title: King penguin

text: The king penguin is able to breed at three years of age, although only a very small minority (5% recorded at Crozet Islands) actually do then; the average age of first breeding is around 5–6 years. King penguins are serially monogamous. They have only one mate each year, and stay faithful to that mate. However, fidelity between years is less than 30%. The unusually long breeding cycle probably contributes to this low rate.


title: King penguin

text: The king penguin has an extremely prolonged breeding cycle, taking around 14–16 months from laying to offspring fledging. Although pairs will attempt to breed annually, they are generally only successful one year in two, or two years in three in a triennial pattern on South Georgia. The reproductive cycle begins in September to November, as birds return to colonies for a prenuptial moult. Those that were unsuccessful in breeding the previous season will usually arrive earlier. They then return to the sea for around three weeks before coming ashore in November or December.


title: King penguin

text: The female penguin lays one pyriform (pear-shaped) white egg weighing 300 g (⅔ lb). It is initially soft, but hardens and darkens to a pale greenish colour. It measures around . The egg is incubated for around 55 days with both birds sharing incubation in shifts of 6–18 days each. Like the closely related emperor penguin, the king penguin balances the egg on its feet and incubates it in a "brood pouch".


title: King penguin

text: Hatching may take up to 2–3 days to complete, and chicks are born semi-altricial and nidicolous. In other words, they have only a thin covering of down, and are entirely dependent on their parents for food and warmth. The "guard phase" begins with the hatching of the chick. Similar to the emperor penguin, the young king penguin chick spends its time balanced on its parents' feet, sheltered in the brood pouch formed from the abdominal skin of the latter. During this time, the parents alternate every 3–7 days, one guarding the chick while the other forages for food. The guard phase lasts for 30–40 days. By then the chick has grown much larger, and is better able to both keep warm and protect itself against most predators. King chicks are very curious and will wander far when exploring their surroundings. The chicks form a group, called a crèche and are watched over by only a few adult birds; most parents leave their chick in these crèches to forage for themselves and their chick. Other species of penguins also practice this method of communal care for offspring.


title: King penguin

text: By April, the chicks are almost fully grown, but lose weight by fasting over the winter months, gaining it again during spring in September. Fledging then takes place in late spring/early summer.


title: King penguin

text: King penguins form huge breeding colonies; for example, the colony on South Georgia Island at Salisbury Plain holds over 100,000 breeding pairs and the colony at St. Andrew's Bay over 100,000 birds. Because of the very long breeding cycle, colonies are continuously occupied year-round with both adult birds and chicks. During breeding, king penguins do not build nests, although they show strong territorial behaviour and keep a pecking distance to neighbouring penguins. Penguin positions in breeding colonies are highly stable over weeks and appear regularly spaced.


title: King penguin

text: The king penguin feeds its chicks by eating fish, digesting it slightly and regurgitating the food into the chick's mouth.


title: King penguin

text: Because of their large size, king penguin chicks take 14–16 months before they are ready to go to sea. This is markedly different from smaller penguins, who rear their chicks through a single summer when food is plentiful. King penguins time their mating so the chicks will develop over the harshest season for fishing. In this way, by the time the young penguins are finally mature enough to leave their parents, it is summer when food is plentiful and conditions are more favorable for the young to survive alone at sea.


title: King penguin

text: 70% of king penguins are expected to abruptly disappear in less than eighty years. Considered sensitive indicators of changes in marine ecosystems, king penguins serve as a key species for understanding the effects of climate change on the marine biome, especially throughout the sub-Antarctic and Antarctic areas.


title: King penguin

text: King penguins primarily feed at the Antarctic Convergence, which provides 80% of their food biomass. King penguins currently travel 300–500 km over a course of over a week to complete the journey. However, ocean warming could easily move these fronts further away from breeding grounds. Continuous ocean warming could cause the convergence zone to move polewards, away from king penguin breeding sites like the Falklands and the Crozet Islands. It has been suggested that if carbon emissions continue to rise at their current rate, king penguins will need to travel an additional 200 km in order to reach their feeding areas. Breeding grounds will also suffer with the rise of emissions. Nearly half of the total population will likely lose their breeding grounds by the year 2100.


title: King penguin

text: King penguins are also threatened by large-scale commercial fishing that could deplete their main source of food: myctophid fish. Over 200,000 tons of myctophid fish were commercially exploited by the beginning of the 1990s in the South Georgia region. Ongoing attempts to further develop this fishery for human consumption close to key penguin foraging areas are likely to have negative impacts on food provisioning.


title: King penguin

text: The Pew Charitable Trust recommends the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) implement “large-scale, fully protected marine reserves in the waters surrounding Antarctica.” The Trust also recommends precautionary management of the Antarctic krill fishery in order to protect king penguins’ main source of food. The CCAMLR is made up of 24 countries (plus the European Union), among those are the United States and China, that withhold the authority to enact such protective measures. It has also been suggested that in conservation modeling, special attention be paid to the southernmost breeding locations, given the predicted rise in water temperature in the Southern Ocean, and that complete regular censuses of breeding populations be carried out to detect temporal trends and environmental changes.


title: King penguin

text: The species is classified as Least Concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species. Since 2004, the IUCN has reported that the population size is large and has increased its breeding rates. Adult king penguins have maintained high survival rates since the 1970s. The steady population of king penguins is due largely to current conservation efforts to protect nesting habitats. Ecotourism and public access to all king penguin breeding sites are heavily restricted in order to prevent outbreaks of disease and general disturbance. All of the colonies in Crozet and Kerguelen Islands are protected under the oversight of the Reserve Naturelle Nationales des Terres australes et Antarctiques Françaises. Additionally, South Georgian penguins reside in a “special protected area within the Environmental Management Plan for South Georgia.” And in the Falklands, all wildlife—including the king penguin—is protected under the Conservation of Wildlife and Nature Bill of 1999.


title: King penguin

text: Considered a flagship species, 176 individuals were counted in captivity in North American zoos and aquaria in 1999. The species is exhibited at SeaWorld Orlando, Indianapolis Zoo, Detroit Zoo, Saint Louis Zoo, Kansas City Zoo, Newport Aquarium in Newport, Kentucky, Edinburgh Zoo and Birdland in the United Kingdom, Berlin Zoological Garden in Germany, Zurich Zoo in Switzerland, Diergaarde Blijdorp in the Netherlands, Antwerp Zoo in Belgium, 63 Seaworld in Seoul, South Korea, Melbourne Aquarium in Australia, Mar del Plata Aquarium in Argentina, Loro Parque in Spain and Ski Dubai in United Arab Emirates, Calgary Zoo in Canada, Odense Zoo in Denmark, Asahiyama Zoo in Hokkaido, Japan, and many other collections.


title: Zhuang Zhou

text: Zhuang Zhou (), commonly known as Zhuangzi (; ; literally "Master Zhuang"; also rendered in the Wade–Giles romanization as Chuang Tzu), was an influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BCE during the Warring States period, a period of great development in Chinese philosophy, the Hundred Schools of Thought. He is credited with writing—in part or in whole—a work known by his name, the "Zhuangzi", which is one of the foundational texts of Taoism.


title: Zhuang Zhou

text: The only account of the life of Zhuangzi is a brief sketch in chapter 63 of Sima Qian's "Records of the Grand Historian", and most of the information it contains seems to have simply been drawn from anecdotes in the "Zhuangzi" itself. In Sima's biography, he is described as a minor official from the town of Meng (in modern Anhui) in the state of Song, living in the time of King Hui of Liang and King Xuan of Qi (late fourth century BC). Sima Qian writes that Chuang-Tze was especially influenced by Lao-Tze, and that he turned down a job offer from King Wei of Chu, because he valued his personal freedom.


title: Zhuang Zhou

text: The validity of his existence has been questioned by Russell Kirkland, who asserts that "there is no reliable historical data at all" for Chuang Chou/Zhuangzi, and that "the "Chuang-tzu" known to us today" is better attributed to its "commentator", the third-century writer Kuo Hsiang"."


title: Zhuang Zhou

text: Zhuangzi is traditionally credited as the author of at least part of the work bearing his name, the "Zhuangzi". This work, in its current shape consisting of 33 chapters, is traditionally divided into three parts: the first, known as the "Inner Chapters", consists of the first seven chapters; the second, known as the "Outer Chapters", consist of the next 15 chapters; the last, known as the "Mixed Chapters", consist of the remaining 11 chapters. The meaning of these three names is disputed: according to Guo Xiang, the "Inner Chapters" were written by Zhuangzi, the "Outer Chapters" written by his disciples, and the "Mixed Chapters" by other hands; the other interpretation is that the names refer to the origin of the titles of the chapters—the "Inner Chapters" take their titles from phrases inside the chapter, the "Outer Chapters" from the opening words of the chapters, and the "Mixed Chapters" from a mixture of these two sources.


title: Zhuang Zhou

text: Further study of the text does not provide a clear choice between these alternatives. On the one side, as Martin Palmer points out in the introduction to his translation, two of the three chapters Sima Qian cited in his biography of Zhuangzi, come from the "Outer Chapters" and the third from the "Mixed Chapters". "Neither of these are allowed as authentic Chuang Tzu chapters by certain purists, yet they breathe the very spirit of Chuang Tzu just as much as, for example, the famous 'butterfly passage' of chapter 2."


title: Zhuang Zhou

text: On the other hand, chapter 33 has been often considered as intrusive, being a survey of the major movements during the "Hundred Schools of Thought" with an emphasis on the philosophy of Hui Shi. Further, A.C. Graham and other critics have subjected the text to a stylistic analysis and identified four strains of thought in the book: a) the ideas of Zhuangzi or his disciples; b) a "primitivist" strain of thinking similar to Laozi in chapters 8-10 and the first half of chapter 11; c) a strain very strongly represented in chapters 28-31 which is attributed to the philosophy of Yang Chu; and d) a fourth strain which may be related to the philosophical school of Huang-Lao. In this spirit, Martin Palmer wrote that "trying to read Chuang Tzu sequentially is a mistake. The text is a collection, not a developing argument."


