title: Ajay Jadeja

text: Jadeja acted in the 2003 movie "Khel" with Sunny Deol and Sunil Shetty. He also acted in the 2009 movie, "Pal Pal Dil Ke Ssaat", directed by V.K.Kumar.


title: Ajay Jadeja

text: Jadeja worked for Zee News as a cricket anchor, along with Zaheer Abbas, the former Pakistan cricket captain, during the 2003 ICC Cricket World Cup. He reprised the role for the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup. Later, he signed to work as a cricket analyst with NDTV India and NDTV 24*7.


title: Ajay Jadeja

text: Jadeja was a contestant on the celebrity dance show "Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa" in its first season. He also appeared on the TV show "Comedy Circus".


title: Ajay Jadeja

text: He did a cameo in Abhishek Kapoor's film Kai Po Che! acting as himself in a cricket commentator role.


title: Christy Hemme

text: Christina Lee Hemme ( ; born October 28, 1980) is an American former professional wrestler, singer and model. She is best known for her time in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (now known as Impact Wrestling) as a ring announcer and one of the original Knockouts, and as a former wrestler in the WWE. She was also the winner of the 2004 WWE Diva Search, receiving $250,000 and a one-year contract with the company.


title: Christy Hemme

text: Hemme was born in Poway, California, but she grew up in Temecula, California. She enjoyed racing street bikes and dirt bikes. She was a "self-described" tomboy. She grew up watching wrestling and favored The Undertaker.


title: Christy Hemme

text: She was a cheerleader for two years at Temecula Valley High School. She graduated in 1998 at age seventeen. Hemme attended Mt. San Jacinto College, where she majored in dance.


title: Christy Hemme

text: After graduating, she relocated to Los Angeles, California to pursue a career in modeling. Hemme initially joined a burlesque dance team known as "The Purrfect Angelz". She performed at Easyrider tours and Harley motorcycle rallies. She went on to appear in magazines such as "Maxim", "Playboy", "Rolling Stone", and "Stuff". In addition, she appeared in the music video of the Trace Adkins songs "Chrome", and "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" and in videos for bands Blink-182 and Sonic. She also had parts in commercials for AT&T Corporation and TrimSpa, and she was a spokesmodel for Hawaiian Tropic. Other early jobs included a waitressing job at Hooters.


title: Christy Hemme

text: In past years, her image has also been found on Bench Warmer trading cards as Christy "Sunni" Hemme. As Sunni, she was Bullz-eye.com's featured model in September 2002. Her modeling career led to her joining the cast of Comedy Central's "The Man Show" as a member of the "Juggy Dance Squad" in 2003. Hemme remained with the series for a year, during which she appeared on "The Commies", a Comedy Central produced award show, on December 7, 2003.


title: Christy Hemme

text: Hemme took part in the 2004 Lingerie Bowl. She appeared on the cover of the April 2005 issue of "Playboy" magazine. Before appearing nude in the magazine, Hemme got the permission of her father, who had previously requested that she never pose nude. She also competed as a quarterback for the Chicago Bliss Lingerie Football League team in the 2006 Lingerie Bowl.


title: Christy Hemme

text: In mid-2004, Hemme participated in the Diva Search, a competition held by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) to recruit new WWE Divas. In the course of the competition, Hemme and the five other finalists faced seven existing Divas in a game of dodgeball at SummerSlam on August 15, eliminating all eight Divas with the loss of just one finalist, Joy Giovanni. Hemme was announced as the winner of the competition on September 20, with a prize of a one-year contract with WWE, with remuneration of $250,000.


title: Christy Hemme

text: Hemme began her WWE career as a member of the Raw roster. She quickly began a feud with Carmella DeCesare, the runner-up of the Diva Search. The feud culminated in a "lingerie pillow fight" at Taboo Tuesday on October 19, which Hemme won.


title: Christy Hemme

text: Following her feud with DeCesare, Hemme began a rivalry with WWE Women's Champion Trish Stratus. Stratus, along with Molly Holly and Gail Kim, threw Hemme an initiation party, but, it soon turned into a 3-on-1 Bra and Panties Handicap match, which Hemme lost. As Stratus was ostensibly scornful of Hemme's appearance in the April 2005 issue of "Playboy", Stratus interrupted Hemme's unveiling and spray painted all over the cover. Hemme responded by slapping her, which resulted in Stratus knocking her out with a Chick Kick and spraying the word "slut" on her back. Hemme eventually challenged Stratus to a match at WrestleMania 21, with Stratus's nemesis Lita training her in the weeks preceding the event. At the event on April 3, Hemme unsuccessfully challenged Stratus for the Women's Championship.


title: Christy Hemme

text: In the months after WrestleMania, Hemme began a feud with Victoria, who claimed to be jealous of the opportunities afforded to Hemme. Hemme would feud with Victoria during "Raw" house shows, and defeated her on several occasions. On the June 6 episode of "Raw", Hemme teamed up with Rosey and The Hurricane in a losing effort to Victoria and The Heart Throbs (Antonio and Romeo) in a six-person mixed tag team match. The feud culminated in a bout at Vengeance on June 26, which Victoria won. With her feud with Victoria over, Hemme briefly aligned herself with Eugene, before she and Stacy Keibler were traded to the SmackDown! brand in exchange for Candice Michelle and Torrie Wilson, on August 25.


title: Christy Hemme

text: On the September 30 episode of "SmackDown!", Hemme began a feud with Melina, the valet of MNM, after losing to her in a singles match, and in the process joined forces with the Legion of Doom. At No Mercy on October 9, Hemme and the Legion of Doom defeated MNM in a six-person intergender tag team match. On the November 4 episode of "SmackDown!", Hemme defeated Melina in a Bra and Panties match. Her feud with Melina continued into November, with Melina defeating Hemme in two singles bouts.


title: Christy Hemme

text: On November 30, Hemme debuted in Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW), a WWE developmental territory, aligning herself with Matt Cappotelli in opposition to Aaron Stevens, Beth Phoenix, and Shelly Martinez. On the December 7 episode of OVW TV, Hemme teamed up with Cappotelli in a winning effort defeating Stevens, Phoenix, and Martinez in three-on-two handicap match.


title: Christy Hemme

text: On December 5, 2005, Hemme was released from her WWE contract. The release happened shortly after WWE asked her to relocate to Louisville, Kentucky to train at OVW. The company cited budget cuts and the creative team having nothing for her as the reason for her dismissal. Turns out Christy Hemme was one of the female wrestlers that Vince Mcmshon paid hush money to after several sexual encounters.


title: Christy Hemme

text: In November 2008, in her column for TNAwrestling.com, Hemme stated her departure from WWE was on her own terms.


title: Christy Hemme

text: Hemme appeared at the 2017 WWE Hall of Fame to support Beth Phoenix, the first time she has been seen in the WWE since 2005.


title: Christy Hemme

text: Hemme signed with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) in April 2006, and she debuted on April 23 at Lockdown. In addition to her hosting role on "Impact!", she was also the co-host of the Internet show "TNA Global Impact!" with Jeremy Borash. At "Hardcore War", Hemme refereed a match between Traci and Gail Kim. In July 2006, she was featured on the "Women of Action" special. She also began traveling to Windsor, Ontario to train under TNA agent Scott D'Amore in between TNA television tapings. Hemme was also voted the 2006 Knockout of the Year.


title: Christy Hemme

text: On January 14, 2007, at Final Resolution, Hemme interrupted the Voodoo Kin Mafia (VKM) and cut a promo about the involvement of women in wrestling. She said that she wanted to wrestle too, and the mostly male crowd in the TNA arena jeered her. Kip James called her a "slut", which garnered him a slap from Hemme, while B.G. James attempted to play peacemaker, turning Hemme heel in the process. In the following weeks, Kip and Hemme argued over his lack of respect for her and women in general. Hemme made her TNA in-ring debut at Against All Odds, where she wrestled and defeated "The Big Fat Oily Guy" in a Tuxedo match, but after his match, Kip James stripped her of her clothes. On the March 8 episode of "Impact", Hemme asked Jim Cornette for a match pitting the Voodoo Kin Mafia against her new, previously undisclosed, team, at Destination X. Cornette consented and booked the match. At the pay-per-view, Hemme introduced The Heartbreakers. Despite Hemme's attempts to give Kip James a low blow, the VKM defeated her team, who she later browbeat at ringside. Hemme later announced that she had found another team to face the VKM. On the pre-show prior to the Lockdown pay-per-view, the mystery team was revealed to be Serotonin (Havok and Kaz), but VKM defeated them as well. She then brought in Basham and Damaja as her new permanent tag team in her battle with VKM. The team beat Kip in a handicap match at Sacrifice, as B.G. had been attacked by them earlier in the night. At Slammiversary, VKM beat Basham and Damaja, but VKM's associate Lance Hoyt turned on them and kissed Hemme. at Bound for Glory, Hemme competed in the Gauntlet for the Gold match to crown the first TNA Women's Knockout Champion but was unable to continue and was removed from the match by EMTs.


title: Christy Hemme

text: Basham and Damaja were then released from the company, and Hoyt formed a partnership with Jimmy Rave, dubbed The Rock 'n Rave Infection, with Hemme as their manager. In the winter of 2007, Hemme, Rave, and Hoyt began a feud with The Latin American Xchange (LAX) faction after being attacked several times by a mysterious assailant. The assailant was revealed to be Salinas at Final Resolution following LAX's victory over the Infection. Shortly after Final Resolution, The Rock 'n Rave Infection began a new gimmick, portraying a rock band, with Hemme as the lead singer. On the March 13 episode of "Impact", Hemme, Rave and Hoyt won a six-person tag team match against LAX after Hemme hit Salinas with a guitar. At No Surrender, Hemme, Hoyt, and Rave lost in an intergender six-person tag team match against the Prince Justice Brotherhood (Shark Boy, Curry Man, and Super Eric).


title: Christy Hemme

text: On the October 16, 2008 episode of "Impact!", Hoyt and Rave were attacked by Kurt Angle, and were hospitalized. As Hemme attempted to leave the building and go to the hospital, The Beautiful People (Angelina Love and Velvet Sky) and Cute Kip confronted and insulted her, which led to the trio attacking her and placing a brown paper bag over her head. Hemme transitioned into a face by defeating Sky on the October 23, 2008 episode of "Impact!". She feuded with the Beautiful People, which resulted in two consecutive tag team matches with ODB and Sojourner Bolt as per partners, respectively. After showcasing improved wrestling skills, Hemme was then placed into a more active in-ring role, being pushed to challenge Awesome Kong for the TNA Women's Knockout Championship at Final Resolution, after defeating Raisha Saeed on the November 27 episode of "TNA Impact!". Hemme then teamed with A.J. Styles in a mixed tag team match against Kong and Scott Steiner, where Hemme pinned Kong. At Final Resolution, Hemme was attacked by Saeed and Rhaka Khan and won the match by disqualification, and thus Kong retained the title. Hemme was subsequently granted a rematch at Genesis. A week later, Hemme teamed with ODB against Khan and Saeed in a winning effort. In January 2009, Hemme sustained a neck injury while training in the ring with Styles for her match, and was deemed unable to compete at Genesis.


