title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: "The Dispossessed", set on the twin planets of Urras and Anarres, features a planned anarchist society depicted as an "ambiguous utopia". The society, created by settlers from Urras, is materially poorer than the wealthy society of Urras, but more ethically and morally advanced. Unlike classical utopias, the society of Anarres is portrayed as neither perfect nor static; the protagonist Shevek finds himself traveling to Urras to pursue his research. Nonetheless, the misogyny and hierarchy present in the authoritarian society of Urras is absent among the anarchists, who base their social structure on cooperation and individual liberty. "The Eye of the Heron", published a few years after "The Dispossessed", was described as continuing Le Guin's exploration of human freedom, through a conflict between two societies of opposing philosophies: a town inhabited by descendants of pacifists, and a city inhabited by descendants of criminals.


title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: "Always Coming Home", set in California in the distant future, examines a warlike society, resembling contemporary American society, from the perspective of the Kesh, its pacifist neighbors. The society of the Kesh has been identified by scholars as a feminist utopia, which Le Guin uses to explore the role of technology. Scholar Warren Rochelle stated that it was "neither a matriarchy nor a patriarchy: men and women just are". "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", a parable depicting a society in which widespread wealth, happiness, and security, comes at the cost of the continued misery of a single child, has also been read as a critique of contemporary American society. "The Word for World is Forest" explored the manner in which the structure of society affects the natural environment; in the novel, the natives of the planet of Athshe have adapted their way of life to the ecology of the planet. The colonizing human society, in contrast, is depicted as destructive and uncaring; in depicting it, Le Guin also critiqued colonialism and imperialism, driven partly by her disapproval for U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War.


title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: Other social structures are examined in works such as the story cycle "Four Ways to Forgiveness", and the short story "Old Music and the Slave Women", occasionally described as a "fifth way to forgiveness". Set in the Hainish universe, the five stories together examine revolution and reconstruction in a slave-owning society. According to Rochelle, the stories examine a society that has the potential to build a "truly human community", made possible by the Ekumen's recognition of the slaves as human beings, thus offering them the prospect of freedom and the possibility of utopia, brought about through revolution. Slavery, justice, and the role of women in society are also explored in "Annals of the Western Shore".


title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: Le Guin received rapid recognition after the publication of "The Left Hand of Darkness" in 1969, and by the 1970s she was among the best known writers in the field. Her books sold many millions of copies, and were translated into more than 40 languages; several remain in print many decades after their first publication. Her work received intense academic attention; she has been described as being the "premier writer of both fantasy and science fiction" of the 1970s, the most frequently discussed science fiction writer of the 1970s, and over her career, as intensively studied as Philip K. Dick. Later in her career, she also received recognition from mainstream literary critics: in an obituary, Jo Walton stated that Le Guin "was so good that the mainstream couldn't dismiss SF any more". According to scholar Donna White, Le Guin was a "major voice in American letters", whose writing was the subject of many volumes of literary critique, more than two hundred scholarly articles, and a number of dissertations.


title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: Le Guin was unusual in receiving most of her recognition for her earliest works, which remained her most popular; a commentator in 2018 described a "tendency toward didacticism" in her later works, while John Clute, writing in "The Guardian", stated that her later writing "suffers from the need she clearly felt to speak responsibly to her large audience about important things; an artist being responsible can be an artist wearing a crown of thorns". Not all of her works received as positive a reception; "The Compass Rose" was among the volumes that had a mixed reaction, while the "Science Fiction Encyclopedia" described "The Eye of the Heron" as "an over-diagrammatic political fable whose translucent simplicity approaches self-parody". Even the critically well-received "The Left Hand of Darkness", in addition to critique from feminists, was described by Alexei Panshin as a "flat failure".


title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: Her writing was recognized by the popular media and by commentators. The "Los Angeles Times" commented in 2009 that after the death of Arthur C. Clarke, Le Guin was "arguably the most acclaimed science fiction writer on the planet", and went on to describe her as a "pioneer" of literature for young people. In an obituary, Clute described Le Guin as having "presided over American science fiction for nearly half a century", and as having a reputation as an author of the "first rank". In 2016, "The New York Times" described her as "America's greatest living science fiction writer". Praise for Le Guin frequently focused on the social and political themes her work explored, and for her prose; literary critic Harold Bloom described Le Guin as an "exquisite stylist", saying that in her writing, "Every word was exactly in place and every sentence or line had resonance". According to Bloom, Le Guin was a "visionary who set herself against all brutality, discrimination, and exploitation". "The New York Times" described her as using "a lean but lyrical style" to explore issues of moral relevance. Prefacing an interview in 2008, "Vice" magazine described Le Guin as having written "some of the more mind-warping [science fiction] and fantasy tales of the past 40 years".


title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: Le Guin's fellow authors also praised her writing. After Le Guin's death in 2018, writer Michael Chabon referred to her as the "greatest American writer of her generation", and said that she had "awed [him] with the power of an unfettered imagination". Author Margaret Atwood hailed Le Guin's "sane, smart, crafty and lyrical voice", and wrote that social injustice was a powerful motivation through Le Guin's life. Her prose, according to Zadie Smith, was "as elegant and beautiful as any written in the twentieth century". Academic and author Joyce Carol Oates highlighted Le Guin's "outspoken sense of justice, decency, and common sense", and called her "one of the great American writers and a visionary artist whose work will long endure". China Miéville described Le Guin as a "literary colossus", and wrote that she was a "writer of intense ethical seriousness and intelligence, of wit and fury, of radical politics, of subtlety, of freedom and yearning".


title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: The accolades Le Guin has received include numerous annual awards for individual works. She won eight Hugo Awards from twenty-six nominations, and six Nebula Awards from eighteen nominations, including four Nebula Awards for Best Novel from six nominations, more than any other writer. Le Guin won twenty-four Locus Awards, voted for by subscribers of "Locus Magazine", and was joint third for total wins, as well as second behind Neil Gaiman, for the number of wins for works of fiction. For her novels alone she won five Locus Awards, four Nebula Awards, two Hugo Awards, and one World Fantasy Award, and won each of those awards in short fiction categories as well. Her third "Earthsea" novel, "The Farthest Shore", won the 1973 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, and she was a finalist for ten Mythopoeic Awards, nine in Fantasy and one for Scholarship. Her 1996 collection "Unlocking the Air and Other Stories" was one of three finalists for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other awards won by Le Guin include three James Tiptree Jr. Awards, and three Jupiter Awards. She won her final Hugo award a year after her death, for a complete edition of "Earthsea", illustrated by Charles Vess; the same volume also won a Locus award.


title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: Other awards and accolades have recognized Le Guin's contributions to speculative fiction. She was voted a Gandalf Grand Master Award by the World Science Fiction Society in 1979. The Science Fiction Research Association gave her its Pilgrim Award in 1989 for her "lifetime contributions to SF and fantasy scholarship". At the 1995 World Fantasy Convention she won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, a judged recognition of outstanding service to the fantasy field. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted her in 2001, its sixth class of two deceased and two living writers. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named her its 20th Grand Master in 2003: she was the second, and one of only six, women to receive that honor. In 2013, she was given the Eaton Award by the University of California, Riverside, for lifetime achievement in science fiction.


title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: Later in her career Le Guin also received accolades recognizing her contributions to literature more generally. In April 2000, the U.S. Library of Congress named Le Guin a Living Legend in the "Writers and Artists" category for her significant contributions to America's cultural heritage. The American Library Association granted her the annual Margaret Edwards Award in 2004, and also selected her to deliver the annual May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture. The Edwards Award recognizes one writer and a particular body of work: the 2004 panel cited the first four "Earthsea" volumes, "The Left Hand of Darkness" and "The Beginning Place". The panel said that Le Guin "has inspired four generations of young adults to read beautifully constructed language, visit fantasy worlds that inform them about their own lives, and think about their ideas that are neither easy nor inconsequential". A collection of Le Guin's works was published by the Library of America in 2016, an honor only rarely given to living writers. The National Book Foundation awarded Le Guin its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2014, stating that she had "defied conventions of narrative, language, character, and genre, and transcended boundaries between fantasy and realism to forge new paths for literary fiction". The American Academy of Arts and Letters made her a member in 2017. On July 27, 2021, Le Guin was honored by the US Postal Service with the 33rd stamp in the Postal Service's Literary Arts series. The stamp features a portrait of the author taken from a 2006 photograph against a background image inspired by her book "The Left Hand of Darkness". The stamp was designed by Donato Gionacola.


title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: Le Guin had a considerable influence on the field of speculative fiction; Jo Walton argued that Le Guin played a large role in both broadening the genre and helping genre writers achieve mainstream recognition. The "Earthsea" books are cited as having a wide impact, including outside the field of literature. Atwood considers "A Wizard of Earthsea" one of the "wellsprings" of fantasy literature, and modern writers have credited the book for the idea of a "wizard school", later made famous by the "Harry Potter" series of books, and with popularizing the trope of a boy wizard, also present in "Harry Potter". The notion that names can exert power is a theme in the Earthsea series; critics have suggested that this inspired Hayao Miyazaki's use of the idea in his 2001 film "Spirited Away".


title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: Le Guin's writings set in the Hainish universe also had a wide influence. Le Guin coined the name "ansible" for an instantaneous interstellar communication device in 1966; the term was later adopted by several other writers, including Orson Scott Card in the "Ender Series" and Neil Gaiman in a script for a "Doctor Who" episode. Suzanne Reid wrote that at the time "The Left Hand of Darkness" was written, Le Guin's ideas of androgyny were unique not only to science fiction, but to literature in general. That volume is specifically cited as leaving a large legacy; in discussing it, literary critic Harold Bloom wrote "Le Guin, more than Tolkien, has raised fantasy into high literature, for our time". Bloom followed this up by listing the book in his "The Western Canon" (1994) as one of the books in his conception of artistic works that have been important and influential in Western culture. This view was echoed in "The Paris Review", which wrote that "No single work did more to upend the genre's conventions than "The Left Hand of Darkness"", while White argued that it was one of the seminal works of science fiction, as important as Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" (1818).


