Eaton Operatic Society was a Canadian musical organization located in Toronto, Ontario that presented operas, operettas, musicals, and choral works from 1919 to 1965. Originally a choir that specialized in mounting oratorios, the group eventually morphed into a light opera company in the early 1930s.

History
Originally a choir, the Eaton Operatic Society was titled the Eaton Choral Society when it was formed by employees of the T. Eaton Co department store in 1919. The group performed annual concerts in Massey Hall, assembling an orchestra mainly of players from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.  Notable performers to have appeared with the choir included harpist Carlos Salzedo and singer Paul Althouse. Herbert M. Fletcher was the group's first conductor, serving in that role until 1925 when he was succeeded by T.J. Crawford.

In 1931 the organization was retitled the Eaton Operatic Society and then began to produce operetta productions in addition to presenting choral concerts, at a new auditorium at The Carlu. Eventually the choir was completely disbanded during the mid-1930s. The first operetta staged by the society was Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe at the Eaton Auditorium on 2 March 1932. The group continued to mount operettas at the Eaton Auditorium every Spring through 1965. The group also toured frequently with their productions to other cities in southern Ontario and performed at Canadian army bases during World War II. In its early years, the Savoy operas of Gilbert and Sullivan were the chief part of the society's repertoire, including Iolanthe (1932, 1938, 1950), The Gondoliers (1933, 1939, 1948, 1954), The Mikado (1934, 1940, 1949), The Yeoman of the Guard (1935, 1941, 1952), and The Pirates of Penzance (1936, 1942, 1953).   Beginning in 1954, the society's repertory consisted exclusively of musicals and other operettas, including The Vagabond King (1957, 1965) and Rose-Marie (1959).

In 1947 Harry Norris succeeded T.J. Crawford as the Eaton Operatic Society's music director. He left after only one season when Godfrey Ridout became director. Ridout remained for nine years, and then was succeeded by Lloyd Bradshaw (1959-1961) and Horace Lapp (1962-1965).  Lois Marshall performed with the company.

References

Canadian choirs
Canadian opera companies
Gilbert and Sullivan performing groups
Musical groups from Toronto
Musical groups established in 1919
Musical groups disestablished in 1965
Arts organizations established in 1919

Eaton Operatic Society


Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009) was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years, from 1962 to 1981. During the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll. Cronkite received numerous honors including two Peabody Awards, a George Polk Award, an Emmy Award and in 1981 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter.

Cronkite reported many events from 1937 to 1981, including bombings in World War II; the Nuremberg trials; combat in the Vietnam War; the Dawson's Field hijackings; Watergate; the Iran Hostage Crisis; and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King Jr., and Beatles musician John Lennon. He was also known for his extensive coverage of the U.S. space program, from Project Mercury to the Moon landings to the Space Shuttle. He was the only non-NASA recipient of an Ambassador of Exploration award. Cronkite is known for his departing catchphrase, "And that's the way it is", followed by the date of the broadcast.

Cronkite died at his home in 2009, at the age of 92, from cerebrovascular disease.

Early life and education
Cronkite was born on November 4, 1916, in Saint Joseph, Missouri, the son of Helen Lena (née Fritsche) and Dr. Walter Leland Cronkite, a dentist.

Cronkite lived in Kansas City, Missouri, until he was 10, when his family moved to Houston, Texas. He attended elementary school at Woodrow Wilson Elementary School (now Baker Montessori School), junior high school at Lanier Junior High School (now Lanier Middle School) in Houston, and high school at San Jacinto High School, where he edited the high school newspaper. He was a member of the Boy Scouts. He attended college at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), entering in the fall term of 1933, where he worked on the Daily Texan and became a member of the Nu chapter of the Chi Phi Fraternity. He also was a member of the Houston chapter of DeMolay, a Masonic fraternal organization for boys.

While attending UT, Cronkite had his first taste of performance, appearing in a play with fellow student Eli Wallach. He dropped out in 1935, not returning for the fall term, to concentrate on journalism.

Career
Cronkite left college in his junior year, in the fall term of 1935, after starting a series of newspaper reporting jobs covering news and sports. He entered broadcasting as a radio announcer for WKY in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In 1936, he met his future wife, Mary Elizabeth "Betsy" Maxwell, while working as the sports announcer for KCMO (AM) in Kansas City, Missouri. His broadcast name was "Walter Wilcox". He would explain later that radio stations at the time did not want people to use their real names for fear of taking their listeners with them if they left. In Kansas City, he joined the United Press International in 1937.

With his name now established, he received a job offer from Edward R. Murrow at CBS News to join the Murrow Boys team of war correspondents, relieving Bill Downs as the head of the Moscow bureau. CBS offered Cronkite $125 ($2,235 in 2020 money) a week along with "commercial fees" amounting to $25 ($447 in 2020) for almost every time Cronkite reported on air. Up to that point, he had been making $57.50 ($1,027 in 2020) per week at UP, but he had reservations about broadcasting. He initially accepted the offer. When he informed his boss Harrison Salisbury, UP countered with a raise of $17.50 ($312 in 2020) per week; Hugh Baillie also offered him an extra $20 ($357 in 2020) per week to stay. Cronkite ultimately accepted the UP offer, a move which angered Murrow and drove a wedge between them that would last for years.

Cronkite became one of the top American reporters in World War II, covering battles in North Africa and Europe. He was on board  starting in Norfolk, Virginia, through her service off the coast of North Africa as part of Operation Torch, and thence back to the US. On the return trip, Cronkite was flown off Texas in one of her Vought OS2U Kingfisher aircraft when Norfolk was within flying distance. He was granted permission to be flown the rest of the distance to Norfolk so that he could outpace a rival correspondent on  to return to the US and to issue the first uncensored news reports to be published about Operation Torch. Cronkite's experiences aboard Texas launched his career as a war correspondent. Subsequently, he was one of eight journalists selected by the United States Army Air Forces to fly bombing raids over Germany in a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress as part of group called The Writing 69th, and during a mission fired a machine gun at a German fighter. He also landed in a glider with the 101st Airborne Division in Operation Market Garden and covered the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he covered the Nuremberg trials and served as the United Press main reporter in Moscow from 1946 to 1948.

Early years at CBS
In 1950, Cronkite joined CBS News in its young and growing television division, again recruited by Murrow. Cronkite began working at WTOP-TV (now WUSA), the CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C.. He originally served as anchor of the network's 15-minute late-Sunday-evening newscast Up To the Minute, which followed What's My Line? at 11:00 pm ET from 1951 through 1962.

Although it was widely reported that the term "anchor" was coined to describe Cronkite's role at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, marking the first nationally televised convention coverage, other news presenters bore the title before him. Cronkite anchored the network's coverage of the 1952 presidential election as well as later conventions. In 1964 he was temporarily replaced by the team of Robert Trout and Roger Mudd; this proved to be a mistake, and Cronkite returned to the anchor chair for future political conventions.

From 1953 to 1957, Cronkite hosted the CBS program You Are There, which reenacted historical events, using the format of a news report. His famous last line for these programs was: "What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times ... and you were there." In 1971, the show was revived and redesigned to attract an audience of teenagers and young adults, hosted again by Cronkite on Saturday mornings.  In 1957, he began hosting The Twentieth Century (eventually renamed The 20th Century), a documentary series about important historical events of the century composed almost exclusively of newsreel footage and interviews.  A long-running hit, the show was again renamed as The 21st Century in 1967 with Cronkite hosting speculative reporting on the future for another three years. Cronkite also hosted It's News to Me, a game show based on news events.

During the presidential elections of 1952 and 1956 Cronkite hosted the CBS news-discussion series Pick the Winner.

Another of his network assignments was The Morning Show, CBS' short-lived challenge to NBC's Today in 1954. His on-air duties included interviewing guests and chatting with a lion puppet named Charlemane about the news. He considered this discourse with a puppet as "one of the highlights" of the show. He added, "A puppet can render opinions on people and things that a human commentator would not feel free to utter. I was and I am proud of it." Cronkite also angered the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, the show's sponsor, by grammatically correcting its advertising slogan. Instead of saying "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should" verbatim, he substituted "as" for "like."

He was the lead broadcaster of the network's coverage of the 1960 Winter Olympics, the first-ever time such an event was televised in the United States. He replaced Jim McKay, who had suffered a mental breakdown.

Anchor of the CBS Evening News

On April 16, 1962, Cronkite succeeded Douglas Edwards as anchorman of the CBS's nightly feature newscast, tentatively renamed Walter Cronkite with the News, but later the CBS Evening News on September 2, 1963, when the show was expanded from 15 to 30 minutes, making Cronkite the anchor of American network television's first nightly half-hour news program. Cronkite's tenure as anchor of the CBS Evening News made him an icon in television news.

During the early part of his tenure anchoring the CBS Evening News, Cronkite competed against NBC's anchor team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, who anchored The Huntley–Brinkley Report. For much of the 1960s, The Huntley–Brinkley Report had more viewers than Cronkite's broadcast. A key moment for Cronkite came during his coverage of John F. Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963. Another factor in Cronkite and CBS' ascendancy to the top of the ratings was that, as the decade progressed, RCA made a corporate decision not to fund NBC News at the levels that CBS provided for its news broadcasts. Consequently, CBS News acquired a reputation for greater accuracy and depth in coverage. This reputation meshed well with Cronkite's wire service experience, and in 1967 the CBS Evening News began to surpass The Huntley–Brinkley Report in viewership during the summer months.

