title: Oregon Trail

text: The north side of the Snake had better water and grass than the south. The trail from Three Island Crossing to Old Fort Boise was about long. The usually lush Boise River Valley was a welcome relief. The next crossing of the Snake River was near Old Fort Boise. This last crossing of the Snake could be done on bull boats while swimming the stock across. Others would chain a large string of wagons and teams together. The theory was that the front teams, usually oxen, would get out of water first and with good footing help pull the whole string of wagons and teams across. How well this worked in practice is not stated. Often young Native American boys were hired to drive and ride the stock across the river—they knew how to swim, unlike many pioneers. In present-day Idaho, I-84 roughly follows the Oregon Trail from the Idaho-Oregon State border at the Snake River. Approximately east of Declo in present-day rural Cassia County, I-84 meets the western terminus of the western section of I-86. I-86 heads east, then northeast to American Falls and Pocatello following the Oregon Trail, while I-84 heads southeast to the State border with Utah. US-30 roughly follows the path of the Oregon Trail from Pocatello to Montpelier


title: Oregon Trail

text: Starting in about 1848 the South Alternate of Oregon Trail (also called the Snake River Cutoff) was developed as a spur off the main trail. It bypassed the Three Island Crossing and continued traveling down the south side of the Snake River. It rejoined the trail near present-day Ontario, Oregon. It hugged the southern edge of the Snake River canyon and was a much rougher trail with poorer water and grass, requiring occasional steep descents and ascents with the animals down into the Snake River canyon to get water. Travellers on this route avoided two dangerous crossings of the Snake River. In present-day Idaho, the state highway ID-78 roughly follows the path of the South Alternate route of the Oregon Trail.


title: Oregon Trail

text: In 1869, the Central Pacific established Kelton, Utah as a railhead and the terminus of the western mail was moved from Salt Lake City. The Kelton Road became important as a communication and transportation road to the Boise Basin.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Once across the Snake River ford near Old Fort Boise the weary travelers traveled across what would become the state of Oregon. The trail then went to the Malheur River and then past Farewell Bend on the Snake River, up the Burnt River canyon and northwest to the Grande Ronde Valley near present-day La Grande before coming to the Blue Mountains. In 1843 settlers cut a wagon road over these mountains making them passable for the first time to wagons. The trail went to the Whitman Mission near Fort Nez Perces in Washington until 1847 when the Whitmans were killed by Native Americans. At Fort Nez Perce some built rafts or hired boats and started down the Columbia; others continued west in their wagons until they reached The Dalles. After 1847 the trail bypassed the closed mission and headed almost due west to present-day Pendleton, Oregon, crossing the Umatilla River, John Day River, and Deschutes River before arriving at The Dalles. Interstate 84 in Oregon roughly follows the original Oregon Trail from Idaho to The Dalles.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Arriving at the Columbia at The Dalles and stopped by the Cascade Mountains and Mount Hood, some gave up their wagons or disassembled them and put them on boats or rafts for a trip down the Columbia River. Once they transited the Cascade's Columbia River Gorge with its multiple rapids and treacherous winds they would have to make the portage around the Cascade Rapids before coming out near the Willamette River where Oregon City was located. The pioneer's livestock could be driven around Mount Hood on the narrow, crooked and rough Lolo Pass.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Several Oregon Trail branches and route variations led to the Willamette Valley. The most popular was the Barlow Road, which was carved through the forest around Mount Hood from The Dalles in 1846 as a toll road at $5 per wagon and 10 cents per head of livestock. It was rough and steep with poor grass but still cheaper and safer than floating goods, wagons and family down the dangerous Columbia River.


title: Oregon Trail

text: In Central Oregon, there was the Santiam Wagon Road (established 1861), which roughly parallels Oregon Highway 20 to the Willamette Valley. The Applegate Trail (established 1846), cutting off the California Trail from the Humboldt River in Nevada, crossed part of California before cutting north to the south end of the Willamette Valley. U.S. Route 99 and Interstate 5 through Oregon roughly follow the original Applegate Trail.


title: Oregon Trail

text: By 1842, many emigrants favored oxen—castrated bulls (males) of the genus "Bos" (cattle), generally over four years old—as the best animal to pull wagons, because they were docile, generally healthy, and able to continue moving in difficult conditions such as mud and snow. Oxen could also survive on prairie grasses and sage, unlike horses, who had to be fed. Moreover, oxen were less expensive to purchase and maintain than horses. Oxen also could stand idle for long periods without suffering damage to the feet and legs. Oxen were trained by leading, the use of a whip or goad, and the use of oral commands (such as "Gee" (right), "Haw" (left), and "Whoa" (stop)). Two oxen were typically yoked together at the neck or head; the left ox was referred to as the "near" or "nigh" ox, and the right ox as the "off" ox. While no reins, bits, or halters were needed, the trainer had to be forceful. Oxen typically traveled at a steady pace up to two miles an hour.


title: Oregon Trail

text: One drawback of oxen was the difficulty of shoeing. Oxen hooves are cloven (split), and they had to be shod with two curved pieces of metal, one on each side of the hoof. While horses and mules allowed themselves to be shod relatively easily, the process was more difficult with oxen, which would lie down and tuck their feet under themselves. As a result, several men had to lift and hold an ox while he was being shod.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Mules were used by some emigrants. The competing merits of oxen and mules were hotly debated among emigrants. Some found oxen to be more durable. Others, by contrast, believed that mules were more durable, and mules may have had a lower attrition rate on the trail than oxen. Like oxen, mules could survive on prairie grasses. Mules were, however, notoriously ill-tempered. Mules also cost about three times as much as oxen, a deciding factor for many emigrants.


title: Oregon Trail

text: In 1855, the typical cost of food for four people for six months was about $150 which would cost almost $5,000 today.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Food and water were key concerns for migrants. Wagons typically carried at least one large water keg, and guidebooks available from the 1840s and later gave similar advice to migrants on what food to take. T. H. Jefferson, in his "Brief Practice Advice" guidebook for migrants, recommended that each adult take 200 pounds of flour: "Take plenty of bread stuff; this is the staff of life when everything else runs short."


title: Oregon Trail

text: Food often took the form of crackers or hardtack; Southerners sometimes chose cornmeal or pinole rather than wheat flour. Emigrants typically ate rice and beans only at forts stopped at along the way, because boiling water was difficult on the trail, and fuel was not abundant. Lansford Hastings recommended that each emigrant take 200 pounds of flour, 150 pounds of "bacon" (a word which, at the time, referred broadly to all forms of salt pork), 20 pounds of sugar, and 10 pounds of salt. Chipped beef, rice, tea, dried beans, dried fruit, saleratus (for raising bread), vinegar, pickles, mustard, and tallow might also be taken. Joseph Ware's 1849 guide recommends that travelers take for each individual a barrel of flour or 180 pounds of ship's biscuit (i.e., hardtack), 150–180 pounds of bacon, 60 pounds of beans or peas, 25 pounds of rice, 25 pounds of coffee, 40 pounds of sugar, a keg of lard, 30 or 40 pounds of dried fruit (peaches or apples), a keg of clear, rendered beef suet (to substitute for butter), as well as some vinegar, salt, and pepper. Many emigrant families also carried a small amount of tea and maple sugar.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Randolph B. Marcy, an army officer who wrote an 1859 guide, advised taking less bacon than the earlier guides had recommended. He advised emigrants to drive cattle instead as a source of fresh beef. Marcy also instructed emigrants to store sides of bacon in canvas bags or in boxes surrounded by bran to protect against extreme heat, which could make bacon go rancid. Marcy instructed emigrants to put salt pork on the bottom of wagons to avoid exposure to extreme heat. Marcy also recommended the use of pemmican, as well as the storage of sugar in India rubber or gutta-percha sacks, to prevent it from becoming wet.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Canning technology had just begun to be developed, and it gained in popularity through the period of westward expansion. Initially, only upper-class migrants typically used canned goods. There are references in sources to canned cheese, fruit, meat, oysters, and sardines. By the time Marcy wrote his 1859 guide, canned foods were increasingly available but remained expensive. Canning also added weight to a wagon. Rather than canned vegetables, Marcy suggested that travelers take dried vegetables, which had been used in the Crimean War and by the U.S. Army.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Some pioneers took eggs and butter packed in barrels of flour, and some took dairy cows along the trail. Hunting provided another source of food along the trail; pioneers hunted American bison as well as pronghorn antelope, deer, bighorn sheep, and wildfowl. From rivers and lakes, emigrants also fished for catfish and trout. When emigrants faced starvation, they would sometimes slaughter their animals (horses, mules, and oxen). In desperate times, migrants would search for less-popular sources of food, including coyote, fox, jackrabbit, marmot, prairie dog, and rattlesnake (nicknamed "bush fish" in the later period).


title: Oregon Trail

text: At the time, scurvy was well-recognized, but there was a lack of clear understanding of how to prevent the disease. Nevertheless, pioneers' consumption of the wild berries (including chokeberry, gooseberry, and serviceberry) and currants that grew along the trail (particularly along the Platte River) helped make scurvy infrequent. Marcy's guide correctly suggested that the consumption of wild grapes, greens, and onions could help prevent the disease and that if vegetables were not available, citric acid could be drunk with sugar and water.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Emigrant families, who were mostly middle-class, prided themselves on preparing a good table. Although operating Dutch ovens and kneading dough was difficult on the trail, many baked good bread and even pies.


title: Oregon Trail

text: For fuel to heat food, travelers would collect cedar wood, cottonwood, or willow wood, when available, and sometimes dry prairie grass. More frequently, however, travelers relied on "buffalo chips"—dried bison dung—to fuel fires. Buffalo chips resembled rotten wood and would make clear and hot fires. Chips burned quickly, however, and it took up to three bushels of chips to heat a single meal. Collecting buffalo chips was a common task for children and was one chore that even very young children could carry out. As a result, "memoirs written by those who were very young when they made the journey west invariably refer to this aspect of life on the trail."


