title: Darkest Hour (film)

text: Churchill refers to Halifax as "the fourth son of an earl" and says that "fourth sons turn nothing down". In reality, Halifax was the third son of Charles Lindley Wood, 2nd Viscount Halifax, and both of his elder brothers died while he was still a child, so he spent most of his youth and young adulthood as heir to his father's viscountcy (which he had already inherited by the time of the events depicted in the film).


title: Darkest Hour (film)

text: Gary Oldman stated, in February 2018, that there was talk of a sequel to "Darkest Hour" that could also include Roosevelt (who had been voiced by David Strathairn in "Darkest Hour") and take place during the Yalta Conference in 1945.


title: Legends of the Fall

text: Legends of the Fall is a 1994 American epic Western drama film directed by Edward Zwick and starring Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn, Julia Ormond and Henry Thomas. Based on the 1979 novella of the same title by Jim Harrison, the film is about three brothers and their father living in the wilderness and plains of Montana in the early 20th century and how their lives are affected by nature, history, war, and love. The film's time frame spans from the early 20th century; World War I, through the Prohibition era, and ending with a brief scene set in 1963. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards and won for Best Cinematography (John Toll). Both the film and book contain occasional Cornish language terms, the Ludlows being a Cornish immigrant family.


title: Legends of the Fall

text: Sick of betrayals the United States government perpetrated on Native Americans, Colonel William Ludlow leaves the Army, moving to a remote part of Montana. Along with One Stab, a Cree friend, he builds a ranch and raises his family. Accompanying them are hired hand and former outlaw Decker, Decker's Cree wife Pet, and daughter Isabel Two. William has three sons: Alfred, the eldest; Tristan, the middle son; and Samuel, the youngest.


title: Legends of the Fall

text: William's wife Isabel does not adapt to the harsh Montana winters and moves to the East Coast; Tristan vows never to speak of her. At age 12, Tristan touches a sleeping grizzly bear. The bear awakens and injures him, but he cuts off a claw.


title: Legends of the Fall

text: Years later, Samuel returns from Harvard University with his fiancée, Susannah. Susannah finds Tristan captivating but loves Samuel. Before they can marry, Samuel announces his intention to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force and aid Britain in the fight against Germany. Much to their father's displeasure, Alfred also joins. Although Tristan does not want to join, he does so after swearing to Susannah to protect Samuel.


title: Legends of the Fall

text: The brothers find themselves in the 10th Battalion, CEF. Alfred, commissioned as an officer, leads a charge into no man's land. The attack results in heavy casualties and Alfred is wounded. While visiting Alfred in the field hospital, Tristan learns that Samuel volunteered for a dangerous reconnaissance mission. He rushes off to protect his brother but arrives too late. Tristan holds Samuel until he dies, then cuts out his brother's heart and sends it home to be buried at the ranch. Tristan single-handedly raids the German lines and returns to camp with the scalps of German soldiers hanging around his neck, horrifying his fellow soldiers. He is discharged but does not go home. Alfred returns to Montana and proposes to Susannah, but she declines.


title: Legends of the Fall

text: Tristan returns home, where Susannah finds him weeping over Samuel's grave. She comforts him and they become lovers. A jealous Alfred confronts Tristan before leaving to make his name in Helena. Tristan is plagued with guilt over Samuel's death and feels responsible for driving Alfred away; he leaves Montana for several years. Susannah vows to wait for Tristan, but eventually receives a letter from him telling her to marry someone else. Alfred comforts Susannah, and William finds them together, which leads to a falling out between him and Alfred. William later suffers a stroke. He does not speak for years and the ranch deteriorates. Susannah marries Alfred, now a congressman. Alfred's business and politics cause him to get involved with the O'Banion brothers, Irish bootleggers and gangsters.


title: Legends of the Fall

text: Tristan returns during Prohibition, bringing life back to the ranch and to his father. He falls in love with Isabel Two and they marry and have two children. Tristan becomes involved in small-scale rum-running, finding himself at odds with the O'Banion brothers. Isabel Two is accidentally killed by a police officer working for the O'Banions. In a fit of grief, Tristan beats the officer nearly to death and is jailed. Susannah visits Tristan, still having feelings for him, but he refuses her advances. After his release, Tristan and Decker kill those responsible for Isabel's death, including one of the O'Banion brothers.


title: Legends of the Fall

text: Unable to live without Tristan, Susannah commits suicide. The remaining O'Banion brother, along with the sheriff and another police officer, come after Tristan. At the ranch, William and Alfred kill the attackers. Alfred reconciles with his father and brother. The family realizes that Tristan will be blamed for the deaths, which prompts Tristan to ask Alfred to take care of his children. One Stab's narration explains that they buried the bodies and dumped the car in the Missouri River. He reflects that rather than dying young as One Stab expected, Tristan lived to watch his children and grandchildren grow. One Stab observes that it was the people Tristan loved and wanted to protect most that died young.


title: Legends of the Fall

text: In 1963, Tristan, now an old man living in the North Country, investigates an animal carcass and is confronted by a grizzly bear. He draws his knife and fights it. As they struggle, One Stab narrates, "It was a good death."


title: Legends of the Fall

text: "Legends of the Fall" was primarily filmed on location in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada. Principal photography began in mid-September 1993. The World War I battlefield scenes took two weeks to film and were shot near Morley, Alberta, with hundreds of locals and a few Canadian Forces soldiers recruited as extras. The Ghost River Wilderness Area in Alberta served as the filming location for the Ludlow ranch; additional outdoor scenes, as well as the funeral and cemetery scenes, were shot at the Bow River near Banff National Park. A historic harbour area in Vancouver called Gastown was augmented with period building facades for the Helena, Montana, street scenes. Hotel scenes were shot at the Hotel Europe at 43 Powell Street in Vancouver. Additional scenes were shot at Maple Tree Square in Gastown, Vancouver, and Ocho Rios in Saint Ann, Jamaica. Filming wrapped up around January 1994.


title: Legends of the Fall

text: The film opened in limited release on December 23, 1994, and expanded to a wide release on January 13, 1995. During its first weekend in wide release, which was a four-day weekend due to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the film reached number one at the domestic box office after grossing $14 million. After its initial run, the film brought in a final box office total of $160,638,883. Against its $30 million budget, the film was a financial success.


title: Legends of the Fall

text: Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 58% of 57 film critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 5.81/10. The site's consensus states: "Featuring a swoon-worthy star turn by Brad Pitt, "Legends of the Fall"s painterly photography and epic sweep often compensate for its lack of narrative momentum and glut of melodramatic twists." Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 45 based on 23 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Legends of the Fall

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" described the film as "pretty good ... with full-blooded performances and heartfelt melodrama". Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" particularly praised Pitt's performance saying, "Though the admirable Quinn has the toughest role, Pitt carries the picture. The blue-eyed boy who seemed a bit lost in "Interview with the Vampire" proves himself a bona fide movie star, stealing every scene he's in." Comparatively, Chris Hicks of "Deseret News" noted, "Pitt is the hunk of the moment, and "Legends of the Fall" will only further cement his big-screen, romantic leading-man status. And he is satisfying as the internalized, rebellious Tristan (look for that name to be given to more than a few babies over the next few years). Even if the character seems only a slight twist on the similar role he played in "A River Runs Through It". (He even becomes a bootlegger!)"


title: Legends of the Fall

text: On the other hand, Rita Kempley of "The Washington Post" stated that the film's "yarn doesn't so much sweep as sprawl across the screen in all its panoramic idiocy". Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" commented, "Before it turns exhaustingly hollow, this film shows the potential for bringing Mr. Harrison's tough, brooding tale to life. And the actors may have captured the spirit of the story, but that's impossible to know." She concluded, "These are performances that lost too much in the editing room, smothered by music and overshadowed by a picture-postcard vision of the American West."


title: Legends of the Fall

text: "Legends of the Fall" was first released on DVD on April 29, 1997, and once again on October 17, 2000. The film was later released on Blu-ray on February 8, 2011, with bonus content that includes two audio commentaries, deleted scenes with optional commentary and two behind-the-scenes featurettes.


title: Normans

text: The Normans (Norman: "Normaunds"; ; ) were a population arising in the medieval Duchy of Normandy from the intermingling between Norse Viking settlers and indigenous West Franks and Gallo-Romans. The term is also used to denote emigrants from the duchy who conquered other territories such as England and Sicily. The Norse settlements in West Francia followed a series of raids on the French northern coast mainly from Denmark, although some also sailed from Norway and Sweden. These settlements were finally legitimized when Rollo, a Scandinavian Viking leader, agreed to swear fealty to King Charles III of West Francia following the siege of Chartres in 911. The intermingling in Normandy produced an ethnic and cultural "Norman" identity in the first half of the 10th century, an identity which continued to evolve over the centuries.


title: Normans

text: The Norman dynasty had a major political, cultural and military impact on medieval Europe and the Near East. The Normans were historically famed for their martial spirit and eventually for their Catholic piety, becoming exponents of the Catholic orthodoxy of the Romance community. The original Norse settlers adopted the Gallo-Romance language of the Frankish land they settled, with their Old Norman dialect becoming known as Norman, Normaund or Norman French, an important literary language which is still spoken today in parts of mainland Normandy (Cotentinais and Cauchois dialects) and the nearby Channel Islands (Jèrriais and Guernésiais). The Duchy of Normandy, which arose from the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, was a great fief of medieval France. The Norman dukes exercised independent control of their holdings in Normandy, while at the same time being vassals owing fealty to the King of France, and under Richard I of Normandy (byname "Richard sans Peur" meaning "Richard the Fearless") the Duchy was forged into a cohesive and formidable principality in feudal tenure. By the end of his reign in 996, the descendants of the Norse settlers "had become not only Christians but in all essentials Frenchmen. They had adopted the French language, French legal ideas, and French social customs, and had practically merged with the Frankish or Gallic population among whom they lived". Between 1066 and 1204, as a result of the Norman conquest of England, most of the kings of England were also dukes of Normandy. In 1204, Philip II of France seized mainland Normandy by force of arms, having earlier declared the Duchy of Normandy to be forfeit to him. It remained a disputed territory until the Treaty of Paris of 1259, when the English sovereign ceded his claim to the Duchy, except for the Channel Islands. In the present day, the Channel Islands (the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey) are considered to be officially the last remnants of the Duchy of Normandy, and are not part of the United Kingdom but are instead self-governing Crown Dependencies.


