title: Gorgo, Queen of Sparta

text: Gorgo (; ; fl. 480 BC) was a Spartan woman and wife to King Leonidas I (r. 489–480 BC). She was the daughter and the only known child of Cleomenes I, Leonidas' half-brother and King of Sparta (r. 520–490 BC). Gorgo was also the mother of King Pleistarchus, her only son with King Leonidas I. She is notably one of the few female historical figures actually named by Herodotus, and is depicted in sources as intelligent and wise. Her birth date is uncertain, but based on Herodotus' dating, it is most likely to have been between 518 and 508 BC.


title: Gorgo, Queen of Sparta

text: According to Herodotus, Gorgo was the only child of King Cleomenes I of Sparta. The earliest anecdote of her life that he provides in "The Histories" comes when Aristagoras, seeking allies after the Ionian revolt, came to Sparta to try to convince Cleomenes to invade the Persian Empire. He cited the "disgrace" suffered by the Ionians in Anatolia and weaved further tales of the wealth and resources to be reaped from an empire as vast as Persia. When he learned that the journey to Asia would take three months by sea, however, Cleomenes turned down Aristagoras' proposal and told him to leave Sparta, telling him that such a journey was out of the question for the Lacedaemonians. However, Aristagoras arrived at Cleomenes' home that evening, now offering increasing bribes going as high as fifty talents of silver. It is here that Gorgo, eight or nine years old at this point according to Herodotus, stepped in and told her father to leave lest Aristagoras' bribes corrupt him. Cleomenes listened to his daughter's advice, removed himself, and Aristagoras left Sparta without being heard any further.


title: Gorgo, Queen of Sparta

text: Spartan women such as Gorgo were ultimately expected to produce strong Spartan offspring, and to that end partook in a physical education curriculum similar to their male peers. As part of this curriculum, Gorgo would have learned sports such as running, discus and javelin throwing, and wrestling. Gorgo would not only have been taught these sports, but also competed against her peers in various contests. The belief was that if both parents were physically strong, their child would be as well.


title: Gorgo, Queen of Sparta

text: In addition to her physical education, Gorgo would have been educated in academic matters. As an elite woman, she would have been taught how to read and write. She would also have received an education in the arts, including music, dance, and poetry. The academic curriculum of Spartan woman was notably at least equivalent, if not superior, to that of Spartan males. It is because of this physical and mental training that Plutarch attributes an anecdote to Gorgo in which a foreign woman notes that "You Spartan women are the only ones who rule their men." To which Gorgo replies, "Yes, we are the only ones that give birth to men."


title: Gorgo, Queen of Sparta

text: After Cleomenes's death in 489 BC, Gorgo was left as his sole heiress. By 490, she was apparently already married to her half-uncle Leonidas I. Despite being the daughter and wife of Spartan kings, Gorgo herself could not be considered a queen, as royal women in Sparta did not typically hold a special role in society. The title of "queen" being used to describe Greek women would not appear until the late Hellenistic period. That said, Gorgo did hold a certain amount of authority and influence in Spartan politics.


title: Gorgo, Queen of Sparta

text: Arguably, Gorgo's most significant role occurred prior to the Persian invasion of 480 BC. According to Herodotus's "Histories", Demaratus, then in exile at the Persian court, sent a warning to Sparta about Xerxes's pending invasion. In order to prevent the message from being intercepted by the Persians or their vassal states, the message was written on a wooden tablet and then covered with wax. The Spartans did not know what to do with the seemingly blank wax tablet, until Gorgo advised them to clear the wax off the tablet. She is described by David Kahn in his book The Codebreakers as one of the first female cryptanalysts whose name has been recorded.


title: Gorgo, Queen of Sparta

text: Historian and novelist Helena P. Schrader speculates that in the time after the Battle of Marathon and leading up to the Battle of Thermopylae, Leonidas I would have travelled to other city-states to coordinate the Greek coalition, and that he brought Gorgo with him. It is here, Schrader postulates, that Gorgo would have had her famous exchange in which she told an Athenian woman that Spartan women were the only Greek women to "give birth to men".


title: Gorgo, Queen of Sparta

text: According to Plutarch, before the Battle of Thermopylae, knowing that her husband's death in battle was inevitable, she asked him what to do. Leonidas replied "marry a good man who will treat you well, bear him children, and live a good life".


title: Gorgo, Queen of Sparta

text: She had at least one son by Leonidas I, Pleistarchus, co-king of Sparta from 480 BC to his death in 458 BC.


title: Gorgo, Queen of Sparta

text: Her son was a minor at his father's death, so his uncle Cleombrotus (died 480 BC) and his first cousin and heir Pausanias (r. 480–479 BC) acted as his regent and tutor. It was Pausanias who was the architect of the combined Greek victory at the Battle of Plataea (479 BC). After Pausanias fell into disfavor and was accused of plotting treason, Pleistarchus ruled with the other king of Sparta, Leotychidas II (and then his grandson Archidamus) until his death 459/458 BC.


title: Gorgo, Queen of Sparta

text: In the 1962 film "The 300 Spartans," Gorgo was portrayed by Greek actress and future politician Anna Synodinou.


title: Gorgo, Queen of Sparta

text: The character makes a minor appearance in the 1998 comic series "300" by Frank Miller, who was heavily inspired by the aforementioned film. In the 2006 motion picture adaptation of the comic, "300", English actress Lena Headey plays Gorgo. In this version, she is more politically involved and has a prominent role in the events preceding and during the war with Persia. Headey reprised her role in the 2014 sequel, "".


title: Gorgo, Queen of Sparta

text: In the 2016 4X video game "Civilization VI," Gorgo is one of the two leaders of the Greek civilization, the other being Pericles. Gorgo is voiced by Angeliki Dimitrakopoulou, who speaks her native Doric dialect of ancient Greece.


title: Kapo

text: A kapo or prisoner functionary () was a prisoner in a Nazi camp who was assigned by the "Schutzstaffel" (SS) guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks.


title: Kapo

text: Also called "prisoner self-administration", the prisoner functionary system minimized costs by allowing camps to function with fewer SS personnel. The system was designed to turn victim against victim, as the prisoner functionaries were pitted against their fellow prisoners in order to maintain the favor of their SS overseers. If they neglected their duties, they would be demoted to ordinary prisoners and be subject to other kapos. Many prisoner functionaries were recruited from the ranks of violent criminal gangs rather than from the more numerous political, religious, and racial prisoners; such criminal convicts were known for their brutality toward other prisoners. This brutality was tolerated by the SS and was an integral part of the camp system.


title: Kapo

text: Prisoner functionaries were spared physical abuse and hard labor, provided they performed their duties to the satisfaction of the SS functionaries. They also had access to certain privileges, such as civilian clothes and a private room. While the Germans commonly called them "kapos", the official government term for prisoner functionaries was "Funktionshäftling".


title: Kapo

text: After World War II, the term was reused as an insult; according to "The Jewish Chronicle", it is "the worst insult a Jew can give another Jew".


title: Kapo

text: The word "kapo" could have come from the Italian word for "head" and "boss", . According to the Duden, it is derived from the French word for "Corporal" (). Journalist Robert D. McFadden believes that the word "kapo" is derived from the German word , meaning camp captain.


title: Kapo

text: Camps were controlled by the SS, but day-to-day organization was supplemented by the system of functionary prisoners, a second hierarchy that made it easier for the Nazis to control the camps. These prisoners made it possible for the camps to function with fewer SS personnel. The prisoner functionaries sometimes numbered as high as 10% of the inmates. The Nazis were able to keep the number of paid staff who had direct contact with the prisoners very low in comparison to normal prisons today. Without the functionary prisoners, the SS camp administrations would not have been able to keep the day-to-day operations of the camps running smoothly. The kapos often did this work for extra food, cigarettes, alcohol or other privileges.


title: Kapo

text: At Buchenwald, these tasks were originally assigned to criminal prisoners, but after 1939, political prisoners began to displace the criminal prisoners, though criminals were preferred by the SS. At Mauthausen, on the other hand, functionary positions remained dominated by criminal prisoners until just before liberation. The system and hierarchy also inhibited solidarity among the prisoners. There were tensions between the various nationalities and prisoner groups, who were distinguished by different Nazi concentration camp badges. Jews wore yellow stars; other prisoners wore colored triangles pointed downward.


title: Kapo

text: Prisoner functionaries were often hated by other prisoners and spat upon as Nazi henchmen. While some barrack leaders ("Blockälteste") tried to assist the prisoners under their command by secretly helping them get extra food or easier jobs, others were more concerned with their own survival and, to that end, did more to assist the SS.


title: Kapo

text: Identified by green triangles, the "Berufsverbrecher" or "BV" ("career criminals") kapos, were called "professional criminals" by other prisoners and were known for their brutality and lack of scruples. Indeed, they were selected by the SS because of those qualities. According to former prisoners, criminal functionaries were more apt to be helpful to the SS than political functionaries, who were more apt to be helpful to other prisoners.


title: Kapo

text: The SS used domination and terror to control the camps' large populations with just a few SS functionaries. The system of prisoner guards was a "key instrument of domination", and was commonly called "prisoner self-government" ("Häftlings-Selbstverwaltung") in SS parlance.


title: Kapo

text: The camp's draconian rules, constant threat of beatings, humiliation, punishment, and the practice of punishing entire groups for the actions of one prisoner were psychological and physical torments added to the starvation and physical exhaustion from back-breaking labor. Prisoner guards were used to push other inmates to work harder, saving the need for paid SS supervision. Many "kapos" felt caught in the middle, being both victims and perpetrators. Though "kapos" generally had a bad reputation, many suffered guilt about their actions, both at the time and after the war, as revealed in a book about Jewish kapos.


title: Kapo

text: Many prisoner functionaries, primarily from the ranks of the "greens" or criminal prisoners, could be quite ruthless in order to justify their privileges, especially when an SS man was around. They also played an active role in the beatings, even killing fellow prisoners. One non-criminal functionary was , a notorious Austrian political prisoner. Feared and hated, he was known as a sadist and was responsible for several deaths. He was released from Dachau in 1942 and became a member of the "Waffen-SS". Some guards were personally involved in the mass murder of other prisoners. Beginning in October 1944, criminal functionaries from among the German "Reichsdeutsche" were sought out for transfer to the Dirlewanger Brigade.


