title: Grimsby

text: Grimsby has rail links via Grimsby Town railway station and Grimsby Docks railway station. There is a level crossing in the centre of the town across "Wellowgate". TransPennine Express provides direct trains to Manchester Airport via Doncaster and Sheffield, whilst East Midlands Railway operates services to Barton-upon-Humber, for buses to Hull, Northern has Saturday service to Sheffield via Brigg but it is temporarily suspended. The Leicester Via Lincoln & Nottingham are served by East Midlands Railway. The service to Cleethorpes runs at least hourly during the day along a single track, passing stations at Grimsby Docks and New Clee.


title: Grimsby

text: Grimsby had two tramway networks: the "Grimsby District Light Railway" and the "Grimsby & Immingham Electric Railway".


title: Grimsby

text: Grimsby Electric was a normal-gauge tramway opened in 1912 between Corporation Bridge at Grimsby and Immingham. There was no physical connection with the railway system. It provided passenger services between Grimsby and Immingham until it closed in 1961. It is claimed that once this was controlled by the corporation, it had more interest in supporting the motorbus service, now No. 45.


title: Grimsby

text: Grimsby Light Railway opened in 1881 using horse-drawn trams. In 1901, these were replaced with electric tramways. In 1925 the Grimsby Transport Company bought the tramway company and in 1927 moved the depot to the Victoria Street Depot, an old sea plane hangar. This system closed in 1937. The depot continues to be used by Stagecoach, although the old Grimsby Tramways livery is still visible on the front of the building.


title: Grimsby

text: Operating in the area until the 1950s was a network of electrically operated trolleybuses served by overhead power lines.


title: Grimsby

text: Humberside Airport is west of Grimsby and mainly caters for charter holidays. It is popular for general aviation, with five flying clubs based there.


title: Grimsby

text: The local football team Grimsby Town F.C., nicknamed The Mariners, has played in League Two, the fourth tier of English football, since its promotion from the Vanarama National League in the 2021/22 season. Its ground is Blundell Park in Cleethorpes. It is the oldest professional football team in Lincolnshire and one of the oldest in the country, being formed in 1878 as Grimsby Pelham, with a home ground on land off Ainslie Street. During the 1930s Grimsby Town played in the English First Division, then the highest level of the domestic game in England. It also appeared in two FA Cup semi-finals in the 1930s: in 1936 (against Arsenal) and in 1939 (against Wolverhampton Wanderers). The latter semi-final was held at Old Trafford, Manchester, and the attendance (76,962) is still a record for the stadium.


title: Grimsby

text: Grimsby Town was relegated on 7 May 2010 to the Football Conference, losing its status as a League club. It returned to the Football League after gaining promotion via the National League play-off final in 2016, beating Forest Green Rovers 3–1 at Wembley Stadium. The team reached the FA Cup quarter-finals in 1987 and in 1998 won the Auto Windscreens Shield and the second division play-off final. Notable former managers include Bill Shankly, Lawrie McMenemy and Alan Buckley.


title: Grimsby

text: Blundell Park's Main Stand is the oldest in English professional football. It opened in 1899, although only the present foundations date from that time. There have been plans to relocate the club to a new stadium, including one at the side of Peaks Parkway in Grimsby.


title: Grimsby

text: Grimsby Borough F.C. is a football club established in 2003 and based in Grimsby. It belongs to the Northern Counties East League Division One.


title: Grimsby

text: An ice hockey club has been based in Grimsby since 1936. It has teams playing at various levels throughout the English Ice Hockey Association structure, under the name of Grimsby Red Wings. In 2009 the club added an ice sled hockey team to ensure that it was able to offer a fully inclusive sport for the NE Lincolnshire area.


title: Grimsby

text: The amateur Rugby Union side, the Grimsby RUFC, and an amateur cricket side, the Grimsby Town Cricket Club, attract reasonable levels of support. The Grimsby Scorpions American Football team operated until 2014 before relocating to Hull, where it merged with Hull's team as Humber Warhawks. Despite playing in another county the club maintains representation of both East Yorkshire and North East Lincolnshire.


title: Grimsby

text: Tennis teams from local clubs have been successful in various inter-county competitions. The Men's Team from Grimsby Tennis Centre won the Lincolnshire Doubles League in 2005. Tennis players from the town represent the county on a regular basis at all age levels. Grimsby Tennis Centre underwent a major redevelopment of facilities in 2005 and is now wholly accessible to the disabled.


title: Grimsby

text: The town had one of the largest table tennis leagues in the country, with over 120 teams competing in the 1970s, but like the game of squash, the sport has declined in the town during recent years.


title: Grimsby

text: Before the late 1960s many public houses in the area were owned by the local brewer Hewitt Brothers and had a distinctive local touch, but it was taken over in 1969 by the brewer Bass-Charrington. The pubs have been re-badged many times, closed or sold off. "The Barge Inn" is a former grain barge converted into a pub/restaurant. It has been moored at the Riverhead quay since 1982.


title: Grimsby

text: Musical entertainment is provided at the Grimsby Auditorium, built in 1995 in Cromwell Road, Yarborough, near Grimsby Leisure Centre. The smaller Caxton Theatre is in Cleethorpe Road (A180) in East Marsh, near the docks. The Caxton Theatre provides entertainment by adults and youths in theatre. Notable in the area is the Class Act Theatre Company run by the local playwright David Wrightam.


title: Grimsby

text: North East Lincolnshire Council has installed a Wi-Fi network covering Victoria Street in central Grimsby. The service gives access to the Internet to the general public on a yearly subscription.


title: Grimsby

text: Grimsby's Freeman Street cinema closed in 2004, leaving the Parkway cinema in Cleethorpes to serve the town. Periodic plans to build a new cinema in Grimsby have been made since. The Whitgift Film Theatre in John Whitgift Academy shows a programme of limited release and art-house films.


title: Grimsby

text: Grimsby is the site of a Blue Cross Animal Hospital, one of only four in the country, the other three being in London. Previously in Cleethorpe Road, the Grimsby hospital moved in 2005 to a new building, Coco Markus House, in Nelson Street.


title: Grimsby

text: The "Grimsby Telegraph", had an audited circulation of 14,344 copies in 2017. It is based in Heritage House near the Fishing Heritage Centre. The local radio stations are BBC Radio Humberside, Lincs FM, Viking FM and the exclusively North East Lincolnshire-based Compass FM, which ceased to be local in 2020, to be rebranded as Greatest Hits Radio Grimsby.The transmitter for Greatest Hits Radio Grimsby and EMAP Humberside (Lincs FM DAB) is on top of a block of flats in East Marsh. Terrestrial television coverage based in the area comes from BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and ITV Yorkshire, which has a news broadcast based in Immingham. That's TV Humberside (formerly Estuary TV and Channel 7 Television) broadcast on Freeview channel 8 and on Virgin Media channel 159.


title: Grimsby

text: The Environment Agency has awarded Sheffield-based telemetry company CSE Seprol a contract to supply flood-warning devices for risk areas in East Anglia. The 18 sirens, at various locations round the flood-risk area of Grimsby and Cleethorpes, should reach 25,500 households to warn of flood danger. They will be sounded only in the event of the Environment Agency issuing a severe flood warning for tidal flooding, or if it is likely the sea defences will be breached. The sirens make various sounds, from the traditional wail to a voice message.


title: Grimsby

text: Listed in alphabetical order (Grimbarians were mainly born at the former Grimsby Maternity Hospital in Nunsthorpe, Grimsby. Many were born at the defunct Croft Baker Maternity Hospital in nearby Cleethorpes. Those born and/or brought up nearby include:


title: Grimsby

text: As a port with trading ties to Continental Europe, the Nordic nations and Baltic Europe, the town houses honorary consulates of Denmark, Iceland, and Norway. Swedish and Finnish honorary consulates are located in Immingham, and that of Germany at Barrow-upon-Humber.


title: Grimsby

text: The people of Norway have sent a tree to the town of Grimsby every Christmas since the end of the Second World War. The Norwegian city of Trondheim sent a tree for 40 years until 2003, since when the tree has been donated by the northern Norwegian town of Sortland and placed in the town's Riverhead Square. During redevelopment of Riverhead Square the tree has been placed in the Old Market Place since 2013.


title: 2001 NBA Finals

text: The 2001 NBA Finals was the championship round of the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s 2000–01 season. The defending NBA champion and Western Conference champion Los Angeles Lakers took on the Eastern Conference champion Philadelphia 76ers for the championship, with the Lakers holding home-court advantage in a best-of-seven format.


title: 2001 NBA Finals

text: The Lakers won the series 4 games to 1. Lakers center Shaquille O'Neal was named the Most Valuable Player of the series.


title: 2001 NBA Finals

text: NBA MVP Allen Iverson scored 48 points in his only NBA Finals victory, as the 76ers took Game 1 107–101 in overtime, handing the Lakers their only loss of the playoffs. However, the Lakers went on to win the next four games. In Game 3 Robert Horry hit a three-point shot in the last minute, and in the next two games the Lakers used hot 3-point shooting to build big leads and hold off late 76ers comeback attempts in games 4 and 5, pulling away for double-digit wins to win the title.


title: 2001 NBA Finals

text: The Los Angeles Lakers entered the 2000–01 NBA season as the defending NBA champions. The club lost a few players to free agency, but they signed veteran players like Isaiah Rider and Horace Grant. The Lakers began the season struggling on and off the court, as they were losing games at the beginning with the Shaq–Kobe feud. Injuries also riddled the team as they struggled through the season. But by April 1, 2001, the Lakers last loss was to the New York Knicks and they never looked back as the team closed out the season on an eight-game winning streak, thus finishing the season 56-26 and closing out as the number 2 seed in the West behind the San Antonio Spurs.


title: 2001 NBA Finals

text: The Lakers began the 2001 NBA Playoffs versus the team against whom they played the previous year in the Western Conference finals, the Portland Trail Blazers. The Trail Blazers were a team that struggled throughout the season but battled back to claim the 7th seed. The series wasn't close, as the Lakers swept the Trail Blazers by double digits in all three games. In the semifinals the Lakers took on the Sacramento Kings, a team who had also given the Lakers a tough series the previous season, but the Lakers took two close games at home and went to Sacramento to finish the Kings off with a 4–0 sweep as well. In the conference finals the Lakers went up against the number 1 seed San Antonio Spurs, who were expected to be more competitive than the Lakers' previous opponents. But the Lakers took games 1 and 2 in San Antonio, and then blew them out in games 3 and 4 in Los Angeles in another complete sweep as they became the second team in NBA history to sweep the conference playoffs at 11–0, the 1988-1989 Los Angeles Lakers being the first.


