title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Percy took the land route across Boston Neck and over the Great Bridge, which some quick-thinking colonists had stripped of its planking to delay the British. His men then came upon an absent-minded tutor at Harvard College and asked him which road would take them to Lexington. The Harvard man, apparently oblivious to the reality of what was happening around him, showed him the proper road without thinking. (He was later compelled to leave the country for inadvertently supporting the enemy.) Percy's troops arrived in Lexington at about 2:00 p.m. They could hear gunfire in the distance as they set up their cannon and deployed lines of regulars on high ground with commanding views of the town. Colonel Smith's men approached like a fleeing mob with the full complement of colonial militia in close formation pursuing them. Percy ordered his artillery to open fire at extreme range, dispersing the colonial militiamen. Smith's men collapsed with exhaustion once they reached the safety of Percy's lines.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Against the advice of his Master of Ordnance, Percy had left Boston without spare ammunition for his men or for the two artillery pieces they brought with them, thinking the extra wagons would slow him down. Each man in Percy's brigade had only 36 rounds, and each artillery piece was supplied with only a few rounds carried in side-boxes. After Percy had left the city, Gage directed two ammunition wagons guarded by one officer and thirteen men to follow. This convoy was intercepted by a small party of older, veteran militiamen still on the "alarm list", who could not join their militia companies because they were well over 60 years of age. These men rose up in ambush and demanded the surrender of the wagons, but the regulars ignored them and drove their horses on. The old men opened fire, shot the lead horses, killed two sergeants, and wounded the officer. The British survivors ran, and six of them threw their weapons into a pond before they surrendered.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Percy assumed control of the combined forces of about 1,700 men and let them rest, eat, drink, and have their wounds tended at field headquarters (Munroe Tavern) before resuming the march. They set out from Lexington at about 3:30 p.m., in a formation that emphasized defense along the sides and rear of the column. Wounded regulars rode on the cannon and were forced to hop off when they were fired at by gatherings of militia. Percy's men were often surrounded, but they had the tactical advantage of interior lines. Percy could shift his units more easily to where they were needed, while the colonial militia was required to move around the outside of his formation. Percy placed Smith's men in the middle of the column, while the 23rd Regiment's line companies made up the column's rearguard. Because of information provided by Smith and Pitcairn about how the Americans were attacking, Percy ordered the rear guard to be rotated every mile or so, to allow some of his troops to rest briefly. Flanking companies were sent to both sides of the road, and a powerful force of Marines acted as the vanguard to clear the road ahead.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: During the respite at Lexington, Brigadier General William Heath arrived and took command of the militia. Earlier in the day, he had traveled first to Watertown to discuss tactics with Joseph Warren, who had left Boston that morning, and other members of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety. Heath and Warren reacted to Percy's artillery and flankers by ordering the militiamen to avoid close formations that would attract cannon fire. Instead, they surrounded Percy's marching square with a moving ring of skirmishers at a distance to inflict maximum casualties at minimum risk.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: A few mounted militiamen on the road would dismount, fire muskets at the approaching regulars, then remount and gallop ahead to repeat the tactic. The unmounted militia would often fire from long range, in the hope of hitting somebody in the main column of soldiers on the road and surviving, since both British and colonials used muskets with an effective combat range of about . Infantry units would apply pressure to the sides of the British column. When it moved out of range, those units would move around and forward to re-engage the column further down the road. Heath sent messengers out to intercept arriving militia units, directing them to appropriate places along the road to engage the regulars. Some towns sent supply wagons to assist in feeding and rearming the militia. Heath and Warren did lead skirmishers in small actions into battle themselves, but it was the presence of effective leadership that probably had the greatest impact on the success of these tactics.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The fighting grew more intense as Percy's forces crossed from Lexington into Menotomy. Fresh militia poured gunfire into the British ranks from a distance, and individual homeowners began to fight from their own property. Marksmen were also concealed in some homes, forcing the British to clear their path of retreat house by house, a soldier's nightmare. Jason Russell pleaded for his friends to fight alongside him to defend his house by saying, "An Englishman's home is his castle." He stayed and was killed in his doorway. His friends, depending on which account is to be believed, either hid in the cellar or died in the house from bullets and bayonets after shooting at the soldiers who followed them in. The Jason Russell House still stands and contains bullet holes from this fight. A militia unit that attempted an ambush from Russell's orchard was caught by flankers, and eleven men were killed, some allegedly after they had surrendered.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Percy lost control of his men, and many regulars began to commit atrocities to repay for the supposed scalping at the North Bridge and for their own casualties at the hands of a distant, often unseen enemy. Based on the word of Pitcairn and other wounded officers from Smith's command, Percy had learned that the Minutemen were using stone walls, trees and buildings in these more thickly settled towns closer to Boston to hide behind and shoot at the column. He ordered the flank companies to clear the colonial militiamen out of such places.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Many of the junior officers in the flank parties had difficulty stopping their exhausted, enraged men from killing everyone they found inside these buildings. For example, two innocent drunks who refused to hide in the basement of a tavern in Menotomy were killed only because they were suspected of being involved with the day's events. Although many of the accounts of ransacking and burnings were exaggerated later by the colonists for propaganda value (and to get financial compensation from the colonial government), it is certainly true that taverns along the road were ransacked and the liquor stolen by the troops, who in some cases became drunk themselves. One church's communion silver was stolen but was later recovered after it was sold in Boston. Aged Menotomy resident Samuel Whittemore killed three regulars before he was attacked by a British contingent and left for dead. (He recovered from his wounds and later died in 1793 at age 98.) All told, far more blood was shed in Menotomy and Cambridge than elsewhere that day. The colonists lost 25 men killed and nine wounded there, and the British lost 40 killed and 80 wounded, with the 47th Foot and the Marines suffering the highest casualties. Each was about half the day's fatalities.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The British troops crossed the Menotomy River (today known as Alewife Brook) into Cambridge, and the fight grew more intense. Fresh militia arrived in close array instead of in a scattered formation, and Percy used his two artillery pieces and flankers at a crossroads called Watson's Corner to inflict heavy damage on them.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Earlier in the day, Heath had ordered the Great Bridge to be dismantled. Percy's brigade was about to approach the broken-down bridge and a riverbank filled with militia when Percy directed his troops down a narrow track (now Beech Street, near present-day Porter Square) and onto the road to Charlestown. The militia (now numbering about 4,000) were unprepared for this movement, and the circle of fire was broken. An American force moved to occupy Prospect Hill (in modern-day Somerville), which dominated the road, but Percy moved his cannon to the front and dispersed them with his last rounds of ammunition.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: A large militia force arrived from Salem and Marblehead. They might have cut off Percy's route to Charlestown, but these men halted on nearby Winter Hill and allowed the British to escape. Some accused the commander of this force, Colonel Timothy Pickering, of permitting the troops to pass because he still hoped to avoid war by preventing a total defeat of the regulars. Pickering later claimed that he had stopped on Heath's orders, but Heath denied this. It was nearly dark when Pitcairn's Marines defended a final attack on Percy's rear as they entered Charlestown. The regulars took up strong positions on the hills of Charlestown. Some of them had been without sleep for two days and had marched in 21 hours, eight hours of which had been spent under fire. But now they held high ground protected by heavy guns from HMS "Somerset". Gage quickly sent over line companies of two fresh regiments—the 10th and 64th—to occupy the high ground in Charlestown and build fortifications. Although they were begun, the fortifications were never completed and would later be a starting point for the militia works built two months later in June before the Battle of Bunker Hill. General Heath studied the position of the British Army and decided to withdraw the militia to Cambridge.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: In the morning, Boston was surrounded by a huge militia army, numbering over 15,000, which had marched from throughout New England. Unlike the Powder Alarm, the rumors of spilled blood were true, and the Revolutionary War had begun. Now under the leadership of General Artemas Ward, who arrived on the 20th and replaced Brigadier General William Heath, they formed a siege line extending from Chelsea, around the peninsulas of Boston and Charlestown, to Roxbury, effectively surrounding Boston on three sides. In the days immediately following, the size of the colonial forces grew, as militias from New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut arrived on the scene. The Second Continental Congress adopted these men into the beginnings of the Continental Army. Even now, after open warfare had started, Gage still refused to impose martial law in Boston. He persuaded the town's selectmen to surrender all private weapons in return for promising that any inhabitant could leave town.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The battle was not a major one in terms of tactics or casualties. However, in terms of supporting the British political strategy behind the Intolerable Acts and the military strategy behind the Powder Alarms, the battle was a significant failure because the expedition contributed to the fighting it was intended to prevent, and because few weapons were actually seized.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The battle was followed by a war for British political opinion. Within four days of the battle, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had collected scores of sworn testimonies from militiamen and from British prisoners. When word leaked out a week after the battle that Gage was sending his official description of events to London, the Provincial Congress sent a packet of these detailed depositions, signed by over 100 participants in the events, on a faster ship. The documents were presented to a sympathetic official and printed by the London newspapers two weeks before Gage's report arrived. Gage's official report was too vague on particulars to influence anyone's opinion. George Germain, no friend of the colonists, wrote, "the Bostonians are in the right to make the King's troops the aggressors and claim a victory". Politicians in London tended to blame Gage for the conflict instead of their own policies and instructions. The British troops in Boston variously blamed General Gage and Colonel Smith for the failures at Lexington and Concord.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The day after the battle, John Adams left his home in Braintree to ride along the battlefields. He became convinced that "the Die was cast, the Rubicon crossed". Thomas Paine in Philadelphia had previously thought of the argument between the colonies and the Home Country as "a kind of law-suit", but after news of the battle reached him, he "rejected the hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh of England forever". George Washington received the news at Mount Vernon and wrote to a friend, "the once-happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched in blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice?" A group of hunters on the frontier named their campsite Lexington when they heard news of the battle in June. It eventually became the city of Lexington, Kentucky.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: It was important to the early American government that an image of British fault and American innocence be maintained for this first battle of the war. The history of Patriot preparations, intelligence, warning signals, and uncertainty about the first shot was rarely discussed in the public sphere for decades. The story of the wounded British soldier at the North Bridge, "hors de combat", struck down on the head by a Minuteman using a hatchet, the purported "scalping", was strongly suppressed. Depositions mentioning some of these activities were not published and were returned to the participants (this notably happened to Paul Revere). Paintings portrayed the Lexington fight as an unjustified slaughter.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The issue of which side was to blame grew during the early nineteenth century. For example, older participants' testimony in later life about Lexington and Concord differed greatly from their depositions taken under oath in 1775. All now said the British fired first at Lexington, whereas fifty or so years before, they weren't sure. All now said they fired back, but in 1775, they said few were able to. The "Battle" took on an almost mythical quality in the American consciousness. Legend became more important than truth. A complete shift occurred, and the Patriots were portrayed as actively fighting for their cause, rather than as suffering innocents. Paintings of the Lexington skirmish began to portray the militia standing and fighting back in defiance.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Ralph Waldo Emerson immortalized the events at the North Bridge in his 1837 "Concord Hymn". The "Concord Hymn" became important because it commemorated the beginning of the American Revolution, and that for much of the 19th century it was a means by which Americans learned about the Revolution, helping to forge the identity of the nation.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: After 1860, several generations of schoolchildren memorized Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Paul Revere's Ride". Historically it is inaccurate (for example, Paul Revere never made it to Concord), but it captures the idea that an individual can change the course of history.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: In the 20th century, popular and historical opinion varied about the events of the historic day, often reflecting the political mood of the time. Isolationist anti-war sentiments before the World Wars bred skepticism about the nature of Paul Revere's contribution (if any) to the efforts to rouse the militia. Anglophilia in the United States after the turn of the twentieth century led to more balanced approaches to the history of the battle. During World War I, a film about Paul Revere's ride was seized under the Espionage Act of 1917 for promoting discord between the United States and Britain.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: During the Cold War, Revere was used not only as a patriotic symbol, but also as a capitalist one. In 1961, novelist Howard Fast published "April Morning", an account of the battle from a fictional 15-year-old's perspective, and reading of the book has been frequently assigned in American secondary schools. A film version was produced for television in 1987, starring Chad Lowe and Tommy Lee Jones. In the 1990s, parallels were drawn between American tactics in the Vietnam War and those of the British Army at Lexington and Concord.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The site of the battle in Lexington is now known as the Lexington Battle Green. It has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a National Historic Landmark. Several memorials commemorating the battle have been established there.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The lands surrounding the North Bridge in Concord, as well as approximately of the road along with surrounding lands and period buildings between Meriam's Corner and western Lexington are part of Minute Man National Historical Park. There are walking trails with interpretive displays along routes that the colonists might have used that skirted the road, and the Park Service often has personnel (usually dressed in period dress) offering descriptions of the area and explanations of the events of the day. A bronze bas relief of Major Buttrick, designed by Daniel Chester French and executed by Edmond Thomas Quinn in 1915, is in the park, along with French's "Minute Man" statue. The American Battlefield Trust and its partners have saved one acre of the battlefield at the site of Parker's Revenge.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Four current units of the Massachusetts National Guard units (181st Infantry, 182nd Infantry, 101st Engineer Battalion, and 125th Quartermaster Company) are derived from American units that participated in the Battles of Lexington and Concord. There are only thirty current units of the U.S. Army with colonial roots.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Several ships of the United States Navy, including two World War II aircraft carriers, were named in honor of the Battle of Lexington.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Patriots' Day, an observed legal holiday is celebrated annually in honor of the battle in Massachusetts. It is recognized by that state, as well as by Connecticut, Maine, and by the Wisconsin public schools, on the third Monday in April. Re-enactments of Paul Revere's ride are staged, as are the battle on the Lexington Green, and ceremonies and firings are held at the North Bridge.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: On April 19, 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant and members of his cabinet joined 50,000 people to mark the 100th anniversary of the battles. The sculpture by Daniel Chester French, "The Minute Man", located at the North Bridge, was unveiled on that day. A formal ball took place in the evening at the Agricultural Hall in Concord.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: In April 1925, the United States Post Office issued three stamps commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Battles at Lexington and Concord. The Lexington—Concord commemorative stamps were the first of many commemoratives issued to honor the 150th anniversaries of events that surrounded America's War of Independence. The three stamps were first placed on sale in Washington, D.C. and in five Massachusetts cities and towns that played major roles in the Lexington and Concord story: Lexington, Concord, Boston, Cambridge, and Concord Junction (as West Concord was then known). This is not to say that other locations were not involved in the battles.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The Town of Concord invited 700 prominent U.S. citizens and leaders from the worlds of government, the military, the diplomatic corps, the arts, sciences, and humanities to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the battles. On April 19, 1975, as a crowd estimated at 110,000 gathered to view a parade and celebrate the Bicentennial in Concord, President Gerald Ford delivered a major speech near the North Bridge, which was televised to the nation.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: President Ford laid a wreath at the base of "The Minute Man" statue and then respectfully observed as Sir Peter Ramsbotham, the British Ambassador to the United States, laid a wreath at the grave of British soldiers killed in the battle.


