title: History of the floppy disk

text: In 1984, IBM introduced the 5¼ high density disk format with its new IBM AT machines. The 5¼ HD drive was essentially a scaled-down 8" drive, using the same rotation speed and bit rate, and it provided almost three times as much storage as the 360k format, but had compatibility issues with the older drives due to the narrower read/write head.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: Except for labeling, 5¼-inch high-density disks were externally identical to their double-density counterparts. This led to an odd situation wherein the drive itself was unable to determine the density of the disk inserted except by reading the disk media to determine the format. It was therefore possible to use a high-density drive to format a double-density disk to the higher capacity. This usually appeared to work (sometimes reporting a small number of bad sectors)—at least for a time. The problem was that the high-density format was made possible by the creation of a new high-coercivity oxide coating (after soft sector formatting became standard, previous increases in density were largely enabled by improvements in head technology; up until that point, the media formulation had essentially remained the same since 1976). In order to format or write to this high-coercivity media, the high-density drive switched its heads into a mode using a stronger magnetic field. When these stronger fields were written onto a double-density disk (having lower coercivity media), the strongly magnetized oxide particles would begin to affect the magnetic charge of adjacent particles. The net effect is that the disk would begin to erase itself. On the other hand, the opposite procedure (attempting to format an HD disk as DD) would fail almost every time, as the high-coercivity media would not retain data written by the low-power DD field. High-density 3½-inch disks avoided this problem by the addition of a hole in the disk cartridge so that the drive could determine the appropriate density. However, the coercivity rating between the 3½-inch DD and HD formats, 665 and 720 oersteds, is much narrower than that for the -inch format, 600 versus 300 oersteds, and consequently it was possible to format a 3½-inch DD disk as HD with no apparent problems.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: By the end of the 1980s, the 5¼-inch disks had been superseded by the 3½-inch disks. Though 5¼-inch drives were still available, as were disks, they faded in popularity as the 1990s began. The main community of users was primarily those who still owned 1980s legacy machines (PCs running DOS or home computers) that had no 3½-inch drive; the advent of Windows 95 (not even sold in stores in a 5¼-inch version; a coupon had to be obtained and mailed in) and subsequent phaseout of stand-alone MS-DOS with version 6.22 forced many of them to upgrade their hardware. On most new computers, the 5¼-inch drives were optional equipment. By the mid-1990s, the drives had virtually disappeared as the 3½-inch disk became the predominant floppy disk.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: During the development of the Apple Lisa, Apple developed a disk format codenamed "Twiggy", and officially known as FileWare. While basically similar to a standard -inch disk, the Twiggy disk had an additional set of write windows on the top of the disk with the label running down the side. The drive was also present in prototypes of the original Apple Macintosh computer, but was removed in both the Mac and later versions of the Lisa in favor of the -inch floppy disk from Sony. The drives were notoriously unreliable and Apple was criticized for needlessly diverging from industry standards.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: Throughout the early 1980s, the limitations of the -inch format were starting to become clear. Originally designed to be smaller and more practical than the 8-inch format, the -inch system was itself too large, and as the quality of the recording media grew, the same amount of data could be placed on a smaller surface. Another problem was that the -inch disks were simply scaled down versions of the 8-inch disks, which had never really been engineered for ease of use. The thin folded-plastic shell allowed the disk to be easily damaged through bending, and allowed dirt to get onto the disk surface through the opening.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: A number of solutions were developed, with drives at 2-inch, -inch, 3-inch and -inch (50, 60, 75 and 90 mm), all being offered by various companies. They all shared a number of advantages over the older format, including a small form factor and a rigid case with a slideable write protect catch. The almost-universal use of the -inch format made it very difficult for any of these new formats to gain any significant market share. Some of these formats included Dysan and Shugart's -inch floppy disk, the later ubiquitous Sony -inch disk and the 3-inch format:


title: History of the floppy disk

text: The 3-inch floppy drive itself was manufactured by Hitachi, Matsushita and Maxell. Only Teac outside this "network" is known to have produced drives. Similarly, only three manufacturers of media (Maxell, Matsushita and Tatung) are known (sometimes also branded Yamaha, Amsoft, Panasonic, Schneider, Tandy, Godexco and Dixons), but "no-name" disks with questionable quality have been seen in circulation.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: Amstrad included a 3-inch single-sided, double-density (180 KB) drive in their CPC and some models of PCW. The PCW 8512 included a double-sided, quad-density (720 KB) drive as the second drive, and later models, such as the PCW 9512, used quad-density even for the first drive. The single-sided double density (180 KB) drive was "inherited" by the ZX Spectrum +3 computer after Amstrad bought the rights from Sinclair. The Oric-1 and Atmos systems from Oric International also used the 3-inch floppy drives, originally shipping with the Atmos, but also supported on the older Oric-1.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: Since all 3-inch media were double-sided in nature, single-sided drive owners were able to flip the disk over to use the other side. The sides were termed "A" and "B" and were completely independent, but single-sided drive units could only access the upper side at one time.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: The disk format itself had no more capacity than the more popular (and cheaper) -inch floppies. Each side of a double-density disk held 180 KB for a total of 360 KB per disk, and 720 KB for quad-density disks. Unlike -inch or -inch disks, the 3-inch disks were designed to be reversible and sported two independent write-protect switches. It was also more reliable thanks to its hard casing.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: 3-inch drives were also used on a number of exotic and obscure CP/M systems such as the Tatung Einstein and occasionally on MSX systems in some regions. Other computers to have used this format are the more unknown Gavilan Mobile Computer and Matsushita's National Mybrain 3000. The Yamaha MDR-1 also used 3-inch drives.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: The main problems with this format were the high price, due to the quite elaborate and complex case mechanisms. However, the final tip of the scale was when Sony in 1984 convinced Apple Computer to use the -inch drives in the Macintosh 128K model, effectively making the -inch drive a de facto standard.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: Another 3-inch (75 mm) format was Mitsumi's Quick Disk format. The Quick Disk format is referred to in various size references: 2.8-inch, 3-inch×3-inch and 3-inch×4-inch. Mitsumi offered this as OEM equipment, expecting their VAR customers to customize the packaging for their own particular use; disks thus vary in storage capacity and casing size. The Quick Disk uses a 2.8-inch magnetic media, break-off write-protection tabs (one for each side), and contains a see-through hole near center spindle (used to ensure spindle clamping). Nintendo packaged the 2.8-inch magnetic media in a 3-inch×4-inch housing, while others packaged the same media in a 3 inch×3 inch square housing.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: The Quick Disk's most successful use was in Nintendo's Famicom Disk System (FDS). The FDS package of Mitsumi's Quick Disk used a 3-inch×4-inch plastic housing called the "Disk Card". Most FDS disks did not have cover protection to prevent media contamination, but a later special series of five games did include a protective shutter.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: Mitsumi's "3-inch" Quick Disk media were also used in a 3-inch×3-inch housing for many Smith Corona word processors. The Smith Corona disks are confusingly labeled "DataDisk 2.8-inch", presumably referring to the size of the medium inside the hard plastic case.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: The Quick Disk was also used in several MIDI keyboards and MIDI samplers of the mid-1980s. A non-inclusive list includes: the Roland S-10 and MKS100 samplers, the Korg SQD1, the Korg SQD8 MIDI sequencer, Akai's 1985 model MD280 drive for the S-612 MIDI sampler, Akai's X7000 / S700 (rack version) and X3700, the Roland S-220, and the Yamaha MDF1 MIDI disk drive (intended for their DX7/21/100/TX7 synthesizers, RX11/21/21L drum machines, and QX1, QX21 and QX5 MIDI sequencers).


title: History of the floppy disk

text: As the cost in the 1980s to add -inch drives was still quite high, the Mitsumi Quick Disk was competing as a lower cost alternative packaged in several now obscure 8-bit computer systems. Another non-inclusive list of Quick Disk versions: QDM-01, QDD (Quick Disk Drive) on French Thomson micro-computers, in the Casio QD-7 drive, in a peripheral for the Sharp MZ-700 & MZ-800 system, in the DPQ-280 Quickdisk for the Daewoo/Dynadata MSX1 DPC-200, in the Dragon 32/64 machine, in the Crescent Quick Disk 128, 128i and 256 peripherals for the ZX Spectrum, and in the Triton Quick Disk peripheral also for the ZX Spectrum.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: The World of Spectrum FAQ reveals that the drives did come in different sizes: 128 to 256 kB in Crescent's incarnation, and in the Triton system, with a density of 4410 bits per inch, data transmission rate of 101.6 kbit/s, a 2.8-inch double sided disk type and a capacity of up to 20 sectors per side at 2.5 kB per sector, up to 100 kB per disk. Quick Disk as used in the Famicom Disk System holds 64 kB of data per side, requiring a manual turn-over to access the second side.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: Unusually, the Quick Disk utilizes "a continuous linear tracking of the head and thus creates a single spiral track along the disk similar to a record groove." This has led some to compare it more to a "tape-stream" unit than typically what is thought of as a random-access disk drive.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: In 1981, Sony introduced their -inch floppy disk cartridge (90.0 mm × 94.0 mm) having a single sided unformatted capacity of 218.8 KB and a formatted capacity of 161.2 KB. A double sided version was available in 1982. This initial Sony design was similar to other less than -inch designs but somewhat simpler in construction. The first computer to use this format was Sony's SMC-70 of 1982. Other than Hewlett-Packard's HP-150 of 1983 and Sony's MSX computers that year, this format suffered from a similar fate as the other new formats; the -inch format simply had too much market share.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: Things changed dramatically in 1982 when the Microfloppy Industry Committee (MIC), a consortium ultimately of 23 media companies, agreed upon a -inch media specification based upon but differing from the original Sony design. The first single-sided drives compatible with this new media specification shipped in early 1983, followed immediately in 1984 by double-sided compatible versions. In 1984, Apple Computer selected the format for their new Macintosh computers. Then, in 1985, Atari adopted it for their new ST line, and Commodore for their new Amiga. By 1988, the -inch was outselling the -inch. In South Africa, the -inch format was generally called a stiffy disk, to distinguish it from the flexible -inch format.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: The term "-inch" or "3.5-inch" disk is and was rounded from the 90 mm actual dimension of one side of the rectangular cartridge. The actual disk diameter is .


