title: Brad Dourif

text: In 1981, Vincent Canby listed Dourif as one of twelve actors to watch, calling Dourif "one of the most intense, most interesting young film actors of his generation." Dourif returned to New York, where he continued in theater and taught acting and directing classes at Columbia University until 1988 (Don Mancini and Yves Lavandier were among his students), when he moved to Hollywood.


title: Brad Dourif

text: Dourif has often played eccentric or disturbed characters, starting with "Cuckoo's Nest" and continuing with "Eyes of Laura Mars" (1978), John Huston's "Wise Blood" (1979), Forman's "Ragtime" (1981), Marc Didden's "Istanbul" (1985) and David Lynch's "Dune" (1984) and "Blue Velvet" (1986).


title: Brad Dourif

text: Dourif has appeared in a number of horror films, most notably as the voice of Chucky in the "Child's Play" franchise. He portrayed the Gemini Killer in "The Exorcist III" (1990) and appeared in "Death Machine" (1994) and "Alien Resurrection" (1997). He later appeared as Sheriff Lee Brackett in Rob Zombie's "Halloween" (2007) and "Halloween II" (2009). In 2013, Dourif reprised his role as Chucky in the sixth installment of the "Child's Play" franchise, "Curse of Chucky", and then again in the 2017 sequel, "Cult of Chucky". His daughter, Fiona Dourif, also starred with him in both films.


title: Brad Dourif

text: Other notable film roles include Gríma Wormtongue in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and supporting roles in "Fatal Beauty" (1987), "Mississippi Burning" (1988), "Hidden Agenda" (1990), "London Kills Me" (1991) and "Sinner" (2007).


title: Brad Dourif

text: Dourif has worked with director Werner Herzog on many occasions, appearing in "Scream of Stone" (1991), "The Wild Blue Yonder" (2005), "" (2009), and "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?" (2009).


title: Brad Dourif

text: In 1984, Dourif played a suspected serial killer in the episode "Number Eight" of "Tales of the Unexpected". In 1994, he appeared in "The X-Files" episode "Beyond the Sea" as the psychic serial killer Luther Lee Boggs. He also portrayed in a three episode story arc on "" and guest starred as a troubled monk haunted by visions in "Babylon 5". Dourif later gained acclaim as Doc Cochran in "Deadwood", receiving a 2004 Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.


title: Brad Dourif

text: In 2011, he guest-starred in the third-season finale of "Fringe" and, in 2014, appeared in the "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." episode "The End of the Beginning".


title: Brad Dourif

text: In 2021, Dourif reprised his role as Chucky in the television series adaption of the Child's Play franchise titled "Chucky".


title: Brad Dourif

text: In 2012, Dourif contributed spoken word vocals to three songs on the album "Misery Together" by the Norwegian duo Thinguma*jigSaw. Dourif also appears in the music videos for "Stranger in Town" (1984) by Toto and "Drinking from the Bottle" (2012) by Calvin Harris.


title: Brad Dourif

text: Dourif has been married twice first to Janet Stephanie with whom he had daughter Kristina/Christina Dourif, born c. 1976, and then to the late Jonina Dourif, with whom he had another daughter, actress Fiona Dourif, born 1981.


title: Supertramp

text: Supertramp were an English rock band that formed in London in 1969. Marked by the individual songwriting of founders Roger Hodgson (vocals, keyboards, and guitars) and Rick Davies (vocals and keyboards), they are distinguished for blending progressive rock and pop styles as well as for a sound that relied heavily on Wurlitzer electric piano. The group's lineup changed numerous times throughout their career, with Davies being the only consistent member throughout the decades. Other longtime members included bassist Dougie Thomson, drummer Bob Siebenberg, and saxophonist John Helliwell.


title: Supertramp

text: The band were initially a prog-rock group, but starting with their third album, "Crime of the Century" (1974), they began moving towards a more pop-oriented sound. They reached their commercial peak with 1979's "Breakfast in America", which yielded the international top 10 singles "The Logical Song", "Breakfast in America", "Goodbye Stranger", and "Take the Long Way Home". Their other top 40 hits included "Dreamer" (1974), "Give a Little Bit" (1977), and "It's Raining Again" (1982). In 1983, Hodgson left the group to pursue a solo career. Davies took over as the band's sole leader until 1988, after which they disbanded and periodically reformed in various configurations.


title: Supertramp

text: As of 2007, Supertramp album sales exceeded 60 million. They attained significant popularity in North America, Europe, South Africa, and Australia. Their highest sales levels were in Canada, where they had two diamond-certified (ten-times platinum) albums ("Crime of the Century" and "Breakfast in America"), and their only number 1 singles anywhere ("The Logical Song" and "Dreamer").


title: Supertramp

text: In 1969 Stanley "Sam" August Miesegaes, a Dutch millionaire, ceased providing financial support to a band called The Joint, as he was disappointed with them. He offered Swindon-born keyboardist Rick Davies, a former bandmate of Irish singer-songwriter Gilbert O'Sullivan, whose talent he felt had been "bogged down" by the group, an opportunity to form his own band with Miesegaes's financial backing. Davies assembled Roger Hodgson (bass and vocals), Richard Palmer (guitars and vocals), and Keith Baker (percussion) after placing an advertisement in the weekly music newspaper "Melody Maker".


title: Supertramp

text: Davies and Hodgson had radically different backgrounds and musical inspirations: Davies was working class and fiercely devoted to blues and jazz, while Hodgson had gone straight from English private school to the music business and was fond of pop. Despite this, they hit it off during the auditions and began writing virtually all of their songs together, with Palmer as a third writer in the mix. Hodgson and Davies collaborated on the songwriting while Palmer composed the lyrics.


title: Supertramp

text: The group, having dubbed themselves "Daddy", after several months of rehearsal at a country house in West Hythe, Kent, flew to Munich for a series of concerts at the P. N. Club. One 10-minute performance there of "All Along the Watchtower" was filmed by Haro Senft ("Daddy Portrait 1970"). The rehearsals had been less than productive and their initial repertoire consisted of only four songs, two of which were covers.


title: Supertramp

text: In January 1970 Keith Baker left, and to avoid confusion with the similarly named Daddy Longlegs, at Palmer's suggestion, the band changed its name to "Supertramp", a moniker inspired by "The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp" by William Henry Davies.


title: Supertramp

text: In April 1970 Supertramp, while back in Munich, returned the favor to their friend Haro Senft by contributing music to his next film, "Fegefeuer" (a.k.a. "Purgatory"), and would also agree to have tracks from their first album used in a documentary, "Extremes" (1971), by Tony Klinger and Michael Lytton.


title: Supertramp

text: Supertramp were one of the first groups to be signed to the UK branch of A&M Records and their first album, "Supertramp", was released on 14 July 1970 in the UK and Canada (it would not be issued in the US until late 1977). Stylistically, the album was fairly typical of progressive rock of the era. Despite receiving a good deal of critical praise, the album did not attract a large audience.


title: Supertramp

text: Dave Winthrop (flute and saxophone, vocals) had joined the group in March 1970, just after the recording of the first record, and performed with Supertramp at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival on 27 August 1970.


title: Supertramp

text: The membership continued to change in the six months following the album's release: Palmer left the band in December 1970, followed by Millar, who had suffered a nervous breakdown. Palmer, as Richard Palmer-James, went on to work as a lyricist for King Crimson. Palmer was replaced by former The Nice guitarist David O'List, who lasted for only one gig.


title: Supertramp

text: For the next album, "Indelibly Stamped", released in June 1971 in both the UK and US, Frank Farrell (bass, keyboards, backing vocals) and Kevin Currie (percussion) replaced Palmer and Millar, while Hodgson switched to guitar and Davies served as a second lead singer. With Palmer's departure, Hodgson and Davies wrote and composed separately for this and the band's subsequent albums. The record sold even less than their debut. In the aftermath, all members gradually quit except Hodgson and Davies, and Miesegaes withdrew his financial support in October 1972.


title: Supertramp

text: A search for new members brought aboard Dougie Thomson (bass), who had done stand-in gigs with the band since Farrell's departure in February 1972. In 1973 auditions to replace the departed Curry and Winthrop started and introduced Bob Siebenberg (initially credited as Bob C. Benberg; drums and percussion) and John Helliwell (saxophone, other woodwinds, occasional keyboards, synthesizers, backing vocals), completing the lineup in the summer of 1973. Hodgson would also begin introducing compositions featuring keyboards (particularly the Wurlitzer electric piano) in the band in addition to guitar. This lineup of Supertramp would remain in place for the next ten years.


title: Supertramp

text: Meanwhile, the bond between Davies and Hodgson had begun weakening. Hodgson mused, "There's a very deep bond, but it's definitely mostly on a musical level. When there's just the two of us playing together, there's an incredible empathy. His down-to-earth way of writing, which is very rock 'n' roll, balances out my lighter, melodic style." Over Supertramp's history, their relationship would be amicable but increasingly distant as their lifestyles and musical inclinations saw less and less overlap. Their songwriting partnership gradually dissolved; though all of Supertramp's songs would continue to be officially credited as "written by Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson", most of them were written by Davies or Hodgson individually.


title: Supertramp

text: Supertramp needed a hit record to continue working, and finally got one with "Crime of the Century". Released in September 1974, it began the group's run of critical and commercial successes, hitting number 4 in Britain, number 38 in the US, and number 4 in Canada. This album made the top 100 albums in Canada three years in a row in 1974, 1975 and 1976, even though it did not have a Top 40 hit in Canada. "Dreamer", the 1975 UK Top 20 single written by Hodgson, was the band's first hit single and drove the album to the top of the charts. Another single from the record, "Bloody Well Right", hit the US Top 40 in May 1975 and would be their only hit in the country for more than two years. Most of the band have said they feel they hit their artistic peak on this album, though their greatest commercial success would come later.


