title: The Milkmaid (Vermeer)

text: It was exhibited at the 1939 World's Fair in New York City, and the outbreak of World War II during the fair – with the German occupation of the Netherlands – caused the work to remain in the U.S. until Holland was liberated. During this time it was displayed at the Detroit Institute of Arts in Michigan (the museum where the curator of the World's Fair exhibit was working), and was included in that museum's exhibition catalogues in 1939 and 1941. During the war, the work was also displayed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it was hanging as late as 1944, according to Leidtke. In 1953, the Kunsthaus Zürich displayed the painting in an exhibition, and the next year it traveled to Italy for an exhibition at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome and the Palazzo Reale in Milan. In 1966, it was part of an exhibition at the Mauritshuis in the Hague and the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris. In 1999 and 2000 the painting was at the National Gallery of Art in Washington for its exhibition "Johannes Vermeer: The Art of Painting", and it was part of the "Vermeer and the Delft School" exhibition at the National Gallery, London from June 20 to September 16, 2001 (it did not appear at the Metropolitan Museum of Art venue of that exhibition, earlier that year).


title: The Milkmaid (Vermeer)

text: The painting returned to New York in 2009, on the occasion of NY400, the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's historic voyage (Amsterdam to Manhattan), where it was the central feature of a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition, alongside several of the museum's five Vermeer works and other Dutch Golden Age paintings.


title: The Milkmaid (Vermeer)

text: The painting was exhibited online in a high-quality digital version after museum curators found that many people thought that a low-quality yellowed version of the image which was circulating on the Internet was a good reproduction of the image.


title: Free climbing

text: Free climbing is a form of rock climbing in which the climber may use climbing equipment such as ropes and other means of climbing protection, but only to protect against injury during falls and not to assist vertical or horizontal progress. The climber ascends or traverses by using physical ability to move over the rock via handholds, footholds, and body smears.


title: Free climbing

text: The term "free climbing" is used in contrast to aid climbing, in which specific aid climbing equipment (such as mechanical ascenders) is used to assist the climber in ascent. The term "free climbing" originally meant "free from direct aid".


title: Free climbing

text: While clear in its contrast to aid climbing, the term "free climbing" is nonetheless prone to misunderstanding and misuse.


title: Ay (pharaoh)

text: Ay was the penultimate pharaoh of ancient Egypt's 18th Dynasty. He held the throne of Egypt for a brief four-year period in the late 14th century BC. Prior to his rule, he was a close advisor to two, and perhaps three, other pharaohs of the dynasty. It is theorized that he was the power behind the throne during Tutankhamun's reign. His "prenomen" "Kheperkheperure" means "Everlasting are the Manifestations of Ra," while his "nomen" "Ay it-netjer" reads as "Ay, Father of the God." Records and monuments that can be clearly attributed to Ay are rare, both because his reign was short and because his successor, Horemheb, instigated a campaign of "damnatio memoriae" against him and the other pharaohs associated with the unpopular Amarna Period.


title: Ay (pharaoh)

text: Ay is believed to have been from Akhmim. During his short reign, he built a rock-cut chapel in Akhmim and dedicated it to the local deity Min. He may have been the son of the courtier Yuya and his wife Thuya, making him a brother of Tiye and Anen. This connection is based on the fact that both Yuya and Ay came from Akhmim and held the titles 'God's Father' and 'Master of Horses'. A strong physical resemblance has been noted between the mummy of Yuya and surviving statuary depictions of Ay. The mummy of Ay has not been located, although fragmentary skeletal remains recovered from his tomb may represent it, so a more thorough comparison with Yuya cannot be made. Therefore, the theory that he was the son of Yuya rests entirely on circumstantial evidence.


title: Ay (pharaoh)

text: Ay's Great Royal Wife was Tey, who was known to be the wet-nurse to Nefertiti. It is often theorised that he was the father of Nefertiti as a way to explain his title 'God's Father' as it has been argued that the term designates a man whose daughter married the king. However, nowhere are Ay and Tey referred to as the parents of Nefertiti.


title: Ay (pharaoh)

text: Nakhtmin, Ay's chosen successor, was likely his son or grandson. His mother's name was Iuy, a priestess of Min and Isis in Akhmim. She may have been Ay's first wife.


title: Ay (pharaoh)

text: All that is known for certain was that by the time he was permitted to build a tomb for himself (Southern Tomb 25) at Amarna during the reign of Akhenaten, he had achieved the title of "Overseer of All the Horses of His Majesty", the highest rank in the elite charioteering division of the army, which was just below the rank of General. Prior to this promotion he appears to have been first a Troop Commander and then a "regular" Overseer of Horses, titles which were found on a box thought to have been part of the original furnishings for his tomb. Other titles listed in this tomb include "Fan-bearer on the Right Side of the King", "Acting Scribe of the King, beloved by him", and "God's Father". The 'Fan-bearer on the Right Side of the King' was a very important position, and is viewed as showing that the bearer had the 'ear' of the ruler. The final "God's Father" title is the one most associated with Ay, and was later incorporated into his royal name when he became pharaoh.


title: Ay (pharaoh)

text: This title could mean that he was the father-in-law of the pharaoh, suggesting that he was the son of Yuya and Thuya, thus being a brother or half-brother of Tiye, brother-in-law to Amenhotep III and the maternal uncle of Akhenaten. Instead, the title may indicate that Ay was the tutor of Tutankhamun. If Ay was the son of Yuya, who was a senior military officer during the reign of Amenhotep III, then he likely followed in his father's footsteps, finally inheriting his father's military functions upon his death. Alternatively, it could also mean that he may have had a daughter that married the pharaoh Akhenaten, possibly being the father of Akhenaten's chief wife Nefertiti. Ultimately there is no evidence to definitively prove either hypothesis. The two theories are not mutually exclusive, but either relationship would explain the exalted status to which Ay rose during Akhenaten's Amarna interlude, when the royal family turned their backs on Egypt's traditional gods and experimented, for a dozen years or so, with an early form of monotheism; an experiment that, whether out of conviction or convenience, Ay appears to have followed under the reign of Akhenaten.


title: Ay (pharaoh)

text: The Great Hymn to the Aten is also found in his Amarna tomb which was built during his service under Akhenaten. His wife Tey was born a commoner but was given the title "Nurse of the Pharaoh's Great Wife". If she were the mother of Nefertiti she would be expected to have the royal title "Mother of the Pharaoh's Great Wife" instead; had Ay been the father of Nefertiti, then Tey would have been her stepmother. In several Amarna tomb chapels there is a woman whose name begins with "Mut" who had the title "Sister of the Pharaoh's Great Wife". This could also be a daughter of Ay's by his wife Tey, and it is known that his successor Horemheb married a woman with the name Mutnodjimet.


title: Ay (pharaoh)

text: Ay's reign was preceded by that of Tutankhamun, who ascended to the throne at the age of eight or nine, at a time of great tension between the new monotheism and the old polytheism. He was assisted in his kingly duties by his predecessor's two closest advisors: Grand Vizier Ay and General of the Armies Horemheb. Tutankhamun's nine-year reign, largely under Ay's direction, saw the return of the old gods – and, with that, the restoration of the power of the Amun priesthood, who had lost their influence over Egypt under Akhenaten.


title: Ay (pharaoh)

text: Egyptologist Bob Brier suggested that Ay murdered Tutankhamun in order to usurp the throne, a claim which was based on X-ray examinations of the body done in 1968. He also alleged that Ankhesenamun and the Hittite prince she was about to marry were also murdered at his orders. This murder theory was not accepted by all scholars, and further analysis of the x-rays, along with CT scans taken in 2005, found no evidence to suggest that Tutankhamun died from a blow to the head as Brier had theorized.


title: Ay (pharaoh)

text: In 2010, a team led by Zahi Hawass reported that the young king had died from a combination of a broken leg, malaria and Köhler disease but another team from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg believes his death was caused by sickle cell disease.


title: Ay (pharaoh)

text: Ay buried his young predecessor, as depicted on the wall of Tutankhamun's burial chamber. The explicit depiction of a succeeding king conducting the "Opening of the Mouth" ceremony of another is unique; the depictions are usually more generic.


title: Ay (pharaoh)

text: Ay was buried in the tomb intended for Tutankhamun in the West Valley of the Kings (WV23), and Tutankhamun was interred in Ay's intended tomb in the East Valley of the Kings (KV62).


title: Ay (pharaoh)

text: Depending on the chronology followed, Ay served as pharaoh between 1323–1319 BC, 1327–1323 BC, or 1310–1306 BC. Tutankhamun's death around the age of 18 or 19, together with the fact he had no living children, left a power vacuum that his Grand Vizier Ay was quick to fill: he is depicted conducting the funerary rites for the deceased monarch and assuming the role of heir. The grounds on which he based his successful claim to power are not entirely clear. The Commander of the Army, Horemheb, had actually been designated as the "idnw" or "Deputy of the Lord of the Two Lands" under Tutankhamun and was presumed to be the boy king's heir apparent and successor. It appears that Horemheb was outmaneuvered to the throne by Ay, who legitimized his claim to the throne by burying Tutankhamun, as well as possibly marrying Ankhesenamun, Tutankhamun's widow.


title: Ay (pharaoh)

text: Since Ay was already advanced in age upon his accession, he ruled Egypt in his own right for only four years. During this period, he consolidated the return to the old religious ways that he had initiated as senior advisor and constructed a mortuary temple at Medinet Habu for his own use. A stela of Nakhtmin (Berlin 2074), a military officer under Tutankhamun who was Ay's chosen successor—is dated to "Year 4, IV Akhet day 1" of Ay's reign. Manetho's Epitome assigns a reign length of four years and one month to Horemheb, and this was usually assigned to him based on this Year 4 dated stela; however, it is now believed that figure should be raised by a decade to fourteen years and one month and attributed to Horemheb instead, as Manetho intended. Hence, Ay's precise reign length is unknown and he could have ruled for as long as seven to nine years, since most of his monuments and his funerary temple at Medinet Habu were either destroyed or usurped by his successor, Horemheb.


