Frank Oscar King (April 9, 1883 – June 24, 1969) was an American cartoonist best known for his comic strip Gasoline Alley. In addition to innovations with color and page design, King introduced real-time continuity in comic strips by showing his characters aging over generations.

Born in Cashton, Wisconsin, King was the older of the two sons of mechanic John J. King and his wife Caroline. When Frank was four years old, he moved with his parents to 1710 Superior Avenue in Tomah, Wisconsin, where they operated their family general store. He started drawing while growing up in Tomah, where he graduated from Tomah High School in 1901.

He entered country fair drawing competitions; a sign he drew for a hotel bootblack earned him only 25 cents, but it was seen by a traveling salesman who learned it had been drawn by the son of one of his customers. The salesman arranged an interview for King with a Minneapolis newspaper editor. King began earning $7 a week at the Minneapolis Times, and during his four years there, he doubled his salary while creating drawings and doing retouching. He also worked as a courtroom sketch artist. On March 17, 1905, he gave a chalk talk at a Minneapolis St. Patrick's Day celebration.

Chicago cartoonists
In 1905-06, he studied art at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. After a spell at an ad agency and a brief time at the Chicago American, he spent three years with the Chicago Examiner, where he worked next to cartoonist T. S. Sullivant. In 1909, King left the Examiner to work at the Chicago Tribune, where, according to his friend, Chicago cartoonist Lew Merrell, he increased his weekly pay 50 cents. At the Tribune he worked alongside Clare Briggs, Dean Cornwell and Garrett Price. In 1910, he began a short-lived daily comic strip, Jonah, a Whale for Trouble, which ran in the Tribune from October 3, 1910 until December 8, 1910. He followed with a Tribune Sunday strip, Young Teddy, which was seen briefly from September 10, 1911 to October 6, 1912. His funny frog Sunday strip, Hi-Hopper, ran from February 1, 1914 until December 27, 1914.

On February 7, 1911, King married Delia Drew, also from Tomah. They were both 28 years old and moved into a series of apartments on the South Side of Chicago. Delia gave birth to a stillborn daughter in 1912, and in 1916, a son, Robert Drew King, was born. It was at this time that the family moved to 533 Madison in Glencoe, a somewhat affluent suburb on Lake Michigan north of Chicago. In 1916, King's salary from the Tribune was $5000. By 1925, this had grown to $22,500, a princely sum that was augmented by royalties from Gasoline Alley books and toys.

The Rectangle

The Rectangle began as a Chicago Tribune page featuring a variety of cartoons and serial features. King's Rectangle Sunday page, usually printed in black-and-white outside the comics section, was a late addition to a page that ran for years in the Tribune. On January 9, 1913, King introduced a bounded rectangle containing themed single-panel gags (beginning with a page headed Hints to Husbandettes), but pages in that format did not appear with any regularity until February 1914. The Rectangle title was finally introduced on December 27, 1914.

King created several recurring strips, including Tough Teddy, The Boy Animal Trainer, Here Comes Motorcycle Mike, Hi Hopper (about a frog) and his first successful full-page comic, Bobby Make-Believe (January 31, 1915 to December 7, 1919). During World War I, King was overseas drawing scenes of the war for publication in American newspapers.

Bobby Make-Believe, Here Comes Motorcycle Mike, Hi Hopper and other pre-Gasoline Alley comic strips by King were reprinted by Sunday Press Books in a hardcover titled: Crazy Quilt by Frank King: Scraps and Panels on the way to Gasoline Alley, Comics from 1909-1919, (2017), ISBN

Gasoline Alley
On Sunday, November 24, 1918, the bottom quadrant of The Rectangle featured Walter Weatherby Wallet and his neighbors Bill, Doc and Avery as they repaired their automobiles in the alley behind their houses. The corner was titled Sunday Morning in Gasoline Alley.

King recalled, "My brother had a car that he kept in the alley with a fellow by the name of Bill Gannon and some others. I'd go to his house on Sunday, and we'd go down the alley and run into somebody else and talk cars. That was the beginning of Gasoline Alley." After King began the daily Gasoline Alley strip (August 24, 1919), The Rectangle appeared sporadically and finally came to an end on February 8, 1920.

King often credited his wife, Delia, for providing a "woman's angle" to Gasoline Alley. The central character of Walt was based on King's brother-in-law, Walter White Drew (1886–1941), and he used his own son, Robert Drew King, as the model for Skeezix. Tomah's Dr. Johnson was the inspiration for the character of Doc, and Bill in the strip was based on Bill Gannon.

King hired young Bill Perry from the Chicago Tribune'''s mail room and then trained him to work as his assistant. Although King leaned toward a homespun simplicity in his Sunday story situations, he also introduced some unusual experiments with time and space, as noted by comics critic Paul Gravett:

Other precedents from America's newspaper supplements were occasional experiments by Frank King in his Gasoline Alley Sunday pages where he would turn the whole page into one continuous landscape. For example, on 24 May 1931, King uses an unrealistic, almost isometric perspective to turn the page into a single image, like a diagram viewed from above, of the neighborhood and its assorted residents. This angled aerial view he divides into 12 equal panels, each containing at least one fresh character to contribute their own moment of comedy. In more of an ensemble of jokes than a strictly linear narrative, no characters appear here more than once. King went further, however, in 1934 when over three consecutive weeks he used the whole page as one image to portray a house being built, from bare site to construction to finishing touches. The first of these, dated 25 March 1934, presents repeated images of Skeezix and his pal Whimpy as they play around the foundations dug out of their favorite baseball diamond and meet a local girl. Here the threesome move around 12 identical square panels and time unfolds in sequence, although jumping ahead sometimes by a considerable period from one to the next.

The success of Gasoline Alley escalated until it was published in over 300 daily newspapers with a daily combined readership of over 27,000,000. According to Lew Merrell, the strip and its merchandising made King a millionaire.

In 1929, the Kings moved to Florida. For 20 years, they lived between Kissimmee, Florida and St. Cloud at his Folly Farms estate on the northeast shore of Lake Tohopekaliga. The cartoonist's estate of  along the Lake is still there, hidden among the other houses in the Regal Oak Shores subdivision.

In 1941, King wrote, "Just what the future holds for Skeezix and Gasoline Alley nobody knows. If permitted a fanciful prophecy, I should say that Skeezix will eventually marry, probably raise a family and make Uncle Walt a happy foster grandparent. Skeezix's offspring will in turn grow up, marry and have children. They in turn will thrive and mature and repeat the customary cycle ad infinitum."

At Folly Farms, during the 1940s, King spent time on his hobbies—sculpting, collecting maps, playing the fiddle and raising amaryllis bulbs. He retired from the Sunday strip in 1951, letting his assistant Bill Perry to take over. King retired from the daily in 1959, turning it over to Dick Moores, his assistant since 1956. The strip continues until the present day.

In later years, King lived in Winter Park, Florida. On June 24, 1969, Dennis Green, a King employee for many years, arrived to prepare King's breakfast. He heard King moving around the house and later found his body on a bathroom floor. King was buried in Tomah's Oak Grove Cemetery beside his wife, Delia, who died February 7, 1959. The couple's son, Robert King, lived in Des Plaines, Illinois.

Awards and exhibitions
King had one-man shows in Springfield, Illinois and Buffalo, New York, and his artwork is in the permanent collection of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. In 1955, he was an honored guest at Tomah's Centennial celebration and presented with an Indian headdress. His desk is on display at the Tomah Area Historical Society Museum, and in 1969, Gasoline Alley signs were placed along Superior Avenue in Tomah.

King's Highway in Florida is named to honor Frank King; it runs south from Neptune Road to King's Folly Farms estate. Mr. Enray, the banker in Gasoline Alley'' during the late 1940s, was based on Kissimmee's real-life banker N. Ray Carroll. When Carroll was a state senator, he had the road named after King by a resolution of the Florida Legislature.

He was twice honored for his work by the Freedom Foundation, and he received awards three times from the National Cartoonists Society.
1949: Silver T-Square Award
1957: Humor Comic Strip Award
1958: Reuben Award

References

External links

Frank King biography

Sunday Press Books
Bobby Make-Believe at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on February 22, 2018.

1883 births
1969 deaths
People from Monroe County, Wisconsin
Chicago Tribune people
American comic strip cartoonists
American comics artists
Courtroom sketch artists
People from Orange County, Florida
Reuben Award winners
Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame inductees
People from Osceola County, Florida
People from Tomah, Wisconsin

Frank King (cartoonist)


Mortal Kombat is an American video game franchise created by Ed Boon and John Tobias.

Mortal Kombat or Mortal Combat, may also refer to:

Mortal Kombat franchise
 Mortal Kombat (1992 video game), the first game in the Mortal Kombat series of games
 Mortal Kombat: The Album, a 1994 album accompaniment to the video game series
 Mortal Kombat (1995 film), a film adaptation based on the first video game
Mortal Kombat Annihilation, second installment in film series and a sequel to the original 1995 film
 Mortal Kombat: Conquest, a 1998 television adaptation based on the video game franchise
 Mortal Kombat (2011 video game), a reboot for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
 Mortal Kombat (2021 film), the film serves as a reboot of the Mortal Kombat film series

Other uses

Mortal Combat
 Mortal Combat, alternate title of the 1978 film Crippled Avengers
 "Mortal Combat of Light and Shadow", an episode of Beast King GoLion (1981–1982)
 "Mortal Combat", an episode from season 2 of Eli Stone (2008–09)
 "Mortal Combat", a song from Big Daddy Kane's album It's a Big Daddy Thing

See also

Immortal Kombat (disambiguation)
Immortal Combat (disambiguation)

Mortal Kombat (disambiguation)


Theme is a quarterly lifestyle magazine that focuses on contemporary creative culture. In collaboration with a guest curator, the publishers collect stories based on a theme, which allows them to provide a coherent lens onto a topic. Initially covering contemporary Asian culture around the world, they opened their content to expanded topics in 2009. Started by the husband and wife team, Jiae Kim and John H. Lee, in Spring 2005, it was initially published four times a year.  In 2008, Theme magazine started publishing bimonthly. In 2009 they returned to a quarterly schedule. The editor-in-chief of the magazine is John H. Lee who also publishes it with Jiae Kim.

In 2006 Theme won many design awards, including the Society of Publication Designers annual competition, and Print's Regional Design Competition.  It has been featured in Adobe's advertising for its CS2 line of products.

