title: Blackbeard

text: At daybreak, preceded by a small boat taking soundings, Maynard's two sloops entered the channel. The small craft was quickly spotted by "Adventure" and fired at as soon as it was within range of her guns. While the boat made a quick retreat to the "Jane", Teach cut the "Adventure"s anchor cable. His crew hoisted the sails and the "Adventure" manoeuvred to point her starboard guns toward Maynard's sloops, which were slowly closing the gap. Hyde moved "Ranger" to the port side of "Jane" and the Union flag was unfurled on each ship. "Adventure" then turned toward the beach of Ocracoke Island, heading for a narrow channel. What happened next is uncertain. Johnson claimed that there was an exchange of small arms fire following which "Adventure" ran aground on a sandbar, and Maynard anchored and then lightened his ship to pass over the obstacle. Another version claimed that "Jane" and "Ranger" ran aground, although Maynard made no mention of this in his log.


title: Blackbeard

text: The "Adventure" eventually turned her guns on the two ships and fired. The broadside was devastating; in an instant, Maynard had lost as much as a third of his forces. About 20 on "Jane" were either wounded or killed and 9 on "Ranger". Hyde was dead and his second and third officers either dead or seriously injured. His sloop was so badly damaged that it played no further role in the attack. Contemporary accounts of what happened next are confused, but small-arms fire from "Jane" may have cut "Adventure"s jib sheet, causing her to lose control and run onto the sandbar. In the aftermath of Teach's overwhelming attack, "Jane" and "Ranger" may also have been grounded; the battle would have become a race to see who could float their ship first.


title: Blackbeard

text: Maynard had kept many of his men below deck, and in anticipation of being boarded told them to prepare for close fighting. Teach watched as the gap between the vessels closed, and ordered his men to be ready. The two vessels contacted one another as the "Adventure"s grappling hooks hit their target and several grenades, made from powder and shot-filled bottles and ignited by fuses, broke across the sloop's deck. As the smoke cleared, Teach led his men aboard, buoyant at the sight of Maynard's apparently empty ship, his men firing at the small group of men with Maynard at the stern.


title: Blackbeard

text: The rest of Maynard's men then burst from the hold, shouting and firing. The plan to surprise Teach and his crew worked; the pirates were apparently taken aback at the assault. Teach rallied his men and the two groups fought across the deck, which was already slick with blood from those killed or injured by Teach's broadside. Maynard and Teach fired their flintlocks at each other, then threw them away. Teach drew his cutlass and managed to break Maynard's sword. Against superior training and a slight advantage in numbers, the pirates were pushed back toward the bow, allowing the "Jane"s crew to surround Maynard and Teach, who was by then completely isolated. As Maynard drew back to fire once again, Teach moved in to attack him, but was slashed across the neck by one of Maynard's men. Badly wounded, he was then attacked and killed by several more of Maynard's crew. The remaining pirates quickly surrendered. Those left on the "Adventure" were captured by the "Ranger"s crew, including one who planned to set fire to the powder room and blow up the ship. Varying accounts exist of the battle's list of casualties; Maynard reported that 8 of his men and 12 pirates were killed. Brand reported that 10 pirates and 11 of Maynard's men were killed. Spotswood claimed ten pirates and ten of the King's men dead.


title: Blackbeard

text: Maynard later examined Teach's body, noting that it had been shot five times and cut about twenty. He also found several items of correspondence, including a letter from Tobias Knight. Teach's corpse was thrown into the inlet and his head was suspended from the bowsprit of Maynard's sloop so that the reward could be collected. On their return to Virginia, Teach's head was placed on a pole at the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay as a warning to other pirates and a greeting to other ships, and it stood there for several years.


title: Blackbeard

text: Lieutenant Maynard remained at Ocracoke for several more days, making repairs and burying the dead. Teach's loot—sugar, cocoa, indigo and cotton—found "in pirate sloops and ashore in a tent where the sloops lay", was sold at auction along with sugar and cotton found in Tobias Knight's barn, for £2,238. Governor Spotswood used a portion of this to pay for the entire operation. The prize money for capturing Teach was to have been about £400 (£ in 2022), but it was split between the crews of HMS "Lyme" and HMS "Pearl". As Captain Brand and his troops had not been the ones fighting for their lives, Maynard thought this extremely unfair. He lost much of any support he may have had though when it was discovered that he and his crew had helped themselves to about £90 of Teach's booty. The two companies did not receive their prize money for another four years, and despite his bravery Maynard was not promoted, and faded into obscurity.


title: Blackbeard

text: The remainder of Teach's crew and former associates were found by Brand, in Bath, and were transported to Williamsburg, Virginia, where they were jailed on charges of piracy. Several were black, prompting Spotswood to ask his council what could be done about "the Circumstances of these Negroes to exempt them from undergoing the same Tryal as other pirates." Regardless, the men were tried with their comrades in Williamsburg's Capitol building, under admiralty law, on 12 March 1719. No records of the day's proceedings remain, but 14 of the 16 accused were found guilty. Of the remaining two, one proved that he had partaken of the fight out of necessity, having been on Teach's ship only as a guest at a drinking party the night before, and not as a pirate. The other, Israel Hands, was not present at the fight. He claimed that during a drinking session Teach had shot him in the knee, and that he was still covered by the royal pardon. The remaining pirates were hanged, then left to rot in gibbets along Williamsburg's Capitol Landing Road (known for some time after as "Gallows Road").


title: Blackbeard

text: Governor Eden was certainly embarrassed by Spotswood's invasion of North Carolina, and Spotswood disavowed himself of any part of the seizure. He defended his actions, writing to Lord Carteret, a shareholder of the Province of Carolina, that he might benefit from the sale of the seized property and reminding the Earl of the number of Virginians who had died to protect his interests. He argued for the secrecy of the operation by suggesting that Eden "could contribute nothing to the Success of the Design", and told Eden that his authority to capture the pirates came from the king. Eden was heavily criticised for his involvement with Teach and was accused of being his accomplice. By criticising Eden, Spotswood intended to bolster the legitimacy of his invasion. Lee (1974) concludes that although Spotswood may have thought that the ends justified the means, he had no legal authority to invade North Carolina, to capture the pirates and to seize and auction their goods. Eden doubtless shared the same view. As Spotswood had also accused Tobias Knight of being in league with Teach, on 4 April 1719, Eden had Knight brought in for questioning. Israel Hands had, weeks earlier, testified that Knight had been on board the "Adventure" in August 1718, shortly after Teach had brought a French ship to North Carolina as a prize. Four pirates had testified that with Teach they had visited Knight's home to give him presents. This testimony and the letter found on Teach's body by Maynard appeared compelling, but Knight conducted his defence with competence. Despite being very sick and close to death, he questioned the reliability of Spotswood's witnesses. He claimed that Israel Hands had talked under duress, and that under North Carolinian law the other witness, an African, was unable to testify. The sugar, he argued, was stored at his house legally, and Teach had visited him only on business, in his official capacity. The board found Knight innocent of all charges. He died later that year.


title: Blackbeard

text: Eden was annoyed that the accusations against Knight arose during a trial in which he played no part. The goods which Brand seized were officially North Carolinian property and Eden considered him a thief. The argument raged back and forth between the colonies until Eden's death on 17 March 1722. His will named one of Spotswood's opponents, John Holloway, a beneficiary. In the same year, Spotswood, who for years had fought his enemies in the House of Burgesses and the Council, was replaced by Hugh Drysdale, once Robert Walpole was convinced to act.


title: Blackbeard

text: Official views on pirates were sometimes quite different from those held by contemporary authors, who often described their subjects as despicable rogues of the sea. Privateers who became pirates were generally considered by the English government to be reserve naval forces, and were sometimes given active encouragement; as far back as 1581 Francis Drake was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, when he returned to England from a round-the-world expedition with plunder worth an estimated £1,500,000. Royal pardons were regularly issued, usually when England was on the verge of war, and the public's opinion of pirates was often favourable, some considering them akin to patrons. Economist Peter Leeson believes that pirates were generally shrewd businessmen, far removed from the modern, romanticised view of them as barbarians. After Woodes Rogers' 1718 landing at New Providence and his ending of the pirate republic, piracy in the West Indies fell into terminal decline. With no easily accessible outlet to fence their stolen goods, pirates were reduced to a subsistence livelihood, and following almost a century of naval warfare between the British, French and Spanish—during which sailors could find easy employment—lone privateers found themselves outnumbered by the powerful ships employed by the British Empire to defend its merchant fleets. The popularity of the slave trade helped bring to an end the frontier condition of the West Indies, and in these circumstances, piracy was no longer able to flourish as it once did.


title: Blackbeard

text: Since the end of the Golden Age of Piracy, Teach and his exploits have become the stuff of lore, inspiring books, films and even amusement park rides. Much of what is known about him can be sourced to Charles Johnson's "A General Historie of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates", published in Britain in 1724. A recognised authority on the pirates of his time, Johnson's descriptions of such figures as Anne Bonny and Mary Read were for years required reading for those interested in the subject. Readers were titillated by his stories and a second edition was quickly published, though author Angus Konstam suspects that Johnson's entry on Blackbeard was "coloured a little to make a more sensational story." "A General Historie", though, is generally considered to be a reliable source. Johnson may have been an assumed alias. As Johnson's accounts have been corroborated in personal and official dispatches, Lee (1974) considers that whoever he was, he had some access to official correspondence. Konstam speculates further, suggesting that Johnson may have been the English playwright Charles Johnson, the British publisher Charles Rivington, or the writer Daniel Defoe. In his 1951 work "The Great Days of Piracy", author George Woodbury wrote that Johnson is "obviously a pseudonym", continuing "one cannot help suspecting that he may have been a pirate himself."


