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Which was the last horse before Nijinsky to win the English Triple Crown of 2000 Guineas, Epsom Derby and St. Leger?

Nijinsky II Derby Winner Nijinsky In 2000, British racing aficionados voted Nijinsky as their Horse of the Millenium. It was a tremendous honor considering that so many great horses have made their mark on the British horse racing scene over the last century. But the 2000 poll conducted by the Sun newspaper spoke loud and clear -- Nijinsky was the horse the people loved the most. It's easy to say that Nijinsky was pegged for greatness at birth. As the son of two winners of the prestigious Queen's Plate race (Northern Dancer and Flaming Page), Nijinsky had an excellent gene pool in his favor. But his amazing performances over a sterling 13-year span would clearly mark Nijinsky as one of the greatest of the greats. Incidentally, the name Nijinsky II was recorded simply for registration purposes. To his legion of fans around the world, he was known simply as the one and only Nijinsky. During his standout career, Nijinsky blazed a trail like no other horse before him. He was the first horse to win the coveted English Triple Crown in 35 years, after capturing the Epsom Derby, St. Leger Stakes and the Two Thousand Guineas in 1970. That same year, Nijinsky was honored as Europe's Horse of the Year. He also shattered the European Earnings record after winning $677,177, Nijinsky was later syndicated for a world record sum of $5.4 million. In 1969, Nijinsky began his career as two-year-old in Curragh, Ireland, where he won the Erne and Railway Stakes, followed by the Anglesey Stakes and finally the Beresford Stakes to cap his career as a two-year-old. With his victories, Nijinksy was heralded as the two-year-old champion of both Ireland and England. He also began his career as a three-year-old in Curragh where he won the Gladness Stakes. He followed this up with the Two Thousand Guineas to capture the first jewel of the Triple Crown. His next two races were easy victories for the muscular thoroughbred as he left the field eating his dust in the English Derby and the Irish Sweeps Derby. The prestigious King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes in Ascot came next, where Nijinsky faced an elite and older field that included the 1969 Epsom Derby winner, Blakeney. Despite that, Nijinsky would defeat this heralded field and, with his jockey, Lester Piggott, would gain consideration as the most formidable horse and jockey combo ever. An attack of ringworm after that victory left Nijinsky inactive for a significant period. Despite that, Nijinsky captured the St. Leger Stakes upon his return to complete the Triple Crown, the first to do so since Bahram accomplished the feat 35 years earlier. In the world-famous Prix de l�Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Nijinsky would suffer his first defeat, losing by a head by Sassafras. Many pundits blamed his jockey, Piggott, for what critics claimed was a sloppy performance. However, in his final race, the Champion Stakes, Nijinsky would again finish second, signaling the fact that the end had arrived for the champion colt. After his retirement, Nijinsky was assigned as a stud at the Claiborne Farm in Kentucky, with his owners earnestly hoping that the great horse could pass on his strength, stamina and incredible will to win. In 1970, a film was released commemorating Nijinsky's brilliant racing career. Orson Welles was the film's narrator. The film was later released in VHS video format in 1988. Bookmakers

Bahram

Which team won baseball's first World Series of the 60s?

A Horse Called Nijinsky A Horse Called Nijinsky   Vaslav Nijinsky | Golden Slave | 1910 Vaslav Nijinsky, celebrated Russian ballet dancer and choreographer, died in 1950 after making the declaration that he would one day return, reincarnated as a horse. A relatively short 17 years later, there seemed some legitimacy in Vaslav’s declaration, when Charles Engelhard recognized potential greatness in a powerful colt, the kind that fuels fervor within the veins of thoroughbred racers. Nijinsky & Jockey Lester Piggott Nijinsky was born February 21, 1967 at Windfield Farms, in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, from a mating of legendary champions Northern Dancer and Flaming Page. Irish trainer, Vincent O’Brien, suggested the horse to Charles Engelhard. O’Brien was soon after training Nijinsky at Ballydoyle training facility in County Tipperary, Ireland. Apart from his three white feet, Nijinsky wore an almost perfectly shaped heart on his forehead. This heart was representative of the passion soon to engulf the racing community in admiration of this legendary colt. Like his namesake, Nijinsky proved to be a mysterious and whimsical spirit. The great British jockey Lester Piggott once said of Nijinsky, whom he rated as one of two best horses he ever rode, “He wouldn’t talk to me. He never talked to me. Nijinsky had that far-off look in his eye from the first time I saw him… it was like he was looking right through you.” Nijinsky was named by Jane Engelhard and raced under the green, yellow and red silks of his Cragwood Stables of Aiken, South Carolina. He demonstrated greatness from birth, beginning his career in 1969, winning the Erne and Railway stakes in Curragh, Ireland, followed by Anlesey Stakes and then Bereford Stakes. He was, at two years of age, proclaimed the two-year old champion of England and Ireland after being unbeaten in five races. Cragwood Stables | Trophy Display 191st Epsom Derby Stakes | June 3, 1960 1970 was a veritable year for the thoroughbred. He earned the first jewel of his Triple Crown with the 2,000 Guineas win, followed by his capture of the Epsom Derby, providing the second jewel. Nijinsky was inactive for some time after an attack of ringworm, which left him losing a significant amount of his hair. With time and steadfast care, he returned to capture the St. Leger Stakes, which granted him the first English Triple Crown win since Bahram’s in 1935. The world has yet to witness another English Triple Crown winner. Nijinsky, and his jockey, Lester Piggott, gained consideration as the most formidable horse and jockey combination in the history of thoroughbred racing. The great horse was retired to Claiborne Farm in 1970, where he became a broodmare sire and a sire of sires, granting the racing community such greats as Ferdinand, Golden Fleece, Royal Academy and Maplejinsky. He was laid to rest due to infirmities of old age in April, 1992, at Claibrone Farm equine cemetery. The Engelhards were a major force in thoroughbred racing, with stables in England, South Africa and South Carolina. Although Nijinsky was the greatest, there were many remarkable Engelhard horses, including champions Assagai and Hawaii. Assagai | The United Nations Handicap | 1966 Hawaii | The United Nations Handicap | 1969 Assagai was foaled in 1963 and raced out of Cragwood’s Kentucky stables. He was named Champion Turf Horse in 1966 and earned the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Turf Horse. His wins further include the Man o’ War Stakes and Long Branch Stakes in 1966, as well as Round Table and Long Island Handicaps in 1967. Assagai was elected to the Aiken Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame on January 23, 1977. Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, of Monaco, presented the trophy in honor of Assagai’s United Nations Handicap win in 1966, pictured above. Cragwood’s South Africa stables were home to Hawaii, foaled in 1964. Hawaii was awarded Two Year Old Champion in 1966 and Three Year Old Champion in 1967. Later sent to race in the United States, Hawaii was awarded the 1969 American Champion Turf Horse and secured a track record setting performance in the Man o’ War Stakes at Belmont Park. Hawaii was elected to the Aiken Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame on January 23, 1977. Charles Engelhard & Hawaii There have been many great horses in the last millennium, including Secretariat, Northern Dancer, Red Rum, Sea Biscuit, Assagai and Hawaii, but it was of course Nijinsky that British racing aficionados voted as Horse of the Millennium, in 2000. He was also immortalized in the 1970 film, A Horse Called Nijinsky, directed by Jo Duren-Smith and narrated by Orson Welles. Nijinsky truly was the horse that people loved the most. “Perhaps the greatest thing about the sport of horse racing, is that you never know,” Engelhard stated in 1970. “One day you may have the sadness of seeing a great horse like Nijinsky go to defeat, and a few days later, a long shot—about to be discarded—suddenly comes to life and turns in a winning performance.” © All Engelhard

i don't know

Who was the first woman tennis player born in the US to win the US Open after Chris Evert's 1984 triumph?

American winners of the U.S. Open tennis title | Sporting News View Fullscreen Close American winners of the U.S. Open tennis title Their names echo in history as the greatest in tennis. From Bill Tilden and Helen Wills in the 1920s to Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert in the '70s; Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova, John McEnroe and Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras and Maureen Connolly, Althea Gibson and the Williams sisters. Meet the players who won the United States national championship. (Getty Images) 2 View Fullscreen Close Richard Sears: 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1885, 1886, 1887 Wilmer Allison chats about the game with Sears, the grandfather of tennis and the first U.S. champion. (AP Photo) 3 View Fullscreen Close Bill Tilden: 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1929 In the Golden Age of Sports, Tilden was revered with Babe Ruth, Bobby Jones, Red Grange and Jack Dempsey. He dominated the 1920s until he became a professional. But later incidents amid reports of his homosexuality lessened his prominence. (AP Photo) 4 View Fullscreen Close Helen Wills: 1923, 1924, 1925, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1931 There's a great argument about whether Wills or France's Suzanne Lenglen was the greatest player of their age. We'll stick with the American. She won half her titles under her married name, Helen Wills Moody. She also won two gold medals in the 1924 Olympics. (AP Photo) 5 Chris Evert: 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1982 In an era of an American renaissance, Evert was the queen of Queens. (AP Photo) 6 View Fullscreen Close Jimmy Connors: 1974, 1976, 1978, 1982, 1983 If Evert was the queen, Connors was the peevish king. Few players overwhelmed the Open with personality to the extend of "the Belleville brat." (AP Photo) 7 View Fullscreen Close Pete Sampras: 1990, 1993, 1995, 1996, 2002 For more than a decade, Sampras was the final name in grand slam tournaments. He was the last great American international champion. (Getty Images) 8 View Fullscreen Close Serena Williams: 1999, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2014 A lioness, Williams stalks her prey for a fourth consecutive Open title, a fifth consecutive major title and a calendar grand slam. (Getty Images) 9 View Fullscreen Close Molla Mallory: 1920, 1921, 1922, 1926 Born in Norway, Anna Margrethe Bjurstedt was the Serena of her age, tough, powerful and aggressive. Mallory was her married name, and she was a naturalized U.S. citizen. She was, one observer remembered, a fighter. (AP Photo) 10 View Fullscreen Close Alice Marble: 1936, 1938, 1939, 1940 Marble was a U.S. spy in Switzerland during World War II and escaped death on one occasion. Her husband, Joe Crowley, died in combat. On the court, Marble was a successor to the Helens and later coached Billie Jean King and helped clear the way for Althea Gibson to becomes a precedent-setting star. (AP Photo) 12 View Fullscreen Close Pauline Betz: 1942, 1943, 1944, 1946 Betz reigned during World War II. She was compared to Wills but never got to rule in Queens against the best players from abroad until her final title in '46. (AP Photo) 13 View Fullscreen Close Billie Jean King: 1967, 1971, 1972, 1974 The first great American champion of the Open Era, she ruled Queens and dominated the game worldwide. The USTA named its Flushing mecca in her honor. (AP Photo) 14 View Fullscreen Close John McEnroe: 1979, 1980,1981, 1984 Two things you could count on: McEnroe would act the spoiled, petulant brat on the court and then manhandle the competition. Like Connors, he was a lefty who honored tennis by winning. (AP Photo) 15 View Fullscreen Close Martina Navratilova: 1983, 1984, 1986, 1987 Dismissed by her home country of communist Czechoslovakia for being too Western, Navratilova became an American en route to being perhaps the greatest women player of all time. (Getty Images) 16 View Fullscreen Close Margaret Osborne DuPont: 1948, 1949, 1953 DuPont failed to become a grand slam champion because she never entered the Australian Open. Too bad, because in her heyday she dominated Wimbledon, Roland Garros and Forest Hills. (Getty Images) 17 View Fullscreen Close Maureen Connolly: 1951, 1952, 1953 Nobody was better than "Little Mo" during the first half of the 1950s. Her career ended after her right leg was crushed by a concrete truck after she was thrown from a horse. Connolly died of cancer at age 34. (Getty Images) 18 View Fullscreen Close Ellsworth Vines: 1931, 1932 Until the Open Era began, professional players were banned by grand slam events. In his final two amateur seasons, Vines swept through Forest Hills. (AP Photo) 19 View Fullscreen Close Don Budge: 1937, 1938 Budge, left, became the first player to achieve a grand slam. His signature was power tennis, and he was an early proponent of using his backhand to attack. His amateur career included a Davis Cup victory over Germany in a stirring comeback. With the world on tenterhooks as Adolph Hitler pushed toward war, Budge was seen as the Jesse Owens of tennis, striking a blow against the myth of Aryan supremacy. (AP Photo) 20 View Fullscreen Close Sarah Palfrey Danzig: 1941, 1945 Stylish. Elegant. Well placed on the Boston social register. She was a singles icon and with Alice Marble, Helen Jacobs and Helen Wills, was terrific in doubles as well. Virginia Wade would remember Palfrey as having "all the elements of grace and charm and played a very stylish game." (AP Photo) 22 View Fullscreen Close Frank Parker: 1944, 1945 Franciszek Andrzej Pajkowski was born in Milwaukee, the son of Polish immigrants. His footwork complemented his intense all-court ability. After his U.S. titles, Parker went on two win the French Open twice. (Getty Images) 23 View Fullscreen Close Jack Kramer: 1946, 1947 Remembered for his outstanding serve-and-volley game, Kramer would become instrumental in bringing about the Open Era by promoting professional tennis in the 1950s and '60s. As a teen, he played against and lost to Arthur Marx — son of Groucho. As his career progressed, Kramer was unbeatable. (Getty Images) 24 View Fullscreen Close Pancho Gonzales: 1948, 1949 American tennis was often white, often the province of the country club set and the elite. Then came Ricardo Alonso González. Self-taught, he started with a 50-cent racquet on public courts in Los Angeles. He was ostracized by the snobbish tennis set, until he began beating the best of them. Bud Collins once said: "If I had to choose someone to play for my life, it would be Pancho Gonzales." (Getty Images) 25 View Fullscreen Close Tony Trabert: 1953, 1955 Trabert played tennis and basketball at the University of Cincinnati. His mentor, Billy Talbert, honed Trabert's game to the point in 1955 in which he won the U.S., French and Wimbledon titles. He fell short of a grand slam by losing in the '55 Australian Open. His game was serve-and-volley, including his athleticism as a weapon. (AP Photo) 26 View Fullscreen Close Doris Hart: 1954, 1955 Hart was an unlikely champion who overcame health issues become the best in her sport. A leg infection threated her life as a child and left her bowlegged while limiting her speed. To overcome, she relied on a terrific drop shop, tenacity and ability across the court. Her serve was also a strength. Hart lost five Open finals before winning her first. (AP Photo) 27 View Fullscreen Close Althea Gibson: 1957, 1958 Gibson broke the color line in international tennis, first winning the French Open in 1956 before winning Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals. She was called the Jackie Robinson of tennis who, according to Billie Jean King, never backed down from a challenge. The daughter of South Carolina sharecroppers, she learned tennis in Harlem. When amateur tennis failed to pay the bills, she turned to show business as a musician, singer and actress. (AP Photo) 28 View Fullscreen Close Tracy Austin: 1979, 1981 In a sport long dominated by women, Austin ushered in the era of girls. She was 16 years, 9 months old when she won the Open for the first time by defeating Martina Navratilova in the semifinals and Chris Evert in the title match. Injuries would end her career, but she had one more precedent ahead — at 29 the youngest member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame. (Getty Images) 29 View Fullscreen Close Andre Agassi: 1994, 1999 America's tennis youth movement was not limited to teenaged girls. Agassi turned pro at 16, had long hair and splashy clothes. But he was a champion, the son of an Iranian Olympic boxer who moved to Las Vegas. It wasn't until a 1992 Wimbledon title until he silenced critics, and then Agassi won the Open. His '99 title crowned a comeback after falling into drugs. Agassi, a champion, was very human. (Getty Images) 30 View Fullscreen Close John Doeg: 1930 Breaking down his opponent’s defense with his cannonball service, Doeg won his only major title at Forest Hills. (AP Photo) 32 View Fullscreen Close Wilmer Allison: 1935 Often overshadowed by Don Budge, Allison was limited in international success. But he beat Fred Perry in the semifinals and Sidney Wood in the finals of his only major triumph. (AP Photo) 33 View Fullscreen Close Don McNeill: 1940 McNeill was down two sets to Bobby Riggs in the 1904 U.S. Nationals title match when he staged a stirring comeback. It was only the third time a champion rallied to win from being down 0-2. When the U.S. entered World War II, McNeill was a naval attaché in Argentina. After the war, he left the game for business career. That, after all, was more lucrative than tennis. (AP Photo) 34 View Fullscreen Close Ted Schroeder: 1942 Schroeder's peak came during World War II, when international tennis was limited. But he continued to play the amateur game after the war. Professional tennis was not for Schroeder. The year he won at Forest Hills, he also was national collegiate champion for Stanford. Soon after his U.S. Nationals title, he joined the Navy, serving on destroyers and becoming a pilot. (AP Photo) 35 View Fullscreen Close Vic Seixas: 1954 Seixas was a rising player when World War II began, and he became an Air Force pilot. After the war, Seixas completed his college education and won at Wimbledon before taking the U.S. Nationals title. (AP Photo) 36 View Fullscreen Close Arthur Ashe: 1968 In beating Tom Okker in the 1968 finals, Ashe became the first black man to win the U.S. Open. After his mother died, Ashe was raised by a caring father who worked for the Richmond, Va., public parks. A skinny kid, he found his sport on the segregated courts. Did you know he was a second lieutenant in the Army? Ashe is an amazing story that ended too soon. (AP Photo) 37 View Fullscreen Close Stan Smith: 1971 Smith's victory combined with Chris Evert's title gave the U.S. its first sweep of the Open championships in 16 years. Smith was a cool customer on the court, seldom showing emotion. But at 6-4, he was a strong serve-and-volley player with great court coverage and the athleticism of a smaller man. Smith also was a doubles whiz and key member of Davis Cup teams. (AP Photo) 38 View Fullscreen Close Lindsay Davenport: 1998 Davenport was a towering presence at 6-2, but her height was just part of her story. Her parents were into volleyball; dad was an Olympian in 1968. Davenport was a baseline player, and she hit the ball a ton. She addressed her need to be faster by improving her conditioning, leading to her Open triumph. She missed a grand slam by never getting past the semifinals at Roland Garros. (Getty Images) 39

Lindsay Davenport

Which Bond movie used Stoke Poges golf club for some location shots?

American winners of the U.S. Open tennis title | Sporting News View Fullscreen Close American winners of the U.S. Open tennis title Their names echo in history as the greatest in tennis. From Bill Tilden and Helen Wills in the 1920s to Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert in the '70s; Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova, John McEnroe and Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras and Maureen Connolly, Althea Gibson and the Williams sisters. Meet the players who won the United States national championship. (Getty Images) 2 View Fullscreen Close Richard Sears: 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1885, 1886, 1887 Wilmer Allison chats about the game with Sears, the grandfather of tennis and the first U.S. champion. (AP Photo) 3 View Fullscreen Close Bill Tilden: 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1929 In the Golden Age of Sports, Tilden was revered with Babe Ruth, Bobby Jones, Red Grange and Jack Dempsey. He dominated the 1920s until he became a professional. But later incidents amid reports of his homosexuality lessened his prominence. (AP Photo) 4 View Fullscreen Close Helen Wills: 1923, 1924, 1925, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1931 There's a great argument about whether Wills or France's Suzanne Lenglen was the greatest player of their age. We'll stick with the American. She won half her titles under her married name, Helen Wills Moody. She also won two gold medals in the 1924 Olympics. (AP Photo) 5 Chris Evert: 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1982 In an era of an American renaissance, Evert was the queen of Queens. (AP Photo) 6 View Fullscreen Close Jimmy Connors: 1974, 1976, 1978, 1982, 1983 If Evert was the queen, Connors was the peevish king. Few players overwhelmed the Open with personality to the extend of "the Belleville brat." (AP Photo) 7 View Fullscreen Close Pete Sampras: 1990, 1993, 1995, 1996, 2002 For more than a decade, Sampras was the final name in grand slam tournaments. He was the last great American international champion. (Getty Images) 8 View Fullscreen Close Serena Williams: 1999, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2014 A lioness, Williams stalks her prey for a fourth consecutive Open title, a fifth consecutive major title and a calendar grand slam. (Getty Images) 9 View Fullscreen Close Molla Mallory: 1920, 1921, 1922, 1926 Born in Norway, Anna Margrethe Bjurstedt was the Serena of her age, tough, powerful and aggressive. Mallory was her married name, and she was a naturalized U.S. citizen. She was, one observer remembered, a fighter. (AP Photo) 10 View Fullscreen Close Alice Marble: 1936, 1938, 1939, 1940 Marble was a U.S. spy in Switzerland during World War II and escaped death on one occasion. Her husband, Joe Crowley, died in combat. On the court, Marble was a successor to the Helens and later coached Billie Jean King and helped clear the way for Althea Gibson to becomes a precedent-setting star. (AP Photo) 12 View Fullscreen Close Pauline Betz: 1942, 1943, 1944, 1946 Betz reigned during World War II. She was compared to Wills but never got to rule in Queens against the best players from abroad until her final title in '46. (AP Photo) 13 View Fullscreen Close Billie Jean King: 1967, 1971, 1972, 1974 The first great American champion of the Open Era, she ruled Queens and dominated the game worldwide. The USTA named its Flushing mecca in her honor. (AP Photo) 14 View Fullscreen Close John McEnroe: 1979, 1980,1981, 1984 Two things you could count on: McEnroe would act the spoiled, petulant brat on the court and then manhandle the competition. Like Connors, he was a lefty who honored tennis by winning. (AP Photo) 15 View Fullscreen Close Martina Navratilova: 1983, 1984, 1986, 1987 Dismissed by her home country of communist Czechoslovakia for being too Western, Navratilova became an American en route to being perhaps the greatest women player of all time. (Getty Images) 16 View Fullscreen Close Margaret Osborne DuPont: 1948, 1949, 1953 DuPont failed to become a grand slam champion because she never entered the Australian Open. Too bad, because in her heyday she dominated Wimbledon, Roland Garros and Forest Hills. (Getty Images) 17 View Fullscreen Close Maureen Connolly: 1951, 1952, 1953 Nobody was better than "Little Mo" during the first half of the 1950s. Her career ended after her right leg was crushed by a concrete truck after she was thrown from a horse. Connolly died of cancer at age 34. (Getty Images) 18 View Fullscreen Close Ellsworth Vines: 1931, 1932 Until the Open Era began, professional players were banned by grand slam events. In his final two amateur seasons, Vines swept through Forest Hills. (AP Photo) 19 View Fullscreen Close Don Budge: 1937, 1938 Budge, left, became the first player to achieve a grand slam. His signature was power tennis, and he was an early proponent of using his backhand to attack. His amateur career included a Davis Cup victory over Germany in a stirring comeback. With the world on tenterhooks as Adolph Hitler pushed toward war, Budge was seen as the Jesse Owens of tennis, striking a blow against the myth of Aryan supremacy. (AP Photo) 20 View Fullscreen Close Sarah Palfrey Danzig: 1941, 1945 Stylish. Elegant. Well placed on the Boston social register. She was a singles icon and with Alice Marble, Helen Jacobs and Helen Wills, was terrific in doubles as well. Virginia Wade would remember Palfrey as having "all the elements of grace and charm and played a very stylish game." (AP Photo) 22 View Fullscreen Close Frank Parker: 1944, 1945 Franciszek Andrzej Pajkowski was born in Milwaukee, the son of Polish immigrants. His footwork complemented his intense all-court ability. After his U.S. titles, Parker went on two win the French Open twice. (Getty Images) 23 View Fullscreen Close Jack Kramer: 1946, 1947 Remembered for his outstanding serve-and-volley game, Kramer would become instrumental in bringing about the Open Era by promoting professional tennis in the 1950s and '60s. As a teen, he played against and lost to Arthur Marx — son of Groucho. As his career progressed, Kramer was unbeatable. (Getty Images) 24 View Fullscreen Close Pancho Gonzales: 1948, 1949 American tennis was often white, often the province of the country club set and the elite. Then came Ricardo Alonso González. Self-taught, he started with a 50-cent racquet on public courts in Los Angeles. He was ostracized by the snobbish tennis set, until he began beating the best of them. Bud Collins once said: "If I had to choose someone to play for my life, it would be Pancho Gonzales." (Getty Images) 25 View Fullscreen Close Tony Trabert: 1953, 1955 Trabert played tennis and basketball at the University of Cincinnati. His mentor, Billy Talbert, honed Trabert's game to the point in 1955 in which he won the U.S., French and Wimbledon titles. He fell short of a grand slam by losing in the '55 Australian Open. His game was serve-and-volley, including his athleticism as a weapon. (AP Photo) 26 View Fullscreen Close Doris Hart: 1954, 1955 Hart was an unlikely champion who overcame health issues become the best in her sport. A leg infection threated her life as a child and left her bowlegged while limiting her speed. To overcome, she relied on a terrific drop shop, tenacity and ability across the court. Her serve was also a strength. Hart lost five Open finals before winning her first. (AP Photo) 27 View Fullscreen Close Althea Gibson: 1957, 1958 Gibson broke the color line in international tennis, first winning the French Open in 1956 before winning Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals. She was called the Jackie Robinson of tennis who, according to Billie Jean King, never backed down from a challenge. The daughter of South Carolina sharecroppers, she learned tennis in Harlem. When amateur tennis failed to pay the bills, she turned to show business as a musician, singer and actress. (AP Photo) 28 View Fullscreen Close Tracy Austin: 1979, 1981 In a sport long dominated by women, Austin ushered in the era of girls. She was 16 years, 9 months old when she won the Open for the first time by defeating Martina Navratilova in the semifinals and Chris Evert in the title match. Injuries would end her career, but she had one more precedent ahead — at 29 the youngest member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame. (Getty Images) 29 View Fullscreen Close Andre Agassi: 1994, 1999 America's tennis youth movement was not limited to teenaged girls. Agassi turned pro at 16, had long hair and splashy clothes. But he was a champion, the son of an Iranian Olympic boxer who moved to Las Vegas. It wasn't until a 1992 Wimbledon title until he silenced critics, and then Agassi won the Open. His '99 title crowned a comeback after falling into drugs. Agassi, a champion, was very human. (Getty Images) 30 View Fullscreen Close John Doeg: 1930 Breaking down his opponent’s defense with his cannonball service, Doeg won his only major title at Forest Hills. (AP Photo) 32 View Fullscreen Close Wilmer Allison: 1935 Often overshadowed by Don Budge, Allison was limited in international success. But he beat Fred Perry in the semifinals and Sidney Wood in the finals of his only major triumph. (AP Photo) 33 View Fullscreen Close Don McNeill: 1940 McNeill was down two sets to Bobby Riggs in the 1904 U.S. Nationals title match when he staged a stirring comeback. It was only the third time a champion rallied to win from being down 0-2. When the U.S. entered World War II, McNeill was a naval attaché in Argentina. After the war, he left the game for business career. That, after all, was more lucrative than tennis. (AP Photo) 34 View Fullscreen Close Ted Schroeder: 1942 Schroeder's peak came during World War II, when international tennis was limited. But he continued to play the amateur game after the war. Professional tennis was not for Schroeder. The year he won at Forest Hills, he also was national collegiate champion for Stanford. Soon after his U.S. Nationals title, he joined the Navy, serving on destroyers and becoming a pilot. (AP Photo) 35 View Fullscreen Close Vic Seixas: 1954 Seixas was a rising player when World War II began, and he became an Air Force pilot. After the war, Seixas completed his college education and won at Wimbledon before taking the U.S. Nationals title. (AP Photo) 36 View Fullscreen Close Arthur Ashe: 1968 In beating Tom Okker in the 1968 finals, Ashe became the first black man to win the U.S. Open. After his mother died, Ashe was raised by a caring father who worked for the Richmond, Va., public parks. A skinny kid, he found his sport on the segregated courts. Did you know he was a second lieutenant in the Army? Ashe is an amazing story that ended too soon. (AP Photo) 37 View Fullscreen Close Stan Smith: 1971 Smith's victory combined with Chris Evert's title gave the U.S. its first sweep of the Open championships in 16 years. Smith was a cool customer on the court, seldom showing emotion. But at 6-4, he was a strong serve-and-volley player with great court coverage and the athleticism of a smaller man. Smith also was a doubles whiz and key member of Davis Cup teams. (AP Photo) 38 View Fullscreen Close Lindsay Davenport: 1998 Davenport was a towering presence at 6-2, but her height was just part of her story. Her parents were into volleyball; dad was an Olympian in 1968. Davenport was a baseline player, and she hit the ball a ton. She addressed her need to be faster by improving her conditioning, leading to her Open triumph. She missed a grand slam by never getting past the semifinals at Roland Garros. (Getty Images) 39

i don't know

How many races did Ed Moses win in succession between '77 and '87?

Sporting dominance | Motor Sport Magazine Sporting dominance by Paul Fearnley on 7th November 2013 Mission Complete in the 2.40 at Chepstow: there could be no better name for AP McCoy’s 4000th winner. Destiny called. Except that the seven-year-old gelding was withdrawn because the going was deemed too soft. Domination in sport, apparently robust, is in fact fragile. Failure, so much easier to attain, can overtake you, trip and blind-side you at the drop of a clutch, catch or shot. McCoy in 2006 McCoy, who today (Thursday) might complete his mission at Lord Hesketh’s Towcester Racecourse, is the greatest National Hunt jockey. His victory tally stands almost 1500 proud of the next highest and he is on the verge of his 19th champion jockey title on the trot. Such longevity and consistency do not sit comfortably with a bone-jarring/breaking sport that has at its heart an unspoken partnership with another sentient, willful and fallible species. No wonder multiple successive race victories are hard to come by in McCoy’s world. It’s the same on the flat. Sir Gordon Richards’ 12 in October 1933 appears to be the best run, although a Puerto Rican stallion called Camarero reportedly won 56 straight between 1953 and ’55. Individual sports, where you have only yourself to blame if self-motivation, self-reliance and your talent come up short, is a happier home for the sporting hot streak. Ed Moses, uniquely grooved at 13 strides between the barriers, won 122 consecutive 400m hurdles between 1977 and ’87, while Michael Phelps had gone 10 years unbeaten in 200m butterfly finals by the time Bert le Clos’ “beautiful boy!” finger-pipped him to gold at London 2012. Michael Phelps celebrates his eighth gold medal in during the 2004 Olympics. Photo by Bryan Allison Despite the more obvious wear and tear of boxing, Julio César Chávez reached 87 and O before being held to a draw by Pernell Whitaker in 1993. Sugar Ray Robinson’s eight-year, 91-bout undefeated streak, including two draws, ended unexpectedly against Britain’s Randolph Turpin in 1951. And Welsh flyweight Jimmy Wilde, known as ‘The Ghost with the Hammer in his Hand’, won 103 in a row before Scotsman Tancy Lee floored him in 1915. Racquet sports provide another rich seam for the dominant. Martina Navratilova prevailed in 74 consecutive singles matches in 1984. Helen Wills Moody, the tennis queen of the 1920s and ’30s, strung together at least 158 wins without conceding a set, and her predecessor, La Divine Suzanne Lenglen, successfully netted 182 between 1921 and ’26. And then there’s squash, that most claustrophobic test of fitness and resolve. Pakistan’s Jahangir Khan squished 555 consecutive opponents in the first half of the 1980s, and yet Aussie Heather McKay, unbeaten during her 19 years as a professional, is likely to have squished even more. The search for perfection in team sports, where the cliché holds that you are only as good as your weakest member, is a more complex task. Even Arsène Wenger’s Arsenal ‘Invincibles’ of 2003-’04 drew 12 of their 38 Premier League fixtures. A draw being an alien concept to American sport, the Miami Dolphins of 1972 remains the only team to complete a perfect NFL season: 17 and O. And that same year, Wilt ‘The Stilt’ Chamberlain’s LA Lakers stretched its NBA record to 33 victories on the bounce. Wilt Chamberlain (right) in 1966 during his time with the Philadelphia 76ers An MLB baseball season is more convoluted, with 162 fixtures per team before the best-of-seven post-season play-offs and World Series, and just once since 1935 has a team won 20 games in a row: the Moneyball Oakland Athletics of 2002. Formula 1 Although F1’s calendar is less crowded, it is no less demanding and, I would argue, possesses many more facets capable of sustaining error. With one man at the apex of a huge team – some number more than 600 staff (plus those of its main suppliers) – and in ultimate control of a finely honed machine that incorporates many hundreds of mechanical, hydraulic and electrical parts constructed from a wide variety of materials and designed to survive at the precipitous edge of calamity, it’s little wonder that Sebastian Vettel’s current victory sequence has been bettered only once. The German’s forthcoming opportunity, at Austin and Interlagos, to match Alberto Ascari’s 60-year-old achievement of winning nine consecutive Grands Prix will be the final act of interest of the current 2.4 V8 formula. Ascari, like Vettel, was at his best when controlling matters from the front. Leaping from pole position, he was capable of sustaining a speed beyond the reach of even Juan Fangio. Ascari at Spa, 1953 The latter’s absence from much of 1952 because of a neck injury sustained in June’s non-championship Monza GP admittedly opened the field wide for Ascari, and the chubby Italian – nickname Ciccio – made hay by winning six world championship GPs in succession, five of them by huge margins. Only in Germany, when a late pit stop for oil forced him to hunt down unimpressed team-mate Giuseppe Farina, was his advantage (14 seconds) anything other than fundamental. He started five of these races from pole, set fastest lap in all six, and led for a record 304 consecutive laps. 1953 was a tougher task. Not only did Fangio return, but the Argentinian’s much-delayed Maserati was much improved and more than a match for Ascari’s well-proven Ferrari in terms of acceleration and top speed, if not handling and braking. The latter, however, won in Argentina (by a lap) and Holland – both from pole – and in Belgium (by almost three minutes) before his spell was broken at Reims. There the others finally sank their claws into him and it was left to his younger, more devil-may-care team-mate Mike Hawthorn to uphold Ferrari’s honour. Ascari finished fourth. Suddenly 4.6 seconds seemed gapingly huge. Ascari proceeded to win in Britain – he would have won in Germany, too, but for an errant front wheel – and in Switzerland to secure back-to-back world titles. The latter occasion saw him charge after a long stop for new spark plugs, and ignore team orders, to put Farina firmly in his place. There was fire in that belly. Yet when Ascari lost out in a last-corner scramble at Monza three weeks later, the label stuck: a bottler not a battler. Though there was only a grain of truth to this harsh assessment, it has survived the sands of time. Michael Schumacher, another supreme frontrunner whose career was besmirched by a few moments of weakness, won seven GPs in a row in 2004. Chances are that he is soon to be upstaged on this account – and eventually on all others – by his young compatriot. Vettel set up for a record-breaking run Vettel’s recent wins in Singapore, India and Abu Dhabi were Ascari-like in their completeness and it’s impossible to imagine anybody beating him in America and Brazil such is his and Red Bull’s momentum. The real measure of the man, however, would be a 10th consecutive GP victory, in Melbourne next March: new formula, new slate – there’s no need to wipe the old one clean – and some different chalk with which to make his mark. The question of Vettel’s greatness has been answered. The question now is: how great? Should his run end at seven, eight or nine, however, it will remain an astounding achievement for all concerned. Championships can still be won despite the occasional cough, hiccup and Jean-Louis Schlesser. To win race after race after race is both a more difficult challenge and a better arbiter of skill and preparation because it happens so infrequently. When McLaren prevailed in all but one GP of 1988, tech boss Gordon Murray’s toughest task was the fight against complacency. Schlesser’s clumsy bunting of an impetuous Ayrton Senna from the lead at Monza did not annoy Gordon as much as did the spark plug problem that had caused Alain Prost’s earlier retirement. Far from it. Thus Tom Kristensen’s nine Le Mans 24 Hours successes, though a remarkable stat, is, for me, topped by the fact that six of them were achieved consecutively. Just think how many gentleman racers in slower machinery he had to overtake during this sequence. Then there are the gear changes, the infinitesimal pauses at TDC, the concentration and the trust in fellow co-drivers to consider. Staggering. The ridiculously high demands of such faultless repetition are proved by the fact that nine-time world champion Sébastien Loeb and, lest we forget, the redoubtable Daniel Elena never won more than six WRC rounds in a row – although they might have made it 12 but for a cautious, title-clinching third place in Japan in 2008. The equally remorseless AJ Foyt won the first seven rounds – five on pavement and two on dirt – of the 1964 Champ Car season: a record that still stands. And in NASCAR, motor racing’s baseball equivalent, nobody has won more than 10 in a row. The latter, racked up by Richard Petty in 1967, is my favourite hot streak in motor sport because of its redolent ‘branch line’ sequence of venues: (stopping at) Bowman Gray, Columbia, Savannah, Darlington, Hickory, Richmond, Beltsville, Occoneechee, Martinsville and North Wilkesboro. Winning is the most important thing if you want to be crowned a champion. How and where you win matter only if you want to be called a king.

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What distance is the Breeders' Cup Sprint?

Countdown to the Beijing Olympics - Telegraph Countdown to the Beijing Olympics click to open PDF  11:01PM BST 14 Jul 2008 One day to go... One: Olympic hero. Great and many have been the deeds by thousands of Olympians since the inaugural modern Games in Athens in 1896. But the achievements of Jesse Owens, the black American track and field athlete who won four gold medals under the nose of Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, surely stand out above all others. By employing the Third Reich’s highly efficient propaganda machine, Hitler wanted to use the Olympics to promote Germany to the world at large. The German team, with full government backing, was the best prepared in the history of the Olympics. But it was Owens - one of 10 black athletes on the US track and field team - who proved to be the indubitable star of the Games. Detested by the German propaganda machine, which dubbed them the Black Auxiliaries, Owens and his nine black colleagues on the American athletics team won seven gold, three silver and three bronze medals between them - more than any other national team. Owens himself won the 100m, 200m and long-jump titles as well as being a member of the successful 4 x 100m relay team. Two days to go... Two: The number of times that London has hosted the summer Olympics, as many times as any other city. Only Athens (1896 and 2004), Paris (1900 and 1924), London (1908 and 1948) and Los Angeles (1932 and 1984) have twice acted as the host city, though London will break that record in 2012 when it becomes the first city to stage the summer Games on three separate occasions. Strangely, London had never bid successfully for the Olympics until winning the 2012 Games. The 1908 Olympics were due to be held in Rome until London stepped in at short notice following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1906. A year after the conclusion of the Second World War, a postal vote of IOC members awarded the 1948 Games to London (which had, in any event, originally been earmarked for the 1944 Olympics). The summer Olympics have been held in the United States on four occasions (in 1904, 1932, 1984 and 1996), more times than any other country. Three days to go... Three: The number of times that Great Britain has won only one gold medal at a summer Olympic Games, though she has thankfully yet to record a duck. Britain managed a solitary gold in 1904 (when Thomas Kiely won the combined events, a forerunner of the decathlon), in 1952 (when the show-jumping team were victorious) and again in 1996 (when Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent were successful in the rowing coxless pairs). Britain’s best gold-medal haul by far is the 56 that were harvested at the London Games of 1908, when they finished on top of the medal table for the only time ever. The next highest British gold-medal tallies, in descending order, are 17 (in 1900), 14 (in 1920), 11 (in 2000), 10 (in 1912) and nine (in 1924 and 2004). Britain have won between two and six gold medals at every other summer Olympics. Four days to go... Four: The number of gold medals won by Francina “Fanny” Blankers-Koen, a 30-year-old from the Netherlands and a mother of two children, at the 1948 London Olympics. Blankers-Coen's gold-medal haul was greater than that of the entire British team between them. Her four gold medals, in the 100m, 200m (which she won by 0.7sec, the widest margin in an Olympic 200m final), 80m hurdles and 4 x 100m relay, earned her the nickname “The Flying Housewife”. And with good reason, for she had become the first woman to win four Olympic gold medals and the first one to do so at a single Olympics. She remains one of only four people, along with Alvin Kraenzlein (1900), Jesse Owens (1936) and Carl Lewis (1984), to have won four track and field gold medals at one Olympics. Blankers-Coen died in 2004 at the age of 85, but her achievements of 1948 will live forever. Five days to go... Five: The number of Olympic gold medals won by Sir Steve Redgrave, the rower widely regarded to be Great Britain‘s greatest ever Olympian. Redgrave won his gold medals at five successive Games between 1984 and 2000 and became only the fourth athlete in any sport to claim gold medals at five different Olympics. Having won the coxed fours in 1984 with Martin Cross, Andy Holmes, Richard Budgett and Adrian Ellison, Redgrave won the coxless pairs at the next three Olympics - with Holmes in 1988 and with Matthew Pinsent in both 1992 and 1996. Immediately after winning gold in 1996, Redgrave famously said: “If anyone ever sees me in a boat again, they have my permission to shoot me.” But he was in a boat again in Sydney four years later when, amid almost unbearable tension, the British coxless fours, which comprised Redgrave, Pinsent, James Cracknell and Tim Foster, just held off the challenge of the Italians. Redgrave was knighted in 2001 and rarely can a knighthood have been so richly deserved. Six days to go... Six: The number of gold medals that Kristin Otto, an East German swimmer, won at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the most that a female Olympian has won at a single Games. The powerful Otto, who was born in Leipzig in 1966, was favoured to win several gold medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Games before becoming a victim of a boycott that involved most of the Eastern Bloc countries. At the 1988 Olympics - the only Games in which she competed - she demonstrated remarkable versatility by winning the 50m and 100m freestyle, the 100m butterfly, the 100m backstroke, the 4 x 100m freestyle relay and the 4 x 100m medley relay. The achievements of Otto, who subsequently worked as a commentator on German television, are inevitably tainted by the revelations of widespread performance-enhancing drugs use by East German athletes, but her haul of six gold medals nevertheless remains a record. Seven days to go... Seven: The number of gold medals that Mark Spitz, the American swimmer, won at the 1972 Munich Olympics, three of them in relays and all of them in new world-record times. It is a gold-medal haul that remains the highest by any person at a single Olympics. Spitz, who was born in California in 1950, brashly predicted that he would win six gold medals at the 1968 Mexico Games, but performed relatively disappointingly, winning two relay golds, a 100m butterfly silver and a 100m freestyle bronze. 1972 proved to be altogether different as he swam to glory in every event in which he participated: the 100m and 200m freestyle, the 100m and 200m butterfly, the 4 x 100m and 4 x 200m freestyle relays and the 4 x 100m medley relay. Still only 22, Spitz retired after Munich. He made a return to competitive swimming in 1991 with the stated aim of qualifying for the 1992 Olympics, but was unable to match swimmers who were half his age. Eight days to go... Eight: The most medals that have been won by one person at a single Olympics, a record that is shared by Alexander Dityatin, a Soviet gymnast, and Michael Phelps, the American swimmer. Dityatin achieved the feat at the Moscow Games of 1980, when he won three gold medals (in the all-around, rings and team events), four silvers and a bronze. He thereby also holds the distinction of being the only athlete to have claimed a medal in each of the eight gymnastics disciplines at one Olympics. Phelps matched Dityatin’s record by winning six golds (in the 100m and 200m butterfly, the 200m and 400m individual medley, the 4 x 200m freestyle relay and the 4 x 100m medley relay) and two bronzes in Athens four years ago. The women’s record for winning multiple medals at one Olympics is held by Maria Gorokhovskaya, a Soviet gymnast, who won seven (two golds and five silvers) at the 1952 Games. Nine days to go . . . Nine: The record-equalling number of Olympic gold medals that were won by Carl Lewis, the American track and field athlete. Lewis won four gold medals in 1984 (the 100m, 200m, 4 x 100m relay and long jump, thereby replicating the feat of Jesse Owens in 1936), two in 1988 (the 100m and long jump), two in 1992 (the 4 x 100m relay and long jump) and one in 1996 (the long jump). He finished second in the 1988 100m final, but was subsequently promoted to first when Ben Johnson was infamously disqualified after failing a dope test. It was revealed in 2003 that Lewis himself had tested positive for banned stimulants three times before the 1988 Games, but he nevertheless remains the only male athlete to have retained either the Olympic 100m title or the Olympic long jump title. Lewis’s gold-medal haul ties him with Paavo Nurmi, Larissa Latynina and Mark Spitz as the only Olympians to have won nine gold medals. 10 days to go . . . 10: The number of Olympic hockey medals that have been won by Great Britain, a total below only that of the Netherlands, who have claimed 13 medals, and India (11). Nine of Britain’s medals (three gold, two silver and four bronze) have been won in men’s hockey, which made its debut at the 1908 London Games, and one (a bronze) in women’s, which was added to the Olympic programme in 1980. Britain won the men’s title in 1908, 1920 and 1988, though India have much the much successful record in that discipline, having won the title on eight occasions, including all six times between 1928 and 1956. During that astonishing run of six successive gold medals, India scored 178 goals and conceded only seven. The highest score ever achieved in international hockey came when India beat the United States 24-1 in the 1932 Olympics. The highest score in an Olympic final also came in 1932, when India beat Japan 11-1. 11 days to go . . . 11: The number of Israelis who so tragically lost their lives at the 1972 Games in Munich, after eight Palestinian terrorists burst into the premises of the Israeli team, who were based in the Olympic Village, on the morning of Sept 5. A weightlifter and a wrestling coach were killed immediately in a fusillade of gunfire before nine Israelis were held hostage. Following lengthy negotiations, the terrorists and their hostages were allowed to go to a local airport, where an abortive rescue attempt resulted in the murder of all the hostages and five of the terrorists. “The Games must go on,” said Avery Brundage, the IOC president. And go on they did, after being temporarily suspended for a memorial service. The rest of the Israeli team went home immediately, as did some individuals from other nations who were concerned about the security measures. 12 days to go . . . 12: The number of Olympic medals that were won by Paavo Nurmi, the great Finnish middle and long distance runner of the 1920s. No other athletics competitor has harvested as many Olympic medals as the ‘Flying Finn‘, who won nine golds and three silvers - in track and cross-country events - between 1920 and 1928. In distances ranging from 1,500m to 10,000m, he claimed three gold medals in 1920, five in 1924 and one in 1928 while additionally gaining one silver in 1920 and two more silvers in 1928. Nurmi was barred from participating at the 1932 Games, where he intended to compete in the 10,000m and the marathon, because he was deemed to be a professional, but he lit the Olympic Flame at the Helsinki Games of 1952. A national hero, Nurmi was given a state funeral when he died at the age of 76 in 1973. 13 days to go . . . 13: The number of Olympic swimming gold medals that have been won by Great Britain, nine of them in men’s swimming (which formed part of the inaugural Olympic programme in 1896) and four in women’s (which was first introduced in 1912). After John Jarvis claimed the 1,000m and 4,000m freestyle titles in 1900, Britain won four swimming gold medals at the London Games of 1908 before the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay team won gold in 1912. Three more women’s gold medals followed - Lucy Morton in the 200m breaststroke in 1924, Judy Grinham in the 100m backstroke in 1956 and Anita Lonsbrough in the 200m breaststroke in 1960 - before David Wilkie won Britain‘s first men‘s swimming gold for 68 years when he triumphed in the 200m breaststroke in 1976. The last two British swimming gold medals have both come in the men’s 100m breaststroke: Duncan Goodhew in 1980 and Adrian Moorhouse in 1988. 14 days to go . . . 14: The age at which Nadia Comeneci, a Romanian gymnast, not only captured five medals (three gold, one silver and one bronze) at the 1976 Montreal Games, but also became the first person ever to be awarded a perfect score of 10 in an Olympic gymnastics event. Trained as a gymnast since the age of six, the 4ft 11in Comaneci made Olympic history by being awarded a magical 10 for her performances on the uneven bars and on the balance beam in the team competition (in which Romania won silver). She also gained another five “perfect 10s” at the 1976 Games en route to winning individual gold medals in the all-around, uneven bars and balance beam events before winning four further medals (two gold and two silver) at the Moscow Olympics four years later. Comaneci retired from competition in 1981 and is now a naturalized citizen of the USA. 15 days to go . . . 15: The number of medals that have been won at the summer Olympics by Soviet gymnast Nikolai Andrianov, more than any other male competitor in the history of the modern Games. An unruly child who often played truant from school, Andrianov competed at three Olympics between 1972 and 1980 and won seven gold medals (one in 1972, four in 1976, two in 1980), five silver and three bronze. Six of his gold medals were in individual events and he also won a team gold in 1980. The next highest tally of Olympic medals that have been won by male competitors is 13, a feat that has been achieved by three different people: Edoardo Mangiarotti, an Italian fencer (between 1936 and 1960), Takashi Ono, a Japanese gymnast (between 1952 and 1964) and Boris Shakhlin, a Soviet gymnast (between 1956 and 1964). 16 days to go . . . 16: The number of countries that have won only one medal in track and field events in the history of the modern Olympics. Burundi, Cameroon, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Luxembourg and Syria have each claimed a sole gold medal while Haiti, Ivory Coast, Saudi Arabia, Senegal and Zambia have all secured one silver. The nations to have won a bronze - and nothing else - in Olympic track and field competitions are Colombia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Qatar and Venezuela. At the other end of the scale, USA lead the way with 717 athletics medals (307 gold, 228 silver, 182 bronze) and they are followed by the Soviet Union, who have harvested a total of 214 medals, Great Britain (186), Finland (112) and East Germany (110 - though many of those were almost certainly won with the aid of performance enhancing drugs). Of Finland’s 112 athletics medals, only three have been won by women. 17 days to go . . . 17: The age at which Bob Mathias became the decathlon champion at the 1948 London Games, thereby making him the youngest ever male gold medallist in an Olympic athletics event. Mathias, an American, was 17 years and 263 days old when he triumphed, which was some achievement given that he had only taken up the event, at the behest of his high school coach, three months previously. Indeed, so unfamiliar was he with the decathlon, he exited the shot put throwing circle from the front and therefore fouled what would have been his longest throw. Asked immediately after winning gold how he intended to celebrate, the teenager replied: “I’ll start shaving, I guess.“ Mathias retained his title in Helsinki four years later by a huge margin, setting a world record in the process, before later acting in four films (one of them with Jayne Mansfield) and being elected to the US Congress, where he served for eight years. He died in 2006 at the age of 75. 18 days to go . . . 18: The record number of Olympic medals that were won by Soviet gymnast Larissa Latynina. Born in Ukraine in 1934, she competed at three Games between 1956 and 1964 and won six medals at each of them. Her overall total, which includes 14 medals in individual events and four in team disciplines, comprises nine gold medals, five silvers and four bronzes. She remains only one of four athletes to have won nine Olympic gold medals as well as being the only one (of either sex) to have gained 14 in individual events. She is also one of only three women to have been victorious in the same individual summer Olympics event (in her case, the floor exercises) on three separate occasions. Nikolai Andrianov, another Soviet gymnast, is second on the all-time medal list, having won 15 between 1972 and 1980. 19 days to go . . . 19: The age of Yoshinori Sakai, a Japanese student, when he lit the Olympic Flame at the Tokyo Games of 1964. Sakai, however, was not just any 19-year-old, for he had been born near Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 - the very day the atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city. And it was as a symbol of peace and reconciliation with the world community after the events of the Second World War that “Baby Hiroshima”, as he was nicknamed, was chosen to ignite the flame. The 1964 Olympics were the first to be held in Asia as well as being the first to include judo and volleyball. Electronic quartz timing was introduced along with photo finish equipment while fibreglass poles were used in the pole vault for the first time. All four of Great Britain’s gold medals were won in athletics events: Lynn Davies and Mary Rand in their respective long jump competitions, Ann Packer in the 800m and Ken Matthews in the 20km walk. 20 days to go . . . 20: The number of countries who have only ever won an overall total of one medal at the summer Olympics. Of those, three have won a gold medal, eight a silver and nine a bronze. The three to have claimed a gold as the only Olympic medal in their history are Burundi, Ecuador and United Arab Emirates while the eight to have secured a silver are Ivory Coast, Netherlands Antilles, Paraguay, Senegal, Singapore, Tonga, Vietnam and Virgin Islands. The nine to have won a bronze are Bermuda, Djibouti, Eritrea, Guyana, Iraq, Kirghizstan, Kuwait, Macedonia and Niger Republic. At the top end of the scale, USA lead the way with a total of 2,200 medals, and they are followed by the Soviet Union, who have gained 1,122 (a figure that includes the Unified Team of 1992), Great Britain (671), unified Germany (608) and France (590). 21 days to go . . . 21: The number of gold medals that have been won at the summer Olympics by Ukraine, which was one of the founding republics of the Soviet Union and became independent again after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Bordered by no less than seven countries, including Russia to the east and Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west, Ukraine is home to more than 46 million people and has Kiev as its capital city. Having competed as part of the Unified Team at the 1992 Games, Ukraine won nine gold medals in 1996, three in 2000 and a further nine in Athens four years ago. In addition to their 21 golds at the past three Olympics, they have also claimed a total of 17 silvers and 31 bronzes. Among their gold medal winners have been Wladimir Klitschko, who won the super-heavyweight boxing title in 1996, and swimmer Yana Klochkova, who was successful in the 200m and 400m individual medley in both 2000 and 2004. 22 days to go . . . 22: The number of Olympic basketball medals that have been won by the United States, appreciably more than any other nation. The Soviet Union, with 13, have the next highest medal tally and they are followed by Yugoslavia (eight), Brazil (five), Australia (three) and Lithuania (three). Since basketball was first introduced to the Olympic programme in 1936, the American men’s team have won 12 gold medals, one silver and two bronze, with their only failure to win a medal coming in 1980, when USA boycotted the Moscow Games. Women’s basketball was first included at the Montreal Olympics of 1976, since when USA have won five of the eight tournaments, as well as finishing second and third in the two other Games at which they competed. Great Britain have never won a medal in Olympic basketball. 23 days to go . . . 23: The number of gold medals that have been won in men’s Olympic football. Great Britain and Hungary, with three each, have won the most gold medals and they are followed by the Soviet Union and Uruguay, who have secured two apiece. Argentina are among those countries to have claimed the title on one occasion, with their success coming in Athens four years ago when a goal by Carlos Tevez fired them to a 1-0 victory against Paraguay. Indeed, Argentina went through the whole tournament without conceding a goal. In 1984, some professional footballers were officially allowed to take part in the Olympics before, in 1992, all professionals were permitted to participate, provided they were less than 23 years old. Since 1996, for the Olympic tournament itself, each qualifying country has been allowed to add three professionals to its squad, regardless of their age. 24 days to go . . . 24: The number of countries that participated in the 1900 Olympics in Paris, although many competitors, even event winners, did not actually realize they were taking part in the Games, such was the chaotic nature of the most disorganised Olympics of all. In fact, some of them died without ever knowing that they had taken part in the Games, which coincided with Paris’s World Fair. Still, 997 athletes (975 men and 22 women) from 24 nations were deemed to have participated in the Olympics. Tennis was one of fives sports in which athletes from different nations competed on the same side, with the others being football, polo, rowing and tug-of-war. Seventeen of the 24 countries won a medal of some colour, with France, who won a total of 100 medals, finishing on top of the table. The United States claimed 46 medals to finish in second place while Great Britain (38 medals) finished third. 25 days to go . . . 25: The number of medals that have been won by Great Britain in Olympic equestrian events, a total that has been surpassed only by Germany, who have gained 51, the United States (46), Sweden (40) and France (35). Britain’s haul is made up of six gold medals (two individual and four team), nine silvers and 10 bronzes. The individual golds have both come in the three-day event competition: Richard Meade was triumphant in 1972 before Leslie Law followed suit in 2004, though only after Germany’s Bettina Hoy was relegated from first to ninth place after crossing the start line twice in the show-jumping part of the event. Britain won the show-jumping team event in 1952 and the three-day event competition in 1956, 1968 and 1972. Britain have also finished second in the three-day event team competition in four of the past six Olympics. 26 days to go . . . 26: The number of Olympic medals (seven gold, 12 silver, seven bronze) that have been won by Kazakhstan, who have participated at the past three Games as an independent nation after competing at the 1992 Olympics as part of the Unified Team. Kazakhstan declared its independence in December 1991 - the last Soviet republic to do so - and is the ninth biggest country in the world with an area of 2.7 million square kilometres, though its population is only a little more than 15 million people. The only woman to win an Olympic medal of any colour for Kazakhstan is Olga Shishigina, who lifted the 100m hurdles title in 2000. Of the other 25 medals, 11 (including four gold) have been won in boxing, six (including one gold) in wrestling, three in shooting, two in weightlifting, one in modern pentathlon (a gold), one in cycling and one in athletics. 27 days to go . . . 27: The number of Olympic hockey gold medals that have been won, 20 in men’s hockey and seven in women’s. Hockey was first introduced to the Olympic movement at the London Games of 1908, when four of the six teams competing represented England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The first ever Olympic hockey game was won by Scotland, who beat Germany 4-0. Apart from 1912 and 1924, hockey has appeared at every subsequent Games, with a women’s event being added to the programme in 1980. India, who won every Olympic tournament between 1928 and 1956, have won the most gold medals overall (eight, all of them in the men’s competition) and they are followed by Australia (four golds), Great Britain (three), Netherlands (three) and Pakistan (three). Three of Australia’s gold medals and one of the Netherlands’ came in the women’s event. 28 days to go . . . 28: The number of gold medals that Yugoslavia won at the summer Olympics. Having been formed in 1918 by the union of the State of Slovenes, Croats & Serbs and the Kingdom of Serbia, Yugoslavia competed at their first Olympics in Antwerp two years later, though they failed to win a medal of any colour. They won two golds at the Paris Games of 1924 to break their duck, but their best gold-medal haul at any Olympics was the seven they secured in Los Angeles in 1984. Following the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991, “new” Yugoslavia was effectively a federation of the two remaining republics of Serbia and Montenegro. It officially became Serbia and Montenegro in 2003, whereby the name “Yugoslavia” was officially abolished. Besides 28 Olympic gold medals, Yugoslavia also won 32 silvers and 33 bronzes. 29 days to go . . . 29: The number of countries that were represented at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, a then record that was surpassed when 44 countries competed in Paris four years later. Among those nations appearing for the first time were Ireland, who were competing separately from Great Britain for the first time, Poland and Romania. Following the events of the Great War, Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary and Turkey were excluded from the Games by the International Olympic Committee. In total, there were 2,626 athletes, which comprised 2,561 men and 65 women. The opening ceremony was notable for the introduction of the five-ringed Olympic flag and the first Olympic oath. Among those events that appeared for the last time were tug-of-war (which was won by Great Britain), weight-throwing, the 3,000m walk and the 400m breaststroke. 30 days to go . . . 30: The number of Olympic gold medals that have been won by Greece. No less than 10 of those were claimed in 1896, when Athens acted as the host city for the inaugural modern Olympics. Among the Greek winners in 1896 were Spyridon Louis, who was victorious in the marathon, and Ioannis Malokinis, who triumphed in the 100m freestyle swimming event for sailors. Greek athletes also won three of the five shooting competitions and two of the three fencing disciplines. After that, however, Greece won a total of only four gold medals (one each in 1904, 1912, 1960 and 1980) before securing two in 1992: one in the women’s 100m hurdles and one in men’s weightlifting. Since then, Greece have fared even better, harvesting four golds in 1996, another four in 2000 and six in Athens four years ago. 31 days to go . . . 31: Block 31, Connollystrasse was the address of the Israeli team’s headquarters at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Located in the Olympic village, 31 Connollystrasse was a modern, three-storey building in which 28 Israeli athletes, coaches and officials shared five apartments. At 4am on 5 September, eight Palestinian terrorists burst into the premises, immediately killing a weightlifter and a wrestling coach in a hail of bullets before holding a further nine athletes hostage. Ten of the Israeli party managed to escape there and then while a further seven were absent at other venues on that fateful night. After lengthy negotiations, the terrorists and the nine hostages were allowed to go to nearby Fürstenfeldbrück Military Airport, where all the hostages and five of the terrorists lost their lives in a wretchedly bungled rescue attempt. 32 days to go . . . 32: The number of Olympic boxing gold medals that have been won by Cuba. It is a total that is second only to USA, who have won 48, and makes up all but half of Cuba's overall tally of 65 Olympic gold medals. Cuba did not win a boxing gold until the 1972 Games, when they secured three, but they have dominated the sport at every Olympics since, with the exceptions of 1984 and 1988, when they did not compete. They won a further three golds in 1976, six in 1980, seven in 1992, four in 1996, four in 2000 and five in 2004. Two of only three men to have won three Olympic boxing gold medals are Cuban: Teofilo Stevenson won the heavyweight title between 1972 and 1980 before Felix Savon equalled his feat in the same division between 1992 and 2000. Mario Kindelan, another Cuban, has won the past two 33 days to go . . . 33: The number of Olympic gold medals that Germany won at the Berlin Games of 1936, more than any other country. The German team, which enjoyed unprecedented government backing, was quite possibly the best prepared in the 40-year history of the modern Olympics up to that stage. German athletes particularly dominated the rowing, in which they won five of the seven available gold medals, equestrianism (all six golds) and gymnastics (six out of nine golds). They also won, among others, five athletics gold medals, all of them in field events. Proceedings on the track were, of course, dominated by Jesse Owens, the black American athlete, who won four gold medals under the gaze of Hitler. Owens was successful in the 100m, the 200m, the long jump and the 4 x 100m relay while USA finished with an overall total of 24 gold medals, second only to the host country. 34 days to go . . . 34: The number of Olympic archery gold medals that have been won in men's events. The sport made its first appearance at the Paris Games of 1900, when there were six separate categories, and it featured again in 1904, 1908 and 1920 before being dropped from the programme until 1972. Belgian archers have won 10 gold medals, more than any country, though eight of those were won at the Antwerp Games of 1920, when Belgium were one of only three countries that participated in the archery disciplines. USA have won nine gold medals and they are followed by France, who have won six, and South Korea (three). Great Britain have claimed one gold medal, with William Dod winning the York Round in 1908. Since 1972, Britain have won three bronze medals: Simon Terry won one in 1992 while the British team did likewise in both 1988 and 1992. 35 days to go . . . 35: The number of gold medals that have been won by Belgium at the summer Olympics. Belgium, who have participated in 23 of the 25 summer Olympics, made their debut at the Paris Games of 1900, when they won five gold medals, but much their most successful Olympics was when they hosted the 1920 Games in Antwerp. There, they finished fifth in the final medal table by securing 13 golds (including seven in archery and two in equestrianism) to go with 11 silver and 11 bronze. Since World War Two, however, they have won a total of only 11 gold medals, with their best haul at one Games being just two - a feat they achieved in 1948, 1952, 1964 and 1996. They also won a single gold medal at the Olympics of 1980 and 1984 as well as four years ago, when Justine Henin-Hardenne won the women's singles tennis title. 36 days to go . . . 36: The number of different countries that won a medal at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, with 25 of them claiming at least one gold. With USA, West Germany and Japan among the 50 or so nations who opted to boycott the Games, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979, it was an Olympics that was dominated by the Soviet Union, who harvested no less than 195 medals, and East Germany, who secured 126. The next highest was the 41 achieved by Bulgaria. Great Britain secured 21 medals, which was made up of five gold, seven silver and nine bronze. Britain's golds were won by Allan Wells in the 100m, Steve Ovett in the 800m, Sebastian Coe in the 1,500m, Daley Thompson in the decathlon and Duncan Goodhew in the 100m breaststroke. Guyana and Lebanon, who won one bronze medal apiece, finished bottom of the medal table 37 days to go . . . 37: The number of countries that were represented at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. It was the lowest total since the Antwerp Games of 1920, when 29 countries participated, though not altogether surprising given the effects of the Great Depression and the then relative remoteness of the host city. Colombia and China were the only two nations to make their Olympic debut, with both countries sending a sole representative. In total, there were 1,332 athletes, 126 of whom were women, though the overall figure was less than half the number that had participated in Amsterdam four years previously. The 1932 Games, however, were the first to last 16 days (between 1900 and 1928, the shortest summer Games spanned 79 days) and the duration of the Olympics has been between 15 and 18 days ever since. 38 days to go . . . 38: The number of different countries that won a medal at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, with 25 of them claiming at least one gold. The Soviet Union, with 98, finished with the most medals overall and they were followed by USA (74), Australia (35), Hungary (26) and Germany (26). Great Britain secured 24 medals, which was made up of six gold, seven silver and 11 bronze. The six gold medals were won by: Chris Brasher in the 3000m steeplechase, Judith Grinham in the 100m backstroke swimming, Terence Spinks and Richard McTaggart in boxing (in the flyweight and lightweight divisions, respectively), Gillian Sheen in the individual foil fencing competition and by the three-day event equestrianism team. Four countries won just one bronze medal: Bahamas, Greece, Switzerland and Uruguay. 39 days to go . . . 39: The number of competitors that entered the women's 400m freestyle swimming event at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, though few expected Ireland's Michelle Smith to be among the leading contenders. She had competed in four events at the 1988 Games in Seoul, where her best placing was 17th in the 200m backstroke. Her highest finish in Barcelona four years later, when she entered three events, was a lowly 26th in the 400m individual medley. Smith shocked the world, however, when she won the 400m freestyle gold medal in Atlanta. Incredibly, she also won the 200m individual medley and the 400m individual medley as well as claiming a bronze in the 200m butterfly. In 1998, Smith was banned from swimming for four years, a punishment that effectively ended her career, after being found guilty of tampering with a urine sample. Analysis of the sample taken form her found “unequivocal signs of adulteration”. 40 days to go . . . 40: The number of days that elapsed between Abebe Bikila, the Ethiopian marathon runner, having an appendectomy in 1964 and retaining his Olympic title in Tokyo. Bikila, who was born on August 7, 1932 - the very day of the Los Angeles Olympic marathon - won the 1960 title in Rome, in a world best time of 2:15:16.2, as a complete outsider. More than that, he ran barefoot for the whole race. Forty days before the 1964 Olympic marathon, he collapsed in pain while on a training run in Ethiopia and was taken to hospital, where he was diagnosed with acute appendicitis. Having been operated on immediately, he started jogging in the hospital courtyard at night during his recovery period. Astonishing, he not only competed in Tokyo (this time running with shoes), but became the first person ever to retain his Olympic marathon title, winning in a new world best time of 2:12:11.2. 41 days to go . . . 41: The number of different countries that won a medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, with 26 of them claiming at least one gold. The Soviet Union, with 125, finished with the most medals overall and they were followed by USA (94), East Germany (90), West Germany (39) and Romania (27). Great Britain claimed 13 medals, which comprised three gold, five silver and five bronze. The three gold medals were won by David Wilkie in the 200m breaststroke, the men's modern pentathlon team and the pairing of Reginald White and John Osborn in Tornado sailing. Brendan Foster's bronze in the men's 10,000m was Britain's sole track and field medal. Australia, for their part, did not win a single gold medal in the entire Games, finishing up with a paltry one silver and four bronze. Five countries won just one bronze medal: Austria, Bermuda, Pakistan, Puerto Rico and Thailand. 42 days to go . . . 42: The age of Great Britain's Frederick Humphreys when he became, in 1920, the oldest person to win an Olympic gold medal in tug of war, which formed part of the athletics programme between 1900 and 1920 . Humphreys was 42 years and 204 days old when he claimed a second gold medal to add to the one that he gained in London 1908. He also won silver in 1912, thereby making him one of three men to win a record two golds and a silver in the event, with the others being compatriots and team-mates John James Shepherd and Edwin Mills. Not that team composition was along traditional lines. The winning 1900 team was made up of three Danes and three Swedes, with one of the Danes being a journalist called Edgar Aaybe who was covering the Games for Politiken before being commandeered to the Danish team. In 1908, the City of London Police beat Liverpool Police in the final. 43 days to go . . . 43: The number of Olympic shooting medals (12 gold, 15 silver, 16 bronze) that have been won by Great Britain, a total that has been exceeded only by USA, who have claimed 98, the Soviet Union (57) and Sweden (55). Shooting events were included in the inaugural modern Olympics of 1896 and have been present at every Games since, with the exception of 1904 and 1928. Women's shooting was admitted to the programme in 1984, though no British woman has yet won a medal. Six of Britain's gold medals were collected in 1908, when London was the host city, while the most recent was the one gained by Richard Faulds in the double-trap competition in 2000. In between, British teams won the small-bore rifle and double-shot running deer gold medals in 1912 and 1924, respectively, while Bob Braithwaite lifted the trap title in 1968 and Malcolm Cooper won the small-bore rifle discipline in both 1984 and 1988. 44 days to go . . . 44: The number of different events that comprised the first modern Olympics, which took place in Athens in 1896. Gold, silver and bronze medals, however, would not be awarded until the 1906 Games in the Greek capital, which were later downgraded to become known as the Intermediate Games. Instead, in 1896, the winners received an olive branch, a certificate and a silver medal while the runners-up were presented with a laurel sprig and a copper medal. USA won the most events (11) and they were followed by Greece (10), Germany (seven), France (five) and Great Britain (three). Some of the events have rather changed in the past 112 years. Among Greece’s winners were Ioannis Malokinis, who triumphed in the 100m swimming event that was open only to sailors, and Nicolaos Andriakopolous, who won the rope-climbing competition. 45 days to go . . . 45: The number of Olympic boxing medals (13 gold, 11 silver, 21 bronze) that have been won by Great Britain, an overall total that has been superseded only by USA, who have won 109, Cuba (56) and the Soviet Union (53). The last British gold medallist (and the first since Chris Finnegan won the middleweight division in 1968) was Audley Harrison, who lifted the super-heavyweight title in 2000. Britain won all five boxing gold medals at the 1908 London Olympics, as well as four of the five silvers and all five bronzes. Among the gold-medal winners in 1908 was Johnny Douglas, who beat Australia's Reginald “Snowy” Baker on points in the final of the middleweight division. A talented all-round cricketer who played 23 Tests, Douglas led England to victory in the Ashes series of 1911-12. In 1930, off the coast of Denmark, he drowned at sea trying to save his father's life after two boats had collided in the fog. 46 days to go . . . 46: The number of countries that were represented at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, a then record that was surpassed when 49 nations participated in Berlin eight years later. Panama and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) were among those countries who were making their Olympic debut in 1928 while Germany were readmitted to the fold after 16 years of exile from the summer Games. In total, there were 2,883 athletes, 277 of whom were women. Indeed, the number of female participants more than doubled from the previous Games, largely on account of the fact that women were finally permitted to compete in athletics and gymnastics events. By dint of emerging victorious in the women's 800m final, Lina Radke won the first Olympic track and field gold medal in Germany‘s history. 47 days to go . . . 47: The number of Olympic gymnastics medals that have been won by Switzerland, a total that has been exceeded only by the Soviet Union, who have won 204 medals, Japan (90), USA (86) and Romania (67). All of Switzerland's medals (15 gold, 19 silver, 13 bronze) have been won by male gymnasts, with the last gold being claimed by Lin Donghua, who lifted the pommel horse title in 1996. That apart, all of Switzerland's gold medals were won between 1896, when Jules Zutter was victorious in the inaugural pommel horse competition, and 1952, when Hans Eugster and Jack Gunthard won the parallel bars and the horizontal bar, respectively. Great Britain have only ever won three gymnastics medals: S Walter Tysal secured silver in the individual combined exercises in 1908 while there have also been two bronzes - in the men's team event in 1912 and in the women's team event in 1928. 48 days to go . . . 48: The number of medals that have been won in Olympic taekwondo events since the Korean martial art was introduced, for men and for women, as a medal sport at the 2000 Games, having previously been a demonstration sport in 1988 and 1992. Translated literally, "tae" means to smash or kick with the foot and "kwon" to punch or destroy with the fist or hand, while "do" is an art or a way. And it is South Korea who have won the most medals, having garnered a total of eight, five of them gold. Taipei lie second with five medals while a host of countries, including Greece, Cuba, Iran and Mexico, have each won three. No British competitor has won a medal. Olympic competition comprises four weight classes for both men and women. A point is awarded for each legitimate blow while a point is deducted for each penalty. 49 days to go . . . 49: The number of Olympic cycling medals (10 gold, 20 silver, 19 bronze) that have been won by Great Britain, a total that has been exceeded only by France, who have secured 77, and Italy, who have 54 to their name. All but one of Britain's medals have been claimed by men, with the exception being Yvonne McGregor's bronze in the 3,000m individual pursuit in 2000. Chris Boardman's triumph in the 4,000m individual pursuit in 1992 was Britain's first cycling gold since the 2,000m tandem event of 1920, though three more golds have since followed: Jason Queally and Chris Hoy won the 1,000m time trial in 2000 and 2004, respectively, while Bradley Wiggins matched Boardman's feat by lifting the 4,000m individual pursuit title in 2004. All of the five other gold medals were gained in 1908, when London acted as the host city. 50 days to go . . . 50: The 50-kilometre walk, which equates to a distance of just over 31 miles, was introduced to the Olympic programme in 1932 and adheres to the same rules as the 20km walk, whereby a competitor must keep at least one foot in contact with the ground at all times. He must also straighten the leg as soon as it has made contact with the ground. Three warnings from the judges results in disqualification. The 50km walk is an event that has been won by a British athlete on three occasions: Tommy Green (1932), Harry Whitlock (1936) and Don Thompson (1960). Only Poland, for whom Robert Korzeniowski has won the past three gold medals, can match Britain's feat while Italy and East Germany have both been successful twice. The Olympic record is held by the Soviet Union's Vyacheslav Ivanenko, who finished in a time of 3:38:29 in 1988. 51 days to go . . . 51: The number of Olympic equestrianism medals that have been won by Germany, more than any other nation and a total that also excludes a further 25 medals that were harvested by West Germany between 1968 and 1988. The United States are second on the list, having won 46 medals, and they are followed by Sweden (40 medals), France (25) and Great Britain (23). Apart from the 1952 team showjumping competition, all of Britain's six gold medals have been won in three-day event disciplines: Richard Meade and Leslie Law won the individual title in 1972 and 2004, respectively, while the team were successful in 1956, 1968 and 1972. With the exceptions of 1904 and 1908, equestrianism has formed part of the Olympic programme at every Games since 1900, though it was necessary to hold the 1956 equestrianism events in Sweden because of Australia's strict quarantine laws at the time. 52 days to go . . . 52: The number of different countries, from a possible 159, that won a medal at the 1988 summer Olympics in Seoul, with 31 of those nations winning at least one gold medal. The Soviet Union and East Germany, which were both competing for the last time, topped the medal table with 132 and 102 medals, respectively, while the United States finished third with 94. Great Britain finished in 12th position with 24 medals (five gold, 10 silver, nine bronze) while Sweden, for their part, won the most medals (11) without winning a single gold. Britain's gold medal winners were Adrian Moorhouse (swimming), Steve Redgrave and Andy Holmes (rowing), Michael McIntyre and Bryn Vaile (sailing), Malcolm Cooper (shooting) and the men's hockey team. The seven countries to win a sole bronze medal were Colombia, Djibouti, Greece, Mongolia, Pakistan, Philippines and Thailand. 53 days to go . . . 53: The age at which “Queenie” Newall, of Great Britain, became the oldest female gold medallist, at the 1908 London Olympics. She also remains the oldest female champion in modern Olympic history. The Lancashire-born Newall was 53 years and 275 days old when she won the women’s double National Round archery competition, in which the archers shot a total of 144 arrows each over the course of two rounds. Each round consisted of 48 arrows from 60 yards and 24 arrows from 50 yards. Lottie Dod, who won the Wimbledon women’s singles tennis title on five occasions between 1887 and 1893, finished second and Beatrice Hill-Low third to complete a British clean sweep of the medals - which was not altogether surprising, given that all the competitors were from the host nation. Archery appeared on the Olympic programme only once more, in 1920, before being readmitted in 1972. 54 days to go . . . 54: The number of Olympic athletics medals that have been won by Kenya since they made their debut appearance in 1956. It is the highest total among African nations and one that has been surpassed by only 10 other countries. Kenya's haul is made up of 16 gold medals, 23 silver and 15 bronze, with only four of those (three silver and one bronze) having been claimed by female athletes. All 16 gold medals have been won on the track, with the 3,000m steeplechase yielding no less than eight of those. Indeed, since 1968, when Amoss Biwott won it, the 3,000m steeplechase title has been lifted by Kenya at every Olympics in which they have participated. (They boycotted the Games in both 1976 and 1980). Kenya have also won the 1,500m on three occasions, the 800m twice and the 5,000m, the 10,000m and the 4 x 400m relay once each. 55 days to go . . . 55: The distance, in centimetres, by which Bob Beamon of the United States smashed the long jump world record when he leapt a prodigious 8.90 metres at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. After 19 loping strides, the 22-year-old New Yorker hit the take-off board perfectly and flew through the air as no one had ever before. Even allowing for the high altitude and a maximum permitted wind, it was a quite staggering performance by Beamon, whose previous personal best had been 8.33m. Indeed, so much so that his history-making leap on Oct 18, 1968 was beyond the capability of the measuring device in use at the pit and a steel tape had to be utilised. Beamon's world record was not broken until 1991, when Mike Powell, a fellow American, jumped 8.95 metres to win the World Championships in Tokyo. 56 days to go . . . 56: The number of gold medals that Great Britain won when London hosted the 1908 Olympic Games. Not surprisingly, it is Britain's highest gold-medal haul at an Olympics, with the next best tally being the 17 that were won at the Paris Games of 1900. Having been asked to stage the 1908 Games at short notice (they were due to be held in Rome, which withdrew its candidacy after the 1906 eruption of Mount Vesuvius), Britain certainly made the most of home advantage, winning every gold medal in the tennis, boxing, rowing and sailing events. In addition, the host country claimed five out of six gold medals in cycling, four out of six in swimming, two out of three in archery and two out of three in motor-boating. Among other sports, Britain also won the polo, the water polo, the football 57 days to go . . . 57: The age at which Great Britain's Allen Whitty became the oldest gold medallist of the 1924 Paris Olympics. Whitty was 57 years and 59 days old when he won gold in the 100-metre team running deer double-shot event, which took place on the shooting ranges of Versailles. A team consisted of four shooters, who each fired 10 times two shots, with a maximum of five points per shot being available. Whitty scored 68 points out of a possible 100, the third highest in the competition, as Britain amassed a team total of 263 out of a maximum 400, beating Norway to the gold medal by a single point. Whitty, who died in 1949 at the age of 82, fared less well in the individual double-shot discipline in 1924, finishing with a disappointing total of 56 out of 100 and coming 18th out of 31 competitors. 58 days to go . . . 58: The number of Olympic athletics medals (13 gold, 21 silver, 24 bronze) that have been won by France, 46 of them in men's events and 12 in women's. Three of the men's seven gold medals have come in the marathon (Michel Theato in 1900, Mohamed El Ouafi in 1928, Alain Mimoun in 1956), two in the pole vault (Pierre Quinon in 1984, Jean Galfione in 1996) and one apiece in the 5,000m (Joseph Guillemot in 1920) and the 110m hurdles (Guy Drut in 1976). Only three French women have ever won an Olympic athletics gold medal, with two of them being multiple winners: Marie-Jose Perec, who won the 200m in 1996 and the 400m in both 1992 and 1996, and Micheline Ostermeyer, who claimed the shot and discus titles in 1948. Colette Besson won the 400m in 1968 when she pipped Great Britain's Lillian Board by less than a tenth of a second. 59 days to go . . . 59: The number of nations that competed at the 1948 London Games, a then record that was surpassed when 69 countries participated in Helsinki four years later. Among those making their Olympic debut in London were a number of Communist countries (though not the Soviet Union), as well as British Guiana, Burma, Ceylon, Colombia, Guatemala, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Korea, Lebanon, Pakistan, Panama, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Syria, Trinidad & Tobago and Venezuela. Germany and Japan were not invited to participate, following the events of World War Two, although Italy were. A total of 4,104 athletes (3,714 men and 390 women) took part in the Games while 37 different countries won a medal, of which 23 gained at least one gold. Great Britain, who won 56 golds when previously acting as hosts in 1908, claimed only three gold medals. 60 days to go . . . 60: The total number of summer Olympic medals (15 gold, 23 silver, 22 bronze) that have been won by Argentina, who were represented by one individual at both the 1900 and 1908 Olympics before sending their first team to a Games in 1920. They claimed their first medals in 1924 - one gold (courtesy of the polo team), three silvers and two bronzes - and maintained a consistent record during the course of the next three decades, claiming at least one gold medal at each of the next five Games. They failed, however, to win gold in 1956 and did not do so again until 2004, when the men's basketball and men's football's teams both won their events to end a 52-year drought. In the midst of their appalling run, Argentina failed to gain a single medal at either the 1976 or the 1984 Games, while they boycotted the Moscow Olympics of 1980. 61 days to go . . . 61: The number of medals that have been won in Olympic badminton events since the Barcelona Games of 1992, when it was introduced as a medal sport (though it had been a demonstration sport in Munich 20 years earlier). And it is a sport that has been thoroughly dominated by Asian countries, with China having won 22 of the 61 medals, Indonesia 15 and South Korea 14. Of the remaining 10 medals, four have been won by Denmark, three by Malaysia, two by Great Britain and one by the Netherlands. Both of Britain's medals have come in the mixed doubles, which was added to the roster in 1996. Joanne Wright-Goode and Simon Archer won bronze in 2000 before Gail Emms and Nathan Robertson claimed silver four years ago, after losing a gripping final to China's Zhang Jun and Gao Ling by two sets to one. 62 days to go . . . 62: The age, in years, of the oldest competitor to participate at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Francois Latil, of Vanuatu, was 62 years and 98 days old when he competed in the men's singles archery event. The 64 archers competed in head-to-head elimination matches in the 70m discipline after a ranking round had determined their seeding. Alas for Latil, who was seeded 61st out of 64, he lost 158-145 to Rod White of the United States in the first round. White, for his part, lost in the next round while Simon Needham, Great Britain's only competitor, also bowed out in the round of 32 after finishing a creditable ninth in the ranking round. Vanuatu, an island nation in the South Pacific, have competed at all five summer Olympics since they made their debut at the 1988 Seoul Games, but they have yet to win a medal. 63 days to go . . . 63: The number of successive victories that the United States men's basketball team had won at the Olympics before they were controversially defeated 51-50 by the Soviet Union in the gold medal match at the Munich Games of 1972. Until that point, the US had won every match that they had contested since basketball became an Olympic sport at the 1936 Berlin Games. After 1972, the Americans have failed to win the gold medal on three further occasions: in 1980, when they boycotted the Moscow Games, in 1988, when they won bronze (behind the Soviet Union, the gold medallists, and Yugoslavia), and in 2004, when they again finished in third place (behind winners Argentina and second-placed Italy). Overall, the US have won the men's basketball gold medal on 12 occasions while the Soviet Union have won twice and Yugoslavia and Argentina once each. 64 days to go . . . 64: The number of years that elapsed between tennis being an Olympic official sport. After being included in the inaugural modern Games in Athens in 1896 (when the Irish-born John Pius Boland won the men's singles title for Great Britain), tennis was included at every Olympics until 1924, after which it was dropped until 1988, a gap of 64 years (although it was a demonstration sport in 1968 and 1984). One of the mixed doubles gold medallists at the Paris Games of 1924 was Norris Williams, a Swiss-born American who was also a survivor of the Titanic disaster of 1912, though he had come perilously close to having to have his legs amputated, after spending several hours knee-deep in freezing water in a collapsible lifeboat. Williams, who was 21 at the time of the Titanic sinking, died in 1968 at the age of 77. 65 days to go . . . 65: The number of Olympic gold medals that have been won by Cuba, who have competed in 17 summer Olympiads since making their debut at the Paris Games of 1900. Cuba won one fencing gold at those Olympics and a further four - all in fencing, too - at the St Louis Games of 1904, but had to wait a further 68 years before striking gold again (which they did three times) in Munich in 1972. Since then, they have won at least six golds at every Games except those of 1984 and 1988, when they were voluntarily absent. Their best gold-medal haul of 14, seven of which came in boxing events, came at the Barcelona Games of 1992, when they finished fifth in the final medals table. Boxing, indeed, has been Cuba's most fruitful Olympic sport by a distance, with their overall medal haul of 56 (32 gold, 16 silver, eight bronze) being second only to the USA's total of 109. 66 days to go . . . 66: The number of Olympic canoeing medals that have been won by Hungary, more than any other nation, since canoeing competitions were officially introduced to the Games in Berlin in 1936. Hungary's medal total, 50 (13 gold, 19 silver, 18 bronze) have been won in men's event's and 16 (four gold, seven silver, five bronze) in women's. Germany, who have gained 62 medals, are second on the list and they are followed by the Soviet Union (53 medals), Romania (34), East Germany (30) and Sweden (30). Great Britain have claimed a total of six medals (three silver, three bronze), three of which were won in Athens four years ago: by Campbell Walsh (silver in the men‘s slalom), Ian Wynne (bronze in the men's 500m flatwater) and Helen Reeves (bronze in the women‘s slalom), respectively. 67 days to go . . . 67: The number of countries that were represented at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, two less than had participated in Helsinki four years previously. Among those nations making their Olympic debut in 1956 were teams from Cambodia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Kenya, Liberia, Taiwan, Uganda, Malaya and North Borneo (the latter two countries now combined as Malaysia). The Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland did not compete because of the Soviet invasion of Hungary while Egypt and Lebanon declined to attend because of the French and British intervention in the Suez Canal dispute. The horse-riding events were forced to take place in Stockholm, Sweden because the Australian government were unwilling to shorten the normal six-month quarantine period for horses entering the country 68 days to go . . . 68: The number of years that elapsed between Great Britain winning an Olympic gold medal in men's swimming events. After claiming four golds at the 1908 London Games (courtesy of Henry Taylor in the 400m freestyle and the 1500m freestyle, Frederick Holman in the 200m breaststroke and the 4 x 200m freestyle relay team), Britain had to wait until David Wilkie won the 200m breaststroke in 1976 before gold was secured again. In the intervening period, British men won eight swimming medals, five of them silver and three bronze. The silvers were gained by John Hatfield (in the 400m freestyle and the 1500m freestyle in 1912), Bobbie McGregor (in the 100m freestyle in 1964), Martyn Woodroffe (in the 200m butterfly in 1968) and Wilkie (in the 200m breaststroke in 1972). The bronzes were won by Percy Courtman (in the 400m breaststroke in 1912) and the 4 x 200m freestyle relay team (in both 1912 and 1920). 69 days to go . . . 69: The number of countries that were represented at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, a then record that was surpassed when 83 nations participated at the Rome Games eight years later. Among those countries who were making their Olympic debut in 1952 were teams from the Bahamas, Dutch Antilles, Gold Coast (now Ghana), Guatemala, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Nigeria, Thailand and Vietnam. The Saarland, an independent German region with its own National Olympic Committee, appeared in the Olympics for the one and only time. For the first time since 1912, athletes from Russia took part in an Olympic Games, though they were now representing a communist Soviet Union. Having participated as part of a united Korea in 1948, South Korea made its Olympic debut as a country in its own right. 70 days to go . . . 70: The number of years that elapsed between Jim Thorpe, an American athlete, having the gold medals he had won in the pentathlon and decathlon events at the 1912 Stockholm Games taken away from him for so-called professionalism, and replica gold medals being presented to his family in 1983. Having set world records in both competitions in Stockholm, Thorpe's world was turned upside early in 1913 when it was revealed that he had, in 1909 and 1910, earned some $15 a week playing minor league baseball in North Carolina. Many college players, in fact, spent their summers playing professionally, but most of them played under aliases, unlike Thorpe. Despite a welter of sympathy from the American public at large, his name was expunged from the record books and he was forced to return his medals and trophies. Virtually penniless, Thorpe died of a heart attack in his trailer home in California on March 28, 1953. 71 days to go . . . 71: The weight, in kilograms, that Launceston Elliot successfully lifted to win the one-arm lift competition at the inaugural modern Games in Athens in 1896 and thereby become Great Britain's first ever Olympic gold medal winner. Viggo Jensen, a Danish weightlifter, finished in second place after recording a lift of 57 kilograms, but controversially beat the Briton in in the two-arm lift event at the same Games after both competitors had tied on 111.5 kilograms. Jensen was awarded first place as a result of his "better style", because Elliot had moved one foot while lifting. Jensen, in fact, was a highly competent all-round athlete. As well as finishing fourth in the rope climb (an event in which Elliot came fifth), the Dane also claimed a silver medal in the free pistol event and a bronze medal in the three positions free rifle competition. 72 days to go . . . 72: The age of the oldest ever Olympic medallist. Oscar Swahn, a Swedish shooter, was 72 years and 280 days old when he claimed a silver medal in the double shot running deer team competition at the 1920 Antwerp Games. Swahn, who won a total of six Olympic medals between 1908 and 1920, also remains the oldest person to have won an Olympic gold medal. He was 64 years and 258 days old when Sweden won the single shot running deer team event at the 1912 Stockholm Games. Swahn qualified to compete in the Paris Olympics at the age of 76, but illness prevented him from doing so. He died three years later. In all of the team competitions that Swahn entered at the Olympics of 1908, 1912 and 1920, he was accompanied by his son Alfred Swahn, who won an overall total of nine Olympic medals - three of each colour - between 1908 and 1924. 73 days to go . . . 73: The number of Olympic records (together with 36 world records and 39 European records) that were set at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. And all that despite the fact that the USA, West Germany and Japan were among more than 50 countries to boycott the Games, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the previous year. A plethora of Olympic records were eclipsed in track and field events alone. Among those to be broken in men's competitions were the 20km walk, the 50km walk, the high jump (in which East Germany's Gerd Wessig set a world record 2.36m) and the pole vault (which yielded a world record 5.78m for Poland's Wladislaw Kozakiewicz). In women's events, Barbel Wockel and Marita Koch, the East German sprinters, established Olympic records in the 200m and 400m, respectively, while there were world records in the 1,500m and the 4 x 100m relay. Sara Simeone, of Italy, created an Olympic record in the high jump by leaping 1.97m 74 days to go . . . 74: The number of different countries that won medals at the Athens Olympics four years ago, 56 of which claimed at least one gold. USA, with 102 medals, finished on top of the tree and they were followed by Russia (92 medals), China (63), Australia (49), Germany (49) and Japan (37). Great Britain came tenth in the table with 30 medals, which comprised nine gold, nine silver and 12 bronze. Eritrea, Serbia/Montenegro, United Arab Emirates and Paraguay were among those nations to win their first ever Olympic medal. Ten countries won just one medal: Cameroon, the Dominican Republic, UAE, Hong Kong, India, Paraguay, Eritrea, Mongolia, Syria and Trinidad & Tobago. India's silver medal was only the 15th they have won in Olympic history, with 11 of those (including all eight gold medals) having come in men's hockey. 75 days to go . . . 75: The 75kg middleweight event, in which competitors must not weigh more than 75 kilograms, is one of nine disciplines in men's Olympic weightlifting, with the lightest being the 52kg flyweight division and the heaviest being the over-110kg super-heavyweight. No British athlete has ever won a middleweight medal, though Britain have claimed eight medals overall in men's weightlifting, with the only gold being won by Launceston Elliot in the one-hand lift heavyweight event in Athens in 1896. It is a sport that has been largely dominated by eastern European countries, with the Soviet Union having won 71 medals (44 gold, 25 silver, two bronze), Bulgaria 36 and Poland 27. The USA have won 40 medals, though the last of their 15 golds was won as long ago as 1960, when Charles Vinci retained the bantamweight title he won in 1956. 76 days to go . . . 76: The overall number of medals (17 gold, 21 silver, 38 bronze) that have been won by Brazil at the summer Olympics. Having won only three medals (one of each colour at the 1920 Antwerp Games) before the onset of World War Two, Brazil have garnered at least one medal at every Olympics since then, though their fortunes have improved dramatically in recent years. Of their 76 medals, 37 have been claimed at the past three Olympics, with their haul of 15 in Atlanta in 1996 being their highest overall return at a single Games. The most gold medals they have won at one Olympics is five, a feat they achieved in Athens four years ago. Perhaps surprisingly, Brazil have never won a football gold medal, though they have claimed seven of the 18 medals awarded in beach volleyball since it was introduced to the Olympics in 1996, including two golds. 77 days to go . . . 77: The number of Olympic cycling medals (37 gold, 20 silver, 20 bronze) that have been won by France, more than any other country. Of France's total, 67 have been won by men and 10 by women. Italy, with 54, have won the second-highest number and they are followed by Great Britain (49), USA (46), Australia (41) and Germany (40). Britons have won 10 gold medals, among them Chris Boardman and Bradley Wiggins, who won the 4,000 metres individual pursuit in 1992 (Britain's first cycling gold since 1920) and 2004, respectively. Jason Queally and Chris Hoy, for their part, both triumphed in the 1,000 metres time trial - Queally in 2000 and Hoy four years ago. Britain have gained only one medal in women's cycling since it was introduced to the Olympics in 1992, with the sole medallist being Yvonne McGregor, who won bronze in the 3,000m individual pursuit in 2000. 78 days to go . . . 78: The 78kg competition, whereby participants must not weigh more than 78 kilograms, is one of seven events in women's Olympic judo, with the lightest category being the 48kg discipline and the heaviest being for those over 78kg. Women's judo was introduced as a demonstration sport at Seoul in 1988 before being added to the official Olympic programme at the 1992 Barcelona Games. No Briton has won a medal in the 78kg event, but three British competitors have shared four medals between them in other categories. Sharon Rendle claimed bronze in the 52kg in 1992 and Nicola Fairbrother silver in the 57kg in 1992 while Kate Howey won bronze in the 70kg, also in 1992, before gaining a silver in the same event in 2000. Japan have won the most medals in women's judo, with their haul of 19 comprising seven gold, seven silver and five bronze. 79 days to go . . . 79: The number of medals that have been won in Olympic football, 70 of them in men's football and nine in women's. Hungary, USA, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia have won the most medals (five each), with the USA total including three in women's football (which was introduced as an Olympic sport in 1996). The most successful countries in terms of gold medals are Great Britain and Hungary, who have each claimed three each (Britain won the men's tournament in 1900, 1908 and 1912). The 1968 final ended with only 18 players on the pitch, after three Bulgarians and a Hungarian were sent off, while the reigning men's champions are Argentina, who beat Paraguay 1-0 in the final four years ago, thanks to a Carlos Tevez goal. The only current restriction on men's players is that they must be under 23 years of age, except for three players per squad. There are no such restrictions in the women's tournament. 80 days to go . . . 80: The number of medals (34 gold, 14 silver and 32 bronze) that have been won by New Zealand at the summer Olympics. Having won three medals (one in 1908 and two in 1912) as part of a combined Australasian team, New Zealand won five medals (including a gold in both 1928 and 1936) in their own right before World War Two. Since 1952, they have won at least one gold medal at every Olympics except the boycott-affected Moscow Games of 1980, when a token team of five athletes competed as independents under the banner of the New Zealand Olympic and Commonwealth Games Association. New Zealand's biggest haul of medals at one Games is 13 - a feat they achieved in Seoul in 1988 - while their most successful Olympics in terms of gold medals came four years previously, in Los Angeles. There, they harvested eight golds, including four in canoeing and two in sailing. 81 days to go . . . 81: The weight limit of the Olympics light-heavyweight boxing division has been 81kgs since 1952, before which it was 80kgs in 1948 and 175lbs between 1920, when it became an Olympic event, and 1936. Of the 20 gold medals that have been awarded, USA have won seven, Yugoslavia three and South Africa two while Great Britain, Argentina, France, Italy, the Soviet Union, Germany, Kazakhstan and Russia have claimed one each. Britain's sole gold medallist was Harry Mitchell, at the 1924 Paris Games, while the last British boxer to win a medal of any colour in the 81kg discipline remains Donald Scott, who collected silver in London in 1948. Among other gold medal winners have been a young Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali), who won in Rome in 1960, and Leon Spinks, the champion at the Montreal Olympics of 1976. 82 days to go . . . 82: The number of Olympic hockey medals that have been won, 61 in men's hockey and 21 in women's. The Netherlands have won the most medals (13) and they are followed by India (11), Australia (10), Great Britain (10) and Pakistan (eight). India's record in men's hockey is unsurpassed. They have won eight Olympic golds, including six in succession between 1928 and 1956, though they failed to qualify for Beijing 2008 after losing a play-off to Britain earlier this year. Britain, for their part, have won the men's title on three occasions - in 1908, 1920 and, latterly, 1988, when two goals from Imran Sherwani and one from Sean Kerly steered Britain to a 3-1 triumph against West Germany in Seoul. After Britain's second goal went in, Barry Davies, who was commentating for the BBC, memorably opined: “Where, oh where, were the Germans? And frankly, who cares?“ 83 days to go . . . 83: The number of Olympic wrestling medals (25 gold, 28 silver, 30 bronze) that have been won by Finland. It is a figure that has been surpassed only by the Soviet Union, who claimed an astonishing 132 wrestling medals at the nine Games in which they competed, and USA, who have won 120. Of Finland's overall medal total, 57 have been gained in Greco-Roman events and 26 in freestyle. Finland's Adolf Lindfors, who was 41 years and 199 days old when he won the Greco-Roman heavyweight competition at the 1920 Antwerp Games, remains the oldest wrestling gold medallist in Olympic history. Among other Finnish wrestling medallists were cousins Kustaa and Hermanni Pihlajamaki, who each won three freestyle wrestling medals between 1924 and 1936. Women's wrestling was included in the Olympics for the first time in 2004, though none of the medallists were Finnish. 84 days to go . . . 84: The number of points that Argentina scored when they beat Italy 84-69 to win the men's basketball final at the Athens Games four years ago. The victory gave Argentina their second gold medal in one day after 52 years without a single gold, following the earlier success of the men's football team (who beat Paraguay 1-0 with a Carlos Tevez goal). Before that, Argentina had not claimed an Olympic gold since winning the men's double sculls in 1952. Argentina's victory in the basketball final, which was made possible by a 25-point haul by Luis Alberto Scola, was revenge for an earlier pool match, which Italy had edged 76-75. Having also lost to Spain, Argentina rather stumbled into the quarter-finals, in which they beat host nation Greece 69-64. A 89-81 semi-final success against USA saw Argentina into the final and on the way to glorious gold. 85 days to go . . . 85: The number of baby grand pianos that featured in the spectacular opening ceremony at the Los Angeles Games of 1984. The three-hour extravaganza of Hollywood-style glitz and glamour was produced by David Wolper, a noted film and television producer who was responsible for award-winning mini-series such as Roots and The Thorn Birds. As well as the grand pianos, there were marching bands, a choir of several hundred singers - all of them volunteers from local churches, schools and universities - dancers, buglers and a rocket-propelled man flying around the stadium. The Games were formally opened by President Ronald Reagan while the final runner on the torch relay was Gina Hemphill, a granddaughter of Jesse Owens, the great black athlete who won four gold medals under the nose of Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Games. 86 days to go . . . 86: The number of Olympic gymnastics medals that have been won by the USA, a total surpassed only by the Soviet Union and Japan. Of USA's overall medal haul (61 of which have been won by men and 25 by women), 28 have been gold, 29 silver and 29 bronze. It is, however, a total that is greatly inflated by events at the St Louis Games of 1904, when 85 per cent of the competitors were from the host country. Of the 36 gymnastics medals available in St Louis, no less than 30 were won by Americans. Among more recent individual US medallists, Mary Lou Retton captured the imagination when she won the combined exercises competition at the Los Angeles Olympics of 1984 while Shannon Miller did likewise when she lifted the balance beam title at the 1996 Atlanta Games. Paul Hamm won the all-round contest for men in Athens four years ago. 87 days to go . . . 87: The length, in kilometres, of the first Olympic cycling road race, which was included in the inaugural modern Games in Athens in 1896. The seven competitors, who comprised five Greeks, a Briton and a German, cycled from Athens to Marathon, where they had to sign their names, and back again on the same road. The race was won by Aristidis Konstantinidis, a Greek, who prevailed despite falling three times and having to change his bike twice. August Goedrich, the German, came second and Britain's Edward Battel third. British residents supposedly tried to prevent Battel, a servant at the British Embassy in Athens, from entering the race because, in their eyes, he was not a "gentleman" and could not therefore be an amateur. The most recent British medallist in the event, which now must be between 210 and 240 kilometres, is Max Sciandri, who claimed bronze at the 1996 Atlanta Games. 88 days to go . . . 88: The number of years that have elapsed since the Olympic flag containing five rings first flew, at the Antwerp Games of 1920, as the official symbol of the Olympic movement. According to the Olympic Charter, the design and proportions of the flag are those of the flag presented by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founding father of the modern Olympics, at the Paris Congress of 1914, which celebrated the 20th anniversary of the founding of the movement. De Coubertin would later say that "the Olympic flag has a white background, with five interlaced rings in the centre: blue, yellow, black, green and red. This design is symbolic. It represents the five continents of the world, united by Olympism, while the six colours are those that appear on all the national flags of the world at the present time." 89 days to go . . . 89: The number of gold medals that were won at the Paris Games of 1900, though many participants were unaware they were even competing in the Olympics, such was the chaotic organisation. France topped the medal table with 27 golds and they were followed by USA (19), Great Britain (17) and Switzerland (six). Among the swimming gold medallists were Charles de Vendeville, a Frenchman, who won the underwater swimming, and Frederick Lane, the Australian victor of the 200m obstacle event. Belgium's Leon de Lunden won the live pigeon shooting competition while Ray Ewry of the USA triumphed in both the standing long jump and the standing triple jump events. USA also won gold in the men's and women's singles golf events while among team events, Britain beat France to win the cricket gold medal. 90 days to go . . . 90: The number of Olympic gymnastics medals that have been won by Japan, a total that has been superseded only by the Soviet Union, who have claimed 204. Of Japan's overall haul, an astonishing 89 have been won by men, with the exception being the bronze that was secured in the women's team event at the Tokyo Games of 1964. Japan won the men's team event at every Olympics between 1960 and 1976, though they had to wait until four years ago before they did so again. Among their victorious team of 1960 was Masao Takemoto, who was 40 years and 344 days old at the time and remains the oldest gymnast to have won an Olympic gold medal. Great Britain have won only three gymnastics medals (one silver, two bronze), with the last one being the bronze won in the women's team event of 1928. 91 days to go . . . 91: The 91 kilograms class in Olympic boxing is the super-heavyweight division, which was introduced at the 1984 Los Angeles Games and has been won by some notable competitors. Tyrell Biggs of the USA won the inaugural title before Lennox Lewis, who was representing Canada at the time but would go onto become the heavyweight champion of the world while fighting under the British flag, beat America's Riddick Bowe by way of a second round technical knockout to claim the 1988 gold medal in Seoul. Cuba's Roberto Balado was successful in Barcelona in 1992 before Vladimir Klichko, the Ukrainian - and current world heavyweight champion - won in 1996. The past two winners have been Britain's Audley Harrison, whose professional career after his victory in Sydney in 2000 has flattered to deceive, and Russia's Alexander Pvyetkin in Athens four years ago. 92 days to go . . . 92: The number of swimming medals that were won by East Germany in the five summer Olympics (1968-1980 and 1988) at which they competed as a separate entity, as opposed to being part of a combined German team. It is a total that has been surpassed only by USA and Australia, who have won 462 and 156 medals, respectively. Of East Germany's medals, 18 were won by men and 74 by women, although quite how many of the overall total were gained with the help of performance-enhancing drugs is a moot point. The Leipzig-born Kristin Otto won six gold medals in Seoul in 1988, setting the record for the most won by a female athlete at a single Games. She won the 50m and 100m freestyle, the 100m butterfly, the 100m backstroke, the 4 x 100m freestyle relay and the 4 x 100m medley relay. She is the only swimmer to win Olympic titles in three different strokes. 93 days to go . . . 93: The number of countries that competed at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, then the highest number ever and 10 more than had taken part in Rome in 1960. Teams from 14 nations made their Olympic debut in 1964, although South Africa were not invited while Indonesia and North Korea were both banned, having participated in the unsanctioned GANEFO Games (Games of the New Emergent Forces) the year before. 1964 was also the last summer Olympics until 1992 that a combined German team would participate. As a reflection of their successful reconstruction after the Second World War, the Japanese selected Yoshinori Sakai, a student born on Aug 6, 1945 - the day the atomic bomb exploded in Hiroshima - to light the Olympic Flame. A total of 5,151 athletes (4,473 men, 678 women) took part in the 1964 Tokyo Games. 94 days to go . . . 94: The total number of medals (28 gold, 39 silver, 27 bronze) that have been won by Spain at the summer Olympics. The record of Spain, who have attended 20 of the 25 Games, was abysmal until 1992, when Barcelona was the host city. Before that, they had won a total of only four gold medals (one each in 1928, 1980, 1984 and 1988), 12 silvers and nine bronzes, but 1992 proved to be the turning point. They won 13 gold medals in Barcelona (four in sailing, two in men's athletics, two in women's judo and one apiece in men's swimming, men's cycling, men's archery, men's football and women's hockey) as well as seven silver and two bronze medals. Since then, Spain have won another 11 Olympic gold medals (five in 1996 and three each in 2000 and 2004) as well as 20 silvers and 16 bronzes. 95 days to go . . . 95: The number of Olympic judo gold medals that have been won. Judo was introduced as an Olympic sport at the 1964 Tokyo Games and it was therefore appropriate that Japan's Takehide Nakatani, who won the lightweight class, should be the first ever gold medal winner. Japan, indeed, have much the most successful overall record, having won 31 gold medals (24 by men, seven by women), and they are followed by France (10 gold medals), South Korea (eight) and the Soviet Union (seven). Great Britain have won 16 medals, though none of them have been gold. Angelo Parisi won a bronze in 1972 while representing Britain before winning a gold and two silvers in 1980 and 1984, by which time he had switched his allegiance to France. The most recent British judo medallist is Kate Howey, who claimed silver in the 70kg division in Sydney in 2000. 96 days to go . . . 96: The number of medals that have been won by Australia in men's Olympic swimming events, a total that is second only to that of the USA, who have claimed a haul of 268 medals. Among the most successful Australian male swimmers at the Olympics are Kieren Perkins, who won four medals (two gold, two silver) between 1992 and 2000, and Grant Hackett, who won a total of five medals (three gold, two silver) at the 2000 and 2004 Games. Between them, Perkins and Hackett have won the past four 1500m freestyle finals. However, not even their achievements can match those of Ian Thorpe, who won a total of nine swimming medals - five gold, three silver and one bronze - during the course of the 2000 and 2004 Olympics. "The Thorpedo" won five of his medals in individual events and four in relays. 97 days to go . . . 97: The number of Olympic diving gold medals that have been won, 52 by men and 45 by women. USA have much the most successful record of any country, having won 47 diving golds (27 by men and 20 by women), and they are followed by China, who have claimed 20, Sweden (six) and Germany (five). Great Britain have won six diving medals, albeit none of them gold, with the most recent being the silver medal gained in the men's platform synchronised event in Athens four years ago. The most successful diver in Olympic history is America's Greg Louganis, who won four gold medals (two each in 1984 and 1988), while the youngest diving champion - and the youngest individual champion in any sport at a summer Games - is Marjorie Gestring, an American, who won the springboard title in 1936 at the age of 13 years and 268 days. 98 days to go . . . 98: The number of medals that have been won in Olympic shooting events by the USA, more than any other nation. The Soviet Union are second on the list, having won 57 medals, and they are followed by Sweden (55 medals), Great Britain (43) and China (34). Shooting was included in the first modern Games of 1896, undoubtedly because Baron Pierre de Counbertin, the founding father of the modern movement, was a fine pistol shot in his youth, and it is a sport that has featured at every Games since, with the exception of 1904 and 1928. The oldest gold medallist in Olympic history is Oscar Swahn, a Swede, who was aged 64 years and 258 days when he won the running deer team event at Stockholm in 1912. The most recent British shooting gold medallist is Richard Faulds, who won the double trap discipline at the 2000 Games in Sydney. 99 days to go . . . 99: The total number of gold medals that were won at the 1904 St Louis Olympics, with the USA winning no less than 80 of them. Of the other 19 golds, Germany, Canada and Cuba each won four, Austria and Hungary two apiece while Great Britain, Greece and Switzerland all claimed one. It is perhaps not surprising that the Games were so utterly dominated by the States, who also won 84 silver medals and 84 bronze. Because of the problems of distance and travel, 85 per cent of the competitors were from the host country. Indeed, some events, such as cycling, were made up entirely of American participants. Only two of the 24 athletics events were won by non-Americans: Etienne Desmarteau, a Canadian policeman who died of typhoid the following year, in the 56lb weight throwing and Britain's Thomas Kiely in the Combined Events (a forerunner of the decathlon). 100 days to go . . . 100: The men's 100m has been an Olympic event since the very first modern Games in Athens in 1896, when Thomas Burke of the USA won in a time of 12.0. And it is an event that has been dominated by Americans ever since, with the States having won 16 of the 25 finals. Great Britain have triumphed in the event on three occasions (Harold Abrahams in 1924, Allan Wells in 1980 and Linford Christie in 1992), Canada twice and South Africa, Germany, the Soviet Union and Trinidad & Tobago once each. Britons have also won two silver medals (Jack London in 1928 and Christie in 1988) and three bronzes (Harry Edward in 1920, Emmanuel McDonald-Bailey in 1952 and Peter Radford in 1960). Christie, of course, finished third in the 1988 final, but was awarded the silver medal after drug cheat Ben Johnson was disqualified. 101 days to go . . . 101: The number of points that were scored in the men's basketball final at the Munich Games of 1972, when the Soviet Union controversially beat the USA 51-50. Doug Collins made two free throws to give the US, who had never lost an Olympic basketball match, a 50-49 lead with three seconds remaining. The Soviets in-bounded the ball right away, but two seconds later the head referee noticed a disturbance at the scorer's table and called an administrative timeout. ladimir Kondrashkin, the Soviet coach, claimed that he had called for a timeout after Collins' first shot. The Soviets were therefore given a second opportunity, and then a third, after Kondrashkin protested that the clock had been reset incorrectly. Aleksandr Belov sank the winning basket on the buzzer and a subsequent appeal by the Americans, who refused to collect their silver medals, failed by a 3-2 margin. 102 days to go . . . 102: The number of Olympic medals that have been won in modern pentathlon. Hungary and Sweden have won the most medals (21 each) and they are followed by the Soviet Union (17 medals), USA (nine) and Italy (seven). The men's team event was discontinued after 1992 while an individual competition for women was added in 2000. Great Britain have won a total of five medals: the men's team won gold in 1976 and bronze in 1988 before Stephanie Cook won gold in 2000 and Kate Allenby and Georgina Harland each claimed bronze in 2000 and 2004, respectively. Modern pentathlon, which previously took place over the course of four or five days, is now held on one day only and consists of five events: shooting, fencing, a 200m freestyle swimming race, show jumping and a 3,000m cross-country run. 103 days to go . . . 103: The age at which Hal Haig "Harry" Prieste, an American, travelled to the 2000 Sydney Games to return the official Olympic flag that he had stolen 80 years earlier. After winning a bronze diving medal at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics, Prieste, who was responding to a dare by team-mate Duke Kahanamoku, shinned up a 15-foot flagpole in the dark of the night at the end of those Games to steal the flag, the first to fly the famous five-ring Olympic symbol. He then kept the flag hidden in a suitcase for the best part of 80 years. Despite being legally blind and severely deaf, Prieste travelled to Sydney, where he handed the folded linen flag to Juan Antonio Samaranch, the then president of the IOC. "I thought I ain't going to be around much longer - it's no good in a suitcase," said Prieste, who died the following year at the age of 104. 104 days to go . . . 104: The number of Olympic gold medals that have been won in women's gymnastics events. Although a team competition was held at the 1928, 1936 and 1948 Games, it was not until the Helsinki Olympics of 1952 that women's gymnastics was fully integrated into the Games. And it is a sport that has been thoroughly dominated by Eastern European countries ever since, with the Soviet Union having gained a total of 38 gold medals, Romania 22, Czechoslovakia nine, Russia eight and Hungary seven. The most successful woman in Olympic gymnastics history is the Soviet Union's Larissa Latynina, who won nine gold medals (as well as five silver and four bronze) between 1956 and 1964. Great Britain, who finished third in the 1928 team event, have won a solitary bronze meda 105 days to go . . . 105: The number of countries that Ignati Novikov, the head of the Organizing Committee for the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the then deputy Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, said, in March 1980, "definitely" intended to participate in the Games, which were still three months hence. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979 and with the Cold War still ongoing, the USA had already decided to boycott the Games. Novikov said that "105 National Olympic Committees have informed the Organizing Committee that they definitely intend to participate in the Games." In April 1980, TASS, the Soviet news agency, stated that that "only seven National Olympic Committees have let us know they will not be able to participate in the Olympic Games." As events transpired, almost 50 nations boycotted the Moscow Games while just 80 competed. 106 days to go . . . 106: The number of Miss World contestants who participated in the recording of Light the Passion, Share the Dream - the official torch relay anthem for the 2008 Olympic Games - in Beijing last November. The recording, together with the accompanying promotional video, was first broadcast to a global audience at the final of Miss World 2007, which took place on the southern China tropical island of Sanya on Dec 1 (and which was won by Miss China). The Miss World contestants formed groups to take turns for the recording and the video. Miss Nigeria, otherwise known as Munachi Gail Teresa Abii Nwankwo, said: "It is an honour for me as a contestant of the Miss World Pageant and a citizen of Nigeria to be a part of this memorable, prestigious event of the 2008 Beijing Olympics." 107 days to go . . . 107: The number of medals (45 gold, 28 silver and 34 bronze) that the USA won at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, more than any other country. It was the last time that the USA would finish on top of the medals table until the boycott-affected Los Angeles Games of 1984. Among the American medalists in 1968 were Jim Hines, who won the 100m in a world record 9.9 sec, and Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who finished first and third, respectively, in the 200m before each giving a Black Power salute on the medal rostrum. Great Britain won 13 medals, with their five golds being won in the 400m hurdles (by David Hemery), the middleweight boxing division (by Chris Finnegan), the Flying Dutchman sailing discipline, the equestrianism three-day team event and the trap shooting competition (by John Braithwaite). 108 days to go . . . 108: The number of years that elapsed between Athens hosting the first modern Olympics in 1896 and playing host once again in 2004, although the Interim, or Intercalated, Games of 1906 also took place there. Against the will of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founding father of the modern movement, the International Olympic Committee voted in 1901 to stage Olympiads at two-year intervals and so it was that Athens hosted the Interim Games, which were held between the III and IV Olympiads. The medals awarded in 1906 are not officially recognised by the IOC. Athens was favoured to host the centenary Games of 1996, but surprisingly lost out to Atlanta. 109 days to go . . . 109: The number of Olympic boxing medals that have been won by the USA, more than any other country. Since boxing was first included in the modern Olympics in 1904, American boxers have won 48 gold medals, 23 silver and 38 bronze. Cuba, with a total of 56, have won the second highest number of medals and they are followed by the Soviet Union (53), Great Britain (45), Poland (43) and Italy (41). Among the American gold medal winners are Joe Frazier and George Foreman, who won the heavyweight division in 1964 and 1968, respectively, and Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali), who won the light-heavyweight title in 1960. Among the Britons to have won boxing gold is Johnny Douglas, who claimed the middleweight division in 1908 before captaining England's cricket team to Ashes success against Australia in 1911-12. 110 days to go . . . 110: The men's 110m hurdles has been an Olympic event since the very first modern Games in Athens in 1896, when Thomas Curtis of the USA won the gold medal. And it is an event that has been thoroughly dominated by American athletes ever since. In the 25 summer Olympics that have taken place - and also bearing in mind that the USA boycotted the 1980 Moscow Games - American hurdlers have won 18 gold medals, 18 silver and 16 bronze. Canada have claimed two of the other seven gold medals while South Africa, France, East Germany, Cuba and China have won one each. Great Britain have won four medals: Grantley Goulding finished second behind Curtis in 1896 (when there were only two finalists), Don Finlay followed up a bronze in 1932 with a silver in 1936 and Colin Jackson gained a silver in 1988. 111 days to go . . . 111: The number of Olympic fencing medals that have been won by France, more than any other country. Fencing was included at the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896, when France's Eugene-Henri Gravelotte won the individual foil to become the first Olympic fencing champion, and has appeared at every Games since. Of France's medal total, 99 (35 gold, 35 silver, 29 bronze) have been won by men and 12 (four gold, three silver, five bronze) have been claimed by women. Italy lie in second place, having won 107 medals, and they are followed by Hungary (81 medals) and the Soviet Union (54). Great Britain have won a total of nine fencing medals - one gold and eight silver. The only Briton to claim gold is Gillian Sheen, who lifted the women's individual foil title at the 1956 Melbourne Games. 112 days to go . . . 112: The number of Olympic athletics medals that have been won by Finland, the fourth highest total of any country. Only the USA (717 medals), the Soviet Union (214) and Great Britain (186) have won more. Of Finland's overall haul, 109 medals (47 gold, 33 silver, 29 bronze) have been won by men while only three (one gold, two silver) have been won by women. The most celebrated of all the Flying Finns is distance runner Paavo Nurmi, who harvested a total of 12 medals (nine gold and three silver) from 1920 to 1928 at distances ranging from 1,500m to 10,000m. His tally of five golds in Paris in 1924 is an athletics record for a single Games. Ville Ritola, Nurmi's team-mate, won a record six medals (four gold and two silver) in 1924, running eight different distances in the space of eight days. 113 days to go . . . 113: The global torch relay, which is also due to visit a total of 21 cities outside China, has had a troubled start, with pro-Tibet protests in London, Paris and San Francisco gaining worldwide headlines. Inappropriately dubbed the "journey of harmony", the relay, which has already passed through Beijing, will return to China on May 4 for a three-month tour of the country before returning to the Chinese capital on August 6. Xi Jinping, the Chinese vice-president, said: "The torch relay will bring together the strength of the whole nation in making every effort to stage a unique and well-run Olympic Games, and promote national development, social progress and people's well-being." 114 days to go . . . 114: The aggregate number of gold medals that have been won by Japan at the Summer Olympics. Japan, who have competed at 19 different Games (they did not participate until 1912, were not invited in 1948 and joined the anti-Soviet Union boycott in 1980), have a biggest gold-medal haul at a single Games of 16. It is a feat they have managed on two occasions: in 1964, when Tokyo was the host city, and four years ago in Athens, where their overall medal tally of 37 (16 gold, nine silver, 12 bronze) was their highest yet. Japan won their first Olympic gold medal in Amsterdam in 1928 and have claimed at least one gold medal at every subsequent Games in which they have competed. After winning a solitary gold at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, they have since won three or more golds at every Games (apart from, of course, 1980). 115 days to go . . . 115: The number of International Olympic Committee members who were permitted to vote in a secret electronic ballot in Singapore in July 2005 to decide which city among London, Paris, Madrid, New York and Moscow would win the right to host the 2012 Games. Moscow was the first city to be eliminated, followed by New York and then Madrid, though an alleged voting error by one IOC member possibly cost the Spanish capital the chance to emerge victorious. Amid almost unbearable tension, London beat Paris by 54 votes to 50 in the final ballot and the rest, as they say, is history. There are currently 110 IOC members as well as 26 honorary members, two "honour" members (including Henry Kissinger, the former American politician) and one honorary president for life (Juan Antonio Samaranch). 116 days to go . . . 116: The number of gold medals that were won at the Los Angeles Olympics of 1932. The United States of America, the host nation, topped the table with 41 gold medals and they were followed by Italy (12 golds), France (10), Sweden (nine), Japan (seven) and Hungary (six). Great Britain claimed four gold medals. Thomas Hampson won the 800m and Thomas Green the 50 km walk while there were also victories for the coxless pairs and coxless fours in men's rowing. The indubitable track and field star of the Games was Mildred "Babe" Didrikson, an American athlete who would become one of the outstanding women golfers in the world. Much to her chagrin, she was only allowed to enter three events, winning both the javelin and the 80m hurdles, but having to settle for second place in the high jump. 117 days to go . . . 117: The number of points that the USA basketball team scored when they beat Croatia 117-85 to win the gold medal at the 1992 Barcelona Games, the first Olympics in which professional NBA players were allowed to compete. The 12-man American squad was known as the Dream Team and with good reason: in its ranks were, among others, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Scottie Pippen. Such was their domination that the 32-point victory margin in the final was actually their narrowest win in the entire tournament, with the 116-48 success against Angola in their first match being their most emphatic. Since it was introduced in 1936, the Americans have competed in the Olympic basketball event on 15 occasions, winning 12 gold medals, one silver and two bronze. 118 days to go . . . 118: The speed of the fastest recorded pitch, in kilometres per hour (73.3 mph), that was made in the women's fast-pitch softball event at the 1996 Atlanta Games. Pitching in softball is underarm with the pitcher standing 13.1 metres (43 feet) from the batter, meaning that the reaction times required are similar to those in baseball and cricket. Softball, which lasts for seven innings and involves nine players per side, was created in the USA in 1887 as an indoor version of baseball and was originally called mushball or kittenball. Eight teams compete in the women's Olympic softball discipline - which has been won by the United States all the three times it has been played. 119 days to go . . . 119: The number of men's Olympic swimming gold medals (excluding diving, synchronized and water polo events) that have been won by the USA, a total which far exceeds that of any other country. Australia, with 32 golds, have the next best haul and they are followed by Japan (14), the Soviet Union (14), Hungary (13) and Germany and Great Britain (nine). The 4 x 100m medley relay has been the most dominant event for male American swimmers. Since it was introduced in 1960, they have won it on every occasion except 1980, when they boycotted the Moscow Games. The most recent British gold-medal winners are David Wilkie, who won the 200m breaststroke in 1976, and Duncan Goodhew and Adrian Moorhouse, who won the 100m breaststroke in 1980 and 1988, respectively. 120 days to go . . . 120: The number of yuan, in billions (about £8.5 billion) purportedly spent during the past decade to improve the air quality in Beijing. According to Zhang Lijun, vice-minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration, the number of days with "fairly good air quality" rose from 100 days in 1998 to 246 in 2007, following 13 improvement phases and more than 200 projects. Beijing plans to take about half of its 3.5 million cars off the roads and partially shut down industry in the city and five surrounding provinces during the Games. Jacques Rogge, the president of the Inter-national Olympic Committee, recently said: "The health of the athletes is absolutely not in danger, though it might be that some of them have a slightly reduced performance." 121 days to go . . . 121: The number of countries that were represented at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, a then record that was surpassed when 140 nations participated in Los Angeles in 1984. Among the countries making their Olympic debuts in 1972 were Albania, Dahomey (later Benin), Lesotho, Malawi, Upper Volta (later Burkina Faso), Somalia, Swaziland, Togo and North Korea. Following the banning of South Africa, Rhodesia, whose team were already in Munich, were thrown out of the Games just four days before the opening ceremony after a threatened boycott by 27 African nations. In total, there were 7,134 athletes (6,075 men, 1,059 women) at the 1972 Olympics, participating in 195 events. Of the 121 competing countries, a record 48 won at least one medal, of which 25 won a gold. 122 days to go . . . 122: The number of consecutive 400 metres hurdles races that Ed Moses, the American athlete, won between 1977 and 1987, a sequence that included the Olympic title in Los Angeles in 1984 and would surely also have included another one in Moscow four years earlier, but for his country's boycott of those Games. After winning the gold medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics in a world record time of 47.64sec, Moses lost to West Germany's Harald Schmid on Aug 26, 1977, but did not lose again until being beaten by fellow American Danny Harris on June 4, 1987. Moses, who also won three World Cup titles and two World Championships in his astonishing unbeaten run, retired after finishing third in the Olympic final of 1988 in Seoul. It was the only defeat he ever suffered in a championship race. 123 days to go . . . 123: The then record number of delegations, including independent athletes from East Timor, who participated at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics, a figure that was surpassed when 136 countries participated in the Athens Paralympics four years ago. By comparison, 83 countries attended the 1992 Barcelona Paralympics and there were 103 nations present in Atlanta in 1996. Since the 1988 Seoul Games, the Paralympics have also taken place at the same venues as the Olympic Games. At the Sydney Paralympics of 2000, Australia topped the medal table with 149 medals while Great Britain finished second with 131. Tanni Grey-Thompson, the British wheelchair athlete, crowned an outstanding career by winning four gold medals (in the 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m events) in her disability category. 124 days to go . . . 124: The number of countries who have won a medal in the history of the summer Olympic Games. Of those nations, 89 have won at least one gold medal. The record for having won the most medals without a gold is held by Mongolia, who have claimed 15 (five silver, 10 bronze). They are followed by the Philippines with nine (two silver, seven bronze). Twenty countries have won only one Olympic medal each. Of those, Burundi, Ecuador and the United Arab Emirates have all won a single gold while Ivory Coast, Netherlands Antilles, Paraguay, Senegal, Singapore, Tonga, Vietnam and the Virgin Islands have bagged a solitary silver medal. The nations to have won a sole bronze medal are Bermuda, Djibouti, Eritrea, Guyana, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Macedonia and Niger. 125 days to go . . . 125: The number of medals (49 gold, 41 silver, 35 bronze) that the Soviet Union won at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. It was a total that they surpassed on only two other occasions - in 1980, when they won 195 medals at the boycott-affected Moscow Games, and in 1988, when they claimed 132 medals at the Seoul Olympics. The Soviet Union's lowest Olympic medal haul was the 71 they won in Helsinki in 1952, in their very first Games. Excluding the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, when they competed as the Unified Team (who still finished top of the medal table), the Soviet Union never came lower than second at the Summer Olympics. In the nine Games at which they competed between 1952 and 1988, the Soviet Union topped the medal table on six occasions and came second on the other three. 126 days to go . . . 126: The number of gold medals won at the 1924 Olympics in Paris. The US topped the medals table with 45 golds, followed by Finland (14), France (13), Great Britain (nine), Italy (eight) and Switzerland (seven). Four of the five 'enemy' countries in the First World War accepted invitations to the Games, but Germany, whose relations with France were still far from cordial, were absent. Among Britain's gold medal-winners were Harold Abrahams (100 metres) and Eric Liddell (400m), who were depicted in the film Chariots of Fire. Johnny Weissmuller, the American who would later become the most famous screen Tarzan of them all, won three freestyle swimming gold medals, while the US also won the last Olympic rugby union gold medal, beating France against the odds in the final. 127 days to go . . . 127: The number of gold medals won by either the Soviet Union or East Germany, out of a total of 204, at the boycott-affected Moscow Games of 1980. The Soviet Union harvested 80 golds and East Germany 47. Such was the disparity among competing nations that the next highest gold-medal haul by one country was eight (by Bulgaria, Cuba and Italy). The most notable absentees among the boycotting nations, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, were United States, West Germany and Japan. The British government supported the boycott, but nevertheless allowed individual sports or competitors to choose whether to go. Britain won five golds: Allan Wells (100 metres), Steve Ovett (800m), Sebastian Coe (1500m), Daley Thompson (decathlon) and Duncan Goodhew (100m breaststroke). 128 days to go . . . 128: The number of competitors who participated in the poodle-clipping event at the 1900 Olympics in Paris. The event was held in the leafy environs of the Bois de Boulogne and it was the only occasion that it featured as an Olympic discipline. This, no doubt, came as a relief to Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the French founding father of the modern Olympic movement, who had opposed its inclusion, but was outvoted by his International Olympic Committee colleagues. The gold medal was won by Avril Lafoule, a 37-year-old farmer's wife from the Auvergne region of France, who successfully clipped 17 poodles in the allotted two-hour time frame. The poodle-clipping competition, held on April 1, was watched by 6,000 spectators, one of the larger audiences at the most chaotic Olympic Games of all. 129 days to go . . . 129: The LZ 129 Hindenburg was, along with its sister ship the Graf Zeppelin II, the largest rigid air ship ever made and is best remembered, in Olympic terms at least, for its brooding presence at the opening ceremony of the 1936 'Nazi' Games in Berlin. With large swastikas emblazoned on its tail fins, the Hindenburg, which had started commercial service three months earlier and had already been flown on many propaganda flights, crossed over the Olympic Stadium moments before the arrival of Hitler. The zeppelin had a length of 804ft - only 79ft shorter than the Titanic - a diameter of 135ft and a maximum speed of 84 mph. The following year, on May 6,1937, 36 people died when the Hindenburg was destroyed by fire while attempting to land at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey, USA. 130 days to go . . . 130: The number of gold medals that were won at the 1936 Berlin Games. The German team, which enjoyed full government backing, was quite probably the best prepared in the history of the Olympics up to that stage and unsurprisingly finished on top of the medal table with 33 gold medals. The host country were followed by USA (24 gold medals), Hungary (10), Italy (eight), Finland (seven) and France (seven). Great Britain won four gold medals: in the men's 4 x 400m relay, the men's 50km walk, the men's double sculls and the 6 metres sailing event. The undoubted star of the Games, however, was Jesse Owens, the black American athlete, who won four gold medals under the nose of - and much to the chagrin of, no doubt - Adolf Hitler. Owens was successful in the 100m, the 200m, the long jump and the 4 x 100m relay. 131 days to go . . . 131: The number of competitors who took part in last November's "first-past-the-post" US Olympic marathon trial for this year's Games. Ryan Hall (who made the fastest marathon debut by an American when he finished seventh in the 2007 London Marathon with a time of 2hr 8min 4sec), Dathan Ritzenhein and Brian Sell finished first, second and third, respectively, to claim the three US team berths available, while Meb Keflezighi, who won the silver medal in Athens in 2004, failed to qualify. The trial was marred when Ryan Shay, a favourite at his country's Olympic marathon trial four years earlier, before suffering a strained hamstring, died after collapsing 5½ miles into the race. 132 days to go . . . 132: The number of wrestling medals won by the Soviet Union, more than any other nation (and including 11 that were claimed at the Barcelona Games of 1992, when athletes from the former USSR were competing as part of the Unified Team). Sixty-three of the medals have been won in freestyle events; the others in Greco-Roman. The United States have won the second-highest number (120), followed by Finland (83), Sweden (83), Bulgaria (63) and Turkey (56). Greco-Roman wrestling was included in the inaugural modern Games in Athens in 1896 before freestyle competitions made their debut at St Louis eight years later. Four freestyle events for women were added in Athens in 2004. 133 days to go . . . 133: The number of home runs hit in the baseball tournament at the 1996 Games in Atlanta, where Orestes Kindelan Olivares, a member of Cuba's winning squads of 1992 and 1996, established an individual Olympic record of nine home runs in nine games. One of those home runs was an astonishing 159-metre (521?ft) hit which went some way towards dictating that aluminium bats were not permitted at Sydney 2000. Having been a demonstration sport seven times, baseball become an Olympic sport in 1992. Cuba have won gold three times and the US once. The greatest margin of victory was the 20-0 success recorded by Chinese Taipei over Spain in 1992. 134 days to go . . . 134: The aggregate number of Summer Olympic medals won by Belgium, who have competed at every Games except those of 1896 and 1904. Of that total, 35 have been gold, while 50 have been silver and 49 bronze. Belgium won 13 medals (five gold, five silver, three bronze) at the Paris Olympics of 1900, but their most successful Games by a distance was on home soil in Antwerp in 1920, when they reaped 13 gold, 11 silver and 11 bronze. They won a further 13 medals in Paris four years later, but the most they have recorded at a Games since then was the seven they won in London in 1948. Since then, moreover, they have mustered only nine gold medals. They claimed six medals in both 1976 and 1996. 135 days to go . . . 135: The number of women who competed at the Paris Olympics of 1924, the first occasion that the figure reached three figures. Females were first allowed to compete in the Olympics at the Paris Games of 1900, when 22 did so. The first female Olympic champion was Britain's Charlotte Cooper, who won the women's singles tennis event in that year. Only six women competed in St Louis in 1904, but the number of female participants rose steadily thereafter until the three-figure mark was breached in 1924. The four-figure mark was not attained until 1972, when 1,059 women competed at the Munich Olympics. The boycott-affected Moscow Games of 1980 apart, the figure has risen at every summer Olympiad since. At Athens four years ago, there were 4,329 female competitors, compared to 6,296 male competitors. 136 days to go . . . 136: The height, in centimetres, of the shortest ever Olympic gold medal winner. Lu Li, a Chinese gymnast, was just 1.36m (4ft 5½in) tall and weighed 36kg (79lbs) when she won the uneven bars event with a perfect 10 at the 1992 Barcelona Games. Alison Riggin (United States), the 1920 springboard diving champion, weighed less (31.5kg), but was taller. The smallest competitor is believed to have been Choe Myong-Hui, a North Korean gymnast, who was just 1.35m (4ft 5in) tall and weighed 25kg (55lb) at the 1980 Moscow Games. The tallest Olympic gold medallist remains Arvidas Sabonis, who stood 2.21m (7ft 3in) when he was a member of the winning Soviet basketball team in Seoul in 1988. The tallest Olympian is Chinese basketball player Yao Ming, who was 2.26m (7ft 5in) when he competed in Athens in 2004. 137 days to go . . . 137: The number of kilometres, in thousands, that the Olympic Torch will travel before it reaches Beijing for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics. The torch relay, which was introduced for the 1936 Games in Berlin, will begin at Olympia in Greece and will involve 21,880 torchbearers. The highlight of the 137,000km journey will be the torch's planned ascent of Mount Everest in May. Among the 80 torchbearers passing the flame through London next month will be Fu Ying, the Chinese ambassador to the United Kingdom, Dame Kelly Holmes and Sir Trevor McDonald. Jiang Xiaoyu, the executive vice president of the Beijing Organizing Committee, said: "The Beijing Olympic Torch relay will display the beautiful Chinese scenery and rich culture to the world, as well as spread the ideas of peace, friendship and harmony." 138 days to go . . . 138: The number of gold medals that were won at the London Olympics of 1948. The United States topped the table with 38 gold medals and they were followed by Sweden (16), France (10), Hungary (10), Italy (eight) and Sweden (eight). The indubitable star of the Games, however, was Francina 'Fanny' Blankers-Koen, a 30-year-old from Holland and a mother of two children. Her four gold medals - in the 100 metres, 200m, 80m hurdles and 4 x 100m relay - earned her the nickname 'The Flying Housewife'. Great Britain won only three gold medals, a far cry from the 56 they had won in 1908, when London previously hosted the Olympics. Two of those three gold medals came in rowing events - in the double sculls and coxless pairs - while the third was won in the Swallow sailing discipline. 139 days to go . . . 139: The number of young British swimmers who are members of the 'Target Squad', a group of athletes between the ages of 12 and 18 who are perceived to have the potential to help Great Britain to succeed in their medal aspirations at the 2012 Games in London. The squad, the membership of which will be reviewed on an annual basis, came together for the first time two months ago to start a process that will see them undergo a comprehensive develop-ment and nurturing process in readiness for the London Games. The youngsters will benefit from coaching advice, sport science education and training opportunities, all of which are aimed at ensuring peak performance in 2012. David Sparkes, the chief executive of British Swimming, said: "We've started early to give ourselves the best possible chance of success." 140 days to go . . . 140: The number of gold medals won in men's Olympic canoeing events since the sport made its official debut at the Berlin Games of 1936, although kayak and Canadian events had been demonstration sports at Paris in 1924. The Soviet Union top the table, having amassed 22 gold medals, followed by Germany (18), Hungary (13), Sweden (12) and Romania (nine). Great Britain have won five men's canoeing medals, alas none of them gold. Three silver medals have been won in slalom events (by Gareth Marriott in 1992, by Paul Ratcliffe in 2000 and by Campbell Walsh in 2004) while two bronze medals have both come in flat-water events (Tim Brabants in 2000 and Ian Wynne in 2004). One British woman has won an Olympic medal: Helen Reeves took a slalom bronze in 2004. 141 days to go . . . 141: The number of Olympic medals that have been won for Australia exclusively by women. Of Australia's overall haul of 398 medals, 255 have been won by men and 141 by women (the remaining two have been gained by mixed teams.) Australian women won only four Olympic medals before World War Two, but more than doubled that total at the 1948 Games in London, where they claimed five medals. Apart from 1976 (no medals) and 1980 (two medals), Australian women have won at least four medals at every Games since 1948, with their best returns being the 23 in 2004 (Athens) and 22 in 2000 (Sydney). Only once, however, have they won more medals than their male counterparts - in Munich in 1972, when they trumped the Aussie men by 10 medals to seven. 142 days to go . . . 142: The number of medals that East Germany and West Germany won between them at the Seoul Games of 1988, the last time that they competed as separate nations at the Olympics before Germany was reunified in 1990. Of the 142 medals the two countries harvested in South Korea, East Germany won 102 (many of them no doubt as a result of the state-sponsored doping regime) while West Germany claimed 40. The highest previous combined total was the 129 medals garnered at the 1976 Montreal Games while the lowest aggregate was the 51 achieved in Mexico City in 1968 - the first summer Games at which they competed as separate nations. Since reunification, Germany's medal tally has become increasingly lower: the country won 82 medals in 1992, 65 in 1996, 56 in 2000 and 49 in 2004. 143 days to go . . . 143: The number of clay pigeons that Russell Mark, an Australian, hit out of a possible 150 in the preliminary round of the men's double-trap shooting competition at the 2000 Sydney Games to set an Olympic record. Mark, who was the defending Olympic champion, carried his lead into the six-man final, which involved shooting at a further 50 targets. Great Britain's Richard Faulds, meanwhile, was lying in fourth after the preliminary round, two points behind Mark. Maintaining his nerve in front of a partisan crowd at the Sydney International Shooting Centre, Faulds finished tied in first place - on 187 points - with the Australian before beating him in a two-man gold-medal shoot-out. Faulds's gold medal was the first to be won by a Briton in an Olympic shooting event since Malcolm Cooper in 1988. 144 days to go . . . 144: The number of Beijing petrol stations, together with nine oil depots, that will be shut down before the end of May because they would not be able to meet required environmental standards. The closures will affect nearly 10 per cent of the 1,442 petrol stations in the Chinese capital as the city attempts to improve its air quality before this year's Olympics. The remaining stations have until the end of May to upgrade in order to cut the amount of fumes that leak after the fuel has been pumped into cars, with each renovation costing about $75,000. The upgrades will specifically involve the installation of new nozzles at the petrol pumps to collect vapours from the vehicle's petrol tank and return them to the service station's underground storage tank. During the Games themselves, many cars will be ordered to stay off the roads. 145 days to go . . . 145: The number of medals (56 gold, 50 silver, 39 bronze) that Great Britain won at the London Olympics of 1908, when they topped the medals table by a distance. The United States finished second with an overall total of 47 medals and they were followed by Sweden (25), France (19), Canada (15) and Germany (13). Britain won all but one of the 15 boxing medals and all but two of the 24 medals in the tennis and rackets events. They also won two of the three motor-boating events, held over a distance of 40 miles. Only one boat finished in each of the three classes, and it was the only time that motor-boating has been an Olympic medal sport. Among other sports, Britain claimed 11 of the 15 freestyle wrestling medals and eight of the 13 rowing medals, as well as recording a clean sweep in the tug-of-war event. 146 days to go . . . 146: The number of Olympic archery medals that have been won. Archery made its Olympic debut in 1900 and appeared again in 1904, 1908 and 1920 before being dropped from the Games until 1972. The United States have won 29 medals, more than any other country, followed by South Korea (25, with all of them having been won since 1984), France (22) and Belgium (19). Fifteen of the United States' medals were won at the St Louis Games of 1904, when only American archers competed. Robert Williams Jr, a 63-year-old gold-medal winner in the team event of 1904, is the only known Olympic gold medallist to have fought in the American Civil War. Great Britain have won nine archery medals, with their two gold medals being won by William Dod and Queenie Newall, both in the 1908 Games. 147 days to go . . . 147: The number of Olympic sailing gold medals that have been won since the sport made its debut at the Paris Games of 1900. (The first Olympic regatta should have been at Athens in 1896, when it was scheduled to take place on the Bay of Salamis before being cancelled due to bad weather.) Britain have won 19 sailing gold medals, more than any other country, and they are followed by Norway (17), USA (17), France (13), Denmark (11) and Spain (10). Britain's most successful gold medal haul at one Olympics is four, a feat they achieved in 1908 (when London was the host city), while they have won three gold medals at one Games on two occasions (in 1900 and 2000). All of Spain's 10 gold medals (four of them claimed when they were the hosts in 1992) have been won since 1980. 148 days to go . . . 148:The aggregate number of medals that have been won by Czechoslovakia at the Summer Olympics. Represented by Bohemia up to 1912, Czechoslovakia won a total of 148 medals (49 gold, 50 silver and 49 bronze) before the country, which was founded in 1918 as one of the successor states of Austria-Hungary at the end of WW1, peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. Czechoslovakia's best gold-medal haul at one Olympics was seven, a feat they achieved in both 1952 and 1968, while their biggest overall medal tally at one Games was 14 - something they managed in both 1964 and 1980. At the three Olympics since separation, the Czech Republic have won a total of 27 medals (seven gold, 10 silver, 10 bronze) while Slovakia have won 14 (four gold, six silver, four bronze). 149 days to go . . . 149:The number of events that took place at the Helsinki Olympics of 1952. USA, who won 40 gold medals, topped the medal table for a second successive Games and they were followed by the Soviet Union (22 gold medals), Hungary (16), Sweden (12) and Italy (eight). Great Britain claimed just one gold medal (in the team show-jumping competition) as well as two silver medals and eight bronze. The stellar performer of the Games was Emil Zatopek, the Czechoslovakian runner, who won an unprecedented triple crown of 5,000m, 10,000m and marathon. To complete an astonishing family double, his wife Dana won a gold medal in the women's javelin, less than an hour after her husband's victory in the 5,000m. American Bob Mathias became the first decathlete to successfully defend an Olympic title. 150 days to go . . . 150:The number of competitors that Sweden sent to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, where they finished a very respectable seventh in the medals table with six gold medals (four in wrestling, one in canoeing and one in shooting), five silver and nine bronze. Sweden, in fact, have performed remarkably consistently since claiming their first Olympic gold medal at the 1900 Games in Paris. Overall, they have won 143 gold medals, 156 silver and 171 bronze. They have finished second in the medals table on three occasions: in Stockholm in 1912 (when they were the host country and won 24 gold, 24 silver and 16 bronze - their best ever haul), in Antwerp in 1920 and in London in 1948. Sweden have won at least one gold medal at every Games since 1908, except in 1988, when they won four silver and seven bronze. 151 days to go . . . 151: The number of competitors that New Zealand sent to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, from where they emerged with a disappointing haul of just four medals - one gold and three bronze. Their sole gold medal winner was Rob Waddell, who was victorious in the men's single sculls rowing event, while bronze medals were garnered by Aaron McIntosh and Barbara Kendall in sailing events and by equestrian rider Mark Todd in the three-day individual competition. New Zealand's most successful Games - by a distance - was the Los Angeles Olympics of 1984, when they won eight gold medals, in addition to one silver and two bronze. Overall, New Zealand have won 32 Olympic gold medals. Their second biggest gold-medal tally at one Games is three, a feat they have achieved four times: in 1964, 1988, 1996 and 2004. 152 days to go . . . 152: The number of events that took place at the Rome Olympics of 1960. The Soviet Union, who won 43 gold medals, topped the medal table for a second successive Games and they were followed by United States (34 gold medals), Italy (13) and Germany (12). Great Britain claimed two gold medals: Don Thompson won the men's 50km walk and Anita Lonsbrough triumphed in the women's 200m breaststroke. Boris Shakhlin, a Soviet gymnast, won seven medals in total, but the two individuals to capture the imagination were American sprinter Wilma Rudolph, who won three gold medals despite having suffered from polio as a child, and Abebe Bikila, an almost unknown Ethiopian, who won the marathon running barefoot. Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) won the light-heavyweight boxing title. 153 days to go . . . 153: The aggregate number of gold medals that have been won by East Germany at the Summer Olympics, though quite how many of those medals were actually tainted by performance-enhancing drugs is anyone's guess. Only the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, Italy, a combined Germany and Hungary have won more, however. East Germany competed as a separate country at every Games between 1968 and 1988, with the exception of 1984, when they joined the Eastern Bloc boycott of the Los Angeles Games. Their lowest gold-medal tally was the nine they won in Mexico City in 1968, while their biggest haul was 47, at the boycott-affected Moscow Olympics of 1980. In the three other Games in which they competed, East Germany won 20 gold medals in 1972, 40 in 1976 and 37 in 1988. 154 days to go . . . 154: The then record number of events that were held at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, a total that was not exceeded until the 1964 Games in Tokyo. Two winter sports, ice hockey and figure skating, appeared at the Olympics for the first time, though tug-of-war, weight throwing, the 3,000m walk, the 400m breaststroke and several sailing events were discontinued after Antwerp. The United States finished on top of the medals table with 41 gold medals and they were followed by Sweden (19), Great Britain and Finland (15). Among Britain's gold-medal winners was Albert Hill, who won the 800m/1500m double (a feat that would not be repeated for 44 years) and the polo, water polo, hockey and tug-of-war teams, which means that Britain are still the reigning Olympic tug-of-war champions. 155 days to go . . . 155: The size, in acres, of the water surface of the Shunyi Olympic Rowing Park that will host 32 medal events in rowing, canoeing and kayaking, as well as the men's and women's 10km marathon swimming disciplines, at this summer's Games in Beijing. The purpose-built venue, which hosted the 2007 Junior World Rowing Championships and has capacity for 37,000 spectators, is located in Mapo Village in the Shunyi district of north-eastern Beijing and is the world's only first-class rowing-canoeing venue that contains both flat-water and slalom courses. The Beijing municipal government has spent more than $57 million on a project to divert river water to improve eco-environment around the venue, which will be converted into a swimming and recreational resort after the Paralympic Games. 156 days to go . . . 156: The aggregate number of gold medals that have been won by Hungary at the Summer Olympics. Hungary, whose gold-medal haul is bettered only by USA, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France and Italy, have won at least one gold medal at every Games in which they have competed (they were not invited to attend the 1920 Olympics, following World War One, and joined the boycott of the 1984 Games). Since World War Two, Hungary's lowest gold-medal tally was the four they claimed in Montreal in 1976 while their highest return at any Games was the 16 gold medals they won in Helsinki in 1952. They have won 10 or more gold medals on six further occasions, with the last time being in 1992. Their highest overall medal return of 42 (16 gold, 10 silver, 16 bronze) also came at Helsinki in 1952. 157 days to go . . . 157: The number of successive matches that Japan's women's volleyball team won during an unblemished four-year run that included winning the World Championships in 1962 and the Olympic gold medal at the Tokyo Games of 1964 (when volleyball made its debut as an Olympic sport). Known as the 'Oriental Witches', they worked at the Nichibo spinning factory at Kaizoku and were coached by Hirofumi Daimatsu, whose rigorous training programme required the squad to train every day of the year between 4pm and midnight - and all that after a full day's work. At the 1964 Games, they won all five matches, outscoring the opposition 238-93 in points and dropping just one set (against Poland). In the final, they steamrolled the Soviet Union, their arch rivals, to win the gold medal. 158 days to go . . . 158: The margin, in runs, by which Great Britain beat France at the 1900 Games in Paris to win cricket's one and only Olympic gold medal. Four teams entered - Britain, France, Belgium and Holland - but, in the event, only one game was played after Belgium and Holland withdrew. Britain, who were represented by Devon & Somerset Wanderers in a 12-a-side game spread over two days, made 117 and 145 for five declared while the French side were dismissed for 78 and a paltry 26. The match was played at the Velodrome de Vincennes, an imposing 20,000-seater banked cycling track, though the only spectators were said to be a handful of bewildered gendarmes. A British report observed that "we found the French temperament is too excitable to enjoy the game and no Frenchman can be persuaded to play more than once." 159 days to go . . . 159: The number of countries that were represented at the 1988 Seoul Olympics in South Korea, a then record that was surpassed when 169 countries participated in Barcelona four years later. The communist rulers of North Korea declined to send a team to Seoul, while Albania, Cuba, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Nicaragua and the Seychelles were also absent. Though Asian-style food, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean dishes, will account for about 30 per cent of the menu designed for athletes in the village, an Olympic spokesperson confirmed that "Western food will make up most of the menu". Among those countries who were making their Olympic debut were American Samoa, Aruba, Burkina Faso, Cook Islands, Guam, the Maldives, St Vincent, Vanuatu and the Democratic Republic of Yemen. In total, there were 8,391 athletes (6,197 men, 2,194 women), 237 events, 27,221 volunteers and 11,331 media (6,353 broadcasters, 4,978 written press). Of the 159 competing countries, 52 won at least one medal, of which 31 won a gold. 160 days to go . . . 160: The size, in acres, of the Olympic Village in Beijing for this year's Games. The village, which will house 16,000 athletes and officials during the Olympic Games and 7,000 athletes and officials during the Paralympic Games, will consist of 22 six-storey buildings and 20 nine-storey buildings, as well as a clinic, restaurants, a library, gyms, swimming pools, tennis courts, basketball courts, volleyball courts and a jogging track. Religious services for five major religions (Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism) will be available. Though Asian-style food, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean dishes, will account for about 30 per cent of the menu designed for athletes in the village, an Olympic spokesperson confirmed that "Western food will make up most of the menu". 161 days to go . . . 161: The length, in days, of the chaotic Paris Olympics of 1900. The Games were awarded to Paris in the belief that the five-month long international exposition, which was to take place in the city concurrently, and the recently built Eiffel Tower would add lustre to the sporting convention. But nowhere was the word 'Olympic' to be observed, with any reference to the Games appearing as 'Paris Championships' or 'The Great Exhibition meeting of 1900'. To illustrate the haphazard nature of the Games, the track and field events were held during July in the Bois de Boulogne while the swimming competitions took place in August in a pool on the River Seine. It was alleged that four million people saw the exposition, but that there were never more than a thousand spectators at an Olympic event. 162 days to go . . . 162: The estimated number, in thousands, of people who watched the 1936 Berlin Olympics on television. The first Games to be televised, they were shown in 28 venues in and around Berlin, with some 162,000 viewers watching a total of 138 hours' coverage on a closed-circuit system. Only one of the three cameras available could be used live — and then only if the sunlight was bright enough. At the next Olympics Games, in 1948 in London, some 500,000 people — the majority of them within a 50-mile radius of London — watched 64 hours of programming. Those Games were the first in which a set price (of 1,000 guineas) was established for television rights. The first live international television coverage of the Games came from Rome in 1960, the first to be sent by satellite was from Tokyo in 1964 and the first live colour pictures were transmitted from Mexico City in 1968. 163 days to go . . . 163: The then record number of events that were held at the 1964 Games in Tokyo. Two sports appeared at the Olympics for the first time: volleyball and judo, with the latter being included at the express behest of the host country, who clearly expected to win all four judo gold medals. The Soviet Union and Japan claimed the men's and women's volleyball events, respectively, but it came as quite a shock to the hosts when Anton Geesink, a Dutchman, won the prestigious Open judo title. USA finished on top of the medals table with 36 golds They were followed by the Soviet Union (30 gold medals) and Japan (16). Great Britain won four gold medals: the men's and women's long jump (courtesy of Lynn Davies and Mary Rand), the women's 800m (Ann Packer) as well as the men's 20km walk (Ken Matthews). 164 days to go . . . 164: The number of gold medals that have been won in men's rowing events since the sport was introduced to the Olympics in 1900 in Paris, where the participants competed over a course on the River Seine. USA have won the most gold medals (29) and they are followed by Great Britain (22), East Germany (20), Germany (16), Soviet Union (11). Britain's Steve Redgrave won a record five successive gold medals between 1984 and 2000, though Vyacheslav Ivanov (Soviet Union) and Pertti Karpinnen (Finland) remain the only men to have won three individual gold medals. The first rower to win three gold medals was John Kelly (USA), who won the single sculls in 1920 and the double sculls in both 1920 and 1924. He was the father of Grace Kelly, actress and Princess of Monaco. 165 days to go . . . 165: The combined number of Olympic medals (65 gold, 51 silver, 49 bronze) that have been won by Cuba, who have competed at 17 of the 25 summer Games. After winning one gold medal at the 1900 Games in Paris and a further four in St Louis in 1904 (all five of them were won in fencing), Cuba did not top the podium again until they won three gold medals at Munich in 1972. At the six subsequent Olympics in which they have competed (they did not participate in 1984 and 1988), they have won at least six gold medals at every Games, with their best being the 14 gold-medal haul they recorded in Barcelona in 1992. Thirty-two of Cuba's 65 gold medals have been won in boxing while they have claimed nine in athletics, five each in judo, fencing and wrestling and three apiece in baseball and volleyball. 166 days to go . . . 166: The number of events in which 384 Chinese athletes competed at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, winning between them 28 gold medals, 16 silver and 15 bronze. It was China's biggest medal haul in what was effectively their fifth summer Games, though it was a figure they surpassed in Athens four years ago, when they claimed 32 gold, 17 silver and 14 bronze. Since their country's National Olympic Committee was recognised in its current form in 1979, China have won a total of 286 medals (112 gold, 96 silver, 78 bronze) at six summer Games. Their highest medal tally in a single sport is the 39 they have claimed in gymnastics and that is followed by diving (38 medals), weightlifting (34), shooting (34), table tennis (33), badminton (22), swimming (21), judo (14) and athletics (13). 167 days to go . . . 167: The number of factories that have been relocated out of Beijing to the suburbs or more far-flung areas in the city's attempt to cut down on pollution and deliver a 'Green Olympiad'. Liu Jingmin, the deputy mayor of the Chinese capital and the executive vice-president of the Beijing Olympic Games Organising Committee, said: "Over the past few years, the city has moved 167 factories to more remote areas, while helping them with technical innovations to reduce emissions." Liu added that even restaurants, hotels and sponsors for the 2008 Games have been required to sign letters of commitment on environmental protection and energy conservation. Beijing once had 16,000 coal-consuming boilers that emitted large volumes of dust and carbon monoxide. Now, 15,000 have been upgraded to use cleaner energy sources. 168 days to go . . . 168: The number of cats that have been rescued from London's Olympic Park site for the 2012 Games since the Celia Hammond Animal Trust (CHAT) was given access to the demolition area in June 2007. More than 200 buildings have been bulldozed and the demolition programme is expected to be completed next month. The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), which has already re-housed newts, frogs and fish, has implemented an ecology programme to protect and preserve wildlife on the site of the Olympic Park. David Higgins, the chief executive of the ODA, said: "Although the Olympic Park is very much a live construction site, we have been working closely alongside CHAT to arrange safe access and we have also ensured that 168 cats have been successfully captured." 169 days to go . . . 169: The number of countries that were represented at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, a then record that was surpassed when 197 countries participated in Atlanta in 1996. The Barcelona Games, which were mercifully boycott-free, featured the first pan-German team since 1964 and South Africa returned to the Olympic movement after 32 years. The disintegrating Soviet Union, which competed as the Unified Team, made their last Olympic appearance while the Baltic states competed either as independent nations or as Independent Olympic Participants. In total, there were 9,356 athletes (6,652 men, 2,704 women), 257 events, 34,548 volunteers and 13,082 media. Of the 169 competing countries, 64 won at least one medal, of which 37 won a gold. 170 days to go . . . 170: The aggregate number of Olympic gold medals that have been awarded in weightlifting, a sport that was included in the first modern Games in 1896. The Soviet Union have won 44 gold medals (all of them by men and including five gained by the Unified Team in 1992) and they are followed by USA (16), China (16) and Bulgaria (12). Great Britain have won eight weightlifting medals, with the only gold medal being earned by Launceston Elliott, who claimed the one-arm lift title in 1896 (a year in which he also won silver in the two-arm lift category). Britain's last weightlifting medal was won in 1984, when David Mercer finished third in the middle heavyweight division. Women's weightlifting, introduced in 2000, has been dominated by China, who have won seven of the 14 available gold medals. 171 days to go . . . 171: The total number of television hours that NBC, the American network, broadcast from the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, when the Games were carried on a single network in the States. It will all be rather different at the Beijing Games this year, when NBC and its cable channels will carry about 1,400 hours of television coverage, an increase of 190 hours from the Athens Games four years ago. Mindful of the fact, however, that there is a 12-hour time difference between Beijing and the Eastern time zone in the United States, meaning that much of prime time will consist of taped events, NBC will also provide 2,200 hours of free live broadband coverage on its Olympic website, which will stay online permanently. There will also be another 3,000 hours of free online highlights and replays. 172 days to go . . . 172: The number of players, 86 men and 86 women, who competed in the four table-tennis events at the Athens Olympics four years ago. A maximum of three players per country were permitted to participate in each of the men's and women's singles competitions while a maximum of two pairs per country were allowed to play in each of the men's and women's doubles events. Since being first included as an Olympic sport at the Seoul Games of 1988, table tennis has been dominated by China, who have won 16 of the 20 gold medals available. Indeed, Chinese athletes have won more than half of Olympic table-tennis medals - 33 out of 64. South Korea have won a total of 15 medals (three gold, two silver, 10 bronze) while Sweden and North Korea have claimed three medals each. 173 days to go . . . 173: The aggregate number of Olympic gold medals that have been awarded in Greco-Roman wrestling, a sport that was included in the first modern Games in 1896 and has been dominated by Europeans throughout. The Soviet Union have won 37 gold medals (including three gained by the Unified Team in 1992) and they are followed by Sweden (21), Finland (17), Hungary (16) and Turkey (11). The USA have won only three gold medals, while Britain have never won a medal of any colour in the event. The first Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling champion was Carl Schumann, a 5ft 4in German, who was victorious in the heavyweight event in 1896. 174 days to go . . . 174: The number of medals that the United States of America won at the Los Angeles Games of 1984, which were overshadowed by the last-minute boycott by the Soviet Union and most of its Eastern Bloc allies. The Soviet Union cited security issues for their withdrawal, but it was widely regarded as retaliation for the US-initiated boycott of the Moscow Olympics four years previously. In the absence of the likes of the Soviet Union and East Germany, the US dominated the Games, winning 83 gold medals, 61 silver and 30 bronze. The second highest gold medal tally was the 20 won by Romania, who were a notable exception to the boycott. The US, however, were not as ascendant as they had been in St Louis in 1904, when they won 248 of the 286 medals available. Germany came second with a total of 13. 175 days to go . . . 175: Metres, the height of the tower that was supposed to form part of the Olympic Stadium for the Montreal Games of 1976. However, industrial action, which caused the loss of 155 working days between December 1974 and April 1976, together with an unusually harsh winter and a severe lack of funds, meant that the stadium was unfinished when the Games opened on July 17, 1976. The projected 50-storey tower, which was fundamental to the construction of an elaborate retractable roof, and the roof itself were not completed until more than a decade later, officially finishing construction of the stadium, as originally designed by Roger Taillibert, a French architect. Montreal Tower is the highest inclined tower in the world and the stadium is now used largely for concerts and trade fairs. 176 days to go . . . 176: The aggregate number of medals that have been won by Switzerland at the summer Olympics. One of only five countries to have participated at all 25 Games - the others are Australia, France, Greece and Great Britain - Switzerland's overall haul of medals comprises 44 gold, 71 silver and 61 bronze. Their most successful Olympics was in Paris in 1924, when they won 25 medals (seven gold, eight silver and 10 bronze), while their least successful Games was in London in 1908, when they failed to win a single medal. Since securing five gold medals in London in 1948, Switzerland have won a total of only 13 gold medals in the 14 subsequent Olympics. Four of those gold medals were gained in Atlanta in 1996 - two in rowing and one each in gymnastics and cycling. 177 days to go . . . 177: The aggregate number of Olympic tennis medals that have been won - 96 in men's events, 62 in women's and a further 19 in mixed doubles, which was an Olympic event between 1900 and 1924. Tennis was an Olympic sport at every Games between 1896 and 1924 before being excluded until 1988, though it was a demonstration event in both 1968 and 1984. Britain has been the most successful nation, winning a total of 46 medals (16 gold, 14 silver, 16 bronze), and they are followed by the United States, who have gained 32 (16 gold, six silver and 10 bronze), and France, who have won 19 (five gold, seven silver and seven bronze). The only British tennis medal since the sport was reintroduced in 1988 came in 1996, when Tim Henman and Neil Broad won silver in the men's doubles. 178 days to go . . . 178: The number of gold medals that have been won in men's freestyle wrestling events since the sport was introduced to the Olympics in 1904 (although Greco-Roman wrestling was included in the inaugural Games of 1896). The USA have won the most gold medals (46) in the freestyle competitions - they are followed by the Soviet Union/Russia (41), Turkey and Japan (16 each). In addition to four silver and 10 bronze medals, Britain have won three gold medals - all of them at the London Games of 1908, when George de Relwyskow won the lightweight division, Stanley Bacon the middleweight and George O'Kelly the heavyweight. Britain's last medal in freestyle wrestling was secured in 1984, when Noel Loban won bronze in the now discontinued light-heavyweight category. 179 days to go . . . 179: The cumulative number of competitors (151 male, 28 female) who have represented Trinidad & Tobago at the summer Olympics. Since making their debut at the London Games of 1948, when they sent a team of five (three athletes, a cyclist and a weightlifter), Trinidad & Tobago have been represented at all 14 subsequent Olympics. The 24-strong team that travelled to Athens four years ago is the biggest they have sent while the two-man team that represented them in Helsinki in 1952 remains the smallest. The 179 slots have been filled by 134 different athletes, who have won a total of 12 medals (one gold, three silver, eight bronze) between them. Eight of those medals have been won in athletics, with Hasely Crawford's 100m triumph in 1976 being the country's sole gold medal. 180 days to go . . . 180: Million years, the age of the Jurassic Coast in Dorset that will provide a spectacular backdrop to the sailing events hosted by the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy at the 2012 London Games. With the natural amphitheatre of Weymouth and Portland Harbour providing some of the best sailing waters in the United Kingdom, it is expected that more than 30,000 spectators will watch the "non-ticketed" sailing events, with many looking on from the high vantage points around the coastline. Construction of a new slipway and 70 moorings, as well as a commercial 600-berth marina, was approved last year and is expected to be finished by the end of 2008. 181 days to go . . . 181: The number of 'points' that Germany won at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin if three points were to be awarded for a gold medal, two for a silver and one for a bronze. By employing the Third Reich's sinister propaganda machine to startlingly efficient effect, Adolf Hitler was able to use the Berlin Games as a stage to promote the host nation to a global audience. The German team, moreover, which included one athlete of Jewish origin as a concession to foreign disapproval, were given a year to train full-time at camps in the Black Forest. Germany finished comfortably on top of the medals table, winning 33 gold medals, 26 silver and 30 bronze. USA, for whom the black Jesse Owens won four gold medals, came second with 124 points (comprising 24 gold medals, 20 silver and 12 bronze). 182 days to go . . . 182: The aggregate number of gold medals that have been won by Italy at the summer Olympics. Only the United States of America, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France have won more. Italy's record has been remarkably consistent. Apart from 1896, when they were represented by a lone shooting competitor in Athens, and 1904, when they did not send a single team member to St Louis, Italy have won at least two gold medals at every Games. They have won 10 or more gold medals on eight occasions (including at each of the last three Olympics) and have won eight gold medals a further six times. Their biggest gold-medal haul at a single Games is 14, which they achieved at Los Angeles in 1984. As well as 182 gold medals, Italy have also won 148 silver medals and 164 bronze. 183 days to go . . . 183: The number of athletes in the Austria team at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. It remains the largest team Austria has sent to a summer Olympics (they have attended every Games except 1920, when they were not invited following the First World War). Berlin proved to be Austria's most successful summer Games by a distance. Of the 84 medals (20 gold, 32 silver, 32 bronze) the country has gleaned overall, 13 (four gold, six silver and three bronze) were secured in 1936. Austria achieved their second-highest haul of seven medals (two gold, four silver, one bronze) in Athens four years ago. Their least successful Olympics was Tokyo in 1964, when they failed to win a single medal. 184 days to go . . . 184: The number of medals South Korea (Korea) have won at the summer Games. Except for 1980, when they joined the Moscow Games boycott, Korea have participated at every Olympics since 1948. They won two bronze, one in boxing and one in weightlifting, at those London Games, but had to wait until 1976 before claiming their first gold - Jung Mo Yang in a wrestling event. Korea have won at least six golds at every Games since 1984, their biggest haul being 33 medals (12 gold, 10 silver, 11 bronze) when they were 1988 hosts. In total, they have won 55 golds, 64 silver and 65 bronze. In contrast, North Korea have won eight gold, 11 silver and 16 bronze. 185 days to go . . . 185: The aggregate number of gold medals that have been won by France at the Summer Olympics. Only the United States of America, the Soviet Union and Great Britain have won more. France's biggest haul of gold medals at a single Games came in 1900, when Paris acted as the host city for the first time. Then, France topped the medal table with 27 gold medals, though that figure more than halved to 13 (behind USA with 45 and Finland with 14) when Paris hosted again in 1924. France failed to win a single gold medal in 1904 and again in 1960 while they mustered a paltry one in 1964 and just two in both 1972 and 1976. Since then, they have won at least five gold medals at every Games, with the 15 golds they claimed in Atlanta in 1996 being their best ever return outside their own country. 186 days to go . . . 186: The aggregate number of Olympic cycling gold medals that have been won, 161 by men and 25 by women. Leon Flameng of France became the first Olympic cycling champion when he was triumphant in the 100 Kilometres Track event at the Athens Games of 1896 before Paul Masson, another Frenchman, claimed three of the five other available gold medals. France, indeed, have won more cycling gold medals (37) than any other country and they are followed by Italy (32), the Netherlands (14), USA (13), Australia (13) and Germany (12). Britain has claimed 10 cycling gold medals (all of them by men), with the last of them being Chris Hoy and Bradley Wiggins, who won, respectively, the 1000 Metres Time Trial and the 4000 Metres Individual Pursuit at the Athens Games four years ago. 187 days to go . . . 187: Days, the length of the London Olympics of 1908. The most protracted Games of all started on April 27 and finally finished on Oct 31. hough the main body of the fourth Olympiad took place at the newly constructed White City Stadium in west London in July, the first medals had been awarded before the official opening ceremony, with the indoor tennis and Jeu de Paume (real tennis) tournaments having been held in the spring. The figure skating events - figure skating was the first winter sport to be included at a summer Olympics - took place in the autumn because the required refrigeration would not have been possible in the summer months. Arranged by the Duchess of Bedford, the figure skating took place on the 62m by 16m Prince's Skating Rink in Knightsbridge. 188 days to go . . . 188: Kilometres, the length of the individual cycling road race at the 1924 Olympics in Paris, an event that was won by France's Armand Blanchonnet in a time of 6:20:48. It is an event that has been held over a number of distances, with the shortest being the 87km at the inaugural modern Games of 1896 (when the competitors cycled from Athens to Marathon, where they signed their names, before returning on the same road), and the longest being a gruelling 329km in 1912. The 2004 race, which was won by Italy's Paulo Bettini, was 224.4km long. Britain has won five medals in the event. Frederick Grubb (1912) and Frank Southall (1928) each claimed silver while Edward Battel (in 1896, when he was a servant at the British Embassy in Athens), Alan Jackson (1956) and Max Sciandri (1996) all won bronze. 189 days to go . . . 189: The aggregate number of gold medals won by Great Britain at the summer Olympics. Britain's biggest haul of gold medals at a single Games came in 1908, when London acted as the host city for the first time. Then, Britain topped the medal table with 56 gold medals, though that figure dwindled to just three when London hosted the Games again, in 1948. Britain have won at least one gold at every summer Olympics, though they had to make do with just the one on three occasions: in St Louis in 1904, in Helsinki in 1952 and in Atlanta 12 years ago. The tally of 11 gold medals at the 2000 Games in Sydney was this country's first double-figure haul since 1920, while a further nine were won in Athens four years ago. Between 1928 and 1996, Britain did not win more than six gold medals at one Games. 190 days to go . . . 190: The number of centimetres - otherwise 1.90 metres - that Irving Baxter, of the United States, cleared to win the men's high jump at the 1900 Olympics, nine centimetres higher than the winning jump in the inaugural Games of 1896 and 10cm better than the highest leap four years later. The first occasion on which the winning jump was in excess of two metres occurred in 1936, when America's Cornelius Johnson claimed gold by clearing 2.03m. The highest winning jump was the 2.39m that Charles Austin, another American, achieved in 1996. Overall, athletes from America have won 13 of the 25 men's Olympic high jump competitions. Britain have won three medals in the event: Pat Leahy won silver in 1900, while Con Leahy, his brother, and Steve Smith claimed bronze in 1908 and 1996, respectively. 191 days to go . . . 191: The number of environmental protection features, such as friendly construction materials, that have been employed in building projects for this year's Games. Renewable energy resources have been used at every opportunity. For example, the Olympic Village has a cooling and heating exchange system that is able to make use of the heat produced in the sewage treatment system. All the hotels must use reclaimed water while steel gutters have been spread over the roof of the Olympic Stadium to collect rain in dippers inside the gutters. The water will be recycled to irrigate land around the venue and for use in the stadium's toilet system. 192 days to go . . . 192: The length, in metres, of the foot race that Coroebus of Elis, a young Greek runner, won in 776 BC to become the first recorded Olympic champion. The 'stadion' - or 'stade' - was the only event on the programme for the Games until a double foot race was introduced at the 14th Olympiad in 724 BC and was named after the stadium, which was 192 metres long (and 32 metres wide, making it sufficiently broad for 20 competitors). Legend has it that Hercules could run the same distance while holding one breath. Dressed only in a leather loin-cloth, the participants ran the race barefoot on a hard-packed earth track while there were also officials at each end to watch out for possible false starts and to ascertain the victor. Coroebus, a humble cook, emerged the winner and was crowned with a wreath made from the leaves of an olive tree. 193 days to go . . . 193: The number of wins that Japanese judo competitor Yasuhiro Yamashita had gained prior to the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics in an unbeaten run that stretched back to 1977 and also included one tie. Yamashita, who did not compete at the 1980 Games in Moscow after Japan joined the USA-led boycott, won the first of nine successive All-Japan championship titles at the age of 19 in 1977 and also claimed four world titles. In Los Angeles in 1984, the 279-pound judoka, who was suffering from a leg injury sustained earlier in the tournament, extended his undefeated sequence by claiming the gold medal in the Open division, beating Egypt's Mohamed Rashwan in the final. Yamashita required Rashwan's help to climb to the top of the medal podium and retired in 1985, after 203 successive bouts without defeat. 194 days to go . . . 194: The number of Olympic swimming medals (excluding diving, synchronised swimming and water polo) that have been won by women from the United States of America. Since women's swimming competitions were introduced to the Olympics in 1912, American females have dominated the pool, winning 85 gold medals, 57 silver and 52 bronze. No swimmer of either sex can match the Olympic record of America's Jenny Thompson, who won 12 medals between 1992 and 2004 - eight gold (all of them in relays), three silver and one bronze. East Germany (74 medals) are second on the overall list. 195 days to go . . . 195: The combined number of Olympic silver medals that have been won by France. Only the United States (who have won 694), the Soviet Union (357), Great Britain (245) and Germany (207) have harvested more. Germany's total excludes medals won by competitors from West Germany and East Germany between 1964 and 1988. France, for their part, have won at least one silver medal at every summer Olympics, with their highest total being the 39 they claimed in Paris in 1900, and the lowest being the one they mustered in St Louis four years later. France have failed to win a gold medal only twice (in 1904 and 1960). Their biggest gold medal haul remains the 27 they won on home soil in 1900 while they have won 10 or more gold medals at seven separate Games, including each of the past three. 196 days to go . . . 196 : The number of participants - 98 men and 98 women - who will compete in gymnastics events at the 2008 Olympics. Twelve teams, consisting of six gymnasts each, have qualified for the respective men's and women's team competitions by virtue of the final standings at the 2007 World Championships. In addition to the 72 team members, a further 26 competitors will be eligible, through qualification and allocation, to participate in the individual events, though no country is permitted to enter more than 12 athletes (six men and six women) overall. As a result of the British men's team finishing 15th in last year's World Championships, two British men will be eligible to compete in the individual events in Beijing. Britain's women's team have qualified after finishing sixth at the World Championships. The event was introduced to the Games in 1928, when Canada's Ethel Catherwood won with a leap of 1.59 m, which remains the lowest winning jump. No British woman has won the Olympic high jump, though five have won a silver medal, the last being Dorothy Shirley in 1960. 197 days to go . . . 197: The number of centimetres - or 1.97 metres - that Sara Simeoni, an Italian, cleared to win the women's high jump at the 1980 Games in Moscow, the last time the winner of the event prevailed by jumping less than two metres. Ulrike Meyfarth, of West Germany, who had won the competition as a 16-year-old schoolgirl in 1972, claimed gold again in 1984 by clearing 2.02 m and every subsequent winner has jumped 2.01 m or better, with the 2.06 m managed by Russia's Yelena Slesarenko in 2004 setting an Olympic record. The event was introduced to the Games in 1928, when Canada's Ethel Catherwood won with a leap of 1.59 m, which remains the lowest winning jump. No British woman has won the Olympic high jump, though five have won a silver medal, the last being Dorothy Shirley in 1960. 198 days to go . . . 198: The then record number of events held at the 1976 Games in Montreal. Although the 50km walk, tandem cycling, slalom canoeing, the free rifle and three swimming disciplines were dropped from the programme, the addition of women's basketball and handball, seven rowing events and four canoeing competitions meant that a record total of 198 gold medals were available in 1976 - three more than in Munich four years previously. The Eastern Bloc dominated the medals table, with the Soviet Union winning 49 gold medals and East Germany 40. USA were third with 34 and West Germany fourth with 10. Britain won three golds: the men's 200m breaststroke (courtesy of David Wilkie), the men's modern pentathlon team event and the Tornado class in sailing. 199 days to go . . . 199: The number of countries that were represented at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, a then record that was surpassed when 201 countries participated in Athens four years ago. Among those countries who were making their Olympic debut in 2000 were Palestine, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia, while four athletes from East Timor competed under the Olympic flag as individual athletes. Korea (South Korea) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) marched together under the same flag, although they competed separately. In total, there were 10,651 athletes (6,582 men, 4,069 women), 300 events, 46,967 volunteers and 16,033 media (10,735 broadcasters, 5,298 written press). Of the 199 competing countries, 80 won at least one medal, of which 51 won a gold. 200 days to go . . . 200: The men's 200m, which was introduced to the Olympic Games in 1900, has been won by a competitor from the USA on 17 of 24 occasions, with the first American victor being Walter Tewksbury in 1900 (in the slowest winning time of 22.2) and the last being Shawn Crawford four years ago. Canada and Italy have each won the event on two occasions while USSR, Jamaica and Greece have done so once each. Four British athletes have won a silver medal (Norman Pritchard in 1900, Walter Rangeley in 1928, Allan Wells in 1980 and Darren Campbell in 2000) while a further three Britons have each claimed bronze (Willie Applegarth in 1912, Harry Edward in 1920 and Eric Liddell in 1924). The fastest winning time in a final was achieved by America's Michael Johnson, who ran 19.32 in 1996.  