title: Oregon Trail

text: Tobacco was popular, both for personal use, and for trading with natives and other pioneers. Each person brought at least two changes of clothes and multiple pairs of boots (two to three pairs often wore out on the trip). About 25 pounds of soap was recommended for a party of four, for bathing and washing clothes. A washboard and tub were usually brought for washing clothes. Wash days typically occurred once or twice a month, or less, depending on availability of good grass, water, and fuel.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Most wagons carried tents for sleeping, though in good weather most would sleep outside. A thin fold-up mattress, blankets, pillows, canvas, or rubber gutta-percha ground covers were used for sleeping. Sometimes an unfolded feather bed mattress was brought for the wagon, if there were pregnant women or very young children along. Storage boxes were ideally the same height, so they could be arranged to give a flat surface inside the wagon for a sleeping platform.


title: Oregon Trail

text: The wagons had no springs, and the ride along the trail was very rough. Despite modern depictions, hardly anyone actually rode in the wagons; it was too dusty, too rough, and too hard on the livestock.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Travelers brought books, Bibles, trail guides, and writing quills, ink, and paper for writing letters or journalling (about one in 200 kept a diary).


title: Oregon Trail

text: A belt and folding knives were carried by nearly all men and boys. Awls, scissors, pins, needles, and thread for mending were required. Spare leather was used for repairing shoes, harnesses, and other equipment. Some used goggles to keep dust out of the eyes.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Saddles, bridles, hobbles, and ropes were needed if the party had a horse or riding mule, and many men did. Extra harnesses and spare wagon parts were often carried. Most carried steel shoes for horses, mules, or livestock. Tar was carried to help repair an ox's injured hoof.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Goods, supplies, and equipment were often shared by fellow travelers. Items that were forgotten, broken, or worn out could be bought from a fellow traveler, post, or fort along the way. New iron shoes for horses, mules, and oxen were put on by blacksmiths found along the way. Equipment repairs and other goods could be procured from blacksmith shops established at some forts and some ferries. Emergency supplies, repairs, and livestock were often provided by local residents in California, Oregon, and Utah for late travelers on the trail who were hurrying to beat the snow.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Non-essential items were often abandoned to lighten the load, or in case of emergency. Many travelers would salvage discarded items, picking up essentials or leaving behind their lower quality item when a better one was found abandoned along the road. Some profited by collecting discarded items, hauling them back to jumping off places, and reselling them. In the early years, Mormons sent scavenging parties back along the trail to salvage as much iron and other supplies as possible and haul it to Salt Lake City, where supplies of all kinds were needed. Others would use discarded furniture, wagons, and wheels as firewood. During the 1849 gold rush, Fort Laramie was known as "Camp Sacrifice" because of the large amounts of merchandise discarded nearby. Travelers had pushed along the relatively easy path to Fort Laramie with their luxury items but discarded them before the difficult mountain crossing ahead, and after discovering that many items could be purchased at the forts or located for free along the way. Some travelers carried their excess goods to Salt Lake City to be sold.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Professional tools used by blacksmiths, carpenters, and farmers were carried by nearly all. Axes, crow bars, hammers, hatchets, hoes, mallets, mattocks, picks, planes, saws, scythes, and shovels were used to clear or make a road through brush or trees, cut down the banks to cross a wash or steep banked stream, build a raft or bridge, or repair the wagon. In general, as little road work as possible was done. Travel was often along the top of ridges to avoid the brush and washes common in many valleys.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Overall, some 268,000 pioneers used the Oregon Trail and its three primary offshoots, the Bozeman, California, and Mormon trails, to reach the West Coast, 1840–1860. Another 48,000 headed to Utah. There is no estimate on how many used it to return East.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Some of the trail statistics for the early years were recorded by the U.S. Army at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, from about 1849 to 1855. None of these original statistical records have been found—the Army either lost them or destroyed them. Only some partial written copies of the Army records and notes recorded in several diaries have survived.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Emigration to California spiked considerably with the 1849 gold rush. Following the discovery of gold, California remained the destination of choice for most emigrants on the trail up to 1860, with almost 200,000 people traveling there between 1849 and 1860.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Travel diminished after 1860, as the Civil War caused considerable disruptions on the trail. Many of the people on the trail in 1861–1863 were fleeing the war and its attendant drafts in both the south and the north. Trail historian Merrill J. Mattes has estimated the number of emigrants for 1861–1867 given in the total column of the above table. But these estimates may well be low since they only amount to an extra 125,000 people, and the 1870 census shows that over 200,000 additional people (ignoring most of the population increase in California, which had excellent sea and rail connections across Panama by then) showed up in all the states served by the Bozeman, California, Mormon, and Oregon Trail(s) and their offshoots.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Mormon emigration records after 1860 are reasonably accurate, as newspaper and other accounts in Salt Lake City give most of the names of emigrants arriving each year from 1847 to 1868. Gold and silver strikes in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Oregon caused a considerable increase in people using the trails, often in directions different from the original trail users.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Though the numbers are significant in the context of the times, far more people chose to remain at home in the 31 states. Between 1840 and 1860, the population of the United States rose by 14 million, yet only about 300,000 decided to make the trip. Many were discouraged by the cost, effort and danger of the trip. Western scout Kit Carson is thought to have said, "The cowards never started and the weak died on the way", though the general saying was written by Joaquin Miller, in reference to the California Gold Rush. According to several sources, 3 to 10 percent of the emigrants are estimated to have perished on the way west.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Many who went were between the ages 12 and 24. Between 1860 and 1870, the U.S. population increased by seven million; about 350,000 of this increase was in the Western states.


title: Oregon Trail

text: These census numbers show a 363,000 population increase in the western states and territories between 1860 and 1870. Some of this increase is because of a high birth rate in the western states and territories, but most is from emigrants moving from the east to the west and new immigration from Europe. Much of the increase in California and Oregon is from emigration by ship, as there was fast and reasonably low cost transportation via east and west coast steamships and the Panama Railroad after 1855. The census numbers imply at least 200,000 emigrants (or more) used some variation of the California/Oregon/Mormon/Bozeman trails to get to their new homes between 1860 and 1870.


title: Oregon Trail

text: The cost of traveling over the Oregon Trail and its extensions varied from nothing to a few hundred dollars per person. Women seldom went alone. The cheapest way was to hire on to help drive the wagons or herds, allowing one to make the trip for nearly nothing or even make a small profit. Those with capital could often buy livestock in the Midwest and drive the stock to California or Oregon for profit. About 60 to 80 percent of the travelers were farmers and as such already owned a wagon, livestock team, and many of the necessary supplies. This lowered the cost of the trip to about $50 per person for food and other items. Families planned the trip months in advance and made much of the extra clothing and many other items needed. Individuals buying most of the needed items would end up spending between $150–$200 per person. As the trail matured, additional costs for ferries and toll roads were thought to have been about $30 per wagon.


title: Oregon Trail

text: The route west was arduous and fraught with many dangers, but the number of deaths on the trail is not known with any precision; there are only wildly varying estimates. Estimating is difficult because of the common practice of burying people in unmarked graves that were intentionally disguised to avoid their being dug up by animals or natives. Graves were often put in the middle of a trail and then run over by the livestock to make them difficult to find. Disease was the main killer of trail travelers; cholera killed up to 3 percent of all travelers in the epidemic years from 1849 to 1855.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Native attacks increased significantly after 1860, when most of the army troops were withdrawn, and miners and ranchers began fanning out all over the country, often encroaching on Native American territory. Increased attacks along the Humboldt led to most travelers' taking the Central Nevada Route. The Goodall cutoff, developed in Idaho in 1862, kept Oregon bound travelers away from much of the native trouble nearer the Snake River. Other trails were developed that traveled further along the South Platte to avoid local Native American hot spots.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Other common causes of death included hypothermia, drowning in river crossings, getting run over by wagons, and accidental gun deaths. Later, more family groups started traveling, and many more bridges and ferries were being put in, so fording a dangerous river became much less common and dangerous. Surprisingly few people were taught to swim in this era. Being run over was a major cause of death, despite the wagons' only averaging 2–3 miles per hour. The wagons could not easily be stopped, and people, particularly children, were often trying to get on and off the wagons while they were moving—not always successfully. Another hazard was a dress getting caught in the wheels and pulling the person under. Accidental shootings declined significantly after Fort Laramie, as people became more familiar with their weapons and often just left them in their wagons. Carrying around a ten-pound rifle all day soon became tedious and usually unnecessary, as the perceived threat of natives faded and hunting opportunities receded.


title: Oregon Trail

text: A significant number of travelers were suffering from scurvy by the end of their trips. Their typical flour and salted pork/bacon diet had very little vitamin C in it. The diet in the mining camps was also typically low in fresh vegetables and fruit, which indirectly led to early deaths of many of the inhabitants. Some believe that scurvy deaths may have rivaled cholera as a killer, with most deaths occurring after the victim reached California.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Miscellaneous deaths included deaths by childbirth, falling trees, flash floods, homicides, kicks by animals, lightning strikes, snake bites, and stampedes. According to an evaluation by John Unruh, a 4 percent death rate or 16,000 out of 400,000 total pioneers on all trails may have died on the trail.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Reaching the Sierra Nevada before the start of the winter storms was critical for a successful completion of a trip. The most famous failure in that regard was that of the Donner Party, whose members struggled to traverse what is today called Donner Pass, in November 1846. When the last survivor was rescued in April 1847, 33 men, women, and children had died at Donner Lake; with some of the 48 survivors confessing to having resorted to cannibalism to survive.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Disease was the biggest killer on the Oregon Trail. Cholera was responsible for taking many lives. As a fecal-oral disease, it commonly resulted from consuming food or water contaminated by the bacterium. Because a dead traveler would often be buried at the site of death, nearby streams could easily be contaminated by the dead body. Other common diseases along the trail included dysentery, an intestinal infection that causes diarrhea containing blood or mucus, and typhoid fever, another fecal-oral disease.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Airborne diseases also commonly affected travelers. One such disease was diphtheria, to which young children were particularly susceptible. It could spread quickly in close quarters, such as the parties that traveled the trail. Measles was also a difficulty, as it is highly contagious and can have an incubation period of ten days or longer. Diseases could spread particularly quickly because settlers had no place to quarantine the sick and because poor sanitation was typical along the route.


