The Central Boulevards (, ) are a series of grand boulevards in central Brussels, Belgium. They were constructed following the covering of the river Senne (1867–1871), as part of the major urban works by the architect Léon Suys under the tenure of the city's then-mayor, Jules Anspach. They are from south to north and from west to east: the /, the Boulevard Anspach/Anspachlaan, the Boulevard Adolphe Max/Adolphe Maxlaan, and the /.

The covering of the Senne and the completion of the Central Boulevards allowed the construction of the modern public buildings which are focal to downtown Brussels today, including the former Brussels Stock Exchange and the Midi Palace, as well as the reconstruction of the Greater Sluice Gate, south of the city.

History

Origins: covering of the Senne

The Senne/Zenne (French/Dutch) was historically the main waterway of Brussels, but it became more polluted and less navigable as the city grew. By the second half of the 19th century, it had become a serious health hazard and was filled with pollution, garbage and decaying organic matter. It flooded frequently, inundating the lower town and the working class neighbourhoods which surrounded it.

Numerous proposals were made to remedy this problem, and in 1865, the then-mayor of the City of Brussels, Jules Anspach, selected a design by the architect Léon Suys to cover the river and build a series of grand boulevards and public buildings. The project faced fierce opposition and controversy, mostly due to its cost and the need for expropriation and demolition of working-class neighbourhoods. The construction was contracted to a British company, but control was returned to the government following an embezzlement scandal. This delayed the project, but it was still completed in 1871.

The covering of the Senne brought boulevards to the heart of Brussels, whereas they had hitherto been limited to the Small Ring, a series of roadways built on the site of the 14th-century walls bounding the historic city centre. The boulevards, whose initial function was to go around the capital, thus became structural urban thoroughfares. The central boulevards' completion also allowed urban renewal and the construction along them of the modern public buildings of Haussmann-esque style which are characteristic of downtown Brussels today.

Construction and development
The Central Boulevards—the / (now the /), the / (now the Boulevard Anspach/Anspachlaan), the / (now the Boulevard Adolphe Max/Adolphe Maxlaan), and the / (now the /)—were laid out between 1869 and 1871, and were progressively opened to traffic from 1871 to 1873. The opening of these new routes offered a more efficient way to get into Brussels' lower town than the cramped streets such as the /, the / and the Rue Neuve/Nieuwstraat, and helped revitalise the lower quarters of the town.

In order to accomplish this revitalisation and attract investment, public buildings were constructed as part of Léon Suys' massive programme of beautification of the city centre, including the Brussels Stock Exchange (1868–1873). The vast Central Halls (, ), a good example of metallic architecture, located between the / and the /, replaced unhygienic open-air markets, though they were torn down in 1958. The monumental fountain, which was to break the monotony of the boulevards at the Place Fontainas/Fontainasplein, was abandoned for budgetary reasons.

The construction of private buildings on the boulevards and surrounding areas took place later. Brussels' middle class continued to prefer living in new suburbs rather than the cramped areas of the city centre. Besides, the high prices of the land (expected to finance part of the construction costs) and the high rents were not within the means of the lower classes. Moreover, life in apartments was no longer desirable for residents of Brussels, who preferred to live in single family homes. For these reasons, the buildings constructed by private citizens had difficulty finding buyers.

To give builders an incentive to create elaborate and appealing facades on their works, two architectural competitions were organised; first in the period 1872–1876 and again in 1876–1878. Great freedom was given to the architects; no unity of style was sought nor imposed and the monumental composition adopted a de facto eclectic approach throughout the immense perspective of the boulevards. The first prize of 20,000 Belgian francs for the 1872–1876 competition was awarded to Henri Beyaert who designed the  or  (loosely, "House of Cats") on the Boulevard du Nord. Nonetheless, it took another 20 years, until 1895, for buildings to solidly line the boulevards.

Contemporary (1945–present)

The covering of the Senne and the construction of the Central Boulevards have left deep traces in Brussels' historic centre. The formerly working-class districts have made way for apartment buildings and for the Stock Exchange with its commercial district, department stores, luxury hotels, concert halls, cafés and brasseries. From the end of the Second World War until the late 1970s, the Central Boulevards were subject to urban planners' failed attempts to transform them into urban motorways (see Brusselisation). In spite of this, they have mostly retained their 19th-century appearance to this day.

Since 29 June 2015, the Central Boulevards have been pedestrianised between the Place de la Bourse/Beursplein and the Place de Brouckère/De Brouckèreplein, as part of a broader pedestrianisation of Brussels' city centre (). The area, covering , includes much of the historic centre within the Small Ring, such as the Grand-Place/Grote Markt, the Place de Brouckère and the Boulevard Anspach.

The boulevards

Boulevard Maurice Lemonnier
Formerly named the /, the / stretches from the / to the Place Fontainas/Fontainasplein. Interrupted halfway by the Place Anneessens/Anneessensplein (former location of the Old Market), this artery is characterised by a homogeneous succession of low-rise buildings for the most part, bourgeois dwellings with a predilection for the neoclassical style, apartment buildings, and commercial buildings such as the Midi Palace. In 1919, the city council ordered the boulevard to be renamed in honour of the alderman and patriot Maurice Lemonnier (1860–1930), who returned from a long captivity as a prisoner in Germany during World War I. Some remarkable buildings along this relatively well-preserved stretch include the Midi Palace, the Model School (currently Charles Buls Primary School), the former Municipal School no. 13 (currently the ) on the Place Anneessens, as well as the old Castellani rotunda (now transformed into a parking lot).

Boulevard Anspach

Central by its original name as much as by its location, the Boulevard Anspach/Anspachlaan connects the Place Fontainas to the Place de Brouckère. In 1879, it was renamed in honour of Jules Anspach (1829–1879), the former mayor of the City of Brussels who instigated these works. Among the most important buildings on the Central Boulevards are concentrated there: the former Brussels Stock Exchange building, major shops and entertainment venues, and formerly markets and department stores (Grand Bazar Anspach and Grands Magasins de la Bourse). Large buildings, several of which bear the signature of the French promoter Mosnier, are adjacent to hotels (Grand Hotel and Hotel Central), cafés, cinemas, theatres, and concert halls (Pathé Palace cinema, Bourse Theatre and Ancienne Belgique). Some remarkable buildings on this section include the former Stock Exchange on the Place de la Bourse, as well as Anspach Gallery.

Boulevard Adolphe Max

Unlike the other sections of the Central Boulevards, the Boulevard Adolphe Max/Adolphe Maxlaan (formerly the /) does not cover the Senne. It doubles with the / and connects the Place de Brouckère to the /, forming a "Y" crossroad with the Boulevard Émile Jacqmain. It is characterised by five-level buildings on average, monumental in appearance for the most part. A dozen of them belong to the Haussmann-esque vein in the Second Empire style. Others, of neoclassical inspiration, are distinguished by the decoration of their balconies, windows, and pediments. In 1919, it was renamed in honour of the then-mayor of the City of Brussels, Adolphe Max (1869–1939). Remarkable buildings on this stretch include the House of Cats, the entrance of the Northern Passage glazed shopping arcade, as well as the luxurious Hotel Le Plaza and Hotel Atlanta.

Boulevard Émile Jacqmain
Connecting the Place de Brouckère to the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique and the /, the Boulevard Émile Jacqmain forms the western branch of the fork which marks the northern end of the Central Boulevards. Sumptuous in its time, the former / (because it follows the course of the river) was bordered by apartment buildings, commercial buildings, luxury hotels, town houses, and some bourgeois dwellings, which have now mostly been replaced by offices. Eclectic styles dominate with a good representation of the Second Empire. Functionalism and Art Deco are also represented by some buildings typical of the interwar period.

See also

 List of streets in Brussels
 Haussmann's renovation of Paris
 History of Brussels
 Belgium in "the long nineteenth century"

References

Notes

Bibliography

Streets in Brussels
City of Brussels
19th century in Brussels
Urban planning in Belgium
Car-free zones in Europe
Subterranean rivers

Central Boulevards of Brussels


Chin chin is a fried snack from Nigeria. It is known as atchomon in Togo and Benin, achomo in Ghana, and croquette or Chin Chin in Cameroon.

It is similar to the Scandinavian snack klenat, a crunchy, donut-like baked or fried dough of wheat flour. Chin chin may contain cowpeas. Many people bake it with ground nutmeg for added flavor.

The dough is usually kneaded and cut into small one-inch (or so) squares, about a quarter of an inch thick, before frying.

Ingredients
Chin chin is made of dough containing flour, sugar, butter, and milk. Optional ingredients include eggs, sugar and baking powder according to individual preference. The dough is cut into various shapes and sizes, then typically deep-fried in vegetable oil.

Gallery

References

Doughnuts
Snack foods

Chin chin


Podocarpaceae is a large family of mainly Southern Hemisphere conifers. There are about 156 species of evergreen trees and shrubs. It has up to 19 genera. The distribution of this family suggests its early evolution took place in the ancient southern continent of Gondwana.

The family is a member of the Antarctic flora. Its main centres of diversity are in Australasia, particularly New Caledonia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. They are also in Malesia and South America (mainly in the Andes mountains).

Several genera extend north of the equator into Indochina and the Philippines. Podocarpus goes as far north as southern Japan and southern China in Asia, and Mexico in the Americas, and Nageia into southern China and southern India. Two genera also occur in sub-Saharan Africa, the widespread Podocarpus and the endemic Afrocarpus.

Parasitaxus usta is unique as the only known parasitic gymnosperm. It occurs on New Caledonia, where it is parasitic on another member of the Podocarpaceae, Falcatifolium taxoides.

References

Conifers
Plant families

Podocarpaceae


Isaäc Jan Hendrik Isbrücker (born 1944) is a retired Dutch ichthyologist who specialised in the scientific classification of South American catfish (Loricarioidea).

Life and work
Between 1960 and 1985 Isbrücker was a keeper of the aquarium in the Amsterdam Zoo. He then became responsible for fish collection of the Zoological Museum in Amsterdam, which was transferred to the Naturalis Centre in Leiden in 2011. Between 1969 and 2006 Isbrücker appeared of author or co-author of more than 80 publications, in which he described roughly a dozen new fish species, including the genus Hypancistrus. His work focuses on the taxonomy of the armored catfish.

