title: Gecko

text: Madagascar day geckos engage in a mating ritual in which sexually mature males produce a waxy substance from pores on the back of their legs. Males approach females with a head swaying motion along with rapid tongue flicking in the female.


title: Hardcore pornography

text: Hardcore pornography, or hardcore porn, is pornography that features detailed depictions of sexual organs or sexual acts such as vaginal, anal or oral intercourse, fingering, anilingus, ejaculation, and fetish play. The term is in contrast with less-explicit softcore pornography. Hardcore pornography usually takes the form of photographs, films and cartoons. Since the 1990s, hardcore pornography has become widely available over the Internet, making it more accessible than ever before.


title: Hardcore pornography

text: A distinction between "hardcore pornography" and "borderline pornography" (or "borderline obscenity") was made in the 1950s and 1960s by American jurists discussing obscenity laws. "Borderline pornography" appealed to sexual prurience, but had positive qualities, such as literary or artistic merit, and so was arguably permitted by obscenity laws; "hardcore pornography" lacked such merits and was definitely prohibited. In "Roth v. United States" (1957) the government brief distinguished three classes of sexual material: "novels of apparently serious literary intent"; "borderline entertainment ... magazines, cartoons, nudist publications, etc."; and "hard core pornography, which no one would suggest had literary merit". Eberhard and Phyllis Kronhausen in 1959 distinguished "erotic realism" from "pornography"; in the latter "the main purpose is to stimulate erotic response in the reader. And that is all." Most famously, in "Jacobellis v. Ohio" (1964), Potter Stewart wrote:


title: Hardcore pornography

text: In "Jacobellis v. Ohio" and other cases, the United States Supreme Court ruled that only "hardcore" pornography could be prohibited by obscenity laws, with the rest protected by the First Amendment. The category of "borderline obscenity" thus became obsolete. The 1970 report of the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography said:


title: Hardcore pornography

text: From the 1970s, the salient distinction was between hardcore pornography and softcore pornography, which may use simulated sex and limits the range and intensity of depictions of sexual activities. For example, William Rotsler's 1973 classification subdivided the X rating for erotic films: "The XXX-rating means hard-core, the XX-rating is for simulation, and an X-rating is for comparatively cool films."


title: Hardcore pornography

text: The prehistory of modern pornography is the classical American stag film, also known as "blue movies", a body of clandestine short pornographic films produced during the first two-thirds of the 20th century. While the exact corpus of the distinctive stag film remains unknown, scholars at the Kinsey Institute believe there are approximately 2000 films produced between 1915 and 1968. Stag cinema is a form of hardcore film and is characterized as silent, usually filling a single reel or less, and was illegally made and exhibited because of censorship laws in America. Women were excluded from these private screenings that were shown in American "smoker" houses such as fraternities or other exclusive institutions. In Europe, films of the same kind were screened in brothels. The mode of reception of the all-male audience of stag films was raucous, collective sexual banter and sexual arousal. Film historians describe stag films as a primitive form of cinema because they were produced by anonymous and amateur male artists who failed to achieve narrative coherence and continuity. Today, many of these films have been archived by the Kinsey Institute, but most are in a state of decay and have no copyright, real credits, or acknowledged authorship. The stag film era inevitably ended with the beginnings of the sexual revolution in the fifties in combination with the new technologies of the post war era, such as 16 mm, 8 mm, and the Super 8. American stag cinema in general received scholarly attention first in the mid-seventies by heterosexual males, e.g. Di Lauro and Gerald Rabkin's "Dirty Movies" (1976) and more recently by feminist and queer cultural historians, e.g. Linda M. Williams' "Hard Core: Power Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible"" (1989) and Thomas Waugh's "Homosociality in the Classical American Stag Film: Off-Screen, On-screen" (2001).


title: Hardcore pornography

text: The distribution of hardcore pornography had been widely prohibited in many countries until the second half of the 20th century when many countries began to allow some dissemination of softcore material. Supply is now usually regulated by a motion picture rating system as well as by direct regulation of points of sale. Restrictions, as applicable, apply to the screening, or rental, sale, or giving of a movie, in the form of a DVD, video, computer file, etc. Public display and advertising of hardcore pornography is often prohibited, as is its supply to minors.


title: Hardcore pornography

text: Most countries have eased the restrictions on the distribution of pornography, either by general or restricted legalization or by failure to enforce prohibitive legislation. Most easing of restrictions has been by way of changes to the criteria of a country's movie classification system. The anti-pornography movement often vigorously opposes legalization. In 1969, Denmark became the first country in the world to legalize pornography. In the U.S., legal interpretations of pornography in relation to the constitutional right to free speech differ from state to state and from city to city. Hardcore pornography was legalized in the UK in 2000.


title: Hardcore pornography

text: "The Independent" reported in 2006 that Nielsen NetRatings found that more than nine million British male adults used Internet porn services. The study also reported a one-third rise in the number of women visiting X-rated sites, from 1.05 million to 1.38 million. A 2003 study found that one third of all British Internet users accessed hardcore porn.


title: Hardcore pornography

text: A 2005 study by Eric Schlosser estimated that revenues from hardcore porn matched Hollywood's domestic box office takings. Hardcore porn videos, Internet sites, live sex acts and cable TV programming generated US$10 billion, roughly equal to U.S. domestic box office receipts.


title: Hardcore pornography

text: Berl Kutchinsky's "Studies on Pornography and Sex Crimes in Denmark" (1970), a scientific report commissioned by the Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, found that the legalizing of pornography in Denmark had not (as had been expected) resulted in an increase of sex crimes.


title: Hardcore pornography

text: A study conducted in Denmark in 2003 and later published in "Archives of Sexual Behavior" found that Danish men and women generally believe that hardcore pornography has a positive influence on their lives.


title: Yoasobi

text: Yoasobi (stylized in all caps) is a Japanese music superduo formed by Sony Music Entertainment Japan, composed of Vocaloid producer , and singer-songwriter . Represented by the slogan "novel into music", the duo has released songs based on novels posted on , a novel-centered social media operated by their label, which is also from various media like novels written by professional authors, books, and letters.


title: Yoasobi

text: After going viral on social media, Yoasobi's 2019 debut single, "Yoru ni Kakeru", gave them their breakthrough by reaching atop the "Billboard" Japan Hot 100 for six non-consecutive weeks and the 2020 year-end chart, and becoming the first song to be certified diamond for streaming by Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ). It was followed by other successful singles, such as "Blue Period"-inspired "Gunjō", and "Beastars" second season themes "Kaibutsu" and "Yasashii Suisei". The group's first two EPs, "The Book" and "The Book 2" (both 2021), both peaked at number two on the Oricon Albums Chart. They also released the English EPs, "E-Side", and "E-Side 2".


title: Yoasobi

text: Both members of Yoasobi had active music careers before forming the duo. , a producer, songwriter, and former vocalist of rock band Davici, began using Vocaloid to produce songs. He uploaded his first song, "Sentensei Assault Girl", on the video hosting website Niconico in 2018 and gained popularity with his 2019 song "Last Resort". Then, he released his debut extended play (EP) "" in December of that year. , performing under the stage name Ikura in Yoasobi, is a singer-songwriter and a then-member of the cover group from 2017 to 2021. She released her solo demo CD: "15 no Omoi" (2016), and two EPs: "Rerise" (2018) and "" (2019) through independent label After School.


title: Yoasobi

text: In 2019, Ayase received an offer from , a novel-centered social media website operated by Sony Music Entertainment Japan, to collaborate on a project to produce songs inspired by novels written on the website. After discussion about vocalists, he found Ikura on Instagram, where she had uploaded some of her music, and formed the superduo. The duo's name Yoasobi originates from the Japanese word ("yoasobi"), which means "nightlife", as a wish that they could take on various playful challenges by comparing their individual career to daytime and their Yoasobi career to nighttime. The duo uses the slogan "novel into music" to represent themselves.


title: Yoasobi

text: The first song released by Yoasobi, "Yoru ni Kakeru", based on 's short story "", published on Monogatary.com and won the Monocon 2019. The music video was initially uploaded via YouTube on November 16, 2019, before subsequently being officially released on December 15. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan, the song went viral on social media as did Ikura's "The Home Take" performance on YouTube, bringing it to top several music streaming service charts in Japan. Five months after its release, "Yoru ni Kakeru" ascended to number one on the "Billboard" Japan Hot 100 for three consecutive weeks and spent six weeks atop the chart. The single finished 2020 as the year's top Japan Hot 100 song, making it the first non-CD single to top the year-end chart. It also became the first diamond-certified song for streaming in Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) history, surpassing 500 million streams. "Yoru ni Kakeru" won the Song of the Year at the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards Japan and the 2021 Space Shower Music Awards.


title: Yoasobi

text: Following the debut single, Yoasobi released their second single "Ano Yume o Nazotte" on January 18, 2020. Like "Yoru ni Kakeru", the song also based on Monocon 2019-winning short story, "", written by . The next song, "Halzion", based on 's "Soredemo, Happy End", was released on May 11. It was marked as the first song collaborated with a professional novelist, whereas the first two were amateur writers, as a promotional project by Suntory to advertise energy drink branded Zone. In the second half of the year, they released the single, "Tabun", on July 20. It was based on the short story of the same name by Shinano, which won Yoasobi Contest Vol. 1. Inspired by the manga "Blue Period" and based on the brand's short story "", "Gunjō" was released on September 1, to accompany 's Mini Chocolate advertisement. On December 18, the duo released "Haruka", a song based on screenwriter Osamu Suzuki's novel "Tsuki Ōji".


title: Yoasobi

text: On December 31, Yoasobi concluded the year at the 71st NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen with their debut "Yoru ni Kakeru" performance as a duo at Kadokawa Culture Center. All singles released before preceded the duo's debut EP "The Book", released on January 6, 2021. It was added three additional tracks, including "Encore", based on Kanami Minakami's Yoasobi Contest Vol. 1-winning "Sekai no Owari to, Sayonara no Uta" and used for Google Pixel 5, Pixel 4a (5G) advertisement. The EP debuted at number two on both the Oricon Albums Chart and the "Billboard Japan" Hot Albums, selling over 150,000 copies as of 2021. It topped the Oricon Digital Albums Chart for five consecutive weeks and the year-end chart with 100,000 downloads in 2021 alone, making it the only album to reach this milestone that year. "The Book" certified gold for both physical and digital release by RIAJ.