title: Oregon Trail

text: There were other possible migration paths for early settlers, miners, or travelers to California or Oregon besides the Oregon trail prior to the establishment of the transcontinental railroads.


title: Oregon Trail

text: From 1821 to 1846, the Hudson's Bay Company twice annually used the York Factory Express overland trade route from Fort Vancouver to Hudson Bay then on to London. James Sinclair led a large party of nearly 200 settlers from the Red River Colony in 1841. These northern routes were largely abandoned after Britain ceded its claim to the southern Columbia River basin by way of the Oregon Treaty of 1846.


title: Oregon Trail

text: The longest trip was the voyage of about on an uncomfortable sailing ship rounding the treacherous, cold, and dangerous Cape Horn between Antarctica and South America and then sailing on to California or Oregon. This trip typically took four to seven months (120 to 210 days) and cost about $350 to $500. The cost could be reduced to zero if you signed on as a crewman and worked as a common seaman. The hundreds of abandoned ships, whose crews had deserted in San Francisco Bay in 1849–50, showed many thousands chose to do this.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Other routes involved taking a ship to Colón, Panama (then called Aspinwall) and a strenuous, disease ridden, five- to seven-day trip by canoe and mule over the Isthmus of Panama before catching a ship from Panama City, Panama to Oregon or California. This trip could be done from the east coast theoretically in less than two months if all ship connections were made without waits and typically cost about $450/person. Catching a fatal disease was a distinct possibility as Ulysses S. Grant in 1852 learned when his unit of about 600 soldiers and some of their dependents traversed the Isthmus and lost about 120 men, women, and children. This passage was considerably sped up and made safer in 1855 when the Panama Railroad was completed at terrible cost in money and life across the Isthmus. The once treacherous trip could be done in less than a day. The time and the cost for transit dropped as regular paddle wheel steamships and sailing ships went from ports on the east coast and New Orleans, Louisiana, to Colón, Panama ($80–$100), across the Isthmus of Panama by railroad ($25) and by paddle wheel steamships and sailing ships to ports in California and Oregon ($100–$150).


title: Oregon Trail

text: Another route was established by Cornelius Vanderbilt across Nicaragua in 1849. The long San Juan River to the Atlantic Ocean helps drain the long Lake Nicaragua. From the western shore of Lake Nicaragua it is only about to the Pacific Ocean. Vanderbilt decided to use paddle wheel steam ships from the U.S. to the San Juan River, small paddle wheel steam launches on the San Juan River, boats across Lake Nicaragua, and a stage coach to the Pacific where connections could be made with another ship headed to California, Oregon, etc.. Vanderbilt, by undercutting fares to the Isthmus of Panama and stealing many of the Panama Railroad workers, managed to attract roughly 30% of the California bound steam boat traffic. All his connections in Nicaragua were never completely worked out before the Panama Railroad's completion in 1855. Civil strife in Nicaragua and a payment to Cornelius Vanderbilt of a "non-compete" payment (bribe) of $56,000 per year killed the whole project in 1855.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Another possible route consisted of taking a ship to Mexico traversing the country and then catching another ship out of Acapulco, Mexico to California etc. This route was used by some adventurous travelers but was not too popular because of the difficulties of making connections and the often hostile population along the way.


title: Oregon Trail

text: The Gila Trail going along the Gila River in Arizona, across the Colorado River and then across the Sonora Desert in California was scouted by Stephen Kearny's troops and later by Captain Philip St. George Cooke's Mormon Battalion in 1846 who were the first to take a wagon the whole way. This route was used by many gold hungry miners in 1849 and later but suffered from the disadvantage that you had to find a way across the very wide and very dry Sonora Desert. It was used by many in 1849 and later as a winter crossing to California, despite its many disadvantages.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Running from 1857 to 1861, the Butterfield Stage Line won the $600,000/yr. U.S. mail contract to deliver mail to San Francisco, California. As dictated by southern Congressional members, the route ran from St. Louis, Missouri through Arkansas, Oklahoma Indian Territory, Texas, New Mexico Territory, and across the Sonora Desert before ending in San Francisco, California. Employing over 800 at its peak, it used 250 Concord Stagecoaches seating 12 very crowded passengers in three rows. It used 1,800 head of stock, horses and mules and 139 relay stations to ensure the stages ran day and night. A one way fare of $200 delivered a very thrashed and tired passenger into San Francisco in 25 to 28 days. After traveling the route, "New York Herald" reporter Waterman Ormsby said, "I now know what Hell is like. I've just had 24 days of it."


title: Oregon Trail

text: The ultimate competitor arrived in 1869, the First transcontinental railroad, which cut travel time to about seven days at a low fare of about $60 (economy)


title: Oregon Trail

text: One of the enduring legacies of the Oregon Trail is the expansion of the United States territory to the West Coast. Without the many thousands of United States settlers in Oregon and California, and thousands more on their way each year, it is highly unlikely that this would have occurred.


title: Oregon Trail

text: The western expansion, and the Oregon Trail in particular, inspired numerous creative works about the settlers' experiences.


title: Oregon Trail

text: The Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar was coined to commemorate the route. Issued intermittently between 1926 and 1939, 202,928 were sold to the public. With 131,050 minted in 1926, that year's issue remains readily available for collectors.


title: Oregon Trail

text: "The Oregon Trail" is a song written by Peter DeRose and Billy Hill, recorded by singing cowboy artist Tex Ritter in 1935, and by Australian country musician Tex Morton in 1936.


title: Oregon Trail

text: Woody Guthrie wrote and recorded a song entitled "Oregon Trail" while travelling in the region in 1941. It was the opening track in his "Columbia River Collection" album.


title: Oregon Trail

text: The story of the Oregon Trail inspired the educational video game series "The Oregon Trail", which became widely popular in the 1980s and early 1990s.


title: Oregon Trail

text: In 2014 a musical named "The Trail to Oregon!", based on "The Oregon Trail" game, with music and lyrics by Jeff Blim and a book by Jeff Blim, Nick Lang and Matt Lang was performed in Chicago and later posted to YouTube by StarKid Productions.


title: Oregon Trail

text: "The Oregon Trail" was a television series that ran from September 22 through October 26, 1977, on NBC. The show stars Rod Taylor, Tony Becker, Darleen Carr, Charles Napier, and Ken Swofford. Although the show was canceled after six episodes, the remaining seven episodes were later aired on BBC 2 in the United Kingdom, the entire series was shown in the UK on BBC1, from November 1977 to January 1978, and on April 13, 2010, Timeless Media Group (TMG) released in the USA the entire show on six DVDs, running 750 minutes. The set includes 14 original episodes, including the feature-length pilot and the six episodes that did not air on NBC.


title: Oregon Trail

text: The episode of "Teen Titans Go!" titled "Oregon Trail" parodies expeditions that took place on the Oregon Trail, as well as the 1985 video game "The Oregon Trail".