Species named in his honour include:
 a cichlid Crenicichla isbrueckeri, Ploeg, 1991)
 an armored catfish (Hypostomus isbrueckeri, R. E. dos Reis, C. Weber & L. R. Malabarba, 1990
 a catfish (Corydoras isbrueckeri, Knaack, 2004)

See also
:Category:Taxa named by Isaäc J. H. Isbrücker

References

1944 births
Living people
Dutch ichthyologists

Isaäc J. H. Isbrücker


The Imbangala or Mbangala were divided groups of warriors and marauders who worked as hired mercenaries in 17th-century Angola and later founded the Kasanje Kingdom.

Origins
The Imbangala were people, possibly from Central Africa, who appeared in Angola during the early 17th century. Their origins are still debated. There is general agreement that they were not the same Jagas that attacked the Kingdom of Kongo during the reign of Alvaro I.

In the 1960s, Jan Vansina and David Birmingham hypothesized that the oral traditions of the Lunda Empire suggested that both groups of Jaga marauders originated in the Lunda Empire (present-day Democratric Republic of Congo and Zambia) under leader Kinguri and had fled 1550 and 1612. Another theory is that the Imbangala were a local people of southern Angola originating from the Bie Plateau or the coastal regions west of the highlands.

The first witness account of the Imbangala, written by an English sailor named Andrew Battell, who lived with them for 16 months around 1600–1601, places them firmly in the coastal regions and highlands of modern Angola, just south of the Kwanza River. Their leaders told Battell that they had come from a place called Elembe and that they had originated from a "page" in its army. Battell's story was published by Samuel Purchas partially in 1614 and fully in 1625.

Initiation and customs
The Imbangala were a fully militarized society based entirely on initiation rites as opposed to the customary kinship rites of most African ethnic groups. To keep kinship from replacing initiation, all children born inside a kilombo (village) were killed. Women were allowed to leave the kilombo to have their children, but when they returned, the child was not considered an Imbangala until undergoing initiation. In almost Spartan-like program, children were trained daily in group and individual combat.

During training, they wore a collar that could not be removed, even after initiation, until they had killed a man in battle. Aside from infanticide rituals, the Imbangala covered themselves with ointment called maji a samba believed to confer invulnerability as long as the soldier followed strict set of yijila (codes), which required the infanticide, cannibalism and an absolute absence of cowardice.

Weapons and tactics
Imbangala fighting men were known as ngunza (singular: gonzo) and were divided into twelve squadrons, each led by a captain called a musungo. These twelve squadrons were part of a kilombo, a temporarily-fortified town surrounded by a wooden palisade. Each kilombo had twelve gates for the twelve squadrons that formed the total fighting force. The Imbangala army took the open field or any battlefield away from their fortifications in a three-prong formation similar to the famous Zulu "bull horn" formation. The Imbangala attacked with a right horn (mutanda), left horn (muya) and vanguard (muta ita) in the center. Unlike the Zulu, the Imbangala fought with the same weapons as their enemies, including bows, knives and swords. Their primary weapon was the war club or hatchet.

Relations with Portuguese
Battell went to the Imbangala's country with Portuguese merchants buying their war captives to sell as slaves. At this time the Imbangala were marauders whose primary interest seemed to be pillaging the country, especially to obtain large quantities of palm wine, which they produced by a wasteful method of chopping down trees and tapping their fermented contents over a few months.

The Imbangala did not permit female members to give birth in their kilombo (Portuguese quilombo), or armed camp. Instead, they replenished their numbers by capturing adolescents and forcing them to serve in their army. This social structure made the Imbangala warbands ideal slavers, as non-male prisoners had little use in their society and as such could be easily sold to the Portuguese.

Their military capacity and ruthlessness appealed to Portuguese colonists in Angola, who had been fought to a standstill in their war against the Angolan kingdom of Ndongo during the first period of colonial rule (1575–1599). Despite professing disgust at Imbangala customs, Portuguese governors of Luanda sometimes hired them for their campaigns, beginning with Bento Banha Cardoso in 1615 but most notably after Luis Mendes de Vasconcelos's 1618 assault on Ndongo.

Mendes de Vasconcelos operated with three bands of Imbangala but soon found that they were not disciplined enough to serve the Portuguese. Kasanje's band, in particular, broke free of Portuguese control and began a long campaign of pillage that eventually established them in the Baixa de Cassange region of modern Angola along the Kwango River. The band became the modern Angolan ethnicity that calls itself Imbangala (and ceased the militant customs of its predecessors in the late 17th century).

Another band, Kaza, joined Ndongo and opposed the Portuguese before betraying Ndongo's Queen Njinga Mbande in 1629, thus frustrating that queen's attempt to preserve Ndongo's independence from a base on islands in the Kwanza River. After Njinga's short-lived attempt to join with Kasanje in 1629–30, she went to Matamba and there formed her own (or joined with another) Imbangala band led by a man known as "Njinga Mona" (Njinga's son). Though reported to be an Imbangala herself (supposedly taking an initiation rite that involved pounding up a baby in a grain mortar), Njinga probably never really became one.

Later fate
Other bands were integrated into the Portuguese army serving as auxiliary soldiers, under their commanders and cantoned within the Portuguese territory. As the 17th century wore on, they and other bands were annihilated by one or another of the political states, such as the one formed by Njinga in Matamba. One rogue group of Imbangala set down roots and formed the Kasanje Kingdom.

South of the Kwanza, in the original homeland of the Imbangala, they continued operating much as before for a least another half a century, but even there, they gradually formed partnerships with existing political entities such as Bihe (Viye), Huambo (Wambu) or Bailundu (Mbailundu).  In all these areas, their customs tended to moderate in the 18th century, cannibalism was restricted to ritual and sometimes only to symbolic occasions (for example, in the 19th century, Imbangala groups in the central highlands still practiced a ritual known as "eating the old man").

References

External links
Angolan Origins of Melungeons in 17th Century Virginia
Angolan Kingdoms

17th century in Angola
Cannibalism in Africa

Imbangala


HMS Triton was a submarine of the Royal Navy named for the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, the personification of the roaring waters. She was the lead ship of the T class (or Triton class) of diesel-electric submarines. Her keel was laid down on 28 August 1936 by Vickers Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness. She was launched on 5 October 1937, and commissioned on 9 November 1938.

Career
At the onset of the Second World War, Triton was a member of the 2nd Submarine Flotilla. From 26–29 August 1939, the flotilla deployed to its war bases at Dundee and Blyth.

The sinking of HMS Oxley
When the Admiralty was notified that the United Kingdom would declare war on Germany, five submarines of the 2nd Submarine Flotilla were ordered to patrol on the Obrestad line off Norway on 24 August 1939. Thus, on 3 September all British submarines were in their combat patrol sectors.

At 1955 on 10 September 1939, Triton had surfaced, fixed a position off the Obrestad Light, set a slow zigzag patrol, and began charging batteries.  Lieutenant Commander Steel, having verified that the area was clear and having posted lookouts, gave the bridge to the officer of the watch and went below, leaving orders that he was to be called if anything unusual appeared. At 2045, he was called to the bridge when an object in the water could be seen very fine on the port bow.

Steel ordered propulsion shifted to the main motors, the signalman to the bridge, and torpedo tubes 7 and 8 readied for firing. The object was recognised as a submarine low in the water.

Once on the bridge, the signalman sent three challenges over several minutes with the box lamp, none of which were answered. Steel wondered if the boat could be , which should have been patrolling next in line, but some distance away. Steel and his bridge crew studied the silhouette, but could not distinguish what type of submarine it was.

A fourth challenge was sent: three green rifle-grenade flares. After firing, Steel counted slowly to 15 and then decided that they were seeing a German U-boat. He ordered tubes 7 and 8 fired with a three-second interval. Less than a minute later, an explosion was heard.

Triton moved into the area to investigate and heard cries for help. The light from the Aldis lamp revealed three men floundering amid oil and debris.

Lieutenant Guy C. I. St.B. Watkins and Lieutenant Harry A. Stacey entered the water and rescued Lieutenant Commander H.G. Bowerman, Oxleys commanding officer, as well as Able Seaman Gluckes, a lookout. The third person in the water, Lieutenant F.K. Manley, was seen to be swimming strongly when he suddenly sank from view. Neither Manley's body nor any other survivors from Oxley were found.

A Board of Enquiry found that Steel had done all he reasonably could in the circumstances. Oxley was out of position, Triton had acted correctly, and the first Allied submarine casualty of World War II was due to "friendly fire." During the war, the loss of Oxley was attributed to an accidental explosion. After the war, it was explained to have been a collision with Triton. The truth was not revealed until the 1950s.

Home waters and the Mediterranean
Triton continued her war patrols, first in Baltic waters. On 8 April, in the lead-up to the German invasion of Norway, she fired ten torpedoes at the German cruisers , Lützow and  off Skagen. All torpedoes missed their targets. On 10 April 1940, she sank the German steamers , Wigbert, and the patrol vessel Rau 6 in the Kattegat.

Later, she was redeployed to the Mediterranean Sea, based in Alexandria. During her first patrol in the Gulf of Genoa, Lieutenant Watkins, now Tritons commanding officer, decided to enter the harbour of Savona. She found a supply ship at anchor in the harbour, at which she fired a single torpedo and claimed an 8,000-ton kill, though the sinking could not be confirmed. No other ships were available to torpedo, so Watkins surfaced Triton. The submarine began shelling a large factory and a gas works on the shore, damaging both of them before departing. According to Italian sources, Tritons target was not a merchant ship; the submarine apparently mistook the chimney of the pump station for the funnel of a merchant ship, and fired the torpedoes against the shore. The Cieli Electric Station sustained slight damage from the gunfire.

Sinking
On 28 November 1940, Triton left Malta for a patrol in the southern Adriatic Sea. On 6 December, the Italian merchant Olimpia was torpedoed by a British submarine in the area. Her distress message was picked up by the Royal Navy, which assumed that the attack had been carried out by Triton. The submarine was never heard from again, and was declared lost with all hands on 18 December. Olimpia was successfully towed to port by Italian escort units. The Italian Navy claimed that she was sunk by torpedo boats, probably Confienza, possibly by Clio, but the date cited was several days after contact was lost. British sources claimed that she was sunk by naval mines in the Strait of Otranto.

