title: Hartford Whalers

text: The song is still very popular with Hartford crowds and continues to occasionally be played at XL Center events, including at Hartford Wolf Pack/Connecticut Whale games from 2011 to 2013 and at the University of Connecticut's basketball and men's ice hockey games. The song plays whenever a player on the city's minor-league baseball team, the Hartford Yard Goats, hits a home run. It was also previously used by the Whalers' AHL affiliate, the Binghamton Whalers, the Danbury Whalers of the Federal Hockey League (FHL), and Quinnipiac University's men's and women's ice hockey teams. It has also been played at Fenway Park in Boston during Boston Red Sox games in between innings for several years. Rock bands have been known to play the song during shows in Connecticut, most notably The Zambonis. The song was played when the Carolina Hurricanes scored a goal on an event called heritage night where the Hurricanes dressed in Whalers attire. The Florida Everblades, a former affiliate of the Hurricanes in the ECHL, play the song after every home game at Hertz Arena. The song has now been adopted by the city's soccer team, Hartford Athletic, and by the Premier Hockey Federation's Connecticut Whale, being played after goals scored by the teams.The Victoria Royals of the WHL - Western Hockey League - have used the theme for goals since 2017.


title: Hartford Whalers

text: The official mascot of the Whalers was named "Pucky The Whale" and most commonly referred to as "Pucky". Depicted as a green whale, not only was he a mascot but he was also a secondary logo of the team, appearing on the shoulders of their jerseys from the 1970s WHA days until the mid 1980s. In the 2010s a new mascot costume version of Pucky was making appearances around Connecticut when the Hartford Wolf Pack minor league hockey team briefly changed its identity to the Connecticut Whale.


title: Hartford Whalers

text: "Note: GP = Games played, W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, Pts = Points, GF = Goals scored for, GA = Goals scored against, PIM = Penalty minutes


title: Hartford Whalers

text: The retirement of McKenzie's number was notable, in so far as it was one of the only three instances in NHL history (the others being the NHL Quebec Nordiques retiring J. C. Tremblay's number and the Ottawa Senators retiring Frank Finnigan's number) that a NHL franchise retired the number of a player who had never played for it while the franchise was in the NHL.


title: Hartford Whalers

text: After the move to North Carolina, the Hurricanes returned number 2 and 19 to circulation; Glen Wesley was the only player to wear number 2 in Carolina before that number was re-retired in 2009 in his honor. Howe's number 9 remained officially retired by Carolina, and has never been issued since the relocation to North Carolina, but there is no banner to acknowledge it.


title: Hartford Whalers

text: "Legend: Pos = Position; GP = Games played; G = Goals; A = Assists; Pts = Points; P/G = Points per game


title: Nacre

text: Nacre ( , ), also known as mother of pearl, is an organicinorganic composite material produced by some molluscs as an inner shell layer; it is also the material of which pearls are composed. It is strong, resilient, and iridescent.


title: Nacre

text: Nacre is found in some of the most ancient lineages of bivalves, gastropods, and cephalopods. However, the inner layer in the great majority of mollusc shells is porcellaneous, not nacreous, and this usually results in a non-iridescent shine, or more rarely in non-nacreous iridescence such as "flame structure" as is found in conch pearls.


title: Nacre

text: The outer layer of cultured pearls and the inside layer of pearl oyster and freshwater pearl mussel shells are made of nacre. Other mollusc families that have a nacreous inner shell layer include marine gastropods such as the Haliotidae, the Trochidae and the Turbinidae.


title: Nacre

text: Nacre is composed of hexagonal platelets of aragonite (a form of calcium carbonate) 10–20 µm wide and 0.5 µm thick arranged in a continuous parallel lamina. Depending on the species, the shape of the tablets differs; in "Pinna", the tablets are rectangular, with symmetric sectors more or less soluble. Whatever the shape of the tablets, the smallest units they contain are irregular rounded granules. These layers are separated by sheets of organic matrix (interfaces) composed of elastic biopolymers (such as chitin, lustrin and silk-like proteins). This mixture of brittle platelets and the thin layers of elastic biopolymers makes the material strong and resilient, with a Young's modulus of 70 GPa and a yield stress of roughly 70 MPa (when dry). Strength and resilience are also likely to be due to adhesion by the "brickwork" arrangement of the platelets, which inhibits transverse crack propagation. This structure, spanning multiple length sizes, greatly increases its toughness, making it almost as strong as silicon.


title: Nacre

text: The statistical variation of the platelets has a negative effect on the mechanical performance (stiffness, strength, and energy absorption) because statistical variation precipitates localization of deformation. However, the negative effects of statistical variations can be offset by interfaces with large strain at failure accompanied by strain hardening. On the other hand, the fracture toughness of nacre increases with moderate statistical variations which creates tough regions where the crack gets pinned. But, higher statistical variations generates very weak regions which allows the crack to propagate without much resistance causing the fracture toughness to decrease. Studies have shown that this weak structural defects act as dissipative topological defects coupled by an elastic distortion.


title: Nacre

text: Nacre appears iridescent because the thickness of the aragonite platelets is close to the wavelength of visible light. These structures interfere constructively and destructively with different wavelengths of light at different viewing angles, creating structural colours.


title: Nacre

text: The crystallographic "c-"axis points approximately perpendicular to the shell wall, but the direction of the other axes varies between groups. Adjacent tablets have been shown to have dramatically different c-axis orientation, generally randomly oriented within ~20° of vertical. In bivalves and cephalopods, the "b-"axis points in the direction of shell growth, whereas in the monoplacophora it is the "a"-axis that is this way inclined. The interlocking of bricks of nacre has large impact on both the deformation mechanism as well as its toughness. In addition, the mineral–organic interface results in enhanced resilience and strength of the organic interlayers.


title: Nacre

text: Nacre formation is not fully understood. The initial onset assembly, as observed in "Pinna nobilis", is driven by the aggregation of nanoparticles (~50–80 nm) within an organic matrix that arrange in fibre-like polycrystalline configurations. The particle number increases successively and, when critical packing is reached, they merge into early-nacre platelets. Nacre growth is mediated by organics, controlling the onset, duration and form of crystal growth. Individual aragonite "bricks" are believed to quickly grow to the full height of the nacreous layer, and expand until they abut adjacent bricks. This produces the hexagonal close-packing characteristic of nacre. Bricks may nucleate on randomly dispersed elements within the organic layer, well-defined arrangements of proteins, or may grow epitaxially from mineral bridges extending from the underlying tablet. Nacre differs from fibrous aragonite – a brittle mineral of the same form – in that the growth in the c-axis (i.e., approximately perpendicular to the shell, in nacre) is slow in nacre, and fast in fibrous aragonite.


title: Nacre

text: A 2021 paper in "Nature Physics" examined nacre from various sponges and molluscs, noting that in each case the initial layers of nacre laid down by the organism contained spiral defects. Defects that spiralled in opposite directions created distortions in the material that drew them towards each other as the layers built up until they merged and cancelled each other out. Later layers of nacre were found to be uniform and ordered in structure.


title: Nacre

text: Nacre is secreted by the epithelial cells of the mantle tissue of various molluscs. The nacre is continuously deposited onto the inner surface of the shell, the iridescent "nacreous layer", commonly known as "mother of pearl". The layers of nacre smooth the shell surface and help defend the soft tissues against parasites and damaging debris by entombing them in successive layers of nacre, forming either a blister pearl attached to the interior of the shell, or a free pearl within the mantle tissues. The process is called "encystation" and it continues as long as the mollusc lives.


title: Nacre

text: The form of nacre varies from group to group. In bivalves, the nacre layer is formed of single crystals in a hexagonal close packing. In gastropods, crystals are twinned, and in cephalopods, they are pseudohexagonal monocrystals, which are often twinned.


title: Nacre

text: The main commercial sources of mother of pearl have been the pearl oyster, freshwater pearl mussels, and to a lesser extent the abalone, popular for their sturdiness and beauty in the latter half of the 19th century.


title: Nacre

text: Widely used for pearl buttons especially during the 1900s, were the shells of the great green turban snail "Turbo marmoratus" and the large top snail, "Tectus niloticus". The international trade in mother of pearl is governed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, an agreement signed by more than 170 countries.


title: Nacre

text: Both black and white nacre are used for architectural purposes. The natural nacre may be artificially tinted to almost any color. Nacre tesserae may be cut into shapes and laminated to a ceramic tile or marble base. The tesserae are hand-placed and closely sandwiched together, creating an irregular mosaic or pattern (such as a weave). The laminated material is typically about thick. The tesserae are then lacquered and polished creating a durable and glossy surface. Instead of using a marble or tile base, the nacre tesserae can be glued to fiberglass. The result is a lightweight material that offers a seamless installation and there is no limit to the sheet size. Nacre sheets may be used on interior floors, exterior and interior walls, countertops, doors and ceilings. Insertion into architectural elements, such as columns or furniture is easily accomplished.


title: Nacre

text: Nacre inlay is often used for music keys and other decorative motifs on musical instruments. Many accordion and concertina bodies are completely covered in nacre, and some guitars have fingerboard or headstock inlays made of nacre (or imitation pearliod plastic inlays). The bouzouki and baglamas (Greek plucked string instruments of the lute family) typically feature nacre decorations, as does the related Middle Eastern oud (typically around the sound holes and on the back of the instrument). Bows of stringed instruments such as the violin and cello often have mother of pearl inlay at the frog. It is traditionally used on saxophone keytouches, as well as the valve buttons of trumpets and other brass instruments. The Middle Eastern goblet drum (darbuka) is commonly decorated by mother of pearl.


title: Nacre

text: Mother of pearl buttons are used in clothing either for functional or decorative purposes. The Pearly Kings and Queens are an elaborate example of this.


title: Nacre

text: Mother of pearl is sometimes used to make spoon-like utensils for caviar (i.e. caviar servers) so as to not spoil the taste with metallic spoons.


title: Nacre

text: The biotech company Marine Biomedical, formed by a collaboration between the University of Western Australia Medical School and a Broome pearling business, is developing a product nacre to create "PearlBone", which could be used on patients needing bone grafting and reconstructive surgery. The company is applying for regulatory approval in Australia and several other countries, and is expecting it to be approved for clinical use around 2024–5. It is intended to build a factory in the Kimberley region, where pearl shells are plentiful, which would grind the nacre into a product fit for use in biomedical products. Future applications could include dental fillings and spinal surgery.