title: Kapo

text: The important functionary positions inside the camp were "Lagerältester" (camp leader or camp senior), "Blockältester" (block or barracks leader or senior), and "Stubenältester" (room leader). The highest position that a prisoner could reach was "Lagerältester", who was placed directly under the camp commandant and expected to implement his orders to ensure that the camp's daily routines ran smoothly and that regulations were followed. The "Lagerälteste" had a key role in the selection of other prisoners as functionaries, making recommendations to the SS. Though dependent on the goodwill of the SS, through them, he had access to special privileges, such as access to civilian clothes or a private room.


title: Kapo

text: The "Blockältester" (block or barracks leader) had to ensure that rules were followed in the individual barracks. He or she was also responsible for the prisoners in the barracks. The "Stubenälteste" (room leader) was responsible for the hygiene, such as delousing, and order of each room in a barracks. The "Blockschreiber" (registrar or barrack clerk) was a record-keeping job that included tasks such as keeping track at roll calls.


title: Kapo

text: Work crews outside the camp were supervised by a "Vorarbeiter" (foreman), a "Kapo", or "Oberkapo" (chief kapo). These functionaries pushed their fellow prisoners to work harder, hitting, beating, and even killing them.


title: Kapo

text: Prisoner functionaries could often help other prisoners by getting them into better barracks or assigned to lighter work. On occasion, the functionaries could effect other prisoners' removal from transport lists or even secure new identities in order to protect them from persecution. This assistance was generally limited to the prisoners in the functionary's own group (fellow citizens or political comrades). The prisoner functionaries were in a precarious hierarchy between their fellow inmates and the SS. This situation was intentionally created, as revealed in a speech by Heinrich Himmler.


title: Kapo

text: In National Socialism's racial ideology, some races were "superior" and others "inferior". Similarly, the SS sometimes had racial criteria for the prisoner functionaries; one sometimes had to be racially "superior" to be a functionary. The group category was also sometimes a factor. A knowledge of foreign languages was also advantageous, particularly as the international population of the camps increased, and because the SS preferred a certain level of education.


title: Kapo

text: An eager prisoner functionary could have a camp "career" as an SS favorite and be promoted from "Kapo" to "Oberkapo" and eventually to "Lagerältester", but could also just as easily run afoul of the SS and be sent to the gas chambers.


title: Kapo

text: During the 1946-47 Stutthof trials in Gdańsk, Poland, in which Stutthof concentration camp personnel were prosecuted, five kapos were found to have used extreme brutality and were sentenced to death. Four of them were executed on 4 July 1946, and one on 10 October 1947. Another was sentenced to three years' imprisonment and one acquitted and released on 29 November 1947.


title: Kapo

text: The Israeli Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law of 1950, most famously used to prosecute Adolf Eichmann in 1961 and Ivan Demjanjuk in 1986, was originally introduced with the principal aim of prosecuting Jewish people who collaborated with the Nazis. Between 1951 and 1964, approximately 40 trials were held, mostly of people alleged to have been kapos. Fifteen trials are known to have resulted in convictions, but scant details are available since the records were sealed in 1995 for a period of 70 years from the trial date. One person – Yehezkel Jungster – was convicted of crimes against humanity, which carried a mandatory death penalty, but the sentence was commuted to two years in prison. Jungster was pardoned in 1952, but died a few days after his release.


title: Kapo

text: According to teacher and researcher Dan Porat, the way in which former kapos were officially viewed – and tried – by the state of Israel went through four distinct phases. Initially viewed as co-perpetrators of Nazi atrocities, they eventually came to be perceived as victims themselves.


title: Kapo

text: During the first stage described by Porat (August 1950 – January 1952), those alleged to have served or to have collaborated with the Nazis were placed on an equal footing with their captors, with some measure of leniency appearing only in the sentencing phase for some cases. It was during this phase that Jungster was sentenced to death; six other former kapos were each sentenced to an average of almost five years in prison.


title: Kapo

text: Jungster’s death sentence had not been anticipated by either the legislators nor the prosecutors, according to Porat, and triggered a number of amendments to pre-trial charges in order to remove any indictment that would potentially carry a death penalty. During this second phase (February 1952 – 1957), the Israeli Supreme Court overturned Jungster’s sentence and essentially ruled that while Nazis could be charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes, their former collaborators could not. While prosecutions of kapos continued, doubts emerged amongst some of those in the public sphere as to whether the trials should continue at all. The official view remained that kapos had been Jewish collaborators, not Nazis themselves.


title: Kapo

text: By 1958, when the third phase began (lasting until 1962), the legal system had begun to view kapos as having committed wrongs but with good intentions. Thus, only those whom prosecutors believed had aligned themselves with the Nazis' aims were brought to trial. There were calls from some survivors that the trials should end, though other survivors still demanded that justice be served.


title: Kapo

text: The fourth phase (1963 – 1972) was marked by the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the principal architects of the Final Solution, and of Hirsch Barenblat two years later. Kapos and collaborators were now seen by the courts as ordinary victims, a complete reversal from the initial official perspective. Eichmann’s prosecutor was very clear in drawing a line between the Jewish collaborators and camp functionaries, and the evil Nazis.


title: Kapo

text: Barenblat’s trial in 1963 drove this point home. Barenblat, conductor of the Israel National Opera, was tried for having turned Jews over to the Nazis as head of the Jewish police in the Bendzin ghetto in Poland. Having arrived in Israel in 1958–9, Barenblat was arrested after a ghetto survivor recognised him while he was conducting an opera. Found guilty of helping the Nazis by ensuring that Jews selected for the death camps did not escape, Barenblat was sentenced to five years in prison. On 1 May 1964, after having served three months, Barenblat was freed and Israel’s Supreme Court quashed his conviction. The acquittal may have been due to the court’s aim of putting an end to the trials against kapos and other alleged Nazi collaborators.


title: Kapo

text: A small number of kapos were prosecuted in East and West Germany. In a well-publicised 1968 case, two Auschwitz kapos were put on trial in Frankfurt. They were indicted for 189 murders and multiple assaults, found guilty of several murders, and sentenced to life imprisonment.


title: Kapo

text: German historian Karin Orth wrote that there was hardly a measure so perfidious as the SS attempt to delegate the implementation of terror and violence to the victims themselves. Eugen Kogon, an avowed opponent of Nazism from prewar Germany and a Buchenwald concentration camp survivor, wrote after the war that the concentration camp system owed its stability in no small way to the cadre of "kapos", who took over the daily operations of the camp and relieved SS personnel. The absolute power was ubiquitous. The system of discipline and supervision would have promptly disintegrated, according to Kogon, without the delegation of power. The rivalry over supervisory and warehouse functionary jobs was, for the SS, an opportunity to pit prisoners against each other. Regular prisoners were at the mercy of a dual authority: the SS, who often hardly seemed to be at the camp, and the prisoner "kapos", who were always there.


title: Kapo

text: The term "kapo" has been used as a slur in the twenty-first century, particularly for Jews deemed insufficiently supportive of Israel or Zionism. In 2017, David Friedman, soon to become US ambassador to Israel, apologized for referring to supporters of the J Street advocacy group as "far worse than kapos".


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: The Kegworth air disaster occurred when British Midland Airways Flight 092, a Boeing 737-400, crashed onto the motorway embankment between the M1 motorway and A453 road near Kegworth, Leicestershire, England, while attempting to make an emergency landing at East Midlands Airport on 8 January 1989.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: The aircraft was on a scheduled flight from London Heathrow Airport to Belfast International Airport when a fan blade broke in the left engine, disrupting the air conditioning and filling the cabin with smoke. The pilots believed this indicated a fault in the right engine, since earlier models of the 737 ventilated the cabin from the right, and they were unaware that the 737-400 used a different system. The pilots mistakenly shut down the functioning engine. They selected full thrust from the malfunctioning one and this increased its fuel supply, causing it to catch fire. Of the 126 people aboard, 47 died and 74 sustained serious injuries. The inquiry attributed the blade fracture to metal fatigue, caused by heavy vibration in the newly upgraded engines, which had been tested only in the laboratory and not under representative flight conditions.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: The accident was the first hull loss of a Boeing 737 Classic aircraft, and the first fatal accident (and second fatal occurrence) involving a Boeing 737 Classic aircraft.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: The aircraft was a British Midland-operated Boeing 737-4Y0, registration on a scheduled flight from London Heathrow Airport to Belfast International Airport, Northern Ireland, having already flown from Heathrow to Belfast and back that day. The 737-400 was the newest design from Boeing, with the first unit entering service less than four months earlier, in September 1988. G-OBME itself had been in service for 85 days, since 15 October 1988, and had accumulated 521 airframe hours. The aircraft was powered by two CFM International CFM56 turbofan engines.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: The flight was crewed by 43-year-old Captain Kevin Hunt and 39-year-old First Officer David McClelland. Captain Hunt was a veteran British Midland pilot who had been with the airline since 1966 and had about 13,200 hours of flying experience. First Officer McClelland joined British Midland in 1988 and had accrued roughly 3,300 total flight hours. Between them, the pilots had close to 1,000 hours in the Boeing 737 cockpit (Hunt had 763 hours, and McClelland had 192 hours). However only 76 of these were logged in Boeing 737-400 series aircraft (Hunt 23 hours and McClelland 53 hours).