title: Blackbeard

text: Despite his infamy, Teach was not the most successful of pirates. Henry Every retired a rich man, and Bartholomew Roberts took an estimated five times the amount Teach stole. Treasure hunters have long busied themselves searching for any trace of his rumoured hoard of gold and silver, but nothing found in the numerous sites explored along the east coast of the US has ever been connected to him. Some tales suggest that pirates often killed a prisoner on the spot where they buried their loot, and Teach is no exception in these stories, but that no finds have come to light is not exceptional; buried pirate treasure is often considered a modern myth for which almost no supporting evidence exists. The available records include nothing to suggest that the burial of treasure was a common practice, except in the imaginations of the writers of fictional accounts such as "Treasure Island". Such hoards would necessitate a wealthy owner, and their supposed existence ignores the command structure of a pirate vessel, in which the crew served for a share of the profit. The only pirate ever known to bury treasure was William Kidd; the only treasure so far recovered from Teach's exploits is that taken from the wreckage of what is presumed to be the "Queen Anne's Revenge", which was found in 1996. As of 2009 more than 250,000 artefacts had been recovered. A selection is on public display at the North Carolina Maritime Museum.


title: Blackbeard

text: Various superstitious tales exist of Teach's ghost. Unexplained lights at sea are often referred to as "Teach's light", and some recitals claim that the notorious pirate now roams the afterlife searching for his head, for fear that his friends, and the Devil, will not recognise him. A North Carolinian tale holds that Teach's skull was used as the basis for a silver drinking chalice; a local judge even claimed to have drunk from it one night in the 1930s.


title: Blackbeard

text: The name of Blackbeard has been attached to many local attractions, such as Charleston's Blackbeard's Cove. His name and persona have also featured heavily in literature. He is the main subject of Matilda Douglas's fictional 1835 work "Blackbeard: A page from the colonial history of Philadelphia".


title: Blackbeard

text: Film renditions of his life include "Blackbeard the Pirate" (1952) starring West Country native Robert Newton whose exaggerated West Country accent is credited with popularising the stereotypical "pirate voice", "Blackbeard's Ghost" (1968), "Blackbeard: Terror at Sea" (2005) and the 2006 Hallmark Channel miniseries "Blackbeard". Parallels have also been drawn between Johnson's Blackbeard and the character of Captain Jack Sparrow in the 2003 adventure film "". Blackbeard is also portrayed as a central character in three TV series: by John Malkovich in "Crossbones" (2014), by Ray Stevenson in seasons three and four of "Black Sails" (2016–2017), and by Taika Waititi in "Our Flag Means Death" (2022).


title: Blackbeard

text: In 2015, the state government of North Carolina uploaded videos of the wreck of the "Queen Anne's Revenge" to its website without permission. As a result Nautilus Productions, the company documenting the recovery since 1998, filed suit in federal court over copyright violations and the passage of "Blackbeard's Law" by the North Carolina legislature, the General Assembly. Before posting the videos the General Assembly passed "Blackbeard's Law", N.C. Gen Stat §121-25(b), which stated, "All photographs, video recordings, or other documentary materials of a derelict vessel or shipwreck or its contents, relics, artifacts, or historic materials in the custody of any agency of North Carolina government or its subdivisions shall be a public record pursuant to Chapter 132 of the General Statutes." On 5 November 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in "Allen v. Cooper". The Supreme Court subsequently ruled in the state's favor, and struck down the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act, which Congress passed in 1989 to attempt to curb such infringements of copyright by states.


title: Knights Templar

text: The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (), also known as the Order of Solomon's Temple, the Knights Templar, or simply the Templars, was a Catholic military order, one of the most wealthy and popular military orders in Western Christianity. They were founded in 1119, headquartered on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and existed for nearly two centuries during the Middle Ages.


title: Knights Templar

text: Officially endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church by such decrees as the papal bull "Omne datum optimum" of Pope Innocent II, the Templars became a favored charity throughout Christendom and grew rapidly in membership and power. Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles with a red cross, were amongst the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades. They were prominent in Christian finance; non-combatant members of the order, who made up as much as 90% of their members, managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom. They developed innovative financial techniques that were an early form of banking, building a network of nearly 1,000 commanderies and fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land, and arguably forming the world's first multinational corporation.


title: Knights Templar

text: The Templars were closely tied to the Crusades; as they became unable to secure their holdings in the Holy Land, support for the order faded. Rumours about the Templars' secret initiation ceremony created distrust, and King Philip IV of France, while being deeply in debt to the order, used this distrust to take advantage of the situation. In 1307, he pressured Pope Clement to have many of the order's members in France arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and then burned at the stake. Under further pressure, Pope Clement V disbanded the order in 1312. The abrupt disappearance of a major part of the European infrastructure gave rise to speculation and legends, which have kept the "Templar" name alive into the present day.


title: Knights Templar

text: After the Franks in the First Crusade captured Jerusalem from the Fatimid Caliphate in 1099 A.D., many Christians made pilgrimages to various sacred sites in the Holy Land. Although the city of Jerusalem was relatively secure under Christian control, the rest of Outremer was not. Bandits and marauding highwaymen preyed upon these Christian pilgrims, who were routinely slaughtered, sometimes by the hundreds, as they attempted to make the journey from the coastline at Jaffa through to the interior of the Holy Land.


title: Knights Templar

text: In 1119, the French knight Hugues de Payens approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and proposed creating a Catholic monastic religious order for the protection of these pilgrims. King Baldwin and Patriarch Warmund agreed to the request, probably at the Council of Nablus in January 1120, and the king granted the Templars a headquarters in a wing of the royal palace on the Temple Mount in the captured Al-Aqsa Mosque.


title: Knights Templar

text: The Temple Mount had a mystique because it was above what was believed to be the ruins of the Temple of Solomon. The Crusaders therefore referred to the Al-Aqsa Mosque as Solomon's Temple, and from this location the new order took the name of "Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon", or "Templar" knights. The order, with about nine knights including Godfrey de Saint-Omer and André de Montbard, had few financial resources and relied on donations to survive. Their emblem was of two knights riding on a single horse, emphasizing the order's poverty.


title: Knights Templar

text: The impoverished status of the Templars did not last long. They had a powerful advocate in Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a leading Church figure, the French abbot primarily responsible for the founding of the Cistercian Order of monks and a nephew of André de Montbard, one of the founding knights. Bernard put his weight behind them and wrote persuasively on their behalf in the letter "In Praise of the New Knighthood", and in 1129, at the Council of Troyes, he led a group of leading churchmen to officially approve and endorse the order on behalf of the church. With this formal blessing, the Templars became a favoured charity throughout Christendom, receiving money, land, businesses, and noble-born sons from families who were eager to help with the fight in the Holy Land. At the Council of Pisa in 1135, Pope Innocent II initiated the first papal monetary donation to the Order. Another major benefit came in 1139, when Innocent II's papal bull exempted the order from obedience to local laws. This ruling meant that the Templars could pass freely through all borders, were not required to pay any taxes, and were exempt from all authority except that of the pope.


title: Knights Templar

text: With its clear mission and ample resources, the order grew rapidly. Templars were often the advance shock troops in key battles of the Crusades, as the heavily armoured knights on their warhorses would set out to charge at the enemy, ahead of the main army bodies, in an attempt to break opposition lines. One of their most famous victories was in 1177 during the Battle of Montgisard, where some 500 Templar knights helped several thousand infantry to defeat Saladin's army of more than 26,000 soldiers.


title: Knights Templar

text: Although the primary mission of the order was militaristic, relatively few members were combatants. The others acted in support positions to assist the knights and to manage the financial infrastructure. The Templar Order, though its members were sworn to individual poverty, was given control of wealth beyond direct donations. A nobleman who was interested in participating in the Crusades might place all his assets under Templar management while he was away. Accumulating wealth in this manner throughout Christendom and the Outremer, the order in 1150 began generating letters of credit for pilgrims journeying to the Holy Land: pilgrims deposited their valuables with a local Templar preceptory before embarking, received a document indicating the value of their deposit, then used that document upon arrival in the Holy Land to retrieve their funds in an amount of treasure of equal value. This innovative arrangement was an early form of banking and may have been the first formal system to support the use of cheques; it improved the safety of pilgrims by making them less attractive targets for thieves, and also contributed to the Templar coffers.


title: Knights Templar

text: Based on this mix of donations and business dealing, the Templars established financial networks across the whole of Christendom. They acquired large tracts of land, both in Europe and the Middle East; they bought and managed farms and vineyards; they built massive stone cathedrals and castles; they were involved in manufacturing, import and export; they had their own fleet of ships; and at one point they even owned the entire island of Cyprus. The Order of the Knights Templar arguably qualifies as the world's first multinational corporation.


title: Knights Templar

text: In the mid-12th century, the tide began to turn in the Crusades. The Islamic world had become more united under effective leaders such as Saladin. Dissension arose among Christian factions in and concerning the Holy Land. The Knights Templar were occasionally at odds with the two other Christian military orders, the Knights Hospitaller and the Teutonic Knights, and decades of internecine feuds weakened Christian positions, both politically and militarily. After the Templars were involved in several unsuccessful campaigns, including the pivotal Battle of Hattin, Jerusalem was recaptured by Muslim forces under Saladin in 1187. The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II reclaimed the city for Christians in the Sixth Crusade of 1229, without Templar aid, but only held it for a little more than a decade. In 1244, the Ayyubid dynasty together with Khwarezmi mercenaries recaptured Jerusalem, and the city did not return to Western control until 1917 when, during World War I, the British captured it from the Ottoman Empire.


title: Knights Templar

text: The Templars were forced to relocate their headquarters to other cities in the north, such as the seaport of Acre, which they held for the next century. It was lost in 1291, followed by their last mainland strongholds, Tortosa (Tartus in present-day Syria) and Atlit (in present-day Israel). Their headquarters then moved to Limassol on the island of Cyprus, and they also attempted to maintain a garrison on tiny Arwad Island, just off the coast from Tortosa. In 1300, there was some attempt to engage in coordinated military efforts with the Mongols via a new invasion force at Arwad. In 1302 or 1303, however, the Templars lost the island to the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate in the siege of Arwad. With the island gone, the Crusaders lost their last foothold in the Holy Land.


title: Knights Templar

text: With the order's military mission now less important, support for the organization began to dwindle. The situation was complex, however, since during the two hundred years of their existence, the Templars had become a part of daily life throughout Christendom. The organisation's Templar Houses, hundreds of which were dotted throughout Europe and the Near East, gave them a widespread presence at the local level. The Templars still managed many businesses, and many Europeans had daily contact with the Templar network, such as by working at a Templar farm or vineyard, or using the order as a bank in which to store personal valuables. The order was still not subject to local government, making it everywhere a "state within a state" – its standing army, although it no longer had a well-defined mission, could pass freely through all borders. This situation heightened tensions with some European nobility, especially as the Templars were indicating an interest in founding their own monastic state, just as the Teutonic Knights had done in Prussia and the Baltic and the Knights Hospitaller were doing in Rhodes.


