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Cold War espionage

Cold War espionage describes the intelligence gathering activities during the Cold War (c. 1947–1991) between the Western allies (primarily the US and Western Europe) and the Eastern Bloc (primarily the Soviet Union and allied countries of the Warsaw Pact). Both relied on a wide variety of military and civilian agencies in this pursuit.

While several organizations such as the CIA and KGB became synonymous with Cold War espionage, many others played key roles in the collection and protection of the section concerning detection of spying, and analysis of a wide host of intelligence disciplines.

Background
Soviet espionage in the United States during the Cold War was an outgrowth of World War II nuclear espionage, with both sides utilizing and evolving techniques and practices developed during World War II. Cold War espionage has been fictionally depicted in works such as the James Bond and Matt Helm books and movies.

The Cold War was a state of political and military tension after World War II led by the United States (and the Western Bloc) and the Soviet Union (and the Eastern Bloc). After World War II, the victory of the Soviet Union over Germany granted them considerable territorial spoils; the Soviet Union banded together these states economically and politically creating a superpower challenging the might of the United States. Prior even to the United States' use of nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union had been developing the technology to make similar devices. Although the two powers never engaged in a full-scale war, both countries were constantly preparing for an all-out nuclear war. Cold War espionage was focused on gaining an advantage in information about the enemies' capabilities, especially related to atomic weaponry.

During the Cold War, information was a key commodity. It was vital to know what the adversary was up to, and the possibility of using the hi-tech surveillance that is used today was not around. Instead of trusting technology, states relied on spies: people who infiltrated enemy territory and tried to discover information while staying undetected.

Espionage activities continued from prior to the beginning of the cold war in the late thirties- early forties, and all the way through the late 1960s and even continuing through today. Due to the nature of espionage, the information that we can gather about these activities is limited, equally as limited is the prosecutorial reach with regards to people who commit espionage are subjected to (especially in the United States). These spies were decoding encrypted information, and using many skills to gain an advantage over enemy countries.

Major spy rings
Cambridge Five: The Cambridge Five consisted of five members that were recruited from the University of Cambridge in the 1930s. There is debate surrounding the exact timing of their recruitment, but it is generally believed that they were not recruited as agents until after they had graduated. The group included Kim Philby (cryptonym 'Stanley'), Donald Maclean (cryptonym 'Homer'), Guy Burgess (cryptonym 'Hicks'), Anthony Blunt (cryptonyms 'Tony', 'Johnson'), and John Cairncross (cryptonym 'Liszt'). There were many others that were accused of being a part of the Cambridge Spy Ring, but these five members were collectively known as the Cambridge Five.

Portland spy ring: The Portland spy ring operated in England, as a Soviet spy ring, from the 1950s until 1961 when the core of the network were arrested by British Security Services. This spy ring was unique because they did not use the cover of an embassy as the cover for their spies. Its members included Harry Houghton, Ethel Gee, Gordon Lonsdale, and most famously Morris and Lona Cohen (cryptonym Peter and Helen Kroger).

Ware Group: Sleeper spy ring in US headed by J. Peters, first organized under Harold Ware, inherited by Whittaker Chambers (under orders from Peters), and also included: John Abt, Marion Bachrach (Abt's sister), Lee Pressman, Alger Hiss, Donald Hiss, Charles Kramer, Nathan Witt, Henry Collins, George Silverman, John Herrmann, Nathaniel Weyl, and Victor Perlo. When Chambers defected in 1938, the Ware Group went dormant and then broke up. Harry Dexter White (below) contributed materials to Chambers but not as part of the Ware Group.

Silvermaster spy ring: The Silvermaster Spy Ring was led by Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of the Treasury and the second most influential member of the Treasury department. His job was to aid placement of Soviet spies within the United States Government. The United States Treasury Department was successfully infiltrated by many Soviet spies, the most successful of which belonged to the Silvermaster Spy Ring. Harold Glasser, Elizabeth Bentley, and Nathan Silvermaster were other major members of the Silvermaster Spy Ring.

Atomic spies: While the Atomic Spies were not exactly a network of spies, the collective information that was obtained by this group of Soviet spies was critical to the Soviet Union's ability to build an atomic bomb. Many of the members of the Atomic spies group worked for, or around, the Manhattan Project, or the United States building of the atomic bomb. This group included:

 * Klaus Fuchs: a German-born British theoretical physicist. He worked with the British delegation on the Manhattan Project.
 * Morris Cohen: an American who gained insight to the plans from the secret laboratory at Los Alamos and delivered it to the designers of the Soviet atomic bomb.
 * Harry Gold: an American who was a courier for Klaus Fuchs and David Greenglass.
 * David Greenglass: an American machinist at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. He gave crude schematics of lab experiments to the Russians.
 * Theodore Hall: an American, and the youngest physicist at Los Alamos, gave a detailed description of the Fat Man plutonium bomb and several processes for purifying plutonium to the Soviets.
 * George Koval: an American-born son of a Russian family. He obtained information from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Dayton Project about the Urchin (detonator) used for the Fat Man plutonium bomb.
 * Irving Lerner: an American film director who was caught photographing the cyclotron at the University of California in 1944.
 * Alan Nunn May: a British physicist who worked for the British nuclear research and then in Canada on the Manhattan Project. His uncovering in 1946 was responsible for the United States restricting sharing atomic secrets with the British.
 * Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: Americans who were involved in the coordinating and recruiting of an espionage network. Ethel's brother was David Greenglass.
 * Saville Sax: an American who acted as a courier for Klaus Fuchs and Theodore Hall.
 * Morton Sobell: an American engineer who admitted to spying for the Soviets and uncovered how extensive the Rosenberg's recruiting network was.

Known spies working for the Western Bloc during the Cold War

 * Aleksandr Dmitrievich Ogorodnik- A Soviet Diplomat who photographed confidential diplomatic cables and sent them to the US.
 * Arkady Shevchenko- A Soviet Diplomat and the highest ranking Soviet to defect to the west. As Under Secretary General at the United Nations, he passed on Soviet secrets to US officials.
 * Boris Morros- Originally a Soviet agent, Morros became an FBI informant who reported on the Sobel Spy ring.
 * Boris Yuzhin- A double agent who while working at the KGB revealed Soviet recruitment programs.
 * Gerry Droller- A German CIA official who recruited Cuban Exiles for the Bay of Pigs invasion.
 * Heinz Barwich- A German Nuclear Physicist who worked on the Soviet atomic bomb project. He defected to the West in 1964 and testified before the US Senate.
 * John Birch- An American Baptist Missionary who was killed gathering intelligence during the Chinese Civil War.
 * Miles Copeland Jr.- A CIA agent who had a hand in the overthrow of the Syrian government in 1949 and the Iranian government of 1953.
 * Milton Bearden- US CIA Station Chief in Pakistan during the Afghanistan Civil War

 * Nicholas Shadrin- A Soviet Naval Officer who defected to the West.
 * Otto von Bolschwing- A former Nazi spy who was recruited by the US before the end of the war. Played a part in the Greek Civil War.
 * Philip Agee- An American CIA agent who became repulsed by CIA actions abroad. He was accused of attempting to sell state secrets to Soviet and Cuba officials, a charge that he denied up until his death.
 * Robert Baer- A former CIA agent, now a writer, and inspiration for George Clooney's character in the film "Syriana."
 * Ruth Fischer- Co-founder of the Austrian Communist Party. Became disillusioned with Stalinism. See also "The Pond."
 * Yosef Amit- A former Israeli intelligence official. Recruited by the CIA and revealed Israeli troop positions and Israeli foreign policy goals.
 * Yuri Nosenko- A KGB defector who experienced harsh interrogation techniques at the hands of the CIA.
 * Adolf Tolkachev- A Soviet electronic engineer who provided key documents to the CIA.
 * Michael Goleniewski- Polish triple agent who potentially helped identify more Soviet spies than any other defector. He also alleged there was a Soviet-controlled organisation of former Nazis - which he nicknamed 'Hacke' - that was active in postwar West Germany.