title: Normans

text: The Normans are noted both for their culture, such as their unique Romanesque architecture and musical traditions, and for their significant military accomplishments and innovations. Norman adventurers played a role in founding the Kingdom of Sicily under Roger II after briefly conquering southern Italy and Malta from the Saracens and Byzantines, and an expedition on behalf of their duke, William the Conqueror, led to the Norman conquest of England at the historic Battle of Hastings in 1066. Norman and Anglo-Norman forces contributed to the Iberian Reconquista from the early eleventh to the mid-thirteenth centuries.


title: Normans

text: Norman cultural and military influence spread from these new European centres to the Crusader states of the Near East, where their prince Bohemond I founded the Principality of Antioch in the Levant, to Scotland and Wales in Great Britain, to Ireland, and to the coasts of north Africa and the Canary Islands. The legacy of the Normans persists today through the regional languages and dialects of France, England, Spain, Quebec and Sicily, and also through the various cultural, judicial, and political arrangements they introduced in their conquered territories.


title: Normans

text: The English name "Normans" comes from the French words "Normans"/"Normanz", plural of "Normant", modern French "normand", which is itself borrowed from Old Low Franconian "Nortmann" "Northman" or directly from Old Norse "Norðmaðr", Latinized variously as "Nortmannus", "Normannus", or "Nordmannus" (recorded in Medieval Latin, 9th century) to mean "Norseman, Viking".


title: Normans

text: In the course of the 10th century, the initially destructive incursions of Norse war bands going upstream into the rivers of France penetrated further into interior Europe, and evolved into more permanent encampments that included local French women and personal property. From 885 to 886, Odo of Paris (Eudes de Paris) succeeded in defending Paris against Viking raiders (one of the leaders was Sigfred) with his fighting skills, fortification of Paris and tactical shrewdness. In 911, Robert I of France, brother of Odo, again defeated another band of Viking warriors in Chartres with his well-trained horsemen. This victory paved the way for Rollo's baptism and settlement in Normandy. The Duchy of Normandy, which began in 911 as a fiefdom, was established by the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte between King Charles III (Charles the Simple) (879–929, ruled 893–929) of West Francia and the famed Viking ruler Rollo also known as Gaange Rolf (–), from Scandinavia, and was situated in the former Frankish kingdom of Neustria. The treaty offered Rollo and his men the French coastal lands along the English Channel between the river Epte and the Atlantic Ocean coast in exchange for their protection against further Viking incursions. As well as promising to protect the area of Rouen from Viking invasion, Rollo swore not to invade further Frankish lands himself, accepted baptism and conversion to Christianity and swore fealty to King Charles III. Robert I of France stood as godfather during Rollo's baptism. He became the first Duke of Normandy and Count of Rouen. The area corresponded to the northern part of present-day Upper Normandy down to the river Seine, but the Duchy would eventually extend west beyond the Seine. The territory was roughly equivalent to the old province of Rouen, and reproduced the old Roman Empire's administrative structure of "Gallia Lugdunensis II" (part of the former "Gallia Lugdunensis" in Gaul).


title: Normans

text: Before Rollo's arrival, Normandy's populations did not differ from Picardy or the Île-de-France, which were considered "Frankish". Earlier Viking settlers had begun arriving in the 880s, but were divided between colonies in the east (Roumois and Pays de Caux) around the low Seine valley and in the west in the Cotentin Peninsula, and were separated by traditional "pagii", where the population remained about the same with almost no foreign settlers. Rollo's contingents from Scandinavia who raided and ultimately settled Normandy and parts of the European Atlantic coast included Danes, Norwegians, Norse–Gaels, Orkney Vikings, possibly Swedes, and Anglo-Danes from the English Danelaw territory which earlier came under Norse control in the late 9th century.


title: Normans

text: The descendants of Vikings replaced the Norse religion and Old Norse language with Catholicism (Christianity) and the Langue d'oil of the local people, descending from the Latin of the Romans. The Norman language (Norman French) was forged by the adoption of the indigenous "langue d'oïl" branch of Romance by a Norse-speaking ruling class, and it developed into the French regional languages that survive today.


title: Normans

text: The Normans thereafter adopted the growing feudal doctrines of the rest of France, and worked them into a functional hierarchical system in both Normandy and in Norman dominated England. The new Norman rulers were culturally and ethnically distinct from the old French aristocracy, most of whom traced their lineage to the Franks of the Carolingian dynasty from the days of Charlemagne in the 9th century. Most Norman knights remained poor and land-hungry, and by the time of the expedition and invasion of England in 1066, Normandy had been exporting fighting horsemen for more than a generation. Many Normans of Italy, France and England eventually served as avid Crusaders soldiers under the Italo-Norman prince Bohemund I of Antioch and the Angevin-Norman king Richard the Lion-Heart, one of the more famous and illustrious Kings of England.


title: Normans

text: Opportunistic bands of Normans successfully established a foothold in southern Italy. Probably as the result of returning pilgrims' stories, the Normans entered southern Italy as warriors in 1017 at the latest. In 999, according to Amatus of Montecassino, Norman pilgrims returning from Jerusalem called in at the port of Salerno when a Saracen attack occurred. The Normans fought so valiantly that Prince Guaimar III begged them to stay, but they refused and instead offered to tell others back home of the Prince's request. William of Apulia tells that, in 1016, Norman pilgrims to the shrine of the Archangel Michael at Monte Gargano were met by Melus of Bari, a Lombard nobleman and rebel, who persuaded them to return with more warriors to help throw off the Byzantine rule, which they did.


title: Normans

text: The two most prominent Norman families to arrive in the Mediterranean were descendants of Tancred of Hauteville and the Drengot family.


title: Normans

text: A group of Normans with at least five brothers from the Drengot family fought the Byzantines in Apulia under the command of Melus of Bari. Between 1016 and 1024, in a fragmented political context, the was founded by another group of Norman knights headed by Gilbert Buatère and hired by Melus of Bari. Defeated at Cannae, Melus of Bari escaped to Bamberg, Germany, where he died in 1022. The county, which replaced the pre-existing chamberlainship, is considered to be the first political body established by the Normans in the south of Italy.


title: Normans

text: Then Rainulf Drengot, from the same family, received the county of Aversa from Duke Sergius IV of Naples in 1030.


title: Normans

text: The Hauteville family achieved princely rank by proclaiming Prince Guaimar IV of Salerno "Duke of Apulia and Calabria". He promptly awarded their elected leader, William Iron Arm, with the title of count in his capital of Melfi. The Drengot family thereafter attained the principality of Capua, and Emperor Henry III legally ennobled the Hauteville leader, Drogo, as ""dux et magister Italiae comesque Normannorum totius Apuliae et Calabriae"" (""Duke and Master of Italy and Count of the Normans of all Apulia and Calabria"") in 1047.


title: Normans

text: From these bases, the Normans eventually captured Sicily and Malta from the Saracens, under the leadership of the famous Robert Guiscard, a Hauteville, and his younger brother Roger the Great Count. Roger's son, Roger II of Sicily, was crowned king in 1130 (exactly one century after Rainulf was "crowned" count) by Antipope Anacletus II. The Kingdom of Sicily lasted until 1194, when it was transferred to the House of Hohenstaufen through marriage. The Normans left their legacy in many castles, such as William Iron Arm's citadel at Squillace, and cathedrals, such as Roger II's Cappella Palatina at Palermo, which dot the landscape and give a distinct architectural flavor to accompany its unique history.


title: Normans

text: Institutionally, the Normans combined the administrative machinery of the Byzantines, Arabs, and Lombards with their own conceptions of feudal law and order to forge a unique government. Under this state, there was great religious freedom, and alongside the Norman nobles existed a meritocratic bureaucracy of Jews, Muslims and Christians, both Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. The Kingdom of Sicily thus became characterized by Norman, Byzantine, Greek, Arab, Lombard and "native" Sicilian populations living in harmony, and its Norman rulers fostered plans of establishing an empire that would have encompassed Fatimid Egypt as well as the crusader states in the Levant. One of the great geographical treatises of the Middle Ages, the ""Tabula Rogeriana"", was written by the Andalusian al-Idrisi for King Roger II of Sicily, and entitled ""Kitab Rudjdjar"" (""The Book of Roger"").


title: Normans

text: The Normans began appearing in the military confrontations between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula since the early eleventh century. The first Norman who appears in the narrative sources was Roger I of Tosny who according to Ademar of Chabannes and the later Chronicle of St Pierre le Vif went to aid the Barcelonese in a series of raids against the Andalusi Muslims . Later in the eleventh century, other Norman adventurers such as Robert Crispin and Walter Giffard participated in the probably papal organised siege of Barbastro of 1064. Even after the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the Normans continued to participate in ventures in the peninsula. After the Frankish conquest of the Holy Land during the First Crusade, the Normans began to be encouraged to participate in ventures of conquest in the northeast of the peninsula. The most significant example of this was the incursion of Rotrou II of Perche and Robert Burdet in the 1120s in the Ebro frontier. By 1129 Robert Burdet had been granted a semi-independent principality in the city of Tarragona by the then Archbishop of this see, Oleguer Bonestruga. Several others of Rotrou's Norman followers were rewarded with lands in the Ebro valley by King Alfonso I of Aragon for their services.


title: Normans

text: With the rising popularity of the sea route to the Holy Land, Norman and Anglo-Norman crusaders also started to be encouraged locally by Iberian prelates to participate in the Portuguese incursions into the western areas of the Peninsula. The first of these incursions occurred when a fleet of these Crusaders was invited by the Portuguese king Afonso I Henriques to conquer the city of Lisbon in 1142. Although this Siege of Lisbon (1142) was a failure it created a precedent for their involvement in Portugal. So in 1147 when another group of Norman and other groups of crusaders from Northern Europe arrived in Porto on their way to join the crusading forces of the Second Crusade, the Bishop of Porto and later Afonso Henriques according to "De expugnatione Lyxbonensi" convinced them to help with the siege of Lisbon. This time the city was captured and according to the arrangement agreed upon with the Portuguese monarch many of them settled in the newly sacked city. The following year the remainder of the crusading fleet, including a substantial number of Anglo-Normans, was invited by the count of Barcelona, Ramon Berenguer IV, to participate in the siege of Tortosa (1148). Again the Normans were rewarded with lands in the newly conquered frontier city.


