The Oxford University Student Union is the official students' union of the University of Oxford. It is better known in Oxford under the branding Oxford SU or by its previous name of OUSU. It exists to represent Oxford University students in the university's decision-making, to act as the voice for students in the national higher education policy debate, and to provide direct services to the student body. The president for the 2023–24 academic year is Danial Hussain (Lady Margaret Hall).

History
In 1961, the University of Oxford Proctors banned the student magazine Isis from publishing reviews of lectures. Students resisted, and legally incorporated the Oxford University Student Representative Council (OUSRC) for the first time. They then agitated for formal university recognition of the OUSRC, and petitioned the United Kingdom's Privy Council, asking the government to amend the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act 1859.  Rather than risk having its hand forced by legislation, the university relented, and formally recognised the OUSRC in 1970.

The OUSRC adopted its contemporary constitution in 1974, changing its name to the Oxford University Student Union, or OUSU. OUSU rebranded itself as Oxford SU in 2017 to improve its image among students at Oxford.

Structure

Membership
Reflecting the collegiate nature of the University of Oxford itself, Oxford SU is both an association of Oxford's more than 21,000 individual students and a federation of the constituent organisations: Junior Common Rooms (JCRs), Middle Common Rooms (MCRs), Graduate Common Rooms (GCRs), and other equivalent organisations that represent undergraduate and graduate students at the university's forty-four colleges and permanent private halls and choose to allocate to the students'union.

Individual students can opt out of membership, although this right is rarely exercised. Individual Common Rooms can also disaffiliate, although few have chosen to do so since Oxford SU started being funded from a block grant from the university rather than through affiliation fees. Oriel College's JCR disaffiliated itself from 2001 to 2010, and again on a temporary basis between January and June 2014; a referendum to disaffiliate permanently failed in 2015. Trinity College's JCR disaffiliated in 2007, holding a referendum on affiliation each year, before reaffiliating in 2014. Christ Church's JCR disaffiliated itself from the Student Union in 2021, with Brasenose JCR voting to disaffiliate from both the SU and NUS in 2023.

Finances

OSSL has its own managing director and board of directors, and the corporation's profits are all remanded to Oxford SU. OSSL's primary activities are: Freshers' Fair, the three-day introduction in Oxford's Examination Schools to clubs and societies, held during Freshers' week; publishing, primarily of handbooks for and by students, but also of The Oxford Student newspaper and Oxide Radio, a student radio station.

Governance
Oxford SU is made up an executive committee, which includes six full-time salaried sabbatical officers, who generally serve in the year following completion of their Final Examinations, although this is not a requirement, and various part-time elected student positions. Also elected are Divisional Board Representatives who represent the students within their Division.

Oxford SU Council acts as the sovereign body of the Student Union, and has over 150 eligible voting members, specifically: every Oxford SU Executive Officer; every Divisional Board Representative; three representatives from each affiliated JCR; two or three representatives from each affiliated MCR/GCR; three votes representing each of the five Oxford SU Autonomous Liberation Campaigns and one vote representing each SU affiliated campaign.  If a JCR, MCR, or GCR has fewer than 100 members, it receives one fewer Council vote. The Chair of Council is elected by the Council itself in each academic term.

In 2021/22, a governance review was conducted by President Anvee Bhutani which changed all six sabbatical officer positions and notably expanded the VP Women position to VP Liberation and Equality.

Campaigns
The 8 student campaigns are independent student lead organisations that work within the SU, which aim to represent, promote the interests of and hold events for self-identifying demographics.

5 are liberation campaigns, which have voting rights in student council and represent marginalised groups.
Campaign for Racial Awareness and Equality (CRAE): BAME & POC Students
Class Act: Working Class, Low Income, First Generation, State Comprehensive, Care Leaver and Parentally Estranged Students.
Disabilities Campaign (DisCam): Disabled Students.
LGBTQ+ Campaign: LGBTQ+ Students.
Wom*Cam: Women and Non-Binary Students

The remaining 3 are sectional campaigns, which promote specific interests or represent specific groups.
International Students Campaign: For International Students
It Happens Here (IHH): Anti Sexual Violence.
Suspended Students Campaign (SusCam): For Suspended/Rusticated Students

Protests and occupations

Shortly before the formation of OUSU in 1974, agitation commenced within certain sections of the student body for a Central Students Union building by the Student Representative Council, forerunner of OUSU. The university feared that the existence of such facilities would be used for the promotion of student activism. In 1972, during the miners strike, students had offered their rooms to miners picketing Didcot Power Station and had supported staff who went on strike at St Anne's College.

On 5 November 1973, an open meeting called for direct action against the university on the issue of a Central Students Union building. Later that day students marched to the Examination Schools and commenced a sit in, which lasted seven days. The University Registrar sent an open letter to all Junior Members threatening proceedings in the High Court and disciplinary action against those who could be identified. The occupation was ended by students themselves after the university obtained a writ of possession.

OUSU was recognised by the university in early January 1974, and a meeting was held on 29 January with the Vice-Chancellor and others. The Vice-Chancellor made it clear that the university was facing deep cuts and there was no money for a CSU project.

The university was expecting a second occupation and contingency plans were drawn up. The Bursar of St John's College wrote to the President of the Junior Common Room on 11 February noting, "all the talk that is going on at the present time about occupation", and stating that in future the Bursary would be kept locked. It was reported that over £9,000 worth of damage had been done to the Examination Schools during the occupation the previous November. On 7 February an Extraordinary OUSU Council Meeting was held. Sue Lukes, David Aaronovitch and others attempted to defeat a motion stating that it was the position of OUSU not to support any occupation of university premises in furtherance of the CSU campaign. When this motion was put, Lukes and Aaronovitch resigned, the former making a speech condemning Council.

The following day, an anonymous flyer was circulated, headed 'Remember 5 November', it gave warning to the university that "You have had three months and your time is up. Negotiations have failed, talking has failed, OUSU has failed. Come to the Open Meeting on Monday night in the Union Hall. And don't forget your sleeping bag!"

At 9.15 am on Wednesday 13 February approximately 50 or 60 students entered the Indian Institute building in Catte Street shouting that they were occupying it and demanding that the people working there should leave. The 22 staff inside stayed at their desks while the students milled around after first closing the doors. What happened next was the subject of bitter dispute. The university claimed that at around 11.30 am, about 50 volunteers, 'relatively elderly gentlemen' working in the Clarendon Building decided out of concern for their colleagues to enter the building.  A secretary let them in through a rear window, and once inside they confronted the intruders, who left in groups through the front door. The spokesman for the university insisted there was no violence, though it was conceded that there was some scrummaging and, 'ears may have been twisted'.

Those supporting the occupiers claimed that the university had set the Oxford University Police upon them who, goaded on by the Proctors, perpetrated acts of violence against the students, and encouraged the police, who were outside, to wade in also. The supporters of the occupiers asserted it was a 'pre-planned and ugly piece of violence'. It was alleged that at least one of the 'relatively elderly gentlemen' was in fact a serving police officer out of uniform, who was identified at a subsequent demonstration.

The university identified those it believed to have been the ringleaders and moved swiftly against them. Eighteen students were charged with an offence under the University Statutes and were required to attend at the Proctor's Office in cap and gown on 21 February under threat of being rusticated if they did not appear. The eighteen included Sue Lukes and another student from Somerville College, three from Magdalen and two each from Pembroke, St John's and Balliol. They were committed for trial at a Disciplinary Court on 11 March, during the Easter vacation. The chairman of the Court was Barry Nicholas, a Professor of Comparative Law. All who attended agreed that the trial was a travesty of justice. Mike Sullivan wrote an open letter describing how the Court decided every procedural point against the defendants; several were expelled for making objections, including Tariq Ali who was acting as a McKenzie friend to some of the defendants. Gordon Day, President of St John's Junior Common Room reported that even Andrew Turek, an ex-President of the university Monday Club and a virulent supporter of disciplinary action being taken against those who occupied University buildings, described the proceedings as a 'farce' and labelled the University Marshall, Mr Skinner, as 'a maniac who should not be allowed on University property'.

On the testimony, mainly, of a University Police Officer, Philip Berry, all of the defendants were convicted of being present at the occupation. It was admitted in Court that the Proctors were present together with other 'employees' of the university and an 'independent contractor' with two of his men. It was conceded that the 'occupation' amounted to nothing more than possession of the stairs and corridors and no violence was at any time offered to University staff. Nevertheless, the eighteen defendants were all sent down with the sentence suspended for one year. A subsequent appeal by thirteen of the defendants failed.

The CSU campaign continued with declining support through the latter half of the 1970s.

1980s: No Platform Referendum
In December 1985 OUSU adopted a No Platform policy following a controversial invitation to Patrick Harrington to speak at the Brasenose Debating Society. The Oxford University Conservative Association organised a petition of almost 700 signatures, more than the minimum requirement, to put the policy to a referendum of the student union's members. In late February 1986, the No Platform policy was overturned by a vote of 3,152 against with 2,246 in favour.

Protests and occupations 1990s to date

Several student groups participated in protests against the introduction of tuition fees from 1998 onwards, with Oxford students playing a major role in the nationwide Campaign for Free Education. Activities included non-payment campaigns, the occupation of Exam Schools in 1998 and of the Development Office in November 1999, several marches and a short-lived blockade of the University Offices. OUSU support for these protests was limited in 1998, but became more formal during the presidency of Anneliese Dodds (1999). Following another occupation of Exam Schools in January 2004, the university pursued disciplinary action against five OUSU sabbatical officers.

In 2001 and 2007, OUSU led protests against speakers at the Oxford Union. In 2001, Kirsty McNeill led a successful protest to stop the visit of Holocaust denier David Irving to the debating society. In 2007, the Oxford Union attracted condemnation again for inviting Irving and BNP leader Nick Griffin to speak at a "free speech forum". The then OUSU President, Martin McCluskey, led a campaign against the visits which attracted attention and support from national anti-fascist organisations, politicians and media commentators.

