title: 2017 United Express passenger removal

text: In April 2018, one of the Aviation Department officers, James Long, filed a lawsuit against United Airlines and the Chicago Department of Aviation alleging that he was not properly trained to handle misbehaving passengers, was unfairly fired, and slandered. The lawsuit was dropped in April 2019.


title: 2017 United Express passenger removal

text: After the Chicago Department of Aviation Police was downgraded to be a security agency, a federal class action lawsuit was filed in 2018 over a perceived loss of employment benefits enjoyed by law enforcement officers by some of the now reclassified security guards. The lawsuit was eventually denied in September 2021, and is undergoing an appeal in the Seventh Circuit appellate courts as of September 2022.


title: 2017 United Express passenger removal

text: Early reports and United Airlines initially characterized the incident as a consequence of overbooking, leading some experts to question whether that was the case. John Banzhaf, a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, states that United was "citing the wrong federal rule to justify its illegal request to force a passenger already boarded and seated to disembark," since the regulation cited only covers denial of boarding, and not removing a passenger after boarding.


title: 2017 United Express passenger removal

text: While United has asserted a right to remove passengers after boarding, none of the reasons for doing so specified in the airline's contract of carriage applied in this situation. One attorney pointedly stated United "had absolutely no right to remove that man from the airplane" and described the incident as "assault and battery."


title: 2017 United Express passenger removal

text: Chicago City Council alderman Michael Zalewski questioned whether the Chicago Airport Police even had the legal authority to enter the aircraft.


title: 2017 United Express passenger removal

text: A partner at Kreindler & Kreindler, a law firm specializing in air disaster litigation, concluded, "United, if they're smart, will quickly and quietly settle the case."


title: 2017 United Express passenger removal

text: Comedian Jimmy Kimmel criticized United Airlines and its handling of the incident in a five-minute segment of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" that aired on April 10, 2017, and included video of the incident. Kimmel, referring to the word "re-accommodate" used by Munoz, said, "That is such sanitized, say-nothing, take-no-responsibility, corporate B.S. speak."


title: 2017 United Express passenger removal

text: The incident was discussed on numerous other comedy shows, including "Conan", "Ellen" and "Saturday Night Live". In an "SNL" sketch, Jimmy Fallon's character Doug proposes marriage to Cecily Strong's Jen after admitting that he made "one of the biggest mistakes a person can make." Jen replies, "No, Doug! You dragged a man off a plane this week!"


title: 2017 United Express passenger removal

text: The cover of the "New Yorker" May 22 issue depicted former FBI director James Comey, who had just been fired, being dragged down the aisle of an airplane by former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.


title: 2017 United Express passenger removal

text: American actor Will Ferrell mentioned the incident in his May 2017 commencement address to the University of Southern California's graduating class. Referring to his honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree awarded on the same day, he quipped, "The next time I'm flying and they ask if there's a doctor on board, I can now confidently leap to my feet and scream, 'I'm a doctor, what can I do? Yes, no problem, I can absolutely deliver that baby.' Hopefully it will be on United Airlines, in which case I will be immediately be subdued and dragged off the aircraft, which we all know will be recorded on someone's iPhone and put on YouTube."


title: 2017 United Express passenger removal

text: A passenger on a United Airlines flight who bought a full-price first-class ticket from Lihue to Los Angeles was told to get off the plane because "they needed the seat for somebody more important." According to the passenger, the gate agent stated "We have a priority list, and you're at the bottom of it." The gate agent then said that he would be arrested and put in handcuffs. The passenger said a fellow passenger warned him that the airline is "really nasty about this stuff" and might call the police. He is considering legal action against United.


title: 2017 United Express passenger removal

text: After paying approximately $1,000 for a seat for her two-year-old child, a woman was forced to hold the child on her lap for over three hours when United Airlines re-sold the child's seat to a standby passenger. The passenger appealed to the flight attendant, who rudely shrugged her shoulders and told her in an aggressive tone that the flight was full. The passenger was afraid to push the issue because of what had happened to Dao. When she flew back to Hawaii, United Airlines upgraded her to business class, provided access to the United lounge at the airport and gave her a lei.


title: 2017 United Express passenger removal

text: A family on a Delta Air Lines flight was removed from an aircraft and threatened with jail time and the loss of custody of their children for not surrendering a seat that they had purchased for their teenage son, who was not on the flight. Delta refused to provide any compensation or lodging for the family.


title: 2017 United Express passenger removal

text: On April 9, 2019, two years after the incident, David Dao was interviewed by ABC News, speaking out for the first time since the incident. Dao claimed that when he watched the video, he "just cried."


title: Henry Fuseli

text: Henry Fuseli ( ; German: Johann Heinrich Füssli ; 7 February 1741 – 17 April 1825) was a Swiss painter, draughtsman and writer on art who spent much of his life in Britain. Many of his works, such as "The Nightmare", deal with supernatural subject matter. He painted works for John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, and created his own "Milton Gallery". He held the posts of Professor of Painting and Keeper at the Royal Academy. His style had a considerable influence on many younger British artists, including William Blake.


title: Henry Fuseli

text: Fuseli was born in Zürich, Switzerland, the second of 18 children. His father was Johann Caspar Füssli, a painter of portraits and landscapes, and author of "Lives of the Helvetic Painters". He intended Henry for the church, and sent him to the Caroline college of Zurich, where he received an excellent classical education. One of his schoolmates there was Johann Kaspar Lavater, with whom he became close friends.


title: Henry Fuseli

text: After taking orders in 1761, Fuseli was forced to leave the country as a result of having helped Lavater to expose an unjust magistrate, whose powerful family sought revenge. He travelled through Germany, and then, in 1765, visited England, where he supported himself for some time by miscellaneous writing. Eventually, he became acquainted with Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom he showed his drawings. Following Reynolds' advice, he decided to devote himself entirely to art. In 1770 he made an art-pilgrimage to Italy, where he remained until 1778, changing his name from Füssli to the more Italian-sounding Fuseli.


title: Henry Fuseli

text: Early in 1779 he returned to Britain, visiting Zürich on the way. In London, he found a commission awaiting him from Alderman Boydell, who was then setting up his Shakespeare Gallery. Fuseli painted a number of pieces for Boydell, and published an English edition of Lavater's work on physiognomy. He also gave William Cowper some valuable assistance in preparing a translation of Homer. In 1788 Fuseli married (originally one of his models), and he soon after became an associate of the Royal Academy. The early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, whose portrait he had painted, planned a trip with him to Paris, and pursued him determinedly, but communication between the two was stopped by Rawlins. Fuseli later said "I hate clever women. They are only troublesome". In 1790 he became a full academician, presenting "Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent" as his diploma work. In 1799 Fuseli was appointed professor of painting to the Academy. Four years later he was chosen as Keeper, and resigned his professorship, but resumed it in 1810, continuing to hold both offices until his death. He was succeeded as keeper by Henry Thomson.


title: Henry Fuseli

text: In 1799 Fuseli exhibited a series of paintings from subjects furnished by the works of John Milton, with a view to forming a Milton gallery comparable to Boydell's Shakespeare gallery. There were 47 Milton paintings, many of them very large, completed at intervals over nine years. The exhibition proved a commercial failure and closed in 1800. In 1805 he brought out an edition of Pilkington's "Lives of the Painters", which did little for his reputation.


title: Henry Fuseli

text: Antonio Canova, when on his visit to England, was much taken with Fuseli's works, and on returning to Rome in 1817 caused him to be elected a member of the first class in the Academy of St Luke.


title: Henry Fuseli

text: As a painter, Fuseli favoured the supernatural. He pitched everything on an ideal scale, believing a certain amount of exaggeration necessary in the higher branches of historical painting. In this theory he was confirmed by the study of Michelangelo's works and the marble statues of the Monte Cavallo, which, when at Rome, he liked to contemplate in the evening, relieved against a murky sky or illuminated by lightning.


title: Henry Fuseli

text: Describing his style, the 1911 edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica" said that:His figures are full of life and earnestness, and seem to have an object in view which they follow with intensity. Like Rubens he excelled in the art of setting his figures in motion. Though the lofty and terrible was his proper sphere, Fuseli had a fine perception of the ludicrous. The grotesque humour of his fairy scenes, especially those taken from "A Midsummer-Night's Dream", is in its way not less remarkable than the poetic power of his more ambitious works.


title: Henry Fuseli

text: Though not noted as a colourist, Fuseli was described as a master of light and shadow. Rather than setting out his palette methodically in the manner of most painters, he merely distributed the colours across it randomly. He often used his pigments in the form of a dry powder, which he hastily combined on the end of his brush with oil, or turpentine, or gold size, regardless of the quantity, and depending on accident for the general effect. This recklessness may perhaps be explained by the fact that he did not paint in oil until the age of 25.


title: Henry Fuseli

text: Fuseli painted more than 200 pictures, but he exhibited only a small number of them. His earliest painting represented "Joseph interpreting the Dreams of the Baker and Butler", but the first to excite particular attention was "The Nightmare", exhibited in 1782, a painting of which he painted several versions. Themes seen in "The Nightmare" such as horror, dark magic and sexuality, were echoed in his 1796 painting, "Night-Hag visiting the Lapland Witches".


title: Henry Fuseli

text: His sketches or designs numbered about 800; they have admirable qualities of invention and design, and are frequently superior to his paintings. In his drawings, as in his paintings, his methods included deliberately exaggerating the proportions of the human body and throwing his figures into contorted attitudes. One technique involved setting down arbitrary points on a sheet, which then became the extreme points of the various limbs. Notable examples of these drawings were made in concert with George Richmond when the two artists were together in Rome. He rarely drew figures from life, basing his art on study of the antique and Michelangelo.


title: Henry Fuseli

text: He produced no landscapes—"Damn Nature! she always puts me out" was his characteristic exclamation—and painted only two portraits. However, similar to contemporary landscape painters such as J. M. W. Turner, he evoked qualities of terror and the sublime.