title: Normans

text: Between 1135 and 1160, the Norman Kingdom of Sicily conquered and kept as vassals several cities on the Ifriqiya coast, corresponding to Tunisia and parts of Algeria and Libya today.


title: Normans

text: Soon after the Normans began to enter Italy, they entered the Byzantine Empire and then Armenia, fighting against the Pechenegs, the Bulgarians, and especially the Seljuk Turks. Norman mercenaries were first encouraged to come to the south by the Lombards to act against the Byzantines, but they soon fought in Byzantine service in Sicily. They were prominent alongside Varangian and Lombard contingents in the Sicilian campaign of George Maniaces in 1038–40. There is debate whether the Normans in Greek service actually were from Norman Italy, and it now seems likely only a few came from there. It is also unknown how many of the "Franks", as the Byzantines called them, were Normans and not other Frenchmen.


title: Normans

text: One of the first Norman mercenaries to serve as a Byzantine general was Hervé in the 1050s. By then, however, there were already Norman mercenaries serving as far away as Trebizond and Georgia. They were based at Malatya and Edessa, under the Byzantine duke of Antioch, Isaac Komnenos. In the 1060s, Robert Crispin led the Normans of Edessa against the Turks. Roussel de Bailleul even tried to carve out an independent state in Asia Minor with support from the local population in 1073, but he was stopped in 1075 by the Byzantine general and future emperor Alexius Komnenos.


title: Normans

text: Some Normans joined Turkish forces to aid in the destruction of the Armenian vassal-states of Sassoun and Taron in far eastern Anatolia. Later, many took up service with the Armenian state further south in Cilicia and the Taurus Mountains. A Norman named Oursel led a force of "Franks" into the upper Euphrates valley in northern Syria. From 1073 to 1074, 8,000 of the 20,000 troops of the Armenian general Philaretus Brachamius were Normans—formerly of Oursel—led by Raimbaud. They even lent their ethnicity to the name of their castle: Afranji, meaning "Franks". The known trade between Amalfi and Antioch and between Bari and Tarsus may be related to the presence of Italo-Normans in those cities while Amalfi and Bari were under Norman rule in Italy.


title: Normans

text: Several families of Byzantine Greece were of Norman mercenary origin during the period of the Comnenian Restoration, when Byzantine emperors were seeking out western European warriors. The Raoulii were descended from an Italo-Norman named Raoul, the Petraliphae were descended from a Pierre d'Aulps, and that group of Albanian clans known as the Maniakates were descended from Normans who served under George Maniaces in the Sicilian expedition of 1038.


title: Normans

text: Robert Guiscard, another Norman adventurer previously elevated to the dignity of count of Apulia as the result of his military successes, ultimately drove the Byzantines out of southern Italy. Having obtained the consent of Pope Gregory VII and acting as his vassal, Robert continued his campaign conquering the Balkan peninsula as a foothold for western feudal lords and the Catholic Church. After allying himself with Croatia and the Catholic cities of Dalmatia, in 1081 he led an army of 30,000 men in 300 ships landing on the southern shores of Albania, capturing Valona, Kanina, Jericho (Orikumi), and reaching Butrint after numerous pillages. They joined the fleet that had previously conquered Corfu and attacked Dyrrachium from land and sea, devastating everything along the way. Under these harsh circumstances, the locals accepted the call of Emperor Alexios I Comnenos to join forces with the Byzantines against the Normans. The Byzantine forces could not take part in the ensuing battle because it had started before their arrival. Immediately before the battle, the Venetian fleet had secured a victory in the coast surrounding the city. Forced to retreat, Alexios ceded the city of Dyrrachium to the Count of the Tent (or Byzantine provincial administrators) mobilizing from Arbanon (i.e., ἐξ Ἀρβάνων ὁρμωμένω Κομισκόρτη; the term "Κομισκόρτη" is short for κόμης της κόρτης meaning "Count of the Tent"). The city's garrison resisted until February 1082, when Dyrrachium was betrayed to the Normans by the Venetian and Amalfitan merchants who had settled there. The Normans were now free to penetrate into the hinterland; they took Ioannina and some minor cities in southwestern Macedonia and Thessaly before appearing at the gates of Thessalonica. Dissension among the high ranks coerced the Normans to retreat to Italy. They lost Dyrrachium, Valona, and Butrint in 1085, after the death of Robert.


title: Normans

text: A few years after the First Crusade, in 1107, the Normans under the command of Bohemond, Robert's son, landed in Valona and besieged Dyrrachium using the most sophisticated military equipment of the time, but to no avail. Meanwhile, they occupied Petrela, the citadel of Mili at the banks of the river Deabolis, Gllavenica (Ballsh), Kanina and Jericho. This time, the Albanians sided with the Normans, dissatisfied by the heavy taxes the Byzantines had imposed upon them. With their help, the Normans secured the Arbanon passes and opened their way to Dibra. The lack of supplies, disease and Byzantine resistance forced Bohemond to retreat from his campaign and sign a peace treaty with the Byzantines in the city of Deabolis.


title: Normans

text: The further decline of Byzantine state-of-affairs paved the road to a third attack in 1185, when a large Norman army invaded Dyrrachium, owing to the betrayal of high Byzantine officials. Some time later, Dyrrachium—one of the most important naval bases of the Adriatic—fell again to Byzantine hands.


title: Normans

text: The Normans were in contact with England from an early date. Not only were their original Viking brethren still ravaging the English coasts, they occupied most of the important ports opposite England across the English Channel. This relationship eventually produced closer ties of blood through the marriage of Emma, sister of Duke Richard II of Normandy, and King Ethelred II of England. Because of this, Ethelred fled to Normandy in 1013, when he was forced from his kingdom by Sweyn Forkbeard. His stay in Normandy (until 1016) influenced him and his sons by Emma, who stayed in Normandy after Cnut the Great's conquest of the isle.


title: Normans

text: When Edward the Confessor finally returned from his father's refuge in 1041, at the invitation of his half-brother Harthacnut, he brought with him a Norman-educated mind. He also brought many Norman counsellors and fighters, some of whom established an English cavalry force. This concept never really took root, but it is a typical example of Edward's attitude. He appointed Robert of Jumièges Archbishop of Canterbury and made Ralph the Timid Earl of Hereford.


title: Normans

text: On 14 October 1066, William the Conqueror gained a decisive victory at the Battle of Hastings, which led to the conquest of England three years later; this can be seen on the Bayeux tapestry. The invading Normans and their descendants largely replaced the Anglo-Saxons as the ruling class of England. The nobility of England were part of a single Norman culture and many had lands on both sides of the channel. Early Norman kings of England, as Dukes of Normandy, owed homage to the King of France for their land on the continent. They considered England to be their most important holding (it brought with it the title of King—an important status symbol).


title: Normans

text: Eventually, the Normans merged with the natives, combining languages and traditions, so much so that Marjorie Chibnall says "writers still referred to Normans and English; but the terms no longer meant the same as in the immediate aftermath of 1066." In the course of the Hundred Years' War, the Norman aristocracy often identified themselves as English. The Anglo-Norman language became distinct from the French spoken in Paris, something that was the subject of some humour by Geoffrey Chaucer. The Anglo-Norman language was eventually absorbed into the Anglo-Saxon language of their subjects (see Old English) and influenced it, helping (along with the Norse language of the earlier Anglo-Norse settlers and the Latin used by the church) in the development of Middle English, which, in turn, evolved into Modern English.


title: Normans

text: The Normans had a profound effect on Irish culture and history after their invasion at Bannow Bay in 1169. Initially, the Normans maintained a distinct culture and ethnicity. Yet, with time, they came to be subsumed into Irish culture to the point that it has been said that they became "more Irish than the Irish themselves". The Normans settled mostly in an area in the east of Ireland, later known as the Pale, and also built many fine castles and settlements, including Trim Castle and Dublin Castle. The cultures intermixed, borrowing from each other's language, culture and outlook. Norman surnames still exist today. Names such as "French", "(De) Roche", "Devereux", "D'Arcy", "Treacy" and "Lacy" are particularly common in the southeast of Ireland, especially in the southern part of Wexford County, where the first Norman settlements were established. Other Norman names, such as "Furlong", predominate there. Another common Norman-Irish name was Morell (Murrell), derived from the French Norman name "Morel". Names beginning with "Fitz-" (from the Norman for "son") usually indicate Norman ancestry. Hiberno-Norman surnames with the prefix "Fitz-" include "Fitzgerald", "FitzGibbons" (Gibbons) as well as "Fitzmaurice". Families bearing such surnames as "Barry" ("de Barra") and "De Búrca" ("Burke") are also of Norman extraction.


title: Normans

text: One of the claimants of the English throne opposing William the Conqueror, Edgar Atheling, eventually fled to Scotland. King Malcolm III of Scotland married Edgar's sister Margaret, and came into opposition to William who had already disputed Scotland's southern borders. William invaded Scotland in 1072, riding as far as Abernethy where he met up with his fleet of ships. Malcolm submitted, paid homage to William and surrendered his son Duncan as a hostage, beginning a series of arguments as to whether the Scottish Crown owed allegiance to the King of England.


title: Normans

text: Normans went into Scotland, building castles and founding noble families that would provide some future kings, such as Robert the Bruce, as well as founding a considerable number of the Scottish clans. King David I of Scotland, whose elder brother Alexander I had married Sybilla of Normandy, was instrumental in introducing Normans and Norman culture to Scotland, part of the process some scholars call the "Davidian Revolution". Having spent time at the court of Henry I of England (married to David's sister Maud of Scotland), and needing them to wrestle the kingdom from his half-brother Máel Coluim mac Alaxandair, David had to reward many with lands. The process was continued under David's successors, most intensely of all under William the Lion. The Norman-derived feudal system was applied in varying degrees to most of Scotland. Scottish families of the names Bruce, Gray, Ramsay, Fraser, Rose, Ogilvie, Montgomery, Sinclair, Pollock, Burnard, Douglas and Gordon to name but a few, and including the later royal House of Stewart, can all be traced back to Norman ancestry.


