title: Protectorate

text: Multiple regions—such as the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, the Colony and Protectorate of Lagos, and similar—were subjects of colonial protection. Conditions of protection are generally much less generous for areas of colonial protection. The protectorate was often reduced to a condition similar to a colony, but with the pre-existing native state continuing as the agent of indirect rule. Occasionally, a protectorate was established by another form of indirect rule: a chartered company, which becomes a state in its European home state (but geographically overseas), allowed to be an independent country with its own foreign policy and generally its own armed forces.


title: Protectorate

text: In fact, protectorates were often declared despite no agreement being duly entered into by the state supposedly being protected, or only agreed to by a party of dubious authority in those states. Colonial protectors frequently decided to reshuffle several protectorates into a new, artificial unit without consulting the protectorates, without being mindful of the theoretical duty of a protector to help maintain a protectorate's status and integrity. The Berlin agreement of February 26, 1885, allowed European colonial powers to establish protectorates in Black Africa (the last region to be divided among them) by diplomatic notification, even without actual possession on the ground. This aspect of history is referred to as the Scramble for Africa. A similar case is the formal use of such terms as "colony" and "protectorate" for an amalgamation—convenient only for the colonizer or protector—of adjacent territories, over which it held () sway by protective or "raw" colonial power.


title: Protectorate

text: In amical protection—as of United States of the Ionian Islands by Britain—the terms are often very favourable for the protectorate. The political interest of the protector is frequently moral (a matter of accepted moral obligation, prestige, ideology, internal popularity, or dynastic, historical, or ethnocultural ties). Also, the protector's interest is in countering a rival or enemy power—such as preventing the rival from obtaining or maintaining control of areas of strategic importance. This may involve a very weak protectorate surrendering control of its external relations but may not constitute any real sacrifice, as the protectorate may not have been able to have a similar use of them without the protector's strength.


title: Protectorate

text: Amical protection was frequently extended by the great powers to other Christian (generally European) states, and to states of no significant importance. After 1815, non-Christian states (such as the Chinese Qing dynasty) also provided amical protection of other, much weaker states.


title: Protectorate

text: In modern times, a form of amical protection can be seen as an important or defining feature of microstates. According to the definition proposed by Dumienski (2014): "microstates are modern protected states, i.e. sovereign states that have been able to unilaterally depute certain attributes of sovereignty to larger powers in exchange for benign protection of their political and economic viability against their geographic or demographic constraints".


title: Protectorate

text: "Protection" was the formal legal structure under which French colonial forces expanded in Africa between the 1830s and 1900. Almost every pre-existing state that was later part of French West Africa was placed under protectorate status at some point, although direct rule gradually replaced protectorate agreements. Formal ruling structures, or fictive recreations of them, were largely retained—as with the low-level authority figures in the French Cercles—with leaders appointed and removed by French officials.


title: Protectorate

text: The German Empire used the word "", literally protectorate, for all of its colonial possessions until they were lost during World War I, regardless of the actual level of government control. Cases involving indirect rule included:


title: Protectorate

text: Before and during World War II, Nazi Germany designated the rump of occupied Czechoslovakia and Denmark as protectorates:


title: Protectorate

text: Some agencies of the United States government, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, still refer to insular areas of the United States—such as Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands—as protectorates. However, the agency responsible for the administration of those areas, the Office of Insular Affairs (OIA) within the United States Department of Interior, uses only the term "insular area" rather than protectorate. The Philippines and (it can be argued via the Platt Amendment) Cuba at the end of Spanish colonial rule were also protectorates. Liberia was the only African nation that was a colony of the United States; but the US government had no control over the land, as it was controlled by the privately owned American Colonization Society. It was, however, a protectorate from January 7, 1822, until the Liberian Declaration of Independence from the American Colonization Society on July 26, 1847.


title: Key of Solomon

text: The Key of Solomon (; []) (Also known as "The Greater Key of Solomon") is a pseudepigraphical grimoire (also known as a book of spells) attributed to King Solomon. It probably dates back to the 14th or 15th century Italian Renaissance. It presents a typical example of Renaissance magic.


title: Key of Solomon

text: It is possible that the "Key of Solomon" inspired later works, particularly the 17th-century grimoire also known as "Clavicula Salomonis Regis", "The Lesser Key of Solomon", or "Lemegeton", although there are many differences between the books.


title: Key of Solomon

text: Many such grimoires attributed to King Solomon were written during the Renaissance, ultimately being influenced by earlier works of Jewish kabbalists and Arab magicians. These, in turn, incorporated aspects of the Greco-Roman magic of Late Antiquity.


title: Key of Solomon

text: Several versions of the "Key of Solomon" exist, in various translations, with minor to significant differences. The original type of text was probably a Latin or Italian text dating to the 14th or 15th century. Most surviving manuscripts date from the late 16th, 17th or 18th century.


title: Key of Solomon

text: There is also an early Greek manuscript dating to the 15th century (British Library, Harley MS 5596) that is closely associated with the text.


title: Key of Solomon

text: The Greek manuscript is referred to as "The Magical Treatise of Solomon", and was published by Armand Delatte in "Anecdota Atheniensia" (Liège, 1927, pp. 397–445.) Its contents are very similar to the "Clavicula".


title: Key of Solomon

text: An important Italian manuscript is Bodleian Library Michael MS 276. An early Latin text survives in printed form, dated to ca. 1600 (University of Wisconsin-Madison, Memorial Library, Special Collections). There are a number of later (17th century) Latin manuscripts. One of the oldest existing manuscripts (besides Harley MS 5596) is a text in English translation, entitled "The Clavicle of Solomon, revealed by Ptolomy the Grecian" and dated to 1572 (British Library, Sloane MS 3847). There are a number of French manuscripts, all dated to the 18th century, with the exception of one dated to 1641 (P1641, ed. Dumas, 1980).


title: Key of Solomon

text: A Hebrew text survives in two versions, one kept at the British Library, on a parchment manuscript, separated in BL Oriental MSS 6360 and 14759. The BL manuscript was dated to the 16th century by its first editor Greenup (1912), but is now thought to be somewhat younger, dating to the 17th or 18th century. The discovery of a second Hebrew text in the library of Samuel H. Gollancz was published by his son Hermann Gollancz in 1903, who also published a facsimile edition in 1914. Gollancz's manuscript had been copied in Amsterdam, in Sephardic cursive script, and is less legible than the BL text. The Hebrew text is not considered the original. It is rather a late Jewish adaptation of a Latin or Italian "Clavicula" text. The BL manuscript is probably the archetype of the Hebrew translation, and Gollancz's manuscript a copy of the BL one.


title: Key of Solomon

text: An English edition based on the manuscripts of the British Library was published by S. L. MacGregor Mathers in 1889. L. W. de Laurence in 1914 published "The Greater Key of Solomon", directly based on Mathers' edition, to which he made alterations in an attempt to advertise his mail-order business (for example by inserting instructions like "after burning one-half teaspoonful of Temple Incense" along with ordering information for the incense).


title: Key of Solomon

text: The "Key of Solomon" is divided into two books. It describes the necessary drawings to prepare each "experiment" or, in more modern language, magical operations.


title: Key of Solomon

text: Unlike later grimoires such as the "Pseudomonarchia Daemonum" (16th century) or the "Lemegeton" (17th century), the "Key of Solomon" does not mention the signature of the 72 spirits constrained by King Solomon in a bronze vessel. As in most medieval grimoires, all magical operations are ostensibly performed through the power of God, to whom all the invocations are addressed. Before any of these operations (termed "experiments") are performed, the operator must confess his sins and purge himself of evil, invoking the protection of God.


title: Key of Solomon

text: Elaborate preparations are necessary, and each of the numerous items used in the operator's "experiments" must be constructed of the appropriate materials obtained in the prescribed manner, at the appropriate astrological time, marked with a specific set of magical symbols, and blessed with its own specific words. All substances needed for the magic drawings and amulets are detailed, as well as the means to purify and prepare them. Many of the symbols incorporate the Transitus Fluvii occult alphabet.


title: Key of Solomon

text: According to the mythical history of the document, as recorded in its introduction, Solomon wrote the book for his son Rehoboam, and commanded him to hide the book in his sepulchre upon his death. After many years the book was discovered by a group of Babylonian philosophers repairing Solomon's tomb. None could interpret the text, until one of them, Iohé Grevis, suggested that they should ask the Lord for understanding. The Angel of the Lord appeared to him and extracted a promise that he would keep the text hidden from the unworthy and the wicked, after which he was able to read it plainly. Iohé Grevis then placed a spell on the book that the unworthy, the unwise or those who did not fear God would not attain the desired effect from any of the workings contained in the book.


title: Key of Solomon

text: Book I contains conjurations, invocations, and curses to summon and constrain spirits of the dead and demons in order to compel them to do the operator's will. It also describes how to find stolen items, become invisible, gain favour and love, and so on.


title: Key of Solomon

text: Book II describes various purifications which the operator (termed "exorcist") should undergo, how they should clothe themselves, how the magical implements used in their operations should be constructed, and what animal sacrifices should be made to the spirits.


title: Key of Solomon

text: The book is mentioned in Goethe’s Faust I, in the scene where the poodle transforms himself into the devil Mephistopheles.


title: Key of Solomon

text: The Key of Solomon is mentioned in H.P. Lovecraft's "Supernatural Horror in Literature", where Lovecraft says it "illustrates the power of the weird over the Eastern mind."