title: Christy Hemme

text: After a seven-month absence, Hemme returned on the August 13, 2009 episode of "Impact!", defeating Sojournor Bolt. The following week on "Impact", she formed an alliance with her former rival Tara, when they helped save Madison Rayne from an attack from Angelina Love and Velvet Sky. Later that night, Hemme competed in a four-way match against Sarita, Awesome Kong and Traci Brooks, which Brooks won. On the September 3 episode of "Impact", Hemme competed in the first round of the tournament for the TNA Knockouts Tag Team Championship alongside her tag partner Tara against Sojourner Bolt and Hamada, which Hemme and Tara won. However, on September 17, the duo lost in the semi-finals to the Beautiful People due to interference from Madison Rayne. On the October 1 episode of "Impact!", Hemme defeated Traci Brooks in a "Battle of the Playboy Models" match, but was attacked by Brooks after the match. On the October 29 episode of "Impact!", Hemme teamed with Hamada and ODB in a six-woman tag team match, where they were defeated by Rayne, Sky and Lacey Von Erich, after Von Erich pinned Hemme.


title: Christy Hemme

text: On the December 10 episode of "Impact!" Hemme debuted in her new role as a backstage interviewer. On December 16, 2009, Hemme announced her retirement from in-ring competition. On April 7, 2010, Dixie Carter announced that Hemme had signed a new multi-year deal with the company. On the December 2 episode on "Impact!", Hemme was involved in a small backstage catfight with Cookie during a brawl with Cookie's cohort, X Division Champion Robbie E, and Jay Lethal. On the December 16 episode of "Impact!", Hemme came out during an X Division Championship match between Robbie E and Lethal and handcuffed herself to Cookie, thus preventing her from interfering in the match and subsequently costing Robbie the X Division Championship. After the match, Hemme and Lethal celebrated, which led to a kiss between the two.


title: Christy Hemme

text: On the April 28, 2011 episode of "Impact!", Hemme began working as a ring announcer. On the September 20, 2012 episode of "Impact Open Fight Night", Hemme was called out by Tara, only to be attacked by her after she refused to say Tara was her favorite Knockout. Miss Tessmacher then made the save for Hemme.


title: Christy Hemme

text: In November 2013, Hemme was put in a storyline with Samuel Shaw, after Hemme interviewed Shaw at his home. Shaw later became an obsessed fan of Hemme, and started asking her on dates, including one in his house, where it was shown that Shaw had a room full of posters and a mannequin of Hemme. Hemme was confronted by Shaw on the February 27 episode of "Impact Wrestling" after an incident the previous week, in which she was injured when Shaw attacked Mr. Anderson. Hemme was used as a shield by Shaw to fend off Mr. Anderson after Anderson attempted to save Hemme from Shaw after she slapped him as well as exact revenge for the previous week's attack.


title: Christy Hemme

text: On April 7, 2014, Hemme was announced as member of the TNA creative team. On April 24, 2015, episode of "Impact Wrestling", Hemme was attacked by the debuting Jade and Marti Bell of The Dollhouse, after Jade lost a match to Laura Dennis. In February 2016, Hemme took an hiatus from TNA being replaced by Jeremy Borash. On April 1, 2016, she announced her departure from TNA.


title: Christy Hemme

text: In November 2006, Hemme participated in the Queens of Chaos shows in Paris, France. She wrestled in a pair of singles matches against the villainous April Hunter; Hemme won the first match, but lost the second. She then defeated British wrestler Minx to earn the right to referee the championship match, which was eventually won by Hunter. On July 21, 2007, Hemme defeated Ann Brookstone at a Heavy on Wrestling event in Superior, Wisconsin with Nora Greenwald acting as Special Guest Referee. She has also competed in Women Superstars Uncensored under the ring name Kristy Hemme.


title: Christy Hemme

text: Christy made her debut for Northeast Wrestling (NEW) on the November 7, 2009 at the "Saugerties Slam" pay-per-view, where competed against Velvet Sky. On November 13, at the "Hart Attack" pay-per-view, Hemme captured her first victory, defeating Alexxis Nevaeh with Kurt Adonis as the special guest referee. On November 14, at the NEW special event "Autumn Ambush" pay-per-view, Hemme defeated Lea Morrison in a singles match.


title: Christy Hemme

text: On May 14, 2011, Hemme made her debut for Family Wrestling Entertainment (FWE) at the "Meltdown" pay-per-view, as a special guest referee for match between fellow TNA Knockouts Winter and Rosita.


title: Christy Hemme

text: In March 2020, Hemme, along with Lita and Gail Kim, announced "KAYfABE", a new wrestling show inspired by true events which blends scripted drama with pro wrestling. Following the failure of the campaign, the team cited the financial impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic as a reason for the campaign's difficulties and assured fans that the show would secure funding elsewhere at a later date.


title: Christy Hemme

text: In September 2006, Hemme recorded a song entitled "Society Box", which was featured on TNA's November 21, 2006 music release, "". Hemme is also the founder and lead singer in HEMME. The band released five songs on their MySpace: "In This Moment", "Visit Me Mom", "Shine", "Dear You", and "Dirty"; the songs have since been removed following the departure of original members Randy Ramirez, Steve Goodwin, Roland Maniago, and Rocky Ramirez, all from the band POLARIS. Hemme released another song, "Don't Give Up", and an EP entitled "Where are You", which is available on iTunes. The EP features Eric Friedman on Guitar and Garrett Whitlock on drums. Both are currently playing in the band Tremonti and formerly of the band Submersed.


title: Christy Hemme

text: In December 2006, Hemme recorded a scene for "Bloodstained Memoirs", a wrestling documentary. Her scene can be seen in the special extras of the DVD. Hemme made her acting debut in the film "Fallen Angels", portraying the deadly sin "Lust". She also filmed a role in another horror film titled "Bubba's Chili Parlor", playing a zombie.


title: Christy Hemme

text: In November 2010, Hemme was a contestant on an all TNA week of "Family Feud", teaming with Angelina Love, Lacey Von Erich, Tara and Velvet Sky against Jay Lethal, Matt Morgan, Mick Foley, Mr. Anderson and Rob Van Dam.


title: Christy Hemme

text: Hemme has a brother, David, and a sister, Deena Hemme, who is also a model. Hemme is an avid motorcyclist. She owns a Harley-Davidson Dyna Low Rider.


title: Christy Hemme

text: Hemme married Charley Patterson in 2010. On January 6, 2015, Hemme gave birth to her first child, a girl, named Charlie Rose. On September 8, 2017, Hemme announced on YouTube that she was expecting quadruplets, three boys and a girl. On October 25, 2017, she revealed the names of her quadruplets: Hemme Lee Patterson, Jagger James Patterson, Quinn Eugene Patterson, and Sunni Sue Patterson. They were born on January 6, 2018, at 32 weeks gestation, sharing the same birthday as their big sister.


title: Victor/Victoria

text: Victor/Victoria is a 1982 musical comedy film written and directed by Blake Edwards and starring Julie Andrews, James Garner, Robert Preston, Lesley Ann Warren, Alex Karras, and John Rhys-Davies. The film was produced by Tony Adams and scored by Henry Mancini, with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse. Released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, it was adapted in 1995 as a Broadway musical. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won the Academy Award for Best Original Score. It is a remake of the 1933 German film "Victor and Victoria".


title: Victor/Victoria

text: In 1934 Paris, Carroll "Toddy" Todd, an aging gay performer at Club Chez Lui in Paris, sees Labisse, the owner, auditioning frail and impoverished soprano, Victoria Grant. After her failed audition, Victoria returns to her hotel room to find herself about to be evicted, as she is unable to pay her rent. That night, when Richard, a hustler with whom Toddy is romantically involved, comes to Chez Lui as part of a straight foursome, Toddy incites a brawl resulting in major damages and the police locking up whomever they can get their hands on. Labisse fires Toddy and bans him from the club. Walking home, he spots Victoria in a restaurant. She invites him to join her. As neither of them can pay for the meal, she has a plan to dump a cockroach in her salad to avoid paying, but it escapes and mayhem ensues.


title: Victor/Victoria

text: The duo runs through the rain to Toddy's, and he invites her to stay when she discovers the rain has shrunken and damaged her decrepit clothing. The next morning, Richard shows up to collect his things. Victoria, who is wearing his suit and hat, hides in Toddy's closet. When Richard opens the closet door, she punches him, breaking his nose before finally kicking him out. Seeing this, Toddy is struck with the inspiration of passing Victoria off as a man and presenting her to Andre Cassell, the most successful talent agent in Paris, as a female impersonator.


title: Victor/Victoria

text: Cassell accepts her as Count Victor Grazinski, a gay Polish female impersonator and Toddy's new boyfriend. Cassell gets her a booking in a nightclub show and invites a collection of club owners to the opening. Among the guests is King Marchand, a Chicago gangster, and his ditzy blonde moll Norma Cassidy and burly bodyguard Mr. Bernstein, also known as Squash. Victoria is an immediate hit, and King is smitten, but he is shocked when she "reveals" herself to be a man at the end of the act. King, however, is convinced that "Victor" is not a man.


title: Victor/Victoria

text: After Norma violently attacks King during a quarrel, he sends her back to the United States. Determined to uncover the truth, King sneaks into Victoria and Toddy's suite and confirms his suspicion when he spies her getting into the bath. Back in Chicago, Norma, still angry over being dumped, tells King's business partner Sal Andretti that King is having an affair with a man. King invites Victoria, Toddy, and Cassell to Chez Lui. Another major fight breaks out. Squash and Toddy are both arrested, along with many of the club clientele, but King and Victoria manage to escape. King kisses Victoria, pretending that he does not care about Victoria's assumed gender.


title: Victor/Victoria

text: Squash returns to the suite and catches King in bed with Victoria. King tries to explain, but then Squash reveals he himself is gay. Victoria and King argue over whether or not the relationship could work and Victoria discovers that King is not really a gangster but someone who pretends to be in order to stay in the nightclub business, leading Victoria to point out that they are both pretending to be something they are not. Victoria returns to her room and finds Squash in bed with Toddy.