title: 2001 NBA Finals

text: But the Lakers met a snag on their quest to the first NBA sweep in playoff history as they went up against Allen Iverson and the Philadelphia 76ers. The 76ers, seeded number 1 in the Eastern Conference, had just come out of two straight seven-game series against the Toronto Raptors and Milwaukee Bucks. During the first game, the trio of Iverson, Dikembe Mutombo and Eric Snow, coming hot off a long Eastern Conference championship road, beat the Lakers in overtime, showcasing their endurance.


title: 2001 NBA Finals

text: The Lakers then took Game 2. Afterwards, Kobe Bryant was quoted as saying he was coming to Philadelphia to cut their hearts out. The Sixers dropped all three games in Philadelphia, giving the Lakers their second straight championship.


title: 2001 NBA Finals

text: The Lakers dominated early, in what looked like to be their fourth series sweep. Scoring 16 straight points, the Lakers took a 21–9 lead over the Allen Iverson-led 76ers. Despite this major lead, Iverson began dominating at the half of the 2nd quarter scoring 30 first half points. The 76ers turned the game around and even went up by 15 points during the third quarter before the Lakers started a comeback. Shaquille O'Neal was a major factor in the comeback, scoring 18 points in the quarter.


title: 2001 NBA Finals

text: The Lakers played fantastically during the 4th quarter, and Tyronn Lue came off the bench and limited Iverson to merely 3 points and had 3 assists and 2 steals of his own. The game was eventually tied at 94, and when Dikembe Mutombo missed two free throws and Eric Snow's desperation three-pointer at the buzzer bounced off the rim, the game went to overtime.


title: 2001 NBA Finals

text: The Lakers scored the first 5 points in the first half of overtime. Raja Bell then hit a tough layup to answer, followed by Iverson scoring 7 straight points, including a three pointer to give them the lead. Iverson followed up with a step back 2-pointer over Lue which is famously known as he stepped over Lue after hitting the shot. The 76ers finished with a 6 point win to take the first game of the series.


title: 2001 NBA Finals

text: Kobe Bryant started off the game with 12 points in the first quarter, while Shaq scored 12 points in the second quarter. Despite their points, the 76ers kept a close lead as Larry Brown ran over 10 plays searching for the right quartet, and the fact that all the Lakers besides Bryant and O'Neal were shooting only at 27%. The Sixers were down by 13 in the fourth quarter, and were making a comeback due to Shaq sitting out with 5 fouls, which helped the 76ers to score 7 straight. Even though the 76ers were within 3 points of the Lakers, the 6 of 16 foul shooting in the fourth quarter put them behind permanently. O'Neal finished with 28 points, 20 rebounds, nine assists, and eight blocks, coming close to a quadruple double. Before the game, Lakers coach Phil Jackson had growled at O'Neal, "Don't be afraid to block a shot!" after O'Neal failed to block a shot in Game 1.


title: 2001 NBA Finals

text: The 2001 NBA Finals was aired in the United States on NBC, with Marv Albert and Doug Collins on play-by-play and color commentary respectively. Albert, who last worked the Finals for NBC Sports in , had been rehired by the network in 1999, two years after a sex scandal led to his dismissal. Albert also began working for TNT during this period, a role he continued until 2021. Collins departed NBC following the series to serve as head coach of the Washington Wizards.


title: 2001 NBA Finals

text: Ahmad Rashad served as the studio host in place of Hannah Storm, who took a maternity leave during the finals. Kevin Johnson and P. J. Carlesimo served as studio analysts, while Lewis Johnson and Jim Gray served as sideline reporters.


title: 2001 NBA Finals

text: The Lakers won their third straight championship in a four-game sweep of the New Jersey Nets the following year. The Lakers won 58 games in the season, then defeated the Portland Trail Blazers in three games, the San Antonio Spurs in five games, and the Sacramento Kings in seven games before sweeping the Nets in the Finals.


title: 2001 NBA Finals

text: , the series remains the 76ers’ last NBA Finals appearance. The Sixers would win only 43 games in the 2001-02 NBA season, as injuries were the story of their season. Nevertheless, they made the playoffs as the sixth seed, but were defeated by the Boston Celtics in five games. The Celtics themselves came within two games of returning to the NBA Finals for the first time since , but were ousted by the upstart Nets, who made the NBA Finals for the first time, denying a possible Celtics-Lakers final. As for the Sixers, they would never challenge for the title again in the Allen Iverson era, with the team reaching the playoffs only twice for the next four years, winning only one series.


title: 2001 NBA Finals

text: Larry Brown later coached the Detroit Pistons to their third championship in the 2004 NBA Finals, defeating the Lakers 4–1.


title: Stella Parton

text: Stella Mae Parton (born May 4, 1949) is an American country singer and songwriter widely known for a series of country singles that charted during the mid-to-late-1970s, her biggest hit being "I Want to Hold You in My Dreams Tonight" in 1975. She is the younger sister of the country music entertainer Dolly Parton and the older sister of the singer Randy Parton and former actress Rachel Dennison.


title: Stella Parton

text: Stella Mae Parton was born in Sevierville, Tennessee. She is the sixth of 12 children born to Avie Lee Caroline ("née" Owens; 1923–2003) and Robert Lee Parton Sr. (1921–2000). Dolly Parton is her elder sister by three years. When Stella was seven, she and Dolly appeared on a Knoxville television program, and two years later she debuted on radio. During this time, Stella and her sisters Willadeene and Cassie formed a group who sang gospel music and made commercials around East Tennessee. During her high school years, she began writing songs. She married Marvin Carroll Rauhuff just before her high school graduation in 1966. She had one son by this marriage.


title: Stella Parton

text: In 1967, Parton released her first album, "In the Garden" (a gospel project with Willadeene, Cassie and their mother). Shortly thereafter, she moved to Washington, D.C., and began performing at the Hillbilly Heaven club. Later moving to Nashville, she started her own record label, Soul, Country and Blues, in 1975 and released her first solo album, "I Want to Hold You in My Dreams Tonight". Its title track was a substantial national hit, climbing into the country top ten. Its success earned her a major-label deal with Elektra in 1976. Her 1977 duet with Carmol Taylor, "Neon Woman", was somewhat successful, and she had three top 20 hits over 1977–1978 with "The Danger of a Stranger", "Four Little Letters" and "Standard Lie Number One". She had an additional top-40 hit with her sister Dolly's composition, "Steady as the Rain", in 1979. She recorded three albums for Elektra up to 1979. In 1984, Stella performed a song with Kin Vassey for the soundtrack of the movie "Rhinestone", in which Dolly starred.


title: Stella Parton

text: Though her chart success tapered off, after she left Elektra in 1980, she continued to record, releasing albums for several independent labels, including Accord/Townhouse and Airborne. She is currently with Raptor Records. To date, she has released 22 albums and has had 28 charting singles.


title: Stella Parton

text: Parton has released a DVD, "Live in Nashville", of footage from a 1990 concert in Nashville taken from the Attic Entertainment archives. It is the first of a planned Vintage Collection Series.


title: Stella Parton

text: In 2019, Parton released an album, "Survivor". In addition to eight original songs, "Survivor" has a cover version of "Wake Me Up" by Avicii and Parton's interpretation of the Bob Seger classic, "Like a Rock".


title: Stella Parton

text: In 1979, Parton starred in "The Dukes of Hazzard" episode titled "Deputy Dukes" as Mary Beth Malone, a woman who impersonates a police officer to settle a family score with a prisoner who ends up being transported by Bo (John Schneider) and Luke (Tom Wopat) during a change of venue.


title: Stella Parton

text: During the 1980s and early 1990s, she starred in several Broadway touring musicals, including "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", "Pump Boys & Dinettes", "Best Little Whorehouse In Texas" and "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes". Parton also wrote and staged several Dollywood shows the opening season, as well as appearing on "The Dukes of Hazzard" (the first country artist to have a dramatic role on the series), "Live with Regis and Kathy Lee", "The Today Show" and "Good Morning America". She has been on several international radio programs, including "Get Focused Radio" with host Kate Hennessy.


title: Stella Parton

text: Parton appeared with Gena Rowlands and Louis Gossett in the 2000 TV movie "The Color of Love: Jacey's Story" which was nominated for a Primetime Emmy award.


title: Stella Parton

text: In 2006, Parton made appearances in two films, "A Dance for Bethany" and "Ghost Town", both scheduled for release in 2007. Each film also includes her music on the soundtrack. Also ready for release in 2007 was her 21st album, which is a collection of original contemporary Christian songs. Followed in 2008, was her 22nd album, "Testimony".


title: Stella Parton

text: She appeared in "Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors" with Jennifer Nettles and Ricky Schroder, an NBC made-for-TV movie based on Dolly's song of the same name that was first broadcast on NBC in December 2015.


title: Stella Parton

text: In 2016, Parton appeared in "" as Corla Bass. The NBC TV movie was nominated for a Primetime Emmy award for Outstanding Television Movie.


title: Stella Parton

text: She appeared as a mystery guest on "To Tell the Truth" hosted by Anthony Anderson in 2021, and none of the panelists guessed her as the real sibling of Dolly Parton.


title: Stella Parton

text: In 2022 she appeared in the Pure Flix film "Nothing is Impossible", starring David A.R. White, which was filmed in Tennessee.


title: Stella Parton

text: She devotes much of her time to causes such as domestic violence and teaches at the New Opportunity School for Women at Berea College, Kentucky, using her knowledge of hair and make-up to help women build self-esteem.


title: Stella Parton

text: Parton has been a national spokesperson for Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the Christian Appalachian Project and National Honorary Country Music Ambassador to the American Cancer Society.


title: Stella Parton

text: Parton went viral on "Twitter" in December 2020 with a tweet criticizing "old moldy politicians" over the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in the United States.


title: Stella Parton

text: She has a consulting business (Attic Entertainment Artist Development and Entertainment Consulting) teaching stage presence, hair, make-up, wardrobe techniques and video coaching. Parton has also written three cookbooks, including her recipe-packed book "State Fairs and Church Bazaars".


title: Twenty-foot equivalent unit

text: The twenty-foot equivalent unit (abbreviated TEU or teu) is an inexact unit of cargo capacity, often used for container ships and container ports. It is based on the volume of a intermodal container, a standard-sized metal box which can be easily transferred between different modes of transportation, such as ships, trains, and trucks.