title: Roddy Ricch

text: Rodrick Wayne Moore Jr. (born October 22, 1998), known professionally as Roddy Ricch, is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. He rose to fame in 2018 with his single, "Die Young", which peaked at number 98 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. Ricch's first two mixtapes, "Feed Tha Streets" (2017) and "Feed Tha Streets II" (2018), also received widespread acclaim. In 2019, Ricch was featured alongside Hit-Boy on Nipsey Hussle's single, "Racks in the Middle", which earned him a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance, and on Mustard's Grammy-nominated single "Ballin'", which reached the top 20 of the Hot 100.


title: Roddy Ricch

text: Ricch's debut studio album, "Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial", was released through Atlantic Records and Bird Vision Entertainment on December 6, 2019, and debuted atop the "Billboard" 200, becoming his first chart-topping album. It spawned the Hot 100 number-one single "The Box", which earned him a diamond certification by the RIAA, as well as the top ten single "High Fashion", which features Mustard. Later in 2020, Ricch's feature on DaBaby's single, "Rockstar", became his second number-one single on the Hot 100. His second studio album, "Live Life Fast", was released on December 17, 2021.


title: Roddy Ricch

text: Ricch has won several accolades, including a Grammy Award from nine different nominations, as well as two BET Awards, two BET Hip Hop Awards, and an American Music Award.


title: Roddy Ricch

text: Rodrick Wayne Moore Jr. was born on October 22, 1998, in Compton, California. Moore grew up in a Christian household. He attended Compton High School. Moore started rapping as young as eight, and at the age of twelve, performed for at-the-time rising artist and fellow Compton native, Kendrick Lamar. He began making beats in earnest at age 16. In Compton, Moore was a member of the Park Village Compton Crips, and has two "C"s tattooed, symbolizing his previous affiliation with the gang. He also had a brief stint in county jail at the time when his second commercial mixtape, "Feed Tha Streets II", was released. Moore listened to Lil Wayne growing up, as well as Young Thug, Future, and Meek Mill.


title: Roddy Ricch

text: On November 22, 2017, Ricch released his debut commercial mixtape, "Feed Tha Streets", which is also his first project. It featured songs like "Chase tha Bag", "HoodRicch", and "Fucc It Up". The tape earned him praise from established rappers, such as Meek Mill, Nipsey Hussle, and 03 Greedo, as well as established record producer Mustard.


title: Roddy Ricch

text: In March 2018, Ricch released his unofficial debut extended play, "Be 4 Tha Fame". In May of the same year, American rapper Nipsey Hussle brought Ricch out as his special guest at a PowerHouse concert in Los Angeles. On July 20, Ricch released the single, "Die Young", the lead single from his second commercial mixtape, "Feed Tha Streets II". Ricch had written the song for a childhood friend, who was lost in a high-speed chase and said in a Genius interview he had written it the night that fellow American rapper XXXTentacion had died from being shot on June 18. The song—which was dedicated, in part, to the childhood friend and its music video would go on to accumulate over 80 million views on YouTube and 120 million streams on Spotify. On September 27, 2018, he released the single "Ricch Forever". In October, American rapper Meek Mill brought Ricch out as his special guest at a PowerHouse concert in Philadelphia, in which he also gifted Ricch a "Dreamchasers" chain for appearing on his fourth studio album, "Championships", in which he was co-featured alongside fellow American rappers Future and Young Thug on the song "Splash Warning", which was released a few weeks later on November 30. On October 28, Ricch released the single, "Every Season", as the second single from "Feed Tha Streets II". He released the mixtape on November 2. The album, which features the singles "Die Young" and "Every Season", peaked at number 67 on the "Billboard" 200 chart and at number 36 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. On December 7, 2018, Ricch released a collaboration with American DJ and record producer Marshmello, titled "Project Dreams".


title: Roddy Ricch

text: On February 15, 2019, Ricch was featured alongside American record producer Hit-Boy on American rapper Nipsey Hussle's single, "Racks in the Middle". and earning him a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance. Exactly one month later, on March 15, he was featured alongside fellow American rapper Tyga on the remix of American rapper Post Malone's 2018 single, "Wow". On May 31, Ricch released the single, "Out Tha Mud". On June 28, he released a collaboration with American record producer Mustard on the single, "Ballin'", as part of the latter's third studio album, "Perfect Ten". The song received a nomination for Best Rap/Sung Performance at the 2020 Grammy Awards.


title: Roddy Ricch

text: On October 11, 2019, Ricch released the single, "Big Stepper", which serves the lead single of his debut studio album, "Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial". Two weeks later, on October 25, he released the album's second single, "Start wit Me", which features fellow American rapper Gunna. Exactly one month later, on November 25, he released the album's third single "Tip Toe", which features fellow American rapper A Boogie wit da Hoodie. The album was released on December 6, 2019. It also features guest appearances from Lil Durk, Meek Mill, Mustard, and Ty Dolla Sign. The album debuted atop the "Billboard" 200 and spent four non-consecutive weeks on the chart, which became the longest running number one debut rap album in the US since 2003. The album contained Ricch's highest-charting single, "The Box", which was later released as the fourth single from the album on January 10, 2020, and topped the "Billboard" Hot 100 the following week, remaining there for eleven weeks. "High Fashion", which features Mustard, was released as the fifth single from the album on May 19, 2020.


