title: European Super League

text: In June 2021, regarding the six English clubs' owners who had withdrawn from the project after the government threatened legislation to block it, amid an intense backlash from fans and the media, the Super League was reported to have responded as such: "The owners know this is not the end — it's just the beginning. We will resume dialogue, whether this year or next year. It's just financial gravity. Football can't survive in its current form." In addition, it was reported that, as all twelve clubs remained tied by binding contracts, they were working on a modified version of the project. About these reports, Arsenal said: "We have been absolutely clear we are withdrawing from the ESL. This is subject to a legal process which is under way." Manchester United said: "The club has no intention to revisit the Super League concept. Any suggestion otherwise is simply an attempt to mislead our fans."


title: European Super League

text: Arsenal chief executive Vinai Venkatesham met with fans and confirmed he had apologised to the fourteen other Premier League clubs but that their reaction was rather lukewarm. Arsenal's head coach Mikel Arteta revealed that Stan Kroenke, the club's owner, personally apologised to the players and the coaching staff. Arsenal's board of directors wrote an open letter to fans stating to have made a mistake, apologised for it, and hoped to regain trust whilst assuring of their commitment to rebuild the club.


title: European Super League

text: In an open letter from the owner Roman Abramovich and the board addressed to its fans, Chelsea wrote they "deeply regret" the decision to join the Super League and pledged to work more closely with supporters in future. Whilst lamenting "the potential damage to the club's reputation" caused by their decision, Chelsea condemned the abuse received by club officials, and implored supporters to engage in a respectful dialogue. The Chelsea Supporters' Trust called for resignations from the club's board in light of the fiasco. Chelsea subsequently announced fan representation in board meetings.


title: European Super League

text: Liverpool owner John W. Henry apologised to the fans, players, and coach Jürgen Klopp "for the disruption" caused by club's decision to join the Super League. Dismissing the apology from the owners, supporters' group Spion Kop 1906 wrote that "the only reason they are sorry is because they have been caught out yet again", and demanded fan representation on the board. Klopp said that Henry has not been in touch with him since the plans unraveled, although he came out in support of the owners, stating: "[T]hey are not bad people. They made a bad decision."


title: European Super League

text: Manchester United senior executive Ed Woodward allegedly resigned due to differences with the owners, the Glazer family, on the viability of the Super League, although some alleged that Woodward was involved in the plans for a breakaway league from day one. Manchester United's co-chairman Joel Glazer apologised "unreservedly" to fans shortly after their withdrawal was confirmed. The Manchester United Supporters' Trust responded: "We cannot just carry on as if nothing has happened. This is a watershed moment and we need to see genuine change as a result."


title: European Super League

text: In a message to fans, Manchester City chief executive Ferran Soriano said that the board deeply regretted its actions, and explained Manchester City's decision to join was motivated by "future ability to succeed and grow."


title: European Super League

text: In May 2021, Tottenham Hotspur released a statement saying that the project was put together in secret due to legal constraints in place, and it was merely a "framework agreement" that through dialogue with the Football Association, the Premier League, UEFA, FIFA, and the fans would have evolved into "something workable." They apologised "unreservedly" but expressed disappointment at Tottenham Hotspur Supporters' Trust for refusing to meet with club officials. The club also announced creation of an advisory panel, composed of elected representatives, with the chair appointed annually to the board as a full non-executive.


title: European Super League

text: Whilst the opposition from fans in Spain remained subdued, the supporters of the Premier League clubs, Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, and Tottenham Hotspur, called on their owners to divest their investments. Supporters of Manchester City and Chelsea appeared more forgiving given their owners' track record and significant investments over the years that as of 2021 amounted to more than US$3billion combined. A few observers, such as Emlyon Business School professor of Eurasian Sport Simon Chadwick, deemed fan opposition of their respective clubs, which acted in self-preservation and with intentions to grow their investments, as naïve, simplistic, and misplaced.


title: European Super League

text: Executives from the Big Six resigned from various league committees after Richard Masters, CEO of the Premier League, called on them to either resign or be fired. Citing the trust deficit created as a result of the attempted breakaway, other Premier League clubs called for layoffs of key personnel employed by the Big Six. The Football Association commenced a formal inquiry against the Big Six, whilst the Premier League began revising its Owner's Charter to prevent similar attempts in the future. On 9 June, "The Athletic" reported that the Big Six had agreed to a collective £22million fine in a settlement with the Premier League, with individual team fines of £25million and 30-point deductions should any club agree to join a future breakaway league. On 10 June, "The Times" reported that the Home Office agreed to the Football Association's rules change to prevent breakaway leagues, such as non-British players for a future breakaway club in England having their work permits revoked.


title: European Super League

text: La Liga President Javier Tebas said that La Liga would not pursue punishments for the Spanish clubs involved, leaving the matter up to UEFA; however, suggested that many of the teams signed up could be motivated by their struggle to match the financial power of Emirates-owned Manchester City and Qatar-owned PSG, suggesting that, far from relaxing financial control over these clubs, these controls should be tightened and that any reform on this issue should involve a limitation on the inflow of money by the states behind these clubs. On 26 April, the FIGC approved an "ad hoc" legislation to expel any team participating in breakaway leagues not recognised by FIFA, UEFA, or FIGC from Italian football. FIGC President Gabriele Gravina later confirmed that Juventus, the only still active club involved in the Super League from Italy, faces the possibility of expulsion from Serie A.


title: European Super League

text: UEFA president Čeferin was conciliatory in welcoming the breakaway clubs back into the fold. Some UEFA members called for the recent changes to the Champions League format set to be implemented from the 2024 season, which would benefit the richer clubs more, to be rolled back. In a tweet, the ECA urged the European clubs "to work hand-in-hand." On 7 May, UEFA announced that the breakaway clubs must sell all their Super League quotes, offer to give €15 million to the grassroots game in recompense, and sign a Commitment Declaration. The clubs part of the agreement would have to pay €100 million if they were ever to join an unauthorised competition, while any breach of the commitment would result in a €50 million fine. UEFA confirmed that three clubs (Barcelona, Juventus and Real Madrid) stand to face sanctions over their still active involvement in the project, announcing the opening of disciplinary proceedings against them on 25 May for "a potential violation of UEFA's legal framework in connection with the Super League." These measures were stayed until further notice by UEFA's Appeals Body as a result of the rulings from the Spanish commercial court on 9 June and from the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police published two days prior, and the three clubs were officially confirmed on 15 June to be admitted to the 2021–22 UEFA Champions League. On 22 June, as reported by "The New York Times" Tariq Panja, the A22 Sports Management filed a new motion on behalf of the Super League to the Spanish court, seeking to scrap the agreement UEFA signed with nine clubs, and UEFA has five days to respond; it is also seeking to cancel in its entirety the disciplinary case against the other three clubs, which was suspended but is currently to stay pending UEFA's appeal against the court injunction. Moreover, a decision of the 17th commercial court in Madrid, which was made public on 1 July, ruled out the possibility of sanctions from UEFA and FIFA for the clubs involved in the project, given the antitrust issues which may occur were any punitive measures to be taken by the instances. On 27 September, after an order from a Madrid court to ban UEFA from taking any disciplinary action against Barcelona, Juventus, and Real Madrid; UEFA announced that it had abandoned its proceedings against the three clubs, and would not request payment of the sums offered by the nine other founding clubs.


title: European Super League

text: JP Morgan, the financier of the Super League's proposed $3.25billion project, said they were taken aback by the opposition and "misjudged how this deal would be viewed by the wider football community." The bank's involvement prompted a sustainability rating agency to downgrade its assessment of JP Morgan's ethical performance. JP Morgan added they had no say in the project's strategy, but one person familiar with the matter said the Super League had plans to fund grassroots sports and community projects.


title: European Super League

text: The British government announced its plans to commence "a fan-led review", to be led by former Minister for Sport Tracey Crouch, into governance of English football, which Boris Johnson described as a "root and branch investigation." The review also aims to examine potential changes to ownership models, such as the 50+1 rule employed in Germany. Jeremy Corbyn, former leader of the Labour Party, and Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, came out in support of the review. The Premier League offered to cooperate with the British government. Paul Widdop, a senior lecturer in sports business at Manchester Metropolitan University, criticised the move, stating that while the incumbent government pursues a neo-liberalist agenda with every other industry, it seeks socialist reform only in football. Following the Super League's suspension, the BBC's Simon Stone said a revised Super League concept could be tabled at some point in future, especially with clubs still seeking increased broadcast revenues received from matches.


title: European Super League

text: Following the collapse of the European Super League, many fan groups in England continued protesting against the ownership of certain clubs and for the introduction of the 50+1 rule seen in German football. The first of these protests occurred on 22 April, a day after the Super League's suspension; a group of around twenty Manchester United fans gained access to the club's Trafford Training Centre in Carrington for over two hours demanding the Glazers sell the club.


title: European Super League

text: On 23 April, a group of over 8,000 Arsenal fans gathered outside the Emirates Stadium protesting for the removal of Stan Kroenke. In response to this, Josh Kroenke stated that the owners had no intention of selling their stake. The same day, a group of about of 100 Tottenham Hotspur supporters appeared outside Tottenham Hotspur Stadium calling for the removal of Daniel Levy and ENIC Group as owners. On 24 April, a group of around 2,000 Manchester United fans gathered outside Old Trafford to the protests against the Glazers, the club owners. Ahead of the North West derby on 2 May, thousands of fans protested outside Old Trafford again, with an estimated 200 breaking into the stadium, which resulted in the game being postponed. Former Liverpool and Manchester United players expressed support for the fan-led protests.


