The Housatonic River ( ) is a river, approximately  long, in western Massachusetts and western Connecticut in the United States. It flows south to southeast, and drains about  of southwestern Connecticut into Long Island Sound.

History

Indigenous history
Indigenous people began using the river area for fishing and hunting at least 6,000 years ago. By 1600, the inhabitants were mostly Mohicans and may have numbered 30,000.

The river's name is derived from the Mohican phrase "usi-a-di-en-uk", translated as "beyond the mountain place" or "river of the mountain place". It is referred to in the deed by which a group of twelve colonists called "The Proprietors" captured the land now called Sherman and New Fairfield as "Ousetonack". Samuel Orcutt, a 19th-century historian, explained the term's pronunciation as "more properly...Howsatunnuck" and also noted an early spelling in the form of "Oweantinock". Prior to the 18th century, the river was alternatively known as the Pootatuck River.  Accounts differ on the origin of this name, with some claiming that Pootatuck is an Algonquian term translating to "river of the falls" while others relate the term was eponymous, reflecting the name of the tribe that had their principal village along the river in the area of Newtown, Connecticut.  "Pootatuck River" eventually came to refer a lesser tributary in the Housatonic watershed which empties into the Housatonic River at Sandy Hook, Connecticut.

The river passes through land that was formerly occupied primarily by native people of Algonquian lineage, typically living in villages of two to three hundred families housed in hide wigwams. These native inhabitants burned the forests along the Housatonic Valley in the autumn to keep the underbrush down, a practice which was customary throughout Connecticut prior to European settlement.

One notable native was Chief Squantz of the Schaghticoke tribe, who still hold a portion of the former reservation on the west side of the Housatonic River, in what is now called the town of Kent.

English settlement of the northern Housatonic Valley began in 1725 in Sheffield, Massachusetts. By 1734, Mohicans established the Indian Town of Stockbridge, which grew over 15 years but then failed, with land pressures increasing.

Industrialization

The river has been a source of power for paper, iron, textiles, and electricity industries. At Great Barrington, a grist mill built by David Ingersoll in 1739 used the river for power. The paper industry grew using the river's power from circa 1800.

The river was dammed with the advent of industry. In 1900, there were 30 dams on the river in Pittsfield. Many have been removed, but many remain, such as the Woods Pond dam in Lenox, Columbia Mill dam in Lee, Willow Mill dam in South Lee, Glendale dam in Stockbridge, and Rising Pond dam in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Five dams impound the river in Connecticut to produce hydroelectricity: the Falls Village, Bulls Bridge, Shepaug, Stevenson and Derby dams.  The last three dams form a chain of lakes: Lake Lillinonah, Lake Zoar and Lake Housatonic, from New Milford south to Shelton.

Covered wooden bridges

Three wooden covered bridges cross the Housatonic River.  Two are in Connecticut: one known as Bull's Bridge, which spans the river between Gaylordsville and Kent, and another at Cornwall, known as the West Cornwall Covered Bridge.  Reinforced with present-day materials, both bridges carry normal vehicle traffic, albeit in only one direction at a time. The third bridge, Old Covered Bridge located in Sheffield, Massachusetts, was destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1998; it is now open only to foot traffic.

Cultural references

The United States Navy named a ship for the Housatonic River. The  has the distinction of being the first ship in history to be sunk by a submarine, the Confederate vessel CSS H.L. Hunley, in 1864.

Inspired by the river during his honeymoon, the American classical music composer Charles Ives wrote "The Housatonic at Stockbridge" as part of his composition Three Places in New England during the 1910s, drawing his text from a poem of the same name by Robert Underwood Johnson. The town of Stockbridge is located in southwestern Massachusetts. The river enters Stockbridge on the east side of town before turning south toward Connecticut.

There was a 1962 American nuclear weapon test of the same name; several such tests used Native American words as codewords.

UFO sighting and monument
In 1969, nine-year-old Thom Reed and his family claimed to see a bright light rise from the Housatonic River, then found themselves inside "what appeared to be an airplane hangar," where they saw creatures that "resembled large insects." Supporters of the family erected a memorial to the incident at the Old Covered Bridge in Sheffield, Massachusetts, in 2015. The 5,000-pound memorial was removed by the town in 2019. The incident featured in a 2020 episode of Unsolved Mysteries on Netflix.

Ecology and wildlife
Historically, the Housatonic River and its Naugatuck River tributary hosted the southernmost spawning runs of the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). The Salmon Creek tributary of the Housatonic River may have been named for this salmonid, which can reach up to .

Pollution

PCBs

From circa 1932 until 1977, the river received PCB pollution discharges from the General Electric (GE) plant at Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency  (EPA) designated the Pittsfield plant and several miles of the Housatonic as a Superfund site in 1997, and ordered GE to remediate the site. EPA and GE began a cleanup of the area in 1999. Most of the PCBs used in the United States during this period were made by Monsanto. Aroclor 1254 and Aroclor 1260, made by Monsanto, was a primary contaminant of the pollution in the Housatonic River. Although the water quality has improved in recent decades, and some remediation has taken place, the river continues to be contaminated by PCBs.

Between 2005 and 2018 GE completed remediation and restoration of the 10 manufacturing plant areas within the city, and continues to conduct inspection, monitoring and maintenance activities. Additional remediation is planned for the downstream polluted areas of the river. The highest concentrations of PCBs in the Housatonic River are found in Woods Pond in Lenox, Massachusetts, just south of Pittsfield, where they have been measured up to 110 mg/kg in the sediment. About 50% of all the PCBs currently in the river are estimated to be retained in the sediment behind Woods Pond dam. This is estimated to be about 11,000 pounds of PCBs. Former filled oxbows are also polluted.

Birds, such as ducks, and fish that live in and around the river contain significant levels of PCBs and can present health risks if consumed.

"Rest of River" settlement agreement
Negotiations regarding how to clean up the contaminated areas south of Pittsfield had continued for many years since the initial Superfund site designations, involving GE, EPA, local governments, citizen groups and other stakeholders. In February 2020 EPA announced a settlement agreement involving GE, EPA and most of the concerned parties, to remove contaminated sediment from the river. Highly contaminated soil would be removed and shipped to federally approved facilities outside the state, while less-contaminated soil would be placed in a new specially designed landfill in Berkshire County.

Following a public comment period, EPA issued a permit in December 2020 for the final cleanup phase. In 2021 two of the citizen groups that were parties to the settlement filed an appeal of the permit, criticizing the design of the planned landfill. In February 2022 the US Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) denied the permit appeal. Following the EAB ruling, EPA has continued to design the new PCB disposal facility and has conducted public meetings in 2022. Two citizen groups appealed the EAB decision to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, and in July 2023 the court rejected the plaintiffs' challenge.

Mercury
The Connecticut segment of the river is polluted with mercury levels far beyond background levels, starting at the confluence with the Still River. The hat manufacturing industry of Danbury, Connecticut, which operated from the 19th to the mid-20th century, was the source of most of this mercury pollution, from mercury nitrate used in the felting process. In the 21st century, the mercury remains in the river sediment and flows downstream, especially during storm events. High mercury levels are measured in the sediment at the outflow delta of the Housatonic River into Long Island Sound.

Watershed and course

The Housatonic River watershed drains  in western Connecticut and Massachusetts and eastern New York. The Housatonic rises from four sources in far western Massachusetts in the Berkshire Mountains near the city of Pittsfield. It flows southward through western Massachusetts through the Berkshires and into western Connecticut, and empties into the Long Island Sound between the cities of Stratford and Milford, forming a border between Connecticut's Fairfield County and New Haven County, respectively. It includes 83 towns.

For most of its extent the watershed is just to the west of the watershed of the lower Connecticut River, and to the east of the
Hudson River Basin. Near the coast, smaller watersheds border it: on the east the Quinnipiac River and Wepawaug River watersheds, and on the west the Norwalk River, Saugatuck River, and Pequonnock River watersheds.

The river's total fall is  ( from the confluence of its east and west branches) to Long Island Sound. Its major tributaries in Massachusetts are (heading downstream) the Williams River (in Great Barrington), Green River  and Konkapot River (in Ashley Falls). Crossing south into Connecticut, the Housatonic's major tributaries are the Blackberry River (in Canaan), Salmon Creek (below Falls Village), Ten Mile River (above Gaylordsville but originating in New York), Still River (south of New Milford), Shepaug River (at the Bridgewater and Southbury border), Pomperaug River (at Southbury), and Naugatuck River (in Derby). The Naugatuck River is the Housatonic's largest tributary with a contributing watershed of .

Candlewood Lake is a pumped storage facility which is replenished when water is pumped into it from the Housatonic during times of non-peak electrical consumption; the water is then allowed to flow back into the river during peak times to generate electricity.

Housatonic Valley region

The Greater Danbury metropolitan area in Western Connecticut is also known as the Housatonic Valley Region.

The Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area is a designated National Heritage Area consisting of an  area in the watershed of the upper Housatonic River, extending from Kent, Connecticut, to Lanesborough, Massachusetts, including eight towns in Connecticut and eighteen in Massachusetts.

Recreation

The Housatonic River is a popular whitewater paddling destination beginning at Falls Village, Connecticut, and continuing to Gaylordsville.  Most of the river is quickwater and Class I whitewater with long sections of Class II-III whitewater.  A deadly and extreme Class VI resides at Great Falls in Canaan (Falls Village) and is most likely not able to be paddled.  The most dangerous and difficult section that is navigable is by Bulls Bridge, with Class V whitewater.

There are several minor and major dams along the river that form lakes. Most notable are two lakes in Connecticut, Lake Zoar, which borders Monroe, Newtown, Oxford, and Southbury, and Lake Lillinonah. Both lakes are major water-sport recreation outlets for the surrounding towns.