title: Ay (pharaoh)

text: Prior to his death, Ay designated Nakhtmin to succeed him as pharaoh. However, his succession plan went awry, as Horemheb became the last king of Egypt's 18th Dynasty instead of Nakhtmin. The fact that Nakhtmin was Ay's intended heir is strongly implied by an inscription carved on a dyad funerary statue of Nakhtmin and his spouse which was presumably made during Ay's reign. Nakhtmin is clearly given the titles "Crown Prince" (jrj-pꜥt) and "King's Son" (zꜣ-nswt). The only conclusion which can be drawn here is that Nakhtmin was either a son or an adopted son of Ay's, and that Ay was grooming Nakhtmin for the royal succession instead of Horemheb. Egyptologists Aidan Dodson and Dyan Hilton observe that the aforementioned statue:


title: Ay (pharaoh)

text: It appears that one of Horemheb's undertakings as Pharaoh was to eliminate all references to the monotheistic experiment, a process that included expunging the name of his immediate predecessors, especially Ay, from the historical record. Horemheb desecrated Ay's burial and had most of Ay's royal cartouches in his WV23 tomb erased while his sarcophagus was smashed into numerous fragments. However, the intact sarcophagus lid was discovered in 1972 by Otto Schaden. The lid had been buried under debris in this king's tomb and still preserved Ay's cartouche. Horemheb also usurped Ay's mortuary temple at Medinet Habu for his own use. Uvo Hölscher (1878–1963) who excavated the temple in the early 1930s provides these interesting details concerning the state of Ay-Horemheb's mortuary temple:


title: Prison gangs in the United States

text: A prison gang is an inmate organization that operates within a prison system, that has a corporate entity, exists into perpetuity, and whose membership is restrictive, mutually exclusive, and often requires a lifetime commitment. Political scientist David Skarbek argues the emergence of prison gangs are due to the dramatic increase in the prison population and inmate's demand for safety. Skarbek observes that in a small, homogeneous environment, people can use social norms to interpret what behavior is acceptable, but a large, heterogeneous setting undermines social norms and acceptable behavior is more difficult to determine. Prison gangs are geographically and racially divided, and about 70% of prison gang members are in California and Texas. Skarbek suggests prison gangs function similar to a community responsibility system. Interactions between strangers are facilitated because you do not have to know an individual's reputation, only a gang's reputation. Some prison gangs are transplanted from the street. In some circumstances, prison gangs "outgrow" the internal world of life inside the penitentiary, and go on to engage in criminal activities on the outside. Gang umbrella organizations like the Folk Nation and People Nation have originated in prisons.


title: Prison gangs in the United States

text: Christian Parenti argues in his book "Lockdown America" that prison gangs serve a convenient function for the prison establishment and officers. They help regulate rogue and rebellious elements within the prison population without intervention from prison authorities.


title: Prison gangs in the United States

text: Parenti sees the repression dished out by gangs on non-affiliated prisoners as a latent function of prison gangs. Thus, gangs are often more-or-less tolerated by prison administrators due to the side-benefits they afford.


title: Khalid Abdul Muhammad

text: Khalid Abdul Muhammad (born Harold Moore Jr.; January 12, 1948 – February 17, 2001) was an African-American Muslim minister and activist who became a prominent figure in the Nation of Islam and later the New Black Panther Party. After a racially inflammatory 1993 speech at Kean College, Muhammad was condemned and removed from his position in the Nation of Islam by Louis Farrakhan. He was also censured by both Houses of the United States Congress.


title: Khalid Abdul Muhammad

text: After being removed from the Nation of Islam, he served as the National Chairman of the New Black Panther Party until his death in 2001 from a brain aneurysm. He advocated black independence and stated a personal practice of anti-miscegenation.


title: Khalid Abdul Muhammad

text: Harold Moore Jr. was raised by his aunt, Carrie Moore Vann, in Houston, Texas, where he attended Bruce Elementary School, E.O. Smith Junior High School, and all-black Phyllis Wheatley High School. After graduating high school, Moore went to Dillard University in Louisiana, where he was known as Harold Vann, to pursue a degree in theological studies, but he did not graduate. At this time, he ministered at Sloan Memorial Methodist Church. In 1967, he was initiated into Omega Psi Phi fraternity (Theta Sigma chapter). Later, Moore transferred to Pepperdine University and earned his bachelor's degree.


title: Khalid Abdul Muhammad

text: In 1970, while attending Dillard, Moore joined the Nation of Islam, which was then under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad. He changed his name to Harold Smith or Harold X, then to Malik Rushaddin, became Minister Louis Farrakhan's protégé, and was active as a recruiter within the organization. In 1978, Rushaddin was appointed Western Regional Minister of the Nation of Islam and leader of Mosque #27. In 1983, Minister Farrakhan named him Khalid after the Islamic general Khalid ibn al-Walid, a follower of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, calling him the Sword of Allah.


title: Khalid Abdul Muhammad

text: By 1984, Muhammad had become one of Louis Farrakhan's most trusted advisors in the Nation of Islam. He traveled to Libya on a fund-raising trip, where he became well acquainted with that country's leader, Muammar al-Gaddafi. Muhammad's dedication to Farrakhan and to the message of the NOI eventually secured him the title of national spokesman and he was named one of Louis Farrakhan's friends in 1981. He served at Nation of Islam mosques in New York and Atlanta throughout the 1980s. A federal court convicted him in 1987 of mortgage fraud and sentenced him to nine months in prison. After his prison term he returned to the Nation, becoming Farrakhan's national advisor in 1991.


title: Khalid Abdul Muhammad

text: In 1993, Muhammad gave a speech at Kean College in Union Township, New Jersey, in which Muhammad referred to Jews as "bloodsuckers" of the black community, labeled the Pope a "no-good cracker," and advocated the murder of any and all white South Africans who would not leave the nation subsequent to a warning period of 24 hours. The United States Senate and United States House of Representatives both voted overwhelmingly to support resolutions condemning the speech. Farrakhan responded by publicly repudiating Muhammad's speech. However, Minister Farrakhan specified that he opposed to the "tone" of Muhammad's speech, while acknowledging the "truths" in it. Despite this, Muhammad's remarks also resulted in not only Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) members distancing themselves from the Nation of Islam, but also CBC chairman Kweisi Mfume, (D-MD), ending his relationship with the Nation of Islam as well. In September 1993, Mfume announced a "covenant" between the Nation of Islam and CBC members to work together on strengthening the black community after he had invited Farrakhan to address the black caucus’ annual legislative conference.


title: Khalid Abdul Muhammad

text: The day after Mfume held a press conference announcing his break with the Nation of Islam in February 1994, Farrakhan demoted Muhammad and also removed him as the NOI's spokesman. He was silenced as a minister and suspended from the NOI soon afterward. In 1994, Muhammad appeared on the Phil Donahue Show. He participated in heated arguments with Jewish audience members amid explanations of his public statements.


title: Khalid Abdul Muhammad

text: Muhammad was shot by James Bess, a former NOI member, after he spoke at the University of California, Riverside on May 29, 1994. He survived the shooting. Muhammed himself believed the shooting was a part of a conspiracy.


title: Khalid Abdul Muhammad

text: After being stripped of his position as NOI spokesman, Muhammad became the national chairman of the New Black Panther Party. On May 21, 1997, he delivered a heated speech at San Francisco State University in which he criticized Jews, whites, Catholics and homosexuals.


title: Khalid Abdul Muhammad

text: In 1998, Muhammad organized the "Million Youth March" in New York City which attracted an estimated 6,000 participants. The march was controversial from its inception as New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani denied the organizers a permit, calling it a hate march. A court ruled that the event could go on but scaled back its duration and size. At the conclusion of the rally, just as Muhammad appeared on the stage to speak, the demonstration was interrupted by a low-flying police helicopter. Muhammad alleges that was the signal for more than 3,000 police in riot gear, including some mounted on horseback, to come in and disperse the crowd. In response, Muhammad exhorted the rally participants to attack the oncoming police, to beat them with rails, and to shoot them with their own guns. Dozens were arrested, and 30 officers and five civilians were injured. Mayor Giuliani said that the march turned out to be precisely what he predicted, "filled with hatred, horrible, awful, vicious, anti-Semitic and other anti-white rhetoric, as well as exhortations to kill people, murder people ... the speeches given today should not occur [at] any place." In subsequent activism, Muhammad convened a second march in 1999.


title: Khalid Abdul Muhammad

text: In the year 2000, it was revealed that one of the contestants on the American version of the Dutch television show "Big Brother", William Collins (Hiram Ashantee), was a follower of Muhammed.


title: Khalid Abdul Muhammad

text: As a prominent Afrocentrist and speaker on African history, Muhammad attracted interest from several hip-hop artists, who sampled him in their songs. Public Enemy quoted him in the introduction of its 1988 track "Night of the Living Baseheads" from the album "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back":


title: Khalid Abdul Muhammad

text: Have you forgotten that once we were brought here, we were robbed of our name, robbed of our language. We lost our religion, our culture, our god ... and many of us, by the way we act, we even lost our minds.


title: Khalid Abdul Muhammad

text: He also appeared on Ice Cube's albums "Death Certificate" (1991) and "Lethal Injection" (1993) as a guest rapper. On the former album, Muhammad appeared in the tracks "Death" and "The Birth". On the latter, he appeared in the song "Cave Bitch", a song ridiculing white women. On the Scarface song "Hand of the Dead Body", Ice Cube also mentioned Muhammad, saying "Down with Kahlid Abdul Muhammad / Do he got a brother? I'm it now." On MC Ren's 1996 album "The Villain in Black" Muhammad appeared in the track "Muhammad Speaks", where he spoke about the history of the rights of African-Americans.


title: Khalid Abdul Muhammad

text: Musical references to Muhammad since his death include a quote of his "Kill the White Man" speech on The Used's 2009 album "Artwork", a sample of his interview with Louis Theroux in the Chase & Status song "Hocus Pocus", and excerpts from a recording of one of his speeches concerning Jesus in the D'Angelo song "1000 Deaths" on the 2014 album "Black Messiah".


title: Khalid Abdul Muhammad

text: Muhammad had five children, including Farrah Gray, who grew up in Chicago's South Side. Although Gray saw his father only during occasional visits, he credits Muhammad for inspiring him with confidence. Gray rose from poverty to become a successful business entrepreneur, but did not join his father's political activities.


title: Khalid Abdul Muhammad

text: In 2001, Muhammad died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in Atlanta, Georgia, at the age of 53. He was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery in Westchester County, New York, near the grave of Malcolm X.


