title: Bokmål

text: In line with these plans, the 1917 reform introduced some elements from Norwegian dialects and Nynorsk as optional alternatives to traditional Dano-Norwegian forms. The reform met some resistance from the Riksmål movement, and "Riksmålsvernet" (The Society for the Protection of Riksmål) was founded in 1919.


title: Bokmål

text: In 1929, the parliament voted to rename the written standards. "Bokmål" was re-introduced as the official name for the Dano-Norwegian standard, replacing "Riksmål", while "Landsmål" was renamed "Nynorsk".


title: Bokmål

text: In 1938 both written standards were heavily reformed and many common spellings and grammatical endings were made mandatory. This meant the removal of many traditional Dano-Norwegian forms in Bokmål, a decision that was harshly criticised by the Riksmål movement for being too radical and premature. While it criticised the adoption of Nynorsk spellings, it initially also expressed support for making the orthography more phonemic, for instance by removing silent h's in interrogative pronouns (which was done in Swedish a few years earlier).


title: Bokmål

text: The resistance culminated in the 1950s under the leadership of Arnulf Øverland. Riksmålsforbundet organised a parents' campaign against Samnorsk in 1951, and the Norwegian Academy for Language and Literature was founded in 1953. Because of this resistance, the 1959 reform was relatively modest, and some of the common traditional Danish spellings and inflections were admitted back into the standard through the reforms in 1981 and 2005.


title: Bokmål

text: Currently, Riksmål denotes a language form regulated by the non-governmental organisation The Norwegian Academy of Language and Literature. It is based on pre-1938 Bokmål and has been regulated by The Academy as a private alternative to the official Bokmål spelling standard since the 1950s. Over time it has accepted widespread "radical" spellings into the Riksmål standard. Since the official Samnorsk policy was abolished Riksmål and Bokmål have converged, and The Academy currently edits an online dictionary that covers both. The differences have diminished (now being comparable to American and British English differences), but The Academy still upholds its own standard.


title: Bokmål

text: Norway's most popular daily newspaper, "Aftenposten", is notable for its use of Riksmål as its standard language. Use of Riksmål is rigorously pursued, even with regard to readers' letters, which are "translated" into the standard. "Aftenposten" gave up its most markedly conservative "signal words" in 1990.


title: Bokmål

text: In the Norwegian discourse, the term "Dano-Norwegian" is seldom used with reference to contemporary Bokmål and its spoken varieties. The nationality of the language has been a hotly debated topic, and its users and proponents have generally not been fond of the implied association with Danish (hence the neutral names "Riksmål" and "Bokmål", meaning "state language" and "book language" respectively). The debate intensified with the advent of Nynorsk in the 19th century, a written language based on rural Modern Norwegian dialects and puristic opposition to the Danish and Dano-Norwegian spoken in Norwegian cities.


title: Bokmål

text: Most natives of Oslo today speak a dialect that is an amalgamation of "vikværsk" (which is the technical term for the traditional dialects in the Oslofjord area) and written Danish; and subsequently Riksmål and Bokmål, which primarily inherited their non-Oslo elements from Danish. The present-day Oslo dialect is also influenced by other Eastern Norwegian dialects.


title: Bokmål

text: The following table shows some important cases where traditional Bokmål and Standard Østnorsk followed Danish rather than the traditional Oslo dialect as it is commonly portrayed in literature about Norwegian dialects. In many of these cases, radical Bokmål follows the traditional Oslo dialect and Nynorsk, and these forms are also given.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: Baker McKenzie is an international law firm located in Chicago, Illinois. It was founded in 1949, originally named Baker & McKenzie. It now has 77 offices in 46 countries. It employs 4,809 attorneys total, and approximately 13,000 employees total. The firm took in $3,126,729,000 gross revenue in 2021, thus placing 4th on The American Lawyer's 2022 Am Law 200 ranking.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: Co-founding partner Russell Baker, born in Wisconsin and raised in New Mexico, opened his early practice, Baker & Simpson, in Chicago in 1925, following graduation from the University of Chicago Law School. Baker had early exposure to the Spanish language and other cultures, and his firm provided legal services to Chicago's growing Mexican American community. The firm later advised U.S. companies investing in Latin America.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: In 1949, the firm relaunched with John McKenzie, a litigator who had graduated from Loyola University Chicago School of Law, who took charge of the litigation practice, as Baker built an international practice.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: Baker McKenzie became an international firm beginning in 1955, when a lawyer in Venezuela contacted Baker McKenzie about opening a joint venture office in Caracas. Russell Baker's son, Donald, moved to Caracas to launch the satellite office. Within the next three years, offices were opened in Washington, D.C., Amsterdam, Brussels, Zurich, New York and São Paulo. By 1978, Baker McKenzie had 26 offices in 20 countries. By 1990, the firm operated 49 offices on six continents, employing around 1500 attorneys, and generating $400 million in revenues. In October 2006, Unilever chose the firm to manage its global trademark portfolio, the largest in the world, with over 160,000 registrations, marking the first time a multinational company outsourced its trademark management to a law firm on such a large scale. In July 2013, co-founding partner Russell Baker was named one of "American Lawyer"'s top 50 innovators for pioneering ideas and initiatives that changed the world of BigLaw.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: In 1999, Christine Lagarde, the Paris managing partner and an antitrust and labor lawyer, was elected chair of the global executive committee, the first woman to lead Baker McKenzie or any major international law firm; she was chair for five years. She later became France's Minister of Finance and managing director of the International Monetary Fund.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: In 2001, the firm employed 3,000 attorneys and garnered $1 billion in revenues. In 2005, 70 partners, and other legal staff, from the New York office of disbanding international firm Coudert Brothers joined Baker McKenzie.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: In August 2014, Baker McKenzie revealed it was the first law firm to break through the $2.5bn revenues barrier since the financial crisis, and that it was also the largest firm in the world by headcount.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: The firm's global chair, from 2016, until his death in April 2019, was former London managing partner Paul Rawlinson, who was the 15th chair, and the first British chair of the firm. Rawlinson had succeeded Eduardo C. Leite who was chair of Baker McKenzie from 2010 to 2016. In September 2019 the Firm announced that Milton Cheng had been elected as the global chair for four years, commenced October 2019.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: Baker McKenzie is organized as a Swiss Verein which allows regional profit pools and their related tax, accounting and partner compensation systems to remain separate while allowing strategy, branding, information technology and other core functions to be shared between the constituent partnerships. Baker McKenzie is the only Verein that used to be a single partnership. All of the other Vereins were created by firms merging.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: After 40 years of existence in the UAE, Baker McKenzie announced to swiftly separate from its Emirati partner, Habib Al Mulla. In September 2022, the law firm raised a concern regarding the homophobic Twitter posts by Mulla, whose firm merged with Baker McKenzie in 2013. Mulla sparked controversy when he described homosexuality as “ugly” in his tweets. Baker McKenzie’s head of investigations Borys Dackiw was temporarily appointed to lead. The law firm said it wanted to “ensure and inclusive work environment for all”.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: According to the ICIJ, Baker McKenzie has a history of working with "notorious fraudsters and autocratic regimes."


title: Baker McKenzie

text: In 1986, Geoffrey Bowers, then a New York attorney, filed a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights, charging that he had been fired from his job at the Manhattan branch of Baker McKenzie law firm after AIDS-related lesions appeared on his face. The firm maintained that he was fired purely for his performance. Two months after testifying at a hearing on the complaint, he died at age 33. The case was resolved in his favor in late December, when Baker McKenzie was ordered to pay $500,000 to Bowers' estate. It was one of the first AIDS discrimination cases to go to a public hearing. Baker McKenzie appealed but subsequently withdrew the appeal after they negotiated a confidential settlement in 1995 with Bowers' family forbidding parties from ever discussing the case or the terms of the agreement. These events were one inspiration for the film "Philadelphia", starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington (the script of which was derived from numerous sources). The film's credits include the following message: "This motion picture was inspired in part by Geoffrey Bowers’ AIDS discrimination lawsuit, the courage and love of the Angius family and the struggles of the many others who, along with their loved ones, have experienced discrimination because of AIDS."


title: Baker McKenzie

text: In 1994, in a seminal case, a legal secretary, Rena Weeks, successfully sued the law firm for sexual harassment. The trial court ordered the law firm to pay $6.9 million in punitive damages, making it one of the largest damage awards in history for this type of action. On May 4, 1998, the California Court of Appeal for the First District upheld the trial court's judgment in full, and the Supreme Court of California denied review. A subsequent dispute among Weeks' victorious attorneys as to the division of fees among them (she had signed a contingent fee agreement for 40% of her recovery) did reach the Supreme Court of California in 2002; the court held that the later-associated co-counsel could not recover the full amount he sought because Weeks' attorneys had not obtained her consent to an agreement to split fees among co-counsel from different firms as required by California court rules. Martin R. Greenstein, the partner whose actions resulted in Weeks' successful lawsuit, was given a public reproval by the State Bar of California on March 26, 1998, and for obvious reasons, is no longer with Baker McKenzie (the Court of Appeal decision noted that he was terminated by the firm in August 1993).


title: Baker McKenzie

text: In 2021, the law firm was listed in the Pandora Papers after the law firm conducted offshoring activities for organizations outside of the United States. One of the actions include setting up shell companies in Cyprus for RJR Nabisco (which as split up), creating a tax shelter for Nike, as well as moving Facebook's tax headquarters to Ireland, allowing these companies to avoid taxes. Baker McKenzie's clients include Malaysian fugitive Jho Low.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: Baker McKenzie has boasted about helping to set up tax free zones in the UAE, which critics say encourage illicit activity. Baker McKenzie has lobbied against legislation to curb offshore tax avoidance by big companies and lobbied against legislation that would increase due diligence for foreign customers of American banks.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: According to the ICIJ, Baker McKenzie is "an architect of the modern tax avoidance system." The company has helped fraudsters, corrupt officials and elites in authoritarian regimes avoid taxes and hide wealth through the use of shell companies, trusts and complex structures in tax havens. The Pandora Papers mentioned Baker McKenzie more than any other major U.S. law firm – the leaks alone revealed that Baker McKenzie was involved in setting up more than 440 offshore companies registered in tax havens.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: Baker McKenzie has described itself as the "go-to firm for Russia’s largest companies and major foreign investors."


