Events

218 – Julia Maesa, aunt of the assassinated Caracalla, is banished to her home in Syria by the self-proclaimed emperor Macrinus and declares her 14-year old grandson Elagabalus, emperor of Rome.

1204 – Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders is crowned as the first Emperor of the Latin Empire.

1527 – The Florentines drive out the Medici for a second time and Florence re-establishes itself as a republic.

1532 – Sir Thomas More resigns as Lord Chancellor of England.

1568 – Mary, Queen of Scots, flees to England.

1770 – 14-year old Marie Antoinette marries 15-year-old Louis-Auguste who later becomes king of France.

1771 – The Battle of Alamance, a pre-American Revolutionary War battle between local militia and a group of rebels called The "Regulators", occurs in present-day Alamance County, North Carolina.

1811 – Peninsular War: The allies Spain, Portugal and United Kingdom, defeat the French at the Battle of Albuera.

1822 – Greek War of Independence: The Turks capture the Greek town of Souli.

1843 – The first major wagon train heading for the Pacific Northwest sets out on the Oregon Trail with one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri.

1866 – The U.S. Congress eliminates the half dime coin and replaces it with the five cent piece, or nickel.

1868 – President Andrew Johnson is acquitted in his impeachment trial by one vote in the United States Senate.

1874 – A flood on the Mill River in Massachusetts destroys much of four villages and kills 139 people.

1877 – May 16, 1877 political crisis in France.

1891 – The International Electro-Technical Exhibition opens in Frankfurt, Germany, and will feature the world's first long distance transmission of high-power, three-phase electrical current (the most common form today).

1914 – The first ever Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup final is played. Brooklyn Field Club defeats Brooklyn Celtic 2-1.

1918 – The Sedition Act of 1918 is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government an imprisonable offense.

1919 – A naval Curtiss aircraft NC-4 commanded by Albert Cushing Read leaves Trepassey, Newfoundland, for Lisbon via the Azores on the first transatlantic flight.

1920 – In Rome, Pope Benedict XV canonizes Joan of Arc.

1929 – In Hollywood, California, the first Academy Awards are handed out.

1943 – Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ends.

1948 – Chaim Weizmann is elected the first President of Israel.

1951 – The first regularly scheduled transatlantic flights begin between Idlewild Airport (now John F Kennedy International Airport) in New York City and Heathrow Airport in London, operated by El Al Israel Airlines.

1953 – American journalist William N. Oatis is released after serving 22 months of a ten-year prison sentence for espionage in Czechslovakia.

1960 – Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser, at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.

1961 – Park Chung-hee leads a coup d'état to overthrow the Second Republic of South Korea.

1966 – The Communist Party of China issues the "May 16 Notice", marking the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

1969 – Venera program: Venera 5, a Soviet spaceprobe, lands on Venus.

1974 – Josip Broz Tito is re-elected president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This time he is elected for life.

1975 – India annexes Sikkim after the mountain state holds a referendum in which the popular vote is in favor of merging with India.

1975 – Junko Tabei becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

1983 – Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement rebels against the Sudanese government.

1986 – The Seville Statement on Violence is adopted by an international meeting of scientists, convened by the Spanish National Commission for UNESCO, in Seville, Spain.

1988 – A report by United States' Surgeon General C. Everett Koop states that the addictive properties of nicotine are similar to those of heroin and cocaine.

1991 – Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom addressed a joint session of the United States Congress. She is the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.

2003 – In Casablanca, Morocco, 33 civilians are killed and more than 100 people are injured in the Casablanca terrorist attacks.

2005 – Kuwait permits women's suffrage in a 35-23 National Assembly vote.

Births

1578 – Everard Digby, English conspirator (d. 1606)

1611 – Pope Innocent XI (d. 1689)

1710 – William Talbot, 1st Earl Talbot, English politician (d. 1782)

1718 – Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Italian mathematician (d. 1799)

1763 – Louis Nicolas Vauquelin, French pharmacist (d. 1829)

1788 – Friedrich Rückert, German Poet, Translator and Orientalist (d. 1866)

1801 – William H. Seward, American politician and diplomat (d. 1872)

1821 – Pafnuty Chebyshev, Russian mathematician (d. 1894)

1824 – Levi P. Morton, 22nd United States Vice President (d. 1920)

1827 – Pierre Cuypers, Dutch architect (d. 1921)

1831 – David E. Hughes, British inventor and musician (d. 1900)

1845 – Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, Russian microbiologist, Nobel laureate (d. 1916)

1861 – H. H. Holmes, American serial killer (d. 1896)

1888 – Royal Raymond Rife, American inventor (d. 1971)

1891 – Richard Tauber, Austrian tenor (d. 1948)

1897 – Zvi Sliternik, Israeli entomologist (d. 1994)

1898 – Tamara de Lempicka, Polish-born painter (d. 1980)

1898 – Kenji Mizoguchi, Japanese film director (d. 1956)

1905 – Henry Fonda, American actor (d. 1982)

1906 – Alfred Pellan, French Canadian painter (d. 1988)

1906 – Arturo Uslar Pietri, Venezuelan writer (d. 2001)

1906 – Margret Rey, author and illustrator (d. 1996)

1909 – Margaret Sullavan, American actress (d. 1960)

1910 – Olga Berggolts, Russian poet (d. 1975)

1910 – Aleksandr Ivanovich Laktionov, Russian painter (d. 1972)

1912 – Studs Terkel, American writer (d. 2008)

1913 – Woody Herman, American musician and band leader (d. 1987)

1914 – Edward T. Hall, American anthropologist and author (d. 2009)

1916 – Adriana Caselotti, American actress (d. 1997)

1916 – Ephraim Katzir, Israeli politician (d. 2009)

1916 – Fred Hargesheimer, American World War II pilot (d. 2010)

1917 – Juan Rulfo, Mexican novelist (d. 1986)

1917 – James C. Murray, American politician (d. 1999)

1917 – George Gaynes, American actor

1918 – Wilf Mannion, English former footballer (d. 2000)

1919 – Liberace, American pianist (d. 1987)

1919 – Ramon Margalef, Spanish scientist (d. 2004)

1920 – Martine Carol, French actress (d. 1967)

1921 – Harry Carey, Jr., American actor

1921 – S. Neil Fujita, American graphic designer (d. 2010)

1923 – Merton Miller, American economist, Nobel laureate (d. 2000)

1923 – Victoria Fromkin, American linguist (d. 2000)

1923 – Peter Underwood, English parapsychologist

1925 – Bobbejaan Schoepen, Belgian entertainer (d. 2010)

1926 – Ronald Podrow, British peace activist (d. 2004)

1927 – Nílton Santos, Brazilian footballer

1928 – Billy Martin, American baseball player and coach (d. 1989)

1929 – John Conyers, American politician

1929 – Claude Morin, French Canadian politician

1929 – Adrienne Rich, American writer

1930 – Betty Carter, American jazz singer (d. 1998)

1930 – Friedrich Gulda, Austrian pianist (d. 2000)

1931 – Jack Dodson, American actor (d. 1994)

1931 – Denise Filiatrault, French Canadian actress and director

1931 – Natwar Singh, Indian politician

1931 – Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., American politician

1931 – Hana Brady, Polish Holocaust victim (d. 1944)

1936 – Roy Hudd, English radio and television actor

1936 – Karl Lehmann, German Catholic cardinal

1937 – Yvonne Craig, American actress

1943 – Dan Coats, American politician, junior senator of Indiana

1943 – Marko Kravos, Slovenian poet

1944 – Billy Cobham, American drummer

1944 – Danny Trejo, American actor

1945 – Nicky Chinn, English songwriter (Sweet, Suzi Quatro)

1945 – Alan Flusser, American clothing designer

1946 – Robert Fripp, English guitarist (King Crimson)

1946 – Roger Earl, English rock drummer (Savoy Brown, Foghat)

1947 – Bob Edwards, American newscaster

1947 – Bill Smitrovich, American actor

1948 – Katia Dandoulaki, Greek actress

1948 – Judy Finnegan, English TV presenter (Richard & Judy)

1948 – Adrian Legg, English guitarist

1948 – Jesper Christensen, Danish actor

1950 – J. Georg Bednorz, German physicist, Nobel laureate

1950 – Ray Condo, Canadian rockabilly musician (d. 2004)

1951 – Christian Lacroix, French fashion designer

1951 – Jonathan Richman, American Protopunk singer and musician (The Modern Lovers)

1952 – James Herndon, American media psychologist

1953 – Pierce Brosnan, Irish actor

1953 – Kitanoumi Toshimitsu, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 55^th Yokozuna

1954 – Dafydd Williams, Canadian physician and astronaut

1955 – Olga Korbut, Belarussian gymnast

1955 – Jack Morris, American baseball player

1955 – Hazel O'Connor, English singer

1957 – Yuri Shevchuk, Russian singer

1955 – Debra Winger, American actress

1958 – Glenn Gregory, British musician (Heaven 17)

1958 – Gitane Demone, American Goth singer

1959 – Mare Winningham, American actress

1960 – Landon Deireragea, Nauruan politician

1961 – Kevin McDonald, Canadian comedian and actor

1961 – Charles Wright, American professional wrestler

1963 – Jon Coffelt, American artist

1963 – Mercedes Echerer, Austrian actress and politician

1964 – John Salley, American basketball player

1964 – Boyd Tinsley, American musician (Dave Matthews Band)

1964 – Edit Berces, Hungarian marathon runner

1965 – Krist Novoselic, American musician and author

1966 – Janet Jackson, American singer

1966 – Scott Reeves, American actor and singer

1966 – Thurman Thomas, American football player

1968 – Ralph Tresvant, American singer (New Edition)

1968 – Chingmy Yau, Hong Kong actress

1969 – David Boreanaz, American actor

1969 – Tucker Carlson, American television commentator

1969 – Tracey Gold, American actress

1969 – Steve Lewis, American athlete

1970 – Gabriela Sabatini, Argentine tennis player

1970 – Danielle Spencer, Australian singer and actress

1971 – Rachel Goswell, English singer and songwriter (Slowdive, Mojave 3)

1972 – Derek Mears, American actor

1972 – Khary Payton, American actor

1972 – Christian Califano, French rugby player

1973 – Jason Acuña, American television personality

1973 – Special Ed, American rapper

1973 – Tori Spelling, American actress

1974 – Laura Pausini, Italian pop singer

1974 – Sonny Sandoval, American singer (P.O.D.)