title: Key of Solomon

text: Along with Johannes Kepler’s Astronomia Nova, the Key of Solomon is one of two real-world texts the fictional character Dr. Stephen Strange returns to the Kamar-Taj library in the Marvel Studios film Doctor Strange. In the scene, Kamer-Taj Librarian and current Marvel Cinematic Universe Sorcerer Supreme Wong reads the titles Strange is returning.


title: Composer

text: A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.


title: Composer

text: The term is descended from Latin, "compōnō"; literally "one who puts together". The earliest use of the term in a musical context given by the "Oxford English Dictionary" is from Thomas Morley's 1597 "A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music", where he says "Some wil be good descanters [...] and yet wil be but bad composers".


title: Composer

text: 'Composer' is a loose term that generally refers to any person who writes music. More specifically, it is often used to denote people who are composers by occupation, or those who in the tradition of Western classical music. Writers of exclusively or primarily songs may be called composers, but since the 20th century the terms 'songwriter' or 'singer-songwriter' are more often used, particularly in the tradition of popular music. In other contexts, the term 'composer' can refer to a literary writer, or more rarely and generally, someone who combines pieces into a whole.


title: Composer

text: Across cultures and traditions composers may write and transmit music in a variety of ways. In much popular music, the composer writes a composition, and it is then transmitted via oral tradition. Conversely, in some Western classical traditions music may be composed aurally—i.e. "in the mind of the musician—and subsequently written and passed through written documents.


title: Composer

text: In the development of European classical music, the function of composing music initially did not have much greater importance than that of performing it. The preservation of individual compositions did not receive enormous attention and musicians generally had no qualms about modifying compositions for performance.


title: Composer

text: In the Western world, before the Romantic period of the 19th century, composition almost always went side by side with a combination of either singing, instructing and theorizing.


title: Composer

text: Even in a conventional Western piece of instrumental music, in which all of the melodies, chords, and basslines are written out in musical notation, the performer has a degree of latitude to add artistic interpretation to the work, by such means as by varying his or her articulation and phrasing, choosing how long to make fermatas (held notes) or pauses, and — in the case of bowed string instruments, woodwinds or brass instruments — deciding whether to use expressive effects such as vibrato or portamento. For a singer or instrumental performer, the process of deciding how to perform music that has been previously composed and notated is termed "interpretation". Different performers' interpretations of the same work of music can vary widely, in terms of the tempos that are chosen and the playing or singing style or phrasing of the melodies. Composers and songwriters who present their music are interpreting, just as much as those who perform the music of others. The standard body of choices and techniques present at a given time and a given place is referred to as performance practice, whereas interpretation is generally used to mean the individual choices of a performer.


title: Composer

text: Although a musical composition often has a single author, this is not always the case. A work of music can have multiple composers, which often occurs in popular music when a band collaborates to write a song, or in musical theatre, where the songs may be written by one person, the orchestration of the accompaniment parts and writing of the overture is done by an orchestrator, and the words may be written by a third person.


title: Composer

text: A piece of music can also be composed with words, images, or, in the 20th and 21st century, computer programs that explain or notate how the singer or musician should create musical sounds. Examples of this range from wind chimes jingling in a breeze, to avant-garde music from the 20th century that uses graphic notation, to text compositions such as "Aus den Sieben Tagen", to computer programs that select sounds for musical pieces. Music that makes heavy use of randomness and chance is called aleatoric music, and is associated with contemporary composers active in the 20th century, such as John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Witold Lutosławski.


title: Composer

text: The nature and means of individual variation of the music are varied, depending on the musical culture in the country and time period it was written. For instance, music composed in the Baroque era, particularly in slow tempos, often was written in bare outline, with the expectation that the performer would add improvised ornaments to the melody line during a performance. Such freedom generally diminished in later eras, correlating with the increased use by composers of more detailed scoring in the form of dynamics, articulation et cetera; composers becoming uniformly more explicit in how they wished their music to be interpreted, although how strictly and minutely these are dictated varies from one composer to another. Because of this trend of composers becoming increasingly specific and detailed in their instructions to the performer, a culture eventually developed whereby faithfulness to the composer's written intention came to be highly valued (see, for example, Urtext edition). This musical culture is almost certainly related to the high esteem (bordering on veneration) in which the leading classical composers are often held by performers.


title: Composer

text: The historically informed performance movement has revived to some extent the possibility of the performer elaborating seriously the music as given in the score, particularly for Baroque music and music from the early Classical period. The movement might be considered a way of creating "greater" faithfulness to the original in works composed at a time that expected performers to improvise. In genres other than classical music, the performer generally has more freedom; thus for instance when a performer of Western popular music creates a "cover" of an earlier song, there is little expectation of exact rendition of the original; nor is exact faithfulness necessarily highly valued (with the possible exception of "note-for-note" transcriptions of famous guitar solos).


title: Composer

text: In Western art music, the composer typically orchestrates his or her compositions, but in musical theatre and pop music, songwriters may hire an arranger to do the orchestration. In some cases, a pop songwriter may not use notation at all, and instead, compose the song in his or her mind and then play or record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable recordings by influential performers are given the weight that written scores play in classical music. The study of composition has traditionally been dominated by examination of methods and practice of Western classical music, but the definition of composition is broad enough the creation of popular and traditional music songs and instrumental pieces and to include spontaneously improvised works like those of free jazz performers and African percussionists such as Ewe drummers.


title: Composer

text: During the Middle Ages, most composers worked for the Catholic church and composed music for religious services such as plainchant melodies. During the Renaissance music era, composers typically worked for aristocratic employers. While aristocrats typically required composers to produce a significant amount of religious music, such as Masses, composers also penned many non-religious songs on the topic of courtly love: the respectful, reverential love of a great woman from afar. Courtly love songs were very popular during the Renaissance era. During the Baroque music era, many composers were employed by aristocrats or as church employees. During the Classical period, composers began to organize more public concerts for profit, which helped composers to be less dependent on aristocratic or church jobs. This trend continued in the Romantic music era in the 19th century. In the 20th century, composers began to seek employment as professors in universities and conservatories. In the 20th century, composers also earned money from the sales of their works, such as sheet music publications of their songs or pieces or as sound recordings of their works.


title: Composer

text: In 1993, American musicologist Marcia Citron asked "[w]hy is music composed by women so marginal to the standard 'classical' repertoire?" Citron "examines the practices and attitudes that have led to the exclusion of women composers from the received 'canon' of performed musical works." She argues that in the 1800s, women composers typically wrote art songs for performance in small recitals rather than symphonies intended for performance with an orchestra in a large hall, with the latter works being seen as the most important genre for composers; since women composers did not write many symphonies, they were deemed to be not notable as composers.


title: Composer

text: According to Abbey Philips, "women musicians have had a very difficult time breaking through and getting the credit they deserve." During the Medieval eras, most of the art music was created for liturgical (religious) purposes and due to the views about the roles of women that were held by religious leaders, few women composed this type of music, with the nun Hildegard von Bingen being among the exceptions. Most university textbooks on the history of music discuss almost exclusively the role of male composers. As well, very few works by women composers are part of the standard repertoire of classical music. In "Concise Oxford History of Music", "Clara Shumann is one of the only female composers mentioned", but other notable women composers of the common practice period include Fanny Mendelssohn and Cécile Chaminade, and arguably the most influential teacher of composers during the mid-20th century was Nadia Boulanger. Philips states that "[d]uring the 20th century the women who were composing/playing gained far less attention than their male counterparts."


title: Composer

text: Women today are being taken more seriously in the realm of concert music, though the statistics of recognition, prizes, employment, and overall opportunities are still biased toward men.


title: Composer

text: Famous composers have a tendency to cluster in specific cities throughout history. Based on over 12,000 prominent composers listed in "Grove Music Online" and using word count measurement techniques, the most important cities for classical music can be quantitatively identified.


title: Composer

text: Paris has been the main hub for western classical music in all periods. It was ranked fifth in the 15th and 16th centuries but first in the 17th to 20th centuries inclusive. London was the second most meaningful city: eighth in the 15th century, seventh in the 16th, fifth in the 17th, second in the 18th and 19th centuries, and fourth in the 20th century. Rome topped the rankings in the 15th century, dropped to second in the 16th and 17th centuries, eighth in the 18th century, ninth in the 19th century but back at sixth in the 20th century. Berlin appears in the top ten rankings only in the 18th century and was ranked third most important city in both the 19th and 20th centuries. New York City entered the rankings in the 19th century (at fifth place) and stood at second rank in the 20th century. The patterns are very similar for a sample of 522 top composers.


title: Composer

text: Professional classical composers often have a background in performing classical music during their childhood and teens, either as a singer in a choir, as a player in a youth orchestra, or as a performer on a solo instrument (e.g., piano, pipe organ, or violin). Teens aspiring to be composers can continue their postsecondary studies in a variety of formal training settings, including colleges, conservatories, and universities. Conservatories, which are the standard musical training system in France and in Quebec, Canada provide lessons and amateur orchestral and choral singing experience for composition students. Universities offer a range of composition programs, including bachelor's degrees, Master of Music degrees, and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees. As well, there are a variety of other training programs such as classical summer camps and festivals, which give students the opportunity to get coaching from composers.