title: Zhuang Zhou

text: Zhuangzi was renowned for his brilliant wordplay and use of parables to convey messages. His critiques of Confucian society and historical figures are humorous and at times ironic.


title: Zhuang Zhou

text: Zhuangzi has influenced thinking far beyond East Asia. The German philosopher Martin Buber translated his texts in 1910. In 1930, Martin Heidegger asked for Buber's translation of Zhuangzi after his Bremen speech "On the Essence of Truth". In order to explain his own philosophy, Heidegger read from chapter 17, where Zhuangzi says to the thinker Hui Shih:


title: Zhuang Zhou

text: The historian of ideas Dag Herbjørnsrud concludes: "It may therefore be difficult to say where the philosophies of Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi end and where the most influential German thinking of the twentieth century starts [...]"


title: Zhuang Zhou

text: The 20th century Chinese philosopher and essayist Hu Shih considered Zhuangzi a Chinese forerunner of evolution. In the chapter ""Supreme Happiness"", Zhuangzi described the transmutation of species.


title: George Balanchine

text: George Balanchine (; born Georgiy Melitonovich Balanchivadze; ; January 22, 1904 (O. S. January 9) – April 30, 1983) was an ethnic Georgian American ballet choreographer who was one of the most influential 20th-century choreographers. Styled as the father of American ballet, he co-founded the New York City Ballet and remained its artistic director for more than 35 years. His choreography is characterized by plotless ballets with minimal costume and décor, performed to classical and neoclassical music.


title: George Balanchine

text: Born in St. Petersburg, Balanchine took the standards and technique from his time at the Imperial Ballet School and fused it with other schools of movement that he had adopted during his tenure on Broadway and in Hollywood, creating his signature "neoclassical style".


title: George Balanchine

text: He was a choreographer known for his musicality; he expressed music with dance and worked extensively with leading composers of his time like Igor Stravinsky. Balanchine was invited to America in 1933 by a young arts patron named Lincoln Kirstein, and together they founded the School of American Ballet. Along with Kirstein, Balanchine also co-founded the New York City Ballet.


title: George Balanchine

text: Balanchine was born Georgiy Melitonovich Balanchivadze in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, son of Georgian opera singer and composer Meliton Balanchivadze, one of the founders of the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theatre and later the culture minister of the short-lived Democratic Republic of Georgia, which became independent in 1918 but was later subsumed into the Soviet Union.


title: George Balanchine

text: The rest of the Georgian side of Balanchine's family consisted largely of artists and soldiers. Little is known of Balanchine's Russian, maternal side. His mother, Meliton's second wife, Maria Nikolayevna Vasilyeva, is said to be the daughter of Nikolai von Almedingen, a German, who later left Russia and abandoned his family, causing Maria to take her mother's name. She was fond of ballet and viewed it as a form of social advancement from the lower reaches of Saint Petersburg society. She was eleven years younger than Meliton and rumored to have been his former housekeeper, although "she had at least some culture in her background" as she could play piano well. The Balanchine mother also worked at a bank. Although she loved ballet, she wished for her son to join the military. This was a difficult topic to enforce in the family because not only was the mother artistic, George’s father was also very talented at playing the piano. Many believe that because his father was very invested in the arts, Balanchine's career of being a businessman failed. Balanchine had three other siblings. One of them being Andrei Balanchivadze, who became a well-known Georgian composer like his father.


title: George Balanchine

text: As a child, Balanchine was not particularly interested in ballet, but his mother insisted that he audition with his sister Tamara, who shared her mother's interest in the art. Balanchine's brother Andria Balanchivadze instead followed his father's love for music and became a composer in Soviet Georgia. Tamara's career, however, would be cut short by her death in unknown circumstances as she was trying to escape on a train from besieged Leningrad to Georgia.


title: George Balanchine

text: Based on his audition, during 1913 (at age nine), Balanchine relocated from rural Finland to Saint Petersburg and was accepted into the Imperial Ballet School, principal school of the Imperial Ballet, where he was a student of Pavel Gerdt and Samuil Andrianov (Gerdt's son-in-law).


title: George Balanchine

text: Balanchine spent the World War I years at the Mariinsky Theater until it closed down in 1917 due to a government decree. Attending ballet here could have been viewed as a convenience to the Balanchivadze family because this is where his father composed music. This theater was transferred to the People’s Enlightenment Commissariat and became property of the state. The Theater reopened in 1918, then two years later the theater was called the State Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet. He mounted some new and experimental ballets for the Mikhailovsky Theatre in Petrograd. Among them were "Le Boeuf sur le toit" (1920) by Jean Cocteau and Darius Milhaud, and a scene for Caesar and Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw.


title: George Balanchine

text: After graduating in 1921, Balanchine enrolled in the Petrograd Conservatory while working in the corps de ballet at the State Academic Theater for Opera and Ballet (formerly the State Theater of Opera and Ballet and known as the Mariinsky Ballet). His studies at the conservatory included advanced piano, music theory, counterpoint, harmony, and composition. Balanchine graduated from the conservatory in 1923, and danced as a member of the corps until 1924. While still in his teens, Balanchine choreographed his first work, a pas de deux named "La Nuit" (1920, music by Anton Rubinstein), a piece which the school of directors did not approve of or like. George Balanchine went about his choreography in an experimental way during the evening time. He and his colleagues eventually performed this piece at the State School of Ballet. This was followed by another duet, "Enigma", with the dancers in bare feet rather than ballet shoes. In 1923, with fellow dancers, Balanchine formed a small ensemble, the Young Ballet.


title: George Balanchine

text: On a 1924 visit to Germany with the Soviet State Dancers, Balanchine, his wife, Tamara Geva, and dancers Alexandra Danilova and Nicholas Efimov fled to Paris, where there was a large Russian community. At this time, the impresario Sergei Diaghilev invited Balanchine to join the Ballets Russes as a choreographer.


title: George Balanchine

text: Balanchine performed ten routines for Diaghilev. Balanchine was 21 at the time and became the main choreographer for the most famous ballet company. Sergei Diaghilev insisted that Balanchine change his name from Balanchivadze to Balanchine.


title: George Balanchine

text: Diaghilev soon promoted Balanchine to ballet master of the company and encouraged his choreography. Between 1924 and Diaghilev's death in 1929, Balanchine created nine ballets, as well as lesser works. During these years, he worked with composers such as Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, Erik Satie, and Maurice Ravel, and artists who designed sets and costumes, such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault, and Henri Matisse, creating new works that combined all the arts.


title: George Balanchine

text: Among his new works, during 1928 in Paris, Balanchine premiered "Apollon musagète" (Apollo and the muses) in a collaboration with Stravinsky; it was one of his most innovative ballets, combining classical ballet and classical Greek myth and images with jazz movement. He described it as "the turning point in my life". "Apollo" is regarded as the original neoclassical ballet. "Apollo" brought the male dancer to the forefront, giving him two solos within the ballet. "Apollo" is known for its minimalism, utilizing simple costumes and sets. This allowed the audience not to be distracted from the movement. Balanchine considered music to be the primary influence on choreography, as opposed to the narrative.


title: George Balanchine

text: Suffering a serious knee injury, Balanchine had to limit his dancing, effectively ending his performance career.


title: George Balanchine

text: After Diaghilev's death, the Ballets Russes went bankrupt. To earn money, Balanchine began to stage dances for Charles B. Cochran's revues and Sir Oswald Stoll's variety shows in London. He was retained by the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen as a guest ballet master. Among his new works for the company were "Danses Concertantes", a pure dance piece to music by Stravinsky, and "Night Shadow", revived under the title "La Sonnambula".


title: George Balanchine

text: In 1931, with the help of financier Serge Denham, René Blum and Colonel Wassily de Basil formed the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo, a successor to Ballets Russes. The new company hired Leonide Massine and Balanchine as choreographers. Featured dancers included David Lichine and Tatiana Riabouchinska. In 1933, without consulting Blum, Col. de Basil dropped Balanchine after one year – ostensibly because he thought that audiences preferred the works choreographed by Massine. Librettist Boris Kochno was also let go, while dancer Tamara Toumanova (a strong admirer of Balanchine) left the company when Balanchine was fired.


title: George Balanchine

text: Balanchine and Kochno immediately founded Les Ballets 1933, with Kochno, Diaghilev's former secretary and companion, serving as artistic advisor. The company was financed by Edward James, a British poet and ballet patron. The company lasted only a couple of months during 1933, performing only in Paris and London, when the Great Depression made arts more difficult to fund. Balanchine created several new works, including collaborations with composers Kurt Weill, Darius Milhaud, Henri Sauguet and designer Pavel Tchelitchew.


title: George Balanchine

text: Balanchine insisted that his first project in the United States would be to establish a ballet school because he wanted to develop dancers who had strong technique along with his particular style. Compared to his classical training, he thought they could not dance well. With the assistance of Lincoln Kirstein and Edward M.M. Warburg, the School of American Ballet opened to students on January 2, 1934, less than three months after Balanchine arrived in the U.S. Later that year, Balanchine had his students perform in a recital, where they premiered his new work "Serenade" to music by Tchaikovsky at Woodlands, the Warburg summer estate. The school of American Ballet became and is now a home for dancers of New York City Ballet as well as companies from all over the world.


title: George Balanchine

text: Between his ballet activities in the 1930s and 1940s, Balanchine choreographed Broadway musicals written by such notables as Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart and Vernon Duke. Among them, Balanchine choreographed Rodgers and Hart's "On Your Toes" in 1936, where his program billing specified "Choreography by George Balanchine" as opposed to the usual billing of "Dances staged by." This marked the first time in Broadway history that a dance-maker received choreography billing for a Broadway musical. "On Your Toes" featured two ballets: "La Princesse Zenobia" and "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue", in which a tap dancer falls in love with a dance-hall girl. Balanchine's choreography in musicals was unique at the time because it furthered the plot of the story.