1974 – Adam Richman, American actor and television personality

1975 – Tony Kakko, Finnish singer (Sonata Arctica)

1975 – Tonéx, American singer

1976 – Brian Langtry, American lacrosse player

1976 – Dirk Nannes, Dutch-born Australian cricketer

1977 – Dolcenera, Italian singer

1977 – Jean-Sébastien Giguère, Canadian ice hockey player

1977 – Melanie Lynskey, New Zealand actress

1977 – Emiliana Torrini Icelandic singer and songwriter

1978 – David Ford, English singer and songwriter

1978 – Lionel Scaloni, Argentine footballer

1979 – McKenzie Lee, English pornographic actress

1980 – Mikel Alonso, Spanish footballer

1980 – Melanie Lofton, American journalist

1980 – Michael Ryan, American ice hockey player

1981 – Taavi Rähn, Estonian footballer

1981 – Jim Sturgess, English actor

1982 – Billy Crawford, Filipino singer and musician

1982 – Joo Ji Hoon, Korean actor and model

1982 – Łukasz Kubot, Polish tennis player

1982 – Hanna Mariën, Belgian athlete

1983 – Nancy Ajram, Lebanese singer

1983 – Daniel Kerr, Australian football player (AFL)

1983 – Kyle Wellwood, Canadian ice hockey player

1984 – Dario Cvitanich, Argentinian footballer

1984 – Jensen Lewis, American baseball player

1984 – Mickie Knuckles, American professional wrestler

1984 – Rick Rypien, Canadian hockey player (d. 2011)

1985 – Café, Brazilian footballer

1985 – Stanislav Ianevski, Bulgarian actor

1985 – Anja Mittag, German footballer

1985 – Corey Perry, Canadian ice hockey player

1985 – Okura Tadayoshi, Japanese singer (Kanjani Eight)

1986 – Megan Fox, American actress

1986 – Andy Keogh, Irish footballer

1987 – Tom Onslow-Cole, British racing driver

1990 – Thomas Sangster, English actor

1990 – Darko Sarovic, Serbian sprinter

1991 – Grigor Dimitrov, Bulgarian tennis player

1992 – Jeff Skinner, Canadian ice hockey player

1993 – Lee Ji-eun, Korean singer also known as IU

1994 – Miles Heizer, American actor

1998 – Ariel Waller, Canadian actress

Deaths

583 – Saint Brendan, Irish navigator (b. 484)

1265 – Saint Simon Stock, English saint (b. 1165)

1569 – Dirk Willems, Dutch Anabaptist

1620 – William Adams, English navigator (b. 1564)

1657 – Andrzej Bobola, Polish Jesuit missionary (b. 1591)

1667 – Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton, English statesman (b. 1607)

1669 – Pietro da Cortona, Italian architect (b. 1596)

1691 – Jacob Leisler, American colonist (b. 1640)

1703 – Charles Perrault, French author (b. 1628)

1778 – Robert Darcy, 4th Earl of Holderness, English diplomat (b. 1718)

1782 – Daniel Solander, Swedish botanist (b. 1736)

1790 – Philip Yorke, 2nd Earl of Hardwicke, English politician (b. 1720)

1830 – Joseph Fourier, French scientist (b. 1768)

1882 – Reuben Chapman, American lawyer and politician (b. 1799)

1891 – Ion Brătianu, Romanian statesman (b. 1821)

1913 – Louis Perrier, member of the Swiss Federal Council (b. 1849)

1920 – Levi P. Morton, 22nd United States Vice President (b. 1824)

1926 – Mehmed VI, last Ottoman Sultan (b. 1861)

1943 – Alfred Hoche, German psychiatrist (b. 1865)

1944 – George Ade, American author (b. 1866)

1947 – Frederick Hopkins, English biochemist, Nobel laureate (b. 1861)

1953 – Django Reinhardt, Belgian musician (b. 1910)

1954 – Clemens Krauss, Austrian conductor (b. 1893)

1955 – James Agee, American writer (b. 1909)

1956 – H. B. Reese, American confectioner, founder of Reese's (b. 1876)

1957 – Eliot Ness, American federal agent (b. 1903)

1959 – Elisha Scott, Northern Irish footballer (b. 1894)

1961 – George A. Malcolm, American jurist & educator (b. 1881)

1969 – Robert R., American AIDS victim (b. 1954)

1975 – Al Helfer, American radio sportscaster (b. 1911)

1979 – A. Philip Randolph, American civil rights activist and labor union leader (b. 1889)

1981 – Ernie Freeman, American pianist and arranger (b. 1922)

1984 – Andy Kaufman, American comedian (b. 1949)

1984 – Irwin Shaw, American author (b. 1913)

1985 – Margaret Hamilton, American actress (b. 1902)

1988 – Charles Keeping, English illustrator (b. 1924)

1988 – George Pyrounakis, Greek religious figure (b. 1910)

1990 – Sammy Davis, Jr., American entertainer (b. 1925)

1990 – Jim Henson, American puppeteer (b. 1936)

1992 – Chalino Sanchez, Mexican musician (b. 1960)

1993 – Marv Johnson, American R&B; and soul singer (b. 1938)

1996 – Jeremy Michael Boorda, American admiral (b. 1939)

1997 – Elbridge Durbrow, American diplomat (b. 1903)

2000 – Bodacious the Bull, rodeo bull (b. 1988)

2001 – Brian Pendleton, English musician (The Pretty Things) (b. 1944)

2002 – Alec Campbell, Australian soldier (b. 1899)

2002 – Big Dick Dudley, American professional wrestler (b. 1968)

2003 – Mark McCormack, American businessman (b. 1930)

2008 – David Mitton, British television director (b. 1939)

2008 – Robert Mondavi, American winemaker (b. 1913)

2010 – Ronnie James Dio, American heavy metal vocalist (b. 1942)

2010 – Hank Jones, American jazz pianist (b. 1918)

2011 – Bob Davis, Australian rules footballer (b. 1928)

2011 – Bill Skiles, American comic (b. 1931)

2011 – Edward Hardwicke, English actor (b. 1932)

Holidays and observances

Christian Feast Day:

* Aaron (Coptic Church)

* Abda and Abdjesus, and companions:

** Abdas of Susa

* Andrew Bobola

* Brendan the Navigator (Roman Catholic Church)

* Germerius

* Honoratus of Amiens

* John of Nepomuk

* Margaret of Cortona

* Peregrine of Auxerre

* Simon Stock

* Ubald (see Saint Ubaldo Day)

* May 16 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)

Mass Graves Day (Iraq)

Middlesex Day (Middlesex)

National Day, declared by Salva Kiir Mayardit (Southern Sudan)

Teachers' Day (Malaysia)

External links

BBC: On This Day

On This Day in Canada

----

Category:Days of the year Category:May

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fullname	Tony Frank Hawk
birth date	May 12, 1968
birth place	Carlsbad, California, United States
sport	Skateboarding
country
height
weight
medaltemplates	}}

}} Anthony Frank "Tony" Hawk (born May 12, 1968) is an American retired professional skateboarder and actor. Hawk gained significant fame for completing the first 900 as well as his licensed video game titles distributed by Activision. He is widely considered one of the most successful and influential pioneers of modern vertical skateboarding.

Raised in San Diego, CA, Hawk was described as being "hyperactive" as a child. His parents supported his skateboarding because it served as an outlet for his excessive energy, and as Hawk's skills developed, he became a professional skateboarder at age fourteen. In 1999, he became the first skater to land a 900. In 2002, he created the Boom Boom HuckJam, an extreme sports exhibition and tour which launched in Las Vegas. Throughout his career, Hawk has made numerous appearances in films and other media, as well as his own series of video games. He has also been involved in various philanthropic activities including his own Tony Hawk Foundation which helps build skateparks in underprivileged areas, and also including collaborations with other athletes in the charity Athletes for Hope.

Early life

Hawk was born in San Diego, California, to a retired U.S. Navy officer, Frank Hawk. His wife Nancy Hawk, is a part-time business teacher. Hawk began skateboarding at age eight after his older brother Steve gave him a used skateboard and his father constructed a ramp in their backyard. When Hawk was young, he was described as being "hyperactive," and his mother says that he was "so hard on himself and expected himself to do so many things." One time, Tony struck out in baseball and was so distraught that he hid in a ravine and had to be "physically coaxed out" by his father. His frustration with himself was so harsh that his parents had him psychologically evaluated at school. The results were that Tony was "gifted," and school advisors recommended placing him in advanced classes.

Hawk attended Jean Farb Middle School from 1980 to 1981, and recently went back there for the show "Homecoming" where he set up a ramp and did a demonstration.

He turned pro by the age of 14. He graduated from Torrey Pines High School in the North County Coastal area of San Diego, California. Tony Hawk was the world champion for 12 consecutive years.

Professional career

The 900

On July 27, 1999, Hawk was the first skater to land a 900. He successfully landed the trick, which involves completing two-and-a-half revolutions with the skateboard, on the eleventh attempt. After completing the trick, he commented, "This is the best day of my life." Nearly 12 years later Hawk was still able to land his famous 900 and posted a video of the trick via his Twitter account stating "I'm 42 and I did a 900 today."

Boom Boom HuckJam

In 2002, Tony Hawk started the Boom Boom HuckJam tour, which is a touring exhibition featuring freestyle motocross, skateboarding, and BMX with a show in Las Vegas and then on to 31 cities around the USA and eventually to Six Flags amusement parks.

Film and television appearances

thumb|left|300px|Tony Hawk (left) making a guest judge appearance, at the FlowRider Mobile Wave machine, installed for the 2009 Canadian National. In 1989, he appeared as a skateboarder in Gleaming the Cube. In 2002, he appeared in Neal H. Moritzs's and Christopher Gilcrest's film xXx playing the role of one of Xander Cages stuntman friends, and later in the movie, a skateboarder at a party. In 2004 he played himself in the Australian skateboarding movie Deck Dogz. In 2006, Tony Hawk appeared in a cameo on the film Drake & Josh Go Hollywood as himself; when Drake & Josh steal his car to escape from two crooks with the Geo (iPods) that carry illegal information for counterfeiting money. Tony Hawk also asks for the cops to give Drake & Josh a police escort to Sunset Studios, for a performance on TRL. Hawk has had a cameo in film The New Guy. Hawk appeared in Jackass: The Movie with Mat Hoffman and Bam Margera, skateboarding in a fat suit and Jackass 2, while skateboarding through an obstacle course. Tony appears in the film following the 2006 Gumball Rally, 3000 Miles, again with Bam Margera. He also plays the police officer who arrests Ryan Dunn in the movie Haggard: The Movie. Hawk also made a brief cameo appearance in Lords Of Dogtown as an astronaut, where he is shown comically falling off the skateboard as he is a "rookie". He played himself in an episode of Rocket Power.

Hawk was featured as an extra in the "Weird Al" Yankovic video "Smells like Nirvana". He can be seen sitting in the bleachers during the crowd sweep near Dick Van Patten. He also made a cameo appearance in the Simple Plan music video for "I'm Just a Kid", he can be seen, in a crowd, watching kids at a high school skating..

On television, he has also appeared in What I Like About You, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, The Tom Green Show, The Naked Brothers Band and Zeke and Luther, So Random, and All That. Hawk was a guest on the kid's show on Nickelodeon, Yo Gabba Gabba. In 2000, he played himself in Max Steel. He also guest voiced on The Simpsons episode "Barting Over", where he played himself, along with fellow San Diegans Blink-182. In the episode, Hawk lends Homer a new board from his brand where complete rookies are able to perform at the top levels. He ends up having a comical play off with him after Homer begins to show him up. On the PBS Kids show Cyberchase, he guest starred as Slider's long-lost father, Coop. In the CSI: Miami episode "Game Over" he played a game programmer who was murdered. In 2008, he played on Million Dollar Password. Hawk also played on Fox's Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader. Tony Hawk helped design the world famous Canvey Island skate park in 1982 and has hosted Cartoon Network's "Hall of Game" sports award show on February 25, 2011. Hawk was also on the Live-Action/Animated Talk Show Take Two With Phineas and Ferb.

Video games

A video game series based on his skateboarding debuted in 1999. Since then, the series has spawned 16 titles, including main series titles, spin-offs, and repackages. The latest game of the series is the Tony Hawk: Ride, which involves riding on a skateboard-shaped controller.