title: Composer

text: Bachelor's degrees in composition (referred to as B.Mus. or B.M) are four-year programs that include individual composition lessons, amateur orchestra/choral experience, and a sequence of courses in music history, music theory, and liberal arts courses (e.g., English literature), which give the student a more well-rounded education. Usually, composition students must complete significant pieces or songs before graduating. Not all composers hold a B.Mus. in composition; composers may also hold a B.Mus. in music performance or music theory.


title: Composer

text: Master of Music degrees (M.mus.) in composition consists of private lessons with a composition professor, ensemble experience, and graduate courses in music history and music theory, along with one or two concerts featuring the composition student's pieces. A Master's degree in music (referred to as an M.Mus. or M.M.) is often a required minimum credential for people who wish to teach composition at a university or conservatory. A composer with an M.Mus. could be an adjunct professor or instructor at a university, but it would be difficult in the 2010s to obtain a tenure track professor position with this degree.


title: Composer

text: To become a tenure track professor, many universities require a doctoral degree. In composition, the key doctoral degree is the Doctor of Musical Arts, rather than the PhD; the PhD is awarded in music, but typically for subjects such as musicology and music theory.


title: Composer

text: Doctor of Musical Arts (referred to as D.M.A., DMA, D.Mus.A. or A.Mus.D) degrees in composition provide an opportunity for advanced study at the highest artistic and pedagogical level, requiring usually an additional 54+ credit hours beyond a master's degree (which is about 30+ credits beyond a bachelor's degree). For this reason, admission is highly selective. Students must submit examples of their compositions. If available, some schools will also accept video or audio recordings of performances of the student's pieces. Examinations in music history, music theory, ear training/dictation, and an entrance examination are required.


title: Composer

text: Students must prepare significant compositions under the guidance of faculty composition professors. Some schools require DMA composition students to present concerts of their works, which are typically performed by singers or musicians from the school. The completion of advanced coursework and a minimum B average are other typical requirements of a D.M.A program. During a D.M.A. program, a composition student may get experience teaching undergraduate music students.


title: Composer

text: Some composers did not complete composition programs, but focused their studies on the performance of voice or an instrument or on music theory, and developed their compositional skills over the course of a career in another musical occupation.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Wardenclyffe Tower (1901–1917), also known as the Tesla Tower, was an early experimental wireless transmission station designed and built by Nikola Tesla on Long Island in 1901–1902, located in the village of Shoreham, New York. Tesla intended to transmit messages, telephony and even facsimile images across the Atlantic to England and to ships at sea based on his theories of using the Earth to conduct the signals. His decision to scale up the facility and implement his ideas of wireless power transmission to better compete with Guglielmo Marconi's radio-based telegraph system was met with refusal to fund the changes by the project's primary backer, financier J. P. Morgan. Additional investment could not be found, and the project was abandoned in 1906, never to become operational.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: In an attempt to satisfy Tesla's debts, the tower was demolished for scrap in 1917 and the property taken in foreclosure in 1922. For 50 years, Wardenclyffe was a processing facility producing photography supplies. Many buildings were added to the site and the land it occupies has been trimmed down from to but the original, , brick building designed by Stanford White remains standing to this day.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: In the 1980s and 2000s, hazardous waste from the photographic era was cleaned up, and the site was sold and cleared for new development. A grassroots campaign to save the site succeeded in purchasing the property in 2013, with plans to build a future museum dedicated to Nikola Tesla. In 2018 the property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Tesla's design for Wardenclyffe grew out of his experiments beginning in the early 1890s. His primary goal in these experiments was to develop a new wireless power transmission system. He discarded the idea of using the newly discovered Hertzian (radio) waves, detected in 1888 by German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz since Tesla doubted they existed and basic physics told him, and most other scientists from that period, that they would only travel in straight lines the way visible light did, meaning they would travel straight out into space becoming "hopelessly lost".


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: In laboratory work and later large-scale experiments at Colorado Springs in 1899, Tesla developed his own ideas on how a worldwide wireless system would work. He theorized from these experiments that if he injected electric current into the Earth at just the right frequency he could harness what he believed was the planet's own electrical charge and cause it to resonate at a frequency that would be amplified in "standing waves" that could be tapped anywhere on the planet to run devices or, through modulation, carry a signal. His system was based more on 19th century ideas of electrical conduction and telegraphy instead of the newer theories of air-borne electromagnetic waves, with an electrical charge being conducted through the ground and being returned through the air.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Tesla's design used a concept of a charged conductive upper layer in the atmosphere, a theory dating back to an 1872 idea for a proposed wireless power system by Mahlon Loomis. Tesla not only believed that he could use this layer as his "return path" in his electrical conduction system, but that the power flowing through it would make it glow, providing night time lighting for cities and shipping lanes.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: In a February 1901 "Collier's Weekly" article titled "Talking With Planets" Tesla described his "system of energy transmission and of telegraphy without the use of wires" as:


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: (using) the Earth itself as the medium for conducting the currents, thus dispensing with wires and all other artificial conductors ... a machine which, to explain its operation in plain language, resembled a pump in its action, drawing electricity from the Earth and driving it back into the same at an enormous rate, thus creating ripples or disturbances which, spreading through the Earth as through a wire, could be detected at great distances by carefully attuned receiving circuits. In this manner I was able to transmit to a distance, not only feeble effects for the purposes of signaling, but considerable amounts of energy, and later discoveries I made convinced me that I shall ultimately succeed in conveying power without wires, for industrial purposes, with high economy, and to any distance, however great.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Although Tesla demonstrated wireless power transmission at Colorado Springs, lighting electric lights mounted outside the building where he had his large experimental coil, he did not scientifically test his theories. He believed he had achieved Earth resonance which, according to his theory, would work at any distance.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Tesla was back in New York in January 1900. He had convinced his friend Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of "The Century Magazine", to allow him to publish an article covering his work and Johnson had even sent a photographer to Colorado Springs the previous year to photograph Tesla's experiments. The article titled "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy" written by Tesla appeared in the June, 1900 edition of "Century Magazine".


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Instead of the understandable scientific description Johnson had hoped for it was more of a lengthy philosophical treatise where Tesla described his futuristic ideas on harnessing the sun's energy, control of the weather with electricity, wireless control, and how future inventions would make war impossible. It also contained what were to become iconic images by photographer Dickenson Alley of Tesla and his Colorado Springs experiments.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Tesla made the rounds in New York trying to find investors for his system of wireless transmission, wining and dining them at the Waldorf-Astoria's Palm Garden (the hotel where he was living at the time), The Players Club and Delmonico's. Tesla first went to his old friend George Westinghouse for help. Westinghouse seemed like a natural fit for the project given the large-scale AC equipment Westinghouse manufactured and Tesla's need for similar equipment.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Tesla asked Westinghouse to "…meet me on some fair terms in furnishing me the machinery, retaining the ownership of the same and interesting yourself to a certain extent". While Westinghouse declined to buy into the project, he did agree to lend Tesla $6,000. Westinghouse suggested Tesla pursue some of the rich venture capitalists. Tesla talked to John Jacob Astor, Thomas Fortune Ryan, and even sent a cabochon sapphire ring as a gift to Henry O. Havemeyer. No investment was forthcoming from Havemeyer and Ryan but Astor did buy 500 shares in Tesla's company. Tesla gained the attention of financier J. P. Morgan in November 1900.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Morgan, who was impressed by Guglielmo Marconi's feat of sending reports from the America's Cup yacht races off Long Island back to New York City via radio-based wireless the previous year, was dubious about the feasibility and patent priority of Tesla's system.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: In several discussions Tesla assured Morgan his system was superior to, and based on patents that superseded, that of Marconi and of other wireless inventors, and that it would far outpace the performance of its main competitor, the transatlantic telegraph cable. Morgan signed a contract with Tesla in March 1901, agreeing to give the inventor $150,000 to develop and build a wireless station on Long Island, New York, capable of sending wireless messages to London as well as ships at sea. The deal also included Morgan having a 51% interest in the company as well as a 51% share in present and future wireless patents developed from the project.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Tesla began working on his wireless station immediately. As soon as the contract was signed with Morgan in March 1901 he placed an order for generators and transformers with the Westinghouse Electric Company. Tesla's plans changed radically after he read a June 1901 "Electrical Review" article by Marconi titled "Syntonic Wireless Telegraph".


