Last to post wins

[Creeperopolis]

Donald Forrester Brown VC (23 February 1890 – 1 October 1916) was a New Zealand soldier, and recipient of the Victoria Cross (VC), the highest award for valour "in the face of the enemy" that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

Born in Dunedin, Brown was a farmer when the First World War began in 1914. In late 1915, he volunteered for service abroad with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) and was posted to the 2nd Battalion, the Otago Infantry Regiment. He saw action on the Western Front, and was awarded the VC for his actions during the Battle of Flers–Courcelette in September 1916. As he was killed several days later during the Battle of Le Transloy, the award was made posthumously. His VC was the second to be awarded to a soldier serving with the NZEF during the war and was the first earned in an action on the Western Front.

[Creeperopolis]

Overdrawn at the Memory Bank is a 1984 science fiction television film starring Raul Julia and Linda Griffiths. Based on the 1976 John Varley short story of the same name from the Eight Worlds series,[1][2] the film takes place in a dystopian future where an employee at a conglomerate gets trapped inside the company's computer and ends up affecting the real world. It was co-produced by Canada's RSL Films, Ltd in Toronto and New York television station WNET. Because of its limited budget, the motion picture was shot on videotape instead of film and was pre-sold to small American cable companies.

It premiered on CBC Television in 1984 and was later broadcast on American Playhouse in 1985. The film had a mixed reception from critics. Overdrawn at the Memory Bank was featured in the eighth season finale episode of the comedy television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 1997.

[Creeperopolis]

Martha Bradley (fl. 1740s–1755) was a British cookery book writer. Little is known about her life, except that she published the cookery book The British Housewife in 1756 and worked as a cook for over thirty years in the fashionable spa town of Bath, Somerset.

Bradley's only printed work, The British Housewife was released as a 42-issue partwork between January and October 1756.[a] It was published in a two-volume book form in 1758, and is more than a thousand pages long. It is likely that Bradley was dead before the partwork was published. The book follows the French style of nouvelle cuisine, distinguishing Bradley from other female cookery book writers at the time, who focused on the British or English style of food preparation. The work is carefully organised and the recipes taken from other authors are amended, suggesting she was a knowledgeable and experienced cook, able to improve on existing dishes.

Because of the length of The British Housewife, it was not reprinted until 1996; as a result, few modern writers have written extensively on Bradley or her work.

[Creeperopolis]

The Roswell incident is a conspiracy theory which alleges that the 1947 United States Army Air Forces balloon debris recovered near Roswell, New Mexico, was actually a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft. Operated from the nearby Alamogordo Army Air Field and part of the top secret Project Mogul, the balloon was intended to detect Soviet nuclear tests.[a] After metallic and rubber debris were recovered by Roswell Army Air Field personnel, the United States Army announced their possession of a "flying disc". This announcement made international headlines, but was retracted within a day. To obscure the purpose and source of the debris, the army reported that it was a conventional weather balloon.

In 1978, retired Air Force officer Jesse Marcel revealed that the army's weather balloon claim had been a cover story, and speculated that the debris was of extraterrestrial origin. Popularized by the 1980 book The Roswell Incident, this speculation became the basis for long-lasting and increasingly complex and contradictory UFO conspiracy theories, which over time expanded the incident to include governments concealing evidence of extraterrestrial beings, grey aliens, multiple crashed flying saucers, alien corpses and autopsies, and the reverse engineering of extraterrestrial technology, none of which have any factual basis.

In the 1990s, the United States Air Force published multiple reports which established that the incident was related to Project Mogul, and not debris from a UFO. Despite this and a general lack of evidence, many UFO proponents claim that the Roswell debris was in fact derived from an alien craft, and accuse the US government of a cover-up. The conspiracy narrative has become a trope in science fiction literature, film, and television. The town of Roswell promotes itself as a destination for UFO-associated tourism.

[Creeperopolis]

John Wick is a 2014 American action thriller film directed by Chad Stahelski and written by Derek Kolstad. Keanu Reeves stars as John Wick, a legendary hitman who comes out of retirement to seek revenge against the men who killed his dog, a final gift from his recently deceased wife. The film also stars Michael Nyqvist, Alfie Allen, Adrianne Palicki, Bridget Moynahan, Dean Winters, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, and Willem Dafoe.

Kolstad's script drew on his interest in action, revenge, and neo noir films. The producer Basil Iwanyk purchased the rights as his first independent film production. Reeves, whose career was declining, liked the script and recommended that the experienced stunt choreographers Stahelski and David Leitch direct the action scenes; Stahelski and Leitch successfully lobbied to co-direct the project. Principal photography began in October 2013, on a $20–$30 million budget, and concluded that December. Stahelski and Leitch focused on long, highly choreographed single takes to convey action, eschewing the rapid cuts and closeup shots of contemporary action films.

Iwanyk struggled to secure theatrical distributors because industry executives were dismissive of an action film by first-time directors, and Reeves's recent films had financially underperformed. Lionsgate Films purchased the distribution rights to the film two months before its release date on October 24, 2014. Following a successful marketing campaign that changed its perception from disposable entertainment to a prestige event helmed by an affable leading actor, John Wick exceeded box-office projections and became a modest success, grossing $86 million worldwide. It received generally positive reviews for its style and its action sequences. Critics hailed John Wick as a comeback for Reeves, in a role that played to his acting strengths. The film's mythology of a criminal underworld with rituals and rules was praised as its most distinctive and interesting feature.

