title: Apollo Lunar Module

text: The Early Apollo Surface Experiments Package (later the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package), was carried in the opposite compartment behind the LM. An external compartment on the right front panel carried a deployable S-band antenna which, when opened looked like an inverted umbrella on a tripod. This was not used on the first landing due to time constraints, and the fact that acceptable communications were being received using the LM's S-band antenna, but was used on Apollo 12 and 14. A hand-pulled Modular Equipment Transporter (MET), similar in appearance to a golf cart, was carried on Apollo 13 and 14 to facilitate carrying the tools and samples on extended moonwalks. On the extended missions (Apollo 15 and later), the antenna and TV camera were mounted on the Lunar Roving Vehicle, which was carried folded up and mounted on an external panel. Compartments also contained replacement Portable Life Support System (PLSS) batteries and extra lithium hydroxide canisters on the extended missions.


title: Apollo Lunar Module

text: One proposed Apollo application was an orbital solar telescope constructed from a surplus LM with its descent engine replaced with a telescope controlled from the ascent stage cabin, the landing legs removed and four "windmill" solar panels extending from the descent stage quadrants. This would have been launched on an uncrewed Saturn 1B, and docked with a crewed command and service module, named the Apollo Telescope Mission (ATM).


title: Apollo Lunar Module

text: This idea was later transferred to the original wet workshop design for the "Skylab" orbital workshop and renamed the Apollo Telescope Mount to be docked on a side port of the workshop's multiple docking adapter (MDA). When Skylab changed to a "dry workshop" design pre-fabricated on the ground and launched on a Saturn V, the telescope was mounted on a hinged arm and controlled from inside the MDA. Only the octagonal shape of the telescope container, solar panels and the Apollo Telescope Mount name were kept, though there was no longer any association with the LM.


title: Apollo Lunar Module

text: The Apollo LM Truck (also known as Lunar Payload Module) was a stand-alone LM descent stage intended to deliver up to of payload to the Moon for an uncrewed landing. This technique was intended to deliver equipment and supplies to a permanent crewed lunar base. As originally proposed, it would be launched on a Saturn V with a full Apollo crew to accompany it to lunar orbit and guide it to a landing next to the base; then the base crew would unload the "truck" while the orbiting crew returned to Earth. In later AAP plans, the LPM would have been delivered by an uncrewed lunar ferry vehicle.


title: Apollo Lunar Module

text: The 1995 Ron Howard film "Apollo 13", a dramatization of that mission starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton, was filmed using realistic spacecraft interior reconstructions of the "Aquarius" and the Command Module "Odyssey".


title: Apollo Lunar Module

text: The development and construction of the lunar module is dramatized in the 1998 miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon" episode entitled "Spider". This is in reference to LM-3, used on Apollo 9, which the crew named "Spider" after its spidery appearance. The unused LM-13 stood in during the teleplay to depict LM-3 and LM-5, "Eagle", used by Apollo 11.


title: Apollo Lunar Module

text: The Apollo 11 Lunar Module "Eagle" is depicted in the 2018 film "First Man", a biopic of Neil Armstrong.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was a multinational military mission in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. It was established by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1386 pursuant to the Bonn Agreement, which outlined the establishment of a permanent Afghan government following the U.S. invasion in October 2001. ISAF's primary goal was to train the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and assist Afghanistan in rebuilding key government institutions; it gradually took part in the broader war in Afghanistan against the Taliban insurgency.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: ISAF's initial mandate was to secure the Afghan capital of Kabul and its surrounding area against opposition forces to facilitate the formation of the Afghan Transitional Administration headed by Hamid Karzai. In 2003, NATO took command of the mission at the request of the UN and Afghan government, marking its first deployment outside Europe and North America. Shortly thereafter, the UN Security Council expanded ISAF's mission to provide and maintain security beyond the capital region. ISAF incrementally broadened its operations in four stages, and by 2006 took responsibility for the entire country; ISAF subsequently engaged in more intensive combat in southern and eastern Afghanistan.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: At its peak between 2010 and 2012, ISAF had 400 military bases throughout Afghanistan (compared to 300 for the ANSF) and roughly 130,000 troops. A total of 42 countries contributed troops to ISAF, including all 30 members of NATO. Personnel contributions varied greatly throughout the course of the mission: Initially, Canada was the largest contributor, though by 2010 the United States accounted for the majority of troops, followed by the United Kingdom, Turkey, Germany, France, and Italy; nations such as Georgia, Denmark, Norway, and Estonia were among the largest contributors per capita. The intensity of the combat faced by participating countries varied greatly, with the U.S. sustaining the most casualties overall, while British, Danish, Estonian, and Georgian forces suffered the most deaths for their size.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: Pursuant to its ultimate aim of transitioning security responsibilities to Afghan forces, ISAF ceased combat operations and was disbanded in December 2014. A number of troops remained to serve a supporting and advisory role as part of its successor organization, the Resolute Support Mission.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: For almost two years, the ISAF mandate did not go beyond the boundaries of Kabul. According to General Norbert Van Heyst, such a deployment would require at least ten thousand additional soldiers. The responsibility for security throughout the whole of Afghanistan was to be given to the newly reconstituted Afghan National Army. However, on 13 October 2003, the Security Council voted unanimously to expand the ISAF mission beyond Kabul with Resolution 1510. Shortly thereafter, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said that Canadian soldiers (nearly half the entire force at that time) would not deploy outside Kabul.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: On 24 October 2003, the German Bundestag voted to send German troops to the region of Kunduz. Approximately 230 additional soldiers were deployed to that region, marking the first time that ISAF soldiers operated outside of Kabul. After the Afghan parliamentary election in September 2005 the Canadian base Camp Julien in Kabul closed, and the remaining Canadian assets were moved to Kandahar as part of Operation Enduring Freedom in preparation for a significant deployment in January 2006. On 31 July 2006, the NATO‑led International Security Assistance Force assumed command of the south of the country, ISAF Stage 3, and by 5 October, also of the east of Afghanistan, ISAF Stage 4.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: ISAF was mandated by UN Security Council Resolutions 1386, 1413, 1444, 1510, 1563, 1623, 1659, 1707, 1776, and 1917 (2010). The last of these extended the mandate of ISAF to 23 March 2011.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: The mandates given by the different governments to their forces varied from country to country. This meant that ISAF suffered from a lack of united aims.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: The initial ISAF headquarters (AISAF) was based on 3rd UK Mechanised Division, led at the time by Major General John McColl. This force arrived in December 2001. Until ISAF expanded beyond Kabul, the force consisted of a roughly division-level headquarters and one brigade covering the capital, the Kabul Multinational Brigade. The brigade was composed of three battle groups, and was in charge of the tactical command of deployed troops. ISAF headquarters served as the operational control center of the mission.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: Eighteen countries were contributors to the force in February 2002, and it was expected to grow to 5,000 soldiers. Turkey assumed command of ISAF in June 2002 (Major General Hilmi Akin Zorlu). During this period, the number of Turkish troops increased from about 100 to 1,300. In November 2002, ISAF consisted of 4,650 troops from over 20 countries. Around 1,200 German troops served in the force alongside 250 Dutch soldiers operating as part of a German-led battalion. Turkey relinquished command in February 2003, and assumed command for a second time in February 2005. Turkey's area of operations expanded into the rugged west of Afghanistan. The expansion of its zone of activities saw ISAF troops operating in 50 percent of Afghanistan, double its previous responsibility.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: On 10 February 2003, German Lieutenant General Norbert van Heyst took command of ISAF, with Brigadier General Bertholee of the Netherlands serving as Deputy. The mission HQ was formed from HQ I. German/Dutch Corps (1GNC), including staff from the UK, Italy, Turkey, Norway, and others. In March 2003, ISAF was composed of 4,700 troops from 28 countries. Service in ISAF by NATO personnel from 1 June 2003. onward earns the right to wear the NATO Medal if a service-member met a defined set of tour length requirements.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: In Kabul on 7 June 2003, a taxi packed with explosives rammed a bus carrying German ISAF personnel, killing four soldiers and wounding 29 others; one Afghan bystander was killed and 10 Afghan bystanders were wounded. The 33 German soldiers, after months on duty in Kabul, were en route to the Kabul International Airport for their flight home to Germany. At the time, Germans soldiers made up more than 40 percent of ISAF troops.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: ISAF command originally rotated among different nations every six months. However, there was tremendous difficulty securing new lead nations. To solve the problem, the command was turned over indefinitely to NATO on 11 August 2003. This marked NATO's first deployment outside Europe or North America.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: Colombia had planned to deploy around 100 soldiers in Spring 2009. These forces were expected to be de-mining experts. General Freddy Padilla de Leon announced to CBS News that operators of Colombia's Special Forces Brigade were scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan in either August or September 2009. However, the Colombians were not listed as part of the force as of June 2011.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: Three NATO states announced withdrawal plans beginning in 2010. Canada in 2011, Poland, in 2012, and the United Kingdom in 2010. Between 1 July 2014, and August, Regional Command Capital and Regional Command West were re-designated Train Advise and Assist Command Capital (TAAC Capital) and TAAC West. The United States ended combat operations in Afghanistan in December 2014. Sizable advisory forces would remain to train and mentor Afghan National Security Forces, and NATO will continue operating under the Resolute Support Mission. ISAF Joint Command, in its final deployment provided by Headquarters XVIII Airborne Corps, ceased operations ahead of the end of the NATO combat mission on 8 December 2014.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: From 2006, the insurgency by the Taliban intensified, especially in the southern Pashtun parts of the country, areas that were the Taliban's original power base in the mid‑1990s. After ISAF took over command of the south on 31 July 2006, British, Dutch, Canadian and Danish ISAF soldiers in the provinces of Helmand, Uruzgan, and Kandahar came under almost daily attack. British commanders said that the fighting for them was the fiercest since the Korean War, 50 years previously. In an article, BBC reporter Alastair Leithead, embedded with the British forces, called it "Deployed to Afghanistan's hell."


