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Viasa

Venezolana Internacional de Aviación Sociedad Anónima (JSC Venezuelan International Airways), or VIASA for short, was the Venezuelan flag carrier airline between 1960 and 1997. It was headquartered in the Torre Viasa in Caracas. Launched in November 1960, it was nationalised in 1975 due to financial problems, and re-privatised in 1991, with the major stake going to Iberia. The company ceased operations in January 1997, and went into liquidation.

Early years
Viasa was envisioned by the government of Venezuela in 1959 to create a new company that could serve as the country's flag carrier and run without government intervention. It was set up in 1960 when the international routes operated by Línea Aeropostal Venezolana (LAV) and Avensa were merged and taken over by the newly created carrier. The government contributed with 55% of the capital, while private investors – among which were LAV and Avensa, the latter owned by Grupo Boulton and Pan American World Airways—contributed with the remainder. The board of directors came entirely from the private sector. The first president of the airline was Mr. R. van den Branden; the first chairman of the board was Mr. Oscar Augusto Machado Zuloaga, a very competent and well liked gentleman, who was instrumental in Viasa's commercial success and immediate acceptance by the market.

In early 1961, the airline signed an agreement with KLM to operate a Douglas DC-8 on Viasa's behalf, aimed at starting operations to Europe in April that year; KLM maintained a nurturing relationship with Viasa for another 24 years. In the same year, Avensa transferred two Douglas DC-6Bs to the company, as well as an order for a Convair 880-22M. Viasa boosted their Convair 880 order by purchasing another one. The airline flew the type mostly on routes to North America. Also in 1961, the airline joined the International Air Transport Association, becoming its 89th member. In 1963, Viasa started a commercial agreement with Iberia and KLM for operations through the mid-Atlantic. The same year, a third Convair 880 was ordered. Until the first DC-8-50 the company had ordered in early 1965 was delivered, long-haul services using the type were provided with wet-leased aircraft from KLM. The type was also chartered from KLM for deployment on the Caribbean routes. By April 1966, the first DC-8-50 was already forming part of the company's fleet along with the three Convair 880s, while an additional DC-8-50 was on order. To complement these two DC-8-50s, the carrier ordered two Douglas DC-8-63s in early 1967. Two Convair 880s were sold to Cathay Pacific in mid-1967. Also in 1967, Viasa started up a Panamanian airline named Panameña Internacional de Aviación SA (PAISA), with KLM support; This company began operations on 3 May 1967 with two DC-9-10s leased to VIASA from Avensa, which were in turn sub-leased to PAISA. In 1968, VIASA set up a wholly owned, non-IATA member, national cargo airline named Transportes Aereos de Carga SA, more commonly known as Transcarga, which in its beginnings served Caracas, Curaçao, Maracaibo, Miami and New York.

In March 1970, the Government of Venezuela had a majority stake (55%) in the carrier, while the balance was held by private investors. Viasa's fleet strength at this time was eight: two DC-8-63s, two DC-8-50s, a DC-8-50F, a Convair 880, and two DC-9-10s. In November 1971 Viasa renewed the pool agreement with KLM and Iberia on their Caribbean–Europe services; to this purpose the company signed another agreement with the Dutch company in 1972, this time for the lease of a Boeing 747-200B that was put on service on a weekly round-trip Caracas–Madrid–Paris flight in April 1972. This event was a milestone for Viasa, as it became the first South American carrier to operate wide-body aircraft across the Atlantic. Through KLM, the company also placed an order for two McDonnell Douglas DC-10s the same year, and bought two Douglas DC-8-33s from the Dutch carrier as well. Also in 1972, the route network saw the incorporation of Washington and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

With the lease of a Douglas DC-8-50 from KLM in 1974, and the sale of two aircraft of the same type to Aeroperú the same year, by March 1975 the Viasa's fleet consisted of two DC-8-63s, one DC-8-50, two DC-8-30s, and one DC-10-30, while another DC-10-30 was yet to be delivered. At a cost of US$30000000 1976, another DC-10-30 was ordered in 1976, followed by an order for three more of these aircraft in July 1977.