title: Twenty-foot equivalent unit

text: The container is defined by its length, although the height is not standardized and ranges between and , with the most common height being . It is common to designate a container as 2 TEU, rather than 2.25 TEU.


title: Twenty-foot equivalent unit

text: The standard intermodal container is designated as twenty feet long (6.1m) and wide. Additionally there is a standard container with the same width but a doubled length of forty feet called a 40-foot (12.2m) container, which equals one forty-foot equivalent unit (often FEU or feu) in cargo transportation (considered to be two TEU, see below).


title: Twenty-foot equivalent unit

text: In order to allow stacking of these types a forty-foot intermodal container has an exact length of , while the standard twenty-foot intermodal container is slightly shorter having an exact length of . The twistlocks on a ship are put at a distance so that two standard twenty-foot containers have a gap of three inches which allows a single forty-foot container to be put on top.


title: Twenty-foot equivalent unit

text: The forty-foot containers have found wider acceptance, as they can be pulled by semi-trailer truck. The length of such a combination is within the limits of national road regulations in many countries, requiring no special permission. As some road regulations allow longer trucks, there are also variations of the standard forty-foot container – in Europe and most other places a container of may be pulled as a trailer. Containers with a length of or are restricted to road and rail transport in North America. Although longer than 40 feet, these variants are put in the same class of forty-foot equivalent units.


title: Twenty-foot equivalent unit

text: The carrying capacity of a ship is usually measured by mass (the deadweight tonnage) or by volume (the net register tonnage). Deadweight tonnage is generally measured now in metric tons ("tonnes"). Register tons are measured in cu. ft, with one register ton equivalent to .


title: Twenty-foot equivalent unit

text: As the TEU is an inexact unit, it cannot be converted precisely into other units. The related unit "forty-foot equivalent unit", however, is defined as two TEU. The most common twenty-foot container occupies a space long, wide, and high, with an allowance externally for the corner castings; the internal volume is . However, both "High cube" and "half height" containers are also reckoned as 1 TEU. This gives a volume range of for one TEU.


title: Twenty-foot equivalent unit

text: While the TEU is not itself a measure of mass, some conclusions can be drawn about the maximum mass that a TEU can represent. The maximum gross mass for a dry cargo container is . Subtracting the tare mass of the container itself, the maximum amount of cargo per TEU is reduced to approximately .


title: Twenty-foot equivalent unit

text: Similarly, the maximum gross mass for a dry cargo container (including the "High cube" container) is . After correcting for tare weight, this gives a cargo capacity of .


title: Twenty-foot equivalent unit

text: Twenty-foot, "heavy tested" containers are available for heavy goods such as heavy machinery. These containers allow a maximum weight of , an empty weight of , and a net load of .


title: Backhoe

text: A backhoe—also called rear actor or back actor—is a type of excavating equipment, or digger, consisting of a digging bucket on the end of a two-part articulated arm. It is typically mounted on the back of a tractor or front loader, the latter forming a "backhoe loader" (a US term, but known as a "JCB" in Ireland and the UK). The section of the arm closest to the vehicle is known as the boom, while the section that carries the bucket is known as the dipper (or dipper-stick), both terms derived from steam shovels. The boom is generally attached to the vehicle through a pivot known as the king-post, which allows the arm to pivot left and right, usually through a total of 180 to 200 degrees.


title: Backhoe

text: The term "backhoe" refers to the action of the bucket, not its location on the vehicle. That is, a backhoe digs by drawing earth backwards, rather than lifting it with a forward motion like a person shovelling, a steam shovel, or a bulldozer. The buckets on some backhoes may be reconfigured facing forward, making them "hoes".


title: Backhoe

text: A tractor-loader backhoe (TLB) is a tractor-like vehicle with a backhoe at the rear, a front loader on the other and a swivelling seat to position the operator facing whichever direction is needed at the time. In North America, this arrangement is often referred to as simply a backhoe, or when on a chassis originally derived from farm tractors, a tractor-loader backhoe. To differentiate, a backhoe on its own dedicated chassis may then be referred to as an excavator.


title: Backhoe

text: Backhoe loaders can be designed and manufactured from the start as such, or can be the result of a farm tractor equipped with a front end loader (FEL) and rear backhoe. Though similar looking, the purpose-designed backhoe loaders are much stronger, with the farm variation unsuitable for heavy work.


title: Backhoe

text: With the advent of hydraulic powered attachments such as a tiltrotator, breaker, a grapple or an auger, the backhoe is frequently used in many applications other than excavation and with the tiltrotator attachment serves as an effective tool carrier. Many backhoes feature quick coupler (quick-attach) mounting systems for simplified attachment mounting, dramatically increasing the machine's utilization on the job site. Backhoes are usually employed together with loaders and bulldozers. Excavators that use a backhoe are sometimes called "trackhoes" by people who do not realize the name is due to the action of the bucket, not its location on a backhoe loader.


title: Backhoe

text: Backhoe loaders are general-purpose tools, and are being displaced to some extent by multiple specialist tools like the excavator and the speciality front-end loader, especially with the rise of the mini-excavator. On many job sites which would have previously seen a backhoe used, a skid-steer loader and a mini excavator will be used in conjunction to fill the backhoe's role. However, backhoes are still in general use. The difference between the backhoe and the skid-steer loader, are that the backhoe has attachments back and front, where as the skid-steer loader only has front attachments, however, the attachment versatility on a skid-steer loader is much greater.


title: Backhoe

text: Sometimes a backhoe arm is used as a crane, by slinging the lifted object from the support linkages behind the scoop (advisably not from the teeth, preferably from a hook welded on a bucket, quick coupler or tiltrotator).


title: Backhoe

text: The backhoe swing frame was invented in 1947 by Vaino (pronounced "Waino") J. Holopainen and Roy E. Handy Jr. The swing frame "allowed the hydraulic digging arm to swing to the side to dump the bucket under US patent # 2,698,697". In April 1948 Wain-Roy Corporation sold the very first hydraulic backhoe, mounted to a Ford Model 8N tractor, to the Connecticut Light and Power Company for $705.


title: Backhoe

text: The first tractor-loader backhoe was a Wain-Roy backhoe mounted to a Frank G. Hough model "HE" in 1952 in Holden, Massachusetts, US, for the Holden Water Department. The F.G. Hough Company was a subsidiary of the International Harvester Company. By early 1954, two Hough "Payloader" model wheel loaders, the HE and the HF, were available with Wain-Roy backhoes. In 1954 the Wain-Roy Corporation negotiated a deal with IH for the Hough TLB full-scale production on several other models of Hough loaders.


title: Backhoe

text: In the same year, JCB launched the first European hydraulic loader, followed by a backhoe with a 180° slew, fitted to a tractor, in 1953. In 1957, Case developed the first integrated tractor backhoe loader at the Case New Holland plant in Burlington, Vermont, helping contractors complete their work more efficiently.


title: Backhoe

text: JCB introduced the first dedicated backhoe loader, incorporating the excavator and the major loader in a single, all-purpose tool.


title: Backhoe

text: In 1960, Vaino Holopainen was introduced as "Mr. Backhoe" to Henry Ford II. Wain-Roy continued to produce them for Ford until 1963, when Ford started making their own. Wain-Roy Corporation later bought the AC Anderson Company. Although the Wain-Roy Corporation no longer exists, the Wain-Roy product line of backhoe attachments and couplers is still available through the Woods Equipment Company of Rockford, Illinois, US. In 1965, Kelly G. Cunningham used the 7.6 Gravely Tractor to create the Terramite Model 1 compact backhoe, known as the T1.


title: Backhoe

text: Because of the long-time predominance of the JCB marque in the United Kingdom and Ireland, it has become a genericized trademark there, and backhoe-equipped diggers are commonly called "JCBs", while the term "backhoe" as an excavator component is almost unknown to the general public in this context. The founder of the JCB company, Joseph Cyril Bamford, is the only Briton to be honored in the Association of Equipment Manufacturers Hall of Fame.


title: Backhoe

text: "Backhoe fade" or "JCB fade" is a term coined by the telecommunications field to refer to accidental damage or complete severing of a communications cable by a backhoe or similar construction activity.


title: Backhoe

text: The term is a play on other types of signal loss, especially on wireless networks. Most of these cause a reduction in the signal, such as rain fade. A cable subjected to "backhoe fade" is instead a sudden and initially inexplicable loss of signal experienced when a cable is accidentally dug up and damaged or cut.


title: Adriana Caselotti

text: Adriana Elena Loreta Caselotti (May 6, 1916 – January 18, 1997) was an American actress and singer. Caselotti was the voice of the title character of the first Walt Disney animated feature, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", for which she was named a Disney Legend in 1994, making her the first female voiceover artist to achieve this.


title: Adriana Caselotti

text: Adriana Caselotti was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut to an Italian-American family. Her father, Guido Luigi Emanuele Caselotti, was an immigrant from Udine, and worked as a music teacher and vocal coach, and served as the organist for the Holy Rosary Church; and her mother, Maria Josephine Orefice from Casavatore, was a singer in the Royal Opera Theatre of Rome. Her older sister, Louise, sang opera and gave voice lessons—Maria Callas being a student of hers. When Caselotti was seven years old, her family left Connecticut for Italy, while her mother toured with an opera company. Caselotti was educated and boarded at the San Getulio convent, near Rome. When her family returned to New York three years later, Caselotti re-learned English and studied singing with her father. In 1934, Caselotti attended Hollywood High School where she sang in the senior class Girls' Glee Club and had a leading role in the school's annual musical, "The Belle of New York".


title: Adriana Caselotti

text: In 1935, after her brief stint as a chorus girl and session singer at MGM, Walt Disney hired Caselotti as the voice of his heroine Snow White. She was paid a total of $970 for working on the film (). She was not credited for the role, and had trouble finding new opportunities later in life. Jack Benny specifically mentioned that he had asked Walt Disney for permission to use her on his radio show and was told, "I'm sorry, but that voice can't be used anywhere. I don't want to spoil the illusion of Snow White." Caselotti had two more jobs in the film business. The first was an uncredited role in MGM's "The Wizard of Oz" (1939); she provided the voice of Juliet during the Tin Man's song, "If I Only Had a Heart", speaking the line, "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" In 1946, she had an uncredited role in Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life", singing in Martini's bar as James Stewart is praying.