Theme publishers operate a creative agency, called EMEHT. The agency provides creative services to clients like Dickies, Scion, Nike and fashion brands like Tess Giberson, Doo.Ri, Diane von Fürstenberg, Inhabit, and (capsule) tradeshow. EMEHT also created the logo and branding for Brooklyn Machine Works, a cult brand in the bicycling world.

References

External links
Theme Magazine
THEME Magazine - Winners of UTNE's Independent Spirit Awards - Best Designed Magazine 2007

Bimonthly magazines published in the United States
Lifestyle magazines published in the United States
Quarterly magazines published in the United States
Magazines established in 2005
Asian-American magazines

Theme (magazine)


Nitrogen mustards are cytotoxic organic compounds with the chloroethylamine ((ClC2H4)2NR) functional group. Although originally produced as chemical warfare agents, they were the first chemotherapeutic agents for treatment of cancer.  Nitrogen mustards are nonspecific DNA alkylating agents.

Name
Nitrogen mustards are not related to the mustard plant or its pungent essence, allyl isothiocyanate; the name comes from the pungent smell of chemical weapons preparations.

Chemical warfare
During World War II, nitrogen mustards were studied at the Yale School of Medicine by Alfred Gilman and Louis Goodman, and classified human clinical trials of nitrogen mustards for the treatment of lymphoma started in December 1942. Also during World War II, an incident during the air raid on Bari, Italy, led to the release of mustard gas that affected several hundred soldiers and civilians. Medical examination of the survivors showed a decreased number of lymphocytes. After World War II was over, the Bari incident and the Yale group's studies eventually converged prompting a search for other similar compounds. Due to its use in previous studies, the nitrogen mustard known as "HN2" became the first chemotherapy drug mustine.

Examples
The nitrogen mustard drug mustine (HN2), is no longer commonly in use in its original IV formulation because of excessive toxicity. Other nitrogen mustards developed include cyclophosphamide, chlorambucil, uramustine, melphalan, and bendamustine. Bendamustine has recently re-emerged as a viable chemotherapeutic treatment.

Nitrogen mustards that can be used for chemical warfare purposes are tightly regulated. Their weapon designations are:
 HN1: Bis(2-chloroethyl)ethylamine
 HN2: Bis(2-chloroethyl)methylamine
 HN3: Tris(2-chloroethyl)amine

Nor-mustard can be used in the synthesis of piperazine drugs. For example, mazapertine, aripiprazole & fluanisone. Canfosfamide was also made from normustard.

Some nitrogen mustards of opiates were also prepared, although these are not known to be antineoplastic. Examples include Chlornaltrexamine and Chloroxymorphamine.

Mechanism of action
Nitrogen mustards (NMs) form cyclic aminium ions (aziridinium rings) by intramolecular displacement of the chloride by the amine nitrogen. This aziridinium group then alkylates DNA once it is attacked by the N-7 nucleophilic center on the guanine base. A second attack after the displacement of the second chlorine forms the second alkylation step that results in the formation of interstrand cross-links (ICLs) as it was shown in the early 1960s. At that time, it was proposed that the ICLs were formed between N-7 atom of guanine residue in a 5'-d(GC) sequence. Later it was clearly demonstrated that NMs form a 1,3 ICL in the 5'-d(GNC) sequence.

The strong cytotoxic effect caused by the formation of ICLs is what makes NMs an effective chemotherapeutic agent. Other compounds used in cancer chemotherapy that have the ability to form ICLs are cisplatin, mitomycin C, carmustine, and psoralen. These kinds of lesions are effective at forcing the cell to undergo apoptosis via p53, a protein which scans the genome for defects. Note that the alkylating damage itself is not cytotoxic and does not directly cause cell death.

Safety
Nitrogen mustards are powerful and persistent blister agents. HN1, HN2, HN3 are therefore classified as Schedule 1 substances within the Chemical Weapons Convention. Production and use is therefore strongly restricted.

Further reading

References

Blister agents
IARC Group 2A carcinogens

Cancer treatments

Nitrogen mustard


Oakland is an officially recognized neighborhood of Atlanta consisting of only four blocks. It is bounded by:
 the Downtown Connector freeway on the west, across which is Downtown Atlanta and the Georgia State Capitol building
 Grant Street on the east, across which is one block of the Grant Park (Atlanta) neighborhood and then the historic Oakland Cemetery (Atlanta)
 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and the Grant Park (Atlanta) and Capitol Gateway neighborhoods on the south
 the MARTA east-west rail line on the north

Oakland contains the disused Corey smokestack; Mattress Factory Lofts, site of the former Southern Spring Bedding factory, with some buildings built as far back as 1864;
and Crown Candy Lofts.

References

Neighborhoods in Atlanta

Oakland, Atlanta


Finningham railway station was a station physically located in the neighbouring parish of Bacton, Suffolk on the Great Eastern Main Line between London and Norwich. It was located 86 miles and 54 chains from Liverpool Street and was opened to passenger in 1849. It was closed in 1966 as part of the Beeching Axe with other smaller stations on the line although the line remains open.

Early history
Work on the extension of the Ipswich to Bury St Edmunds Railway line from Haughley Junction towards Norwich commenced in early 1848 by the Eastern Union Railway (EUR).  A single track railway opened as far as Finningham on 7 June 1848 which was for goods traffic only. Extension towards Diss and Norwich was difficult due to the challenges presented by Thrandeston bog and the line to Diss opened 28 May 1849. Six months later on 11 November 1849 the line opened through to Norwich with a second track.

The EUR, who were short of money, decided to only erect temporary buildings at Finningham to see whether passenger traffic would develop to justify more permanent buildings. Operation of the EUR was taken over by the Eastern Counties Railway in 1854 and following a financially difficult period almost all of the railways in East Anglia were merged into a single operation called the Great Eastern Railway (GER). Following gales in the winter of 1863 which destroyed the temporary buildings, the GER approved and built a substantial station building in 1865.

In 1881 the line was fitted with Absolute Block signalling.

From February 1895 to July 1898 the station master was Robert Gillingwater (1854-1923)

Between 1923 and 1947 the station was operated by the London and North Eastern Railway.

Description
Around 1900 Finningham station had two platforms joined by a footbridge, a small goods shed and cattle pens on the up side (East side) of the line and a loop and sidings on the down side. A siding located a short distance to the south on the up side also handled grain traffic.

The signal box, which had 18 levers for points and signals, was situated at the south end of the down platform more or less opposite the main station building which was just to the north of the goods shed. There was a small brick built shelter on the down side for Norwich bound passengers.

Closure

Following nationalisation in 1948 Finningham station became part of British Railways Eastern Region.

Freight, which for many years during the 1950s consisted of a daily pick-up freight train between Norwich and Stowmarket, was finally withdrawn on 28 December 1964 and the goods sidings were all lifted the following year on 15 July 1965. The connections to the goods loops lasted until 5 June 1968 when the last points were removed and the signal box abolished.

The last passenger trains called on 5 November 1966 when the Ipswich to Norwich stopping service was withdrawn.

The line to Norwich remains in operational use and was electrified in May 1987.

Timetables

1851
In the March 1850 Bradshaws Guide Finningham appears on page 33 and on weekdays has two up services at 0830 to Colchester with a connection via the Eastern Counties Railway to Liverpool Street at 12:50pm. The other service departed at 06:50 pm. calling all stations.

Finningham enjoyed a slightly better service towards Norwich with trains at 9:00 am, 12:55 pm and 7:18 pm. Journey time to Norwich calling all stations (except Swainsthorpe which had not opened) was 1 hour 20 minutes and to Ipswich 1 hour.

July 1922
The Bradshaws guide for July 1922 shows the trains serving Finningham in the last summer before the big four grouping the following January. Services to Finningham appeared on tables 274 to 277.

During the week in the up direction towards Ipswich and London the first service to call at Finningham was the 7:53 am to Ipswich with the next service at 11:33 am to Liverpool Street. There were three train sn the afternoon with the last train - the 7:02 pm Norwich to Liverpool Street train calling at 08:10 pm. There was a single up service on Sunday which called at 8:22 am

On weekdays in the down direction towards Norwich the first service was at 7:33 am and the last at 8:03 pm with four other services throughout the day. Three of these originated from London Liverpool Street with the other three starting from Norwich. On Sunday there were two trains towards Norwich.

Winter 1964

In the 7 September 1964 – 13 June 1965 British Railways Eastern Region public timetable, Finningham appeared in table 3. Along with the two neighbouring stations of Haughley and Mellis, Finningham was marked with an asterisk denoting "These stations may be closed during the currency of the timetable and in this event an appropriate notice will be given".

Despite this, the 05:43 Lowestoft – Norwich - London Liverpool Street, actually called at Finningham at 07:01. The other up morning services at 7:28 and 8:38 and 10:38 terminated at Ipswich (journey time about 30 minutes). In the afternoon the service was more or less two hourly until 8:39 although an 11:39 operated on Saturdays only.

In the down direction the first service to call at Finningham (at 07:35) was the 04:30 am. Liverpool Street – Norwich - Yarmouth Vauxhall.  This was followed by the 8:58 limited stop service to Norwich and then a gap until 1:08 in the afternoon. The next train was the 4:19 pm. service from Stowmarket to Norwich calling at 4:31 which offered a connection form the 2:30 Liverpool Street-Norwich at Stowmarket. The next Norwich service was an all stations service from Ipswich at 5:59 and 7:31, 9:27 and on Saturdays the 08:30 service from Liverpool Street called to set down only at 10:24.

There was no Sunday service.

References

External links
 Finningham station on 1946 O. S. map

Disused railway stations in Suffolk
Former Great Eastern Railway stations
Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1848
Railway stations in Great Britain closed in 1966
1848 establishments in England
1966 disestablishments in England

Finningham railway station


Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys is a 2001 direct-to-video computer-animated Christmas adventure musical film directed by Bill Kowalchuk for GoodTimes Entertainment. It was released on VHS and DVD on October 30, 2001. The film takes place after the events of the original special (despite Rudolph and Clarice utilizing their young designs from that special). The film thus revisits classic characters like Yukon Cornelius, Hermey the elf (now a dentist), Abominable Snow Monster, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, who is now famous in the North Pole.

GoodTimes Entertainment, three years prior, had released Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie, which was set in a separate continuity with different supporting characters. Several key personnel were retained from that movie: Kathleen Barr, the voice of Rudolph; Michael Aschner, the head writer; and Bill Kowalchuk, the director. Golden Books Family Entertainment was likewise retained as the production company.