In 1969, during the Apollo 11 (with co-host and former astronaut Wally Schirra) and Apollo 13 Moon missions, Cronkite received the best ratings and made CBS the most-watched television network for the missions. In 1970, when Huntley retired, the CBS Evening News finally dominated the American TV news viewing audience. Although NBC finally settled on the skilled and well-respected broadcast journalist John Chancellor, Cronkite proved to be more popular and continued to be top-rated until his retirement in 1981.

One of Cronkite's trademarks was ending the CBS Evening News with the phrase "...And that's the way it is," followed by the date. Keeping to standards of objective journalism, he omitted this phrase on nights when he ended the newscast with opinion or commentary. Beginning with January 16, 1980, Day 50 of the Iran hostage crisis, Cronkite added the length of the hostages' captivity to the show's closing in order to remind the audience of the unresolved situation, ending only on Day 444, January 20, 1981.

Historic moments

Kennedy's assassination

Cronkite is vividly remembered for breaking the news of the assassination of John F. Kennedy on Friday, November 22, 1963. Cronkite had been standing at the United Press International wire machine in the CBS newsroom as the bulletin of the President's shooting broke and he clamored to get on the air to break the news as he wanted CBS to be the first network to do so.

There was a problem facing the crew in the newsroom, however. There was no television camera in the studio at the time, as the technical crew was working on it. Eventually, the camera was retrieved and brought back to the newsroom. Because of the magnitude of the story and the continuous flow of information coming from various sources, time was of the essence but the camera would take at least twenty minutes to become operational under normal circumstances. The decision was made to dispatch Cronkite to the CBS Radio Network booth to report the events and play the audio over the television airwaves while the crew worked on the camera to see if they could get it set up quicker.

Meanwhile, CBS was ten minutes into its live broadcast of the soap opera As the World Turns (ATWT), which had begun at the very minute of the shooting. A "CBS News Bulletin" bumper slide abruptly broke into the broadcast at 1:40 pm EST. Over the slide, Cronkite began reading what would be the first of three audio-only bulletins that were filed in the next twenty minutes:

While Cronkite was reading this bulletin, a second one arrived, mentioning the severity of Kennedy's wounds:

Just before the bulletin cut out, a CBS News staffer was heard saying "Connally too," apparently having just heard the news that Texas Governor John Connally had also been shot while riding in the presidential limousine with his wife Nellie and Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy.

CBS then rejoined the telecast of ATWT during a commercial break, which was followed by show announcer Dan McCullough's usual fee plug for the first half of the program and the network's 1:45 pm station identification break. Just before the second half of ATWT was to begin, the network broke in with the bumper slide a second time. In this bulletin Cronkite reported in greater detail about the assassination attempt on the President, while also breaking the news of Governor Connally's shooting:

Cronkite then recapped the events as they had happened: that the President and Governor Connally had been shot and were in the emergency room at Parkland Hospital, and no one knew their condition as yet. CBS then decided to return to ATWT, which was now midway through its second segment.

The cast had continued to perform live while Cronkite's bulletins broke into the broadcast, unaware of the unfolding events in Dallas. ATWT then took another scheduled commercial break. The segment before the break would be the last anyone would see of any network's programming until Tuesday, November 26. During the commercial, the bumper slide interrupted the proceedings again and Cronkite updated the viewers on the situation in Dallas. This bulletin went into more detail than the other two, revealing that Kennedy had been shot in the head, Connally in the chest. Cronkite remained on the air for the next ten minutes, continuing to read bulletins as they were handed to him, and recapping the events as they were known. He also related a report given to reporters by Texas Congressman Albert Thomas that the President and Governor were still alive, the first indication of their condition. At 2:00 pm EST, with the top of the hour station break looming, Cronkite told the audience that there would be a brief pause so that all of CBS' affiliates, including those in the Mountain and Pacific time zones which were not on the same schedule, could join the network. He then left the radio booth and went to the anchor desk in the newsroom.

Within twenty seconds of the announcement, every CBS affiliate except Dallas' KRLD (which was providing local coverage) was airing the network's feed. The camera was finally operational by this time and enabled the audience to see Cronkite, who was clad in shirt and tie but without his suit coat, given the urgent nature of the story. Cronkite reminded the audience, again, of the attempt made on the life of the President and tossed to KRLD news director Eddie Barker at the Dallas Trade Mart, where Kennedy was supposed to be making a speech before he was shot. Barker relayed information that Kennedy's condition was extremely critical. Then, after a prayer for Kennedy, Barker quoted an unofficial report that the President was dead but stressed it was not confirmed.

After several minutes, the coverage came back to the CBS newsroom where Cronkite reported that the President had been given blood transfusions and two priests had been called into the room. He also played an audio report from KRLD that someone had been arrested in the assassination attempt at the Texas School Book Depository. Back in Dallas Barker announced another report of the death of the President, mentioning that it came from a reliable source. Before the network left KRLD's feed for good, Barker first announced, then retracted, a confirmation of Kennedy's death.

CBS cut back to Cronkite reporting that one of the priests had administered last rites to the president. In the next few minutes, several more bulletins reporting that Kennedy had died were given to Cronkite, including one from CBS's own correspondent Dan Rather that had been reported as confirmation of Kennedy's demise by CBS Radio. As these bulletins came into the newsroom, it was becoming clearer that Kennedy had in fact lost his life. Cronkite, however, stressed that these bulletins were simply reports and not any official confirmation of the President's condition; some of his colleagues recounted in 2013 that his early career as a wire service reporter taught him to wait for official word before reporting a story. Still, as more word came in, Cronkite seemed to be resigned to the fact that it was only a matter of time before the assassination was confirmed. He appeared to concede this when, several minutes after he received the Rather report, he received word that the two priests who gave the last rites to Kennedy told reporters on the scene that he was dead. Cronkite said that report "seems to be as close to official as we can get", but would not declare it as such. Nor did he do so with a report from Washington, DC that came moments later, which said that government sources were now reporting the President was dead (this information was passed on to ABC as well, which took it as official confirmation and reported it as such; NBC did not report this information at all and chose instead to rely on reports from Charles Murphy and Robert MacNeil to confirm their suspicions).

At 2:38 pm EST, while filling in time with some observations about the security presence in Dallas, which had been increased due to violent acts against United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson in the city earlier that year, Cronkite was handed a new bulletin. After looking it over for a moment, he took off his glasses, and made the official announcement:

After making that announcement, Cronkite paused briefly, put his glasses back on, and swallowed hard to maintain his composure. With noticeable emotion in his voice he intoned the next sentence of the news report:

With emotion still in his voice and eyes watering, Cronkite once again recapped the events after collecting himself, incorporating some wire photos of the visit and explaining the significance of the pictures now that Kennedy was dead. He reminded the viewers that Vice President Johnson was now the President and was to be sworn in, that Governor Connally's condition was still unknown, and that there was no report of whether the assassin had been captured. He then handed the anchor position to Charles Collingwood, who had just entered the newsroom, took his suit coat, and left the room for a while.

At about 3:30 pm EST, Cronkite came back into the newsroom to relay some new information. The two major pieces of information involved the Oath of Office being administered to now-President Johnson, which officially made him the thirty-sixth President, and that Dallas police had arrested a man named Lee Harvey Oswald whom they suspected had fired the fatal shots. After that, Cronkite left again to begin preparing for that night's CBS Evening News, which he returned to anchor as normal. For the next four days, along with his colleagues, Cronkite continued to report segments of uninterrupted coverage of the assassination, including the announcement of Oswald's death in the hands of Jack Ruby on Sunday. The next day, on the day of the funeral, Cronkite concluded CBS Evening News with the following assessment about the events of the last four dark days:

Referring to his coverage of Kennedy's assassination, in a 2006 TV interview with Nick Clooney, Cronkite recalled:

In a 2003 CBS special commemorating the 40th anniversary of the assassination, Cronkite recalled his reaction upon having the death confirmed to him, he said:

According to historian Douglas Brinkley, Cronkite provided a sense of perspective throughout the unfolding sequence of disturbing events.

Vietnam War

In mid-February 1968, on the urging of his executive producer Ernest Leiser, Cronkite and Leiser journeyed to Vietnam to cover the aftermath of the Tet Offensive. They were invited to dine with General Creighton Abrams, the commander of all forces in Vietnam, whom Cronkite knew from World War II. According to Leiser, Abrams told Cronkite, "we cannot win this Goddamned war, and we ought to find a dignified way out."

Upon return, Cronkite and Leiser wrote separate editorial reports based on that trip. Cronkite, an excellent writer, preferred Leiser's text over his own. On February 27, 1968, Cronkite closed "Report from Vietnam: Who, What, When, Where, Why?" with that editorial report:

Following Cronkite's editorial report, President Lyndon B. Johnson is claimed by some to have said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." However, this account of Johnson has been questioned by other observers in books on journalistic accuracy. At the time the editorial aired, Johnson was in Austin, Texas, attending Texas Governor John Connally's birthday gala and was giving a speech in his honor.

In his book This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV, CBS News correspondent Bob Schieffer, who was serving as a reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram when Cronkite's editorial aired, acknowledged that Johnson did not see the original broadcast but also defended the allegation that Johnson had made the remark. According to Schieffer, Johnson's aide George Christian "told me that the President apparently saw some clips of it the next day" and that "That's when he made the remark about Cronkite. But he knew then that it would take more than Americans were willing to give it." When asked about the remark during a 1979 interview, Christian claimed he had no recollection about what the President had said. In his 1996 memoir A Reporter's Life, Cronkite claimed he was at first unsure about how much of an impact his editorial report had on Johnson's decision to drop his bid for re-election, and what eventually convinced him the President had made the statement was a recount from Bill Moyers, a journalist and former aide to Johnson.