title: Victor/Victoria

text: Meanwhile, Labisse hires a private investigator, Charles Bovin, to tail and investigate Victor. Victoria and King attempt to live together for a while, but keeping up her deception strains the relationship to the breaking point, and King ends it.


title: Victor/Victoria

text: At the same time that Victoria has decided to give up the persona of Victor in order to be with King, Sal arrives and demands that King transfer his share of the business to Sal for a fraction of what it is actually worth. Squash tells Victoria what is happening, and she shows Norma that she is really a woman, saving King's stake. That night at the club, Cassell tells Toddy and Victoria that Labisse has lodged a police complaint against him and "Victor" for perpetrating a public fraud. After checking for himself, the inspector tells Labisse that the performer he saw in the room, after opening the door, is a man and that Labisse is an idiot.


title: Victor/Victoria

text: In the end, Victoria joins King in the club as her real self. The announcer says that Victor is going to perform, but instead of Victoria, Toddy masquerades as "Victor". After an intentionally disastrous but ultimately hilarious performance, Toddy claims that this is his last performance.


title: Victor/Victoria

text: The vocal numbers in the film are presented as nightclub acts, with choreography by Paddy Stone. However, the lyrics or situations of some of the songs are calculated to relate to the unfolding drama. Thus, the two staged numbers "Le Jazz Hot" and "The Shady Dame from Seville" help to present Victoria as a female impersonator. The latter number is later reinterpreted by Toddy for diversionary purposes in the plot, and the cozy relationship of Toddy and Victoria is promoted by the song "You and Me", which is sung before the audience at the nightclub.


title: Victor/Victoria

text: The film's screenplay was adapted by Blake Edwards (Andrews' husband) from the 1933 German film "Victor and Victoria" written and directed by Reinhold Schünzel from an original story treatment by Hans Hoemburg. According to Edwards, the screenplay took only one month to write. Andrews watched the 1933 version to prepare for her role. The film had been planned as early as 1978 with Andrews to star alongside Peter Sellers, but Sellers died in 1980 while Andrews and Edwards were filming "S.O.B." (1981), so Robert Preston was cast in the role of Toddy.


title: Victor/Victoria

text: The costume worn by Andrews in the number "The Shady Dame from Seville" is in fact the same costume worn by Preston at the end of the film. It was made to fit Preston, and then, using a series of hooks and eyes at the back, it was drawn in tight to fit Andrews' shapely figure. Black silk ruffles were added to the bottom of the garment to hide the differences in height. The fabric is a black and brown crepe, with fine gold threads woven into it, that when lit appears to have an almost wet look about it.


title: Victor/Victoria

text: "Victor/Victoria" was the opening night film at Filmex on March 16, 1982. It opened in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto on March 19, 1982.


title: Victor/Victoria

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critical consensus reads, "Driven by a fantastic lead turn from Julie Andrews, Blake Edwards' musical gender-bender is sharp, funny and all-round entertaining." On Metacritic, it has a score of 84 out of 100 based on reviews from 12 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Victor/Victoria

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave it 3 out of 4 stars and wrote: "Not only a funny movie, but, unexpectedly, a warm and friendly one."


title: Victor/Victoria

text: Todd McCarthy of "Variety" called it "sparkling, ultra-sophisticated entertainment from Blake Edwards."


title: East Thrace

text: East Thrace or Eastern Thrace ( or simply "Trakya"; , "Anatoliki Thraki"; , "Iztochna Trakiya"), also known as Turkish Thrace or European Turkey, is the part of Turkey that is geographically a part of Southeast Europe. It accounts for 3.4% of Turkey's land area but comprises 15% of its total population. The largest city of the region is Istanbul, which straddles the Bosporus between Europe and Asia. East Thrace is of historic importance as it is next to a major sea trade corridor and constitutes what remains of the once-vast Ottoman region of Rumelia. It is currently also of specific geostrategic importance because the sea corridor, which includes two narrow straits, provides access to the Mediterranean Sea from the Black Sea for the navies of five countries: Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, and Georgia. The region also serves as a future connector of existing Turkish, Bulgarian, and Greek high-speed rail networks.


title: East Thrace

text: In East Thrace, the majority of the Muslim Populations are descendants of the Muhacir like Balkan Turks, Bulgarian Turks in Turkey, Amuca tribe, Albanians in Turkey, Bosniaks in Turkey, Gajal, Pomaks in Turkey, Megleno-Romanians, Vallahades, Crimean Tatars in Turkey, Circassians in Turkey, and Romani people in Turkey live there.


title: East Thrace

text: East Thrace sometimes refers to the eastern part of the historical region of Thrace. It is also used for the parts of Thrace that is inside Turkey. The area includes all the territories of the Turkish provinces of Edirne, Tekirdağ and Kırklareli, as well as those territories on the European continent of the provinces of Çanakkale and Istanbul. The land borders of East Thrace were defined by the Treaty of Constantinople (1913) and the Bulgarian-Ottoman convention (1915), and were reaffirmed by the Treaty of Lausanne. The term is usually opposed by the Turkish People since the country is seen European as a whole usually, the ongoing debate shows that a large majority of people in Turkey classify the country as European, while almost none describes is as Western Asian.


title: East Thrace

text: East Thrace has a hybrid mediterranean climate/humid subtropical climate on the Aegean Sea coast and the Marmara Sea coast, an oceanic climate on the Black Sea coast and a humid continental climate in the interior. Summers are warm to hot, humid and moderately dry whereas winters are cold and wet and sometimes snowy. The coastal climate keeps the temperatures relatively mild.


title: East Thrace

text: East Thrace has an area of 23,764 km (3.4 percent of Turkey's land area), slightly smaller than Sardinia; the population density is around 430 people/km, compared to about 80 people/km for Asiatic Turkey, which is also called Anatolia or Asia Minor. However, densities are skewed by the metropolis of Istanbul. The two continents are separated by the Dardanelles, the Bosphorus (collectively known as the Turkish Straits) and the Sea of Marmara, a route of about 361 km. The southernmost part of Eastern Thrace is called the Gallipoli peninsula. European Turkey is bordered on the west by Greece for 212 km and on the north by Bulgaria for 269 km, with the Aegean Sea to the south-west and the Black Sea to the north-east.


title: East Thrace

text: The mass killings and displacement of Thracian Bulgarians in 1913 and the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey ethnically cleansed the Orthodox populations. Jews were ethnically cleansed as a result of 1934 Thrace pogroms.


title: East Thrace

text: During the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) and the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), Muslim Muhacir of various ethnic groups from the former Ottoman territories in the Balkans, were forced to flee toward Eastern Thrace through expulsions, violence and massacres, followed by further emigration caused by the 1923-24 Population exchange between Greece and Turkey.


title: East Thrace

text: The Muslim "millet" was recorded as Turkish, while the church members of the Ecumenical Patriarchate were recorded as Greek.


title: East Thrace

text: In the past century, modern East Thrace was the main component of the territory of the Adrianople Vilayet, which excluded the Constantinople Vilayet, but included West Thrace and parts of the Rhodopes and Sakar. A publication from December 21, 1912 in the Belgian magazine "Ons Volk Ontwaakt" (‘Our Nation Awakes’) estimated 1,006,500 inhabitants in the vilayet:


title: East Thrace

text: 21st century East Thrace constitutes what remains of Turkish Rumelia, which once stretched as far north as Hungary and as far west as Bosnia. Rumelia was lost piecemeal from 1699 onwards, until in 1912 the bulk of it was lost in the First Balkan War. Some small regains were made during the Second Balkan War. The current borders were set forth in the Treaty of Constantinople (1913) and the Bulgarian-Ottoman convention (1915), and were reaffirmed in the Treaty of Lausanne.


title: East Thrace

text: Some tourist attractions are the Edirne Museum, Complex of Sultan Bayezid II Health Museum, Treaty of Lausanne Monument and Museum, Kırklareli Museum, and the Edirne Palace. There are several historical religious buildings, such as the Selimiye Mosque, Üç Şerefeli Mosque, Old Mosque, Muradiye Mosque, and the Grand Synagogue of Edirne. There are also historical bridges, such as the Fatih Bridge, Meriç Bridge, and Uzunköprü Bridge.


title: East Thrace

text: Natural attractions include the Lake Gala National Park, İğneada Floodplain Forests National Park, Lake Saka Nature Reserve, and Dupnisa Cave.


title: East Thrace

text: Since 1360, the oil wrestling tournament Kırkpınar is held annually near Edirne; usually in late June. The Romani festival Kakava is held annually in Edirne and Kırklareli.


title: Union of the Crowns

text: The Union of the Crowns (; ) was the accession of James VI of Scotland to the throne of the Kingdom of England as James I and the practical unification of some functions (such as overseas diplomacy) of the two separate realms under a single individual on 24 March 1603. Whilst a misnomer, therefore, what is popularly known as "The Union of the Crowns" followed the death of James's cousin, Elizabeth I of England, the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty.


title: Union of the Crowns

text: The union was personal or dynastic, with the Crown of England and the Crown of Scotland remaining both distinct and separate despite James's best efforts to create a new imperial throne. England and Scotland continued as two separate states sharing a monarch, who directed their domestic and foreign policy, along with Ireland, until the Acts of Union of 1707 during the reign of the last Stuart monarch, Anne. However, there was a republican interregnum in the 1650s, during which the Tender of Union of Oliver Cromwell created the Commonwealth of England and Scotland which ended with the Stuart Restoration.


title: Union of the Crowns

text: In August 1503, James IV of Scotland married Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry VII of England, and the spirit of the new age was celebrated by the poet William Dunbar in "The Thrissil and the Rois". The marriage was the outcome of the Treaty of Perpetual Peace, concluded the previous year, which, in theory, ended centuries of Anglo-Scottish war. The marriage brought Scotland's Stuarts into England's Tudor line of succession, despite the improbability of a Scottish prince acceding the English throne at the time. However, many on the English side were concerned by the dynastic implications of matrimony, including some Privy Councillors. In countering these fears Henry VII is reputed to have said:


title: Union of the Crowns

text: The peace did not last in "perpetuity"; it was disturbed in 1513 when Henry VIII of England, who had succeeded his father four years before, declared war on France in the War of the League of Cambrai. In response France invoked the terms of the Auld Alliance, her ancient bond with Scotland. James duly invaded Northern England leading to the Battle of Flodden.


title: Union of the Crowns

text: In the decades that followed, , including burning its capital. By the middle of Henry's reign, the problems of the royal succession, which seemed so unimportant in 1503, acquired ever larger dimensions, when the question of Tudor fertility or the lack thereof entered directly into the political arena. Margaret's line was excluded from the English succession though during the reign of Elizabeth I, concerns were once again raised. In the last decade of her reign it was clear to all that James VI of Scotland, great-grandson of James IV and Margaret, was the only generally acceptable heir.


