title: Abu al-Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi

text: It was reported by IS-linked sources that Abu al-Hasan was actually Islamic State leader "Abdur Rahman al-Iraqi" (Sayf Baghdad), born in Rawa, Iraq and killed in mid-October 2022 in the city of Jasim in Daraa Governorate, Syria. Later on, it was revealed that his birth name was "Nour Karim Al-Mutni" and he belonged to the Bu Obaid tribe in Anbar. Some additional details about his life were also uncovered which stated that in 2005, his brother and seven of his relatives were kidnapped and killed by the Shiite militia "Wolf Brigade" in Adhamiya, Baghdad. He fought United States forces during the Iraqi insurgency and was imprisoned at some point.According to Iraqi intelligence, he joined AQI in 2005 and operated in Baqubah city, Diyala. During 2014, Abul Hassan worked as an Islamic State operative in Baghdad city in Iraq and in al-Bukamal city in Syria. Some of his relatives work in Al-Rawi Financial Network, subject to US sanctions. Also his brother Firas is detained in Idlib by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.By 2018, he use to work under "Abu Salem Al-Iraqi" (ISIL leader of Damascus" in Yarmouk. In May of same year, he leaved "Yarmouk camp" and moved to Southern Syria where he was appointed "Governor of Hawran region". During his tenure, Islamic State second leader Abdullah Qardash choose him to be his successor. In 2022, he arrived from Iraq to Daraa province and start working under alias of "Abdur Rahman Iraqi" and "Sayf Baghdad" where he headed IS cells that were involved in killing of recoiled rebel leaders. He ordered execution of prominent rebel leader "Sheikh Abu al-Baraa" who refuse to accept his authority. On 14 August 2022, "reconciled" rebels in Tafas were able to apprehend a Syrian member of the IS shura council whose confessions indicated prominent IS leaders, including Abu Abdul Rahman al-Iraqi (turned out to be the "Caliph") are present in Jassem. It is also narrated that the intelligence from this arrested shura member eventually led to demise of Abul Hassan.


title: Abu al-Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi

text: On 26 May 2022, informed sources told Sky News Arabia that Abu al-Hasan had been arrested in Istanbul, and that security forces had reported the arrest to Erdoğan, who was expected to announce the news about the suspect. Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency later claimed that Turkish intelligence had been tracking his movements in Syria for a long period of time, and arrested him promptly after he illegally entered Turkey. In July, a UN Security Council report stated that there was no available clarification regarding the Turkish claim. On 16 September 2022, Islamic State spokesperson Abu Umar al-Muhajir seemingly denied claims that their caliph had been arrested, calling on Muslims globally to pledge allegiance to him.


title: Abu al-Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi

text: On 30 November 2022, the Islamic State announced that Abu al-Hasan had been killed while fighting. The spokesman of IS, Abu Omar, confirmed the news that same day. The United States Central Command confirmed that Abu al-Hassan killed himself by detonating a suicide vest during an operation carried out by former Free Syrian Army rebels which had aligned with government forces in Daraa Governorate in mid-October.


title: Better Call Saul (Breaking Bad)

text: "Better Call Saul" is the eighth episode of the second season of the American television drama series "Breaking Bad". It was written by Peter Gould and directed by Terry McDonough.


title: Better Call Saul (Breaking Bad)

text: This episode marks Bob Odenkirk's first appearance as the fast-talking criminal lawyer Saul Goodman in the series. He was promoted to series regular in Season 3 and stayed with the series until the penultimate episode, later reprising the role in the prequel series "Better Call Saul".


title: Better Call Saul (Breaking Bad)

text: After Brandon "Badger" Mayhew is arrested in a sting operation by the Albuquerque Police, Walter White and Jesse Pinkman look into hiring a shady, flamboyant lawyer named Saul Goodman. Saul has already offered to be Badger's legal counsel and has found out that the DEA is hoping that Badger will lead them to "Heisenberg." Walt poses as Badger's uncle and goes to Saul's office, where he learns that Saul will advise Badger to flip to avoid prison. Walt offers Saul a bribe to keep Badger from confessing, but Saul refuses.


title: Better Call Saul (Breaking Bad)

text: Walt and Jesse resort to kidnapping Saul, threatening to kill him if he does not keep Badger from informing on them. Initially, Saul pleads for mercy, believing they were sent by a man named "Lalo". He blames this apparent slight towards Lalo on a man named "Ignacio", and referring to himself as an "amigo del cartel". However, after composing himself, Saul sees through their scare tactics and instead asks for payment so he can legally represent them, and keep their talks confidential. Saul tells the duo about a man, Jimmy "In-'N-Out" Kilkelly, who makes a living being paid by other criminals to go to jail, and offers to have him stand in for Heisenberg. The DEA busts Kilkelly when Badger gives them a fake deal, but Hank Schrader is not completely convinced. Later, Saul visits Walt at his school, telling him that he is too easy to find. Saul offers to be Walt's full-time legal counsel and adviser in covering his tracks.


title: Better Call Saul (Breaking Bad)

text: Skyler White goes to work on a Saturday, and Walt notices that she is dressing especially well for her job with Ted. Seeing that Hank has holed himself in his house, Walt gives him a motivational speech, talking about how he has not had any fear in his life since he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. This helps Hank leave the house, but he still has panic attacks. Meanwhile, Jesse has slept with Jane Margolis and learns she is in recovery from addiction. Later, after Jesse orders a mattress for his apartment, he and Jane have sex once again.


title: Better Call Saul (Breaking Bad)

text: The episode was written by Peter Gould, and directed by Terry McDonough. It aired on AMC in the United States and Canada on April 26, 2009.


title: Better Call Saul (Breaking Bad)

text: Events of this episode are referenced in the sixth season "Better Call Saul" episode, "Breaking Bad". The episode marks the first appearance of Saul Goodman. Saul's dialog and interactions in "Better Call Saul" became essential elements in setting up characters and plotlines for the spinoff prequel series of the same name. When Walter and Jesse wear masks and try to coerce Saul at gunpoint to accept their case, Saul, having mistaken the two for cartel enforcers, tries to lay blame on a man known as "Ignacio" and asks if "Lalo" sent them. Within "Better Call Saul", this was revealed to be Nacho Varga, a member of the Salamanca cartel, and Lalo Salamanca, nephew of Hector Salamanca. Saul further begs to know if they are "friends of the cartel", a phrase that is shown to be something he learned from Lalo while being forced to work to defend him in court. In "Better Call Saul's" "Point and Shoot", the origins of Saul's fear towards Lalo and what he was blaming Nacho for are revealed.


title: Better Call Saul (Breaking Bad)

text: The episode was very well received. Donna Bowman of "The A.V. Club" gave the episode an A, and praised Jesse and Walt's evolving role in the drug world.


title: Billboard charts

text: The "Billboard" charts tabulate the relative weekly popularity of songs and albums in the United States and elsewhere. The results are published in "Billboard" magazine. "Billboard" biz, the online extension of the "Billboard" charts, provides additional weekly charts, as well as year-end charts. The two most important charts are the "Billboard" Hot 100 for songs and "Billboard" 200 for albums, and other charts may be dedicated to a specific genre such as R&B, country, or rock, or they may cover all genres. The charts can be ranked according to sales, streams, or airplay, and for main song charts such as the Hot 100 song chart, all three data are used to compile the charts. For the "Billboard" 200 album chart, streams and track sales are included in addition to album sales.


title: Billboard charts

text: The weekly sales and streams charts are monitored on a Friday-to-Thursday cycle since July 2015; previously it was on a Monday-to-Sunday cycle. Radio airplay song charts, however, follow the Monday-to-Sunday cycle (previously Wednesday-to-Tuesday). The charts are released each Tuesday with an issue date the following Saturday.


title: Billboard charts

text: The first chart published by "Billboard" was "Last Week's Ten Best Sellers Among The Popular Songs", a list of best-selling sheet music, in July 1913. Other early charts listed popular song performances in theatres and recitals in different cities. In 1928, "Popular Numbers Featured by Famous Singers and Leaders" appeared, which added radio performances to in-person performances. On January 4, 1936, "Billboard" magazine published its first pop chart based on record sales. Titled "Ten Best Records for Week Ending", it listed the 10 top-selling records of three leading record companies as reported by the companies themselves. In March 1937, the "Songs with the Most Radio Plugs" chart debuted with data from a separate company. In October 1938, a review list "The Week's Best Records" was retitled "The Billboard Record Buying Guide" by incorporating airplay and sheet music sales, which would eventually become the first trade survey of record popularity.


title: Billboard charts

text: In the July 27, 1940, issue, the first "Billboard Music Popularity Chart" was published for week ending July 20, with separate listings covering retail sales, sheet music sales, jukebox song selection and radio play. Among the lists were the 10 songs of the "Best Selling Retail Records", which is the fore-runner of today's pop chart, with "I'll Never Smile Again" by Tommy Dorsey its first number one. The final accolade of a successful song was a position on the "Honor Roll of Hits", introduced in March 24, 1945, initially as a 10-song list, later expanded to 30 songs, which ranked the most popular songs by combining record and sheet sales, disk jockey, and jukebox performances as determined by "Billboard's" weekly nationwide survey. This chart amalgamated different records of the same song by different performers as one, and topping the first chart was "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive". In 1955, a composite standing chart that combined retail sales, jukebox and disk jockeys play charts but counted individual record separately was created as "The Top 100" chart, with "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing" by The Four Aces its first No. 1. This chart is the direct predecessor to the current Hot 100 chart. The jukebox chart ceased publication after the June 17, 1957, issue, the disk jockey chart after July 28, 1958, the best-seller chart after October 13, 1958, and the Honor Roll of Hits after November 16, 1963. After July 28, 1958, the composite chart the "Top 100" chart was also discontinued; and the "Hot 100" began the following week on August 4, 1958, listing "Poor Little Fool" by Ricky Nelson as its first No. 1. The Hot 100 currently combines singles sales, radio airplay, digital downloads, and streaming activity (including data from YouTube and other video sites). Many "Billboard" charts use this basic formula apart from charts dedicated to the three data sources: sales (both physical and digital), airplay and streaming.