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: After taking off from Heathrow at 19:52, Flight BD 092 was climbing through to reach its cruising altitude of when a blade detached from the fan of the port (left) engine. While the pilots did not know the source of the problem, a pounding noise was suddenly heard, accompanied by severe vibrations. In addition, smoke poured into the cabin through the ventilation system, and passengers became aware of the smell of burning. Several passengers sitting near the rear of the plane noticed smoke and sparks coming from the left engine. The flight was diverted to nearby East Midlands Airport at the suggestion of British Midland Airways Operations.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: After the initial blade fracture, Captain Kevin Hunt had disengaged the plane's autopilot. When Hunt asked First Officer David McClelland which engine was malfunctioning, McClelland replied: "It's the left... It's the right one". In previous versions of the 737, the right air conditioning pack, fed with compressor bleed air from the right (number 2) engine, supplied air to the flight deck, while the left air conditioning pack, fed from the left (number 1) engine, supplied air to the passenger cabin. On the 737-400, this division of air is blurred; the left pack feeds the flight deck, but also feeds the aft passenger cabin, while the right feeds the forward passenger cabin. The pilots had been used to the older version of the aircraft and did not realise that this aircraft (which had been flown by British Midland for only 520 hours over a two-month period) was different. The captain later claimed that his perception of smoke as coming forward from the passenger cabin led them to assume the fault was in the right engine. The pilots throttled back the working right engine instead of the malfunctioning left engine. They had no way of visually checking the engines from the cockpit, and the cabin crew — who did not hear the captain refer to the right hand engine in his cabin address — did not inform them that smoke and flames had been seen from the left engine.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: When the pilots shut down the right engine, they could no longer smell the smoke, which led them to believe that they had correctly dealt with the problem. As it turned out, this was a coincidence; when the autothrottle was disengaged prior to shutting down the right engine, the fuel flow to both engines was reduced, and the excess fuel, which had been igniting in the left engine exhaust, disappeared; therefore, the ongoing damage was reduced, the smell of smoke ceased, and the vibration reduced, although it would still have been visible on cockpit instruments.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: During the final approach to the East Midlands Airport, the pilots selected increased thrust from the operating, damaged engine. This led to an engine fire that caused the engine to cease operating entirely. The ground proximity warning system activated, sounding several "glideslope" warnings. The pilots attempted to restart the right engine by windmilling, but the aircraft was by now flying at , too slow for a restart. At 20:24:33, Captain Hunt broadcast to the passengers via the aircraft's public-address system: "Prepare for crash landing," instructing passengers to take the brace position. The stick shaker then activated. Just before crossing the M1 motorway at 20:24:43, the tail and main landing gear struck the ground and the aircraft bounced back into the air and over the motorway, knocking down trees and a lamp post before crashing on the far embankment around 475 m (519 yd) short of the active runway's paved surface and about 630 m (689 yd) from its threshold. The aircraft broke into three sections. This was adjacent to the motorway; remarkably, no vehicles were travelling on that part of the M1 at the moment of the crash.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: Of the 118 passengers on board, 39 were killed outright in the crash and eight died later of their injuries, for a total of 47 fatalities. All eight crew members survived the accident. Of the 79 survivors, 74 suffered serious injuries and five suffered minor injuries. In addition, five firefighters also suffered minor injuries during the rescue operation. No one on the motorway was injured, and all vehicles in the vicinity of the disaster were undamaged. The first person to arrive at the scene to render aid was a motorist, Graham Pearson. A former Royal Marine, he helped passengers for over three hours and subsequently received damages for post-traumatic stress disorder. Aid was also given by an eight strong troop of SAS soldiers, four of whom were regimentally qualified paramedics. Their truck had been on the motorway when the crash occurred.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: The investigation established that the wiring associated with the fire warning lights was not cross-wired (left/right), i.e. it was properly connected.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: Captain Hunt believed the right engine was malfunctioning due to the smell of smoke in the cabin because in previous Boeing 737 variants bleed air for cabin air conditioning was taken from the right engine. Starting with the Boeing 737-400 variant, Boeing had redesigned the system to use bleed air from both engines. Several cabin staff and passengers noticed that the left engine had a stream of unburnt fuel igniting in the jet exhaust, but this information was not passed to the pilots because cabin staff assumed they were aware that the left engine was malfunctioning.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: The smell of smoke disappeared when the autothrottle was disengaged and the right engine shut down due to reduction of fuel to the damaged left engine as it reverted to manual throttle. In the event of a malfunction, pilots were trained to check all meters and review all decisions, and Captain Hunt proceeded to do so. Whilst he was conducting the review, however, he was interrupted by a transmission from East Midlands Airport informing him he could descend further to in preparation for the diverted landing. He did not resume the review after the transmission ended, and instead commenced descent.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: The dials on the two vibration gauges (one for each engine) were smaller than on the previous versions of the 737 in which the pilots had the majority of their experience and the LED needle went around the outside of the dial as opposed to the inside. The pilots had received no simulator training on the new model, as no simulator for the 737-400 existed in the UK at that time. At the time, vibration indicators were known for being unreliable (and normally ignored by pilots), but unknown to the pilots, this was one of the first aircraft to have a very accurate vibration readout.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: Analysis of the engine from the crash determined that the fan blades (LP stage 1 compressor) of the uprated CFM International CFM56 engine used on the 737-400 were subject to abnormal amounts of vibration when operating at high power settings above . As it was an upgrade to an existing engine, in-flight testing was not mandatory, and the engine had only been tested in the laboratory. Upon this discovery, the remaining 99 Boeing 737-400s then in service were grounded and the engines modified. Following the crash, testing all newly designed and significantly redesigned turbofan engines under representative flight conditions is now mandatory.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: This unnoticed vibration created excessive metal fatigue in the fan blades, and on G-OBME, this caused one of the fan blades to break off. This damaged the engine terminally and also upset its delicate balance, causing a reduction in power and an increase in vibration. The autothrottle attempted to compensate for this by increasing the fuel flow to the engine. The damaged engine was unable to burn all the additional fuel, with much of it igniting in the exhaust flow, creating a large trail of flame behind the engine.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: The official report into the disaster made 31 safety recommendations. Evaluation of the injuries sustained led to considerable improvements in aircraft safety and emergency instructions for passengers. These were derived from a research programme funded by the CAA and carried out by teams from the University of Nottingham and Hawtal Whiting Structures (an engineering consultancy company). The study between medical staff and engineers used analytical "occupant kinematics" techniques to assess the effectiveness of the brace position. A new notice to operators revising the brace position was issued in October 1993.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: The research into this accident led to the formation on 21 November 2016 of the International Board for Research into Aircraft Crash Events, which is a joint co-operation between experts in the field for the purpose of producing an internationally agreed-upon, evidence-based set of impact bracing positions for passengers and (eventually) cabin crew members in a variety of seating configurations. These will be submitted to the International Civil Aviation Organization through its Cabin Safety Group.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: A memorial was built to "those who died, those who were injured and those who took part in the rescue operation", in the village cemetery in nearby Kegworth, together with a garden made using soil from the crash site.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: Captain Hunt and First Officer McClelland, both seriously injured in the crash, were dismissed following the criticisms of their actions in the Air Accidents Investigation Branch report. Hunt suffered injuries to his spine and legs in the crash. In April 1991, he told a BBC documentary: "We were the easy option—the cheap option if you wish. We made a mistake — we both made mistakes — but the question we would like answered is why we made those mistakes." BM later paid McClelland an out-of-court settlement for unfair dismissal.


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: Alan Webb, the chief fire officer at East Midlands Airport, was made an MBE in the 1990 New Year Honours list for the co-ordination of his team in the rescue efforts that followed the crash. Graham Pearson, a passing motorist who assisted Kegworth survivors at the crash site for three hours, sued the airline for post-traumatic stress disorder and was awarded £57,000 in damages in 1998 ().


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: The crash was featured in a 1991 documentary of" Taking Liberties" named "Fatal Error". ITV aired a documentary in 1999 of the Kegworth crash. Flight 092 was also featured in an episode of "Seconds From Disaster", called "Motorway Plane Crash".


title: Kegworth air disaster

text: In 2015, the incident was featured in the episode "Choosing Sides" or "M1 Plane Crash" of the documentary television series "Mayday" or "Air Crash Investigation" as it is known in the UK.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, also known as just Roman Reloaded, is the second studio album by rapper Nicki Minaj. It was released on April 2, 2012, by Young Money, Cash Money and Universal Republic. Looking to transition from her debut studio album, "Pink Friday" (2010), Minaj wanted to make a follow-up record about "just having fun". Stylistically, the album is divided by a first half of hip hop tracks and a second half of dance-pop songs. As its executive producer, Minaj enlisted a variety of collaborators.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: Upon its release, "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded" received generally mixed reviews from music critics, who were ambivalent towards Minaj's exploration of dance-pop. It debuted at number one on the US "Billboard" 200 selling 253,000 copies in its first week. In doing so, it became Minaj's second number-one album in the country, and was additionally her first to debut in the peak position. The album was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for combined album sales, track sales, on-demand audio and video streams equivalent of two million album-sale units. Internationally, the album peaked at number one in Canada and the United Kingdom, and reached the top five in Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: The album was promoted with six singles. Its lead single "Starships" peaked at number five on the US "Billboard" Hot 100. Follow-up singles "Right by My Side" and "Beez in the Trap" experienced moderate success on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs component chart. "Pound the Alarm" and "Va Va Voom" peaked at numbers fifteen and twenty-two on the "Billboard" Hot 100, respectively. "Automatic" was released as single only in France. The album was additionally promoted through the Pink Friday Tour and the , which visited North America, Asia, Europe, and Oceania throughout May and December 2012.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded" was reissued under subtitle "" in November 2012. In addition to original album the reissue includes CD with seven new songs and one bonus track from deluxe edition of original album and extra DVD which was filmed during the Pink Friday Tour.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: Following the success of Minaj's debut studio album, "Pink Friday" (2010), Cash Money CEO, Brian "Birdman" Williams announced to "Billboard" that Minaj was aiming for a first quarter release in 2012. In November 2011, Minaj announced on Twitter that the album would be released on February 14, 2012, though it was later delayed to April 3, 2012. The album focuses on Roman Zolanski, one of Minaj's alter egos that was first featured on "Pink Friday". The standard artwork was released on March 1, 2012, and the deluxe artwork was revealed on March 8, 2012, both through Twitter.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: When Minaj was asked on Twitter to describe the album in one word, she tweeted "freedom". In an interview following the premiere of the album's lead single, "Starships", Minaj told Ryan Seacrest, "I've never had this much fun recording music in my life. My first album I was very guarded. I felt like I was making music to please everyone else. I had to be politically correct, but this album I am just creating music, and there's such a big difference. Literally in the studio we were cracking up laughing, having fun, and enjoying ourselves. The music itself you're going to get every side that I've ever shown and then a little bit extra. I've tried to make it very, very balanced, because I don't ever want to be boxed in, and that's always what drives me. So I made a very diverse album." She added that with her first album, "I was a too open Nicki Minaj. It felt more to me like a diary, the songs were more introspective and stuff like that...with this particular album I felt that it was time to give people a moment to enjoy the lyrics, and enjoy the beats, and enjoy the voices. When I was going to do my first album people would say, 'What is she going to talk about? Is she just going to talk about sex?' So I made it my business to make an album that did not talk about sex at all. I made it my business to make an album that wasn't a vulgar album, because [on] my mixtapes I was very, very...outlandish on my mixtapes. With this album I'm going back to not necessarily to that sound, but that feeling. The feeling of 'I don't care what you think!' That's what it is." Minaj also spoke on the concept behind her first two albums, saying: "Sometimes I felt the first album was a little too revealing, too emotional at times, and the other thing about your first album is that you’ve had all these emotions pent up inside to release and that's what you do on your debut. On the second album I was more concerned about just having fun".


