title: Videodrome

text: Three different endings were filmed. The ending used in the final film, wherein Max shoots himself on the derelict ship, was James Woods' idea. One of the initial intentions for the ending was to include an epilogue after the suicide, wherein Max, Bianca, and Nicki appear on the set of "Videodrome". Bianca and Nicki are shown to have chest slits like Max, from which grotesque, mutated sex organs emerge. Cronenberg described his original vision of the ending as follows: "After the suicide, [Max] ends up on the 'Videodrome' set with Nicki, hugging and kissing and neat stuff like that. A happy ending? Well, it's my version of a happy ending—boy meets girl on the 'Videodrome' set, with the clay wall maybe covered in blood, but I'm not sure. Freudian rebirth imagery, pure and simple." In his director's commentary for the Criterion Collection release of the film, Cronenberg credited his decision to omit the epilogue at least partially to his own atheist beliefs, as the apparent resurrection of Max and Nicki on the Videodrome set could be interpreted as having gone to an afterlife, whereas Cronenberg himself does not believe in one.


title: Videodrome

text: The special makeup effects were devised by Rick Baker, with his crew composed mostly of twenty-year-olds; some of them had worked with Baker in "An American Werewolf in London", while Michael Lennick served as special video effects supervisor. To create the breathing effects of the television set that Max interacts with, Frank C. Carere utilized an air compressor with valves hooked to a piano keyboard that he himself operated. The undulating screen of the television set was created using a video projector and a sheet of rubbery dental dam. Baker stated that "I knew we would need a flexible material ... we tested with a weather balloon first, stretching it over a frame the size of a TV screen, and pushed a hand through it to see how far it stretched, and then we rear-projected on it." Betamax videotape cassettes were used as items to be inserted into Max's stomach slit, because VHS cassettes were too large to fit the faux abdominal wound. Woods found the stomach slit uncomfortable, and after a long day of wearing it, vented, "I am not an actor anymore. I'm just the bearer of the slit!" Baker's original concept for Max's flesh gun featured eyes, mouth and foreskin, which Cronenberg found to be "too graphic". The cancer effects caused by Max's flesh gun went through various tests, with some tests having the face of the victim being distorted through the use of solvents, but Baker decided against this upon learning that his mentor, Dick Smith, had recently used the same technique in " Spasms". Baker settled on having the cancer tumors burst out from the body of Barry Convex, with his crew operating a dummy underneath the set. Lennick devised effects such as having the image of the Videodrome television set distort whenever Max would whip it through the use of a device which he called the "Videodromer", and glitch and twitch effects related to Max's visions through the Videodrome helmet, but these effects were scrapped due to budget and time concerns.


title: Videodrome

text: An original score was composed for "Videodrome" by Cronenberg's close friend, Howard Shore. The score was composed to follow Max Renn's descent into video hallucinations, starting out with dramatic orchestral music that increasingly incorporates, and eventually emphasizes, electronic instrumentation. To achieve this, Shore composed the entire score for an orchestra before programming it into a Synclavier II digital synthesizer. The rendered score, taken from the Synclavier II, was then recorded being played in tandem with a small string section. The resulting sound was a subtle blend that often made it difficult to tell which sounds were real and which were synthesized.


title: Videodrome

text: The soundtrack was also released on vinyl by Varèse Sarabande, and was re-released on compact disc in 1998. The album itself is not just a straight copy of Shore's score, but a remix. Shore has commented that while there were small issues with some of the acoustic numbers, "on the whole I think they did very well".


title: Videodrome

text: According to Tim Lucas, "Videodrome" deals with "the impression of a sprawlingly technological world on our human senses; the fascination and horror of sex and violence; and the boundaries of reality and consciousness." Cronenberg modeled Brian O'Blivion and his theories on Marshall McLuhan, who taught at the University of Toronto when he attended it.


title: Videodrome

text: The film holds a aggregate rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on reviews, with an average score of . Its consensus states, "Visually audacious, disorienting, and just plain weird, "Videodrome" musings on technology, entertainment, and politics still feel fresh today." It has been described as a "disturbing techno-surrealist film" and "burningly intense, chaotic, indelibly surreal, absolutely like nothing else".


title: Videodrome

text: Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" remarked on the film's "innovativeness", and praised Woods' performance as having a "sharply authentic edge". Adam Smith of "Empire" gave the film 4 out of 5 possible stars, calling it a "perfect example" of body horror. The staff of "Variety" wrote that the film "proves more fascinating than distancing", and commended the "stunning visual effects". Gary Arnold of "The Washington Post" gave the film a negative review, calling it "simultaneously stupefying and boring".


title: Videodrome

text: C.J. Henderson reviewed "Videodrome" in "The Space Gamer" No. 63. Henderson commented that "Despite the fact that "Videodrome" came and went faster than Superman and his bullet, it is still an excellent picture. It is a genre film of high caliber, posing a number of important questions."


title: Videodrome

text: Christopher John reviewed "Videodrome" in "Ares Magazine" #14 and commented that "As usual, Cronenberg has pulled no punches in getting his message across. The movie is tight, and perfectly clear for anyone willing to "watch" the screen and "think" about what they are seeing."


title: Videodrome

text: Trace Thurman of Bloody Disgusting listed it as one of eight "horror movies that were ahead of their time". It was also selected as one of the "23 weirdest films of all time" by "Total Film". Nick Schager of "Esquire" ranked the film at number 10 on their list of "the 50 best horror movies of the 1980s".


title: Videodrome

text: The film won a number of awards upon its release. At the 1984 Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film, it tied with "Bloodbath at the House of Death" for Best Science-Fiction Film, and Mark Irwin received a CSC Award for Best Cinematography in a Theatrical Feature. "Videodrome" was also nominated for eight Genie Awards, with David Cronenberg tying Bob Clark's "A Christmas Story" for Best Achievement in Direction.


title: Videodrome

text: "Videodrome" was named the 89th-most-essential film in history by the Toronto International Film Festival.


title: Videodrome

text: "Videodrome" was released on VHS and DVD in the late 1990s by Universal Studios Home Entertainment, who also released the film on LaserDisc.


title: Videodrome

text: The film was released on DVD by the Criterion Collection on August 31, 2004, and their Blu-ray edition was released on December 7, 2010. The Criterion Blu-ray features two commentary tracks, one with Cronenberg and cinematographer Mark Irwin, and the other with actors James Woods and Deborah Harry. Among the other special features are a documentary titled "Forging the New Flesh"; the soft-core video "Samurai Dreams"; the 2000 short film "Camera"; three trailers for "Videodrome"; and "Fear on Film", which consists of an interview with Cronenberg, John Carpenter and John Landis, hosted by Mick Garris.


title: Videodrome

text: In 2015, Arrow Films released the film on Blu-ray in Region B with further special features, including Cronenberg's short films "Transfer" (1966) and "From the Drain" (1967), as well as his feature films "Stereo" (1969) and "Crimes of the Future" (1970).


title: Videodrome

text: A novelization of "Videodrome" was released by Zebra Books alongside the movie in 1983. Though credited to "Jack Martin", the novel was, in fact, the work of horror novelist Dennis Etchison. Cronenberg reportedly invited Etchison up to Toronto, where they discussed and clarified the story, allowing the novel to remain as close as possible to the actions in the film. There are some differences, however, such as the inclusion of the "bathtub sequence", a scene never filmed in which a television rises from Max Renn's bathtub like in Sandro Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus". This was the result of the lead time required to write the book, which left Etchison working with an earlier draft of the script than was used in the film.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The International Olympic Committee (IOC; , CIO) is a non-governmental sports organisation based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is constituted in the form of an association under the Swiss Civil Code (articles 60–79). Founded by Pierre de Coubertin and Demetrios Vikelas in 1894, it is the authority responsible for organising the modern (Summer, Winter, and Youth) Olympic Games.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The IOC is the governing body of the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) and of the worldwide "Olympic Movement", the IOC's term for all entities and individuals involved in the Olympic Games. As of 2020, there are 206 NOCs officially recognised by the IOC. The current president of the IOC is Thomas Bach.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The stated mission of the IOC is to promote the Olympics throughout the world and to lead the Olympic Movement:


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Beginning in 1995, the IOC has worked to address environmental health concerns resulting from the hosting of the Olympic games. Since 2002, the IOC has been involved in several high-profile controversies including taking gifts, its DMCA take down request of the 2008 Tibetan protest videos, Russian doping scandals, and its support of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics despite China's human rights violations documented in the Xinjiang Papers.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: "Granted the honour of becoming a member of the International Olympic Committee and declaring myself aware of my responsibilities in such a capacity, I undertake to serve the Olympic Movement to the very best of my ability; to respect and ensure the respect of all the provisions of the Olympic Charter and the decisions of the International Olympic Committee which I consider as not the subject to appeal on my part; to comply with the code of ethics to keep myself free from any political or commercial influence and from any racial or religious consideration; to fight against all other forms of discrimination; and to promote in all circumstances the interests of the International Olympic Committee and those of the Olympic Movement."