title: Billboard charts

text: Various music genre charts also began to be published: "Harlem Hit Parade" was created in 1943 which became "Best-Selling Race Records" in 1948 and "Best-selling Rhythm & Blues Records" in 1949, and then "Soul Singles" in 1969 (currently Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs); "Best-selling Folk Records" in 1948, which morphed into "Best-Selling Country & Western Records" in 1949, "Best-Selling C&W Records" in 1956 and "Hot Country Singles" in 1963 (now Hot Country Songs); and MOR charts in 1961, variously called "Easy Listening", "Middle-Road Singles" and "Pop-Standard Singles" and now Adult Contemporary. "Billboard" charts now cover these music genres: rock, pop, country, dance, bluegrass, jazz, classical, R&B, rap, electronic, Latin, Christian, world and holiday music, and even ringtones for mobile (cell) phones.


title: Billboard charts

text: An album chart, the "Best Selling Popular Record Albums", was first published on March 24, 1945, with "The King Cole Trio" its first No. 1. The first chart had 10 albums, before reducing to 5 in the following weeks, and increasing again to 10 in 1948. The album chart was split into 33-8 and 45 rpm lists in 1950 before they recombined in 1954, then divided into mono and stereo classifications in 1959 before they merged into a 150-item pop album chart in 1963. It was eventually expanded into a 200 album list on May 13, 1967. Various genre album charts were also published: Country LP chart in January 1964, R&B chart in 1965, jazz in 1969, Latin in 1973, Gospel 1974, and Rock in 1981. Other charts include Classical albums, Comedy Albums, Holiday Albums, Soundtracks, Independent Albums, Catalog Album and many others besides.


title: Billboard charts

text: At the end of each year, "Billboard" tallies the results of all of its charts, and the results are published in a year-end issue and heard on year-end editions of its "American Top 40" and "American Country Countdown" radio broadcasts. The first such annual charts released were for the year 1946, published on the January 4, 1947, issue, although annual listing of songs had been published irregularly some years prior, such as the undifferentiated annual chart based on "Honor Roll of Hits" for 1945. Between 1991 and 2006, the top single/album/artist(s) in each of those charts was/were awarded in the form of the annual Billboard Music Awards, which were held in December until the awards went dormant in 2007. The awards returned in May 2011.


title: Billboard charts

text: For many years, a song had to be commercially available as a single to be considered for any of the "Billboard" charts. At the time, instead of using Nielsen SoundScan or Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems (BDS), "Billboard" obtained its data from manual reports filled out by radio stations and stores. For different musical genres, which stations and stores are used separates the charts; each musical genre has a core audience or retail group. Each genre's department at "Billboard" is headed up by a chart manager, who makes these determinations. According to the 50th-anniversary issue of "Billboard", prior to the official implementation of SoundScan tracking in November 1991, many radio stations and retail stores removed songs from their manual reports after the associated record labels stopped promoting a particular single. Thus, songs fell quickly after peaking and had shorter chart lives. In 1990, the country singles chart was the first chart to use SoundScan and BDS. They were followed by the Hot 100 and the R&B chart in 1991. Today, all of the "Billboard" charts use this technology.


title: Billboard charts

text: Before September 1995, singles were allowed to chart in the week they first went on sale based on airplay points alone. The policy was changed in September 1995, to only allow a single to debut after a full week of sales on combined sales and airplay points. This allowed several tracks to debut at number one.


title: Billboard charts

text: In December 1998, the policy was further modified to allow tracks to chart on the basis of airplay alone without a commercial release. This change was made to reflect the changing realities of the music business. Previous to this, several substantial radio and MTV hits had not appeared on the "Billboard" chart at all, because many major labels chose not to release them as standalone singles, hoping their unavailability would spur greater album sales. Not offering a popular song to the public as a single was unheard of before the 1970s. The genres that suffered most at the time were those that increasingly impacted pop culture, including new genres such as trip hop and grunge. Among the many pre-1999 songs that had ended up in this Hot 100 limbo were The Cardigans' "Lovefool", Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" (which peaked at 42), Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris" (which hit number 9), OMC's "How Bizarre", Sugar Ray's "Fly", and No Doubt's "Don't Speak".


title: Billboard charts

text: On June 25, 2015, "Billboard" made changes in its chart requirements. The official street date for all new album releases was moved from Tuesday to Friday in the United States. For all sales-based charts (ranking both albums and tracks), "Billboard" and Nielsen changed the chart reporting period to cover the first seven days of an album's release. As a result of the changes, The "Billboard" 200, top albums sales, genre-based albums, digital songs, genre-based downloads, streaming songs, and genre-focused streaming surveys ran on a Friday-to-Thursday cycle. Radio Songs, which informs the Hot 100, synced to the Monday-to-Sunday period after formerly covering Wednesday to Tuesday. All other radio charts and genre tallies followed the Monday-to-Sunday cycle. The move was made to coincide with the IFPI's move to have all singles and albums released globally on Fridays.


title: Billboard charts

text: Starting on February 12, 2005, "Billboard" changed its methodology to include paid digital downloads from digital music retailers such as Rhapsody, AmazonMP3, and iTunes. This change also allowed songs to chart with or without the help of radio airplay. This meant that a song did not need radio airplay to be eligible to chart on the "Billboard" Hot 100. With this policy change, a song could chart based on digital downloads alone.


title: Billboard charts

text: On July 31, 2007, "Billboard" changed its methodology for the Hot 100 chart to include digital streams. The digital information at the time was obtained from Yahoo and AOL's streaming platforms. This change was made exclusively to the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart. The effect of this chart change was minuscule at the time because it was estimated to account for 5% of the chart's total points.


title: Billboard charts

text: In October 2012, "Billboard" significantly changed the methodology for their country, rock, Latin, and rap charts, when it incorporated sales of digital downloads and streaming plays into what had been airplay-only charts. Another change was that rather than measuring airplay only from radio stations of the particular genre, the new methodology measures airplay from all radio formats. This methodology was extended to their Christian and gospel charts in late 2013. These methodology changes resulted in higher positions on the genre charts for songs with crossover appeal to other genres and radio formats (especially pop) at the expense of songs that appeal almost exclusively to core fans of the given genre, which was controversial with those devotees.


title: Billboard charts

text: On February 20, 2013, "Billboard" announced another change in the methodology for its charts that incorporated YouTube video streaming data into the determination of ranking positions on streaming charts. The incorporation of YouTube streaming data enhanced a formula that includes on-demand audio streaming and online radio streaming. The YouTube video streams that used in this methodology are official video streams, Vevo on YouTube streams, and user-generated clips that use authorized audio. "Billboard" said this change was made to further reflect the divergent platforms of music consumption in today's world.


title: Billboard charts

text: In December 2010, "Billboard" announced a new chart titled "Social 50", which ranks the most active artists on the world's leading social networking sites. The Social 50 chart tallies artists' popularity using their weekly additions of friends/fans/followers, along with weekly artist page views and weekly song plays on Myspace, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and iLike.


title: Billboard charts

text: In January 2011, "Billboard" introduced another chart called "Uncharted", which lists new and developing artists, who are yet to appear on any major "Billboard" chart, "...regardless of their country of origin." The ranking is based on the views and fans on social networking websites like Myspace and Facebook. It has since been discontinued.


title: Billboard charts

text: In May 2014, after the Korea K-Pop Hot 100 chart was discontinued in the U.S., the "Billboard" K-Town column continued to provide chart information for K-pop artists on all "Billboard" charts.


title: Billboard charts

text: In June 2019, "Billboard" launched the Top Songwriters Chart and the Top Producers Chart, based on weekly activity on the Hot 100 and other "Hot" genre charts.


title: Billboard charts

text: In October 2021, "Billboard" launched the Hot Trending Songs charts, utilising real-time music-related trends and conversations on Twitter.


title: Volkssturm

text: The (; "people's storm") was a levée en masse national militia established by Nazi Germany during the last months of World War II. It was not set up by the German Army, the ground component of the combined German "Wehrmacht" armed forces, but by the Nazi Party on the orders of Adolf Hitler and established on 25 September 1944. It was staffed by conscripting males between the ages of 16 and 60 years, who were not already serving in some military unit. The "Volkssturm" comprised one of the final components of the total war promulgated by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, part of a Nazi endeavor to overcome their enemies' military strength through force of will. "Volkssturm" units fought unsuccessful futile battles against the Allied forces at the end of the war and on several occasions, its members participated in atrocities accompanied by German civilians and the Hitler Youth, which were overseen by members of the SS or Gau leaders.


title: Volkssturm

text: The new "Volkssturm" drew inspiration from the old Prussian "Landsturm" of 1813–1815, that fought in the liberation wars against Napoleon, mainly as guerrilla forces. Plans to form a "Landsturm" national militia in eastern Germany as a last resort to boost fighting strength were first proposed in 1944 by General Heinz Guderian, chief of the General Staff. The Army did not have enough men to resist the Soviet onslaught. So, additional categories of men were called into service, including those in non-essential jobs, those previously deemed unfit, over-age, or under-age, and those recovering from wounds. The "Volkssturm" had existed, on paper, since around 1925, but it was only after Hitler ordered Martin Bormann to recruit six million men for this militia that the group became a physical reality. While the regime formally established the "Volkssturm" on 25 September, it was not announced to the public until 16 October 1944. The official launch date was two days later, 18 October 1944 and was chosen by Heinrich Himmler to evoke parallels with the popular uprising which, according to popular legend, ended French rule over Germany and culminated in the Battle of Leipzig on the same date in 1813. Despite the appeal for this last-ditch effort, the intended strength of "six million" members was never attained.


title: Volkssturm

text: Joseph Goebbels and other propagandists depicted the "Volkssturm" as an outburst of enthusiasm and the will to resist. Historian Daniel Blatman writes that the "Volkssturm" was portrayed as the "incarnation" of the greater "Volksgemeinschaft", whereby "all differences in social status, origin, or age and unite all people on the basis of race. It was the service framework for members of the local community, who had been raised together and lived side by side, and now bore arms together in order to defend the community." In some regards, the "Volkssturm" was the culmination of Goebbels' "total war" speech of February 1943 and its formation was "given a big build-up" in the November 1944 newsreel episode of "Die Deutsche Wochenschau". Consistent messages of final victory from various Nazi media outlets accompanying the "Volkssturm's" creation provided a psychological rallying point for the civilian population. While it had some marginal effect on morale, it was undermined by the recruits' visible lack of uniforms and weaponry. Nazi themes of death, transcendence, and commemoration were given full play to encourage the fight. Many German civilians realized that this was a desperate attempt to turn the course of the war. Sardonic old men would remark, "We old monkeys are the Führer’s newest weapon" (in German this rhymes: ""Wir alten Affen sind des Führers neue Waffen""). A popular joke about the "Volkssturm" went "Why is the "Volkssturm" Germany's most precious resource? Because its members have silver in their hair, gold in their mouths, and lead in their bones."