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: Because of the security situation in the south, and the mass rape and killings of Afghan woman by suspected Taliban, ISAF commanders asked member countries to send more troops. On 19 October, the Dutch government decided to send more troops because of increasing attacks by suspected Taliban on their Task Force Uruzgan, making it difficult to complete the reconstruction work that they sought to accomplish. Derogatory alternative acronyms for the ISAF were created by critics, including "I Saw Americans Fighting," "I Suck at Fighting," and "In Sandals and Flip Flops."


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: Prior to October 2008, ISAF had only served an indirect role in fighting the illegal opium economy in Afghanistan through shared intelligence with the Afghan government, protection of Afghan poppy crop eradication units and helping in the coordination and the implementation of the country's counter-narcotics policy. For example, Dutch soldiers used military force to protect eradication units that came under attack.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: Crop eradication often affects the poorest farmers who have no economic alternatives on which to fall back. Without alternatives, these farmers no longer can feed their families, causing anger, frustration, and social protest. Thus, being associated with this counterproductive drug policy, ISAF soldiers on the ground found it difficult to gain the support of the local population.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: Though problematic for NATO, this indirect role allowed NATO to avoid the opposition of the local population who depended on the poppy fields for their livelihood. In October 2008, NATO altered its position in an effort to curb the financing of insurgency by the Taliban. Drug laboratories and drug traders became the targets, and not the poppy fields themselves. In order to satisfy France, Italy and Germany, the deal involved the participation in an anti-drug campaign only of willing NATO member countries; the campaign was to be short-lived and with the cooperation of the Afghans.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: On 10 October 2008, during a news conference, after an informal meeting of NATO Defense Ministers in Budapest, Hungary, NATO Spokesman James Appathurai said:


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: ISAF military casualties, and the civilian casualties caused by the war and Coalition/ISAF friendly fire, became a major political issue, both in Afghanistan and in the troop contributing nations. Increasing civilian casualties threatened the stability of President Hamid Karzai's government. Consequently, effective from 2 July 2009, coalition air and ground combat operations were ordered to take steps to minimize Afghan civilian casualties in accordance with a tactical directive issued by General Stanley A. McChrystal, USA, the commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: Another issue over the years has been numerous 'insider' attacks involving Afghan soldiers opening fire on ISAF soldiers. While these diminished, in part due to the planned ending of combat operations on 31 December 2014, they continued to occur, albeit at a lower frequency. On 5 August 2014, a gunman believed to have been an Afghan soldier opened fire on a number of international soldiers, killing a U.S. general, Harold J. Greene, and wounding about 15 officers and soldiers, including a German brigadier general and several U.S. soldiers, at a training academy near Kabul.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: Throughout the four different regional stages of ISAF the number of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) grew. The expansion of ISAF, to November 2006, to all provinces of the country brought the total number of PRTs to twenty-five. The twenty-fifth PRT, at Wardak, was established that month and was led by Turkey. Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum, at Brunssum, the Netherlands, was ISAF's superior NATO headquarters. The headquarters of ISAF was located in Kabul. In October 2010, there were 6 Regional Commands, each with subordinate Task Forces and Provincial Reconstruction Teams. The lower strength numbers of the ISAF forces were as 6 October 2008. The numbers also reflected the situation in the country. The north and west were relatively calm, while ISAF and Afghan forces in the south and east came under almost daily attack. In December 2014 the force reportedly numbered 18,636 from 48 states.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: The command of ISAF has rotated between officers of the participating nations. The first American took command in February 2007 and only Americans have commanded ISAF since that time.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: All NATO member states have contributed troops to the ISAF, as well as some other partner states of the NATO alliance.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: Resolution 1386 of the United Nations Security Council established that the expense of the ISAF operation must be borne by participating states. For this purpose the resolution established a trust fund through which contributions could be channeled to the participating states or operations concerned, and encouraged the participating states to contribute to such a fund.


title: International Security Assistance Force

text: Stene, Lillian K. "Rational beliefs- inconsistent practices, civil military coordination in North Afghanistan." PhD thesis University of Stavanger no 230. September 2014


title: Tyrell Malacia

text: Tyrell Johannes Chicco Malacia (born 17 August 1999) is a Dutch professional footballer who plays as a left-back for Premier League club Manchester United and the Netherlands national team.


title: Tyrell Malacia

text: Malacia joined Feyenoord's youth system at the age of nine. He made his professional debut for the club in December 2017, and won the KNVB Cup in 2018. He was named in the UEFA Europa Conference League Team of the Season in 2022, after earning a runners-up medal in the competition. Later that year, he joined Manchester United.


title: Tyrell Malacia

text: Malacia was a youth international for the Netherlands from under-16 to under-21 level, before making his senior international debut against Montenegro in September 2021.


title: Tyrell Malacia

text: Malacia was born in Rotterdam, and joined the Feyenoord youth academy at the age of nine in 2008. He signed his first professional contract with them on 2 December 2015. He made his professional debut for Feyenoord in a 2–1 UEFA Champions League win against Napoli on 6 December 2017, wherein he played the full 90 minutes. Malacia made his Eredivisie debut for Feyenoord in a 1–1 tie with SC Heerenveen on 13 December 2017. He was an unused substitute in the 2018 KNVB Cup Final, where Feyenoord beat AZ Alkmaar 3–0. On 25 May 2022, he started in Feyenoord's 1–0 UEFA Europa Conference League Final loss against Roma in Albania. He was later one of five Feyenoord players named in the competition's Team of the Season.


title: Tyrell Malacia

text: On 5 July 2022, Malacia signed a four-year contract with Premier League club Manchester United, with the option of a further year. United paid Feyenoord an initial fee of €15 million (£13 million), with an extra €2 million (£1.7 million) in add-ons, to make Malacia the club's first signing under manager Erik ten Hag. Two days later, it was confirmed that he would wear the number 12 shirt last worn by Chris Smalling. On 7 August, Malacia made his club debut as a substitute in a 2–1 home loss against Brighton & Hove Albion in the Premier League. On 22 August 2022, Malacia started for the first time for United in a 2–1 win against Liverpool.


title: Tyrell Malacia

text: Malacia was born in the Netherlands, to a Curaçaoan father and Surinamese mother. Malacia was a youth international who represented the Netherlands at under-16, under-17, under-18, under-20 and under-21 levels. He was called up to the preliminary squad for the Curaçao national team for the 2021 CONCACAF Gold Cup. On 27 August 2021, Malacia received his first call-up for the Netherlands national football team for the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification matches against Norway, Montenegro and Turkey. He made his debut on 4 September 2021 in the match against Montenegro.


title: Aaditi Pohankar

text: Aaditi Pohankar (born 1 January 1997) is an Indian actress who primarily works in Hindi cinema. She had her breakthrough role alongside Riteish Deshmukh in the Marathi action film "Lai Bhaari" (2014).Till date she has worked only in two films and two television series.


title: Aaditi Pohankar

text: Aaditi Pohankar was born to Sudhir and Shobha Pohankar, both athletes. While in school, she represented Maharashtra in athletics and won medals in 100 metres and 200 metres races.


title: Aaditi Pohankar

text: Pohankar began her career in theatre and had her first film role in "Kunasathi Kunitari". She was spotted by director Nishikant Kamat when he saw Makarand's play "Time Boy" in Mumbai, where the actress starred as a seven-year-old boy. Kamat made her go through two days of screen tests for a role in his Marathi film "Lai Bhaari" (2014) and cast her opposite Riteish Deshmukh after being impressed with her temperament. Pohankar revealed that during the shoot, Kamat gave her the liberty to do what she wanted as an actress and to get into her character, she visualized herself as "an evil person". "Lai Bhaari" opened to positive reviews, with Pohankar's villainous character receiving praise. The film went on to become one of the highest-grossing Marathi films.


title: Aaditi Pohankar

text: Three years later, Pohankar starred in the Netflix web series "She" (2020), playing a police constable used as a honeytrap. Nandini Ramnath of Scroll.in found Pohankar to be "riveting" in the role, adding that she successfully "unlocks her character's complexity".


title: Aaditi Pohankar

text: Later in 2020, she starred in "Aashram", playing the role of a young wrestler who is attracted to the seemingly democratic setup of the ashram, upon learning that her being a Dalit is keeping her from success due to casteism. She gained wider attention for her roles in the Hindi web series "She" and "Aashram" (both 2020–present). For this role, she was trained by wrestler Sangram Singh. A reviewer for IANS opined, "Aaditi Pohankar's zestful Pammi stands out for the way the actress traces the character arc."


title: Aaditi Pohankar

text: Pohankar has appeared in over twenty brand ads and commercials including for Cadbury Munch, Godrej AER, Airtel, Lenskart and Samsung, in which she was directed by Shoojit Sircar.


title: Big Brother 23 (American season)

text: Big Brother 23 is the twenty-third season of the American reality television program "Big Brother". The season premiered on July 7, 2021, with a live move-in on CBS in the United States and Global in Canada. The show chronicles a group of contestants (known as HouseGuests) living in a house together while being constantly filmed and having no communication with the outside world as they compete to be the last competitor remaining to win a grand prize of (an increase of from past editions of the show). CBS renewed "Big Brother" for an additional season on October 28, 2020, the day the previous season concluded. On the same day, Julie Chen Moonves was confirmed to return as host.


title: Big Brother 23 (American season)

text: The season concluded on September 29, 2021, after 85 days of competition. Xavier Prather was crowned the winner defeating Derek Frazier, becoming the first black HouseGuest to win in the main edition of the show in the second unanimous jury vote in a row and the fourth unanimous jury vote in "Big Brother US" history (following Dan Gheesling of "Big Brother 10", Tamar Braxton of "Celebrity Big Brother 2" and Cody Calafiore of "Big Brother 22"). Tiffany Mitchell was voted as the season's America's Favorite HouseGuest.