Two of the three lakes formed by the dams are used for rowing by clubs, schools, and to host regattas.  Lake Lillinonah is used by the GMS Rowing Center and is host to the GMS Regatta. Lake Housatonic is used by the Yale University Crew Team at the Gilder Boathouse and by the New Haven Rowing Club.  It is also host to the Derby Sweeps & Sculls and the Head of the Housatonic.

The Housatonic River is also a popular fly fishing destination. Fly fishing on the Housatonic River has been compared with western rivers and is among the finest for trout in the eastern United States.  The most popular area for fly fishing is in Litchfield County, Connecticut, between the dam at Falls Village and Cornwall Bridge.

The Appalachian Trail follows the river along this section from the Bulls Bridge covered wooden bridge near Kent to Falls Village.

Major crossings

As U.S. Route 7 runs along the Housatonic River Valley between Pittsfield and New Milford, it crosses the Housatonic several times.

See also

List of Connecticut rivers
List of Massachusetts rivers

References

Citations

Notes

External links

Housatonic Valley Association
Housatonic River Initiativer-Riverkeeper
GE's Website reviewing the options for Housatonic River cleanup
Charles Ives, Three Places in New England, Music Web
Watershed map
Connecticut Explorer's Guide, Online paddling map of the Housatonic River
GE/Housatonic River Site: Introduction, US EPA

Long Island Sound
Milford, Connecticut
Rivers of Berkshire County, Massachusetts
Rivers of Fairfield County, Connecticut
Rivers of Litchfield County, Connecticut
Rivers of New Haven County, Connecticut
Connecticut placenames of Native American origin
Massachusetts placenames of Native American origin
Rowing venues in the United States
Stratford, Connecticut
Rivers of Massachusetts
Rivers of Connecticut
Wild and Scenic Rivers of the United States

Housatonic River


Zenon Eugene Kohut (; born 18 January 1944) is a Canadian historian specializing in early modern Ukrainian history. He retired as professor emeritus, University of Alberta.  From 1992 to 2014 Kohut worked at the University of Alberta's Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies where he served as the first head of the Stasiuk Program for the Study of Contemporary Ukraine and acted as editor of the Journal of Ukrainian Studies (1990–92). He was acting director (1993) and director (1994–2012) of the Program.

Personal background
Zenon Kohut was born in Yaniv (Ivano-Frankove), Galicia (Ukraine). After the Second World War Kohut's parents emigrated with him as political refugees to the United States and settled in Philadelphia.

Educational background
Zenon Kohut attended La Salle College in Philadelphia (BA 1966) and the University of Pennsylvania (MA 1970, PhD 1975).

Professional background
During the years 1973–75 and 1977–78 Kohut was a research associate at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and Harvard University's Russian Research Center. In between his Harvard stints he taught Russian and Ukrainian history at the University of Pennsylvania (1975–6).  He then taught at Michigan State University (1979–80), Yale University (Visiting Professor 1988) and the University of Alberta where he held the rank of Professor of History. Dr.  Kohut also worked as editor of the American Bibliography of Soviet and East European Studies (1980–84) and as a senior research analyst at the Library of Congress (1984–89). Government work and he spent time at the U.S. Department of Defense as a Soviet political affairs analyst (1990–92).

Published works
 Kohut, Zenon. Russian Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy. Imperial Absorption of the Hetmanate, 1760s–1830s, Harvard University Press, 1989.
 Kohut, Zenon. Making Ukraine Studies on Political Culture, Historical Narrative, and Identity, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2011.
 Historical Dictionary of Ukraine (with Bohdan Y. Nebesio and Myroslav Yurkevich), Lanham and London, 2005.
 Korinnia identychnosti:Studii z rannoomodernoi ta modernoi istorii Ukrainy (Roots of Identity: Studies on Early Modern and Modern Ukraine), Kyiv: Krytyka Press, 2004).
 Culture, Nation, and Identity: The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter (1600-1945). Edited by Andreas Kappeler, Zenon E. Kohut, Frank E. Sysyn, and Mark von Hagen. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2003.
 History as a Battleground: Russian-Ukrainian Relations and Historical Consciousness in Contemporary Ukraine Saskatoon: Heritage Press, 2002.
 "The Question of Russo-Ukrainian Unity and Ukrainian Distinctiveness" in Early Modern Ukrainian Thought and Culture, Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #280 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 2001)
 Rosiis'kyi tsentralizm i ukrains'ka avtonomiia. Likvidatsiia Het'manshchyna. (Russian Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy: The Abolition of the Hetmanate). Kyiv, Osnovy Press, 1996.
 Co-edited Early Modern Ukraine. Special issue of the Journal of Ukrainian Studies, vol. 17, nos.1-2 (Summer–Winter, 1992)

Articles
 "Pereiaslavs'ka uhoda ta ideia spokonvichnykh prav Ukrainy v politychnii ta istorychnii dumtsi Het'manshchyny" (The Pereiaslav Agreement and the Concept of Perpetual Rights of Ukraine in the Political and Historical Thought of the Hetmanate) Ukrains'kyi arkheohrafichnyi shchorichnyk (Ukrainian Archeographic yearbook), Vol. 13/14 (Kyiv, 2006): 291–297.
 "Tsarstvo, dynastiia, ta etnos: Dva rann'omoderni pohliady na rosiis'ku istoriiu" (Tsardom, Dynasty, and Etnos: Two Early-Modern Views of Russian History), Materialy V kongresu Mizhnarodnoi asotsiatsii ukrainistiv. Istoriia: Zbirnyk naukovykh statei. (Materials of the Fifth Congress of the International Association of Ukrainianists. History: Collection of Scholarly Articles), Part 2 (Chernivtsi, 2004): 51-55
 "Ot Iafeta do Moskvy: protsess sozdaniia bibleiskoi rodoslovnoi slavian v pol'skoi, ukrainskoi i russkoi istoriografii (XVII-XVIII vv.)" (From Japhet to Moscow: The Process of Establishing a Biblical Genealogy of the Slavs in Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian Historiography [XVII-XVIII vv.]), Ukraina i sosednie gosudarstva v XVII veke. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii (Ukraine and Neighboring States in XVII century. Materials of an International Conference). (St. Petersburg, 2004): 59-82
 "A Dynastic or Ethno-Dynastic Tsardom? Two Early Modern Concepts of Russia," Extending the Borders of Russian History: Essays in Honor of Alfred J. Rieber, edited by Marsha Siefert. (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2003) pp. 17–30.
 "The Khmelnytsky Uprising, the image of Jews, and the shaping of Ukrainian historical memory," Jewish History, 17, no. 2 (2003), pp. 141–163.
 "The Question of Russo-Ukrainian Unity and Ukrainian Distinctiveness in Early Modern Ukrainian Thought and Culture," Culture, Nation, and Identity: The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter (1600-1945), pp. 57–86.
 "Origins of the Unity Paradigm: Ukraine and the Construction of Russian National History (1620-1860)," Eighteenth-Century Studies 35, no. 1 (2002), pp. 70–76; A Russian-language version of this article also appeared in Ab Imperio, no. 1-2 (2001), pp. 73–85.
 "The Image of Jews in Ukraine's Intellectual Tradition: The Role of Istoriia Rusov, "in Zvi Gitelman, Lubomyr Hajda, John-Paul Himka, and Roman Solchanyk eds., Cultures and Nations of Central and Eastern Europe: Essays in Honor of Roman Szporluk. (Cambridge, MA, 2000), pp. 343-358.
 "In Search of Early Modern Ukrainian Statehood: Post-Soviet Studies of the Cossack Hetmanate," Journal of Ukrainian Studies, 24, no.  2 (Winter 1999) [actually published in the Spring 2002], pp. 101–112.
 "Zustrich z Rosiyeiu: kul'turni tendentsii ta politychni pohliady v rann'ovovitnii Ukraiini," (Encounters with Russia: Cultural Tendencies and Political Views in Early Modern Ukraine) Suchasnist' 9 (1996, Kyiv), pp. 67–76 (in Ukrainian).
 "Ukrainian-Russian Relations in Historical Perspective," Europe 3 (1996, Beijing), pp. 79–97 (in Chinese).

References

External links
 Zenon Kohut at Encyclopedia of Ukraine

1944 births
Living people
20th-century Canadian historians
21st-century Canadian historians
Historians of Ukraine
LaSalle College alumni
Ukrainian SSR emigrants to the United States
Academic staff of the University of Alberta
University of Pennsylvania alumni
American emigrants to Canada
World War II refugees
Political refugees in the United States

Zenon Kohut


The Usual Suspects is a 1995 mystery crime thriller film directed by Bryan Singer and written by Christopher McQuarrie. It stars Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne, Benicio del Toro, Chazz Palminteri, Kevin Pollak, Pete Postlethwaite, and Kevin Spacey.

The plot follows the interrogation of Roger "Verbal" Kint, a small-time con man, who is one of only two survivors of a massacre and fire on a ship docked at the Port of Los Angeles. Through flashback and narration, Kint tells an interrogator a convoluted story of events that led him and his criminal companions to the boat, and of a mysterious crime lord—known as Keyser Söze—who controlled them.

The film was shot on a $6 million budget and began as a title taken from a column in Spy magazine called The Usual Suspects, after one of Claude Rains' most memorable lines in the classic film Casablanca, and Singer thought that it would make a good title for a film.

The film was shown out of competition at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival and then initially released in a few theaters. It received favorable reviews and was eventually given a wider release. The praise was towards the mystery elements, the screenplay, the plot twist and Spacey's performance. McQuarrie won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and Spacey won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. The Writers Guild of America ranked the film as having the 35th greatest screenplay of all time.

Plot
Career criminal Dean Keaton lies badly wounded on a ship docked in San Pedro Bay. He is confronted by a mysterious figure he calls "Keyser," who shoots him dead and sets fire to the ship. The next day, the police recover 27 bodies and only two survivors: Arkosh Kovash ("Ákos Kovács"), a Hungarian mobster hospitalized with severe burns, and Roger "Verbal" Kint, a physically disabled con artist. U.S. Customs agent Dave Kujan flies to Los Angeles from New York City to interrogate Verbal. The men are left alone in a borrowed office belonging to LAPD police sergeant Jeff Rabin while FBI agent Jack Baer visits a hospitalized Kovash. The events that led Keaton, Verbal, and their associates onto the ship are then described by Verbal via flashback.