Oxford SU has also been mentioned in a Governmental enquiry of freedom of speech in universities due to one of its liberation campaigns disrupting a talk at St John's College organised by a student anti-abortion rights group on abortion in Ireland. A protest started shortly after one of the organisers introduced the speakers and involved chants such as "Pro-life, that's a lie, you don't care if women die". The police were called after one of the protesters got into a minor altercation with a security guard, although no arrests were made and the talk eventually started after 40 minutes.

Both the SU and the anti-abortion rights group later issued statements about the event with the SU stating that "We do not believe that the speakers invited should be hosted without challenge. We were not protesting Oxford Students for Life or their speakers' right to free speech" and also that "bodily autonomy is not up for debate". The anti-abortion rights group called this "a deliberate attempt to shut down discussion and dialogue through harassment and bullying" and later issued a second statement accusing the SU of breaking the law. One of the speakers later wrote an article for the Irish Times on her experiences of the event.

The SU voted on 10 February 2018 to support Oxford university staff's strike action against proposed changes to the University Superannuation Scheme (USS). Oxford University staff union members voted to join 60 other universities in the national strike action, coordinated by the University and College Union (UCU) after a breakdown in its negotiations with the university employers' representative, Universities UK (UUK), over UUK's proposals to remove the defined benefit element of the USS pension scheme.

Student groups affiliated with the SU have led repeated environmental protests in recent years at the University of Oxford. In 2017, the Paradise Papers showed large Oxford and Cambridge Universities' investments in fossil fuels, prompting student union action, including Cambridge Zero Carbon Society and the Oxford Climate Justice Campaign (an OUSU Environment & Ethics campaign) disrupting the annual Oxford-Cambridge boat race, and the OCJC occupation of St John's College, Oxford, to protest its investments in large multinational fossil fuel companies like BP and Shell. In 2021, the Climate League of Oxford and Cambridge was created to lobby colleges for transparency around climate info.

Controversies

Rashmi Samant
In 2021, Rashmi Samant, pursuing MSc in Energy Systems at Linacre College, became the first Indian president-elect of Oxford SU. Shortly, several Oxford societies condemned her social media posts for harboring racially insensitive, anti-Semitic, and transphobic sentiments and asked her to resign; Samant apologized and facing multiple successful no-confidence motions at individual colleges, obliged.

Afterwards, Abhijit Sarkar, a postdoctoral scholar of history of S. Asia at New College, posted a photo of Samant's parents framed with the slogan of Jai Shri Ram — that has been increasingly used in India, as a nationalistic war-cry to perpetrate communal violence — and claimed them to be celebrating the destruction of a mosque in India; Sarkar also claimed Samant's alumna institution in India to be a hotbed of Islamophobic far-right forces. Samant has since alleged that she was "cyber-lynched" into resigning, and that her critics were motivated by racism. The Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party demanded that the university probe into the anti-Hindu atmosphere; Indian Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar supported Samant and even promised to raise the issue with his British counterparts, if required.

The Oxford Hindu, Indian, and South Asian societies dismissed Samant's allegations as part of a "misleading narrative", that fed into the "fundamentally exclusionary and discriminatory" nature of Hindutva. An Indian-origin Hindu student went on to win the by-election.

List of former presidents

1971 – Emily Wallace (Somerville) was elected OUSRC president, the first president of Oxford students to be officially recognised by the university.
1982 – John Grogan became the first president to succeed in obtaining a seat for students at the university's governing council, in June 1983. He and two other students chosen by OUSU became observers for most of the council's agenda, and this practice was enshrined in the university's Statutes, Decrees, and Regulations.
1985-86 – Matthew Taylor, subsequently became a Liberal Party Member of Parliament and Member of the House of Lords.
1986-87 – Mark Stephens.
1993 – Akaash Maharaj became the first ever visible ethnic minority president and also the first president from overseas (Canada). He helped lead a successful national campaign that thwarted a 1994 government bill to restrict the ability of students' unions to comment on public policy issues and that contributed to the ultimate dismissal from Cabinet of the then Secretary of State for Education, John Patten.
2003 – Will Straw carried out protests against the government's introduction of tuition fees for students, despite his father Jack Straw being a senior member of the government of the day.
2010/11 – David Barclay
2011/12 – Martha Mackenzie
2013/14 – Tom Rutland
2014/15 – Louis Trup
2016 – Becky Howe
2017/18 – Kate Cole
2020 – Nikita Ma (Trinity) is the first East Asian president and the first president from Asia.
2020/21 – Rashmi Samant  Elected but then resigned.
2021 – Anvee Bhutani (Magdalen) led the first all women of colour SU sabbatical officer team.  Elected in a by-election following the resignation of the previous President.
2023 – Danial Hussain (LMH). The first foundation year student to be elected President.

Sabbatical Officers
Prior to 2023, the 6 Sabbatical Officers of the SU were: President, VP for Access and Academic Affairs, VP Charities and Community, VP Welfare and Equal Opportunities, VP Women and VP Graduates. A review instigated by President Anvee Bhutani (2021-22) changed this.

Following Bhutani's review, the VP Sabbatical roles were amended with the purpose of increasing inclusion, particularly of postgraduates. The amendment of VP for women sparked controversy, with the post-holder at the time, Ellie Greaves, critiquing the decision.  The following months would see Greaves resign from her position.

Amended roles were first elected in 2023.

References

External links
 Official website

1974 establishments in England
Student organizations established in 1974
Students' unions in England
SU
Politics of Oxford

Oxford University Student Union


Burhan Shahidi (; ; 3 October 1894 – 27 August 1989) was a Chinese Tatar politician who occupied several high-level positions in Xinjiang, in the governments of the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China.

Life

Early life
Burhan Shahidi was born in 1894 in the Russian Kazan Governorate to a Tatar family. His family was poor and he received little schooling in his early years. In 1912, after the Qing Dynasty was overthrown, he accompanied Tatar merchants to Dihua (now Ürümqi) in Xinjiang and worked as an apprentice and store-clerk.  In 1914, he was able to apply and receive Chinese citizenship from the Republic of China on account of his family's ancestry. He spoke Tatar, Uyghur, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Turkish and some Arabic and acted as the interpreter for Yang Zengxin, the leader of Xinjiang at the time. Jadid leader Ismail Gasprinski inspired Burhan Shahidi.

In 1929, he was sent to Weimar Germany by Xinjiang's next leader Jin Shuren and studied political-economy in Berlin. He returned to Xinjiang in 1933 and held a number of roles in the provincial government including manager of a land development company. He played a key role in the Xinjiang Nationalities Congress of 1934.  At this Congress, the ethnonym Uyghur was adopted to describe the majority Turkic Muslims in the oases of the Tarim Basin.

Republic of China

In 1937, he was dispatched by the next governor, Sheng Shicai, to the Soviet Union to serve as a consular official in the border district of Zaysan.  The following year, he was recalled by Sheng, branded a "trotskyite" and imprisoned until 1944.   While in prison, Burhan wrote a Uyghur-Chinese-Russian Dictionary and translated Sun Yat-sen's Three People's Principles into Uyghur.

He was released by Wu Zhongxin, the Chinese Nationalist official who replaced Sheng Shicai.  In 1946, Burhan became the vice-chairman of a provincial coalition government formed between the Chinese Nationalists and the revolutionaries who had founded the  Second East Turkestan Republic (Second ETR) in the "Three Districts".  He was considered a political moderate between the Nationalist Chinese and Second ETR members of the coalition.

In 1947, Burhan was transferred to Nanjing and became an official in the central government under Chiang Kai-shek.  Later that year, he led a Xinjiang performance troupe to Taiwan and toured Keelung, Taipei, Taichung, and Kaoshiung.  The tour came shortly after the February 28 Incident, which left many islanders hostile to mainlanders.  Burhan gave speeches that appealed to national unity.

In 1948, he returned to Xinjiang and became the president of the Xinjiang Academy, the precursor to the Xinjiang University.  He favored Chinese nationalism and disagreed with Turkic nationalist positions of Muhammad Amin Bughra.  In January 1949, he replaced Masud Sabri as the chairman of Xinjiang Provincial Government.  Sabri was anti-Soviet and opposed the Soviet-backed Ehmetjan Qasim (Akhmedjan Kasimov), who was the vice-chairman of the provincial government.  He helped stabilize the province's finances, which was ravaged by the spread of inflation throughout Nationalist China, by restoring the local currency. Anti Soviet sentiment was espoused by Isa Yusuf Alptekin while Pro Soviet sentiment was espoused by Burhan. The Soviets were angered by Isa.

In September of that year, he negotiated with Deng Liqun, the Chinese Communist representative sent by Mao Zedong to the province during the waning days of the Chinese Civil War.  On 26 September, Burhan joined Nationalist general Tao Zhiyue in announcing the surrender of the province to the People's Liberation Army, paving the way for the "peaceful liberation" of Xinjiang.  A week later, the People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded in Beijing.

People's Republic of China

On 17 December 1949, the Xinjiang Provincial People's Government was established and Burhan became the chairman.  Saifuddin Azizi was the deputy chairman.  He joined the Chinese Communist Party at the end of the year.  In 1952, he headed the preparatory committee to create the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).  In 1955, Azizi became the first chairman of the XUAR, and Burhan's role in the Xinjiang government lessened.