The voice cast includes Rick Moranis, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Richard Dreyfuss among others.

Plot
Rudolph, not satisfied with being a "novelty act" performing tricks with his nose, travels with Hermey to the Island of Misfit Toys to give King Moonracer a root canal dental treatment. A storm sends Rudolph and Hermey to Castaway Cove where Rudolph considers having his nose made more normal-looking by a hippopotamus named Queen Camilla, being warned that if he gets a normal nose, he won't be able to lead the sleigh anymore on foggy nights which could put Santa's deliveries in potential danger.

Meanwhile, the evil Toy Taker is stealing all of the toys from the island, including Santa's workshop (which made Santa cry), claiming that he's saving them from the inevitable fact that children eventually outgrow their toys and throw them away. Rudolph has a plan to foil the Toy Taker's by disguising themselves as toys.

The Toy Taker's blimp arrives and manages to steal them along with the Misfit Toys, all except for Bumble, who is too big to fit into the blimp so he follows on a floating iceberg. Rudolph tries to talk to a new misfit toy, a kite who is scared of heights and wakes him up from his hypnosis, but fails. The Toy Taker hears all the chatter, and realizing there are intruders, catches Rudolph, Clarice, Yukon, and Hermey.

They head back into the blimp, with Yukon chasing after the Toy Taker, Hermey piloting the blimp, and Rudolph and Clarice doing their best to wake up the toys from their hypnosis. Yukon finally chases the Toy Taker up to the top of the blimp. When a boomerang who doesn't come back swoops by Yukon, he loses his balance and falls. Rudolph and Clarice confront the Toy Taker, with Rudolph's nose blinding him during the confrontation.

The Toy Taker flees and parachutes his way down to Yukon's peppermint mine in hopes of escaping Rudolph and Clarice. Due to the holes in the blimp, Hermey loses control. Luckily, Bumble is there to save the blimp before any further damage can be made. The reindeer are still chasing the Toy Taker in the mine and Rudolph captures him. However, the Toy Taker tries to escape again, but Yukon manages to lasso him up with Hermey's dental floss.

Upon removing the Toy Taker's coat and hat, it is revealed he is none other than a teddy bear named Mr. Cuddles. He apologizes and tells them he used to belong to a boy named Steven, who outgrew him and threw him away. After this, he became the Toy Taker to save the other toys from also being thrown away. Santa explains that while it is true that some children outgrow their toys, he knows Steven is looking for him.

Rudolph and his friends agree to bring Mr. Cuddles to Queen Camilla to repair him and cheer him up. Rudolph also considers about turning his nose normal, but decides to keep it the way it is. Santa leaves to deliver the presents and Mr. Cuddles gets returned to his owner. Santa tells him that Steven didn't mean to throw him away, but was saving him as a family gift. He then places him in the bed of Steven's new daughter who awakens and cuddles him. Steven walks into the room to check on his daughter and smiles as Santa and Rudolph fly off into the night.

Cast
 Kathleen Barr – Rudolph, Mrs. Claus, Dolly, Peggy the Piggy Bank, Tooth Fairy, Rocking Horse
 Scott McNeil – Hermey, Yukon Cornelius, Boomerang Who Won't Come Back, Coach Comet, Duck
 Garry Chalk – Santa Claus, Bumble
 Richard Dreyfuss – Scoop T. Snowman
 Rick Moranis* – Toy Taker/Mr. Cuddles
 Don Brown – Toy Taker's Vocal Effects
 Bruce Roberts – Toy Taker/Mr. Cuddles, Kite Who's Scared of Heights, and Scoop the Snowman's Singing Voice
 Jamie Lee Curtis – Queen Camilla
 Elizabeth Carol Savenkoff – Clarice
 Shawn Southwick – Queen Camilla and Clarice's Singing Voice
 Colin Murdock – King Moonracer, Reindeer #1
 Peter Kelamis – Foreman Elf
 Brent Miller – Hank
 Lee Tockar – Charlie in the Box, Meowing Wind-Up Mouse, Gingerbread Guard
 Terry Klassen – Telephone, Dizzy Top
 Alec Willows – Kite Who's Scared of Heights, Additional Voices

*Billed as 'Rick Moranis' in opening credits, and as 'Richard Moranis' in closing credits.

Reception

The film has received mixed to negative reviews, critics citing the poor animation and weak story, but having praise for some of the voice cast, particularly Curtis and Moranis.

See also
 Christmas film
 List of animated feature films
 List of children's films
 List of computer-animated films

References

External links

2001 animated films
Animated films about deer and moose
2001 direct-to-video films
American children's animated adventure films
American children's animated fantasy films
American direct-to-video films
American Christmas films
Canadian animated fantasy films
Canadian children's adventure films
Canadian children's animated films
Animated Christmas films
GoodTimes Entertainment
2001 computer-animated films
Direct-to-video animated films
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Films about sentient toys
Santa Claus in film
Films about toys
Films set on fictional islands
Animated films set in the Arctic
2000s children's animated films
2000s Christmas films
Canadian direct-to-video films
2001 films
2000s English-language films
2000s American films
2000s Canadian films
Animated films set on islands


Brigadier Andrew Henry Parker Bowles  (born 27 December 1939) is a retired British Army officer. He is the former husband of Queen Camilla, consort of King Charles III.

Early life and family
Andrew Parker Bowles was born on 27 December 1939 as the eldest of four children to Derek Henry Parker Bowles, who was a great-grandson of Thomas Parker, 6th Earl of Macclesfield, and his wife Ann Parker Bowles, daughter of multimillionaire racehorse owner Sir Humphrey de Trafford, 4th Baronet. His christening announcement in The Times listed his godparents as Sir Humphrey de Trafford, William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington who married Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy (the younger sister of U.S. President John F. Kennedy), Miss Mary de Trafford and Miss Swinnerton-Dyer. His parents were friends of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. Some sources have stated that his godmother was also the Queen Mother. Parker Bowles was a page at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. He is an uncle of Derek Paravicini, a blind autistic savant.

As an amateur jockey, Parker Bowles rode in the 1969 Grand National on his horse, The Fossa, finishing the race in 11th place. He played on Prince Charles' polo team during their younger days.

Military career

Parker Bowles was educated at the Benedictine Ampleforth College and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He was commissioned into the Royal Horse Guards (The Blues) in 1960. He was aide-de-camp to the Governor-General of New Zealand, Sir Bernard Fergusson, in about 1965. He was then Adjutant Royal Horse Guards (The Blues) 1967–1969. The regiment became The Blues and Royals (Royal Horse Guards and 1st Dragoons) 1969, and he was the Adjutant of The Blues and Royals 1969–1970. Parker Bowles was promoted to major on 31 December 1971.

He was squadron leader of "B" squadron in 1972 on Operation Motorman in Ulster. Later he was Senior Military Liaison Officer to Lord Soames, when Soames was Governor of Southern Rhodesia during its transition to the majority rule state of Zimbabwe in 1979–1980. He was staff qualified (sq), and became a lieutenant colonel 30 June 1980. In 1980 he was awarded the Queen's Commendation for Bravery in Zimbabwe.

In 1981–1983, he was Commanding Officer of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, and was commanding during the Hyde Park and Regent's Park bombings, when men and horses from his regiment were killed and injured by a terrorist bomb. He was one of the first to the scene, arriving on foot after hearing the bomb blast, and his orders led to the saving of later famous horse Sefton.

From 1987 to 1990, he was colonel Commanding the Household Cavalry and Silver Stick in Waiting to Queen Elizabeth II. On 30 June 1990 he was promoted to brigadier, and was director of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps 1991–1994. He retired in 1994.

Parker Bowles held the following ranks:
 23 January 1962, lieutenant
 23 July 1966, captain
 31 December 1971, major
 1 December 1980, seniority backdated to 30 June 1980, lieutenant colonel
 30 June 1987, colonel
 31 December 1990, seniority backdated to 30 June 1990, brigadier
 27 December 1994, retired

Relationships and children

His godchildren include the circus trapeze artist Lady Emma Herbert, who was a bridesmaid at his first marriage on 4 July 1973, and Zara Tindall, daughter of Princess Anne.

Princess Anne
Parker Bowles dated Princess Anne for a few years, beginning in June 1970. Parker Bowles's father, Derek, was a friend to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. According to biographer Sally Bedell Smith, the relationship could not have been "very serious between Anne and Andrew because Andrew was Catholic," therefore any potential marriage was unlikely. The relationship ended sometime prior to Parker Bowles's engagement to Camilla Shand. Parker Bowles and Princess Anne remain friends. Their relationship was depicted in the third season of The Crown.

Camilla Shand (1973–1995)
In 1973, after an intermittent relationship, Parker Bowles married Camilla Shand in a Roman Catholic ceremony. Shand was a former girlfriend of the then-Prince of Wales. After marriage, the couple lived at Bolehyde Manor and, later, Middlewick House in Corsham, Wiltshire and had two children, Tom and Laura. Laura attended St Mary's School, Shaftesbury, a Catholic girls' school in Dorset, while Tom attended Eton College. Parker Bowles had numerous extramarital affairs throughout his marriage to Camilla, including with several of Camilla's friends. They divorced in 1995.

Rosemary Pitman (1996–2010)
Parker Bowles married his longtime companion Rosemary Alice Pitman (née Dickinson; 17 June 1940 – 10 January 2010) in 1996, a year after his divorce from Camilla. She was previously married to Lt Col John Hugh Pitman, with whom she had three sons. The couple attended the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, which took place on 9 April 2005. Rosemary died from complications due to cancer in 2010. Princess Anne was present at her funeral service at St Aldhelm's Roman Catholic Church, Malmesbury. Camilla attended her memorial service at the Guards Chapel in March 2010.

In the media
In 2003, Parker Bowles posed for the painting The Brigadier by Lucian Freud. In 2015 the work sold for $34.89 million at Christie's. He was portrayed by Simon Wilson in Whatever Love Means (2005) and by Andrew Buchan in The Crown (2019).

Honours
 He was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Royal Veterinary College in 2003.

References

1939 births
Living people
Military personnel from Wiltshire
Blues and Royals officers
Royal Horse Guards officers
English Roman Catholics
English polo players
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
People educated at Ampleforth College
Graduates of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
British military personnel of The Troubles (Northern Ireland)
Andrew
De Trafford family
Sportspeople from Yorkshire
Recipients of the Queen's Commendation for Bravery
Military personnel from Surrey
British Army brigadiers

Andrew Parker Bowles


was a Sengoku period Japanese castle located in what is now part of the town of  Koori, northern Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. The site has been protected by the Japanese government as a National Historic Site since 1990.