Six weeks earlier in New York City, Keaton and Verbal are arrested alongside fellow criminals Michael McManus, Fred Fenster, and Todd Hockney and placed in a police lineup as suspects in a truck hijacking that none of them admits to participating in. Believing the police were unfairly harassing them, McManus proposes they pull a heist to get revenge on the NYPD. Trying to go straight, Keaton initially refuses but eventually agrees to help rob a jewel smuggler being escorted by corrupt cops, netting millions in emeralds and getting over fifty cops arrested after leaking their activities to the press. They then go to California to fence the jewels through a man named Redfoot, who connects them with another jewel heist, but it goes badly and the contents are instead revealed to be China White (synthetic heroin). The men learn that the job was arranged by a lawyer named Kobayashi, who says he arranged for their arrests in New York and that his employer, mysterious Turkish crime lord Keyser Söze, from whom each of the men has unwittingly stolen, has ordered them to raid a ship holding Argentinian drug dealers and destroy $91 million worth of cocaine being sold on board. The cash brought for the exchange will be their reward.

During Kujan's interrogation, he learns that there was no cocaine on the ship, and Söze was seen onboard. At the hospital, Baer learns that Kovács has seen Söze and has a sketch artist begin making a picture.  Verbal then tells Kujan a legend about Söze: he was a small-time drug runner who murdered his own family when they were being held hostage by Hungarian mobsters, then massacred the mobsters and their families before disappearing, and from then on conducted business only indirectly through underlings who are mostly unfamiliar with their true employer. Söze thus became a fearsome urban legend, "a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night."

Concluding his story, Verbal reveals that Fenster was killed after trying to flee; the men then threatened Kobayashi, only to accept the assignment when he threatened their loved ones. The men attacked the ship during the night, killing several Argentinian and Hungarian gangsters before discovering that there was no cocaine. An unseen assailant killed Hockney, McManus, Keaton, and a prisoner in one of the ship's cabins. The mysterious figure then set fire to the ship as Verbal looked on from a hiding place on the dock.

Kujan deduces that Keaton must be Söze, as the prisoner killed on the ship was Arturo Marquez, a smuggler who escaped prosecution by claiming that he could identify Söze. Marquez was represented by lawyer Edie Finneran, Keaton's girlfriend, who was recently murdered. Kujan claims that the Argentinians took Marquez to sell him to Söze's Hungarian rivals. Keaton then used the assault so that he could kill Marquez personally and fake his own death. Verbal finally confesses that Keaton had been behind everything, but refuses to testify in court. Verbal's bail is posted, and he is released.

Moments later, Kujan realizes Verbal seemingly fabricated his entire story, improvising on the spot by piecing together details from random items in Rabin's cluttered office. Verbal walks outside, gradually losing his limp and flexing his supposedly disabled hand. As Kujan pursues Verbal, a fax arrives at the police station with the artist's facial composite of Söze. The picture resembles Verbal, revealing that he was Söze the entire time. Söze enters a car driven by "Kobayashi" and leaves, moments before Kujan arrives on the scene.

Cast
 Kevin Spacey as Roger "Verbal" Kint:  Singer and McQuarrie sent the screenplay for the film to Spacey without telling him which role was written for him. Spacey called Singer and told them that he was interested in the roles of Keaton and Kujan but was also intrigued by Kint who, as it turned out, was the role McQuarrie wrote with Spacey in mind.
 Gabriel Byrne as Dean Keaton:  Kevin Spacey met Byrne at a party and asked him to do the film. He read the screenplay and turned it down, thinking that the filmmakers could not pull it off. Byrne met screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie and Singer and was impressed by the latter's vision for the film. However, Byrne was also dealing with some personal problems at the time and backed out for 24 hours until the filmmakers agreed to shoot the film in Los Angeles, where Byrne lived, and make it in five weeks.
 Chazz Palminteri as Agent Dave Kujan:  Singer had always wanted Palminteri for the film, but he was always unavailable. The role was offered to Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro, both of whom turned it down. The filmmakers even had Al Pacino come in and read for the part, but he decided not to do it because he had just played a cop in Heat. Pacino would later say it was the one film he has regretted turning down the most. Palminteri became available, but only for a week. When he signed on, this persuaded the film's financial backers to support the film fully because he was a sufficiently high-profile star, thanks to the recent releases of A Bronx Tale and Bullets Over Broadway.
 Stephen Baldwin as Michael McManus:   Baldwin was tired of doing independent films where his expectations were not met; when he met with director Bryan Singer, he went into a 15-minute tirade telling him what it was like to work with him. After Baldwin was finished, Singer told him exactly what he expected and wanted, which impressed Baldwin.
 Benicio del Toro as Fred Fenster:   Spacey suggested del Toro for the role. The character was originally written with a Harry Dean Stanton-type actor in mind. Del Toro met with Singer and the film's casting director and told them that he did not want to audition because he did not feel comfortable doing them. After reading the script, del Toro realized that his character's only purpose was to be killed to demonstrate Söze's power, and did not have any meaningful impact on the story. As a result, del Toro developed Fenster's unique, garbled speech pattern to make him more memorable as a character.
 Kevin Pollak as Todd Hockney:   He met with Singer about doing the film, but when he heard that two other actors were auditioning for the role, he came back, auditioned, and got the part.
 Pete Postlethwaite as Kobayashi
 Suzy Amis as Edie Finneran
 Giancarlo Esposito as FBI Agent Jack Baer
 Dan Hedaya as Sergeant Jeff Rabin
 Cástulo Guerra as Arturo Marquez
 Peter Greene as Redfoot (uncredited)
 Scott B. Morgan as Keyser Söze (in flashbacks) (uncredited)

Production

Origins
Bryan Singer met Kevin Spacey at a party after a screening of the young filmmaker's first film, Public Access, at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. Spacey had been encouraged by a number of people he knew who had seen it, and was so impressed that he told Singer and his screenwriting partner Christopher McQuarrie, that he wanted to be in whatever film they did next. Singer read a column in Spy magazine called "The Usual Suspects" after Claude Rains' line in Casablanca. Singer thought that it would be a good title for a film. When asked by a reporter at Sundance what their next film was about, McQuarrie replied, "I guess it's about a bunch of criminals who meet in a police line-up," which incidentally was the first visual idea that he and Singer had for the poster: "five guys who meet in a line-up," Singer remembers. The director also envisioned a tagline for the poster, "All of you can go to Hell." Singer then asked the question, "What would possibly bring these five felons together in one line-up?" McQuarrie revamped an idea from one of his own unpublished screenplays — the story of a man who murders his own family and disappears. The writer mixed this with the idea of a team of criminals.

Söze's character is based on John List, a New Jersey accountant who murdered his family in 1971 and then disappeared for almost two decades, assuming a new identity before he was ultimately apprehended. McQuarrie based the name of Keyser Söze on one of his previous supervisors, Kayser Sume, at a Los Angeles law firm where he worked, but decided to change the last name because he thought that his former boss would object to how it was used. He found the word söze in his roommate's English-to-Turkish dictionary, which translates as "talk too much". All the characters' names are taken from staff members of the law firm at the time of his employment. McQuarrie had also worked for a detective agency, and this influenced the depiction of criminals and law enforcement officials in the script.

Singer described the film as Double Indemnity meets Rashomon, and said that it was made "so you can go back and see all sorts of things you didn't realize were there the first time. You can get it a second time in a way you never could have the first time around." He also compared the film's structure to Citizen Kane (which also contained an interrogator and a subject who is telling a story) and the criminal caper The Anderson Tapes.

Pre-production
McQuarrie wrote nine drafts of his screenplay over five months, until Singer felt that it was ready to shop around to the studios. None were interested except for a European financing company. McQuarrie and Singer had a difficult time getting the film made because of the non-linear story, the large amount of dialogue and the lack of cast attached to the project. Financiers wanted established stars, and offers for the small role of Redfoot (the L.A. fence who hooks up the five protagonists with Kobayashi) went out to Christopher Walken, Tommy Lee Jones, Jeff Bridges, Charlie Sheen, James Spader, Al Pacino, and Johnny Cash. However, the European money allowed the film's producers to make offers to actors and assemble a cast. They were able to offer the actors only salaries that were well below their usual pay, but they agreed because of the quality of McQuarrie's script and the chance to work with one another. That money fell through, and Singer used the script and the cast to attract PolyGram to pick up the film negative.

About casting, Singer said, "You pick people not for what they are, but what you imagine they can turn into." To research his role, Spacey met doctors and experts on cerebral palsy and talked with Singer about how it would fit dramatically in the film. They decided that it would affect only one side of his body. According to Byrne, the cast bonded quickly during rehearsals. Del Toro worked with Alan Shaterian to develop Fenster's distinctive, almost unintelligible speech patterns. According to the actor, the source of his character's unusual speech patterns came from the realization that "the purpose of my character was to die." Del Toro told Singer, "It really doesn't matter what I say, so I can go really far out with this and really make it uncomprehensible."

Filming
The budget was set at $5.5 million, and the film was shot in 35 days in Los Angeles, San Pedro and New York City. Spacey said that they shot the interrogation scenes with Palminteri over a span of five to six days. These scenes were also shot before the rest of the film. The police lineup scene ran into scheduling conflicts because the actors kept blowing their lines. Screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie would feed the actors questions off-camera and they improvised their lines. When Stephen Baldwin gave his answer, he made the other actors break character. Byrne remembers that they were often laughing between takes and "when they said, 'Action!', we'd barely be able to keep it together." Spacey also said that the hardest part was not laughing through takes, with Baldwin and Pollak being the worst culprits. Their goal was to get the usually serious Byrne to crack up. They spent all morning trying unsuccessfully to film the scene. At lunch, a frustrated Singer angrily scolded the five actors, but, when they resumed, the cast continued to laugh through each take. Byrne remembers, "Finally, Bryan just used one of the takes where we couldn't stay serious." Singer and editor John Ottman used a combination of takes and kept the humor in to show the characters bonding with one another.