title: History of the floppy disk

text: The -inch disks had, by way of their rigid case's slide-in-place metal cover, the significant advantage of being much better protected against unintended physical contact with the disk surface than -inch disks when the disk was handled outside the disk drive. When the disk was inserted, a part inside the drive moved the metal cover aside, giving the drive's read/write heads the necessary access to the magnetic recording surfaces. Adding the slide mechanism resulted in a slight departure from the previous square outline. The irregular, rectangular shape had the additional merit that it made it impossible to insert the disk sideways by mistake as had indeed been possible with earlier formats.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: 3.5" drives included several other advantages over the older drive types, including not requiring a terminating resistor pack, and no need of an index hole.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: The shutter mechanism was not without its problems, however. On old or roughly treated disks, the shutter could bend away from the disk. This made it vulnerable to being ripped off completely (which does not damage the disk itself but does leave it much more vulnerable to dust), or worse, catching inside a drive and possibly either getting stuck inside or damaging the drive.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: Like the -inch, the -inch disk underwent an evolution of its own. When Apple introduced the Macintosh in 1984, it used single-sided -inch disk drives with an advertised capacity of 400 KB. The encoding technique used by these drives was known as GCR, or Group Coded Recording (similar recording methods were used by Commodore on its -inch drives and Sirius Systems Technology in its Victor 9000 non-PC-compatible MS-DOS machine).


title: History of the floppy disk

text: Somewhat later, PC-compatible machines began using single-sided -inch disks with an advertised capacity of 360 KB (the same as a double-sided -inch disk), and a different, incompatible recording format called MFM (Modified Frequency Modulation). GCR and MFM drives (and their formatted disks) were incompatible, although the physical disks were the same. In 1986, Apple introduced double-sided, 800 KB disks, still using GCR, and soon after, IBM began using 720 KB double-sided double-density MFM disks in PCs like the IBM PC Convertible. IBM PC compatibles adopted it too, while the Amiga used MFM encoding on the same disks to give a capacity of 1 MB (880 KB available once formatted).


title: History of the floppy disk

text: An MFM-based, "high-density" format, displayed as "HD" on the disks themselves and typically advertised as "1.44 MB" was introduced in 1987; the most common formatted capacity was 1,474,560 bytes (or 1440 KiB), double that of the 720 KiB variant. The term "1.44 MB" is a misnomer caused by dividing the size of 1440 kibibytes (1440 * 1024 bytes) by 1000, thus converting 1440 KiB to "1.44 MB" - where the MB stands for neither a megabyte (1,000,000 bytes) nor a mebibyte (1,048,576 bytes) but instead 1,024,000 bytes. Correctly dividing 1440 KiB by 1024 gives a size of 1.40625 MiB. These HD disks had an extra hole in the case on the opposite side of the write-protect notch. IBM used this format on their PS/2 series introduced in 1987. Apple started using "HD" in 1988, on the Macintosh IIx, and the HD floppy drive soon became universal on virtually all Macintosh and PC hardware. Apple's "FDHD" (Floppy Disk High Density) drive was capable of reading and writing both GCR and MFM formatted disks, and thus made it relatively easy to exchange files with PC users. Apple later marketed this drive as the "SuperDrive". Amiga included "HD" floppy drives relatively late, with releasing of Amiga 4000 in 1992, and was able to store 1760 KB on it, with ability in software to read/write PC's 1440 KB/720 KB formats.


title: History of the floppy disk

text: Another advance in the oxide coatings allowed for a new "extra-high density" ("ED") format at 2880 KB introduced in 1990 on the NeXTcube, NeXTstation and IBM PS/2 model 57. However, by this time the increased capacity was too small an advance over the HD format and it never became widely used.


title: Sean Covel

text: Covel grew up in Edgemont, South Dakotaand attended college at the University of Nebraska, Kearney, majoring in Broadcast Management with a minor in acting. Covel then took a position as a headhunter in San Francisco, and eventually opened his own firm before ultimately turning his attention back to film making. Covel received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, Peter Stark Producing Program where he occasionally lectures.


title: Sean Covel

text: After college, Covel began work on the film "Think Tank". In 2003 he joined the team writing and producing "Napoleon Dynamite", which won critical acclaim. For his and Chris Wyatt's work on the film, they were nominated for the producer award at the 20th Independent Spirit Awards.


title: Sean Covel

text: Covel's other producing credits include "12 Dogs of Christmas", "Beneath"," Carter & June" and "Cafe".


title: Sean Covel

text: In 2019, Covel gave a TED talk entitled “The mind is a computer. The question is how,” on the mental framework of problem-solving.


title: Sean Covel

text: In 2015, he founded a children's charity, 12 Days of Pizza, which works annually with Pizza Ranch to help low-income elementary school children eat over school holiday periods. It started with 144 meals being provided to 12 families. Within a three-year period, the program grew to provide over 12,000 meals to over 1000 food-insecure families with elementary school aged children. The program continues to expand each year. The program is also available for people affected due to coronavirus.


title: Sean Covel

text: In 2019, Covel partnered with illustrator Rebecca Swift to launch a 64-book series for kids, in which the title character is called Porter the Hoarder. The first book, Porter the Hoarder and the Ransacked Room, was a bestseller in 2019.


title: Sean Covel

text: The Porter the Hoarder series is now part of a charitable program with The United Way called Black Hills Reads. The partnership saw over 2000 books given to elementary school children in the Black Hills area in January 2019.


title: Sean Covel

text: Following the success of this initiative, the S.D. Statewide Family Engagement Center (SDSFEC) became involved with the series, using the books as a vehicle for promoting more active engagement from children and their parents in literature and literacy. As part of the partnership, over 10,000 more students received books. The partnership will run for four more years.


title: Richard Blais

text: Richard Blais (born February 12, 1972) is an American chef, television personality, restaurateur and author. He appeared on the reality show cooking show "Top Chef", and is known for his take on classic American cuisine. Blais was the runner-up for the fourth season of "Top Chef" and returned several seasons later to win "Top Chef: All-Stars".


title: Richard Blais

text: Blais was born in Uniondale, New York. He was adopted by his stepfather in the second grade. In 1982 as a pitcher for his "Franks Pizza" Little League team, Richard came in to pitch the final playoff game of the season with his team down by 2 runs. He managed to no hit the mighty "Sunocco" team for the next 5 innings as his squad scored 3 runs to win the game. Blais' first cooking job was in a McDonald's on Long Island, where he learned the basics of working in a kitchen. Coming from a humble beginnings, Blais dreamed of reinventing himself as a sophisticated Manhattanite. After moving on to a couple of upscale restaurants while in college, he received the 2-year AOS in culinary arts from The Culinary Institute of America. After graduation, he was invited to complete a fellowship in the fish kitchen. He has studied under chefs Thomas Keller at The French Laundry, Daniel Boulud, and Ferran Adrià. He also trained at restaurants Chez Panisse and elBulli.


title: Richard Blais

text: A native New Yorker, Blais relocated to Atlanta, Georgia in 2000 to run his own restaurant, called Fishbone. Initially, he was unimpressed with traditionally Southern ingredients, but found ways to elevate them in his own style. He founded Trail Blais, a creative culinary company that has consulted on, designed and operated some of Atlanta's most popular eateries.


title: Richard Blais

text: In July 2011, Blais signed a cookbook deal with Clarkson Potter, a division of Random House. On February 26, he released his debut cookbook, "Try This at Home: Recipes From My Head to Your Plate", an effort to make a simplified approach to adventurous cooking and offers new flavor combinations for home cooks to reinvent classic dishes. "Try This at Home" was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award 2014 in the category of Cookbook: General Cooking. Blais later opened Juniper & Ivy with Michael Rosen in San Diego, California, his first West Coast venture, where he showcases an innovative approach to California cuisine. He and Michael most recently opened Crack Shack, a fried chicken fine-casual concept, where the menu is built around chicken and eggs. Crack Shack has multiple locations in Southern California and Las Vegas.


title: Richard Blais

text: On May 16, 2017, Blais released his second cookbook, "So Good: 100 Recipes from My Kitchen to Yours", which features 100 elevated traditional recipes designed for the home cook.


title: Richard Blais

text: Also in 2017, Blais began hosting a weekly podcast about the culinary industry called "Starving For Attention".


title: Richard Blais

text: In 2020, Blais and iHeartRadio launched the game-show-style podcast "Food Court with Richard Blais" which features guests including celebrity chefs, actors, writers, comedians and other podcasters debating classic food arguments.


title: Richard Blais

text: Blais appeared as a contestant on the 4th season of Bravo's "Top Chef". In 2010, he competed in "Top Chef: All-Stars" and won the competition, earning the title of "Top Chef" by defeating Mike Isabella in the season finale, which aired on March 30, 2011. He was a recurring judge in seasons 12 and 13, and on Season 18, Top Chef: Portland.


title: Richard Blais

text: Blais is a regular on the Food Network, with recurring appearances on "Guy's Grocery Games" as a judge, and as a competitor, and has also hosted Food Network's "Hungry Games", and "Halloween Baking Championship". He competed in the second "Cutthroat Kitchen: Superstar Sabotage" tournament on November 4, 2015, winning his preliminary match and advancing to the finals; he had been a recurring judge on that series since season 12. He also has a recurring role as judge in the "Masterchef" and "Masterchef Junior" franchise. In 2015, Blais was the host of HLN's "Cook Your Ass Off," a transformational culinary contest that focused on healthy cooking competition. In 2017 he became the host of "Man v. Master," a culinary competition on the FYI Network. Richard has also appeared on various talk shows, including "The Today Show", "Good Morning America", "The Rachael Ray Show", "The Chew", "Live! with Kelly and Michael", and "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon". Blais had a cameo role in the 2016 feature film, "Why Him?", starring James Franco and Bryan Cranston. In 2018, Blais appeared as a guest judge on "Sugar Rush". He was most recently a judge on Gordon Ramsay's "Next Level Chef".