Known spies working for the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War

 * Aldrich Ames - (born May 26, 1941) - A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative for over thirty-one years but was a KGB mole
 * Elizabeth Bentley
 * Louis F. Budenz - Labor Activist in the United States. Became a member of the Communist Party and later headed Buben Group of Spies.
 * Ethel Gee - minor member of the Portland spy ring
 * Dieter Gerhardt - Convicted Soviet spy in South Africa along with his wife of many years who acted as his courier.
 * David Greenglass - atomic spy specialist that worked in both the Manhattan Project, the Uranium Facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and at the Los Alamos facility in New Mexico. Arrested in June 1950
 * Gunvor Galtung Haavik - Employee for the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Arrested in January 1977. Betrayed by another Soviet spy.
 * Robert Hanssen - FBI agent who spied for the Soviet Union.
 * Robert Lee Johnson - An American sergeant that joined the KGB when stationed in East Berlin. Turned in by his wife and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Johnson was killed by his own son in 1972.
 * Alexander Koral - Well known member of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). Was in charge of many Soviet Spies residing in the United States during World War II and the Cold War era.
 * Andrew Daulton Lee - Collaborated with a childhood friend, Christopher John Boyce (an American Defense Industry Employee). Lee bought United States satellite secrets and sold them to the Soviet Union. He was arrested in December 1976 under suspicion of killing a Mexico City Police Officer.
 * Oleg Lyalin - Soviet agent that defected from the KGB. Lyalin's defection was forced by his arrest in London. Was given a new identity and placed into a protective housing until his death in 1995.
 * Hede Massing - Austrian Actress turned Soviet intelligence operative in both the United States and Europe. Member of the "Redhead group".
 * Alexandru Nicolschi - (Александр Серге́евич Никольский) A Romanian communist activist and Soviet agent under the Communist Regime. Remained active until the 1960s. Was supportive of violent politics. General inspector for the secret police.
 * Selmer Nilsen - Nilsen was a spy for the GRU during the Cold War. Stationed in Bodø for approximately seven years. Arrested after seventeen years of espionage in 1967. Was pardoned in 1971.
 * Alan Nunn May - A convicted Soviet Spy and former British Physicist. Gave atomic research secrets to the Soviet Union during the gray area of World War II and the Cold War beginning. Confessed to charges of espionage in 1946. Did not believe that his acts should be defined as treason.
 * Earl Edwin Pitts - Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent turned Soviet Spy. Arrested in an FBI sting operation. Pleaded guilty to charges of espionage in 1997.
 * Geoffrey Prime
 * Norman J. Rees oil engineer, Soviet agent, then double agent for FBI; committed suicide after exposure by newspaper
 * John Alexander Symonds - English metropolitan police officer who also worked as a KGB agent. During the 1970s, Symonds was assigned to be a "Romeo spy", directed to work as a playboy and seduce women working in Western embassies while trying to learn other country's secrets. He revealed himself to be a KGB agent in the 1980s. Surprisingly, Symonds was never prosecuted or convicted.
 * Julian Wadleigh - Worked for the Department of State in the United States of America in the 1930s and 1940s. Was a key witness in the trials of Alger Hiss. Wadleigh's main goal in being a spy was to stop the rise of Fascism. He strongly believed that the information he took from the Department of State could not be used against the United States, but that it could be used against Germany and Japan.
 * John Anthony Walker - United States Navy Chief Warrant Officer and communications specialist. Convicted of espionage for the Soviet Union from 1968 to 1985. Was required to testify against former chief petty officer Jerry Whitworth. Walker's job duties allowed him to inform the Soviet Union where the United States' submarines would be located.
 * Theodore Hall - American physicist and Soviet spy who passed atomic secrets to Soviet intelligence during the Manhattan Project, and hydrogen bomb information after 1946.
 * Johannes Clemens - a former Gestapo who served the Soviets as a double agent reporting on West German intelligence.
 * Hans Sommer - a former SD deputy who initially identified Soviet spies for West German intelligence, then flipped to the Soviets until 1953 when he was fired, after which he worked for the East German Stasi.
 * Heinz Felfe - a former Nazi officer who became “Moscow's most important mole in the West German intelligence service” and exposed over 100 CIA agents in the Soviet Union. Felfe was a Soviet double agent in West Germany from about 1951 to his arrest in 1961.
 * Kim Philby - Soviet double agent within British intelligence, recruited in Austria in 1934. He passed secrets to the Soviets as a member of the Cambridge Five until 1963. He came from an upper-class background, and seemed particularly devoted to his belief in communism during almost 30 years as a spy.
 * Markus Wolf - the spymaster for the East German Stasi, seen for many years as an elusive "man without a face" by Western intelligence.
 * Jeffrey Carney - an East German spy.

Surveillance devices of the Cold War

 * 1) Sight Unseen - an F21 'Ammer' spy camera. Currently on exhibit in Berlin, Germany. Used by the Stasi secret police.
 * 2) Sedgley OSS .38 Glove Pistol - 0.38 single shot pistol. Designed by Stanley M. Height. The bullet must be fired at point-blank range to be effective.
 * 3) Maxwell Smart's Other Shoe - A miniature camera stowed in the heel of the spy's shoe. This gadget was used by most spies at the time including those in the CIA.
 * 4) The Bulgarian Umbrella - This umbrella had a very small attachment that allowed it to inject a small poisonous dart (usually containing ricin) into the spy's target.
 * 5) Can You Hear Me Now? - an eavesdropping device
 * 6) Lipstick Gun - a 4.5mm gun that was placed inside a tube of lipstick. Many museums and historians refer to it as the "Kiss of Death." Just a simple twist would fire a bullet.
 * 7) Photo Overdrive -  A tool that was much larger than many other spy equipment. Technicians created a car door that would take hidden, infrared camera images at night.
 * 8) KGB Disappearing Ink Pen - Invisible inks were very commonly used by spies during the Cold War. When used a spy would need to steam the ink, dry the paper, and re-steam it in order to get rid of any indentations.
 * 9) "Belly Buster" Drill - A CIA gadget developed in the 1960s. Used to drill holes into rooms for the planting or mounting of listening devices
 * 10) Letter Remover
 * 11) Dragonfly Insectothopter - Classified as a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle). Contained a hidden camera and designed to look like a dragonfly.
 * 12) Microdot Camera - Using a period sized film, this device was used to film pages of secret documents.
 * 13) Spy Wallet - a camera hidden inside a wallet
 * 14) F-21 Pocket Camera - Issued by the KGB. Concealed in a buttonhole with a wire running to a device that allows the spy to take a picture.
 * 15) Louder, Please, MyWatch Can't Hear You
 * 16) American-British Spy Tunnel

American satellite surveillance systems
Weapons System 117L - Weapons System 117L was the first program designed to develop space-based reconnaissance satellite systems. Several satellite systems would be developed through this program including Corona, the Satellite and Missile Observation System (SAMOS), and the Missile Detection Alarm System (MIDAS).

SAMOS - SAMOS or the Satellite and Missile Observation system was one of the first of a series of short lived satellite systems developed by the United States, operated from October 1960 to November 1962. The SAMOS satellite system was one of the first systems developed through the WS-117L program. The system consisted of three primary components: visual reconnaissance, communications, and electronic intelligence gathering. Of the eleven launched attempted, 8 were successful. The program was likely cancelled because of poor image quality. The satellite could produce photos with 100 foot resolution. It was also heavily overshadowed by the Corona system operated by the CIA.

MIDAS - MIDAS or the Missile Defense Alarm System was a satellite system operated by the United States between 1960 and 1966. This system was designed to be made of twelve satellites, although only nine satellites were successfully launched. The system was designed to provide early warning of Soviet missile launches. The system was eventually cancelled because of the high price and because of the slow warning times. This system, however, would be directly responsible for technologies used in its successors.

Corona - Corona was among the first of a series of reconnaissance satellite systems developed through the WS-117L program. The Corona program was headed by the Central Intelligence Agency along with the Air Force. Corona satellites were used to photograph Soviet and other installations. The first successful Corona mission began on August 10, 1963. The Corona satellite system was expedited largely in part to the U-2 incident in 1960. All of the Corona missions, with the exception of the KH-11 Kennan program, would make use of photographic film, which would have to survive re-entry through the atmosphere and be recovered.

Keyhole - Keyhole was the designation for the initial Corona launches, which included KH-1, KH-2, KH-3, KH-4A, and KH-4B. The name was used because it is analogous to spying through the keyhole of a door. 144 satellites would be launched through this program, and 102 returned usable photos.