title: Yoasobi

text: In November 2020, Yoasobi announced that they would handle theme songs for the second season of the Japanese anime series "Beastars". Its opening theme "Kaibutsu", was released digitally on January 6, 2021, the same date as "The Book", while its ending theme, "Yasashii Suisei", was released on the 20th. Both songs were based on the anime's writer Paru Itagaki's novels "Jibun no Mune ni Jibun no Mimi o Oshi Atete" and "Shishiza Ryūseigun no Mama ni" respectively. Later, the double A-side CD single of the themes was released on March 24, debuting at number two on the Oricon Singles Chart. Their first livestream concert, Keep Out Theater, was held on February 14 at former construction site for 40,000 online audiences. "Kaibutsu" was ranked number five on American magazine "Time" 10 Best Songs of 2021, becoming the only Japanese act on it. The song also won four awards for Song of the Year (Japan) and Best 5 Songs at the 36th Japan Gold Disc Award in both download and streaming categories.


title: Yoasobi

text: The group released "Mō Sukoshi Dake", a 2021 theme song for the Fuji TV's morning show "Mezamashi TV", on May 10. It was based on the Yoasobi Contest Vol.3 with "Mezamashi TV"-winning novel "Meguru", written by Chiharu. A song for NTT Docomo's mobile network operator commercial, "Sangenshoku", based on scriptwriter Yūichirō Komikado's "RGB", was released on July 2, as well as the standalone version of "Encore" with cover artwork to commemorate its 100 million streams. In June, Uniqlo's T-shirt brand UT partnered with Yoasobi to produced T-shirts with patterns inspired by the duo's song visuals. To promote the collaboration, they held and broadcast the free livestream concert at Uniqlo City Tokyo, titled Sing Your World, via the duo's official YouTube channel on July 4. It received 280,000 online viewers around the world.


title: Yoasobi

text: On August 9, Yoasobi released the song "Loveletter", based on Hatsune's letter "Ongaku-san e", which won the Letter Song Project, a contest held in 2020 by Tokyo FM's radio show owned by Japan Post Service, "". In the next month, the duo released "Taishō Roman" on September 15, based on Natsumi's novel "Taishō Romance", won Yoasobi Contest Vol.2. Additionally in September, they were chosen to be a mascot for the 59th Sendenkaigi Award, an advertising award held by , and held an exhibition, titled Semiconductors Create New Realities, at Ginza Sony Park as part of Sony Park Exhibition. A theme of NHK's SDGs children's television series "", "Tsubame", featuring children group , was released on September 15, based on Nana Ototsuki's short story "Chiisana Tsubame no Ōkina Yume".


title: Yoasobi

text: Yoasobi's second EP, "The Book 2", was released on December 1, preceded by the singles released in 2021, and "Moshi mo Inochi ga Egaketara", a soundtrack for Suzuki's 2021 stage of the same name and based on it. The EP debuted at number two on the Oricon Albums Chart, and atop the "Billboard Japan" Hot Albums. Additionally, it topped the Oricon Digital Albums Chart. "The Book 2" was certified gold for physical release by the RIAJ. Yoasobi held their first face-to-face one-off concert since their debut in 2019, Nice to Meet You, at Nippon Budokan on December 4–5 for 14,000 offline audiences. The duo participated in the 72nd NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen on December 31, performing "Gunjō" on the main show with orchestra, and "Tsubame" as part of a special show with Midories and two mascots from "Hirogare! Irotoridori".


title: Yoasobi

text: Furthermore, Yoasobi started releasing English-language songs in 2021. The first English single, "Into the Night", translated from "Yoru ni Kakeru" by Konnie Aoki, was released on July 2. After that, they also released three other tracks: "RGB" and "Monster" in July, and "Blue" in October. All singles preceded the group's debut English-language EP "E-Side", released digitally on November 12. The EP debuted atop the Oricon Digital Albums Chart, and number nine on the "Billboard Japan" Hot Albums. Yoasobi won two Artist of the Years at the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards Japan and the 2022 Space Shower Music Awards, and Special Achievement Award at the 63rd Japan Record Awards.


title: Yoasobi

text: In December 2021, Yoasobi announced a collaboration with four Naoki Prize-winning novelists to write and sing four songs based on the novelists' stories under the theme of "a story to read when you do [something] for the first time". The collaboration contains Rio Shimamoto's "Watashi Dake no Shoyūsha", Mizuki Tsujimura's "Yūrei", Miyuki Miyabe's "Iro Chigai no Trump", and Eto Mori's "Hikari no Tane". All novels were first published as a book, titled "Hajimete no", on February 16, 2022, by Suirinsha. The first single of the project, "Mr.", based on Shimamoto's story, was released on the same day the book published, followed by the song based on Mori's novel "Suki da" on May 30. The third song was issued on November 18, titled "Umi no Manimani", based on Tsujimura's novel.


title: Yoasobi

text: In late March, the duo released several music projects in the meantime. The first was "Baka Majime", a collaboration with hip hop duo , released on March 20, as Ayase and Lilas Ikuta since the song was not based on a novel like Yoasobi's releases. It was followed by their first video album, "The Film", slated on the 23rd, containing the duo's three concerts held in 2021, and their enlarged version episode of the documentary program "". Eventually, the ballade version of "Ano Yume o Nazotte", featured on CalorieMate's television advertisement 2021, "Midnight Train", was released on the 30th, to accompany the Smash live action movie based on the novel of the same name that the song is based on. Yoasobi collaborated with Gen Hoshino to perform Hoshino's single "" at "" on May 6.


title: Yoasobi

text: Yoasobi partnered with Book Truck in July to launch a pop-up bookstore and café called Tabi Suru Honya-san Yoasobi-gō: Books & Café. In August, the duo participated in three Japanese annual music festivals for the first time: Rock in Japan Festival, Rising Sun Rock Festival, and . They surprise-released the standalone version of "Moshi mo Inochi ga Egaketara" on August 12 to commemorate the anniversary of the stage of the same name premiere. The duo released the opening theme of the Japanese mecha anime series "", entitled "Shukufuku", on October 1 digitally, and November 9 physically. The song was based on the anime's writer Ichirō Ōkouchi's "Yurikago no Hoshi". The duo released their second English-language EP "E-Side 2" on November 18, preceded by "The Swallow", and "The Blessing" in the same month.


title: Yoasobi

text: The duo participated in the overseas music festival for the first time at 2022 Head in the Clouds, held at Jakarta, Indonesia; and Manila, the Philippines in December. They are scheduled to embark on their first concert tour, titled Yoasobi Arena Tour 2023, in six cities throughout Japan, starting in Nagoya on April 5, and concluding in Saitama on June 4. The duo will collaborate with Universal Studios Japan to write and sing a song from the 2023 novel contest held by a student-supporting campaign called Unibaru, under the theme "unforgettable episode in studying age at the park".


title: Careless Whisper

text: "Careless Whisper" is a song written by George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley. Released on the 1984 Wham! album "Make It Big", the single release was credited either to "Wham! featuring George Michael" (in North America and several other countries) or solely to "George Michael" (in the United Kingdom and some European countries) as it became apparent, that at some point in the near future, Michael would be embarking on a solo career.


title: Careless Whisper

text: The song features a prominent saxophone riff, and has been covered by a number of artists since its first release. It was released as a single and became a huge commercial success around the world. It reached number one in nearly 25 countries, selling about 6 million copies worldwide—2 million of them in the United States.


title: Careless Whisper

text: In 1981, Michael was working as a DJ in the Bel Air restaurant near Bushey, Hertfordshire. Michael explained in his autobiography, "Bare", that he conceptualised "Careless Whisper" based on events from his childhood. Michael wrote, "I was on my way to DJ at the Bel Air when I wrote 'Careless Whisper'. I have always written on buses, trains and in cars. It always happens on journeys ... With 'Careless Whisper' I remember exactly where it first came to me, where I came up with the sax line ... I remember I was handing the money over to the guy on the bus and I got this line, the sax line ... I wrote it totally in my head. I worked on it for about three months in my head."


title: Careless Whisper

text: "When I was twelve, thirteen, I used to have to chaperone my sister, who was two years older, to an ice rink at Queensway in London," he explained. "There was a girl there with long blonde hair whose name was Jane. I was a fat boy in glasses and I had a big crush on her—though I didn't stand a chance. My sister used to go and do what she wanted when we got to the skating rink and I would spend the afternoon swooning over this girl Jane."


title: Careless Whisper

text: "A few years later, when I was sixteen, I had my first relationship with a girl called Helen," Michael continued.


title: Careless Whisper

text: It had just started to cool off a bit when I discovered that the blonde girl from Queensway had moved in just around the corner from my school. She had moved in right next to where I used to stand and wait for my next-door neighbour, who used to give me a lift home from school. And one day I saw her walk down the path next to me and I thought – now where did SHE come from? She didn't know it was me. It was a few years later and I looked a lot different. Then we played a school disco with The Executive and she saw me singing and decided she fancied me. By this time she was that much older and a big buxom thing – and eventually I started seeing her. She invited me in one day when I was waiting for my lift and I was ... in heaven.


title: Careless Whisper

text: Michael observed that after he stopped wearing glasses, he began getting invited to parties. "And the girl who didn't even see me when I was twelve invited me in," he noted.


title: Careless Whisper

text: So I went out with her for a couple of months but I didn't stop seeing Helen. I thought I was being smart – I had gone from being a total loser to being a two-timer. And I remember my sisters used to give me a hard time because they found out and they really liked the first girl. The whole idea of "Careless Whisper" was the first girl finding out about the second – which she never did. But I started another relationship with a girl called Alexis without finishing the one with Jane. It all got a bit complicated. Jane found out about her and got rid of me ... The whole time I thought I was being cool, being this two-timer, but there really wasn't that much emotion involved. I did feel guilty about the first girl – and I have seen her since – and the idea of the song was about her. "Careless Whisper" was us dancing, because we danced a lot, and the idea was – we are dancing ... but she knows ... and it's finished.