title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: Commentators have also described Le Guin as being influential in the field of literature more generally. Literary critic Elaine Showalter suggested that Le Guin "set the pace as a writer for women unlearning silence, fear, and self-doubt", while writer Brian Attebery stated that "[Le Guin] invented us: science fiction and fantasy critics like me but also poets and essayists and picture book writers and novelists". Le Guin's own literary criticism proved influential; her 1973 essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" led to renewed interest in the work of Kenneth Morris, and eventually to the publication of a posthumous novel by Morris. Le Guin also played a role in bringing speculative fiction into the literary mainstream by supporting journalists and scholarly endeavors examining the genre.


title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: Several prominent authors acknowledge Le Guin's influence on their own writing. Jo Walton wrote that "her way of looking at the world had a huge influence on me, not just as a writer but as a human being". Other writers she influenced include Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, as well as David Mitchell, Gaiman, Algis Budrys, Goonan, and Iain Banks. Mitchell, author of books such as "Cloud Atlas", described "A Wizard of Earthsea" as having a strong influence on him, and said that he felt a desire to "wield words with the same power as Ursula Le Guin". Le Guin is also credited with inspiring several female science fiction authors in the 1970s, including Vonda McIntyre. When McIntyre established a writers' workshop in Seattle in 1971, Le Guin was one of the instructors. Film-maker Arwen Curry began production on a documentary about Le Guin in 2009, filming "dozens" of hours of interviews with the author as well as many other writers and artists who have been inspired by her. Curry launched a successful crowdfunding campaign to finish the documentary in early 2016 after winning a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.


title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: In October 2021, the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction was announced. The award is managed by the Ursula K. Le Guin Literary Trust and a panel of jurors. The prize is worth and will be awarded annually to "a single book-length work of imaginative fiction." The inaugural shortlist was announced on July 28, 2022. The prize's inaugural winner was announced on October 21, 2022, Le Guin's birthday.


title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: Le Guin's works have been adapted for radio, film, television, and the stage. Her 1971 novel "The Lathe of Heaven" has been released on film twice, in 1979 by WNET with Le Guin's participation, and then in 2002 by the A&E Network. In a 2008 interview, she said she considered the 1979 version as "the only good adaptation to film" of her work to date. In the early 1980s Hayao Miyazaki asked to create an animated adaptation of "Earthsea". Le Guin, who was unfamiliar with his work and anime in general, initially turned down the offer, but later accepted after seeing "My Neighbor Totoro". The third and fourth "Earthsea" books were used as the basis of "Tales from Earthsea", released in 2006. Rather than being directed by Hayao Miyazaki himself, the film was directed by his son Gorō, which disappointed Le Guin. Le Guin was positive about the aesthetic of the film, writing that "much of it was beautiful", but was critical of the film's moral sense and its use of physical violence, and particularly the use of a villain whose death provided the film's resolution. In 2004, the Sci Fi Channel adapted the first two books of the "Earthsea" trilogy as the miniseries "Legend of Earthsea". Le Guin was highly critical of the miniseries, calling it a "far cry from the Earthsea I envisioned", objecting to the use of white actors for her red-, brown-, and black-skinned characters.


title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: Le Guin's novel "The Left Hand of Darkness" was adapted for the stage in 1995 by Chicago's Lifeline Theatre. Reviewer Jack Helbig at the "Chicago Reader" wrote that the "adaptation is intelligent and well crafted but ultimately unsatisfying", in large measure because it is extremely difficult to compress a complex 300-page novel into a two-hour stage presentation. "Paradises Lost" was adapted into an opera by the opera program of the University of Illinois. The opera was composed by Stephen A. Taylor; the libretto has been attributed both to Kate Gale and to Marcia Johnson. Created in 2005, the opera premiered in April 2012. Le Guin described the effort as a "beautiful opera" in an interview, and expressed hopes that it would be picked up by other producers. She also said she was better pleased with stage versions, including "Paradises Lost", than screen adaptations of her work to that date. In 2013, the Portland Playhouse and Hand2Mouth Theatre produced a play based on "The Left Hand of Darkness", directed and adapted by Jonathan Walters, with text written by John Schmor. The play opened May 2, 2013, and ran until June 16, 2013, in Portland, Oregon.


title: Ursula K. Le Guin

text: Le Guin's career as a professional writer spanned nearly sixty years, from 1959 to 2018. During this period, she wrote more than twenty novels, more than a hundred short stories, more than a dozen volumes of poetry, five translations, and thirteen children's books. Her writing encompassed speculative fiction, realistic fiction, non-fiction, screenplays, librettos, essays, poetry, speeches, translations, literary critiques, chapbooks, and children's fiction. Le Guin's first published work was the poem "Folksong from the Montayna Province" in 1959, while her first published short story was "An die Musik", in 1961. Her first professional publication was the short story "April in Paris" in 1962, while her first published novel was "Rocannon's World", released by Ace Books in 1966. Her final publications included the non-fiction collections "Dreams Must Explain Themselves" and "Ursula K Le Guin: Conversations on Writing", both released after her death. Her best-known works include the six volumes of the "Earthsea" series, and the many novels of the Hainish Cycle.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: Blue-ringed octopuses, comprising the genus Hapalochlaena, are four highly venomous species of octopus that are found in tide pools and coral reefs in the Pacific and Indian oceans, from Japan to Australia. They can be identified by their yellowish skin and characteristic blue and black rings that change color dramatically when the animal is threatened. They eat small crustaceans, including crabs, hermit crabs, shrimp, and other small sea animals.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: They are one of the world's most venomous marine animals. Despite their small size——and relatively docile nature, they are very dangerous to humans if provoked when handled because their venom contains the powerful neurotoxin tetrodotoxin.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: The species tend to have a lifespan of approximately two to three years. This may vary depending on factors such as nutrition, temperature and the intensity of light within its habitat.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: The genus was described by British zoologist Guy Coburn Robson in 1929. There are four confirmed species of "Hapalochlaena", and six possible but still undescribed species being researched:


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: Blue-ringed octopuses spend most of their time hiding in crevices while displaying effective camouflage patterns with their dermal chromatophore cells. Like all octopuses, they can change shape easily, which helps them to squeeze into crevices much smaller than themselves. This, along with piling up rocks outside the entrance to its lair, helps safeguard the octopus from predators.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: If they are provoked, they quickly change color, becoming bright yellow with each of the 50–60 rings flashing bright iridescent blue within a third of a second as an aposematic warning display. In the greater blue-ringed octopus ("Hapalochlaena lunulata"), the rings contain multi-layer light reflectors called iridophores. These are arranged to reflect blue–green light in a wide viewing direction. Beneath and around each ring there are dark pigmented chromatophores which can be expanded within 1 second to enhance the contrast of the rings. There are no chromatophores above the ring, which is unusual for cephalopods as they typically use chromatophores to cover or spectrally modify iridescence. The fast flashes of the blue rings are achieved by using muscles which are under neural control. Under normal circumstances, each ring is hidden by contraction of muscles above the iridophores. When these relax and muscles outside the ring contract, the iridescence is exposed thereby revealing the blue color.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: Similar to other Octopoda, the blue-ringed octopus swims by expelling water from a funnel in a form of jet propulsion.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: The blue-ringed octopus diet typically consists of small crustaceans such as crabs and shrimp. They also tend to take advantage of small injured fish if they can catch them. The blue-ringed octopus pounces on its prey, seizing it with its arms and pulling it towards its mouth. It uses its horny beak to pierce through the tough crab or shrimp exoskeleton, releasing its venom. The venom paralyzes the muscles required for movement, which effectively kills the prey.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: The mating ritual for the blue-ringed octopus begins when a male approaches a female and begins to caress her with his modified arm, the hectocotylus. A male mates with a female by grabbing her, which sometimes completely obscures the female's vision, then transferring sperm packets by inserting his hectocotylus into her mantle cavity repeatedly. Mating continues until the female has had enough, and in at least one species the female has to remove the over-enthusiastic male by force. Males will attempt copulation with members of their own species regardless of sex or size, but interactions between males are most often shorter in duration and end with the mounting octopus withdrawing the hectocotylus without packet insertion or struggle.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: Blue-ringed octopus females lay only one clutch of about 50 eggs in their lifetimes, towards the end of fall. Eggs are laid and then incubated underneath the female's arms for about six months, during this process the female does not eat. After the eggs hatch, the female dies, and the new offspring will reach maturity and be able to mate by the next year.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: In the southern blue-ringed octopus, body mass is observed to be the strongest factor that influence copulatory rates. Evidence of female preference of larger males is apparent, although no male preference of females is shown. In this species, it is suggested that males expend more effort than females to initiate copulation. Additionally, it is unlikely that males use odor cues to identify females with which to mate. Male-male mounting attempts are common in "H. maculosa", proposing that there is no discrimination between sex. Male blue-ringed octopus will adjust mating durations based on the female's recent mating history. Termination of copulation is not likely to happen with a female if she has not yet mated with another male. Duration length of mating is also found to be longer in these cases as well.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: The blue-ringed octopus, despite its small size, carries enough venom to kill 26 adult humans within minutes. Their bites are tiny and often painless, with many victims not realizing they have been envenomated until respiratory depression and paralysis begins. No blue-ringed octopus antivenom is available.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: The octopus produces venom containing tetrodotoxin, histamine, tryptamine, octopamine, taurine, acetylcholine and dopamine. The venom can result in nausea, respiratory arrest, heart failure, severe and sometimes total paralysis, blindness, and can lead to death within minutes if not treated. Death is usually from suffocation due to paralysis of the diaphragm.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: The venom is produced in the posterior salivary gland of the octopus. The salivary glands possess a tubuloacinar exocrine structure and are located in the intestinal blood space.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: The major neurotoxin component of the blue-ringed octopus is a compound that was originally known as maculotoxin but was later found to be identical to tetrodotoxin, a neurotoxin also found in pufferfish, rough skinned newts and in some poison dart frogs. Tetrodotoxin blocks sodium channels, causing motor paralysis and respiratory arrest within minutes of exposure. The octopus's own sodium channels are adapted to be resistant to tetrodotoxin. The tetrodotoxin is produced by bacteria in the salivary glands of the octopus.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: Direct contact is necessary to be envenomated. Faced with danger, the octopus's first instinct is to flee. If the threat persists, the octopus will go into a defensive stance, and display its blue rings. If the octopus is cornered and touched, it may bite and envenomate its attacker.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: Estimates of the number of recorded fatalities caused by blue-ringed octopuses vary, ranging from seven to sixteen deaths; most scholars agree that there have been at least eleven.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: Tetrodotoxin can be found in nearly every organ and gland of its body. Even sensitive areas such as the Needham's sac, branchial heart, nephridia, and gills, have been found to contain tetrodotoxin, and it has no effect on the octopus's normal functions. This may be possible through a unique blood transport. The mother will inject the neurotoxin into her eggs to make them generate their own venom before hatching.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: Tetrodotoxin causes severe and often total body paralysis. Tetrodotoxin envenomation can result in victims being fully aware of their surroundings but unable to move. Because of the paralysis, they have no way of signaling for help or indicating distress. The victim remains conscious and alert in a manner similar to the effect of curare or pancuronium bromide. This effect is temporary and will fade over a period of hours as the tetrodotoxin is metabolized and excreted by the body.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: The symptoms vary in severity, with children being the most at risk because of their small body size.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: First aid treatment is pressure on the wound and artificial respiration once the paralysis has disabled the victim's respiratory muscles, which often occurs within minutes of being bitten. Because the venom primarily kills through paralysis, victims are frequently saved if artificial respiration is started and maintained before marked cyanosis and hypotension develop. Respiratory support until medical assistance arrives will improve the victim's chances of survival. Definitive hospital treatment involves placing the patient on a ventilator until the toxin is removed by the body. Victims who survive the first 24 hours usually recover completely.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: Currently the blue-ringed octopus population information is listed as Least Concern according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). However, threats such as bioprospecting, habitat fragmentation, degradation, overfishing, and human disturbance, as well as species collections for aquarium trade, may be threats to population numbers. It is possible that "Hapalochlaena" contribute to a variety of advantages to marine conservation. This genera of octopus provide stability of habitat biodiversity as well as expand the balance of marine food webs. Various species of blue-ringed octopus may help control populations of Asian date mussels. Additionally, future research of tetrodotoxins produced by the blue-ringed octopus may produce new medicinal discoveries.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: In the 1983 James Bond film "Octopussy", the blue-ringed octopus is the prominent symbol of the secret order of female bandits and smugglers, appearing in an aquarium tank, on silk robes, and as a tattoo on women in the order. The animal was also featured in the book "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton, where a terrorist organization utilized the animal's venom as a favored murder weapon. "The Adventure Zone" featured a blue-ringed octopus in its "Petals to the Metal" series.