title: Richard Blais

text: In November 2011, Blais ran the ING New York City marathon for Alliance for a Healthier Generation. It was his first marathon, and he completed it in 4:31:54. He has since run four other New York City marathons. In November 2017, Blais ran the TCS New York City Marathon for Room to Read.


title: James Wong (filmmaker)

text: James Wong (born April 20, 1959) is a Hong Kong-born American television producer, writer, and film director. Wong is best known for co-writing episodes of the Fox science fiction supernatural drama series "The X-Files" with his partner, Glen Morgan. Morgan and Wong are founders of the Hard Eight Pictures and co-created "". Wong also directed the films "Final Destination", "The One", and "Dragonball Evolution".


title: James Wong (filmmaker)

text: Wong was born in Hong Kong. At age ten, he moved to the United States along with his family, settling in San Diego, California. During his youth, he met his future writing partner Glen Morgan at El Cajon Valley High School. Later on, he went to Loyola Marymount University, joining a comedy improvisational group. Originally seeking a major in engineering, he later switched to a film major after seeing "Apocalypse Now" at the Cinerama Dome. After graduating, he landed a job as an assistant to Sandy Howard. During this time, both Wong and Morgan wrote screenplays, eventually having one produced.


title: James Wong (filmmaker)

text: With Morgan, he co-wrote "The Boys Next Door". After this Wong became a story editor on the short-lived ABC crime drama "Knightwatch". Later, with Morgan, Wong would work on many Stephen J. Cannell productions, including "Wiseguy" (as supervising producer), "The Commish" (as supervising producer), and as a staff writer and story editor for "21 Jump Street" and its spinoff, "Booker".


title: James Wong (filmmaker)

text: Wong and Morgan began working with Chris Carter in 1993 on the science fiction/drama "The X-Files", about two FBI agents investigating the paranormal, filmed in Vancouver.


title: James Wong (filmmaker)

text: In 1995, Wong and Morgan were offered an $8 million, four-year contract deal with 20th Century Fox Television to write and produce television series. As part of this deal, Morgan and Wong went on to create the short-lived series "".


title: James Wong (filmmaker)

text: They returned to "The X-Files" briefly in its fourth season (1996–1997) when they wrote the horror episode Home. Wong also made his television directing debut with the conspiracy-themed "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man", written by Morgan. Wong and Morgan also took on production and writing duties for Carter's "Millennium". Later, they would go on to executive produce the short-lived NBC paranormal series "The Others".


title: James Wong (filmmaker)

text: During 1995, both Wong and Morgan were hired by producer Joel Silver to write the third intended "Tales from the Crypt" movie called "Body Count". Their script was loved by executive producers Silver, Richard Donner, Walter Hill, David Giler and Robert Zemeckis but the main producers Gilbert Adler and A L Katz hated it and Universal thought it would be too expensive to shoot.


title: James Wong (filmmaker)

text: In 2000, Wong directed "Final Destination", which was originally conceived as an "X-Files" episode by writer Jeffrey Reddick and was then reworked by Wong and Morgan. Wong followed the directorial debut with "The One" (2001), an action film starring Jet Li, and with more horror films, including "Willard" (2003), directed by Glen Morgan and starring Crispin Glover, and a second sequel, "Final Destination 3" (2006), directed by Wong. In late 2006, Wong and Morgan's remake of "Black Christmas" was released; the script was by Wong and Morgan and the film was directed by Morgan.


title: James Wong (filmmaker)

text: In 2009, Wong directed the live-action movie adaptation of the anime and manga media franchise "Dragon Ball". It was poorly received by both critics and audiences.


title: James Wong (filmmaker)

text: Since 2011, Wong has been working with Ryan Murphy as an executive producer on American Horror Story.


title: James Wong (filmmaker)

text: In 2015, Wong wrote and directed one episode, Founder's Mutation, for the tenth season of "The X-Files". He returned again in 2017 for "The X-Files" season eleven to write and direct the episode Ghouli, and to direct the episode Nothing Lasts Forever.


title: James Wong (filmmaker)

text: As part of the initial production crew on "The X-Files", Wong was among the most influential four writer-producers who worked closely with "X-Files" creator Chris Carter to define the characters, plots and aesthetics of the new series (the others were Glen Morgan, Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa). Wong was responsible with his longtime writing partner Glen Morgan for introducing a number of elements that defined "The X-Files" throughout its run.


title: James Wong (filmmaker)

text: In his directorial debut, Wong also directed the episode "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man", for which he received an Emmy nomination, also becoming the first member of the series's regular writing staff (after Chris Carter) to direct an episode, as well as the only person of color to ever direct an X-Files episode. Wong's Emmy nomination for directing "Musings" made him the first Asian American to receive an Emmy nomination for directing anything on television; at that time, no Asian American and no person of Chinese descent had yet been nominated for an Oscar for directing a film. Wong was also, along with Chris Carter (nominated a year later) the only director of an "X-Files" episode to be Emmy nominated for his work.


title: James Wong (filmmaker)

text: As part of "The X-Files" main production team in 1994–1995, Wong shared the show's first Golden Globe Award win for Best Dramatic Series, and also shared its second win in the 1996–1997 season. ("The X-Files" would go on to become the first series to win a Golden Globe three times.) Wong was honoured as his name was used as character in The X-Files game released on the PS1 in 1998.


title: MicroProse

text: MicroProse is an American video game publisher and developer founded by Bill Stealey, Sid Meier, and Andy Hollis in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, including starting the "Civilization" and "X-COM" series. Most of their internally developed titles were vehicle simulation and strategy games.


title: MicroProse

text: In 1993, the company lost most of its UK-based personnel and became a subsidiary of Spectrum HoloByte. Subsequent cuts and corporate policies led to Sid Meier, Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds leaving and forming Firaxis Games in 1996, as MicroProse closed its ex-Simtex development studio in Austin, Texas. In 1998, following an unsuccessful buyout attempt by GT Interactive, the struggling MicroProse (Spectrum HoloByte) became a wholly owned subsidiary of Hasbro Interactive and its development studios in Alameda, California and Chapel Hill, North Carolina were closed the following year. In 2001, MicroProse ceased to exist as an entity and Hasbro Interactive sold the MicroProse intellectual properties to Infogrames Entertainment, SA. MicroProse UK's former main office in Chipping Sodbury was closed in 2002, followed by the company's former headquarters in Hunt Valley, Maryland in 2003.


title: MicroProse

text: The brand was revived in 2007 when Interactive Game Group acquired it from Atari Interactive, formerly Infogrames. The MicroProse brand was licensed to the Legacy Engineering Group for consumer electronics. Cybergun owned the MicroProse brand from 2010 to 2018, which was then acquired by David Lagettie working with Stealey.


title: MicroProse

text: In summer 1982, mutual friends who knew of their shared interest in aviation arranged for retired military pilot Bill Stealey and computer programmer Sid Meier to meet in Las Vegas. After Meier surprised Stealey by repeatedly defeating him when playing "Red Baron", he explained that he had analyzed the game's programming to predict future actions and claimed that he could design a better home computer game in one week. Stealey promised to sell the game if Meier could develop it. Although Meier needed two months to produce "Hellcat Ace", Stealey sold 50 copies in his first sales appointment and the game became the first product of their new company. They planned to name it Smugger's Software, but chose MicroProse. (In 1987 the company agreed to change its name to avoid confusion with MicroPro International, but MicroPro decided to rename itself after its WordStar word processor). MicroProse became profitable in its second month and had $10 million in sales by 1986.


title: MicroProse

text: MicroProse advertised its first batch of games in 1982, under the headline "Experience the MicroProse Challenge!!!" All three were written by Sid Meier for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers: platformer "Floyd of the Jungle", 2D shooter "Chopper Rescue", and first-person airplane combat game "Hellcat Ace". "Hellcat Ace" began a series of increasingly sophisticated 8-bit flight simulation games, including "Spitfire Ace" (1982) and "Solo Flight" (1983), that defined the company.


title: MicroProse

text: In 1983, MicroProse ported "Floyd of the Jungle" to the Commodore 64, their first product for that machine. By 1984, the company had begun supporting the Apple II and IBM compatibles. MicroProse released the air traffic control game "Kennedy Approach", written by Andy Hollis, in 1985. "Conflict in Vietnam" (1986) was the final MicroProse title for the Atari 8-bit line.


title: MicroProse

text: By 1987, "Computer Gaming World" considered MicroProse one of the top five computer game companies, alongside likes of Activision and Electronic Arts.


title: MicroProse

text: MicroProse also started a branch in the United Kingdom to cross-publish titles in Europe, and to import some European titles to be published in the United States. Notable products from this period include simulation games "F-15 Strike Eagle", "F-19 Stealth Fighter", "Gunship", "Project Stealth Fighter", "Red Storm Rising" and "Silent Service", and action-strategy games such as "Sid Meier's Pirates!" and "Sword of the Samurai". Several games from different developers were also published by MicroProse under the labels "Firebird" and "Rainbird" (acquired after buying Telecomsoft in May 1989), including "Mr. Heli", "Midwinter" and Core Design's "Rick Dangerous". During the same period, MicroProse created two labels: MicroStyle (UK), and MicroPlay Software (US), using them for publishing a variety of externally developed games, such as "Challenge of the Five Realms", "Command HQ", "Global Conquest", "Elite Plus", "Flames of Freedom", "Rick Dangerous", "Stunt Car Racer", "Xenophobe" and "XF5700 Mantis".


title: MicroProse

text: In the early 1990s, MicroProse released the strategy games "Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon" and "Sid Meier's Civilization", designed by Meier and developed by its internal division, MPS Labs, on multiple platforms. Critically acclaimed, both of them quickly became two of the best-selling strategy games of all time and spawned multiple sequels. Some of MicroProse's simulation games from the 1980s received remakes in the early 1990s, such as "", "Silent Service II" and "Gunship 2000", and made some first cautious attempts to expand into the console market with "F-117A Stealth Fighter" and "Super Strike Eagle" (MicroProse also ported several of their titles to the 16- and 32-bit consoles during the mid-1990s). Brand new simulation and strategy titles included "", "Dogfight", "Fields of Glory", "Formula One Grand Prix", "Harrier Jump Jet", "Knights of the Sky", "Starlord", "Subwar 2050" and "Task Force 1942".