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The IOC was created by Pierre de Coubertin, on 23 June 1894 with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president. As of February 2022, its membership consists of 105 active members, 45 honorary members, and one honour member (Henry Kissinger). The IOC is the supreme authority of the worldwide modern Olympic Movement.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The IOC organizes the modern Olympic Games and Youth Olympic Games (YOG), held in summer and winter, every four years. The first Summer Olympics was held in Athens, Greece, in 1896; the first Winter Olympics was in Chamonix, France, in 1924. The first Summer YOG was in Singapore in 2010 and the first Winter YOG in Innsbruck was in 2012.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Until 1992, both Summer and Winter Olympics were held in the same year. After that year, however, the IOC shifted the Winter Olympics to the even years between Summer Games, to help space the planning of the two events from one another, and improve the financial balance of the IOC, which receives a proportionally greater income in Olympic years.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: In 2009, the UN General Assembly granted the IOC Permanent Observer status. The decision enables the IOC to be directly involved in the UN Agenda and to attend UN General Assembly meetings where it can take the floor. In 1993, the General Assembly approved a Resolution to further solidify IOC–UN cooperation by reviving the Olympic Truce.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The IOC received approval in November 2015 to construct a new headquarters in Vidy, Lausanne. The cost of the project was estimated to stand at $156m. The IOC announced on 11 February 2019 that "Olympic House" would be inaugurated on 23 June 2019 to coincide with its 125th anniversary. The Olympic Museum remains in Ouchy, Lausanne.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The IOC Session is the general meeting of the members of the IOC, held once a year in which each member has one vote. It is the IOC's supreme organ and its decisions are final.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Extraordinary Sessions may be convened by the President or upon the written request of at least one third of the members.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: For most of its existence, the IOC was controlled by members who were selected by other members. Countries that had hosted the Games were allowed two members. When named, they did not become the representatives of their respective countries to the IOC, but rather the opposite, IOC members in their respective countries.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: During the first half of the 20th century the IOC ran on a small budget. As president of the IOC from 1952 to 1972, Avery Brundage rejected all attempts to link the Olympics with commercial interest. Brundage believed the lobby of corporate interests would unduly impact the IOC's decision-making. Brundage's resistance to this revenue stream meant the IOC left organising committees to negotiate their own sponsorship contracts and use the Olympic symbols.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: When Brundage retired the IOC had US$2 million in assets; eight years later the IOC coffers had swelled to US$45 million. This was primarily due to a shift in ideology toward expansion of the Games through corporate sponsorship and the sale of television rights. When Juan Antonio Samaranch was elected IOC president in 1980 his desire was to make the IOC financially independent. Samaranch appointed Canadian IOC member Richard Pound to lead the initiative as Chairman of the "New Sources of Finance Commission".


title: International Olympic Committee

text: In 1982 the IOC drafted International Sport and Leisure, a Swiss sports marketing company, to develop a global marketing programme for the Olympic Movement. ISL successfully developed the programme but was replaced by Meridian Management, a company partly owned by the IOC in the early 1990s. In 1989, one of the staff members at ISL Marketing, Michael Payne, moved to the IOC and became the organisation's first marketing director. ISL and then Meridian, continued in the established role as the IOC's sales and marketing agents until 2002. In collaboration with ISL Marketing and Meridian Management, Payne made major contributions to the creation of a multibillion-dollar sponsorship marketing programme for the organisation which, along with improvements in TV marketing and improved financial management, helped to restore the IOC's financial viability.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The OCOGs have responsibility for the domestic sponsorship, ticketing and licensing programmes, under the direction of the IOC. The Olympic Movement generated a total of more than US$4 billion (€2.5 billion) in revenue during the Olympic quadrennium from 2001 to 2004.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The IOC distributes some of the Olympic marketing revenue to organisations throughout the Olympic Movement to support the staging of the Olympic Games and to promote the worldwide development of sport. The IOC retains approximately 10% of the Olympic marketing revenue for the operational and administrative costs of governing the Olympic Movement. For the 2013-2016 period, the IOC had revenues of about US$5.0 billion, of which 73% were from broadcasting rights and 18% were from The Olympic Partners. The Rio 2016 organising committee received US$1.5 billion and the Sochi 2014 organising committee received 833 million. National Olympic committees and international federations received US$739 million each.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The IOC provides TOP programme contributions and Olympic broadcast revenue to the OCOGs to support the staging of the Summer Olympic Games and the Winter Olympic Games:


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The NOCs receive financial support for the training and development of Olympic teams, Olympic athletes and Olympic hopefuls. The IOC distributes TOP programme revenue to each of the NOCs throughout the world. The IOC also contributes Olympic broadcast revenue to Olympic Solidarity, an IOC organisation that provides financial support to NOCs with the greatest need. The continued success of the TOP programme and Olympic broadcast agreements has enabled the IOC to provide increased support for the NOCs with each Olympic quadrennium. The IOC provided approximately US$318.5 million to NOCs for the 2001–2004 quadrennium.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The IOC is the largest single revenue source for the majority of IFs, with its contributions of Olympic broadcast revenue that assist the IFs in the development of their respective sports worldwide. The IOC provides financial support from Olympic broadcast revenue to the 28 IFs of Olympic summer sports and the seven IFs of Olympic winter sports after the completion of the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics. The continually increasing value of Olympic broadcast partnership has enabled the IOC to deliver substantially increased financial support to the IFs with each successive Games. The seven winter sports IFs shared US$85.8 million, €75 million in Salt Lake 2002 broadcast revenue. The contribution to the 28 summer sports IFs from Athens 2004 broadcast revenue has not yet been determined, but the contribution is expected to mark a significant increase over the US$190 million, €150 million that the IOC provided to the summer IFs following Sydney 2000.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The IOC contributes Olympic marketing revenue to the programmes of various recognised international sports organisations, including the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The IOC recognises that the Olympic Games demand substantial environmental resources, activities, and construction projects that could be detrimental to a host city's environment.<ref name=Jin2008</ref> In 1995, IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch stated, "the International Olympic Committee is resolved to ensure that the environment becomes the third dimension of the organization of the Olympic Games, the first and second being sport and culture." Acting on this statement, in 1996 the IOC added the "environment" as a third pillar to its vision for the Olympic Games. The IOC requires cities bidding to host the Olympics to provide a comprehensive strategy to protect the environment in preparation for hosting, and following the conclusion of the Games. This initiative was most notably acted upon in 2000, when the "Green Olympics" effort was developed by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Beijing Olympic Games. The Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics effort to host environmentally friendly games resulted in over 160 projects meeting the goal of "green" games through improved air quality and water quality, implementation of sustainable energy sources, improved waste management, and environmental education. These projects included industrial plant relocation or closure, furnace replacement, introduction of new emission standards, and more strict traffic control. Most of these measures were adopted on a temporary basis, and although real improvements were realized (particularly in air quality), most of these improvements had disappeared one year following the Games. Although these improvements were short lived, IOC's inclusion of environmental policies in evaluating and selecting host cities demonstrates a corporate responsibility that may be built upon in years to come. Detailed frameworks for environmental sustainability have been released for the 2018 Winter Olympics, and 2020 Summer Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, and Tokyo, Japan, respectively.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The IOC has four major approaches to addressing environmental health concerns during the construction and competitions of the Olympic Games. First, the IOC Sustainability and Legacy Commission focuses on how the IOC can improve the strategies and policies associated with environmental health throughout the process of cities hosting the Olympic Games. Secondly, every candidate city must provide information to the IOC on environmental health issues like air quality and environmental impact assessments. Thirdly, every host city is given the option to declare "pledges" to address specific or general environmental health concerns of hosting the Olympic Game. Fourthly, the IOC has every host city collaborate with the United Nations to work towards addressing environmental health objectives. Ultimately, the IOC uses these four approaches in an attempt to minimize the negative environmental health concerns of a host city.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Cities hosting the Olympic Games have two primary concerns: traffic congestion and air pollution, both of which can result in compromised air quality during and after Olympic venue construction. Research at the Beijing Olympic Games identified particulate matter – measured in terms of PM10 (the amount of aerodynamic diameter of particle≤10 μm in a given amount of air) – as a top priority that should be taken into consideration. The particulate matter in the air, along with other airborne pollutants, cause both serious health problems, such as asthma, and contribute to the deterioration of urban ecosystems. Black Carbon is released into the air from incomplete combustion of carbonaceous fluids contributing to global climate change and human health effects. Additionally, secondary pollutants like CO, NOx, SO2, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes (BTEX) are also released during the venue construction, resulting in harmful effects to the environment. Measures are taken to measure particulates in the air.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Various air quality improvement measures are undertaken before and after the Olympic Games. Research studies demonstrate that the primary method to reduce concentrations of air pollutants is traffic control, including barring heavy vehicles from the roads. For the Beijing Olympics, vehicles not meeting the Euro 1 emission standards were also banned from the roads, and the odd-even rule was implemented in the Beijing administrative area. Several air quality improvement measures implemented by the Beijing government included replacing coal with natural gas, suspending construction and/or imposing strict dust control on construction sites, closing or relocating the polluting industrial plants, building long subway lines, using cleaner fluid in power plants, and reducing the activity by some of the polluting factories. There, levels of primary and secondary pollutants were reduced, and good air quality was recorded during the Beijing Olympics on most of the days.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Soil contamination can occur during the process of constructing the Olympic venues. In the case of the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Torino, Italy, negative environmental impacts were observed, including impacts on soil. Before the Games, researchers studied four areas which the Games would likely affect: a floodplain, a highway, the motorway connecting the city to Lyon, France, and a landfill. They performed an extensive analysis in the types of chemicals found in the soils in these areas both before and after the Games. Their findings revealed an increase in the number of metals in the topsoil post-Games, and indicated that soil was capable of negating, or "buffering," the effects of many heavy metals. However, their findings also revealed that this was not the case for all metals, and that mercury, lead, and arsenic may have been transferred into the food chain on a massive scale.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: One of the promises made to Londoners when they won the right to host the 2012 Olympic Games was that the Olympic Park would be a "blueprint for sustainable living." However, residents of the allotments of Manor Road were relocated, due to the building of the Olympic stadium, and would later disagree that the Olympics had had any positive effect on their lives. Allotments were originally intended to provide low-income residents with a plot of land on which to grow their own food. Many of these sites were lost as a result of the Olympic venue construction, most notably the Manor Road site. Residents were promised that the allotments would be returned, and they eventually were. However, the soil quality would never be the same. Further, allotment residents were exposed to radioactive waste for five months prior to moving, during the excavation of the site for the Games. Other local residents, construction workers, and onsite archaeologists faced similar exposures and risks.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: In contrast, the Sydney Olympic Games of 2000 provided an opportunity to improve a highly contaminated area known as the Homebush Bay site. A study commissioned by the New South Wales Government Olympic Coordination Authority, which was responsible for the Games' site preparation, looked at soil contamination prior to the Games. The work assessed soils that had been previously impacted by waste and identified areas that could pose a risk to the environment. Soil metal concentrations were found to be high enough to potentially contaminate groundwater. After risk areas were identified, a remediation strategy was developed. Contaminated soil was consolidated into four containment areas within the site, which left the remaining areas available for recreational use. Also, the contained waste materials no longer posed a threat to surrounding aquifers. Sydney's winning Olympic bid provided a catalyst to undertake the "greenest" single urban remediation ever attempted in Australia.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The Olympic Games can affect water quality in the surrounding region in several ways, including water runoff and the transfer of polluting substances from the air to water sources through rainfall. Harmful particulates come from both natural substances (such as plant matter crushed by higher volumes of pedestrian and vehicle traffic) and man-made substances (such as exhaust from vehicles or industry). Contaminants from these two categories lead to elevated amounts of toxins in street dust. Street dust reaches water sources through runoff, facilitating the transfer of toxins to environments and communities that rely on these water sources. One method of measuring the runoff contamination of water sources involves magnetism. Magnetism measurement systems allow specialists to measure the differences in mineral magnetic parameters in samples of water, air, and vegetation. Another method used to assess the amount and effects of water pollutants is to measure the amount of PM2.5 in rainfall. Measuring PM2.5 (the amount of aerodynamic diameter of particle≤2.5 μm in a given amount of air) is a common metric for assessing air quality. Comparing PM2.5 levels between air and rainfall samples allows scientists to determine the amount of air pollution being transferred to water sources. In 2013, researchers in Beijing found a significant relationship between the amount of PM2.5 concentrations in the air and in rainfall. Studies showed that rainfall had transferred a large portion of these pollutants from the air to water sources.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the IOC, was influenced by the ethos of the aristocracy as exemplified in the English public schools. The public schools subscribed to the belief that sport formed an important part of education and there was a prevailing concept of fairness in which practicing or training was considered cheating. As class structure evolved through the 20th century, the definition of the amateur athlete as an aristocratic gentleman became outdated. The advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete" of the Eastern Bloc countries further eroded the ideology of the pure amateur, as it put the self-financed amateurs of the Western countries at a disadvantage. The Soviet Union entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full-time basis. Nevertheless, the IOC held to the traditional rules regarding amateurism.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Near the end of the 1960s, the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA) felt their amateur players could no longer be competitive against the Soviet team's full-time athletes and the other constantly improving European teams. They pushed for the ability to use players from professional leagues but met opposition from the IIHF and IOC. At the IIHF Congress in 1969, the IIHF decided to allow Canada to use nine non-NHL professional hockey players at the 1970 World Championships in Montreal and Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The decision was reversed in January 1970 after Brundage said that ice hockey's status as an Olympic sport would be in jeopardy if the change was made. In response, Canada withdrew from international ice hockey competition and officials stated that they would not return until "open competition" was instituted.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Beginning in the 1970s, amateurism requirements were gradually phased out of the Olympic Charter. After the 1988 Games, the IOC decided to make all professional athletes eligible for the Olympics, subject to the approval of the IFs.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The Games were originally awarded to Denver on 12 May 1970, but a rise in costs led to Colorado voters' rejection on 7 November 1972, by a 3 to 2 margin, of a $5 million bond issue to finance the Games with public funds.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Denver officially withdrew on 15 November, and the IOC then offered the Games to Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, but they too declined, owing to a change of government following elections. Whistler would go on to be associated with neighbouring Vancouver's successful bid for the 2010 Games.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Salt Lake City, Utah, a 1972 Winter Olympics final candidate who would eventually host the 2002 Winter Olympics, offered itself as a potential host after the withdrawal of Denver. The IOC, still reeling from the Denver rejection, declined the offer from Salt Lake City and, on 5 February 1973, selected Innsbruck to host the 1976 Winter Olympics, the same city that had hosted the Games twelve years earlier.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: A scandal broke on 10 December 1998, when Swiss IOC member Marc Hodler, head of the coordination committee overseeing the organisation of the 2002 Games, announced that several members of the IOC had received gifts from members of the Salt Lake City 2002 bid Committee in exchange for votes for the bid who ended as eventual winner. Soon four independent investigations were underway: by the IOC, the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), the SLOC, and the United States Department of Justice. Before any of the investigations could get under way, Tom Welch and David Johnson, the co-heads of the SLOC, both resigned their posts. Many others soon followed. The Department of Justice filed charges against the two: fifteen counts of bribery and fraud.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: As a result of the investigation, ten members of the IOC were expelled and another ten were sanctioned. Stricter rules were adopted for future bids, and caps were put into place as to how much IOC members could accept from bid cities. Additionally, new term and age limits were put into place for IOC membership and an Athlete's Commission was created and fifteen former Olympic athletes gained provisional membership status.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: On 1 March 2016, Owen Gibson of "The Guardian" reported that French financial prosecutors investigating corruption in world athletics had expanded their remit to include the bidding and voting processes for the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2020 Summer Olympics. The story followed an earlier report in January by Gibson, who revealed that Papa Massata Diack, the son of the then-IAAF president Lamine Diack, appeared to arrange for "parcels" to be delivered to six IOC members in 2008 when Qatar was bidding for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, though it failed to make it beyond the shortlisting stage. Due to some technical questions. Some weeks after Qatari authorities denied the allegations. Gibson then reported on 11 May 2016 that a €1.3m (£1m, $1.5m) payment from the Tokyo Olympic Committee team to an account linked to Papa Diack was made during Japan's successful race to host the 2020 Summer Games. The following day, French financial prosecutors confirmed they were investigating allegations of "corruption and money laundering" of more than $2m in suspicious payments made by the Tokyo 2020 Olympic bid committee to a secret bank account linked to Papa Diack. The string of exclusives by "The Guardian" prompted a response from Tsunekazu Takeda of the Tokyo 2020 bid committee on 17 May 2016, though he denied any allegations of wrongdoing, and refused to reveal details of the transfers. The controversy was reignited on 11 January 2019 after it emerged Takeda had been indicted on corruption charges in France over his role in the bid process.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: In 2014, at the final stages of the bid process, the Norwegian capital Oslo, which was seen by the specialists as the big favourite, ended up in a surprise withdrawal from its bid for the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. Following a string of local controversies over the event's masterplan, local officials were outraged by the demands made by the International Olympic Committee on athletes and the Olympic family. In addition, there were allegations about the expensive and lavish treatment of stakeholders, which included separate lanes to "be created on all roads where IOC members will travel, which are not to be used by regular people or public transportation", exclusive cars and drivers for all IOC members and adjusted traffic lights. The differentiated treatment by the sponsors also irritated the Norwegians, since it is common for the sponsors to deliver gifts such as exclusive electronic devices made by them. Another thing was the necessity for the import of seasonal fruits to be served at all venues and inside the Olympic Village and the need for urban equipment and furniture with the visual identity of the Games and of course the exclusivity of some other sponsors about other durable and non-durable consumer goods and also the requirements about food that will be sold during the Games at the venues. The IOC also demanded "control over all advertising space throughout Oslo and the subsites during the Games, to be used exclusively by official sponsors." This left Almaty, Kazakhstan and the eventual winner Beijing, China as the remaining two cities seeking to host the Games.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Sex verification is a practice used by the IOC and other sporting institutions to ensure participants compete only in categories for their sex. Verifying the sex of Olympic participants dates back to ancient Greece when Kallipateira attempted to break Greek law by dressing as a man to enter the arena as a trainer. After she was discovered a new policy was erected wherein trainers, just as athletes, were made to attend naked in order to better assure all were male. In more recent history, sex verification has taken many forms and been subject to dispute within various societal spheres. Before mandatory sex testing, Olympic officials relied on “nude parades” and doctor's notes. Successful women athletes perceived to be masculine were most likely to be targeted for inspection. In 1966, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) implemented compulsory sex verification process that was started at the 1968 Winter Olympics where a lottery system was used to determine who would be inspected with a Barr body test. The scientific community also found fault in this policy for different reasons. The use of the Barr body test was evaluated by fifteen geneticists who unanimously agreed it was scientifically invalid. By the 1970s this method was replaced with PCR testing, as well as evaluating other factors including brain anatomy and behaviour in order to verify sex. Following continued backlash against mandatory sex testing of both forms, the IOC's Athletes' Commission successfully advocated for the end of the practice in 1999. Although sex testing was no longer mandated by IOC policy, women who did not present as feminine enough continued to be inspected based on suspicion and started at 2000 Summer Olympics and remained in use until the 2010 Winter Olympics. By 2011 the IOC created a Hyperandrogenism Regulation, which aimed to standardize natural testosterone levels in women athletes. This transition in sex testing was to assure a fairness within female categories. This was due to the belief that higher testosterone levels increased athletic ability and gave unfair advantages to certain women including intersex and transgender competitors. Any female athlete flagged for suspicion and whose testosterone surpassed regulation levels, was prohibited from competing until medical treatment brought their hormone levels within the standardized amounts. It has been argued by press, scholars, and politicians that some ethnicities are disproportionately impacted by this regulation and it has been alleged that the rule endorses hegemonic gender norms. Most notable cases of competition bans due to sex testing results are as follows: Maria José Martínez-Patiño (1985), Santhi Soundarajan (2006), Caster Semenya (2009), Annet Negesa (2012), and Dutee Chand (2014).


