title: Horace Greeley

text: In 1853, with the party increasingly divided over the slavery issue, Greeley printed an editorial disclaiming the paper's identity as Whig and declaring it to be nonpartisan. He was confident that the paper would not suffer financially, trusting in reader loyalty. Some in the party were not sorry to see him go: the "Republic", a Whig organ, mocked Greeley and his beliefs: "If a party is to be built up and maintained on Fourierism, Mesmerism, Maine Liquor laws, Spiritual Rappings, Kossuthism, Socialism, Abolitionism, and forty other isms, we have no disposition to mix with any such companions." When, in 1854, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas introduced his Kansas–Nebraska Bill, allowing residents of each territory to decide whether it would be slave or free, Greeley strongly fought the legislation in his newspaper. After it passed, and the Border War broke out in Kansas Territory, Greeley was part of efforts to send free-state settlers there, and to arm them. In return, proponents of slavery recognized Greeley and the "Tribune" as adversaries, stopping shipments of the paper to the South and harassing local agents. Nevertheless, by 1858, the "Tribune" reached 300,000 subscribers through the weekly edition, and it would continue as the foremost American newspaper through the years of the Civil War.


title: Horace Greeley

text: The Kansas–Nebraska Act helped destroy the Whig Party, but a new party with opposition to the spread of slavery at its heart had been under discussion for some years. Beginning in 1853, Greeley participated in the discussions that led to the founding of the Republican Party and may have coined its name. Greeley attended the first New York state Republican Convention in 1854 and was disappointed not to be nominated either for governor or lieutenant governor. The switch in parties coincided with the end of two of his longtime political alliances: in December 1854, Greeley wrote that the political partnership between Weed, William Seward (who was by then senator after serving as governor) and himself was ended "by the withdrawal of the junior partner". Greeley was angered over patronage disputes and felt that Seward was courting the rival "The New York Times" for support.


title: Horace Greeley

text: In 1853, Greeley purchased a farm in rural Chappaqua, New York, where he experimented with farming techniques. In 1856, he designed and built Rehoboth, one of the first concrete structures in the United States. In 1856, Greeley published a campaign biography by an anonymous author for the first Republican presidential candidate, John C. Frémont.


title: Horace Greeley

text: The "Tribune" continued to print a wide variety of material. In 1851, its managing editor, Charles A. Dana, recruited Karl Marx as a foreign correspondent in London. Marx collaborated with Friedrich Engels on his work for the "Tribune", which continued for over a decade, covering 500 articles. Greeley felt compelled to print, "Mr. Marx has very decided opinions of his own, with some of which we are far from agreeing, but those who do not read his letters are neglecting one of the most instructive sources of information on the great questions of current European politics."


title: Horace Greeley

text: Greeley sponsored a host of reforms, including pacifism and feminism and especially the ideal of the hard-working free laborer. Greeley demanded reforms to make all citizens free and equal. He envisioned virtuous citizens who would eradicate corruption. He talked endlessly about progress, improvement, and freedom, while calling for harmony between labor and capital. Greeley's editorials promoted social democratic reforms and were widely reprinted. They influenced the free-labor ideology of the Whigs and the radical wing of the Republican Party, especially in promoting the free-labor ideology. Before 1848 he sponsored an American version of Fourierist socialist reform. but backed away after the failed revolutions of 1848 in Europe. To promote multiple reforms Greeley hired a roster of writers who later became famous in their own right, including Margaret Fuller, Charles A. Dana, George William Curtis, William Henry Fry, Bayard Taylor, Julius Chambers, and Henry Jarvis Raymond, who later co-founded "The New York Times". For many years George Ripley was the staff literary critic. Jane Swisshelm was one of the first women hired by a major newspaper.


title: Horace Greeley

text: In 1859, Greeley traveled across the continent to see the West for himself, to write about it for the "Tribune", and to publicize the need for a transcontinental railroad. He also planned to give speeches to promote the Republican Party. In May 1859, he went to Chicago, and then to Lawrence in Kansas Territory, and was unimpressed by the local people. Nevertheless, after speaking before the first ever Kansas Republican Party Convention at Osawatomie, Kansas, Greeley took one of the first stagecoaches to Denver, seeing the town then in course of formation as a mining camp of the Pike's Peak Gold Rush. Sending dispatches back to the "Tribune", Greeley took the Overland Trail, reaching Salt Lake City, where he conducted a two-hour interview with the Mormon leader Brigham Young—the first newspaper interview Young had given. Greeley encountered Native Americans and was sympathetic but, like many of his time, deemed Indian culture inferior. In California, he toured widely and gave many addresses.


title: Horace Greeley

text: Although he remained on cordial terms with Senator Seward, Greeley never seriously considered supporting him in his bid for the Republican nomination for president. Instead, during the run-up to the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago, he pressed the candidacy of former Missouri representative Edward Bates, an opponent of the spread of slavery who had freed his own slaves. In his newspaper, in speeches, and in conversation, Greeley pushed Bates as a man who could win the North and even make inroads in the South. Nevertheless, when one of the dark horse candidates for the Republican nomination, Abraham Lincoln, came to New York to give an address at Cooper Union, Greeley urged his readers to go hear Lincoln, and was among those who accompanied him to the platform. Greeley thought of Lincoln as a possible nominee for vice president.


title: Horace Greeley

text: Greeley attended the convention as a substitute for Oregon delegate Leander Holmes, who was unable to attend. In Chicago, he promoted Bates but deemed his cause hopeless and felt that Seward would be nominated. In conversations with other delegates, he predicted that, if nominated, Seward could not carry crucial battleground states such as Pennsylvania. Greeley's estrangement from Seward was not widely known, giving the editor more credibility. Greeley (and Seward) biographer Glyndon G. Van Deusen noted that it is uncertain how great a part Greeley played in Seward's defeat by Lincoln—he had little success gaining delegates for Bates. On the first two ballots, Seward led Lincoln, but on the second only by a small margin. After the third ballot, on which Lincoln was nominated, Greeley was seen among the Oregon delegation, a broad smile on his face. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, "it is hard to imagine Lincoln letting Greeley's resentment smolder for years as Seward did".


title: Horace Greeley

text: Seward's forces made Greeley a target of their anger at the senator's defeat. One subscriber cancelled, regretting the three-cent stamp he had to use on the letter; Greeley supplied a replacement. When he was attacked in print, Greeley responded in kind. He launched a campaign against corruption in the New York Legislature, hoping voters would defeat incumbents and the new legislators would elect him to the Senate when Seward's term expired in 1861. (Before 1913, senators were elected by state legislatures.) But his main activity during the campaign of 1860 was boosting Lincoln and denigrating the other presidential candidates. He made it clear that a Republican administration would not interfere with slavery where it already was and denied that Lincoln was in favor of voting rights for African Americans. He kept up the pressure until Lincoln was elected in November.


title: Horace Greeley

text: Lincoln soon let it be known that Seward would be Secretary of State, which meant that he would not be a candidate for re-election to the Senate. Weed wanted William M. Evarts elected in his place, while the anti-Seward forces in New York gathered around Greeley. The crucial battleground was the Republican caucus, as the party held the majority in the legislature. Greeley's forces did not have enough votes to send him to the Senate, but they had enough strength to block Evarts's candidacy. Weed threw his support to Ira Harris, who had already received several votes, and who was chosen by the caucus and elected by the legislature in February 1861. Weed was content to have blocked the editor, and stated that he had "paid the "first" installment on a large debt to Mr. Greeley".


title: Horace Greeley

text: After Lincoln's election, there was talk of secession in the South. The "Tribune" was initially in favor of peaceful separation, with the South becoming a separate nation. According to an editorial on November 9:


title: Horace Greeley

text: Similar editorials appeared through January 1861, after which "Tribune" editorials took a hard line on the South, opposing concessions. Williams concludes that "for a brief moment, Horace Greeley had believed that peaceful secession might be a form of freedom preferable to civil war". This brief flirtation with disunion would have consequences for Greeley—it was used against him when he ran for president in 1872.


title: Horace Greeley

text: In the days leading up to Lincoln's inauguration, the "Tribune" headed its editorial columns each day, in large capital letters: "No compromise!/No concession to traitors!/The Constitution as it is!" Greeley attended the inauguration, sitting close to Senator Douglas, as the "Tribune" hailed the beginning of Lincoln's presidency. When southern forces attacked Fort Sumter, the "Tribune" regretted the loss of the fort, but applauded the fact that war to subdue the rebels, who formed the Confederate States of America, would now take place. The paper criticized Lincoln for not being quick to use force.


title: Horace Greeley

text: Through the spring and early summer of 1861, Greeley and the "Tribune" beat the drum for a Union attack. "On to Richmond", a phrase coined by a "Tribune" stringer, became the watchword of the newspaper as Greeley urged the occupation of the rebel capital of Richmond before the Confederate Congress could meet on July 20. In part because of the public pressure, in mid July Lincoln sent the half-trained Union Army into the field at the First Battle of Manassas, where it was soundly beaten. The defeat threw Greeley into despair, and he may have suffered a nervous breakdown.


title: Horace Greeley

text: Restored to health by two weeks at the farm he had purchased in Chappaqua, Greeley returned to the "Tribune" and a policy of general backing of the Lincoln administration, even having kind words to say about Secretary Seward, his old foe. He was supportive even during the military defeats of the first year of the war. Late in 1861, he proposed to Lincoln through an intermediary that the president provide him with advance information as to its policies, in exchange for friendly coverage in the "Tribune". Lincoln eagerly accepted, "having him firmly behind me will be as helpful to me as an army of one hundred thousand men."


title: Horace Greeley

text: By early 1862, however, Greeley was again sometimes critical of the administration, frustrated by the failure to win decisive military victories, and perturbed at the president's slowness to commit to the emancipation of the slaves once the Confederacy was defeated, something the "Tribune" was urging in its editorials. This was a change in Greeley's thinking which began after First Manassas, a shift from preservation of the Union being the primary war purpose to wanting the war to end slavery. By March, the only action against slavery that Lincoln had backed was a proposal for compensated emancipation in the border states that had remained loyal to the Union, though he signed legislation abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia. Lincoln supposedly asked a "Tribune" correspondent, "What in the world is the matter with Uncle Horace? Why can't he restrain himself and wait a little while?"