title: Henry Fuseli

text: Many interesting anecdotes of Fuseli, and his relations to contemporary artists, are given in his "Life" by John Knowles (1831). He influenced the art of Fortunato Duranti.


title: Henry Fuseli

text: In 1788 Fuseli started to write essays and reviews for the "Analytical Review". With Thomas Paine, William Godwin, Joseph Priestley, Erasmus Darwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, and others interested in art, literature and politics, Fuseli frequented the home of Joseph Johnson, a publisher and prominent figure in radical British political and intellectual life. He also visited Allerton Hall in Liverpool, the home of William Roscoe.


title: Henry Fuseli

text: When Louis XVI was executed in France in 1793, Fuseli condemned the revolution as despotic and anarchic, although he had first welcomed it as a sign of "an age pregnant with the most gigantic efforts of character".


title: Henry Fuseli

text: He was a thorough master of French, Italian, English and German, and could write in all these languages with equal facility and vigour, although he preferred German as the vehicle of his thoughts. His principal work was his series of twelve lectures delivered to the Royal Academy, begun in 1801.


title: Henry Fuseli

text: His pupils included John Constable, Benjamin Haydon, William Etty, and Edwin Landseer. William Blake, who was 16 years his junior, recognized a debt to him, and for a time many English artists copied his mannerisms.


title: Henry Fuseli

text: After a life of uninterrupted good health he died at the house of the Countess of Guildford on Putney Hill, at the age of 84, and was buried in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral. He was comparatively wealthy at the time of his death.


title: Andre Melendez

text: Andre "Angel" Melendez (May 1, 1971 – March 17, 1996) was a member of the Club Kids and purported drug dealer who lived and worked in New York City. He was killed by Michael Alig and Robert "Freeze" Riggs on March 17, 1996. His life and death have inspired several pieces of media, including books, films, music, and television.


title: Andre Melendez

text: Melendez and his family arrived in New York from Colombia when Melendez was 8 years old. Melendez purportedly became a drug dealer during the early 1990s after he met Peter Gatien, owner of The Limelight and several other nightclubs in New York City, and became a regular dealer in Gatien's clubs. He was frequently seen at Manhattan clubs wearing his signature feathered wings.


title: Andre Melendez

text: On Sunday, March 17, 1996, Melendez was killed by Michael Alig and Robert D. "Freeze" Riggs. According to various statements, the confrontation became violent and Melendez got the better of Alig, who cried out for help. Riggs then hit Melendez on the head with a hammer, three times (until Melendez "went down"), after which Alig smothered him (either with a pillow or sweatshirt, depending upon the source), next poured a "cleaner or chemical" into his mouth, and then wrapped duct tape around it.


title: Andre Melendez

text: The two then stripped Melendez's body and placed it in the bathtub, where it remained for 5–7 days. According to Riggs, he then purchased "2 chef knives and 1 cleaver" at Macy's, with which he said Alig dismembered Melendez's legs, which the roommates wrapped separately in garbage bags, placed into individual duffle bags, and dumped in the Hudson River.


title: Andre Melendez

text: The following day, they wrapped the upper body in a sheet and plastic garbage bag, placed it in a cardboard box from which Riggs had removed the UPC code, and together took the heavy box down the elevator and through the main lobby, and then placed it in the trunk of a Yellow Cab "that happened to be right outside the door." Riggs confessed: "We took the body to the Westside Highway around 25th Street. The taxi drove off, and we threw the box into the river."


title: Andre Melendez

text: However, Alig gave some conflicting details. For example, he stated he used liquid Drano (and baking soda) to combat the smell of the malodorous decomposition after the body had sat several days in the bathtub, and wrote in a May 12, 2014, "New York Post" article that the pair had successfully enjoined the cab driver to help them throw the box into the Hudson River, near Tunnel nightclub. At first, Alig claimed the killing was in self-defense, but he later admitted to having committed manslaughter.


title: Andre Melendez

text: In the documentary film "Glory Daze" (2015), the police recount the discovery by a group of children at the beach at Miller Field, Staten Island, of a box containing the remains of Melendez, in March 1996. ("American Justice" reports the box was found in April 1996.) A tropical storm had helped propel the floating, cork-lined box to Staten Island.


title: Andre Melendez

text: Mainstream media began covering Melendez's disappearance when the victim's brother and father turned to the press for help and interest grew in rumors – first publicized to outsiders by Michael Musto as a blind item in his "Village Voice" column – that Alig and Riggs had murdered Melendez. The coincidental discovery, on Friday, September 8, 1996, of another dismembered body, fished out of the Harlem River at a pier near 134th Street by a homeless woman, sparked police to begin investigating the case in earnest. A police officer in Staten Island, who caught the Melendez media coverage, initiated an investigation of the John Doe found at Miller Field. The Staten Island Police Department used dental records to identify Melendez (whose body the coroner had mis-identified as that of an Asian male); on November 2, 1996, the mutilated corpse was positively identified as Melendez, and details of the rumors about how Melendez was killed were confirmed.


title: Andre Melendez

text: In the face of increasing police scrutiny, Alig fled to Toms River, New Jersey, where he moved into a motel room with his boyfriend, a drug dealer named Brian. On December 5, 1996, the police arrested Alig at the motel and hours later, Riggs in Manhattan. Alig insisted to the police he and Riggs had killed Melendez in self-defense, and disposed of the body in a panic. (This story contrasts sharply with the account Alig had given the victim's brother, John ("Johnny") Melendez, in an August 1996 conversation secretly taped by the District Attorney's office, implicating "Melendez and club czar Gatien in a drug-dealing venture at Gatien's nightspots", and charging "that Riggs killed Melendez for Gatien because 'Peter is in trouble right now for drugs' and 'Angel knew everything and he was threatening to go to ... his friend at the "Village Voice" and tell him all this stuff".) Prosecutors were hesitant to charge Alig with first-degree murder, as they still hoped he would testify against his former boss, Gatien, who had been arrested for allowing drugs to be sold in his nightclubs. They eventually offered both Alig and Riggs a plea deal: a sentence of 10 to 20 years if they accepted the lesser charge of manslaughter. On October 1, 1997, both pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 10 to 20 years. ("American Justice" reports they pleaded guilty and were sentenced on September 10, 1997.) Because of their convictions, Alig and Riggs were not used as prosecution witnesses in Gatien's trial.


title: Andre Melendez

text: On October 1, 1997, Alig and Riggs were sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison for Melendez's killing, after each pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter. Riggs was released on parole in 2010, Alig on May 5, 2014.


title: Gadget

text: A gadget is a mechanical device or any ingenious article. Gadgets are sometimes referred to as "gizmos".


title: Gadget

text: The etymology of the word is disputed. The word first appears as reference to an 18th-century tool in glassmaking that was developed as a spring pontil. As stated in the glass dictionary published by the Corning Museum of Glass, a gadget is a "metal rod with a spring clip that grips the foot of a vessel and so avoids the use of a pontil". Gadgets were first used in the late 18th century. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, there is anecdotal evidence for the use of "gadget" as a placeholder name for a technical item whose precise name one can't remember since the 1850s; with Robert Brown's 1886 book "Spunyarn and Spindrift, A sailor boy’s log of a voyage out and home in a China tea-clipper" containing the earliest known usage in print.


title: Gadget

text: A widely circulated story holds that the word gadget was "invented" when Gaget, Gauthier & Cie, the company behind the repoussé construction of the Statue of Liberty (1886), made a small-scale version of the monument and named it after their firm; however this contradicts the evidence that the word was already used before in nautical circles, and the fact that it did not become popular, at least in the USA, until after World War I. Other sources cite a derivation from the French "gâchette" which has been applied to various pieces of a firing mechanism, or the French "gagée", a small tool or accessory.


title: Gadget

text: The October 1918 issue of Notes and Queries contains a multi-article entry on the word "gadget" (12 S. iv. 187). H. Tapley-Soper of The City Library, Exeter, writes:


title: Gadget

text: A discussion arose at the Plymouth meeting of the Devonshire Association in 1916 when it was suggested that this word should be recorded in the list of local verbal provincialisms. Several members dissented from its inclusion on the ground that it is in common use throughout the country; and a naval officer who was present said that it has for years been a popular expression in the service for a tool or implement, the exact name of which is unknown or has for the moment been forgotten. I have also frequently heard it applied by motor-cycle friends to the collection of fitments to be seen on motor cycles. 'His handle-bars are smothered in gadgets' refers to such things as speedometers, mirrors, levers, badges, mascots, &c., attached to the steering handles. The 'jigger' or short-rest used in billiards is also often called a 'gadget'; and the name has been applied by local platelayers to the 'gauge' used to test the accuracy of their work. In fact, to borrow from present-day Army slang, 'gadget' is applied to 'any old thing.'


title: Gadget

text: The usage of the term in military parlance extended beyond the navy. In the book "Above the Battle" by Vivian Drake, published in 1918 by D. Appleton & Co., of New York and London, being the memoirs of a pilot in the British Royal Flying Corps, there is the following passage: "Our ennui was occasionally relieved by new gadgets -- "gadget" is the Flying Corps slang for invention! Some gadgets were good, some comic and some extraordinary."


title: Gadget

text: By the second half of the twentieth century, the term "gadget" had taken on the connotations of compactness and mobility. In the 1965 essay "The Great Gizmo" (a term used interchangeably with "gadget" throughout the essay), the architectural and design critic Reyner Banham defines the item as:


title: Gadget

text: A characteristic class of US products––perhaps the most characteristic––is a small self-contained unit of high performance in relation to its size and cost, whose function is to transform some undifferentiated set of circumstances to a condition nearer human desires. The minimum of skills is required in its installation and use, and it is independent of any physical or social infrastructure beyond that by which it may be ordered from catalogue and delivered to its prospective user. A class of servants to human needs, these clip-on devices, these portable gadgets, have coloured American thought and action far more deeply––I suspect––than is commonly understood.