title: Union of the Crowns

text: From 1601, in the last years of Elizabeth I's life, certain English politicians, notably her chief minister, Sir Robert Cecil, maintained a secret correspondence with James to prepare in advance for a smooth succession. Cecil advised James not to press the matter of the succession upon the queen but simply to treat her with kindness and respect. The approach proved effective: "I trust that you will not doubt", Elizabeth wrote to James, "but that your last letters are so acceptably taken as my thanks cannot be lacking for the same, but yield them you in grateful sort". In March 1603, with the queen clearly dying, Cecil sent James a draft proclamation of his accession to the English throne. Strategic fortresses were put on alert, with London placed under guard. Elizabeth died in the early hours of 24 March. Within eight hours, James was proclaimed king in London, with the news received without protest or disturbance.


title: Union of the Crowns

text: On 5 April 1603, James left Edinburgh for London and promised to return every three years, which he failed to keep by returning only once, in 1617. He progressed slowly from town to town to arrive in the capital after Elizabeth's funeral. Local lords received James with lavish hospitality along the route, and James's new subjects flocked to see him and were relieved above all that the succession had triggered neither unrest nor invasion. As James entered London, he was mobbed. The crowds of people, one observer reported, were so great that "they covered the beauty of the fields; and so greedy were they to behold the King that they injured and hurt one another". James's English coronation took place on 25 July though the festivities had to be restricted because of an outbreak of the plague. A Royal Entry featuring elaborate allegories provided by dramatic poets such as Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson was deferred until 15 March 1604, when all London turned out for the occasion: "The streets seemed paved with men", wrote Dekker, "Stalls instead of rich wares were set out with children, open casements filled up with women".


title: Union of the Crowns

text: Whatever residual fears that many in England may have felt, James's arrival aroused a mood of high expectation. The twilight years of Elizabeth had been a disappointment, and for a nation troubled for so many years by the question of succession, the new king was a family man who already had male heirs waiting in the wings. But James's honeymoon was of very short duration, and his initial political actions were to do much to create the rather negative tone, which was to turn a successful Scottish king into a disappointing English one. The greatest and most obvious was the question of his exact status and title. James intended to be King of Great Britain and Ireland. His first obstacle along that imperial road was the attitude of the English Parliament.


title: Union of the Crowns

text: In his first speech to his southern assembly on 19 March 1604 James gave a clear statement of the royal manifesto:


title: Union of the Crowns

text: Parliament may very well have rejected polygamy; but the marriage, if marriage it was, between the realms of England and Scotland was to be morganatic at best. James's ambitions were greeted with very little enthusiasm, as one by one MPs rushed to defend the ancient name and realm of England. All sorts of legal objections were raised: all laws would have to be renewed and all treaties renegotiated. For James, whose experience of parliaments was limited to the stage-managed and semi-feudal Scottish variety, the self-assurance — and obduracy — of the English version, which had long experience of upsetting monarchs, was an obvious shock. He decided to side-step the whole issue by unilaterally assuming the title of King of Great Britain by a "Proclamation concerning the Kings Majesties Stile" on 20 October 1604 announcing that he did "assume to Our selfe by the cleerenesse of our Right, The Name and Stile of KING OF GREAT BRITTAINE, FRANCE AND IRELAND, DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, &c." . This only deepened the offence. Even in Scotland there was little real enthusiasm for the project, though the two parliaments were eventually prodded into taking the whole matter 'under consideration'. Consider it they did for several years, never drawing the desired conclusion.


title: Union of the Crowns

text: In Scotland there were early signs that many saw the risk of the "lesser being drawn by the greater", as Henry VII once predicted. An example before Scottish eyes was the case of Ireland, a kingdom in name, but since 1601, a subject nation in practice. The asymmetric relationship between Scotland and England had been evident for at least a decade. In 1589, the Spanish Armada shipwreck survivor Francisco de Cuellar sought refuge in Scotland, as he had heard the Scottish king "protected all the Spaniards who reached his kingdom, clothed them, and gave them passages to Spain". However, following his six-month ordeal within the kingdom, he concluded "the King of Scotland is nobody: nor does he possess the authority or position of a king: and he does not move a step, nor eat a mouthful, that is not by order of the Queen (Elizabeth I)".


title: Union of the Crowns

text: John Russell, lawyer and writer, an initial enthusiast for "the happie and blissed Unioun betuixt the tua ancienne realmes of Scotland and Ingland" was later to warn James:


title: Union of the Crowns

text: Those fears were echoed by the Scottish Parliament, whose members were telling the King that they were "confident" that his plans for an incorporating union would not prejudice the ancient laws and liberties of Scotland; for any such hurt would mean that "it culd no more be a frie monarchie". James attempted to reassure his new English subjects that the new union would be much like that between England and Wales and that if Scotland should refuse, "he would compel their assents, having a stronger party there than the opposite party of the mutineers". In June 1604 the two national parliaments passed acts appointing commissioners to explore the possibility of "a more perfect union". James closed the final session of his first parliament with a rebuke to his opponents in the House of Commons: "Here all things suspected... He merits to be buried in the bottom of the sea that shall but think of separation, where God had made such a Union".


title: Union of the Crowns

text: The Union Commission made some limited progress, on discrete issues such as hostile border laws, trade and citizenship. The borders were to become the "middle shires". Free trade proved contentious, as did the issue of equal rights before the law. Fears were openly expressed in the Westminster Parliament that English jobs would be threatened by all the poor people of the realm of Scotland, who will "draw near to the Sonn, and flocking hither in such Multitudes, that death and dearth is very probable to ensue". The exact status of the "post nati", those born after the Union of March 1603, was not decided by Parliament but in the courts by "Calvin's Case" (1608), which extended property rights to all the King's subjects in English common law.


title: Union of the Crowns

text: Scottish aristocrats and other placeseekers made their way to London to compete for high positions in government. Several years later Sir Anthony Weldon was to write:


title: Union of the Crowns

text: A wounding observation came in the comedy "Eastward Ho", a collaboration between Ben Jonson, George Chapman and John Marston. In enthusing over the good life to be had in the Colony of Virginia, it is observed:


title: Union of the Crowns

text: Anti-English satires proliferated, and in 1609, the king had an act passed that promised the direst penalties against the writers of "pasquillis, libellis, rymis, cockalanis, comedies and sicklyk occasiones whereby they slander and maligne and revile the estait and countrey of England..."


title: Union of the Crowns

text: In October 1605 Nicolò Molin, the Venetian ambassador in London, noted that "the question of the Union will, I am assured, be dropped; for His Majesty is now well aware that nothing can be effected, both sides displaying such obstinacy that an accommodation is impossible; and so his Majesty is resolved to abandon the question for the present, in hope that time may consume the ill-humours".


title: Union of the Crowns

text: King James devised new coats of arms and a uniform coinage. The creation of a national flag proved contentious, designs acceptable to one side typically offending the other. James finally proclaimed the new Union Flag on 12 April 1606: Scots who saw in it a St George's Cross superimposed upon a St Andrew's Saltire sought to create their own 'Scotch' design, which saw the reverse superimposition take place. (that design was used in Scotland until 1707). For years afterwards, vessels of the two nations continued to fly their respective "flags", the royal proclamation notwithstanding. The Union Flag entered into common use only under Cromwell's Protectorate.


title: Hank Hill

text: Hank Rutherford Hill (born April 15, 1953) is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the Fox animated television series "King of the Hill". He lives in the fictional town of Arlen, Texas, with his family and works as the assistant manager of a local branch of Strickland Propane. He likes to drink beer, typically Alamo brand, in the alley behind his house with his friends. He is voiced by series creator Mike Judge. "The Economist" described Hank Hill as one of the wisest people on television, and in 1997 "Texas Monthly" included him on its annual list of the most influential Texans.


title: Hank Hill

text: When Mike Judge submitted the pilot script and drawings for "King of the Hill" to the Fox network, network executives advised him that Hank Hill should be younger than 49 years old, as Judge had described the character. Judge received a phone message from a network executive who told him that Hank's age should be 32, the same age as the network's average viewer. Judge later said, "I got all angry, and then I was like, 'Well, wait. It's just a drawing.' So I just went back with the same drawing and said, 'Okay, he's 34.'"


title: Hank Hill

text: Hank has been compared to Tom Anderson, the "disapproving old man" who is a neighbor of the title characters on Judge's earlier series "Beavis and Butt-Head". Television columnist Frank Wooten of "The Post and Courier" has written, "Hank still looks and sounds like a young Mr. Anderson (beleaguered, baffled Korean War veteran of 'Beavis and Butt-head'). But he's more in touch with contemporary reality (sort of) -- and funnier." Throughout the show's run, Hank's character's personality appears to primarily be built around the image of the all American, authoritarian family man. In a 2006 interview, Judge said, "Originally I was going to have Hank be his [Mr. Anderson's] son. I was kind of thinking we'd tie it into "Beavis and Butt-Head" as a sort of spinoff or something, but Fox said no." Greg Daniels, another creator of the program, has said that Hank Hill is "based on a lot of neighbors I've had… He's upset about how America is changing, and he doesn't know what to do about it."


title: Hank Hill

text: Hank Hill was born at Yankee Stadium in The Bronx, New York. According to the episode "Yankee Hankie," Hank proudly believed he was born in Texas to Tilly Mae Hill and Cotton Lyndal Hill but finds (to his disgust and horror) that he was actually born in New York City. His mother told him she gave birth to Hank in the women's restroom at Yankee Stadium during Cotton's failed attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro during a rare American visit. Fidel Castro visited New York City on April 19, implying that April 19 is Hank's birthday. After referring to himself as a native Texan for forty years, he was sad to learn he was born in New York, but over time, accepted his heritage when he realized that many of the Alamo heroes were not from Texas, either. Hank, who previously thought he was an only child, finds out he has a Japanese half brother named Junichiro in the episode "Returning Japanese". This is due to an affair Cotton Hill had with his Japanese nurse while recovering from leg injuries in post-World War II Japan. Also, in the episode "Hank Gets Dusted", Hank is shown to be the cousin of ZZ Top bassist and vocalist Dusty Hill.


title: Hank Hill

text: Hank is an Eagle Scout. Hank is set in his ways and afraid of taking risks, but generally a good person. Although he is traditionally conservative in his attitude, in how he dislikes change and novel situations, he can adapt to them quite well, quickly mastering unfamiliar social milieus. He can be pushed too far on occasion, usually by his son, Bobby, and neighbors Bill Dauterive, Dale Gribble, and, (to a lesser extent) Boomhauer.