Keyhole/Argon (KH-5) - Argon was the designation the surveillance satellites, manufactured by Lockheed, used by the United States from February 1961 to August 1964. Argon made use of photographic film in a way similar of the original Corona satellites. Of the twelve known launches, seven were not successful for varying reasons.

Keyhole/Lanyard (KH-6) - Lanyard was the designation for the first, albeit unsuccessful, attempt to establish a high resolution, optical satellite system. This program would be led by the newly established National Reconnaissance Office, and operated from March–July 1963. Because it was only able to achieve a resolution similar to that of the KH-4 satellites, it was discontinued after only 3 launches.

Keyhole/Gambit (KH-7) - Gambit was the next of a series of satellites operated by the United States, by the National Reconnaissance Office, from July 1963 to June 1967. It was among the first successful Corona missions as it produced some of the first high resolution photos. These photos were typically of Soviet and Chinese missile emplacements. Gambit satellites would make use of a three camera system and missions would last typically up to eight days.

Keyhole/Gambit III (KH-8) - The Gambit III satellite system was amongst the longest serving satellite reconnaissance programs operated by the United States during the Cold War. This satellite system would operate from July 1966 to April 1984. Of the fifty-four launch attempts, only three would fail, all of which were attributed to rocket failure. The average mission time of the Gambit III satellite systems were thirty-one days. The Gambit III satellites would differ from the Gambit I satellites in that the Gambit III had a four camera system, which carried over twelve thousand feet of film, and were able to produce resolutions as small as four inches.

Keyhole/Hexagon (KH-9) - The Hexagon satellite system, commonly known as Big Bird, this satellite system was operated from 1971 and 1986. The Hexagon system was officially known as the Broad Coverage Photo Reconnaissance satellites. These satellites photographed large areas of the Earth at a time with moderate resolution. These satellites were also used for mapping missions, which were used in map making. Three Hexagon missions also included electronic intelligence or ELINT gathering capabilities. These were used to eavesdrop on soviet communications and on soviet missile launches. Twenty launches were attempted, only one was unsuccessful. These satellites operated for an increasing duration of time, with the longest mission lasting 275 days.

Keyhole/Kennan (KH-11) - The KH-11 Kennan, which goes under the code name Crystal, was first launched in 1976, and missions are still ongoing. According to leaked documents, this program is currently operation under the code name Evolved Enhanced Crystal. The Kennan satellite system was the first satellite system to use electro-optical imaging, which gives real time imaging capabilities. The resolution of these satellites is estimated to be as low as 2 inches. These satellites are unique in that they have been placed in Sun-synchronous orbits, which allow them to use shadows to help discern ground features. These satellites became famous in 1978 when a CIA employee tried to leak the design of the satellite to the Soviets. He was tried and convicted of espionage.

Keyhole/Improved Crystal (KH-12) – The later KH-11 satellites have been called KH-12 improved Crystal or Ikon satellites. These satellites also had increased download times which allowed for faster processing of photos. It is also suspected that these satellites may have stealth technology to avoid detection by other satellites.

Vela - The Vela satellite system was developed to by the United States to ensure that the Soviet Union complied with the Partial Test Ban Treaty which was ratified in 1963. The satellites were designed to monitor for nuclear explosions in space and in the atmosphere by measuring for neutrons and gamma rays. A total of twelve Vela satellites were launched during the course of the Cold War. The Vela satellites became publicly famous because of the Vela Incident which occurred on 22 September 1979. It was theorized at the time that it was a nuclear test conducted by South Africa and Israel, but new evidence does not support this theory. They have also been used in the study of Gamma-Ray Bursts.

American surveillance aircraft
U-2 – The U-2 aircraft, known as the "Dragon Lady", was developed by the Lockheed Skunk Works, and was first flown on August 1, 1955. The aircraft was initially flown by the CIA, but control was later transferred to the Air Force. The aircraft was designed to fly at altitudes of 70,000 ft. The U-2 was equipped with a camera which had a resolution of 2.5 feet at an altitude of 60,000 ft. The first overflights of the Soviet Union by the U-2 began in May 1956. The aircraft became publicly prominent after a U-2 aircraft flown by Francis Gary Powers was hit by an SA-2 missile and crash landed in the USSR.

SR-71 – The SR-71 Blackbird is a long-range reconnaissance aircraft developed by Lockheed Skunk Works, and designed by Kelly Johnson. The aircraft is known for setting speed and altitude records. The SR-71 was equipped with optical and infrared imaging systems, electronic intelligence gathering systems, side looking airborne radar, and recorders for those systems which are listed. The aircraft required two personnel to pilot it, one to pilot the aircraft, and a Reconnaissance Systems Officer (RSO) to operate the systems.

Soviet satellite surveillance systems
Zenit (Zenith) - The Zenith Satellite program, was a satellite program developed by the Soviet Union and used from 1961 to 1994. During the course of its lifespan over 500 Zenith satellites were launched, making it the most used satellite system ever. The Soviets concealed the nature of the system by giving the satellites the Kosmos designation. The Zenith satellites had an advantage over the satellites developed by the United States, in that they could be reused. A total of eight variants would be developed for a variety of mission types, ranging from high-resolution photography to ELINT to cartographic and topographic missions.

Yantar - The Yantar satellites, designed to replace the Zenit satellite system, are among the newest Russian satellites. Yantar satellites have been launched as recently as 2015. Two variants of the satellite have been developed for high-resolution photography and for medium-resolution broad spectrum imaging.

Historiography
After 1990s new memoirs and archival materials have opened up the study of espionage and intelligence during the Cold War. Scholars are reviewing how its origins, its course, and its outcome were shaped by the intelligence activities of the United States, the Soviet Union, and other key countries. Special attention is paid to how complex images of one's adversaries were shaped by secret intelligence that is now publicly known.

The Soviet Union proved especially successful in placing spies in Britain and West Germany. It was largely unable to repeat its successes in the 1930s in the United States. NATO, on the other hand, also had a few successes of importance, of whom Oleg Gordievsky was perhaps the most influential. He was a senior KGB officer who was a double agent on behalf of Britain's MI6, providing a stream of high-grade intelligence that had an important influence on the thinking of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. He was spotted by Aldrich Ames a Soviet agent who worked for the CIA, but he was successfully exfiltrated from Moscow in 1985. Biographer Ben McIntyre argues he was the West's most valuable human asset, especially for his deep psychological insights into the inner circles of the Kremlin. He convinced Washington and London that the fierceness and bellicosity of the Kremlin was a product of fear, and military weakness, rather than an urge for world conquest. Thatcher and Reagan concluded they could moderate their own anti-Soviet rhetoric, as successfully happened when Mikhail Gorbachev took power, thus ending the Cold War.

title: Cold War espionage


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Worksop

Worksop is a market town in the Bassetlaw District in Nottinghamshire, England. It is located 15 mi south of Doncaster, 15 mi south-east of Sheffield and 24 mi north of Nottingham. Located close to Nottinghamshire's borders with South Yorkshire and Derbyshire, it is on the River Ryton and not far from the northern edge of Sherwood Forest. Other nearby towns include Chesterfield, Gainsborough, Mansfield and Retford. The population of the town was recorded at 44,733 in the 2021 Census.

Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman history
Worksop was part of what was called Bernetseatte (burnt lands) in Anglo-Saxon times. The name Worksop is likely of Anglo-Saxon origin, deriving from a personal name "We(o)rc" plus the Anglo-Saxon placename element "hop" (valley). The first element is interesting because while the masculine name Weorc is unrecorded, the feminine name Werca (Verca) is found in Bede's Life of St Cuthbert. A number of other recorded place names contain this same personal name element.

In the Domesday Book of 1086, Worksop appears as "Werchesope". Thoroton states that the Domesday Book records that before the Norman Conquest, Werchesope (Worksop) had belonged to Elsi, son of Caschin, who had "two manors in Werchesope, which paid to the geld as three car". After the conquest, Worksop became part of the extensive lands granted to Roger de Busli. At this time, the land "had one car. in demesne, and twenty-two sochm. on twelve bovats of this land, and twenty-four villains, and eight bord. having twenty-two car. and eight acres of meadow, pasture wood two leu. long, three quar. broad." This was valued at 3l in Edward the Confessor's time and 7l in the Domesday Book. De Busli administered this estate from his headquarters in Tickhill.