title: León, Spain

text: León (; ) is a city and municipality of Spain, capital of the province of León, part of the autonomous community of Castile and León, in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. It has a population of 124,303 (2019), by far the largest municipality in the province. The population of the metropolitan area, including the neighbouring San Andrés del Rabanedo and other smaller municipalities, accounts for around 200,000 inhabitants.


title: León, Spain

text: Founded as the military encampment of the "Legio VI Victrix" around 29 BC, its standing as an encampment city was consolidated with the definitive settlement of the "Legio VII Gemina" from 74 AD. Following its partial depopulation due to the Umayyad conquest of the peninsula, 910 saw the beginning of one its most prominent historical periods, when it became the capital of the Kingdom of León, which took active part in the Reconquista against the Moors, and came to be one of the fundamental kingdoms of medieval Spain.


title: León, Spain

text: In 1188, the city hosted the first Parliament in European history under the reign of Alfonso IX, due to which it was named in 2010, by the professor John Keane, the King of Spain and the Junta of Castile and León, as the cradle of Parliamentarism, and the Decreta of León were included in the Memory of the World register by UNESCO in 2013. The city's prominence began to decline in the early Middle Ages, partly due to the loss of independence after the union of the Leonese kingdom with the Crown of Castile, consolidated in 1301.


title: León, Spain

text: After a period of stagnation during the early modern age, it was one of the first cities to hold an uprising in the Spanish War of Independence, and some years later, in 1833 acquired the status of provincial capital. The end of the 19th and the 20th century saw a significant acceleration in the rate of urban expansion, when the city became an important communications hub of the northwest due to the rise of the coal mining industry and the arrival of the railroad.


title: León, Spain

text: León's historical and architectural heritage, as well as the numerous festivals hosted throughout the year (particularly noteworthy are the Easter processions) and its location on the French Way of the Camino de Santiago, which is ranked as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, make it a destination of both domestic and international tourism. Some of the city's most prominent historical buildings are the Cathedral, one of the finest examples of French-style classic Gothic architecture in Spain, the Basilica of San Isidoro, one of the most important Romanesque churches in Spain and resting place of León's medieval monarchs, the Monastery of San Marcos, an example of plateresque and Renaissance Spanish architecture, and the Casa Botines, a Modernist creation of the architect Antoni Gaudí. An example of modern architecture is the city's Museum of Contemporary Art or MUSAC.


title: León, Spain

text: León was founded in the 1st century BC by the Roman legion Legio VI "Victrix", which served under Caesar Augustus during the Cantabrian Wars (29-19 BC), the final stage of the Roman conquest of Hispania. In the year 74 AD, the Legio VII "Gemina" —recruited from the Hispanics by Galba in 69 AD— settled in a permanent military camp that was the origin of the city. Its modern name, León, is derived from the city's Latin name "Castra Legionis".


title: León, Spain

text: The Romans established the site of the city to protect the recently conquered territories of northwestern Hispania from the Astures and Cantabri, and to secure the transport of gold extracted in the province —especially in the huge nearby mines of Las Médulas— that was taken to Rome through "Asturica Augusta" (modern-day Astorga).


title: León, Spain

text: Tacitus calls the legion "Galbiana", to distinguish it from the old Legio VII "Claudia", but this appellation is not found on any inscriptions. It appears to have received the appellation of "Gemina" on account of its amalgamation by Vespasian with one of the German legions, probably the Legio I "Germanica". Its full name was Legio VII Gemina Felix. After serving in Pannonia, and in the civil wars, it was settled by Vespasian in Hispania Tarraconensis, to supply the place of the Legio VI "Victrix" and Legio X "Gemina", two of the three legions ordinarily stationed in the province, but which had been withdrawn to Germany.


title: León, Spain

text: That its regular winter quarters, under later emperors, were at León, we learn from the Itinerary, Ptolemy, and the Notitiae Imperii, as well as from a few inscriptions; but there are numerous inscriptions to prove that a strong detachment of it was stationed at Tarraco (modern Tarragona), the chief city of the province.


title: León, Spain

text: Some elements of the original Roman encampment still survive in the modern city layout. Long sections of the Roman walls (built between the first century BC and the fourth century AD) are still standing. There are also archaeological exhibitions showing remains of the walls, gates, baths and an amphitheatre.


title: León, Spain

text: The post-Roman history of the city is largely the history of the Kingdom of León. The station of the legion in the territory of the Astures grew into an important city, which resisted the attacks of the Visigoths until AD 586, when it was taken by Leovigild; and it was one of the few cities which the Visigoths allowed to retain their fortifications.


title: León, Spain

text: During the Umayyad conquest of Hispania, in 715 Tariq advanced from the area of La Rioja towards Astorga and León. The same fortress, which the Romans had built to protect the plain from the incursions of the mountaineers, became the advanced post which covered the mountain, as the last refuge of Cisastur Tribes. However, there is no notice of resistance whatsoever. An attempt was made by the invaders to settle the strongholds with Berbers came in a military capacity, but the scheme was abandoned when the Berbers of northern Iberia rebelled against the Arabs and gave up their positions to join the revolt around 740.


title: León, Spain

text: Towards the year 846, a group of Mozarabs (Christians who did not flee from the Muslims and lived under the Muslim regime) tried to repopulate the city, but a Muslim attack prevented that initiative. In the year 856, under the Christian king Ordoño I, another attempt at repopulation was made and was successful. Alfonso III of León and García I of León made León city the capital of the Kingdom of León and the most important of the Christian cities in Iberia.


title: León, Spain

text: Sacked by Almanzor in about 987, the city was reconstructed and repopulated by Alfonso V, whose Decree of 1017 regulated its economic life, including the functioning of its markets. León was a way-station for pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago leading to Santiago de Compostela. With Alfonso V of León the city had the ""Fueru de Llión"", an important letter of privileges.


title: León, Spain

text: In 1188, Alfonso IX of León gathered the three estates in the city of León (including representatives of the urban class) in the Cortes of León of 1188. Due to the written documentary corpus, the 1188 Cortes were recognised by the UNESCO in 2013 as "cradle" of parliamentarism.


title: León, Spain

text: Suburbs for traders and artisans sprang up, who, after the 13th century, began to influence the municipal government. During the early Middle Ages, the livestock industry produced a period of prosperity for the city.


title: León, Spain

text: Free from the "seigneuralisation" process of the Late Middle Ages, towards the end of the era León had consolidated as one of the 13 cities in the Meseta enjoying the right to vote at the Cortes of Castile.


title: León, Spain

text: In the 16th century, economic and demographic decline set in and continued until the 19th century. For the extent of the Early Modern period the city remained controlled by a reduced set of noble families by means of the "regimientos" and "regidurías".


title: León, Spain

text: The city population increased from 9,000 to 15,000 during the 19th century. The population further increased during the 20th century: 18,000 (1910), 44,000 (1940), 73,000 (1960), and 100,000 (1971).


title: León, Spain

text: The military coup d'état that marked the beginning of the Spanish Civil War took place (and succeeded) in León on 20 July 1936, with the putschist military officers meeting little resistance. The Catholic Church adhered to the rebels and instrumentalised the Catholic sentiment and traditions against the Republic. The rebels expanded from the city to the rest of the traditionally conservative province, which remained under rebel control except a small northern part connected to Asturias, that became part of the battlefront until the fall of the North in October 1937. Both the Convent of San Marcos, the old Santa Ana factory and the provincial prison were nonetheless rehabilitated as mass detention camps in the city by the Francoist side.


title: León, Spain

text: During the 1960s, León experienced much growth due to in-migration from the rural zones of the province.


title: León, Spain

text: Leonese customs include the Semana Santa ("Holy Week"), featuring numerous processions through the centre of the city. One of them is the so-called "Procession of the Meeting", which acts out the meeting of three groups representing Saint John, the Virgin Mary and Christ, in the esplanade in front of the old council. Associated with Semana Santa is the procession called "The Burial of Genarín". "Genarín" was an alcoholic beggar who was hit by and killed by the first garbage truck in the city of León in the year 1929. This is a celebration of alcohol, and the main purpose of the people who attend it is getting drunk in honor to the alcoholic beggar.


title: León, Spain

text: The San Juan and San Pedro festivities are also remarkable, celebrated during the last week of June (between June 23 and June 29). During these days several concerts and festivals take place and the whole city is occupied by terraces and street markets where Leonese people celebrate the beginning of the summer, especially on San Juan's night (June 23) when fireworks and bonfires take place.


title: León, Spain

text: León features an oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb). In winter, temperatures normally oscillate between and . Frost is common in the early hours of the morning before the dawn during the coldest days of the winter, but normally melts after sunrise. Snowfalls are not rare in the city (9 days a year), however heavy snowfalls are extremely rare. During spring, temperatures are usually between on the coldest days and may easily surpass on some days. Summers are warm and relatively dry, with temperatures usually oscillating between and . In the hottest days of summer, it's uncommon that temperatures reach over .


title: León, Spain

text: With about 2,673 sunshine hours, the city enjoys a considerable amount of sunshine throughout the year.


title: León, Spain

text: León Airport (IATA: LEN) is located approximately 6 kilometres away from the city centre, in the neighbouring town of La Virgen del Camino/Valverde de la Virgen. It offers mostly domestic flights within the country. Currently two Spanish airlines operate in it: Iberia/Air Nostrum and Air Europa. Air Nostrum offers flights from and to Barcelona, Spain. During the summer months the number of available destinations increases, and flights are also offered from and to Palma de Mallorca, Spain, Tenerife, Spain, Ibiza, Spain, Menorca, Spain, Málaga, Spain and Gran Canaria, Spain.


title: León, Spain

text: León has two railway stations, León railway station on the Renfe line, and "León-Matallana" on the Renfe Feve lines. There are high-speed services that connect León to Madrid in approximately two hours. Other destinations directly reachable from León are Galicia (to the West), Asturias (to the North) and Valladolid (to the South-East, in the same route as Madrid).


title: León, Spain

text: León has 14 city bus lines, belonging to the company Alesa, a subsidiary of ALSA. Besides the buses, there are plans to introduce tram lines in the city.


title: León, Spain

text: The Leonese language derives directly from Latin and developed in the Middle Ages. At this time, Leonese was the official language of the Leonese Kingdom and achieved a high codification grade in the city of Llión. The first written text in Leonese was "Nodicia de Kesos" (959 or 974); other works in the language include "Fueru de Llión", "Fueru de Salamanca", "Fueru Xulgu", "Códice d'Alfonsu XI", ou "Disputa d'Elena y María" or "Llibru d'Alixandre".


