Rosario Bagnasco (1845 in Palermo – ?) was an Italian sculptor, both in stone but mainly in wood, active mainly in Palermo, Sicily. He is also known as Rosario Bagnasco Bonetti.

Another Rosario Bagnasco (1810-1879), also from Palermo, was also a sculptor, but mainly remembered as a politician and prominent patriot, along with his brother, Francesco, a legal advocate.
The relationship between these two is unclear.  They both belong to a large family of wood sculptors, including Girolamo Bagnasco (died 1832).

The sculptor Rosario, born 1845, studied design with his uncle, a painter, but was apprenticed in modelling in clay with the sculptor Nunzio Morello. From there he worked with Giovanni Duprè in Florence, and then in Rome with Giulio Monteverde. He returned to Palermo, in 1873, and won a contest by completing a bas relief in marble depicting Frederick II placing the first stone for the Palazzo della Citta. In 1880, he wins another award in Catania. His residence in Palermo may have not allowed his skills to be used to the fullest.

Among his works, A First Pain, completed in Florence, and awarded silver medal at the Exposition of Siracusa; The Madwoman, (stucco); The Fallen Angel (stucco); The Hurricane (marble); Gifts of Wind and Dawn, statuettes in marble; The Women of Messina (stucco); The Sicilian Vespers, (Scene in stucco); Busts of Maestro Petrella and Filippo Parlatore.

References

1845 births
19th-century Italian sculptors
Italian male sculptors
Artists from Palermo
Year of death missing
19th-century Italian male artists

Rosario Bagnasco


Time Was is a time travel romance novella by British author Ian McDonald, published on 24 April 2018 by Tor Books.

Plot

London book dealer Emmett Leigh discovers a love letter, written from Tom to Ben, in a World War II-era book of poetry, Time Was by E.L. After selling the book and posting the letter to online war history groups, Emmett is contacted by Thorn Hildreth, who produces a 1941 diary entry from her great-grandfather, Rev Anson Hildreth, which mentions close friends Tom and Ben at the Heliopolis Club in Alexandria, and is accompanied by photos of the men. Emmett's friend Shahrzad Hejazi at the Imperial War Museum in London recalls and finds a photo of Tom and Ben taken in July 1915, as well as an eyewitness account of them, identified by name, disappearing together into an otherworldly portal. Shahrzad also retrieves a photo of them from a documentary shot in Bosnia in 1995, in which they seem only a decade or so older than the one taken in 1915. Emmett and Thorn hypothesize that Tom and Ben are "emortal"—they age slowly, but are not immortal, in that they can die. Emmett and Thorn—now lovers themselves—travel to Paris to retrieve the copy of Time Was Emmett sold. They learn that the old bookstores which possess copies of the book have generations-old instructions to never sell them, and to pass them along to other bookshops should theirs close. In addition to the one sold by Emmett, the Paris bookstore has their own copy, in which Emmett and Thorn find a letter from Ben to Tom, written in Nanking in 1937. They realize that the men are time travelers, and use the books to communicate. Emmett determines that all known copies of Time Was are held by five bookshops across the world, in Paris, Lisbon, New York, Brussels, and Rome. With further research online and at museums, he discovers multiple traces of Tom and Ben throughout the 19th and 20th century, the earliest of which is in 1856. His obsession with the project has a negative impact on his health. Applying quantum mechanics to the fact that the highest incidence of traces of the men is between 1935 and 1949, Emmett deduces that they are time travelers from the past, not the future. Watching the documentary, Thorn's grandfather, Leland, is able to identify Tom's accent as coming from Woodbridge, Suffolk. This leads Emmett to a purported 1980 UFO sighting at RAF Woodbridge, and a 1940s incident at a hamlet named Shingle Street, which Emmett guesses is Tom and Ben's departure point.

In the early 1940s, Royal Engineer Tom Chappell and Royal Air Force scientist Ben Seligman, a new arrival to RAF Bawdsey, lock eyes at a pub. They are soon romantically involved, in secret. A test of Ben's secret military project, seeking cloaking technology, appears successful, which leads to a larger attempt. This experiment creates a time vortex into which Tom and Ben are drawn.

In the present, Regenbald Howe, the caretaker of the Martello tower at Shingle Street, knows of Chappell and Seligman, who were stationed at RAF Bawdsey during World War II. He produces a diary, left anonymously for the Chappell family in 1980, in which Tom describes a military scientific experiment gone awry. Regenbald has also amassed countless eyewitness accounts, personal notes, and legends about the event. Over the next few years, the Paris and Brussels bookstores close, but Emmett keeps track of their copies of Time Was, both in Rome. He reads of a strange storm in Cyprus, which he believes to be one of Tom and Ben's portals. Tom arrives at one of the bookshops, and recognizes a stunned Emmett as the E.L. who wrote Time Was. Sometime in the near future, Emmett will become a time traveler himself, and meet a young Tom before the experiment. Emmett tells Tom that Ben died in a ship sunk by torpedoes.

Characters

1940s
 Tom Chappell, a member of the Royal Engineers, in the 9th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, stationed at RAF Bawdsey
 Ben Seligman, a doctor of physics with Royal Air Force Photoreconnaissance
 Rev Anson Hildreth, padre with the Royal Army Chaplains' Department, assigned to the 9th

Present day
 Emmett Leigh, an English book dealer
 Thorn Hildreth, a jack of all trades who maintains her family archives
 Leland Hildreth, Thorn's aged grandfather
 Shahrzad Hejazi, a Persian photo archivist at the Imperial War Museum in London
 Regenbald Howe, the caretaker of the Martello tower at Shingle Street

Themes
Time Was touches on a necessarily secret homosexual romance in the World War II-era, with Booklist adding that it "captures the emotional nuances of a decades-long love while exploring issues of military and scientific might and the state of the contemporary book industry."

Publication
In April 2016, the novella was announced as Time There Was, to be released in 2017. By October 2017, the title had changed to Time Was, with an April 2018 publication date. It was released  on 24 April 2018.

Reception
In Library Journal, Kristi Chadwick called the story "elegant and delightedly romantic", and praised its "exciting, timeless finish." Booklist wrote that "This tiny novel packs a huge emotional punch as layers upon layers are revealed." Publishers Weekly called the novella compelling and vivid, noting that "The ending's predictability is washed away by beautiful writing that mixes Emmett's excitement with melancholy". Writing for Locus, Gary K. Wolfe called Time Was "one of the most purely beautiful pieces" of McDonald's writing, and praised the device of communicating through bookstores as "both ingenious and romantic in its own way".

In January 2019, Time Was was nominated for a Philip K. Dick Award.

References

2018 British novels
2018 speculative fiction novels
2018 LGBT-related literary works
British romance novels
British speculative fiction novels
Gay male romance novels
Historical romance novels
LGBT speculative fiction novels
Novels by Ian McDonald
Novels with gay themes
Novels about time travel
Quantum mechanics in fiction
2010s LGBT novels
British LGBT novels
Tor Books books

Time Was (novella)


A Whore Like Me is an Israeli film written and directed by Sharon Yaish and Yael Shachar.

Plot
At age 22, Csilla is abducted from a pub in Hungary, and sold to a prostitution ring in Israel. After escaping from her kidnappers, she learns the Hebrew language and volunteers in a humanitarian shelter, and is celebrating 10 years of sobriety. However, when Israel's Ministry of Interior does not believe that she was trafficked and will not give her a certificate of residency, she hires a private investigator and returns to her kidnappers to obtain proof. She searches for anyone who witnessed her trauma, determined not to allow her existence to be erased once again. However, she is unsure what the effect of returning to the hell from which she escaped will be.

Production
The film was produced by Hagai Arad, Elad Peleg and Daroma Productions; it was released with the support of Yes Doco, the New Fund for Film and Television and the National Council for Culture and the Arts.

The idea for the A Whore Like Me came to life when Yaish and Shachar were documenting some community theater in Tel Aviv, conducted by survivors of prostitution. They didn't know what direction their work would take, until Csilla came on stage and told her story. The filmmakers were so impressed with her forthrightness, her unique story, and her ability to reflect upon the ups and downs of her life, and decided to accompany her on her search for her abductors. They describe the journey as riddled with disappointment and danger, alongside hope and determination.

Responses
On June 2, 2019, Zehava Galon wrote a Facebook post addressing Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, urging him to recognize Csilla as a victim of trafficking in women and to cancel her deportation.

On July 24, 2019, a crowdfunding campaign was launched to finance Csilla's legal expenses in her quest to obtain an Israeli identity card.

Critical response
Oron Shamir, in Srita, wrote a favorable review of A Whore Like Me, calling Csilla "a once-in-a-lifetime cinematic character", and that her telling of her experiences struck him deeply, even offered second-hand, as they were. In her Haaretz review, Shani Littman calls A Whore Like Me "one of the most important [films] ever made about prostitution, exhorting that "all men must see this movie". She further writes that the film is "sharp, poignant and piercing chronicling of the experience of a prostituted woman, detailing how she is on the extreme end of a spectrum that includes many, and perhaps all, women.

Awards

References

External links

2019 films
Israeli documentary films
Films about prostitution in Israel
Films about human rights

A Whore Like Me


A hillock or knoll is a small hill, usually separated from a larger group of hills such as a range. Hillocks are similar in their distribution and size to small mesas or buttes. This particular formation occurs often in Great Britain and China. A similar type of landform in the Scandinavian countries goes by the name "kulle" or "bakke" (depending on the country) and is contrary to the above phenomena formed when glaciers polish down hard, crystalline bedrock of gneiss or granites, leaving a rounded rocky hillock with sparse vegetation.

One of the most famous knolls is the one near John F. Kennedy's point of assassination, the grassy knoll, in Dealey Plaza of downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the source of many prominent conspiracy theories regarding the circumstances of his assassination.

A "blind knoll" is either hidden or not readily apparent to those driving vehicles. There are road signs that warn of this, advising drivers to slow down.

Gallery

See also

Notes

Landforms

Hillock


In Hearing of is the third album by British rock band Atomic Rooster. Although not included on the album, the "Devil's Answer" single was released just prior to it, becoming the band's highest chart success at number 4 in the UK. This helped push the album to a number 18 UK chart placing, despite the fact that the four musicians pictured on the inside cover never played together. Half of the songs were written by Crane along with his first wife, Pat Darnell, who assisted with the lyrics. The backing tracks (and some vocals) were recorded by Vincent Crane, John Cann and Paul Hammond, but Cann and Hammond were let go from the group soon after vocalist Pete French was drafted in.  The finished album's sound was dominated by Crane and Hammond, with many of Cann's guitar parts either not used or placed lower in the mix.  However, Cann's guitar does still come through loud and clear on his compositions (tracks 2 and 6) and the instrumentals (tracks 4 and 7).