title: Volkssturm

text: For these militia units to be effective, they needed not only strength in numbers, but also fanaticism. During the early stages of "Volkssturm" planning, it became apparent that units lacking morale would lack combat effectiveness. To generate fanaticism, "Volkssturm" units were placed under direct command of the local Nazi party officials, the "Gauleiter" and "Kreisleiter". The new "Volkssturm" was also to become a nationwide organization, with Heinrich Himmler, as Replacement Army commander, responsible for armament and training. Though nominally under party control, "Volkssturm" units were placed under "Wehrmacht" command when engaged in action. Aware that a "people's army" would not be able to withstand the onslaught of the modern army wielded by the Allies, Hitler issued the following order towards the end of 1944:


title: Volkssturm

text: With the Nazi Party in charge of organizing the "Volkssturm", each "Gauleiter", or Nazi Party District Leader, was charged with the leadership, enrollment, and organization of the "Volkssturm" in their district. The largest "Volkssturm" unit seems to have corresponded to the next smaller territorial subdivision of the Nazi Party organization—the "Kreis". The basic unit was a battalion of 642 men. Units were mostly composed of members of the Hitler Youth, invalids, the elderly, or men who had previously been considered unfit for military service. On 12 February 1945, the Nazis conscripted German women and girls into the auxiliaries of the "Volkssturm". Correspondingly, girls as young as 14 years were trained in the use of small arms, panzerfaust, machine guns, and hand grenades from December 1944 through May 1945.


title: Volkssturm

text: From the militia's inception until the spring of 1945, Himmler and Bormann engaged in a power-struggle over the jurisdictional control over the "Volkssturm" regarding security and police powers in Germany and the occupied territories; a contest which Himmler and his SS more or less won on one level (police and security), but lost to Bormann on another (mobilizing reserve forces). Historian David Yelton described the situation as two ranking officers at the helm of a sinking ship fighting over command.


title: Volkssturm

text: Benito Mussolini suggested, through his son Vittorio, then general secretary of the Republican Fascist party's German branch, that 30,000 Italians should be added to the "Volkssturm" in defense of Germany. However, no evidence exists that this offer was implemented.


title: Volkssturm

text: The "Volkssturm" "uniform" was only a black armband with the German words "Deutscher Volkssturm Wehrmacht" ("German People's Storm Armed Forces"). The German government tried to issue as many of its members as possible with military uniforms of all sorts, ranging from "Feldgrau" to camouflage types. A telling example of the "Volkssturm's" piecemeal outfitting occurred in the Rhineland, where one unit was provided with "pre-war black SS uniforms, brown Organization Todt coats, blue Air Force auxiliary caps, and French steel helmets." Most members of the "Volkssturm", especially elderly members, had no uniform and were not supplied, so they generally wore either work uniforms (including railway workers, policemen and firemen), Hitler Youth uniforms, old uniforms or their parts from the time of the First World War or their civilian clothing and usually carried with them their own personal rucksacks, blankets, cooking-equipment, etc.


title: Volkssturm

text: Typically, members of the "Volkssturm" received only very basic military training. It included a brief indoctrination and training on the use of basic weapons such as the Karabiner 98k rifle and "Panzerfaust". Because of continuous fighting and weapon shortages, weapon training was often minimal. There was also a lack of instructors, meaning that weapons training was sometimes done by World War I veterans drafted into service themselves. Often "Volkssturm" members were only able to familiarize themselves with their weapons when in actual combat.


title: Volkssturm

text: There was no standardization of any kind and units were issued only what equipment was available. This was true of every form of equipment—"Volkssturm" members were required to bring their own uniforms and culinary equipment etc. This resulted in the units looking very ragged and, instead of boosting civilian morale, it often reminded people of Germany's desperate state. Armament was equally haphazard: though some Karabiner 98ks were on hand, members were also issued older Gewehr 98s and 19th-century Gewehr 71s and Steyr-Mannlicher M1888s, as well as Dreyse M1907 pistols. In addition there was a plethora of Soviet, British, Belgian, French, Italian, and other weapons that had been captured by German forces during the war. The Germans had also developed cheap but reasonably effective "Volkssturm" weapons, such as MP 3008 machine pistols and "Volkssturmgewehr" rifles. These were completely stamped and machine-pressed constructions (in the 1940s, industrial processes were much cruder than today, so a firearm needed great amounts of semi-artisanal work to be actually reliable). The "Volkssturm" troops were nominally supplied when and where possible by both the "Wehrmacht" and the SS. By the end of January 1945, the "Volkssturm" had only accumulated 40,500 rifles and 2,900 machine guns amid this mish-mash of foreign and outdated assemblage of weapons.


title: Volkssturm

text: When units had completed their training and received armament, members took a customary oath to Hitler and were then dispatched into combat. Teenagers and middle-aged men were sent to separate training camps, some of whom received as little as ten to fourteen days of training before being sent to fight. Unlike most English-speaking countries, Germany had universal military service for all young men for several generations, so many of the older members would have had at least basic military training from when they served in the German Army and many would have been veterans of the First World War. "Volkssturm" units were supposed to be used only in their own districts, but many were sent directly to the front lines. Ultimately, it was their charge to confront the overwhelming power of the British, Canadian, Soviet, American, and French armies alongside "Wehrmacht" forces to either turn the tide of the war or set a shining example for future generations of Germans and expunge the defeat of 1918 by fighting to the last, dying before surrendering. It was an apocalyptic goal which some of those assigned to the "Volkssturm" took to heart. Unremittingly fanatical members of the "Volkssturm" refused to abandon the Nazi ethos unto the dying days of Nazi Germany, and in a number of instances took brutal "police actions" against German civilians deemed defeatists or cowards.


title: Volkssturm

text: On some occasions, members of the "Volkssturm" showed tremendous courage and a determined will to resist, more so even than soldiers in the "Wehrmacht". The "Volkssturm" battalion 25/235 for instance, started out with 400 men but fought on until there were only 10 men remaining. Fighting at Küstrin between 30 January to 29 March 1945, militia units made up mostly of the "Volkssturm" resisted for nearly two months. Losses were upwards of 60 percent for the "Volkssturm" at Kolberg, roughly 1900 of them died at Breslau, and during the Battle of Königsberg (Kaliningrad), another 2400 members of the "Volkssturm" were killed. At other times along the western front particularly, "Volkssturm" troops would cast their arms aside and disappear into the chaos. Youthful ardor and fanaticism among Hitler Youth members fighting with the "Volkssturm" or an insatiable sense of duty from old men proved tragic sometimes. An example shared by historian Stephen Fritz is instructive in this case:


title: Volkssturm

text: In one representative village just north of Bad Windsheim, the Herbolzheim "Volkssturm" unit, with its customary composition of elderly men and young boys under the influence of a few regular army soldiers, foolishly declared the town a fortress and laid mines in the streets. As American troops approached in midmorning on April 12, shots from the village rang out. Angered, the Americans commenced a two-hour artillery barrage complemented by aerial attacks that gutted the town with incendiary and high-explosive bombs. With their village engulfed in flames, the civilian inhabitants, mostly the elderly, women, and children, fled in search of shelter to the surrounding fields, all the while under American fire.


title: Volkssturm

text: Not every "Volkssturm" unit was suicidal or apocalyptic in outlook as the war drew closer to its end. Many of them lost their enthusiasm for the fight when it became clear that the Allies had won, prompting them to lay down their weapons and surrender – they also feared being captured by Allied forces and tortured or executed as partisans. Duty to their communities and sparing them from horrors like at Bad Windsheim also played a part in their capitulation, as did self-preservation.


title: Volkssturm

text: Their most extensive use was during the Battle of Berlin, where "Volkssturm" units fought in many parts of the city. This battle was particularly devastating to its formations; however, many members fought to the death out of fear of being captured by the Soviets, holding out to the very end, which was in keeping with their covenant. The "Volkssturm" had a strength of about 60,000 in the Berlin area, formed into 92 battalions, of which about 30 battalions of "Volkssturm I" (those with some weapons) were sent to forward positions, while those of "Volkssturm II" (those without weapons) remained in the inner city. One of the few substantive fighting units left to defend Berlin was the LVI Panzer Corps, which occupied the southeastern sector of the town, whereas the remaining parts of the city were being defended by what remained of the SS, the "Volkssturm", and the Hitler Youth formations. Nonetheless, a force of over 2.5 million Soviet troops, equipped with 6,250 tanks and over 40,000 artillery pieces were assigned to capture the city, and the diminished remnants of the "Wehrmacht" were no match for them. Meanwhile, Hitler denounced every perceived "betrayal" to the inhabitants of the "Führerbunker". Not eager to die what was thought to be a pointless death, many older members of the "Volkssturm" looked for places to hide from the approaching Soviet Army. Juxtaposed against the tragic image of Berlin holding out against all odds was the frequent exodus and capitulation of "Wehrmacht" soldiers and members of the "Volkssturm" in southern and western Germany.


title: Volkssturm

text: One notable and unusual "Volkssturm" unit in the Battle for Berlin was the 3/115 Siemensstadt Battalion. It comprised 770 men, mainly First World War veterans in their 50s who were reasonably fit factory workers, with experienced officers. Unlike most "Volkssturm" units it was quite well equipped and trained. It was formed into three rifle companies, a support company (with two infantry support guns, four infantry mortars and heavy machine guns), and a heavy weapons company (with four Soviet M-20 howitzers and a French De Bange 220 mm mortar). The battalion first engaged Soviet troops at Friedrichsfelde on 21 April and saw the heaviest fighting over the following two days. It held out until 2 May, by which time it was down to just 50 rifles and two light machine guns. The survivors fell back to join other "Volkssturm" units. 26 men from the battalion were awarded the Iron Cross. Allied bombing and Soviet artillery had reduced Berlin to rubble; meanwhile the final stand in Berlin dwindled to fighting against highly trained, battle-hardened Soviet troops on the brink of final victory, who viewed resistance fighters like the "Volkssturm" as terrorists in much the same way the Wehrmacht once had viewed potential partisans during Operation Barbarossa. Red Army soldiers called the Hitler Youth formations and members of the "Volkssturm" still fighting to the end in Berlin "totals" for being part of Germany's total mobilization effort.