title: Careless Whisper

text: Andrew Ridgeley came up with the chord sequence on his Fender Telecaster he had received for his 18th birthday. They continued to work together on the music and lyric both at Michael's house in Radlett, and Shirlie Holliman's aunt's basement flat in Peckham, where Ridgeley was living.


title: Careless Whisper

text: The original demo was recorded by local music producer Paul Mex, in January 1982 alongside those for "Club Tropicana" and "Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)" in the front room of Ridgeley's home (his parents’ lounge turned into a makeshift studio) with Mex's TEAC 4-track Portastudio. Because most of the day was spent on "Wham Rap!..." and Ridgeley's mother had returned home by that point, "Careless Whisper" had to be recorded in one take very quickly. It featured a Doctor Rhythm drum machine, an acoustic guitar (played by Ridgeley) and a bass guitar (played by Dave West), with Michael's vocal (recorded with a microphone attached to a broom handle). The overall cost of the recording was £20 (largely due to the rental cost of the Portastudio) and the duo landed a deal with Innervision by Mark Dean on the strength of the demos.


title: Careless Whisper

text: A more complete and fully realised second demo was recorded on 24 March 1982 at Halligan Band Centre, Holloway, London with a backing band and a saxophone riff. However, on the same day, Michael and Ridgely were called over by Dean to sign a contract in addition to the record deal, which they did at a nearby greasy spoon café. Michael recalls of that day:


title: Careless Whisper

text: The song went through at least two rounds of production. The first was during a trip Michael made to Sheffield, Alabama, where he went to work with producer Jerry Wexler at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in 1983. Michael was unhappy with the original version produced by Wexler, and decided to re-record and produce the song himself; the second version was the one ultimately released as a single.


title: Careless Whisper

text: After the backing track and George's vocal had been recorded, Wexler had booked the top saxophone player from Los Angeles to fly in and do the solo. "He arrived at eleven and should have been gone by twelve", recalled Wham! manager Simon Napier-Bell. "Instead, after two hours, he was still there while everyone in the studio shuddered with embarrassment. He just couldn't play the opening riff the way George wanted it, the way it had been on the demo. But that had been made two years earlier by a friend of George's who lived round the corner and played sax for fun in the pub."


title: Careless Whisper

text: While the saxophonist appeared to be playing the part perfectly, Michael told him, "No, it's still not right, you see..." and he would lower his head to the talkback microphone and patiently hum the part to him yet again. "It has to twitch upwards a little just there! See...? And not too much."


title: Careless Whisper

text: Napier-Bell consulted with Wexler over Michael's dispute with the sax sound. "Is there really something George wants that's different from what the sax player is playing?" Napier-Bell asked. "Definitely!" replied Wexler.


title: Careless Whisper

text: "I've seen things like this before. There's some tiny nuance that the sax player is somehow not getting right. Although you and I can't hear what it is, it may be the very thing that will make the record a hit. The success of pop records is so ephemeral, so unbelievably unpredictable, we just can't take the risk of being impatient. But this sax player's not going to get it, is he!"


title: Careless Whisper

text: The version Wexler produced was released later in the year, as a (4:41) B-side "Special Version" on 12" in the UK and Japan.


title: Careless Whisper

text: The record label Innervision was going to put out the Wexler version of "Careless Whisper" after the Club Fantastic Megamix as early as 1983. Song publisher Dick Leahy said that while he could not stop the release of the Club Fantastic Megamix, he could stop the release of this single on the basis that as a publisher they "have the right to grant the first license of the recording of a tune of which he controls the copyright". He was unable to do anything about the Club Fantastic Megamix because it was already released material. He said: "We knew how big that song could be, so it was necessary to upset a few people to stop it." Towards the end of 1983, Michael was also committed to touring with Wham! to promote "Fantastic", so according to him it would not have made sense to release "Careless Whisper" as a solo single in the middle of the tour, despite it being part of the setlist.


title: Careless Whisper

text: Michael later went back to London's Sarm West's Studio 2 to re-record the track, the backbone of which was done with a live rhythm section in one take, with "loads of stuff bunged on [overdubbed] later" as Michael added, although the feel of it was basically live.


title: Careless Whisper

text: After hiring and firing several other different sax players, for which the BBC characterized as struggling to play all the notes with "the right amount of fluidity and still breathe," Michael eventually heard what he was looking for from Steve Gregory.


title: Careless Whisper

text: During an interview with DJ Danny Sun, Gregory said he was the 9th sax player to attempt the riff. Gregory said Michael's secretary had phoned him up midday and asked him to give the solo a try.


title: Careless Whisper

text: The officially released single was issued in August 1984, entering the UK Singles Chart at number 12. Within two weeks it was at number one, ending a nine-week run at the top for "Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It stayed at number one for three weeks, going on to become the fifth best-selling single of 1984 in the United Kingdom; outsold only by the two Frankie Goes to Hollywood tracks, "Two Tribes" and "Relax", Stevie Wonder with "I Just Called to Say I Love You", and Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?". The song also topped the charts in 25 other countries, including the "Billboard" Hot 100 in the United States in February 1985 under the credit "Wham! featuring George Michael". Spending three weeks at the top in America, the song was later named "Billboard"s number-one song of 1985. The song was #1 on the Smooth Radio top 500 songs of all time chart.


title: Careless Whisper

text: "Cash Box" said the song illustrates Wham!'s "versatility and range" when compared to the previous single "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go", calling this song "soft, beguiling and memorable" and saying that it features "a highly romantic instrumental arrangement as well as an extremely well-written melody and lyric."


title: Careless Whisper

text: Despite the success, Michael was never fond of the song. He said in 1991 that it "was not an integral part of my emotional development ... it disappoints me that you can write a lyric very flippantly—and not a particularly good lyric—and it can mean so much to so many people. That's disillusioning for a writer."


title: Careless Whisper

text: The official music video (which uses the shorter single version instead of the full album version and was directed by Duncan Gibbins, who previously directed "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go") shows the guilt felt by a man (portrayed by Michael) over an affair, and his acknowledgement that his partner (Lisa Stahl) is going to find out. Madeline Andrews-Hodge plays the woman who lures George away. It was filmed on location in Miami, Florida, in February 1984 and features such locales as Coconut Grove and Watson Island. The final part of the video shows Michael leaning out of a top floor balcony of Miami's Grove Towers.


title: Careless Whisper

text: A first original version of the video was edited with the Jerry Wexler 1983 version, and featured Andrew as a cameo, handing over a letter to a dark-haired George. This version had a more detailed storyline, but was then re-edited later.


title: Careless Whisper

text: According to producer Jon Roseman, production of the video was "A fucking disaster". According to Michael's co-star Lisa Stahl, "They lost footage of our kissing scene so we had to reshoot it, which I didn't complain about ... Then George decided he didn't like his hair so he flew his sister over from England to cut it and we had to reshoot more scenes."


title: Careless Whisper

text: As the band felt they had "screwed up" the video, further footage of Michael singing the song onstage was later shot at the Lyceum Theatre, London. The video performance (1984 Version) was officially uploaded to George Michael YouTube channel on 24 October 2009. It has over 922.8 million views as of .


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev ( ; Tatar/Bashkir: Рудольф Хәмит улы Нуриев; ; 17 March 19386 January 1993) was a Soviet-born ballet dancer and choreographer. Nureyev is regarded by some as the greatest male ballet dancer of his generation.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Nureyev was born on a Trans-Siberian train near Irkutsk, Siberia, Soviet Union, to a Tatar family. He began his early career with the company that in the Soviet era was called the Kirov Ballet (now called by its original name, the Mariinsky Ballet) in Leningrad. He defected from the Soviet Union to the West in 1961, despite KGB efforts to stop him. This was the first defection of a Soviet artist during the Cold War, and it created an international sensation. He went on to dance with The Royal Ballet in London and from 1983 to 1989 served as director of the Paris Opera Ballet. Nureyev was also a choreographer serving as the chief choreographer of the Paris Opera Ballet. He produced his own interpretations of numerous classical works, including "Swan Lake", "Giselle" and "La Bayadère".


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Nureyev's grandfather, Nurakhmet Fazlievich Fazliev, and his father, Khamit Fazleevich Nureyev (1903–1985), were from Asanovo in the Sharipov volost of the Ufa District of the Ufa Governorate (now the Ufa District of the Republic of Bashkortostan). His mother, Farida Agliullovna Nureyeva (Agliullova) (1907–1987), was born in the village of Tatarskoye Tyugulbaevo, Kuznechikhinsky volost, Kazan Governorate (now Alkeyevsky District of the Republic of Tatarstan).


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Nureyev was born on a Trans-Siberian train near Irkutsk, Siberia, while his mother Farida was travelling to Vladivostok, where his father Khamet, a Red Army political commissar, was stationed. He was raised as the only son with three older sisters in a Tatar Muslim family.<ref name="nureyev.org/"></ref> In his autobiography, Nureyev noted about his Tatar heritage: "My mother was born in the beautiful ancient city of Kazan. We are Muslims. Father was born in a small village near Ufa, the capital of the Republic of Bashkiria. Thus, on both sides our relatives are Tatars and Bashkirs. I cannot define exactly what it means to me to be a Tatar, and not a Russian, but I feel this difference in myself. Our Tatar blood flows somehow faster and is always ready to boil".