title: Big Brother 23 (American season)

text: "Big Brother" depicts a group of contestants, known as HouseGuests, who live inside a custom-built house outfitted with cameras and microphones recording their every move 24 hours a day. The HouseGuests are sequestered in the "Big Brother House" with no contact with the outside world. During their stay, the HouseGuests share their thoughts on events and other HouseGuests inside the Diary Room. Each week, the HouseGuests compete in competitions in order to win power and safety inside the house. At the start of each week, the HouseGuests compete in the Head of Household (abbreviated "HOH") competition. The winner of the HoH competition is immune from eviction and must select two HouseGuests to be nominated for eviction. Six HouseGuests are then selected to compete in the Power of Veto (abbreviated "PoV") competition: the reigning HoH, the nominees, and three other HouseGuests selected by random draw. The winner of the PoV competition wins the right to either revoke the nomination of one of the nominated HouseGuests or leave them as is. If the veto winner uses this power, the HoH must immediately nominate another HouseGuest for eviction. The PoV winner is also immune from being named as the replacement nominee. On eviction night, all HouseGuests must vote to evict one of the nominees. The Head of Household and the nominees are not allowed to vote. This compulsory vote is conducted in the privacy of the Diary Room. In the event of a tie, the Head of Household casts the tie-breaking vote. The nominee with the most votes is evicted from the house. The last nine evicted HouseGuests comprise the Jury and are sequestered in a separate house following their eviction, and ultimately decide the winner of the season. The Jury is not allowed to watch the show except for competitions and ceremonies that include all of the remaining HouseGuests. They are not shown any Diary Room interviews or any footage that might include strategy or details regarding nominations. The viewing public is able to award an additional prize of to their favorite HouseGuest of the season. All evicted HouseGuests are eligible to win this award except for those who either voluntarily leave or are forcibly removed for rule-breaking.


title: Big Brother 23 (American season)

text: As a response to racial reckoning in the United States and a lack of diverse representation on television, CBS enacted a policy whereby at least 50% of the cast of its reality shows must be starting beginning with the 2021–22 broadcast season. The HouseGuests for the twenty-third season were announced on July 1, 2021. Among the 16 HouseGuests is professional boxer Joe Frazier's son Derek Frazier. Christie Valdiserri, a 27-year-old from North Hollywood, California, was originally part of the cast, but tested positive for COVID-19 while in sequester and could not compete. She was replaced by Claire Rehfuss.


title: Big Brother 23 (American season)

text: Azah Awasum, Alyssa Lopez, Derek Xiao, Kyland Young, Tiffany Mitchell, and Xavier Prather competed on "." Tiffany Mitchell returned for "Big Brother 24" to host a Power of Veto competition; Tiffany and the remaining members of The Cookout alliance (Xavier Prather, Derek Frazier, Azah Awasum, Kyland Young, and Hannah Chaddha) also returned for a segment during the final 4 eviction episode of this season. Derek Xiao and Claire Rehfuss competed as a team on "The Amazing Race 34".


title: Big Brother 23 (American season)

text: Through various interviews, the show's producers, Allison Grodner and Rich Meehan, debuted the twists for the season.


title: Big Brother 23 (American season)

text: HouseGuests were separated into four teams of four during the live premiere, with two males and two females on each team. Four competitions took place throughout the premiere to decide four Team Captains; the captains then received a brief introduction from two randomly selected HouseGuests with the option to select either of them for their team. As with "Big Brother 11" and "Big Brother 18", Heads of Household earned immunity for their entire team. The team phase of the game concluded after the fourth eviction.


title: Big Brother 23 (American season)

text: For the first four weeks, the three teams without immunity each selected a teammate to compete in the Wildcard Competition. The winning HouseGuest was given the chance to gain immunity but was given a Wildcard decision in exchange for that immunity; this decision could affect the game for either the Wildcard winner, their teammates, or all HouseGuests. Each HouseGuest could only compete in a Wildcard competition once, unless all other team members had already played. The winner for each week's competition is in bold.


title: Big Brother 23 (American season)

text: For weeks six through eight, the High Roller's Room opened for the final eleven HouseGuests, and an in-game currency, “BB Bucks” (BB$), was introduced. America distributed a certain amount of BB$ to each HouseGuest through text voting; the three HouseGuests with the most votes received BB$100, the next three received BB$75, and the remaining HouseGuests received BB$50. For week eight, additional BB$ were distributed via a random envelope draw after the HoH competition. HouseGuests were not required to use their BB$ immediately and could hold them for as long as possible.


title: Big Brother 23 (American season)

text: While the room was open, HouseGuests could use their BB$ to play a game of chance. If they won the game, they would win a power. The stronger the power, the more expensive the game. Powers won are only allowed to be used within the week that it was obtained.


title: Big Brother 23 (American season)

text: This season was the first to feature back-to-back Double Eviction nights over two consecutive weeks instead of Double Evictions spread out by a few weeks, an early eviction night, or a Triple Eviction as done in previous seasons. As a result, Claire, Alyssa, Tiffany and Hannah were all evicted in the span of only two weeks.


title: Big Brother 23 (American season)

text: For the first four weeks, the HouseGuests competed in teams. When a HouseGuest won the Head of Household competition during this phase, they also won immunity for their entire team. On Day 30, the game reverted to the regular format, with the HouseGuests playing as individuals.


title: Big Brother 23 (American season)

text: CBS announced that "Big Brother" had been renewed for a twenty-third season on October 28, 2020, with Chen Moonves confirmed to return as host on the same day. On May 13, 2021, it was announced that the season would be premiering on July 7, 2021. Key art for the season was released by "Entertainment Weekly" on June 16, 2021.


title: Big Brother 23 (American season)

text: On January 22, 2021, Robyn Kass announced that Kassting, Inc. would not be providing casting services for the upcoming season. It was announced that Jesse Tannenbaum, former "Big Brother" casting producer and casting director for "", "Survivor", and "The Amazing Race", would be in charge of the casting efforts for "Big Brother 23". Several casting producers who cast the show under Kassting, Inc. also returned to cast "BB23".


title: Big Brother 23 (American season)

text: Photos of the house were revealed on July 5, 2021, via various social media accounts and entertainment news outlets. When explaining the theme, executive producer Allison Grodner stated "Everyone’s longing for vacations, to get out there and so forth. So we really wanted to bring a sense of adventure and vacation fun and a club atmosphere to the house." Immediately upon entering the house two neon signs hung in the entry way, one reading "BB Beach Club" and the other stating "No Risk, No Reward." The living room featured floor-to-ceiling azure and teal tinted glass windows, a handmade shark lamp, and a coffee table built of playing cards. Each of the three bedrooms downstairs were based on different water elements: the first bedroom contained orange and aqua illuminated sea glass on the walls, the next bedroom held four nautical-themed yacht beds, and the final bedroom featured a coral reef design. A shark-themed kitchen and dining room contained an L-shaped kitchen island and numerous shark and fish artwork. Gym equipment for the season was relocated inside, taking the place of the former downstairs lounge. The gym and bathroom were collectively known as "The Spa" and for the first time, a wall was constructed, closing off the kitchen from the bathroom area. On the second floor, the upstairs lounge was designed on a casino game of poker and had black, white, and gold furniture. The Head of Household bedroom was designed around a seaside cabana theme.


title: Big Brother 23 (American season)

text: Some viewers accused "The Cookout", an all-black six-person alliance, of racism and making voting decisions solely based on race. The alliance was formed as a collective in hopes of combatting the trend from past seasons of minorities being evicted early, as well as having one of its members becoming the main series' first-ever black winner. The "Cookout" term itself stems from African-American culture. Julie Chen Moonves disapproved of the criticism on the topic, saying that the alliance "is not [racist]" in her opinion, adding that "it's hard for some people who are not of color to understand the importance of [The Cookout] making it this far".


title: Rio Carnival

text: The Carnival in Rio de Janeiro (Portuguese: "Carnaval do Rio de Janeiro") is a festival held every year before Lent; it is considered the biggest carnival in the world, with two million people per day on the streets. The first Carnival festival in Rio occurred in 1723.


title: Rio Carnival

text: The typical Rio carnival parade is filled with revelers, floats, and adornments from numerous samba schools which are located in Rio (more than 200 approximately, divided into five leagues/divisions). A samba school is composed of a collaboration of local neighbours that want to attend the carnival together, with some kind of regional, geographical and common background.


title: Rio Carnival

text: There is a special order that every school has to follow with their parade entries. Each school begins with the "comissão de frente" (meaning "Front Commission"), that is the group of people from the school that appear first. Made of ten to fifteen people, the comissão de frente introduces the school and sets the mood and style of their presentation. These people have choreographed dances in elaborate costumes that usually tell a short story. Following the "comissão de frente" is the first float of the samba school, called "abre-alas" ("Opening Wing"). These are followed by the Mestre-sala and Porta-Bandeira ("Master of Ceremonies and Flag Bearer"), with one to four pairs, one active and three reserve, to lead the dancers, which include the old guard veterans and the "ala das baianas", with the drum line battery at the rear and sometimes a brass section and guitars.


title: Rio Carnival

text: The Rio Carnival celebration dates back to the 1650s. During that time, elaborate feasts were organized to give honor to the Greek wine gods. The Romans used to worship Bacchus, the god of the grape-harvest.


title: Rio Carnival

text: The festival ‘Entrudo’ was introduced by the Portuguese and this inspired the birth of the Carnival in Brazil. In 1840, the very first Rio masquerade took place, and polka and waltz took center stage.