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Some days before the 2014 Asian Games, Indian athlete Dutee Chand was banned from competing internationally after being found to be in violation of the Hyperandrogenism Regulation. Following the decision of her appeal by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the IOC suspended the policy for the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2018 Winter Olympics. Press advocated for the continued suspension of sex verification practices for the 2020 Summer Olympics.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Eight years after the 1998 Winter Olympics, a report ordered by the Nagano region's governor said the Japanese city provided millions of dollars in an "illegitimate and excessive level of hospitality" to IOC members, including US$4.4 million spent on entertainment alone. Earlier reports put the figure at approximately US$14 million. The precise figures are unknown since Nagano, after the IOC asked that the entertainment expenditures not be made public as they destroyed the financial records.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: In 2000, international human rights groups attempted to pressure the IOC to reject Beijing's bid in protest of the state of human rights in the People's Republic of China. One Chinese dissident who expressed similar sentiments was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison for calling on the IOC to do just that at the same time that IOC inspectors were touring the city. After the city won the rights to host the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in 2001, groups like the Amnesty International expressed concerns regarding the fact that the country was to host the Olympic Games to likewise expressing concerns over the human rights situation. The second principle in the Fundamental Principles of Olympism, Olympic Charter states that ""The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity."" Amnesty International considers the policies and practices of the People's Republic of China as failing to meet that principle, and urged the IOC to press the country authorities to immediately enact human rights reforms.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Some days before the Opening Ceremonies, in August 2008, the IOC issued DMCA take down notices on Tibetan Protests videos on YouTube. YouTube and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) both pushed back against the IOC, which then withdrew their complaint.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: In 2010, the IOC was nominated for the Public Eye Awards. This award seeks to present "shame-on-you-awards to the nastiest corporate players of the year".


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Before the start of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, the IOC decided not to hold a minute of silence to honour the 11 Israeli Olympians who were killed 40 years prior in the Munich massacre. Jacques Rogge, the then-IOC President, said it would be "inappropriate" to do so. Speaking of the decision, Israeli Olympian Shaul Ladany, who had survived the Munich Massacre, commented: "I do not understand. I do not understand, and I do not accept it".


title: International Olympic Committee

text: In February 2013, the IOC did not include wrestling as one of its core Olympic sports for the Summer Olympic programme for the 2020 Summer Olympics, after an Olympic Program revision and also the fact that there were political interferences in the International Federation and that the sport did not fit into the concept of equal opportunities for men and women. This decision was poorly received by the sporting and community as the sport was present at all Summer Games editions. This decision was later overturned, after a reassessment process was carried out and its permanence was maintained. Later, the sport was named among the core Olympic sports, the status it will hold until at least the 2032 Summer Olympics.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Media attention began growing in December 2014 when German broadcaster ARD reported on state-sponsored doping in Russia, comparing it to doping in East Germany. In November 2015, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) published a report and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) suspended Russia indefinitely from world track and field events. The United Kingdom Anti-Doping agency later assisted WADA with testing in Russia. In June 2016, they reported that they were unable to fully carry out their work and noted intimidation by armed Federal Security Service (FSB) agents.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: After a Russian former lab director made allegations about the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, WADA commissioned an independent investigation led by Richard McLaren. McLaren's investigation found corroborating evidence, concluding in a report published in July 2016 that the Ministry of Sport and the FSB had operated a "state-directed failsafe system" using a "disappearing positive [test] methodology" (DPM) from "at least late 2011 to August 2015".


title: International Olympic Committee

text: In response to these findings, WADA announced that RUSADA should be regarded as non-compliant with respect to the World Anti-Doping Code and recommended that Russia be banned from competing at the 2016 Summer Olympics. The IOC rejected the recommendation, stating that a separate decision would be made for each athlete by the relevant IF and the IOC, based on the athlete's individual circumstances. One day prior to the opening ceremony, 270 athletes were cleared to compete under the Russian flag, while 167 were removed because of doping. In contrast, the entire Kuwaiti team was banned from competing under their own flag (for a non-doping related matter).


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The IOC's decision on 24 July 2016 was criticised by athletes and writers.<ref name="https://nationalpost.com"></ref> It received support from the European Olympic Committees, which said that Russia was "a valued member". Cam Cole of Canada's "National Post" said that the IOC had "caved, as it always does, defaulting to whatever compromise it could safely adopt without offending a superpower." Expressing disappointment, a member of the IOC Athletes' Commission, Hayley Wickenheiser, wrote, "I ask myself if we were not dealing with Russia would this decision to ban a nation [have] been an easier one? I fear the answer is yes." Writing for "Deutsche Welle" in Germany, Olivia Grettenberger said that Bach had "flunked" his first serious test, adding, "With this decision, the credibility of the organization is shattered once more, while that of state-sponsored doping actually receives a minor boost." "Bild" (Germany) described Bach as "Putin's poodle". Paul Hayward, chief sports writer of "The Daily Telegraph" (UK), remarked, "The white flag of capitulation flies over the International Olympic Committee. Russia's deep political reach should have told us this would happen."


title: International Olympic Committee

text: Leaders of thirteen national anti-doping organisations wrote that the IOC had "violated the athletes' fundamental rights to participate in Games that meet the stringent requirements of the World Anti-Doping Code" and "[demonstrated that] it lacks the independence required to keep commercial and political interests from influencing the tough decisions necessary to protect clean sport." WADA's former chief investigation, Jack Robertson, said "The anti-doping code is now just suggestions to follow or not" and that "WADA handed the IOC that excuse [not enough time before the Olympics] by sitting on the allegations for close to a year." McLaren was dissatisfied with the IOC's handling of his report, saying "It was about state-sponsored doping and the mis-recording of doping results and they turned the focus into individual athletes and whether they should compete. [...] it was a complete turning upside down of what was in the report and passing over responsibility to all the different international federations."


title: International Olympic Committee

text: In contrast to the IOC, the IPC voted unanimously to ban the entire Russian team from the 2016 Summer Paralympics, having found evidence that the DPM was also in operation at the 2014 Winter Paralympics.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: On 5 December 2017, the IOC announced that the Russian Olympic Committee had been suspended effective immediately from the 2018 Winter Olympics. Athletes who had no previous drug violations and a consistent history of drug testing were to be allowed to compete under the Olympic Flag as an "Olympic Athlete from Russia" (OAR). Under the terms of the decree, Russian government officials were barred from the Games, and neither the country's flag nor anthem would be present. The Olympic Flag and Olympic Anthem will be used instead, and on 20 December 2017 the IOC proposed an alternate logo for the uniforms. IOC President Thomas Bach said that "after following due process [the IOC] has issued proportional sanctions for this systematic manipulation while protecting the clean athletes." "The New York Times"' Rebecca Ruiz and Tariq Panja reported the decision was "without precedent in Olympics history", while Sean Ingle at "The Guardian" noted the IOC's view that Russian doping was an "unprecedented attack on the integrity of the Olympic Games and sport". Hugo Lowell at the "i" "newspaper", meanwhile, reported that the IOC nonetheless stopped short of a total ban against Russia from the Games.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: On 1 February 2018, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) found that the IOC provided insufficient evidence for 28 athletes, and overturned their IOC sanctions. For 11 other athletes, the CAS decided that there was sufficient evidence to uphold their Sochi sanctions, but reduced their lifetime bans to only the 2018 Winter Olympics. The IOC said in a statement that "the result of the CAS decision does not mean that athletes from the group of 28 will be invited to the Games. Not being sanctioned does not automatically confer the privilege of an invitation" and that "this [case] may have a serious impact on the future fight against doping". The IOC found it important to note that the CAS Secretary General "insisted that the CAS decision does not mean that these 28 athletes are innocent" and that they would consider an appeal against the court's decision. Later that month, the Russian Olympic Committee was reinstated by the IOC, despite numerous failed drug tests by Russian athletes in the 2018 Olympics, and the Russian Anti-Doping Agency was re-certified in September, despite the Russian officials not accepting the McLaren Report.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The IOC was harshly criticized for their handling of the Russian doping scandal. After reinstating the Russian Olympic committee following the 2018 Winter Olympics, Jim Walden, attorney for Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, who masterminded Russia's programme, called the move "weakness in the face of evil."


title: International Olympic Committee

text: On 24 November 2018, the Taiwanese government held a referendum over a change in the naming of their National Olympic Committee, from "Chinese Taipei," a name agreed to in 1981 by the People's Republic of China at the Nagoya Protocol, who denies the ROC's legitimacy, to simply "Taiwan", after the main island in the Free Area. In the immediate days prior to the referendum, the IOC and the PRC government, issued a threatening statement, suggesting that if the team underwent the name change, the IOC had the legal right to exercise, to make a "suspension of or forced withdrawal," of the team from the 2020 Summer Olympics. In response to the allegations of election interference, the IOC stated, "The IOC does not interfere with local procedures and fully respects freedom of expression. However, to avoid any unnecessary expectations or speculations, the IOC wishes to reiterate that this matter is under its jurisdiction." Subsequently, with a significant PRC pressure, the referendum failed in Taiwan with 45.20% to 54.80%.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: As it happened 14 years earlier, the entity came under pressure again when accepting the Chinese capital's candidacy for the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. Starting in 2014, numerous human rights groups and governments criticised the committee for allowing Beijing to bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics which eventually the city won. Some weeks before the Opening Ceremonies at the wake of the release of the Xinjiang Papers, which documented the abuses by the Chinese government against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, in what many governments have described as a genocide. Many government officials, notably those in the United States and the Great Britain, called for a boycott of the 2022 winter games. The IOC responded to concerns by saying that the Olympic Games must not be politicized. Some Nations, including the United States, diplomatically boycotted games, which prohibited a diplomatic delegation from representing a nation at the games, rather than a full boycott which would have also barred athletes from competing. In September 2021, the IOC suspended the North Korea National Olympic Committee, after they boycott the 2020 Summer Olympics claiming "COVID-19 Concerns". Many journalists and specialists have speculated that this suspension was intended to send a message to other nations, that if they boycott the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, they could be suspended from participation in future editions.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: On 14 October 2021, vice-president of the IOC, John Coates, announced that the IOC had no plans to challenge the Chinese government on humanitarian issues, stating that the issues were "not within the IOC's remit".