Notes

References

British T-class submarines of the Royal Navy
Ships built in Barrow-in-Furness
1937 ships
World War II submarines of the United Kingdom
World War II shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea
Lost submarines of the United Kingdom
Friendly fire incidents of World War II
Maritime incidents in September 1939
Maritime incidents in December 1940
Submarines lost with all hands
Ships sunk by mines

HMS Triton (N15)


Eva Leanza Cornett (June 10, 1971 – October 28, 2020) was an American television personality and beauty pageant titleholder.  She was crowned Miss Florida 1992 and Miss America 1993 the same year.

Early life
Cornett was born in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, and was a 1989 graduate of Terry Parker High School. She was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame in 2006.

Pageantry
Cornett was previously National Sweetheart 1991. As Miss America 1993, she became the first Miss America to adopt AIDS awareness as her platform for her year of service. She became one of the first Miss America titleholders to refuse to wear the Miss America crown at public appearances.

Career
Cornett was the first actress to play a live-action version of Ariel, the title character from The Little Mermaid, at the "Voyage of The Little Mermaid" show at Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World Resort in 1991.  She was also a member of the contemporary Christian music group Area Code, which released their single album, One Big World, before Leanza's big break.

Cornett also served as a host for several television shows, including  Entertainment Tonight (1994–1995), New Attitudes (1998), and Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? (2000).  She made television guest appearances in television series such as Melrose Place, The Tick, CSI, and Saved by the Bell, and Fear Factor.  In addition, she served as a reporter for Animal Planet's coverage of the Eukanuba AKC National Dog Show programs, and hosted the "On The Block" show on DIY Network.

Her stage credits included Barefoot in the Park, Godspell, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Bye Bye Birdie, and Voyage of the Little Mermaid.

Personal life
Cornett married broadcast journalist Mark Steines on July 22, 1995.  Weeks after their wedding, Cornett was let go from her Entertainment Tonight position and immediately replaced by Steines himself.  Cornett and Steines had two sons, Kai Harper (born on February 19, 2002), and Avery James (born on November 4, 2003). The couple later divorced after 17 years of marriage.  She died on October 28, 2020, after being hospitalized for a head injury incurred in a fall at her home in Jacksonville, Florida.

References

External links

 Delta Delta Delta Distinguished Alumnae profile

1971 births
American infotainers
American women television personalities
Miss America 1993 delegates
Miss America winners
People from Big Stone Gap, Virginia
People from Jacksonville, Florida
Rollins College alumni
2020 deaths
Accidental deaths from falls
Accidental deaths in Florida
Deaths from head injury
20th-century American people
Television personalities from Florida

Leanza Cornett


The Coastal Road massacre occurred on 11 March 1978, when Palestinian militants hijacked a bus on the Coastal Highway of Israel and murdered its occupants; 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children, were killed as a result of the attack while 76 more were wounded. The attack was planned by the influential Palestinian militant leader Abu Jihad and carried out by Fatah, a Palestinian nationalist party founded by Jihad in 1959. The initial plan of the militants was to seize a luxury hotel in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv and take tourists and foreign ambassadors hostage in order to exchange them for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody.

According to a Fatah commander who had helped to plan the attack, the timing was aimed primarily at scuppering Israeli–Egyptian peace talks between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat and damaging Israel's tourism sector. However, due to a navigational error, the attackers ended up  north of their target, and were forced to find an alternative method of transportation to their destination.

Time characterized it as "the worst terrorist attack in Israel's history." Fatah dubbed the hijacking "Operation of the Martyr Kamal Adwan" after the chief of operations of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), who was killed during the Israeli commando raid on Lebanon in April 1973. In response to the massacre, Israel launched Operation Litani against PLO bases in southern Lebanon three days later.

Background and perpetrators
The PLO claimed responsibility for the attack, which was planned by influential Fatah leader Abu Jihad. The attack's purpose was to disrupt ongoing Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations. Yasser Arafat and Abu Jihad feared that a truce between Israel and Egypt would be detrimental to their cause. The operation was considered to be of such importance that Abu Jihad, together with his operations commander for Lebanon Azmi Zair, personally briefed the participants.

Israel received intelligence of the planned attack from a Shin Bet source codenamed Housemaid, who met with Israeli military intelligence official Amos Gilad in a safehouse in Jerusalem and briefed him about the plans. The intelligence was confirmed by wiretaps of the PLO offices in Cyprus. Israeli intelligence pinpointed the PLO squad's base to the beach of Damour, learned the attackers' names, and discovered that the goal behind the planned raid was to disrupt peace negotiations with Egypt. On 5 March 1978, Israel launched a military operation to preempt the planned attack. Shayetet 13 naval commandos raided the PLO base at Damour to wipe out the squad, but only killed all of those in one building, while those in a nearby building, who did not come out or open fire, survived the raid.

After intelligence was received from Housemaid that not all of the PLO squad had been killed, Gilad demanded that the commandos be sent in again to wipe out the remaining guerrillas, arguing that as Abu Jihad now knew that Israel was aware of his plans he would be spurred to launch the attack sooner, but Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, not wanting headlines of an Israeli raid on Lebanon to cast a shadow over his upcoming visit to the Pentagon, refused to authorize another such mission. The surviving guerrillas proceeded to carry out the attack.

Attack
On 9 March 1978, 13 Palestinian fedayeen, including 18-year-old female Dalal Mughrabi, left Lebanon on a boat headed for the Israeli coast. They were equipped with Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, light mortars and high explosives. On 11 March, they transferred to two Zodiac boats and headed towards the shore. One of the Zodiacs capsized in the rough weather, and two of the militants drowned, but the surviving 11 carried on with their mission.

Landing
The eleven survivors landed on a beach near the kibbutz Ma'agan Michael, north of Tel Aviv. Due to stormy weather they had lost their bearings and believed they had landed in Cyprus. They met American photographer Gail Rubin, who was taking nature photographs on the beach and asked her where they were, and were relieved when she told them they were in Israel. Then they killed her. Both surviving attackers said that Mughrabi shot Rubin, who was a niece of United States Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff.

Bus hijacking

The militants then walked less than a mile up to the four-lane highway, opened fire at passing cars, and hijacked a white Mercedes taxi, killing its occupants. Setting off down the highway toward Tel Aviv, they hijacked a chartered bus carrying Egged bus drivers and their families on a day outing, along the Coastal Highway. Although Abu Jihad had ordered them to seize a hotel, the militants improvised and changed the nature of their attack due to the dozens of hostages in their hands. The militants drove down the coastal highway, shooting and throwing grenades at passing cars. They also shot at the passengers and threw at least one body out of the bus. At one point they commandeered Bus 901, traveling from Tel Aviv to Haifa, taking its passengers hostage as well, and forced the passengers from the first bus to board it.

At one point, the bus stopped, and one of the perpetrators got out and fired directly into a passing car, killing a teenager, Imri Tel-Oren, and injuring his father Hanoch. Sharon Tel-Oren, Imri's mother, testified: "We were in our station wagon, driving along the coastal highway. We saw something odd ahead – a bus, but it seemed to be stopped. Then we saw someone lying on the road. There was shattered glass all over, children screaming. Then we heard the gunshots. Imri was asleep in the back seat. The bullet passed through the front seat and hit his head, killing him instantly. My husband was shot in the arm, and lost the movement in his fingers."

Police were alerted to the attack; their cars caught up to the bus and trailed it. Although the militants fired at the pursuing police cars, policemen did not return fire, fearing they would hit the civilians inside the bus. Police quickly set up a roadblock, but the militants plowed the bus through it and continued their journey. According to Khaled Abu Asba, one of the two surviving attackers, police set up multiple roadblocks, and there was an exchange of fire at every intersection.

Standoff at the Glilot Junction
The bus was finally stopped by a large police roadblock set up at the Glilot Junction near Herzliya, which included nails planted on the road to puncture the bus' tires. Due to the speed at which the attack was transpiring, Israeli counter-terrorism squads had been unable to mobilize quickly enough, and the roadblock was manned by ordinary patrolmen and traffic policemen, who were lightly armed in comparison to the militants and untrained in dealing with hostage situations. A firefight erupted, and police broke the bus' windows and yelled at passengers to jump.

Escaping passengers were shot at by one of the militants. According to the Israeli police, Assaf Hefetz, then head of the Israeli Police counter-terrorism unit, arrived at the scene before his unit, and stormed the bus, killing two militants. Hefetz sustained a shoulder injury during the battle, and was later awarded the Israeli Police Medal of Courage.

The battle reached its climax when the bus exploded and burst into flames. Some of the militants and hostages escaped but most died in the fire. The explosion may have been set off by a burning fuel tank, or by grenades. The Palestinians claimed that the Israelis destroyed the bus with fire from helicopter gunships. Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, in his book Rise and Kill First, which was based on interviews with Israeli intelligence veterans, claimed that the explosion was due to a grenade blast that came as a result of a scuffle between militants and hostage Avraham Shamir. According to Bergman, during the firefight, Shamir saw one of the militants resting the hand holding his pistol on his daughter's head, after which he charged at him, seized the gun, and shot a militant standing at the front of the bus, then fired three shots at another militant. Another hostage warned Shamir of a militant aiming his gun at him from behind, after which Shamir turned and they both fired, wounding each other. Shamir then saw the militant from whom he had seized the gun lying injured on the floor holding a grenade with the safety pin pulled out. After he dropped it on the floor, Shamir tried to use the militant's body to blunt the effects of the blast. The grenade's explosion killed the militant and five hostages, seriously wounded Shamir, and set the bus on fire.

A total of 38 civilians were killed in the attack, including 13 children, while 71 others were wounded. Of the 11 perpetrators, 9 were killed.

Motives
One motive for the attack from the PLO was to derail Egypt-Israel peace talks. In October 1976, Egypt, the PLO, and Syria were back in contact with each other, though temporarily, under Saudi auspices, at the Riyadh conference that year. In 1977 "...the United States appeared anxious to coordinate Arab approval of a Geneva peace conference, as well as the presence there of Palestinians, and most important, the cooperation of the Soviet Union." Both the Egyptians and the Israelis were opposed to the possibility of a political settlement which would have the effect of uniting the Arabs with the Palestinians or the two superpowers against Israel. "No less than Israelis, therefore, Sadat opposed the join US–USSR statement of October 1977. Not only did the statement put the Palestinian question on a par with the return of Egyptian territory, it almost meant a clear victory for Syrian pan-Arabism."