title: Blue-ringed octopus

text: A video, originally posted on TikTok, of a tourist in Australia handling a blue-ringed octopus went viral in January 2019.


title: Landlocked country

text: A landlocked country is a country that does not have territory connected to an ocean or whose coastlines lie on endorheic basins. There are currently 44 landlocked countries and 4 landlocked de facto states. Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country.


title: Landlocked country

text: In 1990, there were only 30 landlocked countries in the world. The dissolutions of the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia; the breakup of Yugoslavia; the independence referendums of South Ossetia (partially recognized), Eritrea, Montenegro, South Sudan, and the Luhansk People's Republic (partially recognized); and the unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo (partially recognized) created 15 new landlocked countries and 5 partially recognized landlocked states while the former landlocked country of Czechoslovakia ceased to exist on 1 January 1993. On 5 October 2022, the Luhansk People's Republic was annexed by Russia and ceased to exist as a de facto landlocked state.


title: Landlocked country

text: Generally, being landlocked creates some political and economic disadvantages that having access to international waters would avoid. For this reason, nations large and small throughout history have sought to gain access to open waters, even at great expense in wealth, bloodshed, and political capital.


title: Landlocked country

text: The economic disadvantages of being landlocked can be alleviated or aggravated depending on degree of development, surrounding trade routes and freedom of trade, language barriers, and other considerations. Some landlocked countries in Europe are affluent, such as Andorra, Austria, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, San Marino, Switzerland, and Vatican City, all of which, excluding Luxembourg (a founding member of NATO), frequently employ neutrality in global political issues. However, 32 out of the 44 landlocked countries, including all the landlocked countries in Africa, Asia, and South America, have been classified as the Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) by the United Nations. Nine of the twelve countries with the lowest Human Development Indices (HDI) are landlocked. International initiatives are aimed at reducing inequalities resulting from issues such as these, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10, which aims to reduce inequality substantially by 2030.


title: Landlocked country

text: Historically, being landlocked has been disadvantageous to a country's development. It cuts a nation off from important sea resources such as fishing, and impedes or prevents direct access to maritime trade, a crucial component of economic and social advance. As such, coastal regions, or inland regions that have access to the World Ocean, tended to be wealthier and more heavily populated than inland regions that have no access to the World Ocean. Paul Collier in his book "The Bottom Billion" argues that being landlocked in a poor geographical neighbourhood is one of four major development "traps" by which a country can be held back. In general, he found that when a neighbouring country experiences better growth, it tends to spill over into favorable development for the country itself. For landlocked countries, the effect is particularly strong, as they are limited in their trading activity with the rest of the world. He states, "If you are coastal, you serve the world; if you are landlocked, you serve your neighbors." Others have argued that being landlocked has an advantage as it creates a "natural tariff barrier" that protects the country from cheap imports. In some instances, this has led to more robust local food systems.


title: Landlocked country

text: Landlocked developing countries have significantly higher costs of international cargo transportation compared to coastal developing countries (in Asia the ratio is 3:1).


title: Landlocked country

text: Before air travel grew important, passenger travel also got obstacles, needing to pass border controls to reach international passenger boats, maybe with visa requirements.


title: Landlocked country

text: Losing access to the sea is generally a great loss to a nation, politically, militarily, and economically. The following are examples of countries becoming landlocked.


title: Landlocked country

text: The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea now gives a landlocked country a right of access to and from the sea without taxation of traffic through transit states. The United Nations has a programme of action to assist landlocked developing countries, and the current responsible Undersecretary-General is Anwarul Karim Chowdhury.


title: Landlocked country

text: Some countries have a long coastline, but much of it may not be readily usable for trade and commerce. For instance, in its early history, Russia's only ports were on the Arctic Ocean and frozen shut for much of the year. The wish to gain control of a warm-water port was a major motivator of Russian expansion towards the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, and Pacific Ocean. On the other hand, some landlocked countries can have access to the ocean along wide navigable rivers. For instance, Paraguay (and Bolivia to a lesser extent) have access to the ocean through the Paraguay and Paraná rivers.


title: Landlocked country

text: Several countries have coastlines on landlocked bodies of water, such as the Caspian Sea and the Dead Sea. Since these seas are in effect lakes without access to wider seaborne trade, countries such as Kazakhstan are still considered landlocked. Although the Caspian Sea is connected to the Black Sea via the man-made Volga–Don Canal, large oceangoing ships are unable to traverse it.


title: Landlocked country

text: Landlocked countries may be bordered by a single country having direct access to the high seas, two or more such countries, or be surrounded by other landlocked countries, making a country doubly landlocked.


title: Landlocked country

text: Seven landlocked countries are surrounded by only two mutually bordering neighbours (semi-enclaved countries):


title: Landlocked country

text: To this group could be added three landlocked territories, two of them are "de facto" states with no or limited international recognition:


title: Landlocked country

text: A country is "doubly landlocked" or "double-landlocked" when it is surrounded only by landlocked countries (requiring the crossing of at least two national borders to reach a coastline). There are two such countries:


title: Landlocked country

text: To this group could be added one doubly landlocked territory that is a "de facto" state with no or limited international recognition:


title: Landlocked country

text: After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Württemberg became a doubly landlocked state, bordering Bavaria, Baden, Switzerland, the Grand Duchy of Hesse (Wimpfen exclave), Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, and Hohenzollern-Hechingen. The latter two were themselves landlocked between each other, Württemberg and Baden. In 1866 they became an exclave of Prussia, giving Württemberg a border with a coastal country but any path to a coast would still lead across at least two borders. The Free City of Frankfurt which was independent between 1815 and 1866 was doubly landlocked as it bordered the Electorate of Hesse, the Grand Duchy of Hesse, Hesse-Homburg, and Nassau. In the German Confederation there were several other landlocked states that only bordered landlocked states and landlocked exclaves of coastal states: the Grand Duchy of Hesse, Hesse-Homburg, Nassau (all until 1866), Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Saxe-Hildburghausen (both until 1826), and Reuss, elder line (until 1871). All of these bordered Prussia but not the main territory with sea access.


title: Landlocked country

text: There were no doubly landlocked countries from the unification of Germany in 1871 until the end of World War I. Liechtenstein bordered the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had an Adriatic coastline, and Uzbekistan was then part of the Russian Empire, which had both ocean and sea access.


title: Landlocked country

text: With the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918 and creation of an independent, landlocked Austria, Liechtenstein became the sole doubly landlocked country until 1938. In the Anschluss that year, Austria was absorbed into Nazi Germany, which possessed a border on the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. After World War II, Austria regained its independence and Liechtenstein once again became doubly landlocked.


title: Landlocked country

text: Uzbekistan, which had been part of the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union, gained its independence with the dissolution of the latter in 1991 and became the second doubly landlocked country.


title: Landlocked country

text: However, Uzbekistan's doubly landlocked status depends on the Caspian Sea's status dispute: some countries, especially Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, claim that the Caspian Sea should be considered as a real sea (mainly because this way they would have larger oil and gas fields), which would make Uzbekistan only a simple landlocked country since its neighbours Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan have access to the Caspian Sea.


title: Landlocked country

text: There are the following 13 "single" landlocked countries (each of them borders no other landlocked country):


title: Landlocked country

text: According to the United Nations geoscheme (excluding de facto states), Africa has the most landlocked countries, at 16, followed by Europe (14), Asia (12), and South America (2). However, if Armenia, Artsakh (unrecognized), Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and South Ossetia (partially recognized) are counted as parts of Europe, then Europe has the most landlocked countries, at 21, including all four landlocked de facto states. If these transcontinental or culturally European countries are included in Asia, then both Africa and Europe (including Kosovo and Transnistria) have the most, at 16. Depending on the status of Kazakhstan and the South Caucasusian countries, Asia has between 9 and 14, including Artsakh and South Ossetia. South America only has two landlocked countries.


