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Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh was a comedy show broadcast from 1944 to 1950 and 1951 to 1954 by BBC Radio and in 1950–1951 by Radio Luxembourg. It was written by and starred Richard Murdoch and Kenneth Horne as officers in a fictional RAF station coping with red tape and the inconveniences and incongruities of life in the Second World War. After the war the station became a country club and, for its last season, the show became the chronicle of a newspaper, The Weekly Bind.
Among the supporting cast were Sam Costa as the officers' batman, Maurice Denham in a multitude of roles, Diana Morrison, Dora Bryan and Nicholas Parsons. Singers in the show's musical interludes included Gwen Catley, Maudie Edwards, Binnie Hale and Doris Hare. Among those appearing as guest stars were Phyllis Calvert, Richard Dimbleby, Glynis Johns, Alan Ladd and Jean Simmons.
The show followed It's That Man Again as the most popular British radio comedy and was succeeded by Take It from Here and The Goon Show. After the show ended, its two stars returned to radio in several long-running series.
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Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh president of the United States, serving from 1829 to 1837. Before his presidency, he gained fame as a general in the U.S. Army and served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. Sometimes praised as an advocate for working Americans and for preserving the union of states, his political philosophy became the basis for the Democratic Party. Jackson has been criticized for his racist policies, particularly regarding Native Americans.
Jackson was born in the colonial Carolinas before the American Revolutionary War. He became a frontier lawyer and married Rachel Donelson Robards. He briefly served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, representing Tennessee. After resigning, he served as a justice on the Tennessee Superior Court from 1798 until 1804. Jackson purchased a property later known as the Hermitage, becoming a wealthy planter who owned hundreds of African American slaves during his lifetime. In 1801, he was appointed colonel of the Tennessee militia and was elected its commander. He led troops during the Creek War of 1813–1814, winning the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and negotiating the Treaty of Fort Jackson that required the indigenous Creek population to surrender vast tracts of present-day Alabama and Georgia. In the concurrent war against the British, Jackson's victory at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 made him a national hero. He later commanded U.S. forces in the First Seminole War, which led to the annexation of Florida from Spain. Jackson briefly served as Florida's first territorial governor before returning to the Senate. He ran for president in 1824. He won a plurality of the popular and electoral vote, but no candidate won the electoral majority. With the help of Henry Clay, the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams as president. Jackson's supporters alleged that there was a "corrupt bargain" between Adams and Clay and began creating a new political coalition that became the Democratic Party in the 1830s.
Jackson ran again in 1828, defeating Adams in a landslide despite issues such as his slave trading and his "irregular" marriage. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act. This act, which has been described as ethnic cleansing, displaced tens of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands east of the Mississippi and resulted in thousands of deaths. Jackson faced a challenge to the integrity of the federal union when South Carolina threatened to nullify a high protective tariff set by the federal government. He threatened the use of military force to enforce the tariff, but the crisis was defused when it was amended. In 1832, he vetoed a bill by Congress to reauthorize the Second Bank of the United States, arguing that it was a corrupt institution. After a lengthy struggle, the Bank was dismantled. In 1835, Jackson became the only president to pay off the national debt.
After leaving office, Jackson supported the presidencies of Martin Van Buren and James K. Polk, as well as the annexation of Texas. Jackson's legacy remains controversial, and opinions on his legacy are frequently polarized. Supporters characterize him as a defender of democracy and the U.S. Constitution, while critics point to his reputation as a demagogue who ignored the law when it suited him. Scholarly rankings of U.S. presidents historically rated Jackson's presidency as above average. Since the late 20th century, his reputation declined, and in the 21st century his placement in rankings of presidents fell.
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Ada Wong[a] is a character in Resident Evil (Biohazard in Japan), a survival horror video game series created by the Japanese company Capcom. Ada was first mentioned in the original Resident Evil (1996), before being introduced as a supporting character and antiheroine in Resident Evil 2 (1998). The character was initially conceived as a researcher named Linda for the prototype of the second game, but her name was changed to Ada and she was rewritten as a spy and mercenary for the final build to connect its story to that of the original. Over the course of the series, Ada is often hired to steal biological weapons for various organizations, although she betrays her employers on numerous occasions to save protagonist Leon S. Kennedy from dire situations.