title: Nacre

text: In 2012, researchers created calcium-based nacre in the laboratory by mimicking its natural growth process.


title: Nacre

text: In 2014, researchers used lasers to create an analogue of nacre by engraving networks of wavy 3D "micro-cracks" in glass. When the slides were subjected to an impact, the micro-cracks absorbed and dispersed the energy, keeping the glass from shattering. Altogether, treated glass was reportedly 200 times tougher than untreated glass.


title: Character actor

text: A character actor is a supporting actor who plays unusual, interesting, or eccentric characters. The term, often contrasted with that of leading actor, is somewhat abstract and open to interpretation. In a literal sense, all actors can be considered character actors since they all play "characters", but the term more commonly refers to an actor who frequently plays a distinctive and important supporting role. Character actors are generally well-known and recognizable by the audience (by appearance if not by name), even if they play different types of roles in different movies.


title: Character actor

text: A character actor may play characters who are very different from the actor's off-screen real-life personality, while in another sense a character actor may be one who specializes in minor roles. In either case, character-actor roles are more substantial than bit parts or non-speaking extras.


title: Character actor

text: The term is used primarily to describe television and film actors, as opposed to those in the theater. An early use of the term was in the 1883 edition of "The Stage", which defined a character actor as "one who portrays individualities and eccentricities". Actors with a long career history of playing character roles may be difficult for audiences to recognize as being the same actor.


title: Character actor

text: In contrast to leading actors, they are generally seen as less glamorous. While a leading actor often has the physical attractiveness considered necessary to play the love interest, a character actor typically does not. In fact, some character actors are known for their unusual looks. For example, Chicago character actor William Schutz's face was disfigured in a car accident when he was five years old, but his appearance after reconstructive surgery helped him to be distinctive to theater audiences. Generally, the names of character actors are not featured prominently in movie and television advertising on the marquee, since a character actor's name is not expected to attract film audiences. Some character actors have been described as instantly recognizable despite their names being little known.


title: Character actor

text: During the course of an acting career, an actor can sometimes shift between leading roles and secondary roles. Some leading actors, as they get older, find that access to leading roles is limited by their age. Sometimes character actors have developed careers based on specific talents needed in genre films, such as dancing, horsemanship, acrobatics, swimming ability, or boxing. Many up-and-coming actors find themselves typecast in character roles due to an early success with a particular part or in a certain genre, such that the actor becomes so strongly identified with a particular type of role that casting directors and theatrical agents steer the actor to similar roles. Some character actors are known as "chameleons", able to play roles that vary wildly, such as Gary Oldman. Some character actors develop a cult following, like the fans of "Star Trek" or "The Rocky Horror Picture Show".


title: Character actor

text: Character actors tend to play the same type of role throughout their careers, such as Harvey Keitel as tough and determined; Christopher Lloyd as an eccentric; Claude Rains as sophisticated, sometimes morally ambiguous men; Abe Vigoda as an aging criminal; Fairuza Balk as moody goth girls; Doug Jones playing non-human creatures; and Forest Whitaker as composed characters with underlying volatility. Ed Lauter usually portrayed a menacing figure because of his "long, angular face", which was easily recognized in public, although audiences rarely knew his name. Character actors can play a variety of types, such as the femme fatale, gunslinger, sidekick, town drunk, villain, hooker with a heart of gold, and many others. A character actor's roles are often substantially different from their real-life persona. Good character actors, such as Margo Martindale, are rarely out of work, and they often have long careers that span decades. They are often highly esteemed by fellow actors.


title: Ota Benga

text: Ota Benga ( – March 20, 1916) was a Mbuti (Congo pygmy) man, known for being featured in an exhibit at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, and as a human zoo exhibit in 1906 at the Bronx Zoo. Benga had been purchased from local African slave traders by the explorer Samuel Phillips Verner, a businessman searching for African people for the exhibition, who took him to the United States. While at the Bronx Zoo, Benga was allowed to walk the grounds before and after he was exhibited in the zoo's Monkey House. Benga was placed in a cage with an orangutan as a lampoon on Darwinism. To enhance the primitive image and presumably protect himself if need be from the ape, he was given a functional bow and arrow. He used this instead to shoot at visitors who mocked him and partially as a result of this the exhibition was ended. Except for a brief visit to Africa with Verner after the close of the St. Louis Fair, Benga lived in the United States, mostly in Virginia, for the rest of his life.


title: Ota Benga

text: African-American newspapers around the nation published editorials strongly opposing Benga's treatment. Robert Stuart MacArthur, spokesman for a delegation of black churches, petitioned New York City Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. for his release from the Bronx Zoo. In late 1906, the mayor released Benga to the custody of James H. Gordon, who supervised the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn.


title: Ota Benga

text: In 1910, Gordon arranged for Benga to be cared for in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he paid for his clothes and to have his sharpened teeth capped. This would enable Benga to be more readily accepted in local society. Benga was tutored in English and began to work at a Lynchburg tobacco factory.


title: Ota Benga

text: He tried to return to Africa, but the outbreak of World War I in 1914 stopped all ship passenger travel. Benga fell into a depression, and died by suicide in 1916.


title: Ota Benga

text: As a member of the Mbuti people, Ota Benga lived in equatorial forests near the Kasai River in what was then the Congo Free State. His people were attacked by the "Force Publique," established by King Leopold II of Belgium as a militia to control the natives, most of whom were used for labor in order to exploit the large supply of rubber in the Congo. Benga's wife and two children were murdered; he survived because he was on a hunting expedition when the Force Publique attacked his village. He was later captured by slave traders from the enemy "Baschelel" (Bashilele) tribe.


title: Ota Benga

text: In 1904, American businessman and explorer Samuel Phillips Verner traveled to Africa, under contract from the St. Louis World Fair, to capture and bring back an assortment of pygmies to be part of an exhibition. Verner discovered Benga while en route to a Batwa pygmy village visited previously. He purchased Benga from the Bashilele slave traders, giving them a pound of salt and a bolt of cloth in exchange. Verner later claimed he had rescued Benga from cannibals.


title: Ota Benga

text: The two spent several weeks together before reaching the Batwa village. The villagers had developed a racial prejudice against the "muzungu" ("white man"). Verner was unable to recruit any villagers to join him for travel to the United States until Benga said that the "muzungu" had saved his life, and spoke of the bond that had grown between them and his own curiosity about the world Verner came from. Four Batwa, all male, ultimately decided to accompany them. Verner also recruited other Africans who were not pygmies: five men from the Bakuba, including the son of King Ndombe, ruler of the Bakuba; and other related peoples.


title: Ota Benga

text: The group was taken to St. Louis, Missouri, in late June 1904 without Verner, as he had been taken ill with malaria. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition had already begun, and the Africans immediately became the center of attention. Benga was particularly popular, and his name was reported variously by the press as "Artiba", "Autobank", "Ota Bang", and "Otabenga". He had an amiable personality, and visitors were eager to see his teeth that had been filed to sharp points in his early youth as ritual decoration. The Africans learned to charge for photographs and performances. One newspaper account promoted Benga as "the only genuine African cannibal in America", and claimed that "[his teeth were] worth the five cents he charges for showing them to visitors".


title: Ota Benga

text: When Verner arrived a month later, he realized the pygmies were more prisoners than performers. Their attempts to congregate peacefully in the forest on Sundays were thwarted by the crowds' fascination with them. McGee's attempts to present a "serious" scientific exhibit were also overturned. On July 28, 1904, the Africans performed to the crowd's preconceived notion that they were "savages", resulting in the First Illinois Regiment being called in to control the mob. Benga and the other Africans eventually performed in a warlike fashion, imitating Native Americans they saw at the Exhibition. The Apache chief Geronimo (featured as "The Human Tyger" – with special dispensation from the Department of War) grew to admire Benga, and gave him one of his arrowheads.


title: Ota Benga

text: Benga accompanied Verner when he returned the other Africans to the Congo. He briefly lived amongst the Batwa while continuing to accompany Verner on his African adventures. He married a Batwa woman who later died of snakebite, but little is known of this second marriage. Not feeling that he belonged with the Batwa, Benga chose to return with Verner to the United States.


title: Ota Benga

text: Verner eventually arranged for Benga to stay in a spare room at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City while he was tending to other business. Verner negotiated with the curator Henry Bumpus over the presentation of his acquisitions from Africa and potential employment. While Bumpus was put off by Verner's request of what he thought was the prohibitively high salary of $175 a month and was not impressed by the man's credentials, he was interested in Benga. Benga initially enjoyed his time at the museum, where he was given a Southern-style linen suit to wear when he entertained. He became homesick for his own culture.


title: Ota Benga

text: What at first held his attention now made him want to flee. It was maddening to be inside – to be swallowed whole – so long. He had an image of himself, stuffed, behind glass, but somehow still alive, crouching over a fake campfire, feeding meat to a lifeless child. Museum silence became a source of torment, a kind of noise; he needed birdsong, breezes, trees.


title: Ota Benga

text: The disaffected Benga attempted to find relief by exploiting his employers' presentation of him as a 'savage'. He tried to slip past the guards as a large crowd was leaving the premises; when asked on one occasion to seat a wealthy donor's wife, he pretended to misunderstand, instead hurling the chair across the room, just missing the woman's head. Meanwhile, Verner was struggling financially and had made little progress in his negotiations with the museum. He soon found another home for Benga.


title: Ota Benga

text: At the suggestion of Bumpus, Verner took Benga to the Bronx Zoo in 1906. William Hornaday, director of the zoo, initially enlisted Benga to help maintain the animal habitats. However, Hornaday saw that people took more notice of Benga than the animals at the zoo, and he eventually created an exhibition to feature Benga. At the zoo, the Mbuti man was allowed to roam the grounds, but there is no record that he was ever paid for his work. He became fond of an orangutan named Dohong, "the presiding genius of the Monkey House", who had been taught to perform tricks and imitate human behavior.