Several weeks later, Johnson, who sought to preserve his legacy and was now convinced his declining health could not withstand growing public criticism, announced he would not seek reelection.

During the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Cronkite was anchoring the CBS network coverage as violence and protests occurred outside the convention, as well as scuffles inside the convention hall. When Dan Rather was punched to the floor (on camera) by security personnel, Cronkite commented, "I think we've got a bunch of thugs here, Dan."

Other historic events
The first publicly transmitted live trans-Atlantic program was broadcast via the Telstar satellite on July 23, 1962, at 3:00 pm EDT, and Cronkite was one of the main presenters in this multinational broadcast. The broadcast was made possible in Europe by Eurovision and in North America by NBC, CBS, ABC, and the CBC. The first public broadcast featured CBS's Cronkite and NBC's Chet Huntley in New York, and the BBC's Richard Dimbleby in Brussels. Cronkite was in the New York studio at Rockefeller Plaza as the first pictures to be transmitted and received were the Statue of Liberty in New York and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The first segment included a televised major league baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. From there, the video switched first to Washington, D.C.; then to Cape Canaveral, Florida; then to Quebec City, Quebec, and finally to Stratford, Ontario. The Washington segment included a press conference with President Kennedy, talking about the price of the American dollar, which was causing concern in Europe. This broadcast inaugurated live intercontinental news coverage, which was perfected later in the sixties with Early Bird and other Intelsat satellites.

General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower returned to his former Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) headquarters for an interview by Cronkite on the CBS News Special Report D-Day + 20, telecast on June 6, 1964.

Cronkite is also remembered for his coverage of the United States space program, and at times was visibly enthusiastic, rubbing his hands together on camera with a smile and uttering, "Whew...boy" on July 20, 1969, when the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission put the first men on the Moon.

Cronkite participated in Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China. Because Cronkite was colorblind, he had to ask others what color of coat First Lady Pat Nixon was wearing when they disembarked in Peking (Beijing).

According to the 2006 PBS documentary on Cronkite, there was "nothing new" in his reports on the Watergate affair; however, Cronkite brought together a wide range of reporting, and his credibility and status is credited by many with pushing the Watergate story to the forefront with the American public, ultimately resulting in the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon on August 9, 1974. Cronkite had anchored the CBS coverage of Nixon's address, announcing his impending resignation, the night before.

The January 22, 1973, broadcast of the CBS Evening News saw Cronkite break the news of the death of another notable American political figure: former president Lyndon B. Johnson. At approximately 6:38 pm Eastern Time, while a pre-recorded report that the Vietnam peace talks in Paris had been successful was being played for the audience, Cronkite received a telephone call in the studio while off camera. The call was from Tom Johnson, the former press secretary for President Johnson who was at the time serving the former chief executive as station manager at KTBC-TV in Austin, Texas, which was affiliated with CBS at the time and was owned by the Johnson family.

The pre-recorded report was cut short while Cronkite was talking to Johnson, and when the live camera returned Cronkite had the telephone receiver held to his ear. Once he was told he was back on the air, Cronkite briefly nodded and held up one of his fingers to let the audience and studio crew know he needed a moment to let Johnson finish talking before he relayed the topic of conversation to the nation watching. Once Johnson finished talking, Cronkite thanked him and asked him to stay on the line as he reported the following:

During the final ten minutes of that broadcast, Cronkite reported on the death, giving a retrospective on the life of the nation's 36th president, and announced that CBS would air a special on Johnson later that evening. This story was re-told on a 2007 CBS-TV special honoring Cronkite's 90th birthday.

On November 22, 1963, Cronkite introduced The Beatles to the United States by airing a four-minute story about the band on CBS Morning News. The story was scheduled to be shown again on the CBS Evening News that same day, but the assassination of John F. Kennedy prevented the broadcast of the regular evening news.  The Beatles story was aired on the evening news program on December 10.

Retirement
On February 14, 1980, Cronkite announced that he intended to retire from the CBS Evening News; at the time, CBS had a policy of mandatory retirement by age 65. Although sometimes compared to a father figure or an uncle figure, in an interview about his retirement he described himself as being more like a "comfortable old shoe" to his audience. His last day in the anchor chair at the CBS Evening News was on March 6, 1981; he was succeeded the following Monday by Dan Rather.

Cronkite's farewell statement:

On the eve of Cronkite's retirement, he appeared on The Tonight Show hosted by Johnny Carson. The following night, Carson did a comic spoof of his on-air farewell address.

Other activities

Post-CBS Evening News

As he had promised on his last show as anchor in 1981, Cronkite continued to broadcast occasionally as a special correspondent for CBS, CNN, and NPR into the 21st century; one such occasion was Cronkite anchoring the second space flight by John Glenn in 1998 as he had Glenn's first in 1962. Cronkite hosted Universe until its cancellation in 1982. In 1983, he reported on the British general election for the ITV current affairs series World In Action, interviewing, among many others, the victorious Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Cronkite hosted the annual Vienna New Year's Concert on PBS from 1985 to 2008, succeeded by Julie Andrews in 2009. For many years, until 2002, he was also the host of the annual Kennedy Center Honors.

In 1998, Cronkite hosted the 90-minute documentary, Silicon Valley: A 100 Year Renaissance, produced by the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association. The film documented Silicon Valley's rise from the origin of Stanford University to the current high-technology powerhouse. The documentary was broadcast on PBS throughout the United States and in 26 countries. Prior to 2004, he could also be seen in the opening movie "Back to Neverland" shown in the Walt Disney World attraction The Magic of Disney Animation, interviewing Robin Williams as if he is still on the CBS News channel, ending his on-camera time with Cronkite's famous catchphrase. In the feature, Cronkite describes the steps taken in the creation of an animated film, while Williams becomes an animated character (and even becomes Cronkite, impersonating his voice). He also was shown inviting Disney guests and tourists to the Disney Classics Theater.

On May 21, 1999, Cronkite participated in a panel discussion on "Integrity in the Media" with Ben Bradlee and Mike McCurry at the Connecticut Forum in Hartford, Connecticut. Cronkite provided an anecdote about taking a picture from a house in Houston, Texas, where a newsworthy event occurred and being praised for getting a unique photograph, only to find out later that the city desk had provided him with the wrong address.

Voice-overs
Cronkite narrated the IMAX film about the Space Shuttle, The Dream is Alive, released in 1985. From May 26, 1986, to August 15, 1994, he was the narrator's voice in the EPCOT Center attraction Spaceship Earth, at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. He provided the pivotal voice of Captain Neweyes in the 1993 animated film We're Back: A Dinosaur's Story, delivering his trademark line at the end. In 1995, he made an appearance on Broadway, providing the voice of the titular book in the 1995 revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Cronkite was a finalist for NASA's Journalist in Space program, which mirrored the Teacher in Space Project, an opportunity that was suspended after the Challenger disaster in 1986. He recorded voice-overs for the 1995 film Apollo 13, modifying the script he was given to make it more "Cronkitian." In 2002, Cronkite was the voice of Benjamin Franklin in the educational television cartoon Liberty's Kids, which included a news segment ending with the same phrase he did back on the CBS Evening News. This role earned him Daytime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series, in 2003 and 2004, but he did not win. His distinctive voice provided the narration for the television ads of the University of Texas, Austin, his alma mater, with its 'We're Texas' ad campaign.

He held amateur radio operator license KB2GSD and narrated a 2003 American Radio Relay League documentary explaining amateur radio's role in disaster relief. The video tells Amateur Radio's public service story to non-hams, focusing on ham radio's part in helping various agencies respond to wildfires in the Western US during 2002, ham radio in space and the role Amateur Radio plays in emergency communications. "Dozens of radio amateurs helped the police and fire departments and other emergency services maintain communications in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, DC," narrator Cronkite intoned in reference to ham radio's response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Unusually, Cronkite was a Novice-class licensee—the entry level license—for his entire, and long, tenure in the hobby.

On February 15, 2005, he went into the studio at CBS to record narration for WCC Chatham Radio, a documentary about Guglielmo Marconi and his Chatham station, which became the busiest ship-to-shore wireless station in North America from 1914 to 1994. The documentary was directed by Christopher Seufert of Mooncusser Films and premiered at the Chatham Marconi Maritime Center in April 2005. In 2006, Cronkite hosted the World War One Living History Project, a program honoring America's final handful of veterans from the First World War. The program was created by Treehouse Productions and aired on NPR on November 11, 2006. In May 2009, Legacy of War, produced by PBS, was released. Cronkite chronicles, over archive footage, the events following World War II that resulted in America's rise as the dominant world power.

Prior to his death, "Uncle Walter" hosted a number of TV specials and was featured in interviews about the times and events that occurred during his career as America's "most trusted" man. In July 2006, the 90-minute documentary Walter Cronkite: Witness to History aired on PBS. The special was narrated by Katie Couric, who assumed the CBS Evening News anchor chair in September 2006. Cronkite provided the voiceover introduction to Couric's CBS Evening News, which began on September 5, 2006. Cronkite's voiceover was notably not used on introducing the broadcast reporting his funeral – no voiceover was used on this occasion.