title: Roddy Ricch

text: On January 27, 2020, Ricch was featured on Meek Mill's single, "Letter to Nipsey", an ode to the now-late Nipsey Hussle. He was also co-featured alongside Gunna and American record producer London on da Track on A Boogie wit da Hoodie's single, "Numbers", from the latter's third studio album, "Artist 2.0", which was released on February 14, 2020. He then appeared on American rapper NLE Choppa's single, "Walk Em Down", which was released on March 19, 2020, and appeared on the latter's debut studio album, "Top Shotta". On April 17, 2020, Ricch was featured on American rapper DaBaby's single, "Rockstar", from the latter's third studio album, "Blame It on Baby", which became his second number-one single on the "Billboard" Hot 100, spending seven weeks on top, as well as reaching number one in the UK, and in several other countries. Ricch became the first artist to achieve his first two number-one singles in the same year since English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran did it in 2017. Ricch won Album of the Year at the 2020 BET Awards. He has spent eighteen cumulative weeks atop the Hot 100 so far, the most for any artist in 2020. On July 3, Ricch was featured alongside fellow American rapper 50 Cent on late fellow American rapper Pop Smoke's posthumous single "The Woo", from Smoke's debut studio album, "Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon". On August 27, Ricch appeared on fellow American rapper Cordae's single, "Gifted", a bonus track from the latter's second studio album, "From a Birds Eye View" (2022). On September 30, Ricch collaborated with American record label Internet Money and American singer and rapper Don Toliver on the remix of the latter two's top-10 single, "Lemonade", which the original song is also a collaboration with Gunna and features Canadian rapper Nav; the remix appeared on the complete edition of the label's debut studio album, "B4 the Storm".


title: Roddy Ricch

text: During an interview with "GQ", Ricch revealed that his second studio album is completed, however, he said that he is waiting for the right time to release it. Ricch called the album "a full-blown masterpiece. A real idea. A real body of work". On November 24, 2020, he teased towards a potential upcoming project titled "Love Is Barely Real Anymore". Ricch tied with Canadian singer the Weeknd as the most nominated artists at the 2020 American Music Awards, both with eight nominations. He received six nominations at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, including for Song of the Year and Record of the Year for "The Box" and "Rockstar", respectively. "Variety" named him Breakthrough Artist of 2020, and Apple Music awarded him Album and Song of the Year in 2020, with "Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial" and "The Box" respectively being the most-streamed album and song of the year globally on the platform. He was ranked third on the "Billboard" Year-End chart for Top Artists.


title: Roddy Ricch

text: On March 14, 2021, Ricch officially released a live performance of an unreleased song called "Heartless", which he debuted at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards. On April 2, Ricch released a collaboration with fellow American rapper 42 Dugg, titled "4 Da Gang", which appeared as the lead single from the latter's commercial mixtape, "Free Dem Boyz". Ricch was also co-featured alongside American singer and rapper Bryson Tiller and American rapper Lil Baby on DJ Khaled's single, "Body in Motion", from the latter's self-titled twelfth studio album, "Khaled Khaled", which was released on April 30. On May 21, Ricch released a collaboration with fellow American rapper Birdman, titled "Stunnaman", which features American rapper Lil Wayne, on May 21. On June 4, Ricch released the single, "Late at Night", the lead single from his second studio album, "Live Life Fast". Ricch also released a collaboration with fellow American rapper Bino Rideaux, titled "Lemme Find Out", on October 1. On December 3, Ricch also joined Gunna and Future on a remix of their single, "Too Easy", which appeared on Gunna's debut studio album, "DS4Ever".


title: Roddy Ricch

text: On September 14, Ricch posted a story to Instagram, in which he revealed the album title. He used the album title again on social media posts a couple days later. On November 30, in preparation for the release of the album, Ricch deleted all his previous posts from Instagram and announced the release date and revealed its cover art the following day. The album was released on December 17. features guest appearances from Future, Kodak Black, 21 Savage, Takeoff, Jamie Foxx, Ty Dolla Sign, Alex Isley, Fivio Foreign, Lil Baby, and Gunna. On May 12, 2022, Ricch was featured on Post Malone's single, "Cooped Up", which appeared on the latter's fourth studio album, "Twelve Carat Toothache".


title: Roddy Ricch

text: In August 2019, Ricch was arrested for felony domestic violence after he allegedly physically assaulted his girlfriend, American model and businesswoman Allie Minati, at his Los Angeles home. Ricch was booked at 5:40 a.m. PT and later released on a $50,000 bond. All charges were later dropped by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office due to insufficient evidence. In April 2020, Minati gave birth to their son.


title: Roddy Ricch

text: On February 21, 2021, a shooting occurred at Ricch and fellow American rapper 42 Dugg's music video shoot for their collaborative single, "4 Da Gang", which left three people injured in Atlanta, Georgia. American rapper OMB Peezy was later charged in connection with the shooting with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. Ricch and Dugg were unharmed. All three injured survived.


title: Roddy Ricch

text: On June 11, 2022, Ricch was arrested on weapons charges after him and members of his crew were stopped at a security checkpoint near Citi Field, where law enforcement found a loaded firearm, additional ammunition, and a large-capacity magazine. Ricch has been charged with criminal possession of a weapon, possession of a large capacity ammunition feeding device, and unlawful possession of an ammunition feeding device.


title: Roddy Ricch

text: On the transcending themes of his music, Ricch draws inspiration from his life, stating: "As I experience life, my music is gonna evolve. At the same time, I still do tell the stories from my world because there are unlimited stories and unlimited people from that place. I'll always represent them. As my life begins to change and I do different things, I still want to be able to tap in and relate to them". Cady Lang of "Time" magazine noted Ricch's "remarkable musical style as a rapper combines his West Coast [hip hop] roots with the sound of trap music and Chicago drill rap, which gets an extra gravitas with his lyrics that range from pondering the tough realities of life to bouts of uninhibited bravado". Ricch has been recognized for his raspy voice "that works wonders with vocal filters". Paul Thompson of "Vulture" called Ricch "an undeniably talented vocalist and occasionally a compelling songwriter", opining how he "frequently adopts the same syntax and vocal intonations as Young Thug". His music style blends rapping and singing. Ricch has cited Kendrick Lamar, who is also from his hometown of Compton, as a musical influence. He has stated that rapper Speaker Knockerz is his biggest influence, along with the "basis" of his music coming from him. Ricch also credits Young Thug, Future, and Gucci Mane as influences.


title: Ed Wood

text: In the 1950s, Wood directed several low-budget science fiction, crime and horror films that later became cult classics, notably "Glen or Glenda" (1953), "Jail Bait" (1954), "Bride of the Monster" (1955), "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (1957) and "Night of the Ghouls" (1959). In the 1960s and 1970s, he moved towards sexploitation and pornographic films such as "The Sinister Urge" (1960), "Orgy of the Dead" (1965) and "Necromania" (1971), and wrote over 80 lurid pulp crime and sex novels.


title: Ed Wood

text: Notable for their campy aesthetics, technical errors, unsophisticated special effects, use of poorly-matched stock footage, eccentric casts, idiosyncratic stories and non sequitur dialogue, Wood's films remained largely obscure until he was posthumously awarded a Golden Turkey Award for Worst Director of All Time in 1980, renewing public interest in his life and work.


title: Ed Wood

text: Following the publication of Rudolph Grey's 1992 oral biography "Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood Jr.", a biopic of his life, "Ed Wood" (1994), was directed by Tim Burton. Starring Johnny Depp as Wood and Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi, the film received critical acclaim and various awards, including two Academy Awards.


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood's father, Edward Sr., worked for the United States Post Office Department as a custodian, and his family relocated numerous times around the United States. Eventually, they settled in Poughkeepsie, New York, where Ed Wood Jr. was born in 1924. According to Wood's second wife, Kathy O'Hara, Wood's mother Lillian would dress him in girl's clothing when he was a child because she had always wanted a daughter (Ed only had one brother, several years younger than himself). For the rest of his life, Wood crossdressed, infatuated with the feel of angora on his skin.


title: Ed Wood

text: During his childhood, Wood was interested in the performing arts and pulp fiction. He collected comic books and pulp magazines, and adored movies, especially Westerns, serials, and the occult. Buck Jones and Bela Lugosi were two of his earliest childhood idols. He often skipped school in order to watch motion pictures at the local movie theater, where stills from last week's films would often be thrown into the trash by theater staff, allowing Wood to salvage the images, and to add to his extensive collection.


title: Ed Wood

text: On his 12th birthday, in 1936, Wood received as a gift his first movie camera, a Kodak "Cine Special". One of his first pieces of footage, and one that imbued him with pride, showed the airship "Hindenburg" passing over the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, shortly before its disastrous crash at Lakehurst, New Jersey. One of Wood's first paid jobs was as a cinema usher, and he also sang and played drums in a band. Subsequently, he formed a quartet called "Eddie Wood's Little Splinters" in which he sang and played multiple stringed instruments.


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1942, Wood enlisted at age 17 in the United States Marine Corps, just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Assigned to the 2nd Defense Battalion, he reached the rank of corporal before he was discharged in 1946 at age 21. Although Wood reportedly claimed to have faced strenuous combat, including having his front teeth knocked out by a Japanese soldier, his military records reveal that to be false; apart from recovering bodies on Betio following the Battle of Tarawa, and experiencing minor Japanese bombing raids on Betio and the Ellice Islands, a recurring filariasis infection left him performing clerical work for the remainder of his enlistment. His dental extractions were carried out over several months by Navy dentists, unconnected to any combat. Wood had false teeth that he would slip out from his mouth when he wanted to make his wife Kathy laugh, showing her a big toothless grin. Wood later claimed that he feared being wounded in battle more than he feared being killed, mainly because he was afraid a combat medic would discover him wearing a pink bra and panties under his uniform during the Battle of Tarawa.