title: Horace Greeley

text: Greeley's prodding of Lincoln culminated in a letter to him on August 19, 1862, reprinted on the following day in the "Tribune" as "The Prayer of Twenty Millions". By this time, Lincoln had informed his Cabinet of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation he had composed, and Greeley was told of it the same day the prayer was printed. In his letter, Greeley demanded action on emancipation and strict enforcement of the Confiscation Acts. Lincoln must "fight slavery with liberty", and not fight "wolves with the devices of a sheep."


title: Horace Greeley

text: Lincoln's reply would become famous, much more so than the prayer that provoked it. "My paramount object in this struggle "is" to save the Union, and is "not" either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing "any" slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing "all" the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do "not" believe it would help to save the Union." Lincoln's statement angered abolitionists; William Seward's wife Frances complained to her husband that Lincoln had made it seem "that the mere keeping together a number of states is more important than human freedom." Greeley felt Lincoln had not truly answered him, "but I'll forgive him everything if he'll issue the proclamation". When Lincoln did, on September 22, Greeley hailed the Emancipation Proclamation as a "great boon of freedom". According to Williams, "Lincoln's war for Union was now also Greeley's war for emancipation."


title: Horace Greeley

text: After the Union victory at Gettysburg in early July 1863, the "Tribune" wrote that the rebellion would be quickly "stamped out". A week after the battle, the New York City draft riots erupted. Greeley and the "Tribune" were generally supportive of conscription, though feeling that the rich should not be allowed to evade it by hiring substitutes. Support for the draft made them targets of the mob, and the "Tribune" Building was surrounded, and at least once invaded. Greeley secured arms from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and 150 soldiers kept the building secure. Mary Greeley and her children were at the farm in Chappaqua; a mob threatened them but dispersed without doing harm.


title: Horace Greeley

text: In August 1863, Greeley was requested by a firm of Hartford publishers to write a history of the war. Greeley agreed, and over the next eight months he penned a 600-page volume, which would be the first of two, entitled "The American Conflict". The books were very successful, selling a total of 225,000 copies by 1870, a large sale for the time.


title: Horace Greeley

text: Throughout the war, Greeley played with ideas as to how to settle it. In 1862, Greeley had approached the French minister to Washington, Henri Mercier, to discuss a mediated settlement. However, Seward rejected such talks, and the prospect of European intervention receded after the bloody Union victory at Antietam in September 1862. In July 1864, Greeley received word that there were Confederate commissioners in Canada, empowered to offer peace. In fact, the men were in Niagara Falls, Canada, in order to aid Peace Democrats and otherwise undermine the Union war effort. but they played along when Greeley journeyed to Niagara Falls, at Lincoln's request. The president was willing to consider any deal that included reunion and emancipation. The Confederates had no credentials and were unwilling to accompany Greeley to Washington under safe conduct. Greeley returned to New York, and the episode, when it became public, embarrassed the administration. Lincoln said nothing publicly concerning Greeley's credulous conduct, but he privately indicated that he had no confidence in him any more.


title: Horace Greeley

text: Greeley did not initially support Lincoln for nomination in 1864, casting about for other candidates. In February, he wrote in the "Tribune" that Lincoln could not be elected to a second term. Nevertheless, no candidate made a serious challenge to Lincoln, and Lincoln was nominated in June, which the "Tribune" applauded slightly. In August, fearing a Democratic victory and acceptance of the Confederacy, Greeley engaged in a plot to get a new convention to nominate another candidate, with Lincoln withdrawing. The plot came to nothing. Once Atlanta was taken by Union forces on September 3, Greeley became a fervent supporter of Lincoln. Greeley was gratified by both Lincoln's re-election and continued Union victories.


title: Horace Greeley

text: As the war drew to a close in April 1865, Greeley and the "Tribune" urged magnanimity towards the defeated Confederates, arguing that making martyrs of Confederate leaders would only inspire future rebels. This talk of moderation ceased when Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Many concluded that Lincoln had fallen as the result of a final rebel plot, and the new president, Andrew Johnson, offered $100,000 for the capture of fugitive Confederate president Jefferson Davis. After the rebel leader was caught, Greeley initially advocated that "punishment be meted out in accord with a just verdict".


title: Horace Greeley

text: Through 1866, Greeley editorialized that Davis, who was being held at Fortress Monroe, should either be set free or put on trial. Davis's wife Varina urged Greeley to use his influence to gain her husband's release. In May 1867, a Richmond judge set bail for the former Confederate president at $100,000. Greeley was among those who signed the bail bond, and the two men met briefly at the courthouse. This act resulted in public anger against Greeley in the North. Sales of the second volume of his history (published in 1866) declined sharply. Subscriptions to the "Tribune" (especially the "Weekly Tribune") also dropped off, though they recovered during the 1868 election.


title: Horace Greeley

text: Initially supportive of Andrew Johnson's lenient Reconstruction policies, Greeley soon became disillusioned, as the president's plan allowed the quick formation of state governments without securing suffrage for the freedman. When Congress convened in December 1865, and gradually took control of Reconstruction, he was generally supportive, as Radical Republicans pushed hard for universal male suffrage and civil rights for freedmen. Greeley ran for Congress in 1866 but lost badly. He ran for Senate in the legislative election held in early 1867 but lost to Roscoe Conkling.


title: Horace Greeley

text: As the president and Congress battled, Greeley remained firmly opposed to the president, and when Johnson was impeached in March 1868, Greeley and the "Tribune" strongly supported his removal, attacking Johnson as "an aching tooth in the national jaw, a screeching infant in a crowded lecture room," and declaring, "There can be no peace or comfort till he is out." Nevertheless, the president was acquitted by the Senate, much to Greeley's disappointment. Also in 1868, Greeley sought the Republican nomination for governor but was frustrated by the Conkling forces. Greeley supported the successful Republican presidential nominee, General Ulysses S. Grant in the 1868 election.


title: Horace Greeley

text: In 1868, Whitelaw Reid joined the "Tribune" 's staff as managing editor. In Reid, Greeley found a reliable second-in-command. Also on the Tribune's staff in the late 1860s was Mark Twain. Henry George sometimes contributed pieces, as did Bret Harte. In 1870, John Hay joined the staff as an editorial writer. Greeley soon pronounced Hay the most brilliant at that craft ever to write for the "Tribune".


title: Horace Greeley

text: Greeley maintained his interest in associationism. Beginning in 1869, he was heavily involved in an attempt to found the Union Colony of Colorado, a utopia on the prairie, in a scheme led by Nathan Meeker. The new town of Greeley, Colorado Territory was named after him. He served as treasurer and lent Meeker money to keep the colony afloat. In 1871, Greeley published a book "What I Know About Farming", based on his childhood experience and that from his country home in Chappaqua.


title: Horace Greeley

text: Greeley continued to seek political office, running for state comptroller in 1869 and the House of Representatives in 1870, losing both times. In 1870, President Grant offered Greeley the post of minister to Santo Domingo (today, the Dominican Republic), which he declined.


title: Horace Greeley

text: As had been the case for much of the 19th century, political parties continued to be formed and to vanish after the Civil War. In September 1871, Missouri Senator Carl Schurz formed the Liberal Republican Party, founded on opposition to President Grant, opposition to corruption, and support of civil service reform, lower taxes, and land reform. He gathered around him an eclectic group of supporters whose only real link was their opposition to Grant, whose administration had proved increasingly corrupt (although Grant himself was not corrupt). The party needed a candidate, with a presidential election upcoming. Greeley was one of the best-known Americans, as well as being a perennial candidate for office. He was more minded to consider a run for the Republican nomination, fearing the effect on the "Tribune" should he bolt the party. Nevertheless, he wanted to be president, as a Republican if possible, and if not, as a Liberal Republican.


title: Horace Greeley

text: The Liberal Republican national convention met in Cincinnati in May 1872. Greeley was spoken of as a possible candidate, as was Missouri Governor Benjamin Gratz Brown. Schurz was ineligible, being foreign-born. On the first ballot, Supreme Court Justice David Davis led, but Greeley took a narrow lead on the second ballot. Former minister to Britain Charles Francis Adams then took the lead, but on the sixth ballot, after a "spontaneous" demonstration staged by Reid, Greeley gained the nomination, with Brown as vice presidential candidate.


title: Horace Greeley

text: The Democrats, when they met in Baltimore in July, faced a stark choice: nominate Greeley, long a thorn in their side, or split the anti-Grant vote and go on to certain defeat. They chose the former, and even adopted the Liberal Republican platform, which called for equal rights for African Americans. Greeley resigned as editor of the "Tribune" for the campaign, and, unusually for the time, embarked on a speaking tour to bring his message to the people. As it was customary for candidates for major office not to actively campaign, he was attacked as a seeker after office. Nevertheless, in late July, Greeley (and others, such as former Ohio governor Rutherford B. Hayes) thought he would very likely be elected. Greeley campaigned on a platform of intersectional reconciliation, arguing that the war was over and the issue of slavery was resolved. It was time to restore normalcy and end the continuing military occupation of the South.


title: Horace Greeley

text: The Republican counterattack was well financed, accusing Greeley of support for everything from treason to the Ku Klux Klan. The anti-Greeley campaign was famously and effectively summed up in the cartoons of Thomas Nast, whom Grant later credited with a major role in his re-election. Nast's cartoons showed Greeley giving bail money for Jefferson Davis, throwing mud on Grant, and shaking hands with John Wilkes Booth across Lincoln's grave. The Crédit Mobilier scandal—corruption in the financing of the Union Pacific Railroad—broke in September, but Greeley was unable to take advantage of the Grant administration's ties to the scandal as he had stock in the railroad himself, and some alleged it had been given to him in exchange for favorable coverage.


title: Horace Greeley

text: Greeley's wife Mary had returned ill from a trip to Europe in late June. Her condition worsened in October, and he effectively broke off campaigning after October 12 to be with her. She died on October 30, plunging him into despair a week before the election. Poor results for the Democrats in those states that had elections for other offices in September and October presaged defeat for Greeley, and so it proved. He received 2,834,125 votes to 3,597,132 for Grant, who secured 286 electors to 66 for Greeley. The editor-turned-candidate won only six states (out of 37): Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas.