The manor then passed to William de Lovetot, who established a castle and endowed the Augustinian priory around 1103. After William's death, the manor was passed to his eldest son, Richard de Lovetot, who was visited by King Stephen, at Worksop, in 1161. In 1258, a surviving inspeximus charter confirms Matilda de Lovetot's grant of the manor of Worksop to William de Furnival (her son).

Medieval and early modern history
A skirmish occurred in the area during the Wars of the Roses on 16 December 1460, commonly known as the Battle of Worksop.

In 1530, Worksop was visited by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who was on his way to Cawood, in Yorkshire. "Then my lord [Wolsey] intending the next day to remove from thence [Newstead Abbey] there resorted to him the Earl of Shrewsbury's keeper, and gentlemen, sent from him, to desire my lord, in their maister's behalf, to hunt in a parke of their maister's, called Worsoppe Parke." (Cavendish's Life of Wolsey)

A surviving (Cotton) manuscript written by Henry VIII nominated Worksop as one of three places in Nottinghamshire (along with Welbeck and Thurgarton) to become "Byshopprykys to be new made", but nothing was to come of this (White 1875), and the priory later became a victim of the dissolution of the monasteries – being closed in 1539, with its prior and 15 monks pensioned off. All the priory buildings, except the nave and west towers of the church, were demolished at this time and the stone reused elsewhere.

In 1540, John Leland noted that Worksop castle had all but disappeared, saying it was: "clene down and scant knowen wher it was". Leland noted that at that time Worksop was "a praty market of 2 streates and metely well buildid."

Worksop Manor became a prison for Mary, Queen of Scots in 1568. In 1580s the new house was built on the same site for George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury. He was the husband of Elizabeth Talbot, Bess of Hardwick. In the hearth tax records of 1674, Worksop is said to have had 176 households, which made it the fourth-largest settlement in Nottinghamshire after Nottingham (967 households), Newark (339), and Mansfield (318). At this time, the population is estimated to have been around 748 people.

Modern history

By 1743, 358 families were in Worksop, with a population around 1,500. This had risen by 1801 to 3,391, and by the end of the 19th century had reached 16,455.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, Worksop benefitted from the building of the Chesterfield Canal, which passed through the town in 1777, and the subsequent construction of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway in 1849. This led to growth that was further boosted by the discovery of coal seams beneath the town.

Worksop and area surrounding are known as the "Gateway to the Dukeries" due to the former ducal seats of Clumber House, Thoresby Hall, Welbeck Abbey, and Worksop Manor either owned by the Dukes of Newcastle, Portland and Kingston.

Waterways

Worksop is connected to the UK Inland Waterways network by the Chesterfield Canal. It was built to export coal, limestone and lead from Derbyshire; iron from Chesterfield; and corn, deals, timber, groceries and general merchandise into Derbyshire. Today, the canal is used for leisure purposes together with the adjacent Sandhill Lake.

Railway

Worksop lies on the Sheffield-Lincoln line and the Robin Hood line. Northern services run between Sheffield, Lincoln and Leeds; East Midlands Railway services from Nottingham, via Mansfield, terminate at the station.

Roads
Worksop lies on the A57 and A60, with links to the A1 and M1. The A57 Worksop bypass was opened on Thursday 1 May 1986, by Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Michael Spicer and the Chairman of Bassetlaw council. The bypass had been due to open in October 1986 and was built by A.F. Budge of Retford; as part of the contract, a small part of the A60, Turner Road, was opened on Monday 29 September 1986, three months early.

Cycling
National Cycle Route 6, a waymarked route between London and the Lake District, passes through the town.

Buses
Stagecoach East Midlands operates bus services in and around the town, with destinations including Doncaster, Rotherham, Chesterfield and Nottingham.

Primary

 * Gateford Park Primary School
 * Haggonfields Primary and Nursery School
 * Holy Family Catholic Primary School
 * Norbridge Academy
 * Kingston Park Academy
 * Langold Dyscarr Community School
 * Prospect Hill Infant and Nursery School
 * Prospect Hill Junior School
 * Ramsden Primary School

 * Redlands Primary and Nursery School
 * Sparken Hill Academy
 * Sir Edmund Hillary Academy
 * The St Augustine's Academy
 * St Anne's C of E Voluntary Aided Primary School
 * St John's C of E Academy
 * St Luke's C of E Aided Primary School
 * Worksop Priory C of E Primary Academy
 * The Primary School of St Mary and St Martin
 * Redlands Primary and Nursery School

Secondary

 * Outwood Academy Portland
 * Outwood Academy Valley
 * Worksop College

Further education

 * North Nottinghamshire College
 * Outwood Post-16 centre

Healthcare
Worksop is served by Bassetlaw District General Hospital, part of the Doncaster and Bassetlaw NHS Foundation Trust. Bassetlaw Hospital treats about 33,000 people each year, and roughly 38,000 emergencies. Bassetlaw Hospital is one of the University of Sheffield teaching hospitals and medical school.

Mental health services in Worksop are provided by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, which provide local community services. In-patient services are provided in Mansfield and Nottingham.

Current economy
The local economy in Worksop is dominated by service industries, manufacturing, and distribution. Unemployment levels in the area are now lower than the national average, owing to large number of distribution and local manufacturing companies, including Premier Foods, RDS Transport, Pandrol UK Ltd, and Laing O'Rourke.

Major employers in the area include Premier Foods (Worksop Factory), Greencore, RDS Transport (the Flying Fridge), B&Q, MAKE polymers, OCG Cacao, part of Cargill, Pandrol, GCHQ, and the National Health Service (Doncaster and Bassetlaw NHS Trust).

Agricultural and forestry
John Harrison's survey of Worksop for the Earl of Arundel reveals that at that time, most people earned their living from the land. A tenant farmer, Henry Cole, farmed 200 acres of land, grazing his sheep on "Manton sheepwalk". This survey also described a corn-grinding water mill (Bracebridge mill) and Manor Mill situated near to Castle Hill, with a kiln and a malthouse.

One unusual crop associated with Worksop is liquorice. This was originally grown in the priory gardens for medicinal purposes but continued until around 1750. William Camden records in Britannia that the town was famous for growing liquorice. John Speed noted: "In the west, near Worksop, groweth plenty of Liquorice, very delicious and good". White says the liquorice gardens were "principally situated on the eastern margin of the park, near the present 'Slack Walk'." He notes that the last plant was dug up about "fifty years ago" and that this last garden had been planted by "the person after whom the 'Brompton stock' is named". A pub in Worksop is now named after this former industry.

Additionally, with much of the area being heavily forested, timber was always an important industry, supplying railway sleepers to the North Midland Railway, timber for the construction of railway carriages, and packing cases for the Sheffield cutlery industry. The town also became notable for the manufacture of Worksop Windsor chairs. Timber firms in the town included Benjamin Garside's woodyard and Godley and Goulding, situated between Eastgate and the railway.

Brewing and malting
The malting trade began in Retford, but gradually moved to Worksop, where it became an important trade, though it never employed many people. In 1852, Clinton malt kilns were built. Worksop has a strong tradition of brewing, including being the site of the historic Worksop and Retford Brewery. This brewery had previously been known as Garside and Alderson and Prior Well Brewery.

The brewing tradition is continued by a number of local independent breweries in and around the town, including Welbeck Abbey Brewery.

Former Mining
At the start of the 19th century, Worksop had a largely agricultural economy with malting, corn milling, and timber working being principal industries. However, the discovery of coal meant that by 1900, the majority of the workforce was employed in coal mining, which provided thousands of jobs – both directly and indirectly – in and around Worksop for most of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The first coal mine was Shireoaks Colliery, which by 1861 employed over 200 men, which rose to 600 men by 1871. Steetley Colliery started producing coal in 1876, and in Worksop a mine was developed on land to the south-east, owned by Henry Pelham-Clinton, 7th Duke of Newcastle. This mine was fully operational in around 1907, with three shafts, and was named Manton Colliery.

The closure in the 1990s of the pits, compounding the earlier decline of the timber trade and other local industry, resulted in high unemployment in parts of the Worksop area, as well as other social problems.