title: Knights Templar

text: In 1305, the new Pope Clement V, based in Avignon, France, sent letters to both the Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the Hospitaller Grand Master Fulk de Villaret to discuss the possibility of merging the two orders. Neither was amenable to the idea, but Pope Clement persisted, and in 1306 he invited both Grand Masters to France to discuss the matter. De Molay arrived first in early 1307, but de Villaret was delayed for several months. While waiting, De Molay and Clement discussed criminal charges that had been made two years earlier by an ousted Templar and were being discussed by King Philip IV of France and his ministers. It was generally agreed that the charges were false, but Clement sent the king a written request for assistance in the investigation. According to some historians, King Philip, who was already deeply in debt to the Templars from his war against England, decided to seize upon the rumours for his own purposes. He began pressuring the church to take action against the order, as a way of freeing himself from his debts.


title: Knights Templar

text: At dawn on Friday, 13 October 1307—a date sometimes incorrectly cited as the origin of the popular stories about Friday the 13th—King Philip IV ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The arrest warrant started with the words: ("God is not pleased. We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom").


title: Knights Templar

text: Claims were made that during Templar admissions ceremonies, recruits were forced to spit on the Cross, deny Christ, and engage in indecent kissing; brethren were also accused of worshipping idols, and the order was said to have encouraged homosexual practices. Many of these allegations contain tropes that bear similarities to accusations made against other persecuted groups such as Jews, heretics, and accused witches. These allegations, though, were highly politicised without any real evidence. Still, the Templars were charged with numerous other offences such as financial corruption, fraud, and secrecy. Many of the accused confessed to these charges under torture (even though the Templars denied being tortured in their written confessions), and their confessions, even though obtained under duress, caused a scandal in Paris. The prisoners were coerced to confess that they had spat on the Cross. One said: ("I, Raymond de La Fère, 21 years old, admit that I have spat three times on the Cross, but only from my mouth and not from my heart"). The Templars were accused of idolatry and were suspected of worshiping either a figure known as Baphomet or a mummified severed head they recovered, amongst other artifacts, at their original headquarters on the Temple Mount that many scholars theorize might have been that of John the Baptist, among other things.


title: Knights Templar

text: Relenting to Phillip's demands, Pope Clement then issued the papal bull on 22 November 1307, which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets. Pope Clement called for papal hearings to determine the Templars' guilt or innocence, and once freed of the Inquisitors' torture, many Templars recanted their confessions. Some had sufficient legal experience to defend themselves in the trials, but in 1310, having appointed the archbishop of Sens, Philippe de Marigny, to lead the investigation, Philip blocked this attempt, using the previously forced confessions to have dozens of Templars burned at the stake in Paris.


title: Knights Templar

text: With Philip threatening military action unless the pope complied with his wishes, Pope Clement finally agreed to disband the order, citing the public scandal that had been generated by the confessions. At the Council of Vienne in 1312, he issued a series of papal bulls, including , which officially dissolved the order, and , which turned over most Templar assets to the Hospitallers.


title: Knights Templar

text: As for the leaders of the order, the elderly Grand Master Jacques de Molay, who had confessed under torture, retracted his confession. Geoffroi de Charney, Preceptor of Normandy, also retracted his confession and insisted on his innocence. Both men were declared guilty of being relapsed heretics and sentenced to burn alive at the stake in Paris on 18 March 1314. De Molay reportedly remained defiant to the end, asking to be tied in such a way that he could face the Notre Dame Cathedral and hold his hands together in prayer. According to legend, he called out from the flames that both Pope Clement and King Philip would soon meet him before God. His actual words were recorded on the parchment as follows: ("God knows who is wrong and has sinned. Soon a calamity will occur to those who have condemned us to death"). Pope Clement died only a month later, and King Philip died while hunting within the same year.


title: Knights Templar

text: The remaining Templars around Europe were either arrested and tried under the Papal investigation (with virtually none convicted), absorbed into other Catholic military orders, or pensioned off and allowed to live out their days peacefully. By papal decree, the property of the Templars was transferred to the Knights Hospitaller except in the Kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal. Portugal was the first country in Europe where they had settled, occurring only two or three years after the order's foundation in Jerusalem and even having presence during Portugal's conception.


title: Knights Templar

text: The Portuguese king, Denis I, refused to pursue and persecute the former knights, as had occurred in all other sovereign states under the influence of the Catholic Church. Under his protection, Templar organizations simply changed their name, from "Knights Templar" to the reconstituted Order of Christ and also a parallel Supreme Order of Christ of the Holy See; both are considered successors to the Knights Templar.


title: Knights Templar

text: In September 2001, a document known as the Chinon Parchment dated 17–20 August 1308 was discovered in the Vatican Secret Archives by Barbara Frale, apparently after having been filed in the wrong place in 1628. It is a record of the trial of the Templars and shows that Clement absolved the Templars of all heresies in 1308 before formally disbanding the order in 1312, as did another Chinon Parchment dated 20 August 1308 addressed to Philip IV of France, also mentioning that all Templars that had confessed to heresy were "restored to the Sacraments and to the unity of the Church". This other Chinon Parchment has been well known to historians, having been published by Étienne Baluze in 1693 and by Pierre Dupuy in 1751.


title: Knights Templar

text: The current position of the Roman Catholic Church is that the medieval persecution of the Knights Templar was unjust, that nothing was inherently wrong with the order or its rule, and that Pope Clement was pressed into his actions by the magnitude of the public scandal and by the dominating influence of King Philip IV, who was Clement's relative.


title: Knights Templar

text: The Templars were organized as a monastic order similar to Bernard's Cistercian Order, which was considered the first effective international organization in Europe. The organizational structure had a strong chain of authority. Each country with a major Templar presence (France, Poitou, Anjou, Jerusalem, England, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Tripoli, Antioch, Hungary, and Croatia) had a Master of the Order for the Templars in that region.


title: Knights Templar

text: All of them were subject to the Grand Master, appointed for life, who oversaw both the order's military efforts in the East and their financial holdings in the West. The Grand Master exercised his authority via the visitors-general of the order, who were knights specially appointed by the Grand Master and convent of Jerusalem to visit the different provinces, correct malpractices, introduce new regulations, and resolve important disputes. The visitors-general had the power to remove knights from office and to suspend the Master of the province concerned.


title: Knights Templar

text: No precise numbers exist, but it is estimated that at the order's peak there were between 15,000 and 20,000 Templars, of whom about a tenth were actual knights.


title: Knights Templar

text: There was a threefold division of the ranks of the Templars: the noble knights, the non-noble sergeants, and the chaplains. The Templars did not perform knighting ceremonies, so any knight wishing to become a Knight Templar had to be a knight already. They were the most visible branch of the order, and wore the famous white mantles to symbolize their purity and chastity. They were equipped as heavy cavalry, with three or four horses and one or two squires. Squires were generally not members of the order but were instead outsiders who were hired for a set period of time. Beneath the knights in the order and drawn from non-noble families were the sergeants. They brought vital skills and trades from blacksmiths and builders, including administration of many of the order's European properties. In the Crusader States, they fought alongside the knights as light cavalry with a single horse. Several of the order's most senior positions were reserved for sergeants, including the post of Commander of the Vault of Acre, who was the "de facto" Admiral of the Templar fleet. The sergeants wore black or brown. From 1139, chaplains constituted a third Templar class. They were ordained priests who cared for the Templars' spiritual needs. All three classes of brother wore the order's red cross.


title: Knights Templar

text: Starting with founder Hugues de Payens in 1118–1119, the order's highest office was that of Grand Master, a position which was held for life, though considering the martial nature of the order, this could mean a very short tenure. All but two of the Grand Masters died in office, and several died during military campaigns. For example, during the Siege of Ascalon in 1153, Grand Master Bernard de Tremelay led a group of 40 Templars through a breach in the city walls. When the rest of the Crusader army did not follow, the Templars, including their Grand Master, were surrounded and beheaded. Grand Master Gérard de Ridefort was beheaded by Saladin in 1189 at the Siege of Acre.


title: Knights Templar

text: The Grand Master oversaw all of the operations of the order, including both the military operations in the Holy Land and Eastern Europe and the Templars' financial and business dealings in Western Europe. Some Grand Masters also served as battlefield commanders, though this was not always wise: several blunders in de Ridefort's combat leadership contributed to the devastating defeat at the Battle of Hattin. The last Grand Master was Jacques de Molay, burned at the stake in Paris in 1314 by order of King Philip IV.


title: Knights Templar

text: Bernard de Clairvaux and founder Hugues de Payens devised a specific code of conduct for the Templar Order, known to modern historians as the Latin Rule. Its 72 clauses laid down the details of the knights' way of life, including the types of garments they were to wear and how many horses they could have. Knights were to take their meals in silence, eat meat no more than three times per week, and not have physical contact of any kind with women, even members of their own family. A Master of the Order was assigned "4 horses, and one chaplain-brother and one clerk with three horses, and one sergeant brother with two horses, and one gentleman valet to carry his shield and lance, with one horse". As the order grew, more guidelines were added, and the original list of 72 clauses was expanded to several hundred in its final form.


title: Knights Templar

text: The knights wore a white surcoat with a red cross, and a white mantle also with a red cross; the sergeants wore a black tunic with a red cross on the front and a black or brown mantle. The white mantle was assigned to the Templars at the Council of Troyes in 1129, and the cross was most probably added to their robes at the launch of the Second Crusade in 1147, when Pope Eugenius III, King Louis VII of France, and many other notables attended a meeting of the French Templars at their headquarters near Paris. Under the Rule, the knights were to wear the white mantle at all times: they were even forbidden to eat or drink unless wearing it.


title: Knights Templar

text: The red cross that the Templars wore on their robes was a symbol of martyrdom, and to die in combat was considered a great honour that assured a place in heaven. There was a cardinal rule that the warriors of the order should never surrender unless the Templar flag had fallen, and even then they were first to try to regroup with another of the Christian orders, such as that of the Hospitallers. Only after all flags had fallen were they allowed to leave the battlefield. This uncompromising principle, along with their reputation for courage, excellent training, and heavy armament, made the Templars one of the most feared combat forces in medieval times.