title: Hank Hill

text: Most openings of "King of the Hill" start with Hank, Dale, Bill and Boomhauer all agreeing to something before the action kicks in, drinking from Alamo branded beer cans. A running joke throughout the series is an angry Hank yelling "I'm gonna kick your ass!" This is just a threat; he rarely, if ever, harms anyone, though he has literally kicked at least two people in the posterior out of anger (an acupuncturist in "Hank's Unmentionable Problem" and Jimmy Wichard in "Life in the Fast Lane: Bobby's Saga"). Hank's honesty and naivety often get him in unpredictable and troublesome situations. Ultimately, Hank cares for the people around him, particularly his family and friends and is always out to do what is right. One characteristic that Hank shows is when he lies to someone, he turns his head or looks around the room.


title: Hank Hill

text: Hank is a known workaholic and workplace overachiever who sells "propane and propane accessories" as an assistant manager at the fictional Strickland Propane, a local propane dealership. Much to the discomfort of his boss, Buck Strickland, he refuses to miss a day for anything; including sickness and injury, as shown in the episode called "Hank's Back", where he refused to go on Worker's Compensation after injuring his back on the job, despite repeated attempts at suggesting too much work will make him sloppy. He even went into work when his hero Tom Landry died (though he thought it was Dusty Hill making it up). When he gets a phone call in the middle of the night, he often immediately starts with the Strickland slogan, "Strickland Propane, taste the meat, not the heat", showing his dedication to his work. Hank also has a habit of announcing himself as "Hank Hill, Assistant Manager, Strickland Propane", even in situations where it has nothing to do with his work such as when called on to give a speech as Patch Boomhauer's best man at his wedding rehearsal dinner. Hank's family is well aware of his devotion to propane; he refers to the gas as 'sweet lady propane', acknowledging that he and his wife Peggy have an agreement on the matter. Peggy herself has referred to herself as a 'propane wife'.


title: Hank Hill

text: He was briefly promoted to manager when Buck's wife/ex-wife (affectionately referred to as "Miz Liz") temporarily took over Strickland Propane. Hank was also briefly promoted to manager by Buck Strickland while helping Buck rebuild a house for Habitat for Humanity as part of Buck's community service after a drunk driving conviction, before being demoted again after he blurted out "I love you" to Buck. Unlike Buck and his business enemy, Milton Farnsworth "M.F." Thatherton, Hank believes that selling propane through honesty and hard work is what life is all about. Hank won the Propane Salesman of the Year Award for three years, as well as the prestigious Blue Flame of Valor Award. His greatest attribute is his reliability. Another trait of Hank appears to be customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. While appearing to suffer a sales slump during the month-long "Grill Stravaganza" sale, he remained confident his sales would come in at the end of the month, trusting his tried and true method of giving customers pamphlets and simply telling them to return if and only if they're "ready." Despite this, he managed to sell more propane than anyone else at Strickland in a single day by simply giving one customer that pamphlet; he later sold that single customer 500 units, and in doing so won the sales for the Grill Stravaganza. Strickland has referred to Hank as his golden goose. This virtue was tested when he threatened to quit rather than continue working at a carwash (which Buck and Kahn bought stake in) and continue to take verbal abuse. He also threatened to quit unless Buck fired a new employee who was making crude jokes and sexual innuendo (eventually in frustration, Hank actually dragged the new employee into the washroom and washed his mouth out with soap). Hank's work ethic extends past his occupation. He is a noted DIY enthusiast. The meticulous detail to which he maintains his home was reflected when he opted to submit it for Parade of Homes.


title: Hank Hill

text: Hank looks up to Buck, who calls Hank "Ol' Top". And Hank keeps a somewhat idyllic picture of Buck, even though he recognizes his boss's many shortcomings (excessive gambling, alcoholism, womanizing, and a general lack of principles). Hank must frequently clean up his boss's unsavory "situations": bailing him out of jail, facilitating his vices, and performing suspicious errands. In one episode he went as far as covering up Strickland's illegal price fixing agreement with the other local propane providers to keep him from being arrested. Hank also seems to think that being a propane salesman is the best job there is (and wants his son, Bobby Hill, to follow his footsteps and start a propane business of his own). Hank loves his job very much, but throughout the series always makes a big deal out of it when his closest friends and even family find his occupation boring and somewhat useless and even find his obsession with propane odd. In the episode "A Fire Fighting We Will Go," Bobby questions Hank about his new job as a volunteer fireman, in which Bobby says he is surprised because Hank always seems to exaggerate and make a big deal about being a propane salesman.


title: Hank Hill

text: In the first episode of the series, his wife Peggy Hill prompts Hank to tell his son that he loves him. After he finally manages to do so, Bobby says that he thought of himself as a "big disappointment," which Hank immediately rejects, earnestly declaring that Bobby is the one thing in town that has never disappointed him. Although Hank is often confused and irritated by Bobby's eccentricities, he clearly loves his son, even though he's uncomfortable in saying it to his face. He even feigns an interest in Bobby's passions such as prop comedy and theatre. Hank is relieved when his Laotian-American neighbor Kahn Souphanousinphone tells him that he caught Bobby and Connie taking their clothes off since, up until that time, Hank was uncertain of Bobby's interest in girls. From his eccentricities, Hank often says of Bobby, "That boy ain't right. I tell you what.”


title: Hank Hill

text: Hank suffers from a fictional genetic disorder called Diminished Gluteal Syndrome (DGS). His essentially non-existent buttocks provide insufficient cushioning when he sits, causing him great discomfort and eventually forcing him to wear an "ortho-gluteal" prosthesis. A running gag throughout the series is that Hank and Peggy would have more kids if not for Hank's narrow urethra, a topic Hank is sensitive about and often becomes annoyed about if brought up to people outside the immediate family.


title: Hank Hill

text: Hank was on the high school football team (as were Bill, Boomhauer, and team towel manager, Dale). He was a running back and led the league in rushing (his record remains unbroken). He had a promising career until he snapped his ankle in the state championship (although this cost Arlen the game, he is still celebrated for "taking them to State"). This incident exacerbated Hank's already-restrained emotionalism, as he saw it as punishment from God for doing a celebratory dance after scoring a touchdown earlier during the game. After graduating from high school, he went on to work as a salesman at Jeans West, a clothing retailer, until Buck found that he was a good salesman and hired him at Strickland Propane, where he taught Hank everything about propane and propane accessories. According to his neighbor Dale, he also had a brief stint as a tractor salesman.


title: Hank Hill

text: Although his career in propane is later shown to have started with a chance meeting with Buck Strickland, in episode "Order of the Straight Arrow", a flashback to 1965 shows younger Hank, Dale, Bill and Boomhauer on a scouting trip, talking about what they're going to do when they grow up. Hank says, "I'm going to sell propane and propane accessories... if my grades are good enough," which is confusing since he met Buck at Jeans West, although it can be explained if Hank mistakenly puts in his adult passion for propane into memories from his childhood, or it may have been possible that Hank had to work at Jeans West due to a tight job market and his goal of working in propane was finally realized with the sale to Buck. This same episode reveals that boys entering the Order are 12 years old, which would give Hank a birth date of sometime in 1953. In the second-season episode, "Hank's Dirty Laundry," Hank himself states his birth year as 1953.


title: Hank Hill

text: Hank drives a red Ford Super Duty, which replaced his original truck, a red SuperCab Ford Ranger (1983 or 1993 model depends on the episodes) after it was destroyed by a train, despite trying to make it last as long as mechanically possible. Both trucks have manual transmissions while the Ranger carries a bed mounted toolbox for times when Hank takes his truck out on Strickland-related business. He gives great love and affection to his lawn and his bloodhound, Ladybird. In one episode, Peggy is bitter for throwing a special birthday party for Ladybird but not for herself, where it is implied in some episodes she believes Hank spends more time with Ladybird and being house proud than he does with her, as suggested in another episode where he mourns over his sub-par lawn compared to his neighbors, remarking. "I put so much work into this, my sweat, blood, tears, all the tender feelings I've kept from my family."


title: Hank Hill

text: Hank's idol is Outlaw Country singer Willie Nelson (despite multiple differences between the personalities and lifestyles of the two), and he also plays a 1963 Guild Solid Top acoustic guitar named Betsy in his Bluegrass band. Hank is a fan of Country and Bluegrass music. Occasionally, he will listen to Southern Rock music and in one episode, remarks that he likes "this Zamfir fellow," even believing that his music was better than The Beatles. He considers his cousin Dusty's band ZZ Top to be a family shame. Another episode shows that Hank and his friends seem to like the song "Teddy Bear" by Red Sovine. In another, he had also shown approval towards Doo-wop. He also appears to have a soft spot for Foreigner, as on Luanne's 21st birthday he put "I Want to Know What Love Is" on the jukebox six times in a row. Hank seems to dislike Christian Rock music, as in "Reborn To Be Wild", Hank told Bobby's youth group leader, "You're not making Christianity better, you're just making Rock & Roll worse". He took a slight interest in boyband music namely due to their lack of explicit lyrics compared to obscenity-filled rap and failing to understand the demographic the music was meant for.


title: Hank Hill

text: Much of the humor of the show results from the collision of Hank's deeply conservative manner, nature, and philosophy with the world and people around him. He is uncomfortable with intimacy and with expressions of affection or sexuality (as demonstrated by the running joke throughout the series, in which Hank is extremely averse and overreacts to physical contact or anything sexual concerning his niece, Luanne), but he has a healthy relationship with his wife, as well as the rest of his family, except his father. He believes passionately in hard work, honesty, tradition, responsibility, and convention (he refuses to leave work early, even so much as 10 minutes early on a Friday); and is a proud Texan and American always trying his best to see others, regardless of culture, for their personal character. He is, however, a highly respected authority among his friends and family, who often seek his help and advice, knowing that he will always advocate doing the right thing in the right way.


title: Hank Hill

text: Hank is against charcoal, butane (which he refers to as a "bastard gas") and the use of propane alternatives (such as electric water-heaters, heaters, stoves and ovens). Hank believes that propane is the best source of fuel and is known to try to "convert" people to propane use. When niece Luanne Platter uses charcoal on burgers at a barbecue, Peggy and Bobby find them delicious and eat them all: they are horrified to learn that they enjoy charcoal grilling. Hank's love for propane is sometimes shown in an ironic juxtaposition with his love of all things Texas, for example being introduced to mesquite, a traditional Texan barbecue wood, by his immigrant neighbor Kahn.