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: At this point Marconi was transmitting radio signals beyond the range most physicists thought possible (over the horizon) and the description of the Italian inventor's use of a "Tesla coil" "connected to the Earth" led Tesla to believe Marconi was copying his earth resonance system to do it. Tesla, believing a small pilot system capable of sending Morse code yacht race results to Morgan in Europe would not be able to capture the attention of potential investors, decided to scale up his designs with a much more powerful transmitter, incorporating his ideas of advanced telephone and image transmission as well as his ideas of wireless power delivery.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: In July 1901 Tesla informed Morgan of his planned changes to the project and the need for much more money to build it. He explained the more grandiose plan as a way to leap ahead of competitors and secure much larger profits on the investment. With Tesla basically proposing a breach of contract, Morgan refused to lend additional funds and demanded an account of money already spent. Tesla would claim a few years later that funds were also running short because of Morgan's role in triggering the stock market panic of 1901, making everything Tesla had to buy much more expensive.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Despite Morgan stating no additional funds would be supplied, Tesla continued on with the project. He explored the idea of building several small towers or a tower 300 feet and even 600 feet tall in order to transmit the type of low-frequency long waves that Tesla thought were needed to resonate the Earth. His friend, architect Stanford White, who was working on designing structures for the project, calculated that a 600-foot tower would cost $450,000 and the idea had to be scrapped.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Tesla purchased of land close to a railway line from New York City in Shoreham on Long Island Sound from land developer James S. Warden who was building a resort community known as Wardenclyffe-On-Sound. Tesla would later state his plans were to eventually make Wardenclyffe a hub "city" in his plans for a worldwide system of 30 "wireless plants", sending messages and media content and broadcasting electrical power. The land surrounding the Wardenclyffe plant was intended to be what Tesla would later in life refer to as a "radio city" with factories producing Tesla's patented devices. Warden expected to build housing on the part of his remaining land for the expected 2,000–2,500 Tesla employees. At the end of July 1901 Tesla closed a contract for the building of the wireless telegraph plant and electrical laboratory at Wardenclyffe.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: The final design Tesla started building at Wardenclyffe consisted of a wood-framed tower tall and the cupola in diameter. It had a 55-ton steel (some report it was a better conducting material, such as copper) hemispherical structure at the top (referred to as a cupola). The structure was such as to allow each piece to be taken out and replaced as necessary.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: The main building occupied the rest of the facility grounds. Stanford White designed the Wardenclyffe facility main building. It included a laboratory area, instrumentation room, boiler room, generator room and machine shop. Inside the main building, there were electromechanical devices, electrical generators, electrical transformers, glass blowing equipment, X-ray devices, Tesla coils, a remote controlled boat, cases with bulbs and tubes, wires, cables, a library, and an office. It was constructed in the style of the Italian Renaissance. The tower was designed by W.D. Crow, an associate of White.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: There was a great deal of construction under the tower to establish some form of ground connection but Tesla and his workers kept the public and the press away from the project so little is known. The descriptions (some from Tesla's 1923 testimony in foreclosure proceedings on the property) include that the facility had a ten by twelve foot wood and steel lined shaft sunk into the ground beneath the tower with a stairway inside it. Tesla stated that at the bottom of the shaft he ""had special machines rigged up which would push the iron pipe, one length after another, and I pushed these iron pipes, I think sixteen of them, three hundred feet, and then the current through these pipes takes hold of the earth."" In Tesla's words the function of this was "to have a grip on the earth so the whole of this globe can quiver." There is also contemporaneous and later descriptions of four 100 foot long tunnels, possibly brick lined and waterproofed, radiating from the bottom of the shaft north, south, east, and west terminating back at ground level in little brick igloos. Speculation on the tunnels ranges from them being for drainage, acting as access ways, or having the function of enhancing ground connection or resonance by interacting with the water table below the tower, maybe via being filled with salt water or liquid nitrogen.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: The Tesla biographer John Joseph O'Neill noted the cupola at the top of the 186 foot tower had a 5-foot hole in its top where ultraviolet lights were to be mounted, perhaps to create an ionized path up through the atmosphere that could conduct electricity. How Tesla intended to employ the ground conduction method and atmospheric method in Wardenclyffe's design is unknown. Power for the entire system was to be provided by a coal fired 200 kilowatt Westinghouse alternating current industrial generator.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Construction began in September 1901 but money was so short (with Morgan still owing Tesla the remainder of the original $150,000 promised) Tesla complained in a letter to White he was facing foreclosure. Tesla kept writing Morgan letters pleading for more money and assuring the financier his wireless system would be superior to Marconi's, but in December Tesla's plans were dealt another serious blow when Marconi announced to the world he was able to send a wireless transmission (the Morse code for the letter S) across the Atlantic.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Construction at Wardenclyffe continued through 1902 and in June of that year Tesla began moving his laboratory operations from 46 East Houston Street laboratory to the 94-foot-square brick building at Wardenclyffe. By the end of 1902 the tower reached full height of 187 feet. What Tesla was up to at Wardenclyffe and the site itself was generally kept from the public. Tesla would respond to reporters inquiries stating there was a similar wireless plant in Scotland and that ""We have been sending wireless messages for long distances from this station for some time, but whether we are going into the telegraph field on a commercial basis I cannot say at present.""


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Tesla continued to write to Morgan asking the investor to reconsider his position on the contract and invest the additional funds the project needed. In a July 3, 1903 letter Tesla wrote ""Will you help me or let my great work — almost complete — go to pots?"" Morgan's reply on July 14 was ""I have received your letter and in reply would say that I should not feel disposed at present to make any further advances"". The night of Morgan's reply, and several nights after, newspapers reported that the Wardenclyffe tower came alive shooting off bright flashes lighting up the night sky. No explanation was forthcoming from Tesla or any of his workers as to the meaning of the display and Wardenclyffe never seemed to operate again.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Tesla's finances continued to unravel. Investor money on Wall Street was continuing to flow to Marconi's system, which was making regular transmissions, and doing it with equipment far less expensive than the "wireless plant" Tesla was attempting to build. Some in the press began turning against Tesla's project claiming it was a hoax and the fall 1903 "rich man's panic" on Wall Street dried up investment further. Some money came from Thomas Fortune Ryan but the funds went towards the debt on the project instead of funding any further construction. Investors seemed to be shying away from putting money into a project that J. P. Morgan had abandoned. Tesla continued to write Morgan trying to get extra funding stating his ""knowledge and ability"" ""if applied effectively would advance the world a century"". Morgan would only reply through his secretary saying ""it will be impossible for [me/ Morgan] to do anything in the matter"". Tesla's attempts to raise money by getting the US Navy interested in his remote control boat/torpedo and other attempts to commercialize his inventions went nowhere. In May 1905, Tesla's patents on alternating current motors and other methods of power transmission expired, halting royalty payments and causing a further severe reduction of funding to the Wardenclyffe Tower. In an attempt to find alternative funding Tesla advertised the services of the Wardenclyffe facility but he was met with little success.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: In 1906 the financial problems and other events may have led to what Tesla biographer Marc J. Seifer suspects was a nervous breakdown on Tesla's part. In June architect Stanford White was murdered by Harry Kendall Thaw over White's affair with Thaw's wife, actress Evelyn Nesbit. In October long time investor William Rankine died of a heart attack. Things were so bad by the fall of that year George Scherff, Tesla's chief manager who had been supervising Wardenclyffe, had to leave to find other employment. The people living around Wardenclyffe noticed the Tesla plant seemed to have been abandoned without notice.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: In 1904 Tesla took out a mortgage on the Wardenclyffe property with George C. Boldt, proprietor of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, to cover Tesla's living expenses at the hotel. In 1908 Tesla procured a second mortgage from Boldt to further cover expenses. The facility was partially abandoned around 1911, and the tower structure deteriorated. Between 1912 and 1915, Tesla's finances unraveled, and when the funders wanted to know how they were going to recoup their investments, Tesla was unable to give satisfactory answers.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: The March 1, 1916 edition of the publication "Export American Industries" ran a story titled ""Tesla's Million Dollar Folly"" describing the abandoned Wardenclyffe site:


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: There everything seemed left as for a day — chairs, desks, and papers in businesslike array. The great wheels seemed only awaiting Monday life. But the magic word has not been spoken, and the spell still rests on the great plant.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: By 1915, Tesla's accumulated debt at the Waldorf-Astoria was around $20,000 ($ in dollars). When Tesla was unable to make any further payments on the mortgages, Boldt foreclosed on the Wardenclyffe property. Boldt failed to find any use for the property and finally decided to demolish the tower for scrap. On July 4, 1917, the Smiley Steel Company of New York began demolition of the tower by dynamiting it. The tower was knocked on a tilt by the initial explosion but it took until September to totally demolish it. The scrap value realized was $1750.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Since this was during World War I a rumor spread, picked up by newspapers and other publications, that the tower was demolished on orders of the United States Government with claims German spies were using it as a radio transmitter or observation post, or that it was being used as a landmark for German submarines. Tesla was not pleased with what he saw as attacks on his patriotism via the rumors about Wardenclyffe, but since the original mortgages with Boldt as well as the foreclosure had been kept off the public record in order to hide his financial difficulties, Tesla was not able to reveal the real reason for the demolition.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: George Boldt decided to make the property available for sale. On April 20, 1922, Tesla lost an appeal of judgment on Boldt's foreclosure. This effectively locked Tesla out of any future development of the facility.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: In 1925, the property ownership was transferred to Walter L. Johnson of Brooklyn. On March 6, 1939, Plantacres, Inc. purchased the facility's land and subsequently leased it to Peerless Photo Products, Inc.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: AGFA Corporation bought the property from Peerless and used the site from 1969 to 1992 before closing the facility. The site has undergone a final cleanup of waste produced during its Photo Products era. The clean up was conducted under the scrutiny of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and paid for by AGFA.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: In 2009, AGFA put the property up for sale for $1,650,000. The main building remains standing to this day; AGFA advertised that the land can "be delivered fully cleared and level." It says it spent $5 million through September 2008 cleaning up silver and cadmium. A non-profit preservation organization supported by The Oatmeal purchased the land in 2013 with hopes to create a museum to Tesla there.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: On February 14, 1967, the nonprofit public benefit corporation Brookhaven Town Historical Trust was established. It selected the Wardenclyffe facility to be designated as a historic site and as the first site to be preserved by the Trust on March 3, 1967. The Brookhaven Town Historic Trust was rescinded by resolution on February 1, 1972. There were never any appointments made after a legal opinion was received; it was never set up properly. On July 7, 1976, a plaque from Yugoslavia was installed by representatives from Brookhaven National Laboratory near the entrance of the building. It reads:


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: The sign was stolen from the property in November 2009. An anonymous benefactor is offering a $2,000 reward if it is returned to the property.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: In 1976, an application was filed to nominate the main building for listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). It failed to get approval. The "Tesla Wardenclyffe Project, Inc." was established in 1994 for the purpose of seeking placement of the Wardenclyffe laboratory-office building and the Tesla tower foundation on both the New York State and NRHP. Its mission is the preservation and adaptive reuse of Wardenclyffe, the century-old laboratory of electrical pioneer Nikola Tesla located in Shoreham, Long Island, New York.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: In October 1994, a second application for formal nomination was filed. The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation conducted inspections and determined the facility meets New York State criteria for historic designation. A second visit was made on February 25, 2009. The site cannot be registered until it is nominated by a willing owner.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Designation of the structure as a National Landmark is awaiting completion of plant decommissioning activities by its present owner.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: In August 2012, concerned about an apparent offer to purchase the site and develop it for commercial use, web cartoon "The Oatmeal" launched a fundraiser for the Tesla Science Center to raise $1.7 million in order to purchase the property, with the hope of eventually building a museum on the grounds.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Jane Alcorn, president of the nonprofit group The Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, and Matthew Inman, creator of "The Oatmeal", collaborated in 2012 to honor "the Father of the Electric Age", by preserving the Wardenclyffe facility as a science center and museum. They initiated the "Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum" fund-raising campaign on the Indiegogo crowdfunding site, to raise funding to buy the Wardenclyffe property and restore the facility. The project reached its goal of raising $850,000 within a week, more than exceeded the requested amount, including a $33,333 donation from the producers of the Tesla film "Fragments from Olympus-The Vision of Nikola Tesla". The campaign also attracted donations from benefactors such as Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, Inc.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: The money raised within one week was enough to get a matching grant from the state of New York, allowing the project to be able to meet the seller's asking price of $1.6 million; the state had agreed to match donations up to half that amount. A total of $1.37 million was donated, the matching grant from the State of New York brings the total collected to over $2.2 million. The surplus will be used to fund the cleaning and restoration of the property. Tesla, Wardenclyffe and the museum fundraising effort will be the subject of a new documentary being produced called "Tower to the People – Tesla's Dream at Wardenclyffe Continues".


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: On May 2, 2013, The Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe announced that they had purchased the 15.69-acre laboratory site from Agfa Corporation and will begin to raise "about $10 million to create a science learning center and museum worthy of Tesla and his legacy."


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: On May 13, 2014, The Oatmeal published a comic called "What It's Like to Own a Model S, Part 2", in which they requested a further donation of $8 million from Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk in order to propel the museum toward completion. The next day, Musk stated on Twitter that he "would be happy to help." On July 10, 2014, during a 158th birthday celebration for Tesla at the Wardenclyffe site, it was announced that Musk would donate $1 million toward funding the museum, as well as having a Tesla Motors supercharging station installed onsite.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: The center plans to offer several programs, including science teacher associations, conferences, symposia, field trips, associations with science competitions, and other science programs. Planned permanent exhibits include a Tesla exhibit, exploratorium-type exhibits, and a living museum. On September 23, 2013, the President of Serbia, Tomislav Nikolić, unveiled a monument to Tesla at the Wardenclyffe site. Nikolić said that he had planned to push for the monument to be displayed at the United Nations, but chose Wardenclyffe once he learned it had been purchased for the center.


title: Wardenclyffe Tower

text: Wardenclyffe is located near the Shoreham Post Office and Shoreham Fire House on Route 25A in Shoreham, Long Island, New York. Wardenclyffe was divided into two main sections. The tower, which was located in the back, and the main building now compose the entire facility grounds. At one time the property was about . Now it consists of slightly less than .


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used.


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: Intelligibility between languages can be asymmetric, with speakers of one understanding more of the other than speakers of the other understanding the first. When it is relatively symmetric, it is characterized as "mutual". It exists in differing degrees among many related or geographically proximate languages of the world, often in the context of a dialect continuum.


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: An individual's achievement of moderate proficiency or understanding in a language (called L2) other than their first language (L1) typically requires considerable time and effort through study and practical application if the two languages are not very closely related. Advanced speakers of a second language typically aim for intelligibility, especially in situations where they work in their second language and the necessity of being understood is high.


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: However, many groups of languages are partly mutually intelligible, i.e. most speakers of one language find it relatively easy to achieve some degree of understanding in the related language(s). Often the two languages are genetically related, and they are likely to be similar to each other in grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, or other features.


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: Intelligibility among languages can vary between individuals or groups within a language population according to their knowledge of various registers and vocabulary in their own language, their exposure to additional related languages, their interest in or familiarity with other cultures, the domain of discussion, psycho-cognitive traits, the mode of language used (written vs. oral), and other factors.


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: Linguistic distance is the name for the concept of calculating a measurement for how different languages are from one another. The higher the linguistic distance, the lower the mutual intelligibility.


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: Asymmetric intelligibility refers to two languages that are considered partially mutually intelligible, but where one group of speakers has more difficulty understanding the other language than the other way around. There can be various reasons for this. If, for example, one language is related to another but has simplified its grammar, the speakers of the original language may understand the simplified language, but less vice versa. For example, Dutch speakers tend to find it easier to understand Afrikaans than vice versa as a result of Afrikaans' simplified grammar.


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: Some linguists use mutual intelligibility as a primary criterion for determining whether two speech varieties represent the same or different languages. In a similar vein, some claim that mutual intelligibility is, ideally at least, the primary criterion separating languages from dialects.


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: A primary challenge to these positions is that speakers of closely related languages can often communicate with each other effectively if they choose to do so. In the case of transparently cognate languages officially recognized as distinct such as Spanish and Italian, mutual intelligibility is in principle and in practice not binary (simply yes or no), but occurs in varying degrees, subject to numerous variables specific to individual speakers in the context of the communication.


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: Classifications may also shift for reasons external to the languages themselves. As an example, in the case of a linear dialect continuum that shades gradually between varieties, where speakers near the center can understand the varieties at both ends with relative ease, but speakers at one end have difficulty understanding the speakers at the other end, the entire chain is often considered a single language. If the central varieties die out and only the varieties at both ends survive, they may then be reclassified as two languages, even though no actual language change has occurred during the time of the loss of the central varieties. In this case, too, however, while mutual intelligibility between speakers of the distant remnant languages may be greatly constrained, it is likely not at the zero level of completely unrelated languages.


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: In addition, political and social conventions often override considerations of mutual intelligibility in both scientific and non-scientific views. For example, the varieties of Chinese are often considered a single language even though there is usually no mutual intelligibility between geographically separated varieties. Another similar example would be varieties of Arabic, which additionally share a single prestige variety in Modern Standard Arabic. In contrast, there is often significant intelligibility between different Scandinavian languages, but as each of them has its own standard form, they are classified as separate languages.


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: However, others have suggested that these objections are misguided, as they collapse different concepts of what constitutes a "language".


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: To deal with the conflict in cases such as Arabic, Chinese and German, the term "Dachsprache" (a sociolinguistic "umbrella language") is sometimes seen: Chinese and German are languages in the sociolinguistic sense even though speakers of some varieties cannot understand each other without recourse to a standard or prestige form.


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: Northern Germanic languages spoken in Scandinavia form a dialect continuum where two furthermost dialects have almost no mutual intelligibility. As such, spoken Danish and Swedish normally have low mutual intelligibility, but Swedes in the Öresund region (including Malmö and Helsingborg), across a strait from the Danish capital Copenhagen, understand Danish somewhat better, largely due to the proximity of the region to Danish-speaking areas. While Norway was under Danish rule, the Bokmål written standard of Norwegian developed from Dano-Norwegian, a koiné language that evolved among the urban elite in Norwegian cities during the later years of the union. Additionally, Norwegian assimilated a considerable amount of Danish vocabulary as well as traditional Danish expressions. As a consequence, spoken mutual intelligibility is not reciprocal.


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: Because of the difficulty of imposing boundaries on a continuum, various counts of the Romance languages are given; in "The Linguasphere register of the world’s languages and speech communities" David Dalby lists 23 based on mutual intelligibility:


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: Serbo-Croatian dialects in relation to Slovene, Macedonian, and Bulgarian: The non-standard vernacular dialects of Serbo-Croatian (i.e. non-Shtokavian dialects: Kajkavian, Chakavian and Torlakian) diverge more significantly from all four normative varieties. Their mutual intelligibility varies greatly, between the dialects themselves, with Shtokavian, and with other languages.