title: Oregon Trail

text: The animated film "Calamity, a Childhood of Martha Jane Cannary" portrays the expedition of a dozen wagons to Oregon, part of which was the young Calamity Jane.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: Watchmen is an American superhero drama limited series based on the 1986 DC Comics series of the same title created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The TV series was created for HBO by Damon Lindelof, who also served as an executive producer and writer. Its ensemble cast includes Regina King, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Andrew Howard, Jacob Ming-Trent, Tom Mison, Sara Vickers, Dylan Schombing, Louis Gossett Jr. and Jeremy Irons. Jean Smart and Hong Chau joined the cast in later episodes.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: Lindelof likened the television series to a "remix" of the original comic series. While the series is technically a sequel that takes place 34 years after the events of the comics within the same alternate reality, Lindelof wanted to introduce new characters and conflicts which created a new story within the "Watchmen" continuity, rather than creating a reboot. The series focuses on events surrounding racist violence in present-day Tulsa, Oklahoma. A white supremacist group called the Seventh Kavalry has taken up arms against the Tulsa Police Department because of perceived racial injustices, causing the police to conceal their identities with masks to prevent the Seventh Kavalry from targeting them in their homes following the "White Night". Angela Abar (King), a detective known as Sister Night, investigates the murder of her friend and the chief of the police, Judd Crawford (Johnson), and discovers secrets regarding the situations around vigilantism.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: The series, promoted by HBO as an ongoing drama series, premiered on October 20, 2019, before concluding its nine-episode run on December 15. Lindelof left his role as showrunner after the first season, stating that he had completed his intended story. HBO subsequently confirmed there are no further plans for the show to continue without Lindelof returning in some capacity, and reclassified the work as a limited series with possible future installments.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: "Watchmen" received widespread critical acclaim for its performances, writing, visuals, score, and expansion of the source material, as well as commendation for highlighting the 1921 Tulsa race massacre. The series received several awards, including 26 nominations and 11 wins at the Primetime Emmy Award, including Best Limited Series; King for Best Actress for a Limited Series; and Abdul-Mateen for Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series — the most for any show in 2020.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: The series takes place 34 years after the events of the comic series. In the comic's alternate history of the 20th century, vigilantes, once seen as heroes, were outlawed due to their violent methods. In 1985, Adrian Veidt, formerly known as the vigilante Ozymandias, launched a false flag attack on New York City by creating an alien-looking squid monster which resulted in millions in the New York area being killed; this forced the nations to work together against a common threat, averting world war and a nuclear holocaust. Veidt's actions horrified his former companions, with Rorschach planning to tell the world what really happened before being vaporized by Doctor Manhattan, who then left the planet. Unbeknownst to Manhattan, Rorschach had already sent his journal detailing the events to the local newspaper.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: The series is set in 2019 Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Seventh Kavalry, a white supremacist group inspired by Rorschach's writings and masked image (having misinterpreted his journal as a racist manifesto), wages violent war against minorities and the police that enforce special reparations for victims of racial injustice. On Christmas Eve 2016, during an event that came to be known as the "White Night", the Kavalry attacked the homes of 40 police officers working for the Tulsa Police Department. Of those who survived, only two stayed with the force: Detective Angela Abar and Police Chief Judd Crawford. As the police force was rebuilt, laws were passed that required police to not disclose their profession and to protect their identities while on the job by wearing masks, which included allowing for costumed police officers. As Crawford's police force attempts to crack down on the Seventh Kavalry, Abar finds herself at the center of two competing plots to kidnap Doctor Manhattan, who has been working with Hooded Justice, the original masked hero and survivor of the Tulsa massacre.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: Rumors of a potential "Watchmen" television series adaptation first came about in October 2015, with HBO in preliminary discussions with Zack Snyder, director of the 2009 "Watchmen" film. HBO later confirmed that they were seeking to develop a "Watchmen" series in November 2015.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: By June 2017, HBO had begun negotiations with Damon Lindelof, as Snyder was no longer involved with the production. According to Lindelof, he had been long interested in making a "Watchmen" work since he read the comic as a teenager, and had been approached to write it at least twice before, but rejected the offers as they came out shortly following Snyder's film and felt he could not improve on that. In the interim, he developed the HBO series "The Leftovers" that ran from 2014 to 2017. "The Leftovers" was met with high acclaim, and led to yet another offer to write a "Watchmen" series, which Lindelof then accepted.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: Writing for the series started on September 19, 2017. The following day, HBO officially greenlit the production for a pilot and additional backup scripts as well. Nicole Kassell was announced as the director and executive producer for the Lindelof pilot on January 30, 2018. The pilot was filmed around June 2018 in locations around Atlanta, Georgia.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: On August 17, 2018, HBO greenlit a full season of "Watchmen", scheduling the premiere in 2019. Due to the time between filming the pilot and the remaining episodes, a new production crew had been brought on board, and Kassell remained the director for the second episode to provide necessary continuity. The series' premiere date, October 20, 2019, was announced on September 3, 2019.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: The show's credits identify the work as based on characters co-created by Dave Gibbons, who along with Alan Moore created the "Watchmen" comic. Due to multiple disputes with DC Comics and the producers of previous films, Moore has asked for his name to be no longer associated with any film production of his works from that period, including for the "Watchmen" film. Gibbons, however, was an active contributor to the show, providing illustrations in the same style as the original comic series. Lindelof tried to reach out to Moore to get his blessing for the show, but was rebuffed. In 2022, Moore claimed Lindelof had sent him a letter that he described as "neurotic rambling", including Lindelof identifying himself as "one of the bastards currently destroying "Watchmen"". Moore said he replied with a request to not contact him as he did not wish to be associated with the adaptation.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: Lindelof stated that his vision for the series was to be a "remix" of the comic series. While the show is a sequel to the comic, he wanted to make a story of his own that felt part of that universe without creating a reboot, and made sure that this was apparent from the first episode. He affirmed this idea in an open letter to fans posted on May 22, 2018.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: One of the first challenges for Lindelof was determining what the focus of the narrative would be. He considered that at the time the original "Watchmen" comic was released, it reflected on the public anxiety over the ongoing Cold War. In looking for a similar anxiety for contemporary times, Lindelof determined that racial tensions posed the same type of larger picture that would work well for the "Watchmen" universe, since it presented both historical and present conflicts. He also felt "to not tell a story about race in the context of a political text in 2019 almost felt borderline irresponsible". Establishing racism as a central theme, Lindelof assembled a purposely-diverse writing staff, with half the writers being black, and half being female, to help provide proper perspective towards these issues.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: Lindelof opted to open the pilot on the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, an event that he became aware of after reading "The Atlantic" article "The Case for Reparations" written by Ta-Nehisi Coates in 2014. Lindelof, curious about the massacre, found there was very little information about it, and strove to learn more.<ref name="IGN 2019/10/21"></ref> Many aspects of the plot center on the legacy of the graphic novel and the event. This was around the time that he had been approached again to write for the "Watchmen" series, and felt the massacre and its implication for the alternate reality's present would provide an equivalent factor that the Doomsday Clock had been for the original comic series, and used racial conflict as a central element of the series. He believed it would also help more people learn about the 1921 event, and made sure it was represented accurately, including the representation in how aerial attacks were used to bombard the Greenwood district.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: Lindelof had conceived of Angela as the central character that everything revolves around, with the discovery that her grandfather Will, a black man, was one of the first costumed heroes, Hooded Justice, shown only in a few panels from the original comics. Hooded Justice's identity was never established in the original comic series, and Lindelof's suggestion that he was a black man created a challenge for the writers. One of the first tasks the writing staff had was to determine how Will would become Hooded Justice, effectively establishing the plot to the sixth episode "This Extraordinary Being". To further tie to the comic series, the writing staff only considered using the established characters that would best serve Angela's story so that she would remain the focus. To that end, they had established that characters like Doctor Manhattan, Laurie Blake, and Adrian Veidt were necessary to support Angela's discovery of her legacy. They had considered including Dan Dreiberg, the second Nite Owl, as well, but Lindelof wanted to have a fair balance of old and new characters within the show, and felt that adding Dan would have tipped the balance too far away from the new characters. They did consider Dan's fate as part of the "Peteypedia" additional materials created by the show's writers, in which Dan remains in prison after he and Laurie were arrested for vigilantism in the past, and refusing to accept the FBI's offer to work with them as Laurie had done.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: Lindelof used his experience from his past shows to plot out the season prior to writing, stating "What I've learned over time is you need to know the answers to the mysteries...If you don't know those, you're lost. Every time you come to an intersection, you won't know whether to turn left or right." The writers had established some of the season's key mysteries in writing for the pilot, such as Hooded Justice being Will Reeves and Cal being Doctor Manhattan, but how these were to be revealed to the characters in the show and the audience came later in the writing process. Ten episodes were planned for the first season. After completing the sixth episode, "This Extraordinary Being", Lindelof felt the story was closer to its ending rather than as a midpoint, and that if they continued for four additional episodes, one of them would have been filler, and instead opted to conclude the story with three episodes. The omitted episode would have likely covered more of Lady Trieu's backstory, according to Lindelof, though it would not have been exclusively devoted to that topic. Instead, some of this material was covered in conversations within the seventh episode "An Almost Religious Awe".


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: A show-within-the-show, "American Hero Story", was used to tell the purported backstory of Hooded Justice. Writer Cord Jefferson said "American Hero Story" was meant to be the opposite to what they were creating for the actual show, a "cheesy" production that perpetuated the in-universe myth of Hooded Justice being a white man. Lindelof said the show was designed to be comparable to Ryan Murphy's series "American Horror Story" and "American Crime Story", and had even considered bringing in Murphy to play himself as the producer of "American Hero Story". He opted against this, but still treated "American Hero Story" like a Murphy work, and taking its producer to be somewhat secretive and seclusive, like Murphy. Some media critics took the "American Hero Story" segments to be a parody of Zack Snyder's 2009 live-action adaptation of "Watchmen", but Lindelof and Kassell asserted this was not their intent. Kassell said, "I fully admire [Snyder] as a filmmaker so to hear that it could even be used as a negative comment feels terrible. What I was wanting to do with those ("American Hero Story" scenes) is like, 'This is the version we could make,' and we are very concretely not making that version. We're grounding our story in a much more real kind of naturalism."