The US–USSR joint statement state the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict would be based on: "an Israeli withdrawal from 'occupied territories' in 1967; the resolution of the Palestinian question, including insuring the 'legitimate rights' of the Palestinian people; the termination of the state of war; and the establishment of normal peaceful relations on the basis of mutual recognition of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence." Ultimately, America opted for an Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty as Anwar Sadat made a visit to Jerusalem in November 1977. In that treaty "the first item dropped was the question of Palestine as it had evolved through the United Nations; after that the US–USSR statement, and agreed upon Palestinian representation at the Geneva conference, were also dropped.". Anwar Sadat's main concern was the territory of Sinai to be returned to Egypt from Israel.

Official reactions
Involved parties

 Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin stated in a press conference that Israel "shall not forget the carnage" and added that "there was no need of this outrage to understand that a Palestinian state would be a mortal danger to our nation and our people."

 PLO
 The PLO official stated that "the operation stems from the firm belief of Fatah in the necessity of carrying on the armed struggle against the Zionist enemy within the occupied land."

International
 : Egyptian president Anwar Sadat condemned the attack as "an irresponsible action" and indirectly appealed to Israel not to strike back.
 : US president Jimmy Carter released a statement saying the attack was "an outrageous act of lawlessness and senseless brutality. Criminal acts such as this advance no cause or political belief. They inspire only revulsion at the lack of respect for innocent human life."

Aftermath

Trial
The two surviving perpetrators, Khaled Abu Asba and Hussein Fayyad, were arrested and tried in an Israeli military court in Lod. They were charged with 10 counts of firing at people, two counts of placing and detonating explosives, and one count of membership in a hostile organization. Their trial opened on 9 August 1979. The trial was presided over by Judge Colonel Aharon Kolperin. The chief prosecutor was Amnon Straschnov, while Abu Asba and Fayyad were represented by defense lawyer Leah Tsemel. On 23 October 1979, they were convicted on all 13 charges. They were sentenced to life imprisonment, and spent seven years in prison before being released in the 1985 Jibril Agreement.

Israeli response
In a statement to the press the following day, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin stated, "They came here to kill Jews. They intended to take hostages and threatened, as the leaflet they left said, to kill all of them if we did not surrender to their demands.... We shall not forget. And I can only call upon other nations not to forget that Nazi atrocity that was perpetrated upon our people yesterday."

Speaking to the Knesset on 13 March, Begin said, "Gone forever are the days when Jewish blood could be shed with impunity. Let it be known: Those who shed innocent blood shall not go unpunished. We shall defend our citizens, our women, our children. We shall sever the arm of iniquity."

On 15 March, three days after the massacre, Israel launched Operation Litani against PLO bases in southern Lebanon. The IDF spokesman stated, "The objective of the operation is not retaliation for the terrorists' crimes, for there can be no retaliation for the murder of innocent men, women and children – but to protect the state of Israel and its citizens from incursions of members of the Fatah and PLO, who use Lebanese territory in order to attack citizens of Israel." Augustus Richard Norton, professor of international relations at Boston University, said Operation Litani resulted in approximately 1,100 people killed, most of them Palestinian and Lebanese civilians.

Palestinian glorification of hijackers
Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli NGO that monitors antisemitism and support for terrorism in Palestinian society, has cited examples of Palestinian media that portrays Dalal Mughrabi as a heroine and role model.  A Hebron girls' school was briefly named in honor of Mughrabi but the name was changed after it emerged that USAID was funding the school. Her name has also been given to summer camps and both police and military courses. In February 2011 Palestinian Media Watch exposed a pan-Arab feminist media campaign promoting Mughrabi as a role model for women in the Arab world.

During the 2008 Israel-Hezbollah prisoner swap, Israel intended to transfer her body to Hezbollah, however DNA testing showed that her body was not among the exhumed corpses.

Several locations under Palestinian Authority control have been named after Mughrabi.

Palestinian Media Watch reported that, in January 2012, official Palestinian Authority television, which is under the control of PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, rebroadcast a music video glorifying the attack. The words of the clip included: "We [PLO squad] set out on patrol from Lebanon; with no fear of death or the darkness of prison. On the coast [Dalal] Mughrabi's blood was shed, the color of [red] coral on [white] lemon flowers."

In 2011, a summer camp "which took place under the auspices of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad" divided the children into three groups named after militants, and one group was named for Mughrabi.

See also
 2011 southern Israel cross-border attacks
 Avivim school bus massacre
 List of massacres in Israel

References

External links
 32nd anniversary of the coastal massacre – published at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
 30 Die in Rampage by Terrorists in Israel – published on the Los Angeles Times on 12 March 1978
 30 die after terrorists attack 2 buses in Israel – published on The Boston Globe on 12 March 1978
 Fatah admits raid – published on The New York Times on 12 March 1978

1978 crimes in Israel
1970s fires in Asia
1978 disasters in Asia
1978 fires
1978 in international relations
1978 mass shootings in Asia
1970s trials
20th-century mass murder in Israel
Attacks on buses by Palestinian militant groups
Explosions in 1978
Explosions in Israel
Grenade attacks
Hijacking
Hostage taking in Israel
1978 crimes
March 1978 events
March 1978 events in Asia
Mass shootings in Israel
Massacres in Israel during the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Massacres in 1978
Murder trials
Operations involving Israeli special forces
Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon
Spree shootings in Israel
Terrorist incidents in Asia in 1978
Terrorist incidents in Israel in the 1970s
Trials in Israel
Fatah attacks
Massacres committed by the Palestine Liberation Organization

Coastal Road massacre


Alcopop! Records is a British independent record label, run by Jack Clothier and Kevin Douch formed in East Oxford, 2006. The label works with DZ Deathrays, Johnny Foreigner, Fight Like Apes, Anamanaguchi, Peaness, TIGERCUB, Gaffa Tape Sandy, The Spook School, Nelson Can, and QI.

Inception
Alcopop! Records was formally created after a small loan was gambled on the Charlton vs Portsmouth match of 16 September 2006, with money for the first release and show generated from a successful bet on the match. This money was invested in a band from Yeovil called Encyclopedia, with the first single "Emily" (Alcopop001) kicking off the 2006/7 singles club (which also included the likes of Midget, data.select.party and 4 or 5 Magicians). Founder Jack pOp, in a recent interview with the Complete Music Update website, said "Alcopop! was born back in 2006 with a three figure loan from my Dad and a fuzzy idea to mix up some classic 90s indie and some awesome new stuff and – via a series of handmade, special three-inch CDs – do our bit to prove that physical music wasn't dead. We got drunk, bet a large chunk of the money on a football match, and Congolese striker Lomana LuaLua ensured that we had enough cash to get going!"

Alcopop! anti-UKIP controversy
In 2015, Alcopop! stepped in after a hacker cancelled the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) website contract and temporarily purchased the UKIP website. Claiming they'd fill the website with multi-coloured unicorns or donate the website to a pro-immigration agency, the website nevertheless was soon forcibly recovered and returned to the political party by provider GoDaddy. UKIP later blamed 'gremlins in the system'. Alcopop! then proceeded to collaborate with Shikari Sound System to release 7" record "The Wit and Wisdom of Nigel Farage" which was, of course, completely silent. The release profits went to Migrants Rights Network and was in homage to a similar stunt by Stiff Records against Ronald Reagan.

Alcopop! interesting formats
As well as operating more standard album and EP releases on CD and vinyl, Alcopop! Records prides itself on releasing through a host of different formats, and has put out singles and EPs on the likes of frisbees (Johnny Foreigner Certain Songs are Cursed EP), scarves (My First Tooth Sleet and Snow EP), bespoke watches (Gunning for Tamar Time Trophies EP) and a Minidisc (Stagecoach – Say Hi to the Band). When asked about motivation for producing these different formats in a recent interview, Jack pOp stated "For me the it's more than what is on that record… It's about the experience from the moment you get it, how the artwork makes you feel, being able to show it to friends – the anticipation of dropping the needle/ pressing the play button… I genuinely love it."

In 2014, Alcopop! re-released the hit song "Steal My Sunshine" on cassette with co-founders Jack and Kev drawn into the re-imagined sleeve alongside some of the original cast.

In 2023, Alcopop! released Zep Step, a single from the album Our Guest Can't Be Named by The Wytches. A limited edition 7" pressing of the single was printed on X-ray films in the style of Ribs, a historically black market method of smuggling and distributing music banned from the public.

Other notable releases
Alcopop! were the first label in the UK to release a podcast on vinyl, collaborating with the QI Elves to put out a special edition of their 'No Such Thing As A Fish' podcast on vinyl – which came with 52 episodes of the podcast on the download card. The record included a bonus track from Corey Taylor of Slipknot fame on the B-side.

Working with Brighton grunge band TIGERCUB in 2017, Alcopop! put out the world's first Pay What You Want 12" vinyl. Preceded by a physical mailout campaign to all existing fans of the band, the original pressing sold out within 24 hours and was considered a success by singer Jamie Hall, who stated "We were worried people wouldn't give a shit, but it quickly turned into fucking Wikileaks. It escalated fast. We fucking sold out of 'em all pretty much before we went public, so we had to put up a second pressing pre-sale for people who missed out, which is now about to sell out too.

To try to capitalise on the spirit of indie and rally against over-priced reissues at Record Store Day, Alcopop! put out Sensible Record Labels vol 1. and 2 on RSD in 2015 and 2016. RRP'd at £10, featuring 11 songs from independent labels with hundreds of songs on the download card, each release sold out on the day. Tim Dellow, founder of Transgressive Records, said of Volume 1 "We're thrilled to be involved in something that genuinely captures the true spirit of Record Store Day, and what this community of great independent artists and labels represent. A great value way for fans to get into new bands across all the labels, and support their local indie store. Good on Alcopop!"

Alcopop! gained a reputation for their 'Alcopopular' compilation series. The series has even been branded 'The coolest compilation ever' by NME. Alcopopular has been released as a bike, a 3" CD, a cassette tape, a message in a bottle, a restaurant menu and fold out 'Hithikers Guide to the UK'. Loud and Quiet suggested "We need labels like Alcopop to offer us something a little out of the ordinary. There's no character in a bunch of mega bites but there's a hell of a lot in a bottle containing a modern day pirate treasure map that leads you to some audio booty."

Awards and honours
Alcopop! Records were named as the best small label at the AIM Awards 2013, after being nominated in 2012.

Alcopop! were also voted as the best record label in the UK at the Punktastic Reader Awards in 2012.