title: Adriana Caselotti

text: Adriana Caselotti appeared in several promotional spots for "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", and signed memorabilia during promotional events. On November 22, 1972 (Thanksgiving Day), she guest-starred on an episode of "The Julie Andrews Hour" saluting the music of Walt Disney, singing "I'm Wishing" and "Some Day My Prince Will Come" with Julie Andrews. She also made a guest appearance on the syndicated "The Mike Douglas Show". Caselotti later wrote a how-to book, "Do You Like to Sing?".


title: Adriana Caselotti

text: Later in life, she sold autographs and sang opera, including performing in "Rigoletto". In the early 1990s, when the Snow White Grotto at Disneyland was refurbished, Caselotti, at the age of 75, re-recorded "I'm Wishing" for the Snow White Wishing Well exhibit. In 1994, she was named a Disney Legend.


title: Adriana Caselotti

text: Caselotti was married four times. Her first husband was Robert James Chard, a local theater ticket broker whom she married in 1945. The marriage ended in divorce. She later met actor Norval Weir Mitchell, whom she married in 1952. He retired after marrying her and died in 1972. The same year, she was married to a podiatrist, Joseph Dana Costigan, who died in 1982. Caselotti married her last husband, Joseph Laureat Florian St. Pierre, a retired postal employee, in 1989 and they later divorced.


title: Conceptual framework

text: A conceptual framework is an analytical tool with several variations and contexts. It can be applied in different categories of work where an overall picture is needed. It is used to make conceptual distinctions and organize ideas. Strong conceptual frameworks capture something real and do this in a way that is easy to remember and apply.


title: Conceptual framework

text: Isaiah Berlin used the metaphor of a "fox" and a "hedgehog" to make conceptual distinctions in how important philosophers and authors view the world. Berlin describes hedgehogs as those who use a single idea or organizing principle to view the world (such as Dante Alighieri, Blaise Pascal, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Plato, Henrik Ibsen and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel). Foxes, on the other hand, incorporate a type of pluralism and view the world through multiple, sometimes conflicting, lenses (examples include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, James Joyce, William Shakespeare, Aristotle, Herodotus, Molière, and Honoré de Balzac).


title: Conceptual framework

text: Economists use the conceptual framework of "supply" and "demand" to distinguish between the behavior and incentive systems of firms and consumers. Like many conceptual frameworks, supply and demand can be presented through visual or graphical representations (see demand curve). Both political science and economics use principal agent theory as a conceptual framework. The politics-administration dichotomy is a long-standing conceptual framework used in public administration. All three of these cases are examples of a macro level conceptual framework.


title: Conceptual framework

text: The use of the term "conceptual framework" crosses both scale (large and small theories) and contexts (social science, marketing, applied science, art etc.). Its explicit definition and application can therefore vary.


title: Conceptual framework

text: Conceptual frameworks are particularly useful as organizing devices in empirical research. One set of scholars has applied the notion of conceptual framework to deductive, empirical research at the micro- or individual study level. They employ American football plays as a useful metaphor to clarify the meaning of "conceptual framework" (used in the context of a deductive empirical study).


title: Conceptual framework

text: Likewise, conceptual frameworks are abstract representations, connected to the research project's goal that direct the collection and analysis of data (on the plane of observation – the ground). Critically, a football play is a "plan of action" tied to a particular, timely, purpose, usually summarized as long or short yardage. Shields and Rangarajan (2013) argue that it is this tie to "purpose" that make American football plays such a good metaphor. They define a conceptual framework as "the way ideas are organized to achieve a research project's purpose". Like football plays, conceptual frameworks are connected to a research purpose or aim. Explanation is the most common type of research purpose employed in empirical research. The formal hypothesis of a scientific investigation is the framework associated with explanation.


title: Conceptual framework

text: Explanatory research usually focuses on "why" or "what caused" a phenomenon to occur. Formal hypotheses posit possible explanations (answers to the why question) that are tested by collecting data and assessing the evidence (usually quantitative using statistical tests). For example, Kai Huang wanted to determine what factors contributed to residential fires in U.S. cities. Three factors were posited to influence residential fires. These factors (environment, population and building characteristics) became the hypotheses or conceptual framework he used to achieve his purpose – explain factors that influenced home fires in U.S. cities.


title: Conceptual framework

text: Several types of conceptual frameworks have been identified, and line up with a research purpose in the following ways:


title: Conceptual framework

text: Note that Shields and Rangarajan (2013) do not claim that the above are the only framework-purpose pairing. Nor do they claim the system is applicable to inductive forms of empirical research. Rather, the conceptual framework-research purpose pairings they propose are useful and provide new scholars a point of departure to develop their own research design.


title: Conceptual framework

text: Frameworks have also been used to explain conflict theory and the balance necessary to reach what amounts to resolution. Within these conflict frameworks, visible and invisible variables function under concepts of relevance. Boundaries form and within these boundaries, tensions regarding laws and chaos (or freedom) are mitigated. These frameworks often function like cells, with sub-frameworks, stasis, evolution and revolution. Anomalies may exist without adequate "lenses" or "filters" to see them and may become visible only when the tools exist to define them.


title: Charlotte Lewis

text: Lewis attended Bishop Douglass School in Finchley. Her mother is Irish-English, while her father—a doctor whom she never met—is half-Chilean and half-Iraqi.


title: Charlotte Lewis

text: Lewis made her film debut as a teenager in the 1986 Roman Polanski film "Pirates". She followed it that same year with the female lead in "The Golden Child" alongside Eddie Murphy. Later appearances include the film "Tripwire" (1990) and "Storyville" (1992, opposite James Spader). She had a co-starring role in "Men of War" (1995, alongside Dolph Lundgren) and in the 1995 film "Decoy". Lewis appeared in the 2003 film "Hey DJ".


title: Charlotte Lewis

text: On 14 May 2010, Lewis and her Los Angeles-based attorney Gloria Allred accused Roman Polanski of sexually assaulting the actress when she was 16 years old, while the two worked together on "Pirates". Prosecutors in Los Angeles confirmed that they interviewed Lewis


title: Charlotte Lewis

text: in connection with the allegations. According to Lewis, the alleged incident occurred at Polanski's Paris apartment in 1983.


title: Charlotte Lewis

text: In 2010, an article called into question Lewis' testimony by referencing an account of events she gave in an interview with the UK's "News of the World," in which she had spoken of a relationship with Polanski, along with several other actors. Later, in December 2019, French magazine "L’Obs" came back to the "News of the World" story, relating a "violent campaign to discredit her" in the media. Charlotte Lewis said: "I was completely alone in 2010. No one believed me. They said I was a prostitute, a liar. I'm a little anxious to talk. The media got me so depressed."


title: Isabella Blow

text: Isabella "Issie" Blow (nee Delves Broughton; 19 November 1958 – 7 May 2007) was an English magazine editor. As the muse of hat designer Philip Treacy, she is credited with discovering the models Stella Tennant and Sophie Dahl as well as propelling and continually advocating the career of fashion designer Alexander McQueen, beginning when she bought the entirety of his explosive premier show inspired by Jack the Ripper. She died by suicide in 2007.


title: Isabella Blow

text: Born Isabella Delves Broughton in Marylebone, London, she was the eldest child of Major Sir Evelyn Delves Broughton, a military officer, and his second wife, Helen Mary Shore, a barrister. Sir Evelyn was the only son of Jock Delves Broughton; his sister, Rosamond, married Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat in 1938.


title: Isabella Blow

text: Blow had two sisters, Julia and Lavinia; her brother, John, drowned in the family's swimming pool at the age of two. This had a profound effect on her. In 1972, when she was 14, her parents separated and her mother left the household, bidding each daughter farewell with a handshake. Her parents divorced two years later. Isabella did not get along with her father, who bequeathed her only £5,000 from his estate, which was worth more than one million pounds.


title: Isabella Blow

text: Blow studied for her A-levels at Heathfield School, after which she enrolled at a secretarial college and then took odd jobs. She told Tamsin Blanchard of "The Observer" in 2002: I've done the most peculiar jobs. I was working in a scone shop for years, selling apricot-studded scones. I was a cleaner in London for two years. I wore a handkerchief with knots on the side, and my cousin saw me in the post office and said, What are you doing? I said, What do you think I look like I'm doing? I'm a cleaner!


title: Isabella Blow

text: Blow moved to New York City in 1979 to study Ancient Chinese Art at Columbia University and shared a flat with the actress Catherine Oxenberg. A year later, she left the Art History programme at Columbia, moved to Texas, and worked for Guy Laroche. In 1981 she married her first husband, Nicholas Taylor (whom she divorced in 1983), and was introduced to the fashion director of the US edition of "Vogue", Anna Wintour. Blow was hired initially as Wintour's assistant, but it was not long before she was assisting André Leon Talley, as of 2008 US "Vogue"s editor-at-large. While working in New York, she befriended Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.


title: Isabella Blow

text: She returned to London in 1986 and worked for Michael Roberts, then the fashion director of "Tatler" and "The Sunday Times" "Style" magazine. During this period she was romantically linked to editor Tim Willis. In 1989, Blow married her second husband, barrister and art dealer Detmar Hamilton Blow, a grandson of the early 20th-century society architect Detmar Blow, in Gloucester Cathedral. Philip Treacy designed the bride's wedding headdress and a now-famous fashion relationship was forged. Realizing Treacy's talent, Blow established Treacy in her London flat, where he worked on his collections. She soon began wearing Treacy's hats, making them a signature part of her flamboyant style. In a 2002 interview with Tamsin Blanchard, Blow declared that she wore extravagant hats for a practical reason: [...] to keep everyone away from me. They say, Oh, can I kiss you? I say, No, thank you very much. That's why I've worn the hat. Goodbye. I don't want to be kissed by all and sundry. I want to be kissed by the people I love.


title: Isabella Blow

text: In 1993 she worked with the photographer Steven Meisel producing the "Babes in London" shoot, which featured Plum Sykes, Bella Freud and Honor Fraser. Blow had a natural sense of style and a good feeling for future fashion directions. She discovered Alexander McQueen and purchased his entire graduate collection for £5,000, paying it off in weekly £100 installments. Spotting Sophie Dahl, Blow described her as "a blow up doll with brains", and launched the model's career. Blow supported both the fashion world and the art world. Artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster created a shadow portrait of her which was displayed in the National Portrait Gallery. Blow was the fashion director of "Tatler" and consulted for DuPont Lycra, Lacoste, and Swarovski. She became the subject of an exhibition in 2002 entitled "When Philip met Isabella", which featured sketches and photographs of her wearing Treacy's hat designs.