Amusement park rides

A series of amusement park rides known as Tony Hawk's Big Spin were built in three Six Flags parks in 2007 and 2008. The ride was originally billed as the "total Tony Hawk experience" and was designed to have the look and feel of a giant red-and-black skatepark. It offered a full "extreme sports" experience, with monitors in the queue lines displaying highlights of the history of action sports and a large spinning Tony Hawk figure crowning the ride. Additionally, a water park ride called Tony Hawk's Halfpipe was opened at Six Flags America in Bowie, MD.

In-game likeness and appearances

Tony Hawk was originally designated as the protagonist of the Tony Hawk series. Hawk appears as a player character in all of the Tony Hawk games.

Hawk's role in the series was usurped by customizable player characters in later installments, but he has remained a prominent character. In the 2003 game Tony Hawk's Underground, he is a minor non-player character whom the player meets in Tampa, Florida and skates against. Impressed with the player's skills, Hawk grants them entry into a skate competition. He later appears in Moscow to teach them the "360 Varial Heelflip Lien" move. Hawk and other skaters are briefly playable near the end of the game when they skate in a promotional video for the player's skate team, and in all gameplay modes except the story mode.

Personal life

Hawk married Cindy Dunbar in April 1990. They had a son, Riley Hawk (born December 6, 1992) whom they named for one of Hawk's ancestors. Riley also skates for Lakai Limited Footwear and Hawk's own Birdhouse Skateboards. The couple divorced in 1993.

Hawk married Erin Lee in 1996. They had two sons, Spencer (born July 26, 1999) and Keegan (born March 18, 2001). Lee and Hawk divorced in 2004.

Hawk married Lhotse Merriam on January 12, 2006, on the island of Tavarua, Fiji. The couple's first child, a daughter named Kadence Clover Hawk, was born on June 30, 2008. The couple announced their divorce on February 7, 2011.

Philanthropy

Tony launched the Tony Hawk Foundation, which has given away more than $3.4 million to help build well over 400 skateparks around the U.S.A. The Foundation supports projects in low income areas and helps underprivileged kids. In 2007, Hawk, Andre Agassi, Muhammad Ali, Lance Armstrong, Warrick Dunn, Jeff Gordon, Mia Hamm, Andrea Jaeger, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Mario Lemieux, Alonzo Mourning and Cal Ripken, Jr. founded the charity Athletes for Hope which helps professional athletes get involved in charitable causes and aims to inspire all people to volunteer and support their communities.

References

External links

tonyhawkfoundation.org

Tony's Birdhouse Skateboards website

Category:1969 births Category:American businesspeople Category:American skateboarders Category:Sportspeople from San Diego, California Category:Living people Category:People from San Diego, California Category:X-Games athletes

bg:Тони Хоук ca:Tony Hawk cs:Tony Hawk da:Tony Hawk de:Tony Hawk es:Tony Hawk eo:Tony Hawk fr:Tony Hawk it:Tony Hawk he:טוני הוק lv:Tonijs Hauks lt:Tony Hawk hu:Tony Hawk nl:Tony Hawk ja:トニー・ホーク no:Tony Hawk pl:Tony Hawk pt:Tony Hawk ru:Хоук, Тони simple:Tony Hawk sk:Anthony Frank Hawk sl:Tony Hawk fi:Tony Hawk sv:Tony Hawk th:โทนี ฮอว์ก tr:Tony Hawk

name	Christopher Hitchens
birth name	Christopher Eric Hitchens
birth date	April 13, 1949
birth place	Portsmouth, England
death date	December 15, 2011
death place	Houston, Texas, U.S.
occupation	Writer, journalist, public speaker
alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
nationality	English American
religion	None
subject	Politics, religion, history, biography, literature
spouse
relatives	Peter Hitchens (brother)
influences	George Orwell, Leszek Kolakowski, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Eliot, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, John Stuart Mill, Joseph Heller, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Edward Said, Salman Rushdie, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Llewellyn, Aldous Huxley, PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Richard Hofstadter, Paul Mark Scott, James Fenton, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Oscar Wilde, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Martin Amis, Kingsley Amis, Ian McEwan, Colm Tóibín, Bertrand Russell, Wilfred Owen, Israel Shahak, Isaiah Berlin, Émile Zola, W. H. Auden, Susan Sontag
influenced	Johann Hari, Martin Amis, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins
website	}}

Christopher Eric Hitchens, nicknamed "Hitch", (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career spanned more than four decades. He was a columnist and literary critic for The Atlantic, Free Inquiry, The Nation, Salon, Slate, Vanity Fair, World Affairs, and became a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in September 2008. He was a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits and in 2005 was voted the world's fifth top public intellectual in a Prospect/Foreign Policy poll.

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson and for his excoriating critiques of Mother Teresa, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Britain's royal family, among others. His confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure. As a political observer, polemicist and self-defined radical, he rose to prominence as a fixture of the left-wing publications in his native Britain and in the United States. His departure from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left following Ayatollah Khomeini's issue of a fatwā calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face". His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind".

Identified as a champion of the "New Atheism" movement, Hitchens described himself as an antitheist and a believer in the philosophical values of the Enlightenment. Hitchens said that a person "could be an atheist and wish that belief in god were correct", but that "an antitheist, a term I'm trying to get into circulation, is someone who is relieved that there's no evidence for such an assertion." According to Hitchens, the concept of a god or a supreme being is a totalitarian belief that destroys individual freedom, and that free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of teaching ethics and defining human civilization. He wrote at length on atheism and the nature of religion in his 2007 book God Is Not Great.

Though Hitchens retained his British citizenship, he became a United States citizen on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial on 13 April 2007, his 58th birthday. Asteroid 57901 Hitchens is named after him. His memoir, Hitch-22, was published in June 2010. Touring for the book was cut short later in the same month so he could begin treatment for newly diagnosed esophageal cancer. On 15 December 2011, Hitchens died from pneumonia, a complication of his cancer, in the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.

Life and career

Early life and education

His mother, Yvonne Jean (née Hickman), and father, Eric Ernest Hitchens (1909–1987), met in Scotland while both were serving in the Royal Navy during World War II. Yvonne was at the time a "Wren" (a member of the Women's Royal Naval Service), and Eric a "purse-lipped and silent" commander, whose ship HMS Jamaica helped sink Nazi Germany's battleship Scharnhorst in the Battle of the North Cape. His father's naval career required the family to move a number of times from base to base throughout Britain and its dependencies, including in Malta, where Christopher's brother Peter was born in Sliema in 1951.

Hitchens's mother having argued that "if there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it,", in the late fifties and early sixties he was educated at Mount House School in Tavistock in Devon, then at the independent Leys School in Cambridge, and then at Balliol College in Oxford, where he was tutored by Steven Lukes and read philosophy, politics, and economics achieving, however, only third-class honours. Hitchens was "bowled over" in his adolescence by Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley, Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, R. H. Tawney's critique on Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, and the works of George Orwell. In 1968, he took part in the TV quiz show University Challenge.

Hitchens has written of his homosexual experiences when in boarding school in his memoir, Hitch-22. These experiences continued in his college years, when he allegedly had relationships with two men who eventually became a part of the Thatcher government.

In the 1960s Hitchens joined the political left, drawn by his anger over the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons, racism, and "oligarchy", including that of "the unaccountable corporation". He would express affinity with the politically charged countercultural and protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s. However, he deplored the rife recreational drug use of the time, which he describes as hedonistic.

He joined the Labour Party in 1965, but along with the majority of the Labour students' organization was expelled in 1967, because of what Hitchens called "Prime Minister Harold Wilson's contemptible support for the war in Vietnam". Under the influence of Peter Sedgwick, who translated the writings of Russian revolutionary and Soviet dissident Victor Serge, Hitchens forged an ideological interest in Trotskyist and anti-Stalinist socialism. Shortly after he joined "a small but growing post-Trotskyist Luxemburgist sect". Throughout his student days he was on many occasions arrested and assaulted in the various political protests and activities in which he participated.

Journalistic career (1970–1981)

Hitchens began working as a correspondent for the magazine International Socialism, published by the International Socialists, the forerunners of today's British Socialist Workers Party. This group was broadly Trotskyist, but differed from more orthodox Trotskyist groups in its refusal to defend communist states as "workers' states". Their slogan was "Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism".

Hitchens left Oxford with a third class degree. His first job was with the London Times Higher Education Supplement, where he served as social science editor. Hitchens admitted that he hated the position, and was later fired; he recalled, "I sometimes think if I'd been any good at that job, I might still be doing it." In the 1970s, he went on to work for the New Statesman, where he became friends with the authors Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, among others. At the New Statesman he acquired a reputation as a fierce left-winger, aggressively attacking targets such as Henry Kissinger, the Vietnam War, and the Roman Catholic Church.

In November 1973, Hitchens' mother committed suicide in Athens in a suicide pact with her lover, a former clergyman named Timothy Bryan. They overdosed on sleeping pills in adjoining hotel rooms, and Bryan slashed his wrists in the bathtub. Hitchens flew alone to Athens to recover his mother's body. Hitchens said he thought his mother was pressured into suicide by fear that her husband would learn of her infidelity, as their marriage had been strained and unhappy. Both her children were then independent adults. While in Greece, Hitchens reported on the constitutional crisis of the military junta. It became his first leading article for the New Statesman.

American career (1981–2011)

After moving to the United States in 1981, Hitchens wrote for The Nation, where he penned vociferous critiques of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and American foreign policy in South and Central America. He became a contributing editor of Vanity Fair in 1992, writing ten columns a year. He left The Nation in 2002 after profoundly disagreeing with other contributors over the Iraq War. There is speculation that Hitchens was the inspiration for Tom Wolfe's character Peter Fallow in the 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, but others — including Hitchens (or he indicated as such while alive) — believe it to be Spy Magazines "Ironman Nightlife Decathlete" Anthony Haden-Guest. In 1987, his father died from cancer of the esophagus.

Hitchens spent part of his early career in journalism as a foreign correspondent in Cyprus. Through his work there he met his first wife Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, with whom he had two children, Alexander and Sophia. His son, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, born in 1984, has worked as a researcher for London think tanks the Policy Exchange and the Centre for Social Cohesion. Hitchens continued writing essay-style correspondence pieces from a variety of locales, including Chad, Uganda and the Darfur region of Sudan. His work took him to over 60 countries. In 1991 he received a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.

Before Hitchens' political shift, the American author and polemicist Gore Vidal was apt to speak of Hitchens as his "Dauphin" or "heir". In 2010, Hitchens attacked Vidal in a Vanity Fair piece headlined "Vidal Loco," calling him a "crackpot" for his adoption of 9/11 conspiracy theories. Also, on the back of his book Hitch-22, among the praise from notable writers and figures, a Vidal quote endorsing Hitchens as his successor is crossed out with a red 'X' and a message saying "NO C.H." His strong advocacy of the war in Iraq had gained Hitchens a wider readership, and in September 2005 he was named one of the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines. An online poll ranked the 100 intellectuals, but the magazines noted that the rankings of Hitchens (5), Noam Chomsky (1), and Abdolkarim Soroush (15) were partly due to supporters publicising the vote.

In 2007 Hitchens' work for Vanity Fair won him the National Magazine Award in the category "Columns and Commentary". He was a finalist once more in the same category in 2008 for some of his columns in Slate but lost out to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone. He won the National Magazine Award for Columns about Cancer in 2011. Hitchens also served on the Advisory Board of Secular Coalition for America and offered advice to Coalition on the acceptance and inclusion of nontheism in American life.