title: George Balanchine

text: Balanchine relocated his company to Hollywood in 1938, where he rented a white two-story house with "Kolya", Nicholas Kopeikine, his "rehearsal pianist and lifelong colleague", on North Fairfax Avenue not far from Hollywood Boulevard. Balanchine created dances for five movies, all of which featured Vera Zorina, whom he met on the set of "The Goldwyn Follies" and who subsequently became his second wife. He reconvened the company as the American Ballet Caravan and toured with it throughout North and South America, but it folded after several years. From 1944 to 1946, during and after World War II, Balanchine served as resident choreographer for Blum & Massine's new iteration of Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo.


title: George Balanchine

text: Soon Balanchine formed a new dance company, Ballet Society, again with the generous help of Lincoln Kirstein. He continued to work with contemporary composers such as Paul Hindemith, from whom he commissioned a score in 1940 for "The Four Temperaments". First performed on November 20, 1946, this modernist work was one of his early abstract and spare ballets, angular and very different in movement. After several successful performances, the most notable featuring the ballet "Orpheus" created in collaboration with Stravinsky and sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi, the City of New York offered the company residency at the New York City Center.


title: George Balanchine

text: In 1954, Balanchine created his version of "The Nutcracker", in which he played the mime role of Drosselmeyer. The company has since performed the ballet every year in New York City during the Christmas season. His other famous ballets created for New York companies include "Firebird", "Allegro Brilliante", "Agon", "The Seven Deadly Sins", and "Episodes".


title: George Balanchine

text: In 1967, Balanchine's ballet "Jewels" displayed specific characteristics of Balanchine's choreography. The corps de ballet dancers execute rapid footwork and precise movements. The choreography is difficult to execute and all dancers must do their jobs in order to hold the integrity of the piece. Balanchine's use of musicality can also be seen in this work. His other famous works with New York City Ballet are popular today and are performed in the Lincoln Center by New York City Ballet: "Mozartiana", "Apollo", "Orpheus", and "A Midsummer Night's Dream".


title: George Balanchine

text: After years of illness, Balanchine died on April 30, 1983, aged 79, in Manhattan from Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, which was diagnosed only after his death. He first showed symptoms during 1978 when he began losing his balance while dancing. As the disease progressed, his equilibrium, eyesight, and hearing deteriorated. By 1982, he was incapacitated. The night of his death, the company went on with its scheduled performance, which included "Divertimento No. 15" and "Symphony in C" at Lincoln Center.


title: George Balanchine

text: Clement Crisp, one of the many writers who eulogized Balanchine, assessed his contribution: "It is hard to think of the ballet world without the colossal presence of George Balanchine ..." In his lifetime he created 465 works. Balanchine extended the traditions of classical ballet. His choreography remains the same to the present day and the School of American Ballet still uses his teaching technique. As one of the 20th century's best-known choreographers, his style and vision of ballet is interesting to many generations of choreographers.


title: George Balanchine

text: He had a Russian Orthodox funeral, and was interred at the Oakland Cemetery at Sag Harbor, Suffolk County, New York at the same cemetery where Alexandra Danilova was later interred.


title: George Balanchine

text: In 1923, Balanchine married Tamara Geva, a sixteen-year-old dancer. After later parting ways with Geva, he became romantically involved with the ballerina Alexandra Danilova, from approximately 1924 to 1931. As "The New York Times" described their relationship in its obituary for Danilova: "She and Balanchine left the Soviet Union in 1924... Until 1931, she and Balanchine lived together as husband and wife, although they were never married. Balanchine was still officially married to another dancer, Tamara Geva, and he told Miss Danilova that because his marriage papers had been left behind in Russia, he feared it might be difficult to arrange a legal separation." He married and divorced three more times, all to women who were his dancers: Vera Zorina (1938–1946), Maria Tallchief (1946–1952), and Tanaquil LeClercq (1952–1969). He had no children by any of his marriages and no known offspring from any of his extramarital liaisons.


title: George Balanchine

text: Biographer and intellectual historian Clive James has argued that Balanchine, despite his creative genius and brilliance as a ballet choreographer, had his darker side. In his "Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts" (2007), James writes that:


title: George Balanchine

text: With his School of American Ballet, New York City Ballet, and 400 choreographed works, Balanchine transformed American dance and created neoclassical ballet, developing a unique style with his dancers highlighted by brilliant speed and attack.


title: George Balanchine

text: A monument at the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theatre in Georgia was dedicated in Balanchine's memory. A crater on Mercury was named in his honor.


title: George Balanchine

text: George Balanchine Way is a segment of West 63rd Street (located between Columbus Avenue and Broadway) in New York City that was renamed in his honor in June 1990.


title: Ace Ventura

text: Ace Ventura is a title character created by screenwriter Jack Bernstein. Ace was performed by Jim Carrey in the films "", released in 1994, and "", released in 1995, and was voiced by Michael Daingerfield in the "" television series.


title: Ace Ventura

text: Ace is a Miami-based private detective specializing in the retrieval of missing animals, the son of Rex Ventura and descendant of such as "Ernest Ventura Shackleton" and "Jacques Ventura Costeau". It is not known whether the animated television series was contiguous with the feature-films; but if it was it may take place before them because the only one of his pets to appear in the series is his capuchin monkey, Spike. His eccentricities make him a laughing stock to the Miami-Dade Police Department in the early part of the first movie, but he eventually earned their respect after his rescue of quarterback Dan Marino and the dolphin, Snowflake, the mascot of the Miami Dolphins.


title: Ace Ventura

text: During the first film, Ace lives in an apartment alongside many different animals, all of whom hide from his landlord, Mr. Shickadance (Mark Margolis) in his absence, and to whom he owes money for rent. He is tasked with not only finding a stolen dolphin, but also trying to prevent the kidnapping of Dan Marino from a psychopath ex-football player, Ray Finkle, bent on revenge for costing the Dolphins the game with the botched field goal against the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XIX. He is certain that Finkle is the man responsible, but he can't find Finkle. Ace also learns of a missing hiker who coincidentally is named Lois Einhorn, who is a lieutenant of the Miami Police department and tries to figure out the connection she has with his suspect. Eventually, Ace not only discovers the connection that Finkle has with Einhorn, but also that they're the same person in disguise. As the real Lois Einhorn was still missing, Finkle had used the opportunity to steal her identity by having a sex-change and then joined the police force as part of his plan for revenge. Disgusted by the thought that when he had been previously kissed by Einhorn, he had actually been kissed by a man, Ace spends the night rinsing his mouth out and washing himself. Following Einhorn to the hideout inside a wharf, he tries to test his theory on her, but finds a normal feminine body and actual hair. Before Ace was about to give up, Marino secretly alerts him to a bulge sticking between her legs. With concrete proof, Ace makes a short humiliating speech at Einhorn while revealing to the entire Miami PD about her true motive in killing Roger Podacter, when he discovered her true identity as Finkle ("He found Captain Winky!"). He proves it by forcibly turning Einhorn over to reveal the bulge sticking out of her silk panties. Everyone in the PD, as well as Marino and Snowflake, reacts in disgust when they learned that Finkle had kissed them the same way as Ace. Now humiliated and exposed, Finkle makes his last attempt to kill Ace out of revenge, but he flips him over into the wharf. As he attempts to pull himself up, Ace steps over Finkle's hand and takes the ring which was indeed missing a stone to finalize his theory that Einhorn is no doubt the disgraced Ray Finkle. Ace begins a relationship with Miami Dolphins’ press officer, Melissa Robinson, while Finkle is arrested for his crimes.


title: Ace Ventura

text: During the second film, Ace attempts monasticism after a failed rescue attempt of a raccoon, only to be called out of retirement to investigate a missing sacred animal named Shikaka, although he has a severe fear of bats. During meditation with the Abbot, he discovers Vincent Cadby who originally hired him to find the bat is the same kidnapper who wanted the war to happen so he can take control of the guano deposits there. His motive for hiring Ace was to have an alibi, that he tried to prevent the war. He thwarts Cadby's plans to have the two tribes go to war and returns the sacred bat. After the marriage between the Wachati chief's daughter and Tiny Warrior, Ace is eventually hunted down by both tribes, implying he had something to do with the princess no longer being a virgin.


title: Ace Ventura

text: By the events portrayed in "," it is established that after resolving his case in Africa, Ace returned to Miami and started a family. He married Melissa and they had a son, Jr.. But Ace has disappeared somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle, and never appears in the film itself. However, Ace Jr. inherited his ability to discern trouble, which he must rely on when he must assist in finding his classmates' pets along with the missing animals and clear his mother's name when she is accused of the theft. Ace Jr. believes her innocence and seeks the help of his grandfather, Rex, to help him investigate the whole thing. They begin to suspect that one of his classmates was involved in the theft and with the help of A-Plus, Ace Jr. suspects that Pennington Jr. had been involved with Dr. Sickenger (who is insane). Sickenger is found to be innocent and he helps lead Ace Jr. along with Rex to the true culprit, Quinton Pennington Sr. After finding the animals in the Pennington family home, Pennington Sr. confesses to his crime, admitting that he stole the pets along with the famous animals because he was trying to keep his son happy. He eventually got fed up with his spoiled nature when he refused to be satisfied. Melissa is cleared of the theft charges and Pennington Sr. is arrested for his crimes. Ace Jr. is rewarded as a hero for his efforts.


title: Ace Ventura

text: Ace Ventura is an eccentric self-styled "pet detective" who forsook regular police work to concentrate on this latter pursuit. Like other fictional detectives, he is notable for extraordinary powers of observation and deduction; and on at least one occasion, he has managed to escape being shot by catching a bullet in his teeth.