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: When his mother took Nureyev and his sisters into a performance of the ballet "Song of the Cranes", he fell in love with dance. As a child, he was encouraged to dance in Bashkir folk performances and his precocity was soon noticed by teachers who encouraged him to train in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). On a tour stop in Moscow with a local ballet company, Nureyev auditioned for the Bolshoi ballet company and was accepted. However, he felt that the Mariinsky Ballet school was the best, so he left the local touring company and bought a ticket to Leningrad.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Owing to the disruption of Soviet cultural life caused by World War II, Nureyev was unable to enroll in a major ballet school until 1955, aged 17, when he was accepted by the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet of Leningrad, the associate school of the Mariinsky Ballet. The ballet master Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin took an interest in him professionally and allowed Nureyev to live with him and his wife.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Upon his graduation in 1958, Nureyev joined the Kirov Ballet (now Mariinsky). He moved immediately beyond the corps level, and was given solo roles as a principal dancer from the outset. Nureyev regularly partnered with Natalia Dudinskaya, the company's senior ballerina and wife of its director, Konstantin Sergeyev. Dudinskaya, who was 26 years his senior, first chose him as her partner in the ballet Laurencia.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Before long, Nureyev became one of the Soviet Union's best-known dancers. From 1958 to 1961, in his three years with the Kirov, he danced 15 roles, usually opposite his partner, Ninel Kurgapkina, with whom he was very well paired, although she was almost a decade older than he was. Nureyev and Kurgapkina were invited to dance at a gathering at Khrushchev's dacha, and in 1959 they were allowed to travel outside the Soviet Union, dancing in Vienna at the International Youth Festival. Not long after, he was told by the Ministry of Culture that he would not be allowed to go abroad again. In one memorable incident, Nureyev interrupted a performance of "Don Quixote" for 40 minutes, insisting on dancing in tights and not in the customary trousers. He relented in the end, but his preferred dress code was adopted in later performances.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Yet, as the Kirov Ballet was preparing to go on a tour to Paris and London, Nureyev's rebellious character and non-conformist attitude made him an unlikely candidate for the trip, which the Soviet government considered crucial to its ambitions to demonstrate its "cultural supremacy" over the West. Furthermore, tensions were growing between Nureyev and the Kirov's artistic director Konstantin Sergeyev, who was also the husband of Nureyev's former dance partner Natalia Dudinskaya. After a representative of the French tour organizers saw Nureyev dance in Leningrad in 1960, the French organizers urged Soviet authorities to let him dance in Paris, and he was allowed to go.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: I will never forget his arrival running across the back of the stage, and his catlike way of holding himself opposite the ramp. He wore a white sash over an ultramarine costume, had large wild eyes and hollow cheeks under a turban topped with a spray of feathers, bulging thighs, immaculate tights. This was already Nijinsky in "Firebird".


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Nureyev was seen to have broken the rules about mingling with foreigners and allegedly frequented gay bars in Paris, which alarmed the Kirov's management and the KGB agents observing him. The KGB wanted to send him back to the Soviet Union. On 16 June 1961 when the Kirov company gathered at Le Bourget Airport in Paris to fly to London, Sergeyev took Nureyev aside and told him that he must return to Moscow for a special performance in the Kremlin, rather than go on to London with the rest of the company. Nureyev became suspicious and refused.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Next he was told that his mother had fallen severely ill and he needed to go home immediately to see her. Nureyev refused again, believing that on return to the USSR he was likely to be imprisoned. With the help of French police and a Parisian socialite friend, Clara Saint, who had been engaged to Vincent Malraux, the son of the French Minister of Culture, André Malraux, Nureyev escaped his KGB minders and asked for asylum. Sergeyev and the KGB tried to dissuade him, but he chose to stay in Paris.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Within a week, he was signed by the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas and performed "The Sleeping Beauty" with Nina Vyroubova.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: On a tour of Denmark he met Erik Bruhn, soloist at the Royal Danish Ballet. Bruhn became his lover, his closest friend and his protector until Bruhn's death in 1986. He and Bruhn both appeared as guest dancers with the newly formed Australian Ballet at Her Majesty's Theatre, Sydney in December 1962.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Soviet authorities made Nureyev's father, mother and dance teacher Pushkin write letters to him, urging him to return, without effect. Although he petitioned the Soviet government for many years to be allowed to visit his mother, he was not allowed to do so until 1987, when his mother was dying and Mikhail Gorbachev consented to the visit.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: In 1989, he was invited to dance the role of "James" in "La Sylphide" with the Mariinsky Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre in Leningrad. The visit gave him the opportunity to see many of the teachers and colleagues he had not seen since his defection.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Dame Ninette de Valois offered him a contract to join The Royal Ballet as Principal Dancer. During his time at the company, however, many critics became enraged as Nureyev made substantial changes to the productions of "Swan Lake" and "Giselle." Nureyev stayed with the Royal Ballet until 1970, when he was promoted to Principal Guest Artist, enabling him to concentrate on his increasing schedule of international guest appearances and tours. He continued to perform regularly with The Royal Ballet until committing his future to the Paris Opera Ballet in the 1980s.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Nureyev's first appearance with Prima Ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn was in a ballet matinée organized by The Royal Ballet: "Giselle", 21 February 1962. The event was held in aid of the Royal Academy of Dance, a classical ballet teaching organisation of which she was president. He danced "Poème" "Tragique", a solo choreographed by Frederick Ashton, and the "Black Swan" "pas de deux" from "Swan Lake". They were so well received that Fonteyn and Nureyev proceeded to form a partnership that endured for many years. They premiered "Romeo and Juliet" for the company in 1965. Fans of the duo would tear up their programs to make confetti that would be joyously thrown at the dancers. Nureyev and Fonteyn might do upwards of 20 curtain calls.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: On 11 July 1967, Fonteyn and Nureyev, after performing in San Francisco, were arrested on nearby roofs, having fled during a police raid on a home in the Haight-Ashbury district. They were bailed out, and charges of disturbing the peace and visiting a place where marijuana was used were dropped later that day for lack of sufficient evidence.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Among many appearances in North America, Nureyev developed a long-lasting connection with the National Ballet of Canada, appearing as a guest artist on many occasions. In 1972, he staged a spectacular new production of "Sleeping Beauty" for the company, with his own additional choreography augmenting that of Petipa. The production toured widely in the U.S. and Canada after its initial run in Toronto, one performance of which was televised live and subsequently issued on video.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Among the National Ballet's ballerinas, Nureyev most frequently partnered with Veronica Tennant and Karen Kain. In 1975 Nureyev worked extensively with American Ballet Theatre resurrecting "Le Corsaire" with Gelsey Kirkland. He recreated "Sleeping Beauty," "Swan Lake," and "Ramonda" with Cynthia Gregory. Gregory and Brun joined Nureyev in a pas des trois from the little-known August Bournonville ballet "La Ventana."


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: In January 1982, Austria granted Nureyev citizenship, ending more than twenty years of statelessness. In 1983, he was appointed director of the Paris Opera Ballet, where, as well as directing, he continued to dance and to promote younger dancers. He remained there as a dancer and chief choreographer until 1989. Among the dancers he mentored were Sylvie Guillem, Isabelle Guérin, Manuel Legris, Elisabeth Maurin, Élisabeth Platel, Charles Jude, and Monique Loudières.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: His artistic directorship of the Paris Opera Ballet was a great success, lifting the company out of a dark period. His "The Sleeping Beauty" remains in the repertoire and was revived and filmed with his protégé Manuel Legris in the lead.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Despite advancing illness towards the end of his tenure, he worked tirelessly, staging new versions of old standbys and commissioning some of the most ground-breaking choreographic works of his time. His own "Romeo and Juliet" was a popular success. When he was sick towards the end of his life, he worked on a final production of "La Bayadère" which closely follows the Mariinsky Ballet version he danced as a young man.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: When AIDS appeared in France's news around 1982, Nureyev took little notice. The dancer tested positive for HIV in 1984, but for several years he simply denied that anything was wrong with his health. However, by the late 1980s his diminished capabilities disappointed his admirers who had fond memories of his outstanding prowess and skill. Nureyev began a marked decline only in the summer of 1991 and entered the final phase of the disease in the spring of 1992.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: In March 1992, living with advanced AIDS, he visited Kazan and appeared as a conductor in front of the audience at Musa Cälil Tatar Academic Opera and Ballet Theater, which now presents the Rudolf Nureyev Festival in Tatarstan. Returning to Paris, with a high fever, he was admitted to the hospital Notre Dame du Perpétuel Secours in Levallois-Perret, a suburb northwest of Paris, and was operated on for pericarditis, an inflammation of the membranous sac around the heart. At that time, what inspired him to fight his illness was the hope that he could fulfill an invitation to conduct Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" at an American Ballet Theatre benefit on 6 May 1992 at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. He did so and was elated at the reception.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: In July 1992, Nureyev showed renewed signs of pericarditis but determined to forswear further treatment. His last public appearance was on 8 October 1992, at the premiere at Palais Garnier of a new production of "La Bayadère" that he choreographed after Marius Petipa for the Paris Opera Ballet. Nureyev had managed to obtain a photocopy of Ludwig Minkus' original score when in Russia in 1989. The ballet was a personal triumph although the gravity of his condition was evident. The French Culture Minister, Jack Lang, presented him that evening on stage with France's highest cultural award, the "Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres".


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Nureyev re-entered the hospital Notre Dame du Perpétuel Secours in Levallois-Perret on 20 November 1992 and remained there until his death from AIDS complications at age 54 on 6 January 1993. His funeral was held in the marble foyer of the Paris Garnier Opera House. Many paid tribute to his brilliance as a dancer. One such tribute came from Oleg Vinogradov of the Mariinsky Ballet, stating: "What Nureyev did in the west, he could never have done here."


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Nureyev's grave, at the Russian cemetery in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois near Paris, features a tomb draped in a mosaic of an Oriental carpet. Nureyev was an avid collector of beautiful carpets and antique textiles. As his coffin was lowered into the ground, music from the last act of "Giselle" was played and his ballet shoes were cast into the grave along with white lilies.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: After so many years of having been denied a place in the Mariinsky Ballet's history, Nureyev's reputation was restored. His name was re-entered in the history of the Mariinsky, even though he danced there for only three years. Some of his personal effects were placed on display at the theatre museum in what is now St. Petersburg. A rehearsal room was named in his honour at the famed Vaganova Academy. As of October 2013, the Centre National du Costume de Scène has a permanent collection of Nureyev's costumes "that offers visitors a sense of his exuberant, vagabond personality and passion for all that was rare and beautiful." In 2015, he was inducted into the Legacy Walk.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Since his death in 1993, the Paris Opera has instituted a tradition of presenting an evening of dance homage to Nureyev every 10 years. Because he was born in March, these performances have so far been given on 20 March 2003 and 6 March 2013. Peers of Nureyev who speak about and remember him, like Mikhail Baryshnikov, are often deeply touched.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: On 7 November 2018, a monument honoring Nureyev was unveiled at the square near the Musa Cälil Tatar Academic Opera and Ballet Theater in Kazan. The monument was designed by Zurab Tsereteli and its unveiling ceremony was attended by President of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov, state adviser of the Republic of Tatarstan Mintimer Shaimiev and mayor of Kazan Ilsur Metshin. At a speech in the unveiling event, Minnikhanov stated "I think, not only for the republic, Rudolf Nureyev is an international value. Such people are born once in a hundred years."