While Del Toro told Singer how he was going to portray Fenster, he did not tell his cast members, and in their first scene together none of them understood what Del Toro was saying. Byrne confronted Singer and the director told him that for the lockup scene, "If you don't understand what he's saying maybe it's time we let the audience know that they don't need to know what he's saying." This led to the inclusion of Kevin Pollak's improvised line, "What did you say?"

The stolen emeralds were real gemstones on loan for the film.

Singer spent an 18-hour day shooting the underground parking garage robbery. According to Byrne, by the next day Singer still did not have all of the footage that he wanted, and refused to stop filming in spite of the bonding company's threat to shut down the production.

In the scene in which the crew meets Redfoot after the botched drug deal, Redfoot flicks his cigarette at McManus' face. The scene was originally to have Redfoot flick the cigarette at McManus's chest, but the actor missed and hit Baldwin's face by accident. Baldwin's reaction is genuine.

Despite enclosed practical locations and a short shooting schedule, cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel "developed a way of shooting dialogue scenes with a combination of slow, creeping zooms and dolly moves that ended in tight close-ups," to add subtle energy to scenes. "This style combined dolly movement with "imperceptible zooms" so that you'd always have a sense of motion in a limited space."

In December 2017, amid several sexual misconduct allegations against Spacey, Byrne said that, at one point during shooting, production was shut down for two days because Spacey made unwanted sexual advances toward a younger actor. Singer, who has himself been accused of sexual misconduct against minors, has denied that Spacey behaved inappropriately on the set of the film. However, Kevin Pollak, in a 2018 episode of his podcast Kevin Pollak's Chat Show, told another version of the story involving Spacey engaging in sexual acts with Singer's young French boyfriend with only several days left in the production, which disrupted filming and led to a bitter ruination of their relationship.

Post-production
During the editing phase, Singer thought that they had completed the film two weeks early, but woke up one morning and realized that they needed that time to put together a sequence that convinced the audience that Dean Keaton was Söze — and then do the same for Verbal Kint because the film did not have "the punch that Chris had written so beautifully." According to Ottman, he assembled the footage as a montage but it still did not work until he added an overlapping voice-over montage featuring key dialogue from several characters and had it relate to the images. Early on, executives at Gramercy had problems pronouncing the name Keyser Söze and were worried that audiences would have the same problem. The studio decided to promote the character's name. Two weeks before the film debuted in theaters, "Who is Keyser Söze?" posters appeared at bus stops, and TV spots told people how to say the character's name.  In contrast with these efforts, all the actors in the film consistently mispronounce his name as "Soze", one syllable with a silent e, instead of "Söze".

Singer wanted the music for the boat heist to resemble Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. The ending's music was based on a k.d. lang song.

Release
Gramercy ran a pre-release promotion and advertising campaign before The Usual Suspects opened in the summer of 1995. Word of mouth marketing was used to advertise the film, and buses and billboards were plastered with the simple question, "Who is Keyser Söze?"

The film was shown out of competition at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival and was well received by audiences and critics. The film was then given an exclusive run in Los Angeles, where it took a combined $83,513, and New York City, where it made $132,294 on three screens in its opening weekend. The film was then released in 42 theaters where it earned $645,363 on its opening weekend. It averaged a strong $4,181 per screen at 517 theaters and the following week added 300 locations. It eventually made $23.3 million in the United States and Canada. It grossed $43.6 million internationally for a worldwide total of $66.9 million.

Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has received a rating of 88%, based on 81 reviews, with an average rating of 7.80/10. The site's consensus reads, "Expertly shot and edited, The Usual Suspects gives the audience a simple plot and then piles on layers of deceit, twists, and violence before pulling out the rug from underneath." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 77 out of 100, based on 22 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Roger Ebert, in a review for the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film one and a half stars out of four, writing that it was confusing and uninteresting: "To the degree that I do understand, I don't care." He also included the film in his "most hated films" list. USA Today rated the film two and a half stars out of four, calling it "one of the most densely plotted mysteries in memory—though paradoxically, four-fifths of it is way too easy to predict."

Rolling Stone praised Spacey, saying his "balls-out brilliant performance is Oscar bait all the way." In his review for The Washington Post, Hal Hinson wrote, "Ultimately, The Usual Suspects may be too clever for its own good. The twist at the end is a corker, but crucial questions remain unanswered. What's interesting, though, is how little this intrudes on our enjoyment. After the movie you're still trying to connect the dots and make it all fit—and these days, how often can we say that?"

In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin praised the performances of the cast: "Mr. Singer has assembled a fine ensemble cast of actors who can parry such lines, and whose performances mesh effortlessly despite their exaggerated differences in demeanor ... Without the violence or obvious bravado of Reservoir Dogs, these performers still create strong and fascinatingly ambiguous characters." The Independent praised the film's ending: "The film's coup de grace is as elegant as it is unexpected. The whole movie plays back in your mind in perfect clarity—and turns out to be a completely different movie to the one you've been watching (rather better, in fact)."

Accolades

At the 68th Academy Awards, Kevin Spacey won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and Christopher McQuarrie won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. In his acceptance speech, Spacey said, "Well, whoever Keyser Söze is, I can tell you he's gonna get gloriously drunk tonight."

Legacy
On June 17, 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its "AFI's 10 Top 10"—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. The Usual Suspects was acknowledged as the tenth-best mystery film. Verbal Kint was voted the #48 villain in "AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains" in June 2003.

Entertainment Weekly cited the film as one of the "13 must-see heist movies". Empire ranked Keyser Söze #69 in their "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters" poll. In August 2016, James Charisma of Paste ranked The Usual Suspects among Kevin Spacey's greatest film performances.

In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked the screenplay #35 on its list of 101 Greatest Screenplays ever written.

Remake
In India, a critically panned Hindi-language adaptation of The Usual Suspects, titled Chocolate, was released in 2005.

See also
 Heist film

References

External links

1990s American films
1995 drama films
1990s English-language films
1990s German films
1990s heist films
1990s mystery films
1995 crime thriller films
1995 films
American crime thriller films
American heist films
American mystery films
American neo-noir films
American nonlinear narrative films
Anthony Award-winning works
Bad Hat Harry Productions films
BAFTA winners (films)
Edgar Award-winning works
Fiction about familicide
Fiction with unreliable narrators
Filicide in fiction
Films about con artists
Films directed by Bryan Singer
Films featuring a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award-winning performance
Films produced by Bryan Singer
Films scored by John Ottman
Films set in Los Angeles
Films set in New York City
Films shot in California
Films shot in New York City
Films whose writer won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award
Films whose writer won the Best Original Screenplay BAFTA Award
Films with screenplays by Christopher McQuarrie
German nonlinear narrative films
Gramercy Pictures films
PolyGram Filmed Entertainment films
Spelling Films films

The Usual Suspects


Jiří Tlustý (born 16 March 1988) is a Czech former professional ice hockey left winger. He was originally a first-round draft pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 2006 NHL Entry Draft, and split time between the Maple Leafs and the Toronto Marlies of the American Hockey League (AHL) until he was traded to the Carolina Hurricanes in December 2009. Tlustý was also drafted by Atlant Moscow of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) on 1 June 2009, 43rd overall.

Playing career

Amateur
As a youth, Tlustý played in the 2002 Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament with a team from Chomutov.

Whilst playing for HC Kladno in his native Czech Republic, Tlustý was drafted in the first round, 13th overall, by the Toronto Maple Leafs at the 2006 NHL Entry Draft. On 14 July, several weeks after his selection, Tlustý signed a three-year, entry-level contract with the Maple Leafs, wearing jersey number 41 in the team's training camp. On 25 September, he was assigned to the Toronto Marlies, the Maple Leafs' American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate, where he began his professional career by scoring three goals and one assist in six games to begin the 2006–07 season. On 23 October, however, he was assigned to the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds to begin his major junior career.

Tlustý was assigned to Sault Ste. Marie of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) for the 2006–07 season, the holders of his major junior playing rights. In Tlustý's first 13 games of his OHL career, he sustained a high-ankle sprain that kept him out of the lineup for nearly six weeks as he attended treatment in Toronto. The injury also kept him from joining the Czech junior team at the 2007 World Junior Championships after initially being named to the pre-tournament roster.

Tlustý made his return to the Greyhounds lineup in mid-January 2007, finishing his first season in the OHL with 13 goals, 21 assists for 34 points in 37 games. With Tlustý back in the lineup, the Greyhounds made a strong finish leading into the playoffs and scored an upset in the first round, eliminating the Saginaw Spirit in six games. In the next round, the team faced the London Knights, ultimately losing in seven games. In the playoffs, Tlustý excelled, scoring nine goals and eight assists for 17 points in just 13 games.

Professional
Ahead of the 2007–08 season, Tlustý attended the Maple Leafs' prospect camp tournament, where he played in all four tournament games, scoring three goals and adding one assist for four points. After the prospects' camp, Tlustý then attended the Maple Leafs' training camp and participated in the pre-season action. He played five games in the pre-season, recording one assist and eventually making the final cuts before ultimately being assigned to the AHL again. He played in five games in the AHL, scoring one goal and two assists, before being called-up to the NHL for the first time. On 25 October, he made his NHL debut in a game against the Pittsburgh Penguins, scoring two goals. His first came off a shot from Alexander Steen that deflected off of Tlustý's backside and into the net. Thirty-five seconds later, he scored with a wrist shot from the wing. He later recorded his first career NHL assist in a game on 2 November. After originally wearing jersey number 41 in the NHL, he later switched to number 11.