title: León, Spain

text: Leonese is considered a seriously endangered language by UNESCO. It is almost extinct, being known and spoken by only a very few elderly people who live isolated in the mountains of the northern part of the province of León. However, people who wish to separate León from Castile and who support Leonese autonomy are trying to revive the language. León City Council and Leonese language associations like the Asociación Cultural de la Llingua Llïonesa El Fueyu are promoting its knowledge and use.


title: León, Spain

text: Leonese Language Day started in 2006 with the support of Leonese Provincial Government, and from 2008 the celebration is organised by the León City Council.


title: León, Spain

text: At the end of the 1990s, several associations unofficially promoted Leonese language courses. In 2001, the Universidad de León (University of León) created a course for Teachers of Leonese language, and local government developed Leonese language courses for adults. The Leonese Language Teachers and Monitors Association (Asociación de Profesores y Monitores de Llingua Llïonesa) was created in 2008 and promotes Leonese language activities.


title: León, Spain

text: Leonese lessons in schools started in 2008, and it is currently taught in sixteen schools in León city in 2008–2009, promoted by the Leonese Local Government Department for Education. This course is for pupils in their 5th and 6th year of primary school (11- and 12-year-olds), where Leonese language is taught with Leonese culture.


title: León, Spain

text: More than one hundred people are studying Leonese in adult classes in 2008–2009. There are five levels for adults in the official courses developed by the Department for Leonese Culture of the Leonese City Council.


title: León, Spain

text: Within the wide range of Leonese cuisine the following dishes are the most representative: cecina (cured, smoked beef meat), morcilla (a blood sausage), botillo (a dish of meat-stuffed pork intestine), garlic soup, el cocido leonés (a mix of meat with vegetables and chickpeas, served after a vegetable-vermicelli soup) and mantecadas (pastry).


title: León, Spain

text: Another very important part of the gastronomy of León are the tapas, which are usually given free with drinks, unlike in the rest of Spain. It is very common to go "de tapas" or "tapear" i.e. to go for a few drinks ("un corto", which is a very small beer, "una caña", which is roughly half a pint of beer or "un vino", a glass of wine, or a “butano”, a small glass of orange soda) just before lunch but more normally as a light form of dinner.


title: Surilie Gautam

text: Surilie Gautam Bhatti (born 3 April 1990) is an Indian film and television actress. She is the daughter of director Mukesh Gautam and younger sister of actress Yami Gautam. She made her television debut in 2008 with Sony India's "Meet Mila De Rabba". Later she started her film career with Punjabi film "Power Cut".


title: Surilie Gautam

text: She married Jasraj Singh Bhatti, son of Savita Bhatti and late Indian comedian and satirist Jaspal Bhatti in November 2013 in Chandigarh. She completed her schooling from YPS Mohali and went on to graduate from SD College Chandigarh before she moved to Mumbai to live with her sister. She is a graduate in Media and Event Management from the Indian School of Media, Mumbai.


title: Joan Leslie

text: Joan Leslie (born Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel; January 26, 1925 – October 12, 2015) was an American actress and vaudevillian, who during the Hollywood Golden Age, appeared in such films as "High Sierra", "Sergeant York", and "Yankee Doodle Dandy".


title: Joan Leslie

text: Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel was born on January 26, 1925, in Highland Park, Michigan, the youngest child of John and Agnes Brodel. John was a bank clerk and Agnes was a pianist.


title: Joan Leslie

text: Joan's two older sisters, Betty (born 1919) and Mary Brodel (1916–2015), shared their mother's musical interest and started to learn how to play instruments, such as the saxophone and the banjo, at an early age. They began performing in front of audiences in acts that included singing and dancing. Leslie joined the duo at two and a half years of age. She was soon able to play the accordion.


title: Joan Leslie

text: With her father losing his job in the mid-1930s, the Great Depression caused financial difficulties for the family. As a result, the three sisters entered show business as vaudeville performers to support the family. They began touring in Canada and the United States. Collectively, they were known as The Three Brodels. As an attempt to bypass child labor laws at the time, both Mary and Joan pretended to be older than they were. When Leslie was nine, she told child labor investigators that she was 16 years old. Joan proved to be the scene stealer of the three sisters because of her impersonations of figures such as Katharine Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier, and Jimmy Durante. Coming from a family of Irish ancestry, Leslie was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended Catholic schools in Detroit, Toronto, and Montreal.


title: Joan Leslie

text: In 1936, 11-year-old Leslie caught the attention of a talent scout from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) when the three Brodel sisters were performing in New York. She was given a six-month contract with the studio, earning $200 per week. While working at the studio, she attended MGM's "Little Red Schoolhouse" with other child actors such as Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, and Freddie Bartholomew.


title: Joan Leslie

text: Her first film role was in "Camille" (1936), a romantic drama starring Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor. She played Taylor's younger sister Marie Jeanette, but her speaking scenes were deleted and she was uncredited. MGM had trouble finding suitable roles for her, and she was let go by the studio along with Deanna Durbin. Leslie returned to New York, working on the radio and as a model. During this time, her older sister Mary was signed to Universal Studios. Leslie returned to Hollywood with the rest of her family, working for different studios as a freelancer. She mainly worked for RKO Pictures.


title: Joan Leslie

text: Leslie was selected to play a small role in "Men with Wings" (1938). While shooting the film, director William A. Wellman discovered that Leslie's mother had lied about her daughter's age and that she was only 13 years old. For the remainder of the filming schedule, Wellman replaced her with Mary.


title: Joan Leslie

text: Leslie gained her first credited role in "Winter Carnival" (1939) as Betsy Phillips. She was chosen for the part because the director was searching for an actress with a southern accent. She was billed as Joan Brodel. Later that year, she co-starred with Jimmy Lydon in "Two Thoroughbreds", in which she played the daughter of a horse owner.


title: Joan Leslie

text: At age 15, Leslie was selected by a group of Hollywood directors as one of 13 "baby stars of 1940." That same year, she appeared in the Warner Bros. film short, "Alice in Movieland", about a starlet trying to make her mark in Hollywood. One of the first films directed by Jean Negulesco in Hollywood, it was based on a story by Ed Sullivan.


title: Joan Leslie

text: Her big break came when she signed a contract with Warner Bros. in 1941. At the time, actress Joan Blondell's name was considered too similar, so Brodel's acting name was changed to Joan Leslie.


title: Joan Leslie

text: Two weeks later, the then-15-year-old actress was asked to do a screen test while unaware which movie it was for. She got the part because she could cry on cue. The movie was "High Sierra" (1941), starring Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart. Leslie played the crippled girl, Velma. Film critic Bosley Crowther wrote: "a newcomer named Joan Leslie handles lesser roles effectively."


title: Joan Leslie

text: Later that year, Warner Bros. produced a biopic of Alvin C. York, a decorated American World War I soldier, "Sergeant York" (also 1941), starring Gary Cooper. Jane Russell was initially suggested for the role of Gracie Williams, York's fiancée, but York wanted an actress who neither smoked nor drank. 16-year old Leslie eventually got the part. "Sergeant York" was a critical and financial success, becoming the highest-grossing movie of 1941. It received 11 Oscar nominations and Cooper won the Best Actor award.


title: Joan Leslie

text: Cooper (aged 40) was 24 years her senior. "Gary gave me a doll on the set," Leslie later told the "Toronto Star". "That's how he saw me."


title: Joan Leslie

text: Leslie had a supporting role in "The Male Animal" (1942). She played Olivia de Havilland's younger sister, Patricia Stanley, a role Gene Tierney had played in the original Broadway production.


title: Joan Leslie

text: She auditioned for Paramount's "Holiday Inn" (1942), but Warner Bros. decided to cast her in "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (also 1942) with James Cagney. The film is a musical depicting the life of Broadway entertainer George M. Cohan. Leslie portrayed his girlfriend/wife Mary, an aspiring singer. The film received eight Oscar nominations, including a Best Actor award for James Cagney. By now, Leslie had become a star whose on-screen image was described as "sweet innocence without seeming too sugary."


title: Joan Leslie

text: Leslie was in four motion pictures released during 1943. The first was "The Hard Way", starring Ida Lupino and Dennis Morgan. A "New York Times" reviewer described Leslie as "just as deft and versatile a lady as the character she is supposed to be." For the second, she was lent to RKO for "The Sky's the Limit", starring with Fred Astaire. Leslie's character introduced the Harold Arlen-Johnny Mercer song "My Shining Hour". In the third movie, Leslie co-starred in the wartime motion picture "This Is the Army" with Ronald Reagan. The fourth movie was "Thank Your Lucky Stars".


title: Joan Leslie

text: She was considered for the role of Tessa in "The Constant Nymph" (also 1943), wherein she would play opposite Errol Flynn. Studio executive Jack L. Warner, though, felt she was unsuitable and the part went to Joan Fontaine. The Australian-born actor Flynn was rejected because the director wanted a British actor.


title: Joan Leslie

text: During World War II, she was a regular volunteer at the Hollywood Canteen, where she danced with servicemen and signed hundreds of autographs. She was featured with Robert Hutton, among many others, in the Warner Bros. film "Hollywood Canteen" (1944). Like most of the other Hollywood stars appearing in the film, she played herself, but the fictionalized plot had her falling in love with a soldier (played by Hutton) frequenting the canteen. Her sister, actress Betty Brodel, briefly played herself in the film as well. In 1946, an exhibitors' poll conducted by "Motion Picture Herald" voted Leslie the most promising star of tomorrow.


title: Joan Leslie

text: By 1946, Leslie was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the roles offered to her by the studio. She sought more serious and mature roles, and wanted to break out of her ingenue image, which was partly due to her young age. Her decision was also based on moral and religious grounds. With the help of her lawyer Oscar Cummings, she took Warner Bros. to court to get released from her contract.


title: Joan Leslie

text: In 1947, the Catholic Theater Guild gave Leslie an award because of her "consistent refusal to use her talents and art in film productions of objectionable character."


title: Joan Leslie

text: As a result of this, Jack Warner used his influence to blacklist her from other major Hollywood studios. In 1947, she signed a two-picture contract with the poverty row studio Eagle-Lion Films. The first one was "Repeat Performance" (1947), a film noir in which she played a Broadway actress. The other was "Northwest Stampede" (1948) in which she performed with James Craig.