Active roster
Anamanaguchi
Art Brut
Best Ex
Cheekface
cheerbleederz
Cherym
DITZ
DZ Deathrays
El Ten Eleven
False Advertising
Fight Like Apes
Gaffa Tape Sandy
Happy Accidents
Helen Love
Hellogoodbye
itoldyouiwouldeatyou
Johnny Foreigner
Kississippi
Nelson Can
No Such Thing as a Fish
Peaness
Problem Patterns
The QI Elves
Snow Coats
The Spook School
The Wytches
Tellison
Tigercub
Tokky Horror
Weirds

Past roster
Stagecoach
Hush The Many
Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly
The Crimea
Matt Pryor
Freeze The Atlantic
Brawlers
OhBoy!
Emperor Yes
Gunning For Tamar
LightGuides
Ute
Jumping Ships
Oh No! Yoko
Acres of Lions
Screaming Maldini
Sam Isaac
This City
Pavilion
Elephants
The Candle Thieves
Wolf Am I
Stars & Sons
GoFaster
Cut The Blue Wire
The Family Machine
4 or 5 Magicians
Lucy and the Caterpillar
Nathaniel Green
Data.Select.Party
Encyclopedia
The Social Club
Radstewart
Bear Cavalry
The Attika State
Acollective
Katie Malco
Doctrines
Her Parents
My First Tooth
The Spills
Get Inuit

References

External links

Underground punk scene in the United Kingdom
British independent record labels
Record labels established in 2006
Alternative rock record labels
Rock record labels
Pop record labels
British companies established in 2006
2006 establishments in England
Companies based in Oxford

Alcopop! Records


Richard Merritt Montague (September 20, 1930 – March 7, 1971) was an American mathematician and philosopher who made contributions to mathematical logic and the philosophy of language. He is known for proposing Montague grammar to formalize the semantics of natural language. As a student of Alfred Tarski, he also contributed early developments to axiomatic set theory (ZFC). For the latter half of his life, he was a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles until his early death, believed to be a homicide, at age 40.

Career
At the University of California, Berkeley, Montague earned a BA in Philosophy in 1950, an MA in Mathematics in 1953, and a PhD in Philosophy in 1957, the latter under the direction of the mathematician and logician Alfred Tarski. Montague spent his entire career teaching in the UCLA Department of Philosophy, where he supervised the dissertations of Nino Cocchiarella and Hans Kamp.

Montague wrote on the foundations of logic and set theory, as would befit a student of Tarski. His PhD dissertation, titled Contributions to the Axiomatic Foundations of Set Theory, contained the first proof that all possible axiomatizations of the standard axiomatic set theory ZFC must contain infinitely many axioms. In other words, ZFC cannot be finitely axiomatized.

He pioneered a logical approach to natural language semantics that became known as Montague grammar. This approach to language has been especially influential among certain computational linguists—perhaps more so than among more traditional philosophers of language. In particular, Montague's influence lives on in grammar approaches like categorial grammar (such as Unification Categorial Grammar, Left-Associative Grammar, or Combinatory Categorial Grammar), which attempt a derivation of syntactic and semantic representation in tandem and the semantics of quantifiers, scope and discourse (Hans Kamp, a student of Montague's, co-developed Discourse Representation Theory).

Montague was an accomplished organist and a successful real estate investor. He died violently in his own home; the crime is unsolved to this day. Anita Feferman and Solomon Feferman argue that he usually went to bars "cruising" and bringing people home with him. On the day that he was murdered, he brought home several people "for some kind of soirée", but they strangled him.

In popular culture
Three novels have been inspired by the life and death of Richard M. Montague:

The Mad Man by American science fiction author Samuel R. Delany (1994)
 Less Than Meets the Eye by American philosopher David Berlinski (1994)
 The Semantics of Murder by Irish writer Aifric Campbell (2008)

See also
American philosophy
List of American philosophers
List of unsolved murders

Notes

References
 Feferman, Anita, and Solomon Feferman, 2004. Alfred Tarski: A Life. Cambridge Univ. Press.
Donald Kalish, and Montague, Richard, 1964. Logic: Techniques of Formal Reasoning. Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich.
 Donald Kalish, and Montague, Richard, and Mar, Gary, 1980. Logic: Techniques of Formal Reasoning (second edition). Oxford University Press.
 Montague, Richard, 1974. Formal philosophy : selected papers of Richard Montague / ed. and with an introd. by Richmond H. Thomason. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. (1979 printing: )
 Partee, Barbara H., 2006, "Richard Montague (1930 - 1971)" in Brown, Keith, ed., Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. 8, 2nd ed. Oxford: Elsevier: 255–57. Includes a bibliography of the secondary literature on Montague and his eponymous grammar.

External links

 "Montague, Richard (1930–1971) ." Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Encyclopedia.com.
Montague Semantics at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
RICHARD MONTAGUE 1930-1971 memorial page by Ivano Caponigro published on the fiftieth anniversary of his death
That's Just Semantics! (or, the Proper Treatment of Richard Montague in Literary Fiction) (Archived by Wayback Machine).

1930 births
1971 deaths
1971 murders in the United States
20th-century American mathematicians
20th-century American philosophers
American logicians
American LGBT academics
LGBT people from California
American LGBT scientists
Male murder victims
People from Stockton, California
Philosophers of language
Semanticists
Unsolved murders in the United States
LGBT mathematicians
Deaths by strangulation in the United States
People murdered in Los Angeles
20th-century American LGBT people

Richard Montague


Sosweawon or Sosaewon is a typical Korean garden of the middle Joseon Dynasty. It is located in the Nam-myeon, Damyang County of the South Jeolla Province, South Korea.

This garden harmonizes with nature in characteristic traditional Korean style. Clean waters in the valley flow below the wall and fall through the small cataract into the lake. This place can be said to be a cultivating house of  scholar spirit in that many Confucian scholars discussed academic subjects and wrote their works here.

History
Soswaewon was originally constructed by Yang San-bo (양산보) from the end of 1520 through the middle of 1530. Yang gave up his government position after his teacher, Jo Gwang-jo (1482 - 1519) was exiled and then killed in the purge of 1519 called Gimyo sahwa (기묘사화). So Yang made this garden to seclude himself from social position. The part of the garden was burnt down during the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598), but the buildings were reconstructed by his descendants, and the present Sosweawon was renovated by Yang Taek-ji, Yang san-bo's descendant in the fifth generation.
An 18th-century map of Sosweawon remains. It is carved on wood in the 31st year of King Yeongjo (1755), and shows the original design of the garden.

Structures
Jewol Pavilion
Jewol Pavilion is a house for the host and means "bright moon after raining".

Gwangpung Pavilion
Gwangpung Pavilion is a house for guests and means "bright sun and fresh wind after raining".

Daebong Pavilion
Daebong Pavilion is located at high hill of Sosweawon. It means the luck of phoenix is regarded as the good news.

Gallery

See also
Hwanbyeokdang
Korean garden
Hanok
Seowon
Korean architecture

References

 담양 소쇄원 남해 금산 명승지정, " Shegye daily news 2008.05.04

External links

  Official site
  소쇄원 at Yesullo

Architecture in Korea
Damyang County
Scenic Sites of South Korea

Soswaewon


A samara (,  ) is a winged achene, a type of fruit in which a flattened wing of fibrous, papery tissue develops from the ovary wall. A samara is a simple dry fruit, and is indehiscent (not opening along a seam). The shape of a samara enables the wind to carry the seed farther away from the tree than regular seeds would go, and is thus a form of anemochory.

In some cases the seed is in the centre of the wing, as in the elms (genus Ulmus), the hoptree (Ptelea trifoliata), and the bushwillows (genus Combretum).
In other cases the seed is on one side, with the wing extending to the other side, making the seed autorotate as it falls, as in the maples (genus Acer) and ash trees (genus Fraxinus).

There are also single-wing samara such as mahogany (genus Swietenia) which have a shape that enables fluttering.

Some species that normally produce paired samaras, such as Acer pseudoplatanus, can also produce them in groups of three or four.

In culture
A samara is sometimes called a key and is often referred to as a wingnut, helicopter, whirlybird, whirligig, polynose, or, in the north of England, a spinning jenny. During the autumn months, they are a popular source of amusement for children (and adults) who enjoy tossing them in the air and watching them spin to the ground.

References

Further reading

 Spinning Flight : Dynamics of Frisbees, Boomerangs, Samaras and Skipping Stones, Ralph Lorenz,  Copernicus New York, September 2006

Fruit morphology

Samara (fruit)


Gabrielle Fitzpatrick (born 1 February 1967) is an Australian film and television actress. She first appeared in the Italian film Via Montenapoleone directed by Carlo Vanzina, and has since starred in 11 films, her most recent involvement being in 2017's Fatties: Take Down the House directed by Bob Gordon. Fitzpatrick also has numerous television credits, including multiple notable series such as Lost, 24, and NYPD Blue.

Filmography

Film

Television

References

External links

1967 births
Living people
Actresses from Brisbane
Australian film actresses
Australian television actresses

Gabrielle Fitzpatrick


The Cayuga Lake AVA is an American Viticultural Area around Cayuga Lake in Upstate New York.  The boundaries of the AVA include portions of Cayuga, Seneca, and Tompkins counties.  Most of the vineyards in the AVA are planted in the shale soils of the hillsides on the western side of Cayuga Lake.  Vineyards are planted at a range of elevations above the surface of the lake, up to  higher.  The steep hillsides and the lake together form a unique micro-climate in autumn that helps extend the growing season by preventing cold air from settling and producing frost.  The Cayuga grape variety was created in this region by researchers at Cornell University.

History
The first winery in the area was founded in 1980, although grapes were grown on the shores of Cayuga Lake for the large wineries in Hammondsport before then. In 1981, four wineries on the lake banded together to form the Cayuga Lake Wine Trail, the first of its kind in New York State. By 1988, the appellation was given AVA status, the first Finger Lake to be granted its own AVA.

References

American Viticultural Areas of New York (state)
Geography of Cayuga County, New York
New York (state) wine
Geography of Seneca County, New York
Geography of Tompkins County, New York
1988 establishments in New York (state)

Cayuga Lake AVA


The Treaties of Velasco were two documents, one private and the other public, signed in Fort Velasco on May 14, 1836 between General Antonio López de Santa Anna and the Republic of Texas in the aftermath of the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. The part of the former Velasco, Texas, in which the fort was located is now part of the present-day location of Surfside Beach. The signatories were Interim President David G. Burnet for Texas and Santa Anna for Mexico. Texas intended the agreements to conclude hostilities between the two armies and offer the first steps toward the official recognition of Texas's independence from Mexico. At their drafting, the documents were called a "Public Agreement" and a "Secret Treaty."