title: Gadget

text: The first atomic bomb was nicknamed "the gadget" by the Scientists of the Manhattan Project, tested at the Trinity site.


title: Gadget

text: In the software industry, "Gadget" refers to computer programs that provide services without needing an independent application to be launched for each one, but instead run in an environment that manages multiple gadgets. There are several implementations based on existing software development techniques, like JavaScript, form input, and various image formats. Proprietary formats include Google Desktop, Google Gadgets, Microsoft Gadgets, the AmigaOS Workbench and dashboard software Apple Widgets.


title: Gadget

text: The earliest documented use of the term "gadget" in context of software engineering was in 1985 by the developers of AmigaOS, the operating system of the Amiga computers ("intuition.library" and also later "gadtools.library"). It denotes what other technological traditions call "GUI widget"—a control element in graphical user interface. This naming convention remains in continuing use (as of 2008) since then.


title: Gadget

text: The X11 windows system 'Intrinsics' also defines gadgets and their relationship to widgets (buttons, labels etc.). The gadget was a windowless widget which was supposed to improve the performance of the application by reducing the memory load on the X server. A gadget would use the Window id of its parent widget and had no children of its own


title: Gadget

text: It is not known whether other software companies are explicitly drawing on that inspiration when featuring the word in names of their technologies or simply referring to the generic meaning. The word "widget" is older in this context. In the movie "Back to School" from 1986 by Alan Metter, there is a scene where an economics professor Dr. Barbay, wants to start for educational purposes a fictional company that produces "widgets: It's a fictional product."


title: Amrish Puri filmography

text: Amrish Puri (22 June 1932 – 12 January 2005) was an Indian actor, who was an important figure in Indian theatre and cinema. He is remembered for playing iconic villainous roles in Hindi cinema as well as other Indian and international film industries. He remembered for playing various roles in variety of film genres, specially iconic villainous roles in Hindi Cinema, as well as International Cinema. His role as Mogambo in Shekhar Kapur's Hindi film "Mr. India" (1987) is considered as one of greatest villains of all time and to Western audiences he is best known as Mola Ram in Steven Spielberg's Hollywood film "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" (1984).


title: Amrish Puri filmography

text: While he predominantly worked in Hindi-language films, he had also appeared in Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam and Marathi language films. Puri won three Filmfare Awards for Best Supporting Actor.


title: Victoria (2015 film)

text: Victoria is a 2015 German crime thriller film directed by Sebastian Schipper. The film stars Laia Costa and Frederick Lau. It is one of the few feature films shot in a single continuous take.


title: Victoria (2015 film)

text: Victoria is a Spanish woman who moved to Berlin and has been living there for three months. She works in a cafe for a meagre wage, and does not know anybody in the city. In addition, she does not speak much German, and her only common language with the people around her is English. Leaving a club at around 4 o’clock in the morning after a night of dancing and drinking, she meets four young men who are denied entry to the club. They are “Sonne” (sun), “Boxer”, “Blinker” (turn signal), and “Fuß” (foot). The men invite her to take a walk through the city and she agrees. After stealing some alcohol from an all night shop, they all get on the roof of an apartment building where they drink and smoke marijuana together, while Boxer reveals that he spent time in jail for hurting someone.


title: Victoria (2015 film)

text: When Victoria tells the others that she has to leave because she must open up the cafe she works at in a short time, Sonne, who was flirting with her the whole time, suggests accompanying her there and she agrees. When Sonne leaves with her, he is told by Boxer to return soon. It is implied that the four men have something important to do this night.


title: Victoria (2015 film)

text: When Victoria and Sonne arrive at the cafe, she invites him in for a cup of coffee, but he insists he only drinks cacao. While the two are alone inside, Sonne notices a piano, tinkles a bit on it and then dares Victoria to also play something. After much coaxing, she sits down and masterfully plays one of the Mephisto Waltzes, deeply impressing and moving Sonne. She then reveals that she had dedicated her whole life to the dream of becoming a concert pianist but had been told a short time ago at her music school that she was not good enough to continue.


title: Victoria (2015 film)

text: Shortly after, an extremely nervous and agitated Boxer arrives and demands that Sonne leave with him immediately. In front of the cafe, the four men steal a car and drive away, only to come back a few minutes later because Fuß, who had been heavily intoxicated before, has now fallen unconscious. A desperate Boxer demands that Sonne ask Victoria to replace Fuß and help them. Sonne is reluctant at first, but finally does what Boxer asked. He tells Victoria that Boxer had been under the protection of gangster Andi while he was in prison and now Andi demands that Boxer pays him back for his services. For this, Andi has asked Boxer to get three allies and bring them to a meeting with him this night. None of the four men knows the purpose of the meeting. To Sonne's surprise, Victoria immediately agrees to help. She drives Sonne, Boxer, Blinker and Fuß (who is lying in the back of the car) to the meeting place, a parking garage where Andi is waiting with several armed men. He demands that the four rob a certain bank this morning for €50,000. Andi will take €10,000 as payback and leave the rest of the money to them. The four agree to the robbery after Andi threatens to take Victoria hostage if they refuse. They are armed with guns, given a plan of the bank and then forced to take drugs to make them more alert and aggressive.


title: Victoria (2015 film)

text: While Victoria is driving to the bank, Blinker has a panic attack, but the others eventually calm him down. Feeling guilty about involving Victoria and causing his friend's panic attack, Boxer says he will rob the bank alone, but the others, including Victoria, tell him that they will still help. The robbery itself goes smoothly, even though Victoria stalls the car in front of the bank while the others are inside. After leaving the car in a back alley, the four, euphoric after the success of the robbery and still under the influence of the drugs, return to the club to celebrate. While Sonne and Victoria are kissing, Blinker and Boxer in their excitement strip naked on the dance floor, leading to all four being thrown out of the club. Outside, they remember that they have left the unconscious Fuß back in the car. When they return to the back alley, they see that the police have already found the car. Panicking, they leave the scene but are noticed by plainclothes police officers. Boxer, Blinker and Sonne draw their guns and all four run away. A shootout ensues during which Blinker is hit and left behind by the other three. Boxer implores Sonne and Victoria to take the money and flee while he confronts the police. Sonne and Victoria flee to find safety and Boxer is shot at by police.


title: Victoria (2015 film)

text: Sonne and Victoria manage to enter an apartment building unseen, and take a young couple hostage in one of the apartments. When they notice that the couple has a baby, they change clothes, take the baby with them and leave the apartment, under the desperate cries of the mother. When encountered by the police, they manage to give the impression that they are a young family and are allowed to leave the building.


title: Victoria (2015 film)

text: They leave the baby in front of a café across the street and hail a taxi which brings them to a hotel nearby. There, Victoria reserves a room while Sonne waits, writhing in great pain. On the way to their room, Victoria notices that Sonne has been shot. Lying down on the hotel bed, he watches the news, learning that Boxer died during the shootout, and Blinker died while being taken to the hospital. Victoria then notices that Sonne is bleeding profusely from his wound. Sonne urges Victoria to "go and take the money" as no one knows who she is. Victoria calls an ambulance but Sonne dies a few moments later holding Victoria's hands and she breaks down crying. After pulling herself together, she notices the money on the floor, picks it up, walks out of the hotel and is seen walking down the street.


title: Victoria (2015 film)

text: The film was shot in a single long take by Sturla Brandth Grøvlen from about 4.30 am to 7.00 am on 27 April 2014 in the Kreuzberg and Mitte neighborhoods. The script consisted of 12 pages, with most of the dialogue being improvised.


title: Victoria (2015 film)

text: To get financiers onboard, director Sebastian Schipper promised to deliver a version using traditional shot cutting as “plan B” if he couldn't achieve the final product in a true single take. The cut version was filmed first, over 10 days, as a series of 10-minute takes, so that Schipper would have a completed film in the bag even if the one-take version failed. Schipper has characterised the cut version as “not good”. The budget permitted only three attempts at the one-take version. According to Schipper, the first attempt was dull because the actors were too cautious, being afraid to make mistakes; the second attempt was the opposite, as the actors went “crazy”. Schipper says he became “angry” and “terrified” after seeing the second take and realizing he had only one chance left; in a subsequent meeting, he gave the cast a “hairdryer speech ... [it] was not a meeting that ended in hugs and 'good talk.' It was crazy. But the tension was built on knowing we wanted the same thing”. Schipper believes the final attempt was successful because there was an element of “aggression” missing from the other versions.


title: Victoria (2015 film)

text: The score was composed and produced by Nils Frahm; an album version of the soundtrack was released on 12 June 2015.


title: Victoria (2015 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 82%, based on 124 reviews, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's critical consensus states: ""Victoria" single-take production is undeniably impressive, but it's also an effective drama in its own right – and one that juggles its tonal shifts as deftly as its technical complexities." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 77 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Victoria (2015 film)

text: "The Hollywood Reporter" described the film as a "kinetic, frenetic, sense-swamping rollercoaster ride" but said the plot was somewhat implausible. "Variety" reviewed the film well, calling it "suffused with a surprising degree of grace and emotional authenticity."


title: Victoria (2015 film)

text: At the German Film Award 2015, "Victoria" received the awards for Best Fiction Film, Direction, Actress in a Leading Role (Costa), Actor in a Leading Role (Lau), Cinematography and Music. It was also nominated for Best Sound Design.


title: Victoria (2015 film)

text: It screened in the main competition section of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival where the film's cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen won a Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution for Cinematography. It received the German Film Award in six categories, including Best Fiction Film. It was selected for the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. It was one of eight films shortlisted by Germany to be its submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards. However, it lost out to "Labyrinth of Lies", after it was disqualified by the Academy because of its high percentage of English dialogue. In 2017, Laia Costa was nominated for an "EE Rising Star Award" for her performance in the film at the 70th British Academy Film Awards.