Literature reviews

Hitchens wrote a monthly essay on books in The Atlantic and contributed occasionally to other literary journals. One of his books, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, is a collection of such works, and Love, Poverty and War contains a section devoted to literary essays. In Why Orwell Matters, he defends Orwell's writings against modern critics as relevant today and progressive for his time. In the 2008 book Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left, many literary critiques are included of essays and other books of writers, such as David Horowitz and Edward Said.

During a three-hour interview by Book TV, he named authors who have had influence on his views, including Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, P. G. Wodehouse and Conor Cruise O'Brien.

Political views

The San Francisco Chronicle referred to Hitchens as a "gadfly with gusto". In 2009, Hitchens was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the "25 most influential liberals in the U.S. media". However, the same article noted that he would "likely be aghast to find himself on this list", since it reduces his self-styled radicalism to mere liberalism. Hitchens' political perspective can be found in his wide ranging writings which include many of the political dialogues he published.

Socialism

Hitchens became a socialist "largely [as] the outcome of a study of history, taking sides ... in the battles over industrialism and war and empire." In 2001, he told Rhys Southan of Reason magazine that he could no longer say "I am a socialist." Socialists, he claimed, had ceased to offer a positive alternative to the capitalist system. Capitalism had become the more revolutionary economic system, and he welcomed globalisation as "innovative and internationalist", but added, "I don't think that the contradictions, as we used to say, of the system, are by any means all resolved." He stated that he had a renewed interest in the freedom of the individual from the state, but that he still considered libertarianism "ahistorical" both on the world stage and in the work of creating a stable and functional society, adding that libertarians are "more worried about the over-mighty state than the unaccountable corporation" whereas "the present state of affairs ... combines the worst of bureaucracy with the worst of the insurance companies."

In 2006, in a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania debating the Jewish Tradition with Martin Amis, Hitchens commented on his political philosophy by stating, "I am no longer a socialist, but I still am a Marxist". In a June 2010 interview with The New York Times, he stated that "I still think like a Marxist in many ways. I think the materialist conception of history is valid. I consider myself a very conservative Marxist". In 2009, in an article for The Atlantic entitled "The Revenge of Karl Marx", Hitchens frames the late-2000s recession in terms of Marx's economic analysis and notes how much Marx admired the capitalist system he was calling for the end of, but says that Marx ultimately failed to grasp how revolutionary capitalist innovation was. Hitchens was an admirer of Che Guevara, commenting that "[Che's] death meant a lot to me and countless like me at the time, he was a role model, albeit an impossible one for us bourgeois romantics insofar as he went and did what revolutionaries were meant to do — fought and died for his beliefs." However, in an essay written in 1997, he distanced himself somewhat from some of Che's actions.

He continued to regard both Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky as great men, and the October Revolution as a necessary event in the modernization of Russia. In 2005, Hitchens praised Lenin's creation of "secular Russia" and his discrediting of the Russian Orthodox Church, describing it as "an absolute warren of backwardness and evil and superstition".

Iraq War and the war on terror

The years after the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie saw Hitchens looking for allies and friends. In the United States he became increasingly critical of what he called "excuse making" on the left. At the same time, he was attracted to the foreign policy ideas of some on the Republican-right that promoted pro-liberalism intervention, especially the neoconservative group that included Paul Wolfowitz. Around this time, he befriended the Iraqi dissident and businessman Ahmed Chalabi. In 2004, Hitchens stated that neoconservative support for US intervention in Iraq convinced him that he was "on the same side as the neo-conservatives" when it came to contemporary foreign policy issues. Hitchens had also been known to refer to his association with "temporary neocon allies".

Following the September 11 attacks, Hitchens and Noam Chomsky debated the nature of radical Islam and the proper response to it. In October 2001, Hitchens wrote criticisms of Chomsky in The Nation. Chomsky responded and Hitchens issued a rebuttal to Chomsky to which Chomsky again responded. Approximately a year after the September 11 attacks and his exchanges with Chomsky, Hitchens left The Nation, claiming that its editors, readers and contributors considered John Ashcroft a bigger threat than Osama bin Laden, and that they were making excuses on behalf of Islamist terrorism; in the following months he wrote articles increasingly at odds with his colleagues. This highly charged exchange of letters involved Katha Pollitt and Alexander Cockburn, as well as Hitchens and Chomsky.

Christopher Hitchens argued the case for the Iraq War in a 2003 collection of essays entitled A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq, and he has held numerous public debates on the topic with George Galloway and Scott Ritter. Though he admitted to the numerous failures of the war, and its high civilian casualties, he stood by the position that deposing Saddam Hussein was a long-overdue responsibility of the United States, after decades of poor policy, and that holding free elections in Iraq had been a success not to be scoffed at. He argued that a continued fight in Iraq against insurgents, whether they be former Saddam loyalists or Islamic extremists, was a fight worth having, and that those insurgents, not American forces, should have been the ones taking the brunt of the blame for a slow reconstruction and high civilian casualties.

Criticism of George W. Bush

Prior to September 11, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, Hitchens was highly critical of Bush's "non-interventionist" foreign policy. He also criticized Bush's support of intelligent design and capital punishment.

Although Hitchens defended Bush's post-September 11 foreign policy, he criticized the actions of U.S. troops in Abu Ghraib and Haditha, and the U.S. government's use of waterboarding, which he unhesitatingly deemed as torture after being invited by Vanity Fair to voluntarily undergo it. In January 2006, Hitchens joined with four other individuals and four organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Greenpeace, as plaintiffs in a lawsuit, ACLU v. NSA, challenging Bush's warrantless domestic spying program; the lawsuit was filed by the ACLU.

Presidential endorsements

Hitchens would elaborate on his political views and ideological shift in a discussion with Eric Alterman on Bloggingheads.tv. In this discussion Hitchens revealed himself to be a supporter of Ralph Nader in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, who was disenchanted with the candidacy of both George W. Bush and Al Gore.

Hitchens made a brief return to The Nation just before the 2004 U.S. presidential election and wrote that he was "slightly" for Bush; shortly afterwards, Slate polled its staff on their positions on the candidates and mistakenly printed Hitchens' vote as pro-John Kerry. Hitchens shifted his opinion to "neutral", saying: "It's absurd for liberals to talk as if Kristallnacht is impending with Bush, and it's unwise and indecent for Republicans to equate Kerry with capitulation. There's no one to whom he can surrender, is there? I think that the nature of the jihadist enemy will decide things in the end".

In the 2008 presidential election, Hitchens in an article for Slate stated, "I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that 'issue' I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity." He was critical of both main party candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain. Hitchens went on to support Obama, calling McCain "senile", and his choice of running mate Sarah Palin "absurd", calling Palin a "pathological liar" and a "national disgrace".

Blumenthal–Hitchens feud

Hitchens and Carol Blue chose to submit an affidavit to the trial managers of the Republican Party in the trial of impeachment of Bill Clinton. In the affidavit, Blue and Hitchens swore that their then-friend, Sidney Blumenthal, had described Monica Lewinsky as a stalker. This allegation contradicted Blumenthal's own sworn deposition in the trial, and it resulted in a hostile exchange of opinion in the public sphere between Hitchens and Blumenthal. Following the publication of Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars, Hitchens wrote several pieces in which he accused Blumenthal of manipulating the facts.

Israel–Palestine

Hitchens had said of himself, "I am an Anti-Zionist. I'm one of those people of Jewish descent who believes that Zionism would be a mistake even if there were no Palestinians."

A review of his autobiography Hitch-22 in the Jewish Daily Forward refers to Hitchens as "a prominent anti-Zionist" and says that he views Zionism "as an injustice against the Palestinians". Others have commented on his anti-Zionism as well suggesting that his memoir was "marred by the occasional eruption of [his] anti-Zionism". The Jewish Daily Forward quoted him saying of Israel's prospects for the future, "I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable."

In Slate, Hitchens pondered the notion that, instead of curing antisemitism through the creation of a Jewish state, "Zionism has only replaced and repositioned" it, saying: "there are three groups of 6 million Jews. The first 6 million live in what the Zionist movement used to call Palestine. The second 6 million live in the United States. The third 6 million are distributed mainly among Russia, France, Britain, and Argentina. Only the first group lives daily in range of missiles that can be (and are) launched by people who hate Jews." Hitchens argued that instead of supporting Zionism, Jews should help "secularize and reform their own societies", believing that unless one is religious, "what the hell are you doing in the greater Jerusalem area in the first place?"

During a town hall function in Pennsylvania with Martin Amis, Hitchens stated that "one must not insult or degrade or humiliate people" and that he "would be opposed to this maltreatment of the Palestinians if it took place on a remote island with no geopolitical implications". Hitchens described Zionism as "an ethno-nationalist quasi-religious ideology" and stated his desire that if possible, he would "re-wind the tape [to] stop Hertzl from telling the initial demagogic lie (actually two lies) that a land without a people needs a people without a land".

He continued to say that Zionism "nonetheless has founded a sort of democratic state which isn't any worse in its practice than many others with equally dubious origins." He stated that settlement in order to achieve security for Israel is "doomed to fail in the worst possible way", and the cessation of this "appallingly racist and messianic delusion" would "confront the internal clerical and chauvinist forces which want to instate a theocracy for Jews". However, Hitchens contended that the "solution of withdrawal would not satisfy the jihadists" and wondered "What did they imagine would be the response of the followers of the Prophet [Muhammad]?" Hitchens bemoaned the transference into religious terrorism of Arab secularism as a means of democratization: "the most depressing and wretched spectacle of the past decade, for all those who care about democracy and secularism, has been the degeneration of Palestinian Arab nationalism into the theocratic and thanatocratic hell of Hamas and Islamic Jihad". He maintained that the Israel-Palestine conflict is a "trivial squabble" that has become "so dangerous to all of us" because of "the faith-based element."

Hitchens collaborated on this issue with prominent Palestinian advocate Edward Said, in 1988 publishing Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question.

Domestic policy

Hitchens actively supported drug policy reform and called for the abolition of the "War on Drugs" which he described as an "authoritarian war" during a debate with William F. Buckley. He supported the legalization of cannabis for both medical and recreational purposes, citing it as a cure for glaucoma and as treatment for numerous side-effects induced by chemotherapy, including severe nausea, describing the prohibition of the drug as "sadistic". On the issue of abortion, Hitchens prioritized in affirming that he believed a fetus should be regarded as an "unborn child", but opposed the overturning of Roe v. Wade and supported the development of medical abortion techniques, and fundamentally believed in access to contraceptives and reproductive rights as "the only thing that is known to cure poverty", and in order to prevent surgical abortion altogether.

Other

Other issues Hitchens wrote on the subjects of included his support for the reunification of Ireland, abolition of the British monarchy, and his condemnation of the war crimes of Slobodan Milošević and Franjo Tuđman in Yugoslavia, and the Bosnian War.

Critiques of specific individuals

Hitchens was known for his scathing critiques of public figures. Three figures — Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, and Mother Teresa — were the targets of three separate full length texts, No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, and The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. Hitchens also wrote book-length biographical essays about Thomas Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson: Author of America), George Orwell (Why Orwell Matters), and Thomas Paine (Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man": A Biography).

However, the majority of Hitchens's critiques took the form of short opinion pieces, some of the more notable being his critiques of: Jerry Falwell, George Galloway, Mel Gibson, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, Michael Moore, Daniel Pipes, Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, and Cindy Sheehan.

Views on religion

Hitchens often spoke out against the Abrahamic religions, or what he called "the three great monotheisms" (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). He said: "The real axis of evil is Christianity, Judaism, and Islam". In his book, God Is Not Great, Hitchens expanded his criticism to include all religions, including those rarely criticized by Western secularists such as Hinduism and neo-paganism. His book had mixed reactions, from praise in The New York Times for his "logical flourishes and conundrums" to accusations of "intellectual and moral shabbiness" in the Financial Times. God Is Not Great was nominated for a National Book Award on 10 October 2007.