Burhan was a co-founder and the first chairman of the Islamic Association of China. In this capacity, he became an able diplomat in the PRC's outreach to the Islamic world.  In February 1956, he led a cultural and religious delegation on a tour of Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Syria and Lebanon.  As a direct result of his diplomatic work, Egypt under President Gamal Abdel Nasser in May 1956 became the first country in Middle East to recognize the PRC and sever ties with the Republic of China on Taiwan. It was the first country to recognize Beijing in six years and the recognition broke the diplomatic blockade imposed by the West.  In July, he returned to the region leading China's hajj mission to Saudi Arabia, where he met King Saud and visited King Hussein of Jordan, though neither country had diplomatic relations with the PRC.  On the same trip, he also met with President Nazim al-Kudsi of Syria and Amir Muhammad al-Badr of North Yemen.  Both countries switched their recognition to the PRC in 1956.

On 4 November 1956, Burhan and Hu Yaobang, Guo Moruo helped lead a massive public rally and parade in Beijing with over 400,000 people in Tiananmen Square to support Egypt and denounce Anglo-French imperialism in the Suez Crisis.  In the spring of 1959, he led a delegation to Iraq to support Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim who had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy the previous year and founded a pro-socialist republic.

Burhan supervised Chinese Muslim participation in the hajj until the Cultural Revolution, when he was accused of being a collaborator and a foreigner, and imprisoned for eight years.  Afterwards, he was rehabilitated and served as a vice-chairman of the second, third, fifth, sixth and seventh Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee.  His memoir, Fifty Years in Xinjiang was published in 1984.

In 1985, to support the return of the critically endangered Père David's deer to China, Burhan helped found and chair the China Milu Foundation, now known as the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation.

He died in 1989 and is buried in the foothills of the Tian Shan in Xinjiang.

See also
Chinese Tatars

References

Citations

Sources

External links

1894 births
1989 deaths
People from Tatarstan
People from Tetyushsky Uyezd
Volga Tatar people
Chinese Communist Party politicians
Vice Chairpersons of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
Political office-holders in Xinjiang
Jadids
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to China

Burhan Shahidi


The Final Season is a memoir by Tom Stanton published in 2001 by Thomas Dunne Books / St. Martin's Press.

It tells of Stanton's journey in attending every Detroit Tigers home game in the last year (1999) of Tiger Stadium. The book, Stanton's first major nonfiction work, won the Casey Award, given to the best baseball book of the year. In his Wall Street Journal review, Richard Tofel said, "Mr. Stanton is masterly in chronicling the ballpark community's decline as a replication of the decline of his family's old Detroit neighborhood and in identifying what he and his father have lost. And he is just as good at identifying what endures, principally families -- his own family and the family that still gathers around America's national game." The book also won Elysian Field Quarterly's Dave Moore Award.

References

2001 non-fiction books
Books by Tom Stanton
American memoirs

The Final Season (book)


Martín Cortés el Mestizo (; c. 1522 – c. 1595) was the first-born son of  Hernán Cortés and La Malinche (doña Marina), the conquistador's indigenous interpreter and concubine. He is considered to be one of the first mestizos of New Spain and is known as "El Mestizo." His exact date of birth is not precisely known. Until the birth of Martín's younger brother, don Martín Cortés Zúñiga, to his father and his aristocratic second wife, Martín, son of La Malinche, was Cortés's only male heir, despite his illegitimate birth. He was recognized by his father, and was legitimized in 1529 by a bull of Pope Clement VII (along with his siblings Catalina and Luis). Cortés's first marriage to Catalina Suárez was childless. Martín Cortés grew up in Spain but returned to the New World as a young man. He received a first level education and became Knight of the Order of Santiago, the highest status that could be achieved in Spain. During a time he became the page of Philip II of Spain. He accompanied Philip II to Flanders, to England and in the battle of San Quentin. In 1562, the king left all the towns and properties granted to his father. As heirs of Cortés, he and his brother were considered a threat to the vice-regal rule, and they were accused of participating in a plot to overthrow the viceroy. He was arrested and tortured and exiled to Spain, where they were exonerated in 1574. He lived there the rest of his life until his death.

Early life
Martín Cortés was born in 1522 in a former Aztec palace in "New Spain," now Mexico City, Mexico. His father, conquistador Hernán Cortés, and his mother, Malintzin, Cortés's guide, interpreter, and companion, named him Martín after the Roman god of war and Cortés's father. When Martin was only two years old his mother and father left him in the care of Juan Altamirano, Cortés's cousin, to go on an expedition to Honduras.
During the expedition Malinche was wed to another Spaniard by the name of Juan Jaramillo and never again lived with Martín. Hernán thought it was best for Martín to continue to live with Altamirano since that was the home that he had known. When Martín was 6 years old he moved with Cortés to Spain.

Growing up in Spain
In May 1528, Martín arrived in the harbor of Palos de la Frontera. Cortés was still relatively unknown and did not receive the welcome that one might expect someone of his historical importance to receive. In June 1528, Cortés took Martin on his journey to meet the emperor, Charles V. This proved to be a difficult task however. According to a letter written two years after this meeting, Cortés writes, "After I kissed your majesty's hands in Barcelona," which implies that Cortés met the king in Barcelona. In 1529, Hernán Cortés hired a lawyer to petition Pope Clement VII to legitimize Martín. The pope agreed since he himself had been illegitimate. Martín spent most of his adolescence at the royal court. His exact time spent there is debatable. However, according to letters at the royal court's archives from Martín's tutor, he was still living there in September 1530. After spending time studying at the royal court, Martín became a page under Philip II of Spain in 1537.

The other brother, Don Martín Cortés
In 1532, Hernán Cortés had another son, this time with his aristocratic second wife, Spanish aristocrat, Doña Juana de Zúñiga. He also named this son Martín after his father, but this son had the aristocratic title of don, a marker that anyone holding it kept from cradle to grave. In October of the same year his half-brother Don Martín was born, Martín fell ill. According to letters between Hernán Cortés and his cousin, Francisco de Núñez, he was suffering from lamparones, a disease that was called "the king's evil" because some thought that the king could cure it. This is a form of tuberculosis known as "scrofula"; however, not many people commonly suffer from it. In the spring of 1540, Cortés returned to Spain for the last time; this was the first time that Martín Cortés, son of Malinche, and Don Martín Cortés met. In 1541, Cortés was knighted into the Order of Santiago, and fought to gain Algiers for Charles V. In April 1547, Cortés fought in the Battle of Muhlberg in Germany.

Death of Hernán Cortés and adulthood in Spain
Hernán Cortés died in Castile, Spain on December 2, 1547. Although Martín Cortés, son of Malinche, was his first-born son, his primary heir was his legitimate son, Don Martín Cortés, who succeeded to the title of the Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca. Three years later, in 1550, when Martín was twenty-eight, he spent a year in Europe fighting in the armies of the Holy Roman Emperor. In 1557, Martín Cortés hired a lawyer to sue his brother for certain mines and slaves that were supposedly granted to him by his father 8 years before his death. This was a battle that went on for several years. However, during the process of this battle, Spain passed the New Laws that said that every slave in New Spain was free.

Return to Mexico
In September 1562, after a terrible voyage, Martín Cortés arrived into the port of San Francisco de Campeche. At the end of January 1562, Cortés and his two half brothers, the other Martín Cortés and Luis Cortés, sailed toward Vera Cruz, the city their father had founded a mere 44 years prior. By February, the Cortés brothers had reached their parents' former home and the birthplace of Martín Cortés, son of Malinche, Tenochtitlán. Being the heir of Hernán Cortés, Don Martín Cortés Zuñiga (the legitimate son, not the son of Malinche) was now the Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca.

In 1566, news arrived to Mexico that the leyes de encomienda or encomienda laws that changed the encomienda system that said at the death of the encomendero, all his properties would belong to the government and not the family of the deceased. In March 1566, Brothers Gil and Alonso de Ávila held a party at their home in Mexico. This was the spot where what would become known as the "marquis plot" supposedly occurred. The brothers had dressed as Mexican chieftains and paid homage to someone dressed as Hernán Cortés. To the Cortés brothers and their friends, this was simply a charade. However, the Spanish court in New Spain saw it as their attempt to overthrow them.

The Real Hacienda denounced the acts to the Viceroy as a direct attack upon King Philip II, and the conspirators were arrested. Amongst those arrested were Cortés's three sons. Several members of the conspiracy were executed. A few days later, the Viceroy Gastón de Peralta intervened directly and released Cortés's three sons.

On July 16, 1566, guards came to arrest Martín Cortés and bring him to the royal houses. He learned that his brothers, the Ávila brothers, and eighteen other friends had been taken prisoner too. They were being charged with plotting to anoint the marqués, his brother Don Martín, as the king of New Spain. He was brought before the judge on the day of his arrest, three days after having been questioned, he sent the judge a petition asking him to either charge him with something or let him go, but nothing happened. Six days later, he tried again, and once again, nothing happened. Finally, thirteen days later, he was charged with having known for ten or eleven months that his brother and other people in his close circle were charged with planning a rebellion and uprising against His Majesty. Alfonso de Ávila and his brother were both publicly beheaded, and in September 1566, the first Cortés brother, Luis, was sentenced to death by beheading.

However, before this could happen, a new viceroy, the Marqués de Falces, arrived in Vera Cruz on November 15, 1567. He allowed both of Martín's brothers to leave New Spain and for Luis to go serve time in a colony near Algeria while Martin was allowed to plead his case before the king. However, Martín, Malinche's son, stayed in Mexico.

On January 7, 1568, Martín was subjected to torture and was sentenced to indefinite exile in Spain. His torturer was reproached by King Philip II personally, sent back to Spain, and found dead in his room one day after having met with the king. After being exiled from his father's land and his birthplace, he joined the forces of Don Juan, who was Charles V's son, in the Rebellion of the Alpujarras sometime between 1569 and 1570. In 1574, the king offered condolences to the children of Hernán Cortés and they were all exonerated of any wrongdoing.

Legacy
Martín was married to Doña Bernaldina de Porras. They had two children: a daughter, Ana Cortés, and a son, Fernando Cortés. Details and dates of Martín's family life do not exist. It is also not entirely clear when Martín died. He died in Spain sometime before the turn of the seventeenth century; 1595 has been mentioned as a possible date.