title: Landlocked country

text: Australia and North America are the only inhabited continents with no landlocked countries. Antarctica is uninhabited and has no countries. Oceania (which is usually not considered a continent but a geographical region by the English-speaking countries) also has no landlocked countries. Other than Papua New Guinea, which shares a land border with Indonesia (a transcontinental country), all the other countries in Oceania are countries without a land border.


title: Landlocked country

text: All landlocked countries besides Bolivia and Paraguay are located in Afro-Eurasia. Though 11 island countries (including Northern Cyprus) share at least one land border with another country, none of them are landlocked.


title: Samantha Mathis

text: Samantha Mathis (born May 12, 1970) is an American actress and trade union leader who served as the Vice President, Actors/Performers of SAG-AFTRA from 2015 to 2019. The daughter of actress Bibi Besch, Mathis made her film debut in "Pump Up the Volume" (1990), and later co-starred or appeared in such films as "" (1992), "Super Mario Bros." (1993), "The Thing Called Love" (1993), "Little Women" (1994), "The American President" (1995), "Broken Arrow" (1996), "American Psycho" (2000), "The Punisher" (2004), and "" (2012). She has recently had recurring roles on "The Strain" as New York City Councilwoman Justine Feraldo, and on "Billions" as Taylor Mason Capital COO Sara Hammon.


title: Samantha Mathis

text: Mathis was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City, the daughter of Donald Mathis and Austrian-born actress Bibi Besch. Her parents divorced when she was two years old, and Mathis was brought up by her mother. She relocated with her mother to Los Angeles, California, at the age of five.


title: Samantha Mathis

text: Besch tried to discourage Mathis from pursuing acting, but growing up on locations, in theaters, and in acting classes, Mathis knew she wanted to act. She decided to become an actress at the age of twelve.


title: Samantha Mathis

text: Mathis began acting professionally at the age of 16. Her first job was a commercial for "Always Slender Pads – Just For Teens". She co-starred in the television series "Aaron's Way" and "Knightwatch" from 1988 to 1989. Her first starring role in a feature film was that of Nora in "Pump Up the Volume" (1990), opposite Christian Slater, whom she briefly dated at the time. Mathis dyed her natural blonde hair black for the role in an effort to change her image from sweet and innocent to strong-willed.


title: Samantha Mathis

text: Mathis appeared in the television movies "Extreme Close-up," "83 Hours 'til Dawn," and "To My Daughter" in 1990. Mathis and Slater had voice roles in the animated film "" (1992). She next appeared in the comedy "This Is My Life" (1992), written and directed by Nora Ephron, playing an insecure teenager. Mathis appeared in the play "Fortinbras" in New York City in October 1992. "Super Mario Bros." (1993), in which she played Princess Daisy from the popular Nintendo video game, was a box-office bomb but gained a cult following since its release.


title: Samantha Mathis

text: Mathis co-starred with River Phoenix in "The Thing Called Love" (1993). She appeared in the 1994 film adaptation of "Little Women", and in "How to Make an American Quilt" (1995), both starring Winona Ryder. She then appeared in "The American President" (1995), playing the assistant to the President of the United States. Mathis costarred with Christian Slater again, along with John Travolta, in John Woo's "Broken Arrow" (1996). She took a little over a year off from acting after her mother died in 1996 from breast cancer.


title: Samantha Mathis

text: Mathis later appeared in "American Psycho" (2000), a film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's 1991 novel of the same name. She starred in "Attraction" (2000), and in "The Simian Line" (2001). She starred in the TNT television miniseries "The Mists of Avalon" (2001). Mathis starred with Thomas Jane in "The Punisher" (2004). She had a guest role on the ABC television show "Lost" as Olivia Goodspeed. She played Jane Fonda's daughter in the Broadway show "33 Variations." Her indie film "Lebanon, PA" had its world premiere at the 2010 SXSW Film Festival. She appeared in an off-Broadway production of the play, "Love, Loss, and What I Wore", at New York City's Westside Theatre in October 2011.


title: Samantha Mathis

text: In 2013, Mathis played psychiatrist Alice Calvert on the CBS television series "Under the Dome", based on a novel by Stephen King. In 2014, she joined the cast of the FX horror drama series "The Strain" as Justine Feraldo, a New York City councilwoman for Staten Island.


title: Samantha Mathis

text: In October 2015, Mathias was elected National Vice President, Actors/Performers of SAG-AFTRA. She was re-elected in 2017.


title: Samantha Mathis

text: In 2019, she appeared Off-Broadway in the role of Kate Conlee in "Make Believe", a new play by Bess Wohl staged at the Second Stage Theater. Michael Greif directed.


title: Samantha Mathis

text: Mathis met actor River Phoenix on the set of the 1993 film "The Thing Called Love". Soon thereafter, she broke up with boyfriend John Leguizamo and started a relationship with Phoenix. She was with Phoenix on October 31, 1993, the night he died at Cedars-Sinai Hospital of a drug overdose after collapsing outside The Viper Room in West Hollywood, California.


title: Samantha Mathis

text: In the autopsy report, the LASD detailed that Mathis refused several times to give more details surrounding the death of Phoenix and had told deputies at the time of Phoenix's death that she had no knowledge of his drug use. Mathis took a role in the film "Jack and Sarah" (1995), which was shot in London, to get out of the country after Phoenix's death because of the excessive press coverage.


title: Samantha Mathis

text: Mathis spoke for the first time publicly about the death of Phoenix in an interview with "The Guardian" in 2018. She elaborated on the circumstances surrounding Phoenix's death: "I knew something was wrong that night, something I didn’t understand. I didn’t see anyone doing drugs but he was high in a way that made me feel uncomfortable...the heroin that killed him didn’t happen until he was in the Viper Room. I have my suspicions about what was going on, but I didn’t see anything."


title: Samantha Mathis

text: Mathis was nominated in 1995 for a Young Artist Award, despite being 22 years old at the time of her role, at the Young Artist Awards for Best Young Actress Starring in a Motion Picture for "This Is My Life" (1992) and in 2005 for a Saturn Award by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films for Best Supporting Actress on Television for "Salem's Lot" (2004).


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: Jacquelyn Ellen "Jaclyn" Smith (born October 26, 1945) is an American actress and businesswoman. She is best known for her role as Kelly Garrett in the television series "Charlie's Angels" (1976–1981), and was the only original female lead to remain with the series for its complete run. She reprised the role with cameo appearances in the films "" (2003) and "Charlie's Angels" (2019). Her other films include "Nightkill" (1980) and "Déjà Vu" (1985). Beginning in the 1980s, she began developing and marketing her own brands of clothing and perfume.


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: Smith began her career in 1968 in minor roles. In 1976, she was cast in "Charlie's Angels", alongside Kate Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. The show propelled all three to stardom, including an appearance on the front cover of "Time" magazine. She was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Miniseries or TV Film for the title role in the TV film "Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy" (1981), and went on to star in numerous TV films and miniseries over the next 20 years, including "Rage of Angels" (1983), "George Washington" (1984), "The Bourne Identity" (1988), "Kaleidoscope" (1990) and "Nightmare in the Daylight" (1992). She had a recurring role from 2002 to 2004 in the drama series "The District" and appeared as Olivia Hodges in two episodes of "" in 2012.


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: Jacquelyn Ellen Smith was born in Houston, Texas, the daughter of Margaret Ellen (née Hartsfield) and Jack Smith (born Jacob Kupferschmidt), a dentist. Her father was of Russian-Jewish descent, whereas her mother had English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh heritage. She graduated from Mirabeau B. Lamar High School in 1964. She majored in psychology and drama at Trinity University (Texas) in San Antonio but completed only a year. Instead, she moved to New York and joined the Balanchine School of American Ballet.


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: Smith's career aspirations shifted to modeling and acting as she found work in television commercials and print ads, including one for Listerine mouthwash. She was reportedly offered the role of Victoria Winters on the ABC daytime series "Dark Shadows" in 1968 but turned it down. She landed a job as a "Breck girl" for Breck Shampoo in 1971, and a few years later joined the model/actress Farrah Fawcett as a spokesmodel for Wella Balsam shampoo.


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: First appearing uncredited in "Goodbye, Columbus" (1969), Smith had a noticeable role in "The Adventurers" (1970), in which she played a journalist. Both movies were filmed in 1968. Smith followed these up with guest spots on shows like "The Partridge Family", "McCloud", "Switch" and "The Rookies". She was in the made-for-television movies "Probe" (1972) and "Bootleggers" (1974).


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: On March 21, 1976, Smith first played Kelly Garrett in "Charlie's Angels"; the show was aired as a movie of the week, starring Smith, Kate Jackson and Farrah Fawcett as private investigators for Townsend Associates, a detective agency run by a reclusive multi-millionaire whom the women had never met. Voiced by John Forsythe, the Charles Townsend character presented cases and dispensed advice via a speakerphone to his core team of three female employees, to whom he referred as "Angels". They were aided in the office and occasionally in the field by two male associates, played by character actors David Doyle and David Ogden Stiers. The program earned a huge Nielsen rating, causing the network to air it a second time and confirm production for a series, with all of the principal characters with the exception of Stiers. The series formally debuted on September 22, 1976, and ran for five seasons. The show would become a big success not only in the U.S. but, in successive years, in syndication around the world, spawning a cottage industry of peripheral products, particularly in the show's first three seasons, including several series of bubble gum cards, two sets of fashion dolls, numerous posters, puzzles, and school supplies, novelizations of episodes, toy vans, and a board game, all featuring Smith's likeness. The "Angels" also appeared on the covers of magazines around the world, from countless fan magazines to "TV Guide" (four times) to "Time" magazine.


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: Fawcett departed at the end of the first season, and Cheryl Ladd was a successful addition to the cast, remaining until the end of the series. Jackson departed at the end of the third season, and proved harder to replace, as first Shelley Hack and then Tanya Roberts were brought in to try re-igniting the chemistry, media attention and ratings success enjoyed by the earlier teams. Smith played her role for all five seasons of "Charlie's Angels" until 1981, also portraying the Garrett character in a cameo in the 2003 feature film "" and later in the 2019 film "Charlie's Angels". Christina Chambers portrayed Smith in the 2004 television film "".