title: Volkssturm

text: On several occasions, members of the "Volkssturm" either attempted to avert or participated in atrocities. During January 1945, thousands of prisoners were evacuated and force-marched from several smaller concentrations camps—which included Jesau, Seerappen, Schippenbeil, Gerdauen, and Helgenbeil—near Königsberg, many dying along the way. Upon reaching Palmnicken some 2,500 to 3,000 prisoners of the 5,000 that originally began the journey, were lodged in a factory. Mayor and local Nazi party chief, Kurt Friedrichs, wanted the SS to send these prisoners on their way since the Red Army was not far away. When local "Volkssturm" leader Hans Feyerabend was ordered to transport the suffering prisoners out of the town, he refused to carry out the order and was heard exclaiming that he would not permit a massacre like the one at Katyn forest. Feyerabend even assigned "Volkssturm" guards to keep watch on the local Nazi party members, but this proved fruitless when Friedrich armed a group of Hitler Youth and likewise summoned the local SD elements, whose leaders then commanded the "Volkssturm" to help evacuate the prisoners. On 30 January 1945, after the "Volkssturm" left with Friedrich in charge, Feyerabend committed suicide; then between 30 January and 1 February the prisoners were murdered by the remaining assemblage of SS guards, Hitler Youth, and the local "Volkssturm" unit.


title: Volkssturm

text: When prisoners fell sick with typhus in the Styria Gau during February–March 1945, SS men, Hitler Youth, and "Volkssturm" units systematically murdered them. Under the orders of Loeben-district Kreisleiter, Otto Christandl, "Volkssturm" units in nearby Graz and Eisenerz assisted the Gestapo and Ukrainian Waffen-SS men in evacuating between 6,000 and 8,000 prisoners—being marched towards Mauthausen—from their region, many of whom were murdered during the journey when they collapsed from exhaustion.


title: Volkssturm

text: Sometime in early April 1945 as Allied forces approached the Mittelwerk facilities—where V2 rockets were being produced—the slave laborers from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp were force-marched from the western Harz by a collection of guards drawn from the military, the Hitler Youth, and the "Volkssturm". Approximately 40 kilometers north of Magdeburg in the village of Mieste, this motley assemblage of guards locked a thousand of these prisoners in a barn and burned them alive at the instruction of a local Nazi Party leader; this event came to be known as the Gardelegen massacre. At the town of Celle in Lower Saxony around the same time, members of the SS, SA, local police, Hitler Youth, and "Volkssturm" were aided by locals to "hunt down and shoot" prisoners who had fled into the local woodland after their transport train was bombed.


title: Volkssturm

text: Interrogated members of the "Volkssturm"—when questioned as to where the regular forces had gone—revealed that German soldiers surrendered to the Americans and British instead of the Red Army for fear of reprisals related to the atrocities they had committed in the Soviet Union.


title: Volkssturm

text: While Iron Crosses were being handed out in places like Berlin, other cities and towns like Parchim and Mecklenburg witnessed old elites, acting as military commandants over the Hitler Youth and "Volkssturm", asserting themselves and demanding that the defensive fighting stop so as to spare lives and property. Despite their efforts, the last four months of the war were an exercise in futility for the "Volkssturm", and the Nazi leadership's insistence to continue the fight to the bitter end contributed to an additional 1.23 million (approximated) deaths, half of them German military personnel and the other half from the "Volkssturm".


title: Volkssturm

text: In many small towns, when leading members of the "Volkssturm" refused to fight on against the superior forces of the Allies—part of an attempt to circumvent the "total destruction" of their home regions—they were tried and "summarily hanged" by party activists. Thousands were killed like this in Franken during the spring of 1945.


title: Grumman

text: The Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, later Grumman Aerospace Corporation, was a 20th century American producer of military and civilian aircraft. Founded on December 6, 1929, by Leroy Grumman and his business partners, it merged in 1994 with Northrop Corporation to form Northrop Grumman.


title: Grumman

text: Leroy Grumman worked for the Loening Aircraft Engineering Corporation beginning in 1920. In 1929, Keystone Aircraft Corporation bought Loening Aircraft and moved its operations from New York City to Bristol, Pennsylvania. Grumman and three other ex-Loening Aircraft employees, (Edmund Ward Poor, William Schwendler, and Jake Swirbul) started their own company in an old Cox-Klemin Aircraft Co. factory in Baldwin on Long Island, New York.


title: Grumman

text: The company registered as a business on December 6, 1929, and officially opened on January 2, 1930. While maintaining the business by welding aluminum tubing for truck frames, the company eagerly pursued contracts with the US Navy. Grumman designed the first practical floats with a retractable landing gear for the Navy, and this launched Grumman into the aviation market. The first Grumman aircraft was also for the Navy, the Grumman FF-1, a biplane with retractable landing gear developed at Curtiss Field in 1931. This was followed by a number of other successful designs.


title: Grumman

text: During World War II, Grumman became known for its "Cats" (Navy fighter aircraft): the F4F Wildcat and F6F Hellcat, the Grumman F7F Tigercat and Grumman F8F Bearcat, and also for its torpedo bomber, the Grumman TBF Avenger. Grumman ranked 22nd among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. Grumman's first jet aircraft was the F9F Panther; it was followed by the upgraded F9F/F-9 Cougar, and the F-11 Tiger in the 1950s. The company's big postwar successes came in the 1960s with the A-6 Intruder and E-2 Hawkeye and in the 1970s with the Grumman EA-6B Prowler and F-14 Tomcat. Grumman products were prominent in several feature movies including "The Final Countdown" in 1980, "Top Gun" in 1986, and "Flight of the Intruder" in 1990. The U.S. Navy still employs the Hawkeye as part of Carrier Air Wings on board aircraft carriers, while the U.S. Marine Corps, the last branch of service to fly the Prowler, retired it on March 8, 2019.


title: Grumman

text: Grumman was the chief contractor on the Apollo Lunar Module, the first spacecraft to land humans on the Moon. The firm received the contract on November 7, 1962, and built 13 lunar modules. Six of them successfully landed on the Moon, with one serving as a lifeboat on Apollo 13, after an explosion crippled the main Apollo spacecraft. LM-2, a test article which never flew in space, is displayed permanently in the Smithsonian Institution. As the Apollo program neared its end, Grumman was one of the main competitors for the contract to design and build the Space Shuttle, but lost to Rockwell International.


title: Grumman

text: In 1969, the company changed its name to Grumman Aerospace Corporation, and in 1978 it sold the Grumman-American Division to Gulfstream Aerospace. That same year, it acquired the bus manufacturer Flxible. The company built the Grumman LLV (Long Life Vehicle), a light transport mail truck designed for and used by the United States Postal Service. The LLV was produced from 1987 until 1994. Its intended service life was 24 years, but some of them were still in service in 2020. In 1983, Grumman sold Flxible for $40 million to General Automotive Corporation of Ann Arbor.


title: Grumman

text: In the 1950s, Grumman began production of Gulfstream business aircraft, starting with the Gulfstream I turboprop (Grumman model G-159) and the Gulfstream II jet (Grumman model G-1159). Gulfstream aircraft were operated by many companies, private individuals, and government agencies including various military entities and NASA. In addition, the Gulfstream I was operated by several regional airlines in scheduled passenger services. The Gulfstream I-C (Grumman model G-159C) version was "stretched" to carry 37 passengers.


title: Grumman

text: In 1978, Grumman sold Gulfstream to American Jet Industries, which adopted the Gulfstream name. Since 1999, Gulfstream has been a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics.


title: Grumman

text: For much of the Cold War period, Grumman was the largest corporate employer on Long Island. Grumman's products were considered so reliable and ruggedly built that the company was often referred to as the "Grumman Iron Works".


title: Grumman

text: As the company grew, it moved to Valley Stream, New York, then Farmingdale, New York, finally to Bethpage, New York, with the testing and final assembly at the Naval Weapons Station in Calverton, New York, all located on Long Island. At its peak in 1986 it employed 23,000 people on Long Island and occupied in structures on it leased from the U.S. Navy in Bethpage.


title: Grumman

text: The end of the Cold War at the beginning of the 1990s reduced defense spending and led to a wave of mergers as aerospace companies shrank in number; in 1994 Northrop bought Grumman for $2.1 billion to form Northrop Grumman, after Northrop topped a $1.9 billion offer from Martin Marietta.


title: Grumman

text: The new company closed almost all of its facilities on Long Island and converted the Bethpage plant to a residential and office complex, with its headquarters becoming the corporate headquarters for Cablevision and the Calverton plant being turned into a business/industrial complex. Former aircraft hangars have become Grumman Studios, a film and television production center. A portion of the airport property has been used for the Grumman Memorial Park.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: Satya () is a 1998 Indian Hindi-language crime film, produced and directed by Ram Gopal Varma; written by Saurabh Shukla and Anurag Kashyap. It stars J. D. Chakravarthy, Urmila Matondkar with Manoj Bajpayee, Saurabh Shukla, Aditya Shrivastava and Paresh Rawal. It is the first of Varma's "Gangster" trilogy about organised crime in India. The film follows Satya (Chakravarthy), an immigrant who comes to Mumbai looking for a job, befriends Bhiku Mhatre (Bajpayee) and is drawn into the Mumbai underworld.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: Varma initially planned to make an action film, but decided to make a film focusing on felonies after meeting some criminals. He hired Kashyap and Shukla to write the film, and opted to use lesser-known actors. The soundtrack and score were composed by Vishal Bhardwaj and Sandeep Chowta, respectively, while the lyrics were written by Gulzar. Its early cinematography was done by Gerard Hooper, who was replaced by Mazhar Kamran. The film was shot in Mumbai on a budget of .