In 1983, Viasa took delivery of two McDonnell Douglas DC-9 Super 80s. The early 1980s marked an overturn in the carrier's finances, as both the worldwide collapse of oil prices in the decade and the subsequent devaluation of the bolivar since 1983 affected the airline, which suffered a 41% drop in year-on-year traffic in 1983 and had accumulated a debt of VEB210 million in 1984, a year in which the carrier had a negative net value. That year, the crisis forced the company's work force to be cut by 30%, the fleet to be reduced (partly because of noise restrictions within the United States), and some Caribbean destinations to be dropped. Likewise, competition increased on some routes, most notably Miami and New York, where Viasa was the erstwhile sole operator or it had a single competitor at most. Nevertheless, Viasa made an operating profit of VEB125 million (US$4 million) and a net profit of VEB97 million in 1986. In early 1988, the fleet consisted of only five DC-10s, and two Airbus A300s acquired from Lufthansa through a leasing agreement, that were deployed mostly on domestic and regional routes. A Caracas–Havana service was launched in 1989, along with a stopover in São Paulo on the Caracas–Rio de Janeiro route. In March 1990, Viasa's fleet consisted of two Airbus A300B4s, one DC-8-61HF, and five DC-10-30s, and was wholly owned by the Venezuelan government. At this time, it served a network radiating from Barcelona, Caracas, Maracaibo and Porlamar to Amsterdam, Aruba, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Curaçao, Frankfurt, Houston, Lima, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Miami, Milan, New York, Oporto, Paris, Quito, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Santiago, Santiago de Compostela, Santo Domingo, San Juan and Zürich. Toronto and Vancouver were served on a seasonal basis.

Nationalisation
Viasa had been a model of good management and it had returned a profit every year since its creation. Viasa posted its first ever loss for the October 1975 – September 1976 fiscal year, plagued by rising fuel costs and union problems. The government nationalised the airline and began its downturn. This was not noticeable at first, since Venezuela's strong economy was backed by high oil revenue and the government did not mind pumping in money to cover mounting losses.

By 1979, Viasa had built a fleet of 6 DC-10-30s, 2 DC-8-63s, 2 DC-8-53s and 1 DC-8-63F.

In the summer of 1982, Viasa leased a couple of MD-82s from KLM for Caribbean routes and for new flights from Barquisimeto, Barcelona and Porlamar to Miami. These were returned to KLM in 1984.

In 1985, Viasa got rid of all its DC-8s plus one DC-10-30 and kept just five DC-10-30s. It revamped its livery almost completely in 1986, adopting a whiter body with three-tone blue cheatlines under the windows. The orange tail retained the white Viasa letters adopted in 1978 with the arrival of DC-10-30 YV-135C.

Two former Lufthansa Airbus A300-B4 jets were leased from GPA in 1987 for United States and South American services. In the same year, for the first time ever, VIASA began domestic services and made use of empty seats on the Caracas-Maracaibo and Caracas-Porlamar routes.

Privatisation
The red ink continued to flow and, with the new government policies adopted in 1989, Viasa became a target for privatisation. The initial plans of the government were to allocate 60% of the company to private investors, keep 20% of the shares, and transfer the balance to the airline workers. In June 1991, Iberia and KLM were approved as bidders in the privatisation process, the former teaming up with Venezuela's Banco Provincial, and the latter partnering with Northwest Airlines and other four local entities. Iberia was the only bidder left with a US$145.5 million offer, after KLM stepped aside citing that a price of US$81 million for 60% of the shares was too high.

Iberia apparently milked the airline (some Venezuelans point at this as one of Viasa's causes of bankruptcy). While it could be argued that it was not wise to sell a government owned leasing company to another government owned leasing company, changing the old ways of Viasa was an uphill battle. All its aircraft were placed under Iberia's ownership, the Airbuses were sent back to GPA, former Iberia 727s were used by Viasa (competing on the US routes versus American's 757s or A300-600s and United's 757s) and all supplies were purchased centrally through Madrid.

Short of liquidity, Viasa ceased operations on January 23, 1997. Operations came to a halt following the pilots and cabin crew staff rejecting a restructuring plan raised by Iberia and the state-run holding company that had a 40% interest in Viasa at that time, with both consortiums refusing to inject more cash into the airline. Shareholders, with Iberia being the major one having 45% of the stakes at the time, later decided to liquidate the carrier. Viasa's routes were divided between Aeropostal, Avensa and Aserca.

Destinations
Following is a list of destinations Viasa flew to as part of its scheduled destinations.