title: Ota Benga

text: The events leading to his "exhibition" alongside Dohong were gradual: Benga spent some of his time in the Monkey House exhibit, and the zoo encouraged him to hang his hammock there, and to shoot his bow and arrow at a target. On the first day of the exhibit, September 8, 1906, visitors found Benga in the Monkey House.


title: Ota Benga

text: Hornaday considered the exhibit a valuable spectacle for visitors; he was supported by Madison Grant, Secretary of the New York Zoological Society, who lobbied to put Ota Benga on display alongside apes at the Bronx Zoo. A decade later, Grant became prominent nationally as a racial anthropologist and eugenicist.


title: Ota Benga

text: African-American clergymen immediately protested to zoo officials about the exhibit. Said James H. Gordon,


title: Ota Benga

text: Our race, we think, is depressed enough, without exhibiting one of us with the apes ... We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls.


title: Ota Benga

text: The Darwinian theory is absolutely opposed to Christianity, and a public demonstration in its favor should not be permitted.


title: Ota Benga

text: A number of clergymen backed Gordon. In defense of the depiction of Benga as a lesser human, an editorial in "The New York Times" suggested:


title: Ota Benga

text: We do not quite understand all the emotion which others are expressing in the matter ... It is absurd to make moan over the imagined humiliation and degradation Benga is suffering. The pygmies ... are very low in the human scale, and the suggestion that Benga should be in a school instead of a cage ignores the high probability that school would be a place ... from which he could draw no advantage whatever. The idea that men are all much alike except as they have had or lacked opportunities for getting an education out of books is now far out of date.


title: Ota Benga

text: After the controversy, Benga was allowed to roam the grounds of the zoo. In response to the situation, as well as verbal and physical prods from the crowds, he became more mischievous and somewhat violent. Around this time, an article in "The New York Times" quoted Robert Stuart MacArthur as saying, "It is too bad that there is not some society like the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. We send our missionaries to Africa to Christianize the people, and then we bring one here to brutalize him."


title: Ota Benga

text: The zoo finally removed Benga from the grounds. Verner was unsuccessful in his continued search for employment, but he occasionally spoke to Benga. The two had agreed that it was in Benga's best interests to remain in the United States despite the unwelcome spotlight at the zoo.


title: Ota Benga

text: Gordon placed Benga in the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum, a church-sponsored orphanage in Brooklyn that Gordon supervised. As the unwelcome press attention continued, in January 1910, Gordon arranged for Benga's relocation to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he lived with the family of Gregory W. Hayes.


title: Ota Benga

text: So that he could more easily be part of local society, Gordon arranged for Benga's teeth to be capped and bought him American-style clothes. He received tutoring from Lynchburg poet Anne Spencer in order to improve his English, and began to attend elementary school at the Baptist Seminary in Lynchburg.


title: Ota Benga

text: Once he felt his English had improved sufficiently, Benga discontinued his formal education. He began working at a Lynchburg tobacco factory, and began to plan a return to Africa.


title: Ota Benga

text: In 1914, when World War I broke out, a return to the Congo became impossible as passenger ship traffic ended. Benga became depressed as his hopes for a return to his homeland faded. On March 20, 1916, at the age of 32 or 33, he built a ceremonial fire, chipped off the caps on his teeth, and shot himself in the heart with a borrowed pistol.


title: Ota Benga

text: Benga was buried in an unmarked grave in the black section of the Old City Cemetery, near his benefactor, Gregory Hayes. At some point, the remains of both men went missing. Local oral history indicates that Hayes and Benga were eventually moved from the Old Cemetery to White Rock Hill Cemetery, a burial ground that later fell into disrepair. Benga received a historic marker in Lynchburg in 2017.


title: Ota Benga

text: Phillips Verner Bradford, the grandson of Samuel Phillips Verner, wrote a book on Benga, entitled "Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo" (1992). During his research for the book, Bradford visited the American Museum of Natural History, which holds a life mask and body cast of Ota Benga. The display is still labeled "Pygmy", rather than indicating Benga's name, despite objections beginning a century ago from Verner and repeated by others. Publication of Bradford's book in 1992 inspired widespread interest in Ota Benga's story and stimulated creation of many other works, both fictional and non-fiction, such as:


title: Ota Benga

text: Similarities have been observed between the treatment of Ota Benga and Ishi. The latter was the sole remaining member of the Yahi Native American tribe, and he was displayed in California around the same period. Ishi died on March 25, 1916, five days after Ota.


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: Saṃsāra (, ; also "samsara") in Buddhism and Hinduism is the beginningless cycle of repeated birth, mundane existence and dying again. Samsara is considered to be "dukkha", suffering, and in general unsatisfactory and painful, perpetuated by desire and "avidya" (ignorance), and the resulting karma.


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: Rebirths occur in six realms of existence, namely three good realms (heavenly, demi-god, human) and three evil realms (animal, ghosts, hellish). Samsara ends if a person attains nirvana, the "blowing out" of the desires and the gaining of true insight into impermanence and non-self reality.


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: In Buddhism, "saṃsāra" is the "suffering-laden, continuous cycle of life, death, and rebirth, without beginning or end". In several suttas of the Samyutta Nikaya's chapter XV in particular it's said "From an inconstruable beginning comes transmigration. A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating & wandering on". It is the never-ending repetitive cycle of birth and death, in six realms of reality ("gati", domains of existence), wandering from one life to another life with no particular direction or purpose. Samsara is characterized by "dukkha" ("unsatisfactory," "painful").Samsara relates to the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism, as dukkha ("unsatisfactory," "painful") is the essence of Samsara. Every rebirth is temporary and impermanent. In each rebirth one is born and dies, to be reborn elsewhere in accordance with one's own karma. It is perpetuated by one's "avidya" ("ignorance"), particularly about "anicca" (“impermanence”) and "anatta", (“no-self”) and from craving. Samsara continues until moksha is attained by means of insight and nirvana, the "blowing out" of the desires and the gaining of true insight into impermanence and non-self reality. Samsara and the notion of cyclic existence dates back to 800 BCE.


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: The Saṃsāra doctrine of Buddhism asserts that while beings undergo endless cycles of rebirth, there is no changeless soul that transmigrates from one lifetime to another - a view that distinguishes its Saṃsāra doctrine from that in Hinduism and Jainism. This no-soul (no-self) doctrine is called the "Anatta" or "Anatman" in Buddhist texts.


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: The early Buddhist texts suggest that Buddha faced a difficulty in explaining what is reborn and how rebirth occurs, after he innovated the concept that there is "no self" ("Anatta"). Later Buddhist scholars, such as the mid-1st millennium CE Pali scholar Buddhaghosa, suggested that the lack of a self or soul does not mean lack of continuity; and the rebirth across different realms of birth – such as heavenly, human, animal, hellish and others – occurs in the same way that a flame is transferred from one candle to another. Buddhaghosa attempted to explain rebirth mechanism with "rebirth-linking consciousness" ("patisandhi").


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: The mechanistic details of the Samsara doctrine vary within the Buddhist traditions. Theravada Buddhists assert that rebirth is immediate while the Tibetan schools hold to the notion of a bardo (intermediate state) that can last at least forty-nine days before the being is reborn. In Mahayana Buddhist philosophy Samsara and Nirvana are seen as the same. According to Nagarjuna, an ancient Indian philosopher, and a teacher of Mahayana Buddhism, "Nothing of Samsara is different from Nirvana, nothing of Nirvana is different from Samsara. That which is the limit of Nirvana is also the limit of Samsara, there is not the slightest difference between the two."


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: Buddhist cosmology typically identifies six realms of rebirth and existence: gods, demi-gods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts and hells. Earlier Buddhist texts refer to five realms rather than six realms; when described as five realms, the god realm and demi-god realm constitute a single realm.


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: The six realms are typically divided into three higher realms (good, fortunate) and three lower realms (evil, unfortunate). The three higher realms are the realms of the gods, humans and demi-gods; the three lower realms are the realms of the animals, hungry ghosts and hell beings. The six realms are organized into thirty one levels in east Asian literature. Buddhist texts describe these realms as follows:


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: There are six Enlightened Buddhas that exist in each of the six realms. These six Buddhas have also been known as the "Six Sages." Their names are Indrasakra (Buddha in the god realm), Vemacitra (Buddha of the petty god realm), Sakyamuni (Buddha in the human realm); Sthirasimha (Buddha in the animal realm), Jvalamukha (Buddha in the hungry ghost realm), and Yama Dharmaraja (Buddha in the hot hell realm).


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: Samsara is perpetuated by karma. Karma or 'action' results from an intentional physical or mental act, which causes a future consequence. Gethin explains:


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: In the Buddhist view, therefore, the type of birth one has in this life is determined by actions or "karma" from the previous lives; and the circumstances of the future rebirth are determined by the actions in the current and previous lives.


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: Inconsistencies in the oldest texts show that the Buddhist teachings on craving and ignorance, and the means to attain liberation, evolved, either during the lifetime of the Buddha, or thereafter. According to Frauwallner, the Buddhist texts show a shift in the explanation of the root cause of samsara. Originally craving was considered to be the root cause of samsara, which could be stilled by the practice of "dhyana", leading to a calm of mind which according to Vetter "is" the liberation which is being sought.


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: The later Buddhist tradition considers ignorance ("avidya") to be the root cause of samsara. Avidya is misconception and ignorance about reality, leading to grasping and clinging, and repeated rebirth. According to Paul Williams, "it is the not-knowingness of things as they truly are, or of oneself as one really is." It can be overcome by insight into the true nature of reality. In the later Buddhist tradition "liberating insight" came to be regarded as equally liberating as the practice of "dhyana". According to Vetter and Bronkhorst, this happened in response to other religious groups in India, who held that a liberating insight was an indispensable requisite for "moksha", liberation from rebirth.