TV and movie appearances
Cronkite made a cameo appearance on a 1974 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, in which he met with Lou Grant in his office. Ted Baxter, who at first tried to convince Cronkite that he (Baxter) was as good a newsman as Eric Sevareid, pleaded with Cronkite to hire him for the network news, at least to give sport scores, and gave an example: "The North Stars 3, the Kings Oh!" Cronkite turned to Grant and said, "I'm gonna get you for this!" Cronkite later said that he was disappointed that his scene was filmed in one take, since he had hoped to sit down and chat with the cast.

In the late 1980s and again in the 1990s, Cronkite appeared on the news-oriented situation comedy Murphy Brown as himself. Both episodes were written by the Emmy Award-winning team of Tom Seeley and Norm Gunzenhauser. He also continued hosting a variety of series.  In the early 1980s, he was host of the documentary series World War II with Walter Cronkite.  In 1991, he hosted the TV documentary Dinosaur! on A&E (not related to the documentary of the same title hosted by Christopher Reeve on CBS six years earlier), and a 1994 follow-up series, Ape Man: The Story of Human Evolution. In 1995, he narrated the World Liberty Concert held in the Netherlands.

Cronkite routinely hosted the Kennedy Center Honors from 1981 to 2002.

Cronkite appeared briefly in the 2005 dramatic documentary The American Ruling Class written by Lewis Lapham; the 2000 film Thirteen Days reporting on the Cuban Missile Crisis; and provided the opening synopsis of the American Space Program leading to the events in Apollo 13 for the 1995 Ron Howard film of the same name.

Political activism

Cronkite wrote a syndicated opinion column for King Features Syndicate. In 2005 and 2006, he contributed to The Huffington Post. Cronkite was the honorary chairman of The Interfaith Alliance. In 2006, he presented the Walter Cronkite Faith and Freedom Award to actor and activist George Clooney on behalf of his organization at its annual dinner in New York.

Cronkite was a vocal advocate for free airtime for political candidates. He worked with the Alliance for Better Campaigns and Common Cause, for instance, on an unsuccessful lobbying effort to have an amendment added to the McCain-Feingold-Shays-Meehan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2001 that would have required TV broadcast companies to provide free airtime to candidates. Cronkite criticized the present system of campaign finance which allows elections to "be purchased" by special interests, and he noted that all the European democracies "provide their candidates with extensive free airtime." "In fact," Cronkite pointed out, "of all the major nations worldwide that profess to have democracies, only seven – just seven – do not offer free airtime" This put the United States on a list with Ecuador, Honduras, Malaysia, Taiwan, Tanzania, and Trinidad and Tobago. Cronkite concluded that "The failure to give free airtime for our political campaigns endangers our democracy." During the elections held in 2000, the amount spent by candidates in the major TV markets approached $1 billion. "What our campaign asks is that the television industry yield just a tiny percentage of that windfall, less than 1 percent, to fund free airtime."

He was a member of the Constitution Project's bipartisan Liberty and Security Committee. He also supported the nonprofit world hunger organization Heifer International.

In 1998, he supported President Bill Clinton during Clinton's impeachment trial. He was also a proponent of limited world government on the American federalist model, writing fundraising letters for the World Federalist Association (now Citizens for Global Solutions). In accepting the 1999 Norman Cousins Global Governance Award at the ceremony at the United Nations, Cronkite said:

It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace. To do that, of course, we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order. But the American colonies did it once and brought forth one of the most nearly perfect unions the world has ever seen.

Cronkite contrasted his support for accountable global government with the opposition to it by politically active Christian fundamentalists in the United States:

Even as with the American rejection of the League of Nations, our failure to live up to our obligations to the United Nations is led by a handful of willful senators who choose to pursue their narrow, selfish political objectives at the cost of our nation's conscience. They pander to and are supported by the Christian Coalition and the rest of the religious right wing. Their leader, Pat Robertson, has written that we should have a world government but only when the messiah arrives. Any attempt to achieve world order before that time must be the work of the Devil! Well join me... I'm glad to sit here at the right hand of Satan.

In 2003, Cronkite, who owned property on Martha's Vineyard, became involved in a long-running debate over his opposition to the construction of a wind farm in that area. In his column, he repeatedly condemned President George W. Bush and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Cronkite appeared in the 2004 Robert Greenwald film Outfoxed, where he offered commentary on what he said were unethical and overtly political practices at the Fox News Channel. Cronkite remarked that when Fox News was founded by Rupert Murdoch, "it was intended to be a conservative organization – beyond that; a far-right-wing organization". In January 2006, during a press conference to promote the PBS documentary about his career, Cronkite said that he felt the same way about America's presence in Iraq as he had about their presence in Vietnam in 1968 and that he felt America should recall its troops.

Cronkite spoke out against the War on Drugs in support of the Drug Policy Alliance, writing a fundraising letter and appearing in advertisements on behalf of the DPA. In the letter, Cronkite wrote: "Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home. While the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still being fought on our own streets. Its casualties are the wasted lives of our own citizens. I am speaking of the war on drugs. And I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the war on drugs is a failure."

Personal life

Cronkite was married for nearly 65 years to Mary Elizabeth 'Betsy' Maxwell Cronkite, from March 30, 1940, until her death from cancer on March 15, 2005. They had three children: Nancy Cronkite, Mary Kathleen (Kathy) Cronkite, and Walter Leland (Chip) Cronkite III (who is married to actress Deborah Rush). Cronkite dated singer Joanna Simon from 2005 to 2009.
A grandson, Walter Cronkite IV, now works at CBS. Cronkite's cousin is former Mayor of Kansas City and 2008 Democratic nominee for Missouri's 6th congressional district Kay Barnes.

Cronkite was an accomplished sailor and enjoyed sailing coastal waters of the United States in his custom-built 48-foot Sunward "Wyntje". Cronkite was a member of the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary, with the honorary rank of commodore. Throughout the 1950s, he was an aspiring sports car racer, even racing in the 1959 12 Hours of Sebring.

Cronkite was reported to be a fan of the game Diplomacy, which was rumored to be Henry Kissinger's favorite game.

Death

In June 2009, Cronkite was reported to be terminally ill. He died on July 17, 2009, at his home in New York City aged 92. He is believed to have died from cerebrovascular disease.

Cronkite's funeral took place on July 23, 2009, at St. Bartholomew's Church in midtown Manhattan, New York City. Among many journalists who attended were Tom Brokaw, Connie Chung, Katie Couric, Charles Gibson, Matt Lauer, Dan Rather, Andy Rooney, Morley Safer, Diane Sawyer, Bob Schieffer, Meredith Vieira, Barbara Walters, and Brian Williams. At his funeral, his friends noted his love of music, including, recently, drumming.  He was cremated and his remains buried next to his wife, Betsy, in the family plot in Kansas City.

Legacy

Public credibility and trustworthiness
For many years, until a decade after he left his post as anchor, Cronkite was considered one of the most trusted figures in the United States. For most of his 19 years as anchor, he was the "predominant news voice in America." Affectionately known as "Uncle Walter", he covered many of the important news events of the era so effectively that his image and voice are closely associated with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and the Watergate scandal. USA Today wrote that "few TV figures have ever had as much power as Cronkite did at his height." Enjoying the cult of personality surrounding Cronkite in those years, CBS allowed some good-natured fun-poking at its star anchorman in some episodes of the network's popular situation comedy All in the Family, during which the lead character Archie Bunker would sometimes complain about the newsman, calling him "Pinko Cronkite."

Cronkite trained himself to speak at a rate of 124 words per minute in his newscasts so that viewers could clearly understand him. In contrast, Americans average about 165 words per minute, and fast, difficult-to-understand talkers speak close to 200 words per minute.

Awards and honors

In 1968, the faculty of the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University voted to award Cronkite the Carr Van Anda Award "for enduring contributions to journalism." In 1970, Cronkite received a "Freedom of the Press" George Polk Award and the Paul White Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association.

In 1972, in recognition of his career, Princeton University's American Whig-Cliosophic Society awarded Cronkite the James Madison Award for Distinguished Public Service.

In 1977, Cronkite was elected to membership in the American Antiquarian Society, for which he was a proactive supporter and member, even participating in educational video materials for the society's 175th anniversary. In 1981, the year he retired, former president Jimmy Carter awarded Cronkite the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In that year, he also received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards, and the Paul White Award for lifetime achievement from the Radio Television Digital News Association. In 1985, Cronkite was honored with the induction into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame. In 1989 he received the Four Freedoms Award for the Freedom of Speech. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1994. In 1995, he received the Ischia International Journalism Award. In 1999, Cronkite received the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement's Corona Award in recognition of a lifetime of achievement in space exploration. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. On March 1, 2006, Cronkite became the first non-astronaut to receive NASA's Ambassador of Exploration Award. Among Cronkite's numerous awards were four Peabody awards for excellence in broadcasting.

In 2003, Cronkite was honored by the Vienna Philharmonic with the Franz Schalk Gold Medal, in view of his contributions to the New Year's Concert and the cultural image of Austria.

Minor planet 6318 Cronkite, discovered in 1990 by Eleanor Helin, is named in his honor.

Cronkite School at Arizona State University
A few years after Cronkite retired, Tom Chauncey, a former owner of KOOL-TV, the then-CBS affiliate in Phoenix, contacted Cronkite, an old friend, and asked him if he would be willing to have the journalism school at Arizona State University named after him. Cronkite immediately agreed. The ASU program acquired status and respect from its namesake.

Cronkite was not just a namesake, but he also took the time to interact with the students and staff of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Cronkite made the trip to Arizona annually to present the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism to a leader in the field of media.