On 15 January 2009, Tlustý registered an NHL career-high of three points, all assists, in a game against the Carolina Hurricanes. The next month, on 18 February, after being reassigned to the Marlies, Tlustý scored five goals on just five shots in a game against the Syracuse Crunch, setting a franchise record for most goals scored in one game by a Marlies player, and the first player to score five goals in an AHL game since Jarkko Immonen did so in 2006. On 4 March, still with the Marlies, Tlustý set another franchise record, this time for most points in a game against the Providence Bruins; he finished with two goals and four assists for six points in a 6–4 Marlies victory.

On 3 December 2009, during the 2009–10 season, Tlustý was traded to the Carolina Hurricanes in exchange for forward Philippe Paradis. Tlustý scored his first goal for the Hurricanes on 11 December 2009, against the Washington Capitals in his first game for the club. On 1 July 2010, he signed a one-year, one-way contract with Carolina worth US$500,000. On 1 July 2011, Tlustý again signed a one-year, one-way contract with Carolina, this time worth US$525,000.

Tlustý set career-highs of 18 goals and 36 points during the 2011–12 season and was subsequently re-signed by the Hurricanes to a two-year, $3.2 million contract extension.

Tlustý again set a new career-high in goals (23) and points (38) during the lockout-shortened 2012–13 season. Tlustý, playing alongside NHL All-Stars Eric Staal and Alexander Semin, discovered a new-found scoring touch that led him to finish tied for fifth in goal-scoring in the NHL.

On 25 February 2015, during the 2014–15 season and with Tlustý in the final year of his contract and with the Hurricanes out of Stanley Cup playoff contention, he was traded to the Winnipeg Jets in exchange for a third-round draft pick in 2016 and a conditional sixth-round draft pick in 2015.

On 16 September 2015, Tlustý signed a one-year, one-way contract with the New Jersey Devils. In the 2015–16 season with the Devils, Tlustý was hampered with injury and a lack of productivity in a depth role, recording lows of 2 goals and 4 points in 30 games.

As an un-signed free agent over the following summer, on 20 September 2016, Tlustý agreed to a professional try-out contract to participate in the training camp of the Colorado Avalanche. He was subsequently released from his try-out with the Avalanche after failing to pass the initial medical and physical test. On 31 October 2016, Tlustý signed a try-out contract with Finnish based, Oulun Kärpät of the Liiga. He appeared in 14 games in Kärpät before he was released following his trial period due to lingering injury on 12 December 2016.

Personal

In mid-November 2007, photos of Tlustý, one of which was of him nude, appeared on the Internet, causing a media frenzy. Tlustý took the photos with his cell phone while still playing for Sault Ste. Marie the previous season. The photos of Tlustý first appeared on Canadian gossip site isthishappening.com, after which Tlustý retained the Toronto law firm Adair Morse, which began threatening some websites that had put the photos up with legal action. He issued a press release saying, "I used poor judgment in this instance and I have learned a valuable lesson." A second set of photos, reportedly taken during a night at a bar, was also circulating on the Internet. One photo showed Tlustý with his tongue out towards a male friend who was leaning in over his shoulder. This photo was published as the full-front page photo of the 14 November 2007, issue of the Toronto Sun.

Career statistics

Regular season and playoffs

International

References

External links

1988 births
Living people
Albany River Rats players
Carolina Hurricanes players
Charlotte Checkers (2010–) players
Czech expatriate ice hockey players in Canada
Czech expatriate ice hockey players in the United States
Czech ice hockey left wingers
Rytíři Kladno players
National Hockey League first-round draft picks
New Jersey Devils players
Oulun Kärpät players
People from Slaný
Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds players
Toronto Maple Leafs draft picks
Toronto Maple Leafs players
Toronto Marlies players
Winnipeg Jets players
Ice hockey people from the Central Bohemian Region
Czech expatriate ice hockey players in Finland

Jiří Tlustý


SearchOhio is a consortium of public libraries in the state of Ohio that provides borrowing access to more than 10 million library items, including books, movies and music, providing easy access to information and rapid delivery of library materials throughout the state. It was established in 2006.

Cardholders at any participating library can request items online through the SearchOhio catalog (powered by INN-Reach, a product of Innovative Interfaces) to be delivered to their library in 3–5 business days. Items are shipped back to the owning library on return.

Participating libraries
SearchOhio makes public library collections available to the communities served by the following libraries (as of September 2017).

Akron-Summit County Public Library
Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County
Clermont County Public Library
Cuyahoga County Public Library
Cuyahoga Falls Library
Delaware County District Library
Greene County Public Library
Kent Free Library
The Lane Libraries
Louisville Public Library
Mansfield/Richland County Public Library
Massillon Public Library
Mentor Public Library
MidPointe Library System
Portage County District Library
Reed Memorial Library
Rodman Public Library
Salem Public Library
Stark County District Library
Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library
Toledo-Lucas County Public Library
Wadsworth Public Library
Warren-Trumbull County Public Library
Washington-Centerville Public Library
Westerville Public Library
Westlake Porter Public Library
Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County

References

External links
 SearchOhio catalog
 SearchOhio wiki

Library consortia in Ohio
2006 establishments in Ohio

SearchOhio


Albert Diamond Cohen,  LLD (January 20, 1914 – November 21, 2011) was a Canadian entrepreneur, community builder, philanthropist, and Officer of the Order of Canada.  He was Chairman, Co-President and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Gendis Inc., a Toronto Stock Exchange listed Canadian real estate and investment company headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba.  At one time, Gendis held a 51% stake in Sony of Canada and owned the SAAN Stores retail chain.

He was the author of several books:  The Entrepreneurs: The Story of Gendis Inc...The Triangle of Success: The Gendis/Saan Story...The Story of SAAN...and...I.D.E.A.  His latest and last book, published in the fall of 2010, was titled Reminiscences of an Entrepreneur - How Sony came to Canada and then to the World in 1955.  His interest and talent for writing stemmed from his close personal friendship with the late British author Ian Fleming.

Cohen was married to Irena Cohen (née Kankova) from 1953 until his death, and they had three children:  Anthony, James, and Anna-Lisa. He died at the age of 97 years, 10 months, in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Background
Cohen came from a poor immigrant family of eight, born in Winnipeg, Manitoba as the son of Alexander and Rose (Diamond) Cohen, and he served with the Royal Canadian Navy from 1942 to 1945.

Albert's five brothers, John C. (Chauncey), Harry B. Cohen, Morley Cohen, Samuel N. Cohen, and Joseph H. Cohen set up a small retail store and, by 1939, the family had scraped together enough monies to create General Distributors Ltd., a wholesale import firm.

Sony and the Cohen Brothers

By 1950, General Distributors sales amounted to $1 million. In 1952, the company obtained exclusive Canadian rights for Paper Mate pens. Albert negotiated the sale of Papermate in Canada to the Gillette (brand) Company of Boston, Massachusetts in 1955 whereby Gendis continued to distribute the Papermate pen in Canada until 1962 when Gillette fully took over. Then, in 1955, Cohen accomplished the feat of landing the Canadian distribution rights to Sony products.  Spotting an ad in a Japanese newspaper seeking a distributor for a new portable transistor radio, Cohen met with Sony co-founder, Akio Morita.  On the basis of a handshake deal, Cohen cemented a partnership that would last for decades.  The Cohen brothers scattered across Canada in order to manage the national business, each brother establishing himself in a major city:   Morley (Montreal), John (Toronto), Joe (Vancouver), Harry (Calgary), and both Sam and Albert setting up headquarters (Winnipeg).  Gendis' stake in Sony of Canada was sold back to Sony Corporation of Tokyo, Japan in 1995 for $207,000,000.  This was a crowning achievement for Albert, the man who launched Sony's first national export business. In recognition of his forty-year association with Sony, Albert received the Sony Lifetime Achievement Award in Tokyo in 2000.

SAAN, Metropolitan, real estate, and the Cohen Brothers
The six brothers expanded into real estate and retailing.  Over the years, they established several hundred SAAN Stores as well as Metropolitan and Greenberg junior department stores in all provinces of Canada. The explosive growth of the SAAN Stores chain was guided by Samuel N. Cohen while Metropolitan's expansion was overseen by Morley Cohen.  By 1983, the company was a diversified Canadian conglomerate, renamed Gendis. SAAN Stores was eventually sold in 2004 to a Toronto based investor group and sold again in 2008 to Genuity Capital, owner of The Bargain! Shop discount chain.

At one point, it is said the Cohen brothers owned downtown real estate in almost every major Canadian city.  Albert began to accumulate real estate in downtown Winnipeg starting in the early 1960s and Gendis finally sold its city block of property to Manitoba Hydro in 2003 for $16.2 million to allow for construction of the new Manitoba Hydro headquarters which officially opened in September 2009.

Oil & gas, and the Cohen Brothers
Under Albert's guidance, the six brothers participated in various joint ventures and/or owned several minority interests in oil & gas exploration, development, and distribution. The companies included Tripet Resources; Chauvco Resources; Pioneer Natural Resources; Fort Chicago Energy Partners L.P.; and Tundra Oil & Gas. Fort Chicago Energy Partners was renamed Veresen Inc. in 2011.

Gendis today

Through a variety of investment companies, the Cohen family is the largest shareholder of Gendis Inc., as well as major shareholders of Veresen Inc., (TSX-listed), and privately held OSUM Oilsands Corporation, both of Calgary, Alberta.  James Cohen (Albert's youngest son) is the President and CEO of Gendis Inc., President of Gendis Realty, and served as interim President and Chief Operating Officer of SAAN Stores in 2004 during the sale of the retail chain. Today the company is focused on investments in three areas: commercial real estate, energy and the agribusiness sector.

Philanthropy
Cohen was considered to be one of the major community builders/philanthropists in Winnipeg and he was a large contributor to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Manitoba Theatre Centre, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Manitoba Opera, and various Winnipeg hospitals.