title: Perfetti Van Melle

text: Perfetti Van Melle is an Italian-Dutch multinational company of confectionery and gum, It was formed in 2001 with the merger of the Perfetti of Italy, and the Van Melle of the Netherlands. Perfetti Van Melle is headquartered in Lainate, Italy, and Breda, Netherlands. Perfetti Van Melle is the sixth largest confectionery manufacturer in the world. It employs 17,000 people via 30 subsidiary companies and distributes its products in over 159 countries.


title: The Driver

text: The Driver is a 1978 American neo-noir crime thriller film written and directed by Walter Hill. It stars Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern, and Isabelle Adjani. O'Neal is the getaway driver for robberies whose exceptional talent has prevented him being caught. The Detective (Dern) promises pardons to a gang if they help catch him in a set-up robbery. The Driver seeks help from The Player.


title: The Driver

text: 20th Century Fox released "The Driver" on 28 July 1978. The film was a box office disappointment in the United States but performed better overseas. Despite initial negative reviews it has become one of Hill's most popular films, and received more positive critical reception in later years. Quentin Tarantino, Nicolas Winding Refn, and Edgar Wright have cited "The Driver" as a major influence.


title: The Driver

text: The Driver steals cars for use as getaway vehicles in robberies around Los Angeles. He is known among criminals for his high skill and his high price, and is notorious among the police, particularly for The Detective who is obsessed with capturing The Driver whom he calls "Cowboy".


title: The Driver

text: The Driver pulls a job at a casino where his co-conspirators are late and he is seen by The Player. The Detective asks her to identify The Driver, but she denies seeing him. The Driver comes to The Player's apartment to pay her. They are interrupted by The Detective, who threatens The Player and alludes to her criminal history.


title: The Driver

text: The Detective sets up an illegal sting. He offers three arrested criminals – Glasses, Teeth and their driver, Fingers – a deal: hire The Driver for a bank heist and deliver him to the police; in return, they will go free. They seek The Driver via The Connection, his middleman and fence. The Driver initially refuses to work with the men due to his dislike of guns, but agrees to meet with them. When his driving skill is questioned, he systematically wrecks the criminals' car in a display of his prowess, and tells the gang he will not work with them. Later, Teeth visits The Driver to ask him again to join them, eventually threatening him with a gun. The Driver challenges Teeth to shoot, before beating him down. The Detective taunts The Driver at his rented room and challenges him to a 'game'. Despite being aware it is a set up, The Driver agrees to take part in the job on the conditions that his fee is doubled and Teeth is not involved.


title: The Driver

text: During the heist Glasses kills Fingers and escapes with The Driver. He does not deliver The Driver to The Detective however, instead planning to kill him and make off with the money. The Driver surprises him with a gun, kills him, and stashes the money in a locker at Union Station. He has The Connection launder the dirty money and enlists The Player to retrieve it once clean. Meanwhile Teeth has discovered Glasses dead and interrogates The Connection at gunpoint, killing her once she has revealed The Driver's plans.


title: The Driver

text: At the train station the Exchange Man stashes the clean money in a locker, then boards a train with the dirty money. He is followed on board by The Detective, who kills him in a shootout. Teeth robs The Player of her purse containing the key to the clean money locker. Teeth and his driver are pursued by The Driver and The Player in a car chase culminating in a warehouse, where The Driver drives directly at Teeth's car, causing them to swerve and flip the car. The Driver kills Teeth when he refuses to surrender. Teeth's driver returns the purse and is allowed to leave.


title: The Driver

text: The Driver and The Player return to the train station. When The Driver retrieves the bag from the locker The Detective and several police officers appear, but the bag is empty, the money having been ripped off by the Exchange Man. The Player leaves. The Driver leaves The Detective literally 'holding the bag' as each person departs.


title: The Driver

text: "The Driver" is the second film Walter Hill wrote and directed after "Hard Times" (1975), which starred Charles Bronson. Hill and producer Larry Gordon had just finished "Hard Times" when Gordon suggested to Hill that they make a film about a getaway driver, to which Hill agreed. Hill then wrote an original screenplay over the summer of 1975, in between the period when "Hard Times" was made and when it was released (there was a delay because the studio was waiting for other Bronson films to come out).


title: The Driver

text: Hill says he was interested to see how "pure" a film he could make: a genre film that did not conform itself in conventional, Hollywood ways. He said he wrote it as a "very tight script." "I knew when I was getting ready to do the movie that I was taking a chance", said Hill. "This was not meant to be an everyday action movie. I was trying to do something a little more, or a little less, but I was trying to do something else." The script was written in a sparse, minimalist style, which Hill had first employed on "Hard Times": "I thought that approach made people read with greater intention. It's spare in detail but written to dramatic effect. You could maybe capture the mind of the reader a little better." Hill sent a copy of the original draft of the script to Raoul Walsh, who gave it his approval.


title: The Driver

text: In the late 1970s, Britain's EMI Films came under the stewardship of Michael Deeley and Barry Spikings. They began co-financing movies shot in Hollywood in association with major US studios that were aimed at the international market, such as "Convoy", "The Deer Hunter" and "The Driver". They were interested in financing "The Driver" provided a suitable star could be found for the lead.


title: The Driver

text: According to Hill, the script was unable to bring in talents for "about a year and a half." The role of the Driver was originally intended for Steve McQueen, who had starred in the Hill-scripted "The Getaway" (1972). McQueen turned down the role because, as Hill stated, he refused to star in another film that revolved substantially around cars. The studio then went to Bronson, but he was unhappy with Hill. "He thought I had edited "Hard Times" in a way that had not favoured [Bronson's wife and co-star] Jill Ireland", said Hill, who added he "never thought" casting Bronson "was a good idea. And I never thought he'd do it." Hill was contacted by Ryan O'Neal's agent and agreed to meet the star. "We talked about the role and talked about the minimalist approach I wanted to try", said Hill. "He felt he could do it and we just got comfortable with each other." Although considered primarily a comedy and romantic star at the time, O'Neal's casting enabled the filmmakers to secure financing. O'Neal complimented the filmmaker as "a force to be reckoned with", as well as "a first rate writer and an even better director. And he's fast. Most young directors today think they are David Lean; they spend over a year on a film and we get robots that talk."


title: The Driver

text: Several actors were considered for the female lead, including Julie Christie and Charlotte Rampling. Eventually, it went to Isabelle Adjani, who had gained an international reputation with "The Story of Adele H" (1975). This was Adjani's first Hollywood role; she had previously turned down the chance to star in "The Other Side of Midnight" (1977), but agreed to make "The Driver" because she was an admirer of "Hard Times". Of Hill, Adjani commented:


title: The Driver

text: I think he is wonderful, very much in the tradition of Howard Hawks, lean and spare. The story is contemporary but also very stylized, and the roles that Ryan and I play are like Bogart and Bacall. We are both gamblers in our souls and we do not show our emotions or say a lot. For us, talk is cheap. I am really quite a mysterious girl in this film, with no name and no background. And I must say that it is restful not to have a life behind me; this way, I don't have to dig deep to play the part. All I know is that life for me is gambling and I am a loser. I have what people call a poker face.


title: The Driver

text: The studio recommended Robert Mitchum for the role of the Detective. Hill liked the idea and met with Mitchum to discuss the part but the actor turned it down. Hill ended up casting Bruce Dern. "I wanted Bruce's personality", he said. "Audiences get nervous about movies that don't have a lot of dialogue. [...] They like a balance. I wanted Bruce to very much offset the distance of The Driver."


title: The Driver

text: The film featured several car chase sequences. Hill says he felt the first chase was "kind of a failure" because it "was meant to lead up to a much more spectacular finish" but he was unable to film it properly: it was done on the last night of shooting and an electrician fell off the roof and was badly injured; Hill could not get all the shots he wanted and had to "cobble together" the end result. However, he felt the sequence with the Mercedes 250 S in the garage and the final chase were "as fully realised as I could get them to be." Hill wanted to film chase scenes at night, which he felt had not been done many times in films before. In order to expedite this, Hill shot the dramatic scenes first during the day, then the chase scenes at night. Hill said the night shooting was draining: "It's like you're swimming underwater or hypnotised. And I'm a person that stays up late and wakes up early. But staying up night after night after night really threw me out. You make decisions you cannot explain. You just intuit."


title: The Driver

text: Hill says the major visual influence on the film was the works of artist Edward Hopper. He was also influenced by his work as a second assistant director on "Bullitt" (1968), which featured a famous car chase. What fascinated Hill on "Bullitt" was the abundance of shots captured from inside the cars, which compelled him to film the same amount on "The Driver". Production wrapped on the film April 1978.


title: The Driver

text: Contemporary reviews were extremely poor. Hill later said, "I remember the studio had this huge sheaf of Xeroxed reviews they’d handed me — you could stop a fucking .45 slug with this stack, it was so thick. And of all the reviews in this six-inch thick pile, there was only one good one."


title: The Driver

text: Kevin Thomas of the "Los Angeles Times" called the film "ultraviolent trash that wipes out Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern and Isabella Adjani... plays like a bad imitation of a French gangster picture which in turn is a bad imitation of an American gangster picture." Vincent Canby of the "New York Times" wrote "It is Awful Movie. It is Pretentious Movie. It is Silly Movie. It talks just like this." Roger Ebert gave "The Driver" 2.5 stars out of 4, writing: "It's a movie about people who are not real because they are symbols, and it's a damned good thing there are great chase scenes or the movie would sink altogether."


title: The Driver

text: Saying it's "probably advisable for "film noir" aficionados only", film critic Duncan Shepherd of the "San Diego Reader" gave it five out of five stars. "The whole show, in fact, is something like a coded message passed from the moviemaker to the devotees of the genre, in full view of, but beyond the full understanding of, the rest of the audience", according to Shepherd.


title: The Driver

text: , the film holds an approval rating of 77% on Rotten Tomatoes based on twenty-six reviews. The site's consensus states: "A tough, highly stylized thriller with amazing sound design and car chases."