Fleet
Viasa previously operated the following aircraft:

 * Airbus A300B4
 * Airbus A300C4
 * Boeing 747-100
 * Boeing 747-200B
 * Boeing 747-200C
 * Boeing 747-200F
 * Boeing 727-200
 * Convair 880
 * Curtiss C-46
 * Douglas DC-7C
 * Douglas DC-7F
 * Douglas DC-8-30
 * Douglas DC-8-40
 * Douglas DC-8-50
 * Douglas DC-8-60
 * Douglas DC-6B
 * Douglas DC-9-10
 * Douglas DC-9-30
 * Lockheed Super Constellation
 * McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30
 * McDonnell Douglas MD-80

Livery
The airline's livery consisted of silver on the belly, white on the top part of the fuselage color, with orange and blue cheatlines that went all the way to the start of the tail. The fuselage featured the name Viasa written in orange on top of the cheatlines. The tail was all orange, with the name Viasa in white. After Iberia took over, all the fuselage went white, and so did the tail. The cheatlines were made thicker around the plane's cockpit, to resemble Iberia's planes.

Accidents and incidents
According to Aviation Safety Network, Viasa experienced five accidents/incidents events throughout its history, with two of them being deadly ones, yielding a combined death toll of 216 fatalities, plus a hijacking episode. The two deadly accidents occurred with leased aircraft. Following is a list of the events that carried with the hull-loss of the aircraft involved. The worst accident experienced by the company, and also the worst aviation disaster at the time it took place, occurred in March 1969, and killed all 84 occupants of the aircraft plus 71 people on the ground.

title: Viasa


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Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans

Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans was an early 1960s vocal group produced by Phil Spector, and was initially conceived as a vehicle for the lead vocals of Bobby Sheen, who took the stage name Bob B. Soxx. The Blue Jeans were backing vocalists Darlene Love and Fanita James, both of whom were also members of the girl group the Blossoms.

Career
Despite Sheen's status as group leader, by the time the trio entered the recording studio, Spector was often using Love as the group's primary vocalist. Sheen sang lead on the group's first hit, 1962's "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" (originally from the 1946 Disney movie, Song of the South). Love, meanwhile, handled the lead vocals on the follow-up single, 1963's "Why Do Lovers Break Each Other's Heart". Sheen and Love shared lead vocal duties on the final single, "Not Too Young to Get Married".

Sheen and Love shared vocal duties on the only album the group ever recorded, Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah (1963).

Sheen can be heard as lead vocalist on the group's final recordings, "The Bells of St. Mary's" and "Here Comes Santa Claus", two tracks on the Spector-produced album, A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector (1963), on which Love also appears as a solo artist. On the cover of this album, a group portrait shows Sheen with two Blue Jeans vocalists (actually two more Spector session singers, Lillian Washington and future Honey Cone member Carolyn Willis, who toured with Sheen as the Blue Jeans, although both Love and James continued as the Blue Jeans in the recording studio).

After 1963, the group was dropped by Philles Records and effectively ceased to exist. Sheen went back to using his real name, recorded some tracks for Capitol Records in the mid-1960s, and later joined a touring version of the Coasters, which featured original bass singer Bobby Nunn. Sheen had previously been a member of the Robins, joining in 1957. Love recorded a few solo hits, but, more memorably, was the lead vocalist on at least two hit records by the Crystals. It is also established that Sheen, Love, and James (with the rest of the Blossoms) were the voices on the Crystals' hits "He's a Rebel" and "He's Sure the Boy I Love".

Albums

 * Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah (1963)

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

title: Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans


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Bitstream format

A bitstream format is the format of the data found in a stream of bits used in a digital communication or data storage application. The term typically refers to the data format of the output of an encoder, or the data format of the input to a decoder when using data compression.

Processing
Standardized interoperability specifications such as the video coding standards produced by the MPEG and the ITU-T, and the audio coding standards produced by the MPEG, often specify only the bitstream format and the decoding process. This allows encoder implementations to use any methods whatsoever that produce bitstreams which conform to the specified bitstream format.

Normally, decoding of a bitstream can be initiated without having to start from the beginning of a file, or the beginning of the data transmission. Some bitstreams are designed for this to occur, for example by using indexes or key frames.

Uses of bit stream decoders (BSD):
 * Graphics processing unit (GPU)
 * H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
 * Unified Video Decoder (UVD) – the video decoding bit-stream technology from ATI Technologies/AMD
 * PureVideo – the video decoding bit-stream technology from Nvidia
 * Quick Sync Video – the video decoding and encoding bit-stream technology from Intel

title: Bitstream format


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Bruce & Terry

Bruce & Terry was an American rock music duo from Los Angeles that was active from 1963 to 1965. Consisting of Columbia Records staff producers Bruce Johnston and Terry Melcher, the pair recorded under a variety of names, and most notably with the band the Rip Chords. After 1965, Johnston and Melcher reduced their collaborations together, but both producers continued to occasionally contribute to tracks by the Beach Boys, including on the albums Pet Sounds (1966), Still Cruisin' (1989), and Summer in Paradise (1992).