title: Horace Greeley

text: Greeley resumed the editorship of the "Tribune", but quickly learned there was a movement underway to unseat him. He found himself unable to sleep, and after a final visit to the "Tribune" on November 13 (a week after the election) he remained under medical care. At the recommendation of a family physician, Greeley was sent to Choate House, the asylum of Dr. George Choate at Pleasantville, New York. There, he continued to worsen, and he died on November 29, with his two surviving daughters and Whitelaw Reid at his side.


title: Horace Greeley

text: His death came before the Electoral College balloted. His 66 electoral votes were divided among four others, principally Indiana governor-elect Thomas A. Hendricks and Greeley's vice presidential running mate, Benjamin Gratz Brown.


title: Horace Greeley

text: Although Greeley had requested a simple funeral, his daughters ignored his wishes and arranged a grand affair at the Church of the Divine Paternity, later the Fourth Universalist Society in the City of New York, where Greeley was a member. He is buried in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. Among the mourners were old friends, "Tribune" employees including Reid and Hay, his journalistic rivals, and a broad array of politicians, led by President Grant.


title: Horace Greeley

text: Despite the venom that had been spewed over him in the presidential campaign, Greeley's death was widely mourned. "Harper's Weekly", which had printed Nast's cartoons, wrote, "Since the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, the death of no American has been so sincerely deplored as that of Horace Greeley; and its tragical circumstances have given a peculiarly affectionate pathos to all that has been said of him." Henry Ward Beecher wrote in the "Christian Union", "when Horace Greeley died, unjust and hard judgment of him died also". Harriet Beecher Stowe noted Greeley's eccentric dress, "That poor white hat! If, alas, it covered many weaknesses, it covered also much strength, much real kindness and benevolence, and much that the world will be better for".


title: Horace Greeley

text: Greeley supported liberal policies towards the fast-growing western regions; he memorably advised the ambitious to "Go West, young man." He hired Karl Marx because of his interest in coverage of working-class society and politics, attacked monopolies of all sorts, and rejected land grants to railroads. Industry would make everyone rich, he insisted, as he promoted high tariffs. He supported vegetarianism, opposed liquor, and paid serious attention to any ism anyone proposed.


title: Horace Greeley

text: Greeley's view of freedom was based in the desire that all should have the opportunity to better themselves. According to his biographer, Erik S. Lunde, "a dedicated social reformer deeply sympathetic to the treatment of poor white males, slaves, free blacks, and white women, he still espoused the virtues of self-help and free enterprise". Van Deusen stated: "His genuine human sympathies, his moral fervor, even the exhibitionism that was a part of his makeup, made it inevitable that he should crusade for a better world. He did so with apostolic zeal."


title: Horace Greeley

text: Nevertheless, Greeley's effectiveness as a reformer was undermined by his idiosyncrasies: according to Williams, he "must have looked like an apparition, a man of eccentric habits dressed in an old linen coat that made him look like a farmer who came into town for supplies". Van Deusen wrote, "Greeley's effectiveness as a crusader was limited by some of his traits and characteristics. Culturally deficient, he was to the end ignorant of his own limitations, and this ignorance was a great handicap."


title: Horace Greeley

text: The "Tribune" remained under that name until 1924, when it merged with the New York "Herald" to become the New York "Herald-Tribune", which was published until 1966. The name survived until 2013, when the "International Herald-Tribune" became the "International New York Times".


title: Horace Greeley

text: There is a statue of Greeley in City Hall Park in New York, donated by the Tribune Association. Cast in 1890, it was not dedicated until 1916. A second statue of Greeley is located in Greeley Square in Midtown Manhattan. Greeley Square, at Broadway and 33rd Street, was named by the New York City Common Council in a vote after Greeley's death. Van Deusen concluded his biography of Greeley:


title: Ruby Sparks

text: Ruby Sparks is a 2012 American romantic comedy-drama film written by Zoe Kazan and directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton. It stars Paul Dano as an anxious novelist whose fictional character, Ruby Sparks, played by Kazan, comes to life, and his struggles to reconcile his idealized vision of her with her increasing independence. The score was composed by Nick Urata of the band DeVotchKa.


title: Ruby Sparks

text: Calvin Weir-Fields is a novelist who found incredible success at an early age but is struggling to recreate the success of his first book, as well as to forge relationships. His therapist tasks him to write a page about someone who likes his dog, Scotty. After a dream in which he meets a strange young woman, Calvin is inspired to write about her, admitting to Dr. Rosenthal that he is falling in love with this character and telling him all about "Ruby Sparks".


title: Ruby Sparks

text: Calvin's brother Harry and sister-in-law Susie come to visit, and Susie finds women's clothing around the house. Harry reads some of Calvin's new writing and criticizes it, saying that his version of a woman is overly idealized and unrealistic. Calvin writes a passage about Ruby falling in love with him, before falling asleep at his typewriter. The next day, he is stunned to find Ruby in his kitchen, a living person. He calls Harry, who does not believe him and advises him to meet with someone to take his mind off things. Ruby is confused by Calvin's behavior and insists on coming along, but he leaves her to shop while he meets with Mabel, a fan of his book who gave him her number. Ruby finds them and believes Calvin is cheating on her; the ensuing confrontation proves she is not a figment of his imagination.


title: Ruby Sparks

text: Calvin introduces Ruby to Harry, who is incredulous and suggests alternate explanations, but Calvin proves that his writing directly affects Ruby. He asks Harry not to tell anyone of Ruby's origins, insisting that since he wrote her into existence, he truly knows her, and asserts he will never write about her again.


title: Ruby Sparks

text: Months later, Calvin reluctantly takes Ruby to meet his free-spirited mother Gertrude and her boyfriend Mort. While the outgoing Ruby enjoys herself, the introverted Calvin grows jealous of her time with other people, and her happiness fades with his increased gloominess.


title: Ruby Sparks

text: Returning home, their relationship becomes tense and a depressed Ruby explains to Calvin how lonely she is, suggesting they spend less time together. Fearful of Ruby's desertion, Calvin writes that Ruby is miserable without him. Ruby returns, now incredibly clingy. Tiring of this, Calvin writes that Ruby becomes constantly happy but he is morose, knowing her happiness is artificial.


title: Ruby Sparks

text: After talking with Harry, Calvin tries to write Ruby back to her original self, but his wording leaves her confused. They fight once more, and he attempts to cheer her up by taking her to a party hosted by author Langdon Tharp. Calvin leaves Ruby and talks with others about his unfinished manuscript. He runs into his ex-girlfriend Lila, who accuses him of being uninterested in anyone outside of himself. Langdon finds Ruby alone and flirts with her, convincing her to strip to her underwear and join him in the pool. Furious and humiliated, Calvin drives Ruby home.


title: Ruby Sparks

text: They fight, and Ruby tells Calvin that he cannot stop her from doing what she wants. As she prepares to leave, Calvin reveals that she is a product of his imagination and that he can make her do anything he writes. Their growing argument leads to a crazed Calvin forcing Ruby to perform increasingly frenzied and humiliating acts. Ruby collapses and when Calvin tries to approach her—feeling confused, lost, and having no control of her own self—she locks herself in his room.


title: Ruby Sparks

text: Distraught and ashamed, Calvin writes a final page stating that as soon as Ruby leaves the house, she is no longer his creation, no longer subject to his will, and is free. He leaves the manuscript outside her door with a note telling her to read the last page and that he loves her. The next morning, Calvin finds the note and Ruby gone.


title: Ruby Sparks

text: Time passes, and Harry suggests Calvin write a new book about his experiences with Ruby. The novel, "The Girlfriend", is a success. Walking Scotty in the park, Calvin sees a woman who appears to be Ruby but has no recollection of him, reading his book. She says that Calvin also seems familiar, which he deflects by showing her his author's photo on the book. She jokes that they ought to start over, urging him, "Don't tell me how it ends," to which he replies, "I promise."


title: Ruby Sparks

text: The film was written by Zoe Kazan, who plays the eponymous character. Kazan was initially inspired by a discarded mannequin and the myth of Pygmalion, quickly writing twenty pages, before putting the script aside for six months. She returned to the writing when she was clear on the central concept of comparing the idea of love to the actuality of it.


title: Ruby Sparks

text: During the writing, Kazan thought of Woody Allen's "The Purple Rose of Cairo" and "Groundhog Day", wanting to present a slanted version of our own reality. From early in the development, she wrote the lead character Calvin with her boyfriend Paul Dano in mind. On the feminist aspects of the story, Kazan explains she wanted to explore the idea of "being gazed at but never seen", where a woman is not properly understood but in a way that wasn't unkind or alienating for men. She rejects the description of Ruby Sparks as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, calling it reductive and diminutive, whereas Ruby Sparks is about the danger of idealizing a person, of reducing a person down to an idea of a person.


title: Ruby Sparks

text: Kazan thanks Warren Beatty for his indirect encouragement of Paul Dano to develop their own material, and Dano in turn suggested she write a project.


title: Ruby Sparks

text: Kazan shopped the script around and got the attention of Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa, the producers of "Little Miss Sunshine", who sent it to directing couple Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who took it on as the first project since "Little Miss Sunshine" in 2006. Faris blamed their delay between films on their own need to be ready for the right project.


title: Ruby Sparks

text: Kazan talked about the importance of Los Angeles as the location for the film, comparing it to a character as much as a setting. She sees Los Angeles as a place where it is easy to feel alone and isolated and that fits in with the isolation of Calvin in the story. Directors Dayton and Faris said it was great to show Los Angeles itself, rather than pretending to be another place.


title: Ruby Sparks

text: Filming took place largely around the Silver Lake and Los Feliz neighborhoods. Other locations include Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, and the Hollywood Cemetery.


title: Ruby Sparks

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a "Certified Fresh" score of 79% based on 181 reviews, with an average rating of 7.10/10. The website's critical consensus states "Cleverly written and wonderfully acted, "Ruby Sparks" overcomes its occasional lags in pace with an abundance of charm and wit". On Metacritic the film has a score of 67 out of 100 based on reviews from 40 critics, indicating "Generally favorable reviews."