"The values that Mr. Cronkite embodies – excellence, integrity, accuracy, fairness, objectivity – we try to instill in our students each and every day. There is no better role model for our faculty or our students," said Dean Christopher Callahan.

The school, with approximately 1,700 students, is widely regarded as one of the top journalism schools in the country. It is housed in a new facility in downtown Phoenix that is equipped with 14 digital newsrooms and computer labs, two TV studios, 280 digital student workstations, the Cronkite Theater, the First Amendment Forum, and new technology. The school's students regularly finish at the top of national collegiate journalism competitions, such as the Hearst Journalism Awards program and the Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Awards. In 2009, students won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for college print reporting.

In 2008, the state-of-the-art journalism education complex in the heart of ASU's Downtown Phoenix campus was also built in his honor. The Walter Cronkite Regents Chair in Communication seats the Texas College of Communications dean.

Walter Cronkite Papers

The Walter Cronkite papers are preserved at the curatorial Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. Occupying 293 linear feet (almost 90 metres) of shelf space, the papers document Cronkite's journalism career. Amongst the collected material are Cronkite's early beginnings while he still lived in Houston. They encompass his coverage of World War II as a United Press International correspondent, where he cemented his reputation by taking on hazardous overseas assignments. During this time he also covered the Nuremberg war crimes trial serving as the chief of the United Press bureau in Moscow. The main content of the papers documents Cronkite's career with CBS News between 1950 and 1981.

The Cronkite Papers assemble a variety of interviews with U.S. presidents, including Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, and Ronald Reagan. President Lyndon Johnson requested a special interview with Cronkite while he was broadcasting live on CBS.

Between 1990 and 1993, Don Carleton, executive director for the Center for American History, assisted Cronkite as he compiled an oral history to write his autobiography, A Reporter's Life, which was published in 1996. The taped memoirs became an integral part of an eight-part television series Cronkite Remembers, which was shown on the Discovery Channel.

As a newsman, Cronkite devoted his attention to the early days of the space program, and the "space race" between the United States and the Soviet Union. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration honored Cronkite on February 28, 2006. Michael Coats, director of NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, presented Cronkite with the Ambassador of Exploration Award. Cronkite was the first non-astronaut thus honored.

NASA presented Cronkite with a Moon rock sample from the early Apollo expeditions spanning 1969 to 1972. Cronkite passed on the Moon rock to Bill Powers, president of the University of Texas at Austin, and it became part of the collection at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. Carleton said at this occasion, "We are deeply honored by Walter Cronkite's decision to entrust this prestigious award to the Center for American History. The Center already serves as the proud steward of his professional and personal papers, which include his coverage of the space program for CBS News. It is especially fitting that the archive documenting Walter's distinguished career should also include one of the moon rocks that the heroic astronauts of the Apollo program brought to Earth."

Memorial at Missouri Western State University
On November 4, 2013, Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, Missouri, dedicated the Walter Cronkite Memorial. The nearly 6,000 square-foot memorial includes images, videos and memorabilia from Cronkite's life and the many events he covered as a journalist. The memorial includes a replica of the newsroom from which Cronkite broadcast the news during the 1960s and 1970s. In 2014, the Memorial received the Missouri Division of Tourism's Spotlight Award.

Books
 The Challenges of Change (1971). Washington: Public Affairs Press. .
 Eye on the World (1971). New York:  Cowles Book Co. .
 A Reporter's Life (1996). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. .

See also
 New Yorkers in journalism
 Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication

References

Further reading

 Menand, Louis, "Seeing It Now: Walter Cronkite and the legend of CBS News", The New Yorker, July 9, 2012

External links

 The Walter Cronkite Papers at the University of Texas at Austin

 FBI Records: Walter Leland Cronkite at the Federal Bureau of Investigation

1916 births
2009 deaths
20th-century American Episcopalians
20th-century American journalists
60 Minutes correspondents
Amateur radio people
American drug policy reform activists
American game show hosts
American male journalists
American television news anchors
American television reporters and correspondents
American war correspondents of the Vietnam War
American war correspondents of World War II
CBS News people
Deaths from cerebrovascular disease
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Journalists from Houston
Members of the American Philosophical Society
Members of the American Antiquarian Society
Moody College of Communication alumni
Neurological disease deaths in New York (state)
Oklahoma Sooners football announcers
Peabody Award winners
People from St. Joseph, Missouri
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
Recipients of Ischia International Journalism Award
San Jacinto High School alumni
Space advocates
United States Coast Guard Auxiliary officers
American people of Frisian descent
American people of German descent
American people of Dutch descent
American people of Scottish descent
American people of English descent

Walter Cronkite


Marnix Smit (born 10 December 1975) is a Dutch former footballer who played as a centre back. He spent all of his professional career, which lasted ten years, with Heracles Almelo.

Playing career
Smit was born in Almelo and played youth football for SV Rietvogels and FC Twente. In January 1999, while playing for the reserve team of FC Twente, he was approached by Eerste Divisie side Heracles Almelo, who were looking to give the club a more regional image with players who were from the area. Smit subsequently made his debut in professional football on 16 August 1999, in an away match against FC Eindhoven. During the 2004–05 season, he helped Heracles become Eerste Divisie champions. During the next season, they were able to stay in the Eredivisie comfortably (reaching 13th place), of which he said in 2014: "it felt like winning another championship". Smit subsequently played for three more seasons in the Eredivisie with Heracles, before leaving the club in the summer of 2009. He then moved to amateur side SVZW, where he played until 2012.

Style of play
Smit was known as a player with good passing ability, and as a free kick specialist.

Personal life
While playing professional football, Smit was a public administration student at the University of Twente. In 2010, he obtained a PhD degree in urban planning at the same university with a dissertation entitled "Safeguarding public interests in urban planning: A study on the impact of public-private partnerships on the public interest".

Honours
Heracles Almelo
 Eerste Divisie: 2004–05

References

1975 births
Living people
Dutch men's footballers
Men's association football defenders
Heracles Almelo players
Eerste Divisie players
Eredivisie players
Sportspeople from Almelo
SV Zwaluwen Wierden players
Footballers from Overijssel

Marnix Smit


The Salt Range () is a mountain range in the north of Punjab province of Pakistan, deriving its name from its extensive deposits of rock salt. The range extends along the south of the Potohar Plateau and the north of the Jhelum River. The Salt Range contains the great mines of Khewra, Kalabagh and Warcha which yield vast supplies of salt. Coal of a medium quality is also found. The Salt Range starts from the Bakralla and Tilla Jogian ridges in the east and extends to the west of River Jhelum.

In the Himalayan and Salt Range, rock containing fossil of marine life go back to the Ediacaran period (up to 570 million years ago), which shows these rocks have developed out of sea sediments, and that where we have the Himalayas now was once a sea.

Sakaser is the highest peak of Salt Range.
Namal Lake, Khabikki Lake and Uchhali Lake are lakes in the Salt Range.

History
An inscription found at Kura in the Salt Range records the building of a Buddhist monastery by a person named Rotta Siddhavriddhi during the reign of the Huna ruler Toramana. The donor expresses the wish that the religious merit gained by his gift be shared by him with the king and his family members.

The Awans, Khokhars, Gakhars, and Janjuas had engaged in an endless battle for sovereignty over the Salt Range.

The history of this region(the Salt Range) from the thirteenth century onward had been a sickening record of wars between various landowning dominant and ruling clans of Punjabi Muslims including the Khokhars, Janjuas, Awans and Gakhars for political ascendancy.

According to the Emperor Babar, the Jude and the Janjua were "two races descended from the same father, " who from old times had been rulers of the hills between Nilab and Bhera, that is, of the Salt Range. "On one-half of the hill lived the Jud, and on the other half the Janjua." The Awans now occupy western half of these hills towards Nilab and Janjuas (Rajputs) on eastern part of these Hills. Juds are actually a sub-clan of Janjuas and there are still 7 seven villages of Juds near Dhrabi Area of Chakwal including Dhrabi village and Dam. They are descendants of Raja Jodh who was 2nd Prince of Janjua King Raja Mal Dev Khan Janjua. There are several forts on these hills and all of them were built by Janjua Rajputs and their ancestors the Pandav's at Katas Raj as well as the Janjua Shahi Dynasty of 2nd Kabul Shahis at Nandna fort.
Also this area is known as the first ever Muslim Rajputs Kingdom and Raja Mal Dev Khan Janjua was the founder of this kingdom. He was from the Chandravanshi Rajput clan and  was from the bloodline of famous Indian Mahabharata Warrior Prince Arjun Dev Pandav.

About 1500 Janjua Rajputs warrior cavalry fought in the battle of Panipat from this area in support of Babur under the command of Malik Hast Khan Janjua (Asad).
Sultan Lashkar Janjua and Raja Sanghral Ali Khan Janjuas were also commanding their own Muslim Janjua Rajputs during the battles of Panipat and Khanwa against Rana Sanga. All of them were rulers of these Hills and chieftains of this ruling Rajput clan. These hills were earlier known as Koh-e-jodh, named after Raja Jodh Janjua, son of Raja Mal Dev Khan Janjua.

Kathwai
Two interesting sites are close to Kathwai, Kutte Mar, and Tulaja Fort. At Kuttee Mar to the Northeast of Kathwai are Muslim graves made of Kangar and the purported grave of a dog that is said to have died defending the wedding procession of its owner from an attack by bandits. Kutte Mar may have been the place where the Khura inscription of Toramana was found (Buhler 1891–92, 238–41; Sircar 1965: 422–4). If this assessment is correct, a Buddhist monastery was established here around 500. A.D. This inscription and another fragmentary inscription found at Sakaser (Pakistan Archaeology 5, 1968: 284–70) confirm that this area was a flourishing, center for Buddhism, which is borne out by the extensive archaeological remains.