title: Rio Carnival

text: Africans subsequently influenced the Carnival with the introduction of Samba music in 1917, which is now considered a traditional Brazilian form.


title: Rio Carnival

text: There was no carnival in 1915–18 or 1940–45. It has been canceled with strict warnings against clandestine celebrations since 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, and will return come 2023.


title: Rio Carnival

text: The Samba school parades were held in Praça Onze, also known as “Big Africa”, the birthplace of the Carioca Carnival parade as it is known today. Future Estácio de Sá, together with Portela and Estação Primeira de Mangueira paraded for the first time in the city in 1929. In 1930, seven schools were already active in the city. With the works of in Avenida Presidente Vargas, the parade moved there, and from 1942 to 1945 the parade was held in São Januário. From 1952 temporary stands for the public were annually assembled, and in 1961 paid tickets made their debut to take advantage of the rising international and national interest and the increasing tourist arrivals. In 1974, due to the works of the subway, the parade was held on Avenida Presidente Antônio Carlos, from where it was also broadcast for the first time in color television. In 1978, the parade was transferred to the Marquês de Sapucaí Avenue, where it remains up to this day. In 1983, the then governor Leonel Brizola, commissioned the architect Oscar Niemeyer the project of a permanent local stadium for the parades in that same area, because until then the bleachers had continued to be temporary, and only assembled and disassembled for the event.


title: Rio Carnival

text: With the increase in the number of schools taking part, which made the parade longer and tiring for the public, in 1984 the parade was separated into two dates and categories: Friday evening into Saturday morning for the lower-level schools; and Sunday evening into Monday morning for the major schools, including the more recognizable ones. That year, a “super-champion” school was also announced following the parade of the champions that took place the following Saturday, which by that time were awarded for the best performances of the past nights of competition. Since this practice was never again repeated, Mangueira remains the only samba school to ever be awarded with the title and dignity of "super-champion" of the annual event. is the samba school that has the largest number of championships with 22.


title: Rio Carnival

text: The schools of the Special Group under LIESA parade over two days (Sunday and Monday), while the A Series schools parade on Friday and Saturday under LIERJ, which also has the B Series, which parades on Fat Tuesday. Both organizations were under the AESCRJ banner before it lost organizing rights, thus also providing for the establishment of new organizations like LIESB and Samba é Nosso for the lower level divisions. The Gold Division (A Series) champion school which advances directly as a participant in the Special Group for the next year's Carnival parades last on Carnival Monday while the Special Group champion parades once more on the Saturday after Ash Wednesday.


title: Rio Carnival

text: As of 2018, LIESB handed over the management of the E series and its schools to ACAS, which now operates it as a rookie level organization for samba schools, in 2020 the C Series (Silver Division) fell under a new organization, LIVRES, with LIESB handling the divisions above and below it.


title: Rio Carnival

text: Rio's Carnival begins on the Friday preceding Lent and ends on Ash Wednesday, but the Winners' Parade happens on the Saturday after the carnival ends. The winning school and runners' up of the Special Group, as well as the A Series champion, all march past one final time on this night.


title: Rio Carnival

text: In 1984, the government decided to give Rio Carnival its new home in the Sambadrome. Today, some of the most famous events of Rio Carnival are ticketed events. There are different types of Sambadrome tickets that are available for purchase. Grandstand tickets are general admissions tickets that are available on a first-come, first-served basis and are not allocated ahead of time. Frisas are open air box seats located along the samba runway. Camarotes are luxury boxes situated between the frisas and the grandstands. Sector 9 is the tourist sector which are the same as grandstand tickets, with the difference being that they are allocated so people have assigned seats.


title: Rio Carnival

text: Carnival ticket prices can vary depending on the ticket type, sector and season. The cheapest sectors are 12 and 13. Tickets can be bought in advance through international brokers, or through local travel agents in Rio de Janeiro. 'Purchase of a ticket' normally means purchase of a "voucher" which is then exchangeable for the ticket close to the date. Ticket sales are organised by LIESA, who will often also make tickets available at late notice via a venue (often a bank) announced the day before. LIESA prices for grandstand tickets vary from Rs5 to Rs500 for the Tourist Sector (2014 prices) (Rs500 = approx. US$250). LIESA publish the base price of the tickets, and agents and brokers charge more (sometimes significantly more) but offer considerable convenience and other benefits.


title: Rio Carnival

text: As the parade is taking place in the Sambadrome and the balls are being held in the Copacabana Palace and beach, many carnival participants are at other locations. Street festivals are very common during carnival and are highly populated by the locals. Elegance and extravagance are usually left behind, but music and dancing are still extremely common. Anyone is allowed to participate in the street festivals. Bandas are very familiar with the street carnival especially because it takes nothing to join in on the fun except to jump in. One of the most well known bandas of Rio is Banda de Ipanema. Banda de Ipanema was first created in 1965 and is known as Rio's most irreverent street band.


title: Rio Carnival

text: Incorporated into every aspect of the Rio carnival are dancing and music. The most famous dance is carnival samba, a Brazilian dance with African influences. The samba remains a popular dance not only in carnival but in the ghettos outside of the main cities. These villages keep alive the historical aspect of the dance without the influence of the western cultures.


title: Rio Carnival

text: Music is another major part of all aspects of the carnival. As stated by Samba City, "Samba Carnival Instruments are an important part of Brazil and the Rio de Janeiro carnival, sending out the irresistible beats and rhythms making the crowd explode in a colourful dance revolution fantasy fest!" The samba that is found in Rio is Battucanada, referring to the dance and music being based on percussion instruments. It "is born of a rhythmic necessity that it allows you to sing, to dance, and to parade at the same time." This is why the batucada style is found in most all of Rio's street carnivals.


title: Rio Carnival

text: Street parades, blocos, and bandas take place throughout the city of Rio during Carnival, the most famous and largest carnival celebration of the world. There can be more than 300 bandas taking place at any given point in time. While the biggest street party takes place right outside the Sambadrome, the largest organized street dance is typically found on Cinelândia Square in Rio's Centro. In 2012, more than 2 million revelers took to the streets of Rio de Janeiro to participate in the Cordão da Bola Preta bloco. According to police estimates, more than 5 million people attended a bloco during Rio Carnival 2012 and there was not one reported incident of crime.


title: Rio Carnival

text: When the Sambadrome was built in 1984, it had the side-effect of taking street parades from the downtown area to a specific, ticketed performance area. Some samba schools have since been motivated by an agenda that focuses on regaining public space, and using the carnival tradition to occupy the streets with parades or "blocos". Many of these represent a local community of the area but are open to all.


title: Rio Carnival

text: Several of the Rio street carnival blocks that hold the parties are affiliated to the "Rio de Janeiro State Street Carnival Blocks Federation" (FBCERJ), established in 1965.


title: Rio Carnival

text: The Queen of the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro and up to two princesses having the duty to woo the revelry, along with the King Momo. Unlike some cities, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Queens of Carnival do not see a certain school of samba. In competitions, princesses are usually placed as second and third, and are correspondingly 1st and 2nd Princess. Some of them after the reign become queens or battery bridesmaids.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Batavia was the capital of the Dutch East Indies. The area corresponds to present-day Jakarta, Indonesia. Batavia can refer to the city proper or its suburbs and hinterland, the Ommelanden, which included the much-larger area of the Residency of Batavia in the present-day Indonesian provinces of Jakarta, Banten and West Java.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: The founding of Batavia by the Dutch in 1619, on the site of the ruins of Jayakarta, led to the establishment of a Dutch colony; Batavia became the center of the Dutch East India Company's trading network in Asia. Monopolies on local produce were augmented by non-indigenous cash crops. To safeguard their commercial interests, the company and the colonial administration absorbed surrounding territory.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Batavia is on the north coast of Java, in a sheltered bay, on a land of marshland and hills crisscrossed with canals. The city had two centers: Oud Batavia (the oldest part of the city) and the relatively-newer city, on higher ground to the south.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: It was a European colonial city for about 320 years until 1942, when the Dutch East Indies was occupied by Japan during World War II. During the Japanese occupation and after Indonesian nationalists declared independence on 17 August 1945, the city was known as Jakarta. It was internationally known by its Dutch name until Indonesia achieved full independence in 1949, when the city was renamed Jakarta.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Amsterdam merchants embarked on an expedition to the East Indies archipelago in 1595 under the command of Cornelis de Houtman. The English East India Company's first voyage in 1602, commanded by James Lancaster, arrived in Aceh and sailed on to Bantam. There, Lancaster was allowed to build a trading post which was the center of English trade in East Indies archipelago until 1682.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: The Dutch government granted the Dutch East India Company a monopoly on Asian trade in 1602. A year later, the first permanent Dutch trading post in the East Indies archipelago was established in Bantam, West Java. Prince Jayawikarta gave Dutch merchants permission to build a wooden warehouse and houses on the east bank of the Ciliwung River opposite Jayakarta in 1610, and the outpost was established the following year. As Dutch power increased, Jayawikarta allowed the English to build houses on the west bank of the Ciliwung and a fort near his customs office to maintain a balance of power.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Tensions between Prince Jayawikarta and the Dutch escalated until 1618, when Jayawikarta's soldiers besieged the Dutch fortress containing the Nassau and Mauritius warehouse. An English fleet of 15 ships arrived under Thomas Dale, former governor of the colony of Virginia. After a sea battle, newly appointed Dutch governor Jan Pieterszoon Coen escaped to the Moluccas to seek support; the Dutch had taken over the first of the Portuguese forts there in 1605. Dutch garrison commander Pieter van den Broecke and five other men were arrested during negotiations, since Jayawikarta believed that he had been deceived by the Dutch. Jayawikarta and the English then forged an alliance.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: The Dutch army was on the verge of surrendering to the English when, in 1619, the Sultanate of Banten sent a group of soldiers to summon Jayawikarta. Jayawikarta's agreement with the English had not been approved by the Bantenese authorities. The conflict between Banten and Jayawikarta and the tense relationship between Banten and the English provided a new opportunity for the Dutch. Coen returned from the Moluccas with reinforcements on 28 May 1619, razing Jayakarta to the ground two days later and expelling its population. Only the Luso-Sundanese padrão remained.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Jayawikarta retreated to Tanara, in the interior of Banten, where he later died. The Dutch established a closer relationship with Banten and assumed control of the port, which became the regional Dutch center of power.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: The region which became Batavia came under Dutch control in 1619, initially as an expansion of the original Dutch fort and a new building on the ruins of the former Jayakarta. Coen decided to expand the original fort into a larger fortress on 2 July 1619, and sent plans for Batavia Castle to the Netherlands on 7 October of that year. The castle was larger than the previous one, with two northern bastions protecting it from a maritime attack. The Nassau and Mauritius warehouses were expanded with the erection of an eastern fort extension, overseen by Commander Van Raay, on 12 March 1619.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Although Coen wanted to name the new settlement Nieuw-Hoorn after Hoorn (his birthplace), he was prevented from doing so by the board of the East India Company. Batavia was chosen as the new name of the fort and settlement, and a naming ceremony was held on 18 January 1621. It was named after the Batavi Germanic tribe, which inhabited the Batavian region during the Roman Empire; at the time, it was believed that the tribe was the ancestors of the Dutch people. Jayakarta was called Batavia for over 300 years.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: There were three governmental administrations in the Batavia region. Initial authority was established in 1609 and became the colonial "High Government", consisting of the Governor-General and the Council of the Indies. The urban (or civil) administration of the city of Batavia was established in 1620. On 24 June 1620, two company officials and three free citizens (or burghers) were appointed to the first College of Aldermen. The local rural administration, formed in 1664, became fully functional in 1682. The Javanese people were prohibited from settling in Batavia from the time of its founding in 1619.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: From its founding, Batavia was planned in a well-defined layout. Three trenches were dug east of the Ciliwung River in 1619, its first Dutch-made canals. The canals were named (from south to north) Leeuwengracht, Groenegracht, and Steenhouwersgracht. The Castle area begins in a former field north of Steenhouwersgracht, in which a town market was established. The first church and town hall were built c. 1622 on the east bank of the river; Batavia's first combined church and town hall (replaced during the 1630s) was at .