Santa Anna had been captured by Texans. Many wanted him hanged as just vengeance for the murder of comrades and family during the battles at Alamo and Goliad, but Sam Houston spared his life and extracted a promise from Santa Anna that Mexican troops would be removed from Texas. Santa Anna persuaded Burnet that if he were allowed to return to Mexico City, he would argue for the independence of Texas. Santa Anna signed both the public agreement and the secret treaty, but neither was ratified as a treaty by the Mexican government because he had signed them under duress while being held captive. Santa Anna later said, "I did promise to try to get a hearing for the Texas Commissioners, but this in itself did not bind the government to receive them."

The Mexican Congress considered Santa Anna's actions scandalous and nullified both. Mexican conservatives removed Santa Anna as president and installed Anastasio Bustamante, and there was an agreement with the Mexican Congress that Santa Anna had "offered nothing in the name of the nation."

A biographer of Santa Anna, Will Fowler, considered that the "general of tricks was at his most ingenious" with the negotiations with Texas since he did not commit himself to do anything other than to permit Texas commissioners to present their case to the Mexican government. He was "no longer in a position to act freely, and anything he said or signed would not be validated by Congress" since as a captive, he was no longer president. A draft of the agreement, which Santa Anna refused to sign until it was amended, stated that he recognized as "Head of the Mexican Nation" Texas's independence, text that was later dropped. Santa Anna sent a message to General Vicente Filisola to retreat below the Rio Grande, but his message made it clear that Filisola was in charge. Fowler argues that Filisola should have known that Santa Anna was in no position to be issuing orders since he had been captured. Both Filisola and Santa Anna were blamed for the defeat, but signing the Velasco documents did not commit either Santa Anna or Mexico to Texas independence.

Mexico still claimed Texas but was too weak to attempt to reconquer it; thus, Texas was de facto independent. The documents were not even called "treaties" until they were so characterized by U.S. President James K. Polk in his justifications for war some ten years later, as U.S. Representative Abraham Lincoln pointed out in 1848. Lincoln's efforts earned the freshman Whig U.S. Representative the derisive sobriquet "Spotty" Lincoln because of his Spot Resolutions, which demanded to know that the "spot" at which American troops were killed was on American soil, which Polk argued to justify war with Mexico.

Text of Public Agreement
This is the text of the Public Agreement:

Untitled preamble
Articles of an agreement entered into between his Excellency David G. Burnet  President of the Republic of Texas of the one part & His Excellency General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana President-General in Chief of the other part--

Article 1
General Antonio López de Santa Anna agrees that he will not take up arms, nor will he exercise his influence to cause them to be taken up against Texas's people during the present war of Independence.

Article 2
All hostilities between the Mexican and Texan troops will cease immediately both on land and water.

Article 3
The Mexican troops will evacuate the Territory of Texas, passing to the other side of the Rio Grande del Norte.

Article 4
The Mexican Army in its retreat shall not take the property of any person without his consent and just indemnification, using only such articles as may be necessary for its subsistence, in cases when the owner may not be present, and remitting to the commander of the army of Texas or to the commissioner to be appointed for the adjustment of such matters, an account of the value of the property consumed—the place where taken, and the name of the owner, if it can be ascertained.

Article 5
That all private property including cattle, horses, negro slaves or indentured persons of whatever denomination, that may have been captured by any portion of the Mexican army or may have taken refuge in the said army since the commencement of the late invasion, shall be restored to the Commander of the Texian army, or to such other persons as may be appointed by the Government of Texas to receive them.

Article 6
The troops of both armies will refrain from coming into contact with each other. To this end, the Commander of Texas's army will be careful not to approach within a shorter distance of the Mexican army than five leagues.

Article 7
The Mexican army shall not make any other delay on its march than that which is necessary to take up their hospitals, baggage [---] and cross the rivers—any delay not necessary to these purposes to be considered an infraction of this agreement.

Article 8
By express to be immediately dispatched, this agreement shall be sent to General Filisola and to General T. J. Rusk, commander of the Texian Army, to be apprised of its stipulations to this, and they will exchange engagements to comply with the same.

Article 9
That all Texan prisoners now in possession of the Mexican Army or its authorities be forthwith released and furnished with free passports to return to their homes, in consideration of which a corresponding number of Mexican prisoners, rank, and file, now in possession of the Government of Texas shall be immediately released. The remainder of the Mexican prisoners that continue in possession of the Government of Texas to be treated with due humanity—any extraordinary comforts that may be furnished them to be at the charge of the Government of Mexico.

Article 10
General Antonio López de Santa Anna will be sent to Veracruz as soon as it shall be deemed proper.

Text of Secret Treaty
This is the text of the Secret Treaty:

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, General in Chief of the Army of Operations and President of the Republic of Mexico, before the Government established in Texas, solemnly pledges himself to fulfill the stipulations contained in the following Articles, so far as concerns himself.

Article 1
He will not take up arms nor cause them to be taken up against the People of Texas during the present War of Independence.

Article 2
He will give his Orders that, in the shortest time, the Mexican Troops may leave the Territory of Texas [sic].

Article 3
He will so prepare matters in the Cabinet of Mexico that the Mission that may be sent thither by the Government of Texas may be well received. By means of negotiations, all differences may be settled. The Independence that has been declared by the Convention may be acknowledged.

Article 4
A treaty of Commerce, Amity, and limits will be established between Mexico and Texas. The territory of the latter not to extend beyond the Rio Bravo del Norte.

Nonratification by Mexico
Although Mexican General Vicente Filisola began troop withdrawals on May 26, 1836, the government of Mexican President José Justo Corro in Mexico City resolved on May 20 to disassociate itself from all undertakings by Santa Anna while he was held captive. Mexico's position was that Santa Anna had no legal standing with the Mexican government to agree to those terms or negotiate a treaty.

Santa Anna's position was that he had signed the documents under coercion as a prisoner, not as a surrendering general in accordance with the laws of war. In fact, he had no authority under the Mexican Constitution to make a treaty, and the Mexican government never ratified the agreements.

Santa Anna's return to Veracruz
Santa Anna was not allowed to return to Veracruz until 1837. He was kept as a prisoner-of-war ("clapped in irons for six months," he later claimed) in Velasco and then in the Orozimbo Plantation, before he was taken to Washington, DC, to meet with US President Andrew Jackson, ostensibly to negotiate a lasting peace between Mexico and Texas, with the US acting as mediator. Sailing on the frigate USS Pioneer, the "guest" of the US Navy, he did not arrive in Veracruz until February 23, 1837.

Aftermath
Because the provisions of the public agreements had not been met, the terms of the secret agreement were not released until much later. Neither the de facto independence of Texas nor its later annexation by the United States was formally recognized by Mexico until the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican–American War and recognized the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte) as the Mexico–United States border.

References

External links
Treaties of Velasco (includes facsimiles)
Treaties of Velasco
Santa Anna's Captivity
A Continent Divided: The U.S.-Mexico War, Center for Greater Southwestern Studies, the University of Texas at Arlington

1836 in Mexico
Velasco
Velasco
Texas Revolution
Brazoria County, Texas
Treaties of the Republic of Texas
Peace treaties of Mexico
Peace treaties
1836 treaties
Treaties of the Centralist Republic of Mexico
Sam Houston
May 1836 events

Treaties of Velasco


The 2008 World Enduro Championship was the 19th season in the FIM World Enduro Championship. The season consisted of eight events and 16 races.

Last season's Enduro 2 champion, Honda's Mika Ahola, took his second world championship title now racing in the Enduro 1 class. In the Enduro 2 class, Yamaha's Johnny Aubert won his first world championship, becoming the first racer to defeat Juha Salminen since the 1998 season. With nine wins, Salminen broke compatriot Kari Tiainen's record (77) for most wins in the series. In Enduro 3, KTM's Samuli Aro became the sixth enduro rider to win five world championship titles.

Events

Riders' championship - top 10

Enduro 1

Enduro 2

Enduro 3

Manufacturers' championship

External links

Full results at the official website

Motorcycle off-road racing series
World Enduro

2008 World Enduro Championship


Sir Edward Milner Holland  (8 September 1902 – 2 November 1969) was a British lawyer. He served as the Attorney-General of the Duchy of Lancaster from 1951 to 1969.

Holland was born in Sutton, Surrey, the second son of the publisher Sir Edward John Holland, and was educated at Charterhouse School and at Hertford College, Oxford, (BA, BCL). He was called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1927, and practised mainly at the Chancery bar. During World War II, he served in the British Army, rising to the rank of Brigadier and serving as the Deputy Director of Personal Services at the War Office. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1945.

After the War, Holland returned to the bar and was made Queen's Counsel in 1948. He was appointed Attorney-General of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1951, and held the position until 1969. He was Chairman of the General Council of the Bar between 1957 and 1958 and between 1962 and 1963. He was a member of the Vassall Tribunal in 1963. In 1965 he was appointed Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. Later in his life he refused appointment as a High Court judge.

References

1902 births
1969 deaths
People educated at Charterhouse School
Alumni of Hertford College, Oxford
Members of the Inner Temple
Royal Army Service Corps officers
Knights Commander of the Royal Victorian Order
Knights Bachelor
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
English King's Counsel
20th-century King's Counsel
Attorneys-General of the Duchy of Lancaster
Recipients of the Order of Isabella the Catholic
British Army personnel of World War II
20th-century English lawyers

Milner Holland


Pinning is a technique used when assembling large or heavy model kits (such as metal wargaming miniatures) that involves drilling a hole in two pieces of the model to be joined, and using a "pin" to strengthen the bond when they are glued.  Pinning is a useful technique for reinforcing joints and is essential when making models from parts that were not designed to go together, such as a miniature conversion.

While models that are used for display purposes do not often require pinning, heavy models that are frequently handled (such as large metal miniatures used for wargaming) will often benefit from pinning to ensure that the model does not come apart.

Some modellers also use Blu Tack or another temporary adhesive as an aid when pinning.

See also
Miniature conversion

References

Miniature wargames
Scale modeling

Pinning (modelling)


Monoplacophora  is a class of molluscs. They have a cap-like shell and live on the bottom of the sea.