The album reached #45 in Canada.

Track listing

Original version
Side one
 "Breakthrough" (Vincent Crane, Pat Darnell) 6:18
 "Break the Ice" (John Cann) 4:59
 "Decision/Indecision" (Crane, Darnell) 3:50
 "A Spoonful of Bromide Helps the Pulse Rate Go Down" (Crane) 4:38
Side two
 "Black Snake" (Crane, Darnell) 6:00
 "Head in the Sky" (Cann) 5:38
 "The Rock" (Crane) 4:31
 "The Price" (Crane, Darnell) 5:16

Original U.S. Version
Side one
 "Breakthrough"
 "Break the Ice"
 "Decision/Indecision"
 "A Spoonful of Bromide Helps the Pulse Rate Go Down"
 "Devil's Answer" - U.S. Version with Pete French Overdubbed Vocals

Side two
 "Black Snake"
 "Head in the Sky"
 "The Rock"
 "The Price"

1990 (and 1995 remastered Digipack) Repertoire Records CD reissue bonus track
 "Devil's Answer" (Cann) 3.28 - original single version 1971

2004 Castle Music CD reissue bonus tracks
 "Devil's Answer" (Cann) 3:28 - US version with overdubbed Pete French vocals 1971
 "Breakthrough" 7:20 - Live in Concert 1972
 "A Spoonful of Bromide Helps the Pulse Rate Go Down" 4:46 - Live in Concert 1972

2001 Akarma Records unlicensed CD reissue bonus tracks
 "Devil's Answer" (Cann) 3.28 - original single version 1971
 "Breakthrough" (Crane, Darnell) 6:10 - Live in Concert 1972
 "Stand by Me" (Crane) 4:57 - as above
 "People You Can't Trust" (Crane) 4:29 - as above
 "All in Satan's Name" (Ric Parnell) 3:56 - as above
 "Devil's Answer" (Cann) 5:39 - as above

Personnel
Atomic Rooster
 Vincent Crane - Hammond organ, keyboard bass (all tracks), piano (1, 3, 4), vocals (5, 8)
 John Cann - guitars (all but 3)
 Pete French - vocals (1-3, 6, 8)
 Paul Hammond - drums, percussion (all tracks)

Personnel (North American Tour, 1971)
 Vincent Crane: Hammond organ, electric piano, keyboard bass
 Pete French: vocals
 Steve Bolton: guitar
 Ric Parnell: drums

References

The New Musical Express Book of Rock, 1975, Star Books,

Atomic Rooster albums
1971 albums
Albums with cover art by Roger Dean (artist)
Elektra Records albums
Castle Communications albums
Albums produced by Vincent Crane
Albums produced by John Du Cann
Philips Records albums
Repertoire Records albums

In Hearing of Atomic Rooster


Bear in the Big Blue House is an American children's television series created by Mitchell Kriegman and produced by Jim Henson Television for Disney Channel's Playhouse Disney preschool television block. Debuting on October 20, 1997, it aired its last episode on April 28, 2006. Reruns of the program continued to air on Playhouse Disney until May 6, 2007.

In 2004, The Jim Henson Company sold the rights to the show, including characters, content library and copyrights, to The Walt Disney Company; it is now owned by The Muppets Studio, a subsidiary of Disney that also owns, and is named after, The Muppets characters and copyrights.

Plot
Bear lives in the Big Blue House where he is a caregiver for his friends Ojo, a bear cub; Tutter, a mouse; Treelo, a lemur; otters Pip and Pop; and storyteller Shadow. He and his friends have many adventures together. Those normally include solving problems, sharing, cooperating with each other, and developing social/life skills.

Each episode opens with the welcome song, Bear detecting a scent in the viewers (which he likens to a pleasant smell) and appearance of the characters.  Each show focuses on a theme (ex; "sleep", "doctors", "Thanksgiving") which folds into a lesson at the end. Songs and jokes accompany the episode.  The character "Shadow" narrates a segment with shadow puppets in each episode. Most of the segments are in song, while some are simply a short story relating to the episode's theme. At the end of the program, Bear sings the goodbye song with Luna, the moon.

Episodes

Characters

Main

 Bear (performed by Noel MacNeal) – The protagonist of the series, he is a large bear who is very kind and lovable. He is tall and has light brown fur. Bear acts a caregiver to Pip, Pop, Ojo, Treelo and Tutter. He was designed by Paul Andrejco.
 Tutter (performed by Peter Linz) – A small light blue mouse who loves cheese. He lives in a mousehole in the kitchen of Bear's house. He is considered the show's breakout character. He was designed and built by Paul Andrejco.
 Pip and Pop (performed by Peter Linz and Tyler Bunch) – Two purple otter twins who live in the otter pond by the Big Blue House. They were designed by Paul Andrejco.
 Ojo (performed by Vicki Eibner) – A curious red bear cub who has a wild imagination and is good friends with Treelo. She was designed and built by Paul Andrejco.
 Treelo (performed by Tyler Bunch) – A white, blue, and green lemur who is playful, loves to dance, always active and good friends with Ojo. He was designed by Paul Andrejco and built by Kip Rathke.
 Shadow (performed by Peter Linz, voiced by Tara Mooney) – A shadow girl who is always laughing, telling stories, and sneaking up on Bear.
 Luna the Moon (operated by Peter Linz, voiced by Lynne Thigpen) – A talking Moon. At the end of every episode Bear walks out onto the balcony and discusses the episode's theme with her. They sing "The Goodbye Song" while playing a montage of the day's events. She was designed by Paul Andrejco and built by Ed Christie. "Luna" means "Moon" in Italian, Spanish, and Latin.
 Ray the Sun (operated by Peter Linz, voiced by Geoffrey Holder) – A talking Sun who would often rise (or set) at the beginning of some episodes, starting from Season Two. He will also occasionally tell Bear what the weather will be like throughout the day. Sometimes, he also sings the "Good Morning song". He was designed by Paul Andrejco.

Supporting

 Grandma Flutter (performed by Alice Dinnean in 1997–1998, Vicki Eibner from 1998–2003) – Tutter's grandmother who has a dance called "The Grandma Mambo". She has a granddaughter named Baby Blotter. She was designed by Paul Andrejco and built by Michael Schupbach and Kip Rathke.
 Cousin Whiner (performed by Victor Yerrid) – One of Tutter's cousins.
 Uncle "Jet Set Tutter" (performed by Tim Lagasse) – Tutter's uncle.
 Doc Hogg (performed by Tyler Bunch) – A pig who is the local physician. He was designed by Paul Andrejco and built by Eric Englehardt.
 Benny the Bat (performed by James Kroupa) – A fruit bat living in the attic of the house.
 Jeremiah Tortoise (performed by James Kroupa) – An elderly tortoise living in Woodland Valley.
 Lois (performed by Vicki Eibner) – A Blue-footed booby living in Woodland Valley. She usually mishears things that her friends are saying.
 Annette (performed by Vicki Eibner) – An armadillo who runs the Woodland Valley Cinema and is very shy.
 Henrietta Vanderpreen (performed by Vicki Eibner) – An ostrich who is the editor of Woodland House Wonderful, a magazine of interest to residents of Woodland Valley.
 Skippy - A blind red squirrel living in Woodland Valley that wears sunglasses and uses a cane. He is good friends with Treelo.
 Big Old Bullfrog (performed by Peter Linz) – A bullfrog living in Woodland Valley.
 Jacques the Beaver (performed by Peter Linz) – A French beaver living in Woodland Valley.
 Miss Maxwell (performed by Jennifer Barnhart) – A mouse who is a teacher at the Mouse School.
 Rita Mouse (performed by Anney McKilligan) – A mouse who attends Mouse School with Tutter. She needs some help with painting but is very good at soccer.
 Keisha (performed by Vicki Eibner) – A mouse who attends Mouse School with Tutter.
 Moss (performed by Noel MacNeal) – A mouse who attends Mouse School with Tutter.
 Cousin Jitter -
 Harry the Duck (performed by Eric Jacobson) – A duck who has been seen several times through the show who addresses bear as "Mister Bear" and quacks repeatedly when he is upset. He was designed by Paul Andrejco.
 Otto and Etta Otter (performed by James Kroupa and Vicki Eibner) – Pip and Pop's grandparents who run the Woodland Valley Library.
 Ursa (operated by Matt Vogel, voiced by Carmen Osbahr) – Bear's old friend from Mexico that appeared twice in "And to All a Good Night" and "You Never Know."
 Yukker Tutter (performed by Eric Jacobson) - One of Tutter's relatives. He is distinguishable by the bucket he wears on his head.

Several of these characters appeared in a music video for the We Are Family Foundation. Bear also appeared as a celebrity in the 2002 revival of The Hollywood Squares; he notably appeared in Whoopi Goldberg's final episode.