title: Baker McKenzie

text: Baker McKenzie has represented Russian state-owned companies Gazprom, Sberbank, VTB Bank, VEB.RF and Sviaz Bank, and the arms-manufacturer Rostec. In October 2021, the Pandora Papers leaks revealed that company represented at least six sanctioned Russian companies. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the company initially did not sever ties with Russian state-owned companies, but said it was "reviewing and adjusting our Russia-related operations and client work" to adjust to sanctions. In late March 2022, the company said it was leaving Russia.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: In 2016, Baker McKenzie worked for Rostec in selling shares in a Mongolian copper mine. The sale triggered a corruption investigation.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: For the last seven years Thomson Reuters has ranked Baker McKenzie number one in the world by number of cross-border deals — more than 65% of the firm's deals are cross-border — and for the eleventh year in a row the firm was ranked first for deals with emerging market involvement, by both number of announced and completed number of deals.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: , it is ranked as the second-largest international law firm in the world by headcount with 13,000 employees including 6,076 fee earners and 4,700 lawyers on a full-time equivalent basis in 78 offices across 47 countries. It is the largest law firm in the United States by headcount. It is also ranked as the third largest law firm in the world in terms of revenue with US$2.89 billion in annual revenue in FY2018. It is the largest international law firm in Asia Pacific, Continental Europe and Latin America. In December 2016 and as part of a major visual identity change, Baker & McKenzie re-branded and dropped the '&' from its name to become Baker McKenzie.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: In 2006, Baker McKenzie wrote the amicus brief of the Council of Parent Attorneys & Advocates (COPAA) in support of the petition for a Writ of Certiorari in "Winkelman v. Parma City School District", and later, COPAA's amicus brief on the merits. It argued that parents have the right to represent themselves in court to enforce their IDEA rights and protect their children's access to a free appropriate public education. This led to a unanimous Supreme Court decision in June 2007 granting parents the right to proceed without counsel on behalf of children with disabilities.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: In December 2009, Baker McKenzie won a landmark tax case against the U.S. Internal Revenue Service for Symantec Corporation. The IRS had claimed that the Veritas Software Corporation, which Symantec had subsequently acquired in 2005, owed over $1 billion in back taxes, penalties and interest as a result of Veritas' non-U.S. operations. Symantec took the case to the U.S. Tax Court where Baker & McKenzie argued that the IRS position was arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable. In an opinion by Judge Maurice Foley, the court decided in favor of Symantec.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: In 2012, Baker McKenzie helped overturn Paul Chambers' conviction under the Communications Act of 2003 (the Twitter Joke Trial) for tweeting a "message of a menacing character." Chambers, an accountant, had tweeted a "silly joke" about "blowing up the Robin Hood airport in South Yorkshire." The team advising on his appeal was led by Preiskel & Co's David Allen Green, John Cooper QC of 25 Bedford Row and Sarah Przybylska of 2 Hare Court. The Baker McKenzie team, which acted on the case pro bono from 2010, included partners Harry Small, Tom Cassels and Ben Allgrove.


title: Baker McKenzie

text: Baker McKenzie is currently representing Facebook Inc. in its dispute with the IRS over the value of assets the company transferred to its Irish holding company. Lawyers with the U.S. Department of Justice asked for a court order forcing Facebook to provide information to the IRS related to agreements between the company and the holding company, Facebook Ireland Holdings.


title: Power (international relations)

text: In international relations, power is defined in several different ways. Material definitions of state power emphasize economic and military power. Other definitions of power emphasize the ability to structure and constitute the nature of social relations between actors. Power is an attribute of particular actors in their interactions, as well as a social process that constitutes the social identities and capacities of actors.


title: Power (international relations)

text: International relations scholars use the term polarity to describe the distribution of power in the international system. Unipolarity refers to an international system characterized by one hegemon (e.g. United States in the post-Cold War period), bipolarity to an order with two great powers or blocs of states (e.g. the Cold War), and multipolarity refers to the presence of three or more great powers. Those states that have significant amounts of power within the international system are referred to as small powers, middle powers, regional powers, great powers, superpowers, or hegemons, although there is no commonly accepted standard for what defines a powerful state.


title: Power (international relations)

text: Entities other than states can have power in international relations. Such entities can include multilateral international organizations, military alliance organizations like NATO, multinational corporations like Wal-Mart, non-governmental organizations such as the Roman Catholic Church, or other institutions such as the Hanseatic League and technology companies like Facebook and Google.


title: Power (international relations)

text: Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall define power as "the production, in and through social relations, of effects that shape the capacities of actors to determine their circumstances and fate." They reject definitions of power that conflate power as any and all effects because doing so makes power synonymous with causality. They also reject persuasion as part of the definition of power, as it revolves around actors freely and voluntarily changing their minds once presented with new information.


title: Power (international relations)

text: Political scientists, historians, and practitioners of international relations (diplomats) have used the following concepts of political power:


title: Power (international relations)

text: The primary usage of "power" as a goal in international relations belongs to political theorists, such as Niccolò Machiavelli and Hans Morgenthau. Especially among Classical Realist thinkers, power is an inherent goal of mankind and of states. Economic growth, military growth, cultural spread etc. can all be considered as working towards the ultimate goal of international power. The German military thinker Carl von Clausewitz is considered to be the quintessential projection of European growth across the continent. In more modern times, Claus Moser has elucidated theories centre of distribution of power in Europe after the Holocaust, and the power of universal learning as its counterpoint. Jean Monnet was a French left-wing social theorist, stimulating expansive Eurocommunism, who followed on the creator of modern European community, the diplomat and statesman Robert Schuman.


title: Power (international relations)

text: Political scientists principally use "power" in terms of an actor's ability to exercise influence over other actors within the international system. This influence can be coercive, attractive, cooperative, or competitive. Mechanisms of influence can include the threat or use of force, economic interaction or pressure, diplomacy, and cultural exchange.


title: Power (international relations)

text: Under certain circumstances, states can organize a sphere of influence or a bloc within which they exercise predominant influence. Historical examples include the spheres of influence recognized under the Concert of Europe, or the recognition of spheres during the Cold War following the Yalta Conference. The Eastern Bloc, the Western Bloc, and the Non-Aligned Movement were the blocs that arose out of the Cold War contest. Military alliances like NATO and the Warsaw Pact are another forum through which influence is exercised. However, "realist" theory attempted to maintain the balance of power from the development of meaningful diplomatic relations that can create a hegemony within the region. British foreign policy, for example, dominated Europe through the Congress of Vienna after the defeat of France. They continued the balancing act with the Congress of Berlin in 1878, to appease Russia and Germany from attacking Turkey. Britain has sided against the aggressors on the European continent—i.e. the German Empire, Nazi Germany, Napoleonic France or the Austrian Empire, known during the Great War as the Central Powers and, in World War II as the Axis Powers.


title: Power (international relations)

text: International orders have both a material and social component. Martha Finnemore argues that unipolarity does not just entail a material superiority by the unipole, but also a social structure whereby the unipole maintains its status through legitimation, and institutionalization. In trying to obtain legitimacy from the other actors in the international system, the unipole necessarily gives those actors a degree of power. The unipole also obtains legitimacy and wards off challenges to its power through the creation of institutions, but these institutions also entail a diffusion of power away from the unipole. David Lake has argued along similar lines that legitimacy and authority are key components of international order.


title: Power (international relations)

text: Susan Strange made a key contribution to International Political Economy on the issue of power, which she considered essential to the character and dynamics of the global economy. Strange was skeptical of static indicators of power, arguing that it was structural power that mattered. In particular, interactions between states and markets mattered. She pointed to the superiority of the American technology sector, dominance in services, and the position of the U.S. dollar as the top international currency as real indicators of lasting power. She distinguished between relational power (the power to compel A to get B to do something B does not want to do) and structural power (the power to shape and determine the structure of the global political economy). Political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman argue that state power is in part derived from control over important nodes in global networks of informational and financial exchange, which means that states can "weaponize interdependence" by fighting over control of these nodes.


title: Power (international relations)

text: "Power" is also used when describing states or actors that have achieved military victories or security for their state in the international system. This general usage is most commonly found among the writings of historians or popular writers.


title: Power (international relations)

text: "Power" is also used to describe the resources and capabilities of a state. This definition is quantitative and is most often used by geopoliticians and the military. Capabilities are thought of in tangible terms—they are measurable, weighable, quantifiable assets. A good example for this kind of measurement is the "Composite Indicator on Aggregate Power", which involves 54 indicators and covers the capabilities of 44 states in Asia-Pacific from 1992 to 2012. Hard power can be treated as a potential and is not often enforced on the international stage.


title: Power (international relations)

text: Chinese strategists have such a concept of national power that can be measured quantitatively using an index known as comprehensive national power.


title: Power (international relations)

text: Michael Beckley argues that gross domestic product and military spending are imprecise indicators of power. He argues that better measurements of power should take into account "net" indicators of powers: "[Gross] indicators systematically exaggerate the wealth and military capabilities of poor, populous countries, because they tally countries’ resources without deducting the costs countries pay to police, protect, and serve their people. A country with a big population might produce vast output and field a large army, but it also may bear massive welfare and security burdens that drain its wealth and bog down its military, leaving it with few resources for power projection abroad."


title: Power (international relations)

text: Much effort in academic and popular writing is devoted to deciding which countries have the status of "power", and how this can be measured. If a country has "power" (as influence) in military, diplomatic, cultural, and economic spheres, it might be called a "power" (as status). There are several categories of power, and inclusion of a state in one category or another is fraught with difficulty and controversy. In his famous 1987 work, "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers," British-American historian Paul Kennedy charts the relative status of the various powers from AD 1500 to 2000. He does not begin the book with a theoretical definition of "great power"; however he lists them, separately, for many different eras. Moreover, he uses different working definitions of great power for different eras. For example;


title: Power (international relations)

text: Neorealist scholars frequently define power as entailing military capabilities and economic strength. Classical realists recognized that the ability to influence depended on psychological relationships that touched on ethical principles, legitimacy and justice, as well as emotions, leaders' skill and power over opinion.