title: Ace Ventura

text: Ventura's eccentricities include his persistent vulgarity and exceedingly flamboyant behaviour; despite this, he is a dedicated detective, driven by an insatiable adoration of animals and a desire to protect them from human mistreatment. In "", it is implied that his abilities, personality and appearance are hereditary. Although Ace is an animal lover, "" reveals a deep-seated fear of bats.


title: Ace Ventura

text: In most appearances, Ace usually wears an unbuttoned Aloha shirt over a plain white A-shirt, with red and black striped trousers and black engineer boots.


title: Ace Ventura

text: In the episode "The Aceman Cometh" of "", when Milo, the pet dog of Stanley Ipkiss, was stolen by Dr. Pretorius, Ipkiss calls Ace for help. Both Ipkiss/the Mask and Ace Ventura were the animated versions of characters portrayed by Jim Carrey himself. The crossover continued in the "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" episode "Have Mask, Will Travel", in which Ace accidentally wears the mask on his buttocks, which assumes a face similar to his own and gains the ability to speak, suggesting a joke featured in "" of speaking while presenting his rump to the listener and moving it in semblance of a speaking mouth.


title: Ace Ventura

text: Ace was ranked the 59th Greatest Movie Character in a November 2008 list by "Empire Magazine". Despite his popularity, he was also voted one of the most annoying film characters ever in a British online poll.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: Har Gobind Khorana (9 January 1922 – 9 November 2011) was an Indian American biochemist. While on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley for research that showed the order of nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell and control the cell's synthesis of proteins. Khorana and Nirenberg were also awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in the same year.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: Born in British India, Khorana served on the faculties of three universities in North America. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1966, and received the National Medal of Science in 1987.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: Khorana was born to Krishna Devi Khorana and Ganpat Rai Khorana, in Raipur, a village in Multan, Punjab, British India in a Punjabi Hindu family. The exact date of his birth is not certain but he believed that it might have been 9 January 1922; this date was later shown in some documents, and has been widely accepted. He was the youngest of five children. His father was a patwari, a village agricultural taxation clerk in the British Indian government. In his autobiography, Khorana wrote this summary: "Although poor, my father was dedicated to educating his children and we were practically the only literate family in the village inhabited by about 100 people." The first four years of his education were provided under a tree, a spot that was, in effect, the only school in the village. He did not even own a pencil until age 6.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: He attended D.A.V. (Dayanand Anglo-Vedic) High School in Multan, in West Punjab. Later, he studied at the Punjab University in Lahore, with the assistance of scholarships, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in 1943 and a Master of Science degree in 1945.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: Khorana lived in British India until 1945, when he moved to England to study organic chemistry at the University of Liverpool on a Government of India Fellowship. He received his PhD in 1948 advised by Roger J. S. Beer. The following year, he pursued postdoctoral studies with Professor Vladimir Prelog at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. He worked for nearly a year on alkaloid chemistry in an unpaid position.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: During a brief period in 1949, he was unable to find a job in his original home area in the Punjab. He returned to England on a fellowship to work with George Wallace Kenner and Alexander R. Todd on peptides and nucleotides. He stayed in Cambridge from 1950 until 1952.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: He moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, with his family in 1952 after accepting a position with the British Columbia Research Council at University of British Columbia. Khorana was excited by the prospect of starting his own lab, a colleague later recalled. His mentor later said that the Council had few facilities at the time but gave the researcher "all the freedom in the world". His work in British Columbia was on "nucleic acids and synthesis of many important biomolecules" according to the American Chemical Society.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: In 1960 Khorana accepted a position as co-director of the University of Wisconsin–Madison's Institute for Enzyme Research He became a professor of biochemistry in 1962 and was named Conrad A. Elvehjem Professor of Life Sciences in 1964. While at Wisconsin, "he helped decipher the mechanisms by which RNA codes for the synthesis of proteins" and "began to work on synthesizing functional genes". During his tenure at this University, he completed the work that led to sharing the Nobel prize. The Nobel web site states that it was "for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis". Har Gobind Khorana's role is stated as follows: he "made important contributions to this field by building different RNA chains with the help of enzymes. Using these enzymes, he was able to produce proteins. The amino acid sequences of these proteins then solved the rest of the puzzle."


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: He became a US citizen in 1966. Beginning in 1970, Khorana was the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Biology and Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later, a member of the Board of Scientific Governors at The Scripps Research Institute. He retired from MIT in 2007.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: Har Gobind Khorana married Esther Elizabeth Sibler in 1952. They had met in Switzerland and had three children, Julia Elizabeth, Emily Anne, and Dave Roy.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: Ribonucleic acid (RNA) with two repeating units (UCUCUCU → UCU CUC UCU) produced two alternating amino acids. This, combined with the Nirenberg and Leder experiment, showed that UCU genetically codes for serine and CUC codes for leucine. RNAs with three repeating units (UACUACUA → UAC UAC UAC, or ACU ACU ACU, or CUA CUA CUA) produced three different strings of amino acids. RNAs with four repeating units including UAG, UAA, or UGA, produced only dipeptides and tripeptides thus revealing that UAG, UAA, and UGA are stop codons.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: Their Nobel lecture was delivered on 12 December 1968. Khorana was the first scientist to chemically synthesize oligonucleotides.<ref name="doi10.1126/science.366749"></ref> This achievement, in the 1970s, was also the world's first synthetic gene; in later years, the process has become widespread. Subsequent scientists referred to his research while advancing genome editing with the CRISPR/Cas9 system.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: After years of work, he was the first in the world to complete the total synthesis of a functional gene outside a living organism in 1972. He did this by extending the above to long DNA polymers using non-aqueous chemistry and assembled these into the first synthetic gene, using polymerase and ligase enzymes that link pieces of DNA together, as well as methods that anticipated the invention of polymerase chain reaction (PCR). These custom-designed pieces of artificial genes are widely used in biology labs for sequencing, cloning and engineering new plants and animals, and are integral to the expanding use of DNA analysis to understand gene-based human disease as well as human evolution. Khorana's invention(s) have become automated and commercialized so that anyone now can order a synthetic oligonucleotide or a gene from any of a number of companies. One merely needs to send the genetic sequence to one of the companies to receive an oligonucleotide with the desired sequence.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: After the middle of the 1970s, his lab studied the biochemistry of bacteriorhodopsin, a membrane protein that converts light energy into chemical energy by creating a proton gradient. Later, his lab went on to study the structurally related visual pigment known as rhodopsin.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: A summary of his work was provided by a former colleague at the University of Wisconsin: "Khorana was an early practitioner, and perhaps a founding father, of the field of chemical biology. He brought the power of chemical synthesis to bear on deciphering the genetic code, relying on different combinations of trinucleotides."


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: In addition to sharing the Nobel prize, Khorana was elected a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1966, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1967, a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1973, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1978. In 2007, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Government of India (DBT Department of Biotechnology), and the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum jointly created the Khorana Program. The mission of the Khorana Program is to build a seamless community of scientists, industrialists, and social entrepreneurs in the United States and India.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: The program is focused on three objectives: Providing graduate and undergraduate students with a transformative research experience, engaging partners in rural development and food security, and facilitating public-private partnerships between the U.S. and India. The Wisconsin–India Science and Technology Exchange Program (WINStep Forward, WSF) adopted administration responsibilities for the Khorana program in 2007. WINStep Forward was jointly created by Drs. Aseem Ansari and Ken Shapiro at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. WINStep Forward also administers the nationally competitive S.N. Bose Programs for Indian and American students, respectively, to promote both fundamental and applied research not only in biotechnology but broadly across all STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, including medicine, pharmacy, agriculture, wildlife and climate change.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: In 2009, Khorana was hosted by the Khorana Program and honored at the 33rd Steenbock Symposium in Madison, Wisconsin.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: Other honors included the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University and the Lasker Foundation Award for Basic Medical Research, both in 1969, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1971, the Willard Gibbs Medal of the Chicago section of the American Chemical Society, in 1974, the Gairdner Foundation Annual Award, in 1980 and the Paul Kayser International Award of Merit in Retina Research, in 1987.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: On 9 January 2018, a Google Doodle celebrated the achievements of Har Gobind Khorana on what would have been his 96th birthday.


title: Har Gobind Khorana

text: Khorana died on 9 November 2011, in Concord, Massachusetts, at the age of 89. His wife, Esther, and daughter, Emily Anne, had died earlier, but Khorana was survived by his other two children. Julia Elizabeth later wrote about her father's work as a professor: "Even while doing all this research, he was always really interested in education, in students and young people."


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: "Give me liberty, or give me death!" is a quotation attributed to American politician and orator Patrick Henry from a speech he made to the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775, at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia. Henry is credited with having swung the balance in convincing the convention to pass a resolution delivering Virginian troops for the Revolutionary War. Among the delegates to the convention were future United States presidents Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: Over forty years after Patrick Henry delivered his speech and eighteen years after his death, biographer William Wirt published a posthumous reconstruction of the speech in his 1817 work "Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry". This is the version of the speech as it is widely known today and was reconstructed based on the recollections of elderly witnesses many decades later. A scholarly debate persists among colonial historians as to what extent Wirt or others invented parts of the speech including its famous closing words.


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: The Second Virginia Convention met in Richmond at St. John's Episcopal Church on March 20, 1775. Delegates selected a presiding officer, and they elected delegates to the Continental Congress. At the convention, Patrick Henry—a delegate from Hanover County—offered amendments to raise a militia independent of royal authority in terms that explicitly recognized that war with the British Empire was inevitable, sparking the opposition of convention moderates. On March 23, Henry defended his amendments and purportedly concluded with the following statement:


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: As he concluded, Henry plunged an ivory letter opener towards his chest in imitation of the Roman patriot Cato the Younger.