Several of his notable accomplishments include:

 Founding Member, Canada-Japan Business Council
 Former President, Manitoba Theatre Centre (1968–1969, 1970–1971, 1976–1981)
 Former President, Winnipeg Clinic Research Institute (1975–1980)
 Former President, Dr. Paul Thorlakson Research Foundation (1978–1980)
 Past Commissioner, Metric Board, Ottawa (1978)

Awards

 Man of the Year, Sales and Advertising Club, Winnipeg (1974)
 Member of the Order of Canada (1983)
 International Distinguished Entrepreneur Award (IDEA), University of Manitoba, [(Asper School of Business)] (1983)
 National Business Book Award, The Entrepreneurs: the Story of Gendis (1986)
 Honorary Doctorate, University of Manitoba (1987)
 The Albert D. Cohen Building at St. John's-Ravenscourt School (1990)
 Order of Excellence Achievement Award, Manitoba Sport Directorate (renamed Sport Manitoba) (1990)
 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Medal (1992)
 Officer of the Order of Canada (1994)
 Canadian Business Hall of Fame (1994)
 Albert D. Cohen Management Library at the University of Manitoba's Asper School of Business
 Sony Lifetime Achievement Award (2000)
 Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal (2002)
 Order of the Rising Sun, 3rd Class, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon (Japan) (2011)
 Manitoba Business Hall of Fame Inductee (2013)

While Cohen has collected an array of awards for business achievements and community service during his life, he was particularly proud of the fact that he holds three Canadian speed skating records in Master 5 Class (over 70 age category), as per the Ottawa Amateur Speedskating Association.

General references

References

1914 births
2011 deaths
Businesspeople from Winnipeg
Canadian chief executives
Jewish Canadian philanthropists
Officers of the Order of Canada
Recipients of the Order of the Rising Sun, 3rd class
Royal Canadian Navy personnel of World War II
20th-century Canadian philanthropists

Albert D. Cohen


Mayday is a 1979 thriller novel by American author Thomas Block.  The novel was updated in 1998 by authors Thomas Block and Nelson DeMille and re-released as a paperback.

Plot summary
A supersonic passenger jet flying over the Pacific Ocean is struck by an errant missile. Due to the effects of decompression and oxygen deprivation, all but a handful are incapacitated.  Three survivors must attempt to land the airplane, despite attempts to cover up the disaster.

Film adaptation

Mayday was adapted in a television film that premiered on CBS-TV as a Sunday night movie on October 2, 2005.  The movie stars Aidan Quinn, Gail O'Grady, Dean Cain, Charles Dutton, Michael Murphy, and Kelly Hu.

The name of the airline in the original novel was Trans-United (a possible merger between TWA and United), but changed in the movie to Pacific Global (a fictional airline from another thriller novel, Shadow 81 by Lucien Nahum). Other differences included navy pilot Peter Matos refusing to destroy the stricken airliner and diverting to an aircraft carrier (he was originally tricked into ditching his plane at sea), Harold Stein staying on board the flight (in the novel, he committed suicide by jumping from the airliner with his wife) and insurer Wayne Metz replaced by Anne Metz.

References

External links
 Mayday on Nelson DeMille's Official Website
 Mayday on Thomas Block's Official Website

1979 American novels
Novels by Nelson DeMille
Novels by Thomas Block
Aviation novels
American novels adapted into films
American novels adapted into television shows

Mayday (novel)


Dienedione, also known as estra-4,9-diene-3,17-dione, is a synthetic, orally active anabolic-androgenic steroid (AAS) of the 19-nortestosterone group that was never introduced for medical use. It is thought to be a prohormone of dienolone. The drug became a controlled substance in the US on January 4, 2010, and is classified as a Schedule III anabolic steroid under the United States Controlled Substances Act. Previous to this, it was sold as a bodybuilding supplement within the United States, and often mistakenly marketed as a prohormone for trenbolone, a veterinary steroid. Prior to its scheduling, it was part of a number of supplements that were seized during FDA enforcement of Bodybuilding.com for selling unapproved new drugs. The actual active metabolite, dienolone, is almost identical to trenbolone structurally, but lacks the C11 double bond.

See also
 Androstenedione
 Bolandiol
 Bolandione
 Boldione

References

Androgens and anabolic steroids
Estranes

Dienedione


Jeanne Renée Deneuve (10 September 1911 – 11 July 2021), known professionally as Renée-Jeanne Simonot, was a French actress and voice artist. She was married to actor Maurice Dorléac, the mother of actresses Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac and the grandmother of actor Christian Vadim and actress Chiara Mastroianni.

Early life and career
Born in Le Havre, France to Joseph-Sévère Deneuve and Antoinette-Jeanne Deneuve (née Schenardi), she debuted at the Odéon Theatre in 1918 at the age of seven. Primarily a stage actress, she remained there for 28 years, holding the post of "leading lady". Her daughter Catherine chose to use her maiden name, Deneuve, as her stage name. Simonot is Renée's stage name, which she took from an opera singer and family friend.

Renée Simonot was one of the first French actresses to begin the dubbing of American films in France from the beginning of the talkies in 1929 through the 1930s. She was the voice of Olivia de Havilland (in most of her films), Sylvia Sidney, Judy Garland, Donna Reed and Esther Williams, among others.

Personal life
She had her first daughter, Daniele, out of wedlock on 27 October 1936 with actor Aimé Clariond. Simonot told Le Point magazine in 2013: "Mr. Clariond was not my husband. He was married, not divorced and separated from his wife for a long time. The only happiness he gave me is a child. For the rest, he was charming, but we could not count on him."

While dubbing for MGM, she met Maurice Dorléac and they married in 1940. The couple had three daughters: Françoise (1942–1967), Catherine (born 22 October 1943) and Sylvie (born 14 December 1946).

Simonot had been a widow since 1979 and lived in Paris. In an interview conducted a few months before her 102nd birthday in 2013, she said: "My old age is not sad. I am lucky to be very surrounded. There is not a day where I don't get a phone call or a visit from my children and grandchildren."

In 2019, ahead of her 108th birthday, daughter Catherine told Gala: "It's pretty amazing, it comes from her genes. My sisters and I are holding her. She has been in a home for two or three years. At the same time it's a little scary, it still seems very far in life. I am all the more surprised by her longevity that she is not sick."

Simonot died in Paris in July 2021 at the age of 109.

Selected stage work
1921: Les Misérables (Cosette) by Paul Meurice and Charles Hugo based on the novel by Victor Hugo, Odéon Theatre
1922: Molière by  and , directed by Firmin Gémier, Odéon Theatre
1928: La Belle Aventure by Gaston Arman de Caillavet, Robert de Flers and Étienne Rey, Odéon Theatre
1932: Le Favori by Martial Piéchaud, Odéon Theatre
1934: Jeanne d'Arc by Saint-Georges de Bouhélier, Odéon Theatre

References

1911 births
2021 deaths
20th-century French actresses
Dorléac family
French centenarians
French child actresses
French film actresses
French people of Norman descent
French stage actresses
French voice actresses
Actresses from Le Havre
Women centenarians

Renée Simonot


An underwater acoustic positioning system is a system for the tracking and navigation of underwater vehicles or divers by means of acoustic distance and/or direction measurements, and subsequent position triangulation. Underwater acoustic positioning systems are commonly used in a wide variety of underwater work, including oil and gas exploration, ocean sciences, salvage operations, marine archaeology, law enforcement and military activities.

Method of operation
Figure 1 describes the general method of operation of an acoustic positioning system, this is an example of a long baseline (LBL) positioning system for ROV

Baseline station deployment and survey

Acoustic positioning systems measure positions relative to a framework of baseline stations, which must be deployed prior to operations.  In the case of a long-baseline (LBL) system, a set of three or more baseline transponders are deployed on the sea floor.  The location of the baseline transponders either relative to each other or in global coordinates must then be measured precisely. Some systems assist this task with an automated acoustic self-survey, and in other cases GPS is used to establish the position of each baseline transponder as it is deployed or after deployment.

Tracking or navigation operations

Following the baseline deployment and survey, the acoustic positioning system is ready for operations.  In the long baseline example (see figure 1), an interrogator (A) is mounted on the ROV that is to be tracked.  The interrogator transmits an acoustic signal that is received by the baseline transponders (B, C, D, E). The reply of the baseline transponders is received again at the ROV. The signal time-of-flight or the corresponding distances A-B, A-C, A-D and A-E are transmitted via the ROV umbilical (F) to the surface, where the ROV position is computed and displayed on a tracking screen.  The acoustic distance measurements may be augmented by depth sensor data to obtain better positioning accuracy in the three-dimensional underwater space.

Acoustic positioning systems can yield an accuracy of a few centimeters to tens of meters and can be used over operating distance from tens of meters to tens of kilometers.  Performance depends strongly on the type and model of the positioning system, its configuration for a particular job, and the characteristics of the underwater acoustic environment at the work site.

Classes

Underwater acoustic positioning systems are generally categorized into three broad types or classes

Long-baseline (LBL) systems, as in figure 1 above, use a sea-floor baseline transponder network.  The transponders are typically mounted in the corners of the operations site.  LBL systems yield very high accuracy of generally better than 1 m and sometimes as good as 0.01m along with very robust positions This is due to the fact that the transponders are installed in the reference frame of the work site itself (i.e. on the sea floor), the wide transponder spacing results in an ideal geometry for position computations, and the LBL system operates without an acoustic path to the (potentially distant) sea surface.