title: Ruby Sparks

text: Stephen Holden from "The New York Times" wrote, ""Ruby Sparks" doesn't try to pretend to be more than it is: a sleek, beautifully written and acted romantic comedy that glides down to earth in a gently satisfying soft landing." Online film critic Chris Pandolfi from At A Theater Near You called it "an intelligent commentary on the creative process, insecurity, controlling behavior, idealism, and the fragility of the male ego. It's all rather ingeniously combined into one of the most likeable films I've seen all year – a fantasy, a character study, and a cautionary tale all rolled into one."


title: Ruby Sparks

text: "Ruby Sparks" opened in a limited release in 13 theaters and grossed $140,822, with an average of $10,832 per theater and ranking #28 at the box office. The film's widest release in the U.S. was 261 theaters, and it ultimately earned $2,540,106 domestically and $6,588,157 internationally for a worldwide total of $9,128,263.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Cabinets of curiosities ( and ), also known as cabinets of wonder and wonder-rooms (), were collections of notable objects. Although more rudimentary collections had preceded them, the classic cabinets of curiosities emerged in the sixteenth century. The term "cabinet" originally described a room rather than a piece of furniture. Modern terminology would categorize the objects included as belonging to natural history (sometimes faked), geology, ethnography, archaeology, religious or historical relics, works of art (including cabinet paintings), and antiquities. In addition to the most famous and best documented cabinets of rulers and aristocrats, members of the merchant class and early practitioners of science in Europe formed collections that were precursors to museums.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Cabinets of curiosities served not only as collections to reflect the particular curiosities of their curators but as social devices to establish and uphold rank in society. There are said to be two main types of cabinets. As R. J. W. Evans notes, there could be "the princely cabinet, serving a largely representational function, and dominated by aesthetic concerns and a marked predilection for the exotic," or the less grandiose, "the more modest collection of the humanist scholar or virtuoso, which served more practical and scientific purposes." Evans goes on to explain that "no clear distinction existed between the two categories: all collecting was marked by curiosity, shading into credulity, and by some sort of universal underlying design".


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: In addition to cabinets of curiosity serving as an establisher of socioeconomic status for its curator, these cabinets served as entertainment, as particularly illustrated by the proceedings of the Royal Society, whose early meetings were often a sort of open floor to any Fellow to exhibit the findings his curiosities led him to. However purely educational or investigative these exhibitions may sound, it is important to note that the Fellows in this period supported the idea of "learned entertainment," or the alignment of learning with entertainment. This was not unusual, as the Royal Society had an earlier history of a love of the marvellous. This love was often exploited by eighteenth-century natural philosophers to secure the attention of their audience during their exhibitions.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: The earliest pictorial record of a natural history cabinet is the engraving in Ferrante Imperato's "Dell'Historia Naturale" (Naples 1599) ("illustration"). It serves to authenticate its author's credibility as a source of natural history information, in showing his open bookcases at the right, in which many volumes are stored lying down and stacked, in the medieval fashion, or with their spines upward, to protect the pages from dust. Some of the volumes doubtless represent his herbarium. Every surface of the vaulted ceiling is occupied with preserved fishes, stuffed mammals and curious shells, with a stuffed crocodile suspended in the centre. Examples of corals stand on the bookcases. At the left, the room is fitted out like a "studiolo" with a range of built-in cabinets whose fronts can be unlocked and let down to reveal intricately fitted nests of pigeonholes forming architectural units, filled with small mineral specimens. Above them, stuffed birds stand against panels inlaid with square polished stone samples, doubtless marbles and jaspers or fitted with pigeonhole compartments for specimens. Below them, a range of cupboards contain specimen boxes and covered jars.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: In 1587 Gabriel Kaltemarckt advised Christian I of Saxony that three types of item were indispensable in forming a "Kunstkammer" or art collection: firstly sculptures and paintings; secondly "curious items from home or abroad"; and thirdly "antlers, horns, claws, feathers and other things belonging to strange and curious animals". When Albrecht Dürer visited the Netherlands in 1521, apart from artworks he sent back to Nuremberg various animal horns, a piece of coral, some large fish fins and a wooden weapon from the East Indies.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: The highly characteristic range of interests represented in Frans II Francken's painting of 1636 ("illustration, above") shows paintings on the wall that range from landscapes, including a moonlit scene—a genre in itself—to a portrait and a religious picture (the "Adoration of the Magi") intermixed with preserved tropical marine fish and a string of carved beads, most likely amber, which is both precious and a natural curiosity. Sculpture both classical and secular (the sacrificing "Libera", a Roman fertility goddess) on the one hand and modern and religious ("Christ at the Column") are represented, while on the table are ranged, among the exotic shells (including some tropical ones and a shark's tooth): portrait miniatures, gem-stones mounted with pearls in a curious quatrefoil box, a set of sepia chiaroscuro woodcuts or drawings, and a small still-life painting leaning against a flower-piece, coins and medals—presumably Greek and Roman—and Roman terracotta oil-lamps, a Chinese-style brass lock, curious flasks, and a blue-and-white Ming porcelain bowl.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: The "Kunstkammer" of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor (ruled 1576–1612), housed in the Hradschin at Prague, was unrivalled north of the Alps; it provided a solace and retreat for contemplation that also served to demonstrate his imperial magnificence and power in symbolic arrangement of their display, ceremoniously presented to visiting diplomats and magnates.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Rudolf's uncle, Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria, also had a collection, organized by his treasurer, Leopold Heyperger, which put special emphasis on paintings of people with interesting deformities, which remains largely intact as the Chamber of Art and Curiosities at Ambras Castle in Austria. "The Kunstkammer was regarded as a microcosm or theater of the world, and a memory theater. The Kunstkammer conveyed symbolically the patron's control of the world through its indoor, microscopic reproduction." Of Charles I of England's collection, Peter Thomas states succinctly, "The "Kunstkabinett" itself was a form of propaganda.".


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Two of the most famously described seventeenth-century cabinets were those of Ole Worm, known as Olaus Wormius (1588–1654) ("illustration, above right"), and Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680). These seventeenth-century cabinets were filled with preserved animals, horns, tusks, skeletons, minerals, as well as other interesting man-made objects: sculptures wondrously old, wondrously fine or wondrously small; clockwork automata; ethnographic specimens from exotic locations. Often they would contain a mix of fact and fiction, including apparently mythical creatures. Worm's collection contained, for example, what he thought was a Scythian Lamb, a woolly fern thought to be a plant/sheep fabulous creature. However he was also responsible for identifying the narwhal's tusk as coming from a whale rather than a unicorn, as most owners of these believed. The specimens displayed were often collected during exploring expeditions and trading voyages.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Cabinets of curiosities would often serve scientific advancement when images of their contents were published. The catalog of Worm's collection, published as the "Museum Wormianum" (1655), used the collection of artifacts as a starting point for Worm's speculations on philosophy, science, natural history, and more.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Cabinets of curiosities were limited to those who could afford to create and maintain them. Many monarchs, in particular, developed large collections. A rather under-used example, stronger in art than other areas, was the Studiolo of Francesco I, the first Medici Grand-Duke of Tuscany. Frederick III of Denmark, who added Worm's collection to his own after Worm's death, was another such monarch. A third example is the Kunstkamera founded by Peter the Great in Saint Petersburg in 1714. Many items were bought in Amsterdam from Albertus Seba and Frederik Ruysch. The fabulous Habsburg Imperial collection included important Aztec artifacts, including the feather head-dress or crown of Montezuma now in the Museum of Ethnology, Vienna.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Similar collections on a smaller scale were the complex "Kunstschränke" produced in the early seventeenth century by the Augsburg merchant, diplomat and collector Philipp Hainhofer. These were cabinets in the sense of pieces of furniture, made from all imaginable exotic and expensive materials and filled with contents and ornamental details intended to reflect the entire cosmos on a miniature scale. The best preserved example is the one given by the city of Augsburg to King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in 1632, which is kept in the Museum Gustavianum in Uppsala. The curio cabinet, as a modern single piece of furniture, is a version of the grander historical examples.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: The juxtaposition of such disparate objects, according to Horst Bredekamp's analysis (Bredekamp 1995), encouraged comparisons, finding analogies and parallels and favoured the cultural change from a world viewed as static to a dynamic view of endlessly transforming natural history and a historical perspective that led in the seventeenth century to the germs of a scientific view of reality.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: In seventeenth-century parlance, both French and English, a "cabinet" came to signify a collection of works of art, which might still also include an assembly objects of "virtù" or curiosities, such as a "virtuoso" would find intellectually stimulating. In 1714, Michael Bernhard Valentini published an early museological work, "Museum Museorum", an account of the cabinets known to him with catalogues of their contents.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: In the second half of the 18th century, Belsazar Hacquet (c. 1735–1815) operated in Ljubljana, then the capital of Carniola, a natural history cabinet () that was appreciated throughout Europe and was visited by the highest nobility, including the Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II, the Russian grand duke Paul and Pope Pius VI, as well as by famous naturalists, such as and . It included a number of minerals, including specimens of mercury from the Idrija mine, a "herbarium vivum" with over 4,000 specimens of Carniolan and foreign plants, a smaller number of animal specimens, a natural history and medical library, and an anatomical theatre.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: A late example of the juxtaposition of natural materials with richly worked artifice is provided by the "Green Vaults" formed by Augustus the Strong in Dresden to display his chamber of wonders. The "Enlightenment Gallery" in the British Museum, installed in the former "Kings Library" room in 2003 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the museum, aims to recreate the abundance and diversity that still characterized museums in the mid-eighteenth century, mixing shells, rock samples and botanical specimens with a great variety of artworks and other man-made objects from all over the world.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Some strands of the early universal collections, the bizarre or freakish biological specimens, whether genuine or fake, and the more exotic historical objects, could find a home in commercial freak shows and sideshows.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Late in his life Browne parodied the rising trend of collecting curiosities in his tract Musaeum Clausum an inventory of dubious, rumoured and non-existent books, pictures and objects.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753) an English physician, member of the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians, and the founder of the British Museum in London, began sporadically collecting plants in England and France while studying medicine. In 1687, the Duke of Albemarle offered Sloane a position as personal physician to the West Indies fleet at Jamaica. He accepted and spent fifteen months collecting and cataloguing the native plants, animals, and artificial curiosities (e.g. cultural artifacts of native and enslaved African populations) of Jamaica. This became the basis for his two volume work, "Natural History of Jamaica", published in 1707 and 1725. Sloane returned to England in 1689 with over eight hundred specimens of plants, which were live or mounted on heavy paper in an eight-volume herbarium. He also attempted to bring back live animals (e.g., snakes, an alligator, and an iguana) but they all died before reaching England.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Sloane meticulously cataloged and created extensive records for most of the specimens and objects in his collection. He also began to acquire other collections by gift or purchase. Herman Boerhaave gave him four volumes of plants from Boerhaave's gardens at Leiden. William Charleton, in a bequest in 1702, gave Sloane numerous books of birds, fish, flowers, and shells and his miscellaneous museum consisting of curiosities, miniatures, insects, medals, animals, minerals, precious stones and curiosities in amber. Sloane purchased Leonard Plukenet's collection in 1710. It consisted of twenty-three volumes with over 8,000 plants from Africa, India, Japan and China. Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort (1630–1715), left him a twelve-volume herbarium from her gardens at Chelsea and Badminton upon her death in 1714. Reverend Adam Buddle gave Sloane thirteen volumes of British plants. In 1716, Sloane purchased Englebert Kaempfer's volume of Japanese plants and James Petiver's virtual museum of approximately one hundred volumes of plants from Europe, North America, Africa, the Near East, India, and the Orient. Mark Catesby gave him plants from North America and the West Indies from an expedition funded by Sloane. Philip Miller gave him twelve volumes of plants grown from the Chelsea Physic Garden.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Sloane acquired approximately three hundred and fifty artificial curiosities from North American Indians, Eskimos, South America, the Lapland, Siberia, East Indies, and the West Indies, including nine items from Jamaica.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: "These ethnological artifacts were important because they established a field of collection for the British Museum that was to increase greatly with the explorations of Captain James Cook in Oceania and Australia and the rapid expansion of the British Empire."