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: As executive producer, Minaj enlisted a variety of producers, including Alex da Kid, Alex P, Pop & Oak, Benny Blanco, Blackout, Carl Falk, Cirkut, David Guetta, DJ Diamond Kuts, Dreamlab, Dr. Luke, Flip, Hitboy, Jimmy Joker, J.R. Rotem, Kane Beatz, Kenoe, KoOol Kojak, M.E. Productions, Pink Friday Productions, Rami Yacoub, RedOne, Rico Beats, Ryan & Smitty, Nikhil S. and T-Minus. Minaj also collaborated with different artists for the album, which includes: Cam’ron, Rick Ross, 2 Chainz, Lil Wayne, Nas, Drake, Young Jeezy, Chris Brown, Bobby V, and Beenie Man.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: Stylistically, "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded" is divided by the first half's hip hop tracks and the second half's dance-pop songs. Minaj raps in her unhinged alter ego "Roman Zolanski" over the former tracks' hard-edged beats and mostly sings on the latter half; she returns to rapping on the album's final track "Stupid Hoe". Music journalist Jody Rosen delineates the album's music as comprising "'Side One' for the hip-hop headz, 'Side Two' for teenyboppers." Slant Magazine's Matthew Cole comments that the album is "partitioned almost exactly between a rap half and a pop half". Pitchfork Media's Ryan Dombal denotes the second half as tracks following "Roman Reloaded" and writes that they "range from brittle Euro-trance to milquetoast R&B to washed-out balladry." Music critic Kitty Empire cites the song "Pound the Alarm" as a "compromise" between the album's two stylistic halves.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded" was promoted with five singles. "Starships" was released as the lead single from the album on February 14, 2012. The song was an international hit, peaking inside the top ten in over fifteen countries. In the United States, the song charted at number 5 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. The song is also Minaj's second most certified single to date.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: "Right by My Side" was sent to US rhythmic radio and US urban radio on March 27, 2012, as the album's second single. The song, which features additional vocals from Chris Brown, has since peaked at number 51 on the "Billboard" Hot 100.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: "Beez in the Trap", which features 2 Chainz, was sent to US rhythmic radio on May 29, 2012, as the third single from the album. The song peaked at number 48 on the "Billboard" Hot 100.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: "Pound the Alarm" was released as the fourth single from the album. It was sent to US Top 40/Mainstream radio on July 17, 2012. The song peaked at number 15 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 as well as in the top ten in other countries including Australia, Canada and the UK.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: "Va Va Voom" was released as the fifth single from the album. It was sent to BBC Radio 1 in the United Kingdom on September 12, 2012, and to US Top 40/Mainstream radio on October 23, 2012. The song peaked at number 22 on "Billboard" Hot 100 and in the top 20 in Canada and the UK.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: "Automatic" impacted on French contemporary hit radio on October 18, 2012 as sixth and final single from the album.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: Minaj performed "Roman Holiday" at the 54th Grammy Awards on February 12, 2012, making Minaj the first solo female rapper to perform at the award show. The controversial performance borrowed elements of the classic horror film, "The Exorcist". Minaj said in an interview with Rap-Up, "I had this vision for [alter-ego, Roman Zolanski] to be sort of exorcised—or actually he never gets exorcised—but people around him tell him he's not good enough because he's not normal, he's not blending in with the average Joe. And so his mother is scared and the people around him are afraid because they’ve never seen anything like him. He wanted to show that not only is he amazing and he's sure of himself and confident, but he's never gonna change, he's never gonna be exorcised. Even when they throw the holy water on him, he still rises above." MTV said the performance "was the most elaborate of the night's Grammy performances and had everyone talking."


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: On February 26, 2012, Minaj performed "Starships" live for the first time along with "Moment 4 Life", "Turn Me On" and "Super Bass" at the 2012 NBA All-Star Game. She also performed "Starships" on the eleventh season of "American Idol" on March 29, 2012. In April 2012, Minaj held album signings in New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and London. That month, she traveled to the UK for a week of promotion. On April 4, 2012, she performed a 40-minute mini-concert for BET's "106 & Park". She performed "Starships", "Right by My Side", and "Super Bass" in Times Square, hosted by Nokia, on April 7, 2012.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: On April 19, 2012, HMV held a competition for fans, where 500 winners would get the chance to meet Minaj in one of their stores in Bayswater, London, where she would sign their albums. Minaj also made an appearance on "The Graham Norton Show", which was aired on April 20, 2012, and on that same day, she visited BBC Radio 1 for an interview with Nick Grimshaw.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: To further promote "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded", Minaj embarked on her first concert tour, entitled the Pink Friday Tour. The tour comprised 41 show dates, including, 19 in North America, 15 in Europe, 4 in Asia, and 3 in Oceania. The tour began in May 2012 with shows in Australia and Asia. The tour then continued on to Europe and North America in June, July, and August 2012. The tour came to a close on August 14, 2012, in New York City at the Roseland Ballroom. The final show was a part of a free Pepsi promotional concert.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: The tour was officially announced by Minaj on May 1, 2012, featuring a stage resembling Barbie Dreamhouse. Minaj stated that she will play radio and outdoor festivals in conduction with arenas and theaters. She described the tour as being "intimate yet big". Laurieann Gibson served as creative director and choreographer for the tour. Minaj also embarked on the , which visited arenas throughout October and December 2012, to further promote the album and its reissue "".


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded" received mixed reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 60, based on 30 reviews. Although he complimented its first half as "an amusement park for production lovers", AllMusic editor David Jeffries criticized the album's "iffy pop" and called it "a frustrating mix of significant and skippable." Randall Roberts of the "Los Angeles Times" commended its "minimal, bouncy hip-hop tracks" for highlighting Minaj's "charm and achievement", but wrote that the "disjointed, artistically confused" album "drives off a cliff" with "dance pop songs as simple as they are generic". Emily Mackay of "NME" found its disparate music "just baffling" and "zany for the sake of it". Kitty Empire, writing in "The Observer", interpreted Minaj's pop songs as "an aggressive bid for [Lady] Gaga's territory." David Amidon of PopMatters accused Minaj of "doubling down on her cartoonish elements" and criticized its first half as "very poorly thought out rap music masquerading as pop". John Calvert of The Quietus described the album as "pop postmodernity in an advanced state of hollow, banal meaningless[ness]" and felt that the pop songs have "absolutely nothing to do with Minaj's art". "Slant Magazine"s Matthew Cole panned it as a "mediocre rap album" and felt that "Minaj conveys no personality" when she does not rap. "Too many of its 19 tracks leave Minaj simply treading the territory of other radio divas", wrote Kyle Anderson in "Entertainment Weekly".


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: In a positive review for "Rolling Stone", journalist Jody Rosen called it a "filler-free mega-pop album" and commented that "the energy never flags". Jessica Hopper of "Spin" praised Minaj's "rap offerings" as "nearly flawless" and wrote of the album's portion of pop tracks, "Her artistic potency dissolves, and she's just another well-finessed quirky diva". Tom Ewing of "The Guardian" said that it "doesn't matter" that the album is inconsistent and "makes no attempt to marry its rap and pop impulses ... at their best the styles are wedded anyway by a particular frenzy, a sense that Minaj comes with no off switch or lower gear." Robert Christgau said in his review for "MSN Music" that Minaj "raps exceptionally well, sings quite well, rhymes inconsistently but sometimes superbly", and that the album's deluxe edition starts and ends "strong", with a "fun" middle that veers between "mawkish and loud". Christgau recommended it to listeners who "enjoy contemporary pop whose market-tested blare offends both rockist philistines and IDM aesthetes".