title: MicroProse

text: MicroProse attempted to diversify beyond its niche roots as a sim and strategy game company, looking for opportunities into the arcade game industry. MicroProse designed further action-strategy titles such as "Covert Action" (also designed by Sid Meier) and "Hyperspeed", and experimented with the role-playing genre by developing "BloodNet" and "Darklands" (in addition to publishing ""). The company invested a large sum of money to create its arcade game division as well as their own graphic adventure game engine. Meier felt that Stealey was taking the company in a risky direction, and the two could not work out their differences. Meier opted to quietly sell Stealey his share of the company but remained on in the same apparent role for all other purposes to the rest of the staff and their customers to allow Stealey to proceed in this direction.


title: MicroProse

text: The arcade division did not perform well, and was canceled after making only two games: "F-15 Strike Eagle: The Arcade Game" and "Battle of the Solar System" (both of which featured high-end 3D graphics but failed to become popular as they were too different from existing machines), while the adventure game engine was used for just three games: "Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender", "Return of the Phantom" and "Dragonsphere", before it was sold off to Sanctuary Woods.


title: MicroProse

text: In August 1991, MicroProse filed for an initial public offering. The company hoped to raise $18 million to help repay debts from its unsuccessful arcade games. In 1992 MicroProse acquired Paragon Software. It also acquired Leeds-based flight simulation developer Vektor Grafix, which had already developed titles for them (such as "B-17 Flying Fortress"), turning it into a satellite development studio named MicroProse Leeds.


title: MicroProse

text: In December 1993, following Black Wednesday in the UK, MicroProse Software Inc. merged with Spectrum HoloByte, another game company that specialized in simulation games, to form MicroProse Inc. Bill Stealey, who was good friends with Spectrum HoloByte president Gilman Louie, convinced Louie to help MicroProse as Stealey was afraid that some bank would not understand the company culture. MicroProse UK was forced to close its two satellite studios of MicroProse in northern England and dispose of over 40 staff at its Chipping Sodbury head office (Microprose Chipping Sodbury). A core group of artists, designers, and programmers left MicroProse UK to join Psygnosis, which opened an office in Stroud specifically to attract ex-MicroProse employees. In 1994, Stealey departed MicroProse and Spectrum HoloByte agreed to buy out his shares. He later commented, "Spectrum Holobyte had a lot of cash and very few products. Microprose had a lot of products and no cash. It was a great marriage, but the new company only needed one chairman, so I resigned." Stealey went on to found an independent game company Interactive Magic (also specializing in vehicle simulators and strategy games), while Andy Hollis departed for Origin Systems, and Sandy Petersen joined id Software.


title: MicroProse

text: Spectrum Holobyte managed to line up licenses, including "Top Gun" (""), "" (""), "" ("", "", "") and "MechWarrior" ("MechCommander", "MechWarrior 3"). Strategy game "" proved to be an unanticipated hit in 1994, spawning multiple sequels. In 1996, Spectrum HoloByte/MicroProse bought out Simtex, earlier a developer of MicroProse-published bestsellers "Master of Orion" and "Master of Magic". Simtex was re-branded as MicroProse Texas (""), based in Austin, Texas. Other MicroProse developed and/or published games during that period included "7th Legion", "Addiction Pinball", "", "Civilization II", "Dark Earth", "F-15 Strike Eagle III", "Fleet Defender", "Grand Prix 2", "Pizza Tycoon", "Sid Meier's Colonization", "Tinhead", "Transport Tycoon", "", "" and "". Insufficient financial resources largely prevented MicroProse from developing games for other game platforms, therefore MicroProse concentrated on the PC game market.


title: MicroProse

text: MicroProse Software continued as separate subsidiary company under Spectrum HoloByte until 1996. That year, Spectrum HoloByte started cutting a majority of the MicroProse staff to reduce costs. Soon after, it consolidated all of its titles under the MicroProse brand (essentially renaming itself MicroProse). MicroProse's remaining co-founder Sid Meier, along with Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds, departed the company after the staff cut, forming a new company named Firaxis Games.


title: MicroProse

text: On October 5, 1997, GT Interactive announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire MicroProse for $250 million in stock. The deal was unanimously approved by the Board of Directors of both companies. After the announcement MicroProse's stock price reached $7 a share. GT Interactive expected the deal to be completed by the end of that year. The acquisition was cancelled on December 5, as according to both CEOs "the time is simply not right" for the deal. MicroProse's stock plummeted to just $2.31 after the announcement of the deal's cancellation, and the company had estimated losses of $7–10 million during the third quarter of 1997 which are largely attributed to dislocations caused by the aborted merger. According to "Computer Gaming World", the merger was annulled due to a "fundamental" disagreement over how the joint company would be writing off its research and development costs, as MicroProse insisted to keep their method of paying off the developer immediately.


title: MicroProse

text: In November 1997, MicroProse was sued by both Avalon Hill (who had the U.S. publishing rights to the name "Civilization") and Activision for copyright infringement. MicroProse responded by buying Hartland Trefoil, which was the original designer and manufacturer of the "Civilization" board game, and then sued Avalon Hill and Activision for trademark infringement and unfair business practices as a result of Activision's decision to develop and publish "Civilization" video games. Because Hasbro was negotiating the acquisition of both Avalon Hill and MicroProse, the lawsuits were settled in July 1998. Under the terms of the settlement MicroProse became the sole owner of the rights of the name "Civilization" and Activision acquired a license to publish a "Civilization" video game which was later titled "".


title: MicroProse

text: In preparation for its sale, MicroProse closed down its studio in Austin in June 1998; as a result of the closure, 35 employees lost their jobs. On August 14, 1998, Hasbro issued a $70 million cash tender offer to purchase all MicroProse's shares for $6 each. This deal was completed on September 14, when Hasbro bought 91% of MicroProse's shares and announced that MicroProse had become a wholly owned subsidiary. The remaining shares would also be acquired for $6 in cash. MicroProse was merged with Hasbro Interactive. At the time of Hasbro's acquisition, MicroProse had 343 employees, including 135 at Alameda, California (MicroProse Alameda), with a total operating cost of $20 million per year. Besides the development studio in Alameda, MicroProse had three other studios: Hunt Valley, Maryland (Microprose, Hunt Valley); Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and Chipping Sodbury, England.


title: MicroProse

text: In December 1998, MicroProse finally managed to publish "Falcon 4.0" (in development by Spectrum HoloByte since 1992), to disappointing sales. In December 1999, Hasbro Interactive closed down former MicroProse studios in Alameda and Chapel Hill. Among titles in development that got canceled during that period was "". The last MicroProse developed game under Hasbro, "", was published in 2000.


title: MicroProse

text: In January 2001, after French game publisher Infogrames Entertainment, SA (IESA) took over Hasbro Interactive for $100 million, the company was renamed to Infogrames Interactive. and the long development of "" was finally aborted.


title: MicroProse

text: Infogrames began to slowly phase out the brand name, with many MicroProse branded titles that were previously released by Hasbro being reissued with Infogrames' logo on the packaging. The final two games branded under the MicroProse name were "" and "Grand Prix 4". The two remaining MicroProse studios were also renamed under Infogrames branding as well, becoming Infogrames Hunt Valley and Infogrames Chippenham respectively. Infogrames would later shut down the Chippenham studio in September 2002.


title: MicroProse

text: Infogrames intermittently used the Atari name as a brand name for selected titles before officially changing the U.S. subsidiary's name to Atari, Inc. in 2003., with the Hunt Valley briefly being renamed as "Atari Hunt Valley". In November 2003, Atari closed the last former MicroProse development studio in Hunt Valley, which was MicroProse's original location and had just completed work on "". However, several game developers now exist in the area, including Firaxis Games and BreakAway Games, who all owe their origin to MicroProse.


title: MicroProse

text: In 2019, the MicroProse brand (then owned by Cybergun) was purchased and revived by David Lagettie, one of the makers of "TitanIM" open world military simulation software. Lagettie was a former developer for Bohemia Interactive at their Australian studios before starting his own company to create video game simulators to be used by military groups. Lagettie had been a fan of the original MicroProse games growing up, and as he saw the games ownership transition made the company eventually disappear, he started investigating the fate of MicroProse around 2005. When possible, he began buying whatever IP from MicroProse he could, including the name and original logo trademarks, allowing him to establish the new MicroProse as a games publisher by 2019. Lagettie's acquisitions drew the attention of Stealey, who subsequently inquired Lagettie about his plans, leading to Stealey joining Lagettie in an unofficial manner in the new MicroProse.


title: MicroProse

text: The new company announced in May 2020 the first of three new games to be released for personal computers: Triassic Games' "Sea Power", Drydock Dreams' "Task Force Admiral", and Hexdraw's "Second Front", with about twenty additional titles planned out for publishing in the future. Lagettie said that while the new MicroProse will branch out to other genres such as adventure and racing games, their core portfolio will be centered on combat-based ones.


title: MicroProse

text: Games by MicroProse include "Civilization" (1991), "Civilization II" (1996), "Darklands" (1992), "F-15 Strike Eagle" (1985), "F-19 Stealth Fighter" (1988), "Formula One Grand Prix" (1992), "Grand Prix 2" (1995), "Grand Prix World (1999), "Gunship" (1986), "M1 Tank Platoon" (1989), "Master of Magic" (1994), "Master of Orion" (1993), "" (1996), "Midwinter" (1989), "Pirates!" (1987), "Project Stealth Fighter" (1987), "Railroad Tycoon" (1990), "Red Storm Rising" (1988), "Silent Service" (1985), and "" (1994).