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Around 1627, the three canals were connected with the Tijgersgracht canal. The new canal was lined with coconut trees; according to a contemporary observer, "Among the Grachts, the Tygersgracht is the most stately and most pleasant, both for the goodliness of its buildings, and the ornamentation of its streets, which afford a very agreeable shadow to those who pass along the street". The Prinsestraat, originally the street leading to the Castle, became an urban center connecting the Castle's south gate with the city hall.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Eastern Batavia was protected by a long canal which linked the castle moat and the Ciliwung riverbend, and ran at a slight angle to Tijgersgracht. The canal cost over 160,000 real, which was paid mostly by the Chinese instead of the company (who had strengthened the Castle with slave and prison labor). The short-lived outer canal was redesigned several years after the 1628–29 Siege of Batavia.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: East of Batavia, Sultan Agung (king of the Mataram Sultanate) gained control of most of Java by defeating Surabaya in 1625. On 27 August 1628, Agung began the Siege of Batavia. After heavy losses in his first attempt, he retreated and launched a second offensive the following year. This also failed; the Dutch fleet destroyed his supplies and ships in the harbors of Cirebon and Tegal. Mataram troops, starving and decimated by illness, retreated again. Agung then moved east, attacking Blitar, Panarukan and the Blambangan Kingdom in eastern Java (a vassal state of the Balinese kingdom of Gelgel).


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: After the siege, it was decided that Batavia needed a stronger defense system. Based on the work of Flemish mathematician and military engineer Simon Stevin, Governor-General Jacques Specx designed a moat and city wall; extensions of the wall were built west of Batavia, and the city was completely enclosed.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: In 1656, due to a conflict with Banten, the Javanese were not allowed to live within the city walls and settled outside Batavia. The Chinese and the Mardijkers were the only non-Dutch settlers within the walled city. A 1659 truce with Banten enabled the city to grow, and more bamboo houses were built. Bamboo houses and livestock were banned in 1667, and the wealthy Dutch built tall houses and canals.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: The region was an important source of food crops and building materials. The Dutch East India Company established a local government in 1664, which became fully functional in 1682. Chinese inhabitants began to cultivate sugarcane.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Large-scale cultivation negatively impacted the environment, and Batavia's northern area experienced coastal erosion. The canals required extensive maintenance, with frequent closures for dredging. Residents of the Ommelanden lived in country houses or ethnic kampungs governed by a headman.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Batavia's sugar industry declined during the 1730s, with rising unemployment and social disorder. In 1739, there were 10,574 Chinese people living in the Ommelanden. Tensions grew as the colonial government attempted to restrict Chinese immigration with deportations to Ceylon and South Africa.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: The Chinese, afraid that they would be thrown overboard to drown, rioted. Ten thousand Chinese were killed from 9 to 22 October 1740. The few surviving Chinese inhabitants were moved to Glodok, outside the city walls, the following year.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: After the Dutch East India Company went bankrupt and was dissolved in 1800, the Batavian Republic nationalized its debts and possessions and expanded its territorial claims into a colony known as the Dutch East Indies. Batavia evolved from a regional company headquarters into the colony's capital.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: In 1808, Herman Willem Daendels decided to leave the dilapidated, unhealthy Old Town. A new town center was built further south, on the Weltevreden estate. Batavia became a city with two centers; Kota was the business hub with offices and warehouses of shipping and trading companies, and Weltevreden was home to the government, military, and shops. The centers were connected by the Molenvliet Canal and a road alongside the canal.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Under British rule, Daendels was replaced by Stamford Raffles. In 1811, Raffles – who was employed by the East India Company as secretary to the governor of Malacca – decided to take over the government in Batavia. One reason was to prevent the French from stepping in completely, since Napoleon had nominated Daendels (who worked closely with the French).


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: In 1816, the Dutch returned to rule the region. Europeans were brought to the archipelago to establish a colony on vacant land, triggering wars in Java and Sumatra. Large numbers of troops were brought into the Dutch Indies to suppress unrest (particularly on Sumatra) and extend Dutch government influence beyond Java. However, the Dutch never conquered the entire archipelago.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: The development of Weltevreden as the colony's administrative center continued, gradually shifting the center of Batavia south from Oud Batavia. A new Indies Empire style of architecture emerged; white-plastered villas with a large front porch were built, especially around the Koningsplein and at Weltevreden. This newer part of Batavia generally had a more open look than Oud Batavia's developed, canal cityscape.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Unlike the first half of the 19th century, the second half of the century was a peaceful period characterized by economic and technological expansion and a stable government. In 1856, the region's first telegraph line was installed between Batavia and Buitenzorg. In 1859, Batavia was connected to Singapore with the Dutch East Indies' first international telegraph connection. The city completed its first gasworks two years later, and its streets were lit with gas by 1862. The first trams and telephones came in 1882.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Horse-drawn tram, introduced to Batavia in 1869, were upgraded to steam power in 1882 and electricity in 1900. The city's first railway also began in 1869, and the line from Batavia to Buitenzorg was completed in 1873.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: The 1869 opening of the Suez Canal increased the need for a new port. The port of Tanjung Priok was completed in 1885, replacing the centuries-old, inadequate Sunda Kelapa, significantly increasing trade and tourism in Batavia and the Dutch East Indies.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: The Cultivation System ("cultuurstelsel") was a mid-19th-century Dutch government policy which required a portion of agricultural production to be export crops. Indonesian historians refer to it as "tanam paksa" (enforced planting).


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: The 1870 abolition of the Cultivation System led to the rapid development of private enterprise in the Dutch East Indies. A number of trading companies and financial institutions were established on Java, particularly in Batavia. The Old Town's deteriorating structures were replaced with offices, usually along the Ciliwung River. Private companies owned (or managed) plantations, oil fields, and mines. The island's first railway line opened in 1867, and railway stations were built in urban centers such as Batavia.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Schools, hospitals, factories, offices, trading companies, and post offices were established throughout the city. Improvements in Batavia's transportation, health, and technology encouraged more Dutch people to move to the capital, and Batavian society became increasingly Dutch. The city traded with Europe, and increased shipping led to the construction of a new harbor at Tanjung Priok between 1877 and 1883.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Foreigners were known locally as totoks, distinguishing new Chinese arrivals from the peranakans. Many totoks adopted Indonesian culture, wearing kebayas, sarongs, and summer dresses.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: By the end of the 19th century, Batavia's population was 115,887 people; of these, 8,893 were Europeans, 26,817 were Chinese and 77,700 were indigenous islanders. The city's expanding commercial activity led to the immigration of large numbers of Dutch employees and rural Javanese to Batavia. The 1905 population of Batavia and its surrounding area reached 2.1 million, including 93,000 Chinese people, 14,000 Europeans, and 2,800 Arabs. This growth resulted in an increased demand for housing, and land prices soared. New houses were built close together, and kampung settlements filled spaces between the houses. Settlements, built with little regard for the region's tropical conditions, resulted in overcrowding, poor sanitation, and an absence of public amenities. Java had an outbreak of plague in 1913.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Old Batavia's abandoned moats and ramparts experienced a boom during the period, as trading companies were established along the Ciliwung. The old city soon re-established itself as a commercial center, with 20th- and 17th-century buildings adjacent to each other.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: The Dutch Ethical Policy was introduced in 1901, expanding educational opportunities for the indigenous population of the Dutch East Indies. In 1924, a law school was founded in Batavia. The city's population in the 1930 census was 435,000.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: The University of Batavia was established in 1941, and later became the University of Indonesia. In 1946, the Dutch colonial government established the Nood Universiteit (Emergency University) in Jakarta. The following year, its name was changed to Universiteit van Indonesië (UVI). After the Indonesian National Revolution the government established Universiteit Indonesia, a state university, in Jakarta in February 1950. Its name was later changed to Universitas Indonesia.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Volksraad member Mohammad Husni Thamrin criticized the colonial government for ignoring the kampungs and catering to the wealthy in Menteng. In 1909, Tirto Adhi Soerjo founded the Islamic Commercial Union in Batavia to support Indonesian merchants. Branches in other areas followed. In 1920, Oemar Said Tjokroaminoto and Agus Salim established a committee in Batavia to support the Ottoman Caliphate.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Spies warned the Dutch about a planned revolt in 1926, and Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) leaders were arrested. Andries Cornelis Dirk de Graeff replaced Dirk Fock as governor-general, and uprisings in Batavia, Banten, and Priangan were quickly crushed. Armed Communists occupied the Batavia telephone exchange for one night before they were captured. The Dutch sent prisoners to Banden and to a penal colony at Boven-Digoel in West New Guinea, where many died of malaria. Sukarno and the Study Club founded the Indonesian Nationalist Association (which became the Indonesian National Party and later joined the Partai Sarekat Islam, Budi Utomo, and the Surabaya Study Club to form the Union of Indonesian Political Associations) on 4 July 1927.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: A youth congress was held in Batavia in October 1928, and the groups began referring to the city as Jakarta. They demanded Indonesian independence, displayed the red-and-white flag, and sang the Indonesian national anthem written by Wage Rudolf Supratman. The Dutch banned the flag, the national anthem, and the words "Indonesia" and "Indonesian".