History
Johnston was a session musician and Melcher had a minor solo career as "Terry Day" before becoming the youngest staff record producer in Columbia Records' history. In 1963, they began recording together and helped produce the album Surfin' Round the World.

While producing a "surf-frat" band called the Rip Chords, whose "Here I Stand" had reached No. 51 in early 1963, they ended up vocal arranging and singing all of the vocal parts on the band's hit "Hey Little Cobra" in 1964. The song was the first in a series of hit singles (most of which were released under the name Bruce & Terry), reaching No. 4 on the U.S. pop charts.

The duo virtually disbanded when Johnston joined The Beach Boys, singing on Pet Sounds and performing with them well into the 21st century, while Melcher became a full-time producer. The two occasionally worked on projects together until Melcher died at 62, after a long battle with melanoma, on November 19, 2004.

Discography
Bruce & Terry singles
 * "Custom Machine" / "Makaha at Midnight" (Columbia 4-42956, 1964) – No. 85 US
 * "Summer Means Fun" / "Yeah!" (Columbia 4-43055, 1964) – No. 72 US
 * "I Love You Model 'T'" / "Carmen" (Columbia 4-43238, 1965) -- No. 107 US
 * "Raining in My Heart" / "Four Strong Winds" (Columbia 4-43378, 1965)
 * "Thank You, Baby" / "Come Love" (Columbia 4-43479)
 * "Girl, It's Alright Now" / "Don't Run Away" (Columbia 4-43582, 1966)
 * "Take It To Mexico (Tulsa County Blue)" / "Rebecca" (RCA Victor NB-10238, 1975)

Bruce & Terry albums
 * Rare Masters (M&M MMCD 1001, 1992)
 * The Best of Bruce & Terry (Sundazed SC 11052, 1998)

Rip Chords singles featuring both Bruce and Terry
 * 1962–63: "Here I Stand" (Bringas on lead vocal) backed with "Karen" (Stewart on lead) Billboard #51.
 * 1963: "Gone" (Bringas on lead) b/w "She Thinks I Still Care" (Bringas on lead) Billboard #88.
 * 1963–64: "Hey Little Cobra" (Melcher on lead) b/w "The Queen" (Melcher on lead) Billboard #4.
 * 1964: "Three Window Coupe" (Melcher on lead) b/w "Hot Rod U.S.A." (Melcher on lead) Billboard #28.
 * 1964: "One Piece Topless Bathing Suit" (Melcher and Bringas on lead) b/w "Wah-Wahini" (Melcher on lead) Billboard #96.
 * 1965: "Don't Be Scared" (Melcher on lead) b/w "Bunny Hill" (instrumental by The Wrecking Crew)

Other albums featuring both Bruce and Terry

 * Surfin' 'Round the World (1963) (Bruce Johnston solo album)
 * Hey Little Cobra and Other Hot Rod Hits (Columbia, February 1964) #56. Billboard Album Chart. (Rip Chords album)
 * Three Window Coupe (Columbia, September 1964) (Rip Chords album)
 * Pet Sounds (Capitol, 16th May 1966) (Beach Boys album)
 * The Beach Boys (Caribou, 10th June 1985) (Beach Boys album)
 * Still Cruisin' (Capitol, 28th August 1989) (Beach Boys album)
 * Summer in Paradise (Brother, 3rd August 1992) (Beach Boys album)
 * Summer U.S.A.! The Best of the Rip Chords (Sundazed, 27th June 2006) (Rip Chords album)

title: Bruce & Terry


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The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is an American television sitcom created by Andy and Susan Borowitz for NBC. It aired from September 10, 1990, to May 20, 1996. The series stars Will Smith as a fictionalized version of himself, a street-smart teenager born and raised in West Philadelphia who is sent to live with his wealthy uncle and aunt in Bel-Air, Los Angeles, where his lifestyle often clashes with that of his upper-class relatives.

The series was considered Will Smith's star vehicle into television, and later his film career. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was a top hit for NBC, running for 148 episodes over six seasons. A reunion special/retrospective reuniting the surviving cast debuted on HBO Max in November 2020. A more dramatic reimagining of the series, titled Bel-Air and based on the fan film of the same name, was given a two-season order for Peacock, and released on February 13, 2022.