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1947, Wood moved to Hollywood, California, where he wrote scripts and directed television pilots, commercials and several forgotten micro-budget westerns, most of which failed to sell. In 1948, Wood wrote, produced, directed, and starred in "The Casual Company", a play derived from his own unpublished novel which was based on his service in the United States Marine Corps. It opened at the Village Playhouse to negative reviews on October 25. That same year, he wrote and directed a low-budget western called "Crossroads of Laredo" with the aid of a young producer he met named Crawford John Thomas. The film was shot silent and was not completed during Wood's lifetime.


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1949, Wood and Thomas acted together in a play called "The Blackguard Returns" at the Gateway Theatre (Wood played the Sheriff and Thomas was the villain). Wood joined the Screen Actors Guild in 1951, and worked very briefly as a stuntman among other things. When writing, Wood used a number of different pen names, including Ann Gora (in reference to Angora, his favorite female textile) and Akdov Telmig (the backwards spelling of his favorite drink, the vodka gimlet).


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1952, Wood was introduced to actor Bela Lugosi by friend and fellow writer-producer Alex Gordon (Wood's roommate at the time who was later involved in creating American International Pictures). Lugosi's son, Bela Lugosi Jr., has been among those who felt Wood exploited the senior Lugosi's stardom, taking advantage of the fading actor when he could not afford to refuse any work. However, most documents and interviews with other Wood associates in "Nightmare of Ecstasy" suggest that Wood and Lugosi were genuine friends and that Wood helped Lugosi through the worst days of his clinical depression and drug addiction. Lugosi had become dependent on morphine as a way of controlling his debilitating sciatica over the years, and was in a poor mental state caused by his recent divorce.


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1953, Wood wrote and directed the semi-documentary film "Glen or Glenda" (originally titled "I Changed My Sex!") with producer George Weiss. The film starred Wood (under the alias "Daniel Davis") as a transvestite, his girlfriend Dolores Fuller, Timothy Farrell, Lyle Talbot, Conrad Brooks and Bela Lugosi as the god-like narrator/scientist. Fuller was shocked when she learned soon afterward that Wood actually "was" a transvestite.


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1953, Wood wrote and directed a stage show for Lugosi called "The Bela Lugosi Review" (a take-off on "Dracula") that was put on at the Silver Slipper in Las Vegas. When Lugosi appeared on the TV show "You Asked For It" that same year, he announced that Ed Wood was producing a "Dr. Acula" TV show for him, but it never materialized. Wood acted as Lugosi's dialogue coach when he guest-starred on "The Red Skelton Show" in 1954, alongside Lon Chaney Jr. and Vampira (aka Maila Nurmi).


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood co-produced and directed a crime film, "Jail Bait" (1954, originally titled "The Hidden Face"), along with his co-writer/ roommate Alex Gordon, which starred Herbert Rawlinson (as the plastic surgeon), Lyle Talbot, Dolores Fuller, Timothy Farrell, Theodora Thurman and Steve Reeves (in one of his first acting jobs). Bela Lugosi was supposed to play the lead role of the plastic surgeon, but was busy with another project when filming started and had to bow out. His replacement, Herbert Rawlinson, died the day after he filmed his scenes. Distributor Ron Ormond changed the title from "The Hidden Face" to "Jail Bait" just before releasing it.


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood produced and directed the horror film "Bride of the Monster" (1955, originally titled "Bride of the Atom" or "The Monster of the Marshes"), based on an original story idea by Alex Gordon which he had originally called "The Atomic Monster". It starred Bela Lugosi as the mad scientist, Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson as mute manservant "Lobo", Paul Marco, Billy Benedict ("Whitey" of "The Bowery Boys"), Harvey B. Dunn and Loretta King. Soon after the film was completed, Bela Lugosi committed himself to the Norwalk State Hospital for three months, to be treated for drug addiction. The film premiered on May 11, 1955, at the Paramount theater in Hollywood while Lugosi was institutionalized, but a special screening was arranged for him upon his release, pleasing him greatly.


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1956, Wood wrote the screenplay (uncredited) for the film "The Violent Years" (originally titled "Teenage Girl Gang"), which was directed by William M. Morgan, starring "Playboy" model Jean Moorhead, Timothy Farrell, and serial star I. Stanford Jolley (as a judge).


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood began filming a juvenile delinquency film called "Rock and Roll Hell" (a.k.a. "Hellborn") in 1956, but producer George Weiss pulled the plug on the project after only ten minutes of footage had been completed. Wood's friend Conrad Brooks purchased the footage from Weiss, and some scenes were later incorporated as stock footage into Wood's later "Night of the Ghouls" (1959). (The entire ten minutes of footage was later released complete on VHS in 1993, as "Hellborn".)


title: Ed Wood

text: In late 1956, Wood co-produced, wrote, and directed his science fiction opus "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (his screenplay was originally titled "Grave Robbers from Outer Space"), which featured Bela Lugosi in a small role. (Lugosi actually died in August 1956 before production even began but Wood inserted some footage into the film that he had previously shot of Lugosi in 1955–1956). The film also starred Tor Johnson, Vampira (Maila Nurmi), Tom Mason (who doubled for Lugosi in some scenes), and the Amazing Criswell as the film's narrator. "Plan 9" premiered on March 15, 1957, at the Carlton Theatre in Hollywood, and later went into general release in July 1959 (retitled "Plan Nine from Outer Space") in Texas and a number of other Southern states. It was finally sold to late night television in 1961, thereby finding its audience over the years. It became Wood's best-known film and received a cult following in 1980 when Michael Medved declared this film "the worst film ever made" in his book "The Golden Turkey Awards".


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1957 Wood wrote and directed a pilot for a suspense-horror TV series to be called "Portraits in Terror" that ultimately failed to sell. The pilot, entitled "Final Curtain", sees an old and world-weary actor wandering in an empty theatre, imagining ghosts and a living mannequin haunting the backstage area, until a la "The Twilight Zone", he realizes that he himself is dead. The episode has no dialogue, and Dudley Manlove narrates the thoughts of Duke Moore as the actor. Bela Lugosi would've starred in this short film had he lived. Parts of the unsold pilot were later recycled for use in Wood's "Night of the Ghouls" (1959). The episode was thought to be lost until a complete print was located circa 2010. It was remastered and given its first ever cinema showing in a theater in February 2012. Today it is widely available online and on DVD.


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1958, Wood wrote, produced, and directed "Night of the Ghouls" (originally titled "Revenge of the Dead"), starring Kenne Duncan, Tor Johnson (reprising his role as "Lobo" from "Bride of the Monster"), Criswell, Duke Moore, and Valda Hansen. The film premiered at the Vista Theatre in Hollywood on a double bill with the Lana Turner movie "Imitation of Life" on March 17, 1959, and then promptly vanished from circulation. For many years, it was thought to be a lost film, but distribution of the film was held up for 25 years because Wood hadn't paid the lab bill. Video producer Wade Williams paid the bill and released the film on videocassette in 1984, copyrighting the film in his name.


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1958, Wood also wrote the screenplay for "The Bride and the Beast" (1958), which was directed by Adrian Weiss. Wood's screenplay was based on Adrian Weiss' plot.


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood also wrote the screenplay (as "Peter LaRoche") for a 1959 "nudie cutie" film called "Revenge of the Virgins", which was directed by Peter Perry Jr.


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood wrote and directed the exploitation film "The Sinister Urge" (1960), starring Kenne Duncan, Duke Moore, Dino Fantini, Harvey B. Dunn and Carl Anthony. Filmed in just five days, this is the last mainstream film Wood directed, although it has grindhouse elements. The film contains an "eerily prescient" scene, in which Carl Anthony's character states, "I look at this slush, and I try to remember, at one time, I made good movies". The scenes of the teenagers at the pizzeria had been previously shot in 1956 for Wood's unfinished juvenile delinquency film, "Rock and Roll Hell" (a.k.a. "Hellborn"), which Wood never completed.


title: Ed Wood

text: Also in 1960, Wood wrote the screenplay for "The Peeper", which he intended as a direct sequel to his 1960 film "The Sinister Urge", but it was never produced.


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood also contributed to the plot of Jane Mann's 1961 screenplay "Anatomy of a Psycho". The film was directed by Mann's husband Boris Petroff.


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1963, Wood wrote the screenplay for "Shotgun Wedding" (an exploitation film directed by Boris Petroff about hillbillies marrying child brides in the Ozarks). Wood wrote the screenplay from a story idea by Jane Mann. Wood's friend, cameraman William C. Thompson, died around this time.


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood's 1965 transitional film "Orgy of the Dead" (originally titled "Nudie Ghoulies") combined the horror and grindhouse skin-flick genres. Wood handled various production details while Stephen C. Apostolof directed under the pseudonym A. C. Stephen. The film begins with a recreation of the opening scene from "Night of the Ghouls". Criswell, wearing one of Lugosi's old capes, rises from his coffin to deliver an introduction taken almost word-for-word from the previous film. Set in a misty graveyard, the Lord of the Dead (Criswell) and his sexy consort, the Black Ghoul (a Vampira look-alike), preside over a series of macabre performances by topless dancers from beyond the grave (recruited by Wood from local strip clubs). The film also features a Wolf Man and a Mummy. Together, Wood and Apostolof went on to make a string of sexploitation films up to 1977. Wood co-wrote the screenplays with Apostolof and occasionally even acted in some of the films.


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1969, Wood appeared in "The Photographer" (a.k.a. "Love Feast" or "Pretty Models All in a Row"), the first of two films produced by a Marine buddy, Joseph F. Robertson, with Wood portraying a photographer using his position to engage in sexual antics with his models.