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: All South Slavic languages in effect form a large dialect continuum of gradually mutually intelligible varieties depending on distance between the areas where they are spoken.


title: Mutual intelligibility

text: Below is an "incomplete" list of fully and partially mutually intelligible languages, that are so similar that they are sometimes considered not to be separate, but merely varieties of the same language.


title: Marina Wheeler

text: Marina Claire Wheeler (born 18 August 1964) is a British lawyer and writer. As a barrister, she specialises in public law, including human rights, and is a member of the Bar Disciplinary Tribunal. She was appointed Queen's Counsel in 2016.


title: Marina Wheeler

text: She is the author of "The Lost Homestead: My Mother, Partition and the Punjab" (2020) and is an ex-wife of former British prime minister Boris Johnson.


title: Marina Wheeler

text: Marina Claire Wheeler was born in West Berlin on 18 August 1964, to Charles Wheeler, a BBC correspondent, and his second wife Dip Singh, an Indian Punjabi Sikh. Her elder sister is Shirin Wheeler.


title: Marina Wheeler

text: Wheeler was educated at Bedales School and then the European School of Brussels, and then in the early 1980s at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where she wrote for the student magazine "Cantab".


title: Marina Wheeler

text: After Cambridge, Wheeler returned to Brussels and worked there for four years. In 1987, she was called to the Bar, practising from chambers in London at One Crown Office Row. In her work as a barrister, Wheeler specialises in mental health matters and discrimination claims. In January 2004, she was appointed to the B-Panel of Junior Counsel to the Crown. In 2009, she joined the Bar Disciplinary Tribunal as a barrister member.


title: Marina Wheeler

text: On 8 May 1993, a pregnant Wheeler married her childhood friend Boris Johnson, whose previous marriage had ended 12 days earlier. They had met again and teamed up together in Brussels, where he was covering the European Parliament for "The Daily Telegraph". Together they have four children, including Lara Lettice, their eldest child born 12 June 1993.


title: Marina Wheeler

text: In September 2018, Johnson and Wheeler issued a statement confirming that after 25 years of marriage, they had separated "several months ago" and begun divorce proceedings. They reached a financial settlement in February 2020, and the divorce was finalised by November 2020.


title: Marina Wheeler

text: In August 2019, Wheeler revealed that she had been diagnosed with cervical cancer earlier in the year and had undergone two operations to be in remission.


title: Marina Wheeler

text: In 2020 her memoir "The Lost Homestead: My Mother, Partition and the Punjab", detailing her family's history in India, was published. Her ancestry goes back to the city of Sargodha in West Punjab, present-day Pakistan, with her maternal family migrating to present-day India after the Partition of India. It was shortlisted for the 2021 RSL Christopher Bland Prize.


title: Shōjo Tsubaki

text: The character is known to western and contemporary Japanese audiences predominantly by way of Suehiro Maruo's "ero guro" reinterpretation in comics, first in a short story as part of an anthology and then in a full-length graphic novel of the same name (published in English as Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show), and Hiroshi Harada's semi-animated film based on Maruo's version, screened at film festivals and released on DVD-Video with English subtitles as Midori.


title: Shōjo Tsubaki

text: The graphic novel is considered a classic of Maruo's 1920s-inspired brand of "ero guro" and its out-of-print English edition has become much sought-after. Harada's film is also infamous in itself and for the elaborate expanded cinema presentations it was originally only shown in, though it has been allowed to screen in conventional movie theaters and even released on home video outside of Japan. A live-action film adaptation of the manga was released in Japan in May 2016.


title: Shōjo Tsubaki

text: Maruo's manga (as well as its film adaptations) follows the dark misadventures behind the colorful curtains and extravagant performances of the local funfair freak show, hidden away from the audience's smiles and praises. Set in early 20th century Japan in a circus involving freaks such as "Hohichi the Human Pretzel" and "the Human Worm", one member (who is a little girl) has highlighted the misdeeds that occur during these events of the circus camps in her dark and twisted tale.


title: Shōjo Tsubaki

text: is a 1992 Japanese independent semi-animated "ero guro" fantasy horror drama film by Hiroshi Harada, based on Suehiro Maruo's comic version of the "kamishibai" standard. The film (which Harada wrote for the screen and directed under the pseudonym of and whom he presents as a lost filmmaker he worked on it under) consists primarily of paintings and cels of drawings by Harada held, panned, or zoomed over with music, sound effects, voice acting, and occasional touches of traditional animation.


title: Shōjo Tsubaki

text: In 1994, a censored version of the film was produced for future screenings at the request of Eirin, the Japanese film censor board. This version optically censored nudity, sexual assault, and violence towards animals, while removing discriminatory language from the audio track in the form of audio muting. The 2006 Ciné Malta DVD release of the film contains the original 1992 version, albeit with two short sections intended for audiences at live screenings omitted.


title: Shōjo Tsubaki

text: For many years, a videotape transfer of the film was all that was known to exist of the film, aside from censored post-1994 film prints screened at various international film festivals. In 2013, the original 16 mm negative of the film was rediscovered in an IMAGICA warehouse. A new print and digital master were made from this negative and began to be screened in digital format in Japan numerous times. Harada's production company plans to release a restored Blu-ray Disc of the new film master in 2020.


title: Shōjo Tsubaki

text: The film was single-handedly created by Hiroshi Harada. Given the subject matter, Harada had found it impossible to gain sponsors. He then used his life savings to make the film over a five-year period. Harada hand-drew over 5000 separate sheets of animation.


title: Shōjo Tsubaki

text: The film was for many years very rare to see at all, as Harada will only screen "Midori" in Japan if the venue is presented as a carnival freak show. From 1994 to 2006, outside of standard definition videotape transfers of the original master, the film was only available in the form of prints with visual and audio censorship in place. However, in 2006, a region 2-locked PAL-style DVD-Video of the film with subtitles in French, English, Spanish, Italian, and German was released in France by Ciné Malta containing the film's original, uncensored version.


title: Shōjo Tsubaki

text: , a live-action film adaptation of the manga directed by Torico and starring was released in cinemas in Japan on May 21, 2016. Other cast members include Shunsuke Kazama, , Takeru of the band Sug, and .


title: Shōjo Tsubaki

text: The film was shown in Germany in 2017 at the 18th Japan-Filmfest Hamburg, and it was released on limited edition DVD (limited to 1000 copies in total) with Japanese audio and both German and English subtitles in German-speaking Europe by the distributor Midori-Impuls in 2020.


title: Male pregnancy

text: Male pregnancy is the incubation of one or more embryos or fetuses by organisms of the male sex in some species. Most species that reproduce by sexual reproduction are heterogamous—females producing larger gametes (ova) and males producing smaller gametes (sperm). In nearly all animal species, offspring are carried by the female until birth, but in fish of the family Syngnathidae (pipefish, seahorses and the leafy seadragon), males perform that function.


title: Male pregnancy

text: The fish family Syngnathidae has the unique characteristic of a highly derived form of male brood care referred to as "male pregnancy". The family is highly diverse, containing around 300 different species of fish. Included in Syngnathidae are seahorses, the pipefish, and the weedy and leafy seadragons. The males of some of these species possess a brood pouch on the trunk or tail; in other species, the eggs are merely attached to the male's trunk or tail when the female lays them. Although biologists' definitions of pregnancy somewhat differ, all members of the family are considered by ichthyologists to display male pregnancy, even those without an external brood pouch.


title: Male pregnancy

text: Fertilization may take place in the pouch or in the water before implantation, but in either case, syngnathids' male pregnancy ensures them complete confidence of paternity. After implantation in or on the brood pouch or brood patch, the male incubates the eggs. Many species osmoregulate the brood pouch fluid to maintain proper pH for the developing embryos. In at least some species, the male also provisions his offspring with nutrients such as glucose and amino acids through the highly vascularized attachment sites in or on his body.


title: Male pregnancy

text: This period of incubation can take much longer than the production of another clutch of eggs by the female, especially in temperate regions where pregnancies last longer, leading to a reproductive environment in which sexual selection can be stronger on females than on males due to increased male parental investment. This reversal of traditional sex roles has only been found in pipefishes, whereas seahorses have largely been accepted as monogamous. Some pipefish species display classical polyandry because of this unique situation. Male syngnathids usually prefer females with large body size and prominent ornaments such as blue skin pigmentation or skin folds. Syngnathid males in some species are apparently capable of absorbing eggs or embryos while in the brood pouch. In these cases, embryos with the highest survival rate are those whose mothers display the preferred phenotype.


title: Male pregnancy

text: Syngnathidae is the only family in the animal kingdom to which the term "male pregnancy" has been applied.


title: Male pregnancy

text: In 2021, Chinese researchers at the Naval Medical University in Shanghai published a preprint of a study that attempted to impregnate male rats by stitching them together with female rats. The study went viral on social media platform Weibo and attracted controversy over bioethics issues.


title: Male pregnancy

text: Human males do not possess a uterus to gestate offspring. The theoretical issue of male ectopic pregnancy (pregnancy outside the uterine cavity) by surgical implantation has been addressed by experts in the field of fertility medicine, who stress that the concept of ectopic implantation, while theoretically plausible, has never been attempted and would be difficult to justify – even for a woman lacking a uterus – owing to the extreme health risks to both the parent and child.


title: Male pregnancy

text: Robert Winston, a pioneer of in-vitro fertilization, told London's "Sunday Times" that "male pregnancy would certainly be possible" by having an embryo implanted in a man's abdomen – with the placenta attached to an internal organ such as the bowel – and later delivered surgically. Ectopic implantation of the embryo along the abdominal wall, and resulting placenta growth would, however, be very dangerous and potentially fatal for the host, and is therefore unlikely to be studied in humans. Gillian Lockwood, medical director of Midland Fertility Services, a British fertility clinic, noted that the abdomen has not evolved to separate from the placenta during delivery, hence the danger of an ectopic pregnancy. Bioethicist Glenn McGee said "the question is not 'Can a man do it?'. It's 'If a man does have a successful [ectopic] pregnancy, can he survive it?


title: Male pregnancy

text: Since 2000, several hoax web sites have appeared on the Internet purporting to describe the world's first pregnant man. While some rely on legitimate scientific claims, no such experiment has ever been reported. Fertility clinician Cecil Jacobson claimed to have transplanted a fertilized egg from a female baboon to the omentum in the abdominal cavity of a male baboon in the mid-1960s, which then carried the fetus for four months; however, Jacobson did not publish his claims in a scientific journal, and was subsequently convicted on several unrelated counts of fraud for ethical misconduct.