Summary
The theme song and opening sequence set the premise of the show. Will Smith is a street-smart African-American teenager, "born and raised" in West Philadelphia. While playing street basketball, Will accidentally hits a group of gang members with the ball, causing a confrontation that frightens his mother, who sends him to live with his wealthy aunt and uncle in the opulent neighborhood of Bel Air, Los Angeles.

Will's working class background ends up clashing in various humorous ways with the upper class world of the Banks family – Will's stern uncle Phil and tough but fair aunt Vivian and their children, Will's cousins: spoiled Hilary, pompous Carlton, impressionable Ashley and baby Nicky (introduced in season 3), as well as their sarcastic butler Geoffrey.

Cast and characters

 * = Main cast (credited)
 * = Recurring cast (4+)

Celebrity guest stars
The show is notable for having a heavy celebrity guest presence, with more than forty celebrities guest starring throughout the series. Seasons 1 and 6 had the highest celebrity participation, with over 10 celebrity guest stars each.

Development
In 1990, music manager Benny Medina, along with his business partner, real estate mogul Jeff Pollack, decided to market a TV story based on Medina's life. Medina had grown up poor in East Los Angeles but his life changed when he befriended a rich white teenager, whose family lived in Beverly Hills and allowed Medina to live with them. Medina decided to use this part of his life as the main focus of the show. However, given that by then a black character living with a white family was a concept that had been done multiple times on TV, Medina decided to change the rich white family to a rich black family. "That way we could explore black-on-black prejudice as well as black class differences", Medina said in an interview for Ebony magazine.

Medina pitched the idea to Quincy Jones, who had just signed a TV deal with Time-Warner. Jones was impressed by the idea and arranged a meeting with NBC chief Brandon Tartikoff. Will Smith was well known at the time as one-half of the hip-hop duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, which had put him on the mainstream radar, but he had come into debt after failing to pay taxes. At the suggestion of his then-girlfriend, Smith went to a taping of The Arsenio Hall Show where he met Medina by chance. Medina pitched the idea to Smith, but Smith was reluctant, having never acted before. Medina invited Smith to meet Jones at a party that Jones was throwing at his house in December 1989. There, Jones handed Smith a script for a failed Morris Day pilot that he had produced and challenged Smith to audition for Tartikoff on the spot. Smith did so, and the first contract for the show was drawn up that night in a limo outside. Three months later, the pilot was shot.

Andy Borowitz and his wife, Susan, are credited as the series' creators. Andy Borowitz, who was on a contract with NBC, was selected by Tartikoff to write the pilot. He based Will's cousins on Quincy Jones's daughters, and named Carlton after his friend Carlton Cuse. In 2015, he remarked that "it was written and taped in about three weeks, start to finish, and somehow it worked. It was just an explosion of really good luck."

The pilot episode began taping on May 1, 1990. Season 1 first aired in September 1990, and ended in May 1991. The series finale was taped on Thursday, March 21, 1996, and aired on Monday, May 20, 1996.

The theme song "Yo Home to Bel Air" was written and performed by Smith under his stage name, The Fresh Prince. The music was composed by Quincy Jones, who is credited with Smith at the end of each episode. The music often used to bridge scenes together during the show is based on a similar chord structure.

Crossovers and other appearances
During the fall 1991–1992 season, NBC gained two hit television shows to anchor their Monday night lineup (Blossom aired immediately after The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air). To gain popularity between the two shows, Will Smith appeared in the Blossom episode "I'm with the Band" as himself under his rap stage name, The Fresh Prince. That same season, Karyn Parsons appeared in the Blossom episode "Wake Up Little Suzy" as Hilary Banks. Parsons also appeared in the Patti LaBelle sitcom Out All Night as Hilary.

James Avery had a short cameo as "the father from Fresh Prince" on Family Matters, at the end of the episode "Scenes from a Mall". He appears during the credits in a blooper scene where he surprises Reginald VelJohnson on set.

In the House and Fresh Prince were both executive-produced by Winifred Hervey, David Salzman and Quincy Jones. During the second season's first episode, Alfonso Ribeiro and Tatyana Ali appeared as their Fresh Prince characters (Carlton and Ashley Banks) in the crossover episode "Dog Catchers". Later that season, James Avery (Phillip Banks) appeared as a mediator in the episode "Love on a One-Way Street".