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood had a smaller role in Robertson's second film, "Mrs. Stone's Thing" (1970), as a transvestite who spends his time at a party trying on lingerie in a bedroom.


title: Ed Wood

text: "Venus Flytrap" (1970) aka "The Revenge of Dr. X", a US/Japanese co-production, was based on an unproduced Ed Wood screenplay from the 1950s. The film was produced and directed by Sci-Fi pulp writer Norman Earl Thomson. The film involves a mad scientist who uses lightning to transform plants into man-eating monsters. Wood did not participate in the actual making of the movie.


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1970, Wood wrote and directed his own pornographic film, "Take It Out in Trade", starring Duke Moore and Nona Carver. Wood played a transvestite named Alecia in the film.


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1970, Wood produced a 45 rpm record which featured Tor Johnson on one side, reading "The Day The Mummy Returned", and Criswell reading "The Final Curtain" on the other. It has never been determined whether or not the record was actually released, but a bunch of them were definitely produced.


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1971, he produced, wrote and directed "Necromania" (subtitled "A Tale of Weird Love") under the pseudonym "Don Miller". The film was an early entry to the new subgenre of hardcore pornographic films. Thought lost for years, it resurfaced in edited form on Mike Vraney's Something Weird imprint in the late 1980s, and was re-released later on DVD by Fleshbot Films in 2005. In the Rudolph Grey biography "Nightmare of Ecstasy", Maila Nurmi ("Vampira") said she declined Wood's offer to do a nude scene sitting in a coffin for "Necromania", claiming she was recovering from a stroke at the time.


title: Ed Wood

text: From 1971 to 1972, Wood directed an unknown number of short X-Rated films produced by the Swedish Erotica film company. These were short 12-minute loops that were silent films with subtitles. Ed was paid $100.00 for every ten loops he subtitled.


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood's friends Kenne Duncan and Tor Johnson both passed away during this period. (Ed Wood was named executor of Kenne Duncan's estate, and following Duncan's death, Wood held a small memorial funeral for him with his wife and some friends in his backyard around the swimming pool where they eulogized the departed Western film star.) Wood's friend Duke Moore died in 1976.


title: Ed Wood

text: Throughout the 1970s, Wood worked with his friend Stephen C. Apostolof, usually co-writing scripts with him, but also serving as an assistant director and an associate producer. (Together they had made Wood's "Orgy of the Dead" back in 1965.) Wood's last known on-screen appearance (a dual role) was in Apostolof's 1974 film "Fugitive Girls" (a.k.a. "Five Loose Women"), in which he played both a gas station attendant called "Pops" and a sheriff on the fugitive women's trail.


title: Ed Wood

text: At the time of his death, Wood was working on a biographical screenplay based on the last years of actor Bela Lugosi to be called "Lugosi Post Mortem", which was supposed to star actor Peter Coe as Lugosi and Karl Johnson as his father Tor Johnson. The nearly completed script was left behind the last time Wood was evicted and is presumed to have been discarded in the trash. Wood was also working on a screenplay for a film called "Venus De Milo", a mystery that would explain the famous statue's missing arms.


title: Ed Wood

text: Technically, Wood's last acting job was in the 1978 Stephen Apostolof film "Hot Ice". Ed Wood played a janitor in the film, but his scene was cut out at the last minute due to his drunkenness on the set. Wood died soon after this film was made in 1978, at age 54. (Ironically his demise coincided with the end of the soft-core porn industry circa 1978. Apostolof himself stopped making films as well at this time.)


title: Ed Wood

text: Beginning in 1963 up until his death, Wood wrote at least 80 lurid crime and sex novels in addition to hundreds of short stories and non-fiction pieces for magazines and daily newspapers.


title: Ed Wood

text: His novels include "Black Lace Drag" (1963) (reissued in 1965 as "Killer in Drag"), "Orgy of the Dead" (1965), "Parisian Passions" (1966), "Watts the Difference" (1966), "Side-Show Siren" (1966), "Drag Trade" (1967), "Watts After" (1967), "Devil Girls" (1967), "It Takes One to Know One" (1967), "Death of a Transvestite" (1967), "Suburbia Confidential" (1967), "Night Time Lez" (1968), "The Perverts" (1968), "Bye Bye Broadie" (1968), "Raped in the Grass" (1968), "Sex, Shrouds and Caskets" (1968), "Love of the Dead" (1968), "The Sexecutives" (1968), "Young, Black and Gay" (1968), "Hell Chicks" (1968), "The Gay Underworld" (1968), "Carnival Piece" (1969), "Toni, Black Tigress" (1969), "Mama's Diary" (1969), "To Make a Homo" (1969), "Mary-Go-Round" (1969), "The Sexual Woman" (1971), "The Only House" (1972), "A Study of Fetishes and Fantasies" (1973), "Tales for a Sexy Night Part 1 and 2" (1973), "Sex Star" (1973), "Death of a Transvestite Hooker" (1974). "Forced Entry" (1974), and "TV Lust" (1977).


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1965, Wood wrote the quasi-memoir "Hollywood Rat Race", which was only published years later in 1998. In it, Wood advises new writers to "just keep on writing. Even if your story gets worse, you'll get better", and also recounts tales of dubious authenticity, such as how he and Bela Lugosi entered the world of nightclub cabaret.


title: Ed Wood

text: Thirty-two short stories known to be written by Wood (he sometimes wrote under pseudonyms such as "Ann Gora" and "Dr. T.K. Peters") are collected in an anthology "Blood Splatters Quickly", published by OR Books in 2014.


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood's list of unrealized film projects also included scripts called "Piranhas" (1957), "Trial by Terror" (1958), "The Peeper" (a proposed 1960 sequel to "The Sinister Urge"), "Silent Night" (1961), "Joaquin Murieta" (a 1965 biopic about the infamous bandit of the Old West), "Mice on a Cold Cellar Floor" (1973), "Epitaph for the Town Drunk" (1973), "To Kill a Saturday Night" (1973, which was set to star John Carradine), "The Teachers" (1973), "The Basketballers" (1973), "The Airline Hostesses" (1973), "I Awoke Early the Day I Died" (1974, a rewrite of Wood's 1961 "Silent Night"), "Heads, No Tails" (1974, a take-off on Sweeney Todd), and "Shoot Seven" (1977, Wood's proposed musical based on the St. Valentine's Day Massacre).


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood was in a long term relationship with actress and songwriter Dolores Fuller, whom he met in late 1952. She was in the process of divorcing her first husband Donald Fuller, with whom she had had two sons. Wood and Fuller shared an apartment for three years, and Wood cast her in three of his films: "Glen or Glenda", "Jail Bait" and, in a very brief cameo, in "Bride of the Monster". Fuller later said she initially had no idea that Wood was a crossdresser and was mortified when she saw Wood dressed as a woman for the first time in "Glen or Glenda". The couple broke up in 1955 after Wood cast another actress for the lead role in "Bride of the Monster" (Wood originally wrote the part for Fuller but later reduced her part to a brief cameo appearance) and because of Wood's excessive drinking. Fuller relocated to New York City where she embarked on a successful songwriting career, writing for famous singers like Elvis Presley and Nat King Cole. Fuller died on May 9, 2011 at age 88.


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1956, soon after his breakup with Fuller, Wood married actress Norma McCarty. McCarty appeared as Edie, the airplane stewardess, in "Plan 9 from Outer Space", and was recently divorced with two sons, Mike and John McCarty, from her earlier marriage. The marriage took Wood’s friends by surprise; one night Wood called everyone to the sound stage for what they thought was a cast party, but when everyone was present, Wood brought out a huge wedding cake and a preacher, and announced he was getting married. The marriage ended approximately one month later after McCarty discovered that Wood was a crossdresser, and while it has been reported that their marriage was annulled, according to film archivist Wade Williams, they neither annulled the marriage nor legally divorced. (McCarty died on June 27, 2014 at age 93.)


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood moved in with Paul Marco for a short while after McCarty left him. Later in 1956, Wood met Kathy O'Hara in a bar one night where he was drinking with Bela Lugosi. O’Hara fell in love with Wood immediately; they were married in Las Vegas a short while later, and Wood always considered O’Hara his legal wife despite the fact that his first marriage had not been legally annulled. Wood and O'Hara remained together until Wood's death in December 1978. Kathy O’Hara never got along with his mother Lillian, calling her "a strict disciplinarian" who messed Wood up psychologically from early childhood. Wood occasionally sent money to his mom in the mail, without O’Hara’s knowledge.


title: Ed Wood

text: Ed Wood was shocked to learn he had fathered an illegitimate daughter after World War II with a young woman he had dated while he was in the Marines. According to Conrad Brooks, Wood and his wife Kathy only met the young woman (also named Kathy) in 1967 when she was already 21 years old. Born on May 23, 1946, the girl had been living in Lancaster, California and had managed to trace her father's whereabouts. Wood's mother Lillian said she had been contacted by the girl back in 1963 when she sent his mother a photo and introduced herself to Lillian as her granddaughter. Lillian said she sent the girl a watch for her graduation in 1964, but never heard back from her.


title: Ed Wood

text: She visited the Woods and stayed over at their house for a couple of days, but apparently the two Kathys did not get along well. In fact, Wood's wife physically threw her out of the house on the second day when she found her sleeping on their sofa.