The Tulaja fort is located on a huge rock outcropping with sheer cliffs overlooking the shrine of Kacchianwalla and the Punjab plains. The entire area is covered with the ruins of defensive walls, houses, and other structures made of large stone blocks. Although one building has been identified as a mosque, it is very difficult to distinguish other religious, military or civil structures. One of the most interesting features is a large square tank made of the flat rectangular bricks, which may have supplied water so that the fort could withstand a siege. Comparing this tank with those in other forts may help in assigning a relative date to its construction. In addition to architectural styles, evidence from any coins, which are found here, may help to indicate if this city belonged to the period of the Turk Sultans, Lodhis or Mughals. Extensive remains of a cemetery and other settlements are on the slopes below the fort. There are also supposed to be some remains on Tulaji across the valley from Talaja.

Habitat
The Salt Range has a high level of biodiversity and is home to a number of wildlife sanctuaries (ChumbiSurla, Jahlar Lake, Sodhi, Khabekki Lake and KundalRakh) and protected areas, including the Chinji National Park and several forest (e.g. Simli Reserved Forest and Noorpur Reserved Forest) and wetland areas (including Ucchali, Jahlar and Khabbiki lakes).

See also
 Himalayan salt
 Khewra Salt Mine
 List of mountains in Pakistan

References

External links
 Salt Range Temples

Geography of Punjab, Pakistan
History of Punjab
History of Punjab, Pakistan
Mountain ranges of Punjab (Pakistan)
Regions of Punjab, Pakistan
Salt industry in Pakistan

Salt Range


Świecko () is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Słubice, within Słubice County, Lubusz Voivodeship, in western Poland, close to Frankfurt an der Oder on the German border. It lies approximately  south of Słubice,  south-west of Gorzów Wielkopolski, and  north-west of Zielona Góra.

Transport
The important national road 2, which is part of the European route E30, crosses the border near the village. It connects with the German A12 autobahn at Frankfurt an der Oder, where the two roads are linked by a motorway bridge across the River Oder.

All border controls at this crossing ceased as of 21 December 2007 when Poland joined the Schengen Area.

History
The village is located within the historic Lubusz Land, which formed part of Poland since the establishment of the state by the Piast dynasty in the 10th century. In 1354 the municipal authorities of the city of Frankfurt (Oder) bought the village called Sweyt at the time from its owners Nicolaus and Hermann von Lossow and added it to the property districts of the city treasury. With the purchase, Frankfurt acquired a settlement with 12 hoofs area, 17 farmers, ten with half a hoof each, the remaining seven with one hoof land each, and six cottages. The rural field mark had a total area of 2810 acres. Since the city of Frankfurt on the right bank of the Oder also owned the four neighboring villages Kunowice, Kunice, Rybocice and Drzecin and the five villages together had the property of a manor, the city council was entitled to a seat of knighthood in the state parliament.

In 1477 an army under Hans von Sagan passed through the village and plundered it. In 1516 there were only six farmers left, but 13 cottagers. In 1651 there was a school in town.

In the 18th century, the village became part of Prussia. In 1759, during the Seven Years' War, the village was burned down by the Russian army in 1759 during the Battle of Kunersdorf (Kunowice). Only the forge survived the fire. In 1763 Mattig became a village mayor. With a brief interruption, this office remained in the hands of this family until 1852. If you compare the situation with the other council villages in Frankfurt, this is very unusual. Since the 18th century in particular, the Schulzen changed frequently, as the position became increasingly unattractive due to fewer privileges. Only Drzecin (then officially Trettin), which also belongs to Frankfurt, was able to show a similar resistance. In 1785 the village had 18 farmers, 13 cottagers, nine householders, a shepherd, three shepherds, a blacksmith, a forester and a schoolmaster. In November 1806 the place was occupied by the French army, and the residents had to provide shelter and care for soldiers. In 1820 there were 50 residential and 60 farm houses as well as a mill. In 1838 a trade table for the village listed three residents, eight full farmers, ten half-farmers, 13 cottagers, eleven Büdner, 14 old-Altenteil and three shepherds.

On June 13, 1855, a major fire destroyed 20 houses, 16 barns, 31 stables and three sheds. In 1871 the village became part of the German Empire, and in 1873 it came to the Weststernberg district of the Frankfurt administrative district in the province of Brandenburg as part of an administrative reform. An inspection report noted in 1914 about the school school house for needs sufficient, whereby it can be assumed on the basis of knowledge of the financial situation and the situation of the schools in the area that the equipment was very limited. In 1929 the school received a radio system for classroom use.

During World War II, the Oderblick labor education camp () was established near the village by Nazi Germany in October 1940. Its prisoners were mostly Poles, but also Belgians, French, Bulgarians, Dutch, Yugoslavs, Russians, Ukrainians and Italians. The camp on the site of the former workers' camp for the construction of the motorway was built for 400 prisoners and was under the Gestapo control center in Frankfurt (Oder). At least 11,500 prisoners could have passed through the camp. Camp commandant was SS-Obersturmführer Schneider, deputy camp commandant SS-Stabsscharführer Willi Dietrich. Since the camp was also used as an extended prison, there was a women's section in which German women were held. Their treatment was better than that of the other inmates.

In autumn of 1941 typhus broke out and the camp was completely isolated until May 7, 1942. Almost all the prisoners at the time died. New prisoners were brought in since May 1942. The prisoners were forced to exhausting labour, and were subjected to malnutrition, cold, mental and physical abuse, accidents at work, diseases, and tortures and murder by German guards. Some prisoners even committed suicide. According to the survivors, many people died in the camp every week or even every day. In the final stages of the war, the Germans took blood from prisoners for wounded German soldiers. The liquidation of the camp began on January 30, 1945, when 1,600 prisoners were sent on a death march to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The number of prisoners who survived the march is not known. Some of the survivors were used as forced labour in the Heinkel factory in Potsdam. On January 31, 1945, around 70 sick prisoners were locked up in the sick barrack and burned alive. The other barracks were also burned, and probably all the documents relating to the camp as well. On March 16, 1945, 29 prisoners reached the Buchenwald concentration camp.

At the end of the Second World War, on February 2, 1945, the residents of the village fled towards Frankfurt from the approaching Red Army. On February 3, the 77th Rifle Division of the Soviet 69th Army took the place without a fight. After the end of the war, the village, along with the lands east of the Oder–Neisse line became again part of Poland. The abandoned village was resettled by Polish civilians. The locals who had fled were prevented from returning by Polish militiamen. The village was renamed Świecko. In 1977 a memorial to the victims of the Nazi German labor camp was built.

Notes
 Currently the stretch near country border is signed as a national road. It will be incorporated into the motorway in the future, presumably after constructing a bypass of the former border crossing area.

References

Villages in Słubice County
Germany–Poland border crossings

Świecko


A beam homogenizer is a device that smoothes out the irregularities in a laser beam profile to create a more uniform one. Most beam homogenizers use a multifaceted mirror with square facets. The mirror reflects light at different angles to create a beam with uniform power across the whole beam profile (a "top hat" profile). Some applications of beam homogenizers include their use with excimer lasers for making computer chips and with  lasers for heat treating.

Most lasers produce a Gaussian beam energy distribution. A beam homogenizer will create an evenly distributed energy of the beam instead of the Gaussian shape. Unlike a beam shaper, which imparts a certain shape to the beam, a beam homogenizer spreads out the central concentrated energy of the beam among the entire beam diameter.

A simple beam homogenizer can be just a murky piece of glass. However, this is a very simple solution with low efficiency, producing a blurry beam. For most applications/uses, advanced methods of beam homogenizing are required such as diffractive beam homogenizers or using a micro lens array (MLA).

External links
Lens Array Vs Rod Lens For Laser Beam Homogenization

Optical devices
Laser science

Beam homogenizer


Märta Norberg (19 September 1922 – 19 December 2020) was a Swedish cross-country skier. She competed in the 1950s. She won two bronze medals in the 3 × 5 km relay at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships (1954, 1958). Norberg finished fourth in the 10 km event at the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo. Norberg was born in Sidensjö, Sweden.

Norberg died on 19 December 2020 in Stockholm at the age of 98.

References

1922 births
2020 deaths
Swedish Olympians
Swedish skiers

Märta Norberg


Faience pottery is tin-glazed pottery. It is the use of a white pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration. This is got by adding  an oxide of tin to a lead glaze.

It was a major advance in the history of pottery, made about 500 years ago. The technique was brought to Al-Andalus in Spain from Moorish potteries in the eastern Mediterranean.

In Italy locally produced tin-glazed earthenwares was called maiolica. It reached a peak in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

It was made in several countries. English creamware was developed in Staffordshire in the 18th century. Instead of faience they were called delftware.

References

Pottery

Faience


Henry Grey, 4th Earl of Kent (c. 1495 – 24 September 1562) was Earl of Kent from 1524 to his death.

He was a son of George Grey, 2nd Earl of Kent and his second wife Catherine Herbert. His maternal grandparents were William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke and Anne Devereux.

His father was previously married to Anne Woodville, a daughter of Richard Woodville, 1st Earl Rivers and Jacquetta of Luxembourg. His only known paternal half-brother was Richard Grey, 3rd Earl of Kent.