title: International Olympic Committee

text: In December 2021, the United States House of Representatives voted unanimously for a resolution stating that the IOC had violated its own human rights commitments by cooperating with the Chinese government. In January 2022, members of the U.S. House of Representatives unsuccessfully attempted to pass legislation to strip the IOC of its tax exemption status in the United States.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: In November 2021, the IOC was again criticized by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and others for its response to the 2021 disappearance of Peng Shuai, following her publishing of sexual assault allegations against former Chinese vice premier, and high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party, Zhang Gaoli.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The IOC's response was internationally criticized as complicit in assisting the Chinese government to silence Peng's sexual assault allegations. Zhang Gaoli previously led the Beijing bidding committee to host the 2022 Winter Olympics.


title: International Olympic Committee

text: The Olympic Partner (TOP) sponsorship programme includes the following commercial sponsors of the Olympic Games.


title: Inquisition

text: The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, but convictions of unrepentant heresy were handed over to the secular courts, which generally resulted in execution or life imprisonment. The Inquisition had its start in the 12th-century Kingdom of France, with the aim of combating religious deviation (e.g. apostasy or heresy), particularly among the Cathars and the Waldensians. The inquisitorial courts from this time until the mid-15th century are together known as the Medieval Inquisition. Other groups investigated during the Medieval Inquisition, which primarily took place in France and Italy, include the Spiritual Franciscans, the Hussites, and the Beguines. Beginning in the 1250s, inquisitors were generally chosen from members of the Dominican Order, replacing the earlier practice of using local clergy as judges.


title: Inquisition

text: During the Late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, the scope of the Inquisition grew significantly in response to the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. During this period, the Inquisition conducted by the Holy See was known as the Roman Inquisition. The Inquisition also expanded to other European countries, resulting in the Spanish Inquisition and the Portuguese Inquisition. The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions focused particularly on the anusim (people who were forced to abandon Judaism against their will) and on Muslim converts to Catholicism. The scale of the persecution of converted Muslims and converted Jews in Spain and Portugal was the result of suspicions that they had secretly reverted to their previous religions, although both religious minority groups were also more numerous on the Iberian Peninsula than in other parts of Europe.


title: Inquisition

text: During this time, Spain and Portugal operated inquisitorial courts not only in Europe, but also throughout their empires in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. This resulted in the Goa Inquisition, the Peruvian Inquisition, and the Mexican Inquisition, among others.


title: Inquisition

text: With the exception of the Papal States, the institution of the Inquisition was abolished in the early 19th century, after the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and the Spanish American wars of independence in the Americas. The institution survived as part of the Roman Curia, but in 1908 it was renamed the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office. In 1965, it became the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.


title: Inquisition

text: The term "Inquisition" comes from the Medieval Latin word , which described any court process based on Roman law, which had gradually come back into use during the Late Middle Ages. Today, the English term "Inquisition" can apply to any one of several institutions that worked against heretics (or other offenders against canon law) within the judicial system of the Roman Catholic Church. Although the term "Inquisition" is usually applied to ecclesiastical courts of the Catholic Church, it refers to a judicial process, not an organization. Inquisitors '...were called such because they applied a judicial technique known as "inquisitio", which could be translated as "inquiry" or "inquest".' In this process, which was already widely used by secular rulers (Henry II used it extensively in England in the twelfth century), an official inquirer called for information on a specific subject from anyone who felt he or she had something to offer."


title: Inquisition

text: The Inquisition, as a church-court, had no jurisdiction over Muslims and Jews as such. Generally, the Inquisition was concerned only with the heretical behaviour of Catholic adherents or converts.


title: Inquisition

text: The overwhelming majority of sentences seem to have consisted of penances like wearing a cross sewn on one's clothes or going on pilgrimage. When a suspect was convicted of unrepentant heresy, canon law required the inquisitorial tribunal to hand the person over to secular authorities for final sentencing. A secular magistrate, the "secular arm", would then determine the penalty based on local law. Those local laws included proscriptions against certain religious crimes, and the punishments included death by burning, although the penalty was more usually banishment or imprisonment for life, which was generally commuted after a few years. Thus the inquisitors generally knew the fate which expected anyone so remanded.


title: Inquisition

text: The 1578 edition of the Directorium Inquisitorum (a standard Inquisitorial manual) spelled out the purpose of inquisitorial penalties: "... quoniam punitio non refertur primo & per se in correctionem & bonum eius qui punitur, sed in bonum publicum ut alij terreantur, & a malis committendis avocentur" (translation: "... for punishment does not take place primarily and "per se" for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit").


title: Inquisition

text: Before 1100, the Catholic Church suppressed what they believed to be heresy, usually through a system of ecclesiastical proscription or imprisonment, but without using torture, and seldom resorting to executions. Such punishments were opposed by a number of clergymen and theologians, although some countries punished heresy with the death penalty. Pope Siricius, Ambrose of Milan, and Martin of Tours protested against the execution of Priscillian, largely as an undue interference in ecclesiastical discipline by a civil tribunal. Though widely viewed as a heretic, Priscillian was executed as a sorcerer. Ambrose refused to give any recognition to Ithacius of Ossonuba, "not wishing to have anything to do with bishops who had sent heretics to their death".


title: Inquisition

text: In the 12th century, to counter the spread of Catharism, prosecution of heretics became more frequent. The Church charged councils composed of bishops and archbishops with establishing inquisitions (the Episcopal Inquisition). The first Inquisition was temporarily established in Languedoc (south of France) in 1184. The murder of Pope Innocent's papal legate Pierre de Castelnau in 1208 sparked the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229). The Inquisition was permanently established in 1229 (Council of Toulouse), run largely by the Dominicans in Rome and later at Carcassonne in Languedoc.


title: Inquisition

text: Historians use the term "Medieval Inquisition" to describe the various inquisitions that started around 1184, including the Episcopal Inquisition (1184–1230s) and later the Papal Inquisition (1230s). These inquisitions responded to large popular movements throughout Europe considered apostate or heretical to Christianity, in particular the Cathars in southern France and the Waldensians in both southern France and northern Italy. Other Inquisitions followed after these first inquisition movements. The legal basis for some inquisitorial activity came from Pope Innocent IV's papal bull "Ad extirpanda" of 1252, which explicitly authorized (and defined the appropriate circumstances for) the use of torture by the Inquisition for eliciting confessions from heretics. However, Nicholas Eymerich, the inquisitor who wrote the "Directorium Inquisitorum", stated: 'Quaestiones sunt fallaces et ineficaces' ("interrogations via torture are misleading and futile"). By 1256 inquisitors were given absolution if they used instruments of torture.


title: Inquisition

text: In the 13th century, Pope Gregory IX (reigned 1227–1241) assigned the duty of carrying out inquisitions to the Dominican Order and Franciscan Order. By the end of the Middle Ages, England and Castile were the only large western nations without a papal inquisition.


title: Inquisition

text: Most inquisitors were friars who taught theology and/or law in the universities. They used inquisitorial procedures, a common legal practice adapted from the earlier Ancient Roman court procedures. They judged heresy along with bishops and groups of "assessors" (clergy serving in a role that was roughly analogous to a jury or legal advisers), using the local authorities to establish a tribunal and to prosecute heretics. After 1200, a Grand Inquisitor headed each Inquisition. Grand Inquisitions persisted until the mid 19th century.


title: Inquisition

text: With the sharpening of debate and of conflict between the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, Protestant societies came to see/use the Inquisition as a terrifying "Other", while staunch Catholics regarded the Holy Office as a necessary bulwark against the spread of reprehensible heresies.


title: Inquisition

text: While belief in witchcraft, and persecutions directed at or excused by it, were widespread in pre-Christian Europe, and reflected in Germanic law, the influence of the Church in the early medieval era resulted in the revocation of these laws in many places, bringing an end to traditional pagan witch hunts. Throughout the medieval era, mainstream Christian teaching had denied the existence of witches and witchcraft, condemning it as pagan superstition. However, Christian influence on popular beliefs in witches and "maleficium" (harm committed by magic) failed to entirely eradicate folk belief in witches.


title: Inquisition

text: The fierce denunciation and persecution of supposed sorceresses that characterized the cruel witchhunts of a later age were not generally found in the first thirteen hundred years of the Christian era. The medieval Church distinguished between "white" and "black" magic. Local folk practice often mixed chants, incantations, and prayers to the appropriate patron saint to ward off storms, to protect cattle, or ensure a good harvest. Bonfires on Midsummer's Eve were intended to deflect natural catastrophes or the influence of fairies, ghosts, and witches. Plants, often harvested under particular conditions, were deemed effective in healing.


title: Inquisition

text: Black magic was that which was used for a malevolent purpose. This was generally dealt with through confession, repentance, and charitable work assigned as penance. Early Irish canons treated sorcery as a crime to be visited with excommunication until adequate penance had been performed. In 1258, Pope Alexander IV ruled that inquisitors should limit their involvement to those cases in which there was some clear presumption of heretical belief.