See also
Hernán Cortés
Martín Cortés, 2nd Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca

References

16th-century Mexican people
Mestizo people
Nahua nobility
Knights of Santiago
1522 births
Year of death missing
16th-century indigenous people of the Americas

Martín Cortés (son of Malinche)


Padua is an unincorporated community in western Washington Township, Mercer County, Ohio, United States. It lies at the intersection of State Route 49 and St. Anthony Road, west of the city of Celina, the county seat of Mercer County. Its elevation is 899 feet (274 m), and it is located at  (40.5083795, -84.7838517).

History
Founded in 1848, Padua is one of the oldest communities in the region.  A post office was established in Padua on July 27, 1882, and operated for approximately twenty years: after it was discontinued on August 31, 1903, the community's mail was sent through the Fort Recovery post office. The leading building in Padua is St. Anthony's Catholic Church, which is located at the community's central intersection.  Other properties in the community include the St. Anthony Cemetery and a former school, which operated from 1940 to 1978.

Aside from the name "Padua," the community has also been known by the name of "St. Anthony." The United States Board on Geographic Names officially ruled in favor of the current name in 1961, although sign posts at either end of town refer to the town as "St. Anthony," and locals refer to the town as St. Anthony.

References

Unincorporated communities in Mercer County, Ohio
Unincorporated communities in Ohio

Padua, Ohio


Pseudoliparis belyaevi is a species of snailfish found in hadal zone of the Northwest Pacific Ocean, particularly the Japan Trench.

In the Izu-Ogasawara Trench, south of Japan, a team of researchers from the Minderoo-University of Western Australia Deep Sea Research Centre and the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology managed to film the deepest record of a fish, the unknown snailfish species of the genus Pseudoliparis, at a depth of 8,336m (27,447 ft). The fish was recorded by an autonomous deep-ocean lander that was dropped from the DSSV Pressure Drop.

A few days later, in the Japan Trench the team collected two fish in traps from 8,022m (26,319 ft) deep. This possibly breaks the depth record for a fish collected from the seafloor, previously held by Pseudoliparis swirei at a depth of 7,966m (26,135 ft).  These snailfish, Pseudoliparis belyaevi, may be the first fish to be collected from depths greater than 8,000m (26,247 ft) and have only ever been seen at a depth of 7,703m (25,272 ft) in 2008.  Another fish, Abyssobrotula galatheae, was trawled from the Puerto Rico Trench at a depth of 8,370m (27,460 ft). However, this specimen may have been caught using a non-closing net (a net that is open on the way up and down into the deep) and could have been retrieved at a shallower depth.

Size
This species reaches a length of .

Habitat
The species is a marine and bathymersal fish that lives at depths exceeding 6,000m deep. It is also harmless to humans.

References

Pseudoliparis
Fish described in 1993
Taxa named by Anatoly Andriyashev

Pseudoliparis belyaevi


Tarzan in Manhattan is a 1989 action adventure CBS television film.  Joe Lara portrays Tarzan, and Kim Crosby appears as Jane Porter.  Tony Curtis and Jan-Michael Vincent co-star.  The telefilm was produced by Max A. Keller, Micheline H. Keller and Gina Scheerer, written by Anna Sandor and William Gough (based on characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs), and directed by Michael Schultz.  It aired on April 15, 1989.

Plot
Tarzan leaves Africa and goes to present-day New York City to seek vengeance for the murder of his Ape mother Kala, and to rescue Cheeta who was taken by hunters working for B. B. Brightmore (Jan-Michael Vincent) and his Brightmore Foundation.  Soon Tarzan discovers this supposed philanthropic organization is conducting illegal tests on animal brains in an effort to transfer the thoughts and knowledge of one creature to another, and he sets out to rescue the animals and expose Brightmore.  He is aided by Jane Porter (a cab driver, played by Kim Crosby) and her father, Archimedes "Archie" Porter (Tony Curtis), a retired police officer, now the head of his own security agency.

With Brightmore's operations shut down, Jane joins her father's security agency, and both talk Tarzan into coming on board at minimum wage, but with all the bananas Cheeta can eat.

Cast
Joe Lara as Tarzan
Kim Crosby as Jane Porter, reluctant ally of Tarzan
Tony Curtis as Archimedes "Archie" Porter, Jane's father
Jan-Michael Vincent as B. B. Brightmore, villain who kidnaps animals for illicit research
Joe Seneca as Joseph, African storekeeper, mentor and friend to Tarzan
Sloan Fischer as Some Man

Production
Joe Lara also later starred in Tarzan: The Epic Adventures, an otherwise unrelated interpretation of the character.

Soundtrack
Warren Zevon's Leave My Monkey Alone plays on the soundtrack as Tarzan's plane flies over prominent New York landmarks. Also, Grace Jones's Pull Up to the Bumper plays on the soundtrack in Jane's taxicab.

References

External links

1989 films
1989 television films
1989 action films
1980s adventure films
1989 fantasy films
CBS network films
Films set in New York City
Tarzan films
Television shows based on American novels
Films directed by Michael Schultz
Films scored by Charles Fox

Tarzan in Manhattan


The Vail-Leavitt Music Hall  is a late nineteenth-century theater presently in use on the east end of Long island in Riverhead, New York. The building was built by David F. Vail,  with the help of his son George M. Vail in 1881. David was a local lumber dealer in the Riverhead and Eastern Suffolk County Long Island area.

The theater/music hall opened on October 11, 1881. The main theater and its balcony are a miniature opera house designed by J. W. Flack. The ground floor of the building housed commercial business storefronts, while the upstairs contained the opera house. The music hall began its operations with candle lighting, however the Vail's began operating a gas plant behind the theater. As a result, gas fixtures were placed all along the horseshoe balcony, and gaslight continued at the music hall until the advent of electricity to the area in July 1888, when the venue added electric lights.

In 1908, George M. Vail, now sole owner of Music Hall, sold the building to Simon Leavitt, a tailor and clothier, who leased out the upstairs as a theatrical venue. In 1914, the Music Hall was used by Thomas Edison as a demonstration site for kinetophone, an early attempt at the synchronization of sound and film.

As more modern theaters were built in the area, the Music Hall was converted for use over the years as a restaurant, a roller skating rink and even a betting parlor. However, the balcony and stage proscenium remained intact throughout the conversions. Eventually Theodore Leavitt (Simon's son) took over the clothier business and closed the upstairs, using it only as a storage area until his retirement in the 1970s.

After his death, Theodore Leavitt's widow Mollie Leavitt owned the music hall until its acquisition by the Council for the Vail-Leavitt Music Hall in 1982 through a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development arranged by the Town of Riverhead's Community Development officer, Robert Schemer.  The Council is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 charitable corporation which now oversees and operates the venue.

From the early eighties to the late nineties, old movies were shown on a small screen in its downstairs space, dubbed the "Mini-Cine".  These movie showings helped the theater raise monies for the music hall's restoration. The theater has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since August 25, 1983.

The music hall held its grand re-opening on June 28, 2003.  It continues to host numerous cultural, civic and charitable events throughout the year for the local community.

References

External links
Vail-Leavitt Music Hall (Official Website)
Vail-Leavitt Music Hall (Yahoo Yellow Pages and Maps)
Vail-Leavitt Music Hall (Theatermania.com)
Vail-Leavitt Music Hall (LandmarkHunter)
Riverhead Blues & Music Festival

Riverhead (town), New York
Theatres on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state)
Tourist attractions in Suffolk County, New York
Buildings and structures in Suffolk County, New York
National Register of Historic Places in Suffolk County, New York
1881 establishments in New York (state)

Vail-Leavitt Music Hall


Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) (formerly named Jabber) is a protocol for instant messaging. It is inspired by XML.

It is different to most protocols because it is an open standard. This means that anybody who has a domain name and an internet connection can run their own server. Most of the software and the clients are open source.

Other software such as Google Talk and the Gizmo5 use the XMPP protocol. It has been installed on thousands of servers across the internet. There are over five hundred million users who use software based on the protocol. Clients include Pidgin and iChat.

History

Jeremie Miller started the Jabber project in 1998. The first major public release was in May 2000. This early software was the basis of XMPP. It was a competitor to SIMPLE, which was based on the SIP protocol.

In August 2001, the Jabber Software Foundation (JSF) was started. The main role of the JSF was to manage the XML protocols for XMPP by documenting them. As well as this, the organisation was to co-ordinate the many companies that were using the XMPP technology.

In 2002, the Internet Engineering Task Force created a working group to formalize the protocol. The group was named the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol Working Group, or XMPP WG.

In 2007, Jabber Software Foundation (JSF) became XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF).

XMPP and HTTP

XMPP can use HTTP to send data to the servers. This is useful when there are strict firewalls in place, because data can be sent through the web instead of through a different port (port 5222 and 5223).

There are also open public servers which use standard ports (port 80 and 443) so that users can connect from behind most firewalls.

References

Other websites
 XMPP Standards Foundation
 Jabber.org (always maintained, the first XMPP server)

Internet communication
Computer protocols


1968 in the United States was marked by several major historical events. It is often considered to be one of the most turbulent and traumatic years of the 20th century in the United States.

The year began with relative peace until January 21 when the North Vietnamese Army PAVN attacked the Marine base at Khe Sanh Combat Base Quang Tri Province, Vietnam. This was the beginning of the Battle of Khe Sanh and the attack focused US command on Khe Sanh near the DMZ. The initial attack was followed by the North Vietnamese country-wide launch of the Tet Offensive on January 30, resulting in a South Vietnamese-US victory, eliminating the Viet Cong as an effective fighting force. The attack included a North Vietnamese assassination attempt on South Vietnam's president Nguyễn Văn Thiệu which failed. North Vietnam premised the attack on a South Vietnamese uprising against South Vietnam and US forces but this uprising did not occur as the South Vietnamese populace did not rally to the North. Also, on January 23 the North Korean government seized  and its crew of eighty-three in an attempt to divert attention from a failed January 21 assassination attempt on South Korean President Park Chung-hee known as the Blue House raid. In Greenland a B-52 bomber on a Cold War mission known as Operation Chrome Dome crashed with four nuclear bombs on board. One airman was killed. The cleanup operation was informally known as Operation Freezelove, a play on words on the movie Dr. Strangelove.