title: Isabella Blow

text: In 2004 Blow had an acting cameo playing a character called Antonia Cook in the film "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou". She starred in 2005 in a project by artist Matthieu Laurette, commissioned and produced by Frieze Projects 2005 and entitled "What Do They Wear at Frieze Art Fair?" It consisted of daily guided tours of Frieze Art Fair led by Blow and fellow international fashion experts Peter Saville, Kira Joliffe, and Bay Garnett. Shortly before her death, Blow was the creative director and stylist of a series of books for an Arabic beauty magazine, "Alef"; the books were being produced by Kuwaiti fashion entrepreneur Sheikh Majed al-Sabah.


title: Isabella Blow

text: Toward the end of her life, Blow became seriously depressed and was reportedly anguished over her inability to "find a home in a world she influenced". Daphne Guinness, a friend of Blow's, stated: "She was upset that Alexander McQueen didn't take her along when he sold his brand to Gucci. Once the deals started happening, she fell by the wayside. Everybody else got contracts, and she got a free dress". According to a 2002 interview with Tamsin Blanchard, it was Blow who brokered the deal in which Gucci purchased McQueen's label. Other pressures on her included financial problems (Blow was disinherited by her father in 1994) and infertility.


title: Isabella Blow

text: Isabella and Detmar Blow separated in 2004. Detmar Blow went on to have an affair with Stephanie Theobald, the society editor of British "Harper's Bazaar", while his estranged wife entered into a liaison with a gondolier she met in Venice. During the couple's separation, Blow was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and began undergoing electroshock therapy. For a time, the treatments appeared to be helpful. During this period she also had an affair with Matthew Mellon; however, after an eighteen-month separation, Isabella and Detmar Blow were reconciled. Soon afterward, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.


title: Isabella Blow

text: Depressed over her waning celebrity status and her cancer diagnosis, Blow began telling friends that she was suicidal. In 2006, Blow attempted suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. Later that year, Blow again attempted suicide by jumping from the Hammersmith Flyover, which resulted in her breaking both ankles. Blow made several more suicide attempts in 2007, by driving her car into the rear of a lorry, attempting to obtain horse tranquilizers, trying to drown herself in a lake and by overdosing while on a beach in India.


title: Isabella Blow

text: On 6 May 2007, during a weekend house party at Hilles, where the guests included Treacy and his partner, Stefan Bartlett, Blow announced that she was going shopping. Instead, she was later discovered collapsed on a bathroom floor by her sister Lavinia and was taken to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, where Blow told the doctor she had drunk the weedkiller paraquat. She died at the hospital the following day. Blow's death was initially reported as being caused by ovarian cancer; however, a coroner later ruled the death a suicide. At the inquest, Blow's sister, Lavinia Verney, stated that after she discovered her sister had ingested the poison, Blow had told her, "I'm worried that I haven't taken enough."


title: Isabella Blow

text: Her funeral was held at Gloucester Cathedral on 15 May 2007. Her casket, made of willow, was surmounted by one of her Philip Treacy hats as well as a floral tribute, and her pallbearers included her godson Otis Ferry, a son of the rock star Bryan Ferry. (In 2010, Bryan Ferry dedicated his "Olympia" album "in memoriam Isabella Blow and David Williams".) Actor Rupert Everett and actress Joan Collins delivered eulogies. Opera singer Charles Eliasch sang. A memorial service was held in the Guards Chapel in London on 18 September 2007, where Anna Wintour and Geordie Greig spoke. Prince Michael and Princess Michael of Kent were in attendance. Wintour's eulogy and part of the memorial service can be seen in DVD disc two of "The September Issue".


title: Brandon Rogers (YouTuber)

text: Brandon George Rogers (born August 3, 1988) is an American YouTuber and comedian. He plays many characters in his eponymous YouTube channel and co-wrote the adult animated web series "Helluva Boss", in which he voices the main character Blitzø.


title: Brandon Rogers (YouTuber)

text: Rogers began creating videos for his job in Los Angeles at a personal-injury law firm where he made documentaries that were shot by Gabriel Gonzales on the daily life of plaintiffs that were used in court. He had the idea to make humorous versions of these documentaries with Gonzales and started his YouTube channel on January 7, 2006 as "HotBananaStud." Rogers first gained recognition in 2015 when a Vine user uploaded six-second clips of his videos in uncredited roles. After a clip from one of his videos went viral on Vine and it was featured on Fine Brothers Entertainment's React series, the original creator of the video became publicly known, and Rogers gained online fame.


title: Brandon Rogers (YouTuber)

text: In 2016, Super Deluxe offered to produce a show for Rogers. The show, "Magic Funhouse!" was available on Fullscreen's short-lived subscription service and was the service’s most watched original show. "Magic Funhouse!" was nominated for Best Comedy Series at the 7th Annual Streamy Awards. In 2017, Rogers was named a New Face: Creator at the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival. In addition to co-hosting the event, he was nominated for four awards and won the awards for Scripted Series and Acting at the 9th Annual Streamy Awards for his web series "Blame the Hero". In 2018, Rogers was a 10th Annual Shorty Awards finalist for the Best Youtube Comedian award. Rogers collaborated with Comedy Central in 2019 for their "Under the Influencer" program which had him take over the company's social media platforms for a week.


title: Brandon Rogers (YouTuber)

text: Rogers is from Livermore, California, and is of Portuguese, Filipino, Scottish and Spanish descent. Rogers describes his hometown as conservative, but his parents were very liberal. His mother is an accountant and his father works for Cisco. He has two younger siblings. Rogers is gay. He is an ordained minister.


title: Undisputed championship (boxing)

text: In professional boxing, the undisputed champion of a weight class is the boxer who holds world titles from all of the major sanctioning organisations simultaneously. There are currently four major sanctioning bodies: WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO. There were many undisputed champions before the number of sanctioning bodies increased to four in 2007, but there have only been 13 boxers to hold all four titles simultaneously. As of December 2022, Canelo Álvarez, Jermell Charlo, Devin Haney, and Naoya Inoue are undisputed champions in the super middleweight, light middleweight, lightweight, and bantamweight divisions respectively.


title: Undisputed championship (boxing)

text: Prior to the 1960s, most champions were "undisputed", although the term was rarely used (it does not appear in one 1970 "Boxing Dictionary"). Early boxing champions at various weight divisions were established by acclamation between 1880 and 1920. Once a consensus champion had been awarded the title, the championship could usually be taken only by beating the reigning holder, establishing a lineal championship.


title: Undisputed championship (boxing)

text: The New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC) recognized champions from its foundation in 1920. The National Boxing Association (NBA) was founded by other U.S. state bodies in 1921, and began recognising champions in 1927. Until the 1960s, both usually recognised the same lineal champion. However, disputes could arise if the champion retired or moved to a different weight class. Occasionally, the International Boxing Union (renamed the European Boxing Union in 1946) recognised a different champion. The disputes were usually short-lived as a lucrative fight would be organised between the rival champions. The longest split was ten years, of the middleweight title, between Mickey Walker's move up to heavyweight in 1931 and NBA champion Tony Zale's defeat of NYSAC contender Georgie Abrams in 1941. An early use of "undisputed" appears in a "New York Times" preview of the 1941 fight.


title: Undisputed championship (boxing)

text: The growing popularity of boxing outside of the U.S. led to creation of various boxing organizations, each strengthening their influence (most notably BBBofC) and having their own champion. This resulted in a growing number of boxers claiming to be legitimate champions. The disruption in boxing was solved after World War II when the "World Championship Committee" (WCC) was created with NBA as its unanimous authority. The committee, however, was disbanded in 1955 when NBA, along with its new members (which included the Orient, Mexican and South American federations and boxing commissions of the Philippines and Thailand) left WCC citing lack of control over the organisation. The NBA's voting scheme guaranteed one vote for each state commission as well as one vote for each foreign country. On August 23, 1962, the NBA officially became the World Boxing Association and moved their headquarters to Panama City, Panama.


title: Undisputed championship (boxing)

text: A year later NYSAC along with European Boxing Union and BBBofC supported creation of the World Boxing Council. WBC was officially established on February 14, 1963, in Mexico City, Mexico by 11 countries (the U.S., Argentina, U.K., France, Mexico, Philippines, Panama, Chile, Peru, Venezuela and Brazil) that were invited by the President of Mexico Adolfo López Mateos to form an international organization to unify all commissions of the world to control the expansion of boxing. The reason for the move were concerns about WBA's alleged lack of desire to support professional boxing outside of the U.S..


title: Undisputed championship (boxing)

text: In April 1983, members of United States Boxing Association along with Robert W. Lee (a former WBA vice-president) voted to expand the organisation and form the USBA-International. The organization later changed the name to International Boxing Federation. The inaugural IBF heavyweight champion was Larry Holmes, who relinquished the WBC title to accept IBF's recognition, thus helping the newly formed organization to establish its legitimacy. The fragmentation of titles was thus increased. After some negotiations, the heavyweight title was unified in the heavyweight unification series, a series of coordinated bouts in 1986 and 1987, with Mike Tyson emerging as the first undisputed champion (WBA, WBC, and IBF) since Leon Spinks in 1978. The title was split again in 1992 when Riddick Bowe forfeited the WBC title.


title: Undisputed championship (boxing)

text: Another major sanctioning body, the World Boxing Organisation, was established in 1988 in San Juan, Puerto Rico by a group of local businessmen. At the beginnings, when most of the challengers for WBA, WBC, and IBF titles were Americans, WBO had a wider variety of countries, mainly European, represented in title bouts. Before the Klitschko Era, the United Kingdom tied the United States for most wins in WBO heavyweight title fights with eight. By 2001, the WBA was giving the same recognition to WBO champions as to WBA, WBC, and IBF champions. In 2004, the WBC began naming WBO champions on its ranking listings. The IBF did not recognise the WBO in May 2006, but was doing so by February 2007. Conversely, the WBO has been explicitly recognizing the other three sanctioning bodies since at least October 1, 2008.


title: Undisputed championship (boxing)

text: Until at least 2008, many considered it sufficient to hold the WBA, WBC, and IBF titles. Other bodies such as the IBO, IBU, and World Boxing Foundation are disregarded.