title: Inquisition

text: The prosecution of witchcraft generally became more prominent in the late medieval and Renaissance era, perhaps driven partly by the upheavals of the era – the Black Death, the Hundred Years War, and a gradual cooling of the climate that modern scientists call the Little Ice Age (between about the 15th and 19th centuries). Witches were sometimes blamed. Since the years of most intense witch-hunting largely coincide with the age of the Reformation, some historians point to the influence of the Reformation on the European witch-hunt.


title: Inquisition

text: Dominican priest Heinrich Kramer was assistant to the Archbishop of Salzburg. In 1484 Kramer requested that Pope Innocent VIII clarify his authority to prosecute witchcraft in Germany, where he had been refused assistance by the local ecclesiastical authorities. They maintained that Kramer could not legally function in their areas.


title: Inquisition

text: The papal bull "Summis desiderantes affectibus" sought to remedy this jurisdictional dispute by specifically identifying the dioceses of Mainz, Köln, Trier, Salzburg, and Bremen. Some scholars view the bull as "clearly political". The bull failed to ensure that Kramer obtained the support he had hoped for. In fact he was subsequently expelled from the city of Innsbruck by the local bishop, George Golzer, who ordered Kramer to stop making false accusations. Golzer described Kramer as senile in letters written shortly after the incident. This rebuke led Kramer to write a justification of his views on witchcraft in his 1486 book "Malleus Maleficarum" ("Hammer against witches"). In the book, Kramer stated his view that witchcraft was to blame for bad weather. The book is also noted for its animus against women. Despite Kramer's claim that the book gained acceptance from the clergy at the University of Cologne, it was in fact condemned by the clergy at Cologne for advocating views that violated Catholic doctrine and standard inquisitorial procedure. In 1538 the Spanish Inquisition cautioned its members not to believe everything the "Malleus" said.


title: Inquisition

text: Portugal and Spain in the late Middle Ages consisted largely of multicultural territories of Muslim and Jewish influence, reconquered from Islamic control, and the new Christian authorities could not assume that all their subjects would suddenly become and remain orthodox Roman Catholics. So the Inquisition in Iberia, in the lands of the Reconquista counties and kingdoms like León, Castile, and Aragon, had a special socio-political basis as well as more fundamental religious motives.


title: Inquisition

text: In some parts of Spain towards the end of the 14th century, there was a wave of violent anti-Judaism, encouraged by the preaching of Ferrand Martínez, Archdeacon of Écija. In the pogroms of June 1391 in Seville, hundreds of Jews were killed, and the synagogue was completely destroyed. The number of people killed was also high in other cities, such as Córdoba, Valencia, and Barcelona.


title: Inquisition

text: One of the consequences of these pogroms was the mass conversion of thousands of surviving Jews. Forced baptism was contrary to the law of the Catholic Church, and theoretically anybody who had been forcibly baptized could legally return to Judaism. However, this was very narrowly interpreted. Legal definitions of the time theoretically acknowledged that a forced baptism was not a valid sacrament, but confined this to cases where it was literally administered by physical force. A person who had consented to baptism under threat of death or serious injury was still regarded as a voluntary convert, and accordingly forbidden to revert to Judaism. After the public violence, many of the converted "felt it safer to remain in their new religion". Thus, after 1391, a new social group appeared and were referred to as "conversos" or "New Christians".


title: Inquisition

text: King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile established the Spanish Inquisition in 1478. In contrast to the previous inquisitions, it operated completely under royal Christian authority, though staffed by clergy and orders, and independently of the Holy See. It operated in Spain and in most Spanish colonies and territories, which included the Canary Islands, the Kingdom of Sicily, and all Spanish possessions in North, Central, and South America. It primarily focused upon forced converts from Islam (Moriscos, Conversos and "secret Moors") and from Judaism (Conversos, Crypto-Jews and Marranos)—both groups still resided in Spain after the end of the Islamic control of Spain—who came under suspicion of either continuing to adhere to their old religion or of having fallen back into it.


title: Inquisition

text: In 1492 all Jews who had not converted were expelled from Spain; those who converted became nominal Catholics and thus subject to the Inquisition.


title: Inquisition

text: In the Americas, King Philip II of Spain set up three tribunals (each formally titled "Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición") in 1569, one in Mexico, Cartagena de Indias (in modern-day Colombia) and Peru. The Mexican office administered Mexico (central and southeastern Mexico), Nueva Galicia (northern and western Mexico), the Audiencias of Guatemala (Guatemala, Chiapas, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica), and the Spanish East Indies. The Peruvian Inquisition, based in Lima, administered all the Spanish territories in South America and Panama.


title: Inquisition

text: The Portuguese Inquisition formally started in Portugal in 1536 at the request of King João III. Manuel I had asked Pope Leo X for the installation of the Inquisition in 1515, but only after his death in 1521 did Pope Paul III acquiesce. At its head stood a "Grande Inquisidor", or General Inquisitor, named by the Pope but selected by the Crown, and always from within the royal family. The Portuguese Inquisition principally focused upon the Sephardi Jews, whom the state forced to convert to Christianity. Spain had expelled its Sephardi population in 1492; many of these Spanish Jews left Spain for Portugal but eventually were subject to inquisition there as well.


title: Inquisition

text: The Portuguese Inquisition held its first "auto-da-fé" in 1540. The Portuguese inquisitors mostly focused upon the Jewish New Christians (i.e. "conversos" or "marranos"). The Portuguese Inquisition expanded its scope of operations from Portugal to its colonial possessions, including Brazil, Cape Verde, and Goa. In the colonies, it continued as a religious court, investigating and trying cases of breaches of the tenets of orthodox Roman Catholicism until 1821. King João III (reigned 1521–57) extended the activity of the courts to cover censorship, divination, witchcraft, and bigamy. Originally oriented for a religious action, the Inquisition exerted an influence over almost every aspect of Portuguese society: political, cultural, and social.


title: Inquisition

text: According to Henry Charles Lea, between 1540 and 1794, tribunals in Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra, and Évora resulted in the burning of 1,175 persons, the burning of another 633 in effigy, and the penancing of 29,590. But documentation of 15 out of 689 autos-da-fé has disappeared, so these numbers may slightly understate the activity.


title: Inquisition

text: The Goa Inquisition began in 1560 at the order of John III of Portugal. It had originally been requested in a letter in the 1540s by Jesuit priest Francis Xavier, because of the New Christians who had arrived in Goa and then reverted to Judaism. The Goa Inquisition also focused upon Catholic converts from Hinduism or Islam who were thought to have returned to their original ways. In addition, this inquisition prosecuted non-converts who broke prohibitions against the public observance of Hindu or Muslim rites or interfered with Portuguese attempts to convert non-Christians to Catholicism. Aleixo Dias Falcão and Francisco Marques set it up in the palace of the Sabaio Adil Khan.


title: Inquisition

text: The inquisition was active in colonial Brazil. The religious mystic and formerly enslaved prostitute, Rosa Egipcíaca was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned, both in the colony and in Lisbon. Egipcíaca was the first black woman in Brazil to write a book - this work detailed her visions and was entitled "Sagrada Teologia do Amor Divino das Almas Peregrinas."


title: Inquisition

text: With the Protestant Reformation, Catholic authorities became much more ready to suspect heresy in any new ideas,


title: Inquisition

text: including those of Renaissance humanism, previously strongly supported by many at the top of the Church hierarchy. The extirpation of heretics became a much broader and more complex enterprise, complicated by the politics of territorial Protestant powers, especially in northern Europe. The Catholic Church could no longer exercise direct influence in the politics and justice-systems of lands that officially adopted Protestantism. Thus war (the French Wars of Religion, the Thirty Years' War), massacre (the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre) and the missional and propaganda work (by the "Sacra congregatio de propaganda fide") of the Counter-Reformation came to play larger roles in these circumstances, and the Roman law type of a "judicial" approach to heresy represented by the Inquisition became less important overall. In 1542 Pope Paul III established the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition as a permanent congregation staffed with cardinals and other officials. It had the tasks of maintaining and defending the integrity of the faith and of examining and proscribing errors and false doctrines; it thus became the supervisory body of local Inquisitions. A famous case tried by the Roman Inquisition was that of Galileo Galilei in 1633.


title: Inquisition

text: The penances and sentences for those who confessed or were found guilty were pronounced together in a public ceremony at the end of all the processes. This was the "sermo generalis" or "auto-da-fé". Penances (not matters for the civil authorities) might consist of a pilgrimage, a public scourging, a fine, or the wearing of a cross. The wearing of two tongues of red or other brightly colored cloth, sewn onto an outer garment in an "X" pattern, marked those who were under investigation. The penalties in serious cases were confiscation of property by the Inquisition or imprisonment. This led to the possibility of false charges to enable confiscation being made against those over a certain income, particularly rich "marranos". Following the French invasion of 1798, the new authorities sent 3,000 chests containing over 100,000 Inquisition documents to France from Rome.


title: Inquisition

text: In Portugal, in the wake of the Liberal Revolution of 1820, the "General Extraordinary and Constituent Courts of the Portuguese Nation" abolished the Portuguese inquisition in 1821.


title: Inquisition

text: The wars of independence of the former Spanish colonies in the Americas concluded with the abolition of the Inquisition in every quarter of Hispanic America between 1813 and 1825.


title: Inquisition

text: The last execution of the Inquisition was in Spain in 1826. This was the execution by garroting of the school teacher Cayetano Ripoll for purportedly teaching Deism in his school. In Spain the practices of the Inquisition were finally outlawed in 1834.


title: Inquisition

text: In Italy, the restoration of the Pope as the ruler of the Papal States in 1814 brought back the Inquisition to the Papal States. It remained active there until the late-19th century, notably in the well-publicised Mortara affair (1858–1870). In 1908 the name of the Congregation became "The Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office", which in 1965 further changed to "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith", as retained to .