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: The ideas on what exactly constituted this "liberating insight" evolved over time. Initially the term "prajna" served to denote this "liberating insight." Later on, "prajna" was replaced in the suttas by the four truths. This happened in those texts where "liberating insight" was preceded by the four jhanas, and where this practice of the four jhanas then culminates in "liberating insight." The four truths were superseded by "pratityasamutpada", and still later, in the Hinayana schools, by the doctrine of the non-existence of a substantial self or person. And Schmithausen states that still other descriptions of this "liberating insight" exist in the Buddhist canon:


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: Samsara ends when one attains "moksha", liberation. In early Buddhism, Nirvana, the "blowing out" of desire, is "moksha". In later Buddhism insight becomes predominant, for example the recognition and acceptance of non-self, also called the anatta doctrine. One who no longer sees any soul or self, concludes Walpola Rahula, is the one who has been liberated from the samsara suffering-cycles. The theme that Nirvana is non-Self, states Peter Harvey, is recurring in early Buddhist texts.


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: Some Buddhist texts suggest that rebirth occurs through the transfer of "vinnana" (consciousness) from one life to another. When this consciousness ceases, then liberation is attained. There is a connection between consciousness, karmic activities, and the cycle of rebirth, argues William Waldron, and with the destruction of vinnana, there is "destruction and cessation of "karmic activities" (anabhisankhara, S III, 53), which are considered in Buddhism to be "necessary for the continued perpetuation of cyclic existence."


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: While Buddhism considers the liberation from samsara as the ultimate spiritual goal, in traditional practice, Buddhists seek and accumulate merit through good deeds, donations to monks and various Buddhist rituals in order to gain better rebirths rather than nirvana.


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: A value of Buddhism is the idea of impermanence. All living things, causes, conditions, situations are impermanent. Impermanence is the idea that all things disappear once they have originated. According to Buddhism, Impermanence occurs constantly "moment to moment", and this is why there is no recognition of the self. Since everything is considered to be in a state of decay, permanent happiness and self cannot exist in Samsara.


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: Anatta is the Buddhist idea of non-self. Winston L. King, a writer from the University of Hawai'i Press, references two integral parts of Anatta in "Philosophy East and West." King details the first aspect, that Anatta can be "experienced and not just described." King states the second aspect of Anatta is that it is the liberation from the "power of samsaric drives." Obtaining awareness of Anatta and non-self reality results in a, "freedom from the push-pull of his own appetites, passions, ambitions, and fixations and from the external world's domination in general, that is, the conquest of greed, hatred, and delusion." This "push-pull" of mundane human existence or samsara results in dukka, but the recognition of Anatta results in a "freedom from the push-pull."


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: According to Chogyam Trungpa the realms of samsara can refer to both "psychological states of mind and physical cosmological realms".


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: Gethin argues, rebirth in the different realms is determined by one's karma, which is directly determined by one's psychological states. The Buddhist cosmology may thus be seen as a map of different realms of existence and a description of all possible psychological experiences. The psychological states of a person in current life lead to the nature of next rebirth in Buddhist cosmology.


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: Paul Williams acknowledges Gethin's suggestion of the "principle of the equivalence of cosmology and psychology," but notes that Gethin is not asserting the Buddhist cosmology is really all about current or potential states of mind or psychology. The realms in Buddhist cosmology are indeed realms of rebirths. Otherwise rebirth would always be into the human realm, or there would be no rebirth at all. And that is not traditional Buddhism, states Williams.


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: David McMahan concludes that the attempts to construe ancient Buddhist cosmology in modern psychological terms is modernistic reconstruction, "detraditionalization and demythologization" of Buddhism, a sociological phenomenon that is seen in all religions.


title: Saṃsāra (Buddhism)

text: A pre-modern form of this interpretation can be seen in the views of Zhiyi, the founder of the Tiantai school in China. The "Record of Linji", a text attributed to the 9th Century Chan teacher Linji Yixuan, also presents the view that the Three Realms originate with the mind.


title: U.S. Steel

text: United States Steel Corporation, more commonly known as U.S. Steel, is an American integrated steel producer headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with production operations primarily in the United States of America and in several countries across Central Europe. It was the 8th largest steel producer in the world in 2008. By 2018, the company was the world's 38th-largest steel producer and the second-largest in the United States behind Nucor Corporation.


title: U.S. Steel

text: Though renamed USX Corporation in 1986, the company was renamed United States Steel in 2001 after spinning off its energy business, including Marathon Oil, and other assets from its core steel concern.


title: U.S. Steel

text: J. P. Morgan formed U.S. Steel on March 2, 1901 (incorporated on February 25), by financing the merger of Andrew Carnegie's Carnegie Steel Company with Elbert H. Gary's Federal Steel Company and William Henry "Judge" Moore's National Steel Company for $492 million ($ billion today). At one time, U.S. Steel was the largest steel producer and largest corporation in the world. It was capitalized at $1.4 billion ($ billion today), making it the world's first billion-dollar corporation. The company established its headquarters in the Empire Building at 71 Broadway in New York City; it remained a major tenant in the building for 75 years. Charles M. Schwab, the Carnegie Steel executive who originally suggested the merger to Morgan, ultimately emerged as the new corporation's first President.


title: U.S. Steel

text: In 1907 U.S. Steel bought its largest competitor, the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, which was headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. Tennessee Coal was replaced in the Dow Jones Industrial Average by the General Electric Company. The federal government attempted to use federal antitrust laws to break up U.S. Steel in 1911 (the same year Standard Oil was broken up), but that effort ultimately failed. In 1902, its first full year of operation, U.S. Steel made 67 percent of all the steel produced in the United States. About 100 years later, as of 2001 it produced only 8 percent more than it did in 1902 and its shipments accounted for only about 8 percent of domestic consumption.


title: U.S. Steel

text: According to the author Douglas Blackmon in "Slavery by Another Name", the growth of U.S. Steel and its subsidiaries in the South was partly dependent on the labor of cheaply paid black workers and exploited convicts. The company could obtain black labor at a fraction of the cost of white labor by taking advantage of the Black Codes and discriminatory laws passed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Southern states after the Reconstruction Era. In addition, U.S. Steel had agreements with more than 20 counties in Alabama to obtain the labor of its prisoners, often paying locals nine dollars a month for workers who would be forced into their mines through a system of convict leasing. This practice continued until at least the late 1920s. While some individuals were guilty of a crime they did not receive payment or recognition for their work; many died from abuse, malnutrition, and dire working and living conditions. This practice of convict leasing was fairly ubiquitous as eight Southern states had similar practices and many companies, as well as farmers, took advantage of this.


title: U.S. Steel

text: The Corporation, as it was known on Wall Street, was distinguished by its size, rather than for its efficiency or creativity during its heyday. In 1901, it controlled two-thirds of steel production and, through its Pittsburgh Steamship Company, developed the largest commercial fleet on the Great Lakes. Because of heavy debts taken on at the company's formation—Carnegie insisted on being paid in gold bonds for his stake—and fears of antitrust litigation, U.S. Steel moved cautiously. Competitors often innovated faster, especially Bethlehem Steel, run by Charles Schwab, U.S. Steel's former president. U.S. Steel's share of the expanding market slipped to 50 percent by 1911. James A. Farrell was named president in 1911 and served until 1932.


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel ranked 16th among United States corporations in the value of World War II production contracts. Production peaked at more than 35  million tons in 1953. Its employment was greatest in 1943, when it had more than 340,000 employees.


title: U.S. Steel

text: The federal government intervened to try to control U.S. Steel. President Harry S. Truman attempted to take over its steel mills in 1952 to resolve a crisis with its union, the United Steelworkers of America. The Supreme Court blocked the takeover by ruling that the president did not have the Constitutional authority to seize the mills. President John F. Kennedy was more successful in 1962 when he pressured the steel industry into reversing price increases that Kennedy considered dangerously inflationary.


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel strongly resisted Kennedy administration efforts to enlist Alabama businesses to support the desegregation of the University of Alabama, which race-baiting Gov. George Wallace had promised to block by standing in the schoolhouse door. Although the firm employed more than 30,000 workers in Birmingham, Ala., company president Roger M. Blough in 1963 "went out of his way to announce that any attempt to use his company position in Birmingham to pressure local whites was 'repugnant to me personally' and 'repugnant to my fellow officers at U.S. Steel.'"


title: U.S. Steel

text: In the postwar years, the steel industry and heavy manufacturing went through a restructuring that caused a decline in U.S. Steel's need for labor, production, and portfolio. Many jobs moved offshore. By 2000, the company employed 52,500 people.


title: U.S. Steel

text: In the early days of the Reagan Administration, steel firms won substantial tax breaks in order to compete with imported goods. But instead of modernizing their mills, steel companies shifted capital out of steel and into more profitable areas. In March 1982, U.S. Steel took its concessions and paid $1.4 billion in cash and $4.7 billion in loans for Marathon Oil, saving approximately $500 million in taxes through the merger. The architect of tax concessions to steel firms, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), complained that "we go out on a limb in Congress and we feel they should be putting it in steel." The events are the subject of "The U.S. Steal Song" by folk singer Anne Feeney.


title: U.S. Steel

text: In 1984 the federal government prevented U.S. Steel from acquiring National Steel, and political pressure from the United States Congress, as well as the United Steelworkers (USW), forced the company to abandon plans to import British Steel Corporation slabs. U.S. Steel finally acquired National Steel's assets in 2003 after National Steel went bankrupt. As part of its diversification plan, U.S. Steel had acquired Marathon Oil on January 7, 1982, as well as Texas Oil and Gas several years later. Recognizing its new scope, it reorganized its holdings as USX Corporation in 1986, with U.S. Steel (renamed USS, Inc.) as a major subsidiary.


title: U.S. Steel

text: About 22,000 USX employees stopped work on August 1, 1986, after the United Steelworkers of America and the company could not agree on new employee contract terms. This was characterized by the company as a strike and by the union as a lockout. This resulted in most USX facilities becoming idle until February 1, 1987, seriously degrading the steel division's market share. A compromise was brokered and accepted by the union membership on January 31, 1987. On February 4, 1987, three days after the agreement had been reached to end the work stoppage, USX announced that four USX plants would remain closed permanently, eliminating about 3,500 union jobs. The closure of so many plants created the term "rust belt" for a region of idle and derelict factories.


title: U.S. Steel

text: Corporate raider Carl Icahn launched a hostile takeover of the steel giant in late 1986 in the midst of the work stoppage. He conducted separate negotiations with the union and with management and proceeded to have proxy battles with shareholders and management. But he abandoned all efforts to buy out the company on January 8, 1987, a few weeks before union employees returned to work.


title: U.S. Steel

text: At the end of the twentieth century, the corporation was deriving much of its revenue and net income from its energy operations. Led by CEO Thomas Usher, U.S. Steel spun off Marathon and other non-steel assets (except railroad company Transtar) in October 2001. It expanded internationally for the first time by purchasing operations in Slovakia and Serbia.


title: U.S. Steel

text: In the early 2010s, U.S. Steel began investing to upgrade software programs throughout their manufacturing facilities.


title: U.S. Steel

text: In January 2012, U.S. Steel sold its Serbian mills outside Belgrade to the Serbian government, as their operations had been running at an economic loss.


title: U.S. Steel

text: On May 2, 2014, U.S. Steel announced an undisclosed number of layoffs affecting employees worldwide. On July 2, 2014, U.S. Steel was removed from S&P 500 index and placed in the S&P MidCap 400 Index, in light of its declining market capitalization.