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Yvette Chauviré of the Paris Opera Ballet often danced with Nureyev; he described her as a "legend". (Chauviré attended his funeral with French dancer and actress Leslie Caron.)


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: At the Royal Ballet, Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn became long-standing dance partners. Nureyev once said of Fonteyn, who was 19 years older than him, that they danced with "one body, one soul". Together Nureyev and Fonteyn premiered Sir Frederick Ashton's ballet "Marguerite and Armand", a ballet danced to Liszt's Piano Sonata in B minor, which became their signature piece. Kenneth MacMillan was forced to allow them to premiere his "Romeo and Juliet", which was intended for two other dancers, Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable. Films exist of their partnership in "Les Sylphides", "Swan Lake", "Romeo and Juliet", and other roles. They continued to dance together for many years after Nureyev's departure from the Royal Ballet. Their last performance together was in "Baroque Pas de Trois" on 16 September 1988 when Fonteyn was 69, Nureyev was aged 50, with Carla Fracci, aged 52, also starring.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: He celebrated another long-time partnership with Eva Evdokimova. They first appeared together in "La Sylphide" (1971) and in 1975 he selected her as his "Sleeping Beauty" in his staging for London Festival Ballet. Evdokimova remained his partner of choice for many guest appearances and tours across the globe with "Nureyev and Friends" for more than fifteen years.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: During his American stage debut in 1962, Nureyev also partnered with Sonia Arova at New York City's Brooklyn Academy of Music. In collaboration with Ruth Page's Chicago Opera Ballet, they performed the grand pas de deux from "Don Quixote".


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Nureyev was above all a stickler for classical technique, and his mastery of it made him a model for an entire generation of dancers. If the standard of male dancing rose so visibly in the West after the 1960s, it was largely because of Nureyev's inspiration.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Nureyev's influence on the world of ballet changed the perception of male dancers; in his own productions of the classics the male roles received much more choreography. Another important influence was his crossing the borders between classical ballet and modern dance by performing both. Today it is normal for dancers to receive training in both styles, but Nureyev was the originator and excelled in modern and classical dance. He went out of his way to work with modern dance great, Martha Graham, and she created a work specially for him. While Gene Kelly had done much to combine modern and classical styles in film, he came from a more Modern Dance influenced "popular dance" environment, while Nureyev made great strides in gaining acceptance of Modern Dance in the "Classical Ballet" sphere.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Nureyev's charisma, commitment and generosity were such that he did not just pass on his knowledge. He personified the school of life for a dancer. Several dancers, who were principals with the Paris Opera Ballet under his direction, went on to become ballet directors themselves inspired to continue Nureyev's work and ideas. Manuel Legris was director of the Vienna State Ballet and now directs La Scala Theatre Ballet, Laurent Hilaire was ballet director of the Stanislavski Theatre of Moscow and is now director of Bavarian State Ballet at Munich, and Charles Jude was ballet director of the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Mikhail Baryshnikov, the other great dancer who like Nureyev defected to the West, holds Nureyev in high regard. Baryshnikov said in an interview that Nureyev was an unusual man in all respects, instinctive, intelligence, constant curiosity, and extraordinary discipline, that was his goal of life and of course love in performing.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Nureyev had a late start to ballet and had to perfect his technique in order to be a success. John Tooley wrote that Nureyev grew up very poor and had to make up for three to five years in ballet education at a high-level ballet school, giving him a decisive impetus to acquire the maximum of technical skills and to become the best dancer working on perfection during his whole career. The challenge for all dancers whom Nureyev worked with was to follow suit and to share his total commitment for dance. Advocates to describe the Nureyev phenomenon precisely are John Tooley, former general director of the Royal Opera House, London, Pierre Bergé, former president of Opéra Bastille, venue of the Paris Opera Ballet (in addition to the Palais Garnier) and Manuel Legris, principal dancer with the Paris Opera Ballet nominated by Nureyev in New York.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Nureyev put it like this: "I approach dancing from a different angle than those who begin dancing at 8 or 9. Those who have studied from the beginning never question anything." Nureyev entered the Vaganova Ballet Academy at the age of just 17 staying there for only 3 years compared to dancers who usually become principal dancers after entering the Vaganova school at 9 and go through the full 9 years of dance education. Nureyev was a contemporary of Vladimir Vasiliev, who was the premiere dancer at the Bolshoi. Later, Nureyev was a predecessor to Mikhail Baryshnikov at the Kirov Ballet, now the Mariinsky Theater. Unlike Vasiliev and Baryshnikov, Nureyev did not build his reputation on success in international ballet competitions, but rather through his performances and popular image.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Paradoxically, both Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov became masters of perfection in dance. Dance and life was one and the same, Pierre Bergé said about Nureyev: "He was a dancer like any other dancer. It is extraordinary to have 19 points out of 20. It is extremely rare to have 20 out of 20. However, to have 21 out of 20 is even much rarer. And this was the situation with Nureyev." Legris said: "Rudolf Nureyev was a high-speed train (he was a TGV)." Working with Nureyev involved having to surpass oneself and "stepping on it."


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Nureyev did not have much patience with rules, limitations and hierarchical order and had at times a volatile temper. He was apt to throw tantrums in public when frustrated. His impatience mainly showed itself when the failings of others interfered with his work.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: He socialised with Gore Vidal, Freddie Mercury, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, Andy Warhol, Lee Radziwill and Talitha Pol, Jessye Norman, Tamara Toumanova and occasionally visited the New York discotheque Studio 54 in the late 1970s, but developed an intolerance for celebrities.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: He kept up old friendships in and out of the ballet world for decades, and was considered to be a loyal and generous friend.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Most ballerinas with whom Nureyev danced, including Antoinette Sibley, Cynthia Gregory, Gelsey Kirkland and Annette Page, paid tribute to him as a considerate partner. He was known as extremely generous to many ballerinas, who credit him with helping them during difficult times. In particular, the Canadian ballerina Lynn Seymour – distressed when she was denied the opportunity to premiere MacMillan's "Romeo and Juliet" – says that Nureyev often found projects for her even when she was suffering from weight problems and depression and thus had trouble finding roles.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: Depending on the source, Nureyev is described as either bisexual, as he did have heterosexual relationships as a younger man, or homosexual. He had a turbulent personal life, with numerous bathhouse visits and anonymous pickups. Nureyev met Erik Bruhn, the celebrated Danish dancer, after Nureyev defected to the West in 1961. Nureyev was a great admirer of Bruhn, having seen filmed performances of the Dane on tour in the Soviet Union with the American Ballet Theatre; although stylistically the two dancers were very different. Bruhn and Nureyev became a couple and the two remained together on and off, with a very volatile relationship for 25 years, until Bruhn's death in 1986.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: In 1978, Nureyev met the 23-year-old American dancer and classical arts student Robert Tracy and a two-and-a-half-year love affair began. Tracy later became Nureyev's secretary and live-in companion for over 14 years in a long-term open relationship until death. According to Tracy, Nureyev said that he had a relationship with three women in his life, he had always wanted a son, and once had plans to father one with Nastassja Kinski.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: In 1962, Nureyev made his screen debut in a film version of "Les Sylphides". He decided against an acting career in order to branch into modern dance with the Dutch National Ballet in 1968. Nureyev also made his debut in 1962 on network television in America partnered with Maria Tallchief dancing the pas de deux from August Bournonville's "Flower Festival in Genzano" on the "Bell Telephone Hour".


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: In 1972, Sir Robert Helpmann invited him to tour Australia with Nureyev's production of "Don Quixote."


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: In 1973, a film version of "Don Quixote" was directed by Nureyev and Helpmann and features Nureyev as "Basilio", Lucette Aldous as "Kitri", Helpmann as "Don Quixote" and artists of the Australian Ballet.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: In 1972, Nureyev was a guest in David Winters' television special "The Special London Bridge Special". In 1973 he appeared in a cameo for The Morecambe & Wise Show Christmas Special.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: In 1978, he appeared as a guest star on the television series "The Muppet Show" where he danced in a parody called "Swine Lake", sang "Baby, It's Cold Outside" in a sauna duet with Miss Piggy, and sang and tap-danced in the show's finale, "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails". His appearance is credited with making Jim Henson's series become one of the most sought after programs to appear in.


title: Rudolf Nureyev

text: In 1989, he toured the United States and Canada for 24 weeks with a revival of the Broadway musical "The King and I".


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: The final battle of the European Theatre of World War II continued after the definitive overall surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allies, signed by Field marshal Wilhelm Keitel on 8 May 1945 in Karlshorst, Berlin. After German dictator Adolf Hitler's suicide and handing over of power to German Admiral Karl Dönitz in May of 1945, the Soviet troops conquered Berlin and accepted German surrender led by Dönitz. The last battles were fought as part of the Eastern Front which ended in the total surrender of all of Nazi Germany’s remaining armed forces, such as in the Courland Pocket from Army Group North in the Baltics lasting until 10 May 1945 and in Czechoslovakia during the Prague offensive on 11 May 1945.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: Red Army soldiers from the 322nd Rifle Division liberated Auschwitz concentration camp on 27 January 1945 at 15:00. Two hundred and thirty-one Red Army soldiers died in the fighting around Monowitz concentration camp, Birkenau, and Auschwitz I, as well as the towns of Oświęcim and Brzezinka. For most of the survivors, there was no definite moment of liberation. After the death march away from the camp, the "SS-Totenkopfverbände" guards had left.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: About 7,000 prisoners had been left behind, most of whom were seriously ill due to the effects of their imprisonment. Most of those left behind were middle-aged adults or children younger than 15. Red Army soldiers found 600 corpses, 370,000 men's suits, 837,000 articles of women's clothing, and seven tonnes (7.7 tons) of human hair. At Monowitz camp, there were about 800 survivors and the camp was liberated on 27 January by the Soviet 60th Army, part of the 1st Ukrainian Front.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: Soldiers who were used to death were shocked by the Nazis' treatment of prisoners. Red Army general Vasily Petrenko, commander of the 107th Infantry Division, remarked, "I, who saw people dying every day, was shocked by the Nazis' indescribable hatred toward the inmates who had turned into living skeletons. I read about the Nazis' treatment of prisoners in various leaflets, but there was nothing about the Nazis' treatment of women, children, and old men. It was in Auschwitz that I found out about the fate of the Jews."