title: Inquisition

text: Beginning in the 19th century, historians have gradually compiled statistics drawn from the surviving court records, from which estimates have been calculated by adjusting the recorded number of convictions by the average rate of document loss for each time period. Gustav Henningsen and Jaime Contreras studied the records of the Spanish Inquisition, which list 44,674 cases of which 826 resulted in executions "in person" and 778 "in effigy" (i.e. a straw dummy was burned in place of the person). William Monter estimated there were 1000 executions between 1530–1630 and 250 between 1630 and 1730. Jean-Pierre Dedieu studied the records of Toledo's tribunal, which put 12,000 people on trial. For the period prior to 1530, Henry Kamen estimated there were about 2,000 executions in all of Spain's tribunals. Italian Renaissance history professor and Inquisition expert Carlo Ginzburg had his doubts about using statistics to reach a judgment about the period. "In many cases, we don't have the evidence, the evidence has been lost," said Ginzburg.


title: Trevor Rees-Jones (bodyguard)

text: Trevor Rees-Jones (also known as Trevor Rees; born 3 March 1968) is a German-born British bodyguard who was badly injured in a car crash in Paris that killed Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. Because he suffered a serious head injury, he does not recall any details from the crash.


title: Trevor Rees-Jones (bodyguard)

text: Some media reports claimed he was wearing a seat belt and survived, but investigations revealed that none of the occupants of the car were wearing their seat belts.


title: Trevor Rees-Jones (bodyguard)

text: Rees-Jones was born on 3 March 1968 in Rinteln, West Germany, the middle-born of three boys of Colin Rees, a surgeon in the British Army, and Gill, a nurse. He has an older brother, Gareth, and younger brother, John. At ten, he returned with his family to Oswestry, on the Welsh border near his father's childhood home. At Fitzalan High School, he enrolled in the Combined Cadet Force.


title: Trevor Rees-Jones (bodyguard)

text: In 1987, Rees-Jones enlisted in the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, served one tour of duty in Northern Ireland and was awarded the General Service Medal.


title: Trevor Rees-Jones (bodyguard)

text: On 12 August 1995, he married his first wife, Sue Jones, in Oswestry, where the couple had met at Fitzalan High School. Jones filed for divorce in June 1997.


title: Trevor Rees-Jones (bodyguard)

text: On 31 August 1997, Rees-Jones was seriously injured in the crash that resulted in the death of Princess Diana. The Princess's boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, and their chauffeur, Henri Paul, were found dead inside the car; Rees-Jones was the sole survivor of the crash. His face was flattened, with numerous bones broken or crushed, and was reconstructed afterwards with old family photos by French facial doctor, Luc Chikhani, with about 150 pieces of titanium to hold the bones together and recreate the original shape. Within a year, his face was nearly back to normal.


title: Trevor Rees-Jones (bodyguard)

text: Hospital care costs were paid by Dodi's father, Mohamed Al-Fayed, Rees-Jones' employer at the time of the crash, and the rest by the British National Health Service (NHS). At first, it was widely rumoured that Rees-Jones had lost his tongue in the crash, but this was not true. He underwent a ten-hour operation to restore his jaw to a normal condition.


title: Trevor Rees-Jones (bodyguard)

text: After spending more than a month in hospital, Rees-Jones finally returned to the United Kingdom on 3 October 1997. At the time, he was able to communicate only by whispering and writing down answers. He resigned from his job as a bodyguard on 19 May 1998. Al-Fayed was reported as saying that his job would be available if he wished to return.


title: Trevor Rees-Jones (bodyguard)

text: Following recovery from his injuries, he moved to north Shropshire and for some time worked in a small family-run sportswear shop in Oswestry. He remarried on 15 February 2003, to Ann Scott, a teacher at Belvidere School, Shrewsbury. The ceremony took place in Welshpool, Wales.


title: Trevor Rees-Jones (bodyguard)

text: He wrote a book, published in 2000 and titled "The Bodyguard's Story: Diana, the Crash, and the Sole Survivor" (), about his experiences, with the help of ghostwriter Moira Johnston. The book reconstructed the events from Rees-Jones's partial memories and those of his family and friends. He decided to write the book because many bizarre stories had circulated about the crash and because his former employer, Al-Fayed, had accused him of not doing his job properly.


title: Bluebeard

text: "Bluebeard" (, ) is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in "Histoires ou contes du temps passé". The tale tells the story of a wealthy man in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of the present one to avoid the fate of her predecessors. "The White Dove", "The Robber Bridegroom" and "Fitcher's Bird" (also called "Fowler's Fowl") are tales similar to "Bluebeard". The notoriety of the tale is such that Merriam-Webster gives the word "Bluebeard" the definition of "a man who marries and kills one wife after another". The verb "bluebearding" has even appeared as a way to describe the crime of either killing a series of women, or seducing and abandoning a series of women.


title: Bluebeard

text: In one version of the story, Bluebeard is a wealthy and powerful nobleman who has been married six times to beautiful women who have all mysteriously vanished. When he visits his neighbor and asks to marry one of his daughters, they are terrified. After hosting a wonderful banquet, the youngest decides to be his wife and goes to live with him in his rich and luxurious palace in the countryside, away from her family.


title: Bluebeard

text: Bluebeard announces that he must leave for the country and gives the palace keys to his wife. She is able to open any room with them, each of which contain some of his riches, except for an underground chamber that he strictly forbids her to enter lest she suffer his wrath. He then goes away, leaves the palace, and the keys in her hands. She invites her sister, Anne, and her friends and cousins over for a party. However, she is eventually overcome with the desire to see what the secret room holds, and she sneaks away from the party and ventures into it.


title: Bluebeard

text: She immediately discovers that the room is flooded with blood and the murdered corpses of Bluebeard's previous six wives hanging on hooks from the walls. Horrified, she drops the key in the blood and flees the room. She tries to wipe the blood stain off the key, but the key is magic and the stain can't be removed from it. Bluebeard unexpectedly returns and finds the bloody key. In a blind rage, he threatens to kill his wife on the spot, but she asks for one last prayer with Anne. Then, as Bluebeard is about to deliver the fatal blow, Anne and the wife's brothers arrive and kill him. The wife inherits his fortune and castle, and has his six dead wives buried. She uses the fortune to have her siblings married then remarries herself, finally moving on from her horrible experience with Bluebeard.


title: Bluebeard

text: Although best known as a folktale, the character of Bluebeard appears to derive from legends related to historical individuals in Brittany. One source is believed to have been the 15th-century convicted serial killer Gilles de Rais, a nobleman who fought alongside Joan of Arc and became both Marshal of France and her official protector, then was hanged and burned as a murderous witch. However, Gilles de Rais did not kill his wife, nor were any bodies found on his property, and the crimes for which he was convicted involved the sexually-driven, brutal murder of children rather than women.


title: Bluebeard

text: Another possible source stems from the story of the early Breton king Conomor the Accursed and his wife Tryphine. This is recorded in a biography of St. Gildas, written five centuries after his death in the sixth century. It describes how after Conomor married Tryphine, she was warned by the ghosts of his previous wives that he murders them when they become pregnant. Pregnant, she flees; he catches and beheads her, but St. Gildas miraculously restores her to life, and when he brings her to Conomor, the walls of his castle collapse and kill him. Conomor is a historical figure, known locally as a werewolf, and various local churches are dedicated to Saint Tryphine and her son, Saint Tremeur.


title: Bluebeard

text: The fatal effects of female curiosity have long been the subject of story and legend. Pandora and Psyche are examples of women in mythic stories whose curiosity have dire consequences. In giving his wife the keys to his castle, Bluebeard is acting the part of the serpent, and therefore of the devil, and his wife the part of the victim held by the serpent's gaze.


title: Bluebeard

text: In addition, hidden or forbidden chambers were not unknown in pre-Perrault literature. In Basile's "Pentamerone", the tale "The Three Crowns" tells of a Princess Marchetta entering a room after being forbidden by an ogress, and in "The Arabian Nights," Prince Agib is given a hundred keys to a hundred doors but forbidden to enter the golden door, which he does with terrible consequences.


title: Bluebeard

text: While some scholars interpret the Bluebeard story as a fable preaching obedience to wives (as Perrault's moral suggests), folklorist Maria Tatar has suggested that the tale encourages women not to unquestioningly follow patriarchal rules. Women breaking men's rules in the fairy tale can be seen as a metaphor for women breaking society's rules and being punished for their transgression. The key can be seen as a sign of disobedience or transgression; it can also be seen as a sign that one should not trust their husband.


title: Bluebeard

text: Tatar, however, does go on to speak of Bluebeard as something of a "Beauty and the Beast" narrative. The original Beauty and the Beast tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont is said to be a story created to condition young women into the possibility of not only marriage, but marrying young, and to placate their fears of the implications of an older husband. It shows the beast as secretly compassionate, and someone meant to curb the aggressive sexual fears that young women have towards marriage. Though "Beauty and the Beast" holds several similarities in Gothic imagery to "Bluebeard" (such as is shared with Cupid and Psyche as well, in the case of a mysterious captor, a looming castle, and a young, beautiful heroine), Tatar goes on to state that the latter tale lives on the entire opposite side of the spectrum: one in which, instead of female placation, the tale simply aggravates women's apprehension, confirming one's "worst fears about sex".


title: Bluebeard

text: Jungian psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés refers to the key as "the key of knowing" which gives the wife consciousness. She can choose to not open the door and live as a naive young woman. Instead, she has chosen to open the door of truth.