i don't know

Which team won the most Super Bowls in the 1980s?

Super Bowl History 1980 - 1989 - Superbowl in the 1980's Super Bowl History 1980 - 1989 Super Bowl XIV Chuck Noll's Pittsburgh Steelers would repeat to win Super Bowl 14 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California on January 20th, 1980 against Ray Malavasi's LA Rams. Terry Bradshaw took home MVP for the second straight year as the Steelers won their 4th Super Bowl before any other team had won three. John Stallworth and Lynn Swan each caught touchdowns, while Franco Harris ran for two. Dave Elmendorf, Rod Perry, and Eddie Brown intercepted three Bradshaw passes, but it wasn't enough. Lawrence McCutcheon connected with Ron Smith on a halfback pass but quarterback Vince Ferragamo couldn't make the big throw for the Rams. Unsung hero, Larry Anderson, had 162 return yards setting up the Steeler win, 31-19. Super Bowl XV Tom Flores' Oakland Raiders beat Dick Vermeil's Philadelphia Eagles, 27-10, in Super Bowl 15 on January 25th, 1981 at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. Ron Jaworski had 291 yards, but was intercepted by linebacker Rod Martin three times. Jim Plunkett threw three touchdowns in Super Bowl Fifteen; an 80 yard bomb to Kenny King, and two shorter scores to Cliff Branch. An Eagle defense led by John Bunting and Herman Edwards couldn't slow Plunkett and Mark Van Eeghen (75 yards). Ted Hendricks, Matt Millen, Dave Browning, and Martin led the stout Raider defense. Super Bowl XVI On January 24, 1982 Super Bowl 16 was played in Pontiac, Michigan at the Pontiac Sliverdome. Bill Walsh's San Francisco 49ers faced Forrest Gregg's Cincinnati Bengals. MVP, Joe Montana, inched his Forty-Niners into Super Bowl Sixteen by completing a last second touchdown to Dwight Clark in the NFC Title Game, known as "The Catch". Montana took home MVP honors, throwing one touchdown to Earl Cooper, while running for another. Ray Wersching had a Super Bowl record 4 field goals. Ken Anderson brought the Bengals roaring back with a touchdown run and pass to Dan Ross. But early turnovers by Chris Collinsworth and Anderson were too much to overcome as Eric Wright, Lynn Thomas, Ronnie Lott, and Dwight Hicks led San Francisco's defense to victory. Super Bowl XVII On January 30th, 1983, Joe Gibbs' Washington Redskins beat Don Shula's Miami Dolphins 27-17 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. Super Bowl 17 MVP, John Riggins, rushed for a record 166 yards, and Joe Theismann threw two touchdowns, to Alvin Garrett and Charlie Brown, leading the Redskin comeback in the second half. Miami's 17 Super Bowl Seventeen points came in the first half; a 76 yard touchdown pass from David Woodley to Jimmy Cefalo, a short field goal by Uwe Von Schamann, and a 98 yard kickoff return by Fulton Walker. Vernon Dean and Mark Murphy led the Washington defense that held Woodley and Don Strock to 4-17 passing. Super Bowl XVIII Joe Gibbs' Washington Redskins were back as Defending Champs for Super Bowl 18 in Tampa, Florida on January 30th, 1983. Super Bowl Eighteen was different for Joe, as Tom Flores' Los Angeles Raiders blew-out Joe Theismann (2-ints), John Riggins (64-yds) and the rest of the Redskins, 38-9, in the Super Bowl's most lopsided contest yet. Marcus Allen literally ran away with Super Bowl MVP, compiling over 200 total yards and two touchdowns, with a record 192 rushing. Derrick Jensen blocked a punt for a touchdown and linebacker Jack Squireck returned an interception for a score to end the half. Jim Plunkett tossed a TD to Cliff Branch adding fuel to the fire. Super Bowl XIX On January 20th, 1985 Don Shula's Miami Dolphins played Bill Walsh's San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl 19 at Stanford Stadium in Stanford, California. Two of the NFL's greatest quarterbacks of all time, Dan Marino and Joe Montana, led their respective teams into what promised to be an offensive explosion. But Walsh's Nickel Defense held Marino well below season averages while the Dolphins couldn't coral Super Bowl Nineteen MVP Joe Montana (361 yards, 4 total touchdowns), Roger Craig (3 scores), and Dwight Clark, as the Niners nailed Miami, 38-9. Manu Tuiasosopo, Ronnie Lott, and Eric C. Wright halted Mark Clayton, Mark Duper, Tony Nathan, and the Dolphins. Super Bowl XX In Super Bowl 20, on January 26th, 1986, Mike Ditka's Chicago Bears destroyed Raymond Berry's New England Patriots 46-10, in the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. The Bear's "46 Zone" that helped Chicago to a 15-1 record, recorded 7 sacks, holding Steve Grogan, Tony Eason, Morgan Stanley, and the Patriots to 10 points and just 7 yards rushing. One of the most popular teams of all time, the Bears were led by Jim McMahon, Walter "Sweetness" Payton, Mike Singletary, Super Bowl MVP Richard Dent, Willie Gault, and rookie William "Refrigerator" Perry. Their famous "Super Bowl Shuffle" rap song peaked at #41 on the Billboard charts. Their nearly perfect season, tagged the Bears one of the greatest teams of all time. Super Bowl XXI On January 25th, 1987 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, Dan Reeves' Denver Broncos lost 39-20 to Bill Parcells' New York Football Giants in Super Bowl 21. Super Bowl Twenty-One MVP, Phil Simms was 22-25, for 261 yards and 3 touchdowns. His 88% completion percentage is a Super Bowl record. John Elway led the Broncos in rushing and passing, throwing for 304 yards. Vance Johnson led the game with 121 yards, but neither could bring home the Broncos' first Super Bowl. Joe Morris and Mark Bevaro helped Simms control the second half as a record 8 different players caught passes for the N.Y. Giants. Super Bowl XXII Super Bowl 22, played on January 31st, 1988 at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego, California, saw Joe Gibbs' Washington Redskins maim Reeves' Denver Broncos 42-10. John Elway threw a 56 yard touchdown to Ricky Nattiel and Rich Karlis' field goal put the Broncos up 10-0. It was false hope for Denver as the Redskins ran off 42 unanswered points to win Super Bowl Twenty-Two. MVP Doug William's had a record tying 4 touchdowns to Ricky Sanders (2), Clint Didier (1), and Gary Clark (1).Two records fell as Sanders had 193 yards receiving and rookie runner Timmy Smith rushed for 204 yards. Led by Barry Wilburn and Alvin Walton the Redskins held Denver scoreless for the last three quarters. Super Bowl XXIII On January 22nd, 1989 at Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami, Florida, Sam Wyche's Cincinnati Bengals lost to Bill Walsh's San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl 23, 20-16. Super Bowl Twenty-Three MVP, Jerry Rice, set a Super Bowl record with 215 yards receiving and Joe Montana had a record 357 yards. Boomer Esiason, Anthony Munoz, Tim McGee and Icky Woods all struggled against Ronnie Lott, Charles Haley, Tim McKyer, and the 49er defense. But, the Bengals' D, led by Jason Buck, Leon White and Solomon Wilcots, made big plays when they had to, as Cincinnati found themselves up 16-13 with 3:20 remaining. Montana led an 11 play, 92 yard, game winning drive that ended with a 10 yard touchdown pass to John Taylor with 34 seconds remaining.

San Francisco 49ers

Anton Geesink was the first non-Japanese judoka to win a judo world championship, but which country did he come from?

Super Bowl Winners and Results - Super Bowl History - National Football League - ESPN Super Bowl Winners and Results NO. Green Bay 35, Kansas City 10 II Green Bay 33, Oakland 14 III New York Jets 16, Baltimore 7 IV Kansas City 23, Minnesota 7 V Pittsburgh 31, Los Angeles 19 XV San Francisco 26, Cincinnati 21 XVII Los Angeles 38, Washington 9 XIX San Francisco 38, Miami 16 XX Chicago 46, New England 10 XXI New York Giants 39, Denver 20 XXII Jack Murphy Stadium (San Diego) Washington 42, Denver 10 San Francisco 20, Cincinnati 16 XXIV San Francisco 55, Denver 10 XXV New York Giants 20, Buffalo 19 XXVI San Francisco 49, San Diego 26 XXX Sun Devil Stadium (Tempe, Ariz.) Dallas 27, Pittsburgh 17 Green Bay 35, New England 21 XXXII Denver 31, Green Bay 24 XXXIII St. Louis 23, Tennessee 16 XXXV Raymond James Stadium (Tampa, Fla.) Baltimore 34, New York Giants 7 XXXVI New England 20, St. Louis 17 XXXVII Tampa Bay 48, Oakland 21 XXXVIII New England 32, Carolina 29 XXXIX New England 24, Philadelphia 21 XL University of Phoenix Stadium (Glendale, Ariz.) New York Giants 17, New England 14 XLIII Raymond James Stadium (Tampa, Fla.) Pittsburgh Steelers 27, Arizona Cardinals 23 XLIV New Orleans Saints 31, Indianapolis Colts 17 XLV Green Bay Packers 31, Pittsburgh Steelers 25 XLVI New York Giants 21, New England Patriots 17 XLVII Baltimore Ravens 34, San Francisco 49ers 31 XLVIII MetLife Stadium (East Rutherford, N.J.) Seattle Seahawks 43, Denver Broncos 8 XLIX University of Phoenix Stadium (Glendale, Ariz.) New England Patriots 28, Seattle Seahawks 24 50 Levi's Stadium (Santa Clara, Calif.) Denver Broncos 24, Carolina Panthers 10 SPONSORED HEADLINES

i don't know

Who was the defending champion when Chris Evert first won Wimbledon singles?

History - 1970s - The Championships, Wimbledon 2017 - Official Site by IBM  READ MORE 1970: Margaret Court v Billie Jean King: Margaret Court and Billie Jean King contested one of the great Wimbledon finals in 1970. As veteran commentator John Barrett has said, "It produced one of the most dramatic finals ever seen at Wimbledon." The fact it was televised in colour rather than black and white added to the spectacle while also underlining the changing times of a sport that only two years earlier had turned professional. 1970: John Newcombe v Ken Rosewall: John Newcombe defeated his Australian countryman Ken Rosewall and a partisan crowd 5-7, 6-3, 6-2, 3-6, 6-1 to win the men’s singles for a second time. From the start the elegant Rosewall, the underdog, had the Centre Court crowd behind for everyone hoped that this, his third appearance in a final, would be his year having previously been the gallant runner-up in 1954 and 1956. The 16-year gap set a record-breaking span between his first and this year’s final, one that was so appreciated by the crowd that it led Newcombe to ask ‘why do they hate me?’ With a nine-year age gap between the two, it was always going to be difficult for the 35-year-old Rosewall to outlast the younger former champion and his play proved patchy as Newcombe exploited his weaknesses with his power and guile to level and take a two-sets-to-one lead. Rosewall recovered in the fourth, helped by Newcombe’s brief loss of concentration and the clear favouritism being shown to the older player, but regained his composure to inflict a quick coup de grace over his tiring compatriot in the fifth. 1971: Evonne Goolagong v Margaret Court: The highlight of the Ladies’ singles was the final clash between Margaret Court and Evonne Goolagong, an all-Australian encounter, which will be perceived as the end of one era and the start of another. Goolagong, at 19, had captured the tennis world’s hearts on her second appearance at The Championships with her breezy, easy-going style and sunny smile, which contrasted greatly with the quiet and dignified defending champion Court. While the Aussie teenager arrived in the final having taken out the previous year’s runner-up, Billie Jean King, in three sets, no one expected her to also get the better of the big-hitting defending champion. The die was cast from the opening exchanges as Court surprisingly, showed more nerves than her challenger who immediately raced to a 4-0 lead with ultimate ease. However, Court drew on her experience and clawed her way back to 3-4 but in the eighth game, with Goolagong 15-40 down, she was unable to capitalise and level as the teenager struck three searing winners to completely deflate the champion. Goolagong showed no anxiety in her free-flowing shots to claim six successive games and take the title 6-4 6-1 to become only the fourth teenager to win the women’s singles since the war. 1971: Ken Rosewall: Classic or epic matches are measured by the numbers watching a struggle to the death and the Ken Rosewall v Cliff Ritchie clash at the quarter-final stage of the 1971 Championships falls firmly into that category. Australia’s Rosewall and Ritchie of the US battled it out for 3hrs 59mins before Rosewall captured the semi-final place at stake, 6-8, 5-7, 6-4, 9-7, 7-5, recovering from two sets down and trailing 2-4 and 0-30 in the third. As the scoreline suggests, Richie the hustler from America, had the match well in hand but failed to maintain his supremacy as Rosewall’s doggedness started to pay dividends. From a near hopeless position, Rosewall levelled and went on to score an excellent victory with one of his trademark backhands, passing an attacking Ritchie attempting to stave off a fifth match point. While the victory was popular, the crowd rose in appreciation to acclaim both protagonists’ efforts. 1972: Stan Smith v Ilie Nastase Rain, the first of the fortnight, washed out Saturday play and for the first time in the history of The Championships, the men’s final was played out on the Sunday to the dismay of traditionalists. Stan Smith, the tall upright American and top seed, faced the crowd’s favourite, Ilie Nastase, the Romanian court jester seeded second, and between them, they entertained the crowd with a classic final. Having made his last racket change in the fourth game of the fourth set, Nastase became hyper matching Smith stroke for stroke from the back of the court, dominating the net and showing remarkable determination to level the match. In the decider both players defended stoutly to prevent their opponent to capitalise on their chances but in the 12th game, Smith forced his challenger to net a high backhand volley and concede the final after 164 minutes, 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 4-6, 7-5 on his fourth match point in what proved to be the closest final since 1933 when Jack Crawford (Aus) beat the title-holder Ellsworth Vines (USA). 1973: The Strike In Britain strikes had always been industrial disputes - until 1973, that is, when most of the men's field at Wimbledon withdrew their labour in the most sensational move in the history of The Championships. As with most disputes, it concerned who was top dog. And in this respect Wimbledon was caught in the middle of a confrontation between the then International Lawn Tennis Federation (now ITF) and the newly-formed players "union", the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). There had already been some flexing of muscles over who ran what, and further turmoil broke out over the Yugoslav number one, Nikki Pilic. He was suspended by his national association, who alleged he had refused to play in a Davis Cup tie. The suspension, supported by the ILTF, meant that Pilic would not be permitted to play at Wimbledon. Ultimately 79 players, including 13 of the original 16 seeds, withdrew. The final was an anti-climax as Czech Jan Kodes, already twice a winner of the French Open, swept aside Alex Metreveli, the first Russian to reach a Wimbledon Gentlemen's final, 6-1, 9-8, 6-3. The drama was over. And so was the strike. 1974: Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert There were two factors in particular which were unique about the 1974 Championships. The titles were won by an engaged couple, Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert, both of the United States, and in playing terms they attracted particular attention because both were double-fisted on the backhand side. In the end, the opponent Connors had to worry about was the 39-year-old Australian, Ken Rosewall, who stunned the field and captivated the crowd by reaching the final for the fourth time - and 20 years after his first appearance in the final. There was little doubt that the sentiments of the crowd at the final swung towards Rosewall who, clearly, had earned his last chance of winning the title. But Connors raced through to title 6-1, 6-1, 6-4 against an opponent who was obviously tired after the rigours of the previous two rounds. Chris Evert had already been a semi-finalist at her first Wimbledon in 1972, losing to Evonne Goolagong and a finalist in 1973, losing to Billie Jean King. She was due to play them in sequence in 1974 but both were beaten in earlier matches. Evert had never lost to Russian Olga Morozova so went into the final full of confidence. She won the title for the first time with victory by 6-0, 6-4. The bookmakers had quoted odds of 33-1 on a "love double" for the engaged couple. In the end, Connors and Evert did not marry. 1975: Arthur Ashe wins Wimbledon The 1975 Gentlemen's final pitted the brash, abrasive and sometimes uncouth defending champion and No.1 seed, Jimmy Connors, against Arthur Ashe, seeded sixth and tennis's ultimate gentleman. It proved to be one of Wimbledon's greatest finals. Ashe hooked his serve wide to the two-handed backhand of his left-handed opponent and he took pace off his pounding, often error-producing ground-strokes. More importantly, Ashe exploited Connors' weakness - the low forehand. Time and again he caressed a shot that forced Connors to dig a reply out of the turf. Ashe did not just create the game plan, he stuck to it superbly, winning the first two sets 6-1, 6-1. Connors, a player renowned for his never-say-die attitude was not prepared to give his title up easily and took the third set, 7-5. The fourth set found Connors with an early break-up 3-0 before Ashe won six of the next seven games to take the final set 6-4 and become the first black male to win the Gentlemen's Singles Championship at Wimbledon. 1976: Bjorn Borg v Ilie Nastase: At 20 years and 17 days, Bjorn Borg, became the third youngest men’s singles champion and the youngest since 1931 in what was also the first all-European final since 1936 when Fred Perry beat Gottfried von Cramm. Despite nursing a slight stomach muscle strain, Borg, the fourth seed, required just 1hr and 50mins to dispatch Ilie Nastase 6-4 6-2 9-7 in what was a one-sided contest on a sultry day in SW19. The ever popular Nastase, the third seed and title favourite, arrived in the final having brushed aside all opposition without the loss of a set only to run into a player on the verge of making tennis history. Borg’s ferociously struck top-spin forehands successfully blunted Nastase’s attacking game, as did the Swede’s speed about the court and his defensive play, which left few opportunities for the 29-year-old to prevent defeat in the final for a second time in five years. Having saved a match point in the 10th game, Nastase took a 6-5 lead only to be frustrated yet again by some weak play on his part, thus allowing Borg to raise the golden trophy for the first time in his blossoming career. 1976: The rise of Chris Evert: Fittingly the 1976 Women’s Singles final saw the year’s best two players facing each other, namely from America, the determined, technically sound and gifted Chris Evert against Australia’s athletic, naturally talented and graceful stroke player, Evonne Goolagong Cawley. In what had been a scorching fortnight, the favourite for the crown was the popular Cawley but on the day the greater determination of the ice-maiden Evert proved too much for the more laidback approach of the Australian. From the beginning Evert looked to have the edge but with the final level at a set-all and Cawley leading 2-0, the pendulum looked to have swung her way, but Evert broke back and slowly regained the initiative by breaking up her opponent’s game and coming to the net, much to Cawley’s surprise. The accuracy of her passing shots also took their toll and after just over two hours of competitive play, the American claimed her second Wimbledon singles crown, 6-3, 4-6, 8-6, leaving the Australian to rue missed opportunities and accept the runners-up spot for a second consecutive year. 1977: Virginia Wade: Although Virginia Wade had won the US Open in 1968, the Australian Open in 1972 and was twice a Wimbledon semi-finalist in 1974 and 1976, the consensus was that she was past her peak and at 31, far older than exciting new talents such as America's Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova (then of Czechoslavakia, later USA) and Britain's Sue Barker. However, Wade's victory couldn't have been scripted any better. Wade was a British player winning the Ladies' Championship in Wimbledon's centenary year, in front of the Queen during her Silver Jubilee year in 1977. As Wade stood alongside the Queen, clutching the Venus Rosewater Dish she was at the epicentre of one of Britain's greatest sporting moments. Wade later said: "The atmosphere was phenomenal. I've never experienced anything like that in England other than football's 1966 World Cup. The place went absolutely crazy. It was a cauldron of excitement and celebration. It was humbling in a way. You immersed yourself in it and then you realised the reason for it was because you'd won. I had become a part of a major celebration." Although her final victory against Betty Stove (Netherlands) 4-6 6-3 6-1 ensured Wade the coveted crown, she picked out her semi-final win over defending champion Chris Evert as the high point of that Championships. 1977: The Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum: Over the years Wimbledon has been good at marking occasions and there was no better way to celebrate 100 years of tennis than opening a Museum on its grounds during the Club’s Centenary celebrations. The Wimbledon Museum and its associated Lord Ritchie Library, was officially opened on 20th May, 1977 by HRH, The Duke of Kent, and over the years, has become a major London tourist attraction in its own right. From the outset, the Wimbledon Museum was determined to cover all aspects of tennis from its origins, through all the developments to the present day and as far as possible, the future. In addition, special exhibitions highlighting specific areas like ‘tennis fashion through the ages’, were organised to provide additional visitor attractions. The Museum, originally situated above the old debenture holders restaurant, was designed by Robin Wade and provided a stark contrast to the fustian image of other ‘museums’ to quickly become a must visit for tennis enthusiasts. 1977: Bjorn Borg v Vitas Gerulaitis: Once in a while a tennis match will reach its climax with both players utterly convinced they are going to win until the last stroke of the rally. Such was the case when Bjorn Borg met Vitas Gerulaitis in the Wimbledon semi-finals in 1977. The pair, great friends, practice partners, both possessing blond flowing locks, although Gerulaitis didn't have the beard, sparred over five thrilling sets as Gerulaitis twice came back from a set down. Missing a match point as he scuppered a simple backhand down the line, he eventually went down 6-8 in the fifth set in the Centre Court twilight. "I'm surprised I had it in me to play that well, and I'm completely choked I lost," Gerulaitis said afterwards. Borg went on to win the match and claim the second of his five Wimbledon titles against Jimmy Connors in the final. 1977: Bjorn Borg v Jimmy Connors: The Bjorn Borg-Jimmy Connors final in the Centenary Year of The Championships provided a more than suitable climax to what had been a somewhat controversial start to the celebrations. That final saw the two champions remorselessly battling it out, on fast grass, from the back of the court in what in hindsight, could be deemed the start of the baseline era. It was the first time these two great champions had met on grass with Borg pulling ahead to lead two sets to one by deploying less spin, hitting flatter deliveries and mixing in a series of nothing balls. But the Viking’s iron concentration wavered and the American came storming back to force a decider. Crucially, Connors raised his own game to draw level at 4-all in the fifth set but a double fault at 15-love, only his second of the match, proved pivotal for he then failed to win another point as a weary Borg closed the match out 3-6 6-2 6-1 5-7 6-4 after three hours and 14 minutes of gruelling play.  1977: John McEnroe v Jimmy Connors: John McEnroe has often said that he did not choose tennis as his pursuit. Tennis found him. And that moment, when he shot on to the scene as a pale, unathletic looking 18-year-old in Wimbledon 1977, was the turning point. Runner-up at the 18&U national junior championships, and ranked No.270 in the world, he earned the chance to play the Wimbledon qualifying tournament. Two weeks later, he found himself in the semi-finals against Jimmy Connors. Aged 18 years and four months, McEnroe became the youngest semi-finalist in 100 years of The Championships when he defeated Phil Dent in the quarter-finals, simultaneously becoming the first qualifier to reach the semi-finals. Luring Connors into errors by varying the pace of the game, McEnroe unleashed a series of backhands to take the third set, and dent the world No.1's pride. The turning point of the match came in the seventh game of the fourth set, McEnroe fending off two break points before Connors finally broke and served out the match. The life of John McEnroe would never be the same again.   1980: Chris Evert v Martina Navratilova All along, the talk of Wimbledon 1978 had been about defending champion Martina Navratilova and Tracy Austin, the top two seeds. But Chris Evert, or Chris Evert-Lloyd as she was then, floated through the draw free from the Centre Court scrutiny that can sometimes make winning a major tennis title so agonising. When she met her erstwhile rival Navratilova, in the semi-finals, the latter seemed more frustrated than tired. Not even the traditional spit-kiss on each cheek that her mother, Jana, had given her before each match during the last two years, a Czech good-luck custom, could keep her volleys in the court. Alongside the 37 other matches that the two stars of the game had contested, it was not a well-played match. Even Navratilova's mother told her in the locker-room, "you played bad". But to Evert's credit, she fought her way into the match, eventually triumphing 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 in a reverse of their two previous Wimbledon encounters, both in the final. 1979: Billie Jean King wins 20th title Immediately after Bjorn Borg won a record fourth successive men's title at Wimbledon, Billie Jean King grabbed the Centre Court spotlight by becoming the most prolific Wimbledon winner. The 35-year-old partnered singles champion Martina Navratilova to win the women's doubles final 5-7 6-3, 6-2 against Australia's Wendy Turnbull and Holland's Betty Stove. It gave King the 20th title she had been chasing for four years. Since winning the singles title for the sixth time in 1975, the American had shared the record of 19 titles with Elizabeth Ryan, who, in a bizarre twist of fate, died 24 hours before King surpassed her in the record books. "It seemed she didn't want to see her record broken," King said. "Although she told me that if anyone was going to break it, she hoped it would be me. Right from my early days, Elizabeth was always around watching the juniors and one felt her presence." King's 20 Championships are made up of six singles titles, 10 doubles titles and four mixed doubles titles.

Billie Jean King

Who was Super Bowl MVP in successive years in 1967 and 1968?

Wimbledon Champions: Women's top 25 - Telegraph Wimbledon Champions: Women's top 25 9:41AM BST 28 Jun 2008 Former champion Bjorn Borg reveals his top 25 women while Mark Hodgkinson and Kaz Mochlinski profile the players. Louise Brough 1948-1950, 1955 No player has ever dominated Wimbledon more completely than did Brough in the three Championships between 1948 and 1950. Not only did she collect three of her four singles titles in that time, but she reached the final of every event, winning eight out of nine. The only final she lost was the mixed doubles in the middle year, when she played 117 games in three finals that involved five hours 20 minutes' playing time on Centre Court on the final Saturday of the tournament. Her hard volleying was ideally suited to the Wimbledon grass courts, which she again demonstrated in adding a last singles victory in 1955. It was her 13th title in total at the All England Club and she did not drop a set in winning it. With Margaret du Pont, she also collected a remarkable 12 women's doubles successes in the US Championships. Maria Bueno 1959-1960, 1964 The lithe and elegant Brazilian brought sex appeal to the Wimbledon lawns, improving the SW19 libido. All the men in the Centre Court crowd fell in love with Bueno after she won her first Wimbledon title in 1959, after which she was given a prize of a clothes voucher and then flown back in a presidential jet to a ticker-tape parade in Sao Paolo. In future years she titillated Wimbledon by wearing a white dress with a pink lining, and also won two more titles, in 1960 and 1964. Maureen Connolly 1952-1954 Her first love was horse riding, but Maureen Connolly's mother could not afford the lessons and she turned to tennis. 'Little Mo' snaffled a hat-trick of Wimbledon titles, from 1952-54, and was a popular figure back home in the United States. But that did not stop her from speaking of "the dark destiny" of her tennis career. "I always believed greatness on a tennis court was my destiny, a dark destiny at times, where the court became my secret jungle and I, a lonely, fear-stricken hunter. I was a strange little girl armed with hate, fear and a golden racket," Connolly once said. Margaret Court 1963, 1965, 1970 'Big Marge' dominated the tour in the 1960s and 1970s, winning her first two Wimbledon titles, as Margaret Smith, in 1963 and 1965. She quit the circuit in 1966 to marry and start a family, but returned to the game as Margaret Court, and in 1970 won all four majors to achieve the grand slam. On the Wimbledon leg of that feat, Court and the American Billie Jean King contested what was one of the greatest finals in the tournament's history, with the Australian eventually closing out a 14-12, 11-9 victory. In addition to her three Wimbledon trophies, Court won a further 21 grand slam singles titles, taking her singles tally to 24, and many consider her to be the greatest female player to have ever stepped on Centre Court. Lindsay Davenport 1999 American Lindsay Davenport may have won Wimbledon as well as the US and Australian Opens , plus an Olympic gold medal, in an illustrious career. But her greatest achievement is perhaps showing that it is still possible to succeed in modern tennis as a mother. After giving birth to a baby son 12 months ago, she returned to win two of her three tournaments before the end of the year and has continued to notch up further victories in 2008. She made her breakthrough by winning the women's singles at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, but she secured full recognition as one of the best players of her generation only when she clinched the Wimbledon title in 1999. In an emotional final Davenport overcame Steffi Graf, who was playing her last major match. To underline her dominance that year, the American added the women's doubles with her compatriot, Corina Morariu, too. Chris Evert 1974, 1976, 1981 Known as the 'Ice Maiden' for having icicles in her veins on court, the American won her first Wimbledon title in 1974. That same year, her fiancé, Jimmy Connors, won the men's crown and the two of them danced together at the Champions' Ball. Their romance became known as the 'Love Match'. But they broke off the engagement later that year so there was no fairytale ending. However, she did go on to win two more Venus Rosewater Dishes, with triumphs in 1976 and 1981, and also married and then divorced John Lloyd, the British tennis player. Borg on Evert Chris could play on every surface, but she was particularly comfortable on the Wimbledon grass. She knew exactly which shot to play. Everyone called me 'Ice Borg' or the 'Ice Man', but she was the 'Ice Maiden' of the women's game. She was a great champion Althea Gibson 1957-1958 The African-American Althea Gibson is one of the most important figures in Wimbledon's history as she was the first black player, male or female, to win a title on the grass of SW19. Born in North Carolina and raised in Harlem, she had it tough during her tennis education as she was barred from whites-only clubs and competitions. However, Gibson persevered with her tennis and secured her first Wimbledon title in 1957 and then backed it up by winning again the next year. She lived in poverty for much of her old age before dying in 2003. Venus and Serena Williams know that they owe much to Gibson. Evonne Goolagong 1971, 1980 She was the daughter of a sheep shearer and the family lived in a tin shack in New South Wales. Yet that didn't stop Evonne Goolagong, an Australian of Aboriginal descent, following her dream of playing tennis. Her early career was funded by the Aboriginal community. "The town only had a population of 700, but they used to provide everything for me, including clothes, shoes and rackets," said Goolagong. She won her first Wimbledon title in 1971, beating Margaret Court, and a second in 1980, beating Chris Evert. Steffi Graf 1988-1989, 1991-1993, 1995-1996 Steffi Graf was to win a total of seven Wimbledon singles titles up to 1996, but none would surpass her first. In 1988 she dethroned Martina Navratilova at the All England Club on the way to collecting all four major championships in a calendar year. And she then added a victory at the Seoul Olympics to produce a unique Golden grand slam. An added bonus that year was her success in the Wimbledon doubles with Gabriela Sabatini, of Argentina, for her only major title in that version of the game. In 1989 the then German supremacy in tennis was underlined with Wimbledon wins for both Graf and Boris Becker. Graf went on to collect a remarkable 22 grand slam singles crowns before marrying Andre Agassi in a rare match-up of Wimbledon champions. Borg on Graf It's difficult to compare one generation to another, but there is no question that Steffi was one of the greats. She worked extremely hard on her tennis, she had that brilliant forehand, and I remember watching a lot of her matches at Wimbledon. I can't think of one weakness in Steffi's game Blanche Bingley Hillyard 1886, 1889, 1894, 1897, 1899-1900 First as Blanche Bingley and then as Mrs Hillyard, she became the first multiple champion of women's tennis. Her severe looks concealed a friendly and sporting nature, but she was nevertheless a ferocious competitor and claimed six Wimbledon titles from 1886 to 1900. Usually photographed wearing a tie as part of her formal tennis kit, she became well known at the time as an indefatigable player. Martina Hingis 1997 The 'Little Swiss Miss' was just 16??years old when she beat Jana Novotna in the 1997 Wimbledon final and so became the youngest champion of the professional era. Martina Hingis displayed an excellent tennis brain; she played with an exceptionally high IQ, Mensa stuff off the strings. But 10 years on she tested positive for cocaine after a third-round defeat and was banned from the game. In the space of a decade Hingis had gone from a sweet-16 prodigy to a scandal-hit veteran. Ann Jones 1969 The delight that greeted Ann Jones's triumph in 1969 was not just down to it being a home victory. As well as the Birmingham player's popularity, her success was all the sweeter for being unexpected. She was past her 30th birthday and competing at her 14th??Wimbledon. Having got through to the semi-finals, she put out the top seed, Margaret Court, before beating defending champion, Billie Jean King, in the final. Billie Jean King 1966-1968, 1972-1973, 1975 It was not just her record 20?Wimbledon titles, six of them in the singles between 1966 and 1975, that King will be remembered for. She was the foremost pioneer of women's professional tennis in the 1960s and 1970s, bringing a new athleticism to the female game and campaigning for fair rewards in return. To which end she played in the infamous 'Battle of the Sexes' in Houston, Texas, in 1973, when, as the reigning Wimbledon champion, she lost in three straight sets to Bobby Riggs, the 1939 men's victor at the All England Club. Having won the doubles on her first visit to SW19 as a teenager in 1961, she was nearly 36 years old at the time of her last success at the Championships in 1979 – partnering Martina Navratilova, who would later equal King's number of Wimbledon crowns. A less-heralded achievement was becoming the first woman to win at Wimbledon wearing glasses. Borg on King All the players in the current generation should thank Billie Jean, as she is the one who has done the most to put women's tennis where it is now. If it wasn't for her, the women might not have equal prize money at Wimbledon these days. She has done some great work off the court, but she was also a great player on the court, let's not forget about that. She is one of the most important figures in the history of women's tennis, if not the most important Suzanne Lenglen 1919-1923, 1925 She was French and she was fabulous. One of the first racket-twirling divas, Suzanne Lenglen used to sip brandy during the change of ends. And – shock horror – Lenglen showed her ankles to the world, sported a short hairstyle and refused to wear a corset at Wimbledon. Polite society didn't know what had hit it when Lenglen won the Wimbledon title in 1925. The French press nicknamed her 'La Divine' (the divine one) and she did much to get the starch out of the clothes and out of tennis as whole. She won six Wimbledon titles, with an uninterrupted stretch of five crowns from 1919-23, and the last in 1925. Alice Marble 1939 The American Alice Marble was raped by a stranger when she was 15, but she overcame the trauma of that violent attack to become a professional tennis player. Marble won her Wimbledon title in 1939, just months before the outbreak of the Second World War. She married a pilot and miscarried her husband's child after a car accident during the war and a few days later he was killed in action. She attempted suicide, but then recovered and agreed to work as a spy for American intelligence, going on a difficult mission that involved contacting a former lover, a Swiss banker. Marble was shot in the back by a Nazi agent, but rescued by American intelligence. She died in 1990 at the age of 77. Amelie Mauresmo 2006 Before Wimbledon in 2006 Amelie Mauresmo's talent had never been in doubt, just her mental fortitude. There was a time when the Frenchwoman was known as the choker-in-chief of women's tennis, when it seemed that an hour on the psychologist's couch would have been as useful as an hour on the practice court. However, she overcame the doubt and the doubters to beat Belgium's Justine Henin and win her Wimbledon title. "I don't want people to talk about my nerves any more," she said triumphantly; winning Wimbledon had sealed her career. Helen Wills Moody 1927-1930, 1932-1933, 1935, 1938 The American Helen Wills Moody was an introverted, shy woman to the point of being socially awkward, and on court she would show little emotion and ignore her opponent and the crowd. However, that shyness was often wrongly and unfairly seen as her being aloof and arrogant and she became known as 'Little Miss Poker Face', 'Queen Helen' and 'The Imperial Helen'. See, even back then, between the World Wars, the public wanted to see their stars emoting. Yet 'Little Miss Poker Face' went on to win eight Wimbledon titles, landing four in a row from 1927-30 and then the rest in 1932, 1933, 1935 and 1938. A serious woman and a serious champion. Angela Mortimer 1961 The Henmania of later years was hardly a match for the patriotic fervour that surrounded Angela Mortimer's sole Wimbledon victory in 1961. There had been a wait of 24?years since Dorothy Round had provided the last triumph by a player from the host nation, but a new home-produced champion was guaranteed by the first all-British final since 1914, with Mortimer getting through to face Christine Truman. While Truman famously practised on shale courts in a local park, Mortimer was prepared by Arthur Roberts, the coach at the Palace Hotel in Torquay, which was renowned for its two covered courts. It produced a tennis player with a style that was a joy to watch, which proved enough to add a Wimbledon title to Mortimer's earlier successes in the French and Australian grand slam events. Martina Navratilova 1978-1979, 1982-1987, 1990 There can be no disputing Martina Navratilova's supremacy at the All England Club. The joint-record holder with Billie Jean King of a total of 20 Wimbledon titles in singles, doubles and mixed doubles, she is unmatched in singles with nine victories. Having won the singles title in 1978 and 1979 and then another six victories in a row up to 1987 – when she defeated Germany's Steffi Graf to equal the American Helen Wills Moody's record of eight singles titles – she finally went past the record in 1990, in what was to be her final Wimbledon singles title, when she was almost 34 ??years old. Her longevity in doubles was even greater, spanning 17 years to 2003, when her victory in the mixed doubles made her, at 46 years 261 days, the oldest Wimbledon champion. It was possible only because she took physical fitness in tennis to new levels. And yet it could have been very different after her defection from Czechoslovakia to the US during the Cold War, as she initially showed such a passion for American junk food that she put on weight alarmingly. Turning that around proved to be the making of her. Borg on Navratilova I really admire Martina for the way she went on playing at the top for so long. Tennis was really in her heart and she kept on setting herself new goals. Her results speak for themselves. She had a game that was almost perfect for grass-court tennis. She was an aggressive player and liked to come into the net, and that is what you needed to do, to do well on Centre Court. Martina did a lot for women's tennis Jana Novotna 1998 The Czech player, Jana Novotna, was a popular loser, but also a popular winner. In 1993, after she was defeated in the final by Germany's Steffi Graf, Novotna famously sobbed on the shoulder of the Duchess of Kent, and was then denied for a second time in 1997 when losing to Martina Hingis, of Switzerland. On this second occasion there were no tears staining the royal jacket, but the duchess was moved to remark to the runner-up: "The third time will be third time lucky." A year later Novotna beat Nathalie Tauziat, of France, and the Venus Rosewater Dish was hers. But there was another quiet word from the Duchess. "I was right," the Duchess told her. Maria Sharapova 2004 One sunny afternoon in the summer of 2004, the 17-year-old Siberian became an international superstar when beating Serena Williams in the final. With her photogenic looks, this was a victory made in marketing men's heaven and she has gone on to become the world's highest-earning sportswoman. Don't think that Maria Sharapova doesn't have a sense of her own worth. She is a businesswoman as well as an athlete. Borg on Sharapova It doesn't hurt to look good, and Maria looks good, but what she really cares about is winning titles. Every time she goes on the court, she gives absolutely everything. She loves to win and hates to lose. She won Wimbledon at such a young age, at 17, but she has a game that is well suited to grass. She's a great athlete, her game is well-suited to playing on grass, and you can tell that she enjoys being on Centre Court Virginia Wade 1977 It's the cardigan that most people remember, Virginia Wade having walked on to Centre Court for the 1977 final wearing a natty pink one with a monogrammed 'VW' on the front. She peeled the pink cardy off and then went out and beat Holland's Betty Stove. It was quite a way to celebrate the Queen's Silver Jubilee year, with the monarch in attendance that day in the Royal Box. Afterwards the crowd sang "For she's a jolly fellow", and it wasn't directed at Her Majesty, but at Wade. No British woman has won Wimbledon since and Wade is as frustrated as anyone by that. British winners are as retro as Wade's attire that day. Maud Watson 1884-1885 Maud Watson is inevitably found in tennis books as the first in historical lists. She won Wimbledon on her debut in 1884, owing to it being the inaugural staging of the women's singles at the Championships. In doing so she was the first player to beat her sister, having to overcome her older sibling, Lillian, in the final. Maud was also the first champion, man or woman, to wear headgear, sporting a neat straw hat, something which was by no means usual on court at the time. The following year she also went on to become the first to defend the title successfully. It was a shame, then, that a trophy was not provided for the women's event until the year after the last of her two victories. Venus and Serena Williams 2000-2001, 2005, 2007 (Venus) 2002-2003 (Serena) Venus Williams may have a kooky off-court air, but she is the finest grass-court player of her generation. Going into the 2008 Championships, Williams had already appeared in six Wimbledon finals. She won her first title in 2000, added a second a year later, picked up a third in 2005 and then won her fourth last summer when she was hitting the ball so violently that she made Frenchwoman Marion Bartoli's wrist sting. The only two finals that she lost were to her younger sister, Serena, in 2002 and 2003. Serena may go on court with designer handbags and outrageous earrings, but don't for a minute think that the American is anything other than ferociously competitive. Serena has won two Wimbledon titles, in 2002 and 2003, and on both occasions she had to beat her older sister Venus in the final. The sisters, both coached from an early age by their father, Richard, have won the title six??times between them, but those all-Williams finals have rarely lived up to the hype. Borg on the Williams sisters I've always enjoyed watching the Williams sisters play as they strike the ball so powerfully. That has often been the difference for them. And maybe they could have won more titles than they have so far, but they have been unlucky. It must have been tricky for them having to play against each other in the Wimbledon final. They are a very close family and they do everything together, so having to play each other in a grand slam final, I can't even imagine how difficult that would be for them. If I had a brother and I had to play him in the final of Wimbledon, I have no idea how I would have behaved towards him before the match, what I would have said to him. You can tell that it's a strange situation for Venus and Serena as the tennis they have produced against each other hasn't been as good as when they have played against someone else  

i don't know

Who won the most men's US Open tennis titles in the 20th century?

Tennis players of the century | The Independent Tennis players of the century Tuesday 7 December 1999 00:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Online Rod Laver beat out the player who grew up idolizing him, Pete Sampras, as the men's tennis player of the century, and Steffi Graf edged Martina Navratilova as the top women's player in a poll conducted by The Associated Press. Rod Laver beat out the player who grew up idolizing him, Pete Sampras, as the men's tennis player of the century, and Steffi Graf edged Martina Navratilova as the top women's player in a poll conducted by The Associated Press. Laver, assembled by The AP, while Sampras received no first-place votes and 39 points. Bill Tilden, who dominated men's play in the 1920s, finished third with the help of one first-place vote. Dubbed the "Rocket," Laver is the only double Grand Slammer in history. He won the Australian, French, Wimbledon and US titles in 1962 as an amateur, then repeated the feat in 1969 as a pro. He attacked the net relentlessly, yet possessed a potent all-around game from the baseline. Laver won the Australian singles title three times, the French twice, Wimbledon four times, and the US twice. He probably would have won many more majors but was banned from the Grand Slam events in his prime after he turned pro in 1963. He did not return to the majors until the open era in 1968, then he promptly won Wimbledon for the third time. Sampras always listed Laver as his favorite player, admiring the completeness of his game, his aggressive style on court, and his gentlemanly demeanor off court. Although Sampras owns 12 major singles titles, including six at Wimbledon, he has never gone beyond the semi-finals in 10 appearances at the French Open. That failure on clay led one voter to omit him from the top 10 list, while another rated him only No 5. Bjorn Borg of Sweden and winner of five straight Wimbledon titles from 1976 to 1980, finished fourth, followed by Don Budge, the first player to complete a Grand Slam in 1938. John McEnroe and Lew Hoad of Australia, tied for sixth place, Roy Emerson and Ken Rosewall, both Australians, tied for eighth, and Jack Kramer finished 10th. Hoad and Pancho Gonzales, scintillating players in the 1950s who limited their play in majors by turning pro in their prime, each garnered one first-place vote. In the women's poll, Graf and Navratilova were separated by a point, 52-51, and were followed by Margaret Smith Court - the winner of 24 Grand Slam titles. Billie Jean King, who holds the most Wimbledon titles, with 20 (6 singles and 14 doubles titles) was fourth on the list. Chris Evert was fifth followed by Suzanne Lenglen of France, Helen Wills Moody, Maureen Connolly, Monica Seles of Yugoslavia, and a tie for No 10 between Evonne Goolagong of Australia and Martina Hingis of Switzerland. Graf, of Germany, retired at 30 in 1999 after her emotional victory at the French Open, her sixth at Roland Garros, and a runner-up finish at Wimbledon, where she had won seven times. She is the only player to complete a Golden Slam - winning the four majors and the Olympics in 1988. Four voters ranked Graf No 1, one listed Navratilova, a Czech native, as the best, and another put King at the top, in part because of her influence on the game as the founder of the WTA Tour. The AP panel included six players whose careers spanned six decades: Ted Schroeder, Fred Stolle, Barry MacKay, Pam Shriver, Wendy Turnbull and Virginia Wade. Turnbull and Stolle are Australian, while Wade is from England. "Ranking players of different eras is completely subjective," said Schroeder, who won the US title in 1942 and Wimbledon in 1949 and has been a keen observer of the sport ever since. "My selections are based on levels of competition in their respective eras." Among the surprises in the voting were the low regard the panelists had for Ivan Lendl, who dominated the 1980s with eight major singles titles at the Australian, French and US Open, and two runner-up finishes at Wimbledon. One panelist ranked him No seven, another No 9, and the others left him off their lists entirely. Andre Agassi, the only man to complete a career Golden Slam by winning the four majors and the Olympic gold, also failed to make the top 10 as he totaled 10 points, with no votes higher than No 7. Others receiving votes were Jimmy Connors, Fred Perry, John Newcombe, Jean Borotra, Rene Lacoste and Arthur Ashe. Other women who received votes were Althea Gibson, Maria Bueno, Alice Marble, Tracy Austin, Doris Hart, Helen Jacobs, and Lindsay Davenport.

Bill Tilden

Pong was an early console type of game based on which sport?

Tennis players of the century | The Independent Tennis players of the century Tuesday 7 December 1999 00:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Online Rod Laver beat out the player who grew up idolizing him, Pete Sampras, as the men's tennis player of the century, and Steffi Graf edged Martina Navratilova as the top women's player in a poll conducted by The Associated Press. Rod Laver beat out the player who grew up idolizing him, Pete Sampras, as the men's tennis player of the century, and Steffi Graf edged Martina Navratilova as the top women's player in a poll conducted by The Associated Press. Laver, assembled by The AP, while Sampras received no first-place votes and 39 points. Bill Tilden, who dominated men's play in the 1920s, finished third with the help of one first-place vote. Dubbed the "Rocket," Laver is the only double Grand Slammer in history. He won the Australian, French, Wimbledon and US titles in 1962 as an amateur, then repeated the feat in 1969 as a pro. He attacked the net relentlessly, yet possessed a potent all-around game from the baseline. Laver won the Australian singles title three times, the French twice, Wimbledon four times, and the US twice. He probably would have won many more majors but was banned from the Grand Slam events in his prime after he turned pro in 1963. He did not return to the majors until the open era in 1968, then he promptly won Wimbledon for the third time. Sampras always listed Laver as his favorite player, admiring the completeness of his game, his aggressive style on court, and his gentlemanly demeanor off court. Although Sampras owns 12 major singles titles, including six at Wimbledon, he has never gone beyond the semi-finals in 10 appearances at the French Open. That failure on clay led one voter to omit him from the top 10 list, while another rated him only No 5. Bjorn Borg of Sweden and winner of five straight Wimbledon titles from 1976 to 1980, finished fourth, followed by Don Budge, the first player to complete a Grand Slam in 1938. John McEnroe and Lew Hoad of Australia, tied for sixth place, Roy Emerson and Ken Rosewall, both Australians, tied for eighth, and Jack Kramer finished 10th. Hoad and Pancho Gonzales, scintillating players in the 1950s who limited their play in majors by turning pro in their prime, each garnered one first-place vote. In the women's poll, Graf and Navratilova were separated by a point, 52-51, and were followed by Margaret Smith Court - the winner of 24 Grand Slam titles. Billie Jean King, who holds the most Wimbledon titles, with 20 (6 singles and 14 doubles titles) was fourth on the list. Chris Evert was fifth followed by Suzanne Lenglen of France, Helen Wills Moody, Maureen Connolly, Monica Seles of Yugoslavia, and a tie for No 10 between Evonne Goolagong of Australia and Martina Hingis of Switzerland. Graf, of Germany, retired at 30 in 1999 after her emotional victory at the French Open, her sixth at Roland Garros, and a runner-up finish at Wimbledon, where she had won seven times. She is the only player to complete a Golden Slam - winning the four majors and the Olympics in 1988. Four voters ranked Graf No 1, one listed Navratilova, a Czech native, as the best, and another put King at the top, in part because of her influence on the game as the founder of the WTA Tour. The AP panel included six players whose careers spanned six decades: Ted Schroeder, Fred Stolle, Barry MacKay, Pam Shriver, Wendy Turnbull and Virginia Wade. Turnbull and Stolle are Australian, while Wade is from England. "Ranking players of different eras is completely subjective," said Schroeder, who won the US title in 1942 and Wimbledon in 1949 and has been a keen observer of the sport ever since. "My selections are based on levels of competition in their respective eras." Among the surprises in the voting were the low regard the panelists had for Ivan Lendl, who dominated the 1980s with eight major singles titles at the Australian, French and US Open, and two runner-up finishes at Wimbledon. One panelist ranked him No seven, another No 9, and the others left him off their lists entirely. Andre Agassi, the only man to complete a career Golden Slam by winning the four majors and the Olympic gold, also failed to make the top 10 as he totaled 10 points, with no votes higher than No 7. Others receiving votes were Jimmy Connors, Fred Perry, John Newcombe, Jean Borotra, Rene Lacoste and Arthur Ashe. Other women who received votes were Althea Gibson, Maria Bueno, Alice Marble, Tracy Austin, Doris Hart, Helen Jacobs, and Lindsay Davenport.

i don't know

In which decade of this century were airmail letters first carried?