Ultra-short-baseline (USBL) systems  and the related super-short-baseline (SSBL) systems rely on a small (ex. 230 mm across), tightly integrated transducer array that is typically mounted on the bottom end of a strong, rigid transducer pole which is installed either on the side or in some cases on the bottom of a surface vessel. Unlike LBL and SBL systems, which determine position by measuring multiple distances, the USBL transducer array is used to measure the target distance from the transducer pole by using signal run time, and the target direction by measuring the phase shift of the reply signal as seen by the individual elements of the transducer array.  The combination of distance and direction fixes the position of the tracked target relative to the surface vessel.  Additional sensors including GPS, a gyro or electronic compass and a vertical reference unit are then used to compensate for the changing position and orientation (pitch, roll, bearing) of the surface vessel and its transducer pole.  USBL systems offer the advantage of not requiring a sea floor transponder array.  The disadvantage is that positioning accuracy and robustness is not as good as for LBL systems. The reason is that the fixed angle resolved by a USBL system translates to a larger position error at greater distance. Also, the multiple sensors needed for the USBL transducer pole position and orientation compensation each introduce additional errors. Finally, the non-uniformity of the underwater acoustic environment cause signal refractions and reflections that have a greater impact on USBL positioning than is the case for the LBL geometry.

Short-baseline (SBL) systems use a baseline consisting of three or more individual sonar transducers that are connected by wire to a central control box. Accuracy depends on transducer spacing and mounting method. When a wider spacing is employed as when working from a large working barge or when operating from a dock or other fixed platform, the performance can be similar to LBL systems.  When operating from a small boat where transducer spacing is tight, accuracy is reduced.  Like USBL systems, SBL systems are frequently mounted on boats and ships, but specialized modes of deployment are common too. For example, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution uses a SBL system to position the Jason deep-ocean ROV relative to its associated MEDEA depressor weight with a reported accuracy of 9 cm

GPS intelligent buoys (GIB) systems are inverted LBL devices where the transducers are replaced by floating buoys, self-positioned by GPS. The tracked position is calculated in realtime at the surface from the Time-Of-Arrival (TOAs) of the acoustic signals sent by the underwater device, and acquired by the buoys. Such configuration allow fast, calibration-free deployment with an accuracy similar to LBL systems. At the opposite of LBL, SBL or USBL systems, GIB systems use one-way acoustic signals from the emitter to the buoys, making it less sensitive to surface or wall reflections. GIB systems are used to track AUVs, torpedoes, or divers, may be used to localize airplanes black-boxes, and may be used to determine the impact coordinates of inert or live weapons for weapon testing and training purposes references: Sharm-El-Sheih, 2004; Sotchi, 2006; Kayers, 2005; Kayser, 2006; Cardoza, 2006 and others...).

History and examples of use

An early use of underwater acoustic positioning systems, credited with initiating the modern day development of these systems, involved the loss of the American nuclear submarine USS Thresher on 10 April 1963 in a water depth of 2560m.  An acoustic short baseline (SBL) positioning system was installed on the oceanographic vessel USNS Mizar.  This system was used to guide the bathyscaphe Trieste 1 to the wreck site.  Yet, the state of the technology was still so poor that out of ten search dives by Trieste 1, visual contact was only made once with the wreckage.  Acoustic positioning was again used in 1966, to aid in the search and subsequent recovery of a nuclear bomb lost during the crash of a B-52 bomber at sea off the coast of Spain.

In the 1970s, oil and gas exploration in deeper waters required improved underwater positioning accuracy to place drill strings into the exact position referenced earlier thorough seismic instrumentation and to perform other underwater construction tasks.

But, the technology also started to be used in other applications.  In 1998, salvager Paul Tidwell and his company Cape Verde Explorations led an expedition to the wreck site of the World War 2 Japanese cargo submarine I-52 in the mid-Atlantic. Resting at a depth of 5240 meters, it had been located and then identified using side scan sonar and an underwater tow sled in 1995. War-time records indicated the I-52 was bound for Germany, with a cargo including 146 gold bars in 49 metal boxes.  This time, Mr. Tidwell's company had hired the Russian oceanographic vessel, the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh with its two manned deep-ocean  submersibles MIR-1 and MIR-2 (figure 3). In order to facilitate precise navigation across the debris field and assure a thorough search, MIR-1 deployed a long baseline transponder network on the first dive. Over a series of seven dives by each submersible, the debris field was progressively searched. The LBL positioning record indicated the broadening search coverage after each dive, allowing the team to concentrate on yet unsearched areas during the following dive.  No gold was found, but the positioning system had documented the extent of the search.

In recent years, several trends in underwater acoustic positioning have emerged.  One is the introduction of compound systems such the combination of LBL and USBL in a so-called LUSBL configuration to enhance performance. These systems are generally used in the offshore oil & gas sector and other high-end applications.  Another trend is the introduction of compact, task optimized systems for a variety of specialized purposes. For example, the California Department of Fish and Game commissioned a system (figure 4), which continually measures the opening area and geometry of a fish sampling net during a trawl. That information helps the department improve the accuracy of their fish stock assessments in the Sacramento River Delta.

Water-proof smart devices like Apple Watch Ultra and Garmin Descent have been introduced to function as dive computers. These devices have a depth gauge sensor, provide a dive profile, and safety alerts for fast ascents and mandatory safety stops using the depth data. In 2023, University of Washington researchers demonstrated a fourth class of 3D underwater positioning for these smart devices that does not require infrastructure support like buoys. Instead they use distributed localization techniques by computing the pairwise distances between a network of diver devices to determine the shape of the resulting network topology. Combining this with depth sensor data from these devices, the lead diver can then compute the relative 3D positions of all the other diver devices.

References

External links
 Safran Electronics & Defense Naval solutions
 IXBLUE Subsea navigation and positioning
 Underwater GPS at ACSA Underwater GPS

Navigation
Surveying
Oceanography
Shipbuilding
Watercraft components
Geopositioning

Underwater acoustic positioning system


Vasvár (, , Latin: (formerly) ), is a town in Vas County, Hungary.

History

While the Ottomans occupied most of central Europe, the region north of lake Balaton remained in the Kingdom of Hungary (1538–1867) (captaincy between Balaton and Drava).  The town was the head of the EISENBURG comitat near 1850. Until 1918, VASVÁR was part of the Austrian monarchy, province of Hungary; in Transleithania after the compromise of 1867 in the Kingdom of Hungary.

During World War II, Vasvár was captured on 31 March 1945 by Soviet troops of the 3rd Ukrainian Front in the course of the Nagykanizsa–Körmend Offensive.

References

See also
 Peace of Vasvár
 Vasvári kistérség (hu)

Populated places in Vas County

Vasvár


Moulvi Fakhre Alam (1922–1991) was a zamindar, lawyer and politician in Budaun District. He was, for most of his career, associated with the Indian National Congress Party. He represented Usehat constituency in the 8th Legislative Assembly of UP.

Early life and education

Alam was born on 22 March 1922 in Budaun, in Khandan-e-Bani Hameed, a clan of erstwhile Qazis and Zamindars. His father, Maulvi Ikram Alam, was a well known Zamindar, lawyer and politician of the region and played an active part in the state's politics. He was a member of the District Board of Budaun. He also served as the Chief Legal Advisor of Rampur State during the reign of Nawab Hamid Ali Khan and Nawab Raza Ali Khan.

Alam was initially educated at Govt. High School, Budaun. He received his law degree from Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh.

Political career
Upon the death of his father Ikram Alam in 1942, Fakhre Alam inherited the zamindari and was a zamindar of several villages in Budaun District until the abolition of zamindari in 1952.

Alam was active in youth politics at an early age. He served as the National Secretary of All India Muslim Students Federation, the youth wing of Muslim League.

He contested his first election in 1951 for Budaun Municipality. He was elected as its member consecutively for three terms, in 1951, 1953 and 1957. He also served as the Education Chairman of Budaun Municipality. In 1957, he was appointed by the UP Govt. as District Govt. Counsel (Civil) for Budaun District. He held this office from 1957 to 1967 and 1969.

In 1969, Alam contested the assembly election from Budaun on Indian National Congress's ticket, but he came second, losing to Jan Sangh's Kishanswaroop Vaish by 10,000 votes. From then onwards, Alam became much active in the state's politics with the Congress Party. Alam, along with SK Goel, Raja Purshottamlal Bhadwar, Asrar Ahmad, Mir Mazhar Ali and others became the key leaders of the Congress Party in Budaun District. In 1973, Akbar Ali Khan, the then Governor of Uttar Pradesh, paid a visit to Alam in Budaun.

In 1974, 1977 and 1980, he contested assembly elections from Usehat, Budaun. During these elections, several key politicians of the Indian National Congress including Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, Jagjivan Ram, Kamlapati Tripathi, Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna, Ammar Rizvi and others met him at Budaun.
In the 1980 assembly elections, he contested from the breakaway faction of congress, Indian National Congress (Urs) and made a landslide victory by defeating INC(I) candidate Nirottam Singh. Following the elections, he became the leader of the Congress Urs Legislature party in UP Assembly.

After 1985, though his health declined, he still remained active in state politics. He played an active role during the Babri Masjid Movement, and was made the Chairman of Babri Masjid Action Committee.

Death and legacy
After 1985, his health started to decline. In November 1991, he was in Delhi for his routine checkup. In the evening of 17 November 1991, he had a severe heart attack and died several minutes later at UP Bhavan, New Delhi.

He was laid to rest in Jogipura (Bijnor) in the graveyard of Dargah Najafe Hind.

Alam had a very kind and gentle attitude towards the general public, especially the poor. He was much loved and respected by the people of Budaun and was affectionately called "Moulvi Fakhre Alam" or "Moulvi Sahab", meaning "learned man".

1922 births
1991 deaths
Indian National Congress politicians
Indian National Congress (U) politicians

Moulvi Fakhrey Alam


United States v. Williams, 553 U.S. 285 (2008), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that a federal statute prohibiting the "pandering" of child pornography (offering or requesting to transfer, sell, deliver, or trade the items) did not violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, even if a person charged under the code did in fact not possess child pornography with which to trade.

The decision overturned the Eleventh Circuit's ruling that the statute was facially void for overbreadth and vagueness.  The Supreme Court reasoned that there is no First Amendment protection for offers to engage in illegal transactions, and that banning "the collateral speech that introduces such material into the child-pornography distribution network" does not in fact criminalize a "substantial amount of protected speech."