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood's wife Kathy never believed that the girl was Wood's daughter, saying in an interview, "There was never any proof, only the woman's statement on a birth certificate." Wood told Kathy that the woman he had sex with in 1946 used to sleep around regularly "with 10 or 20 other Marines at the base", so he probably wasn't the girl's father. She said "She's "not" your daughter, that bitch lied to you! The father could have been anyone. There's only her accusation."


title: Ed Wood

text: Actress Valda Hansen said "I met Ed's daughter at his house in the Valley. She looked just like him. Beautiful, delicate. Green eyes, dark chocolate brown hair. She was very sweet." Art director Bob Derteno, who worked with Wood on "Orgy of the Dead", said that Wood later travelled to attend his daughter's wedding in New York and was later told that he had become a grandfather.


title: Ed Wood

text: In Rudolph Grey's 1992 biography "Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood Jr.", Wood's wife Kathy O’Hara recalls that Wood told her that his mother dressed him in girls' clothing as a child. O’Hara stated that Wood's transvestitism was not a sexual inclination, but rather a neomaternal comfort derived mainly from angora fabric (angora is featured in many of Wood's films). Even in his later years, Wood was not shy about going out in public dressed in drag as "Shirley", his female alter ego (a name that appeared in many of his screenplays and stories). In his partly autobiographical film "Glen or Glenda", the heterosexual Wood takes pains to emphasize that a male transvestite is not automatically also a homosexual. Wood directed many of his pornographic films in drag, but usually would not take the time to shave, which made for a bizarre sight, according to his friends. Wood always swore that he had never had a single homosexual relationship in his life, and was even considered quite a womanizer by many of his acquaintances. He said once that his greatest fantasy, though, was to be reincarnated as a gorgeous blonde.


title: Ed Wood

text: During the last fifteen years of his life, Wood depended almost entirely on writing pornography to earn a living, receiving about $1,000 per novel which he spent almost immediately on alcohol at the local liquor store. Friends have stated how, in his final years, he eventually stopped bathing, and that his apartment was so filthy he eventually would not allow friends to come over and visit any more because he knew they would be horrified to see how unkempt it had become. Paul Marco said Wood was constantly moaning, "My God, I've given everything away. I should be a millionaire. I should have a million bucks right now!"


title: Ed Wood

text: Actor John Agar, an alcoholic himself, was drinking at Wood's apartment one day in the late 1960s when the afternoon news program erroneously announced Agar's obituary. Wood called the studio and told them that Agar was not dead. He told them "He's alive...he's sitting right here with me now!". The story was corrected shortly thereafter.


title: Ed Wood

text: Ed Wood and his wife were routinely evicted from apartments for non-payment of rent. Each time they moved, Wood would immediately establish credit with the liquor store nearest his new address. Their last apartment was in a high-crime ghetto area "at the corner of Yucca and Cahuenga" in Hollywood inhabited by drug addicts, gamblers and prostitutes. Wood, who regularly pawned his typewriters for cash, was mugged regularly when he would stumble down to the liquor store. Eventually he had his publisher send his checks directly to the various liquor store owners so that he wouldn't have to carry cash when he went there.


title: Ed Wood

text: The Woods’ apartment was always in danger of being burglarized. One night, a transvestite was beaten to death in the hallway just outside Wood's apartment door and the sound of gunshots outside the building was a nightly occurrence.


title: Ed Wood

text: According to friends, Wood and his wife often became violent when they drank. Stories abound of the two beating each other, Wood sometimes knocking Kathy unconscious. Criswell commented once, "I always had the feeling that one would kill the other. And if you were there, the killer would say you did it!" Nonetheless, years after Wood's death, his wife always professed to love him dearly.


title: Ed Wood

text: Bela Lugosi biographer Robert Cremer interviewed Wood once in his Yucca apartment for his 1976 book "Lugosi: The Man Behind the Cape" two years before Wood died. Cremer said Wood began the interview sober, but quickly became intoxicated as the interview proceeded. Cremer said, "He started getting really angry at me because he felt he was the person who should be writing (the book)...He went out in the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of Wild Turkey...He smashed the bottle on the kitchen counter and then came after me with it. He lunged at me but he was so drunk, I just pushed him against the wall and he collapsed. I just walked out the door and said "Okay Ed, I guess that was our last interview. I'll see you."


title: Ed Wood

text: By 1978, Wood's depression had worsened, and he and his wife Kathy had both become alcoholics. They were evicted from their Hollywood apartment on Yucca Street on Thursday, December 7, 1978, in total poverty by two sheriff's deputies called by their landlord for failure to pay their overdue rent and had to leave behind all of his scrapbooks and unfinished screenplays, which the landlord allegedly threw into a garbage dumpster. The couple moved into the small North Hollywood apartment of their friend, actor Peter Coe, located at 5635 Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Wood spent the weekend drinking vodka and desperately calling old friends for money, but to no avail.


title: Ed Wood

text: Around noon on Sunday, December 10, Wood felt ill and went to lie down in Coe's bedroom while Coe, O’Hara and a few friends were watching a football game on TV. From the bedroom, he asked O’Hara to bring him a drink, which she refused to do. A few minutes later he yelled out, "Kathy, I can't breathe!", a plea O’Hara ignored as she later said she was tired of Wood bossing her around. After hearing no movement in the bedroom for twenty minutes, O’Hara sent a female friend to check on Wood, who discovered him dead on the bed from a heart attack. O’Hara later said, "I still remember when I went into that room that afternoon and he was dead, his eyes and mouth were wide open. I'll never forget the look in his eyes. He clutched at the sheets. It looked like he'd seen Hell."


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood was cremated at the Utter-McKinley mortuary, and his ashes were scattered at sea. Paul Marco, Kathy O'Hara, David DeMering and Criswell attended Wood's makeshift memorial service which was held at Peter Coe's apartment following the cremation. Marco recalled how devastated Kathy was at the time.


title: Ed Wood

text: At the time of his death, Wood's name and career had become so obscure that most local Los Angeles newspapers, including the entertainment magazine "Variety", didn't run an obituary about him.


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1986 in an essay paying homage to Wood in "Incredibly Strange Films", Jim Morton wrote: "Eccentric and individualistic, Edward D. Wood Jr. was a man born to film. [...] Lesser men, if forced to make movies under the conditions Wood faced, would have thrown up their hands in defeat".


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1994, director Tim Burton released the biopic "Ed Wood", starring Johnny Depp in the title role and Martin Landau, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Bela Lugosi. It also won an Academy Award for Best Makeup for Rick Baker. Conrad Brooks appeared in the movie in a cameo role as "Barman", along with Gregory Walcott in the role of a potential backer. The film premiered on September 30, 1994, just ten days before what would have been Wood's 70th birthday. Despite receiving mass critical acclaim, the movie did poorly at the box office; however, it has since developed a cult following.


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1996, Reverend Steve Galindo of Seminole, Oklahoma, created a legally recognized religion with Wood as its official savior. Founded as a joke, the Church of Ed Wood now boasts more than 3,500 baptized followers. Woodites, as Galindo's followers are called, celebrate "Woodmas" on October 10, which was Wood's birthday. Numerous parties and concerts are held worldwide to celebrate Woodmas. On October 4–5, 2003, horror host Mr. Lobo was canonized as the "Patron Saint of late night movie hosts and insomniacs" in the Church of Ed Wood.


title: Ed Wood

text: In 1997 the University of Southern California began holding an annual "Ed Wood Film Festival", in which student teams are challenged to write, film, and edit an Ed Wood-inspired short film based on a preassigned theme. Past themes have included "Rebel Without a Bra" (2004), "What's That in Your Pocket?" (2005), and "Slippery When Wet" (2006).


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood's 1972 film "The Undergraduate" was a lost film, as was his 1970 film "Take It Out in Trade", but they both eventually turned up years later. (Both films in their entirety are now available on DVD.)


title: Ed Wood

text: An 80-minute print of "Take It Out in Trade" was discovered and publicly exhibited at Anthology Film Archives in New York City in September 2014. Silent outtakes from the film were released by Something Weird Video.


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood's 1971 film "Necromania" was also believed lost for years, until an edited version resurfaced at a yard sale in 1992, followed in 2001 by a complete, unedited print.


title: Ed Wood

text: A complete print of Wood's lost 1972 pornographic film, "The Young Marrieds" was discovered in 2004. It was released by Alpha Blue Archives in July 2014 as a part of the four-DVD set "The Lost Sex Films of Ed Wood Jr.".


title: Ed Wood

text: Wood is said to have filmed some scenes of Lon Chaney Jr. in a werewolf costume in Hollywood in 1964 that were said to have been later incorporated into Jerry Warren's film "Face of the Screaming Werewolf" (1965). Chaney biographer Don G. Smith however has stated that this story was never substantiated.


title: Miracle in Cell No. 7

text: Miracle in Cell No. 7 (; lit. "A Gift from Room 7") is a 2013 South Korean comedy-drama film starring Ryu Seung-ryong, Kal So-won and Park Shin-hye. The film is about a mentally challenged man wrongfully imprisoned for murder, who builds friendships with the hardened criminals in his cell, who in return help him see his daughter again by smuggling her into the prison.


title: Miracle in Cell No. 7

text: The movie is based on the real-life story of a man who was tortured and pleaded guilty under duress to the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl on September 27, 1972 in Chuncheon before being finally exonerated in November 2008. Its early working title was "December 23" ().


title: Miracle in Cell No. 7

text: Ye-sung is a lawyer defending her late father for a crime he did not commit. While leaving the prison court after a successful trial, Ye-sung notices a balloon caught on barbed wire and reminisces about the past.


title: Miracle in Cell No. 7

text: Back in 1997, 6-year-old Ye-sung and her father, Yong-gu (who is mentally disabled), stare into a store window admiring a Sailor Moon backpack. Yong-gu promises to buy Ye-sung the backpack when he gets paid. However, the police commissioner and his daughter purchased it before Yong-gu. When Yong-gu rushes in to grab the backpack, he is assaulted by the police commissioner and kicked out of the store. After the incident, the two return home without the bag, slightly battered, but in high spirits. The next day, after work, the commissioner’s daughter spots Yong-gu and tries to show him another store selling the same backpack. In an unfortunate accident, the little girl slips running on the market’s icy pavement and a brick drops on her head, killing her. Yong-gu is arrested for rape and murder after his futile attempts at CPR are misconstrued by a female bystander.


title: Miracle in Cell No. 7

text: Yong-gu is sent to prison, where he shares a jail cell (titled "Room 7") with five other inmates, all who initially dislike him for his falsely accused crime and mental disability. One day, Yong-gu saves the life of his cellmate and prison gang leader, So Yang-ho, from being stabbed by a rival prison gang leader. Touched at this, Yang-ho then offers to help Yong-gu in any way he can to return the favor. Yong-gu tells Yang-ho that he wants to see his daughter Ye-sung. The inmates successfully smuggle Ye-sung into the prison when her choir visits the prison for a performance. Ye-sung is introduced to her dad’s cell mates and manages to stay for a night, but is inadvertently found by the warden. Eventually, the warden realises that Yong-gu is not the assailant of the girl after Yong-gu saves him from an attempted arson, and allows Ye-sung to visit Yong-gu everyday after school.