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel once owned the Northampton and Bath Railroad. The N&B was an short-line railroad built in 1904 that served Atlas Cement in Northampton, Pennsylvania, and Keystone Cement in Bath, Pennsylvania. By 1979 cement shipments had dropped off such that the railroad was no longer economically viable, and U.S. Steel abandoned the line. A section of track was retained to serve Atlas Cement. The remainder of the right-of-way was transformed into the Nor-Bath Trail. U.S. Steel also owned the Atlantic City Mine Railroad, whose line in Wyoming operated from 1962 until 1983 and served an iron ore mine north of Atlantic City, Wyoming.


title: U.S. Steel

text: Through its Transtar subsidiary, U.S. Steel also owned other railroads that served its mines and mills. Those properties included the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range Railway in the iron-mining region of northeast Minnesota; the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern that served its Gary Works in northwest Indiana; the Birmingham Southern Railroad serving the U.S. Steel mill in Birmingham, Alabama; and the Bessemer & Lake Erie and Union railroads in western Pennsylvania that delivered iron ore and provided plant-switching services at its mill complex in Braddock, Pennsylvania and coke works in Clairton, Pennsylvania.


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel also owned a large Great Lakes commercial freighter fleet, under the Pittsburgh Steamship Company, that transported its raw materials from the Duluth area to Ashtabula, Ohio; Gary, Indiana; and Conneaut, Ohio. The laker fleet, the B&LE, and the DM&IR were acquired by Canadian National after U.S. Steel sold most of Transtar to that company. The ships are leased out to a different, domestic operator because of the United States cabotage law.


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel is a former Dow Jones Industrial Average component, listed from April 1, 1901, to May 3, 1991. It was removed under its USX Corporation name with Navistar International and Primerica. An original member of the S&P 500 since 1957, U.S. Steel was removed from that index on July 2, 2014, due to declining market capitalization.


title: U.S. Steel

text: The Board of Directors considers the declaration of dividends four times each year, with checks for dividends declared on common stock mailed for receipt on 10 March, June, September, and December. In 2008, the dividend was $0.30 per share, the highest in company history, but on April 27, 2009, it was reduced to $0.05 per share. Dividends may be paid by mailed check, direct electronic deposit into a bank account, or be reinvested in additional shares of U.S. Steel common stock.


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel maintained the labor policies of Andrew Carnegie, which called for low wages and opposition to unionization. The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers union that represented workers at the Homestead, Pennsylvania, plant was, for many years, broken after a violent strike in 1892. U.S. Steel defeated another strike in 1901, the year it was founded. U.S. Steel built the city of Gary, Indiana, in 1906, and 100 years later it remained the location of the largest integrated steel mill in the Northern Hemisphere. U.S. Steel reached a détente with unions during World War I, when under pressure from the Wilson Administration it relaxed its opposition to unions enough to allow some to operate in certain factories. It returned to its previous policies as soon as the war ended, however, and in a 1919 strike defeated union-organizing efforts by William Z. Foster of the AFL.


title: U.S. Steel

text: Heavy pressure from public opinion forced the company to give up its 12-hour day and adopt the standard eight-hour day. During the 1920s, U.S. Steel, like many other large employers, coupled paternalistic employment practices with "employee representation plans" (ERPs), which were company unions sponsored by management. These ERPs eventually became an important factor leading to the organization of the United Steelworkers of America. The company dropped its hard-line, anti-union stance in 1937, when Myron Taylor, then president of U.S. Steel, agreed to recognize the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, an arm of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) led by John L. Lewis. Taylor was an outsider, brought in during the Great Depression to rescue U.S. Steel, and had no emotional investment in the company's long history of opposition to unions. Watching the upheaval caused by the United Auto Workers' successful sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan, and convinced that Lewis was someone he could deal with on a businesslike basis, Taylor sought stability through collective bargaining.


title: U.S. Steel

text: Still, U.S. Steel worked hand-in-hand with the Birmingham (Alabama) Police Department as it vigorously investigated and targeted labor activities during the 1930s and 1940s. The corporation developed and fed information to a "Red Squad" of detectives "who used the city's vagrancy and criminal-anarchy statutes (liberally reinforced by backroom beatings) to strike at radical labor organizers." In the 1950s, those investigations shifted from labor to civil rights activists.


title: U.S. Steel

text: The Steelworkers continue to have a contentious relationship with U.S. Steel, but far less so than the relationship that other unions had with employers in other industries in the United States. They launched a number of long strikes against U.S. Steel in 1946 and a 116-day strike in 1959, but those strikes were over wages and benefits and not the more fundamental issue of union recognition that led to violent strikes elsewhere.


title: U.S. Steel

text: The Steelworkers union attempted to mollify the problems of competitive foreign imports by entering into a so-called Experimental Negotiation Agreement (ENA) in 1974. This was to provide for arbitration if the parties were not able to reach an agreement on any new collective bargaining agreements, thereby preventing disruptive strikes. The ENA failed to stop the decline of the steel industry in the U.S.


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel and the other employers terminated the ENA in 1984. In 1986, U.S. Steel employees stopped work after a dispute over contract terms, characterized by the company as a strike and by the union as a lockout. In a letter to striking employees in 1986, Johnston warned, "There are not enough seats in the steel lifeboat for everybody." In addition to reducing the role of unions, the steel industry had sought to induce the federal government to take action to counteract the dumping of steel by foreign producers at below-market prices. Neither the concessions nor anti-dumping laws have restored the industry to the health and prestige it once had.


title: U.S. Steel

text: During the 1948 Donora smog, an air inversion trapped industrial effluent (air pollution) from the American Steel and Wire plant and U.S. Steel's Donora Zinc Works in Donora, Pennsylvania.


title: U.S. Steel

text: In three days, 20 people died... After the inversion lifted, another 50 died, including Lukasz Musial, the father of baseball great Stan Musial. Hundreds more lived the rest of their lives with damaged lungs and hearts. But another 40 years would pass before the whole truth about Donora's bad air made public-health history.


title: U.S. Steel

text: Today the Donora Smog Museum in that city tells of the influence that the hazardous Donora Smog had on the air quality standards enacted by the federal government in subsequent years.


title: U.S. Steel

text: Researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute have ranked U.S. Steel as the eighth-greatest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States (down from their 2000 ranking as the second-greatest). In 2008, the company released more than one million kg (2.2 million pounds) of toxins, chiefly ammonia, hydrochloric acid, ethylene, zinc compounds, methanol, and benzene, but including manganese, cyanide, and chromium compounds. In 2004, the city of River Rouge, Michigan, and the residents of River Rouge and the nearby city of Ecorse filed a class-action lawsuit against the company for "the release and discharge of air particulate matter...and other toxic and hazardous substances" at its River Rouge plant.


title: U.S. Steel

text: The company has also been implicated in generating water pollution and toxic waste. In 1993, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an order for U.S. Steel to clean up a site on the Delaware River in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania, where the soil had been contaminated with arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals, as well as naphthalene. Groundwater at the site was found to be polluted with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and trichloroethylene (TCE). In 2005, the EPA, United States Department of Justice, and the State of Ohio reached a settlement requiring U.S. Steel to pay more than $100,000 in penalties and $294,000 in reparations in answer to allegations that the company illegally released pollutants into Ohio waters. U.S. Steel's Gary, Indiana facility has been repeatedly charged with discharging polluted wastewater into Lake Michigan and the Grand Calumet River. In 1998 the company agreed to payment of a $30 million settlement to clean up contaminated sediments from a five-mile (8 km) stretch of the river.


title: U.S. Steel

text: With the exception of the Fairless Hills and Gary facilities, the lawsuits concern facilities acquired by U.S. Steel via its 2003 purchase of National Steel Corporation, not its historic facilities.


title: U.S. Steel

text: The U.S. Steel Tower in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is named after the company and since 1970, the company's corporate headquarters have been located there. It is the tallest skyscraper in the downtown Pittsburgh skyline, built out of the company's Corten Steel. New York City's One Liberty Plaza was also built by the corporation as that city's U.S. Steel Tower in 1973.


title: U.S. Steel

text: When the Steelmark logo was created, U.S. Steel attached the following meaning to it: "Steel lightens your work, brightens your leisure and widens your world." The logo was used as part of a major marketing campaign to educate consumers about how important steel is in people's daily lives. The Steelmark logo was used in print, radio and television ads as well as on labels for all steel products, from steel tanks to tricycles to filing cabinets.


title: U.S. Steel

text: In the 1960s, U.S. Steel turned over the Steelmark program to the AISI, where it came to represent the steel industry as a whole. During the 1970s, the logo's meaning was extended to include the three materials used to produce steel: yellow for coal, orange for ore and blue for steel scrap. In the late 1980s, when the AISI founded the Steel Recycling Institute (SRI), the logo took on a new life reminiscent of its 1950s meaning.


title: U.S. Steel

text: The Pittsburgh Steelers professional football team borrowed elements of its logo, a circle containing three hypocycloids, from the Steelmark logo belonging to the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) and created by U.S. Steel. In the 1950s, when helmet logos became popular, the Steelers added players' numbers to either side of their gold helmets. Later that decade, the numbers were removed and in 1962, Cleveland's Republic Steel suggested to the Steelers that they use the Steelmark as a helmet logo.