Background
On April 26, 2004, as part of an undercover operation aimed at combating child exploitation on the Internet, Special Agent (SA) Timothy Devine, United States Secret Service, Miami Field Office, entered an Internet "chat" room using the screen name "Lisa n Miami" (LNM). Devine observed a public message posted by a user employing a sexually graphic screen name, which was later traced to the defendant, Michael Williams. Williams's public message stated that "Dad of toddler has 'good' pics of her an [sic] me for swap of your toddler pics, or live cam." Devine, as "LNM", engaged Williams in a private Internet chat during which they swapped non-pornographic photographs. Williams provided a photograph of a two to three-year-old female lying on a couch in her bathing suit, and five photographs of a one to two-year-old female in various non-sexual poses, one of which depicted the child with her chest exposed and her pants down just below her waistline. Devine sent a non-sexual photo of a college-aged female digitally regressed to appear 10–12 years old, who LNM claimed was her daughter.

After the initial photo exchange, Williams claimed that he had nude photographs of his four-year-old daughter, stating "I've got hc [hard core] pictures of me and dau, and other guys eating her out—do you?" Williams asked for additional pictures of "LNM"'s daughter. When these pictures were not received, Williams accused Devine of being a police officer. Devine responded by accusing Williams of being a police officer. After repeating these accusations in the public part of the chat room, Williams posted a message stating "HERE ROOM; I CAN PUT UPLINK CUZ IM FOR REAL—SHE CANT." The message was followed by a computer hyperlink, which Devine accessed. The computer hyperlink contained, among other things, seven images of actual minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct. The nude children in the photos were approximately five to fifteen years old, displaying their genitals and/or engaged in sexual activity.

Secret Service agents executed a search warrant of Williams's home. Two computer hard drives seized during the search held at least 22 images of actual minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct or lascivious display of genitalia. Most of the images depicted prepubescent children and also depicted sado-masochistic conduct or other depictions of pain. Williams was charged with one count of promoting, or "pandering," material "in a manner that reflects the belief, or that is intended to cause another to believe," that the material contains illegal child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(3)(B), which carries a 60-month mandatory minimum sentence. Williams was also charged with one count of possession of child pornography under 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B). Williams filed a motion to dismiss the pandering charge on the grounds that 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(3)(B) is unconstitutionally overbroad and vague. While the motion was pending before the trial court, the parties reached a plea agreement by which Williams would plead guilty to both counts but reserve his right to challenge the constitutionality of the pandering provision on appeal. The court sentenced Williams to 60 months.

Important notes/dictation
The Court further stated that  would not be construed to punish the solicitation or offering of "virtual" (computer generated/animated) child pornography, thus comporting with the holding of Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, .

United States v. Panfil, 338 F.3d 1299, 1300 (11th Cir. 2003).
"Pandering" is defined as the catering to or exploitation of the weaknesses of others, especially "to provide gratification for others' desires." As a legal concept, pandering is most commonly associated with prostitution. In that context, pandering provisions are statutes penalizing various acts by intermediaries who engage in the commercial exploitation of prostitution and are aimed at those who, as agents, promote prostitution rather than against the prostitutes themselves. The term pandering, in some instances, is applied by Congress and the courts to the promotion of obscenity. See, e.g., 39 U.S.C. § 3008 (prohibiting pandering advertisements of sexually provocative materials by mail), Ginzburg v. United States, 383 U.S. 463, 86 S. Ct. 942, 16 L.Ed.2d 31 (1966) (considering obscene nature of erotically advertised publications). Congress has characterized both the child pornography regulation at issue in this case (18 U.S.C. 2252A(a)(3)(B)) and its unconstitutional predecessor (18 U.S.C. § 2256(8)(D) (1996)) as "pandering" provisions. imprisonment for the pandering charge and sixty
months for the possession charge, to be served concurrently.

In keeping with Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002), The Court stated that "an offer to provide or request to receive virtual child pornography is not prohibited by the statute. A crime is committed only when the speaker believes or intends the listener to believe that the subject of the proposed transaction depicts real children. It is simply not true that this means 'a protected category of expression [will] inevitably be suppressed,' post, at 13. Simulated child pornography will be as available as ever."

See also

References

External links

 United States Department of Justice cache

United States Supreme Court cases
United States Supreme Court cases of the Roberts Court
United States Free Speech Clause case law
Child pornography law
Void for vagueness case law
2008 in United States case law

United States v. Williams (2008)


Love in a Veil is a 1718 comedy play by the British writer Richard Savage. It was inspired by a seventeenth century play by the Spanish writer Pedro Calderón de la Barca. The cast included Charles Williams as Lorenzo, Henry Norris as Alonzo, John Mills as Sir Charles Winlove, John Thurmond as Don Philip, William Mills as Diego, Anna Maria Seymour as Leonora, Mary Willis as Fidelia and Joe Miller as Aspin.

References

Bibliography
 Burling, William J. A Checklist of New Plays and Entertainments on the London Stage, 1700-1737. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1992.
 Hogan, Floriana Tarantino.The Spanish Comedia and the English Comedy of Intrigue with Special Reference to Aphra Behn. Boston University, 1995.

1718 plays
British plays
West End plays

Love in a Veil


Mahatet El Raml () is a neighborhood in Alexandria, Egypt. It features a large public square containing the main station of the Alexandria tramways. It is one of the main centers for tourism, retail, and entertainment in the city.

One of the defining features of Mahatet El Raml is the specialization of vendors along certain streets (e.g. sellers of electrical and electronic equipment congregate in Nabi Danial Street). These vendors also attract tourists, helped by the presence of several hotels, including international chains such as Sofitel, restaurants, and entertainment venues. The Alexandria Opera House and Alexandria Creativity Center, venues for traditional and non-traditional performing arts respectively, are also located in the neighborhood.

See also
 Neighborhoods in Alexandria

Populated places in Alexandria Governorate
Neighbourhoods of Alexandria

Mahatet El Raml


The Royal Library of the Netherlands (Dutch: Koninklijke Bibliotheek or KB; Royal Library) is the national library  of the Netherlands. It is based in The Hague. It was founded in 1798. The KB collects everything that is published in the Netherlands. It also collection everything about the Netherlands. This includes anything from medieval literature to today's publications (books, newspapers, etc.). There are about 7 million publications in the stockrooms of the library. This includes books, newspapers, magazines and maps. The KB also offers many digital services. The main service is the national online Library. It has e-books and audiobooks. Other digital services include Delpher (millions of digitised pages) and The Memory. Since 2015, the KB has helped to bring together many institutions to make a large digital library.

History
Representative Albert Jan Verbeek had the idea to create a national library. He suggested this on August 17, 1798. The basis of the collection would be William V's confiscated book collection. The library was officially founded as the Nationale Bibliotheek on November 8 1798. This was after a group of representatives gave advice for the creation of a national library on the same day. At first, the National Library was only open to members of the Representative Body.

King Louis Bonaparte (the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte) gave called the national library the Royal Library in 1806. Napoleon Bonaparte transferred the Royal Library to The Hague as property, while also allowing the Imperial Library in Paris to expropriate publications from the Royal Library. In 1815 King William I of the Netherlands confirmed the name of 'Royal Library' (Dutch: Koninklijke Bibliotheek) by royal resolution. It has been known as the National Library of the Netherlands since 1982, when it opened new quarters. The institution became 'Independent Administrative Body' of the state in 1996, although it is financed by the Department of Education, Culture and Science. On 18 November 2014 the Wsob (Public Library Facilities System Act or 'Library Act') came into being. The act became valid on 1 January 2015 and from this moment onwards four organizations from the library world continued under the name Koninklijke Bibliotheek. These organizations are Sector Institute Public Libraries (SIOB), the Foundation Bibliotheek.nl (BNL), the Digital Library for Dutch Literature (DBNL) and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB).

Collection
The humanities are central to the collection of the KB, with an emphasis on Dutch history, language and culture.

In 2016, the KB contained 7,000,000 items, equivalent to 115 kilometers of bookshelves. Most items in the collection are books. There are also pieces of "grey literature", where the author, publisher, or date may not be apparent but the document has cultural or intellectual significance. The collection contains almost the entire literature of the Netherlands, from medieval manuscripts to modern scientific publications. As there was no law for depositing Dutch publication the library started on January 1 1974 the voluntary Dutch Repository Library. This in contrast with most other countries that have a legal deposit of publications. For a publication to be accepted, it must be from a registered Dutch publisher.

The collection is accessible for members. Any person aged 16 years or older can become a member. One day passes are also available. Requests for material take approximately 30 minutes. The KB hosts several open access websites, including the "Memory of the Netherlands" (Geheugen van Nederland), Digital Library for Dutch Literature and Delpher, an archive of more than 100 million pages as of 2020.

Literature museum
The Literature museum (in Dutch: Literatuurmuseum) was founded in 1750 as Nederlands Letterkundig Museum, The museum contains a large collection of letters, manuscripts and memorabilia. The museum has three permanent and several temporary exhibitions. It also contains a special children's book museum. On 4 February 2016, an online museum was opened. On 1 November 2016, the museum was renamed to Literature museum. The museum has a reading room with an extensive collection of newspaper clipping, and under certain conditions, some archival material can be consulted.

Research
The KB's Research Department is engaged in internationally renowned research in the field of digital technology, sustainable preservation and accessibility of both paper and digital heritage. Important topics are the applicability of artificial intelligence, the use of big data, the increasing importance of privacy & security, the changes in the publishing and publishing world and the role of public libraries in today's society.

Related pages
List of libraries in the Netherlands
European Library
Nederlandse Centrale Catalogus (Dutch Central Catalog)
Books in the Netherlands

References

Other websites

Literature museum (in Dutch)

1798 establishments in Europe
Dutch culture
Netherlands
The Hague
Organizations based in the Netherlands

Royal Library of the Netherlands