title: Supertramp

text: In 1975, the band moved to the United States. With a hit album under their belt, pressures on the band increased, and the followup "Crisis? What Crisis?" had to be recorded in the few months between two scheduled concert tours. As a consequence, most of the material consisted of leftover songs from "Crime of the Century", and decades later the band would continue to regard the album as one of their worst moments. Nevertheless, Hodgson said in a 2015 interview that "Crisis? What Crisis?" was his favourite Supertramp album. Despite Supertramp's own misgivings, the album was well received by critics, and when released in November 1975, it broke both the UK Top Twenty and the US Top Fifty in spite of its singles all being commercial flops.


title: Supertramp

text: The following album, "Even in the Quietest Moments...", released in April 1977, spawned a hit single with "Give a Little Bit" (number 15 US, number 29 UK, number 8 in Canada), first written by Hodgson at 19 or 20 years of age before he introduced it to the band for recording five to six years later. As usual, the popularity of the album itself eclipsed that of its singles, and "Even in the Quietest Moments..." hit number 16 in the US, number 12 in the UK, and 1 in Canada. During this period, the band permanently relocated to Los Angeles.


title: Supertramp

text: The band's switch to a more pop-oriented approach peaked with their most popular album, "Breakfast in America". For the last two months of completing the album, Hodgson parked a camper outside of the studio to work diligently on mixing, with brief periods of rest in between. He remembered feeling that "it could be a big album" and that he spent "days and sometimes weeks choosing the right songs and the right order of songs so one song flowed into the next".


title: Supertramp

text: Released in March 1979, "Breakfast in America" reached number 3 in the UK and number 1 in the US and Canada. The album spawned four successful singles (more than their first five albums combined): three of Hodgson's songs, "The Logical Song" (number 1 Canada, number 6 US, number 7 UK), "Take the Long Way Home" (number 4 Canada, number 10 US, not released in UK), and "Breakfast in America" (number 9 UK, not released in the US or Canada) and Davies' "Goodbye Stranger" (number 5 in Canada, number 15 US, number 57 UK).


title: Supertramp

text: To avoid an overly lengthy gap between albums during their hiatus, the band put out 1980's "Paris", a two-LP live album recorded mostly at the Pavillon de Paris. It broke the top ten in both the US and UK. A live version of "Dreamer" was released as a single hitting number 1 in Canada and number 15 in the US, even though the studio version had failed to even chart there in 1974. And a second single from the live album, "Breakfast in America", peaked at number 62 in the US.


title: Supertramp

text: Hodgson moved his family from the Los Angeles area to the mountains of northern California where he built a home and studio and focused on his family and spiritual life, while recording a solo album, initially titled "Sleeping with the Enemy", which would later be released as "In the Eye of the Storm" in 1984. This geographic separation widened the rift between him and the rest of the group; during the conceptualization and recording of their next album, "...Famous Last Words...", Davies and Hodgson found far greater difficulty in reconciling their musical ideas than they had before, and it was apparent to the rest of the band that Hodgson wanted out.


title: Supertramp

text: "...Famous Last Words..." was released in October 1982, and scored two more hits with "It's Raining Again" and "My Kind of Lady". It peaked at no. 5 in the USA and no. 6 in the UK.


title: Supertramp

text: A worldwide tour followed in 1983, in which the band was joined by two additional musicians on stage, former Alice Cooper and Queen player Fred Mandel (guitar, keyboards, synthesizers, backing vocals) and Scott Page (sax, guitar, horns, backing vocals), and Hodgson announced he would not be continuing with the band once the tour finished in September 1983. Hodgson has stated that his departure was motivated by a desire to spend more time with his family and make solo recordings and that there were never any real personal or professional problems between him and Davies, as some people thought.


title: Supertramp

text: The Davies-led Supertramp released "Brother Where You Bound" in May 1985. The album was a deliberate step away from the pop approach of their last two studio albums, and reached no. 20 in the UK charts and no. 21 in the US charts. It included the Top 30 hit single "Cannonball", along with the title track, a 16-minute exposition on Cold War themes highlighted by guitar solos from Pink Floyd's David Gilmour. A 20-minute film of the title track by Rene Daalder was used to promote the album.


title: Supertramp

text: Supertramp mounted a tour in the fall of 1985 through early 1986 that was their first without Hodgson. The lineup included Davies, Thomson, Helliwell, Siebenberg, Scott Page, Marty Walsh (guitar, backing vocals), Carl Verheyen (guitar, percussion, backing vocals) and Mark Hart (vocals, guitar, keyboards). Brad Cole replaced Page during the tour's European leg in early 1986.


title: Supertramp

text: 1987's "Free as a Bird" experimented in heavily synthesised music, such as "I'm Beggin' You", which reached number 1 on the US dance charts. The stylistic change was generally not well-received, however, and the album itself reached only no. 93 in the UK and 101 in the US, breaking a streak of seven consecutive top 100 efforts on the American charts.


title: Supertramp

text: In addition to their shift towards less commercially oriented material, the band members decided to drop all of Hodgson's compositions from their setlist in order to further establish an identity separate from him. However, audiences were angered by the omissions of these songs, and although Supertramp toured in 1985 using only Davies's compositions, in 1988 the pressure from fans and their first tour of South America drove them to reintroduce a handful of Hodgson-penned hits to their set. The band's 1988 touring lineup was almost the same as it had been in '85/'86, but with Brad Cole continuing in place of Scott Page and percussionist Steve Reid instead of guitarist Carl Verheyen.


title: Supertramp

text: After 1988's tour, the group fragmented. Davies later explained, "We'd been out there for about 20 years just recording and touring and it seemed time to have a break with no ideas as to if or when we would come back. We decided not to actually say anything, just sort of fade away like an old soldier."


title: Supertramp

text: On 14 April 1993 at the Beverly Hills Hilton, for a special dinner honoring Jerry Moss, co-founder of A&M Records, Hodgson, Davies, and Helliwell (together with Jeff Daniel) appeared to perform "The Logical Song" and "Goodbye Stranger". After that, Davies and Hodgson began working together again, recording demos of two new songs, "You Win, I Lose" and "And the Light". But disagreements over management prompted them to part ways once again soon after, with both songs eventually appearing, "sans" Hodgson, on Supertramp's next release in 1997.


title: Supertramp

text: In 1996 Davies re-formed Supertramp with Helliwell, Siebenberg and guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Mark Hart, who was new to the official lineup but had prominently contributed to "Free as a Bird" and to the group's tours from 1985 to 1988. Their 1985–86 guitarist, Carl Verheyen, returned as well, along with new bassist Cliff Hugo, horn player Lee Thornburg and former America percussionist Tom Walsh (who was replaced for the band's 1997 tour by Bob Siebenberg's son Jesse, who would also go on to contribute guitar, keyboards and vocals), bringing the band up to an eight-man lineup. The result of this reunion was "Some Things Never Change", a new studio album released in March 1997 that echoed the earlier Supertramp sound and reached number 74 in the UK.


title: Supertramp

text: In the summer of 1997, Supertramp returned to the road, resulting in the live "It Was the Best of Times" (April 1999).


title: Supertramp

text: After a three-year hiatus, Supertramp released in April 2002 a new studio album entitled "Slow Motion", followed by a 2002 world tour entitled "One More for the Road Tour".


title: Supertramp

text: Supertramp continued to play several Hodgson-penned songs during live shows following their reunion. Hodgson subsequently claimed that when he had left the band back in 1983, he and Davies made a verbal agreement that they would not play those songs. Davies has never publicly alluded to such an agreement, and former member Dougie Thomson (who retired from performing to move into music publishing) commented "Nobody except Rick and Roger were privy to that conversation. Rick and Roger had several dialogues that no one else was privy to. Again, that's hearsay." The publishing company and contract legally recognize which songs each songwriter actually wrote. Hodgson has contractual approval rights over the use of his songs and Davies for his.


title: Supertramp

text: After the 2002 "One More for the Road Tour", Supertramp went inactive once again. Another attempt to bring Hodgson back into the band failed in 2005. In 2008, it was announced that Supertramp's music would be featured in the film adaptation of Irvine Welsh's best-selling novel "".


title: Supertramp

text: In 2009 Hodgson said he could not see a Supertramp reunion ever happening: "We've looked at it and talked it over... I would never say never but Rick [Davies] has pretty much retired right now and I'm in the prime of my life. The reaction I am getting from fans is 'please don't reunite'."


title: Supertramp

text: On 21 April 2010 it was announced that Supertramp would perform 35 concerts in late 2010 in Europe. The tour was titled "70-10" to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the group's first release. Hodgson concurrently embarked on a worldwide solo tour, and thus was unable to rejoin the band for the 70-10 tour. However, in response to a fan campaign, Hodgson sent a letter to Rick Davies and had his manager send one to Davies's management, offering to join them for select dates during gaps in his tour schedule. Davies's agent notified Hodgson that his offer was declined.


title: Supertramp

text: When asked whether Hodgson might appear at any Supertramp concerts, Davies replied, "I know there are some fans out there who would like that to happen. There was a time when I had hoped for that too. But the recent past makes that impossible. In order to play a great show for our fans, you need harmony, both musically and personally. Unfortunately that doesn't exist between us anymore and I would rather not destroy memories of more harmonious times between all of us." Hodgson and Supertramp continued to tour separately in 2011. Supertramp performed their last 2011 show on 16 July at "Les Vieilles Charrues" Festival, Carhaix, France.


title: Supertramp

text: The group's lineup for their 2010–11 tours was Davies, Helliwell, Siebenberg, Jesse Siebenberg (now assuming Mark Hart's role on vocals, keyboards and guitar), Cliff Hugo, Carl Verheyen, Lee Thornburg, Gabe Dixon (vocals, keyboards, percussion) and Cassie Miller (backing vocals).


title: Supertramp

text: From July 2011 to 2015, Supertramp went dormant again. Meanwhile, Hodgson toured his "Breakfast in America World Tour" from 2012 onwards. On 25 January 2015 at Cirque Royal in Brussels, Belgium, Hodgson continued his "Breakfast in America World Tour" with a European leg concluding 7 September 2015 at Tempodrom in Berlin, Germany and the North American leg of the tour extending from November in Tarrytown, New York, concluding on 13 December in Halifax, Nova Scotia.