title: European Super League

text: On 19 October 2022, A22 Sports Management, the Spain-based company that "sponsor[s]" and "assist[s]" in "the creation of the European Super League," appointed as chief executive Bernd Reichart, formerly the CEO of German broadcaster RTL. The same day, Reichart claimed the European Super League "would be relaunched within three years." He added that European football is "becoming unsustainable" under the "current system." After claiming that "European club-football is not living up to its potential", he stated that "permanent membership is off the table" and, instead, the "stakeholders" should discuss "an open competition based on sporting merit." UEFA responded that they had received a letter from A22 and "will consider the request for a meeting in due course," while the management of the Premier League directed interested parties to its 9 June 2021 statement, jointly signed with the Football Association, in which it was acknowledged that their member-clubs' actions to participate in a Super League were a "mistake" and, therefore, "the matter" has been brought "to a conclusion."


title: European Super League

text: UEFA's meeting with A22 Sports Management took place on 8 November 2022, and was attended by representatives from all sectors to express their total disagreement with the Super League. The meeting was attended by around 30 people, including UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin, Paris Saint-Germain's European Club Association (ECA) chief Nasser Al-Khelaifi, La Liga president Javier Tebas, and more than 20 senior officials from the ECA, continental leagues, supporters' groups and footballers' associations. They all said they remain firmly against the Super League plan.


title: European Super League

text: Former Bayern Munich legend Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said: “In football you need to realize when the game is lost, and your game is lost forever”. Al-Khelaifi of Paris Saint-Germain described the attempts of Super League’s representative Bernd Reichart to reopen dialogue as "as if it were a broken record", stating that "football is not a legal contract, but a social contract. You have to respect the fans.


title: Darren McGavin

text: Darren McGavin (born William Lyle Richardson; May 7, 1922 – February 25, 2006) was an American actor.


title: Darren McGavin

text: McGavin began his career working as a set painter for Columbia Pictures. In 1954, he originated roles in Broadway productions of "My Three Angels" and "The Rainmaker", followed by roles in David Lean's "Summertime" and Otto Preminger's "The Man with the Golden Arm" (both 1955).


title: Darren McGavin

text: On television, McGavin portrayed the title character in "Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer" (1958–1959), as well as starred in "Riverboat" (1959–1961) and "" (1974–1975). For his recurring role on the sitcom "Murphy Brown", he received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series.


title: Darren McGavin

text: His film credits include "Airport '77" (1977), "Hot Lead and Cold Feet" (1978), "A Christmas Story" (1983), "Happy Hell Night" (1992), and "Billy Madison" (1995). Despite playing a significant role in the baseball film "The Natural" (1984), due to a contract dispute, McGavin was uncredited for his portrayal as shady bookie, Gus Sands.


title: Darren McGavin

text: William Lyle Richardson was born in Spokane, Washington, the only child of Grace (née Bogart) Watson and Reed D. Richardson. His parents divorced when he was 11 years old, and custody was given to his father, who was employed as a traveling salesman for a chemical company. When William was an adolescent, his father boarded him with a family at their farm on Puget Sound near Tacoma while he traveled for work. McGavin eventually ran away from the farm, and lived with a Native American family along the Nisqually River. His father was soon notified that he had fled, and McGavin temporarily dodged police and welfare workers before his father enrolled him in a Catholic boarding school.


title: Darren McGavin

text: Around age 16, McGavin left the boarding school and temporarily lived as a runaway under the wharf in San Francisco, before moving in with his mother and stepfather at their ranch in Southern California. While attending high school in California, McGavin developed aspirations to be an architect, and after graduating enrolled at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California to study architecture. He later studied theatre at the HB Studio in New York City. McGavin was rejected for military service during World War II because of bad knees.


title: Darren McGavin

text: While attending the University of the Pacific, McGavin took a side job building scenery for a local theater group. He subsequently dropped out of college, and found work as a painter at Columbia Pictures movie studios in 1945. When an opening became available for a bit part in "A Song to Remember", McGavin applied and won his first movie role. Shortly afterwards, he moved to New York City and studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Actors Studio under teacher Sanford Meisner. In 1949, he joined the cast of a touring production of "Death of a Salesman", playing Happy Lohman. He began appearing on Broadway in 1954, in productions of "My Three Angels" and "The Rainmaker" (where he created the title role) opposite Geraldine Page. While in New York, McGavin also appeared on several live theater programs that aired on television, such as "Kraft Television Theatre" and "The U.S. Steel Hour".


title: Darren McGavin

text: McGavin returned to Hollywood in the early 1950s and appeared in the short film "A Word to the Wives" with Marsha Hunt, and had his first starring roles in the feature films "Summertime", opposite Katharine Hepburn, and "The Man with the Golden Arm" (both 1955). Also in 1955, McGavin appeared twice in the anthology series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", first in an episode titled "Triggers in Leash" and later in an episode titled "The Cheney Vase", as a scheming caretaker and aspiring art thief, opposite Carolyn Jones, Patricia Collinge, and Ruta Lee. He also later appeared in an episode of "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" titled "A Matter of Murder" in 1964.


title: Darren McGavin

text: Throughout his career, McGavin starred in seven different TV series and guest-starred in many more; these television roles increased in the late 1950s and early 1960s with leading parts in series such as "Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer", in which he portrayed the title character from 1957 until 1959. He was subsequently cast as Captain Grey Holden opposite Burt Reynolds in the Western series "Riverboat", which aired from 1959 until 1961; Reynolds was replaced by Noah Beery Jr. midway through the series due to disputes between Reynolds and McGavin. After his departure, Reynolds told "TV Guide": "Darren McGavin is going to be a very disappointed man on the first Easter after his death." Though considered by critics to be among the best actors working in television at the time, in 1960, McGavin told the "Vancouver Sun" that he disliked most television, likening it to purgatory for a working actor.


title: Darren McGavin

text: When Martin and Lewis broke up, McGavin played the role originally earmarked for Dean Martin in "The Delicate Delinquent", Jerry Lewis's first solo film. McGavin was also known for his role as Sam Parkhill in the miniseries adaptation of "The Martian Chronicles". He appeared as a fill-in regular in "The Name of the Game" in an episode entitled "Goodbye Harry" and was featured as a reporter in one of the Gene Barry segments. McGavin returned to theater in 1964, starring in a regional production of "A Thousand Clowns", in which his teenage son, York, also appeared. In 1964 McGavin appeared as Mark Troxel on "The Virginian" in the episode "The Intruders." In 1968, he starred as David Ross on the short-lived detective series "The Outsider".


title: Darren McGavin

text: McGavin was cast as the lead in the supernatural-themed television film "The Night Stalker" (1972). With McGavin playing a reporter who discovers the activities of a modern-day vampire on the loose in Las Vegas, the film became the highest-rated made-for-TV movie in history at that time; when the sequel "The Night Strangler" (1973) was also a strong success, a subsequent television series "" (1974) was made. In the series, McGavin played Carl Kolchak, an investigative reporter for the INS, a Chicago-based news service, who regularly stumbles upon the supernatural or occult basis for a seemingly mundane crime; although his involvement routinely assisted in the dispelment of the otherworldly adversary, his evidence in the case was always destroyed or seized, usually by a public official or major social figure who sought to cover up the incident. He would write his ensuing stories in a sensational, tabloid style which advised readers that the true story was being withheld from them. McGavin reportedly entered into a verbal agreement with Sid Sheinberg (President of MCA and Universal TV) to produce "The Night Stalker" as a TV series as a co-production between Universal and McGavin's Taurean Productions. Early promises were never fulfilled, and McGavin expressed concern over script quality and lack of network commitment toward promoting the show. His concerns appeared justified, as the series drifted into camp humor and the production values declined in later episodes.


title: Darren McGavin

text: In 1973, prior to the production of "Kolchak: The Night Stalker", McGavin made his directorial debut with the film "Happy Mother's Day, Love George", a mystery film starring Cloris Leachman, Ron Howard, and Bobby Darin.


title: Darren McGavin

text: In 1973, McGavin played Oliver Spencer in the original pilot film "The Six Million Dollar Man". McGavin starred in the comedy "Zero to Sixty" (1978), produced by his wife, Kathie Browne, in which he portrayed a divorced man attempting to sort out his life. In 1983, he starred as "Old Man Parker", the narrator's father, in Bob Clark's comedy "A Christmas Story". He portrayed a middle class father in 1940s fictional Hohman, Indiana, who was endearing in spite of his being comically oblivious to his own use of profanity and completely unable to recognize his unfortunate taste for kitsch. Blissfully unaware of his family's embarrassment by his behavior, he took pride in his self-assessed ability to fix anything in record time, and carried on a tireless campaign against his neighbor's rampaging bloodhounds. The film was a moderate box-office success and went on to become a classic holiday film in the years since its release.


title: Darren McGavin

text: McGavin appeared in 1984's "The Natural" as a shady gambler, and appeared on a Christmas episode ("Midnight of the Century") of "Millennium", playing the long-estranged father of Frank Black (Lance Henriksen). In 1986 he took a part in John Irvin's "Raw Deal", alongside then rising star Arnold Schwarzenegger; McGavin plays a long time FBI officer who enlists a former colleague to help him unmask a mole within the Bureau working for a Chicago mob family. He won a CableACE Award (for the 1991 TV movie "Clara") and received a 1990 Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Star in a Comedy Series on "Murphy Brown", in which he played Murphy's father, Bill. From 1993 to 1994, he appeared in an off-Broadway production of Tom Dudzick's holiday comedy "Greetings!", performed in numerous popular productions in regional and community theaters nationwide.