title: Male pregnancy

text: Transplanting a uterus into a male body poses a challenge due to the lack of natural ligaments, vasculature, and hormones required to support the uterus. The uterus would either have to be donated by a willing donor or be tissue-engineered using the male's stem cells and then implanted into the pelvic region. Afterward, an in vitro fertilisation (IVF) procedure would be followed to insert the embryo into the male's transplanted womb. Due to the risks posed by long term anti-rejection medication, the uterus would need to be removed following the implied pregnancy. Given that humans do not require a uterus to survive, and knowing the predictable complications associated with uterus transplants in females, let alone males, many surgeons advise against the procedure altogether for healthy individuals.


title: Male pregnancy

text: Some science fiction writers have picked up on these issues, in "cross-gender" themes—e.g., Octavia E. Butler's "Bloodchild and Other Stories". Ursula K. Le Guin's novel "The Left Hand of Darkness" contains the sentence "The king was pregnant", and explores a society in which pregnancy can be experienced by anyone, since individuals are not sexually differentiated during most of their life and can become capable of inseminating or gestating at different times. Lois McMaster Bujold's "Ethan of Athos" features an all-male society in which men use artificial wombs, but experience many of the psychological effects of pregnancy (anticipation, anxiety, etc.). In Marge Piercy's feminist utopian novel "Woman on the Edge of Time", neither men nor women get pregnant, leaving that to artificial wombs, but both sexes may lactate and nurse the infant; the specifically female experiences of pregnancy and nursing were opened to men in the cause of gender equality. Larry Niven's 1969 essay "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" ends with considering Superman as a carrier for his own baby, due to the difficulties a human female might encounter carrying a superpowered fetus.


title: Male pregnancy

text: The concept of male pregnancy has been the subject of popular films, generally as a comedic device. The 1978 comedy film "Rabbit Test" stars Billy Crystal as a young man who inexplicably becomes pregnant instead of his female sex partner. In Monty Python's 1979 film, "Life of Brian", there is a political satire scene in which a character demands that any man has a "right to have babies if he wants them," which is ridiculed as impossible. The 1990 BBC television comedy drama "Frankenstein's Baby" features a Dr. Eva Frankenstein helping a male patient to become the world's first pregnant man. The 1994 science fiction comedy/drama "Junior" stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a fertility researcher who experiments on himself; the screenplay was inspired by a 1985 article in "Omni" magazine. The 2015 romantic comedy "Paternity Leave" explores the concept of a gay couple surprised with a miraculous pregnancy in feature length. In the 2017 film "Mamaboy" stars Sean O'Donnell as Kelly Hankins as a teenager who decides to undergo an experimental procedure that enables him to carry his girlfriend's baby to term. In 2019, as a social commentary on the issue of abortion, "The Blacklist" had an episode which had anti-abortion men being kidnapped and forced to be pregnant. One stayed consistent with their belief and gave birth while the other became hypocritical and sought to get an abortion despite it being illegal in their state.


title: Male pregnancy

text: In April 2020, an independent film "Three Pregnant Men" was released on Gumroad in the form of a mock documentary following three of the eponymous pregnant men who have become part of an experimental project with a less than ethical corporation. When news of their pregnancy is leaked, each of them are put in jeopardy in different ways, allowing the film to explore gender norms, gay rights in Middle Eastern countries, racism/xenophobia, male privilege, and the power of corporations vs bodily autonomy.


title: Male pregnancy

text: The concept appears frequently as a comedic gag in numerous television programs as well. In a 1981 episode of the Canadian sketch comedy series "Bizarre", the show’s resident daredevil character Super Dave Osborne (Bob Einstein) performs, as one of his many stunts, carrying and giving birth to a baby. In the BBC science fiction comedy series "Red Dwarf", the main character Dave Lister becomes pregnant after having sex with a female version of himself in an alternate universe. In an episode of "Sliders", the quartet "slides" into an alternate world in which babies develop during their final months in the father because a worldwide disease has kept women from being able to carry children beyond their first trimester. In the popular fantasy series "Charmed"s fifth season, during a dream spell gone wrong, Leo ends up pregnant with Piper's baby for a good deal of the episode, leading to her referring to him as an "incubator" and at times berating him for "upsetting the baby". A Season 6 episode of the popular situation comedy "The Cosby Show" features main protagonist Cliff Huxtable having a dream about a bizarre event causing thousands of men – including himself, Elvin, Martin and Theo – to become impregnated and – in the end – deliver some "unique" babies.


title: Male pregnancy

text: In "Doctor Who" (series 11), an episode features a man going into labor pain. In the "Ozzy & Drix" episode "Ozzy Jr.", Ozzy thinks he is having a baby but is actually a parasite growing in his belly caused by an infection by Strepfinger. In the "Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon"" episode "Stimpy's Pregnant", Stimpy is thought to be pregnant but Mr. Horse finds out that he is actually constipated.


title: Male pregnancy

text: The possibility of extraterrestrial life having different reproductive sexuality is the basis for many references. In the "" episode "", Trip Tucker becomes pregnant with the offspring of a female of another species. In the video game "The Sims 2" male characters can be impregnated via cheat codes or alien abduction. In the "American Dad!" episode "Deacon Stan, Jesus Man", the boy Steve becomes impregnated after giving the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the extraterrestrial Roger, then unwittingly passes it on to his girlfriend via a kiss. In the animated series "Futurama", the extraterrestrial Kif can be impregnated by a touch. In the "SciFi Channel" miniseries, "", the extraterrestrial Rygel becomes impregnated with human John and Aeryn's baby. In the series "Alien Nation", when Tectonese main character George Francisco and his wife Susan decide to have a third child, it is revealed that, in order to conceive, a Tectonese couple needs a third party, called a "binnaum", to complete impregnation, and that the male carries the baby—encased in a pod—during the final months of gestation. In the animated series "The Fairly OddParents" in the TV film "Fairly OddBaby", the fairy Cosmo was pregnant with Baby Poof. Additionally, Robert Sheckley's 1989 short story "Love Song From the Stars" also contains this element. "My Friends from Afar", a science fiction Singaporean drama series, Xiang Lin becomes pregnant to his surprise by kissing Tianning and his pregnancy provides an ongoing plotline in the latter half of the series. However, after he gives birth, it turns out that his species gives birth to eggs, which hatch, after some time, a child that appears to be roughly four years old.


title: Male pregnancy

text: Horror rarely dips into male pregnancy in depth. Minor appearances exist in the well-known "Alien" series, in which the first chestburster appears, as a result of the host organism using human bodies to gestate its young. While this concept is repeated and parodied widely, the origin is as much sci-fi as it is horror. In the 2019 anthology film "The Mortuary Collection", a predatory fraternity brother named Jake has sex with a woman, using stealthing to trick her into having sex with him without a condom. As a result, her young grows in him rapidly over the course of a day, resulting in his bloody death when the child emerges. In 2020, the horror film "Amulet" depicts a soldier returning from war to live in a claustrophobic house with a woman and her mother, and a dark presence that may be lurking there as well. Like the former movie, male pregnancy serves as a sort of punishment for a man's sins.


title: Male pregnancy

text: In the "" episode "Save the Last Dance", it is revealed that Necrofriggians have an ability to asexually reproduce once every 80 years, building a large nest made of digested metal where their eggs will hatch and their offspring will feed on the metal, first eating from the nest before they instinctively feed on solar plasma until they mature and starts their own separate lives. Due to the Necrofriggian reproduction cycle, Big Chill overtook Ben's personality to carry out the process, but Ben did not remember anything he did as Big Chill during this cycle, like eating metal and having 14 babies, and he felt very embarrassed when Gwen, Kevin and Julie explained, and Kevin's teasing and calling him "mommy" did not help. In "The Three Stooges" episode "Even as IOU" Curly accidentally swallows a Vitamin Z pill meant for a horse. However, the error allows Curly to give birth to an Equidae, which the Stooges crown as a winning race horse. The manga series "Kentaro Hiyama's First Pregnancy" takes place in the future where men are suddenly capable of becoming pregnant, though it is only a 10% chance of happening. The series explores the workplace prejudice that men and women experience and the titular character's efforts to change public opinion once he himself becomes pregnant.


title: Male pregnancy

text: Virgil Wong, a performance artist, created a hoax site featuring a fictitious male pregnancy, claiming to detail the pregnancy of his friend Lee Mingwei.


title: Male pregnancy

text: Male pregnancy is also commonly explored in hentai, the subgenre of speculative erotic fiction known as the Omegaverse, and slash (homosexual) fan fiction, usually based upon fantasy series such as "Supernatural" or "Harry Potter".


title: ISO 3166

text: ISO 3166 is a standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that defines codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, special areas of geographical interest, and their principal subdivisions (e.g., provinces or states). The standard employs a code of letters and numbers to represent the name of a given geographical area in order to save time and energy when describing the area, as well as to reduce the risk of description errors. The official name of the standard is Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions.


title: ISO 3166

text: The first edition of ISO 3166, which included only alphabetic country codes, was published in 1974. The second edition, published in 1981, also included numeric country codes, with the third and fourth editions published in 1988 and 1993 respectively. The fifth edition, published between 1997 and 1999, was expanded into three parts to include codes for subdivisions and former countries.


title: ISO 3166

text: The ISO 3166 standard is maintained by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA), located at the ISO central office in Geneva. Originally it was located at the Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN) in Berlin. Its principal tasks are:


title: ISO 3166

text: There are fifteen experts with voting rights on the ISO 3166/MA. Nine are representatives of national standards organizations:


title: ISO 3166

text: The other six are representatives of major United Nations agencies or other international organizations who are all users of ISO 3166-1:


title: ISO 3166

text: The ISO 3166/MA has further associated members who do not participate in the votes but who, through their expertise, have significant influence on the decision-taking procedure in the maintenance agency.


title: ISO 3166

text: Country codes beginning with "X" are used for private custom use (reserved), never for official codes. Despite the words “private custom”, the use may include other public standards. Examples:


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: The 15:17 to Paris is a 2018 American biographical drama film produced and directed by Clint Eastwood and written by Dorothy Blyskal, based on the 2016 autobiography "The 15:17 to Paris: The True Story of a Terrorist, a Train, and Three American Heroes" by Jeffrey E. Stern, Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alek Skarlatos. The film stars Stone, Sadler, and Skarlatos as themselves and follows the trio through life leading up to and including their stopping of the 2015 Thalys train attack. Judy Greer and Jenna Fischer also star.