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: On May 23, 2018, it was announced that Regina King, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, Louis Gossett Jr., Adelaide Clemens, and Andrew Howard had joined the cast of the pilot. At least one of the actors was expected to have been cast in a potentially recurring role. In June 2018, it was reported that Jeremy Irons, Tom Mison, Frances Fisher, Jacob Ming-Trent, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Sara Vickers had been cast in the pilot. On August 7, 2018, it was announced that Dylan Schombing, Adelynn Spoon, and Lily Rose Smith had joined the pilot's cast. In November 2018, it was reported that Jean Smart had been cast in a starring role and that James Wolk would appear in a recurring capacity. Additionally, it was confirmed that Irons would portray Adrian Veidt / Ozymandias, that Nelson would portray a newly devised character named Looking Glass, and that Vickers and Mison would join the cast. In January 2019, it was announced that Hong Chau and Dustin Ingram had been cast in recurring roles.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: The performances of the cast during the pilot and other scenes influenced later episodes in the show's writing. When filming Irons for the pilot, Lindelof and his team found he took the character of Veidt in a comedic direction, something not suggested by the original comic series. They recognized that this was "a slightly absurd and ridiculous treatment of the character" that worked for Veidt's role within the show, and stuck with it in writing the later episodes.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: While reports in July 2019 suggested that actor Robert Redford would play a fictionalized version of himself in the series, Lindelof affirmed later that the real Redford would not be appearing in the show; the use of Redford is a tribute to the closing pages of the original comic where it is suggested that Redford was positioning himself for president, in much the same way actor Ronald Reagan became president.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails were announced as the series' composers on September 20, 2018. In considering the series music, Lindelof had considered using Reznor and Ross as they had not composed for television before. By coincidence, when Lindelof suggested the pair to HBO, HBO reported that the two had been in contact with the network about doing the music just a few days prior, as they were big fans of "Watchmen". Reznor stated he and Ross were also fans of Lindelof's previous work and thus sought to offer their services for the show. Reznor and Ross had already prepared pieces for the pilot episode prior to filming, allowing Lindelof to better incorporate it into the pilot. According to Reznor, their initial compositions were set for "an aggressive, sort of sleazy tone" for the show, but adapted to the series as it changed tone throughout the first season.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: Reznor and Ross released three albums of music from the show on both vinyl albums and through streaming services. The was released on November 4, the on November 25, and the on December 16, 2019.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: In addition to new compositions, the show employed licensed music selected by music supervisor Liza Richardson. Similar to how music and lyric references were employed in the original comic series, the soundtrack's song titles and lyrics frequently tied in with narrative elements of the show. For example, several songs from the musical "Oklahoma!" are used, given the show's setting in Tulsa. "A God Walks into Abar", in which the blue-skinned Doctor Manhattan is introduced, used a number of songs themed around the color blue, such as "Rhapsody in Blue" and "The Blue Danube". The final episode "See How They Fly" incorporates many of the unusual phrases from the Beatles' "I Am the Walrus" into its visual elements.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: Principal photography for the pilot commenced May 30, 2018, and lasted through June 2, 2018, in Cedartown, Georgia. Filming began on the 97th anniversary of the start of the riots during the second day of the production schedule on May 31. Throughout the month, filming occurred in additional Georgia cities and towns, including Macon, Fayetteville, Newnan, Palmetto, Brooks, Griffin, Georgia and Tucker. In October 2018, filming for the remainder of the first season began in Georgia. Filming locations that month included Palmetto, Brookhaven, Peachtree City, Decatur, and the MARTA station in Chamblee. In November 2018, shooting moved to locales such as Palmetto, Chamblee, McDonough, and the West Lake MARTA station. In December 2018, the production was working out of Union City, Newnan, and the Georgia World Congress Center. Interior shooting was filmed at Atlanta Metro Studios in Union City.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: Filming of the country manor scenes was treated as a separate production, similar in nature to the "Tales of the Black Freighter" comic narrative within the original "Watchmen" graphic novel. Filming of these scenes took place in September 2018 in Wales at Penrhyn Castle. These were completed before most of the remaining episode scripts were finished, according to actor Tom Mison. According to Lindelof, these scenes are "the idea is doing an escape story with Adrian Veidt that's more like Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner than it was like "Escape from Alcatraz", that felt too delicious to not do". Until the third episode, HBO did not identify Irons' character as Veidt, but only as "Lord of a Country Manor". Lindelof chose to keep Veidt's identity a secret in part to avoid having the show be considered a sequel of the comic, as well as in keeping with the storytelling mystery used by the comic, in which the identity of Rorschach is not revealed until midway through the series.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: With release of each episode, HBO released additional content on a special site named "Peteypedia", a collection of files written in-universe by Dale Petey and from other excerpts. Peteypedia was developed after most of the filming was completed, with writer Jeff Jensen overseeing it. The writing team were aware they had developed too much information that would fit into the broadcast show and debated how to present this, including as post-credit scenes or through social media. At the same time, HBO was working with Reznor and Ross on how to release the albums and were considering including additional liner notes in the vinyl releases, which included the additional background material the writers had developed. This led to creating reports and clippings similar to those presented in the original "Watchmen" comic, and presenting this as part of Peteypedia. Peteypedia allowed them, for example, to explain Laurie's trajectory from being the second Silk Spectre and fighting crime with Nite Owl at the end of the comic series, to becoming an FBI agent, elements of this that they had written briefly into the show but did not have broadcast time to spell out. They also tied elements back to the original comic. Of note is the fictional novel "Fogdancing", written in-universe by Max Shea, one of the people who Veidt had employed to devise the alien squid attack in 1985. Jensen said that in the extra material with the graphic novel, "Fogdancing" had been made into a film at least twice, so the writers considered the work to be seminal to the characters in the television series, having the book appear at least twice during the show. Jensen created a whole plot summary of the work based on minimal clues from the comic, making the work to be about super-soldiers and having it tie to the idea of the "Watchmen" superhero culture.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: While HBO had not yet confirmed a second season following the show's broadcast, Lindelof stated that if there were, he would not likely be back for it, but instead have another producer step forward to tell another story set in this universe. Lindelof said he felt that the show was "not my story" and that "These nine episodes are sort of everything that I have to say at this point about "Watchmen"". Lindelof created the first season to be a complete story, in the same manner that each season of "Fargo" and "True Detective" were each self-contained stories. Following the broadcast of the season one finale, Lindelof still said that the story he told during the season was everything he could put forward about "Watchmen", with a definitive beginning, middle, and end. However, he agreed with HBO that "Watchmen" should be treated as a continuing series, and did not rule out returning, but would want to have time to develop a similar complete story before committing.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: By January 2020, Lindelof stated he had passed on a second season but gave his blessing to anyone that followed him as showrunner. HBO's programming chief Casey Bloys stated with regards to a second season that "It would be hard to imagine doing it without Damon involved in some way", while not altogether dismissing the possibility of the concept of one. Due to this, HBO reclassified "Watchmen" as a limited series in February 2020, with the potential for additional installments.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: The series was first broadcast on the HBO network from October 20 through December 15, 2019. In New Zealand, "Watchmen" is distributed exclusively by Neon, Sky Television's subscription television series. In Australia, the series is distributed by Foxtel's streaming service.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: The series was released onto digital media for purchase or streaming in December 2019. Warner Bros. Home Entertainment released the series on Blu-ray under the title "Watchmen: An HBO Limited Series" on June 2, 2020.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: Across May and June 2020, the George Floyd protests arose as black people and others protested against police violence, and some saw "Watchmen" as a "predictive text for the current moment". HBO made the series available for free streaming from its website and other on demand services on the weekend of June 19, 2020, in observation of Juneteenth, identifying the show "highlighting Black experiences, voices and storytellers" as "this timely, poignant series that explores the legacy of systemic racism in America".


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: "Watchmen" received widespread critical acclaim. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the series has a 96 percent "certified fresh" rating based on 398 reviews, with an average rating of 8.6/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Bold and bristling, "Watchmen" isn't always easy viewing, but by adding new layers of cultural context and a host of complex characters it expertly builds on its source material to create an impressive identity of its own." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 85 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: Rotten Tomatoes' audience score is lower than the critics' consensus, with several news outlets reporting that the site was review bombed. "Esquire" writer Matt Miller alleged that "far-right trolls" artificially deflated the audience score. These outlets agree that the chief complaint among followers of the source material is that the image of fan-favorite character Rorschach is adopted by the Seventh Kavalry, a white supremacist organization. Many fans agreed with the television series' use of Rorschach's image, citing Alan Moore's intention in the original "Watchmen" to comment on fascist undertones within the superhero genre. Other fans have claimed that the show fails to properly reflect the complexities of Rorschach's character. In response, Damon Lindelof stated that the show is not intended to portray Walter Kovacs, the original Rorschach, as a racist. At the New York Comic Con, he explained that Rorschach's journal had been misinterpreted by the "New Frontiersman" and that his image has been misappropriated by the Seventh Kavalry. "He's been dead for over 30 years," Lindelof clarified. "He doesn't get to say, 'You misunderstood me. No, I wasn't a white supremacist.' They decided what he was."


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: Patrick Wilson, who played Dan Dreiberg / Nite Owl in the 2009 film adaptation, praised the series, saying he was initially curious based on his familiarity with the source material but said he was hooked by the cast and wound up loving the series.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: According to HBO, the first episode of "Watchmen" had more than 1.5 million viewers on its first night across television and streaming services, the strongest debut performance for the network. The first broadcast of the episode, at 9 p.m. EDT, had 800,000 viewers, making it the most viewed debut episode for any premium-cable show in 2019. The second episode dropped to about 1.3 million viewers across the first night, with 765,000 watching the first broadcast, though this was considered a strong performance as the show aired alongside Game 5 of the 2019 World Series.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: As of episode 9, HBO reported 7 million viewers to date, making it HBO's most viewed new series since "Big Little Lies". HBO estimates that the Sunday night premiere viewership represents only about 10 percent of the total viewership for an episode, to the effect of word-of-mouth that has brought new viewers to the show, with the first episode having a total of 9.6 million viewers as of December 4, 2019.


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: Among the various awards, "Watchmen" led total nominations of the main Primetime and Creative Arts Emmy Awards for the 2019–20 television season with a total of 26 nominations, and won a combined 11 awards, including Outstanding Limited Series, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie (for Regina King), Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie (for Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special (for Damon Lindelof and Cord Jefferson) for the episode "This Extraordinary Being".


title: Watchmen (TV series)

text: "Watchmen" had been critically praised for presenting the events of the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. Until the show premiered, while historians had documented the event, few filmmakers were able to successfully acquire funding for projects that addressed the event due to its relative obscurity in American history. "Watchmen" served as a "catalyst" for more interest in works related to the massacre ahead of the event's 100th anniversary in 2021, according to "The Washington Post" DeNeen Brown. At least four separate documentaries were produced in advance of the anniversary, and there was an increase in depictions of the event in other works, such as in HBO's "Lovecraft Country".


title: Isabela Merced

text: Isabela Yolanda Moner (born July 10, 2001), known professionally as Isabela Merced since 2019, is an American actress and singer. She played the lead role of CJ Martin on the Nickelodeon television series "100 Things to Do Before High School" (2014–2016) and voiced Kate in Nickelodeon's animated spinoff series "" (2014–2017). In film, she has played Izabella in "" (2017), Lizzy in "Instant Family" (2018), Isabel in "" (2018), the titular character in "Dora and the Lost City of Gold" (2019), and Rachel Cooper in the Netflix film "Sweet Girl" (2021).


title: Isabela Merced

text: Merced was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the daughter of Katherine, who was born in Lima, Peru, and Patrick Moner, who was born in Louisiana. Merced has stated that Spanish was her first language, and she struggled with English when she first started grade school, adding that she considers herself more Peruvian than American. At age 15, she was accepted into college.


title: Isabela Merced

text: Merced began acting after her family's Cleveland home was destroyed by a fire. Merced was a Judy Garland fan, so her parents, wanting to distract her from the loss, asked her if she wanted to audition for a local production of "The Wizard of Oz". She agreed and was cast as a Munchkin. A local theatre director urged the family to relocate to New York City, which they did, to help her pursue a career on Broadway.