Four to six thousand citizens of the city of Huế, Vietnam, deemed political enemies, were either clubbed to death or buried alive by the North Vietnamese Army. This is known as the Massacre at Hue.

The year also saw the highest level of US troop commitment when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation that increased the maximum number of United States troops active on the ground to five hundred and forty-nine thousand and five hundred (549,500). This did not count US forces in the South China Sea, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, North Vietnam, and China with reserves in the Philippines, Okinawa, Japan, Korea, Guam, Hawaii, the United States, and worldwide totaling over three million (3,000,000). South Vietnam in the same year fielded a total force of eight hundred and twenty thousand troops (820,000). It was also the most expensive year of the war, with a cost of $77.4 billion. The support of the United States for South Vietnam was at its peak. Antiwar sentiment continued to grow as an increasing number of Americans questioned United States involvement in Vietnam, as the United States was drafting young men to fight for South Vietnam while South Vietnam did not have a draft for its own citizens; however, the war continued despite changing US public opinion.

North Vietnam benefited politically from the Tet Offensive when Walter Cronkite, a respected television newscaster, swayed many Americans and President Johnson, by giving his personal opinion on a national prime time editorial: "It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could." This may have marked a transition in journalism where a news reporter became a news and policy maker. President Johnson cited Walter Cronkite's changed opinion as a factor as well as Johnson's poor New Hampshire primary numbers in his decision to stop seeking reelection, stating to his advisers: "If I have lost Cronkite I have lost middle America."

On April 4, civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.  The United States erupted in violent riots, the most severe of which occurred in Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Baltimore. Extensive areas of these and many other cities were looted, burned, and destroyed by the rioters and more than 40 people were killed during the month of protest, which led to greater racial tensions between Americans. Despite this, a landmark piece of legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which was President John F. Kennedy's legacy, was passed by the expertise of President Johnson in April. This legislation was passed with bipartisan Congressional support and effectively prohibited housing discrimination based on race.

The 1968 United States presidential election became a referendum on the Vietnam War. A peace candidate had previously emerged in the Democratic Party when Senator Eugene McCarthy challenged the Vietnam War policies of President Johnson, who had refused to seek or accept another nomination for president and had endorsed his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, for the Democratic presidential nomination. Senator McCarthy's support came primarily from young people, most of whom were subject to the draft or were in deferred status. This divided the country by age as older citizens, a so-called silent majority, tended to support or not actively oppose government policies. This division of the populace encouraged Senator Robert F. Kennedy to seek the Democratic presidential nomination. Robert F. Kennedy who was a leading 1968 Democratic presidential candidate was assassinated after winning the California primary and defeating Senator Eugene McCarthy. The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in June led to uncertainty in the race for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. After Vice President Humphrey won the Democratic nomination at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, another wave of violent protests emerged, this time between the mostly young antiwar demonstrators and police. The uncertainty within the Democratic Party benefited Richard Nixon, a Republican and former vice president, as he successfully won the presidential race by appealing to the "Silent Majority" under the promise "Peace with Honor". Nixon, a staunch anti-communist, had gained the voters' trust. A particularly strong showing by segregationist George Wallace of the American Independent Party in 1968's presidential election highlighted the strong element of racial division that continued to persist across the country.

In popular culture, 2001: A Space Odyssey was the most profitable film of the year, earning $56.7 million, while Oliver! won the Academy Award for Best Picture. "Hey Jude" by the Beatles was the hottest single of 1968 in the U.S. according to Billboard, demonstrating the continued popularity of bands associated with the British Invasion that began in 1964.

Incumbents

Federal government
 President: Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Texas)
 Vice President: Hubert Humphrey (D-Minnesota)
 Chief Justice: Earl Warren (California)
 Speaker of the House of Representatives: John William McCormack (D-Massachusetts)
 Senate Majority Leader: Mike Mansfield (D-Montana)
 Congress: 90th

Events

January
 January 2 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average is 906.4.
 January 5 – The United States indicts Benjamin Spock, famous pediatrician and author, for conspiracy to violate the draft laws. Spock's indictment is set aside in 1969.
 January 6
N. E. Shumway performs the first adult cardiac transplant operation in the U.S.
Surveyor 7, the last of the series of uncrewed probes, is launched by the U.S. for soft-landing on the Moon.
 January 7 – First-class US postage is raised from 5 cents to 6 cents. US Prime rate is 6%.
 January 13 – Johnny Cash records At Folsom Prison live at Folsom State Prison, California.
 January 14 – The Green Bay Packers win Super Bowl II.
 January 17 – Lyndon B. Johnson calls for the non-conversion of the U.S. dollar.
 January 18 – The Soviet Union performs a nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk.
 January 19 – At a White House conference on crime, singer and actress Eartha Kitt denounces the Vietnam War to Lady Bird Johnson while attending a "ladies' lunch".
 January 21
Battle of Khe Sanh in Vietnam begins.
1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash: A U.S. B-52 Stratofortress crashes in Greenland carrying four nuclear bombs which do not explode.
 January 22 – Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In debuts on NBC. This launches the career of Goldie Hawn, who becomes an instant sensation.
 January 23 – North Korea seizes , claiming the ship invaded its territorial waters while spying.
 January 30 – The Viet Cong of North Vietnam launch the Tet Offensive against South Vietnam, the United States and their allies.
 January 31 – Viet Cong soldiers attack the Embassy of the United States, Saigon. Their leaders are killed by the two United States Military Police on duty at the gate. The 101st Airborne lands on the Embassy roof and eliminates the remaining leaderless soldiers.

February

 February 1
 Vietnam War: A Viet Cong officer named Nguyễn Văn Lém is executed by Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, a South Vietnamese National Police Chief. The event is photographed by Eddie Adams. The photo makes headlines around the world, eventually winning the 1969 Pulitzer Prize, and sways U.S. public opinion against the war.
 The Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central Railroad merge to form Penn Central, the largest ever corporate merger up to this date.
 February 8 – American civil rights movement: A civil rights protest staged at a white-only bowling alley in Orangeburg, South Carolina is broken up by highway patrolmen; three college students are killed.
 February 11 – Madison Square Garden in New York City opens.
 February 12 – Memphis sanitation strike: Provoked by the crushing to death of two black workers, over 1,000 black waste collectors in Memphis, Tennessee, begin a strike that lasts until April 16.
 February 13 – Civil rights disturbances occur at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
 February 16 – The first 9-1-1 call is made by Alabama Senator, Rankin Fite in Haleyville, Alabama.
 February 19
 The Florida Education Association (FEA) initiates a mass resignation of teachers to protest state funding of education. This is, in effect, the first statewide teachers' strike in the U.S.
 NET televises the very first episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.
 February 28 – The influential American news reporter Walter Cronkite shows his disdain for the Vietnam War effort during a broadcast, which influences President Johnson not to seek another term.
 February 29 – The Kerner Commission releases its final report on the causes of the 1967 race riots.

March

 March 11 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson mandates that all computers purchased by the federal government support ASCII character encoding.
 March 12 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson edges out antiwar candidate Eugene J. McCarthy in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, a vote which highlights the deep divisions in the country, as well as the party, over Vietnam.
 March 14 – Nerve gas leaks from the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground near Skull Valley, Utah.
 March 16
Vietnam War – My Lai massacre: American troops kill scores of civilians. The story will first become public in November 1969 and will help undermine public support for the U.S. efforts in Vietnam.
U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy enters the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.
 March 17 – A demonstration in London's Grosvenor Square against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War leads to violence; 91 people are injured and 200 demonstrators are arrested.
 March 18 – Gold standard: The Congress of the United States repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back U.S. currency.
 March 19–23 – Afrocentrism, Black power, Vietnam War: Students at Howard University in Washington, D.C. signal a new era of militant student activism on college campuses in the U.S. Students stage rallies, protests, and a 5-day sit-in. Students lay siege to the administration building, shut down the university in protest over its ROTC program and the Vietnam War, and demand a more Afrocentric curriculum.
 March 21 – Vietnam War:  In ongoing campus unrest, Howard University students protesting the Vietnam War, the ROTC program on campus, and the draft, confront Gen. Lewis Hershey, then head of the U.S. Selective Service System, and as he attempts to deliver an address, shouting cries of "America is the Black man's battleground!"
 March 26 – Joan Baez marries activist David Harris in New York.
 March 31 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces he will not seek re-election in the 1968 presidential election.

April
 April 2
 The film 2001: A Space Odyssey premieres in Washington, D.C.
 In a television special broadcast on NBC, white British singer Petula Clark touches black American singer Harry Belafonte affectionately on the arm.
 April 3
 Civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee.
 Planet of the Apes is released in theaters.
 April 4
 Martin Luther King Jr. is shot dead at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. In response, riots erupt in major American cities, lasting for several days afterward.
 Apollo Program: Apollo 6 is launched, the second and last uncrewed test flight of the Saturn V launch vehicle.
April 5 – Robert F. Kennedy gives a speech at the Cleveland City Club.
 April 6
 A shootout between Black Panthers and Oakland police results in several arrests and deaths, including 17-year-old Panther Bobby Hutton.
 A double explosion in downtown Richmond, Indiana kills 41 and injures 150.
 April 10 – The 40th Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by Bob Hope, is held at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Norman Jewison's In the Heat of the Night wins five awards, including Best Picture, while Mike Nichols wins Best Director for The Graduate. Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde and Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner both receive ten nominations each.
 April 11 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
 April 23–30 – Vietnam War: Columbia University protests of 1968 – Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.
 April 29 – The musical Hair officially opens on Broadway.