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: As soon as they arrived, the liberating forces, which contained the Polish Red Cross, helped survivors by organizing medical care and food; Red Army hospitals cared for 4,500 survivors. There were also efforts to document the camp. As late as June 1945, there were still 300 survivors at the camp who were too weak to be moved.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: Allied forces begin to take large numbers of Axis prisoners: The total number of prisoners taken on the Western Front in April 1945 by the Western Allies was 1,500,000. April also witnessed the capture of at least 120,000 German troops by the Western Allies in the last campaign of the war in Italy. In the three to four months up to the end of April, over 800,000 German soldiers surrendered on the Eastern Front. In early April, the first Allied-governed "Rheinwiesenlagers" were established in western Germany to hold hundreds of thousands of captured or surrendered Axis Forces personnel. Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) reclassified all prisoners as Disarmed Enemy Forces, not POWs (prisoners of war). The legal fiction circumvented provisions under the Geneva Convention of 1929 on the treatment of former combatants. By October, thousands had died in the camps from starvation, exposure and disease.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: Liberation of Nazi concentration camps and refugees: Allied forces began to discover the scale of the Holocaust, confirming the findings of Pilecki's 1943 Report. The advance into Germany uncovered numerous Nazi concentration camps and forced labour facilities. Up to 60,000 prisoners were at Bergen-Belsen when it was liberated on 15 April 1945, by the British 11th Armoured Division. Four days later troops from the American 42nd Infantry Division found Dachau. Allied troops forced the remaining SS guards to gather up the corpses and place them in mass graves. Due to the prisoners' poor physical condition, thousands continued to die after liberation. Captured SS guards were subsequently tried at Allied war crime tribunals where many were sentenced to death. Some Nazi guards and personnel were murdered outright upon the discovery of their crimes. However, up to 10,000 Nazi war criminals eventually fled Europe using ratlines such as ODESSA.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: German forces withdraw from Finland: On 25 April 1945, the last German troops withdrew from Finnish Lapland and made their way into occupied Norway. On 27 April 1945, the "Raising the Flag on the Three-Country Cairn" photograph was taken.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: Mussolini is executed: On 25 April 1945, Italian partisans liberated Milan and Turin. On 27 April 1945, as Allied forces closed in on Milan, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was captured by Italian partisans. It is disputed whether he was trying to flee from Italy to Switzerland (through the Splügen Pass), and was travelling with a German anti-aircraft battalion. On 28 April, Mussolini was executed in Giulino (a civil parish of Mezzegra); the other fascists captured with him were taken to Dongo and executed there. The bodies were then taken to Milan and hung up on the Piazzale Loreto of the city. On 29 April, Rodolfo Graziani surrendered all Fascist Italian armed forces at Caserta. This included Army Group Liguria. Graziani was the Minister of Defence for Mussolini's Italian Social Republic.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: Hitler dies by suicide: On 30 April 1945, as the Battle of Nuremberg and the Battle of Hamburg ended with American and British occupation, in addition to the Battle of Berlin raging above him with the Soviets surrounding the city, along with his escape route cut off by the Americans, realizing that all was lost and not wishing to suffer Mussolini's fate, German dictator Adolf Hitler died by suicide in his "Führerbunker" along with Eva Braun, his long-term partner whom he had married less than 40 hours earlier. In his will, Hitler dismissed "Reichsmarschall" Hermann Göring, his second-in-command and Interior minister Heinrich Himmler after each of them separately tried to seize control of the crumbling remains of Nazi Germany. Hitler appointed his successors as follows; "Großadmiral" Karl Dönitz as the new "Reichspräsident" ("President of Germany") and Joseph Goebbels as the new "Reichskanzler" (Chancellor of Germany). However, Goebbels died by suicide the next day, leaving Dönitz as the sole leader of Germany.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: German forces in Italy surrender: On 29 April, the day before Hitler died, Oberstleutnant Schweinitz and Sturmbannführer Wenner, plenipotentiaries for Generaloberst Heinrich von Vietinghoff and SS Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, signed a surrender document at Caserta after prolonged unauthorised secret negotiations with the Western Allies, which were viewed with great suspicion by the Soviet Union as trying to reach a separate peace. In the document, the Germans agreed to a ceasefire and surrender of all the forces under the command of Vietinghoff on 2 May at 2 pm. Accordingly, after some bitter wrangling between Wolff and Albert Kesselring in the early hours of 2 May, nearly 1,000,000 men in Italy and Austria surrendered unconditionally to British Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander on 2 May at 2 pm.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: German forces in Berlin surrender: The Battle of Berlin ended on 2 May. On that date, "General der Artillerie" Helmuth Weidling, the commander of the Berlin Defense Area, unconditionally surrendered the city to General Vasily Chuikov of the Red Army. On the same day the officers commanding the two armies of Army Group Vistula north of Berlin, (General Kurt von Tippelskirch, commander of the German 21st Army and General Hasso von Manteuffel, commander of Third Panzer Army), surrendered to the Western Allies. 2 May is also believed to have been the day when Hitler's deputy Martin Bormann died, from the account of Artur Axmann who saw Bormann's corpse in Berlin near the Lehrter Bahnhof railway station after encountering a Soviet Red Army patrol. Lehrter Bahnhof is close to where the remains of Bormann, confirmed as his by a DNA test in 1998, were unearthed on 7 December 1972.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: German forces in North West Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands surrender: On 4 May 1945, the British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery took the unconditional military surrender at Lüneburg from "Generaladmiral" Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, and General Eberhard Kinzel, of all German forces "in Holland [sic], in northwest Germany including the Frisian Islands and Heligoland and all other islands, in Schleswig-Holstein, and in Denmark… includ[ing] all naval ships in these areas", at the Timeloberg on Lüneburg Heath; an area between the cities of Hamburg, Hanover and Bremen. The number of German land, sea and air forces involved in this surrender amounted to 1,000,000 men.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: On 5 May, "Großadmiral" Dönitz ordered all U-boats to cease offensive operations and return to their bases.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: At 16:00 on 5 May, German "Oberbefehlshaber Niederlande" supreme commander "Generaloberst" Johannes Blaskowitz surrendered to I Canadian Corps commander Lieutenant-General Charles Foulkes in the Dutch town of Wageningen, in the presence of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (acting as commander-in-chief of the Dutch Interior Forces).


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: German forces in Bavaria surrender: At 14:30 on 5 May 1945, General Hermann Foertsch surrendered all forces between the Bohemian mountains and the Upper Inn river to the American General Jacob L. Devers, commander of the American 6th Army Group.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: Central Europe: On 5 May 1945, the Czech resistance started the Prague uprising. The following day, the Soviets launched the Prague Offensive. In Dresden, "Gauleiter" Martin Mutschmann let it be known that a large-scale German offensive on the Eastern Front was about to be launched. Within two days, Mutschmann abandoned the city but was captured by Soviet troops while trying to escape.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: Hermann Göring's surrender: On 6 May, "Reichsmarshall" and Hitler's second-in-command, Hermann Göring, surrendered to General Carl Spaatz, who was the commander of the operational United States Air Forces in Europe, along with his wife and daughter at the Germany-Austria border. He was by this time the most senior Nazi official still alive.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: German forces in Breslau surrender: At 18:00 on 6 May, General Hermann Niehoff, the commandant of Breslau, a 'fortress' city surrounded and besieged for months, surrendered to the Soviets.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: Jodl and Keitel surrender all German armed forces unconditionally: Thirty minutes after the fall of ""Festung Breslau"" ("Fortress Breslau"), General Alfred Jodl arrived in Reims and, following Dönitz's instructions, offered to surrender all forces fighting the Western Allies. This was exactly the same negotiating position that von Friedeburg had initially made to Montgomery, and like Montgomery, the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, threatened to break off all negotiations unless the Germans agreed to a complete unconditional surrender to all the Allies on all fronts. Eisenhower explicitly told Jodl that he would order western lines closed to German soldiers, thus forcing them to surrender to the Soviets. Jodl sent a signal to Dönitz, who was in Flensburg, informing him of Eisenhower's declaration. Shortly after midnight, Dönitz, accepting the inevitable, sent a signal to Jodl authorizing the complete and total surrender of all German forces.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: Channel Islanders were informed about the German surrender after: At 10:00 on 8 May, the Channel Islanders were informed by the German authorities that the war was over. British prime minister Winston Churchill made a radio broadcast at 15:00 during which he announced: "Hostilities will end officially at one minute after midnight tonight, but in the interests of saving lives the 'Cease fire' began yesterday to be sounded all along the front, and our dear Channel Islands are also to be freed today."