Ada is featured in several Resident Evil games, novelizations, and films, and has also appeared in other game franchises such as Project X Zone, Teppen, and Dead by Daylight. Several actresses have portrayed the character. Sally Cahill, Courtenay Taylor, Jolene Andersen, and Lily Gao, among others, have provided Ada's voice for her video game and animated appearances, while Li Bingbing and Gao have played her in the live-action Resident Evil films.
Critics have positively responded to Ada as a character, highlighting her intelligence and resourcefulness as her key personality traits. Several journalists have praised Ada's portrayal as a femme fatale, and cited her as an example of a female character who is as competent and skilled as her male counterparts. Due to Ada's Asian ethnicity, however, concerns that the character perpetuates the Orientalist trope of the "Dragon Lady" have also been raised. Ada's outfits—particularly her red dress from Resident Evil 4 (2005)—have been brought up in discussions bearing on the male gaze and criticized for being overtly sexualized. Gao's performance as Ada in the 2023 remake of Resident Evil 4 received unfavorable reviews.
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Caitlin Elizabeth Clark[1] (born January 22, 2002) is an American professional basketball player for the Indiana Fever of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). She played college basketball for the Iowa Hawkeyes and is regarded as one of the greatest collegiate players of all time. Clark is the NCAA Division I all-time leading scorer and was a two-time national player of the year with the Hawkeyes. Since her college career, she has helped popularize women's basketball, a trend known as the "Caitlin Clark effect".
Clark attended Dowling Catholic High School in her hometown of West Des Moines, Iowa, where she was named a McDonald's All-American and rated the fourth-best player in her class by ESPN. In her freshman season with Iowa, she led the NCAA Division I in scoring and earned All-American honors. As a sophomore, Clark was a unanimous first-team All-American and became the first women's player to lead Division I in points and assists in a single season. In her junior season, she was the national player of the year. She led Iowa to its first national championship game. Clark again led Division I in assists and set Big Ten single-season marks in points and assists. As a senior, she repeated as national player of the year and helped Iowa return to the national title game. Clark became the Division I women's career and single-season leader in points and three-pointers and broke the all-time conference record in assists, while leading the nation in both points and assists.
At the youth international level, Clark won three gold medals with the United States, including two at the FIBA Under-19 Women's World Cup, where she was named Most Valuable Player in 2021.
Clark was selected first overall by the Indiana Fever in the 2024 WNBA draft. In her first season, she won the WNBA Rookie of the Year award and made the All-WNBA First Team and WNBA All-Star Game. She set league single-season and single-game records in assists, broke the rookie scoring record, and became the first rookie to achieve a triple-double.
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Castell Coch (Welsh for 'red castle'; Welsh pronunciation: [ˈkas.tɛɬ koːχ]) is a 19th-century Gothic Revival castle built above the village of Tongwynlais, Cardiff, in Wales. The first castle on the site was built by the Normans after 1081 to protect the newly conquered town of Cardiff and control the route along the Taff Gorge. Abandoned shortly afterwards, the castle's earth motte was reused by Gilbert de Clare as the basis for a new stone fortification, which he built between 1267 and 1277 to control his freshly annexed Welsh lands. This castle may have been destroyed in the native Welsh rebellion of 1314. In 1760, the castle ruins were acquired by John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, as part of a marriage settlement that brought the family vast estates in South Wales.
John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, inherited the castle in 1848. One of Britain's wealthiest men, with interests in architecture and antiquarian studies, he employed the architect William Burges to rebuild the castle, "as a country residence for occasional occupation in the summer", using the medieval remains as a basis for the design. Burges rebuilt the outside of the castle between 1875 and 1879, before turning to the interior; he died in 1881 and the work was finished by Burges's remaining team in 1891. Bute reintroduced commercial viticulture into Britain, planting a vineyard just below the castle, and wine production continued until the First World War. He made little use of his new retreat, and in 1950 his grandson, the 5th Marquess of Bute, placed it into the care of the state. It is now controlled by the Welsh heritage agency Cadw.