Hitchens contended that organized religion is "the main source of hatred in the world", "[v]iolent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children", and that accordingly it "ought to have a great deal on its conscience". In God Is Not Great, Hitchens contends that:

[A]bove all, we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment, which will base itself on the proposition that the proper study of mankind is man and woman [referencing Alexander Pope]. This Enlightenment will not need to depend, like its predecessors, on the heroic breakthroughs of a few gifted and exceptionally courageous people. It is within the compass of the average person. The study of literature and poetry, both for its own sake and for the eternal ethical questions with which it deals, can now easily depose the scrutiny of sacred texts that have been found to be corrupt and confected. The pursuit of unfettered scientific inquiry, and the availability of new findings to masses of people by electronic means, will revolutionize our concepts of research and development. Very importantly, the divorce between the sexual life and fear, and the sexual life and disease, and the sexual life and tyranny, can now at last be attempted, on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse. And all this and more is, for the first time in our history, within the reach if not the grasp of everyone.

His book rendered him one of the major advocates of the "New Atheism", and he also was made an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. Hitchens said he would accept an invitation from any religious leader who wished to debate with him. He also served on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America, a lobbying group for atheists and humanists in Washington, DC. In 2007, Hitchens began a series of written debates on the question "Is Christianity Good for the World?" with Christian theologian and pastor, Douglas Wilson, published in Christianity Today magazine. This exchange eventually became a book by the same title in 2008. During their book tour to promote the book, film producer Darren Doane sent a film crew to accompany them. Doane produced the film Collision: "Is Christianity GOOD for the World?" which was released on 27 October 2009.

On 26 November 2010 Hitchens appeared in Toronto, Canada at the Munk Debates, where he debated religion with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a convert to Roman Catholicism. Blair argued religion is a force for good, while Hitchens was against it. Preliminary results on the Munk website said 56 per cent of the votes backed the proposition (Hitchens' position) before hearing the debate, with 22 per cent against (Blair's position), and 21 per cent undecided, with the undecided voters leaning toward Hitchens, giving him a 68 per cent to 32 per cent victory over Blair, after the debate.

In February 2006, Hitchens helped organize a pro-Denmark rally outside the Danish Embassy in Washington, DC in response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.

Hitchens was accused by William A. Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Liberties of being particularly anti-Catholic. Hitchens responded, "when religion is attacked in this country [...] the Catholic Church comes in for a little more than its fair share". Hitchens had also been accused of anti-Catholic bigotry by others, including Brent Bozell, Tom Piatak in The American Conservative, and UCLA Law Professor Stephen Bainbridge. In an interview with Radar in 2007, Hitchens said that if the Christian right's agenda were implemented in the United States "It wouldn't last very long and would, I hope, lead to civil war, which they will lose, but for which it would be a great pleasure to take part." When Joe Scarborough on 12 March 2004 asked Hitchens whether he was "consumed with hatred for conservative Catholics", Hitchens responded that he was not and that he just thinks that "all religious belief is sinister and infantile". Piatak claimed that "A straightforward description of all Hitchens's anti-Catholic outbursts would fill every page in this magazine", noting particularly Hitchens' assertion that U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts should not be confirmed because of his faith.

Hitchens was raised nominally Christian, and went to Christian boarding schools but from an early age declined to participate in communal prayers. Later in life, Hitchens discovered that he was of partially Jewish ancestry. According to Hitchens, when his brother Peter took his fiancée to meet their maternal grandmother, who was then in her 90s, she said of his fiancée, "She's Jewish, isn't she?" and then announced: "Well, I've got something to tell you. So are you." Hitchens found out that his maternal grandmother, Dorothy Levin, was raised Jewish (Dorothy's father and maternal grandfather had both been born Jewish, and Dorothy's maternal grandmother – Hitchens' matrilineal great-great-grandmother – was a convert to Judaism). Hitchens' maternal grandfather converted to Judaism before marrying Dorothy Levin. Hitchens' Jewish-born ancestors were immigrants from Eastern Europe (including Poland). In an article in the The Guardian on 14 April 2002, Hitchens stated that he could be considered Jewish because Jewish descent is matrilineal. In a 2010 interview at New York Public Library, Hitchens stated that he was against circumcision, a Jewish tradition, and that he believed "if anyone wants to saw off bits of their genitalia they should do when they're grown up and have made the decision for themselves".

In February 2010, he was named to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers.

Personal life

Marriages and children

Hitchens married Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, in a Greek Orthodox church in 1981; the couple had a son, Alexander and a daughter, Sophia. In 1989 Hitchens left Meleagrou for Carol Blue, an American writer. The couple married in a New York synagogue; they had a daughter, Antonia.

Relationship with his younger brother

Hitchens' younger brother by two-and-a-half years, Peter Hitchens, is a Christian and socially conservative journalist in London, although, like his brother, he had been a Trotskyist in the 1970s. The brothers had a protracted falling-out after Peter wrote that Christopher had once joked that he "didn't care if the Red Army watered its horses at Hendon" (a suburb of London). and at the Pew Forum on 12 October 2010.

Smoking and drinking

A June 2006 profile on Hitchens by NPR stated: "Hitchens is known for his love of cigarettes and alcohol — and his prodigious literary output." However, in late 2007 he gave up smoking, undergoing an epiphany in Madison, Wisconsin. His brother Peter later wrote of his surprise at this decision. It was while writing his memoir Hitch-22 that he resumed smoking cigarettes and continued until his cancer diagnosis. Hitchens admitted to drinking heavily; in 2003 he wrote that his daily intake of alcohol was enough "to kill or stun the average mule", noting that many great writers "did some of their finest work when blotto, smashed, polluted, shitfaced, squiffy, whiffled, and three sheets to the wind."

British politician George Galloway, founder of the socialist Respect Party, on his way to testify in front of a United States Senate sub-committee investigating the scandals in the U.N. Oil-for-Food programme, called Hitchens a "drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay", to which Hitchens quickly replied, "only some of which is true". Later, in a column for Slate promoting his debate with Galloway which was to take place on 14 September 2005, he elaborated on his prior response: "He says that I am an ex-Trotskyist (true), a 'popinjay' (true enough, since the word's original Webster's definition is a target for arrows and shots), and that I cannot hold a drink (here I must protest)."

Oliver Burkeman writes, "Since the parting of ways on Iraq [...] Hitchens claims to have detected a new, personalised nastiness in the attacks on him, especially over his fabled consumption of alcohol. He welcomes being attacked as a drinker 'because I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem.' He drinks, he says, 'because it makes other people less boring. I have a great terror of being bored. But I can work with or without it. It takes quite a lot to get me to slur.'"

In the question and answer session following a speech Hitchens gave to the Commonwealth Club of California on 9 July 2009, one audience member asked what was Hitchens' favorite whisky. Hitchens replied that "the best blended scotch in the history of the world" is Johnnie Walker Black Label. He also playfully indicated that it was the favorite whisky of, among others, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, the Palestinian Authority, the Libyan dictatorship, and "large branches of the Saudi Arabian Royal Family". He concluded his answer by calling it the "breakfast of champions" and exhorted the audience to "accept no substitute".

In his 2010 memoir Hitch-22, Hitchens wrote: "There was a time when I could reckon to outperform all but the most hardened imbibers, but I now drink relatively carefully." He described his current drinking routine on working-days as follows: "At about half past midday, a decent slug of Mr. Walker's amber restorative, cut with Perrier water (an ideal delivery system) and no ice. At luncheon, perhaps half a bottle of red wine: not always more but never less. Then back to the desk, and ready to repeat the treatment at the evening meal. No 'after dinner drinks' — ​most especially nothing sweet and never, ever any brandy. 'Nightcaps' depend on how well the day went, but always the mixture as before. No mixing: no messing around with a gin here and a vodka there."

Reflecting on the lifestyle that supported his career as a writer he said:

I always knew there was a risk in the bohemian lifestyle ... I decided to take it because it helped my concentration, it stopped me being bored — it stopped other people being boring. It would make me want to prolong the conversation and enhance the moment. If you ask: would I do it again? I would probably say yes. But I would have quit earlier hoping to get away with the whole thing. I decided all of life is a wager and I'm going to wager on this bit ... In a strange way I don't regret it. It's just impossible for me to picture life without wine, and other things, fueling the company, keeping me reading, energising me. It worked for me. It really did.

Esophageal cancer and death

In June 2010, Hitchens postponed his book tour for Hitch-22 to undergo treatment for esophageal cancer. He announced that he was undergoing treatment in a Vanity Fair piece entitled "Topic of Cancer". Hitchens said that he recognised the long-term prognosis was far from positive, and that he would be a "very lucky person to live another five years". In November 2010, Hitchens canceled a scheduled appearance in New York, where he was to debate religion writers David Hazony and Stephen Prothero on the subject of the Ten Commandments. Earlier that year, he published a piece in Vanity Fair on the subject, and was working on a book about the Ten Commandments as well.

During his illness, Hitchens was under the care of Francis Collins and was the subject of Collins' new cancer treatment which maps out the human genome and selectively targets damaged DNA.

In April 2011, Hitchens was forced to cancel an appearance at the American Atheist Convention, and instead sent a letter that stated, "Nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument I am currently having with the specter of death." He closed with "And don't keep the faith." The letter also dismissed the notion of a possible deathbed conversion, in which he claimed that "redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before." In June 2011, he spoke to a University of Waterloo audience via a home video link.

In October 2011, Hitchens made a public appearance at the Texas Freethought Convention in Houston, TX. Atheist Alliance of America was also a participant in the joint convention.

In November 2011, George Eaton wrote in the New Statesman:

The tragedy of Hitchens' illness is that it came at a time when he enjoyed a larger audience than ever. Of his tight circle of friends – Amis, Fenton, McEwan, Rushdie – Hitchens was the last to gain international renown, yet he is now read more widely than any of them." Eaton revealed that Hitchens would like to be remembered as a man who fought totalitarianism in all its forms although many remember him as a "lefty who turned right", and his support of the Iraq War and not his support of the War in Bosnia on the side of the Moslems. Eaton concluded, "The great polemicist is certain to be remembered, but, as he is increasingly aware, perhaps not as he would like."

Hitchens died on 15 December 2011 at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

In accordance with his wishes, his body was donated to medical research.

Reactions to death

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said, "Christopher Hitchens was a complete one-off, an amazing mixture of writer, journalist, polemicist, and unique character. He was fearless in the pursuit of truth and any cause in which he believed. And there was no belief he held, that he did not advocate with passion, commitment and brilliance. He was an extraordinary, compelling and colorful human being whom it was a privilege to know."

Richard Dawkins, a British evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford and a friend of Hitchens', said, "I think he was one of the greatest orators of all time. He was a polymath, a wit, immensely knowledgeable, and a valiant fighter against all tyrants including imaginary supernatural ones."

Norman Finkelstein, an American political scientist and author, wrote, "When I first learned that Hitchens was diagnosed with an excruciating and terminal cancer, it caused me to doubt my atheism. The news came just as Hitchens was about to go on a book tour for his long-awaited memoir. It was as if he was setting out on his victory lap when the adulating crowds were supposed to fawn over him and — wham! — his legs were lopped off at the kneecaps. The irony could not be more perfect: the god that the vindictive but witty Mr. Hitchens made a career scoffing at turns out to be ... vindictive but witty. When I heard that Hitchens was dead, I took a deep breath. The air felt cleaner, as if after a 40-day and 40-night downpour." Finkelstein also added, "I get no satisfaction from Hitchens's passing. Although he was the last to know it, every death is a tragedy, if only for the bereft child — or, as in the case of Cindy Sheehan, bereft parent — left behind.