title: Darren McGavin

text: McGavin co-starred with Adam Sandler in "Billy Madison" (1995), playing the titular character's hotel magnate father. In 1998, McGavin was asked to play the role of Arthur Dales in "The X-Files", and appeared in two episodes between then and 1999. McGavin also narrated a number of audiobooks, notably the Robert Ludlum Jason Bourne Trilogy and John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series.


title: Darren McGavin

text: McGavin was married three times. He first married Anita Marie Williams in 1942. He later married Melanie York in March 1944; their marriage ended in divorce in 1969, and produced four children. His third marriage was to actress Kathie Browne in December 1969, ending with her death in 2003.


title: Darren McGavin

text: In 1960, McGavin purchased an Alexander home in the Racquet Club Estates neighborhood of Palm Springs, California.


title: Darren McGavin

text: McGavin died on February 25, 2006, of cardiovascular disease in a Los Angeles hospital, aged 83. He is interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Wife Kathie Browne-McGavin is buried at another local cemetery just 6 miles away at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) in Los Angeles County, California.


title: Dileep

text: Gopalakrishnan Padmanabhan Pillai, better known by his stage name Dileep, is an Indian actor, producer, and businessman who predominantly works in the Malayalam film industry. He has acted in more than 150 films and has won several awards, including four Kerala State Film Awards and one Filmfare Awards South.


title: Dileep

text: Beginning as an impressionist in stage shows, Dileep obtained recognition after being cast in the television comedy series "Comicola" on Asianet and its successor "Cinemala". He then produced and performed in the audio cassette series "De Maveli Kombathu" with Nadirshah, a successful sketch comedy, which was later turned into a television series on Asianet. He began his film career as an assistant director and worked under director Kamal in nine films, beginning with "Vishnulokam" in 1991, and made his acting debut with a minor role in Kamal's "Ennodu Ishtam Koodamo" (1992). He acted in a principal role in the 1994 film "Manathe Kottaram" taking the screen name Dileep. He established himself as a successful actor during the late 1990s, mostly playing comedic roles. In 2003, Dileep founded the film production company Graand Production, its debut film was "C.I.D. Moosa".


title: Dileep

text: Outside of films, Dileep also owns the multiplex theatre D Cinemaas and the restaurant chain Dhe Puttu. Dileep was married to actress Manju Warrier from 1998 to 2015. He married actress Kavya Madhavan in 2016.


title: Dileep

text: Dileep was born in Edavanakad, in Ernakulam district of Kerala, India to Padmanabhan Pillai and Sarojam. He is the eldest among three children. He has a brother, Anoop, and a sister, Sabitha.


title: Dileep

text: Dileep studied at Vidyadhiraja Vidya Bhavan Higher Secondary School in Aluva, where he passed the tenth standard in 1985, and joined the Union Christian College, Aluva for pre-degree (higher secondary) third group, during 1985–1987. Later, he pursued a degree in history at Maharaja's College, Ernakulam. It was during his time in Maharaja's College that he began taking impressionist acts (mimicry) seriously. Dileep along with his friend Nadirshah produced and performed (voice) in the Onam-based audio cassette (album) titled "De Maveli Kombathu", which helped his entry into the film industry.


title: Dileep

text: Dileep started his career at Kalabhavan, working as a mimicry artist in the 1980s. He also performed in Asianet's comedy show "Comicola". Later, while working as the assistant director to Kamal, he acted in a few small roles, starting with a small scene in Kamal's "Ennodu Ishtam Koodamo" (1992). Kamal recommended his name to many directors. He started using the name of the role Dileep in "Manathe Kottaram" (1994), as his screen name. Success of two 1996 films, Kamal's Ee Puzhayum Kadannu and Sundar Das' Sallapam, anchored his place in the Malayalam film industry. He played a supporting role in I. V. Sasi's "Varnapakittu" (1997). "Punjabi House" in 1998 marked the beginning of the successful Dileep-Harishree Ashokan combo.


title: Dileep

text: "Ee Parakkum Thalika" (2001) and "Kuberan" (2002) were a major success at box office and are considered two of the best movies in his career.


title: Dileep

text: In 2002 he won the Kerala State Film Special Jury Award for playing the role of Kunjan in the film "Kunjikoonan". In Lal Jose's "Meesa Madhavan" (2002), Dileep played the role of the thief "Madhavan". This movie, which eventually developed a cult following was a major breakthrough in his career as it increased Dileep's stardom to a new level in Malayalam cinema. The same year he also debuted in Tamil cinema with "Raajjiyam". "C.I.D. Moosa" (2003), a slapstick comedy by Johny Anthony is considered one of Dileep's career best movies by many fans. In 2004, he produced and starred in T. V. Chandran's "Kadhavaseshan". He won a Special Mention for his performance in "Chanthupottu" (2005).


title: Dileep

text: Dileep produced Joshiy-directed "" (2008) to raise funds for the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA). The film became the highest-grossing Malayalam film ( 31.4 crore) until that time.


title: Dileep

text: He ventured into production with "Malarvaadi Arts Club". "Kaaryasthan" (2010) was his 100th movie, For his role in "Vellaripravinte Changathi" (2011) he won a Kerala State Film Award for Best Actor. "Two Countries" released on Christmas Day 2015, directed by Shafi, became the highest-grossing film in his career. His 2017 film, Ramaleela, became one of the highest-grossing Malayalam films of all time.


title: Dileep

text: After a break, in the movie Keshu Ee Veedinte Nadhan (transl. Keshu is the lord of this house) Dileep comes to the screen in the titular role along with Urvashi.


title: Dileep

text: The film was originally scheduled for a theatrical release but was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in India.


title: Dileep

text: Dileep married actress Manju Warrier on 20 October 1998. They have a daughter. In July 2014, the couple filed for divorce which was granted on 31 January 2015. On 25 November 2016, Dileep married actress Kavya Madhavan. The couple have a daughter born in 2018.


title: Dileep

text: Besides acting and film production, Dileep is also involved in film distribution (through Graand Production) and exhibition. He owns the multiplex theater complex D Cinemaas situated in Chalakudy. He along with his friend Nadirshah founded the restaurant chain Dhe Puttu, they have restaurants in Kochi, Kozhikode, Qatar and Dubai, as of 2019.


title: Dileep

text: On 28 June 2017, Dileep was interrogated by the Kerala Police in connection with the abduction and sexual assault of actress Bhavana on 17 February 2017. On 10 July 2017, Dileep was arrested by the Kerala Police for alleged conspiracy, and was remanded by the court. Following his arrest, Dileep's membership was revoked by various film organisations. Several political parties protested against Dileep and his business firms were vandalized, including Dhe Puttu restaurant and the multiplex theatre D Cinemas. On 3 October 2017, he was released on conditional bail by the Kerala High Court. In June 2018, he filed a petition in the Kerala High Court charging the Kerala Police of deliberately framing him. He requested the case be handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation.


title: Dileep

text: Dileep filed an additional plea for accessing video footage of the incident. The plea was denied by both the Angamaly Magistrate Court and the Kerala High Court. Mukul Rohatgi represented him in the case. In October 2018, Dileep was granted bail by the Kerala High Court. In April 2019, the Government of Kerala froze charges against him until the court has given an independent verdict on the case. In May 2019, the Supreme Court stayed his trial until his plea for footage is considered. On 30 November, the court turned down his plea, rather allowed to inspect its content, or have a second opinion as to whether the video is genuine.


title: Dileep

text: In December 2021, film director Balachandra Kumar gave an interview to a news channel where he alleged that he was witness to discussions among people including Dileep, regarding turning witnesses hostile, attacking police officers leading the investigation and being in illegal possession of the assault video. He also claimed he had audio recordings of these conversations. Based on these claims, Kerala police registered a new case against Dileep for conspiracy to assault investigating officers.


title: Lukas Haas

text: Lukas Daniel Haas (born April 16, 1976) is an American actor and musician. His acting career has spanned four decades, during which he has appeared in more than 50 feature films and a number of television shows and stage productions.


title: Lukas Haas

text: Haas was born in West Hollywood, California, the son of Berthold Haas, an artist, and Emily Tracy, an author. His mother is from Texas, and his father emigrated from Germany. He has two brothers: twins Simon Jakoway Haas and Nikolai Johannes Haas, both designers.


title: Lukas Haas

text: Haas was discovered at the age of five in his kindergarten by casting director Margery Simkin. His first screen role was as a child in the 1983 nuclear holocaust film "Testament". He became more widely known in 1985 when, at the age of eight, he appeared in "Witness". His performance as an Amish boy who is the sole witness to a police officer's murder was well received by critics. Haas followed this with roles in films such as "Lady in White" and "Solarbabies". In 1989, he appeared in the film "Music Box", as the 12-year-old son of Jessica Lange's character, and grandson of an immigrant who is accused of being a war criminal. For this role he was nominated for the Young Artist Award. He also starred in the films "Alan and Naomi" and "Rambling Rose".


title: Lukas Haas

text: Haas received an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Ryan White in the television movie "The Ryan White Story", about an American teenager who contracted AIDS through contaminated blood treatments for hemophilia. On stage in 1988, he performed in Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" at Lincoln Center in New York City. He went on to appear in "Everyone Says I Love You", "Mars Attacks!", and "Breakfast of Champions". His work in the 2000s includes "Brick", "Last Days", and "While She Was Out". Haas also gained recognition for his portrayal of The Patient in the music video for the My Chemical Romance song "Welcome to the Black Parade".


title: Lukas Haas

text: In March 2010, Haas was inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame. More recently he appeared in "Red Riding Hood", "Contraband" and Christopher Nolan's "Inception". He has made guest appearances in "Amazing Stories", both the 1985 and the 2002 versions of "The Twilight Zone", "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles", "As Told by Ginger", "The Zeta Project", "24", "Criminal Minds", "Dirt" and "Entourage". He had a role on the 2012 television series "Touch". During 2014 he co-starred also in the horror film "Dark Was the Night".


title: Lukas Haas

text: In 2018, Haas played astronaut Michael Collins, the Apollo 11 Command Module Pilot, in "First Man", a film about the first human moon landing space flight in 1969. The film was directed by Damien Chazelle, with whom he'll reunite in the 2022 film "Babylon".


title: Lukas Haas

text: Haas is the drummer and pianist for The Rogues. He has composed parts of several film soundtracks, including "Breakfast of Champions" and "Last Days", and performed as a guest musician on the Macy Gray album "The Trouble with Being Myself" and the Jet album "Shaka Rock". In 2008, he released a solo EP. He appeared in the music videos for OutKast's "Roses," My Chemical Romance's "Welcome to the Black Parade," UGK's "International Player's Anthem (I Choose You)," Death Cab For Cutie's "Cath…," and Jet's "She's a Genius".


title: Lukas Haas

text: On February 25, 2011, the media announced that Haas had released a musical collaboration with Isabel Lucas called "Made for You". The recorded and video clip were filmed in Lukas' LA studio, and were later revealed to be a marketing campaign of the Portuguese band The Gift for their album "Explode".