A Brief History of Air Mail | Airtug A Brief History of Air Mail Posted on June 8, 2016 in Blog It all started a very long time, ago – there existed a sophisticated mail service in Ancient Rome; and the postal service of 2nd-century Rome was akin to our postal service today in that regardless of the weather or the circumstances, the mail would simply have to go through!  Horse-drawn carts meandered a good 50 miles per day over the masterfully-constructed roads that covered the sprawling Roman Empire.  Relay teams worked with one another, day and night, to ensure that the most important mail – usually political – would make a 170 mile trip within 24 hours!   As centuries passed, mail delivery became increasingly ‘sophisticated’; and the first aerial mail transportation occurred in 1870 in France.  Here, letters were carried by balloons cast adrift, guided by the wind.  It was on September of 1870 that 500 pounds of mail was carried, although the question remains:  Was the mail actually delivered?  With no way to control the balloons’ flights, the system was doomed shortly after its inception.  With that being said, however, balloon mail was also experimented with in 1877 in Nashville, Tennessee with, presumably, questionable results.   If we fast-forward to the 2nd decade of 20th-Century America, we find government-sponsored flights for domestic US Airmail which took place between 1911 and 1918.  It wasn’t until May 15 of 1918 that the first day of scheduled airmail came to be – the US Post Office Department officially established a new class of mail service – Air Mail was born!  On that date, the first airmail route was inaugurated between Washington DC and New York City.  The US Post Office Department had made an agreement with the War Department which would supply the planes and pilots while the Post Office would manage the mail and relevant details.  This historic flight carried 136 pounds of mail.  During a 76-day operation that followed, Air Service pilots delivered 20 tons of mail.  It should be noted, however, that of the initial 40 pilots, three died in flight crashes in a single year during 1919 and nine more crew died in 1920.   To further demonstrate the potential of utilizing aircraft for mail delivery, however, arrangements were made for a flight from San Francisco to New York City on February 22, 1921; and it was successful!  Including all stops, the flight took 33 hours and 21 minutes with an average speed of 104 mph, covering a distance of just over 2600 miles.  By 1924, transcontinental air mail delivery became serious business; and 5 years later, a total of 45 airlines were chosen for mail delivery.  The compensation for the carriers was a whopping $1.10 per mile!  

2nd decade

How many bits are there in a byte?

A Brief History of Air Mail | Airtug A Brief History of Air Mail Posted on June 8, 2016 in Blog It all started a very long time, ago – there existed a sophisticated mail service in Ancient Rome; and the postal service of 2nd-century Rome was akin to our postal service today in that regardless of the weather or the circumstances, the mail would simply have to go through!  Horse-drawn carts meandered a good 50 miles per day over the masterfully-constructed roads that covered the sprawling Roman Empire.  Relay teams worked with one another, day and night, to ensure that the most important mail – usually political – would make a 170 mile trip within 24 hours!   As centuries passed, mail delivery became increasingly ‘sophisticated’; and the first aerial mail transportation occurred in 1870 in France.  Here, letters were carried by balloons cast adrift, guided by the wind.  It was on September of 1870 that 500 pounds of mail was carried, although the question remains:  Was the mail actually delivered?  With no way to control the balloons’ flights, the system was doomed shortly after its inception.  With that being said, however, balloon mail was also experimented with in 1877 in Nashville, Tennessee with, presumably, questionable results.   If we fast-forward to the 2nd decade of 20th-Century America, we find government-sponsored flights for domestic US Airmail which took place between 1911 and 1918.  It wasn’t until May 15 of 1918 that the first day of scheduled airmail came to be – the US Post Office Department officially established a new class of mail service – Air Mail was born!  On that date, the first airmail route was inaugurated between Washington DC and New York City.  The US Post Office Department had made an agreement with the War Department which would supply the planes and pilots while the Post Office would manage the mail and relevant details.  This historic flight carried 136 pounds of mail.  During a 76-day operation that followed, Air Service pilots delivered 20 tons of mail.  It should be noted, however, that of the initial 40 pilots, three died in flight crashes in a single year during 1919 and nine more crew died in 1920.   To further demonstrate the potential of utilizing aircraft for mail delivery, however, arrangements were made for a flight from San Francisco to New York City on February 22, 1921; and it was successful!  Including all stops, the flight took 33 hours and 21 minutes with an average speed of 104 mph, covering a distance of just over 2600 miles.  By 1924, transcontinental air mail delivery became serious business; and 5 years later, a total of 45 airlines were chosen for mail delivery.  The compensation for the carriers was a whopping $1.10 per mile!  

i don't know

Alta Vista is a type of what?

Alta Vista, Laguna Beach, CA Apartments for Rent - realtor.com® Alta Vista, Laguna Beach, CA Apartments for Rent Alta Vista, Laguna Beach, CA Real Estate and Homes for Sale Displaying results based upon viewable map area. Click to revert to last search. × Single Family Home For Rent 2 bd How Much Home Can You Afford? Calculate your true monthly costs based on: Income The zip code is not valid Move To The zip code is not valid Size of Move Moving To: XX address The cost calculator is intended to provide a ballpark estimate for information purposes only and is not to be considered an actual quote of your total moving cost. Data provided by Moving Pros Network LLC. More… The calculator is based on industry average costs. Your move costs may vary depending on the actual weight of your goods, the services you request or are needed to complete the move, and/or on the pricing of each individual mover. Also, certain costs are not reflected in this calculation, for example any fuel surcharge that may be applicable at the time of your move and valuation costs. Get a Free Quote from a Professional Mover Moving date: The first name is not valid Last Name The last name is not valid Email The email is not valid Phone Number No Thanks By clicking "Get Your Free Quote," I consent to receiving moving quotes from up to four (4) companies as may be selected by Moving.com, who may contact me using an automated dialing system or a pre-recorded message at the phone number I've provided above. × Thanks! Your message is on its way. A moving professional will contact you soon. Hunting for Alta Vista apartments for rent and other rentals? Realtor.com® has rentals listings in Alta Vista, Laguna Beach, CA for you to search. The listings that you see here are precise and comprehensive and put virtually all of the important property details right in front of you. Simply key in your search criteria to begin finding your dream apartment in Alta Vista. For a more detailed analysis of floor plans and feature options, browse through our lovely photos. Realtor.com® is your ideal option to find apartments for rent in Alta Vista online. Unearth places to rent where you've always wanted to live right now.

Web search engine

Barclay Square was an early Internet site offering what?

Alta Vista, Laguna Beach, CA Apartments for Rent - realtor.com® Alta Vista, Laguna Beach, CA Apartments for Rent Alta Vista, Laguna Beach, CA Real Estate and Homes for Sale Displaying results based upon viewable map area. Click to revert to last search. × Single Family Home For Rent 2 bd How Much Home Can You Afford? Calculate your true monthly costs based on: Income The zip code is not valid Move To The zip code is not valid Size of Move Moving To: XX address The cost calculator is intended to provide a ballpark estimate for information purposes only and is not to be considered an actual quote of your total moving cost. Data provided by Moving Pros Network LLC. More… The calculator is based on industry average costs. Your move costs may vary depending on the actual weight of your goods, the services you request or are needed to complete the move, and/or on the pricing of each individual mover. Also, certain costs are not reflected in this calculation, for example any fuel surcharge that may be applicable at the time of your move and valuation costs. Get a Free Quote from a Professional Mover Moving date: The first name is not valid Last Name The last name is not valid Email The email is not valid Phone Number No Thanks By clicking "Get Your Free Quote," I consent to receiving moving quotes from up to four (4) companies as may be selected by Moving.com, who may contact me using an automated dialing system or a pre-recorded message at the phone number I've provided above. × Thanks! Your message is on its way. A moving professional will contact you soon. Hunting for Alta Vista apartments for rent and other rentals? Realtor.com® has rentals listings in Alta Vista, Laguna Beach, CA for you to search. The listings that you see here are precise and comprehensive and put virtually all of the important property details right in front of you. Simply key in your search criteria to begin finding your dream apartment in Alta Vista. For a more detailed analysis of floor plans and feature options, browse through our lovely photos. Realtor.com® is your ideal option to find apartments for rent in Alta Vista online. Unearth places to rent where you've always wanted to live right now.

i don't know

What is a message sent to a newsgroup in the Internet called?|

Newsgroups Newsgroups This icon indicates that there is a screen capture or animation describing the concept. This icon indicates that there is a sound clip describing the tutorial.   Topics covered in this tutorial (click link to jump to topic): 1.   Introduction A newsgroup is like an electronic public notice board on a particular subject. Anyone can post a message or read a message. Newsgroups provide a way to communicate with people who share your interests from all over the world. You can read a newsgroup any time and anyone can participate in a newsgroup... though not all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have a news server or offer access to every newsgroup. There are literally thousands of newsgroups covering virtually every topic imaginable - from computers, social issues, literature and science, to recreation, entertainment, hobbies and current affairs. In newsgroups you can find job postings, business and health care advice, announcements about events, referrals, political and religious discussions - even photos you can download. Reading newsgroups is easy. You can use a newsreader that is nested or bundled in your email program although a specialized newseader will allow you to manage the huge volume of information in most newsgroups. You will need to set up your newsreader. This means "pointing" it at your ISPs news server. You will need to know the name of your ISPs news server. It will look something like news.yourisp.com.au. Categories Newsgroups are divided into categories. The categories help you determine what kind of group and what kind of postings you will find there. For example, alt.bicycle.rec.oz means this is an alternative newsgroup for recreational cyclists in Australia. Be aware that some newsgroups are not for the faint hearted. alt.gay.leather would not be a place to read interesting stuff about spring flowers. Some common examples are: alt. means "alternative" and refers to newsgroups that are alternative (and sometime absurd), or simply that they don’t fit into other categories. com. means "computers" and newsgroups proceeded with com. cover areas of interest to computer users or professionals soc. means "social" and cover topics like politics, community groups and social policy talk. Means "talk" and sci. means "science" denotes more discussive newsgroups rec. means "rec" and proceeds newsgroups that are not work related Subscribing You "subscribe" to newsgroups that interest you. To do this you first get a complete listing of all the newsgroups that are available from your ISP. It takes a few minutes to download because the list of newsgroups is very long - there are over 50,000 newsgroups and rising. Once downloaded to your computer, use the "search" or "find" functions in your newsreader to look for topics that interest you. You can build a list of subscribed newsgroups or just view a newsgroup once. When you subscribe to a newsgroup, your newsreader automatically downloads new messages or "posts" to that newsgroup each time you log onto your ISP's news server. Posting A message on a newsgroup is called a "post" or an "article". It may a response to a previous post or be a new post. People reading the newsgroup can reply to any post and in this way a discussion or "thread" is formed. It is often a good idea to read through a thread before posting your own ideas. When replying to a post, try to keep the information relevant and to the point. You post a message in much the same way you create a new e-mail message. Click the "Post a new message" or "Compose a new message button", the name of the newsgroup appears in the "To:" line, put in your subject and type your comments or questions and then hit the "Send" or "Post" button. A few minutes later your message will appear in the newsgroup for everyone to see. Similarly, you can forward a message from a newsgroup to a friend using the "Forward" function, or "Rely to the Author" to send your comments or questions directly to original author without your message going back to the newsgroup. Note that some newsgroups are more active than others, just like some IRC channels are more active than others. If you go a newsgroup and there are only a handful of postings there, you are not doing anything wrong, there are just fewer people posting and reading that newsgroup. Also, note the dates of the posts, there is probably no point in posting a reply if the original post is more than a week or so old. Some people just read the posting to the newsgroup, without posting their own message. This is called "lurking". Flaming Avoid personal attacks or you will be "flamed" by one or more people. A flame is a particularly nasty personal attack on somebody for something he or she has written. It is usually a little hysterical. Don’t flame; it is a waste of bandwidth and politeness shouldn’t cost anything. There are plenty of articles on "Netiquette" on the web (yes, the Net has it’s style police as well). What can I use newsgroups for? Newsgroups are an excellent way to find out good web sites to visit in your particular area of interest or just pick up detailed information about your area of interest. You can buy and sell stuff. People often advertise things for sale in some newsgroups. Gauge public opinion or strength of feeling about certain topics or interest Find out detailed information that the mainstream media tend to over simplify The History of Newsgroups Newsgroups had their beginnings in an academic environment in 1979, when a couple of Duke University graduate students connected some computers together to exchange information with the UNIX community. At the same time, another graduate student at the University of North Carolina wrote the first version of the software used to distribute news. This network, called Usenet, grew into a voluntary, cooperative exchange of "newsfeeds", eventually evolving into electronic discussion groups. While there are some places that charge a fee for the newsfeed, Usenet continues to reflect its origins as an academic project designed to distribute information freely to anyone who wants it. Newsgroups have been around almost since the dawn of the Internet, enabling scientists to post questions (and answers) to other scientists who were interested in the same subject. Today, newsgroups are like virtual coffee houses where people get together to discuss their mutual interests. Except with newsgroups, the communication is written, not verbal. Newsgroups revolve around specific subjects, such as the AFL or organic gardening. Was this tutorial helpful? If so, please support it with a donation >>

Article

A bitmap is a collection of what?

Newsgroup | Article about newsgroup by The Free Dictionary Newsgroup | Article about newsgroup by The Free Dictionary http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/newsgroup Computing a forum where subscribers exchange information about a specific subject by electronic mail newsgroup [′nüz‚grüp] (computer science) A collection of computers on a wide-area network that form a discussion group on a particular topic, such that a message generated by any computer in the group is automatically distributed over the network to all the others. Also known as forum. newsgroup (messaging) One of Usenet 's huge collection of topic groups or fora . Usenet groups can be "unmoderated" (anyone can post) or "moderated" (submissions are automatically directed to a moderator , who edits or filters and then posts the results). Some newsgroups have parallel mailing lists for Internet people with no netnews access, with postings to the group automatically propagated to the list and vice versa. Some moderated groups (especially those which are actually gatewayed Internet mailing lists) are distributed as "digests", with groups of postings periodically collected into a single large posting with an index. Among the best-known are comp.lang.c (the C -language forum), comp.arch (on computer architectures), comp.Unix.wizards (for Unix wizards), rec.arts.sf-lovers (for science-fiction fans), and talk.politics.misc (miscellaneous political discussions and flamage ). Barry Shein <[email protected]> is alleged to have said, "Remember the good old days when you could read all the group names in one day?" This gives a good idea of the growth and size of Usenet . See also netiquette . newsgroup A discussion group on the Internet as well as a source for MP3 files and images. Newsgroups make up the Usenet (user network), which preceded the Web by more than a decade. Starting in the late 1970s, newsgroups were message boards for Unix technical issues. However, they continue to prosper alongside Web-based discussion groups called "forums" (see Internet forum ). Although a topic can be newsworthy, newsgroups have nothing to do with the daily news. Organized into categories, alt (alternative) contains the most diversity (see newsgroup categories ). The Usenet Network There are tens of thousands of newsgroups originating from many sources and hosted on many news servers. A small percentage are moderated either by a human or a software agent. An ISP may offer newsgroups to its customers, either by hosting them or funneling them from another source, although the ISP decides which ones and how long they remain online. Dedicated Usenet providers do not discriminate and store most newsgroups indefinitely. NNTP and Newsreaders The NNTP protocol is used to transport newsgroup content, similar to the way HTTP is used for Web pages (see NNTP ). Newsreader software (an NNTP client), which may be a stand-alone application or an e-mail or browser plug-in, is used to search for and subscribe to newsgroups as well as read and post messages. When a user posts a question or comment, the chain of replies is called a "message thread." See Usenet , newsreader , Deja.com , syndication format and newsgroup categories .

i don't know

If edu appears at the end of an address, what is the host computer?

How to Get a Free .edu Address for Student Discounts How to Get a Free .edu Address for Student Discounts By | August 8, 2014 11:21 am MORE EDITOR'S NOTE: This method no longer works for acquiring a .edu email address.  Being a student has a lot of perks, such as a deep markdown on Amazon Prime, discounts on major newspapers and savings at numerous popular retailers. Unfortunately, the money saved won’t come even close to displacing the rapidly increasing cost of education, but there’s an easy way to reap many of the benefits of student status without dropping the big bucks on school. Many online retailers will verify your student status by requiring you to sign up with a simple .edu email address, which is typically available only to attendees of a college or university. From time to time, however, an .edu website will allow users to register an email address without actually checking their student status. It’s a way for non-students to get many of the benefits of being a student without taking on loan after loan. This is often subject to abrupt change, when an organization learns how it's being exploited. There are certainly ethical questions about taking advantage of the system, but if you're determined to do it, here’s how to get an .edu email address. 1. Visit the  account creation page  on the California Colleges website and select that you’re a College or Postsecondary School Student. The California Colleges website is a place for students and potential students to plan their educational path. It allows anyone to sign up for an email account, but you’ll want to select that you’re currently a college student.   2. Select Find and choose your favorite college from the list. Have you ever dreamed of attending a California college? Here’s your chance to pretend that you’re really there! There are a long list of schools, from universities to community colleges to choose from. Pick your favorite. 3. Enter in your personal information, and select an account name and password. You certainly can use your real information, but there’s no system in place to check anything. Entering sensitive information, such as your address, is optional. We recommend filling out the bare minimum of the form. Note that your account name will be your new email address. 4. Click to continue once you see the notice that your account has been successfully created. If you’ve filled out the form correctly, you should be redirected to a page that confirms your new account. If you see this page, you now have an .edu email address. 5. Click My Portfolio in the top right corner, followed by Send and Receive Messages to view your new .edu email address. This is where you’ll go when you want to view your messages — which is often required by sites offering student discounts in order to verify that you’re the owner of the account. 6. Send yourself a test email. It’s good to know that your new email address actually works. Head over to an existing email account and send a message to your new .edu address. Then, return to your new .edu inbox and refresh the page to view your test message.  

college or university

What was the name of the first satellite to relay live TV pictures between the USA and Europe?

How to Get a Free .edu Address for Student Discounts How to Get a Free .edu Address for Student Discounts By | August 8, 2014 11:21 am MORE EDITOR'S NOTE: This method no longer works for acquiring a .edu email address.  Being a student has a lot of perks, such as a deep markdown on Amazon Prime, discounts on major newspapers and savings at numerous popular retailers. Unfortunately, the money saved won’t come even close to displacing the rapidly increasing cost of education, but there’s an easy way to reap many of the benefits of student status without dropping the big bucks on school. Many online retailers will verify your student status by requiring you to sign up with a simple .edu email address, which is typically available only to attendees of a college or university. From time to time, however, an .edu website will allow users to register an email address without actually checking their student status. It’s a way for non-students to get many of the benefits of being a student without taking on loan after loan. This is often subject to abrupt change, when an organization learns how it's being exploited. There are certainly ethical questions about taking advantage of the system, but if you're determined to do it, here’s how to get an .edu email address. 1. Visit the  account creation page  on the California Colleges website and select that you’re a College or Postsecondary School Student. The California Colleges website is a place for students and potential students to plan their educational path. It allows anyone to sign up for an email account, but you’ll want to select that you’re currently a college student.   2. Select Find and choose your favorite college from the list. Have you ever dreamed of attending a California college? Here’s your chance to pretend that you’re really there! There are a long list of schools, from universities to community colleges to choose from. Pick your favorite. 3. Enter in your personal information, and select an account name and password. You certainly can use your real information, but there’s no system in place to check anything. Entering sensitive information, such as your address, is optional. We recommend filling out the bare minimum of the form. Note that your account name will be your new email address. 4. Click to continue once you see the notice that your account has been successfully created. If you’ve filled out the form correctly, you should be redirected to a page that confirms your new account. If you see this page, you now have an .edu email address. 5. Click My Portfolio in the top right corner, followed by Send and Receive Messages to view your new .edu email address. This is where you’ll go when you want to view your messages — which is often required by sites offering student discounts in order to verify that you’re the owner of the account. 6. Send yourself a test email. It’s good to know that your new email address actually works. Head over to an existing email account and send a message to your new .edu address. Then, return to your new .edu inbox and refresh the page to view your test message.  

i don't know

If you surf the Internet, what do you do?

time management - What to do when tired instead of surfing the internet? - Personal Productivity Stack Exchange What to do when tired instead of surfing the internet? up vote 40 down vote favorite 27 After a full day, I am tired, and often end up mindlessly surfing the internet in the evening. It is the easiest thing to do when I've already made a lot of decisions during the day. Unfortunately, this practice bakes little bread, and I feel empty and hollow after doing it. I am not opposed to surfing the internet. When I am alert, it is incredibly fun to learn new and interesting things. But when I am tired, I hardly have the imagination to surf in a fun way. My question is what can I do when I am tired other than surfing the internet? (For others, you could substitute watching television with surfing the internet.) I either want it to be something more relaxing, or something more productive. Either would be better. In addition, how do I overcome the barrier of doing the easy thing instead of something more worthwhile? 1   Why do I have this irrestistable urge to say - have some children? –  HLGEM Aug 30 '12 at 20:57 6 How about sleep? –  Dave Newton Aug 30 '12 at 21:00      Sleep is good, but sometimes you are tired earlier in the evening, and you won't fall asleep anyways. If I could easily fall asleep early in the evening, I would. But I can't. –  pasta Aug 31 '12 at 14:23 5   @HLGEM The question was not about how to go from tired to fried and exhausted! :-) Although, yeah, pretty worthwhile overall. –  eflat Sep 4 '12 at 20:51 1   You do not seem to realize that surfing the internet (jumping from one topic to the other) makes you even more tired. –  Jan Doggen May 1 '14 at 8:18 I've started keeping a list of hobby-related things I want to do. I usually have ideas during my "alert" hours. Examples might be: Learn to play song ________ on the piano Write a Hello-World program in some new language Then in the evening, when tiredness starts to set in and I feel myself tempted to veg out in front of the TV, I look at my list and pick something from it. What's important about this method is that I'm leveraging the moments when I'm motivated and "saving" those ideas for later, when I lack the motivation to think of something valuable to do.      This is a good idea--there are many things I want to do during the day, but it is possible I do the easy things too early in the day when I have more energy. Thus I do not match my energy to tasks requiring the same amount of energy, which creates waste. –  pasta Aug 31 '12 at 14:25 Why not try reading a book? Fiction, or something related to an interest you have. Or how about learning a craft, cooking etc. The possibilities are endless. Just turn the internet off - seriously - just turn the computer off and stand up. Make a cup of cocoa, go outside and watch the sunset. 1   This in part isn't really helpful. Of course there are many possibilities, but part of the problem is realizing them, particularly when you are tired and you've developed habits. –  pasta Aug 31 '12 at 14:26 7   The thing to do is not have to realise them - just the simple act of turning off your computer lets you think. I do agree with @Avian though - making a list when you are able to concentrate and use this when tired is an excellent idea. –  Rory Alsop♦ Aug 31 '12 at 14:33 up vote 15 down vote This is what worked for me trying to break the same habit. Walk. Get out your house and just wander somewhere. Better still listen to an audiobook or a podcast or something at the same time, something that will captivate your attention so you don't feel bored and time starts to fly by (music works too but I find listening to something on a topic helps better). It's not much but you get some exercise and depending on what you choose to listen to you can absorb lots of interesting knowledge, all without really having to really focus. up vote 12 down vote Are you physically or mentally tired? If you are mentally tired but not physically tired, doing exercise may be the best option as it is good for health, reduces levels of stress hormones, and releases endorphins that make you feel good. If you are physically tired but not mentally tired, perhaps reading a book or playing an intellectual game like chess is a good option. Doing crossword puzzles or sudoku may be fun too if you like it. If you are both mentally tired and physically tired, I guess the only thing to do is to sleep. :) up vote 8 down vote When you think you surf on the net but you are too tired to have results and benefits from it... Well I've discovered Memrise really recently in a post on a stackexchange forum... (it was not more than one week ago I think)... Well it is SO MUCH fun to use that my time on Facebook and Youtube, and news sites has dropped significantly (more than 4 times less). So pick a foreign language (or several) to learn on Memrise. You'll be astonished. It won't be tiring, it will be relaxing. Words learned are flowers that you keep alive in a garden... I can't say more, just try. 2   Ooops. I've just "wasted" four hours in a row on Memrise! :) Thanks a lot @Stephane! –  Michal Mau Apr 11 '13 at 23:55    When I am tired in the evening, I take a hot bath and then turn on some relaxing music (chill out, lounge). Then I am doing yoga for about 40 minutes. It is very refreshing and brings me many ideas. Before sleep, I usually read a non-fiction book or practice drawing. I heard that the best way, however, is to manage your cognitive resource better, so that you are not mentally tired in the evening. So taking regular breaks and doing small exercises during the day will bring you more creative evenings.      I think I might want to be mentally tired in the evening, because that means I mostly put a lot of effort in during the day. If I can extend my mental focus for longer, that is great, but at some point I will still be tired. So the problem will remain, if the during of it is shorter. –  pasta Sep 9 '12 at 18:28      @nayrb I've recently read the book "The Power of Full Engagement" . It reveals how to fully engage in work and fully disengage then. The motto is: Life is not a marathon, it is a series of sprints. So they recommend to achieve your best at work, do a little more, and then recover. Just like when you are training your muscles. Going little over the top and then recovery fully is the key. Surfing web simply cannot be taken as a form of relaxation when you don't feel refreshed after doing that. My own experience:) –  Libor Sep 9 '12 at 19:13 up vote 2 down vote I'm answering to "how do I overcome the barrier of doing the easy thing instead of something more worthwhile?" I have the same problem with pointless internet-surfing and just having the list of activities other than surfing doesn't help by itself. Usually, after a lot of surfing, getting tired and decided to go to bed, I turn the PC off and suddenly realize, that there is a plenty of good things I'd like to do (reading, cleaning, playing my guitar) - but it's too late. This moment of "enlightment" is like waking up from an uneasy sleep. Sometimes, however, I get distracted, i.e. by a phone call or supper, and "wake up" comes earlier. Once you "woke up", it's pretty easy to overcome the barrier (abandon the PC and do everything else). So the key point is to wake up. The most easy method for this is to promise yourself to turn off the PC and "wake up" after, say, an hour of surfing. And set an alarm and don't ignore it. So you concentrate only on one smallest goal - turning off the PC. Then it runs automatically without requiring any willpower: alarm -> put an effort to turn off the PC -> "wake up" -> good mood and motivation to do things -> spending your time in a better way. What about surfing the Internet productively? Browse Chrome Web Store for useful software What I do is go the the Chrome Web Store, look around for tools, download a few. There are some nice things that let you draw better diagrams, neater photo processing, tools that do tedious tasks in one click, recipe/news site aggregators, house planning software, flight discount sites. They're fun to mess around with and let you do things faster. You can spend your free time upgrading the tools that you're already using. Contact old friends Aside from that, there's always little maintenance tasks. Another thing I like to do is browse through Facebook, delete 'friends' I don't really know. Write "Hi, how are you? What are you up to?" messages to people I haven't contacted in years. Sometimes you'll find that an old friend has a solution to a problem you're facing, like getting a new job. Or say, if you own a store, an old friend might be a supplier for things you're buying. Most of the time you'll actually feel good about keeping in touch with someone from a long time ago. up vote 1 down vote I have the same problem - pretty much everything I want to do (other than spending time with my family and exercising) is online. The only things I've found to take my attention away are 1.reading a hard copy book (the iPad is so tempting, but it's still looking at a screen), and 2. scheduling time with people. The second is really the only way I've found to successfully stay offline - plus it satisfies a few other needs (stimulating conversation, community, etc.) - so in a way all the time I spend online has been helping me focus on spending more time with actual people vs. less! :-) up vote 0 down vote When tired, it's difficult to motivate yourself to do anything. Now, there's a couple of options. 1) You can do something that will make it so you feel less tired and more motivated to do regular tasks that doesn't involve sleeping. One way in which you can do this is by taking a cold shower. Sounds crazy, but oh boy does it work. Wakes you right up, I'd even go as far to say as it makes you feel hyper. Just crank that tap up to freezing and spend a few minutes under the water. 2) The other option is to simply rest. Power naps (naps in which you sleep until the point where you're going to enter deep sleep) are great for restoring energy and after only a few minutes you can come out feeling great on the other side. However, if you're like me, and you feel worse after naps, then I'd recommend against this one.

Look Around

Which page of a Web site is called a Home Page?

time management - What to do when tired instead of surfing the internet? - Personal Productivity Stack Exchange What to do when tired instead of surfing the internet? up vote 40 down vote favorite 27 After a full day, I am tired, and often end up mindlessly surfing the internet in the evening. It is the easiest thing to do when I've already made a lot of decisions during the day. Unfortunately, this practice bakes little bread, and I feel empty and hollow after doing it. I am not opposed to surfing the internet. When I am alert, it is incredibly fun to learn new and interesting things. But when I am tired, I hardly have the imagination to surf in a fun way. My question is what can I do when I am tired other than surfing the internet? (For others, you could substitute watching television with surfing the internet.) I either want it to be something more relaxing, or something more productive. Either would be better. In addition, how do I overcome the barrier of doing the easy thing instead of something more worthwhile? 1   Why do I have this irrestistable urge to say - have some children? –  HLGEM Aug 30 '12 at 20:57 6 How about sleep? –  Dave Newton Aug 30 '12 at 21:00      Sleep is good, but sometimes you are tired earlier in the evening, and you won't fall asleep anyways. If I could easily fall asleep early in the evening, I would. But I can't. –  pasta Aug 31 '12 at 14:23 5   @HLGEM The question was not about how to go from tired to fried and exhausted! :-) Although, yeah, pretty worthwhile overall. –  eflat Sep 4 '12 at 20:51 1   You do not seem to realize that surfing the internet (jumping from one topic to the other) makes you even more tired. –  Jan Doggen May 1 '14 at 8:18 I've started keeping a list of hobby-related things I want to do. I usually have ideas during my "alert" hours. Examples might be: Learn to play song ________ on the piano Write a Hello-World program in some new language Then in the evening, when tiredness starts to set in and I feel myself tempted to veg out in front of the TV, I look at my list and pick something from it. What's important about this method is that I'm leveraging the moments when I'm motivated and "saving" those ideas for later, when I lack the motivation to think of something valuable to do.      This is a good idea--there are many things I want to do during the day, but it is possible I do the easy things too early in the day when I have more energy. Thus I do not match my energy to tasks requiring the same amount of energy, which creates waste. –  pasta Aug 31 '12 at 14:25 Why not try reading a book? Fiction, or something related to an interest you have. Or how about learning a craft, cooking etc. The possibilities are endless. Just turn the internet off - seriously - just turn the computer off and stand up. Make a cup of cocoa, go outside and watch the sunset. 1   This in part isn't really helpful. Of course there are many possibilities, but part of the problem is realizing them, particularly when you are tired and you've developed habits. –  pasta Aug 31 '12 at 14:26 7   The thing to do is not have to realise them - just the simple act of turning off your computer lets you think. I do agree with @Avian though - making a list when you are able to concentrate and use this when tired is an excellent idea. –  Rory Alsop♦ Aug 31 '12 at 14:33 up vote 15 down vote This is what worked for me trying to break the same habit. Walk. Get out your house and just wander somewhere. Better still listen to an audiobook or a podcast or something at the same time, something that will captivate your attention so you don't feel bored and time starts to fly by (music works too but I find listening to something on a topic helps better). It's not much but you get some exercise and depending on what you choose to listen to you can absorb lots of interesting knowledge, all without really having to really focus. up vote 12 down vote Are you physically or mentally tired? If you are mentally tired but not physically tired, doing exercise may be the best option as it is good for health, reduces levels of stress hormones, and releases endorphins that make you feel good. If you are physically tired but not mentally tired, perhaps reading a book or playing an intellectual game like chess is a good option. Doing crossword puzzles or sudoku may be fun too if you like it. If you are both mentally tired and physically tired, I guess the only thing to do is to sleep. :) up vote 8 down vote When you think you surf on the net but you are too tired to have results and benefits from it... Well I've discovered Memrise really recently in a post on a stackexchange forum... (it was not more than one week ago I think)... Well it is SO MUCH fun to use that my time on Facebook and Youtube, and news sites has dropped significantly (more than 4 times less). So pick a foreign language (or several) to learn on Memrise. You'll be astonished. It won't be tiring, it will be relaxing. Words learned are flowers that you keep alive in a garden... I can't say more, just try. 2   Ooops. I've just "wasted" four hours in a row on Memrise! :) Thanks a lot @Stephane! –  Michal Mau Apr 11 '13 at 23:55    When I am tired in the evening, I take a hot bath and then turn on some relaxing music (chill out, lounge). Then I am doing yoga for about 40 minutes. It is very refreshing and brings me many ideas. Before sleep, I usually read a non-fiction book or practice drawing. I heard that the best way, however, is to manage your cognitive resource better, so that you are not mentally tired in the evening. So taking regular breaks and doing small exercises during the day will bring you more creative evenings.      I think I might want to be mentally tired in the evening, because that means I mostly put a lot of effort in during the day. If I can extend my mental focus for longer, that is great, but at some point I will still be tired. So the problem will remain, if the during of it is shorter. –  pasta Sep 9 '12 at 18:28      @nayrb I've recently read the book "The Power of Full Engagement" . It reveals how to fully engage in work and fully disengage then. The motto is: Life is not a marathon, it is a series of sprints. So they recommend to achieve your best at work, do a little more, and then recover. Just like when you are training your muscles. Going little over the top and then recovery fully is the key. Surfing web simply cannot be taken as a form of relaxation when you don't feel refreshed after doing that. My own experience:) –  Libor Sep 9 '12 at 19:13 up vote 2 down vote I'm answering to "how do I overcome the barrier of doing the easy thing instead of something more worthwhile?" I have the same problem with pointless internet-surfing and just having the list of activities other than surfing doesn't help by itself. Usually, after a lot of surfing, getting tired and decided to go to bed, I turn the PC off and suddenly realize, that there is a plenty of good things I'd like to do (reading, cleaning, playing my guitar) - but it's too late. This moment of "enlightment" is like waking up from an uneasy sleep. Sometimes, however, I get distracted, i.e. by a phone call or supper, and "wake up" comes earlier. Once you "woke up", it's pretty easy to overcome the barrier (abandon the PC and do everything else). So the key point is to wake up. The most easy method for this is to promise yourself to turn off the PC and "wake up" after, say, an hour of surfing. And set an alarm and don't ignore it. So you concentrate only on one smallest goal - turning off the PC. Then it runs automatically without requiring any willpower: alarm -> put an effort to turn off the PC -> "wake up" -> good mood and motivation to do things -> spending your time in a better way. What about surfing the Internet productively? Browse Chrome Web Store for useful software What I do is go the the Chrome Web Store, look around for tools, download a few. There are some nice things that let you draw better diagrams, neater photo processing, tools that do tedious tasks in one click, recipe/news site aggregators, house planning software, flight discount sites. They're fun to mess around with and let you do things faster. You can spend your free time upgrading the tools that you're already using. Contact old friends Aside from that, there's always little maintenance tasks. Another thing I like to do is browse through Facebook, delete 'friends' I don't really know. Write "Hi, how are you? What are you up to?" messages to people I haven't contacted in years. Sometimes you'll find that an old friend has a solution to a problem you're facing, like getting a new job. Or say, if you own a store, an old friend might be a supplier for things you're buying. Most of the time you'll actually feel good about keeping in touch with someone from a long time ago. up vote 1 down vote I have the same problem - pretty much everything I want to do (other than spending time with my family and exercising) is online. The only things I've found to take my attention away are 1.reading a hard copy book (the iPad is so tempting, but it's still looking at a screen), and 2. scheduling time with people. The second is really the only way I've found to successfully stay offline - plus it satisfies a few other needs (stimulating conversation, community, etc.) - so in a way all the time I spend online has been helping me focus on spending more time with actual people vs. less! :-) up vote 0 down vote When tired, it's difficult to motivate yourself to do anything. Now, there's a couple of options. 1) You can do something that will make it so you feel less tired and more motivated to do regular tasks that doesn't involve sleeping. One way in which you can do this is by taking a cold shower. Sounds crazy, but oh boy does it work. Wakes you right up, I'd even go as far to say as it makes you feel hyper. Just crank that tap up to freezing and spend a few minutes under the water. 2) The other option is to simply rest. Power naps (naps in which you sleep until the point where you're going to enter deep sleep) are great for restoring energy and after only a few minutes you can come out feeling great on the other side. However, if you're like me, and you feel worse after naps, then I'd recommend against this one.

i don't know

In addition to the computer, what else must a modem be plugged into?

Understanding Routers, Switches, and Network Hardware Understanding Routers, Switches, and Network Hardware Today we’re taking a look at the home networking hardware: what the individual pieces do, when you need them, and how best to deploy them. Read on to get a clearer picture of what you need to optimize your home network. When do you need a switch? A hub? What exactly does a router do? Do you need a router if you have a single computer? Network technology can be quite an arcane area of study but armed with the right terms and a general overview of how devices function on your home network you can deploy your network with confidence. Understanding Home Networking Through Network Diagrams Rather than start off with a glossary of networking terms—and in the process slam you with a technical terms with no easy point of reference—let’s dive right into looking at network diagrams. Here is the simplest network configuration available: a computer linked directly to a modem which is in turn linked through a phone line/cable/fiber optic uplink to the individual’s internet service provider. It doesn’t get less complicated than this arrangement but there is a price to pay for the ultra-simplicity of the setup. This user cannot access the internet with a Wi-Fi device (thus no access for smart phones, tablets, or other wireless devices) and they lose out on the benefits of having a router between their computer and the greater internet. Let’s introduce a router and highlight the benefits of using one.  In the diagram below we’ve introduced two elements to the network: a wireless router and a laptop connecting to the network via that wireless connection. When should you use a router? Given the low cost of home routers and the benefits gained from installing one on your network you should always use a router (which almost always includes a firewall feature). Home routers are actually a a combination of three networking components: a router, a firewall, and a switch. In a commercial setting the three pieces of hardware are kept separate but consumer routers are almost always a combination of both the routing and switching components with a firewall added in for good measure. First let’s look at what the router function does. At the most basic level a router links two networks together, the network within your home (however big or small) and the network outside your home (in this case, the Internet). The broadband modem provided to you by your ISP is only suited to linking a single computer to the internet and usually does not include any sort of routing or switch functionality. A router performs the following functions: IP sharing: Your ISP assigns you one IP address. If you have a desktop, a laptop, a media box on your TV, and an iPad, that one IP address clearly isn’t going to cut it. A router manages those multiple connections and ensures that the right packets of information go to the right places. Without this function there would be no way for a person on the desktop and a person on the laptop to both browse the web as there would be no distinguishing between which computer was requesting what. Network Address Translation (NAT): Related to the IP sharing function, NAT modifies the headers in packets of information coming into and out of your network so that they get routed to the proper device. Think of NAT like a very helpful receptionist inside your router that knows exactly where every incoming/outgoing package should go and stamps the department on them accordingly. Dynamic Host Configuration: Without DHCP you would have to manually configure and add all the hosts to your network. This means every time a new computer entered the network you would have to manually assign it an address on the network. DHCP does that for you automatically so that when you plug your XBOX into your router, your friend gets on your wireless network, or you add a new computer, an address is assigned with no human interaction required. Firewall: Routers act as basic firewalls in a variety of ways including automatically rejecting incoming data that is not part of an ongoing exchange between a computer within your network and the outside world. If you request a music stream from Pandora, for example, your router says, “We’re expecting you, come on in” and that stream of data is directed to the device that made the request. On the other hand, if a sudden burst of port probing comes in from an unknown address your router acts as a bouncer and rejects the requests, effectively cloaking your computers. Even for a user with a single computer a simple $50 router is worth it for the firewall functionality alone. In addition to the inside-to-outside network functionality outlined above, home routers also act as a network switch. A network switch is a piece of hardware that facilitates communication between computers on an internal network. Without the switching function the devices could talk through the router to the greater internet but not to each other—something as simple as copying an MP3 from your laptop to your desktop over the network would be impossible. Most routers have four Ethernet ports which allow you to plug in four devices and have them communicate via the switch function. If you need more than four Ethernet connections you’ll need to upgrade to a router with a larger port bank (a rather expensive proposition that will usually only boost you up to eight ports) or you can pick up a dedicated switch. Note: You only need to upgrade if you’re running out of physical ports for hard line connections. If you only have one computer and one networked printer plugged into your four-port router (and everything else on your network is Wi-Fi based) there is no need to upgrade to gain physical ports. That said, let’s take a look at a network with a dedicated switch. Although the four-port limit on the super majority of home routers was more than enough for most home users, the last 10 years have brought a significant increase in the number of networkable devices within the home. It isn’t uncommon to have multiple computers, multiple game consoles, media centers, printers, file servers, and more that all connect to the Ethernet LAN (while you may get away with putting your Wii on the Wi-Fi network for things like dedicated video streaming and media server access it is much preferable to have a hard line connection). Once you’ve reached that level of device saturation it’s necessary to add in a switch with eight, 16, or more ports to properly support your growing home network. As a side note, historically people often relied on hubs because they were so much cheaper than pricey switches. A hub is a a simple network device that does not examine or manage any of the traffic that comes through it—it’s a “dumb” network device—by contrast switches actually interact with the data packets and actively direct them. Because hubs have no management component there are frequent collisions between packets which leads to an overall decrease in performance. Hubs suffer from a number of technical shortcomings which you can read about here . Consumer grade networks switches have fallen in price so steeply over the last 10 years that very few hubs are even manufactured anymore (Netgear, one of the largest manufacturers of consumer hubs, no longer even makes them). Because of the shortcomings of network hubs and the low prices of quality consumer-grade network switches we cannot recommend using a hub. When you can pick up a perfectly good high-speed 8-port switch for $25 there’s no good reason to use an outdated hub on a home network—if you’re curious why a network admin would ever deploy a hub you can read about it here . Returning to the topic of switches: switches are an excellent and inexpensive way to increase the size of your home network. If you outgrow the bank of four ports on the back of your router the simplest thing you can do to expand your network is to purchase a switch with an appropriate number of ports. Unplug the devices from your router, plug all the devices into the switch, and then plug the switch into the router. Note: switches have absolutely no routing functionality and cannot take the place of a router. Your router likely has a four-port switch built into it but that does not mean your new eight-port dedicated switch can replace your router—you still need the router to mediate between your modem and switch. Decoding Network Speed Designations Now that you’ve got a clear picture of how exactly your network should be physically configured let’s talk about network speeds. There are two primary designations we are interested in: Ethernet and Wi-Fi. Let’s take a look at Ethernet first. Ethernet connection speeds are designated in 10BASE. The original Ethernet protocol, now 30 years old, operated as a max speed of 10 Mbit/s. Fast Ethernet, introduced in 1995, upped the speed to 100 Mbit/s. Gigabit Ethernet was introduced shortly after that in 1998 but didn’t gain much traction in the consumer market until recently. As its name suggests, Gigabit Ethernet is capable of 1000 Mbit/s. You will commonly see these designations noted on networking gear and its packaging as 10/100 or 10/100/1000 indicating which Ethernet version the device is compatible with. In order to take full advantage of the maximum speeds all the devices in the transfer chain need to be at or above the speed rating you want. For example, let’s say you have a media server in your basement with a Gigabit Ethernet card installed and a media console in your living room with a Gigabit Ethernet card but you are connecting the two together with a 10/100 switch. Both devices will be limited by the 100 Mbit/s ceiling on the switch. In this situation upgrading the switch would boost your network performance considerably. Outside of transferring large files and streaming HD video content across your home network there is little need to go out and upgrade all your equipment to Gigabit. If your primary computer network usage involves browsing the web and light file transfers 10/100 is more than satisfactory. Understanding Wi-Fi Speeds Wi-Fi speeds are designated by letter, not by number. Unlike the easy to translate number-as-network-speed designation we find with Ethernet the Wi-Fi designations actually refer to the draft versions of the IEEE 802.11 networking standard that dictates the parameters of the Wi-Fi protocol. 802.11b was the first version widely adopted by consumers. 802.11b devices operate at a maximum transmission of 11 Mbit/s but the speed is highly dependent on signal strength and quality—realistically users should expect 1-5 Mbit/s. Devices using 802.11b suffer from interference from baby monitors, bluetooth devices, cordless phones, and other 2.4GHz band devices. 802.11g was the next major consumer upgrade and boosted the max transmission to 54 Mbit/s (realistically about 22 Mbit/s accounting for error correction and signal strength). 802.11g suffers from the same kind of 2.4GHz band interference that 802.11b does. 802.11n is a significant upgrade to the Wi-Fi standards—devices use multiple-input multiple-output antennas (MIMO) to operate on both the 2.4GHz and relatively empty 5GHz bands. 802.11n has a theoretical maximum of 300 Mbit/s but accounting for error correction and less than ideal conditions you can expect speeds in 100-150 Mbit/s range. 802.11ac is a huge upgrade that brings wider channels (80 or 160 MHz versus 40 MHz), more spatial streams (up to eight) and things like beamforming, which sorta send the waves directly to your device instead of bouncing all around, making things much faster. How much faster? There are some models that can do one gigabit per second. It’s extremely fast. Like Ethernet, Wi-Fi speeds are limited by the weakest link in the direct network. If you have an 802.11n capable Wi-Fi router but your netbook only has an 802.11g capable Wi-Fi module you will max out at the 802.11g speeds. In addition to the speed limitations there is a very pressing reason for abandoning the oldest popular Wi-Fi protocol 802.11b. You must use the same level of encryption on every device in your network and the encryption schemes available to 802.11b devices are weak and have been compromised (WEP encryption, for example, can be compromised in a matter of minutes by a moderately skilled child). Upgrading your Wi-Fi router and wireless equipment allows you to upgrade your wireless encryption as well as enjoy faster speeds. If you haven’t done anything to secure your router now would be a good time to read our guide to locking down your Wi-Fi network against intrusion . Also like Ethernet, upgrading to the maximum speed—in this case 802.11n—is best suited for people moving large files and streaming HD video. Upgrading to 802.11n will have a negligible impact on your web browsing speed but will have an enormous impact on your ability to wirelessly stream HD content around your home. At this point you’ve got a handle on how your home network needs to be laid out and you have an understanding of what the network speed designations mean and how they impact you and your network. It’s time to upgrade your switch, roll out some new Wi-Fi bandwidth, and enjoy a better optimized home network.

Telephone

What does Q mean in FAQ?

Phone Power Backup | Time Warner Cable Phone Power Backup Where can I replace or return my TWC Internet hardware? Stay connected even when the power is out Your TWC Phone modem (“modem”) must be plugged into an electrical wall outlet to operate. In the event of a power outage, your Phone service (including your access to 911 and any medical and security monitoring services that depend on it) will be unavailable if you do not have a battery backup. Phone service may also be unavailable in the event of a network outage. In addition, moving your modem to a different address may delay first responders if you call 911 and is prohibited by your Time Warner Cable agreement. To establish service at a new address, please call Time Warner Cable at 1-800-892-2253. Buy a Backup Battery To allow your modem to operate in the event of a power outage, you may purchase a battery for your modem directly from TWC. The battery will provide at least 8 hours of standby time for your modem and comes with a one-year warranty. Easy self-installation instructions will be included with the battery or TWC can install it for you at an additional charge. If your battery is no longer keeping a charge, you can purchase a replacement from TWC or from the modem’s manufacturer. If you purchase your battery from TWC and it is defective, TWC will replace it for up to one year from the date of purchase. Prepare for a Power Outage There are several steps you can take to prepare for a power outage in your home, which may help you maintain phone service: If you have a cell phone, ensure that it is fully charged. Keep a car charger handy for situations where electrical power is not available. A modem with a battery will work with standard corded phones, but will not power other equipment like cordless phones and alarm systems. Consider having at least one standard corded telephone in your home that can be plugged directly into the telephone jack on your modem. Optimize your Battery Life Here are some tips on how to get the most out of your backup battery: A fully charged battery normally provides 8 hours of standby power when used in a clean, dry and temperate environment. Standby time will be shorter for batteries that are more than two years old or if the modem is kept in a hot, cold or dusty environment. For best results, batteries should be stored between 59°F and 77°F. Use your Phone service sparingly and avoid using Internet services to preserve battery life during a power outage. An indicator light on the modem will glow when the battery is charged and working. If the battery has little or no charge, the light will blink or turn off. Check your battery twice a year by unplugging the modem and checking for dial tone on your phone. If your battery is no longer keeping a charge, you can purchase a replacement from TWC.  

i don't know

What letter appears on the computer screen when you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer?

Cipher strength appears as 0-bit in Internet Explorer Cipher strength appears as 0-bit in Internet Explorer Symptoms In Microsoft Internet Explorer, you may experience the following behaviors: When you click About Internet Explorer on the Help menu, the Cipher Strength value is 0-bit. You cannot connect to and view Web pages on SSL-secured Web sites. Cause This behavior may occur if the Schannel.dll, Rsabase.dll, or Rsaenh.dll files are missing, damaged, or of the incorrect version. Resolution To resolve this behavior, use the method that is appropriate for your operating system. Method 1: Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition Step 1: Rename the Schannel.dll, Rsabase.dll, and Rsaenh.dll files Insert the Windows Millennium Edition Startup disk into the floppy drive, and then restart the computer. For additional information about how to create a Windows Millennium Edition Startup disk, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 267287 How to create a startup disk in Windows Millennium Edition When the Startup menu appears, use the ARROW keys to select Start computer with CD-ROM Support, and then press ENTER. Note the drive letter of your CD-ROM drive. At the command prompt, type the following lines, and then press ENTER after each line. Note C: is the drive where Windows is installed: C: cd windows\system Rename the Schannel.dll, Rsabase.dll, and Rsaenh.dll files (if they are present) by using the .old file name extension. To do this, type the following command lines, and then press ENTER after each line: ren schannel.dll schannel.old Step 4: Reregister the Schannel.dll, Rsabase.dll, Rsaenh.dll, Security.dll, and Secur32.dll files Note Follow these steps separately for each of the files that you reregister. Click Start, and then click Run. In the Open box, type one of the following commands (for the file that you are re-registering), and then click OK. drive:\windows\system\regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system\schannel.dll drive:\windows\system\regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system\rsabase.dll drive:\windows\system\regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system\rsaenh.dll drive:\windows\system\regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system\security.dll drive:\windows\system\regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system\secur32.dll Note drive is the drive where Windows is installed Click OK when you receive the "DllRegisterServer in file name succeeded" message. Step 5: Verify the cipher strength in Internet Explorer Start Internet Explorer, and then click About Internet Explorer on the Help menu. Verify that the Cipher Strength value is 128-bit. Method 2: Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition Click Start, point to Settings, click Folder Options, and then click the View tab. In the Advanced settings box, click Show all files, clear the Hide file extensions for known file types check box (if it is selected), and then click OK. Start Windows Explorer, and then locate the drive:\Windows\System folder. Note drive is the drive where Windows is installed. Rename the Schannel.dll, Rsabase.dll, and Rsaenh.dll files (if they exist) by using the .old file name extension. To do this, follow these steps: Right-click the Schannel.dll file, and then click Rename. Type schannel.old, and then press ENTER. Repeat steps 2a through 2b to rename the Rsabase.dll and Rsaenh.dll files to Rsabase.old and Rsaenh.old. Reinstall Internet Explorer. To do this, use the method that is appropriate for your version of Internet Explorer: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 Download and install Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, or reinstall Microsoft Internet Explorer 6. To do this, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

E

Which name of something used by avid readers is the Netscape Navigator name for Favorites?

Fix Print Problems Fix Print Problems You can click on a topic of interest in the list below to go directly to that topic: Remarks, Special Remarks, or Directions are Truncated When Remarks, Special Remarks, or Directions are incomplete (some information does not display or print), it usually is because too much text has been entered into that field in the listing record in Navigator to fit in the space reserved for it on MLS reports. The listing agent must correct this issue as described below. CTI Navigator sets an approximate limit on what can be typed into the Remarks, Special Remarks, and Directions fields. However, because CTI Navigator allows proportional (variable) spaced fonts, it cannot be programmed in advance exactly how much space what is typed into the field will eventually fill the entire printable space. It is not just a function of number of characters. The total space is affected by factors such as the difference between letters (such as "i" versus "w") and between numbers (such as �1� and �8�), but also by the fact that capital or italicized letters occupy more space than lowercase or non-italicized versions of the same letter. It would degrade performance if the program had to continuously re-calculate space used/remaining with every keystroke as you type in the Remarks, Special Remarks, or Directions fields.   Pasting information into a field on the other hand is an all-or-none process. Therefore, Navigator will accept pasting blocks of text even though some of the text may exceed the available print area and not display on MLS reports.   As a general guideline, to ensure text can display in printed reports when using Arial 12 point font, listing agents should: Remarks: enter no more than 5 to 6 lines of text in the text field, or approximately 700 characters (including spaces) Special Remarks: enter no more than 2.5 lines of text in the text field, or approximately 300 characters (including spaces) Directions: enter no more than 2 lines of text, or approximately 200 characters (including spaces). Depending on the actual characters, spacing and formatting used, it is possible to enter about 20 to 25% more than the above recommended maximum numbers. Note however, that viewing Add or Modify Listing on a larger monitor or maximizing the view will display more typing area, but does not actually increase what the system will display.   To help get more of the important information to display, listing agents can: Minimize use of CAPITAL letters, italic font, and articles of speech (such as �the�) Abbreviate whenever practical and clear Always enter most important information first (so it will show in tables, 1-line reports, and CMAs) When entering a new listing, preview/print a Full Report and Buyers' Handout to ensure everything shows as you intend. Field sizes have been optimized so that key information can be displayed in a variety of report formats. Any expansion in the size of one field would require offsetting reduction in the size of other field(s).  General Fixes   Clear Temp Files . If printing from CTI Navigator Web worked properly recently, clear the temporary Internet files for the browser in which you are running Navigator ( Internet Explorer , Firefox , Chrome , on Windows or Safari on Mac). Then close all open screens in that browser, and re-open the CTI Navigator website.  Page Setup Basics . CTI Navigator Web prints using your browser's printer and page setup settings . These setting should be for Letter size paper in Portrait orientation with no Header or Footer added by the browser. To view or change the current printer and/or printer settings for your browser, press the Ctrl+P keys on a Windows computer or Command+P on an Apple computer. Otherwise, in the browser menu for Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari: click on File and select Print; Chrome (with IE Tab extension ): click on the menu icon and select Print. Reduce Page Margins . If MLS reports have blank pages or do not fit on the print pages correctly, try adjusting the top and bottom margins (such as reducing size to 0.25 in Internet Explorer or Firefox ) on the browser's Page Setup screen. Otherwise, print MLS reports using the browser's PDF viewer (described below ) instead of using its general print controls. Un-block Pop-ups . Also, to print from CTI Navigator Web, your Internet browser (or add-on toolbar) must allow the print screen to "pop-up" in a browser window. If you do not see a print screen, print options, or print preview when you click a Print button in CTI Navigator Web, configure or disable any pop-up blocker in your browser to allow ctimls.com. For instructions to disable the default Pop-up Blocker in your browser, click on the browser in the list below that you are using : For additional instructions, select " Disable or Configure Common Pop-Up Blockers or Remove Add-on Toolbars " in the Related Articles at the end of this web page.   Trust Ctimls.com website . If your pop-up blocker is disabled or properly configured to allow "ctimls.com" but the print screen or print options fail, you may need to add "ctimls.com" to your browser's trusted sites and/or enable JavaScript/scripting in your browser. To add CTI's Internet server website (ctimls.com) to Internet Explorer's Trusted sites (which will also enable scripting specifically for the MLS website):  Select Tools > Internet Options > click the Security tab > select Trusted Sites > click Sites button > un-check "Require server verification (https:)... " > click in the "Add this website to the zone" box and type ctimls.com > click the Add button > click the close button.  Normally scripting is already enabled by default in all the major browser. For instructions on verifying or enabling scripting in the browser you are using, select " Enable JavaScript (scripting) in Internet Browsers " in the Related Articles at the end of this web page.  Print Using PDF Viewer . If your browser�s default print control is not inserting page breaks properly for MLS reports, even after disabling it from inserting its own Headers and Footers (as described under " browser page setup settings " below) and adjusting the page margins, print using the browser's PDF printer ( click here to change the browser's default PDF printer if needed ). To print using the browser's  PDF print controls, on the CTI Navigator Print Report screen click the �View PDF� button (instead of the Print or the Preview button), and then select Print in the PDF viewer itself. You can see on-screen how the separate pages will print. Note: The IE Tab browser extension must be installed and activated in Firefox to support printing MLS reports from Firefox's PDF Viewer in Windows. When the IE Tab extension is running in Firefox, a blue miniature Internet Explorer icon   is displayed on the website tab. Currently, the IE Tab extension for Firefox only runs in Windows (not in Mac OS X). Chrome includes a built-in PDF viewer from Google. If this internal viewer does not print MLS reports in PDF View properly, you can disable it, download the free Adobe Reader, and set Chrome to use the Adobe Reader (as described under Chrome PDF Settings below). Print Reports in Firefox : To print MLS reports, follow the instructions in " Print Using PDF Viewer " above and then select the print icon on Firefox's PDF Viewer screen. If the print problem persists, click " Fix Printing Problems in Firefox " for Mozilla's instructions on how to troubleshoot printing problems in Firefox. Print CMA from Firefox through Internet Explorer : Due to a change in the way Firefox processes multiple page printing (which is now different from all other browsers), to print a CMA you may need to print your CMA in Firefox through the Internet Explorer (IE) browser. To print through IE: On the CMA Printing tab screen in Firefox, select "Copy Link to Clipboard" - in beta Navigator Web click the Options button, then click "Copy Link to Clipboard." Open IE and paste  your CMA report link into IE's address box (right-click and paste, or use Ctrl+V keys). The full CMA report should display.  Click on IE's Tools gear icon , or File in IE's Menu bar, and select Print (or Print Preview if you want to see exactly how the report will look when printed). To save your CMA report as a PDF file in IE, print to a PDF Converter. This is described in CTI's General Tech Tip, " Save File or Report as PDF ". Browser Page Setup Settings   Print problems for CTI Navigator Web can be caused by the browser's "Page Setup" settings.  Internet Explorer. To see or change Internet Explorer's default Page Setup , go to the menu bar at the top of the browser, click File* (or the Print icon if displayed) and then click Page Setup. This will open a "Page Setup" screen similar to the following:   * IE Menu Bar Note . If the menu bar is not displayed, either press the Alt key on your keyboard to temporarily display it; or right-click on a blank spot at the top of the browser (or simultaneously press Alt+V > select Toolbars) and check "Menu Bar" to set it to stay visible.  What is in the top box under Header/Footer prints on the left side, what is in the middle box prints in the middle of the line, and what is in the bottom box prints on the right side of the Header/Footer line. For example, the settings above will create a Header with Title (if any) on the left, and "Page_ of _" on the right at the top of every page; and URL on the left, and Date on the right in a Footer at the bottom of every page. Any entry under Header will reserve the entire top line of every page for a header, even if there is no text to print there. The same is true for Footer (which reserves the bottom line of every page).    The Margin settings determine how close to the edge of the sheet the printer prints either its Heading/Footer, or if no Heading/Footer, how close to the paper edge the text prints. When the default page setup reserves space at the top and bottom of all pages for a browser Header and Footer, the space available to print reports (between the Header/Footer) is reduced. MLS Reports contain their own Header and Footer, and are not designed to also print (or reserve space for) a browser's Header and Footer. Checking "Enable Shrink-to-Fit" may cause the report to print between the Header/Footer at a reduced size. However, if the Top and Bottom Margins are too large (greater than 0.25 for most printers) and the browser is adding its own Header and Footer (as shown above), the MLS report may not print at all -  even with "Enable Shrink-to-fit" checked. This is because the browser's Headers/Footers apply to every page, so no page will have room to print a complete MLS report page.   To change or delete any Header or Footer setting in the browser Page Setup, click the down button to the right of its setting box. Select "Empty" to not reserve space to print that Heading or Footer item. If any box has an entry other than empty, the entire Header/Footer line will be reserved and not available for printing report text or photos. To maximize the space available in which to print reports or other information, set all Header/Footer commands to "Empty" as shown below. If the browser adds its own Header and/or Footer, some report pages or photos may overflow onto subsequent pages, causing blank pages or incorrect page breaks. Depending on your printer, you may also need to adjust the margins (to between 0.5 and 0.25 for most printers) to print reports the way you prefer. All of these print controls and settings are in the browser (not in CTI Navigator Web). For Microsoft's information on printing from Internet Explorer, click Help in Internet Explorer's Menu bar > select Internet Explorer Help > type "Page Setup" under the Index or Search tab. Chrome . To adjust basic printer and page settings in Chrome, click the menu icon (or wrench icon ) and then select Print, (or in press Ctrl+P Windows or Command+P in Mac) to display Chrome's Print screen (see settings in image below).  DEFAULT OR On this screen you can adjust: Destination: Click Change to choose the printer you want to use. To save the document as a PDF file (instead of printing onto paper), click the Change button and select "Save as PDF" under "Local Destination." Pages: Choose the pages you want to print. Select All to print every page or select specific pages to print by clicking in the box and entering the page numbers. Copies: If your printer supports printing multiple copies, use the + or - buttons to change the number of copies to be printed, or type the number of copies you need in the box. Layout: For MLS reports, choose to print page content in Portrait (vertical) orientation on the page (not Landscape orientation). Color: Choose whether the page should be printed in Color or Black and white. Margins: Adjust the amount of margin space surrounding the page content. For some printers you may need to click the down arrow and select "Minimum." Headers and footers Option: Choose whether to include a default header and footer that display the date, page title, URL, and number of pages printed. Most MLS Reports include their own Header and Footer, and therefore print best with Chrome's additional Headers and Footers not checked. Pages may not print properly or at all when there is not enough room to add Chrome�s headers and footers to the top and bottom of the page. Two-sided Option: If you have a duplex printer, choose this option to print on both sides of the paper. Print using system dialog (except Chrome OS): Use your operating system's (Windows or Mac) print functionality instead of Chrome's functionality to print the page. Often this is the easiest way to print from the Internet ï¿½normally.� Note that changes in Chrome's Print screen are only temporary during the current browser session. Once you close all the browser screens, Chrome returns to Google's default print settings (instead of retaining your custom settings).  Firefox. In Mozilla Firefox select File* > "Page Setup" to open the screen where you can adjust print orientation, margins, and the page headers and footers:   * FF Menu Bar Note . If the menu bar is not displayed at the top of your Firefox browser screen, either press the Alt key on your keyboard to temporarily display the menu so you can select File > Page Setup; or Click the Menu button in the top toolbar > select Print > Page Setup.  If MLS reports do not print correctly in Firefox, try setting the Top and Bottom Margins to 0.25 and set all the "Headers & Footers" boxes to "-blank-" to maximize the printable area for the MLS report.  Safari. In Apple Safari (for versions prior to 3 on a Mac or current versions installed in Windows), select File > Page Setup.  The default Page Setup screen displays all 1 inch margins as shown below:   If your MLS reports (especially CMAs) do not print correctly in Safari, try setting the Top and Bottom margins to 1.2 inches (or zero, or whatever works for your printer). Set the margins on the File > Print Preview screen so you can use Safari's Up and Down Arrow icons in the top menu of the Print Preview screen to preview for page breaks.  Some printers may also have utility software for configuration. To check, select the Apple icon at the top left of the screen > select System Preferences > "Print & Fax" in the Hardware section.  Starting with version 3 (Leopard) and later of Safari installed on a Mac, the page setup has been integrated into the File > Print dialog screen. On the Print dialog screen you can select Page Size, set the Orientation and its Scale (+/- 100%), and you can check or uncheck to Print Headers and Footers. Ensure that Paper Size is set to "US Letter" (8.50 by 11.00 inches) and Orientation is set to Portrait.  Un-check "Print Headers and Footers" to provide more printable area for MLS reports and to support normal page breaks.  There is no setting option for margins on the print dialog screen. Print Margins are now a feature of the specific printer that is installed, and the margin settings can be shared across browsers in Apple's OS X System Preferences. Depending on your brand and model of printer, selecting Paper Size may provide a "borderless" option, or a "Manage Custom Sizes" option. The "Manage Custom Sizes" screen will usually provide margin settings that you modify and then save the setting with a Custom Name (such as "No Margins" if you set all margins to zero). For more information on managing or resolving printing issues, consult your printer manufacturer's website.  The following procedure for setting margins in Safari 4+ on a Mac was posted on the Macworld Community Form . From within Safari choose File > Print.  Select the "Paper Size" drop-down option and choose "Manage Custom Sizes." Use the "+" sign to create a new template. Double-click on the name of the template "Untitled" and type in a name of your choosing, such as "Letter for Safari." Hit "Return" to save you Custom Size name.  For "Paper Size" type in "8.5 in" for width and "11 in" for height. For "Non-Printable Area" select "User Defined." Input your desired Top, Bottom, Left, and Right margin settings. For example,  Top and Right: .25" Hit "OK". Quit Safari. Go to "System Preferences > Print and Fax" and select your printer from the menu on the left side. Under the drop-down "Default Paper Size" tab in the lower-middle section of the screen, select the Custom paper size that you just created in Safari (such as "Letter for Safari"). Quit System Preferences. Open Safari and print a test page. Note: You DO NOT need to select the Paper Size on the "Print" screen menu. Although "Paper Size" displays the default "Letter," it actually prints the margin sizes set for your Custom paper size. If your printer does not provide an adjustable margin setting option, you can (install and) open Firefox, and then change the Page Setup margins in Firefox ( see above ). Those adjusted margins should also be reflected when printing from Safari on a Mac using OS X.   Internet Explorer 9+ Print Issues To speed up graphic performance, Internet Explorer 9 and later direct the rendering of web pages, images and web mail from your computer's Central Processing Unit (CPU) to your video card's Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) by default. If your computer's video card or video driver do not support GPU hardware acceleration, you may not be able to Print or view the Print Preview of web pages or emails; printed colors may not match displayed colors; or printing may generate a script error (that may reference "URL: res://ieframe.dll/preview.js"). Script errors also can be caused by an outdated, incompatible or corrupt printer driver.  To resolve problems when trying to print from IE 9 or later, first update your printer driver to the latest version. If the print problem persists, set your IE 9, 10 or 11 browser to use Software rendering instead of GPU rendering. Then, if necessary, re-register the ieframe.dll file in Windows.  To update or repair your printer driver to the latest version, follow the steps below as needed: Uninstall and re-install the printer in Windows Control Panel.  Update the Printer Drivers using Windows Update.  Download and install the latest driver for your printer model directly to the printer manufacturer's website.  For detailed instructions, select the article in the Related Articles at the end of this web page appropriate for your version of Windows. (Note that IE 9 or later cannot be installed in Windows XP or earlier.)  As a temporary workaround for script errors when printing from IE 9+: Print using 32-bit IE instead of 64-bit; or Print using "Run as Administrator" for IE.  To set your IE 9+ to use Software rendering instead of GPU (hardware) rendering: Open Internet Explorer   Wherever the "Content Type" contains "Adobe Acrobat...", click on the corresponding Action (in the right pane) Select "Use Adobe Reader" from the list (instead of Adobe Acrobat) Click OK at the bottom of the Options dialog Restart Firefox. Black & White or Color . To print in Black & White, check "Print in grayscale (black and white)" on the Print dialog box for your printer (as shown below) . To send color code for PDF documents to your color printer, un-check "Print in grayscale (black and white)" on the Print dialog box for your printer.  CTI Navigator Desktop   Print problems in Windows are typically caused by  either a missing, corrupted, out-of-date, or misconfigured printer driver (or LAN print server/ spooler ), or by non-standard printer default settings or fonts. Printer drivers can become corrupted by viruses, power surges or outages, and other computer problems. If you upgrade your version of Windows, the current printer driver may not be fully compatible with the new version of Windows. The preview and print functions in CTI Navigator Desktop depend entirely on the default settings of the default printer in your Windows. Reports depend on your printer's default settings to be standard formats (letter size, portrait layout) and standard fonts (Windows standard Arial). A corrupted or out-of-date printer driver may fail to print MLS reports properly even though it prints correctly for other programs (that do not depend on the printer's default settings).  In Windows XP, you must install a print driver before you can preview reports correctly (even if a printer is not attached to the computer).   Manage Default Printer You can check the Windows default printer and its settings in the Windows Control Panel by selecting Printers (or "Devices and Printers"). To verify that the printer driver is active, right-click on the default printer > select Properties > click Test Print Page (or print from another Windows application such as WordPad or Word). Click Printing Preference s to verify that the default printer is the correct name and that it is set to letter size paper, portrait orientation, main or default tray.   In CTI Navigator Desktopyou can see the Windows default printer settings by selecting the "Setup" button above the Preview button in the "Select Report" screen. If the default print driver is not correct or one of the printer's default settings is non-standard (such as legal, landscape, postcard, banner, etc), MLS reports (which are formatted for Portrait layout) cannot print correctly. If you do not want to change the default printer setting in Windows, you can use this Setup button on the Select Report screen in CTI Navigator to temporarily change the printer properties (such as from black and white to color, or vice versa) to print the selected report(s) during the current  print session. Using the Setup button on Navigator's Select Report screen does not change the printer's default settings in Windows.   Note 1 - Administrative Settings in Vista/7 : If you are printing from CTI Navigator Desktop that was installed prior to April 17, 2012 in Windows Vista/7 , you may need to change the administrative settings in Windows for CTI Navigator. Open Windows Explorer (right-click on the Start icon) > browse to Program Files\CTI Navigator > right-click on CTI Navigator.exe > click on Properties > select the Compatibility tab > Under "Privilege Level" check  "Run this as an administrator" (or uncheck i if this is already checked) > click the OK button. If you are using a 64-bit version of Windows Vista/7, it also is advisable to ensure that CTI Navigator is not in Window's "VirtualStore". To check and correct this, open Windows Explorer, browse to  \Users\{YourUserName}\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86), and delete any CTI Navigator folder and its contents if they appear in this "Virtual Store" location. Note 2 - Network Printer in Vista : When setting up a network printer in Windows Vista, let Windows locate the printer on the network and add its IP address. If you browse to install a network a printer and manually enter its URL (alphabetic) address rather than its IP (numeric) address, MLS reports may not get routed correctly to the network printer (they may just disappear).  Note 3 - Spooling : When printing over a network and/or through a wireless router, you may need to set the printer driver to accumulate the entire print file (by spooling) before sending the document to the printer. Otherwise, the printer may fail to print or lock up when printing MLS documents. To set spooling, open Windows Control Panel > select Printers >  right-click on the name of the default printer > select Properties > Advanced tab > under "Spool print documents so program finishes printing faster" select "Start printing after last page is spooled" > OK button.  Update Printer Driver or Windows Standard Fonts To download the latest driver for your model of printer, go to the printer manufacturer's website.  Most manufacturer's have a site with their name (www.{brother, dell, epson, hp, kodak, lexmark, or xerox}.com - although Canon's is www.usa.canon.com ). If you don't know your printer's model, some of the generic driver site's have programs to detect it (such as www.drivershq.com , www.driverzone.com ). If you are printing over a local area network, have the network administrator ensure that the latest print drivers are installed for that specific model of printer and for the version of Windows running on your computer. MLS Reports are formatted to use the Windows standard Arial TrueType fonts. (The CTI Navigator program depends on  Windows to provide the standard Courier New TrueType fonts and the MS Sans Serif fonts.) All of these are standard fonts included in every installation of Windows, so these fonts are not installed (or replaced) by CTI Navigator. If customized or corrupted versions of these fonts have replaced the original from Microsoft, MLS reports cannot print correctly.  See Microsoft's instructions on reinstalling the standard fonts included in Windows under Related Articles below. You will need your Microsoft Windows installation disk to restore the standard fonts using Windows Setup as described in this Microsoft article. Manage Printer Resources Sometimes other programs send special print commands and/or fonts to the printer that stay in memory (i.e., the printer does not return to its default settings). MLS reports may not print correctly if the printer is not using its default (standard) settings. Selecting Print from the MLS report Preview screen (rather than printing directly from the Search Results table) can help ensure that the default printer driver with its default settings are activated in Windows.  It also is possible that memory management settings or resource limitations in Windows or in the printer itself are causing printing problems. Try closing all programs except CTI Navigator, turn the printer off and back on (to flush its memory and re-set it to its default settings) and then print MLS reports without selecting Preview.   Instead of selecting Print and Print Preview, you can select Report Display on a search results table. The Report Display function is not as resource (memory) intensive as the Print Preview function. Using Report Display allows you to interactively  preview reports for each listing in a search results table and select only those you want to print (see description of the  Report Display Icon in the Data Table Overview section of CTI Navigator Help ). Even when your computer or printer may have resource limitations, you still should be able to use Report Display to preview before printing.  Scanners  may reserve specific sections of memory exclusively for us by the scanner. If you have a scanner attached to your computer, try inactivating the scanner's memory management program before printing MLS reports. Adjust Print Margins If re-installing your printer driver does not fix the problem, you may need to adjust the margins for output to your printer. To change the printer margins, in CTI Navigator select File > Options > Printer Margin Offsets. Printer margin adjustments are in pixels. There are approximately 1,440 pixels in one inch. Therefore a one-eighth inch adjustment would be 180 pixels, one-quarter inch would be 360 pixels. The value entered is added to the existing default margin. Entering a positive value makes the margin wider (i.e., printing starts further away from the edge of the paper). Entering a negative value reduces the width of the margin (i.e., text prints closer to the edge of the paper). Printers differ in how close they can print to the edge of a sheet of paper. Reducing the width of the margin (by entering a negative offset value) assumes that your printer can actually print as close to the edge of the paper as you specify. You may need to experiment with several values to determine the pixel adjustment appropriate for your printer, or consult the printer's documentation from the manufacturer. Example margin adjustments are: If the bottom line of your MLS reports print on a second page rather than on the same page as the rest of the report, raise the bottom margin one-quarter inch by entering 360 beside Bottom. If the top of your MLS reports are missing text, widen the top margin one-eighth of an inch by entering 180 beside Top. To lower the bottom margin by one-quarter inch enter -360 (with a minus sign) beside Bottom. To move the top line one-eighth inch further up toward the top edge, enter -180 (with a minus sign) beside Top. Most printers work correctly with the default print settings and do not need printer margin offsets.

i don't know

A small a in a circle is pronounced how?

Czech Pronunciation Czech Pronunciation Czech spelling is amoung the most phonetic of all European languages. This means that you need not worry how to pronounce each new word because the letters or combination of letters consistantly represent the sound. The following are a few important points to remember about Czech spelling. Czech has two accents which HTML cannot accomodate: when a letter is followed by a ^ (for example c^) it means there is an upsidedown caret on top of the letter ( ). And u* means a u with a small circle above it. VOWELS: LETTER PRONUNCIATION a as in the 'u' in luck e as in the 'e' in bet i,y as in the 'i' in sit o as in the 'o' in cost u as in the 'oo' in look These same vowels can be also marked by a slash (or a little circle) above them and are pronounced a little bit longer: ACCENTED VOWELS: LETTER PRONUNCIATION á as in the 'a' in father é as in the 'ea' in bear í,ý as in the 'ee' in meet ó as in the 'a' in ball ú, u* as in the 'oo' in soon The following letters have a 'caret' above them and have the following english equivelents: LETTER

AT

Where does a bounced email return to?

How to Pronounce R's: 9 Steps (with Pictures) - wikiHow Understanding How to Articulate the R 1 Understand that the "r" is not a simple sound to learn. It is considered one of the hardest English language sounds to articulate, and it is typically the last sound that native English speakers master as children. Most toddlers begin saying the sound as a "w" instead of an "r," as in "wabbit." This can continue for several years and usually self-corrects without intervention. The proper pronunciation of the "r" sound before the age of 6 or 7 is typically not a concern. If its not accompanied by other speech problems or by social anxiety, its often best to let it resolve on its own. [2] Age and intelligibility can be a clue as to whether or not a child needs intervention for language skills. If a 3 year old is not intelligible to strangers at all, that can signal a problem; however, a kindergartner who is intelligible but still struggles with the "r" is probably in the range of normal. By second grade, a child should be able to pronounce the "r" sound. [3] 2 Know the parts of the mouth involved in producing the "r" sound. There are three major parts of the mouth that have to constrict and work together to properly produce an "r" sound, and these include: The lips: To understand how the lips function when saying the "r" sound, ask someone who can pronounce it properly to say the word "rabbit." What does their mouth do when they say the "r" part of the word? If they're forming it correctly, their mouth makes a small circle. The rounded lips are the first component of a proper "r" pronunciation. [4] The tongue: If you are unable to make the "r" sound, you may have no idea what a tongue should be doing while properly pronouncing the "r." In fact, the tongue makes a small mound or hump in the mouth, and sound waves travel over that mound to properly execute the sound. [5] The pharynx: The pharynx is another word for the throat, and the part of the pharynx that is associated with the "r" sound is at the very top of the throat. In order to make the "r" sound, the pharynx has to constrict or tighten. 3 See a speech language pathologist. If you or your child struggles to produce the "r" and the issue does not seem to be resolving itself, intervention from a SLP can help to avoid further speech problems as well as issues with bullying, self-confidence, and even spelling problems that can result from not being able to say the "r" sound properly. [6] An SLP will conduct a thorough evaluation of all elements of you or your child's speech, including your muscle control, articulation, eating habits, and receptive skills (that is, how well you or your child understands spoken language). Part 2 Producing the R Sound 1 Purse your lips. Because the lips have to make a rounded, small "o" shape to properly execute the "r," This is a very important step in reciting the "r" sound, which cannot be executed unless the mouth is in an oval shape. To assist another person in learning the "r" sound, encourage them to look at you as you form it correctly by forming a small "o" with your lips. [7] 2 Constrict the pharynx. This is a motion that most people do without realizing it, so it can be a bit of a learning curve to recognize where these muscles are and how to move them. To practice constricting the pharynx, gargle water while saying "ah." Your pharynx will constrict in the same place that it must constrict to say the "r" sound. Another way to learn how to constrict the pharynx involves gently biting both edges of the tongue with the molars, and pressing up with the tongue onto the top molars. Say "eee" while doing this motion with the tongue; this is what it feels like when the pharynx constricts. [8] 3 Practice "car" daily. Words that end in "r" are easier to produce than words that begin with it or contain it in the middle, so start with a word like "car." Practice it every day, even if you are not getting the sound correctly. If you have a friend or partner who can help you daily, ask them to say the word to you and you say it back to them as you watch in a mirror, so you can watch their sound production and compare it to your own. Part 3 Troubleshooting the R Sound 1 Strengthen your pharynx. If you are struggling to constrict your pharynx to properly say the "r" sound, you may have a weak pharynx that needs exercise! One way to strengthen it is to gargle water every day. Try to articulate the sound "ah" while you gargle the water in the back of your throat; this is a similar motion to what you need to do when you are saying the "r" sound. [9] 2 Differentiate sounds by watching your face. If you are struggling to differentiate between the "r" and similar sounds ("l" is a frequent culprit), you need to enlist a buddy who can model the sounds while you watch in a mirror. Watch your friend's face as he properly executes the different sounds, then watch your own face as you attempt to execute the sounds. Look to see how your lips' position moves with each sound. 3 Consider a speech positioning device. Since the tongue is behind the barrier of the teeth and can't be seen while trying to properly position it, some severe cases that involve incorrect positioning of the tongue may require the use of a tactile cue to help a person learn how the tongue must move to produce the correct sound. A speech language pathologist can help you to determine if a positioning device is right for you. Examples of these positioning devices are available from the Speech Buddy manufacturer at www.speechbuddy.com. Community Q&A If this question (or a similar one) is answered twice in this section, please click here to let us know. Tips These techniques can also help native English speakers when trying to learn the difficult "rolled r" of Czech or the infamous "rz" sound in Polish. Even if English doesn't have these letters (and some people can't hear the difference), English speakers can learn to mimic the mouth motions. Consider using an app that can help you by providing the correct pronunciations of words that you can then try to approximate. "Sounds of Speech" is a very highly rated app that was created by researchers at the University of Iowa and is available in the Apple download store. Warnings Stress and anxiety can truly contribute to speech impediments. Relax and the sound will flow more smoothly.

i don't know

What name is given to the software program needed to access the Web?

5 Information Systems Software Processing programs or transactions in batches, without a user's interaction. Time Sharing Systems providing interactive processing by allocating a short time slice for the use of the server to each user in turn. Real-time Processing Systems that respond to an event within a fixed time interval; used for example, in manufacturing plants or to collect data from several pieces of equipment in a laboratory. With the move toward multiprocessors, in which several (or even many) processors are configured in a single computer system, multiprocessing operating systems have been designed to allocate the work to the multiple processors. These systems also support multiprogramming, which allows many programs to compete for the processors. Operating Systems for Personal Computers The operating systems of personal computers which are dedicated to a single user are vastly simpler than the operating systems running larger machines, to which hundreds or thousands of users may have simultaneous access. One important capability an operating system can offer in a personal computing environment is multitasking: the ability to run several tasks at once on behalf of a user. The most popular microcomputer operating systems are: Windows 95 - Windows 95 is an advanced operating system - graphical user interface 2. Menu drive 3. Graphical User Interface (GUI) The most popular graphical user interface is that provided by Windows 95. The Windows environment has become a standard platform for computers. The Goal of Open Systems A drive is to use open systems in organizational computing, so that the software and hardware of any vendor can operate with those of any other, calls for an operating system that would run on any hardware platform. The term Aopen system@ is used as the opposite of proprietary systems of a specific manufacturer. In open systems, organizations want portability, scalability, and interoperability of applications software. Portable application: can be moved from one computer system to another. Scalable application: is one that can be moved without significant reprogramming. Interoperability: means that machines of various vendors and capabilities can work together to produce needed information. 5.3 Personal Productivity Software Personal productivity software is the most common applications software. Run on personal computers, these programs assist the user in a certain range of tasks. Taken together with professional support systems and systems supporting groupwork, personal productivity software is a potent enabler of today's knowledge work. Functions of Personal Productivity Software [Figure 5.3][Slide 5-4] Personal productivity software enhances its user's performance on a specific range of common tasks. This software supports database management and analysis, authoring and presentation, and activity and notes tracking. All these are software applications. Data management is supported by database management systems, while spreadsheet software assists in data analysis. For the needs of authoring and presentation, users employ the applications software for word processing, desktop publishing, presentation, and multimedia authoring. Personal information management software is used to track activities and personal notes. Communications software enables the user to connect to a telecommunications network in order to exchange information with other users or systems. Web browsers are used to access the resources of the Internet's World Wide Web. Spreadsheets Electronic spreadsheet packages are programs that are used for analysis, planning, and modelling. They provide electronic replacement for more traditional tools such as paper worksheets, pencils, and calculators. In a worksheet of rows and columns are stored in the computer's memory and displayed on the video screen. Data and formulas are entered into the worksheet and the computer performs the calculations based on the formulas entered. A spreadsheet package can also be used as a decision support tool to perform what-if analysis. Database Management Database management packages facilitate the storage, maintenance, and utilization of data in a database that is shared by many users. Microcomputer DBMs enables the users to: 1. Create and maintain a database 2. Query a database with a query language 3. Prepare formatted reports In addition, packages offer security features, network connectivity, and the ability to present graphical output, as well as to perform spreadsheet-type computations. Word Processing Word processing packages are programs that computerize the creation, edition, and printing of documents by electronically processing text data. Word processing is an important application of office automation. Word processing is the most popular authoring and presentation activity. In fact, it is the most common personal computing application. Desktop Publishing Organizations use desktop publishing software to produce their own printed materials like newsletters, brochures, manuals, and books with several type styles, graphics, and colors on each page. The components required to set up a modest desktop publishing system include: a high-resolution display, a laser printer, desktop publishing software, and perhaps a scanner. Presentation Software The goal of presentation graphics is to provide information in a graphical form that helps end users and mangers understand business proposals and performance and make better decisions about them. It is important to note that presentation graphics does not replace reports and displays of numbers and text material. Multimedia Authoring Software Multimedia authoring software enables its users to design multimedia presentations. Using these packages, you can develop attractive computer-based training (CBT) courseware or customer presentations. This software has superior graphic imagery, computer animation, and motion video which may be combined with high-fidelity sound in combination with the text. Hypermedia are electronic documents that contain multiple forms of media, including text, graphics, video, voice messages, or other units of information such as worksheets. In the hypermedia method of information delivery, linkages may be established among various items in a large multimedia document. These linkages enable the user to move from one topic directly to a related one, instead of scanning the information sequentially. Hypertext is a methodology for the construction and interactive use of text databases. By definition, hypertext contains only text and a limited amount of graphics. Personal Information Management Personal Information management (PIM) packages are tools that help knowledge workers track tasks, people, projects, commitments, and ideas. These packages help end users store, organize, and retrieve text and numerical data in the form of notes, lists, clippings, tables, memos, letters, reports, and so on. Communications Software and Web Browser Communications software enables the user to connect to a telecommunications network in order to exchange information with other users or systems. The software provides the following capabilities: 1. Sending and receiving electronic mail 2. File transfer. You can download a program or a data file from a remote computer to your own workstation or upload a file to the remote computer. 3. Terminal emulation - enabling the personal computer to act as a terminal when required in a particular application. 4. Sending and receiving a fax More and more frequently, the reason for connecting to a telecommunications network is to gain access to the resources of the Internet. Web browsers are rapidly becoming one of the most popular categories of software packages. A browser is a program that enables its user to access electronic documents in included in the Internet's World Wide Web, a collection of interlinked hypermedia databases distributed among remote sites. 5.4 Programming Languages and their Translators [Figure 5.8][Slide 5-5] Much of the applications software used in an organization needs to be programmed or customized. Programming languages are the languages which computer programs are written int. A programming language allows a programmer or end user to develop the sets of instructions that constitute a computer program. These languages have evolved over four generations and can be grouped into five major categories: 1. Machine languages translates the symbolic instruction codes of programs written in an assembler language into machine language instructions. Compiler: translates (compiles) high-level language statements (source programs) to machine language programs. Interpreter: translates and executes each program statement one at a time, instead of first producing a complete machine language program, like compilers and assemblers do. 5.5 Fourth-Generation Languages: (4GL's) 4GL's include a variety of programming languages that are more nonprocedural and conversational than prior languages. The use of fourth-generation languages permits a severalfold increase in productivity in information systems development. Categories of Fourth-Generation Languages and their Role in End-User Computing The distinguishing feature of 4GLs is that they specify what is to be done rather than how to do it. Characteristics of 4GL's include: 1. The languages are nonprocedural 2. They do not specify the complete procedure for accomplishing the task (this is filled in by the software translator for the 4GL). 3. About one-tenth of the number of instructions are required in 4GL as compared to procedural languages. [Figure 5.12] 4. Principal categories of 4GLs are query languages, report generators, and application generators - Figure 5.13 [Slide 5-6] 5. Query languages and report generators make it unnecessary to develop certain applications by providing direct access to a database. Application generators make it relatively easy to specify in nonprocedural terms a system for such access. 6. 4GLs also have software generators for producing decision support and executive information systems. Three categories of 4GLs are: 1. Query language Disadvantages: 1. Less flexible that other languages 2. Programs written in 4GLs are generally far less efficient during program execution that programs in high-level languages. Therefore, their use is limited to projects that do not call for such efficiency.   5.6 Object-Oriented Languages The idea of object-oriented programming (OOP) is to build programs of software objects, in order to tie data elements and the procedures or actions that will be performed on them, together into objects. Examples include Smalltalk, C++, Turbo C++, Object C+, Java. Characteristics of OOP include: 1. OOP, objects combine (encapsulate) the data with the operations that act on the data. 2. OOP support class definition and inheritance, creating objects as instances of classes, sending messages to the methods in these objects during program execution, and other features of OOP. 3. OOP simplifies design of multimedia systems and of graphical user interfaces. Three fundamental concepts of object-oriented programming are: 1. Objects 2. Classes 3. Inheritance Objects: are the basic components of which programs are built. In software, a program component that models a real-world object by encapsulating data and instructions that work with these data. Class: is a template from which objects are created. Classes can be defined in a hierarchy. Inheritance: in object-oriented programming, classes lower in the hierarchy inheriting properties (attributes and methods) of the classes higher in it. Advantages: 1. OOP languages are easier to use and more efficient for programming the graphics-oriented user interface required by many applications. 2. Saves much programming, since inheriting properties means programmed objects are reusable.  

Browser

What goes after Netscape in the name of a popular Internet browser?

Registering Programs with Client Types (Windows) Registering Programs with Client Types Collapse the table of content Expand the table of content This documentation is archived and is not being maintained. This documentation is archived and is not being maintained. Registering Programs with Client Types This topic explains how to register a program in the Windows registry as one of the following client types: browser, email, media playback, instant messaging, or virtual machine for Java. Note  This information applies to the following operating systems: Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 (SP4) Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) Windows Server 2003 Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) Windows 8 This topic extends existing documentation about registering a program as a particular client type. For links to that documentation, see the Related Topics section. Common Registration Elements for All Client Types When registering a program as a client type, most of the registry entries are the same regardless of the client type. Some registry entries, however, are specific to the client type and these are noted in the Registration Elements for Specific Client Types section. This section discusses the following topics: Note  Subkey names given in italics throughout this topic are placeholders for user-defined subkey names or a set of possible values. Full examples with example names in place are provided in the Complete Sample Registrations section.   All client type registration information is stored under the following subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          ClientTypeName ClientTypeName is one of the following subkey names: StartMenuInternet (for browsers) IM (for instant messaging) JavaVM (for virtual machine for Java) Throughout this topic, you will note references to a fictional computer program named "Lit View" by Litware Inc., with an executable file named Litview.exe. This hypothetical program is used interchangeably as an instant messenger, a browser, or another type of client program as needed for illustrative purposes. Selecting a Canonical Name The vendor must choose a canonical name for the program. The canonical name is never shown to the user, so it does not need to be localized. Its only purpose is to provide a unique string that can be used to identify the program. It is typically the same as the English name of the program, but this is merely a convention. For client types other than browsers, the canonical name can be any string. Choose a unique name, one that is not likely to be used by another vendor. For browser clients, the canonical name must be the name—including the extension—of the associated executable; for instance, "Litview.exe". Here are some examples of canonical names. Iexplore.exe (browser) Windows Media Player (media) Windows Messenger (instant messaging) Register the canonical name by creating a subkey as shown here. The name of the subkey is the canonical name. All information relating to that program's registration will exist under this subkey. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          ClientTypeName             CanonicalName Registering a Program's Display Name The next step in registration is to specify the program's display name. It is given as a value under the canonical name key as shown here. Note again that CanonicalName and ClientTypeName are not the actual names of the keys, but only placeholders for the true names, such as Lit View. Note  As of Windows 8, the name used to register for Set Program Access and Computer Defaults (SPAD) and for Default Programs should match in order for SPAD changes to trigger Default Programs registrations.   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          ClientTypeName             CanonicalName                LocalizedString = @FilePath,-StringID The LocalizedString value is a REG_SZ string and consists of an "at" sign (@), the full path to a .dll or .exe file, a comma, a minus sign, and a decimal integer. The decimal integer is the ID of a string resource—contained within the .dll or .exe file—whose value is to be displayed to the user as the name of this client. Note that the file path does not require quotation marks, even if it contains spaces. Registering the display name string in this manner allows the same registration to be used for multiple languages. Each language installation provides a different resource file with the display name stored at the same resource ID. The following example shows the registration for a fictional Lit View instant messaging program. Because it is an instant messaging program, the CanonicalName subkey (in this case Lit View) is stored under the IM subkey. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          IM             Lit View                (Default) = Lit View                LocalizedString = @C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\ResourceDLL.dll,-123 Note the use of the (Default) entry as a secondary declaration of the client's display name. If the LocalizedString is not present, the (Default) value is used instead. This works with all client types (Internet browsers, email browsers, instant messengers, and media players). For backward compatibility with the Internet Explorer Client Registry Layout , email programs should set the (Default) value of the CanonicalName subkey to the client's display name in the currently installed language. Registering a Program's Icon Note  This section does not apply to Windows 2000.   By default, the upper section of the Windows XP and Windows Vista Start menu contains Internet and E-mail icons. These icons are not present in Windows 7 and later. For browser and email clients, when a program is assigned as the default for their client type, that program's registered icon is displayed for those Start menu entries. Registering a program's icon is mandatory for browser and email clients. Registering an icon for the media playback, instant messaging, or virtual machine for Java client types is optional, and registered icons for those client types are not currently used by Windows and are not displayed in the upper section of the Windows XP or Windows Vista Start menus. To register an icon for a client program, add a DefaultIcon subkey with a default value as shown here. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          ClientTypeName             CanonicalName                DefaultIcon                   (Default) = FilePath,IconIndex The FilePath value is the full path to the file that contains the icon. This path does not require quotation marks, even if it contains spaces. The IconIndex value is interpreted as follows: If IconIndex is a positive number, the number is used as the index of the zero-based array of icons stored in the file. For example, if IconIndex is 1, the second icon is loaded from the file. If IconIndex is a negative number, the absolute value of IconIndex is used as the resource identifier (rather than the index) for the icon. For example, if IconIndex is -3, the icon whose resource identifier is 3 is loaded from the file. The following example shows the registration of a hypothetical Lit View browser. The second icon stored in the Litview.exe file is used as the default. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          StartMenuInternet             LITVIEW.EXE                DefaultIcon                   (Default) = C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\Litview.exe,1 Registering an Open Verb Note  This section does not apply to Windows 2000. The following step is necessary only for browser and email clients.   Assume that a user has selected your program as the default Internet or email program. That user clicks the Internet or E-mail icon in the Windows XP or Windows Vista Start menu to open the program. At that point, the command line registered as shown here is executed. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          ClientTypeName             CanonicalName                shell                   open                      command                         (Default) = command line The command line must specify a fully qualified absolute path to the file, followed by optional command-line options. If the entry type is REG_EXPAND_SZ, environment variables can be used in the path. Use quotation marks appropriately to ensure that spaces in the command line are not misinterpreted. The command line should execute the program with appropriate defaults. Browsers generally default to the user's home page. Email programs generally open the user's Inbox. The following example shows the registration of an open verb for a hypothetical Lit View browser. It specifies no command-line options. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          StartMenuInternet             LITVIEW.EXE                shell                   open                      command                         (Default) = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\Litview.exe" Note that in this value, quotation marks are placed around the path because it contains embedded spaces. Omitting these quotation marks could cause the command line to be misinterpreted. Registering Installation Information Note  This section does not apply to Windows Server 2003.   Add or Remove Programs Control Panel item   For simplicity, this topic uses the Windows 7 title of the feature. All versions of the feature are popularly referred to as SPAD. Note  If you are running Windows 2000 or Windows XP, you must have at least Windows 2000 SP3 or Windows XP SP1 installed to see the Set Program Access and Defaults page. In Windows Vista and later, access to the Set Program Access and Computer Defaults page requires Administrator privileges. For this reason, developers are encouraged to register for the Set your default programs Control Panel item so that any user can manage application defaults.   The following registry tree shows the variety of information that must be registered in the program's InstallInfo key in order for the program to appear on the Set Program Access and Computer Defaults page as an option for its client type. Each of these values is discussed in detail in the following sections. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          ClientTypeName             CanonicalName                InstallInfo                   HideIconsCommand = command line                   ReinstallCommand = command line                   ShowIconsCommand = command line                   IconsVisible = 1 The command line must specify a fully qualified absolute path to the file, followed by optional command-line options. Use quotation marks appropriately to ensure that spaces in the command line are not misinterpreted. The Reinstall Command The reinstall command line declared in the ReinstallCommand value is executed when the user uses the Set Program Access and Computer Defaults page to select your program as the default for its client type. In Windows Vista and later, access to this page requires an Administrator privilege level. In Windows 8, if you have registered your application using the same name for both Set Program Access and Computer Defaults and Default Programs, the defaults specified in Default Programs for that application will be applied for the current user as well as running the reinstall command. The program launched by the reinstall command line must associate the application with the complete set of file and protocol types the application can handle. All applications must establish handler capability in the reinstall command. Applications can use the reinstall command to register capability as well as optionally establish default status. When an application chooses to implement both capability and default handler status in the reinstall command, it should also reinstate any visible links or shortcuts desired. The visible entry points most applications choose are listed in The Hide Icons Command . Note  It is highly recommended that applications implement handling capability in the reinstall command.   Once the reinstall process is complete, the program launched by the reinstall command line should exit. It should not launch the corresponding program; it should merely register defaults. For example, the reinstall command for a browser should not open the user's home page. Note  For browser and email clients in Windows XP and Windows Vista, applications that choose to establish both handling capability and default status in the reinstall command should register for the corresponding icon at the top of the Start menu. See Start Menu Registration for additional information.   The Hide Icons Command The command line declared in the HideIconsCommand value is executed when the user clears the Enable access to this program box in the Set Program Access and Computer Defaults page. This command line must hide all of your program's access points that are visible in the user interface. The specific guidelines are to remove shortcuts and icons from the following locations: Desktop icons Shortcut menus Folder task band This command line must also prevent automatic invocations of the program, such as those specified in the Run registry key. Vendors are encouraged to implement these guidelines in the application's Hide Access callback. You do not need to relinquish registration (application capability) of file types when icons are hidden. You also do not need to relinquish the application's default status for file and protocol types. Doing so can lead to a bad user experience when these types are encountered in the UI. After successfully hiding icons, you must update the IconsVisible registry value to 0 as shown: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          ClientTypeName             CanonicalName                InstallInfo                   IconsVisible = 0 The IconsVisible entry is of type REG_DWORD. An Alternate Hide Icons Method in SPAD For some legacy applications, a full implementation of Hide Access may not be practical. An alternative method that achieves the same effect is to uninstall the application. The section below shows example behavior and sample code to implement this alternative. In general, independent software vendors (ISVs) should avoid this alternative since it will: Uninstall the application completely from the system. Remove previously selected defaults. Leave no UI option to reinstall the application. Make the enable access feature no longer available, since an uninstallation removes the application completely from SPAD. The recommended user experience is as follows: When the user unchecks the Enable access to this program box in SPAD, the following UI is presented. When the user selects OK, the Programs and Features Control Panel item launches to allow the user to uninstall the application. Windows XP users should be presented with this dialog box. When the Windows XP user selects OK, the Add or Remove Programs Control Panel item launches to allow the user to uninstall the application. The following code provides a reusable implementation for the Hide Access feature as outlined above. It can be used on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. Copy #include <windows.h> #include <shlwapi.h> #include <strsafe.h> PCWSTR c_pszMessage1 = L"To hide access to this program, you need to uninstall it by "; PCWSTR c_pszMessage2 = L"using\n%s in Control Panel.\n\nWould you like to start %s?"; PCWSTR c_pszApplicationName = L"Sample App"; int _tmain(int argc, WCHAR* argv[]) { OSVERSIONINFO version; version.dwOSVersionInfoSize = sizeof(version); if (GetVersionEx(&version)) { PCWSTR pszCPLName = NULL; if (version.dwMajorVersion >= 6) { // Windows Vista and later pszCPLName = L"Programs and Features"; } else if (version.dwMajorVersion == 5 && version.dwMinorVersion == 1) { // Windows XP pszCPLName = L"Add/Remove Programs"; } if (pszCPLName != NULL) { WCHAR szMessage[256], szScratch[256]; if (SUCCEEDED(StringCchPrintf(szScratch, ARRAYSIZE(szScratch), c_pszMessage2, pszCPLName, pszCPLName))) { if (SUCCEEDED(StringCchCopy(szMessage, ARRAYSIZE(szMessage), c_pszMessage1))) { if (SUCCEEDED(StringCchCat(szMessage, ARRAYSIZE(szMessage), szScratch))) { if (IDOK == MessageBox(NULL, szMessage, c_pszApplicationName, MB_OKCANCEL)) { ShellExecute(NULL, NULL, L"appwiz.cpl", NULL, NULL, SW_SHOWNORMAL); } } } } } } return 0; } The Show Icons Command The command line declared in the ShowIconsCommand entry is executed when the user checks the Enable access to this program box in the Set Program Access and Computer Defaults page. This command line may restore your program's access points, including those in the Start menu, on the desktop, and in the Startup group, as well as normal automatic invocations, such as those specified in the Run registry key. The visible access points of interest to most applications are listed in The Hide Icons Command . The application should not change per-user defaults; that change should be done by the user through Default Programs. After successfully showing your icons, you must update the IconsVisible registry value to 1 as shown: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          ClientTypeName             CanonicalName                InstallInfo                   IconsVisible = 1 Note that if you have used the HideIconsCommand entry to prompt an uninstall of the application, the ShowIconsCommand entry is of no use. It should be removed from the registry with the rest of the application's information during the uninstall process. Group Program Configuration Note  This section does not apply to Windows 2000.   As part of system preparation, an OEM can establish a configuration that hides access points for the Microsoft browser, email, media playback, instant messaging, or virtual machine for Java client programs and specifies their own default programs. OEMs can enable users to reset their computers at any time to this default configuration by setting the following registry values. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          ClientTypeName             CanonicalName                InstallInfo                   OEMShowIcons = 1                   OEMDefault = 1 If these keys are set, users can restore the OEM configuration by selecting the Computer Manufacturer option on the Set Program Access and Computer Defaults page. If these keys are not set, the Computer Manufacturer option is not shown. The OEMShowIcons entry, if present, sets the icon show state for the specified client that is applied if the user selects Computer Manufacturer. A value of 1 causes icons to be shown, and a value of 0 causes icons to not be shown. If OEMShowIcons is absent, selecting Computer Manufacturer has no effect on the icon show setting. OEMShowIcons is of type REG_DWORD. The OEMDefault entry, if present and set to 1, establishes the OEM preference for the default client of the indicated type. Only one client of a particular type can be marked as the OEM default. If more then one client's registration contains the OEMDefault entry, then all are ignored and the current client continues to be used as default client. If the OEMDefault entry is not present or is present and set to 0, then that particular client is not used as the default client if the user selects Computer Manufacturer. OEMDefault is of type REG_DWORD. In addition to the option to reset their computers to the default configuration established by the OEM, users have three other configuration options: Set their computer to a Microsoft Windows configuration. In this case, the Set Program Access and Computer Defaults page enables access to all Microsoft and non-Microsoft software on the computer registered in the relevant product categories. Microsoft Windows programs are selected as the default option for each category. Set their computer to a non-Microsoft configuration. This configuration hides access points (such as the Start menu) to Windows Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Windows Messenger, and Microsoft Outlook Express. It enables access to the non-Microsoft software on the computer in these categories. Furthermore, if a non-Microsoft program is available in a category, it is set as the default for that category. If more than one non-Microsoft program is available in a category, the user is asked to choose which non-Microsoft program should be used as the default. Establish a custom configuration. Users make their own selections for enabling or removing access, mixing Microsoft and non-Microsoft programs as they see fit. Users establish default options on a category-by-category basis. Users are free to change any of these options at any time. Browser Registration Example The following example shows the full InstallInfo registration for a fictional Lit View browser. In this case the command line switches allow the Litview.exe file to perform whatever actions are necessary for each value. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          StartMenuInternet             LITVIEW.EXE                InstallInfo                   ReinstallCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\Litview.exe" /reinstall                   HideIconsCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\Litview.exe" /hideicons                   ShowIconsCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\Litview.exe" /showicons                   IconsVisible = 1 Note that quotation marks are placed around the paths because they contain embedded spaces. Registration Elements for Specific Client Types The following information also can be found in the resources listed in the Related Topics section at the end of this topic. Mail Client Registration Start Menu Registration Under Windows XP, applications typically registered defaults on a machine-wide (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) rather than a user (HKEY_CURRENT_USER) scope. With the Windows Vista introduction of the User Account Control (UAC), applications that claim the Internet and E-mail slots in the Start menu must implement the reinstall command within the correct execution context. Note  The Start menu E-mail link has been removed as of Windows 7. However, the registration discussed in this section should still be performed because it assigns the default MAPI client.   A limited user on Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 cannot access SPAD. For this reason, developers are encouraged to register for the Set your default programs Control Panel item so that any user can manage per-user application defaults. Selections made in SPAD should only affect per-machine settings. Set the registry value as follows. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          ClientTypeName             (Default) = CanonicalName Note  : The following information applies to Windows XP only. If the registration of the computer-level default under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE as shown above is successful, the application should delete the value assigned to the Default entry under the following subkey: HKEY_CURRENT_USER    SOFTWARE       Clients          ClientTypeName If the registration of the computer-level default under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE as shown above fails, usually because the user does not have write permission to the subkey, the application should set the following value: HKEY_CURRENT_USER    SOFTWARE       Clients          ClientTypeName             (Default) = CanonicalName This registers the canonical name only for the current user, not for all users.   After updating the registry keys, the program should broadcast the WM_SETTINGCHANGE message with wParam = 0 and lParam pointing to the null-terminated string "Software\Clients\ClientTypeName" to notify the operating system that the default client has changed. Mail Client Registration For a mail client, the program needs to have registered settings under the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto key in order to service URLs that use the mailto protocol. Set values and keys that mirror those settings under the following key. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          Mail             CanonicalName                Protocols                   mailto This registry hierarchy replaces the existing mailto registry hierarchy found at HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto. The hierarchy remains the same, only the location has changed. The format of this hierarchy is documented on MSDN under Asynchronous Pluggable Protocol Overviews and Tutorials . Typically, the mailto protocol is registered to a program rather than an asynchronous protocol, in which case the documentation on Registering an Application to a URI Scheme applies. The following example shows the mailto section of the registration for a mailto handler registered to a program. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          Mail             CanonicalName                Protocols                   mailto                      (Default) = URL:MailTo Protocol                      EditFlags = 02 00 00 00                      URL Protocol                      DefaultIcon                         (Default) = %FilePath%,IconIndex                      shell                         open                            command                               (Default) = command line The EditFlags registry value is documented in File Types in the section titled "Defining File Type Attributes." Complete Sample Registrations A Sample Virtual Machine for Java A Sample Browser HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          StartMenuInternet             LITVIEW.EXE                (Default) = Lit View                LocalizedString = @C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\ResourceDLL.dll,-123                DefaultIcon                   (Default) = C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE,1                InstallInfo                   ReinstallCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /reinstall                   HideIconsCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /hideicons                   ShowIconsCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /showicons                   IconsVisible = 1                   shell                      open                         command                            (Default) = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /homepage A Sample Mail Browser HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          Mail             Lit View                (Default) = Lit View                DLLPath = @C:\Program Files\LItwareInc\LitwareMAPI.dll                LocalizedString = @C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\ResourceDLL.dll,-123                DefaultIcon                   (Default) = C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE,1                InstallInfo                   ReinstallCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /reinstall                   HideIconsCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /hideicons                   ShowIconsCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /showicons                   IconsVisible = 1                shell                   open                      command                         (Default) = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /inbox                protocols                   mailto                      (Default) = URL:MailTo Protocol                      EditFlags = 02 00 00 00                      URL Protocol                      DefaultIcon                         (Default) = C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE,1                      shell                         open                            command                               (Default) = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /mailto:%1 A Sample Media Player HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          Media             Lit View                (Default) = Lit View                LocalizedString = @C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\ResourceDLL.dll,-123                DefaultIcon                   (Default) = C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE,1                InstallInfo                   ReinstallCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /reinstall                   HideIconsCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /hideicons                   ShowIconsCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /showicons                   IconsVisible = 1 A Sample Instant Messenger Program HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          IM             Lit View                (Default) = Lit View                LocalizedString = @C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\ResourceDLL.dll,-123                DefaultIcon                   (Default) = C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE,1                InstallInfo                   ReinstallCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /reinstall                   HideIconsCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /hideicons                   ShowIconsCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /showicons                   IconsVisible = 1 A Sample Virtual Machine for Java HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE    Software       Clients          JavaVM             Lit View                (Default) = Lit View                LocalizedString = @C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\ResourceDLL.dll,-123                DefaultIcon                   (Default) = C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE,1                InstallInfo                   ReinstallCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /reinstall                   HideIconsCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /hideicons                   ShowIconsCommand = "C:\Program Files\LitwareInc\LITVIEW.EXE" /showicons                   IconsVisible = 1 The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, email addresses, logos, people, places, and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, email address, logo, person, place, or event is intended or should be inferred. Related topics

i don't know

A newbie is a new what?

Newbie | Define Newbie at Dictionary.com newbie [noo-bee, nyoo‐] /ˈnu bi, ˈnyu‐/ Spell noun 1. a newcomer or novice, especially an inexperienced user of the Internet or of computers in general. Origin of newbie 1965-70, Americanism; perhaps newb(orn) + -ie Dictionary.com Unabridged Examples from the Web for newbie Expand Contemporary Examples Michael Steinbrick, a personal trainer with New York Sports Clubs, says he can always spot a newbie. British Dictionary definitions for newbie Expand (slang) a newcomer, esp in computing or on the internet Word Origin C20: origin unknown; possibly from new boy Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012 Word Origin and History for newbie Expand n. "newcomer, new person to an existing situation," by 1969, from new with diminutive or derogatory suffix. Perhaps originally U.S. military slang. Cf. noob . Middle English had newing "a new thing" (early 15c.); new was used as a noun meaning "naval cadet during first training on a ship" (1909); and newie "new thing" is recorded from 1947. Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper Slang definitions & phrases for newbie Expand newbie noun A person new to computers and computer networks; computer neophyte: You'd copy it because you didn't want to seem like a newbie (read: clueless computer rookie)/ Newbies sometimes get flamed just because they are new (1990s+ Computer) The Dictionary of American Slang, Fourth Edition by Barbara Ann Kipfer, PhD. and Robert L. Chapman, Ph.D. Copyright (C) 2007 by HarperCollins Publishers.

Internet

In an e mail address, how is a symbol like a period said out loud?

Newbie Synonyms, Newbie Antonyms | Merriam-Webster Thesaurus a person who is just starting out in a field of activity <a newbie to the Internet, he was still trying to cope with the visual clutter of cyberspace> Synonyms abecedarian , apprentice , babe , colt , cub , fledgling , freshman , greenhorn , neophyte , beginner , newcomer , novice , novitiate , punk , recruit , rook , rookie , tenderfoot , tyro , virgin Related Words boot ; amateur , dabbler , dilettante ; learner , student , trainee ; candidate , entrant , probationer Near Antonyms expert , master , pro , professional Antonyms old hand , old-timer , vet , veteran Learn More about newbie

i don't know

What name is given to a program designed to cause damage by attaching itself to other programs?