Sam Harris, an American writer and neuroscientist, wrote, "I have been privileged to witness the gratitude that so many people feel for Hitch’s life and work — for, wherever I speak, I meet his fans. On my last book tour, those who attended my lectures could not contain their delight at the mere mention of his name — and many of them came up to get their books signed primarily to request that I pass along their best wishes to him. It was wonderful to see how much Hitch was loved and admired — and to be able to share this with him before the end. I will miss you, brother."

Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health and the former head of the Human Genome Project who helped treat Hitchens' illness, wrote, "I will miss Christopher. I will miss the brilliant turn of phrase, the good-natured banter, the wry sideways smile when he was about to make a remark that would make me laugh out loud. No doubt he now knows the answer to the question of whether there is more to the spirit than just atoms and molecules. I hope he was surprised by the answer. I hope to hear him tell about it someday. He will tell it really well."

British columnist and author Peter Hitchens, who had a tumultuous relationship with his older brother Christopher, wrote that he and Christopher "got on surprisingly well in the past few months, better than for about 50 years as it happens," and praised his brother as "courageous."

Irish-American political journalist Alexander Cockburn, founder of the left-wing political magazine CounterPunch wrote an obituary critical of Hitchens, criticizing his support for the Iraq War, criticisms of Mother Teresa, and criticisms of their mutual friend Edward Said and concluded, "I found the Hitchens cult of recent years entirely mystifying. He endured his final ordeal with pluck, sustained indomitably by his wife Carol."

Tributes followed from the philosopher Daniel Dennett, the physicist Lawrence Krauss, the actor Stephen Fry, the writer Ian McEwan; and Vanity Fair, in which he was remembered as an "incomparable critic and masterful rhetorician".

Film and television appearances

As referenced from the Internet Movie Database, Hitchens Web or Charlie Rose. {|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center" |- ! Year ! Film and/or Television |- |1984 |align="left" | Opinions: "Greece to their Rome" |- |1988 |align="left" | Frontiers (TV series) |- |1993 |align="left" | Everything You Need to Know |- |1994 |align="left" | Tracking Down Maggie: The Unofficial Biography of Margaret Thatcher |- |1994 |align="left" | Hell's Angel |- |1996 |align="left" | Where's Elvis This Week? |- |1996–2010 |align="left" | Charlie Rose (talk show) (13 episodes) |- |1998 |align="left" | Princess Diana: The Mourning After |- |1999–2002 |align="left" | Dennis Miller Live (TV show) (4 episodes) |- |2002 |align="left" | The Trials of Henry Kissinger |- |2003 |align="left" | Hidden in Plain Sight |- |2003–2009 |align="left" | Real Time with Bill Maher (TV show) (6 episodes) |- |2004 |align="left" | Mel Gibson: God's Lethal Weapon |- |2004–2006 |align="left" | Newsnight (TV show) (3 episodes) |- |2004–2010 |align="left" | The Daily Show (TV show) (4 episodes) |- |2005 |align="left" | Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (TV show)(1 episode, s03e05) |- |2005 |align="left" | The Al Franken Show (TV show)(1 episode) |- |2005 |align="left" | Confronting Iraq: Conflict and Hope |- |2005 |align="left" | Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism |- |2005–2008 |align="left" | Hardball with Chris Matthews (TV show)(3 episodes) |- |2006 |align="left" | American Zeitgeist |- |2006 |align="left" | Blog Wars |- |2007 |align="left" | Manufacturing Dissent |- |2007 |align="left" | Question Time (TV series) (1 episode) |- |2007 |align="left" | Your Mommy Kills Animals |- |2007 |align="left" | Personal Che |- |2007 |align="left" | Heckler |- |2007 |align="left" | In Pot We Trust |- |2008 |align="left" | Discussions with Richard Dawkins: Episode 1: "The Four Horsemen" |- |2008 | style="text-align:left;"| ''Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed '' |- |2009 |align="left" | Holy Hell |- |2009 |align="left" | Presidency |- |2009 |align="left" | Collision: "Is Christianity GOOD for the World?" |- |2010 |align="left" | Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune |}

Selected publications

1984 Cyprus. Quartet. Revised editions as Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger, 1989 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and 1997 (Verso)

1988 Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (contributor; co-editor with Edward Said) Verso, ISBN 0-86091-887-4 Reissued, 2001

1990 The Monarchy, Chatto & Windus Ltd

1990 Blood, Class and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies,Farrar Straus & Giroux (T)(June 1990)

1995 The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, Verso

1997 The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification, Verso

1999 No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family, Verso

2000 Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, Verso

2001 The Trial of Henry Kissinger. Verso.

2001 Letters to a Young Contrarian, Basic Books

2002 Why Orwell Matters also Orwell's Victory, Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-03050-5

2004 Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays, Thunder's Mouth, Nation Books, ISBN 1-56025-580-3

2005 Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, Eminent Lives/Atlas Books/HarperCollins Publishers, ISBN 0-06-059896-4

2007 "Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography ",Atlantic Monthly Press,ISBN-10: 0871139553

2007 The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer, [Editor] Perseus Publishing. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6

2007 God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Twelve/Hachette Book Group USA/Warner Books, ISBN 0-446-57980-7 / Published in the UK as God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion, Atlantic Books, ISBN 978-1-84354-586-6

2008 Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq and the Left (with Simon Cottee and Thomas Cushman), New York University Press

2008 Is Christianity Good for the World? — A Debate (co-author, with Douglas Wilson), Canon Press, ISBN 1-59128-053-2

2010 Hitch-22: A Memoir, Twelve, ISBN 978-0-446-54033-9

2011 Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens, Twelve. UK edition as Arguably: Selected Prose, Atlantic, ISBN 1-4555-0277-4 / ISBN 978-1-4555-0277-6

References

External links

Daily Hitchens, an archive of material on or by Hitchens

in 2010

Drexel Interview (One-hour video interview) with Paula Marantz Cohen, June 2010

Christopher Hitchens collected news and commentary at The Boston Globe

"Journalist Christopher Hitchens fully embraces the Bush war camp" from the World Socialist Website, October 2002

"Christopher Hitchens" feature story in Prospect magazine, May 2008

"Incendiary Author Spares No Targets" feature story in The New Zealand Herald, May 2008

"Such, Such are His Joys" David Brooks assessment in The New York Times, 1 July 2010

Hitchens on Dying with Cancer, video interview with The Atlantic, August 2010

"Christopher Hitchens: 'You have to choose your future regrets'" The Guardian, 13 November 2010

"Christopher Hitchens's Jewish Problem" feature article on Jewish Ideas Daily, 13 December 2010

A debate between Hitchens and Berlinski 2010

Outspoken and outrageous: Christopher Hitchens a 60 Minutes profile aired 6 March 2011

Booknotes interview with Hitchens on For the Sake of Argument, 17 October 1993.

;Articles by Hitchens

Contributor page at Vanity Fair

Column archive at The Atlantic

Article archive at The Guardian

Hitchens articles at Slate

Article archive at Journalisted

Category:1949 births Category:2011 deaths Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Category:Anti-Zionism Category:Anti–Vietnam War activists Category:Antitheists Category:Atheism activists Category:British people of Jewish descent Category:British people of Polish descent Category:British republicans Category:Cancer deaths in Texas Category:Deaths from esophageal cancer Category:English atheists Category:English biographers Category:English emigrants to the United States Category:English essayists Category:English expatriates in the United States Category:English humanists Category:English journalists Category:English Marxists Category:English political writers Category:Genital integrity activists Category:Materialists Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:Old Leysians Category:People from Portsmouth Category:Slate (magazine) people Category:The Nation (U.S. magazine) people Category:University Challenge contestants

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name	Joey Cape
background	solo_singer
birth name	Randal Joseph Cape
Birth date	November 16, 1966
instrument	Vocals, guitar
genre	Punk rock, skate punk, alternative rock, indie rock, folk punk, alternative country
occupation	Singer-songwriter, musician, producer
years active	1989–present
label	Fat Wreck Chords, Suburban Home
associated acts	Lagwagon, Bad Astronaut, Joey Cape's Bad Loud, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Afterburner, The Playing Favorites, Tony Sly, Jon Snodgrass,
notable instruments	}}

Randal "Joey" Cape (born November 16, 1966) is an American singer, songwriter and producer. Active since 1989, Cape is best known as the frontman of the seminal California punk rock band Lagwagon.

Cape released his first solo album, Bridge, on October 21, 2008 on Suburban Home Records. His second album Doesn't Play Well with Others, was released on February 2011, after he released each song on the album each month of 2010, collecting them all on CD and vinyl in the end of 2010.

Biography

In addition to his work with Lagwagon, he was the lead vocalist for the experimental band Bad Astronaut until they disbanded due to death of drummer Derrick Plourde and is also the guitarist in the cover band Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. In addition, Joey Cape released a split CD with Tony Sly of No Use for a Name, featuring acoustic versions of Lagwagon and No Use For a Name songs. Both Cape and Sly also contributed one unreleased/new song to the split. Cape's was entitled, 'Violet', a song written for his daughter of the same name. He has also contributed a song called 'Minus' for the album Protect: A Benefit for the National Association to Protect Children.

In 1996, Cape created a record label called My Records that released its debut album, Nerf Herder's self-titled album. My Records is no longer in operation.

In 1999-2000, Cape spent the hiatus of Lagwagon working on two side projects: Bad Astronaut and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. This slowed down Cape's work on Lagwagon until 2002. Cape, with Lagwagon, later released Blaze in 2003 and Resolve in 2005, the latter being a tribute to Lagwagon / Bad Astronaut drummer Derrick Plourde, who took his own life in 2005. They recently released an EP, I Think My Older Brother Used to Listen to Lagwagon, on August 19, 2008 on Fat Wreck Chords. Since 2009, Lagwagon has been on hiatus from touring and writing.

Cape has produced records by The Ataris, Ridel High, Nerf Herder and his own bands Lagwagon and Bad Astronaut. He is also involved in a project called Afterburner, working alongside fellow Bad Astronaut Todd Capps, as well as opening a solo Myspace page with new acoustic songs and demos. He has also written songs for and played guitar with a new band of old friends called The Playing Favorites, who recently released their first album entitled I Remember When I Was Pretty.

On October 21, 2008 Cape released his first solo acoustic record Bridge on Bad Taste Records in Europe, and on Suburban Home Records in the US.

In August 2009, Cape announced that he was recording material for a second solo acoustic album, entitled Doesn't Play Well with Others. The album was released throughout 2010, one track at a time, with one song being released by Cape in each month of the year, with the full album with all 12 tracks to be released in January 2011. The album was delayed a few times until it was released on June 1, 2011, on CD and vinyl.

On April 25, 2011, Cape has revealed that he is working on a new band project called Joey Cape's Bad Loud and that he already recorded a full-length album with the band, to feature electric full-band renditions of acoustic songs from his two solo albums Bridge and Doesn't Play Well with Others. The band's debut self-titled album was released on June 9, 2011, on BandCamp.