May
 May 14 – The Beatles announce the creation of Apple Records in a New York press conference.
 May 15 – An outbreak of severe thunderstorms produces tornadoes causing massive damage and heavy casualties in Charles City, Iowa, Oelwein, Iowa, and Jonesboro, Arkansas.
 May 17 – The Catonsville Nine enter the Selective Service offices in Catonsville, Maryland, take dozens of selective service draft records, and burn them with napalm as a protest against the Vietnam War.
 May 22 – The U.S. nuclear-powered submarine Scorpion sinks with 99 men aboard, 400 miles southwest of the Azores.

June
 June 3 – Radical feminist Valerie Solanas shoots Andy Warhol at his New York City studio, The Factory; he survives after a 5-hour operation.
 June 5 – Leading 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California by Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy dies from his injuries the next day.
 June 8 – James Earl Ray is arrested for the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April.
 June 26 – Bonin Islands are returned to Japan after 23 years of occupation by the United States Navy.
 June 30 – The Lockheed C-5 Galaxy heavy military transport aircraft first flies in the U.S. This model will still be in service 50 years later.

July
 July 1 – The Central Intelligence Agency's Phoenix Program against the Viet Cong is officially established.
 July 15 – Soap opera One Life to Live premieres on ABC television.
 July 18 – The semiconductor company Intel is founded.
 July 20 – The Special Olympics World Summer Games are held in Chicago.
 July 23–28 – Black militants led by Fred Evans engage in a fierce gunfight with police in the Glenville Shootout of Cleveland, Ohio.

August
 August 5–8 – The Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida nominates Richard Nixon for U.S. president and Spiro Agnew for vice president.
 August 21 – The Medal of Honor is posthumously awarded to James Anderson Jr.; he is the first black U.S. Marine to be awarded the Medal of Honor.
 August 22–30 – Police clash with anti-war protesters in Chicago, Illinois, outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which nominates Hubert Humphrey for U.S. President, and Edmund Muskie for Vice President.

September
 September 7
150 women (members of New York Radical Women) arrive in Atlantic City, New Jersey to protest against the Miss America Pageant for being exploitative of women. Led by activist and author Robin Morgan, it is one of the first large demonstrations of Second Wave Feminism as Women's Liberation begins to attract media attention.
The Banana Splits Adventure Hour begins airing on NBC. It went on for two seasons, ending on December 13 a year later in the middle of Season 2.
 September 13 – Army Major General Keith L. Ware, World War II Medal of Honor recipient, is killed when his helicopter is shot down in Vietnam. He is posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
 September 20 – Hawaii Five-O debuts on CBS, and eventually becomes the longest-running crime show in television history, until Law & Order overtakes it in 2003.
 September 24 – 60 Minutes debuts on CBS.

October
 October 1 – Night of the Living Dead premieres in the United States.
 October 2 – North Cascades National Park is established.
 October 7 – At the height of protests against the Vietnam War, José Feliciano performs "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Tiger Stadium in Detroit during Game 5 pre-game ceremonies of the 1968 World Series between the Tigers and the St. Louis Cardinals. His personalized, slow, Latin jazz performance proves highly controversial, opening the door for later interpretations of the national anthem.
 October 8 – Vietnam War – Operation Sealords: United States and South Vietnamese forces launch a new operation in the Mekong Delta.
 October 10 – 1968 World Series: The Detroit Tigers defeat the St. Louis Cardinals in the best of 7 series (4 games to 3) after being down 3 games to 1, completing an unlikely comeback against the heavily favored Cardinals led by the overpowering right-handed pitcher Bob Gibson. The final score of Game 7 is 4–1.
 October 11 – Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 7, the first crewed Apollo mission (Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, Walter Cunningham). Mission goals include the first live television broadcast from orbit and testing the lunar module docking maneuver.
 October 14 – Vietnam War: The United States Department of Defense announces that the United States Army and United States Marines will send about 24,000 troops back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours.
 October 16 – In Mexico City, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, two black Americans competing in the Olympic 200-meter run, raise their arms in a black power salute after winning, respectively, the gold and bronze medals for 1st and 3rd place.
 October 20 – Former U.S. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy marries Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis on the Greek island of Skorpios.
 October 25 – The Jimi Hendrix Experience releases Electric Ladyland.
 October 31 – Vietnam War: Citing progress in the Paris peace talks, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces to the nation that he has ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective November 1.

November
 November 5
U.S. presidential election, 1968: Republican challenger Richard M. Nixon defeats the Democratic candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and American Independent Party candidate George C. Wallace.
Luis A. Ferre is elected Governor of Puerto Rico.
 November 11 – Vietnam War: Operation Commando Hunt is initiated to interdict men and supplies on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, through Laos into South Vietnam. By the end of the operation, 3 million tons of bombs are dropped on Laos, slowing but not seriously disrupting trail operations.
 November 14 – Yale University announces it is going to admit women.
 November 17 – The Heidi game: NBC cuts off the final 1:05 of an Oakland Raiders–New York Jets football game to broadcast the pre-scheduled Heidi. Fans are unable to see Oakland (which had been trailing 32–29) score 2 late touchdowns to win 43–32; as a result, thousands of outraged football fans flood the NBC switchboards to protest.
 November 20 – The Farmington Mine Disaster in Farmington, West Virginia, kills 78 men.
 November 24 – Four men hijack Pan Am Flight 281 from JFK International Airport, New York to Havana, Cuba.
 November 26 – Vietnam War: United States Air Force First Lieutenant and Bell UH-1F helicopter pilot James P. Fleming rescues an Army Special Forces unit pinned down by Viet Cong fire, earning a Medal of Honor for his bravery.

December
 December 3 – The 50-minute television special Elvis (sponsored by sewing machine manufacturer The Singer Company), taped in June with a live audience in Burbank, California, airs on NBC marking the comeback of Elvis Presley after 7 years during which the legendary rock and roll musician's career has centered on the movie industry. Concluding with the premiere of "If I Can Dream", it is not only the highest-rated television show for the week of broadcast, but the highest rated television special of the year.
 December 6 – During an airing of Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, NBC renews The Banana Splits Adventure Hour for a second season.
 December 8 – NBC airs Pinocchio, starring Burl Ives and Peter Noone as part of Hallmark Hall of Fame.
 December 9 – Douglas Engelbart publicly demonstrates his pioneering hypertext system, NLS, in San Francisco.
 December 11 – The film Oliver!, based on the hit London and Broadway musical, opens in the U.S. after being released first in England. It goes on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus is also filmed on this date, but not released until 1996.
 December 20 – The Zodiac Killer is believed to have shot Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday on Lake Herman Road, Benicia, San Francisco Bay, California, his first confirmed victims.
 December 21 – Apollo 8 and its three-astronaut crew launch in order to orbit the Moon.
 December 22 – David Eisenhower marries Julie Nixon, the daughter of U.S. President-elect Richard Nixon.
 December 23 – The crew of USS Pueblo are released after spending 11 months in captivity by the North Koreans.
 December 24 – Apollo Program: U.S. spacecraft Apollo 8 enters orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William A. Anders become the first humans to see the far side of the Moon and planet Earth as a whole. The Earthrise photograph is taken. The crew also gives a reading from the Book of Genesis.
 December 26 – Led Zeppelin make their American debut in Denver.

Undated
 Cañada College opens in Redwood City, California.
 Computers Unlimited is founded in Rochester, NY.
 In or about this year the HIV virus is thought to have first arrived in the U.S.
 United Artists pulls eleven Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons in its library from television due to the depiction of racist stereotypes towards African-Americans. These cartoons come to be known as the Censored Eleven.

Ongoing
 Cold War (1947–1991)
 Space Race (1957–1975)
 Vietnam War, U.S. involvement (1964–1973)

Births

January – February

 January 2 – Cuba Gooding Jr., actor
 January 4 – Mike Wilpolt, American football player and coach
 January 5 – Carrie Ann Inaba, American choreographer, game show host and singer
 January 6 – John Singleton, African American film director (died 2019)
 January 9 – Joey Lauren Adams, American actress
 January 12
 Farrah Forke, American actress (died 2022)
 Rachael Harris, actress
 January 14 – LL Cool J, rapper and songwriter
 January 15 – Chad Lowe, actor
 January 21 – Tom Urbani, baseball player (died 2022)
 January 22 – Guy Fieri, restaurateur and television personality
 January 24
 Colleen Doran, author and illustrator
 Laura Leighton, actress
 Mary Lou Retton, Olympic Gymnastics
 January 28 – Rakim, rapper and record producer
 January 29
 Edward Burns, actor, director, and producer
 Monte Cook, game designer and writer
 Carmelo Sigona, graffiti artist
 Aeneas Williams, American football player and pastor
 February 1
 Lisa Marie Presley, singer-songwriter (died 2023)
 Pauly Shore, actor
 February 7 – Sully Erna, singer-songwriter and guitarist
 February 8 – Gary Coleman,  actor and comedian (died 2010)
 February 11 – Mo Willems, writer
 February 12
 Pauly Shore, comedian, actor, director, and producer
 Josh Brolin, actor
 Chynna Phillips, singer-songwriter and actress
 February 13 – Kelly Hu, actress
 February 14 – Phill Lewis, actor
 February 17 – Bryan Cox, American football player and coach
 February 18 – Molly Ringwald, actress
 February 19 – Prince Markie Dee, rapper (died 2021)
 February 22
 Bradley Nowell, singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (died 1996)
 Jayson Williams, basketball player and sportscaster
 Jeri Ryan, actress
 February 26 – Ed Quinn, actor, model and musician