title: MicroProse

text: Sid Meier, who now works at Firaxis Games, eventually got the rights of most of his games back under his control from Atari Inc. "Railroad Tycoon" series rights was sold to PopTop Software, who developed "Railroad Tycoon II" and "Railroad Tycoon 3". Eventually, Poptop was acquired by Take-Two Interactive, which later also acquired Firaxis as well, thus returning the rights to the series to Meier, resulting in "Sid Meier's Railroads!", released by Take-Two's 2K Games along with a new "Sid Meier's Pirates!" and the new "Civilization" games, including "Sid Meier's Civilization III", "Sid Meier's Civilization IV", "Sid Meier's Civilization V", "" and "Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution". Firaxis Games also developed the "X-COM" series' reboot "", which was followed by 2K Marin's spin-off "".


title: MicroProse

text: "Master of Orion III" was developed by Quicksilver Software and released under the Infogrames label. "Falcon 4.0" rights were sold to Graphsim Entertainment, who developed "".


title: MicroProse

text: In 2007, Interactive Game Group acquired the MicroProse brand from Atari Interactive Inc, which filed for transfer of trademark protection on December 27, 2007. Interactive Game Group then shared a percentage of the MicroProse brand to "I-Drs At" in January 2008. Originally, claims as to what titles and other intellectual properties were also acquired by the Interactive Game Group from Infogrames were originally unverified, and the last verified owner of MicroProse properties was Infogrames. Later on, however, MicroProse's IPs that remained with Atari/Infogrames were eventually included as part of asset sale and sold to Tommo, who have been republish the titles under their "Retroism" brand.


title: MicroProse

text: The Interactive Game Group also licensed the MicroProse brand to the Legacy Engineering Group (LEG), which used the license to form subsidiaries called Microprose Systems and Microprose Consumer Electronics Division, selling consumer electronics from February 2008 to the second half of 2008. In October 2008, the licensing agreement between LEG and Frederic Chesnais, owner of Interactive Game Group, was discontinued, forcing LEG to rebrand its subsidiaries to Legacy Consumer Electronics.


title: MicroProse

text: In 2010, the Cybergun Group, manufacturer of airsoft gun products, merged with Interactive Game Group and MicroProse, giving them access to officially licensed weapons. The name has been used by a video game studio Microprose (with no capital "P" in the name).


title: MicroProse

text: Since 2018, the MicroProse brand has been owned by David Lagettie, working with Bill Stealey's own company iEntertainment Network on the "WarBirds" series of combat flight simulators. Since its revival by Lagettie in 2019, it had announced "Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age" by the developer Triassic Games AB, "Task Force Admiral - Vol.1: American Carrier Battles" by Drydock Dreams Games, "Operation: Harsh Doorstop" by Drakeling Labs, and "Warfare 1944" by Drakeling Labs.


title: Three-sector model

text: The three-sector model in economics divides economies into three sectors of activity: extraction of raw materials (primary), manufacturing (secondary), and service industries which exist to facilitate the transport, distribution and sale of goods produced in the secondary sector (tertiary). The model was developed by Allan Fisher, Colin Clark, and Jean Fourastié in the first half of the 20th century, and is a representation of an industrial economy. It has been criticised as inappropriate as a representation of the economy in the 21st century.


title: Three-sector model

text: According to the three-sector model, the main focus of an economy's activity shifts from the primary, through the secondary and finally to the tertiary sector. Countries with a low per capita income are in an early state of development; the main part of their national income is achieved through production in the primary sector. Countries in a more advanced state of development, with a medium national income, generate their income mostly in the secondary sector. In highly developed countries with a high income, the tertiary sector dominates the total output of the economy.


title: Three-sector model

text: The rise of the post-industrial economy in which an increasing proportion of economic activity is not directly related to physical goods has led some economists to expand the model by adding a fourth quaternary or fifth quinary sectors, while others have ceased to use the model.


title: Three-sector model

text: Fourastié saw the process as essentially positive, and in "The Great Hope of the Twentieth Century" he wrote of the increase in quality of life, social security, blossoming of education and culture, higher level of qualifications, humanisation of work, and avoidance of unemployment. The distribution of the workforce among the three sectors progresses through different stages as follows, according to Fourastié:


title: Three-sector model

text: This phase represents a society which is scientifically not yet very developed, with a negligible use of machinery. The state of development corresponds to that of European countries in the early Middle Ages, or that of a modern-day developing country.


title: Three-sector model

text: More machinery is deployed in the primary sector, which reduces the number of workers needed to produce a given output of food and raw materials. Since the food requirements of a given population do not change much, employment in agriculture declines as a proportion of the population.


title: Three-sector model

text: As a result, the demand for machinery production in the secondary sector increases and workers move from agriculture to manufacturing. The transitional way or phase begins with an event which can be identified with the industrialisation: far-reaching mechanisation (and therefore automation) of manufacture, such as the use of conveyor belts.


title: Three-sector model

text: The primary and secondary sectors are increasingly dominated by automation, and the demand for workforce numbers falls in these sectors. It is replaced by the growing demands of the tertiary sector, where productivity growth is slower.


title: Three-sector model

text: Various empirical studies seemingly confirm the three-sector hypothesis, but employment in the primary sector fell far more than Fourastié predicted. Germany's Federal Statistical Office study shows the following employment proportions for 2014: primary sector at 1.5%, secondary sector at 24.6%, and tertiary sector at 73.9%.Furthermore, four incorrect predictions can be found in his book on the subject:


title: Three-sector model

text: Fourastié predicted that the transition from the secondary to the tertiary sector would eliminate the problem of unemployment as, in his opinion, this sector could not be rationalized. When he conceived of the theory in the 1930s, however, he did not foresee the enormous technological progress made in the service sector, such as invention of the modern computer bringing with it the digital revolution.


title: Three-sector model

text: Fourastié's false prognosis is that there will be no country in the highly developed third phase which also has a significant secondary sector. The best example to counter this is Germany: in German economy, the secondary sector has sharply declined since the 1950s, but not quite to the level that Fourastié predicted due to Germany's high exports.


title: Three-sector model

text: Another Fourastié's false prediction states that the tertiary sector would always place high demands on employees in terms of education, which is not the case, since the service occupations also include cleaning services, shoeshining, parcel delivery service etc.


title: Three-sector model

text: The high level of income equality predicted by Fourastié also did not take place; in fact, the opposite development has happened: the inequality of income distribution has been increasing in most OECD countries.


title: Three-sector model

text: Fourastié described the tertiary sector - which is usually seen as equivalent with the service sector - as a production sector enjoying little to no technical progress and thus offering at best a slight increase in labor productivity. Confinement of the service sector within the tertiary sector today is only tenable in few areas. Instead, addition of the fourth "information sector" can be seen, leading towards the development of a knowledge society.


title: Three-sector model

text: Further development has led to the service or post-industrial society. Today the service sector has grown to such an enormous size that it is sometimes further divided into an information-based quaternary sector, and even a quinary sector based on human services.


title: Three-sector model

text: The quaternary sector, sometimes referred to as the research and development sector, consists mainly of businesses providing information services, intellectual activities and knowledge based activities aimed at future growth and development.


title: Three-sector model

text: Activities include, and are mainly composed of: scientific research, ICT/computing, education, consulting, information management and financial planning.


title: Three-sector model

text: Contrary to what might be inferred from the naming convention, the quaternary sector does not add value to the outputs of the tertiary sector, but provides services directly with limited reliance on purchased inputs. The output of the quaternary sector is difficult to measure. The volume of information produced has grown rapidly, in line with Moore's Law.


title: Three-sector model

text: Definitions of the quinary sector vary significantly. Some define it as merely non-profit work such as for charities and NGOs.


title: Three-sector model

text: Others define it as the sector that focuses on human services and control, such as government and some charities, as well as creation or non-routine use of information and new technologies, linking slightly with the quaternary sector.


title: Three-sector model

text: Sometimes referred to as ‘gold collar’ professions, they include special and highly paid skills of senior business executives, government officials, research scientists, financial and legal consultants, etc. The highest level of decision makers or policy makers perform quinary activities.