title: Supertramp

text: In 2015 Supertramp announced their first tour in more than four years: a 25-date European tour entitled "Supertramp Forever" set to launch on 3 November 2015 in Porto, Portugal. The tour would include a London show on 7 December at The O2 Arena, and would end on 11 December 2015 at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam, Netherlands. On 4 August 2015, however, the band announced that the tour was cancelled due to health issues affecting Rick Davies, who had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma and required aggressive treatment to combat the disease.


title: Supertramp

text: In late August 2018, Davies gave an interview in which he expressed that, for the most part, he has overcome his health problems and enjoys playing music again, something he couldn't do in 2016, when he was under medical treatment. Davies can also be seen performing a few tracks in a rehearsal/sound check at a bar with some of Supertramp's current members at his side. In the same interview, Rick also stated that Supertramp were unlikely to return as a structured band.


title: Supertramp

text: On 25 June 2019 "The New York Times Magazine" listed Supertramp among hundreds of artists whose material was destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: Empire of the Sun is a 1987 American epic coming-of-age war film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Tom Stoppard, based on J. G. Ballard's semi-autobiographical 1984 novel of the same name. The film tells the story of Jamie "Jim" Graham (Christian Bale), a young boy who goes from living with his wealthy British family in Shanghai to becoming a prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp during World War II.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: Harold Becker and David Lean were originally to direct before Spielberg came on board, initially as a producer for Lean. Spielberg was attracted to directing the film because of a personal connection to Lean's films and World War II topics. He considers it to be his most profound work on "the loss of innocence". The film received positive reviews, but was not initially a box office success, earning only $22 million at the US box office, although it eventually more than recouped its budget through revenues in other markets.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: Amid Japan's invasion of China during World War II, Jamie "Jim" Graham is a British upper middle class schoolboy enjoying a privileged life in the Shanghai International Settlement. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan begins occupying the settlement. As the Graham family evacuate the city, Jamie is separated from his parents in the ensuing chaos. Jamie makes his way back to their house, assuming they will return. After a length of time alone and having eaten the little remaining food, he ventures back into the city.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: Hungry, Jamie tries surrendering to Japanese soldiers, who ignore him. After being chased by a street urchin, he is taken in by two American expatriates and hustlers, Basie and Frank. Unable to sell Jamie for money, they intend to abandon him in the streets, but Jamie offers to lead them to his neighbourhood to loot the empty houses there. Jamie is surprised to see lights on in his family home and thinks his parents have returned, only to discover it is occupied by Japanese troops. The trio are taken prisoner, transported to the Lunghua Civilian Assembly Centre in Shanghai for processing, and ultimately sent to an internment camp in Suzhou.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: It is now 1945, nearing the end of the Pacific War. Despite the terror and poor living conditions of the camp, Jim survives by establishing a successful trading network—which even involves the camp's commander, Sergeant Nagata. Dr Rawlins, the camp's British doctor, becomes a father figure and teacher to Jim. Jim also visits Basie in the American POW barracks, where he idolises the Americans and their culture. One night after a bombing raid, Nagata orders the destruction of the prisoners' infirmary as a reprisal, but stops when Jim eloquently begs forgiveness. Through the barbed wire fencing Jim befriends a Japanese teenager who is a trainee pilot.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: One morning, at dawn, the base is suddenly attacked by a group of American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft. Jim is overjoyed and climbs the ruins of a nearby pagoda to better watch the action.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: Dr Rawlins chases Jim up the pagoda to save him, whereupon the boy breaks down in tears—saying he cannot remember what his parents look like. Dr. Rawlins comforts Jim and carries him down from the pagoda. As a result of the attack the Japanese decide to evacuate the camp. Basie escapes during the confusion. As they leave, Jim's trainee pilot friend goes through the ritual kamikaze preparation and attempts to take off in a Japanese attack plane. The trainee is devastated when the engine sputters and dies.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: The camp prisoners march through the wilderness, where many die from fatigue, starvation and disease. Arriving at a football stadium near Nantao, where many of the Shanghai inhabitants' possessions have been stored by the Japanese, Jim recognises his parents' Packard car. He spends the night there with Mrs Victor, a fellow prisoner who dies shortly thereafter, and later witnesses flashes from the atomic bombing of Nagasaki hundreds of miles away.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: Jim wanders back to the Suzhou camp. Along the way he hears news of Japan's surrender and the war's end. He is reunited with the now-disillusioned Japanese teenager, who remembers Jim and offers him a mango, drawing his guntō to cut it. Basie re-appears with a group of armed Americans to loot the Red Cross containers being airdropped over the area. One of the Americans, thinking Jim is in danger, shoots and kills the Japanese youth. Basie offers to help Jim find his parents but Jim—infuriated over his friend's death—chooses to stay behind.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: Jim is eventually found by American soldiers and placed in an orphanage, where he is reunited with his mother and father, though he does not recognise them at first.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: Warner Bros. purchased the film rights, intending Harold Becker to direct and Robert Shapiro to produce. Tom Stoppard wrote the first draft of the screenplay, on which Ballard briefly collaborated. Becker dropped out, and David Lean came to direct with Spielberg as producer. Lean explained, "I worked on it for about a year and in the end I gave it up because I thought it was too similar to a diary. It was well-written and interesting, but I gave it to Steve." Spielberg felt "from the moment I read J. G. Ballard's novel I secretly wanted to direct myself." Spielberg found the project to be very personal. As a child, his favourite film was Lean's "The Bridge on the River Kwai", which similarly takes place in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. Spielberg's fascination with World War II and the aircraft of that era was stimulated by his father's stories of his experience as a radio operator on North American B-25 Mitchell bombers in the China-Burma Theater. Spielberg hired Menno Meyjes to do an uncredited re-write before Stoppard was brought back to write the shooting script.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: J.G. Ballard felt Bale had a physical resemblance to himself at the same age. The actor was 12 years old when he was cast. Amy Irving, Bale's co-star in the television movie "", recommended Bale to her then-husband, Steven Spielberg, for the role. More than 4,000 child actors auditioned. Jim's singing voice was provided by English performer James Rainbird.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: "Empire of the Sun" was filmed at Elstree Studios in the United Kingdom, and on location in Shanghai and Spain. Principal photography began on 1 March 1987, and lasted for 16 weeks. The filmmakers searched across Asia in an attempt to find locations that resembled 1941 Shanghai. They entered negotiations with Shanghai Film Studios and China Film Co-Production Corporation in 1985. After a year of negotiations, permission was granted for a three-week shoot in early March 1987. It was the first American film shot in Shanghai since the 1940s. The Chinese authorities allowed the crew to alter signs to traditional Chinese characters, as well as closing down city blocks for filming. Over 5,000 local extras were used, some old enough to remember the Japanese occupation of Shanghai 40 years earlier. Members of the People's Liberation Army played Japanese soldiers. Other locations included Trebujena in Andalusia, Knutsford in Cheshire and Sunningdale in Berkshire. Lean often visited the set during the England shoot.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: Spielberg attempted to portray the era accurately, using period vehicles and aircraft. Four Harvard SNJ aircraft were lightly modified in France to resemble Mitsubishi A6M Zero aircraft. Two additional non-flying replicas were used. Three restored P-51D Mustangs, two from 'The Fighter Collection' of England, and one from the 'Old Flying Machine Company', were flown in the film. These P-51s were flown by Ray Hanna (who was featured in the film flying at low-level past the child star with the canopy back, waving), his son Mark and "Hoof" Proudfoot and took over 10 days of filming to complete due to the complexity of the planned aerial sequences, which included the P-51s actually dropping plaster-filled replica 500 lb bombs at low level, with simulated bomb blasts. A number of large scale remote control flying models were also used, including an 18-foot wingspan B-29, but Spielberg felt the results were disappointing, so he extended the film contract with the full-size examples and pilots on set in Trebujena, Spain. J.G. Ballard makes a cameo appearance at the costume party scene.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: Spielberg had wanted to film in Super Panavision 70 but did not want to work with the old camera equipment that was only available at the time.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: Industrial Light & Magic designed the visual effects sequences with some computer-generated imagery also used for the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. Norman Reynolds was hired as the production designer while Vic Armstrong served as the stunt co-ordinator.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: "Empire of the Sun" was given a limited release on 11 December 1987 before being widely released on Christmas Day, 1987. The film earned $22.24 million in North America, and $44.46 million in other countries, accumulating a worldwide total of $66.7 million, earning more than its budget but still considered a box office disappointment by Spielberg.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 76% based on reviews from 59 critics, with an average rating of 6.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "One of Steven Spielberg's most ambitious efforts of the 1980s, "Empire of the Sun" remains an under-rated gem in the director's distinguished filmography." Metacritic calculated an average score of 62 out of 100 based on 22 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: J. G. Ballard gave positive feedback, and was especially impressed with Christian Bale's performance. Critical reaction was not universally affirmative, but Richard Corliss of "Time" stated that Spielberg "has energized each frame with allusive legerdemain and an intelligent density of images and emotions". Janet Maslin from "The New York Times" said Spielberg's movie-conscious spirit gave it "a visual splendor, a heroic adventurousness and an immense scope that make it unforgettable". Julie Salamon of "The Wall Street Journal" wrote that the film was "an edgy, intelligent script by playwright Tom Stoppard, Spielberg has made an extraordinary film out of Mr. Ballard's extraordinary war experience." J. Hoberman from "The Village Voice" decried that the serious subject was undermined by Spielberg's "shamelessly kiddiecentric" approach. Roger Ebert gave a mixed reaction, "Despite the emotional potential in the story, it didn't much move me. Maybe, like the kid, I decided that no world where you can play with airplanes can be all that bad." On his TV show with Gene Siskel, Ebert said that the film "is basically a good idea for a film that never gets off the ground". Siskel added, "I don't know what the film is about. It's so totally confused and taking things from different parts. On one hand, if it wants to say something about a child's-eye view of war, you got a movie made by John Boorman called "Hope and Glory" that was just released that is much better, and much more daring in showing the whimsy that children's view of war is. On the other hand, this film wants to hedge its bet and make it like an adventure film, so you've got like "Indiana Jones" with the John Malkovich character helping the little kid through all the fun of war. I don't know what Spielberg wanted to do."