Following Fresh Prince's conclusion, Ribeiro joined the principal cast of In the House from its third season as Dr. Maxwell Stanton. In the Season 4 episode "My Pest Friend's Wedding", Avery and Daphne Maxwell Reid (the second Vivian Banks) guest starred as Stanton's parents. Joseph Marcell, Geoffrey Butler on Fresh Prince, appeared as an officiating minister in the same episode.

Syndication
The series was produced by NBC Productions in association with the Stuffed Dog Company and Quincy Jones Entertainment (later Quincy Jones-David Salzman Entertainment in 1993).

After the show was released to syndication in 1994, the series' distribution rights were picked up by Warner Bros. Television Distribution who continue to hold them to this day and its parent company Warner Bros currently owning the rights to the series.

Currently, reruns of the series are still aired around the world on ViacomCBS Domestic Media Networks' MTV2 and VH1, having previously been aired on its MTV, Nick at Nite, TeenNick, and Centric channels. Other past carriers include WGN America, TBS, TNT, Walt Disney Television's Disney XD, ABC Family and ViacomCBS Domestic Media Networks' BET and Paramount Network.

The series attained huge popularity in the United Kingdom, where it aired on BBC Two between 1991 and 1996, with reruns airing on the network between 1996 and 2004; it was shown alongside The Simpsons and was later repeated on Trouble, Bravo, Channel One, Living, Sky Living Loves, Viva, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Comedy Central Extra and 5Star. In the United Kingdom, all seasons became available on BBC iPlayer from 1 January 2021, and also currently airs on Sky Comedy and Sky Showcase.

It also aired on Omni Television, YTV, Yes TV and CBC in Canada.

In Italy, the series aired under the name Willy, il principe di Bel-Air (Willy, the Prince of Bel-Air) on Italia 1 from September 20, 1993, until December 3, 1996. It aired in Australia on the nine network during the allotted years and was popular in Australia. It can now be streamed on Stan where the entire series is on the site.

The series became available to stream on HBO Max and Hulu on May 27, 2020. It streams in Canada on Crave. It began to stream on Paramount+ on March 29.

Home media
Warner Home Video has released the complete series, seasons 1 to 6, on DVD in Region 1. Seasons 1 to 4 have been released in Regions 2 and 4. Seasons 5 to 6 have been released in Region 2 in Germany, and in the complete series boxset in the United Kingdom.

Cultural impact and legacy
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air's success is considered to be a watershed moment for hip-hop and black television, with many publications referring to it as one of the greatest sitcoms of all time. Professor Andrew Horton stated: "Smith's genre of comedy, popularized on the sitcom Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, translated well into commercial box-office appeal. The Fresh Prince watered down and capitalized upon the then growing popularity of hip-hop and almost anticipated its dominance on the American scene".

Author Willie Tolliver noted: "What The Fresh Prince did accomplish was to put Smith and his character Will into an environment of affluence and possibility, thus changing the terms of his own Black identity. This social and cultural mobility is central to Smith's racial significance, and this will become evident again and again; he moves the image of the Black male into unaccustomed spaces just as Smith himself was in the process of conquering Hollywood."

Reboot series
On August 13, 2015, it was reported that a reboot of the show was in development by Overbrook Entertainment, with Will Smith serving as a producer. In August 2016, during a promotional interview with the E! television network for his then upcoming film Suicide Squad, Smith denied that a reboot was in development, saying that it would happen "...pretty close to when Hell freezes over".

In 2019, a mock trailer titled Bel-Air was uploaded on YouTube, written and directed by Morgan Cooper, for a darker, more dramatic re-imagining of the sitcom. Will Smith subsequently heavily praised the fan film, commenting that "Morgan did a ridiculous trailer for Bel-Air. Brilliant idea, the dramatic version of The Fresh Prince for the next generation", expressing interest in expanding the idea beyond the short film into a full Bel-Air reboot series.

In August 2020, it was announced that Will Smith and Morgan Cooper would be developing a reboot of the series based on Cooper's Bel-Air. The series had reportedly been in the works for over a year since Cooper posted his Bel-Air trailer on YouTube, with Netflix, Peacock and HBO Max all currently bidding for the series. On September 8, 2020, Peacock gave Bel-Air a two-season order, with the series produced by and copyrighted to Universal Television. In September 2021, the full cast was announced with newcomer Jabari Banks cast as Will Smith, Adrian Holmes as Philip Banks, Cassandra Freeman as Vivian Banks, Olly Sholotan as Carlton Banks, Coco Jones as Hilary Banks, Akira Akbar as Ashley Banks, Jimmy Akingbola as Geoffrey, Jordan L. Jones as Jazz and Simone Joy Jones as Lisa. The series premiered in February 2022.