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: Ludovico Maria Enrico Einaudi OMRI (; born 23 November 1955) is an Italian pianist and composer. Trained at the Conservatorio Verdi in Milan, Einaudi began his career as a classical composer, later incorporating other styles and genres such as pop, rock, folk, and world music.


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: Einaudi has composed the scores for a number of films and television productions, including "This Is England", "The Intouchables", "I'm Still Here", the TV miniseries "Doctor Zhivago", and "Acquario" (1996), for which he won the Grolla d'oro. His music was used as the score for the Golden Globe and Academy Award-winning films "Nomadland" and "The Father""."


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: He has also released a number of solo albums for piano and other instruments, notably "I Giorni" in 2001, "Nightbook" in 2009, and "In a Time Lapse" in 2013. On 1 March 2019, Einaudi announced a seven-part project named "Seven Days Walking", which was released over the course of seven months in 2019.


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: Einaudi was born in Turin, Piedmont. His father, Giulio Einaudi, was a publisher working with authors including Italo Calvino and Primo Levi, and founder of Giulio Einaudi Editore, while his paternal grandfather, Luigi Einaudi, was President of Italy between 1948 and 1955. His mother, Renata Aldrovandi, played the piano to him as a child. Her father, Waldo Aldrovandi, was a pianist, opera conductor, and composer who emigrated to Australia after World War II.


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: Einaudi started composing his own music as a teenager, first writing by playing a folk guitar. He began his musical training at the Conservatorio Verdi in Milan, obtaining a diploma in composition in 1982. That same year he took an orchestration class taught by Luciano Berio and was awarded a scholarship to the Tanglewood Music Festival. According to Einaudi, "[Luciano Berio] did some interesting work with African vocal music and did some arrangements of Beatles songs, and he taught me that there is a sort of dignity inside music. I learnt orchestration from him and a very open way of thinking about music." He also learned by collaborating with musicians such as Ballaké Sissoko from Mali and Djivan Gasparyan from Armenia. His music is ambient, meditative, and often introspective, drawing on minimalism and contemporary pop.


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: After studying at the conservatory in Milan and subsequently with Berio, Einaudi spent several years composing in traditional forms, including several chamber and orchestral compositions. He soon garnered international attention and his music was performed at venues such as the Teatro alla Scala, the Tanglewood Music Festival, Lincoln Center, and the UCLA Center for Performing Arts.


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: In the mid-1980s, he began to search for more personal expression in a series of works for dance and multimedia, and later for piano.


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: Some of his collaborations in theater, video, and dance included compositions for the Sul filo d'Orfeo in 1984, "Time Out" in 1988, a dance-theater piece created with writer Andrea De Carlo, "The Wild Man" in 1990, and the" Emperor" in 1991. Later collaborations include "Salgari" ("Per terra e per mare") (1995), an opera/ballet commissioned by the Arena di Verona with texts by Emilio Salgari, Rabindranath Tagore, and Charles Duke Jr, and "E.A. Poe" (1997), which was conceived as a soundtrack for silent films.


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: Einaudi began using his style to compose film soundtracks in the mid-1990s. He started with two films by Michele Sordillo, "Da qualche parte in città" in 1994 and "Acquario" in 1996, for which he won the Grolla d'oro for best soundtrack. In 1998, he composed the soundtrack for "Treno di panna" and the score for "Giorni dispari" by Dominick Tambasco.


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: In 2000, he collaborated with Antonello Grimaldi on "Un delitto impossibile", and he also composed the soundtrack for "Fuori del mondo", which was nominated for an Oscar Award and for which he won the Echo Klassik award in Germany in 2002. After the release of his debut album, some excerpts were included in the film "Aprile" by Nanni Moretti. In 2002, his soundtrack for "Luce dei miei occhi" was named best soundtrack at the 2002 Italian Music Awards.


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: In 2002, Einaudi won an Italian award for Best Film Score for "Luce dei miei occhi". Allmusic gave his score for the 2002 TV serial "Doctor Zhivago" 4.5/5 stars and published a glowing review, comparing it in skill to Maurice Jarre's score of the previous film adaptation.


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: In 2004, his soundtrack for "Sotto falso nome" received the prize for the best film music at the Avignon Film Festival.


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: In 2010, Einaudi wrote the music for the trailer of "Black Swan". His "Due Tramonti" was featured in the film "I'm Still Here" (2010), directed by Casey Affleck. His composition "Nuvole Bianche" was featured in the film "Insidious" (2010), directed by James Wan, the British TV drama "This Is England 86", and in the TV series "Derek" (2012), directed by and starring Ricky Gervais. To "The Intouchables" (2011), the biggest box office movie in French history, he contributed the tracks "Fly", "Writing Poems", "L'origine nascosta", "Cache-cache", "Una Mattina", and "Primavera." The film "This Is England" featured "Fuori dal mondo" and "Dietro casa". The British TV drama series "This Is England '88" also contained the tracks "Fuori Dalla Notte", "Solo" (a bonus track from "Nightbook"), "Berlin Song", and "Distacco".


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: Einaudi is signed to Decca Records and is published by Chester Music Limited, part of the Music Sales Group of Companies.


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: After the multi-media-inspired "Time Out" in 1988, in 1992 he released "Stanze", which he had composed for harp. The album was performed by Cecilia Chailly, one of the first musicians to use an electric harp. Einaudi released his first solo piano album, "Le Onde", in 1996, under BMG. The album is based on the novel "The Waves" by British writer Virginia Woolf, and enjoyed mainstream success, particularly in Italy and the UK. His 1999 followup, "Eden Roc", was also released on BMG, with shorter pieces. For the project he collaborated with the Armenian duduk musician Djivan Gasparyan.


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: His next solo piano release, "I Giorni" (2001), was inspired by his travels in Africa. The solo piano track "I Giorni" was featured in a BBC promotion for arts and culture programs, and attracted much interest due to Greg James' airing of the piece on BBC Radio 1 in June 2011. James mentioned that he found the piece therapeutic when he was studying at university. Due to repeated airings that month, the track entered the UK Singles Chart at #32 on 12 June 2011.


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: In 2003, Einaudi released the live album "La Scala Concert 03.03.03", which was recorded at the famous La Scala opera house in Milan. His 2003 album "Diario Mali" is another collaboration, with Einaudi on piano and Malian musician Ballaké Sissoko on kora. In 2004, Einaudi released the album "Una Mattina" on Decca Records. The 2006 album "Divenire" consists of piano accompanied by orchestra. The album also includes the artist's critically acclaimed track "Primavera." It was recorded by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, with Einaudi as the piano master. Shortly after its release, Einaudi went on tour to various places in the UK, playing both the music on "Divenire" and orchestral arrangements of his other works. The album topped the iTunes classical chart.


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: In October 2009, "Nightbook" was released. The album saw Einaudi take a new direction with his music as he incorporated synthesized sounds alongside his piano. The album was conceived and recorded in response to the German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer, as well as an exhibit space where Einaudi performed for a gallery opening for Kiefer. It was also inspired by the drums and electronics of the Whitetree Project, a performing trio Einaudi formed with Robert and Ronald Lippok of To Rococo Rot, a German electronic group. In Italy, the album went Gold with more than 35,000 copies sold.