title: Hank Hill

text: One of Hank's most treasured hobbies is the care he takes over his lawn. He's unofficially nominated the best lawn in the neighborhood. He rides a fictional "Mason" 1500 series Riding mower, a mower he also covets to the point when the Mason Corporation undertook the focus group discontinuing his model in favor of a new one, he managed to point out all the flaws in the engineering and convince the group the mower was inferior. In the episode "King of the Ant Hill" with Cinco de Mayo approaching, Hank purchases an exorbitant new lawn of Raleigh St. Augustine sod for $1.25 per square foot, which Dale destroys with fire ants as an act of revenge to Hank for terminating his exterminating services. Just as Hank is about to beat him up, Dale redeems himself by saving Bobby from the fire ants, who attacked him for confining them. His friends and neighbors gifted him with a few square feet of new Raleigh, albeit only enough to cover a small fraction of his front yard. When he converted his back yard into a putting green, he installed kikuyu grass. In only one episode did Hank purposely allow his lawn to die; when water restrictions and a drought forced Hank to run for public office on a platform opposing the city water policy which wasted more water than it saved. He later discovered Kahn was bribing the water department employee to keep his lawn green and Bobby blackmailed him to keep Hank's lawn from dying. Refusing to be corrupt, he ceased watering. Hank has also states that he has held back "tender feelings" towards his family in order to focus on the lawn.


title: Hank Hill

text: Hank resides in a single-story rancher, which he claims has historic value. He is a noted do it yourself (DIY) enthusiast and prides himself on homeownership, to the point where he completely distrusts repairmen and refuses initially to call them during times of crisis, even during a few incidents where he was unable to solve the problem on his own. He is skilled in home repair, lawn and garden and automotive repair. He meticulously obeys virtually every building code in the city ordinance. He gets a great deal of joy engaging in home repair and his level of skill (and attention to detail) was repeatedly shown to exceed that of workmen he employed.


title: Hank Hill

text: Hank is also a follower of sports. He is a huge fan of football, being a former player himself. He is a long-time fan of the Dallas Cowboys, but later allows himself to also be a fan of the Houston Texans because they play in a different conference and wouldn't play the Cowboys unless it was in an all-Texas Super Bowl. Contemplating the possibility, Hank states dreamily "An all Texas Superbowl.. His will be done". Hank also is a supporter of the Texas Longhorns. He also follows baseball as a fan of the Texas Rangers, although in "Meet The Manger Babies", he stated that he would rather miss a baseball game than the Super Bowl to help Luanne with her puppet show. However, his idyllic passion is golf which coincides with his love of lawns. He once converted his back yard into a putting green. He is, however, critical of some sports. He is critical of soccer, claiming to Bobby "I didn't think I ever needed to tell you this, but I would be a bad parent if I didn't; soccer was invented by European ladies to keep them busy while their husbands did the cooking". He also hates tennis and appears to hate ice hockey as well.


title: Hank Hill

text: While more of a stereotypical Southern redneck in earlier episodes, for example, idolizing outlaw singer Willie Nelson, Hank becomes more of a small town, middle-class conservative who is extremely law-abiding. Everybody looks to Hank when they have any seemingly useless or dull work that needs to be done. His gruff, temperamental, and impartial tendencies have been challenged a few times throughout the series, during which Hank always proves himself to be on top of his game. When his dog Ladybird attacked a black repairman named Mack (voiced by Bernie Mac) working on their heating system, he was accused of being racist and portraying those feelings onto his dog, though it was later proven that he is not racist but that in fact he hates repairmen, as he prides himself on proper home maintenance. Before Ladybird had attacked Mack, Hank had told him that "A man should not be judged by the color of his skin but by the actions of his heart". He prides himself on having taken auto-shop in high school and refuses to let mechanics touch his truck, feeling that he can accomplish anything without help. Hank has briefly worked at Mega-Lo Mart as a propane salesman trainee after Mega-Lo Mart drove Strickland Propane out of business. Hank's reserved nature probably resulted from years of verbal abuse from his war-veteran father Cotton Hill. However, if sufficiently provoked, Hank has proven not to be a pushover, often ending disputes with his self-popularized quote "I'm gonna kick your ass!" (though he rarely follows through on this threat). He is also staunchly pro-Texas. In the episode "Texas City Twister," in which a tornado has torn off all his clothes, he is given the choice of covering himself with the Texas flag or a potted cactus. With barely a thought, he chooses the cactus, thereby sparing the flag.


title: Hank Hill

text: He is for the most part an outspoken conservative (he once said dreamily that he missed voting for Ronald Reagan). He was initially a huge fan of George W. Bush, but after discovering he had a weak handshake, Hank suffered a crisis of conscience and was unsure if he could still vote for the man. Hank is a registered Republican, but has respect for some old-school Democrats such as fellow Texan and former US President Lyndon B. Johnson. His purebred Georgia bloodhound Ladybird is named after the wife of President Johnson, former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, Hank has made mention that Ladybird's mom helped track down James Earl Ray, assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after an attempted prison escape. However, Hank also shows deference to Jimmy Carter when they meet (though he later refers to him as a "one-termer") and greatly respects former Democratic Texas Governor Ann Richards (although he displays great respect for, and deference to, all authority figures, but the respect was most likely the result of Hank's great liking of Texas culture and history as mentioned throughout the show). He has also expressed support for labor unions.


title: Hank Hill

text: In nearly every episode, Hank and his friends Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer will stand about in the alley behind Hank's house, drinking Alamo beer and discussing the events of the day. When consensus is reached and at breaks in the conversation, they will give short words of agreement, such as "yup" or "mm-hmm". He considers his wife his best friend and feels that physically punishing children is wrong; he is verbally strict, but not directly abusive. In the episode "Sleight of Hank", it was revealed that Hank has a huge dislike for magicians after seeing David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear. He has shown to have chiroptophobia, the fear of bats.


title: Hank Hill

text: Political parties aside, he is very conservative and old-fashioned, being largely ignorant (and disdainful) of new trends; several episodes involve him reluctantly dealing with subjects outside of his comfort zone, such as yoga, boybands, etc. Despite his discomfort with change and unfamiliar or awkward social situations and milieus, when his involvement is unavoidable, Hank repeatedly shows the ability to adapt to


title: Hank Hill

text: (and even learn from) them, even to immerse himself and become intellectually or emotionally invested in them — Hank's surprising ability to adapt to the awkward and uncomfortable is also evident from his good relations with all three members of the Nancy Gribble love triangle. Hank is portrayed as having traditional family values and he is shown to be uncomfortable with hiring a woman to work at Strickland because she was believed to be too attractive, even though she was overqualified; instead, he hired a man for shallowly expressing a fondness for the Dallas Cowboys and a blatantly fraudulent adoration for propane. The man was later revealed to be a completely unreliable drug addict. His old-fashioned ways extend to a suspicion of new technology. He does, however, eventually get a cellphone and briefly becomes addicted to a computer game whose main character is modeled on him. In the episode "Jumpin' Crack Bass", Hank made the mistake of purchasing crack cocaine he assumed was fish bait; when his liberal lawyer explained that virtually everyone including then-President Bill Clinton has consumed drugs, Hank comments, "Not my president! I voted for Dole!", referencing the 1996 election.


title: Hank Hill

text: Hank is not entirely unbending in his habits. One of them is his discovery and embrace of organic meat in the episode "Raise the Steaks". He even goes as far as to defend hippies, something he seemed somewhat ashamed to do; nevertheless, he agreed with them on the superior flavor of some natural and organic food. He has also been shown to have fairly tolerant views on other religions (except perhaps Buddhism). Hank has some environmentalist leanings (though he distances himself from the movement at large), once lamenting about air pollution in Houston, opposing the building of McMansions, and running for city council on a platform of removing low-flow toilets, in part, because they wasted more water than they saved. Similarly, he seems to believe in global warming, as when Dale commented on how warmer temperatures could lead to a citrus industry in Alaska, Hank responded "We live in Texas. It's already 110 in the summer, and if it gets one degree hotter I'm gonna kick your ass!" Despite his un-worldly outlook and occasional naiveté, he has been shown to be very clever in various scenarios. These include outwitting a rapacious lawyer who was attempting to sue Strickland Propane for an injury suffered on its premises by making it appear as though the injury occurred in his own law office, and forcing a veterinarian who was requiring costly and unnecessary tests for a soldier's cat to desist (in poetic irony, Hank began informing the vet's demanding clientele of an unneeded, but slightly superior, imaging machine the vet was unwilling to invest in). Hank also got the see-no-evil parents of a youngster who was bullying him to exert discipline by having Bobby behave exactly like their son toward them.


title: Hank Hill

text: Hank can be gullible, as for 25 years he bought vehicles (five cars) at sticker price from Tom Hammond's dealership, thinking they were a great deal and Hammond was a true friend. He has also been tricked because of his relative ignorance concerning drugs or subcultures. Hence he once mistakenly bought vials of crack cocaine believing they were fishing bait and in a time of stress took a hit of marijuana because he thought it was a cigarette. He once introduced a woman named Tammy Duvall (voiced by Renée Zellweger), who later turned out to be a prostitute, to several business associates, she gifted him with a feather-tipped hat while driving his father's vintage Cadillac leading to the community to thinking that he was a pimp much to his horror. This led her former pimp, Alabaster Jones (voiced by Snoop Dogg), to believe he was her new pimp, a role he was forced to act out to rid her of him.


title: Hank Hill

text: In "Be True to Your Fool", a flashback reveals that shortly after Hank graduated from high school with his three best friends, Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer, Bill enlisted in the United States Army—a night of celebratory drinking led them to a punk bar, where the then-formidable Bill saved a drunken Hank from a beating. In gratitude, Hank stumbled off to a tattoo parlor and paid to have Bill's name inked onto his chest before passing out. Only Boomhauer was with Hank, and, unable to persuade the proprietor to ignore Hank's purchase, convinced him to put the tattoo in a less conspicuous place, the back of Hank's head; Hank had completely forgotten that night, but was reminded of it while undergoing treatment for head lice in the present (an affliction caused by Bill trying to meet the school district's head lice lady). He had the name removed out of disgust, but eventually had a jailhouse tattoo of it put on to show Bill that the two were still friends.


title: Hank Hill

text: Hank thinks very highly of Texas. He thinks that Texas is superior to all other states in the U.S or at least Hollywood. (This is a play on the stereotype of exaggerated Texas pride.) In the episode "Returning Japanese Part 1", Hank says "Peggy, I've already chosen the country for our summer vacation, America. And the state, Texas. And the town, Denton. I don't care what their police did to that cyclist. It's still a great town." Later in the episode, he also says to his father Cotton, "Dad, there is no other place I'd rather be," after Cotton said, "Hank, you work at a gas station; fuel this thing up and fly me back to Texas!". A recurring gag throughout the series is Hank's contempt for big cities and urban areas, once comparing a youth-oriented shopping center to "Hell, or Dallas", and, regarding San Antonio, asking "Why would anyone want to live there?" as he and Bobby watched a weather girl screw up on camera.