Textiles
In John Harrison's survey of Worksop for the Earl of Arundel, a dye house and a tenter green (where lengths of cloth were stretched out to dry) indicates a small cloth industry was present in Worksop. Late attempts during the Industrial Revolution to introduce textile manufacturing saw two mills constructed, one at Bridge Place and the other somewhere near Mansfield Road. Both enterprises failed and closed within three years. They were converted to milling corn.

Religion

Worksop has three churches, all of which are on the National Heritage List for England.

Officially titled the Priory Church of Saint Mary and Saint Cuthbert, the Anglican parish church is usually known as Worksop Priory. It was an Augustinian priory founded in 1103. The church has a nave and detached gatehouse. Monks at the priory made the Tickhill Psalter, an illuminated manuscript of the medieval period, now held in New York Public Library. After the dissolution of the monasteries, the east end of the church fell into disrepair, but the townspeople were granted the nave as a parish church. The eastern parts of the building have been restored in several phases, the most recent being in the 1970s when architect Lawrence King rebuilt the crossing.

St. Anne's Church is an Anglican parish church and is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade-II listed building. The church was built in 1911 by the Lancaster architects Austin and Paley. The church has an historic pipe organ originally built by Gray and Davison in 1852 for Clapham Congregational Church.

St. John's Church is a parish church built between 1867 and 1868 by architect Robert Clarke.

St Mary's is a Roman Catholic church, built from 1838 to 1840 and paid for by the Bernard Howard, 12th Duke of Norfolk, after the sale of Worksop Manor, which the duke owned. The church was designed by Matthew Ellison Hadfield and it is a Grade II-listed building. In late 1913, the church was visited by Archduke Franz Ferdinand seven months before his assassination in Sarajevo.

Relatively few religious minorities live in the town, with the largest non-Christian community being Worksop's 243 Muslims. A small community and prayer centre for adherents is on Watson Road.

Local Media
The town receives local news and television programmes from the BBC and ITV Yorkshire region. Local radio stations are BBC Radio Sheffield on 104.1 FM, Greatest Hits Radio South Yorkshire on 107.9 FM, and Trust AM, an online hospital radio station serving the Bassetlaw District General Hospital in the town. The local newspapers are the Worksop Guardian and Worksop Trader.

Places of interest

Mr Straw's House, the family home of the Straw family, was inherited by the Straw brothers, William and Walter, when their parents died in the 1930s. The house remained unaltered until the National Trust acquired it in the 1990s and opened it to the public.

Clumber Park, located south of Worksop, is a country park, also owned by the National Trust. It has 3,800 acres of parkland.

Worksop Town Hall was originally established as a corn exchange, designed by Isaac Charles Gilbert, which opened in 1851.

The Worksop War Memorial is a large Grade II* listed cenotaph dedicated to the memory of local residents that died during World War I and II.

Notable people

 * A'Whora (real name George Boyle, b. 1996), drag queen, fashion designer and TV personality, known from RuPaul's Drag Race UK.
 * James Walsham Baldock (1822–1898), artist, adopted by his grandfather who was a farmer at Worksop
 * Maurice Bembridge (b.1945), golfer
 * George A. Best, former goalkeeper with Blackpool F.C.
 * Basil Boothroyd (1910–1988), humorous writer
 * Bruce Dickinson (b.1958), singer with Iron Maiden
 * Craig Disley (b.1981), footballer
 * Mark Foster (b.1975), golfer
 * Anne Foy (b.1986), former BBC Children's TV presenter
 * Alexina Graham (b.1990), model and Victoria's Secret Angel
 * Gwen Grant (b.1940), writer
 * Henry Haslam (1879–1942), footballer and Olympic gold medalist at the 1900 Olympics
 * Sarah-Jane Honeywell (b.1974), BBC Children's TV presenter
 * William Henry Johnson (1890–1945), recipient of a Victoria Cross
 * Mick Jones (b.1945), Sheffield United and Leeds United striker during the 1960s and 1970s
 * Sam Osborne (b.1993), racing driver
 * Liam Palmer (b.1991), Sheffield Wednesday Football Player
 * John Parr (b.1954), musician
 * Henry Pickard (1832–1905), cricketer
 * Donald Pleasence (1919–1995), actor
 * Graham Taylor (1944–2017), former England, Aston Villa and Watford manager
 * Danny Thomas (b.1961), footballer, played for Coventry City F.C. and Tottenham Hotspur
 * Sam Walker (b.1995), table tennis player
 * Darren Ward (b.1974), former football goalkeeper
 * Lee Westwood (b.1973), golfer
 * Elliott Whitehouse (b.1993), footballer
 * Chris Wood (b.1987), footballer

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Worksop


text:
1999 Independence Day weekend shootings

During the weekend of July 4, 1999, white supremacist Benjamin Smith targeted Orthodox Jews and members of racial and ethnic minorities in a three-day drive-by shooting rampage in Illinois and Indiana, after which he committed suicide. Smith was member of the neo-Nazi World Church of the Creator.

Events
Smith was a follower of the white supremacist organization now known as the Creativity Movement, and was a devoted disciple of the group's leader Matthew Hale. Two days after Hale was denied a license to practice law in Illinois, Smith loaded his light blue Ford Taurus with guns and ammunition and went on a three-day, two-state shooting spree, killing two people and wounding nine others.

On the evening of Friday, July 2, Smith shot and wounded nine Orthodox Jews in drive-by shootings in the West Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. Smith then shot and killed former Northwestern University basketball coach Ricky Byrdsong, an African-American, in front of two of his three children, while they were walking outside Byrdsong's Skokie, Illinois, home.

The next day, Smith traveled to Urbana, Springfield and then Decatur, where he shot and wounded an African-American minister.

On Sunday, July 4, Smith traveled to Bloomington, Indiana, where he killed Won-Joon Yoon, a 26-year-old Korean graduate student in economics at Indiana University, who was on his way to the Korean United Methodist Church. Smith shot at but missed another nine people. On Sunday, July 4, fleeing the police in a high-speed chase on a southern Illinois highway, Smith shot himself twice in the head and crashed his automobile into a metal post. He then shot himself again, in the heart, this time fatally. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Perpetrator
Benjamin Nathaniel Smith (March 22, 1978 – July 4, 1999) was born and raised in Wilmette, Illinois. He attended high school at New Trier Township High School. During this time he accosted a Skokie, Illinois, police officer and pleaded guilty to two counts of misdemeanor battery. He transferred to Mary D. Bradford High School in Kenosha for his senior year. He did not pose for a photograph in his senior yearbook, but in his class statement he wrote, "Sic semper tyrannis" (Thus always to tyrants). This phrase was shouted by John Wilkes Booth after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.

After graduating, Smith attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Smith dropped out of the university in 1998 after several conflicts with campus authorities. After dropping out, he transferred to Indiana University in Bloomington. Police reported that Smith was known for passing out hate-filled fliers against Jews, blacks and Asians on university campuses. In October 1998, Smith was the subject of a story on his university's public broadcasting station.

Smith was a follower of the white supremacist organization now known as the Creativity Movement, and was a devoted disciple of the group's leader Matthew Hale. Two days after Hale was denied a license to practice law in Illinois, Smith loaded his light blue Ford Taurus with guns and ammunition and committed the shooting spree.

Aftermath
Around 2,000 people attended Won-Joon Yoon memorial service at the Indiana University Musical Arts Center on July 12, 1999. Attorney General of the United States Janet Reno spoke at the memorial service. IU created a scholarship to honor Won-Joon. Every July 4th, the Korean United Methodist Church holds an early morning service to remember Yoon who was murdered on his way to the church's Sunday service.

Ricky Byrdsong's widow established The Ricky Byrdsong Foundation to "arrest the growing epidemic of hate and violence in our society by and against our youth." The foundation holds a number of events in and around Evanston; the most well-known is the Race Against Hate, a 5K running race held annually in late June in Evanston. The Race Against Hate race draws several thousand runners. In 2009, a 10,000-meter running race was added in honor of the 10th anniversary of the Race Against Hate.

One of the victims has filed a lawsuit against the World Church of the Creator and its leader Matthew Hale, Smith's parents, and the person who has been charged with selling guns to Smith without a license.