title: Joan Leslie

text: After her contract with Eagle-Lion Films expired, she was cast in "The Skipper Surprised His Wife" (1950), appearing with Robert Walker. The film was distributed by MGM, the studio with which she began her film career in 1936.


title: Joan Leslie

text: In the early 1950s, Leslie chose to focus on raising her daughters, which resulted in a more irregular film career. In 1952, she signed a short-term deal with Republic Pictures, the low-budget studio that primarily produced Westerns. One of the films she made for Republic was "Flight Nurse" (1953). Leslie's character, Polly Davis, was based on the successful flight nurse Lillian Kinkella Keil's career in the Air Force. It was described by the newspaper "Kingsport Times-News" as a thrilling film that "honors the courageous women who performed miracles of mercy above the clouds in evacuation of wounded GIs from Korean battlefields." Her last film was "The Revolt of Mamie Stover" (1956), but she continued making sporadic appearances in television shows while her children were at school. She retired from acting in 1991, after appearing in the TV film "Fire in the Dark".


title: Joan Leslie

text: In March 1950, she married William Caldwell, an obstetrician. Their identical twin daughters, Patrice and Ellen, were born on January 7, 1951. Both daughters eventually became teachers.


title: Joan Leslie

text: Leslie was a Democrat who supported the campaign of Adlai Stevenson during the 1952 presidential election.


title: Joan Leslie

text: Leslie was in the business of designing clothes, with her own eponymous brand. William died in 2000. A year later, she founded the Dr. William G. and Joan L. Caldwell Chair in Gynecologic Oncology for the University of Louisville. Leslie was an adopted alumna of the university for over 32 years.


title: Joan Leslie

text: A devout Catholic, she was involved with charity work for the St. Anne's Maternity Home for more than 50 years.


title: Ruben Santiago-Hudson

text: Ruben Santiago-Hudson (born Ruben Santiago Jr., November 24, 1956) is an American actor, playwright, and director who has won national awards for his work in all three categories. He is best known for his role of Captain Roy Montgomery from 2009 to 2011 on ABC's "Castle". In November 2011 he appeared on Broadway in Lydia R. Diamond's play "Stick Fly". In 2013 he starred in the TV series "Low Winter Sun", a police drama set in Detroit.


title: Ruben Santiago-Hudson

text: Ruben Hudson was born in 1956 in Lackawanna, New York, the son of Alean Hudson and Ruben Santiago, a railroad worker. He later adopted his mother's maiden name as part of his compound surname. His father was Puerto Rican and his mother was African American. He went to Lackawanna High school, earned his bachelor's degree from Binghamton University, his master's degree from Wayne State University and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Buffalo State College and Wayne State University.


title: Ruben Santiago-Hudson

text: In 2003, he was the reader in Volume 13 of the HBO film, "Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives". The series was narrated by Whoopi Goldberg. He wrote "Lackawanna Blues" (2001), an autobiographical play in which he portrayed himself and some twenty different characters from his past, which was produced in New York at the Joseph Papp Theatre in 2001. He adapted it for a highly acclaimed, award-winning 2005 HBO film, in which the parts were played by different people. It won the Humanitas Prize and earned Emmy and Writers Guild of America Award nominations.


title: Ruben Santiago-Hudson

text: Santiago-Hudson appeared on Broadway in "Jelly's Last Jam" (1992), written by George C. Wolfe. He received the 1996 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in August Wilson's "Seven Guitars".


title: Ruben Santiago-Hudson

text: On television, he has appeared on the daytime soaps "Another World" and "All My Children". His work in primetime series have included "The Cosby Mysteries", "New York Undercover", "NYPD Blue", "Touched by an Angel", "The West Wing", "Third Watch", "" and five episodes of "Law & Order" (which coincidentally stars "Lackawanna Blues" star S. Epatha Merkerson), among others. He starred as New York City Police Captain Roy Montgomery in the ABC series "Castle" until his character's death occurred in the third season finale. In 2007 he starred in a PBS Nova documentary about the life of chemist Percy Lavon Julian.


title: Ruben Santiago-Hudson

text: In 2013, Santiago-Hudson won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Director, an Obie Award for Direction, and was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Play for his work in the Off-Broadway production of August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson".


title: Ruben Santiago-Hudson

text: In 2016, he won the Obie Awards Special Citation for Collaboration for his work on "Skeleton Crew" with Dominique Morisseau and the Atlantic Theater Company.


title: Ruben Santiago-Hudson

text: Santiago-Hudson has four children: Broderick Santiago and Ruben Santiago III from previous relationships, and Trey and Lily from his marriage with Jeannie Brittan.


title: Ruben Santiago-Hudson

text: When he came to New York in 1983, he was known as Ruben Santiago. He tried to get a part at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and was asked if he spoke Spanish, which he does not. When he wanted to work at the Negro Ensemble Company, "they laughed and said, 'We don't have Puerto Ricans.'" So he added his mother's name, Hudson, and eventually won a part in "A Soldier's Play" at the Ensemble Company.


title: News aggregator

text: In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, feed reader, news reader, RSS reader or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates syndicated web content such as online newspapers, blogs, podcasts, and video blogs (vlogs) in one location for easy viewing. The updates distributed may include journal tables of contents, podcasts, videos, and news items.


title: News aggregator

text: Visiting many separate websites frequently to find out if content on the site has been updated can take a long time. Aggregation technology helps to consolidate many websites into one page that can show only the new or updated information from many sites. Aggregators reduce the time and effort needed to regularly check websites for updates, creating a unique information space or "personal newspaper". Once subscribed to a feed, an aggregator is able to check for new content at user-determined intervals and retrieve the update. The content is sometimes described as being "pulled" to the subscriber, as opposed to "pushed" with email or IM. Unlike recipients of some "push" information, the aggregator user can easily unsubscribe from a feed.


title: News aggregator

text: The feeds are often in the RSS or Atom formats which use Extensible Markup Language (XML) to structure pieces of information to be aggregated in a feed reader that displays the information in a user-friendly interface. Before subscribing to a feed, users have to install either "feed reader" or "news aggregator" applications in order to read it. The aggregator provides a consolidated view of the content in one browser display or desktop application. "Desktop applications offer the advantages of a potentially richer user interface and of being able to provide some content even when the computer is not connected to the Internet. Webbased feed readers offer the great convenience of allowing users to access up-to-date feeds from any Internet-connected computer." Although some applications will have an automated process to subscribe to a news feed, the basic way to subscribe is by simply clicking on the web feed icon and/or text link. Aggregation features are frequently built into web portal sites, in the web browsers themselves, in email applications or in application software designed specifically for reading feeds. Aggregators with podcasting capabilities can automatically download media files, such as MP3 recordings. In some cases, these can be automatically loaded onto portable media players (like iPods) when they are connected to the end-user's computer. By 2011, so-called "RSS-narrators" appeared, which aggregated text-only news feeds, and converted them into audio recordings for offline listening. The syndicated content an aggregator will retrieve and interpret is usually supplied in the form of RSS or other XML-formatted data, such as RDF/XML or Atom.


title: News aggregator

text: RSS began in 1999 "when it was first introduced by Internet-browser pioneer Netscape". In the beginning, RSS was not a user-friendly gadget and it took some years to spread. "...RDF-based data model that people inside Netscape felt was too complicated for end users." The rise of RSS began in the early 2000s when the New York Times implemented RSS: "One of the first, most popular sites that offered users the option to subscribe to RSS feeds was the New York Times, and the company's implementation of the format was revered as the 'tipping point' that cemented RSS's position as a de facto standard." "In 2005, major players in the web browser market started integrating the technology directly into their products, including Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox and Apple's Safari." As of 2015, according to BuiltWith.com, there were 20,516,036 live websites using RSS.


title: News aggregator

text: Web aggregators gather material from a variety of sources for display in one location. They may additionally process the information after retrieval for individual clients. For instance, Google News gathers and publishes material independent of customers' needs while Awasu is created as an individual RSS tool to control and collect information according to clients' criteria. There are a variety of software applications and components available to collect, format, translate, and republish XML feeds, a demonstration of presentation-independent data.


title: News aggregator

text: A news aggregator provides and updates information from different sources in a systematized way. "Some news aggregator services also provide update services, whereby a user is regularly updated with the latest news on a chosen topic". Websites such as Google News, Yahoo News, Bing News, and NewsNow where aggregation is entirely automatic, using algorithms which carry out contextual analysis and group similar stories together, while other sites supplement automatically aggregated news headline RSS feeds from a number of reputable mainstream and alternative news outlets, while including their own articles in a separate section of the website such as Drudge Report and "HuffPost". Some news aggregators offer subscription services to professionals.


title: News aggregator

text: News aggregation websites began with content selected and entered by humans, while automated selection algorithms were eventually developed to fill the content from a range of either automatically selected or manually added sources. Google News launched in 2002 using automated story selection, but humans could add sources to its search engine, while the older Yahoo News, as of 2005, used a combination of automated news crawlers and human editors.


title: News aggregator

text: Web-based feeds readers allow users to find a web feed on the internet and add it to their feed reader. Online feed readers include Bloglines, Feedly, Inoreader, Facebook News Feed, Flipboard, Digg, News360, My Yahoo!, NewsBlur, Netvibes, Tiny Tiny RSS, and Journali.sm. These are meant for personal use and are hosted on remote servers. Because the application is available via the web, it can be accessed anywhere by a user with an internet connection. There are even more specified web-based RSS readers. For instance, a news aggregator created for scientists: "Michael Imbeault, an HIV researcher at the Université Laval in Quebec, launched his fully automated site called "e! Science News".


title: News aggregator

text: More advanced methods of aggregating feeds are provided via Ajax coding techniques and XML components called web widgets. Ranging from full-fledged applications to small fragments of source code that can be integrated into larger programs, they allow users to aggregate OPML files, email services, documents, or feeds into one interface. Many customizable homepage and portal implementations provide such functionality.


title: News aggregator

text: In addition to aggregator services mainly for individual use, there are web applications that can be used to aggregate several blogs into one. One such variety—called "planet" sites—are used by online communities to aggregate community blogs in a centralized location. They are named after the Planet aggregator, a server application designed for this purpose.