title: Power (international relations)

text: In the modern geopolitical landscape, a number of terms are used to describe various types of powers, which include the following:


title: Power (international relations)

text: Some political scientists distinguish between two types of power: Hard and Soft. The former is coercive (example: military invasion) while the latter is attractive (example: broadcast media or cultural invasion).


title: Power (international relations)

text: Hard power refers to coercive tactics: the threat or use of armed forces, economic pressure or sanctions, assassination and subterfuge, or other forms of intimidation. Hard power is generally associated to the stronger of nations, as the ability to change the domestic affairs of other nations through military threats. Realists and neorealists, such as John Mearsheimer, are advocates of the use of such power for the balancing of the international system.


title: Power (international relations)

text: Joseph Nye is the leading proponent and theorist of soft power. Instruments of soft power include debates on cultural values, dialogues on ideology, the attempt to influence through good example, and the appeal to commonly accepted human values. Means of exercising soft power include diplomacy, dissemination of information, analysis, propaganda, and cultural programming to achieve political ends.


title: Power (international relations)

text: Others have synthesized soft and hard power, including through the field of smart power. This is often a call to use a holistic spectrum of statecraft tools, ranging from soft to hard.


title: Two Women

text: Two Women ( , rough literal translation "The Woman from Ciociaria") is a 1960 war drama film directed by Vittorio De Sica from a screenplay by Cesare Zavattini and De Sica, based on the novel of the same name by Alberto Moravia. The film stars Sophia Loren, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Eleonora Brown and Raf Vallone. It tells the story of a woman trying to protect her young daughter from the horrors of war. The story is fictional, but based on actual events of 1944 in Rome and rural Lazio, during the "Marocchinate".


title: Two Women

text: Loren's performance received critical acclaim, earning her an Academy Award for Best Actress, among other accolades.


title: Two Women

text: Cesira (Loren) is a widowed shopkeeper, raising her devoutly religious twelve-year-old daughter, Rosetta (Brown), in Rome during World War II. Following the bombing of Rome, mother and daughter flee to Cesira's native Ciociaria, a rural, mountainous province of central Italy. The night before they go, Cesira sleeps with Giovanni (Vallone), a coal dealer in her neighbourhood, who agrees to look after her store in her absence.


title: Two Women

text: After they arrive at Ciociaria, Cesira attracts the attention of Michele (Belmondo), a young local intellectual with communist sympathies. Rosetta sees Michele as a father figure and develops a strong bond with him. Michele is later taken prisoner by German soldiers, who force him to act as a guide through the mountainous terrain.


title: Two Women

text: After the Allies capture Rome, in June 1944, Cesira and Rosetta decide to head back to that city. On the way, the two are gang-raped inside a church by a group of "Moroccan Goumiers" – soldiers attached to the invading Allied Armies in Italy. Rosetta is traumatized, becoming detached and distant from her mother and no longer an innocent child.


title: Two Women

text: When the two manage to find shelter at a neighbouring village, Rosetta disappears during the night, sending Cesira into a panic. She thinks Rosetta has gone to look for Michele, but later finds out that Michele was killed by the Germans. Rosetta returns, having been out with an older boy, who has given her silk stockings, despite her youth. Cesira is outraged and upset, slapping and spanking Rosetta for her behavior, but Rosetta remains unresponsive, emotionally distant. When Cesira informs Rosetta of Michele's death, Rosetta begins to cry like the little girl she had been prior to the rape. The film ends with Cesira comforting the child.


title: Two Women

text: The film was based on a 1957 novel by Alberto Moravia, "La ciociara" ("The Woman From Ciociaria"). It was inspired by Moravia's experiences during World War II.


title: Two Women

text: Carlo Ponti bought the film rights along with Marcello Girosi for a reported US$100,000. Sophia Loren was always meant to star and there was some talk that the film might be financed by Paramount, with whom Loren had made a number of movies. Anna Magnani was going to play the lead and Loren was going to be her daughter. George Cukor was going to direct as part of a two-picture deal with Ponti, the other one being "Heller in Pink Tights" (1960). The film was going to be shot as part of a six-picture deal between Ponti and Paramount.


title: Two Women

text: Cukor and Paramount dropped out. Vittorio De Sica became attached as director. Magnani pulled out, supposedly because she did not want to play Loren's mother, leading to Loren taking Magnani's role, even though the former was only 25 at the time. However, De Sica says it was his decision for Loren to play Magnani's role and cast a younger performer as the daughter "for great poignancy. If, in doing this, we moved away from original line of Moravia, we had better opportunity to stress, to underline, the monstrous impact of war on people. The historical truth is that the great majority of those raped were young girls." In a 2017 interview, Brown stated that Loren protected her from some of the underlying implications of the rape scene in the film, and also stated that director De Sica brought her to tears for the climactic final scene of hearing that Belmondo's character has died, by saying that a telegram had arrived saying that Brown's parents had died in an accident.


title: Two Women

text: Magnani said she was going to do it, "Moravia wanted me, but Ponti got it, and Moravia did not fight. After that, they went through all the roles I'd turned down for Sophia Loren to play." "The book was one of the most beautiful I've ever read", said Loren. "I thought it was worth taking the risk at 25 to play an older woman because the story was so beautiful."


title: Two Women

text: Loren later said her performance was inspired by her memories of her mother during the war. She also said she was greatly helped by her experience acting in "Desire Under the Elms" (1958).


title: Two Women

text: Ponti raised money from France and Italy. French investment was conditional upon a French star being used, which lead to the casting of Jean-Paul Belmondo, who had leapt to international fame in "Breathless" (1960). Belmondo's voice was dubbed into Italian.


title: Two Women

text: Joseph E. Levine (Embassy Pictures) agreed to buy US release rights after watching only nine minutes of the film. "I bet Sophia she'd win the Oscar and I nursed that film like a baby", Levine later said. He showed the film in every city that a member of the academy jury lived and promoted it assiduously. "That showed foreign films could get big audiences if promoted with flair", said Levine.


title: Two Women

text: The film was submitted two days late to be eligible as the 1960 Italian entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.


title: Two Women

text: "La Ciociara" was remade for television in 1988. It was adapted by Diana Gould, Lidia Ravera, Dino Risi, and Bernardino Zapponi. It was directed by Risi, and starred Loren, Robert Loggia, Leonardo Ferrantini, Dario Ghirardi, and Sydney Penny. The opera "La Ciociara" written by Luca Rossi, with music composed by Marco Tutino, received its premiere at San Francisco Opera, and a European premiere at Teatro Lirico, Cagliari.


title: Lucas the Spider

text: Lucas the Spider is an animated character created by animator Joshua Slice, named after and voiced by his nephew. Lucas is based on a jumping spider and has starred in multiple short YouTube videos between 2017 and 2019. The first Lucas the Spider video was uploaded on November 5, 2017. Lucas was met with a highly positive reception for his gentle and warm-hearted nature.


title: Lucas the Spider

text: In 2018, a plushie of Lucas the Spider was released for sale online. In May 2018, the series was acquired by Canadian production company Fresh TV. In December 2018, Lucas the Spider appeared in .


title: Lucas the Spider

text: 2020 saw no new YouTube episodes. In various replies within posts to comments on his Instagram, Slice has stated that they "haven’t posted any new content for a while because the team is hard at work on the TV show!". A short upload on YouTube on July 29, 2021 announced then-upcoming episodes on the Cartoonito programming block on Cartoon Network. This was followed by more short cartoons and excerpts from television episodes.


title: Lucas the Spider

text: In February 2020, it was announced that a "Lucas the Spider" TV series has secured a global distribution deal with Cartoon Network and Boomerang. It is shown on Cartoon Network's Cartoonito block. A 'first look' cartoon titled "Fun with Findley" was uploaded on YouTube on July 29, 2021. In the following months, this was followed by more new shorts (initially introducing supporting characters from the TV series) and excerpts from the TV show (not mentioned in this table).


title: Lucas the Spider

text: In March 2018, following the purchase of the series by Fresh TV, the company announced to produce a long-form series based on the web series.


title: Lucas the Spider

text: In February 2020, Cartoon Network acquired the US broadcast rights to the series for a broadcast in early 2021 on the main channel and on Boomerang., however, the series instead became a launch series for the Cartoonito block, and began airing on the block on September 18, 2021. The series left Cartoonito on September 23, 2022 leaving three episodes unaired in the US, although they aired in Canada. It's left unknown at this point which network will pick up the series in the US next.


title: Ursula K. Le Guin bibliography

text: Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) was an American author of speculative fiction, realistic fiction, non-fiction, screenplays, librettos, essays, poetry, speeches, translations, literary critiques, chapbooks, and children's fiction. She was primarily known for her works of speculative fiction. These include works set in the fictional world of Earthsea, stories in the "Hainish Cycle", and standalone novels and short stories. Though frequently referred to as an author of science fiction, critics have described her work as being difficult to classify.


title: Ursula K. Le Guin bibliography

text: Le Guin came to critical attention with the publication of "A Wizard of Earthsea" in 1968, and "The Left Hand of Darkness" in 1969. The Earthsea books, of which "A Wizard of Earthsea" was the first, have been described as Le Guin's best work by several commentators, while scholar Charlotte Spivack described "The Left Hand of Darkness" as having established Le Guin's reputation as a writer of science fiction. Literary critic Harold Bloom referred to the books as Le Guin's masterpieces. Several scholars have called the Earthsea books Le Guin's best work. Her work has received intense critical attention. As of 1999, ten volumes of literary criticism and forty dissertations had been written about her work: she was referred to by scholar Donna White as a "major figure in American letters". Her awards include the National Book Award, the Newbery Medal, and multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards. Feminist critiques of her writing were particularly influential upon Le Guin's later work.