title: Hank Hill

text: Describing Hank physically, Jo Johnson has written, "In keeping with [Mike] Judge's tradition of subtlety, the character of Hank Hill is only slightly overweight, not to satisfy the stereotype of the boorish husband, but because he eats a lot of meat and drinks a lot of beer."


title: Hank Hill

text: Palmer-Mehta notes that Hank's "fervor for selling propane and propane accessories is nearly apostolic." During their development of the character, the show's writers did substantial research on the propane business. Over time, members of the propane industry came to view Hank Hill as a largely positive image.


title: Hank Hill

text: Ethan Thompson writes that although Hank Hill is similar to other sitcom father figures, such as Archie Bunker from "All in the Family", he is different due to his "ability to acknowledge that the values and beliefs he grew up with are no longer sufficient to guide him in his roles as father, husband, friend, and employee."


title: Hank Hill

text: "New York Times" contributor Matt Bai discussed Hank's political perspective in 2005, writing, "[L]ike a lot of the basically conservative voters you meet in rural America ... Hank never professes an explicit party loyalty, and he and his buddies who sip beer in the alley don't talk like their fellow Texan Tom DeLay. If Hank votes Republican, it's because, as a voter who cares about religious and rural values, he probably doesn't see much choice. But Hank and his neighbors resemble many independent voters, open to proposals that challenge their assumptions about the world, as long as those ideas don't come from someone who seems to disrespect what they believe."


title: Hank Hill

text: In 1997, "Texas Monthly" included Hank Hill on its annual "Texas Twenty" list of "the most impressive, intriguing, and influential Texans". He was the first "non-human" to make the list. An accompanying mock interview described him as "perhaps the most recognized Texan in the world".


title: Hank Hill

text: Ten years later, Associated Press television critic Frazier Moore described Hank as "more than ever ... a man on the spot, torn between squabbling, widening extremes. . . the man politicians always glorify in campaign speeches, but conveniently forget once they win: the ordinary guy, just trying to get by." Moore opined that Hank "was a remarkable invention 10 years ago" and the fact that the show was "still funny and savvy" a decade later was "even more notable".


title: Proto-punk

text: Proto-punk (or protopunk) is rock music played mostly by garage bands from the 1960s to mid-1970s that foreshadowed the punk rock movement.<ref name="Bangs (RS-2nd ed./Garage)"></ref> The phrase is a retrospective label; the musicians involved were generally not originally associated with each other and came from a variety of backgrounds and styles; together, they anticipated many of punk's musical and thematic attributes.


title: Proto-punk

text: Most musicians classified as proto-punk are rock performers of the 1960s and early-1970s, with garage rock/art rock bands Them, the Velvet Underground, the Shaggs, los Saicos, MC5 and the Stooges considered to be archetypal proto-punk artists, along with glam rock band the New York Dolls.


title: Proto-punk

text: One of the earliest written uses of the term "punk rock" was by critic Dave Marsh who used it in 1970 to describe US group Question Mark & The Mysterians, who had scored a major hit with their song "96 Tears" in 1966. Many US bands were active in the mid-to-late 1960s playing garage rock: a ragged, highly energetic, often amateurish style of rock. While garage bands varied in style, the label of garage "punk" has been attributed by critic Michael Hann to the "toughest, angriest garage rockers" such as The 13th Floor Elevators and The Sonics. AllMusic states that bands like The Sonics and The Monks "anticipated" punk; the latter have likewise been cited as examples of proto-punk and The Sonics' 1965 debut album "Here Are The Sonics" as "an early template for punk rock". Music journalist Jason Draper cites The Rolling Stones' 1966 live album "Got Live If You Want It!" as another example. The raw sound and outsider attitude of psychedelic garage bands like The Seeds also presaged the style of bands that would become known as the archetypal figures of proto-punk.


title: Proto-punk

text: Debut albums by two key US proto-punk bands were released in 1969, both from Metro Detroit in Michigan; Detroit's MC5 released "Kick Out the Jams" in January, and The Stooges, from Ann Arbor, premiered with their self-titled album in August. The latter album was produced by John Cale, a former member of New York's The Velvet Underground which inspired, directly or indirectly, many of those involved in the creation of punk rock. The Stooges released second album "Fun House" in 1970. Michigan, USA was also the birthplace of bands The Dogs, The Punks and Death, the latter a pioneering but commercially unsuccessful African-American proto-punk group.


title: Proto-punk

text: The Who released the proto-punk single "My Generation" in 1965. In the early 1970s, the UK underground counter-cultural scene centred on Ladbroke Grove in West London spawned a number of bands that have been considered proto-punk, including The Deviants, Pink Fairies, Hawkwind, Edgar Broughton Band, Stack Waddy, and Third World War; contemporaries Crushed Butler have been called "Britain's first proto-punk band." According to Allmusic, glam rock also "inspired many future punks with its simple, crunchy guitar riffs, its outrageous sense of style, and its artists' willingness to sing with British accents (not to mention the idiosyncratic images of David Bowie and Roxy Music)". With his Ziggy Stardust persona, David Bowie made artifice and exaggeration central elements, that were later picked up by punk acts. Glam group The Hollywood Brats have likewise been cited as "proto-punk" and "Britain's answer to the New York Dolls." The Doctors of Madness built on Bowie's presentation concepts, while moving conceptually in the direction that would become identified with punk. Bands in London's pub rock scene anticipated punk by stripping the music back to its basics, playing hard, R&B-influenced rock 'n' roll; by 1974, the scene's top act, Dr. Feelgood, was paving the way for others such as the Stranglers and Cock Sparrer that would play a role in the punk explosion. Among the pub rock bands that formed that year was the 101ers, whose lead singer would two years later adopt the name Joe Strummer and form punk band The Clash.


title: Proto-punk

text: Bands anticipating the forthcoming movement were appearing as far afield as Düsseldorf, West Germany, where "punk before punk" band NEU! formed in 1971, building on the krautrock tradition of groups such as Can. Simply Saucer formed in Hamilton, Canada in 1973 and have been called "Canada's first proto-punk band", blending garage rock, krautrock, psychedelia and other influences to produce a sound that was later described as having a "frequent punk snarl."


title: Proto-punk

text: In Japan, the anti-establishment Zunō Keisatsu (Brain Police) mixed garage, psych and folk; the band's first two albums were withdrawn from public sale after their lyrics were found to violate industry regulations, and their "spirit.. was taken up again by the punk movement."


title: Proto-punk

text: A new generation of Australian garage rock bands, inspired mainly by the Stooges and MC5, came even closer to the sound that would soon be called "punk": in Brisbane, the Saints (formed in 1973 but renamed in 1974) recalled the raw live sound of the British Pretty Things, who had made a notorious tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1965, while in Sydney, Radio Birdman, co-founded by Detroit expatriate Deniz Tek in 1974, began playing gigs to a small but fanatical following. The Saints are regarded as a punk band and as being "to Australia what the Sex Pistols were to Britain and the Ramones to America," while Radio Birdman are regarded as co-founders of punk but have also been designated as proto-punk.


title: Proto-punk

text: In South America, the garage band Los Saicos appeared in Lima, Peru in 1964. They are considered the first group in history that can be classified as protopunk. One of their key songs is "Demolición", released as a single in 1965.


title: Regia Marina

text: The Regia Marina (; ) was the navy of the Kingdom of Italy ("Regno d'Italia") from 1861 to 1946. In 1946, with the birth of the Italian Republic ("Repubblica Italiana"), the "Regia Marina" changed its name to "Marina Militare" ("Military Navy").


title: Regia Marina

text: The "Regia Marina" was established on 17 March 1861 following the proclamation of the formation of the Kingdom of Italy. Just as the Kingdom was a unification of various states in the Italian peninsula, so the "Regia Marina" was formed from the navies of those states, though the main constituents were the navies of the former kingdoms of Sardinia and Naples. The new Navy inherited a substantial number of ships, both sail- and steam-powered, and the long naval traditions of its constituents, especially those of Sardinia and Naples, but also suffered from some major handicaps.


title: Regia Marina

text: Firstly, it suffered from a lack of uniformity and cohesion; the "Regia Marina" was a heterogeneous mix of equipment, standards and practice, and even saw hostility between the officers from the various former navies. These problems were compounded by the continuation of separate officer schools at Genoa and Naples, and were not fully addressed until the opening of a unified Naval Academy at Livorno in 1881.


title: Regia Marina

text: Secondly, unification occurred during a period of rapid advances in naval technology and tactics, as typified by the launch of by France in 1858, and later by the appearance of, and battle between, and in 1862. These innovations quickly made older warships obsolete. Italy did not possess the shipyards or infrastructure to build the modern ships required, but the then Minister for the Navy, Admiral Carlo di Persano, launched a substantial programme to purchase warships from foreign yards.


title: Regia Marina

text: The new navy's baptism of fire came on 20 July 1866 at the Battle of Lissa during the Third Italian War of Independence (parallel to the Seven Weeks War). The battle was fought against the Austrian Empire and occurred near the island of Vis in the Adriatic sea. This was one of the few fleet actions of the nineteenth century, and as a major sea battle that involved ramming, it is often considered to have had a profound effect on subsequent warship design and tactics.


title: Regia Marina

text: The Italian fleet, commanded by Admiral Persano, mustered 12 ironclad and 17 wooden-hulled ships, though only one, , was of the most modern turret ship design. Despite a marked disadvantage in numbers and equipment, superior handling by the Austrians under Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff resulted in a severe defeat for Italy, which lost two armoured ships and 640 men.


title: Regia Marina

text: After the war, the "Regia Marina" passed through some difficult years as the naval budget was substantially reduced, thus impairing the fleet's efficiency and the pace of new construction; only in the 1870s, under Simone Pacoret de Saint Bon's ministry, did the situation begin to improve. In 1881, the battleship was commissioned, followed in 1882 by the battleship ; at the time these were the most powerful warships in the world, and signalled the Italian fleet's renewed power. In 1896 the corvette "Magenta" completed a circumnavigation of the world. The following year the "Regia Marina" conducted experiments with Guglielmo Marconi in the use of radio communications. 1909 saw the first use of aircraft with the fleet. An Italian naval officer, Vittorio Cuniberti, was the first in 1903 to envision in a published article the all-big gun battleship design, which would be later come to be known as dreadnought.