title: Undisputed championship (boxing)

text: Only 6 women have held all four versions of the belts and been an undisputed world champion. One of which has been the only boxer, male or female, to have done so in two divisions.


title: Undisputed championship (boxing)

text: If a fighter wins all the titles but is stripped by one organization of its title, he may continue to be considered the undisputed champion.


title: Undisputed championship (boxing)

text: Roy Jones Jr. was called the undisputed light heavyweight champion after unifying the WBA, WBC, and IBF titles in June 1999. He was later awarded "The Ring" championship title. However, two of those titles (WBA and IBF) had been stripped from Dariusz Michalczewski, who had unified them with his WBO title by beating the lineal champion Virgil Hill in June 1997 and subsequently remained unbeaten, defending his remaining title, until his first loss in October 2003. Speaking of Jones' claim to being undisputed champion, one writer opined that the distinction "could just as easily belong to current WBO titleist Dariusz Michalczewski."


title: Undisputed championship (boxing)

text: Five months after Lennox Lewis unified the WBA, WBC, and IBF titles to become the undisputed heavyweight champion, a U.S. Federal Judge ruled that Lewis would be stripped by the WBA of their world championship belt for fighting Michael Grant instead of the association's #1 contender, John Ruiz. The fight took place on April 29, 2000. Lewis remained a unified world champion until April 22, 2001, when he was defeated by Hasim Rahman. He regained the WBC and IBF titles following victory over Rahman seven months later in a rematch. His reign as a unified world champion ended in September 2002, when he rejected the chance to fight the IBF's #1 contender, Chris Byrd, and was therefore stripped by the organisation of their belt. He retained his WBC title until his retirement in February 2004.


title: Undisputed championship (boxing)

text: Jermain Taylor won all four middleweight titles from Bernard Hopkins in July 2005, but was stripped of the IBF title for agreeing to a rematch rather than fighting Sam Soliman. Nevertheless, he was still described as "undisputed champion" by some reports.


title: Undisputed championship (boxing)

text: After Joe Calzaghe's super middleweight victory over Mikkel Kessler in November 2007, he was frequently described as "undisputed champion". Others disputed this, because although he held the WBA, WBC, and WBO titles, he had vacated his IBF title in November 2006 for choosing to face Peter Manfredo Jr. as his next opponent instead of mandatory challenger Robert Stieglitz.


title: Undisputed championship (boxing)

text: Teófimo López won the WBC Franchise lightweight title in addition to the WBA (Super), IBF, WBO and "The Ring" magazine titles after beating Vasiliy Lomachenko in October 2020, and was subsequently reported by some media outlets to be the youngest four-belt undisputed champion of all-time at the age of 23 years old; however, the WBC Franchise title is not universally recognized as a major world title.


title: Undisputed championship (boxing)

text: The unified champion is defined as a boxer that holds at least two world championships of major sanctioning bodies (WBA, WBC, IBF or WBO) in their respective division. Around 2004, the World Boxing Association recognized three different types: the unified champion (two-titles holder in the weight division or category, obliged to defend the title against WBA's No. 1 contender in 18 months periodically), the undisputed champion (three-titles holder, mandatory defense against WBA's challenger in 21 months regularly) and the super champion (four-titles holder, WBA's mandatory defense in 24 months periodically). The rules required only one unified/undisputed/super champion per weight class and the purse in the bid would be distributed in a 65/35 ratio in favor of the unified champion. However, along with the changes to "super" status (besides holding more than one title, the super titles were awarded to champions that were able to defend the WBA title 5 times), the term "undisputed" was dropped completely.


title: Diana (musical)

text: Diana is a musical with music and lyrics by David Bryan and Joe DiPietro, and a book by DiPietro, based on the life of Diana, Princess of Wales. A filmed performance was added to the streaming service Netflix on October 1, 2021, to negative reviews.


title: Diana (musical)

text: Previews for "Diana" began on February 19, 2019, at the La Jolla Playhouse. The world premiere of "Diana" opened the following month on March 3. The limited run was extended twice and closed on April 14, 2019. The production was directed by Christopher Ashley with choreography by Kelly Devine. Costumes were designed by William Ivey Long and Nic Rackow, Scenic design was designed by David Zinn, Lighting was designed by Natasha Katz, and Sound was designed by Gareth Owen. The production's orchestrations were composed by John Clancy.


title: Diana (musical)

text: Following the La Jolla production, the producers continued workshopping the musical. The production was eventually picked up and began previews at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway on March 2, 2020 with the same directing team.


title: Diana (musical)

text: The show was planned to open on March 31, 2020, but on March 12 the show suspended production due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 30, 2021, it was announced the show would resume previews on December 1, with an official opening set for December 16. On May 14, 2021, it was announced that previews would begin on November 2, with an opening night set for November 17, nearly a month earlier than initially announced. "The New York Times" reported that the show played to 51 percent capacity and grossed $374,000 in the week ending December 12, 2021. The show closed on December 19 after a total of 33 performances and 16 previews.


title: Diana (musical)

text: Before opening, the Broadway production was recorded in the summer of 2020 with COVID-19 safety protocols in place and no audience. This capture, also directed by Ashley, was released on Netflix on October 1, 2021. The recording was universally panned by critics and won five of its nine nominations at the 42nd Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Picture, the first filmed stage performance with this distinction.


title: Diana (musical)

text: In 1980, Diana Spencer attends a party thrown by Prince Charles, and meets Camilla Parker Bowles, Charles' mistress ("Underestimated"). Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth II is looking for Charles to get married, and he brings up Diana as a possibility, although he has recently broken off a relationship with her older sister Sarah. The Queen encourages Charles to begin the courting process, as she believes Diana would be perfect for what the staff calls "The Worst Job in England".


title: Diana (musical)

text: Charles sends Diana a necklace and invites her to a performance by cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. There, she meets Camilla again and starts to become a lot more suspicious of her and her relationship with Charles. While the performance is going on, she imagines a more punk-rock version of the concert, more in line with her interests ("This Is How Your People Dance"). The press takes note of Diana's growing relationship with Charles and starts hounding her ("Snap, Click"). Charles is still unsure about marrying Diana, but the Queen tells him that he can keep his close relationship with Camilla while marrying Diana. Charles proposes to her, but tells Camilla he will break it off if that's what she wants. Camilla tells Charles to go ahead with the wedding, and he assures her he will be there for her. A nervous Diana moves in to Buckingham Palace ("Whatever Love Means Anyway"). Soon after, despite some reservations from Diana, she and Charles get married. ("I Will"). Camilla's husband Andrew, having affairs of his own, assures Camilla that they will make their own complicated marriage work ("I Will (Tag)").


title: Diana (musical)

text: Diana's first public appearance happens in Wales, and even though the townsfolk are skeptical at first, they, as well as the whole country, become enamored with Diana. Charles starts to become jealous of Diana's newfound fame ("The World Fell in Love"). Camilla tells Charles that Andrew has cut off all his other relations, hoping to reignite their own marriage, and Camilla breaks up the affair, saying she would be the most hated woman in England if she was found out. Diana tells Charles that she is pregnant, and soon after their son William is born. Diana walks in on Charles talking sweetly on the phone to Camilla, who he hasn't talked to in months. Camilla says that Andrew is being stationed more and more overseas. Diana is very hurt by Charles' lack of affection towards her and becomes depressed, even after having their second child Harry. This culminates in her smashing a window with her hand ("Happiness/Simply Breathe").


title: Diana (musical)

text: Sarah convinces Diana to fight back and do more with her power, so she decides to become more and more involved with charity, leading to even more popularity, especially after a surprise performance at the Royal Ballet Christmas Gala ("She Moves in the Most Modern Ways"). Charles is enraged at this and reminds Diana that her only achievement is marrying him ("Diana (The Rage)"). Diana realizes this might be the end of any hope of love in her marriage ("As I Love You"). Charles visits Camilla late at night and she says she still loves him and would like to continue their affair ("I Miss You Most on Sundays"). Diana decides to use the press and newfound popularity to get back at Charles and fight back against the norms of British society. Despite Charles' attempt to fight back, she succeeds and becomes more popular ("Pretty, Pretty Girl").


title: Diana (musical)

text: Barbara Cartland, novelist and Diana's step-grandmother, introduces the audience to James Hewitt, a war hero who has recently come home. He and Diana begin their own affair ("Here Comes James Hewitt"). Barbara notes that the two affairs between Diana and James as well as Charles and Camilla are filled with more love and happiness than Charles and Diana's marriage ("Him and Her (and Him and Her)"). Diana tries to talk to Charles, but he wants to "Just Dance". Charles' valet Colin lets him know of Diana and James' relationship, but he decides to let it go as he is happy with Camilla.


title: Diana (musical)

text: Diana goes to a clinic for AIDS patients and bonds with the men there ("Secrets and Lies"). Soon after, Diana learns that Charles and Camilla go out almost every night with their friends, and Diana decides to crash a party for Camilla's sister. At the party, their friends, usually bored by Charles, are excited that they get to witness "The Main Event", which leads to a confrontation between Diana, Camilla, and Charles. On the car ride home, Charles reveals he knows about Diana's relationship with James, which he says he doesn't care about and that the boys will be fine as long as they both love them ("Whatever Love Means Anyway (Reprise)"). Diana is excited to tell James, but he reveals that he has been stationed in Germany and will be there for two years. Diana, suspecting Charles, vows to get revenge ("Pretty, Pretty Girl (Reprise)"). The press increasingly hounds Charles about his failing marriage ("Snap, Click (Reprise)"). Diana contacts Andrew Morton, a writer who is writing a book on her, and agrees to give anonymous quotes to him, bashing Charles, Camilla, and the monarchy. The book is published and is the talk of the country ("The Words Came Pouring Out").


title: Diana (musical)

text: Charles tries to get the Queen to meet Camilla, but she refuses. Charles decides to go on TV, tell the truth about his affair, and try to win back some favor from the public ("I Miss You Most on Sundays (Reprise)"). Diana learns about the interview from Paul, her butler and friend, who comes up with the idea that she draw attention away from it by wearing a "F-You" Dress ("The Dress"). The Queen has had enough and agrees to a divorce between Diana and Charles. She laments that it didn't work out while reflecting on her own marriage ("An Officer's Wife"), and tells Diana "don't be foolish". Diana is excited to start a new life with her boys, however it is tragically cut short by a car accident. Charles and the company tell the audience that "the people who will change the world are not the ones you think will change the world." ("If (Light of the World)")


title: Diana (musical)

text: The La Jolla production received mostly negative reviews from critics. Charles McNulty of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote: "The score is actually closer to commercial Broadway in the early aughts, an even more dated style to my ear." "The Guardian" gave the Netflix recording a one-star review, stating "If it was deliberate satire it would be genius, but it’s not."