title: Ursula K. Le Guin bibliography

text: Le Guin's first published work was the poem "Folksong from the Montayna Province" in 1959, while her first short story was "An die Musik", in 1961; both were set in her fictional country of Orsinia. Her first professional publication was the short story "April in Paris" in 1962, while her first published novel was "Rocannon's World", released by Ace Books in 1966. Her final publications included the non-fiction collections "Dreams Must Explain Themselves" and "Ursula K Le Guin: Conversations on Writing", and the poetry volume "So Far So Good: Final Poems 2014–2018", all of which were released after her death. This bibliography includes all of Le Guin's published novels, short fiction, translations, and edited volumes, and all collections that include material not previously published in book form, as well as any works mentioned in commentary about Le Guin's writings.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Kings Dominion is an amusement park located in Doswell, Virginia, north of Richmond and south of Washington, D.C. Owned and operated by Cedar Fair, the park opened to the public on May 3, 1975, and features more than 60 rides, shows and attractions including 13 roller coasters and a water park. Its name is derived from the name of its sister park, Kings Island, and the nickname for the state of Virginia, "Old Dominion."


title: Kings Dominion

text: Following the success of Kings Island in Mason, Ohio, Family Leisure Centers (a partnership formed between Taft Broadcasting Company and Top Value Enterprises) decided to expand into a new region of the country by opening a second park. A site was chosen in Doswell, Virginia, with construction beginning on October 1, 1972. The new park was designed with similar themes, rides, and activities as sister park Kings Island.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Following a limited preview of the park's Lion Country Safari, a drive-through animal zoo with 230 species of animals, and the Scooby-Doo rollercoaster in 1974, Kings Dominion officially opened on May 3, 1975, offering fifteen attractions including the Rebel Yell (later renamed Racer 75), the Lion Country Safari Monorail, Galaxie, and a junior wooden roller coaster known as Scooby-Doo. Also present at the opening was a log flume, steam train, a collection of flat rides and a cable-car sky ride that transported visitors between Old Virginia and The Happy Land of Hanna-Barbera. In addition, Kings Dominion's 1/3-scale replica of the Eiffel Tower and the International Street Fountain greet visitors near the main entrance to the park. Original themed areas included The Happy Land of Hanna-Barbera, International Street, Lion Country Safari, Old Virginia, and Coney Island. Daily admission price in 1975 was $7.50, and a dollar for parking. Opening day of the park saw 50,000 guests, with an additional 50,000-60,000 guests waiting to enter.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Kings Dominion added its fourth roller coaster, a Schwarzkopf shuttle loop known as the King Kobra, in 1977. The King Kobra featured a 50-ton counterweight drop launch and was the park's first launched roller coaster. It was in the park for nine seasons before being relocated to Jolly Roger Amusement Park in Ocean City, Maryland, Alton Towers in England, and later to Hopi Hari in Brazil where it exists today as "Katapul". Also in 1977, Kings Dominion was one of several amusement parks serving as location for the film "Rollercoaster".


title: Kings Dominion

text: A campground was completed in time for the 1978 season and the park's well-known Lost World mountain debuted in 1979. Originally, the Lost World featured three rides: a flume ride called "Voyage to Atlantis", a children's attraction mine ride known as "Land of the Dooz", and a rotor called "Time Shaft". Only a year later in 1980, the flume ride was rethemed "Haunted River". Kings Dominion later expanded Old Virginia with the addition of the park's third wooden roller coaster, the Grizzly, in 1982 and a river rapids ride called White Water Canyon in 1983.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Kings Dominion was also active in political lobbying. They and other entertainment businesses convinced Virginia to make it illegal for schools to start classes before the Labor Day holiday in early September. They thought that if students were not able to attend school in August, then more families would spend money at Kings Dominion, and more teenagers would be able to provide a low-cost workforce to the amusement park. This law, known as the "Kings Dominion Law" after the amusement park, stayed in force until 2019.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Taft Broadcasting Company sold its theme park division in late 1983 for $167.5 million to Kings Entertainment Company (KECO), a new company formed by senior executives and general managers of Taft's Amusement Park Group. Three parks were involved in the sale – Kings Island, Kings Dominion, and Carowinds – along with a 20-percent stake in Canada's Wonderland. American Financial Group later purchased KECO in 1987 but allowed KECO to continue to manage operations at the amusement parks.


title: Kings Dominion

text: One of the first additions under the new management group was Berserker – a looping starship ride added to International Street in 1984. Also that year, Smurf Mountain replaced the mine ride Land of the Dooz, transforming the Lost World into The Smurfs theme. Kings Dominion unveiled a TOGO stand-up roller coaster in 1986 called Shockwave, the first of three roller coasters to be added under KECO. Shockwave had one loop, similar to the older King Kobra but added a helix. King Kobra was removed at the end of the season. A water slide complex known as Racing Rivers opened in 1987, and Avalanche, which remains the only Mack bobsled roller coaster in the United States, debuted the following year in 1988. The trains of Avalanche now known as “Reptilian” were themed after bobsleds from various countries including the United States, France, Germany, Canada and Switzerland creating the experience of a bobsled race in the Winter Olympics.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Kings Dominion continued to expand over the next few seasons starting with Hanna-Barbera Land in 1990 with the addition of more children's flat rides. A new, looping roller coaster from Arrow Dynamics called Anaconda was introduced the following year in 1991 featuring the world's first underwater tunnel which travels under part of Lake Charles. Anaconda was also originally billed as having six loops, but unlike Arrow's six-inversion coaster Drachen Fire that opened at Busch Gardens Williamsburg the following year, the Anaconda actually has only four inversions: a vertical loop, a sidewinder, and two consecutive corkscrews.


title: Kings Dominion

text: A new water park addition called Hurricane Reef opened in 1992. To build the water park, Kings Dominion filled in two-thirds of Lake Charles near the Candy Apple Grove region of the park. Originally it featured the Monsoon Chutes (two pairs of free-fall body slides, at 70 and high, respectively), the Torrential Twist (two enclosed body slides that wrapped around each other), the Pipeline (four open body slides), Cyclone (three enclosed body slides, the center of which was a free-fall), Tidal Wave (two open slides, which riders rode on inner tubes), Splash Island (an area for children with five water slides), and a lazy river.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Kings Dominion continued its growth when it became part of Paramount Parks in 1993 and switched its name to Paramount's Kings Dominion. New attractions and areas of the park themed to Paramount's television shows and films appeared at Paramount's Kings Dominion almost every season that they were under Paramount's ownership. In 1993, they added a motion simulator attraction, originally featuring the "Days of Thunder" film, and Lion County Safari was removed at the end of the season. Also in 1993, Smurf Mountain was removed, leaving only the Time Shaft and Haunted River remaining in The Lost World Mountain until 1995 when both rides were removed. The 1994 season saw the addition of a new area of the park themed to the 1992 Paramount motion picture "Wayne's World", which featured its third full-size wooden roller coaster, Hurler, a shop called the Rock Shop, and a Stan Mikita's restaurant similar to the one featured in the film. Since then, the Wayne's World section has been merged into the Candy Apple Grove; the Stan Mikita's was converted to the Juke Box Diner, and the Hurler was converted into Twisted Timbers, the park's newest roller coaster, in 2018. In the next year, another children's area, known as Nickelodeon Splat City, opened near the Shockwave roller coaster, this was a product of Viacom purchasing Paramount in 1994. This was later converted into Nick Central. In the 1995 season, The Skyride and The Singing Mushrooms were removed.


title: Kings Dominion

text: In 1996, Kings Dominion introduced its second launched roller coaster, and first LIM-launched roller coaster, The Outer Limits: Flight of Fear. The Outer Limits has a launch, four inversions, and an identical "spaghetti bowl" layout to Flight of Fear at Kings Island. Almost as notable as the launch of The Outer Limits was the fact that the entire ride was in semi-darkness; the riders could not see where they were going. Five years after The Outer Limits opened, Paramount Parks' licensing agreement to use theming from the television show after which the ride was named expired; the "Outer Limits" theming in the ride and its queue was removed, and the ride was renamed Flight of Fear. After the 2000 season, Flight of Fear's trains received lap bars instead of shoulder restraints.


title: Kings Dominion

text: 1997 featured the debut of KidZville, a re-theming of the Hanna-Barbera section. The park added the new Taxi Jam roller coaster, and Scooby's Playpark became a construction-themed playpen called Kidz Construction Company. Yogi's Cave was rethemed to Treasure Cave and many rides in KidZville, such as Scooby-Doo's Ghoster Coaster, George Jetson's Spaceport, and Huck's Hot Rods, continued to bear the names of Hanna-Barbera characters.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Kings Dominion added another launched roller coaster in 1998, , in the former Lost World mountain. The mountain's previous rides had all been removed several years previously, and Volcano gave the mountain a major transformation. Volcano, which was manufactured by Intamin, was the world's first LIM-launched inverted roller coaster. The ride featured two separate launch sections, a roll-out inversion on the top of the mountain, and three heartline rolls on the way back down. Volcano was themed to the 1997 film "Volcano"; the other Paramount Parks added inverted or suspended roller coasters themed to "Top Gun" around the same time. During the next two seasons, Kings Dominion expanded Hurricane Reef behind the Rebel Yell and renamed it WaterWorks. The new portion of WaterWorks includes Pipeline Peak, a set of four enclosed water slides, one of which (the Night Slider) is the world's tallest dark free-fall slide. In 2000, Nick Central opened, replacing Nick Splat City and part of Kidzville.


title: Kings Dominion

text: The park added its third launched roller coaster, Hypersonic XLC, in 2001. Hypersonic XLC, a Thrust Air 2000 air-launched coaster made by S&S Power, launched riders from 0 to in 1.5 seconds, taking them up an 87-degree incline and down an 87-degree drop. The entire ride's duration was about 25 seconds. Hypersonic XLC broke down frequently and was closed for the first three months of its second season; no other Paramount Parks installed a similar ride. Nevertheless, Hypersonic XLC helped establish Kings Dominion's reputation as "the launched coaster capital of the world". Hypersonic XLC was removed after the 2007 season.