Richard succeeded their father as Earl of Kent but wound up heavily in debt, probably through gambling, and was forced to alienate most of his property. A good part ended up in the crown's hands; historians disagree regarding what this says about the relationship of Henry VII of England with the aristocracy.

When Richard died childless, Henry inherited the title of Earl of Kent and what was left of the associated property. Henry tried, with little success, to reacquire the property Richard had sold, and had to live as a modest gentleman, never formally taking title as earl.

He married Anne Blennerhassett daughter of John Blennerhassett and Jane Higham. They had two children:

 Henry Grey (1520–1545). He married Margaret St. John. They were parents to Reginald Grey, 5th Earl of Kent, Henry Grey, 6th Earl of Kent and Charles Grey, 7th Earl of Kent.
 Katherine Grey. She is mentioned to have married twice, to unnamed members of the Slayton and Spencer families. Uncertain if she had descendants.

Sources
The Complete Peerage

External links
A Grey family pedigree

1490s births
1562 deaths

Year of birth uncertain
Earls of Kent (1465 creation)
Henry
16th-century English nobility
Barons Grey of Ruthin

Henry Grey, 4th Earl of Kent


Numismatics is the study and collecting of coins and the history behind the coins. A Numismatist is either a collector of coins or a scholar who studies the history of coins.

Origin of Word
The term comes from a word meaning "of coins." The original word is French (numismatique), which itself is from a Latin origin (numismatis).

History of Numismatics
Coin collectors may have existed in ancient times. Caesar Augustus may have been an example. The first known book about coin collecting was in 1514, "De Asse et Partibus", by Guillaume Budé. However, only royalty really enjoyed coin collecting until the 19th century. That's when professional organizations started to sprout, like the American Numismatic Society in 1858.

Modern Numismatics
Modern numismatics is a sub-field that focuses on when coins started being stamped by machines (around 17th century on). Because of its focus, modern numismatics is more popular with collectors than with historians. Other subfields/variants include exonumia (focus on coin-like objects), notaphily (focus on paper money instead of coins), and scripophily (focus on stocks and bonds instead of coins).

References

Hobbies

Numismatics


Home Sweet Home Alone is an American Christmas comedy film directed by Dan Mazer with a script by Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell. It is the sixth film in the Home Alone franchise. The project is produced by 20th Century Studios as a Disney+ original film, the first 20th Century Studios film to be produced for the streaming service. It was announced after The Walt Disney Company acquired 21st Century Fox and inherited the film rights to the Home Alone franchise. The film stars Ellie Kemper, Rob Delaney, Archie Yates, Aisling Bea, Kenan Thompson, Pete Holmes, Ally Maki, and Chris Parnell.

Plot
Jeff and Pam McKenzie are trying to sell their house, but have not told their children, Abby and Chris. Jeff had lost his job and Pam's salary is not able to afford keeping their home. To make matters worse, Jeff's obnoxious and more successful brother Hunter and his wife, Mei, and son Ollie, have decided to stay with them for Christmas. During an open house, Max Mercer and his mother Carol stop by to use the restroom. Max has a brief exchange with Jeff, during which the latter reveals a box of old dolls, including a malformed one with an upside down face. Carol comments on how dolls with unusual deformities tend to sell due to their rarity. As Max and Carol return home, the whole family is preparing to leave for Tokyo, Japan for the holidays, with Carol leaving earlier than the rest of the family. Max, annoyed with the fuss, decides to hide in the garage parked car and falls asleep.

Concerned about losing their home, Jeff goes to retrieve the doll, only to find that it is missing. Believing that Max stole it, he manages to locate the Mercer household the next day, only to find the whole family hastily leaving. During the commotion, he overhears the security code and sees where the house key is hidden. He tells Pam about it and they agree to go and steal the doll at night. Meanwhile, Max discovers that the whole family has left and takes advantage of it by having fun, though he quickly grows bored. Jeff and Pam arrive at the Mercer house and get inside. Max overhears them talking about getting an "ugly little boy" and assumes they are talking about him. He manages to scare them away by calling the cops. Officer Buzz McCallister arrives, but Pam manages to divert him. Max realizes that if he found out he was home alone, his parents might get arrested.

Carol discovers that Max has been left home alone and buys a ticket to head back. The McKenzies head to church the next day where they run into their realtor Gavin Washington who tells them that they have a buyer, but they need to decide by the end of the year; putting pressure on them. Max arrives and unknowingly converses with Jeff and Pam's son Chris who sympathetically gives him his nerf gun. Jeff and Pam spot Max talking with an elder afterwards and assume she is his grandmother. They resolve to break into the house once again while the rest of their family is still at church. They sneak around the back of the house, but end up in the neighbor's backyard instead. Max overhears them once again plotting with Jeff agreeing to arrive dressed as Santa in an effort to fool him. Max responds by setting up traps in his house while Jeff and Pam wait for their family to fall asleep on Christmas Eve.

Jeff and Pam are subjected to Max's traps, during which they discover that Max did not steal the doll, but instead stole a can of soda. They clear up the misunderstanding, but learn that Max is also home alone and agree to let him stay with them until his mother comes back. As they explain the whole situation to their family, it turns out that Ollie stole the doll and manage to safely retrieve it, thus ensuring that the McKenzies will stay. Carol arrives to pick up Max and, having moved into their house only two months ago, finds friends in the McKenzies and thanks them for taking care of Max. One year later, the Mercers and McKenzies have Christmas dinner together with Jeff having gotten a new job and willingly gives Max the soda he craved the year prior.

Marketing
The first trailer released on October 12, 2021. It was met with negative responses by fans, and received over 79,000 dislikes on YouTube.

Cast

 Archie Yates as Max Mercer, a boy who is accidentally left at home by his family.
 Ellie Kemper as Pam McKenzie, a criminal who aims to steal a priceless heirloom from the Mercers' home, and the wife of Jeff.
 Rob Delaney as Jeff McKenzie, Pam's husband who at first isn't willing to be a criminal.
 Aisling Bea as Carol Mercer, the mother of Max.
 Kenan Thompson as Gavin
 Ally Maki as Mei
 Pete Holmes as Blake, Carol's husband and Max's father.
 Chris Parnell as Uncle Stu, the uncle of Max.
 Timothy Simons as Hunter
 Andy Daly as Mike
 Mikey Day as Priest
 Jim Rash as Bell Choir Leader
Katie Beth Hall as Abby McKenzie, Jeff and Pam's daughter.
Justine Archambault as Young Abby McKenzie
Max Ivutin as Chris McKenzie, Jeff and Pam's son.
Amadeo Correia as Young Chris McKenzie
Maddie Holliday as Katie Mercer, the sister of Max
Aiden and Allan Wang as Ollie McKenzie, Hunter and Mei's son.

Additionally, Devin Ratray reprises his role as an adult Buzz McCallister from Home Alone (1990) and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) with the character now working as a police officer. John Novak and Eddie G appear as Johnny and Snakes respectively, two movie characters who were portrayed by Ralph Foody and Michael Guido in the first film as well.

References

Other websites

2021 comedy movies
American comedy movies
Christmas movies

Home Sweet Home Alone


Mourilyan is a town and locality in the Cassowary Coast Region, Queensland, Australia. It was established around the Mourilyan sugar mill which provided much of the employment in the area until it was destroyed by Cyclone Larry on 20 March 2006. In the , Mourilyan had a population of 571 people.

Geography
The town is located  south of Innisfail on the Bruce Highway.

History

Construction of the Mourilyan sugar mill began in 1882, rendering it among the oldest in Australia. Excavation of the site was undertaken mainly  by Kanakas, with assistance from Chinese and Anglo-Saxon labourers. After its completion in 1884, the mill had a processing capacity of 14 tonnes of sugar per 12-hour shift.

In 1913, the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (now CSR) began purchasing sugar refined at the mill. Mourilyan remained a small settlement, growing only very slowly since.

Mourilyan Post Office opened by September 1910 (a receiving office had been open from 1884 when the mill opened).

Mourilyan is prone to tropical cyclones; in 1918, a cyclone caused serious damage to the mill and surrounding community, having a drastic effect on sugar production in that year.

The Mourilyan parish of the Roman Catholic Vicariate Apostolic of Cooktown (now the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cairns) was established in 1935. It is now merged with the Innisfail and South Johnstone parishes.

In 1986, Cyclone Winifred also caused substantial damage to the area.

In March 2006 Cyclone Larry caused substantial damage to many households in the area, and destroyed the town's main source of employment. A major effort by the Australian Defence Force helped restore Mourilyan Primary School to functioning capacity. Insurance payouts have helped to repair residential and commercial properties.

At the 2006 census, Mourilyan had a population of 424 people.

At the , Mourilyan had a population of 571 people.

Attractions
Mourilyan's main attraction is the Australian Sugar Industry Museum, which contains several relics from North Queensland's extensive sugar farming history. It also serves as a gateway to Mourilyan Harbour, Etty Bay and Paronella Park.

Education
Mourilyan State School opened on 29 January 1908 and as of July 2017, educates 167 students from Prep to Year 6.

Amenities
Christ the King Catholic Church is at 10 Harbour Road. It is within the Innisfail Parish of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cairns.

See also
 List of tramways in Queensland

References

External links

 University of Queensland: Queensland Places: Mourilyan
 Town map, 1979

Towns in Queensland
Populated places in Far North Queensland
Cassowary Coast Region
Localities in Queensland

Mourilyan, Queensland


Guy Takeo Kawasaki (born August 30, 1954) is an American marketing specialist, author, and Silicon Valley venture capitalist. He was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing their Macintosh computer line in 1984. He popularized the word evangelist in marketing the Macintosh as an "Apple evangelist" and the concepts of evangelism marketing and technology evangelism/platform evangelism in general.