title: Diana (musical)

text: Jesse Green, chief theater critic for "The New York Times", negatively reviewed the production at Broadway's Longacre Theatre, deeming it tawdry and exploitative, and writing, "if you care about Diana as a human being, or dignity as a concept, you will find this treatment of her life both aesthetically and morally mortifying."


title: Diana (musical)

text: The Netflix presentation currently has a score of 12% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 34 reviews, with an average rating of 3.10/10. The website's critics consensus reads: ""Diana" done dirty". Metacritic gave the film a rating of 29.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: Joseph Stalin started his career as a student radical, becoming an influential member and eventually the leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He served as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: In the years following the death of Vladimir Lenin he became the political leader of the Soviet Union after growing up in Georgia, conducting discreet activities for the Bolshevik Party for twelve years before the Russian Revolution in 1917. Following the October Revolution, Stalin took military positions in the Russian Civil War and the Polish-Soviet War. Stalin was one of the Bolsheviks' chief operatives in the Caucasus and grew close to leader Vladimir Lenin, who saw him as a tough character, and a loyal follower capable of getting things done behind the scenes. Stalin played a decisive role in engineering the 1921 Red Army invasion of Georgia, adopting a hardline approach to opposition. Stalin's connections helped him to gain influential positions behind the scenes in the Soviet-Russian government.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: At the 11th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1922, the leaders decided to expand the party's Central Committee. Due to this expansion, a secretariat became a necessity. Stalin was appointed the head of this new office on the 3rd of April. From that date until his death, Stalin's formal title was "General Secretary". The office grew with Stalin's assumption of power, not the other way around. After a brief disappointment of not being given a prestigious ministerial post, Stalin soon learned how to use his new office in order to gain advantages towards other key persons within the Communist Party. He prepared the agenda for the Politburo meetings, directing the course of meetings. As General Secretary, he appointed new local party leaders, establishing a patronage network of people loyal to him.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: Only a few weeks after his appointment, Lenin was forced into semi-retirement because of a stroke. Lenin never fully recovered and died in January 1924. He spent most of his remaining life resting in a countryside Dacha. But he received messages and political visitors, and between the autumn of 1922 and spring of 1923, he resumed his party leadership in Moscow. As late as in October 1922, Lenin expressed his "unreserved support" for Stalin as General Secretary and for his work with a new constitution. (Adopted in December 1924, it shaped the Soviet Union.) Lenin was disturbed by a report on violent atrocities committed in Georgia, reported by the head of the security police OGPU, Felix Dzerzhinsky. He attributed the atrocities to Sergo Ordzhonikidze and associated people. Lenin also disapproved of Dzerzhinsky.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: In December 1922 and early January 1923, Lenin is believed to have dictated a political will - though its authenticity is debated. It contains criticism of Stalin, and Leon Trotsky; Lenin primarily expressed a fear of a future fragmentation of the party.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: After Lenin's death, a struggle for power in the party broke out in the open. Stalin, through his office as General Secretary, took advantage of his knowledge of the existing antagonisms among the Bolshevik Party's leaders. Many were members of the Party's supreme organ, the Politburo, but rivalries extended beyond that. Several People's Commissars (or Ministers in other countries) were involved in the Party's internal personal as well as political struggles. Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev represented the intellectual "left wing," whilst Nikolai Bukharin, Mikhail Tomsky and Alexei Rykov represented the trade unionist "right wing". Leon Trotsky, who led a group of his own. None of these persons would survive following Stalin's consolidation of power; all died in suspected assassinations.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: Soon after Lenin's death, Stalin joined Zinoviev and Kamenev in a Politburo Triumvirate. By 1924 they were united in wanting to get rid of the troublesome Trotsky. But this was no easy task. Trotsky had developed the Red Army and had played a huge role during the October Revolution. Stalin used Zinoviev and Kamenev to combat Trotsky, while appearing as "The Golden Centre Man". There are multiple theories on the hostility between Stalin and Trotsky, and when it began. But a huge "political" divider became Stalin's idea of "Socialism in One Country" vs Trotsky's "Permanent Revolution". Stalin's idea, in the mid-1920s, was actually revolutionary in itself. The entire Bolshevik concept had been to begin at home, in Russia, and then "export" the revolution to the West. By 1925 it had become apparent that all revolutionary movements in Germany and elsewhere had failed. In Italy even a counterrevolutionary movement, Fascism, had come to power. Trotsky was first removed as Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs (January 1925), removed from the Politburo (October 1926), removed from the Central Committee (October 1927), expelled from the Communist Party (November 1927), exiled to Alma–Ata in Kazakhstan (January 1928), and exiled from the Soviet Union (February 1929).


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: Stalin had ended cooperation with Zinoviev and Kamenev long before Trotsky's final decline. Desiring to remove his two former Triumvirate-companions, Stalin cooperated with Bukharin, Tomsky, and Rykov, to send Zinoviev and Kamenev to a Gulag (though only briefly, at first). By 1929, power struggles in the Soviet Union had concluded with Stalin presiding as leader.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: Before his 1913-1917 exile in Siberia, Stalin was one of the Bolshevik operatives in the Caucasus, organizing cells, spreading propaganda, and raising money through criminal activities. Stalin eventually earned a place in Lenin's inner circle and the highest echelons of the Bolshevik hierarchy. His pseudonym, Stalin, means "man of the steel hand". The October Revolution took place in the Russian capital of Petrograd on 7 November 1917 (O.S. 25 October 1917), which saw the transfer of all political power to the Soviets.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: In the Russian Civil War that followed, Stalin forged connections with various Red Army generals and eventually acquired military powers of his own. He brutally suppressed counter-revolutionaries and bandits. After winning the civil war, the Bolsheviks moved to expand the revolution into Europe, starting with Poland, which was fighting the Red Army in Ukraine. As joint commander of an army in Ukraine and later in Poland itself, Stalin's actions in the war were later criticized by many, including Leon Trotsky.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: In late 1920, with the crises in society following the Russian Civil War, Trotsky argued for the trade unions to be incorporated more and more into the workers' state, and for the workers' state to completely control the industrial sectors. Lenin's position was one where the trade unions were subordinate to the workers' state, but separate, with Lenin accusing Trotsky of "bureaucratically nagging the trade unions". Fearing a backlash from the trade unions, Lenin asked Stalin to build a support base in the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate (Rabkrin) against bureaucratism. Lenin's faction eventually prevailed at the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921. Frustrated by the squabbling factions within the Communist Party during what he saw as a time of crisis, Lenin convinced the Tenth Congress to pass a ban on any opposition to official Central Committee policy (the Ban on Factions, a law which Stalin would later exploit to expel his enemies).