What are malware, viruses, Spyware, and cookies, and what differentiates them ? | Symantec Connect What are malware, viruses, Spyware, and cookies, and what differentiates them ? Created: 25 Jun 2009 • Updated: 02 Jul 2009 | 22 comments Language Translations Tweet What are malware, viruses, Spyware, and cookies, and what differentiates them ? "Malware" is short for malicious software and used as a single term to refer to virus, spy ware, worm etc. Malware is designed to cause damage to a stand alone computer or a networked pc. So wherever a malware term is used it means a program which is designed to damage your computer it may be a virus, worm or Trojan. Worms:- Worms are malicious programs that make copies of themselves again and again on the local drive, network shares, etc. The only purpose of the worm is to reproduce itself again and again. It doesn’t harm any data/file on the computer. Unlike a virus, it does not need to attach itself to an existing program. Worms spread by exploiting vulnerabilities in operating systems Examples of worm are: - W32.SillyFDC.BBY Packed.Generic.236 W32.Troresba Due to its replication nature it takes a lot of space in the hard drive and consumes more cpu uses which in turn makes the pc too slow also consumes more network bandwidth. Virus:- Virus is a program written to enter to your computer and damage/alter your files/data. A virus might corrupt or delete data on your computer. Viruses can also replicate themselves. A computer Virus is more dangerous than a computer worm as it makes changes or deletes your files while worms only replicates itself with out making changes to your files/data. Examples of virus are: - W32.Sfc!mod ABAP.Rivpas.A Accept.3773 Viruses can enter to your computer as an attachment of images, greeting, or audio / video files. Viruses also enters through downloads on the Internet. They can be hidden in a free/trial softwares or other files that you download. So before you download anything from internet be sure about it first. Almost all viruses are attached to an executable file, which means the virus may exist on your computer but it actually cannot infect your computer unless you run or open the malicious program. It is important to note that a virus cannot be spread without a human action, such as running an infected program to keep it going. Virus is of different types which are as follows. 1) File viruses 3) Master boot record viruses 4) Boot sector viruses 6) Polymorphic viruses 7) Stealth viruses File Virus:-This type of virus normally infects program files such as .exe, .com, .bat. Once this virus stays in memory it tries to infect all programs that load on to memory. Macro Virus: - These type of virus infects word, excel, PowerPoint, access and other data files. Once infected repairing of these files is very much difficult. Master boot record files: - MBR viruses are memory-resident viruses and copy itself to the first sector of a storage device which is used for partition tables or OS loading programs .A MBR virus will infect this particular area of Storage device instead of normal files. The easiest way to remove a MBR virus is to clean the MBR area, Boot sector virus: - Boot sector virus infects the boot sector of a HDD or FDD. These are also memory resident in nature. As soon as the computer starts it gets infected from the boot sector. Cleaning this type of virus is very difficult. Multipartite virus: - A hybrid of Boot and Program/file viruses. They infect program files and when the infected program is executed, these viruses infect the boot record. When you boot the computer next time the virus from the boot record loads in memory and then start infecting other program files on disk Polymorphic viruses: - A virus that can encrypt its code in different ways so that it appears differently in each infection. These viruses are more difficult to detect. Stealth viruses: - These types of viruses use different kind of techniques to avoid detection. They either redirect the disk head to read another sector instead of the one in which they reside or they may alter the reading of the infected file’s size shown in the directory listing. For example, the Whale virus adds 9216 bytes to an infected file; then the virus subtracts the same number of bytes (9216) from the size given in the directory. Trojans: - A Trojan horse is not a virus. It is a destructive program that looks as a genuine application. Unlike viruses, Trojan horses do not replicate themselves but they can be just as destructive. Trojans also open a backdoor entry to your computer which gives malicious users/programs access to your system, allowing confidential and personal information to be theft. Example: - JS.Debeski.Trojan Trojan horses are broken down in classification based on how they infect the systems and the damage caused by them. The seven main types of Trojan horses are: • Remote Access Trojans • security software disabler Trojans • denial-of-service attack Trojans Adware: - Generically adware is a software application in which advertising banners are displayed while any program is running. Adware can automatically get downloaded to your system while browsing any website and can be viewed through pop-up windows or through a bar that appears on a computer screen automatically. Adwares are used by companies for marketing purpose. Spywares: - Spyware is a type of program that is installed with or without your permission on your personal computers to collect information about users, their computer or browsing habits tracks each and everything that you do without your knowledge and send it to remote user. It also can download other malicious programs from internet and install it on the computer.Spyware works like adware but is usually a separate program that is installed unknowingly when you install another freeware type program or application. Spam: - Spamming is a method of flooding the Internet with copies of the same message. Most spams are commercial advertisements which are sent as an unwanted email to users. Spams are also known as Electronic junk mails or junk newsgroup postings. These spam mails are very annoying as it keeps coming every day and keeps your mailbox full. Tracking cookies: - A cookie is a plain text file that is stored on your computer in a cookies folder and it stores data about your browsing session. Cookies are used by many websites to track visitor information A tracking cookie is a cookie which keeps tracks of all your browsing information and this is used by hackers and companies to know all your personal details like bank account details, your credit card information etc. which is dangerous . Misleading applications: - Misleading applications misguide you about the security status of your computer and shows you that your computer is infected by some malware and you have to download the tool to remove the threat. As you download the tool it shows some threats in your computer and to remove it you have to buy the product for which it asks some personal information like credit card information etc. which is dangerous. Article Filed Under:

Virus

Which cartoons are associated with Kim Casalli?

Security Threats Collapse the table of content Expand the table of content This documentation is archived and is not being maintained. This documentation is archived and is not being maintained. Security Threats Archived content. No warranty is made as to technical accuracy. Content may contain URLs that were valid when originally published, but now link to sites or pages that no longer exist. Microsoft Solutions Framework Best Practices for Enterprise Security Note: This white paper is one of a series. Best Practices for Enterprise Security ( http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/security/bestprac/bpent/bpentsec.mspx ) contains a complete list of all the articles in this series. See also the Security Entities Building Block Architecture ( http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/security/bestprac/bpent/sec2/secentbb.mspx ). The Focus of This Paper The purpose of this white paper is to help administrators, computer security officials, and others to understand the importance of computer security and the responsibilities it involves. The document provides a discussion of general security threats and how to plan and implement security policies and controls for often-performed computer security activities. On This Page Background Any organization that has a computer system and sensitive information wants to protect that information. This section of this paper focuses on the background of security. It also looks at the importance of planning for possible threats and defining policies to limit the vulnerabilities that exist in a system and its security policies. The greatest threat to computer systems and their information comes from humans, through actions that are either malicious or ignorant. When the action is malicious, some motivation or goal is generally behind the attack. For instance, the goal could be to disrupt normal business operations, thereby denying data availability and production. This could happen between two rival companies or even as a hoax. Here is a real life example: April 13, 2000, 3:55 P.M. Pacific time: The Web site for the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) is suffering intermittent outages, and the organization suspects computer vandals are to blame. A source inside the organization, who asked not to be identified, said that the MPAA is currently "experiencing problems with their public Web site, and they suspect a denial-of-service attack." The attack was first rumored on http://www.hackernews.com/ , a Web site for news on computer hacking. To achieve their goals, attackers use well-known techniques and methods to exploit vulnerabilities in security policies and systems. The next section on security deals with the general threats associated with computer systems and discusses the motives or goals the attackers have, techniques and methods for gaining access, and the various vulnerabilities that could exist in systems and security policies. Not all threats, goals, vulnerabilities, and methods are discussed because they are so numerous and they differ for each situation, organization, and system. Instead of identifying each, the section on threats presents a guideline outlining how to identify various threats, methods, and vulnerabilities that exist in systems. Defining Security Computer security means to protect information. It deals with the prevention and detection of unauthorized actions by users of a computer. Lately it has been extended to include privacy, confidentiality, and integrity. For example: Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao rejected allegations that China stole U.S. nuclear secrets, saying such claims are meant to undermine China-U.S. relations. Meanwhile, a CIA-led task force was assessing how much damage may have been done to U.S. national security after a Chinese scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico allegedly shared nuclear secrets.1 http://cnn.com/US/9903/09/china.spy.02/ Two parties agree and seal their transaction using digital signatures. The signature cannot be ruled invalid by state legislature or other law-making bodies because it uniquely identifies the individuals involved.2 You visit a Web site and the site collects more personal information than you are willing to divulge or the site distributes data to outside parties. By doing this, it compromises your privacy and opens your world to other parties.3 This definition implies that you have to know the information and the value of that information in order to develop protective measures. You also need to know to which individuals need unique identities and how much information may be divulged to the outside world. A rough classification of protective measures in computer security is as follows: Prevention—Take measures that prevent your information from being damaged, altered, or stolen. Preventive measures can range from locking the server room door to setting up high-level security policies. Detection—Take measures that allow you to detect when information has been damaged, altered, or stolen, how it has been damaged, altered, or stolen, and who has caused the damage. Various tools are available to help detect intrusions, damage or alterations, and viruses. Reaction—Take measures that allow recovery of information, even if information is lost or damaged. The above measures are all very well, but if you do not understand how information may be compromised, you cannot take measures to protect it. You must examine the components on how information can be compromised: Confidentiality. The prevention of unauthorized disclosure of information. This can be the result of poor security measures or information leaks by personnel. An example of poor security measures would be to allow anonymous access to sensitive information. Integrity. The prevention of erroneous modification of information. Authorized users are probably the biggest cause of errors and omissions and the alteration of data. Storing incorrect data within the system can be as bad as losing data. Malicious attackers also can modify, delete, or corrupt information that is vital to the correct operation of business functions. Availability. The prevention of unauthorized withholding of information or resources. This does not apply just to personnel withholding information. Information should be as freely available as possible to authorized users. Authentication. The process of verifying that users are who they claim to be when logging onto a system. Generally, the use of user names and passwords accomplishes this. More sophisticated is the use of smart cards and retina scanning. The process of authentication does not grant the user access rights to resources—this is achieved through the authorization process. Authorization. The process of allowing only authorized users access to sensitive information. An authorization process uses the appropriate security authority to determine whether a user should have access to resources. History of Security Computers and networks originally were built to ease the exchange of information. Early information technology (IT) infrastructures were built around central computers or mainframe solutions while others were developed around the personal computer. What some thought impossible became reality and today businesses are being driven by the power of the personal computer that users access with just a user name and password. But as the information revolution opened new avenues for IT, it also opened new possibilities for crime. Attackers used these opportunities to steal passwords and gain access to information or to create disastrous effects on networks and computers. For example: Activist group RTMark attempted to justify its attack on eToys' Web site by citing the eToys versus etoy case as the victory of corporate greed over art and freedom of expression. Declaring a war of revenge against eToys, RTMark sought to rally the public to use a denial-of-service tool called FloodNet to saturate the eToys.com site with network ping floods. RTMark also engaged the help of the Electronic Disturbance Theater—a hacker group claiming to attack sites only on behalf of social causes—to help cripple eToys or deface its Web pages. "We're going to make an example of them," claimed Ray Thomas, a San Francisco-based accountant and RTMark's spokesman, describing how the group wants to "destroy" eToys.4 http://www.nwfusion.com/news/1999/1220etoys.html What will information security be like in the 21st century? The nature of computing has changed over the last few years. Networks are designed and built to facilitate the sharing and distribution of data and information. Controlling access to these resources can become a problem because you need to balance the requirement for access to free information with the value of the content of that information. Some information is more sensitive in nature than other information; this leads to the need for security requirements. Today, IT security has progressed to more than just user names and passwords. It involves digital identities, biometric authentication methods, and modular security strategies. The easiest one to relate to is the use of smart cards. These are tamper-proof devices that store security information. They are similar to a credit card with a built-in microprocessor and memory used for identification or financial transactions. When the user inserts it into a reader, it transfers data to and from a central computer. It is more secure than a magnetic stripe card and can be programmed to self-destruct if the wrong password is entered too many times. As a financial transaction card, it can be loaded with digital money and used like a travelers check, except that variable amounts of money can be spent until the balance is zero. The Need for Security Administrators normally find that putting together a security policy that restricts both users and attacks is time consuming and costly. Users also become disgruntled at the heavy security policies making their work difficult for no discernable reason, causing bad politics within the company. Planning an audit policy on huge networks takes up both server resources and time, and often administrators take no note of the audited events. A common attitude among users is that if no secret work is being performed, why bother implementing security. There is a price to pay when a half-hearted security plan is put into action. It can result in unexpected disaster. A password policy that allows users to use blank or weak passwords is a hacker's paradise. No firewall or proxy protection between the organization's private local area network (LAN) and the public Internet makes the company a target for cyber crime. Organizations will need to determine the price they are willing to pay in order to protect data and other assets. This cost must be weighed against the costs of losing information and hardware and disrupting services. The idea is to find the correct balance. If the data needs minimal protection and the loss of that data is not going to cost the company, then the cost of protecting that data will be less. If the data is sensitive and needs maximum protection, then the opposite is normally true. Security Threats Introduction The first part of this section outlines security threats and briefly describes the methods, tools, and techniques that intruders use to exploit vulnerabilities in systems to achieve their goals. The section discusses a theoretical model and provides some real life scenarios. The appendixes give detailed analyses of the various aspects and components that are discussed in this section. Security Threats, Attacks, and Vulnerabilities Information is the key asset in most organizations. Companies gain a competitive advantage by knowing how to use that information. The threat comes from others who would like to acquire the information or limit business opportunities by interfering with normal business processes. The object of security is to protect valuable or sensitive organizational information while making it readily available. Attackers trying to harm a system or disrupt normal business operations exploit vulnerabilities by using various techniques, methods, and tools. System administrators need to understand the various aspects of security to develop measures and policies to protect assets and limit their vulnerabilities. Attackers generally have motives or goals—for example, to disrupt normal business operations or steal information. To achieve these motives or goals, they use various methods, tools, and techniques to exploit vulnerabilities in a computer system or security policy and controls. Goal + Method + Vulnerabilities = Attack. These aspects will be discussed in more detail later in this section. Security Threats Figure 1 introduces a layout that can be used to break up security threats into different areas. Figure 1: Natural Disasters Nobody can stop nature from taking its course. Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, lightning, and fire can cause severe damage to computer systems. Information can be lost, downtime or loss of productivity can occur, and damage to hardware can disrupt other essential services. Few safeguards can be implemented against natural disasters. The best approach is to have disaster recovery plans and contingency plans in place. Other threats such as riots, wars, and terrorist attacks could be included here. Although they are human-caused threats, they are classified as disastrous. Human Threats Malicious threats consist of inside attacks by disgruntled or malicious employees and outside attacks by non-employees just looking to harm and disrupt an organization. The most dangerous attackers are usually insiders (or former insiders), because they know many of the codes and security measures that are already in place. Insiders are likely to have specific goals and objectives, and have legitimate access to the system. Employees are the people most familiar with the organization's computers and applications, and they are most likely to know what actions might cause the most damage. Insiders can plant viruses, Trojan horses, or worms, and they can browse through the file system. The insider attack can affect all components of computer security. By browsing through a system, confidential information could be revealed. Trojan horses are a threat to both the integrity and confidentiality of information in the system. Insider attacks can affect availability by overloading the system's processing or storage capacity, or by causing the system to crash. People often refer to these individuals as "crackers" or "hackers." The definition of "hacker" has changed over the years. A hacker was once thought of as any individual who enjoyed getting the most out of the system he or she was using. A hacker would use a system extensively and study it until he or she became proficient in all its nuances. This individual was respected as a source of information for local computer users, someone referred to as a "guru" or "wizard." Now, however, the term hacker refers to people who either break in to systems for which they have no authorization or intentionally overstep their bounds on systems for which they do not have legitimate access. The correct term to use for someone who breaks in to systems is a "cracker." Common methods for gaining access to a system include password cracking, exploiting known security weaknesses, network spoofing, and social engineering. Malicious attackers normally will have a specific goal, objective, or motive for an attack on a system. These goals could be to disrupt services and the continuity of business operations by using denial-of-service (DoS) attack tools. They might also want to steal information or even steal hardware such as laptop computers. Hackers can sell information that can be useful to competitors. In 1996, a laptop computer was stolen from an employee of Visa International that contained 314,000 credit card accounts. The total cost to Visa for just canceling the numbers and replacing the cards was $6 million.5 Attackers are not the only ones who can harm an organization. The primary threat to data integrity comes from authorized users who are not aware of the actions they are performing. Errors and omissions can cause valuable data to be lost, damaged, or altered. Non-malicious threats usually come from employees who are untrained in computers and are unaware of security threats and vulnerabilities. Users who open up Microsoft Word documents using Notepad, edit the documents, and then save them could cause serious damage to the information stored on the document. Users, data entry clerks, system operators, and programmers frequently make unintentional errors that contribute to security problems, directly and indirectly. Sometimes the error is the threat, such as a data entry error or a programming error that crashes a system. In other cases, errors create vulnerabilities. Errors can occur in all phases of the system life cycle. Figure 2 gives a theoretical model that can be used to determine the various threats, goals, methods, and vulnerabilities used in an attack. Figure 2: The following table gives some examples of the various aspects discussed above. Threats • Hardware • Personnel Note that ignorant employees usually have no motives and goals for causing damage. The damage is accidental. Also, malicious attackers can deceive ignorant employees by using "social engineering" to gain entry. The attacker could masquerade as an administrator and ask for passwords and user names. Employees who are not well trained and are not security aware can fall for this. For more information on security threats, see Appendix A. Motives, Goals, and Objectives of Malicious Attackers There is a strong overlap between physical security and data privacy and integrity. Indeed, the goal of some attacks is not the physical destruction of the computer system but the penetration and removal or copying of sensitive information. Attackers want to achieve these goals either for personal satisfaction or for a reward. Here are some methods that attackers use: Deleting and altering information. Malicious attackers who delete or alter information normally do this to prove a point or take revenge for something that has happened to them. Inside attackers normally do this to spite the organization because they are disgruntled about something. Outside attackers might want to do this to prove that they can get in to the system or for the fun of it. April 27, 2000: Cheng Tsz-chung, 22, was put behind bars last night after changing the password on another user's account and then demanding $500 (Hong Kong currency) to change it back. The victim paid the money and then contacted police. Cheng has pleaded guilty to one charge of unauthorized access of a computer and two counts of theft. The magistrate remanded Cheng in custody and said his sentence, which will be handed down on May 10 pending reports, must have a deterrent effect. Cheng's lawyer told Magistrate Ian Candy that his client committed the offenses "just for fun." Committing information theft and fraud. Information technology is increasingly used to commit fraud and theft. Computer systems are exploited in numerous ways, both by automating traditional methods of fraud and by using new methods. Financial systems are not the only ones subject to fraud. Other targets are systems that control access to any resources, such as time and attendance systems, inventory systems, school grading systems, or long-distance telephone systems. Disrupting normal business operations. Attackers may want to disrupt normal business operations. In any circumstance like this, the attacker has a specific goal to achieve. Attackers use various methods for denial-of-service attacks; the section on methods, tools, and techniques will discuss these. Methods, Tools, and Techniques for Attacks Attacks = motive + method + vulnerability. The method in this formula exploits the organization's vulnerability in order to launch an attack as shown in Figure 2. Malicious attackers can gain access or deny services in numerous ways. Here are some of them: Viruses. Attackers can develop harmful code known as viruses. Using hacking techniques, they can break into systems and plant viruses. Viruses in general are a threat to any environment. They come in different forms and although not always malicious, they always take up time. Viruses can also be spread via e-mail and disks. Trojan horses. These are malicious programs or software code hidden inside what looks like a normal program. When a user runs the normal program, the hidden code runs as well. It can then start deleting files and causing other damage to the computer. Trojan horses are normally spread by e-mail attachments. The Melissa virus that caused denial-of-service attacks throughout the world in 1999 was a type of Trojan horse. Worms. These are programs that run independently and travel from computer to computer across network connections. Worms may have portions of themselves running on many different computers. Worms do not change other programs, although they may carry other code that does. Password cracking. This is a technique attackers use to surreptitiously gain system access through another user's account. This is possible because users often select weak passwords. The two major problems with passwords is when they are easy to guess based on knowledge of the user (for example, wife's maiden name) and when they are susceptible to dictionary attacks (that is, using a dictionary as the source of guesses). Denial-of-service attacks. This attack exploits the need to have a service available. It is a growing trend on the Internet because Web sites in general are open doors ready for abuse. People can easily flood the Web server with communication in order to keep it busy. Therefore, companies connected to the Internet should prepare for (DoS) attacks. They also are difficult to trace and allow other types of attacks to be subdued. E-mail hacking. Electronic mail is one of the most popular features of the Internet. With access to Internet e-mail, someone can potentially correspond with any one of millions of people worldwide. Some of the threats associated with e-mail are: Impersonation. The sender address on Internet e-mail cannot be trusted because the sender can create a false return address. Someone could have modified the header in transit, or the sender could have connected directly to the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) port on the target computer to enter the e-mail. Eavesdropping. E-mail headers and contents are transmitted in the clear text if no encryption is used. As a result, the contents of a message can be read or altered in transit. The header can be modified to hide or change the sender, or to redirect the message. Packet replay. This refers to the recording and retransmission of message packets in the network. Packet replay is a significant threat for programs that require authentication sequences, because an intruder could replay legitimate authentication sequence messages to gain access to a system. Packet replay is frequently undetectable, but can be prevented by using packet time stamping and packet sequence counting. Packet modification. This involves one system intercepting and modifying a packet destined for another system. Packet information may not only be modified, it could also be destroyed. Eavesdropping. This allows a cracker (hacker) to make a complete copy of network activity. As a result, a cracker can obtain sensitive information such as passwords, data, and procedures for performing functions. It is possible for a cracker to eavesdrop by wiretapping, using radio, or using auxiliary ports on terminals. It is also possible to eavesdrop using software that monitors packets sent over the network. In most cases, it is difficult to detect eavesdropping. Social engineering. This is a common form of cracking. It can be used by outsiders and by people within an organization. Social engineering is a hacker term for tricking people into revealing their password or some form of security information. Intrusion attacks. In these attacks, a hacker uses various hacking tools to gain access to systems. These can range from password-cracking tools to protocol hacking and manipulation tools. Intrusion detection tools often can help to detect changes and variants that take place within systems and networks. Network spoofing. In network spoofing, a system presents itself to the network as though it were a different system (computer A impersonates computer B by sending B's address instead of its own). The reason for doing this is that systems tend to operate within a group of other trusted systems. Trust is imparted in a one-to-one fashion; computer A trusts computer B (this does not imply that system B trusts system A). Implied with this trust is that the system administrator of the trusted system is performing the job properly and maintaining an appropriate level of security for the system. Network spoofing occurs in the following manner: if computer A trusts computer B and computer C spoofs (impersonates) computer B, then computer C can gain otherwise-denied access to computer A. Appendix C contains detailed descriptions of some of the methods listed above. Security Vulnerabilities As explained previously, a malicious attacker uses a method to exploit vulnerabilities in order to achieve a goal. Vulnerabilities are weak points or loopholes in security that an attacker exploits in order to gain access to the network or to resources on the network (see Figure 2). Remember that the vulnerability is not the attack, but rather the weak point that is exploited. Some weak points are: Passwords. Password selection will be a contentious point as long as users have to select one. The problem usually is remembering the correct password from among the multitude of passwords a user needs to remember. Users end up selecting commonly used passwords because they are easy to remember. Anything from birthdays to the names of loved ones. This is a vulnerability because it gives others a good chance to guess the correct password. Protocol design. Communication protocols sometimes have weak points. Attackers use these to gain information and eventually gain access to systems. Some known issues are: TCP/IP. The TCP/IP protocol stack has some weak points that allow: IP address spoofing TCP connection request (SYN) attacks Telnet protocol. Telnet can be used to administer systems running Microsoft Windows 2000 and Unix. When using the telnet client to connect from a Microsoft system to UNIX system and vice versa, user names and passwords are transmitted in clear text. File Transfer Protocol (FTP). As with Telnet, if the FTP service is running and users need to send or retrieve information from a secure location then user names and passwords are transmitted in clear text. Commands revealing user information. It is not uncommon to find interoperability between Microsoft products and various versions of UNIX. Commands that reveal user and system information pose a threat because crackers can use that information to break into a system. Here are some ways: Finger. The finger client utility on Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 2000 can be used to connect to a finger daemon service running on a UNIX-based computer to display information about users. When the finger program is run with no arguments, information for every user currently logged on to the system is displayed. Rexec. The rexec utility is provided as a client on Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 2000. The rexec client utility allows remote execution on UNIX-based systems running the rexecd service. A client transmits a message specifying the user name, the password, and the name of a command to execute. The rexecd program is susceptible to abuse because it can be used to probe a system for the names of valid accounts. In addition, passwords are transmitted unencrypted over the network. Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM). Security can be compromised by what is referred to as "manhole manipulation"—direct access to network cables and connections in underground parking garages and elevator shafts. Frame relay. Similar to the ATM problem. Device administration. Switches and routers are easily managed by an HTTP interface or through a command line interface. Coupled to the use of weak passwords (for example, public passwords), it allows anybody with some technical knowledge to take control of the device. Modems. Modems have become standard features on many desktop computers. Any unauthorized modem is a serious security concern. People use them not just to connect to the Internet, but also to connect to their office so they can work from home. The problem is that a modem is a means of bypassing the "firewall" that protects a network from outside intruders. A hacker using a "war dialer" tool to identify the modem telephone number and a "password cracker" tool to break a weak password can gain access to the system. Due to the nature of computer networking, once a hacker connects to that one computer, the hacker can often connect to any other computer in the network. Appendix D explains more about vulnerabilities. To help explain Figure 2 and the theory behind attacks, here are some real life examples. Example 1: non-malicious threat (ignorant employees). An employee known here as John Doe copies games and other executables from a 1.44 MB disk onto his local hard drive and then runs the executables. Unfortunately, the games contained various viruses and Trojan horses. The organization had not yet deployed any anti-virus software. After a short time, John Doe and other employees began to notice strange and unforeseen events occurring on their computers, causing disruption of services and possible corruption of data. The following figure explains the various vulnerabilities that existed and the loss in assets that are involved. Figure 3: Example 2: malicious threat (malicious attackers) An employee known here as Sally was turned down for promotion three times. Sally believes that she has put in a considerable amount of work and overtime and is being turned down for promotion because she is too young. Sally has a degree in computer science and decides to resign from the company and take revenge on it by causing the company's Web server to stop servicing requests. Sally uses a denial-of-service attack tool called Trin00 to start an attack on the company's Web server. Most of the company's business is conducted via e-commerce and clients are complaining that they cannot connect to the Web server. The following diagram outlines the various tools and vulnerabilities Sally used to achieve her goal. Figure 4: Remember that this is just an example. Many possibilities, tools, and vulnerabilities can exist and will differ in the way to counter the attack. Example 3: natural disasters An organization has various modems and Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) router installations and does not have surge protection. During a thunderstorm, lightning strikes the telephone and ISDN lines. All modems and ISDN routers are destroyed, taking with them a couple of motherboards. The following diagram shows the vulnerability and the loss of assets. Figure 5: Conclusion Malicious attackers will use various methods, tools, and techniques to exploit vulnerabilities in security policies and controls to achieve a goal or objective. Non-malicious attacks occur due to poor security policies and controls that allow vulnerabilities and errors to take place. Natural disasters can occur at any time, so organizations should implement measures to try to prevent the damage they can cause. Top Of Page Appendix A: Security Threats Threats can originate from two primary sources: humans and nature. Human threats subsequently can be broken into two categories: malicious and non-malicious. The non-malicious "attacks" usually come from users and employees who are not trained on computers or are not aware of various computer security threats. Malicious attacks usually come from non-employees or disgruntled employees who have a specific goal or objective to achieve. Natural Disasters Nobody can stop nature from taking its course. Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, lightning, and fire can cause severe damage to computer systems. Information can be lost, downtime or loss of productivity can occur, and damage to hardware and other essential services can be disrupted. Few safeguards can be implemented against natural disasters. The best course of action is to have disaster-recovery and contingency plans in place. These will help an organization restore itself to normal business operations. Riots, wars, and terrorist attacks, although the result of human activity, fall into this category because they are seen as disasters and are difficult to protect against with computer security policies and controls. Insiders or Malicious and Disgruntled Employees Insiders are likely to have specific goals and objectives, and have legitimate access to the system. Employees are the group most familiar with their employer's computers and applications, including knowing what actions might cause the most damage. Insiders can plant viruses, Trojan horses, or worms, or browse through the file system. This type of attack can be extremely difficult to detect or protect against. The insider attack can affect all components of computer security. By browsing through a system, an insider can learn confidential information. Trojan horses are a threat to both the integrity and confidentiality of information in the system. Insiders can affect availability by overloading the system's processing or storage capacity, or by causing the system to crash. These attacks are possible for a variety of reasons. On many systems, the access control settings for security-relevant objects do not reflect the organization's security policy. This allows the insider to browse through sensitive data or plant a virus or Trojan horse. Often these actions are undetected because audit trails are inadequate or ignored. Disgruntled employees can create both mischief and sabotage on a computer system. Organizational downsizing in both public and private sectors has created a group of individuals with organizational knowledge who may retain potential system access. System managers can limit this threat by invalidating passwords and deleting system accounts in a timely manner. However, disgruntled current employees actually cause more damage than former employees. Common examples of computer-related employee sabotage include: Changing data Entering data incorrectly Outside Attackers or 'Crackers' People often refer to "crackers" as "hackers." The definition of "hacker" has changed over the years. A hacker was once thought of as any individual who enjoyed getting the most out of the system he or she was using. A hacker would use a system extensively and study the system until he or she became proficient in all its nuances. This individual was respected as a source of information for local computer users, someone referred to as a "guru" or "wizard." Now, however, the term hacker refers to people who either break in to systems for which they have no authorization or intentionally overstep their bounds on systems for which they do not have legitimate access. The correct term for someone who breaks in to systems is a "cracker." Common methods for gaining access to a system include password cracking, exploiting known security weaknesses, network spoofing, and social engineering. Appendix C contains a detailed description of these methods. Non-Malicious Employees Attackers are not the only ones who can harm an organization. The primary threat to data integrity comes from authorized users who are not aware of the actions they are performing. Errors and omissions can lose, damage, or alter valuable data. Users, data entry clerks, system operators, and programmers frequently make unintentional errors that contribute to security problems, directly and indirectly. Sometimes the error is the threat, such as a data entry error or a programming error that crashes a system. In other cases, errors create vulnerabilities. Errors can occur in all phases of the system life cycle. Programming and development errors, often called "bugs," range in severity from irritating to catastrophic. Improved software quality has reduced but not eliminated this threat. Installation and maintenance errors also cause security problems. Errors and omissions are important threats to data integrity. Errors are caused not only by data entry clerks processing hundreds of transactions per day, but also by all users who create and edit data. Many programs, especially those designed by users for personal computers, lack quality-control measures. However, even the most sophisticated programs cannot detect all types of input errors or omissions. People often assume that the information they receive from a computer system is more accurate than it really is. Many organizations address errors and omissions in their computer security, software quality, and data quality programs. Top Of Page Appendix B: Motives, Goals, and Objectives of Malicious Attackers There is a strong overlap between physical security and data privacy and integrity. Indeed, the goal of some attacks is not the physical destruction of the computer system but the penetration and removal or copying of sensitive information. Attackers want to achieve these goals for either personal satisfaction or for a reward. Deleting and Altering Information Malicious attackers who delete or alter information normally do this to prove a point or take revenge for something that has happened to them. Insider attackers normally act out of spite for the organization because they are disgruntled about something. Outsiders might attack just to prove that they can or for the fun of it. Committing Information Theft and Fraud Information technology is increasingly used to commit fraud and theft. Computer systems are exploited in numerous ways, both by automating traditional methods of fraud and by using new methods. Financial systems are not the only ones subject to fraud. Other targets are systems that control access to any resources, such as time and attendance systems, inventory systems, school grading systems, or long-distance telephone systems. Insiders or outsiders can commit fraud. Insiders who are authorized users of a system perpetrate the majority of fraud uncovered on computer systems. Since insiders have both access to and familiarity with the victim computer system, including what resources it controls and where the flaws are, authorized system users are in a better position to commit crimes. An organization's former employees may also pose threats, particularly if their access is not terminated promptly. Because many computers are relatively small and valuable, they are easy to steal and sell. An organization should attempt to protect its investment in equipment with physical measures such as locks and bolts. If the computer is stolen, the information it contains will be at the disposal of the perpetrator. The thief may erase it or may be able to read it. The thief could sell sensitive information, use it for blackmail, or use it to compromise other computer systems. You can never make something impossible to steal, but you can make stolen information virtually useless by making sure the information is encrypted and the thief does not have the key. Data can be stolen from a computer or even manipulated without the owner's knowledge. A Zip drive can be connected to a computer's parallel port and several megabytes of data can be copied. Disrupting Normal Business Operations Attackers may want to disrupt normal business operations. This could be done out of spite, as with a disgruntled employee who does not want to work because he or she has been turned down for promotion. Outside attackers might want to disrupt services to gain a competitive edge in world that thrives on competition. Maybe the perpetrators attack just for the fun of it. In any situation like this, the attacker has a specific goal to achieve. Accomplishing it is satisfying and rewarding. Attackers use various methods for performing denial-of-service attacks; the section on methods, tools, and techniques discusses these. Appendix C: Methods, Tools, and Techniques for Attacks Malicious attackers use various method, tools, and techniques to enter, disrupt, and steal information from a system. E-mail Hacking The most common mail transfer protocols (SMTP, POP3, IMAP4) do not typically include provisions for reliable authentication as part of the core protocol, allowing e-mail messages to be easily forged. Nor do these protocols require the use of encryption that could ensure the privacy or confidentiality of e-mail messages. Although extensions to these basic protocols do exist, the decision whether to use them needs to be established as part of the mail server administration policy. Some of the extensions use a previously established means of authentication while others allow the client and server to negotiate a type of authentication that both ends support. Social Engineering This is a common form of cracking. It can be used both by outsiders and by people within an organization. Social engineering is a hacker term for tricking people into revealing their password or some form of security information. Users should be made aware of various security issues, even those that are not common. A common example of social engineering would be where a hacker sends e-mail to an employee, claiming to be an administrator who needs the employee's password to do some administrative work. The normal user who has not been taught about security might not know the difference between the actual administrator and the imposter administrator, especially in a large organization. Other variations of this type of social engineering would be where someone claiming to be the administrator phones a user and asks for the user's password and logon credentials. The user unwittingly gives out the logon and password and the imposter now has full access. "Shoulder surfing" is also common among hackers and users who wish to learn someone's password. In this case, they hang around a user's desk, talking and waiting for the user to type in a password. Company employees with malicious intent could also do this. Users should be informed not to type in their passwords in front of others or, if they have and suspect that someone else now has their password, that they should change the password immediately. Another form of social engineering is guessing a user's password. When people can learn things about certain users' personal and social lives, they can use this against them. For example, users might choose a daughter or son's name or birth date or a friend's name as a password. Users also often use passwords that they can read on their desks or on posters in the work area. This gives the hacker a chance at guessing the password. Intrusion Attacks Attackers using well-known techniques can penetrate many networks. This often happens when attackers use known vulnerabilities in the network. In updateable systems, administrators may not have or take the time to install all the necessary patches in a large number of hosts. In addition, it is usually not possible to perfectly map an organization's policy on computer use to its access-control mechanisms and thus authorized users often can perform unauthorized actions. Users may also demand network services and protocols that are known to be flawed and subject to attack. For example, a user might ask, "Why can't I just FTP the files down?" It is very important that security policies deal not only with end-user demands but also with the threats and vulnerabilities associated with those demands. Realistically, however, it is seldom possible to remove all vulnerabilities. Intrusion detection is the process of detecting unauthorized use of, or an attack upon, a computer or network. Intrusion detection provides two important functions in protecting information system assets. The first function is that of a feedback mechanism that informs the security staff about the effectiveness of other components of the security system. The lack of detected intrusions is an indication that there are no known intrusions, not that the system is completely impenetrable. The second function is to provide a trigger or gating mechanism that determines when to activate planned responses to an incident. A computer or network without an intrusion detection system (IDS) may allow attackers to leisurely explore its weaknesses. If vulnerabilities exist in networks, a determined attacker will eventually find them and exploit them. The same network with an IDS installed is a much more formidable challenge to an attacker. Although the attacker may continue to probe the network for weaknesses, the IDS should be able to detect these attempts if the vulnerabilities are known, block these attempts, and alert security personnel who can take appropriate action. Denial-of-Service Attacks Background DoS attacks are designed to prevent legitimate use of a service. Attackers achieve this by flooding a network with more traffic than it can handle. Examples of this include: Saturating network resources, thereby preventing users from using network resources. Disrupting connections between two computers, preventing communications between services. Preventing a particular individual from accessing a service. Disrupting services to a specific system or client. DoS attacks flood a remote network with an enormous amount of protocol packets. Routers and servers eventually become overloaded by attempting to route or handle each packet. Within minutes, network activity exponentially rises and the network stops responding to normal traffic and service requests from clients. This is also known as a network saturation attack or bandwidth consumption attack. Attackers strike with various tools, including Trin00 and Tribe Flood Network (TFN, TFN2K). Types of Denial-of-Service Attacks Computers use certain core resources to operate and function correctly. Failure or disruption of resources could cause the computer to crash. Some of these resources include network bandwidth, memory, CPU time, and hard drive space. The operating system and applications than run on the system play an important role in managing these resources correctly. When the operating system or the resources are overrun by malicious attacks, one or more of these core resources breaks down, causing the system to crash or stop responding. An attacker can cause resources to be overrun by various means, including consuming server resources, saturating network resources, and mail bombing. Consuming Server Resources The goal of a DoS attack is to prevent hosts or networks from communicating on the network. An example of this type of attack is the SYN flood attack: When a client attempts to contact a server service, the client and server exchange a series of messages. The client starts by sending a TCP connection request or SYN message to the server. The server responds to the SYN message with an acknowledgement ACK-SYN message. The client then acknowledges the server's ACK-SYN message with an ACK message. After these three actions take place, the connection between the client and server is open and they can exchange service-specific data. The problem arises when the server has sent the SYN-ACK message back to the client but has not yet received an ACK response from the client. This is now a half-open connection. The server keeps the pending connection in memory, waiting for a response from the client. The half-open connections in memory eventually will time out on the server, freeing up valuable resources again. Creating these half-open connections is accomplished with IP spoofing. The attacker's system sends a SYN message to the victim's server. These messages seem to be legitimate but in fact are references to a client system that is unable to respond to the server's SYN-ACK message. This means that the server will never be able to send an ACK message to the client computer. The server now has half-open connections in memory and eventually will fill up the server connections. The server now is unable to accept any new connections. The time limit on half-open connections will expire. However, the attacker's system keeps sending IP-spoofed packets faster than the expire limit on the victim's server. In most cases the victim of such an attack will have difficulty accepting any new, legitimate incoming connections. This type of attack does not really affect any of the current connections or outgoing connections. Normally it consumes an enormous amount of memory and processing power on the server, causing it to crash. The location of the attacking system is difficult to trace because the attacker's system address was masquerading as a legitimate IP address. Since the network forwards packets based on destination address, the only way to validate the source of a packet is to use input source filtering. This type of attack does not depend on the attacker being able to consume network bandwidth. In this case, the intruder is consuming valuable server resources. The implication is that an intruder can execute this attack from a dial-up connection against a computer on a very fast network. Saturating Network Resources An intruder may also be able to consume all the available bandwidth on a network by generating a large number of packets directed to the network. Typically, these packets are Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo packets, but in principle they may be anything. Further, the intruder need not be operating from a single computer; he or she may be able to coordinate or co-opt several computers on different networks to achieve the same effect. This is known as a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS). The ICMP is used to convey status and error information including notification of network congestion and other network-related problems. ICMP can be used to determine if a computer on the Internet is responding. To do this, an ICMP echo request packet is sent to a computer on the network. If the computer is operating, it will respond to the request by sending an ICMP echo reply packet. A common example of this is the PING command. On TCP/IP networks, a packet can be sent to an individual computer or broadcast to all computers on the network. When an IP packet is sent to an IP broadcast address from a computer on the same local area network, all computers on that network receive the IP packet. When a computer outside the local area network sends an IP broadcast packet, all computers on the target network receive the broadcast packet (as long as the routers have been configured to forward these broadcast packets). Three parties are involved in these attacks: the attacker, the intermediary, and the victim. The intermediary can also be a victim. The intermediary receives an ICMP echo request packet that is directed to the IP broadcast network address. If nothing is filtering these ICMP echo requests, all computers on the network will receive the ICMP echo request packet and respond with an ICMP echo reply packet. When all computers respond to these packets, severe network congestion or outages are possible. When the attackers create these packets, they do not use their own IP source address. Instead, they use the source address of their intended victim. This is known as IP spoofing. The result is that when the intermediary computers respond to the ICMP echo request packet, they send the reply packet to the victim's IP address. The victim's computer is now subjected to network congestion that could cause the network to stop responding. Attackers have developed a variety of tools for this purpose. The tools enable the hackers to send ICMP echo request packets to multiple intermediary computers, causing all of them to respond to the same victim's source IP address. These tools could also be used to scan for network routers that do not filter broadcast traffic. DDoS attacks involve breaking in to hundreds or thousands of computers across the Internet. Then the attacker installs DDoS software on them, allowing the attacker to control all of these computers and launch coordinated attacks on victim sites. These attacks typically exhaust bandwidth, router processing capacity, or network stack resources, breaking network connectivity to the victims. The perpetrator starts by breaking into weakly secured computers, using well-known defects in standard network service programs, and common, weak configurations in operating systems. Then they perform some additional steps on each system. First, they install software to conceal the break-in and to hide the traces of their subsequent activity. For example, they replace the standard commands for displaying running processes with versions that fail to display the attacker's processes. Then they install a special process used to remotely control the burgled computer. This process accepts commands from over the Internet, letting the intruder launch an attack over the Internet against some designated victim site. Finally, they make a note of the IP address of the computer they've taken over. All these steps are highly automated. A cautious intruder will begin by breaking in to just a few sites, then using them to break into some more, and repeating this cycle for several steps. By the time they are ready to mount the attacks, they have taken over thousands of computers and assembled them into a DDoS network. Once the attacker has installed the DDoS software, the attacker runs a single command that sends command packets to all the captured computers, instructing them to launch an attack (from a menu of different varieties of flooding attacks) against a specific victim. When the attacker decides to stop the attack, he or she sends another single command. The controlled computers being used to mount the attacks send a stream of packets. For most of the attacks, these packets are directed at the victim computer. For one variant (called "smurf," after the first circulated program to perform this attack), the packets are aimed at other networks, where they provoke multiple echoes all aimed at the victim as described earlier. The packets used in DDoS attacks use forged source addresses or spoofed IP addresses. If a packet arrives at the first router, and the source IP address doesn't match the IP network it's coming from, the router should discard the packet. This style of packet checking is called ingress or egress filtering, depending on the point of view; it is egress from the customer network, or ingress to the heart of the Internet. The first signs of an attack may be when thousands of compromised systems all over the world begin to flood the victim's network with traffic all at once. The first symptom is likely to be a router crash, or something that looks a lot like one; traffic simply stops flowing between the victim and the Internet. Mail Bombing Mail bombing is an e-mail-based attack. E-mail floods the attacked system until it fails. A system will fail in different ways, depending on the type of server and how it is configured. Some Internet service providers give temporary accounts to anyone who signs up for a trial subscription, and those accounts can be used to launch e-mail attacks. Here are typical failure modes: The e-mail server accepts e-mail messages until the disk where e-mail is stored fills up. Subsequent e-mail is not accepted. If the e-mail disk is also the main system disk, it may crash the system. The incoming queue is filled with messages to be forwarded until the queue reaches its limit. Subsequent messages can't be queued. A particular user's server disk quota can be exceeded. This prevents subsequent mail from being received and may keep the user from getting work done. Recovery can be difficult because the user may need to use more disk space just to delete the e-mail. Virus Attacks History All administrators have heard about viruses and their effects. Viruses can be very destructive, causing loss of information. Fred Cohen formally defined the term "computer virus" in 1983 when he performed academic experiments on a Digital Equipment Corporation VAX system. Viruses are classified as being one of two types: research or "in the wild." A research virus is one that has been written for research or study purposes and has received almost no distribution to the public. Viruses that have been seen with regularity are termed "in the wild." The first computer viruses were developed in the early 1980s. The first viruses found in the wild were Apple II viruses such as Elk Cloner, which was reported in 1981. Viruses now have been found on the following platforms: Apple II, IBM PC, Macintosh, Atari, and Amiga. When personal computers first came onto the market, operating systems like Microsoft MS-DOS were intended for a single user who was in total control of the computer. There were no security mechanisms to separate users, to separate the user from the system, or to stop intentional modification of system or user files. Given the ways computers were used, these mechanisms were not required. However, the spread of computers instigated a new industry that grew around them. This included the emergence of: Commercial software products such as spreadsheets and word processors. Computer games. Shared use of computers, whether it be several employees using the same computer or large organizations connecting computers on a LAN. Note that all viruses found in the wild target personal computers. As of today, the overwhelming numbers of virus strains are IBM PC viruses. Viruses have evolved over the years due to efforts by their authors to make the code more difficult to detect, disassemble, and eradicate. This evolution has been especially apparent in the IBM PC viruses. An examination of the IBM PC family of viruses indicates that the most commonly detected viruses vary according to continent, but that "Stoned," "Brain," "Cascade," and members of the "Jerusalem" family have spread widely and continue to appear. This implies that highly survivable viruses tend to be benign, replicate many times before activation, or are somewhat innovative, utilizing some technique never used before in a virus. Personal computer viruses exploit the lack of effective access controls in these systems. The viruses modify files and even the operating system itself. These are legal actions within the context of the operating system. While more stringent controls are in place on multitasking, multiuser operating systems, configuration errors and security holes (security bugs) make viruses on these systems more than theoretically possible. With the advent of the personal computer, software was exchanged on floppy disks, software for professional and private use ran on the same computer, and companies moved information onto computers that no longer were controlled by a central IT department but by individual users. The lack of security mechanisms and security awareness on these systems started to make itself felt. Virus researchers have put considerable effort into developing schemes for describing, naming, and classifying computer viruses and on defining the distinctive features that distinguish computer viruses from other malicious software How Viruses Work A computer virus is a piece of self-replicating code attached to some other piece of code. This code can be harmless—for example, it might display a message or play a tune. Or it might be harmful and proceed to delete and modify files. The virus code searches users' files for an uninfected executable program for which the user has security write privileges. The virus infects the file by putting a piece of code in the selected program file. When a program that is infected with a virus is executed, the virus immediately takes command, finding and infecting other programs and files. Some viruses are "memory resident" viruses. When a user executes an executable file that is infected with this type of virus, the virus loads itself into memory and remains there even if the original program is shut down. Subsequent programs that are executed are infected with the virus until the computer is shut down or turned off. Some viruses have a "dormant" phase and will appear only at certain times or when certain actions are performed. A variant is a virus that is generated by modifying a known virus. Examples are modifications that add functionality or evade detection. The term "variant" usually applies only when the modifications are minor. An example would be changing the trigger date from Friday the 13th to Thursday the 12th. An overwriting virus will destroy code or data in the host program by replacing it with the virus code. It should be noted that most viruses attempt to retain the original host program's code and functionality after infection because the virus is more likely to be detected and deleted if the program ceases to work. A non-overwriting virus is designed to append the virus code to the physical end of the program or to move the original code to another location. A self-recognition procedure is a technique whereby a virus determines whether or not an executable is already infected. The procedure usually involves searching for a particular value at a known position in the executable. Self-recognition is required if the virus is to avoid multiple infections of a single executable. Multiple infections cause excessive growth in size of infected executables and corresponding excessive storage space, contributing to the detection of the virus. A resident virus installs itself as part of the operating system upon execution of an infected host program. The virus will remain resident until the system is shut down. Once installed in memory, a resident virus is available to infect all suitable hosts that are accessed. A stealth virus is a resident virus that attempts to evade detection by concealing its presence in infected files. To achieve this, the virus intercepts system calls that examine the contents or attributes of infected files. The results of these calls must be altered to correspond to the file's original state. For example, a stealth virus might remove the virus code from an executable when it is read (rather than executed) so that an anti-virus software package will examine the original, uninfected host program. An encrypted virus has two parts: a small decryptor and the encrypted virus body. When the virus is executed, the decryptor will execute first and decrypt the virus body. Then the virus body can execute, replicating or becoming resident. The virus body will include an encryptor to apply during replication. A variably encrypted virus will use different encryption keys or encryption algorithms. Encrypted viruses are more difficult to disassemble and study since the researcher must decrypt the code. A polymorphic virus creates copies during replication that are functionally equivalent but have distinctly different byte streams. To achieve this, the virus may randomly insert superfluous instructions, interchange the order of independent instructions, or choose from a number of different encryption schemes. This variable quality makes the virus difficult to locate, identify, or remove. A reaserch virus is one that has been written, but has never been unleashed on the public. These include the samples that have been sent to researchers by virus writers. Viruses that have been seen outside the research community are termed "in the wild." How Are Computer Viruses Spread? The following are necessary characteristics of a virus: It is able to replicate. It requires a host program as a carrier. It is activated by external action. Its replication ability is limited to the (virtual) system. Computer viruses move from computer to computer by attaching themselves to files or boot records of disks and diskettes. These days it is not uncommon to find them in e-mail attachments and other programs that can be downloaded from the Internet. A virus is a relatively passive agent that relies on ordinary users for its activation and propagation. It can travel from one file to another on the same computer if the infected file is executed, from computer memory to a file on disk, on a disk that is carried from one computer to another (some companies prohibit floppy drives, thereby preventing users from copying information onto their computers), on e-mail attachment executable files, and over a modem or network connection. Damage that Viruses Cause Viruses can destroy file allocation tables (FAT) and lead to the corruption of an entire file system, resulting in the need to fully reinstall and reload the system. Viruses also can create bad sectors on the disk, destroying parts of programs and files. They can decrease the space on hard disks by duplicating files. They also can format specific tracks on the disks or format the entire disk. Viruses can destroy specific executable files and alter data in data files, causing a loss of integrity in the data. Viruses can cause the system to hang so that it does not respond to any keyboard or mouse movements. Trojan Horses Background The term "Trojan horse" comes from a myth in which the Greeks gave a giant wooden horse to their foes, the Trojans, seemingly as a peace offering. After the Trojans dragged the horse inside the city walls of Troy, Greek soldiers sneaked out of the horse's hollow belly and opened the city gates, allowing their compatriots to pour in and capture Troy. What Are Trojan Horses? A Trojan horse is code hidden in a program such as a game or spreadsheet that looks safe to run but has hidden side effects. When the program is run, it seems to function as the user expects, but in actuality it is destroying, damaging, or altering information in the background. It is a program on its own and does not require a host program in which to embed itself. An example of a Trojan horse would be a Christmas executable that, when executed, pops up with an animated figure of Santa Claus and a caption saying "Merry Christmas." In the background, extra code could be deleting files or performing other malicious actions. How Trojan Horses Are Spread Trojan horses generally are spread through e-mail and exchange of disks and information between computers. Worms could also spread Trojan horses. Damage Caused by Trojan Horses The damage that Trojan horses cause is much the same as what a virus causes. Most of the time the users are unaware of the damage it is causing because of the Trojan horse's masking effect. Worms Background Worms first were used as a legitimate mechanism for performing tasks in a distributed environment. Network worms were considered promising for the performance of network management tasks in a series of experiments at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1982. The key problem noted was worm management; controlling the number of copies executing at a single time. Worms were first noticed as a potential computer security threat when the Christmas Tree Exec attacked IBM mainframes in December 1987. It brought down both the worldwide IBM network and BITNET. The Christmas Tree Exec wasn't a true worm. It was a Trojan horse with a replicating mechanism. A user would receive a Christmas card by e-mail that included executable (REXX) code. If executed, the program claimed to draw a Christmas tree on the display. That much was true, but it also sent a copy to everyone on the user's address lists. The Internet Worm was a true worm. It was released on November 2, 1988. It attacked Sun and DEC UNIX systems attached to the Internet (it included two sets of binaries, one for each system). It utilized the TCP/IP protocols and vulnerabilities in sendmail, common application layer protocols, operating system bugs, and a variety of system administration flaws to propagate. Various problems with worm management resulted in extremely poor system performance and a denial of network service. It exploited operating system flaws and common system management problems. What Are Worms? The following are necessary characteristics of a worm: It is able to replicate. It is self-contained and does not require a host. It is activated by creating process (it needs a multitasking system). If it is a network worm, it can replicate across communication links. A worm is a program designed to replicate. The program may perform any variety of additional tasks as well. The first network worms were intended to perform useful network management functions. They took advantage of system properties to perform useful actions. However, a malicious worm takes advantage of the same system properties. The facilities that allow such programs to replicate do not always discriminate between malicious and good code. Worms exploit flaws (that is, bugs) in the operating system or inadequate system management to replicate. Release of a worm usually results in brief outbreaks, shutting down entire networks. Worms are programs that run independently and travel from computer to computer across network connections. Worms may have portions of themselves running on many different computers. Worms do not change other programs, although they may carry other code that does. How Worms Affect Network Systems Developing a worm requires a network environment and an author who is familiar not only with the network services and facilities, but also with the operating facilities required to support them once they've reached the computer. Protection against worm programs is like protection against break-ins. If an intruder can enter your computer, so can a worm program. If the computer is secure from unauthorized access, it should be secure from a worm program. How Worms Are Spread Worms are autonomous agents capable of propagating themselves without the use of another program or intervention or action by a user. Worms are found primarily on computers that are capable of multitasking and are connected by a network. Damage that Worms Can Cause Most worms disrupt services and create system management problems. Some worms scan for passwords and other loopholes and then send the information back to the attacker. In some cases worms can install Trojan horses or viruses that cause damage to the systems. Macro Viruses A macro virus is a virus that attaches itself to a spreadsheet worksheet, or is programmed into the spreadsheet. It also could be programmed into other products such as Word documents and Microsoft PowerPoint presentations and so on. Macro viruses are written in high-level languages like Visual Basic for applications used by Microsoft Office products, Lotus scripting, WordPerfect macros, and so on. Macro viruses bypass integrity protection mechanisms for normal executables because macro viruses are embedded in the data file. Documents are widely exchanged by e-mail and therefore are a good medium for spreading a virus. Users opening a file may not even be aware of the fact that they are running a program. All instructions available for writing macros are also available to virus writers who now can hide viral code in a macro file. An example of a macro virus is the Melissa macro virus. The Melissa macro virus was spread via e-mail. The virus was programmed into a Word document. When the document was opened, the macro virus would send a copy of it to the first 50 e-mail addresses from the global address list. This caused major e-mail systems to crash throughout the world and also saturated network bandwidth. Top Of Page Appendix D: Security Vulnerabilities Vulnerabilities are weak points or loopholes in security that an attacker can exploit in order to gain access to the network or to resources on the network. The vulnerability is not the attack, but rather the weak point that is exploited. This section discusses only a few common vulnerabilities. So many different types of vulnerabilities can exist that discussing them all would require hundreds of pages. To find out about vulnerabilities that exist on any particular system, talk to various software and hardware vendors and do research and tests on the products. Vulnerabilities in Common Network Access Procedures and Protocols The primary protocol used in operating systems today is the TCP/IP protocol stack. The wide use of this protocol helps to integrate different operating system architectures such as Microsoft and UNIX. Many organizations make use of this interoperability and use various TCP/IP utilities to run programs, transfer information, and reveal information. Due to the nature of these utilities, various security risks and threats exist. Users often use the same passwords for mixed environments. Sometimes, passwords are automatically synchronized. If hackers can crack the password on systems other than Microsoft systems, they could also use that password to logon to a Microsoft system. Telnet The Telnet protocol allows a user to log onto a system over the network and use that system as though the user was sitting at a terminal that was directly connected. The telnet command provides a user interface to a remote system. When using the Microsoft telnet client to log on to the Microsoft Windows 2000 Telnet service, it uses the NTLM protocol to log the client on. Problems arise when integrating Microsoft systems and UNIX systems. When logging on to a system from a Microsoft telnet client to UNIX TELNET daemon service or vice versa, the user name and password are sent over the network in plain text. Since the user name and password characters are not encrypted, it is possible for an electronic eavesdropper to capture a user name and password for a system for which a telnet connection is being established. File Transfer Protocol File Transfer Protocol allows users to connect to remote systems and transfer files back and forth. As part of establishing a connection to a remote computer, FTP relies on a user name and password combination for authentication. Use of FTP poses a security problem similar to use of the Telnet protocol because passwords typed to FTP are transmitted over the network in plain text, one character per packet. These packets can be intercepted. Another problem area for FTP is anonymous FTP. Anonymous FTP allows users who do not have an account on a computer to transfer files to and from a specific directory. This capability is particularly useful for software or document distribution to the public. To use anonymous FTP, a user passes a remote computer name as an argument to FTP and then specifies "anonymous" as a user name. One of the problems with anonymous FTP is that there is often no record of who has requested what information. Another problem with anonymous FTP is the threat of denial-of-service attacks. For deliberate or accidental denial-of-service attacks, authorized users may be denied access to a system if too many file transfers are initiated simultaneously. It is important to securely set up the anonymous FTP account on the server because everyone on the network will have potential access. If the anonymous FTP account is not securely configured and administered, crackers may be capable of adding and modifying files. Trivial File Transfer Protocol The 6Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) is a file transfer program that is frequently used to allow diskless hosts to boot over the network. Microsoft Windows 2000 implements a client utility to make use of TFTP services on UNIX flavors. Because TFTP has no user authentication, it may be possible for unwanted file transfer to occur. The use of TFTP to steal password files is a significant threat. Commands Revealing User Information It is not uncommon to find interoperability between Microsoft products and various flavors of UNIX. 7 Commands that reveal user and system information pose a threat because crackers can use that information to break into a system. This section provides a brief description of various commands whose output makes a system vulnerable to break-ins. Finger The finger client utility on Windows NT and Windows 2000 can be used to connect to a finger daemon service running on a UNIX-based computer to display information about users. When the finger client utility is invoked with a name argument, the password file is searched on a UNIX server. Every user with a first name, last name, or user name that matches the name argument is returned. When the finger program is run with no arguments, information for every user currently logged on to the system is displayed. User information can be displayed for remote computers as well as for the local computer. The output of finger typically includes logon name, full name, home directory, last logon time, and in some cases when the user received mail and/or read mail. Personal information, such as telephone numbers, is often stored in the password file so that this information is available to other users. Making personal information about users available poses a security threat because a password cracker can make use of this information. In addition, finger can reveal logon activity. Rexec The rexec utility is provided as a client on Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 2000. The rexec client utility allows remote execution on UNIX-based systems running the rexecd service. A client transmits a message specifying the user name, the password, and the name of a command to execute. The rexecd program is susceptible to abuse because it can be used to probe a system for the names of valid accounts. In addition, passwords are transmitted unencrypted over the network. Protocol Design Communication protocols sometimes have weak points. Attackers use these to gain information and eventually gain access to systems. Some known issues are: TCP/IP. The TCP/IP protocol stack has some weak points that allows: IP address spoofing TCP connection request (SYN) attacks ATM. Security can be compromised by what is referred to as "manhole manipulation"—direct access to network cables and connections in underground parking garages and elevator shafts. Frame relay. Similar to the ATM issue. Weak Passwords Password selection will always be a contentious point as long as users have to select one. The problem normally is to remember the correct password from among the many that users need to remember. Users end up selecting commonly used passwords because they are easy to remember—anything from birthday to the names of loved ones. This creates a vulnerability, however, because it gives others a good chance to guess the correct password. A password is the key to a computer—a key much sought-after by hackers as a means of getting a foothold into a system. A weak password may give a hacker access not only to a computer, but to the entire network to which the computer is connected. Users should treat their passwords like the keys to their homes. Would they leave their homes or offices unlocked in a high crime area? Device Administration Switches and routers are easily managed by an HTTP Web interface or through a command line interface. Coupled to the use of weak passwords (for example, public passwords), it allows anybody with some technical knowledge to take control of the device. Modems If a computer has a modem connected to the Internet, the user needs to take appropriate precautions because modem connections can be a significant vulnerability. Any unauthorized modem is a serious security concern. Hackers commonly use a tool known as a "war dialer" to identify the modems at a target organization. A war dialer is a computer program that automatically dials phone numbers within a specified range of numbers. Most organizations have a block of sequential phone numbers. If an organization has one number, it is usually correct to assume that most other numbers are within a limited range of numbers either higher or lower than that number. By dialing all numbers within the targeted range, the war dialer identifies which numbers are for computer modems and determines certain characteristics of those modems. The hacker then uses other tools to attack the modem to gain access to the computer network. Anyone can download effective war dialers from the Internet at no cost. Garfinkel, Simson, and Gene Spafford. Practical Unix and Internet Security. O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., April 1996. Gollmann, Dieter. Computer Security. John Wiley and Sons, August 1999 Microsoft Corp. Microsoft Windows 2000 Resource Kit. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 2000. Microsoft Corp. Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Resource Kit. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press 1996. Microsoft Corp. Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Workstation Resource Kit. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press 1996. Sanna, Paul. Windows 2000 Server Security for Dummies. IDG Books Worldwide, 1999. Online Publications Bassham, Lawrence E., and W. Timothy Polk. Threat Assessment of Malicious Code and Human Threats. National Institute of Standards and Technology Computer Security Division. http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistir/threats/threats.html Brown, Carol E. and Alan Sangster. Electronic Sabotage. http://accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aies/www.bus.orst.edu/faculty/brownc/lectures/virus/virus.htm Chess, David. Things that Go Bump in the Net. http://www.research.ibm.com/massive/bump.html Huegen, Craig. Network-Based Denial of Service Attack Information. http://users.quadrunner.com/chuegen/smurf/ Martin, Brian. Have Script Will Destroy (Lessons in DoS). http://www.attrition.org/ Parker, Donn. Automated Crime. http://www.infosecuritymag.com/ Department of Defense Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria (Orange Book). National Computer Security Center. http://csrc.ncsl.nist.gov/secpubs/rainbow/std001.txt Trusted Network Interpretation (Red Book). National Computer Security Center. http://csrc.ncsl.nist.gov/secpubs/rainbow/tg005.txt Web Sites For more information on viruses, Trojan horses, and Internet hoaxes, see: The Computer Incident Advisory Capability site at http://ciac.llnl.gov The E-Commerce Webopedia at http://e-comm.webopedia.com/ For more information on distributed denial-of-service attacks, see http://www.icsa.net/ For more information on back-end system issues for online financial sites, see http://www.incurrent.com/ For more information about security, see the Pretty Good Privacy site at http://www.pgp.com . This paper was created with help from the following people: Writer Christopher Benson, Inobits Consulting (Pty) Ltd. Contributors Denis Bensch, Inobits Consulting (Pty) Ltd. Dawie Human, Inobits Consulting (Pty) Ltd. Louis De Klerk, Inobits Consulting (Pty) Ltd. Johan Grobler, Inobits Consulting (Pty) Ltd. Reviewer Macintosh is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc 1 March 9, 1999. "CIA measures damage following leaked nuclear secrets." 2 October 18, 1999. WASHINGTON (IDG)—The U.S. House Judiciary Committee has approved a bill designed to encourage electronic commerce by recognizing digital signatures as having the same legally binding status as a handwritten signature. 3 The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is developing the Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P). 4 "eToys attacks show need for strong Web defenses," NetWork World, December 20, 1999, 5 SecurTek Corporation, 6 Windows 2000 clients can retrieve information from a UNIX computer using the Trivial File Transfer Protocol client utility. Windows 2000 does not run a TFTP server service but the utility still is used without any authentication to UNIX systems. 7 The utilities described could still be used although Windows does not support services for these utilities. The client utilities can still be used when there is interoperability between Microsoft Windows and UNIX systems.

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Where was William Kellogg working when he decided to sell cornflakes?

Inventor Will Keith Kellogg Biography Inventor: Will Keith Kellogg Criteria; First to invent. First practical. Entrepreneur. Birth: April 7, 1860 in Battle Creek, Michigan Death: October 6, 1951 in Battle Creek, Michigan Nationality: American Invention: Kellogg's Corn Flakes� Function: noun / breakfast cereal Definition: A crisp, flaky, commercially prepared cold cereal made from coarse cornmeal. To be used as a breakfast food. Trademark: #73586717 (US) first used in commerce 12/22/1925 Milestones: 1860 Born in Battle Creek, Michigan 1894 Invented cereal flakes as a  healthy food 1990 started mail-order business called the Sanitas Food Company 1906 founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flakes Co., the world�s first ready-to-eat cereal co. 1930 founded the W. K. Kellogg Foundation 1951 Died in Battle Creek, Michigan CAPS: Kellogg, Kellogg's, Will Keith Kellogg, John Harvey Kellogg, Battle Creek Michigan, Sanitas Food Company, Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flakes Co., Kellogg Company, ARY, invention, cereal, corn flakes, Kellogg's' corn flakes, cornflakes, SIP, history, biography, inventor. The Story: Will Keith Kellogg, creator of the cereal company and the foundation that bears his name, led three professional "lives" while making his mark on Battle Creek, Michigan and the world. Born April 7, 1860, Will Keith Kellogg lacked a formal education beyond the sixth grade. When he died Oct. 6, 1951, at the age of 91, he had amassed a fortune and enriched the lives of people in his hometown, and millions of people around the world. The world-renowned benefactor and cereal industry leader began as a clerk at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, also known as the San. It was there, searching for a vegetarian diet for patients, that he discovered cereal flakes. His first job was as a stock-boy, followed by the life of a traveling broom salesman in his late teens. He finally went to work as a young man in the San, where his older brother, John Harvey Kellogg, was physician-in-chief. Will Kellogg was bookkeeper and manager of the world-famous hospital, which put virtually any task outside of medicine under his purview. For years he assisted his brother in research aimed at improving the vegetarian diet of the San's patients, especially the search for a digestible bread-substitute by the process of boiling wheat. They never achieved their basic purpose, but stumbled on a major dividend. In 1894, Will Kellogg accidentally left a pot of boiled wheat to stand and become tempered. When it was put through the usual rolling process, each grain of wheat emerged as a large, thin flake. Will persuaded his brother to serve the food in flake form, and it was an immediate favorite among the patients. Soon it was being packaged to meet hundreds of mail order requests from persons after they left the San. Because John Kellogg had little interest in such matters, his brother added another task to his long list of responsibilities: that of managing the burgeoning packaged food enterprise. Using his sense of economics, an understanding of marketing techniques and hard work Kellogg constantly increased production, advertising budgets and sales. He expanded his business to Australia in 1924, guided the cereal company through the Depression (he increased advertising while others cut back), and brought Kellogg's cereal into England in 1938. W. K.. Kellogg, who at 46 founded the Kellogg Company, was never comfortable with his riches. In the 1920s, when many captains of industry were building castle-sized summer "cottages" with 40-car garages, Kellogg lived a comparatively modest life. Even as a millionaire, he resided for years in a two-story stucco house on 256 West Van Buren Street in Battle Creek Michigan. As a father, he feared the pitfalls of unearned wealth. None of his children would ever become rich through inherited money. Explaining his tight rein on the family purse, Kellogg once wrote, "I want that my sons develop into conscientious and truthful men." As his wealth grew, Kellogg gave generously to charitable causes, many involving children. By establishing the Kellogg Foundation, W.K. Kellogg sought to focus his philanthropy. In 1934, W.K. Kellogg donated more than $66 million in Kellogg Company stock and other investments to establish the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Kellogg was fiercely competitive, but also quiet, reserved, somber—an introvert. Still, over the years, his support of charitable causes was enormous and varied. He became convinced that the most good could be accomplished by helping young people. So in 1925, he established the Fellowship Corporation. The Fellowship Corporation helped to build an agricultural school and a bird sanctuary, and to establish an experimental farm and a reforestation project. Kellogg also donated nearly $3 million to hometown causes, such as the Ann J. Kellogg School for handicapped children, a civic auditorium, a junior high school, and a youth recreation center. President Herbert Hoover named him a delegate at a White House Conference on Child Health and Protection. He returned from the conference determined to help. As a result, in June 1930, the W.K. Kellogg Child Welfare Foundation was born. A few months later, he broadened the focus of the charter, and renamed it the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Through his philanthropic work, Mr. Kellogg demonstrated great compassion and caring and acted on his belief that the most good came from helping people to help themselves--giving them the opportunity to do what is important to them. Kellogg worked at the Foundation until just before his death. His grave in Oak Hill Cemetery in Battle Creek is marked by a simple monument of stone. But his legacy lives on.  TO LEARN MORE

Hospital

What is Dionne Warwick's real first name?

Corn Flakes History - Invention of Kellpgg's Corn Flakes Fascinating facts about the invention of Kellogg's Corn Flakes by Will Keith Kellogg in 1894. KELLOGG'S� CORN FLAKES In 1894 Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was superintendent of a famous hospital and health spa in Battle Creek, Michigan. His younger brother, Will Keith Kellogg, was the business manager. The hospital stressed healthful living and kept its patients on a diet that eliminated caffeine, meat, alcohol, and tobacco. The brothers invented many foods that were made from grains, including a coffee substitute and a type of granola, which they forced through rollers and rolled into long sheets of dough. One day, after cooking some wheat, the men were called away. When they finally returned, the wheat had become stale. They decided to force the tempered grain through the rollers anyway. Surprisingly, the grain did not come out in long sheets of dough. Instead each wheat berry was flattened and came out as a thin flake. The brothers baked the flakes and were delighted with their new invention. They realized they had discovered a new and delicious cereal, but they had no way of knowing they had accidentally invented a whole new industry. Will Keith Kellogg eventually opened his own cereal business, and its most famous product is still sold today: It wasn’t until 1906 that Kellogg’s� Corn Flakes were made available to the general public. In 1909, the very first cereal premium was offered: The Funny Jungleland Moving Pictures Booklet available with the purchase of 2 packages. The offer was available for twenty-three years! TO LEARN MORE

i don't know

What's the first word of Richard Marx's Right Here Waiting For You?

RICHARD MARX - RIGHT HERE WAITING FOR YOU LYRICS Right Here Waiting For You Lyrics Richard Marx - Right Here Waiting For You Lyrics Oceans apart, day after day And I slowly go insane I hear your voice on the line But it doesn't stop the pain If I see you next to never But how can we say forever Wherever you go, whatever you do I will be right here waiting for you Whatever it takes or how my heart breaks I will be right here waiting for you I took for granted, all the times That I thought would last somehow I hear the laughter, I taste the tears But I can't get near you now Oh, can't you see it, baby You've got me goin' crazy Wherever you go, whatever you do I will be right here waiting for you Whatever it takes or how my heart breaks I will be right here waiting for you I wonder how we can survive This romance But in the end if I'm with you I'll take the chance Oh, can't you see it, baby You've got me goin' crazy Wherever you go, whatever you do I will be right here waiting for you Whatever it takes or how my heart breaks I will be right here waiting for you Waiting for you cannot get any better when it comes to expressing true love..... ;o) Miscellaneous Tracklist Embed Get the embed code <table class="songlyrics" style="width: 100%; table-layout: fixed;"><col width="40" /><col /><tbody><tr><th colspan="2">Richard Marx - Miscellaneous Album Lyrics</th></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">1.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/hold-on-to-the-night-lyrics/" title="Hold On To The Night Lyrics Richard Marx">Hold On To The Night</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">2.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/miami-2017-lyrics/" title="Miami 2017 Lyrics Richard Marx">Miami 2017</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">3.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/surrender-to-me-lyrics/" title="Surrender To Me Lyrics Richard Marx">Surrender To Me</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">4.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/thanks-to-you-lyrics/" title="Thanks To You Lyrics Richard Marx">Thanks To You</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">5.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/days-in-avalon-lyrics/" title="Days In Avalon Lyrics Richard Marx">Days In Avalon</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">6.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/shine-lyrics/" title="Shine Lyrics Richard Marx">Shine</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">7.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/someone-special-lyrics/" title="Someone Special Lyrics Richard Marx">Someone Special</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">8.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/power-of-you-and-me-lyrics/" title="Power Of You And Me Lyrics Richard Marx">Power Of You And Me</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">9.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/one-more-time-lyrics/" title="One More Time Lyrics Richard Marx">One More Time</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">10.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/waiting-on-your-love-lyrics/" title="Waiting On Your Love Lyrics Richard Marx">Waiting On Your Love</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">11.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/more-than-a-mystery-lyrics/" title="More Than A Mystery Lyrics Richard Marx">More Than A Mystery</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">12.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/boy-next-door-lyrics/" title="Boy Next Door Lyrics Richard Marx">Boy Next Door</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">13.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/too-early-to-be-over-lyrics/" title="Too Early To Be Over Lyrics Richard Marx">Too Early To Be Over</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">14.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/straight-from-the-heart-lyrics/" title="Straight From The Heart Lyrics Richard Marx">Straight From The Heart</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">15.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/nothing-you-can-do-about-it-lyrics/" title="Nothing You Can Do About It Lyrics Richard Marx">Nothing You Can Do About It</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">16.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/to-where-you-are-lyrics/" title="To Where You Are Lyrics Richard Marx">To Where You Are</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">17.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/another-heaven-lyrics/" title="Another Heaven Lyrics Richard Marx">Another Heaven</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">18.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/at-the-beginning-lyrics/" title="At The Beginning Lyrics Richard Marx">At The Beginning</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">19.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/beautiful-lyrics/" title="Beautiful Lyrics Richard Marx">Beautiful</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">20.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/breathless-lyrics/" title="Breathless Lyrics Richard Marx">Breathless</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">21.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/can-t-help-falling-in-love-lyrics/" title="Can't Help Falling In Love Lyrics Richard Marx">Can't Help Falling In Love</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">22.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/edge-of-a-broken-heart-lyrics/" title="Edge Of A Broken Heart Lyrics Richard Marx">Edge Of A Broken Heart</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">23.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/everyday-of-your-life-lyrics/" title="Everyday Of Your Life Lyrics Richard Marx">Everyday Of Your Life</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">24.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/hands-in-your-pockets-lyrics/" title="Hands In Your Pockets Lyrics Richard Marx">Hands In Your Pockets</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">25.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/haunt-me-tonight-lyrics/" title="Haunt Me Tonight Lyrics Richard Marx">Haunt Me Tonight</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">26.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/heart-of-my-own-lyrics/" title="Heart Of My Own Lyrics Richard Marx">Heart Of My Own</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">27.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/i-m-never-gonna-fall-in-love-again-lyrics/" title="I'm Never Gonna Fall In Love Again Lyrics Richard Marx">I'm Never Gonna Fall In Love Again</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">28.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/miracle-lyrics/" title="Miracle Lyrics Richard Marx">Miracle</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">29.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/now-forever-lyrics/" title="Now & Forever Lyrics Richard Marx">Now & Forever</a></td></tr><tr><td class="sl-td-left">30.</td><td class="sl-td-right"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx/remmember-manhattan-lyrics/" title="Remmember Manhattan Lyrics Richard Marx">Remmember Manhattan</a></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="sl-credit"><a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/richard-marx-lyrics/" title="Richard Marx Lyrics">Richard Marx Lyrics</a> provided by <a href="/" title="Lyrics">SongLyrics.com</a></p> Note: When you embed the widget in your site, it will match your site's styles (CSS). 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Ocean

"Who described a Hollywood studio set as, ""The biggest train set a boy ever had?"""

RICHARD MARX LYRICS - Right Here Waiting RICHARD MARX LYRICS Oceans apart day after day And I slowly go insane I hear your voice on the line But it doesn't stop the pain If I see you next to never How can we say forever Wherever you go I will be right here waiting for you Whatever it takes Or how my heart breaks I will be right here waiting for you I took for granted, all the times That I thought would last somehow I hear the laughter, I taste the tears But I can't get near you now Oh, can't you see it baby You've got me going crazy Wherever you go I will be right here waiting for you Whatever it takes Or how my heart breaks I will be right here waiting for you I wonder how we can survive This romance But in the end if I'm with you I'll take the chance Oh, can't you see it baby You've got me going crazy Wherever you go I will be right here waiting for you Whatever it takes Or how my heart breaks I will be right here waiting for you Waiting for you Visit www.azlyrics.com for these lyrics. Thanks to Gabbie, Net, Cherokee for correcting these lyrics.

i don't know

On which special day did Charlie Chaplin die in 1977?

Charlie Chaplin Dead at 88; Made the Film an Art Form Charlie Chaplin Dead at 88; Made the Film an Art Form By BOSLEY CROWTHER harlie Chaplin, the poignant little tramp with the cane and comic walk who almost single-handedly elevated the novelty entertainment medium of motion pictures into art, died peacefully yesterday at his home in Switzerland. He was 88 years old. Sir Charles -- he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1975 -- died at 4 A.M., a few hours before his family's traditional Christmas celebration was to begin. His wife, Oona, daughter of the playwright Eugene O'Neill, and seven of their children were at the bedside when the comedian died. A daughter, the actress Geraldine Chaplin, was in Madrid making a film, but left immediately to join her family at the Chaplin home at Corsiersur-Vevey, a village near the eastern tip of the Lake of Geneva. "All the presents were under the tree," Lady Chaplin told a caller, adding, "Charlie gave so much happiness and, although he had been ill for a long time, it is so sad that he should have passed away on Christmas day." "He died of old age," said Dr. Henri Perrier, the Chaplin family physician. "His death was peaceful and calm." A source close to the family said Sir Charles had been given oxygen because of breathing trouble in recent days. In a statement, Lady Chaplin said the funeral would be private and restricted to the immediate family. A family spokesman said the funeral might be held in England but that burial would probably be in Switzerland, Sir Charles's home since his self-imposed exile from the United States in 1952. Sir Charles had been in failing health for many years. He was confined to a wheelchair and his speech, hearing and sight were impaired. During the last year, he left his secluded 20-room villa only for an occasional drive into Vevey with his wife. Local people caught an occasional glimpse of the famous actor waiting in his blue-and-silver Rolls- Royce while his wife, 35 year his junior, purchased English newspapers and magazines, which she read to him later. His last public appearance took place last fall when he attended a circus performance in Vevey. He wore a soft hat pulled down over his forehead and thick-lensed glasses that hid most of his face. He shook hands with one of the clowns at the end of the performance. No motion picture actor so captured and enthralled the world as did Charles Spencer Chaplin, a London ragamuffin who became an immortal artist for his deft and effective humanization of man's tragicomic conflicts with fate. In more than 80 movies from 1914 to 1967, he either portrayed or elaborated (he was a writer and director as well as an actor) the theme of the little fellow capriciously knocked about by life, but not so utterly battered that he did not pick himself up in the hope that the next encounter would turn out better. His harassed but gallant Everyman was the Little Tramp, part clown, part social outcast, part philosopher. He was "forever seeking romance, but his feet won't let him," Chaplin once explained, indicating that romance connoted not so much courtship as the fulfillment of fancy. Stumble Chaplin's Everyman might, but he always managed to maintain his dignity and self-respect. Moreover, he sometimes felled a Goliath through superb agility, a little bit of luck and a touch of pluck. There was pathos to the Little Tramp, yet he really did not want to be pitied. The essence of Chaplin's humor was satire, sometimes subtle as in "The Kid" and "The Gold Rush," sometimes acerbic as in "The Great Dictator" and "Monsieur Verdoux." "The human race I prefer to think of as the underworld of the gods," he said. "When the gods go slumming they visit the earth." And what they saw mostly was uncelestial folly. In ridiculing that folly Chaplin displayed a basic affection for the human race. He was serious and funny at the same time, and it was this blend of attitudes that elevated his comedy beyond film slapstick into the realm of artistry. Rebounding From Adversity A serious theme in "The Gold Rush," for example, is man's inhumanity to man. The comedy arises from the hero's adversity, illustrated by his boiling and eating of his shoe with the �clat of a gourmet. The element of contrast exemplified by that scene was at the root of Chaplin's comedy. This sense of comedy tickled the fancy of millions in the United States for half a century, despite some notoriety that came to Chaplin through marital and political misadventures. The Little Tramp, the comedy character that lifted its creator to enduring fame, was neatly accoutered in baggy trousers, outsize shoes, an undersize derby redolent of decayed gentility, a frayed short cutaway and a sport bamboo cane. A jet black mustache completed the costume. What made it all fit together was that it complemented Chaplin's slight stature-- he was 5 feet 4 inches tall -- and his slimness -- he weight about 130 in his prime years. Although Chaplin often suggested that the costume was a studied contrivance, the fact seems to be that it was arrived at by accident in 1914 when he was breaking into films with Mack Sennett. Sennett, famous for his Keystone Kops and other comic shorts, sent Chaplin to Venice, Calif., to make a bit of film eventually called "Kid Auto Races at Venice." He was told to wear something funny, and he assembled, on a grab-bag basis from other members of the company, pants belonging to Fatty Arbuckle, size 14 shoes each placed on the wrong foot, a tight coat, a colleague's derby, a prop cane and a false mustache that he cut down to fit his face. The splayed shuffle was a touch made up on the spur of the moment. With a few exceptions Chaplin used the costume for about 25 years, and it was his symbol for a lifetime. The artistry with which it was employed, of course, evolved, so that the Little Tramp of "Modern Times" was a far more complex character than that in "Kid Auto Races at Venice." The explanation for this was the meticulousness with which Chaplin studied the structure of comedy. Desiring to make audiences laugh, he analyzed the ingredients of his approach to comedy and each scene that went into the whole. 'Desperately Serious' "All my pictures are built around the idea of getting me into trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman," he wrote early in his Hollywood career, adding: "That is why, no matter how desperate the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening by derby hat, and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head." One of Chaplin's basic routines had to do with dignity. "Even funnier than the man who has been made ridiculous is the man who, having had something funny happen to him, refuses to admit that anything out of the way has happened, and attempts to maintain his dignity," he wrote in 1918. He continued: "I am so sure of this point that I not only try to get myself into embarrassing situations, but I also incriminate the other characters in the picture. When I do this, I always aim for economy of means. By that I mean that when one incident can get two big, separate laughs, it is much better than two individual incidents. Achieved Artistic Control "In 'The Adventurer' I accomplished this by first placing myself on a balcony, eating ice cream with a girl. On the floor directly underneath the balcony I put a stout, dignified, well-dressed woman at a table. Then, while eating the ice cream, I let a piece drop off my spoon, slip through my baggy trousers and drop from the balcony onto this woman's neck. "The first laugh came at my embarrassment over my own predicament. The second, and the much greater one, came when the ice cream landed on the woman's neck and she shrieked and started to dance around. Only one incident had been used, but it had got two people into trouble, and had also got two big laughs. "Simple as this tricks seems, there were two real points of human nature involved in it. One was the delight the average person takes in seeing wealth and luxury in trouble. The other was the tendency of the human being to experience within himself the emotions he sees on the stage or screen." In his early days in Hollywood Chaplin had little to say about how his movies were constructed or filmed. Later, though, he achieved artistic control, and he took infinite pains in perfecting each scene, often shooting hundreds of feet of film for a few minutes of final screen action. "With only a rudimentary idea in his head he concocted the story as he went along," Theodore Huff wrote in "The Literature of Cinema." "Some pictures changed completely in the course of production. He improvised a scene or a series of gags, then discussed the results the next day in the projection room. A bit might be used or all of it might be reshot; or the whole project might be scrapped and some other idea substituted. . . . In 'City Lights' the meeting of the blind flower girl and the tramp took months before the variation that satisfied Chaplin was reached." A Train of Possibilities Some of Chaplin's best comic situations resulted from his keen-eyed observation of life around him. "I watch people inside a theater to see when they laugh, I watch them everywhere to get material which they can laugh at," he explained. "I was passing a firehouse one day," he went on, "and heard a fire alarm ring. I watched the men sliding down a pole, climbing onto the engine and rushing off to a fire. "At once a train of comic possibilities occurred to me. I saw myself sleeping in bed, oblivious to the clanging of the fire bell. This point would have universal appeal, because everyone likes to sleep. I saw myself sliding down the pole, playing tricks with the fire horses, rescuing my heroine, falling off the fire engine as it turned a corner, and many other points along the same lines. "I stored these points away in my mind and some time later, when I made "'The Fireman,'" I used every one of them. "Another time, I went up and down a moving staircase in a department store. I got to thinking how this could be utilized for a picture, and I finally made it the basis for 'The Floorwalker.' "Watching a prize fight suggested 'The Champion,' in which I, the small man, knocked out a big bruiser by having a horseshoe concealed in my glove." Added to Chaplin's talent for perceiving the comic potential in everyday occurrences was his skill at using contrast. "Contrast spells interest," he once remarked. "If I am being chased by a policeman, I always make the policeman seem heavy and clumsy while, by crawling through his legs, I appear light and acrobatic. If I am being treated harshly, it is always a big man who is doing it; so that, by the contrast between the big and the little, I get the sympathy of the audience, and always I try to contrast my seriousness of manner with the ridiculousness of the incident." Entering motion pictures in what was virtually the medium's infancy-- before the advent of feature-length films and, of course, sound-- Chaplin was obliged to rely on situational comedy and on pantomime, the use of mute gestures and facial expressions to convey motion. Transcending linguistic barriers, this form of body language permitted the actor to be readily understood by peoples everywhere. Affection and Adulation "I am known in parts of the world by people who have never heard of Jesus Christ," Chaplin said matter-of-factly early in his career. Indeed, after only two years on the screen, "he was unquestionably the top figure in the motion picture industry," according to Mr. Huff. Audience demand for his pictures was phenomenal. For example, one New York theater played his films continuously from 1914 to 1923, stopping only because the building burned down. By 1917 world-renowned performers visited his studios-- Ignace Paderewski, Leopold Godowsky, Nellie Melba, Harry Lauder. When the Nijinsky ballet played Los Angeles, its dancers spotted Chaplin in the audience and halted the show for a half hour while they embraced him. His popularity at the box office won him a $1-million contract -- a stupendous sum in 1917 -- for eight pictures over 18 months. Some notion of the adulation of the actor may be inferred from the response to his bond tours in World War I-- crowds of 30,000 in New York, 65,000 in Washington, 40,000 in New Orleans. Going to Europe in 1921 -- "The Tramp," "Shoulder Arms" and other of his classics had, of course preceded him-- Chaplin was mobbed in London and Paris. The latter city declared a public holiday for the premiere of "The Kid." Few men in this century in any field attained his stature with the public "Charlie," "Charlot," his first name in any language bespoke affection amounting to idolatry. At the same time, Chaplin widened his intellectual and social world, meeting and becoming friendly with Max Eastman, the radical writer; Upton Sinclair, the Socialist novelist, James M. Barrie, the British playwright; H.G. Wells, the British writer; Waldo Frank, the novelist and critic; Georges Carpentier, the boxer, and St. John Irvine, the British dramatist. Throughout his life, he enjoyed the shuttlecock of wits with bright and learned men and women. With his success, he was taken up by society figures-- Mrs. W.K. Vanderbilt, Elsie de Wolfe, Princess Xenia of Greece and hundreds of others. Although Chaplin was not generally accounted vain, he was impressed, as the latter portion of "My Autobiography" attests. Written after his forced absence from the United States and in perhaps an understandable mood of irritation, the book concludes with accounts of his reception in Europe after 1952 by socially and governmentally prestigious people, in whose attentions he basked. Other comic actors of the silent or early-sound era-- Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, Harold Lloyd and W.C. Fields-- also enjoyed acclaim and their pictures were often revived; but none, with the possible exceptions of Fields, created a genre. Even the Marx Brothers, in the opinion of many critics, could not rival Chaplin in creativity and fertility. One explanation was that Chaplin's command of pictures after 1917 was complete. He was the author, star, producer, director and chief cutter. Moreover, as Huff's book noted: "He himself played every character in every one of his pictures, to show the actors, men and women, exactly how he wanted them to do a character or a scene. And he accompanied each actor's miming with a running commentary of suggestions, criticism or encouragement." In one film, "The Great Dictator," he served as hairdresser in the belief that he could do a better job than a professional coiffeur of arranging Paulette Goddard's hair to resemble a scrub-woman's. This impulse to perfectionism, costly in terms of time and film exposed, caused Chaplin many moments of anxiety, and self-doubt. His usual solution was to spend a couple of days in bed working through his problem. Exuberance From Confidence Over all, however, Chaplin possessed an egotism that did not admit of defeat. "You have to believe in yourself,"-- that's the secret" he once advised his son Charles Jr. "I had that exuberance that comes from utter confidence in yourself." Even as a London waif "I thought of myself as the greatest actor in the world," he recalled. Born April 16, 1889, in south London, Charles Spencer Chaplin was the son of a vaudevillian and a music hall soubrette, whose stage name was Lily Harley. By an earlier union, Chaplin's mother, Hannah, had a son, Sydney, four years the actor's senior. Sydney was to become his half-brother's business manager. The elder Chaplin was a heavy drinker. "I was hardly aware of a father, and do not remember him living with us," Chaplin wrote. The couple separated shortly after he was born, and for a time Mrs. Chaplin was able to support herself. But her voice lost its quality, and "it was owing to her vocal condition that at the age of 5 I made my first appearance on the stage." "I remember standing in the wings when mother's voice cracked and went into a whisper," her son recalled. "The audience began to laugh and sing falsetto and to make catcalls. It was all vague and I did not quite understand what was going on. But the noise increased until mother was obliged to walk off the stage. When she came into the wings she was very upset and argued with the stage manager who, having seen me perform before mother's friends, said something about letting me go on in her place. Captivated His Audience "And in the turmoil I remember him leading me by the hand and, after a few explanatory words to the audience, leaving me on the stage alone. And before a glare of footlights and faces in the smoke, I started to sing, accompanied by the orchestra, which fiddled about until it found my key." The lad captivated his audience, especially when "in all innocence I imitated mother's voice cracking," and he was greeted by laughter and cheers and applause. Very shortly, however, Mrs. Chaplin's fortunes dwindles, and she and the two children were obliged to enter the Lambeth workhouse. Then the boys were dispatched to an orphanage outside London. "Although we were well looked after, it was a forlorn existence," Chaplin wrote of those years. The institution practiced flogging, and at the age of 7 he received a severe caning. Moreover, for suspected ringworm, his head was shaved and iodined, and he was put in an isolation ward. Sydney went off to sea for a while and young Charles passed through a succession of workhouses. Meantime, Mrs. Chaplin was committed briefly as insane. When she was released, the small family again lived in penury, relieved slightly when Charles joined a troupe of clog dancers. He never forgot his days of poverty and the struggle for the necessities of life. Nor, when he was wealthy and famous, did he neglect his mother, seeing to it that she was well cared for in her eventual emotional breakdown. Finally, he took her to California, where she died. Clog dancing lasted only briefly, followed by weeks and months of catch-as-catch-can existence. "I (was) newsvender, printer, toymaker, doctor's boy, etc., but during these occupational digressions, I never lost sight of my ultimate aim to become an actor," Chaplin recalled. "So, between jobs I would polish my shoes, brush my clothes, put on a clean collar and make periodic calls at a theatrical agency." At 12-- his persistence was rewarded, and he received a small stage part, then toured the provinces as Billy in William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes." Later, he played the part with Mr. Gillette in London, receiving favorable notices. An awkward age followed, however, in which he received several burlesque bookings. Then came a substantial run in "Casey's Court Circus," in which he impersonated a patent-medicine faker. Switch to Pantomime In this engagement, according to the Huff biography, Chaplin decided to become a comedian. He also learned the unimportance of the spoken word. "Once, while playing in the Channel Islands," Mr. Huff wrote, "he found that his jokes were not getting over because the natives knew little English. He resorted to pantomime and got the desired laughs." His success landed him a job with the Fred Karno Company. "With Karno he learned the hard way, traveling all over Britain and going twice to America," according to John Montgomery, a writer on films. "The repertory was varied; there were sketches about drunks, thieves, family relations, billiards champions, boxers, Turkish baths, policemen, singers who prepared to sing but somehow never started, conjurors who spoiled their own tricks and pianists who lost the music . . . a wide various of subjects, mixed with a little honest vulgarity." The Karno troupe was Chaplin's polishing school, for it taught him the rich lessons of his trade by which the actor makes an audience laugh. In 1913, Mack Sennett, then the producer of short film comedies for an insatiable public, signed the actor for $150 a week. "I hated to leave the troupe," he recalled. "How did I know that pictures were going to be a successful medium for pantomime? Suppose I didn't make good?" Nevertheless, he joined Sennett in Los Angeles, and made his debut in "Making a Living," a one-reeler that appeared in 1914. In those early Sennett comedies, there was no scenario. "We get an idea, then follow the natural sequence of events until it leads up to a chase, which is the essence of our comedy," Sennett explained. Chaplin changed that by adopting an identifiable character -- the Little Tramp -- which allowed the public to single him out from other comedians. 35 Sennett Films In his year with Sennett, Chaplin played in 35 films, including "Tillie's Punctured Romance," a six-reeler that also starred Marie Dressler and Mabel Normand. It was the screen's first feature-length comedy, and it is occasionally shown today in various cut-up versions. Others of the Keystone, or Sennett, films have been mutilated or rearranged, according to the Huff book, which notes, "Rarely does one come across an unmutilated Keystone original." The originals of these films were shown around the world and they inspired such songs as "When the Moon Shines Bright on Charlie Chaplin." The renown they brought to Chaplin enabled him to shift to the Essanay Company for the then grand sum of $1,250 a week. For Essanay he made 14 films in 1915, including "The Tramp," his first generally recognized classic and the first in which he introduced a note of pathos. In the picture, Chaplin, a tramp, saves a farmer's daughter, played by Edna Purviance, from a robber gang, for which he is rewarded with a job on the farm. Routing the gang again, he is shot in the leg and nursed by the daughter. The tramp's happiness is unbounded until the girl's sweetheart arrives. Realizing his fate, the tramp scribbles a farewell and departs. In the fadeout, Chaplin's back is to the camera. He walks dejectedly down a long road. Then he pauses, shrugs his shoulders, flips his heels and continues jauntily toward the horizon. Several variations on this theme were used in later Chaplin films, notably in "Limelight." After his Essanay period Chaplin went to the Mutual Company for $670,000 a year. He was 26, three years out of vaudeville and perhaps the world's highest paid performer. The sudden advent of wealth had little immediate effect on its life-style. When he signed his Mutual contract he remarked, "Well, I've got this much if they never give me another cent-- guess I'll go and buy a whole dozen ties." He was living at the time in a small hotel room and he kept away from Hollywood parties, preferring to roam at might through Los Angeles's poorer quarters. Shortly, however, he moved to larger quarters, hired a secretary, bought a Locomobile and acquired Toraichi Kono, a combination valet, bodyguard and chauffeur. Kono, as he was generally called, remained with the actor for about 20 years, serving as the keeper of his privacy. Fortune in the Millions In time Chaplin grew passionately attached to money. Although he was not a tightwad, neither was he a conspicuous spender, save on his own comfort. In the end, his fortune was in the millions. And he insisted toward the close of his life that he had been actuated all along by money. "I went into the business for money, and the art grew out of it," he said. "If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can't help it. It's the truth." However, those who were close to Chaplin in his early film years were impressed by his painstaking search for artistry. In doing the two-reel "The Immigrant," in 1917, for instance, he shot 90,000 feet of film to obtain the 1,809 feet of the finished picture. His dozen Mutual films were all two-reelers. They included some ranked among his best-- "The Floorwalker," "The Fireman," "The Vagabond" and "Easy Street." The negatives were not preserved, and the worn and duplicated prints that are sometimes shown at "Chaplin festivals," according to critics, bear only slight relationship to the quality of the original films. His Own Producer When the Mutual contract was up, Chaplin went to First National for $1-million for eight pictures over 18 months. For the first time he was his own producer in his own studio. Actually he made nine pictures over five years and these included some of his greatest achievements-- "A Dog's Life," "Shoulder Arms" and "The Kid." Sparing of caricature, "A Dog's Life" derives its humor from the parallels between a dog's existence and that of a vagabond. "Shoulder Arms" is Everyman at war, and, according to Jean Cocteau, "It moves like a drumroll." For "The Kid," Chaplin employed Jackie Coogan, a 5-year-old with mischievous brown eyes. Hailed as "a picture with a smile -- perhaps a tear," the movie was a chapter out of Chaplin's own slum life. It contains little horseplay and much emotional intensity. Coogan's tears were real, induced by the sad stories Chaplin spun for him at necessary moments. Marriages and Divorces During the preparation of "The Kid" for release, Chaplin was embroiled in the first of several marital and extra-marital episodes that were to plague him. Good-looking and attractive to women, he was involved in a score or more of alliances, many with glamorous actresses, but these were usually discreetly handled. Not so with his first two marriages. In 1918, when the actor was 29, he abruptly married 16-year-old Mildred Harris. They were divorced two years later in a fanfare of publicity. Four years afterward he married Lolita McMurry, also 16, whose stage name was Lita Grey. She was ensconced in her husband's 40-room mansion, from which Chaplin soon fled. Two children, Charles Jr. and Sydney, were born of the union, which ended in 1927 after a sensational divorce case, in the course of which Chaplin pictures were barred in some states at the urging of women's clubs. The actor's third wife was Pauline Levy, a chorus girl whose film name was Paulette Goddard. The two met in 1931, when Miss Goddard was 20, and according to Chaplin, were married in 1936. They were divorced in 1942 without public fuss. Meantime, in 1941, the actor met Joan Berry, a 21-year-old aspiring actress known as Joan Barry. She later charged that he was the father of her daughter, and Chaplin was once again the subject of lurid headlines. He was indicted for allegedly taking Miss Barry across state lines for immoral purposes, but this charge was dropped and he was acquitted of three related accusations. Miss Barry, however, filed a paternity suit, in which blood tests demonstrated that Chaplin was not her child's father. Nonetheless, a jury found against him and he was ordered to support the infant. In the midst of these troubles in 1943, Chaplin, then 54, married 18-year-old Oona O'Neill, the playwright's daughter, over her father's vigorous objections. Their marriage proved happy and lasting, and it produced eight children. Chaplin's later films were made for United Artists, a company he founded in 1919 with three Hollywood friends, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and David Wark Griffith. Chaplin's initial picture for this concern was "A Woman of Paris," a comedy of manners that he produced and directed without starring in it. Considered a milestone in screen history for its influence on movie style, it was based in part on the life of Peggy Hopkins Joyce, briefly Chaplin's mistress, and it stressed social sophistication. In it Adolphe Menjou made his debut as a suave philanderer. "The Gold Rush" -- "the picture I want to be remembered by," Chaplin said -- came out in 1925 and it once again confirmed his hold on the public. It has been frequently revived and much analyzed. Less successful with the critics was "The Circus," which opened in 1928. It seemed to lack the feeling of "The Gold Rush," and its comedy twists were short on flair. Its shortcomings, however, appeared less evident in revivals. Starting work on "City Lights" in 1928, the actor faced a crisis in the advent of talkies. He was fearful that spoken dialogue would impair the character of The Tramp, cause difficulties in his reliance on pantomime and cut into foreign sales. Moreover, many of Chaplin's effects had been achieved by undercranking the camera, a feat impossible at the set speed of a motordrive sound camera. After some thought, Chaplin decided to defy the new technology, and "City Lights" was produced as a silent picture with a musical score. The story of the blind flower girl, played by Virginia Cherrill, used more than 800,000 feet of film over two years. The tragicomedy was an enormous triumph when it opened in 1931, and outgrossed many slick sound films in revivals over the last 40 years. Many critics rank "City Lights" as among Chaplin's greatest creations. Reputation as Radical The picture's appeal was one factor in Chaplin's conquering tour of Europe and the Orient-- a whirl of meetings with statesmen, writers, artists and celebrities. Returning to Hollywood, he embarked upon "Modern Times," a satire on mass production, which at the time gave the actor a reputation as a radical. "It [the picture] started from an abstract idea, an impulse to say something about the way life is being standardized and channelized, men turned into machines-- and the way I felt about it," he said of his witty social parable. The Little Tramp disappeared with "Modern Times," and with "The Great Dictator" Chaplin joined the sound-picture ranks. A ferocious ridicule of Hitler and Mussolini, the film has grown in stature over the years as its political implications have been, according to critics, more fully realized. "I want to see the return of decency and kindness," Chaplin said at the time. "I'm just a human being who wants to see this country a real democracy . . ." Despite "The Great Dictator," the nineteen-forties were difficult years for Chaplin. His private life provided a headline festival for the tabloid press; he was vexed by income tax trouble; his wartime speeches calling for a Western second front to crush Hitler irked many conservatives; and "Monsieur Verdoux" did poorly at the box office. This fugue of troubles was intensified by the advent of the cold war. The actor came under fire for introducing Henry A. Wallace at a rally and for protesting the deportation of Hanns Eisler, the composer and a onetime Communist. Westbrook Pegler, the columnist, denounced him, and Representative John E. Rankin, a right-wing legislator from Mississippi, demanded his deportation. Chaplin's life "is detrimental to the moral fabric of America," Mr. Rankin asserted, urging that he be kept "off the American screen and his loathsome pictures be kept from the eyes of American youth." Finally, in 1952, the actor, a British subject, was virtually exiled by the United States. While he was sailing to Britain on vacation, the Attorney General announced that he could not re-enter the country unless he could prove his "moral worth." Piqued, Chaplin spent the rest of his life in Europe, settling on a 38-acre estate at Vevey, Switzerland. A Special Academy Award In 1972, however, amends of a sort were made to Chaplin. He visited the United States to receive a special Oscar from the Motion Picture Academy and to accept accolades in New York. By this time the once-bubbling actor had aged into senility. He could do little more than bow and smile in response to expressions of affection for him and his art. Meantime, critical opinion vindicated Chaplin's belief that "Verdoux" was a brilliant picture. Its satire of a business and war-minded world was more appreciated in the context of opinion in the 1960's and 70's than it had been in the late 40's. Apart from "Limelight," Chaplin's final films-- "The King in New York" and "A Countess From Hong Kong"-- were accounted by many critics as lesser works. In his declining years Chaplin looked back with happiness on his early days in the movies at Keystone and Essanay. "I was able to try anything in those days," he said. "I was free."

Christmas

In Mork and Mindy, what was the Orkan phrase for 'Goodbye'?

BBC ON THIS DAY | 17 | 1978: Charlie Chaplin's stolen body found About This Site | Text Only 1978: Charlie Chaplin's stolen body found The coffin containing the body of Charlie Chaplin - missing since his grave was robbed 11 weeks ago - has been found. It was dug up from a field about a mile away from the Chaplin home in Corsier near Lausanne, Switzerland. The legendary comedian died on Christmas Day last year, aged 88. He was buried two days later in the village of Corsier in the hills above Lake Geneva. Charlie would have thought it ridiculous Lady Oona Chaplin Swiss police have arrested two men - a Pole aged 24 and a Bulgarian aged 38 - and say they have confessed to stealing the coffin and reburying it. Names of the accused have not been released, but police say they are both motor mechanics. They were traced after police kept a watch on 200 phone kiosks and tapped the Chaplins' phone after the family received ransom demands of �400,000 for return of the body after it went missing in March. Sir Charles' 51-year-old widow, Lady Oona Chaplin, refused to pay up saying: "Charlie would have thought it ridiculous." In further calls the kidnappers made threats to harm her two youngest children. Hollywood rumours The family kept silent about the ransom demands and various rumours circulated about the missing coffin. One Hollywood report suggested it had been dug up because Sir Charles was a Jew buried in a gentile cemetery. Lady Chaplin, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill inherited about �12m after the death of her husband. The couple and their eight children have been living in Lausanne since 1952. A spokesman for the Chaplins said: "The family is very happy and relieved that this ordeal is over." Superintendent Gabriel Cettou, the head of the Geneva police, said the two men would be charged with attempted extortion and disturbing the peace of the dead.

i don't know

Amilcar Cabral international airport is in which country?

A-Z World Airports Online - Cape Verde airports - Amilcar Cabral International Airport (SID/GVAC) Amilcar Cabral International Airport (SID/GVAC) Sal Airport, Cape Verde, PO Box 58, Espargos, Sal Island, Cape Verde Sal Airport, Cape Verde, Airport Administration, Espargos, Sal Island, Cape Verde Tel: +238 241 1394, +238 241 1468, +238 241 1135, +238 241 1309 Tel: (Operations) +238 241 1372 Fax: (Pres Board Directors) +238 241 1570 Fax: (Finance and Planning) +238 241 1323 email: Managing Director: Americo Medina +238 00 238 991 9363 Operations Director: Paulino Brito Cargo Manager: Nidia Spencer Lima Air Traffic Controller: Jose Cabral Security Manager: João Monteiro +238 00 238 991 2804 Operator: ASA S.A Airport Data: International, Espargos 2km (1mile), Position 16°44´29"N, 022°56´58"W, Elevation 54m (177ft), 24 hours, 1 Passenger Terminal, 1 Cargo Terminal, 5 Aircraft Stands Customs Tel: +238 241 1222 Fax: +238 241 1222 Espargos Customs Director: Joao Teixeira Traffic Airfield Data: 2 Runways, Fire Category 9 Emergency Services: SOSS Noise Restrictions: None Aircraft Maintenance: Minor Repairs Runway 1: Heading 01/19, 3 272m (10 734ft), PCN 58/F/A/W/T, ICAO Cat. E, Aircraft size max: B747, Lighting: Approach CAT II, PAPI Runway 2: Heading 07/25, 1 500m (4 921ft), PCN 58/F/A/W/T, ICAO Cat. C, Aircraft size max: B747, No Lighting Cargo Facilities: Capacity 4 020tonnes (8 862,000lbs), Bonded Warehouse, Transit Zone, Domestic Cargo Only, Free Port/Foreign Trade Zone, Mechanical Handling, Refrigerated Storage, Deep Freeze Storage, Fresh Meat Inspection, Health Officials, X-Ray Equipment, Express/Courier Centre, Handling Equipment: 7 loaders, 8 goods-lifts Passenger Facilities: 9 check-in desks, 4 gates, 1 baggage claim belt, short term parking spaces, long term parking spaces, Min. Connection Times Intl-Intl: 60mins, Dom-Intl: 60mins, Dom-Dom: 30mins, Post Office, Bank, Auto Exchange Machine, Restaurants, Cafeterias, Bars, VIP Lounge, Duty Free Shop, Newsagent/Tobacconist, Gift Shop, Travel Agent, Tourist Help Desk, Car Rental, Taxi Service/Rank, First Aid Branch Offices -

Cape Verde

In 1993, Michael Jackson give his first TV interview in 14 years with which talk show presenter?

Amílcar Cabral International Airport (SID) Europe America Asia Africa Australia Oceania Amílcar Cabral International Airport (SID) The Amílcar Cabral is one of 6 airports with scheduled flights in Cape Verde. However Amílcar Cabral one of the smaller airports in the country. The next passenger airport by size in Cape Verde is Praia International Airport .

i don't know

Where is the University of Delaware located?

Location | English Language Institute Request an Appointment (for students only) Location The University of Delaware is located in Newark, Delaware, a quiet, safe, and friendly college town of 30,000 people. Newark is two hours by car or train from Washington, DC and New York City (170 km) and one hour from Philadelphia and Baltimore (80 km). Nearby recreational areas on the Atlantic Ocean and in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania offer students a variety of summer and winter activities.

Newark

Which composer was born on exactly the same day as TV evangelist Pat Robertson?

University of Delaware - Newark | Tickets, Schedule, Seating Chart, Directions University of Delaware University of Delaware; Routes 4 and 896, Newark, DE  19716 Venue Information & Seating Charts Close Placeholder This list is subject to change. Also, this list does not necessarily reflect performance order at the event. University of Delaware Tickets University of Delaware; Routes 4 and 896,  Newark,  DE  19716   Favorite Added You're in the loop for University of Delaware! We'll email you the monthly calendar along with special offers. Have more than just one favorite venue? Let My Ticketmaster keep track of all of them for you. Do more, see more with My Ticketmaster . Do more, see more with My Ticketmaster .   Add to Favorites Get email alerts and never miss your favorite events at University of Delaware. Error: please enter your e-mail address.  Error: that is not a valid e-mail address format. Please try again.  Error: please enter your zip code.  Error: this zip/postal code entered is invalid. Please try again.  Error: you are currently registered for a different area. To change your area, please visit My Account and update your Profile. E-mail: University of Delaware Tickets and Event Dates Loading... There are no events currently scheduled at this venue. Venue Information The Preferred Hotel of Ticketmaster Where to Stay There are 20 hotels within 30 miles of this venue. 1 Venue Details Directions From the North: Take I-95 South to exit 1-B and go north on route 896. Facility is 1/2 mile ahead on right. From South: Take I-95 to exit 1-B follow 896 North. Bob Carpenter Center is 1/2mile ahead on right. For maps and detailed directions, please visit us at www.udel.edu/cfa Parking Public Transportation Dart bus and train service. Information and costs can be obtained as follows: ww/dartfirstate.com; Telephone 1 800 652 DART; 1 800 553 DART and ADA 1 800 553 DART Box Office Numbers Cash, check, VISA, Mastercard, American Express, Discover. Will Call At main box office, located on west side of building facing route 896. Opens one hour prior to event. Customer needs to present purchasing credit card,confirmation number and photo I.D.: Football 4 hours prior to kickoff. Basketball 2 hours prior to kickoff.All other events 1 hour prior to performance. Accessible Seating This is an accessible venue. Accessible seating available through Box Office only. Call (302) 831-4012. General Rules No audio or visual cameras. NO SMOKING. No outside food or drink. NO ALCOHOL. Children Rules All partons must have a ticket to enter event regardless of age. Miscellaneous Arena seating is made up of chairs and bleachers. refer to map or call Box Office with questions. Concessions available: Hot dogs, Pizza, Nachos, Popcorn, pretzels, candy, soda, NO ALCOHOL. CASH ONLY.This information is in regards to the Bob Carpenter Center. Restaurants nearby include: McDonald's Colby's First State Diner, TGIFridays and Boston Market. List of hotels nearby: SleepInn, Embassy Suites, Best Western, Days Inn, Fairfield Inn by Marriott, Christiana Hilton, Holiday Inn, Howard Johnson, McIntosh Inn, Residence Inn and Comfort Suites. Our Network

i don't know

Who was the last undisputed boxing world heavyweight champion before Mike Tyson?

Mike Tyson and 5 Other Heavyweights Who Carried on for Too Long | Bleacher Report Mike Tyson and 5 Other Heavyweights Who Carried on for Too Long By Rob Lancaster , Featured Columnist Jun 11, 2015 Use your ← → (arrow) keys to browse the slideshow SUSAN WALSH/Associated Press Comments Mike Tyson was given the nickname "The Baddest Man on the Planet" for a reason. In his prime, he was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. He won his first 37 professional fights, the vast majority of them inside the distance. He was a fearsome puncher, but the one opponent Iron Mike couldn't beat was Father Time. Financial problems (Tyson had to file for bankruptcy ) forced him to carry on his career when he was well past his peak, leading to defeats that tarnished both his record and reputation. On June 11, 2005, the American quit on his stool against Kevin McBride. It was the end of the line—he retired after his 58th fight, a shadow of the man who had once dominated the division. However, Tyson is not the only heavyweight who opted to keep extending their careers beyond their expiry date.  Here we look at five big men who, like Tyson, carried on boxing when their best years were behind them. (Warning: The above video contains profanity). Evander Holyfield was an undisputed champion at cruiserweight before making the move up. As a heavyweight he was just as dominant, at one stage holding the IBF, WBA and WBC titles. He registered two wins over Mike Tyson, albeit the second of them came about due to a disqualification after he had been bitten by his rival. However, an ageing Holyfield was well over the hill by the time he was beaten by former middleweight world champion James Toney (more on him to come) in 2003. The problem was, though, that the Real Deal needed to keep going for financial reasons. He lost nearly all of his earnings, telling Martha Kelner of the Daily Mail: "You make a lot of money but you don’t know how money works, you don’t know how to calculate. I gave more than I should have. I gave, gave, gave. People talk you into doing things that you’re not accustomed to doing." Carrying on to cover maintenance payments for his 11 children, Holyfield fought until he was 48 years old. He actually finished with a win, beating Brian Nielsen in Denmark, meaning his final record stood at 44-10-2 with one no-contest. Tweet James Toney started out at middleweight but worked his way all the way up to the top division. Lights Out had appeared to follow in the footsteps of Bob Fitzsimmons and long-time rival Roy Jones Jr. in moving through the ranks to win a world title at heavyweight. However, his victory over John Ruiz for the WBA title was later changed to a no-contest by the New York State Athletic Commission after Toney tested positive for a banned substance. He returned after a 90-day ban but defeats began to pile up. There were two in a row to Samuel Peter, while a trip to Russia to take on Denis Lebedev saw him shut out on the scorecards. Toney carried on fighting until 2013, his last appearance coming as a contestant in the Prizefighter series in England. At the age of 45, the American came through a quarter-final against Matt Legg before losing to compatriot Jason Gavern on points. It was a sorry sight to see him as the shell of the man who had been so dominant in the early years, albeit at a lighter weight.  Larry Holmes Holly Stein/Getty Images Larry Holmes was 42 when he lost to Evander Holyfield in 1992. It would be another decade before the Easton Assassin would finally hang up his gloves. A victory over Eric "Butterbean" Esch was the final chapter in Holmes' never-ending story, meaning the man with the meanest left jab, per T homas Gerbasi of boxingscene.com, finished with a 69-6 (44 KO) record. He had won his first 48 professional fights, only falling short of equalling Rocky Marciano's 49-0 mark when he lost to Michael Spinks in 1985. A rematch saw Holmes fail to regain the IBF title after an extremely close fight, and he decided to call it quits. Holmes said after the second loss to Spinks, per the LA Times : "I'm 50-0. People know it. They can question the 49th (the outcome of the first Spinks fight), but they can't question the 50th." However, retirement wouldn't last long. He was tempted back into the ring in 1988 to fight Mike Tyson, but he suffered the first stoppage defeat of his career. He hung up his gloves again, only to be back in action in 1991. He worked his way into a position to challenge Holyfield for the IBF, WBA and WBC belts, but he could not live with the younger fighter. Holmes would also lose to Oliver McCall and Brian Nielsen in bids to become WBC and IBO champion respectively, before seeing out his career in a series of 10-rounders. Tweet When Audley Harrison struck gold at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, it seemed only a matter of time until he would become a world champion as a professional. The British boxer signed an exclusive contract with the BBC when he joined the paid ranks in 2001, then proceeded to reel off 19 straight victories. Yet Harrison never hit the same heights in the heavyweight division. Instead, he began to hit the canvas. His first loss came at the hands of Danny Williams in 2005, and although he avenged that defeat, the signs were there that his amateur talents were not going to translate into success as a pro. He was knocked out by Michael Sprott in 2007, leading to promoter Frank Warren saying, per Ben Dirs of BBC Sport: "If he decides to fight on, it'll be a long, hard road." Harrison did fight on, yet his best moments came in the Prizefighter Series, an eight-man tournament that took place on one night. The format—three-round bouts—suited the southpaw to a tee. Twice he won the event, raising his profile again. His success also opened doors, but he was badly beaten by British rivals David Haye and David Price. Deontay Wilder flattened him inside a round in 2013, leading to Harrison announcing his retirement. He threatened a comeback, but health issues ruled out a return to the ring. Muhammad Ali Associated Press The story of Muhammad Ali's career is well known: the rise into a sporting icon, the stints as world champion, the historic wins and classic fights and, sadly, the decline. The Greatest made history when he avenged a defeat to the inexperienced Leon Spinks, in the process regaining the WBA and WBC titles and becoming the first three-time lineal champion. He announced he was hanging up his gloves in the summer of 1979, though his retirement did not last for long. In 1980, at the age of 38, he returned to action to take on Larry Holmes, a former sparring partner who now held the WBC belt. The boxer from Louisville did, as ever, talk the talk before the first bell. He said ahead of the bout with Holmes (h/t Thomas Hauser in the Guardian): I'm dedicating this fight to all the people who've been told, 'you can't do it'. People who drop out of school because they're told they're dumb. People who go to crime because they don't think they can find jobs. I'm dedicating this fight to all of you people who have a Larry Holmes in your life. I'm gonna whup my Holmes, and I want you to whup your Holmes. But, as Hauser noted in the same article, it was a "horrible night" as Holmes hammered away until Ali retired after the 10th round. Sadly, that wasn't the end of the line. Ali fought just once more, in 1981. His opponent was Trevor Berbick, with the event staged in the Bahamas. It went the full 10 rounds, with Berbick winning easily by decision. Ali afterwards said, per Gareth A. Davies of the Telegraph: "Father Time has finally caught up with me and I'm gonna retire. And I don't think I'm gonna wake up next week and change my mind."