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: The film won awards from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures for Best Film and Best Director, and Bale received a special citation for Best Performance by a Juvenile Actor, the first National Board award bestowed on a child actor. At the 60th Academy Awards, "Empire of the Sun" was nominated for Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design (Bob Ringwood), Film Editing, Original Music Score, and Sound (Robert Knudson, Don Digirolamo, John Boyd and Tony Dawe). It did not convert any of the nominations into awards. Allen Daviau, who was nominated as cinematographer, publicly complained, "I can't second-guess the Academy, but I feel very sorry that I get nominations and Steven doesn't. It's his vision that makes it all come together, and if Steven wasn't making these films, none of us would be here." The film won awards for cinematography, sound design, and music score at the 42nd British Academy Film Awards. The nominations included production design, costume design, and adapted screenplay. Spielberg was honored for this work by the Directors Guild of America, while the American Society of Cinematographers honored Allen Daviau. "Empire of the Sun" was nominated for Best Motion Picture (Drama) and Original Score at the 45th Golden Globe Awards. John Williams earned a Grammy Award nomination.


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: Jim's growing alienation from his pre-war self and society is reflected in his hero-worship of the Japanese aviators based at the airfield adjoining the camp. "I think it's true that the Japanese were pretty brutal with the Chinese, so I don't have any particularly sentimental view of them," Ballard recalled. "But small boys tend to find their heroes where they can. One thing there was no doubt about, and that was that the Japanese were extremely brave. One had very complicated views about patriotism [and] loyalty to one's own nation. Jim is constantly identifying himself, first with the Japanese; then, when the Americans start flying over in their Mustangs and B-29s, he's very drawn to the American."


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: The apocalyptic wartime setting and the climactic moment when Jim sees the distant white flash of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki gave Spielberg powerful visual metaphors "to draw a parallel story between the death of this boy's innocence and the death of the innocence of the entire world". Spielberg reflected he "was attracted to the idea that this was a death of innocence, not an attenuation of childhood, which by my own admission and everybody's impression of me is what my life has been. This was the opposite of Peter Pan. This was a boy who had grown up too quickly." Other topics that Spielberg previously dealt with, and are presented in "Empire of the Sun", include a child being separated from his parents ("The Sugarland Express", "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Poltergeist") and World War II ("1941", and "Raiders of the Lost Ark"). Spielberg explained "My parents got a divorce when I was 14, 15. The whole thing about separation is something that runs very deep in anyone exposed to divorce."


title: Empire of the Sun (film)

text: The dramatic attack on the Japanese prisoner of war camp carried out by P-51 Mustangs is accompanied by Jim's whoops of "...the Cadillac of the skies!", a phrase believed to be first used in Ballard's text as "Cadillac of air combat". Steven Bull quotes the catchwords in the "Encyclopedia of Military Technology and Innovation" (2004) as originating in 1941. John Williams' soundtrack includes "Cadillac of the Skies" as an individual score cue.


title: Skype

text: Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, debit-based calls to landline and mobile telephones (over traditional telephone networks), and other features. Skype is available on various desktop, mobile, and video game console platforms.


title: Skype

text: Skype was created by Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis, and four Estonian developers and first released in August 2003. In September 2005, eBay acquired Skype for $2.6 billion. In September 2009, Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board bought 65% of Skype for $1.9 billion from eBay, valuing the business at $2.92 billion. In May 2011, Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion and used it to replace their Windows Live Messenger. As of 2011, most of the development team and 44% of all the division's employees were in Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia.


title: Skype

text: Skype originally featured a hybrid peer-to-peer and client–server system. It became entirely powered by Microsoft-operated supernodes in May 2012; in 2017, it changed from a peer-to-peer service to a centralized Azure-based service.


title: Skype

text: As of March 2020, Skype was used by 100 million people at least once a month and by 40 million people each day. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Skype lost a large part of its market share to Zoom.


title: Skype

text: The name for the software is derived from "Sky peer-to-peer", which was then abbreviated to "Skyper". However, some of the domain names associated with "Skyper" were already taken. Dropping the final "r" left the current title "Skype", for which domain names were available.


title: Skype

text: Skype was founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström, from Sweden, and Janus Friis, from Denmark. The Skype software was created by Estonians Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, Jaan Tallinn, and Toivo Annus. Friis and Annus are credited with the idea of reducing the cost of voice calls by using a P2P protocol like that of Kazaa. An early alpha version was created and tested in spring 2003, and the first public beta version was released on 29 August 2003.


title: Skype

text: In June 2005, Skype entered an agreement with the Polish web portal Onet.pl for an integrated offering on the Polish market. On 12 September 2005, eBay Inc. agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA for approximately US$2.5 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock, plus potential performance-based consideration. On 1 September 2009, eBay announced it was selling 65% of Skype to Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board for US$1.9 billion, valuing Skype at US$2.75 billion. On 14 July 2011, Skype partnered with Comcast to bring its video chat service to Comcast subscribers via HDTV sets.


title: Skype

text: On 17 June 2013, Skype released a free video messaging service, which can be operated on Windows, Mac OS, iOS, iPadOS, Android, and BlackBerry.


title: Skype

text: Between 2017 and 2020, Skype collaborated with PayPal to provide a money-send feature. It allowed users to transfer funds via the Skype mobile app in the middle of a conversation.


title: Skype

text: In 2019, Skype was announced to be the sixth most downloaded mobile app of the decade, from 2010 to 2019.


title: Skype

text: On 10 May 2011, Microsoft Corporation acquired Skype Communications, S.à r.l for US$8.5 billion. The company was incorporated as a division of Microsoft, which acquired all its technologies with the purchase. The acquisition was completed on 13 October 2011. Shortly after the acquisition, Microsoft began integrating the Skype service with its own products. Along with taking over the development of existing Skype desktop and mobile apps, the company developed a dedicated client app for its then-newly released, touch-focused Windows 8 and Windows RT operating systems. They were made available from Windows Store when the then-new OS launched on 26 October 2012. The following year, it became the default messaging app for Windows 8.1, replacing the Windows 8 Messaging app at the time, and became pre-installed software on every device that came with or upgraded to 8.1.


title: Skype

text: In a month-long transition from 8 to 30 April 2013, Microsoft discontinued two of its own products in favor of Skype, including its Windows Live Messenger instant messaging service, although Messenger continued to be available in mainland China.


title: Skype

text: On 11 November 2014, Microsoft announced that in 2015, its Lync product would be replaced by Skype for Business. This combined features of Lync and the consumer Skype software. There are two user interfaces, organizations could switch their users between the default Skype for Business interface to the Lync interface.


title: Skype

text: On 12 August 2013, Skype released the 4.10 update to the app for Apple iPhone and iPad that allows HD quality video for iPhone 5 and fourth-generation iPads.


title: Skype

text: On 20 November 2014, Microsoft Office's team announced that a new chat powered by Skype would be implemented in their software, giving tools to be able to chat with co-workers in the same document.


title: Skype

text: On 15 September 2015, Skype announced the release of Mojis, "a brand new way to express yourself on Skype". Mojis are short clips/gifs featuring characters from films and TV shows to be entered into conversations with the same ease as emoticons. They worked with Universal Studios, Disney Muppets, BBC and other studios to add to the available collection of Mojis. Later that year, Gurdeep Singh Pall, Corporate Vice President of Skype, announced that Microsoft had acquired the technology from Talko.


title: Skype

text: In July 2016, Skype introduced an early Alpha version of a new Skype for Linux client, built with WebRTC technology, after several petitions had asked Microsoft to continue development for Linux. In September of that year, Skype updated their iOS app with new features, including an option to call contacts on Skype through Siri voice commands. In October of that year, Microsoft launched Skype for Business for Mac.


title: Skype

text: In February 2017, Microsoft announced plans to discontinue its Skype Wi-Fi service globally. The application was delisted, and the service itself became non-functional from 31 March 2017. On 5 June 2017, Microsoft announced its plans to revamp Skype with similar features to Snapchat, allowing users to share temporary copies of their photos and video files. In late June 2017, Microsoft rolled out their latest update for iOS, incorporating a revamped design and new third-party integrations, with platforms including Gfycat, YouTube, and UpWorthy. It was not well-received, with numerous negative reviews and complaints that the new client broke existing functionality. Skype later removed this "makeover". In December 2017, Microsoft added "Skype Interviews", a shared code editing system for those wishing to hold job interviews for programming roles.


title: Skype

text: Microsoft eventually moved the service from a peer-to-peer to a central server based system, and with it adjusted the user interfaces of apps to make text-based messaging more prominent than voice calling. Skype for Windows, iOS, Android, Mac and Linux all received significant visual overhauls at this time.


title: Skype

text: Registered users of Skype are identified by a unique Skype ID and may be listed in the Skype directory under a Skype username. Skype allows these registered users to communicate through both instant messaging and voice chat. Voice chat allows telephone calls between pairs of users and conference calling and uses proprietary audio codec. Skype's text chat client allows group chats, emoticons, storing chat history, and editing of previous messages. Offline messages were implemented in a beta build of version 5 but removed after a few weeks without notification. The usual features familiar to instant messaging users—user profiles, online status indicators, and so on—are also included.


title: Skype

text: The "Online Number", a.k.a. SkypeIn, service allows Skype users to receive calls on their computers dialed by conventional phone subscribers to a local Skype phone number; local numbers are available for Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Nepal, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A Skype user can have local numbers in any of these countries, with calls to the number charged at the same rate as calls to fixed lines in the country.


title: Skype

text: Skype supports conference calls, video chats, and screen sharing between 25 people at a time for free, which then increased to 50 on 5 April 2019.


title: Skype

text: Skype does not provide the ability to call emergency numbers, such as 112 in Europe, 911 in North America, 999 in the UK or 100 in India and Nepal. However, as of December 2012, there is limited support for emergency calls in the United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark, and Finland. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has ruled that, for the purposes of section 255 of the Telecommunications Act, Skype is not an "interconnected VoIP provider". As a result, the U.S. National Emergency Number Association recommends that all VoIP users have an analog line available as a backup.