title: Isabela Merced

text: Merced has said that she wanted to be an actress from a very young age, inspired by movies featuring Shirley Temple and Judy Garland and starting in local community theatre at age six. Merced made her Broadway debut at age ten in a production of "Evita", in which she sang in Spanish with Ricky Martin. She released an album produced by Broadway Records in September 2015, entitled "Stopping Time".


title: Isabela Merced

text: Merced's first starring performance was as CJ Martin, the lead role on the Nickelodeon television series "100 Things to Do Before High School", from 2014 to 2016. That same year, she began providing the voice of Kate, one of the main characters in the "Dora the Explorer" spinoff, "", a role she performed from 2014 to 2017. In 2015, she appeared as Lori Collins in the Nickelodeon Original Movie "Splitting Adam", and was cast as Sadie, one of the leading roles, in the 2016 Nickelodeon Original Movie "Legends of the Hidden Temple". In May 2016, Merced was cast in the film "", which was released in June 2017. She voiced Heather in the animated film "", which was theatrically released on August 11, 2017.


title: Isabela Merced

text: In 2018, Merced had a "major" role in "", playing the daughter of a drug cartel head, in a performance lauded by critics. "The New Yorker"'s Anthony Lane wrote "Moner is terrific, and her character’s fortunes can be read in her eyes—blazing to begin with, as she scraps with another girl in a schoolyard, but dark and blank by the end, their youthful fire doused by the violence that she has seen."


title: Isabela Merced

text: In the same year, she played the adopted daughter of the characters played by Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne in the comedy film "Instant Family", for which she also wrote and sang the song "I'll Stay". In 2019, Merced starred as the title character in "Dora and the Lost City of Gold", a live action film adaptation of the animated series, and was cast in the Christmas romantic comedy ensemble film "Let It Snow". The same year, she was cast opposite Jason Momoa in the film "Sweet Girl" for Netflix.


title: Isabela Merced

text: On October 14, 2019, Merced announced to her fans via a post on her Instagram account that she had decided to change her stage name to Isabela Merced, in memory of her late grandmother whom she never met. Merced later explained that she had not legally changed her name and said that it was "just a stage name but it's got a deeper meaning". Her first single, "Papi", was released on October 25, 2019, followed by her first music video released on November 6, 2019. On May 22, 2020, Merced released her debut EP, "The Better Half of Me"; and was named one of "Billboard"'s top 15 new Peruvian artists to listen to in July 2020.


title: Isabela Merced

text: In March 2022, it was announced Merced would star in "Turtles All the Way Down", a film adaptation of the 2017 novel by John Green, which began filming in April 2022.


title: Siemens

text: Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad.


title: Siemens

text: The principal divisions of the corporation are "Industry", "Energy", "Healthcare" (Siemens Healthineers), and "Infrastructure & Cities", which represent the main activities of the corporation. The corporation is a prominent maker of medical diagnostics equipment and its medical health-care division, which generates about 12 percent of the corporation's total sales, is its second-most profitable unit, after the industrial automation division. In this area, it is regarded as a pioneer and the company with the highest revenue in the world. The corporation is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. Siemens and its subsidiaries employ approximately 303,000 people worldwide and reported global revenue of around €62 billion in 2021 according to its earnings release.


title: Siemens

text: Siemens & Halske was founded by Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske on 1 October 1847. Based on the telegraph, their invention used a needle to point to the sequence of letters, instead of using Morse code. The company, then called "Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske", opened its first workshop on 12 October.


title: Siemens

text: In 1848, the company built the first long-distance telegraph line in Europe; 500 km from Berlin to Frankfurt am Main. In 1850, the founder's younger brother, Carl Wilhelm Siemens, later Sir William Siemens, started to represent the company in London. The London agency became a branch office in 1858. In the 1850s, the company was involved in building long-distance telegraph networks in Russia. In 1855, a company branch headed by another brother, Carl Heinrich von Siemens, opened in St Petersburg, Russia. In 1867, Siemens completed the monumental Indo-European telegraph line stretching over 11,000 km from London to Calcutta.


title: Siemens

text: In 1867, Werner von Siemens described a dynamo without permanent magnets. A similar system was also independently invented by Ányos Jedlik and Charles Wheatstone, but Siemens became the first company to build such devices. In 1881, a Siemens AC Alternator driven by a watermill was used to power the world's first electric street lighting in the town of Godalming, United Kingdom. The company continued to grow and diversified into electric trains and light bulbs. In 1885, Siemens sold one of its generators to George Westinghouse, thereby enabling Westinghouse to begin experimenting with AC networks in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.


title: Siemens

text: In 1887, Siemens opened its first office in Japan. In 1890, the founder retired and left the running of the company to his brother Carl and sons Arnold and Wilhelm. In 1892, Siemens were contracted to construct the Hobart electric tramway in Tasmania, Australia as they increased their markets. The system opened in 1893 and became the first complete electric tram network in the Southern Hemisphere.


title: Siemens

text: Siemens & Halske (S & H) was incorporated in 1897, and then merged parts of its activities with Schuckert & Co., Nuremberg in 1903 to become Siemens-Schuckert. In 1907, Siemens (Siemens & Halske and Siemens-Schuckert) had 34,324 employees and was the seventh-largest company in the German empire by number of employees. (see List of German companies by employees in 1907)


title: Siemens

text: During the 1920s and 1930s, S & H started to manufacture radios, television sets, and electron microscopes.


title: Siemens

text: In 1932, (Erlangen), Phönix AG (Rudolstadt) and Siemens-Reiniger-Veifa mbH (Berlin) merged to form the Siemens-Reiniger-Werke AG (SRW), the third of the so-called parent companies that merged in 1966 to form the present-day Siemens AG.


title: Siemens

text: In the 1920s, Siemens constructed the Ardnacrusha Hydro Power station on the River Shannon in the then Irish Free State, and it was a world first for its design. The company is remembered for its desire to raise the wages of its under-paid workers only to be overruled by the Cumann na nGaedheal government.


title: Siemens

text: Siemens (at the time: Siemens-Schuckert) exploited the forced labour of deported people in extermination camps. The company owned a plant in Auschwitz concentration camp.


title: Siemens

text: Siemens exploited the forced labour of women in the concentration camp of Ravensbrück. The factory was located in front of the camp.


title: Siemens

text: During the final years of World War II, numerous plants and factories in Berlin and other major cities were destroyed by Allied air raids. To prevent further losses, manufacturing was therefore moved to alternative places and regions not affected by the air war. The goal was to secure continued production of important war-related and everyday goods. According to records, Siemens was operating almost 400 alternative or relocated manufacturing plants at the end of 1944 and in early 1945.


title: Siemens

text: In 1972, Siemens sued German satirist F.C. Delius for his satirical history of the company, "Unsere Siemens-Welt", and it was determined much of the book contained false claims although the trial itself publicized Siemens' history in Nazi Germany. The company supplied electrical parts to Nazi concentration camps and death camps. The factories had poor working conditions, where malnutrition and death were common. Also, the scholarship has shown that the camp factories were created, run, and supplied by the SS, in conjunction with company officials, sometimes high-level officials.


title: Siemens

text: In the 1950s, and from their new base in Bavaria, S&H started to manufacture computers, semiconductor devices, washing machines, and pacemakers. In 1966, Siemens & Halske (S&H, founded in 1847), Siemens-Schuckertwerke (SSW, founded in 1903) and Siemens-Reiniger-Werke (SRW, founded in 1932) merged to form Siemens AG. In 1969, Siemens formed Kraftwerk Union with AEG by pooling their nuclear power businesses.


title: Siemens

text: The company's first digital telephone exchange was produced in 1980, and in 1988, Siemens and GEC acquired the UK defence and technology company Plessey. Plessey's holdings were split, and Siemens took over the avionics, radar and traffic control businesses—as Siemens Plessey.


title: Siemens

text: In 1977, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) entered into a joint venture with Siemens, which wanted to enhance its technology expertise and enter the American market. Siemens purchased 20% of AMD's stock, giving the company an infusion of cash to increase its product lines. The two companies also jointly established Advanced Micro Computers (AMC), located in Silicon Valley and in Germany, allowing AMD to enter the microcomputer development and manufacturing field, in particular based on AMD's second-source Zilog Z8000 microprocessors. When the two companies' vision for Advanced Micro Computers diverged, AMD bought out Siemens' stake in the American division in 1979. AMD closed Advanced Micro Computers in late 1981 after switching focus to manufacturing second-source Intel x86 microprocessors.


title: Siemens

text: In 1985, Siemens bought Allis-Chalmers' interest in the partnership company Siemens-Allis (formed 1978) which supplied electrical control equipment. It was incorporated into Siemens' Energy and Automation division.


title: Siemens

text: In 1989, Siemens bought the solar photovoltaic business, including 3 solar module manufacturing plants, from industry pioneer ARCO Solar, owned by oil firm ARCO.


title: Siemens

text: In 1991, Siemens acquired Nixdorf Computer AG and renamed it Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG, in order to produce personal computers.


title: Siemens

text: In October 1991, Siemens acquired the Industrial Systems Division of Texas Instruments, Inc, based in Johnson City, Tennessee. This division was organized as Siemens Industrial Automation, Inc., and was later absorbed by Siemens Energy and Automation, Inc.


title: Siemens

text: In 1992, Siemens bought out IBM's half of ROLM (Siemens had bought into ROLM five years earlier), thus creating SiemensROLM Communications; eventually dropping ROLM from the name later in the 1990s.


title: Siemens

text: In 1993–1994, Siemens C651 electric trains for Singapore's Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system were built in Austria.


title: Siemens

text: In 1997, Siemens agreed to sell the defence arm of Siemens Plessey to British Aerospace (BAe) and a German aerospace company, DaimlerChrysler Aerospace. BAe and DASA acquired the British and German divisions of the operation respectively.


title: Siemens

text: In October 1997, Siemens Financial Services (SFS) was founded to act as a competence center for financing issues and as a manager of financial risks within Siemens.