Castell Coch's external features and the High Victorian interiors led the historian David McLees to describe it as "one of the greatest Victorian triumphs of architectural composition".[1] The exterior, based on 19th-century studies by the antiquarian George Clark, is relatively authentic in style, although its three stone towers were adapted by Burges to present a dramatic silhouette, closer in design to mainland European castles such as Chillon than native British fortifications. The interiors were elaborately decorated, with specially designed furniture and fittings; the designs include extensive use of symbolism drawing on classical and legendary themes. Joseph Mordaunt Crook wrote that the castle represented "the learned dream world of a great patron and his favourite architect, recreating from a heap of rubble a fairy-tale castle which seems almost to have materialised from the margins of a medieval manuscript".[2]
The surrounding Castell Coch beech woods contain rare plant species and unusual geological features and are protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
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Slayback's Missouri Cavalry Regiment was a cavalry regiment of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Originally formed as Slayback's Missouri Cavalry Battalion, the unit consisted of men recruited in Missouri by Lieutenant Colonel Alonzo W. Slayback during Price's Raid in 1864. The battalion's first action was at the Battle of Pilot Knob on September 27; it later participated in actions at Sedalia, Lexington, and the Little Blue River. In October, the unit was used to find an alternate river crossing during the Battle of the Big Blue River. Later that month, Slayback's unit saw action at the battles of Westport, Marmiton River, and Second Newtonia. The battalion was briefly furloughed in Arkansas before rejoining Major General Sterling Price in Texas in December. Probably around February 1865, the battalion reached official regimental strength after more recruits joined.
On June 2, 1865, the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department surrendered. The men of the regiment were located at different points in Louisiana and Arkansas when they were paroled twelve days later, leading the historian James McGhee to believe that the regiment had disbanded before the surrender.[1]
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The new wave of British heavy metal (commonly abbreviated as NWOBHM) was a nationwide musical movement that started in England in the mid-1970s and achieved international attention by the early 1980s. Editor Alan Lewis coined the term for an article by Geoff Barton in a May 1979 issue of the British music newspaper Sounds to describe the emergence of new heavy metal bands in the mid to late 1970s, during the period of punk rock's decline and the dominance of new wave music.
Although encompassing diverse styles inherited from rock music, the music of the NWOBHM is best remembered for drawing on the heavy metal of the 1970s and infusing it with the intensity of punk rock to produce fast and aggressive songs. The DIY attitude of the new metal bands led to the spread of raw-sounding, self-produced recordings and a proliferation of independent record labels. Song lyrics were usually about escapist themes, such as mythology, fantasy, horror and the rock 'n' roll lifestyle.
The NWOBHM began as an underground phenomenon growing in parallel to punk and largely ignored by the media. It was only through the promotion of rock DJ Neal Kay and Sounds' campaigning that it reached the public consciousness and gained radio airplay, recognition and success in the UK. The movement involved mostly young, white, male and working-class musicians and fans, who suffered the hardships brought on by rising unemployment for years after the 1973–75 recession. As a reaction to their bleak reality, they created a community separate from mainstream society to enjoy each other's company and their favourite loud music. The NWOBHM was heavily criticised for the excessive hype generated by local media in favour of mostly talentless musicians. Nonetheless, it generated a renewal in the genre of heavy metal music and furthered the progress of the heavy metal subculture, whose updated behavioural and visual codes were quickly adopted by metal fans worldwide after the spread of the music to continental Europe, North America and Japan.
By some estimates, the movement spawned as many as a thousand heavy metal bands, but only a few survived the advent of MTV and the rise of the more commercial glam metal in the second half of the 1980s. Among them, Iron Maiden and Def Leppard became superstars, while Motörhead and Saxon also had considerable success. Other groups, such as Diamond Head, Venom and Raven, while reaching limited chart success, never achieved popularity of the above-mentioned bands, but were a major influence on the successful extreme metal subgenres of the mid/late 1980s and 1990s. Many bands from the NWOBHM reunited in the 2000s and remained active through live performances and new studio albums.