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: In 1977 on the first episode of the Aaron Spelling produced comedy, "The San Pedro Beach Bums", the Bums try to recruit the women of "Charlie's Angels" to judge the Miss Harbor Beauty Contest. The "Angels" – Smith, Jackson and Ladd – guest-star as themselves.


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: Smith's first acting venture outside the Angels mold (as an actress of note) was the CBS-TV movie of the week "Escape from Bogen County" in 1977. Then came a leading role in Joyce Haber's "The Users" with Tony Curtis and John Forsythe in 1978. In 1980, Smith starred with Robert Mitchum in the suspense thriller "Nightkill". Following the cancellation of "Charlie's Angels" in 1981, Smith starred in the title role of the critically acclaimed television movie "Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy", earning her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. In 1983, Smith starred as Jennifer Parker in the TV movie "Rage of Angels", based on the novel by Sidney Sheldon. The film was the highest rated in the Nielsen ratings the week it aired. Smith reprised the role in the 1986 sequel, "Rage of Angels: The Story Continues".


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: Smith continued to appear in a number of television movies and miniseries during the 1980s and 1990s including "George Washington", "The Night They Saved Christmas" (both 1984), "Florence Nightingale" (1985), "Windmills of the Gods" (1988) – another TV film based on a Sidney Sheldon novel – "The Bourne Identity" (also 1988); adapted from author Robert Ludlum's novel of the same name; "Settle the Score" (1989), "Lies Before Kisses", "The Rape of Dr. Willis" (both 1991), "In the Arms of a Killer" (1992), and several TV versions of Danielle Steel novels, including "Kaleidoscope" (1990) and "Family Album" (1994).


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: In 1985, Smith starred in the feature film "Deja Vu", directed by her then-husband Tony Richmond. In 1989, she played the title role in "Christine Cromwell", a mystery television series based in San Francisco, but which only lasted one season. That same year, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: From 2002 to 2004, Smith had a recurring role as Vanessa Cavanaugh in the TV series "The District". She reprised her role as Kelly Garrett for a cameo in the 2003 feature film "", the only "angel" from the original series to appear in a film adaptation. In August 2006, Smith reunited with her angels co-stars Farrah Fawcett and Kate Jackson at the 58th Primetime Emmy awards in tribute to producer Aaron Spelling who died earlier that year. Her appearance there subsequently led Bravo TV's producers to cast Smith as the celebrity host of Bravo's weekly competitive reality series "Shear Genius", which began airing in March 2007. Smith hosted the show for its first two seasons.


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: In March 2010, Smith returned to acting after a five-year absence with a guest role on the NBC television drama "". In March 2012, Smith guest-starred on "" as Olivia Hodges, the mother of David Hodges (played by Wallace Langham).


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: In January 2019, Smith was seen promoting the "Charlie's Angels" television series on the MeTV network. She reprised her role as Kelly for a cameo appearance in the 2019 feature film "Charlie's Angels", Smith's second cameo in the film franchise.


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: In 1985, Smith entered the business world with the introduction of her collection of women's apparel for Kmart. She pioneered the concept of celebrities developing their own brands rather than merely endorsing others. A season 15 episode of "The Simpsons" ("The Fat and the Furriest") lampooned Smith's many business successes, portraying her as having her own line of axe heads. In May 2009, Smith allowed a documentary crew to profile her home life, design philosophy and relationship with Kmart in an online video series sponsored by Kmart. Her foray into home furnishings was extended to Kmart stores in the fall of 2008, with the chain's introduction of its Jaclyn Smith Today product line of bedding and bath accessories.


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: In September 2008, Smith launched the STYLE by Jaclyn Smith wig collection for Paula Young Wigs. The wigs are designed by hair stylist José Eber.


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: Smith has been married four times. Her first marriage was to actor Roger Davis (1968–1975). She married Dennis Cole, an actor who appeared on "Charlie's Angels" in 1977 and 1978. Cole appeared on the show two more times before the couple divorced in 1981. Cole's son from a previous marriage, Joe Cole, with whom Smith had maintained a relationship after her divorce from his father, was murdered in 1991 during a robbery; the case remains unsolved. In 1981, Smith married filmmaker Tony Richmond, with whom she had two children, Gaston (born 1982) and Spencer Margaret (born 1985), before divorcing Richmond in 1989. Smith has been married to Houston cardiothoracic surgeon Brad Allen since 1997.


title: Jaclyn Smith

text: Smith was treated for breast cancer in 2003. In 2010, Smith was featured in "1 a Minute", a documentary about breast cancer.


title: Saturn Devouring His Son

text: Saturn Devouring His Son is a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya. It is traditionally interpreted as a depiction of the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus (known as Saturn in Roman mythology) eating one of his offspring. Fearing a prophecy foretold by Gaea that predicted he would be overthrown by one of his children, Saturn ate each one upon their birth. The work is one of the 14 so-called "Black Paintings" that Goya painted directly on the walls of his house sometime between 1819 and 1823. It was transferred to canvas after Goya's death and is now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.


title: Saturn Devouring His Son

text: In 1819, Goya purchased a house on the banks of Manzanares near Madrid called Quinta del Sordo (Villa of the Deaf Man). It was a two-story house which was named after a previous occupant who had been deaf, although the name was fitting for Goya too, who had been left deaf after contracting a fever in 1792. Between 1819 and 1823, when he left the house to move to Bordeaux, Goya produced a series of 14 paintings using mixed technique on the walls of the house.


title: Saturn Devouring His Son

text: Although he initially decorated the rooms of the house with more inspiring images, in time he painted over them all with the intensely haunting pictures known today as the "Black Paintings". Created without commission for private display, these paintings may reflect the artist's state of mind late in a life that witnessed the violence of war and terror stoked by the Spanish Inquisition.


title: Saturn Devouring His Son

text: "Saturn Devouring His Son" was one of six works Goya painted in the dining room. It is important to note that Goya never named the works he produced at Quinta del Sordo; the names were assigned by others after his death. This interpretation of the painting sees it as a reference to the Roman myth (inspired by the original Greek myth), in which Terra (Gaea) foretold that one of the sons of Saturn would overthrow him, just as he had overthrown his father, Caelus (Uranus). To prevent this, Saturn ate his children moments after each was born, eating the gods Vesta (Hestia), Ceres (Demeter), Juno (Hera), Pluto (Hades), and Neptune (Poseidon). His wife Ops (Rhea) eventually hid his sixth child and third son, Jupiter (Zeus), on the island of Crete, deceiving Saturn by offering a stone wrapped in swaddling in his place. Unlike the painting, the myths usually portray Saturn/Kronos "swallowing" his children, and later vomiting them up alive after swallowing the stone, rather than violently tearing them apart as in the painting. Jupiter eventually supplanted his father just as the prophecy had predicted.


title: Saturn Devouring His Son

text: Goya depicts a large figure feasting on a human form. The figure's head and part of the left arm have already been consumed. The right arm has probably been eaten too, though it could be folded in front of the body and held in place by the larger figure's thumbs. The larger figure is on the point of taking another bite from the left arm; as he looms from the darkness, his mouth gapes and his eyes bulge widely. The only other brightness in the picture comes from the white flesh, the red blood of the corpse, and the white knuckles of the larger figure as he digs his fingers into the back of the body.


title: Saturn Devouring His Son

text: Various interpretations of the meaning of the picture have been offered: the conflict between youth and old age, time as the devourer of all things, the wrath of God and an allegory of the situation in Spain, where the fatherland consumed its own children in wars and revolution. There have been explanations rooted in Goya's relationships with his own son, Xavier, the only of his six children to survive to adulthood, or with his live-in housekeeper and possible mistress, Leocadia Weiss; the sex of the body being consumed cannot be determined with certainty. If Goya made any notes on the picture, they have not survived, as he never intended the picture for public exhibition.


title: Saturn Devouring His Son

text: The mood of the painting is in stark contrast to Rubens's Saturn, as the central figure is acting out of madness rather than calculating reason, and the consumed figure is completely lifeless rather than in clear pain. It is very likely Goya had seen Rubens's Saturn in his life, but the degree to which inspiration was taken (if any) is unknown. Goya made a chalk drawing of the same subject in 1796–97: it showed a figure biting on the leg of one person while he holds another to eat, with none of the gore or madness of the later work.


title: Saturn Devouring His Son

text: Goya scholar Fred Licht has raised doubts regarding the traditional title, stating that it may "very well be misleading." He notes that the traditional iconographical attributes associated with Saturn (such as his scythe or hourglass) are absent from the painting, and the body of the smaller figure does not resemble that of an infant, or even truly an anatomically accurate human at all. He states that much like the other Black Paintings, "one must take the title with a grain of salt." Licht offers the alternative explanation that the painting is an inversion of antisemitic artistic depictions of Jewish figures eating children, a reference to the alleged blood libel. In this way, the larger figure represents the fears of Jews manifesting in real violence against them, as "real bestiality is born of imagined bestiality," although he concedes this is impossible to prove and, like the Saturn interpretation, demonstrates the varied intent of Goya in the composition. Additionally, he argues that the very act of naming the black paintings is an attempt to impose rationale on pictures which force one to contemplate chaos and nothingness, a primary theme in the black paintings.


title: Saturn Devouring His Son

text: The art historian John J. Ciofalo writes that "the victim appears to be an adult and, given the curvaceous buttocks and legs, a female." Moreover, in other versions, the sons are alive and struggling or at least have heads, so the viewer is able to identify or sympathize. The victim is not struggling in Saturn's vice-like, blood-oozing grip, which literally cuts into her body, because she is dead, not to mention headless. She does not, to say the least, encourage identification. The identification flows toward Saturn. Ciofalo concludes: "The overwhelming feeling of the image is one of violent and insatiable lust, underscored, to put it mildly, by the livid and enormously engorged penis between his legs...utter male fury has hardly before or since been captured so vividly."


title: Saturn Devouring His Son

text: When Goya went into self-imposed exile in France in 1823, he passed the Quinta del Sordo to his grandson Mariano. After various changes of ownership, the house came into the possession of the Belgian Baron Émile d'Erlanger in 1874. After 70 years on the walls of the Quinta del Sordo, the murals were deteriorating badly and, in order to preserve them, the new owner of the house had them transferred to canvas under the direction of Salvador Martínez Cubells, the chief art restorer at the Museo del Prado. After showing them at the Exposition Universelle of 1878 in Paris, d'Erlanger eventually donated them to the Spanish state. The effects of time on the murals, coupled with the inevitable damage caused by the delicate operation of mounting the crumbling plaster on canvas, meant that most of the murals required restoration work and some detail may have been lost, but in this respect "Saturn Devouring His Son" appears to have fared better than some of the other works.