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Upon his death in 1753, Sloane bequeathed his sizable collection of 337 volumes to England for £20,000. In 1759, George II's royal library was added to Sloane's collection to form the foundation of the British Museum.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: John Tradescant the elder (circa 1570s–1638) was a gardener, naturalist, and botanist in the employ of the Duke of Buckingham. He collected plants, bulbs, flowers, vines, berries, and fruit trees from Russia, the Levant, Algiers, France, Bermuda, the Caribbean, and the East Indies. His son, John Tradescant the younger (1608–1662) traveled to Virginia in 1637 and collected flowers, plants, shells, an Indian deerskin mantle believed to have belonged to Powhatan, father of Pocahontas. Father and son, in addition to botanical specimens, collected zoological (e.g., the dodo from Mauritius, the upper jaw of a walrus, and armadillos), artificial curiosities (e.g., wampum belts, portraits, lathe turned ivory, weapons, costumes, Oriental footwear and carved alabaster panels) and rarities (e.g., a mermaid's hand, a dragon's egg, two feathers of a phoenix's tail, a piece of the True Cross, and a vial of blood that rained in the Isle of Wight). By the 1630s, the Tradescants displayed their eclectic collection at their residence in South Lambeth. Tradescant's Ark, as it came to be known, was the earliest major cabinet of curiosity in England and open to the public for a small entrance fee.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Elias Ashmole (1617–1692) was a lawyer, chemist, antiquarian, Freemason, and a member of the Royal Society with a keen interest in astrology, alchemy, and botany. Ashmole was also a neighbor of the Tradescants in Lambeth. He financed the publication of "Musaeum Tradescantianum", a catalogue of the Ark collection in 1656. Ashmole, a collector in his own right, acquired the Tradescant Ark in 1659 and added it to his collection of astrological, medical, and historical manuscripts. In 1675, he donated his library and collection and the Tradescant collection to the University of Oxford, provided that a suitable building be provided to house the collection. Ashmole's donation formed the foundation of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Places of exhibitions of and places of new societies that promoted natural knowledge also seemed to culture the idea of perfect civility. Some scholars propose that this was "a reaction against the dogmatism and enthusiasm of the English Civil War and Interregum [sic]." This move to politeness put bars on how one should behave and interact socially, which enabled the distinguishing of the polite from the supposed common or more vulgar members of society. Exhibitions of curiosities (as they were typically odd and foreign marvels) attracted a wide, more general audience, which "[rendered] them more suitable subjects of polite discourse at the Society."


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: A subject was considered less suitable for polite discourse if the curiosity being displayed was accompanied by too much other material evidence, as it allowed for less conjecture and exploration of ideas regarding the displayed curiosity. Because of this, many displays simply included a concise description of the phenomena and avoided any mention of explanation for the phenomena. Quentin Skinner describes the early Royal Society as "something much more like a gentleman's club," an idea supported by John Evelyn, who depicts the Royal Society as "an Assembly of many honorable Gentlemen, who meete inoffensively together under his Majesty's Royal Cognizance; and to entertaine themselves ingenously, whilst their other domestique avocations or publique business deprives them of being always in the company of learned men and that they cannot dwell forever in the Universities."


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Cabinets of Curiosities can now be found at Snowshill Manor and Wallington Hall, and the Ashmolean Museum has a display of items from its disparate Ashmole and Tradescant founding collections.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Thomas Dent Mutter (1811–1859) was an early American pioneer of reconstructive plastic surgery. His specialty was repairing congenital anomalies, cleft lip and palates, and club foot. He also collected medical oddities, tumors, anatomical and pathological specimens, wet and dry preparations, wax models, plaster casts, and illustrations of medical deformities. This collection began as a teaching tool for young physicians. Just prior to Mütter's death in 1859, he donated 1,344 items to the American College of Physicians in Philadelphia, along with a $30,000 endowment for the maintenance and expansion of his museum. Mütter's collection was added to ninety-two pathological specimens collected by Doctor Isaac Parrish between 1849 and 1852. The Mütter Museum began to collect antique medical equipment in 1871, including Benjamin Rush's medical chest and Florence Nightingale's sewing kit. In 1874 the museum acquired one hundred human skulls from Austrian anatomist and phrenologist, Joseph Hyrtl (1810–1894); a nineteenth-century corpse, dubbed the "soap lady"; the conjoined liver and death cast of Chang and Eng Bunker, the Siamese twins; and in 1893, Grover Cleveland's jaw tumor. The Mütter Museum is an excellent example of a nineteenth-century grotesque cabinet of medical curiosities.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: P. T. Barnum established Barnum's American Museum on five floors in New York, "perpetuating into the 1860s the Wunderkammer tradition of curiosities for gullible, often slow-moving throngs—Barnum's famously sly but effective method of crowd control was to post a sign, 'THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS!' at the exit door".


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: In 1908, New York businessmen formed the Hobby Club, a dining club limited to 50 men, in order to showcase their "cabinets of wonder" and their selected collections. These included literary specimens and incunabula; antiquities such as ancient armour; precious stones and geological items of interest. Annual formal dinners would be used to open the various collections up to inspection for the other members of the club.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: By the early decades of the eighteenth century, curiosities and wondrous specimens began to lose their influence among European natural philosophers. As Enlightenment thinkers placed growing emphasis on patterns and systems within nature, anomalies and rarities came to be regarded as potentially misleading objects of study. Curiosities, previously interpreted as divine messages and expressions of nature's variety, were increasingly seen as vulgar exceptions to nature's overall uniformity.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: The Houston Museum of Natural Science houses a hands-on Cabinet of Curiosities, complete with taxidermied crocodile embedded in the ceiling a la Ferrante Imperato's Dell'Historia Naturale. In Los Angeles, the modern-day Museum of Jurassic Technology anachronistically seeks to recreate the sense of wonder that the old cabinets of curiosity once aroused.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: In Spring Green, Wisconsin, the house and museum of Alex Jordan, known as House on the Rock, can also be interpreted as a modern day curiosity cabinet, especially in the collection and display of automatons. In Bristol, Rhode Island, Musée Patamécanique is presented as a hybrid between an automaton theater and a cabinet of curiosities and contains works representing the field of Patamechanics, an artistic practice and area of study chiefly inspired by Pataphysics.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: The idea of a cabinet of curiosities has also appeared in recent publications and performances. For example, "Cabinet" magazine is a quarterly magazine that juxtaposes apparently unrelated cultural artifacts and phenomena to show their interconnectedness in ways that encourage curiosity about the world. The Italian cultural association Wunderkamern uses the theme of historical cabinets of curiosities to explore how "amazement" is manifested within today's artistic discourse. in May 2008, the University of Leeds Fine Art BA programme hosted a show called "Wunder Kammer", the culmination of research and practice from students, which allowed viewers to encounter work from across all disciplines, ranging from intimate installation to thought-provoking video and highly skilled drawing, punctuated by live performances.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: The concept has been reinterpreted at The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History. In July 2021 a new Cabinet of Curiosities room was opened at The Whitaker Museum & Art Gallery in Rawtenstall, Lancashire, curated by artist Bob Frith, founder of Horse and Bamboo Theatre.


title: Cabinet of curiosities

text: Several internet bloggers describe their sites as "wunderkammern" either because they are primarily links to interesting things, or inspire wonder similarly to the original wunderkammern (see External Links, below). Researcher Robert Gehl describes such internet video sites as YouTube as modern-day wunderkammern, although in danger of being refined into capitalist institutions "just as professionalized curators refined Wunderkammers into the modern museum in the 18th century."


title: Battle at Big Rock

text: Battle at Big Rock is a 2019 American short film directed by Colin Trevorrow. It is part of the "Jurassic Park" franchise and follows the events of "" (2018). It stars André Holland, Natalie Martinez, Melody Hurd, and Pierson Salvador. The short premiered on FX in September 2019 and was subsequently released online.


title: Battle at Big Rock

text: Set one year after the events of "", a blended family from Oakland, California goes on a camping trip at the fictional Big Rock National Park in Northern California, approximately from where dinosaurs from "Fallen Kingdom" were let loose. The film chronicles the first major confrontation between humans and the dinosaurs.