title: Knights Templar

text: Although not prescribed by the Templar Rule, it later became customary for members of the order to wear long and prominent beards. In about 1240, Alberic of Trois-Fontaines described the Templars as an "order of bearded brethren"; while during the interrogations by the papal commissioners in Paris in 1310–1311, out of nearly 230 knights and brothers questioned, 76 are described as wearing a beard, in some cases specified as being "in the style of the Templars", and 133 are said to have shaved off their beards, either in renunciation of the order or because they had hoped to escape detection.


title: Knights Templar

text: Initiation, known as Reception ("receptio") into the order, was a profound commitment and involved a solemn ceremony. Outsiders were discouraged from attending the ceremony, which aroused the suspicions of medieval inquisitors during the later trials. New members had to willingly sign over all of their wealth and goods to the order and take vows of poverty, chastity, piety, and obedience. Most brothers joined for life, although some were allowed to join for a set period. Sometimes a married man was allowed to join if he had his wife's permission, but he was not allowed to wear the white mantle.


title: Knights Templar

text: With their military mission and extensive financial resources, the Knights Templar funded a large number of building projects around Europe and the Holy Land. Many of these structures are still standing. Many sites also maintain the name "Temple" because of centuries-old association with the Templars. For example, some of the Templars' lands in London were later rented to lawyers, which led to the names of the Temple Bar gateway and the Temple Underground station. Two of the four Inns of Court which may call members to act as barristers are the Inner Temple and Middle Temple – the entire area known as Temple, London.


title: Knights Templar

text: Distinctive architectural elements of Templar buildings include the use of the image of "two knights on a single horse", representing the Knights' poverty, and round buildings designed to resemble the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.


title: Knights Templar

text: The Knights Templar were dismantled in the Rolls of the Catholic Church in 1309. Following the suppression of the Order, a number of Knights Templar joined the newly established Order of Christ, which effectively reabsorbed the Knights Templar and its properties in AD 1319, especially in Portugal. The story of the persecution and sudden dissolution of the secretive yet powerful medieval Templars has drawn many other groups to use alleged connections with them as a way of enhancing their own image and mystery. Apart from the Order of Christ, there is no clear historical connection between the Knights Templar and any other modern organization, the earliest of which emerged publicly in the 18th century.


title: Knights Templar

text: Following the dissolution of the Knights Templar, the Order of Christ was erected in 1319 and absorbed many of the Knights Templar into its ranks, along with Knights Templar properties in Portugal. Its headquarters became a castle in Tomar, a former Knights Templar castle.


title: Knights Templar

text: The Military Order of Christ consider themselves the successors of the former Knights Templar. After the Templars were abolished on 22 March 1312, the Order of Christ was founded in 1319 under the protection of the Portuguese king Denis, who refused to persecute the former knights as in most other states under the influence of the Catholic Church. Denis revived the Templars of Tomar as the Order of Christ, grateful for their aid during the "Reconquista" and in the reconstruction of Portugal after the wars. Denis negotiated with Clement's successor John XXII for recognition of the new order and its right to inherit Templar assets and property. This was granted in the papal bull "Ad ea ex quibus" of 14 March 1319.


title: Knights Templar

text: Many temperance organizations named themselves after the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, citing the belief that the original Knights Templar "drank sour milk, and also because they were fighting 'a great crusade' against 'this terrible vice' of alcohol". The largest of these, the International Order of Good Templars (IOGT), grew throughout the world after being started in the 19th century and continues to advocate for the abstinence from alcohol and other drugs; other Orders in this tradition include those of the Templars of Honor and Temperance (Tempel Riddare Orden), which has a large presence in Scandinavia.


title: Knights Templar

text: The Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem (French: "Ordre Souverain et Militaire du Temple de Jérusalem", OSMTJ)OSMTJ Global Knights Templar - The Official International Home of the OSMTJ ( (Latin: "Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani", OSMTH) is a self-styled order which was publicly disclosed in 1804 and "accredited as a nongovernmental organization (NGO) by the UN in 2001". It is ecumenical in that it admits Christians of many denominations in its ranks. Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat produced the Larmenius Charter in 1804 with a claim of succession to the original Catholic Christian military order.


title: Knights Templar

text: Freemasonry has incorporated the symbols and rituals of several medieval military orders in a number of Masonic bodies since at least the 18th century. This can be seen in the "Red Cross of Constantine," inspired by the Military Constantinian Order; the "Order of Malta," inspired by the Knights Hospitaller; and the "Order of the Temple", inspired by the Knights Templar. The Orders of Malta and the Temple feature prominently in the York Rite. One theory on the origin of Freemasonry claims direct descent from the historical Knights Templar through its final fourteenth-century members who were thought to have taken refuge in Scotland and aided Robert the Bruce in his victory at Bannockburn. This theory is usually rejected both by Masonic authorities and historians due to lack of evidence in regards to the connections.


title: Knights Templar

text: The Knights Templar have been associated with legends circulated even during their time. Masonic writers added their own speculations in the 18th century, and further fictional embellishments have been added in popular novels such as "Ivanhoe", "Foucault's Pendulum", and "The Da Vinci Code"; modern movies such as "National Treasure", "The Last Templar", "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"; the television series "Knightfall"; as well as video games such as "Broken Sword", "Deus Ex", "Assassin's Creed" and "Dante's Inferno".


title: Knights Templar

text: There have been speculative popular publications surrounding the order's early occupation of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as well as speculation about what relics the Templars may have found there.


title: Knights Templar

text: The association of the Holy Grail with the Templars has precedents even in 12th-century fiction; Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival" calls the knights guarding the Grail Kingdom "templeisen", apparently a conscious fictionalisation of the "templarii".


title: Sid Vicious

text: John Simon Ritchie (10 May 1957 – 2 February 1979), better known by his stage name Sid Vicious, was an English musician, best known as the bassist for the punk rock band Sex Pistols. Despite dying in 1979 at age 21, he remains an icon of the punk subculture; one of his friends noted that he embodied "everything in punk that was dark, decadent and nihilistic."


title: Sid Vicious

text: John Simon Ritchie was born on 10 May 1957 in Lewisham to John and Anne Ritchie nee McDonald (1933–1996). Anne had dropped out of school and joined the British Army, where she met Ritchie's father, a guardsman at Buckingham Palace and a semi-professional trombone player on the London jazz scene. Shortly after Ritchie's birth, he and his mother moved to Ibiza, where they expected to be joined by his father, who did not appear and provided no financial support—Anne reportedly sold marijuana to get by. With the help of the British Embassy in Spain, Anne returned to England and settled in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, where she enrolled her son known as John in Sandown Court School (now The Skinners' Kent Academy).


title: Sid Vicious

text: In 1965, Anne married Christopher Beverley, who died six months later of kidney failure. Anne and John lived briefly in Bristol and Clevedon, Somerset, where John attended Clevedon School. In 1971, the pair moved to Stoke Newington in Hackney, east London, where John attended Clissold Park School (now Stoke Newington School). At this time, he began using the name 'John Beverley'.


title: Sid Vicious

text: By 1973, Anne's life was consumed by her addiction to heroin and opiates, to the point where she was unaware that her son was attending Westminster Kingsway College, then known as Kingsway College of Further Education and as a community and vocational school for students with difficulties. While at Kingsway—which he was likely attending to complete his 'O Levels' (GCE Ordinary Level), John indicated to a counsellor that he was contemplating suicide; there were also claims that he was torturing and killing cats. When John turned 16 that year, Anne kicked him out of her home.


title: Sid Vicious

text: In 1973, Beverley met fellow Kingsway student John Lydon, who introduced him to his friends John Grey and John Wardle. All four, who became known locally as 'The Four Johns', quit school and began squatting in various dismal locations. Three of the four Johns would then take nicknames: Lydon nicknamed Beverley "Sid Vicious" after Beverley was bitten by Lydon's hamster Sid (named after Syd Barrett). Lydon's bandmate, guitarist Steve Jones gave him the name Johnny Rotten, and Sid nicknamed Wardle Jah Wobble.


title: Sid Vicious

text: The four young men started hanging around the King's Road in Chelsea, London which, at the time, was the epicentre of 'Swinging London', when music and fashion were burgeoning. A favourite spot was Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's clothing store, SEX. There, Vicious met American expatriate Chrissie Hynde, before she formed her group the Pretenders, who reportedly tried (and failed) to convince Vicious to join her in a sham marriage so she could get a work permit. According to Lydon, he and Vicious took up busking, with Lydon singing and occasionally playing the violin and Vicious playing a tambourine or an acoustic guitar. They would play Alice Cooper covers, and people gave them money to stop.


title: Sid Vicious

text: In 1975, Lydon joined Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook in the formation of the band the Sex Pistols, managed by McLaren—Vicious was photographed watching the band attack their audience at the Nashville Rooms in Kensington in 1976. Vicious then began his musical career.


title: Sid Vicious

text: In 1976, Vicious co-founded, as vocalist and saxophone player, the Flowers of Romance along with the Clash co-founder Keith Levene and Viv Albertine, who would go on to become the guitarist of The Slits. During this time, he learned to play bass by listening to the first Ramones album "Ramones", fixating on the up-tempo bump-and-grind pattern of the song "I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement", a pattern he would apply to most of his playing from then on.


title: Sid Vicious

text: In June 1976, Vicious went to a Sex Pistols concert at the 100 Club. Nick Kent, who had played guitar with the Sex Pistols early on and had left music to become an "NME" music critic and champion of punk rock (and who was Hynde's boyfriend), was also there, and was apparently blocking Vicious' view. Vicious, high on speed, lashed Kent's head with a rusted motorcycle chain which, according to Hynde, he carried with him. The incident was reported in the papers but no charges were laid.


title: Sid Vicious

text: Although the songs they wrote would later be performed by other bands, The Flowers of Romance did not perform live, or record any music. But Vicious came to the attention of members of The Damned. He was considered, along with Dave Vanian, for the position of lead singer, but Vicious failed to show for the audition. Vicious contended that Vanian and his associates had intentionally withheld information about the audition to ensure that Vicious missed the audition.