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: On 5 March 1942, Batavia fell to the Japanese. The Dutch formally surrendered to the Japanese occupation forces on 9 March 1942, and the colony's government was transferred to Japan. Batavia was renamed Jakarta. The economic situation and the physical condition of Indonesian cities deteriorated during the occupation. Buildings were converted to internment camps for the Dutch.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: After the Japanese defeat in 1945, the region experienced a period of transition and upheaval during the Indonesian struggle for independence. During the Japanese occupation, and when the Indonesian nationalists declared independence on 17 August 1945, the city was renamed Jakarta. In 1945, it was briefly occupied by the Allies and returned to the Dutch. The Dutch name, Batavia, remained the internationally recognized name until Indonesian independence was achieved and Jakarta proclaimed the national capital on 27 December 1949.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Batavia, founded as the trade and administrative center of the Dutch East India Company, was never intended to be a Dutch settlement. Jan Pieterszoon Coen founded Batavia for trade, with the city's inhabitants producing and supplying food. There was no migration of intact Dutch families, and there were few Dutch women in Batavia. A mixed society was formed; relationships between Dutchmen and Asian women did not usually result in marriage, and the women did not have the right to return to the Dutch Republic. This societal pattern created a group of mestizos in Batavia. Since the Dutch East India Company preferred to maintain complete control of its business, a large number of slaves was employed.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Women became an important feature of Batavia's social network; they were accustomed to dealing with slaves, and spoke the same language (mostly Portuguese and Malay). Many of these women effectively became widows; their husbands left Batavia to return to the Netherlands, and their children were often removed as well.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Most of Batavia's residents were of Asian descent. Thousands of slaves were brought from India and Arakan; later, slaves were brought from Bali and Sulawesi. To avoid an uprising, a decision was made to free the Javanese people from slavery. Chinese people made up the largest group in Batavia (most being merchants and laborers), and were the most decisive group in the city's development. Other residents included Malays and Muslim and Hindu merchants from India.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Initially, these ethnic groups lived together; however, in 1688, segregation was imposed on the indigenous population. Each ethnic group was forced to live in its own village outside the city wall. Each person was tagged to identify their ethnic group; later, the identity tags were replaced with parchment.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Batavia experienced more malaria epidemics during the 18th century, as its marsh areas bred mosquitoes. The disease killed many Europeans and Batavia received the nickname "cemetery of Europeans". Wealthier European settlers moved to southern areas at higher elevations.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Within Batavia's walls, the wealthy Dutch built tall houses and canals. Commercial opportunities attracted Indonesian and Chinese immigrants, with the increasing population imposing a burden on the city. During the 18th century, over 60 percent of Batavia's population were slaves working for the Dutch East India Company. Laws protected slaves against overly-cruel actions by their masters; Christian slaves were freed after the death of their masters, and other slaves were allowed to own a store and earn money to buy their freedom.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Although Batavia became the political and administrative center of the Dutch East Indies and the main port in Southeast Asian trade, the city's population remained relatively small. Early-19th-century estimates of its population were smaller than that of Surabaya, although it overtook the latter by the end of the century; the 1920 census indicated a population of 306,000, compared to 192,000 for Surabaya, 158,000 for Semarang and 134,000 for Surakarta. Its population increased rapidly, exceeding half a million ten years later.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: The population of the Dutch East Indies was never purely European. Of the 30,000 Dutch citizens in the Dutch East Indies in 1860, less than 5,000 were purely Dutch. Seventy percent of the population was male, since more male immigrants arrived from Europe.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Slavery existed in Batavia until its abolition in 1853. Slaves mainly lived in the back of the garden of the main house and were paid, with free food and lodging. Female slaves, known as "baboe", cooked and cared for children.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: Children went to school, where the teachers were locally trained. Many children did not finish school; to counter this, the school system awarded prizes to well-performing children.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: When Stamford Raffles was governor of Java, he changed social interaction in Batavian society. Raffles disapproved of the relaxed Dutch dress code, where many men wore Javanese attire. Raffles and his wife, Olivia, introduced European dress (with much white, because of the tropical climate) for men and women.


title: Batavia, Dutch East Indies

text: When the British left Batavia in 1815, most of the native people reverted to their original Javanese attire but some new aspects persisted. Native males chosen to be the governing elite wore a European outfit on duty, but after hours they would change to sarongs and kebaya. Lower-ranked Dutchmen might wear the local style all day. Women wore sarongs and kebaya to official events, where they wore tighter-fitting robes or richly-colored (or flowered) cloth – in the style of British India – and batik shawls.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – ) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and American Civil War veteran. His book "The Devil's Dictionary" was named as one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. His story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" has been described as "one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature", and his book "Tales of Soldiers and Civilians" (also published as "In the Midst of Life") was named by the Grolier Club as one of the 100 most influential American books printed before 1900.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: A prolific and versatile writer, Bierce was regarded as one of the most influential journalists in the United States, and as a pioneering writer of realist fiction. For his horror writing, Michael Dirda ranked him alongside Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. S. T. Joshi speculates that he may well be the greatest satirist America has ever produced, and in this regard can take his place with such figures as Juvenal, Swift, and Voltaire. His war stories influenced Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, and others, and he was considered an influential and feared literary critic. In recent decades Bierce has gained wider respect as a fabulist and for his poetry.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: In 1913, Bierce told reporters that he was travelling to Mexico to gain first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution. He disappeared and was never seen again.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Bierce was born in a log cabin at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio, on June 24, 1842, to Marcus Aurelius Bierce (1799–1876) and Laura Sherwood Bierce. He was of entirely English ancestry: all of his forebears came to North America between 1620 and 1640 as part of the Great Puritan Migration. He often wrote critically of both "Puritan values" and people who "made a fuss" about genealogy. He was the tenth of thirteen children, all of whom were given names by their father beginning with the letter "A": in order of birth, the Bierce siblings were Abigail, Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius, Augustus, Almeda, Andrew, Albert, Ambrose, Arthur, Adelia, and Aurelia. His mother was a descendant of William Bradford.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: His parents were a poor but literary couple who instilled in him a deep love for books and writing. Bierce grew up in Kosciusko County, Indiana, attending high school at the county seat, Warsaw.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: He left home at 15 to become a printer's devil at a small abolitionist newspaper, the "Northern Indianan".


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Bierce briefly attended the Kentucky Military Institute until it burned down. At the start of the American Civil War, he enlisted in the Union Army's 9th Indiana Infantry. He participated in the operations in Western Virginia (1861), was present at the Battle of Philippi (the first organized land action of the war) and received newspaper attention for his daring rescue, under fire, of a gravely wounded comrade at the Battle of Rich Mountain. Bierce fought at the Battle of Shiloh (April 1862), a terrifying experience that became a source for several short stories and the memoir "What I Saw of Shiloh".


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: In April 1863 he was commissioned a first lieutenant, and served on the staff of General William Babcock Hazen as a topographical engineer, making maps of likely battlefields. As a staff officer, Bierce became known to leading generals such as George H. Thomas and Oliver O. Howard, both of whom supported his application for admission to West Point in May 1864. General Hazen believed Bierce would graduate from the military academy "with distinction" and William T. Sherman also endorsed the application for admission, even though stating he had no personal acquaintance with Bierce. In June 1864, Bierce sustained a traumatic brain injury at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain and spent the rest of the summer on furlough, returning to active duty in September. He was discharged from the army in January 1865.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: His military career resumed in mid-1866, when he joined General Hazen as part of an expedition to inspect military outposts across the Great Plains. The expedition traveled by horseback and wagon from Omaha, Nebraska, arriving toward year's end in San Francisco, California.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Bierce married Mary Ellen "Mollie" Day on December 25, 1871. They had three children: sons Day (1872–1889) and Leigh (1874–1901) and daughter Helen (1875–1940). Both of Bierce's sons died before he did. Day committed suicide after a romantic rejection (he non-fatally shot the woman of his affections along with her fiancé beforehand), and Leigh died of pneumonia related to alcoholism. Bierce separated from his wife in 1888, after discovering compromising letters to her from an admirer. They divorced in 1904. Mollie Day Bierce died the following year.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Bierce was an avowed agnostic and strongly rejected the divinity of Christ. He had lifelong asthma, as well as complications from his war wounds, most notably episodes of fainting and irritability assignable to the traumatic brain injury experienced at Kennesaw Mountain.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: In San Francisco, Bierce was awarded the rank of brevet major before resigning from the Army. He remained in San Francisco for many years, eventually becoming famous as a contributor or editor of newspapers and periodicals, including "The San Francisco News Letter", "The Argonaut", the "Overland Monthly", "The Californian" and "The Wasp". A selection of his crime reporting from "The San Francisco News Letter" was included in the Library of America anthology "True Crime".