Leon Spinks

Which country's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 forced Haile Selassie to flee?

Mike Tyson and 5 Other Heavyweights Who Carried on for Too Long | Bleacher Report Mike Tyson and 5 Other Heavyweights Who Carried on for Too Long By Rob Lancaster , Featured Columnist Jun 11, 2015 Use your ← → (arrow) keys to browse the slideshow SUSAN WALSH/Associated Press Comments Mike Tyson was given the nickname "The Baddest Man on the Planet" for a reason. In his prime, he was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. He won his first 37 professional fights, the vast majority of them inside the distance. He was a fearsome puncher, but the one opponent Iron Mike couldn't beat was Father Time. Financial problems (Tyson had to file for bankruptcy ) forced him to carry on his career when he was well past his peak, leading to defeats that tarnished both his record and reputation. On June 11, 2005, the American quit on his stool against Kevin McBride. It was the end of the line—he retired after his 58th fight, a shadow of the man who had once dominated the division. However, Tyson is not the only heavyweight who opted to keep extending their careers beyond their expiry date.  Here we look at five big men who, like Tyson, carried on boxing when their best years were behind them. (Warning: The above video contains profanity). Evander Holyfield was an undisputed champion at cruiserweight before making the move up. As a heavyweight he was just as dominant, at one stage holding the IBF, WBA and WBC titles. He registered two wins over Mike Tyson, albeit the second of them came about due to a disqualification after he had been bitten by his rival. However, an ageing Holyfield was well over the hill by the time he was beaten by former middleweight world champion James Toney (more on him to come) in 2003. The problem was, though, that the Real Deal needed to keep going for financial reasons. He lost nearly all of his earnings, telling Martha Kelner of the Daily Mail: "You make a lot of money but you don’t know how money works, you don’t know how to calculate. I gave more than I should have. I gave, gave, gave. People talk you into doing things that you’re not accustomed to doing." Carrying on to cover maintenance payments for his 11 children, Holyfield fought until he was 48 years old. He actually finished with a win, beating Brian Nielsen in Denmark, meaning his final record stood at 44-10-2 with one no-contest. Tweet James Toney started out at middleweight but worked his way all the way up to the top division. Lights Out had appeared to follow in the footsteps of Bob Fitzsimmons and long-time rival Roy Jones Jr. in moving through the ranks to win a world title at heavyweight. However, his victory over John Ruiz for the WBA title was later changed to a no-contest by the New York State Athletic Commission after Toney tested positive for a banned substance. He returned after a 90-day ban but defeats began to pile up. There were two in a row to Samuel Peter, while a trip to Russia to take on Denis Lebedev saw him shut out on the scorecards. Toney carried on fighting until 2013, his last appearance coming as a contestant in the Prizefighter series in England. At the age of 45, the American came through a quarter-final against Matt Legg before losing to compatriot Jason Gavern on points. It was a sorry sight to see him as the shell of the man who had been so dominant in the early years, albeit at a lighter weight.  Larry Holmes Holly Stein/Getty Images Larry Holmes was 42 when he lost to Evander Holyfield in 1992. It would be another decade before the Easton Assassin would finally hang up his gloves. A victory over Eric "Butterbean" Esch was the final chapter in Holmes' never-ending story, meaning the man with the meanest left jab, per T homas Gerbasi of boxingscene.com, finished with a 69-6 (44 KO) record. He had won his first 48 professional fights, only falling short of equalling Rocky Marciano's 49-0 mark when he lost to Michael Spinks in 1985. A rematch saw Holmes fail to regain the IBF title after an extremely close fight, and he decided to call it quits. Holmes said after the second loss to Spinks, per the LA Times : "I'm 50-0. People know it. They can question the 49th (the outcome of the first Spinks fight), but they can't question the 50th." However, retirement wouldn't last long. He was tempted back into the ring in 1988 to fight Mike Tyson, but he suffered the first stoppage defeat of his career. He hung up his gloves again, only to be back in action in 1991. He worked his way into a position to challenge Holyfield for the IBF, WBA and WBC belts, but he could not live with the younger fighter. Holmes would also lose to Oliver McCall and Brian Nielsen in bids to become WBC and IBO champion respectively, before seeing out his career in a series of 10-rounders. Tweet When Audley Harrison struck gold at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, it seemed only a matter of time until he would become a world champion as a professional. The British boxer signed an exclusive contract with the BBC when he joined the paid ranks in 2001, then proceeded to reel off 19 straight victories. Yet Harrison never hit the same heights in the heavyweight division. Instead, he began to hit the canvas. His first loss came at the hands of Danny Williams in 2005, and although he avenged that defeat, the signs were there that his amateur talents were not going to translate into success as a pro. He was knocked out by Michael Sprott in 2007, leading to promoter Frank Warren saying, per Ben Dirs of BBC Sport: "If he decides to fight on, it'll be a long, hard road." Harrison did fight on, yet his best moments came in the Prizefighter Series, an eight-man tournament that took place on one night. The format—three-round bouts—suited the southpaw to a tee. Twice he won the event, raising his profile again. His success also opened doors, but he was badly beaten by British rivals David Haye and David Price. Deontay Wilder flattened him inside a round in 2013, leading to Harrison announcing his retirement. He threatened a comeback, but health issues ruled out a return to the ring. Muhammad Ali Associated Press The story of Muhammad Ali's career is well known: the rise into a sporting icon, the stints as world champion, the historic wins and classic fights and, sadly, the decline. The Greatest made history when he avenged a defeat to the inexperienced Leon Spinks, in the process regaining the WBA and WBC titles and becoming the first three-time lineal champion. He announced he was hanging up his gloves in the summer of 1979, though his retirement did not last for long. In 1980, at the age of 38, he returned to action to take on Larry Holmes, a former sparring partner who now held the WBC belt. The boxer from Louisville did, as ever, talk the talk before the first bell. He said ahead of the bout with Holmes (h/t Thomas Hauser in the Guardian): I'm dedicating this fight to all the people who've been told, 'you can't do it'. People who drop out of school because they're told they're dumb. People who go to crime because they don't think they can find jobs. I'm dedicating this fight to all of you people who have a Larry Holmes in your life. I'm gonna whup my Holmes, and I want you to whup your Holmes. But, as Hauser noted in the same article, it was a "horrible night" as Holmes hammered away until Ali retired after the 10th round. Sadly, that wasn't the end of the line. Ali fought just once more, in 1981. His opponent was Trevor Berbick, with the event staged in the Bahamas. It went the full 10 rounds, with Berbick winning easily by decision. Ali afterwards said, per Gareth A. Davies of the Telegraph: "Father Time has finally caught up with me and I'm gonna retire. And I don't think I'm gonna wake up next week and change my mind."

i don't know

Who directed the 1951 classic movie The Day The Earth Stood Still?

‎The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) directed by Robert Wise • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd 2 A message movie that really works. The message being - that our first response to the unknown is often fear and prejudice, not reason or understanding. To the visiting spaceman Klaatu played by the great stony faced Michael Rennie - his mission is to warn us of this potentially dangerous emotional flaw before it results in the destruction of all people, then Earth. It's simplistically told. All scenes are free of script fat: making their points quickly, serving the overall narrative efficiently before deftly moving on to the next. It's a masterclass of focused storytelling. What's surprising to me on this re-watch though, is that the only element that really dates the movie (other than Gort's flexible 'metal' pants) is… Gort! Klaatu barada nikto! -Helen Robert Wise might have been criticized during his career for never challenging the studios and perhaps being a bit too much of a "team player" but as Hollywood directors go you'd be hard-pressed to find another studio director that could dabble in ALL genres while turning out not only successful films, but films that have stood the test of time. Here Wise and screenwriter Edmund H. North turnout not just a memorable movie, but a landmark film in science-fiction. In an age of goofy-ass flying saucer films The Day the Earth Stood Still stands out because despite it's simplistic nature actually works on different levels. On purpose no less. That's actually something a lot of… 3 There have been some high moments in early science fiction since Georges Méliès released Le Voyage dans la Lune, and through the close of the 1950’s, notably Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and William Cameron Menzies’ 1936 adaptation of H.G. Well’s The Shape of Things to Come; both social criticism guised in the clothing of a futuristic world, the tenant of true hard sci-fi. The majority of films classified loosely in the genre were nothing much more than monster, war, or westerns set in outer space; the staple of the drive-in, the Saturday Double Feature, and later, 60’s Saturday afternoon TV fodder; which is exactly where I first encountered the form. Sci-Fi seemed to explode in the late 40’s and 50’s with… Review by Sally Jane Black 3 Gort is beautiful. That chrome shine and faceless visage, that fluid and human movement, that cold white dome. He's sometimes menacing, sometimes distant, sometimes unnerving, but he's always beautiful to behold. This absurd belief that these beings need to look "realistic" is what leads us to this unending parade of bad animation and CGI, these lifeless, soulless creations that suck all of the creativity and grace out of our aliens, robots, and monsters. You demand perfection, and you get ill-gotten computers trying to replicate human artistry. Fuck that. Gort is fucking beautiful. Yeah, it's a man in a suit. Yeah, you can tell especially when he walks. It just makes it better. It's jarring to see those legs bend like… 11 With "The Day the Earth Stood Still," director, Robert Wise, offers a stately, controlled science fiction vision with zero hint of the B-movie sensibilities often associated with genre offerings of the era. Serious and weighty, the film is both a document to the fears of the past and piece of work with still timely importance. Its premise is simple: a man from space comes to Earth with a dire warning regarding its future. Humankind must find peace or face its eventual destruction. Of course, humankind mucks everything up by, literally, shooting the messenger, forcing him to live among Washington D.C.'s humans and spreading his message. The story provides an outsider's view of humanity along with that outsider's necessary message. Wise's… 2 Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still plays like an interesting sci-fi and a cautionary tale about world peace. The story written by Harry Bates and adapted to the screen by Edmund H. North shows us how visitors from another planet might see our selfish ways. How someone from the outside looking in might see our planet with all it's violence and war as a threat to the universe. It provides an interesting perspective on the ways or our world and in my opinion isn't far from the truth. Klaatu (Michael Rennie) is an alien from another planet. He lands his spaceship in Washington to deliver a warning that Earth's people must cease their violent behavior or be destroyed…

Robert Wise

Who wrote the novel The Left Hand Of Darkness?

The Day The Earth Stood Still 1951 - Theremin studio session. - YouTube The Day The Earth Stood Still 1951 - Theremin studio session. Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded on Oct 17, 2010 The soundtrack was composed in August 1951 and was Bernard Herrmann's first soundtrack after he moved to Hollywood. Herrmann chose unusual instrumentation for the film: violins, cellos, and basses (all three electric), two theremin electronic instruments (played by Dr. Samuel Hoffman and Paul Shure), two Hammond organs, a large studio electric organ, three vibraphones, two glockenspiels, marimba, tam-tam, 2 bass drums, 3 sets of timpani, two pianos, celesta, two harps, 1 horn, three trumpets, three trombones, and four tubas. Unusual overdubbing and tape-reversal techniques were used, as well. 20th Century Fox later reused the Herrmann title theme in the original pilot episode for Irwin Allen's 1965 TV series Lost in Space. Danny Elfman noted The Day the Earth Stood Still's score inspired his interest in film composing, and made him a fan of Herrmann. The Day the Earth Stood Still is a 1951 American science fiction film that tells the story of a humanoid alien visitor who comes to visit the Earth with a warning, accompanied by his powerful robot, "Gort". Robert Wise directed this film, and its leading actors and actresses were Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Sam Jaffe, and Hugh Marlowe. "Gort" is also a primary character in this motion picture, but he is portrayed as a completely mechanical man. The writer of The Day the Earth Stood Still, Edmund H. North, based his screenplay on Harry Bates's short story "Farewell to the Master" (1940). Julian Blaustein produced this film for 20th Century Fox, and its cinematography was executed by Leo Tover. Nearly all of the action takes place in Washington, D.C., where the alien spacecraft lands, and then remains without moving for almost the entire motion picture. Category

i don't know

What is Neil Simon's real first name?

Neil Simon - Biography - IMDb Neil Simon Jump to: Overview  (4) | Mini Bio  (1) | Spouse  (5) | Trivia  (23) | Personal Quotes  (7) Overview (4) 6' 1½" (1.87 m) Mini Bio (1) Neil Simon was born on July 4, 1927 in The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA as Marvin Neil Simon. He is a writer and producer, known for The Odd Couple (1968), Your Show of Shows (1950) and The Odd Couple (1970). He has been married to Elaine Joyce since September 11, 1999. He was previously married to Diane Lander , Marsha Mason and Joan Baim. Spouse (5) ( 10 September  1953 - 17 July  1973) (her death) (2 children) Trivia (23) Almost every one of his 30-plus plays, mostly Broadway comedies, has also been adapted into a motion picture-- the greatest such achievement of any playwright/author, even surpassing William Shakespeare As a result, Simon has received more Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer in the history of show business. Received newly established 'Apple Award' from The Nederlander Company and Wayne State University. Named in honor of Sarah Applebaum Nederlander, who was known affectionately as 'Apple', the Apple Award will be presented annually to a nationally recognized theatre professional who has made significant contributions in his or her field. The Nederlander's and WSU established the award this year in celebration of the Fisher Theatre's 40th anniversary. [November 2001] Children: daughters Ellen, Nancy by Joan Baim; Bryn (adopted) with Diane Lander . He loves playing tennis. He has became so successful financially that he backs his own plays. His brother, Danny Simon , actually started writing the "The Odd Couple" but was not able to finish it. He asked Neil to take it over, and Neil did in exchange for sole author credit. However, he continued to pay Danny 10% of everything the property generated. The Alvin Theater at 250 W. 52nd Street on Broadway was renamed the Neil Simon Theater on June 23, 1983. 2004: Received kidney transplant donated by Bill Eveans, his publicist. His play, "Laughter on the 23rd Floor", was nominated for a 1997 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best New Comedy of 1996. He won both a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize for "Lost In Yonkers" in 1991. Has won two Tony Awards as author of Best Play winners: in 1985 for "Biloxi Blues" and in 1991 for "Lost in Yonkers." Additionally, he has been Tony-nominated an impressive 15 times: in 1963, as Best Author (Musical) and book for Best Musical nominee "Little Me," in 1964, as author of Best Play nominee "Barefoot in the Park;" in 1965, as Best Author (Dramatic) and author of Best Play nominee "The Odd Couple;" in 1966, for book of Best Musical nominee "Sweet Charity;" in 1968, as author of Best Play nominee "Plaza Suite;" in 1969, for book for Best Musical nominee "Promises, Promises;" in 1970, as author of Best Play nominee "Last of the Red Hot Lovers;" in 1972, as author of Best Play nominee "The Prisoner of Second Avenue;" in 1973, as author of Best Play nominee "The Sunshine Boys;" in 1974, as Best Score, his lyrics with Peter Link 's music, for "The Good Doctor;" in 1978, as author of Best Play nominee "Chapter Two;" in 1979, as Best Book (Musical) for "They're Playing Our Song;" and in 1987, as author of Best Play nominee "Broadway Bound." Received the 2006 Mark Twain prize on October 15, 2006 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Neil Simon was nominated for the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the play "Broadway Bound" and the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the play "Lost in Yonkers". Practiced Shaolin Qi Gong with Shaolin Warrior Monk Shi Yan Fan in Sherman Oaks before he moved to New York. Based his play 'The Odd Couple' on his brother Danny's divorce. He actually wrote two versions of it. The more famous version features Oscar Madison and Felix Ungar, and is written primarily for a male cast. The other one changes the leads to two women - Olive Madison and Florence Ungar. In 1966 Simon had four shows playing in Broadway theaters at the same time: 'Sweet Charity', 'The Star-Spangled Girl', 'The Odd Couple', and 'Barefoot in the Park'. Part of his film 'Chapter Two' was based on his own life in that after losing his first wife he married actress Marsha Mason 6 months later after a courtship of 22 days. In the film recently widowed George (James Caan) meets and impulsively marries actress Jennie (Marsha Mason) after a whirlwind courtship. His play, "Lost in Yonkers" at the Northlight Theatre in Chicago, Illinois was nominated for a 2014 Joseph Jefferson Equity Award for Large Play Production. He was awarded the 1977 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Distinguished Playwriting for "Chapter Two," at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, California. His play, "Biloxi Blues," on Broadway in New York City was awarded the 1985 Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for Best Play. He was awarded the 1992 Drama-Logue Award for Writing for "Lost in Yonkers" in presented by the Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson at the James A. Doolittle (University of California) Theatre in Los Angeles, California. His play, "Lost in Yonkers" in presented by the Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson at the James A. Doolittle (University of California) Theatre in Los Angeles, California was awarded the 1992 Drama-Logue Award for Production. He was awarded the 1997 Drama Logue Award for Writing for "Proposals" at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, California. Personal Quotes (7) When it's 100 in New York, it's 72 in Los Angeles. When it's 20 in New York, it's 72 in Los Angeles. However, there are six million interesting people in New York - and 72 in Los Angeles. On writing 1991's "The Marrying Man": "With a play, I have only two people to please - myself and the director. With this movie, it was 19 executives, a director who'd never done anything but animation before, and two stars who would tell you what lines they'd say and what lines they wouldn't say." On Hollywood: "Everyone in Hollywood is looking for a blockbuster. They tell you their last movie 'only grossed $70 million,' as if that were some kind of crime." I don't like writing for comedians. I like writing for actors. The best comedians are the best actors. [on Herbert Ross ] I think Herb Ross is the best director I've worked with in films. The others just don't understand my material as well. On the 2009 closing of his Broadway revival, "Brighton Beach Memoirs" one week after it premiered: I'm still dumbfounded. After all these years, I still don't get how Broadway works, or what to make of our culture. I didn't think of a thing called money. If I had a nickel, I would run in the street and say, 'I got a nickel! I got a nickel! I'm rich! I'm rich!' As a kid, I always thought, I'll never forget all these things, but you do. I managed to forget all of it. Some people spend their lives remembering, and that's what I thought I would do. But it doesn't last. See also

Marvin

Augusto C Sandino international airport is in which country?

Paris Review - Neil Simon, The Art of Theater No. 10 Neil Simon, The Art of Theater No. 10 Interviewed by James Lipton Issue 125, Winter 1992   Legend has it that on his deathbed the actor Edmund Gwenn answered director John Ford’s “What is dying like?” with a reflective, “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” By any measure—quantity, quality, popular success, renown—Neil Simon is the preeminent purveyor of comedy in the last half of the twentieth century. Like the work of most writers of comedy, from Aristophanes to Woody Allen, Simon’s humor is written to be spoken. And heard. For Simon the art of humor is both communal (each member of the audience in league with all the other members of the audience) and collegial (playwright and performers in league with the audience—a relationship Simon will describe as a “shared secret”). Fielding, Twain, and Thurber can be savored in one’s lap, but verbal, visual humor, like misery, loves company. Simon is not only skillful at his craft but prolific as well. He is the author of more than twenty plays, including Come Blow Your Horn, Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, the Brighton Beach trilogy, Prisoner of Second Avenue, Plaza Suite, and Lost in Yonkers. These pages are the winnowing of sixteen hours of taped conversation in Simon’s office on the second floor of a Spanish colonial apartment building in the Beverly Hills flats—several miles, a thousand vertical feet, and a dozen social strata below the Bel Air hilltop home Simon shares with his wife Diane and their daughter Bryn. The writer’s no-nonsense work space, impersonal in its laid-back Southern Californian setting, is conspicuously empty (no secretary, no phone calls, no distractions) but intensely personal in the memorabilia that have, as Simon explains, “sort of gravitated” there over the years. Halfway through the tour of the apartment Simon stopped abruptly and remarked, in apparent surprise, on how many of the room’s furnishings date from the house on Manhattan’s East Sixty-second Street where he lived with his first wife Joan: chairs, tables, photographs, paintings—some painted by Joan—and a framed letter from her, written in cryptic, Joycean prose and signed, “Klarn.” The baseball paraphernalia on display reflects another side of Simon’s life. His substantial collection of antique caps and autographed balls, with a recent emphasis on Bobby Bonilla, would knock the kneesocks off the playwright’s baseball-mad alter ego, Eugene Jerome. There are the usual theatrical souvenirs and a few unusual ones: a telegram from the president of Columbia University informing Simon of his Pulitzer Prize for Lost in Yonkers, a Neil Simon Time magazine cover, a poster from the Moscow production of Biloxi Blues, signed by the cast, “Dear Neil Simon, We love you and your plays. We had worked on this performance with enjoy.” “Doc” Simon, so called from his childhood habit of mimicking the family doctor, is tall and fit, despite the chronic back problems that have curtailed his tennis playing in recent years. We sat at a massive, polished tree-stump coffee table covered with the tools of his trade: pens neatly stacked (by the cleaning woman, he hastened to say), scripts—finished and unfinished—books, and the long pads on which he writes. We laughed frequently as we discussed his plays, opinions, and past. Even when the talk turned as serious as some of his recent scripts, the face that peered over the tree stump like a Bronx leprechaun bore two indelible Simon trademarks: the eyes of an insatiably curious and slightly guarded child, shielded by horn-rimmed glasses, and a faint, constant, enigmatic smile. Take a look at the accompanying photograph. What is this man smiling at? Perhaps the shared secret.   INTERVIEWER Lillian Hellman once said she always began work on a play with something very small—a scene or even two vague lines of dialogue whose meaning was utterly unknown to her. What starts you, what makes you think there’s a play there? NEIL SIMON As many plays as I’ve written—twenty-seven, twenty-eight—I can’t recollect a moment when I’ve said, This would make a good play. I never sit down and write bits and pieces of dialogue. What I might do is make a few notes on who’s in the play, the characters I want, where it takes place, and the general idea of it. I don’t make any outlines at all. I just like to plunge in. I’ll start right from page one because I want to hear how the people speak. Are they interesting enough for me? Have I captured them? It goes piece by piece, brick by brick. I don’t know that I have a play until I’ve reached thirty, thirty-five pages. INTERVIEWER Have you ever started thematically? SIMON I think about thematic plays but I don’t believe I write them. Nothing really takes shape until I become specific about the character and the dilemma he’s in. Dilemma is the key word. It is always a dilemma, not a situation. To tell the truth, I really don’t know what the theme of the play is until I’ve written it and the critics tell me. INTERVIEWER Every playwright, every director, every actor, speaks about conflict. We’re all supposed to be in the conflict business. When you speak of dilemma, are you talking about conflict? SIMON Yes. In Broadway Bound I wanted to show the anatomy of writing comedy—with the older brother teaching Eugene, which was the case with my brother Danny and me. Stan keeps asking Eugene for the essential ingredient in comedy and when Eugene can’t answer, Stan says, “Conflict!” When he asks for the other key ingredient, and Eugene can only come up with, “More conflict?” Stan says, “The key word is wants. In every comedy, even drama, somebody has to want something and want it bad. When somebody tries to stop him—that’s conflict.” By the time you know the conflicts, the play is already written in your mind. All you have to do is put the words down. You don’t have to outline the play, it outlines itself. You go by sequential activity. One thing follows the other. But it all starts with that first seed, conflict. As Stan says, it’s got to be a very, very strong conflict, not one that allows the characters to say, Forget about this! I’m walking out. They’ve got to stay there and fight it out to the end. INTERVIEWER You said that it isn’t until you get to page thirty-five that you know whether or not you’ve got a play. Are there times when you get to page thirty-five and decide the conflict isn’t strong enough and the play disappears to languish forever in a drawer? SIMON I’ve got infinitely more plays in the drawer than have seen the lights of the stage. Most of them never come out of the drawer, but occasionally one will and it amazes me how long it has taken to germinate and blossom. The best example would be Brighton Beach Memoirs. I wrote the first thirty-five pages of the play and gave it to my children, Nancy and Ellen, and Marsha, my wife at the time. They read it and said, This is incredible. You’ve got to go on with it. I showed it to my producer, Manny Azenberg and to Gordon Davidson, and they said, This is going to be a great play. I knew the play was a turn in style for me, probing more deeply into myself, but maybe the pressure of the words great play scared me, so I put it away. Periodically, I would take it out and read it and I wouldn’t know how to do it. After nine years I took it out one day, read the thirty-five pages, picked up my pen and the pad I write on and finished the play in six weeks. I have the feeling that in the back of your mind there’s a little writer who writes while you’re doing other things, because I had no trouble at that point. Obviously, what had happened in the ensuing years in my life made clear to me what it should be about. Somewhere in the back of my head I grew up, I matured. I was ready to write that play. Sometimes it helps to have some encouragement. Once I was having dinner with Mike Nichols and he asked, What are you doing? I said, I’m working on a play about two ex-vaudevillians who haven’t worked together or seen each other in eleven years and they get together to do an Ed Sullivan Show. He said, That sounds wonderful. Go back and finish it. So I did. It was as though a critic had already seen the play and said, I love it. But there are many, many plays that get to a certain point and no further. For years I’ve been trying to write the play of what happened to me and the seven writers who wrote Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows. But I’ve never got past page twenty-two because there are seven conflicts rather than one main conflict. I’ve been writing more subtext and more subplot lately—but in this situation everybody was funny. I didn’t have somebody to be serious, to anchor it. I always have to find the anchor. I have to find the Greek chorus in the play, the character who either literally talks to the audience or talks to the audience in a sense. For example, Oscar in The Odd Couple is the Greek chorus. He watches, he perceives how Felix behaves, and he comments on it. Felix then comments back on what Oscar is, but Oscar is the one who is telling us what the play is about. More recently, in the Brighton Beach trilogy, I’ve been literally talking to the audience, through the character of Eugene, because it is the only way I can express the writer’s viewpoint. The writer has inner thoughts and they are not always articulated on the stage—and I want the audience to be able to get inside his head. It’s what I did in Jake’s Women. In the first try out in San Diego the audience didn’t know enough about Jake because all he did was react to the women in his life, who were badgering him, trying to get him to open up. We didn’t know who Jake was. So I introduced the device of him talking to the audience. Then he became the fullest, richest character in the play, because the audience knew things I never thought I would reveal about Jake—and possibly about myself. INTERVIEWER Will you return to the Show of Shows play? SIMON I do very often think about doing it. What was unique about that experience was that almost every one of the writers has gone on to do really major things—Mel Brooks’s whole career . . . Larry Gelbart . . . Woody Allen . . . Joe Stein who wrote Fiddler on the Roof . . . Michael Stewart who wrote Hello, Dolly . . . it was a group of people only Sid Caesar knew how to put together. Maybe it was trial and error because the ones who didn’t work fell out, but once we worked together it was the most excruciatingly hilarious time in my life. It was also one of the most painful because you were fighting for recognition and there was no recognition. It was very difficult for me because I was quiet and shy, so I sat next to Carl Reiner and whispered my jokes to him. He was my spokesman, he’d jump up and say, He’s got it! He’s got it! Then Carl would say the line and I would hear it and I’d laugh because I thought it was funny. But when I watched the show on a Saturday night with my wife, Joan, she’d say, That was your line, wasn’t it? and I’d say, I don’t remember. What I do remember is the screaming and fighting—a cocktail party without the cocktails, everyone yelling lines in and out, people getting very angry at others who were slacking off. Mel Brooks was the main culprit. We all came in to work at ten o’clock in the morning, but he showed up at one o’clock. We’d say, That’s it. We’re sick and tired of this. Either Mel comes in at ten o’clock or we go to Sid and do something about it. At about ten to one, Mel would come in with a straw hat, fling it across the room, and say, Lindy made it!—and everyone would fall down hysterical. He didn’t need the eight hours we put in. He needed four hours. He is, maybe, the most uniquely funny man I’ve ever met. That inspired me. I wanted to be around those people. I’ve fooled around with this idea for a play. I even found a title for it, “Laughter on the Twenty-third Floor,” because I think the office was on the twenty-third floor. From that building we looked down on Bendel’s and Bergdorf Goodman and Fifth Avenue, watching all the pretty girls go by through binoculars. Sometimes we’d set fire to the desk with lighter fluid. We should have been arrested, all of us. INTERVIEWER If you ever get past page twenty-two, how would you deal with Mel and Woody and the others? Would they appear as themselves? SIMON No, no, no! They’d all be fictitious. It would be like the Brighton Beach trilogy, which is semiautobiographical. INTERVIEWER It feels totally autobiographical. I assumed it was. SIMON Everyone does. But I’ve told interviewers that if I meant it to be autobiographical I would have called the character Neil Simon. He’s not Neil. He’s Eugene Jerome. That gives you greater latitude for fiction. It’s like doing abstract painting. You see your own truth in it but the abstraction is the art. INTERVIEWER When did you realize there was a sequel to Brighton Beach Memoirs? SIMON It got a middling review from Frank Rich of The New York Times, but he said at the end of it, “One hopes that there is a chapter two to Brighton Beach.” I thought, he’s asking for a sequel to a play that he doesn’t seem to like! INTERVIEWER Are you saying Frank Rich persuaded you to write Biloxi Blues? SIMON No, but I listened to him saying, I’m interested enough to want to know more about this family. Then, Steven Spielberg, who had gone to see Brighton Beach, got word to me, suggesting the next play should be about my days in the army. I was already thinking about that and I started to write Biloxi Blues, which became a play about Eugene’s rites of passage. I discovered something very important in the writing of Biloxi Blues. Eugene, who keeps a diary, writes in it his belief that Epstein is homosexual. When the other boys in the barracks read the diary and assume it’s true, Eugene feels terrible guilt. He’s realized the responsibility of putting something down on paper, because people tend to believe everything they read. INTERVIEWER The Counterfeiters ends with the diary André Gide kept while he was writing the book. In it he says he knows he’s writing well when the dialectic of the scene takes over and the characters seize the scene from him and he’s become not a writer but a reader. Do you sometimes find that your characters have taken the play away from you and are off in their own direction? SIMON I’ve always felt like a middleman, like the typist. Somebody somewhere else is saying, This is what they say now. This is what they say next. Very often it is the characters themselves, once they become clearly defined. When I was working on my first play, Come Blow Your Horn, I was told by fellow writers that you must outline your play, you must know where you’re going. I wrote a complete, detailed outline from page one to the end of the play. In the writing of the play, I didn’t get past page fifteen when the characters started to move away from the outline. I tried to pull them back in, saying, Get back in there. This is where you belong. I’ve already diagrammed your life. They said, No, no, no. This is where I want to go. So, I started following them. In the second play, Barefoot in the Park, I outlined the first two acts. I said, I’ll leave the third act a free-for-all, so I can go where I want. I never got through that outline either. In The Odd Couple, I outlined the first act. After a while I got tired of doing even that. I said, I want to be as surprised as anyone else. I had also read a book on playwriting by John van Druten, in which he said, Don’t outline your play, because then the rest of it will just be work. It should be joy. You should be discovering things the way the audience discovers them. So, I stopped doing it. INTERVIEWER Gide writes about being surprised by the material coming up on the typewriter. He finds himself laughing, shocked, sometimes dismayed . . . SIMON Sometimes I start laughing—and I’ve had moments in this office when I’ve burst into tears. Not that I thought the audience might do that. The moment had triggered a memory or a feeling that was deeply hidden. That’s catharsis. It’s one of the main reasons I write the plays. It’s like analysis without going to the analyst. The play becomes your analysis. The writing of the play is the most enjoyable part of it. It’s also the most frightening part because you walk into a forest without a knife, without a compass. But if your instincts are good, if you have a sense of geography, you find that you’re clearing a path and getting to the right place. If the miracle happens, you come out at the very place you wanted to. But very often you have to go back to the beginning of the forest and start walking through it again, saying, I went that way. It was a dead end. You cross out, cross over. You meet new friends along the way, people you never thought you’d meet. It takes you into a world you hadn’t planned on going to when you started the play. The play may have started out to be a comedy, and suddenly you get into a place of such depth that it surprises you. As one critic aptly said, I wrote Brighton Beach Memoirs about the family I wished I’d had instead of the family I did have. It’s closer to Ah, Wilderness than my reality. INTERVIEWER When did you realize that Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues were part of a trilogy? SIMON I thought it seemed odd to leave the Eugene saga finished after two plays. Three is a trilogy—I don’t even know what two plays are called. So, I decided to write the third one, and the idea came immediately. It was back to the war theme again, only these were domestic wars. The boys were having guilts and doubts about leaving home for a career writing comedy. Against this played the war between the parents. I also brought in the character of the socialist grandfather who was constantly telling the boys, You can’t just write jokes and make people laugh. Against this came Blanche from the first play, Brighton Beach, trying to get the grandfather to move to Florida to take care of his aging, ill wife. To me, setting people in conflict with each other is like what those Chinese jugglers do, spinning one plate, then another, then another. I wanted to keep as many plates spinning as I could. INTERVIEWER What exactly do you mean when you call the Brighton Beach trilogy semiautobiographical? SIMON It means the play may be based on incidents that happened in my life—but they’re not written the way they happened. Broadway Bound comes closest to being really autobiographical. I didn’t pull any punches with that one. My mother and father were gone when I wrote it, so I did tell about the fights and what it was like for me as a kid hearing them. I didn’t realize until someone said after the first reading that the play was really a love letter to my mother! She suffered the most in all of it. She was the one that was left alone. Her waxing that table didn’t exist in life but it exists symbolically for me. It’s the abstraction I was talking about. INTERVIEWER Speaking of abstraction, there’s something mystifying to audiences—and other writers—about what the great comedy writers do. From outside, it seems to be as different from what most writers are able to do as baseball is from ballet. I’m not going to ask anything quite as fatuous as “what is humor?” but I am asking—is it genetic, is it a mind-set, a quirk? And, most important, can it be learned—or, for that matter, taught? SIMON The answer is complex. First of all, there are various styles and attitudes towards comedy. When I worked on Your Show of Shows, Larry Gelbart was the wittiest, cleverest man I’d ever met, Mel Brooks the most outrageous. I never knew what I was. I still don’t know. Maybe I had the best sense of construction of the group. I only know some aspects of my humor, one of which involves being completely literal. To give you an example, in Lost in Yonkers, Uncle Louie is trying to explain the heartless grandmother to Arty. “When she was twelve years old, her old man takes her to a political rally in Berlin. A horse goes down and crushes Ma’s foot. Nobody ever fixed it. It hurts every day of her life, but I never once seen her take even an aspirin.” Later, Arty says to his older brother, “I’m afraid of her, Jay. A horse fell on her when she was a kid, and she hasn’t taken an aspirin yet.” It’s an almost exact repetition of what Louie told him and this time it gets a huge laugh. That mystifies me. In Prisoner of Second Avenue you knew there were terrible things tormenting Peter Falk. He sat down on a sofa that had stacks of pillows, like every sofa in the world, and he took one pillow after the other and started throwing them angrily saying, “You pay eight hundred for a sofa and you can’t sit on it because you got ugly little pillows shoved up your back! There is no joke there. Yet, it was an enormous laugh—because the audience identified. That, more or less, is what is funny to me—saying something that’s instantly identifiable to everybody. People come up to you after the show and say, I’ve always thought that, but I never knew anyone else thought it. It’s a shared secret between you and the audience. INTERVIEWER  You’ve often said that you’ve never consciously written a joke in one of your plays. SIMON I try never to think of jokes as jokes. I confess that in the early days, when I came from television, plays like Come Blow Your Horn would have lines you could lift out that would be funny in themselves. That to me would be a “joke,” which I would try to remove. In The Odd Couple Oscar had a line about Felix, “He’s so panicky he wears his seatbelt at a drive-in movie.” That could be a Bob Hope joke. I left it in because I couldn’t find anything to replace it. INTERVIEWER Have you ever found that a producer, director, or actor objected to losing a huge laugh that you were determined to cut from the play? SIMON An actor, perhaps, yes. They’ll say, But that’s my big laugh. I say, But it hurts the scene. It’s very hard to convince them. Walter Matthau was after me constantly on The Odd Couple, complaining not about one of his lines, but one of Art Carney’s. He’d say, It’s not a good line. A few days later, I received a letter from a doctor in Wilmington. It said, Dear Mr. Simon, I loved your play but I find one line really objectionable. I wish you would take it out. So, I took the line out and said, Walter, I’ve complied with your wishes. I got a letter from a prominent doctor in Wilmington who didn’t like the line . . . He started to laugh and then I realized, You son of a bitch, you’re the doctor! And he was. Those quick lines, the one-liners attributed to me for so many years—I think they come purely out of character, rather than out of a joke. Walter Kerr once came to my aid by saying “to be or not to be” is a one-liner. If it’s a dramatic moment no one calls it a one-liner. If it gets a laugh, suddenly it’s a one-liner. I think one of the complaints of critics is that the people in my plays are funnier than they would be in life, but have you ever seen Medea? The characters are a lot more dramatic in that than they are in life. INTERVIEWER You’ve also said that when you began writing for the theater you decided to try to write comedy the way dramatists write plays—writing from the characters out, internally, psychologically . . . SIMON Yes. What I try to do is make dialogue come purely out of character, so that one character could never say the lines that belong to another character. If it’s funny, it’s because I’m telling a story about characters in whom I may find a rich vein of humor. When I started writing plays I was warned by people like Lillian Hellman, “You do not mix comedy with drama.” But my theory was, if it’s mixed in life, why can’t you do it in a play? The very first person I showed Come Blow Your Horn to was Herman Shumlin, the director of Hellman’s The Little Foxes. He said, I like the play, I like the people, but I don’t like the older brother. I said, What’s wrong with him? He said, Well, it’s a comedy. We have to like everybody. I said, In life do we have to like everybody? In the most painful scene in Lost in Yonkers, Bella, who is semiretarded, is trying to tell the family that the boy she wants to marry is also retarded. It’s a poignant situation and yet the information that slowly comes out—and the way the family is third-degreeing her—becomes hilarious because it’s mixed with someone else’s pain. I find that what is most poignant is often most funny. INTERVIEWER In the roll-call scene in Biloxi Blues you riff for several pages on one word, one syllable: Ho. It builds and builds in what I’ve heard you call a “run.” SIMON I learned from watching Chaplin films that what’s most funny isn’t a single moment of laughter but the moments that come on top of it and on top of those. I learned it from the Laurel and Hardy films too. One of the funniest things I ever saw Laurel and Hardy do was try to undress in the upper berth of a train—together. It took ten minutes, getting the arms in the wrong sleeves and their feet caught in the net, one terrible moment leading to another. I thought, there could be no greater satisfaction for me than to do that to an audience. Maybe Ho also came from sitting in the dark as a kid listening to Jack Benny’s running gags on the radio. In Barefoot in the Park, when the telephone man comes up five or six flights of stairs, he arrives completely out of breath. When Paul makes his entrance, he’s completely out of breath. When the mother makes her entrance, she’s completely out of breath. Some critics have written, You milk that out-of-breath joke too much. My answer is, You mean because it’s happened three times, when they come up the fourth time they shouldn’t be out of breath anymore? It’s not a joke, it’s the natural thing. Like Ho. Those boys are petrified on their first day in the army, confronted by this maniac sergeant. INTERVIEWER Do you pace the lines so the laughs don’t cover the dialogue or is that the director’s job? Do you try to set up a rhythm in the writing that will allow for the audience’s response? SIMON You don’t know where the laughs are until you get in front of an audience. Most of the biggest laughs I’ve ever had I never knew were big laughs. Mike Nichols used to say to me, Take out all the little laughs because they hurt the big ones. Sometimes the little laughs aren’t even meant to be laughs. I mean them to further the play, the plot, the character, the story. They’re written unwittingly . . . strange word to pick. I cut them and the laugh pops up somewhere else. INTERVIEWER When did you first realize you were funny? SIMON It started very early in my life—eight, nine, ten years old—being funny around the other kids. You single out one kid on your block or in the school who understands what you’re saying. He’s the only one who laughs. The other kids only laugh when someone tells them a joke—two guys got on a truck . . . I’ve never done that in my life. I don’t like telling jokes. I don’t like to hear someone say to me, Tell him that funny thing you said the other day. It’s repeating it. I have no more joy in it. Once it’s said, for me it’s over. The same is true once it’s written—I have no more interest in it. I’ve expelled whatever it is I needed to exorcise, whether it’s humorous or painful. Generally, painful. Maybe the humor is to cover the pain up or maybe it’s a way to share the experience with someone. INTERVIEWER Has psychoanalysis influenced your work? SIMON Yes. Generally I’ve gone into analysis when my life was in turmoil. But I found after a while I was going when it wasn’t in turmoil. I was going to get a college education in human behavior. I was talking not only about myself; I was trying to understand my wife, my brother, my children, my family, anybody—including the analyst. I can’t put everything in the plays down to pure chance. I want them to reveal what makes people tick. I tend to analyze almost everything. I don’t think it started because I went through analysis. I’m just naturally that curious. The good mechanic knows how to take a car apart; I love to take the human mind apart and see how it works. Behavior is absolutely the most interesting thing I can write about. You put that behavior in conflict and you’re in business. INTERVIEWER Would you describe your writing process? Since you don’t use an outline, do you ever know how a play will end? SIMON Sometimes I think I do—but it doesn’t mean that’s how the play will end. Very often you find that you’ve written past the end and you say, Wait a minute, it ended here. When I started to write Plaza Suite it was going to be a full three-act play. The first act was about a wife who rents the same suite she and her husband honeymooned in at the Plaza Hotel twenty-three years ago. In the course of the act the wife finds out that the husband is having an affair with his secretary and at the end of the act the husband walks out the door as champagne and hors d’oeuvres arrive. The waiter asks, Is he coming back? and the wife says, Funny you should ask that. I wrote that and said to myself, That’s the end of the play, I don’t want to know if he’s coming back. That’s what made me write three one-act plays for Plaza Suite. I don’t like to know where the play is going to end. I purposely won’t think of the ending because I’m afraid if I know, even subliminally, it’ll sneak into the script and the audience will know where the play is going. As a matter of fact, I never know where the play is going in the second act. When Broadway Bound was completed, I listened to the first reading and thought, There’s not a moment in this entire play where I see the mother happy. She’s a miserable woman. I want to know why she’s miserable. The answer was planted in the beginning of the play: the mother kept talking about how no one believed she once danced with George Raft. I thought, the boy should ask her to talk about George Raft and as she does, she’ll reveal everything in her past. INTERVIEWER The scene ends with the now-famous moment of the boy dancing with the mother the way Raft did—if he did. SIMON Yes. People have said, It’s so organic, you had to have known you were writing to that all the time. But I didn’t know it when I sat down to write the play. I had an interesting problem when I was writing Rumors. I started off with just a basic premise: I wanted to do an elegant farce. I wrote it right up to the last two pages of the play, the denouement in which everything has to be explained—and I didn’t know what it was! I said to myself, Today’s the day I have to write the explanation. All right, just think it out. I couldn’t think it out. So I said, Well then, go sentence by sentence. I couldn’t write it sentence by sentence. I said, Go word by word. The man sits down and tells the police the story. He starts off with, It was six o’clock. That much I could write. I kept going until everything made sense. That method takes either insanity or egocentricity—or a great deal of confidence. It’s like building a bridge over water without knowing if there’s land on the other side. But I do have confidence that when I get to the end of the play, I will have gotten so deeply into the characters and the situation I’ll find the resolution. INTERVIEWER So you never write backwards from a climactic event to the incidents and scenes at the beginning of the play that will take you to it? SIMON Never. The linkages are done by instinct. Sometimes I’ll write something and say, Right now this doesn’t mean very much but I have a hunch that later on in the play it will mean something. The thing I always do is play back on things I set up without any intention in the beginning. The foundation of the play is set in those first fifteen or twenty minutes. Whenever I get in trouble in the second act, I go back to the first act. The answers always lie there. One of the lines people have most often accused me of working backwards from is Felix Ungar’s note to Oscar in The Odd Couple. In the second act, Oscar has reeled off the laundry list of complaints he has about Felix, including “the little letters you leave me.” Now, when Felix is leaving one of those notes, telling Oscar they’re all out of cornflakes, I said to myself, How would he sign it? I know he’d do something that would annoy Oscar. So I signed it “Mr. Ungar.” Then I tried “Felix Ungar.” Then I tried “F.U.” and it was as if a bomb had exploded in the room. When Oscar says, “It took me three hours to figure out that F.U. was Felix Ungar,” it always gets this huge laugh. INTERVIEWER Felix Unger also appears in Come Blow Your Horn. I wanted to ask why you used the name twice. SIMON This will give you an indication of how little I thought my career would amount to. I thought The Odd Couple would probably be the end of my career, so it wouldn’t make any difference that I had used Felix Ungar in Come Blow Your Horn. It was a name that seemed to denote the prissiness of Felix, the perfect contrast to the name of Oscar. Oscar may not sound like a strong name, but it did to me—maybe because of the k sound in it. INTERVIEWER So you subscribe to the k-theory expressed by the comedians in The Sunshine Boys—k is funny. SIMON Oh, I do. Not only that, k cuts through the theater. You say a k-word, and they can hear it. INTERVIEWER Let’s talk about the mechanics of writing, starting with where you write. SIMON I have this office. There are four or five rooms in it and no one is here but me. No secretary, no one, and I’ve never once in the many years that I’ve come here ever felt lonely or even alone. I come in and the room is filled with—as corny as it might sound—these characters I’m writing, who are waiting each day for me to arrive and give them life. I’ve also written on airplanes, in dentist’s offices, on subways. I think it’s true for many writers. You blank out whatever is in front of your eyes. That’s why you see writers staring off into space. They’re not looking at “nothing,” they’re visualizing what they’re thinking. I never visualize what a play will look like on stage, I visualize what it looks like in life. I visualize being in that room where the mother is confronting the father. INTERVIEWER What tools do you use? Do you use a 1928 Underwood the way real writers are supposed to? Or a computer? You mentioned using a pad and pencil . . . SIMON I wrote my early plays at the typewriter because it was what writers looked like in His Girl Friday. INTERVIEWER Lots of crumpled pages being flung across the room? SIMON Yes. But my back started to get so bad from bending over a typewriter eight hours a day, five or six days a week that I couldn’t do it anymore, so I started to write in pads. Then a curious thing happened. I was in England and found that they have pads over there with longer pages and thinner spaces between the lines. I liked that because I could get much more on a single page. At a single glance I could see the rhythm of the speeches. If they’re on a smaller page with wide spaces you don’t get a sense of the rhythm. You have to keep turning. So, I write in these pads. Sometimes I write on both sides of the page, but I always leave myself lots of room to make notes and cross things out. I’ll write about three pages, then go to the typewriter and type that out. Then the next day I’ll read those three pages again and maybe not like them and go back to the notebook—write it out, make changes, and then retype it. The typing is boring for me, but I can’t use a word processor. It feels inhuman. It seems to me that every script comes out of a computer looking like it was written by the same person. My typewriter has its own characteristics, its own little foibles. Even there, I black out parts and write marginal notes. I’d like it to be neat, but I don’t like to send it to a professional typist because they invariably correct my purposely made grammatical errors. I try to write the way people speak, not the way people should speak. INTERVIEWER When you’re writing dialogue, do you write it silently or speak it aloud? SIMON I never thought I spoke the lines until my family told me I did. They said they could walk by and tell if it was going well or not by the rhythm of it. I guess I want to see if I’m repeating words and, because I write primarily for the stage, I want to make sure the words won’t be tripping badly over some tongues. INTERVIEWER Do you play the parts, I mean, really play them and get into them? SIMON Yes. When I wrote the Sergeant Bilko show my father asked me naively, Do you just write Sergeant Bilko’s lines or do you write the other lines too? When you write a play, maybe even a novel, you become everybody. It may seem like I only write the lines spoken by the character who is like Neil Simon, but in Lost in Yonkers I’m also the grandmother—and Bella. And to do that you have to become that person. That’s the adventure, the joy, the release that allows you to escape from your own boundaries. To be Grandma every other line for a couple of pages takes you into another being. It’s interesting how many people ask, Was this your grandmother? I say, No, I didn’t have a grandmother like that, and they say, Then how do you know her? I know what she sounds like. I know what she feels like. The boys describe it when they say, When you kiss her it’s like kissing a cold prune. I describe her in a stage direction as being a very tall, buxom woman. But she doesn’t necessarily have to be tall and buxom. She just has to appear that way to the boys. You can’t really use that as physical description, but it will convey something to the actress. INTERVIEWER And to the actors playing the two boys. SIMON Yes. Those directions are very important. INTERVIEWER Family seems to be more than a predilection or interest, it is a near obsession with you. Even if you’re writing about a couple, in comes an extended family of friends or the blood-related aunts, uncles, cousins, fathers, and mothers with which your plays abound. Is that because family has played such an important role, for good and ill, in your life? SIMON Well, for one thing, it’s a universal subject. For example, when Come Blow Your Horn was playing, the theater doorman, a black man in his sixties, was standing in the back of the theater, laughing his head off. I went over to him after the play and asked, Why were you laughing so much? He said, That’s my family up there. I don’t write social and political plays, because I’ve always thought the family was the microcosm of what goes on in the world. I write about the small wars that eventually become the big wars. It’s also what I’m most comfortable with. I am a middle-class person, I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood. I try now and then to get away from the family play, but it amazes me that I’ve spent the last thirty-one years writing plays primarily about either my family or families very close to it. Maybe the answer is that at some point along the way you discover what it is you do best and writing about the family unit and its extensions is what I do best. INTERVIEWER Your introduction to the first published collection of your work is called “The Writer as Schizophrenic.” The word observer comes up repeatedly in your conversation, your interviews and especially in your plays. Have you always seen yourself as an outsider, an observer? SIMON Yes, that started very early, when my parents would take me to visit family. They’d offer me a cookie or a piece of fruit, but no one spoke to me, because they knew I had nothing to contribute. I wasn’t offended. I just thought it was the accepted norm. And that led me to believe that I was somehow invisible. On radio shows like The Shadow, there were invisible people. And movies were coming out—The Invisible Man, with Claude Rains. To me, invisible seemed the greatest thing you could be! If I could have one wish, it was to be invisible. First of all, you could go to any baseball game you wanted to. Free. You could go into any girl’s house and watch her get undressed! But it works another way too. It means there’s no responsibility. You don’t have to integrate, to contribute. This becomes a part of your personality. INTERVIEWER Does that detachment apply to your personal relationships as pervasively as to your work? SIMON I’m not quite sure who I am besides the writer. The writer is expressive, the other person can sit in a room and listen and not say anything. It’s very hard for me to get those two people together. In the middle of a conversation or a confrontation, I can suddenly step outside it. It’s like Jekyll turning into Mr. Hyde without the necessity of taking the potion. It’s why the Eugene character speaks to the audience in the trilogy—because in a sense he is invisible. The other characters in the play don’t see him talking to the audience. They go right about their business. As I wrote it, I thought, I’m now living my perfect dream—to be invisible. INTERVIEWER In Barefoot in the Park, Corie says, “Do you know what you are? You’re a watcher. There are watchers in the world and there are doers, and the watchers sit around watching the doers do.” SIMON In all three of my marriages I’ve been accused of this separation: You’re not listening to me. You’re not looking at me. When you asked about where I write I said anywhere. I just stare into space. That’s happened when I was talking to my wife. I could be looking at her and not thinking about what she’s saying. It’s rude. It’s selfish, I guess. But it’s what happens; some other thought has taken its place. One of the worst and most frightening examples of that was the first time I was ever on television. I went on the Johnny Carson show. I was standing behind that curtain, hearing them give my credits. Then they said, And here he is, the prolific playwright Neil Simon. I walked out and froze. I thought, My God, I’m out here, I’ve got to deliver something, I’ve got to be humorous, that’s what they expect of me. I sat down opposite Johnny Carson and he asked his first question, which was fairly lengthy. After the first two words I heard nothing. I only saw his lips moving. I said to myself, I’ve got all this time not to do anything. In other words, while his lips are moving I’m all right. So, my mind just wandered. I was looking around, saying, Well, forty million people are watching me, I wonder if my brother’s going to watch this, what’s he going to think of it? When Johnny’s lips stopped, I was on. But I had no answer because I’d never heard the question. So, I said something like, That reminds me of something, Johnny, and went into something completely irrelevant that fortunately was funny and we just seemed to move on with the conversation. It happens while I’m speaking to students at a college or university. I’ll be talking. I’ll look over the room and see one face not interested, and I’m gone, I’m lost. I wish I were out there, sitting among the invisible, but I’m up there having to deliver. The demands of coming up with something every minute are very difficult. In a sense, being in this office, I am invisible because I can stop. When I’m writing, there’s no pressure to come up with the next line. I always need that escape hatch, that place to go that’s within myself. I’ve tried coming to terms with it. I feel, as long as it doesn’t bother someone else, I’m happy with it. When it does bother someone else, then I’m in trouble. INTERVIEWER And your characters share this watcher/doer problem? SIMON Felix in The Odd Couple isn’t a watcher—or a doer. He’s stuck. He’s reached a certain point in his life and developed no further. Most of my characters are people who are stuck and can’t move. The grandmother in Lost in Yonkers has been stuck for the last seventy years. The mother in Broadway Bound—she’s really stuck. INTERVIEWER I remember George in Chapter Two saying, I’m stuck, Jennie . . . I’m just stuck some place in my mind and it’s driving me crazy. Going back to Barefoot in the Park, Corie’s pretty hard on your surrogate Neil when she tells him he’s not a doer. But, come to think of it, what could be more venturesome and brave—or foolhardy—than the real Neil opening a play on Broadway and exposing it to the critics and the audience? SIMON It is the most frightening thing in the world—and it was almost a matter of life and death for Joan and me with Come Blow Your Horn. If it had failed I would have been forced to move to California and become a comedy writer in television. But I don’t worry about it anymore and I think not being fearful of what’s going to happen has allowed me to write so much. If I do worry, I say I won’t do the play, because that means I don’t think it’s that good. INTERVIEWER Is the opposite true? Can you anticipate a hit? SIMON I never think of the plays as being hits when I write them. Well, I thought Rumors, of all plays, would be a really good commercial comedy if I wrote it well. I thought The Odd Couple was a black comedy. I never thought it was going to be popular, ever. INTERVIEWER It’s your most popular play, isn’t it? All over the world. SIMON Yes. And I thought it was a grim, dark play about two lonely men. I thought The Sunshine Boys wouldn’t be a popular play, but it was very well received. Chapter Two was another one I doubted, because when you touch on a character’s guilt, you touch on the audience’s guilt, and that makes them uncomfortable. Yet the play turned out to be very successful because it was a universal theme. Lost in Yonkers is an enormous success, but I thought I was writing the bleakest of plays. What I liked about it was that I thought it was Dickensian—two young boys left in the hands of dreadful people. What I was afraid of was that I would hear words like melodrama. INTERVIEWER You heard “Pulitzer Prize.” There are several plays that don’t seem to fit in your canon. In plays like The Good Doctor, Rumors, Fools, and God’s Favorite you seem to have a different agenda, there’s a different relationship between you and the play than the one you’ve described. Could that explain their lack of critical and popular success? SIMON I wrote The Good Doctor soon after I learned my wife had a year and a half to live. She didn’t know that. On the advice of the doctors, I’d elected not to tell her and I wanted to keep on working, so it would seem to her that everything was normal. I was reading Chekhov’s short stories and decided, just for practice, to translate one of them into my own language, my own humor. I knew it was a diversion. After a performance, a woman grabbed me in the foyer and said, This is not Neil Simon! Fools was an experiment that didn’t work. God’s Favorite is an absurdist black comedy about Job that was written as an outcry of anger against Joan’s death. My belief in God had vanished when this beautiful young girl was dying. I wasn’t Archibald MacLeish. I thought it would be pretentious for me to try to write something like a dramatic JB. So, I wrote it as a black comedy and it did help me get through that period. Sometimes you write a play just for the sake of working at it. It’s my craft. I’m allowed to go in any direction I want. I hate being pushed into certain places. Walter Kerr once wrote that he thought I was successful because I didn’t listen to what was in fashion in the theater and went my own way at my peril, and that sometimes I suffered for it and at other times I broke through. With Lost in Yonkers I suddenly heard from critics who said, This is a new voice for Neil Simon. We want you to go deeper and deeper into this area. At the same time other critics complained, I don’t like this as much. It’s not as funny as the old plays. They wanted Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple. I could have spent my whole life writing the Barefoot in the Parks and Odd Couples, which I certainly don’t denigrate, because I love them—but where would I have gone with my life? I would have been standing still, grinding out the same story time after time after time. What I’ve done, I think, is take the best of me and the best of my observations and try to deepen them to reform them and reflesh them. At some point along the way you discover what it is you do best. Recently I’ve been reading Samuel Beckett’s biography. When he was about forty-four years old, he said he wanted to write monologue. It was his way of expressing himself to the world. He was shy too. In a sense, I think many of my plays are dramatized monologues. It’s like sitting around the fire and telling you the story of my life and my father and my mother and my cousins and my aunts. In Lost in Yonkers I know I’m one of those two boys, probably the younger one. Who that grandmother is, who Aunt Bella is, with her adolescent mind, I don’t know. INTERVIEWER You seem to be saying that Lost in Yonkers is even less autobiographical than the Brighton Beach trilogy. SIMON I’d say Lost in Yonkers isn’t autobiographical at all. You asked me earlier whether I write thematic plays. I don’t, but I have a feeling that in Lost in Yonkers there was a theme within me that was crying to get out, a common denominator that got to everybody. In the last fifteen, twenty years, a phrase has come into prominence that didn’t exist in my childhood: “dysfunctional family.” My mother’s and father’s constant breakups seemed to show little concern for my brother and me. It was like coming from five broken families. That pain lingers. Writing plays is a way of working out your life. That’s why I can never conceive of stopping, because I would stop the investigation of who I am and what I am. INTERVIEWER You have the reputation of being a tireless, even an eager, rewriter. How much of the rewriting is done during the first drafts of the play and how much do you rewrite after the play has gone into rehearsal? SIMON I would say that I do no fewer than three to four major rewrites on a play before we go into rehearsal. I write the play, put it aside, take it out six months later, read it. By then I’ve forgotten everything about the play. It’s as though someone had sent it to me in the mail and I’m reading it for the first time. I can tell right away what I don’t and do like. That becomes a very easy rewrite—you just get rid of the stuff you don’t like. Then we start auditions for actors, so I keep hearing the words every day. After a while I can’t stand some of them and I start to rewrite, so in later auditions the actors get a better script to read. I finally say it’s the last draft before we go into rehearsal and we have a reading of the play in a room with just the producer, director and a few of the other people who will work on the play, one month before rehearsal. At that reading we have the entire cast, so now I know what it’s going to sound like. Based on that reading, I’ll do another major rewrite. It’s rare that I would ever do what they do in musicals: “Why don’t we switch scene four and scene two?” I write in a linear way, so that everything falls apart if you take anything out. Sometimes if even a few sentences come out of the play something suffers for it later on. Once the play opens out of town, the most important rewriting begins, based on not only the audience’s and the out-of-town critics’ reactions, but the reactions of ourselves, the actors, and some people we’ve invited to see the play and comment. I also listen—if I can, to the audience’s comments on the way out of the theater. That becomes harder now that I’ve lost my invisibility. INTERVIEWER How do you remain objective with all those voices in your ear? SIMON Mostly it’s my own intuition. I bring in rewrites no one has asked for. I’ll suddenly come in with five pages and the director and the actors will say, You didn’t like the other stuff? I’ll say, I think this is better. If you bring in seven pages, maybe three will work. That’s a big percentage. You’re way ahead of the game. An analogy for it would be if you were in college and took a test and your grade came back. You got a sixty-three on the test and they say, Come back tomorrow. You’ll be given exactly the same test. There’ll be no new questions. Well, you’re going to get an eighty-four on the second test. You’ll have had chances to fix it. That’s what happens to a play. Day by day, it gets better and better. In the case of Jake’s Women, in the first production a couple of years ago, there were a lot of things wrong. It was miscast, I had a director I was unfamiliar with who didn’t really understand my process. We opened with a play that was about a sixty-two on a possible grade of a hundred. I brought the play up to about a seventy-eight. As we got toward the end of the run, just prior to going to New York, I thought, you can’t get by in New York with a seventy-eight. You need at least a ninety-six or ninety-seven. So, I said to everyone, Let’s just pull it. And we did. I thought it was dead forever, because I’d put so much into it and wasn’t able to save it. Two years later I took another crack at it and did a major rewrite in which, as I’ve told you, I had Jake speak to the audience. The play took a whole new turn. I thought it was finally up in the ninety-percent bracket. INTERVIEWER If a play is truly flawed, how much can you do to improve it? SIMON Well, in the case of something like The Gingerbread Lady, which was a flawed play, the producer was going to put up a closing notice in Boston. Maureen Stapleton, who was starring in the play, came to me and said, If you close this play I’ll never speak to you again. She said, This is a potentially wonderful play. It needs work but don’t walk away from it! I thought, What a reasonable thing to say, because all it amounted to was more of my time. The producer said he wanted to close, to save me “from the slings and arrows of the critics in New York.” I said, I can take the slings and arrows. I’ve had enough success up to now. I’ll learn from this one. What finally made up my mind after reading three terrible reviews in Boston was that while waiting at the airport for my plane, I picked up The Christian Science Monitor and the review was a letter addressed to me. It said, Dear Neil Simon, I know you’re probably going to want to close this play, but I beg of you, don’t do it. This is potentially the best play you have written. You’re going into a whole new genre, a whole new mode of writing. Don’t abandon it. So, I called the producer and said, Please don’t close the play. Let’s run in Boston and see what happens. Then I didn’t want to get on a plane and arrive in New York an hour later; I wanted a four-hour trip on a train so I could start the rewrite. By the time I got to New York I had rewritten fifteen pages of the play. I stayed in New York for a week and came back with about thirty-five new pages. And we went to work. The play was never a major success, but we did have a year’s run and sold it to the movies. Maureen Stapleton won the Tony Award, and Marsha Mason, who played the lead in the film version, got an Oscar nomination. So, something good came out of persevering. INTERVIEWER Your plays have become darker in the last several years. Is this a sign of maturity or a wish to be taken seriously, since comedy generally isn’t as highly regarded as so-called “serious plays”? SIMON Maybe the plays matured because I matured. I do want to be taken more seriously, yet I want to hear the laughter in the theater. The laughs are very often the same gratification to the audience as letting themselves cry. They’re interchangeable emotions. INTERVIEWER Most of the darker plays take place in your childhood. Does that mean that your childhood was dark or that your view of your childhood and perhaps of the world has darkened as you’ve matured? SIMON My view of my childhood was always dark, but my view of the world has darkened considerably. The darkness in my plays reflects the way the world is now. The darkness in the plays, strangely enough, seems more beautiful to me. I think anything that is truthful has beauty in it. Life without the dark times is unrealistic. I don’t want to write unrealistically anymore. INTERVIEWER What do you consider your strongest suit as a writer? And what in your view is your weakest suit? SIMON I think my blue suit is my weakest. INTERVIEWER I knew it would come to this. SIMON I think my greatest weakness is that I can’t write outside of my own experience. I’m not like Paddy Chayefsky who could go off and do six months of research and then write something extremely believable. I’d like to write about Michelangelo, but I don’t know Michelangelo. I don’t know what his life was like. I wish I could extend myself, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I might play around with it from time to time. Those are the ones that wind up in the drawer. INTERVIEWER If you ever have a fire sale of the contents of that drawer, call me. What would you say is your particular strength? SIMON I think it’s construction. Maybe what I write is outmoded today, the “well-made play”—a play that tells you what the problem is, then shows you how it affects everybody, then resolves it. Resolution doesn’t mean a happy ending—which I’ve been accused of. I don’t think I write happy endings. Sometimes I have hopeful endings, sometimes optimistic ones. I try never to end the play with two people in each other’s arms—unless it’s a musical. When I was writing three-act plays, a producer told me the curtain should always come down on the beginning of the fourth act. A play should never really come to an end. The audience should leave saying, What’s going to happen to them now? As the plays progressed, some people wanted darker endings. Some critics even said the ending of Lost in Yonkers wasn’t dark enough. But I can’t write a play as dark and bleak and wonderful as A Streetcar Named Desire. I fall in some gray area. There is so much comedy within the dramas or so much drama within the comedies. INTERVIEWER In her interview for The Paris Review, Dorothy Parker said she got her character names from the telephone book and obituary columns. Do you have a system for naming your characters? SIMON There was a time I used to take baseball players’ names. The famous ones were too obvious, so you had to take names like Crespi. There was a guy named Creepy Crespi who played for the St. Louis Cardinals. Crespi would be a good name, although I’ve never used it. INTERVIEWER It’s got a nice k sound in it.  SIMON Yes. I try to name the character the way the character looks to me. I spend more time on the titles of plays than on the names of the characters. What I’ve tried to do over the years is take an expression from life that has a double entendre in it, for example, the musical Promises, Promises, so that every time people speak the words it sounds like they’re talking about your play. Or The Odd Couple—people sometimes say “they’re sort of an odd couple.” If you mention an odd couple now, you think of the play. I’ve seen the words maybe a thousand times in newspapers since, and it seems as if I originated the term, which, of course, I didn’t. Come Blow Your Horn comes from the nursery rhyme. Barefoot in the Park came from what the play was about. There’s a line in the play that comes from my life, when Joan used to say to me, Stop being a fuddy-duddy. Let’s go to Washington Square Park and walk barefoot in the grass. Chapter Two was, literally, the second chapter of my life, after my wife Joan died and I married Marsha. Prisoner of Second Avenue was a good title for a play about a man who loses his job and is left to live in that little apartment on Second Avenue while his wife goes to work. He has nothing to do but walk around the room ’til he knows exactly how many feet each side is—so he’s literally a prisoner. The Gingerbread Lady is a bad title. I liked the title and then had to make up a phrase about the gingerbread lady to make it fit. The film title was better: Only When I Laugh. The Star-Spangled Girl was a better title than a play. I liked Last of the Red Hot Lovers. It seemed familiar. It comes from Sophie Tucker’s slogan: last of the red hot mamas. Lost in Yonkers—I love the word Yonkers and I wanted to put the play in a specific place. I said to myself, What in Yonkers? These boys are lost, Bella is lost, this family is all lost . . . in Yonkers. Jake’s Women is literally about a man named Jake and three women. Again, there’s the k sound in Jake. INTERVIEWER Let’s talk about stage directors. How much can a director help a play? Or, conversely, hurt it? SIMON Well, in the early days, I worked principally with Mike Nichols. He was after me day and night: This scene isn’t good enough. Work on this. Fix this. He’d call me at two or three in the morning, to the point where I’d say, Mike, give me a chance, leave me alone. You’re on my back all the time. But, I always knew he was right. I wasn’t that experienced a playwright. The way I work now—with Gene Saks—the conversation is generally short. He might say to me, There’s something wrong with this scene. I’ll say, I know what you mean. Let me go home and work on it. I’m much less influenced by the director now than I was before. I depend on the director in terms of interpretation of the play. With the Brighton Beach trilogy and Lost in Yonkers, I watched with clenched fists and teeth as Gene was directing, thinking, That’s wrong, it’s all wrong what he’s doing. Then, suddenly, I saw what he was doing and said, Oh God! He has to go step by step to get to this place, trying all his things, the way I would try them at the writer’s table. INTERVIEWER How much do actors influence you? Is it ever the case that the personality of an actor influences you to remold the character to the actor, playing into what you now perceive to be the actor’s strength? SIMON I might do that. But what I try to do in terms of rewriting is always to benefit the character, not the actor. There’s something an actor sometimes says that drives me crazy: I would never do that. I say you’re not doing this, the character is. The one thing I almost always look for is the best actor not the funniest actor. I rarely, rarely cast a comedian in a play. The best comedian I ever had in a play was George C. Scott. He was funnier than anybody in the third act of Plaza Suite because he was playing King Lear. He knew the essence of comedy is not to play “funny.” I remember, at the first reading of Barefoot in the Park, the whole cast was laughing at every line in the play. When we finished the reading, Mike Nichols said, Now forget it’s a comedy. From here on we’re playing Hamlet. INTERVIEWER I notice in the printed plays that you use ellipses, italics, and all caps. I assume the ellipses are meant to tell the actors when you want them to pause, the italics are meant to give emphasis, and that all caps ask for added emphasis, even volume. SIMON Yes. They are a first indication to the actor and the director. Some of those emphases change enormously in the rehearsal period, but I also have to worry about what’s going to be done in stock and amateur and European productions, so I hope it’s a guide to what I meant. The Prisoner of Second Avenue opens in the dark. All we see is a cigarette as Mel Edison comes in. The part was played by Peter Falk. He sat down on the sofa, took a puff of the cigarette, and in the dark we heard aaaahhhhhhh. I don’t know how you’re going to be able to spell that, but it’s got a lot of hs in it—a lot of them. It got a huge laugh because the audience heard two thousand years of suffering in that aaaahhhhhhh. When Peter left and other actors played the part, they would go ahh. There weren’t enough hs and the line wasn’t funny. People tell me that when they study my work in acting class, the teachers have to give them the sounds, the nuances, the way the lines are said. I guess Shakespeare can be said a thousand different ways, but in certain kinds of lines—for example, that run on Ho in Biloxi Blues—everything depends on the timing of it. I’ve always considered all of this a form of music. I wish I could write tempo directions, like allegro and adagio. That’s why I put dots between words or underline certain words, to try to convey the sense of music, dynamics, and rhythm. INTERVIEWER Do the critics ever help you, shedding light on your work, regardless of whether they’re praising or damning it? SIMON Walter Kerr gave me one of the best pieces of criticism I’ve ever had. In the first line of his review of The Star-Spangled Girl, he said, “Neil Simon didn’t have an idea for a play this year, but he wrote it anyway.” That was exactly what had happened. Elliot Norton was very helpful to me in Boston with The Odd Couple. His title of the opening night review was, “Oh, for a Third Act.” He wasn’t going to waste his time telling everyone how good the first two acts were. His job, he felt, was to make me make the third act better. And his suggestion to me was to bring back the Pigeon sisters. I said, Good idea, brought back the Pigeon sisters, and the play worked. More important than the reviews, it’s the audience that tells you whether or not you’ve succeeded. A week prior to the opening of the play you know if it’s going to work or not. If ninety percent of the critics say it doesn’t work, well, you already knew that without having to read the reviews. On the other hand, the opening night of Little Me, Bob Fosse and I were standing in the back of the theater. The producers had allowed a black-tie audience to come from a dinner to the theater. They’d eaten, they’d had drinks, they all knew each other—that’s the worst audience you can get. About three-quarters of the way through the first act, a man got up, so drunk he could hardly walk, and staggered up the aisle looking for the men’s room. As he passed Bob and me he said, This is the worst piece of crap I’ve seen since My Fair Lady! Go figure out what that means. INTERVIEWER Maybe the reason comedies like Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, and The Sunshine Boys are sometimes underrated is quite simply that the audience is laughing at them—rather than worrying, weeping, learning—or doing any of the other virtuous things an audience is reputed to be doing at a drama. However, I think most writers would agree that it is relatively easy to make people cry and very, very hard to make them laugh. SIMON Billy Wilder, whom I respect enormously, once confided in me that drama’s a lot easier than comedy. He found some of the brilliant dramas he wrote, like Sunset Boulevard, much easier to write than the comedies. Comedies are relentless, especially a farce like Some Like It Hot. Rumors was the most difficult play I ever wrote because not only did every moment of that play have to further the story, complicate it and keep the characters in motion—literal motion, swinging in and out of doors— but the audience had to laugh at every attempt at humor. You don’t have five minutes where two people can sit on a sofa and just say, What am I doing with my life, Jack? Am I crazy? Why don’t I get out of this? You can do that in a drama. You can’t do it in a farce. INTERVIEWER Do you make it a point to see the plays of other playwrights?  SIMON When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I went to the theater a lot. There was always a Tennessee Williams play to see or a great English play. It was such an education. I learned more from bad plays than from good ones. Good plays are a mystery. You don’t know what it is that the playwright did right. More often than not you see where a work fails. One of the things I found interesting was that a lot of comedy came from drunks on the stage. If a character was drunk he was funny. I thought, Wouldn’t it be great to write characters that are as funny as drunks but are not drunk. In other words, bring out the outrageousness of them and the only way you can do that is to put them in such a tight corner that they have to say what’s really on their minds. That’s where the humor comes from. INTERVIEWER Are you a good audience for other people’s work? Do you laugh in the theater? I know some writers who are just not good audiences. Would you call yourself a good audience? SIMON I’d call myself a great audience. I’m appreciative of good work, no matter what its form—comedy, drama, musical. I saw Amadeus four times. A Streetcar Named Desire I could see over and over. When I’m in England I go to some of the most esoteric English plays, plays that never even come over here, and I’m just amazed at them. I’ve recently caught up with the works of Joe Orton. I love Tom Stoppard’s plays Jumpers and Travesties, and I admire the work of Peter Schaffer. If it’s good theater, yes, I’m the best audience. I’m out there screaming. INTERVIEWER Comedy has changed in a very noticeable way in the last thirty years. Subjects and language that were taboo are now almost obligatory. Do you think that indicates progress? SIMON I like the fact that one can touch on subjects one wouldn’t have dealt with in years gone by. The things that Lenny Bruce got arrested for you can find on any cable station today. Television situation comedy doesn’t seem as funny to me as what Chaplin and Buster Keaton did without words. There are a few good comedians, but by and large I don’t think comedy is a lot better today. INTERVIEWER You seem to exercise a certain constraint over the language of your plays. Even Biloxi Blues doesn’t use the kind of profanity and obscenity I remember from my days at that same airfield. SIMON I think to say fuck once in an entire play is much more shocking than to say it sixty times. Four of the last five plays I’ve written took place in the thirties and forties, when profanity wasn’t used on stage—or in the home. The fifth play, Rumors, is contemporary and it’s filled with profanity. But I don’t need profanity. I love language and I’d rather find more interesting ways to use it than take the easy way out. INTERVIEWER Every playwright has fingerprints. You’ve mentioned thinking of your plays in musical terms and one fingerprint of yours seems to be the “aria.” At a certain point in almost every one of your plays a character in extremis launches into an extended list of all the catastrophes that are happening to him. In Come Blow Your Horn, Alan says, “You’re using my barber, my restaurants, my ticket broker, my apartment, and my socks. How’s it going, kid? Am I having fun?” In Plaza Suite the father explodes, “You can take all the Eislers, all the hors d’oeuvres, and go to Central Park and have an eight thousand dollar picnic! I’m going down to the Oak Room with my broken arm, with my drenched, rented, ripped suit and I’m going to get blind!” Are you aware of doing that? SIMON Yes, it’s a fingerprint. You’ll notice that those arias always come near the end of the play. The character has reached the point where he can’t contain himself anymore and everything comes spurting out, like a waterfall, a cascade of irritations. Just mentioning one of them wouldn’t be funny, but to mention all the irritations wraps up a man’s life in one paragraph. INTERVIEWER The words you use to describe your comedy are words that are generally associated not with comedy at all, but with tragedy. You’ve talked about catharsis and your characters exploding when they can’t bear the pain anymore. SIMON Yes. That’s why I don’t find television comedy very funny—because it’s hardly ever about anything important. I think the weightier comedy is, the funnier it is. To me, Chaplin’s films are masterpieces. Remember him running after a truck with the red warning flag that has fallen off it? INTERVIEWER And he doesn’t see hundreds of rioting radicals falling enthusiastically in behind him . . . SIMON So he gets busted and goes to jail as their leader. INTERVIEWER Maybe when the record is written a hundred years from now it will turn out that all our comedy writers, from Chaplin and Keaton to you and Woody Allen, were writing tragedies. What’s the cliché? Comedy is tragedy plus time. How fine is the line between tragedy and comedy? SIMON It’s almost invisible. I think Mel Brooks is one of the funniest people in the world, but when he makes a picture like Spaceballs, he’s telling us, This is foolishness. No one is in danger, so the audience knows it’s too inconsequential to laugh at. But when he does a picture like High Anxiety or Young Frankenstein there’s something at stake. He’s taken a frightening idea and twisted it, so we’re able to laugh at it.  INTERVIEWER Here comes a difficult question ... SIMON As long as it doesn’t have to do with math. INTERVIEWER I don’t know a writer who wouldn’t say that—or a musician who isn’t good at math. Because music is mathematical, I guess. SIMON But so are plays. As surely as two plus two is four, the things you write in the play must add up to some kind of logical figure. In Broadway Bound, when Stan is teaching Eugene the craft of comedy, Eugene says, “It’s just a comedy sketch. Does it have to be so logical? We’re not drawing the plans for the Suez Canal,” and Stan says, “Yes we are. It’s not funny if it’s not believable.” INTERVIEWER Well, now that we’ve covered math and logic, here’s the difficult question. You write repeatedly about an uptight man and a liberating woman; is that because it’s a reflection of your relationship with the women in your life—or because you feel it’s a common and important theme? SIMON The answer is quite simple. It’s because I’m an uptight man who’s been married to three liberated women. Joan was the first liberated woman I ever met and the most unconventional. She introduced me to more ways of looking at life than I’d ever dreamed of. She was more adventuresome than I’d ever been. She would jump from a plane in a parachute, and I’m the uptight man who would say, You’re crazy. Marsha was the same way. She was a feminist and had me marching in parades with a flag, yelling for women’s rights. It’s not that I didn’t believe in women’s rights, but I’m not an activist. Diane is an environmentalist, an ecologist, and also a fighter for the rights of women. Go over all the plays. With the exception of The Odd Couple and The Sunshine Boys, you’ll find that the women are not only stronger but more interesting characters than the men. Again, the men are usually the Greek chorus. That’s me sitting there, little Neil, born Marvin, observing the world—verbally, from a very safe place, which is what the man does in Barefoot in the Park, which is what he does in Chapter Two, in almost every play. INTERVIEWER In the theater, in films, rugged men usually liberate unfulfilled women. From what you say, your plays reverse that convention. SIMON Yes. I never feel threatened by women. I have enormous respect for them. I would also usually rather be with them than with men. I’m not much of a male bonder. I have male friends, obviously. I belong to tennis clubs. But in a social situation, I’d generally rather talk to a woman because it’s like a play—you’re getting the opposite point of view. You talk to a man, you’re getting your own point of view. It becomes redundant. But when you’re with a woman, that’s when the sparks fly, that’s when it’s most interesting. INTERVIEWER Plays these days are usually in two acts rather than three and you are using more and shorter scenes. Is that the result of changes in stage technology? Are you being influenced by film? SIMON I think I’ve been influenced by films, which have been influenced by television and commercials. Today you can see a one-minute commercial with about forty setups in it. There’s a need to pace things differently because the audience’s attention span has grown shorter. Biloxi Blues was the first major example of that because I had fourteen set changes. What also helped speed things along was that I started writing plays with larger casts, so there were many more entrances and exits. Also, having a narrator makes big time-leaps possible. I am influenced by new technologies and techniques, but that doesn’t mean I’m following the fashions. It just means that I’m moving to another phase in my career—I’m becoming less literal and more abstract. INTERVIEWER You’ve mentioned finding your characters waiting for you every time you walk into your office. Dickens complained that he hated to end his books because he didn’t want to say good-bye to the characters he’d been living with. SIMON That’s why I don’t go back to see my plays again, because they belong to someone else—to the actors and the audience. That process happens in a series of events. First, you finish writing the play and everyone reads it. Then you go into rehearsal. Day by day, it slowly becomes the director’s and the actors’. They’re still asking me questions. I’m still participating. I’m still the father of these children. They get onstage and soon the play is finished. They no longer need me! I feel locked out, I’m not part of them. After the play opens, I’m almost embarrassed to go backstage, because it’s the place that belongs to the director and the actors. I’m just the man who introduced the characters to them. It’s a very, very sad feeling for me. What happens eventually—it may sound cold—is that I disown them. I have no interest in seeing the plays again. In fact, it’s painful, especially when a play has run for a long time and new actors have come in to replace the original cast. When I walk into that theater, it’s as if I were picking up my family album and turning the pages to see my mother and father and aunt and cousins and I say, This isn’t my family! So, you give it up and go on to the next play. INTERVIEWER And the next. And the next. SIMON Every time I write a play it’s the beginning of a new life for me. Today as I listen to you read excerpts from these plays and talk about them, it makes me feel nostalgic about how wonderful those days were—but I’m enjoying these days of writing, even though I see that the sun is setting.  

i don't know

What was the second Oscar Hammerstein show to win the Pulitzer Prize?

Oscar Hammerstein II — Listen for free on Spotify Oscar Hammerstein II Play on Spotify During the '40s and '50s, lyricist/librettist Oscar Hammerstein II and composer Richard Rodgers were the most successful composing team on Broadway, writing several long-running shows that were eventually made into movie musicals. Hammerstein was also the second most prolific lyricist of the 20th century, second only to Irving Berlin . Born into a show business family in N.Y.C. on July 12, 1895, as Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein, he later dropped his middle names and adopted the "II." The grandfather he was named after was a theater builder and opera company director, and the lyricist's father worked as the manager of a historic vaudeville theater in New York. As a young man, Hammerstein attended Columbia University and law school and took part in school plays. He later became stage manager in his uncle Arthur's theater and tried his hand -- unsuccessfully -- at writing screenplays. Hammerstein co-wrote songs for Broadway during the '20s with lyricist Otto Harbach, including Showboat (1928) and Sweet Adeline (1929). He also collaborated with many composers over the years, including George Gershwin and Jerome Kern , but his most prolific and successful period was with composer Richard Rodgers . They teamed up after Rodgers' songwriting partner, Lorenz Hart, became ill and died in 1943. From this time until a year before Hammerstein's passing in 1960, Rodgers & Hammerstein were unmatched creators of smash hit Broadway musicals. Their first big hit was 1943's Oklahoma!, for which they received a Pulitzer Prize. The duo received another Pulitzer for 1949's South Pacific. Rodgers & Hammerstein were also responsible for such wildly successful musicals as The King & I (1951) and The Sound of Music (1959). Some of Hammerstein's best-known songs include "Ol' Man River," "Lover, Come Back to Me" (1928), "Why Was I Born?" (1929), "All the Things You Are" (1939), "People Will Say We're in Love" (1943), "Some Enchanted Evening" (1949), "Getting to Know You," and "My Favorite Things." Hammerstein produced many of the shows that he scored, and on some he didn't, including Annie Get Your Gun. He is also author of the book Lyrics. ~ Joslyn Layne, Rovi Read More Show less

South Pacific

Lionel Hampton played on which band until forming his own in1941?

Foothill Music Theatre presents, South Pacific Music by Richard Rodgers & Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II Book by Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by James Michener Director, Milissa Carey; Music Director, Mark Hanson; Choreographer, Michael Ryken The Story From the pages of James Michener's Pulitzer Prize winning novel came Rogers & Hammerstein's sweeping epic set on an island paradise during World War II. Winner of 10 Tony Awards in 1950, including Best Musical, the plot follows two parallel love stories threatened by the dangers of prejudice and war. The production was also ground-breaking for its candid and progressive message on racism. The music of South Pacific has become iconic popular standards: Some Enchanted Evening, Younger Than Springtime, I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy, There Is Nothing Like a Dame, Happy Talk, Bali Ha'i and I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair. The show, which was the second longest running on Broadway at the time, spawned a 1958 motion picture and has repeatedly enjoyed success in revivals and tours. In 2008 it returned to Broadway to wide critical acclaim and nearly 1,000 performances. It would win another seven Tonys that year, including Best Musical Revival. Vividly capturing the emotions of war, the intensity and boredom, the optimism and desperation, and the prejudice and acceptance, this is a story ahead of its time and for all time. Performances Dates:

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In what year was indoor handball introduced as an Olympic event for men?

Handball - Summer Olympic Sport Handball Victoire surprenante des Françaises - London 2012 - Handball 01 Jan 0001 Handball is a fast-paced team game that was first played in Scandinavia and Germany at the end of the 19th century. European origins The modern game of handball was first played towards the end of the 19th century in Scandinavia and Germany. Field handball was first recognised at the turn of the century and G. Wallström introduced the sport of "handball" to Sweden in 1910. First competition The International Amateur Handball Federation (IAHF) was set up in 1928 on the occasion of the Olympic Games in Amsterdam, leading to the first Field Handball World Championships being played in Germany in 1938, following its appearance at the 1936 Berlin Games. Rival codes Between 1938 and 1966 both forms of handball were played at separate World Championships: an outdoor, 11-a-side game played on a football pitch and a new 7-a-side indoor version preferred by the Scandinavians. Olympic history After 1936, field handball was no longer played at the Games, except as a demonstration sport in 1952 in Helsinki. Indoor handball was presented for the first time at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Yugoslavia was victorious and won the first gold medal after a competition between 16 men’s teams. The introduction of women’s handball to the Games took place in 1976 in Montreal. The Soviet Union won this first women’s Olympic competition, taking home two gold medals after the 11-team men’s competition and the six-team women’s one.

one thousand nine hundred and seventy two

Which country does the airline Air Littoral come from?

GoldMap NBC Olympics - Team Handball What is Handball? Handball is a fascinating game played throughout five continents by over 180 countries and 19 million people all ages, worldwide. First introduced as an outdoor sport during the 1939 Summer Olympics program, handball has since been an indoor sport in the Summer Olympics program since 1972.  Handball is awesome!  Watch our video today! Help us grow the sport of handball in the US and donate today at  http://www.teamusa.org/usa-team-handball/donate What is Beach Handball? Beach Handball is a relatively new "kid on the block" as the game and its first official rules were officially recognized by the International Handball Federation (IHF) in 1994. The sport will be featured in the 2013 World Games while being considered to debut as a separate event in the 2020 or 2024 Olympic Games. The IHF and other continental federations actively promote beach handball through grassroots and international competitions understanding that some athletes will specialize in beach handball while others will cross-over into indoor handball. Handball Legacy Many women and men have represented the United States on National Teams in Olympic Games, World Championships, Qualification Tournaments and Matches, Pan American Championships and Games and many other international tournaments and matches and training camps. This gallery displays National Teams and rosters spanning many decades and, in doing so, helps to consecrate our team handball legacy. USA Team Handball Residency Program Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, is home to the  USA Team Handball Residency Program  for the Men’s and Women’s National Teams. The AU School of Kinesiology is a  U.S. Olympic Training Site  providing sports science performance testing and training for athletes of all sports. Any athlete interested in playing Olympic handball may contact the Men’s Coach Javier Garcia Cuesta or the Women’s Coach Christian Latulippe, for more information about the program and tryouts.   Javier Garcia Cuesta, Men's NT Coach         Email:   [email protected] Christian Latulippe, Women's NT Coach     Email:   [email protected]   Contact Us Today We are always eager to teach people about how wonderful Handball is and how much fun we have while playing.  If you are looking for more information about rules, how to get involved and where our next events will be held, please contact us!  We love to share!  Michael D. Cavanaugh, CEO, (719)866-2203

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In which country was Emilio Estevez born?

Emilio Estevez - IMDb IMDb Official Photos » Emilio Estevez was born on May 12, 1962, in New York City. He is the eldest son of actor Martin Sheen , who at the time was just breaking into the business. His mother, Janet Sheen (née Templeton), was a former New York art student who had met Emilio's father right after he had moved to Manhattan. Martin and Janet had three other children, Charlie ... See full bio » Born: Famous Directors: From Sundance to Prominence From Christopher Nolan to Quentin Tarantino and every Coen brother in between, many of today's most popular directors got their start at the Sundance Film Festival . Here's a list of some of the biggest names to go from Sundance to Hollywood prominence. a list of 36 people created 25 Apr 2012 a list of 30 people created 16 Aug 2013 a list of 42 people created 10 Jun 2014 a list of 29 people created 31 May 2015 a list of 43 people created 9 months ago Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDbPage How much of Emilio Estevez's work have you seen? User Polls 4 wins & 10 nominations. See more awards  » Known For Men at Work James St. James (1990)  2012 Abominable Christmas (TV Movie) Mr. Winterbottom (voice)  1982 Making the Grade (TV Series) Dwayne  2010/I The Way (written for the screen by)  2006 Bobby (written by)  1990 Men at Work (written by)  1987 Wisdom (written by)  1995 The Jerky Boys (executive producer) Hide   2010/I The Way (additional photography) Hide   1996 The War at Home (performer: "Fuer Elise") Hide   2010 King's Man (additional thanks) Hide   2010-2011 The Hour (TV Series) Himself - Guest  2011 CBS News Sunday Morning (TV Series documentary) Himself - Guest  2011 Chelsea Lately (TV Series) Himself - Guest  2011 Tavis Smiley (TV Series) Himself - Guest  2011 Made in Hollywood (TV Series) Himself  2006-2011 Live! with Kelly (TV Series) Himself - Guest  2011 Sidewalks Entertainment (TV Series) Himself  2011 The One Show (TV Series) Himself  2010 Días de cine (TV Series) Himself  2010 El hormiguero (TV Series) Himself - Guest  2007 Film 2016 (TV Series) Himself  2006 Larry King Live (TV Series) Himself - Guest  2006 History in Focus (TV Series documentary) Himself - Episode #3.46 (2006) ... Himself - Guest  2006 Shootout (TV Series)  2006 Corazón de... (TV Series) Himself  2006 Entertainment Tonight (TV Series) Himself  2005 Dude Room (TV Series) Himself  2003 E! True Hollywood Story (TV Series documentary) Himself  1996 The Single Guy (TV Series) Himself  1994 Saturday Night Live (TV Series) Himself - Host / Various - Emilio Estevez/Pearl Jam (1994) ... Himself - Host / Various  1994 Later (TV Series)  1989-1991 Good Morning America (TV Series) Himself - Guest  1990 America This Morning (TV Series) Himself  2015 Entertainment Tonight (TV Series) Himself  2010 E! True Hollywood Story (TV Series documentary) Himself  2007 Biography (TV Series documentary) Himself Personal Details Other Works: Appeared in Bon Jovi 's music video, "Say It Isn't So", along with Matt LeBlanc , Claudia Schiffer and Arnold Schwarzenegger (2000). See more » Publicity Listings: 2 Print Biographies | 7 Interviews | 1 Article | 2 Magazine Cover Photos | See more » Alternate Names: Did You Know? Personal Quote: What's the level of compromise for making that kind of money? How far do I have to sell my soul? What's the price of that? And I don't know if I want to make those kind of compromises any more. I think I'm a different person. I think I've matured to a great extent. I think that I want different things now. That it's not about the celebrity status that you receive because you're doing the next hot... See more » Trivia: Uncle of Sam Sheen , Lola Rose Sheen and Cassandra Sheen. See more » Trademark: As a film director, he often puts the most focus on the characters rather than the plot itself. See more » Star Sign:

United States

Which brand had to apologize for a logo said to be like the Arabic for Allah?

Emilio Estevez Nationality - Emilio Estevez Net Worth Emilio Estevez Nationality Read more... Emilio Estevez Emilio Estevez Net Worth is $15 Million. Emilio Estevez was born in New York and has an estimated net worth of $15 million dollars. An actor, director, producer, and writer, Emilio Estevez is most widely recognized for his work in 80's films such as. Emilio Estevez (/?'mi:ljo? '... Emilio Estevez Net Worth is $15 Million. Emilio Estevez Net Worth is $15 Million. Emilio Estevez was born in New York and has an estimated net worth of $15 million dollars. An actor, director, producer, and writer, Emilio Estevez is most widely recognized for his work in 80's films such as Emilio Estevez is an American actor, film director, and writer. He started his career as an actor and is well known for being a member of the acting Brat Pack of the 1980s, starring in The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire. He is also known for Repo Man, The Mighty Ducks and its sequels, Maximum Overdrive, Bobby , and his performances in Western films such as Young Guns and its sequel. One of his first appearances was as "Two-Bit" in The Outsiders. Estevez was born in Staten Island, New York, the oldest child of actor Martin Sheen and artist Janet Templeton. His siblings are Ramon Estevez, Charlie Sheen , Natasha Prasaud Estevez, and Renee Estevez. Estevez initially attended school in the New York public school system but transferred to a prestigious private academy once his father's career took off. He lived on Manhattan's Upper West Side until his family moved Wes...

i don't know

What was the Blue Swede's only No 1 hit?

Blue Swede - Hooked On A Feeling (Guardians of the Galaxy - Music Trailer) - YouTube Blue Swede - Hooked On A Feeling (Guardians of the Galaxy - Music Trailer) Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Feb 19, 2014 Blue Swede's, Hooked On A Feeling is the song that's been used on the trailer for the latest addition to Marvel cinematic universe in the Guardians of the Galaxy film. I DO NOT OWN ANY RIGHTS... ALL RIGHTS BELONG TO THEIR RESPECTFUL OWNERS. Category

Hooked on a Feeling

New York-born Sir Jacob Epstein worked in which branch of the arts?

BLUE SWEDE LYRICS - Hooked On A Feeling "Hooked On A Feeling" lyrics BLUE SWEDE LYRICS I can't stop this feeling Deep inside of me Girl, you just don't realize What you do to me When you hold me In your arms so tight You let me know I'm hooked on a feeling I'm high on believing That you're in love with me Lips as sweet as candy Its taste is on my mind Girl, you got me thirsty For another cup o' wine Got a bug from you girl But I don't need no cure I'll just stay a victim If I can for sure All the good love

i don't know

How old was Dodi Fayed at the time of his death in 1997?

CNN - Princess Diana killed in Paris car crash - August 31, 1997 Princess Diana killed in Paris car crash Prince Charles to accompany body to Britain August 31, 1997 Web posted at: 11:35 a.m. EDT (1535 GMT) PARIS (CNN) -- Britain's Princess Diana died early Sunday after suffering massive internal injuries in a high-speed car crash, reportedly after being chased by photographers who were trying to snap photographs of the princess. Her companion and rumored lover, Dodi Fayed , and their chauffeur also died when the Mercedes crashed shortly after midnight in a tunnel along the Seine River at the Pont de l'Alma bridge, less than a half mile north of the Eiffel Tower. A fourth person in the car, a bodyguard of the princess, was also seriously injured. The 36-year-old princess died from internal bleeding stemming from major chest, lung and head injuries, doctors said at a 6 a.m. news conference. "Diana's body arrived at the hospital in a condition of serious hemorrhage and shock. Shortly thereafter, she went into cardiac arrest," said Dr. Bruno Riou, an anesthesiologist at Paris Hospital de la Petie Salpetriere. "An urgent surgery showed a severe wound to the left pulmonary vein. Despite the closure of this wound and the two-hour external and internal cardiac massage, no official respiratory circulation could be established and she died at 4 a.m. Paris time," he said. Prince Charles heads to France Diana's body was to arrive in London around 7 p.m. (2 p.m. EDT) Sunday, French police said. Prince Charles left Scotland early Sunday afternoon for Paris. From there he will accompany the body of his former wife on its return to Britain. Charles will also visit the hospital where Diana died to thank doctors for having tried to save her life. Fayed's body was to return to Britain Sunday according to a Harrods spokesman. No further details are available. The Prince of Wales woke their children, Princes William, 15, and Harry, 12, and informed them of their mother's death at Balmoral Castle, Scotland, where they were spending the summer. Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles said in statements early Sunday that they were "deeply shocked and distressed by this terrible news." British Prime Minister Tony Blair said, "I feel like everyone else in this country: utterly devastated. ... She was a wonderful, warm human being." 7 photographers detained Diana's car was traveling at 80 to 85 mph (128 to 136 kph) when the car slammed into a concrete abutment in the narrow tunnel , careened into a wall and was crushed like an accordion, police said. According to witnesses, Paparazzi -- the commercial photographers who constantly followed Diana -- were pursuing the car on motorcycles. Authorities said seven photographers -- six reported to be French and one Macedonian -- were in custody, and a criminal investigation was under way. Police seized two motorcycles and a motor scooter believed used in the chase. France Info radio said at least some of the photographers took pictures before help arrived -- and that one of the photographers was beaten at the scene by horrified witnesses. Harrods spokesperson Michael Cole relates Dodi's feelings for Diana 264 K/24 sec. AIFF or WAV sound "Serious questions will need to be asked as to whether the aggressive intrusion into her privacy has contributed to this tragedy," said British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. Mourners gather at Kensington Palace In London, people began gathering outside Diana's Kensington Palace residence before dawn. Some sat with their heads in their hands and wept. Flowers from mourners adorned the palace gate . One man lit two candles at Kensington Palace. "I just feel disbelief more than shock," said student Fiona von Schank, 24, who brought two roses. "It's amazing that this woman who finally seemed to have just about found some happiness has now died so tragically." Diana and Fayed, the 42-year-old son of the billionaire Egyptian owner of London's prestigious Harrods department store, had arrived in Paris on Saturday afternoon on a private visit. They had dined at the Ritz and were headed to a villa owned by Fayed in a posh district in western Paris, France Info reported. Witnesses: at least 1 photographer at scene American Mike Walker was among the first on the scene. He said the car Diana was in "looked like it hit a wall." Eyewitnesses describe the crash scene Tom Richardson 352K/26 sec. AIFF or WAV sound "His equipment was very professional. His camera was a foot- and-a-half tall," Luz said. "It definitely was not a tourist camera." Offering condolences via Web The royal family's Web site, www.royal.gov.uk , invited users to offer condolences. The site opens with a color photograph of Diana smiling and dressed elegantly with a bouquet of wildflowers. The caption is simple: "Diana, Princess of Wales 1 July 1961 - 31 August 1997." On a special link, users can sign in on the visitor's book and express their sympathy. "Thank you for your kind message of condolence for the sad loss of Diana, Princess of Wales," a message from the royal family reads.  

forty two

In which country is the Angostura bridge?

CNN - Princess Diana killed in Paris car crash - August 31, 1997 Princess Diana killed in Paris car crash Prince Charles to accompany body to Britain August 31, 1997 Web posted at: 11:35 a.m. EDT (1535 GMT) PARIS (CNN) -- Britain's Princess Diana died early Sunday after suffering massive internal injuries in a high-speed car crash, reportedly after being chased by photographers who were trying to snap photographs of the princess. Her companion and rumored lover, Dodi Fayed , and their chauffeur also died when the Mercedes crashed shortly after midnight in a tunnel along the Seine River at the Pont de l'Alma bridge, less than a half mile north of the Eiffel Tower. A fourth person in the car, a bodyguard of the princess, was also seriously injured. The 36-year-old princess died from internal bleeding stemming from major chest, lung and head injuries, doctors said at a 6 a.m. news conference. "Diana's body arrived at the hospital in a condition of serious hemorrhage and shock. Shortly thereafter, she went into cardiac arrest," said Dr. Bruno Riou, an anesthesiologist at Paris Hospital de la Petie Salpetriere. "An urgent surgery showed a severe wound to the left pulmonary vein. Despite the closure of this wound and the two-hour external and internal cardiac massage, no official respiratory circulation could be established and she died at 4 a.m. Paris time," he said. Prince Charles heads to France Diana's body was to arrive in London around 7 p.m. (2 p.m. EDT) Sunday, French police said. Prince Charles left Scotland early Sunday afternoon for Paris. From there he will accompany the body of his former wife on its return to Britain. Charles will also visit the hospital where Diana died to thank doctors for having tried to save her life. Fayed's body was to return to Britain Sunday according to a Harrods spokesman. No further details are available. The Prince of Wales woke their children, Princes William, 15, and Harry, 12, and informed them of their mother's death at Balmoral Castle, Scotland, where they were spending the summer. Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles said in statements early Sunday that they were "deeply shocked and distressed by this terrible news." British Prime Minister Tony Blair said, "I feel like everyone else in this country: utterly devastated. ... She was a wonderful, warm human being." 7 photographers detained Diana's car was traveling at 80 to 85 mph (128 to 136 kph) when the car slammed into a concrete abutment in the narrow tunnel , careened into a wall and was crushed like an accordion, police said. According to witnesses, Paparazzi -- the commercial photographers who constantly followed Diana -- were pursuing the car on motorcycles. Authorities said seven photographers -- six reported to be French and one Macedonian -- were in custody, and a criminal investigation was under way. Police seized two motorcycles and a motor scooter believed used in the chase. France Info radio said at least some of the photographers took pictures before help arrived -- and that one of the photographers was beaten at the scene by horrified witnesses. Harrods spokesperson Michael Cole relates Dodi's feelings for Diana 264 K/24 sec. AIFF or WAV sound "Serious questions will need to be asked as to whether the aggressive intrusion into her privacy has contributed to this tragedy," said British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. Mourners gather at Kensington Palace In London, people began gathering outside Diana's Kensington Palace residence before dawn. Some sat with their heads in their hands and wept. Flowers from mourners adorned the palace gate . One man lit two candles at Kensington Palace. "I just feel disbelief more than shock," said student Fiona von Schank, 24, who brought two roses. "It's amazing that this woman who finally seemed to have just about found some happiness has now died so tragically." Diana and Fayed, the 42-year-old son of the billionaire Egyptian owner of London's prestigious Harrods department store, had arrived in Paris on Saturday afternoon on a private visit. They had dined at the Ritz and were headed to a villa owned by Fayed in a posh district in western Paris, France Info reported. Witnesses: at least 1 photographer at scene American Mike Walker was among the first on the scene. He said the car Diana was in "looked like it hit a wall." Eyewitnesses describe the crash scene Tom Richardson 352K/26 sec. AIFF or WAV sound "His equipment was very professional. His camera was a foot- and-a-half tall," Luz said. "It definitely was not a tourist camera." Offering condolences via Web The royal family's Web site, www.royal.gov.uk , invited users to offer condolences. The site opens with a color photograph of Diana smiling and dressed elegantly with a bouquet of wildflowers. The caption is simple: "Diana, Princess of Wales 1 July 1961 - 31 August 1997." On a special link, users can sign in on the visitor's book and express their sympathy. "Thank you for your kind message of condolence for the sad loss of Diana, Princess of Wales," a message from the royal family reads.  

i don't know

What is Elle Macpherson's real name?

Elle Macpherson - IMDb IMDb Actress | Producer Elle Macpherson was born on March 29, 1964 in Cronulla, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia as Eleanor Nancy Gow. She is an actress and producer, known for Britain and Ireland's Next Top Model (2005), Miss Universe 2001 (2001) and 42nd Annual TV Week Logie Awards (2000). She has been married to Jeffrey Soffer since July 2013. She was previously ... See full bio » Born:

Elle Macpherson

Which instrument is associated with Lester 'Prez' Young?

Elle Macpherson marries billionaire boyfriend: report - NY Daily News Elle Macpherson marries billionaire boyfriend Jeffrey Soffer in Fiji: report  Elle Macpherson marries billionaire boyfriend: report Elle Macpherson married billionaire boyfriend Jeffrey Soffer in Fiji, a source close to the couple told US Weekly. (Charles Sykes/ASSOCIATED PRESS) Sunday, August 4, 2013, 2:17 PM Elle Macpherson is officially off the market! The 49-year-old Aussie supermodel married her billionaire boyfriend Jeffrey Soffer in Fiji, a source close to the couple confirmed to US Weekly. Soffer (left), a real estate tycoon, proposed to Macpherson in March 2013. (Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images) Though few details about the destination wedding were made available, the website confirmed the newlyweds were joined by close family and friends. Macpherson and Soffer got engaged in March after nearly three years of dating. (Charles Sykes/AP) Macpherson and her beau were engaged for five months. The blond bombshell said yes to Soffer's marriage proposal in March, after nearly three years of dating. Elle Macpherson, 49, is six years older than her new husband. (John Parra/WireImage) This will be the second marriage for both Soffer, 43, and his supermodel, who was previously married to famed photographer Gilles Bensimon from 1986 - 1989. Elle Macpherson and Jeffrey Soffer: During their relationship the couple reportedly split for 8 months, but reconciled in November of 2012. (John Parra/WireImage) The former "Fashion Star" host also has two sons from a previous relationship with ex-boyfriend Arpad Busson. The stunning supermodel has two children from a previous marriage. (JB Lacroix/WireImage)

i don't know

Which criminal was set up by the Lady In Red?

THE BIOGRAPH THEATER THE BIOGRAPH THEATER THE LIFE & MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF JOHN DILLINGER The scene outside of Chicago's Biograph Theater less than one hour after Dillinger. was allegedly killed by the FBI. On the evening of July 22, 1934 a dapper-looking man wearing a straw hat and a pin-striped suit stepped out of the Biograph Theater in downtown Chicago where he and two girlfriends had watched a film called Manhattan Melodrama starring Clark Gable. No sooner had they reached the sidewalk when a man appeared and identified himself as Melvin Purvis of the FBI. He ordered the man in the straw hat to surrender.  Experience the Ghosts, Local Legends & Best Kept Secrets of the Windy City! Weird Chicago Tours! Several shots rang out and the fleeing man in the straw hat fell dead to the pavement, his left eye shredded by one of the shots fired by the other agents who lay in wait. So ended the life of John Herbert Dillinger, the most prolific bank robber in modern American history and the general public's favorite Public Enemy No. 1...... or did it? One of the most famous haunted theaters in the history of Chicago is the Biograph Theater, located on North Lincoln Avenue in downtown Chicago. It was here, in 1934, that John Dillinger supposedly met his end.... The theater has gained a reputation for being haunted, but the story of the ghost seen here actually revolves around the alleyway outside. But the theater, and the surrounding businesses, have banked on the criminal's name for many years. On the day after the fatal shots were fired, the bar next door placed a sign in the window that read "Dillinger had his last drink here". Theater patrons can examine a window in the box office that describes the set-up of Dillinger by the FBI. They can sit in the same seat where Dillinger sat nearly 65 years ago and after the film, they can emerge into "Dillinger's Alley.... it is here where the ghost is said to appear. But what really happened in the final moments of Dillinger's life? To answer the strange and perplexing questions surrounding his possible death, we have to first look at his bloody and violent life. On the evening that he was killed, Dillinger left the theater in the company of Anna Sage (the famed "Lady in Red") and with another girlfriend, Polly Hamilton. He had been hiding out in her North Halstead Street apartment but for months he had been pursued diligently by Melvin Purvis, the head of the Chicago branch of the FBI. Purvis had lived and breathed Dillinger (and would, after the robber's death, commit suicide) and had narrowly missed him several times at a State Street and Austin Cafe; at Dillinger's north woods hideout in Sault St. Marie; and at Wisconsin's Little Bohemia, where FBI agents recklessly killed a civilian and injured two others. It was finally at the Biograph where Purvis caught up with Dillinger and put an end to his career. The criminal life of John Dillinger started in 1925 when he held up a grocery store in his hometown of Mooresville, Indiana. Pleading guilty, he was sentenced to serve 10-20 years in prison while his accomplice, who claimed not guilty, only received a sentence of 2 years. Dillinger spent the next 8 years in jail but when he was released in May of 1933, he robbed three banks in three months and netted more than $40,000. Thus began Dillinger's wild spree of crime. Dillinger was captured in September 1933 and imprisoned in Lima, Ohio. In three weeks, his gang sprung him in a dangerous escape and again were back to bank robbing. In January 1934, Dillinger shot and killed a police officer in East Chicago, for which he was arrested in Arizona and jailed in Crown Point, Indiana to await trial. He escaped a month later, using a fake gun that he had carved from a bar of soap and blackened with shoe polish. He eluded the police for another month, shooting his way out of an ambush in St. Paul and dodging the FBI near Mercer, Wisconsin.  Dillinger arrived in Chicago in late June and proceeded to rob a South Bend, Indiana bank and kill a police officer and four civilians. In just over a year, Dillinger has robbed six banks, killed two cops, two FBI agents, escaped from jail twice and had escaped from police and FBI traps six times. In the process of all of this violence, Dillinger managed to become an American folk hero. It was the time of the Great Depression and here was a man striking back at poverty by taking from those who could afford losing their money the most. Stories began to circulate about Dillinger giving away much of his stolen money to the poor and the needy. Were these stories true? Who knows? But the American public believed it, which was more than the government could stand. Dillinger had to be taken, and soon. He had become J. Edgar Hoover's "Public Enemy No. 1"... and the heat was on. Dillinger knew that his luck could only hold out for so long and in May of 1934, he  contacted a washed-up doctor who had done time for drug charges named Loeser. He paid him $5000 to perform some plastic surgery on his recognizable face, getting rid of three moles and a scar and getting rid of the cleft of his chin and the bridge of his nose. The doctor agreed to the surgery and left Dillinger in the care of his assistant to administer the general anesthetic. An ether-soaked towel was placed over Dillinger's face and the assistant told him to breathe deeply. Suddenly, Dillinger's face turned blue and he swallowed his tongue... and died! Dr. Loeser immediately revived the gangster and proceeded to do the surgery. Dillinger would have no idea how close he had come to death. Ironically, just 25 days later, he would catch a bullet in front of the Biograph Theater.... or so they say. When Dillinger walked into the theater that night he had been set up by Anna Sage, who had taken him there at the request of the FBI. She had promised to be wearing a red dress for identification purposes. Sixteen cops and FBI agents waited over two hours outside the theater, waiting for the unknowing Dillinger to exit. They even walked the aisles of the theater several times to make sure that he was still there.... how could the clever gangster have not noticed them? Finally, Dillinger left the theater and was met by Melvin Purvis. He stepped down from the curb, just passing the alley entrance and tried to run. He reached for his own gun, but it was too late... four shots were fired and three hit Dillinger. The gangster fell, dead when he hit the pavement. Purvis ordered Dillinger rushed to nearby Alexian Brothers Hospital. He was turned away at the doors as he was already dead and Purvis and the police waited on the hospital lawn for the coroner to arrive. A mob scene greeted the coroner at the Cook County Morgue where curiosity-seekers filed in long lines past a glass window for a last look at Dillinger. Little did they know that the man they were looking at may not have been the famed gangster at all..... The scene at the Biograph Theater was also chaotic. Tradition tells that passers-by ran to the scene and dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood of the fallen man, hoping for a macabre souvenir of this terrible event. And it is at this theater where the final moments of John Dillinger have left a lasting impression. It would be many years after before people passing by the Biograph on North Lincoln Avenue would begin to spot a blue, hazy figure running down the alley next the theater, falling down and then vanishing. Along with the sighting of this strange apparition were reports of cold spots, icy chills, unexplainable cool breezes,  and odd feelings of fear and uneasiness. Local business owners began to notice that people had stopped using the alley as a shortcut to Halstead Street. The place certainly seemed haunted.... but is the ghost of the man who has been seen here really that of John Dillinger? I would hazard a guess to say that it is not! Ever since the night of the shoot-out at the Biograph, eyewitness accounts and the official autopsy have given support to the theory that the dead man may not have been Dillinger. Rumors have persisted that the man killed by the FBI was actually a small-time hood from Wisconsin who had been set up by Dillinger's girlfriend and Anna Sage to take the hit. There are many striking errors in the autopsy report.... the dead man had brown eyes while Dillinger's were blue; the corpse had a rheumatic heart condition since childhood while Dillinger's naval service records said that his heart was in perfect condition; and the man who was killed was much shorter and heavier than Dillinger and had none of his distinguishing marks. Police agencies claimed that Dillinger had plastic surgery to get rid of his scars and moles, but also missing were at least two scars on Dillinger's body! And there is more conflicting evidence to say that the FBI killed the wrong man... On the night of the shooting, a local man named Jimmy Lawrence disappeared. Lawrence was a small-time criminal who had recently moved from Wisconsin. He lived in the neighborhood and often came to the Biograph Theater.... he also bore an uncanny resemblance to John Dillinger. In addition, a photograph taken from the purse of Dillinger's girlfriend shows her in the company of a man who looks like the man killed at the Biograph... a photo taken before Dillinger ever had plastic surgery!  Could Dillinger's girlfriend have made a date with Jimmy Lawrence to go to the Biograph, knowing (thanks to Anna Sage) that the FBI was waiting for him there? Some writers have suggested this is exactly what happened. Respected crime writer, Jay Robert Nash, an expert on Dillinger, reported in his book The Dillinger Dossier that Dillinger's girlfriend and Anna Sage rigged the whole affair. According to Nash, Sage was a prostitute from England who was in danger of being deported. To prevent this, she went to the police and told them that she knew Dillinger. In exchange for not being deported, she would arrange to have Dillinger at the Biograph, where they could nab him. She agreed to wear a bright, red dress so she would be easily recognized. While FBI agents waited, "Dillinger" and his girlfriends watched the movie and enjoyed popcorn and soda. When the film ended, the FBI agents made their move. Nash believes however, that they shot Jimmy Lawrence instead of Dillinger. He also believes that when they learned of their mistake, the FBI covered it up, either because they feared the wrath of J. Edgar Hoover, who told them to "get Dillinger or else", or because Hoover himself was too embarrassed to admit the mistake. So, what happened to the real John Dillinger? Nobody knows for sure, but some claim this American Robin Hood, who supposedly only robbed from banks and gave some of his spoils to the poor, married and moved to Oregon. He disappeared in the late 1940's and was never heard from again....... The Biograph Theater is located on North Lincoln Avenue in Chicago.  