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel financed and constructed the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, New York, for the 1964 World's Fair. It is the largest globe ever made and is one of the world's largest free-standing sculptures.


title: U.S. Steel

text: The Chicago Picasso sculpture was fabricated by U.S. Steel in Gary, Indiana, before being disassembled and relocated to Chicago. U.S. Steel donated the steel for the construction of St. Michael's Catholic Church in Chicago since 90 percent of the parishioners worked at its mills.


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel sponsored "The United States Steel Hour" television program from 1945 until 1963 on CBS. U.S. Steel built both the Disney's Contemporary Resort and the Disney's Polynesian Resort in 1971 at Walt Disney World, in part to showcase its residential steel building "modular" products to high-end and luxury consumers.


title: U.S. Steel

text: This same U.S. Steel manufacturing plant that was located on Disney property also helped build the now defunct Court of Flags Resort in Orlando, Florida, on Major Blvd.


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel was also involved with Florida real estate development including building beachfront condominiums during the 1970s, such as Sand Key near Daytona Beach, Florida, and the Pasadena Yacht and Country Club near St. Petersburg, Florida.


title: U.S. Steel

text: Of note in the United States is Clairton Works, Edgar Thomson Works, and Irvin Plant, which are all members of Mon Valley Works just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Clairton Works is the largest coking facility in North America. Edgar Thomson Works is one of the oldest steel mills in the world. The company acquired Great Lakes Works and Granite City Works, both large integrated steel mills, in 2003 and is partnered with Severstal North America in operating the world's largest electro-galvanizing line, Double Eagle Steel Coating Company at the historic Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan.


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel's largest domestic facility is Gary Works, in Gary, Indiana, on the shore of Lake Michigan. For many years, the Gary Works Plant was the world-largest steel mill and it remains the largest integrated mill in North America. It was built in 1906 and has been operating since June 28, 1908. Gary is also home to the U.S. Steel Yard baseball stadium.


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel operates a tin mill in East Chicago now known as East Chicago Tin. The mill was idled in 2015, but reopened shortly after. The mill was then 'permanently idled' in 2019, however the facility remains in possession of the corporation as of early 2020.


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel operates a sheet and tin finishing facility in Portage, Indiana, known as Midwest Plant, acquired after the National Steel Corporation bankruptcy. U.S. Steel acquired National Steel Corporation in May 2003 for $850 million and assumption of $200 million in debt. U.S. Steel operates Great Lakes Works in Ecorse, Michigan, Midwest Plant in Portage, Indiana, and Granite City Steel in Granite City, Illinois. In 2008 a major expansion of Granite City was announced, including a new coke plant with an annual capacity of 650,000 tons.


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel operates Fairfield Works in Fairfield, Alabama (Birmingham), employing 1,500 people, and operates a sheet galvanizing operation at the Fairless Works facility in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania, employing 75 people.


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel operates three pipe mills: Fairfield Tubular Operations in Fairfield, Alabama (Birmingham), McKeesport Tubular Operations, in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, and Texas Operations (Formerly Lone Star Steel) in Lone Star, Texas. A fourth pipe mill, Lorain Tubular Operations in Lorain, Ohio is no longer operating at this time.


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel operates two major taconite mining and pelletizing operations in northeastern Minnesota's Iron Range under the operating name Minnesota Ore Operations. The Minntac mine is located near Mountain Iron, Minnesota, and the Keetac mine is near Keewatin, Minnesota. U.S. Steel announced on February 1, 2008, that it would be investing approximately $300 Million in upgrading (project later abandoned) the operations at Keetac, a facility purchased in 2003 from the now-defunct National Steel Corporation.


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel has completely closed nine of its major integrated mills. The Duluth Works in Duluth, Minnesota, closed in 1973. The Ohio Works and Macdonald Works in Youngstown, Ohio, closed in 1980, the Duquesne Works in Duquesne, Pennsylvania, and Ensley Works in Ensley, Alabama in 1984, the Homestead Works in Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1986. Geneva Steel in Vineyard, Utah, was sold in 1987, South Chicago's South Works closed in 1992, followed by the National Tube Works in Mckeesport, Pennsylvania, in 2014.


title: U.S. Steel

text: Internationally, U.S. Steel operates facilities in Slovakia (former East Slovakian Iron Works in Košice). It also operated facilities in Serbia – former Sartid with facilities in Smederevo (steel plant, hot and cold mill) and Šabac (tin mill).


title: U.S. Steel

text: U.S. Steel added facilities in Hamilton and Nanticoke, Ontario, Canada, with the purchase of Stelco (now U.S. Steel Canada) in 2007. These facilities were sold in 2016 to venture capital firm Bedrock Resources and has since been renamed Stelco. The blast furnaces in Hamilton have not been reactivated as they were shut down by U.S. Steel in 2013, but those at Nanticoke are functional.


title: U.S. Steel

text: The company opened a training facility, the Mon Valley Works Training Hub, in Duquesne, Pennsylvania, in 2008. The state-of-the-art facility, located on a portion of the property once occupied by the company's Duquesne Works, serves as the primary training site for employees at U.S. Steel's three Pittsburgh-area Mon Valley Works locations. This site also served as the company's temporary technical support headquarters during the 2009 G20 Summit.


title: McMahon family

text: The McMahon family is an Irish-American family, primarily known for their involvement in the professional wrestling business. They are the founders, owners, and promoters of the wrestling company, WWE. Vince McMahon, a third generation wrestling promoter, was the chairman and CEO of the company. McMahon joined his father's regional wrestling company in 1969 and purchased the promotion 13 years later. WWF (now called WWE) went public in 1999 and today its programs are broadcasting in around 150 countries and more than 30 languages. The company has also branched out into movie production and - separate to WWE - American football, with two incarnations of the XFL.


title: McMahon family

text: The family’s involvement in wrestling started when Jess McMahon, who was descended from the Thomond McMahon clan of Western Ireland, began promoting wrestling shows in 1915. He died in 1954. Jess and his son, Vincent J. McMahon, formed the Capitol Wrestling Corporation in 1952, which would subsequently be renamed twice during his tenure (as the World Wide Wrestling Federation, and then the World Wrestling Federation). Vince Sr. had two wives, Victoria Askew and Juanita Johnston. When he retired in 1982, his son from his first marriage, Vince McMahon, purchased the business and served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the company until July 2022, at which time he retired as a result of a sex scandal. The company is now known as World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (WWE) since 2002 and Alpha Entertainment, LLC since 2017.


title: McMahon family

text: Vince and Linda's children are Shane and Stephanie. Shane is married to Marissa Mazzola, and Stephanie is married to Paul Levesque, best known by his wrestling moniker Triple H. Stephanie and Paul have three daughters named Aurora Rose, Murphy Claire, and Vaughn Evelyn. Shane and Marissa have three sons, Declan James, Kenyon Jesse, and Rogan Henry. Linda would step down as CEO to run for United States Senate in Connecticut. Their son, Shane also eventually departed WWE at the beginning of 2010 to become Chairman and Principal executive officer of YOU On Demand Inc., a New York City based company with its primary business in China, but he would later return to the WWE in 2016 as an on-screen talent. Vince, Stephanie, and Shane are the only three members born into the McMahon family working under the brand as of 2021. Although every member holds a collective 90% of WWE stock through WWE's Class B shares, which the family controls completely. As of June 2016, the WWE has a USD market cap that is over $1.38 billion.


title: McMahon family

text: In December 2016, Linda was nominated to be the Administrator of the Small Business Administration by President Donald Trump, and served from 2017 through 2019.


title: Atreus

text: In Greek mythology, Atreus ( , ; from ἀ-, "no" and τρέω, "tremble", "fearless", ) was a king of Mycenae in the Peloponnese, the son of Pelops and Hippodamia, and the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. Collectively, his descendants are known as Atreidai or Atreidae.


title: Atreus

text: Atreus and his twin brother Thyestes were exiled by their father for murdering their half-brother Chrysippus in their desire for the throne of Olympia. They took refuge in Mycenae, where they ascended to the throne in the absence of King Eurystheus, who was fighting the Heracleidae. Eurystheus had meant for their stewardship to be temporary, but it became permanent after his death in battle.


title: Atreus

text: According to most ancient sources, Atreus was the father of Pleisthenes, but in some lyric poets (Ibycus, Bacchylides) Pleisthenides (son of Pleisthenes) is used as an alternative name for Atreus himself.


title: Atreus

text: Atreides is a patronymic form of Atreus which refers to one of his sons—Agamemnon or Menelaus. The plural form Atreidae or Atreidai refers to both sons collectively. Atreides is commonly used to translate both the singular and plural form to English. The term can also be used for the more distant descendants of Atreus.


title: Atreus

text: The House of Atreus begins with Tantalus. Tantalus, the son of Zeus and the nymph Plouto, enjoyed cordial relations with the gods until he decided to slay his son Pelops and feed him to the gods as a test of their omniscience. Most of the gods, as they sat down to dinner with Tantalus, immediately understood what had happened, and, because they knew the nature of the meat they were served, were appalled and did not partake. But Demeter, who was distracted due to the abduction by Hades of her daughter Persephone, obliviously ate Pelops‘s shoulder. The gods threw Tantalus into the underworld to spend eternity standing in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever he reaches for the fruit, the branches raise his intended meal from his grasp. Whenever he bends down to get a drink, the water recedes before he can drink. Thus is derived the word "tantalizing" in English. The gods brought Pelops back to life, replacing the bone in his shoulder with a bit of ivory with the help of Hephaestus, thus marking the family forever afterwards.


title: Atreus

text: Pelops married Hippodamia after winning a chariot race against her father, King Oenomaus, by arranging for the sabotage of his would-be-father-in-law's chariot which resulted in his death. The versions of the story differ. The sabotage was arranged by Myrtilus, a servant of the king who was killed by Pelops for one of three reasons: 1) because he had been promised the right to take Hippodamia's virginity, which Pelops retracted; 2) because he attempted to rape her, or; 3) because Pelops did not wish to share the credit for the victory. As Myrtilus died, he cursed Pelops and his line, further adding to the house's curse.