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: Einaudi's album "In a Time Lapse" was released on 21 January 2013, with US and Canadian supporting tours. He also appeared on KCRW in Los Angeles. On 17 September 2013, Einaudi performed various songs from "In a Time Lapse", together with a new ensemble, at the annual iTunes Festival held at the Roundhouse in London. The group intimately rehearsed this performance in the barn of Einaudi's house. In March 2016, the world premiere of a new piano concerto, "Domino", took place at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.


title: Ludovico Einaudi

text: In a review of "Elements", Classicalite's Steve Nagel writes that "because Einaudi errs so much on the side of minimalism and pop that it might be more appropriate to label his music as a product of the New Age movement, which—although seemingly less ambitious than broader classical structures—concentrates more on relaxation, cohesion, elements of nature and an air of optimism". Ben Beaumont-Thomas of "The Guardian", in a negative review of a 2016 live performance, critiques Einaudi the performer with "[he] casts himself as the antithesis to the stuffy conservatoire—but then plays music that is less adventurous than your average indie band's", complaining that "Einaudi compounds this by being a mediocre pianist. He can finesse a phrase, but is proudly anti-virtuosic, playing only simple arpeggios and limpid four-note melodies".


title: Mechatronics

text: Mechatronics, also called mechatronics engineering, is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering that focuses on the integration of mechanical, electrical and electronic engineering systems, and also includes a combination of robotics, electronics, computer science, telecommunications, systems, control, and product engineering.


title: Mechatronics

text: As technology advances over time, various subfields of engineering have succeeded in both adapting and multiplying. The intention of mechatronics is to produce a design solution that unifies each of these various subfields. Originally, the field of mechatronics was intended to be nothing more than a combination of mechanics, electrical and electronics, hence the name being a portmanteau of the words "mechanics" and "electronics"; however, as the complexity of technical systems continued to evolve, the definition had been broadened to include more technical areas.


title: Mechatronics

text: The word "mechatronics" originated in Japanese-English and was created by Tetsuro Mori, an engineer of Yaskawa Electric Corporation. The word "mechatronics" was registered as trademark by the company in Japan with the registration number of "46-32714" in 1971. The company later released the right to use the word to the public, and the word began being used globally. Currently the word is translated into many languages and is considered an essential term for advanced automated industry.


title: Mechatronics

text: Many people treat "mechatronics" as a modern buzzword synonymous with automation, robotics and electromechanical engineering.


title: Mechatronics

text: French standard NF E 01-010 gives the following definition: "approach aiming at the synergistic integration of mechanics, electronics, control theory, and computer science within product design and manufacturing, in order to improve and/or optimize its functionality".


title: Mechatronics

text: A mechatronics engineer unites the principles of mechanics, electrical, electronics, and computing to generate a simpler, more economical and reliable system. The term "mechatronics" was coined by Tetsuro Mori, the senior engineer of the Japanese company Yaskawa in 1969. An industrial robot is a prime example of a mechatronics system; it includes aspects of electronics, mechanics, and computing to do its day-to-day jobs.


title: Mechatronics

text: Engineering cybernetics deals with the question of control engineering of mechatronic systems. It is used to control or regulate such a system (see control theory). Through collaboration, the mechatronic modules perform the production goals and inherit flexible and agile manufacturing properties in the production scheme. Modern production equipment consists of mechatronic modules that are integrated according to a control architecture. The most known architectures involve hierarchy, polyarchy, heterarchy, and hybrid. The methods for achieving a technical effect are described by control algorithms, which might or might not utilize formal methods in their design. Hybrid systems important to mechatronics include production systems, synergy drives,


title: Mechatronics

text: exploration rovers, automotive subsystems such as anti-lock braking systems and spin-assist, and everyday equipment such as autofocus cameras, video, hard disks, CD players and phones.


title: Mechatronics

text: Mechanical modeling calls for modeling and simulating physical complex phenomena in the scope of a multi-scale and multi-physical approach. This implies to implement and to manage modeling and optimization methods and tools, which are integrated in a systemic approach.


title: Mechatronics

text: The specialty is aimed for students in mechanics who want to open their mind to systems engineering, and able to integrate different physics or technologies, as well as students in mechatronics who want to increase their knowledge in optimization and multidisciplinary simulation techniques.


title: Mechatronics

text: The specialty educates students in robust and/or optimized conception methods for structures or many technological systems, and to the main modeling and simulation tools used in R&D. Special courses are also proposed for original applications (multi-materials composites, innovating transducers and actuators, integrated systems, …) to prepare the students to the coming breakthrough in the domains covering the materials and the systems.


title: Mechatronics

text: For some mechatronic systems, the main issue is no longer how to implement a control system, but how to implement actuators. Within the mechatronic field, mainly two technologies are used to produce movement/motion.


title: Mechatronics

text: An emerging variant of this field is biomechatronics, whose purpose is to integrate mechanical parts with a human being, usually in the form of removable gadgets such as an exoskeleton. This is the "real-life" version of cyberware.


title: Mechatronics

text: Another variant is Motion control for Advanced Mechatronics, presently recognized as a key technology in mechatronics. The robustness of motion control will be represented as a function of stiffness and a basis for practical realization. Target of motion is parameterized by control stiffness which could be variable according to the task reference. The system robustness of motion always requires very high stiffness in the controller.


title: Mechatronics

text: Avionics is also considered a variant of mechatronics as it combines several fields such as electronics and telecom with Aerospace engineering.


title: Mechatronics

text: Mechatronic systems represent a large part of the functions of an automobile. The control loop formed by sensor -- information processing -- actuator -- mechanical (physical) change is found in many systems. The system size can be very different. The Anti-lock braking system (ABS) is a mechatronic system. The brake itself is also one. And the control loop formed by driving control (for example cruise control), engine, vehicle driving speed in the real world and speed measurement is a mechatronic system, too. The great importance of mechatronics for automotive engineering is also evident from the fact that vehicle manufacturers often have development departments with "Mechatronics" in their names.


title: Mechatronics

text: The Internet of things (IoT) is the inter-networking of physical devices, embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity which enable these objects to collect and exchange data.


title: Mechatronics

text: IoT and mechatronics are complementary. Many of the smart components associated with the Internet of Things will be essentially mechatronic. The development of the IoT is forcing mechatronics engineers, designers, practitioners and educators to research the ways in which mechatronic systems and components are perceived, designed and manufactured. This allows them to face up to new issues such as data security, machine ethics and the human-machine interface.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. The battles were fought on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy (present-day Arlington), and Cambridge. They marked the outbreak of armed conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and its thirteen colonies in America.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: In late 1774, Colonial leaders adopted the Suffolk Resolves in resistance to the alterations made to the Massachusetts colonial government by the British parliament following the Boston Tea Party. The colonial assembly responded by forming a Patriot provisional government known as the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and calling for local militias to train for possible hostilities. The Colonial government effectively controlled the colony outside of British-controlled Boston. In response, the British government in February 1775 declared Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: About 700 British Army regulars in Boston, under Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, were given secret orders to capture and destroy Colonial military supplies reportedly stored by the Massachusetts militia at Concord. Through effective intelligence gathering, Patriot leaders had received word weeks before the expedition that their supplies might be at risk and had moved most of them to other locations. On the night before the battle, warning of the British expedition had been rapidly sent from Boston to militias in the area by several riders, including Paul Revere and Samuel Prescott, with information about British plans. The initial mode of the Army's arrival by water was signaled from the Old North Church in Boston to Charlestown using lanterns to communicate "one if by land, two if by sea".


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The first shots were fired just as the sun was rising at Lexington. Eight militiamen were killed, including Ensign Robert Munroe, their third in command. The British suffered only one casualty. The militia was outnumbered and fell back, and the regulars proceeded on to Concord, where they broke apart into companies to search for the supplies. At the North Bridge in Concord, approximately 400 militiamen engaged 100 regulars from three companies of the King's troops at about 11:00am, resulting in casualties on both sides. The outnumbered regulars fell back from the bridge and rejoined the main body of British forces in Concord.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The British forces began their return march to Boston after completing their search for military supplies, and more militiamen continued to arrive from the neighboring towns. Gunfire erupted again between the two sides and continued throughout the day as the regulars marched back towards Boston. Upon returning to Lexington, Lt. Col. Smith's expedition was rescued by reinforcements under Brigadier General Hugh Percy, a future Duke of Northumberland styled at this time by the courtesy title Earl Percy. The combined force of about 1,700 men marched back to Boston under heavy fire in a tactical withdrawal and eventually reached the safety of Charlestown. The accumulated militias then blockaded the narrow land accesses to Charlestown and Boston, starting the siege of Boston.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Ralph Waldo Emerson describes the first shot fired by the Patriots at the North Bridge in his "Concord Hymn" as the "shot heard round the world".


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The British Army's infantry was nicknamed "redcoats" and sometimes "devils" by the colonists. They had occupied Boston since 1768 and had been augmented by naval forces and marines to enforce what the colonists called The Intolerable Acts of 1774, which had been passed by the British Parliament to punish the Province of Massachusetts Bay for the Boston Tea Party and other acts of protest.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: General Thomas Gage was the military governor of Massachusetts and commander-in-chief of the roughly 3,000 British military forces garrisoned in Boston. He had no control over Massachusetts outside of Boston, however, where the implementation of the Acts had increased tensions between the Patriot Whig majority and the pro-British Tory minority. Gage's plan was to avoid conflict by removing military supplies from Whig militias using small, secret, and rapid strikes. This struggle for supplies led to one British success and several Patriot successes in a series of nearly bloodless conflicts known as the Powder Alarms. Gage considered himself to be a friend of liberty and attempted to separate his duties as governor of the colony and as general of an occupying force. Edmund Burke described Gage's conflicted relationship with Massachusetts by saying in Parliament, "An Englishman is the unfittest person on Earth to argue another Englishman into slavery."