title: News aggregator

text: Feed aggregation applications are installed on a PC, smartphone or tablet computer and designed to collect news and interest feed subscriptions and group them together using a user-friendly interface. The graphical user interface of such applications often closely resembles that of popular e-mail clients, using a three-panel composition in which subscriptions are grouped in a frame on the left, and individual entries are browsed, selected, and read in frames on the right. Some notable examples include NetNewsWire, Flipboard, Prismatic, and Zite.


title: News aggregator

text: Software aggregators can also take the form of news tickers which scroll feeds like ticker tape, alerters that display updates in windows as they are refreshed, web browser macro tools or as smaller components (sometimes called plugins or extensions), which can integrate feeds into the operating system or software applications such as a web browser. Clients applications include Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Office Outlook, iTunes, FeedDemon and many others.


title: News aggregator

text: One of the examples of social news aggregators is Digg.com. The website collects the most popular stories on the Internet, selected and edited and proposed by a wide range of people. "In these social news aggregators, users submit news items (referred to as "stories"), communicate with peers through direct messages and comments, and collaboratively select and rate submitted stories to get to a real-time compilation of what is currently perceived as "hot" and popular on the Internet." Social news aggregators based on engagement of community. Their responses, engagement level, and contribution to stories create the content and determine what will be generated as RSS feed.


title: News aggregator

text: Media bias and Framing (social sciences) are concepts that fundamentally explain deliberate or accidental differences in news coverage. A simple example is a coverage of media in two countries, which are in (armed) conflict with another: one can easily imagine that news outlets, particularly if state-controlled, will report differently or even contrarily on the same events (see for instance Russo-Ukrainian War). While media bias and framing have been subject to manual research for a couple of decades in the social sciences, only recently automated methods and systems have been proposed to analyze and show such differences. Such systems make use of text-features, e.g., NewsCube is a news aggregator that extracts key phrases that describe a topic differently, or other features, e.g., matrix-based news aggregation spans a matrix over two dimensions, such as in which articles have been published (first dimension) and on which country they are reporting (second dimension).


title: News aggregator

text: Media aggregators are sometimes referred to as "podcatchers" due to the popularity of the term "podcast" used to refer to a web feed containing audio or video. Media aggregators are client software or web-based applications which maintain subscriptions to feeds that contain audio or video media enclosures. They can be used to automatically download media, playback the media within the application interface, or synchronize media content with a portable media player. Multimedia aggregators are the current focus. EU launched the project Reveal This to embedded different media platforms in RSS system. "Integrated infrastructure that will allow the user to capture, store, semantically index, categorize and retrieve multimedia, and multilingual digital content across different sources – TV, radio, music, web, etc. The system will allow the user to personalize the service and will have semantic search, retrieval, summarization."


title: News aggregator

text: "Broadcatching is a promising mechanism to improve the experience of BitTorrent users by automatically downloading files advertised through RSS feeds." Several BitTorrent client software applications such as Azureus and μTorrent have added the ability to "broadcatch" torrents of distributed multimedia through the aggregation of web feeds.


title: News aggregator

text: One of the problems with news aggregators is that the volume of articles can sometimes be overwhelming, especially when the user has many web feed subscriptions. As a solution, many feed readers allow users to tag each feed with one or more keywords which can be used to sort and filter the available articles into easily navigable categories. Another option is to import the user's Attention Profile to filter items based on their relevance to the user's interests.


title: News aggregator

text: Some bloggers predicted the death of RSS when Google Reader was shut down. Later, however, RSS was considered more of a success as an appealing way to obtain information. "Feedly, likely the most popular RSS reader today, has gone from around 5,000 paid subscribers in 2013 to around 50,000 paid subscribers in early 2015 – that's a 900% increase for Feedly in two years." Customers use RSS to get information more easily while businesses take advantage of being able to spread announcements. "RSS serves as a delivery mechanism for websites to "push" online content to potential users and as an information aggregator and filter for users." However, it has been pointed out that in order to "push the content" RSS should be user-friendly to ensure proactive interaction so that the user can remain engaged without feeling "trapped", good design to avoid being overwhelmed by stale data, and optimization for both desktop and mobile use. RSS has a positive impact on marketing since it contributes to better search engine rankings, to building and maintaining brand awareness, and increasing site traffic.


title: Euarchontoglires

text: Euarchontoglires (synonymous with Supraprimates) is a clade and a superorder of mammals, the living members of which belong to one of the five following groups: rodents, lagomorphs, treeshrews, colugos, and primates.


title: Euarchontoglires

text: The Euarchontoglires clade is based on DNA sequence analyses and retrotransposon markers that combine the clades Glires (Rodentia + Lagomorpha) and Euarchonta (Scandentia + Primates + Dermoptera). It is usually discussed without a taxonomic rank but has been called a cohort, magnorder, or superorder. Relations among the four cohorts (Euarchontoglires, Xenarthra, Laurasiatheria, Afrotheria) and the identity of the placental root remain controversial.


title: Euarchontoglires

text: So far, few, if any, distinctive anatomical features have been recognized that support Euarchontoglires; nor does any strong evidence from anatomy support alternative hypotheses. Although both Euarchontoglires and diprotodont marsupials are documented to possess a vermiform appendix, this feature evolved as a result of convergent evolution.


title: Euarchontoglires

text: Euarchontoglires probably split from the Boreoeutheria magnorder about 85 to 95 million years ago, during the Cretaceous, and developed in the Laurasian island group that would later become Europe. This hypothesis is supported by molecular evidence; so far, the earliest known fossils date to the early Paleocene. The combined clade of Euarchontoglires and Laurasiatheria is recognized as Boreoeutheria.


title: Euarchontoglires

text: One study based on DNA analysis suggests that Scandentia and Primates are sister clades, but does not discuss the position of Dermoptera. Although it is known that Scandentia is one of the most basal Euarchontoglires clades, the exact phylogenetic position is not yet considered resolved, and it may be a sister of Glires, Primatomorpha or Dermoptera or to all other Euarchontoglires. Some old studies place Scandentia as sister of the Glires, invalidating Euarchonta.


title: Mitch Ryder

text: Mitch Ryder (born William Sherille Levise, Jr.; February 26, 1945) is an American musician who has recorded more than 25 albums over more than four decades.


title: Mitch Ryder

text: Ryder formed his first band, Tempest, when he was at Warren High School, and the group gained some notice playing at a Detroit soul music club called The Village. Ryder next appeared fronting a band named Billy Lee & The Rivieras, which had limited success until they met songwriter / record producer Bob Crewe. He selected his stage name when he saw "Mitch Ryder" in the Manhattan telephone directory and renamed the group Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels. They recorded several hit records for his DynoVoice Records and New Voice labels in the mid to late 1960s, most notably 1964’s "Devil with a Blue Dress On," their highest-charting single at number four, as well as "Jenny Take a Ride!," which reached number 10 in 1965, and "Sock It to Me, Baby!", a number six hit in 1967. The Detroit Wheels were John Badanjek on drums, Mark Manko on lead guitar, Joe Kubert (not to be confused with the comic book illustrator Joe Kubert) on rhythm guitar, Jim McCarty (not to be confused with the Yardbirds drummer of the same name) on lead guitar and Jim McAllister on bass.


title: Mitch Ryder

text: In December 1966, producer Bob Crewe's vision for Mitch as a blue-eyed soul singer backed by a horn band (a la Wilson Pickett, Joe Tex, etc.) was put into motion. They assembled a 10 piece band of white R&B musicians: from Baltimore, Maryland; Jimmy Wilson (trumpet), Bob Shipley (sax), Jimmy Loomis (sax), Don Lehnhoff (trombone), Frank Invernizzi (organ); from Chicago, Illinois; John Siomos (drums), Bob Slawson (guitar), Carmine Riale (bass guitar); from Miami, Florida; Andy Dio (trumpet); from New York; Johnny ? (lead guitar). The band rehearsed for a month in a dance studio above the Cheetah, a night club at Broadway and 53rd, then hit the road as The Mitch Ryder Show in February, 1967.


title: Mitch Ryder

text: Ryder was the last person to perform with Otis Redding; they performed the song "Knock On Wood," on December 9, 1967, in Cleveland, Ohio, on a local TV show called "Upbeat". Redding and four members of his touring band, The Bar-Kays, died in a plane crash near Madison, Wisconsin the following day, December 10, 1967.


title: Mitch Ryder

text: Ryder's musical endeavors were less successful after the early 1970s. Ryder's participation with the Detroit Wheels ended just as the counterculture was becoming dominant in 1968. During 1968, trumpeters Mike Thuroff and John Stefan were hired to tour with his horn section and band. Thuroff and Stefan also recorded the trumpet parts of Ryder's song, "Ring My Bell." This song was not permitted to be played by radio in many states due to its sexual innuendos. Ryder had one hit single from that period, a cover version of "What Now, My Love." His last successful ensemble band was Detroit. The only original Wheel in the group was the drummer John Badanjek; other members were guitarists Steve Hunter, Robert Gillespie, and Brett Tuggle, organist Harry Phillips, and bassist W.R. Cooke. A single album was released by this grouping, a 1971 self-titled LP issued on Paramount Records (US #176 in 1972). They had a hit with their version of the Lou Reed-penned song "Rock & Roll," which Reed liked enough to ask Steve Hunter to join his backing band.


title: Mitch Ryder

text: Reviewing Ryder's 1978 LP "How I Spent My Vacation", Robert Christgau wrote in "" (1981): "What he remembers best, apparently, is sex with men, and the songs that result put across all the sin, fear, passion, love-and-hate, pleasure, and release that buggery seems to have involved for him. The lyrics sometimes lack coherence, and the music is a more sensitive version of the now outdated r&b-based guitar flash he favored with Detroit back in 1970. But the overall effect is revelatory."


title: Mitch Ryder

text: According to AllMusic (which calls Ryder "the unsung hero" of Michigan rock and roll), Ryder withdrew from music after experiencing throat trouble, moving to Colorado with his wife and taking up writing and painting. In 1983, Ryder returned to a major label with the John Mellencamp-produced album "Never Kick a Sleeping Dog". The album featured a cover version of the Prince song "When You Were Mine," which was Ryder's last score on the "Billboard" Hot 100.


title: Mitch Ryder

text: In 2005, Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels were inducted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame.