title: Atreus

text: Pelops and Hippodamia had many sons; two of them were Atreus and Thyestes. Depending on myth versions, they murdered Chrysippus, who was their half-brother. Because of the murder, Hippodamia, Atreus, and Thyestes were banished to Mycenae, where Hippodamia is said to have hanged herself.


title: Atreus

text: Atreus vowed to sacrifice his best lamb to Artemis. Upon searching his flock, however, Atreus discovered a golden lamb which he gave to his wife, Aerope, to hide from the goddess. She gave it to Thyestes, her lover and Atreus' brother, who then persuaded Atreus to agree that whoever had the lamb should be king. Thyestes produced the lamb and claimed the throne.


title: Atreus

text: Atreus retook the throne using advice he received from Zeus, who sent Hermes to him, advising him to make Thyestes agree that if the sun rose in the west and set in the east, the throne of the kingdom should be given back to Atreus. Thyestes agreed, but then Helios did exactly that, rising where he usually set and setting where he usually rose, not standing the injustice of Thyestes' usurpation. The people then bowed to the man who had managed to reverse the circuit of the Sun.


title: Atreus

text: Atreus then learned of Thyestes' and Aerope's adultery and plotted revenge. He killed Thyestes' sons and cooked them, save their hands and feet. He tricked Thyestes into eating the flesh of his own sons and then taunted him with their hands and feet. Thyestes was forced into exile for eating the flesh of a human. Thyestes responded by asking an oracle what to do, who advised him to have a son by his daughter, Pelopia, who would then kill Atreus. However, when Aegisthus was first born, he was abandoned by his mother, who was ashamed of the incestuous act. A shepherd found the infant Aegisthus and gave him to Atreus, who raised him as his own son. Only as he entered adulthood did Thyestes reveal the truth to Aegisthus, that he was both father and grandfather to the boy. Aegisthus then killed Atreus, although not before Atreus and Aerope had had two sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus, and a daughter Anaxibia.


title: Atreus

text: Agamemnon married Clytemnestra, and Menelaus married Helen, her famously attractive sister. Helen later left Sparta with Paris of Troy, and Menelaus called on all of his wife's former suitors to help him take her back.


title: Atreus

text: Prior to sailing off to war against Troy, Agamemnon had angered the goddess Artemis because he had killed a sacred deer in a sacred grove, and had then boasted that he was a better hunter than she was. When the time came, Artemis stilled the winds so that Agamemnon's fleet could not sail. A prophet named Calchas told him that in order to appease Artemis, Agamemnon would have to sacrifice the most precious thing that had come to his possession in the year he killed the sacred deer. This was his first-born daughter, Iphigenia. He sent word home for her to come (in some versions of the story on the pretense that she was to be married to Achilles). Iphigenia accepted her father's choice and was honored to be a part of the war. Clytemnestra tried to stop Iphigenia but was sent away. After doing the deed, Agamemnon's fleet was able to get under way.


title: Atreus

text: While he was fighting the Trojans, his wife Clytemnestra, enraged by the murder of her daughter, began an affair with Aegisthus. When Agamemnon returned home he brought with him a new concubine, the doomed prophetess, Cassandra. Upon his arrival that evening, before the great banquet she had prepared, Clytemnestra drew a bath for him and when he came out of the bath, she put the royal purple robe on him which had no opening for his head. He was confused and tangled up. Clytemnestra then stabbed him to death.


title: Atreus

text: Agamemnon's only son, Orestes, was quite young when his mother killed his father. He was sent into exile. In some versions he was sent away by Clytemnestra to avoid having him present during the murder of Agamemnon; in others his sister Electra herself rescued the infant Orestes and sent him away to protect him from their mother. In both versions he was the legitimate heir apparent and as such a potential danger to his usurper uncle.


title: Atreus

text: Goaded by his sister Electra, Orestes swore revenge. He knew it was his duty to avenge his father's death, but saw also that in doing so he would have to kill his mother. He was torn between avenging his father and sparing his mother. 'It was a son's duty to kill his father's murderers, a duty that came before all others. But a son who killed his mother was abhorrent to gods and to men'.


title: Atreus

text: When he prayed to Apollo, the god advised him to kill his mother. Orestes realized that he must work out the curse on his house, exact vengeance and pay with his own ruin. After Orestes murdered Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, he wandered the land with guilt in his heart. After many years, with Apollo by his side, he pleaded to Athena. No descendant of Atreus had ever done so noble an act and 'neither he nor any descendant of his would ever again be driven into evil by the irresistible power of the past.' Thus Orestes ended the curse of the House of Atreus.


title: Atreus

text: Plato in his dialogue "The Statesman" tells a "famous tale" that "the sun and the stars once rose in the west, and set in the east, and that the god reversed their motion, and gave them that which they now have as a testimony to the right of Atreus." Virgil, in book IV of the "Aeneid", references the House of Atreus and specifically Orestes in describing the death of Dido.


title: Atreus

text: The first English language translation of the "Oresteia" in 1777 contributed greatly to the development of the Romantic period in literature.


title: Atreus

text: There is a possible reference to Atreus in a Hittite text known as the "Indictment of Madduwatta". The indictment describes several army clashes between the Greeks and the Hittites which took place around the late 15th or early 14th centuries BC. The Greek leader was a man called Attarsiya, and some scholars have speculated that Attarsiya or Attarissiya was the Hittite way of writing the Greek name Atreus. Other scholars argue that even though the name is probably Greek (since the man is described as an Ahhiyawa) and related to Atreus, the person carrying the name is not necessarily identical to the famous Atreus.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: Lady Macbeth is a leading character in William Shakespeare's tragedy "Macbeth" (). As the wife of the play's tragic hero, Macbeth (a Scottish nobleman), Lady Macbeth goads her husband into committing regicide, after which she becomes queen of Scotland. After Macbeth becomes a murderous tyrant, she is driven to madness by guilt over their crimes, and commits suicide offstage.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: Lady Macbeth is a powerful presence in the play, most notably in the first two acts. Following the murder of King Duncan, however, her role in the plot diminishes. She becomes an uninvolved spectator to Macbeth's plotting and a nervous hostess at a banquet dominated by her husband's hallucinations. Her sleepwalking scene in the fifth act is a turning point in the play, and her line "Out, damned spot!" has become a phrase familiar to many speakers of the English language. The report of her death late in the fifth act provides the inspiration for Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: The role has attracted countless notable actors over the centuries, including Sarah Siddons, Charlotte Melmoth, Helen Faucit, Ellen Terry, Jeanette Nolan, Vivien Leigh, Simone Signoret, Vivien Merchant, Glenda Jackson, Francesca Annis, Judith Anderson, Judi Dench, Renee O'Connor, Helen McCrory, Keeley Hawes, Alex Kingston, Marion Cotillard, Hannah Taylor-Gordon, and Frances McDormand.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth appeared to be a composite of two personages found in the account of King Duff and in the account of King Duncan in "Holinshed's Chronicles": Donwald's nagging, murderous wife in the account of King Duff and Macbeth's ambitious wife, Gruoch of Scotland, in the account of King Duncan. In the account of King Duff, one of his captains, Donwald, suffers the deaths of his kinsmen at the orders of the king. Donwald then considers regicide at "the setting on of his wife", who "showed him the means whereby he might soonest accomplish it." Donwald abhors such an act, but perseveres at the nagging of his wife. After plying the king's servants with food and drink and letting them fall asleep, the couple admit their confederates to the king's room, where they then commit the regicide. The murder of Duff has its motivation in revenge rather than ambition.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: In Holinshed's account of King Duncan, the discussion of Lady Macbeth is confined to a single sentence:


title: Lady Macbeth

text: Lady Macbeth makes her first appearance late in scene five of the first act, when she learns in a letter from her husband that three witches have prophesied his future as king. Aware her husband's is "too full o' the milk of human kindness" for committing a murder, then, countering her husband's arguments and reminding him that he first broached the matter, finally winning him to her designs.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: The king retires after a night of eating. Lady Macbeth drugs his attendants and lies the daggers ready for the commission of the crime. Macbeth kills the sleeping king while Lady Macbeth waits nearby. When he brings the daggers from the king's room, Lady Macbeth orders him to return them to the scene of the crime. He refuses. She carries the daggers to the room and smears the drugged attendants faces with the king's blood. The couple retire to wash their hands.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: Following the murder of King Duncan, Lady Macbeth's role in the plots diminish. When Duncan's sons flee the land in fear for their own lives, Macbeth is given king. Without consulting her, Macbeth plots other murders in order to secure his throne, and, at a royal banquet, the queen is forced to dismiss her guests when Macbeth hallucinates.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: When Macbeth orders the death of Macduff, his assassins succeed only in killing his wife and children. Lady Macbeth is horrified and wracked with guilt, which drives her to kill herself; in her last appearance, she sleepwalks in profound torment, and hallucinates that her hands are stained with the blood of Duncan and Macduff's family, scrubbing furiously in a vain attempt to "clean" them. She dies off-stage, with suicide being suggested as its cause when Malcolm declares that she died by "self and violent hands."


title: Lady Macbeth

text: In the First Folio, the only source for the play, she is never referred to as Lady Macbeth, but variously as "Macbeth's wife", "Macbeth's lady", or just "lady"..


title: Lady Macbeth

text: The sleepwalking scene is one of the more celebrated scenes from "Macbeth," and, indeed, in all of Shakespeare. It has no counterpart in "Holinshed's Chronicles," Shakespeare's source material for the play, but is solely his invention.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: A.C. Bradley notes that, with the exception of its few closing lines, the scene is entirely in prose with Lady Macbeth being the only major character in Shakespearean tragedy to make a last appearance "denied the dignity of verse." According to Bradley, Shakespeare generally assigned prose to characters exhibiting abnormal states of mind or abnormal conditions such as somnambulism, with the regular rhythm of verse being inappropriate to characters having lost their balance of mind or subject to images or impressions with no rational connection. Lady Macbeth's recollections – the blood on her hand, the striking of the clock, her husband's reluctance – are brought forth from her disordered mind in chance order with each image deepening her anguish. For Bradley, Lady Macbeth's "brief toneless sentences seem the only voice of truth" with the spare and simple construction of the character's diction expressing a "desolating misery."