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: At 02:41 on the morning of 7 May, at SHAEF headquarters in Reims, France, the chief-of-staff of the German Armed Forces High Command, General Alfred Jodl, signed an unconditional surrender document for all German forces to the Allies. General Franz Böhme announced the unconditional surrender of German troops in Norway on 7 May. It included the phrase "All forces under German control to cease active operations at 2301 hours Central European Time on May 8, 1945." The next day, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and other German OKW representatives travelled to Berlin, and shortly before midnight signed another document of unconditional surrender, again surrendering to all the Allied forces, this time in the presence of Marshal Georgi Zhukov and representatives of SHAEF. The signing ceremony took place in a former German Army Engineering School in the Berlin district of Karlshorst; it now houses the German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: VE-Day: Following news of the German surrender, spontaneous celebrations erupted all over the world on 7 May, including in Western Europe and the United States. As the Germans officially set the end of operations for 2301 Central European Time on 8 May, that day is celebrated across Europe as V-E Day. Most of the former Soviet Union celebrates Victory Day on 9 May, as the end of operations occurred after midnight Moscow Time.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: German units cease fire: Although the military commanders of most German forces obeyed the order to surrender issued by the "Oberkommando der Wehrmacht" (OKW)—the German Armed Forces High Command—not all commanders did so. The largest contingent was Army Group Centre under the command of "Generalfeldmarschall" Ferdinand Schörner, who had been promoted to Commander-in-Chief of the Army on 30 April in Hitler's last will and testament. On 8 May, Schörner deserted his command and flew to Austria; the Soviet Army sent overwhelming force against Army Group Centre in the Prague Offensive, forcing many of the German units in there to capitulate by 11 May. The other units of the Army Group which did not surrender on 8 May were forced to surrender.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: Debellation: At the time the Allied powers assumed that a debellation had occurred (the end of a war caused by the complete destruction of a hostile state), and their actions during the immediate post war period were based on that legal premise (however the German government's legal position during and after the reunification of Germany is that the state remained in existence although moribund in the immediate post war period).


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: Dönitz government ordered dissolved by Eisenhower: Karl Dönitz continued to act as if he were the German head of state, but his Flensburg government (so called because it was based at Flensburg in northern Germany and controlled only a small area around the town), was not recognized by the Allies. On 12 May an Allied liaison team arrived in Flensburg and took quarters aboard the passenger ship "Patria". The liaison officers and the Supreme Allied Headquarters soon realized that they had no need to act through the Flensburg government and that its members should be arrested. On 23 May, acting on SHAEF's orders and with the approval of the Soviets, American Major General Rooks summoned Dönitz aboard the "Patria" and communicated to him that he and all the members of his Government were under arrest and that their government was dissolved. The Allies had a problem because they realized that although the German armed forces had surrendered unconditionally, SHAEF had failed to use the document created by the "European Advisory Commission" (EAC) and so there had been no formal surrender by the civilian German government. This was considered a very important issue, because just as the civilian, but not military, surrender in 1918 had been used by Hitler to create the "stab in the back" argument, the Allies did not want to give any future hostile German regime a legal argument to resurrect an old quarrel.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: On 20 September 1945, the Allied Control Council passed its Control Council Law No. 1 - Repealing of Nazi Laws, which repealed numerous pieces of legislation enacted by the national-socialist regime, putting a "de jure" end to the Government of Nazi Germany. Incidentally, this law should have theoretically reestablished the Weimar Constitution, however this constitution stayed irrelevant on the grounds of the powers of the Allied Control Council acting as occupying forces. On 10 October 1945, Control Council Law No. 2 was also passed, formally abolishing all national socialist organisations.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: Declaration Regarding the Defeat of Germany and the Assumption of Supreme Authority by Allied Powers was signed by the four Allies on 5 June. It included the following:


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: The Potsdam Agreement was signed on 1 August 1945. In connection with this, the leaders of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union planned the new postwar German government, resettled war territory boundaries, "de facto" annexed a quarter of pre-war Germany situated east of the Oder-Neisse line, and mandated and organized the expulsion of the millions of Germans who remained in the annexed territories and elsewhere in the east. They also ordered German demilitarization, denazification, industrial disarmament and settlements of war reparations. But, as France (at American insistence) had not been invited to the Potsdam Conference, so the French representatives on the Allied Control Council subsequently refused to recognise any obligation to implement the Potsdam Agreement; with the consequence that much of the programme envisaged at Potsdam, for the establishment of a German government and state adequate for accepting a peace settlement, remained a dead letter.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: Operation Keelhaul began the Allies' forced repatriation of displaced persons, families, anti-communists, White Russians, former Soviet Armed Forces POWs, foreign slave workers, soldier volunteers and Cossacks, and Nazi collaborators to the Soviet Union. Between 14 August 1946 and 9 May 1947, up to five million people were forcibly handed over to the Soviets. On return, most deportees faced imprisonment or execution; on some occasions the NKVD began killing people before Allied troops had departed from the rendezvous points.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: The Allied Control Council was created to effect the Allies' assumed supreme authority over Germany, specifically to implement their assumed joint authority over Germany. On 30 August, the Control Council constituted itself and issued its first proclamation, which informed the German people of the council's existence and asserted that the commands and directives issued by the Commanders-in-Chief in their respective zones were not affected by the establishment of the council.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: Cessation of hostilities between the United States and Germany was proclaimed on 13 December 1946 by US President Truman.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: The Paris Peace Conference ended on 10 February 1947 with the signing of peace treaties by the wartime Allies with the former European Axis powers (Italy, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria) and their co-belligerent ally Finland.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: The Federal Republic of Germany, which had been founded on 23 May 1949 (when its Basic Law was promulgated), had its first government formed on 20 September 1949 while the German Democratic Republic was formed on 7 October.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: End of state of war with Germany was declared by many former Western Allies from 1950. In the Petersberg Agreement of 22 November 1949, it was noted that the West German government wanted an end to the state of war, but the request could not be granted. The US state of war with Germany was being maintained for legal reasons, and though it was softened somewhat it was not suspended since "the US wants to retain a legal basis for keeping a US force in Western Germany".


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: At a meeting for the foreign ministers of France, the UK, and the US in New York from 12 September – 19 December 1950, it was stated that among other measures to strengthen West Germany's position in the Cold War that the western allies would "end by legislation the state of war with Germany". In 1951, many former Western Allies did end their state of war with Germany: Australia (9 July), Canada, Italy, New Zealand, the Netherlands (26 July), South Africa, the United Kingdom (9 July), and the United States (19 October). The state of war between Germany and the Soviet Union was ended in early 1955.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: "The full authority of a sovereign state" was granted to the Federal Republic of Germany on 5 May 1955 under the terms of the Bonn–Paris conventions.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: The treaty ended the military occupation of West German territory, but the three occupying powers retained some special rights, e.g. vis-à-vis West Berlin.


title: End of World War II in Europe

text: The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany was signed following the 1990 German reunification, whereby the Four Powers renounced all rights they formerly held in the newly single country, including Berlin. The treaty came into force on 15 March 1991. Under the terms of the Treaty, the Allies were allowed to keep troops in Berlin until the end of 1994 (articles 4 and 5). In accordance with the Treaty, occupying troops were withdrawn by that deadline.


title: S-500 missile system

text: The S-500 Prometey (), also known as 55R6M "Triumfator-M", is a Russian hypersonic surface-to-air missile/anti-ballistic missile system replacing the A-135 missile system currently in use, and supplementing the S-400. The S-500 was developed by the Almaz-Antey Air Defence Concern. Initially planned to be in production by 2014, the first unit entered service in 2021 with the 15th Air Army.


title: S-500 missile system

text: Although sharing a similar designation with the S-500U project of the late 1960s, the relationship between the two remains unclear. The S-500U multichannel anti-aircraft system was a 1968 initiative by the Soviet Air Defence Forces, Soviet Navy, Ministry of the Radio Industry (Ministerstvo Radio Promyshlennosti SSSR), and Ministry of the Shipbuilding Industry to create a unified complex for the National Air Defence Troops, navy and ground troops. Missiles of the S-500U complex were supposed to engage enemy aircraft at a range up to . The S-500U SAM complex project was rejected by the Soviet Army, which had a requirement to engage not only enemy aircraft, but also short-range ballistic missiles. Consequently, the S-300 family (SA-10 and SA-12) was developed instead.


title: S-500 missile system

text: In 2009, the system was in design stage at Almaz-Antey and had been planned to be completed in 2012. In February 2011, it was announced that the first S-500 units should be in serial production by 2014. Two production plants to produce the S-500 were to be built by 2013, with first deliveries then scheduled for 2015 or 2017. According to the original plans, ten S-500 battalions were to be purchased for the Russian Aerospace Defense (VKO) under the State Armament Programme 2020 (GPV-2020).


title: S-500 missile system

text: The S-500s will work in parallel with S-400s and together are planned to replace the S-300 missile systems. The first units are planned to be deployed around the Moscow oblast and the country's central area. A naval version is the likely armament for the new Lider-class destroyer, which was to enter service after 2020 but is not operational as of 2022.


title: S-500 missile system

text: CEO of Rostec Corporation Sergey Chemezov declared the beginning of S-500 production on 30 June 2019. Despite that, serial production of the first 10 systems (ordered in late 2020) only begun in 2021. A new contract was signed in August 2022.


title: S-500 missile system

text: In May 2018, Russia conducted the longest range surface-to-air missile test to date with the S-500. According to reports citing unnamed sources familiar with U.S. intelligence on the program, the S-500 was able to hit a target 482 km (300 mi) away, which is 80 km further than the previous record.


title: S-500 missile system

text: On 4 June 2019, the Russian Ministry of Defense posted a video showing the successful launch of a new anti ballistic missile system in the form of a long range surface to air missile. Though the nature of the air defence system which was being tested was not mentioned it has been widely speculated to have been a test of the S-500 Prometheus long range surface to air missile system.


title: S-500 missile system

text: As of July 2021, the Russian MOD has released the first public footage of a live-fire test of the new S-500 anti-ballistic missile system at Kapustin Yar.


title: S-500 missile system

text: The S-500 is designed for intercepting and destroying intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as hypersonic cruise missiles and aircraft, for air defense against Airborne Early Warning and Control and for jamming aircraft. With a planned range of for anti-ballistic missile (ABM) and for air defense, the S-500 would be able to detect and simultaneously engage up to 10 ballistic hypersonic targets flying at a speed of to a limit of . It also aims at destroying hypersonic cruise missiles and other aerial targets at speeds of higher than Mach 5, as well as spacecraft. The altitude of a target engaged can be as high as. It is effective against ballistic missiles with a launch range of 3,500 km (2,200 mi), the radar reaches a radius of 3,000 km (1,300 km for the EPR 0,1 square meter). Other targets it has been announced to defend against include unmanned aerial vehicles, low Earth orbit satellites, space weapons launched from hypersonic aircraft, and hypersonic orbital platforms.