Background
Kōri-Nishiyama Castle is located on top of Mount Takadate, a 100-meter hill east of the center of the modern town of Koori where the geography forms a bottleneck connecting the Fukushima Basin with central Mutsu Province. In the modern period, the Tōhoku Shinkansen and Tōhoku Expressway follow the path of the ancient Ōshū Kaidō, passing just beneath the site of Kōri-Nishiyama Castle to exit Fukushima Prefecture.

History
During the late Heian period, northern Japan was controlled by the Northern Fujiwara clan based at Hiraizumi. After the start of the Kamakura shogunate, Minamoto no Yoritomo led an army and defeated the Northern Fujiwara at the Battle of Koromo River in 1189. Afterwards, their territory was divided amongst Yoritomo's generals as spoils of war, and the Isa clan received what is now part of northern Fukushima Prefecture, A branch of the Isa clan relocated to this area, building Yanagawa Castle on the banks of the Abukuma River, and renamed themselves the Date clan. Following the fall of the Kamakura Shogunate in 1333, the Date pledged fealty to the Southern Court of Emperor Go-Daigo and accompanied Kitabatake Akiie on two expeditions to Kyoto; however, seeing the weakness of the Southern Court, the Date changed their allegiance nominally to the Muromachi shogunate, but in reality acted independently of outside control and expanded their territory to the west into the Yonezawa Basin and north into what is now southern Miyagi. In 1532, Date Tanemune relocated his seat from Yanagawa Castle to Kōri-Nishiyama Castle.

Tanemune's son, Date Harumune revolted against his father in 1542, protesting what he felt was a reckless policy of expansion and antagonizing the Date clan's powerful neighbors. Harumune seized Tanemune at Kōri-Nishiyama Castle, but he was rescued by his henchmen, and a civil war erupted in the Date territories. Harumune eventually prevailed, and moved the seat of the Date from Kōri-Nishiyama Castle to Yonezawa Castle in 1548, keeping Kōri-Nishiyama Castle to control the Fukushima Basin.

Harumune's son was the famous Date Masamune, who relocated from Yonezawa to Kurokawa Castle in Aizu. However, in 1591, Masamune submitted to Toyotomi Hideyoshi and was ordered to relocate his territories further north to Iwadeyama Castle. Kōri-Nishiyama Castle was abandoned at that time.

Design of Kōri-Nishiyama Castle
Kōri-Nishiyama Castle was typical of Sengoku period mountain forts in that it consisted of several enclosures spread across a long and narrow ridge, utilising the natural terrain (the steep cliff and nearby cliff and nearby Ubugasawa River), as part of its defences. The castle extends over 600 meters of mountain ridges and consists of five enclosures protected by dry moats. The inner bailey  is located in the center, and is roughly 100 meters long, and was protected by a simple clay walls. The main gate was to the west, where some remnants of clay and stone walls remain. The western enclosures are at a higher level, with the highest enclosure measuring 100 by 60 meters, separated into two sections. This may have been used as the inner bailey towards the end of the castle's history. At the southern end of this enclosure was a masugata-style gate.

At present, all of the structures of this castle are in ruins, and all that can be seen are some fragments of clay and stone walls and moats, and the layers of terraces on the mountaintop.

See also
List of Historic Sites of Japan (Fukushima)

Literature

References

External links
  Koori town  home page

Castles in Fukushima Prefecture
Mutsu Province
Ruined castles in Japan
Koori, Fukushima
1530s establishments in Japan
Historic Sites of Japan
Date clan

Kōri-Nishiyama Castle


Thomas Bernard Colcolough (October 8, 1870 – December 10, 1919) was a professional baseball player.  He was a right-handed pitcher over parts of four seasons (1893–1895, 1899) with the Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Giants.  For his career, he compiled a 14–11 record in 47 appearances, with a 5.67 earned run average and 65 strikeouts.

Colcolough was born and later died in Charleston, South Carolina at the age of 49.

See also
 List of Major League Baseball annual saves leaders

References

1870 births
1919 deaths
Major League Baseball pitchers
Pittsburgh Pirates players
New York Giants (NL) players
Charleston Sea Gulls players
Atlanta Firecrackers players
Wilkes-Barre Coal Barons players
Bridgeport Orators players
19th-century baseball players
Baseball players from Charleston, South Carolina

Tom Colcolough


The King's Daughters () is a 2000 French period drama film directed by Patricia Mazuy. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. It was adapted from the novel La maison d'Esther by Yves Dangerfield.

Plot
In March 1685, Louis XIV's final wife Madame de Maintenon wishes to set up a boarding school for young daughters of noble families that have fallen on hard times, the Maison royale de Saint-Louis, a school where girls receive a pious but liberal education. The first difficulty is that the students from the provinces all speak different regional languages and dialects and the first task is to teach them all to speak a standardised Parisian French.

After a few years of indifference, the school's first aims prove impossible to attain. An important crisis arises from a performance by the students of an extract from Iphigenie by Racine. This provokes too much passion among the actors and so Madame de Maintenon asks Racine to write her a play for her students that praises virtue – this proves to be Esther. The students put on the new play and, when the king and his court attend the production, Madame de Maintenon realises that this had made the nobles of the court view her protégées as targets for seduction and marriage. Marriage proposals mount up and one nobleman even manages to break into the school.

Madame de Maintenon decides to impose stricter rules and plunges into religion in an attempt to expiate her past. She asks an abbot to help her keep students on the right Christian moral path and keep them safe from the world. Instead of turning its students into an elite for the world outside, the school falls prey to realities, cuts itself off from reality and falls apart – the film ends with its final failure and closure.

Cast
 Isabelle Huppert as Madame de Maintenon
 Jean-Pierre Kalfon as Louis XIV
 Simon Reggiani as The Abbot
 Jean-François Balmer as Racine
 Anne Marev as Madame de Brinon
 Ingrid Heiderscheidt as Sylvine de la Maisonfort
 Nina Meurisse as Lucie de Fontenelle
 Morgane Moré as Anne de Grandcamp
 Bernard Waver as Gobelin
 Jérémie Renier as François de Réans
 Jeanne Le Bigot as Lucie (child)
 Mathilde Lechasles as Anne (child)
 Alain Hinard as First soldier

Soundtrack
The film's score was composed by Welsh composer and former member of the Velvet Underground, John Cale. The score was arranged by Randy Wolf, and released as a soundtrack album.

See also
 Isabelle Huppert on screen and stage

References

External links

2000 films
French historical drama films
2000s historical drama films
Films directed by Patricia Mazuy
Films scored by John Cale
Films set in the 1680s
Films set in the 1690s
Films based on French novels
Films set in boarding schools
2000 drama films
2000s French films

The King's Daughters


Bhakti movement (in Hinduism) is a religious movement. It was known as the ideas and engagement formed in the medieval era. It was based on love and devotion to religious concepts built around one or more gods and goddesses. Bhakti movement spoke against the caste system using the local languages so that the message reached to the people.It was an significant religious movement in medieval Hinduism.

Hinduism

Bhakti movement


An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island (also known as An American Tail 3: The Treasure of Manhattan Island) is a 1998 American animated adventure film produced by Universal Cartoon Studios and directed by Larry Latham. It is the third film in the An American Tail series, the first to be released direct-to-video, and the first in the series to use digital ink and paint.

While retaining Dom DeLuise throughout the film series, the film reunites the voice cast of Nehemiah Persoff and Erica Yohn from both An American Tail (1986) and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, Pat Musick from An American Tail with the return of her character Tony Toponi, and introduces Elaine Bilstad, René Auberjonois, David Carradine, John Kassir, Ron Perlman, Tony Jay and Richard Karron. Fievel and Tanya Mousekewitz's voices were performed by Thomas Dekker and Lacey Chabert, replacing the previous voice actors Phillip Glasser, Amy Green from the 1986 film, and Cathy Cavadini from both Fievel Goes West and the TV series Fievel's American Tails.

The film premiered in the United Kingdom on November 16, 1998, and was released in the United States and Canada on February 15, 2000. The film explores the themes of labor exploitation, worker's rights, xenophobia and the effects of European colonialism.

This was Erica Yohn and Elaine Bilstad's final film appearances.

Plot
In New York City, sometime after the events of the first film and before the second one, Fievel and Tony discover that an ancient treasure lies underneath Manhattan when snooping around an abandoned subway and stumbling upon the remains of a dead mouse clutching a treasure map, deciding they must find it with the help of an archaeologist Tony knows: Dr. Dithering.

The film focuses on the relationship between the over-exploited workers of a sweatshop (in this case, a cheese production line) and the factory's robber baron owners: Mr. Grasping, Mr. Toplofty and Mr. O'Bloat. The treasure under Manhattan turns out to be a group of Lenape mice living a long-distance beneath the surface (far below the sewers) that decided to hide when they saw how the first Europeans only brought war and disease with them and did not want to wait for the European mice to do the same to them.

The sachem, Chief Wulisso, decides to send his daughter Cholena, to the surface to see if they have "changed their ways." Upon their return, Scuttlebutt (one of the members of the expedition to find the treasure) reports to the villains unbeknownst to the rest of the members of the expedition, who then decide to use this to their advantage. They lie to all the workers of the sweatshop about Cholena (not by name), telling them that she is their enemy. The corrupt mouse police chief, McBrusque, and Scuttlebutt scavenge every nook and cranny until they find her. After the angry mouse mob try to capture Cholena and anyone else involved with her, Fievel and his friends decide to take Cholena back underground before being put in further harm's way, but the police find out and go after them.

Meanwhile, everyone finds out about Dr. Dithering's friendship with the Indian and take him to the butcher shop for his execution. Papa tells everyone about how madness like this is why they all left for America and should work together to become friends with those different from them as the fellow Americans they are. Tiger the orange tabby cat saves Dr. Dithering from the villains, who escape and order McBrusque and his men to find and kill the Lenape mice.