title: Sid Vicious

text: On 20 September 1976, Vicious appeared with Siouxsie and the Banshees, playing drums at their first gig at the 100 Club Punk Special in London's Oxford Street, a two-day festival co-founded by McLaren. The following day, Vicious went to The Damned's performance. Drunk and high on amphetamines, he hurled his glass at the stage, attempting to strike Vanian. He missed, the glass shattered against a pillar and blinded a woman in one eye. Vicious was arrested and imprisoned at Ashford Remand Centre. Westwood and Albertine visited Vicious in prison, with Albertine bringing the book "Helter Skelter" as a gift.


title: Sid Vicious

text: In February 1977, McLaren announced that Glen Matlock had been "thrown out of the band" because "he liked the Beatles", and that he had been replaced by Vicious. In his autobiography "I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol", Matlock says he quit because he was "sick of all the bullshit". In the 2000 documentary "The Filth and the Fury", the band members agreed that there was tension between Matlock and Rotten, but Matlock says that those tensions were aggravated by McLaren, who wanted to generate chaos in the band as a creative mechanism, and as a way of building the band's image. He wanted Matlock to leave, and to replace him with Vicious, saying "if Johnny Rotten is the voice of punk, then Vicious is the attitude."


title: Sid Vicious

text: Vicious had become the Sex Pistols' uber-fan, never missing a concert. He was encouraged to be drunk and disorderly, with Wobble saying "Sid was offered up as a sacrificial lamb by the people around the Pistols. None of them would have gone over the top. He was their kamikaze pilot, and they were all too happy to strap him in and send him off."


title: Sid Vicious

text: In March 1977, the Sex Pistols were signed to A&M Records. In celebration, they trashed the company's offices, and then held a private party at the Speakeasy, a club and restaurant frequented by established members of the London music scene. The Sex Pistols members confronted the BBC DJ Bob Harris, who was the presenter of the "Old Grey Whistle Test", a television show which featured non-chart music. Blocking Harris behind the bar, broken bottles in hand, they demanded to know when they would be on the show. A bar fight ensued. Sid Vicious jammed a broken bottle into the face of BBC recording engineer George Nicholson. Harris was rescued by the Procol Harum road crew, who grouped around him and escorted him out of the club, where they found that police had had to cordon off the entire block. None of the Sex Pistols were arrested but, the next day, A&M dropped them and Capital Radio banned all Sex Pistols music from its stations.


title: Sid Vicious

text: Vicious played his first gig with the Sex Pistols on 3 April 1977 at The Screen On The Green; his debut was filmed by Don Letts and appears in "Punk Rock Movie". But he could not play well and had no bass experience, so guitarist Steve Jones played bass on the band's debut album "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols". Vicious was allowed to play bass on one track, "Bodies" but his contribution was later overdubbed by Jones. He also missed most of the band's rehearsals and recording sessions because he was in hospital with hepatitis, likely caused by intravenous drug use. By this time, Vicious was using heroin, with many believing that his mother was his supplier. Dee Dee Ramone had seen him shooting drugs on more than one occasion, and Rotten's friend John Gray had found Vicious shooting speed while he was still living with his mother; Vicious told him that the drugs were "me mum's".


title: Sid Vicious

text: Also in 1977, Vicious met Nancy Spungen, an American groupie living in London, who had a history of psychological problems and was also a heroin addict. Spungen, who had initially set her sights on Rotten and who supported herself by alternately dealing drugs and working as a topless dancer, made herself useful on the King's Road scene by procuring drugs for musicians. She and Vicious became inseparable, which caused problems with the band, whose members did not like her; McLaren admitted to planning to have her abducted and forced onto a plane back to the United States. The two had a strange relationship; Vicious played nursemaid when she was sick and was shy and polite with her mother, who reported watching Nancy cut his meat for him. On the other hand, Spungen was known to be verbally abusive and physically aggressive. Vicious may have facilitated Spungen's occasional prostitution (and watched). According to Rotten's wife Nora Forster, Vicious often hit Nancy and, in her last conversation with her mother, Spungen admitted that beatings which she had previously said were at the hands of strangers actually came from Vicious. They shared an infatuation with knives.


title: Sid Vicious

text: Beginning in July, with Spungen in tow, the band went on a Scandinavian tour, then toured Holland and the UK. On 28 October 1977, their only album "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols" was released and, due in part to notoriety (particularly of the song "God Save the Queen"), and in spite of sales bans at major retailers, the album debuted at number one on the UK Album Charts and went gold on 17 November. It remained a best-seller for nearly a year, spending 48 weeks in the top 75. It is frequently listed as the most influential punk album of all time.


title: Sid Vicious

text: On 24 December 1977, the Sex Pistols played The Royal Links Pavilion, Cromer; the next day, the band played two shows at Ivanhoes in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. It was during the national Fire Brigades Strike and the band performed a matinee for the children of firefighters. In the 2013 documentary "Never Mind the Baubles: Xmas '77 with the Sex Pistols", Lydon claimed that Vicious had to be warned not to be the "hardcore, tough rocker bloke" in front of the children. The track of Vicious singing the Johnny Thunders song "Born to Lose" which appears on "Sid Sings", was recorded during this performance, as Vicious stepped in when Lydon left the stage to pose as Father Christmas. These were the Sex Pistols' last performances in Britain, until the original members reunited for the Filthy Lucre tour in 1996.


title: Sid Vicious

text: In January 1978, the Sex Pistols embarked on a two-week US tour. There was rising tension within the band. Rotten was barely speaking to anyone. Warner Bros., which organised and staffed the tour, insisted that Vicious clean up his heroin habit so he was using methadone. He was in a constant state of semi-withdrawal and furious that the band had blocked Spungen from accompanying them on the tour. McLaren had long been keeping Vicious on rations of $14.00 (US) a week but he still managed to find drugs. To make matters worse, McLaren, ever eager for more chaos and careful that journalists were on-scene, booked the band, not into the clubs of New York, but into bars in Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas. In San Antonio on 8 January, Vicious felt antagonised by an audience member and struck him on the head with his bass. Before the Sex Pistols took the stage of the Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas on 10 January, Vicious carved the words "gimme a fix" into his chest with a razor (later joking that "if you try to kill yourself [with a razor to the chest], it won't work"). He greeted the audience by calling them "cowboy faggots"; in return, he was struck by a full can of beer to the head. The next night, 11 January, he punched a hole in the Green Room wall after the band’s show at Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa. It was long rumoured that at their 14 January show at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, Vicious did not bother to plug in his bass at all, although video from the show makes it clear when Jones' guitar cuts out during "Bodies" that Sid was both playing bass and the right notes. There is also a pre-show soundcheck audio recording where Johnny says to turn Sid down because his bass was too loud. At the end of the show, Johnny Rotten uttered the famous quote "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?", marking the end of the Sex Pistols.


title: Sid Vicious

text: On 19 January, Vicious boarded a flight from San Francisco to New York. By the time the plane landed at JFK Airport, he had slipped into a diazepam-, methadone- and alcohol-induced coma and was rushed to a hospital in Queens where, as he told the photographer Roberta Bayley, the doctor told him that if he did not quit drinking, he would be dead in six months.


title: Sid Vicious

text: When he was released, he re-united with Spungen. In April, the two travelled to Paris to film the Sex Pistols mockumentary "The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle", where they spent most of their time in their hotel room, doing drugs. Director Julien Temple was able to get Vicious to attend production long enough to record three songs: "C'Mon Everybody", "Something Else" and "My Way". When Vicious returned to his hotel, he found that Spungen had retaliated for being left alone by (superficially) cutting her wrists.


title: Sid Vicious

text: The couple then travelled to London where, by August, they needed to return to the US but had no money. He bumped into Glen Matlock, who by this point had founded the band Rich Kids, and suggested that they play a gig together. For this concert, Vicious and Matlock recruited Rich Kids guitarist and singer Steve New, and the Damned's drummer Rat Scabies. They called themselves Vicious White Kids and performed once—at the Electric Ballroom in Camden Town on 15 August 1978. Sid did not play bass in this band; he was the lead singer. Spungen joined on backing vocals but Matlock made sure that her microphone was not plugged in for the concert.


title: Sid Vicious

text: Vicious and Spungen then returned to New York, where they settled into Room 100 of the Hotel Chelsea, after causing a fire in their first room, as Mr. and Mrs. John Ritchie. Spungen acted as his manager, putting together the band of Steve Dior, Jerry Nolan and Arthur Kane and booking him into the New York club Max's Kansas City. Spungen sang with him, and they were sometimes joined by Mick Jones and Johnny Thunders. He drew large crowds, though some performances were "hellish", with the audience booing his attempted imitation of Rotten, and Vicious insulting the audience. Examples of this can be heard in the in-between tracks on his live album "Sid Sings"; these performances were also released in 2002 (and again in 2011), as "Live at Max's Kansas City, NY 1978". In the documentary "Who Killed Nancy?", Dior said that Vicious "got good money for those shows" but Spungen often had to call her parents for money. In one of these conversations, Spungen said that she was having problems with her kidneys, and asked her mother to look into getting her, and Sid, into a detox programme.


title: Sid Vicious

text: On the night of 11 October 1978, Sid and Nancy hosted a party in their hotel room, during which Vicious took approximately 30 Tuinol tablets and, while numerous people came and went, was comatose for the rest of the night. At about 11:00 the next morning, hotel staff found Spungen dead on the bathroom floor, with a knife wound to her abdomen. Vicious was found wandering the hallway. He first claimed to have killed her, then said he remembered nothing. Two people who had been at the party stated that Nancy was alive at 5:00 a.m. The murder weapon was identified as a Jaguar K-11 hunting knife, which Nancy had purchased for Sid a few days earlier. Vicious was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. He told police that he and Nancy had argued that night but gave conflicting versions of what happened next, saying, "I stabbed her, but I never meant to kill her" then saying that he did not remember anything, then that Spungen had fallen onto the knife. Later, the arresting officer, Sgt Thomas Kilroy of the Third Homicide Unit, was quoted as having said: "After an investigation, Vicious admitted killing Miss Spungen during a dispute."