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: "Satya" was released on 3 July 1998 to critical acclaim, particularly for its realistic depiction of the Indian underworld. It was a commercial success, grossing , and helped launch a number of careers (especially for Kashyap and Bajpayee). The film won six Filmfare Awards and a National Film Award. Over the years, "Satya" has been regarded as a cult film, and is considered one of the greatest films ever made by a number of critics and scholars in Indian cinema. Film critic Rajeev Masand called it one of the most influential films of the past ten years. It inspired several sequels like "Company" (2002) and "D" (2005), and a direct sequel, "Satya 2" (2013).


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: Satya (J. D. Chakravarthy) arrives in Mumbai in search of work and finds a job at a dance bar. Jagga (Jeeva), a criminal, throws the glass of whiskey that Satya prepared for him in his face because he dislikes the taste. Later another small time goon Pakya, (Sushant Singh), who works for Jagga, demands money from Satya. Satya refuses to pay and slashes Pakya's face with a razor. Pakya tells Jagga about the attack, and Jagga's goons beat Satya. A film producer is murdered by Bapu (Rajesh Joshi) and Vitthal Manjrekar (Sanjay Mishra) on the orders of Bhiku Mhatre (Manoj Bajpayee). Manjrekar is captured by police during the getaway and admits Mhatre's involvement to Inspector Khandilkar (Aditya Srivastava) during questioning; Mhatre is arrested.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: Jagga makes fun of Satya when he is serving drinks; they fight, and he later frames Satya for procuring. Mhatre and Satya fight in prison, and Mhatre, impressed by Satya's courage, arranges his release through lawyer Chandrakant Mule (Makrand Deshpande). Satya is given a flat by Kallu Mama (Saurabh Shukla) and meets Vidya (Urmila Matondkar), his neighbour and an aspiring singer. Manjrekar denies any link to Mhatre in court, and Mhatre is released. With Mhatre's help, Satya shoots Jagga in the dance bar and joins Mhatre's gang. Malhotra (Mithilesh Chaturvedi), a builder whom Kallu Mama extorted, asks them to meet him for the money and Mhatre, Satya and the gang are ambushed. Under questioning, they admit to working for Guru Narayan (Raju Mavani). Vidya is initially rejected by music director Renusagar (Neeraj Vora), who later signs her for a project after Satya threatens him. Vidya and Satya begin a romantic relationship.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: Guru Narayan arrives in Mumbai. Mhatre and his gang are ready to kill him but are forced to abandon their plan on orders from politician Bhau Thakurdas Jhawle (Govind Namdeo). Bhau asks him and Guru Narayan not to endanger his career with a gang war. Guru Narayan says (over the phone, to Bhau) that he wants to kill Satya to avenge Jagga's murder. This conversation is not heard by Mhatre, who (under Bhau's pressure), agrees to call it evens with Guru Narayan.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: However, Satya later tells Mhatre that if they do not kill Guru Narayan, he will kill them. Mhatre gang, then kill Guru Narayan. This brings Mhatre and Satya in direct confrontation with Bhau. A new police commissioner, Amodh Shukla (Paresh Rawal), is appointed because of the increase in crime. In a strategic move, Bhau forgives Mhatre and his gang for their earlier actions. The police encounter a group of criminals, including Mhatre gang member Chander Khote (Snehal Dabi). At Satya's suggestion, Shukla is shot by his gang to alarm the police. Bhau wins the election by a landslide, thanks to Mhatre's help.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: Satya and Vidya go to the cinema. When they step out for a drink during the intermission, Pakya sees Satya and informs the police. Inspector Khandilkar arrives and orders all the doors locked except one, expecting to apprehend Satya when he leaves the cinema through the single open door. Satya shoots a blank cartridge at the ground, creating a stampede, and escapes with Vidya. He is afraid of losing her after the incident, and Mhatre offers to move them to Dubai. Mhatre arrives at Bhau's house that night to celebrate his election victory with Kallu Mama and Chandrakant Mule, and the politician kills him for disobeying his order and killing Narayan. Satya tells Vidya he has a job in Dubai when the police arrive, and he is forced to escape. Vidya learns from Inspector Khandilkar that Satya is a criminal.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: Satya arrives at Kallu Mama's residence. Mule orders Mama to kill Satya but Mama rebels and kills Mule instead, prompting the two to avenge Mhatre's murder. During Ganesh Chaturthi at a beach, Satya kills Bhau and is wounded. He and Mama leave; Mama plans to help Satya board a ship to Dubai, but Satya insists on going to Vidya's house first. Mama waits in the car while Satya knocks on her door. Vidya refuses to answer and, while they argue, Khandilkar arrives and shoots and kills Mama. Satya manages to break down Vidya's door, however, Khandilkar shoots him, and he collapses a few inches from her and dies.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: Director Ram Gopal Varma, fascinated with Mumbai, wanted to return to making action films after a long break. While he was planning the film, Varma encountered some people from the underworld and became interested in their human side. Music producer and singer Gulshan Kumar was shot dead outside the Jeeteshwar Mahadev temple in Mumbai on 12 August 1997. Varma learned about the murder from Jhamu Sughand, who had produced "Rangeela". Sughand told Varma that Gulshan had awakened at about 7 am and told the producer he would meet a singer at 8 am and a friend at 8:30; he would then go to the temple and meet him afterwards. Varma then thought, "If Gulshan had woken up at 7 am, then at what time would the killer have woken up?" He then decided to make a film about gangsters and, as an Ayn Rand fan, wanted to "put Howard Roark in the underworld".


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: Varma had intended to leave songs out of the film, but " ... at that time it was very difficult to make a film without a song since the music companies were almost 'ruling the industry' and it was impossible to promote a song-less film". With a basic story in his mind, the director wanted Vijay Tendulkar to write the film's dialogue; he admired Tendulkar's work, particularly "Ardh Satya" (1983). However, Tendulkar was unable to work on "Satya". The film was edited by a newcomer Apurva Asrani, who edited the trailer for "Daud" and Bhanodaya. Impressed by his work, Varma offered Apurva the editing position on "Satya" when he was nineteen years old. Varma incorporated several scenes from real life in the film including the scene were Mhatre abuses one of his dead friend on how he could die. One of his friends told him that his neighbor was a criminal whom he used to greet every day but could not guess that he was involved in crime. Varma liked this angle and used it in the film as well. Varma said that the characters in the film "are at a very low level of the gangster hierarchy". On the film's title, Varma said that he named it "Satya" for two reasons: one being a homage to "Ardh Satya" and the other one was a namesake girl whom he used to love in college who did not love him back.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: A struggling Manoj Bajpayee auditioned for the role of Paresh Rawal's henchman in "Daud", and Varma asked him if he had done any other film work; Bajpayee mentioned his supporting role in "Bandit Queen". Varma, impressed by his performance in "Bandit Queen", said that he wanted to give him a bigger role and advised him not to do "Daud". However, Bajpayee wanted to appear in the film and Varma agreed. After filming was completed, Varma told Bajpayee that he regretted giving him a minor role and promised him a prominent role in his next film. Bajpayee suggested newcomer Anurag Kashyap's name to Varma for the screenplay. Varma liked Kashyap's "Auto Narayan", and signed him to write the script. Although Kashyap was already writing the film, Varma felt that he needed a more experienced writer and asked Saurabh Shukla. Shukla was initially hesitant, since he wrote films he could direct. He went to Varma's office to decline, but the director told him that he wanted to cast him in the film and outlined the plot. Shukla then agreed to do the film, since he was "stuck" with the narration. They went to Varma's farmhouse in Hyderabad and wrote the first draft in a week without doing research, since Kashyap felt that a gangster's psychology is "very similar to anybody else". Bajpayee had never met any gangster in his life and was not good in speaking Marathi language, although he was playing a Maharashtrian character. He then decided to first work on his external look and grew a beard, a heavy face and curly hair. He took suggestions from his maid on how to get the nuances of the Marathi accent and worked on the character for three to four months before filming began.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: Varma wanted to cast new actors in the film. He cast J.D. Chakravarthy, who had worked with Varma on "Shiva" (1990), in the title role. Chakravarthy said that he tried to imitate Varma to prepare for the role. The title role was initially planned for Bajpayee, but after the characters clarified for Varma he felt that he needed someone more fluent in Hindi for Bhiku Mhatre; Chakravarthy, a native Telugu speaker, was not sufficiently fluent in Hindi. Bajpayee was unhappy with the decision since he wanted to play the title role, but agreed to remain on the film because no other role was available. He based the character of Bhiku Mhatre on a person from his hometown who was a Jeetendra fan, wore coloured T-shirts and was short-tempered; he took the accent from his cook who was from Kolhapur. He also gathered his own costume from 25,000 given to him by the production. When Shukla and Kashyap were discussing authentic-sounding character names, an office boy named Bhiku came in, and they decided to use his name for a character. Although the female lead was initially offered to Mahima Chaudhary, but later replaced by Urmila Matondkar, with whom he had worked in "Rangeela" and "Daud". Newcomer Sushant Singh was cast as Mhatre's henchman. Matondkar's costume was designed by Manish Malhotra.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: "Satya" was filmed in Mumbai during the monsoon season. The scene where Sushant Singh's face is slashed by Chakravarthy was supposed to end there, but Varma forgot to say "cut" and the rest of the scene was improvised by the actors. The film's opening montage, when Chakravarthy arrives in the city, was given to Kashyap to shoot. He planned the scene and filmed it with the cinematographer. The scene was very different from what Kashyap had imagined because of his inexperience in filming. Varma instructed him to re-shoot it and taught him how to communicate with the cameraman. Several scenes in the film were improvised, including the entire death scene of Bhiku Mhatre.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: Bajpayee, who has acrophobia, was apprehensive while filming a scene for two hours where he is standing at the edge of a cliff. "Satya" climactic scene was filmed during Ganesh Chaturthi, when the team recreated the Juhu beach with about 500 junior artists. The song "Kallu Mama" was filmed by Varma himself because the cinematographer was absent on the day of the shoot. The film's final scene to be shot, the song was largely improvised because the actors had been drinking. "Satya" was filmed in 50 days. The scene in the beginning of the film where Manjrekar and Bappu murder a film producer on a busy street was shot on a set; the street was created inside the studio, with parked cars belonging to the film crew. The first cinematographer was American Gerard Hooper, recommended to Varma by Kannan Iyer (who had written "Daud"). Hooper roamed Mumbai, filming the city even when no shooting was scheduled. However, he could not devote enough time to the project and left when it was thirty percent complete. Mazhar Kamran was the cinematographer for the rest of the film. According to Shukla, the film was shot on celluloid with "very low-light" and "low aperture."