title: Siemens

text: In 1998, Siemens acquired Westinghouse Power Generation for more than $1.5 billion from the CBS Corporation and moving Siemens from third to second in the world power generation market.


title: Siemens

text: In 1999, Siemens' semiconductor operations were spun off into a new company called Infineon Technologies. Its Electromechanical Components operations were converted into a legally independent company: Siemens Electromechanical Components GmbH & Co. KG, (which, later that year, was sold to Tyco International Ltd for approximately $1.1 billion.


title: Siemens

text: In the same year, Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG became part of Fujitsu Siemens Computers AG, with its retail banking technology group becoming Wincor Nixdorf.


title: Siemens

text: In 2000, Shared Medical Systems Corporation was acquired by the Siemens' Medical Engineering Group, eventually becoming part of Siemens Medical Solutions.


title: Siemens

text: Also in 2000, Atecs-Mannesman was acquired by Siemens, The sale was finalised in April 2001 with 50% of the shares acquired, acquisition, "Mannesmann VDO AG" merged into Siemens Automotive forming Siemens VDO Automotive AG, "Atecs Mannesmann Dematic Systems" merged into Siemens Production and Logistics forming Siemens Dematic AG, "Mannesmann Demag Delaval" merged into the Power Generation division of Siemens AG. Other parts of the company were acquired by Robert Bosch GmbH at the same time. Also, Moore Products Co. of Spring House, PA USA was acquired by Siemens Energy & Automation, Inc.


title: Siemens

text: In 2001, Chemtech Group of Brazil was incorporated into the Siemens Group; it provides industrial process optimisation, consultancy and other engineering services.


title: Siemens

text: Also in 2001, Siemens formed joint venture Framatome with Areva SA of France by merging much of the companies' nuclear businesses.


title: Siemens

text: In 2002, Siemens sold some of its business activities to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. L.P. (KKR), with its metering business included in the sale package.


title: Siemens

text: In 2002, Siemens abandoned the solar photovoltaic industry by selling its participation in a joint-venture company, established in 2001 with Shell and E.ON, to Shell.


title: Siemens

text: In 2003, Siemens acquired the flow division of Danfoss and incorporated it into the Automation and Drives division. Also in 2003 Siemens acquired IndX software (realtime data organisation and presentation). The same year in an unrelated development Siemens reopened its office in Kabul. Also in 2003 agreed to buy Alstom Industrial Turbines; a manufacturer of small, medium and industrial gas turbines for €1.1 billion.


title: Siemens

text: On 11 February 2003, Siemens planned to shorten phones' shelf life by bringing out annual Xelibri lines, with new devices launched as spring -summer and autumn-winter collections. On 6 March 2003, the company opened an office in San Jose. On 7 March 2003, the company announced that it planned to gain 10 per cent of the mainland China market for handsets. On 18 March 2003, the company unveiled the latest in its series of Xelibri fashion phones.


title: Siemens

text: In 2004, the wind energy company Bonus Energy in Brande, Denmark was acquired, forming Siemens Wind Power division. Also in 2004 Siemens invested in Dasan Networks (South Korea, broadband network equipment) acquiring ~40% of the shares, Nokia Siemens disinvested itself of the shares in 2008. The same year Siemens acquired Photo-Scan (UK, CCTV systems), US Filter Corporation (water and Waste Water Treatment Technologies/ Solutions, acquired from Veolia), Hunstville Electronics Corporation (automobile electronics, acquired from Chrysler), and Chantry Networks (WLAN equipment).


title: Siemens

text: In 2005, Siemens sold the Siemens mobile manufacturing business to BenQ, forming the BenQ-Siemens division. Also in 2005 Siemens acquired Flender Holding GmbH (Bocholt, Germany, gears/industrial drives), Bewator AB (building security systems), Wheelabrator Air Pollution Control, Inc. (Industrial and power station dust control systems), AN Windenergie GmbH. (Wind energy), Power Technologies Inc. (Schenectady, USA, energy industry software and training), CTI Molecular Imaging (Positron emission tomography and molecular imaging systems), Myrio (IPTV systems), Shaw Power Technologies International Ltd (UK/USA, electrical engineering consulting, acquired from Shaw Group), and Transmitton (Ashby de la Zouch UK, rail and other industry control and asset management).


title: Siemens

text: Beginning in 2005, Siemens became embroiled in a multi-national bribery scandal. One component of this scandal was the Siemens Greek bribery scandal over deals between Siemens and Greek government officials during the 2004 Summer Olympic Games. Siemens' activities came under legal scrutiny when complaints from prosecutors in Italy, Liechtenstein and Switzerland led to German authorities opening investigations, followed by a US investigation in 2006 concerning their activities while listed on US stock exchanges. The investigators found that bribing officials to win contracts was standard operating procedure. Over that time period the company paid around $1.3 billion in bribes in many countries and kept separate books to hide them. Settlement negotiations took place through most of 2008 with settlement terms announced in December 2008. The company paid a total of about $1.6 billion, around $800 million to the US and Germany each. This was the largest bribery fine in history, at the time. The company was also obligated to spend $1 billion on setting up and funding new internal compliance regimens. Siemens pleaded guilty to violating accounting provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; the parent company did not plead guilty to paying bribes (although its Bangladesh and Venezuela subsidiaries did).


title: Siemens

text: Fines were anticipated to be as high as $5 billion as the investigation unfolded. Settlement negotiations took place through most of 2008 and when they were announced in December they were far less, driven in part by Siemens' cooperation, in part by the imminent change in US administrations (the Obama administration was about to take over from the Bush administration), and in part by the dependence of the US military on Siemens as a contractor.


title: Siemens

text: The company paid a total of about $1.6 billion, around $800 million in each of the US and Germany. This was the largest bribery fine in history, at the time. The money paid to Germany included a $270 million fine paid the year before (related to bribes in Nigeria). The US payment included $450 million in fines and penalties and a forfeiture of $350 million in profits. The company was also obligated to spend $1 billion on setting up and funding new internal compliance regimens. Siemens pleaded guilty to violating accounting provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; the parent company did not plead guilty to paying bribes (although its Bangladesh and Venezuela subsidiaries did); such a guilty plea would have barred Siemens from contracting for the US government. As the scandal had started breaking, Siemens had fired its chairman and CEO Heinrich von Pierer, and had hired its first non-German CEO, Peter Löscher; it also had appointed a US lawyer, Peter Solmssen as an independent director to its board, in charge of compliance, and had accepted oversight of Theo Waigel, a former German finance minister, as a "compliance monitor". The compliance overhaul eventually entailed hiring around 500 full-time compliance personnel worldwide. Siemens also enacted a series of new anti-corruption compliance policies, including a new anti-corruption handbook, web-based tools for due diligence and compliance, a confidential communications channel for employees to report irregular business practices, and a corporate disciplinary committee to impose appropriate disciplinary measures for substantiated misconduct.


title: Siemens

text: The culture of bribery was old in Siemens, and led to the 1914 scandal in Japan over bribes paid by both Siemens and Vickers to Japanese naval authorities to win shipbuilding contracts.


title: Siemens

text: The culture of bribery developed further within Siemens after World War II as it attempted to rebuild its business by competing in the developing world, where bribery is common. Until 1999 in Germany, bribes were a tax-deductible business expense, and there were no penalties for bribing foreign officials. In 1999 the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention came into effect, to which Germany was a party, and Siemens started to use off-shore accounts and other means of hiding its bribery.


title: Siemens

text: As the investigation opened a midlevel executive in the telecommunications unit, Reinhard Siekaczek, was identified as a key player; Siekaczek quit Siemens in 2005 after the company required him to sign a document saying he had followed law and company policy, and turned state's evidence and led investigators to documents he had saved and to other documents. He had controlled an annual global bribery budget of $40 to $50 million. The usual method of bribery was to pay a local insider as a "contractor" who would in turn pass money to government officials; as part of the settlement Siemens disclosed that it had 2,700 such contractors worldwide. Bribes were generally around 5% of a contract's value but in very corrupt countries they could be as high as 40%. It paid the highest bribes in Argentina, Israel, Venezuela, China, Nigeria, and Russia.


title: Siemens

text: The investigation led directly to several prosecutions while it was unfolding, and led to settlements with other governments and prosecution of Siemens employees and bribe recipients in various countries.


title: Siemens

text: In May 2007 a German court convicted two former executives of paying about €6 million in bribes from 1999 to 2002 to help Siemens win natural gas turbine supply contracts with Enel, an Italian energy company. The contracts were valued at about €450 million. Siemens was fined €38 million.


title: Siemens

text: In July 2009, Siemens settled allegations of fraud by a Russian affiliate in a World Bank-funded mass transit project in Moscow by agreeing to not bid on World Bank projects for two years, not allowing the Russian affiliate to do any World Bank funded work for four years, and setting up a $100 million fund at the World Bank to fund anti-corruption activities over 15 years, over which the World Bank had veto and audit rights; this fund became the "Siemens Integrity Initiative". The first payments were made out of the funds in 2010 in a tranche of $40 million. A second set of projects was funded in 2014 totaling $30 million.


title: Siemens

text: In 2012, the Greek government settled the Greek bribery scandal for 330 million euros. The trial of the persons accused of involvement in the scandal began on 24 February 2017. A total of 64 individuals are accused, both Greek and German nationals. The central figure of the scandal however, ex-Siemens chief executive in Greece Michael Christoforakos, against whom European arrest warrants are pending will likely be absent, as Germany refuses his extradition to this day. Initially arrested in Germany in 2009, the accusations against him by German courts have been dropped, and he since lives free in this country. Greece has been demanding his extradition since 2009, and considers him a fugitive from justice.


title: Siemens

text: In 2014 a former Siemens executive Andres Truppel pleaded guilty to funneling nearly $100 million in bribes to Argentine government officials to win the ID card project for Siemens.