title: Skype

text: In 2019, Skype added an option to blur the background in a video chat interface using AI algorithms purely done using software, despite a depth-sensing camera not being present in most webcams.


title: Skype

text: At the end of 2010, there were over 660 million worldwide users, with over 300 million estimated active each month as of August 2015. At one point in February 2012, there were 34 million users concurrently online on Skype.


title: Skype

text: In January 2011, after the release of video calling on the Skype client for iPhone, Skype reached a record 27 million simultaneous online users. This record was broken with 29 million simultaneous online users on 21 February 2011 and again on 28 March 2011 with 30 million online users. On 25 February 2012, Skype announced that it has over 32 million users for the first time ever. By 5 March 2012, it had 36 million simultaneous online users, and less than a year later, on 21 January 2013, Skype had more than 50 million concurrent users online.


title: Skype

text: On 19 July 2012, Microsoft announced that Skype users had logged 115 billion minutes of calls in the quarter, up to 50% since the last quarter.


title: Skype

text: On 15 January 2014, TeleGeography estimated that Skype-to-Skype international traffic has gone up to 36% in 2013 to 214 billion minutes.


title: Skype

text: At end March 2020 there was a 70% increase in the number of daily users from the previous month, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Skype

text: Multiple different versions of Skype have been released for Windows since its conception. The original line of Skype applications continued from versions 1.0 through 4.0. It has offered a desktop-only program since 2003. Later, a mobile version was created for Windows Phones.


title: Skype

text: In 2012, Skype introduced a new version for Windows 8 similar to the Windows Phone version. On 7 July 2015 Skype modified the application to direct Windows users to download the desktop version, but it was set to continue working on Windows RT until October 2016. In November 2015, Skype introduced three new applications, called Messaging, Skype Video, and Phone, intended to provide an integrated Skype experience on Windows 10. On 24 March 2016, Skype announced the integrated applications did not satisfy most users' needs and announced that they and the desktop client would eventually be replaced with a new UWP application, which was released as a preview version for the Windows 10 Anniversary Update and dubbed as the stable version with the release of the Windows 10 Creators Update.


title: Skype

text: The latest version of Skype for Windows is Skype 11, which is based on the Universal Windows Platform and runs on various Windows 10-related systems, including Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Windows phones, and Microsoft Hololens. Microsoft still offers the older Skype 8, which is Win32-based and runs on all systems from Windows XP (which is otherwise unsupported by Microsoft) to the most recent release of Windows 10.


title: Skype

text: In late 2017, this version was upgraded to Skype 12.9 in which several features were both removed and added.


title: Skype

text: Third-party developers, such as Truphone, Nimbuzz, and Fring, previously allowed Skype to run in parallel with several other competing VoIP/IM networks (Truphone and Nimbuzz provide TruphoneOut and NimbuzzOut as a competing paid service) in any Symbian or Java environment. Nimbuzz made Skype available to BlackBerry users and Fring provided mobile video calling over Skype as well as support for the Android platform. Skype disabled access to Skype by Fring users in July 2010. Nimbuzz discontinued support of Skype on request in October 2010.


title: Skype

text: Before and during the Microsoft acquisition, Skype withdrew licensing from several third parties producing software and hardware compatible with Skype. The Skype for Asterisk product from Digium was withdrawn as "no longer available for sale". The Senao SN358+ long-range (10–15 km) cordless phone was discontinued due to loss of licenses to participate in the Skype network as peers. In combination, these two products made it possible to create roaming cordless mesh networks with a robust handoff.


title: Skype

text: Skype uses a proprietary Internet telephony (VoIP) network called the Skype protocol. The protocol has not been made publicly available by Skype, and official applications using the protocol are also proprietary. Part of the Skype technology relies on the Global Index P2P protocol belonging to the Joltid Ltd. corporation. The main difference between Skype and standard VoIP clients is that Skype operates on a peer-to-peer model (originally based on the Kazaa software), rather than the more usual client–server model (note that the very popular Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) model of VoIP is also peer-to-peer, but implementation generally requires registration with a server, as does Skype).


title: Skype

text: On 20 June 2014, Microsoft announced the deprecation of the old Skype protocol. Within several months from this date, in order to continue using Skype services, Skype users will have to update to Skype applications released in 2014. The new Skype protocol, Microsoft Notification Protocol 24, was released. The deprecation became effective in the second week of August 2014. Transferred files are now saved on central servers.


title: Skype

text: As far as networking stack support is concerned, Skype only supports the IPv4 protocol. It lacks support for the next-generation Internet protocol, IPv6. Skype for Business, however, includes support for IPv6 addresses, along with continued support of IPv4.


title: Skype

text: Many networking and security companies have claimed to detect and control Skype's protocol for enterprise and carrier applications. While the specific detection methods used by these companies are often private, Pearson's chi-squared test and naive Bayes classification are two approaches that were published in 2008. Combining statistical measurements of payload properties (such as byte frequencies and initial byte sequences) as well as flow properties (like packet sizes and packet directions) has also shown to be an effective method for identifying Skype's TCP- and UDP-based protocols.


title: Skype

text: Skype 2.x used G.729, Skype 3.2 introduced SVOPC, and Skype 4.0 added a Skype-created codec called :SILK, intended to be "lightweight and embeddable". Additionally, Skype has released Opus as a free codec, which integrates the SILK codec principles for voice transmission with the CELT codec principles for higher-quality audio transmissions, such as live music performances. Opus was submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in September 2010. Since then, it has been standardized as RFC 6716.


title: Skype

text: As of version 7.0, H.264 is used for both group and one-on-one video chat, at standard definition, 720p and 1080p high-definition.


title: Skype

text: Skype acquired the video service Qik in 2011. After shutting down Qik in April 2014, Skype relaunched the service as Skype Qik on 14 October 2014. Although Qik offered video conferencing and Internet streaming, the new service focuses on mobile video messaging between individuals and groups.


title: Skype

text: Skype was claimed initially to be a secure communication, with one of its early web pages stating "highly secure with end-to-end encryption". Security services were invisible to the user, and encryption cannot be disabled. Skype claims to use publicly documented, widely trusted encryption techniques for Skype-to-Skype communication: RSA for key negotiation and the Advanced Encryption Standard to encrypt conversations. However, it is impossible to verify that these algorithms are used correctly, completely, and at all times, as there is no public review possible without a protocol specification and/or the program's source code. Skype provides an uncontrolled registration system for users with no proof of identity. Instead, users may choose a screen name which does not have to relate to their real-life identity in any way; a name chosen could also be an impersonation attempt, where the user claims to be someone else for fraudulent purposes. A third-party paper analyzing the security and methodology of Skype was presented at Black Hat Europe 2006. It analyzed Skype and found a number of security issues with the then-current security model.


title: Skype

text: Skype incorporates some features that tend to hide its traffic, but it is not specifically designed to thwart traffic analysis and therefore does not provide anonymous communication. Some researchers have been able to watermark the traffic so that it is identifiable even after passing through an anonymizing network.


title: Skype

text: In an interview, Kurt Sauer, the Chief Security Officer of Skype, said, "We provide a safe communication option. I will not tell you whether we can listen or not." This does not deny the fact that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) monitors Skype conversations. Skype's client uses an undocumented and proprietary protocol. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is concerned about user privacy issues arising from using proprietary software and protocols and has made a replacement for Skype one of their high-priority projects. Security researchers Biondi and Desclaux have speculated that Skype may have a back door, since Skype sends traffic even when it is turned off and because Skype has taken extreme measures to obfuscate the program's traffic and functioning. Several media sources reported that at a meeting about the "Lawful interception of IP based services" held on 25 June 2008, high-ranking unnamed officials at the Austrian interior ministry said that they could listen in on Skype conversations without problems. Austrian public broadcasting service ORF, citing minutes from the meeting, reported that "the Austrian police are able to listen in on Skype connections". Skype declined to comment on the reports. One easily demonstrated method of monitoring is to set up two computers with the same Skype user ID and password. When a message is typed or a call is received on one computer, the second computer duplicates the audio and text. This requires knowledge of the user ID and password.


title: Skype

text: The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has interpreted the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) as requiring digital phone networks to allow wiretapping if authorized by an FBI warrant, in the same way as other phone services. In February 2009, Skype said that, not being a telephone company owning phone lines, it is exempt from CALEA and similar laws, which regulate US phone companies, and it is not clear whether Skype could support wiretapping even if it wanted to. According to the ACLU, the Act is inconsistent with the original intent of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; more recently, the ACLU has expressed the concern that the FCC interpretation of the Act is incorrect.<ref name="ACLU/FCC"></ref> It has been suggested that Microsoft made changes to Skype's infrastructure to ease various wiretapping requirements; however, Skype denies the claims.


title: Skype

text: Sometime before Skype was sold in 2009, the company had started "Project Chess," a program to explore legal and technical ways to easily share calls with intelligence agencies and law enforcement.


title: Skype

text: On 20 February 2009, the European Union's Eurojust agency announced that the Italian Desk at Eurojust would "play a key role in the coordination and cooperation of the investigations on the use of internet telephony systems (VoIP), such as 'Skype'. [...] The purpose of Eurojust's coordination role is to overcome the technical and judicial obstacles to the interception of internet telephony systems, taking into account the various data protection rules and civil rights."


title: Skype

text: In November 2010, a flaw was disclosed to Skype that showed how computer crackers could secretly track any user's IP address. Due to Skype's peer-to-peer nature, this was a difficult issue to address, but this bug was eventually remedied in a 2016 update.


title: Skype

text: In 2012, Skype introduced automatic updates to better protect users from security risks but received some challenge from users of the Mac product, as the updates cannot be disabled from version 5.6 on, both on Mac OS and Windows versions, although in the latter, and only from version 5.9 on, automatic updating can be turned off in certain cases.