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: The film's soundtrack was composed by Vishal Bhardwaj, with lyrics by Gulzar. Sandeep Chowta composed the background score, which was released on the Venus Worldwide Entertainment label on 3 July 1998. The album has six tracks, including one instrumental. The film's 23-track background score was released as a separate album, "Satya: The Sound", in November 1998. The singers were Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Suresh Wadkar, Mano, Hariharan and Bhupinder Singh.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: It was the second soundtrack produced by the Gulzar-Bhardwaj collaboration; the first was "Maachis" (1996). An article in "The Hindu" on the art of film scoring mentioned "Satya": "Interestingly (and hopefully) Indian films are just making a start with original soundtracks: Sandeep Chowta's background score for Ram Gopal Varma's 'Satya. According to Rediff.com, "Satya" "set the standards for background score" and the film's throbbing score "took the audience inside the mind of its characters. Every time a bullet was shot or there were close-ups of actors, one could hear the haunting score, which had a hallucinatory effect on the audience."


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: A test screening of "Satya" rough cut was shown to 60 people at the Dimple theatre in Bandra. The response was negative; the audience thought the film advocated amorality, and portions of its second half were re-shot. "Satya" was released in India on 3 July 1998 on a commission basis, so distributors would not lose money. The film targeted an urban audience, and dubbed Telugu and Tamil-language versions were released in their regional markets. It was dubbed in English for screenings at international film festivals, with Vivek Oberoi dubbing one of the characters. "Satya" was part of the Indian Panorama section at the 1998 International Film Festival of India.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: The Central Board of Film Certification retained its strong language and violence, since its members found them an integral part of the film. "Satya" received an A (adults-only) certificate, with no objections from the board. Star Plus acquired the film's satellite-telecast rights, and it was telecast on 26 December 1998 concurrently with theatres. Several cast and crew members attended the film's premiere at the Eros Cinema, where it received a good audience response. Its DVD was released on 22 September 2006.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: "Satya" opened to praise from film critics. Shobhaa De wrote in her review, ""Satya" spoke the language of the streets-rough, crude, brutal. And yet, did not offend sensibilities. It perfectly captured the savagery of what has become our daily reality while also uncovering the final futility and pathos of mind-less gang wars." In his review, Khalid Mohammed wrote: "Satya is a gritty, hellishly exciting film which stings and screams. No one will go away from it unprovoked or unmoved." According to Anupama Chopra, "The maverick director ... has broken all Bollywood rules this time... "Satya" is an exercise in integrated aesthetics. It has a decidedly realistic feel and taut pacing." Suparn Verma of Rediff.com wrote, ""Satya" is a culmination of Ram Gopal Varma's work to date. His characters have the intensity and anger of "Shiva", and the Urmila-Chakravathy relationship is better tuned version of what he did in "Drohi"". Another reviewer called to the film a "no punches pulled movie mirroring, authentically, the visage of a sick society."


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: Its retrospective reviews have also been positive. Jai Arjun Singh wrote, "Ram Gopal Varma shattered movie tastes with it, inventing a new language", and he called it his "favourite Indian gangster film". Raja Sen, giving the film a five-out-of-five rating, called "Satya" "... a visceral ride up the ranks of Mumbai's underworld, a film that influenced every gangster film after it, and one where all the elements-performances, characters, music, cinematography, action-came together very memorably indeed." At the 20 years of the film's release, Sukanya Verma


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: wrote: "Shot in a blue-brown palette, the clever compositions - a mix of cool camera angles, hand-held view, long shots and noir lighting - capture the stifling complexity and conflicting emotions of its characters."


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: The film, made on a budget of , earned an estimated . It did "record-breaking" business in Mumbai, with first-week occupancy rate of 85 percent and earnings of . "Satya" earned on fifteen screens in one week in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, and the film benefited from the government of Maharashtra's entertainment tax exemption. It earned in its second week, with a 97 percent occupancy rate in its third week. "Satya" ran for eleven weeks, when it earned . The film did 65 percent of its business on the Mumbai circuit, netting over in the city. Declared a box-office hit, it was one of 1998's highest-grossing Indian films.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: Although "Satya" is known for its realistic depiction of the Mumbai underworld, Varma has often said that his films do not glorify crime. In his book, "Studying Indian Cinema", Omar Ahmed wrote that unlike American crime films (where success is measured by the accumulation of wealth), "Satya" is about individual survival; Ahmed called it a "post-modern gangster film." The title character's background remains a mystery throughout the film, and his and other characters' location in the city is unspecified. In her book "Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City", Ranjani Mazumdar wrote that "Satya" Mumbai resembles a "documentary montage of claustrophobic spaces" with "documentary-styled visuals".


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: The film's characters speak in a local, tapori dialect of Hindi. In his book, "Lunch with a Bigot", Amitava Kumar wrote that "Satya" language of abuse "erupts more than the guns exploding". The authors of "Locating Cultural Change: Theory, Method, Process" compared the characters of Amod Shukla and Khandilkar to former Mumbai police commissioner Rakesh Maria. Varma used Sudhir Mishra's 1996 film, "Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin", as a reference point for "Satya".


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: "Satya" is considered a modern masterpiece by several critics, and one of the best films of the 1990s. It has achieved cult status, and is cited as one of the best Indian gangster films for its realistic portrayal of violence; "paving the way" for future gangster films. Reviewing Varma's 2008 film, "Contract", critic Rajeev Masand called "Satya" one of the most influential films of the past ten years. The film introduced a new genre, a variation of "film noir" which has been called "Mumbai noir". "Satya" was a breakthrough film for Manoj Bajpayee. Kay Kay Menon credited his role as a turning point for other method actors: "If it were not for Manoj's brilliant performance in "Satya", actors like Irrfan and me might still be waiting to be accepted. Manoj opened the doors for us." His performance as Bhiku Mhatre (with his line, ""Mumbai ka king kaun? Bhiku Mhatre""; "Who is king of Mumbai? Bhiku Mhatre") is considered one of the most memorable in Hindi cinema. Filmmaker Karan Johar placed "Satya" in his list of the 11 films that changed Bollywood forever, calling it "quite simply the mother of all underworld films."


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: Music director and composer Vishal Bhardwaj named his studio Satya Studio, after the film. "Satya" also gave 24-year-old writer Anurag Kashyap his Bollywood break: "I learnt everything to do with films while working with [Varma] on "[Satya]" and I still reflect in my movies what I learnt during the making of [the film]." Meghna Gulzar said that in the song "Kallu Mama", she could smell the beer on the character's breath. The film also propelled the career of editor Apurva Asrani, since it was his first. Reviewing "Satya 2", critic Paloma Sharma wrote: ""Satya 2" is as bad as "Satya" was good". "Satya" is also credited for a trend toward Hindi films with no stars, high concepts and low budgets. After seeing the film, Shah Rukh Khan told Chakravathy that if "you want to ruin this film, you should replace yourself with me in it". Amitabh Bachchan called Kashyap with praise. British director Danny Boyle cited "Satya" as an inspiration for his 2008 Academy Award-winning "Slumdog Millionaire". "Satya" "slick, often mesmerizing" portrayal of the Mumbai underworld, which included gritty, realistic "brutality and urban violence," influenced Boyle's depiction of the Mumbai underworld.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: "Satya" was on IBN Live's 2013 list of the 100 greatest Indian films of all time, in the "100 Filmfare Days" series and on the "70 iconic movies of independent India" list. It was mentioned in Rachel Dwyer's "100 Bollywood Films" (where she called it a "masterpiece"), and in critic and author Shubhra Gupta's "50 Films That Changed Bollywood, 1995-2015".


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: In 2021, critic Uday Bhatia wrote a book titled "Bullets Over Bombay: Satya and the Hindi Film Gangster" about the making of the film.


title: Satya (1998 film)

text: "Satya" was the first film of Varma's "Gangster" series. It was followed by two other films – "Company" (2002) and "D" (2005) – and a sequel, "Satya 2" (2013). "Company", starring Mohanlal, Manisha Koirala, Vivek Oberoi and Ajay Devgn, was loosely based on Dawood Ibrahim's D-Company and received positive reviews. It was followed by "D", starring Randeep Hooda and also produced by Varma, which was less successful than its predecessors. "Satya 2" was a critical and commercial failure. According to Saibal Chatterjee, ""Satya", the ultimate guns-and-gangs saga, was clearly in no need of re-interpretation."