title: Siemens

text: In 2014 Israeli prosecutors decreed that Siemens should pay US$42.7 million penalty and appoint an external inspector to supervise its business in Israel in exchange for state prosecutors dropping charges of securities fraud. According to the indictment, "Siemens systematically paid bribes to Israel Electric Corporation executives so they would utilize their positions in order to favor and advance the interests of Siemens".


title: Siemens

text: In 2006, Siemens purchased Bayer Diagnostics which was incorporated into the Medical Solutions Diagnostics division on 1 January 2007, also in 2006 Siemens acquired Controlotron (New York) (ultrasonic flow meters), and also in 2006 Siemens acquired Diagnostic Products Corp., Kadon Electro Mechanical Services Ltd. (now TurboCare Canada Ltd.), Kühnle, Kopp, & Kausch AG, Opto Control, and VistaScape Security Systems.


title: Siemens

text: In January 2007, Siemens was fined €396 million by the European Commission for price fixing in EU electricity markets through a cartel involving 11 companies, including ABB, Alstom, Fuji Electric, Hitachi Japan, AE Power Systems, Mitsubishi Electric Corp, Schneider, Areva, Toshiba and VA Tech. According to the commission, "between 1988 and 2004, the companies rigged bids for procurement contracts, fixed prices, allocated projects to each other, shared markets and exchanged commercially important and confidential information." Siemens was given the highest fine of €396 million, more than half of the total, for its alleged leadership role in the activity.


title: Siemens

text: In March 2007, a Siemens board member was temporarily arrested and accused of illegally financing a business-friendly labour association which competes against the union IG Metall. He has been released on bail. Offices of the labour union and of Siemens have been searched. Siemens denies any wrongdoing. In April the Fixed Networks, Mobile Networks and Carrier Services divisions of Siemens merged with Nokia's Network Business Group in a 50/50 joint venture, creating a fixed and mobile network company called Nokia Siemens Networks. Nokia delayed the merger due to bribery investigations against Siemens. In October 2007, a court in Munich found that the company had bribed public officials in Libya, Russia, and Nigeria in return for the awarding of contracts; four former Nigerian Ministers of Communications were among those named as recipients of the payments. The company admitted to having paid the bribes and agreed to pay a fine of 201 million euros. In December 2007, the Nigerian government cancelled a contract with Siemens due to the bribery findings.


title: Siemens

text: Also in 2007, Siemens acquired Vai Ingdesi Automation (Argentina, Industrial Automation), UGS Corp., Dade Behring, Sidelco (Quebec, Canada), S/D Engineers Inc., and Gesellschaft für Systemforschung und Dienstleistungen im Gesundheitswesen mbH (GSD) (Germany).


title: Siemens

text: In July 2008, Siemens AG formed a joint venture of the Enterprise Communications business with the Gores Group, renamed Unify in 2013. The Gores Group holding a majority interest of 51% stake, with Siemens AG holding a minority interest of 49%.


title: Siemens

text: In August 2008, Siemens Project Ventures invested $15 million in the Arava Power Company. In a press release published that month, Peter Löscher, President and CEO of Siemens AG said: "This investment is another consequential step in further strengthening our green and sustainable technologies". Siemens now holds a 40% stake in the company.


title: Siemens

text: In January 2009, Siemens sold its 34% stake in Framatome, complaining limited managerial influence. In March, it formed an alliance with Rosatom of Russia to engage in nuclear-power activities.


title: Siemens

text: In April 2009, Fujitsu Siemens Computers became Fujitsu Technology Solutions as a result of Fujitsu buying out Siemens' share of the company.


title: Siemens

text: In June 2009 news broke that Nokia Siemens had supplied telecommunications equipment to the Iranian telecom company that included the ability to intercept and monitor telecommunications, a facility known as "lawful intercept". The equipment was believed to have been used in the suppression of the 2009 Iranian election protests, leading to criticism of the company, including by the European Parliament. Nokia Siemens later divested its call monitoring business, and reduced its activities in Iran.


title: Siemens

text: In October 2009, Siemens signed a $418 million contract to buy Solel Solar Systems, an Israeli company in the solar thermal power business.


title: Siemens

text: In December 2010, Siemens agreed to sell its IT Solutions and Services subsidiary for €850 million to Atos. As part of the deal, Siemens agreed to take a 15% stake in the enlarged Atos, to be held for a minimum of five years. In addition, Siemens concluded a seven-year outsourcing contract worth around €5.5 billion, under which Atos will provide managed services and systems integration to Siemens.


title: Siemens

text: In March 2011, it was decided to list Osram on the stock market in the autumn, but CEO Peter Löscher said Siemens intended to retain a long-term interest in the company, which was already independent from the technological and managerial viewpoints.


title: Siemens

text: In September 2011, Siemens, which had been responsible for constructing all 17 of Germany's existing nuclear power plants, announced that it would exit the nuclear sector following the Fukushima disaster and the subsequent changes to German energy policy. Chief executive Peter Löscher has supported the German government's planned "Energiewende", its transition to renewable energy technologies, calling it a "project of the century" and saying Berlin's target of reaching 35% renewable energy sources by 2020 was feasible.


title: Siemens

text: In November 2012, Siemens acquired the Rail division of Invensys for £1.7 billion. In the same month, Siemens acquired a privately held company, LMS International NV.


title: Siemens

text: In August 2013, Nokia acquired 100% of the company Nokia Siemens Networks, with a buy-out of Siemens AG, ending Siemens role in telecommunication.


title: Siemens

text: In August 2013, Siemens won a $966.8 million order for power plant components from oil firm Saudi Aramco, the largest bid it has ever received from the Saudi company.


title: Siemens

text: In 2014, Siemens announced plans to build a $264 million facility for making offshore wind turbines in Paull, England, as Britain's wind power rapidly expands. Siemens chose the Hull area on the east coast of England because it is close to other large offshore projects planned in coming years. The new plant is expected to begin producing turbine rotor blades in 2016. The plant and the associated service center, in Green Port Hull nearby, will employ about 1,000 workers. The facilities will serve the UK market, where the electricity that major power producers generate from wind grew by about 38 percent in 2013, representing about 6 percent of total electricity, according to government figures. There are also plans to increase Britain's wind-generating capacity at least threefold by 2020, to 14 gigawatts.


title: Siemens

text: In May 2014, Rolls-Royce agreed to sell its gas turbine and compressor energy business to Siemens for £1 billion.


title: Siemens

text: In June 2014, Siemens and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries announced their formation of joint ventures to bid for Alstom's troubled energy and transportation businesses (in locomotives, steam turbines, and aircraft engines). A rival bid by General Electric (GE) has been criticized by French government sources, who consider Alstom's operations as a "vital national interest" at a moment when the French unemployment level stands above 10% and some voters are turning towards the far-right.


title: Siemens

text: In November 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice charged three Chinese employees of Guangzhou Bo Yu Information Technology Company Limited with hacking into corporate entities, including Siemens AG.


title: Siemens

text: In December 2017, Siemens acquired the medical technology company Fast Track Diagnostics for an undisclosed amount.


title: Siemens

text: In August 2018, Siemens acquired rapid application development company Mendix for €0.6 billion in cash.


title: Siemens

text: In September 2019, Siemens and Orascom Construction signed an agreement with the Iraqi government to rebuild two power plants, which is believed to setup the company for future deals in the country.


title: Siemens

text: In 2019–2020, Siemens was identified as a key engineering company supporting the controversial Adani Carmichael coal mine in Queensland (Australia).


title: Siemens

text: In January 2020, Siemens signed an agreement to acquire 99% equity share capital of Indian switchgear manufacturer C&S Electric at €267 million (₹2,100 crore). The takeover was approved by the Competition Commission of India in August 2020.


title: Siemens

text: In April 2020, Siemens acquired a 77% majority stake in Indian building solution provider iMetrex Technologies for an undisclosed sum.


title: Siemens

text: In April 2020, Siemens Energy was created as an independent company out of the energy division of Siemens. The trading of shares of the new Siemens Energy AG on the stock exchange is expected to be possible from 28 September onwards.


title: Siemens

text: In August 2020, Siemens Healthineers AG announced that it plans to acquire U.S. cancer device and software company Varian Medical Systems in an all-stock deal valued at $16.4 billion.


title: Siemens

text: In October 2021, Siemens acquired the building IoT software and hardware company Wattsense for an undisclosed sum.


title: Siemens

text: In May 2022, Siemens decided to drop Russian operations and everything regarding the conglomerate on the Russian state amid the ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine since February 24. In July 2022, Siemens acquired ZONA Technology, specialist in aerospace simulation firm.


title: Siemens

text: Siemens offers a wide range of electrical engineering- and electronics-related products and services. Its products can be broadly divided into the following categories: buildings-related products; drives, automation and industrial plant-related products; energy-related products; lighting; medical products; and transportation and logistics-related products.


title: Siemens

text: Siemens buildings-related products include building-automation equipment and systems; building-operations equipment and systems; building fire-safety equipment and systems; building-security equipment and systems; and low-voltage switchgear including circuit protection and distribution products.


title: Siemens

text: Siemens drives, automation and industrial plant-related products include motors and drives for conveyor belts; pumps and compressors; heavy duty motors and drives for rolling steel mills; compressors for oil and gas pipelines; mechanical components including gears for wind turbines and cement mills; automation equipment and systems and controls for production machinery and machine tools; and industrial plant for water processing and raw material processing.


title: Siemens

text: Siemens energy-related products include gas and steam turbines; generators; compressors; on- and offshore wind turbines; high-voltage transmission products; power transformers; high-voltage switching products and systems; alternating and direct current transmission systems; medium-voltage components and systems; and power automation products.


title: Siemens

text: In the renewable energy industry, the company provides a portfolio of products and services to help build and operate microgrids of any size. It provides generation and distribution of electrical energy as well as monitoring and controlling of microgrids. By using primarily renewable energy, microgrids reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, which is often required by government regulations. It supplied a sustainable storage product and microgrids to Enel Produzione SPA for the island of Ventotene in Italy.