John Dillinger

Who penned Kenny Rogers' No 1 hit Lady?

The Lady in Red The Lady in Red Photos The Lady in Red The day after the robbery a man known as Jimmy Lawrence met his girlfriend, Polly Hamilton, for a date. He had been seeing her for two weeks. She was renting out a room from a Romanian immigrant named Anna Sage. Sage was currently facing deportation proceedings, stemming from her convictions resulting from charges related to her running brothels in Gary, Indiana, and East Chicago. Only Sage knew that Jimmy Lawrence, was in fact, John Dillinger. While living quietly in his new identity, the manhunt was continuing. Hoover had appointed Samuel Cowley to head up the investigation in Chicago. On July 20, 1934, Anna Sage contacted acquaintance Martin Zarkovich, an East Chicago police sergeant, and offered to reveal the whereabouts of John Dillinger in return for both the reward money and help in blocking her deportation. Zarkovich contacted Melvin Purvis. At subsequent secret meeting with Purvis and Cowley she outlined her offer and received assurance that they would help with her deportation problem. She told them that she would be going with John and Polly to the movies at the Marbro the following evening. On July 22, all available agents were briefed on the setup. At 5:30 p.m., Sage called and confirmed that they would attend a movie that night at either the Marbro, or the Biograph theater. Secondary plans were quickly made to have Purvis and Agent Ralph Brown stake out the Biograph. Spotting Dillinger and the women arrive at the Biograph, where Manhattan Melodrama featuring Clark Gable was showing, Agent Brown immediately called Cowley. Agents quickly surrounded the theater. Purvis was stationed left of the entrance.

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Who had a 50s No 1 with Heartaches By The Number?

YouTube Undo Close "GUY MITCHELL- "HEARTACHES..." The YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated due to multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement. Sorry about that.

Guy Mitchell

In which country was power seized in the 70s by the Gang of Four?

Guy Mitchell - Heartache by the Numbers 50s (clean version) - YouTube Guy Mitchell - Heartache by the Numbers 50s (clean version) Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded on Jul 30, 2008 Guy Mitchell

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At which sport did Jonah Barrington win international success?

Profile: The big noise of squash: Jonah Barrington - Owen Slot studies the qualities of a sporting legend who is keen to put officialdom in its place | The Independent Profile: The big noise of squash: Jonah Barrington - Owen Slot studies the qualities of a sporting legend who is keen to put officialdom in its place Saturday 13 August 1994 23:02 BST Click to follow The Independent Online TWENTY-ONE years after his last great triumph, Jonah Barrington, the most successful British squash player ever, can be found, for hours every day, still stalking the courts. He is now 53 and shackled by a limp, but though the body weakens, no punishment that time can mete out will ever shake his resolve, the element which won him six British Open titles. For, as he says himself, there were far more talented players around. Barrington's career was a victory for the man of limited means. He was the inspiration for many then, as he still is now for the proteges who are graced with his presence on court. But you would have to go to Holland to see him in action, for there is no place for Barrington in the British game. There was until last December, when his five-year role as the director of excellence with the Squash Rackets Association was deemed further to requirements. What the suits who dismissed him hardly expected was his nomination, last week, to join their company as the Association's head. Barringtonwas furious when his contract was not renewed but his ambition to become SRA president is born neither of revenge, nor of an ego in need of a massage. It is pure affection for the sport that has thrown him into the fight; squash in Britain is sick and he sees it as his duty to nurse it back to health. It was he, after all, who helped it come of age. Much of Barrington's good work is still there. As a director of excellence he has taken Britain to the verge of greatness: there are at present 23 British professionals in the world's Top 50, most of them young and with the potential to improve. What infuriated Barrington about the SRA's decision was that here was the class of the future, nurtured to excellence, scaling the heights of the world game, and just as they approach its peak, they were robbed of the mentor who had talked them through every step of the climb and left to go the distance unguided. This is no exaggeration. Barrington has worked with some of these boys since 1979 when he started running national junior squads. When funding from the SRA ceased temporarily, the squads started to live not only off his knowledge, but out of his own pocket too. Knocking around in his under-10 classes in those early days were both Peter Marshall and Simon Parke, now the top two in Britain, but both missing his influence. 'I'd like to see him now,' Parke said. 'If only to have a feeding session before the season begins. Even then his electrifying enthusiasm comes right through.' So much for the healthier side of the game. The debit lies in the bank balance: a deficit in the last tax year of nearly pounds 100,000 thanks in part to a reduction in the Sports Council's grant, but also to the sport's credibility which has dipped so low that its national league cannot find a sponsor. Barrington was one of four SRA employees squeezed out in the resultant belt-tightening; he argues that the image crisis would best be solved by a champion or two, which is the area in which he can be most helpful. Among Barrington's less well- known achievements is a book, Murder on the Squash Court, which is not an account of his recent treatment at the hands of the SRA, but a flashback to his greatest matches. 'Murder' refers to the way he would win, not through superior skill, but through what he calls 'boxing with rackets', through stamina, relentlessly keeping the ball in play, grinding away at his opponents, waiting for their physical and mental defences to break and then going in for the kill. As a coach, he loathes his players 'going cheap' - losing a point through going for a winner because they do not have the mental strength to extend the rally and go for the kill when appropriate. His professionalism, an eternal attempt to maximise his resources, is what he hopes will revolutionise the SRA. In the mid-Sixties, in a sport where his peers could be both cavalier and rotund yet still successful, his attitude caused its own revolution. 'I won through fitness rather than through talent,' he says, and this stemmed from an unprecedented training schedule and his infallible application to the cause. In 1966, after winning his first British Open championship, he did some press- ups and then, as the champagne was passed round, discussed his plans for Christmas training runs along his home cliffs of Morwenstow in Cornwall. Such dedication fired an unquenchable desire to win. Michael Corby, for many years No 2 to him in Britain, remembers how Barrington cried after defeat in the quarter-finals of the world championship in Australia in 1967. 'He cried because he cared so much,' Corby said. 'I used to say to him that of life's many facets, he only had one and he should lighten up. But who is to say that I was right?' Not that Barrington was ever poor company. With Corby,as they travelled the international circuit, he shared an affinity for late nights ('We used to enjoy cowboy films, let's leave it at that,' said Corby) and, with a resultant affinity for late mornings, would entertain his peers with the blasphemous variations of 'Do not disturb' he would leave on his hotel doors. But little caused them more amusement than his early exit from the BBC's Superstars competition; Barrington had paid a pounds 500 fine to leave the squash circuit and compete, but had joined them rather sooner than intended. He had been coming second until a disagreement over squat-thrust technique provoked a howling argument. The army officer detailed to count his thrusts had faulted a number of them, Barrington, his belligerence levels rising, said that if you discount one, you discount them all. On came David Vine who failed to calm the situation but instead encountered the sort of hurricane better associated with his snooker days and Barrington was on the next plane out. 'The lid came off my head,' he recalls in amusement. 'I had what I call one of my Celtic tantrums.' Barrington was entertaining, but also so headstrong and articulate that he became the mouthpiece for his fellow competitors. Aware that squash was a hidden sport, he used his prominence to change the structure of the game, setting up the professional players' association in 1973, the year he last won the British Open, and, in the eight years that he chaired it, overseeing a boom in playing numbers and sponsorship and bringing television to the court-side. His achievements have inspired benevolence as well as affection. 'In my eyes we all owe him,' says Hidayat Jahan, for some years the world No 3 behind Barrington and Geoff Hunt. 'Because of him we are making what we are making. He has done a great job.' Little of this could have been expected of the adolescent who discovered rebellion at Cheltenham College, left Trinity College Dublin with little to show for his two years bar failed examinations and an affection for Guinness (he was accused of being 'infrequently sober') and who, in the next four years, drifted through a number of jobs and picked up a petty larceny conviction when he and a friend were caught trundling 'borrowed' wheelbarrows down Earl's Court Road. Certainly his acolytes pushing to fill his shoes would not be allowed to follow such an agenda; from them he demands the commitment and professionalism that have marked all his post-Earl's Court years. Among them, his coaching catchphrase, 'Squeeze', has become something of a joke. It means that Barrington wants tighter ball positioning, but also that he is demanding that every last iota of energy is plundered. What he achieves are undying loyalty - players still ring him even though they are no longer under his wing - and motivation. After Parke had won a match in his first world championships, in Singapore in 1989, there was no commendation from Barrington and instead he was left with a flea in his ear for missing his first match point. Parke thought this harsh treatment but, with hindsight, believes he learnt a good lesson - Barrington felt he had gone cheap. It is these motivational powers, if none other, that Barrington knows he can bring to the SRA. As a figurehead and public relations man, let alone as a coach, many believe it is wasteful to leave him out in the cold. After all, it was a group from within the SRA itself that approached him and asked him to stand. Against him will stand the present incumbent, Sir Michael Edwardes, the former British Leyland head, and though the disputed presidency is an unpaid role, Barrington is still determined. Again, it is his affection for the game that guides him. 'The game's been very good to me, it's given me a fantastic life.' At present, his fantastic life continuing abroad, he talks about the presidency with some inevitability, 'I believe the time has come,' he says. If it does, he will be 'a very very active president' and, you can be sure, he'll squeeze the most out of his term in office.

Squash

What was the nationality of composer Aaron Copland?

iSPORTstore.com - Daryl Selby & Laura Massaro Win British National Titles In Manchester Daryl Selby & Laura Massaro Win British National Titles In Manchester Daryl Selby & Laura Massaro Win British National Titles In Manchester The world's best squash player's bid to win a record-equalling fourth domestic title was thwarted by Daryl Selby today when the Essex outsider beat world champion Nick Matthew in a marathon 84-minute British National Championship climax at the National Squash Centre in Manchester. Earlier third seed Laura Massaro celebrated the biggest success of her career when she upset Yorkshire favourite Jenny Duncalf, the world No2, to become the first Lancashire winner of the women's title in the event's 36-year-history. After being dominated by the Yorkshireman in the opening game of the men's final, world No10 Selby fought back to draw level as Matthew dropped his first game of the tournament.  The packed crowd, expecting a Matthew win, watched in amazement as the evenly-contested match moved into a fifth game. Both players had leads in the decider, but an uncharacteristic series of errors by the defending champion saw Selby pull away from 6-7 down to win 7-11, 11-9, 6-11, 11-9, 11-7 – with Matthew calling his final ball down and shaking Selby's hand. "I feel I played really well – but I had to play really well against the world number one," said the 28-year-old from Witham.  "I knew I had a chance.  I feel I raised my game to his level. "In fact I feel I played a phenomenal match.  I'm 10 in the world, and results like this show that I can go higher.  Hopefully this can be a catalyst to move on. "Is it the best win of my career?  I should say so, when you look at the names on this trophy – Nick Matthew, James Willstrop, Peter Nicol, Jonah Barrington ..... it's an amazing list of names.  And there's Del Harris, the last Essex man to win the title (in 1989)," Selby continued. "I feel I deserved to win – I matched him physically and turned the pressure back on him," concluded the new men's champion. A downcast Matthew acknowledged that his opponent had been the better player:  "He didn't give me anything – it was almost error-free squash.  I had my chances – but when he came back he took his chances better than I did.  He played better than me. "I wanted so much to win that fourth title." Laura Massaro arrived in Manchester fresh from international success in the USA where she upset three higher-ranked players - including the 14-month-unbeaten world number one Nicol David - to win the biggest Tour title of her career. Seeded three in the British championship, Massaro reached the final after battling to victory over second-seeded Irish opponent Madeline Perry.  But after taking the opening game in the final, the world No9 slipped behind as England team-mate Duncalf, ranked two in the world, began to dominate. Despite going into the match 3-11 down on their career head-to-head tally, Massaro beat Duncalf last week in Cleveland - and picked up her game to draw level, before completely dominating the decider to come through 11-7, 9-11, 7-11, 11-7, 11-2 after 62 minutes. "It sounds pretty good, doesn't it – British National champion," said the jubilant 27-year-old after her first-time success in her second final since 2008. "I just kept thinking in that last game 'keep calm, keep calm, and keep volleying'," added Massaro, who then paid tribute to her coach Phil Whitlock, a former national champion with whom she has worked for the past year. "Jenny played so well in that third game – and the fourth was quite tight.  But I just got on top of it in the fifth, and that made all the difference. "What an amazing couple of week it's been," said the new champion as she signed autographs for youngsters in the packed National Squash Centre arena. When asked to explain the difference in her approach to the event this year, Massaro said:  "It's having more belief in myself and my game.  And my fitness has also definitely improved. "It's knowing that I can do it after what I achieved last week in Cleveland. "But, believe it or not, I was quite nervous towards the end of the match – thinking about what I had said before the event about wanting my name on that trophy, and that I would be the first Lancashire player to win it! "It feels really good to have won it at last.  My England team-mates Jenny and Alison (Waters) have both done it – and I wanted to be a member of that club." And as Massaro walked away from the presentation, passing event posters featuring the 2010 champions, the 2011 champion said:  "Does this mean I'll be on the poster next year? "That's maybe the best thing about winning it!" British National Squash Championships, National Squash Centre, Manchester Men's Final: [3] Daryl Selby (Essex) bt [1] Nick Matthew (Yorks) 7-11, 11-9, 6-11, 11-9, 11-7 (84m) Women's Final: [3] Laura Massaro (Lancs) bt [1] Jenny Duncalf (Yorks) 11-7, 9-11, 7-11, 11-7, 11-2 (62m) For more general details of the 2011 National Championships, please visit the official website:  www.nationalsquashchamps.co.uk Daryl Selby & Laura Massaro use the Head YouTek Xenon 135 Squash Racket. To buy the Head YouTek Xenon 135 Squash Racket online, visit: www.isquashstore.com/Head Latest Headlines

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What was the occupation of Edith Cavell who was shot by the Germans in WWI?

Edith Cavell, shot by Germans during WWI, celebrated 100 years on | World news | The Guardian First world war Edith Cavell, shot by Germans during WWI, celebrated 100 years on Centenary of death of British nurse executed for treason in 1915 marked as evidence emerges of possible links to British intelligence Edith Cavell was hailed as a Christian martyr and dubbed ‘our Joan of Arc’ by the British press. Photograph: UniversalImagesGroup/Getty Images Monday 12 October 2015 02.00 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 13 October 2015 14.12 EDT Close This article is 1 year old On 12 October 1915, British nurse Edith Cavell was shot at dawn by a German firing squad in Brussels for helping hundreds of allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium. From the archive, 22 October 1915: The execution of Miss Cavell Read more A century later, she is being celebrated in exhibitions and concerts in Norwich Cathedral and in public buildings in the city, and in the nearby village of Swardeston where her father was vicar and where she grew up. Cavell was hailed as a Christian martyr concerned only with saving the lives of allied soldiers. Her execution provoked outrage in Britain. Egged on by the government, she was dubbed “our Joan of Arc” by the press. Pinterest The wording on the monument to Edith Cavell near Trafalgar Square in London remains controversial. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian “Everybody must feel disgusted at the barbarous actions of the German soldiery in murdering this great and glorious specimen of womanhood,” wrote Arthur Conan Doyle. A headline in the Manchester Guardian on 22 October 1915 read: “Merciless Execution of Nurse Cavell,” while an editorial dwelled on the “callousness” and “brutality” of the German occupiers in Belgium, and the way Cavell’s execution was carried out quickly and secretly. Pinterest Edith Cavell’s grave in France. Photograph: Tim Ockenden/PA Her death, at a time when the war was going badly for the allies, led to a huge increase in the number of volunteers signing up to join the British army. Cavell is remembered in Norwich above all as a pioneering nurse. One of her lasting legacies is the Cavell Nurses’ Trust , which provides financial support for nurses in need. She had returned to Belgium, where she had set up the first secular training hospital for nurses, after the outbreak of war in 1914, saying: “At a time like this, I am needed more than ever”. Nick Miller, the chair of the Norfolk Cavell 2015 Partnership said: “To me she seems to embody the Good Samaritan. Edith risked her own life over nine months to help men who came to her with no way home.” Edith Cavell: nurse, martyr, and spy? | Vanessa Heggie Read more But other, more uncomfortable, sides to her story are emerging amid renewed controversy over her legacy, and even the wording on her statue outside St Martin-in-the-Fields near Trafalgar Square in London. Cavell’s biographer, Diana Souhami, records that following her execution, MI5 was anxious to suppress anything that would implicate Cavell in spying. Stella Rimington, a former head of the intelligence agency, said recently after researching Belgian archives: “Her main objective was to get hidden allied soldiers back to Britain but, contrary to the common perception of her, we have uncovered clear evidence that her organisation was involved in sending back secret intelligence to the allies.” The intelligence included information about a German trench system, the location of munitions dumps and aircraft. Details were written in ink on strips of fabric and sewn into clothes, or hidden in shoes and boots. Yet it remained unclear, Rimington told BBC Radio 4’s programme, The Untold Story of Edith Cavell, last month, what Cavell precisely knew about the spying network. Richard Maguire of the University of East Anglia (UEA), goes further. He told the Guardian: “Cavell was not merely acting as a nurse and treating the wounded – she could have done this without helping those soldiers to then escape”. He added: “I think we now have to accept that the likelihood is that Cavell was working for British intelligence, or at the very least was happy for the network to be used for its purposes. How Edith Cavell made a confession | Letters Read more “Does this make Cavell a spy? That depends upon your definition of the term. I would argue that the balance of evidence suggests that she was certainly an active and very successful agent for the British government’s war effort.” Cavell was found guilty of treason, specifically by providing “reinforcements” to Germany’s enemies, rather than of spying. She confessed to helping wounded allied troops escape, mainly to neutral Netherlands, but insisted she was acting out of purely humanitarian motives. Interestingly, the Red Cross took the view that Cavell was protected by the Geneva conventions only for her work for wounded soldiers (allied or German), not for helping people escape from Belgium. She was condemned at her trial, not as a nurse, but as someone committing a political act. Even the words on her London statue remain controversial. “King and Country” is engraved at its apex. After protests from the National Council of Women of Great Britain and Ireland in 1923 Labour’s prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, agreed the statue should include what were recorded as Cavell’s final words on the eve of her execution. The inscription, “Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone”, added near the base of the statue. “So Edith Cavell’s statue became a muddle monument of opposing views”, Souhami says. Yet her final words to Stirling Gahan, the Anglican chaplain in Brussels, remain unclear. Those on the statue are taken from the typed version he sent to the American legation in Brussels, which passed them on to London. Gahan’s manuscript note, seen by Miller, records her saying: “Patriotism is not enough. It is not enough to love one’s own people, one must love all men and hate none ...” There is speculation among those concerned in the Cavell story that these words went too far and were too pacifist for the British government to accept. “She could not endorse the patriotisms of the warring parties – German, British or Belgian”, Miller emphasised. The Cavell Nurses’ Trust is to launch a national “moment of thanks” to today’s nurses.

Nursing

How did Satyajit Ray achieve fame?

Edith Cavell: WWI Nurse, Hero, Martyr | Article | NursingCenter Edith Cavell: WWI Nurse, He... Edith Cavell: WWI Nurse, Hero, Martyr Fall 2003, Volume :20 Number 4 , page 38 - 40 [Free] Join NursingCenter to get uninterrupted access to this Article Authors Article Content Long ago people called a nurse the watcher. Watching. Watching to see that the sick do not slip away forever in their sleep. 1 Edith Cavell was a watcher. But World War I led this English-born nurse to become a member of an underground escape organization behind enemy lines. Her selfless sense of duty drove her to risk her life nursing and aiding Allied soldiers hiding from the Germans in war-torn Belgium. Cavell's patriotism and loyalty to Britain, as well as her sacrifice to humanity, has made her a significant heroine of World War I.     Figure. No caption available. Born on December 4, 1865, the oldest child of the Vicar of Swardeston and his wife, Edith was taught to help those less fortunate than herself and was often sent on errands of mercy in their village. Her father, a strict Victorian, abhorred lying and raised his children to have an unswerving respect for the truth. Cavell's compassion for others was apparent as she confided her dreams to her cousin, "Someday, somehow, I am going to do something useful. [horizontal ellipsis] I don't know what it will be, but it must be something for people. They are, most of them, so helpless, so hurt and so unhappy." 2   Cavell studied at home with her father until the age of eighteen, when she enrolled in Miss Gibson's School for Young Ladies in Peterborough. She discovered she had a gift for languages and learned to speak French fluently, earning praise as the teacher's best student. By graduation, Cavell had grown into a serious young woman with a frail build who scorned fun and mischief. In 1884, she accepted a position with a wealthy English family who needed a governess. Although this was not an occupation to fulfill her dreams, she grew to love the children and remained with the family for six years. She spent another five years as a governess in Belgium. In 1895 she returned to England to care for her seriously ill father. After tending him for nearly a year, he gradually recovered. The experience provided Cavell with a calling in which she felt needed. She decided to become a nurse. The following year, at the age of thirty, she entered the London Hospital Nurses' Training School as a probationer.   The next five years Cavell faced long hours of work and study, with little financial reward. She ministered to the old, the sick, the criminal and the poor in the dreary hospital and in the squalid London homes she visited on out-duty.   In 1901, she completed the nursing course and took a position as night supervisor of a small hospital. She was quickly promoted and within three years was employed as assistant matron of a large hospital where she gained experience teaching and lecturing senior probationers. Cavell's meticulous work and supervisory skills soon elevated her to the top of her profession. By 1906, she was matron at Ashton New Road District Home in Manchester, when she received an intriguing letter from a Belgian surgeon.   New Beginnings The letter contained an offer to organize and direct a nurses' school in Brussels to educate and professionally train personnel as Florence Nightingale had in England. The surgeon, Antoine Depage, was frustrated with the religious orders that controlled Belgian nursing. He had available four brownstone houses and sought a matron to begin the training school. The nurse he sought must have administrative experience and teaching capabilities, understand Belgian people and be fluent in French. Nurse Cavell satisfied all the requirements.   Cavell opened the school on October 1,1907, with four students. As director of the Berkendael Institute of Brussels, she demanded the highest standards from her pupil nurses. "Her discipline was strict but scrupulously fair. She stressed duty and service to others, as well as ethical conduct, cleanliness, dedication to work and punctuality." 3   As the months went by, the nursing staff grew, and by 1909, Cavell had twenty-three probationers and was supervising three other hospitals in Brussels, as well as the Institute. She wrote many articles on nursing and sent periodical reports to the English Nursing Mirror. In 1912, she started her own nursing magazine, L'infirmiere. 4 By 1914, Edith Cavell had significantly improved the level of Belgian nursing by training scores of nurses, while superintending the care of hundreds of patients.   Cavell was vacationing in England when Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated. Fear and unrest spread across Europe and on July 28, 1914, Austria declared war on Serbia, triggering World War I. Although her family begged her to stay in England, Cavell insisted on returning to Belgium to ready the nurses for the flood of wounded. All were hard at work in the Institute in the suburbs of Brussels when the German army occupied the city less than a month after her return.   Underground Relief As the war raged around them, the Belgian people began aiding Allied soldiers that had become separated from their units. Sympathetic nuns and villagers hid stragglers in woods, barns, deserted houses and shell holes, wherever they could escape the Germans. The network provided fugitive troops with food, money, civilian clothes and a guide to the border into Holland. Over the months, Germans swarmed the countryside, forcing the resistance to recruit more accomplices to hide the refugees in the city. The underground work spread, and more links were added in the chain that led to escape for many Allied soldiers.   One wet night in November 1914, three men came to the door of the Institute, now a Red Cross hospital, with a letter from Dr. Depage's wife. A member of the underground had been sent to Cavell, hoping she would help. He pleaded with Cavell to hide two English soldiers, one with a wounded leg and needing medical attention. Her sense of duty would not allow her to refuse aid to her countrymen. Cavell believed only God had the right to take a life away, and it was her sacred duty to preserve life-any life placed in her hands. 5   When Cavell agreed to harbor the English soldiers, she was accepted into the underground operation. In the following months, she helped hundreds of soldiers escape from behind the German lines and eventually rejoin their units. Despite an order from the German authorities stating that anyone sheltering Allied troops be shot, Cavell's secret work continued. "With the growing number of escapees in her nursing home, it was harder and harder for Edith Cavell to make ends meet. It was difficult enough to get food under any circumstances; even water was rationed now, and the Germans were making life more difficult by the day." 6   Cavell did most of the chores involving the hidden soldiers herself so she did not incriminate other nurses, but eventually the German Secret Police grew suspicious of the activities at the Institute. As the resistance continued to funnel soldiers to the hospital, one arrived whom Cavell suspected was a spy. He was a handsome Frenchman who charmed the nurses. He stayed three weeks and absorbed information.   Soon after, the Institute was placed under surveillance. Then one night the Secret Police came to search the hospital. Cavell remained calm. As she delayed the Germans, nurses sneaked the soldiers out the back door before they could be found.   As rumors continued to circulate about Berkendael, the Germans were closing in on the resistance. Key members of the network were arrested, and incriminating letters were confiscated bearing Edith Cavell's name. Cavell expected to be arrested, and although her colleagues urged her to escape, she refused. The Germans seized Cavell on August 5, 1915, and placed her in solitary confinement. During questioning, Cavell's trusting nature allowed the Germans to trick her into confessing by pretending they already had the necessary information. She remained in prison more than a month before she was tried, along with thirty-five other members of the network that had aided English, French and other Allied soldiers to escape.   At her trial, Cavell couldn't lie to the judges. As a young child she had been taught lying was a sin, so she answered, yes, when asked if she had nursed and given money and food to Allied soldiers. Yes, she knew they were going to cross the border into Holland. Yes, she had helped over two hundred soldiers escape. And yes, she had done her duty in trying to save men who might otherwise have died.   Martyr The judges could not believe this small, frail, middle-aged woman was not frightened. They resented her truthfulness, simple dignity and patriotic pride. Cavell and her conspirators were found guilty of high treason and were sentenced three days later. Edith Cavell remained stoic as her death sentence was pronounced.   Despite diplomatic efforts by neutral countries to obtain a reprieve, on October 12, 1915, Edith Cavell, wearing her nursing uniform, was shot at dawn by a firing squad at the national rifle range in Brussels. The night before her execution, Cavell had told her last visitor, an English chaplain, "Standing as I do, in view of God and eternity, I realize that patriotism is not enough; I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone." 7   She became an instant martyr, and her death aroused a worldwide storm of protest. Allied morale was strengthened, and recruitment doubled for eight weeks after her death was announced. 8   Until the end of the war, Cavell lay buried in Belgium near the place she was executed. In May 1919, her body was brought home to England with great ceremony, and she was reburied at the Cathedral of Norwich, a few miles from her hometown of Swardeston. Her memory is kept alive today in the Institut (French spelling) Medical Edith Cavell in Brussels, where she served as matron and helped improve nursing standards. In Saint Martin's Place, near London's Trafalger Square, stands a tall statue of Edith Cavell in her nurse's cloak. Perhaps the best tribute to this heroic nurse is found in the words carved beneath her image: "Humanity, Fortitude, Devotion, Sacrifice"-a fitting description of this Christian watcher.   NIGHTINGALE NURSING Following in Florence Nightingale's footsteps, Edith Cavell instituted the nursing reforms in Belgium that Nightingale had pioneered in England. Nightingale's military service during the Crimean War left her shocked by the lack of hygiene and elementary care that men in the British army received. Before her reforms, no one set out to be a nurse. Hospitals were so dirty and filled with disease that they attracted only the poorest women. These women stayed only until they had enough money to quit. Nightingale changed the face of nursing.   The "Nightingale Training School for Nurses," established in 1860, provided the best technical training available. Probationers were given room, board, uniforms, laundry facilities and pocket money. They nursed real patients in the hospital ward and were educated in the medical sciences through lectures by the medical staff. Those trainees who successfully completed the one-year training course were certified and registered as nurses.   Successful candidates for Nightingale's school had to adhere to her Christian standards. Immoral behavior, including drunkenness and excessive flirting, was not tolerated. Upon completion of the course, the Florence Nightingale graduate was an educated, disciplined, morally sound nurse. Local hospitals snapped them up and medical professionals proclaimed the program "revolutionary."   Florence Nightingale's radical nursing principles formed the basis for the training school. Published in 1 859, her book, Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not, describes in detail her essential doctrines of caring for the sick. She believed, above all else, in hygiene (fresh air, cleanliness, clean water, proper drainage and plenty of light), constant consideration for the patient's feelings and shrewd observations at the sick bed.   Nightingale's revisions laid the foundation of the modern nursing profession and established nursing as a respectable vocation for women, while greatly alleviating human suffering in the nineteenth century.     1 Iris Vinton, The Story of Edith Cavell (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1959), 70. [Context Link]   2 Elizabeth Grey, Friend Within the Gates (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1961), 16. [Context Link]   3 Abraham linger, "Edith Cavell," British History (May 1997) accessed at http://www./thehistorynet.com/BritishHeritage/articles/1997/05972_text.htm . [Context Link]   4 Adele DeLeeuw, Edith Cavell (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1968), 28. [Context Link]   5 Grey, 120. [Context Link]   6 DeLeeuw, 54. [Context Link]   7 Vinton, 174. [Context Link]  

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Who had a 1980s No 1 hit with Don't You (Forget About Me)?

Simple Minds - Don't You (Forget About Me) - YouTube Simple Minds - Don't You (Forget About Me) Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded on Dec 3, 2010 Acoustic – 12 songs reimagined acoustically - out now on CD/Vinyl/Stream/Download – featuring Don’t You (Forget About Me), Promised You A Miracle FT KT Tunstall, American and many more. https://SimpleMindsInl.lnk.to/AcousticID Listen to the complete playlist on Spotify here: https://SimpleMindsInl.lnk.to/ListenID Sign up for news http://po.st/SMNewsLetter Follow Simple Minds online:

Simple Minds

Which Japanese company bought CBS records in 1988?

The Breakfast Club (1985) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Five high school students, all different stereotypes, meet in detention, where they pour their hearts out to each other, and discover how they have a lot more in common than they thought. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC Famous Directors: From Sundance to Prominence From Christopher Nolan to Quentin Tarantino and every Coen brother in between, many of today's most popular directors got their start at the Sundance Film Festival . Here's a list of some of the biggest names to go from Sundance to Hollywood prominence. a list of 24 titles created 02 Jan 2013 a list of 33 titles created 05 Mar 2015 a list of 27 titles created 3 months ago a list of 30 images created 1 month ago a list of 32 titles created 2 days ago Title: The Breakfast Club (1985) 7.9/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. A high school wise guy is determined to have a day off from school, despite what the principal thinks of that. Director: John Hughes A girl's "sweet" sixteenth birthday becomes anything but special as she suffers from every embarrassment possible. Director: John Hughes A poor girl must choose between the affections of her doting childhood sweetheart and a rich but sensitive playboy. Director: Howard Deutch A rich high school student tries to boost a new pupil's popularity, but reckons without affairs of the heart getting in the way. Director: Amy Heckerling A pretty, popular teenager can't go out on a date until her ill-tempered older sister does. Director: Gil Junger Two high school nerds attempt to create the perfect woman, but she turns out to be more than that. Director: John Hughes Cady Heron is a hit with The Plastics, the A-list girl clique at her new school, until she makes the mistake of falling for Aaron Samuels, the ex-boyfriend of alpha Plastic Regina George. Director: Mark Waters The adventures of high school and junior high students on the last day of school in May 1976. Director: Richard Linklater A group of Southern California high school students are enjoying their most important subjects: sex, drugs and rock n' roll. Director: Amy Heckerling An introvert freshman is taken under the wings of two seniors who welcome him to the real world. Director: Stephen Chbosky English teacher John Keating inspires his students to look at poetry with a different perspective of authentic knowledge and feelings. Director: Peter Weir Three former parapsychology professors set up shop as a unique ghost removal service. Director: Ivan Reitman Edit Storyline Beyond being in the same class at Shermer High School in Shermer, Illinois, Claire Standish, Andrew Clark, John Bender, Brian Johnson and Allison Reynolds have little in common, and with the exception of Claire and Andrew, do not associate with each other in school. In the simplest and in their own terms, Claire is a princess, Andrew an athlete, John a criminal, Brian a brain, and Allison a basket case. But one other thing they do have in common is a nine hour detention in the school library together on Saturday, March 24, 1984, under the direction of Mr. Vernon, supervising from his office across the hall. Each is required to write a minimum one thousand word essay during that time about who they think they are. At the beginning of those nine hours, each, if they were indeed planning on writing that essay, would probably write something close to what the world sees of them, and what they have been brainwashed into believing of themselves. But based on their adventures during that ... Written by Huggo They only met once, but it changed their lives forever. See more  » Genres: 15 February 1985 (USA) See more  » Also Known As: Did You Know? Trivia Ally Sheedy generally ate very healthy food - she got a sugar high from the sandwich she eats onscreen. See more » Goofs After Vernon has given out the paper and pencils and gives Bender his first detention and is pointing at him with a few pencils still in his hand, the pencils change position/height in the two shots. See more » Quotes Bender : Claire, you wanna see a picture of a guy with elephantitis of the nuts? It's pretty tasty. Claire : No thank you. Bender : How does he ride a bike? Bender : Oh Claire, would you ever consider dating a guy who looked like this? Claire : Can't you just leave me alone? Bender : I mean even if he had a nice personality and a cool car... although you'd probably have to ride in the backseat because his nuts would ride shotgun See more » Crazy Credits Opens with the following which then explodes from the screen. "And these children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds; are immune to your consultations, they are quite aware of what they are going through." -David Bowie See more » Connections One of the best portrayals of adolescent life ever done 4 April 2005 | by bppihl (Normal, Illinois) – See all my reviews John Hughes is in my opinions the "king of teens." Each of his teen films is great, from "Sixteen Candles", "Pretty in Pink" (which he co-wrote and produced), and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." They all have funny and serious moments and are classics. By the same token, "The Breakfast Club" is no exception. However, it stands out as doing the best job of the above films at portraying 80s teen life (and perhaps even teen life today) as it really was (is). Hence the familiar plot: Five high school students from different crowds in school (a nerd, a jock, a prom queen, a delinquent, and a loner) are thrown together for a Saturday detention in their school library for various reasons. Detention is supervised by the gruff and demeaning principal Richard Vernon, believably portrayed by Paul Gleason. As the day progresses, each member tells the story of why they are in detention, and by day's end they realize they have more in common than they ever imagined. What makes the film unique is that each character tells his or her own story with credibility and persistence. Jock Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez) is under pressure from his father to perform up to high standards, which Mr. Clark believes will add to his (dad's) lost youth. Nerd Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall) excels academically, but is failing shop class. Neither he nor his family can accept an F. Delinquent John Bender (Judd Nelson), while tough on the exterior, masks a difficult home life. Prom queen Claire(Molly Ringwald) has pressure to conform from her friends, as well as issues with her parental unit. Loner Allison (Ally Sheedy) has few if any friends, wears all black, and has similar problems at home. Can the emotional bonding they share in detention hold true beyond the library, and can stereotypes be broken? "The Breakfast Club" presents no-doubt stereotypical characters, and every member represents countless real-life examples. But what makes it so enjoyable is that applies a variety of themes to its context: prejudice/discrimination, acceptance/tolerance, diversity, class/status differences, family matters, group dynamics, etc. It also encourages us to look at others and ourselves beyond surface-level appearances. Finally, "The Breakfast Club" has great 1980s pop culture and societal integrations, from the soundtrack with Simple Minds "Don't You (Forget about Me), to wealthy, surburban American life (haves and have nots), and superficial values of the "me" decade. It reminds us that there truly is diversity in all of us. We are different, but we are all "the same" in one way or another. 47 of 58 people found this review helpful.  Was this review helpful to you? Yes

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How many of Mark Spitz's Olympic golds were for solo events?

Mark Spitz | Olympics Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Edit Spitz was born in Modesto, California, the first of three children [3] of Arnold and Lenore (Smith) Spitz. His family is Jewish. [4] When he was two years old, Spitz's family moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, where he swam at Waikiki Beach every day. "You should have seen that little boy dash into the ocean. He'd run like he was trying to commit suicide." Lenore Spitz told a reporter for Time (April 12, 1968). [3] At age six his family returned to Sacramento, California, and he began to compete at his local swim club. At age nine, he was training at Arden Hills Swim Club in Sacramento with swimming coach Sherm Chavoor, who mentored seven Olympic medal winners including Spitz. Before he was 10, Spitz held 17 national age-group records, and one world record. At 14 his family moved to Santa Clara so Spitz could train with George F. Haines of the Santa Clara Swim Club. From 1964 to 1968 Mark trained with Haines at SCSC and Santa Clara High School. During his four years there, Mark held national high school records in every stroke and in every distance. It was a remarkable and unprecedented achievement. In 1966 at age 16 he won the 100 meter butterfly at the National AAU Championships, the first of his 24 AAU titles. The following year Mark set his first world record at a small California meet in the 400 meter freestyle with a time of 4:10.60, and emerged on the world swimming stage. [5] Swimming career Edit The 1965 Maccabiah Games was his first international competition. At age 15 in Tel Aviv, Spitz, won four gold medals and was named the most outstanding athlete. [3] He returned to Israel in 1969 following the Mexico Olympics to again compete in the Maccabiah Games. This time he won six gold medals. [6] He was again named outstanding athlete of the Games. [7] In 1985 Spitz lit a torch to open the Maccabiah Games. [8] In 2005 he was a member of the U.S. delegation at the 17th Maccabiah Games. He spoke at the JCC Maccabiah Games Opening Ceremonies, which was held in Richmond, Virginia. The Weinstein JCC in Richmond was one of the Host JCC's for the 2005 games with over 1,000 teenagers participating in various sports, including swimming. Pan American Games In 1967 he won five gold medals at the Pan American Games, thereby setting a record that lasted until 2007 when Brazilian swimmer, Thiago Pereira, won six golds at the XV Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro. 1968 Olympics Edit Holder of ten world records already, Spitz predicted brashly he would win six golds at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. However, he won only two team golds: the 4 × 100 meter freestyle relay in 3:31:70, and the 4 × 200 meter freestyle relay in 7:52:33. In addition, Spitz finished second in the 100m butterfly in 00:56:40. In this event he was beaten by fellow American Doug Russell by a half second, despite holding the world record and having beaten Russell the previous ten times they had swum against each other that year. [9] Russell did briefly match Spitz's world record in late August 1967, holding the world record equally with Spitz for five days before Spitz regained it solely on October 2, 1967. As a result of being beaten by Russell, Spitz did not get to swim in the 4 × 100 meter medley relay, which gave Russell his second gold medal and the USA team another World Record swim. College training Edit Disappointed in his 1968 Olympic performance, Spitz decided in January 1969 to swim for the Indiana University Hoosiers [2] to train with legendary coach, Doc Counsilman, [10] who was also his coach in Mexico City. He called choosing Indiana and Counsilman "the biggest decision of my life (and) the best." While at Indiana, Spitz won eight individual NCAA titles. In 1971 he won the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States. Spitz also set a number of world records during the U.S. Olympic Swim Trials held in Chicago's Portage Park in 1972. He was nicknamed "Mark the Shark" by his teammates. 1972 Olympics Edit At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich (West Germany), Spitz was back to maintain his bid for the six gold medals. He did even more, winning seven Olympic gold medals. Further, Spitz set a new world record in each of the seven events (the 100 m freestyle [00:51:22], 200 m freestyle [01:52:78], 100 m butterfly [00:54:27], 200 m butterfly [02:00:70], 4 × 100 m freestyle relay [03:26:42], 4 x 200 m freestyle relay [07:35:78] and the 4 × 100 m medley relay [03:48:16]). Originally Spitz was reluctant to swim the 100m freestyle fearing a less than gold medal finish. Minutes before the race he confessed on the pool deck to ABC's Donna de Varona, "I know I say I don't want to swim before every event but this time I'm serious. If I swim six and win six, I'll be a hero. If I swim seven and win six, I'll be a failure." Spitz won by half a stroke in a world-record 51.22. [11] Spitz is one of five Olympians to win nine or more career gold medals: Larisa Latynina , Paavo Nurmi and Carl Lewis also have nine;> only swimmer Michael Phelps has won more with 18. [12] Spitz's record of seven gold medals in a single Olympics was not surpassed until Michael Phelps at the 2008 Beijing Olympics . Retirement Edit Following the Munich Olympics, even though he was still only 22, Spitz retired from competition. In 1999 Spitz ranked #33 on ESPN SportsCentury 50 Greatest Athletes, the only aquatic athlete to make the list. Spitz briefly came out of retirement in 1992 to compete for a place on the U.S. Swimming Team at the Barcelona Games at the age of 41. He was two seconds slower than the requisite qualifying time at the Olympic trials. Hall of Fame Edit After his retirement from swimming at age 22, he was managed by the William Morris Agency, which tried to get him into show business while his name was still familiar due to his athletic success. A poster featuring Spitz wearing his swimsuit and seven gold medals made him the hottest pin-up since Betty Grable. [21] In 1973–74, Spitz appeared on TV's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. On the TV drama Emergency!, he portrayed Pete Barlow, who accidentally shoots his wife (played by Spitz's wife, Suzy). He also appeared briefly on the The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast of then-Governor of California Ronald Reagan in September 1973. Spitz went to work for ABC Sports in 1976 and worked on many sports presentations, including coverage of the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal and the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. [22] In 1985 he appeared as a TV announcer in Challenge of a Lifetime. He continued as a broadcaster for some time, but within a few years, he was hardly seen as a public figure [21] except perhaps as a commentator for swimming events like the 2004 Summer Olympics . Instead Spitz focused on his real estate company in Beverly Hills and hobbies such as sailing. [21] Critical praise Edit In 2006 he received critical praise for his narration of Freedom's Fury, a Hungarian documentary about the Olympic water polo team's famous Blood in the Water match against Russia during the Revolution of 1956—considered the most famous match in water polo history. The film was executive produced by Quentin Tarantino and Lucy Liu, and made its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival. Commercials Edit He appeared in an ad for the California Milk Advisory Board. One of his print advertisements featured the caption "I always drink it-is something I like to do. I want to be loved by the mothers." In 1974 he was in a number of Schick razors commercials. [23] In 1998 he appeared with Evel Knievel in a TV commercial for PlayStation. In 2004 he appeared in a TV commercial for Sprint PCS. [24] Then in November 2007, Spitz made a cameo appearance on Amanda Beard's first television commercial (for GoDaddy) featuring her own seven Olympic medals (won between 1996–2004). The ad was entitled "Shock". [25] Also, in 2007 he appeared in the infomercial for the "Orbitrek Elite" fitness workout. [26] He appeared in a commercial for Lear Capital, a gold investment company. (at 8:13 and 15:42 on a video at http://www.stanpredicts.com/media.php dated February 12, 2011, but the commercial was edited out of the version labeled "Episode 1: Will Massive Amount [sic] Of Oil Be Discovered In Israel?") In 2012 Spitz appeared in a commercial for Ageless Male, a testosterone supplement. Personal life Edit When Spitz returned from the Olympics, he began dating Suzy Weiner, a UCLA theater student and part-time model, who also was the daughter of one of his father's business acquaintances. [21] [27] Less than a year after the Munich Olympics, they were married on May 6, 1973, [26] in a traditional Jewish service at the Beverly Hills Hotel. [23] They have two sons, Matthew (born October 1981) and Justin (born September 1991). Justin currently is a sophomore at Stanford University, and is on the swim team. [22] [28] [29] Education Edit From 1964 to 1968 Spitz attended Santa Clara High School. After graduating he went on to Indiana University. [21] At Indiana University from 1968–72, he was a pre-dental student and member of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. TIME magazine asked him if he wanted to return to dental school after the Olympics. "I always wanted to be a dentist from the time I was in high school, and I was accepted to dental school in the spring of 1972. I was planning to go, but after the Olympics there were other opportunities. I did some television and speaking engagements, and things just went from there." [30] Post-swimming career Edit In 1972, soon after his return to the US, Spitz landed several lucrative corporate endorsement contracts. He earned about $7 million in a two-year period. [31] However, as the memory of his feat receded, so did his endorsement and promotional deals. As his endorsements faded he started a successful real-estate company in Beverly Hills. He bought a Ferrari and says he made more than $1 million. "A million dollars in 1972 would be equivalent to more than $10 million today," Spitz said. "I did very well, thank you very much." [32] "I would say I was a pioneer. There wasn't anyone who'd gone to the Olympics before me who capitalized the same way on opportunity. It depends on timing, it depends on hype, it depends on the economy, and most importantly, it depends on looks. I mean, I've never seen a magazine of uglies. That's our society. I'm not saying it's right. That's just the facts." [33] Per his official website, Spitz is self-employed as a corporate spokesperson and motivational speaker. However, Sports Yahoo! lists his occupation as a stock broker and motivational speaker. [34] According to a recent interview "Spitz became a stockbroker in 2002 and has since moved into private equity. He is now also dabbling in the "water business," as he calls it, and is in negotiations to build a water-bottling facility on aquifer-rich land that he and a business partner own. [35] He has pursued various entrepreneurial projects with former NBA player Rick Barry. He travels the world delivering about 25 lectures a year. His biography, The Extraordinary Life of An Olympic Champion by Richard J. Foster was released in July 2008. [36] In July 2012 he endorsed Istanbul's bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics. [37] Hobbies His hobbies include sailing, skiing and collecting art. [38] He has been involved in blue water ocean racing (sailing) and in the summer of 1981 competed in his third Trans-Pac Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Hawaii, finishing third. [22] Iconic moustache during Olympics Edit In an era when other swimmers, male and female, were shaving body hair, he swam with a moustache. When asked why he initially grew one he stated "I grew the moustache because a coach in college said I couldn't grow one." [30] Spitz said he originally grew the moustache as a form of rebellion against the clean-cut look imposed on him in college. “It took a long time to grow,” he said. [39] It took four months to grow, but Spitz was proud of it, he decided the moustache was a "good-luck piece." [40] Mark Spitz is quoted as saying, "When I went to the Olympics, I had every intention of shaving the moustache off, but I realized I was getting so many comments about it—and everybody was talking about it—that I decided to keep it. I had some fun with a Russian coach who asked me if my moustache slowed me down. I said, 'No, as a matter of fact, it deflects water away from my mouth, allows my rear end to rise and make me bullet-shaped in the water, and that's what had allowed me to swim so great.' He's translating as fast as he can for the other coaches, and the following year every Russian male swimmer had a moustache." [41] According to a Sports Illustrated article, on February 14, 1988, after talking about shaving off his moustache for a year, he finally did. "He looked great with it, don't get me wrong," explained his wife Suzy, "but he looks so handsome without it." [42] When he was asked why he shaved it off he responded "well, one, I'm not swimming anymore; two, it started to turn gray; and three, my wife had never seen me, nor my family, without the moustache... I'm happy [without it]." [43] He also commented on his moustache in a live, in-studio interview with KCRA host Mike TeSelle on June 14, 2008, Spitz commented that he no longer maintains his iconic moustache because it had become "too gray." Health issues Edit After retirement, Spitz was diagnosed with acid reflux disease, a condition from which his physician thinks he suffered throughout his career. [44] "During my Olympic training, I attributed the symptoms [of acid reflux] to an overexposure to chlorine and eating too soon before and after swimming," says Spitz. "It wasn't until the symptoms began to get in the way of my 1976 Olympic broadcasting career in Montreal, which was four years after retirement that I suspected something more serious must be happening." He has also reported having high cholesterol and other chronic health issues. [45] "People don't believe that I have high cholesterol, but it's a fact," said Spitz. "I take medication every day because my doctor told me that diet and exercise are not enough to keep my cholesterol down. He is a paid spokesperson for Medco, a pharmacy benefit management company." [46] Olympic controversies Edit In 1972, Spitz was accused of product placement during the medal ceremony. Following the 200-meter freestyle race Spitz arrived to obtain his gold medal barefoot and carrying his shoes. He put them down when the American national anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner" was played. After the anthem played, he picked up his shoes and waved to the crowd. The Soviets saw this as product placement. When questioned by the IOC, Spitz explained that the gesture was innocent, the shoes were old and he was not paid. The IOC cleared him of any wrongdoing. [47] Issues with 2008 Summer Olympics Edit Spitz felt snubbed by not being asked to attend the 2008 Olympics to watch Michael Phelps attempt to break his seven gold medal record. In an article, he is quoted as saying, "I never got invited. You don't go to the Olympics just to say, I am going to go. Especially because of who I am....I am going to sit there and watch Michael Phelps break my record anonymously? That's almost demeaning to me. It is not almost—it is." [34] Spitz has stated that he has no hard feelings towards Phelps. He is, however, unhappy that he was not invited to the 2008 Summer Olympics. As a result, Spitz refused to attend the games. [48] "They voted me one of the top five Olympians of all time. Some of them are dead. But they invited the other ones to go to the Olympics, but not me," he said. "Yes, I am a bit upset about it." [49] However, on August 14, 2008 Spitz appeared on NBC's Today Show where he clarified his statement and his pride in Michael Phelps: "It’s about time that somebody else takes the throne. And I’m very happy for him. I really, truly am...I was working with a corporate sponsor who elected not to bring their US contingent over to China, and they piled on more work for me here in the United States, which was great. So I wasn't able to get to the Olympics and watch Michael in the first couple of days. And they thought, some of these reporters, that I was supposed to be invited by some entity, and I told them that that wasn't really the case, that doesn't happen that way. And so, I'm sort of disappointed that I wasn't there, but, you know, that interview somehow took a different turn, and I've done hundreds and hundreds of them and I've been true to form about the way I feel about Michael, and he's doing a great job for the United States and inspiring a lot of great performances by the other team members." [50] Also on August 14, 2008, in an interview aired on Los Angeles KNBC-4's morning news show, Today in L.A., Spitz was quoted saying he does believe that, "Michael Phelps is the greatest Olympic athlete ever." [51] On August 15, 2008, as part of an interview on NBC, Spitz said that he felt Phelps' performance in the 100 fly in Beijing was "epic". Spitz paid this compliment to Phelps just two hours after his record-tying seventh gold medal during a live joint interview with Bob Costas: "You know, Bob and Michael, I wondered what I was going to say at this monumental time, when it would happen and who I would say it to, and of course I thought I was going to say it to you for some time now. But, it's the word that comes to mind, "epic". What you did tonight was epic, and it was epic for the whole world to see how great you really are. I never thought for one moment that you were out of that race and contention, because I watched you at Athens win the race by similar margins, and 18 months ago at the World's by similar margins. And, you know, that is a tribute to your greatness. And now the whole world knows. We are so proud of you Michael here in America, and we are so proud of you and the way that you handle yourself, and you represent such an inspiration to all the youngsters around the world. You know, you weren't born when I did what I did, and I'm sure that I was a part of your inspiration, and I take that as a full compliment. And they say that you judge one's character by the company you keep, and I'm happy to keep company with you. And you have a tremendous responsibility for all those people that you are going to inspire over the next number of years, and I know that you will wear the crown well. Congratulations, Mike." [52] Views on drug testing Edit Mark Spitz has been consistent in criticism of both swimming's world bodies, FINA and the IOC, in their incomplete attempts to keep drugs out of the sport. He has felt that not enough has been done to monitor and encourage drug-free participation. In 1998 he criticized FINA for its "embarrassing" attempts to stamp out drug abuse, urging them to test for all known drugs. In September 1999 Spitz said the IOC had the technology to test for a plethora of drugs but was refusing to do so because of some IOC member protests. [53] During a radio interview in Australia, Spitz was quoted as saying "They don't want to test for everything because there's tremendous pressure from the television networks because they want the television to have athletic competitions with the world record holders there for the finals. They want the medals not to be tainted in their value of accomplishment by winning them, and it's all about ratings and commercial selling of time and about money. And an International Olympic Committee has got their hand in the pockets of the network television people, so there's a tremendous conflict of interest in what they should do and what they're doing." [54] In August 2008 the Los Angeles Times reported, that Spitz continued to discuss drug testing and was saying "the IOC has sponsors who demand a good show. Television pays the IOC for the rights to that good show, and its sponsors want that too. Drug news and drug distractions are not a good show. People are not going to tune in to see athletes have their medals taken away from them." [55] Records

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Who made the album Honky Tonk Angels with Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette?

Mark Spitz Auto ��Cricket ��|�� Slideshows ��|�� Football ��|�� Tennis ��|�� Olympics ��|�� Formula1 ��|�� Videos ��|�� Discussion ��|�� Cricket Scorecards ��|�� Other Sports ��|�� Ind vs SL Mark Spitz freestyle and butterfly World Records 33 (100m and 200m freestyle, 100m and 200m butterfly, 4x100m freestyle relay, 4x200m freestyle relay, 4x100m medley relay) Olympic Games (11 medals - 9 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze) 100m freestyle: 1st (1972), 3rd (1968) 200m freestyle: 1st (1972) 100m butterfly: 1st (1972), 2nd (1968) 200m butterfly: 1st (1972), 8th (1968) 4x100m freestyle relay: 1st (1968, 1972) 4x200m freestyle relay: 1st (1968, 1972) 4x100m medley relay: 1st (1972) Pan American Games (2 medals - 2 gold) 100m butterfly: 1st (1967) 200m butterfly: 1st (1967) The golden tidal wave crashes in on Munich Mark Spitz gave swimming an unparalleled and unforgettable memory in Munich. A total of seven gold medals, and as many world records, were won by the determined Californian during the Games of 1972, adding to what he described as his "disappointing" haul of medals in 1968. Born in 1950 in Modesto (California), Spitz's formative years were spent in Honolulu where his parents moved when he was 2 years old. Four years spent on the beaches and in the seas of the Pacific were enough to give his engineer father an indication of his son's talents. Mr Spitz, whose motto was "swimming isn't everything, winning is", may have inadvertently played a role in his son's success. Returning to the mainland, first to Sacramento then Walnut Creek in 1961, the Spitz family, including his two sisters Nancy and Heidi, organised their lives around their younger brother. At the age of 10, Spitz was already training four hours per day. Don Schollander's success in the Tokyo Olympics (1964) proved the catalyst for the young hopeful. So much so that his only dream at the age of 14 was to equal his compatriot's record of four gold medals. Spitz thus increased his distance, swimming 9km every day and employing various styles including the crawl, butterfly and backstroke. Four medals not enough in Mexico A year before the Mexico Olympiad, he beat the world 400m record and promptly declared that he would win six gold medals at the Games. Two, however, were to be his lot, as well as one silver and a bronze and he returned home, disappointed, and facing a hostile press. Munich, however, witnessed the return of Spitz in top form. Announcing that he would swim in seven events, many people believed the American would suffer for his "folly". But Spitz was confident, and had every right to be so. Despite last-minute hesitation on competing in the 100m freestyle for fear of not realising his dream, an unprecedented seven targeted golds were won in Germany making the Spitz name that of legend. One sad note to his exploits in Munich was his precipitated departure from the Olympic village after the hostage taking incident and ultimate deaths of 11 people in a terror attack carried out by the "Black September" commando outfit. Following the Games, like a bolt from the blue, Spitz announced his retirement. Married to a wealthy heiress and father of a child, he caused a sensation at the age of 41 when he returned to the water to prepare for the Barcelona Games! Eventually, however, he renounced his Olympic aspirations and the myth of Mark Spitz would remain unblemished. Mark Spitz

i don't know

How many Nobel prizes did Marie curie win?

Marie Curie - Questions and Answers Marie Curie The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1911 Marie Curie Marie Curie - Questions and Answers Question: When was Marie Curie born? Answer: Marie Curie was born on 7 November 1867. Question: When did she die? Answer: Marie Curie died on 4 July 1934, in Savoy, France. She died of aplastic anaemia, a blood disease that often results from exposure to large amounts of radiation. Question: Where was she born? Answer: She was born in Warsaw, now the capital of Poland, but at that time the city belonged to the Russian Empire. Question: What was her maiden name? Answer: Her maiden name was Maria Sklodowska. She was also called 'Manya' by her family and friends. She later changed her name to 'Marie' when she moved to Paris, France in later years. Question: What was her family background? Answer: Marie had four brothers and sisters. Both her parents were teachers. Her father was a patriot whose views about an independent Poland often made it difficult for him to keep his job. When Marie was 11 years old, her oldest sister died of typhus and her mother of tuberculosis. Question: What was her educational background? Answer: Marie finished high school at 15, with the highest honours. She worked as a private tutor for children in Poland before moving to Paris, France at the age of 24 to study mathematics and physics at the Sorbonne. Her goal was to get a teacher's diploma and return to Poland. Question: Why did she not return to Poland? Answer: Marie stayed in France after she met a French scientist, Pierre Curie, in the spring of 1894. Pierre was the head of a laboratory at the School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry. She later married Pierre and they had two daughters, Irène , born in 1897, and Eve, born in 1904. Marie and Pierre worked together in the laboratory, which later resulted in a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, making Marie Curie the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize. Question: What was the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded for? Answer: Henri Becquerel was awarded half of the prize for his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity. Marie and Pierre Curie were awarded half the prize for their research on the radiation phenomena discovered by Becquerel. Question: What did Marie Curie discover? Answer: Marie Curie studied the radiation of all compounds containing the known radioactive elements, including uranium and thorium, which she later discovered was also radioactive. She also found out that: - you can exactly measure the strength of the radiation from uranium; - the intensity of the radiation is proportional to the amount of uranium or thorium in the compound - no matter what compound it is; - the ability to emit radiation does not depend on the arrangement of the atoms in a molecule; it must be linked to the interior of the atom itself - a revolutionary discovery! When she realized that some uranium and/or thorium compounds had stronger radiation than uranium, she made the following hypothesis: there must be an unknown element in the compound which had a stronger radiation than uranium or thorium. Her work aroused the interest of her husband, Pierre Curie, who stopped his own research on crystals and joined the "detective work" with his wife. And Marie was proven right: in 1898 the Curies discovered two new radioactive elements: radium (named after the Latin word for ray) and polonium (named after Marie's home country, Poland).  Question: Was she awarded another Nobel Prize? Answer: Yes, Marie Curie was awarded the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discoveries and studies of the elements radium and polonium. She is the only woman so far, who has been awarded the Nobel Prize twice. Question: Were there other members of Marie Curie's family who were awarded the Nobel Prize? Answer: Yes, Marie and Pierre's (who died in an accident in 1906) daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry , sharing it with her husband, Frédéric Joliot, for their synthesis of new radioactive elements. Sources:

two

In which country is the deepwater port of Belem?

Marie Curie Marie Curie (b. 1867-1934) Marie Curie is one of the most famous scientists that ever lived. Her contributions such as the discovery of Radium and other key elements help us out every day, especially when getting an x-ray. Manya,as she was called, was born Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland on November 7, 1867. Maria was only eight when her oldest sister caught typhus and died. That death was followed less than three years later by the death of her mother, Madame Sklodowska, who lost a five-year battle with tuberculosis at the age of 42. The surviving family members, Professor Sklodowski, his son Joseph and his daughters Bronya, Hela, and Maria drew closer to one another. Manya was the star student in her class. Her personal losses did not block her academic success. After graduating at the age of 15, Maria hoped to get an advanced degree, but while Joseph was able to enroll in the medical school at the University of Warsaw, women were not allowed to. In 1891, she attended Sorbonne and changed her name to Marie.  Marie realized that neither her math or science background nor her ability in technical French equaled that of her fellow students. Refusing to let go of her goals, she was determined to overcome these drawbacks through hard work. Marie finished first in her master's degree physics course in the summer of 1893 and second in math the following year. Having little money stood in the way of her math degree, but senior French scientists recognized her abilities and were able to help her by awarding a scholarship. In Paris she met her future husband and collaborator, Pierre Curie. Pierre was Lab Chief for the Paris Municipal School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry. Marie and Pierre shared lab space. Pierre gave Marie a lab of her own. In Marie, Pierre found an equal with a comparable devotion to science. They would soon marry and have two daughters. The Curies would work together and combine to receive the Nobel Prize in 1903 for their research with radium. The Curies published in detail all the processes they used to isolate radium, without patenting any of them. Radium was tightly linked with the Curies. Pierre's pioneering work on the effects of radium on living organisms showed it could damage tissue, and this discovery was put to use against cancer and other diseases. Health and Financial concerns were not the only problems to plague the Curies as Marie wound up her thesis research. Hardship would soon follow Marie once again with her husband dying in an accident. Pierre's life ended tragically on April 19, 1906, when he slipped and fell in the street. His head was crushed under the wheel of a horse-drawn car. Marie took over his classes and continued her own research. It was the first time that a woman would hold an important university research position. She would work harder than ever and receive much prestige.  She won the Nobel Prize again in 1911.   Rumors and gossip surround the award: many jealous scientists snipe that she has been awarded the Nobel Prize only out of pity, since her husband, Pierre, has recently died, while others alleged that she is "morally unfit" to receive the prize because of an affair with a married man, Paul Langevin, a long time family friend and a student of Pierre's. Paul was known as a sexist and a philanderer. When word of the affair reached the public, it nearly destroyed Marie's career and public standing in the scientific community. When the scandal broke, no one in the physics community supported Marie. Earlier in the year, the Swedish Academy informed Marie that she would again receive the Nobel Prize. When letters to Paul were published in a newspaper in Paris, the Academy told her that they did not want her to come to the public ceremony in Stockholm. Marie defied their wishes and went to the ceremony. Eventually, her honor and reputation were restored. During World War I, Marie worked as an "X-ray technician," taught radiological technology, and equipped mobile X-ray vans to assist in the war effort. She became head of the Paris Institute of Radium in 1914 and helped found the Curie Institute. Her health deteriorated quickly but still she worked diligently.  In 1934 at the age of 67, she died from leukemia, thought to have been from research. Marie would lead an exciting life receiving 15 gold medal awards, 19 degrees, and many other honors. Mary Curie has opened a lot of doors for the young women today. Annotated Bibliography Ashburn, Norma. "Her Life as a Media Compendium." The Warsaw Times: Marie Sklodowska Curie, 2000. http://www.woodrow.org/teachers/ci/1992/MarieCurie.html  (15 December 2005). This talks about the life and times of Marie Curie and shows articles from the Warsaw Times.�  Coppes-Zatinga, Arty R. "Radium and Curie." Canadian Medical Association Journal. 159 (1998): 1389. �  This medical journal focuses on the one-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of Radium by Marie and Pierre Curie. It deals with the expression of news from the discovery by the amazing scientists. The medical journal then goes on to explaining Marie�s death due to radiation and the harmful effects it has.��  Curie, Eve. Madame Curie. Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1937.  The author of this book is the youngest daughter of Marie Curie. She has written this book by using records and letters of her mothers. Her own personal experience also is used in the book. The text is easy to follow and the writing is very clear. Pictures in the book give it an inside look at Marie.�  D.B."X-rays, not radium, may have killed Curie." Nature 377 (1995): 96. �  This article deals with Marie�s fatal illness that brought her to her death. All signs of her dying are toward her experimentation with radiation. But they examine her work during World War I and her uses of X-rays. It is an interesting look at how they determine her cause of death. They author also speculates that the radiation is escaping from the dead corpses. Moore, Victoria. "Madame Marie Sklodowska Curie: An Extraordinary Life of Breaking Boundaries." Breaking Boundaries.  http://www.ampolinstitute.org [under Poland go to "Famous Poles" page and link to Marie Sklodowska Curie] � (16 December 2005). �  This site gives a brief outline on Marie and her studies. It includes charts and diagrams relating to her scientific studies.  Pasachoff , Naomi E. "Marie Curie and the Science of Radioactivity." Marie Curie Polish/French Physicist. 2000. http://www2.lucidcafe.com/lucidcafe/lucidcafe/library/95nov/curie.html � (15 December 2005). �  This site is very informative in that it gives the basic information about Marie and her discoveries. Pasachoff, Naomi E. Marie Curie and the Science of Radioactivity. London, England: Oxford University, 1996. �  This book examines the life of the Polish-born scientist whom, with her husband Pierre, was awarded a 1903 Nobel Prize for discovering radium. This account of the life and work of the French chemist, Polish-born, provides an in-depth look at the person as well as the scientist whose work with radioactivity led to two Nobel Prizes. Brief but thorough insets throughout the book explain the science behind Curie's accomplishments. Historical photographs accompany the text. �  Pflaum, Rosalyn, Grand Obsession-Madame Curie and Her World. Bantam, Dell, Doubleday. New York. 1989. �  Marie Curie�s fascination with science was developed early on by her father. School only elevated her curiosity and led her to a life of discovery. This book displays her love for science and her husband Pierre. Pictures help to relay the information more clearly. � Poynter, Margaret, Marie Curie: Discoverer of Radium. Chicago, Illinois: Enslow Publishers, 1994.� In an easy-to-read format, the biography emphasizes Marie Curie's early life of poverty, desire to study, and contributions to the fields of chemistry, physics, and medicine. The science activities and the Periodic Table of Elements provided at the end of the book take away from the volume's biographical intent. Black-and-white photographs are included. � �  Quinn, Susan, Marie Curie: A Life. New York, NY.: Perseus Publishing, 1996. �  This biography does an excellent job of explaining both the importance of Marie Curie's scientific work, and how she experienced life herself. The author Susan Quinn gives detailed descriptions of her studies in the science world. It also includes information drawn from previously unavailable letters that Curie wrote to Pierre, her husband, who unfortunately had an accidental death.� �  Quinn, Susan. Family Element Washington, D.C.: The New Republic, April 10, 1995.   This book tells of the family influence on Marie Curie from her physicist father to her sister who held a doctorate degree. Gives a detailed description of her trials and tribulations. Maps and pictures help to set the stage for her story. � �  Raynal, Florence. "A Nobel Prize Pioneer at the Panth�on." Science: Marie Curie, 1997. http://www.france.diplomatie.fr/label_france/ENGLISH/SCIENCES/CURIE/marie.html � (15 December 2005).  This web site includes information on when Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize. It talks of her other accomplishments in the field of science. Shearer Barbara S, ed., Notable Women in the Physical Sciences. Greenwood Press. London, Benjamin F.1997.  This gives bibliographies of the many distinguished women in sciences that have made contributions to the world. Marie Curie�s chapter gives information on her discovery and it�s contribution to society. It looks at her to devotion to her work by explaining her death from radiation exposure.  Winter, Mark. "Maria Sklodowska-Curie 1867-1934." Marie Curie, 1998. < http://www.staff.amu.edu.pl/~zbzw/ph/sci/msc.htm > (16 December 2005).�  This is the only site that you would have to see in order to learn anything and everything about Marie. It has over 50 links to other sites about Marie. This is the best site on Marie. Wolke, Robert L, "Marie Curie's doctoral thesis: prelude to a Nobel prize," Journal of Chemical Education 65, (1988): 561-73.� This journal article is very informative to those who seek to go more in depth and look as Marie�s work. The author writes in an inspiring way about Marie�s hard work and determination to excel. He describes her doctoral thesis and talks about her being the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. 

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In which country was Danny De Vito born?

Danny DeVito - Biography - IMDb Danny DeVito Biography Showing all 61 items Jump to: Overview  (3) | Mini Bio  (1) | Spouse  (1) | Trade Mark  (4) | Trivia  (44) | Personal Quotes  (7) | Salary  (1) Overview (3) 4' 10" (1.47 m) Mini Bio (1) Danny DeVito has amassed a formidable and versatile body of work as an actor, producer and director that spans the stage, television and film. Daniel Michael DeVito Jr. was born on November 17, 1944, in Neptune, New Jersey, to Italian-American parents. His mother, Julia (Moccello), was a homemaker. His father, Daniel, Sr., was a small business owner whose ventures included a dry cleaning shop, a dairy outlet, a diner, and a pool hall. While growing up in Asbury Park, his parents sent him to private schools. He attended Our Lady of Mount Carmel grammar school and Oratory Prep School. Following graduation in 1962, he took a job as a cosmetician at his sister's beauty salon. A year later, he enrolled at New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts so he could learn more about cosmetology. While at the academy, he fell in love with acting and decided to further pursue an acting career. During this time, he met another aspiring actor Michael Douglas at the National Playwrights Conference in Waterford, Connecticut. The two would later go on to collaborate on numerous projects. Soon after he also met an actress named Rhea Perlman . The two fell in love and moved in together. They were married in 1982 and had three children together. In 1968, Danny landed his first part in a movie when he appeared as a thug in the obscure Dreams of Glass (1970). Despite this minor triumph, Danny became discouraged with the film industry and decided to focus on stage productions. He made his Off-Broadway debut in 1969 in "The Man With the Flower in His Mouth." He followed this up with stage roles in "The Shrinking Bride," and "Lady Liberty." In 1975, he was approached by director Milos Forman and Michael Douglas about appearing in the film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), which would star Jack Nicholson in the leading role. With box office success almost guaranteed and a chance for national exposure, Danny agreed to the role. The movie became a huge hit, both critically and financially, and still ranks today as one the greatest movies of all time. Unfortunately, the movie did very little to help Danny's career. In the years following, he was relegated to small movie roles and guest appearances on television shows. His big break came in 1978 when he auditioned for a role on an ABC sitcom pilot called Taxi (1978), which centered around taxi cab drivers at a New York City garage. Danny auditioned for the role of dispatcher Louie DePalma. At the audition, the producers told Danny that he needed to show more attitude in order to get the part. He then slammed down the script and yelled, "Who wrote this sh**?" The producers, realizing he was perfect for the part, brought him on board. The show was a huge success, running from 1978 to 1983. Louie DePalma, played flawlessly by Danny, became one of the most memorable (and reviled) characters in television history. While he was universally hated by TV viewers, he was well-praised by critics, winning an Emmy award and being nominated three other times. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Danny maintained his status as a great character actor with memorable roles in movies like Romancing the Stone (1984), Ruthless People (1986), Throw Momma from the Train (1987) and Twins (1988). He also had a great deal of success behind the camera, directing movies like The War of the Roses (1989) and Hoffa (1992). In 1992, Danny was introduced to a new generation of moviegoers when he was given the role of The Penguin/Oswald Cobblepot in Tim Burton 's highly successful Batman Returns (1992). This earned him a nomination for Best Villain at the MTV Movie Awards. That same year, along with his then-wife Rhea Perlman , Danny co-founded Jersey Films, which has produced many popular films and TV shows, including Pulp Fiction (1994), Get Shorty (1995), Man on the Moon (1999) and Erin Brockovich (2000). DeVito has many directing credits to his name as well, including Throw Momma from the Train (1987), The War of the Roses (1989), Hoffa (1992), Death to Smoochy (2002) and the upcoming St. Sebastian . In 2006, he returned to series television in the FX comedy series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005). With a prominent role in a hit series, Devito's comic talents were now on display for a new generation of television viewers. In 2012, he provided the title voice role in Dr. Seuss ' The Lorax (2012). These days, he continues to work with many of today's top talents as an actor, director and producer. - IMDb Mini Biography By: SteveG Spouse (1) ( 28 January  1982 - present) (3 children) Trade Mark (4) Often directs and produces mean-spirited dark comedies with elements of crime in them. Often portrays ruthless and sinister people in the movies he is in Deep raspy voice Brother-in-law of Heide Perlman . In his New Jersey hometown, one of his relatives ran a hair salon with the relatives of another actor from his neighborhood, Jack Nicholson . Was considered for the role of Sallah in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) but could not do it due to his TV commitments. The role went to John Rhys-Davies instead. Biography in: "Who's Who in Comedy" by Ronald L. Smith. Pg. 136-137. New York: Facts on File, 1992. ISBN 0816023387 Brought a bag of carrots to munch on during the 73rd Annual Academy Awards. Host Steve Martin presented him with an impromptu bowl of ranch dip in the middle of the ceremony. Often appears in Tim Burton movies. In 1975, under a grant from the American Film Institute, he and Rhea Perlman wrote and produced Minestrome (1975), which was screened at the Cannes Film Festival and has been translated into five languages. Often portrays sinister people in the movies he is in. He played the Penguin, a mutant crime boss, in Batman Returns (1992), a cynical gambler in Space Jam (1996) and Mars Attacks! (1996), a sleazy talent agent in Death to Smoochy (2002) and ruthless and greedy businessmen in Ruthless People (1986), What's the Worst That Could Happen? (2001), Matilda (1996) and Other People's Money (1991). Graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA) in Hollywood, CA, in 1966. Attended the final Phish concert with his son and 75,000 others in Coventry, VT, on August 16, 2004. Has appeared alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in three films, two of which were directed and produced by Ivan Reitman -- Twins (1988) and Junior (1994); the third was Last Action Hero (1993), playing a minor role, as the voice of Detective Whiskers. Both have played Batman villains, DeVito as The Penguin in Batman Returns (1992), Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze in Batman & Robin (1997). Was considered for the role of Detective John Kimble in Kindergarten Cop (1990), but could not secure it due to his small stature. The role went to Arnold Schwarzenegger instead. Was originally set to play Mario in Super Mario Bros. (1993) but backed out and was replaced by Bob Hoskins . Is a huge fan of musician Mike Patton and his bands Fantomas and Peeping Tom , and asked to be in the video clip for the Peeping Tom single "Mojo". He was given a cameo. Was considered for the role of George Costanza in Seinfeld (1989), which went to Jason Alexander . Provides the voice of Herbert Powell, Homer Simpson's half-brother. Frequently appears in films with Jack Nicholson , including Goin' South (1978), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Terms of Endearment (1983), Hoffa (1992), and Mars Attacks! (1996). They have also both played Batman villains: The Joker in Batman (1989) and The Penguin in Batman Returns (1992). Lives in Beverly Hills, CA, and attended the Beverly Hills Film Festival in 2008. A staunch supporter of the Democratic Party. Has been nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor three different times in three different decade--in the 1980s for Going Ape! (1981), in the 1990s for Batman Returns (1992) and in the 2000s for Deck the Halls (2006). He has never won. First connection with Michael Douglas happened when he starred in a New York stage production of "Down the Morning Line" in 1969, directed by Douglas and written by Martin Sheen . He was inducted into the 2010 New Jersey Hall of Fame for his services and contributions to Arts and Entertainment. Close friends with Lucy Liu . Co-owner of a restaurant, called DeVito South Beach, in Miami, FL. Has part of his family living in New Canaan, CT. Has a vacation home in Interlaken, NJ. Lives in Los Angeles and Malibu, CA. In Romancing the Stone (1984), he makes a Batman-related joke, when he corners Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in the cave ("Move it, before Batman comes home!"). Eight years later, he played "the Penguin" in Batman Returns (1992). Drives a Nissan Leaf 100% electric car. The launch of his and wife Rhea Perlman 's production company, "Jersey Films", kicked off with the release of Hoffa (1992). In the late 1960s he shared a New York apartment with fellow actor Michael Douglas at 338 West 89th Street in Manhattan where the rent was $75 each per month. Directed one Oscar-nominated performance: Anne Ramsey in Throw Momma from the Train (1987). He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6906 Hollywood Blvd. on August 18, 2011. Of all actors from the Tim Burton / Joel Schumacher Batman films, DeVito (as actor, producer or director) has had the most affiliation with other actors from the films. He has worked with Michael Keaton , Jack Nicholson , Tracey Walter , Kim Basinger , Christopher Walken , Vincent Schiavelli , George Clooney , Arnold Schwarzenegger , Uma Thurman and more. As of 2014, has appeared in three films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Terms of Endearment (1983) and L.A. Confidential (1997). Only the latter isn't a winner in the category. As a producer, he produced two films that Best Picture Oscar nominees: Pulp Fiction (1994) and Erin Brockovich (2000). During his acting school years he lived with Michael Douglas . They remain great friends to this day. Personal Quotes (7) It's fun to be on the edge. I think you do your best work when you take chances, when you're not safe, when you're not in the middle of the road, at least for me, anyway. Jersey is always with me. I was one of the lucky ones. Asbury Park is just the greatest place in the world to spend your childhood. I used to love Benny Hill because he's nuts. And Monty Python [ Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969)]. I'll watch Ricky Gervais in anything he does. The guy's hilarious. Rhea loves Downton Abbey (2010). The costumes are great, let's put it that way. I enjoy watching Piers Morgan over here. He also took to task a couple of people who needed it during the gun-control debate. Piers is OK by me. I never missed Homeland (2011) when it was on. Or Deadwood (2004). I watch Jon Stewart a lot, too - I'm a big leftie. And a lot of news. Salary (1)

United States

The Chinook blows down which mountains?

Danny DeVito - TV.com Danny DeVito 11/17/1944, Neptune, New Jersey (USA) Birth Name EDIT Daniel Michael DeVito Jr. was born on November 17, 1944, in Neptune, New Jersey. His father, Daniel, Sr., was a small business owner whose ventures included a dry cleaning shop, a dairy outlet, a diner, and a pool hall. His mother, Julia, was a homemaker. While growing up… more Credits S 12: Ep 1 The Gang Turns Black 1/4/17 S 11: Ep 9 The Gang Goes to Hell 3/2/16 S 11: Ep 8 Charlie Catches a Leprechaun 2/24/16 S 9: Ep 5 Mac Day 10/2/13 S 9: Ep 2 Gun Fever Too: Still Hot 9/11/13 S 9: Ep 1 The Gang Broke Dee 9/4/13 S 2: Ep 8 The Gang Runs for Office 8/3/06 S 2: Ep 7 The Gang Exploits A Miracle 7/27/06 S 2: Ep 6 The Gang Gives Back 7/20/06 S 1: Ep 1 My Little Pony: The Movie 6/20/86 S 5: Ep 24 Simka's Monthlies 6/15/83 S 5: Ep 23 A Grand Gesture 5/25/83 S 5: Ep 22 Jim's Mario's 5/18/83 S 5: Ep 21 Tony's Baby 4/20/83 S 5: Ep 20 Arnie Meets the Kids 4/13/83 S 37: Ep 5 Charlie Day/Maroon 5 11/5/11 S 25: Ep 9 Danny DeVito/R.E.M. 12/11/99 S 18: Ep 11 Danny DeVito/Bon Jovi 1/9/93 S 14: Ep 7 Danny DeVito/The Bangles 12/3/88 S 13: Ep 6 Danny DeVito/Bryan Ferry 12/5/87 S 15: Ep 2 Show #2809 9/5/07 S 14: Ep 59 Show #2668 12/1/06 S 11: Ep 57 Show #2088 12/9/03 S 8: Ep 157 Show #1615 5/25/01 S 7: Ep 85 Late Show: Backstage #2 2/8/00 S 23: Ep 22 SNL Remembers Phil Hartman 6/13/98 S 2: Ep 5 The Occult Leader 4/20/15 S 62: Ep 1206 December 6, 2013 12/6/13 S 19: Ep 17 Week 16 (2012) 12/23/12 S 10: Ep 32 28th June, 2012 6/28/12 S 2: Ep 12 24 March 2012 3/24/12 S 5: Ep 17 Episode #5.017 9/23/11 S 4: Ep 145 Episode #4.145 2/21/11 S 4: Ep 125 Episode #4.125 1/28/11 S 3: Ep 291 Episode #3.291 8/11/10 S 3: Ep 213 Episode #3.213 5/12/10 S 8: Ep 17 Danny DeVito/Olivia Munn 9/14/11 S 7: Ep 37 Danny DeVito/Brie Larson/Henry Cho 10/26/10 S 6: Ep 8 Danny DeVito 9/9/09 S 1: Ep 135 September 15, 2010 9/15/10 S 15: Ep 12 Danny DeVito 5/11/09 S 1: Ep 20 Oscars 2004 2/29/04 S 4: Ep 7 Reno 911!: Miami 2/23/07 S 10: Ep 62 November 29, 2006 11/29/06 S 4: Ep 9 Danny DeVito, Patric Verrone 11/26/06 S 1: Ep 5 Danny DeVito 11/9/03 S 2: Ep 114 November 24, 2006 11/24/06 S 12: Ep 6 Episode #1206 11/18/06 S 11: Ep 99 Danny DeVito 8/3/06 S 18: Ep 224 August 3, 2006 8/3/06 S 12: Ep 78 December 16, 1999 12/16/99 S 10: Ep 15 September 19, 1997 9/19/97 S 8: Ep 228 July 31, 1996 7/31/96 S 7: Ep 22 September 27, 1994 9/27/94 S 1: Ep 5 And the Revolution Continues 9/28/04 S 2: Ep 13 President Bush's Motorcade 9/1/04 S 1: Ep 2 Dumb Bunnies 10/8/03 S 1: Ep 17 Danny DeVito/Faith Ford/Maroon 5 9/30/03 S 2: Ep 184 Danny DeVito and Bob Costas 4/3/00 S 2: Ep 168 Danny DeVito and Bob Costas 3/3/00 S 3: Ep 1 Human Nature 9/25/02 S 6: Ep 21 South Park 5th Anniversary Special 9/3/02 S 73: Ep 1 The 73rd Annual Academy Awards 3/25/01 S 1: Ep 1 Pilot 10/11/00 S 4: Ep 100 Show #724 2/11/00 S 3: Ep 41 Show #472 11/2/98 S 2: Ep 54 Show #296 11/20/97 S 1: Ep 44 Show #44 8/13/96 S 2: Ep 16 Michael Douglas: Son of Spartacus 8/13/99 S 1: Ep 3 June 10, 1998 6/10/98 S 5: Ep 130 Show #0992 4/21/98 S 3: Ep 197 Show #0636 8/6/96 S 1: Ep 16 Dean Cuisine 2/5/97 S 30: Ep 5 Space Jam 1/1/96 S 3: Ep 4 The Gift Episode 7/13/94 S 3: Ep 2 Danny DeVito, Shelley Winters 4/29/93 S 2: Ep 15 Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? 2/21/91 S 2: Ep 67 December 15, 1989 12/15/89 S 28: Ep 33 Show #4078 12/8/89 S 2: Ep 1 The Wedding Ring 9/22/86 S 6: Ep 134 April 17, 1986 4/17/86 S 6: Ep 67 December 10, 1985 12/10/85 S 1: Ep 3 All the Kids Do It 4/24/84 S 6: Ep 254 August 20, 1981 8/20/81 S 9: Ep 21 Host: Marilu Henner 2/20/81 S 18: Ep 63 Week of December 3, 1979 12/3/79 S 2: Ep 8 Uncle Cheech 11/13/79 S 17: Ep 133 Week of April 30, 1979 4/30/79 S 5: Ep 138 April 13, 1979 4/13/79 S 5: Ep 98 February 13, 1979 2/13/79 S 17: Ep 113 Week of March 26, 1979 3/26/79 S 4: Ep 8 Death Game 12/21/77 S 3: Ep 11 The Collector 12/3/77 S 1: Ep 13 The Out of Town Trip Cameo (2) S 24: Ep 11 Changing of the Guardian 1/27/13 S 2: Ep 1 The Wedding Ring 9/22/86 S 1: Ep 2 Make My Day 12/18/85 S 1: Ep 1 From Pillar to Post 12/11/85 S 5: Ep 22 Jim's Mario's 5/18/83 S 5: Ep 15 Sugar Ray Nardo 2/5/83 S 5: Ep 10 Elaine and the Monk 12/2/82 Become a contributor Important: You must only upload images which you have created yourself or that you are expressly authorised or licensed to upload. By clicking "Publish", you are confirming that the image fully complies with TV.com’s Terms of Use and that you own all rights to the image or have authorization to upload it. Please read the following before uploading Do not upload anything which you do not own or are fully licensed to upload. The images should not contain any sexually explicit content, race hatred material or other offensive symbols or images. Remember: Abuse of the TV.com image system may result in you being banned from uploading images or from the entire site – so, play nice and respect the rules! Choose background:

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In which country was Michael J. Fox born?

The Biography of Michael J. Fox: On a Quest to Cure Parkinson's Disease | Parkinson's Disease MICHAEL'S STORY Childhood Michael J. Fox was born Michael Andrew Fox in 1961 to parents William and Phyllis in Edmonton, the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta. (He later adopted the "J" as an homage to legendary character actor Michael J. Pollard.) Fox, a self-described "Army brat," moved several times during his childhood along with his parents, brother, and three sisters. The Foxes finally planted roots in Burnaby, British Columbia (a suburb of Vancouver), when William Fox retired from the Canadian Armed Forces in 1971. Career Like most Canadian kids, Fox loved hockey and dreamed of a career in the National Hockey League. In his teens, his interests expanded. He began experimenting with creative writing and art and played guitar in a succession of rock-and-roll garage bands before ultimately realizing his affinity for acting. Fox debuted as a professional actor at 15, co-starring in the sitcom Leo and Me on Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) with future Tony Award-winner Brent Carver. Over the next three years, he juggled local theater and TV work, and landed a few roles in American TV movies shooting in Canada. When he was 18, Fox moved to Los Angeles. He had a series of bit parts, including one in CBS' short-lived (yet critically acclaimed) Alex Haley/Norman Lear series "Palmerstown USA" before winning the role of lovable conservative Alex P. Keaton on NBC's enormously popular "Family Ties" (1982-89). During Fox's seven years on "Ties," he earned three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe, making him one of the country's most prominent young actors. "Spin City" reunited Fox with Family Ties creator/executive producer Gary David Goldberg. Together with Bill Lawrence, Goldberg created the series expressly for Fox, establishing it as a joint venture of Dreamworks SKG, Goldberg's UBU Productions, and Lottery Hill Entertainment (run by Fox and partner Nelle Fortenberry, now a member of the Board of Directors of The Michael J. Fox Foundation). Goldberg served as co-executive producer with Fox for Spin City's first and second seasons, and Lawrence stepped in during the third. For the fourth seasons, Rosenthal and Cadiff shared duties with Fox. In other television work, Fox starred in Woody Allen's "Don't Drink the Water" in 1994. He directed Teri Garr and Bruno Kirby in an episode of "Tales From the Crypt" and later directed an installment of the series "Brooklyn Bridge." Fox also had time during his busy TV work to become an international film star, appearing in over a dozen features showcasing his keen ability to shift between comedy and drama. These include the Back to the Future trilogy, The Hard Way , Doc Hollywood , The Secret of My Success , Bright Lights , Big City , Light of Day , Teen Wolf , Casualties of War , Life With Mikey , For Love or Money , The American President , Greedy , The Frighteners , and Mars Attacks! Fox married his "Family Ties" co-star, actress Tracy Pollan, in 1988. Together they have four children. Inspired to find projects that his kids would enjoy, Fox has lent his voice to a variety of hit children's films since the early 1990s. He began as Chance the dog in Disney's Homeward Bound movies. In December 1999, he provided the voice of Stuart Little for the Sony feature of the same name, and in the summer of 2001 Fox's voice was heard as that of the lead in Atlantis The Lost Empire , his first animated feature for The Walt Disney Co. Living and working with Parkinson's disease Though he would not share the news with the public for another seven years, Fox was diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson's disease in 1991. Upon disclosing his condition in 1998, he committed himself to the campaign for increased Parkinson's research. Fox announced his retirement from "Spin City" in January 2000, effective upon the completion of his fourth season and 100th episode. Expressing pride in the show, its talented cast, writers, and creative team, he explained that new priorities made this the right time to step away from the demands of a weekly series. Later that year he launched The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, which the New York Times has called "the most credible voice on Parkinson's research in the world." Today the largest nonprofit funder of Parkinson's drug development in the world, the Foundation has galvanized the search for a cure for Parkinson's disease, and Michael is widely admired for his tireless work as a patient advocate. In 2012 Fox announced his intention to return to full-time acting. While the announcement may have upended public expectations, Fox had spoken publicly about finding a drug cocktail that helped him control the symptoms and side effects of his Parkinson's disease well enough to play a character with PD. In 2013, he returned to primetime network TV as Mike Henry on NBC's "The Michael J. Fox Show." The show, which quickly gained nationwide attention, centers on a beloved newscaster and family man who returns to work following a diagnosis with Parkinson's disease. Parkinson's families and Michael J. Fox Foundation supporters united around the power of optimism demonstrated by Fox's return, hosting more than 2,000 premiere night house parties around the country to celebrate the airing of the first episode. Fox also continues to thrill fans in his multi-episode guest arc as Lewis Canning, a devious attorney who uses his tardive dyskinesia to his clients' advantage, in the CBS hit drama "The Good Wife" starring Julianna Margulies. In 2011, he guest starred in "Larry versus Michael J. Fox," the season eight finale of Larry David's acclaimed HBO comedy "Curb Your Enthusiasm." In spring 2009 he portrayed embittered, drug-addicted Dwight in Denis Leary's hit FX Network drama "Rescue Me," a role that earned him his fifth Emmy Award. His 2006 recurring guest role in the ABC legal drama "Boston Legal" was nominated for an Emmy, and he appeared as Dr. Kevin Casey in the then-NBC series "Scrubs" in 2004. Fox is the recipient of several lifetime achievement awards for accomplishments in acting, including the 2011 Hoerzu Magazine Golden Camera Award and the 2010 National Association of Broadcasters Distinguished Service Award. Offstage Fox also is the bestselling author of three books, all with Hyperion: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future , a compendium of wisdom for graduates, was published in April 2010. Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist , published in April 2009, debuted at number two on the New York Times bestseller list. It was accompanied by an ABC-TV prime time special that was nominated for an Emmy award for Outstanding Nonfiction Special; additionally, its audio recording by Fox won the 2010 Grammy award for Best Spoken Word Album, an honor for which all three books were nominated. His first book, the 2002 memoir Lucky Man , also was a New York Times and national bestseller. Fox is the recipient of honorary degrees from The Karolinska Institute in Sweden, New York University, Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the University of British Columbia. He also has received numerous humanitarian awards for his work and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2010. Fox has spoken and written extensively about his predisposition to look at challenges, including his Parkinson's disease, through a lens of optimism and humor. His message has always been one of gratitude for the support he has received from his fellow Parkinson's patients, and hope and encouragement for every decision to take action -- no matter how big or small -- to help advance the pursuit of a cure.

Canada

To the nearest million, how mjch did Heavan's Gate lose for United Artists?

Michael J. Fox Net Worth - biography, quotes, wiki, assets, cars, homes and more Michael J. Fox Net Worth Net Worth $ 65 Million About Quotes Trivia Born on: 9th Jun 61 Born in: Canada Marital status: Married Occupation: Actor, Author and Producer Michael J Fox  net worth is estimated at $65 million.  Fox is a famous Hollywood actor of Canadian origin. He started his career in showbiz way back in the late 1970s with his successful 1980 debut film “Midnight Madness”. Fox again proved his acting capabilities in the hugely successful film series “Back to the Future”. Fox’s starring role in the American TV sitcom “Family Ties” earned him three Emmy awards and a Golden Globe Award. The artist has also tried his luck as a voice artist in the blockbuster “Stuart Little” movie series. Fox has also penned several successful books. All these became the source to Michael J Fox  net worth. Michael’s acting prowess has transformed him into a multimillionaire with an estimated net worth of "$65 million". Remuneration from films has provided more than half of Michael J Fox  net worth. A sizeable amount of money has also been made by acting in blockbuster TV sitcoms. MNC giant Pepsi has tapped into Fox’s immense popularity to sell their soft drinks and signed up the actor in a lucrative endorsement deal. Books authored by the artist have also registered impressive sales bringing in a lot of royalty money to Michael J Fox  net worth. The actor’s massive bank balance has ensured that he can easily afford to give all material comforts of life to his family. Fox loves large mansions and currently resides in a massive 6 bedroom property situated in the middle of a 1.2 acre estate in Southampton, New York valued at "$6.4 million", thanks to the huge Michael J Fox  net worth. Michael once owned a massive 121 acre farmhouse in Vermont but has moved out of it many years back. The actor is the perfect family man and devotes a lot of quality time to his wife and kids. Fox’s bitter battle with Parkinson’s disease spanning almost a quarter of a century has turned him into a staunch advocate of stem cell research in the hope of finding a cure to this disease. The Michael J. Fox Foundation started by the actor tries to find a remedy to Parkinson’s disease by funding advanced genetic research. This act added a cute charisma to Michael J Fox  net worth. Michael Fox was born in Canada and is the only son of actress Phyllis and police officer William Fox. He grew up in a very stable family environment. Fox’s personal life has been completely free of any kind of controversy and he enjoys the well-earned reputation of a committed family man. The actor met actress Tracy Pollan during the filming of the movie "Family Ties" and tied the knot on July 1988. The happy couple has been blessed with four children. The artist was diagnosed with the Parkinson disease more than 20 years back but fortunately he has managed to overcome the calamity and has recovered to a great extent with the aid of medication. "Family is not an important thing. It's everything." "Acceptance doesn't mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there's got to be a way through it." "I like to encourage people to realize that any action is a good action if it's proactive and there is positive intent behind it." "The more I expect, the more unhappy I am going to be. The more I accept, the more serene I am." "I see possibilities in everything. For everything that's taken away, something of greater value has been given." He won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award for his role from Family Ties from 1982 to 1989. He won an Emmy, three Golden Globes, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards for his role as Mike Flaherty in Spin City from 1996 to 2001. He was listed as one of twelve "Promising New Actors of 1985" in John Willis Screen World, Vol. 37. He received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from New York University in May 2008. He was named one of the 100 people "whose power, talent or moral example is transforming the world" in 2007 by Time magazine. Family & relationships

i don't know

From which show does Love Changes Everything come from?

Love Changes Everything Lyrics - Aspects of Love musical Love Changes Everything lyrics Can make the summer fly, Or a night Will turn your world around, And that world Why did I go back to see her...? WOMAN (GIULIETTA) Alex, it's all in the past... ALEX Into the world we go, Planning futures, Waitress Follow us on   Musical: Aspects of Love. Song: Love Changes Everything. Broadway musical soundtrack lyrics. Song lyrics from theatre show/film are property & copyright of their owners, provided for educational purposes ©2017 AllMusicals.com

Aspects of Love

Under which name did Leonard Slye ride across the silver screen?

Love Changes Everything - Lyrics - Soundtrack Lyrics Love changes everything: Can make the summer fly, Or a night Will turn your world around, And that world Why did I go back to see her...? WOMAN (GIULIETTA) Alex, it's all in the past... ALEX Into the world we go, Planning futures, Soundtrack CD Musical DVD Sheet music Music blog A-Z Lyrics Universe Popular Aspects of Love Songs Anything But Lonely There is More to Love Mermaid Song Seeing is Believing First Man You Remember Falling Hand Me the Wine and the Dice Parlez-Vous Francais? Other Pleasures Chanson d'Enfance MORE › New soundtracks

i don't know

Who directed The Deer Hunter?

The Deer Hunter (1978) - IMDb IMDb 17 January 2017 4:34 PM, UTC NEWS There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error An in-depth examination of the ways in which the U.S. Vietnam War impacts and disrupts the lives of people in a small industrial town in Pennsylvania. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC Robert De Niro Writes Meryl Streep a Letter in Support of Her Golden Globes Speech 11 January 2017 12:06 PM, -08:00 | Indiewire a list of 31 titles created 30 Nov 2011 a list of 35 titles created 12 Jun 2013 a list of 25 titles created 30 Nov 2014 a list of 23 titles created 10 Jan 2016 a list of 29 titles created 3 months ago Title: The Deer Hunter (1978) 8.2/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 5 Oscars. Another 17 wins & 26 nominations. See more awards  » Videos A young recruit in Vietnam faces a moral crisis when confronted with the horrors of war and the duality of man. Director: Oliver Stone During the Vietnam War, Captain Willard is sent on a dangerous mission into Cambodia to assassinate a renegade colonel who has set himself up as a god among a local tribe. Director: Francis Ford Coppola An emotionally self-destructive boxer's journey through life, as the violence and temper that leads him to the top in the ring destroys his life outside it. Director: Martin Scorsese Greed, deception, money, power, and murder occur between two best friends, a mafia underboss and a casino owner, for a trophy wife over a gambling empire. Director: Martin Scorsese Retired Old West gunslinger William Munny reluctantly takes on one last job, with the help of his old partner and a young man. Director: Clint Eastwood A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the Vietnam War has on his fellow recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting in Hue. Director: Stanley Kubrick A mentally unstable Vietnam War veteran works as a night-time taxi driver in New York City where the perceived decadence and sleaze feeds his urge for violent action, attempting to save a preadolescent prostitute in the process. Director: Martin Scorsese A group of professional bank robbers start to feel the heat from police when they unknowingly leave a clue at their latest heist. Director: Michael Mann In Miami in 1980, a determined Cuban immigrant takes over a drug cartel and succumbs to greed. Director: Brian De Palma After settling his differences with a Japanese PoW camp commander, a British colonel co-operates to oversee his men's construction of a railway bridge for their captors - while oblivious to a plan by the Allies to destroy it. Director: David Lean A criminal pleads insanity after getting into trouble again and once in the mental institution rebels against the oppressive nurse and rallies up the scared patients. Director: Milos Forman Rocky Balboa, a small-time boxer, gets a supremely rare chance to fight heavy-weight champion Apollo Creed in a bout in which he strives to go the distance for his self-respect. Director: John G. Avildsen Edit Storyline Michael, Steven and Nick are young factory workers from Pennsylvania who enlist into the Army to fight in Vietnam. Before they go, Steven marries the pregnant Angela, and their wedding party also serves as the men's farewell party. After some time and many horrors, the three friends fall in the hands of the Vietcong and are brought to a prison camp in which they are forced to play Russian roulette against each other. Michael makes it possible for them to escape, but they soon get separated again. Written by Leon Wolters <[email protected]> Best Picture 1978 See more  » Genres: 23 February 1979 (USA) See more  » Also Known As: The Man Who Came to Play See more  » Filming Locations: 70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints)| Dolby Stereo (35 mm prints) Color: Did You Know? Trivia The Clairton scenes comprise footage shot in eight different towns in four states: West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Ohio. See more » Goofs The credits list John D. Rockefeller III as the Governor of West Virginia, when in fact it was his son, Jay Rockefeller , or John D. Rockefeller IV. See more » Quotes See more » Crazy Credits We gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of our Thai crew in the production of "The Deer Hunter" See more » Connections Adapted and Arranged by Ken Kovach Sung after the funeral The Best Film Ever made about War 18 June 2007 | by Lord_Crypto (Pennsylvania Wilderness) – See all my reviews Most of you after reading my title are already going to be upset. I do consider this to be the best film ever made about war. I do not look at this film being about the Vietnam War. I look at this film being about war (Period). I think this film is as excellent as it is for one good reason, showing the effects of war. True, we see the films where men are shaped by war, what events make them who they are, and how the events of war transform them. It is mainly about what the war has done to them. The Deer Hunter takes a bigger step back from that and shows the entire character transformation. It does not just show the transformation of a soldier, but also the transformation as a civilian. You spend a good 40 minutes in the Deer Hunter getting to know the main characters and getting a feel for their personalities. The first 40 minutes is about character development and almost getting an attachment to those characters. This makes their transformation more effective for the viewer and they almost feel for the character and what they are going through. Than those characters get thrown into war and you see the events that change them. The things they had to experience as a soldier. And than, most importantly, we see the changes in their characters after the war. And we do not just see the changes in the soldiers, we see the changes that their friends and lovers undergo as a result of the war. We are not just looking at one soldier, we are looking at a network of friends and how they are changed due to the war. Even those who did not go to war are still effected. And the fact all the characters are from a small town makes it that much more powerful. The Deer Hunter is a powerful film about how war effects everybody, not just the soldiers involved in it. The cast is terrific! Robert De Niro, John Cazale, John Savage, Meryll Streep, and Christopher Walken. Need I say more. Christopher Walken won an Oscar for best supporting actor in this film. The script is beautifully written and the movie is filmed perfectly. I can find nothing wrong with anything about this movie. I mean, it did win 5 Oscars in 1978 including Best Picture and Best Director for Michael Cimino. This movie is emotionally powerful. I can not say this film is accurate about war, I can only give my opinion and take from the film what I can. I am an 18-year old teen who has an almost complete control over his emotions. This film brought me the closest to tears I have ever been by a movie. It is an absolute masterpiece. This is one of the greatest films ever made. Take the time to watch this film, it is a classic that hits you the hardest emotionally. 42 of 77 people found this review helpful.  Was this review helpful to you? Yes

Michael Cimino

What color is Laa Laa of the Teletulbbies?

Michael Cimino Dead: ‘Deer Hunter,’ ‘Heaven’s Gate’ Director Was 77 | Variety Courtesy: REX/Shutterstock July 2, 2016 | 01:37PM PT Michael Cimino , who won Oscars as director and a producer of “ The Deer Hunter ” before “Heaven’s Gate” destroyed his career and sped up the demise of 60-year-old United Artists, has died. He was 77.  Friends called the police when they couldn’t reach him and he was found dead Saturday at his Los Angeles home. Cause of death has not yet been determined. Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Fremaux tweeted the news Saturday, writing that he died in peace surrounded by those close to him and the two women who loved him. “We loved him too,” wrote Fremaux. His birthday is usually cited as Feb. 3, 1939, though many facts about Cimino’s life, including his birthdate, were shrouded in conflicting information.  Cimino directed eight films in his career. His first was 1974’s “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot”; his second was the 1978 Vietnam War masterpiece “The Deer Hunter,” which won five Academy Awards, including best picture and director; his third was 1980’s “Heaven’s Gate,” the film that became synonymous with showbiz disaster; and the rest were mostly footnotes, though some (like “Year of the Dragon”) have passionate fans. In a statement Saturday, Robert De Niro said, “Our work together is something I will always remember. He will be missed.” Directors Guild of America president Paris Barclay also issued a statement on the news late on Saturday: “With his visionary approach and attention to every detail, Michael Cimino is forever etched in the history of filmmaking. In his most iconic work, the DGA and Academy Award-winning film ‘The Deer Hunter,’ Michael captured the horrors of war through a personalized lens – captivating a nation in the process.” The rise and fall of Cimino is so extreme that it would undoubtedly make for a great book, miniseries or opera. But it may not make a good film: It would require too big a budget, and the plot would be too complex. His career is a cautionary tale for Hollywood, about the eternal conflict between artistry and finance, with side battles between creative people and the media. When Cimino pacted with Universal and EMI for the 1978 “The Deer Hunter,” he had only two screenplay credits (including “Silent Running”), plus the one film he wrote and directed. “Hunter” ran behind schedule and over budget, but proved a big profit-maker, earning $48 million on a $15 million budget. It was nominated for nine Oscars and won five — including director for Cimino and picture (another statuette for Cimino as one of the four winning producers). Based on its success, United Artists signed him for “Heaven’s Gate,” a Western based on the Johnson County Wars. Since its founding in 1919, UA had a long tradition of giving creative freedom to filmmakers, from Charlie Chaplin to Billy Wilder to Woody Allen. In 1978, a new United Artists team was in place, after top execs like Arthur Krim battled with parent company Transamerica and defected to form Orion Pictures. The new team at UA were eager for a big hit and Cimino seemed just the ticket. So they contractually gave him control over the production. The French New Wave in the early 1960s had anointed directors as auteurs, and the 1970s, after “Easy Rider,” saw many successful films from maverick filmmakers. So, the UA execs figured, what could possibly go wrong? “Heaven’s Gate” started filming in April 1979 and wrapped 11 months later, in March 1980. In his book “Final Cut,” Steven Bach, who was a UA exec at the time, said the film was greenlit for $7.5 million but eventually budgeted at $11.5 million. It ended up costing $35.1 million, with another $9 million for marketing, leading to a $44 million writedown for UA. After the film, Cimino directed only four more features, ending with the 1996 “Sunchaser.” He always avoided questions about “Heaven’s Gate,” except to label Bach’s book “a work of fiction.” Cimino was born in New York City and raised in Long Island; his father was a music publisher, his mother a costume designer. He went to Michigan State, graduated from Yale in 1961 and got an MFA there in 1963, both in painting. He directed TV commercials for United Airlines, Kool cigarettes and Pepsi, among others. He moved to L.A. in 1971 and was repped by Stan Kamen at William Morris. He got gigs as a co-writer of the ecological science fiction film “Silent Running,” starring Bruce Dern, and the 1973 “Magnum Force,” the second “Dirty Harry” film. Eastwood was impressed, and gave Cimino his big break by agreeing to star in Cimino’s directing debut, the 1974 “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.” The film was a box office hit and gained an Oscar nomination for supporting actor Jeff Bridges. Director Michael Cimino, left, talks with actor Robert De Niro, wearing beret, during a break in filming of “The Deer Hunter” on location in Bangkok, Thailand, Sept. 11, 1977.(AP Photo/Neal Ulevich) His second work, 1978’s “The Deer Hunter,” was the right movie at the right time. Though the Vietnam War was a daily presence on American TV, the studios generally avoided the topic on the bigscreen until long after the last troops had withdrawn in 1973. Cimino’s film was a three-hour-plus look at events on the battlefield and the home front, a gritty, grim study with excellent, Oscar-nominated performances by Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep (her first) and supporting actor Christopher Walken, who won. The film also won for editing and sound. When “Deer Hunter” was released, Cimino implied in various interviews that the story (credited to him and three other scribes) was autobiographical, or else based on tales he heard when he was part of a 1968 Green Beret medical unit in Vietnam. Others refuted both versions, saying Cimino was never in Vietnam and his military experience was limited to six months in the reserves. Other details of Cimino’s life were subject to scrutiny, criticism and re-evaluation, including his age and even his gender identity. He variously listed the year of his birth as 1939, 1943 and 1952, sometimes shifting the month. Almost from the beginning, “Heaven’s Gate” was the subject of criticism and speculation. Cimino was such a perfectionist that Hollywood told tales of him halting filming so an outdoor set could be rebuilt to have a wider sidewalk, and waiting endlessly for the clouds to create the right formation before filming. The story, possibly apocryphal, was that on the sixth day of shooting, it was already five days behind schedule. Aside from complaints of  self-indulgence, there were claims of animal cruelty. At various times, United Artists execs considered firing him (but relented, fearing a backlash and citing the actors’ support of him) or  pulling the plug. But they were impressed with the footage — “as if David Lean were directing a Western,” the execs said of what they’d seen. Plus, they didn’t want a huge writedown with nothing to show for it, so the film was completed. In the next few years, there were four cuts of the film, of varying lengths. Three months after wrapping, Cimino had a print that ran 325 minutes (i.e., five hours, 25 minutes), with Cimino announcing that it needed to lose 15 minutes. However, it was trimmed to 219 minutes by the time it premiered in New York on Nov. 19, 1980. The audience and critical reaction were negative, so UA pulled the film and re-released it in April 1981 at 149 minutes. It earned less than $4 million. United Artists was sold to Kirk Kerkorian and MGM; at a Cannes screening of “Heaven’s Gate,” Cimino denied that his film was responsible. UA honcho Norbert Auerbach said tactfully that if the film didn’t force previous owner Transamerica to exit show business, “Heaven’s Gate” certainly didn’t discourage that move. The company never regained its stature. In 1985 Bach, who was senior VP and head of worldwide production for UA at the time, wrote “Final Cut,” a withering account of the film. Bach cited studio execs, including himself, for culpability, and questioned how artists are expected to learn “discipline and responsibility” in an age of conglomerates. He notes that it was a time of turbulence in the film biz, and within three years of “Heaven’s Gate,” every major company changed management. But Bach clearly portrays Cimino as the villain, for giving priority to his artistic vision over budget considerations, and for his refusal to deal with studio executives. Over the years, the film has been re-evaluated several times, with either positive or rapturous reception. A new director’s cut, running 216 minutes, debuted in fall 2012 at the Venice Film Festival. Although he directed a few films in the decades after “Heaven’s Gate,” Cimino kept a low profile, and plastic surgery made him almost unrecognizable. He resurfaced at the Cannes Film Festival for a screening of his 1996 film “Sunchaser.” He appeared at Cannes again in 2007 for his final film venture, a three-minute contribution to the multi-director anthology “Chacun son gout.” He obliquely addressed the rumor that he was transitioning into a woman, saying there were many false rumors about him, part of a “personal assassination”; he said if a detractor wants to prevent a person from working, the next best thing is to “destroy them personally.” Cimino circled many projects that never came to fruition, including a life of Dostoevsky developed with Raymond Carver; adaptations of “Crime and Punishment,” Truman Capote’s “Handcarved Coffins,” Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” and Andre Malraux’s “Man’s Fate”; and bios of Janis Joplin, Legs Diamond and Mafia boss Frank Costello. He also circled many projects eventually directed by others, including “The Bounty,” “Footloose,” “The Pope of Greenwich Village” and “Born on the Fourth of July.” He wrote a 2001 novel, “Big Jane” and two years later collaborated with Francesca Pollock on the book “Conversations en miroir.” He had no survivors.

i don't know

Who was the most recent Democrat before Clinton to be reelected for a second term as US President?