title: Bluebeard

text: For folklorist Bruno Bettelheim, "Bluebeard" can only be considered a fairy tale because of the magical bleeding key; otherwise, it would just be a monstrous horror story. Bettelheim sees the key as associated with the male sexual organ, "particularly the first intercourse when the hymen is broken and blood gets on it". For Bettelheim, the blood on the key is a symbol of the wife's indiscretion.


title: Bluebeard

text: For scholar Philip Lewis, the key offered to the wife by Bluebeard represents his superiority, since he knows something she does not. The blood on the key indicates that she now has knowledge. She has erased the difference between them, and in order to return her to her previous state, he must kill her.


title: Bluebeard

text: According to the Aarne–Thompson system of classifying folktale plots, the tale of Bluebeard is type 312. Another such tale is "The White Dove", an oral French variant. The type is closely related to Aarne–Thompson type 311 in which the heroine rescues herself and her sisters, in such tales as "Fitcher's Bird", "The Old Dame and Her Hen", and "How the Devil Married Three Sisters". The tales where the youngest daughter rescues herself and the other sisters from the villain are in fact far more common in oral traditions than this type, where the heroine's brother rescues her. Other such tales do exist, however; the brother is sometimes aided in the rescue by marvelous dogs or wild animals.


title: Bluebeard

text: Some European variants of the ballad "Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight", Child ballad 4, closely resemble this tale. This is particularly noteworthy among some German variants, where the heroine calls for help much like Sister Anne calls for help to her brothers in Perrault's "Bluebeard".


title: Bluebeard

text: It is not explained why Bluebeard murdered his first bride; she could not have entered the forbidden room and found a dead wife. Some scholars have theorized that he was testing his wife's obedience, and that she was killed not for what she discovered there, but because she disobeyed his orders.


title: Bluebeard

text: In the 1812 version published in "Grimms' Fairy Tales", Wilhelm Grimm, on p. XLI of the annotations, makes the following handwritten comment: "It seems in all Märchen [fairy tales] of Bluebeard, wherein his Blutrunst [lust for blood] has not rightly explained, the idea to be the basis of himself through bathing in blood to cure of the blue beard; as the lepers. That is also why it is written that the blood is collected in basins."


title: Bluebeard

text: Maurice Maeterlinck wrote extensively on Bluebeard and his plays name at least six former wives: Sélysette from "Aglavaine et Sélysette" (1896), Alladine from "Alladine et Palomides" (1894), both Ygraine and Bellangère from "La mort de Tintagiles" (1894), Mélisande from "Pelléas et Mélisande", and Ariane from "Ariane et Barbe-bleue" (1907).


title: Bluebeard

text: In Jacques Offenbach's opera "Barbe-bleue" (1866), the five previous wives are Héloïse, Eléonore, Isaure, Rosalinde and Blanche, with the sixth and final wife being a peasant girl, Boulotte, who finally reveals his secret when he attempts to have her killed so that he can marry Princess Hermia.


title: Bluebeard

text: Béla Bartók's opera "Bluebeard's Castle" (1911), with a libretto by Béla Balázs, names "Judith" as wife number four.


title: Bluebeard

text: Anatole France's short story "The Seven Wives of Bluebeard" names Jeanne de Lespoisse as the last wife before Bluebeard's death. The other wives were Collette Passage, Jeanne de la Cloche, Gigonne, Blanche de Gibeaumex, Angèle de la Garandine, and Alix de Pontalcin.


title: Bluebeard

text: In Edward Dmytryk's film "Bluebeard" (1972), Baron von Sepper (Richard Burton) is an Austrian aristocrat known as Bluebeard for his blue-toned beard and his appetite for beautiful wives, and his wife is an American named Anne.


title: Bluebeard

text: In Alex Garland's film "Ex Machina" (2014), Nathan is an internet mogul who designs robots with a human female body inside his home. Each time he starts a new iteration of the robot, he eliminates the AI of the previous one and puts the robot body inside a cupboard in his vault. Nathan's company is called "Blue Book" and a key plays a central role in the movie.


title: Bluebeard

text: In Charles Dickens' short story "Captain Murderer", the titular character is described as "an offshoot of the Bluebeard family", and is far more bloodthirsty than most Bluebeards: he cannibalises each wife a month after marriage. He meets his demise after his sister-in-law, in revenge for the death of her sister, marries him and consumes a deadly poison just before he devours her.


title: Bluebeard

text: In Anatole France's "The Seven Wives of Bluebeard", Bluebeard is the victim of the tale, and his wives the perpetrators. Bluebeard is a generous, kind-hearted, wealthy nobleman called Bertrand de Montragoux who marries a succession of grotesque, adulterous, difficult, or simple-minded wives. His first six wives all die, flee, or are sent away under unfortunate circumstances, none of which are his fault. His seventh wife deceives him with another lover and murders him for his wealth.


title: Bluebeard

text: In Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber", Bluebeard is a 1920s decadent with a collection of erotic drawings, and Bluebeard's wife is rescued by her mother, who rides in on a horse and shoots Bluebeard between the eyes, rather than by her brothers as in the original fairy tale.


title: Bluebeard

text: In Joyce Carol Oates' short story, "Blue-Bearded Lover", the most recent wife is well aware of Bluebeard's murdered wives: she does not unlock the door to the forbidden room, and therefore avoids death herself. She remains with Bluebeard despite knowing he is a murderer, and gives birth to Bluebeard's children. The book has been interpreted as a feminist struggle for sexual power.


title: Bluebeard

text: In Helen Oyeyemi's "Mr. Fox", Mr. Fox is a writer of slasher novels, with a muse named Mary. Mary questions Mr. Fox about why he writes about killing women who have transgressed patriarchal laws, making him aware of how his words normalize domestic violence. One of the stories in the book is about a girl named Mary who has a fear of serial killers because her father raised her on stories about men who killed women who did not obey them and then killed her mother.


title: Bluebeard

text: Kurt Vonnegut's "Bluebeard" features a painter who calls himself Bluebeard, and who considers his art studio to be a forbidden chamber where his girlfriend Circe Berman is not allowed to go.


title: Bluebeard

text: In Donald Barthelme's "Bluebeard", the wife believes that the carcasses of Bluebeard's previous six wives are behind the door. She loses the key and her lover hides the three duplicates. One afternoon Bluebeard insists that she open the door, so she borrows his key. Inside, she finds the decaying carcasses of six zebras dressed in Coco Chanel gowns.


title: Gene Autry

text: Orvon Grover "Gene" Autry (September 29, 1907 – October 2, 1998), nicknamed the Singing Cowboy, was an American singer, songwriter, actor, musician, rodeo performer, and baseball owner who gained fame largely by singing in a crooning style on radio, in films, and on television for more than three decades beginning in the early 1930s. Autry was the owner of a television station, several radio stations in Southern California, and the Los Angeles/Anaheim/California Angels Major League Baseball team from 1961 to 1997.


title: Gene Autry

text: From 1934 to 1953, Autry appeared in 93 films, and between 1950 and 1956 hosted "The Gene Autry Show" television series. During the 1930s and 1940s, he personified the straight-shooting hero—honest, brave, and true. Autry was also one of the most important pioneering figures in the history of country music, considered the second major influential artist of the genre's development after Jimmie Rodgers. His singing cowboy films were the first vehicle to carry country music to a national audience. In addition to his signature song, "Back in the Saddle Again" and his hit "At Mail Call Today", Autry is still remembered for his Christmas songs, most especially his biggest hit "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" as well as "Frosty the Snowman", "Here Comes Santa Claus", and "Up on the House Top".


title: Gene Autry

text: Autry is a member of both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and is the only person to be awarded stars in all five categories on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for film, television, music, radio, and live performance. The town of Gene Autry, Oklahoma, was named in his honor, as was the Gene Autry precinct in Mesa, Arizona.


title: Gene Autry

text: Orvon Grover Autry was born September 29, 1907, near Tioga in Grayson County in north Texas, the grandson of a Methodist preacher. His parents, Delbert Autry and Elnora Ozment, moved in the 1920s to Ravia in Johnston County in southern Oklahoma. Gene Autry worked on his father's ranch while growing up and going to school. In 1925, Autry left the family ranch. With only his high school education, Autry became a telegrapher for the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway. His talent at singing and playing guitar led to performing at local dances.


title: Gene Autry

text: While working as a telegraph operator in Chelsea, Oklahoma, Autry would sing and accompany himself on the guitar to pass the lonely hours, especially when he had the midnight shift. This later got him fired. One night, he was encouraged to sing professionally by a customer, humorist Will Rogers, who had heard him singing.


title: Gene Autry

text: As soon as he could save money to travel, he went to New York. In the autumn of 1928, he auditioned for the Victor Talking Machine Company, shortly before purchase by David Sarnoff's Radio Corporation of America (RCA). According to Nathaniel Shilkret, director of Light Music for Victor at the time, Autry asked to speak to Shilkret after finding that he had been turned down. Shilkret explained to Autry that he was turned down not because of his voice, but because Victor had just made contracts with two similar singers. Autry left with a letter of introduction from Shilkret and the advice to sing on radio to gain experience and to come back in a year or two. In 1928, Autry was singing on Tulsa radio station KVOO (now KTSB) as "Oklahoma's Yodeling Cowboy". The Victor archives show an October 9, 1929, entry stating that the vocal duet of Jimmie Long and Gene Autry with two Hawaiian guitars, directed by L. L. Watson, recorded "My Dreaming of You" (Matrix 56761) and "My Alabama Home" (Matrix 56762).


title: Gene Autry

text: Autry signed a recording deal with Columbia Records in 1929. He worked in Chicago on the WLS-AM radio show "National Barn Dance" for four years, and with his own show, where he met singer-songwriter Smiley Burnette. In his early recording career, Autry covered various genres, including a labor song, "The Death of Mother Jones", in 1931.