title: Battle at Big Rock

text: The family is enjoying their camping when they are suddenly greeted by a "Nasutoceratops" and her baby. To their terror, an adult "Allosaurus" attacks the "Nasutoceratops" baby and the mother tries to protect her baby. A battle ensues between the two dinosaurs and the family decide to hide inside their RV. Eventually, a third "Nasutoceratops" appears from the woods, driving back the "Allosaurus". The "Nasutoceratops" escape and the baby of the family starts crying. Hearing the cry, the "Allosaurus" starts wrecking the RV apart in order to feed on the family hiding inside. After the RV is completely destroyed, the parents and the son begin to fear for the worst. To their relief, the daughter shoots the "Allosaurus" in its head and eye with a crossbow, which causes the dinosaur to flee. They embrace, though are in complete shock over what just happened.


title: Battle at Big Rock

text: During the closing credits, found footage clips of dinosaurs and other creatures are shown including a pack of "Compsognathus" chasing after a scared little girl, a "Stegosaurus" causing a car to swerve and drive off a cliff, fishermen in a boat peacefully passing by a "Parasaurolophus" on the banks of a river, a "Mosasaurus" eating a great white shark after the shark eats a seal, and a "Pteranodon" swooping at a dove that had just been released at a wedding.


title: Battle at Big Rock

text: The idea for the film originated when Universal Studios asked Trevorrow if he would be interested in making a potential "Jurassic World" short film, and he accepted. Trevorrow wrote the short film with Emily Carmichael, who was already working with him to write "Jurassic World Dominion" (2022). The short film's story remained the same throughout the project's history, as Trevorrow believed the next logical step for the franchise would be for campers to encounter dinosaurs following the events of "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom".


title: Battle at Big Rock

text: To maintain secrecy on the project, no auditions or casting calls were held. A casting director who knew Trevorrow helped lead a secretive search for the child actors. The film marked Melody Hurd's acting debut. Trevorrow chose André Holland and Natalie Martinez as he admired their acting in other films.


title: Battle at Big Rock

text: Filming took place in Ireland in January 2019. Filming locations included Powerscourt Estate. Ireland was chosen as redwood trees outside Dublin resembled national parks in northern California. Filming took place with a small crew over the course of five days. Larry Fong was the film's cinematographer. Much of the film was shot using a hand-held camera, as Trevorrow wanted to see if audiences would accept such a filmmaking style in a "Jurassic Park" film, which he later felt they did.


title: Battle at Big Rock

text: Industrial Light & Magic created CGI dinosaurs for the film, as well as reference maquettes, while John Rosengrant of Legacy Effects created an animatronic "Allosaurus". The film had a much smaller budget than the full films in the "Jurassic Park" franchise. Originally, the film was going to be shorter than eight minutes. After filming concluded, Trevorrow decided to add end-credit scenes depicting dinosaurs. Because he could not film any new scenes, he instead searched through YouTube videos that could be integrated into the film. The rights to each of the online videos were purchased for use in the short film, and dinosaurs were then added into the videos.


title: Battle at Big Rock

text: Amie Doherty composed the film's score. Doherty was contacted in October 2018 about composing "Battle at Big Rock". She met with Trevorrow in December, and was chosen to compose the film. After filming concluded, Doherty's score changed slightly over the next four months as the film underwent editing. Doherty said the score was mainly tightened to fit in with the events depicted in the film. The musical recording process took place at Abbey Road Studios, where an 80-piece orchestra recorded the score in May 2019.


title: Battle at Big Rock

text: "Battle at Big Rock" was announced on September 10, 2019, and it premiered five days later on FX. Trevorrow was surprised at the amount of secrecy maintained on the project up until the announcement. Mattel had released toys for the film prior to its release, and a fan site had also learned of the film, but its existence otherwise remained largely unknown. After its television premiere, "Battle at Big Rock" was released online through YouTube, as well as JurassicWorld.com and the website for NBC. The short film was initially scheduled to accompany the theatrical release of Universal's "Hobbs & Shaw" in August 2019. The short film was included on the Blu-ray and DVD releases of "Jurassic World Dominion". (Exclusively in North America, Japan, China, English, French, Dutch, German & Italian speaking countries)


title: Battle at Big Rock

text: Stuart Heritage of "The Guardian" called it, "...by far the best in the ["Jurassic World"] series..." Julia Alexander of "The Verge" claimed, "[the film] has everything a "Jurassic Park" fan would want..."


title: Battle at Big Rock

text: Charles Pulliam-Moore of "io9" described it as "solid". Josh Millican of "Dread Central" described it as "...a tasty little treat..." Mike Reyes of "CinemaBlend" described it as "...a sight to see..."


title: Alan Autry

text: Carlos Alan Autry Jr. (also known for a time as Carlos Brown; born July 31, 1952), is an American actor, politician, and former National Football League player. During his brief football career, he was known as Carlos Brown. He played the role of Captain Bubba Skinner on the NBC (and later CBS) television series "In the Heat of the Night", starring Carroll O'Connor. He has also appeared in films and other television shows. In November 2000, he was elected mayor of Fresno, California, and served for two four-year terms through January 2009. In 2008, Autry hosted a radio news talk show on KYNO AM 940 in Fresno, but left the station in 2011.


title: Alan Autry

text: Autry was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, the son of Carl and Verna (née Brown) Autry. His name was changed to Carlos Brown when he was a year old, after his parents divorced. He worked alongside his mother and stepfather, Joe Duty, in California's San Joaquin Valley, where they planted and harvested cotton, grapes, and other crops, traveling around the valley living in migrant worker camps. When he was twelve, they settled in Riverdale, California.


title: Alan Autry

text: In high school, Autry was a star quarterback for the Riverdale Cowboys. He received an athletic scholarship to the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, where he was a second-string tight end in his senior year for the Tigers. In 1975, he was drafted by the Green Bay Packers, where he ended up in 1976, as the starting quarterback for three games.


title: Alan Autry

text: His football career ended quickly when he was cut from the team by then-coach Bart Starr. Autry then went to Hollywood to become an actor. He made a football comeback attempt, playing for the B.C. Lions of the CFL in 1979 (as Carlos Brown). He was the third-string quarterback behind Joe Paopao and another ex-Green Bay Packer, Jerry Tagge.


title: Alan Autry

text: Autry made his film debut in the 1978 motion picture "Remember My Name". He met his father, Carl Autry Sr., for the first time in 1982, while on location in Shreveport for the motion picture "Southern Comfort", after he found Carl's name in the telephone book. Afterwards, he made the decision to return to his birth surname of Autry. During his acting years, he struggled with drug and alcohol use, according to an interview with Pat Robertson's "The 700 Club" in 2007.


title: Alan Autry

text: After nine years in Hollywood, Autry returned home and left his career. "I realized that God had moved in my life like never before. I really realized what God and the power of Jesus Christ was," he said on "The 700 Club."


title: Alan Autry

text: By 1986, he was divorced and became a born-again Christian and began to devote much of his time to working with charitable causes. He is married to his second wife, Kimberlee Autry; the couple has three children.


title: Alan Autry

text: Autry, an Independent, was elected in 2000 to succeed Jim Patterson as the mayor of Fresno, defeating former mayor Dan Whitehurst. He was elected to a second term (2005-2009) on March 2, 2004, with more than 72 percent of the vote. Because of term limits, he was ineligible to run for re-election. In November 2008, he endorsed Ashley Swearengin, who was elected to succeed him as mayor.


title: Alan Autry

text: In 1997, Autry launched his own production company, Dirt Road Productions. In 2002, he released "The Legend of Jake Kincaid", a Western based on a story he wrote. He was also the director of this film.


title: Alan Autry

text: Autry and his "In the Heat of the Night" co-star Randall Franks joined forces under the banner of Autry-Franks Productions to produce the charity "In the Heat of the Night" CD "Christmas Time's A Comin"', featuring the cast of the show. The project raised funds for drug abuse prevention charities. With Franks producing, Autry performed his rendition of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in homage to Gene Autry. (Gene and Alan were distant cousins, descended from William A. Autry (5 August 1784 – 2 April 1836) and Mary Campbell of North Carolina/Tennessee.)


title: Alan Autry

text: Franks and Autry both performed on "Jingle Bells" and "Christmas Time's A Comin'". The duo were able to include many music legends, including Kitty Wells, Jimmy Dickens, and Pee Wee King, and many from the bluegrass genre, from Jim & Jesse to The Lewis Family. The "Christmas Time's A Comin"' CD, released on Sonlite and MGM/UA, was one of the most popular Christmas releases of 1991 and 1992 with Southern retailers.


title: Alan Autry

text: Crimson Records released their second Autry-Franks Productions project "Alan Autry and Randall Franks Mississippi Moon: Country Traditions" in 2013, an Americana CD featuring both actors vocally on various classic and original songs. The project, which incorporates country, bluegrass and Southern gospel, includes special appearances by Bluegrass Hall of Fame members Jim and Jesse McReynolds and three-time Dove Award nominee Mark Wheeler of the Marksmen Quartet.


title: Paris Gun

text: The Paris Gun () was the name given to a type of German long-range siege gun, several of which were used to bombard Paris during World War I. They were in service from March to August 1918. When the guns were first employed, Parisians believed they had been bombed by a high-altitude Zeppelin, as the sound of neither an airplane nor a gun could be heard. They were the largest pieces of artillery used during the war by barrel length, and qualify under the (later) formal definition of large-calibre artillery.


title: Paris Gun

text: Also called the ""Kaiser Wilhelm Geschütz"" ("Kaiser Wilhelm Gun"), they were often confused with Big Bertha, the German howitzer used against Belgian forts in the Battle of Liège in 1914; indeed, the French called them by this name as well. They were also confused with the smaller "Langer Max" (Long Max) cannon, from which they were derived; although the famous Krupp-family artillery makers produced all these guns, the resemblance ended there.


title: Paris Gun

text: As military weapons, the Paris Guns were not a great success: the payload was small, the barrel required frequent replacement, and the guns' accuracy was good enough for only city-sized targets. The German objective was to build a psychological weapon to attack the morale of the Parisians, not to destroy the city itself.