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The colonists had been forming militias since the very beginnings of Colonial settlement for the purpose of defense against Indian attacks. These forces also saw action in the French and Indian War between 1754 and 1763 when they fought alongside British regulars. Under the laws of each New England colony, all towns were obligated to form militia companies composed of all males 16 years of age and older (there were exemptions for some categories) and to ensure that the members were properly armed. The Massachusetts militias were formally under the jurisdiction of the provincial government, but militia companies throughout New England elected their own officers. Gage effectively dissolved the provincial government under the terms of the Massachusetts Government Act, and these existing connections were employed by the colonists under the Massachusetts Provincial Congress for the purpose of resistance to the military threat from Britain.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: A February 1775 address to King George III, by both houses of Parliament, declared that a state of rebellion existed:


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: On April 14, 1775, Gage received instructions from Secretary of State William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth, to disarm the rebels and to imprison the rebellion's leaders, but Dartmouth gave Gage considerable discretion in his commands. Gage's decision to act promptly may have been influenced by the information he received on April 15, from a spy within the Provincial Congress, telling him that although the Congress was still divided on the need for armed resistance, delegates were being sent to the other New England colonies to see if they would cooperate in raising a New England army of 18,000 colonial soldiers.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: On the morning of April 18, Gage ordered a mounted patrol of about 20 men under the command of Major Mitchell of the 5th Regiment of Foot into the surrounding country to intercept messengers who might be out on horseback. This patrol behaved differently from patrols sent out from Boston in the past, staying out after dark and asking travelers about the location of Samuel Adams and John Hancock. This had the unintended effect of alarming many residents and increasing their preparedness. The Lexington militia, in particular, began to muster early that evening, hours before receiving any word from Boston. A well-known story alleges that after nightfall one farmer, Josiah Nelson, mistook the British patrol for the colonists and asked them, "Have you heard anything about when the regulars are coming out?" upon which he was slashed on his scalp with a sword. However, the story of this incident was not published until over a century later, which suggests that it may be a family myth.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith received orders from Gage on the afternoon of April 18 with instructions that he was not to read them until his troops were underway. He was to proceed from Boston "with utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord, where you will seize and destroy ... all Military stores ... But you will take care that the soldiers do not plunder the inhabitants or hurt private property." Gage used his discretion and did not issue written orders for the arrest of rebel leaders, as he feared doing so might spark an uprising.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The rebellion's leaders—with the exception of Paul Revere and Joseph Warren—had all left Boston by April 8. They had received word of Dartmouth's secret instructions to General Gage from sources in London well before they reached Gage himself. Adams and Hancock had fled Boston to the home of one of Hancock's relatives, Jonas Clarke, where they thought they would be safe from the immediate threat of arrest.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The Massachusetts militias had indeed been gathering a stock of weapons, powder, and supplies at Concord and much further west in Worcester. An expedition from Boston to Concord was widely anticipated. After a large contingent of regulars alarmed the countryside by an expedition from Boston to Watertown on March 30, "The Pennsylvania Journal", a newspaper in Philadelphia, reported, "It was supposed they were going to Concord, where the Provincial Congress is now sitting. A quantity of provisions and warlike stores are lodged there. ... It is ... said they are intending to go out again soon."


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: On April 18, Paul Revere began the "midnight ride" to Concord to warn the inhabitants that the British appeared to be planning an expedition. The ride was finished by Samuel Prescott. Upon hearing Prescott's news, the townspeople decided to remove the stores and distribute them among other towns nearby.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The colonists were also aware that April 19 would be the date of the expedition, despite Gage's efforts to keep the details hidden from all the British rank and file and even from the officers who would command the mission. There is reasonable speculation that the confidential source of this intelligence was Margaret Gage, General Gage's New Jersey-born wife, who had sympathies with the Colonial cause and a friendly relationship with Warren.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Between 9 and 10 pm on the night of April 18, 1775, Joseph Warren told Revere and William Dawes that the British troops were about to embark in boats from Boston bound for Cambridge and the road to Lexington and Concord. Warren's intelligence suggested that the most likely objectives of the regulars' movements later that night would be the capture of Adams and Hancock. They did not worry about the possibility of regulars marching to Concord, since the supplies at Concord were safe, but they did think their leaders in Lexington were unaware of the potential danger that night. Revere and Dawes were sent out to warn them and to alert colonial militias in nearby towns.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Dawes covered the southern land route by horseback across Boston Neck and over the Great Bridge to Lexington. Revere first gave instructions to send a signal to Charlestown using lanterns hung in the steeple of Boston's Old North Church. He then traveled the northern water route, crossing the mouth of the Charles River by rowboat, slipping past the British warship HMS "Somerset" at anchor. Crossings were banned at that hour, but Revere safely landed in Charlestown and rode west to Lexington, warning almost every house along the route. Additional riders were sent north from Charlestown.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: After they arrived in Lexington, Revere, Dawes, Hancock, and Adams discussed the situation with the militia assembling there. They believed that the forces leaving the city were too large for the sole task of arresting two men and that Concord was the main target. The Lexington men dispatched riders to the surrounding towns, and Revere and Dawes continued along the road to Concord accompanied by Samuel Prescott. In Lincoln, they ran into the British patrol led by Major Mitchell. Revere was captured, Dawes was thrown from his horse, and only Prescott escaped to reach Concord. Additional riders were sent out from Concord.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The ride of Revere, Dawes, and Prescott triggered a flexible system of "alarm and muster" that had been carefully developed months before, in reaction to the colonists' impotent response to the Powder Alarm. This system was an improved version of an old notification network for use in times of emergency. The colonists had periodically used it during the early years of Indian wars in the colony before it fell into disuse in the French and Indian War. In addition to other express riders delivering messages, bells, drums, alarm guns, bonfires and a trumpet were used for rapid communication from town to town, notifying the rebels in dozens of eastern Massachusetts villages that they should muster their militias because over 500 regulars were leaving Boston. This system was so effective that people in towns from Boston were aware of the army's movements while they were still unloading boats in Cambridge. These early warnings played a crucial role in assembling a sufficient number of colonial militia to inflict heavy damage on the British regulars later in the day. Adams and Hancock were eventually moved to safety, first to what is now Burlington and later to Billerica.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Around dusk, General Gage called a meeting of his senior officers at the Province House. He informed them that instructions from Lord Dartmouth had arrived, ordering him to take action against the colonials. He also told them that the senior colonel of his regiments, Lieutenant Colonel Smith, would command, with Major John Pitcairn as his executive officer. The meeting adjourned around 8:30 pm, after which Earl Percy mingled with town folk on Boston Common. According to one account, the discussion among people there turned to the unusual movement of the British soldiers in the town. When Percy questioned one man further, the man replied, "Well, the regulars will miss their aim."


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: "What aim?" asked Percy. "Why, the cannon at Concord" was the reply. Upon hearing this, Percy quickly returned to Province House and relayed this information to General Gage. Stunned, Gage issued orders to prevent messengers from getting out of Boston, but these were too late to prevent Dawes and Revere from leaving.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The British regulars, around 700 infantry, were drawn from 11 of Gage's 13 occupying infantry regiments. Major Pitcairn commanded ten elite light infantry companies, and Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Bernard commanded 11 grenadier companies, under the overall command of Lieutenant Colonel Smith.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Of the troops assigned to the expedition, 350 were from grenadier companies drawn from the 4th (King's Own), 5th, 10th, 18th (Royal Irish), 23rd, 38th, 43rd, 47th, 52nd and 59th Regiments of Foot, and the 1st Battalion of His Majesty's Marine Forces. Protecting the grenadier companies were about 320 light infantry from the 4th, 5th, 10th, 23rd, 38th, 43rd, 47th, 52nd, and 59th Regiments, and the 1st Battalion of the Marines. Each company had its own lieutenant, but the majority of the captains commanding them were volunteers attached to them at the last minute, drawn from all the regiments stationed in Boston. This lack of familiarity between commander and company would cause problems during the battle.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The British began to awaken their troops at 9 pm on the night of April 18 and assembled them on the water's edge on the western end of Boston Common by 10 pm. Colonel Smith was late in arriving, and there was no organized boat-loading operation, resulting in confusion at the staging area. The boats used were naval barges that were packed so tightly that there was no room to sit down. When they disembarked near Phipps Farm in Cambridge, it was into waist-deep water at midnight. After a lengthy halt to unload their gear, the regulars began their march to Concord at about 2 am. During the wait they were provided with extra ammunition, cold salt pork, and hard sea biscuits. They did not carry knapsacks, since they would not be encamped. They carried their haversacks (food bags), canteens, muskets, and accoutrements, and marched off in wet, muddy shoes and soggy uniforms. As they marched through Menotomy, sounds of the colonial alarms throughout the countryside caused the few officers who were aware of their mission to realize they had lost the element of surprise.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: At about 3 am, Colonel Smith sent Major Pitcairn ahead with six companies of light infantry under orders to quick march to Concord. At about 4 am Smith made the wise but belated decision to send a messenger back to Boston asking for reinforcements.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The continental force included some 4,000 militia and local minuteman companies. Although the Provincial Congress had organized local companies into regiments and brigades with designated commanders, units turned out piecemeal over the course of the day. Thirty towns from the surrounding area sent men into combat with many more on the way. By afternoon, many regimental commands were fundamentally present and acting in a coordinated manner. Several provincial generals were en route to the fighting during the day but not in a position to assert overall command. General William Heath of Roxbury, Massachusetts exerted command of a phase of the fighting toward the day's end.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Although often styled a battle, in reality, the engagement at Lexington was a minor brush or skirmish. As the regulars' advance guard under Pitcairn entered Lexington at sunrise on April 19, 1775, about 80 Lexington militiamen emerged from Buckman Tavern and stood in ranks on the village common watching them, and between 40 and 100 spectators watched from along the side of the road. Their leader was Captain John Parker, a veteran of the French and Indian War, who had developed tuberculosis and was at times difficult to hear. Of the militiamen who lined up, nine had the surname Harrington, seven Munroe (including the company's orderly sergeant, William Munroe), four Parker, three Tidd, three Locke, and three Reed; fully one-quarter of them were related to Captain Parker in some way. This group of militiamen was part of Lexington's "training band", a way of organizing local militias dating back to the Puritans, and not what was styled a "minuteman company".