title: Regia Marina

text: In 1911 and 1912, the "Regia Marina" was involved in the Italo-Turkish War against forces of the Ottoman Empire. As the majority of the Ottoman Navy stayed behind the relative safety of the Dardanelles, the Italians dominated the Mediterranean during the conflict winning victories against Ottoman light units at the battles of Preveza and Beirut. In the Red Sea the Italian forces were vastly superior to those of the Ottomans who possessed only a squadron of gunboats there. These were destroyed while attempting to withdraw into the Mediterranean at the Battle of Kunfuda Bay.


title: Regia Marina

text: Before 1914, the Kingdom of Italy built six dreadnought battleships: ( as a prototype; , and of the ; and and of the ), but they did not participate in major naval actions in World War I, as they were positioned to intercept a major sortie of the Austro-Hungarian Navy which never came.


title: Regia Marina

text: During the war, the "Regia Marina" spent its major efforts in the Adriatic Sea, fighting the Austro-Hungarian Navy. The resulting Adriatic Campaign of World War I consisted mainly of Austro-Hungarian coastal bombardments of Italy's Adriatic coast, and wider-ranging German/Austro-Hungarian submarine warfare into the Mediterranean. Allied forces mainly limited themselves to blockading the German/Austro-Hungarian navies in the Adriatic, which was successful in regards to surface units, but failed for the submarines, which found safe harbours and easy passage into and out of the area for the whole of the war. Considered a relatively minor part of the naval warfare of World War I, it nonetheless tied down significant forces.


title: Regia Marina

text: For most of the war the Italian and Austro-Hungarian navies each kept a relatively passive watch over their adversaries. The Italian fleet lost the pre-dreadnought battleship at Brindisi (27 September 1915) and the dreadnought at Taranto (2 August 1916) due to a magazine explosion (although there were rumours of Austrian sabotage). In the last part of the war, the Regia Marina developed new weapons: the MAS boats, that sank the Austro-Hungarian battleship in the Adriatic Sea on 10 June 1918; and an early type of human torpedo (codenamed "Mignatta", or "leech") entered the harbour of Pula and sank the Austro-Hungarian flagship on 1 November 1918 shortly after the entire Austro-Hungarian Navy was turned over to the newly founded neutral State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. The battleship (sister of the former two) was handed over to Italy as a war prize in 1919.


title: Regia Marina

text: During the interwar years the Italian government set about modernizing the "Regia Marina" in a way that could enable it to reach dominance over the Mediterranean Sea. Italian naval planners also wanted a force capable of taking on the British Royal Navy, especially after the Fascist takeover. The British response to the Corfu incident left Benito Mussolini and his military advisors convinced that Italy was "imprisoned in the Mediterranean" through British bases in Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, Malta, and Cyprus. Italian naval construction was limited by the Washington Naval Conference. The 1922 treaty required a parity in naval forces between the Italian and French navies, with equality in total displacement in battleships and carriers. The treaty influenced the development of the Italian fleet over the years between the two world wars. Between the late twenties and early thirties a construction program began, focusing first on cruisers up to 10,000 tons, followed by the building of destroyers and submarines, and lastly the construction of the new s; plans were also put in place to modernize the and s. Much of these new naval units were responses to French naval constructions, as the Marine nationale was seen until the mid-1930s as the most likely enemy in a hypothetical conflict.


title: Regia Marina

text: The "Regia Marina" chose to build fast ships armed with longer ranged guns to give the Italian vessels the ability to minimize close contact with vessels of the Royal Navy, whose crews were more experienced. In theory this would allow them to engage or break off at their own choosing, and would allow them to hit the enemy when he could not yet hit back. New guns were developed with longer ranges than their British counterparts of similar caliber. Speed was emphasized in their new construction. Italian cruisers built in the 1920s, such as were built with a newly designed and relatively thin armour. This would have a decisive role in a number of naval battles, including the Battle of Cape Spada. Later classes, such as the and classes, were built to a more balanced design with thicker armor.


title: Regia Marina

text: The modernization work on the four Great War era battleships turned into a significant reconstruction project, with only 40% of the original structures being left. The ship's guns were upgraded in main armament, going from 13 guns of 305 mm diameter, to 10 guns of 320 mm diameter. The middle turret and the vessel's central tower were eliminated. To increase speed the coal-fired boilers were replaced with modern oil-fired boilers and ten meters were added to the ship's length to improve the coefficient of fineness. Though the ships were improved, they still were not an equal match for the s and the s, both of which carried larger guns and heavier armour.


title: Regia Marina

text: Though scientific research on tracking devices such as radar and sonar was being conducted in Italian universities and military laboratories by men such as Ugo Tiberio and Guglielmo Marconi, the conservative Italian leadership had little interest in these new technologies, and did not use them to improve the effectiveness of the Italian vessels. This was mainly due to the influence of Admiral Domenico Cavagnari, whom Mussolini appointed as Chief of Staff of the Navy in 1933, and whom he later promoted to Secretary of the Navy. Likewise technological advancement in radio range finders and gunnery control devices for night combat were not incorporated. Regarding such devices, Cavagnari emphasized "not wanting traps in your way". Writing to Admiral Iachino, he wrote ""procedere con estrema cautela nell'accettare brillanti novità tecniche che non siano ancora collaudate da una esperienza pratica sufficientemente lunga"", which can be translated to "proceed with extreme caution regarding brilliant technical innovations that have not yet been tested or with which there is no practical experience". Thus, the Italian navy entered the Second World War with a marked technical inferiority to the British Royal Navy. Albert Kesselring, overall commander of Axis forces in the Mediterranean, observed that the Italian navy was "a good weather" force, unable to operate effectively at night or in heavy seas.


title: Regia Marina

text: Two training ships were built during this period, in addition to the effort to modernize and re-equip the combat vessels of the navy. These were square rigged school ships the "Regia Marina" ordered in 1925. The sailing ships followed a design by Lieutenant Colonel Francesco Rotundi of the Italian Navy Engineering Corps, reminiscent of ships of the line from the Napoleonic era. The first of these two ships, , was put into service in 1928 and was used by the Italian Navy for training until 1943. After World War II, this ship was handed over to the Soviet Union as part of war reparations and was shortly afterwards decommissioned. The second ship of the design was . The ship was built in 1930 at the (formerly Royal) Naval Shipyard of Castellammare di Stabia (Naples). She was launched on 22 February 1931, and was put into service in July of that year. She is still being used to this day.


title: Regia Marina

text: In 1928, the unified command of the ""Armata Navale"" was abolished, and the fleet was divided in two squadrons ("Squadre navali"), one based at La Spezia and the other based at Taranto.


title: Regia Marina

text: The "Regia Marina" played a limited role in the invasion of Ethiopia. While the Ethiopian Empire was landlocked, the navy was instrumental in delivering and supplying the invasion forces through Somali and Eritrean ports.


title: Regia Marina

text: At the time of the Italian intervention in the Spanish Civil War, the "Regia Marina" sent naval units in support of the Italian Corps of Volunteer Troops ("Corpo Truppe Volontarie"). Approximately 58 Italian submarines took part in operations against the Spanish Republican Navy. These submarines were organized in a Submarine Legion and complemented German Kriegsmarine U-boat operations as part of Operation Ursula. At least two Republican freighters, one Soviet and another Panamanian were either sunk or forced to run aground by Italian destroyers near the Strait of Sicily. Two light cruisers took part in the shelling of Barcelona and Valencia in 1937, resulting in the deaths of more than 30 civilians.


title: Regia Marina

text: In 1939, the "Regia Marina" supported the invasion of Albania. All ground forces involved in the invasion had to cross the Adriatic Sea from mainland Italy and the crossings were accomplished without incident.


title: Regia Marina

text: On 10 June 1940, following the German invasion of France and the lowlands, the Kingdom of Italy declared war on France and the United Kingdom and entered World War II. Italy went to war with the fifth largest navy in the world. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini saw the control of the Mediterranean Sea as an essential prerequisite for expanding his "New Roman Empire" into Nice, Corsica, Tunis and the Balkans. Italian naval building accelerated during his tenure. Mussolini described the Mediterranean as "Mare Nostrum" (Our Sea).


title: Regia Marina

text: Before the declaration of war, Italian ground and air forces prepared to strike at the beaten French forces across the border in the Italian invasion of France. By contrast, the "Regia Marina" prepared to secure the lines of communications between Italy, Libya and the East African colonies. The Italian High Command ("Comando Supremo") did not approve of the plan devised by the Italian Naval Headquarters ("Supermarina") to occupy a weakly defended Malta, which proved a crucial mistake. British High Command, thinking Malta could not be defended due to the proximity of Regia Aeronautica air bases in Italy, Sicily, and Libya, had put little effort into bolstering the islands' defences. Thus, at the outset of the war there were only 42 anti-aircraft guns on the island and twelve Gloster Sea Gladiators, half sitting in crates at the wharf.


title: Regia Marina

text: Entering the war, the "Regia Marina" was operating under a number of limitations. Though significant assets were available to challenge the Royal Navy for control of the Mediterranean, there had been a lack of emphasis on the incorporation of technological advances such as radar and sonar. This meant that in night engagements or foul weather, the Italian ships were unable to detect the approach of their British adversaries. When engaged, they could only range their guns if they were able to visually locate their targets.


title: Regia Marina

text: The "Regia Marina" had six battleships with which to contend for control of the Mediterranean, the four most modern of which were being re-fitted at the outbreak of the war. In addition to the six capital ships, the Italians had 19 cruisers, 59 destroyers, 67 torpedo boats, and 116 submarines. Though the "Regia Marina" had a number of fast new cruisers with good range in their gunnery, the older classes were lightly built and had inadequate defensive armor. Numerically the Italian fleet was formidable, but there were a large number of older vessels, and the service suffered in general from insufficient time at sea for crew training.


title: Regia Marina

text: Italy's lack of raw materials meant that they would have great difficulty building new ships over the course of the war. Thus, the assets they did have were handled with caution by "Supermarina". Whereas Allied commanders at sea had a fair degree of autonomy and discretion to fight their vessels as circumstance allowed, Italian commanders were required to confer with their headquarters before committing their forces in an engagement that might result in their loss. This led to delays in arriving at decisions and actions being avoided, even when the Italians had a clear advantage. An example occurred during "Operation Hats", in which the "Regia Marina" had superior forces but failed to commit them to take advantage of the opportunity.


title: Regia Marina

text: A further key disadvantage in the convoy support and interception battles that dominated the Battle of the Mediterranean was the intelligence advantage granted to the British in intercepting German "Ultra" and, through this, the key information on Italian convoy routes, times of departure, time of arrival, and make up of the convoy.