Upon returning Cholena to her home, they tell the chief what is happening. McBrusque, Scuttlebutt, and the other police officers show up to the village, but the Chief, the Native Americans, Fievel and his friends drive the villains away. The chief gives them a gunpowder bomb to collapse the tunnel connecting the Native Americans to the outside world. But before they can do so, they are ambushed by the enraged McBrusque and Scuttlebutt who attempt to get revenge on the Mousekewitz children and Tony once and for all, but the two crooks are overpowered and Fievel manages to set off the bomb. This floods the tunnel, together with McBrusque and Scuttlebutt as they fall into the chasm to their deaths. Tony and Tanya managed to reach higher ground, but Fievel is seemingly carried off by the current.

When the water recedes Tanya and Tony desperately search through the mud to find him, before giving up. But just then, Fievel breaks through the surface, and all three share a muddy group hug, thankful that everyone survived.

The movie ends with Fievel's papa forming a worker's union and the villains agreeing amongst themselves that they are forced to negotiate with "that riff-raff" to avoid a labor strike. Meanwhile, Tiger is enjoying his new job as the police chief. The last scene is Fievel seeing, through a foldable telescope, Cholena and her father disappearing into a hidden door at the foot of a statue, which pleases Fievel (as he wishes for the best for them).

Voice cast

 Thomas Dekker as Fievel Mousekewitz
 Lacey Chabert as Tanya Mousekewitz
 Nehemiah Persoff as Papa Mousekewitz
 Erica Yohn as Mama Mousekewitz
 Dom DeLuise as Tiger
 Pat Musick as Tony Toponi
 Elaine Bilstad as Cholena
 Leeza Miller as Cholena's singing voice
 René Auberjonois as Dr. Dithering
 David Carradine as Chief Wulisso
 Ron Perlman as Mr. Grasping
 Tony Jay as Mr. Toplofty
 Richard Karron as Mr. O'Bloat
 Sherman Howard as Police Chief McBrusque
 John Kassir as Scuttlebutt
 Dave Mallow as additional voices

The Treasure of Manhattan Island is the final film Bilstad contributed to as it would be released posthumously in the United States.

Production
Following a six year hiatus for the An American Tail series, Universal kicked off a $15 million marketing campaign to reignite interest in the franchise with re-releases of the first two films leading up to the release of An American Tail III with the fourth installment scheduled for the following June. The mandate for the series as dictated by then President of Universal Worldwide Home Entertainment, Louis Feola, was "...to create the same value and success for An American Tail as the studio did with the Land Before Time".

Animation
Japanese studio TMS-Kyokuichi Corporation was the overseas animation studio for the film.

Casting
New voices were handed out for Fievel and Tanya during production while some of the original characters retaining their original voices from the first film. Phillip Glasser was unable to recast as Fievel for this film due to voice changing by age, as Glasser was 19 at the time. Universal hired then-child actor Thomas Dekker as Fievel. Then-15-year-old Lacey Chabert was chosen as the voice for Tanya. The previous actress, Cathy Cavadini, could not participate in the role at the time due to being under the contract for Cartoon Network while casting for Blossom in The Powerpuff Girls. Pat Musick returned to reprise her role as Tony, as the character returns since An American Tail in 1986.

Universal hired actors from the previous works to voice the characters that were made exclusively for this film. René Auberjonois (Odo in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), David Carradine (Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu), Ron Perlman (Vincent in Beauty and the Beast), and John Kassir (the Crypt-Keeper from the Tales from the Crypt franchise) are cast as Dr. Dithering, Chief Wulisso, Mr. Grasping, and Scuttlebutt, respectively.

Elaine Bilstad, a Native American actress, was chosen to voice for Cholena. Bilstad was previously given limited roles as one-time characters in Walker, Texas Ranger, Baywatch Nights, and as Catherine in the TV movie The Broken Chain. She even played White Snow, the indigenous version of Snow White in Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child. This was Bilstad's final role before she died of a heart problem on January 30, 1999, releasing the film posthumously in the United States. Her character became absent in the next film.

Technical issues
Despite restoring the continuity from the first film as mandated, most of the original film's characters are written off from subsequent sequels due to casting issues or that by absences of the original actors, except returning Tony after being excluded from the Green River continuity without Musick's input in the early 1990s. Madeline Kahn did not return to reprise her role for Gussie Mausheimer nor returning her character in the films as she was busy casting for other films, such as A Bug's Life and Judy Berlin, before being diagnosed with cancer in late 1998. Bridget, Tony's soulmate from the first film, remains absent in the later sequels in question as her actress, Cathianne Blore, was since battling cancer in the mid 1990s, discarding the importance to the franchise's continuity. Her last work was Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness in 1994. Christopher Plummer did not return to reprise his role for Henri as he was busy casting for other films, such as The First Christmas and The Clown at Midnight. His character is only seen as a background cameo.

Songs
In addition to three original songs, archive music from the first two films are reused.

All tracks are written by Michael Tavera.

Release

As early as March 17, 1998, The Treasure of Manhattan Island was advertised on the VHS release of The Chipmunk Adventure. It was then advertised on the VHS reissues of An American Tail and its sequel Fievel Goes West on August 11 the same year. However, the film's North American release date remained undisclosed until late December 1999, receiving the VHS release on February 15, 2000. It was later released on DVD on January 20, 2004, with a sing-along version of "Anywhere In Your Dreams" as a bonus feature. It was later combined in a DVD set packaged with three other films on June 13, 2017.

It was first televised on Cartoon Network in 2001 and occasionally aired on Disney Channel and Toon Disney in the 2000s. It was last seen on television scheduling via Universal Kids in 2017. This was skipped on Freeform which instead aired The Mystery of the Night Monster in January 2019. Following the wake of the protest in 2020, this prequel is no longer televised due to regarding sequences involving police corruption, but is still available on DVD and digital.

Overseas
The film premiered in the United Kingdom in November 1998. It was also released on April 6, 2001 in Italy, January 2, 2003 in Spain, February 9, 2003 in Australia, April 3, 2003 in Russia, June 19, 2003 in France, November 4, 2003 in Germany and April 4, 2006 in Japan.

Reception
Robert Pardi of TV Guide gave the film 2 out of 5 stars and wrote: "Although the bright and bubbly animation lacks depth, these cute little vermin have just enough personality to make tykes unaware they're being spoonfed ethnic-harmony aphorisms". Susan King of the Los Angeles Times wrote that young children under 10-years-old might find it entertaining. Grace Montgomery of Common Sense Media felt that the politically sensitive elements depicted in the film are "out of place for An American Tail" and recommended that "your kids would be better off to stick with the original An American Tail and skip this one".

References

External links

1998 animated films
1998 direct-to-video films
1990s adventure films
Direct-to-video sequel films
Universal Animation Studios animated films
Animated films set in the 1880s
Animated films about mice
Direct-to-video interquel films
Direct-to-video prequel films
American children's animated films
Universal Pictures direct-to-video animated films
Animated films about Native Americans
Animated films about prejudice
Animated films set in Manhattan
Animated films about cats
Rail transport films
Films scored by Michael Tavera
1990s American animated films
An American Tail (franchise)
Universal Pictures direct-to-video films
1990s children's animated films
1990s English-language films
American adventure films
American direct-to-video films
American prequel films


Devin Titus (born 18 May 2001) is a South African professional footballer who plays as a forward for DStv Premiership side Stellenbosch FC and the South Africa national under-23 football team.

Club career

Stellenbosch FC

Born in Cape Town, South Africa, Titus' footballing career began at the age of six when he started playing for local amateur side Bishop Lavis, who at the time were coached by his father.

He later signed for professional side Stellenbosch FC where he initially joined the reserve team, who compete in the DStv Diski Challenge, and won the club's Diski Player of the Season award following the 2020-21 campaign. Mid-way through the same season, his form was recognised by head coach Steve Barker who handed him his senior debut in a 1-1 DStv Premiership draw against Black Leopards. The following season, Titus was named the reserve team's captain and he led the side to the league trophy, with his performances later seeing the reserves' No. 7 jersey temporarily retired by the players for the 2022-23 season in honour of his contributions. As a result of Stellenbosch's reserve league triumph, the club was also invited to take part in the 2022 Premier League Next Gen Cup in England where Titus scored two goals against Nottingham Forest in the semi-final before netting a first-half hat-trick in a 7–2 victory over Leicester City in the final.

In July 2023, he was rewarded with a first-team contract and permanently promoted to the senior side, where he went on to be an ever-present in the top-flight the following season, serving as the only player to feature in all 30 matches for the club in the domestic campaign. He also featured in four Nedbank Cup matches, scoring the opening goal in the 6–3 Round of 16 win over TS Galaxy, as Stellenbosch went on to reach the semi-final of the competition for the first time. The club ultimately failed to progress to the final but Titus was later nominated for the competition's Most Promising Player of the Tournament award.

International career

South Africa U-23

Titus has represented South Africa at U-23 level and received his first call-up by coach David Notoane in March 2023 for the third round of 2023 U-23 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers against Congo. He made his debut in a 1–1 home draw in the first leg but was ultimately unable to help his side qualify for the competition, which also served as the qualification route for the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Career statistics

Club

1 Includes Nedbank Cup matches.
2 Includes Telkom Knockout matches.
3 Includes CAF Champions League matches.
4 Includes MTN 8 matches.

Honours

Stellenbosch FC Reserves

 DStv Diski Challenge: 2021–22
 Premier League Next Gen Cup: 2022

References

2001 births
Living people
Soccer players from Cape Town
Men's association football forwards
Stellenbosch F.C. players
South African Premier Division players

Devin Titus


Chester William Harrison (1913 in Indiana – 1994) was an American author who wrote under the names C. William Harrison, Coe Williams and Will Hickok.  He wrote up to 1200 novels, non-fiction books and pulp and slick magazine stories.

Biography
Harrison worked as a portrait photographer and a builder of house trailers where he had his first fictional story published in 1936.  His first novel Boothill Trail was published in 1940.

His Collier's Weekly two part magazine story Petticoat Brigade was purchased by Audie Murphy and co-produced with Harry Joe Brown as the 1957 film The Guns of Fort Petticoat.  Harrison did a novelization of the screenplay and the original stories under the same title in the same year.

Under the name Will Hickok he wrote three western novels: Web of Gunsmoke (1955), The Restless Gun (1959) and Trail of the Gun (1960), the latter two tie-ins with the American television show The Restless Gun.

His non-fiction works include Conservation, the Challenge of Reclaiming our Plundered Land, Find a Career in Auto Mechanics, Here Is Your Career: The Building Trades and Here is Your Career, Auto Mechanic.