title: Three-sector model

text: The 3 sector model is closely related to the development of national accounts, notably by Colin Clark. The concept of value added is central to national accounting. Value added in the secondary sector of the economy (manufacturing) is equal to the difference between the (wholesale) value of goods produced and the cost of raw materials supplied by the primary sector. Similarly, the value added by the tertiary sector is equal to the difference between the retail price paid by consumers and the wholesale price paid to manufacturers.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: Denise Amber Lee was a 21 year old woman who was murdered by Michael King in the U.S. state of Florida on January 17, 2008 after he had kidnapped and raped her earlier in the day.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: Lee and several others had attempted to call for help through the 9-1-1 system but there was a lack of communication and the police and other emergency services arrived too late. Five 9-1-1 calls were made that day, including one by Lee herself from her abductor's phone and one from a witness, Jane Kowalski, who gave a detailed account of events as they unfolded before her. Failures were found in the way the 9-1-1 operators handled Kowalski's call, and additional failures were identified nationwide in the 9-1-1 system. King was sentenced to death.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: The Denise Amber Lee Act was passed unanimously by the Florida Legislature on April 24, 2008. This act provides for optional training for 9-1-1 operators. Lee's family continue to lobby for a new law to be passed nationwide that would institute mandatory training and certification for all 9-1-1 dispatchers. The Denise Amber Lee Foundation was established in June 2008 to promote such training as well as to raise public awareness of the issues involved. Lee was the daughter of a police detective, Sgt Rick Goff.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: Denise Amber Lee (née Goff) (August 6, 1986 – January 17, 2008) was born in Englewood, Florida. Lee was the daughter of Sgt. Rick Goff, of the sheriff's office in Charlotte County, Florida and Sue Goff. Not long after their first date, Lee's future husband, Nathan, bought her a $40 heart-shaped ring which she never removed. The ring later became key evidence connecting perpetrator and victim.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: Michael Lee King (born May 4, 1971) trained as a plumber but had been unemployed for several months before the crime and was facing foreclosure on his home in North Port, Florida. He was married but is now divorced. He has a low IQ, and family members described to the court how King had an accident while sledding as a child; an expert witness described the subsequent injury as a "divot" in his brain.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: On January 17, 2008, Michael King abducted Denise Amber Lee from her home. He drove her around, tied up in his vehicle, for quite some time; several people witnessed the journey. Later, King raped and murdered Lee and buried her in a shallow grave. Her body was found on January 19, 2008. King was found guilty of kidnapping, sexual battery, and first-degree murder; he was sentenced to death and is presently detained awaiting execution.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: Nathan Lee was at work that Thursday (January 17, 2008); his wife, Denise Lee, was home with their two young children. She called him at 11:21 a.m., the last time the two would speak. Among the topics discussed was the nice weather: the couple decided that the windows should be open at home. She said she had already opened them. Nathan Lee arrived home around 3:30 p.m. to find the windows closed, his wife missing, and the children home alone in the same crib. This prompted him to make his 9-1-1 call, the first of the day related to this crime.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: A neighbor saw a car arrive at Lee's home around 2 p.m. The car was later identified as Michael King's dark green 1994 Chevrolet Camaro.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: Lee was bound and taken to King's home in North Port, Florida, where he set up what the prosecution in the trial referred to as a "rape room ."Duct tape and other evidence were found in this room.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: She was taken to King's cousin Harold Muxlow's home, where King then borrowed a shovel, a gas can, and a flashlight. Lee was able to take King's cell phone while he was out of the vehicle and dial 9-1-1. Her desperate 9-1-1 call was released during the trial, which caused a lot of reaction from the public. The operator obtained information from Lee, which later helped convict King. The call is several minutes long, with Lee begging for her life, saying "please" 17 times. She answered the call taker's questions while pretending to talk to King. Judge Deno Economou, the presiding judge over the murder trial, noted how unusual and rare it was to hear a murder victim's last words. Prosecutors said later that Lee had given them their best evidence that she was taken against her will. She did not know her abductor, and her subsequent murder was premeditated. Lee was unable to give her exact location. Police were unable to trace the location of the caller (Denise Amber Lee) because it was made on a prepaid wireless phone.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: Around 6:30 p.m., a witness, Jane Kowalski, heard screaming from a car next to hers at a stoplight. Kowalski called 9-1-1 to report what she believed to be child abduction.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: The trial of the "State of Florida vs. Michael L. King" officially began on August 24, 2009. The lead prosecuting attorney was State Assistant Lon Arend. The lead defense attorney was Public Defender Carolyn Schlemmer. The presiding judge was Deno Economou, and the trial occurred in Sarasota County, Florida.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: The prosecution presented DNA, and other forensic evidence, including hair and personal articles of Lee's found around and within the Camaro, King's home, and the grave site. Other evidence included King's change of clothing, duct tape, a shell casing, the shovel, and King's cell phone. The prosecution also called eyewitnesses, including Jane Kowalski and King's cousin. The defense attempted to provide reasonable doubt by bringing evidence of tampering and contamination to the jury and suggesting that one of King's friends had committed the crime. The judge disapproved of the latter defense. The defense rested without calling any witnesses.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: On August 28, 2009, after deliberating for two hours and five minutes, the jury found King guilty of kidnapping with intent to commit a felony, sexual battery, and first-degree murder. On September 4, 2009, at 2:45 pm, the jury handed down the recommended sentence of death in a 12–0 vote.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: In total, five 9-1-1 calls related to Lee's disappearance were placed by five people between 3:29 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on January 17, 2008. Four were routed to operators in Sarasota County, Florida; the other—placed by Jane Kowalski and the fourth in the sequence—was routed to operators in neighboring Charlotte County, Florida. The call routed to Charlotte County allegedly was mishandled.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: Lee placed the second call at 6:14 p.m. from her abductor's cell phone. The state prosecutors presented this call as part of the key evidence at King's trial.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: Jane Kowalski's call was placed by cell phone at 6:30 p.m. while she was driving on U.S. Route 41. "I was at a stoplight, and a man pulled up next to me, and a child was screaming in the car," she said. She explained further that she heard "terrifying screaming" and "never heard anything like that." Kowalski believed that she was witnessing a child abduction. She also identified the car as a Camaro but stated the color as blue (rather than green). She stated that she had made eye contact with the driver, after which "a hand came up and started banging on the passenger window." Since she had crossed the county line into Charlotte, the call was routed to Charlotte County's 9-1-1 call center. It was only after she saw the news the following day that she realized she had witnessed the abduction of Lee rather than that of a child. When she called the North Port Police Department to explain who she was and that she had made a 9-1-1 call, it became apparent that the call had not been forwarded to the proper authorities. This call is alleged to have been mishandled because the operators neglected to file it correctly. The state prosecutors also presented this call as part of the key evidence at King's trial.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: As of July 2020, King is incarcerated in Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida, awaiting imposition of the death sentence.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: Due to Jane Kowalski's mishandled 9-1-1 call, more research revealed several issues countrywide in the 9-1-1 system, so a non-profit organization with the mission to "To promote and support public safety through uniform training, standardized protocols, defined measurable outcomes, and technological advances in the 9-1-1 system." was established in June 2008 in Lee's name.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: On April 24, 2008, the Senate Bill, CS/SB 1694, concerning the Denise Amber Lee Act, which provides for voluntary training for 9-1-1 operators, was passed unanimously by the Florida Legislature. The act's passage into state law continues.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: In 2010, House Bill CS/HB 355 and Senate Bill CS/SB 742 were to address the fact that 9-1-1 operators in the state are not required to undertake mandatory training. Lee's husband Nathan Lee and her father Rick Goff continued to lobby in Tallahassee to get Denise's Law passed, which recommended mandatory training and certification for all 9-1-1 dispatchers.


title: Murder of Denise Amber Lee

text: A separate bill, also in 2010 and sponsored by Representative Robert C. Schenck, would have placed significant limitations on 9-1-1 calls when played in public. The Lee family spoke against this bill. The governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, said that he was "not favorably inclined toward the bill". The bill was later dropped.


title: History of Gmail

text: The public history of Gmail dates back to 2004. Gmail, a free, advertising-supported webmail service with support for Email clients, is a product from Google. Over its history, the Gmail interface has become integrated with many other products and services from the company, with basic integration as part of Google Account and specific integration points with services such as Google+, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Hangouts, Google Meet, YouTube, and Google Buzz. It has also been made available as part of G Suite. The "Official Gmail Blog" tracks the public history of Gmail from July 2007.


title: History of Gmail

text: Gmail was a project started by Google developer Paul Buchheit, who had already explored the idea of web-based email in the 1990s, before the launch of Hotmail, while working on a personal email software project as a college student. Buchheit began his work on Gmail in August 2001. At Google, Buchheit had first worked on Google Groups and when asked "to build some type of email or personalization product", he created the first version of Gmail in one day, reusing the code from Google Groups. The project was known by the code name "Caribou", a reference to a "Dilbert" comic strip about Project Caribou.


title: History of Gmail

text: At the time when Gmail was being developed, existing email services such as Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail featured extremely slow interfaces that were written in plain HTML, with almost every action by the user requiring the server to reload the entire webpage. Buchheit attempted to work around the limitations of HTML by using the highly interactive JavaScript code, an approach that ultimately came to be called AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML).


title: History of Gmail

text: Buchheit recalls that the high volume of internal email at Google created "a very big need for search". Advanced search capabilities eventually led to considerations for providing a generous amount of storage space, which in turn opened up the possibility of allowing users to keep their emails forever, rather than having to delete them to stay under a storage limit. After considering alternatives such as 100 MB, the company finally settled upon 1 GB of space, compared to the 2 to 4 MB that was the standard at the time.


title: History of Gmail

text: Buchheit had been working on Gmail for about a month when he was joined by another engineer, Sanjeev Singh, with whom he would eventually found the social-networking startup FriendFeed after leaving Google in 2006. Gmail's first product manager, Brian Rakowski, learned about the project on his very first day at Google in 2002, fresh out of college. In August 2003, another new Google recruit, Kevin Fox was assigned the task of designing Gmail's interface. When the service was finally launched in April 2004, about a dozen people were working on the project.


title: History of Gmail

text: Initially the software was available only internally as an email system for Google employees. According to Google, the software had been used internally for "a number of years" before it was released to the public in 2004.


title: History of Gmail

text: For much of its development, Gmail had been a skunkworks project, kept secret even from most people within Google. “It wasn’t even guaranteed to launch–we said that it has to reach a bar before it’s something we want to get out there,” says the Gmail interface designer Kevin Fox. By early 2004, however, almost everybody at Google was using Gmail to access the company's internal email system.


title: History of Gmail

text: Gmail was announced to the public by Google on 1 April 2004, after extensive rumors of its existence during testing. Owing to the April Fool's Day release, the company's press release aroused skepticism in the technology world, especially since Google had been known for making April Fool's jokes, such as . However, they explained that their real joke had been a press release saying that they would take offshoring to the extreme by putting employees in a "Google Copernicus Center" on the Moon. Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's vice-president of products, was quoted by BBC News as saying, "We are very serious about Gmail."


title: History of Gmail

text: Even when the service was announced to the public, Google did not have the required infrastructure in place to provide millions of users a reliable service with a gigabyte of space apiece. Gmail ran on three hundred old Pentium III computers nobody else at Google wanted. This was sufficient for the limited beta rollout the company planned, which involved inviting about 1,000 opinion leaders and then allowing them to invite their friends, and family members to become beta testers, with trials beginning on 21 March 2004; and growing slowly from there.


title: History of Gmail

text: Once it became clear that Gmail was real, and not an April Fools' joke, invitations became highly desired. Although the limited rollout was born of necessity, it created an aura of exclusivity which contributed to its publicity windfall. “Everyone wanted it even more. It was hailed as one of the best marketing decisions in tech history, but it was a little bit unintentional” says Georges Harik, who was responsible for most of Google's new products at the time.


title: History of Gmail

text: Active users from the Blogger community were offered the chance to participate in the beta-testing on 20 April and later, Gmail members occasionally received "invitations" which they could send to anyone. One round of invitations was sent out on 1 May and another three invitations were given to all active members on 1 June. When Gmail increased the supply of invitations, the nascent buying and selling market for Gmail invitations collapsed.