They were well-known as a fossil group from the Cambrian to the Devonian. One species was dredged up from the Pacific Ocean off Mexico in 1952. It was found to be a Monoplacophoran, and given the genus of Neopilina.  This was one of the most remarkable modern discoveries of a 'living fossil', and a Lazarus taxon.

More than that, they are the most extreme example of the pull of the recent, which is a term in palaeontology. All fossil groups have a first and last appearance in the fossil record but, for living species, their last appearance is the present day. This may be very much later than their last appearance as a fossil. The discovery of the living monoplacs extended their time range by 400 million years.

The anatomy of Neopilina shows "serially repeated structures" such as gills. Serial repetition of anatomical structures such as gills and muscles may have evolved once in the common ancestor of chitons and monoplacophorans. It suggests the ancient ancestor of molluscs had bilateral symmetry, and segments.

Reference

Molluscs

Monoplacophora


A.I. Artificial Intelligence (or simply A.I.) is a 2001 American science fiction film directed by Steven Spielberg. The screenplay by Spielberg and screen story by Ian Watson were based on the 1969 short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" by Brian Aldiss. Set in a futuristic society, the film stars Haley Joel Osment as David, a childlike android uniquely programmed with the ability to love. Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, Brendan Gleeson and William Hurt star in supporting roles.

Development of A.I. originally began after producer/director Stanley Kubrick acquired the rights to Aldiss' story in the early 1970s. Kubrick hired a series of writers, including Brian Aldiss, Bob Shaw, Ian Watson and Sara Maitland, until the mid-1990s. The film languished in development hell for years, partly because Kubrick felt that computer-generated imagery was not advanced enough to create the David character, whom he believed no child actor would convincingly portray. In 1995, Kubrick handed A.I. to Spielberg, but the film did not gain momentum until Kubrick died in 1999. Spielberg remained close to Watson's treatment for the screenplay, and dedicated the film to Kubrick.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence was released on June 29, 2001 by Warner Bros. Pictures in North America. It received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $235.9 million against a budget of $90–100 million. It was also nominated for Best Visual Effects and Best Original Score (for John Williams) at the 74th Academy Awards. In a 2016 BBC poll of 177 critics around the world, A.I. Artificial Intelligence was voted the eighty-third greatest film since 2000. It has since been called one of Spielberg's best works and one of the greatest films of the 2000s, the 21st century, and of all time.

Plot

In the 22nd century, rising sea levels from global warming have wiped out 99% of existing cities, reducing the world's population. Mecha humanoid robots, seemingly capable of complex thought but lacking emotions, have been created as replacements. In Madison, New Jersey, David, a prototype Mecha child capable of experiencing love, is given to Henry Swinton and his wife Monica, whose son Martin contracted a rare disease and has been placed in suspended animation. Initially uncomfortable with David, Monica eventually warms to him and activates his imprinting protocol. Seeking to have her love him in return, he also befriends Teddy, Martin's robotic teddy bear. After Martin is unexpectedly cured of his disease and brought home, he jealously goads David into cutting off a piece of Monica's hair. That night, David enters his adoptive parents' room and cuts a lock of hair from Monica's head using a pair of scissors. Monica turns over and is poked in the eye by the scissors. As Henry helps her treat her eye, Teddy picks up the lock of hair from the floor and places it in his pocket. At a pool party, one of Martin's friends pokes David with a knife, triggering his self-protection programming. David grabs onto Martin, and they both fall to the bottom of the pool. Others rescue Martin before he drowns, and David is accused of endangering living people. Henry convinces Monica to return David to his creators for destruction, believing David is capable of love and hate. En route, Monica instead spares David by abandoning him in the woods. Now accompanied solely by Teddy, David recalls The Adventures of Pinocchio and decides to find the Blue Fairy in order to become human, which he believes will regain Monica's love.

David and Teddy are captured by a "Flesh Fair", a traveling circus-like event where obsolete Mecha are destroyed before jeering crowds. About to be destroyed himself, David pleads for his life, and the audience, deceived by David's realistic nature, revolts and allows David to escape alongside Gigolo Joe, a male prostitute Mecha on the run from authorities after being framed for murder. David, Teddy, and Joe go to the decadent resort town of Rouge City, where "Dr. Know", a holographic answer engine, directs them to the top of Rockefeller Center in the flooded ruins of Manhattan and also provides fairy tale information that David interprets as suggesting that a Blue Fairy can help him. Above the ruins of Manhattan, David meets Professor Hobby, his creator, who tells him that their meeting demonstrates David's ability to love and desire. David finds many copies of himself, including female variants called "Darlene", boxed and ready to be shipped. Disheartened by his lost sense of individuality, David attempts suicide by falling from a skyscraper into the ocean. While underwater, David notices a figure resembling the Blue Fairy before Joe rescues him in an amphibious aircraft. Before David can explain, authorities capture Joe via electromagnet. David and Teddy take control of the aircraft to see the Blue Fairy, which turns out to be a statue from an attraction on Coney Island. The two become trapped when the Wonder Wheel falls on their vehicle. Believing the Blue Fairy is real, David repeatedly asks the statue to turn him into a real boy until his power source is depleted.

Two thousand years later, humanity has become extinct and Manhattan is now buried under glacial ice. Mecha have evolved into an advanced form, and a group known as the Specialists, interested in humanity, find and resurrect David and Teddy. They reconstruct the Swinton family home from David's memories before explaining, via an interactive version of the Blue Fairy, that he cannot possibly be human. However, they recreate Monica through genetic material from the strand of hair that Teddy kept. This version of Monica can live for only one day and cannot be revived again due to a copy-protection subroutine. David spends his happiest day with her, and as she falls asleep in the evening, she tells David that she has always loved him: "the everlasting moment he had been waiting for", as the narrator describes. David falls asleep as well and goes to a place "where dreams are born."

Cast

 Haley Joel Osment as David. Osment was Spielberg's first and only choice for the role. To portray the character, Osment avoided blinking his eyes and "programmed" himself with good posture.
 Frances O'Connor as Monica Swinton
 Sam Robards as Henry Swinton
 Jude Law as Gigolo Joe. To prepare for the role, Law studied the acting of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, whose movements Joe emulates.
 Jake Thomas as Martin Swinton
 William Hurt as Professor Allen Hobby
 Brendan Gleeson as Flesh Fair impresario Lord Johnson-Johnson
 Jack Angel as Teddy (voice)
 Ken Leung, Matt Winston, Eugene Osment and Clark Gregg as Cybertronics Corp employees
 April Grace as Female Colleague
 Enrico Colantoni as The Murderer
 Paula Malcomson as Patricia in Mirrored Room
 Ashley Scott as Gigolo Jane
 Kathryn Morris as Teenage Honey
 Adrian Grenier as Teen in Van
 Robin Williams as Dr. Know (voice)
 Ben Kingsley as Specialist (voice)
 Meryl Streep as the Blue Fairy (voice)
 Chris Rock as Comedian Robot (voice)
 Erik Bauersfeld as Gardener (voice)
 Ministry as Flesh Fair band
 Daveigh Chase as Singing Girl (deleted scene)

Production

Development
Kubrick began development on an adaptation of "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" in the late 1970s, hiring the story's author, Brian Aldiss, to write a film treatment. In 1985, Kubrick asked Steven Spielberg to direct the film, with Kubrick producing. Warner Bros. agreed to co-finance A.I. and cover distribution duties. The film labored in development hell, and Aldiss was fired by Kubrick over creative differences in 1989. Bob Shaw briefly served as writer, leaving after six weeks due to Kubrick's demanding work schedule, and Ian Watson was hired as the new writer in March 1990. Aldiss later remarked, "Not only did the bastard fire me, he hired my enemy [Watson] instead." Kubrick handed Watson The Adventures of Pinocchio for inspiration, calling A.I. "a picaresque robot version of Pinocchio".

Three weeks later, Watson gave Kubrick his first story treatment, and concluded his work on A.I. in May 1991 with another treatment of 90 pages. Gigolo Joe was originally conceived as a G.I. Mecha, but Watson suggested changing him to a male prostitute. Kubrick joked, "I guess we lost the kiddie market." Meanwhile, Kubrick dropped A.I. to work on a film adaptation of Wartime Lies, feeling computer animation was not advanced enough to create the David character. After the release of Spielberg's Jurassic Park, with its innovative computer-generated imagery, it was announced in November 1993 that production of A.I. would begin in 1994. Dennis Muren and Ned Gorman, who worked on Jurassic Park, became visual effects supervisors, but Kubrick was displeased with their previsualization, and with the expense of hiring Industrial Light & Magic.

Pre-production
In early 1994, the film was in pre-production with Christopher "Fangorn" Baker as concept artist, and Sara Maitland assisting on the story, which gave it "a feminist fairy-tale focus". Maitland said that Kubrick never referred to the film as A.I., but as Pinocchio. Chris Cunningham became the new visual effects supervisor. Some of his unproduced work for A.I. can be seen on the DVD, The Work of Director Chris Cunningham. Aside from considering computer animation, Kubrick also had Joseph Mazzello do a screen test for the lead role. Cunningham helped assemble a series of "little robot-type humans" for the David character. "We tried to construct a little boy with a movable rubber face to see whether we could make it look appealing," producer Jan Harlan reflected. "But it was a total failure, it looked awful." Hans Moravec was brought in as a technical consultant. Meanwhile, Kubrick and Harlan thought A.I. would be closer to Steven Spielberg's sensibilities as director. Kubrick handed the position to Spielberg in 1995, but Spielberg chose to direct other projects, and convinced Kubrick to remain as director. The film was put on hold due to Kubrick's commitment to Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

After Kubrick's death in March 1999, Harlan and Christiane Kubrick approached Spielberg to take over the director's position. By November 1999, Spielberg was writing the screenplay based on Watson's 90-page story treatment. It was his first solo screenplay credit since Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Pre-production was briefly halted during February 2000, because Spielberg pondered directing other projects, which were Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Minority Report and Memoirs of a Geisha. The following month Spielberg announced that A.I. would be his next project, with Minority Report as a follow-up. When he decided to fast track A.I., Spielberg brought Chris Baker back as concept artist. Ian Watson reported that the final script was very faithful to Kubrick's vision, even the ending, which is often attributed to Spielberg, saying: "The final 20 minutes are pretty close to what I wrote for Stanley, and what Stanley wanted, faithfully filmed by Spielberg without added schmaltz."