title: Mitch Ryder

text: Ryder has influenced the music of such blue collar rock music artists as Bob Seger, John Mellencamp, and also Bruce Springsteen, whose version of the song "Devil With a Blue Dress" was part of the "No Nukes" concert album in the early 1980s. He has also been cited as a primary musical influence by Ted Nugent.


title: Mitch Ryder

text: In concert, Bruce Springsteen has often featured a performance informally known as "Detroit Medley" that includes the songs "Devil With a Blue Dress," "Jenny Take a Ride," "Good Golly Miss Molly" and "C.C. Rider." The medley from time to time blends in a variety of other songs, but this remains the core section, often featuring guitar solos from Springsteen and piano solos by Roy Bittan.


title: Mitch Ryder

text: Ryder has been credited by guitarist Steve Hunter for giving Hunter his first real break in rock and roll and introducing Hunter to producer Bob Ezrin. In 2017 he was inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.


title: Mitch Ryder

text: Ritchie Blackmore acknowledged the influence of Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels on the type of beat Deep Purple chose for their version of "Kentucky Woman," the song by Neil Diamond.


title: Universal approximation theorem

text: In the mathematical theory of artificial neural networks, universal approximation theorems are results that establish the density of an algorithmically generated class of functions within a given function space of interest. Typically, these results concern the approximation capabilities of the feedforward architecture on the space of continuous functions between two Euclidean spaces, and the approximation is with respect to the compact convergence topology.


title: Universal approximation theorem

text: However, there are also a variety of results between non-Euclidean spaces and other commonly used architectures and, more generally, algorithmically generated sets of functions, such as the convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture, radial basis-functions, or neural networks with specific properties. Most universal approximation theorems can be parsed into two classes. The first quantifies the approximation capabilities of neural networks with an arbitrary number of artificial neurons (""arbitrary width"" case) and the second focuses on the case with an arbitrary number of hidden layers, each containing a limited number of artificial neurons (""arbitrary depth"" case). In addition to these two classes, there are also universal approximation theorems for neural networks with bounded number of hidden layers and a limited number of neurons in each layer (""bounded depth and bounded width"" case).


title: Universal approximation theorem

text: Universal approximation theorems imply that neural networks can "represent" a wide variety of interesting functions when given appropriate weights. On the other hand, they typically do not provide a construction for the weights, but merely state that such a construction is possible.


title: Universal approximation theorem

text: One of the first versions of the "arbitrary width" case was proven by George Cybenko in 1989 for sigmoid activation functions. Kurt Hornik, Maxwell Stinchcombe, and Halbert White showed in 1989 that multilayer feed-forward networks with as few as one hidden layer are universal approximators. Hornik also showed in 1991 that it is not the specific choice of the activation function but rather the multilayer feed-forward architecture itself that gives neural networks the potential of being universal approximators. Moshe Leshno "et al" in 1993 and later Allan Pinkus in 1999 showed that the universal approximation property is equivalent to having a nonpolynomial activation function.


title: Universal approximation theorem

text: The "arbitrary depth" case was also studied by a number of authors, such as Gustaf Gripenberg in 2003, Dmitry Yarotsky, Zhou Lu "et al" in 2017, Boris Hanin and Mark Sellke in 2018, and Patrick Kidger and Terry Lyons in 2020. The result minimal width per layer was refined in 2020 for residual networks.


title: Universal approximation theorem

text: The bounded depth and bounded width case was first studied by Maiorov and Pinkus in 1999. They showed that there exists an analytic sigmoidal activation function such that two hidden layer neural networks with bounded number of units in hidden layers are universal approximators.


title: Universal approximation theorem

text: Using algorithmic and computer programming techniques, Guliyev and Ismailov constructed a smooth sigmoidal activation function providing universal approximation property for two hidden layer feedforward neural networks with less units in hidden layers. It was constructively proved in 2018 paper that single hidden layer networks with bounded width are still universal approximators for univariate functions, but this property is no longer true for multivariable functions.


title: Universal approximation theorem

text: Several extensions of the theorem exist, such as to discontinuous activation functions, noncompact domains, certifiable networks,


title: Universal approximation theorem

text: The classical form of the universal approximation theorem for arbitrary width and bounded depth is as follows. It extends the classical results of George Cybenko and Kurt Hornik.


title: Universal approximation theorem

text: Universal approximation theorem: Let formula_1 denote the set of continuous functions from formula_2 to formula_3. Let formula_4. Note that formula_5, so formula_6 denotes formula_7 applied to each component of formula_8.


title: Universal approximation theorem

text: Then formula_7 is not polynomial if and only if for every formula_10, formula_11, compact formula_12, formula_13 there exist formula_14, formula_15, formula_16, formula_17 such that


title: Universal approximation theorem

text: Such an formula_20 can also be approximated by a network of greater depth by using the same construction for the first layer and approximating the identity function with later layers.


title: Universal approximation theorem

text: The 'dual' versions of the theorem consider networks of bounded width and arbitrary depth. A variant of the universal approximation theorem was proved for the arbitrary depth case by Zhou Lu et al. in 2017. They showed that networks of width "n+4" with ReLU activation functions can approximate any Lebesgue integrable function on "n"-dimensional input space with respect to formula_21 distance if network depth is allowed to grow. It was also shown that if the width was less than or equal to "n", this general expressive power to approximate any Lebesgue integrable function was lost. In the same paper it was shown that ReLU networks with width "n+1" were sufficient to approximate any continuous function of "n"-dimensional input variables. The following refinement, specifies the optimal minimum width for which such an approximation is possible and is due to.


title: Universal approximation theorem

text: Universal approximation theorem "(L1 distance, ReLU activation, arbitrary depth, minimal width)." For any Bochner–Lebesgue p-integrable function formula_22 and any formula_23, there exists a fully-connected ReLU network formula_24 of width exactly <math>d _ { m }= \max\


title: Islamic religious leaders

text: Islamic religious leaders have traditionally been people who, as part of the clerisy, mosque, or government, performed a prominent role within their community or nation. However, in the modern contexts of Muslim minorities in non-Muslim countries as well as secularised Muslim states like Turkey, and Bangladesh, the religious leadership may take a variety of non-formal shapes.


title: Islamic religious leaders

text: Compared to religious leaders/clerics of the other Abrahamic faiths, Islamic clergy are said to resemble rabbis and not priests. Unlike Catholic priests they do not "serve as intermediaries between mankind and God", have "process of ordination", or "sacramental functions", but instead serve as "exemplars, teachers, judges, and community leaders," providing religious rules to the pious on "even the most minor and private" matters.


title: Islamic religious leaders

text: (ʿĀlim). Ulama (/ˈuːləˌmɑː/; Arabic: علماء ʿUlamāʾ, singular عالِم Scholar) religious sciences. In its narrow sense it refers to scholars of Islamic Jurisprudence. In the broader sense, it refers to those who have studied a broad range of essentially Islamic disciplines for several years, for example the hadith and the muhaddith. They represent the Ijmah, or Islamic consensus of the Ummah on religious issues; this does not mean that there can be no disputes - far from it - but they should be aware of what counts as the main consensual opinion, of other dissenting views and their objections.


title: Islamic religious leaders

text: Allamah is an honorary and prestigious title carried by only the very highest scholars of Islamic thought, jurisprudence, and philosophy.


title: Islamic religious leaders

text: It is used as an honorific in Sunni Islam as well as in Shia Islam. Allamah is a leader for the Islamic faith.


title: Islamic religious leaders

text: "Almami" is a title of West African Muslim rulers, used especially in the conquest states of the 19th century.


title: Islamic religious leaders

text: Caliph was first used for Abu Bakr, who was elected head of the Muslim community after the Prophet Muhammad's death.


title: Islamic religious leaders

text: Imam is an Arabic word meaning "Leader". The ruler of a country might be called the Imam, for example. The term, however, has important connotations in the Islamic tradition especially in Shia belief. In Sunni belief, the term is used for the founding scholars of the four Sunni madhhabs, or schools of religious jurisprudence "(fiqh)".


title: Islamic religious leaders

text: It is commonly used to refer to the official that leads the prayers at the mosques. Meanwhile, in Brunei, Singapore and Malaysia, those who lead any prayers in any places such as at home, are also called imam.


title: Islamic religious leaders

text: The "Grand Imam" or "Imam of imams" (Arabic: ) of the Al-Azhar Mosque and Al-Azhar University is a prestigious Sunni Islam title and a prominent official title in Egypt. It is considered by Muslims in some countries to indicate the highest authority in Sunni Islam for Islamic jurisprudence, The grand Imam holds a great influence on followers of the theological Ash'ari and Maturidi traditions worldwide, while the defenders of the Athari and Salafi ideologies find their leaders in the Arabian Peninsula. The concept of Imam has its origins in the Quran. Ibrahim was promoted as Imam after his successful sacrifice. Every person at the day of judgement will also be called by his Imam. And there is an Imam e Mubeen who encompasses the whole universe as per the teachings of the Quran. Noble Imperial Sheik is the title for the Grand Imam of Al Hakika Mizaan Mizaani Sufi Order.


title: Islamic religious leaders

text: The title of "Grand Mufti" (Arabic: ) refers to the highest official of religious law in some Muslim countries.


title: Islamic religious leaders

text: Muezzin (the word is pronounced this way in Turkish, Urdu, etc.; in Arabic, it is "muathi" [mu-a-thin] ) is any person at the mosque who makes the adhan, or athan (call to prayer) for the Friday prayer service and the five daily prayers, or salat. Some mosques have specific places for the adhan to be made from, such as a minaret or a designated area in the mosque. Major mosques usually have a person who is called the "servant of the mosque". He usually is the person who performs the athan. In the case of small mosques, the imam of the mosque would perform the athan.


title: Islamic religious leaders

text: Mujtahids are interpreters of the Qur'an and Hadith, the Islamic scriptures. These were traditionally Muftis who used interpretation ("ijtihad") to clarify Islamic law, but in many modern secular contexts, Islamic law is no longer the law of the land. In that case, the traditional Mufti may well be replaced by a university or madrasa professor who informally functions as adviser to the local Muslim community in religious matters such as inheritance, divorce, etc.


title: Islamic religious leaders

text: Kyai or Kiai is a title originally used in Javanese culture. Only a male person is called with this appellation. His wife is called "nyai". In early modern times it is mainly used for the headmaster of an Islamic Boarding School (in Indonesia known as "pondok pesantren"). However, nowadays it is common in Indonesia to call any elderly preacher from any cultural background with this title.