March – May
 March 3 – Brian Leetch, American ice hockey player
 March 6 – Moira Kelly, actress
 March 7 – Jeff Kent, baseball player
 March 11 – Lisa Loeb, singer
 March 12 – Aaron Eckhart, actor
 March 15 – Mark McGrath, singer
 March 23 – Mitch Cullin, author
 March 26
 Kenny Chesney, country music singer
 James Iha, alternative rock musician and co-founder of The Smashing Pumpkins; in Chicago
 March 28 – Iris Chang, author (d. 2004)
 April 8 – Patricia Arquette, actress
 April 14 – Anthony Michael Hall, actor
 April 16
 Vickie Guerrero, professional wrestler
 Greg Baker, actor
 April 17 – Adam McKay, American film director
 April 19 – Ashley Judd, American actress
 April 24 – Stacy Haiduk, American actress
 April 26 – Angela Santomero, television executive producer
 May 1
Johnny Colt, bass player
D'arcy Wretzky, bass player and singer (Smashing Pumpkins)
 May 2
Eric Holcomb, 51st Governor of Indiana
Sean Taylor, writer
Jeff Agoos, soccer player
 May 3 – Nina Paley, cartoonist
 Traci Lords, actress
 May 9 – David Benoit, basketball player
 May 12
Mark Clark, baseball player and coach
Scott Schwartz, child actor
Tony Hawk, skateboarder
 May 19 – Kyle Eastwood, jazz bass musician
 May 20 – Timothy Olyphant, actor
 May 22 – Michael Kelly, actor
 May 27
 Jeff Bagwell, baseball player
 Frank Thomas, baseball player

June – July
 June 2
 Jason Falkner, singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer (Jellyfish, The Grays and The Three O'Clock)
 Andy Cohen, radio and television talk show host
 Beetlejuice, actor
 June 4
 Joey Mazzarino, actor, puppeteer, writer and director
 Scott Wolf, American actor
 June 8 – Black Rob, rapper (died 2021)
 June 10 – Bill Burr, American comedian
 June 14
 Campbell Brown, journalist
 Yasmine Bleeth, American actress
 June 27 – Kelly Ayotte, U.S. Senator from New Hampshire from 2011 to 2017
 June 30 – Phil Anselmo, heavy metal vocalist
 July 2 – Ron Goldman, murder victim (died 1994)
 July 5
 Darin LaHood, politician
 Michael Stuhlbarg, American actor
 Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube
 July 7
 Allen Payne, actor
 Jeff VanderMeer, writer

 July 8
 Billy Crudup, actor
 Michael Weatherly, actor

 July 11 – Conrad Vernon, voice actor and director
 July 13 – Robert Gant, actor
 July 16
Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia
Lynn Turner, poisoner convicted of the murder of two of her husbands (died 2010)
Barry Sanders, football player
 July 17 – Beth Littleford, actress and comedian
 July 19 – Robert Flynn, guitarist
 July 23
 Gary Payton, basketball player
 Stephanie Seymour, model and actress
 July 24
 Kristin Chenoweth, actress, singer, author
 Laura Leighton, actress
 Troy Kotsur, actor
 July 25 – John Grant, singer-songwriter
 July 29 – Kristen Babb-Sprague, synchronized swimmer
 July 30 – Terry Crews, actor

August  – October

 August 1 – Kenneth Bae, Korean-American missionary
 August 3 – Rod Beck, baseball player (d. 2007)
 August 7 – Lynn Strait, musician (d. 1998)
 August 9 – Gillian Anderson, actress
 August 14 – Jennifer Flavin, businesswoman
 August 15 – Debra Messing, actress
 August 17 – Ed McCaffrey, football player
 August 21 – Stretch, rapper and record producer (d. 1995)
 August 24 – Tim Salmon, baseball player
 August 25 – Rachael Ray, TV host
 September 4
 John DiMaggio, voice actor
 Mike Piazza, baseball player
 September 10 – Big Daddy Kane, hip-hop artist
 September 11 – Kay Hanley, singer
 September 15
 Susan Dalian, actress
 Danny Nucci, actor
 September 16 – Marc Anthony, singer
 September 17 – Anastacia, singer-songwriter
 September 20
 Van Jones, political commentator
 Michelle Visage, singer and radio DJ
 Norah Vincent, journalist (died 2022)
 September 21
 David Jude Jolicoeur aka Trugoy the Dove, rapper and record producer (De La Soul) (died 2023)
 Ricki Lake, television host and actress
 September 23 –  Michelle Thomas, actress (d. 1998)
 September 25
 Will Smith, actor, producer and rapper
 John A. List, economist
 September 26
 James Caviezel, actor
 Ben Shenkman, television, film and stage actor
 September 29 – Alex Skolnick, jazz/heavy metal guitarist
 October 8 – Emily Procter, actress
 October 9
 Troy Davis, high-profile death row inmate and human rights activist (d. 2011)
 Pete Docter, animator, film director, screenwriter, producer, voice actor and chief creative officer of Pixar
 October 11 – Jane Krakowski, actress
 October 12 –  Adam Rich, actor
 October 13
 Preet Bharara, Indian-American politician
 Tisha Campbell-Martin, actress and singer
 October 20 – Sunny Hostin, lawyer and television host

November – December

 November 4 – Miles Long, pornographic actor and director
 November 5
 Sam Rockwell, actor
 Seth Gilliam, African-American actor
 November 6 – Kelly Rutherford, actress
 November 8 – Parker Posey, actress
 November 10 – Tracy Morgan, actor and comedian
 November 12 – Kathleen Hanna, musician and activist
 November 13 – Pat Hentgen, baseball player and coach
 November 14 – Roland Martin, political commentator
 November 15 – Ol' Dirty Bastard, rapper (d. 2004)
 November 18
 Nicholas Scutari, politician
 Gary Sheffield, baseball player
 Owen Wilson, actor and comedian
 November 24  – Todd Beamer, passenger on board United Airlines Flight 93 (died 2001)
 November 29 – Jonathan Knight, singer
 December 2
 Lucy Liu, actress, voice actress, director, singer, dancer, model, and artist
 Joshua Seth, voice actor and hypnotist
 Rena Sofer, actress
 December 3
 Brendan Fraser, actor
 Montell Jordan, singer
 December 5 – Margaret Cho, actress and comedian
 December 7 – Greg Ayres, voice actor
 December 8
 Michael Cole, television sports commentator
 Mike Mussina, baseball player
 December 9 – Kurt Angle, WWE superstar and Olympic wrestler
 December 16 – Tom Spurgeon, journalist, comics critic and editor (died 2019)
 December 19 – Ken Marino, actor and comedian
 December 22 – Dina Meyer, actress
 December 23 – Manuel Rivera-Ortiz, photographer
 December 26
 Dennis Knight, professional wrestler
 Malcolm L. McCallum, herpetologist, conservation biologist, and environmental scientist
 December 28 – Deanna Favre, activist and wife of Brett Favre
 December 29 – Tricia Leigh Fisher, actress and singer

Deaths
 January 16 – Bob Jones Sr., evangelist, religious broadcaster and founder of Bob Jones University (born 1883)
 January 19 – Ray Harroun, race car driver (born 1879)
 January 26 – Merrill C. Meigs, newspaper publisher and aviation promoter (born 1883)
 February 15 – Little Walter, blues singer, musician, and songwriter (born 1930)
 March 6 – Joseph W. Martin Jr., poltician (born 1884)
 March 11 – Pearl Doles Bell, film scenarist, novelist and editor (born 1883)
 March 16 – Leon Cadore, baseball pitcher (born 1891)
 April 4 – Martin Luther King Jr., activist, clergyman and leader in the Civil Rights Movement (born 1929)
 April 8 – Harold D. Babcock, astronomer (born 1882)
 April 12 – Lester Melrose, record producer of the Chicago blues genre (born 1891)
 April 16 – Edna Ferber, novelist, short story writer and playwright (born 1885)
 April 24 – Walter Tewksbury, runner and hurdler (born 1876)
 May 10 – Scotty Beckett, actor and singer (born 1929)
 May 26 – Little Willie John, African-American rock and roll, rhythm and blues singer (born 1937)
 May 28 – Corbett Davis, football fullback (born 1914)
 June 1 – Helen Keller, campaigner for the deaf and blind (born 1880)
 June 2
 Jouett Shouse, politician (born 1879)
 R. Norris Williams, tennis player (born 1891 in Switzerland)
 June 6 – Robert F. Kennedy, younger brother of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Senator, presidential candidate (born 1925)
 June 17 – Henrietta Bingham, journalist, newspaper executive, horse-breeder and anglophile (born 1901)
 August 18 – Arthur Marshall, ragtime composer and performer (born 1881)
 September 7 – Harold C. Train, rear admiral in World War II, Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence (born 1887)
 November 25 – Upton Sinclair, novelist (born 1878)
 December 11 – Bob Bartlett, U.S. Senator from Alaska (born 1904)
 December 20 – John Steinbeck, author (born 1902)
 December 24 – Leo Otis Colbert, admiral and engineer, Director of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (born 1883)

See also
List of American films of 1968
Timeline of United States history (1950–1969)

References

External links

1960s in the United States
United States
United States
Years of the 20th century in the United States

1968 in the United States


The Boys in Blue is a 1982 British comedy film directed by Val Guest and starring Tommy Cannon, Bobby Ball, Suzanne Danielle and Roy Kinnear. It is loosely based on the classic 1939 Will Hay film Ask a Policeman, which Guest co-wrote. Some policemen who have failed to make any arrests are threatened with dismissal, and begin to invent crime to justify their existence. It was the final feature film that Guest directed.

Plot

An elaborate theft of priceless paintings has taken place in Central London, and the police are at a loss to explain where they have disappeared to. In the seaside village of Little Botham (pronounced bottom), we encounter the local police force consisting of Constable Ball (Bobby Ball) and Sergeant Cannon (Tommy Cannon), who are concerned with breaking up a traffic jam. One of the delayed drivers is an attractive foreign woman, who Ball causes to collide with a parked car belonging to the Chief Constable (Eric Sykes). It emerges that the woman is part of the gang transporting the paintings.