title: Lady Macbeth

text: Stephanie Chamberlain in her article "Fantasizing Infanticide: Lady Macbeth and the Murdering Mother in Early Modern England" argues that though Lady Macbeth wants power, her power is "conditioned on maternity", which was a "conflicted status in early modern England". Chamberlain argues that the negative images of Lady Macbeth as a mother figure, such as when she discusses her ability to "dash the brains" of the babe that sucks her breast, reflect controversies concerning the image of motherhood in early modern England. In early modern England, mothers were often accused of hurting the people that were placed in their hands. Lady Macbeth then personifies all mothers of early modern England who were condemned for Lady Macbeth's fantasy of infanticide. Lady Macbeth's fantasy, Chamberlain argues, is not struggling to be a man, but rather struggling with the condemnation of being a bad mother that was common during that time.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: Jenijoy La Belle takes a slightly different view in her article, "A Strange Infirmity: Lady Macbeth’s Amenorrhea". La Belle states that Lady Macbeth does not wish for just a move away from femininity; she is asking the spirits to eliminate the basic biological characteristics of womanhood. The main biological characteristic that La Belle focuses on is menstruation. La Belle argues that by asking to be "unsex[ed]" and crying out to spirits to "make thick [her] blood / Stop up th' access and passage to remorse", Lady Macbeth asks for her menstrual cycle to stop. By having her menstrual cycle stop, Lady Macbeth hopes to stop any feelings of sensitivity and caring that is associated with females. She hopes to become like a man to stop any sense of remorse for the regicide. La Belle furthers her argument by connecting the stopping of the menstrual cycle with the persistent infanticide motifs in the play. La Belle gives examples of "the strangled babe" whose finger is thrown into the witches' cauldron (4.1.30); Macduff's babes who are "savagely slaughter’d" (4.3.235); and the suckling babe with boneless gums whose brains Lady Macbeth would dash out (1.7.57–58) to argue that Lady Macbeth represents the ultimate anti-mother: not only would she smash in a baby's brains but she would go even further to stop her means of procreation altogether.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: Some literary critics and historians argue that not only does Lady Macbeth represent an anti-mother figure in general, she also embodies a specific type of anti-mother: the witch. Modern day critic Joanna Levin defines a witch as a woman who succumbs to Satanic force, a lust for the devil, and who, either for this reason or the desire to obtain supernatural powers, invokes (evil) spirits. Levin refers to Marianne Hester's "Lewd Women and Wicked Witches: A Study of Male Domination," in which Hester articulates a feminist interpretation of the witch as an empowered woman. Levin summarises the claim of feminist historians like Hester: the witch should be a figure celebrated for her nonconformity, defiance, and general sense of empowerment; witches challenged patriarchal authority and hierarchy, specifically "threatening hegemonic sex/gender systems". This view associates witchcraft – and by extension, Lady Macbeth – not with villainy and evil, but with heroism.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: Literary scholar Jenijoy La Belle assesses Lady Macbeth's femininity and sexuality as they relate to motherhood as well as witchhood. The fact that she conjures spirits likens her to a witch, and the act itself establishes a similarity in the way that both Lady Macbeth and the Weird Sisters from the play "use the metaphoric powers of language to call upon spiritual powers who in turn will influence physical events – in one case the workings of the state, in the other the workings of a woman's body." Like the witches, Lady Macbeth strives to make herself an instrument for bringing about the future.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: She proves herself a defiant, empowered nonconformist, and an explicit threat to a patriarchal system of governance in that, through challenging his masculinity, she manipulates Macbeth into murdering King Duncan. Despite the fact that she calls him a coward, Macbeth remains reluctant, until she asks: "What beast was't, then, that made you break this enterprise to me? / When you durst do it, then you were a man; / And to be more than what you were, you would / Be so much more the man." Thus Lady Macbeth enforces a masculine conception of power, yet only after pleading to be unsexed, or defeminised.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: John Rice, a boy actor with the King's Men, may have played Lady Macbeth in a performance of what was likely Shakespeare's tragedy at the Globe Theatre on 20 April 1611. The performance was witnessed and described by Simon Forman in his manuscript "The Book of Plays and Notes thereof per Formans for Common Policy". His account, however, does not establish whether the play was Shakespeare's "Macbeth" or a work on the same subject by another dramatist. The role may have been beyond the talents of a boy actor and may have been played by a man in early performances.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: In the mid-18th century, Hannah Pritchard played Lady Macbeth opposite David Garrick's Macbeth. She was, in Thomas Davies' words, "insensible to compunction and inflexibly bent on cruelty."


title: Lady Macbeth

text: Sarah Siddons starred in John Philip Kemble's 1794 production at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and offered a psychologically intricate portrait of Lady Macbeth in the tradition of Hannah Pritchard. Siddons was especially praised for moving audiences in the sleepwalking scene with her depiction of a soul in profound torment. Siddons and Kemble furthered the view established by Pritchard and Garrick that character was the essence of Shakespearean drama.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: Helen Faucit was critiqued by Henry Morley, a professor of English literature in University College, London, who thought the actress "too demonstrative and noisy" in the scenes before Duncan's murder with the "Come, you spirits" speech "simply spouted" and its closing "Hold! Hold!" shouted in a "most unheavenly manner." In the "I have given suck" speech, he thought Faucit "poured out" the speech in a way that recalled the "scold at the door of a gin-shop." Faucit, he believed, was "too essentially feminine, too exclusively gifted with the art of expressing all that is most beautiful and graceful in womanhood, to succeed in inspiring anything like awe and terror." He thought her talents more congenial to the second phase of the character, and found her "admirably good" in the banquet scene. Her sleepwalking scene, however, was described as having "the air of a too well-studied dramatic recitation."


title: Lady Macbeth

text: In 1884 at the Gaiety Theatre, Sarah Bernhardt performed the sleepwalking scene barefoot and clad in a clinging nightdress, and, in 1888, a critic noted Ellen Terry was "the stormy dominant woman of the eleventh century equipped with the capricious emotional subtlety of the nineteenth century."


title: Lady Macbeth

text: In 1915 and 1918, Sybil Thorndike played the role at Old Vic and then at the Prince's Theatre in 1926. Flora Robson played the role in Tyrone Guthrie's Old Vic production in 1934. In 1955, Vivien Leigh played Lady Macbeth opposite Laurence Olivier at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. In 1977 at The Other Place in Stratford, Judi Dench and Ian McKellen played the infamous husband and wife in Trevor Nunn's production. Other notable Lady Macbeths in the late 20th century included Judith Anderson, Pamela Brown, Diana Wynyard, Simone Signoret, Vivien Merchant, Jane Lapotaire, Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren and Janet Suzman.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: Jeanette Nolan performed the role in Orson Welles' 1948 film adaptation and was critiqued by Bosley Crowther in the "New York Times" of 28 December 1950: "The Lady Macbeth of Jeanette Nolan is a pop-eyed and haggard dame whose driving determination is as vagrant as the highlights on her face. Likewise, her influence upon Macbeth, while fleetingly suggested in a few taut lines and etched in a couple of hot embraces, is not developed adequately. The passion and torment of the conflict between these two which resides in the play has been rather seriously neglected in this truncated rendering." Michael Costello of "Allmovie" has described her performance as "uneven" and has also stated, "Her unique Lady Macbeth is either an exhibition of rank scenery-chewing or a performance of intriguingly Kabuki-like stylization."


title: Lady Macbeth

text: In 2001, actress Maura Tierney portrayed a modernized version of Lady MacBeth in the satirical film "Scotland, PA".


title: Lady Macbeth

text: In 2009, Pegasus Books published "The Tragedy of Macbeth Part II", a play by American author and playwright Noah Lukeman, which endeavoured to offer a sequel to Macbeth and to resolve its many loose ends, particularly Lady Macbeth's reference to her having had a child (which, historically, she did - from a previous marriage, having remarried Macbeth after being widowed.) Written in blank verse, the play was published to critical acclaim.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: In 2010, Gloria Carreño's play "A Season Before The Tragedy of Macbeth" was produced by British Touring Shakespeare and received the plaudits of critics for "its amazing grasp of language". It was deemed "a feat" and a must-see for fans of Shakespeare. The dramatist Gloria Carreño describes events from the murder of "Lord Gillecomgain", Gruoch Macduff's first husband, to the fateful letter in the first act of Shakespeare's tragedy.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: Alex Kingston starred as Lady Macbeth opposite Kenneth Branagh in his and Rob Ashford's adaption of "Macbeth". The play was first performed at the Manchester Festival in 2013 and then transferred to New York for a limited engagement in 2014.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: Marion Cotillard played the character in Justin Kurzel's 2015 film adaptation opposite Michael Fassbender as Macbeth.


title: Lady Macbeth

text: Frances McDormand played the character in The Tragedy of Macbeth opposite Denzel Washington as Macbeth directed by her husband Joel Coen, the first film directed without his brother Ethan Coen.


title: Love Hostel

text: Love Hostel is a 2022 Indian Hindi-language romantic thriller film starring Bobby Deol, Vikrant Massey and Sanya Malhotra. Produced by Red Chillies Entertainment and Drishyam Films, it is directed by Shanker Raman.


title: Love Hostel

text: Completely in love, Ahmed and Jyoti have chosen to spend the rest of their lives together. Aware that their families will not approve as they each come from a different religion, the couple decides to elope and wed in secret. This decision puts them in danger as they are now being hunted by Viraj Singh Dagar, a ruthless mercenary who will not stop until he has found and "corrected" them.


title: Love Hostel

text: Plans to create "Love Hostel" were first announced in October 2020. Shanker Raman wrote the script for "Love Hostel", with the plans that he would also serve as the film's director. While writing the script and developing the movie he focused on "questions of the heart and the mind" and also focused on questioning "what our society has become but also the paths we take to solve our problems". The film also focuses on honor killings. Vikrant Massey and Sanya Malhotra were brought in to portray two of the film's central characters and principal photography began on 23 February 2021 in Punjab's Patiala district. Gauri Khan, Gaurav Verma, and Manish Mundra served as producers and the film was created as a joint production between Red Chillies Entertainment and Drishyam Films.