title: Skype

text: According to a 2012 "Washington Post" article, Skype "has expanded its cooperation with law enforcement authorities to make online chats and other user information available to police"; the article additionally mentions Skype made changes to allow authorities access to addresses and credit card numbers.


title: Skype

text: In November 2012, Skype was reported to have handed over user data of a pro-WikiLeaks activist to Dallas, Texas-based private security company iSIGHT Partners without a warrant or court order. The alleged handover would be a breach of Skype's privacy policy. Skype responded with a statement that it launched an internal investigation to probe the breach of user data privacy.


title: Skype

text: On 13 November 2012, a Russian user published a flaw in Skype's security, which allowed any person to take over a Skype account knowing only the victim's email by following seven steps. This vulnerability was claimed to exist for months and existed for more than 12 hours since published widely.


title: Skype

text: On 14 May 2013, it was documented that a URL sent via a Skype instant messaging session was usurped by the Skype service and subsequently used in a HTTP HEAD query originating from an IP address registered to Microsoft in Redmond (the IP address used was 65.52.100.214). The Microsoft query used the full URL supplied in the IM conversation and was generated by a previously undocumented security service. Security experts speculate the action was triggered by a technology similar to Microsoft's SmartScreen Filter used in its browsers.


title: Skype

text: The 2013 mass surveillance disclosures revealed that agencies such as the NSA and the FBI have the ability to eavesdrop on Skype, including the monitoring and storage of text and video calls and file transfers. The PRISM surveillance program, which requires FISA court authorization, reportedly has allowed the NSA unfettered access to its data center supernodes. According to the leaked documents, integration work began in November 2010, but it was not until February 2011 that the company was served with a directive to comply signed by the attorney general, with NSA documents showing that collection began on 31 March 2011.


title: Skype

text: On 10 November 2014, Skype scored 1 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's secure messaging scorecard. Skype received a point for encryption during transit but lost points because communications are not encrypted with a key the provider does not have access to (i.e. the communications are not end-to-end encrypted), users cannot verify contacts' identities, past messages are not secure if the encryption keys are stolen (i.e. the service does not provide forward secrecy), the code is not open to independent review (i.e. not available to merely view, nor under a free-software license), the security design is not properly documented, and there has not been a recent independent security audit. AIM, BlackBerry Messenger, Ebuddy XMS, Hushmail, Kik Messenger, Viber and Yahoo Messenger also scored 1 out of 7 points.


title: Skype

text: Cybersex trafficking has occurred on Skype and other videoconferencing applications. According to the Australian Federal Police, overseas pedophiles are directing child sex abuse using its live streaming services.


title: Skype

text: Since September 2007, users in China trying to download the Skype software client have been redirected to the site of TOM Online, a joint venture between a Chinese wireless operator and Skype, from which a modified Chinese version can be downloaded. The TOM client participates in China's system of Internet censorship, monitoring text messages between Skype users in China as well as messages exchanged with users outside the country. Niklas Zennström, then chief executive of Skype, told reporters that TOM "had implemented a text filter, which is what everyone else in that market is doing. Those are the regulations." He also stated, "One thing that's certain is that those things are in no way jeopardising the privacy or the security of any of the users."


title: Skype

text: In October 2008, it was reported that TOM had been saving the full message contents of some Skype text conversations on its servers, apparently focusing on conversations containing political issues such as Tibet, Falun Gong, Taiwan independence, and the Chinese Communist Party. The saved messages contain personally identifiable information about the message senders and recipients, including IP addresses, usernames, landline phone numbers, and the entire content of the text messages, including the time and date of each message. Information about Skype users outside China who were communicating with a TOM-Skype user was also saved. A server misconfiguration made these log files accessible to the public for a time.


title: Skype

text: Research on the TOM-Skype venture has revealed information about blacklisted keyword checks, allowing censorship and surveillance of its users. The partnership has received much criticism for the latter. Microsoft remains unavailable for comment on the issue.


title: Skype

text: According to reports from the advocacy group Great Fire, Microsoft has modified censorship restrictions and ensured encryption of all user information. Furthermore, Microsoft is now partnered with Guangming Founder (GMF) in China.


title: Skype

text: All attempts to visit the official Skype web page from mainland China redirects the user to skype.gmw.cn. The Linux version of Skype is unavailable.


title: Skype

text: Skype comes bundled with the following locales and languages: Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Nepali, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian and European), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.


title: Skype

text: As the Windows desktop program offers users the option of creating new language files, at least 80 other (full or partial) localizations are also available for many languages.


title: Skype

text: In January 2010, Skype rescinded its policy of seizing funds in Skype accounts that have been inactive (no paid call) for 180 days. This was in settlement of a class-action lawsuit. Skype also paid up to US$4 to persons who opted into the action.


title: Skype

text: As of February 2012, Skype provides support through their web support portal, support community, @skypesupport on Twitter, and Skype Facebook page. Direct contact via email and live chat is available through their web support portal. Chat Support is a premium feature available to Skype Premium and some other paid users.


title: Skype

text: Skype's refund policy states that they will provide refunds in full if customers have used less than 1 euro of their Skype Credit. "Upon a duly submitted request, Skype will refund you on a pro-rata basis for the unused period of a Product".


title: Skype

text: Skype has come under some criticism from users for the inability to completely close accounts. Users not wanting to continue using Skype can make their account inactive by deleting all personal information, except for the username.


title: Skype

text: Due to an outage on 21 September 2015 that affected several users in New Zealand, Australia, and other countries, Skype decided to compensate their customers with 20 minutes of free calls to over 60 landline and 8 mobile phone destinations.


title: Skype

text: Although Skype is a commercial product, its non-paid version is used with increasing frequency among teachers, schools, and charities interested in global education projects. A popular use case is to facilitate language learning through conversations that alternate between each participant's native language.


title: Skype

text: The video conferencing aspect of the software has been praised for its ability to connect students who speak different languages, facilitate virtual field trips, and engage directly with experts.


title: Skype

text: Skype in the classroom is another free-of-charge tool that Skype has set up on its website, designed to encourage teachers to make their classrooms more interactive, and collaborate with other teachers around the world. There are various Skype lessons in which students can participate. Teachers can also use a search tool and find experts in a particular field. The educational program Skype a Scientist, set up by biologist Sarah McAnulty in 2017, had in two years connected 14,312 classrooms with over 7000 volunteer scientists.


title: Skype

text: However, Skype is not adopted universally, with many educational institutions in the United States and Europe blocking the application from their networks.


title: London Bridge

text: Several bridges named London Bridge have spanned the River Thames between the City of London and Southwark, in central London. The current crossing, which opened to traffic in 1973, is a box girder bridge built from concrete and steel. It replaced a 19th-century stone-arched bridge, which in turn superseded a 600-year-old stone-built medieval structure. This was preceded by a succession of timber bridges, the first of which was built by the Roman founders of London.


title: London Bridge

text: The current bridge stands at the western end of the Pool of London and is positioned upstream from previous alignments. The approaches to the medieval bridge were marked by the church of St Magnus-the-Martyr on the northern bank and by Southwark Cathedral on the southern shore. Until Putney Bridge opened in 1729, London Bridge was the only road crossing of the Thames downstream of Kingston upon Thames. London Bridge has been depicted in its several forms, in art, literature, and songs, including the nursery rhyme "London Bridge Is Falling Down", and the epic poem "The Waste Land" by T. S. Eliot.


title: London Bridge

text: The modern bridge is owned and maintained by Bridge House Estates, an independent charity of medieval origin overseen by the City of London Corporation. It carries the A3 road, which is maintained by the Greater London Authority. The crossing also delineates an area along the southern bank of the River Thames, between London Bridge and Tower Bridge, that has been designated as a business improvement district.


title: London Bridge

text: The abutments of modern London Bridge rest several metres above natural embankments of gravel, sand and clay. From the late Neolithic era the southern embankment formed a natural causeway above the surrounding swamp and marsh of the river's estuary; the northern ascended to higher ground at the present site of Cornhill. Between the embankments, the River Thames could have been crossed by ford when the tide was low, or ferry when it was high. Both embankments, particularly the northern, would have offered stable beachheads for boat traffic up and downstream – the Thames and its estuary were a major inland and Continental trade route from at least the 9th century BC.


title: London Bridge

text: There is archaeological evidence for scattered Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement nearby, but until a bridge was built there, London did not exist. A few miles upstream, beyond the river's upper tidal reach, two ancient fords were in use. These were apparently aligned with the course of Watling Street, which led into the heartlands of the Catuvellauni, Britain's most powerful tribe at the time of Caesar's invasion of 54 BC. Some time before Claudius's conquest of AD 43, power shifted to the Trinovantes, who held the region northeast of the Thames Estuary from a capital at Camulodunum, nowadays Colchester in Essex. Claudius imposed a major "colonia" at Camulodunum, and made it the capital city of the new Roman province of Britannia. The first London Bridge was built by the Romans as part of their road-building programme, to help consolidate their conquest.


title: London Bridge

text: It is possible that Roman military engineers built a pontoon type bridge at the site during the conquest period (AD43). A bridge of any kind would have given a rapid overland shortcut to Camulodunum from the southern and Kentish ports, along the Roman roads of Stane Street and Watling Street (now the A2). The Roman roads leading to and from London were probably built around AD50, and the river-crossing was possibly served by a permanent timber bridge. On the relatively high, dry ground at the northern end of the bridge, a small, opportunistic trading and shipping settlement took root and grew into the town of Londinium. A smaller settlement developed at the southern end of the bridge, in the area now known as Southwark. The bridge may have been destroyed along with the town in the Boudican revolt (AD 60), but Londinium was rebuilt and eventually, became the administrative and mercantile capital of Roman Britain. The bridge offered uninterrupted, mass movement of foot, horse, and wheeled traffic across the Thames, linking four major arterial road systems north of the Thames with four to the south. Just downstream of the bridge were substantial quays and depots, convenient to seagoing trade between Britain and the rest of the Roman Empire.