title: Carl Reiner

text: Carl Reiner (March 20, 1922 – June 29, 2020) was an American actor, stand-up comedian, director, screenwriter, and author whose career spanned seven decades. He was the recipient of many awards and honors, including 11 Primetime Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1999.


title: Carl Reiner

text: During the early years of television comedy from 1950 to 1957, he acted on and contributed sketch material for "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar's Hour", starring Sid Caesar, writing alongside Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, and Woody Allen. Reiner teamed up with Brooks and together they released several iconic comedy albums beginning with "2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks" (1960). Reiner was best known as the creator and producer of, and a writer and actor on, "The Dick Van Dyke Show" which ran from 1961 to 1966.


title: Carl Reiner

text: Reiner formed a comedy duo with Brooks in "The 2000 Year Old Man" and acted in such films as "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (1963), "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming" (1966), and the "Ocean's" film series (2001–2007). Reiner directed such comedies as "Entering Laughing" (1966), "Where's Poppa?" (1970), and "Oh, God!" (1977). Reiner had a successful collaboration with Steve Martin, directing some of his most successful films, including "The Jerk" (1979), "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" (1982), "The Man with Two Brains" (1983), and "All of Me" (1984).


title: Carl Reiner

text: Reiner appeared in dozens of television specials from 1967 to 2000, and was a guest star on television series from the 1950s until his death. He also voiced characters in animated films and television series, including the TV series "Father of the Pride" (2004–2005), in which he voiced Sarmoti, and was a reader for books on tape. He wrote more than two dozen books, mostly in his later years. He is the father of actor-director Rob Reiner, author Annie Reiner, and artist Lucas Reiner and the grandfather of Tracy Reiner.


title: Carl Reiner

text: Reiner was born in the Bronx, New York on March 20, 1922, to Irving and Bessie Reiner ("née" Mathias). He was Jewish. His father was a watchmaker from Austria, and his mother was from Romania. He had an older brother, Charles, who served in the 9th Division in World War II; his ashes are buried at Arlington National Cemetery.


title: Carl Reiner

text: When Reiner was 16, working as a machinist repairing sewing machines, Charles read about a free drama workshop sponsored by the Works Progress Administration and told him about it. Carl later credited Charles with his decision to change careers. His uncle Harry Mathias was the first entertainer in his family.


title: Carl Reiner

text: Reiner was drafted into the United States Army Air Forces on October 27, 1942, and served during World War II, eventually achieving the rank of corporal by the end of the war. He initially trained to be a radio operator. After spending three months in the hospital recovering from pneumonia, he was sent to Georgetown University for ten months of training as a French interpreter. There he had his first experience as a director, putting on a Molière play entirely in French. After completing language training in 1944, he was sent to Hawaii to work as a teleprinter operator. The night before he was scheduled to ship out for an unknown assignment, he attended a production of "Hamlet" by the Special Services entertainment unit. Following an audition before actor Major Maurice Evans and Captain Allen Ludden, he was transferred to Special Services. Over the following two years, Reiner performed around the Pacific theater, entertaining troops in Hawaii, Guam, Saipan, Tinian, and Iwo Jima until he was honorably discharged in 1946.


title: Carl Reiner

text: Reiner performed in several Broadway musicals (including "Inside U.S.A." and "Alive and Kicking") and had the lead role in "Call Me Mister". In 1950, he was cast by Max Leibman as a comic actor on Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows", appearing on air in skits while also contributing ideas to such writers as Mel Brooks and Neil Simon. He did not receive credit for his sketch material, but won Emmy Awards in 1955 and 1956 as a supporting actor. Reiner also wrote for "Caesar's Hour" with Brooks, Simon, Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart, Mel Tolkin, Mike Stewart, Aaron Ruben, Sheldon Keller, and Gary Belkin. He assumed the role of head writer and semi-regular on "The Dinah Shore Chevy Show" during the 1959–60 television season.


title: Carl Reiner

text: In November 1958, Reiner hosted a CBS prime time game show called "Keep Talking", when he succeeded original host Monty Hall. He left the show in July 1959 and was succeeded by Vincent Price.


title: Carl Reiner

text: Starting in 1960, Reiner teamed with Brooks as a comedy duo on "The Steve Allen Show". Their performances on television and stage included Reiner playing the straight man in "The 2000 Year Old Man". Eventually the routine expanded into a series of five comedy albums and a 1975 animated television special, with the last album in the series winning a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Comedy Album. The act gave Brooks "an identity as a comic performer for the first time," said Reiner. Brooks's biographer William Holtzman called their 12-minute act "an ingenious jazz improvisation..." while Gerald Nachman described Reiner's part in guiding the act:


title: Carl Reiner

text: In 1958, he wrote the initial 13 episodes of a television series titled "Head of the Family", based on his own personal and professional life. However, the network disliked Reiner in the lead role for unknown reasons. In 1961, the series was recast and re-titled "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and became a popular series, making stars of his lead actors Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. In addition to writing many of the episodes, Reiner occasionally appeared as show host Alan Brady. The series ran from 1961 to 1966 and thereafter entered a long run of syndication. In 1966, Reiner co-starred in "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming".


title: Carl Reiner

text: From April 5, 1964 to September 9, 1965, Reiner hosted "The Celebrity Game", a CBS prime time game show that was a precursor to the long-running "Hollywood Squares".


title: Carl Reiner

text: His first film directorial effort was an adaptation of Joseph Stein's play "Enter Laughing" (1967), which, in turn, was based on his semi-autobiographical 1958 novel of the same name. Balancing directing, producing, writing, and acting, he worked on a wide range of films and television programs. Films from his early directing career include "Where's Poppa?" (1970), "Oh, God!" (1977), and "The Jerk" (1979).


title: Carl Reiner

text: Of all the films I have directed, only "Where's Poppa?" is universally acknowledged as a cult classic. A cult classic, as you may know, is a film that was seen by a small minority of the world's film goers, who insist it is one of the greatest, most daring, and innovative moving pictures ever made. Whenever two or more cult members meet, they will quote dialogue from the classic and agree that "the film was ahead of its time." To be designated a genuine cult classic, it is of primary importance that the film fail to earn back the cost of making, marketing, and distributing it. "Where's Poppa?" was made in 1969 for a little over $1 million. According to the last distribution statements I saw, it will not break even until it earns another $650,000.


title: Carl Reiner

text: In 1977, Reiner directed and appeared in "Oh, God!" starring George Burns, John Denver, and Teri Garr. The film was a financial success making it the sixth highest-grossing film of 1977. The film was also a critical success with Roger Ebert giving the film a positive review writing, "Carl Reiner's "Oh, God!" is a treasure of a movie: A sly, civilized, quietly funny speculation on what might happen if God endeavored to present himself in the flesh yet once again to forgetful Man."


title: Carl Reiner

text: His follow up film "The One and Only" (1978) was not as successful, receiving a mixed reception from film critics. The film starred Henry Winkler, Kim Darby, and Gene Saks.


title: Carl Reiner

text: Throughout the 1970s, Reiner made appearances on multiple television shows, including "Night Gallery" in the segment "Professor Peabody's Last Lecture" in 1971, and as various characters in the variety sketch show "The Carol Burnett Show" (1974).


title: Carl Reiner

text: Reiner also returned to writing television by creating "The New Dick Van Dyke Show" (1971–1974), which ran for three seasons and starred Dick Van Dyke.


title: Carl Reiner

text: Reiner played a large role in the early career of Steve Martin by directing his first film "The Jerk" (1979) and directing and co-writing the comedian in "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" (1982), "The Man with Two Brains" (1983), and "All of Me" (1984). Reiner also appeared in both "The Jerk", playing a version of himself, and "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid". In 1989, he directed "Bert Rigby, You're a Fool".


title: Carl Reiner

text: In 2000, Reiner was honored with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center, where he was honored by fellow friends and comedians Mel Brooks, Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Steve Martin, Rob Reiner, Jerry Seinfeld, Ray Romano, and Joy Behar. A year later, he portrayed Saul Bloom in "Ocean's Eleven" (Steven Soderbergh's remake of 1960's "Ocean's 11") and reprised his role in "Ocean's Twelve" (2004) and "Ocean's Thirteen" (2007). From 2004 to 2005, Reiner voiced Sarmoti in "Father of the Pride". He claimed he knew how to play the role; in a teleconference, he said, "I spent my youth, from the time I was 6 to 18, living next to the Bronx Zoo. I knew the lions intimately. I watched them pace. They talked to me and I talked back to them. I learned that they have the worst breath of any animal in the world. I got my roar from the lions in person." He continued, "The writing on this show is extraordinarily good. It's a pleasure to come to work because you know you're going to say something funny." Of his character of Sarmoti, Reiner stated that "curmudgeons always get the good lines."


title: Carl Reiner

text: From 1967 to 2000, Reiner appeared in dozens of television specials. He also guest starred in several television series from the 1950s until his death in 2020. In May 2009, he guest starred as a clinic patient in "Both Sides Now," the season five finale of "House". He also voiced Santa in "Merry Madagascar" (2009) and reprised his role in the 2010 "Penguins of Madagascar" episode "The All Nighter Before Christmas." In season 7 (December 2009) of "Two and a Half Men", he guest-starred as television producer Marty Pepper. In 2010, he guest starred in three of the first-season episodes of "Hot in Cleveland" as Elka Ostrovsky's (Betty White) date and reprised his role in February 2011. He also made appearances in "The Cleveland Show" as Murray and wrote the story for the episode "Your Show of Shows", named after the program that started his career. Reiner reprised his role on "Two and a Half Men" in seasons 8 (October 2013) and 11 (January 2014).


title: Carl Reiner

text: Reiner lent his voice to numerous films and animated films. He also read for books on tape, among them "Aesop's Fables" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" (Running Press, 1994), as well as Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", "The Prince and the Pauper", and "Letters from the Earth" (New Millenium, 2001).