title: Kings Dominion

text: The early 2000s saw Kings Dominion opening new rides similar to existing rides at other Paramount Parks. In 2002, the park opened its new wild mouse roller coaster, Ricochet (Now known as Apple Zapple), Carowinds also installed its Ricochet in 2002. Diamond Falls, the Shoot the Chute ride closed that season. The 2003 season saw Kings Dominion become the final of several of the Paramount Parks to open a Drop Zone: Stunt Tower, now Drop Tower: Scream Zone. The Drop Zone at Kings Dominion was the tallest freefall ride in the world at the time it opened. In 2004, Kings Dominion added Scooby-Doo! And the Haunted Mansion; similar Scooby-Doo-themed dark rides had opened at three other Paramount Parks during the three previous seasons. In the next season, Kings Dominion added a Huss Top Spin called Tomb Raider: Firefall, and was named The Crypt, which was a standard size and outdoor version of a similar, but larger, ride named Tomb Raider: The Ride, also now The Crypt, at Kings Island. The differences between the two were that at Kings Dominion riders' feet dangle freely and at Kings Island, which installed a Giant Top Spin, there was a floor. In the 2006 season, Kings Dominion opened the Italian Job Turbo Coaster, its fourth launched roller coaster. Unlike the previously built launched coasters at Kings Dominion, each of which was faster than its predecessor, the Italian Job Turbo Coaster is designed more like a family ride and features multiple launches at . The coaster was later be renamed the "Backlot Stunt Coaster" in 2008. It is similar to the "Backlot Stunt Coaster" rides at Kings Island and Canada's Wonderland, which both opened in 2005.


title: Kings Dominion

text: On May 22, 2006, Cedar Fair announced the purchase of all five Paramount Parks. The sale was finalized on June 30, 2006 for $1.24 billion. The park continued to operate as Paramount's Kings Dominion until the beginning of the 2007 season when Paramount was dropped from the title.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Control of Paramount Parks had been transferred from Viacom to CBS Corporation in 2007. Kings Dominion expanded WaterWorks for the 2007 season, adding a second wave pool called Tidal Wave Bay, a four-person family raft slide called Zoom Flume, and a ProSlide Tornado.


title: Kings Dominion

text: During the Cedar Fair era, the park introduced Halloween Haunt. While the park had always had a Halloween event, the new HAUNT event has been received very well.


title: Kings Dominion

text: In December 2006, Kings Dominion put Hypersonic XLC up for sale. The park announced plans to keep it running until a buyer was found. It remained in operation during the 2007 season and was closed and dismantled several weeks before the 2008 season started. Also during the 2007–2008 offseason, Cedar Fair renamed the park's last two rides to open with Paramount theming. Drop Zone Stunt Tower became Drop Tower Scream Zone and The Italian Job: Turbo Coaster became Backlot Stunt Coaster. Tomb Raider: Firefall received the name The Crypt. The Paramount Theater also changed its name to Kings Dominion Theater.


title: Kings Dominion

text: The 2008 and 2009 seasons saw Kings Dominion receive three rides that had operated at Geauga Lake during its dry amusement park's final season. On October 23, 2007, Kings Dominion announced that Dominator, a floorless roller coaster, would be moved to Kings Dominion and located in the International Street section. Dominator opened on May 24, 2008, becoming Kings Dominion's first roller coaster with five inversions. For the 2009 season, two flat rides once located at Geauga Lake, like Dominator, opened in 2008. Located near Rebel Yell, Americana became Kings Dominion's first Ferris wheel.


title: Kings Dominion

text: For the 2010 season, Kings Dominion opened Intimidator 305, a giga coaster by Intamin. The ride features a cable lift hill, an 85° first drop and a maximum speed of . The ride, which is themed to NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, was announced on August 20, 2009, and represents the park's largest-ever capital investment. It was opened to the public in May 2010. Also for the 2010 season, the Kidzville and Nickelodeon Universe areas of the park began being re-themed to Planet Snoopy, as were the children's areas at Canada's Wonderland and Kings Island. The park has renamed the Hanna-Barbera-themed rides in Kidzville to match the Planet Snoopy theme, ending the park's 35-year run with Scooby-Doo and other Hanna-Barbera characters.


title: Kings Dominion

text: For the 2012 season, Kings Dominion installed WindSeeker in the Grove section of the park next to the Juke Box Diner. There are other versions of the ride in Cedar Fair parks such as Canada's Wonderland, Cedar Point, Kings Island, Knott's Berry Farm, and Carowinds. The ride stands and gives riders a view of the surrounding area. Kings Dominion also added Dinosaurs Alive!, an upcharge dinosaur walkthrough exhibit, located in the Old Virginia section of the park. This attraction also appeared at Kings Island, Dorney Park, Cedar Point, and Canada's Wonderland.


title: Kings Dominion

text: For the 2013 season, Planet Snoopy merged with KidZville during a expansion to form the largest Planet Snoopy in the Cedar Fair chain. There are now 18 attractions covering .


title: Kings Dominion

text: For the 2014 season, Kings Dominion commemorated the 40th anniversary of Lion Country Safari and the preview-opening of Kings Dominion by returning park icons from past eras. These icons included the return of the classic singing mushrooms, the repainting of Anaconda, an improved queue line for Volcano: The Blast Coaster, the return of classic blue ice cream, among other additions. They also returned the Rebel Yell roller coaster to its original red and blue colors. The 2014 season also saw the return of the iconic floral clock, the popular clown band, and the renaming of Johnny's and Trail's End Grill restaurants to the original names, Dinner Bell and Hungry Hippo, respectively. New lighting packages were added to the International Street fountains and Rebel Yell. The Congo and Grove sections of the park were returned to the original themes, Safari Village and Candy Apple Grove, respectively.


title: Kings Dominion

text: For the 2015 season, Kings Dominion continued in celebration of its 40th anniversary with a major expansion to WaterWorks. The expansion included a new 65-foot tall slide complex featuring three different attractions called Paradise Plunge, Aqua Blast, and Thunder Falls; a new children's area called Splash Island; expanded cabana areas, updated bathhouses, and other improvements to the area. As part of the major water park expansion, the area was renamed Soak City. On August 9, 2015, Shockwave closed in Candy Apple Grove permanently, and a swinging pendulum ride titled "Delirium" was built in its place. Hurler closed permanently at the end of the season on November 1, 2015. In 2017, Planet Snoopy was expanded with the addition of three new children's rides in the former Nickelodeon Central side of the area. On October 15, 2016, Kings Dominion announced that the Hurler wooden coaster would be permanently closed.


title: Kings Dominion

text: For the 2018 season, Kings Dominion opened Twisted Timbers on March 24, 2018, three years after Hurler operated for the last time, converting the track from wood to steel. It was built by Rocky Mountain Construction utilizing many of the original wooden supports from Hurler. 2018 also marked the debut of WinterFest, a Christmas-themed holiday event, during the winter season. The Rebel Yell and Ricochet coasters were renamed Racer 75 and Apple Zapple, respectively. Tornado, Dinosaurs Alive, and Volcano: The Blast Coaster were all removed before the 2019 season.


title: Kings Dominion

text: In August 2019, Kings Dominion announced that Soak City would be expanded in 2020 to include a new sub-area called Coconut Shores, featuring a multi-level water play structure and a children's wave pool. In January 2020, the park also announced the removal of The Crypt to make room for future development in the Safari Village section of the park.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Kings Dominion did not open for its normal operating schedule in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After restrictions were partially lifted by Virginia governor Ralph Northam in November 2020, the park opened for a limited capacity winter event titled "Taste of the Season" that operated for three weeks the following month in December. The event featured specialty food trucks, seasonal decorations, a small selection of rides.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Normal operation resumed for the 2021 season, and in August of that year, the park announced that Safari Village would receive a makeover for 2022. The upgraded section of the park, Jungle X-Pedition, is themed to an archeological research facility and dig site. The area received similarly-themed restaurants and retail shops, as well as a new roller coaster named Tumbili, a 4D Free Spin model manufactured by S&S – Sansei Technologies.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Candy Apple Grove was known as Coney Island when the park first opened in 1975. It was renamed Candy Apple Grove in 1976. The area is Kings Dominion's largest section in the park, and in its early years, it featured an orchard theme that included three apple-themed rides: Apple Turnover, Bad Apple, and Adam's Apple. Much of the apple-related themes were removed over the years, and the area became known as simply "The Grove" when it merged with the former Wayne's World area in 2001.


title: Kings Dominion

text: As part of Kings Dominion's 40th-anniversary celebration in 2014, The Grove was restored to its original orchard theme, and the name was changed back to Candy Apple Grove. The animatronic Singing Mushrooms, popular decades ago, was redeveloped with newer technology and placed back on display. Other features that made a return to the area include a fully restored floral clock near the Carousel, oversized candy apples, and the popular blue ice cream that existed in the park for decades.


title: Kings Dominion

text: The westernmost corner of Candy Apple Grove, distinct from the rest of the area, is themed to the 1950s.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Some of the area's more notable rides include WindSeeker, a swing ride that opened in 2012, and Delirium, a type of pendulum amusement ride that opened in place of stand-up roller coaster Shockwave in 2016. Candy Apple Grove's newest ride, steel coaster Twisted Timbers, opened in 2018 replacing Hurler and reusing some of the previous support structure. In addition to rides, the area features an arcade, carnival games, counter-service restaurants, and a gift shop.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Jungle X-Pedition is themed to an archeological base camp in a mysterious jungle. The area's fictional backstory centers around an explorer who discovered the uncharted land in 1935, naming the location "Site X." Initially, the area was part of one of the park's original attractions, Lion Country Safari, which contained a monorail train through a nature preserve until its closure in the 1990s. The area's name changed from Lion Country Safari to Safari Village in the mid-1980s and was changed again by Paramount to Congo in the 1990s. In 2014, the area's name reverted to Safari Village to commemorate the park's 40th anniversary. For the 2022 season, the area was rethemed to Jungle X-Pedition, which includes new immersive theming elements, dining, shopping, and a new roller coaster, Tumbili.


title: Kings Dominion

text: The area is home to many of the park's thrill rides and roller coasters. From 1979 until 2019, the area was anchored by a large artificial mountain, originally home to the Lost World ride complex and later to ; the structure was demolished with the coaster in spring 2019.


title: Kings Dominion

text: International Street is the park's main entry area, featuring a fountain pool in the center of the walkway leading up to the 1/3 scale replica of the Eiffel Tower at the end of the street. The area is themed to a showcase of various European cultures, with buildings representing France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, and Italy. Originally, only the walkway and its shops were considered part of the International Street area; during the park's Paramount seasons, the boundaries of International Street expanded to include the Action Theater.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Along with International Street, Old Virginia is the only original section of Kings Dominion that has kept its same name throughout the park's history. Set in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the area has a vintage, rustic theme marked by its wooded architecture and country-style decor. An Intamin Flying Dutchman flat ride called Jamestown Landing operated in Old Virginia through the 1970s, and was removed in 1980. A steam train ride called Old Dominion Line operated nearby in the same park section. It has since been removed.