title: History of Gmail

text: During the early months of the initial beta phase, Gmail's well-publicized feature set and the exclusive nature of the accounts caused the aftermarket price of Gmail invitations to skyrocket. According to PC World magazine, Gmail invitations were selling on eBay for as much as US$150, with some accounts being sold for several thousand dollars. After a new round of invitations in early June, the price for invitations fell to between US$2–$5. Websites such as Gmail Swap emerged to allow philanthropic Gmail users to donate invitations to people who wanted them. On 28 June 2004, Google amended its policy to forbid the selling of registered accounts.


title: History of Gmail

text: In January 2005, security experts discovered a critical flaw in the handling of Gmail messages that would allow hackers to easily access private emails from any Gmail user's account. This was posted with detailed information to popular technology site Slashdot at 9:23 a.m. PST on 12 January 2005. On 13 January 2005, developers at Gmail announced that they had fixed the problem and that the security flaw had been patched. Despite Gmail's status as a beta application, concerns were raised among some users who were using Gmail as their primary mail account. On 1 April 2005, exactly one year after the initial release, Gmail increased the mailbox size to 2 GB, advertising it as "2 GB plus" and introduced some other new features, including formatted editing which gave users the option of sending messages in HTML or plain text.


title: History of Gmail

text: On 7 June 2005, The Gmail Invitation Spooler was deactivated by the site owner, following a direct request from the Gmail product manager to shut it down. The service was featured in Popular Science magazine and had given out over 1.2 million Gmail accounts.


title: History of Gmail

text: , Gmail's canonical URI changed from "<nowiki>http://gmail.google.com/gmail/</nowiki>" to "<nowiki>http://mail.google.com/mail/</nowiki>". , those who typed in the former URI were redirected to the latter.


title: History of Gmail

text: On 2 November 2006, Google began offering a mobile-application based version of Gmail for mobile phones capable of running Java applications. In addition, Sprint announced separately that it would make the application available from its Vision and Power Vision homepages, preloaded onto some new Sprint phones. The application gives Gmail its own custom menu system and the site displays attachments, such as photos and documents in the application. The application was solely developed in Google's Kitchener office.


title: History of Gmail

text: On 28 January 2007, Google Docs & Spreadsheets was integrated with Gmail, providing the capability to open attached Microsoft Word DOC files directly from Gmail.


title: History of Gmail

text: On 14 February 2007, invitations were no longer required to create an account and the service was opened for anyone to sign up for.


title: History of Gmail

text: On 24 October 2007, Google announced that IMAP was available for all accounts, including "Google Apps for your Domain".


title: History of Gmail

text: On 8 December 2008, Google added a to-do list to Gmail. When the new Tasks feature is enabled, a box shows up on top of the Gmail window. In it, users can add, reorder and delete tasks. It is also possible to assign a due date to each action and even convert e-mails into tasks.


title: History of Gmail

text: On 7 July 2009, Gmail officially exited its beta status in a move to attract more business use of the service.


title: History of Gmail

text: On 4 July 2005 Google announced that "Gmail Deutschland" would be rebranded as "Google Mail". The domain became unavailable in Germany due to trademark disputes, in which cases users must use the domain . From that point forward, visitors originating from an IP address determined to be in Germany would be forwarded to where they could obtain an email address containing the new domain.


title: History of Gmail

text: The domains are interchangeable so users obliged to use the domain are unable to select addresses already chosen by users. Inbound emails sent to either or addresses will reach the user.


title: History of Gmail

text: The German naming issue is due to a trademark dispute between Google and Daniel Giersch, who owns a German company called "G-mail" which provides the service of printing out email from senders and sending the print-out via postal mail to the intended recipients. On 30 January 2007, the EU's Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market ruled in favour of Giersch.


title: History of Gmail

text: On 13 April 2012, Google received the right to the Gmail trademark in Germany. On that day the domain and the Gmail trademark were transferred to Google.


title: History of Gmail

text: In February 2007 Google filed legal action against the owners of , a poet group known in full as "Grupa Młodych Artystów i Literatów" abbreviated GMAiL (literally, "Group of Young Artists and Writers"). This lawsuit was lost, but the Web site no longer exists.


title: History of Gmail

text: On 19 October 2005, Google voluntarily converted the United Kingdom version of Gmail to "Google Mail" because of a dispute with the UK company Independent International Investment Research.


title: History of Gmail

text: Users who registered before the switch to Google Mail were able to keep their Gmail address, although the Gmail logo was replaced with a "Google Mail" logo. Users who signed up after the name change receive a address, although a reverse of either in the sent email would still deliver it to the same place.


title: History of Gmail

text: In September 2009 Google began to change the branding of UK accounts back to Gmail, following the resolution of the trademark dispute.


title: History of Gmail

text: On 3 May 2010, Google announced that they would start to phase out the domain in the UK. Existing users would get the option to switch to , while new users would be given a address by default. This also required Android phone users to perform a factory reset (requiring a back-up to prevent data loss) to restore phone functionality.


title: Lanarkshire

text: Lanarkshire, also called the County of Lanark (; ), is a historic county, lieutenancy area and registration county in the central Lowlands of Scotland.


title: Lanarkshire

text: Lanarkshire is the most populous county in Scotland, as it contains most of Glasgow and the surrounding conurbation. In earlier times it had considerably greater boundaries, including neighbouring Renfrewshire until 1402. Lanarkshire is bounded to the north by the counties of Stirlingshire and Dunbartonshire (this boundary is split into two sections owing to Dunbartonshire's Cumbernauld exclave), to the northeast by West Lothian and Mid Lothian, to the east by Peeblesshire, to the south by Dumfriesshire, and to the west by Ayrshire and Renfrewshire.


title: Lanarkshire

text: Lanarkshire was historically divided between two administrative areas. In the mid-18th century it was divided again into three wards: the upper, middle and lower wards with their administrative centres at Lanark, Hamilton and Glasgow, respectively, and remained this way until the Local Government Act of 1889. Other significant settlements include Coatbridge, East Kilbride, Motherwell, Airdrie, Blantyre, Cambuslang, Rutherglen, Wishaw, Bellshill, Strathaven and Carluke. The Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 established a uniform system of county councils in Scotland and realigned the boundaries of many of Scotland's counties. Subsequently, Lanark County Council was created in 1890. The county council was initially based at County Buildings in Wilson Street in Glasgow but, from 1930, it was located at Lanarkshire House in Ingram Street in Glasgow. Lanark County Council relocated to Lanark County Buildings in Hamilton in 1964.


title: Lanarkshire

text: In 1975, the county council was abolished and the area absorbed into the larger Strathclyde region, which itself was abolished when new council areas for Scotland were introduced in 1996. The old area of Lanarkshire is now occupied by the council areas of:


title: Lanarkshire

text: North Lanarkshire and South Lanarkshire have a joint board for valuation and electoral registration. There is also a joint health board, which does not cover Rutherglen and the surrounding area in South Lanarkshire. Without the northern portion of North Lanarkshire, this is also a lieutenancy area.


title: Lanarkshire

text: Lanarkshire was granted a coat of arms by the Lord Lyon on 24 December 1886. The arms is: Party per chevron gules and argent, two cinquefoils pierced in chief ermine, and in base a man's heart counter-changed. The cinquefoils come from the arms of the Clan Hamilton, and the heart from the arms of the Clan Douglas, the two main local families. The crest is a demi-eagle displayed with two heads, sable beaked gules. The motto is "VIGILANTIA".


title: Lanarkshire

text: Lanarkshire occupies the valley of the river Clyde, which crosses the county from the north-west to south-east. It is predominantly flat and agricultural, rising to the south with the Lowther Hills of the Southern Uplands, with Culter Fell on the border with Peeblesshire being the highest point at 748 m (2,454 ft). In the east a small portion of the Pentland Hills lie in the county, in the vicinity of Tarbrax and Dunsyre. In the far south lies the Daer Reservoir. Northern Lanarkshire is dominated by the Glasgow conurbation, Scotland's largest city, though some small bodies of water can be found such as the Roughrigg Reservoir, Lilly Loch, Hillend Reservoir, Forrestburn Reservoir and Black Loch.


title: Lanarkshire

text: From the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth century Lanarkshire profited from its rich seams of coal in places such as Glenboig. As the coal industry developed around Glasgow in the 1700s the price of coal to the city rose under the control of a cartel of coal owners. The solution was to carve out a canal to take advantage of the good (and uncontrolled) coal deposits of the Monklands area. By 1793, the Monklands canal was completed and the Lanarkshire coal industry thrived. The resulting boom lasted for over 100 years but reached its peak by the second decade of the twentieth century and even two world wars failed to halt the contraction. Output in the county continued to fall and the National Coal Board concentrated investment in Ayrshire, Fife and the Lothians. By 1970 there were only four collieries left in Lanarkshire and the closure of Cardowan in 1983 brought the long decline to an end.


title: Lanarkshire

text: The M74 motorway links Glasgow with Carlisle and points further south, with the M8 linking the city to Edinburgh. Glasgow and the surrounding areas are well served by numerous roads and train lines. The West Coast Main Line cuts north–south across the county and connects Glasgow with Manchester, Birmingham and London. Glasgow is also served by the Glasgow Subway.


title: Lanarkshire

text: Lanarkshire hosted the International Children's Games in August 2011. A total of 1,300 competitors and coaches, along with administrators and delegates, representing 77 cities from 33 countries worldwide attended.


title: Lanarkshire

text: Digitised historic and modern maps of Lanarkshire are available from National Library of Scotland including:


title: Peterborough ditch murders

text: The Peterborough ditch murders were a series of murders which took place in Cambridgeshire, England, in March 2013. All three victims were male and died from stab wounds. Their bodies were discovered dumped in ditches outside Peterborough. In Hereford, two other men were stabbed, but survived. The perpetrator was Joanna Christine Dennehy, a Cambridgeshire woman, who was later sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order.


title: Peterborough ditch murders

text: Kevin Lee was a property developer, landlord and lover of Dennehy. Lukasz Slaboszewski, a Polish national, met Dennehy through a shared interest in drink and drugs, and John Chapman was a housemate of Dennehy. Slaboszewski was killed at some point between 19 and 29 March 2013. Both Lee and Chapman were killed on 29 March. Lee's body was found the next day near Newborough; Dennehy had dressed his body in a black sequined dress before dumping the corpse. The bodies of Slaboszewski and Chapman were found on 3 April near Thorney with stab wounds.