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: The 1896 Summer Olympics (), officially known as the Games of the I Olympiad () and commonly known as Athens 1896 (), was the first international Olympic Games held in modern history. Organised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which had been created by French aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin, it was held in Athens, Greece, from 6 to 15 April 1896.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Fourteen nations (according to the IOC, though the number is subject to interpretation) and 241 athletes (all males; this number is also disputed) took part in the games. Participants were all European, or living in Europe, with the exception of the United States team. Over 65% of the competing athletes were Greek. Winners were given a silver medal, while runners-up received a copper medal. Retroactively, the IOC has converted these to gold and silver, and awarded bronze medals to third placed athletes. Ten of the 14 participating nations earned medals. The United States won the most gold medals, 11, while host nation Greece won the most medals overall, 47. The highlight for the Greeks was the marathon victory by their compatriot Spyridon Louis. The most successful competitor was German wrestler and gymnast Carl Schuhmann, who won four events.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Athens had been unanimously chosen to stage the inaugural modern Games during a congress organised by Coubertin in Paris on 23 June 1894, during which the IOC was also created, because Greece was the birthplace of the Ancient Olympic Games. The main venue was the Panathenaic Stadium, where athletics and wrestling took place; other venues included the Neo Phaliron Velodrome for cycling, and the Zappeion for fencing. The opening ceremony was held in the Panathenaic Stadium on 6 April, during which most of the competing athletes were aligned on the infield, grouped by nation. After a speech by the president of the organising committee, Crown Prince Constantine, his father officially opened the Games. Afterwards, nine bands and 150 choir singers performed an Olympic Hymn, composed by Spyridon Samaras, with words by poet Kostis Palamas.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: The 1896 Olympics were regarded as a great success. The Games had the largest international participation of any sporting event to that date. The Panathenaic Stadium overflowed with the largest crowd ever to watch a sporting event. After the Games, Coubertin and the IOC were petitioned by several prominent figures, including Greece's King George and some of the American competitors in Athens, to hold all the following Games in Athens. However, the 1900 Summer Olympics were already planned for Paris and, except for the Intercalated Games of 1906, the Olympics did not return to Greece until the 2004 Summer Olympics, 108 years later.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: During the 19th century, several small-scale sports festivals across Europe were named after the Ancient Olympic Games. The 1870 Olympics at the Panathenaic stadium, which had been refurbished for the occasion, had an audience of 30,000 people. Pierre de Coubertin, a French pedagogue and historian, adopted Dr William Penny Brookes' idea to establish a multi-national and multi-sport event—the ancient games only allowed male athletes of Greek origin to participate. In 1890, Coubertin wrote an article in "La Revue Athletique", which espoused the importance of Much Wenlock, a rural market town in the English county of Shropshire. It was here that, in October 1850, the local physician William Penny Brookes had founded the Wenlock Olympian Games, a festival of sports and recreations that included athletics and team sports, such as cricket, football and quoits. Coubertin also took inspiration from the earlier Greek games organised under the name of Olympics by businessman and philanthropist Evangelis Zappas in 1859, 1870 and 1875. The 1896 Athens Games were funded by the legacies of Evangelis Zappas and his cousin Konstantinos Zappas and by George Averoff who had been specifically requested by the Greek government, through crown prince Constantine, to sponsor the second refurbishment of the Panathenaic Stadium. The Greek government did this despite the cost of refurbishing the stadium in marble already being funded in full by Evangelis Zappas forty years earlier.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: On 18 June 1894, Coubertin organised a congress at the Sorbonne, Paris, to present his plans to representatives of sports societies from 11 countries. Following his proposal's acceptance by the congress, a date for the first modern Olympic Games needed to be chosen. Coubertin suggested that the Games be held concurrently with the 1900 Universal Exposition of Paris. Concerned that a six-year waiting period might lessen public interest, congress members opted instead to hold the inaugural Games in 1896. With a date established, members of the congress turned their attention to the selection of a host city. It remains a mystery how Athens was finally chosen to host the inaugural Games. In the following years both Coubertin and Demetrius Vikelas would offer recollections of the selection process that contradicted the official minutes of the congress. Most accounts hold that several congressmen first proposed London as the location, but Coubertin dissented. After a brief discussion with Vikelas, who represented Greece, Coubertin suggested Athens. Vikelas made the Athens proposal official on 23 June, and since Greece had been the original home of the Olympics, the congress unanimously approved the decision. Vikelas was then elected the first president of the newly established International Olympic Committee (IOC).


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: News that the Olympic Games would return to Greece was well received by the Greek public, media, and royal family. According to Coubertin, "the Crown Prince Constantine learned with great pleasure that the Games will be inaugurated in Athens." Coubertin went on to confirm that, "the King and the Crown Prince will confer their patronage on the holding of these games." Constantine later conferred more than that; he eagerly assumed the presidency of the 1896 organising committee.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: However, the country had financial troubles and was in political turmoil. The job of prime minister alternated between Charilaos Trikoupis and Theodoros Deligiannis frequently during the last years of the 19th century. Because of this financial and political instability, both prime minister Trikoupis and Stephanos Dragoumis, the president of the Zappas Olympic Committee, which had attempted to organise a series of national Olympiads, believed that Greece could not host the event. In late 1894, the organising committee under Stephanos Skouloudis presented a report that the cost of the Games would be three times higher than originally estimated by Coubertin. They concluded the Games could not be held, and offered their resignation. The total cost of the Games was 3,740,000 gold drachmas.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: With the prospect of reviving the Olympic games very much in doubt, Coubertin and Vikelas commenced a campaign to keep the Olympic movement alive. Their efforts culminated on 7 January 1895 when Vikelas announced that crown prince Constantine would assume the presidency of the organising committee. His first responsibility was to raise the funds necessary to host the Games. He relied on the patriotism of the Greek people to motivate them to provide the required finances. Constantine's enthusiasm sparked a wave of contributions from the Greek public. This grassroots effort raised 330,000 drachmas. A special set of postage stamps were commissioned; the sale of which raised 400,000 drachmas. Ticket sales added 200,000 drachmas. At the request of Constantine, businessman George Averoff agreed to pay for the restoration of the Panathenaic Stadium. Averoff would donate 920,000 drachmas to this project. As a tribute to his generosity, a statue of Averoff was constructed and unveiled on 5 April 1896 outside the stadium. It stands there to this day.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Some of the athletes would take part in the Games because they happened to be in Athens at the time the Games were held, either on holiday or for work (e.g., some of the British competitors worked for the British embassy). A designated Olympic Village for the athletes did not appear until the 1932 Summer Olympics. Consequently, the athletes had to provide their own lodging.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: The first regulation voted on by the new IOC in 1894 was to allow only amateur athletes to participate in the Olympic Games. The various contests were thus held under amateur regulations with the exception of fencing matches. The rules and regulations were not uniform, so the Organising Committee had to choose among the codes of the various national athletic associations. The jury, the referees and the game director bore the same names as in antiquity ("Ephor", "Helanodic" and "Alitarc"). Prince George acted as final referee; according to Coubertin, "his presence gave weight and authority to the decisions of the ephors."


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Women were not entitled to compete at the 1896 Summer Olympics, because de Coubertin felt that their inclusion would be "impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and incorrect".


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Seven venues were used for the 1896 Summer Olympics. Panathenaic Stadium was the main venue, hosting four of the nine sports contested. The city of Marathon served as host to the marathon event and the individual road race events. Swimming was held in the Bay of Zea, fencing at the Zappeion, sport shooting at Kallithea, and tennis at the Athens Lawn Tennis Club. Tennis was a sport unfamiliar to Greeks at the time of the 1896 Games.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: The Bay of Zea is a seaport and marina in the Athens area; it was used as the swimming venue because the organizers of the Games wanted to avoid spending money on constructing a special purpose swimming venue.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Four of the 1896 venues were reused as competition venues for the 2004 Games. The velodrome would be renovated into a football stadium in 1964 and was known as Karaiskakis Stadium. This venue was renovated in 2003 for use as a football venue for the 2004 Games. During the 2004 Games, Panathinaiko Stadium served as host for archery competitions and was the finish line for the athletic marathon event. The city of Marathon itself served as the starting point for both marathon events during the 2004 Games. The Zappeion served as the first home of the organizing committee (ATHOC) for the 2004 Games from 1998 to 1999, and served as the main communications center during those Games.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: On 6 April (25 March according to the Julian calendar then in use in Greece), the games of the First Olympiad were officially opened; it was Easter Monday for both the Western and Eastern Christian Churches and the anniversary of Greece's independence. The Panathenaic Stadium was filled with an estimated 80,000 spectators, including King George I of Greece, his wife Olga, and their sons. Most of the competing athletes were aligned on the infield, grouped by nation. After a speech by the president of the organising committee, Crown Prince Constantine, his father officially opened the Games with the words (in Greek):


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Afterwards, nine bands and 150 choir singers performed an Olympic Hymn, composed by Spyridon Samaras, with words by poet Kostis Palamas. Thereafter, a variety of musical offerings provided the backgrounds to the Opening Ceremonies until 1960, since which time the Samaras/Palamas composition has become the official Olympic Anthem (decision taken by the IOC Session in 1958). Other elements of current Olympic opening ceremonies were initiated later: the Olympic flame was first lit in 1928, the first athletes' oath was sworn at the 1920 Summer Olympics, and the first officials' oath was taken at the 1972 Olympic Games.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: At the 1894 Sorbonne congress, a large roster of sports were suggested for the program in Athens. The first official announcements regarding the sporting events to be held featured sports such as football and cricket, but these plans were never finalised, and these sports did not make the final list for the Games. Rowing and sailing were also scheduled but were cancelled on the planned days of competition: sailing due to lack of special boats and rowing due to poor weather. As a result, the 1896 Summer Olympics programme featured 9 sports encompassing 10 disciplines and 43 events. The number of events in each discipline is noted in parentheses.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: The athletics events had the most international field of any of the sports. The major highlight was the marathon, held for the first time in international competition. Spyridon Louis, a previously unrecognised water carrier, won the event to become the only Greek athletics champion and a national hero. Although Greece had been favoured to win the discus and the shot put, the best Greek athletes finished just behind the American Robert Garrett in both events.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: No world records were set, as few top international competitors had elected to compete. In addition, the curves of the track were very tight, making fast times in the running events virtually impossible. Despite this, Thomas Burke, of the United States, won the 100-meter race in 12.0 seconds and the 400-meter race in 54.2 seconds. Burke was the only one who used the "crouch start" (putting his knee on soil), confusing the jury. Eventually, he was allowed to start from this "uncomfortable position".


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Chile claims one athlete, Luis Subercaseaux, who competed for the nation at the 1896 Summer Olympics. This makes Chile one of the 14 nations to appear at the inaugural Summer Olympic Games. Subercaseaux's results are not listed in the official report, though that report typically includes only winners and Subercaseaux won no medals. Some sources claim that he was entered to compete in the 100m, 400m and 800m events but did not start. An appraisal of a famous photo of series 2 of the 100 meters sprint, performed by facial recognition experts of the Chilean forensic police, concluded that Subercaseaux was one of the participants.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: The day after the official marathon Stamata Revithi ran the 40-kilometer course in 5 hours 30 minutes, finishing outside Panathinaiko Stadium. However, some of the authors, who believe that "Melpomene" and Revithi are the same person, attribute to the latter the more favorable time of  hours. She was denied entry into the official race as the 1896 Olympics excluded women from competition.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: The rules of the International Cycling Association were used for the cycling competitions. The track cycling events were held at the newly built Neo Phaliron Velodrome. Only one road event was held, a race from Athens to Marathon and back (87 kilometres).