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: After having waited most of the night with no sign of any British troops (and wondering if Paul Revere's warning was true), at about 4:15 a.m., Parker got his confirmation. Thaddeus Bowman, the last scout that Parker had sent out, rode up at a gallop and told him that they were not only coming but coming in force and they were close. Captain Parker was clearly aware that he was outmatched in the confrontation and was not prepared to sacrifice his men for no purpose. He knew that most of the colonists' powder and military supplies at Concord had already been hidden. No war had been declared. (The Declaration of Independence was more than fourteen months in the future.) He also knew the British had gone on such expeditions before in Massachusetts, found nothing, and marched back to Boston.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Parker had every reason to expect that to occur again. The Regulars would march to Concord, find nothing, and return to Boston, tired but empty-handed. He positioned his company carefully. He placed them in parade-ground formation, on Lexington Common. They were in plain sight (not hiding behind walls), but not blocking the road to Concord. They made a show of political and military determination, but no effort to prevent the march of the Regulars. Many years later, one of the participants recalled Parker's words as being what is now engraved in stone at the site of the battle: "Stand your ground; don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here." According to Parker's sworn deposition taken after the battle:


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Rather than turn left towards Concord, Marine Lieutenant Jesse Adair, at the head of the advance guard, decided on his own to protect the flank of the British column by first turning right and then leading the companies onto the Common itself, in a confused effort to surround and disarm the militia. Major Pitcairn arrived from the rear of the advance force and led his three companies to the left and halted them. The remaining companies under Colonel Smith lay further down the road toward Boston.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: A British officer (probably Pitcairn, but accounts are uncertain, as it may also have been Lieutenant William Sutherland) then rode forward, waving his sword, and called out for the assembled militia to disperse, and may also have ordered them to "lay down your arms, you damned rebels!" Captain Parker told his men instead to disperse and go home, but, because of the confusion, the yelling all around, and due to the raspiness of Parker's tubercular voice, some did not hear him, some left very slowly, and none laid down their arms. Both Parker and Pitcairn ordered their men to hold fire, but a shot was fired from an unknown source.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: According to one member of Parker's militia, none of the Americans had discharged their muskets as they faced the oncoming British troops. The British did suffer one casualty, a slight wound, the particulars of which were corroborated by a deposition made by Corporal John Munroe. Munroe stated that:


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Some witnesses among the regulars reported the first shot was fired by a colonial onlooker from behind a hedge or around the corner of a tavern. Some observers reported a mounted British officer firing first. Both sides generally agreed that the initial shot did not come from the men on the ground immediately facing each other. Speculation arose later in Lexington that a man named Solomon Brown fired the first shot from inside the tavern or from behind a wall, but this has been discredited. Some witnesses (on each side) claimed that someone on the other side fired first; however, many more witnesses claimed to not know. Yet another theory is that the first shot was one fired by the British, that killed Asahel Porter, their prisoner who was running away (he had been told to walk away and he would be let go, though he panicked and began to run). Historian David Hackett Fischer has proposed that there may actually have been multiple near-simultaneous shots.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Witnesses at the scene described several intermittent shots fired from both sides before the lines of regulars began to fire volleys without receiving orders to do so. A few of the militiamen believed at first that the regulars were only firing powder with no ball, but when they realized the truth, few if any of the militia managed to load and return fire. The rest ran for their lives.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The regulars then charged forward with bayonets. Captain Parker's cousin Jonas was run through. Eight Lexington men were killed, and ten were wounded. The only British casualty was a soldier who was wounded in the thigh. The eight colonists killed were John Brown, Samuel Hadley, Caleb Harrington, Jonathon Harrington, Robert Munroe, Isaac Muzzey, Asahel Porter, and Jonas Parker. Jonathon Harrington, fatally wounded by a British musket ball, managed to crawl back to his home, and died on his own doorstep. One wounded man, Prince Estabrook, was a black slave who was serving in the militia.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The companies under Pitcairn's command got beyond their officers' control in part because they were unaware of the actual purpose of the day's mission. They fired in different directions and prepared to enter private homes. Colonel Smith, who was just arriving with the remainder of the regulars, heard the musket fire and rode forward from the grenadier column to see the action. He quickly found a drummer and ordered him to beat assembly. The grenadiers arrived shortly thereafter, and once order was restored among the soldiers, the light infantry was permitted to fire a victory volley, after which the column was reformed and marched on toward Concord.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: In response to the raised alarm, the militiamen of Concord and Lincoln had mustered in Concord. They received reports of firing at Lexington and were not sure whether to wait until they could be reinforced by troops from towns nearby, or to stay and defend the town, or to move east and greet the British Army from superior terrain. A column of militia marched down the road toward Lexington to meet the British, traveling about until they met the approaching column of regulars. As the regulars numbered about 700 and the militia at this time only numbered about 250, the militia column turned around and marched back into Concord, preceding the regulars by a distance of about . The militia retreated to a ridge overlooking the town, and their officers discussed what to do next. Caution prevailed, and Colonel James Barrett withdrew from the center of town and led the men across the North Bridge to a hill about a mile north, where they could continue to watch the troop movements of the British and the activities in the town center. This step proved fortuitous, as the ranks of the militia continued to grow as minuteman companies arriving from the western towns joined them there.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: When the British troops arrived in the village of Concord, Lt. Col. Smith divided them to carry out Gage's orders. The 10th Regiment's company of grenadiers secured South Bridge under Captain Mundy Pole, while seven companies of light infantry under Captain Parsons, numbering about 100, secured the North Bridge, where they were visible across the cleared fields to the assembling militia companies. Captain Parsons took four companies from the 5th, 23rd, 38th, and 52nd Regiments up the road beyond the North Bridge to search Barrett's Farm, where intelligence indicated supplies would be found. Two companies from the 4th and 10th Regiments were stationed to guard their return route, and one company from the 43rd remained to guard the bridge itself. These companies, which were under the relatively inexperienced command of Captain Walter Laurie, were aware that they were significantly outnumbered by the 400-plus militiamen. The concerned Captain Laurie sent a messenger to Lt. Col. Smith requesting reinforcements.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Using detailed information provided by Loyalist spies, the grenadier companies searched the small town for military supplies. When they arrived at Ephraim Jones's tavern, by the jail on the South Bridge road, they found the door barred shut, and Jones refused them entry. According to reports provided by local Loyalists, Pitcairn knew cannon had been buried on the property. Jones was ordered at gunpoint to show where the guns were buried. These turned out to be three massive pieces, firing 24-pound shot, that were much too heavy to use defensively, but very effective against fortifications, with sufficient range to bombard the city of Boston from other parts of nearby mainland. The grenadiers smashed the trunnions of these three guns so they could not be mounted. They also burned some gun carriages found in the village meetinghouse, and when the fire spread to the meetinghouse itself, local resident Martha Moulton persuaded the soldiers to help in a bucket brigade to save the building. Nearly a hundred barrels of flour and salted food were thrown into the millpond, as were 550 pounds of musket balls. Of the damage done, only that done to the cannon was significant. All of the shot and much of the food was recovered after the British left. During the search, the regulars were generally scrupulous in their treatment of the locals, including paying for food and drink consumed. This excessive politeness was used to advantage by the locals, who were able to misdirect searches from several smaller caches of militia supplies.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Barrett's Farm had been an arsenal weeks before, but few weapons remained now, and according to family legend, these were quickly buried in furrows to look like a crop had been planted. The troops sent there did not find any supplies of consequence.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Colonel Barrett's troops, upon seeing smoke rising from the village square as the British burned cannon carriages, and seeing only a few light infantry companies directly below them, decided to march back toward the town from their vantage point on Punkatasset Hill to a lower, closer flat hilltop about from the North Bridge. As the militia advanced, the two British companies from the 4th and 10th Regiments that held the position near the road retreated to the bridge and yielded the hill to Barrett's men.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Five full companies of Minutemen and five more of militia from Acton, Concord, Bedford and Lincoln occupied this hill as more groups of men streamed in, totaling at least 400 against Captain Laurie's light infantry companies, a force totaling 90–95 men. Barrett ordered the Massachusetts men to form one long line two abreast on the highway leading down to the bridge, and then he called for another consultation. While overlooking North Bridge from the top of the hill, Barrett, Lt. Col. John Robinson of Westford and the other captains discussed a possible advance on the bridge. Barrett asked Captain Isaac Davis, who commanded a company of Minutemen from Acton, if his company would be willing to lead the advance. Davis responded, "I'm not afraid to go, and I haven't a man that's afraid to go."