title: Islamic religious leaders

text: Due to animistic belief of ancient Javanese people, the title "Kyai" is also used to call almost all persons and things venerated. Therefore, it is also common too for kris, weapons, gamelan, trees and certain venerated cattles.


title: Islamic religious leaders

text: Ayatollah (Arabic: ; Persian: ) is a prestigious title given to major Shia clergymen. Ayatollah means "sign of God"; those who carry it are considered experts in Islamic studies.


title: Islamic religious leaders

text: Only a few of the most important ayatollah of one of the ayatollahs refer to him in many situations and ask him to publish his Juristic book in which he answers the vast majority of daily Muslim affairs. The book is called Resalah, which is usually a reinvention of the book Al-Urwatu l-Wuthqah, according to their knowledge of the most authentic Islamic sources and their application to current life.


title: Richard Brooks

text: Richard Brooks (May 18, 1912 – March 11, 1992) was an American screenwriter, film director, novelist and film producer. Nominated for eight Oscars in his career, he was best known for "Blackboard Jungle" (1955), "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958), "Elmer Gantry" (1960; for which he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay), "In Cold Blood" (1967) and "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" (1977).


title: Richard Brooks

text: Brooks was born as Reuben Sax to Hyman and Esther Sax, Russian Jewish immigrants. Married teenagers when they immigrated to the United States in 1908, they found employment in Philadelphia's textile and clothing industry. Their only child, Reuben Sax, was born in 1912 in Philadelphia. He attended public schools Joseph Leidy Elementary, Mayer Sulzberger Junior High School and West Philadelphia High School, graduating from the latter in 1929.


title: Richard Brooks

text: Sax took classes at Temple University for two years, studying journalism and playing on the school's baseball team. He dropped out and left home when he discovered that his parents were going into debt to pay for his tuition. He rode freight trains around the East and Midwest for a period of time, eventually returning to Philadelphia to seek work as a newspaper reporter. At some point in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Sax began using the name Richard Brooks professionally. He changed his name legally in 1943.


title: Richard Brooks

text: Brooks wrote sports for the "Philadelphia Record" and later joined the staff of the "Atlantic City Press-Union." He moved to New York to work for the "World-Telegram;" shortly afterward he took a job with radio station WNEW for a larger paycheck. As a newsman for the station, he reported and read stories on the air and provided commentary.


title: Richard Brooks

text: Brooks also began writing plays in 1938 and tried directing for Long Island's Mill Pond Theater in 1940. A falling out with his theater colleagues that summer led him to drive to Los Angeles on a whim, hoping to find work in the film industry. He also may have been trying to escape a marriage; a legal document indicates he was married at least part of the time he lived in New York.


title: Richard Brooks

text: He did not find film work but was hired by the NBC affiliate to write original stories and read them for a daily fifteen-minute broadcast called "Sidestreet Vignettes." His second marriage, in 1941, to Jeanne Kelly, an actress at Universal Studios, may have helped to open the door to writing for the studio. He contributed dialogue to a few films and wrote two screenplays for the popular actress Maria Montez, known as the "Queen of Technicolor." With no prospect of moving into more prestigious productions, he quit Universal and joined the Marine Corps in 1943 during World War II.


title: Richard Brooks

text: Brooks never served overseas during the war, instead working in the Marine Corps film unit at Quantico, Virginia, and at times at Camp Pendleton, California. In his two years in uniform he learned more about the basics of filmmaking, including writing and editing documentaries. He also found time to write a novel, "The Brick Foxhole," a searing portrait of some stateside soldiers who were tainted by religious and racial bigotry, and opposed to homosexuals. In 1944 he divorced his wife, then known in films as Jean Brooks. Later he said he had been a self-centered husband and unsuitable for what she needed.


title: Richard Brooks

text: His book was published in 1945 to favorable reviews. It was adapted as the film "Crossfire" (1947) with the homosexual element removed. It was the first major Hollywood film to deal with anti-Semitism, receiving an Oscar nomination. The novel drew the attention of independent producer Mark Hellinger, who hired Brooks as a screenwriter after he left the Marines.


title: Richard Brooks

text: Working for Hellinger brought Brooks back to the film industry and led to a long friendship with actor Humphrey Bogart, a close friend of the producer. Brooks provided an uncredited screen story for "The Killers" (1946), which introduced actor Burt Lancaster. He wrote the scripts for two other Hellinger films, notably "Brute Force" (1947), also starring Lancaster. After Hellinger died suddenly in 1947, Brooks wrote screenplays for three Warner Brothers films, including "Key Largo" (1948), starring Bogart and wife Lauren Bacall and directed and co-written by John Huston, another Brooks mentor. Huston and Brooks had both worked together previously in the uncredited rewrite for "The Killers", and Huston would be the only co-writer Brooks ever had. While filming "Key Largo", Huston allowed Brooks to be on the "Key Largo" set during shooting, so that he could learn more about directing a Hollywood film.


title: Richard Brooks

text: Brooks wrote two more novels shortly after the war, "The Boiling Point" (1948) and "The Producer" (1951), a thinly disguised portrait of Mark Hellinger. It may also have contained autobiographical elements about Brooks. In 1946 he married again, to Harriette Levin, who had no apparent connection to the film industry. Their marriage lasted until 1957, when she sought a default divorce.


title: Richard Brooks

text: Success as a screenwriter with Hellinger and Warner Brothers led Brooks to a contract with MGM and the promise of a chance to direct. He wrote two screenplays for the studio before he was given the opportunity. His first film as writer and director, "Crisis" (1950), starred Cary Grant as a brain surgeon forced to save the life of a South American dictator, played by José Ferrer. His second film, "The Light Touch" (1951), an art-theft caper film starring Stewart Granger, was shot in Italy.


title: Richard Brooks

text: Brooks recounted useful advice he received just before his directorial debut from cinematographer Karl Freund while speaking at the American Film Institute. Freund gave Brooks reels of 16mm film, calling them "Lesson Number One." When Brooks watched the reels at home, he saw that they were pornography. The next day, Freund explained: "I produced them. My pictures, 1922. Many times you will be wondering, do you put the camera here, or up here, or down here? Maybe you make the scene a little bigger, or a little smaller. Lesson Number One. Get to the fucking point."


title: Richard Brooks

text: Brooks came into his own when he directed an original screenplay, "Deadline – U.S.A." (1952), for 20th Century-Fox, starring his friend Humphrey Bogart. Based on the closing of the "New York World", the film was part gangster picture, part newspaper drama. At its core was an issue Brooks cared about: the consolidation of the newspaper industry and its effect on the diversity of voices in the press. The film remains one of the more highly regarded dramas about American newspapers.


title: Richard Brooks

text: Brooks directed four more films before achieving an unqualified hit with "Blackboard Jungle" (1955) starring Glenn Ford. Based on a best-seller by Evan Hunter, the film was shocking for its time in its presentation of juvenile delinquency. It also offered a career-making supporting role for a young black actor, Sidney Poitier, and early roles for actors Vic Morrow, Jamie Farr and Paul Mazursky. Brooks chose to begin and end the film with the song "Rock Around the Clock", bringing rock 'n' roll to a major Hollywood production for the first time and sparking a No. 1 hit for Bill Haley and the Comets. "Blackboard Jungle" was nominated for an Oscar for its screenplay, and was MGM's top moneymaker that year.


title: Richard Brooks

text: In 1955, Brooks was one of four American auteur filmmakers named as "rebels" by the French magazine "Cahiers du Cinéma." Box-office success was what gave the writer/director more freedom at MGM, but Brooks also recognized that he would never have complete control of his films while under contract. He determined to avoid writing original screenplays and focused on adaptations of best-sellers or classic novels. He later noted that adapting a novel gave him a head start on developing the story structure required for a screenplay.


title: Richard Brooks

text: He spent the rest of the decade at MGM, where his most notable film was an adaptation of Tennessee Williams's sexually charged play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958). A huge hit for MGM – it drew more money and a larger audience than any other film Brooks ever directed – the film revived the career of Elizabeth Taylor and made a star of Paul Newman. It brought Brooks his first Oscar nomination for directing and the first Best Picture nomination in his directorial career.


title: Richard Brooks

text: Brooks spent the last third of his film career working in relative independence. In 1958, he signed a non-exclusive, seven-year writer-director deal with Columbia Pictures that was to earn him over $1 million. He followed the success of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" with an independent production for United Artists of "Elmer Gantry" (1960), based on the novel by Sinclair Lewis. The story of a phony preacher, played by Burt Lancaster, and a sincere revivalist, played by Jean Simmons, was edgy for the time. As it had for "Blackboard Jungle" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", controversy accompanied the film's release and helped bring people to theaters. The movie received five Academy Award nominations, including one for best picture, and won Oscars for Lancaster as lead actor, for Shirley Jones as supporting actress, and for Brooks' script.


title: Richard Brooks

text: Brooks adapted and directed another Tennessee Williams play, "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1962). Ed Begley won a Best Supporting Oscar for his role in the film. While popular and well-received critically, the MGM production did not duplicate the success of the previous Williams film. A dream project followed, an adaptation for Columbia Pictures of Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim" (1965), but the lavish film proved to be a misfire at the box office and with most critics. Brooks had spent years writing the script and planning the most expensive project of his career. He had assembled a stellar cast led by Peter O'Toole, Eli Wallach, Jack Hawkins, Paul Lukas, and James Mason. While beautifully photographed in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia by Freddie Young and scored by Bronisław Kaper, "Lord Jim" did not find the audience that had made David Lean's epics "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Doctor Zhivago" such notable hits of the 1960s.


title: Richard Brooks

text: To recover professionally from the failure of "Lord Jim," Brooks surprised Hollywood by choosing to adapt a minor western novel about a wealthy husband who hires mercenaries to rescue his kidnapped wife from Mexican bandits. Brooks worked quickly and within a year released "The Professionals" (1966), which became Columbia's biggest hit that year. The slick crowd-pleaser starred Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan and Woody Strode as "the professionals" with Jack Palance as the bandit leader and Claudia Cardinale as the kidnapped wife. The film received Oscar nominations for Brooks' screenplay and direction, and for Conrad Hall's cinematography. It has been lauded as one of the most entertaining westerns ever filmed.