title: Sid Vicious

text: Lawyer Michael Berger first dealt with the matter, but McLaren and Anne Beverley were lawyer-shopping. They interviewed several high-profile lawyers, including Melvin Belli, Gerald B. Lefcourt and William Kunstler before settling on F. Lee Bailey. Bailey never appeared in court, but another lawyer from his firm, Jim Merberg, arranged for Vicious to be released on $50,000.00 bail, with the conditions that he not leave New York and that he sign in daily at the 3rd Homicide Unit offices, and at the Lafayette Street Methadone Center. All legal costs were paid by The Sex Pistols' label, Virgin Records. Vicious returned to the Chelsea Hotel, where he was joined by McLaren and his mother.


title: Sid Vicious

text: McLaren firmly believed that Vicious was innocent. Noting that the knife was left in plain view and that the couple kept their cash in a drawer, he believed that Spungen caught one of the party guests stealing money and was stabbed by that person. Given the number of people who had been through the hotel room on the night of the murder, Bailey had his investigator look into the possibility that a third party was involved in Spungen's death.


title: Sid Vicious

text: Bailey also hired forensic psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Teich to evaluate Vicious. After their initial conversation, during which Vicious was preoccupied by the 'working class in Berlin' and remained fixated on the television, Teich told Anne Beverley that Sid must not be left alone. Hours later, Beverley called Teich and said that Sid had slashed his arms with a smashed light bulb. Teich returned to the hotel and called an ambulance. EMS staff arrived with the police; when Sid saw them, he headed for the window but was blocked by Teich. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital and then moved to the New York-Presbyterian Westchester Behavioral Health Center in White Plains, New York. He was released on 26 November and returned to the Chelsea. At this time, Rotten tried to contact Vicious, but his calls were barred by Beverley and McLaren. On 28 November, Vicious was interviewed by the Irish journalist Bernard Clarke. He said that Spungen's death was "meant to happen" and that "Nancy always said she'd die before she was 21." He said that he just wanted to have fun. When asked where he would like to be, he replied, "Under the ground."


title: Sid Vicious

text: In the meantime, McLaren announced that the Sex Pistols would reunite to record a Christmas album to benefit Sid's defence, and sold T-shirts with the slogan, "She's Dead, I'm Alive, I'm Yours."


title: Sid Vicious

text: Vicious had started seeing women again and was casually involved with rocker Judy Nylon, Dee Dee Ramone's ex-girlfriend Connie Gripp, an aspiring actress named Michele Robison and Johnny Rotten's ex-girlfriend, Danielle Boothe. On 5 December, Vicious went to the Hurrah night club with Boothe, the photographers David Still and Peter Kodick Gravelle, and the comedian Michael Morra (aka Rockets Redglare) who was Sid's self-appointed bodyguard. Playing that night was Skafish; their drum roadie was a woman named Tarrah, who was the girlfriend of Todd Smith (Patti Smith's brother). Vicious began flirting with Tarrah. She rebuffed him and he pinched her. Smith told him to back off and Vicious smashed a beer bottle and jammed it into Smith's face. Smith required five stitches. Morra told police that Smith provoked Sid, that the bottle broke in Sid's hand and, producing the glass shards, said that Smith's wound was the accidental result of flying glass. On 7 December, Vicious was arrested and charged with assault. The judge agreed that Vicious had broken the terms of his previous bail and sent him to Rikers Island, where he underwent enforced detoxification. While he was in Rikers, Anne Beverley brought Robison to visit her son.


title: Sid Vicious

text: On 18 January, Vicious appeared in court, represented by Jim Merberg. To everyone's surprise, the judge, James Leff, not only released Vicious on $10,000.00 bail, but reduced his previous bail conditions—he now had to report to the Homicide Unit only three days a week and did not have to appear at the methadone centre at all. Leff applied one condition—that Vicious not frequent night clubs.


title: Sid Vicious

text: While it was widely reported, including by Rotten, that Mick Jagger paid Vicious' bail, that was untrue; Virgin Records continued to pay his legal fees. Anne Beverley, who was in court with Robison, was happy with the outcome, telling reporters "Now the public will know he is a good boy."


title: Sid Vicious

text: On the morning of 1 February 1979, after completing his detoxification programme, Vicious was released from Rikers Island. When he arrived in Manhattan, and by chance, he met his friend Peter Gravelle. Vicious asked Gravelle to find him some heroin. Gravelle brought $200 worth of the drug to the apartment of Michele Robison at 63 Bank Street, where he joined Vicious, Robison, Beverley, Jerry Only and Howie Pyro. Gravelle said that they sat around doing drugs, and he left at 3:00 a.m. Only said that he and Anne Beverley made dinner, and that he left early, when the drug use began. He noted that Vicious was already nodding off, but Gravelle said that Robison gave Vicious four quaaludes to help him sleep. Vicious died in the night, of a drug overdose, Robison and his mother discovering his body the next morning.


title: Sid Vicious

text: In the 1996 book "Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk" by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, Vicious' friend, photographer Eileen Polk, said that no New York funeral home was willing to hold a funeral or burial for Vicious due to his reputation. There is no evidence of this and the scenario is unlikely.


title: Sid Vicious

text: Anne Beverley claimed that Vicious and Spungen had made a suicide pact and that Vicious' death was not accidental. She produced a handwritten note, which she said she found in the pocket of Sid's leather jacket, reading "We had a death pact, and I have to keep my half of the bargain. Please bury me next to my baby. Bury me in my leather jacket, jeans and motorcycle boots. Goodbye." According to Deborah Spungen, Vicious wrote a letter to her when he was last hospitalised, saying approximately the same thing. "We always knew that we would go to the same place when we died", he wrote. "We so much wanted to die together in each other's arms. I cry every time I think about that. I promised my baby that I would kill myself if anything ever happened to her, and she promised me the same. This is my final commitment to my love." Spungen was Jewish, and is buried in a Jewish cemetery in Pennsylvania. As an inter-faith burial was not possible, Sid's body was cremated at Garden State Crematory in New Jersey. According to Polk, Beverley asked Deborah Spungen if she could scatter Vicious' ashes over Nancy's grave and Spungen said no. Regardless, Polk said that Jerry Only drove Beverley, her sister, and two of Vicious' friends, to Nancy's gravesite, where Beverley scattered Sid's ashes.


title: Sid Vicious

text: By the time of Sid's death, he and Nancy were internationally notorious. His death made the front pages of most New York newspapers for days, and Robison's apartment building was thronged by reporters. She would soon change her name. The first of many posthumous albums appeared in 1980; "Sid Vicious", released by EMI sub-label Innocent Records, has as its jacket image the photo of Vicious' body being removed from 63 Bank St.


title: Sid Vicious

text: In his 2007 book "Pretty Vacant: A History of Punk", director Phil Strongman stated his conviction that it was actor Michael Morra who killed Nancy Spungen, noting that it was Morra who brought the Tuinol to the party, and that Morra knew about the large amounts of cash kept in the bedside table drawer. Morra publicly denied this but privately confessed it to friends, however Howie Pyro insists that it was Morra's habit to tell stories for attention. (Morra died in 2001.) Strongman also implicated Morra's friend, punk rocker Neon Leon, who lived down the hall from Sid and Nancy and who was found to be in possession of many of Sid's belongings, including his famed leather jacket and two of his gold records. Leon said that Vicious had given the items to him for safe-keeping. He also told the "Village Voice" that he knew who the murderer was, although he refused to name the person. Leon now performs under another name and lives outside the United States.


title: Sid Vicious

text: Several online sources state that the estate of Sid Vicious continues to earn approximately $400,000 annually in royalties. These statements are not verified. In "Lonely Boy", Jones states that Vicious' estate passed to maternal cousins.


title: Sid Vicious

text: In 2006, the Sex Pistols were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The surviving members declined to attend the ceremony.


title: Sid Vicious

text: Anne Beverley had taken possession of Sid's bass guitar, a white Fender Precision Bass with a black Pickguard and a leather strap with the name 'Sid' etched into it. Shortly before her death (of a drug overdose in 1996) she sold it to Steve Jones for £2,000.


title: Sid Vicious

text: Steven Severin of Siouxsie and the Banshees remembered Vicious in positive terms, saying "Before he got deeply into drugs, he was one of the funniest guys. He had a brilliant sense of humour, goofy, sweet, and very cute." In 2009, Lydon told "The Independent" "I'm sorry, God, for the day I brought Sid into the band. He felt so isolated, poor old Sid, because he wasn't the sharpest knife on the block. The best aspect of his character, which was his humour, just vanished the day he joined the Pistols."


title: Sid Vicious

text: On 20 January 2009, a 30-minute documentary about Sid Vicious titled "In Search of Sid" and recorded 30 years after his death by musician and long-term friend of Vicious Jah Wobble was aired on the BBC Radio 4.


title: Sid Vicious

text: As of 2022, Sid Vicious-themed souvenirs are widely available for purchase, and anything possibly having belonged to him fetches high prices. In 2011, a suit of Vicious sold at auction by Christie's for GBP 11,000.


title: Sid Vicious

text: Any recording with Vicious in it has been repeatedly released. His singles "My Way" and "It's Shit" were last released by the American label Cleopatra Records in 2021. Also in 2021, Cleopatra's sub-label, Anarchy Records, released the album "Love Kills".


title: Sid Vicious

text: Numerous bands have recorded songs about Sid Vicious. In 1979, the band Helpless Huw released the four-track recording "Sid Vicious Was Innocent". In 1982, the Exploited included the song "Sid Vicious Was Innocent" on their album "Troops of Tomorrow". Former frontman for the Clash, Joe Strummer, recorded "Love Kills" and "Dum Dum Club" for the "Sid and Nancy" soundtrack. In 1986, the Ramones released "Love Kills" on their album "Animal Boy", which was a tribute to both Sid and Nancy. In 2017, Foster the People released "Loyal Like Sid & Nancy", which references Vicious and Spungen's relationship, as the second single from their album "Sacred Hearts Club". In 2015, Medusa released a music video to their song "Sid and Nancy" which portrays the two as children. In 2017, Industrial Metal band Powerman 5000 released a single called "Sid Vicious in a Dress," which is about a female punk rocker who exhibits similar chaos and violent nature of the former Sex Pistols bassist. In 2017, singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers recorded a track entitled "Chelsea", included on her debut album Stranger in the Alps. The track was originally a poem about Vicious and Spungen's relationship in their final two months of life - Bridgers was so enthralled with the story, she turned it into a song.