Locations
 Woodland Valley – Woodland Valley is the area/village in which events on the show are situated. The Big Blue House is the main landmark, but there is also a general store, post office, mall, library, movie theater, mouse school, and many other locations. Many of these are not seen (or not seen in much detail) until the fourth season. In "History, Herstory, Bearstory," Jeremiah Tortoise reveals that his grandfather Hepahestus Tortoise was the town's first settler. He initially decided to call it Who'd Have Thought I Would Land in This Valley Valley, but decided it was too long and changed it to Would Land Valley. Jeremiah says he's been trying to get the official spelling changed for years. Sequoia City is a neighboring town of Woodland Valley.
 The Big Blue House – The Big Blue House is where most of the main action of the series Bear in the Big Blue House takes place. Located in Woodland Valley, it looks somewhat small from the outside, but large and roomy on the inside. Bear lives here and runs a sort of daycare/group-home. Tutter has his mousehole in the house, while most of the other young characters only spend the day here. The Big Blue House is often described as warm and cozy. The Big Blue House has five rooms. The kitchen and the living room are downstairs. Bear has his very own swing where he sometimes sits and reads in the living room. Tutter's mousehole is in the kitchen. The front-door, where Bear greets the viewers at the beginning of each episode, is also downstairs. Upstairs are the bathroom and Bear's bedroom. Finally, Bear stores various items in the attic. There's also a landing there where Bear visits each night to talk with his friend Luna, the moon. Bear once gave the following directions on how to reach the Big Blue House: just take the path that leads into the woods, make the right past the big oak, go right, past the pond and then you're there.
 Otter Pond – Pip and Pop often hang out at the Otter Pond. It is also home to Harry the Duck, his mom, and his sister, Hallie. Additionally, various other creatures sometimes hang out at the Otter Pond, including Benny, Christine, and Big Old Bullfrog. The general area of the Otter Pond is filled with plants, including bushes filled with berries. Bear and Ojo visit there to pick berries for triple-berry pie in "If at First You Don't Succeed..." The Otter Pond was the site of a special nighttime party in "And to All a Good Night."
 Woodland Valley Library – The Woodland Valley Library is a place for everyone in Woodland Valley to go for research and resources. It is managed by Otto and Etta Otter. It is located directly in the center of the town. In addition to books, it also offers DVDs, CD-ROMs, Internet access and various other resources. Woodland Valley Library is featured in the two-part "Welcome to Woodland Valley" story. A tree falls on the library and the entire community works together to help get it cleaned up. There is damage to the collection and so donations are made. When Ojo discovers two unnamed opossums (voiced by Gilbert Gottfried and Brad Garrett) living in the tree that fell, the tree itself is made into a part of the library as the Book Nook. The library is featured in the song, "Everything's Great About the Library." Harry the Duck wonders what's so great about the library and so Tutter, Treelo, Pip and Pop sing a song to explain it. They tell him that there's something for everyone at the library, but the library is a place to read, so you have to keep your voices down; no disturbing allowed.
 Woodland Valley Cinema – The Woodland Valley Cinema is a local movie theater for everyone in Woodland Valley to relax and watch films. Annette is the owner of the movie theater and does all the jobs from box office to ticket taker. The screening room has three rows of seats in the auditorium and a concession stand. The concession stand accepts dollars and cents as payment instead of clams, Woodland Valley's official currency. Woodland Valley Cinema was first introduced in "Welcome to Woodland Valley." However, in "Words, Words, Words," the Woodland Valley Gazette says the movie theater is named "Woodland Valley Multiplex."
 Woodland Valley Post Office – The Woodland Valley Post Office is Woodland Valley's own facility for posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail. The post office also sells stamps for stamp collections and does clammygrams if asked. Jeremiah Tortoise works there in addition to running his general store. Most of the mail ends up arriving late due to Jeremiah Tortoise, who is slow at delivering the mail. In "A Strange Bird," Bear received a two-week-old postcard from a penguin named Puck from the South Pole and finds out Puck is paying a visit to the Big Blue House today. The store accepts clams, Woodland Valley's official currency, as payment and it has to be exact change only. Woodland Valley Post Office was first introduced in "Read My Book" and was seen more in later episodes.
 Mouse School – The Mouse School is a fun place to learn for Tutter and his classmates, including Keisha, Luke, Lily, Rita, and Moss. Learning and other activities are overseen by Miss Maxwell. It's a one-room schoolhouse, but there's plenty of places to play and an occasional field trip. Tutter first begins attending Mouse School in the fourth season. He joins the school soccer team, coached by Bear, but considers quitting in "Show Your Stuff." In "Teacher Appreciation Day," Tutter joins with Lily to figure out a way to show Miss Maxwell how much the mice kids all appreciate her. Tutter holds a sleepover for his Mouse School classmates in "Tutter's First Big Sleepover Bash."
 Doc Hogg's Office – Doc Hogg's Office is where Doc Hogg treats his patients on Bear in the Big Blue House. Bear, Tutter and Ojo visited the office when Tutter hurt his tail in "That Healing Feeling." The office has a waiting room with toys and books to keep children entertained.
 Sequoia City – Sequoia City is a neighboring town of Woodland Valley, and Woodland Valley may be considered a suburb of it. They are known to have a baseball team called the "Big Bats." Sequoia City is the hometown for two radio stations that reach Woodland Valley; WWTL (a news and weather station) and Bear's favorite music station WCHA-CHA. Sequoia City was one of the locations on a signpost in "The Great Bandini." The other location names on that signpost (other than the library) have not been used again, but Sequoia City has been mentioned in other episodes. Bear and the kids of the Big Blue House went on vacation at a nice hotel in Sequoia City in "This Is Your Life, Bear."
 River City – River City is a town mentioned on Bear in the Big Blue House. Not much is known about it, but Grandma Flutter was an all-star player for their baseball team: the River City Rodents.

Cancellation
Bear in the Big Blue House was initially produced from 1997 to 2003. The sudden death of Lynne Thigpen, who voiced 'Luna' the Moon, led to production being put on hiatus for three years, along with a planned film.

In 2005, two years after Thigpen's death, Tara Mooney, who voiced Shadow, told Irish radio station Today FM that "the crew's hearts just weren't in it anymore".

Spin-off
After the hiatus and the spin-off Breakfast with Bear, a final run of new episodes aired on the Disney Channel in April 2006, with the last episode airing on April 28, 2006. Repeats of the show ceased altogether in May 2007 (December 2010 in the UK). Thigpen was posthumously nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for voicing Luna.

Songs
 "Welcome to the Blue House"
 "What's That Smell?"
 "The Bear Cha-Cha-Cha"
 "Dear Grandma"
 "Happy, Happy Birthday"
 "Good Morning"
 "Brush, Brush Bree"
 "Look at You Now"
 "That's My Name"
 "Everybody Say Ah"
 "What's In The Mail Today?"
 "Making Sense Of The World"
 "The Grandma Mambo"
 "Remember When"
 "The Otter Dancing School"
 "Shadow's Lullaby"
 "When I'm Older"
 "Everybody In The Tub"
 "Rhythm In The Air"
 "Why Can't The Dirt Just Leave Me Alone?"
 "Imagine That"
 "Smellorama"
 "When I Find The Great Lost Cheese"
 "Under Your Blanket"
 "Love Is Incredible"
 "Your Grandma And Grandpa"
 "What Kind Of Mouse Am I?"
 "Picture This"
 "Hello Doctor"
 "Worth The Wait"
 "Friends Forever"
 "Surprise!"
 "What's Mine Is Yours"
 "The Toileteers"
 "Next Stop Dreamland"
 "Great to Be at Home"
 "Go to Bed, Sleepy Head"
 "Take Time to Smell the Cheese"
 "Clean Up the House"
 "Oops! I Goofed Again"
 "Quiet Time"
 "Otter Love"
 "Shape of a Bear"
 "Baby, Baby"
 "When You Make Yourself a Friend"
 "Oh, Boy"
 "You Go, Ojo"
 "Need a Little Help Today"
 "Goodbye Song"

International airings
The show was shown throughout the world including in the United Kingdom on Playhouse Disney UK and Channel 5, on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Australia, on RTÉ Two in Ireland and on Playhouse Disney and TV Globo in Brazil.

Awards
Daytime Emmy Awards
2000 – Outstanding Sound Mixing – Peter Hefter and John Alberts (won) (Tied with Bill Nye the Science Guy and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show)
2000 – Outstanding Directing in a Children's Series – Mitchell Kriegman, Richard A. Fernandes and Dean Gordon (won)
2003 – Outstanding Directing in a Children's Series – Mitchell Kriegman and Dean Gordon (won)
 Parent's Choice Gold Award Winner – 2000, 2002
 Director's Guild Award – Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Children's Programs - "Episode 225: Love Is All You Need"

References

External links

1990s American children's television series
2000s American children's television series
1997 American television series debuts
2006 American television series endings
1990s preschool education television series
2000s preschool education television series
American children's adventure television series
American children's fantasy television series
American children's musical television series
American preschool education television series
American television shows featuring puppetry
American television series with live action and animation
Personal development television series
Television shows adapted into plays
Television shows adapted into video games
English-language television shows
Disney Channel original programming
Disney Junior original programming
Television series about bears
Television series about mice and rats
Talking animals in fiction
Works about friendship
Television shows set in the United States
Television shows set in forests
Television series by Disney–ABC Domestic Television
Television series by The Jim Henson Company

Bear in the Big Blue House


Bishopsgate was one of the eastern gates in London's former defensive wall. The gate's name is traditionally attributed to Earconwald, who was Bishop of London in the 7th century. It was first built in Roman times and marked the beginning of Ermine Street, the ancient road running from London to York (Eboracum). The gate was rebuilt twice in the 15th and 18th centuries, but was permanently demolished in 1760.

Bishopsgate gave its name to the Bishopsgate Ward of the City of London. The ward is traditionally divided into Bishopsgate Within, inside the line of the former wall, and Bishopsgate Without beyond it. Bishopsgate Without is described as part of London's East End. The ancient boundaries of the City wards were reviewed in 1994 and 2013, so that the wards no longer correspond very closely to their historic extents. Bishopsgate Without gained a significant part of Shoreditch from the London Borough of Hackney, while nearly all of Bishopsgate Within was transferred to other wards.

Bishopsgate is also the name of the street, being the part of the originally Roman Ermine Street (now the A10) within the traditional extent of the Ward.

The gate
The gate was first built in the Roman era, probably at the time the wall was first built. The road though the gate, Ermine Street (known at this point as Bishopsgate) was in place long before the wall and the gate.

The gate is traditionally held to be named after Earconwald, a 7th-century Bishop of London (Bishop of the East Saxons). One of the ward's ancient churches, St Ethelburga-the-Virgin within Bishopsgate, is dedicated to Eorconwald's sister, St Ethelburga of Barking, the first Abbess of Barking Abbey.

In 1471, during the Wars of the Roses, the Yorkist-turned supporter of the House of Lancaster Bastard Fauconberg attacked London, trying to force his way across London Bridge and also attacking the eastern gates with a further five thousand men and artillery. Bishopsgate was set on fire and the attackers came close to capturing nearby Aldgate and with it the city. The attackers were repulsed from both gates with heavy losses, before being chased back to Bow Bridge and Blackwall.

The Bishop's Gate was rebuilt by the Hansa merchants in 1471 in exchange for steelyard privileges. Its final form was erected in 1735 by the City authorities, but demolished in 1760. This gate often displayed the heads of criminals on spikes. London Wall (which is no longer extant in this sector) divided the ward and road into an intramural portion called Bishopsgate Within and an extramural portion called Bishopsgate Without.

The site of this former gate is marked by a stone bishop's mitre, fixed high upon a building located near Bishopsgate's junction with Wormwood Street, by the gardens there and facing the Heron Tower.

Ward
The ward is notable for its skyscrapers, and is home to the main London offices of several major banks, including National Westminster Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Although tens of thousands of people commute to and work in the ward, it has a resident population of only 222 (2011).

The ward is divided into two parts by the line of the former London Wall and gate which lay just north of Wormwood and Camomile Streets.

Bishopsgate Without
Bishopsgate Without corresponds to the parish of St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate. The church is located immediately north of the site of the original Gate on the west side of the road. The church was one of four in medieval London dedicated to Saint Botolph or Botwulf, a 7th-century East Anglian saint; three of these were outside city gates, with a fourth near London Bridge and the riverside wharves. The locations result from Botolph being regarded as the patron saint of boundaries, and by extension of trade and travel.

The former River Walbrook, known at this point as Deepditch, ran along the line of modern Blomfield Street, forming the western boundary of Bishopsgate Without, with the Moorfields (in Coleman Street Ward) beyond it. The Blomfield Street section of the river was the focal point of the Walbrook Skulls; the result of the deposit of large quantities of decapitated Roman-era human skulls into the water. These are still often uncovered during building work.