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: According to Edmund Randolph, the convention sat in profound silence for several minutes after Henry's speech ended. George Mason, who later drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, said that the audience's passions were not their own after Henry had addressed them. Thomas Marshall told his son John Marshall, who later became Chief Justice of the United States, that the speech was "one of the boldest, vehement, and animated pieces of eloquence that had ever been delivered." Edward Carrington, listening by a window, was so affected by the speech that he requested to be buried there, and in "1810, he got his wish."


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: Ultimately, Henry's speech swayed the convention, and it was resolved that the colony be "put into a posture of defence: and that Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Robert Carter Nicholas, Benjamin Harrison, Lemuel Riddick, George Washington, Adam Stephen, Andrew Lewis, William Christian, Edmund Pendleton, Thomas Jefferson and Isaac Zane, Esquires, be a committee to prepare a plan for the embodying arming and disciplining such a number of men as may be sufficient for that purpose." Despite this resolution, many moderate delegates remained uncertain where the resistance urged by Henry and other radicals would lead, and few counties formed independent militia companies at the urging of the convention. Nevertheless, Henry was named as chairman of the committee assigned to build a militia.


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: A month later, Lord Dunmore, the British colonial governor of Virginia, ordered royal troops to seize the gunpowder in the public magazine at Williamsburg, Virginia. This flashpoint—later known as the Gunpowder Incident—became Virginia's equivalent of the Battle of Lexington. Upon learning of Dunmore's decision, Patrick Henry led his militia toward Williamsburg to force return of the gunpowder to the colony. The stand-off was resolved without conflict when a payment of £330 was made to Henry. Fearing for his safety, Dunmore retreated to a naval vessel, ending royal control of the colony. Henry became the independent state's first governor in July 1776.


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: In the months following Henry's speech, English monarchist Samuel Johnson published a 1775 pamphlet titled "Taxation No Tyranny" in which he asked rhetorically, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" In the pamphlet, Johnson used Henry's rhetoric to emphasize the hypocrisy of the colonists agitating for independence. Johnson denounced American separatists as "traitors to this country", and he felt confident that any conflict would end with "English superiority and American obedience".


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: Over 40 years after Patrick Henry delivered his speech and 18 years after Henry's death, a reconstruction of the speech was printed in Wirt's 1817 biography "Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry". Wirt corresponded with elderly men who had heard the speech in their youth as well as others who were acquainted with people who were there at the time. All concurred that Henry's speech had produced a profound effect upon its audience, but only one surviving witness attempted to reconstruct the actual speech.


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: St. George Tucker attempted a two-paragraph reconstruction of the speech in a letter to Wirt, but Tucker noted that it was "in vain... to give any idea of his speech". Using Tucker's two paragraphs, Wirt "filled in the blanks" and created a speech that was far longer in length. The original letter with Tucker's remembrances has been lost.


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: For 160 years, Wirt's reconstruction of Henry's speech was accepted as fact. In the 1970s, historians began to question the authenticity of Wirt's rendition. According to the only written first-hand account of the speech, Henry's 1775 speech used graphic name-calling that does not appear in Wirt's 1817 rendition. Furthermore, Wirt's reconstruction is devoid of Henry's rhetorical custom of invoking fear of Indian attacks in promoting independence from Britain. Given Wirt's artistic liberties in reconstructing the speech, it is possible that Henry never uttered the quotation, "Give me liberty, or give me death," and scholars question to what extent the speech we know is the work of Wirt or Tucker.


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: According to historian Bernard Mayo, most scholars are skeptical of the accuracy of Wirt's rendition of Henry's speech. Nevertheless, "its expressions... seemed to have burned themselves into men's memories. Certainly, its spirit is that of the fiery orator who in 1775 so powerfully influenced Virginians and events leading to American independence."


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: There had been similar phrases used preceding Henry's speech. The 1320 Declaration of Arbroath made in the context of Scottish independence was a letter to Pope John XXII that contained the line: "It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom—for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself". It is commonly cited as an inspiration for the Declaration of Independence by many, including Trent Lott in a speech before the United States Senate.


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: The 1713 play, "Cato, a Tragedy", was popular in the American Colonies and well known by the Founding Fathers who frequently quoted from the play. George Washington had the play performed for the Continental Army at Valley Forge. It contains the line, "It is not now time to talk of aught/But chains or conquest, liberty or death" (Act II, Scene 4). The phrase "Liberty or Death" also appears on the Culpeper Minutemen flag of 1775.


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: Phrases equivalent to "liberty or death" have appeared in a variety of other places. In the summer of 1787, the armed citizens' militia of the Dutch Republic paraded and drilled beneath banners extolling "Liberty or Death". Soon after, amid the French Revolution, the sentence that would become the national motto of France "Liberté égalité fraternité" ("Liberty, equality, fraternity") was sometimes written as "Liberté, égalité, fraternité ou la mort" ("Liberty, equality, fraternity or death").


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: During the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s, "Liberty or Death" ("Eleftheria i thanatos") became a rallying cry for Greeks who rebelled against Ottoman rule. During this same period, Emperor Pedro I of Brazil purportedly uttered the famous "Cry from [the river] Ipiranga", "Independence or Death" ("Independência ou Morte") in 1821, when Brazil was still a colony of Portugal.


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: The 1833 national anthem of Uruguay, "Orientales, la Patria o la Tumba", contains the line "¡Libertad o con gloria morir!" ("Liberty or with glory to die!").


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: During the Russian Civil War, the flag used by Nestor Makhno's anarchist Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine had the dual slogans "Liberty or Death" and "The Land to the Peasants, the Factories to the Workers" embroidered in silver on its two sides.


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: In March 1941, the motto of the public demonstrations in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia against the signing of a treaty with Nazi Germany was "Better grave than slave" ("Bolje grob nego rob").


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: During the Indonesian National Revolution, the Pemuda ("Youth") used the phrase "Merdeka atau Mati" ("Freedom or Death").


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: In the 1964 speech "The Ballot or the Bullet" in Cleveland, Ohio, Malcolm X said, "It'll be ballots, or it'll be bullets. It'll be liberty, or it will be death. The only difference about this kind of death—it'll be reciprocal."


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: In 2012, in China, Ren Jianyu, a 25-year-old former college student "village official," was given a two-year re-education through labor sentence for an online speech against the Chinese Communist Party. A T-shirt of Ren saying "Give me liberty or give me death!" (in Chinese) has been taken as evidence of his anti-social guilt.


title: Give me liberty, or give me death!

text: In the 2022 COVID-19 protests in China, a man in Chongqing was filmed giving a speech criticizing harsh lockdown measures, shouting "Give me liberty or give me death!" in Chinese repeatedly to the cheers of onlookers.


title: Carlos Valdes (actor)

text: Carlos David Valdes (born April 20, 1989) is a Colombian-American actor and singer. He is best known for his role as Cisco Ramon / Vibe on The CW television series "The Flash" and other Arrowverse-related projects.


title: Carlos Valdes (actor)

text: Valdes was born in Cali, Colombia and raised in Miami, Florida by the age of 5, then moved again to Marietta, Georgia at the age of 12. He studied at the University of Michigan with Darren Criss and other actors from the theater group StarKid Productions, and co-wrote their 2009 musical "Me and My Dick". Additionally he played the bass for that show as well as for "A Very Potter Musical", and was featured on the track "A Thousand and One Nights (Pop Version)" which played during the end credits of "Twisted" and appeared on the cover album "Twisted: Twisted."


title: Carlos Valdes (actor)

text: After graduating in 2011, Valdes became entirely devoted to theater. Between 2009 and 2011, he participated in theatrical productions like "High School Musical" and "The Wedding Singer". He also was a stand-in in the national tour of "Jersey Boys". From March 2013 to March 2014, he played the role of Andrej in the musical "Once", in which he also performed on piano, guitar, ukulele, bass, and percussion.


title: Carlos Valdes (actor)

text: In 2014, Valdes made his television debut in the American series "Arrow", before appearing in the spin-off series, "The Flash", as a series regular in the role of Francisco "Cisco" Ramón, an engineering genius. Cisco is part of the S.T.A.R. Labs team, along with Dr. Harrison Wells and Dr. Caitlin Snow, that help Barry Allen with his superpowers. Ramon is later revealed to have metahuman powers of his own, and takes on the moniker Vibe. Valdes also played other versions of Ramon: his Earth-2 doppelganger, who goes by Reverb; Pablo, a waiter in the season 3 episode "Duet"; and his Earth-19 doppelganger, who goes by Echo. Valdes also voiced the character in the animated spin-off web series "Vixen". Valdes exited "The Flash" as a regular cast member after its seventh season.


title: Carlos Valdes (actor)

text: Valdes also works as a songwriter, instrumentalist, and recording artist. In 2015, he independently released the EP "Night Off", under his music pseudonym Tha Los.


title: Musa (genus)

text: Musa is one of two or three genera in the family Musaceae. The genus includes flowering plants producing edible bananas and plantains. Around 70 species of "Musa" are known, with a broad variety of uses.


title: Musa (genus)

text: Though they grow as high as trees, banana and plantain plants are not woody and their apparent "stem" is made up of the bases of the huge leaf stalks. Thus, they are technically gigantic herbaceous plants.


title: Musa (genus)

text: "Musa" species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species, including the giant leopard moth and other "Hypercompe" species, including "H. albescens" (only recorded on "Musa"), "H. eridanus", and "H. icasia".


title: Musa (genus)

text: Banana plants represent some of the largest herbaceous plants existing in the present, with some reaching up to in height (59 feet (18 meters) in the case of "Musa ingens"). The large herb is composed of a modified underground stem (rhizome), a false trunk, a network of roots, and a large flower spike. The false trunk is an aggregation of the basal portion of leaf sheathes; it is not until the plant is ready to flower that a true stem grows up through the sheath and droops back down towards the ground. At the end of this stem grows a peduncle with many female flowers protected by large purple-red bracts. The extension of the stem (this part called the rachis) continues growth downward where terminal male flowers grows. The leaves originate from a pseudostem and unroll to show a leaf blade with two lamina halves. The lamina can be as much as 22 feet (seven meters) in length in the case of "Musa truncata" of the Malay Penninsula). "Musa" reproduces by both sexual (seed) and asexual (suckers) processes, utilizing asexual means when producing sterile (non-seedy) fruits. Further qualities to distinguish "Musa" include spirally arranged leaves, fruits as berries, latex-producing cells present, Flowers with 5 connate tepals and 1 member of the inner whorl distinct, and petiole with one row of air channels.