title: Miracle in Cell No. 7

text: Before the trial takes place, Yong-gu is trained by the Room 7 inmates on how to answer potential prosecution questions and he becomes proficient in answering them. Unfortunately, the commissioner beats Yong-gu before the trial in a fit of rage, threatening to kill his daughter if he does not confess. Left with no other choice, Yong-gu sacrifices himself by lying that he killed the commissioner's daughter to protect Ye-sung. Yong-gu is then sentenced to death and the execution date is scheduled for December 23, which happens to fall on Ye-sung's birthday. Feeling sorry for Yong-gu, the inmates decide to build a hot air balloon for Yong-gu to escape. During a prison concert, the inmates send Yong-gu and Ye-sung on the balloon while the guards pretend to be overwhelmed, but the balloon's rope is caught by barbed wire. On the day of Yong-gu's execution, the inmates and Yong-gu celebrate Ye-sung's birthday before he is executed.


title: Miracle in Cell No. 7

text: In court 16 years later (in the present), Ye-sung, the prison warden and the Room 7 inmates all attend Yong-gu's trial to prove his innocence. The judge exonerates Yong-gu by overturning the previous verdict and granting him a posthumous acquittal, as well as a court order to re-investigate the girl's death, to the joy of the former Room 7 inmates, the warden, and tearful Ye-sung. The scene then returns to the beginning of the film, where Ye-sung has a vision of Yong-gu and her younger self on the hot air balloon waving goodbye. She tearfully says goodbye to her father as the balloon flies away.


title: Miracle in Cell No. 7

text: The film took 4.6 million admissions (the equivalent of more than ) in its first two weeks due to strong word of mouth. Despite the release of "The Berlin File", it drew in 15% more audience members on its third week, with seat booking at 75.8%. 32 days after its release, it became only the eighth film in Korean cinema history to break the 10 million mark in ticket sales. This was especially notable since "Miracle in Cell No. 7" had a modest budget with a break-even point of 1.7 million admissions, making its eventual profit the highest among the films that reached 10 million.


title: Miracle in Cell No. 7

text: The film exceeded 12 million viewers 46 days after its release. On March 15, 2013, 52 days after its release, ticket sales reached 12.32 million, making it the fifth highest grossing Korean film of all time.


title: Miracle in Cell No. 7

text: Analysts say among the reasons for its success was the long lunar new year holiday and families going to see the film in groups. The film proved to be especially popular among middle-aged and elderly Koreans.


title: Miracle in Cell No. 7

text: Kross Pictures to produce the official Hindi remake of the movie in collaboration with Indian Film Studios and was directed by Umesh Shukla.


title: Miracle in Cell No. 7

text: It was also adapted in 2019 in Turkey as "7. Koğuştaki Mucize" starring Aras Bulut İynemli in the lead role. This is an entirely dramatic interpretation and adds several story elements and characters. The film was also adapted in the Philippines with the same title, starring Aga Muhlach, Bela Padilla and Xia Vigor. Indonesia adapted the film with the , while remakes are being planned in Spain, and the United States.


title: Rock (geology)

text: In geology, rock (or stone) is any naturally occurring solid mass or aggregate of minerals or mineraloid matter. It is categorized by the minerals included, its chemical composition, and the way in which it is formed. Rocks form the Earth's outer solid layer, the crust, and most of its interior, except for the liquid outer core and pockets of magma in the asthenosphere. The study of rocks involves multiple subdisciplines of geology, including petrology and mineralogy. It may be limited to rocks found on Earth, or it may include planetary geology that studies the rocks of other celestial objects.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Rocks are usually grouped into three main groups: igneous rocks, sedimentary rocks and metamorphic rocks. Igneous rocks are formed when magma cools in the Earth's crust, or lava cools on the ground surface or the seabed. Sedimentary rocks are formed by diagenesis and lithification of sediments, which in turn are formed by the weathering, transport, and deposition of existing rocks. Metamorphic rocks are formed when existing rocks are subjected to such high pressures and temperatures that they are transformed without significant melting.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Humanity has made use of rocks since the earliest humans. This early period, called the Stone Age, saw the development of many stone tools. Stone was then used as a major component in the construction of buildings and early infrastructure. Mining developed to extract rocks from the Earth and obtain the minerals within them, including metals. Modern technology has allowed the development of new man-made rocks and rock-like substances, such as concrete.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Geology is the study of Earth and its components, including the study of rock formations. Petrology is the study of the character and origin of rocks. Mineralogy is the study of the mineral components that create rocks. The study of rocks and their components has contributed to the geological understanding of Earth's history, the archaeological understanding of human history, and the development of engineering and technology in human society.


title: Rock (geology)

text: While the history of geology includes many theories of rocks and their origins that have persisted throughout human history, the study of rocks was developed as a formal science during the 19th century. Plutonism was developed as a theory during this time, and the discovery of radioactive decay in 1896 allowed for the radiocarbon dating of rocks. Understanding of plate tectonics developed in the 20th century.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Rocks are composed primarily of grains of minerals, which are crystalline solids formed from atoms chemically bonded into an orderly structure. Some rocks also contain mineraloids, which are rigid, mineral-like substances, such as volcanic glass, that lacks crystalline structure. The types and abundance of minerals in a rock are determined by the manner in which it was formed.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Most rocks contain silicate minerals, compounds that include silica tetrahedra in their crystal lattice, and account for about one-third of all known mineral species and about 95% of the earth's crust. The proportion of silica in rocks and minerals is a major factor in determining their names and properties.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Rocks are classified according to characteristics such as mineral and chemical composition, permeability, texture of the constituent particles, and particle size. These physical properties are the result of the processes that formed the rocks. Over the course of time, rocks can be transformed from one type into another, as described by a geological model called the rock cycle. This transformation produces three general classes of rock: igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Those three classes are subdivided into many groups. There are, however, no hard-and-fast boundaries between allied rocks. By increase or decrease in the proportions of their minerals, they pass through gradations from one to the other; the distinctive structures of one kind of rock may thus be traced, gradually merging into those of another. Hence the definitions adopted in rock names simply correspond to selected points in a continuously graduated series.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Igneous rock (derived from the Latin word "igneus," meaning "of fire," from "ignis" meaning "fire)" is formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava. This magma may be derived from partial melts of pre-existing rocks in either a planet's mantle or crust. Typically, the melting of rocks is caused by one or more of three processes: an increase in temperature, a decrease in pressure, or a change in composition.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Magmas tend to become richer in silica as they rise towards the Earth's surface, a process called "magma differentiation". This occurs both because minerals low in silica crystallize out of the magma as it begins to cool (Bowen's reaction series) and because the magma assimilates some of the crustal rock through which it ascends ("country rock"), and crustal rock tends to be high in silica. Silica content is thus the most important chemical criterion for classifying igneous rock. The content of alkali metal oxides is next in importance.


title: Rock (geology)

text: About 65% of the Earth's crust by volume consists of igneous rocks. Of these, 66% are basalt and gabbro, 16% are granite, and 17% granodiorite and diorite. Only 0.6% are syenite and 0.3% are ultramafic. The oceanic crust is 99% basalt, which is an igneous rock of mafic composition. Granite and similar rocks, known as granitoids, dominate the continental crust.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Sedimentary rocks are formed at the earth's surface by the accumulation and cementation of fragments of earlier rocks, minerals, and organisms or as chemical precipitates and organic growths in water (sedimentation). This process causes clastic sediments (pieces of rock) or organic particles (detritus) to settle and accumulate or for minerals to chemically precipitate (evaporite) from a solution. The particulate matter then undergoes compaction and cementation at moderate temperatures and pressures (diagenesis).


title: Rock (geology)

text: Before being deposited, sediments are formed by weathering of earlier rocks by erosion in a source area and then transported to the place of deposition by water, wind, ice, mass movement or glaciers (agents of denudation). About 7.9% of the crust by volume is composed of sedimentary rocks, with 82% of those being shales, while the remainder consists of 6% limestone and 12% sandstone and arkoses. Sedimentary rocks often contain fossils. Sedimentary rocks form under the influence of gravity and typically are deposited in horizontal or near horizontal layers or strata, and may be referred to as stratified rocks.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Sediment and the particles of clastic sedimentary rocks can be further classified by grain size. The smallest sediments are clay, followed by silt, sand, and gravel. Some systems include cobbles and boulders as measurements.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Metamorphic rocks are formed by subjecting any rock type—sedimentary rock, igneous rock or another older metamorphic rock—to different temperature and pressure conditions than those in which the original rock was formed. This process is called metamorphism, meaning to "change in form". The result is a profound change in physical properties and chemistry of the stone. The original rock, known as the protolith, transforms into other mineral types or other forms of the same minerals, by recrystallization. The temperatures and pressures required for this process are always higher than those found at the Earth's surface: temperatures greater than 150 to 200 °C and pressures greater than 1500 bars. This occurs, for example, when continental plates collide. Metamorphic rocks compose 27.4% of the crust by volume.


title: Rock (geology)

text: The three major classes of metamorphic rock are based upon the formation mechanism. An intrusion of magma that heats the surrounding rock causes contact metamorphism—a temperature-dominated transformation. Pressure metamorphism occurs when sediments are buried deep under the ground; pressure is dominant, and temperature plays a smaller role. This is termed burial metamorphism, and it can result in rocks such as jade. Where both heat and pressure play a role, the mechanism is termed regional metamorphism. This is typically found in mountain-building regions.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Depending on the structure, metamorphic rocks are divided into two general categories. Those that possess a texture are referred to as foliated; the remainders are termed non-foliated. The name of the rock is then determined based on the types of minerals present. Schists are foliated rocks that are primarily composed of lamellar minerals such as micas. A gneiss has visible bands of differing lightness, with a common example being the granite gneiss. Other varieties of foliated rock include slates, phyllites, and mylonite. Familiar examples of non-foliated metamorphic rocks include marble, soapstone, and serpentine. This branch contains quartzite—a metamorphosed form of sandstone—and hornfels.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Though most understanding of rocks comes from those of Earth, rocks make up many of the universe's celestial bodies. In the Solar System, Mars, Venus, and Mercury are composed of rock, as are many natural satellites, asteroids, and meteoroids. Meteorites that fall to Earth provide evidence of extraterrestrial rocks and their composition. They are typically heavier than rocks on Earth. Asteroid rocks can also be brought to Earth through space missions, such as the "Hayabusa" mission. Lunar rocks and Martian rocks have also been studied.