Bishopsgate Without was, from 1247 to 1633, the first home of the Bethlem Royal Hospital (also known as Bedlam). This psychiatric hospital lay immediately north of St Botolph's church.

Around 1597, the merchant Sir Paul Pindar, purchased several existing properties, and built himself a new home on the site (incorporating part of one or more of the old properties). The house had a fairly narrow frontage but extended a long way back. Bishopsgate Street had recently been paved, making the site convenient for Pindar's business activities in East Anglia. The house had views over the open space in nearby Moorfields and Finsbury Fields, west of the Walbrook. The house was soon prestigious enough to be used as a base by several foreigh ambassadors, including the Venetian ambassador Pietro Contarini in 1617–18.

The district was then on the edge of London, something Contarini had mixed feelings about, describing Bishopsgate Without as "…an airy and fashionable area…a little too much
in the country"

In the 1600s, Bishopsgate Without, together with neighbouring Bethnal Green and Spitalfields was home to many Huguenot refugees, many of them weavers. In the late 1600s wealthy residents began to migrate to the newly developed areas of West End of London and the character of the area began to change, partly due to the more prosperous parts of the community leaving, and partly to the densification of the area and rapid urbanisation of the neighbouring rural areas.

In time, the East and West Ends of London became more strikingly different in character, writing of the period around 1800, Rev. Richardson commented:

Bishopsgate Without was a very densely populated neighbourhood, prior to the opening (1874) and later expansion (1891) of Liverpool Street station, which now dominates the area. The initial opening of the station saw 3,000 residents of Bishopsgate Without evicted and their homes demolished. Around 7,000 people in neighbouring Shoreditch also lost their homes to the railway tracks feeding into the station.

Notable buildings include:
 Broadgate Tower
 Heron Tower
 Liverpool Street station
 Great Eastern Hotel
 Bishopsgate Institute
 Broadgate Estate
 Dirty Dick's (a 200 year old pub)
 Bishopsgate Victorian Bath House

Bishopsgate Within
Bishopsgate Within was originally divided into many parishes, each with its own parish church: St Andrew Undershaft, St Ethelburga Bishopsgate, St Martin Outwich, St Mary Axe and St Helen's Bishopsgate, now all amalgamated under the last of these. St Helen's is a historic medieval church and former monastic establishment with many ancient funerary monuments and a stained glass window commemorating William Shakespeare, a local parishioner in the early to mid-1590s. The area was well located for Shakespeare, being close to the theatres in Shoreditch where he worked; The Theatre and the Curtain Theatre.

Notable buildings include:
 99 Bishopsgate
 100 Bishopsgate
 Tower 42
 22 Bishopsgate

Ward boundary changes

The 1994 (city), 2003 and 2013 (ward) boundary revisions made fundamental changes to the ancient boundaries of the ward. The 1994 changes saw Bishopsgate Without (and with it the City of London) gain a large area from the Shoreditch area of the London Borough of Hackney,

The changes made in 2003 and 2013 shifted land between wards of the city. The effect of this was to transfer nearly all of Bishopsgate Within (except for a small area surrounding the Leathersellers' livery hall) to other wards. The ward previously extended much further south, along the Bishopsgate road and Gracechurch Street. At this time Bishopsgate Without lost a small block of buildings east Blomfield Street to the Broad Street ward.

There were no changes to Bishopsgate's ward boundaries in the 2013 boundary changes.

The revised ward borders the London Borough of Hackney to the north, it neighbours The Portsoken and the borough of Tower Hamlets in the east. The other neighbours are Aldgate (southeast), Coleman Street (west), Cornhill (south-west), Broad Street and Lime Street (south).

Politics
Bishopsgate is one of 25 wards in the City of London, each electing an Alderman to the Court of Aldermen, and Commoners (the City equivalent of a councillor) to the Court of Common Council of the City of London Corporation. Only electors who are Freemen of the City of London are eligible to stand. On 15 September 2022 the ward elected Kawsar Zaman as its Alderman. He is only the third non-white Alderman in the city's hundreds of years of history, the first British-Bangladeshi ever to hold the office, and the youngest ever elected to the Court of Alderman.

Street
The street called Bishopsgate (formerly Bishopsgate Street), which takes its name from the Gate, is the main thoroughfare of the Ward. It is a stretch of the originally Roman Ermine Street (now the A10) between Gracechurch Street and Norton Folgate, taking the name Bishopsgate only within the historical area of the ward.

Although it takes its name from the gate, the road pre-dates the building of the London Wall which was built in the late second or early third centuries. Ermine Street (sometimes called the Old North Road) connected London to Cambridge, Lincoln, York and other towns and cities.

History

Early history
In the Roman period it was illegal to bury the dead within the city, so cemeteries were established outside the city gates. There were large burial grounds outside Bishopsgate, on both side of Ermine Street.

The wards of London appear to have taken shape in the 11th century, before the Norman Conquest. Their administrative, judicial and military purpose made them equivalent to hundreds in the countryside. The primary purpose of wards like Bishopsgate, which included a gate, appears to be the defence of the gate, as gates were the weakest points in any fortification.

The earliest origins of the wards reach back further than the 11th century but their emergence and evolution is uncertain and any narrative conjectural. The ward may have developed from the Soke of Bishopsgate, a set of rights, and possibly land, held by the Bishop of London over an area to the east of the River Walbrook. The Bishop may have been granted the land and rights in order to promote growth in the under-developed part of the city east of the Walbrook. Outside the wall the Walbrook formed the boundary between the Soke of Bishopsgate to the east and the Soke of Cripplegate on the other side of the brook.

Bishopsgate may have originally included the area that subsequently became known as Lime Street Ward.

The Domesday Survey of 1086 did not cover London, but a landholding called Bishopsgate is recorded nearby; this may have been the property later known as Norton Folgate.

Coaching inns
Bishopsgate had many coaching inns which accommodated passengers setting out on the originally Roman Ermine Street, that issued from the gate. Although they survived the Great Fire of London, they have now all been demolished. These included the Angel, the Black Bull, the Dolphin, the Flower Pot, the Green Dragon, the Magpie and Punchbowl, the White Hart and the Wrestlers. The Black Bull was a venue for the Queen's Men theatrical troupe in the 16th century. The English politician Anthony Bacon moved nearby with his mother in May 1594 and she complained about the plays and interludes at the Bull which might "corrupt his servants".

An inn called the Catherine Wheel (demolished 1911) is commemorated by Catherine Wheel Alley which leads off Bishopsgate to the east. The 17th century façade of Sir Paul Pindar's House on Bishopsgate, demolished, with many other old buildings, for the expansion of Liverpool Street railway station in 1890, was also preserved and can now be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum. In the 18th century this grand residence became a tavern called Sir Paul Pindar's Head; another notable venue was the London Tavern (1768–1876). Also demolished (but then re-erected in Chelsea in 1910) was the old Crosby Hall, at one time the residence of Richard III and Thomas More.

Bishopsgate Mutiny
In 1649, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, Colonel Whalley's Regiment, a parliamentary unit, was stationed in Bishopsgate Ward, helping to protect London from Royalists. The Bishopsgate mutiny occurred when soldiers of the regiment, mutinied against parliament - partly due to their radical Leveller sympathies. A surrender was eventually negotiated, but Robert Lockyer a parishioner of Bishopsgate Without as well as a soldier in the regiment, was executed as a ringleader.

Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto was first printed, anonymously and in German, by the Workers Educational Association at 46 Liverpool Street in Bishopsgate Without in 1848.

Terrorist attack
On 24 April 1993, it was the site of an IRA truck bombing which killed journalist Ed Henty, injured over 40 people and caused £1 billion worth of damage, including the destruction of St Ethelburga's church and damage to the NatWest Tower and Liverpool Street station. Police had received a coded warning, but were still evacuating the area at the time of the explosion. The area had already suffered damage from the Baltic Exchange bombing one year before.

St Ethelburga's was rebuilt, functioning not just as a church but also as home to the St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace charity.

Gallery

See also
 Fortifications of London

References

External links

 Ward map from the Corporation of London
 Bishopsgate ward newsletter
 Map of Early Modern London, with scholarly commentary. Bishopsgate is in grid square B6, right side.
 Pubs within the City of London
 Bishopsgate Ward Club
 Michael Wood (2003) In Search of Shakespeare. London: BBC Worldwide.
 Mention in Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! by the Beatles: "The celebrated Mr. K. performs his feat on Saturday at Bishopsgate."
 St Helen's Bishopsgate

Streets in the City of London
London Wall and its gates
Wards of the City of London
Odonyms referring to religion

Bishopsgate


Belle-Poule was a  60-gun first rank frigate of the French Navy. She achieved fame for bringing the remains of Napoleon from Saint Helena back to France, in what became known as the Retour des cendres.

Career

Construction and early career
Although construction was started in 1828, Belle-Poule was launched only in 1834. She was one of the first ships to be built in a covered shipyard, which allowed the builders to delay construction while the political and financial circumstances were not favourable. Her design was inspired by . She was commissioned in July 1835, and displayed very good sailing properties.

On 1 August 1839, under command of the Prince of Joinville, third son of King Louis-Philippe, she left Cherbourg to join the Eastern fleet of Admiral Lalande. In October, she ran aground on the Taches Blanches, in the Dardanelles and was damaged. She was refloated and taken into Constantinople, Ottoman Empire for temporary repairs before sailing to Toulon for permanent repairs.

Retour des cendres

On 27 July 1840, she set sail with special equipment for Saint Helena to bring back the remains of Napoleon. She had been painted black for the occasion. On 30 September, she arrived back in Cherbourg, where, on 8 December, the Emperor's remains were transferred to the steamship Normandie. Normandie transported the remains to Le Havre and up the Seine to Rouen, for further transport to Paris.

The transfer of the remains from Belle-Poule to Normandie in the road of Cherbourg was executed in much ceremony, and became a subject of choice for marine and romantic painters.

Canada and Morocco

In 1841, Belle-Poule cruised along the Canadian coast, landing in Halifax, Nova Scotia and visited New York City, where the Prince of Joinville visited the President of the United States. Belle-Poule was back in Toulon on 14 July 1842.

In 1844, Joinville, then vice-admiral, was sent to Morocco to support the action of General Thomas Robert Bugeaud in Algeria, with , Jemmapes, Triton, and the frigate Belle-Poule. Tanger came under attack on 6 August, and Mogador was taken on 15  August.

Afterwards, Belle-Poule cruised the Indian Ocean, where a cyclone left her with serious damage. She was repaired in Sainte-Marie de Madagascar, and returned to Brest.