title: Musa (genus)

text: The genus "Musa" was first named by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. The name is a Latinization of the Arabic name for the fruit, "mauz" (موز). "Mauz" meaning "Musa" is discussed in the 11th-century Arabic encyclopedia "The Canon of Medicine", which was translated to Latin in medieval times and well known in Europe. "Muz" is also the Turkish, Persian, and Somali name for the fruit. Some sources assert that "Musa" is named for Antonius Musa, physician to the Emperor Augustus. According to Roger Blench, the ultimate origin of "musa" is in the Trans–New Guinea languages, whence they were borrowed into the Austronesian languages and across Asia, via the Dravidian languages of India, into Persian, Greek and Arabic as a "Wanderwort":


title: Musa (genus)

text: The word "banana" came to English from Spanish and Portuguese, which in turn apparently obtained it from a West African language (possibly Wolof).


title: Musa (genus)

text: From the time of Linnaeus until the 1940s, different types of edible bananas and plantains were given Linnaean binomial names, such as "Musa cavendishii", as if they were species. In fact, edible bananas have an extremely complicated origin involving hybridization, mutation, and finally selection by humans. Most edible bananas are seedless (parthenocarpic), hence sterile, so they are propagated vegetatively. The giving of species names to what are actually very complex, largely asexual, hybrids (mostly of two species of wild bananas, "Musa acuminata" and "Musa balbisiana") led to endless confusion in banana botany. In the 1940s and 1950s, it became clear to botanists that the cultivated bananas and plantains could not usefully be assigned Linnean binomials, but were better given cultivar names.


title: Musa (genus)

text: "Musa" sectional systematics possesses a history dating back to 1887. In that year, M.P. Sagot published "Sur Le Genre Bananier", where the genus "Musa" was first formally classified. In this article, Sagot grouped the "Musa" species into three groups, although no section names were assigned to them. The grouping was based on morphological traits, establishing the trio as:


title: Musa (genus)

text: In 1893, five years after Sagot's article, J.G. Baker made the first formal designation of "Musa" sections. To do so, he named three subgenera which almost paralleled the sections that had been described by Sagot. These sections were:


title: Musa (genus)

text: After this classification, 50 years passed without revision to the banana sections. In 1947, Cheeseman reclassified the taxon based on morphological features and chromosome number. This project proposed 4 sections:


title: Musa (genus)

text: The addition of another "Musa" section came in 1976 in G.C.G. Ardent's "The wild bananas of Papua New Guinea". The added section, "M". sect. "Ingentimusa" , was based on a single species, "Musa ingens". This designation put the number of sections in "Musa" at five: "Eumusa", "Rhodochlamys", "Callimusa", "Australimusa", and "Ingentimusa".


title: Musa (genus)

text: In the 21st century, genomics have become cheaper, more efficient, and more accurate, and "Musa" genetic research has increased exponentially. Research was conducted around a diversity of genomic markers (cpDNA, nrDNA, rDNA, introns, various spacers, etc.). The results of many of these studies suggested that the five sections of "Musa" defined by morphology (and listed above) were not monophyletic.


title: Musa (genus)

text: Based on the incorrect section grouping, Markku Häkkinen proposed another reclassification of the "Musa" sections in 2013. Using a multitude of genetic evidence and markers from other studies, Häkkinen suggested the reduction of five "Musa" sections into two: "Musa" and "Callimusa". Unlike sectional classifications of the past, this hypothesis was based on genetic markers rather than morphological features or chromosome number. The two groups were generally formed by the clustering of the previously defined groups:


title: Musa (genus)

text: The advance of genomic analysis technologies and further data on the relatedness of "Musa" species, formulated Häkkinen's two sections and later corroborated them as correct subcategories for the genus. The history of "Musa" sections provides an example of genomics superseding morphological evidence and thus classifications.


title: Musa (genus)

text: The World Checklist of Selected Plant Families accepts 68 species and two primary hybrids, , which are listed below. The assignment to sections is based on GRIN (where this gives the species), regrouped according to Wong et al.


title: Musa (genus)

text: [A] and [C] indicate known placement in the former sections "Australimusa" and "Callimusa", respectively.


title: Musa (genus)

text: A number of distinct groups of plants bearing edible fruit have been developed from species of "Musa". In English, fruits which are sweet and used for dessert are usually called "bananas", whereas starchier varieties used for cooking are called "plantains", but these terms do not have any botanical significance. By far the largest and now the most widely distributed group of cultivated bananas is derived from section "Musa", particularly and , either alone or in various hybrid combinations. The next but much smaller group is derived from members of section "Callimusa" (previously classified as "Australimusa") and is restricted in importance to Polynesia. Of even more restricted importance are small groups of hybrids from Papua New Guinea; a group from section "Musa" to which "Musa schizocarpa" has also contributed, and a group of hybrids between section "Musa" and section "Callimusa".


title: Musa (genus)

text: Banana and plantains are the fourth most produced food globally surpassed only by the staple crops of rice, wheat and maize.


title: Musa (genus)

text: Plants of the "Musa" spp. including roots, flowers and fruits have been used in the folk medicine cultures of Africa, Asia, India and the Americas. Modern studies examining the properties of the fruits have found diversity of bioactive compounds among genotypes compared with commercially grown cultivars.


title: Musa (genus)

text: When the Linnaean binomial system was abandoned for cultivated bananas, an alternate genome-based system for the nomenclature of edible bananas in section "Musa" was devised. Thus, the plant previously known by the "species" name "Musa cavendishii" became "Musa" (AAA Group) 'Dwarf Cavendish'. The "new" name shows clearly that 'Dwarf Cavendish' is a triploid, with three sets of chromosomes, all derived from "Musa acuminata", which is designated by the letter "A". When "Musa balbisiana" is involved, the letter "B" is used to denote its genome. Thus, the cultivar 'Rajapuri' may be called "Musa" (AAB Group) 'Rajapuri'. 'Rajapuri' is also a triploid, expected to have two sets of chromosomes from "Musa acuminata" and one from "Musa balbisiana". In the genome of edible bananas from section "Musa", combinations such as AA, BB, ABB, BBB and even AAAB can be found.


title: Musa (genus)

text: No such nomenclature system has been developed for the group of edible bananas derived from section "Callimusa". This group is known generally as the "Fe'i" or "Fehi" bananas, and numerous cultivars are found in the South Pacific region. They are very distinctive plants with upright fruit bunches, featuring in three of Paul Gauguin's paintings. The flesh can be cooked before eating and is bright orange, with a high level of beta carotene. Fe'i bananas are no longer very important for food, as imported foods have grown in popularity, although some have ritual significance. Investigations are under way to use the Fe'i karat bananas (the name derives from "carrot" due to the intense orange-yellow color of the fruit) in prevention of childhood blindness in Pohnpei. Fe'i bananas probably derive mainly from "Musa maclayi", although their origins are not as well understood as the section "Musa" bananas. Cultivars can be formally named, as e.g. "Musa" (Fe'i Group) 'Utafun'.


title: Musa (genus)

text: In addition to the edible fruits, the flowers can be eaten cooked, and the heart of the plant (like heart of palm) can be eaten raw or cooked. Additionally, the rootstocks and leaf sheaths of some species can be cooked and eaten.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Battle of Britain is a 1969 British war film directed by Guy Hamilton, and produced by Harry Saltzman and S. Benjamin Fisz. The film documents the events of the Battle of Britain. The film drew many respected British actors to accept roles as key figures of the battle, including Laurence Olivier as Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, Trevor Howard as Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, and Patrick Wymark as Air Vice-Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory. It also starred Michael Caine, Christopher Plummer, and Robert Shaw as Squadron Leaders. The script by James Kennaway and Wilfred Greatorex was based on the book "The Narrow Margin" by Derek Wood and Derek Dempster.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: The film endeavoured to be an accurate account of the Battle of Britain, when in the summer and autumn of 1940 the British RAF inflicted a strategic defeat on the "Luftwaffe" and so ensured the cancellation of Operation Sea Lion, Adolf Hitler's plan to invade Britain. The film is notable for its spectacular flying sequences. It was on a far larger scale than had been seen on film before, and this made the film's production very expensive.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: During the Battle of France in June 1940, RAF pilots evacuate a small airfield in advance of the German "Blitzkrieg". The pilots, along with British and French military, leave just as German aircraft arrive and execute a heavy strafing attack. RAF Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding (Laurence Olivier), realising that an imminent invasion of Great Britain will require every available aircraft and airman to counter it, stops additional aircraft being deployed to France so that they are available to defend Britain. In the next dramatic scene, French civilians watch in grim despair as a convoy of German troops marches into France and takes control.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: At the deserted beaches of Dunkirk, the BBC reports British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's declaration that "what General Weygand called the 'Battle of France' is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin." Luftwaffe Inspector-General Field Marshal Milch arrives to inspect a large German airfield in captured France. Hundreds of Heinkel He 111 bomber aircraft are stationed under Luftwaffe General Kesselring's command.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Luftwaffe commanders are stunned when the Führer informs them that the British are not their "natural enemy" and delays their attack while attempting a diplomatic settlement. In neutral Switzerland, the German ambassador, Baron von Richter (Curd Jürgens), officially proposes new peace terms to his British counterpart, Sir David Kelly (Ralph Richardson), stating that continuing to fight the "masters" of Europe is hopeless. Kelly's brave retort, "Don't threaten or dictate to us until you're marching up Whitehall ... and even then we won't listen", is followed by a private comment to his wife that von Richter is probably correct. In England, commanders celebrate their good fortune, using the delay to build up their strength and continually train their pilots and ground controllers.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: The wait finally ends when Luftwaffe pilots receive orders to move to the front, where troops are preparing for a sea-borne invasion. The campaign begins with the Luftwaffe launching an early morning assault on "Eagle Day". The plan is to destroy the RAF on the ground before they have time to launch their Spitfire and Hurricane fighters.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Eagle Day proves highly successful, with attacks on British radar installations by Stuka dive bombers. Two radar stations are put out of action and a number of British airfields are damaged or destroyed but British losses are relatively light. A grueling battle of attrition ensues, with the RAF airfields under repeated attack while inflicting heavy, but non-critical, damage on the attacking forces.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Adding to the RAF's problems is a battle between the commanding officers of 11 Group, Keith Park (Trevor Howard), and 12 Group, Trafford Leigh-Mallory (Patrick Wymark). 12 Group is tasked with protecting 11 Group's airfields while 11 Group meets the enemy, but in raid after raid 12 Group aircraft are nowhere to be seen. Called to meet Dowding, Leigh-Mallory explains that the "Big Wing" tactic takes time for form up, while Park complains that the tactic simply is not working. Dowding ends the debate noting a critical shortage of pilots, wearily remarking, "We're fighting for survival, and losing."