Filming
The original start date was July 10, 2000, but filming was delayed until August. Aside from a couple of weeks shooting on location in Oxbow Regional Park in Oregon, A.I. was shot entirely using sound stages at Warner Bros. Studios and the Spruce Goose Dome in Long Beach, California.
Spielberg copied Kubrick's obsessively secretive approach to filmmaking by refusing to give the complete script to cast and crew, banning press from the set, and making actors sign confidentiality agreements. Social robotics expert Cynthia Breazeal served as technical consultant during production. Costume designer Bob Ringwood studied pedestrians on the Las Vegas Strip for his influence on the Rouge City extras. Additional visual effects such as removing the visible rods controlling Teddy and removing Haley Joel Osment's breath, were provided in-house by PDI/DreamWorks.

Casting
Julianne Moore and Gwyneth Paltrow were considered for the role of Monica Swinton before Frances O'Connor was cast and Jerry Seinfeld was originally considered to voice and play the Comedian Robot before Chris Rock was cast.

Soundtrack

The film's soundtrack was released by Warner Sunset Records in 2001. The original score was composed and conducted by John Williams and featured singers Lara Fabian on two songs and Josh Groban on one. The film's score also had a limited release as an official "For your consideration Academy Promo", as well as a complete score issue by La-La Land Records in 2015. The band Ministry appears in the film playing the song "What About Us?" but the song does not appear on the official soundtrack album.

Release

Marketing
Warner Bros. used an alternate reality game titled The Beast to promote the film. Over forty websites were created by Atomic Pictures in New York City (kept online at Cloudmakers.org) including the website for Cybertronics Corp. There were to be a series of video games for the Xbox video game console that followed the storyline of The Beast, but they went undeveloped. To avoid audiences mistaking A.I. for a family film, no action figures were created, although Hasbro released a talking Teddy following the film's release in June 2001.

A.I. premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2001.

Home media
A.I. Artificial Intelligence was released on VHS and DVD in the United States by DreamWorks Home Entertainment on March 5, 2002 in widescreen and full-screen 2-disc special editions featuring an extensive sixteen-part documentary detailing the film's development, production, music and visual effects. The bonus features also included interviews with Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, Steven Spielberg, and John Williams, two teaser trailers for the film's original theatrical release and an extensive photo gallery featuring production stills and Stanley Kubrick's original storyboards. It was released overseas by Warner Home Video.

The film was first released on Blu-ray in Japan by Warner Home Video on December 22, 2010, followed shortly after with a United States release by Paramount Home Media Distribution (former owners of the DreamWorks catalog) on April 5, 2011. This Blu-ray featured the film newly remastered in high-definition and incorporated all the bonus features previously included on the two-disc special-edition DVD. Warner Home Video currently owns the digital rights to the film worldwide. Because of the regional distribution, A.I. Artificial Intelligence can be streamed on HBO Max in North America and Paramount+ internationally.

Box office
The film opened in 3,242 theaters in the United States and Canada on June 29, 2001, earning $29.35 million at #1 during its opening weekend. A.I went on to gross $78.62 million in the United States and Canada. Opening on 524 screens in Japan, A.I. grossed almost two billion Yen in its first five days, the biggest June opening ever in Japan at the time, and sold more tickets in its opening weekend than Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, although grossed slightly less. It went on to gross $78 million in Japan. It grossed $79 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $235.93 million.

Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes, A.I. Artificial Intelligence holds an approval rating of 76% based on reviews from 200 critics, with an average rating of 6.60/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "A curious, not always seamless, amalgamation of Kubrick's chilly bleakness and Spielberg's warm-hearted optimism. A.I. is, in a word, fascinating." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 65 out of 100 based on reviews from 32 critics, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.

Producer Jan Harlan stated that Kubrick "would have applauded" the final film, while Kubrick's widow Christiane also enjoyed A.I. Brian Aldiss admired the film as well: "I thought what an inventive, intriguing, ingenious, involving film this was. There are flaws in it and I suppose I might have a personal quibble but it's so long since I wrote it." Of the film's ending, he wondered how it might have been had Kubrick directed the film: "That is one of the 'ifs' of film history—at least the ending indicates Spielberg adding some sugar to Kubrick's wine. The actual ending is overly sympathetic and moreover rather overtly engineered by a plot device that does not really bear credence. But it's a brilliant piece of film and of course it's a phenomenon because it contains the energies and talents of two brilliant filmmakers". Richard Corliss heavily praised Spielberg's direction, as well as the cast and visual effects.

Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of a possible four, saying that it is "wonderful and maddening". Ebert later gave the film a full four stars and added it to his "Great Movies" list in 2011. Leonard Maltin, on the other hand, gives the film two stars out of four in his Movie Guide, writing: "[The] intriguing story draws us in, thanks in part to Osment's exceptional performance, but takes several wrong turns; ultimately, it just doesn't work. Spielberg rewrote the adaptation Stanley Kubrick commissioned of the Brian Aldiss short story Super Toys Last All Summer Long; [the] result is a curious and uncomfortable hybrid of Kubrick and Spielberg sensibilities." However, he calls John Williams' music score "striking". Jonathan Rosenbaum compared A.I. to Solaris (1972), and praised both "Kubrick for proposing that Spielberg direct the project and Spielberg for doing his utmost to respect Kubrick's intentions while making it a profoundly personal work." Film critic Armond White, of the New York Press, praised the film, noting that "each part of David's journey through carnal and sexual universes into the final eschatological devastation becomes as profoundly philosophical and contemplative as anything by cinema's most thoughtful, speculative artists – Borzage, Ozu, Demy, Tarkovsky." Filmmaker Billy Wilder hailed A.I. as "the most underrated film of the past few years." When British filmmaker Ken Russell saw the film, he wept during the ending.

Screenwriter Ian Watson has speculated, "Worldwide, A.I. was very successful (and the 4th-highest earner of the year) but it didn't do quite so well in America, because the film, so I'm told, was too poetical and intellectual in general for American tastes. Plus, quite a few critics in America misunderstood the film, thinking for instance that the Giacometti-style beings in the final 20 minutes were aliens (whereas they were robots of the future who had evolved themselves from the robots in the earlier part of the film) and also thinking that the final 20 minutes were a sentimental addition by Spielberg, whereas those scenes were exactly what I wrote for Stanley and exactly what he wanted, filmed faithfully by Spielberg."

Mick LaSalle gave a largely negative review. "A.I. exhibits all its creators' bad traits and none of the good. So we end up with the structureless, meandering, slow-motion endlessness of Kubrick combined with the fuzzy, cuddly mindlessness of Spielberg." Dubbing it Spielberg's "first boring movie", LaSalle also believed the robots at the end of the film were aliens, and compared Gigolo Joe to the "useless" Jar Jar Binks, yet praised Robin Williams for his portrayal of a futuristic Albert Einstein. Peter Travers gave a mixed review, concluding "Spielberg cannot live up to Kubrick's darker side of the future.", but still put the film on his top ten list that year. David Denby in The New Yorker criticized A.I. for not adhering closely to his concept of the Pinocchio character. Spielberg responded to some of the criticisms of the film, stating that many of the "so called sentimental" elements of A.I., including the ending, were in fact Kubrick's and the darker elements were his own. However, Sara Maitland, who worked on the project with Kubrick in the 1990s, claimed that one of the reasons Kubrick never started production on A.I. was because he had a hard time making the ending work. James Berardinelli found the film "consistently involving, with moments of near-brilliance, but far from a masterpiece. In fact, as the long-awaited 'collaboration' of Kubrick and Spielberg, it ranks as something of a disappointment." Of the film's highly debated finale, he claimed, "There is no doubt that the concluding 30 minutes are all Spielberg; the outstanding question is where Kubrick's vision left off and Spielberg's began." John Simon of the National Review described A.I. "as an uneasy mix of trauma and treacle".

In 2002, Spielberg told film critic Joe Leydon that "People pretend to think they know Stanley Kubrick, and think they know me, when most of them don't know either of us". "And what's really funny about that is, all the parts of A.I. that people assume were Stanley's were mine. And all the parts of A.I. that people accuse me of sweetening and softening and sentimentalizing were all Stanley's. The teddy bear was Stanley's. The whole last 20 minutes of the movie was completely Stanley's. The whole first 35, 40 minutes of the film—all the stuff in the house—was word for word, from Stanley's screenplay. This was Stanley's vision." "Eighty percent of the critics got it all mixed up. But I could see why. Because, obviously, I've done a lot of movies where people have cried and have been sentimental. And I've been accused of sentimentalizing hard-core material. But in fact it was Stanley who did the sweetest parts of A.I., not me. I'm the guy who did the dark center of the movie, with the Flesh Fair and everything else. That's why he wanted me to make the movie in the first place. He said, 'This is much closer to your sensibilities than my own. He also added: "While there was divisiveness when A.I. came out, I felt that I had achieved Stanley's wishes, or goals."

Upon re-watching the film many years after its release, BBC film critic Mark Kermode apologized to Spielberg in an interview in January 2013 for "getting it wrong" on the film when he first viewed it in 2001. He now believes the film to be Spielberg's "enduring masterpiece".

Accolades
Visual effects supervisors Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Michael Lantieri, and Scott Farrar were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, and John Williams was nominated for Best Original Music Score.  Steven Spielberg, Jude Law and Williams received nominations at the 59th Golden Globe Awards. A.I. was successful at the Saturn Awards, winning five awards, including Best Science Fiction Film along with Best Writing for Spielberg and Best Performance by a Younger Actor for Osment.

American Film Institute nominated the film in AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores

See also
 List of underwater science fiction works

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

 Official Warner Bros. Site

2001 films
2001 science fiction films
2000s science fiction drama films
2000s dystopian films
Amblin Entertainment films
American robot films
American science fiction drama films
Android (robot) films
Climate change films
DreamWorks Pictures films
2000s English-language films
Films about artificial intelligence
Films about families
Films based on British short stories
Films directed by Steven Spielberg
Puppet films
Films produced by Bonnie Curtis
Films produced by Kathleen Kennedy
Films produced by Steven Spielberg
Films scored by John Williams
Films set in the 22nd century
Films set in Manhattan
Films set in New Jersey
Films shot in Los Angeles
Films shot in Oregon
Pinocchio films
American post-apocalyptic films
Films with screenplays by Steven Spielberg
Films about sentient toys
Stanley Kubrick
Warner Bros. films
2001 drama films
2000s American films

A.I. Artificial Intelligence