Reunion
Much of the cast virtually reunited over a video call in an episode of Smith's Snapchat reality series Will From Home that premiered in April 2020. A reunion of the surviving original cast, The Fresh Prince Reunion, aired on HBO Max in November 2020. Among other reminisces, Janet Hubert appeared, also appearing around this time in a joint radio interview with Smith where the two reconcile. More information and context were offered regarding the situation between Smith and Hubert and her exit when the two met for their conversation. Hubert discussed the turmoil in her personal life, her abusive marriage and that she had not actually been fired by the show. She was offered what she described as a "bad deal" to return for the fourth season and she turned it down. Smith talked about how grappling with his rapidly increasing fame at such a young age led him to make decisions during that time that he now regrets and wishes he had made differently. The reunion show also features a tribute to James Avery, who died in 2013, that was shown to the surviving cast. The tribute brought the entire cast to tears.

title: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air


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Talk:Experiment

Manhattan Project
The last section of the article currently says something along the lines of the Manhattan project not directly involving human exposure, but from the Trinity test onward it certainly did. Although there were scientists present at that test who more fully understood the danger and could be considered willing to endanger themselves for the sake of watching their bomb-peen in action, it's almost certain that the enlisted soldiers and others on site had very little real idea of the dangers of what they were watching outside of being impressed by the scale. Fallout from the tests in the form of vaporized plutonium from the 10 pounds of bomb core that didn't undergo fission settled slowly over inhabited areas downwind. After this test the minimum range to inhabited areas was increased to 150 miles, which was convenient since most inhabited areas were on the edge of this so the test site could just be adjusted slightly; it seemingly had little to do with human health. For reasons that make little sense (they weren't aware of the test (?!)) those affected by fallout from the Trinity test aren't eligible, but the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act has covered a very large number of others; As a result of fallout from later Nevada tests, as of early 2023 (see linked page) 25,663 had received compensation for having been affected by fallout, along with 5,388 onsite participants, 6,896 uranium miners, 1,921 uranium millers and 406 ore transporters, with nearly $2.6 trillion having been paid out. That it happened and wasn't ethical was basically acknowledged in the act itself: "The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was passed by Congress on October 5, 1990, and signed into law by President George H. W. Bush on October 15, 1990. In the successful bill it was written that Congress 'apologizes on behalf of the nation' to individuals who were 'involuntarily subjected to increased risk of injury and disease to serve the national security interests of the United States.'" "Involuntarily subjected" says everything that needs to be said about intent.

Actually at the time that the first bombs were assembled, plutonium was believed to be far more toxic in the long term than it is and it was expected that all scientists on site and more or less anyone handling plutonium would have been dead of lung cancer by the 70s. They ended up having a fairly low rate of lung cancer. The fact that it was being tracked because of those expected results indicates it wasn't a simple unexpected discovery but intentional observation of a treatment group (those exposed) vs. general populations (control) which basically defines a human experiment.

I would say far better examples might be the TGN1412 first phase trials where 6 otherwise healthy people were affected by multiple organ failures or died after an unexpected reaction in humans (mice, rats, and chimps didn't show negative reactions), although with the history of monoclonal antibodies in humans and their potential usually horrifying side effects the ethical question could also be whether testing them on healthy people is ever justified. In that case they were the first test subjects, but a drug with the effects of that and most of the T-cell related monoclonal drugs is something a healthy person doesn't need or want; they're generally (in the US) approved to treat specific cancers, then later sold as psoriasis medications unethically (commercials showing a woman with a tiny red spot near her hairline instead of the 50% body coverage you should be at before considering a drug that can cause the blood-brain barrier to mess up somehow and allow infection of the brain itself by fungus, something that only happens otherwise in corpses and late-stage AIDS patients.  The second doesn't occur as much anymore, either.