title: Kings Dominion

text: The section originally opened as Nickelodeon Splat City in 1995, and was later renamed Nickelodeon Central in 2000. It was re-themed to the Peanuts for the 2010 season. In 2013, Cedar Fair merged the KidZville section of the park and introduced 12 new and re-themed attractions. Another expansion in 2017 updated the former Nickelodeon Central area of Planet Snoopy with three new attractions and a covered pavilion area.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Soak City, formerly known as WaterWorks, is Kings Dominion's water park. It opened in 1992 as Hurricane Reef and is included with admission to Kings Dominion. In 2015, the water park was expanded and re-branded as Soak City.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Fast Lane is Kings Dominion's virtual queue system. For $60, visitors get a wristband enabling them to get to the front of the line on 11 of the most popular attractions without queueing. They also offer “Fast Lane Plus”, which covers the same rides as Fast Lane, but also includes: Dominator, Intimidator 305, Tumbili, and Twisted Timbers.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Fast Lane Plus at Kings Dominion is converted into regular Fast Lane during Winterfest due to a decrease in operating rides.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Halloween Haunt is an annual Halloween event at Kings Dominion on weekends during the months of September and October. It debuted in 2001 as "FearFest," but following Cedar Fair's acquisition of the park, the event was renamed "Halloween Haunt" in 2007. In 2017, Kings Dominion's Halloween Haunt was voted the second-best theme park Halloween event by USA Today. Kings Dominion cancelled the event in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Kings Dominion

text: In 2013, Halloween Haunt featured a walk-through maze called Miner's Revenge. Advertisements for the attraction characterized it as "the worst coal mine accident in history," and the attraction featured depictions of dead miners' bodies that had been mangled by a mining disaster. The attraction drew criticism in the press due to the region's experience with mining disasters. "Washington Post" writer Peter Galuszka (author of a book on the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster) said the attraction "hits a little too close to home for me" since "the idea of abandonment is a difficult topic for miners". He added, "At Kings Dominion, the suggestion of living miners left to die is meant to inject some enjoyable dramatic tension". Kathleen Geier of "Washington Monthly" decried, "agonizing deaths are being served up for fun and profit to the gawking, peanut-crunching masses" and asked, "What next – a thrill ride based on the Rana Plaza factory disaster in Bangladesh? Auschwitz: The Theme Park?". Following the controversy, Kings Dominion dropped Miner's Revenge from its Halloween maze lineup the following season.


title: Kings Dominion

text: Parts of the 1977 movie "Rollercoaster" were filmed at Kings Dominion, and the park was involved in a major part of the film's plot.


title: Der Freischütz

text: The opera's plot is mainly based on August Apel's tale "Der Freischütz" from the "Gespensterbuch" though the hermit, Kaspar and Ännchen are new to Kind's libretto. That Weber's tunes were just German folk music is a common misconception. Its unearthly portrayal of the supernatural in the famous Wolf's Glen scene has been described as "the most expressive rendering of the gruesome that is to be found in a musical score".


title: Der Freischütz

text: The reception of "Der Freischütz" surpassed Weber's own hopes and it quickly became an international success, with productions in Vienna the same year followed by Dresden, Leipzig, Hamburg, Munich, Karlsruhe, Königsberg, Prague, other German centres, Riga and Copenhagen. 1824 saw productions in four London theatres in four different adaptations, as well as an inadequate adaptation by François Castil-Blaze in French, named "Robin des Bois" at the Théâtre de l'Odéon.


title: Der Freischütz

text: In order to get round the Paris Opera's ban on spoken text, a version in French with recitatives was prepared in 1841 by Hector Berlioz – who greatly admired the opera and feared other arrangers might do worse – which incorporated his orchestration of Weber's Invitation to the Dance to serve as a ballet, another Paris Opera requirement. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky criticised Berlioz's arrangement in the Bolshoi Theatre production of 1873 as "utterly incongruous", "tasteless" and "silly" because it inserted into the rustic opera an urban piece of music. In 1879 he again criticised a performance in Paris:


title: Der Freischütz

text: "Der Freischütz" afforded me great pleasure; in many places in the first act my eyes were moist with tears. In the second act Krauss pleased me greatly by her wonderful rendition of Agathe's aria. The Wolf's Glen was staged not at all as splendidly as I had expected. The third act was curious because of the French brazenness with which they took the liberty, on the one hand, of inserting "Invitation à la valse" with the most stupid dances, and, on the other, of cutting out the role of the hermit who appears at the end for the dénouement.


title: Der Freischütz

text: Berlioz's arrangement again underlay the production at the Paris Opéra-Comique in 2011. His orchestration of "Invitation à la valse" soon became a concert piece in its own right.


title: Der Freischütz

text: Weber's overture and the "Huntsmen's Chorus" from act 3 ("With princely enjoyment and manly employment") are often performed as concert pieces.


title: Der Freischütz

text: At a shooting contest, the second assistant forester, Max, loses to a peasant, Kilian, who is proclaimed "King of marksmen" (Chorus: "Viktoria! Der Meister soll leben"—"Victory! Long live the master"). Kilian mocks him good-naturedly ("Schau der Herr mich an als König"—"Let him gaze on me as king").


title: Der Freischütz

text: Max wants to marry Agathe, daughter of the head forester Kuno. In order to marry her and succeed her father as head forester, he has to prove his marksmanship and score in a shooting trial before Ottokar, the sovereign prince, on the following day.


title: Der Freischütz

text: As Max has had ill luck for several days, he muses upon his prospects of losing Agathe by failing the shooting test (Trio of Kuno, Kaspar, and Max; chorus: "O diese Sonne"—"O this sun").


title: Der Freischütz

text: Left alone in deep melancholy, he recalls happy days (Aria: "Durch die Wälder, durch die Auen"—"Through the forests, through the meadows").


title: Der Freischütz

text: Kaspar, the first assistant forester, falsely tries to imbue Max with wine and courage ("Hier im ird'schen Jammerthal"—"Here in this vale of tears"). He had hoped to marry Agathe himself but she had rejected him and chosen Max. The marriage would make Max the heir of Kuno who would see Max as a son. Kaspar seeks revenge upon all three – his rival, his former sweetheart and her father. He hands Max his gun and Max, to his own astonishment, hits an eagle soaring at a great height. Kaspar explains that the gun had been loaded with his last magic bullet.


title: Der Freischütz

text: He persuades Max to meet him at midnight in the terrible Wolf's Glen to cast seven more of the magic bullets. (Six hit, but the seventh belongs to the Evil One who can guide it wherever he pleases.) He warns Max not to tell a soul about their purpose so as not to endanger them. Left alone, Kaspar triumphs and boasts of his insidiousness (Aria: "Schweig’! damit dich niemand warnt"—"Silence! So that nobody warns you.").


title: Der Freischütz

text: At the moment when Max shoots the magic bullet, a picture of Agathe's ancestor hanging on the wall falls to the floor, slightly wounding her. Agathe's cousin and companion Ännchen refastens the hook (Duet: "Schelm, halt fest!"—"Rogue, hold fast!"). She endeavours to cheer Agathe with jests (Ännchen: "Kommt ein schlanker Bursch gegangen"—"Comes a pretty boy this path"). Agathe, still disturbed, tells of her meeting with the hermit. He had indicated a danger from which his white consecrated roses would protect her.


title: Der Freischütz

text: Left alone, Agathe awaits Max with the news of his success (Recitative and aria: "Wie nahte mir der Schlummer...Leise, leise"—"How did slumber approach me...Low, low"). Max arrives, acknowledging that while he has not been the victor, he has killed an eagle. Though the night is falling, he has to leave again to bring in a stag which he had shot in the Wolf's Glen (Trio: "Wie? Was? Entsetzen!"—"What? What? Oh, horror!").


title: Der Freischütz

text: As the bell chimes twelve Kaspar calls upon Samiel, the Black Huntsman, for assistance in casting the magic bullets. Having already sold his own soul, which is due the next day, Kaspar offers Max’s soul in exchange for a prolongation of his soul of three years. Agathe is to be killed by Max's magic bullet, despair will then make him the Devil's, him – and the father. Samiel agrees ambiguously: "So be it – By the gates of hell! Tomorrow he or you!"


title: Der Freischütz

text: As Max arrives, the spirit of his mother warns him to abandon the project. But Samiel conjures up Agathe, seemingly drowning herself in despair, whereupon Max plunges into the glen. With demoniacal noise, the casting of the bullets begins.


title: Der Freischütz

text: Having split the seven bullets between them, Max has used three during the hunt in the morning. Kaspar spoils his three on a fox. Thus Max's remaining bullet is the seventh, the Devil's bullet.


title: Der Freischütz

text: Agathe is praying (Aria: "Und ob die Wolke sie verhülle"—"Through clouds obscure"), her doubts having returned owing to a dream of ill omen where she was a white dove which Max shot. Ännchen tries to cheer her with a spooky tale (Aria: "Einst träumte meiner sel'gen Base"—"My deceased cousin had a dream"). The bridesmaids bring the box with the bridal wreath (Song: "Wir winden dir den Jungfern-Kranz"—"We wind round thee the bridal wreath"). But as they open it they find a funeral wreath. Recalling the hermit's promise that the white roses will protect her, Agathe proposes to twine them to the bridal wreath.


title: Der Freischütz

text: Prince Ottokar awaits Max at his tent (Chorus of foresters: "Was gleicht wohl auf Erden"—"What excels the pleasures of the chase"). As a test, Max is ordered to shoot the dove pointed out to him. Max takes aim, fires and Agathe, who has just entered the scene, falls as if hit (Finale: "Schaut, o schaut"—"See, oh see"). But her bridal wreath and the hermit behind her have deflected the bullet. It strikes Kaspar. Agathe revives from her faint and Kaspar, seeing a holy hermit by her side, realizes that he has failed. Samiel grasps him instead of Max, whereupon Kaspar expires, cursing hell and heaven.