title: Paris Gun

text: Due to the weapon's apparent total destruction by the Germans in the face of the final Entente offensives, its capabilities are not known with full certainty. Figures stated for the weapon's size, range, and performance varied widely depending on the source—not even the number of shells fired is certain. In the 1980's a long note on the gun was discovered and published. This was written by (in German), the Krupp engineer in charge of the gun's development, shortly before his death in 1926


title: Paris Gun

text: The gun was capable of firing a shell to a range of and a maximum altitude of —the greatest height reached by a human-made projectile until the first successful V-2 flight test in October 1942. At the start of its 182-second trajectory, each shell from the Paris Gun reached a speed of .


title: Paris Gun

text: The distance was so far that the Coriolis effect—the rotation of the Earth—was substantial enough to affect trajectory calculations. The gun was fired at an azimuth of 232 degrees (west-southwest) from Crépy-en-Laon, which was at a latitude of 49.5 degrees north.


title: Paris Gun

text: Seven barrels were constructed. They used worn-out 38 cm SK L/45 "Max" 17,130 millimeter gun barrels that were fitted with an internal tube that reduced the caliber from to . The tube was long and projected out of the end of the gun, so an extension was bolted to the old gun-muzzle to cover and reinforce the lining tube. A further, 6-meter–long smooth-bore extension was attached to the end of this, giving a total barrel length of . This smooth section was intended to improve accuracy and reduce the dispersion of the shells, as it reduced the slight yaw a shell might have immediately after leaving the gun barrel produced by the gun's rifling. The barrel was braced to counteract barrel drop due to its length and weight, and vibrations while firing; it was mounted on a special rail-transportable carriage and fired from a prepared, concrete emplacement with a turntable. The original breech of the old 38 cm gun did not require modification or reinforcement.


title: Paris Gun

text: Since it was based on a naval weapon, the gun was manned by a crew of 80 Imperial Navy sailors under the command of Vice-Admiral Maximilian Rogge, chief of the Ordnance branch of the Admiralty. It was surrounded by several batteries of standard army artillery to create a "noise-screen" chorus around the big gun so that it could not be located by French and British spotters.


title: Paris Gun

text: The projectile flew significantly higher than projectiles from previous guns. Writer and journalist Adam Hochschild put it this way: "It took about three minutes for each giant shell to cover the distance to the city, climbing to an altitude of at the top of its trajectory. This was by far the highest point ever reached by a man-made object, so high that gunners, in calculating where the shells would land, had to take into account the rotation of the Earth. For the first time in warfare, deadly projectiles rained down on civilians from the stratosphere". This reduced drag from air resistance, allowing the shell to achieve a range of over .


title: Paris Gun

text: The unfinished V-3 cannon would have been able to fire larger projectiles to a longer range, and with a substantially higher rate of fire. The unfinished Iraqi super gun would also have been substantially bigger.


title: Paris Gun

text: The Paris Gun shells weighed . The shells initially used had a diameter of and a length of . The main body of the shell was composed of thick steel, containing of TNT.


title: Paris Gun

text: The small amount of explosive – around 6.6% of the weight of the shell – meant that the effect of its shellburst was small for the shell's size. The thickness of the shell casing, to withstand the forces of firing, meant that shells would explode into a comparatively small number of large fragments, limiting their destructive effect. A crater produced by a shell falling in the Tuileries Garden was described by an eyewitness as being across and deep.


title: Paris Gun

text: The shells were propelled at such a high velocity that each successive shot wore away a considerable amount of steel from the rifled bore. Each shell was sequentially numbered according to its increasing diameter, and had to be fired in numeric order, lest the projectile lodge in the bore and the gun explode. Also, when the shell was rammed into the gun, the chamber was precisely measured to determine the difference in its length: a few inches off would cause a great variance in the velocity, and with it, the range. Then, with the variance determined, the additional quantity of propellant was calculated, and its measure taken from a special car and added to the regular charge. After 65 rounds had been fired, each of progressively larger caliber to allow for wear, the barrel was sent back to Krupp and rebored to a caliber of with a new set of shells.


title: Paris Gun

text: The shell's explosive was contained in two compartments, separated by a wall. This strengthened the shell and supported the explosive charge under the acceleration of firing. One of the shell's two fuzes was mounted in the wall, with the other in the base of the shell. The fuzes proved very reliable as every single one of the 303 shells that landed in and around Paris successfully detonated.


title: Paris Gun

text: The shell's nose was fitted with a streamlined, lightweight, ballistic cap – a highly unusual feature for the time – and the side had grooves that engaged with the rifling of the gun barrel, spinning the shell as it was fired so its flight was stable. Two copper driving bands provided a gas-tight seal against the gun barrel during firing.


title: Paris Gun

text: The Paris gun was used to shell Paris at a range of . The gun was fired from a wooded hill (Le mont de Joie) near Crépy, and the first shell landed at 7:18 a.m. on 23 March 1918 on the "Quai de la Seine", the explosion being heard across the city. Shells continued to land at 15-minute intervals, with 21 counted on the first day. On the first day, fifteen people were killed and thirty-six wounded. The effect on morale in Paris was immediate: by 27 March, queues of thousands had started at the Gare d'Orsay and, at the Gare Montparnasse, ticket sales out of the capital were suspended due to demand.


title: Paris Gun

text: The initial assumption was these were bombs dropped from an airplane or Zeppelin flying too high to be seen or heard. Within a few hours, sufficient casing fragments had been collected to show that the explosions were the result of shells, not bombs. By the end of the day, military authorities were aware the shells were being fired from behind German lines by a new long-range gun, although there was initial press speculation on the origin of the shells. This included the theory they were being fired by German agents close by Paris, or even within the city itself, so abandoned quarries close to the city were searched for a hidden gun.


title: Paris Gun

text: Three emplacements for the gun were located within days by the French reconnaissance pilot Didier Daurat, the path of the shells which landed in Paris having revealed the direction from which they were being fired. The closest emplacement was engaged by a 34 cm railway gun while the other two sites were bombed by aircraft, although this failed to interrupt the German bombardment.


title: Paris Gun

text: Between 320 and 367 shells were fired, at a maximum rate of around 20 per day. The shells killed 250 people and wounded 620, and caused considerable damage to property. The worst incident was on 29 March 1918, when a shell hit the roof of the St-Gervais-et-St-Protais Church, collapsing the roof onto the congregation then hearing the Good Friday service. A total of 91 people were killed and 68 were wounded. There was no firing between 25 and 29 March, when the first barrel was being replaced; an unconfirmed intelligence report claimed that it had exploded. Barrels were probably changed again between 7-11 April and again between 21-24 April. The diameter of the later shells increased from 21 to 24 cm, indicating that the used barrels had been re-bored.


title: Paris Gun

text: A further emplacement, later identified as specifically designed for the Paris Gun, was found by advancing US troops at the beginning of August, on the north side of the wooded hill at Coucy-le-Château-Auffrique, some from Paris.


title: Paris Gun

text: The gun was taken back to Germany in August 1918 as Allied advances threatened its security. No guns were ever captured by the Allies. It is believed that near the end of the war they were completely destroyed by the Germans. One spare mounting was captured by American troops in Bruyères-sur-Fère, near Château-Thierry, but the gun was never found; the construction plans seem to have been destroyed as well.


title: Paris Gun

text: Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the Germans were required to turn over a complete Paris Gun to the Allies, but they never complied with this.


title: Paris Gun

text: In the 1930s, the German Army became interested in rockets for long-range artillery as a replacement for the Paris Gun—which was specifically banned under the Versailles Treaty. This work eventually led to the V-2 rocket that was used in World War II.


title: Paris Gun

text: Despite the ban, Krupp continued theoretical work on long-range guns. They started experimental work after the Nazi government began funding the project upon coming to power in 1933. This research led to the 21 cm K 12 (E), a refinement of the Paris Gun design concept. Although it was broadly similar in size and range to its predecessor, Krupp's engineers had significantly reduced the problem of barrel wear. They also improved mobility over the fixed Paris Gun by making the K12 a railway gun.


title: Paris Gun

text: The first K12 was delivered to the German Army in 1939 and a second in 1940. During World War II, they were deployed in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France; they were used to shell Kent in Southern England between late 1940 and early 1941. One gun was captured by Allied forces in the Netherlands in 1945.


title: Paris Gun

text: A parody of the Paris Gun appears in the Charlie Chaplin movie "The Great Dictator". Firing at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the "Tomanians" (the fictional country that represented Germany) succeed in blowing up a small outhouse.


title: Paris Gun

text: The destruction of the St-Gervais-et-St-Protais Church inspired Romain Rolland to write his novel "Pierre et Luce".


title: EXID

text: EXID (; ; short for "Exceed in Dreaming") is a South Korean girl group formed in 2012. The group currently consists of five members: Solji, Elly, Hani, Hyelin and Jeonghwa. EXID debuted in February 2012, with the single "Whoz That Girl". Though the album gained some attention, it was not until 2014 that the group unexpectedly gained popularity with the single "Up & Down", which reached number one on the Gaon Singles Chart four months after release due to a fan-recording of a live performance becoming a viral video.


title: EXID

text: EXID released their second EP "Ah Yeah" in April 2015, to commercial success, and followed this with their first studio album "Street" (2016) and various other EPs over the years. In May 2019, EXID announced its indefinite hiatus for Korean group activities due to various members leaving their agency Banana Culture, but remained active in their Japanese releases such as their studio albums "Trouble" (2019) and "B.L.E.S.S.E.D" (2020). EXID returned two years later in September 2022 with released their first independent album, "X" , to commemorate their tenth anniversary.


title: EXID

text: In May 2011, producer Shinsadong Tiger and AB Entertainment scouted several trainees from JYP Entertainment to form a new girl group. Trainee Yuji was the first to join the JYP girl group but failed to debut. Yuji contacted the trainees Hani, Haeryeong, and Jeonghwa to audition for AB, and all three were subsequently accepted into the agency. The group added a fifth member when Shinsadong Tiger discovered Elly, an underground rapper and songwriter who performed under the name Elly. Dami, who was already an AB trainee, was the sixth and last member added to the group. Originally named "WT", an acronym for "Who's That", the group changed their name to EXID a few months before their debut. In December 2011, Elly was featured in Huh Gak's single "Whenever You Play That Song", which appeared on Korean music charts. EXID was scheduled to debut in January 2012, but their debut was delayed to February when Elly sustained a leg injury during rehearsals. On February 3, AB Entertainment announced that EXID would debut with the single "Whoz That Girl". Video teasers featuring the members doing solo performances were subsequently released online.