From March 2015 until December 2016, Kawasaki sat on the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees, the non-profit operating entity of Wikipedia.

Kawasaki has also written fifteen books, including The Macintosh Way (1990), The Art of the Start (2004), and Wise Guy: Lessons from a Life (2019).

Early life
Guy Kawasaki was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Duke Takeshi Kawasaki (d. 2015) and Aiko Kawasaki. His family lived in an area outside Honolulu called Kalihi Valley. His father, Duke, once served as a fireman, real estate broker, state senator, and government official while his mother was a housewife. He attended ʻIolani School and graduated in 1972.

Kawasaki graduated from Stanford University in 1976 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology. He then attended law school at UC Davis, but quit after about a week of classes when he realized that he disliked law school. In 1977, he enrolled in the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where he earned an MBA degree. While there, Kawasaki also worked at a jewelry company, Nova Stylings. Kawasaki observed, "The jewelry business is a very, very tough business, tougher than the computer business... I learned a very valuable lesson: how to sell."

Career

In 1983, Kawasaki got a job at Apple through his Stanford roommate, Mike Boich. He was Apple's chief evangelist for four years. In a 2006 podcast interview on the online site Venture Voice, Kawasaki said, "What got me to leave is basically I started listening to my own hype, and I wanted to start a software company and really make big bucks." In 1987 he was hired to lead ACIUS, the U.S. subsidiary of France-based ACI, which published an Apple database software system called 4th Dimension.

Kawasaki left ACIUS in 1989 to further his writing and speaking career. In the early 1990s he wrote columns that were featured in Forbes and MacUser magazines. He also founded another company, Fog City Software, which created Emailer, an email client that sold to Claris. A collection of namesake software utilities called Guy's Utilities for Macintosh (GUM), was published by After Hours Software in the early 1990s. An edition of GUM for PowerBook systems was acquired by Gordon Eubanks and was subsequently remarketed by Symantec as The Norton Essentials for PowerBook.

He returned to Apple as an Apple Fellow in 1995. In 1998, he was a co-founder of Garage Technology Ventures, a venture capital firm that has made investments in Pandora Radio, Tripwire, The Motley Fool and D.light Design. In 2007, he founded Truemors, a free-flow rumor mill, that sold to NowPublic. He is also a founder at Alltop, an online magazine rack.

In March 2013, Kawasaki joined Google as an advisor to Motorola. His role was to create a Google+ mobile device community.

In April 2014, Kawasaki became the chief evangelist of Canva. It is a free graphic design website for non-designers as well as professionals and was founded in January 2013.

On March 24, 2015, Kawasaki joined Wikimedia Foundation's board of trustees. He stepped down at the end of December 2016.

On April 25, 2017, WikiTribune mentioned him as an adviser.

On February 26, 2019, Penguin Group released Wise Guy, described as Kawasaki's most personal book to date. While the book is written as what could be considered a memoir, it contains a series of vignettes that include various personal experiences that Kawasaki says have enlightened and inspired him.

December 2019 to Current, Kawasaki created a podcast called Remarkable People. There are now over 90 episodes available including interviews with Jane Goodall, Stephen Wolfram, Andrew Yang and Sal Khan. Kawasaki has stated that he believed the podcast was his best and most under appreciated work.

Personal life
Kawasaki and his wife have four children: Nicodemus ("Nic"), Noah, Nohemi, and Nate. Nohemi and Nate are biological siblings whom the couple adopted from Guatemala.

Bibliography
 The Macintosh Way (1990) .
 Database 101 (1991) .
 Selling the Dream (1992) .
 The Computer Curmudgeon (1993) .
 Hindsights (1995) .
 How to Drive Your Competition Crazy (1995) .
 Rules for Revolutionaries (2000) .
 The Art of the Start (2004) .
 Reality Check (2008) .
 Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions (2011). Portfolio Penguin, London. .
 What the Plus! Google+ for the rest of us (2012) (only available on Amazon Kindle, iBooks, and on Google Play).
 APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur—How to Publish a Book (2013). (Guy Kawasaki; Shawn Welch) Nononina Press .
 The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users (2015) (Guy Kawasaki; Peg Fitzpatrick) .
 The Art of the Start 2.0: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything (2015) Portfolio .
 Wise Guy: Lessons from a Life (2019) Penguin Group .

References

External links

 Alltop.com co-founder

1954 births
20th-century American businesspeople
20th-century American writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American businesspeople
American technology chief executives
American technology writers
American writers of Japanese descent
Apple Inc. employees
Apple Fellows
Hawaii people of Japanese descent
Businesspeople from Hawaii
Edu-Ware
Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees members
Google employees
ʻIolani School alumni
Living people
Motorola employees
Silicon Valley people
Stanford University alumni
UCLA Anderson School of Management alumni
Writers from Honolulu
American Wikimedians
Shorty Award winners

Guy Kawasaki


Le Magnifique (literally The Magnificent; also known as The Man from Acapulco) is a French/Italian international co-production released in 1973, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jacqueline Bisset and Vittorio Caprioli that was directed by Philippe de Broca. Le Magnifique is a slapstick spoof of B-series espionage films and novels and the men who write them.

Synopsis
François Merlin (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a Jean Bruce type writer of pulp espionage novels (he has written 42 so far) and about half of the film plays in his imagination, where he is the world-renowned superspy Bob Sinclar. (The name of the character is never seen written in the film. While some people write his name "Saint-Clair", the way it is pronounced in French sounds like Sinclar; in the English dubbed soundtrack the surname is "St. Cloud".)

Christine (Jacqueline Bisset) is a sociology student who lives in François' building and is interested in the novels, but in the writer's imagination she becomes Tatiana, his paramour, while the pompous and rich publisher of his novels, Pierre Charron (Vittorio Caprioli), doubles as the great villain of the spy novels, the Albanian secret services head Karpov, who in a memorable scene of the film threatens to cut off one of Tatiana's breasts.

Christine is clearly fascinated with the handsome spy Bob Sinclar, an unrealistic and idealised hero, who is the very opposite of his creator: a clumsy, frustrated divorced man who barely makes enough money to get by. However, when she is befriended by the rich and vain publisher who looks down upon his poor hack writer, she realises her mistake, and after a party where he tries to seduce her, she flees him and falls asleep on the landing outside the writer's flat, where he finds her in the morning, clad apparently only in a T-shirt and embraces her for a happy ending. In the final scene, François throws over the balcony his last manuscript, freeing himself from his character and his imaginary life.

Production
Due to a dispute between Francis Veber and director Philippe de Broca over the importance of the lead female character to the script, Francis Veber refused to be credited as a writer. As a result, the credits don't feature any writer.

UK Release
In the United Kingdom, Le Magnifique was titled How to Destroy the Reputation of the Greatest Secret Agent, and was released as the B-Movie to the film Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze in 1975.

Cast
 Jean-Paul Belmondo : François Merlin / Bob Saint-Clar
 Jacqueline Bisset : Christine / Tatiana
 Vittorio Caprioli : Georges Charron / Colonel Karpof
  : Mrs. Berger
 Mario David (actor) : Policeman
 Raymond Gérôme : General Pontaubert
 Jean Lefebvre : The electrician
 Hans Meyer : Colonel Collins
 André Weber : The plumber
 Hubert Deschamps : Salesman
 Bernard Musson : Interpreter
  : Interpreter
  : The Lecturer
  : Doctor

References to other films and media

This is the film that is the main inspiration for the three teenage heroes of the novel by Andrei Makine, Once Upon the River Love (Au temps du fleuve Amour, 1994).

French DJ Bob Sinclar took his stage name from the unseen super spy.

Notes

External links

Le Magnifique at Le Film Guide

1973 films
Films about writers
French spy comedy films
Italian spy comedy films
Films directed by Philippe de Broca
1970s action comedy films
1970s spy comedy films
French parody films
French action comedy films
Films with screenplays by Jean-Paul Rappeneau
1973 comedy films
Parody films based on James Bond films
Films scored by Claude Bolling
Films set in a fictional country
1970s Italian films
1970s French films
Films with screenplays by Francis Veber

Le Magnifique


The Pedra das Flores Natural Monument is a municipal natural monument in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Location

The Pedra das Flores Natural Monument is in the municipality of São José do Vale do Rio Preto, Rio de Janeiro.
It has an area of about .
It is in the Serra do Capim.
It is one of the main conservation areas in the municipality along with the Serra do Taquaruçu (Araponga Municipal Nature Park) and Serra da Maravilha (Maravilha Environmental Protection Area).
The monument has vegetation of alpine meadows, rich in bromeliads and orchids.

History

The Pedra das Flores Natural Monument was created by municipal decree 1.651 of 2005.
That year the conservation unit was swept by a fire started by a farmer on pasture beside the site.
It was included in the Central Rio de Janeiro Atlantic Forest Mosaic, created in December 2006.
The monument has suffered from vandalism by people opposed to creating the unit.
In 2009 the unit was again partially consumed by a fire that burned all the vegetation from the banks of the Calçado River to the rock wall that leads to the Campo Dois, a favorite location for camping and climbing.

Notes

Sources

2006 establishments in Brazil
Natural monuments of Brazil
Protected areas of Rio de Janeiro (state)

Pedra das Flores Natural Monument