title: Normans

text: Even before the Norman Conquest of England, the Normans had come into contact with Wales. Edward the Confessor had set up the aforementioned Ralph as Earl of Hereford and charged him with defending the Marches and warring with the Welsh. In these original ventures, the Normans failed to make any headway into Wales.


title: Normans

text: After the Conquest, however, the Marches came completely under the dominance of William's most trusted Norman barons, including Bernard de Neufmarché, Roger of Montgomery in Shropshire and Hugh Lupus in Cheshire. These Normans began a long period of slow conquest during which almost all of Wales was at some point subject to Norman interference. Norman words, such as "baron" (), first entered Welsh at that time.


title: Normans

text: The legendary religious zeal of the Normans was exercised in religious wars long before the First Crusade carved out a Norman principality in Antioch. They were major foreign combatants in the Reconquista in Iberia. In 1018, Roger de Tosny travelled to the Iberian Peninsula to carve out a state for himself from Moorish lands, but failed. In 1064, during the War of Barbastro, William of Montreuil, Roger Crispin and probably Walter Guiffard led an army under the papal hanner which took a huge booty as they captured the city from its Andelusi rulers. Later a group of Normans led by certain William (some have suggested this was William the Carpenter) participated in the failed siege of Tudela of 1087.


title: Normans

text: In 1096, Crusaders passing by the siege of Amalfi were joined by Bohemond of Taranto and his nephew Tancred with an army of Italo-Normans. Bohemond was the "de facto" leader of the Crusade during its passage through Asia Minor. After the successful Siege of Antioch in 1097, Bohemond began carving out an independent principality around that city. Tancred was instrumental in the conquest of Jerusalem and he worked for the expansion of the Crusader kingdom in Transjordan and the region of Galilee..


title: Normans

text: After the First Crusade to the Levant, the Normans continued with their involvement in Iberia as well as other areas of the Mediterranean. Among them was Rotrou of Perche and his followers Robert Burdet and William Giffard who joined multiple expeditions into the Ebro Valley to aid Alfonso I of Aragon in his campaigns of conquest. Robert Burdet managed to acquire the position of Alcide of Tudela by 1123 and later that of Prince of the city Tarragona in 1129.


title: Normans

text: The conquest of Cyprus by the Anglo-Norman forces of the Third Crusade opened a new chapter in the history of the island, which would be under Western European domination for the following 380 years. Although not part of a planned operation, the conquest had much more permanent results than initially expected.


title: Normans

text: In April 1191, Richard the Lion-hearted left Messina with a large fleet in order to reach Acre. But a storm dispersed the fleet. After some searching, it was discovered that the boat carrying his sister and his fiancée Berengaria was anchored on the south coast of Cyprus, together with the wrecks of several other ships, including the treasure ship. Survivors of the wrecks had been taken prisoner by the island's despot Isaac Komnenos. On 1 May 1191, Richard's fleet arrived in the port of Limassol on Cyprus. He ordered Isaac to release the prisoners and the treasure. Isaac refused, so Richard landed his troops and took Limassol.


title: Normans

text: Various princes of the Holy Land arrived in Limassol at the same time, in particular Guy de Lusignan. All declared their support for Richard provided that he support Guy against his rival Conrad of Montferrat. The local barons abandoned Isaac, who considered making peace with Richard, joining him on the crusade, and offering his daughter in marriage to the person named by Richard. But Isaac changed his mind and tried to escape. Richard then proceeded to conquer the whole island, his troops being led by Guy de Lusignan. Isaac surrendered and was confined with silver chains, because Richard had promised that he would not place him in irons. By 1 June, Richard had conquered the whole island. His exploit was well publicized and contributed to his reputation; he also derived significant financial gains from the conquest of the island. Richard left for Acre on 5 June, with his allies. Before his departure, he named two of his Norman generals, Richard de Camville and Robert de Thornham, as governors of Cyprus.


title: Normans

text: While in Limassol, Richard the Lion-Heart married Berengaria of Navarre, first-born daughter of King Sancho VI of Navarre. The wedding was held on 12 May 1191 at the Chapel of St. George and it was attended by Richard's sister Joan, whom he had brought from Sicily. The marriage was celebrated with great pomp and splendor. Among other grand ceremonies was a double coronation: Richard caused himself to be crowned King of Cyprus, and Berengaria Queen of England and Queen of Cyprus as well.


title: Normans

text: The rapid Anglo-Norman conquest proved more important than it seemed. The island occupied a key strategic position on the maritime lanes to the Holy Land, whose occupation by the Christians could not continue without support from the sea. Shortly after the conquest, Cyprus was sold to the Knights Templar and it was subsequently acquired, in 1192, by Guy de Lusignan and became a stable feudal kingdom. It was only in 1489 that the Venetians acquired full control of the island, which remained a Christian stronghold until the fall of Famagusta in 1571.


title: Normans

text: Between 1402 and 1405, the expedition led by the Norman noble Jean de Bethencourt and the Poitevine Gadifer de la Salle conquered the Canarian islands of Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and El Hierro off the Atlantic coast of Africa. Their troops were gathered in Normandy, Gascony and were later reinforced by Castilian colonists.


title: Normans

text: Bethencourt took the title of King of the Canary Islands, as vassal to Henry III of Castile. In 1418, Jean's nephew Maciot de Bethencourt sold the rights to the islands to Enrique Pérez de Guzmán, 2nd Count de Niebla.


title: Normans

text: When Norse Vikings from Scandinavia arrived in the then-province of Neustria and settled the land that became known as Normandy, they originally spoke Old Norse, a North Germanic language. Over time, they came to live among the local Gallo-Romance-speaking population, with the two communities converging to the point that the original Norsemen largely assimilated and adopted the local dialect of Old French while contributing some elements from the Old Norse language. This Norse-influenced dialect which then arose was known as Old Norman, and it is the ancestor of both the modern Norman language still spoken today in the Channel Islands and parts of mainland Normandy, as well as the historical Anglo-Norman language in England. Old Norman was also an important language of the Principality of Antioch during Crusader rule in the Levant.


title: Normans

text: Old Norman and Anglo-Norman literature was quite extensive during the Middle Ages, with records existing from notable Norman poets such as Wace, who was born on the island of Jersey and raised in mainland Normandy.


title: Normans

text: The customary law of Normandy was developed between the 10th and 13th centuries and survives today through the legal systems of Jersey and Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Norman customary law was transcribed in two customaries in Latin by two judges for use by them and their colleagues: These are the "Très ancien coutumier" ("Very ancient customary"), authored between 1200 and 1245; and the "Grand coutumier de Normandie" ("Great customary of Normandy", originally "Summa de legibus Normanniae in curia laïcali"), authored between 1235 and 1245.


title: Normans

text: Norman architecture typically stands out as a new stage in the architectural history of the regions they subdued. They spread a unique Romanesque idiom to England, Italy and Ireland, and the encastellation of these regions with keeps in their north French style fundamentally altered the military landscape. Their style was characterised by rounded arches, particularly over windows and doorways, and massive proportions.


title: Normans

text: In England, the period of Norman architecture immediately succeeds that of the Anglo-Saxon and precedes the Early Gothic. In southern Italy, the Normans incorporated elements of Islamic, Lombard, and Byzantine building techniques into their own, initiating a unique style known as Norman-Arab architecture within the Kingdom of Sicily.


title: Normans

text: In the visual arts, the Normans did not have the rich and distinctive traditions of the cultures they conquered. However, in the early 11th century, the dukes began a programme of church reform, encouraging the Cluniac reform of monasteries and patronising intellectual pursuits, especially the proliferation of scriptoria and the reconstitution of a compilation of lost illuminated manuscripts. The church was utilised by the dukes as a unifying force for their disparate duchy. The chief monasteries taking part in this "renaissance" of Norman art and scholarship were Mont-Saint-Michel, Fécamp, Jumièges, Bec, Saint-Ouen, Saint-Evroul, and Saint-Wandrille. These centres were in contact with the so-called "Winchester school", which channeled a pure Carolingian artistic tradition to Normandy. In the final decade of the 11th and first of the 12th century, Normandy experienced a golden age of illustrated manuscripts, but it was brief and the major scriptoria of Normandy ceased to function after the midpoint of the century.


title: Normans

text: The French Wars of Religion in the 16th century and the French Revolution in the 18th successively destroyed much of what existed in the way of the architectural and artistic remnant of this Norman creativity. The former, with their violence, caused the wanton destruction of many Norman edifices; the latter, with its assault on religion, caused the purposeful destruction of religious objects of any type, and its destabilisation of society resulted in rampant pillaging.


title: Normans

text: By far the most famous work of Norman art is the Bayeux Tapestry, which is not a tapestry but a work of embroidery. It was commissioned by Odo, the Bishop of Bayeux and first Earl of Kent, employing natives from Kent who were learned in the Nordic traditions imported in the previous half century by the Danish Vikings.


title: Normans

text: In Britain, Norman art primarily survives as stonework or metalwork, such as capitals and baptismal fonts. In southern Italy, however, Norman artwork survives plentifully in forms strongly influenced by its Greek, Lombard, and Arab forebears. Of the royal regalia preserved in Palermo, the crown is Byzantine in style and the coronation cloak is of Arab craftsmanship with Arabic inscriptions. Many churches preserve sculptured fonts, capitals, and more importantly mosaics, which were common in Norman Italy and drew heavily on the Greek heritage. Lombard Salerno was a centre of ivorywork in the 11th century and this continued under Norman domination. French Crusaders traveling to the Holy Land brought with them French artefacts with which to gift the churches at which they stopped in southern Italy amongst their Norman cousins. For this reason many south Italian churches preserve works from France alongside their native pieces.