Notes

External links
Short story work
Books

American male novelists
20th-century American novelists
Western (genre) writers
Pulp fiction writers
1913 births
1994 deaths
American male short story writers
20th-century American short story writers
20th-century American male writers

Chester William Harrison


The Death Star is a fictional space station and superweapon featured in the Star Wars space-opera franchise. Constructed by the autocratic Galactic Empire, the Death Star is capable of annihilating entire planets into rubble, and serves to enforce the Empire's reign of terror. Appearing in the original 1977 film Star Wars, the Death Star serves as a central plot point and setting for the movie, and is destroyed in an assault by the Rebel Alliance in the climax of the film. A larger second Death Star is constructed in the events of the film Return of the Jedi featuring substantially improved capabilities compared to its predecessor. It is destroyed by the Rebel Alliance while under construction, however.

Since its first appearance, the Death Star has become a cultural icon and a widely recognized element of the Star Wars franchise. It inspired numerous similar superweapons in fiction as well as in other Star Wars works. The 2015 film The Force Awakens introduces Starkiller Base, a planet converted by the First Order into a Death Star-like weapon. While more powerful and technologically advanced than both Death Stars, it is also destroyed by the Resistance.

Origin and design
According to franchise creator George Lucas, his initial outline for the Star Wars saga did not feature the Death Star in the portion that would be adapted as the first film. When he set to creating the first act of this outline as a feature, he borrowed the Death Star concept from the third act.

Although details, such as the superlaser's location, shifted between different concept models during the production of Star Wars (1977), the notion of the Death Star being a large, spherical space station over  in diameter was consistent in all of them. George Lucas gave the original task of designing a "Death Star" to concept artist and spaceship modeler Colin Cantwell, who had collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. In Empire of Dreams, a documentary about the filming and production of Star Wars, Cantwell revealed that the Death Star was originally supposed to be a perfect sphere. The model was constructed in two separate pieces, however, and wasn't fitting together as planned. It was then decided that there could be a trench going around the equator of the space station. Lucas liked the idea, and the Death Star model was created by John Stears. The buzzing sound counting down to the Death Star firing its superlaser comes from the Flash Gordon serials. Portraying an incomplete yet powerful space station posed a problem for Industrial Light & Magic's modelmakers for Return of the Jedi. Only the front side of the  model was completed, and the image was flipped horizontally for the final film. Both Death Stars were depicted by a combination of complete and sectional models and matte paintings.

Special effects

The grid plan animation shown during the Rebel briefing before the Death Star attack in A New Hope was an actual computer-graphics simulation developed by Larry Cuba at the University of Illinois Chicago alongside computer graphics researcher Tom DeFanti. George Lucas had recruited Cuba for the project after becoming familiar with his and Gary Imhoff's work with CalArts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

After filming was complete, the original model, as well as one of the surface setpieces, were to be thrown out, but they were eventually salvaged.

The Death Star explosions featured in the Special Edition of A New Hope and in Return of the Jedi are rendered with a Praxis Effect, wherein a flat ring of matter erupts from the explosion.

Depiction
The original Death Star was introduced in the original Star Wars film, which later had elements of its backstory explored in the prequel films Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, the animated series The Clone Wars and Rebels, and the 2016 anthology film Rogue One. The second Death Star appears in Return of the Jedi , and a similar superweapon, Starkiller Base, appears in The Force Awakens. Both the original and second Death Star were moon-sized and designed for massive power-projection capabilities, capable of destroying an entire planet with a 6.2x1032 J/s power output blast from their superlasers.

Original Death Star
The original Death Star's completed form appears in the original Star Wars film, known as the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station, or Project Stardust in Rogue One; before learning the true name of the weapon, the Rebel Alliance referred to it as the "Planet Killer". Commanded by Governor Tarkin, it is the Galactic Empire's "ultimate weapon", a huge spherical battle station 160 kilometers in diameter capable of destroying a planet with one shot of its superlaser.

The film opens with Princess Leia transporting the station's schematics to the Rebel Alliance to aid them in destroying the Death Star. To mark the Death Star being fully operational, Tarkin orders the Death Star to destroy Leia's home world of Alderaan in an attempt to press her into giving him the location of the secret Rebel headquarters; she gives them the location of Dantooine, which housed a now-deserted Rebel base, but Tarkin has Alderaan destroyed anyway as a demonstration of the Empire's resolve. Later, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Obi-Wan Kenobi, C-3PO, and R2-D2 (who were intended to arrive at Alderaan on board the Millennium Falcon) are pulled aboard the station by a tractor beam, where they discover and manage to rescue Princess Leia. As they make their escape, Obi-Wan sacrifices himself whilst dueling Darth Vader, enabling the others to flee the station. Later, Luke returns as part of a fighter force to attack its only weak point: a ray-shielded particle exhaust vent leading straight from the surface directly into its reactor core, discovered previously from the stolen schematics. Luke is able to successfully launch his X-wing fighter's torpedoes into the vent, impacting the core and triggering a catastrophic explosion, which destroys the station before it can annihilate the Rebel base on Yavin 4.

The Death Star's schematics are visible in the scenes on Geonosis in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, evidently designed by Geonosians led by Archduke Poggle the Lesser, a member of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, and is shown early in construction at the end of Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. The Clone Wars Legacy story reel from the unfinished Crystal Crisis on Utapau episodes reveals that General Grievous went to Utapau prior to Revenge of the Sith in order to acquire an enormous kyber crystal to power the Death Star's superlaser.

As depicted in Rogue One and Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel (2016), the Death Star was worked on by a team of scientists sequestered on the rainswept world of Eadu, overseen by Orson Krennic, the Director of Advanced Weapons Research for the Imperial Military. Under Krennic's supervision, the project was beset by constant delays, and he forcibly recruited weapons designer Galen Erso (the father of Jyn Erso, the film's protagonist) to complete the design. The Death Star scientists sought to fuse kyber crystal shards into larger structures and used those crystals to amplify energy into a stable beam powerful enough to destroy an entire planet. In the Disney+ series, Andor, set after the novel but before the film, prisoners of the Imperial Prison Complex in Narkina 5, including Cassian Andor, who got sent to the prison during his time as Keef Girgo, worked on Imperial equipment during their shifts, which was revealed in the post-credits scene of the series' final episode, Rix Road, to be parts built for the superlaser.

The 2014 book Star Wars: Tarkin details the life of Grand Moff Tarkin, and prominently featured the Death Star. Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel tells the story of the development of the Death Star's superweapon by Galen Erso and Krennic's deception of him. It also reveals how Poggle worked with Krennic on the project but then turned on him. In the animated series Star Wars Rebels, the two-part episode "Ghosts of Geonosis" hints that the Geonosians were nearly wiped out to extinction out of the Empire's need for secrecy. Saw Gerrera, having been sent to Geonosis to investigate, deduces that the Empire possesses a superweapon and resolves to discover the Death Star as depicted in the two-part episode "In the Name of the Rebellion". Though it is a dead end, Saw learns that the weapon is powered by kyber crystals taken from the Jedha system.

Rogue One focuses on a band of Rebels stealing the Death Star plans just prior to the events of A New Hope. The Death Star is first used to destroy Jedha City, both as a response to a violent insurgency on the planet and as a display of the Death Star's operational status. Tarkin assumes control over the Death Star while Krennic investigates security breaches in the design project. It is subsequently revealed that Galen discreetly sabotaged the design by building a vulnerability into the reactor. After the Death Star plans are stolen from the Scarif vault, Tarkin fires the Death Star's superlaser on the base, killing Krennic, as well as Jyn Erso and her small band of rebels. Rogue One also reveals that the Death Star's superlaser is powered by multiple reactors, allowing it to vary its destructive power depending on the target; both the attack on Jedha City and the Scarif base used a single reactor.

According to Star Wars reference books, the population of the Death Star was 1.7 million military personnel, 400,000 maintenance droids, and 250,000 civilians, associated contractors and catering staff.
The Death Star was defended by thousands of turbolasers, ion cannons and laser cannons, plus a complement of seven to nine thousand TIE fighters, along with tens of thousands of support craft. It also had several massive docking bays, including dry docks capable of accommodating Star Destroyers.

A hologram of the original Death Star is briefly visible in a scene at the Resistance base in The Force Awakens and used as a means of comparison with one from the First Order's own superweapon, Starkiller Base.

Second Death Star

The 1983 film Return of the Jedi features the DS-2 Orbital Battle Station under construction as it orbits the forest moon Endor, which houses a shield generator protecting the station. The second Death Star is substantially more advanced and more powerful than its predecessor, and the critical weakness found in the first Death Star has been removed—the Rebel Alliance's only hope is to destroy it prior to its completion. Darth Sidious and Darth Vader send the Rebels false information that the station's weapons systems are not yet complete in order to lure the Alliance fleet into a trap, resulting in the decisive Battle of Endor. In fact, the station's superlaser is fully operational, and it begins firing on and destroying Rebel capital ships during the battle.

A ground assault team led by Han Solo with the help of the Endor-native Ewoks successfully manages to disable the shield generator, allowing Rebel pilots Wedge Antilles and Lando Calrissian to fly into the station (using Han's Millennium Falcon) and fire on its reactor, destroying the station in another catastrophic explosion.

An early draft of Return of the Jedi features two Death Stars at various stages of completion. According to the Star Wars Encyclopedia, the second Death Star had at its "north pole ... a heavily armored 100-story tower topped by the Emperor's private observation chamber." The size of the second Death Star has not remained consistent among the various writers for the Star Wars franchise, with some stating it shared the first Death Star's 160 kilometer radius and others claiming it was much more massive with a 900 kilometer radius. The most recent figure established in 2017 by Ryder Windham gives the second Death Star a radius of 200 kilometers.

The second Death Star is featured on the cover of the book Star Wars: Aftermath (2015), which also features many flashbacks to the destruction of the second Death Star, as well as the events directly after its destruction. One of the main characters in the story personally escaped the explosion of the Death Star. The destruction of the second Death Star was also shown in holograms in the book. The 2015 comic book Star Wars: Shattered Empire also explores the days following the destruction of the second Death Star from the perspective of Poe Dameron's parents, who were pilots during the event. The video game Star Wars: Uprising also takes place during the aftermath of the second Death Star's destruction, and features a hologram of its description on multiple occasions in and out of cutscenes.

Part of the wreckage of the second Death Star appears in The Rise of Skywalker (2019), on the ocean moon Kef Bir. Rey visits the wreckage to obtain the Emperor's wayfinder, a device that points the way to his hidden lair on Exegol.