title: Peterborough ditch murders

text: After the killings, Dennehy was driven by her friend Gary Stretch (formerly known as Gary Richards) to Hereford where she stabbed two men, chosen separately and at random, both of whom survived. Both men were dog walkers; she stole the second man's dog. Another man, travelling in the car unwillingly, was later cleared of criminal involvement in the attacks.


title: Peterborough ditch murders

text: Dennehy, born August 1982 in St Albans, Hertfordshire, grew up in nearby Harpenden, and was an absent mother of two young children at the time of the killings. She specifically targeted men during her killing spree, telling her acquaintance Lloyd that she did not wish to kill a woman and especially not a woman with children. Lloyd stated Dennehy had wanted to kill nine men in total, seeking to be like Bonnie and Clyde. Dennehy stabbed men for the purpose of "entertainment", telling Stretch, "I want my fun. I need you to get my fun." She later told a psychiatrist that she had found murder to be "moreish" and that after the first killing she "got a taste for it."


title: Peterborough ditch murders

text: In November 2013, Dennehy pleaded guilty to all three murders and two further attempted murders. Her sister Maria was unsurprised by the guilty plea and said, "I think she did that to control the situation. She likes people to know she's the boss." Dennehy was held on remand at HM Prison Bronzefield. Assessing psychiatrists later diagnosed Dennehy with psychopathic, anti-social and borderline personality disorders.


title: Peterborough ditch murders

text: Two men, Richards, 47, and Leslie Layton, 36, stood trial charged with a range of crimes relating to assisting Dennehy. Both decided not to give evidence in their defence. The jury began deliberation on 4 February 2014. On 10 February, Richards was found guilty of attempted murder and Layton was found guilty of perverting the course of justice. On 12 February, Layton and Richards were convicted of all other charges.


title: Peterborough ditch murders

text: On 28 February 2014, at the Old Bailey, Dennehy was sentenced to life imprisonment. The trial judge, Mr Justice Spencer, ordered that she should never be released due to the premeditation of each murder. Spencer said further that Dennehy was sadomasochistic, and lacked the normal range of human emotions. As of 2014, Dennehy has since become one of three women in the UK to be given a whole life tariff, after Myra Hindley and Rosemary West.


title: Peterborough ditch murders

text: Richards was also sentenced at the Old Bailey alongside Dennehy to life imprisonment, with a recommended minimum term of 19 years. Layton was sentenced to a total of 14 years, and Robert Moore, 55, who admitted to assisting an offender, received a three-year prison sentence.


title: Peterborough ditch murders

text: After the trial it emerged that the Probation Service was supervising Dennehy at the time of the murders as she had been convicted of assault and owning a dangerous dog. It was later concluded that the staff dealing with her were inexperienced.


title: Peterborough ditch murders

text: While Dennehy was on remand before the trial, prison staff found an escape plot in her diary. This involved killing or seriously injuring a prison officer, cutting off one of the officer’s fingers and using the amputated finger to fool the biometric system in the prison. Because of the plot, Dennehy was placed in solitary confinement from September 2013 (before the court proceedings) to September 2015 (after the proceedings). She claims isolation left her 'tearful and upset' and led to self harm.


title: Peterborough ditch murders

text: The High Court rejected Dennehy's claim that her human rights had been violated. Government lawyers argued isolation was necessary due to the nature of Dennehy's offences and the risk she could pose to the public if she were to escape. Mr Justice Singh found solitary confinement was "in accordance with law (...) at all material times it has been necessary and proportionate". At the time, Dennehy was incarcerated in HMP Bronzefield, Surrey.


title: Peterborough ditch murders

text: In 2018 she requested permission to marry her cellmate Hayley Palmer and received a positive answer from prison authorities, to the dismay of Palmer's family, who feared Dennehy might endanger her. In 2018 both Dennehy and Palmer tried to kill themselves during a suicide pact. In June 2020 she was reported to be in a relationship with another prisoner, Emma Aitken, a 25-year-old serving a twelve-year sentence for her part in the murder of a man whose body was dumped outside a social club. In May 2021 it was again reported Dennehy and Palmer, since released from a sixteen-year robbery sentence, intended to marry.


title: Peterborough ditch murders

text: In 2019 Dennehy was moved to Low Newton Prison in County Durham. Upon her arrival she threatened to kill Rosemary West, who had been moved to another prison.


title: Peterborough ditch murders

text: Dennehy’s story was featured in "The Murderer & Me: Joanna Dennehy", a documentary that aired on Sky Crime in the UK and Ireland on 21 February 2021.


title: Samuel Loomis

text: Dr. Samuel "Sam" J. Loomis is a fictional character in the "Halloween" franchise. A main protagonist of the overall series, Loomis appears on-screen in eight of the twelve "Halloween" films (and is mentioned or featured in audio recordings in others), first appearing in John Carpenter's original 1978 film. Donald Pleasence portrayed the character in five films, with Malcolm McDowell taking on the role in the 2007 reimagining and its sequel. In both portrayals, Loomis is introduced as the psychiatrist of series antagonist Michael Myers, driven to pursue and restrain his murderous former patient. He also appears in a flashback in "Halloween Kills".


title: Samuel Loomis

text: Dr. Samuel Loomis first appears in the original "Halloween" (1978). Assigned as the psychiatrist to six-year-old Michael Myers after the boy killed his own sister, Loomis spent eight years trying to reach Myers before coming to the conclusion that he was "purely and simply evil" and advocating that Myers never be released. Fifteen years after Myers' first murder, Loomis and colleague Marion Chambers prepare to escort Michael from Smith's Grove Sanitarium to court; Loomis plans to give Michael Thorazine to ensure he will have no chance to be released back to society. However, upon arrival they find that the sanitarium's patients are wandering loose, and in the confusion an escaped Michael steals their car. Loomis suspects Michael plans to return to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois; investigating the Haddonfield cemetery he discovers that Judith Myers' tombstone is missing. He meets with Sheriff Leigh Brackett, and the two begin their search at Michael's former home. While a skeptical Sheriff Brackett patrols the streets, the doctor stays at the house believing that Michael may desire to return "home". Loomis hears two children frantically fleeing a nearby house; investigating, he finds Michael attacking Laurie Strode. Loomis draws his revolver and shoots Michael six times, knocking him off the balcony, but when he goes to check Michael's body he finds it missing. An unsurprised Loomis stares off into the night, while Laurie begins sobbing in terror.


title: Samuel Loomis

text: "Halloween II" (1981) begins at the final moments of the first film. Laurie is taken to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, while Brackett accompanies Loomis in his search for Michael. The pair spots a masked figure that may be Myers, but he is struck by a car and immolated which confounds identification of the body. Sheriff Brackett learns his daughter Annie was killed by Michael, and angrily blames Loomis for letting him escape and leaves the search to Deputy Gary Hunt. Investigation of the burned corpse reveals it was not Myers, whose trail is picked up at the local elementary school. As Loomis investigates he discovers clues connecting Michael to the occult practice of Samhain, suggesting an explanation to his seeming invulnerability and murderous desire. The search is interrupted by a returning Chambers: the governor has ordered Loomis to return immediately to Smith's Grove accompanied by a US Marshal. Along the way, Marion shares that a previously sealed file reveals that Laurie is Michael's sister, adopted by the Strodes after the death of her parents. Realizing that Michael is after Laurie, Loomis forces the Marshal to drive to Haddonfield Memorial at gunpoint. The trio reach the hospital to defend Laurie. As Marion attempts to contact the police, Michael kills the Marshal and chases Loomis and Laurie into an operating theater. Michael stabs Loomis in the stomach, seriously wounding him, but Laurie blinds Michael by shooting him in the eyes. The pair fill the room with oxygen and ether. Laurie flees while Loomis ignites the flammable gases, blowing up the operating room. Miraculously, Loomis survives, as he is thrown out of the room by the explosion and is knocked unconscious. Michael, engulfed in flames, staggers out of the room before finally collapsing lifeless.


title: Samuel Loomis

text: "" (1988) picks the story up ten years after the events of "Halloween II". Michael has been comatose since the explosion, but awakens when he learns Laurie Strode has died in a car accident, leaving behind a daughter, Jamie Lloyd. Loomis heads to Haddonfield after learning that Michael has escaped. He follows Michael to a gas station, but Myers escapes in a tow truck and causes an explosion, destroying Loomis's car in the process. Catching a ride to Haddonfield, Loomis warns the new sheriff, Ben Meeker, that Michael has returned. Michael attacks the police station and kills all of the officers. A lynch mob is formed by the town's men to kill Michael once Loomis reveals he's returned, refusing to let Michael cause a massacre and the latter goes to protect Jamie Lloyd from her uncle. After Michael Myers is shot and falls down a mine shaft, Jamie and Rachel are brought back to their foster parents' house, where Loomis arrives with Sheriff Meeker, the former being convinced that Myers has died. Without warning, Jamie stabs her foster mother giving her an appearance similar to six-year-old Michael's first kill. Sheriff Meeker prevents a horrified Loomis from shooting her as the group realizes that Jamie is following in Michael's footsteps.


title: Samuel Loomis

text: "" (1989) takes place a year later as Loomis is assigned to Jamie at the Haddonfield Children's Clinic. Aware that Michael is still alive, and discovering that Jamie is telepathically linked with him, Loomis constantly pressures her to inform him of Michael's whereabouts, but Jamie is too traumatized to tell him. When Michael returns, Loomis sets a trap for Myers at his house, which involves Jamie recreating an eerie recreation of Judith Myers' final moments before her murder. Michael arrives, and Loomis tries to reason with him, proposing that he fight his rage and redeem himself through a positive relationship with Jamie. Loomis's words seem to work at first, as Michael calmly listens to him and lowers his knife, but when Loomis reaches to take away Michael's knife, he subdues him. When Loomis awakens, he uses Jamie as bait, and lures Michael into a trap to weaken him with a tranquilizer gun. After beating Michael unconscious with a wooden plank, Loomis suffers a stroke and collapses.