title: Normans

text: Normandy was the site of several important developments in the history of classical music in the 11th century. Fécamp Abbey and Saint-Evroul Abbey were centres of musical production and education. At Fécamp, under two Italian abbots, William of Volpiano and John of Ravenna, the system of denoting notes by letters was developed and taught. It is still the most common form of pitch representation in English- and German-speaking countries today. Also at Fécamp, the staff, around which neumes were oriented, was first developed and taught in the 11th century. Under the German abbot Isembard, La Trinité-du-Mont became a centre of musical composition.


title: Normans

text: At Saint Evroul, a tradition of singing had developed and the choir achieved fame in Normandy. Under the Norman abbot Robert de Grantmesnil, several monks of Saint-Evroul fled to southern Italy, where they were patronised by Robert Guiscard and established a Latin monastery at Sant'Eufemia Lamezia. There they continued the tradition of singing.


title: Anthony Edwards (basketball)

text: Anthony DeVante Edwards (born August 5, 2001), nicknamed "Ant-Man", is an American professional basketball player for the Minnesota Timberwolves of the National Basketball Association (NBA). A shooting guard, he played college basketball for the Georgia Bulldogs.


title: Anthony Edwards (basketball)

text: Edwards finished his high school career at Holy Spirit Preparatory School in his hometown of Atlanta, where he was rated a consensus five-star recruit and one of the best players in the 2019 class by major recruiting services. As a senior, he earned McDonald's All-American and "USA Today" All-USA first team honors. He committed to play college basketball for Georgia, becoming the highest rated recruit to do so, and was named SEC Freshman of the Year after his freshman season with the team. He was selected with the first overall pick by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the 2020 NBA Draft.


title: Anthony Edwards (basketball)

text: Edwards spent his early life in Atlanta, Georgia. When he was three years old, he was given the nickname "Ant-Man" by his father. For much of his childhood, Edwards played football at the running back, quarterback, and cornerback positions. He played youth football for the Atlanta Vikings and became one of the best Pop Warner running backs in the country by age 10. However, Edwards switched his focus to basketball because he "thought it looked more fun" after watching his brothers play the sport. He often played basketball against his brothers at their grandmother's house. Entering ninth grade, he began training under the guidance of Justin Holland, a former college basketball player for Liberty and an Atlanta-based basketball trainer.


title: Anthony Edwards (basketball)

text: Due to his success with the Atlanta Xpress 15-under Amateur Athletic Union team, Edwards was considered a four-star recruit by Rivals in 2016. He began playing high school basketball for Therrell High School in Atlanta as a member of the 2019 class. In early January 2017, Edwards transferred to Holy Spirit Preparatory School in Atlanta and reclassified to the 2020 class. He made the move in an effort to improve his academic performance, since Holy Spirit Preparatory had "small class sizes and support to help that."


title: Anthony Edwards (basketball)

text: In March 2018, Edwards helped Holy Spirit Preparatory defeat The Heritage School for the Georgia Independent School Association (GISA) Class AAA state championship. He reclassified back to the 2019 class in November 2018 after seeing academic improvement. As a result, Edwards rose to become the number one recruit in the Top247 rankings by recruiting website 247Sports. In his senior season, his team finished as GISA Class AAA runners-up to The Heritage School, despite 27 points from Edwards. At the end of the season, he was averaging 29 points, nine rebounds, and two assists per game. Edwards garnered "USA Today" All-USA first team and MaxPreps All-American fourth team recognition. He played in the McDonald's All-American Game and Jordan Brand Classic in March and April 2019, respectively.


title: Anthony Edwards (basketball)

text: By consensus among major recruiting services 247Sports, ESPN, and Rivals, Edwards was rated a five-star recruit, top-five player, and the top shooting guard in the 2019 class. On February 11, 2019, he committed to play college basketball for Georgia, becoming the program's best recruit in the modern recruiting era. Edwards chose the Bulldogs over offers from Florida State, Kansas, Kentucky, and North Carolina. Edwards was drawn to Georgia because two of his favorite players, Dwyane Wade and Victor Oladipo, had been coached in college by head coach Tom Crean.


title: Anthony Edwards (basketball)

text: On November 5, 2019, Edwards made his debut for the Georgia Bulldogs, recording 24 points, nine rebounds, and four steals in a 91–72 win over Western Carolina. It was the most points by a Georgia freshman debutant since Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Dominique Wilkins in 1979. On November 26, he scored a season-high 37 points, including 33 in the second half, and posted six rebounds, four steals, and three blocks in a 93–85 loss to third-ranked Michigan State at the Maui Invitational. Edwards became the first Georgia freshman to score at least 37 points in a game since Jacky Dorsey in 1975. In his final game at the tournament, he led all scorers with 24 points and made the game-winning shot against NCAA Division II team Chaminade.


title: Anthony Edwards (basketball)

text: On February 1, 2020, Edwards recorded 29 points and 15 rebounds, both game-highs, in a 63–48 victory over Texas A&M. In his next game, he led all scorers with 32 points in an 81–75 loss to Florida. On February 26, Edwards scored 36 points and collected seven rebounds, four assists and four steals, in a 94–90 overtime defeat of South Carolina. As a freshman, he averaged 19.1 points, 5.2 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game. Edwards was the top scorer on his team and among freshmen nationally. He earned second-team All-SEC and SEC Freshman of the Year honors. Edwards collected SEC Freshman of the Week accolades four times during the season, the most in program history. He was also one of five finalists for the Jerry West Award, which recognizes the top collegiate shooting guard.


title: Anthony Edwards (basketball)

text: On March 20, 2020, in the spring of his freshman year, Edwards declared for the 2020 NBA draft as one of the most touted prospects in his class. He signed with an agent, forgoing his remaining college basketball eligibility.


title: Anthony Edwards (basketball)

text: The 2020 NBA draft was delayed by five months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In November 2020, Edwards was selected as the No. 1 overall pick by the Minnesota Timberwolves. On December 23, 2020, Edwards made his NBA debut, putting up 15 points, 4 rebounds, and 4 assists in 25 minutes, in a 111–101 win against the Detroit Pistons. On March 18, 2021, Edwards scored a then career-high 42 points, along with seven rebounds and three assists in a game against the Phoenix Suns becoming the third youngest player to score 40+ points in NBA history. After the season, Edwards finished second in Rookie of the Year voting and was named to the NBA All-Rookie First Team.


title: Anthony Edwards (basketball)

text: On November 10, 2021, Edwards scored a then career-high 48 points on seven three-pointers in a 123–110 loss to the Golden State Warriors. On December 15, 2021, Edwards became just the seventh player in NBA history to score 2,000 points in his first 100 games at age 20 or younger, joining LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Luka Dončić, and Zion Williamson. In the same game, Edwards also became the youngest player in NBA history with 10 three-pointers in a game, he also joined LeBron James, Blake Griffin and Luka Dončić as the fourth active player with at least 2,000 points, 400 rebounds and 300 assists in his first 100 career games. On January 25, 2022, in a 109–107 win over the Portland Trail Blazers, Edwards became the first player in NBA history to record a stat line of at least 40 points, nine rebounds, three blocks, three steals, and five three-pointers in a single game; he joined Anthony as the only players to score 40 points without an assist at 20 years old or younger. On April 7, 2022, Edwards scored a career-high 49 points in a 127–121 win over the San Antonio Spurs.


title: Anthony Edwards (basketball)

text: In Edwards' playoff debut on April 16, 2022, he logged 36 points and six assists in a 130–117 Game 1 win over the Memphis Grizzlies in the opening round of the 2022 NBA playoffs. Minnesota would go on to lose to Memphis despite Edwards' 30-point, 5-rebound, 5-assist, 2-steal and 2-block outing in the 114–106 close-out loss in Game 6.


title: Anthony Edwards (basketball)

text: Edwards' mother, Yvette, and grandmother, Shirley, both died from cancer during an eight-month span in 2015, when he was in eighth grade. He has worn the 5 basketball jersey since high school to honor them, as they both died on the fifth day of the month. As a result, Edwards was raised by his sister, Antoinette, and brother, Antoine, who shared legal custody over him. In high school, Edwards frequently worked as an instructor at a number of youth camps. He intended to major in marketing while attending the University of Georgia.


title: Anthony Edwards (basketball)

text: During his childhood, Edwards also starred in baseball, often acting as his team's fourth or fifth hitter in the batting order. Edwards has also jokingly expressed how he was very skilled at a variety of sports when he was younger. He owns two dogs and has also expressed his affinity for lions, although he does not believe he has the requisite space to care for one.


title: Anthony Edwards (basketball)

text: Edwards made his acting debut in the 2022 sports drama film "Hustle". His performance in the film as the main antagonist, Kermit Wilts, was praised by many, including the film’s producer and star Adam Sandler.


title: Anthony Edwards (basketball)

text: In September 2022, the NBA fined Edwards $40,000 for posting a video on September 10 in which he called a group of shirtless men "queer". The next day, he posted an apology, stating, "What I said was immature, hurtful, and disrespectful, and I'm incredibly sorry."