title: Rock (geology)

text: The use of rock has had a huge impact on the cultural and technological development of the human race. Rock has been used by humans and other hominids for at least 2.5 million years. Lithic technology marks some of the oldest and continuously used technologies. The mining of rock for its metal content has been one of the most important factors of human advancement, and has progressed at different rates in different places, in part because of the kind of metals available from the rock of a region.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Anthropic rock is synthetic or restructured rock formed by human activity. Concrete is recognized as a man-made rock constituted of natural and processed rock and having been developed since Ancient Rome. Rock can also be modified with other substances to develop new forms, such as epoxy granite. Artificial stone has also been developed, such as Coade stone. Geologist James R. Underwood has proposed anthropic rock as a fourth class of rocks alongside igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Rock varies greatly in strength, from quartzites having a tensile strength in excess of 300 MPa to sedimentary rock so soft it can be crumbled with bare fingers (that is, it is "friable"). (For comparison, structural steel has a tensile strength of around 350 MPa.) Relatively soft, easily worked sedimentary rock was quarried for construction as early as 4000 BCE in Egypt, and stone was used to build fortifications in Inner Mongolia as early as 2800 BCE. The soft rock, tuff, is common in Italy, and the Romans used it for many buildings and bridges. Limestone was widely used in construction in the Middle Ages in Europe and remained popular into the 20th century.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock salt, potash, construction aggregate and dimension stone. Mining is required to obtain any material that cannot be grown through agricultural processes, or created artificially in a laboratory or factory. Mining in a wider sense comprises extraction of any resource (e.g. petroleum, natural gas, salt or even water) from the earth.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Mining of rock and metals has been done since prehistoric times. Modern mining processes involve prospecting for mineral deposits, analysis of the profit potential of a proposed mine, extraction of the desired materials, and finally reclamation of the land to prepare it for other uses once mining ceases.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Mining processes may create negative impacts on the environment both during the mining operations and for years after mining has ceased. These potential impacts have led to most of the world's nations adopting regulations to manage negative effects of mining operations.


title: Rock (geology)

text: Stone tools have been used for millions of years by humans and earlier hominids. The Stone Age was a period of widespread stone tool usage. Early Stone Age tools were simple implements, such as hammerstones and sharp flakes. Middle Stone Age tools featured sharpened points to be used as projectile points, awls, or scrapers. Late Stone Age tools were developed with craftsmanship and distinct cultural identities. Stone tools were largely superseded by copper and bronze tools following the development of metallurgy.


title: Deep South

text: The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion in the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states most dependent on plantations and slavery prior to the American Civil War. Following the war, the region suffered economic hardship and was a major site of racial tension during and after the Reconstruction era. Before 1945, the Deep South was often referred to as the "Cotton States" since cotton was the primary cash crop for economic production. The civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s helped usher in a new era, sometimes referred to as the New South.


title: Deep South

text: Although often used in history books to refer to the seven states that originally formed the Confederacy, the term "Deep South" did not come into general usage until long after the Civil War ended. For at least the remainder of the 19th century, "Lower South" was the primary designation for those states. When "Deep South" first began to gain mainstream currency in print in the middle of the 20th century, it applied to the states and areas of South Carolina, Georgia, southern Alabama, northern Florida, Mississippi, northern Louisiana, West Tennessee, southern Arkansas, and eastern Texas, all historical areas of cotton plantations and slavery. This was the part of the South many considered the "most Southern."


title: Deep South

text: Later, the general definition expanded to include all of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, as well as often taking in bordering areas of West Tennessee, East Texas and North Florida. In its broadest application, the Deep South is considered to be "an area roughly coextensive with the old cotton belt, from eastern North Carolina through South Carolina, west into East Texas, with extensions north and south along the Mississippi."


title: Deep South

text: After the Civil War, the region was economically poor. After Reconstruction ended in 1877, a small fraction of the white population composed of wealthy landowners, merchants and bankers controlled the economy and, largely, the politics. Most white farmers were poor and had to do manual work on their farms to survive. As prices fell, farmers' work became harder and longer because of a change from largely self-sufficient farms, based on corn and pigs, to the growing of a cash crop of cotton or tobacco. Cotton cultivation took twice as many hours of work as raising corn. The farmers lost their freedom to determine what crops they would grow, ran into increasing indebtedness, and many were forced into tenancy or into working for someone else. Some out-migration occurred, especially to Texas, but over time, the population continued to grow and the farms were subdivided smaller and smaller. Growing discontent helped give rise to the Populist movement in the early 1890s. It represented a sort of class warfare, in which the poor farmers sought to gain more of an economic and political voice.


title: Deep South

text: After 1950, the region became a major epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement, including: the emergence of a young (25 year old) new pastor of a local church, Martin Luther King Jr., the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, the 1956 Sugar Bowl Riots, the 1960 founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the 1964 Freedom Summer.


title: Deep South

text: The Deep South has three major Metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) located solely within its boundaries, with populations exceeding 1,000,000 residents. Atlanta, the 9th largest metro area in the United States, is the Deep South's largest population center.


title: Deep South

text: Rankings are assorted by metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) population. Combined statistical areas (CSAs) populations are shown as well.


title: Deep South

text: In the 1980 census, of people who identified solely by one European national ancestry, most European Americans identified as being of English ancestry in every Southern state except Louisiana, where more people identified as having French ancestry. A significant number also have Irish and Scotch-Irish ancestry.


title: Deep South

text: With regards to people in the Deep South who reported only a single European-American ancestry group, the 1980 census showed the following self-identification in each state in this region:


title: Deep South

text: These figures do not take into account people who identified as "English" and another ancestry group. When the two were added together, people who self-identified as being English with other ancestry, made up an even larger portion of southerners. South Carolina was settled earlier than other states commonly classified as the Deep South. Its population in 1980 included 578,338 people out of 1,706,966 people, who identified as "English" only, making them 33.88% of the total population, the largest national ancestry group by a wide margin.


title: Deep South

text: The map to the right was prepared by the Census Bureau from the 2000 census; it shows the predominant ancestry in each county as self-identified by residents themselves. Note: The Census said that areas with the largest "American"-identified ancestry populations, were mostly settled by descendants of English and others from the British Isles, French, Germans and later Italians. Those with African ancestry tended to identify as African American, although some African Americans also have some British or Northern European ancestors as well.


title: Deep South

text: Hispanic and Latino Americans largely started arriving in the Deep South during the 1990s, and their numbers have grown rapidly. Politically they have not been very active.


title: Deep South

text: Political expert Kevin Phillips states that, "From the end of Reconstruction until 1948, the Deep South Black Belts, where only whites could vote, were the nation's leading Democratic Party bastions."


title: Deep South

text: From the late 1870s to the mid-1960s, conservative whites of the Deep South held control of state governments and overwhelmingly identified with and supported the Democratic Party. The most powerful leaders belonged to the party's moderate-to-conservative wing. The Republican Party would only control mainly mountain districts in Southern Appalachia, on the fringe of the Deep South, during the "Solid South" period.


title: Deep South

text: At the turn of the 20th century, all Southern states, starting with Mississippi in 1890, passed new constitutions and other laws that effectively disenfranchised the great majority of blacks and sometimes many poor whites as well. Blacks were excluded subsequently from the political system entirely. The white Democratic-dominated state legislatures passed Jim Crow laws to impose white supremacy, including caste segregation of public facilities. In politics, the region became known for decades as the "Solid South." While this disenfranchisement was enforced, all of the states in this region were mainly one-party states dominated by white Southern Democrats. Southern representatives accrued outsized power in the Congress and the national Democratic Party, as they controlled all the seats apportioned to southern states based on total population, but only represented the richer subset of their white populations.


title: Deep South

text: Major demographic changes would ensue in the 20th century. During the two waves of the Great Migration (1916–1970), a total of six million African Americans left the South for the Northeast, Midwest, and West, to escape the oppression and violence in the South. Beginning with the Goldwater–Johnson election of 1964, a significant contingent of white conservative voters in the Deep South stopped supporting national Democratic Party candidates and switched to the Republican Party. They still would vote for many Democrats at the state and local level into the 1990s. Studies of the Civil Rights Movement often highlight the region. Political scientist Seth McKee concluded that in the 1964 presidential election, "Once again, the high level of support for Goldwater in the Deep South, and especially their Black Belt counties, spoke to the enduring significance of white resistance to black progress."


title: Deep South

text: White southern voters consistently voted for the Democratic Party for many years to hold onto Jim Crow Laws. Once Franklin D. Roosevelt came to power in 1932, the limited southern electorate found itself supporting Democratic candidates who frequently did not share its views. Journalist Matthew Yglesias argues:


title: Deep South

text: Kevin Phillips states that, "Beginning in 1948, however, the white voters of the Black Belts shifted partisan gears and sought to lead the Deep South out of the Democratic Party. Upcountry, pineywoods and bayou voters felt less hostility towards the New Deal and Fair Deal economic and caste policies which agitated the Black Belts, and for another decade, they kept The Deep South in the Democratic presidential column.


title: Deep South

text: Wallace won very high support from Black Belt whites and no support at all from Black Belt Negroes. In the Black Belt counties of the Deep South, racial polarization was practically complete. Negroes voted for Hubert Humphrey, whites for George Wallace. GOP nominee Nixon garnered very little backing and counties where Barry Goldwater had captured 90 percent to 100 percent of the vote in 1964.