John Wick began a successful franchise which includes three sequels (John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017), John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019), and John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)), the prequel television series The Continental (2023), and the spin-off film Ballerina (2025), as well as video games and comic books. It is seen as having revitalized the action genre and popularized long single takes with choreographed, detailed action.

[Creeperopolis]

Hugh Ferguson (2 March 1895 – 8 January 1930) was a Scottish professional footballer. Born in Motherwell, he played for Parkhead at junior level as an amateur and was one of the most sought-after young players in Scotland before signing for his hometown club, Motherwell F.C., to begin his professional career. He established himself as a consistent scorer playing as a centre forward, finishing as the top goalscorer in the Scottish Football League on three occasions between 1918 and 1921. His 284 league goals remains a record at the club and, by 1925, he was the highest-scoring player in the history of the Scottish League.

In 1925, Ferguson moved to Welsh side Cardiff City for £5,000 (equivalent to £360,000 in 2023) and continued his scoring exploits. He was the club's top goalscorer for four consecutive seasons and scored the winning goal in the 1927 FA Cup Final during a 1–0 victory over Arsenal. He also scored in the 1927 FA Charity Shield, during a 2–1 victory over amateur side Corinthians. Both results made Cardiff the only non-English team to have won the FA Cup or the FA Charity Shield. Despite his prolific scoring record, finishing his career with a goal average of 0.855 per game, he was never selected to play for Scotland, but did represent a Scottish League XI on three occasions.

Ferguson returned to Scotland with Dundee in 1929, but struggled to reproduce his goalscoring form. Six months after his arrival, he had lost his place in the team and died by suicide on 8 January 1930 at the age of 34. He is one only out of seven men in the history of the English and Scottish Football Leagues to have scored 350 league goals.

[Totaletatier]

Whoever is the last to post in this thread wins. When is that? Who knows.

I win

[Creeperopolis]

USS Congress was a nominally rated three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy, one of the first six ships of the US Navy. Built by James Hackett at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, she was launched on 15 August 1799 and rated as capable of holding 38 guns, though she often carried more. The name Congress was among ten names submitted to President George Washington by Secretary of War Timothy Pickering in March 1795.[6][7] As Joshua Humphreys intended for the frigates to serve as the young Navy's capital ships, Congress and her sister ships were larger and more heavily armed than the standard frigates of the period.

Her first duties with the newly formed United States Navy were to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the Quasi War with France and to defeat the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War. During the War of 1812, she made several extended length cruises in company with her sister ship President and captured or assisted in the capture of twenty British merchant ships. At the end of 1813, due to a lack of materials to repair her, she was placed in reserve for the remainder of the war. In 1815, she returned to service for the Second Barbary War and made patrols through 1816. In the 1820s, she helped suppress piracy in the West Indies, made several voyages to South America, and was the first U.S. warship to visit China. Congress spent her last ten years of service as a receiving ship until she was broken up in 1834.

[Creeperopolis]

James Madison (March 16, 1751 [O.S. March 5, 1750] – June 28, 1836) was an American statesman, diplomat, and Founding Father who served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. Madison was popularly acclaimed the "Father of the Constitution" for his pivotal role in drafting and promoting the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights.

Madison was born into a prominent slave-owning planter family in Virginia. In 1774, strongly opposed to British taxation, Madison joined with the Patriots. He was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates and the Continental Congress during and after the American Revolutionary War. Dissatisfied with the weak national government established by the Articles of Confederation, he helped organize the Constitutional Convention, which produced a new constitution designed to strengthen republican government against democratic assembly. Madison's Virginia Plan was the basis for the convention's deliberations. He became one of the leaders in the movement to ratify the Constitution and joined Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in writing The Federalist Papers, a series of pro-ratification essays that remain prominent among works of political science in American history. Madison emerged as an important leader in the House of Representatives and was a close adviser to President George Washington. During the early 1790s, Madison opposed the economic program and the accompanying centralization of power favored by Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton. Alongside Thomas Jefferson, he organized the Democratic–Republican Party in opposition to Hamilton's Federalist Party. Madison served as Jefferson's Secretary of State from 1801 to 1809, during which time he helped convince Jefferson to submit the Louisiana Purchase Treaty for approval by the Senate.

Madison was elected president in 1808. Motivated by a desire to acquire land held by Britain, Spain, and Native Americans, and after diplomatic protests with a trade embargo failed to end British seizures of American-shipped goods, Madison led the United States into the War of 1812. Although the war ended inconclusively, many Americans viewed it as a successful "second war of independence" against Britain. Madison was re-elected in 1812. The war convinced Madison of the necessity of a stronger federal government. He presided over the creation of the Second Bank of the United States and the enactment of the protective Tariff of 1816. By treaty or through war, Native American tribes ceded 26 million acres (11 million ha) of land to the United States during Madison's presidency.

Retiring from public office at the end of his presidency in 1817, Madison returned to his plantation, Montpelier, where he died in 1836. Madison was a slave owner; he freed one slave in 1783 to prevent a slave rebellion at Montpelier but did not free any in his will. Historians regard Madison as one of the most significant Founding Fathers of the United States, and have generally ranked him as an above-average president, although they are critical of his endorsement of slavery and his leadership during the War of 1812. Madison's name is commemorated in many landmarks across the nation, with prominent examples including Madison Square Garden, James Madison University, the James Madison Memorial Building, the capitol city of Wisconsin, and the USS James Madison.

[ZPRO10]

Me all the way