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded" debuted at number one on the US "Billboard" 200 chart, selling 253,000 copies in its first week, for the week ending April 10, 2012. This marked Minaj's second number-one album in that country following her previous studio album, "Pink Friday" (2010), which peaked at number one in February 2011. On June 22, 2012, "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded" was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), for shipments of one million copies in the U.S. The album sold 785,000 copies throughout 2012 in the US. "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded" was the best selling rap album released in 2012 in the US, and overall the album was the third highest-selling R&B/Hip-Hop album of 2012 in the US. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded" was the 25th best-selling album globally of 2012, with sales of 1.4 million copies worldwide during that year. As of February 2015, "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded" has sold 905,000 copies in the US. On March 22, 2016, the album was certified double platinum by the RIAA for combined album sales, track sales, on-demand audio, and video streams equivalent of two million album-sale units.


title: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

text: "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded" debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and the UK R&B Albums Chart, with first week sales of 47,000 copies. In doing so, "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded" became the first album by a female rap artist to chart at number one in the United Kingdom. Additionally, the album sold 242,000 copies in the UK throughout 2012, making it the thirty-seventh best selling album of that year. "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded" also debuted at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart, and debuted at number five on the Australian Albums Chart. In Mexico, the album reached the top 40 in its first week of release.


title: Mark Ballas

text: Mark Alexander Ballas Jr. (born May 24, 1986) is an American dancer, choreographer, singer-songwriter, musician, and actor.


title: Mark Ballas

text: Ballas is a professional ballroom dancer on the ABC program "Dancing with the Stars". He began competing on the show in season five during the fall of 2007 and was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Choreography in 2011. Ballas released his first solo CD "HurtLoveBox" in March 2011.


title: Mark Ballas

text: Ballas was born in Houston, Texas, the son of dancers Corky Ballas and Shirley Ballas (née Rich). His paternal grandparents were of Mexican and Greek background, and his mother is originally from the United Kingdom and is of predominantly English heritage. His mother also has distant Malagasy ancestry from Madagascar. His paternal grandfather, George Ballas, was the inventor of the Weed Eater lawn-trimming device. His paternal great-grandparents, Karolos ("Charles") Ballas and Maria Lymnaos were immigrants to the United States from Greece.


title: Mark Ballas

text: Ballas is a member of singer-songwriter duo Alexander Jean along with his wife, BC Jean. The two became engaged in November 2015 after three years of dating, and were married on 25 November 2016, in Malibu, California.


title: Mark Ballas

text: Ballas attended Rosemead Preparatory School in South London. At the age of 11, he earned a full-time slot at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in London, as well as earning a full scholarship. In 2005, he was awarded "Performer of the Year". He then moved on to win championships at The British Open to the World, The US Open to the World, and The International Open to the World. With his former partner Julianne Hough, he won the Junior Latin American Dance Championship and the gold medal at the Junior Olympics.


title: Mark Ballas

text: As an actor, Ballas played the lead role of Tony in the musical "Copacabana" and was the lead dancer in the UK national tour of the Spanish musical "Maria de Buenos Aires". He was also the understudy for the role of Ritchie Valens in the UK national tour of "Buddy, The Buddy Holly Story". Ballas played an extra in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" as part of the Hufflepuff House. In October 2008, Ballas made a guest appearance on the season premiere of "Samantha Who".


title: Mark Ballas

text: On 6 September 2016, it was announced that Ballas would be the final actor to portray the role of Frankie Valli in the Broadway cast of "Jersey Boys" before it closes in 2017. On 26 May 2018, it was announced that he would play the role of the Teen Angel in the 2018 Toronto revival of "Grease" in a limited engagement from 7–10 June. From 11 September 2018 to 18 November 2018, Ballas portrayed Charlie Price in the musical "Kinky Boots" on Broadway.


title: Mark Ballas

text: On the fifth season of "Dancing with the Stars", Ballas was partnered with Cheetah Girls star Sabrina Bryan. On 30 October 2007, the pair was voted off the show. They have been the only couple invited back for an exhibition dance.


title: Mark Ballas

text: Ballas's partner for season 6 of "Dancing with the Stars" was Olympic Gold Medal-winning figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi. They won the season.


title: Mark Ballas

text: On 25 August 2008, ABC announced the cast of the seventh season of "Dancing with the Stars", with Ballas paired with reality television star Kim Kardashian. They were the third couple eliminated, finishing in eleventh place, on 30 September 2008.


title: Mark Ballas

text: For the eighth season of "Dancing with the Stars", Ballas was paired with Olympic gold-medal winning gymnast Shawn Johnson, winning that season's competition on 19 May 2009.


title: Mark Ballas

text: He was partnered with actress Melissa Joan Hart for the show's ninth season. They were voted off in week six and came in 9th place.


title: Mark Ballas

text: For season 10, Ballas was partnered with actress Shannen Doherty. They were the first couple eliminated, on 30 March 2010. Despite that, Shannen & Mark hold a higher average than a few celebrities who lasted longer than they did.


title: Mark Ballas

text: For season 11, Ballas was partnered with Bristol Palin, daughter of former Alaska governor and U.S. Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. They made it to the finale and finished in third place.


title: Mark Ballas

text: For season 12, Ballas was partnered with Disney Channel star Chelsea Kane. They made it to the finals where they finished in third place. For his choreography with Kane, specifically the Jive ("I Write Sins Not Tragedies"), Viennese Waltz ("Hedwig's Theme") and Waltz ("My Love") dances, Ballas was nominated for that year's Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Choreography.


title: Mark Ballas

text: For season 13, Ballas was partnered with reality star Kristin Cavallari where they were the 3rd couple eliminated finishing in 10th place. In spite of this, they retained a higher average than a few couples that easily outlasted them, including Nancy Grace & Tristan MacManus, the quarter-finalists of the season.


title: Mark Ballas

text: For season 14, he was partnered with Classical Singer Katherine Jenkins. They made it to the finale where they finished as the runners-up, losing to Donald Driver & Peta Murgatroyd.


title: Mark Ballas

text: For season 15, he returned with season 11 partner, Bristol Palin before being eliminated in week 4. In week 7, he danced with his former partner Shawn Johnson because her partner, Derek Hough suffered a neck injury.


title: Mark Ballas

text: He was paired with two-time Olympic champion Aly Raisman for season 16. Since season 16 had four couples reach the finals for the first time, Aly and Mark were able to become finalists. On 21 May, however, they were eliminated at the beginning of the show landing them in fourth place.


title: Mark Ballas

text: For season 17, he was paired with singer Christina Milian. They were the 4th couple eliminated despite receiving high scores and good comments from the judges.


title: Mark Ballas

text: For season 18, he partnered with "Full House" actress Candace Cameron Bure. The couple made it to the finals and ended in third place.


title: Mark Ballas

text: For season 19, he partnered with "Duck Dynasty" star Sadie Robertson and finished in 2nd place behind Alfonso Ribeiro.


title: Mark Ballas

text: For season 20, he was paired with star of "The Hunger Games" film series Willow Shields. The couple was shockingly eliminated in week 7, finishing in seventh place despite receiving high scores throughout the season.


title: Mark Ballas

text: For season 21, he was partnered with actress Alexa PenaVega. They were eliminated in week 9 (despite being at the top of the leaderboard that week) and finished the competition in 6th place.


title: Mark Ballas

text: For season 22, he was paired with UFC mixed martial artist Paige VanZant. Ballas and VanZant made it to the finals of the show and finished in second place. Ballas was not part of the season 23 & 24 cast.


title: Mark Ballas

text: Ballas returned as a professional dancer for season 25, and was paired with violinist Lindsey Stirling. Ballas and Stirling made it to the finals and finished in second place.


title: Mark Ballas

text: Ballas returned to the show for season 31. He was partnered with social media personality and dancer Charli D'Amelio. They won the competition, making this Ballas' third win on the show and his first win since Season 8.


title: Mark Ballas

text: In his time on Dancing With the Stars, Ballas has set, and broken, numerous records in the course of his (so far) 18 seasons. Some of these records include, but are not limited to:


title: Mark Ballas

text: Alexander Jean is a duo formation made up of Mark Ballas and his wife BC Jean. They worked as a husband-wife American pop rock duo starting 2015. Their debut single was "Roses and Violets". The single reach the Top 20 on Billboard's Hot 100 "Bubbling Under" chart. They had success with "Waiting for You" and were nominated Elvis Duran's Artist of the Month in November 2018.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: Augustine of Canterbury (early 6th century – probably 26 May 604) was a monk who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597. He is considered the "Apostle to the English" and a founder of the English Church.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: Augustine was the prior of a monastery in Rome when Pope Gregory the Great chose him in 595 to lead a mission, usually known as the Gregorian mission, to Britain to Christianize King Æthelberht and his Kingdom of Kent from Anglo-Saxon paganism. Kent was probably chosen because Æthelberht had married a Christian princess, Bertha, daughter of Charibert I the King of Paris, who was expected to exert some influence over her husband. Before reaching Kent, the missionaries had considered turning back, but Gregory urged them on, and in 597, Augustine landed on the Isle of Thanet and proceeded to Æthelberht's main town of Canterbury.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: King Æthelberht converted to Christianity and allowed the missionaries to preach freely, giving them land to found a monastery outside the city walls. Augustine was consecrated as a bishop and converted many of the king's subjects, including thousands during a mass baptism on Christmas Day in 597. Pope Gregory sent more missionaries in 601, along with encouraging letters and gifts for the churches, although attempts to persuade the native British bishops to submit to Augustine's authority failed. Roman bishops were established at London, and Rochester in 604, and a school was founded to train Anglo-Saxon priests and missionaries. Augustine also arranged the consecration of his successor, Laurence of Canterbury. The archbishop probably died in 604 and was soon revered as a saint.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: After the withdrawal of the Roman legions from their province of Britannia in 410, the inhabitants were left to defend themselves against the attacks of the Saxons. Before the Roman withdrawal, Britannia had been converted to Christianity and produced the ascetic Pelagius. Britain sent three bishops to the Council of Arles in 314, and a Gaulish bishop went to the island in 396 to help settle disciplinary matters. Material remains testify to a growing presence of Christians, at least until around 360. After the Roman legions departed, pagan tribes settled the southern parts of the island while western Britain, beyond the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, remained Christian. This native British Church developed in isolation from Rome under the influence of missionaries from Ireland and was centred on monasteries instead of bishoprics. Other distinguishing characteristics were its calculation of the date of Easter and the style of the tonsure haircut that clerics wore. Evidence for the survival of Christianity in the eastern part of Britain during this time includes the survival of the cult of Saint Alban and the occurrence in place names of "eccles", derived from the Latin "ecclesia", meaning "church". There is no evidence that these native Christians tried to convert the Anglo-Saxons. The invasions destroyed most remnants of Roman civilisation in the areas held by the Saxons and related tribes, including the economic and religious structures.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: It was against this background that Pope Gregory I decided to send a mission, often called the Gregorian mission, to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity in 595. The Kingdom of Kent was ruled by Æthelberht, who married a Christian princess named Bertha before 588, and perhaps earlier than 560. Bertha was the daughter of Charibert I, one of the Merovingian kings of the Franks. As one of the conditions of her marriage, she brought a bishop named Liudhard with her to Kent. Together in Canterbury, they restored a church that dated to Roman timespossibly the current St Martin's Church. Æthelberht was a pagan at this point but allowed his wife freedom of worship. One biographer of Bertha states that under his wife's influence, Æthelberht asked Pope Gregory to send missionaries. The historian Ian N. Wood feels that the initiative came from the Kentish court as well as the queen. Other historians, however, believe that Gregory initiated the mission, although the exact reasons remain unclear. Bede, an 8th-century monk who wrote a history of the English church, recorded a famous story in which Gregory saw fair-haired Saxon slaves from Britain in the Roman slave market and was inspired to try to convert their people. More practical matters, such as the acquisition of new provinces acknowledging the primacy of the papacy, and a desire to influence the emerging power of the Kentish kingdom under Æthelberht, were probably involved. The mission may have been an outgrowth of the missionary efforts against the Lombards who, as pagans and Arian Christians, were not on good relations with the Catholic church in Rome.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: Aside from Æthelberht's granting of freedom of worship to his wife, the choice of Kent was probably dictated by a number of other factors. Kent was the dominant power in southeastern Britain. Since the eclipse of King Ceawlin of Wessex in 592, Æthelberht was the "bretwalda", or leading Anglo-Saxon ruler; Bede refers to Æthelberht as having imperium (overlordship) south of the River Humber. Trade between the Franks and Æthelberht's kingdom was well established, and the language barrier between the two regions was apparently only a minor obstacle, as the interpreters for the mission came from the Franks. Lastly, Kent's proximity to the Franks allowed support from a Christian area. There is some evidence, including Gregory's letters to Frankish kings in support of the mission, that some of the Franks felt that they had a claim to overlordship over some of the southern British kingdoms at this time. The presence of a Frankish bishop could also have lent credence to claims of overlordship, if Bertha's Bishop Liudhard was felt to be acting as a representative of the Frankish church and not merely as a spiritual advisor to the queen. Frankish influence was not merely political; archaeological remains attest to a cultural influence as well.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: In 595, Gregory chose Augustine, who was the prior of the Abbey of St Andrew in Rome, to head the mission to Kent. The pope selected monks to accompany Augustine and sought support from the Frankish royalty and clergy in a series of letters, of which some copies survive in Rome. He wrote to King Theuderic II of Burgundy and to King Theudebert II of Austrasia, as well as their grandmother Brunhild, seeking aid for the mission. Gregory thanked King Chlothar II of Neustria for aiding Augustine. Besides hospitality, the Frankish bishops and kings provided interpreters and Frankish priests to accompany the mission. By soliciting help from the Frankish kings and bishops, Gregory helped to assure a friendly reception for Augustine in Kent, as Æthelbert was unlikely to mistreat a mission which visibly had the support of his wife's relatives and people. Moreover, the Franks appreciated the chance to participate in mission that would extend their influence in Kent. Chlothar, in particular, needed a friendly realm across the Channel to help guard his kingdom's flanks against his fellow Frankish kings.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: Sources make no mention of why Pope Gregory chose a monk to head the mission. Pope Gregory once wrote to Æthelberht complimenting Augustine's knowledge of the Bible, so Augustine was evidently well educated. Other qualifications included administrative ability, for Gregory was the abbot of St Andrews as well as being pope, which left the day-to-day running of the abbey to Augustine, the prior.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: Augustine was accompanied by Laurence of Canterbury, his eventual successor to the archbishopric, and a group of about 40 companions, some of whom were monks. Soon after leaving Rome, the missionaries halted, daunted by the nature of the task before them. They sent Augustine back to Rome to request papal permission to return. Gregory refused and sent Augustine back with letters encouraging the missionaries to persevere. In 597, Augustine and his companions landed in Kent. They achieved some initial success soon after their arrival: Æthelberht permitted the missionaries to settle and preach in his capital of Canterbury where they used the church of St Martin's for services. Neither Bede nor Gregory mentions the date of Æthelberht's conversion, but it probably took place in 597. In the early medieval period, large-scale conversions required the ruler's conversion first, and Augustine is recorded as making large numbers of converts within a year of his arrival in Kent. Also, by 601, Gregory was writing to both Æthelberht and Bertha, calling the king his son and referring to his baptism. A late medieval tradition, recorded by the 15th-century chronicler Thomas Elmham, gives the date of the king's conversion as Whit Sunday, or 2 June 597; there is no reason to doubt this date, although there is no other evidence for it. Against a date in 597 is a letter of Gregory's to Patriarch Eulogius of Alexandria in June 598, which mentions the number of converts made by Augustine, but does not mention any baptism of the king. However, it is clear that by 601 the king had been converted. His baptism likely took place at Canterbury.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: Augustine established his episcopal see at Canterbury. It is not clear when and where Augustine was consecrated as a bishop. Bede, writing about a century later, states that Augustine was consecrated by the Frankish Archbishop Ætherius of Arles, Gaul (France) after the conversion of Æthelberht. Contemporary letters from Pope Gregory, however, refer to Augustine as a bishop before he arrived in England. A letter of Gregory's from September 597 calls Augustine a bishop, and one dated ten months later says Augustine had been consecrated on Gregory's command by bishops of the German lands. The historian R. A. Markus discusses the various theories of when and where Augustine was consecrated, and suggests he was consecrated before arriving in England, but argues the evidence does not permit deciding exactly where this took place.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: Soon after his arrival, Augustine founded the monastery of Saints Peter and Paul, which later became St Augustine's Abbey, on land donated by the king. In a letter Gregory wrote to the patriarch of Alexandria in 598, he claimed that more than 10,000 Christians had been baptised; the number may be exaggerated but there is no reason to doubt that a mass conversion took place. However, there were probably some Christians already in Kent before Augustine arrived, remnants of the Christians who lived in Britain in the later Roman Empire. Little literary traces remain of them, however. One other effect of the king's conversion by Augustine's mission was that the Frankish influence on the southern kingdoms of Britain was decreased.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: After these conversions, Augustine sent Laurence back to Rome with a report of his success, along with questions about the mission. Bede records the letter and Gregory's replies in chapter 27 of his "Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum"; this section of the "History" is usually known as the "Libellus responsionum". Augustine asked for Gregory's advice on a number of issues, including how to organise the church, the punishment for church robbers, guidance on who was allowed to marry whom, and the consecration of bishops. Other topics were relations between the churches of Britain and Gaul, childbirth and baptism, and when it was lawful for people to receive communion and for a priest to celebrate mass.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: Further missionaries were sent from Rome in 601. They brought a pallium for Augustine and a present of sacred vessels, vestments, relics, and books. The pallium was the symbol of metropolitan status, and signified that Augustine was now an archbishop unambiguously associated with the Holy See. Along with the pallium, a letter from Gregory directed the new archbishop to consecrate 12 suffragan bishops as soon as possible and to send a bishop to York. Gregory's plan was that there would be two metropolitans, one at York and one at London, with 12 suffragan bishops under each archbishop. As part of this plan, Augustine was expected to transfer his archiepiscopal see to London from Canterbury. This move never happened; no contemporary sources give the reason, but it was probably because London was not part of Æthelberht's domains. Instead, London was part of the kingdom of Essex, ruled by Æthelberht's nephew Saebert of Essex, who converted to Christianity in 604. The historian S. Brechter has suggested that the metropolitan see was indeed moved to London, and that it was only with the abandonment of London as a see after the death of Æthelberht that Canterbury became the archiepiscopal see. This theory contradicts Bede's version of events, however.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: In 604, Augustine founded two more bishoprics in Britain. Two men who had come to Britain with him in 601 were consecrated, Mellitus as Bishop of London and Justus as Bishop of Rochester. Bede relates that Augustine, with the help of the king, "recovered" a church built by Roman Christians in Canterbury. It is not clear if Bede meant that Augustine rebuilt the church or that Augustine merely reconsecrated a building that had been used for pagan worship. Archaeological evidence seems to support the latter interpretation; in 1973 the remains of an aisled building dating from the Romano-British period were uncovered just south of the present Canterbury Cathedral. The historian Ian Wood argues that the existence of the "Libellus" points to more contact between Augustine and the native Christians because the topics covered in the work are not restricted to conversion from paganism, but also dealt with relations between differing styles of Christianity.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: Augustine failed to extend his authority to the Christians in Wales and Dumnonia to the west. Gregory had decreed that these Christians should submit to Augustine and that their bishops should obey him, apparently believing that more of the Roman governmental and ecclesiastical organisation survived in Britain than was actually the case. According to the narrative of Bede, the Britons in these regions viewed Augustine with uncertainty, and their suspicion was compounded by a diplomatic misjudgement on Augustine's part. In 603, Augustine and Æthelberht summoned the British bishops to a meeting south of the Severn. These guests retired early to confer with their people, who, according to Bede, advised them to judge Augustine based upon the respect he displayed at their next meeting. When Augustine failed to rise from his seat on the entrance of the British bishops, they refused to recognise him as their archbishop. There were, however, deep differences between Augustine and the British church that perhaps played a more significant role in preventing an agreement. At issue were the tonsure, the observance of Easter, and practical and deep-rooted differences in approach to asceticism, missionary endeavours, and how the church itself was organised. Some historians believe that Augustine had no real understanding of the history and traditions of the British church, damaging his relations with their bishops. Also, there were political dimensions involved, as Augustine's efforts were sponsored by the Kentish king, and at this period the Wessex and Mercian kingdoms were expanding to the west, into areas held by the Britons.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: Gregory also instructed Augustine on other matters. Temples were to be consecrated for Christian use, and feasts, if possible, moved to days celebrating Christian martyrs. One religious site was revealed to be a shrine of a local St Sixtus, whose worshippers were unaware of details of the martyr's life or death. They may have been native Christians, but Augustine did not treat them as such. When Gregory was informed, he told Augustine to stop the cult and use the shrine for the Roman St Sixtus.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: Gregory legislated on the behaviour of the laity and the clergy. He placed the new mission directly under papal authority and made it clear that English bishops would have no authority over Frankish counterparts nor vice versa. Other directives dealt with the training of native clergy and the missionaries' conduct.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: The King's School, Canterbury claims Augustine as its founder, which would make it the world's oldest existing school, but the first documentary records of the school date from the 16th century. Augustine did establish a school, and soon after his death Canterbury was able to send teachers out to support the East Anglian mission. Augustine received liturgical books from the pope, but their exact contents are unknown. They may have been some of the new mass books that were being written at this time. The exact liturgy that Augustine introduced to England remains unknown, but it would have been a form of the Latin language liturgy in use at Rome.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: Before his death, Augustine consecrated Laurence of Canterbury as his successor to the archbishopric, probably to ensure an orderly transfer of office. Although at the time of Augustine's death, 26 May 604, the mission barely extended beyond Kent, his undertaking introduced a more active missionary style into the British Isles. Despite the earlier presence of Christians in Ireland and Wales, no efforts had been made to try to convert the Saxon invaders. Augustine was sent to convert the descendants of those invaders, and eventually became the decisive influence in Christianity in most of the British Isles. Much of his success came about because of Augustine's close relationship with Æthelberht, which gave the archbishop time to establish himself. Augustine's example also influenced the great missionary efforts of the Anglo-Saxon Church.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: Augustine's body was originally buried in the portico of what is now St Augustine's, Canterbury, but it was later exhumed and placed in a tomb within the abbey church, which became a place of pilgrimage and veneration. After the Norman Conquest the cult of St Augustine was actively promoted. After the Conquest, his shrine in St Augustine's Abbey held a central position in one of the axial chapels, flanked by the shrines of his successors Laurence and Mellitus. King Henry I of England granted St. Augustine's Abbey a six-day fair around the date on which Augustine's relics were translated to his new shrine, from 8 September through 13 September.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: A life of Augustine was written by Goscelin around 1090, but this life portrays Augustine in a different light, compared to Bede's account. Goscelin's account has little new historical content, mainly being filled with miracles and imagined speeches. Building on this account, later medieval writers continued to add new miracles and stories to Augustine's life, often quite fanciful. These authors included William of Malmesbury, who claimed that Augustine founded Cerne Abbey, the author (generally believed to be John Brompton) of a late medieval chronicle containing invented letters from Augustine, and a number of medieval writers who included Augustine in their romances. Another problem with investigating Augustine's saintly cult is the confusion resulting because most medieval liturgical documents mentioning Augustine do not distinguish between Augustine of Canterbury and Augustine of Hippo, a fourth-century saint. Medieval Scandinavian liturgies feature Augustine of Canterbury quite often, however. During the English Reformation, Augustine's shrine was destroyed and his relics were lost.