title: The Driver

text: The movie was a commercial disappointment in the United States although it performed better overseas. Hill says "I don't think you could say the film did commercially well anywhere except Japan, where I believe it did reasonable business."


title: The Driver

text: The film grossed a total of 1,102,183 admissions in France. It was the 33rd most popular film of the year.


title: The Driver

text: If we'd had Clint Eastwood in the film, we'd have been forgiven everything and they'd have said, 'It's another Eastwood film about driving cars'." If we'd had Steve McQueen, we'd have been compared to "Bullitt" or "The Getaway". We were treated as an art film rather than an action film. We took a unique approach to standard material. We'd go the same way again, but with a different cast we might have attracted an audience. I believe in returning investors' money – and if I could make "The Driver" again I'd try to rectify it for a commercial market. When you're writing this kind of script... naturally you think of an action lead like Bronson or Eastwood... and certainly Fox wanted a name. But when we got Ryan, I suggested we make changes to suit his character. This is always the director's prerogative.


title: The Driver

text: Isabelle Adjani later complained she felt the film hurt her career. "Afterwards the only American offers I got were bad ones", she said. "I did it, really because after "The Story of Adele H" everyone urged me to make a Hollywood film. I turned down several, and felt I couldn't continue to do that. And I liked Walter Hill. Only later did I realize I'd made a terrible mistake."


title: The Driver

text: Walter Hill recalled, "Had I not been shooting "The Warriors" at the time, I don't think my career would have survived. They loved it overseas, but in those days, that didn't matter that much. It made exactly zero dollars in the United States.


title: The Driver

text: "I think Ryan gave a very good performance", added Hill. "I was always very happy with what he did." He said, "I was very disappointed that people didn't particularly give him any credit for what he did. To me, he's the best he's ever been. I cannot imagine another actor. When you don't get who you want, sometimes you really do get lucky."


title: The Driver

text: EMI Films had announced plans to make another film with Hill, a Western called "The Last Gun", but this did not happen.


title: The Driver

text: The film has gone on to become more popular, and it is often the first film shown during retrospectives of Hill's work.


title: The Driver

text: The Reflections Interactive video game "Driver" (1999) uses several thematic inspirations from this movie.


title: The Driver

text: Both Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" (1994) and "" (2004) refer to this film: a shot and setup of Vincent Vega skidding out into the road with an overdosed Mia Wallace in the passenger seat in "Pulp Fiction" is copied from the opening chase of "The Driver;" and Beatrix Kiddo being described as "the cowgirl [who] ain't never been caught" in "Kill Bill: Volume 2" is copied from Ryan O'Neal's character description in "The Driver" as "the cowboy who could not be caught". According to Wensley Clarkson's book, "Tarantino – The Man, the Myths and His Movies", Tarantino lists "The Driver" as one of the "coolest movies of all time."


title: The Driver

text: The film also influenced "Drive" (2011), directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. "It's a very different movie", said Hill of this. "It has certain things, as Nic has told me, that are homage and that's fine. It's very complimentary. I bear him no animosity or anything. I think he's a remarkably talented guy and quite like him."


title: The Driver

text: "Baby Driver" (2017), directed by Edgar Wright, was also influenced by "The Driver". Wright commented on Hill's film: "Its influence on video games is very clear and in movies its style has echoed throughout the work of Michael Mann, James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino, Nicolas Refn and now me with my new film (ahem), "Baby Driver"."


title: The Driver

text: Around 1996, 20th Century Fox were developing a remake of the film, which was going to be directed by Luc Besson, who had already had huge success with films like "La Femme Nikita" and "" and was working on "The Fifth Element". He worked on the script with screenwriter John Pogue, but it was not made.


title: Little Darlings

text: Little Darlings is a 1980 American teen comedy-drama film starring Tatum O'Neal and Kristy McNichol and featuring Armand Assante and Matt Dillon. It was directed by Ronald F. Maxwell. The screenplay was written by Kimi Peck and Dalene Young and the original music score was composed by Charles Fox. The film was marketed with the tagline "Don't let the title fool you", a reference to a scene in which Randy comments on Angel's name, to which Angel replies, "Don't let the name fool you."


title: Little Darlings

text: Film critic Roger Ebert said of the film that it "somehow does succeed in treating the awesome and scary subject of sexual initiation with some of the dignity it deserves."


title: Little Darlings

text: A group of teenage girls from Atlanta go to summer camp, and, unbeknownst to the adults, two of them make a bet as to which one will lose her virginity first, with all the girls in camp betting money on the contest. The girls involved in the contest are opposites and rivals: cynical, suspicious and streetwise poor girl Angel Bright and naive, prissy and romantic rich girl Ferris Whitney. The rest of the girls divide into two "teams", each rooting for and egging on either Ferris or Angel. The two girls then choose guys they want to lose their virginity with. Angel targets Randy, a boy from the camp across the lake, and Ferris attempts to seduce Gary Callahan, the (much older) camp counselor.


title: Little Darlings

text: The girls also engage in typical teenage camp behavior, like food fights and singing around a campfire. Both girls discover that sex is not what they thought it would be. Ferris thinks of sex as love and romance and wine and flowers and poetry. She imagines herself swept off her feet by Gary. When she lies about "making love" with him, Gary gets in trouble for having sex with a fifteen-year-old. She discovers that physical sex can have ugly consequences. Her attitude is now more grounded in reality; she has become more like street-wise Angel.


title: Little Darlings

text: Meanwhile, street-wise Angel approaches the same issue from the other side and learns the opposite lesson. She views winning the contest as a purely biological act, "no big deal" and "nothing," as her mother told her. But when she tries to do "it" with Randy in a boathouse, she becomes confused by scary feelings she did not know she had. She behaves defensively, like she doesn't want it. Randy, now also confused, is put off by her recalcitrance and leaves.


title: Little Darlings

text: Angel sees that sex is more than just a mechanical function she can cynically turn on and off. It involves feelings and caring and love. Sex is important, and something she deeply wants. As Randy leaves, she tearfully protests, "But I "like" you!"


title: Little Darlings

text: She meets Randy a few days later with a much-improved attitude—one closer to Ferris's. This time she pays attention, not to condoms and clothing, but to Randy and her feelings about him. As the novel adapted from the film's screenplay describes it, "All her fear and resistance melted as they kissed. Soon, she didn't know who was touching whom, only that it was wonderful and right and fine."


title: Little Darlings

text: Angel has sex (offscreen) with Randy in the boathouse, but she doesn't tell the other girls. Ferris remains a virgin and lies about an evening of romantic passion ("We had chilled Chablis; the darkness enveloped us.").


title: Little Darlings

text: In the end, Ferris discovers that sex is not just a fantasy of poetry and flowers and moonlight or something from a novel. The biological aspect is not necessarily romantic. Angel discovers that biological sex involves powerful emotions that touch her deeply and transform her soul. Neither girl is quite ready for the emotional aspects that sex brings: When Randy seeks her out, Angel admits that while she likes him, and she is not ready for that kind of a relationship (he says they can start over, but Angel observes that it's too late and wouldn't be enough), while Ferris apologizes to Gary. Together, the girls talk with the camp director and confess the situation, saving Gary's job.


title: Little Darlings

text: Angel and Ferris, the two outsiders, discover they are more alike than different, and as they return home to their parents, they become best friends.


title: Little Darlings

text: The film was made by Stephen Friedman's Kings Road Productions. Paramount agreed to provide $5.3 million to make it in exchange for $14.3 million to market and develop the film.


title: Little Darlings

text: Kristy McNichol had the first pick of lead roles over Tatum O’Neal and chose the role of Angel, the more streetwise character.


title: Little Darlings

text: Principle photography on "Little Darlings" began on March 19, 1979 at Hard Labor Creek State Park, 50 miles east of Atlanta. The gas station men's room (condom) scene was filmed in downtown Rutledge, the town nearest the park. The meeting place for the buses at the beginning and ending were filmed in a parking lot near the offices of "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution", and the old Omni Coliseum can be seen in the background including in the last scene of the movie. When Ferris is driven into town, they pass the Swan House, indicating that her family lives in Buckhead, a wealthy part of town to the north of the city.


title: Little Darlings

text: The film was notable for having a contemporary pop soundtrack, with music by artists like Blondie, Rickie Lee Jones, Supertramp, The Cars, and Iain Matthews. The original video release—on blue box VHS and laserdisc—kept the soundtrack intact; however, many songs in the film such as Supertramp's "School", John Lennon's "Oh My Love" and The Bellamy Brothers' "Let Your Love Flow" were removed from the second round of home releases—VHS red box—due to licensing issues, and were replaced with sound-alikes.


title: Little Darlings

text: As of 2019, the film has not been released on DVD or Blu-ray, but has been made available for digital video rental on iTunes and Amazon Prime. Turner Classic Movies also aired the original theatrical version, letterboxed, and with all original music and credits intact. Canada’s Hollywood Suite aired the original theatrical version on June 22, 2021, with a replay scheduled for the following day.


title: Little Darlings

text: The film made $19.4 million domestically against a budget of $5.3 million. NBC later acquired broadcasting rights for $2.7 million and the network first aired the film on May 9, 1983. The film also made $1.2 million in the ancillary markets.


title: Little Darlings

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a "fresh" approval rating of 67% based on nine reviews. On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 45 out of 100 based on nine reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews."


title: Little Darlings

text: Frank Rich of "Time" praised McNichol’s acting, but criticized the script and said the characters were underdeveloped. Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" wrote, “Miss O'Neal and Miss McNichol, both lovely and accomplished actresses, are much better than their material. And they go a long way toward lending the story a little charm.”


title: Little Darlings

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" also criticized the tonal inconsistencies of the film, but noted that “the scenes in which [the characters] actually confront the realities of sex are handled so thoughtfully and tastefully that they almost seem to belong to another movie.”