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: Eastwood's intention to adapt the autobiography into a film was announced in April 2017, from a screenplay by Blyskal, a first-time screenwriter. Though professional actors such as Kyle Gallner and Jeremie Harris were considered, Eastwood decided by July to instead cast the real-life participants of the event, and filming began in the same month.


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: "The 15:17 to Paris" was released in the United States on February 9, 2018, by Warner Bros. Pictures. It received negative reviews from critics, who faulted the screenplay and unengaging story before the climax, and the acting from the lead actors, while the central train sequences were generally praised. The film grossed $57 million worldwide against a production budget of $30 million.


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos are attending a suburban Christian middle school. They bond over their interest in guns, and are often sent to the principal's office for disciplinary action. Once, while sent to the principal's office, they meet another student, who often misbehaves in school, Anthony Sadler, and the three become friends. Spencer and Alek are from single-mother homes, and their mothers often stick up for them when called to the principal's office regarding their misconduct.


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: While working part time at a smoothie shop, Spencer waits on a recruiter for the United States Marine Corps. He asks the recruiter what military branch he would select if he could go back. The recruiter replies that the Air Force pararescue save lives and "seem to being doing fine work in the field." Spencer is intrigued and decides that he wants to join up, so he begins working out to lose weight. After several months of rigorous training and exercise, he gets into better shape and enlists in the Air Force in hopes of becoming a Pararescueman.


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: Upon completing basic training, Spencer takes his exams to qualify for pararescue school but is turned down due to having poor depth perception. Upset, he chooses from the other Air Force options left to him, and is soon stationed abroad. Alek enlisted in the National Guard, and has been deployed to Afghanistan. On Skype, Alek tells him that he is planning to visit his girlfriend in Germany, and the two decide to rendezvous there for their next leave. Spencer skypes Anthony, now a college student, and talks him into coming to Europe for a vacation, starting in Italy. Next, the three meet in Germany and decide to go to Amsterdam. After a few days there, they finally decide to visit France. They depart from Amsterdam Centraal station on the 15:17 train to Paris.


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: On the train, all seems well, until American-born Frenchman Mark Moogalian notices that one of the toilets has been occupied for an unusually long time. When he goes to investigate, a terrorist bursts out with an assault rifle. Another passenger, Damien A., grabs the terrorist by the neck and Moogalian manages to wrest the rifle from the terrorist but is then shot in the back with a 9mm pistol. Passengers begin to flee out of their seats and rush toward the forward cabins of the train, trying to escape. Eventually, the terrorist approaches the next car, where Spencer and his friends are sitting. The moment Spencer sees him, he springs into action. He decides that his only hope, and the only hope of the remaining passengers, is for him to try to defeat the terrorist. Spencer makes a desperate all-out sprint toward the terrorist in the hope of subduing him before being shot. By remarkable luck, the terrorist's weapon jams just as he is about to fire, and Spencer tackles and disarms him. Seeing Spencer's progress in subduing the terrorist, Alek, Anthony, and other passengers join the effort to try to overwhelm the terrorist. Spencer finally knocks him out by putting him in a choke hold. Spencer then stanches the bleeding by plugging the exit wound in Moogalian's neck with his fingers. The police at the next station enter the train fully armed, discovering that Spencer has subdued the terrorist, and the paramedics begin to treat his wounds and the more serious ones of the shot passenger. Paramedics take Moogalian to the emergency room at a local hospital and he survives.


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: In a formal ceremony, Spencer, Alek and Anthony are recognized as heroes of France for their gallantry and bravery by the President François Hollande, who tells the public that the terrorist was armed with over 300 rounds of ammunition with the apparent aim of using all of it to wreak havoc on all those who boarded the train. The odds of the particular misfire and jam of the cartridge in the terrorist's weapon was estimated on the scene as being less than one out of a thousand, and highly unlikely to have been in Spencer's favor. French officials at the ceremony acknowledge their bravery and award them the French Legion of Honour in recognition of their act of courage. The film ends with a parade in honour of the three friends in the town they grew up in, Sacramento.


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: Additionally, Paul-Mikel Williams, Max Ivutin, Bryce Gheisar, Cole Eichenberger, and William Jennings portray younger versions of Stone, Sadler, and Skarlatos.


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: On April 20, 2017, it was announced that Clint Eastwood would next direct "The 15:17 to Paris" from a screenplay by newcomer screenwriter Dorothy Blyskal based on the book "The 15:17 to Paris: The True Story of a Terrorist, a Train, and Three American Heroes". It was announced that Eastwood would begin casting immediately for a principal production start date of later that year. On June 21, 2017, it was announced that Eastwood had chosen Kyle Gallner, Jeremie Harris and Alexander Ludwig to star as Alek Skarlatos, Anthony Sadler and Spencer Stone although offers had not yet been made.


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: On July 11, 2017, it was announced that Eastwood had cast Sadler, Skarlatos and Stone as themselves in the film which will "begin during their childhood and show their friendship leading up to the moment that changed their lives". It was also announced that the film had commenced principal production. On July 13, 2017, Tony Hale and Thomas Lennon joined the cast as staff members of a school the lead three men attended as children. On August 1, 2017, Sinqua Walls was cast in the film for an unspecified role. Mark Moogalian and Isabelle Risacher Moogalian were also cast as themselves in the film. Eastwood finished shooting in Atlanta, Georgia on August 2, 2017.


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: The film was released in the United States on February 9, 2018. The film was originally rated R by the MPAA for "a sequence of violence and bloody images", but received a PG-13 rating upon appeal.


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: The trailer for the film was released on December 13, 2017, two months before the film's general release.


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: "The 15:17 to Paris" was released on HD digital copies on May 1, 2018. The film was then released on Blu-ray and DVD on May 22, 2018.


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: "The 15:17 to Paris" grossed $36.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $20.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $56.9 million, against a production budget of $30 million.


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: In the United States and Canada, the film was released alongside "Peter Rabbit" and "Fifty Shades Freed", and was projected to gross $10–15 million from 3,042 theaters in its opening weekend. It ended up making $12.6 million, finishing third at the box office behind its two fellow releases. The film dropped 40% in its second weekend to $7.6 million ($8.9 million over the four-day Presidents Day weekend), finishing fifth.


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews, and an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, ""The 15:17 to Paris" pays clumsily well-intentioned tribute to an act of heroism, but by casting the real-life individuals involved, director Clint Eastwood fatally derails his own efforts." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 45 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The 15:17 to Paris

text: Kevin P. Sullivan of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the film a grade of D, praising the train attack scene as "thrillingly shot and edited" while criticizing the entire lead-up to it as filler. Sullivan emphasized that "The entire script is replete with [clunky and unsubtle] dialogue... doing no favors for the inexperienced actors." Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave the film two out of four stars, stating that "[a] good 70% of ["The 15:17 to Paris"] is inert, its affable nothingness redeemed only by the laid-back charisma of three men", although he praised the film's "poker-faced sincerity" and the "superb" climactic train scene. A. O. Scott of "The New York Times" gave the film a positive review and wrote, "[Eastwood's] workmanlike absorption in the task at hand is precisely what makes this movie fascinating as well as moving. Its radical plainness is tinged with mystery."


title: Kris Aquino

text: Kristina Bernadette Cojuangco Aquino (born February 14, 1971), professionally known as Kris Aquino (), is a Filipino television host, actress, producer, socialite and businesswoman.


title: Kris Aquino

text: Dubbed as Philippine's "Queen of All Media", Aquino has hosted numerous talk shows and game shows, starred in several films and television series, and currently making waves in the social media platform.


title: Kris Aquino

text: She is the youngest daughter of the assassinated Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. and the late President Corazon Aquino, who served as the 11th President of the Philippines. Her brother Benigno Aquino III served as the 15th President of the Philippines from 2010 until 2016.


title: Kris Aquino

text: Her debut film appearance was in "" and was also known for her roles in horror films "Feng Shui" and "Sukob", which was the highest-grossing Filipino film of 2006.


title: Kris Aquino

text: She is also widely known as a top celebrity product endorser and a philanthropist who advocates for lupus awareness, children's rights, LGBT rights, culture and art appreciation, freedom of expression, and democratic reforms.