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Barrett told the men to load their weapons but not to fire unless fired upon, and then ordered them to advance. Laurie ordered the British companies guarding the bridge to retreat across it. One officer then tried to pull up the loose planks of the bridge to impede the colonial advance, but Major Buttrick began to yell at the regulars to stop harming the bridge. The Minutemen and militia from Concord, Acton, Lincoln and a handful of Westford Minutemen, advanced in column formation, two by two, led by Major Buttrick, Lt. Col. Robinson, then Capt. Davis, on the light infantry, keeping to the road, since it was surrounded by the spring floodwaters of the Concord River.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Captain Laurie then made a poor tactical decision. Since his summons for help had not produced any results, he ordered his men to form positions for "street firing" behind the bridge in a column running perpendicular to the river. This formation was appropriate for sending a large volume of fire into a narrow alley between the buildings of a city, but not for an open path behind a bridge. Confusion reigned as regulars retreating over the bridge tried to form up in the street-firing position of the other troops. Lieutenant Sutherland, who was in the rear of the formation, saw Laurie's mistake and ordered flankers to be sent out. But as he was from a company different from the men under his command, only three soldiers obeyed him. The remainder tried as best they could in the confusion to follow the orders of the superior officer.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: A shot rang out. It was likely a warning shot fired by a panicked, exhausted British soldier from the 43rd, according to Captain Laurie's report to his commander after the fight. Two other regulars then fired immediately after that, shots splashing in the river, and then the narrow group up front, possibly thinking the order to fire had been given, fired a ragged volley before Laurie could stop them.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Two of the Acton Minutemen, Private Abner Hosmer and Captain Isaac Davis, who were at the head of the line marching to the bridge, were hit and killed instantly. Rev. Dr. Ripley recalled:


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Four more men were wounded. Major Buttrick then yelled to the militia, "Fire, for God's sake, fellow soldiers, fire!" At this point the lines were separated by the Concord River and the bridge, and were only apart. The few front rows of colonists, bound by the road and blocked from forming a line of fire, managed to fire over each other's heads and shoulders at the regulars massed across the bridge. Four of the eight British officers and sergeants, who were leading from the front of their troops, were wounded by the volley of musket fire. At least three privates (Thomas Smith, Patrick Gray, and James Hall, all from the 4th) were killed or mortally wounded, and nine were wounded. In 1824, Reverend and Minuteman Joseph Thaxter wrote:


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The regulars found themselves trapped in a situation where they were both outnumbered and outmaneuvered. Lacking effective leadership and terrified at the superior numbers of the enemy, with their spirit broken, and likely not having experienced combat before, they abandoned their wounded, and fled to the safety of the approaching grenadier companies coming from the town center, isolating Captain Parsons and the companies searching for arms at Barrett's Farm.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The colonists were stunned by their success. No one had actually believed either side would shoot to kill the other. Some advanced; many more retreated; and some went home to see to the safety of their homes and families. Colonel Barrett eventually began to recover control. He moved some of the militia back to the hilltop away and sent Major Buttrick with others across the bridge to a defensive position on a hill behind a stone wall.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Lieutenant Colonel Smith heard the exchange of fire from his position in the town moments after he received the request for reinforcements from Laurie. He quickly assembled two companies of grenadiers to lead toward the North Bridge himself. As these troops marched, they met the shattered remnants of the three light infantry companies running towards them. Smith was concerned about the four companies that had been at Barrett's since their route to town was now unprotected. When he saw the Minutemen in the distance behind their wall, he halted his two companies and moved forward with only his officers to take a closer look. One of the Minutemen behind that wall observed, "If we had fired, I believe we could have killed almost every officer there was in the front, but we had no orders to fire and there wasn't a gun fired." During a tense standoff lasting about 10 minutes, a mentally ill local man named Elias Brown wandered through both sides selling hard cider.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: At this point, the detachment of regulars sent to Barrett's farm marched back from their fruitless search of that area. They passed through the now mostly-deserted battlefield and saw dead and wounded comrades lying on the bridge. There was one who looked to them as if he had been scalped, which angered and shocked the British soldiers. They crossed the bridge and returned to the town by 11:30 a.m., under the watchful eyes of the colonists, who continued to maintain defensive positions. The regulars continued to search for and destroy colonial military supplies in the town, ate lunch, reassembled for marching, and left Concord after noon. This delay in departure gave colonial militiamen from outlying towns additional time to reach the road back to Boston.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Lieutenant Colonel Smith, concerned about the safety of his men, sent flankers to follow a ridge and protect his forces from the roughly 1,000 colonials now in the field as the British marched east out of Concord. This ridge ended near Meriam's Corner, a crossroads about a mile (2 km) outside the village of Concord, where the main road came to a bridge across a small stream. To cross the narrow bridge, the British had to pull the flankers back into the main column and close ranks to a mere three soldiers abreast. Colonial militia companies arriving from the north and east had converged at this point and held a clear numerical advantage over the regulars. The British were now witnessing once again what General Gage had hoped to avoid by dispatching the expedition in secrecy and in the dark of night: the ability of the colonial militiamen to rise and converge by the thousands when British forces ventured out of Boston. As the last of the British column marched over the narrow bridge, the British rear guard wheeled and fired a volley at the colonial militiamen, who had been firing irregularly and ineffectively from a distance but now had closed to within musket range. The colonists returned fire, this time with deadly effect. Two regulars were killed and perhaps six wounded, with no colonial casualties. Smith sent out his flanking troops again after crossing the small bridge.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: On Brooks Hill (also known as Hardy's Hill) about past Meriam's Corner, nearly 500 militiamen had assembled to the south of the road, awaiting an opportunity to fire down upon the British column on the road below. Smith's leading forces charged up the hill to drive them off, but the colonists did not withdraw, inflicting significant casualties on the attackers. Smith withdrew his men from Brooks Hill, and the column continued on to another small bridge into Lincoln, at Brooks Tavern, where more militia companies intensified the attack from the north side of the road.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The regulars soon reached a point in the road, now referred to as the "Bloody Angle", where the road rises and curves sharply to the left through a lightly wooded area. At this place, the militia company from Woburn had positioned themselves on the southeast side of the bend in the road in a rocky, lightly wooded field. Additional militia flowing parallel to the road from the engagement at Meriam's Corner positioned themselves on the northwest side of the road, catching the British in a crossfire, while other militia companies on the road closed from behind to attack. Some further along, the road took another sharp curve, this time to the right, and again the British column was caught by another large force of militiamen firing from both sides. In passing through these two sharp curves, the British force lost thirty soldiers killed or wounded, and four colonial militia were also killed, including Captain Jonathan Wilson of Bedford, Captain Nathan Wyman of Billerica, Lt. John Bacon of Natick, and Daniel Thompson of Woburn. The British soldiers escaped by breaking into a trot, a pace that the colonials could not maintain through the woods and swampy terrain. Colonial forces on the road itself behind the British were too densely packed and disorganized to mount more than a harassing attack from the rear.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: As militia forces from other towns continued to arrive, the colonial forces had risen to about 2,000 men. The road now straightened to the east, with cleared fields and orchards along the sides. Lt. Col. Smith sent out flankers again, who succeeded in trapping some militia from behind and inflicting casualties. British casualties were also mounting from these engagements and from persistent long-range fire from the militiamen, and the exhausted British were running out of ammunition.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: When the British column neared the boundary between Lincoln and Lexington, it encountered another ambush from a hill overlooking the road, set by Captain John Parker's Lexington militiamen, including some of them bandaged up from the encounter in Lexington earlier in the day. At this point, Lt. Col. Smith was wounded in the thigh and knocked from his horse. Major John Pitcairn assumed effective command of the column and sent light infantry companies up the hill to clear the militia forces.


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: The light infantry cleared two additional hills as the column continued east—"The Bluff" and "Fiske Hill"— and took still more casualties from ambushes set by fresh militia companies joining the battle. In one of the musket volleys from the colonial soldiers, Major Pitcairn's horse bolted in fright, throwing Pitcairn to the ground and injuring his arm. Now both principal leaders of the expedition were injured or unhorsed, and their men were tired, thirsty, and exhausting their ammunition. A few surrendered or were captured; some now broke formation and ran forward toward Lexington. In the words of one British officer, "we began to run rather than retreat in order. ... We attempted to stop the men and form them two deep, but to no purpose, the confusion increased rather than lessened. ... the officers got to the front and presented their bayonets, and told the men if they advanced they should die. Upon this, they began to form up under heavy fire."


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: Only one British officer remained uninjured among the three companies at the head of the British column as it approached Lexington Center. He understood the column's perilous situation: "There were very few men had any ammunition left, and so fatigued that we could not keep flanking parties out, so that we must soon have laid down our arms, or been picked off by the Rebels at their pleasure—nearer to—and we were not able to keep them off." He then heard cheering further ahead. A full brigade, about 1,000 men with artillery under the command of Earl Percy, had arrived to rescue them. It was about 2:30 p.m., and the British column had now been on the march since 2 o'clock in the morning. Westford Minuteman, Rev. Joseph Thaxter, wrote of his account:


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: In their accounts afterward, British officers and soldiers alike noted their frustration that the colonial militiamen fired at them from behind trees and stone walls, rather than confronting them in large, linear formations in the style of European warfare. This image of the individual colonial farmer, musket in hand and fighting under his own command, has also been fostered in American myth: "Chasing the red-coats down the lane / Then crossing the fields to emerge again / Under the trees at the turn of the road, / And only pausing to fire and load." To the contrary, beginning at the North Bridge and throughout the British retreat, the colonial militias repeatedly operated as coordinated companies, even when dispersed to take advantage of cover. Reflecting on the British experience that day, Earl Percy understood the significance of the American tactics:


title: Battles of Lexington and Concord

text: General Gage had anticipated that Lt. Col. Smith's expedition might require reinforcement, so Gage drafted orders for reinforcing units to assemble in Boston at 4 a.m. But in his obsession for secrecy, Gage had sent only one copy of the orders to the adjutant of the 1st Brigade, whose servant then left the envelope on a table. Also at about 4 a.m., the British column was within three miles of Lexington, and Lt. Col. Smith now had a clear indication that all element of surprise had been lost and that alarm was spreading throughout the countryside. So he sent a rider back to Boston with a request for reinforcements. At about 5 a.m., the rider reached Boston, and the 1st Brigade was ordered to assemble: the line infantry companies of the 4th, 23rd, and 47th Regiments, and a battalion of Royal Marines, under the command of Earl Percy. Unfortunately for the British, once again only one copy of the orders was sent to each commander, and the order for the Royal Marines was delivered to the desk of Major John Pitcairn, who was already on the Lexington Common with Smith's column at that hour. After these delays, Percy's brigade, about 1,000 strong, left Boston at about 8:45 a.m., headed toward Lexington. Along the way, the story is told, they marched to the tune of "Yankee Doodle" to taunt the inhabitants of the area. By the Battle of Bunker Hill less than two months later, the song would become a popular anthem for the colonial forces.