Solo discography

2004 - Acoustic (with Tony Sly)

2008 - Bridge

2009 - Who Wants to Get Down? (7" with Jon Snodgrass)

2010 - Tony Sly / Joey Cape Split 7" (with Tony Sly)

2010 - Liverbirds (with Jon Snodgrass)

2011 - Doesn't Play Well with Others

;Compilations

2005 - Protect: A Benefit for the National Association to Protect Children

2009 - Under the Influence, vol. 11 (Vinyl Collective's Under the Influence series) - "Watch Me Bleed" (Tears for Fears cover)

References

External links

Official website

Lagwagon Official website

Bad Astronaut Official website

The Playing Favorites Official website

Afterburner Myspace

Bad Astronaut Myspace

Joey Cape Myspace

Joey Cape soundcloud

The Playing Favorites myspace

Category:1966 births Category:Living people Category:American punk rock singers Category:American male singers Category:American record producers Category:Musicians from California Category:Me First and the Gimme Gimmes members

de:Joey Cape es:Joey Cape fr:Joey Cape it:Joey Cape nl:Joey Cape pt:Joey Cape ru:Кейп, Джоуи sv:Joey Cape

name	Jim Henson
birth name	James Maury Henson
birth date	September 24, 1936
birth place	Greenville, Mississippi, U.S.
death date	May 16, 1990
death place	New York City, New York, U.S.
nationality	American
education	Northwestern High School
alma mater	University of Maryland, College Park
home town	Leland, Mississippi
occupation	PuppeteerFilm directorTelevision producer
years active	1954–1990
spouse
children	Lisa Henson,Brian Henson,John Henson,Cheryl Henson,Heather Henson
parents	Betty Marcella (nee Brown),Paul Ransom Henson }}

James Maury "Jim" Henson (September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990) was an American puppeteer best known as the creator of The Muppets. As a puppeteer, Henson performed in various television programs, such as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, films such as The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper, and creator of advanced puppets for projects like Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth. He was also an Oscar-nominated film director, Emmy Award-winning television producer, and the founder of The Jim Henson Company, the Jim Henson Foundation, and Jim Henson's Creature Shop. He died of Streptococcus pyogenes on May 16, 1990.

Henson, who was born in Mississippi, and educated at University of Maryland, College Park, was one of the most widely known puppeteers in history. He created Sam and Friends as a freshman in College Park. After suffering struggles with programs that he created, he eventually was selected to participate in Sesame Street. During this time, he also participated in the comedy series Saturday Night Live. The success of Sesame Street spawned The Muppet Show, which featured Muppets created by Henson. He also co-created with Michael Jacobs the television show Dinosaurs during his final years. In 1992, he posthumously received the Courage of Conscience Award from The Peace Abbey, and on June 16, 2011, he posthumously received the Disney Legends Award.

Early life

Henson was born in Greenville, Mississippi, the younger of two boys. His parents were Betty Marcella (née Brown) and Paul Ransom Henson, an agronomist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He was raised as a Christian Scientist and spent his early childhood in Leland, Mississippi, moving with his family to Hyattsville, Maryland, near Washington, DC, in the late 1940s. He later remembered the arrival of the family's first television as "the biggest event of his adolescence," having been heavily influenced by radio ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and the early television puppets of Burr Tillstrom (on Kukla, Fran, and Ollie) and Bil and Cora Baird.

In 1954, while attending Northwestern High School, he began working for WTOP-TV, creating puppets for a Saturday morning children's show called The Junior Morning Show. After graduating from high school, Henson enrolled at the University of Maryland, College Park, as a studio arts major, thinking he might become a commercial artist. A puppetry class offered in the applied arts department introduced him to the craft and textiles courses in the College of Home Economics, and he graduated in 1960 with a B.S. in home economics. As a freshman, he had been asked to create Sam and Friends, a five-minute puppet show for WRC-TV. The characters on Sam and Friends were forerunners of Muppets, and the show included a prototype of Henson's most famous character: Kermit the Frog.

In the show, he began experimenting with techniques that would change the way puppetry had been used on television, including using the frame defined by the camera shot to allow the puppeteer to work from off-camera. Believing that television puppets needed to have "life and sensitivity," Henson began making characters from flexible, fabric-covered foam rubber, allowing them to express a wider array of emotions at a time when many puppets were made of carved wood. A marionette's arms are manipulated by strings, but Henson used rods to move his Muppets' arms, allowing greater control of expression. Additionally, Henson wanted the Muppet characters to "speak" more creatively than was possible for previous puppets - which had seemed to have random mouth movements – so he used precise mouth movements to match the dialogue.

When Henson began work on Sam and Friends, he asked fellow University of Maryland freshman Jane Nebel to assist him. The show was a financial success, but after graduating from college, Jim began to have doubts about going into a career as a puppeteer. He wandered off to Europe for several months, where he was inspired by European puppeteers who look on their work as an art form. Upon Henson's return to the United States, he and Jane began dating. They were married in 1959 and had five children, Lisa (b. 1960), Cheryl (b. 1961), Brian (b. 1962), John (b. 1965), and Heather (b. 1970).

Struggles and projects in the 1960s

Despite the success of Sam and Friends, which ran for six years, Henson spent much of the next two decades working in commercials, talk shows, and children's projects before being able to realize his dream of the Muppets as "entertainment for everybody". The popularity of his work on Sam and Friends in the late fifties led to a series of guest appearances on network talk and variety shows. Henson himself appeared as a guest on many shows, including The Ed Sullivan Show. This greatly increased exposure led to hundreds of commercial appearances by Henson characters throughout the sixties.

Among the most popular of Henson's commercials was a series for the local Wilkins Coffee company in Washington, D.C., in which his Muppets were able to get away with a greater level of slapstick violence than might have been acceptable with human actors. In the first Wilkins ad, a Muppet named Wilkins (with Kermit's voice) is poised behind a cannon seen in profile. Another Muppet named Wontkins (with Rowlf's voice) is in front of its barrel. Wilkins asks, "What do you think of Wilkins Coffee?" and Wontkins responds gruffly, "Never tasted it!" Wilkins fires the cannon and blows Wontkins away, then turns the cannon directly toward the viewer and ends the ad with, "Now, what do you think of Wilkins?" Henson later explained, "Till then, [advertising] agencies believed that the hard sell was the only way to get their message over on television. We took a very different approach. We tried to sell things by making people laugh." The first seven-second commercial for Wilkins was an immediate hit and was syndicated and reshot by Henson for local coffee companies across the United States; he ultimately produced more than 300 coffee ads. The same setup was used to pitch Kraml Milk in the Chicago, Il., area and Red Diamond coffee.

In 1963, Henson and his wife moved to New York City, where the newly formed Muppets, Inc. would reside for some time. Jane quit muppeteering to raise their children. Henson hired writer Jerry Juhl in 1961 and puppeteer Frank Oz in 1963 to replace her. Henson later credited both writers with developing much of the humor and character of his Muppets. Henson and Oz developed a close friendship and a performing partnership that lasted 27 years; their teamwork is particularly evident in their portrayals of the characters of Bert and Ernie and Kermit and Fozzie Bear.

Henson's sixties talk show appearances culminated when he devised Rowlf, a piano-playing anthropomorphic dog. Rowlf became the first Muppet to make regular appearances on a network show, The Jimmy Dean Show. From 1963 to 1966, Henson began exploring film-making and produced a series of experimental films. His nine-minute Time Piece was nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for an Oscar for Short Film in 1966. The year 1969 saw the production of the NBC-TV movie The Cube – another Henson-produced experimental film.

Sesame Street

In 1969, Joan Ganz Cooney and the team at the Children's Television Workshop asked Henson to work on Sesame Street, a visionary children's program for public television. Part of the show was set aside for a series of funny, colorful puppet characters living on the titular street. These included Oscar the Grouch, Bert and Ernie, Cookie Monster and Big Bird. Henson performed the characters of Ernie, game-show host Guy Smiley, and Kermit, who appeared as a roving television news reporter. It was around this time that a frill was added around Kermit's neck to make him more frog-like. The collar was functional as well: it covered the joint where the Muppet's neck and body met.

At first, Henson's Muppets appeared separately from the realistic segments on the Street, but after a poor test-screening in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the show was revamped to integrate the two, placing much greater emphasis on Henson's work. Though Henson would often downplay his role in Sesame Street's success, Cooney frequently praised Jim's work and, in 1990, the Public Broadcasting Service called him "the spark that ignited our fledgling broadcast service." The success of Sesame Street also allowed Henson to stop producing commercials. He later remembered that "it was a pleasure to get out of that world".

In addition to creating and performing Muppet characters, Henson was involved in producing various film and animation insets during the first two seasons. During the first, Henson produced a series of counting films for the numbers 1 through 10, which always ended with a baker (voiced by Henson) falling down the stairs while carrying the featured number of desserts. For seasons two to seven, Henson worked on a variety of inserts for the numbers 2 through 12, in a number of different styles – including film ("Dollhouse", "Number Three Ball Film"), stop-motion ("King of Eight", "Queen of Six"), cut-out animation ("Eleven Cheer"), and computer animation ("Nobody Counts To 10").

Concurrently with the first years of Sesame Street, Henson directed Tales From Muppetland, a short series of TV movie specials – in the form of comedic tellings of classic fairy tales – aimed at a young audience and hosted by Kermit the Frog. The series included Hey, Cinderella!, The Frog Prince, and The Muppet Musicians of Bremen.

Expansion of audience

Concerned that the company was becoming typecast as a purveyor of solely children's entertainment, Henson, Frank Oz, and his team targeted an adult audience with a series of sketches on the first season of the groundbreaking comedy series Saturday Night Live (SNL). Eleven "Dregs and Vestiges" sketches, set mostly in the Land of Gorch, aired between October 1975 and January 1976, with four additional appearances in March, April, May, and September. Henson recalled that "I saw what [creator Lorne Michaels] was going for and I really liked it and wanted to be a part of it, but somehow what we were trying to do and what his writers could write for it never gelled." The SNL writers never got comfortable writing for the characters, and frequently disparaged Henson's creations; one, Michael O'Donoghue, memorably quipped, "I won't write for felt."

Around the time of his characters' final appearances on SNL, Henson began developing two projects featuring the Muppets: a Broadway show and a weekly television series. In 1976 the series was initially rejected by the American networks who believed that Muppets would only appeal to a child audience. Henson was finally able to convince British impresario Lew Grade to finance the show, which would be shot in the United Kingdom and syndicated worldwide. That same year, he abandoned work on his Broadway show and moved his creative team to England, where The Muppet Show began filming. The Muppet Show featured Kermit as host, and a variety of other memorable characters, notably Miss Piggy, Gonzo the Great, and Fozzie Bear. Kermit's role on The Muppet Show was often compared by his co-workers to Henson's role in Muppet Productions: a shy, gentle boss with "a whim of steel" who "[ran] things as firmly as it is possible to run an explosion in a mattress factory." Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, remembered that Henson "would never say he didn't like something. He would just go 'Hmm.' That was famous. And if he liked it, he would say, 'Lovely!' " Henson himself recognized Kermit as an alter-ego, though he thought that Kermit was bolder than his creator; he once said of Kermit, "He can say things I hold back."

Jim Henson was the performer for several well known characters, including Kermit the Frog, Rowlf the Dog, Dr. Teeth, The Swedish Chef, Waldorf, Link Hogthrob, and the Muppet Newsman.

Transition to the big screen

Three years after the start of The Muppet Show, the Muppets appeared in their first theatrical feature film, 1979's The Muppet Movie. The film was both a critical and financial success; it made US$65.2 million domestically and (at the time) was the 61st highest-grossing film ever made.