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: In the track events, the best cyclist was Frenchman Paul Masson, who won the one lap time trial, the sprint event, and the 10,000 meters. In the 100 kilometres event, Masson entered as a pacemaker for his compatriot Léon Flameng. Flameng won the event, after a fall, and after stopping to wait for his Greek opponent Georgios Kolettis to fix a mechanical problem. The Austrian fencer Adolf Schmal won the 12-hour race, which was completed by only two cyclists, while the road race event was won by Aristidis Konstantinidis.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: The fencing events were held in the Zappeion, which, built with money Evangelis Zappas had given to revive the ancient Olympic Games, had never seen any athletic contests before. Unlike other sports (in which only amateurs were allowed to take part at the Olympics), professionals were authorised to compete in fencing, though in a separate event. These professionals were considered gentlemen athletes, just as the amateurs.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Four events were scheduled, but the épée event was cancelled for unknown reasons. The foil event was won by a Frenchman, Eugène-Henri Gravelotte, who beat his countryman, Henri Callot, in the final. The other two events, the sabre and the masters foil, were won by Greek fencers. Leonidas Pyrgos, who won the latter event, became the first Greek Olympic champion in the modern era.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: The gymnastics competition was carried out on the infield of the Panathinaiko Stadium. Germany had sent an 11-man team, which won five of the eight events, including both team events. In the team event on the horizontal bar, the German team was unopposed. Three Germans added individual titles: Hermann Weingärtner won the horizontal bar event, Alfred Flatow won the parallel bars; and Carl Schuhmann, who also competed successfully in wrestling, won the vault. Louis Zutter, a Swiss gymnast, won the pommel horse, while Greeks Ioannis Mitropoulos and Nikolaos Andriakopoulos were victorious in the rings and rope climbing events, respectively.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: A regatta of sailing boats was on the program of the Games of the First Olympiad for 31 March 1896 (Julian calendar). However this event had to be given up.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Rowing races were scheduled for the next day, 1 April 1896 (Julian); however, poor weather forced their cancellation.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: The German rower, Berthold Küttner, wrote several articles about the 1896 Games that were published in his Berlin rowing club's magazine in 1936 and reprinted in the Journal of Olympic History in 2012. He stated that he and Adolf Jäger had lined up for the start of the double sculls event. He further wrote that "The double scull would be the first to start because the wind had become much stronger. On a fishing boat we took our double scull to the starting line. We already had problems getting into the double scull because of the swells. From our opponents no one had appeared – although both Greeks and Italians had applied. Because a longer wait for them seemed pointless, the starter told us to sail without competition.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: "After the official salutation and presentation in the Court Loge, where many of the attendees could not hide a laugh about my clothing, Prince George, President of the Committee, praised me for our appearance at the racing track and presented me with the winners medal in bronze. At the same time he also gave me one for "Bundesbruder" Jäger. The commemorative medal, which each of the participants received, had already been presented to us earlier."


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: He went on to state that the single sculls and race for naval boats were postponed until the following day, then ultimately cancelled when the weather worsened. The International Olympic Committee does not recognize any of this.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Held at a range at Kallithea, the shooting competition consisted of five events—two using a rifle and three with the pistol. The first event, the military rifle, was won by Pantelis Karasevdas, the only competitor to hit the target with all of his shots. The second event, for military pistols, was dominated by two American brothers: John and Sumner Paine. They became the first siblings to finish first and second in the same event. To avoid embarrassing their hosts, the brothers decided that only one of them would compete in the next pistol event, the free pistol. Sumner Paine won that event, thereby becoming the first relative of an Olympic champion to become Olympic champion himself.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: The Paine brothers did not compete in the 25-meter pistol event, as the event judges determined that their weapons were not of the required calibre. In their absence, Ioannis Phrangoudis won. The final event, the free rifle, began on the same day. However, the event could not be completed due to darkness and was finalised the next morning, when Georgios Orphanidis was crowned the champion.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: The swimming competition was held in the open sea because the organizers had refused to spend the money necessary for a specially constructed stadium. Nearly 20,000 spectators lined the Bay of Zea off the Piraeus coast to watch the events. The water in the bay was cold, and the competitors suffered during their races. There were three open events (men's 100-metre freestyle, men's 500-metre freestyle, and men's 1200 metre freestyle), in addition to a special event open only to Greek sailors, all of which were held on the same day (11 April).


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: For Alfréd Hajós of Hungary, this meant he could only compete in two of the events, as they were held too close together, which made it impossible for him to adequately recuperate. Nevertheless, he won the two events in which he swam, the 100 and 1200 meter freestyle. Hajós later became one of only two Olympians to win a medal in both the athletic and artistic competitions, when he won a silver medal for architecture in 1924. The 500-meter freestyle was won by Austrian swimmer Paul Neumann, who defeated his opponents by more than a minute and a half.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Although tennis was already a major sport by the end of the 19th century, none of the top players turned up for the tournament in Athens. The competition was held at the courts of the Athens Lawn Tennis Club, and the infield of the velodrome used for the cycling events. John Pius Boland, who won the event, had been entered in the competition by a fellow-student of his at Oxford; the Greek, Konstantinos Manos. As a member of the Athens Lawn Tennis sub-committee, Manos had been trying, with the assistance of Boland, to recruit competitors for the Athens Games from among the sporting circles of Oxford University. In the first round, Boland defeated Friedrich Traun, a promising tennis player from Hamburg, who had been eliminated in the 100-meter sprint competition. Boland and Traun decided to team up for the doubles event, in which they reached the final and defeated their Greek opponents after losing the first set.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: The sport of weightlifting was still young in 1896, and the rules differed from those in use today. Competitions were held outdoors, in the infield of the main stadium, and there were no weight limits. The first event was held in a style now known as the "clean and jerk". Two competitors stood out: Scotsman Launceston Elliot and Viggo Jensen of Denmark. Both of them lifted the same weight; but the jury, with Prince George as the chairman, ruled that Jensen had done so in a better style. The British delegation, unfamiliar with this tie-breaking rule, lodged a protest. The lifters were eventually allowed to make further attempts, but neither lifter improved, and Jensen was declared the champion.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Elliot got his revenge in the one hand lift event, which was held immediately after the two-handed one. Jensen had been slightly injured during his last two-handed attempt, and was no match for Elliot, who won the competition easily. The Greek audience was charmed by the Scottish victor, whom they considered very attractive. A curious incident occurred during the weightlifting event: a servant was ordered to remove the weights, which appeared to be a difficult task for him. Prince George came to his assistance; he picked up the weight and threw it a considerable distance with ease, to the delight of the crowd.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: No weight classes existed for the wrestling competition, held in the Panathenaic Stadium, which meant that there would only be one winner among competitors of all sizes. The rules used were similar to modern Greco-Roman wrestling, although there was no time limit, and not all leg holds were forbidden (in contrast to current rules).


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Apart from the two Greek contestants, all the competitors had previously been active in other sports. Weightlifting champion Launceston Elliot faced gymnastics champion Carl Schuhmann. The latter won and advanced into the final, where he met Georgios Tsitas, who had previously defeated Stephanos Christopoulos. Darkness forced the final match to be suspended after 40 minutes; it was continued the following day, when Schuhmann needed only fifteen minutes to finish the bout.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: On the morning of Sunday 12 April (or 31 March, according to the Julian calendar then used in Greece), King George organised a banquet for officials and athletes (even though some competitions had not yet been held). During his speech, he made clear that, as far as he was concerned, the Olympics should be held in Athens permanently. The official closing ceremony was held the following Wednesday, after being postponed from Tuesday due to rain. Again the royal family attended the ceremony, which was opened by the national anthem of Greece and an ode composed in ancient Greek by George S. Robertson, a British athlete and scholar.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Afterwards, the king awarded prizes to the winners. Unlike today, the first-place winners received a silver medal, an olive branch and a diploma, while runners-up received a copper medal, a laurel branch, and diploma. Third place winners did not receive a prize.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Some winners also received additional prizes, such as Spyridon Louis, who received a cup from Michel Bréal, a friend of Coubertin, who had conceived the marathon event. Louis then led the medalists on a lap of honour around the stadium, while the Olympic Hymn was played again. The King then formally announced that the first Olympiad was at an end, and left the Stadium, while the band played the Greek national hymn and the crowd cheered.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Like the Greek king, many others supported the idea of holding the next Games in Athens; most of the American competitors signed a letter to the Crown Prince expressing this wish. Coubertin, however, was heavily opposed to this idea, as he envisioned international rotation as one of the cornerstones of the modern Olympics. According to his wish, the next Games were held in Paris, although they would be somewhat overshadowed by the concurrently held Universal Exposition.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: The concept of national teams was not a major part of the Olympic movement until the Intercalated Games 10 years later, though many sources list the nationality of competitors in 1896 and give medal counts. There are significant conflicts with regard to which nations competed. The International Olympic Committee gives a figure of 14, but does not list them. The following 14 are most likely the ones recognised by the IOC. Olympedia lists 13, excluding Chile; other sources list 12, excluding Chile and Bulgaria; others list 13, including those two but excluding Italy. Egypt is also sometimes included because of the participation of Dionysios Kasdaglis, a Greek national who resided in Alexandria after living in Great Britain for years. Belgium and Russia had entered the names of competitors, but withdrew.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: Ten of the 14 participating nations earned medals, in addition to two medals won by mixed teams, i.e. teams made up of athletes from multiple nations. The IOC has retroactively assigned gold, silver and bronze medals to the three best placed athletes in each event to comport with more recent traditions. The United States won the most gold medals (11), while host nation Greece won the most medals overall (47) as well as the most silver (18) and bronze (19) medals, finishing with one fewer gold medal than the United States, having 155 athletes more than the U.S.


title: 1896 Summer Olympics

text: "To sort this table by nation, total medal count, or any other column, click on the icon next to the column title."


title: E!

text: E! (an initialism for Entertainment Television) is an American basic cable channel which primarily focuses on pop culture, celebrity focused reality shows, and movies, owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast.


title: E!

text: E! was originally launched on July 31, 1987, as Movietime, a service that aired movie trailers, entertainment news, event and awards coverage, and interviews as an early example of a national barker channel. The channel was founded by Larry Namer and Alan Mruvka. Early Movietime hosts included Greg Kinnear, Katie Wagner, Julie Moran, Suzanne Kay (daughter of Diahann Carroll), Mark DeCarlo, Sam Rubin and Richard Blade.