title: Little Darlings

text: For its broadcast on TV, "Little Darlings" was shown in a heavily edited version which had all the sex-related scenes and dialogue removed, giving the impression that, instead of trying to lose their virginity, Angel and Ferris were engaged in competition simply to make a guy fall in love with them. The deleted scenes were replaced with alternate footage not seen in the theatrical version, including a scene in which Angel rescues Ferris from drowning in the lake during a thunderstorm. Some additional music was also used in this version. Director Ron Maxwell has stated that he had no participation in this TV version and does not approve of it.


title: Nice View (film)

text: Nice View is a 2022 Chinese comedy-drama film directed by Wen Muye. It is Wen's second feature film. It mainly tells the story of a young man named Jing Hao who, in order to save his sister, desperately seizes the opportunity he found to start a business, changes his fate, and affects the people around him. The film was completed in October 2021 and was released in mainland China on February 1, 2022 (the first day of the Chinese New Year). The film made over $211 million, making it the ninth highest-grossing film of 2022. China submitted Nice View for Best International Feature Film category of the Academy Awards.


title: Nice View (film)

text: 20-year-old Jing Hao came to Shenzhen to live with his young sister alone. The siblings live a warm yet straitened life. In an effort to pay for his sister's expensive surgery, Jing Hao gets an opportunity by chance, thinking that a better life is coming, but unexpectedly encounters a serious setback. Under the pressure of both time and money, Jing Hao, who has no way out, decides to take a desperate gamble. Can this ignite the spark of hope for his troubled ordinary life?


title: Nice View (film)

text: On 5 August 2021, it was revealed Jackson Yee would be the lead in Wen Muye's second feature film. The director's first film is "Dying to Survive". Filmed in Shenzhen and across summer and autumn, the crew and cast had endured two resurgences of the COVID-19 and four typhoons. Despite there was adequate natural rainfall, artificial rain was used, so they can control it according to their requirement and vision. Filming wrapped on 8 October 2021.


title: Nice View (film)

text: "Nice View" has become a holiday favorite among those in the Chinese film industry, who have rallied the headlines on social media. The film rose from fifth to third during its opening weekend, grossing $104.4 million.


title: Nice View (film)

text: Some critics praised the film as "one of the best homegrown productions in recent years that focuses on the dreams, endeavors and touching emotions of ordinary people against a massive historical backdrop." With its "sophisticated techniques and compelling [plot]", it provides experience for similar films to be made in the future. This film "also pays tribute to ordinary people who have contributed to the country's remarkable progress and development over the past few decades."


title: International recognition of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) was proclaimed by the Polisario Front on 27 February 1976, in Bir Lehlu, Western Sahara. SADR claims sovereignty over the entire territory of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony; however, at present the SADR government controls only about 20–25% of the territory it claims. It calls the territories under its control the "Liberated Territories".


text: The SADR has been a member of the African Union (AU), formerly the Organization of African Unity (OAU), since 1984. At the time, Morocco withdrew from the OAU in protest, until 2017, when Morocco again joined the African Union. The SADR also participates as guest on meetings of the Non-Aligned Movement or the New Asian–African Strategic Partnership, over Moroccan objections.


text: The Arab League simply supports "Moroccan territorial integrity", without further specification. In 2020, the United States under Donald Trump was the first country to recognize Morocco's unilateral annexation of Western Sahara. While some countries reiterate support for the "territorial integrity of Morocco", a number of countries have expressed their support for a future status of Western Sahara as an autonomous part of Morocco.


text: Besides Mexico, Algeria, Iran, Venezuela, Vietnam, Nigeria and South Africa, India was the major middle power to have ever recognized SADR, having allowed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic to open an embassy in New Delhi in 1985. However, India withdrew its recognition in 2000.


text: On 16 October 1975, by the mean of an Advisory Opinion, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared that it did not find any territorial sovereignty tie, either from the Kingdom of Morocco or the Mauritanian entity, over the territory of Western Sahara. Moreover, the ICJ recognized the self-determination of the peoples of the territory of Western Sahara through their free and genuine expression of such will. The decision reads as follows:


text: UN member states and South Ossetia either currently recognize the SADR or have recognized it in the past. Of these, have "suspended", "frozen" or "withdrawn" recognition (most recently Guyana). Several African countries and Caribbean or Pacific island-states have taken such actions subsequent to Moroccan lobbying and offers of economic and other exchanges, although the association of such decisions and these efforts is disputable. On the other hand, some states which had "withdrawn" or "frozen" recognition later resumed it (most recently Colombia and South Sudan).


text: The parliaments of several states that do not recognize the Sahrawi Republic have called on their respective governments to recognize SADR. The parliament of Sweden was the first in the EU voted to recognize Western Sahara in December 2012, but this has not been enacted by the Swedish government. Declarations were also adopted by the parliaments of Chile and Brazil.


title: Player piano

text: A player piano (also known as a pianola) is a self-playing piano containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism, that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper or metallic rolls, with more modern implementations using MIDI. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home, in the late 19th and early 20th century. Sales peaked in 1924, then declined, as the improvement in phonograph recordings due to electrical recording methods developed in the mid-1920s. The advent of electrical amplification in home music reproduction via radio in the same period helped cause their eventual decline in popularity, and the stock market crash of 1929 virtually wiped out production.


title: Player piano

text: This mechanism came into widespread use in the 20th century, and was all-pneumatic, with foot-operated bellows providing a source of vacuum needed to operate a pneumatic motor, driving the take-up spool, while each small inrush of air through a hole in the paper roll was amplified in two pneumatic stages, to sufficient strength to strike a note.


title: Player piano

text: Votey advertised the Pianola widely, making unprecedented use of full-page color advertisements. It was sold initially for $250. Other, cheaper makes were launched. A standard 65-note format evolved, with rolls and holes spaced 6 to the inch, although several player manufacturers used their own form of roll incompatible with other makes.


title: Player piano

text: By 1903, the Aeolian Company had more than 9,000 roll titles in their catalog, adding 200 titles per month. Many companies' catalogs ran to thousands of rolls, mainly consisting of light, religious or classical music, ragtime music did feature, but not commonly.


title: Player piano

text: Melville Clark, introduced two key features to the player piano, the full-scale roll which could play every note on the piano keyboard, and the internal player as standard.


title: Player piano

text: By the end of the decade, the piano player device was obsolete, as was the 65-note format. This caused issues for many small manufacturers, who had spent their capital on setting up 65-note player operations, and the result was rapid consolidation in the industry.


title: Player piano

text: A new full-scale roll format, playing all 88 notes, was agreed at an industry conference in Buffalo, New York in 1908, the so-called Buffalo Convention. This kept the 11-inch roll, but now had smaller holes spaced at 9 to the inch. This meant that any player could now play any make of roll. This consensus was key to avoiding a costly format war, which plagued almost every other form of entertainment media that followed roll music.


title: Player piano

text: While the player piano matured in America, an inventor in Germany, Edwin Welte, was working on a player which would reproduce all the aspects of the performance automatically, so that his machine would play back a recorded performance exactly as if the original pianist were sitting at the piano keyboard. Known as a Reproducing Piano, this device, the Welte-Mignon, was launched in 1904. It created new marketing opportunities, as manufacturers could now get the foremost pianists and composers of the day to record their performances on a piano roll, allowing owners of player pianos to experience such a performance in their own homes on their own instruments, exactly as the original pianist had played it.


title: Player piano

text: Aeolian introduced Metrostyle in 1901 and the Themodist in 1904, the latter being an invention "bringing out the melody clearly above the accompaniment." With sales growing rapidly, and the instruments themselves relatively mature, this decade saw a wider variety of rolls become available. Two major advances were the introduction of the hand-played roll, both classical and popular, and the word roll.


title: Player piano

text: The other major advance was the arrival in America of two major commercial rivals for the Welte-Mignon Reproducing Piano: the Ampico (from 1911 but fully 're-enacting' by 1916) and the Duo-Art (1914). Artrio-Angelus also introduced a reproducing player from 1916. When World War I came in 1914, German patents were seized in the US. In England, Aeolian had a huge factory and sales network, so easily outsold the Ampico. Other makers of Reproducing systems were successful in Europe: Hupfeld Meisterspiel DEA (1907) and Philipps Duca (c 1909). Hupfeld perfected an 88 note reproducing system, the Triphonola, in 1919 It is estimated that around 5% of players sold were Reproducing Pianos.


title: Player piano

text: In America by the end of the decade, the new 'jazz age' and the rise of the fox-trot confirmed the player piano as the instrument of popular music, with classical music increasingly relegated to the reproducing piano. Most American roll companies stopped offering large classical catalogs before 1920, and abandoned 'instrumental' rolls (those without words) within a few years.


title: Player piano

text: In England, where the Aeolian Company continued to find success selling classical material, as well as customers willing to contribute to performances by following directions printed on the rolls and operate the hand and foot controls. Sydney Grew, in his manual "The Art of the Piano Player", published in London in 1922, said that "it takes about three years to make a good player-pianist of a man of woman of average musical intelligence. It takes about seven years to make a good pianist, or organist, or singer". Word rolls never became the norm in England, always being charged at a 20% premium over non-word rolls. As a result, post-World War I American and British roll collections look very different.


title: Player piano

text: During the early 1950s, a number of collectors began to collect player pianos and all the other instruments of the 1920s and earlier. Among them was Frank Holland, who formed his collection while working in Canada. On returning to England, he located a number of like-minded enthusiasts and started to hold meetings at his house in west London. In 1959 this was formalized as 'The Player Piano Group'. By the early 1960s, Frank Holland had formed the British Piano Museum (now the Musical Museum) in Brentford.


title: Player piano

text: In America, another collector was Harvey Roehl, who was so enthused by the players that in 1961 he published a book called "Player Piano Treasury". This sold by the tens of thousands, and was followed by books on how to rebuild and restore these instruments. Roehl's Vestal Press was a major driving force in raising awareness of the player piano within the general population.