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: Stalin played a decisive role in engineering the Red Army invasion of Georgia in February and March 1921, at a time when Georgia was the biggest Menshevik stronghold. Following the invasion, Stalin adopted particularly hardline, centralist policies towards Soviet Georgia, which included severe repression of opposition to the Bolsheviks, and to opposition within the local Communist Party (e.g., the Georgian Affair of 1922), not to mention any manifestations of anti-Sovietism (the August Uprising of 1924). It was in the Georgian affairs that Stalin first began to play his own hand. Lenin, however, disliked Stalin's policy towards Georgia, as he believed that all Soviet states should be on equal standing with Russia, rather than be absorbed and subordinated to Russia.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: Grigory Zinoviev successfully had Stalin appointed to the post of General Secretary in March 1922, with Stalin officially starting in the post on 3 April 1922. Stalin still held his posts in the Orgburo, the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate and the Commissariat for Nationalities Affairs, though he agreed to delegate his workload to subordinates. With this power, he would steadily place his supporters in positions of authority.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: On 25 May 1922, Lenin suffered a stroke while recovering from surgery to remove a bullet lodged in his neck since a failed assassination attempt in August 1918. Severely debilitated, he went into semi-retirement and moved to his dacha in Gorki. After this, prominent Bolsheviks were concerned about who would take over if Lenin actually died. Lenin and Trotsky had more of a personal and theoretical relationship, while Lenin and Stalin had more of a political and apparatical relationship. Yet, Stalin visited Lenin often, acting as his intermediary with the outside world. During this time, the two quarrelled over economic policy and how to consolidate the Soviet republics. One day, Stalin verbally swore at Lenin's wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, for breaching Politburo orders by helping Lenin communicate with Trotsky and others about politics; this greatly offended Lenin. As their relationship deteriorated, Lenin dictated increasingly disparaging notes on Stalin in what would become his testament. Lenin criticised Stalin's rude manners, excessive power, ambition and politics, and suggested that Stalin should be removed from the position of General Secretary. One of Lenin's secretaries showed Stalin the notes, whose contents shocked him. On 9 March 1923, Lenin suffered his most debilitating stroke, which ended his political career.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: During Lenin's semi-retirement, Stalin forged a triumvirate alliance with Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev in May 1922, against Trotsky. These allies prevented Lenin's Testament from being revealed to the Twelfth Party Congress in April 1923. Although Zinoviev and Kamenev were disconcerted by Stalin's power and some of his policies, they needed Stalin's help in opposing Trotsky's faction and to prevent Trotsky's possible succession to Lenin in a power struggle.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: Lenin died on 21 January 1924. Stalin was given the honour of organizing his funeral. Upon Lenin's death, Stalin was officially hailed as his successor as the leader of the ruling Communist Party and of the Soviet Union itself. Against Lenin's wishes, he was given a lavish funeral and his body was embalmed and put on display. Thanks to Kamenev and Zinoviev's influence, the Central Committee decided that Lenin's Testament should not be made public. At the Thirteenth Party Congress in May 1924, it was read out only to the heads of the provincial delegations. Trotsky did not want to appear divisive so soon after Lenin's death and did not seize the opportunity to demand Stalin's removal.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: In the months following Lenin's death, Stalin's disputes with Zinoviev and Kamenev intensified. While the triumvirate remained intact throughout 1924 and the early months of 1925, Zinoviev and Kamenev did not regard Stalin highly as a revolutionary theorist, and often disparaged him in private even as they had aided him publicly against Trotsky and the Left Opposition. For his part, Stalin was cautious about where the political situation was heading and often felt that Zinoviev's volatile rhetoric against Trotsky was going too far, especially when Zinoviev demanded Trotsky's expulsion from the Communist Party in January 1925. Stalin opposed Zinoviev's demand and skillfully played the role of a moderate. At this time, Stalin was allying himself more and more with Nikolai Bukharin and the Right Opposition, whom Stalin had promoted to the Politburo at the Thirteenth Party Congress. Stalin proposed the theory of Socialism in One Country in October 1924, which Bukharin soon elaborated upon to give it a theoretical justification. Zinoviev and Kamenev suddenly found themselves in a minority at the Fourteenth Party Conference in April 1925, over their belief that socialism could only be achieved internationally, which resulted in the triumvirate splitting up. This saw a strengthening of Stalin's alliance with Bukharin.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: With Trotsky mostly sidelined with a persistent illness during 1925, Zinoviev and Kamenev then formed the New Opposition against Stalin. At the Fourteenth Party Congress in December 1925, Stalin openly attacked Kamenev and Zinoviev, revealing that they had asked for his aid in expelling Trotsky from the Communist Party. Stalin's revelation made Zinoviev, in particular, very unpopular with many inside the Communist Party. Trotsky remained silent throughout this Congress.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: In early 1926, Zinoviev and Kamenev drew closer to Trotsky and the Left Opposition, forming an alliance that became known as the United Opposition. The United Opposition demanded, among other things, greater freedom of expression within the Communist Party and less bureaucracy. In October 1926, Stalin's supporters voted Trotsky out of the Politburo.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: During the years of 1926 and 1927, Soviet policy toward the Chinese Revolution became the ideological line of demarcation between Stalin and the United Opposition. The Chinese Revolution began on 10 October 1911, resulting in the abdication of the Chinese Emperor, Puyi, on 12 February 1912. Sun Yat-sen established the Republic of China. In reality, however, the Republic controlled very little of the country. Much of China was divided between various regional warlords. The Republican government established a new "nationalist people's army and a national people's party" — the Kuomintang. In 1920, the Kuomintang opened relations with Soviet Russia. With Soviet help, the Republic of China built up the nationalist people's army. With the development of the nationalist army, a Northern Expedition was planned to smash the power of the warlords of the northern part of the country. This Northern Expedition became a point of contention over foreign policy by Stalin and Trotsky. Stalin tried to persuade the small Chinese Communist Party to merge with the Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalists to bring about a bourgeois revolution before attempting to bring about a Soviet-style working-class revolution. Stalin believed that the KMT bourgeoisie, together with all patriotic national liberation forces in the country, would defeat the western imperialists in China.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: Trotsky wanted the Communist Party to complete an orthodox proletarian revolution and have clear class independence from the KMT. Stalin funded the KMT during the expedition. Stalin countered Trotskyist criticism by making a secret speech in which he said that Chiang's right-wing Kuomintang were the only ones capable of defeating the imperialists, that Chiang Kai-shek had funding from the rich merchants, and that his forces were to be utilized until squeezed for all usefulness like a lemon before being discarded. However, Chiang quickly reversed the tables in the Shanghai massacre of April 1927 by massacring the Communist Party in Shanghai midway through the Northern Expedition.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: While the catastrophic events in China completely vindicated Trotsky's criticism of Stalin's approach towards the Chinese Revolution, this paled insignificance compared to the demoralization that the Soviet masses felt at such a big setback for socialist revolution in China, with this demoralization aiding Stalin and his allies in the Communist Party and the Soviet state. Attacks against the United Opposition increased in volatility and ferocity. Many supporters of Kamenev and Zinoviev's group, as well as most from the Workers Opposition grouping, had left the United Opposition by mid-1927, changing sides under the growing political pressure and espousing their support for Stalin. Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev grew increasingly isolated and were ejected from the Central Committee in October 1927.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: On 7 November 1927, on the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, the United Opposition held a demonstration in Red Square, Moscow, along with Vladimir Lenin's widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya. On 12 November 1927, Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the Communist Party itself, followed by Kamenev at the Fifteenth Party Congress in December 1927. At the Congress, where Kamenev acted as the United Opposition's spokesman due to Trotsky's and Zinoviev's expulsion, the United Opposition were unable to gain the support of more than a small minority of the Communist Party, and they were expelled after the Congress declared United Opposition views to be incompatible with Communist Party membership.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: While Trotsky remained firm in his opposition to Stalin after his expulsion from the Communist Party and his subsequent exile, Zinoviev and Kamenev capitulated almost immediately and called on their supporters to follow suit. They wrote open letters acknowledging their mistakes and were readmitted to the Communist Party in June 1928, after a six-month cooling-off period. They never regained their Central Committee seats, but they were given mid-level positions within the Soviet bureaucracy. Kamenev and Zinoviev were courted by Bukharin at the beginning of his short and ill-fated struggle with Stalin in the summer of 1928. This activity was soon reported to Stalin and was later used against Bukharin as proof of his factionalism. Trotsky, firmer than ever in his opposition to Stalin, was exiled to Alma-ata in January 1928 and was exiled from the Soviet Union itself in February 1929, sent into exile in Turkey. From his exile, Trotsky continued to oppose Stalin, right up until Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico on Stalin's orders in August 1940.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: After the United Opposition was prohibited in December 1927, the Kulaks and NEPmen were emboldened and exerted much greater economic pressure on the Soviet government in the months afterwards. In January 1928, Stalin personally travelled to Siberia where he oversaw the seizure of grain stockpiles from kulak farmers. Many in the Communist Party supported the seizures, but Bukharin and Premier Rykov were outraged. Bukharin criticized Stalin's plans for rapid industrialization financed by kulak wealth, and advocated a return to Lenin's NEP. Bukharin was unable to rally sufficient support from the higher levels of the Communist Party to oppose Stalin. By the latter months of 1928, a critical shortfall in grain supplies prompted Stalin to push for collectivisation of agriculture. Stalin began pushing for more rapid industrialisation and central control of the economy, a position which alienated Bukharin and the Right Opposition, but which appeared close to what the Left Opposition had advocated before they were banned. Stalin accused Bukharin of factionalism and capitalist tendencies. The other Politburo members sided with Stalin, and labelled Bukharin a "Right Deviationist" from Marxist–Leninist principles. Bukharin was ejected from the Politburo in November 1929.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: Stalin's agricultural policies were also criticized by fellow Politburo member Mikhail Kalinin. In the summer of 1930, Stalin exposed Kalinin's embezzlement of state funds, which he spent on a mistress. Kalinin begged forgiveness and effectively submitted himself to Stalin. In September 1930, Stalin proposed dismissing Premier Rykov, who was Bukharin's fellow oppositionist. The other Politburo members agreed with Stalin, and supported his nomination of Vyacheslav Molotov. On December 19, the Central Committee dismissed Rykov and replaced him with Molotov.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: After 1930, open criticism of Stalin within the Communist Party was virtually non-existent, though Stalin continued to hunt for discreet dissenters. Stalin dominated the Politburo (the policy-making branch of the Communist Party) through staunch allies such as Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Lazar Kaganovich, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Kliment Voroshilov.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: On the night of 9 November 1932, Stalin's wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, committed suicide and shot herself in her bedroom. As Stalin was sleeping in another room, her death was not discovered until the next morning. To prevent a scandal, "Pravda" reported the cause of death as appendicitis. Stalin did not tell his children the truth, to prevent them from revealing it accidentally.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: On 1 December 1934, Sergei Kirov was murdered by Leonid Nikolaev. The death of this popular, high-profile politician shocked Russia, and Stalin used this murder to begin The Great Terror. Within hours of Kirov's death, Stalin declared Grigory Zinoviev and his supporters to be responsible for Kirov's murder. Lev Kamenev and Zinoviev were arrested and, to escape long prison sentences, confessed to political and moral responsibility for Kirov's murder. In January 1935, Zinoviev was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, and Kamenev was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment. Stalin sanctioned the formation of troikas for the purpose of extrajudicial punishment. In April 1935, Kamenev's prison sentence was increased by another 5 years, to a total of 10 years imprisonment. Hundreds of oppositionists linked to Kamenev and Zinoviev were arrested and exiled to Siberia. In late 1935, Stalin reopened the case. Kamenev and Zinoviev were interrogated again, and the exiled Trotsky was now accused of being the leading mastermind in Kirov's murder. As in claimed by Montefiore, in July 1936, Stalin promised Kamenev and Zinoviev (through NKVD chief, Genrikh Yagoda) that there would be no executions or persecution of their families if they confessed to conspiring with Trotsky. Stalin's promise was soon broken. A few weeks later, after a trial, Kamenev and Zinoviev were both executed on 25 August 1936.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: Spearheading Stalin's purges was a Commissar called Nikolai Yezhov, a fervent Stalinist and a believer in violent repression. Nikolai Yezhov continued to expand the lists of suspects to include all the old oppositionists as well as entire nationalities, such as the Poles.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: Stalin distrusted the Soviet secret police – the NKVD – which was filled with Old Bolsheviks and ethnicities he distrusted, such as Poles, Jews and Latvians. In September 1936, Stalin fired the head of the NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda, and replaced him with the more aggressive and zealous Yezhov, with Yezhov overseeing the most brutally oppressive period of Stalin's Great Purge from late 1936 to late 1938.


title: Rise of Joseph Stalin

text: In June 1937, The Case of the Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization took place. Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and the senior Red Army military officers Iona Yakir, Ieronim Uborevich, Robert Eideman, August Kork, Vitovt Putna, Boris Feldman and Vitaly Primakov (as well as Yakov Gamarnik, who committed suicide before the investigations began) were accused of anti-Soviet conspiracy and sentenced to death; they were executed on the night of 11 to 12 June 1937, immediately after the verdict delivered by a Special Session (специальное судебное присутствие) of the Supreme Court of the USSR. The Tribunal was presided over by Vasili Ulrikh and included marshals Vasily Blyukher, Semyon Budyonny and Army Commanders Yakov Alksnis, Boris Shaposhnikov, Ivan Panfilovich Belov, Pavel Dybenko, and Nikolai Kashirin. Only Ulrikh, Budyonny and Shaposhnikov would survive the purges that followed. The Tukhachevsky trial triggered a massive subsequent purge of the Red Army. In September 1938, the People's Commissar for Defence, Voroshilov, reported that a total of 37,761 officers and commissars were dismissed from the army, 10,868 were arrested and 7,211 were condemned for anti-Soviet crimes.