title: Augustine of Canterbury

text: Augustine's shrine was re-established in March 2012 at the church of St. Augustine in Ramsgate, Kent, very close to the mission's landing site. St Augustine's Cross, a Celtic cross erected in 1884, marks the spot in Ebbsfleet, Thanet, East Kent, where the newly arrived Augustine is said to have first met and preached to the awaiting King Ethelbert.


title: Ana Ortiz

text: Ana Ortiz (born January 25, 1971) is an American actress and singer. Having pursued a career in ballet and singing from a young age, she eventually attended University of the Arts. Ortiz began her acting career in theatre, in early 2000s starred in the short-lived NBC sitcoms "Kristin" (2001) and "A.U.S.A." (2003), and had recurring roles on "Over There" and "Boston Legal".


title: Ana Ortiz

text: Ortiz garnered widespread attention for her role as Hilda Suarez in the ABC comedy-drama series "Ugly Betty" from 2006 to 2010. She also appeared in such films like "Labor Pains" (2009) and "" (2011), and starred in "" (2008). From 2013 to 2016, Ortiz starred as Marisol Suarez in the Lifetime television comedy-drama series "Devious Maids", for which she received the Imagen Award for Best Actress - Television. In 2020, Ortiz began starring in the Hulu series "Love, Victor" as Isabel Salazar, mother of the title character Victor Salazar.


title: Ana Ortiz

text: Ortiz was born in New York City, and is the daughter of Angel Ortiz, a former Philadelphia City Council member of Puerto Rican descent, and an Irish-American mother, Kathleen Kuhlman. As a child, Ortiz studied ballet for eight years, until the pain of dancing en pointe forced her to pursue a different artistic discipline. Ortiz graduated from University of the Arts in Philadelphia.


title: Ana Ortiz

text: Switching to singing, Ortiz attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York City and later the University of the Arts in Philadelphia before making her professional stage debut in a regional theater production of "Dangerous Liaisons". Her additional stage credits include portraying Chrissy in a European touring production of "Hair", regional theater productions such as "Dog Lady and the Cuban Swimmer" and in the South Coast Repertory Theater's production of "References to Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot". After joining LAByrinth Theatre Company, she appeared Off-Broadway in "In Arabia We'd All Be Kings", directed by Academy Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and named one of the 10-best plays of 1999 by the magazine "Time Out New York".


title: Ana Ortiz

text: Ortiz appeared in several television shows including "NYPD Blue", "Everybody Loves Raymond", "Commander In Chief", "ER", and "The New Adventures of Old Christine". She had her first series regular role in short-lived NBC comedy series "Kristin" (2001). She later starred in another short-lived sitcom, called "A.U.S.A." in 2003, and later had recurring roles in the FX drama "Over There", and ABC series "Boston Legal".


title: Ana Ortiz

text: In 2006, Ortiz was cast as Hilda Suarez, the lead character's sister, in the ABC comedy-drama series "Ugly Betty". Originally, Ortiz had auditioned for the Betty Suarez role, saying in 2008, "I was super plain. I just put on some glasses and kept my hair kind of flat and layered on the clothing", describing what she wore when auditioning for the role of Betty. "I just wanted them to remember me, so that I could be involved in the future".


title: Ana Ortiz

text: In addition to her role on "Ugly Betty", Ortiz was active in films, which include starring roles in "Tortilla Heaven" and "Labor Pains". She also had a voice role in "", and starred in the made-for-television movie "" in 2008. Ortiz also had a guest-starring role on "Army Wives" during its second season, playing a waitress named Sandi. She also appeared in the 2010 music video for Enrique Iglesias and Juan Luis Guerra's "Cuando me enamoro".


title: Ana Ortiz

text: After "Ugly Betty" ended in 2010, Ortiz was cast as lead character in the ABC drama pilot "True Blue" about San Francisco homicide detectives reunited to solve the murder of one of their own. The pilot was not picked up to series. The following year she appeared in the comedy film "", and starred in another pilot, called "Outnumbered" for Fox, her second pilot not picked up to series. She later had a recurring role on the HBO comedy series "Hung". Ortiz also starred in the independent films "Sleeping with the Fishes", and "Such Good People".


title: Ana Ortiz

text: In 2012, Ortiz was cast as a lead character on the ABC comedy drama pilot "Devious Maids". While ABC chose not to pick it up to series, Lifetime picked up the pilot with a thirteen-episode order. The series premiered June 23, 2013, on Lifetime with positive reviews from critics. In the show, she plays the lead role of Marisol Duarte (the alias of Professor Marisol Suarez). Also in 2013, Ortiz was special guest star in the ABC primetime soap opera, "Revenge", as Bizzy Preston. In 2014, Ortiz guest-starred in episodes of two ABC shows: "How to Get Away with Murder" and "Black-ish".


title: Ana Ortiz

text: In 2014 Ortiz was cast in the gay-drama film "Love is All You Need?" (2016), based on the 2011 short film with the same name. She did voice over work in the 2018 film "Ralph Breaks the Internet".


title: Ana Ortiz

text: "Devious Maids" was canceled after four seasons, in 2016. The following year, Ortiz starred in her third unsold pilot, a comedy called "Charlie Foxtrot". Since 2019, Ortiz appears in the main cast of the comedy drama "Whiskey Cavalier", playing FBI profiler Susan Sampson.


title: Ana Ortiz

text: In 2020, Ortiz starred in the acclaimed Hulu series "Love, Victor" as Isabel Salazar, mother of the title character Victor Salazar. Her role is acclaimed by critics.


title: Ana Ortiz

text: Ortiz married musician Noah Lebenzon on June 7, 2007 in Rincón, Puerto Rico. Their daughter Paloma was born June 25, 2009. Their second child, son Rafael, was born on September 24, 2011.


title: Ana Ortiz

text: Ortiz is active in raising awareness against domestic abuse, citing her own experiences when she was in her 20s and involved in a romantic relationship that turned physically abusive. In an article for "USA Today", Ortiz notes that the final scene from the "Ugly Betty" episode "How Betty Got Her Grieve Back", in which Hilda sat on her bed staring at the bathroom after realizing that Santos had died, was drawn from that experience: "I used some of that subconsciously ... It's something that is always with me".


title: Take Me Out (play)

text: Take Me Out is a play by American playwright Richard Greenberg. After a staging at the Donmar Warehouse in London, it premiered Off-Broadway on September 5, 2002 at the Joseph Papp Public Theater. It made its Broadway debut on February 27, 2003 at the Walter Kerr Theatre, where it ran for 355 performances and won the 2003 Tony Award for Best Play. A Broadway revival opened at the Hayes Theater on April 4, 2022.


title: Take Me Out (play)

text: While Glenn Burke was out to teammates and team owners in the 1970s and Billy Bean came out in 1999 after retiring from playing in Major League Baseball for eight seasons, at the time of the writing of this play no Major League Baseball player had ever come out to the public during his career. This play is the dramatic exploration of what such an event might be like.


title: Take Me Out (play)

text: Playwright Greenberg has stated that one of the compulsions for creating a baseball play was his complete immersion into the sport in 1999 after following the New York Yankees' (then-)record 114-win season the previous year, beginning with David Wells' perfect game. Many believe the inspiration for Lemming is former American Major League Baseball player Derek Jeter of the Yankees, and for racist pitcher Shane Mungitt, former National League pitcher John Rocker, then of the Atlanta Braves.


title: Take Me Out (play)

text: Much of the play is set in the locker room of a professional baseball team, and as such has an all-male cast that explores themes of homophobia, racism, class, and masculinity in sports.