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: The turning point occurs when a squadron of German bombers becomes lost in bad weather at night and drops bombs on London. In retaliation, the RAF attacks Berlin. Though the damage is negligible, an enraged Adolf Hitler publicly orders London to be razed. Hermann Göring (Hein Riess) arrives in France to personally command the attack, confident that the end of the battle nears. Their first attack skirts the RAF, who are still defending their airfields to the south, and they bomb unopposed. Night time attacks follow and London burns.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: One of the film's most poignant scenes takes place during the Blitz. Non-commissioned fighter pilot Andy Moore (Ian McShane) comes home on leave and is furious to discover that his family have returned to London from their place of evacuation. Meeting them in a church during a raid, he gives his children presents of model aeroplanes, and tells his wife she must return them to the country at once. As they argue, an ARP warden arrives with news of a family trapped in a burning house. Andy goes to help but when he returns, the church has been reduced to a flaming ruin, leaving his wife and children dead.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Meanwhile, to supplement Commonwealth forces, the RAF has been forming units of foreign pilots who have escaped German-occupied countries. The main difficulty is their lack of English-language skills. While on a training flight, a Free Polish Air Force squadron accidentally runs into an unescorted flight of German bombers. Ignoring the commands of their British training officer, they peel off one by one and shoot down several of the bombers with unorthodox aggressive tactics. Park rewards them by elevating them to operational status, leading Dowding to do the same for the Canadian and Czech squadrons as well.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: While discussing the day's events, Park and Dowding examine the German switch to London. Given a respite, Park notes that he will be able to repair his airfields and bring his squadrons back to full strength. Dowding adds that 12 Group units north of London are now all within range, while enemy fighters are at the extreme edge of their own range. He concludes that "turning on London could be the Germans' biggest blunder."


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: The next German daytime raid is met by a massive response; watching his formations build up in 11 Group's operations room, Wing Commander Willoughby (Robert Flemyng) wryly states "this should give them something to think about." RAF fighters arranged into large groups attack en masse, overwhelming the German raids. Luftwaffe losses are now critical and Göring is incensed, ordering his fighters remain with the bombers, an order the pilots hate because it robs them of the mobility required to keep the British squadrons off the German bombers. Losses continue to mount on both sides.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: The climactic air battle of 15 September 1940 arrives, with Winston Churchill in attendance at 11 Group's operations room. In the underground bunker, British ground control personnel order every squadron into the air to meet the massive attack. Intense combat in the sky over London follows, with both sides taking heavy losses. The outcome is so confused that Dowding refuses to comment on the events.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: The next day the RAF anxiously await a raid that never comes. Likewise the Luftwaffe is disheartened by heavy losses and also await orders that never come to resume raiding. Two German anti-aircraft gunners, who had earlier observed a French port teeming with Kriegsmarine vessels and landing barges, now observe a deserted harbour basin. Göring leaves the front, accusing his commanders of betrayal. Dowding looks out over the gardens and up to the sky where the words of Winston Churchill appear onscreen: ""Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.""


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: The "Battle of Britain" has a large all-star international cast. The film was notable for its attempt to accurately portray the role of the Germans, with participants in the battle including Group Captain Tom Gleave, Wing Commander Robert Stanford Tuck, Squadron Leader Bolesław Drobiński and Luftwaffe "Generalleutnant" Adolf Galland involved as consultants. During the war, Drobiński had heavily damaged Galland's plane and forced him into a crash-landing.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Subtitled German-speaking actors were utilised, a departure from other English language British films in the postwar period, where Germans were often played by Anglophone actors.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Former participants of the battle served as technical advisers including Douglas Bader, James Lacey, Robert Stanford Tuck, Adolf Galland and Dowding himself.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: The film required a large number of period aircraft. In September 1965 producers Harry Saltzman and S. Benjamin Fisz contacted former RAF Bomber Command Group Captain T.G. 'Hamish' Mahaddie to find the aircraft and arrange their use. Eventually 100 aircraft were employed, called the "35th largest air force in the world". With Mahaddie's help, the producers located 109 Spitfires in the UK, of which 27 were available although only 12 could be made flyable. Mahaddie negotiated use of six Hawker Hurricanes, of which three were flying. The film helped preserve these aircraft, including a rare Spitfire Mk II which had been a gate guardian at RAF Colerne in Wiltshire.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: During the actual aerial conflict, all RAF Spitfires were Spitfire Mk I and Mark II variants. However, only one Mk Ia and one Mk IIa (the latter with a Battle of Britain combat record) could be made airworthy, so the producers had to use seven other different marks, all of them built later in the war. To achieve commonality, the production made some modifications to "standardise" the Spitfires, including adding elliptical wingtips, period canopies and other changes. To classic aircraft fans, they became known as "Mark Haddies" (a play on Grp. Capt. Mahaddie's name).


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: A pair of two-seat trainer Spitfires were camera platforms to achieve realistic aerial footage inside the battle scenes. Lieutenant Maurice Hynett, RN, on leave from duties at Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough flew a number of Spitfire sequences in the film, including one of the opening scenes which features a single Spitfire in flight. A rare Hawker Hurricane XII had been restored by Canadian Bob Diemert, who flew the aircraft in the film. Eight non-flying Spitfires and two Hurricanes were set dressing, with one Hurricane able to taxi.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: A North American B-25 Mitchell "N6578D", flown by pilots John "Jeff" Hawke and Duane Egli, was the primary filming platform for the aerial sequences. It was fitted with camera positions in what were formerly the aircraft's nose, tail and waist gun positions. An additional camera, on an articulating arm, was mounted in the aircraft's bomb bay and allowed 360-degree shots from below the aircraft. The top gun turret was replaced with a clear dome for the aerial director, who would co-ordinate the other aircraft by radio.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: "N6578D" was painted garishly for line-up references and to make it easier for pilots to determine which way it was manoeuvring. When the brightly coloured aircraft arrived at Tablada airbase in Spain in early afternoon of 18 March 1968, the comment from Derek Cracknell, the assistant director, was "It's a bloody great psychedelic monster!" The aircraft was henceforth dubbed the "Psychedelic Monster".