Similar superweapons
The 2019 comic Star Wars #68 reveals that the Rebels considered creating their own version of a Death Star by luring Star Destroyers to a tectonically unstable planet and setting it off with proton detonators.

Starkiller Base
The Force Awakens features Starkiller Base, a Death Star-like superweapon built by the First Order, an autocratic regime considered to be the successor of the Empire. Significantly larger than both previous Death Stars, the superweapon was constructed out of an existing planet called Ilum instead of being assembled in deep space. The base draws its raw firepower by harnessing energy directly from a nearby star. Unlike its predecessors, Starkiller Base is capable of firing on and destroying multiple planets at once from extreme range—in the film, the First Order obliterates the five planets in the Hosnian Prime system, at that time the capital of the New Republic. Starkiller Base is protected by a defensive shield that blocks all objects traveling at slower-than-light speeds; Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Finn exploit a vulnerability by bypassing the shield at faster-than-light speeds, successfully infiltrating the base and sabotaging its shields. Subsequently, an X-wing assault led by Poe Dameron and Nien Nunb destroys the superweapon by damaging the base's thermal oscillator and fuel cells, resulting in a catastrophic release of energy from the planet's core. As Resistance forces flee, the planet implodes and forms a star.

The name Starkiller Base pays homage to the early drafts of the original Star Wars film, referring to Luke Skywalker's original surname. Coincidentally, the name "Starkiller" is an alias given to Galen Marek by Darth Vader in the 2008 game, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. During early concept development, artist Doug Chiang envisioned the superweapon's gun as set inside a volcano, which X-wings would have to enter in a maneuver similar to the trench run on the Death Star in the original film.

Sith Star Destroyers
In The Rise of Skywalker, the ninth installment in the series, the resurrected Darth Sidious is revealed to have constructed the Sith Eternal's fleet of Xyston-class Star Destroyers, the Final Order, over the Sith planet Exegol. Each warship is armed with an axial superlaser capable of destroying planets; Sidious uses one of the Star Destroyers to destroy the planet Kijimi as a show of force. At the end of the film, the Resistance launches an offensive against the Sith Eternal forces, including the Sith fleet. Aided by reinforcements from across the galaxy, the Resistance defeats the remaining Sith forces by destroying the onboard superlasers, which ignited the ships reactors and destroyed them one by one. The Resistance also destroyed the  Resurgent-class Star Destroyer Steadfast and the navigation signal that the fleet needed to exit the planet due to the unstable nature of the atmosphere.

Expanded Universe
Both Death Stars and similar superweapons appear throughout the non-canonical Star Wars Legends continuity.
National Public Radio's Star Wars adaptation (1981) portrays Leia (Ann Sachs) and Bail Organa's (Stephen Elliott) discovery of the Death Star's existence and how Leia obtained its schematics. The 1983 Star Wars arcade game and numerous LucasArts titles recreate the movies' attacks on the Death Stars.

Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy trilogy (1994) introduces the Maw Cluster of black holes that protect a laboratory where the Death Star prototype was built (consisting of the superstructure, power core, and superlaser). The first level of LucasArts' Dark Forces (1995) gives mercenary Kyle Katarn the role of stealing the plans that are subsequently given to Leia. Steve Perry's novel Shadows of the Empire (1996) describes a mission that leads to the Rebels learning of the second Death Star's existence, and that mission is playable in LucasArts' X-Wing Alliance space flight simulator (1999). The Death Star itself is a controllable weapon for the Empire in the Rebellion (1998) and Empire at War (2006) strategy game. In Battlefront II  (2005), the player participates in a mission to secure crystals used in the Death Star's superlaser. Another mission in the game tasks the player with acting as a stormtrooper or Darth Vader in an attempt to recover the plans and capture Leia. The first Death Star under construction acts as the final stage in the video game The Force Unleashed (2008).

The first Death Star's construction is the subject of Michael Reaves and Steve Perry's novel Death Star (2007), which depicts the many politics and hidden agendas behind the massive project, from its construction up until its final destruction.

The first Death Star is depicted in various sources of having 1,206,293 crews and troops, 2 officers, as well as 40,000 gunners, 25,984 stormtroopers and 180,216 TIE fighter pilots and support crew. Its hangars contain assault shuttles, blastboats, Strike cruisers, land vehicles, support ships, and 7,293 TIE fighters. It is also protected by 10,000 turbolaser batteries, 2,600 ion cannons, and at least 768 tractor beam projectors. Various sources state that the first Death Star has a diameter of between 140 and 160 kilometers. There is a broader range of figures for the second Death Star's diameter, ranging from 160 to 900 kilometers.

DS-X Prototype Battle Station
In the Legends works Death Star (2007), Dark Empire II, Jedi Search and Champions of the Force, an experimental Death Star prototype, DS-X (a durasteel frame surrounding a reactor core, superlaser, engines and a control room) was conceived by Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin as a test bed for the first Death Star. It was constructed by Bevel Lemelisk and his engineers at the Empire's secret Maw Installation. The prototype measured 120 kilometers in diameter. Its superlaser was only powerful enough to destroy a planet's core, rendering it an uninhabitable "dead planet". The targeting system on the prototype was never calibrated and the superlaser was inefficient, leaving the weapon's batteries drained. The prototype had no interior except a slave-linked control room, hyperdrive engines and other components; the station operated with skeleton-crew of 75 personnel.

Death Star III
In the Disney attraction Star Tours – The Adventures Continue, guests can travel inside an incomplete Death Star during one of the randomized ride sequences. In the original Star Tours, a Death Star III is seen and destroyed during the ride sequence by the New Republic. Leland Chee originally created the third Death Star to explain why a Death Star is present on the Star Tours ride when both of the stations in the movies were destroyed. The station being built near the Forest Moon of Endor like the second Death Star before. It is similar to an original concept for Return of the Jedi, where two Death Stars would have been built near Had Abbadon (then the Imperial capital world). The Habitation spheres, based on the Imperials' suspicious claims that they were designed strictly for peaceful purposes, were suggested by some fans to have been the origin for the Death Star III. This was later revealed to be the case in Part 2 of the StarWars.com Blog series The Imperial Warlords: Despoilers of an Empire. In the Expanded Universe game Star Wars: Tiny Death Star, a random HoloNet entry states that one of the residents of the Death Star is simply staying there until he can afford to stay at the third Death Star.

Other superweapons
A prototype version of the Death Star can be found in Kevin J. Anderson's novel Jedi Search (1994). It was kept at the Maw Installation, an Imperial research institute in a cluster of black holes, and later deployed by Tol Sivron after the Maw Installation was invaded by the New Republic. The prototype was ineffective, missing its target and instead destroying an Imperial garrison moon the sole time it was fired in combat. After this, the prototype was later destroyed when it was led into the black holes of the cluster.

In the original Marvel Star Wars comic series (1977–1986), a superweapon called "The Tarkin" is built. It is described as being similar to the Death Star but with more energy. Darth Vader commands it and Luke, Leia, Chewbacca, , and R2-D2 sabotage it with Lando's help. It is finally destroyed by an Imperial officer attempting to use an ionic weapon to both attack the escaping Rebels and assassinate Vader. Later in the series, a nihilistic group attempts to use a weapon to dislodge a planet from its orbit and cause others to do the same in a chain reaction, thereby destroying the entire universe.

In the Dark Empire comic series (1991–95), the reborn Emperor Palpatine's flagships Eclipse and Eclipse II Super Star Destroyers (Star Dreadnoughts) have a miniaturized version of the Death Star superlaser. The first Eclipse was under construction at the time of the Emperor's death at Endor; shortly thereafter, it was briefly captured by pirates, who quickly abandoned it as an obvious target for the Rebels. The vessel was retrieved by remnants of the Empire and completed, and later served as the flagship of the resurrected Palpatine. It was destroyed by a Force storm enhanced by Luke and Leia, who had been brought aboard by the Emperor in hopes that they could be converted to the dark side. The Eclipse II was mostly identical to its predecessor save for a handful of visual changes, and fulfilled the same purpose. It was later destroyed when an errant projectile from the destroyed Galaxy Gun, another superweapon developed under the returned Palpatine, fell onto the ship and caused a massive explosion that destroyed not only the ship and its accompanying fleet, but also the nearby Imperial citadel of Byss.

In Kevin J. Anderson's novel Darksaber (1995), Death Star designer Bevel Lemelisk is recruited by the Hutts to build a superlaser weapon. Due to their refusal to sufficiently fund and supply the project, the resultant 'superweapon' is quickly destroyed by a combination of the tumultuous Hoth asteroid field in which it was built and the efforts of the New Republic. Lemelisk is captured and incarcerated by the Republic, and is later executed for his hand in the design and construction of Imperial superweapons.

The novel Children of the Jedi (1995) involves the return of Eye of Palpatine, a "colossal, asteroid-shaped" super dreadnaught constructed at the behest of Emperor Palpatine during the second year of the Galactic Civil War. The Imperials lose control of the Eye when a Jedi uses the Force to hijack the main computer with their spirits.

Cultural influence

The Death Star placed ninth in a 2008 20th Century Fox poll of the most popular movie weapons.

It has been referred to outside of the Star Wars context in such examples as:

 AT&T Corporation's logo, designed by Saul Bass and introduced in 1982, is informally referred to as the "Death Star". Ars Technica referred to "the AT&T Death Star" in an article criticizing a company data policy. Competitor T-Mobile mocked AT&T's "Death Star" logo and "Empire-like reputation" in a press release.
 In Kevin Smith's first feature film, Clerks (1994), Randal Graves points out that many independent contractors would have been killed in the second Death Star's destruction. In the DVD audio commentary for Attack of the Clones, George Lucas says that the inclusion of the holographic Death Star in the film implies that the Geonosians were the contractors discussed by "Jay and Silent Bob".
 KTCK (SportsRadio 1310 The Ticket) in Dallas were the first to use the term "Death Star" to describe the new mammoth Cowboys Stadium, now AT&T Stadium, in Arlington, Texas. The term has since spread to local media and is generally accepted as a nickname for the stadium.
 The Death Star strategy was the name Enron gave to one of their fraudulent business practices for manipulating California's energy market.
 In the novels of the Bridge Trilogy, the San Francisco Police Department admonishes its officers to stop referring to their surveillance satellite as the "Death Star".
In the 1987 Star Wars parody film Spaceballs, the Spaceballs use a spacecraft called "Spaceball I", which can change shape into "Mega Maid", resembling a woman with a vacuum cleaner. A reference to the Death Star destroying Alderaan, the Mega Maid is used to drain Druidia's atmosphere of fresh air.
While mostly ground based, the Technodrome from the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon and 1988 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures comics is based on the Death Star.
 The Sonic the Hedgehog video game series features a parody of the Death Star known as the "Death Egg", a battle station created by Dr. Eggman that serves as a level in multiple games.
 Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign was nicknamed the "Death Star" by some of its members.
 Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis dubbed the nickname of the team's new Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nevada as the "Death Star".
 The Social Sciences and Humanities Building at the University of California, Davis is referred to by students as the "Death Star", due to its shiny metallic exterior and maze-like architecture.