title: EXID

text: EXID released their first single "Whoz That Girl" from the digital single album "Holla", on February 16, 2012. They made their debut performance on "M! Countdown", and then performed on "Music Core" and "Inkigayo". Their debut song "Whoz That Girl" peaked at number 36 on the Gaon Singles Chart and ultimately sold 840,000 digital copies.


title: EXID

text: In April 2012, AB Entertainment officially announced members Yuji, Dami, and Haeryeong's departure and said in a statement that Yuji and Dami had left the group to focus on their studies, while Haeryeong had left to pursue an acting career. They were replaced by Solji, a former member of vocal duo 2NB, and Hyelin, who was originally considered for EXID's original lineup before she was dropped. With the new members, EXID returned in August 2012 with their second single "I Feel Good" from their first EP "Hippity Hop". "Hippity Hop" debuted at number 13 on the Gaon Albums Chart, selling 1,500 copies. EXID released the digital single "Every Night", in October. The title track is an alternate version of Elly's self-written song "Phone Call", which was recorded in their debut EP. "Every Night" debuted at number 43 on the Gaon Singles Chart, selling 105,000 digital copies.


title: EXID

text: On October 11, EXID released the song "Hey Boy" as part of the soundtrack release for MBC's sitcom "The Thousandth Man." The song is the female version of B1A4's song "Hey Girl". Producer Shinsadong Tiger rearranged the song into a "reggae style" to create a different approach from B1A4's original version. It was revealed on November 30 that EXID, along with Big Star and D-Unit, would release a collaboration album, in addition to doing a special year of end show. The concert, entitled "The Bugs Show Vol. 1", was held on December 22 at the V-Hall in the Hongdae area of Seoul. On December 6, EXID won the rookie award at the 20th Korea Culture & Entertainment Awards.


title: EXID

text: In February 2013, EXID released the single "Up & Down", from the "Incarnation of Money" soundtrack. It was announced shortly afterwards that members Hani and Solji would form a subunit called "Dasoni". The sub-unit released their debut single "Goodbye" on February 15, with the B-side track "Said So Often".


title: EXID

text: In June 2014, EXID was announced to have signed an exclusive contract with Yedang Entertainment, and were preparing a comeback in collaboration with producer Shinsadong Tiger. On August 24, 2014, EXID held their comeback showcase at the Ilchi Art Hall, performing their new song "Up & Down". The song was released on August 27, 2014 and initially charted poorly, failing to make it onto the top 100 of the Gaon Chart; though it peaked at number 94 on the domestic chart. However, the song slowly gained popularity in early October 2014 after a fan-recorded video of Hani performing the song went viral on South Korean social networking websites. This led to the song shooting back up record charts, eventually climbing into the top 10 on the real-time charts and topping the Gaon Chart. Because of the success of the fancam, EXID was invited back onto stage to promote despite the fact their promotions ended months prior. Due to this success, EXID returned to several music programs to promote "Up and Down". The song was subsequently nominated for a first place award on "Show! Music Core", "Inkigayo", and "M Countdown", where they took their first music show win since debut. The group won a second award at "Music Bank" on January 9, 2015, and a third one at "Inkigayo" on January 11, 2015.


title: EXID

text: On April 13, 2015, the music video for the title song "Ah Yeah", from EXID's second EP, was released. The group won first place with "Ah Yeah" on both April 26 and May 3 episodes of "Inkigayo", as well as the April 29 and May 6 episodes of "Show Champion".


title: EXID

text: In May 2015, the group made their first American performance at the Korean Music Festival in Los Angeles, California. EXID featured in their own season of the MBC Every 1 reality show "Showtime" in July 2015.


title: EXID

text: On November 7, 2015, EXID won the MBC Music Star Award at the 2015 Melon Music Awards. The music video for "Hot Pink" was released on November 17, 2015.


title: EXID

text: On January 11, 2016, EXID signed with China's entertainment company Banana Project in a bid to extend its popularity outside Korea. This sparked discussions regarding EXID's future activities in South Korea; however, CEO of Banana Culture Music Wang Sicong assured fans that the next album his company invested on EXID would be released simultaneously in China and South Korea.


title: EXID

text: On March 2, EXID's record label Yedang Entertainment changes name to Banana Culture, launching a joint venture company in Seoul with Banana Project. On March 18, EXID held their first Chinese fan meeting, 'EXID's LEGGO Show in Shanghai'.


title: EXID

text: On June 1, the group released their first studio album titled "Street" with the title track "L.I.E". "Street" includes 12 tracks, many of which were written and/or composed by Elly. EXID's first studio album also included "Hello", a solo song by lead vocalist Hani and "3%", a solo song sung by main vocalist Solji. The album peaked at number two in Korea on the Gaon Album Chart, while "L.I.E" peaked at number five as a single. On June 8, 2016, EXID won first place with "L.I.E" on "Show Champion" and soon after, they won first place on both "Inkigayo" and "The Show" as well.


title: EXID

text: On December 20, 2016, EXID released their first Chinese single, "Cream" on QQ Music and YinYueTai-which peaked at number six on the Billboard China V Chart. However, a day later, Banana Culture announced that Solji had been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, and that she would halt all her activities for the awards season of 2016–17, while the remaining four members continue on.


title: EXID

text: On January 10, 2017, the group released their second Chinese single "Up & Down" (). On the same day of its release, an edited version music video for "Up & Down (Chinese Ver.)" was uploaded to YouTube and the original was removed. Some Chinese fans found EXID's dancing in the 'Forbidden City' to be inappropriate whilst some thought that it was completely normal.


title: EXID

text: On March 17, the four members of EXID excluding Solji performed at the Mexico City Arena as part of the KCON music festival in Mexico, with Hani covering Mexican duo Jesse & Joy's "Ecos De Amor".


title: EXID

text: Due to Solji's remaining health issues, the group's comeback was delayed until April. Their agency announced in March that EXID would return as a four-piece while Solji recovered from her hyperthyroidism. On April 10, EXID officially released their third EP "Eclipse" and their title song "Night Rather Than Day". "Eclipse" debuted at number four on the "Billboard" World Albums chart, becoming the group's best-charting – and first top-five – album on the chart to date. On April 25, 2017, EXID won first place on "The Show" with "Night Rather Than Day". This was followed by their second win with this song on "Show Champion" the following day and their third win on "The Show" on May 2, 2017.


title: EXID

text: On May 12, Banana Culture Entertainment has announced that EXID would embark on a promotional Asian tour during the summer. Titled ‘EXID Asia Tour 2017’, the group visited a handful of countries for the tour, starting in Hong Kong and Singapore. They originally planned to visited Taiwan on July 30, before performing a homecoming concert in Seoul on August 12; however, due to safety concerns over the threat of Typhoon Nesat, the Taiwanese show was postponed to August 26. Solji gave a surprise appearance at the encore of the Seoul concert before resuming her treatment; neither the audience nor the rest of the group knew of her visit. The Asian tour wrapped with their Taipei concert on August 26.


title: EXID

text: EXID's fourth mini album "Full Moon" was released on November 7, 2017. This marks the return of member Solji, who was absent from the group since 2016. This time, Solji only participated in the recording process but was absent from the promotions and the title track's music video. On November 21, 2017, EXID won first place on "The Show" with "DDD".


title: EXID

text: From December 2017 onwards, EXID, through their social media platforms, shared photo teasers for a project named "re:flower", whose songs would be remasters and remakes of past their songs that weren't title songs.


title: EXID

text: EXID returned with a single album "Lady" on April 2, 2018, only promoting as four, however, due to Solji still recovering from surgery. The lead track for the album is entitled "내일해 (Lady)". On April 10, 2018, EXID won first place on "The Show" with "Lady".


title: EXID

text: On 11 May, Banana Culture announced EXID's launching of their Japanese official website, which included a Japanese fan club. They also announced a debut showcase at Tokyo to be held on June 27. During the showcase, EXID announced their release of the Japanese version of "Up & Down" on August 22, as well as their first Japanese tour to be held between August 23 and 25, with Solji confirming that she will have returned by then.


title: EXID

text: On July 22 and 29, Solji returned as a contestant in episode 163-164 of MBC's singing competition program "King of Mask Singer" as 'Dongmakgol Girl' and emerged victorious, being crowned the 82nd generation of 'Mask King'. On September 6, Banana Culture released a statement, announcing that Solji will join EXID on September 7 to attend the 2018 Hallyu Pop Festival in Singapore as her first official schedule. This marked the formal return of Solji into EXID, of which she will be joining in all of their future group promotions. Solji appeared with the rest of the group members on stage on August 10, on day 2 of HallyuPopFest 2018, in which she performed 5 of their title tracks with the group. Solji continued to successfully defend herself over all contestants in the next 8 episodes since her initial victory in "King of Mask Singer", before ending her streak as the winner of 82nd to 86th generation on October 21. After her defeat, she revealed her identity, and explained her choice of return through the show as it was where she rose to fame.


title: EXID

text: To further their promotions since their debut in Japan, the music video for the Japanese version of "Up & Down" was released early on August 10 before the launch of the Japanese debut album, which debuted at number 15 on the Daily chart of Oricon.


title: EXID

text: On November 11, EXID made a full-member comeback with the single album "I Love You", while releasing the music video with the same title. "I Love You" entered Billboard's World Digital Song Sales chart at number 5, which was by far their highest achievement in the chart.


title: EXID

text: On December 31, 2018, EXID performed at Taipei New Year's Eve Countdown Party in Taipei, Taiwan, and stayed there through the countdown to 2019.


title: EXID

text: In February 2019, EXID held their second Japanese live tour, titled "2019 EXID Valentine Japan Live Tour". Their debut Japanese album, "Trouble", was released on April 3, 2019. "Trouble" debuted and peaked at number 12 on the Oricon Albums Chart and at number 23 on "Billboard Japan"s Hot Albums. It also peaked at number 10 on "Billboard Japan"s Top Albums Sales, with 4,831 physical copies sold in its first week.