title: Take Me Out (play)

text: Darren Lemming, a star mixed-race center fielder for the fictional Empires Major League Baseball team, comes out as gay. His friend and teammate Kippy Sunderstrom warns Darren that the team will feel uncomfortable about his sexual orientation, but is brushed off by Darren. As Kippy wonders why Darren chose that particular moment in time to come out, a flashback to a week earlier shows Darren having drinks with his best friend Davey Battle, a religious player on a rival team. Davey tells Darren that he should want his true nature known to the world. Later, Darren meets with his new accountant Mason Marzac, a gay man uninterested in baseball until Darren's coming out.


title: Take Me Out (play)

text: The Empires fall into a slump, prompting relief pitcher Shane Mungitt to be brought up from the minor leagues. Shane tells the team that as a child, he was raised in orphanages after his father killed his mother and then himself in a murder-suicide. The team begins winning games again, but in a television interview, Mungitt expresses his discomfort with "colored people" on the team, and that he has to shower every night with a "faggot."


title: Take Me Out (play)

text: Shane is suspended due to the interview, causing the team to fall back into its slump. He writes an apology letter that is leaked to the public, which combined with the details about his tragic childhood, causes public sympathy to shift in his favor. Shane returns to the team, despite Darren's threat to retire in protest. In the locker room showers, Darren derides Shane for his racism and homophobia, and mockingly kisses him. In the game, Shane is sent to pitch against Davey Battle; the ball hits Davey's head, killing him.


title: Take Me Out (play)

text: In a flashback to Darren and Davey's final encounter, Davey angrily accuses Darren of using his straight-and-narrow public reputation to conceal his sexuality. Shane is permanently suspended from major league baseball, and arrested for questioning after players say they heard him muttering about wanting to "kill someone" before the game. He refuses to speak to the police, stating that he will only talk to Kippy. Kippy is joined by Darren, and as Kippy attempts to determine whether the pitch that killed Davey was intentional, Shane discloses that the apology letter was written by Kippy on Shane's behalf.


title: Take Me Out (play)

text: In narration, Kippy states to the audience that the Empires went on to win the World Series, and no charges were ever filed against Shane. Kippy expresses to Darren his desire to again be friends, and Darren invites Mason to the end-of-season party.


title: Take Me Out (play)

text: The show premiered at the Donmar Warehouse in London on June 20, 2002. The production was directed by Joe Mantello and starred Daniel Sunjata, Denis O'Hare, Neal Huff, Frederick Weller, Kevin Carroll, Dominic Fumusa, Gene Gabriel, Robert M. Jimenez, Joe Lisi, Kohl Sudduth, and James Yaegashi. It ran until August 3 of the same year.


title: Take Me Out (play)

text: The production transferred off-Broadway to the Joseph Papp Public Theater later that year with the same cast and direction where it ran until 2003.


title: Take Me Out (play)

text: The next year, the show transferred to the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway with the same cast with the exception of Dominic Fumusa, who was replaced by David Eigenberg. It opened on February 27, 2003. It featured designs by Scott Pask (scenic), Jess Goldstein (costume), Kevin Adams (lighting), and Janet Kalas (sound). At the 2003 Tony Awards, the production won the award for Best Play, Mantello won Best Direction of a Play, and O'Hare won Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play. It closed on January 4, 2004 after 355 performances.


title: Take Me Out (play)

text: A Broadway revival opened at the Hayes Theater on April 4, 2022. It was originally scheduled to begin previews on April 2, 2020 and officially open on April 23. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the show suspended production on March 12. The cast is made up of Jesse Williams, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Patrick J. Adams, Michael Oberholtzer, Brandon L. Dirden, Carl Lundstedt, Hiram Delgado, Ken Marks, Eduardo Ramos, Tyler Lansing Weaks, and Julian Cihi. The production is directed by Scott Ellis and has a production team including David Rockwell (scenic), Linda Cho (costumes), Kenneth Posner (lighting), and Fitz Patton (sound). The production began previews on March 10, 2022 and officially opened on April 4. It closed on June 11.


title: Take Me Out (play)

text: The Broadway revival has a very strict policy regarding phones and requires that all audience members place their phones in locked Yondr pouches prior to the show. However, on May 9, 2022, a video leaked online of a scene of Williams during the shower scene in which he is fully nude. The Actors' Equity Association, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and 2nd Stage, owner the Helen Hayes Theater, released statements sharing their disgust. The latter stated they would be adding additional staff to enforce the "no phones" policy.


title: Take Me Out (play)

text: The revival will be remounted at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre and begin performances on October 27, 2022 for a limited run of 14 weeks. Due to previous filming engagement, Adams was unable to return and Bill Heck assumed the role of Kippy for the return engagment.


title: Take Me Out (play)

text: A limited-run production opened at the DBS Arts Centre in Singapore on January 8, 2014 and closed on January 31.


title: Take Me Out (play)

text: In August 2021, it was reported that Anonymous Content would be adapting the play into a limited television series. Jesse Williams will star and Scott Ellis will direct the pilot written by Greenberg.


title: Chantal Akerman

text: Chantal Anne Akerman (; 6 June 19505 October 2015) was a Belgian film director, screenwriter, artist, and film professor at the City College of New York. She is best known for films such as "Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" (1975), "News from Home" (1977), and "Les Rendez-vous d'Anna" (1978); the former was ranked the greatest film of all time in "Sight & Sound" magazine's 2022 "Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time" critics poll. According to film scholar Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Akerman's influence on feminist and avant-garde cinema is substantial.


title: Chantal Akerman

text: Akerman was born in Brussels, Belgium, to Holocaust survivors from Poland. She was the older sister of Sylviane Akerman, her only sibling. Her mother, Natalia (Nelly), survived years at Auschwitz, where her own parents were murdered. From a young age, Akerman and her mother were exceptionally close, and she encouraged her daughter to pursue a career rather than marry young.


title: Chantal Akerman

text: At age 18, Akerman entered the Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle et des Techniques de Diffusion, a Belgian film school. She dropped out during her first term to make the short film "Saute ma ville", funding it by trading diamond shares on the Antwerp stock exchange.


title: Chantal Akerman

text: Akerman had an extremely close relationship with her mother, captured in some of her films. In "News from Home" (1976), Akerman's mother's letters outlining mundane family activities serve as a soundtrack throughout. Her 2015 film "No Home Movie" centers on mother-daughter relationships, largely situated in the kitchen, and is a response to her mother's death in 2014. The film explores issues of metempsychosis, the last shot of the film acting as a memento mori of the mother's apartment.


title: Chantal Akerman

text: Akerman acknowledged that her mother was at the center of her work and admitted to feeling directionless after her death. The maternal imagery can be found throughout all of Akerman's films as an homage and an attempt to reconstitute the image and voice of the mother. In "Family in Brussels", Akerman narrates the story, interchanging her own voice with her mother's.


title: Chantal Akerman

text: Akerman said that, at the age of 15, after viewing Jean-Luc Godard's "Pierrot le fou" (1965), she decided, that same night, to become a filmmaker. In 1971, Akerman's first short film, "Saute ma ville", premiered at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. That year, she moved to New York City, where she remained until 1972.


title: Chantal Akerman

text: At Anthology Film Archives in New York, Akerman was impressed with the work of Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Michael Snow, Yvonne Rainer, and Andy Warhol.


title: Chantal Akerman

text: Her first feature film, "Hotel Monterey" (1972), and subsequent short films "La Chambre 1" and "La Chambre 2" reveal the influence of structural filmmaking through these films' usage of long takes. These protracted shots serve to oscillate images between abstraction and figuration. Akerman's films from this period also signify the start of her collaboration with cinematographer Babette Mangolte.


title: Chantal Akerman

text: In 1973 Akerman returned to Belgium, and in 1974 she received critical recognition for her feature "Je, Tu, Il, Elle (I, You, He, She)". Feminist and queer film scholar B. Ruby Rich noted that "Je Tu Il Elle" can be seen as a "cinematic Rosetta Stone of female sexuality".


title: Chantal Akerman

text: Akerman's most significant film, "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles", was released in 1975. Often considered one of the greatest examples of feminist filmmaking, the film makes a hypnotic, real-time study of a middle-aged widow's stifling routine of domestic chores and prostitution. Upon the film's release, "The New York Times" called "Jeanne Dielman" the "first masterpiece of the feminine in the history of the cinema". Scholar Ivone Margulies says the picture is a filmic paradigm for uniting feminism and anti-illusionism. The film was named the 19th greatest film of the 20th century by J. Hoberman of the "Village Voice". More recently, December 2022 saw the film awarded first place by "Sight & Sound" magazine's "Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time" list, as voted for by critics, becoming the fourth film to do so after "Bicycle Thieves", "Citizen Kane", and "Vertigo". "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" thus became the first film directed by a woman to top the list and, together with "Beau Travail", one of the first two such films to appear in the top 10.


title: Chantal Akerman

text: Akerman has acknowledged that her cinematic approach can be explained, in part, through the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Deleuze and Guattari write about the concept of minor literature as being characterized by the following things:


title: Chantal Akerman

text: Deleuze and Guattari claim that these characteristics describe the revolutionary conditions within the canon of literature. Akerman has referenced Deleuze and Guattari on how, in minor literature, characters assume an immediate, nonhierarchical relation between small individual matters and economic, commercial, juridical, and political ones. While the filmmaker has an interest in multiple deterritorializations, she also considers the feminist demand for the exercise of identity, where a borderline status may be undesirable.


title: Chantal Akerman

text: Akerman has used the setting of a kitchen to explore the intersection between femininity and domesticity. The kitchens in her work provide intimate spaces for connection and conversation, functioning as a backdrop to the dramas of daily life. The kitchens, alongside other domestic spaces, act as self-confining prisons under patriarchal conditions. In Akerman's work, the kitchen acts as a domestic theatre.


title: Chantal Akerman

text: Akerman is often grouped within feminist and queer thinking, but she articulated her distance from an essentialist feminism. Akerman resisted labels relating to her identity like "female", "Jewish" and "lesbian", choosing instead to immerse herself in the identity of being a daughter; she said she saw film as a "generative field of freedom from the boundaries of identity". She advocated for multiplicity of expression, explaining, "when people say there is a feminist film language, it is like saying there is only one way for women to express themselves". For Akerman, there are as many cinematic languages as there are individuals.