American History: Bill Clinton’s Second Term American History: Bill Clinton’s Second Term Last Updated: March 01, 2012 A poster advertises a book about President Clinton at a Beijing bookstore in May 1998, shortly before he visited China. The poster declares his troubles as the "number one sex scandal in the world." Share STEVE EMBER: Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English. I’m Steve Ember. This week in our series, we look back at Bill Clinton's second term as president. BILL CLINTON: “For four years now, to realize our vision, we have pursued a simple but profound strategy – opportunity for all, responsibility from all, a strong united American community.” Americans elected Clinton as their forty-second president in nineteen-ninety-two and re-elected him four years later. (MUSIC) President Clinton speaks to the United Nations General Assembly on September 22, 1997 In the summer of nineteen ninety-six, President Clinton's first term was coming to an end. He had established a mixed record of successes and failures in his dealings with Congress. He had greater difficulty in those dealings after opposition Republicans won control of Congress in nineteen ninety-four. All presidents face political battles. But in President Clinton's case there was more to it. He and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, were being investigated over their personal financial dealings in Arkansas during the nineteen eighties. There were also accusations of womanizing from his years as governor of that state. But in the summer of ninety-six President Clinton's public approval ratings stayed above fifty percent and went as high as sixty percent. The economy had improved during his first term. Americans were getting jobs and spending more money. More people, and not just the wealthy, were investing in the stock market. In August of nineteen ninety-six the Democratic Party met in Chicago and nominated President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore for a second term. BILL CLINTON: “My fellow Democrats and my fellow Americans, thank you for your nomination. I don’t know if I can find a fancy way to say this, but I accept.” (MUSIC) The Republican Party held its nominating convention that summer in San Diego, California. The party chose former Kansas senator Bob Dole as its presidential candidate. He had resigned from the United States Senate to seek the nomination. He chose former congressman and cabinet secretary Jack Kemp of New York as his vice presidential running mate. Dole was a World War Two hero who suffered a permanent injury to his right arm. He later served four terms in the House of Representatives. He was elected to the Senate in nineteen sixty-eight and re-elected four times. Another candidate in the presidential race was businessman Ross Perot. He won the nomination of the Reform Party which he started a year earlier. He had also run for president in nineteen ninety-two, and received nineteen percent of the popular vote. During the ninety-six campaign, President Clinton pointed to the stronger economy. He also campaigned on his legislative record, including new gun-control measures and a higher minimum wage for the lowest paid workers. Bob Dole, in his campaign, accused President Clinton of spending too much. Clinton's answer was that he had stopped Congress from cutting too much from programs like health insurance for retirees. Bill Clinton and Al Gore easily won the election, defeating Bob Dole and Jack Kemp. Ross Perot received just eight percent of the popular vote this time. Clinton became the first Democrat to win a second term since Franklin Roosevelt in nineteen thirty-six. (MUSIC) William Jefferson Clinton began his second term as president of the United States on January twentieth, nineteen ninety-seven. His inaugural speech would be the last by an American president in the twentieth century. BILL CLINTON: “Let us lift our eyes toward the challenges that await us in the next century. It is our great good fortune that time and chance have put us not only at the edge of a new century, in a new millennium, but on the edge of a bright new prospect in human affairs, a moment that will define our course, and our character, for decades to come. We must keep our old democracy forever young.” Clinton discussed some of the issues that the country continued to face, including racial divisions. BILL CLINTON: “The divide of race has been America’s constant curse. And each new wave of immigrants gives new targets to old prejudices. Prejudice and contempt, cloaked in the pretense of religious or political conviction are no different.” (MUSIC) During his first term, President Clinton appointed a large number of women and minorities to the government. As he began his second term, he chose the first woman to serve as secretary of state. Madeleine Albright had represented the United States in the United Nations during Clinton’s first term. And he appointed the first Asian-American to serve in the cabinet. Norman Mineta became secretary of commerce. (MUSIC) The Republican Party kept control of both houses of Congress in the ninety ninety-six elections. At the end of his first term Clinton had gotten into a budget fight with the Republicans which resulted in two government shutdowns. Those shutdowns did more political harm to the Republicans than to the president. In nineteen ninety-seven they reached a compromise. They agreed to a plan to end the federal deficit by two thousand two. In fact, the budget was balanced much sooner. In nineteen ninety-eight, the economy was so strong that the government found itself with an extra seventy billion dollars -- the first surplus since nineteen sixty-nine. (MUSIC) President Clinton visited China in nineteen ninety-eight. He spoke of his belief that in the twenty-first century, democracy "will be the right course practically as well as morally, yielding more stability and more progress." A month later, in August of nineteen ninety-eight, al-Qaida terrorists bombed the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The attacks killed more than two hundred people. President Clinton ordered missile strikes against al-Qaida targets in Sudan – and in Afghanistan, in an effort to kill the group's leader, Osama bin Laden. Later in the year, President Clinton ordered military action in response to Iraq's refusal to cooperate with United Nations inspectors. The inspectors were searching for nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Clinton ordered missile strikes against targets that U.N. officials said could have been linked to such weapons of mass destruction. BILL CLINTON: “Their mission is to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs, and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors. Their purpose is to protect the national interests of the United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the middle east and around the world. “Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors, or the world, with nuclear arms, poison gas, or biological weapons.” (MUSIC) In nineteen ninety-nine, Clinton deployed American aircraft and missiles as part of a NATO campaign in Yugoslavia. NATO was trying to stop attacks against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Yugoslav military leaders agreed to withdraw their troops. NATO stopped the bombing and sent an international peacekeeping force to Kosovo. The United States provided seven thousand troops for that force. (MUSIC) Earlier in Clinton's presidency, the United States had led NATO airstrikes against Serb targets in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia. The operations followed the killing of eight thousand Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica, a U.N.-declared "safe area." Clinton later pushed for the nineteen ninety-five peace agreement to end the Bosnian war. The Dayton peace accords were named after Dayton, Ohio, the location of the Air Force base where they were negotiated. Three years later, in nineteen ninety-eight, Israeli and Palestinian leaders signed a memorandum of understanding at the White House. It called for Israeli forces to withdraw from some areas of the West Bank. The Wye Memorandum resulted from nine days of negotiations at the Wye River Plantation in Maryland. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and special diplomat Dennis Ross traveled repeatedly to the Middle East to work on the peace efforts. In two thousand one, President Clinton tried to get Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to sign a peace agreement. Clinton invited the two leaders to the United States and held many hours of talks with them. Reports said they came close to an agreement, but the negotiations ended without success. Palestinians declared a new uprising against Israel. (MUSIC) On trade issues, President Clinton at the end of his second term got Congress to approve permanent normal trade relations with China. That meant no more need for presidents to have to ask Congress for temporary renewals of those trade rights. Clinton argued that the move would create a better environment for democratic reforms in China, as well as creating jobs in the United States. Among other foreign policy matters during his presidency, Clinton normalized relations with Vietnam. And he supported the expansion of NATO -- the North Atlantic Treaty Organization -- in Europe. Bill Clinton's presidency will be remembered at least in part for his efforts to reach out to the international community. But it will also be remembered for the impeachment trial in Congress that almost ended that presidency. BILL CLINTON: “These allegations are false, and I need to go back to work for the American people. That will be our story next week. (MUSIC) You can find our series online with transcripts, MP3s, podcasts and pictures at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English. I’m Steve Ember, inviting you to join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English. ___ Contributing: Jerilyn Watson This was program #230. For earlier programs, type "Making of a Nation" in quotation marks in the search box at the top of the page.

Roosevelt

For what did Georgie O'Keefe become famous?

William J. Clinton | whitehouse.gov Air Force One William J. Clinton Bill Clinton is an American politician from Arkansas who served as the 42nd President of the United States (1993-2001). He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first baby-boomer generation President.  During the administration of William Jefferson Clinton, the U.S. enjoyed more peace and economic well being than at any time in its history. He was the first Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second term. He could point to the lowest unemployment rate in modern times, the lowest inflation in 30 years, the highest home ownership in the country's history, dropping crime rates in many places, and reduced welfare rolls. He proposed the first balanced budget in decades and achieved a budget surplus. As part of a plan to celebrate the millennium in 2000, Clinton called for a great national initiative to end racial discrimination. After the failure in his second year of a huge program of health care reform, Clinton shifted emphasis, declaring "the era of big government is over." He sought legislation to upgrade education, to protect jobs of parents who must care for sick children, to restrict handgun sales, and to strengthen environmental rules. President Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas, three months after his father died in a traffic accident. When he was four years old, his mother wed Roger Clinton, of Hot Springs, Arkansas. In high school, he took the family name. He excelled as a student and as a saxophone player and once considered becoming a professional musician. As a delegate to Boys Nation while in high school, he met President John Kennedy in the White House Rose Garden. The encounter led him to enter a life of public service. Clinton was graduated from Georgetown University and in 1968 won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. He received a law degree from Yale University in 1973, and entered politics in Arkansas. He was defeated in his campaign for Congress in Arkansas's Third District in 1974. The next year he married Hillary Rodham, a graduate of Wellesley College and Yale Law School. In 1980, Chelsea, their only child, was born. Clinton was elected Arkansas Attorney General in 1976, and won the governorship in 1978. After losing a bid for a second term, he regained the office four years later, and served until he defeated incumbent George Bush and third party candidate Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential race. Clinton and his running mate, Tennessee's Senator Albert Gore Jr., then 44, represented a new generation in American political leadership. For the first time in 12 years both the White House and Congress were held by the same party. But that political edge was brief; the Republicans won both houses of Congress in 1994. In 1998, as a result of issues surrounding personal indiscretions with a young woman White House intern, Clinton was the second U.S. president to be impeached by the House of Representatives. He was tried in the Senate and found not guilty of the charges brought against him. He apologized to the nation for his actions and continued to have unprecedented popular approval ratings for his job as president. In the world, he successfully dispatched peace keeping forces to war-torn Bosnia and bombed Iraq when Saddam Hussein stopped United Nations inspections for evidence of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. He became a global proponent for an expanded NATO, more open international trade, and a worldwide campaign against drug trafficking. He drew huge crowds when he traveled through South America, Europe, Russia, Africa, and China, advocating U.S. style freedom. The Presidential biographies on WhiteHouse.gov are from “The Presidents of the United States of America,” by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey. Copyright 2006 by the White House Historical Association. For more information about President Clinton, please visit

i don't know

A-Ha sang the title song for which Bond film?

Sam Smith sings theme song for James Bond film 'Spectre' - CNN.com 1 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers English singer Matt Monro is best known for his hearty rendition of the theme tune for 1963's "From Russia with Love." (The first James Bond movie, "Dr. No," had an instrumental title song.) Hide Caption 2 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Shirley Bassey, perhaps the most iconic Bond theme-song singer, sang the title theme to 1964's Goldfinger." Bassey brought her strong, distinctive voice back to the series in title tunes for 1971's "Diamonds Are Forever" and 1979's "Moonraker." Hide Caption 3 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Welsh singer Tom Jones, best known for hits like "What's New Pussycat" and "She's a Lady," sang the title tune for 1965's "Thunderball." Hide Caption 4 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers These boots were made for walking, but she was made for singing: Nancy Sinatra performed the theme to "You Only Live Twice" in 1967. Hide Caption 5 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Jazz great Louis Armstrong sang "We Have All the Time in the World," the secondary musical theme from the 1969 Bond film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." The song became a hit in the UK 25 years later when it was featured in a Guinness beer commercial. Hide Caption 6 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Paul and then-wife Linda McCartney and their pop group Wings performed the title number from 1973's "Live and Let Die," the first of the Bond movies to star Roger Moore as Agent 007. The song is still a staple of Paul McCartney's live concerts. Hide Caption 7 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Scottish pop singer Lulu sang the title song for 1974's "The Man with the Golden Gun." Hide Caption 8 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Carly Simon scored a major radio hit with "Nobody Does it Better," the theme from the 1977 Bond film, "The Spy Who Loved Me." Hide Caption 9 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers After the band Blondie recorded another version that was rejected, Scottish pop star Sheena Easton was tapped to sing "For Your Eyes Only" for the 1981 Bond movie of the same name. The song reached No. 4 on the U.S. Billboard charts. Hide Caption Photos: James Bond theme song singers Rita Coolidge sang "All Time High," the theme from 1983's "Octopussy." Hide Caption 11 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers American singer Lani Hall, wife of bandleader Herb Alpert, sang the title song to 1983's "Never Say Never Again," which brought Sean Connery back for his final Bond role. The film was made by a different production company from the other James Bond movies, so some fans don't consider it part of the official series. Hide Caption 12 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Singer Simon Le Bon and British pop group Duran Duran did the title song for 1985's "A View to a Kill." Hide Caption 13 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Norwegian pop band A-Ha recorded the title song for 1987's "The Living Daylights," the first of two films starring Timothy Dalton as Bond. It was the last theme written by longtime Bond composer John Barry. Hide Caption Photos: James Bond theme song singers Soul legend Gladys Knight sang the theme to "License to Kill" in 1989. Hide Caption 15 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers After a six-year hiatus, the Bond series rebooted with 1995's "GoldenEye" and Pierce Brosnan in the lead role. Tina Turner sang the theme song, which was written by U2's Bono and the Edge. Hide Caption Photos: James Bond theme song singers Sheryl Crow performed the title song to 1997's "Tomorrow Never Dies." Hide Caption 17 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Garbage, led by Shirley Manson, did the title track to 1999's "The World is Not Enough." Hide Caption 18 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Pop icon Madonna finally did her first and only Bond theme song in 2002 for "Die Another Day." Hide Caption 19 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers One of the few men to sing a Bond theme, rocker Chris Cornell performed "You Know My Name" from 2006's "Casino Royale." It was the first film to feature Daniel Craig as Bond. Hide Caption 20 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Pop star Alicia Keys and blues rocker Jack White teamed up to sing "Another Way to Die," the theme from 2008's "Quantum of Solace." White also wrote the song. Hide Caption 21 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers British pop star Adele sang the title theme from "Skyfall" in 2012. Three years later, the world is still awaiting the singer's long-delayed new album. Hide Caption

The Living Daylights

Which Russian writer wrote Cancer Ward?

Check out Sam Smith's new James Bond theme - CNN.com 1 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers English singer Matt Monro is best known for his hearty rendition of the theme tune for 1963's "From Russia with Love." (The first James Bond movie, "Dr. No," had an instrumental title song.) Hide Caption 2 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Shirley Bassey, perhaps the most iconic Bond theme-song singer, sang the title theme to 1964's Goldfinger." Bassey brought her strong, distinctive voice back to the series in title tunes for 1971's "Diamonds Are Forever" and 1979's "Moonraker." Hide Caption 3 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Welsh singer Tom Jones, best known for hits like "What's New Pussycat" and "She's a Lady," sang the title tune for 1965's "Thunderball." Hide Caption 4 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers These boots were made for walking, but she was made for singing: Nancy Sinatra performed the theme to "You Only Live Twice" in 1967. Hide Caption 5 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Jazz great Louis Armstrong sang "We Have All the Time in the World," the secondary musical theme from the 1969 Bond film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." The song became a hit in the UK 25 years later when it was featured in a Guinness beer commercial. Hide Caption 6 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Paul and then-wife Linda McCartney and their pop group Wings performed the title number from 1973's "Live and Let Die," the first of the Bond movies to star Roger Moore as Agent 007. The song is still a staple of Paul McCartney's live concerts. Hide Caption 7 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Scottish pop singer Lulu sang the title song for 1974's "The Man with the Golden Gun." Hide Caption 8 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Carly Simon scored a major radio hit with "Nobody Does it Better," the theme from the 1977 Bond film, "The Spy Who Loved Me." Hide Caption 9 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers After the band Blondie recorded another version that was rejected, Scottish pop star Sheena Easton was tapped to sing "For Your Eyes Only" for the 1981 Bond movie of the same name. The song reached No. 4 on the U.S. Billboard charts. Hide Caption Photos: James Bond theme song singers Rita Coolidge sang "All Time High," the theme from 1983's "Octopussy." Hide Caption 11 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers American singer Lani Hall, wife of bandleader Herb Alpert, sang the title song to 1983's "Never Say Never Again," which brought Sean Connery back for his final Bond role. The film was made by a different production company from the other James Bond movies, so some fans don't consider it part of the official series. Hide Caption 12 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Singer Simon Le Bon and British pop group Duran Duran did the title song for 1985's "A View to a Kill." Hide Caption 13 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Norwegian pop band A-Ha recorded the title song for 1987's "The Living Daylights," the first of two films starring Timothy Dalton as Bond. It was the last theme written by longtime Bond composer John Barry. Hide Caption Photos: James Bond theme song singers Soul legend Gladys Knight sang the theme to "License to Kill" in 1989. Hide Caption 15 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers After a six-year hiatus, the Bond series rebooted with 1995's "GoldenEye" and Pierce Brosnan in the lead role. Tina Turner sang the theme song, which was written by U2's Bono and the Edge. Hide Caption Photos: James Bond theme song singers Sheryl Crow performed the title song to 1997's "Tomorrow Never Dies." Hide Caption 17 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Garbage, led by Shirley Manson, did the title track to 1999's "The World is Not Enough." Hide Caption 18 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Pop icon Madonna finally did her first and only Bond theme song in 2002 for "Die Another Day." Hide Caption 19 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers One of the few men to sing a Bond theme, rocker Chris Cornell performed "You Know My Name" from 2006's "Casino Royale." It was the first film to feature Daniel Craig as Bond. Hide Caption 20 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers Pop star Alicia Keys and blues rocker Jack White teamed up to sing "Another Way to Die," the theme from 2008's "Quantum of Solace." White also wrote the song. Hide Caption 21 of 22 Photos: James Bond theme song singers British pop star Adele sang the title theme from "Skyfall" in 2012. Three years later, the world is still awaiting the singer's long-delayed new album. Hide Caption

i don't know

Which summer month is the title of an album by Eric Clapton?

Eric Clapton | uDiscover uDiscoverMusic Eric Clapton In the mid 60s graffiti began appearing around London proclaiming: ‘Clapton is God’. A staggering rise to fame, given that his grandparents only bought him his first guitar in 1959. Eric Clapton has been in the spotlight for close on fifty years and the portrait of his artistry is a complex one – from his early days as a guitar god, to a songwriter of great sensitivity, as well as an interpreter of everything from blues and jazz to rock and country music. His music has run the emotional gambit and on many occasions his art has reflected his life. “He's been a tremendous friend to me, I love the man; he's a great man. There’s Eric Clapton, then you talk about the rest of the guys.” –  B.B. King Eric Clapton was one of the earliest British musicians to become a disciple of the Blues. Young Clapton’s interest was sparked after hearing a Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee record on a children’s radio programme. After playing with the Yardbirds, he got his big break when he joined  John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers . In 1966 they recorded the brilliant Bluesbreakers, which proved to be a breakthrough for both men. Next Clapton formed Cream with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce. On Cream’s debut, Fresh Cream, they covered Spoonful, written by Willie Dixon and made famous by  Howlin’ Wolf , it features some typical early Clapton guitar work. There are also covers of Robert Johnson,  Muddy Waters  and Skip James. Cream and Clapton had nailed their colours to the blues mast.  The band’s follow-up, Disraeli Gears, is less of a blues album, yet they are never far away – witness 'Strange Brew', the album’s opening cut that has Clapton playing in the style of Albert King. Wheels of Fire is half studio and half live; it’s very much a return to the blues, with the opening number of the live album being Robert Johnson’s 'Crossroads' – for many it is the definitive version of this classic, for others it was their introduction to the Blues. After Cream, Clapton formed the short lived Blind Faith in 1969, with Stevie Winwood from Traffic, Ric Grech from Family and Ginger Baker. Clapton then sought relative anonymity by joining Delaney and Bonnie & Friends, along with his friend George Harrison, on whose song, 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps', he had so memorably soloed. After this experience, Clapton was inspired to form Derek & The Dominoes, recording Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs – it is another of those landmark rock albums.< He then embarked on a solo career, which actually started with the eponymous album released in August 1970 but was resurected with his Rainbow Concert in 1973 and was then quickly followed by  461 Ocean Boulevard  the following year, There's One in Every Crowd and the live album E.C. Was Here in 1975 and then  Slowhand  in 1977. Eric Clapton is a rock icon, a guitar god, yet he has never lost his passion for the music that inspired him as a teenager. It was music from the mystical land of America that was played by men who he would later get to know, but back in the early 1960s they just seemed liked mystical gods. “The first blues I ever heard was on that programme. It was a song by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, with Sonny Terry howling and playing the harmonica. It blew me away. I was ten or eleven.”  – Eric Clapton Eric’s first band was the Roosters, along with Tom McGuinness, who later played with Manfred Mann. Both of them briefly joined Casey Jones and The Engineers before Eric then joined The Yardbirds in October 1963. The Yardbirds followed the  Rolling Stones  as the resident band at the Crawdaddy Club, during which time Eric acquired the nickname ‘Slowhand’. To begin with Clapton was very happy, with a reasonably paying gig, in a band that mostly played the Blues.  After touring and recording with Sonny Boy Williamson, the band drifted towards more chart orientated pop and Clapton became disillusioned and left (to be replaced by Jeff Beck, after Jimmy Page - who Clapton recommended, turned them down). After a spell working on a building site,  John Mayall   offered Eric Clapton a slot alongside John McVie and Hughie Flint in April 1965.  He briefly left the band in the summer of 1965 to live in Greece, before returning to Mayall’s band in April 1966 to record Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton. Produced by Mike Vernon, it featured Mayall originals alongside ‘All Your Love’ by Otis Rush, Mose Allison’s ‘Parchman Farm’ and Little Walter’s ‘It Ain’t Right’; Eric the God like deity had arrived. In early 1966, Jack Bruce played some gigs with Mayall, and then a little later drummer Ginger Baker sat in. Somehow the idea of forming a band came up between Ginger and Eric, Eric suggested Jack should be included and in July 1966 Cream was formed, “sort of like Buddy Guy with a rhythm section” Eric later recalled. For two years and three albums, Cream were it. The band’s internal strife (Bruce and Baker found it hard to get along, but loved each other’s playing) produced dynamics that have never been bettered by a powerhouse trio. Cream sold massive amounts of albums; featuring clever band originals like ‘Sunshine of Your Love’, ‘I Feel Free’ and ‘White Room’, alongside classic pre-war Blues songs given a makeover. ‘Spoonful’, ‘I’m So Glad’, ‘Rollin’ and Tumblin’, ‘Crossroads’ and ‘Outside Woman Blues’. ‘Crossroads’ in particular gave Clapton the opportunity to demonstrate what a brilliant guitar player he was, especially at live gigs. It wasn’t just thirty-year-old Blues songs that Eric and Cream loved; Albert King’s ‘Born Under A Bad Sign’ was given the treatment too. By November 1968, Eric had grown tired of Cream and he was especially stung by criticism from Rolling Stone magazine who called him “the master of the Cliché”. At Cream’s farewell concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall, the support band was Yes, Prog Rock was making a bid to be the new genre on the block. A final album Goodbye, was released in 1969 and is a mix of live and newly recorded studio tracks, with further live releases Live Cream and Live Cream II released after the group had disbanded. Clapton had already befriended George Harrison, playing the solo on the Beatles ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, shortly before forming Blind Faith in February 1969. Having met Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett while touring in America, Clapton decided a more organic approach to music was the way forward and he went on the road as part of Delaney and Bonnie & Friends, which also included Harrison and Dave Mason. Throughout Eric’s time with Blind Faith, he continued working sessions with, among others, Leon Russell (one of the Delaney and Bonnie circle). Amongst the songs he cut with Russell were ‘Sweet Home Chicago’ and Russell’s ‘Blues Power’. He also recorded with John Lennon as part of the Plastic Ono Band and with Dr. John, The Crickets, George Harrison and Jesse Ed Davis. Somehow in all of this activity, Eric managed to release his first solo album, Eric Clapton, which was released in August 1970 and was essentially Eric fronting the Delaney and Bonnie band, with songs co writen by Delaney Bramlett and Clapton. The single however, was a J.J.Cale cover 'After Midnight'. Almost as soon as his first solo album was released, Eric would be back in the studio. Writing sessions with Bobby Whitlock from the Delaney and Bonnie band, became a touring band called 'Derek And The Dominos', fitting Eric's desire to avoid the limelight. In August and September 1970, Eric went into the studio in Miami with Carl Radle (Bass), Bobby Whitlock (drums & keyboards) and Jim Gordon (Drums) to record. Producer Tom Dowd was at the time mixing the second Allman Brothers album, which would lead to Duane Allman's involvement on most of the record, most memorably the slide playing on the outro to what would become the title track 'Layla'. The album  Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs  is an absolute classic, but was a slow starter. It failed to chart in the UK and took two years to reach its top 20 peak in the U.S. as 'Layla' enjoyed a slow growth at radio; released as a single in 1971, it didn't peak until in 1972. Originally a double vinyl release, the album was a mixture of covers and originals, continuing Eric's love of blues standards such as Big Bill Broonzy’s ‘Key To The Highway’ and 'Have You Ever Loved A Woman' written by Billy Myles. A version of Jimi Henrix's 'Little Wing' was recorded as a tribute and committed to tape just days before Jimi's death. With drug addiction taking its toil, Eric's next studio release would not be for 4 years, but his return to the stage in 1973, at the encouragement of Pete Townsend, would be captured for the Rainbow Concert live album and featured an all star band including Steve Winwood, Rick Grech, Jim Capaldi, Ronnie Wood and Townsend. The 1974 album 461 Ocean Boulevard is essentially the first proper solo album and was a move away from the Blues, delivering Clapton his first U.S. #1 single and a U.K. top 10 with his cover of  Bob Marley's  'I Shot The Sheriff'. Echoing the single, the album would hit #1 in the U.S. and number 3 in the U.K. As would be the formula for many of the releases to follow, despite heading towards a more commercial sound, Eric included Blues covers such as 'Motherless Children' & Robert Johnson's 'Steady Rolling Man'. In the 1974 concert, included as a second disc in the deluxe version of the album, is a three track blues medley featuring Elmore James' 'The Sky In Crying' which Eric would capture in the studio on his next album There's One In Every Crowd. The album was recorded in Jamaica and led by a version of the traditional song 'Swing Low Sweet Chariot' as a single. The fourth solo studio album No Reason To Cry was recorded at The Band's studio in 1976 and featured contributions from not only all five members, but also Bob Dylan, who duets with Eric on 'Sign Language', a track he also wrote. Later that year, both Clapton and Dylan would appear at The Last Waltz concert, The Band's farewell show, famously filmed by Martin Scorsese. After a couple of commercially disappointing albums, everything would seemingly fall into place for 1977's  Slowhand . The album may have just missed out on the number 1 spot in the U.S. but it was the first of his albums to go multi platinum and produced three hit singles in 'Lay Down Sally', 'Wonderful Tonight' & another J.J. Cale song 'Cocaine'. Clapton would record two more studio albums for Polydor before moving labels;  Backless followed  Slowhand  and would include another contribution from J.J. Cale and 2 tracks written for him by Dylan whilst  Another Ticket , released in 1981 would represent more of a sea change, with a new backing band (including Albert Lee on guitar and Procol Harum's Gary Brooker) and the majority of songs written by Clapton. There was of course still space for the Blues tracks; Muddy Waters' 'Blow Wind Blow' and 'Floating Bridge' by Sleepy John Estes. In 2013 Eric Clapton’s 20th studio album came out and just goes to prove that some things just get better with age.  Clapton has been treading his own musical road for some time now and this album is proof positive. Just two of the twelve tracks on Old Sock are new songs, the rest are tunes that he obviously loves, songs to which he brings his unique guitar-toting troubadour perspective. A 2 disc live album  Just One Night  was released in 1980 and recorded in Japan after the  Backless  album. It is different in almost every way to the E.C. Was Here live release in 1975, demonstrating just how much had happened in the intervening 5 years. The common factor is of course the Blues, a Clapton show just is not complete without an extended blues instrumental where Eric gets to show where it all came from. Listen and enjoy. There are some excellent compilations covering Eric Clapton's lengthy career at Polydor; the 4 disc  Crossroads  set starts with Bluesbreakers, through Cream and Blind faith through to the solo albums, whilst Crossroads 2 is a 4 disc live set spanning the 70's recordings. Timepieces features all of the solo hit singles, whilst the Cream Of Clapton is expanded to include the best know Cream songs. The two-disc Complete Clapton is exactly that and includes the hits that he had after moving to Warners. Recently, Clapton contributed to The Breeze: An Appreciation Of JJ Cale , a project he produced and oversaw, bringing in key interpreters such as Willie Nelson , Tom Petty and Mark Knopfler . On home turf, Slowhand At 70: Live At The Royal Albert Hall was seemingly released on every format from gramophone record to Blu-ray, and functions as a virtual greatest hits package. 2016 gave us I Still Do, produced with Glyn Johns, and another cracking set of tunes by Cale, Bob Dylan, Skip James and Leroy Carr, among others; the following Live in San Diego set goes back to 2007 and features Cale guesting on several of his own songs written by him. A spring tour sees Clapton return to his beloved RAH – and, yep, he’s still an avid supporter of West Bromwich Albion. Max Bell

August

In the Simpsons, which Hollywood superstar provided Maggie's first word?

The Real History of Eric Clapton's Layla Browse albums now The story of Derek and the Dominos's , Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs is not all it seems. Neither the album, whose title is taken from the track ‘Layla’, nor the outstanding single, that is now considered one of rock’s greatest love songs, do nearly as well when they were originally released as many of us imagine. The album came out in November 1970, and in America made the charts later that month entering at 195, going on to peak at No.16, probably not as high a chart placing as many would guess, if asked. In the UK Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs failed to chart at all, no that’s not quite true. It finally made No.68 on the album charts in 2011 when it was reissued. The review in Britain’s Melody Maker was somewhat reserved in its praise for the album, stating that “If you do judge Derek and the Dominos by Cream standards you’ll be disappointed.” It has as the years have rolled by become increasingly popular and many now regard this as Eric Clapton’s masterpiece. Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and Rolling Stone ranked it number 117 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". But what about Layla as a single? In the US it was released as an edited 45rpm in March 1971 and made No.51 in the charts: ‘Bell Bottom Blues’ was the lead single from the album. A year later a longer version was issued in the US and it fared a lot better, entering the Hot 100 at No.92 on 13 May 1972 it reached No.10 on the Billboard charts in early August. In the UK it was not released at all until 1 August 1972, and only then in the shortened version (barely 2 and three quarter minutes long). It made No.7 on the charts in 1972 and a decade later it charted again, making No.4 in 1982. The Melody Maker's July 1972 review of Layla Share this story

i don't know

Which writer came up with Catch 22 in the 60s?

Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition: Joseph Heller, Christopher Buckley: 9781451626650: Amazon.com: Books By David B. on June 25, 2015 Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase While Catch-22 can put people off due to being hard to follow or absurd, once you get accustomed to the writing style you come to love this book and really get caught up in the characters. Heller manages to discuss many of the darker aspects of war through Yossarian's experiences, but he is able to do so using irony and humor to make points more effectively than would be possible through a book that was entirely dark and bleak. Rare is a book such as this that can make you think so much about real issues while keeping you not just entertained but thoroughly enjoying the story and even laughing at the humorous and frequently absurd turns in events throughout the tale. By vijaynara on April 8, 2015 Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase It's a hard read but well worth it. The book's background is about second world war and how the rationale behind lots of decisions could be self interest of individuals, stupidity and profiteering. I think the same thing applies to pretty much any realm of life -- a lot of corporate decision making definitely falls into this.. Even in individual homes, head of households can frequently make wrong decisions for him/herself or on behalf of family members, more due to lack of knowledge and empathy... The book ends with the message that each individual is responsible for his own life and can't just blindly let someone else make decisions for them or let things just happen.. Take charge of your own life.. By George J Caspar on October 11, 2016 Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase This book is too clever by half. I imagine when it was first written the clever, sarcastic style seemed novel. To me, however, it became tiring. I got the joke or point of the book that the military bureaucracy and bureaucracies in general become absurd environments in which to operate. However, this joke and point could have been more effectively demonstrated in 100 pages rather than 500. The fact that the story never built up to a any sort of payoff convinces me that this would have been much more satisfying as a short story. In summary the book was well written, clever and even funny at points but far too long to justify spending the time to read it in my opinion. By Laszlo Hopp on January 11, 2014 Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase It is a bizarre story staged in a small island of WWII Italy. We meet Yossarian, the veteran bombardier protagonist in a hospital where his imaginary liver pain causes an uncrackable puzzle to a bunch of incompetent army physicians. We also learn that, along with other officers, Yossarian is charged to censor the letters of the enlisted soldiers' to their loved ones. Yossarian first shows his rebellious nature by censoring the letters with the utmost irresponsibility. This act of his left me puzzled through the whole story - what was I missing? - To hide his mischief, he usually signs his reviews with the assumed name of Irwin Washington--except for one letter that he signs as his good friend, Chaplain Tappman. Toward the end of the book, the poor chaplain with his gentle soul gets into a whole lot of trouble because of this faked signature. From these humble beginnings, the plot takes on as the literary equivalent of "Family Guy;" an irreverent US animated sitcom series. The main conflict builds between Yossarian and his bombardment squadron leader, Col. Cathcart, because of increasing numbers of required missions. Although the colonel has the choice of requesting fresh crews, he wants to distinguish himself by the highest number of missions per crew in the entire Air Corps. It quickly becomes evident that Col. Cathcart doesn't have much more to impress his superiors with. Most chapters are methodically built around various characters who interact with Yossarian. Although this structure gives a sense of monotony and choppiness to the chapters, Heller manages to hold the story coherent with the help of the vibrant Yossarian and the powerful satirical narration. The third person omniscient narrator reveals the characters through their action and dialogues without having much access to their inner thoughts. Although the timeline stays in a relative narrow range between 1943 and 1944, the narrative advances out of sequence. Several events are told more than once from different perspectives. This structure requires alertness from the reader to piece the story together. One peculiar attribute of Heller's dialogues is an abundance of repetitive, circular repartees. Although initially this style felt original and witty, at times it became stilted due to overuse. Perhaps because of the almost cartoonish nature of the characters and events - at one point, e.g. Yossarian picks up his medal from General Dreedle completely naked since he is upset over the death of a comrade -, first I had hard time to identify with the story. As I moved on however, Yossarian's deep humanity, complete with both weaknesses and strengths, and the intrigues of the corrupt military leadership, drew me into the novel. Although the setting is strictly military, the story is loaded with allusions to everyday life with universal relevance. This is nowhere more evident than in the actions of Milo, the mess officer. He sets up a world-wide syndicate of comical complexity, exemplifying the worst of capitalistic excess and greed. The book has multiple compelling passages about the dangers of bombing missions. Among these, the most heart retching is the tragic fate of Snowden that keeps hunting Yossarian throughout the novel. Heller has undisputed authority describing the tension of bombing raids having served as a bombardier himself during WWII. Yet, for me the most gripping passage of the book happened not in an airplane. It was Yossarian's futile search for a lost child he wanted to rescue from the streets of war-stricken Rome. During this search, he encountered an impressive collection of the worst that war can bring forth from humanity including sadism and indifference. Finally, an obligatory remark on the title. Although in its original form the camp doctor Doc Daneeka refers to Catch-22 as a particular concept describing who can do and who does do combat missions, the circular nature of this logic appears in multiple situations throughout the story, when mindless arguments seem to justify mindless actions. In my paraphrasing, Catch-22 states that those who are crazy enough will fight in the wars even though they could be exempted from combat duties because they are crazy. Those who are not crazy and would want to get out of wars however are not allowed to leave the battle field since they have no mental illness for an excuse. If a crazy person changes his mind and asks for relief from duty, it means that he is not crazy anymore and thus he needs to continue the fight. So, at the end, there is no way out of war: everyone has to fight it. This is perhaps a simplified, perhaps even a pacifist concept of war, but it comes from someone who has personal experience of the devastation war brings. I wish people were listening to Joseph Heller. By Kirby on August 22, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase I liked it. I've never read a book quite like it. It balances the horrors and mindset of war (I feel like) along with the humor and absurdity of life and random events very well. Books are typically either comical or striking/graphic, but Heller's story manages to balance between the two. It's for that reason it feels so lifelike. The more I think about it, the more I like it. But don't think you're going to pick it up and just be convinced it's the funniest book ever, because it's more subtle than that. As you get to know the characters and their individual stories you began to find the humor in the random occurrences of the book. If there was one word to describe the story that's told, it's: Absurd. It's easy to see why this book is a classic. Advice? Just read it. Don't have any expectations. By JP Hidore on November 25, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase I understand why this novel is considered a classic. I also understand why literary critics are divided when it comes to this work. Heller's novel is witty and a clear statement about authority from a generation that often felt betrayed. The character development is excellent and the humor will make you laugh out loud from time to time. However, I felt like Heller made his point within the first hundred pages and that the last two, three, or four hundred were somewhat unnecessary. While brilliantly thought out, the writing style, which does match the overarching tone of the novel, is like someone shouting at you. This is a long book, so if you decide to be ambitious, be prepared.

Joseph Heller

Bourgas international airport is in which country?

Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition: Joseph Heller, Christopher Buckley: 9781451626650: Amazon.com: Books By David B. on June 25, 2015 Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase While Catch-22 can put people off due to being hard to follow or absurd, once you get accustomed to the writing style you come to love this book and really get caught up in the characters. Heller manages to discuss many of the darker aspects of war through Yossarian's experiences, but he is able to do so using irony and humor to make points more effectively than would be possible through a book that was entirely dark and bleak. Rare is a book such as this that can make you think so much about real issues while keeping you not just entertained but thoroughly enjoying the story and even laughing at the humorous and frequently absurd turns in events throughout the tale. By vijaynara on April 8, 2015 Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase It's a hard read but well worth it. The book's background is about second world war and how the rationale behind lots of decisions could be self interest of individuals, stupidity and profiteering. I think the same thing applies to pretty much any realm of life -- a lot of corporate decision making definitely falls into this.. Even in individual homes, head of households can frequently make wrong decisions for him/herself or on behalf of family members, more due to lack of knowledge and empathy... The book ends with the message that each individual is responsible for his own life and can't just blindly let someone else make decisions for them or let things just happen.. Take charge of your own life.. By George J Caspar on October 11, 2016 Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase This book is too clever by half. I imagine when it was first written the clever, sarcastic style seemed novel. To me, however, it became tiring. I got the joke or point of the book that the military bureaucracy and bureaucracies in general become absurd environments in which to operate. However, this joke and point could have been more effectively demonstrated in 100 pages rather than 500. The fact that the story never built up to a any sort of payoff convinces me that this would have been much more satisfying as a short story. In summary the book was well written, clever and even funny at points but far too long to justify spending the time to read it in my opinion. By Laszlo Hopp on January 11, 2014 Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase It is a bizarre story staged in a small island of WWII Italy. We meet Yossarian, the veteran bombardier protagonist in a hospital where his imaginary liver pain causes an uncrackable puzzle to a bunch of incompetent army physicians. We also learn that, along with other officers, Yossarian is charged to censor the letters of the enlisted soldiers' to their loved ones. Yossarian first shows his rebellious nature by censoring the letters with the utmost irresponsibility. This act of his left me puzzled through the whole story - what was I missing? - To hide his mischief, he usually signs his reviews with the assumed name of Irwin Washington--except for one letter that he signs as his good friend, Chaplain Tappman. Toward the end of the book, the poor chaplain with his gentle soul gets into a whole lot of trouble because of this faked signature. From these humble beginnings, the plot takes on as the literary equivalent of "Family Guy;" an irreverent US animated sitcom series. The main conflict builds between Yossarian and his bombardment squadron leader, Col. Cathcart, because of increasing numbers of required missions. Although the colonel has the choice of requesting fresh crews, he wants to distinguish himself by the highest number of missions per crew in the entire Air Corps. It quickly becomes evident that Col. Cathcart doesn't have much more to impress his superiors with. Most chapters are methodically built around various characters who interact with Yossarian. Although this structure gives a sense of monotony and choppiness to the chapters, Heller manages to hold the story coherent with the help of the vibrant Yossarian and the powerful satirical narration. The third person omniscient narrator reveals the characters through their action and dialogues without having much access to their inner thoughts. Although the timeline stays in a relative narrow range between 1943 and 1944, the narrative advances out of sequence. Several events are told more than once from different perspectives. This structure requires alertness from the reader to piece the story together. One peculiar attribute of Heller's dialogues is an abundance of repetitive, circular repartees. Although initially this style felt original and witty, at times it became stilted due to overuse. Perhaps because of the almost cartoonish nature of the characters and events - at one point, e.g. Yossarian picks up his medal from General Dreedle completely naked since he is upset over the death of a comrade -, first I had hard time to identify with the story. As I moved on however, Yossarian's deep humanity, complete with both weaknesses and strengths, and the intrigues of the corrupt military leadership, drew me into the novel. Although the setting is strictly military, the story is loaded with allusions to everyday life with universal relevance. This is nowhere more evident than in the actions of Milo, the mess officer. He sets up a world-wide syndicate of comical complexity, exemplifying the worst of capitalistic excess and greed. The book has multiple compelling passages about the dangers of bombing missions. Among these, the most heart retching is the tragic fate of Snowden that keeps hunting Yossarian throughout the novel. Heller has undisputed authority describing the tension of bombing raids having served as a bombardier himself during WWII. Yet, for me the most gripping passage of the book happened not in an airplane. It was Yossarian's futile search for a lost child he wanted to rescue from the streets of war-stricken Rome. During this search, he encountered an impressive collection of the worst that war can bring forth from humanity including sadism and indifference. Finally, an obligatory remark on the title. Although in its original form the camp doctor Doc Daneeka refers to Catch-22 as a particular concept describing who can do and who does do combat missions, the circular nature of this logic appears in multiple situations throughout the story, when mindless arguments seem to justify mindless actions. In my paraphrasing, Catch-22 states that those who are crazy enough will fight in the wars even though they could be exempted from combat duties because they are crazy. Those who are not crazy and would want to get out of wars however are not allowed to leave the battle field since they have no mental illness for an excuse. If a crazy person changes his mind and asks for relief from duty, it means that he is not crazy anymore and thus he needs to continue the fight. So, at the end, there is no way out of war: everyone has to fight it. This is perhaps a simplified, perhaps even a pacifist concept of war, but it comes from someone who has personal experience of the devastation war brings. I wish people were listening to Joseph Heller. By Kirby on August 22, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase I liked it. I've never read a book quite like it. It balances the horrors and mindset of war (I feel like) along with the humor and absurdity of life and random events very well. Books are typically either comical or striking/graphic, but Heller's story manages to balance between the two. It's for that reason it feels so lifelike. The more I think about it, the more I like it. But don't think you're going to pick it up and just be convinced it's the funniest book ever, because it's more subtle than that. As you get to know the characters and their individual stories you began to find the humor in the random occurrences of the book. If there was one word to describe the story that's told, it's: Absurd. It's easy to see why this book is a classic. Advice? Just read it. Don't have any expectations. By JP Hidore on November 25, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase I understand why this novel is considered a classic. I also understand why literary critics are divided when it comes to this work. Heller's novel is witty and a clear statement about authority from a generation that often felt betrayed. The character development is excellent and the humor will make you laugh out loud from time to time. However, I felt like Heller made his point within the first hundred pages and that the last two, three, or four hundred were somewhat unnecessary. While brilliantly thought out, the writing style, which does match the overarching tone of the novel, is like someone shouting at you. This is a long book, so if you decide to be ambitious, be prepared.

i don't know

Who did Pope John Paul II succeed as Pope?

The Secret of Pope John Paul II’s Success | None | Catholic Family News The Secret of Pope John Paul II’s Success 26/04/14 08:38 The Secret of Pope John Paul II’s Success by John Vennari   Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen said in 1974, “We live in a sensate age. We are no longer governed by Faith, we are no longer governed by reason. We are governed by feelings.” The outpouring of naked emotion at the death of Pope John Paul II proves these words true. It is expected that Catholics worldwide would grieve and pray for the departed Pontiff, as it is a fitting expression of filial piety. But the effusion over John Paul II was a good bit more. Cardinals, bishops, priests, religious and laity vied with each other to canonize him as “John Paul the Great”. Politicians and non-Catholic religious leaders praised him for his humanity and for his outreach to other religions. He was praised for his leadership, praised for his popularity with youth, praised for his travels, his poetry, his writings. He was praised for his trail-blazing style, his being a man of the people. his “theology of the body”, his media savvy, his evangelizing, his charisma, his humor. The pop-star Bono lauded John Paul as the “funky Pontiff”, calling him “the best front-man the Church ever had.” Yet nowhere in this tsunami of sentiment did I see anyone praise him for achieving the primary purpose of the papacy: unswervingly fidelity to the teachings and traditions of the Catholic Church as taught and practiced throughout the centuries. Nowhere did I see him praised for preserving the purity of doctrine and the maintenance of discipline in the Church worldwide. Pope John Paul II was not praised for this because he did not achieve it. And for a Pope to fail in this area is to fail mightily. True, Pope John Paul II held the line on the Church’s teaching against women priests, married priests, and spoke consistently against divorce, abortion and euthanasia. He is hated by liberals for maintaining these teachings, and this is to his credit. But for the most part, amidst the seemingly endless adulation over Pope John Paul II after his death, no one seemed to judge his papacy by the only measuring rod that counts: the infallible and immutable Catholic Faith of all time. All was sentiment, all was emotion, all was feelings. There are many reasons why Pope John Paul II was so loved by the modern world. The core reason, in my opinion, is because of a central aspect of his New Evangelization — a new approach that cut him loose from the one hard truth that made all pre-Vatican II popes unpopular. Unburdened by this fundamental truth, he could easily mix with men of all religions, and of no religion, with little fear of invoking their displeasure. The New Approach On the day of Pope John Paul II’s death, I received a phone call from a young lady in New Zealand, a friend of the family. She presently works in a situation where she interacts with Muslims and Hindus. When she tells these non-Catholics, with gentleness and charity, they must convert to the one true Catholic Church to save their souls, the Muslims and Hindus laugh at her. “Your Pope doesn’t believe that”, they cackle, referring to John Paul II, “Your Pope doesn’t teach that. Your Pope’s interfaith actions don’t convey that. Your Pope prays with the Dalai Lama and with Hindus. Your Pope visits mosques and kisses the Koran. You are out-of-step with your own Pope. Why should we listen to you?” Two Catholic young men of my acquaintance, debating with a Protestant Minister, were likewise laughed to scorn when they in-formed the Protestant he must become Catholic to be saved. “What?”, said the Protestant, “You obviously don’t read the writings of your own Pope. He prays with Protestants. He praises Martin Luther as a man of ‘deep religiousness’. He calls Protestants ‘disciples of Christ’. He never says it is necessary to become Catholic for salvation.” Brother Roger of the ecumenical Taize Community, a place that was dear to Pope John Paul’s heart, said that during the Papal visit to Taize on October 5, 1986, John Paul II suggested a path of “communion” to the community. The Pope said, “By desiring to be yourselves a ‘parable of community,’ you will help all whom you meet to be faithful to their denominational ties, the fruit of their education and their choice in conscience ...”[1] Pope John Paul II thus encouraged Protestants to be faithful to false creeds solemnly anathematized by the Council of Trent. There is no mention of the need to convert to Christ’s one true Church for salvation. The day after Pope John Paul II’s death, Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League issued a press release praising the departed Pontiff for his relations with the Jewish people. Foxman wrote of John Paul, “Most importantly, the Pope rejected the destructive concept of supersessionism and has recognized the special relationship between Christianity and the Jewish people, while sharing his understanding of Judaism as a living heritage, of the permanent validity of God’s covenant with the Jewish people.”[2] Foxman thus applauded John Paul II for rejecting the truth found in Scripture and in the defined dogmas of the Catholic Church, that the New Covenant superseded and made obsolete the old Judaic Covenant. Foxman rejoices in the error that members of today’s Jewish religion have their own covenant with God, and need not accept Jesus Christ nor convert to the Catholic Church for salvation. And Foxman praises John Paul II for championing this falsehood. Here, then, is the secret of Pope John Paul II’s success with the world and with false religions — one of the main reasons he is loved by the multitudes, why almost all doors were open to him. Pope John Paul II was the man who, in effect, told the inhabitants of the world that everything is suddenly changed, that the “triumphalism” of the Church is passed, that they need not convert to the Catholic Church to save their souls. The eclipse of the infallible dogma, “Out-side the Church there is no salvation” is the defining mark of his Pontificate. Sadly, this is no sign of greatness, but a collapse into the spirit of the age. It is a concession that any Pope in history could have made were he willing to dismiss the truths of the Faith. The Scorn of Liberals The abandonment of the doctrine “Outside the Church there is no salvation” did not start with the reign of John Paul II. The dogma was hated by liberals for centuries, particularly by the dark forces of the Masonic Enlightenment. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the apostate encyclopedist of the French Revolution declared: “Whoever dares to assert that outside the Church there is no salvation should be driven out of the state.”[3] Liberal Catholics through-out the 19th Century undermined the dogma “outside the Church there is no salvation” in word and writing, as is evident in the 19th Century Popes’ repeated condemnation of religious indifferentism.[4] Modernism, in effect, denied this central dogma, and neo-modernist theologians, in the decades leading up to Vatican II, sought to subvert this truth in various ways. Two star progressivists who undermined this dogma were Father Henri de Lubac and Father Yves Congar.[5] Both were proponents of the New Theology that taught religion must change with the times.[6] Both were considered theological misfits by Pope Pius XII’s Vatican. Both had their writings and activities curtailed under Cardinal Ottaviani’s Holy Office. Yet both Yves Congar and Henri de Lubac, along with other progressivist theologians, emerged as leading lights of Vatican II, and of the post-Conciliar period, without ever changing their heretical views.7 The young Bishop Karol Wojtyla from Poland sided with these progessivists during the Council. Father Ludvik Nemec, a conservative, wrote in 1979 in praise of John Paul II, “Bishop Wojtyla took a progressive stand” at Vatican II, and he “interacted with progressive theologians” at the Council.[8] Years later, Pope John Paul II would make Congar and De Lubac Cardinals, despite the fact that neither rejected their un-orthodox ideas. Henri de Lubac, in fact, was a stalwart defender of the pantheist evolutionist, Teilhard de Chardin. Thus John Paul II rewarded red hats to two modernist theologians whose pre-Vatican II writings — and post-Vatican II writings — undermined the doctrine, “Outside the Church there is no salvation”. Convergence Replaces Conversion  The landmark event that removed this dogma from circulation was the Second Vatican Council. It was at Vatican II that this dogma was buried alive, and Catholic churchmen have been dancing on its grave ever since. True, nowhere in the documents does one find the sentence, “The dogma ‘outside the Church there is no salvation’ no longer holds”, but the entire ecumenical thrust of Vatican II implied it countless ways; particularly through the calculated use of ambiguous language in the Council documents.[9] After the Council, Catholic churchmen in the highest places, by their words and actions, continued to transmit the false idea that this central dogma is now a thing of the past. The documents of Vatican II were, by the admission of their drafters, drawn up to favor the new ecumenical spirit. Father Joseph Ratzinger, a liberal Council peritus, explained one of the many ways in which Vatican II undermined this core truth. In his 1966 book Theological Highlights of Vatican II, Father Ratzinger, said that the Council document Lumen Gentium was purposely constructed along ecumenical lines to lay the foundation for Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism. Father Ratzinger says that according to Lumen Gentium: “The Catholic Church has no right to absorb the other Churches... [A] basic unity — of Churches that remain Churches, yet become one Church — must replace the idea of conversion, even though conversion retains its meaningfulness for those in conscience motivated to seek it.”[10] Father Ratzinger wrote this book during the Council. As a co-worker with Father Karl Rahner, he was heavily involved in drafting the documents. He is in a position to tell us what were the true intentions of the architects at Vatican II. And he declares that the true teaching of Vatican II, according to its authors, was that conversion is an option. The non-Catholic need not convert to the true Church for unity and for salvation. The principle of conversion of non-Catholics is replaced with the new principle of convergence with non-Catholics. Everything since the Council follows this new model; the principle of conversion of non-Catholics is replaced by the new notion of convergence with non-Catholics. Father Edward Schillebeeckx, another liberal Council peritus, likewise celebrated Vatican II’s modernist orientation. He said, “At Vatican II, the Catholic Church officially abandoned its monopolies over the Christian religion.”[11] Dr. Robert McAfee Brown, a Protestant observer at Vatican II, was quick to praise this new approach. Dr. Brown is well aware of the traditional Catholic teaching against Protestantism, and rejoices in the drastic change of attitude that Vatican II wrought. In his 1967 book, The Ecumenical Revolution, he applauds the Council’s Decree on Ecumenism: “The document makes clear how new is the attitude that has emerged. No more is there talk of ‘schismatics and here-tics’ but rather of ‘separated brethren’. No more is there an imperial demand that the dissidents return in penitence to the Church who has no need of penitence; instead there is recognition that both sides are guilty of the sins of division and must reach out penitentially to one another. No more are Protestants dismissed merely as ‘sects’ or psychological entities alone; instead it is acknowledged that there is a measure of ‘ecclesial reality’ to be found within their corporate life.”[12] This is a revolutionary approach to false religions that every Pope before Vatican II would rightly condemn. The Catholic Church had always dealt with Protestants as individual heretics. It never recognized them as a valid religious group, because their so-called “church” or “ecclesial community” is actually a fiction. A group of Protestants is simply a gathering of individuals who have become interiorly convinced of their salvation in Christ. They do not really constitute a “church”.[13] In September of 1868, just before Vatican I, Blessed Pope Pius IX issued a public letter entitled Iam vos Omnes that was addressed “to all Protestants and other non-Catholics”. He was not inviting them to the Council, but urged them to consider the event of the Council as an opportunity to convert to the one true Church. Pius called the letter “To All Protestants ...” He chose that title purposely. He addressed them as individuals. Commenting on this text in 1959, the renowned American theologian Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton pointed out that Pius IX chose these words deliberately because Protestant groups “are not Christian churches” but are actually “heretical assemblies”.[14] This explains why Dr. McAfee Brown celebrates Vatican II’s new modernist approach, which claims these heretical assemblies are suddenly invested with a vague and undefined “ecclesial reality”. The suggestion that Protestants need not “return in penitence to the Church” mocks the Council of Trent’s condemnation of Protestant errors, and mocks the infallible dogma of the Council of Florence that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation. Yet in the eyes of today’s ecumenical Church-men, this willingness to kick the teeth out of defined Catholic doctrine is precisely what gives the post-Vatican II Church its sparkle. A Man of the Council Post-conciliar ecumenical falsehoods ran rampant during the reign of Pope Paul VI, his Cramnerized New Mass being the crowning concession to Protestantism.[15] It is not known if Pope John Paul I had planned to rid the Church of the ecumenical plague. If he did, he did not live long enough to enact it. Then in October 1978, Poland’s Karol Cardinal Wojtyla was elected Pope. Anyone with eyes to see would have known what to expect. From the start, he made clear his commitment to the liberal reforms of Vatican II, particularly to ecumenism.[16] In his first Papal address, John Paul II did not speak of his duty to preserve the purity of Catholic doctrine against the many errors of the day, as did Pope Saint Pius X.[17] Rather, John Paul II saw his primary task to further the progressivist agenda of Vatican II. On October 17, 1978, the newly- elected John Paul II said: “We consider it our primary duty to be that of promoting, with prudent but encouraging action, the most exact fulfillment of the norms and directives of the Council. Above all we must favor the development of Conciliar attitudes. First one must be in harmony with the Council. One must put into effect what was started in its documents; and what was ‘implicit’ should be made explicit in the light of the experiments that followed and in the light of new and emerging circumstances.”[18] There is no doubt that Pope John Paul II made good his word. Novelties, trendy experiments, going boldly where no Pope had gone before, was the man in a nutshell. He forged his 25-year pontificate according to the new ecumenical doctrine wherein the principle of conversion of non-Catholics is replaced by the new principle of convergence with non-Catholics. Pope John Paul II’s inter-religious activities, chronicled repeatedly in Catholic Family News and other journals, demonstrate this beyond dispute. His Spirit of Assisi, in which members of all religions pray together for peace and supposedly work together for the betterment of the human family — a concept condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in his Letter against the Sillon[19] — is an icon of his papacy. At the Pope’s first pan-religious meeting at Assisi in October 1986, Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Shinto, Animist Snake Worshipers, Native American, and other religions converged to pray for peace. Representatives from the religions stood together with Pope John Paul II, giving a visual endorsement to the prominent error of our time, that any religion is good enough for salvation. During the 1986 Assisi event, the various religions were encouraged to offer their false worship. Muslims chanted to the false god Allah; African animists, in colorful off-the-shoulder togas, invoked the spirits of trees and plants to come to the aid of peace; an American Indian conducted a pagan ritual, offering stentorian intonations against the evil sprits in the Crow language, waving a straw fan like a magic wand.[20] False worship was also permitted inside of Catholic Churches. At the Church of San Pietro, Buddhists, led by the Dalai Lama, placed a statue of Buddha atop the tabernacle, and set scrolls and incense burners a-round it. Even the Vatican’s Cardinal Oddi voiced public disapproval of the Assisi outrage: “On that day ... I walked through Assisi ... And I saw real profanations in some places of prayer. I saw Buddhists dancing around the altar upon which they placed Buddha in the place of Christ and then incensed it and showed it reverence. A Benedictine protested and the police took him away ... There was obvious confusion in the faces of the Catholics who were assisting at the ceremony.”[21] Assisi: Vatican II Enfleshed  But if Cardinal Oddi was horrified at the Assisi affair, Pope John Paul II was jubilant. Two months after the event, in a Christmas speech to his Cardinals published in the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano, John Paul said, “The day of Assisi, showing the Catholic Church holding hands with our brothers of other religions, was a visible express of [the] statements of the Second Vatican Council.” The interfaith event at Assisi was thus described by John Paul II not as a tragic misrepresentation of Vatican II, but as the glorious realization of its teaching. Pope John Paul II went on to celebrate the inter-religious prayer meeting at Assisi as a new direction for the future, “The event of Assisi” he said, “can thus be considered as a visible illustration, an exegesis of events, a catechesis intelligible to all, of what is presupposed and signified by the commitments to ecumenism and to the inter-religious dialogue which was recommended and promoted by the Second Vatican Council.” Toward the end of the speech, the Pope urged his Cardinals to continue on the same new path, “Keep always alive the spirit of Assisi as a motive of hope for the future.”[22] The event of Assisi was one of the ways in which Pope John Paul II fulfilled his 1978 pledge to “favor the development of Conciliar attitudes” and to make what was “implicit” in Vatican II’s documents “explicit”. Cardinals and bishops throughout the world, following John Paul II’s directive, continued the Spirit of Assisi for the past 18 years through countless pan-religious activities. One of the most recent of these events was the 2003 Interfaith Congress at Fatima, during which Father Jacques Dupuis denounced as a “horrible text,” the Council of Florence’s, “outside the Church there is no salvation,” to the grand applause of a predominantly Catholic audience.[23] The organizers and speakers at the event, including the Vatican’s Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, justified the interfaith Congress and all its pomps and works, by appealing to Pope John Paul II’s Assisi initiative.[24] It is this Spirit of Assisi that is ultimately responsible for Fatima Shrine Rector Guerra allowing a Hindu priest to chant to the false gods of Hinduism at the Catholic altar at the Fatima Shrine on May 5, 2004[25] — a sacrilege that was never publicly repudiated by John Paul II. This new pan-religious orientation has an effect on our lives and on those around us, as it projects a counterfeit image of the Catholic Church. After decades of being subjected to the new ecumenical religion widespread throughout the Catholic world, after years of seeing photos and films of Pope John Paul II’s new interfaith jamborees, most people — Catholic or not — now regard this new pan-religious orientation as the true representation of the Catholic religion. Never mind that it is an orientation condemned repeatedly by the Popes of the past, particularly by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos. The new Spirit of Assisi is now falsely viewed as the authentic face of Catholicism. It is the new Spirit of Assisi that causes Muslims and Hindus to laugh and to tell a young Catholic woman she is out-of-step with her own Pope when she says they must convert to the Catholic Faith to be saved. It is the new interfaith orientation that causes Protestant ministers to claim Catholic men are unfaithful to Catholic teaching when they remind the Protestant that he must convert to the Catholic Church to save his soul. It is the new ecumenical approach that makes Jewish leaders rejoice that, according to John Paul II, they need not accept Jesus Christ, nor join Christ’s one true Church, for salvation. Here then is Pope John Paul II’s most sizable achievement. He has succeeded in making those Catholics who insist on the infallible dogma “outside the Church there is no salvation” appear to be crazy. Thanks to John Paul II’s radical pontificate, those Catholics who believe and practice everything taught by Pope Eugene IV, Saint Pius V, Gregory XVI, Blessed Pius IX, Saint Pius X, Pius XI and Pius XII are viewed as a kooky fringe of questionable orthodoxy. Those who resist John Paul’s modernist orientation and remain faithful to the Popes of all time are in many instances calumniated as enemies of the Faith. Pope John Paul II and Supersessionism Pope John Paul II’s new teaching regarding present-day Judaism bears this out dramatically. It is one of the clearest illustrations of John Paul II’s discontinuity with the consistent teaching of his predecessors from the time of Christ. Today’s Jews celebrate John Paul II as they are fully aware of the drastic change in doctrine that he attempted to forge. Those who resist this new teaching are denounced as anti-semitic,[26] as unfaithful to Vatican II, or as one web-page snarled, as “extreme supersessionists”.[27] At first glance, it would seem preposterous to suggest that Pope John Paul II rejected the truth that the New Covenant superseded the Old Covenant. It is unthinkable that a Pope should deny a fundamental truth found so clearly in Scripture and Catholic doctrine. On the subject of the absolute necessity of the Catholic Faith for salvation, there is, first of all, the Athanasian Creed, which begins: “Whoever wishes to be saved must, first of all, hold the Catholic faith, which, unless a man shall have held it whole and inviolate, he will most certainly perish forever.” This is not only a Creed of the Catholic Church that one must believe to be Catholic, but the Athanasian Creed was also part of the Church’s public liturgy. Before Vat-can II, it was recited at the Office of Prime on Trinity Sunday. No Pope has the authority to imply that this solemn Catholic Creed has suddenly expired. As for the doctrine “Out-side the Church there is no salvation,” it has been three times defined by the Catholic Church. The most explicit and forceful of these three ex cathedra pronouncements is from the Council of Florence under Pope Eugene IV. Here the Church declared infallibly: “The Most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews, heretics, and schismatics can ever be partakers of eternal life, but that they are to go into the eternal fire ‘which was prepared for the devil and his angels,’ (Mt. 25:41) unless before death they are joined with her; and that so important is the unity of this Ecclesiastical Body, that only those remaining within this unity can profit from the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and that they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, almsdeeds, and other works of Christian piety and duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved unless they abide within the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.”[28] This truth is taught repeatedly by the Popes, Saints and holy Doctors throughout the centuries. There is no deviation from one Pope to the next. It is one unchanging doctrine taught from Apostolic times. In fact, according the perennial teaching of the Church, the dogmatic First Vatican Council, and the Oath Against Modernism, a Pope is not allowed to change any of the doctrines of the Church, since the they are not his to change.[29] Nor is it possible for a Pope to change an objective truth divinely revealed by God. Nor is a Pope allowed to explain doctrine in a manner differently from what the Church always held, but must teach doctrine, to use the words of Vatican I and of the Oath Against Modernism, “in the same sense and in the same explanation.”[30] For a Catholic to do otherwise is to betray the Catholic Faith, and for a Pope to do otherwise is to betray his Papal Office. For nearly 2000 years, the Popes taught the doctrine “outside the Church there is no salvation” faithfully, as they knew it to be a truth received from Christ and the Apostles. One of the many 20th Century examples of the continuity of this teaching is found in The Catechism of Pope Saint Pius X. Here we read, “Outside the true Church are: Infidels, Jews, heretics, apostates, schismatics and excommunicated persons.” It states further, “No one can be saved outside the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church, just as no one could be saved from the flood outside the Ark of Noah, which was a figure of the Church.”[31] The New Covenant Supersedes the Old Now if the doctrine of the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation is clear, Catholic doctrine regarding the necessity of Jews to covert to Christ’s one true Church for salvation is even more exact. The New Testament abounds with such teaching, and the Catholic Church has taught it since Saint Peter’s first sermon on Pentecost morning. It is a teaching that comes directly from the lips of Our Lord. Our Lord Jesus Christ told the Jews: “If you do not believe that I am He [the Messiah], you will die in your sins.” (John 8:24) Elsewhere He said to the Jews, “You search the Scripture because in them you think you have life everlasting. And it is they that bear witness to Me, yet you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.” (John 5:39-40) Saint John, faithful to Our Lord’s teaching, says likewise, “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. He is Antichrist who denies the Father and the Son.” (1 John 2: 22) Saint Peter, at his first sermon on Pentecost morning, publicly told the Jews who had assembled to hear him speak, that they must be baptized and become members of Christ’s true ecclesia for salvation. (Acts Chapter 2) He did not tell them they had their own workable covenant independent from Christ. Commenting on this Scriptural text, the eminent America theologian, Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, pointed out that Saint Peter did not direct his words to men of no religion at all. Saint Peter, the first Pope, directed his words to pious Jews who had traveled from various parts of the world to attend the religious feasts at Jerusalem. Nonetheless, Saint Peter told these well-meaning Jews that the religion of the Old Covenant would not save them, but they must enter the New Covenant forged by the Blood of Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church.[32] Sacred Scripture likewise teaches that the Old Covenant is superseded by the New. Saint Paul declares explicitly that Our Lord’s New Covenant “has made obsolete the former one,” that is, made obsolete the old Judaic Covenant. (Heb. 8:13) No Pope has the authority to reject this Scriptural truth, as the Word of God is infallible. The Catholic Church throughout the centuries has been faithful to this truth. The doctrine of the supersession of the Old Testament by the New is a universal and perpetual doctrine of the Catholic Church. It is a defined article of the Catholic Faith that Catholics must believe. The solemn Profession of Faith of the Ecumenical Council of Florence under Pope Eugene IV, says the following: “The sacrosanct Roman Church ... firmly believes, professes, and teaches that the matter pertaining to the Old Testament, of the Mosaic law, which are divided into ceremonies, sacred rites, sacrifices, and sacraments, because they were established to signify something in the future, although they were suited to the divine worship at that time, after Our Lord’s coming had been signified by them, ceased, and the sacraments of the New Testament began; ... All, therefore, who after that time observe circumcision and the Sabbath and the other requirements of the law, it (the Roman Church) declares alien to the Christian faith and not in the least fit to participate in eternal salvation, unless someday they recover from these errors.”[33] It is clear then that no Pope could trample under foot this Scriptural and Dogmatic truth if he wished to be true to the Catholic Faith, and to the Papal Office. Yet at the time of Pope John Paul II’s death, the world’s media buzzed with claims that John Paul II had rejected this basic doctrine; that the doctrine no longer applies. Here are but a few examples: ● Abraham Foxman from the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, as mentioned, celebrated Pope John Paul II as the man who “rejected the destructive concept of supersessionism,” that is, rejected the Catholic truth that the New Covenant of Jesus Christ superseded and made obsolete the Old Judaic Covenant. ● The Jerusalem Post headlined its tribute, “What Will Follow the Best Pope the Jews Ever Had?”, and likewise lauded John Paul for rejecting supersessionism.[34] ● Sergio Itzhak Minerbi, Israel’s former Ambassador to the Ivory Coast, Belgium, praised John Paul’s new approach to Judaism. Though Minerbi criticized the Pope’s alleged attempts to “Christianize the Holocaust,” he nonetheless wrote the following accolade: “For centuries, the Church has claimed to be the ‘true Israel’, thus substituting the Jewish religion. It is therefore important that, in a meeting with the Jewish community in Mainz on 17 November 1980, the Pope announced his respect for ‘the people of God, of the Old Covenant, which has never been revoked by God’.”[35] ● The Boston Globe likewise eulogized that John Paul’s “outreach to the Jewish people” was “remarkable”, ad-ding that “He spoke of a special relationship between the Jews and the Church and insisted that the Old Covenant had never been revoked. His words put forth possibilities for theologians that are yet to be fully explored.”[36] ● The day after the Pope’s death, Father David Marie a Jaeger said, “public opinion polls published towards the end of his [John Paul’s] 2000 pilgrimage to the Holy Land” indicated that “a great majority of Israelis who were interviewed declared John Paul II their favorite candidate for Chief Rabbi of Israel!”[37] It is a woeful day for the Catholic Church when the Vicar of Christ is favored for the post of Chief Rabbi — and of Israel, of all places. The Israelis would never have heaped such praise on John Paul II — would never have considered John Paul as one of their own — had he reinforced the teaching of Saint Peter, Saint Paul and the Council of Florence on the supersession of the Old Covenant with the New. Sacred Doctrine Inverted But is it true? Did Pope John Paul II actually say these things? Catholic Family News readers will recognize these as rhetorical questions, since tragically, the answer is yes. In what appears to be an attempt to make “explicit” what was “implicit” in the Council Document Nostra Aetate,[38] Pope John Paul II said the following in a speech to a Jewish Community in Mainz, Germany on November 17, 1980: “The first dimension of this dialogue, that is, the meeting between the people of the Old Covenant, never revoked by God, and that of the New Covenant, is at the same time a dialogue within our Church, that is to say, between the first and second part of her Bible ... Jews and Christians, as children of Abraham, are called to be a blessing to the world. By committing themselves together for peace and justice among all men and peoples.”[39] This statement of the Pope, in fact, is now quoted in modern Church documents to reinforce the new, post-Conciliar teaching against “supersessionism”. In 1985, the Vatican issued its Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis of the Roman Catholic Church.[40] The document’s introduction bids the reader to take “special note” of Paragraph 3 “which speaks about Judaism as a present reality and not only as a historical (and thus superseded) reality.” When we turn to Paragraph 3, we see that the Notes quotes the above speech where John Paul speaks of “the people of God of the Old Covenant” which has “not been revoked.”[41] Far from claiming that the Notes misinterpreted his words, John Paul spoke of his unqualified support of the document. On October 28, 1985, John Paul II said “[The] Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis of the Roman Catholic Church” is “proof of the Holy See’s continued interest in and commitment to this renewed relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people,” and that the Notes “will greatly help toward freeing our catechetical and religious teaching of a negative or inaccurate presentation of Jews and Judaism in the context of the Catholic Faith”.[42] Thus it is demonstrable that what the Jews say of John Paul II is true; the words they quote from John Paul II are found in Vatican documents with John Paul II’s approval. Yet we know from Saint Peter’s sermon on the first Pentecost, that the Old Covenant is not still in force, not acceptable to God, not capable of providing salvation. We know from the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ that those who will not accept Him will die in their sins. We know from Saint John’s Epistle that he who denies that Jesus is the Christ, is anti-Christ. We know from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews that the New Covenant has made obsolete the Old. And we know from the infallible Council of Florence that the Old Covenant ceased with the establishment of the New Covenant by Jesus Christ. We know, then, that Pope John Paul’s rejection of supersessionism is an error that must be neither embraced nor applauded. Catholics have a duty to resist Pope John Paul II’s new teaching, as it defies Sacred Scripture and Sac-red Tradition. It leaves these non-Catholics in the darkness of their false religion and thus deprives them of sanctifying grace. It imperils the eternal destiny of countless souls. In resisting these novel teachings, we are only following the instruction given by Pope Innocent III who taught that if a Pope departs from the universal teaching and customs of the Church,“ he need not be followed”.[43] Saint Robert Bellarmine adds that he must also be resisted.[44] Santo Subito? Two weeks before Pope John Paul II’s double beatification of Popes Pius IX and John XXIII, the progressivist Commonweal journal observed: “The splendid absurdity of the coming event can be grasped when we recognize that John XXIII and John Paul II would both have been condemned for their ideas and their words had they expressed them when Pius IX was in power.”[45] Pope John Paul II’s commitment to the liberal reforms of the Second Vatican Council are precisely what would have earned his condemnation under Blessed Pius IX. Pope John Paul II’s pontificate effectively pitted today’s Catholics against the teachings of his predecessors. Very few in the media recognized this, and those who did viewed it as praiseworthy. One of the few was James Carroll, no friend of the Catholic Church. Nonetheless, his recent piece in Time accurately dispelled the myth of Pope John Paul II’s conservativsm: “This may be what you think: John Paul II was the conservative Pope. His pontificate was marked by a resurgent Roman Catholic traditionalism, setting the Church against liberalizing forces of all kinds. John Paul II is remembered above all for shoring up structures of the past. “This is wrong. John Paul II boldly presided over the maturing of political and theological revolutions in Catholicism. Perhaps despite himself, he was a Pope of change, accomplishing two radical shifts — one in the Church’s attitude toward war and the other in its relationship to the Jewish people. Taken together, those represent the most significant change in Church history, and they lay the groundwork for future changes that could well go beyond what this Pope foresaw or even wanted. In each case, John Paul II brought to completion a movement that was begun by his predecessors John XXIII and Paul VI, the Popes of the Second Vatican Council.”[46] James Carroll sees Pope John Paul II’s continuing revolution as a “maturing” of Catholic thought. Pope Saint Pius X would have seen it for what it was: Modernism in action. Likewise, Pope Pius XII would have recognized John Paul II as one of the progressivist theologians he warned against in Humani Generis “who reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation.”[47] Yet none of these facts seem to count in the post-Conciliar age of sentiment, as was evident in Pope John Paul II’s funeral Mass. Here churchmen and laity called for the instant canonization (Santo Subito!) of the Polish Pontiff. Yet the effects of John Paul II’s papacy have been anything but edifying. Columnist Joe Sobran noted: “... orthodox Catholics ask whether his papacy has been a success. He seems to have retained a naive Sixties faith in ecumenical ‘dialogue,’ however fruitless it turned out to be. The maladies that have infected the Church since the Second Vatican Council (at which he was an enthusiastic participant) haven’t been remedied — liturgical corruption, low Mass attendance, poor Catholic education, errant bishops, heretical theologians. “And one of the worst scandals in Catholic history erupted on his watch: the revelation that homosexual priests had been abusing boys. This was a natural result of the homosexual domination of American (and possibly other) Catholic seminaries that had been increasing since the 1960s, well before John Paul’s papacy; but he seemed to have had no clue that it was going on and hardly to have believed it when he learned. That doesn’t speak well for his supervision.”[48] All that Glitters is Not Gold Pope John Paul II has met his Judge, Who according to Pope Saint Pius X, will demand a strict account of his Papal stewardship.[49] The purpose of this article is not to judge John Paul’s soul, as that is God’s prerogative alone. Catholics are nonetheless called upon to appraise the words and actions of his pontificate by the only measuring rod that counts: the infallible and immutable Catholic Faith of all time. Against this measure, Pope John Paul II is found wanting, and nothing is gained by pretending otherwise. We pray for his soul, but we do not follow his progressivist lead. He was a Pope who gave much bad example.[50] As Catholics, we have the duty to avoid shallow emotion and sentiment. We do not adulate a Pope who tells members of false religions what they want to hear; that they will find salvation by clinging to false creeds. This fabrication is the glitter of earth, not the glory of God. It is the foolishness of the world, not the wisdom of a saint. It paves the way for the eternal damnation of countless souls. Our first duty, rather, is to adhere to the Athanasian Creed: “Whoever wishes to be saved must, first of all, hold the Catholic Faith, which, unless a man shall have held it whole and inviolate, he will most certainly perish forever.” We must pray that a future Pope will risk the unpopularity and instruct Catholics once again in this central truth of our Faith. A good starting point would be to incorporate into a future encyclical the gentle but firm words of the eminent theologian, Father Francis Connell: “Far from minimizing the exclusiveness of the Catholic religion, our people should be instructed unhesitatingly, whenever the occasion offers, and to let non-Catholics know that we consider them as deprived of the ordinary means of salvation, however excellent their intentions.”[51] Notes: 1. “A Future of Peace,” Brother Roger, Zenit News, December 25, 2004.  2. “The ADL Mourns the Loss of Pope John Paul II,” Press Release of the Anti-Defamation League. April 3, 2005. [Emphasis added.]   3. The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, Father Denis Fahey, Third Edition, (Originally published in 1939. Republished by Christian Book Club of America, 1987), p. 41. 4. See “The Components of Liberal Catholicism”, Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, The American Ecclesiastical Review, July, 1958.         5. In De Lubac’s book, Le fondement theoligique des missions, published in the mid 1940’s, he spoke of “The light of the Word which enlightens every man,” and spoke of the “thousand undetected forms of grace.” De Lubac then concluded, “It is false to say that without the missionary, the ‘pagan’ is inevitably destined for hell.” Archbishop Lefebvre, a missionary bishop in Africa at the time, commented on De Lubac’s errors: “The theories of Father De Lubac would sweep away all missionary zeal. It is a fact, and a fact that is seemingly borne out by experience, that even if some pagans are able to cooperate with grace in the beginning, it is quite difficult for them to persevere because of the societies in which they live.” See The Biography of Marcel Lefebvre, Bernard Tissier de Malleraise, (Kansas City: Angelus Press, 2004), pp. 147-8. Father Yves Congar’s undermining of the dogma “Outside the Church there is no Salvation” was specifically warned against and refuted by Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton in “Two Statements About the Necessity of the Catholic Church for the Attainment of Eternal Salvation”, American Ecclesiastical Review, June 1962. 6. In October 1950, The Thomist published an article by Father David Greenstock that warned against the New Theology. He explained that “The main contention of the partisans of this new movement is that theology, to remain alive, must move with the times” and that “traditional theology is out of touch with reality.” Their hallmark has always been scorn for the Magisterium. See “Thomism and the New Theology”, David Greenstock, T.OP. The Thomist, October. 1950.7. The initial freeing-up of these poisonous theologians took place under Pope John XXIII in preparation for Vatican II. For a fuller treatment, see The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, John Vennari (Tan Books, 1999). Available from Catholic Family News for $4.00 postpaid. 8. Father Ludvik Nemec, Pope John Paul II: A Festive Profile (New York: Catholic Book Publishing, 1979), p. 98. 9. For a fuller treatment, see Pope John’s Council by Michael Davies (Angelus Press). 10. Theological Highlights of Vatican II, Joseph Ratzinger, (New York: Paulist Press, 1966), p. 73.         11. E. Schillebeeckx, OP, “Igreja ou igrejas?” in V.A. Cinco problemas que desafiam a Igreja hoje, pp. 26f. Quoted from In the Murky Waters of Vatican II, GuimarE3es, (Metaire, LA 1997) p. 243.                  12. The Ecumenical Revolution, Robert McAfee Brown. (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967 - 2nd Edition 1969), pp. 67-8. 13. The American theologian Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton explains that the word “Church” is not a one-size-fits-all term that can be applied to any religious group. The word “Church” means, the Kingdom of God on Earth, the People of the Divine Covenant, the one social unit outside of which salvation cannot be found. It only properly applies to the Catholic Church. See “The Meaning of the Name ‘Church’,” Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, American Ecclesiastical Review, October 1954. This article was re-published in its entirety in the November 2000, Catholic Family News. (Reprint #528 available from CFN for $2.00US postpaid). 14. “The Ecumenical Council and Christian Reunion”, Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, American Ecclesiastical Review, July 1959. 15. See sidebar on page 8, “The Ottaviani Intervention”. See also Pope Paul’s New Mass by Michael Davies (currently out-of-print). See also, Michael Davies, The Roman Rite Destroyed, available from Catholic Family News, for $7.50US postpaid.  16. Pope John Paul II’s commitment to the new ecumenical orientation was also showcased in his first Encyclical, Redemptor Hominis. For a fascinating commentary on this encyclical, see Pope John Paul II’s Theological Journey to the Prayer Meeting of Religious at Assisi, Part I, Volume I. The First Encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, by Father Johannes Dormann (Angelus Press, 1996) Available from Catholic Family News for $17.50US postpaid. 17. See “Model of Papal Authority, Pope Saint Pius X,” J. Vennari, (Available from Oltyn Library Ser-vices, 2316 Delaware Ave, PMB 325, Buffalo, NY 14216 for $6.50US postpaid). 18. Quoted from Peter Hebblethwaite, “Pope John Paul II,” from a collection of essays entitled Modern Catholicism, Vatican II and After, edited by Adrian Hastings, (London: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 447. Emphasis added. 19. Our Apostolic Mandate, Pope Saint Pius X, 1910. 20. For a fuller treatment of the Assisi event with all footnotes and references, see “Defending the Indefensible”, by John Vennari, Catholic Family News, August 1999. Reprint #404 available from CFN for $3.00US postpaid. 21. “ConfissF5es de um Cardeal,” Interview granted by Cardinal Oddi to Tommasco Ricci, 30 Dias, November 1990, p. 64. Cited from Quo Vadis Petre? by Atila Sinke Guimaraes (Tradition in Action, Los Angeles, 1999), pp. 5-6. 22. “Pope’s Christmas Address to Roman Curia,” L’Osservatore Romano, January 5, 1987, pp. 6-7.  23. For details, see “Fatima to Become an Interfaith Shrine? And an Account from One Who Was There,” J. Vennari, Catholic Family News, December 2003. (Reprint #890 available from CFN for $2.00US postpaid.) 24. Archbishop Fitzgerald, defending the Fatima Interfaith Congress, said “It was the Pope himself who said in Assisi in October 1986 that we are all pilgrims together. As I said at the conference in Fatima, we must learn to journey together, for if we drift apart we do ourselves harm, but if we walk together we can help one another to reach the goal that God has set for us. See “What is Happening in Fatima,” Zenit News. January 1, 2004. 25. “Pictures of a Desecration”, J. Vennari, Catholic Family News, July, 2004. (Reprint #958 available from CFN for $2.00US postpaid) For a full collection of CFN articles on the new interfaith orientation at Fatima, see www.cfnews.org./cfn.htm and go to the “Permanent Archives” section. 26.For example, on May 24, 1991, Agence France Presse ran the story, "French Catholic Monastery Reprints Anti-Semetic Missal". The traditional Benedictine Monastery of Saint Madeline du Barroux, which celebrates the Tridentine Mass and operates under the good graces of the Vatican's Ecclesia Dei Office, republished a pre-Vatican II missal. AFP reported in horror, "A French Benedict monastery which supports the right-wing Catholic integrist movement has reprinted a 35-year-old missal which is now rejected by the Church and which contains anti-Semetic passages." It went on to reprimand the prayers in the Missal that pray for the Jews to be "pulled from their darkness." Yet the Missal is nothing more than the traditional Catholic teaching throughout the centuries. 27. This asinine epitaph was hurled at me and at others who hold the Church’s perennial doctrine on this point. Is there such a thing as a “moderate supersessionist”? 28. Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, February 4, 1442.   29. The dogmatic Vatican I proclaimed de fide, that not even a Pope may preach a new doctrine. Defining Papal Infallibility, Vatican I taught: “The Holy Spirit was not promised to the successor of Peter that by the revelation of the Holy Spirit they might disclose new doctrine, but that by His help they might guard sacredly the revelation transmitted through the Apostles and the deposit of Faith, and might faithfully set it forth.” [Vatican I, Session IV, Chapter IV; Pastor Aeternus.] No authority in the Church, not even a Pope, may lawfully attempt to change the clear meaning of infallible dogma, including the thrice defined dogma that “outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation”. Neither may anyone, no matter how highly placed, change the meaning of doctrine in the name of a newer or “deeper” understanding. Vatican I taught: “The meaning of Sacred Dogmas, which must always be preserved, is that which our Holy Mother the Church has determined. Never is it permissible to depart from this in the name of a deeper understanding.” [Vatican I, Session III, Chap. IV, Dei Filius] 30. Vatican I’s Dei Filius says clearly, “let therefore the understanding, the knowledge and the wisdom of individual men, and of all men of one man, and of the entire Church, grow and advance greatly and powerfully, over the course of the years and the ages, but only in its own class, in the same dogma, with the same meaning and in the same explanation.” The Oath Against Modernism brings out the same truth. The man who takes this Oath makes the following promise, “I sincerely receive the doctrine of faith handed down to us from the Apostles through the orthodox Fathers, with the same meaning and the same explanation (eodem sensu eademque sententia); and consequently I completely reject the heretical fiction of an evolution of dogma, changing from one meaning to another, different from that which the Church first held.” Translation from “Two Statements About the Necessity of the Catholic Church for the Attainment of Eternal Salvation,” Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, American Ecclesiastical Review, June 1962, p. 408.  31. The Catechism of Pope Saint Pius X, (First published in 1910, republished by Instaratio Press, Australia), pp. 31 and 41. 32. See "The Concept of Salvation" from The Catholic Church and Salvation (In Light of Recent Pronouncements by the Holy See), by Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, (Newman Press, 1958 - out or print), pp. 133-143. A summary of the teaching in this section is found in "The Gospel According to Non-Believers", J. Vennari, Catholic Family News, May & June, 2000. (Reprint #492 available from CFN for $3.00US postpaid). 33. Denzinger, 1348. [Emphasis added]. 34. Jersulasem Post, April 4, 2005.  35. “Israelis and Palestinians Mourn the Pope”, Israel Faxx, April 4, 2005. 36. “The Legacy of Pope John Paul II”, The Boston Globe, April 3, 2005. 37. “The Pope, the Bridge with the Jews, and Israel,” Asia News, April 3, 2005.  38. Nostra aetate “On the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions”. The Fourth Chapter: “The Jewish Religion,” says the following: “Given this great spiritual heritage common to Christians and Jews, it is the wish of this sacred Council to foster and recommend a mutual knowledge and esteem ... the Jews should not be presented as rejected by God or accursed, as though this followed from Scripture ... The Church ... deplores all hatred, persecutions and other manifestations of anti-semitism, whatever the period and whoever was responsible.” Now, the Popes of the past have rightly taught that Jews should not be hated or mistreated. So if the document had said words to this effect, then there would be no cause for concern. But the Council says that the Jews should not be presented as “rejected by God”, which can be interpreted as a radical departure from Catholic teaching. Pope John Paul II then makes this radical departure even more explicit claiming that the New Covenant did not revoke the Old Covenant.   39. Quoted from The Hidden Pope, Darcy O’Brien, (Daybreak Books, New York, 1998), p. 316. This same text also appears in Pope John Paul II: On Jews and Judaism, 1979-1986, published by the National Council of Catholic Bishops, Washington, D.C., 1987, p. 35 40. As is typical of Vatican II and post-Vatican II documents, the Notes contain a mixture of progressive teachings and traditional-sounding statements. For example, in No. 7 the document states “Church and Judaism cannot then be seen as two parallel ways of salvation, and the Church must witness to Christ as the Redeemer for all, ‘while maintaining the strictest respect for religious liberty in line with the teaching of the Second Vatican Council’.” At the same time, the document insists that Christ did not supersede the Old Covenant with the New, and thus posits members of today’s Jewish religion are objectively in a legitimate position before God, even though they continue to reject Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church. Eugene Fisher from the NCCB reassured Jews who were uneasy about certain parts of the Notes that the document “doesn’t say the only way to salvation is by becoming a member of the institutional Church through baptism”. “Better Teaching About Jews Urged,” Washington Post, June 29, 1985. 41. The United States NCCB document God’s Mercy Endures Forever, Guidelines on the Presentation of Jews and Judaism in Catholic Preaching also quotes the Pope’s statement that the Old Covenant was “never revoked by God” in order to claim that Christ did not supersede the Old Covenant with the New. (No. 6) [Emphasis added] 42. Pope John Paul II, “Address to International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee on the Twentieth Anniversary of Nostra Aetate,” taken from John Paul II, On Jews and Judaism, 1979-1986, published by the United States Catholic Conference, (Washington, 1987), p.75.   43. Juan Cardinal de Torquemada (1388-1468) was a revered medieval theologian responsible for the formulation of the doctrines that were defined at the Council of Florence. Cardinal Torquemada teaches: “Were the Pope to command anything against Holy Scriptures, or the articles of faith, or the truth of the sacraments, or the commands of the natural or divine law, he ought not to be obeyed, but in such commands he is to be disregarded. Citing the doctrine of Pope Innocent III, Cardinal Torquemada further teaches: “Thus it is that Pope Innocent III states (De Consuetudine) that it is necessary to obey the Pope in all things as long as he, himself, does not go against the universal customs of the Church, but should he go against the universal customs of the Church, “he need not be followed ...” Sources: Summa de ecclesia (Venice: M. Tranmezium, 1561). Lib. II, c. 49, p. 163B. The English translation of this statement of Juan de Torquemada is found in Patrick Granfield, The Papacy in Transition (New York: Doubleday, 1980), p. 171. And in Father Paul Kramer, A Theological Vindication of Roman Catholic Traditionalism, 2nd ed. (Kerala, India), p. 29. 44. Saint Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church, taught “Just as it is licit to resist the Pontiff that aggresses the body, it is also licit to resist the one who aggresses the soul or who disturbs civil order, or, above all, who attempts to destroy the Church. I say that it is licit to resist him by not doing what he orders and preventing his will from being executed; it is not licit, however, to judge, punish or depose him, since these are acts proper to a superior.” De Romano Pontifice, lib. II, chap. 29, in Opera omnia, Neapoli/ Panormi/Paris: Pedone Lauriel, 1871, vol. I, p. 418. For more, see “Resisting Wayward Prelates, According to the Saints,” J. Vennari, Catholic Family News, January 1998. (Reprint #259 available from CFN for $2.00US postpaid.)  45. Commonweal, August 11, 2000. 46. “The Pope’s True Revolution,” James Carroll, Time Magazine online, April 2, 2005. 47. Humani Generis, “Concerning Some False Opinions Threatening to Undermine the Foundations of Catholic Doctrine,” Pope Pius XII, August 12, 1950. 48. Sobran Column, “The End of a Papacy,” March 31, 2004. Mr. Sobran had some kind things to say about Pope John Paul II as a man, but closed his column with the frank observation that his papacy was one of chaos.   49. In his 1906 Encyclical Pieni l’animo, Pope Saint Pius X gave voice to his reverential fear about the grave responsibility before God that the Petrine Office demands: “With our soul full of fear for the strict account we shall have to give one day to the Prince of Pastors, Jesus Christ, with regard to the flock entrusted to us by Him, we pass our days in continued anxiety to preserve the faithful, as far as possible, from the most pernicious evils by which human society is at present afflicted. Quoted from A Symposium on the Life and Work of Pope Pius X; entry by Father James E. Earn, O.P, S.T.D., “Pius X and the Integrity of Doctrine” (Washington, Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, 1946), p. 51. 50. The many other instances of Pope John Paul II’s bad example are too numerous to mention. One that cannot be here overlooked is the new rock’n’roll riot known as World Youth Day. Pope John Paul II’s Masses implicitly placed an imprimatur on some of the worst abuses of the post-Conciliar period. The 2002 Papal Mass at World Youth Day included inculurated liturgies with screaming, thumping native Americans conducting pagan ritual immediately before the Mass; rock’n’roll music blasting during Mass; liturgical dance, slovenly and highly immodest dress of the young people, pep-rally enthusiasm including cheers during the Pope’s homily; and Eucharistic sacrilege. The Papal Mass was rife was lay-“Eucharistic Ministers,” and Canada’s Vision Television broadcast close-ups of Pope John Paul II continually administering Communion in the hand at his Papal Mass. All this is paraded as Pope John Paul II’s love of the youth. The truth, however, is that it is a scandal to the youth, as it tells young people that these liturgical abuses — always rightly condemned by the Catholic Church — are legitimate aspects of Catholic worship. This is, in my opinion, the real reason why Pope John Paul II was so loved by young people. He gave them their own World Youth religion and liturgies in which they were not asked to give up their slovenly dress, their immodesty, their attachment to the poisonous rock’n’roll culture. No wonder Bono praised John Paul II as a “funky pontiff”. In many respects, he gave the defrauded MTV generation exactly what it wanted. There is another aspect of this also. A Pope who truly loved the youth would not leave the Catholic education of youth in shambles. Yet this is precisely the legacy of Pope John Paul II. Heretical teachings and perverse sex-education are rampant in Catholic schools. Most Catholic universities are places in which the young Catholic is sure to lose his Faith. Granted, the quality of Catholic schools took a drastic nose dive under Pope Paul VI, but the situation only worsened under the reign of John Paul II. Catholic schools under Pope John Paul II were so abysmal that thousands of Catholic parents at great personal sacrifice have taken upon themselves the burden of home-schooling rather than entrust their children to these collapsed institutions. Catholic home-schooling was unthinkable under Pope Pius XII as it was not necessary. If Pope John Paul II truly loved the youth in a Catholic manner, we would have no fear in sending our children or young people to his diocesan schools and colleges. The need for widespread Catholic home-schooling in order for parents to protect the faith of their children marks one of the greatest failures of Pope John Paul II’s Pontificate. For more on World Youth Day, see World Youth Day: From Catholicism to Counter-church by Cornelia Ferreira and John Vennari (Cansisus Books, 2005). (Available from Oltyn Library Services for $17.00 post-paid - Oltyn Library Services, 2316 Delaware Ave, PMB 325 • Buffalo NY 14216). 51. Father Francis Connell, C.Ss.R., “Communication with Non-Catholics in Sacred Rites,” American Eccles-iastical Review, September, 1944. Originally published in the May 2005 Catholic Family News Reposted: April 26 , 2014

Pope John Paul I

"Who described his paintings as ""hand-painted dream photographs?"""