title: Carl Reiner

text: In 2012, he appeared as a guest on Jerry Seinfeld's series "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee". They talked at a diner about his comedy career and Reiner invited Seinfeld to come and have dinner with Mel Brooks and himself. Reiner reported that every night, Brooks headed to his house to eat, watch "Jeopardy" (he taped it), and watch movies. He went on to offer the one rule for movies was that it had to be one where "somebody says, 'Secure the perimeter!' or 'Get some rest.'" Reiner stated that Brooks "falls asleep with his mouth open" every time.


title: Carl Reiner

text: Reiner's final role was in "", a project that Jason Reitman had envisioned to engage his celebrity friends to help raise money for charity during the COVID-19 pandemic, with actors filming their own takes on scenes from "The Princess Bride" at their own homes. Reiner appeared along with Rob Reiner (who directed the original film) in the final scene as the Grandfather and Grandson, which Rob said had been shot three days before Reiner's death. His final line on camera is, "As you wish," which in the film it is based on means, "I love you." After hearing of his death, Reitman asked the Reiner family if they should swap out the scene, but the family gave him their blessing to use the scene.


title: Carl Reiner

text: Reiner was the author of more than two dozen books. His first autobiographical novel "Enter Laughing" (1958) led to a 1995 sequel "Continue Laughing". He published a memoir "My Anecdotal Life: A Memoir" in 2003. He also wrote a humorous series of memoirs under the titles "I Remember Me" (2012), "I Just Remembered" (2014), and "What I Forgot to Remember" (2015), along with books about film and art. He began to write children's books based on the stories he used to tell a certain grandson who would request, "Tell me a scary story, Grandpa, but not too scary."


title: Carl Reiner

text: In July 2012, Reiner joined Twitter, tweeting that he was doing so to keep up with his grandson Jake. He felt obliged to post at least once per day, and so posted 6,520 tweets and accumulated 367,000 followers. His favorite topics were movies and Donald Trump, but his final tweet was a reminiscence about Noël Coward performing in Las Vegas. At the age of 98, Reiner was the oldest celebrity to actively use Twitter.


title: Carl Reiner

text: His final interview was a webisode of "Dispatches From Quarantine", which was posted on YouTube by the Jewish arts organization Reboot and Temple Beth Am. In this, he reminisced about his wife and family, "We met, fell in love, and I was 20 at the time and she was 28, and people said this is not a match ... It only worked for 65 years, and if she didn't pass on we'd still be working on it."


title: Carl Reiner

text: Reiner expressed his philosophy on writing comedy in an interview in the December 1981 issue of "American Film":


title: Carl Reiner

text: You have to imagine yourself as not somebody very special, but somebody very ordinary. If you imagine yourself as somebody really normal and if it makes you laugh, it's going to make everybody laugh. If you think of yourself as something very special, you'll end up a pedant and a bore. If you start thinking about what's funny, you won't be funny, actually. It's like walking. How do you walk? If you start thinking about it, you'll trip.


title: Carl Reiner

text: On December 24, 1943, Reiner married singer Estelle Lebost. They were married for almost 65 years until her death in October 2008. Estelle delivered the iconic line "I'll have what she's having" in the deli scene of their son Rob's 1989 film "When Harry Met Sally...". They were the parents of Rob Reiner (b. 1947); poet, playwright, and author Annie Reiner (b. 1949); and painter, actor, and director Lucas Reiner (b. 1960). Reiner described himself as an atheist. He said, "I have a very different take on who God is. Man invented God because he needed him. God is us." He said in 2013 he developed an atheistic viewpoint as the Holocaust progressed. Reiner was a Democrat. His residence was in Beverly Hills, California.


title: Carl Reiner

text: On October 31, 2018, Reiner, then 96, publicly denounced Donald Trump's administration, and stated his goal to live past November 3, 2020 and see Trump voted out of office.


title: Carl Reiner

text: From 1974 to 2001, he sponsored the Carl Reiner Charity Celebrity Tennis Tournament in La Costa, California, directed by international tennis player Mike Franks, which was played yearly over 3 days and included 400 players, of which 100 were professionals.


title: Carl Reiner

text: On June 29, 2020, Reiner died from natural causes at his home in Beverly Hills, California, at the age of 98. According to his nephew George Shapiro, Reiner had been in good spirits all day, and had spent the evening watching television with Mel Brooks; afterward, at around 10:00 pm, he became unsteady and fell while walking with the assistance of his housekeeper. He lost consciousness within a few minutes and died shortly thereafter.


title: Carl Reiner

text: Upon news of his death, fellow comedians and other figures in the entertainment industry gave tributes and remembrance, including Brooks, Woody Allen, Alan Alda, Steve Martin, Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Dick Van Dyke, Carol Burnett, George Clooney, Bette Midler, Bernadette Peters, and Sarah Silverman. Cheryl Hines and Orlando Jones, two of Reiner's co-stars in "Father of the Pride", expressed their condolences on Twitter, Hines stating that he was "not only an amazing comedic gift, but was also an extraordinary human being." Jones mentioned his time with Reiner during their work on "Father of the Pride" and expressed his gratitude for his kindness and lessons.


title: Carl Reiner

text: Over Reiner's long television and film career, he earned numerous awards. From his stand-up comedy albums with Mel Brooks to writing on "Your Show of Shows", "Caesar's Hour", and "The Dick Van Dyke Show", he earned 11 Primetime Emmy Awards and one Grammy Award. In 1960, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 6421 Hollywood Boulevard. In 1999, he was inducted into Television Hall of Fame.


title: Carl Reiner

text: In 2000, he received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center. In 2017, Carl and his son Rob Reiner became the first father-son duo to have their footprints and handprints added to a concrete slab at Grauman's Chinese Theater.


title: Katherine Jackson

text: Katherine Esther Jackson (née Scruse, born Kattie B. Screws; May 4, 1930) is the matriarch of the Jackson family of entertainers that includes her children Michael and Janet Jackson.


title: Katherine Jackson

text: Jackson was born as Kattie B. Scruse on May 4, 1930 in Clayton, Alabama, the elder daughter of Martha (née Upshaw; December 14, 1902 – April 30, 1990) and Prince Albert Screws (October 16, 1907 – January 21, 1997). Jackson contracted polio at the age of two, which left her with a noticeable limp. In 1934, her father changed his surname to Scruse, and renamed her to Katherine Esther Scruse.


title: Katherine Jackson

text: As a child, Jackson aspired to become an actress or country singer, but was dismayed to find no notable black country stars. Her parents divorced when she was still a child. She joined her high school band while she was a student at Washington High School in East Chicago, Indiana.


title: Katherine Jackson

text: In 1947, Scruse met Joseph "Joe" Jackson, a fellow resident of East Chicago, Indiana. Scruse and Joe began dating after obtaining an annulment of his earlier marriage. The couple married on November 5, 1949, after dating for a year. In January 1950, they purchased a two-bedroom house on 2300 Jackson Street in Gary, Indiana. The house had just two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and a small utility room for the washing machine and freezer. Their sons slept in bunk beds in one bedroom, Jackson and Joe in the other, while their daughters slept in the living room. From 1950 until 1966, Jackson and Joe had 10 children, including twins Marlon and Brandon, the latter of whom died a few hours after birth. Those children are:


title: Katherine Jackson

text: The Jackson 5 was founded in 1964 in Gary, Indiana. It included brothers Jackie, Tito, and Jermaine, with younger brothers Marlon and Michael joining soon after. The Jackson 5 performed in talent shows and clubs on the Chitlin' Circuit, then signed with Steeltown Records in 1967 and released two singles. The group was managed by Joe Jackson. In 1968, the group left Steeltown Records and signed with Motown and Berry Gordy, where they were the first group to debut with four consecutive number one hits on the "Billboard" Hot 100 with the songs "I Want You Back", "ABC", "The Love You Save", and "I'll Be There".


title: Katherine Jackson

text: During the couple's early years in Gary, Jackson sang together with Joe playing the guitar. Joe and his brother Luther also formed an R&B band in the mid-1950s called the Falcons, for extra income. Joe had a boxing career, but later went on to work as a crane operator at East Chicago's Inland Steel Company to support the family. Jackson a devout Jehovah's Witness began working part-time at Sears in Gary. She played the instruments clarinet and piano on the side. Jackson caught baby Michael dancing to the old, rickety washing machine, a Maytag early on. Jackson knew Michael had rhythm and loved music. Their son, Tito, would sneak to play Joe’s guitar while Joe was not home and one day broke a guitar string. After the guitar was fixed, Tito played for Joe. That sparked the forming of the family group Jackson named “The Jackson Brothers 5”, that later became the Jackson 5. While Joe led the rehearsals in the living room, Jackson designed and hand sewed the stage outfits for the boys, and visited The Salvation Army for shoes. Jackson also spent time singing harmonies with the boys around the kitchen table. Jackson served as the family's backbone.


title: Katherine Jackson

text: Jackson filed for divorce in March 1973, but chose to rescind the divorce papers. In August 1974, Joe and Cheryl Terrell's daughter, Joh'Vonnie Jackson, was born. Jackson would again file for divorce in 1982, but again would rescind the papers. Jackson and Joe would remain legally married until Joe's death in 2018. Despite rumours that the couple were estranged, Jackson denied them. In 1990, Jackson released her autobiography, "My Family, The Jacksons", which documented her early years and her relationship with her husband and their children, eight of whom wrote salutes to their mother in the book's foreword.


title: Katherine Jackson

text: In 1980, Jackson and her two youngest children, Randy and Janet, confronted a woman who worked for Joe's company, whom Jackson had often reportedly accused of cheating with Joe. The incident was redramatized for the 1992 miniseries "". In the miniseries, Jackson was shown confronting Joe instead of the woman about the alleged incident. During the late 1980s, Jackson began experiencing an estrangement from her daughter La Toya after she was being managed by husband Jack Gordon. In her 1991 memoir "", La Toya alleged that Jackson was emotionally abusive, charges Jackson denied and blamed La Toya's husband for "brainwashing" her. In 1997, La Toya and her mother reconciled after she filed for divorce from Gordon.


title: Katherine Jackson

text: Michael dedicated his 1982 album "Thriller" to her. Janet did the same following the release of her 1989 album "Rhythm Nation 1814". In 1985, acknowledging the positive impact on her children's successful music careers, national urban magazine "Essence" honored her as "Mother of the Year".