Astronomy
In 1981, following the Voyager spacecraft's flight past Saturn, scientists noticed a resemblance between one of the planet's moons, Mimas, and the Death Star. Additionally, a few astronomers sometimes use the term "Death Star" to describe Nemesis, a hypothetical star postulated in 1984 to be responsible for gravitationally forcing comets and asteroids from the Oort cloud toward Earth.

Merchandise
Kenner and AMT created a playset and a model, respectively, of the first Death Star. In 2005 and 2008, Lego released models of Death Star II and Death Star I, respectively.
In 1979, Palitoy created a heavy card version of the Death Star as a playset for the vintage range of action figures in the UK, Australia and Canada. Both Death Stars are part of different Micro Machines three-packs. The Death Stars and locations in them are cards in Decipher, Inc.'s and Wizards of the Coast's Star Wars Customizable Card Game and Star Wars Trading Card Game, respectively. Hasbro released a Death Star model that transforms into a Darth Vader mech. Estes Industries released a flying model rocket version.

A Death Star trinket box was also released by Royal Selangor in 2015, in conjunction with the December screening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens that year, and in 2016, Plox released the official levitating Death Star Speaker in anticipation of that year's screening of Rogue One.

Political campaigns
In 2012–13, a proposal on the White House's website urging the United States government to build a real Death Star as an economic stimulus and job creation measure gained more than 30,000 signatures, enough to qualify for an official response. The official (tongue-in-cheek) response was released in January 2013: the cost of building a real Death Star has been estimated in 2012 by a Centives economics blog of Lehigh University to $850 quadrillion, or about 13,000 times the gross domestic product on Earth, as well as at current rates of steel production, the Death Star would not be ready for more than 833,000 years. The White House response also stated that "the Administration does not support blowing up planets," and questioned funding a weapon "with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship" as reasons for denying the petition.

The Luxembourgish magician Christian Lavey (born as Christian Kies) submitted a petition for the construction of a Death Star to the Luxemburgish parliament. In an interview with a local radio station, however Lavey admitted that this petition was just a joke and some kind of protest against the space plans of the government.

References
Footnotes

Citations

External links

NASA Engineer Says It Would Be Easier To Build A Death Star On Asteroid

Fictional space stations
Fiction about megastructures
Star Wars spacecraft
Star Wars weapons
Weapons of mass destruction in fiction
Star Wars locations
Fictional energy weapons
Fictional doomsday devices
Fictional elements introduced in 1977

Death Star


The West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) is a type of exam in West Africa. It is made by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC). It is only given to students who live in the five English-speaking West African countries: Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, The Gambia and Liberia

The exams
There are two different types of the exam:

The WASSCE (November/December): students from government and private schools are able to take this exam. Uniforms are not needed, but other rules must be obeyed by the students. This exam is only taken in the fall season(November/December), and the grades are available by December. Its old name is the G.C.E. (General Certificate Examinations).

The WASSCE (May/June): This exam is ideally made for students who go to government schools. Students from private schools, that are well known in the country, can only sit for this exam in any government schools. They must also wear a type of uniforms as the teachers want them to wear. This exam is only taken in the spring season, and the grades are usually  available on or before August of the same year. Its old name is the S.S.C.E. (Senior School Certificate Examinations).

The grades
The grades below are given on the WASSCE certificates for the students who finished their exams. They also depend on how well the students did in their exams.

Qualifications

WASSCE


A gripe is a simple form of clamp used in building a clinker boat, for temporarily holding the strake which is being fitted onto the one to which it is to be attached. The strake is relatively thin and wide, so the tool must have a long reach and requires only a small movement. This is achieved by taking two pieces of dense timber, typically oak, each of a length a little more than twice the widest width of the strake. A coach bolt  is fitted through the middle and adjusted so that the gripe will fit onto the land (the joint between the adjacent strakes) while admitting the point of a wedge between the free ends of the two parts of the gripe. The wedge is then tapped in so that the gripe grips the land, using the bolt as a fulcrum.

The name is pronounced with the "i" as a long diphthong and is a form of the word grip.

Woodworking hand tools
Shipbuilding

Gripe (tool)


The Hiding Place is an autobiographical book written by Corrie ten Boom with John and Elizabeth Sherrill and published in 1971.

The idea for this book began when the Sherrills were doing research for another book of theirs called God's Smuggler. At the time, Ten Boom was already in her mid-70s when the Sherrills first heard about her. Being  one of van der Bijl's favorite traveling companions, ten Boom is referenced in a bunch of his recollections. In the preface to the book, the Sherrills recount:

...his [Brother Andrew's] fascinating stories about her in Vietnam, where she had earned that most honorable title "Double-old Grandmother" - and in a dozen other Communist countries - came to mind so often that we finally had to hold up her hands to stop his flow of reminiscence. "We could never fit her into the book," we said. "She sounds like a book in herself." It's the sort of thing you say, not meaning anything.

The book was later made into a film of the same name, along with a comic book adaptation by Spire Christian Comics.

The title refers to both the physical hiding place, where the ten Boom family hid Jews from the Nazis, and also to the Scriptural message found in Psalm 119:114: "Thou art my hiding place and my shield...."

Plot
The book begins with the 'Ten Boom family' celebrating the 100th anniversary of the family business; they sell and repair watches under the family's elderly father, Casper ten Boom. The business takes up the ground floor of the family home, known as the Béjé. Casper lives with his two unmarried daughters; Corrie, the narrator and a watchmaker herself, and Betsie, who takes care of the house. It seems as if everyone in the Dutch town of Haarlem has shown up to the party, including Corrie's sister Nollie, her brother Willem, and her nephews Peter and Kik. Willem, a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, brings a Jewish man, who has just escaped from Germany. The man's beard has been burned off by some thugs, a grim reminder of what was happening just to the east of the Netherlands.

In the next few chapters, Corrie talks about her childhood, her infirm but gladhearted mother, and the three aunts who once used to live in the Béjé. Additionally, she talks about the only man she ever loved, a young man named Karel, who ultimately married a woman from a rich family.

Eventually, both Nollie and Willem marry. And after the deaths of Corrie's mother and aunts, Casper, Corrie and Betsie, settle down into a pleasant domestic life. Later, in 1940, the Nazis invade the Netherlands.

Having strong morals based in Christian beliefs, the family felt obligated to help the Jews in every way possible. The Béjé soon became the center of a major anti-Nazi operation. Corrie, who had grown to think of herself as a middle-aged spinster, becomes entangled in black market operations, uses stolen ration cards, and eventually hides Jews in her own home.

Corrie suffers a moral crisis over the lying, theft, forgery and bribery that are necessary to keep the Jews that her family is hiding. Moreover, it is unlikely that her family would get away with helping Jews for long, as they had nowhere to hide them. The Dutch underground arranges for a secret room to be built in the Béjé so that the Jews would have a place to hide during an inevitable raid.

It is a constant struggle for Corrie to keep the Jews safe; she sacrifices her own safety and part of her own personal room to give constant safety to the Jews. Rolf, a police officer friend, trains her to be able to think clearly anytime when the Nazis invade her home and start to question her.

When a man asks Corrie to help his wife who had been arrested, Corrie agrees, but with reservation. As it turns out, the man was a spy and the watch shop is raided. The entire family is arrested, along with the shop employees, but the Jews managed to stay hidden in the secret room.

Casper is now in his mid-80s and a Nazi official offers to let him go if he agrees to cause no more trouble. Casper does not agree and states that if he is set free, he will return home and help the first person who asks him for it. For this, Casper is shipped off to a prison. It is later learned that he had died ten days later.

Meanwhile, Corrie was sent to Scheveningen, a Dutch prison used by the Nazis for political prisoners, nicknamed '"Oranjehotel"', a hotel for people loyal to the House of Orange. She later learns that her sister is being held in another cell and that, aside from her father, all of her other family members and friends have been released. A coded letter from Nollie reveals that the hidden Jews are safe. At Scheveningen, Corrie befriends a depressed Nazi officer, who arranges a brief meeting with her family under the pretense of reading Casper's will. Corrie is horrified to see how ill Willem is, as he contracted jaundice in prison and would later die from it in 1946. Corrie also learns that her nephew, Kik, was captured while he worked for the Dutch underground. He is later killed, but the family does not learn that until 1953.

After four months at Scheveningen, Corrie and Betsie are transferred to Vught, a concentration camp for political prisoners in the Netherlands. Corrie is assigned to a factory that makes radios for aircraft. The work is not hard, and the prisoner-foreman, Mr. Moorman, is kind. Betsie, whose health is starting to fail, is sent to work sewing prison uniforms.

When a counteroffensive against the Nazis seems imminent, the prisoners are shipped by train to Germany, where they are imprisoned at Ravensbrück, a notorious women's concentration camp. The conditions there are hellish; both Corrie and Betsie are forced to perform backbreaking manual labour. There, Betsie's health completely fails. Throughout the ordeal, Corrie is amazed at her sister's faith. In every camp, the sisters use a hidden Bible to teach their fellow prisoners about Jesus.

In Ravensbrück, where there is only hatred and misery, Corrie finds it hard to look to Heaven. Betsie, however, shows a universal love for everyone: not only the prisoners but also the Nazis. Instead of feeling anger, Betsie pities the Germans and is sorrowful that they were so blinded by hatred. She yearns to show them the love of Christ, but dies before the war was over. Corrie is later released because of a clerical error, but she is forced to stay in a hospital barracks while she recovers from edema. Corrie arrives back in the Netherlands by January 1945.

After armistice, Corrie works with persecuted victims as well as Nazis themselves who were scarred by the war.

References

Sources

1971 non-fiction books
Biographies adapted into films
Culture of the Netherlands
Collaborative non-fiction books
Personal accounts of the Holocaust
World War II memoirs

The Hiding Place (biography)