title: Sid Vicious

text: In his 2022 album "Mainstream Sellout", artist Machine Gun Kelly released a track titled "Sid & Nancy", about a couple who was deeply in love but shared some dark ideas. The song ends with the sound of two consecutive gunshots.


title: Sid Vicious

text: The critically-acclaimed 1986 film "Sid and Nancy", directed by Alex Cox, portrays Sid's life from his joining the Sex Pistols to the end of his life. It stars Gary Oldman as Sid Vicious and Chloe Webb as Nancy Spungen. Oldman's performance was praised by "Uncut" as a "hugely sympathetic reading of the punk figurehead as a lost and bewildered manchild" though Oldman detested the film and punk music in general.


title: Sid Vicious

text: In 1993, Ade Edmondson played Vicious in "The Comic Strip Presents: Demonella". In the film, which was directed by Paul Bartel, Vicious resides in Hell with Oscar Wilde, Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan and Marie Antoinette.


title: Sid Vicious

text: The Foo Fighters' 1997 video for "Everlong" is about Sid and Nancy, with Sid defending Nancy against party demons. Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins play Sid and Nancy, respectively.


title: Sid Vicious

text: Love, Springfieldian Style, the Valentine's Day episode of "The Simpsons" 2008 season, spoofs Sid and Nancy's relationship.


title: Sid Vicious

text: In September 2009, the Roy Smiles play "Kurt and Sid" debuted at the Trafalgar Studios in London's West End. The play, set in Kurt Cobain's greenhouse on the day of his suicide, revolves around the ghost of Sid Vicious visiting Cobain to try and convince him not to kill himself. Vicious was played by Danny Dyer.


title: Sid Vicious

text: In January 2021, FX announced that a series about the Sex Pistols, called "Pistol", had gone into production, with Vicious to be portrayed by Louis Partridge. It is based on Steve Jones' memoir "Lonely Boy" and is directed by Danny Boyle. Lydon called the series "The most disrespectful shit I've ever had to endure" and unsuccessfully sued to block the use of the Sex Pistols' music in the series.


title: Donnie Wahlberg

text: Donald Edmond Wahlberg Jr. (born August 17, 1969) is an American singer, songwriter, rapper, actor, record producer, and film producer. He is a founding member of the boy band New Kids on the Block. Outside music, he has had roles in the "Saw" films, "Zookeeper", "Dreamcatcher", "The Sixth Sense", "Righteous Kill", and "Ransom", as well as appearing in the World War II miniseries "Band of Brothers" as Carwood Lipton.


title: Donnie Wahlberg

text: From 2002 to 2003, he starred in the crime drama "Boomtown". He has starred in the drama series "Blue Bloods" as Danny Reagan since 2010, and since 2014 is an executive producer of the TNT reality television show "Boston's Finest". He was nominated for "Choice Scream" at the 2006 Teen Choice Awards for his work in the "Saw" films. He has also produced and starred in "Rock This Boat", "Donnie Loves Jenny" and "Return of the Mac" on Pop TV. He also produced and starred in "Wahlburgers" on A&E TV.


title: Donnie Wahlberg

text: Wahlberg was born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. He is the eighth of nine children, with older siblings, Arthur, Jim, Paul, Robert, Tracey, Michelle, Debbie and younger brother, Mark, who began his entertainment career formerly as the leader of the early 1990s boy band, New Kids on the Block. He also has three half-siblings from his father's first marriage: Donna, Scott and Buddy. His mother, Alma Elaine (née Donnelly), was a bank clerk and nurse's aide who passed on April 19, 2021, and his father, Donald Edmond Wahlberg Sr., was a teamster who worked as a delivery driver; they divorced in 1982. His father was of Swedish and Irish descent, and his mother was of Irish, English, and French-Canadian ancestry.


title: Donnie Wahlberg

text: As a recording artist, Wahlberg is known as an original member of the boy band New Kids on the Block.


title: Donnie Wahlberg

text: Wahlberg's first film acting role was in the 1996 film "Bullet" with Mickey Rourke and Tupac Shakur. Also in 1996, he appeared as a kidnapper in "Ransom" with Mel Gibson. He went back to his home town for a starring role in the South Boston-based film "Southie". Wahlberg received attention for his role in the 1999 film "The Sixth Sense", playing the patient of Bruce Willis' character in the opening sequence.


title: Donnie Wahlberg

text: In 2001, Wahlberg co-starred as Second Lieutenant C. Carwood Lipton in the television miniseries "Band of Brothers". He also starred in the 2002–2003 NBC drama series "Boomtown" as Joel Stevens, a Los Angeles police detective. Graham Yost, executive producer and writer of "Boomtown", had worked with him in "Band of Brothers" and was so impressed by his performance that he wrote the role of Joel Stevens specifically for him.


title: Donnie Wahlberg

text: In 2003, Wahlberg starred alongside Timothy Olyphant, Jason Lee, and his "Band of Brothers" co-star Damian Lewis as the mentally challenged Duddits in William Goldman and Lawrence Kasdan's adaptation of the Stephen King alien-invasion thriller, "Dreamcatcher". In 2005, he starred as Detective Eric Matthews in the second installment of the "Saw" series. He reprised the role in "Saw III" in 2006 and "Saw IV" in 2007, also appearing in "Saw V" in 2008 via archive footage from the previous films.


title: Donnie Wahlberg

text: In 2006, Wahlberg played Lieutenant Commander Burton in the military/boxing drama "Annapolis". In September 2006, he played the lead role in the short-lived television drama "Runaway" on The CW. The show was cancelled in October 2006 due to poor ratings. In 2007, he starred in the television film "Kings of South Beach" on A&E. Also in 2007, he starred on the TV series "The Kill Point".


title: Donnie Wahlberg

text: Wahlberg stars as 1st Grade Detective Danny Reagan on CBS's "Blue Bloods", a police drama set in New York City.


title: Donnie Wahlberg

text: , Wahlberg is the host of an internet radio show on Friday nights at 8 pm PST called "DDUB's R&B Back Rub" on Cherry Tree Radio and appeared in the 2011 comedy "Zookeeper".


title: Donnie Wahlberg

text: In 2021, Wahlberg worked on season five of "The Masked Singer" as the rooster "Cluedle-Doo" who gave exclusive clues to the viewers. After performing Mark Morrison's "Return of the Mack" in the semi-finals, Wahlberg was unmasked. He even stuck around when Omarion was unmasked as the wildcard contestant "Yeti".


title: Donnie Wahlberg

text: In 1991, Wahlberg was charged with first-degree arson for setting a fire at the historic Seelbach Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. Authorities stated that Wahlberg, then known as the "bad boy" of boy band New Kids on the Block, was partying with fellow band member Danny Wood and fans in the early morning hours when Wahlberg dumped vodka on a hallway carpet and ignited it. Wahlberg was facing up to twenty years in prison, but the charge was later reduced to misdemeanor criminal mischief, and eventually dismissed after Wahlberg agreed to appear in public-service videos addressing fire safety, drug abuse, and drunk driving.


title: Donnie Wahlberg

text: Wahlberg married Kimberly Fey on August 20, 1999, with whom he has two sons. They filed for divorce on August 13, 2008, citing irreconcilable differences. In July 2013, it was reported by "Us Weekly" that he was dating actress Jenny McCarthy after meeting on "Watch What Happens Live" in March. They announced their engagement on "The View" on April 16, 2014, and wed on August 31, 2014, at the Hotel Baker in St. Charles, Illinois.


title: Donnie Wahlberg

text: Wahlberg is a fan of the Boston Celtics and has been seen attending many of their games. He narrated "The Association: Boston Celtics", a documentary about the team's 2010 season, and co-narrated, alongside Ice Cube, the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary "", about the Celtics' rivalry with the Los Angeles Lakers. He co-owns a line of restaurants, Wahlburgers, located in Boston, MA and St. Charles, IL with brothers Paul and Mark.


title: Donnie Wahlberg

text: In February 2016, Wahlberg endorsed Republican candidate Marco Rubio for president of the United States, but later said the decision had been "tough" because "we have a lot of things we don't agree on." On the prospect of Donald Trump as president, he commented, "We can blame the president, we can blame the government, but we also have to look at ourselves if we vote with emotion, which we're on the verge of doing again collectively, the angry vote is what is moving the meters right now."


title: Sam Worthington

text: Samuel Henry John Worthington (born 2 August 1976) is an Australian actor. He is best known for playing Jake Sully in "Avatar", Marcus Wright in "Terminator Salvation", and Perseus in "Clash of the Titans" and its sequel "Wrath of the Titans". He later took more dramatic roles, appearing in "The Debt" (2010), "Everest" (2015), "Hacksaw Ridge" (2016), "The Shack" (2017), "" (2017), and "Fractured" (2019).


title: Sam Worthington

text: On television, he appeared in his native Australia as Howard in "Love My Way" and as Phillip Schuler in the television drama mini-series "Deadline Gallipoli", for which he was also an executive producer. He voiced the protagonist, Captain Alex Mason, in the video game "" (2010), as well as its sequels "" (2012), and "" (2018). In 2022, he starred in the true crime miniseries "Under the Banner of Heaven".


title: Sam Worthington

text: Worthington was born to English parents in Godalming, Surrey, in South East England, and moved to Perth, Western Australia, when he was six months old. He grew up in Warnbro, a suburb of Rockingham. His mother, Jeanne J. (née Martyn), is a housewife, and his father, Ronald W. Worthington, is a power plant employee. He has a sister, Lucinda.


title: Sam Worthington

text: He attended John Curtin College of the Arts, a school specialising in the dramatic arts, located in Fremantle, Western Australia, where he studied drama but did not graduate. When he left the college, his father gave him $400 and sent him on a one-way trip to Cairns, Queensland, telling him to "work his way home". He began working on construction and odd jobs, eventually settling in Sydney. At age 19, while working as a bricklayer, he auditioned for the National Institute of Dramatic Art and was accepted with a scholarship.


title: Sam Worthington

text: Worthington played a small role alongside Adam Garcia in the Aussie dance film "Bootmen" (2000). He also played a lead role in the low-budget Aussie comedy "Gettin' Square".