Crimean War and late career
She took part in the Crimean War, mostly as a transport; she stayed in the East until August 1856, and sailed back to Toulon on 1 September.

In 1859, she was used to transport ammunition, and was decommissioned on 19 March 1861. She was still used to store gunpowder until 1888.

Citations

References

Age of Sail frigates of France
Frigates of the French Navy
Surveillante-class frigates
1834 ships
Crimean War naval ships of France
Maritime incidents in October 1839

French frigate Belle Poule (1834)


1958 Pattern Web Equipment was a modular personal equipment system issued to the British Armed Forces from 1959 up until the mid 90s. It replaced the 1937 Pattern Web Equipment that had served the UK's Armed Forces through the Second World War and the first decade of the Cold War and also the 1944 pattern Webbing which was used in jungle conditions starting from the mid-1960s.

It was in turn gradually replaced in the 1990s by 90 and 95 Pattern Personal Load Carrying Equipment (PLCE), though usage in Ministry of Defence-sponsored Community and Combined Cadet Forces persisted into the 2000s. Although replaced, the belt in particular seems to survive as an unofficial form of dress (replacing the general issue Working Belt) by older soldiers when worn with Combat Soldier 95 clothing.

Components

A standard set of 1958 Pattern webbing as issued to most British personnel consisted of a belt, a yoke that supported the attachment of a shovel or pick, two ammunition pouches to carry magazines for the L1A1 rifle, L2A3 submachine gun, or L4A1-A9 machine gun, linked 7.62mm ammunition for the L7A1/A2 machine gun, and/or L2A1/A2 and other grenades (with the left-hand pouch having provision for carrying a sheathed bayonet and the right-hand pouch having an external pocket to the rear for the ENERGA rifle grenade adapter), a water bottle pouch (also able to be fitted with a mug while containing the waterbottle), a pair of rear "kidney" pouches (for the storage of spare underwear and socks, washing and shaving kit, boot cleaning items, twenty-four-hour rations, and any other items that the user may need to have secured), a poncho roll or "cape carrier", and a large pack.

The standard webbing could be altered to take additional pieces of needed equipment, an example of which is the large pack having provision for externally carrying a blanket or sleeping bag and, if not worn, the Mark IV helmet.

There were a number of ancillary pouches and fittings available for soldiers carrying other armament or conducting certain roles, e.g. a holster for the L9A1 and other pistols, a compass pouch, and a binocular case.

All components of the webbing equipment were made from pre-shrunk canvas webbing that was dyed in Standard Camouflage Colour (SCC) 15 Green and could be cleaned through conventional methods (as opposed to the 1908 and 1937 web equipments that used Blanco for both colouration and cleaning; fitting instructions for the 1958 equipment specifically forbade scrubbing or Blancoing of the equipment as well as any attempt to remove the finish on metal parts); the metal fittings were made from anodised dark green aluminium, again requiring less cleaning compared to the brass fittings of earlier web equipments (though said fittings were supposed to be allowed to grow dull for fieldcraft purposes anyway).

In its standard configuration, each of the belt-mounted components was secured to the belt by a pair of double hooks (one double hook only in the case of the compass pouch) at the rear, hooked over the belt above and below, with the ends of the hooks further retained in canvas pockets on the inside face of the belt.  However, some sets of webbing, particularly where used by special forces, were fitted or modified with a canvas loop on the pouches into which the belt was threaded. This method of attachment allowed the pouch to be moved around the belt for the comfort of the user, for example when sitting for long periods. Some sets were also modified with quick-release buckles on the belt, pouches, or both, and could also feature pouches taken from other load-bearing systems. Most personnel used their webbing as issued, however.

Several of the individual components evolved over the lifetime of the 1958 Pattern system. There were three iterations of the standard (SLR) ammunition pouches, and two of the water-bottle pouch, poncho roll and yoke.

Usage
The equipment was worn in a series of combinations. Weapon Training or Skeleton Order consisted of the belt, the yoke, the two ammunition pouches, and the water bottle pouch, becoming Light Fighting Order (LFO) with the addition of the rear pouches and, if desired, the cape carrier. Combat Equipment Fighting Order (CEFO) was the term used for the full webbing equipment (comprising the LFO and cape carrier with the addition of entrenching tools), and once the large pack was attached it became Combat Equipment Marching Order (CEMO).

A further informal order, effectively amounting to Skeleton Order without the yoke and with a minimal number of pouches, was often used by soldiers serving in the Aden Emergency and later Operation Banner to aid disembarkation from vehicles; soldiers who were tasked with searching vehicles at security checkpoints often carried a pistol in lieu of a rifle and thus went even further in reducing their webbing, only wearing the belt and the pistol's holster.

Over the course of its service, there were a number of developments and modifications. When the system was originally designed, little scope was given to Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) warfare and when this was addressed, the system gained a respirator haversack to house the then issue S6 NBC Respirator.

Variants

72 Pattern webbing

Foreign copies and derivatives

61 pattern webbing

 61 pattern webbing, A South African copy, used by Rhodesian Forces as 69 pattern.

 1970 pattern webbing, South African equivalent
 69 pattern webbing, Rhodesian webbing

UTV webbing
 UTV webbing, East German equivalent made of nylon/rain camo

Users

: Primarily used by the Defence Force, also used by the Royal Barbados Police Force contingent of the Caribbean Peace Force
: Used during Ba'athist rule, primarily imported from Pakistan
: Imported from Great Britain; replaced by PLCE webbing by the early 2000s

: Domestically produced

: British Armed Forces (replaced by PLCE in the 1990s) and MOD-sponsored cadet forces (also replaced by PLCE, albeit at a slower rate than the Armed Forces)

References

External links

1988 M. Wright & Sons brochure

British Army equipment
Personal military carrying equipment
Military equipment introduced in the 1950s

58 pattern webbing


C. Jackson "Jack" Grayson, Jr. (October 8, 1923 – May 4, 2017) was an American businessman and writer. He was the chairman of APQC, dean of two business schools, head of the U.S. Price Commission (1971), a farmer, newspaper reporter and FBI agent. In 1977 he founded APQC as a private sector, non-profit organization.

Grayson was the United States Chair of the Price Commission from 1971 to 1973 under President Richard Nixon. In that position, Grayson oversaw price controls. Grayson gained exposure to productivity issues and how they related to product pricing. Grayson went on to found the American Productivity and Quality Center in 1977 where he now resides as chairman and oversees the organization's public education improvement initiatives.

Other websites
 APQC
 Open Standards Benchmarking
 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (NIST)
 Public School Insights Interview with Grayson

1923 births
2017 deaths
Businesspeople from Louisiana
Writers from Louisiana

C. Jackson Grayson


The R.38 class (also known as the A class) of rigid airships was designed for Britain's Royal Navy during the final months of the First World War, intended for long-range patrol duties over the North Sea. Four similar airships were originally ordered by the Admiralty, but orders for three of these (R.39, R.40 and R.41) were cancelled after the armistice with Germany and R.38, the lead ship of the class, was sold to the United States Navy in October 1919 before completion.

On 24 August 1921, R.38 (designated ZR-2 by the USN) was destroyed by a structural failure while in flight over the city of Hull. It crashed into the Humber Estuary, killing 44 out of the 49 crew aboard. At the time of its first flight it was the world's largest airship. Its destruction was the first of the great airship disasters, followed by the Italian-built US semi-rigid airship Roma in 1922 (34 dead), the French Dixmude in 1923 (52 dead), the USS Shenandoah in 1925 (14 dead), the British R101 in 1930 (48 dead), the  in 1933 (73 dead), the USS Macon in 1935 (2 dead), and the German Hindenburg in 1937 (36 dead).

Design and development
The R.38 class was designed to meet an Admiralty requirement of June 1918 for an airship capable of patrolling for six days at ranges of up to 300 miles from home base and altitudes of up to 22,000 ft (6,700 m). A heavy load of armaments was specified, to allow the airship to be used to escort surface vessels.  Design work was carried out by an Admiralty team led by Constructor-Commander C. I. R. Campbell, of the Royal Corps of Navy Constructors. The construction contract was awarded to Short Brothers in September 1918 but cancelled on 31 January 1919 before work had been started.  It was then re-ordered on 17 February: on the same day, Oswald Short was informed that the Cardington, Bedfordshire works, recently built as a specialised airship production facility, was to be nationalised. Construction of R.38 started at Cardington in February 1919.  It was intended to follow R.38 with orders for three airships of the same class: R.39, identical to R.38, to be built by Armstrong-Whitworth, and two others, R.40 and R.41, of a design variant with the length reduced to 690 ft (210.31 m) due to the limited size of existing manufacturing sheds. The Armistice coupled with the assignment of airships from the admiralty to the Royal Air Force and a decision to nationalize the Shorts airship plant into the Royal Airship Works confused the matter of whom was responsible for what. Constructor-Commander Campbell became both Manager and Chief Designer of the Royal Airship Works.

Later in 1919, several airship orders were cancelled as a peacetime economy measure, including the three planned R.38 class ships. In a further round of cutbacks, the cancellation of the unfinished R.38 also appeared imminent, but, before this actually happened, the project was offered to the United States. The United States Navy demanded significant changes in the airship including modification to the bow in order to allow mooring to a mast, access to the mast from the keel and the addition of weight to the stern to ensure balance.

The hull contained 14 hydrogen-filled gasbags.  The 13-sided mainframes were  apart, and were made up of diamond-shaped trusses connected by 13 main and 12 secondary longitudinal girders and a trapezoidal keel.  There were two secondary ring frames between each pair of mainframes.  The forward-mounted control car was directly attached to the hull.  The cruciform tail surfaces were unbraced cantilevers and carried aerodynamically balanced elevators and rudders.  The six Sunbeam Cossack engines, each driving a two-bladed pusher propeller, were housed in individual cars arranged as three pairs: one pair aft of the control car, one pair amidships, and the third pair aft.

Sale to United States
The United States Navy had decided that it wanted to add rigid airships to its fleet and originally hoped to get two Zeppelins as part of war reparations, but these had been deliberately destroyed by their crews in 1919 in actions connected with the scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow. An order was placed with the Zeppelin company for a new craft, to be paid for by the Germans (which became USS Los Angeles), and, to go with it, they also planned to build one in the United States (which became USS Shenandoah). With the news of the impending termination of R.38s construction, the possibility of taking over the project was investigated. An agreement was reached in October 1919 for its purchase for £300,000, and work on the airship was resumed. As work progressed the US Navy began checking the documentation given them by the British. Following significant girder failures during testing Commander Jerome Hunsacker and Charles Burgess raised questions over the strength of R.38. Burgess concluded that "This investigation indicates that the transverses of the R.38 are only just strong enough, and have no factor of safety.