A chapter of Lone Wolf (a study of spree killers), by Pan Pantziarka, is devoted to Smith and his crimes. Invisible Revolution, a documentary by filmmaker Beverly Peterson, features an interview with Smith less than two weeks before his killing spree. The film includes scenes of Smith distributing World Church of the Creator leaflets in his home town and saying, "If they violate our constitutional rights and say we can't put out our literature, we have no choice but to resort to acts of violence and really to plunge this country into a terrorist war they've never seen before."

title: 1999 Independence Day weekend shootings


text:
Spree killer

A spree killer is someone who commits a criminal act that involves two or more murders in a short time, often in multiple locations. There are different opinions about what durations of time a killing spree may take place in. The United States Bureau of Justice Statistics has spoken of "almost no time break between murders", but some academics consider that a killing spree may last weeks or months, e.g. the case of Andrew Cunanan, who murdered five people over three months.

Definition
The general definition of spree murder is two or more murders committed by a person (or people) with no cooling-off period, in contrast to serial murder, where there is a period of time between killings. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has found the category to be of no real value to law enforcement because quantifying a "cooling-off period" is arbitrary. Serial killers commit murders in separate events, at different times. Mass murderers are defined by one incident, with no distinctive period between the murders.

How to distinguish a spree killer from a mass murderer, or a serial killer, is subject to considerable debate, and the terms are not consistently applied even within the academic literature.

The United States Bureau of Justice Statistics has defined a spree killing as "killings at two or more locations with almost no time break between murders".

The Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment lists five different categories of spree killers and cites Mark O. Barton as an example of the second one. He is also noted alongside mass murderers, such as Patrick Sherrill, in the respective entry about mass murder. In The Anatomy of Motive, John E. Douglas cites Charles Starkweather and Andrew Cunanan (who murdered five people over three months) as examples of spree killers, while Jack Levin calls Starkweather a mass murderer and Cunanan a serial killer.

In Controversial Issues in Criminology, Fuller and Hickey write that "[t]he element of time involved between murderous acts is primary in the differentiation of serial, mass, and spree murderers", later elaborating those spree killers "will engage in the killing acts for days or weeks" while the "methods of murder and types of victims vary". Andrew Cunanan is given as an example of spree killing, while Charles Whitman is mentioned in connection with mass murder and Jeffrey Dahmer with serial killing.

In Serial Murder, Ronald M. Holmes and StephenT. Holmes defines spree murder as "the killing of three or more people within a 30-day period" and add that killing sprees are "usually accompanied by the commission of another felony." They cite Charles Starkweather and the Beltway Snipers as examples of spree killers. They define serial murder as "the killing of three or more people over a period of more than 30 days, with a significant cooling-off period between the killings." Under this definition, Andrew Cunanan would be categorized as a serial killer and not a spree killer.

In Sexual Homicide, Ressler, Burgess and Douglas gave more emphasis to killings being at more than one location, and less precision about the time span, saying that a single event can last a short or long time, citing Christopher Wilder's seven-week "murder event" or "killing spree".

Douglas wrote that the identity of serial killers is generally unknown until they are caught, and a mass murderer's identity is learned only after they have committed the crime. The identity of the spree killer, on the other hand, usually becomes known by police while the spree is still in progress.

The term rampage killer has also been used sometimes to describe spree killers, especially when a single individual perpetrator: "A rampage involves the (attempted) killing of multiple persons at least partly in public space by a single physically present perpetrator using (potentially) deadly weapons in a single event without any cooling-off period."

title: Spree killer


text:
Ricky Byrdsong

Ricky Byrdsong (June 24, 1956 – July 3, 1999) was an American college basketball coach and insurance executive. He served as the head men's basketball coach at the University of Detroit Mercy (1988–1993) and Northwestern University (1993–1997), compiling a career coaching record of 89–163. Byrdsong was the first African American head coach of the Northwestern Wildcats men's basketball program. On July 2, 1999, he was shot during a racially motivated killing spree and died the next day.

Early life
Byrdsong grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, raised by his mother with his younger sister Marcia. He attended Frederick Douglass High School. Besides basketball, Byrdsong played the saxophone in the band, sang with the chorus and appeared in school plays. After graduation in 1974, Byrdsong accepted a basketball scholarship to Pratt Community College in Pratt, Kansas.

Byrdsong then played his final two seasons of college basketball for Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa under Coach Lynn Nance from 1976–1978. He was named team captain, but played sparingly for the Cyclones averaging 0.9 points and 0.9 rebounds in his career. After graduating from Pratt, Byrdsong had been offered scholarships from many schools, before choosing Iowa State. He said, "Then I went there and I never played. I probably was the only non-playing captain in Iowa State history. Total all my minutes in two years and it might equal two games."

However, after he graduated from Iowa State, Coach Nance asked Brydsong consider coaching and then asked him to stay with the Cyclones as a graduate assistant. He accepted the advice and began his coaching career in 1978.

Coaching career
In a ten year run as a college assistant, Byrdsong was an assistant at Arizona six seasons under Coach Lute Olson. Byrdsong was an assistant as the Wildcats advanced to the NCAA Final Four in 1988, after the program had been 4–24 in 1983. After the season he was offered the head coaching position at Detroit Mercy.

As coach for the Northwestern University Wildcats from 1993 to 1997, Byrdsong led them to a National Invitation Tournament berth in 1994, the second postseason appearance in school history, defeating DePaul University in the first round.

He had previously been head coach at the University of Detroit-Mercy (1988–1993) and assistant coach at the University of Arizona (1982–1988), Eastern Illinois University (1980–1982), Western Michigan University (1979–1980) and Iowa State University (1978–1979). After he left Northwestern, he worked as an vice president of community affairs for Aon Corporation until his death.

The walk on the wild side
On February 5, 1994, while coaching a game against Minnesota, Byrdsong abruptly left the game and joined the fans in the stands shaking hands, high-fiving the Minnesota Gopher mascot and taking an unticketed seat until removed by an usher. The team had started the season 9–0 but was at this point on a 9-game losing streak.

After returning to Evanston, Byrdsong's wife requested a leave of absence for the coach, to which Byrdsong remarked, "My wife, after watching me, obviously got concerned, now, any time I'm going to take a walk on the wild side, I should let her know."

Personal life and death
On July 2, 1999, while jogging near his Skokie, Illinois home with his son and daughter, ages 8 and 10, Byrdsong was shot by Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, a member of the white supremacist Creativity Movement who went on a shooting spree that killed one person and injured ten others. Byrdsong died four hours later on July 3 at Evanston Hospital. Smith was a disciple of Mathew Hale, the leader of Creativity Movement, and his shooting spree took place two days after Hale was denied a license to practice law in Illinois. According to eyewitnesses, Smith pulled alongside Byrdsong and shot him multiple times. Smith was never brought to trial because he committed suicide on July 4 after he crashed his car into a metal post during a high-speed chase in Southern Illinois.

Byrdsong and his wife, Sherialyn, had three children: Sabrina, Kelley and Ricky Jr.

Media coverage and public reaction
A fair amount of media coverage was centered on the events of Byrdsong's death and his achievements as a former Northwestern basketball coach. In 2000, an award was created in his honor by the Illinois Fatherhood Initiative. Anya Cordell, Byrdsong's neighbor, wrote the anti-hate crime book Race: An Open and Shut Case. Cordell said that she was inspired by the urge to combat the hate that fueled Benjamin Smith's deadly shooting rampage. Byrdsong's children also received college scholarships from the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, an organization which helps victims of families from hate crimes.

In 2009, a documentary about Byrdsong, entitled Fly Like the Byrd, was created by Northwestern students from the Medill School of Journalism. The 25-minute documentary examines race relations and how his legacy has lived on, ten years later.

The Ricky Byrdsong Foundation
His widow established The Ricky Byrdsong Foundation. Its mission is to "arrest the growing epidemic of hate and violence in our society by and against our youth."

The foundation holds a number of events in and around Evanston; the most well-known is the Race Against Hate, a 5K running race held annually in late June in Evanston. The Race Against Hate race draws several thousand runners. In 2009, a 10,000-meter running race was added in honor of the 10th anniversary of the Race Against Hate.

title: Ricky Byrdsong


text:
Wedgwood Baptist Church shooting

On September 15, 1999, a mass shooting occurred at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. 47-year-old Larry Gene Ashbrook entered during a See You at the Pole Rally featuring a concert by the Christian rock group Forty Days, where he killed seven people and wounded eight others before committing suicide. Most of the victims were teenagers.