title: London Bridge

text: With the end of Roman rule in Britain in the early 5th century, Londinium was gradually abandoned and the bridge fell into disrepair. In the Anglo-Saxon period, the river became a boundary between the emergent, mutually hostile kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex. By the late 9th century, Danish invasions prompted at least a partial reoccupation of the site by the Saxons. The bridge may have been rebuilt by Alfred the Great soon after the Battle of Edington as part of Alfred's redevelopment of the area in his system of burhs, or it may have been rebuilt around 990 under the Saxon king Æthelred the Unready to hasten his troop movements against Sweyn Forkbeard, father of Cnut the Great. A skaldic tradition describes the bridge's destruction in 1014 by Æthelred's ally Olaf, to divide the Danish forces who held both the walled City of London and Southwark. The earliest contemporary written reference to a Saxon bridge is c.1016 when chroniclers mention how Cnut's ships bypassed the crossing, during his war to regain the throne from Edmund Ironside.


title: London Bridge

text: Following the Norman conquest in 1066, King William I rebuilt the bridge. It was repaired or replaced by King William II, destroyed by fire in 1136, and rebuilt in the reign of Stephen. Henry II created a monastic guild, the "Brethren of the Bridge", to oversee all work on London Bridge. In 1163, Peter of Colechurch, chaplain and warden of the bridge and its brethren, supervised the bridge's last rebuilding in timber.


title: London Bridge

text: After the murder of his former friend and later opponent Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, the penitent King Henry II commissioned a new stone bridge in place of the old, with a chapel at its centre dedicated to Becket as martyr. The archbishop had been a native Londoner, born at Cheapside, and a popular figure. The Chapel of St Thomas on the Bridge became the official start of pilgrimage to his Canterbury shrine; it was grander than some town parish churches, and had an additional river-level entrance for fishermen and ferrymen. Building work began in 1176, supervised by Peter of Colechurch. The costs would have been enormous; Henry's attempt to meet them with taxes on wool and sheepskins probably gave rise to a later legend that London Bridge was built on wool packs. In 1202, before Colechurch's death, Isembert, a French monk who was renowned as a bridge builder, was appointed by King John to complete the project. Construction was not finished until 1209. There were houses on the bridge from the start; this was a normal way of paying for the maintenance of a bridge, though in this case it had to be supplemented by other rents and by tolls. From 1282 two bridge wardens were responsible for maintaining the bridge, heading the organization known as the Bridge House. The only two collapses occurred when maintenance had been neglected, in 1281 (five arches) and 1437 (two arches). In 1212, perhaps the greatest of the early fires of London broke out, spreading as far as the chapel and trapping many people.


title: London Bridge

text: The bridge was about 926 feet (282 metres) long, and had nineteen piers linked by nineteen arches and a wooden drawbridge. There were 'starlings' around the piers to protect them (they had deeper piles than the piers themselves). The bridge, including the part occupied by houses, was from 20 to 24 feet wide (6.1–7.3 metres). The roadway was mostly around 15 feet wide (4.6 metres), varying from about 14 feet to 16 feet, except that it was narrower at defensive features (the stone gate, the drawbridge and the drawbridge tower) and wider south of the stone gate. The houses occupied only a few feet on each side of the bridge. They received their main support either from the piers, which extended well beyond the bridge itself from west to east, or from 'hammer beams' laid from pier to pier parallel to the bridge. It was the length of the piers which made it possible to build quite large houses, up to 34 feet deep (10.4 metres).


title: London Bridge

text: The numerous starlings restricted the river's tidal ebb and flow. The difference in water levels on the two sides of the bridge could be as much as , producing ferocious rapids between the piers resembling a weir. Only the brave or foolhardy attempted to "shoot the bridge" – steer a boat between the starlings when in flood – and some were drowned in the attempt. The bridge was "for wise men to pass over, and for fools to pass under." The restricted flow also meant that in hard winters the river upstream was more susceptible to freezing.


title: London Bridge

text: The number of houses on the bridge reached its maximum in the late fourteenth century, when there were 140. Subsequently many of the houses, originally only 10 to 11 feet wide, were merged, so that by 1605 there were 91. Originally they are likely to have had only two storeys, but they were gradually enlarged. In the seventeenth century, when there are detailed descriptions of them, almost all had four or five storeys (counting the garrets as a storey); three houses had six storeys. Two-thirds of the houses were rebuilt from 1477 to 1548. In the seventeenth century, the usual plan was a shop on the ground floor, a hall and often a chamber on the first floor, a kitchen and usually a chamber and a waterhouse (for hauling up water in buckets) on the second floor, and chambers and garrets above. Approximately every other house shared in a 'cross building' above the roadway, linking the houses either side and extending from the first floor upwards.


title: London Bridge

text: All the houses were shops, and the bridge was one of the City of London's four or five main shopping streets. There seems to have been a deliberate attempt to attract the more prestigious trades. In the late fourteenth century more than four-fifths of the shopkeepers were haberdashers, glovers, cutlers, bowyers and fletchers or from related trades. By 1600 all of these had dwindled except the haberdashers, and the spaces were filled by additional haberdashers, by traders selling textiles and by grocers. From the late seventeenth century there was a greater variety of trades, including metalworkers such as pinmakers and needle makers, sellers of durable goods such as trunks and brushes, booksellers and stationers.


title: London Bridge

text: The three major buildings on the bridge were the chapel, the drawbridge tower and the stone gate, all of which seem to have been present soon after the bridge's construction. The chapel was last rebuilt in 1387–1396, by Henry Yevele, master mason to the king. Following the Reformation, it was converted into a house in 1553. The drawbridge tower was where the severed heads of traitors were exhibited. The drawbridge ceased to be opened in the 1470s and in 1577–1579 the tower was replaced by Nonsuch House—despite the name, a pair of magnificent houses. Its architect was Lewis Stockett, Surveyor of the Queen’s Works, who gave it the second classical facade in London (after Somerset House in the Strand). The stone gate was last rebuilt in the 1470s, and later took over the function of displaying the heads of traitors. The heads were dipped in tar and boiled to preserve them against the elements, and were impaled on pikes. The head of William Wallace was the first recorded as appearing, in 1305, starting a long tradition. Other famous heads on pikes included those of Jack Cade in 1450, Thomas More in 1535, Bishop John Fisher in the same year, and Thomas Cromwell in 1540. In 1598, a German visitor to London, Paul Hentzner, counted over 30 heads on the bridge:


title: London Bridge

text: The last head was installed in 1661; subsequently heads were placed on Temple Bar instead, until the practice ceased.


title: London Bridge

text: There were two multi-seated public latrines, but they seem to have been at the two ends of the bridge, possibly on the riverbank. The one at the north end had two entrances in 1306. in 1481, one of the latrines fell into the Thames and five men were drowned. Neither of the latrines is recorded after 1591.


title: London Bridge

text: In 1578–1582 a Dutchman, Peter Morris, created a waterworks at the north end of the bridge. Water wheels under the two northernmost arches drove pumps that raised water to the top of a tower, from which wooden pipes conveyed it into the city. In 1591 water wheels were installed at the south end of the bridge to grind corn.


title: London Bridge

text: In 1633 fire destroyed the houses on the northern part of the bridge. The gap was only partly filled by new houses, with the result that there was a firebreak that prevented the Great Fire of London (1666) spreading to the rest of the bridge and to Southwark. The Great Fire destroyed the bridge's waterwheels, preventing them from pumping water to fight the fire.


title: London Bridge

text: For nearly twenty years only sheds replaced the burnt buildings. They were replaced In the 1680s, when almost all the houses on the bridge were rebuilt. The roadway was widened to 20 feet (6.1 metres) by setting the houses further back and was increased in height from one storey to two. The new houses extended further back over the river, which was to cause trouble later. In 1695 the bridge had 551 inhabitants. From 1670 attempts were made to keep traffic in each direction to one side, at first through a keep-right policy and from 1722 through a keep-left policy. This has been suggested as one possible origin for the practice of traffic in Britain driving on the left.


title: London Bridge

text: A fire in September 1725 destroyed all the houses south of the stone gate; they were rebuilt. The last houses to be built on the bridge were designed by George Dance the Elder in 1745, but these buildings had begun to subside within a decade. In 1756, the London Bridge Act gave the City Corporation the power to purchase all the properties on the bridge so that they could be demolished and the bridge improved. While this work was underway, a temporary wooden bridge was constructed to the west of London Bridge. It opened in October 1757 but caught fire and collapsed in the following April. The old bridge was reopened until a new wooden construction could be completed a year later. To help improve navigation under the bridge, its two centre arches were replaced by a single wider span, the Great Arch, in 1759.


title: London Bridge

text: Demolition of the houses was completed in 1761 and the last tenant departed after some 550 years of housing on the bridge. Under the supervision of Dance the Elder, the roadway was widened to and a balustrade was added "in the Gothic taste" together with fourteen stone alcoves for pedestrians to shelter in. However, the creation of the Great Arch had weakened the rest of the structure and constant expensive repairs were required in the following decades; this, combined with congestion both on and under bridge, often leading to fatal accidents, resulted in public pressure for a modern replacement.


title: London Bridge

text: In 1799, a competition was opened to design a replacement for the medieval bridge. Entrants included Thomas Telford; he proposed a single iron arch span of , with centre clearance beneath it for masted river traffic. His design was accepted as safe and practicable, following expert testimony. Preliminary surveys and works were begun, but Telford's design required exceptionally wide approaches and the extensive use of multiple, steeply inclined planes, which would have required the purchase and demolition of valuable adjacent properties.


title: London Bridge

text: A more conventional design of five stone arches, by John Rennie, was chosen instead. It was built west (upstream) of the original site by Jolliffe and Banks of Merstham, Surrey, under the supervision of Rennie's son. Work began in 1824 and the foundation stone was laid, in the southern coffer dam, on 15 June 1825.


title: London Bridge

text: The old bridge continued in use while the new bridge was being built, and was demolished after the latter opened in 1831. New approach roads had to be built, which cost three times as much as the bridge itself. The total costs, around £2.5 million (£ in ), were shared by the British Government and the Corporation of London.