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: For the German aircraft, the producers obtained 32 CASA 2.111 twin-engined bombers, a Spanish-built version of the German Heinkel He 111H-16. They also located 27 Hispano Aviación HA-1112 M1L 'Buchon' single-engined fighters, a Spanish version of the German Messerschmitt Bf 109. The Buchons were altered to look more like correct Bf 109Es, adding mock machine guns and cannon, and redundant tailplane struts, and removing the rounded wingtips. The Spanish aircraft were powered by British Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, and thus almost all the aircraft used, British and German alike, were Merlin-powered. After the film, one HA-1112 was donated to the German "Luftwaffenmuseum der Bundeswehr", and converted to a Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-2 variant, depicting the insignias of German ace Gustav Rödel.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Two Heinkels and the 17 flyable Messerschmitts (including one dual-controlled HA-1112-M4L two-seater, used for conversion training and as a camera ship), were flown to England to complete the shoot. In the scene where the Polish training squadron breaks off to attack (the "Repeat, please" sequence), the three most distant Hurricanes were Buchons marked as Hurricanes, as there were not enough flyable Hurricanes. In addition to the combat aircraft, two Spanish-built Junkers Ju 52 transports were used.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Filming in England was at Duxford, Debden, North Weald and Hawkinge, all operational stations in 1940; one surviving First World War "Belfast" hangar at Duxford was blown up and demolished for the "Eagle Day" sequence. Some filming also took place at Bovingdon, a former wartime bomber airfield. Some aerial shots were also taken over the former RAF Sywell (now Sywell Aerodrome). The title sequence scene, showing a review of German bombers on the ground by Fieldmarshal Milch, was filmed at Tablada Airfield in Spain. Stunt coordinator Wilson Connie Edwards retained a Mark IX Spitfire, six Buchons, and a P-51 Mustang in lieu of payment, which were stored in Texas until sold to collectors in 2014.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Denton, another Kent village, and its pub, The Jackdaw Inn, features in the film as the location where Christopher Plummer and his on-screen wife argue about her relocating closer to his posting. The Jackdaw Inn has a room devoted to an extensive collection of RAF Second World War memorabilia.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Many of the scenes in the film were filmed in Spain. Among these scenes was the Dunkirk recreation, which was shot at the beachfront in Huelva, Spain. To reflect the cloudless skies of summer of 1940, many upward-facing shots were filmed over Spain, while downward-facing shots were almost all below the clouds, over southern England, where farmland is distinctive. However, 1940 camouflage made it difficult to see the aircraft against the ground and sky, so a cloud background was used where possible. Only one Spitfire was relocated to Spain to stand in for the RAF defenders. After filming began, the English weather proved too unreliable and filming was moved to Hal Far and Luqa Airfields in Malta to complete the aerial sequences.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Numerous scenes were shot in the preserved operations rooms, illustrating the operation of the Dowding system that controlled the fighter squadrons. Much of this footage takes place in 11 Group's operations room, today preserved as the Battle of Britain Bunker. Other scenes take place in Fighter Command's central "filter room" as well as recreations of the squadron ops rooms. One scene shows the hit on Biggin Hill's ops room, and another shows its relocation to a local bakery, although this is a recreation of another squadron's backup room in a local butcher's shop.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Location filming in London was carried out mainly in the St Katharine Docks area where older houses were being demolished for housing estates. Partly demolished buildings represented bombed houses and disused buildings were set on fire. St Katharine Docks was one of the few areas of London's East End to survive the Blitz. Many extras were survivors of the Blitz. Aldwych tube station, used as a wartime air-raid shelter, was also used as a filming location.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Almost all the period equipment from the London Fire Brigade Museum was used in the film. The night scenes of wartime Berlin were filmed in Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Production gaffers were allowed to blackout the city on demand, with health facilities and official buildings backed up with generators.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: The scenes at RAF Fighter Command were filmed at RAF Bentley Priory, the headquarters of Fighter Command. Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding's original office, with the original furniture, was used.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Permission was granted to the producers to use the Royal Air Force Museum's Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" dive-bomber (one of only two that survive intact). The 1943 aircraft was repainted and slightly modified to resemble a 1940 model Ju 87. The engine was found to be in excellent condition and there was little difficulty in starting it, but returning the aircraft to airworthiness was ultimately too costly for the filmmakers. Instead, two Percival Proctor training aircraft were converted into half-scale "Stukas", with a cranked wing, as "Proctukas" though, in the film, they were not used on-screen. Instead, to duplicate the steep dive of Ju 87 attacks, large models were flown by radio control.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: To recreate airfield scenes, with the limited number of period aircraft available for the film, large scale models were used. The first requirement was for set decoration replicas. Production of full-size wood and fibreglass Hurricanes, Spitfires and Bf 109s commenced in a sort of production line set up at Pinewood Studios. A number of the replicas were fitted with motorcycle engines to enable them to taxi. Although most of these replicas were destroyed during filming, a small number were made available to museums in the UK.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: The other need was for models in aerial sequences, and art director and model maker John Siddall was asked by the producer to create and head a team specifically for this because of his contacts in the modelling community. A test flight was arranged at Lasham Airfield in the UK and a model was flown down the runway close behind a large American estate car with a cameraman in the rear. This test proved successful, leading to many radio-controlled models being constructed in the band rehearsal room at Pinewood Studios.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Over a period of two years, a total of 82 Spitfires, Hurricanes, Messerschmitts, and He 111s were built. Radio-controlled Heinkel He 111 models were flown to depict bombers being destroyed over the English Channel. When reviewing the footage of the first crash, the producers noticed a trailing-wire antenna; this was explained by an added cutaway in which the control wires of a Heinkel are seen shot loose.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: The quote from the 20 August 1940 speech was changed when the movie was released on DVD in 2003. Onscreen, instead of the quote about "The Few," this Churchill quote appears: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning," which was a reference to the Second Battle of El Alamein being a turning point in the war. The 2004 Special Edition, however, reverts to the quotation about The Few: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: The film is generally faithful to events, although merging some characters. Most historians doubt that Germany could realistically have won the battle of Britain, given Britain's superiority in aircraft production; its vast radar and surveillance infrastructure; the superior experience of its pilots; and the inherent advantage of fighting an air war over its home territory. While loss of pilots was an issue, Britain could supplement its ranks with experienced pilots who had fled Poland, France, Belgium, and other countries Germany had conquered, as well as pilots from the Dominions and volunteers from the United States. The German switch from attacking airfields to bombing cities was an effect, not a cause, of Germany's failure, as Germany had proved unable to destroy the airfields and other air infrastructure. That said, the British tended to overestimate German air strength and underestimate their own, so the film is not necessarily wrong for portraying the *perception* that Germany was close to winning the battle.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: The film includes a sequence which relates the events of 15 August 1940, in which the "Luftwaffe" attempted to overwhelm fighter defences by simultaneous attacks on northern and southern England, the "Luftwaffe" reasoning that "even a Spitfire can't be in two places at once". North East England was attacked by 65 Heinkel He 111s escorted by 34 Messerschmitt Bf 110s and RAF Driffield was attacked by 50 unescorted Junkers Ju. 88s. Out of 115 bombers and 35 fighters sent, 16 bombers and seven fighters were lost. As a result of these casualties, "Luftflotte" 5 did not appear in strength again in the campaign.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: The Robert Shaw character "Skipper" is based loosely on Squadron Leader Sailor Malan, a South African fighter ace and No. 74 Squadron RAF commander during the Battle of Britain. The scene in the operation room in which the British listen to their fighters' wireless transmissions relies on dramatic licence, as the operations room received information by telephone from the sector airfields. The scenes at the end, where the RAF pilots are seen suddenly idle and left awaiting the return of the "Luftwaffe" raids, rely similarly on licence; the fighting fizzled out through late September, although daylight raids continued for some weeks after the 15 September engagement. 31 October 1940 is regarded as the official end on the British side.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: As the RAF did not practise ramming as an air combat tactic, this was considered an impromptu manoeuvre and an act of selfless courage. Holmes was feted by the press as a war hero who saved Buckingham Palace. This event became one of the defining moments of the Battle of Britain and elicited a congratulatory note to the RAF from Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands who had witnessed the event. The ramming is depicted in the film, with considerable artistic licence.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: The Susannah York character Section Officer Maggie Harvey is based on Felicity Peake who was a young Section Officer at Biggin Hill in 1940. Her reaction to the heavy raid resulting in the deaths of several WAAFs and the confrontation with Warrant Officer Warwick were based on real events.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: The confrontation between Dowding and Keith Park and Trafford Leigh-Mallory is fictitious, though there were undoubted tensions between the two sides. The film does not mention that, following the Battle of Britain, Dowding and Park were replaced by Sholto Douglas and Leigh-Mallory, despite Dowding and Park having demonstrated that Leigh-Mallory's "Big Wing" strategy was unworkable.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: One omission is at the end of the film, when casualties are listed. The film does not mention losses by the "Corpo Aereo Italiano", an Italian expeditionary force that took part, nor is its participation mentioned during the film. One anomalous entry in the list of pilots who served with the RAF is a Palestinian pilot described by the credits as "Israeli", even though the State of Israel was only created in 1948. This referred to George Goodman, an ace born in Haifa while Palestine was under British administration, who was killed in action in 1941. In the combat scenes there was no attempt to recreate tracer rounds.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Göring's train in the film is Spanish rather than French (the RENFE markings are just visible on its tender) and the steam locomotive shown did not come into service on Spanish National Railways (RENFE) until 1951.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: The character Major Falke is based on "Generalleutnant" Adolf Galland, a famous ace during the Second World War, who did ask "Reichsmarshall" Göring for "an outfit of Spitfires for my squadron". Galland explained in his autobiography that his request was only a way to upset Göring, because he was "unbelievably vexed at the lack of understanding and stubbornness with the command (i.e. Göring) who gave us orders we could not execute". Galland did feel that the Spitfire was more manoeuvrable than the Bf 109, which he felt made it more suitable as a defensive fighter but he also states that "fundamentally I preferred the Bf 109". Galland was upset about the director's decision not to use the real names. While making the film, Galland was joined by his friend Robert Stanford Tuck.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: During filming, Galland, who was acting as a German technical adviser, took exception to a scene where Kesselring is shown giving the Nazi salute, rather than the standard military salute. Journalist Leonard Mosley witnessed Galland spoiling the shooting and having to be escorted off the set. Galland subsequently threatened to withdraw from the production, warning "dire consequences for the film if the scene stayed in". When the finished scene was screened before Galland and his lawyer, he was persuaded to accept the scene after all.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: Reported German losses during the battle derive from claims made and believed at the time. Subsequent research shows that these were substantial overestimates, resulting from, for example, multiple claims on the same downed aircraft. The actual number of German losses on 15 September was 56.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: An RAF officer pilot with a disfigured face appears in a scene with Kenneth More and Susannah York. This is not an actor but retired Squadron Leader Bill Foxley, a trainee navigator with RAF Bomber Command during World War II who suffered severe burns following a crash. He was notable for the support he gave to other burns victims and for this film appearance that gave a wide audience some awareness of the facial burns suffered by World War II aircrew.


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: As recounted in Mervyn Cooke's "A History of Film Music" (2008), the film has two musical scores. The first was written by Sir William Walton, then in his late 60s, and conducted by Malcolm Arnold, who also assisted Walton with the orchestration – notably the music accompanying the Blitz sequences, and some sections of "Battle in the Air", which may have involved some compositional "patches" by Arnold. Aside from the undoubted originality and impact of "The Battle in the Air" sequence, and an opening march (conducted at the sessions by Walton) which was described by a journalist present at its recording as "a grand patriotic tune to out-type and out-glory any that Sir William has yet written, whether for films or coronations", much of Walton's score involves parodies of the horncall from Wagner's "Siegfried".


title: Battle of Britain (film)

text: However, Arnold and David Picker – the uncle and nephew in charge of United Artists – insisted on having the music tracks sent to them in New York; their verdict on hearing the music, unaccompanied by the film, was that it was unsuitable and that a composer known to them should be hired to write a replacement score. The music department at United Artists furthermore objected that the score was too short to fill an LP recording which was intended to be marketed with the film. As a result, John Barry – who had scored several James Bond films – was approached, but he declined.