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Bierce lived and wrote in England from 1872 to 1875, contributing to "Fun" magazine. His first book, "The Fiend's Delight", a compilation of his articles, was published in London in 1873 by John Camden Hotten under the pseudonym "Dod Grile".


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Returning to the United States, he again took up residence in San Francisco. From 1879 to 1880, he traveled to Rockerville and Deadwood in the Dakota Territory, to try his hand as local manager for a New York mining company. When the company failed he returned to San Francisco and resumed his career in journalism.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: From January 1, 1881, until September 11, 1885, he was editor of "The Wasp" magazine, in which he began a column titled "Prattle". He also became one of the first regular columnists and editorialists on William Randolph Hearst's newspaper, "The San Francisco Examiner", eventually becoming one of the most prominent and influential writers and journalists on the West Coast. He remained associated with Hearst Newspapers until 1909.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: The Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad companies had received large, low-interest loans from the U.S. government to build the First transcontinental railroad. Central Pacific executive Collis P. Huntington persuaded a friendly member of Congress to introduce a bill excusing the companies from repaying the loans, amounting to $130 million (worth $ today).


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: In January 1896 Hearst dispatched Bierce to Washington, D.C., to foil this attempt. The essence of the plot was secrecy; the railroads' advocates hoped to get the bill through Congress without any public notice or hearings. When the angered Huntington confronted Bierce on the steps of the Capitol and told Bierce to name his price, Bierce's answer ended up in newspapers nationwide: "My price is one hundred thirty million dollars. If, when you are ready to pay, I happen to be out of town, you may hand it over to my friend, the Treasurer of the United States."


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Bierce's coverage and diatribes on the subject aroused such public wrath that the bill was defeated. Bierce returned to California in November.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Because of his penchant for biting social criticism and satire, Bierce's long newspaper career was controversial. On several occasions his columns stirred up a storm of hostile reaction, which created difficulties for Hearst. One of the most notable of these incidents occurred following the assassination of President William McKinley, when Hearst's opponents turned a poem Bierce had written about the assassination of Governor William Goebel of Kentucky in 1900 into a "cause célèbre".


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Bierce meant his poem to express a national mood of dismay and fear, but after McKinley was shot in 1901, it seemed to foreshadow the crime:


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Hearst was thereby accused by rival newspapers—and by then-Secretary of War Elihu Root—of having called for McKinley's assassination. Despite a national uproar that ended his ambitions for the presidency (and even his membership in the Bohemian Club), Hearst kept employing Bierce.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: During his lifetime, Bierce was better known as a journalist than as a fiction writer. His most popular stories were written in rapid succession between 1888 and 1891, in what was characterized as "a tremendous burst of consummate art". Bierce's works often highlight the inscrutability of the universe and the absurdity of death.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Bierce wrote realistically of the terrible things he had seen in the war in such stories as "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", "A Horseman in the Sky", "One of the Missing", and "". His grimly realistic cycle of 25 war stories has been called "the greatest anti-war document in American literature".


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: According to Milton Subotsky, Bierce helped pioneer the psychological horror story. In addition to his ghost and war stories, he also published several volumes of poetry. His "Fantastic Fables" anticipated the ironic style of grotesquerie that became a more common genre in the 20th century.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: One of Bierce's most famous works is his much-quoted "The Devil's Dictionary", originally an occasional newspaper item, first published in book form in 1906 as "The Cynic's Word Book." Described as "howlingly funny", it consists of satirical definitions of English words which lampoon cant and political double-talk. Bierce edited the twelve volumes of "The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce", which were published from 1909 to 1912. The seventh volume consists solely of "The Devil's Dictionary".


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Bierce has been criticized by his contemporaries and later scholars for deliberately pursuing improbability and for his penchant toward "trick endings". In his later stories, apparently under the influence of Maupassant, Bierce "dedicated himself to shocking the audience", as if his purpose was "to attack the reader's smug intellectual security".


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Bierce's bias towards Naturalism has also been noted: "The biting, deriding quality of his satire, unbalanced by any compassion for his targets, was often taken as petty meanness, showing contempt for humanity and an intolerance to the point of merciless cruelty".


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Stephen Crane was of the minority of Bierce's contemporaries who valued Bierce's experimental short stories. In his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature", H. P. Lovecraft characterized Bierce's fictional work as "grim and savage." Lovecraft goes on to say that nearly all of Bierce's stories are of the horror genre and some shine as great examples of weird fiction.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Critic and novelist William Dean Howells said, "Mr. Bierce is among our three greatest writers." When told this, Bierce responded, "I am sure Mr. Howells is the other two."


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: In October 1913, Bierce, then age 71, departed from Washington, D.C., for a tour of his old Civil War battlefields. According to some reports, by December he had passed through Louisiana and Texas, crossing by way of El Paso into Mexico, which was in the throes of revolution. In Ciudad Juárez he joined Pancho Villa's army as an observer, and in that role he witnessed the Battle of Tierra Blanca.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: It was reported that Bierce accompanied Villa's army as far as the city of Chihuahua. His last known communication with the world was a letter he wrote there to Blanche Partington, a close friend, dated December 26, 1913. After closing this letter by saying, "As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination," he vanished without a trace, his disappearance becoming one of the most famous in American literary history.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Despite an abundance of theories, Bierce's ultimate fate remains a mystery. He wrote in one of his final letters: "Good-bye. If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it is a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico--ah, that is euthanasia!"


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Skeptic Joe Nickell noted that the letter to Partington had not been found (all that existed was a notebook belonging to his secretary and companion, Carrie Christiansen), and concluded that Bierce deliberately concealed his true whereabouts when he finally went to a selected location in the Grand Canyon and committed suicide.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: There was an official investigation by U.S. consular officials of the disappearance of one of its citizens. Some of Villa's men were questioned at the time of his disappearance and afterwards, with contradictory accounts. Pancho Villa's representative in the U.S., Felix A. Sommerfeld, was contacted by U.S. chief of staff Hugh L. Scott and Sommerfeld investigated the disappearance. Bierce was said to have been last seen in the city of Chihuahua in January.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Oral tradition in Sierra Mojada, Coahuila, documented by a priest, James Lienert, states that Bierce was executed by firing squad in the town cemetery there.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Bierce has been fictionalized in more than 50 novels, short stories, movies, television shows, stage plays, and comic books. Most of these works draw upon Bierce's vivid personality, colorful wit, relationships with famous people such as Jack London and William Randolph Hearst, or, quite frequently, his mysterious disappearance.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Bierce has been portrayed by such well-known authors as Ray Bradbury, Jack Finney, Carlos Fuentes, Winston Groom, Robert Heinlein, and Don Swaim. Some works featuring a fictional Ambrose Bierce have received favorable reviews, generated international sales, or earned major awards.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Bierce's short stories, "Haita the Shepherd" and "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" are believed to have influenced early weird-fiction writer Robert W. Chambers' tales of "The King in Yellow" (1895), which featured Hastur, Carcosa, Lake Hali and other names and locations initiated in these tales. Chambers in turn went on to influence H. P. Lovecraft and much of modern horror fiction.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: At least three films have been made of Bierce's story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". A silent film version, "The Bridge", was made in 1929 by Charles Vidor. A French version called "La Rivière du Hibou", directed by Robert Enrico, was released in 1962; this black-and-white film faithfully recounts the original narrative using voiceover. It aired in 1964 on American television as one of the final episodes of the television series "The Twilight Zone": "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". Prior to "The Twilight Zone", the story had been adapted as an episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents". Another version, directed by Brian James Egen, was released in 2005. It was also adapted for the CBS radio programs "Escape" (1947), "Suspense" (1956, 1957, 1959), and "Radio Mystery Theater" (1974).


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: In his 1932 book "Wild Talents", American writer and researcher into anomalous phenomena Charles Fort wrote about the unexplained disappearances of Ambrose Bierce and Ambrose Small, and asked, "Was somebody collecting Ambroses?"


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Actor James Lanphier (1920–1969) played Bierce, with James Hampton as William Randolph Hearst, in the 1964 episode "The Paper Dynasty", of the syndicated western television series "Death Valley Days", hosted by Stanley Andrews. In the story line, Hearst struggles to turn a profit despite increased circulation of "The San Francisco Examiner". Robert O. Cornthwaite appears as Sam Chamberlain.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Carlos Fuentes's 1985 novel "The Old Gringo" is a fictionalized account of Bierce's disappearance; it was later adapted into the film "Old Gringo" (1989), starring Gregory Peck in the title role. Fuentes stated: "What started this novel was my admiration for Ambrose Bierce and for his "Tales of Soldiers and Civilians"."


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Two adaptations were made of Bierce's story "Eyes of the Panther". One version was developed for Shelley Duvall's "Nightmare Classics" series and was released in 1990. It runs about 60 minutes. A shorter version was released in 2007 by director Michael Barton and runs about 23 minutes.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Bierce was a major character in a series of mystery books written by Oakley Hall and published between 1998 and 2006.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Biographer Richard O'Connor argued that, "War was the making of Bierce as a man and a writer... [he became] truly capable of transferring the bloody, headless bodies and boar-eaten corpses of the battlefield onto paper."