title: Der Freischütz

text: Prince Ottokar orders the corpse to be thrown into the Wolf's Glen. Then he demands and receives an explanation from Max who confesses to shooting with magic bullets. Regardless of pleas from Kuno, Agathe, peasants, and huntsmen, the infuriated Prince forbids the marriage and banishes Max from the country.


title: Der Freischütz

text: The hermit seeks to appease the Prince (Aria: Wer legt auf ihn so strengen Bann! Ein Fehltritt, ist er solcher Büssung wert?—"Who lays so strict a sentence upon him? An error, is it worthy of such atonement?"). Only love of Agathe and fear of losing her had caused Max to stray from a life that was formerly without fault. Who is to raise the first stone? Who does not look into his own heart? Once he has completed a faultless probationary year, Max should be allowed to marry Agathe. To the exuberant joy of all the Prince accepts this judgement. After the probation, he himself will place the hand of Agathe in that of Max.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik ( – May 5, 1995) was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster. The sixth World Chess Champion, he also worked as an electrical engineer and computer scientist and was a pioneer in computer chess.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: Botvinnik was the first world-class player to develop within the Soviet Union. He also played a major role in the organization of chess, making a significant contribution to the design of the World Chess Championship system after World War II and becoming a leading member of the coaching system that enabled the Soviet Union to dominate top-class chess during that time. His pupils include World Champions Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: Botvinnik was born on August 17, 1911, in what was then Kuokkala, Vyborg Governorate, Grand Duchy of Finland, now the district of Repino in Saint Petersburg. His parents were Russian Jews; his father, Moisei Botvinnik (1878–1931), was a dental technician and his mother, Shifra (Serafima) Rabinovich (1876–1952), a dentist, which allowed the family to live outside the Pale of Settlement, to which most Jews in the Russian Empire were restricted at the time. As a result, Botvinnik grew up in Saint Petersburg's Nevsky Prospect. His father forbade the speaking of Yiddish at home, and Mikhail and his older brother Isaak "Issy" attended Soviet schools. Botvinnik later recounted, "I was asked once, “What do you consider yourself to be from the point of view of nationality?” My reply was, “Yes, my position is 'complicated'. I am a Jew by blood, a Russian by culture, Soviet by upbringing.”" On his religious views, he called himself an atheist.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: In 1920, his mother became ill and his father left the family, but maintained contact with the children, even after his second marriage, to a Russian woman. At about the same time, Botvinnik started reading newspapers, and became a committed communist.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: In autumn 1923, at the age of twelve, Botvinnik was taught chess by a school friend of his older brother, using a home-made set, and instantly fell in love with the game. He finished in mid-table in the school championship, sought advice from another of his brother's friends, and concluded that for him it was better to think out "concrete concepts" and then derive general principles from these – and went on to beat his brother's friend quite easily. In winter 1924, Botvinnik won his school's championship, and exaggerated his age by three years in order to become a member of the Petrograd Chess Assembly – to which its president turned a blind eye. Botvinnik won his first two tournaments organized by the Assembly. Shortly afterwards, Nikolai Krylenko, a devoted chess player and leading member of the Soviet legal system who later organized Joseph Stalin's show trials, began building a huge nationwide chess organization, and the Assembly was replaced by a club in the city's Palace of Labour.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: To test the strength of Soviet chess masters, Krylenko organized the Moscow 1925 chess tournament. On a rest day during the event, world champion José Raúl Capablanca gave a simultaneous exhibition in Leningrad. Botvinnik was selected as one of his opponents, and won his game. In 1926, he reached the final stage of the Leningrad championship. Later that year, he was selected for Leningrad's team in a match against Stockholm, held in Sweden, and scored +1=1 against the future grandmaster Gösta Stoltz. On his return, he entertained his schoolmates with a vivid account of the rough sea journey back to Russia. Botvinnik was commissioned to annotate two games from the match, and the fact that his analyses were to be published made him aware of the need for objectivity. In December 1926, he became a candidate member of his school's Komsomol branch. Around this time his mother became concerned about his poor physique, and as a result he started a programme of daily exercise, which he maintained for most of his life.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: When Botvinnik finished the school curriculum, he was below the minimum age for the entrance examinations for higher education. While waiting, he qualified for his first USSR Championship final stage in 1927 as the youngest player ever at that time, tied for fifth and sixth places and gained the title of master. He wanted to study Electrical Technology at the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute and passed the entrance examination; however, there was a persistent excess of applications for this course and the "Proletstud", which controlled admissions, had a policy of admitting only children of engineers and industrial workers. After an appeal by a local chess official, he was admitted in 1928 to Leningrad University's Mathematics Department. In January 1929, Botvinnik played for Leningrad in the student team chess championship against Moscow. Leningrad won and the team manager, who was also deputy chairman of the "Proletstud", secured Botvinnik a transfer to the Polytechnic's Electromechanical Department, where he was one of only four students who entered straight from school. As a result, he had to do a whole year's work in five months, and failed one of the examinations. Early in the same year he placed joint third in the semi-final stage of the USSR Championship, and thus failed to reach the final stage.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: His early progress was fairly rapid, mostly under the training of Soviet Master and coach Abram Model, in Leningrad; Model taught Botvinnik the Winawer Variation of the French Defence, which was then regarded as inferior for Black, but Botvinnik analysed it more deeply and played this variation with great success.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: Botvinnik won the Leningrad Masters' tournament in 1930 with a score of 6½/8, following this up the next year by winning the championship of Leningrad by 2½ points over former Soviet champion Peter Romanovsky.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: In 1935, Botvinnik married Gayane Davidovna Ananova, of Armenian descent, who was the daughter of his algebra and geometry teacher. She was a student at the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in Leningrad and, later, a ballerina in the Bolshoi Theatre. They had one daughter, named Olga, who was born in 1942.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: In 1931, at the age of 20, Botvinnik won his first Soviet Championship in Moscow, scoring 13½ out of 17. He commented that the field was not very strong, as some of the pre-Revolution masters were absent. In late summer 1931, he graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, after completing a practical assignment on temporary transmission lines at the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station. He stayed on at the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute to study for a Candidate of Sciences degree.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: In 1933, Botvinnik repeated his Soviet Championship win, in his home city of Leningrad, with 14/19, describing the results as evidence that Krylenko's plan to develop a new generation of Soviet masters had borne fruit. He and other young masters successfully requested the support of a senior Leningrad Communist Party official in arranging contests involving both Soviet and foreign players, as there had been none since the Moscow 1925 chess tournament. Soon afterwards, Botvinnik was informed that Alexander Ilyin-Genevsky, one of the older Soviet masters and a member of the Soviet embassy in Prague, had arranged a match between Botvinnik and Salo Flohr, a Czech grandmaster who was then regarded as one of the most credible contenders for Alexander Alekhine's World Chess Championship title. The highest-level chess officials in the Soviet Union opposed this on the grounds that Botvinnik stood little chance against such a strong international opponent. In spite of this attempt to dissuade him, Krylenko insisted on staging the match, saying that "We have to know our real strength."


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: Botvinnik used what he regarded as the first version of his method of preparing for a contest, but fell two games behind by the end of the first six, played in Moscow. However, aided by his old friend Ragozin and coach Abram Model, he leveled the score in Leningrad and the match was drawn. When describing the post-match party, Botvinnik wrote that at the time he danced the foxtrot and Charleston to a professional standard.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: In his first tournament outside the USSR, the Hastings 1934–35, Botvinnik achieved only a tie for 5th–6th places, with 5/9. He wrote that, in London after the tournament, Emanuel Lasker said his arrival only two hours before the first round began was a serious mistake and that he should have allowed ten days for acclimatization. Botvinnik wrote that he did not make this mistake again.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: Botvinnik placed first equal with Flohr, ½ point ahead of Lasker and one point ahead of José Raúl Capablanca, in Moscow's second International Tournament, held in 1935. After consulting Capablanca and Lasker, Krylenko proposed to award Botvinnik the title Grandmaster, but Botvinnik objected that "titles were not the point." However, he accepted a free car and a 67% increase in his postgraduate study grant, both provided by the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: He later reported to Krylenko that the 1935 tournament made it difficult to judge the strength of the top Soviet players, as it included a mixture of top-class and weaker players. Botvinnik advocated a double round-robin event featuring the top five Soviet players and the five strongest non-Soviet players available. Despite politicking over the Soviet choices, both Krylenko and the Central Committee of the Komsomol quickly authorised the tournament. This was played in Moscow in June 1936, and Botvinnik finished second, one point behind Capablanca and 2½ ahead of Flohr. However, he took consolation from the fact the Soviet Union's best had held their own against top-class competition.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: In early winter, 1936, Botvinnik was invited to play in a tournament at Nottingham, England. Krylenko authorised his participation and, to help Botvinnik play at his best, allowed Botvinnik's wife to accompany him – a privilege rarely extended to chess players at any time in Soviet history. Taking Lasker's advice, Botvinnik arrived ten days before play started. Although his Soviet rivals forecast disaster for him, he scored an undefeated shared first place (+6=8) with Capablanca, ½ point ahead of current World Champion Max Euwe and rising American stars Reuben Fine and Samuel Reshevsky, and 1 point ahead of ex-champion Alexander Alekhine. This was the first tournament victory by a Soviet master outside his own country. When the result reached Russia, Krylenko drafted a letter to be sent in Botvinnik's name to Stalin. On returning to Russia, Botvinnik discovered he had been awarded the "Mark of Honour".