Prior to the shooting, he had displayed behavior considered erratic and frightening by those around him, and had mailed multiple letters to a local newspaper proclaiming he was being framed for murder and being watched by intelligence agencies. During the shooting, Ashbrook disparaged Christianity and the beliefs of the churchgoers.

Shooting
Ashbrook arrived at the Wedgwood Baptist Church wearing mirrored sunglasses and a pullover. As he entered the church, he did not put out his cigarette, which was viewed by churchgoers as odd. According to an injured victim, Ashbrook asked him: "Is this where that damn religious meeting is being held?"; he planned to tell Ashbrook to put out his cigarette, but Ashbrook then proceeded to pull out a gun from under his shirt and shoot him twice. He interrupted a teen prayer rally, slamming his hand on a door to make his presence known. Spouting anti-Christian rhetoric, he opened fire with a Ruger 9 mm semi-automatic handgun and a .380-caliber handgun.

He reloaded several times during the shooting; three empty magazines were found at the scene. Ashbrook threw a pipe bomb into the church, where it exploded upwards and released shrapnel. There were no deaths from the bomb. Seven people were killed, four of whom were teenagers (a 14-year-old boy, two 14-year-old girls and a 17-year-old boy). Three people sustained major injuries while four others received relatively minor injuries.

During the shooting, Ashbrook was confronted by a 19-year-old former football lineman, Jeremiah "Jeremy" Neitz, who recounted the ensuing conversation for the Houston Press:

"I don't know why, but I just sat there, looking at him as he came toward me. When he got to within about five feet, he pointed one of his guns at me and just glared. I told him, 'Sir, you don't have to be doing this.' He told me to shut the hell up. Then he asked me what my religion was, and I told him I was a Christian, a Baptist. He said, 'That sucks,' and that it was 'a stupid religion.' [Neitz replied] 'No sir, it doesn't suck. It's a wonderful thing. God put me on this earth for a reason. I'm certain of that.'"

Ashbrook fired several more rounds and yelled, "This religion is bullshit." Neitz replied, "Sir, what you need is Jesus Christ in your life." Neitz asked Ashbrook "What about you?" Ashbrook replied, "Fuck off" and "I can't believe you believe in this junk." He then sat down in a pew and shot himself. The shooting lasted less than 10 minutes.

Time magazine described accounts of the confrontation as "unconfirmed" and possibly "pious invention", but the Houston Press wrote that the story had been confirmed, quoting the Fort Worth police detective who had interviewed Neitz: "Maybe he did frustrate Ashbrook with what he was saying. There's no way we'll ever really know. All I can say is that I'm impressed by what he did that evening. It was a very brave thing. You have to admire that."

Perpetrator
The shooter was 47-year-old Larry Gene Ashbrook, born July 10, 1952. Nine years before the shooting, Ashbrook's mother died. This reportedly sent him into a cycle of erratic and frightening behavior. Ashbrook lived for many years with his father, Jack D. Ashbrook. Across the street from the Ashbrooks' home, neighbors said they saw Ashbrook treat his father violently but were afraid to report it. Newspaper editor Stephen Kaye, whom Ashbrook had visited days before the shooting, described him as being "the opposite of someone you'd be concerned about", saying he "couldn't have been any nicer." In Ashbrook's home, police found materials used to make pipe bombs. He had legally purchased the Ruger and the .380 caliber at a flea market February 13 and 15 of the year, from two different sellers.

However, his neighbors had an entirely different view of him, describing him as strange and violent. Investigators at his house discovered that he had virtually destroyed the interior of his house - holes were bashed into the walls with crowbars, the toilets were filled with concrete, and the fruit trees growing in the front yard had been poisoned. He sent "rambling" letters to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram describing encounters with the CIA. His brother described him as a paranoid schizophrenic.

Police investigating the shooting could find no solid motive for the crime. In the months before the shooting, people who knew Ashbrook said he became increasingly paranoid, certain that he was being framed for serial murder and other crimes that he did not commit. He also feared that the CIA was targeting him, and he reported psychological warfare, assaults by co-workers and being drugged by the police. Just days before the shooting he voiced these concerns to a newspaper, saying "I want someone to tell my story, no one will listen to me; no one will believe me."

Houston-area writer John Craig claimed that Ashbrook was a member of Phineas Priesthood and he interviewed Ashbrook in 1997. Craig said he notified the FBI after the interview and called the Fort Worth police after realizing he knew the shooter but FBI official said there were no plans to pursue Craig's story, and police spokesman Lt. David Ellis said he had no knowledge that Craig had called. Several representatives of organizations that monitor hate groups said Ashbrook appeared nowhere in their databases.

Aftermath
In the immediate aftermath, Ashbrook's identity was unknown. The church was closed to check for explosives. President Clinton stated after the shooting "Yet again, we have seen a sanctuary violated by gun violence, taking children brimming with faith and promise and hope before their time." George W. Bush, then presidential candidate and governor of Texas, cancelled two fundraisers and returned to the state. He condemned a "wave of evil" and said the solution was "more love in society".

A Sunday service was held just four days after the shooting, as the lead pastor of the church, Al Meredith, said they did not wish to "give an inch to the darkness." During his sermon at the service, he said that "this tragedy that the devil wanted to use to stop the people of God has ended up strengthening us", and that the shooting had united the church. He preached forgiveness for Ashbrook, describing him as a "poor man" influenced by Satan. He, and other members of the church, later met with Ashbrook's family.

Meredith expressed his condolences for victims of the Charleston church shooting in 2015 and the Sutherland Springs church shooting in 2017. On the 20th anniversary of the shooting, he stated, referring to the recent mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton: “[we] hardly get shocked anymore, [...] after three days, it’s old news. And all our thoughts and prayers, that’s about all we can conjure up for the victims. There’s something tragically wrong with that.” A memorial service was held at the church for the 20th anniversary.

A memorial to the victims of the shooting was put up outside the church.

title: Wedgwood Baptist Church shooting


text:
Eric Chiwaya

Eric Chiwaya, a member of the United Democratic Front, is the urban governor for Blantyre, Malawi. On January 8, 2003, he was stoned by a mob which argued that the government was colluding with vampires. Chiwaya survived the attack and denied the allegations.

title: Eric Chiwaya


text:
Lifting body

A lifting body is a fixed-wing aircraft or spacecraft configuration in which the body itself produces lift. In contrast to a flying wing, which is a wing with minimal or no conventional fuselage, a lifting body can be thought of as a fuselage with little or no conventional wing. Whereas a flying wing seeks to maximize cruise efficiency at subsonic speeds by eliminating non-lifting surfaces, lifting bodies generally minimize the drag and structure of a wing for subsonic, supersonic and hypersonic flight, or spacecraft re-entry. All of these flight regimes pose challenges for proper flight safety.

Lifting bodies were a major area of research in the 1960s and 70s as a means to build a small and lightweight crewed spacecraft. The US built a number of lifting body rocket planes to test the concept, as well as several rocket-launched re-entry vehicles that were tested over the Pacific. Interest waned as the US Air Force lost interest in the crewed mission, and major development ended during the Space Shuttle design process when it became clear that the highly shaped fuselages made it difficult to fit fuel tankage.

Advanced spaceplane concepts in the 1990s and 2000s did use lifting-body designs. Examples include the HL-20 Personnel Launch System (1990) and the Prometheus spaceplane (2010). The Dream Chaser lifting-body spaceplane, an extension of HL-20 technology, was proposed as one of three vehicles to potentially carry US crew to and from the International Space Station, but eventually was selected as a resupply vehicle instead. In 2015 the ESA Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle performed the first ever successful reentry of a lifting body spacecraft.

History
The lifting body had been imagined by 1917, in which year an aircraft with something like a delta wing plan form with a thick included fuselage was described in a patent by Roy Scroggs. However at low airspeeds the lifting body is inefficient and did not enter mainstream airplane design.

Aerospace-related lifting body research arose from the idea of spacecraft re-entering the Earth's atmosphere and landing much like a regular airplane. Following atmospheric re-entry, the capsule spacecraft from the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo series had very little control over where they landed. A steerable spacecraft with wings could significantly extend its landing envelope. However, the vehicle's wings would have to be designed to withstand the dynamic and thermal stresses of both re-entry and hypersonic flight. One proposal eliminated wings altogether: design the fuselage body to produce lift by itself.