Operational history

The airship was to be given a curtailed series of tests before being handed over to the U.S. Navy, who would fly it across the Atlantic.  J. E. M. Pritchard, the officer in charge of flight testing, proposed to carry out 100 hours of flight testing, including flights in rough weather, followed by 50 more flown by an American crew before crossing the Atlantic. The commander of the Howden Detachment Commander Maxfield disagreed and urged that the test of R.38 be completed in one day. Air Commodore Edward Maitland as the man most responsible for testing the R.38 was appalled and disagreed. He protested the abbreviated test schedule. He was told to not provide advice unless asked.  The Air Ministry ruled that 50 hours would be sufficient. The decision had been made in ignorance by officials unfamiliar with airships as well as the knowledgeable officers who were reluctant to release an airship of unproven strength, egged on by an eagerness to return to America by Commander Maxfield.

The R.38 made its first flight on 23–24 June 1921, when it flew registered as R.38 but bearing the US designation ZR-2; the seven-hour flight revealed problems with over-balance of the control surfaces.  With the balance area of the top rudder reduced, a second test flight was carried out on 17–18 July.  The control balance problem remained, and, on return to Cardington, all the control surfaces were reduced in area.  On 17–18 July, a third flight was made, during which the airship was flown from Cardington to Howden and then out over the North Sea, where the speed was increased to , causing the ship to begin hunting over a range of around .  The highly experienced Pritchard took over the controls from the American coxswain and reduced the oscillation, but several girders in the vicinity of the midship engine cars had already failed. The control surfaces were still over balanced. More importantly girders of intermediate frame 7b as well as longitudinal Girder F had failed in one place, while frame 7a and longitudinal F' each had failed in two locations. R.38 returned to Howden at reduced speed. Work on reinforcing the buckled girders was carried out and completed by 30 July at Howden. There were increasing doubts being expressed about the design, including some made by Air Commodore E. M. Maitland, the very experienced commander of the Howden base. Maitland urged that all future speed trials be conducted at higher altitude as was the practice of the Germans while testing the fragile Zeppelins upon which the R.38 design was based. There was considerable concern expressed by Admiral Griffen, the chief of the Bureau of Steam Engineering.  Burgess at the Bureau of Construction and Repair was also concerned. Starr Truscott of the Bureau of Construction and Repairs believed that the negative endorsements of Admirals Griffin and Taylor would suffice to extend trials for the ZR-2 (R.38) but he was soon proven wrong. Admiral Taylor endorsed Commander Maxfield's optimistic report of July 20. Truscott later came to accept that decision writing "We must accept ship as per British practice, i.e., if acceptable to Air Ministry it must be to us. Question of starting flight is up to people in England."

Fatal crash

Following a spell of bad weather, the airship was walked out on 23 August and, in the early morning, took off for its fourth flight, which had an intended destination of RNAS Pulham in Norfolk, where it could be moored to a mast (a facility unavailable at Howden). The mooring, however, proved impossible because of low cloud, so the airship returned to sea for the night. The next day, after a brief speed trial (during which a speed of  was reached), a series of turning trials was started at a speed of  and an altitude of . Passing over Hull, a series of control reversals were started which the Germans would never have attempted at such a low altitude. Wann, who was in the control gondola, stated that the controls were never put beyond 15 degrees, while Bateman, from the National Physical Laboratory who was recording pressures upon the vertical fins, stated clearly that the rudders were being driven rapidly from hard over to hard over which would have been 25 degrees from one side to 25 degrees to the other. At 17:37, while close offshore near Hull and watched by thousands of spectators, the structure failed amidships. Eyewitnesses reported seeing creases diagonally along the hull towards the stern. Both ends drooped. The R.38 then cracked open with men and objects dropping from the rupture. The two sections separated with the forward section catching fire followed by two colossal explosions. The two explosions broke windows over a large area with the flaming fore section falling rapidly followed by the aft section descending slowly. The remains fell into the shallow waters of the Humber Estuary. Sixteen of the 17 Americans, and 28 of the 32 Britons, in the crew were killed, including both Maitland and Pritchard. The only American to survive was Rigger Norman Otto Walker. Four of those who survived were in the tail section, Flight Lieutenant Archibald Herbert Wann, R.38's British Commanding Officer, was in the control gondola and survived.

A memorial was erected at Hull, and in 2021, a centenary memorial service was held at Hull Minster.

Aftermath

The loss of the R.38, which represented the hope of airship men in Britain, resulted in three official enquiries into the disaster. The first, chaired by Air Vice-Marshal Sir John Salmond and composed mainly of RAF personnel, was convened on 27 August. Its remit was to consider the general circumstances of the accident, and, although it came to the conclusion that the structure had failed while extreme control forces were being exerted, it was considered necessary to carry out a more detailed technical inquiry into the airship's design. The report also criticized the system by which a single authority was responsible both for the airship's construction and for inspection of the work, and, given the great differences between R.38 and previous British designs, held that the design should have been subjected to a more thorough scrutiny.

The Admiralty held a second inquiry into the history of the design of the airship, and into its construction up to the point where it was taken over from the Admiralty by the Air Ministry. In contrast to the previous inquiry, this one concluded that the design did not incorporate any new features which affected the airship's strength, and further maintained that "there was at the time no body in existence which could have been called in to advise on the structural strength of R.38."

The technical Committee of Enquiry, chaired by Mervyn O'Gorman, concluded that no allowance had been made for aerodynamic stresses in the design, and that while no loads had been placed on the structure during testing that would not have been met in normal use, the effects of the manoeuvres made had weakened the hull. No blame was attached to anyone, as this was not part of the committee's remit.

The R.38 disaster led to a rigorous investigation of the structure of airships preceding the design of the next two airships built in Britain, the R.100 and the more radical R.101. What is curious is that the practice of having responsibility for design and ultimately judging the airworthiness of that design remained in the same hands.
Nevil Shute Norway (who was the novelist Nevil Shute) worked on the design of the R.100 airship for Vickers Ltd. from 1924. When he researched previous airship calculations and read the reports of the 1921 R.38 crash he was "unable to believe the words he was reading" that "the civil servants concerned had made no attempt to calculate the aerodynamic forces ... " and he asked one of his chiefs  "if this could possibly be true. Not only did he confirm it but he pointed out that no one had been sacked over it or even suffered any censure. Nevil Shute Norway in ignorance of the deaths of the principals in the R.38 disaster then asserted wrongly that the same team of men had been entrusted with the construction of another airship, the R101, which was to be built by the Air Ministry in competition with our own ship, the R100" ("by rights they ought to be in gaol for manslaughter." Norway was wrong in that C.I.R Campbell died in the R.38 he designed. There can be no argument that the design of the R.38 was defective and negligently so. There can also be no argument that the emphasis the R.38 disaster wrought upon structural design and calculation resulted in the R.100 and R.101 being the strongest airships ever flown. They also had structures weighing far more for their size than any other airships. The R.38 suffered from attempting to copy what the men attempting to copy little understood. The R.38 was designed for high altitude operations over the North Sea. The US Navy intended it for low altitude operations over the western Atlantic. For the men who built the R.38 its sale to the US Navy represented a last chance to salvage something from the Royal Navy's rigid airship program and its takeover and abandonment by the RAF. The demands of the Exchequer and the US Navy's commander Maxwell converged to cause risks to be taken which were questioned at the time and ignored with fatal consequences.

Specifications (R.38/ZR-2)

R.38 Memorial Prize
In December 1922, the Council of the Royal Aeronautical Society decided to offer an annual prize for technical papers on airships, open to international competition.  This would be known as the R.38 Memorial Prize. The first R.38 Memorial Prize was awarded to C.P. Burgess, Jerome Hunsacker, and Starr Truscott who presented their paper "The Strength of Rigid Airships."

See also

Notes

References

 Airshipsonline. 2006. Airshipsonline – Airship Heritage Trust: R38, last accessed 28 June 2008
 Althof, William F. USS Los Angeles: The Navy's Venerable Airship and Aviation Technology. Brassey's, 2004, p. 4
 Robinson, Douglas H., and Charles L. Keller. "Up Ship!": U.S. Navy Rigid Airships 1919–1935. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1982.
 Griehl, Manfred and Dressel Joachim, Zeppelin! The German Airship Story, 1990
 Higham, Robin. The British Rigid Airship 1908–1931. Henley-on-Thames: Foulis, 1961.
 Jamison, T. W. Icarus over the Humber, Lampada Press, 1994
 Mowthorpe, Ces. Battlebags: British Airships of the First World War, 1995

 Swinfield, John. Airship: Design, Development and Disaster. London: Conway, 2012.
 Lord Ventry and Eugene Kolesnik. Jane's Pocket Book 7 – Airship Development, 1976
 Lord Ventry and Eugene Kolesnik. Airship saga: The history of airships seen through the eyes of the men who designed, built, and flew them , 1982,
 BBC Humber article on the R38 disaster

External links

  Detailed contemporary report of the R38 accident, including survivors' accounts, early speculation on the cause, and reporting of official reactions. An editorial view is on pages 581–582.
  Contemporary report of the funeral services for the R38 victims.
  Report of the Court of Enquiry on the R38 accident. An editorial comment is on pages 667–668.
  Photograph of the crash site.

Airships of the United Kingdom
Rigid airships of the United States Navy
Aviation accidents and incidents in England
History of Kingston upon Hull
Aviation accidents and incidents in 1921
1921 in England
1920s British patrol aircraft
Accidents and incidents involving balloons and airships
1921 disasters in the United Kingdom
1920s in the East Riding of Yorkshire

R38-class airship


George John Godolphin Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford (born 28 July 1992), styled as Earl of Sunderland until 2014, is a British aristocrat and polo player. He is a model and brand ambassador for La Martina, an Argentine polo clothing and accessories company. As the heir apparent to the Dukedom of Marlborough, he uses the courtesy title of Marquess of Blandford.

Early life and family
He is the son of Jamie Spencer-Churchill, 12th Duke of Marlborough and his first wife, Rebecca Mary Few Brown. He is also a descendant of Consuelo Vanderbilt (first wife of the 9th Duke of Marlborough).

He and his family are notable for being involved in a high-profile legal dispute around 1993, when his paternal grandfather (the 11th Duke of Marlborough) sought to disinherit Lord Blandford's father. Since his father has had a controversial past, including serving time in jail for forging prescriptions and road rage, Lord Blandford was announced as the financial beneficiary of his grandfather's estate. His inheritance was to include Blenheim Palace, a 187-room mansion set in 2,000 acres in Oxfordshire.

Education and career
He was educated at Harrow School, where he was captain of the school's polo team. From 2011 to 2014, he attended University College London, where he studied town planning.

In 2015, he started working as an aviation broker at JLT Group in London. In 2019, he became a broker at the London office of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., an American insurance brokerage.