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Essayist Clifton Fadiman wrote, "Bierce was never a great writer. He has painful faults of vulgarity and cheapness of imagination. But... his style, for one thing, will preserve him; and the purity of his misanthropy, too, will help to keep him alive."


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Author Alan Gullette argues that Bierce's war tales may be the best writing on war, outranking his contemporary Stephen Crane (author of "The Red Badge of Courage") and even Ernest Hemingway.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: The short film "Ah! Silenciosa" (1999), starring Jim Beaver as Bierce, weaves elements of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" into a speculation on Bierce's disappearance.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Bierce's disappearance and trip to Mexico provide the background for the vampire horror film "" (2000), in which Bierce's character plays a central role. Bierce's fate is the subject of Gerald Kersh's "The Oxoxoco Bottle" (aka "The Secret of the Bottle"), which appeared in "The Saturday Evening Post" on December 7, 1957, and was reprinted in the anthology "Men Without Bones". Bierce reappears in the future on Mount Shasta in Robert Heinlein's novella, "Lost Legacy".


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: In the fall of 2001, "An Occurrence Remembered", a theatrical retelling of Bierce's "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge" and "Chickamauga", premiered off-Broadway in New York City under the production and direction of Lorin Morgan-Richards and lead choreographer Nicole Cavaliere.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: American composer Rodney Waschka II composed an opera, "Saint Ambrose" (2002), based on Bierce's life.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: In 2002 the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco premiered a one-act version of Bierce's ultra-short story "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field" by American composer David Lang. The opera has since been performed by other companies.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: In 2005, author Kurt Vonnegut stated that he considered "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" the "greatest American short story" and a work of "flawless... American genius".


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: "The Damned Thing" was adapted into a 2006 "Masters of Horror" episode of the same title directed by Tobe Hooper.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Don Swaim writes of Bierce's life and disappearance in "The Assassination of Ambrose Bierce: A Love Story" (2015).


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Ambrose Bierce features as a character in Winston Groom's 2016 novel "El Paso". In the novel, Bierce is personally executed by Pancho Villa.


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Weird-fiction critic and editor S. T. Joshi has cited Bierce as an influence on his own work, and has praised him for his satirical wit, saying "Bierce will remain an equivocal figure in American and world literature chiefly because his dark view of humanity is, by its very nature, unpopular. Most people like writing that is cheerful and uplifting, even though a substantial proportion of the world's great literature is quite otherwise."


title: Ambrose Bierce

text: Ambrose Bierce was a prolific writer of short fiction. He wrote 249 short stories, 846 fables, and more than 300 humorous Little Johnny stories. The following list provides links to more information about notable stories by Bierce.


title: The Last Full Measure (2019 film)

text: The Last Full Measure is a 2019 American war drama film written and directed by Todd Robinson. It follows the efforts of fictional Pentagon staffer Scott Huffman and many veterans to see the Medal of Honor awarded to William H. Pitsenbarger, a United States Air Force Pararescueman who flew in helicopter rescue missions during the Vietnam War to aid downed soldiers and pilots. Based on true events, the film stars Sebastian Stan, Christopher Plummer, William Hurt, Ed Harris, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Irvine, and Peter Fonda. It was the final film appearance of Fonda, who died before the film’s release; and Plummer's final on screen appearance before his death in 2021, though it had filmed prior to "Knives Out" which was released before it.


title: The Last Full Measure (2019 film)

text: Production began in the United States in March 2017, and it premiered in October 2019 in Westhampton Beach, New York. It was released in the U.S. by Roadside Attractions on January 24, 2020, and grossed $3 million against a $20 million budget. Its title is from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, where Lincoln honored the fallen, saying that they "gave the last full measure of devotion."


title: The Last Full Measure (2019 film)

text: "The Last Full Measure" centers on the true story of Vietnam War hero William H. Pitsenbarger, a U.S. Air Force Pararescueman who personally saved over 60 men during the Vietnam War. During a rescue mission on April 11, 1966, Pits, as he was called, chose to leave the relative safety of his rescue helicopter to aid wounded soldiers under heavy fire, when others on his team declined to go. After saving many, he was ordered to leave on the last helicopter out of what became one of the war's bloodiest battles. He chose to stay, sacrificing his own life to save and defend soldiers of the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division.


title: The Last Full Measure (2019 film)

text: 32 years later, Pentagon staffer Scott Huffman, on a career fast track, is reluctantly tasked with investigating a posthumous Medal of Honor request for Pitsenbarger by his parents and Tom Tulley, Pitsenbarger's partner on the fateful mission. Huffman seeks out the testimony of Army veterans who witnessed or were saved by Pitsenbarger's extraordinary valor, including Takoda, Burr and Mott, who carry their own demons from their experiences.


title: The Last Full Measure (2019 film)

text: As Huffman learns more about Pitsenbarger's selfless courage, he uncovers a decades-long, high-level conspiracy: as of Pitsenbarger's death in combat in 1966, the Air Force had never put forth the names of enlisted personnel to receive the Medal of Honor. This prompts him to put his own career on the line, potentially creating controversy around the company's former commanding officer who ordered the highly dangerous mission, and who is now a US senator seeking reelection.


title: The Last Full Measure (2019 film)

text: When a Senate effort to award the medal fails on the floor of Congress due to unrelated political infighting, Huffman goes public with the story, and ultimately the Medal of Honor is awarded to Pitsenbarger by presidential decree. Before the award ceremony, Mott finds the courage to deliver Pitsenbarger's last letter to the airman's former love. Pitsenbarger's father, who is dying of cancer, and mother are in attendance as their son's duty, courage and sacrifice is recounted. The Air Force Secretary presents the medal to the parents, then recognizes everyone in attendance, all of whose lives were influenced by Pitsenbarger's actions, saying, "This is the power of what one person can do." The epilogue points out that , of the 3,489 Medal of Honor recipients among millions of US military personnel, only three have been enlisted Air Force.


title: The Last Full Measure (2019 film)

text: It took nearly 20 years to make the movie. Todd Robinson first learned about the William H. Pitsenbarger story while researching another movie in 1999. The character of Scott Huffman is loosely based on Parker Hayes, who worked at the Airman Memorial Museum and pushed for Pitsenbarger's commendation be upgraded to the Medal of Honor. The story intrigued him for several reasons, including Pitsenbarger's awarding of the Air Force Cross rather than the Medal of Honor. After he and executive producer Sidney Sherman unsuccessfully pitched the film to more than 50 production companies, Robinson decided to write the script without funding or a studio commitment.


title: The Last Full Measure (2019 film)

text: After finishing the script, Robinson and Sherman continued searching for a studio. They landed a deal with New Line Cinema in 2007, but not long after, New Line was sold to Warner Bros. and the project was canceled and the project was again without a backer. Robinson and Sherman spent the next decade finding funding, and production finally began in 2017.


title: The Last Full Measure (2019 film)

text: It was announced in May 2016 that Scott Eastwood and Ed Harris had been cast, with Laurence Fishburne and Morgan Freeman in negotiations. By March 2017, Eastwood was no longer involved, and Samuel L. Jackson, Sebastian Stan, Christopher Plummer, William Hurt, Bradley Whitford, Michael Imperioli, Linus Roache, John Savage and Diane Ladd joined the cast. Filming was to begin between Atlanta and Costa Rica later that month. Grant Gustin and LisaGay Hamilton were cast as production commenced, with Amy Madigan and Peter Fonda joining in April. The film was later dedicated to Fonda's memory.


title: The Last Full Measure (2019 film)

text: In August 2017, filming concluded in Atlanta and moved to Thailand, with Jeremy Irvine (replacing Gustin in his role), Ethan Russell, Ser'Darius Blain, Cody Walker, Julian Adams, Tommy Hatto and Zach Roerig cast as young soldiers in Vietnam.


title: The Last Full Measure (2019 film)

text: Roadside Attractions acquired the film's distribution rights in September 2018, planning a wide release in 2019.


title: The Last Full Measure (2019 film)

text: The film premiered at a special free screening for veterans in Westhampton Beach, New York on October 19, 2019, and was released in the United States on January 24, 2020.


title: The Last Full Measure (2019 film)

text: Lionsgate released the film digitally on April 7, 2020, and on DVD, Blu-ray and video on demand on April 21, 2020.


title: The Last Full Measure (2019 film)

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, "The Last Full Measure" holds an approval rating of 60% based on 78 critics, with an average rating of 6.1/10. The site's critics consensus reads, ""The Last Full Measure" struggles to capture the incidents that inspired it, but ultimately prevails thanks to strong performances in service of a remarkable true story." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 51 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews."


title: Hulagu Khan

text: Hulagu Khan, also known as Hülegü or Hulegu (; ; Arabic: , "Holâku Khân;" ; 8 February 1265), was a Mongol ruler who conquered much of Western Asia. Son of Tolui and the Keraite princess Sorghaghtani Beki, he was a grandson of Genghis Khan and brother of Ariq Böke, Möngke Khan, and Kublai Khan.


title: Hulagu Khan

text: Hulagu's army greatly expanded the southwestern portion of the Mongol Empire, founding the Ilkhanate of Persia, a precursor to the eventual Safavid dynasty, and then the modern state of Iran. Under Hulagu's leadership, the siege of Baghdad (1258) destroyed Baghdad's standing in the Islamic Golden Age and weakened Damascus, causing a shift of Islamic influence to the Mamluk Sultanate in Cairo and ended the Abbasid Dynasty.


title: Hulagu Khan

text: Hulagu was born to Tolui, one of Genghis Khan's sons, and Sorghaghtani Beki, an influential Keraite princess and a niece of Toghrul in 1217. Nothing much is known of Hulagu's childhood except of an anecdote given in Jami' al-Tawarikh and he once met his grandfather Genghis Khan with Kublai in 1224.