title: London Bridge

text: Rennie's bridge was long and wide, constructed from Haytor granite. The official opening took place on 1 August 1831; King William IV and Queen Adelaide attended a banquet in a pavilion erected on the bridge. The northern approach road, King William Street, was renamed after the monarch.


title: London Bridge

text: In 1896 the bridge was the busiest point in London, and one of its most congested; 8,000 pedestrians and 900 vehicles crossed every hour. It was widened by , using granite corbels. Subsequent surveys showed that the bridge was sinking an inch (about 2.5 cm) every eight years, and by 1924 the east side had sunk some three to four inches (about 9 cm) lower than the west side. The bridge would have to be removed and replaced.


title: London Bridge

text: Common Council of the City of London member Ivan Luckin put forward the idea of selling the bridge, and recalled: "They all thought I was completely crazy when I suggested we should sell London Bridge when it needed replacing." Subsequently, in 1968, Council placed the bridge on the market and began to look for potential buyers. On 18 April 1968, Rennie's bridge was purchased by the Missourian entrepreneur Robert P. McCulloch of McCulloch Oil for US$2,460,000. The claim that McCulloch believed mistakenly that he was buying the more impressive Tower Bridge was denied by Luckin in a newspaper interview. Before the bridge was taken apart, each granite facing block was marked for later reassembly. The blocks were taken to Merrivale Quarry at Princetown in Devon, where 15 to 20 cm (6 to 8 inches) were sliced off the inner faces of many, to facilitate their fixing. (Stones left behind were sold in an online auction when the quarry was abandoned and flooded in 2003.) 10,000 tons of granite blocks were shipped via the Panama Canal to California, then trucked from Long Beach to Arizona. They were used to face a new, purpose-built hollow core steel-reinforced concrete structure, ensuring the bridge would support the weight of modern traffic. The bridge was reconstructed by Sundt Construction at Lake Havasu City, Arizona, and was re-dedicated on 10 October 1971 in a ceremony attended by London’s Lord Mayor and celebrities. The bridge carries the McCulloch Boulevard and spans the Bridgewater Channel, an artificial, navigable waterway that leads from the Uptown area of Lake Havasu City.


title: London Bridge

text: The current London Bridge was designed by architect Lord Holford and engineers Mott, Hay and Anderson. It was constructed by contractors John Mowlem and Co from 1967 to 1972,


title: London Bridge

text: and opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 16 March 1973. It comprises three spans of prestressed-concrete box girders, a total of long. The cost of £4 million (£ in ), was met entirely by the Bridge House Estates charity. The current bridge was built in the same location as Rennie's bridge, with the previous bridge remaining in use while the first two girders were constructed upstream and downstream. Traffic was then transferred onto the two new girders, and the previous bridge demolished to allow the final two central girders to be added.


title: London Bridge

text: In 1984, the British warship HMS "Jupiter" collided with London Bridge, causing significant damage to both the ship and the bridge.


title: London Bridge

text: On Remembrance Day 2004, several bridges in London were furnished with red lighting as part of a night-time flight along the river by wartime aircraft. London Bridge was the one bridge not subsequently stripped of the illuminations, which are regularly switched on at night.


title: London Bridge

text: The current London Bridge is often shown in films, news and documentaries showing the throng of commuters journeying to work into the City from London Bridge Station (south to north). An example of this is actor Hugh Grant crossing the bridge north to south during the morning rush hour, in the 2002 film "About a Boy".


title: London Bridge

text: On 11 July 2009, as part of the annual Lord Mayor's charity appeal and to mark the 800th anniversary of Old London Bridge's completion in the reign of King John, the Lord Mayor and Freemen of the City drove a flock of sheep across the bridge, supposedly by ancient right.


title: London Bridge

text: In a terrorist attack on 3 June 2017, three pedestrians on the bridge were driven into with a van and killed. Altogether, eight people died and 48 were injured in the attack. Security barriers were installed on the bridge to help isolate the pedestrian pavement from the road.


title: London Bridge

text: The nearest London Underground stations are Monument, at the northern end of the bridge, and London Bridge at the southern end. London Bridge station is also served by National Rail.


title: Galatasaray S.K. (football)

text: Galatasaray Spor Kulübü (, "Galatasaray Sports Club"), also known as Galatasaray AŞ in UEFA competitions, is a Turkish professional football club based on the European side of the city of Istanbul in Turkey. It is the association football branch of the larger Galatasaray Sports Club of the same name, itself a part of the Galatasaray Community Cooperation Committee which includes Galatasaray High School where the football club was founded in October 1905 consisting entirely of student members. The team traditionally play in dark shades of red and yellow at home, with the shirts split down the middle between the two colours.


title: Galatasaray S.K. (football)

text: Galatasaray is one of three teams to have participated in all seasons of the Süper Lig since 1959, following the dissolution of the Istanbul Football League.


title: Galatasaray S.K. (football)

text: Galatasaray also has accumulated the most Süper Lig (22), Turkish Cup (18) and Turkish Super Cup (16) titles in Turkey, thus making them the most decorated football club in Turkey, as those competitions are the top nationwide Turkish professional leagues and cups that are recognized and accounted for in accordance to the regulations set by the Turkish Football Federation and UEFA.


title: Galatasaray S.K. (football)

text: Internationally, Galatasaray has won the UEFA Cup and UEFA Super Cup in 2000, becoming the first and only Turkish team to win a major UEFA competition. In the 1999–2000 season, the club achieved the rare feat of completing a treble by winning the Süper Lig, the Turkish Cup, and the UEFA Cup in a single season. Galatasaray is also the only Turkish club to have been ranked first on the IFFHS World Rankings. According to the same international organization, Galatasaray is the best Turkish club of the 20th century, and the 60th most successful club in Europe.


title: Galatasaray S.K. (football)

text: Since 2011, the club's stadium is the 52,280-capacity Nef Stadium in Seyrantepe, Istanbul. Previously, the club played at the Ali Sami Yen Stadium, as well as a succession of other grounds in Istanbul, which included groundshares with Beşiktaş and Fenerbahçe at the Taksim Stadium and İnönü Stadium.


title: Galatasaray S.K. (football)

text: As a result of the team's 20th championship for the 2014–15 Süper Lig season, their crest hereafter contains four stars representing their 20 championships for the league; each star corresponds to five of the team's championships. Making them the first and only Turkish club to have achieved such a feat, thereby officially being the club with most stars on their logo in Turkey.


title: Galatasaray S.K. (football)

text: The club has a long-standing rivalry with Istanbul teams, namely with Beşiktaş and Fenerbahçe. The derby between Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe is dubbed the "Kıtalar Arası Derbi" () due to the location of their headquarters and stadiums on the European (Galatasaray) and Asian (Fenerbahçe) sides of the Bosphorus strait in Istanbul.


title: Galatasaray S.K. (football)

text: Galatasaray SK was founded in October 1905 (the exact day is disputed, but is traditionally accepted as "17 Teşrinievvel 1321" according to the Rumi calendar, which corresponds to "30 October 1905" according to the Gregorian calendar) by Ali Sami Yen and other students of Galatasaray High School (a high school in Istanbul which was established in 1481) as a football club. Ali Sami Yen became Galatasaray SK's first president and was given the club's membership number "1". The team's first match was against Cadi-Keuy FC and Galatasaray won this match with a score of 2–0. There were discussions about the club's name, in which some suggested "Gloria" (victory) and others "Audace" (courage), but it was decided that its name would be Galatasaray.


title: Galatasaray S.K. (football)

text: In addition to Ali Sami Yen (Club member No. 1), who was the driving force behind the club's foundation, Asim Tevfik Sonumut (2), Emin Bülent Serdaroğlu (3), Celal İbrahim (4), Boris Nikolov (5), Milo Bakić (6), Pavle Bakić (7), Bekir Sıtkı Bircan (8), Tahsin Nihat (9), Reşat Şirvanizade (10), Hüseyin Hüsnü (11), Refik Cevdet Kalpakçıoğlu (12) and Abidin Daver (13) were also involved in the decision to organize such a club.


title: Galatasaray S.K. (football)

text: The name Galatasaray itself comes from that of Galatasaray High School, which in turn takes its name from Galata Sarayı Enderûn-u Hümâyûn (Galata Palace Imperial School), the name of the original school founded on the site in 1481, and which in turn took its name from the nearby medieval Genoese citadel of Galata (the modern quarter of Karaköy) in the Beyoğlu (Pera) district of Istanbul. Galatasaray literally means "Galata palace".


title: Galatasaray S.K. (football)

text: According to researcher Cem Atabeyoğlu, Galatasaray took its name from one of its first matches. In that match, Galatasaray won 2–0 over a local Greek club, and the spectators called them ""Galata Sarayı efendileri"" (English: "Gentlemen of Galata Palace"), and, after this incident, they adopted that name and started to call their club "Galata Sarayı". In 1905, during the era of the Ottoman Empire, there were no laws for associations so the club could not be registered officially, but, after the 1912 Law of Association, the club registered legally.


title: Galatasaray S.K. (football)

text: Since there weren't any other Turkish teams, Galatasaray joined the Istanbul League that was consisting of English and Greek teams in the season of 1905–1906. With their first championship title they won in 1908–1909, they heralded the beginning of Turkish football history.


title: Galatasaray S.K. (football)

text: While football in Turkey began to fully develop, Galatasaray won ten more "Istanbul League" titles until 1952. Upon the initiation of professional football in 1952, the first professional but non-national league of Turkey, "Istanbul Professional League", was played between 1952 and 1959. Galatasaray won three of these seven titles.


title: Galatasaray S.K. (football)

text: "Türkiye Profesyonel 1. Ligi" (Turkish Super League today) formed in 1959. This is the top-flight professional league in Turkish nationwide football, and the most popular sporting competition in the country. Galatasaray joined all seasons and won 22 league titles since then.


title: Galatasaray S.K. (football)

text: The Turkish Football Federation began organizing the Turkish Cup (today it is organized with the name Ziraat Turkish Cup) in the 1962–63 season for Turkish clubs to qualify for the UEFA competitions. This is the only national cup competition in Turkey. Galatasaray joined all seasons and won 16 trophies since then.