title: Player piano

text: Other societies worldwide were formed to preserve and study all aspects of mechanical music, such as the Musical Box Society International (MBSI) and the Automatic Musical Instruments Collector's Association (AMICA) in the USA.


title: Player piano

text: In 1961, Max Kortlander died of a heart attack, and QRS was run by his wife until she sold the company to Ramsi Tick in 1966, who focussed on limiting losses rather than widening profits. QRS's presence ensured that owners of newly awakened players could purchase rolls of the latest titles, so ensuring that the instrument remained current, not just a historical curiosity.


title: Player piano

text: The revival of interest in player pianos in the 1960s, lead to the production of player pianos to start again. Aeolian revived the Pianola, albeit this time in a small spinet piano suited to post-war housing. Other manufacturers followed, and production has continued intermittently ever since. QRS today offers a traditional player piano in its Story and Clark piano.


title: Player piano

text: In recent years, there has been greater focus on full rebuilding as original instruments. Early enthusiasts could often get by with limited patching, but the repair requirements have slowly risen, although to this day it is possible to find original 1920s instruments that still work.


title: Player piano

text: While there are many minor differences between manufacturers, a player piano is a piano that contains a manually controlled pneumatically operating piano player mechanism. It is intended that the operator manually manipulates the control levers in order to produce a musical performance. Various aids to the human operator were developed:


title: Player piano

text: Music rolls for pneumatic player pianos, often known as piano rolls, consist of a continuous sheet of paper rolled on to a spool. The spool fits into the player piano spool box whereupon the free end of the music sheet is hooked onto the take-up spool which will unwind the roll at an even pace across the reading mechanism (the "tracker bar") The music score to be played is programmed onto the paper by means of perforations. Different player systems have different perforation sizes, channel layouts and spool fittings though the majority conform to one or two predominant formats latterly adopted as the industry standard.


title: Player piano

text: The player piano sold globally in its heyday, and music rolls were manufactured extensively in the US, as well as most European countries, South America, Australia and New Zealand. A large number of titles from all manufacturers survive to this day, and rolls still turn up regularly in large quantities.


title: Player piano

text: It was reported that the last remaining mass producer of piano rolls in the world, QRS Music, temporarily halted production of the rolls on December 31, 2008.


title: Player piano

text: However, QRS Music still list themselves as the only roll manufacturer remaining, and claim to have 45,000 titles available with "new titles being added on a regular basis".


title: Player piano

text: The Musical Museum in Brentford, London, England houses a nationally significant collection of piano rolls, with over 20,000 rolls, as well as an extensive collection of instruments which may be seen and heard.


title: Player piano

text: Later developments of the reproducing piano include the use of magnetic tape and floppy disks, rather than piano rolls, to record and play back the music; and, in the case of one instrument made by Bösendorfer, computer assisted playback.


title: Player piano

text: In 1982, Yamaha Corporation introduced the "Piano Player", which was the first mass-produced, commercially available reproducing piano that was capable of digitally capturing and reproducing a piano performance using floppy disk as a storage medium. The Piano Player was replaced in 1987 by the Yamaha Disklavier and since 1998, the Disklavier PRO models are capable of capturing and reproducing "high-resolution" piano performances of up to 1024 velocity levels and 256 increments of positional pedaling using Yamaha's proprietary XP (Extended Precision) MIDI specification.


title: Player piano

text: Almost all modern player pianos use MIDI to interface with computer equipment. Most modern player pianos come with an electronic device that can record and playback MIDI files on floppy disks and/or CD-ROMs, and a MIDI interface that enables computers to drive the piano directly for more advanced operations. The MIDI files can trigger electromechanical solenoids, which use electric current to drive small mechanical plungers mounted to the key action inside the piano. Live performance or computer generated music can be recorded in MIDI file format for accurate reproduction later on such instruments. MIDI files containing converted antique piano-rolls can be purchased on the Internet.


title: Player piano

text: , several player piano conversion kits are available (PianoDisc, PNOmation, etc.), allowing the owners of normal pianos to convert them into computer controlled instruments. The conversion process usually involves cutting open the bottom of the piano to install mechanical parts under the keyboard, although one organization—Logos Foundation—has manufactured a portable, external kit. A new player piano conversion kit was introduced in 2007-08 by Wayne Stahnke, the inventor of the Bösendorfer SE reproducing system, called the "LX".


title: Player piano

text: Steinway now manufactures a player piano based on Wayne Stahnke's Live Performance LX system. Live Performance Model LX, was sold to Steinway in 2014 and re-branded as Spirio. In contrast to other piano brands, a recording option was not originally available in Steinway Spirio pianos. However, in 2019 Steinway introduced the Spirio | r, which is capable of both reproducing and recording piano music for later playback.


title: Player piano

text: Edelweiss is a British music upcomer on the player piano market offering totally bespoke pianos, available in luxury department store Harrods since 2017 and according to the "Financial Times" YouTube channel 'How to Spend it', Edelweiss is "regarded as the most upmarket of today's breed of the self-playing piano".


title: Player piano

text: A player piano is neither an electric piano, electronic piano, nor a digital piano. The distinction between these instruments lies in the way sounds are produced. A player piano is an acoustic piano where the sound is produced by hammer strikes on the piano strings. Electrical or electronic components are limited to moving the keys or hammers mimicking the actions of a person; no sound is produced from electrically amplified audio.


title: Hamza Haq

text: Hamza Haq (born October 27, 1990) is a Canadian actor, best known for his leading role in the television series "Transplant".


title: Hamza Haq

text: Hamza Haq was born to Pakistani parents in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, before immigrating to Canada when he was nine years old, where he became a Canadian citizen. His father worked for an airline while his mother was an organic chemist. He learned English from a school in the Filipino embassy in Saudi Arabia before switching to an American school. He later attended Bell High School in Ottawa, Ontario. Haq graduated from Carleton University with a Bachelor of Arts in film studies with a minor in Law.


title: Hamza Haq

text: Haq started his career with roles on various television series, before taking on roles in feature films. As an actor, his work has included the television series "Quantico" and limited series "The Indian Detective". He was also the host for the children's television series "Look Kool".


title: Hamza Haq

text: At the 6th Canadian Screen Awards in 2018, he received a nomination for Best Performance in a Guest Role in a Drama Series for an appearance on "This Life", and in 2019 he received the Star award from the Mosaic International South Asian Film Festival.


title: Hamza Haq

text: In 2020, he assumed the lead role in the television series "Transplant", and had a supporting role in Philippe Falardeau's film "My Salinger Year".


title: Hamza Haq

text: In his year-end review of television in 2020, critic John Doyle of "The Globe and Mail" named Haq as having given one of the year's best performances in Canadian television. The industry trade magazine "Playback" also named Haq as Canadian television's breakout star of 2020.


title: Hamza Haq

text: Haq won the award for Best Actor in a Drama Series for "Transplant" at the 9th Canadian Screen Awards in 2021 and at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2022.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (born Cecilia Helena Payne; – ) was a British-born American astronomer and astrophysicist who proposed in her 1925 doctoral thesis that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. Her groundbreaking conclusion was initially rejected because it contradicted the scientific wisdom of the time, which held that there were no significant elemental differences between the Sun and Earth. Independent observations eventually proved she was correct. Her work on the nature of variable stars was foundational to modern astrophysics.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: Cecilia Helena Payne was one of three children born in Wendover in Buckinghamshire, England, to Emma Leonora Helena (née Pertz) and Edward John Payne, a London barrister, historian and musician who had been an Oxford fellow. Her mother came from a Prussian family and had two distinguished uncles, historian Georg Heinrich Pertz and the Swedenborgian writer James John Garth Wilkinson; her sister Florence was a pianist. Cecilia Payne's father died when she was four years old, forcing her mother to raise the family on her own.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: Cecilia Payne began school in Wendover at a private school run by Elizabeth Edwards. When she was twelve her mother moved to London for the sake of the education of Cecilia's brother Humfry, who later became an archaeologist. Cecilia attended St Mary's College, Paddington, where she was unable to study much mathematics or science, but in 1918 changed schools for St Paul's Girls' School. There she was urged by Gustav Holst, who taught music at the school, to pursue a career in music, but she preferred to focus on science. The following year she won a scholarship that paid all her expenses at Newnham College, Cambridge University, where she initially read botany, physics, and chemistry but she dropped botany after her first year.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: Her interest in astronomy began after she attended a lecture by Arthur Eddington on his 1919 expedition to the island of Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea off the west coast of Africa to observe and photograph the stars near a solar eclipse as a test of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. She said of the lecture: "The result was a complete transformation of my world picture. [...] My world had been so shaken that I experienced something very like a nervous breakdown." She completed her studies, but was not awarded a degree because of her sex; Cambridge did not grant degrees to women until 1948.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: Payne realized that her only career option in the U.K. was to become a teacher, so she looked for grants that would enable her to move to the United States. After being introduced to Harlow Shapley, the Director of the Harvard College Observatory, where he had just established a graduate program in astronomy, she left England in 1923. This was made possible by a fellowship to encourage women to study at the observatory. Adelaide Ames had become the first student on the fellowship in 1922; the second was Payne. She was described by Lawrence H. Aller as one of the "most capable go-getters" in Shapley's group.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: Shapley persuaded Payne to write a doctoral dissertation, and so in 1925 she became the first person to earn a PhD in astronomy from Radcliffe College of Harvard University. Her thesis title was "Stellar Atmospheres; A Contribution to the Observational Study of High Temperature in the Reversing Layers of Stars".