title: Sam Worthington

text: Worthington had a major role in "Somersault" (2004), for which he won the AFI Award for Best Lead Actor. He was well known in Australia for his role as Howard in the acclaimed Australian TV series "Love My Way", in which he played the main love interest of the female lead. In 2006, he played the lead in a modern Australian retelling of "Macbeth".


title: Sam Worthington

text: Worthington's international film career began with a series of small roles in Hollywood production "The Great Raid" (2005), which was filmed in Australia.


title: Sam Worthington

text: He auditioned for the role of James Bond in "Casino Royale", but lost the role to Daniel Craig. He starred in the Australian creature-feature film "Rogue" (2007), as a man named Neil, which gained a 100% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes.


title: Sam Worthington

text: In "Terminator Salvation", Worthington played cyborg Marcus Wright, who assists humans despite their suspicions of him. Worthington's next project was the James Cameron-directed science-fiction film "Avatar," in which he played Jake Sully, a paraplegic former U.S. Marine who finds himself at the centre of a war between his own species and the indigenous Na'vi people of the moon Pandora. The film became the highest-grossing film of all time, grossing more than $2.8 billion ($ billion adjusted for inflation) in box-office receipts worldwide. In November 2010, Worthington told "GQ Australia" that he went to audition, but wasn't told what it was for and got annoyed. So he did his part, left, forgot about it – and was called back. "I was a bit pissed off, and I think that came across," he says. "I think Jim saw a spark and liked it because that's Sully's character – a guy who doesn't like to be bullied and a guy who just wants to set things right."


title: Sam Worthington

text: He provided voice work for Captain Alex Mason, the protagonist in the video game "". Some gamers criticised Worthington's inability to mask his Australian accent, as in "Avatar". In November 2010, "The Hollywood Reporter" named Worthington as one of the young male actors who are "pushing – or being pushed" into taking over Hollywood as the new "A-List".


title: Sam Worthington

text: In 2012, Worthington starred in the sequel to "Clash of the Titans", called "Wrath of the Titans", alongside Liam Neeson. As in the first film, Worthington played the demigod and son of Zeus, Perseus. He also reprised his role as Alex Mason in "". Also in 2012, Worthington starred as Nick Cassidy in "Man on a Ledge", a suspense-thriller film directed by Asger Leth. Though the film received poor reviews from critics, Worthington's performance received praise, with "The New Zealand Herald" describing him as "suitably terrified".


title: Sam Worthington

text: Worthington portrayed Jim Fitzgerald in the Discovery Channel television series, "Manhunt: Unabomber".


title: Sam Worthington

text: Worthington has said that when he was about 30, he sold most of his possessions and ended up with around $2,000 to his name. He says he bought a car with the proceeds and was living in it before he auditioned for "Avatar".


title: Sam Worthington

text: On 18 October 2013, Worthington had confirmed rumours of a relationship with fellow Australian, model Lara Worthington (née Bingle). They married on 28 December 2014 and had son Rocket Zot in 2015. In 2016, Bingle and Worthington had their second son, Racer. In 2020, the couple announced the birth of their third son, River.


title: Sam Worthington

text: Worthington is a Christian. He is a recovering alcoholic and has been sober since 2014. He began heavily drinking as a means to cope with his loss of privacy following his increase in popularity after "Avatar"'s release, and stopped after his wife Lara gave him an ultimatum.


title: Sam Worthington

text: On 23 February 2014, Worthington was arrested in New York City for assault, after punching a paparazzo, Sheng Li, who followed Bingle to get a "perfect picture". Video footage of the incident depicts Worthington referring to Bingle as his "wife", furthering speculation about the pair's marital status. Worthington was initially released on a desk appearance ticket, while Li was arrested on charges of reckless endangerment, assault, and harassment.


title: Sam Worthington

text: On 26 February 2014, Worthington appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court, where he was ordered to stay away from Li for six months. The case was adjourned until 8 May 2014, with the actor to face charges of assault in the third degree, attempted assault, and harassment.


title: Sam Worthington

text: On 1 April 2014, Li blamed Bingle for starting the fight and called for her to be arrested. Later that month, Worthington secured a conditional discharge deal on a misdemeanour assault charge, therefore, avoiding any jail time, while the charges against Li were dismissed "in the interest of justice". Li then filed a $3.7 million civil lawsuit against Worthington, which was settled out of court before going to trial in September 2015.


title: Lost (TV series)

text: Lost is an American science fiction drama television series created by Jeffrey Lieber, J. J. Abrams, and Damon Lindelof that aired on ABC from September 22, 2004, to May 23, 2010, over six seasons, comprising a total of 121 episodes. The show contains elements of supernatural fiction, and follows the survivors of a commercial jet airliner flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, after the plane crashes on a mysterious island somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean. Episodes typically feature a primary storyline set on the island, augmented by flashback or flashforward sequences which provide additional insight into the involved characters.


title: Lost (TV series)

text: Lindelof and Carlton Cuse serve as showrunners and are executive producers along with Abrams and Bryan Burk. Inspired by the 2000 Tom Hanks film "Cast Away", the show is told in a heavily serialized manner. Due to its large ensemble cast and the cost of filming primarily on location in Oahu, Hawaii, the series was one of the most expensive on television, with the pilot alone costing over $14 million. The fictional universe and mythology of "Lost" were expanded upon by a number of related media, most importantly, a series of short mini-episodes called "", and a 12-minute epilogue titled "The New Man in Charge".


title: Lost (TV series)

text: "Lost" has regularly been ranked by critics as one of the greatest television series of all time. The first season had an estimated average of 16 million viewers per episode on ABC. During its sixth and final season, the show averaged over 11 million U.S. viewers per episode. "Lost" was the recipient of hundreds of industry award nominations throughout its run and won numerous of these awards, including the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series in 2005, Best American Import at the British Academy Television Awards in 2005, the Golden Globe Award for Best Drama in 2006, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Drama Series.


title: Lost (TV series)

text: Season 1 begins with the aftermath of a plane crash, which leaves the surviving passengers of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 on what seems to be an uninhabited tropical island. Jack Shephard, a spinal surgeon, becomes their leader. Their survival is threatened by a number of mysterious entities, including polar bears, an unseen creature that roams the jungle (the "Smoke Monster"), and the island's malevolent inhabitants known as "The Others". They encounter a French woman named Danielle Rousseau, who was shipwrecked on the island 16 years before the main story and is desperate for news of her daughter, Alex. They also find a mysterious metal hatch buried in the ground. While two survivors, Locke and Boone, try to force the hatch open, four others, Michael, Jin, Walt, and Sawyer attempt to leave on a raft that they have built. Meanwhile, flashbacks center on details of the individual survivors' lives prior to the plane crash.


title: Lost (TV series)

text: Season 2 follows the growing conflict between the survivors and the Others and continues the theme of the clash between faith and science, while resolving old mysteries and posing new ones. The four survivors in the raft are ambushed by the Others, and they take Walt, Michael's son. The survivors are forced to return to the island, where they find the tail-section survivors (the "Tailies"). A power struggle between Jack and John Locke over control of the guns and medicine located in the hatch develops, resolved in "The Long Con" by Sawyer when he gains control of them. The hatch is revealed to be a research station built some thirty years earlier by the Dharma Initiative, a scientific research project that involved conducting experiments on the island. A man named Desmond Hume had been living in the hatch for three years, activating a computer program every 108 minutes to prevent an unknown catastrophic event from occurring. To recover his son, Michael betrays the survivors, and Jack, Sawyer, and Kate are captured. Michael is given a boat and leaves the island with his son, while John destroys the computer in the hatch, whereupon an electromagnetic event shakes the island. This causes the island to be detected by scientists working for Penelope Widmore, and it is revealed that a similar event caused the breakup of the plane.


title: Lost (TV series)

text: In Season 3, the crash survivors learn more about the Others and their long history on the mysterious island, along with the fate of the Dharma Initiative. The leader of the Others, Benjamin Linus, is introduced as well and defections from both sides pave the way for conflict between the two. Time travel elements also begin to appear in the series, as Desmond is forced to turn the fail-safe key in the hatch to stop the electromagnetic event, and this sends his mind eight years to the past. When he returns to the present, he is able to see the future. Kate and Sawyer escape the Others, while Jack stays after Ben promises that Jack will be able to leave the island in a submarine if he operates on Ben, who has cancer. Jack does, but the submarine is destroyed by John. Jack is left behind with Juliet, an Other, who also seeks to leave the island, while John joins the Others. A helicopter carrying Naomi crashes near the island. Naomi says her freighter, "Kahana", is near and was sent by Penelope Widmore, Desmond's ex-girlfriend. Desmond has a vision in which Charlie will drown after shutting down a signal that prevents communication with the exterior world. His vision comes true, but Charlie speaks with Penelope, who says she does not know any Naomi. Before drowning, Charlie writes on his hand "Not Penny's Boat" so Desmond can read it. Meanwhile, the survivors make contact with a rescue team aboard the freighter. In the season's finale, apparent flashbacks show a depressed Jack going to an unknown person's funeral. In the final scene, these are revealed to be "flash forwards", and Kate and Jack are revealed to have escaped the island. Jack, however, is desperate to go back.


title: Lost (TV series)

text: Season 4 focuses on the survivors dealing with the arrival of people from the freighter, who have been sent to the island to reclaim it from Benjamin. "Flash forwards" continue, in which it is seen how six survivors, dubbed the "Oceanic Six", live their lives after escaping the island. The "Oceanic Six" are Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Sun, and Aaron. In the present, four members of the freighter arrive and team up with the survivors to escape the island, since the crew of the freighter have orders to kill everyone who stays.


title: Lost (TV series)

text: Meanwhile, Ben travels with John to see Jacob, the island's leader. John enters his house but finds Jack's dead father, Christian, who says he can speak on Jacob's behalf, and orders John to "move" the island. Ben takes John to an underground station in which time travel was researched. John becomes the new leader of the Others, while Ben moves the island by turning a giant frozen wheel, after which he is transported to the Sahara. The six survivors escape in a helicopter as they watch the island disappear and are subsequently rescued by Penelope. It is then, that Desmond and Penelope reunite for the first time in a long while.


title: Lost (TV series)

text: In the season finale, it is revealed that the funeral Jack went to in the "flash forwards" was that of John Locke, who had been seeking out the Oceanic Six in his efforts to convince them to return to the island.