Other activities
He began serving as a model and brand ambassador for the La Martina brand of polo clothes and accessories in 2015. His "Blenheim Polo Team" plays at Cirencester Park Polo Club in Gloucestershire.

From December 2018 to January 2019, he and three friends successfully rowed across the Atlantic Ocean in a time of 35 days, finishing second in the 2018 Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge.  He helped raise over £850,000 for the Starlight children's charity in the process.

Marriage and issue
Lord Blandford married Camilla Elizabeth Antonia Thorp (now styled as Marchioness of Blandford) (b. 7 April 1987), a descendant of the Tempest baronets of Tong, Yorkshire, on 8 September 2018 at St Mary Magdalene Church, Woodstock. Attendees of the wedding included Lady Violet Manners, Lord and Lady Bamford, Andrew Parker-Bowles, and Lord Milford Haven. They have a daughter, Lady Olympia Arabella Kitty Spencer-Churchill (born 10 September 2020).

References

1992 births
Living people
People educated at Harrow School
Alumni of University College London
Blandford
George
Vanderbilt family
English polo players
British polo players
Cadogan family

George Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford


was the pen name of a Japanese literary critic, active in the Shōwa and early Heisei periods of Japan. His real name was .

Early life
Etō was born in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo; his father was a banker, and his grandfather (originally from Saga in Kyūshū) was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy. His mother died when he was four years old, and always sickly as a child, he was mostly educated at home. He had an interest in literature from an early age, ranging from the heavy works of Jun'ichirō Tanizaki and Fyodor Dostoevsky, to the comics of Suihō Tagawa. In 1942, he was sent to boarding school in Kamakura, Kanagawa prefecture. While in Kamakura, his family's house in Tokyo was destroyed during the American air raids.

In the immediate postwar era, he went to high school in Fujisawa, Kanagawa prefecture, where he developed a friendship with future Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, who was one year ahead of him. He later returned to Tokyo, and eventually graduated from Keio University with a degree in English literature. Etō moved from Kamakura to the Ichigaya neighborhood in central Tokyo in 1948, returning to live in Kamakura from 1980 to his death.

Literary career
Although hired as a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Etō devoted most of his time and efforts into literature, and published his first work, Natsume Sōseki ron (1955), a critique of the famous Japanese writer Natsume Sōseki, which won the Noma Literary Prize and the Kikuchi Kan Prize. He followed this with Dorei no shisō wo haisu (1958) and Sakka ha kōdō suru (1959), in which he argued that a writer's style was directly related to his personal behavior and background.

In 1958, Etō joined a group of young, left-wing writers, artists and composers to form the "Young Japan Society" (Wakai Nihon no Kai) for the purpose of protesting a draconian Police Duties Bill introduced by conservative prime minister Nobusuke Kishi that would have authorized police use of warrantless searches and seizures against left-wing activists. Etō and the Young Japan Society later participated in the massive Anpo protests against Kishi's effort to revise the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty from 1959 to 1960.

In 1962, he published Kobayashi Hideo ronshū, in which he dared to write a critique on the famous literary critic Kobayashi Hideo. This work was awarded the Shichosha Literary Prize. Shortly afterwards, he departed for the United States for two years, for advanced studies at Princeton University at the invitation of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Other works include Ichizoku saikai (1967–1972) in which he attempted to trace his family roots and at the same time, the roots of the Japanese people.

Etō was a very prolific author, and his books and essays ranged from literary criticism and to postwar political commentary; through taking controversial viewpoints, he also established himself as one of foremost public intellectuals in the print and television. He was initially a prominent member of the movement against the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, establishing the "Young Japan Society" with like-minded writers and intellectuals, although he later reversed his position after a revised version of the treaty was ratified, accusing his former colleagues of "intellectual bankruptcy" and of confusing politics with morality.

Etō especially drew controversy during the mid-1960s when he produced a series of essays after his return from Princeton, which indicated a shift to the far right end of the political spectrum. He was highly critical of the policies of the American occupation, which he felt had destroyed or subverted Japanese traditions. He was especially critical of the post-war Constitution of Japan, which he asserted was a foreign import imposed upon Japan which needed revision, if not replacement.

In 1970, Etō completed Umi ga Yomigaeru, a work on the Russo-Japanese War, which (in August 1977) was made into the first three-hour historical drama to be aired on Japanese television.

In 1975, he submitted a doctoral dissertation entitled Sōseki to Āsā-Ō densetsu ("Sōseki and the Arthurian Legend") to Keiō University, and received his doctoral degree. The dissertation was a literary criticism of Kairo-kō: A Dirge and he argued that Soseki's own love affair was reflected in the plot.

He was awarded the Japan Art Academy Award in the same year and in 1991, became a member of the Japan Art Academy. From 1994, he was an honorary chairman of the Japan Writer's Association and was on the judging committees for many of Japan's literary awards.

On 21 July 1999, Etō committed suicide at his home in Kamakura by cutting his left wrist. He had been depressed by the death of his wife due to cancer the previous year, and by a stroke which he had suffered, which made writing difficult. His funeral was held per Shinto rites, and his grave is at the Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo.

Selected bibliography
 Eto, Jun. . Kawade Shobo Shinsha. .
 Eto, Jun. A Nation Reborn: A short history of postwar Japan. International Society for Educational Information (1974). ASIN: B0006D99OO
 Eto, Jun. Closed Linguistic Space: Censorship by the Occupation Forces and Postwar Japan. Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture (2020). .

See also
 Japanese literature
 List of Japanese authors

Notes

References
 Fukuda, Kazuya. Eto Jun to iu hito. Shinchosha (2000).
 Berkofsky, Alex. A Pacifist Constitution for an Armed Empire. Past and Present of Japanese Security and Defense Policies. FrancoAngeli (2001)
Brune, Lester. The Korean war: handbook of the literature and research. Greenwood Publishing Group (1996).
 Kwak, Jun-Hyeok. Inherited Responsibility and Historical Reconciliation in East Asia. Routledge. (2013)
Rimer, J. Thomas. The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From 1945 to the Present. Columbia University Press (2007)
 Tansman, Alan and Dennis Washburn. (1997). Studies in Modern Japanese Literature: Essays and Translations in Honor of Edwin McClellan. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan.  (cloth)

1932 births
1999 suicides
1999 deaths
Audiobook narrators
Japanese essayists
Japanese literary critics
Japanese monarchists
Japanese political commentators
Japanese political writers
Japanese Shintoists
People from Shinjuku
Princeton University faculty
Rockefeller Fellows
Keio University alumni
Academic staff of Keio University
Suicides by sharp instrument in Japan
Academic staff of Taisho University
Academic staff of Tokyo Institute of Technology
Writers from Tokyo
20th-century Japanese novelists
20th-century essayists
Presidents of the Japan Writers' Association

Jun Etō


A useless machine or useless box is a device whose only function is to turn itself off. The best-known useless machines are those inspired by Marvin Minsky's design, in which the device's sole function is to switch itself off by operating its own "off" switch. Such machines were popularised commercially in the 1960s, sold as an amusing engineering hack, or as a joke.

More elaborate devices and some novelty toys, which have an obvious entertainment function, have been based on these simple useless machines.

History
The Italian artist Bruno Munari began building "useless machines" (macchine inutili) in the 1930s. He was a "third generation" Futurist and did not share the first generation's boundless enthusiasm for technology, but sought to counter the threats of a world under machine rule by building machines that were artistic and unproductive.

The version of the useless machine that became famous in information theory (basically a box with a simple switch which, when turned "on", causes a hand or lever to appear from inside the box that switches the machine "off" before disappearing inside the box again) appears to have been invented by MIT professor and artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky, while he was a graduate student at Bell Labs in 1952. Minsky dubbed his invention the "ultimate machine", but that sense of the term did not catch on. The device has also been called the "Leave Me Alone Box".

Minsky's mentor at Bell Labs, information theory pioneer Claude Shannon (who later also became an MIT professor), made his own versions of the machine. He kept one on his desk, where science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke saw it. Clarke later wrote, "There is something unspeakably sinister about a machine that does nothing—absolutely nothing—except switch itself off", and he was fascinated by the concept.

Minsky also invented a "gravity machine" that would ring a bell if the gravitational constant were to change, a theoretical possibility that is not expected to occur in the foreseeable future.

Commercial products
In the 1960s, a novelty toy maker called "Captain Co." sold a "Monster Inside the Black Box", featuring a mechanical hand that emerged from a featureless plastic black box and flipped a toggle switch, turning itself off. This version may have been inspired in part by "Thing", the disembodied hand featured in the television sitcom The Addams Family. Other versions have been produced. In their conceptually purest form, these machines do nothing except switch themselves off.

It is claimed that Don Poynter, who graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1949 and founded Poynter Products, Inc., first produced and sold the "Little Black Box", which simply switched itself off. He then added the coin snatching feature, dubbed his invention "The Thing", arranged licensing with the producers of the television show, The Addams Family, and later sold "Uncle Fester's Mystery Light Bulb" as another show spinoff product. Robert J. Whiteman, owner and president of Liberty Library Corporation, also claims credit for developing "The Thing". (Both companies were later to be co-defendants in landmark litigation initiated by Theodor Geisel ("Dr. Seuss") over copyright issues related to figurines.)

Both the plain black box and the bank version were widely sold by Spencer Gifts, and appeared in its mail-order catalogs through the 1960s and early 1970s. , a version of the coin snatching black box is being sold as the "Black Box Money Trap Bank" or "Black Box Bank".

Do-it-yourself versions of the useless machine (often modernized with microprocessor controls) have been featured in a number of web videos and inspired more complex machines that are able to move or which use more than one switch. , there are several completed or kit form devices being offered for sale.

Cultural references
In 2009, the artist David Moises exhibited his reconstruction of The Ultimate Machine aka Shannon's Hand, and explained the interactions of Claude Shannon, Marvin Minsky, and Arthur C. Clarke regarding the device.

Episode 3 of the third season of the FX show Fargo, "The Law of Non-Contradiction", features a useless machine (and, in a story within the story, an android named MNSKY after Marvin Minsky).

See also
 Arthur Ganson
 Discard Protocol
 Jean Tinguely
 Overengineering
 Rube Goldberg machine
 Theo Jansen
 Trammel of Archimedes

References

Office toys
Machines
Novelty items
Mechanical toys
Products introduced in the 1950s

Useless machine


Used Cars is a 1980 American satirical black comedy film co-written and directed by Robert Zemeckis. The story follows Rudy Russo (Kurt Russell), a devious salesman, working for affable, but monumentally unsuccessful used-car dealer Luke Fuchs (Jack Warden). Luke's principal rival, located directly across the street, is his more prosperous brother, Roy L. Fuchs (also played by Warden), who is scheming to take over Luke's lot. The film also stars Deborah Harmon and Gerrit Graham, and the supporting cast includes Frank McRae, David L. Lander, Michael McKean, Joe Flaherty, Al Lewis, Dub Taylor, Harry Northup, Dick Miller, and Betty Thomas.