Pope Francis and the Rose Prophecy   Pope Francis and the Rose Prophecy For Internet Explorer 8, 9, 10, and 11 browsers: This page is best viewed on wide screens zoomed at 125% magnification with text size set at "larger" option. This page is now formatted for IE 10 and 11 at 125% zoom, "larger" text.   Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum. Habemus Papam! Qui sibi nomen imposuit: Franciscum, 'Ingis ardens' Nostradamus, Quatrain 2.97 ~ Romain Pontife garde de t'approcher, De la cit� que deux fleuves arrouse, Ton sang viendras aupres de l� cracher, Toi & les tiens quand fleurira la Rose. Roman Pontiff beware of approaching, The city that two rivers arrouse, Your blood will come from the spitting, You and yours when the Rose will flourish. The Third Secret of Fatima (excerpt) ~ And we saw in an immense light ... a Bishop dressed in White. We had the impression that it was the Holy Father. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions.   Updated: June 28, 2016 (5:33 PM EDT). LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: A page of this type can no longer stand alone without creating great confusion. As time has passed it has doubtlessly become more difficult to distinguish the established prophecies concerning the office of the Pope and the future of the Vatican on the one hand, and news events regarding the current Pope and how they may or may not be applied to these established prophecies on the other. Because of this, there have been instances where the same material has had to appear on this page twice. There should be TWO pages, in other words. This page should deal with the BACKGROUND of established papal prophecies and the background of the current pope (in this case Pope Francis). This information will never change unless the current pope dies or retires and another pope is elected. The second page should deal with events like controversial statements made by the Pope or upcoming papal visits wherever they can be applied to prophecy. We will call this second page Pope Francis and the Rose Prophecy: The Current View . Henceforth, you will see a link section at this location, with a brief summary of the news to be discussed. You will click on it to get to Pope Francis and the Rose Prophecy: The Current View where the news event(s) will be discussed in greater detail in prophetic analysis. If there is anything in discussion that is not easily understood, refer back to the background information on this page. Bear with me, some fine tuning will still need to be done.     Nostradamus, Quatrain 2.97: The Prophecy of the City Between Two Rivers and The Rose Should Pope Francis, or any future pope, choose to venture into the Mesopotamian "land between two rivers," then I must revert to the original premise of this page when it was created in May 1999 to warn the late Pope John Paul II of possible assassination if he visited Iraq. At that time, my website was located at the now long gone web host known as GeoCities. Over the last few years, militants loyal to their "emir," Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, have been massacring Iraqi and Syrian Christians by the many thousands, subjecting them, along with Zoroastrians and Muslims not willing to follow Sharia law, to beheadings, garrotings, mass shootings, and being burned alive in metal cages; subjecting them to the mass abductions of their wives and fianc�es; subjecting their unmarried women and girls into forced marriages with the jihadists or else being raped and murdered; and subjecting their children to mass beheadings or being dashed to pieces. They are known under the anacronyms of ISIS and ISIL, calling the territories they have raped, pillaged, ruined, and taken control of by force as a caliphate known as the Islamic State (IS). Over the last two years, their caliph, a once obscure terrorist leader, has become a potential antichrist ... and if not a candidate for the beast of Revelation 13, still quite possibly a fulfillment of one of the other dark figures found in both Biblical and Islamic prophecy who will precede him. How many Christians will die before Francis will feel OBLIGATED to visit Iraq or Syria and bless the bodies of the slain Christian martyrs is unknown. It may well fall to a successor to carry out such a mission. The prophetic implications of a papal visit to any part of Iraq or Syria are potentially dreadful. Nostradamus was preoccupied ... obsessed even ... with a land that is famous for its two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, at least two infamous tyrants that would rule over it, several military campaigns, and one horrific conflict involving Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and what appears to be the United States. This conflict may well be the ongoing Syrian Civil War which, despite a ceasefire agreement hammered out by Russia and the United States, shows every evidence that it is continuing. In a final battle, an adversary called the bloody Alus is killed or seriously wounded, the country responsible suffers major casualties, and a "black and angry one" ultimately takes control of the region. There is evidence that some factions fighting this war will be allied with a powerful country ruled by a female leader. Before any of that happens, there is a prophecy relating to a visiting pope: one who travels to a city watered by two rivers. Nostradamus has identified the "land between two rivers" in certain other quatrains as "Mesopotamia" ... thus Iraq or Syria. I cannot shake the belief that Quatrain 2.97 was one of a group of quatrains dealing with near future events in either country. Nostradamus, Quatrain 2.97 ~ Romain Pontife garde de t'approcher, De la cit� que deux fleuves arrouse, Ton sang viendras aupres de l� cracher, Toi & les tiens quand fleurira la Rose. Roman Pontiff beware of your approaching, The city where two rivers arrouse, Your blood will come from the spitting, You and yours when the Rose will flourish. Quatrain 2.97 suggests an anti-Christian leader, who at this time would most likely be Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State (IS), will order the Pope and everyone in his entourage to be gunned down during a visit to a river port city in Iraq or possibly in Syria. According to Nostradamus they will bleed from the mouth due to internal hemorrhaging. The prophecy also states that the deadly visit will be scheduled to take place "when the Rose will flourish." Roses can bloom anytime between mid-May and throughout September, although the big flush for Old European roses, the kind Nostradamus would have been most familiar with, is usually in June. An alternative meaning of "the Rose" will be explored further below. I tell you, if the mass slaughter and rape of innocents does not end, the Pope will be forced to go to that terrible place. And then the odds increase terribly that he and everyone who accompanies him will fall victim not only to the warning of the bloodshed in Quatrain 2.97, but possibly to the Third Secret of Fatima prophecy concerning a "Bishop dressed in White" who enters a large city half-destroyed, prays over the corpses lying on the city streets, and is assassinated along with his clergy as they seek to ascend a holy mountain with a rugged cross at its summit.   The Third Secret of Fatima Prophecy It remains clear as ever that the above prophetic verse, Quatrain 2.97, inked by Michel de Notredame in 1554, does have some characteristics that are similar to what was revealed concerning the prophecy revealed in the Third Secret of Fatima as to possibly be another facet of the vision. Then again, there are striking differences. In any event, there is now no question that the vision contained in the Third Secret of Fatima was not fulfilled with the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981 as suggested by leading cardinals after the release of the transcript on June 26, 2000.   Complete Translation of Original Text by Lucia dos Santos VATICAN CITY, JUN 26, 2000 (VIS) - Given below is the complete translation of the original Portuguese text of the third part of the secret of Fatima, revealed to the three shepherd children at Cova da Iria-Fatima on July 13, 1917, and committed to paper by Sr. Lucia on January 3, 1944:   "I write in obedience to you, my God, who command me to do so through his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy Mother and mine. "After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: 'Penance, Penance, Penance!'. And we saw in an immense light that is God: 'something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it' a Bishop dressed in White 'we had the impression that it was the Holy Father'. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God."   It has been declared that the May 1981 attack on Pope John Paul II's life in Rome by Turkish assailant Mehmet Ali Agca was the fulfillment of the Third Secret of Fatima. This plainly cannot be the meaning of the Third Secret. First of all, according to the translated text of the letter written by Sr. Lucia, "the Bishop dressed in White" is accompanied by a large number of bishops, priests, nuns, and various lay people -- all of whom are killed along with the pope. Secondly, and this is most important, the Pope visits a large (and probably major) city that is half-destroyed and littered with corpses. It is quite obvious that a major war is going on at the time since so many dead people lay in the streets. If not for all the corpses, the city might otherwise be numerous ancient ruins allowed to still be standing in a part of an otherwise thriving city. Thirdly, the Pope and his clergy are killed by soldiers (or else people who are similar to soldiers, such as the IS terrorist militants) ... and not by a single deranged man in a crowd. The mountain with the rugged cross at its top is a mystery if applied to Mesopotamia. I can find no evidence of a holy mountain associated with Christianity existing anywhere in Iraq or Syria! Could the mountain somehow be symbolic, a metaphor for the tribulation of the Holy Church and Christendom? If you know of such a mountain with a cross at its summit near to where the Islamic State is holding territory in Iraq and the adjacent part of Syria ... or anywhere in Iraq ... please do leave a comment on my forum or blog or via email! The sprinkling of souls with the blood of the martyrs by angels may be the sealing of the 144,000 of the tribes of children of Israel as described in the Book of Revelation. If not, it is something that will precede that event and involve the blessing upon the faithful. We are introduced to a new figure -- what may be an angel of the Apocalypse described as "an Angel with a flaming sword." He is actually introduced well before the appearance of the Bishop in White. Mary stays the world-consuming fire from his hand. This suggests that nuclear war has nearly occurred in the recent past but was prevented by Mary's intercession and prayer. I strongly believe there is linkage between the "Roman Pontiff" and his clergy who are slain in Nostradamus' Quatrain 2.97 and the "Bishop dressed in White" and his clergy and lay people who are gunned down in the Third Secret of Fatima. Since the vision clearly states that the "Bishop clothed in White" (the Pope) will be slain along with "the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious" by soldiers firing bullets, I submit to you that this is remarkably similar to Quatrain 2.97 which warns the pontiff that both "you and yours" will come to spit blood in a city watered or arroused by two rivers. Even though, by miracle, Saint John Paul II was spared during the attack on his life by Mehmet Ali Agca thirty-four years ago, this does not explain why he alone was attacked when the Third Secret states that the Bishop in White will crawl over the corpses of his entourage and followers. This is also what Quatrain 2.97 indicates when saying "both you and yours." Because the pope is described as being "afflicted with pain and sorrow" one might conclude that this is a frail and elderly pontiff. However, we cannot discount the possibility that the "pain and sorrow" is a result of the terrible war and persecution to come. I have little doubt that events described in Quatrain 2.97 and the Third Secret of Fatima will happen. And if events are as predestined as they appear to be in the Third Secret of Fatima, then all the warnings in the world will not save the then-reigning Pope or those who will be slain with him. Where is the "big city?" Assuming it is located in Iraq or Syria, it could be Erbil, in northern Iraq, Baghdad in central Iraq, Najaf, in southern Iraq, or possibly Basra. However, I fear it may yet be the capital:   Islamic ahadith: The Sufyani will then send an army to Iraq, killing 100,000 in Az-Zawra (Baghdad).   The IS could have killed as many as 500,000 people in Baghdad if they had blown up the Mosul Dam in 2014! If they had accomplished such an horrific act, would Pope Francis have felt compelled to fly to Baghdad to pray for the souls of those lying dead in its streets? Almost as a warning to the Pope NOT to travel to Iraq, three members of his family died in a car crash near Cordoba in Argentina: the wife of his nephew and their two sons. There are cities in Iraq and neighbouring Syria watered by both the Tigris and Euphrates, the city of Basra in particular (not far from the ancient city of Ur). But it matters little. For a pope these days to be in any city in the "land between two rivers" (Iraq) is death! To the Islamic State, formerly ISIS, formerly Al Qaeda in Iraq, responsible for unspeakable acts of blood-letting and carnage, especially against Christians, he is one of several iconic symbols representing what they hate most about the "infidel" Christian West. Still, one must always be mindful of the possibility that IS and its leader may be destroyed by the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, or Turkey. Then again, ISIS could be destroyed by the Shi'a in Iran and southern Iraq. This could conceivably set up an alternative scenario in Iraq that may be just as dreadful as the one currently emerging. If so, it may yet fall to militant Shi'a leader Muqtada al-Sadr in southern Iraq, who also caused much death in southern Baghdad and places such as Karbala, to dispatch the new "pontiff of Rome." Unfortunately, Francis or his successor risk possible assassination in any city “arroused by two rivers.” An act of terrorism against the Pope and his entourage could occur anywhere in the world at the behest of any terrorist leader who may order a pope and everyone in his entourage to be shot by terrorists during a visit to a major port city near a dual river system. According to Nostradamus they will all bleed from the mouth from internal hemorrhaging. Due to similarities between Quatrain 2.97 and a prominent theme in the text released in 2000 of the Third Secret of Fatima, I also suspect the papal visit will occur during a major war or even a global war. After all, there are already half-destroyed cities in Syria and Iraq ... a result of the campaign of mass death carried out by either Bashar al-Assad or ISIS. Soon there may be half-destroyed cities in Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, Hungary, and the rest of the Balkans as well. We cannot apply ourselves to anything specific concerning any trip to Iraq or Syria, until we know exactly where it will be and when. As Benedict XVI looks on in our background for the time being, we can thankfully say the election of Francis did not take place in the shadow of mourning the death of a pope as was the case in 2005. Pontiff emeritus Benedictus, though advanced in years, remains alive though frail in body on Vatican grounds and may yet enjoy more years of life ahead. Thus the election of his successor was truly a celebration and not the conclusion of a long papal funerary rite as is often the case. Still, the world is a dark and evil place, much more so at this time than it was during the reigns of Saint John XXII and Saint John Paul II and his successor, Benedict XVI. For prophecy tells us the challenges to come are dreadful ones indeed. And the new pope, Francis, and those who may follow, will be forced to contend with them, perhaps to the very death. Many have noted with wonder the fact that Pope Francis is the first pontiff to be elected from Latin America ... from the nation of Argentina. Nostradamus actually predicted that a pope from Latin America would be elected. But the wise sage also made another prediction in the same prophecy, and in so doing, supports my long-held belief that the greatest pope in Vatican history will come from France. This is what he says: Nostradamus, Quatrain 5.49 ~ Nul de l'Espaigne mais de l'antique France Ne sera esleu pour le tremblant nacelle, A l'ennemi sera saicte fiance, Qui dans son regne sera peste cruelle. Not from Spain but from ancient France Will be the one elected for the trembling ship, To the enemy will be made a trust, In whose reign will be a cruel plague. When Nostradamus mentions a "trembling ship" in his quatrains and its pope, he is referring to a time when the Church is in danger of breaking up (schism) or being terribly troubled and its very existence threatened by world events. According to the French prophet, when this state of affairs reaches its most critical point, the Pope from Spain (or Latin America) will no longer be in power and a French pope shall be elected. This time of trouble may be happening quite soon as it seems clear that "the enemy" is either the Islamic State and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi or else ... Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Russia is currently backing Assad against the IS. Thus, it is possible the West may also choose what they consider to be the lesser of two evils. Then again, the enemy to which a promise is made may be Russia and Vladimir Putin, who is much more capable of directly harming Europe and Rome than either al-Baghdadi or al-Assad. Or the enemy may be Iran, the nation now in the process of leading the Shi'a resistance against the Sunni-backed, Sharia-run caliphate known as the Islamic State. The prophet Daniel warns that Persia (Iran) will eventually declare war on Turkey, Greece, and the Balkans. Why remains a mystery at this time. The same prophecy uses the Hebrew word "Yawan" which can also be applied to Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Iran and Saudi Arabia have nearly come to blows twice since Arab Spring regarding the proxy war being fought in Yemen. As for the cruel plague, it will seep into Europe and America from Africa: possibly the dreaded epidemic known as ebola. It is a horrible disease, one to be feared, and its effects on the body are most cruel indeed. The implications of the last two lines are that there is little time left to the pope from the Spanish American nation of Argentina. However, the birth name of the Pope, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, gives additional information. I stated on this page that the next pope after Benedict would most likely be the one Nostradamus called "The Sabine" in the following quatrain (and thus an Italian): Nostradamus, Quatrain 5.46 ~ Par chapeaux rouges querelles & nouveaux schismes, Quand on aura esleu le Sabinois: On produira contre lui grans sophismes, Et sera Rome lesse par Albanois. By red hats & quarrels, new schisms When the Sabine will have been elected: They will produce great sophism against him, And Rome will be injured by Alba (Scotland or Alba near Piedmont in NW Italy). Although born a native of Argentina, the father of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was an Italian immigrant. Thus, Bergoglio is an Italian by birth. Also, choosing the name of Francis, shared by one of Italy's greatest patron saints (St. Francis of Assisi) strongly ties the new pope to Italy in a way no preceding Italian pope has ever aspired to do. St. Francis was also, and perhaps even more powerfully, linked to that province of Rome settled by the ancient Sabines: the province of Sabina and the beautiful Sabine Hills. Sabina, the region in the Sabine Hills of Latium named for the Sabines, is the ancient territory that today is still identified mainly with the North-Eastern Province of Rome and the Province of Rieti, Lazio. Via Franchigena This is the path taken by St. Francis when he walked from Assisi to Rome to petition the Pope. Unlike most of the public footpaths in Italy, it is well-marked and the final section cuts right through the Sabine Hills. The Franciscan Sanctuaries St. Francis of Assisi was attracted by the Sabina region above all other parts of Italy. The Sabine hills saw the first Franciscan preaching and the religious prayer that Francis addressed to God from the wildest and most inaccessible natural surroundings. Following in the footsteps of St. Francis through the “Valle Santa” (Sacred Valley), visitors will be amazed by nature and mysticism. The area still preserves four sanctuaries which are a widespread evidence of the presence of the Saint during the early part of his life. Francis, during his long stay in Sabina left important traces which legend has tended to amplify. By identifying himself with St. Francis of Assisi, the new pope has also linked his identitiy to the Sabine pope of Nostradamus' Quatrain 5.46. He is the Sabine. When I saw the mild, benevolent expression on the bespectacled face of Francis, I immediately recalled another pope who looked much like him: the ill-fated Pope John Paul I, who died mysteriously 33 days after being installed, officially of natural causes. However, it has been alleged by many that he had actually been murdered by poison. John Paul I was the last pope to inaugurate a name never before used (John Paul); in 2013, Pope Francis followed suit. Quatrain 5.46 indicates that Pope Francis will be greatly harmed by both false accusations concerning his person and ministry and also due to a Great Schism. It is not certain at this time whether it is he or a succeeding pope who will have to flee from Rome, reigning in exile for 25 months before returning to a Rome and Vatican in ruins from a coming great global war. Seeing the spectre of Pope John Paul I in the face of Pope Francis is not at all reassuring. Like Francis, John Paul I too presented as a humble shepherd and, as Nostradamus warned, died through "too much goodness." Why might there be a "schism" in the Vatican and the Catholic Church? We saw the beginnings of a possible schism immediately prior to, during, and briefly following the election of Pope Francis. To anyone paying attention, the Church at that time was rocked by sex scandals and was not far from plunging into a schism. In connection with the threat of a new schism, one of Nostradamus' use of the word Albanois is Alba, the old name for the country of Scotland, which in February 2013 suddenly became quite relevant. The headlines said it all: Vatican Rocked by Resignation of Scottish Archbishop; Britain's Top Catholic Cleric Quits Amid Unfolding Sex Scandal!   Cardinal Keith O’Brien of Scotland resigns amidst scandal Allvoices | Edinburgh : United Kingdom | Feb 25, 2013 at 1:17 PM PST With Pope Benedict XVI ready to step down as the leader of the Catholic Church on Thursday, February 28, the first pope to do so in nearly 600 years, scandal has hit his resignation and the selection of a new pope, as today, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, head of the Scottish Catholic Church, announced his own resignation amidst allegations that go back three decades. Scheduled to make his way to Rome for the papal conclave that would elect the new pope sometime before Easter, Cardinal O’Brien had come under fire for allegations of “inappropriate behavior” towards priests, stemming back to the 1980s, with calls for him not to take part in the vote that would elect the new pope. And with the announcement of the Cardinal’s resignation, which would take immediate effect, this has come to pass, as he will not take part in the conclave, leaving the Scottish Catholic Church and indeed Britain without representation at the papal vote. In a statement released by Cardinal O’Brien, the Cardinal said that he had already submitted his resignation to the Pope as archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, to come into effect next month, when the Cardinal turns 75; however, the Pope ordered that the Cardinal’s resignation take immediate effect. Cardinal O’Brien asked forgiveness of those he had offended, saying, "I have valued the opportunity of serving the people of Scotland and overseas in various ways since becoming a priest. Looking back over my years of ministry: For any good I have been able to do, I thank God. For any failures, I apologise to all whom I have offended. I do not wish media attention in Rome to be focused on me - but rather on Pope Benedict XVI and on his successor.”   So how badly was the Vatican injured? The keyword is injured. I would say without the inclusion of Britain in the March 2013 enclave to elect the current pope, it was very injurious indeed. Now, once again, there are signs that the sexual misconduct controversy may be returning to pave the way for a "great Schism." The other meaning of Albanois is the town of Alba in Piedmont, located in northwestern Italy. It may be from here that an antipope will launch a viscious slander against Pope Francis and begin an actual splitting in the Church. Concluding Quatrain 5.46, what "great sophistry" might be aimed against the new pope? We cannot possibly imagine how important the prophecies of Malachy may be to some of those who have elected Pope Francis. It is clear some faction wished to make it appear that then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger would be associated with Gloria Olivae ... even down to the detail of having him take the name of Benedict (after the Benedictine order). When a dove, the symbol of peace associated with the olive branch, recently perched on a window sill near the former pope and then was attacked in full view of thousands by a seagull, this hit home the failure of Gloria Olivae to bring about world peace or even a regional peace to the Middle East. Indeed, if ever there was a protracted period of time since the Second World War when events could easily fall into place to create a third more terrible global conflict, the time is now. Someone knew that the year 2013 would be an extremely dangerous one for a pope ... Benedict or any other pope. Thus, Pope Benedict elected to "die" via rassegnazione, probably with some degree of urging. Further down on this page I have set forth an exhaustive amount of evidence that there are those in the Vatican who have allowed nine antipopes to long ago be attributed with mottos listed by Malachy intended exclusively for future popes ... and not antipopes. I also discuss how Benedict XVI was actually "Lumen in C�lo" (and provide examples of the natural phenonema that support this claim). Because Cardinal Bergoglio is of Italian descent and has identified himself with Italy's Patron saint, Francis of Assisi, it is possible there will be those who will say he is Malachy's final pope Petrus Romanus ('Peter of Rome'). I say no. But it is clear some sort of Vatican spin is making it appear that Francis is the last and final pope on Malachy's list.   Pope Francis visits St. Peter's tomb under Vatican AP/ April 1, 2013, 4:01 PM VATICAN CITY Pope Francis on Monday took an emotional, close-up look at the tomb of Peter, the church's first pontiff, buried beneath St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican said. By doing so, Francis became the first pontiff to visit the necropolis, where pagans and early Christians were buried, since extensive archaeological excavations were conducted at the ancient site decades ago, the Vatican said. The 45-minute "visit of devotion to the tomb of St. Peter" was private, the Vatican said, but it later released a video of it. The basilica was built over the location where early Christians would gather in secret, at a time of persecution in ancient Rome, to pray at an unmarked tomb believed to be that of Peter, the apostle Jesus chose to lead his church. The Vatican first said Francis would pray at Peter's tomb, but later said he prayed instead in the basilica. The new pope `'paused in silent prayer, in profound and emotional meditation" in the Clementine Chapel in the vast basilica that is `'the closest place (in the basilica) to the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles," it said. During a tour of the necropolis conducted by its director and an Italian cardinal, the pope "climbed up a bit, got closer to the place where the tomb of St. Peter lies, exactly under the central altar and the dome of the basilica," the Vatican said. Francis walked down the entire main street of the ancient city of the dead, the statement said. The streets of the necropolis are similar to those of ancient Rome, only they are flanked by tombs instead of shops and apartments. The Vatican said Francis walked to the necropolis entrance from the hotel on the Vatican grounds where he lives, took the tour and later — after paying homage at the tombs of several popes in another underground level known as the grottoes, including Pius XII, Paul XVI and John Paul I — strolled back to his residence. St. Peter's mission was to continue to preach the message of Jesus and reach more souls. Francis, as a Jesuit, is steeped in the evangelizing mission of the church, and the necropolis tour brings him back to the origins of the church in its simplest years as a community of Christians professing their faith in defiance of the crackdown by Roman emperors. Peter himself was among the Christian martyrs during Nero's reign. He is believed to have been crucified, head down, on the Vatican hill. Constantine, the first Christian emperor, had an early basilica built on the slopes of the Vatican Hill, burying the pagan and Christian cemetery — necropolis means `city of the dead' — that surrounded Peter's burial site. The current basilica, named after St. Peter, was constructed over the earlier basilica that was deemed unsafe and demolished in the late 15th century. The Baroque master architect Bernini designed the bronze canopy over the central altar over the spot of Peter's burial site. The current basilica was planned as an awe-inspiring monument that would project the image of a powerful church. Under popes of the last century, extensive excavations were carried out of the sprawling necropolis. In 1965, archaeologists said they had found the bones of Peter in an area near an ancient Greek inscription saying `'Peter is here."   Being associated with the Vatican's most apocalyptic papal figure would leave the new pope vulnerable to false accusations and debates from both within and outside the Church. Nothing he does will seem right, especially if a world war breaks out, for it will be falsely believed that he is the Pope who will help usher in the end of the world. For some he will become a source of fear rather than of love and admiration (as he currently is now). He will also become the perfect target of assassination for those in the world today who hold great hatred towards Christendom and have only contempt for The Gospels of Jesus and The Book of Revelation! Ironically, even as Ignis Ardens, his true Malachy motto (if there are any true Malachy mottos), it will be difficult for him to distance himself from such an association should there be the hellfire of a war that possibly becomes nuclear or a fire from heaven in the form of an asteroid impact accompanied by a hail of meteors. As the shadows of war spread outwards from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel, Eastern and Central Europe, Russia, China, and North Korea, the world is being prepared for a truly horrific global war which could quickly turn nuclear. As for an asteroid impact: one may occur at any time. On February 15, 2013, five months prior to the 105th anniversary of The Tunguska Event, we witnessed a huge meteorite exploding over Chelyabinsk, Russia (which we may well call 'The Chelyabinsk Event'). Perhaps an even larger asteroid, like the one believed to have impacted Siberia in 1908, is yet to strike the earth, along with many smaller meteorites. This could well become a reality by 2016 when thousands of fragments of a comet may strike the earth. Also, judging from keywords I have discovered used to search this page, there are those who even believe the next pope will be "the false prophet" from the Book of Revelation. That would be quite a sophistry indeed if taken seriously! A lot has already happened in the nearly three years and a half years since February 11, 2013, and even more can happen yet. How long may Pope Francis reign if he is the schismatic pope? No one knows for certain, but if his death is linked with a coming schism in the Church. Nostradamus continues his prophecy of the Sabine pope: Nostradamus, Quatrain 8.93 ~ Sept mois sans plus obtiendra prelature, par son deces grand schisme sera naistre: Sept mois tiendra un autre la preture, pres de Venise paix union renaistre. Seven months without further prelature obtained, Through his death a great schism will arise: For seven months another acts as prelate, Near Venice, peace and union are reborn. According to Nostradamus, a pope, if not Pope Francis himself, will die during "the mother of all Schisms." As a result, there will either be NO POPE at all or else an antipope will reign for seven months. Why? Because there will be chaos in the Catholic Church! It may well be there will be a series of unsuccessful attempts at new papal elections, all doomed to failure. However, either at the start of a seven-month schism or else following seven months of schism and discord, it will be decided that one will "act as prelate." What is unclear is whether the schism lasts 7 months with an antipope reigning or else 7 months without a pope and then 7 months more with an antipope (for a total of 14 months). It may be that Benedict pontiff emeritus will be called out of retirement to act as pope. Again, using the word "act" suggests an antipope or, in the case of Benedict, a former living pope invested with the same authority he enjoyed as supreme pontiff. But if this does occur, he will technically be an antipope. Of course the antipope may well be the one who aimed great sophistry against Francis ... a cardinal from Alba, a town near Piedmont in northwestern Italy. After the reign of the antipope will come a new election and a new pope. To this person may be attributed the motto Religio depopulata ("Religion Depopulated" or "Religion Laid Waste") ... indicating either a great loss of human life worldwide from various causes and/or mass execution and sacrificing of Christians. This may or may not be the Pope who flees the Vatican at the time of the "great star" prophesied by Nostradamus. If not, then that fate will fall to the next pope: Fides intrepida ("Intrepid Faith"). However we cannot rule out the possibility that both Religio depopulata and Fides intrepida will be killed, one assassinated, the other a casualty of war. Either Religio depopulata or Fides intrepida will flee Rome for Avignon, France, take up residence in the old papal castles of Avignon, France, where popes reigned in exile during the 14th century, and will die during an Islamic invasion of southern France after the fall of Marseilles. Personally, I think the following quatrain is about this future pope who will witness the great star/two suns phenomenon on the night that he is forced to flee the Vatican: Nostradamus, Quatrain 2.41 ~ La grande etoile par sept jours bruslera, Nu�e fera deux soleils apparoir: Le gros matin toute nuit hurlera, Quand grand pontife changera de terroir. The great star will burn for seven days, The cloud will cause two suns to appear: The great mastiff will howl all night, When the great pontiff will change country. Catholic prophecy abounds with warnings of a "great comet" or "great star." I will not print them all here, for this page addresses specific warnings to the current pope or his immediate sucessor(s), but here are a few notable ones:   Rigord of St. Denis ~ A comet will be seen in heaven -- a star, that is, with a tail or appendage -- and this apparition will signify destructions and tumults and hard strifes, and withholding of rains, and dryness of the earth, and mighty battles, and the flowing of blood upon the earth of the east, and from beyond the River Habor it will reach to the very end of the west. And the just and the truly righteous will be oppressed and will suffer persecutions, and the house of prayer will be destroyed.   Johann Friede ~ Of mankind there will be more dead than there have been casualties in all wars. In the abodes of the children of light, the Book of Revelations will be read, and in the palaces of the Church they will await the arrival of the great comet.   Hildegard of Bingen ~ Before the Comet comes, many nations, the good excepted, will be scoured with want and famine. The great nation in the ocean that is inhabited by people of different tribes and descent by an earthquake, storm and tidal waves will be devastated. It will be divided, and in great part submerged. That nation will also have many misfortunes at sea, and lose its colonies in the east through a Tiger and a Lion. The Comet by its tremendous pressure, will force much out of the ocean and flood many countries, causing much want and many plagues. All sea coast cities will be fearful and many of them will be destroyed by tidal waves, and most living creatures will be killed and even those who escape will die from a horrible disease. For in none of these cities does a person live according to the laws of God.   We will find scarcely any European prophets who do not agree with Nostradamus concerning the flight of a future pope -- those who bother to relate an entire view of the great global war to come anyway. It should be noted that this flight from Rome always occurs during the height of World War III -- just prior to the "three days of darkness" and the great horrors that follow.   Revelation 8:10-11 ~ The third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.   Prophets like Alois Irlmaier and Erna Stieglitz agree that a pope will flee Italy when World War III comes to Europe. There is also an ancient prophecy that describes what may be the slowing of the earth's rotation, something that researchers abscribe to the gravitational force exerted upon the earth by an object like a brown dwarf star, something that "Planet X" is purported to be. Liber Vaticinationem Quodam Instinctumentis describes the sun "halting" in the heavens and terrible hot winds that will blow: Norma 63:7 For the third (world war), the earth shakes, The throat of the Gaul (France) is ravaged. Many die fleeing from the awful winds, The sun halts in its path in the heavens. It is then said that the norma will die "when the wolf (Germany) is hacked to bits." The fiery invasion of southern France is echoed in this ancient document authored by an unknown clergyman in AD 346. It presages three world wars that will directly involve Germany, the first two as an aggressor and the last as a defender of "the Empire" against the invaders from the East. According to John of Vitiguerro (13th Century) after this exiled pope's death, there will be no pope at all for 25 months, after which a French pope is elected:   The pope will change his residence and the Church will not be defended for twenty-five months or more because, during all that time there will be no Pope in Rome... After many tribulations, a Pope shall be elected out of those who survived the persecutions.   The motto of this "great Pontiff" would be Pastor Angelicus ("Angelic shepherd"). Only then will "peace and union" truly be "reborn."   A SPECIAL SECTION DEDICATED TO THE SAINT JOHN PAUL II IN PROPHECY APPEARS AT BOTTOM OF PAGE . IT REMAINS UNCHANGED, WITH ITS ERRORS, FROM MAY 15, 2005   A SPECIAL SECTION DEDICATED TO POPE BENEDICT XVI, PONTIFF EMERITUS IN PROPHECY APPEARS AT BOTTOM OF PAGE . IT REMAINS UNCHANGED, WITH ITS ERRORS, FROM MARCH 1, 2013   The Papal Prophecies of St. Malachy We are almost certainly obliged to address another prophetic issue I am sure is on the minds of everyone. And, once again, Nostradamus may have clarified some of the muddled controversies presented here. Well over three years have passed since the white smoke appeared and a new pope was introduced to the world, replacing an uncertain winter season with a season of renewal and hope. That season has since withered away and has been replaced by many seasons and yet another summer of uncertainty and dread. We must, unfortunately, respect the dark days ahead that may be in store for the entire planet. Pope Benedict XVI's olive branch of peace and reconciliation proved to be ineffective against the dangerous stratagems of evil men, of psychopaths, and of lovers of war, and of a vast subculture dedicated to death rather than life. Thus a new pope has come, one who needs as much support and aid as possible to achieve his mission. For this is also a man who has been placed in terrible danger by a convergence of prophecies and, perhaps unwittingly, by the very Church he serves. Unfortunately, four controversies become apparent due to an apparent clash between the prophecies of Malachy and those of the learned scholar, doctor, astronomer, and prophet Michel de Notredame ... Nostradamus.   Controversy 1 The first, perhaps, is no longer much of a controversy at all. There are too many popes -- at least seven of them -- prophesied for the future by Nostradamus. That is far too many to be fulfilled by Pope Francis, whom we are supposed to conclude is none other than the final pope on Malachy's list known as Petrus Romanus ("Peter the Roman"). However, I have learned it has apparently become the Vatican's official position that there may be an indeterminate time (and presumably a number of popes) between "Glory of the Olive" (if that was indeed Benedict XVI) and "Peter the Roman", whom they agree is the last pope. Indeed, Nostradamus does not foresee the fall of the last Pope happening until the final Antichrist comes to power in 2242 AD. This is what he has to say about this final pope ("grand Vicaire de la Cappe"):   Perdu trouv�, cach� de si long siecle, Sera Pasteur demi Dieu honor�: Ains que la lune acheve son grand siecle, Par austres vents sera deshonor�. The lost thing is discovered, hidden many centuries, The Pastor will be honoured as a demi-God: This is when the moon achieves her great cycle, By other winds (rumours) he shall be dishonoured.   Nostradamus, Epistle to Henry II ~ The third Northern king, hearing the complaint of the people of his principal title, shall raise up so great an army, and defying the tradition of his predecessors, shall restore almost everything back into his estate. The great Vicar of the Cape shall be restored to his original estate, but desolate and then by all abandoned, shall return to find the Holy sanctuary [Rome] destroyed by Paganism, and the Old and New Testament will be thrust out and burnt. After that shall the Antichrist be the infernal prince. Again for the last time all the Kingdoms of Christianity shall tremble, even those of the infidels, for a space of 25 years ...   The Moon completes its current 354-year cycle in 2242 AD under the aegis of the Sun ("cycle of the sun"). In 2243, the Moon begins yet another cycle under the aegis of Saturn. The final Antichrist then is likely the beast of Revelation 13 whose reign culminates with the war of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ in either 2245-46 AD (at the conclusion of a 42-month reign), 2249 AD (at the conclusion of a 7-year reign), or else 2267 AD (at the end of a reign and a war together lasting 25 years). Thus, we can see there is an extremely long period of time spanning the pontificates of Gloria Olivae (if that was indeed Benedict XVI) and Petrus Romanus, some 230 years, if it is true many future popes between the two were not listed as the Vatican claims.   Controversy 2 This controversy should begin with the phrase assuming Benedict XVI was really Gloria Olivae ... As it turns out, because Benedict did not die but instead retired, it is possible that the prophesied office of Gloria Olivae did not likewise go into retirement, but was passed on along! If so, Pope Francis would not actually be Petrus Romanus (Peter of Rome) but a continuation of Gloria Olivae ... Gloria Olivae II. This could explain why the Vatican has said that between Gloria Olivae and Petrus Romanus may be an indeterminate number of popes! Francis has likewise indicated that he might consider retiring within the next three years. Retirement could prolong indefinitely a series of popes, some being pulled out of retirement temporarily as needed if another retires due to poor health. In the event of a great schism, there could be enough retired popes to function as an emergency pope and one or more antipopes. Abbot Joachim Merlin prophesied the coming of three angelic pastors who would succeed a great French pontiff. Two of these three could well be in retirement, functioning as "support pontiffs" or "backup popes" to the one reigning pope. Thus, the office of pope may now be in the process of undergoing a transformation, transitioning into a completely different kind of office.   Controversy 3 The Hidden Pope Malachy saw fit to give the final pope on his list, Petrus Romanus, an entire sentence of description rather than only a motto. There is, in fact, a possible hidden pope in this prophecy: In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church there will reign Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock amid many tribulations, after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people. The End. It is assumed that the "dreadful Judge" is none other than God. Yet according to many other prophecies, Rome will be destroyed and a pope elected in exile, a French pope, will return to rebuild Rome's papal palaces and residences. Often called "the great Pontiff" he will assist another French figure known as the "great Monarch" after the end of World War III to restore peace, order, and law. Nostradamus says of this pope:   The great Celt will enter into Rome With a great mass of exiles and banished: The great pastor will put to death every man Who was united over the Alps against the cock.   So, clearly it can be seen that a "great pastor" will return to Rome in the post-war period and will indeed become a "dreadful judge" ... as he will have the power of life and death over the enemies of Christendom.   Controversy 4 This controversy suggests that there are nine popes predicted by Nostradamus who have yet to reign: In order for Francis to be the 112th and final pope, Malachy would have had to count all of the antipopes as well. Here are the antipopes the Vatican applied Malachy's legends to: They are: Felix V (1440-1449) That is 9 antipopes. Three of these reigned at the same time. One of the three, Innocent III (1179-1180), is listed by the Vatican, but no Malachy motto was attached to him. Another, who is called a counter anti-pope, Benedict XIV (1425-1430), is also listed by the Vatican but not given a Malachy description. Thus, 9 out of 11 antipopes were given mottoes as though they were actual popes. Did Malachy really foresee the future of these antipopes and regard them as legitimate heirs of St Peter and apply mottos to each of them? I doubt it. He was predicting an orderly line of legitimate papal succession. Half of these antipopes actually confused the line of succession and, of course, were not legitimate heirs of the Holy See. Malachy prophesied 112 POPES to follow Celestine II -- NOT 103 POPES and 9 OUT OF 11 ANTIPOPES! If we are to take Malachy seriously, therefore, we are currently on pope number 103, not pope 112. If this is true then Pope Benedict XVI was really Lumen in c�lo ("Light in the Heavens"). Indeed, only 20 months after becoming pope, the brightest comet since Comet Ikeya-Seki in 1965 appeared in the northern and southern hemispheres in January 2007. Comet McNaught was so bright it could even be seen overhead in a clear blue sky during the day. The mysterious and ghostly Comet Holmes followed in October 2007 in the constellation Perseus. Then, only hours after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation, lightning struck the top of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. Four days later, people were greeted by the blinding flash of a large meteorite exploding over Chelyabinsk, Russia. Lumen in c�lo is to be followed by the apocalyptic-sounding Ignis ardens ("Burning Fire") ... which can mean anything from a nuclear war to fiery meteors plunging to earth from the skies. Ignis ardens would then be the true motto for the current pontiff of Rome, Pope Francis. With World War III seemingly only months or a few years away, we may find the motto will be most applicable. After Ignis ardens, more ominously comes Religio depopulata ("Religion Depopulated" or "Religion Laid Waste") ... indicating either a great loss of human life worldwide from various causes and/or mass execution and sacrificing of Christians, not unlike what occurred during the reign of Nero, the French Revolution, or the Nazi genocide of Jews during the Second World War. After this would come Fides intrepida (Intrepid Faith) who apparently will also come to an early and dreadful end. After a period of 25 months with no pope at all he is followed by the "great Pontiff" of so many prophecies, Pastor angelicus (Angelic Shepherd), who will reign alongside the future "great Monarch" who will bring an end to World War III:   Ancient Irish (author unknown) ~ The close of the war finds a Celt in the Chair of Peter. He is the most perfect of all the popes; chosen miraculously amidst chaos. An angel in human form, he shall be called "Papa Angelorum." This Celt is not an Irish Celt but one born in Galicia, and the only Celt to occupy Peter's throne. He shall, like Peter of old, take his staff and his scrip, and with a few companions start out to reconcile the nations. Busto ~ The angelic Pope shall place an imperial crown on his head. Abbot Joachim Merlin ~ He will be the joy of God's elect. This angelic pope will preach the gospel in every country. Through his zeal and solicitude the Greek Church shall be forever reunited to the Catholic Church ... This holy Pope shall be both pastor and reformer. Through him the East and West shall be in everlasting concord. The city of Babylon shall then be the head and guide of the world. Rome, weakened in temporal power, shall forever preserve her spiritual dominion, and shall enjoy great peace. During these happy days the Angelic Pope shall be able to address to Heaven prayers full of sweetness. The dispersed nation shall also enjoy tranquillity. Six and a half years after this time the Pope will render his soul to God. The end of his days shall arrive in an arid province, situated between a river and a lake near the mountains ... His three immediate successors shall be men of exemplary holiness. One after the other will be models of virtue, and shall work miracles, confirming the teaching of their predecessors. Under their government the Church shall spread, and these Popes shall be called the Angelic Pastors. Capuchin Friar (1776) By the Catholic clergy and people the true and lawful Pope will be elected, who shall be a man of great holiness and goodness of life ... A scion of the Carlovingian race, by all considered extinct, will come to Rome to behold and admire the clemency of this Pontiff, who will crown him, and declare him to be the legitimate Emperor of the Romans, and from the Chair of St. Peter, the Pope will lift up the standard, the crucifix, and will give it to the new emperor. This new emperor, with the robust Italian and French people, and with those of other nations, will form a most Powerful host, called the Church Army, through which he shall destroy the Ottoman Empire, all heresies, and shall also totally defeat the Emperor of the North, who is called Mystic Antichrist. The above mentioned new emperor, with the assistance of God and of the Pope, will cooperate to the reformation of abuses; will assume the management of the temporal government; will assign a decent pension to the Supreme Pontiff, and also the bishops and clergy: and they all, being detached from earthly covetousness, will live in peace, which shall last till the end of time.   The three future "angelic popes" who shall follow Pastor angelicus will be Pastor et Nauta ("Pastor and Mariner"), Flos florum ("Flower of Flowers"), and De medietate Lun� ("of the Half Moon") ... applied erroneously to John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul I. If true, the late pope, Saint John Paul II, was not De labore Solis ("Labour of the Sun") but actually Crux de Cruce ("Cross of Crosses") ... which would make Saint John Paul II the "Pope of Popes" and one of the greatest popes in all of papal history. Therefore the bizarre legend De balneis hetruriae ("the Bath of Etruria"), mistakenly applied to Pope Gregory XVI, would be applied to Pope John Paul I, whose pontificate lasted only 33 days. So short and unexpected a reign was his that the motto was likely never fulfilled. Many believe John Paul I was murdered. Long after Malachy listed the legend De medietate Lunae ("of the Half Moon") which was applied by the Vatican to John Paul I, an unknown Vatican scholar updated the description by adding the cryptic line "and future victim." Another example of forcing a prophecy by adding a brief descriptive phrase. Even so, could it be that if he had lived a longer life and reigned a longer reign, that John Paul I (as De balneis hetruriae) would have been murdered in a bath in Tuscany (similar to how Jean-Paul Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday)? In any event, if Benedict XVI was "Light in the Heaven" and Francis is "Burning Fire," that means there are 9 more popes remaining after the reign of Francis. That is consistent with what I find in Nostradamus' prophecies. I can easily find nine (9) popes who have yet to reign. I have written an article about each of them on Nostradamus NOW Archives 1 .   Now that the potential folly of strictly adhering to Malachy's prophecies has been revealed, we can focus again on Quatrain 2.97 (The Rose Prophecy) and the Third Secret of Fatima.   Similarities, Differences Between Quatrain 2.97 and the Third Secret of Fatima Obviously, Pope Francis, or any successor, must avoid extensive traveling to cities that match the profile provided by Nostradamus or the Blessed Virgin in the Third Secret of Fatima. Not only will the Pope be assassinated but so too will all clergy people accompanying him ("you and yours"). This shared assassination of the pope and his clergy people ("you and yours") is what Quatrain 2.97 and the Third Secret of Fatima have in common. Another thing they both have in common is that neither prophecy has yet been fulfilled. However, there are striking differences (or at least striking omissions). Nostradamus never mentions that the city is half-destroyed. He never says anything about a pope climbing a holy mountain in Quatrain 2.97 ... or in any other quatrain. The Fatima vision, likewise, makes no mention of the city being watered by two rivers nor does it make reference in any fashion to a rose. Thus, it is entirely possible that Francis could be the pope of Quatrain 2.97 and his successor could be the "Bishop In White" who appears in the Third Secret of Fatima. Either that or else one man, Francis or a successor, may be the pope found in both prophecies. Because Nostradamus forsees a number of popes to follow Francis, rather than Francis being the final pope named "Peter of Rome" listed by Malachy, it is even possible that Quatrain 2.97 and the Fatima prophecy are about two successors of Francis and that Francis will die a natural death like John Paul II or even retire like Benedict XVI did. Francis has already discussed his possible retirement within the next three years with the news media. It is impossible to be entirely certain.   What is the meaning of the Rose? As discussed above, "the Rose" may simply be a seasonal dating clue, indicating late spring or possibly summer (or more specifically late May/early June) as the time the Pope will be in danger of succumbing to the prophecy. Then again, "the Rose" appears in several other Nostradamus quatrains and is used in a far more mysterious manner, as with Quatrain 5.96: "The rose above the middle of the great world." Thus, it could signify something of a mystical nature ... or an actual person: the late Princess Diana. One thing has come to my attention: the Rose may function as a key that helps us connect some very important dots. After we review the possible meanings of the Rose, we shall discuss two other quatrains linked together by the rose symbol ... for one of the three rose prophecies actually appears to tell us WHERE the city "watered by two rivers" may be located.   England's Rose. I have long established a possible connection between the Pope and the late Princess of Wales because of the "rose" clue in the final line of Quatrain 2.97. There is a seperate prophecy by Nostradamus that tells of a time that will come when an apparition of a beloved and famous woman will be seen by millions of people above her grave and that she will speak to them. Could this woman be the late Princess Diana being witnessed by a multitude at her island grave at Althorp? This may begin a time when what Nostradamus calls "the Temple of Diana" will become a new religion or Diana will be made an Anglican saint. It may well be that when this apparition appears, or the new church or sect begins attracting followers, that will be the time the Pope is assassinated. Click here for a three-section presentation on the relationship of "the rose" to Princess Diana and Pope Francis; more on the coming apparition; what may be the "new Diana," actress and ambassador Angelina Jolie, and Diana's actual replacement, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, recently-wedded to her eldest and favorite son, Prince William; and what prophecy says about the tragic death of "The Rose" in a Paris tunnel. In November 1999, a critical dream vision emailed to me by Conor concerning three stages in the relationship between a pope and a young woman who is only a ghostly spirit in the final stage, has suggested what may well be a psychic connection between Diana and John Paul II, Diana and Benedict XVI, and possibly Diana and Francis -- one that I believe may establish Paris or Avignon as the city of this pope's doom rather than a city in Iraq or Syria. To view this vision open a Dream Window .   The Mystical Rose. The lady who is associated with "the Rose" and who appears in Conor's dream may instead be the Virgin Mary. If the day of the Rosa Mystica is taken literally, the Pope or his successor may be assassinated on the specific dates of July 13, 2016 or July 13, 2018. Click here to learn more of the Rosa Mystica and its possible relationship to Quatrain 2.97.   The Rosy Cross. The emblem of the Rosicrucian Order, also known as The Order of the Rose and the Cross. Founded in the 15th Century, its mystical rites influenced the Freemasonic societies. However, it is claimed that its true beginning was in 46 AD as a gnostic Christian sect that also embraced Hermeticism (ancient Egyptian mystery beliefs). Today's Rosicrucian orders, and there are many, are either Christian or they are far afield from Christianity (the Golden Dawn, for example) and exalt the magical arts. It is strongly believed by many that Nostradamus was secretly a Christian Rosicrucian as a number of letters from him to his clients infer an association by the prophet, not to Catholicism, but to Lutheranism. That, combined with heremetic symbology and rites found in a number of his verses indicates this was likely so. The French seer was among an obscure group in the 16th Century that preserved the secret wisdom of the ancients as well as the original tenets of Christianity ... which included the concept of reincarnation. Christian Gnostics believed that if spiritual resurrection was not attained in one lifetime, then the soul would be subjected to as many reincarnations as neccessary until spiritual rebirth is attained. In The Apocalypse of Paul, the apostle Paul describes witnessing the soul of a deceased person in a place called the "the fourth heaven" being reincarnated by angelic beings. The apostle Mark relates accounts of secret rites and indoctrinations into the mysteries of the Kingdom of God by Jesus and of people other than Lazurus who were brought back from the dead. All of these writings were removed from what would be considered for the next 1700 years as The Holy Bible and consigned to Old Testament Apocrypha and New Testament Apocrypha. However, it is alleged that the Church fathers did not destroy these writings but held them in secret or hid them until such time the world would be ready for their release. Some of these writings have yet to be found. Others remain guarded by secret religious orders or even by the Catholic Church itself. The Gilded Rose (aka The Rose of Rialp). A sign given by God to Fr Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, an order operating within today's Catholic Church. The Opus Dei emblem is a cross in the circle of the world above a rose which symbolises Opus Dei women. Fact and fiction are blurred, but the order founded in 1928 may be a revived secret sect that kept concealed over the centuries the now badly-guarded "secret" that Jesus may have been married to Mary Magdalene and had children and kept hidden the descendants of this Merovingian bloodline. Controversies about Opus Dei have centered around criticisms of its alleged secretiveness, its recruiting methods, the alleged strict rules governing members, the practice by celibate members of mortification of the flesh, its alleged elitism and misogyny, the alleged right-leaning politics of most of its members, and the alleged participation by some in authoritarian or extreme right-wing governments, especially the Francoist Government of Spain until 1978. Within the Catholic Church, Opus Dei is also criticized for allegedly seeking independence and more influence. (Source: Wikipedia). Pop icon Madonna is reportedly fascinated by this "church within the Church" and may be seeking membership, even as her Kabbalah organisation falls to legal actions and investigations. Could it mean that Opus Dei will be merged with Kabbalah by Madonna to somehow create a "world religion" around the same time the Pope is assassinated? Or will the Hermetic mysteries, symbolised by the Rose, be made knowledge to the world by today's Rosicrucian orders and Freemason societies?   Where is the city between two rivers located? Unfortunately, we can only speculate about this city. There are a number of cities "watered by two rivers." Two nations where two large rivers are an important feature that spring immediately to mind are Iraq and France. There is no question that the clairvoyant saw many important future events taking place in Mesopotamia -- a region he was quite concerned about and predicted would be a major battleground in a future war. Although both Syria and Iraq make up this part of the world, he is more specific when he identifies the Mesopotamian nation as being "a land between two rivers" (obviously the Tigris and Euphrates). Unfortunately, there is no modern Iraqi city that is watered by two rivers or the Tigris and Euphrates. There is a small town named Qurna where the two rivers meet and form the Shatt al-Arab. According to legend, this is the site of the Garden of Eden. But far from being a city, it is barely more than a village and was partially destroyed during the US invasion of 2003. If it were a city, and not a town, it would probably qualify as the city half-destroyed in the Third Secret of Fatima. Not far away is the city of Basrah, also partially depopulated by war. There is also the site of the ancient city of Babylon, where exiled Jews lamented by the banks of its rivers their loss of Zion. Initial work on Babylon's restoration was begun by the late Saddam Hussein in 1983, but three wars, one with Iran and two with the United States, destroyed some of the progress that was made and stalled further construction. Still, plans are currently underway by the US and the Iraqi government to rebuild Babylon as a tourist attraction and entertainment center ... to bring to fruition the dream pursued by Saddam. Lastly, there is the city of Baghdad, the capital of the "land between two rivers" (Iraq), although only the Tigris River runs through it. As for France, Paris is watered by the two major rivers Seine and Marne. Another French city that figures prominently in Nostradamus' quatrains concerning France and the Vatican is Avignon. It lies within the V formed by the rivers Rhone and Durance. In Greece, the great city of Athens is watered by two rivers, the Kifisos and Ilisos. In North America, the huge metropolis of Montreal in Quebec, Canada lies on the junction of two rivers: the St Lawrence and the Ottawa. There are many others to be found throughout the world.   Where is the city where there is a nearby mountain with a cross at its summit? Again, there are many such cities all over the world.   Is there a city watered by two rivers with a nearby mountain with a cross at its summit? Returning to the city of Paris, the holy mountain, as suggested by a viewer, may well be the hill of the Sacre Couer Cathedral. Paris also is the city of Diana's death ("the Rose") and now the site of several Diana shrines of great significance. Also in France, the holy mountain of Avignon, as suggested by another viewer, could well be Le rocher des Doms which looks a lot like the one of prophecy. As for the cross at the top of Le rocher des Doms, it likely belongs to the Cathedrale Notre Dame des Doms.     According to the Third Secret of Fatima, the city in question will be half-destroyed. In the case of Paris, a huge metropolis with a population of 2,249,975, the French prophet warns that a second, dreadful revolution will plague the great city again, which will be surrounded by foreign troops that will allow its own people to burn it to the ground. At Avignon, a city of 92,000, a terrible Muslim invasion will bring military destruction there as well. Montreal, a huge, sprawling, cosmopolitan city between two rivers, is well-known for its holy mountain. The Mount Royal Cross is a monument on top of Mount Royal in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It stands at the northeastern edge of the mountain, overlooking the east end of Montreal. The current cross stands 103 feet tall. It was converted to fibre-optic light in 1992, allowing the cross to be lit in red, blue or purple. The cross is usually illuminated in white; the new computerised system permits it to be changed to any colour, including the purple traditionally used between the death of the Pope and the election of the new Pope. How frightful, indeed, it would be if the half-destroyed metropolis of prophecy is Montreal ... with a population in 2013 of 1,717,767. This would indeed indicate World War III had begun.   The Second Rose Prophecy Indicates Athens May Be The City However, if we look at our second "rose" prophecy by Nostradamus, it becomes apparent that the city in question may well be ATHENS ... in the nation of Greece. Pope John Paul II visited this great city in 2001, but Pope Benedict XVI did not and Pope Francis has yet to visit there ... and he might not until the fatal blooming of "the Rose" takes place.   Nostradamus, Quatrain 5.31 ~ Through the land of Attica, leader of wisdom, which at present is the rose of the world: The Pontiff ruined and his great pre-eminence, to be subjugated and a shipwreck in the waves.   Athens, the capital and largest city in Greece, is located in the southeastern part of the country along the Attic plain. Three of its sides are mountainous, the Parnis, Penteli and Hymettos Mountains, and two rivers, the Kifisos and Ilisos, flow throughout the city. It has a huge population of 3,737,550. Athens is truly a city watered by two rivers. That is all that is required for it to be the city described in Quatrain 2.97. But could it also be the city of the Fatima vision ... a city where a sacred mountain can be accessed? There is no notable cross at the top of any of the three mountains listed above, although there are several monastaries. The nearest mountain in Greece that does have a cross at its peak is many miles away on the Greek island of Rhodes (which is obviously not on the Attica plain and quite close to Turkey). However, in 1925, high above Mount Hymettus, just outside of Athens, there was a gigantic cross seen for the space of half an hour. On the night of September 14, 1925, above the top of Mount Hymettus, over 2,000 of the Faithful witnessed a miracle from God: it took the form of a huge, radiant Byzantine cross:   One of the most astounding signs from God took place during the all-night vigil for the feast of the Exaltation of the Precious Cross, in the year 1925. In the little country chapel of St. John the Theologian at the foot of Mt. Hymettus (which was then miles outside of Athens, but which is now deep within the city limits-so much has the city grown. The section is called St. John Holargos) over two thousand people had gathered to celebrate the feast according to the old calendar reckoning. When Archbishop Papadopoulos got wind of it, he sent a message to the Minister of Interior Affairs, who in turn sent the police to disperse the crowd and arrest the priest. When the police arrived and saw the size of the crowd, they decided to wait until the morning to arrest the priest. At midnight, just when the procession for Litya was taking place, the people who were standing outside in the court of the little chapel suddenly saw a giant cross forming in the heavens directly above their heads. The Cross, which was lying horizontally, stretched from the little chapel to above the peak of Mt. Hymettus, and was in the form of the Byzantine Cross, with three straight cross-bars. When the people saw it-it was most brilliant and radiant in appearance-they all cried out in fear. The procession and the service came to a stop, and the people fell on their knees weeping and chanting Kyrie eleison. The police, also, became so terrified that they literally threw down their weapons and with tears began to pray with the others. For a half-hour the Cross remained thus in the sky and then slowly began to raise itself until it finally stood straight up and down, and then it slowly disappeared.   Could the answer to the riddle of the cross in the Third Secret of Fatima be that the cross itself is a miracle? Imagine Pope Francis or a successor deciding one day to celebrate the 1925 Miracle of the Cross of Mount Hymettus by visiting Athens and then touring the slope and peak of the holy mountain ... a mountain whose slopes are inside Athens itself (just like the mountain in the Third Secret of Fatima, accessible from the "half-destroyed" city). From its top one can see all of Athens, the tops of the other mountains, and even as far southwest as the Peloponnese. When we read the Third Secret of Fatima, it becomes apparent that the Cross itself transcends reality, being attended by angelic beings associated with Martyrdom and the sealing of souls. Thus, there need be no cross at all ... the cross the Pope and his entourage may be paying homage to in the Fatima prophecy may be the miraculous one that appeared upon the feast of the Exaltation of the Precious Cross. Or could it be that a great monument will be erected there to commemorate the 1925 miracle ... a giant cross? A future papal trip to Athens and Mount Hymettus could well mark another occasion of importance: an effort to merge the Greek Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church ... the reuniting of the Eastern and Western Roman Empire. Pope Benedict made great strides at the task John Paul II held dear: the reunification of the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion. Will Francis one day reconcile with the Greek Orthodox Church? This pope seems to be all about unification. If Athens is the city half-destroyed, then this pope or another will die there "in the land of Attica" at a pivotal moment of future history, for there may be a biblical prophecy that coincides with the murderous attack by soldiers upon him and his entourage.   Daniel 11:2 ~ And now will I show thee the truth. Behold, there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia: and the fourth shall be far richer than they all: and by his strength through his riches he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia.   World War III will either begin or be well under way when a declaration of war by Iran (Persia) is made against Greece, Macedonia, Turkey, and the European Union. When Iran invades Macedonia and Greece, Russia will invade Germany and Austria.   The Third Rose Prophecy Indicates a Great Revelation   Nostradamus, Quatrain 5.96 ~ The rose above the middle of the great world, for new deeds blood publicly shed: To speak the truth they will have closed mouths, then at the time of need the awaited one will come late.   Although one meaning, as we will discover, concerns the murder of Princess Diana ("the Rose") in Paris, another concerns a religious cult, a spectacular suicide, and the release of a great revelation. It was reported in 2011 by various news sources that a 1970s American mind-control cult similar to Scientology called "The Rose of the World" remains active in other countries, including Russia. An investigation by filmmaker Peter Pomerantsev has concluded without a doubt that Russian supermodel Ruslana Korshunova, who leapt to her death from a building site adjacent to her 9th floor Manhattan apartment on June 28, 2008, belonged to this cult. So too did another prominent model, Anastasia Drozdova, a close friend of Ruslana's, who also leapt to her death in 2009. Both were members of the cult, Rose of the World. Ruslana allegedly wrote the following on her web page before leaping to her death: "My dream is to fly. Oh, my rainbow it is too high." A search of Anastasia's room yielded the following cryptic message from Rose of the World: "Anastasia, your lullaby is winter's end. You're on your way." Ruslana's body was found 8.5 metres from the building from which she fell. Pomerantsev had this to say about Ruslana's alleged suicide "jump": "8.5 meters? That's not a fall. That's a leap. That's almost flight. She didn't stand on the ledge and take a step off. She took a run and soared." Manhattan is the financial centre of the world ("middle of the great world"). Ruslana Korshunova's blood was shed publicly, but for what "new deeds" remains a mystery. Meantime, the return of Jesus Christ was falsely anticipated to occur on May 21, 2011. However, as Nostradamus assures us, He will come much later than anyone dares to imagine. In some way, this "rose revelation" may be a warning to the current pope that a "two rivers" city or "Holy cross mountain" must be avoided. It could be functioning as a timing clue, just as the time when the roses bloom (May/June) also does. Unplanned, spontaneous trips could be extemely dangerous. One example of how such a trip could have been disastrous was the former Pope Benedict's June 2011 journey to Croatia and considered visit to nearby Medjugorje. The timing of this papal visit to Zagreb was potentially dangerous had Pope Benedict decided to take a train or plane afterwards to Medjugorje and then climb Medjugorje Cross Mountain, the highest Golgotha in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Especially in light of the following revelation:   Student arrested ahead of Papal visit to Croatia Cache of guns found but police have not confirmed if they have halted an assassination attempt on Holy Father Scottish Catholic Observer May 31, 2011 A Croatian student has been arrested after posting ‘weird’ comments about Pope Benedict XVI on Facebook ahead of the Papal visit to the country this weekend. The arrest was made in the southern village of Skabrnja and the 22-year-old, who lives with his father, was found with two guns and 300 rounds of ammunition, according to police reports. Croatian police have not confirmed whether they believe they halted an assassination attempt on the Holy Father, who is due to arrive in Zagreb on Saturday. Prior to the incident, Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi said that the Pope feels at home in Croatia, a country with deep Christian and Catholic roots that has preserved with loyalty in difficult times. “Today, Croatia faces the challenge of secularisation: the family and youth are crucial challenges it has to deal with,” Fr Lombardi said. “That’s why the central events of the Pope’s trip are his participation in the meeting with Croatian Catholic Families, and with young people.”   This occurred on the heels of the arrest the previous week of former Bosnian Serb military general Ratko Mladic for genocide. Since the arrest and pending trial in the Netherlands, thousands of Serbs rioted and clashed with police in support of Mladic. The region, once again, threatened to become inflamed with passions ... then came the report of a foiled assassination. A city like Zagreb or Belgrade could have been torn asunder if just the wrong events had taken place. Although when reading the Third Secret of Fatima one gets the feeling that the "big city" is quite near to the "mountain," this need not be the case. In this age of air travel they could be miles apart yet the trip from one to the other might only be 15 to 20 minutes, more or less. The Croatian city of Zagreb is this close in terms of air travel. It is not watered by two rivers, but it is "big" enough with a population of 785,964. Yet, hop on a plane, and the Pope could be in the pastoral village of Medjugorje in less than half an hour. The most famous and holy mountain in the world at this time is Cross Mountain in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is accessed from Apparition Mountain where a Marian apparition appeared before six children on June 24, 1981. Two of the six children have continued to receive messages from the Virgin Mary every month since that date. Medugorje has become one of the most popular pilgrimage sites for Catholics (and people of other faiths) in the world and has turned into Europe's third most important religious place, where each year more than 1 million people visit. It has been estimated that 30 million pilgrims have come to Medugorje since the reputed apparitions began in 1981. Many have reported visual phenomena including the sun spinning in the sky or changing colors and figures such as hearts and crosses around the sun.   When is either the Nostradamus prophecy or Fatima prophecy supposed to take place? Unfortunately, Nostradamus does not say. Aside from the possible season of late spring or summer, a year is not given. Nor is there any planetary alignment contained in Quatrains 2.97 or 5.31 as a dating clue. Likewise, the Fatima revelation, as much as we know, reveals only that such an event will occur at a time of major, probably global, war (unless the half-destroyed city is in ruins due to a massive terrorist attack).   Base 7 projection I believe that history repeats itself (more or less) at intervals of seven years and multiples of seven years. I call this mathematically-based theory "base 7 numerology" although it is not true numerology, but a mathematically-contrived system based on observation of historical patterns ... a way to understand and anticipate the workings of a very real natural phenomenon. The key to the future, in other words, lies in the past. History truly does repeat itself, yet not always exactly. I use real historical events, their months and years, as the index or precedent(s) for the projected future event. I also use real prophecy and close observation of current events to calculate in what direction we are heading. I find that to the year I am usually between 71% and 91% successful with my predictions. So, according to my base 7 system of numerology, when might the current pope be in danger? Some things are hidden from us, however perfect God's number 7 may be. There are some events we are meant to be confused about, and that we cannot be allowed to tamper with .. for better or for worse. Yet, it is surprising the many things we are allowed to know about in advance ... and to change or at least postpone. Evidence of the number 7, and multiples thereof, working through diverse historical patterns and trends is more plentiful than one man alone can possibly predict. Often I discover, after it is too late, that yet another "base 7" historical repetition has played out. Still, some things are intended to be hidden. All of these projections of past events repeating again in some fashion in the future and the dating "vectors" for them are merely "windows of opportunity." That is all they are: opportunities for an event to happen again in some way. Yet, by anticipating the future through the study of past events and repetitive trends, these projections can fulfill the same function as prophecy. There are three established assassination and assassination attempt "windows of opportunity" to be concerned about: September 1978, May 1981, and May 1982. The first is September 1978. This was a "Triple Pope" year. August, September, and October were marked by the deaths of Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul I, and Pope John Paul II's ascension to the Holy See. The last repetition of that year was 2013. I believed and predicted that Pope Benedict XVI would die of natural causes like Pope Paul VI. Instead he was the first pope to retire in Vatican history. It then stood to reason that his successor, who turned out to be Pope Francis, might die after a brief reign like Pope John Paul I who, it is widely believed, was murdered by poison. It would have happened no later than September 2013. Nerves became frayed in June 2013, one month before Francis was to visit Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, when mass protests and terrible riots broke out that lasted for many days and involved millions of people. Parts of the city went up in flames. I felt it necessary to warn against the planned July 2013 visit. Indeed, the trip was nearly canceled by Vatican officials. Fortunately, the rioting ended a few weeks beforehand and peace prevailed during the papal visit. An opportunity for 2013 to become another Triple Pope year failed. Had Francis died after a short reign, the next pope might well have been the one Nostradamus called "Paul the celibate." He would have fled Rome during the appearance of an unusually bright comet and later died at Avignon during a military attack on southern France. When that might have happened is unknown since the third pope of 1978, John Paul II, reigned a very long time. Avignon is a city between two rivers. Of course, Francis did not die and a third pope was not elected. Still, anxiety was high in 2013 because two major comets were predicted by astronomers to appear. The first, the much anticipated Comet PanSTARRS, turned out to be yet another fizzle. Because of its timing, I never believed it would be a danger anyway, unless it were to portend disaster in Rio. A greater expectation awaited for November 2013 with Comet ISON (yet another major disappointment). That would have been during the time of the third pope had Francis died earlier in the year. If ISON had been an extremely bright comet and a third pope had been elected by August, September, or October, World War III might have begun at that time. Again, fortunately this was not the case. The year 1978 comes around again in 2020. Will 2020 become the next "Triple Pope" year? The other two base 7 dates to be concerned about are May 2016, due to the attempted assassination and serious injuring of Pope John Paul II when he was shot by Mehmet Ali Agca in May 1981, and May 2017, due to a second attempt on the Pope's life in May 1982 when he was attacked by a bayonet-wielding priest. May 2016 has passed, and Pope Francis safely completed a papal visit to Armenia in June. Still, May 1981 will continue to be an influence throughout the remainder of 2016. After that, May 2017 will be the last window of opportunity until September 2020. Again, May 1982 will wield its influence throughout the year 2017. We should be very concerned about 2017: the May 1982 attack on John Paul II occurred in F�tima, Portugal. Whether or not John Paul II was wounded by the bayonet was not allowed to be reported. But F�tima is the source of the Third Secret prophecy and it is to F�tima that Francis will travel on either May 13, 2017 ... on the 100th anniversary of the first apparition (the roses will be blooming then too) .... or October 13, 2017 ... on the 100th anniversary of the last apparition! The decision has not yet been made and it may well be either or both. Or it may yet be another date: July 13, 2017 ... on the 100th anniversary of the revealing of the Third Secret. I must emphasize that new precedents can always be created and not one of these three years may be the year of impact. In the face of established prophecy, vigilance has to be maintained at all times.   Clues from Nostradamus Quatrain 2.97, by itself, reads like a papal visit gone horribly wrong. It sings with a sense of peacetime in spring or summer, with roses abloom, perhaps with what may be a beautiful apparition of Diana occurring at the same time in England -- all shattered by the crackling guns of assassins. However, in sharp contrast to this scenario is the Third Secret of Fatima which says the city will be gloomy and half-destroyed, apparently by war, and that the visiting pope will bless the dead bodies of the inhabitants before he and his entire ENTOURAGE are killed BY SOLDIERS. The entourage is the detail that may link the two prophecies. Nostradamus says "both you and yours" to the pope who will die, thus indicating others accompanying him will also die. However, I must stress this as a possibility: Quatrain 2.97 may deal with the first murdered pope (Francis or his successor) and the Third Secret of Fatima prophecy may concern the next murdered pope, "Paul the Celibate" (Pope Paul VII? Pope John Paul III?). Thus, we may see: 1) a murdered "Rose Pope," 2) a murdered "Paul the Celibate" (Pol Mensolee) during a military attack, 3) followed by the election of a French pope in exile ... not to officially return to take power in Rome and the Vatican for another 25 months. In a series of frightening quatrains, Nostradamus describes an invasion of southern France via the Pyrenees and from the port at Marseilles. It culminates with nearly a million dead French civilians killed by "fire from the sky" as they flee northwards toward Lyon (which is also captured by the enemy). I believe the cause of the "fire" may be Fuel Air Explosives, sometimes called the poor man's nuclear bomb. The devastation from FAEs is nearly as horrific as that caused by atomic bombs, only without the radiation. This southern advance I believe will either be led by 1) by a powerful, united Arab leader much to the bewilderment of The West and to other nations like Russia and China; the major nations not having expected this to happen, or 2) by powerful Iranian ("Persian") and "Median" allies of Moscow (Iranians, Kurds, and Muslim groups from the former Soviet Union). In addition, if the second instance prevails, Russian forces will press westward into Austria and Germany from the former Warsaw Pact and north into Scandinavia. Either way, the world will be at war.   "Pol Mensolee"/"Paul the celibate" (Nostradamus) The next pope, whenever he is elected, will likely be called Paul VII or else John Paul III. If Francis fails to fulfill the role of Petrus Romanus, but instead proves to be Ignis ardens, upon his death or retirement it will be said of him that he was one of the "indeterminant number of popes" not named by Malachy that would reign between Gloria Olivae and Petrus Romanus. Upon the election of his successor it may be said that he is the Tribulation pope. But this will be wrong, as he shall have a successor who will be French and reign many years. This next pope was a frontrunner in the election that followed the death of Pope John Paul II and again in the election that followed Pope Benedict's official retirement. The current Archbishop of Milan and former Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Angelo Scola, retains the right to participate in any future conclaves that begin before his 80th birthday on November 7, 2021. The reign of "Pol Mensolee" will be short, for war will come to Western Europe and he shall be forced to flee Rome. He will escape to France, only to be killed-in-action in Avignon during a military attack.   Nostradamus, Quatrain 1.37 ~ A short time before the sun sets, conflict is engaged, a great nation in doubt: Overcome, the marine port will not reply, Pontiff and grave to be both in foreign places.     Nostradamus, Quatrain 8.46 ~ Paul the celibate will die three leagues from the Rhone, the two nearest flee the destructive monster: When Mars will make a most horrible throne, the cock and the eagle, France, the three brothers.   John of the Cleft Rock (14th Century) Towards the end of the world, tyrants and hostile mobs will rob the Church and the clergy of all their possessions and will afflict and martyr them. Those who heap the most abuse upon them will be held in high esteem. At that time, the Pope with his cardinals will have to flee Rome in tragic circumstances to a place where they will be unknown. The Pope will die a cruel death in his exile. The sufferings of the Church will be much greater than at any previous time in her history. But God will raise a holy Pope, and the Angels will rejoice. Enlightened by God, this man will rebuild almost the whole world through his holiness. He will lead everyone to the true Faith.   Pope Pius X (1835 - 1914) "What I have seen is terrifying! Will I be the one, or will it be a successor? What is certain is that the Pope will leave Rome and, in leaving the Vatican, he will have to pass over the dead bodies of his priests! Do not tell anyone this while I am alive." "I saw one of my successors taking to flight over the bodies of his brethren. He will take refuge in disguise somewhere and after a short retirement he will die a cruel death. The present wickedness of the world is only the beginning of the sorrows which must take place before the end of the world. Respect for God has disappeared from human hearts. They wish to efface even God's memory. This perversity is nothing less than the beginning of the last days of the world."   Watch Out For Planet Mars We were able to rule out an August 27, 2003 dating for the above Quatrain 8.46 when global war failed to occur at the time Mars achieved its closest opposition to earth in 60,000 years. Therefore, Nostradamus might only be writing of Mars in its usual role of the God of War. However, in July 2018, Mars will undergo its second closest opposition to earth in 60,000 years ... with the August 2003 opposition being the only closer one. To the human eye there will be no difference at all: On July 31, 2018 Mars will only be 35.8 million miles from Earth ... the closest approach since August 27, 2003 when it was only 34.6 million miles and the closest at that time in 60,000 years. In other words, if not for the August 2003 opposition, the coming July 2018 opposition would be the closest in 60,000 years. Scientists calculate they won't get that close again until August 28, 2287. Once again, "Mars will make a most horrible throne." Thus, according to Quatrain 8.46 above, a pope who flees Rome will die nine miles (three leagues) from Tarascon, in Avignon. As mentioned already, Avignon is situated in the V formed by the rivers Rhone and Durance. He will literally be between two rivers. Diana, the possible "rose" of Quatrain 2.97, died in northern France, in Paris, watered by the rivers Seine and Marne. So there is an interesting symmetry here: northern France for Diana, southern France for Pol Mensolee (Paul VII or John Paul III). So Quatrain 2.97 apparently happens during a time of war, just as the Fatima vision suggests. The fiery invasion of southern France is also echoed in an ancient document authored by an unknown clergyman in AD 346. Entitled the Liber Vaticinationem Quodam Instinctumentis, it presages three world wars that will directly involve Germany, the first two as an aggressor and the last as a defender of "the Empire" against the invaders from the East:   For the third (world war), the earth shakes, The throat of the Gaul (France) is ravaged. Many die fleeing from the awful winds, The sun halts in its path in the heavens.   It is then said that the norma will die "when the wolf (Germany) is hacked to bits." According to Nostradamus many of the towns and cities in this region, such as Carcassonne, Comminges, Foix, Auch, Mazeres, Nice, Frejus, and Antibes will be attacked by enemies with weapons that bring down "fire from the sky." During this invasion, the Pope dies approaching Le Rocher des Doms. Nearly a million French will die along with him or be taken captive:   All of the inhabitants of Marseilles are changed, Fleeing and pursued as far as Lyon, Narbonne, Toulouse outraged by Bordeaux, The killed and captive are nearly one million.   Citizens of Marseilles are pursued by Islamic forces as far as the major French city of Lyon 150 miles to the north. The southern cities of Toulouse and Narbonne are sacked, and the total number of French killed or taken prisoner fleeing 'the awful winds' of atomic and FAE (Fuel Air Explosive) attacks are 1,000,000. In any event, I must lay out this scenario, if not as a warning to Francis (whose name does not really conform to "Paul"), then to the one who follows after him.   "The Pope from Ancient France" aka "The Cardinal of France" (Nostradamus)     I believe the above cardinal of France, Andr� Armand Vingt-Trois, may be the same "cardinal of France" Nostradamus tells us will appear during World War III and that this man will be elected pope to become the "great Pontiff." Many candidates have been placed by interpreters of prophecy; however, I have been consistant about my belief that Vingt-Trois will be the French pontiff since at least 2004. Nostradamus even names him in one quatrain when London is under attack and a highly-placed high priestess, none other than "the whore of Babylon," is killed along with many of her sect. The Vatican will be in exile at this time. When the war ends, he will return to Rome and will become the greatest pope of our age: "The great Pontiff" who shall rule alongside the "The Great Monarch." However, according to John of Vitiguerro (13th Century) there may be no pope at all for 25 months, after which the French pope is elected:   The pope will change his residence and the Church will not be defended for twenty-five months or more because, during all that time there will be no Pope in Rome... After many tribulations, a Pope shall be elected out of those who survived the persecutions.   This could delay the "great Pontiff" coming to power until 2020 ... but only if the second closest opposition of Mars in the last 60,000 years in July 2018 is of prophetic significance. After all, the closest opposition of August 2003 came and went without a third world war taking place. Vingt-Trois will be eligible to participate in any future papal conclaves until he reaches the age of 80, on November 7, 2022. Here is yet another prophecy concerning a French pontiff:   Abbot "Merlin" Joachim (d. 1202) ~ At the beginning, in order to obtain these happy results, having need of a powerful temporal assistance, this holy Pontiff will ask the cooperation of the generous monarch of France (Great Monarch). At that time a handsome monarch, a scion of King Pepin, will come as a pilgrim to witness the splendor of this glorious pontiff, whose name shall begin with R . . . A temporal throne becoming vacant, the Pope shall place on it this king whose assistance he shall ask.   This certainly appears to be about the pope who, in most prophecies, comes to power near or at the end of World War III along with "the Great Monarch" (whom Nostradamus names "Chiren" in the quatrains). Then again, perhaps the "great Pontiff" comes to power before the great and terrible war begins and the "Great Monarch" (who is usually French) does not take action and defeat the enemies from "the East" until near the end of the war. Thus, speculation concerning the identity of this monarch will remain a subject of debate until this destined "first king" of Europe drives out the Eastern armies. However, if he is to be a descendent of Pepin the Short, he would have to be of Carolingian blood, long thought to be extinct. Upon this issue of the "great Pontiff" many prophecies are in contradiction: some say the wartime pope flees Rome and dies in exile, there is no pope or only antipopes for a few years, and then another pope (the "great Pontiff") is elected and installed at the end of the world war; others say the wartime pontiff flees Rome, goes into temporary exile, and is restored to the Vatican when the war ends. Which shall it be?   Benedict XVI, pontiff emeritus: Future German Antipope? Benedict XVI may be retired and no longer a pope, but he is very much alive and can still function as an antipope. There is a lengthy (too lengthy for this page) prophecy by Merlin that would suggest that the now retired Benedict XVI might come to be regarded as a "German Anti-Pope" after which another pope is restored as "true Pope" by the French monarch near the end of the war.   Merlin (6th century) ~ There will come a German Anti-Pope. Italy and Germany will be sorely troubled. A French King will restore the true Pope ... In the meanwhile a powerful Prince out of the East shall provoke him to battle. Against whom the Lion shall march with all his forces and pitching his camp on this side (west) of the Euphrates, shall await him. If the Prince shall come over the river the Lion shall be overcome; but he (Lion) shall cross the river with his army and give his enemy a bloody defeat and be master of all the East.   Note that Merlin somewhat contradicts Joachim who says the Pope will select the great Monarch and restore him to the long vacant imperial throne of the Charlemagne empire. Here it is the monarch who restores the Pope. Also, in this instance, the pope from Germany is called an "Anti-Pope." Time will tell.   The Pope of the Crooked Cross Although the following quatrain alone does not identify who "the great Pontiff" may be, it is important in setting the stage for one that does. Note that a time will come when the Pope has his own army. No pope has had a real army of his own since the 16th Century. And since this prophecy was never fulfilled during the 16th Century, during or after the death of Nostradamus, it must be futuristic.   By sea the red one will be captured by pirates, The peace will be troubled by his policy: The anger and greed will be revealed by a false act, For the great Pontiff the army will be doubled.   Apparently the Cardinal Legate will be taken hostage at sea by terrorists ("pirates"), troubling a shaky peace. The Pope's private army will be doubled, indicating he already has had one for some period of time.   Through the party of Mars, the great Pontiff Will subjugate the confines of the Danube: The cross pursues with a crooked cross of iron, Captives, gold, jewels, more than one hundred thousand rubies.   Again we see a new pope with a private army. During the latter stages of World War III, he will order a task force into lower Germany, Austria, and the former Yugoslavia to drive out what foreign forces still remain in these countries. War criminals will be pursued and captured, weapons confiscated, prisoners released from death camps, and valuables restored to the survivors. Note that in line 3 the Pope is associated with the "crooked cross of iron": Nostradamus' description in other quatrains of the Nazi swastika. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was a member of the Hitler youth and served in the German army for two years before deserting to America. For this reason, I believe this quatrain, at least, and possibly Quatrain 5.44 above, may be about a German antipope, the now-retired Benedict XVI, and events yet to come in the near future.   The Name of the Rose Nostradamus may be providing the pontiff with a double clue as to the time when he and his entourage may be gunned down by assassins. "When blooms the rose" not only indicates the season of summer but the July 1 to August 31 period when the memory of Princess Diana, "England's Rose" is honored each year at Althorp, London, and the tunnel in Paris.   The Resurrection of the Rose     Nostradamus, Quatrain 4.24 ~ Heard beneath the holy earth the sacred voice of a woman, divine flame to shine for the human voice: It will cause the sole ones their land to be stained with blood, and the holy temples of the impure ones destroyed.   Nostradamus seems to have prophesied the death of Princess Diana, her "temple" at Althorp, and her reappearance to the world as a miraculous apparition. Sacred ground, especially from Nostradamus' strict European Christian perspective, is usually burial ground: earth that has been consecrated by the Church or by a Christian ceremony made suitable for burial of the dead. Thus, the woman whose voice is discerned coming from the ground is dead. Therefore, what we are experiencing in this quatrain is a woman of tremendous importance, adored and loved in death as well as in life, returning to communicate a message to her worshippers and to the entire world. This final event has been presaged by a growing number of paranormal apparitions sighted in various parts of the world, including the UK, by large numbers of people and entire communities. Most recently Diana's ghost appeared quite clearly in a church in Scotland and was captured on camera, the video since going viral. This, however, was but a precursor of the event predicted by Nostradamus. Diana's spirit appearance at Althorp, or before a multitude elsewhere, should occur after the founding of a new, false religion (ISIS?) and just prior to Iraq entering a huge regional conflict in the Middle East (the still ongoing war in Syria and parts of Iraq) just before World War III is triggered:   Nostradamus, Quatrain 9.74 ~ Within the city of Fersod (al-Sadr), homicide, again and again many oxen plow, not to slaughter, a return again to the honours of Diana, and to Vulcan dead bodies to burn.   So very terrible will this war be that many hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people will be delivered up as human sacrifices to Vulcan, the God of Fire. They will be soldiers and luckless civilians incinerated by terrible weapons, including nuclear weapons. Also, perhaps, their dead bodies will be collected and mass cremated. In one quatrain, Nostradamus links Babylon (Iraq) to "the infernal gods of Hannibal," and thusly to the worship of Ba'al Hammon who was honoured in Carthage by the taking of criminals, slaves, war prisoners, and other people unlucky to be captives and burning them alive at an altar before a statue shaped like a giant bull or ox. One such bull was made of bronze and hollow on the inside. The human sacrifice was shut up inside its belly and roasted alive, his or her screams sounding like the bellowing of a bull when issuing forth from the statue's metallic nostrils. Later, when the trap door of the bull's stomach was opened, the victims' bones tumbled out, glistening like well-polished jewels. Fersod (change the "F" to an "L) = el-Sodr. Modernised, "el" becomes "al", thus el-Sodr becomes al-Sodr, which sounds like the actual spelling, al-Sadr. Sadr City is a southern suburban district of the city of Baghdad. During the reign of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein it was called Saddam City. After the US invasion of Iraq ended in May 2003, the district was renamed Sadr City after the deceased Shi'a leader Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr. Muqtada al-Sadr, an Iraqi Shi'a mullah who leads the Mahdi Army (also spelled as Mehdi Army) in Iraq, is the son of the man the city was named after, and used Sadr City as a base of operations against US occupational forces between 2004 and 2007. If al-Sadr ever becomes leader of Iraq, which is possible, this would make Baghdad his city by namesake. Muqtada al-Sadr may well be the "king of Babylon" prophesied by both Nostradamus and the Biblical prophet Jeremiah to appear in the latter days. Jeremiah warns that at the conclusion of the great war, Babylon (Iraq) will be utterly destroyed by many nations from beyond the Middle East, likely from Europe, as well as by the former Mede nations such as Georgia, Armenia, and Turkey. Afterwards, it will remain uninhabitable forever. Nostradamus specifically predicts the armies that are arrayed against "the King of Babylon" at the conclusion of World War III will be led by "the King of Europe" allied with those of Russia. The huge regional conflict to occur in the Middle East will be ignited by a figure named Alus sanguinaire: "The bloody Alus." This is possibly Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (al-Us sad). Then again, it may be connected to the brutal regime and "caliphate" known as ISIS/ISIL or, as they prefer to be known, the Islamic State, and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Once again, I point to the coming visit by Pope Francis to Fatima, Portugal near the 100th anniversary of the Third Secret of Fatima on July 13, 2017 and the July 31, 2018 dating of Mars' second closest opposition in 60,000 years.     Angelina Jolie: The New Diana This is actually rather shocking. But watching Pope Francis greet UN ambassador and actress Angelina Jolie in January 2015 gave me a sense of de ja vu ... when Pope John Paul II greeted Princess Diana. Note that both women are wearing black. Could it be that instead of England's Rose we are witnessing the flourishing of the World's Rose in the person of Angelina Jolie? It seems to me that if there is a danger to anyone other than the Pope in 2017 or 2018, it would have to be someone who comes in close to being another Princess Diana, and possibly one who is an actress. And there is only one person I can think of who fits that description: Angelina Jolie warns ISIS using rape as weapon of war on unprecedented scale - September 9, 2015. ISIS, thus far, has said nothing publically about Jolie's remarks or threatened her. But I fear that day may well come. One can see that although Angelina Jolie is not royalty as was Princess Diana, she is a major global diplomat and humanitarian, something that Princess Diana also was. But while on the subject of royalty: Angelina Jolie's meeting with Pope Francis came three months after she received an honorary Damehood from Queen Elizabeth II. The Oscar-winning actress met the Queen in October 2014, and was presented with the Insignia of an Honorary Dame Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George at a reception at Buckingham Palace. The monarch herself received Angelina, who starred as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, Mr and Mrs Smith, and Changeling, and who was named by Forbes as Hollywood's highest-paid actress. Angelina Jolie has been in Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. Jolie also is to play the role of Cleopatra in an upcoming movie to be filmed in 2016 with a tentative projected release in 2017. Then again, the film may never get made. In any case, she has definite ties to Egypt. Husband Brad Pitt and Angelina have spent much time in that country since June 2012. Thus, from a prophecy perspective, it is quite possible Angelina Jolie may outdo Princess Diana in stature. Because she has almost all the requirements to become "The Woman Clothed With the Sun": The Woman of Revelation 12:1-6. And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days. There is one problem. Angelina Jolie had both ovaries and Fallopian tubes removed. For her to become pregnant would require a miracle. Yet, such miracles do happen and make major news when they do. Such a miracle child would without question have the attention of the entire planet. I believe Revelation 12 is linked to the vision Jeane Dixon had in 1962 concerning the birth of a future messiah. The wilderness mentioned in Revelation 12 simply means the places where there are desert sands and scant vegetation. Thus, the woman will be hidden in the desert for a period of 1,260 days: 42 months (3 1/2 years). Still, if Dixon's vision is related to Revelation 12, she will be murdered, stabbed in the back by an assailant. Thus, if Angelina Jolie is the woman of Revelation 12, and the dragon in this case represents an antichrist system, possibly either the Sufyani (ISIS) or the Dajjal of Islamic prophecy, she will be attacked but escape in August/September 2018, only to be captured and killed 42 months later ... in February/March 2022. Again, this is a big "if" that Angelina Jolie is the woman of Revelation 12. Still it is not something to be entirely dismissed. She is the closest we have come to someone like Princess Diana since the death of Diana. Remarkably so.   Kate Middleton: An English Rose By Any Other Name On April 24, 2011, the time finally arrived for a substitute "England's Rose" ... a woman who would marry Diana's eldest son and pretender to the throne, Prince William. For that is what people are beginning to call the former Catherine Elizabeth Middleton (Kate Middleton), now Duchess of Cambridge. Like the late Princess Diana did when she was alive, Kate is also setting new fashion trends. She is the most popular female to marry into royalty since Diana ... many are counting on her to take Diana's place in their hearts. Will she be able to do this? It is still much too early to tell if a link between England's new rose and the Pope has been established. Stay tuned.   Evidence that Nostradamus' Rose is a Person   As much as I dislike having to do this, my assertion that Nostradamus used "the Rose" to represent Princess Diana will hold no water unless I discuss a quatrain that seems to indicate that her death would be linked to a conspiracy. Only after Diana's death did I understand this prediction, because it had been many years since I had heard her called "England's Rose" -- for so very long she had been "Di," "Lady Di," "Princess Di," or simply "Diana" to her adoring fans and admirers. Quatrain 5.96 Above the middle of the great world, the rose, For new deeds blood publicly is shed: To speak the truth they (French investigators) will have closed mouths, Then, at a time of need, the awaited one will come late. Diana was the most famous and glamorous woman in "the great world." If the second line does apply to her, she was killed because of "new deeds": possibly her affair with boyfriend Dodi al-Fayed. The French authorities have frustrated the international public which adored Diana by being tight-lipped about the investigation. It is doubtful they will ever "speak the truth," perhaps because French secret police were involved in the murder plot. The last line remains a mystery, unless it refers to the tardy coronation of an aging Prince Charles. Then again, if the "awaited one" is a spiritual leader, it could refer to Pope Francis. It must be noted that Pope John Paul II's funeral was held exactly 7 years and 7 months after the funeral of Princess Diana. The election of Francis may be coded by "will come late" as the time between funerals.   Continue or return to previous position . Mary and The Rosa Mystica   In a recent letter from a visitor to this web site I was enlightened on yet another connexion to the rose. The Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus, has also been called the Rosa Mystica (Mystical Rose) since her appearances in Montichiari, Italy in 1947 and 1968. The writer states that she thinks "that the 'blooming of the rose' could very well be the acceptance of her many calls to Prayer, and Penance for the sake of World Peace. The number of Reported apparitions has skyrocketed in the last forty years or so and if a small percentage are real then this will truly be what even secular media have called The Age of Mary." According to one web site dedicated to providing information on Mary as Rosa Mystica: "Since antiquity the rose was considered a symbol of mystery. For early Christians the rose is a visual expression for paradise (Catacombs of Callixtus, 3rd century) but also for martyrdom (Cyprian, Ep. 10). The Marian interpretation of this symbol dates to the 5th century (Sedulius Caelius). He is probably the first to call Mary a 'rose among thorns' (Carmen paschale II, 28-31). Frequent Marian references to rose and rosebush were made in medieval times with special reference to Isaiah 11,1 ('...a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse / and from his roots a bud shall blossom.'). Medieval authors had a second source for their use of mystical rose: the verse from Sir. 24, 14 ('like a palm tree in Engedi, like a rosebush in Jericho') which makes reference to God graced fertility and growth, again a reference to the mysterious generation of Christ from the womb of Mary. It is based on these two traditions that the expression rosa mystica was coined by the author of the Litanies of Loreto, and subsequently used in hymns ('Es ist ein Ros...') and art (center of the labyrinth of Chartres)." I have also uncovered something else of interest in my research. Another, more specific meaning may be found regarding the "blooming of the rose." Since Montichiari, some Catholics celebrate July 13 as the Day of Mary. Therefore, if an actual month or season is being referenced by Nostradamus in association with someone named "the rose," in a strange way it might not matter whether we mean the Virgin Mary or Princess Diana. For Mary, the season is summer, specifically the month of July (and more specifically July 13). For Diana, the season is also summer, and July/August marks the Althorp season when her life is reflected upon -- from her birth on July 1 to her death on August 31. If Rosa Mystica is the key to Quatrain 2.97, and the Day of Mary is the clue to the "blooming of the Rose," then Pope Benedict XVI or the one who follows him may be assassinated on a specific date: July 13, 2008 or July 13, 2009.   Continue or return to previous position .   Pope Benedict XVI in Prophecy   Pope Benedictus XVI Retires from Papacy on 28 February The First Pope To Resign in Nearly 600 Years Neither the Rose Prophecy nor the Third Secret of Fatima shall touch this pope. However, because this may be a Triple Pope year, his successor might have a very short reign and succumb to the most dire of prophecies.   Pope Benedict to resign at the end of the month, Vatican says February 11, 2013 Rome (CNN) -- Pope Benedict XVI will resign on February 28, his spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told CNN Monday. The 85-year-old pope is resigning "because of advanced age," Benedict told the cardinals of the Catholic Church on Monday. "Strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me," the pope told the cardinals, according to the Vatican. The last pope to resign was Gregory XII in 1415. He did so to end a civil war within the church in which more than one man claimed to be pope. 'I'm just a pilgrim,' Benedict XVI says in public farewell March 1, 2013 � Rome (CNN) -- Benedict XVI's time as pope came to a historic end Thursday, as he became the first pontiff in six centuries to resign as leader of the world's Roman Catholics, who now number 1.2 billion. Torchlit crowds stood before the gates of the Castel Gandolfo residence, waiting to see the Swiss Guards, the soldiers who traditionally protect the pope, salute and close the doors on the stroke of 8 p.m. The guards' departure from the papal summer home brings Benedict's papacy to a formal end. The protection of Benedict there falls now to Vatican police. The process of transition to that new pope now begins. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church is without a leader. Benedict, who will now be known as "pontiff emeritus," will spend the next few weeks at the peaceful, hilltop Castel Gandolfo residence before moving to a small monastery on Vatican grounds. "I am no longer the pope but I am still in the church. I'm just a pilgrim who is starting the last part of his pilgrimage on this earth. I would still -- with my heart, with my love, with my prayers, with my reflection, and with all my inner strength -- like to work for the common good and the good of the church and of humanity. I feel very supported by your kindness. Let us go forward with the Lord for good of the church and the world. Thank you."   LADIES AND GENTLEMEN (2/13/13), UPDATED (3/1/13): Before continuing, I believe the timing of Benedict's resignation proves I am correct about Malachy's list of mottos of future popes being misinterpreted and misapplied. It is now clear the following nine antipopes should not have been included in the list: Victor IV (1159-1164), Paschal III (1164-1168), Callistus III (1168-1178), Nicholas V (1328-1330), Clement VII (1378-1394), Benedict XIII (1394-1423), Alexander V (1409-1410), John XXIII (1410-1415), and Felix V (1440-1449). As has been a matter of record for the last eight years on this page, I do not believe Pope Benedict XVI was 'Gloria Olivae' but rather 'Lumen in C�lo' ('Light in the Sky'). Two distinct naked eye comets appeared during his reign: Comet McNaught (2007), a major and historic comet that could even be seen during daytime, and the easy to find Comet Holmes (also in 2007) visible every night, all night, for over a month in the northern hemisphere constellation of Perseus. In addition, Comet PanSTARRS, now delighting southern hemisphere viewers, shall become even brighter in the evening sky in the northern hemisphere beginning on March 7. The comet just reached the threshold of naked eye visibility as a morning object on February 11 ... the same day Pope Benedict announced to the world his decision to resign the papacy. PanSTARRS shall be bright throughout the entire month of March, and especially bright March 12 and 13, near to when a conclave will begin the process to elect a new pope by Easter, March 31. Pope Benedict XVI, Benedictus, pontiff emeritus, 'Lumen in C�lo' Thus, it appears that a major comet has marked Pope Benedict XVI's resignation announcement, and has brightened considerably in time to attend his actual resignation and the entire month to follow during which there shall be no pope. However, until the next pope is elected, in the meantime the "light in heaven" will grow brighter whilst Benedict XVI remains pontiff emeritus. Truly, if any pope deserved the motto Lumen in C�lo, is it not Benedict XVI? And, if this is not enough ... as further proof that Pope Benedict XVI is 'Lumen in C�lo', two other notable lights in the heaven were seen while Benedict was still officially pope. One of these also occurred on the day he announced his resignation, the other on 15 February: VOXXI, February 15, 2013 Just hours after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation Feb. 11, lightning struck the top of the St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. Is it the end of the world as we know it? It has been a busy week—Pope Benedict XVI quit the papacy, the first time it has been done in about 600 years. Then this morning, the country woke up to news of a bus-sized meteor striking Earth and unleashing as much power as an atomic bomb. Plus, many have seen that picture of lightning striking St. Peter’s Basilica taken earlier this week, shortly after the pope made his announcement. There may be more to Benedict's resignation than his concerns about his age or possible health problems. Lest we forget, exactly one year ago the following warning was released to the public:     We might even regard the arrival of Comet PanSTARRS along with the lightning striking the basilica of St. Peter's dome as Benedict's 'Light in the Sky' and the meteorite exploding over Chelyabinsk, Russia as a sign of the coming 'Burning Fire.' We might say all three of these are portents associated with the transfer of power over the period from Benedict to Francis, demonstrating characteristics of both.   Pope Benedict XVI: "Gloria Olivae" Was Clearly a Forced Malachy Motto It had long been whispered in the Vatican halls that a Benedictine would lead when all the nations of Christendom would come to be in grave peril from the enemies gathering in the East. The author of this folly was a 12th Century monk named St Malachy who conferred upon the 111th pope on his list the motto of Gloria Olivae, which translated means "the Glory of the Olive." The order St Benedict founded, the Benedictines, is also known as the "Olivetans." Clearly, someone in the Vatican went to a lot of trouble to force the prophecy of Malachy to come true. Being a Benedictine is one thing, but electing a pope to take on the name of Benedict would make it appear that the prophecy had been sealed. This, after the shortest election conclave in Vatican history, leaves little room for doubt that this rite of passage was all planned out in advance. The choice of Benedict almost guaranteed that a world war was looming on the horizon. Why? The last Benedict, Benedict XV, became pope in 1914 just before World War I broke out. He spent the next four years trying to get the warring nations of Europe to mend their differences and end the most calamitous conflict in world history up to that time. So, this tells us several things. The Vatican believed at the time of Benedict's election, and still believes, that World War III is right around the corner. They wanted a pope in power who could live up to the name given by Malachy: "Glory of the Olive" -- a name which also signifies the role of the peacemaker (to this day "offering an olive branch" is a gesture of peace). Thus, they hoped Pope Benedict XVI would be instrumental in bringing a quick end to the coming world war, preventing it from happening, or leading all of Christendom in the coming great conflict of good against evil where the West and Christianity will emerge victorious. And let us not forget that Benedict still lives ... as a retired pope. Should anything happen to Pope Francis, should he be assassinated by warlike forces, Benedict could be pulled out of retirement in an effort to make the peace. It is even possible that by retiring, rather than dying, Benedict's motto of Gloria Olivae has been passed on to Pope Francis. Think of it as Benedict being Gloria Olivae Part One and Francis as Gloria Olivae Part Two. If this is what has happened, Petrus Romanus may still be in the future: the next pope to be elected.   His Legacy At first alienating the Islamic world with 14th Century maledictions; afterwards he bowed to Mecca from what was once Constantinople, stood amid the ruins atop Mount Nebo to view the Holy Land where Moses once stood, and appealed for reconciliation between Jews and Muslims from a podium in Amman. He was also the first pope to enter the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem's Old City and the first pope to pray at the Western Wall. He was the first pope to visit Great Britain in 30 years, and his was the first state visit by a pope since the 16th century when King Henry VIII broke from Rome. To that end, he won the admiration of the Archbishop of Canterbury who joined with him in calls for a marriage between The Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church. Indeed, if any pope ever came close to establishing a unified Christian Church, it may well have been Pope Benedict XVI. Also, Pope Benedict XVI was the first Pope to have presided over the Beatification of his predecessor in over 1,000 years of Church history and the first retired Pope ever to assist the reigning Pope, Francis, in a ceremony to bestow sainthood on two former popes: Saint John Paul II and Saint John XXIII. If he is to be called upon to be pope once again should Francis die, then the legacy of Benedict XVI is not yet complete.   Pope John Paul II in Prophecy     The passing of Pope John Paul the Great, the third-longest living pope in all of Vatican history, the period of mourning, the grand public funeral, and the historic election of Pope Benedict XVI, was the only major news story during the month of April 2005. One can easily recognise the career of John Paul II in the following quatrain:   Because of the passing of the very old Pontiff, Will be elected to Rome one of good age. He will be accused of weakening the Holy See, And long will he hold to it with stinging effort.   Lest we forget, because of the natural death of the elderly Pope Paul VI (and the short one-month reign of Pope John Paul I, not mentioned in this quatrain), a pope of "good age" -- 58-year-old Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla -- was elected. The new pope, taking the name John Paul II, was youthful and vigorous when he first came to the sacred office in October 1978, a former sportsman, mountain climber and football player, and an active skier and swimmer. He was (and is) a very controversial pope whose ideas were and are not always popular in the Vatican. To some he had been seen to have failed in reforming the Catholic Church itself, maintaining extremely controversial policies on contraception and homosexuality until quite recently, whilst failing to arrest a decline in congregations (again, until quite recently). This is likely what Nostradamus means by his being "accused of weakening the Holy See." On the other hand, the Pope has always been consistently and universally praised for attempting to build greater understanding between Judaism, Islam and Christianity, visiting more countries than any previous pope, and promoting non-violent revolution against oppressive regimes, especially communism. The last line is painfully obvious: John Paul II has held the papacy the third longest of all popes in history, with "stinging effort" indicating the assassination attempt on his life in 1981 by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca, an attempted stabbing by a bayonet-wielding Spanish priest in 1982, and his continuing endurance whilst suffering from the ravages of arthritis and Parkinson's disease. This quatrain does not speak of death at all -- but of a long life!   POPE JOHN PAUL II DIES AT AGE 84 --- WORLD MOURNS It would appear that the following Nostradamus prophecy below also applied to the late Pope John Paul the Great. Even so, there are certain specifics in the quatrain that have yet to play out. So only Time will tell for certain. The Pope was indeed "dispersed" in the night, just as I maintained he would be:   It will appear towards Ursa Minor, Not far from Cancer, the bearded star: Susa [NW Italy], Siena [central Italy], Boetia [SE Greece], Eretria [E. Greece], The great one of Rome will die, the night dispersed.   Lines 1 and 2 inform us there will be a comet that will begin or end as a circumpolar object when the Pope dies. Such a comet did arrive this year and ended up, at low naked eye visibility, in Ursa Minor. It remains there still; however, it has faded to a binocular, small telescopic object. Comet Machholz first became visible in the southeast in December 2004 and brightened to magnitude 3 when it crossed near Castor and Pollux and the Pleiades in January 2005. For those who enjoy dark skies very far away from city lights (10 to 50 miles away depending on the size of the city), Machholz appeared like smaller version of the greenish-blue comet Hyakutake that appeared spectacular even to city dwellers back in March 1996. If Machholz is the comet of prophecy, it makes all the more sense that this was the time for the Pope to succumb to catastrophic illness and old age. What will be happening in Italy and Greece is not altogether clear. Greece will likely become a part of a major Balkan conflict prophesied by a living Austrian prophet from Kremms, the Seer of Waldviertel, and also prophesied by Nostradamus. This Balkans conflict is to occur during a terrible war in the Middle East. As for Italy, civil war or revolution in that country is also prophesied to begin shortly after. Then again, the references to Greece and Italy could relate to a rash of deadly earthquakes or escalating acts of terrorism by Al Qaeda and other groups in both countries. Nostradamus specifically predicts unprecedented terrorism for Italy from those who once worshipped the ancient gods of Hannibal (Tunisia and Libya) and from the direction of Babel (Iraq) before the coming of a great and terrible world war. What else could be meant by "the night dispersed" besides the time of day when the Pope would die? It could mean a dispersal of "night" worldwide by extraordinary means. Perhaps, unknown to us, "Planet X" is finally closing in on Earth. Earthquake and volcanic activity has been increasingly violent and almost unprecedented. It is now said that the ancient super-volcano Toba will reawaken and erupt in the Pacific, unleashing enough fire to burn away 30% or more of the planet's forests and grasslands in a rain of super-heated plasma and produce enough ash to plunge the world into a "nuclear winter." Ever larger meteor sightings and collisions are also on the increase, suggesting we may be entering a debris field or "tail" belonging to this celestial body. Therefore, the "it" that "appears towards Ursa Minor, the Tropic of Cancer, and the bearded star (Comet Machholz)" may be the brown dwarf star of myth and antiquity, Nibiru, also regarded by many to be the Wormwood of Revelation. As I have mentioned before elsewhere, if we are to be visited by such a nightmare as ancient Nibiru, the prophet Mother Shipton warns we will be thrashed by the "dragon's tail" twice. The red dragon star's first passage, an inbound one, will be the least destructive of the two according to Mother Shipton. The outbound passage, almost forty years later, will wipe out at least 5/6 of humanity, reducing the global population to "such a tiny band." Then again "the night dispersed" could be a poetic way of saying that the papal policies of the Pope's long career will be dispersed on the night of his death. This would then suggest that his successor will be a quite different person who will change many of the Vatican's positions on various social and international issues.   Pope John Paul II: "De Labore Solis" or "De Medietate Lunae?" According to the 12th Century prophet St Malachy there are only two more popes to follow Pope John Paul II: "Glory of the Olive" (supposedly the newly-elected pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI) and lastly, "Peter the Roman." The now-deceased John Paul II was supposed to have the motto: "De Labore Solis" or "Labour of the Sun." Many prophecy commentators thought that meant John Paul would undergo many tribulations during the late 20th Century, also called the Century of the Sun in astrology. Otherwise, the motto was a mystery and Malachy's predictions potentially unreliable. As if to prove the motto was correct, there was a partial eclipse of the sun in southern Europe during the funeral on Friday, April 8, 2005. And there is more evidence suggesting John Paul the Great was "Labour of the Sun" according to the following article from NewsMax:   Prophecy on Pope Fulfilled by Eclipses? NewsMax.com Wednesday, April 6, 2005 3:55 p.m. EDT A 10th Century Irish bishop - St. Malachy - predicted every pope that would preside over the Catholic Church. Almost ten centuries ago, Malachy predicted this pope would be noted by an eclipse of the sun. In an eerie coincidence, John Paul II was the only known pope to be born on the day of a solar eclipse. But the prophetic link doesn't end there. Pope John Paul II will be buried this Friday during another solar eclipse. Astronomers say that on Friday, the day of the Pope's funeral, a partial solar eclipse will blot out most of the sun and darken a wide area of the world, from the South Pacific to the Western Hemisphere. Solar eclipses are not unusual. But what makes this coming Friday's eclipse notable is the fact that there was a near total eclipse of the sun seen across Europe on May 18, 1920, the very day that John Paul II was born in Poland. Adding fuel to the arcane speculation about these events is the prophecy of St. Malachy. Malachy was discovered to have left behind a prophetic list of all future popes beginning with Pope Celestine II, whose papacy began in 1143 A.D., up to and including the 112th. The list includes John Paul and just two more popes who will follow him. In his list of popes, he uses a single line in Latin identifying a characteristic of each pope. The description applied to the 110th pope on his list - John Paul II - is "De Labore Solis" (Of the Solar Eclipse), which seems to add great weight to the validity of St. Malachy’s chilling prophecy: that the next two popes chosen to succeed John Paul II will be the last popes. After the reign of the last pope, "Peter the Roman," St. Malachy wrote, Rome will be destroyed. As NewsMax.com reported April 3, Saint's Prophecy: Only Two Popes Remain, the 112th prophecy says, "In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will reign Petrus Romanus (Peter the Roman), who will feed his flock amid many tribulations; after which the seven-hilled city [Rome] will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people," an indication that the world will end.   Not mentioned in the above article is the legend of the 111th pope -- "Glory of the Olive." Still, a few thoughts have occurred to me regarding Malachy. Did he count the antipopes as popes? Probably not (which means Benedict XVI is the 101st pope after Celestine II, not the 111th). Also, regarding De Medietate Lunae which was supposedly applied to the extremely short-lived Pope John Paul the First.  33 days is an awfully short period of time.  Is it possible Malachy overlooked John Paul I but saw only John Paul II?  After all, "John Paul" was a most unusual name. If so, then that would make "Of the Half Moon" John Paul II's motto and not "Labour of the Sun." It would apply very well to Pope John Paul the Great.  Here is why: both the half moon and crescent moon are symbols of Islam.  John Paul II was the first pope to visit the Muslim and Arab nations and open up friendly relations between them and the Vatican. Of course, the Jubilee Year was the zenith year of this embrace of Islamic nations by John Paul II (who also greeted Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and Iraqi Prime Minister Tariq Aziz at the Vatican and condemned the then-pending US war in Iraq).   The Sun Pope and the Moon Princess Another matter regarding the moon is a linkage between the late Princess Diana (Diana, Goddess of the Moon) to the Pope. It is well-known that the Roman goddess, Diana (Artemis in the Greek pantheon), was the goddess of the Moon. Thus, Princess Diana, because of this namesake, is also associated with the moon. Indeed, Nostradamus makes much of this in a few of his prophecies. Her star and his star rose together, nearly side-by-side. She died in Paris at the zenith of her popularity in August 1997 -- shortly after John Paul visited Paris himself. Not long after her death, John Paul II, almost by default, found his health and his powers moving steadily in decline, then accelerating downhill after 2000. John Paul II's funeral was held exactly 7 years and 7 months after the funeral of Princess Diana! Yet another good reason for John Paul II to be given the motto "Of the Half Moon." So, if this is true, then there are still two popes remaining after the current one, Benedict XVI, who would then be Labour of the Sun and not Glory of the Olives. Of course, if the 10 antipopes were not counted by Malachy (and I doubt they were), this would have made John Paul II the 100th pope after Celestine II, rather than the 110th. Thus, he would have had whatever motto was applied to Pope Gregory XVI (1831-1846). Still, Pope John Paul II could yet be associated with the sun metaphorically, as a complement to Diana's moon. Christianity is often associated through symbolism with the sun. Apollo was the Roman sun god and the son of Jupiter. He overthrew his Jovian father (Paganism) and spawned the modern age of Man (Christendom). However, the late poet and author Robert Graves argues in his book, The White Goddess, that Apollo is synonymous with the age of science, a sterile god who, by usurping the pantheon of the Gods and their one King, has destroyed man's natural association with the supernatural. Thus "divine" intervention is required (the Muse according to Graves, or from a Christian perspective, an angel, the Virgin Mary, etc). Pope John Paul II was the first pope to make his working devotion to the "woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet." To some this is Mary; to others it is a woman persecuted by the forces of Satan who is about to give birth to a man-child to reign as the "Son of Man." This woman could have been Princess Diana; and is likely to be still another woman in the future who will succeed in delivering this long-awaited child. Thus, the pontificate of John Paul II seems to have been symbolised by both sun and moon.   The Original Mission of This Web Page: How Pope John Paul the Great Narrowly Escaped Being the Slain Pontiff of Quatrain 2.97 On October 16, 1998, it was reported that Pope John Paul II was planning to visit Iraq ("the land between two rivers") in the summer of 1999. The original version of this web page was created in the early spring of 1999 to warn that such a trip might prove dangerous to the Pope and those close to him. In July 1999 it was revealed that he hoped to make a pilgrimage to the ancient city of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, and meet with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. That visit was postponed until December 1999 and then re-scheduled for January 2000. Thankfully, on December 10, 1999, it was announced that the trip had been canceled. Again, during the Jubilee Year, the Pope expressed a desire to visit Baghdad and the ancient city of Ur, and again what might have been a May 2001 trip was canceled. I am convinced that the Pope narrowly escaped what would have been a likely assassination attempt, probably at the behest of Osama bin Laden, had any of the planned trips to Iraq moved forward in 1999, 2000, 2001, or 2003. It is very strange that so many attempted trips to Iraq were cancelled -- in one instance at the request of the United States government. Were he alive to visit Iraq now, it would be incredibly dangerous -- dangerous beyond belief. Needless to say, Pope Benedict XVI must also refrain from visiting such a perilous place.   A Base 7 Prediction Fulfilled I believe that history repeats itself (more or less) at intervals of seven years and MULTIPLES of seven years. I call this mathematically-based theory "base 7 numerology" (although it is not true numerology, but a mathematically-contrived system). The key to the future, in other words, lies in the past. History truly does repeat itself, yet not always exactly. I use real historical events, their months and years, as the index or precedent(s) for the projected future event. I also use real prophecy and close observation of current events to calculate what direction we are heading. I find that to the year I am usually between 71% and 91% successful with my predictions. In the appendix of my book, Nostradamus and the Final Age, I indicated that Pope John Paul II might be in danger during the base 7 vector of June/July 1998. On May 4, 1998, three days after I mailed my manuscript out to Llewellyn Worldwide, Alois Estermann, the second-in-command of the Pope's Swiss Guards, was slain by a disgruntled non-commissioned officer. Estermann's wife, Gladys Romero, was also shot to death by Cedrich Tornay who afterwards turned the murder weapon on himself. All three died; blood flowing from their mouths. It was the worst tragedy to befall the Swiss Guards in over five hundred years. Then on August 29, 1999 -- once again during the season of the rose -- another death plagued the Vatican. The suicide of a worshipper who managed to smuggle a gun into St. Peter's Basilica raised security concerns for the Church and Vatican City four months before the start of the Holy Year. The suicide claimed to be both Christ and Michelangelo. Benedetto Minnini of the port city of Bari, shot himself in the mouth on the afternoon of August 24 while the basilica was crowded with tourists. A woman videotaping inside happened to catch the suicide on tape, and apparently was the first to alert authorities. Blood flowed from yet another mouth for the second year in a row -- and during a predicted August-October 1999 vector. One must remember Nostradamus' warning to the Pope: blood will not only flow from his mouth, but from those close to him ("both you and yours"). That is why the main focus of Quatrain 2.97 remains unfulfilled, despite commentators who insist that it is to be applied to Pius VI who died of acute enteritis at Valence in 1799. Pius did not "approach" the city (implying an act of volition), which is indeed watered by two rivers -- he was captured and taken prisoner there. Yes, it was reported that he vomited blood; however, no one in the pope's company died in a similar fashion. Indeed, the pope died alone. Using my base 7 system yet again, I warned that Pope John Paul might be in danger were he to travel abroad in May 2002, twenty-one (3 x 7) years after the assassination attempt that seriously wounded him. Here is what happened in May 2002:   Bulgaria on alert for pope's visit -- Security scare as man rushes pope May 23, 2002 Posted: 2:48 PM EDT (1848 GMT) SOFIA, Bulgaria (CNN) -- Ailing Pope John Paul II has arrived in Bulgaria for his first papal visit to the country, where all its 27,000 police have been put on duty or standby. It is hoped his four-day visit will heal wounds with the former communist country which was once implicated in the 1981 assassination attempt against the pontiff. The trip is also aimed at bringing a reconciliation of Christianity's eastern and western churches. The pope praised Christians in largely Orthodox Bulgaria for their resistance to communist-era oppression. The 82-year-old pope, who has looked ever more frail recently, had the strength to make impromptu remarks in Italian after his official speech, thanking Bulgarians for his welcome joking: "The pope is an old man and that's why he is sitting down," while he gestured to Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov, who stood by his side during the arrival ceremony. He urged Bulgaria to retain Christian values as it undertakes difficult social reforms in the push to convert the still deeply poor ex-communist state to a market economy, Reuters news agency reported. He also remembered the victims of east Europe's authoritarian regimes. "Even during the long winter of the totalitarian system, which brought suffering to your country... numberless children of this people remained heroically faithful to Christ, in not a few cases to the point of sacrificing their lives," the pope said. The hard-line communists who ruled Bulgaria from World War Two to 1989 repressed both majority Orthodox Christians, around 80 percent of the 8 million population, and the 80,000 Roman Catholic minority in the name of atheism. On arrival in Sofia, the pope was carried down the steps of the plane on a lift and his usual ritual of kissing the tarmac on disembarkation was substituted for his blessing a pot of soil lifted to his lips. He was then ferried to the airport terminal on an electric platform. The tour is likely to be a strain on an ailing pope who has been forced to jettison some of his traditional rituals during the two-country tour of Azerbaijan and Bulgaria. During the first-stage in Azerbaijan, the pope escaped a security alert when a shouting man on crutches rushed towards the altar where the pope was presiding over mass. Security officials told journalists the man said he wanted to have his picture taken with the pontiff. The situation resolved itself and the man later received a blessing from the pope. The pope survived an assassination attempt 20 years ago in Rome for which three Bulgarians were tried for suspected complicity in the shooting by a Turk but cleared by the Italian court through lack of evidence. Pope John Paul has said he has "never ceased" to love the Bulgarian people. Foreign Minister Solomon Pasi is quoted by The Associated Press as calling the visit "a blessing," adding: "This visit will wipe out the undeserved taint Bulgaria has carried for the past 20 years." Helicopters made low sweeps over the capital and army snipers took up positions around the airport as the pope arrived at about 6 p.m. local time on Thursday. The pontiff, who first visited an Orthodox country in 1999 when he travelled to Romania, is likely to use his Bulgarian trip to renew his call for a reunification of Christianity's eastern and western Churches, which split in 1054. He is scheduled to visit an Orthodox monastery near the southern town of Rila and hold an outdoor mass in the southeast in Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second-largest city. As well as meeting Patriarch Maxim on Friday, the pope will also meet leaders of the one million Bulgarian Muslims and the country's tiny Jewish community, which numbers between 7,000 and 8,000, some of whom worship at the world's largest Sephardic synagogue in Sofia. He also plans to beatify three Roman Catholic priests who were executed in 1952 after being convicted of spying by the then communist regime. The pope arrived in Bulgaria from the Azerbaijani capital of Baku after a two-day trip during which he gave mass for all 120 of the country's registered Roman Catholics -- mostly expatriates.   And again, only five days after the end of May:   Pope caught in Vatican bomb scare June 5, 2002 VATICAN (CNN) -- Pope John Paul II has been caught up in a bomb alert after a man threatened to blow himself up at the Vatican. The man, who is believed to be mentally unstable, was reported to have phoned a local television station warning that he was about to carry out a bombing at St Peter's Square on Wednesday. The 45-year-old Italian was arrested carrying a hoax bomb -- empty tubes with dangling wires -- after shouting accusations against local politicians, Reuters news agency quoted police as saying. The pope was holding his weekly general audience at the time, but it is not known how close he was to the incident. The suspect, who police say has a history of psychological problems, was believed to have been protesting at corruption in his native southern Italy. He had told the TV station that he was about to blow himself up outside the Vatican post offices in the square, but in fact he made his way to another part where pilgrims were queuing. The man was screaming out that he wanted to meet journalists and magistrates to talk about the alleged corruption. Police sealed off the area and temporarily stopped the flow of pilgrims into the square before preparations were resumed for the audience.   Back in 2003, I indicated that I believed John Paul II might hold on and finally succumb of natural causes sometime in August-October 2006 -- an important base 7 numerological anniversary (4 x 7) of the deaths of Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul I, and Pope John Paul II's ascension to the Holy See during the same period of 1978. However, around March 23, 2005, I realised that I had overlooked posting another vector -- one which had disturbing implications -- that indicated the Pope would instead succumb to natural causes around June/July 2005 on the 42nd (6 x 7) anniversary of Pope John XXIII's death on June 30, 1963. This vector was quickly posted to this page on March 24, 2005 and then to the 2005 (Part Two) page on March 31. This, as it turns out, was the correct vector and only off by two months and twenty-eight days. Bear in mind that when this June/July 2005 vector was posted on this page on March 24, Vatican officials were playing down concerns about Pope John Paul II's health. The pontiff made a silent and brief appearance from his apartment window overlooking St. Peter's Square that same day, as he had the previous day, silently blessing the faithful gathered below. So, despite his recent ill health, there was absolutely no reason to suspect with any certainty that the Pope would be dead within the space of nine days due to a sudden onset of sepsis caused by an undiagnosed urinary tract infection. This is why it was a PREDICTION FULFILLED and without a doubt a base 7 link to 1963 and the death of Pope John XXIII.   The Pope and the President According to the base 7 system, this year is also the year that President Bush is in greatest danger of falling victim to the Shawnee Curse (also known as the curse of Chief Tecumseh). Therefore 2005 may be very similar to 1963 when Pope John XXIII and President John F Kennedy died four months and twenty-two days apart.   President John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) Pope John Paul II (1978-2005) President George W. Bush (2001-2005?)   An interesting link between John Paul II and John XXIII has been discussed on CNN: It has been reported that John XXIII's body was in excellent condition when it was exhumed from the cramped grotto under the basilica in 2001 -- 38 years after his death -- and moved to the main floor following his beatification. I have seen recent photos of the body, and can confirm that there were absolutely no signs of decay. John XXIII looks today as he did when he died in June 1963. John Paul II, who expressed a will to be buried underground, was buried in John XXIII's vacant tomb. In addition, his name was changed to Pope John Paul the Great and it is quite likely that one day, like John XXIII, he too shall be made a saint. Now that the most popular pope since John XXIII has died, President George W. Bush will be in extremely grave and mortal danger of death in what is also the 42nd anniversary of John F Kennedy's assassination in 1963. Bush recently crossed the latest dates any president subject to the Tecumseh Curse has survived to: April 12 (FDR) and April 14 (Lincoln) of a year ending in 5. Having survived this, he may find himself in positive peril of losing his life four months and twenty-two days after the death of Pope John Paul II: around August 24, 2005. Then comes the actual 42nd anniversary of Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 2005. Of course, I would not expect the specific dates to be the ones to worry about, which is why I project by the month or window of months and year and not by the day, month, and year. The base 7 system is rarely exact to the very day. For more on Bush and the Tecumseh curse, see Signature of Death for US President in 2005 .   MAJOR PAGE REVISION COMPLETED: June 28, 2016 (5:33 PM EDT) Most Recent Update: June 28, 2016 (5:33 PM EDT)  

i don't know

What was the full first name of the President who gave his name to Teddy Bears?

Teddy bear history Your Site for Teddy Bear and Stuffed Animal Information and Fun ... Fun And Games Teddy Bear History Teddy Bears got their name from Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States. In 1902, the president went bear hunting in Mississippi without success, so members of his party caught a bear cub, tied it to a tree, and offered it to the president as an easy trophy. The president refused. The event was drawn by a cartoonist for the Washington Post the next day. The cartoon emphasized the helplessness of the bear and conveyed the message that Roosevelt would not make decisions for the wrong reasons. Roosevelt's popularity soared as a result of his actions and the cartoon. Morris and Rose Michtom made a stuffed bear in honor of the president's actions. Teddy Bears name is based on one of two stories. One story is that the president gave the Michtom's permission to christen the new stuffed toy bear "Teddy Bear". The other story is that at President Roosevelt's daughter's wedding, bears decorated the tables. When a guest asked what breed of bear they were, a guest said, "Why, they're Teddy Bears, of course". By 1908, over 20 companies were making stuffed teddy bears in the United States alone and teddy bears were on their way to a love affair with all of us that continues today.

Theodore

Donald Woods escaped from where in 1979, later the subject of the film Cry Freedom?

Rose & Morris Michtom | Jewish Virtual Library Rose & Morris Michtom Tweet Teddy bears are a symbol of cuddly gentleness and security the world over. It is well known that the teddy bear is named for President Theodore Roosevelt. Less well known are the inventors of the teddy bear, Rose and Morris Michtom, two Russian Jewish immigrants who lived in Brooklyn. The American bear as a symbol of gentleness is filled with ironies. For generations, bears prompted fear, not affection. The teddy bear’s namesake, Theodore Roosevelt, was a ferocious warrior and big game hunter – a man who killed for sport. However, an unlikely alliance between the rugged, native-born American Protestant president and the inventive, immigrant Jewish couple from Brooklyn created one of the most lovable and enduring American icons. The story begins in 1902. The states of Mississippi and Louisiana disagreed over the location of their common boundary, which bisected some of the least well-developed land in the United States. The governors of both states invited President Roosevelt to arbitrate the dispute. Roosevelt decided to combine his tour of the disputed territory with a five-day black bear hunt. The president’s foray attracted a large contingent of journalists, who reported on Roosevelt’s every move. Even more compelling to the reporters than the boundary dispute was the president’s pursuit of a trophy bear. For four days, the press reported little about Roosevelt’s arbitration of the boundary dispute and harped on the ability of the area’s bears to elude his crosshairs. On the fifth and last day of the junket, apparently to redeem the president’s reputation, one of his hunting companions caught and tied a bear cub to a tree so that the president could shoot it. When he came upon the cub, Roosevelt refused to kill it, saying that he only took prey that had a sporting chance to defend itself. Roosevelt’s demurrer took the nation by storm. The leading American cartoonist, Clifford Berryman, published a cartoon showing Roosevelt turning his back on the young bear, tied by its neck, and public response to the president’s self-restraint was overwhelmingly favorable. The next day, the Washington Post published a second cartoon, depicting the bear as a more placid beast, cementing the docile image of the young bear even more firmly in the public imagination. Enter the Michtoms. Morris had arrived penniless in New York in 1887, when only in his teens, a refugee from pogroms. He married Rose and opened a small store that sold notions, candy and other penny items. In the evening, to help make ends meet, Rose sewed toys that they sold in the shop. Like millions of other Americans, the Michtoms avidly followed press accounts of Roosevelt’s journey into the Louisiana backcountry. Roosevelt’s refusal to shoot the defenseless bear touched the Michtoms. Morris suggested to Rose that she sew a replica of the bear represented in Berryman’s cartoons. That night, Rose cut and stuffed a piece of plush velvet into the shape of a bear, sewed on shoe button eyes and handed it to Morris to display in the shop window. He labeled it, "Teddy’s bear." To his surprise, not only did someone enter the store asking to buy the bear, but twelve other potential customers also asked to purchase it. Aware that he might offend the president by using his name without permission, the Michtoms mailed the original bear to the White House, offering it as a gift to the president’s children and asking Roosevelt for the use of his name. He told the Michtoms he doubted his name would help its sales but they were free to use it if they wanted. The rest is an amazing – yet characteristic – American Jewish immigrant success story. The Michtoms sewed teddy bears and placed them in the window of their shop, but demand was so great they couldn’t keep up. The couple concluded that there was more profit in teddy bears than in penny candy and dedicated full time to producing them. Because of the doll’s popularity, Roosevelt and the Republican Party adopted it as their symbol in the election of 1904, and Michtom bears were placed on display at every public White House function. The Michtoms’ labor grew into the Ideal Toy Company, which remained in family hands until the 1970s. Ideal Toys sold millions of teddies throughout the world; yet, their good fortune did not spoil the Michtoms. Ever mindful of their humble origins, supported the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Jewish National Fund, the National Labor Campaign for Palestine and numerous other Jewish causes. While Ideal Toys could not secure a patent on the teddy bear and many imitators entered the market, the Michtoms created an American — and worldwide — icon. Their original teddy bear, treasured and saved by Teddy Roosevelt’s grandchildren, is now displayed at the Smithsonian.

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Which Austrian wrote The Psychopathology of Everyday Life?

The Psychopathology of Everyday Life | IndieBound A Community of Independent Local Bookstores The Psychopathology of Everyday Life The Psychopathology of Everyday Life W. W. Norton & Company, Paperback, 9780393006117, 432pp. Publication Date: September 17, 1990 List Price: $19.95* * Individual store prices may vary. Buy at Local Store Enter your zip code below to purchase from an indie close to you. or Buy Here Description It is filled with anecdotes, many of them quite amusing, and virtually bereft of technical terminology. And Freud put himself on the line: numerous acts of willful forgetting or "inexplicable" mistakes are recounted from his personal experience. none of such actions can be called truly accidental, or uncaused: that is the real lesson of the Psychopathology.

Sigmund Freud

"Who said, ""Some women get excited about nothing-- and then they marry him?"

Psychopathology of Everyday Life (03) by Freud, Sigmund [Paperback (2003)]: Freud: 9780141182377: Amazon.com: Books Psychopathology of Everyday Life (03) by Freud, Sigmund [Paperback (2003)] Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1 This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. Page 1 of 1 Start over Sponsored Products are advertisements for products sold by merchants on Amazon.com. When you click on a Sponsored Product ad, you will be taken to an Amazon detail page where you can learn more about the product and purchase it. To learn more about Amazon Sponsored Products, click here .

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Who is the famous mother of Elijah Blue?

Cher's son Elijah Blue reveals rift with mother in explosive new interview | Daily Mail Online Cher's son Elijah Blue reveals rift with famous mother after he eloped to marry girl and his recovery from heroin addiction in explosive new interview Cher has so far not congratulated them on their engagement or marriage The singer did not invite them to the family Christmas He nearly died after contracting Lyme disease but his mother questioned whether it was ‘imaginary’ Cher ‘haunted’ by Elijah’s troubled childhood and it’s a ‘real regret’ for her He’s a recovering heroin addict and has been to rehab ‘several times’

Cher

What was the occupation of Roger Moore's father?

Elijah Blue Allman Net Worth - Get Elijah Blue Allman Net Worth Elijah Blue Allman Net Worth Elijah Blue Allman Net Worth is$15 Million VN:F [1.9.22_1171] Rating: 2.5/5 (4 votes cast) VN:F [1.9.22_1171] Rating: 2.0/5 (2 votes cast) Profession: Guitarist | Singer | Musician Date of Birth: 1976-07-10 Nicknames: Allman, Elijah Blue, Exeter, elijah_blue_allman, Elijah Allman, P. Exeter Blue, Elijah Blue, Phillips Exeter Blue Height: 1.85 m Ethnicity: Armenian American Country: Beverly Hills Elijah Blue Allman net worth: Elijah Blue Allman is an American musician and contemporary artist who has a net worth of $15 million dollars. Elijah Blue Allman was born in Los Angeles, California and currently lives in Germany. He is the son of Cher, and her second husband, Gregg Allman of The Allman Brothers Band. He began playing guitar after he was gifted with the instrument by KISS bassist, Gene Simmons. By age 13, he was performing on tour with his mother. He went on to appear as a featured musician on albums by such artists as Orgy, Sugar Ray, and Korn. He has released three albums with his band, Deadsy. The group is currently on hiatus. He also released three demos with his solo project, Elijah Blue and the Trapezoids. He worked on the debut album for the group, 30 Seconds to Mars, as well. Since the late 2000s, he has been focusing on contemporary art, and in 2010, he had his first solo exhibition at Kantor Gallery in Los Angeles. Elijah Blue Allman (born July 10, 1976) is an American musician, the son of Cher and her second husband Gregg Allman, and half brother of Chaz Bono, Delilah Allman, Michael Allman, Layla Allman and Devon Allman. Through his mother Cher, Allman is of Armenian, Irish, English, German, and Cherokee ancestry. Elijah Blue Allman is the singer and guitarist for the rock band Deadsy, which prior to their hiatus in April 2007, consisted of Alec P? 1/4 re on drums, Dr. Nner on synthesizer, Carlton Megalodon on Ztar, and Jens Funke on bass. Deadsy released two albums: 2002's Commencement, and Phantasmagore, which came out on August 22, 2006. Many of the themes used by Elijah in Deadsy have been heavily influenced by the 1955 film This Island Earth. He was given his first guitar by KISS bassist Gene Simmons and at the age of 13, went on tour as a guitarist with Cher. In 1994, he auditioned for the spot of guitarist for Nine Inch Nails but ended up losing the spot to Robin Finck. He appears as a guitarist in the music video of "If I Could Turn Back Time." In an MTV interview for a program about children of famous rock musicians, he commented that "I respect The Allman Brothers Band very much, but I've always been more into Black Sabbath, David Bowie, and Metallica." He has worked with 30 Seconds to Mars for the band's self-titled debut album. Also he has provided guest vocals on a number of different songs for other bands including, Orgy, Coal Chamber and Sugar Ray. It was announced in February 2007 that Elijah is working on a solo record as Elijah Blue and the Trapezoids. It was also announced at one point fellow Deadsy member Jens Funke had been working on Allman's solo project as well. In 2010, Elijah Blue had his first solo exhibition at Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles. He is currently working as a contemporary artist. Elijah is currently living in Germany. Since starting Elijah Blue and the Trapezoids, Allman has released a few demos on his myspace, but Elijah Blue Allman Net Worth, 2.5 out of 5 based on 4 ratings Elijah Blue Allman Latest News

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