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov (, ; born 21 March 1950) is a Russian diplomat and politician who has served as the Foreign Minister of Russia since 2004.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: Lavrov was born on 21 March 1950 in Moscow, to an Armenian father from Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, and a Russian mother from Noginsk, Russian SFSR. His father's surname was originally Kalantaryan. His mother worked in the Soviet Ministry for Foreign Trade. Lavrov graduated from high school with a silver medal. Since his favorite class was physics, he planned to enter either the National Research Nuclear University or the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, but he entered the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) and graduated in 1972.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: During his education at the MGIMO, Lavrov studied international relations. Soon he learned Sinhalese, then the only official language of Sri Lanka, as well as Dhivehi, the official language of the Maldives. Moreover, Lavrov learned English and French. After he was admitted to the university, Lavrov, along with other students, was sent for a month to a student construction brigade building the Ostankino Tower.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: During his summer vacations, Lavrov also worked in his university's student construction brigades in Khakassia, Tuva and the Russian Far East. Each semester, Lavrov with his fellow students conducted drama performances, which were later presented on the main stage of the university. During the third year of his studies, Lavrov was married.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: Lavrov graduated in 1972. According to the rules of that time, a graduate of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations had to work for the Foreign Ministry for a certain amount of time. Lavrov was employed in the Soviet embassy in Sri Lanka as an advisor, as he was already a specialist on the country. At the time, the Soviet Union and Sri Lanka had close market and economic cooperation and the Soviet Union launched the production of natural rubber in the country.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: The Soviet embassy in Sri Lanka also maintained relations with the Maldives. The embassy in Sri Lanka employed only 24 diplomats. Lavrov was given the task of continuously analysing the situation in the country, but he also worked as a translator, personal secretary and assistant to Rafiq Nishonov, who would later become the 12th First Secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbek SSR. In addition, he gained the diplomatic rank of an attaché.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: In 1976, Lavrov returned to Moscow. He worked as a third and second secretary in the Section for International Economic Relations of the USSR. There, he was involved in analytics and his office also worked with various international organizations, including the United Nations.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: In 1981, he was sent as a senior adviser to the Soviet mission to the United Nations in New York City.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: In 1988, Lavrov returned to Moscow and was named Deputy Chief of the Section for International Economic Relations of the USSR. Between 1990 and 1992 he worked as Director of the International Organization of the Soviet Foreign Ministry.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: In October 1990, Andrey Kozyrev, who was in charge of monitoring international organizations at the time, was named Foreign Minister of the Russian SFSR. In that year, the powers of the Soviet Foreign Ministry and the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic were distributed. Until then the Russian SFSR had only a ceremonial role. In October 1991, the foreign ministers of all Soviet republics, except Georgia and the Baltic states, held a meeting where they dealt with the Union of Foreign Ministries.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: In November 1990, the State Council decided to change its name from the Union of Foreign Ministries to the Foreign Ministry of the Soviet Union. In April 1991, he was named deputy foreign minister.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: In December 1991 the Foreign Ministry of Soviet Russia became the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: In 1992, Lavrov was named director of the Department for International Organizations and Global Issues in the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: Lavrov was asked to oversee the activities of the Human Rights and International Cultural Cooperation and the two departments – for the CIS countries, international organizations and international economic cooperation.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: Lavrov was promoted to the diplomatic rank of the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary — the highest diplomatic rank in the Russian Federation — by the Decree of the President of Russia of 5 June 1992 No. 568.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: Lavrov worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until 1994 when he returned to work in the United Nations, this time as the Permanent Representative of Russia. While in the latter position, he was the President of the United Nations Security Council in December 1995, June 1997, July 1998, October 1999, December 2000, April 2002, and June 2003.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: On 9 March 2004, President Vladimir Putin appointed Lavrov to the post of minister of foreign affairs. He succeeded Igor Ivanov in the post.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: Lavrov held on to his position through Vladimir Putin's Second Cabinet while Dmitri Medvedev occupied the presidency from 2008 to 2012.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: On 21 May 2012, Lavrov was reappointed foreign minister to the cabinet led by prime minister Dimitri Medvedev.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: Lavrov is regarded as continuing in the style of his predecessor: a brilliant diplomat but a civil servant rather than a politician. A Russian foreign policy expert at London's Chatham House has described him as "a tough, reliable, extremely sophisticated negotiator" but adds that "he's not part of Putin's inner sanctum" and that the toughening of Russian foreign policy has got very little to do with him.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: US politicians have been much more critical in their appraisal of Lavrov, seeing him as emblematic of President Putin's resurgent violent foreign policies. Then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found that Lavrov treated her poorly during negotiations, like a "jerk."


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: On 15 January 2020, he resigned as part of the cabinet, after President Vladimir Putin delivered the Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly, in which he proposed several amendments to the constitution. On 21 January 2020, he maintained his position in Mikhail Mishustin's Cabinet.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: In 2012, in the early stages of the Syrian Civil War, a Russian delegation travelled to Syria to affirm Russia's backing of the Syrian government of the President Bashar al-Assad. Lavrov and Mikhail Fradkov, who were part of the delegation, were given a favorable welcome by thousands of pro-Assad supporters. The supporters waved Russian flags in thanks to Russia's veto of a UN resolution calling for tough sanctions on the Syrian government.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: In September 2013, then Secretary of State John Kerry and Lavrov reached a breakthrough agreement that would destroy almost all chemical weapons stored in Assad's Syria. The deal was reached after three challenging rounds of talks in Geneva, Switzerland. Soon after, Syria fully accepted this plan, and by June 2014 all chemical weapons submitted by the Syrian government were safely incinerated in the Eastern Mediterranean. The director general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons at the United Nations declared that this treaty was a major benchmark.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: In October 2019, Lavrov condemned Donald Trump's decision to send American troops to guard Syria's oil fields and possibly exploit them, saying that any "exploitation of natural resources of a sovereign state without its consent is illegal".


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: After the March 2014 Crimean status referendum, Lavrov proposed that Ukraine should be independent of any bloc, that the Russian language be recognised officially, and that the constitution be organised along federal lines. In an interview with the Russia-24 TV channel, Lavrov said that the zero-sum "either-or" bloc-politics of Ukraine were first suggested in 2004 by Karel De Gucht, then Foreign Minister of Belgium.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: When G8 leaders voted to officially suspend Russia's membership on 24 March, Lavrov stated that the G8 was an informal organization and membership was optional for Russia.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: In a 30 March interview, he spoke of the 21 February agreement which was signed by Viktor Yanukovich, Vitaly Klitchko, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and Oleg Tyagnibok as well as the Foreign Ministers of Poland, France and Germany to promote peaceful changes in Ukrainian power. Lavrov stressed federalism as a solution to the constitutional impasse in Ukraine, and deplored the de-officialisation of the Russian language. He noticed the work of the secretariat of the Council of Europe at the Venice Commission to prevent a legitimation of the Crimean referendum, and to expel Russia. Lavrov was "taken aback" when US President Barack Obama called Russia a "regional power". He deplored the misuse of the Schengen Agreement to force Crimeans to visit Kyiv in order to gain a Schengen visa, and noticed that the E.U. proposes a visa-free regime for Ukrainian citizens. Lavrov stated that the Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv and the results of the Crimean referendum should both be accepted equally by the West. He reiterated the three-part Russian proposal for the progress of Ukraine:


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: The Kyiv government on 30 March denounced Lavrov's proposals as amounting to "the complete capitulation of Ukraine, its dismemberment, and the destruction of Ukrainian statehood.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: While Lavrov acknowledged that Russia is in contact with the Ukrainian separatist rebels he denied US and EU allegations that Moscow sponsored the rebellion and accused the United States of aggravating the conflict. "Our American colleagues still prefer to push the Ukrainian leadership toward a confrontational path." He added that chances for settling the Ukrainian crisis would have been higher if it only depended on Russia and Europe. Lavrov said the separatists want to "defend their culture, their traditions, celebrate their holidays rather than anniversaries of Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera."


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: In June 2016, Lavrov stated that Russia will never attack any NATO country, saying: "I am convinced that all serious and honest politicians know perfectly well than Russia will never attack a member state of NATO. We have no such plans." He also said: "In our security doctrine it is clearly stated that one of the main threats to our safety is the further expansion of NATO to the east."


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: Lavrov likened the war of words between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to a kindergarten fight between two children, saying "Together with China we'll continue to strive for a reasonable approach and not an emotional one like when children in a kindergarten start fighting and no-one can stop them."


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: Lavrov also said that the United States would not carry out a strike on North Korea because "they know for sure – rather than suspect – that it has atomic bombs." He said the US invaded Iraq "solely because they had 100 percent information that there were no weapons of mass destruction left there."


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: Lavrov criticized US sanctions against countries like Iran, Turkey and Russia. In August 2018, Lavrov said, "unilateral enforcement measures are illegitimate in international affairs" [...]. "One way to counter these illegitimate barriers and restrictions is we can use national currencies on our bilateral trade". "I strongly believe that abuse of the role the U.S. dollar plays as an international currency will eventually result in its role being undermined".


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: Businesses involved in Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany have been sanctioned by the United States with the passing of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 on 20 December 2019. Lavrov said that US Congress "is literally overwhelmed with the desire to do everything to destroy" the Russia–United States relations.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: Lavrov condemned Ukraine's 2017 education law, which makes Ukrainian the only language of education in state schools. According to Lavrov, the "reaction of Brussels to the Ukrainian Law on Education is utterly vague although it crudely violates Kyiv's commitments on linguistic and educational rights." Russia's Foreign Ministry stated that the law is designed to "forcefully establish a mono-ethnic language regime in a multinational state."


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: As early as 2011 Lavrov criticized the status of "non-citizens" in Latvia and Estonia, calling the problem of Russian speaking stateless persons "shameful for the EU."


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: In 2021, Lavrov was critical of a massive NATO-led military exercise called Defender-Europe 21, one of the largest NATO-led military exercises in Europe in decades, which began in March 2021. It included "nearly simultaneous operations across more than 30 training areas" in Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania and other countries. He said that Russia's response was inevitable.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: In January 2022, the United States accused Russia of sending saboteurs into Ukraine to stage "a false-flag operation" that would create a pretext for Russia to invade Ukraine. Lavrov dismissed the US claim as "total disinformation." On 4 February 2022, Lavrov dismissed as "nonsense" and "craziness" allegations by the United States that Russia was preparing a fake video of the Ukrainian forces attacking the separatist-held Donbas as a pretext for starting a war in Ukraine. On 10 February 2022, Lavrov met with British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. In the context of tensions between Russia and the West over a build up of Russian troops near the Russia–Ukraine border talks between the two foreign ministers were described as "difficult". Lavrov denied that Russia has any plans to invade Ukraine. He described Western "demands to remove Russian troops from Russian territory" as "regrettable."