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: Three weeks later, Botvinnik began work on his dissertation for the Candidate's degree, obtaining this in June 1937, after his supervisor described the dissertation as "short and good", and the first work in its field. As a result of his efforts, he missed the 1937 Soviet championship, won by Grigory Levenfish, who was then nearly fifty. Later in 1937, Botvinnik drew a match of thirteen games against Levenfish. Botvinnik challenged Levenfish, writing that Krylenko, angered by Botvinnik's absence from the tournament, ordered the match.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: Botvinnik won further Soviet Championship titles in 1939, 1944, 1945, and 1952, bringing his total to six. In 1945, he dominated the tournament, scoring 15/17; however, in 1952 he tied with Mark Taimanov and won the play-off match.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: In 1938, the world's top eight players met in the Netherlands to compete in the AVRO tournament, whose winner was supposed to get a title match with the World Champion, Alexander Alekhine. Botvinnik placed third, behind Paul Keres and Reuben Fine. According to Botvinnik, Alekhine was most interested in playing an opponent who could raise the funds. After consulting the nearest available Soviet officials, Botvinnik discreetly challenged Alekhine, who promptly accepted, subject to conditions that would enable him to acclimatize in Russia and get some high-quality competitive practice a few months before the match. In Botvinnik's opinion, Alekhine was partly motivated by the desire for a reconciliation with the Soviet authorities, so that he could again visit his homeland. The match, including funding, was authorised at the highest Soviet political level in January 1939; however, a letter of confirmation was only sent two months later – in Botvinnik's opinion, because of opposition by his Soviet rivals, especially those who had become prominent before the Russian Revolution – and the outbreak of World War II prevented a World Championship match.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: In spring 1939, Botvinnik won the USSR Championship, and his book on the tournament described the approach to preparation which he had been developing since 1933. One striking feature of this was emphasis on opening preparation in order to gain a permanent positional advantage in the middlegame, rather than seeking immediate tactical surprises that could only be used once.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: Botvinnik took an early lead in the 1940 USSR Championship, but faded badly in the later stages, eventually sharing fifth place. He attributed this to the unaccustomed difficulty of concentrating in a party-like atmosphere filled with noise and tobacco smoke. Botvinnik wrote to a friendly official, commenting that the champion was to be the winner of a match between Igor Bondarevsky and Andor Lilienthal, who had tied for first place, but had no achievements in international competition. The official's efforts led to a tournament for the title of "Absolute Champion of the USSR", whose official aim was to identify a Soviet challenger for Alekhine's title. The contestants were the top six finishers in the Soviet Championship – Bondarevsky, Lilienthal, Paul Keres (whose home country, Estonia, had recently been annexed by the Soviet Union), future World Champion Vasily Smyslov, Isaac Boleslavsky and Botvinnik – who were to play a quadruple round-robin. Botvinnik's preparation with his second, Viacheslav Ragozin, included training matches in noisy, smoky rooms and he slept in the playing room, without opening the window. He won the tournament, 2½ points ahead of Keres and three ahead of Smyslov; moreover, with plus scores in the "mini-matches" against all his rivals.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: In June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Botvinnik's wife Gayane, a ballerina, told him that her colleagues at the Kirov Opera and Ballet Theatre were being evacuated to the city of Perm, then known as Molotov in honour of Vyacheslav Molotov. The family found an apartment there, and Botvinnik obtained a job with the local electricity supply organization – at the lowest pay rate and on condition that he did no research, as he had only a Candidate's degree. Botvinnik's only child, a daughter named Olya, was born in Perm in April 1942.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: In the evenings, Botvinnik wrote a book in which he annotated all the games of the "Absolute Championship of the USSR", in order to maintain his analytic skills in readiness for a match with Alekhine. His work included wood-cutting for fuel, which left him with insufficient energy for chess analysis. Botvinnik obtained from Molotov an order that he should be given three days off normal work in order to study chess.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: In 1943, after a two-year lay-off from competitive chess, Botvinnik won a tournament in Sverdlovsk, scoring 1½  out of 2 against each of his seven competitors – who included Smyslov, Vladimir Makogonov, Boleslavsky, and Ragozin. Chessbase regards this as one of the fifty strongest tournaments between 1851 and 1986.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: Shortly afterwards, Botvinnik was urged to return to Moscow by the People's Commissar for Power Stations, an admirer and subsequent good friend. On his return, Botvinnik suggested a match with Samuel Reshevsky in order to strengthen his claim for a title match with Alekhine, but this received no political support. In December 1943, he won the Moscow Championship, ahead of Smyslov. At the same time, opposition to his plan for a match with Alekhine re-surfaced, on the grounds that Alekhine was a political enemy and the only proper course was to demand that he be stripped of the title. The dispute ended in Botvinnik's favor, and in the dismissal of a senior chess official, one of those to have opposed Botvinnik's plan, who was also a KGB colonel.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: After Botvinnik won the 1944 and 1945 Soviet championships, most top Soviet players supported his desire for a World Championship match with Alekhine. However, the allegations that Alekhine had written anti-Semitic articles while in Nazi-occupied France made it difficult to host the match in the USSR. Botvinnik opened negotiations with the British Chess Federation to host the match in England, but these were cut short by Alekhine's death in 1946.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: When the Second World War ended, Botvinnik won the first high-level post-war tournament, at Groningen in 1946, with 14½ points from nineteen games, ½ point ahead of former World Champion Max Euwe and two ahead of Smyslov. He and Euwe both struggled in the last few rounds, and Botvinnik had a narrow escape against Euwe, who he acknowledged had always been a difficult opponent for him. This was Botvinnik's first outright victory in a tournament outside the Soviet Union.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: Botvinnik strongly influenced the design of the system which would be used for World Championship competition from 1948 to 1963. Viktor Baturinsky wrote: "Now came Botvinnik's turn to defend his title in accordance with the new qualifying system which he himself had outlined in 1946." (This statement referred to Botvinnik's 1951 title defence.)


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: On the basis of his strong results during and just after World War II, Botvinnik was one of five players to contest the 1948 World Chess Championship, which was held at The Hague and Moscow. He won the 1948 tournament convincingly—with a score of 14/20, three points clear—becoming the sixth World Champion. While he was on vacation in Riga after the tournament, an eleven-year-old boy called Mikhail Tal paid a visit, hoping to play a game against the new champion. Tal was met by Botvinnik's wife, who said the champion was asleep, and that she had made him take a rest from chess. In 1950, Botvinnik was one of the inaugural recipients of the international grandmaster title from FIDE.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: Botvinnik held the world title, with two brief interruptions, for the next fifteen years, during which he played seven world championship matches. In 1951, he drew with David Bronstein over 24 games in Moscow, +5−5=14, keeping the world title, but it was a struggle for Botvinnik, who won the second-last game and drew the last in order to tie the match. In 1954, he drew with Vasily Smyslov over 24 games in Moscow, +7−7=10, again retaining the title. In 1957, he lost to Smyslov by 9½–12½ in Moscow, but the rules then in force allowed him a rematch without having to go through the Candidates' Tournament, and in 1958 he won the rematch in Moscow; Smyslov said his health was poor during the return match. In 1960, Botvinnik was convincingly beaten 8½–12½ at Moscow by Tal, now 23 years old, but again exercised his right to a rematch in 1961, and won by 13–8 in Moscow. Commentators agreed that Tal's play was weaker in the rematch, probably due to his health, but also that Botvinnik's play was better than in the 1960 match, largely due to thorough preparation. Botvinnik changed his style in the rematch, avoiding the tactical complications in which Tal excelled and aiming for closed positions and endgames, where Tal's technique was not outstanding. Finally, in 1963, he lost the title to Tigran Petrosian, by 9½–12½ in Moscow. FIDE had by then altered the rules, and he was not allowed a rematch. The rematch rule had been nicknamed the "Botvinnik rule" because he twice benefited from it.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: Though ranking as formal World Champion, Botvinnik had a relatively poor playing record in the early 1950s: he played no formal competitive games after winning the 1948 match tournament until he defended his title, then struggled to draw his 1951 championship match with Bronstein, placed only fifth in the 1951 Soviet Championship, and tied for third in the 1952 Géza Maróczy Memorial tournament in Budapest; and he had also performed poorly in Soviet training contests. However, he lost only five of over thirty games in the two tournaments; three of the four who finished ahead of him in the 1951 championship were future world champions Smyslov and Petrosian and a leading world championship contender (and winner in both tournaments) Paul Keres; and he finished ahead of Petrosian and even with Smyslov in 1952. Botvinnik did not play in the Soviet team that won the 1952 Chess Olympiad in Helsinki: the players voted for the line-up and placed Botvinnik on second board, with Keres on top board; Botvinnik protested and refused to play. Keres' playing record from 1950 to early 1952 had been outstanding.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: Botvinnik won the 1952 Soviet Championship (joint first with Mark Taimanov in the tournament, won the play-off match). He included several wins from that tournament over the 1952 Soviet team members in his book "Botvinnik's Best Games 1947–1970", writing "these games had a definite significance for me". In 1956, he tied for first place with Smyslov in the 1956 Alexander Alekhine Memorial in Moscow, despite a last-round loss to Keres.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: Botvinnik was selected for the Soviet Olympiad team from 1954 to 1964 inclusively, and helped his team to gold medal finishes each of those six times. At Amsterdam 1954 he was on board one and won the gold medal with 8½/11. Then at home for Moscow 1956, he was again board one, and scored 9½/13 for the bronze medal. For Munich 1958, he scored 9/12 for the silver medal on board one. At Leipzig 1960, he played board two behind Mikhail Tal, having lost his title to Tal earlier that year, but he won the board two gold medal with 10½/13. He was back on board one for Varna 1962, scored 8/12, but failed to win a medal for the only time at an Olympiad. His final Olympiad was Tel Aviv 1964, where he won the bronze with 9/12, playing board 2 as he had lost his title to Petrosian. Overall, in six Olympiads, he scored 54½/73 for an outstanding


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: Botvinnik also played twice for the USSR in the European Team Championship. At Oberhausen 1961, he scored 6/9 for the gold medal on board one. But at Hamburg 1965, he struggled on board two with only 3½/8. Both times the Soviet Union won the team gold medals. Botvinnik played one of the final events of his career at the Russia (USSR) vs Rest of the World match in Belgrade 1970, scoring 2½/4 against Milan Matulović, as the USSR narrowly triumphed.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: After losing the world title for the final time, to Tigran Petrosian in Moscow in 1963, Botvinnik withdrew from the following World Championship cycle after FIDE declined, at its annual congress in 1965, to grant a losing champion the automatic right to a rematch. He remained involved with competitive chess, appearing in several highly rated tournaments and continuing to produce memorable games.


title: Mikhail Botvinnik

text: He retired from competitive play in 1970, aged 59, preferring instead to occupy himself with the development of computer chess programs and to assist with the training of younger Soviet players, earning him the nickname of "Patriarch of the Soviet Chess School" (see below).