NASA's refinements of the lifting body concept began in 1962 with R. Dale Reed of NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center. The first full-size model to come out of Reed's program was the NASA M2-F1, an unpowered craft made of wood. Initial tests were performed by towing the M2-F1 along a dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base California, behind a modified Pontiac Catalina. Later the craft was towed behind a C-47 and released. Since the M2-F1 was a glider, a small rocket motor was added in order to extend the landing envelope. The M2-F1 was soon nicknamed the "Flying Bathtub".

In 1963, NASA began programs with heavier rocket-powered lifting-body vehicles to be air launched from under the starboard wing of a NB-52B, a derivative of the B-52 jet bomber. The first flights started in 1966. Of the Dryden lifting bodies, all but the unpowered NASA M2-F1 used an XLR11 rocket engine as was used on the Bell X-1. A follow-on design designated the Northrop HL-10 was developed at NASA Langley Research Center. Air flow separation caused the crash of the Northrop M2-F2 lifting body. The HL-10 attempted to solve part of this problem by angling the port and starboard vertical stabilizers outward and enlarging the center one.

Starting 1965 the Russian lifting-body Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105 or EPOS (Russian acronym for Experimental Passenger Orbital Aircraft) was developed and several test flights made. Work ended in 1978 when the efforts shifted to the Buran program, while work on another small-scale spacecraft partly continued in the Bor program.

The IXV is a European Space Agency lifting body experimental re-entry vehicle intended to validate European reusable launchers which could be evaluated in the frame of the FLPP program. The IXV made its first flight in February 2015, launched by a Vega rocket.

Orbital Sciences proposed a commercial lifting-body spaceplane in 2010. The Prometheus is more fully described below.

Aerospace applications
Lifting bodies pose complex control, structural, and internal configuration issues. Lifting bodies were eventually rejected in favor of a delta wing design for the Space Shuttle. Data acquired in flight test using high-speed landing approaches at very steep descent angles and high sink rates was used for modeling Shuttle flight and landing profiles.

In planning for atmospheric re-entry, the landing site is selected in advance. For reusable reentry vehicles, typically a primary site is preferred that is closest to the launch site in order to reduce costs and improve launch turnaround time. However, weather near the landing site is a major factor in flight safety. In some seasons, weather at landing sites can change quickly relative to the time necessary to initiate and execute re-entry and safe landing. Due to weather, it is possible the vehicle may have to execute a landing at an alternate site. Furthermore, most airports do not have runways of sufficient length to support the approach landing speed and roll distance required by spacecraft. Few airports exist in the world that can support or be modified to support this type of requirement. Therefore, alternate landing sites are very widely spaced across the U.S. and around the world. The Shuttle's delta wing design was driven by these issues. These requirements were further exacerbated by requirements that extended the Shuttle's flight landing envelope.

Nonetheless, the lifting body concept has been implemented in a number of other aerospace programs, the previously mentioned NASA X-38, Lockheed Martin X-33, BAC's Multi Unit Space Transport And Recovery Device, Europe's EADS Phoenix, and the joint Russian-European Kliper spacecraft. Of the three basic design shapes usually analyzed for such programs (capsule, lifting body, aircraft) the lifting body may offer the best trade-off in terms of maneuverability and thermodynamics while meeting its customers' mission requirements.

Current systems
The Dream Chaser is a suborbital and orbital vertical-takeoff, horizontal-landing (VTHL) lifting-body spaceplane being developed by Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC). The Dream Chaser design is planned to eventually carry up to seven people to and from low Earth orbit, and the spaceplane is currently planned to be used for delivering cargo to the International Space Station under the Commercial Resupply Services program. The vehicle will launch vertically on an Atlas V and land horizontally on conventional runways.

Body lift
Some aircraft with wings also employ bodies that generate lift. Some of the early 1930s high-wing monoplane designs of the Bellanca Aircraft Company, such as the Bellanca Aircruiser, had vaguely airfoil-shaped fuselages capable of generating some lift, with even the wing struts on some versions given widened fairings to give them some lift-generating capability. The Gee Bee R-1 Super Sportster racing plane of the 1930s, likewise, from more modern aerodynamic studies, has been shown to have had considerable ability to generate lift with its fuselage design, important for the R-1's intended racing role, while in highly banked pylon turns while racing. Vincent Burnelli developed several aircraft between the 1920s and 1950 that used fuselage lift. Like the earlier Bellanca monoplanes, the Short SC.7 Skyvan produces a substantial amount of lift from its fuselage shape, almost as much as the 35% each of the wings produces.

Fighters like the F-15 Eagle also produce substantial lift from the wide fuselage between the wings. Because the F-15 Eagle's wide fuselage is so efficient at lift, an F-15 is able to land successfully with only one wing, albeit under nearly full power, with thrust contributing significantly to lift. In the summer of 1983, an Israeli F-15 staged a mock dogfight with Skyhawks for training purposes, near Nahal Tzin in the Negev desert. During the exercise, one of the Skyhawks miscalculated and collided forcefully with the F-15's wing root. The F-15's pilot was aware that the wing had been seriously damaged, but decided to try and land in a nearby airbase, not knowing the extent of his wing damage. It was only after he had landed, when he climbed out of the cockpit and looked backward, that the pilot realized what had happened: the wing had been completely torn off the plane, and he had landed the plane with only one wing attached. A few months later, the damaged F-15 had been given a new wing, and returned to operational duty in the squadron. The engineers at McDonnell Douglas had a hard time believing the story of the one-winged landing: as far as their planning models were concerned, this was an impossibility.

In 2010, Orbital Sciences proposed the Prometheus "blended lifting-body" spaceplane vehicle, about one-quarter the size of the Space Shuttle, as a commercial option for carrying astronauts to low Earth orbit under the commercial crew program. The Vertical Takeoff, Horizontal Landing (VTHL) vehicle was to have been launched on a human-rated Atlas V rocket but would land on a runway. The initial design was to have carried a crew of 4, but it could carry up to 6, or a combination of crew and cargo. In addition to Orbital Sciences, the consortium behind the proposal included Northrop Grumman, which would have built the spaceplane, and the United Launch Alliance, which would have provided the launch vehicle. Failing to be selected for a CCDev phase 2 award by NASA, Orbital announced in April 2011 that they would likely wind down their efforts to develop a commercial crew vehicle.

Design principles of lifting bodies are used also in the construction of hybrid airships.

Armstrong Flight Research Center
The US government developed a variety of proof-of-concept and flight-test vehicle lifting body designs from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s at Armstrong Flight Research Center. These included:
 * M2-F1
 * M2-F2
 * M2-F3
 * HL-10
 * X-24A
 * X-24B

Pilots and flights

 * Wood, Haise and Engle each made a single car-towed flight of the M2-F1.

Popular culture
Lifting bodies have appeared in some science fiction works, including the movie Marooned, and as John Crichton's spacecraft Farscape-1 in the TV series Farscape. The Discovery Channel TV series conjectured using lifting bodies to deliver a probe to a distant earth-like planet in the animated Alien Planet. Gerry Anderson's 1969 Doppelgänger used a VTOL lifting body lander / ascender to visit an Earth-like planet, only to crash in both attempts. His series UFO featured a lifting body craft visually similar to the M2-F2 for orbital operations ("The Man Who Came Back"). In the Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space computer game, a modified X-24A becomes an alternative lunar capable spacecraft that the player can choose over the Gemini or Apollo capsule.

The 1970s television program The Six Million Dollar Man used footage of a lifting body aircraft, culled from actual NASA exercises, in the show's title sequence. The scenes included an HL-10's separation from its carrier plane—a modified B-52—and an M2-F2 piloted by Bruce Peterson, crashing and tumbling violently along the Edwards dry lakebed runway. The cause of the crash was attributed to the onset of Dutch roll stemming from control instability as induced by flow separation.

The episode "The Deadly Replay" (season 2 episode 8 aired 9/22/1974) features the HL-10 as a prop of the story.

Other sources

 * McPhee, John (1973), The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed; ISBN 0-374-51635-9. (Story of the Aereon, a combination aerodyne/aerostat, a.k.a. hybrid airship.)

title: Lifting body