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: On 25 February 2022, the day after Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Lavrov claimed that Putin ordered the invasion to "free Ukrainians from oppression". The same day, the US, UK, EU and Canada announced sanctions against Lavrov as well as Putin. The US added Lavrov to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List. On 26 February, Australia announced similar sanctions on Lavrov. On 1 March most diplomats at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva staged a walkout in protest at the Russian invasion of Ukraine as Lavrov began to speak to the assembly via video from Moscow. Lavrov criticized the West on some policies relating to Ukraine, denouncing his prevention on flying to Geneva due to the ban on Russian aircraft on EU airspace as "Trying to avoid a candid face-to-face dialogue or direct contacts designed to help identify political solutions to pressing international issues." He was also quoted "The West clearly has lost self-control in venting anger against Russia and has destroyed its own rules and institutions." Lavrov, who read from a prepared text, repeated Putin's 23 February goal statement: "The goal of our actions is to save people by fulfilling our allied obligations, as well as to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine so that such things never happen again."


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: On 2 March 2022, Lavrov explained in an interview with "Al Jazeera", Moscow, how the invasion of Ukraine came about in the context of an international crisis that already existed well before 2014. According to him, Russia had to annex the Crimea in 2014 due to the unacceptable risk that NATO naval bases would replace the Russian military port there. He primarily contests the legitimacy of the putsch against Viktor Yanukovych, who according to the Russian leadership already initiated "peace" in Ukraine, with respect to all Russian speaking minorities. He accuses the West of not supporting the special status of those minorities, before Yanukovych was deposed by the Orange Revolution in 2004–2005. He continued that Zelenskyy did not improve the situation any further, and that Putin had to order the invasion of Ukraine, because the US did not comply or even address the security concerns of Russia's western flank. Lavrov claimed the US exerted similar pressures on Iraq in 2003, which the US invaded later for no reason other than "a vial of unidentified chemicals". At the same time, Lavrov tries to portray the current Ukrainian government as "nationalistic" and "right wing" because it does not incorporate historical and linguistic ties to Russia into national policies, and only excels to separate itself from a shared history and culture.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: On 7 April 2022, the United Nations General Assembly in New York voted to suspend Russia from the UNHRC over its behaviour in Ukraine: "93 members voted in favour of the diplomatic rebuke while 24 were against and 58 abstained. This met the required threshold of a two-thirds majority of the assembly members that vote yes or no, with abstentions not counting in the calculation." Linda Thomas-Greenfield had spearheaded the effort and Dmytro Kuleba thought it appropriate and published his thanks while UK Ambassador James Roscoe observed of the Putin administration who tried to quit the body after the fact that it sounded "like someone that’s just been fired tendering their resignation." On 25 April, Lavrov accused NATO of fighting a proxy war with Russia that could escalate into a global conflict with nuclear weapons. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that "it's unhelpful and dangerous to rattle sabers and speculate about the use of nuclear weapons."


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: On 1 May 2022, in an interview with the Italian television broadcaster Rete 4, Lavrov was asked why Russia claimed it needed to "denazify" Ukraine, considering the Ukrainian president himself was Jewish. Lavrov responded by suggesting that Adolf Hitler, like Volodymyr Zelenskyy, had Jewish heritage, saying "as to [Zelenskyy's] argument of what kind of nazification can we have if I'm Jewish, if I remember correctly, and I may be wrong, Hitler also had Jewish blood." Lavrov elaborated "for some time we have heard from the Jewish people that the biggest antisemites were Jewish." Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett condemned Lavrov's comments and said that "using the Holocaust of the Jewish people as a political tool must cease immediately". On 5 May, Bennett's office issued a statement saying: "The Prime Minister accepted President Putin's apology for Lavrov's remarks and thanked him for clarifying his attitude towards the Jewish people and the memory of the Holocaust". Lavrov was criticized by Deborah Lipstadt for the remarks.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: On 14 May 2022, Lavrov used the phrase "total hybrid war" in the course of describing the West's efforts to help Ukraine combat the 2022 Russian invasion.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: On 6 June 2022, according to "Večernje novosti", Sergey Lavrov was due to visit the Serbian capital, Belgrade. However the countries of Bulgaria, North Macedonia, and Montenegro, which surround Serbia, refused Lavrov permission to use their airspace, which led to the cancellation of the visit.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: On 16 June 2022, in an interview with the BBC's Steve Rosenberg, Lavrov stated that Russia did not invade Ukraine, but instead "declared a special military operation because we had absolutely no other way of explaining to the West that dragging Ukraine into Nato was a criminal act." He again repeated the Kremlin's claim that there were Nazis in Ukraine. Lavrov was also asked about a report by the United Nations on an incident involving the Russian military in Yahidne, Ukraine. Lavrov replied: "It's a great pity but international diplomats, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Secretary-General and other UN representatives, are being put under pressure by the West. And very often they're being used to amplify fake news spread by the West. Russia is not squeaky clean. Russia is what it is. And we are not ashamed of showing who we are."


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: On 8 July 2022, Lavrov left the G20 summit of foreign ministers in Bali, Indonesia because he disliked the questions about Putin's invasion of Ukraine. He left when German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock began her formal address. Ukraine sympathizers refused to join a group photo with Lavrov, who seemed perplexed at the criticism.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: On 20 July 2022, Lavrov publicly confirmed that Russia had as a goal not only to "liberate" the Donbas region, but also to occupy the Kherson region, the Zaporizhzhia region and several other territories, supposedly as a response to Ukraine receiving weapons support from abroad.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: On 26 July 2022, he said: ”We are determined to help the people of eastern Ukraine to liberate themselves from the burden of this absolutely unacceptable regime,”


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: On 2 September 2022, Lavrov was concerned over the delay in obtaining US visas for himself and his staff for the yearly meeting of world leaders at the UNGA on 19 September. "Not a single member of the 56-member Russian advance team and delegation" had received the visas. The US protested that this was due to the expulsion of staff from its Moscow embassy.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: On 11 September 2022, Lavrov said that he has not given up on the idea of peace talks with Kyiv. According to his views, "the longer this process is delayed, the harder it will be to reach an agreement." Kyiv and Moscow have held intermittent peace talks since late February of 2022, sponsored by Russia's foreign ministry.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: One week before the 2022 Russian mobilization, Lavrov assured the Russians that there would be no mobilization or martial law.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: On 23 September 2022, Lavrov attended the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York City, after he received permission to travel to the United States. The Russian foreign minister regretted that he was not able to attend the full presentation by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Lavrov attempted to convince the audience that 'countries supplying weapons to Ukraine and training its soldiers were parties to the conflict'. He said that Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine would be under Russia's "full protection" if they are annexed by Russia. Lavrov again falsely claimed that the elected government in Ukraine was illegitimately installed and filled with neo-Nazis. Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Lavrov's comments about using nuclear weapons were "irresponsible" and "absolutely unacceptable".


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: On 14 November, the Associated Press reported, citing Indonesia officials, that Lavrov had been admitted to hospital with a heart condition. An aide subsequently released a video on Telegram showing Lavrov laughing at such reports from his hotel in Bali, claiming Western media was at fault for "some kind of game".


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: Lavrov is a keen sportsman. He likes to watch soccer games on television and is an ardent fan of the Moscow club Spartak Moscow. He has been married since 1971 to Maria Lavrova and they have one daughter and two grandchildren. Their daughter Ekaterina Sergeyevna Lavrova, who lived in the US and London while her father was working for the United Nations, is a graduate of Columbia University. Having stayed in New York City until 2014, and spent a long time outside Russia, she is not fluent in Russian. She is married to Russian businessman Alexander Vinokurov.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: Lavrov has allegedly had a relationship with his mistress, Svetlana Polyakova, since the early 2000s. In 2016, her daughter Polina Kovaleva purchased an apartment in London's elite district of Kensington for £4.4 million in cash when she was 21 years old. She has a master’s degree from Imperial College London. On 25 March 2022, the British government sanctioned her over allegations of "dirty money" as a part of a broader sanctions regime against corrupt Russian interests following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: Lavrov is under personal sanctions in the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Japan, and Australia for his role in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In March 2022, the UK sanctioned Lavrov's stepdaughter, Polina Kovaleva. In April 2022, Canada imposed sanctions against Lavrov's wife and daughter, Maria Lavrova and Ekaterina Vinokurova. The latter was soon included in Australia's sanction list as well.


title: Sergey Lavrov

text: A "Politico" profile from 2017 featured assessments from a senior Bush official of Lavrov as "a complete asshole". John Negroponte said of Lavrov that "His two objectives were always the same: Veto things for the greater glory of Russia and to take the Americans down wherever possible... If he has a moral compass, my Geiger counter hasn’t clicked into it." An official in the Obama administration said "He’s a nasty SOB. He would be relentlessly berating and browbeating and sarcastic and nasty." Another said he was "acerbic and nasty".


title: Neuralink

text: Neuralink Corporation is a neurotechnology company that develops implantable brain–computer interfaces (BCIs). Founded by Elon Musk and a founding team of seven other scientists and engineers, the company's headquarters is in the Pioneer Building in San Francisco sharing offices with OpenAI. Neuralink was launched in 2016 and was first publicly reported in March 2017.


title: Neuralink

text: Since its founding, the company has hired several high-profile neuroscientists from various universities. By July 2019, it had received $158 million in funding (of which $100 million was from Musk) and was employing a staff of 90 employees. At that time, Neuralink announced that it was working on a "sewing machine-like" device capable of implanting very thin (4 to 6 μm in width) threads into the brain, and demonstrated a system that read information from a lab rat via 1,500 electrodes. They had anticipated starting experiments with humans in 2020; but have since moved that projection to 2022.


title: Neuralink

text: Several neuroscientists and publications, including the "MIT Technology Review", have been critical of claims made by Musk about Neuralink, calling some of the technological promises "highly speculative".


title: Neuralink

text: Neuralink was founded in 2016 by Elon Musk and a founding team of seven other scientists and engineers. The group of initial hires consisted of experts in areas such as neuroscience, biochemistry and robotics. The trademark "Neuralink" was purchased from its previous owners in January 2017.


title: Neuralink

text: In April 2017, Neuralink announced that it was aiming to make devices to treat serious brain diseases in the short-term, with the eventual goal of human enhancement, sometimes called transhumanism. Musk had said his interest in the idea partly stemmed from the science fiction concept of "neural lace" in the fictional universe in "The Culture", a series of 10 novels by Iain M. Banks.