Steven Spielberg and John Milius acted as executive producers on the project, while the original musical score was composed by Patrick Williams. Filmed primarily in Mesa, Arizona, the film was released on July 11, 1980.

Although not a box-office success at the time, it has since developed cult film status due to its dark, cynical humor and the Zemeckis style. It was marketed with the tagline, "Like new, great looking, and fully loaded with laughs." It was the only Zemeckis film to be rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America until Flight (2012).

Plot

Rudy Russo is a young and cunning car salesman in Mesa, Arizona, with aspirations of running for the state senate. He works at the struggling New Deal used car lot owned by the elderly Luke Fuchs, who agrees to invest $10,000 in Rudy's campaign if he promises to keep the business alive.

Meanwhile, across the street, Luke's twin brother and arch-competitor Roy L. Fuchs is desperate to keep his used car lot from being demolished and replaced by a proposed freeway exit. Wanting to collect life insurance money and New Deal from Luke, Roy hires his mechanic, demolition derby driver Mickey, to recklessly drive Luke's pristine, hand-restored 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air around the block with Luke in the passenger's seat.

Shortly after crashing the classic car into the lot, Luke dies of a heart attack, leaving Rudy with firm evidence that Roy staged the "accident". In an attempt to prevent Roy from gaining any inheritance, Rudy has his superstitious co-worker, Jeff and mechanic, Jim, help him bury Luke on the dealership's backlot in a vintage Edsel that was once New Deal's sign ornament. When Roy comes looking for Luke the next day, they explain that Luke took the Edsel on a vacation to Miami.

The following night, Rudy and his friends make a live cut-in broadcast of their commercial into the middle of a major network football game. It goes awry when Jeff finds out the car on display is red (he believes all red cars are bad luck) and female model Margaret has her dress stuck on the hood ornament, which rips open and exposes her when the hood is popped open. The commercial results in New Deal receiving a massive number of new customers the next day. In one deal, Jeff cons a family into buying a station wagon by having the lot's mascot dog, Toby, fake being run over during a test drive.

When Roy lures customers to his lot by hiring circus animals, Rudy counters with a live stripper show. Luke's estranged daughter Barbara Jane visits the lot in hopes of reuniting with her dad, having dropped out of college more than ten years before to live on a hippie commune. Rudy conceals the truth about her father by taking her out on a date, and inadvertently convinces her to stay in town.

Rudy's gang broadcasts another commercial in the middle of Jimmy Carter's presidential address, destroying some of Roy's used cars in the process, most notably his prized Mercedes SL. In retaliation, Roy storms into New Deal and attacks Jeff before discovering Luke's resting place in the backlot. Roy brings the police to New Deal the next day to dig up the rearlot, but Jim has taken the Edsel out of the pit, placed Luke's corpse in the driver's seat, and rigged the car to crash into a power transformer, where it explodes as planned.

Everyone believes Luke was killed in the fiery accident, and any evidence to the contrary is destroyed. Roy believes he now has possession of New Deal, but Rudy points out that Barbara, as Luke's daughter, is effectively the new owner.

Eventually, Barbara discovers the fiasco over her father's death and fires Rudy, Jeff, and Jim for their cover-up scheme. As a final means of shutting down New Deal, Roy has his connections in local television station KFUK re-edit Barbara's commercial to imply that she has "a mile of cars", while also pushing a trumped-up charge of false advertising.

Rudy's luck changes when he wins a bet on a football game, guaranteeing him enough money for his campaign. Once he discovers that Barbara is being prosecuted for false advertising, Rudy convinces her to tell the court she has a mile of cars. To avoid a charge of perjury, she must prove it in front of the judge by having more than 250 cars on her lot by 2:45 pm that afternoon.

Rudy spends his investment on 250 cars bought from Mexican dealer Manuel and having 250 student drivers deliver them to New Deal's lot in less than two hours. After overcoming Roy's attempt at disrupting the resulting convoy and Jeff's superstition of driving a red car, the drivers arrive just in time. The total measurements are just long enough to equal a mile of cars, saving Barbara and the car lot. Roy's former attorney informs Rudy and Barbara that once the freeway ramp across the street is constructed, New Deal will become the largest dealership in the state. Everyone except Roy celebrates, while Rudy and Barbara embrace each other in a kiss.

Cast
 Kurt Russell as Rudy Russo
 Jack Warden as Roy L. Fuchs / Luke Fuchs
 Gerrit Graham as Jeff
 Frank McRae as Jim
 Deborah Harmon as Barbara Jane Fuchs
 Joe Flaherty as Sam Slaton
 David L. Lander as Freddie Paris
 Michael McKean as Eddie Winslow
 Michael Talbott as Mickey
 Harry Northup as Carmine
 Alfonso Arau as Manuel
 Cheryl Rixon as Margaret
 Al Lewis as Judge H. H. Harrison
 Woodrow Parfrey as Mr. Chertner
 Dub Taylor as Tucker
 Wendie Jo Sperber as Nona "Nervous Nona"
 Marc McClure as "Heavy Duty" Dubois
 Andrew Duncan  as Charlie
 Betty Thomas as Bunny
 Dick Miller as Man In Bed
 Rita Taggart as Woman In Bed
 Terence Knox as Reese
 Will McMillan as Police Sergeant

Production

Development
The idea for Used Cars originated from producer John Milius, who pitched it to Gale and Zemeckis while they were writing the script for 1941 (1979), the parody film directed by Steven Spielberg. Milius said that he and Spielberg had hoped to one day write a story about a used car salesman based outside Las Vegas.

Casting
They had wanted to cast actor George Hamilton as Kurt Russell's character, Rudy. Universal Pictures passed on the film, leading the duo to take it to Columbia Pictures. Frank Price, the studio president at the time, had sold used cars as a young man, and he quickly said yes. According to Bob Gale, Jack Warden had initially passed on the role of Roy Fuchs, but agreed to play the role under the condition that he be able to play Luke Fuchs, since he was interested in playing the role of both brothers. John Candy was originally cast as Sam Slaton, but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts with 1941 and was replaced with Joe Flaherty.

Filming
The film was shot in 29 days at the working Darner Chrysler-Plymouth dealership in Mesa, Arizona, from October to November 1979. The dealership served as the setting for "Roy L. Fuchs Pre-owned Automobiles", while a vacant lot across the street served as the setting for "New Deal Used Cars". The vacant lot now has an apartment complex, while the Chrysler bankruptcy of 2009 caused the Darner dealership to lose its Chrysler affiliation. Many local police officers worked in the film in several capacities, including the "cowboy" Shotgun role. Kurt Russell produced some commercials for Darner's, inviting customers to come in and shop while the film was still being shot.

In the scene where Rudy and Jeff are burying the Edsel on the backlot and are confronted by Roy and Sam over Luke's whereabouts, Gerrit Graham repeated some of Kurt Russell's lines, which was not in the script. Jack Warden was so angered over the impromptu ad-libbing that he ended the scene with his own ad-libbed "What are you, a fuckin' parrot?" directed at Graham. Luke Fuchs's old Edsel switches back and forth between 1958 and 1959 model years. When it is sitting on top of the pole as the car lot sign, it is a 1959 model. When it is dropped to the ground in which to bury Luke, and when it is dug-up, started, and drives across the car lot with the dead Luke behind the wheel, it is a 1958 model Edsel. When the car hits the transformer, it is again a 1959 model, with a turquoise scallop painted on the side to match the 1958 model (only 1958 model Edsels have this feature). The judge's props for the music video for Sammy Hagar's song "I Can't Drive 55" were borrowed from Zemeckis, who in turn used Hagar's song as Marty enters the alternate Hill Valley in Back to the Future Part II. The excerpts of President Carter's televised speech used in the film were taken from his Oval Office address on his Administration's anti-inflation program, broadcast on October 24, 1978.

Release

Home media
Shout! Factory re-released Used Cars on Blu-ray February 26, 2019 through their Shout! Select branch. The film had been previously released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on January 1, 2002, as a Region 1 DVD with audio commentary by Robert Zemeckis, Kurt Russell, and Bob Gale. The film was released August 12, 2019 as a Region B Blu-ray by Eureka Entertainment Ltd., a division of their Eureka Classics product line.

Reception

Box office
Used Cars grossed $11.7 million in North America.

Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 77% based on 30 reviews, with an average score of 6.60/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Robert Zemeckis' pitch-black satire of American culture doesn't always hit the mark, but it's got enough manic comic energy to warrant a spin." On Metacritic, the film received a score of 68 based on 11 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

However, early reviews were mixed. The Washington Post Gary Arnold dubbed it "a mean, spirited farce [...] Director/co-writer Robert Zemeckis has undeniable energy and flair, but it's being misspent on pretexts and situations that seem inexcusably gratuitous and snide." A staff reviewer for Variety wrote that "What might have looked like a great idea on paper has been tackled by filmmakers who haven't expanded it much beyond the one joke inherent in the premise." They too praised Zemeckis' direction as "undeniable vigor, if insufficient control and discipline." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two out of four stars, saying the film is "filled with too many ideas, relationships, and situations with plot overkill."

Among the positive reviews, Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader found it to be a "fierce, cathartically funny celebration of the low, the cheap, the venal—in short, America." Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "...a movie that has more laughs in it than any film of the summer except Airplane! It wipes out...just about every other recent comedy aimed, I assume, at an otherwise television-hooked public." Pauline Kael of The New Yorker described Cars as "a classic screwball fantasy — a neglected modern comedy that's like a more restless and visually high-spirited version of the W. C. Fields pictures."

At the time, Used Cars received the highest ratings in test screenings in Columbia Pictures history. In 2015, film critic and historian Leonard Maltin said, "I loved Used Cars, and I'll never understand really why that didn't become more." Zemeckis and Gale blamed the film's failure on Columbia, who moved the film up a month from its scheduled release date based on the test-screening response. It debuted with little advance marketing and was released only one week after Airplane!

References

External links

1980 films
1980 black comedy films
1980s satirical films
American black comedy films
American satirical films
Columbia Pictures films
Culture of Mesa, Arizona
1980s English-language films
Films about automobiles
Films about car dealerships
Films directed by Robert Zemeckis
Films scored by Patrick Williams
Films set in Phoenix, Arizona
Films set in Maricopa County, Arizona
Films shot in Arizona
Films with screenplays by Robert Zemeckis
Films with screenplays by Bob Gale
Fratricide in fiction
Used car market
Workplace comedy films
1980 comedy films
1980s American films
Films about salespeople
Films about twin brothers

Used Cars