Ball and Cannon become suspicious of a new arrival in the area, a writer named Hilling (Edward Judd), who they suspect may have something to do with the stolen artworks. The bumbling policemen break into his barn at night but find nothing incriminating, then Hilling threatens them with a gun and chases them away. Next they visit a rich local businessman Lloyd (Roy Kinnear) to ask for information about Hilling but he knows nothing.

The postman brings a letter telling them that the Chief Constable wants to close down their police station because there is no crime in the area. They remember the valuable paintings at Lloyd's house, and decide to steal one of them with the help of their friend Kim, Lloyd's assistant (Suzanne Danielle). They will then be able to solve the crime, justify their existence, and save their police station.

Although Kim refuse to help with their crackpot scheme, Cannon accidentally finds some of the stolen paintings on the beach. However, while he and Ball decide what to do with them, the evidence is removed by a mysterious stranger hidden in their cellar. Kim arrives at the police station, and reports seeing a UFO. Having taken her home, Ball and Cannon see mysterious blue and red flashing lights and think they have found the UFO themselves (although in reality it is a fake ambulance used by the thieves to frighten the locals).

Meanwhile a coast guard (Jon Pertwee) asks for permission to raise a light on the roof of the police station. The reasons for the request are incomprehensible, but lead to some hilarious banter, after which the lamp is raised. Returning to the beach, the police officers find more paintings, a discarded Turkish cigarette, and then stairs leading to a storeroom which turns out to be the cellar of the police station!

Before Ball and Cannon can call the authorities Lloyd arrives, revealing that he is the mastermind behind the crimes and shutting the policemen - handcuffed together due to their own incompetence - in their cell. He cannot transfer the paintings to a boat, as originally planned, so loads them into the fake ambulance and drives off. Our heroes escape from the faulty cell and set off in pursuit. After several changes of vehicle, Ball and Cannon end up chasing Lloyd and the foreign woman (who turns out to be Kim in disguise) in a bus.

Meanwhile customs officers and police, including Hilling who is a DI with the Arts Squad, converge on the Little Botham police station, and find evidence of the crime. They also realise that the lamp on the roof had been used to guide ships to the beach to pick up the paintings, conclude that Ball and Cannon are responsible, and start to search for them.

The hapless Ball and Cannon continue their own pursuit and are diverted onto a race track, where the bus narrowly misses several speeding cars. Eventually, they collide with Lloyd's car and the police, headed by the Chief Constable, arrive. Despite originally believing that Ball and Cannon are to blame, it is quickly revealed that Lloyd is the true culprit and he is arrested. Our heroes, ignored by the Chief Constable and still handcuffed together, begin the long walk home.

Cast
 Tommy Cannon – Sergeant Cannon
 Bobby Ball – PC Ball
 Suzanne Danielle – Kim
 Roy Kinnear – Lloyd
 Eric Sykes – Chief Constable
 Jack Douglas – Chief Superintendent
 Edward Judd – Hilling
 Jon Pertwee – Coastguard
 Arthur English – Farmer

Production
Val Guest was approached to make a film with the comedy team of Cannon and Ball. Guest went to see them perform live, and thought "they would be a good draw". Guest says the idea to remake Ask a Policeman came from Bobby Ball being a film buff. "We had a lot of fun making it," said Guest. "It was hard work to lead two newcomers. But we  made it and it had a certain amount of success, but not enough success to warrant another one."

Filming locations

The film was shot primarily at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, England, but many other locations throughout the United Kingdom were used, such as Edlesborough, Eaton Bray, Weymouth, Wool, Lulworth Cove, St Albans, Borehamwood and Bushey Heath.

References

External links

1982 films
British crime comedy films
Films shot at EMI-Elstree Studios
1980s English-language films
1980s crime comedy films
1982 comedy films
1980s British films

The Boys in Blue


Tbilisi State Conservatoire (, Tbilisis Saxelmc̣ipo Ḳonservaṭoria) is the State Conservatoire of Georgia, located in the capital Tbilisi.

History

The Tbilisi Conservatoire was founded on 1 May 1917. It was formally recognised by the Russian Musical Society as a conservatoire later that year. A rival conservatoire was also founded in 1921 by D. Arakishvili, and it was not until 1924 that the situation was resolved by the Soviet regime in favour of the original foundation. Since 1947 it has borne the name of Georgian singer Ivane Sarajishvili.

Among the first teachers in Conservatoire were students of leading musicians such as Franz Liszt, Henryk Wieniawski, Antoine Marmontel, Tchaikovsky, and Ignaz Moscheles, as well as Joseph and Rosina Lhévinne – later founder-teachers at the Juilliard School of Music; Georgian musicians, former alumni of the Moscow Conservatory and St. Petersburg Conservatory – including Dimitri Arakishvili and Zachary Paliashvili (composers, and founders of modern Georgian music); Wanda Shiukashvili, A.Tulashvili and A.Virsaladze (pianists); L.Iashvili and L.Shiukashvili (violinists); D.Andghuladze and A.Inashvili (singers); Greek conductor Odysseas Dimitriadis and others.

At different times the Tbilisi State Conservatoire was headed by prominent Georgian and Russian musicians, among them Nikolai Nikolaev (1917-1918), Nikolai Tcherepnin (1919-1922), Tamara Vakhvakhishvili (1921-1923), Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov (1924-1925), Zakaria Paliashvili (1918-1919;1922-1923;1930-1931), Dimitri Arakishvili (1926-1929) Otar Taktakishvili (1962-1964), Sulkhan Tsintsadze (1965-1984), Nodar Gabunia (1984-2000), Manana Doidjashvili (2000-2012) and Reso Kiknadze (2012-2019). The current rector is Nana Sharikadze.

Among the notable graduates of the Conservatoire are: composers Gia Kancheli, S. Nasidze and Dagmara Slianova-Mizandari; conductor Jansug Kakhidze; ethnomusicologist and evolutionary musicologist Joseph Jordania; musicians Elisso Virsaladze, Dimitri Bashkirov, Lev Vlassenko, Tamar Gabarashvili, Regina Gurgenyan, Alexander Toradze, Marine Iashvili, Alexander Korsantia, Giorgi Latso, Zurab Andjaparidze, Iano Alibegashvili (Tamari), Lado Ataneli, Tamar Atschba and others.

Building

The original building was designed by Aleksander Szymkiewicz and built in 1901-05. Unlike most buildings of the same style in the given period, the conservatoire's column decorated main portal is not centrally located. Rather, along with the main facade it is built near the left corner of the building in order for it to face the main entrance from the Rustaveli Avenue.

The style of the building is eclectic in nature. While original two-story building was built with elements of renaissance and baroque, the exterior of the present four-story building is neoclassical and somewhat less ornate. The exterior displays the statue of Anton Rubinstein, a Russian pianist and composer who in 1891 donated an entire income from one of his concerts for the opening of the original conservatoire building.

The main auditorium and the smaller auditorium are the two auditoriums in the building. The conservatoire's tiny auditorium is renowned for its ornately decorated walls. The main auditorium also holds an organ from the Alexander Schuke factory in Potsdam, Germany, installed in 1963.

Activities
Today the conservatoire teaching staff  includes about 200 professors. There are about 400 students.

Cultural events taking place at the Conservatoire include: music forums, national competitions, international symposia and scientific conferences, master classes, chamber and symphony concerts and student opera performances at the Conservatoire Opera Studio. Amongst those who have performed at the Conservatoire are Vladimir Horowitz, Egon Petri, Sviatoslav Richter, David Oistrakh, Emil Gilels, Mstislav Rostropovich and others.

Since 1995 the State Conservatoire has aligned itself with the  two-step European Educational System of studies. Since 2006 the Tbilisi State Conservatoire has become a member of the European Association of Conservatories. From 2005 the Conservatoire  joined the Bologna Process with its international student transfer and credit system.

On September 14, 2022 the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth of Georgia launched focusing on eliminating the deficiency of instruments in the Tbilisi State Conservatory.  A multiyear purchase agreement was signed with world leader manufacturing company Steinway & Sons in accordance with which 78 grand pianos would gradually be transferred to the State Conservatory until 2025. Initial negotiations between Steinway & Sons and Ministry of Culture has particularly facilitated Georgian-American composer and concert pianist Giorgi Latso. Since Steinway & Sons was founded and its company history this contract is regarded as unprecedented and significant in Europe, given the fact that Georgia had a 50 year shortage for purchases.

See also
Music of Georgia

References

Bibliography
Rusudan Tsurtsumia (ed.), Vano Sarajishvili Tbilisi State Conservatoire, Tbilisi, 1998
Arutinov Devil (ed.), Vano Sarajishvili Tbilisi State Conservatoire, Tbilisi, 2000

External links
Tbilisi Conservatoire Official website

Educational institutions established in 1917
1917 establishments in Georgia (country)
Buildings and structures in Tbilisi

Tbilisi State Conservatoire


"More Cowbell" is a comedy sketch. It is a part of Saturday Night Live. It was first shown on television on April 8, 2000. The sketch is shown as a fake episode of Behind the Music. It is about the real band Blue Öyster Cult making a sound recording for the song "(Don't Fear) The Reaper". Will Ferrell is shown in the sketch as a man playing the cowbell. He plays the cowbell very loud and annoys the members of Blue Öyster Cult. Christopher Walken is in the sketch as a music producer that keeps asking for the cowbell to be louder.

Many people thought that it was one of the best sketches of Saturday Night Live. Rolling Stone named it the 9th best sketch of Saturday Night Live. "More Cowbell" became a catchphrase in popular culture.

References

2000 in American television

More Cowbell