title: S-500 missile system

text: The system is mobile and has rapid deployability. Experts believe that the system's capabilities can affect enemy intercontinental ballistic missiles at the middle and end portions of flight, but reports by Almaz-Antey say that the external target-designation system (RLS Voronezh-DM and missile defence system A-135 radar Don-2N) will be capable of mid-early flight portion interceptions of enemy ballistic missiles, which is one of the final stages of the S-500 project. It is to have a response time of less than 4 seconds (Compared to the S-400's less than 10).


title: S-500 missile system

text: The type of missiles used, especially for the long range ABM/ATBM role, has not been disclosed yet. It is likely to be a derivative of the SA-12B Giant two-stage ATBM, since the 77P6 launch vehicle is originally meant to carry 2 containers for the SA-12B. The other missiles, to be used against classical airborne targets, are likely to be the same as in the S-400 system.


title: S-500 missile system

text: In September 2021, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov said that India could be a prospective, and probably the first, S-500 customer.


title: S-500 missile system

text: Also according to the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey is ready to consider possible S-500 purchases in the future.


title: Trebuchet

text: A trebuchet () is a type of catapult that uses a long arm to throw a projectile. It was a common powerful siege engine until the advent of gunpowder. The design of a trebuchet allows it to launch projectiles of greater weights and further distances than that of a traditional catapult.


title: Trebuchet

text: There are two main types of trebuchet. The first is the traction trebuchet, or mangonel, which uses manpower to swing the arm. It first appeared in China in the 4th century BC. Carried westward by the Avars, the technology was adopted by the Byzantines in the late 6th century AD and by their neighbors in the following centuries.


title: Trebuchet

text: The later, and often larger and more powerful, counterweight trebuchet, also known as the counterpoise trebuchet, uses a counterweight to swing the arm. It appeared in both Christian and Muslim lands around the Mediterranean in the 12th century, and was carried back to China by the Mongols in the 13th century.


title: Trebuchet

text: It is uncertain what the origin of the word "trebuchet" is. D.J. Cathcart King suggests that it is derived from ""trebucher", to rock or tilt". The numerous forms of the word that appeared during the 13th century, including "trabocco", "tribok", "tribuclietta", and "trubechetum", have made it impossible to identify the source with any certainty. In Arabic the counterweight trebuchet was called "manjaniq maghribi" or "majaniq ifranji". In China it was called the "huihui pao" (Muslim trebuchet).


title: Trebuchet

text: The earliest appearance of the term "trebuchet" dates to the late 12th century. The word "trabuchellus" appeared alongside "manganum" and "prederia" in a document in Vicenza on . "Trabucha" is found a decade later with "predariae" at the siege of Castelnuovo Bocca d'Adda in an account by Iohannes Codagnellus. It is unclear, however, whether these referred to counterweight trebuchets. Codagnellus did not specify a specific type of engine with the term and even implied that they were "fairly light in subsequent references". Only in the late 1210s do variations of "trebuchet" in sources, described as increasingly powerful machines or utilizing different components, identify more closely with the counterweight trebuchet. Other terms, such as "machina maior/magna", might have also referred to counterweight trebuchets.


title: Trebuchet

text: "Traction trebuchet" and "counterweight trebuchet" are modern terms (retronyms), not used by contemporary users of the weapons. The term "traction trebuchet" was created mainly to distinguish this type of weapon from the "onager", a torsion powered catapult that is often conflated in contemporary sources with the "mangonel", which was used as a generic term for any medieval stone throwing artillery. Both the traction and counterweight trebuchets have been called "mangonel" at one point or another. Confusion between the onager, mangonel, trebuchet, and other catapult types in contemporary terminology has led some historians today to use the more precise "traction trebuchet" instead, with "counterweight trebuchet" used to distinguish what was before called simply a "trebuchet". Some modern historians use "mangonel" to mean exclusively traction trebuchets, while others call traction trebuchets "traction mangonels" and counterweight trebuchets "counterweight mangonels".


title: Trebuchet

text: The trebuchet is a compound machine that makes use of the mechanical advantage of a lever to throw a projectile. They are typically large constructions, with the length of the beam as much as , with some purported to be even larger.


title: Trebuchet

text: A trebuchet consists primarily of a long beam attached by an axle suspended high above the ground by a stout frame and base, such that the beam can rotate vertically through a wide arc (typically over 180°). A sling is attached to one end of the beam to hold the projectile. The projectile is thrown when the beam is quickly rotated by applying force to the opposite end of the beam. The mechanical advantage is primarily obtained by having the projectile section of the beam much longer than the opposite section where the force is applied – usually four to six times longer.


title: Trebuchet

text: The difference between counterweight and traction trebuchets is what force they use. Counterweight trebuchets use gravity; potential energy is stored by slowly raising an extremely heavy box (typically filled with stones, sand, or lead) attached to the shorter end of the beam (typically on a hinged connection), and releasing it on command. Traction trebuchets use human power; on command, men pull ropes attached to the shorter end of the trebuchet beam. The difficulties of coordinating the pull of many men together repeatedly and predictably makes counterweight trebuchets preferable for the larger machines, though they are more complicated to engineer. The trebuchet had further modifications to allow an increase to its range, by creating a slot for the sling and projectile to sit underneath the trebuchet, enabling the sling to be lengthened and thus extending the range, an alteration in the trajectory, or the release point to be changed. Further increasing their complexity is that either winches or treadwheels, aided by block and tackle, are typically required to raise the more massive counterweights. So while counterweight trebuchets require significantly fewer men to operate than traction trebuchets, they require significantly more time to reload. In a long siege, reload time may not be a critical concern.


title: Trebuchet

text: When the trebuchet is operated, the force causes rotational acceleration of the beam around the axle (the fulcrum of the lever). These factors multiply the acceleration transmitted to the throwing portion of the beam and its attached sling. The sling starts rotating with the beam, but rotates farther (typically about 360°) and therefore faster, transmitting this increased speed to the projectile. The length of the sling increases the mechanical advantage, and also changes the trajectory so that, at the time of release from the sling, the projectile is traveling in the desired speed and angle to give it the range to hit the target. Adjusting the sling's release point is the primary means of fine-tuning the range, as the rest of the trebuchet's actions are difficult to adjust after construction.


title: Trebuchet

text: The rotation speed of the throwing beam increases smoothly, starting slow but building up quickly. After the projectile is released, the arm continues to rotate, allowed to smoothly slow down on its own accord and come to rest at the end of the rotation. This is unlike the violent sudden stop inherent in the action of other catapult designs such as the onager, which must absorb most of the launching energy into their own frame, and must be heavily built and reinforced as a result. This key difference makes the trebuchet much more durable, allowing for larger and more powerful machines.


title: Trebuchet

text: A trebuchet projectile can be almost anything, even debris, rotting carcasses, or incendiaries, but is typically a large stone. Dense stone, or even metal, specially worked to be round and smooth, gives the best range and predictability. When attempting to breach enemy walls, it is important to use materials that will not shatter on impact; projectiles were sometimes brought from distant quarries to get the desired properties.


title: Trebuchet

text: The traction trebuchet, also referred to as a mangonel in some sources, is thought to have originated in ancient China.


title: Trebuchet

text: The first recorded use of traction trebuchets was in ancient China. They were probably used by the Mohists as early as 4th century BC; descriptions can be found in the "Mojing" (compiled in the 4th century BC). According to the "Mojing", the traction trebuchet was 17 feet high with four feet buried below ground, the fulcrum attached was constructed from the wheels of a cart, the throwing arm was 30 to 35 feet long with three quarters above the pivot and a quarter below to which the ropes are attached, and the sling two feet and eight inches long. The range given for projectiles are 300, 180, and 120 feet. They were used as defensive weapons stationed on walls and sometimes hurled hollowed out logs filled with burning charcoal to destroy enemy siege works. By the 1st century AD, commentators were interpreting other passages in texts such as the "Zuo zhuan" and "Classic of Poetry" as references to the traction trebuchet: "the guai is 'a great arm of wood on which a stone is laid, and this by means of a device [ji] is shot off and so strikes down the enemy.'" The "Records of the Grand Historian" say that "The flying stones weigh 12 catties and by devices [ji] are shot off 300 paces." Traction trebuchets went into decline during the Han dynasty due to long periods of peace but became a common siege weapon again during the Three Kingdoms period. They were commonly called stone-throwing machines, thunder carriages, and stone carriages in the following centuries. They were used as ship mounted weapons by 573 for attacking enemy fortifications. It seems that during the early 7th century, improvements were made on traction trebuchets, although it is not explicitly stated what. According to a stele in Barkul celebrating Tang Taizong's conquest of what is now Ejin Banner, the engineer Jiang Xingben made great advancements on trebuchets that were unknown in ancient times. Jiang Xingben participated in the construction of siege engines for Taizong's campaigns against the Western Regions. In 617 Li Mi (Sui dynasty) constructed 300 trebuchets for his assault on Luoyang, in 621 Li Shimin did the same at Luoyang, and onward into the Song dynasty when in 1161, trebuchets operated by Song dynasty soldiers fired bombs of lime and sulphur against the ships of the Jin dynasty navy during the Battle of Caishi.


title: Trebuchet

text: The traction trebuchet was carried westward by the Avars and appeared next in the eastern Mediterranean by the late 6th century AD, where it replaced torsion powered siege engines such as the ballista and onager. The rapid displacement of torsion siege engines was probably due to a combination of reasons. The traction trebuchet is simpler in design, has a faster rate of fire, increased accuracy, and comparable range and power. It was probably also safer than the twisted cords of torsion weapons, "whose bundles of taut sinews stored up huge amounts of energy even in resting state and were prone to catastrophic failure when in use." At the same time, the late Roman Empire seems to have fielded "considerably less artillery than its forebears, organised now in separate units, so the weaponry that came into the hands of successor states might have been limited in quantity." Evidence from Gaul and Germania suggests there was substantial loss of skills and techniques in artillery further west.