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: Payne was able to accurately relate the spectral classes of stars to their actual temperatures by applying the ionization theory developed by Indian physicist Meghnad Saha. She showed that the great variation in stellar absorption lines was due to differing amounts of ionization at different temperatures, not to different amounts of elements. She found that silicon, carbon, and other common metals seen in the Sun's spectrum were present in about the same relative amounts as on Earth, in agreement with the accepted belief of the time, which held that the stars had approximately the same elemental composition as the Earth. However, she found that helium and particularly hydrogen were vastly more abundant (for hydrogen, by a factor of about one million). Her thesis concluded that hydrogen was the overwhelming constituent of stars (see Metallicity), making it the most abundant element in the Universe.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: However, when Payne's dissertation was reviewed, astronomer Henry Norris Russell, who stood by the theories of American physicist Henry Rowland, dissuaded her from concluding that the composition of the Sun was predominantly hydrogen because it would contradict the current scientific consensus that the elemental composition of the Sun and the Earth were similar. In 1914, he had written in an academic article:


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: The agreement of the solar and terrestrial lists is such as to confirm very strongly Rowland's opinion that, if the Earth's crust should be raised to the temperature of the Sun's atmosphere, it would give a very similar absorption spectrum. The spectra of the Sun and other stars were similar, so it appeared that the relative abundance of elements in the universe was like that in Earth's crust.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: Payne consequently described her results as "spurious". A few years later, astronomer Otto Struve described her work as "the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy". Russell also realized she was correct when he derived the same results by different means. In 1929, he published his findings in a paper that briefly acknowledged Payne's earlier work and discovery, including the mention that "[t]he most important previous determination of the abundance of the elements by astrophysical means is that by Miss Payne [...]". Nevertheless, he was generally credited for the conclusions she reached.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: After her doctorate, Payne studied stars of high luminosity to understand the structure of the Milky Way. Later she surveyed all stars brighter than the tenth magnitude. She then studied variable stars, making over 1,250,000 observations with her assistants. This work later was extended to the Magellanic Clouds, adding a further 2,000,000 observations of variable stars. These data were used to determine the paths of stellar evolution. She published her conclusions in her second book, "The Stars of High Luminosity" (1930). Her observations and analysis of variable stars, carried out with her husband, Sergei Gaposchkin, laid the basis for all subsequent work on such objects.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: Payne-Gaposchkin remained scientifically active throughout her life, spending her entire academic career at Harvard. When she began, women were barred from becoming professors at Harvard, so she spent years doing less prestigious, low-paid research jobs. Nevertheless, her work resulted in several published books, including "The Stars of High Luminosity" (1930), "Variable Stars" (1938) and "Variable Stars and Galactic Structure" (1954). Shapley had made efforts to improve her position, and in 1938 she was given the title of "Astronomer." On Payne's request, her title was later changed to Phillips Astronomer, an endowed position which would make her an "officer of the university"; in order to get approval for her title, Shapley assured the university that giving Payne-Gaposchkin this position would not make her equivalent to a professor, but privately pushed for the position to be later converted into an explicit professorship as the "Phillips Professor of Astronomy". She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943. Her courses were not recorded in the Harvard University catalogue until 1945.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: When Donald Menzel became Director of the Harvard College Observatory in 1954, he tried to improve her appointment, and in 1956 she became the first woman to be promoted to full professor from within the faculty at Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She was appointed the Phillips Professor of Astronomy in 1958. Later, with her appointment to the Chair of the Department of Astronomy, she also became the first woman to head a department at Harvard.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: Her students included Helen Sawyer Hogg, Joseph Ashbrook, Frank Drake, Harlan Smith and Paul W. Hodge, all of whom made important contributions to astronomy. She also supervised Frank Kameny.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: Payne-Gaposchkin retired from active teaching in 1966 and was subsequently appointed Professor Emerita of Harvard. She continued her research as a member of staff at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, as well as editing the journals and books published by Harvard Observatory for twenty years. She edited and published the lectures of Walter Baade as "Evolution of Stars and Galaxies" (1963).


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: Payne's career marked a turning point at Harvard College Observatory. Under the direction of Harlow Shapley and Dr E. J. Sheridan (whom Payne-Gaposchkin described as a mentor), the observatory had already offered more opportunities in astronomy to women than did other institutions, and notable achievements had been made earlier in the century by Williamina Fleming, Antonia Maury, Annie Jump Cannon, and Henrietta Swan Leavitt. However, with Payne's PhD, women entered the mainstream.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: The trail she blazed into the largely male-dominated scientific community was an inspiration to many. For example, she became a role model for astrophysicist Joan Feynman. Feynman's mother and grandmother had dissuaded her from pursuing science, since they believed women were not physically capable of understanding scientific concepts. Feynman was later inspired by Payne-Gaposchkin when she came across some of her work in an astronomy textbook. Seeing Payne-Gaposchkin's research published in this way convinced Feynman that she could, in fact, follow her scientific passions.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: While accepting the Henry Norris Russell Prize from the American Astronomical Society, Payne spoke of her lifelong passion for research: "The reward of the young scientist is the emotional thrill of being the first person in the history of the world to see something or understand something. Nothing can compare with that experience [...] The reward of the old scientist is the sense of having seen a vague sketch grow into a masterly landscape."


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: In her autobiography, Payne tells that while in school she created an experiment on the efficacy of prayer by dividing her exams in two groups, praying for success only on one, the other one being a control group. She achieved the higher marks in the latter group. Later on, she became an agnostic.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: In 1931, Payne became a United States citizen. On a tour through Europe in 1933, she met Russian-born astrophysicist Sergei I. Gaposchkin in Germany. She helped him get a visa to the United States, and they married in March 1934, settling in the historic town of Lexington, Massachusetts, a short commute from Harvard. Payne added her husband's name to her own, and the Payne-Gaposchkins had three children: Edward, Katherine and Peter. Payne's daughter remembers her as "an inspired seamstress, an inventive knitter, and a voracious reader". Payne and her family were members of the First Unitarian Church in Lexington, where Cecilia taught Sunday school.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: She was also active with the Quakers. She died at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on December 7, 1979, aged 79.


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: Shortly before her death, Payne had her autobiography privately printed as "The Dyer's Hand". It was later reprinted as "Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: An Autobiography and Other Recollections".


title: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

text: Payne's younger brother, Humfry Payne (1902–1936), who married author and film critic Dilys Powell, became director of the British School of Archaeology at Athens, where he died in 1936, aged 34. Payne's granddaughter Cecilia Gaposchkin is a professor of late medieval cultural history and French history at Dartmouth College.


title: Alcázar of Segovia

text: The Alcázar of Segovia ("Segovia Castle") is a medieval castle located in the city of Segovia, in Castile and León, Spain. Rising out on a rocky crag at the western end of the old town, above the confluence of rivers Eresma and Clamores at the bottom of Sierra de Guadarrama, it is one of the most distinctive castle-palaces in Spain by virtue of its shape– like the bow of a ship. The alcázar was originally built around the eleventh century by the Almoravid dynasty to serve as a fortress and has subsequently served as a royal palace for twenty-two monarchs, a state prison, a Royal Artillery College, and a military academy. The Old Town of Segovia, including the alcázar, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985. Today, it is used as a museum and a military archives building since its declaration as a National Archive by a Royal Decree in 1998.


title: Alcázar of Segovia

text: The Alcázar of Segovia, like many fortifications in Spain, started off as a Roman "castrum", but apart from the foundations, little of the original structure remains. The alcázar was built by the Berber Almoravid dynasty. Almoravid art and architecture is scarcely talked about in scholarship in part because so little of the physical work has survived in Spain. Furthermore, the Almoravid dynasty was short-lived and therefore much of the art and architecture of that period was subsequently destroyed or converted by their successors.


title: Alcázar of Segovia

text: The first reference to this castle was in 1120, around 32 years after the city of Segovia was conquered by the Christians (during the Reconquista when King Alfonso VI reconquered lands to the south of the Duero river, down to Toledo and beyond).In 1258, during the reign of King Alfonso X of Castile (r. 1252–1284), an intense thunderstorm caused a fire that destroyed several rooms, leading to centuries-long reconstruction during the reigns of various kings.


title: Alcázar of Segovia

text: The shape and form of the Alcázar was not known until the reign of King Alfonso VIII (1155–1214), however early documentation mentioned a wooden stockade fence. It can be concluded that prior to Alfonso VIII's reign, the Muslim era structure was no more than a wooden fort built over the old Roman foundations. Alfonso VIII and his wife, Eleanor of England (sister of Richard the Lionheart), made this alcázar their principal residence and much work was carried out to erect the beginnings of the stone fortification we see today.


title: Alcázar of Segovia

text: The Alcázar of Segovia was one of the royal's favorite residences starting in the 13th century that in turn, led to secular patronage to the city of Segovia. It was during this period that most of the current building was constructed by the Trastámara dynasty.


title: Alcázar of Segovia

text: In 1258, parts of the Alcázar had to be rebuilt by King Alfonso X after a cave-in and the Hall of Kings was built to house Parliament soon after. However, the single largest contributor to the continuing construction of the Alcázar is King John II of Castile who built the "New Tower" (John II tower as it is known today).


title: Alcázar of Segovia

text: In 1474, the Alcázar played a major role in the rise of Queen Isabella I. On 12 December news of the King Henry IV's death in Madrid reached Segovia and Isabella immediately took refuge within the walls of the Alcázar where she received the support of Andres Cabrera and Segovia's council. She was enthroned the next day as Queen of Castile and León.


title: Alcázar of Segovia

text: The next major renovation at the Alcázar was conducted by King Philip II after his marriage to Anna of Austria. He added the sharp slate spires to reflect the castles of central Europe. In 1587, architect Francisco de Morar completed the main garden and the School of Honor areas of the castle.


title: Alcázar of Segovia

text: During his visit to Spain known as the "Spanish match", Prince Charles of England visited the Alcázar in 1623, after dining at Valsain. He was entertained by Luis Jerónimo de Cabrera, 4th Count of Chinchón, who was then keeper of the Alcázar. Prince Charles was shown the Galley Room or "second great hall" with the heraldry of Catherine of Lancaster. In the evening there was a torchlit masque involving 32 mounted knights. Prince Charles gave the Count of Chinchón a jewel and rewarded the poet Don Juan de Torres for his verses. He left early in the morning for Santa María la Real de Nieva.