title: Neuralink

text: Musk defined the neural lace as a "digital layer above the cortex" that would not necessarily imply extensive surgical insertion but ideally an implant through a vein or artery. He said the long-term goal is to achieve "symbiosis with artificial intelligence", which he perceives as an existential threat to humanity if it goes unchecked. He believes the device will be "something analogous to a video game, like a saved game situation, where you are able to resume and upload your last state" and "address brain injuries or spinal injuries and make up for whatever lost capacity somebody has with a chip."


title: Neuralink

text: As of 2020, Neuralink is headquartered in San Francisco's Mission District, sharing the Pioneer building with OpenAI, another company co-founded by Musk. Jared Birchall, the head of Musk's family office, was listed as CEO, CFO and president of Neuralink in 2018. As of September 2018, Musk was the majority owner of Neuralink but did not hold an executive position.


title: Neuralink

text: By August 2020, only three of the eight founding scientists remained at the company, according to an article by Stat News which reported that Neuralink had seen "years of internal conflict in which rushed timelines have clashed with the slow and incremental pace of science."


title: Neuralink

text: In April 2021, Neuralink demonstrated a monkey playing the game "Pong" using the Neuralink implant. While similar technology has existed since 2002, when a research group first demonstrated a monkey moving a computer cursor with neural signals, scientists acknowledged the engineering progress in making the implant wireless and increasing the number of implanted electrodes.


title: Neuralink

text: In May 2021, co-founder and president Max Hodak announced that he no longer works with the company. As of January 2022, of the eight cofounders, only two remain at the company.


title: Neuralink

text: A January 2022 article in "Fortune" highlighted criticism of Neuralink's corporate culture from anonymous former employees. They described a "culture of blame and fear" and one with vacillating priorities. Additionally, Musk allegedly undermined management by encouraging junior employees "to email issues and complaints to him directly."


title: Neuralink

text: In 2018, Gizmodo reported that Neuralink "remained highly secretive about its work", although public records showed that it had sought to open an animal testing facility in San Francisco; it subsequently started to carry out research at the University of California, Davis. In 2019, during a live presentation at the California Academy of Sciences, the Neuralink team revealed to the public the technology of the first prototype they had been working on. It is a system that involves ultra-thin probes that will be inserted into the brain, a neurosurgical robot that will perform the operations and a high-density electronic system capable of processing information from neurons. It is based on technology developed at UCSF and UC Berkeley.


title: Neuralink

text: The probes, composed mostly of polyimide, a biocompatible material, with a thin gold or platinum conductor, are inserted into the brain through an automated process performed by a surgical robot. Each probe consists of an area of wires that contains electrodes capable of locating electrical signals in the brain, and a sensory area where the wire interacts with an electronic system that allows amplification and acquisition of the brain signal. Each probe contains 48 or 96 wires, each of which contains 32 independent electrodes, making a system of up to 3072 electrodes per formation.


title: Neuralink

text: Neuralink says they have engineered a surgical robot capable of rapidly inserting many flexible probes into the brain, which may avoid the problems of tissue damage and longevity issues associated with larger and more rigid probes. This surgical robot has an insertion head with a 40 μm diameter needle made of tungsten-rhenium designed to attach to the insertion loops, inject individual probes, and penetrate the meninges and cerebral tissue; it is capable of inserting up to six wires (192 electrodes) per minute.


title: Neuralink

text: Neuralink has developed an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) to create a 1,536-channel recording system. This system consists of 256 amplifiers capable of being individually programmed ("analog pixels"), analog-to-digital converters within the chip ("ADCs") and a peripheral circuit control to serialize the digitized information obtained. It aims to convert information obtained from neurons into an understandable binary code in order to achieve greater understanding of brain function and the ability to stimulate these neurons back. With the present technology, electrodes are still too big to record the firing of individual neurons, so they can record only the firing of a group of neurons; Neuralink representatives believe this issue might get mitigated algorithmically, but it is computationally expensive and does not produce exact results.


title: Neuralink

text: In July 2020, according to Musk, Neuralink obtained a FDA breakthrough device designation which allows limited human testing under the FDA guidelines for medical devices.


title: Neuralink

text: Neuralink tests their devices by surgically implanting them in the brains of live monkeys, pigs and other animals. Neuralink's methods have been criticized by groups such as PETA.


title: Neuralink

text: From 2017 to 2020, Neuralink's experiments on monkeys were conducted in partnership with UC Davis. At the end of their partnership, UC Davis transferred seven monkeys to Neuralink. In 2022, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) alleged that Neuralink and UC Davis had mistreated several monkeys, subjecting them to psychological distress, extreme suffering, and chronic infections due to surgeries. Experiments conducted by Neuralink and UC Davis have involved at least 23 monkeys, and the PCRM believes that 15 of those monkeys died or were euthanized as a result of the experiments. Furthermore, the PCRM alleged that UC Davis withheld photographic and video evidence of the mistreatment.


title: Neuralink

text: In February 2022, Neuralink said that macaque monkeys died and were euthanized after experimentation, denying that any animal abuse had occurred.


title: Neuralink

text: Musk previously stated that Neuralink implants would be introduced by injecting them through the jugular vein, and not by opening the cranium (which Neuralink currently requires).


title: Neuralink

text: In December 2022, it was reported that Neuralink was under federal investigation by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) regarding animal welfare violations. Additionally, a report by Reuters revealed that several Neuralink employees have claimed that testing was being rushed due to Musk's demands for fast results, which was leading to needless suffering and deaths among the animals.


title: Neuralink

text: Scientists have cited technical challenges for Neuralink. In 2017, a journalist at the IEEE Spectrum Magazine had asked for comments from five researchers that had been working on BCI implants, including Thomas Oxley that invented the Stentrode. At a live demonstration in August 2020, Musk described their device as "a Fitbit in your skull". Several neuroscientists and publications criticized these claims. "MIT Technology Review" accused the demonstration of having the main objective to "stir excitement", adding that "Neuralink has provided no evidence that it can (or has even tried to) treat depression, insomnia, or a dozen other diseases that Musk mentioned in a slide". Andrew Jackson, professor of neural interfaces at Newcastle University, also commented on the presentation to the BBC. To Musk's statement that he found Neuralink's advancements to be "profound", Jackson responded, "I don't think there was anything revolutionary in the presentation."


title: Neuralink

text: Thiago Arzua of the Medical College of Wisconsin argued that Neuralink's functions are not novel and that ideas for a brain–machine interface (BMI) are at least 50 years old. He cited successful control of a robotic prosthetic arm by a man that gave him haptic feedback, which he used in 2016 to give President Obama a fist bump. Arzua said that the 2020 Neuralink presentation "showed little more than a flashy new design for a BMI with more electrodes".


title: Home Improvement (TV series)

text: Home Improvement is an American television sitcom starring Tim Allen that aired on ABC from September 17, 1991 to May 25, 1999 with a total of 204 half-hour episodes spanning eight seasons. The series was created by Matt Williams, Carmen Finestra, and David McFadzean. Despite not being a favorite with critics, it was one of the most watched sitcoms in the United States during the 1990s, winning many awards. The series launched Allen's acting career and was the start of the television career of Pamela Anderson, who was part of the recurring cast for the first two seasons.


title: Home Improvement (TV series)

text: Based on the stand-up comedy of Tim Allen, "Home Improvement" made its debut on ABC on September 17, 1991, and was one of the highest-rated sitcoms for almost the entire decade. It went to No. 2 in the ratings during the 1993–1994 season, the same year Allen had the No. 1 book ("Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man") and film ("The Santa Clause").


title: Home Improvement (TV series)

text: Beginning in season 2, "Home Improvement" began each episode with a cold open, which features the show's logo during the teaser. From season 4 until the end of the series in 1999, an anthropomorphic version of the logo was used in different types of animation.


title: Home Improvement (TV series)

text: The series centers on the Taylor family, which consists of Tim (Tim Allen), his wife Jill (Patricia Richardson) and their three sons: Brad (Zachery Ty Bryan), Randy (Jonathan Taylor Thomas), and Mark (Taran Noah Smith). The Taylors live in suburban Detroit, and they have a neighbor named Wilson (Earl Hindman) who is often the go-to guy for solving the Taylors' problems.


title: Home Improvement (TV series)

text: Tim loves power tools, cars, and sports. An avid fan of the Detroit professional sports teams, Tim wears Lions, Pistons, Red Wings, and Tigers clothing in numerous instances, and many plots revolve around the teams. He is a former salesman for the fictional Binford Tool company, and he is very much a cocky, overambitious, accident-prone know-it-all. Witty but flippant, Tim jokes around a lot, even at inappropriate times, much to the dismay of his wife. However, Tim can sometimes be serious when necessary. Jill, Tim's wife, is loving and sophisticated, but she is not exempt from dumb moves herself. In later seasons, she returns to college to study psychology. Family life is boisterous for the Taylors, with the two oldest children, Brad and Randy, tormenting the much younger Mark, all while continually testing and pestering each other. Such play happened especially throughout the first three seasons, and it was revisited only occasionally until Jonathan Taylor Thomas left at the beginning of the eighth season. During the show's final season, Brad and Mark became much closer due to Randy's absence.


title: Home Improvement (TV series)

text: Brad, popular and athletic, was often the moving factor, who engaged before thinking, a tendency which regularly landed him in trouble. Randy, a year younger, was the comedian of the pack, known for his quick thinking, wisecracks, and smart mouth. He had more common sense than Brad but was not immune to trouble. Mark was somewhat of a mama's boy, though later in the series (in the seventh season) he grew into a teenage outcast who dressed in black clothing. Meanwhile, Brad became interested in cars like his father and took up soccer. Randy joined the school drama club and later the school newspaper; in the eighth season, he left for Costa Rica.


title: Home Improvement (TV series)

text: In early seasons, Wilson was always seen standing on the other side of Tim's backyard fence as the two engaged in conversation, usually with Wilson offering sage advice as Tim grappled with his problems. In later seasons, a running joke developed in which more and more creative means were used to prevent Wilson's face below the eyes from ever being seen by the audience. Also, in later seasons, Wilson's full name was revealed to be Wilson W. Wilson, Jr.