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"Telephone" is a song by American singer Lady Gaga from her third extended play (EP), The Fame Monster (2009)—the reissue of her debut studio album, The Fame (2008). Featuring American singer Beyoncé, it was released as the EP's second single on January 26, 2010. Gaga and Rodney Jerkins wrote and produced "Telephone", with additional songwriting by LaShawn Daniels, Lazonate Franklin and Beyoncé. Gaga originally wrote the song for Britney Spears, who recorded a demo. "Telephone" conveys Gaga's fear of not finding time for fun given the increasing pressure for her to work harder as an artist. Musically, the song consists of an expanded bridge, verse-rap and a sampled voice of an operator announcing that the phone line is unreachable. Beyoncé appears in the middle of the song, singing the verses in a "rapid-fire" way, accompanied by double beats.
"Telephone" received positive reviews from critics who called it a stand-out track from The Fame Monster and praised Gaga's chemistry with Beyoncé. Several critics included it in their best-of list of 2010. It was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, and won a ASCAP Pop Music Award and a BMI Award. Following the album's release, the song charted in many countries, including Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and Hungary. Peaking at number three in the US, it was particularly successful in Europe where it topped the charts in Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Ireland, Norway and the UK. The song sold 7.4 million digital copies worldwide in 2010, making it the year's fourth best-selling single.
The accompanying music video for "Telephone", shot as a short film, was filmed in an intense two-day shoot across multiple locations, with minimalist lighting and meticulous planning, allowing 150 setups per day to be captured. It is a continuation of the video for "Paparazzi" (2009), the fifth single from The Fame. It follows Beyoncé as she bails Gaga out of prison for killing her boyfriend; they go to a diner and poison the customers' breakfast. The video ends as they attempt to escape a high-speed police chase. It references Quentin Tarantino and his films Pulp Fiction (1994) and Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003). The video received generally positive reviews and was nominated for three awards at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, including Video of the Year. In January 2015, Billboard named it the best video of the decade. NME listed it as one of the 100 greatest music videos of all time. Retrospective reviewers analyzed the video's themes, including feminism, lesbianism, and commentary on fame and celebrity culture.
In memory of fashion designer and friend Alexander McQueen, Gaga performed an acoustic rendition of "Telephone" at the 2010 BRIT Awards. She also sang it during the Super Bowl LI halftime show, and many of her concert tours and other live appearances. The song was covered by several artists, as well as characters from the television show Glee.
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The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia resulted in the deportation, dispossession, and murder of most of the pre-World War II population of Jews in the Czech lands that were annexed by Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945.
Before the Holocaust, the Jews of Bohemia were among the most assimilated and integrated Jewish communities in Europe; antisemitic prejudice was less pronounced than elsewhere on the continent. The first anti-Jewish laws in Czechoslovakia were imposed following the 1938 Munich Agreement and the German occupation of the Sudetenland. In March 1939, Germany invaded and partially annexed the rest of the Czech lands as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. More anti-Jewish measures followed, imposed mainly by the Protectorate administration (which included both German and Czech officials). Jews were stripped of their employment and property, required to perform forced labor, and subject to discriminatory regulations including, in September 1941, the requirement to wear a yellow star. Many were evicted from their homes and concentrated into substandard housing.
Some 30,000 Jews, from the pre-invasion population of 118,310, managed to emigrate. Most of the remaining Jews were deported to other Nazi-controlled territories, starting in October 1939 as part of the Nisko plan. In October 1941, mass deportations of Protectorate Jews began, initially to Łódź Ghetto. Beginning in November 1941, the transports departed for Theresienstadt Ghetto in the Protectorate, which was, for most, a temporary stopping-point before deportation to other ghettos, extermination camps, and other killing sites farther east. By mid-1943, most of the Jews remaining in the Protectorate were in mixed marriages and therefore exempt from deportation.
About 80,000 Jews from Bohemia and Moravia were murdered in the Holocaust. After the war, surviving Jews—especially those who had identified as Germans before the war—faced obstacles in regaining their property and pressure to assimilate into the Czech majority. Most Jews emigrated; a few were deported as part of the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia. The memory of the Holocaust was suppressed in Communist Czechoslovakia, but resurfaced in public discourse after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989.
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