title: Katherine Jackson

text: Jackson was portrayed by Angela Bassett in the 1992 miniseries "The Jacksons: An American Dream". Patricia Idlette portrayed her in the 2004 film "". In a 2010 interview on "The Oprah Winfrey Show", Jackson acknowledged that her husband had admitted to having physically disciplined their children. Over the years, some claimed that Joe was abusive towards his children, to which he continually denied.


title: Katherine Jackson

text: On June 25, 2009, Michael Jackson died from cardiac arrest and an overdose of propofol. In July 2009, Katherine and Debbie Rowe, the mother of Michael's two oldest children, reached a settlement pertaining to the care of Rowe's children, Prince and Paris. The agreement provided that the children would be raised by Katherine and Rowe would have visitation rights and would continue to receive the yearly payments to which Michael had agreed. On August 3, 2009, a judge named Jackson as the children's permanent guardian.


title: Katherine Jackson

text: As of 2011, Jackson resided at her home in Calabasas, California with her grandson, TJ Jackson, and his family. Jackson moved out of her Hayvenhurst home in Encino, California due to house renovations.


title: Katherine Jackson

text: On July 25, 2012, Jackson's guardianship of the children was suspended by the court amid allegations that she may have been held against her will by several Jackson family members as a result of a financial dispute between those family members and Michael's estate. Guardianship of the children was temporarily given to Michael's nephew, TJ Jackson, son of Tito Jackson . Jackson's guardianship later resumed, with TJ Jackson added as a co-guardian.


title: Katherine Jackson

text: On November 1, 2017, Jackson resigned as co-guardian of Michael's youngest son, Bigi. Jackson stated her reasons for resigning included her own advanced age, the fact that Michael's oldest children Prince and Paris Jackson were now adults, and that Bigi was now 15 years old. TJ Jackson was, without objection, awarded sole custody of Bigi.


title: Laura Bailey

text: Laura Bailey is an American voice actress. At the age of 18, she made her anime debut as Kid Trunks in the Funimation dub of "Dragon Ball Z". Her other anime credits include Emily / Glitter Lucky in "Glitter Force", Tohru Honda in "Fruits Basket", Lust in "Fullmetal Alchemist" and "", the title character in the Funimation dub of "Shin-Chan", and Maka Albarn in "Soul Eater". She is a cast member of the web series "Critical Role", playing Vex'ahlia ("Vex"), Jester Lavorre, and Imogen Temult.


title: Laura Bailey

text: In video games, Bailey has voiced Rayne in the "BloodRayne" franchise, Kira Carsen in "", Jaina Proudmoore in "World of Warcraft", Rise Kujikawa in "Persona 4", the Female Protagonist in Persona 3 Portable, Chun-Li in "Street Fighter", Serah Farron in "Final Fantasy XIII", the title role in "Catherine", Serana in "", Oriana Lawson in "Mass Effect 3", Lucina in "Fire Emblem Awakening", Abigail "Fetch" Walker in "Infamous Second Son" and "First Light", Fiona in "Tales from the Borderlands", Nadine Ross in "" and "", and Kait Diaz in "Gears of War". In 2020, she starred as Abby Anderson in the video game "The Last of Us Part II", for which she won the BAFTA Award for Best Performer in a Leading Role and Best Performance at The Game Awards.


title: Laura Bailey

text: Bailey has voiced Catwoman in "", Supergirl in "Injustice 2", Mary Jane Watson in "Spider-Man" and Black Widow in a number of Marvel projects, particularly the TV show "Avengers Assemble" and the 2020 "Avengers" video game.


title: Laura Bailey

text: Bailey was born in Mississippi. She has an older sister named Jenny. Her father was in the Air Force, causing the family to move around frequently. They lived in Oklahoma before moving to San Antonio, Texas, and then moved throughout North Texas, all before Bailey was six years old. They eventually settled in Allen, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. She had a passing interest in acting and performed in school plays, but was planning to become a biologist. She did not realize she could make a career out of acting until she watched a "Dawson's Creek" behind-the-scenes special in which Katie Holmes was interviewed. She attended the theatre program at Collin County Community College in Plano, Texas, where she participated in productions of the plays "Suburbia", "Through a Glass Onion", and "Don't Rock the Jukebox".


title: Laura Bailey

text: Voice actor Kent Williams spotted Bailey at one of her college plays and invited her to audition for Funimation while they were working on "Dragon Ball Z". Her first major role on "Dragon Ball Z" was Kid Trunks, which she portrayed with a raspy voice. She voiced the starring character Marlene Angel in "Blue Gender", which was the first project Funimation did outside of the "Dragon Ball" world, and Keiko Yukimura in "Yu Yu Hakusho", which ran on Cartoon Network.


title: Laura Bailey

text: Bailey was cast for the starring role of Tohru Honda in the anime "Fruits Basket". She said that Tohru's character has helped her be more positive: "I was so inspired by her character by her, joy, and outlook on life that, you know, you wanna emulate that." She later voiced Lust, one of the villains in "Fullmetal Alchemist", and Sana Kurata in "Kodocha".


title: Laura Bailey

text: Bailey had been working with Funimation for about four years before she started ADR directing. She worked on "" and some episodes of "Case Closed". Her first major ADR directing project was "Gunslinger Girl", in which she also voices Henrietta. She also co-directed parts of "Kodocha". She became a line producer for the Funimation dub of "Shin-Chan" and also voiced the title character.


title: Laura Bailey

text: Bailey's video game voice roles include Rayne in the "BloodRayne" franchise, Jaina Proudmoore in "World of Warcraft", Rise Kujikawa in "Persona 4", the Female Protagonist in Persona 3 Portable, Chun-Li in "Street Fighter", Serah Farron in "Final Fantasy XIII", Blaze the Cat in "Sonic the Hedgehog", the title role in "Catherine", Serana in "" DLC, Lucina in "Fire Emblem Awakening", Abigail "Fetch" Walker in "Infamous Second Son" and "First Light", Fiona in "Tales from the Borderlands", Spartan Olympia Vale in "", Nadine Ross in "" and "", and Kait Diaz in "Gears of War".


title: Laura Bailey

text: In 2020, Bailey starred as Abby Anderson in the video game "The Last of Us Part II", a role which won her the BAFTA Award for Best Performer in a Leading Role and the Best Performance award at The Game Awards 2020. She also received death threats online, sparking outrage. In 2022, Bailey was nominated for Best VA Performance (EN) at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards.


title: Laura Bailey

text: In addition to her voice over roles, Bailey has also appeared in several live action productions. In 2001, she played a minor role in an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger (titled "Saturday Night") as the daughter of a club owner (Frank Stallone Jr.) with ties to the Mafia. She later had a brief appearance in an episode of "One Tree Hill" ("It gets worse at night"), which was filmed in Texas. She has appeared in the films "Mr. Brooks", "Ruffian", and "The Staircase Murders".


title: Laura Bailey

text: Bailey is also a cast member of the popular "Dungeons & Dragons" web series "Critical Role", where she played Vex'ahlia ("Vex") in Campaign One, Jester Lavorre in Campaign Two, and Imogen Temult (Campaign three.). "Critical Role" was both the Webby Winner and the People's Voice Winner in the "Games (Video Series & Channels)" category at the 2019 Webby Awards; the show was also both a Finalist and the Audience Honor Winner at the 2019 Shorty Awards. After becoming hugely successful, the "Critical Role" cast left the Geek & Sundry network in early 2019 and set up their own production company, Critical Role Productions. Soon after, they aimed to raise $750,000 on Kickstarter to create an animated series of their first campaign, but ended up raising over $11 million. In November 2019, Amazon Prime Video announced that they had acquired the streaming rights to this animated series, now titled "The Legend of Vox Machina;" Bailey reprises her role as Vex. Bailey is also one of the narrators for the audiobook edition of the novel "" (2021).


title: Laura Bailey

text: On September 25, 2011, Bailey married voice actor Travis Willingham in Camarillo. They had briefly dated when they were younger, and reconnected later on. They live in Los Angeles. They have a son.


title: Family of Joe Biden

text: Joe Biden, the 46th and current president of the United States, has family members who are prominent in law, education, activism and politics. Biden's immediate family became the first family of the United States on his inauguration on January 20, 2021. His immediate family circle was also the second family of the United States from 2009 to 2017, when Biden was vice president. The Biden family is of Irish, English, and French descent.


title: Family of Joe Biden

text: Of Joe Biden's sixteen great-great grandparents, ten were born in Ireland. He is descended from the Blewitts of County Mayo and the Finnegans of County Louth. One of Biden's great-great-great grandfathers was born in Sussex, England, and emigrated to Maryland in the United States in or before 1822.


title: Family of Joe Biden

text: Neilia Hunter Biden, the first wife of Joe Biden, was born on July 28, 1942. The couple married on August 27, 1966. After the wedding, the Bidens moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where Biden was on the New Castle County Council. The couple had three children: Joseph Robinette "Beau" III, Robert Hunter and Naomi Christina "Amy". Biden campaigned to unseat U.S. Senator from Delaware J. Caleb Boggs and Neilia was described by "The News Journal" as the "brains" of his campaign.


title: Family of Joe Biden

text: On December 18, 1972, shortly after her husband became U.S. senator-elect, Neilia was driving with Naomi, Beau, and Hunter to buy a Christmas tree, when their car was hit by a tractor-trailer. Neilia and the children were taken to Wilmington General Hospital. Neilia and Naomi died upon arrival, but her two sons survived with serious injuries. Biden was sworn into the Senate on January 3, 1973, at the hospital where his sons were being treated.


title: Family of Joe Biden

text: Jill Tracy Jacobs Biden (née Jacobs, formerly Stevenson), the second and current wife of Joe Biden, was born on June 3, 1951. She met Biden while on a blind date in March 1975.


title: Family of Joe Biden

text: She and Joe Biden were married by a Catholic priest on June 17, 1977, at the Chapel at the United Nations in New York City. This was four and a half years after his first wife and infant daughter died; Joe had proposed several times before she accepted, as she was wary of entering the public spotlight, anxious to remain focused on her own career, and initially hesitant to take on the commitment of raising his two young sons who had survived the accident.