A song from the film, "The Rainbow Connection", sung by Henson as Kermit, hit #25 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1981, a Henson-directed sequel, The Great Muppet Caper, followed, and Henson decided to end the still-popular Muppet Show to concentrate on making films. From time to time, the Muppet characters continued to appear in made-for-TV-movies and television specials.

In addition to his own puppetry projects, Henson also aided others in their work. In 1979, he was asked by the producers of the Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back to aid make-up artist Stuart Freeborn in the creation and articulation of enigmatic Jedi Master Yoda. Henson suggested to Star Wars creator George Lucas that he use Frank Oz as the puppeteer and voice of Yoda. Oz voiced Yoda in Empire and each of the five subsequent Star Wars films, and the naturalistic, lifelike Yoda became one of the most popular characters in the Star Wars films. Lucas even lobbied unsuccessfully to have Oz nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award.

In 1982, Henson founded the Jim Henson Foundation to promote and develop the art of puppetry in the United States. Around that time, he also began creating darker and more realistic fantasy films that did not feature the Muppets and displayed "a growing, brooding interest in mortality." With 1982's The Dark Crystal, which he co-directed with Frank Oz and also co-wrote, Henson said he was "trying to go toward a sense of realism—toward a reality of creatures that are actually alive [where] it's not so much a symbol of the thing, but you're trying to [present] the thing itself." To provide a visual style distinct from the Muppets, the puppets in The Dark Crystal were based on conceptual artwork by Brian Froud.

Crystal was a financial and critical success, and, a year later, the Muppet-starring The Muppets Take Manhattan (directed by Frank Oz) did fair box-office business, grossing $25.5 million domestically and ranking as one of the top 40 films of 1984. However, 1986's Labyrinth, a Crystal-like fantasy that Henson directed by himself, was considered (in part due to its cost) a commercial disappointment. Despite some positive reviews (The New York Times called it "a fabulous film"), the commercial failure of Labyrinth demoralized Henson to the point that son Brian Henson remembered the time of its release as being "the closest I've seen him to turning in on himself and getting quite depressed." The film later became a cult classic. Henson and his wife also separated the same year, although they remained close for the rest of his life. Jane later said that Jim was so involved with his work that he had very little time to spend with her or their children. All five of his children began working with Muppets at an early age, partly because, Cheryl Henson remembered, "One of the best ways of being around him was to work with him".

Later career

Though he was still engaged in creating children's programming, such as the successful eighties shows Fraggle Rock and the animated Muppet Babies, Henson continued to explore darker, mature themes with the folk tale and mythology oriented show The Storyteller (1988). The Storyteller won an Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program but was canceled after nine episodes. The next year, Henson returned to television with The Jim Henson Hour, which mixed lighthearted Muppet fare with riskier material. The show was critically well-received and won Henson another Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Variety or Music Program, but was canceled after 13 episodes due to low ratings. Henson blamed its failure on NBC's constant rescheduling.

In late 1989, Henson entered into negotiations to sell his company to The Walt Disney Company for almost $150 million, hoping that, with Disney handling business matters he would "be able to spend a lot more of my time on the creative side of things." By 1990, he had completed production on a television special, The Muppets at Walt Disney World, and a Disney World (Later Disney's California Adventure as well) attraction, Jim Henson's Muppet*Vision 3D, and was developing film ideas and a television series titled Muppet High.

Natural History Project and Dinosaurs

In the late 1980s, Henson worked with illustrator/designer William Stout on a feature film starring animatronic dinosaurs with the working title of The Natural History Project. In 1991, news stories written around the premiere of the Jim Henson Company-produced Dinosaurs sitcom highlighted the show's connection to Henson. "Jim Henson dreamed up the show's basic concept about three years ago," said a New York Times article in April 1991. "'He wanted it to be a sitcom with a pretty standard structure, with the biggest differences being that it's a family of dinosaurs and their society has this strange toxic life style,' said [his son] Brian Henson. But until The Simpsons took off, said Alex Rockwell, a vice president of the Henson organization, 'people thought it was a crazy idea.'" A New Yorker article said that Henson continued to work on a dinosaur project (presumably the Dinosaurs concept) until the "last months of his life."

Illness and death

During production of his later projects, Henson began to experience flu-like symptoms. On May 4, 1990, Henson made an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show, one of his last television appearances. At the time, he mentioned to his publicist that he was tired and had a sore throat, but felt that it would go away.

On May 12, 1990, Henson traveled to Ahoskie, North Carolina, with his daughter Cheryl to visit his father and stepmother. The next day, feeling tired and ill, he consulted a physician in North Carolina, who could find no evidence of pneumonia by physical examination and prescribed no treatment except aspirin. Henson returned to New York on an earlier flight and cancelled a Muppet recording session scheduled for May 14.

Henson's wife Jane, from whom he was separated, came to visit and sat with him talking throughout the evening. At 2 A.M. on May 15, Henson was having trouble breathing and began coughing up blood. He suggested to his wife that he might be dying, but did not want to bother going to the hospital. She later told People Magazine that it was likely due to his desire not to be a bother to people.

Two hours later, Henson finally agreed to go to New York Hospital. By the time he was admitted at 4:58 A.M., he could no longer breathe on his own and had abscesses in his lungs. He was placed on a mechanical ventilator to help him breathe, but his condition deteriorated rapidly into septic shock despite aggressive treatment with multiple antibiotics. 20 hours and 23 minutes after he was admitted, Henson died on the morning of May 16, 1990 at the age of 53.

The official cause of death was first reported as Streptococcus pneumonia, a bacterial infection. Bacterial pneumonia is usually caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, an alpha-hemolytic species of Streptococcus. Henson's cause of death, however, was organ failure resulting from Streptococcus pyogenes, a severe Group A streptococcal infection. S. pyogenes is the bacterial species that causes strep throat, scarlet fever, and rheumatic fever. It can also cause other infections.

On May 21, a public memorial service was held in New York City at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Another one was held on July 2 at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. As per Henson's wishes, no one in attendance wore black, and a Dixieland jazz band finished the service by performing "When The Saints Go Marching In". Harry Belafonte sang "Turn the World Around," a song he had debuted on The Muppet Show, as each member of the congregation waved, with a puppeteer's rod, an individual, brightly-colored foam butterfly. Later, Big Bird (performed by Caroll Spinney) walked out onto the stage and sang Kermit the Frog's signature song, "Bein' Green". Henson was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery. His ashes were scattered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at his ranch.

In the final minutes of the two-and-a-half hour service, six of the core Muppet performers sang, in their characters' voices, a medley of Jim Henson's favorite songs, culminating in a performance of "Just One Person" that began with Richard Hunt singing alone, as Scooter. "As each verse progressed," Henson employee Chris Barry recalled, "each Muppeteer joined in with their own Muppets until the stage was filled with all the Muppet performers and their beloved characters." The funeral was later described by LIFE as "an epic and almost unbearably moving event." The image of a growing number of performers singing "Just One Person" was recreated for the 1990 television special The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson and inspired screenwriter Richard Curtis, who attended the London service, to write the growing-orchestra wedding scene of his 2003 film Love Actually.

Henson's sudden death resulted in an outpouring of public and professional affection. There have since been numerous tributes and dedications in his memory. Henson’s companies, which are now run by his children, continue to produce films and television shows.

Business legacy

The Jim Henson Company and the Jim Henson Foundation continued after his death, producing new series and specials. Jim Henson's Creature Shop, founded by Henson, also continues to build creatures for a large number of other films and series (e.g. the science fiction production Farscape, the film adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the movie MirrorMask) and is considered one of the most advanced and well respected creators of film creatures. His son Brian and daughter Lisa are currently the co-chairs and co-CEOs of the company; his daughter Cheryl is the president of the foundation. Steve Whitmire, a veteran member of the Muppet puppeteering crew, has assumed the roles of Kermit the Frog and Ernie, the most famous characters formerly played by Jim Henson.

On February 17, 2004, it was announced that the Muppets (excluding the Sesame Street characters, which are separately owned by Sesame Workshop) and the Bear in the Big Blue House properties had been sold by Henson's heirs to The Walt Disney Company.

The Jim Henson Company retains the Creature Shop, as well as the rest of its film and television library including Fraggle Rock, Farscape, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth.

In 2010, it was announced that the first major biography of Henson, sanctioned by the family and the Jim Henson Legacy, was under way.

Tributes

Henson is honored both as himself and as Kermit the Frog on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Only two other people have received this honor: Mel Blanc, the voice actor of Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker, and Walt Disney, the voice actor of Mickey Mouse.

The theater at his alma mater, Northwestern High School, in Hyattsville, MD, is named in his honor.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze and The Muppet Christmas Carol are both dedicated to him.

Stephen Lynch produced a song titled "Jim Henson's Dead", in which he pays homage to many of the characters from The Muppet Show and Sesame Street.

Apple Computer's "Think Different" advertising campaign featured Henson.

Henson featured in The American Adventure in Epcot at the Walt Disney World Resort.

Philip Roth often quotes Jim Henson in his Sabbath's Theater as the "great regret" for Mickey Sabbath.

The Jim Henson Museum, located in his hometown of Leland, Mississippi, features an assortment of original Muppet characters, official certificates from the Mississippi Legislature honoring Henson and his characters, and a statue of Kermit in the middle of the stream behind the museum.

The 1990 television special The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson allowed the Muppets themselves to pay tribute to Henson. The special featured interviews with Steven Spielberg and others.

Tom Smith's Henson tribute song, "A Boy and His Frog," won the Pegasus Award for Best Filk Song in 1991.

Henson was featured in Boyz II Men's 1991 video, "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday".

Episode 2880 of Sesame Street (which aired on November 15, 1991) was dedicated in his memory, with a memorial card following the closing credits.

The classes of 1994, 1998, and 1999 at the University of Maryland, College Park, Henson's alma mater, commissioned a life-size statue of Henson and Kermit the Frog, which was dedicated on September 24, 2003, Henson's 67th birthday. The statue cost $217,000, and is displayed outside Maryland's student union. In 2006, Maryland introduced 50 statues of their school mascot, Testudo the Terrapin, with various designs chosen by different sponsoring groups. Among them was Kertle, a statue by Washington DC artist Elizabeth Baldwin designed to look like Kermit the Frog.

On the evening of October 25, 2000, Comedy Central had a banner sign that said: Jim Henson [1936-1990].

In 2003, Jim Henson was honored at the annual Norsk Høstfest in Minot, North Dakota.

Oury Atlan, Thibaut Berland, and Damien Ferri wrote, directed, and animated a 3D tribute to Henson entitled Over Time that was shown as part of the 2005 Electronic Theater at SIGGRAPH.

Vintage footage of Henson was featured in an American Express credit card commercial in 2008.

The Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, United States, has acquired more than 700 puppets created by Henson and his studio, including some of the earliest Muppets. Many of these are displayed in the museum exhibit Jim Henson: Puppeteer. In September 2008, the Center opened Jim Henson: Wonders From His Workshop, highlighting creations from Fraggle Rock, Labyrinth, and other later works.

On September 24, 2011, Henson's hometown of Leland will rename one of their bridges "The Rainbow Connection" to honor Henson and his work.

Further reading

References

External links

The Jim Henson Legacy

Art Directors Club biography and portrait

Jim Henson at Find A Grave

Some Wilkins Coffee ads

The Jim Henson Works at the University of Maryland: 70+ digital videos available to students, scholars and visitors at the University of Maryland (College Park, MD)

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