More recently BIA 10-2474 tests left one man brain-dead after rapid change into a state resembling stroke and severe permanent brain damage and necrosis in 4 others. In that case the drug had been tested in 90 others at lower doses first; the ethical issue arises where the high multiple dose group that suffered the debilitating permanent effects was being given the drugs even after the first person injected was in the hospital lapsing into a coma without factoring in that as being a possible effect of the drug despite several factors pointing towards the posibility. In that way it's very similar to the drug trial mentioned above, with test subjects being given doses even as those who had been injected before them were well on their way to death. This case with successful human trials before these poses the good ethical question of whether or not the supervisors were acting ethically and really believed their drug had nothing to do with the rapid onset of effects in the first person injected. My bias would be to say they were thinking more of the potential jackpot of money from this drug and the huge lineup of analogues I'm sure was already tested on rats and mice. You need medical ethics studies for that sort of thing though. A Shortfall Of Gravitas (talk) 12:10, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Experiment


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Henry II of Castile

Henry II (13 January 1334 – 29 May 1379), called Henry of Trastámara or the Fratricidal (el Fratricida), was the first King of Castile and León from the House of Trastámara. He became king in 1369 by defeating his half-brother Peter the Cruel, after numerous rebellions and battles. As king he was involved in the Fernandine Wars and the Hundred Years' War.

Biography
Henry was the fourth of ten illegitimate children of King Alfonso XI of Castile and Eleanor de Guzmán, a great-granddaughter of Alfonso IX of León. He was born a twin to Fadrique Alfonso, Lord of Haro, and was the first boy born to the couple that survived to adulthood.

At birth, he was adopted by Rodrigo Álvarez de las Asturias. Rodrigo died the following year and Henry inherited his lordship of Noreña. His father later made him Count of Trastámara and lord over Lemos and Sarria in Galicia, and the towns of Cabrera and Ribera, which constituted a large and important heritage in the northwest of the peninsula. It made him the head of the new Trastámara dynasty, arising from the main branch of Burgundy-Ivrea.

While Alfonso XI lived, his lover Eleanor gave a great many titles and privileges to their sons. This caused discontent among many of the noblemen and in particular the queen, Maria of Portugal, and her son, Peter.

They had a chance for revenge when Alfonso XI died unexpectedly from a fever in the siege of Gibraltar in March, 1350. They pushed Eleanor, her sons and their supporters aside, and Henry and his brothers fled and scattered. They were fearful of what their brother, King Peter, could do to them. The late king had not even been buried.

Although Eleanor and her sons reached an agreement with Peter to live peacefully in his court, the situation remained unstable. Henry and his brothers Fadrique, Tello and Sancho staged numerous rebellions against the new king. Also, to strengthen his position and gain allies, Henry married Juana Manuel, the daughter of Juan Manuel, Prince of Villena, adelantado mayor of Murcia and Lord of Villena, the most prosperous nobleman of the realm. In 1351, the King took counsel from Juan Alfonso de Alburquerque, María of Portugal's right-hand man. He became convinced that his father's lover was the instigator of the uprisings, so he ordered Eleanor to be incarcerated and finally executed in Talavera de la Reina.

After that, Henry fled to Portugal. He was pardoned by Pedro and returned to Castile, then revolted in Asturias in 1352. He reconciled with his brother, only to rebel against him again in a long, intermittent war, which ended with Henry's flight to France, where he entered the service of John II of France.

Shortly after, Henry and his men spent time in Peter IV of Aragon's army in their war against Castile (1358). During that conflict, he was defeated and held prisoner in Nájera (1360). He was liberated (with the help of Juan Ramírez de Arellano, among others) and exiled himself to France once more.

Then Peter IV of Aragon attacked Castile again. Henry agreed to help him on condition that he would lend his support to destroying his half-brother. This became the Castilian Civil War. The attack combined Henry's Castillian allies, the Aragonese and the French (a company of Bertrand du Guesclin's mercenaries, expelled by Peter of Castile, who had taken refuge in Guyenne). Henry was proclaimed king in Calahorra (1366). In return, he had to reward his allies with titles and riches for the help they had provided. This earned him the nickname el de las mercedes ("mercedes'' being Spanish for "mercies").

Peter of Castile fled north to Bordeaux, the capital of the English dominions in France, where Edward, the Black Prince held court. Edward agreed to help Peter recover his throne. Despite the fact that the army suffered so badly from dysentery that it is said that one out of every five Englishmen would not return home, on 3 April 1367 an Anglo-Gascon army, led by Edward and his younger brother, John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, met the Castilian forces (supported by French mercenaries under Bertrand du Guesclin). Peter then defeated Henry in the Battle of Nájera, but Henry escaped and returned to France under the protection of Charles V of France. King Peter and Prince Edward parted ways over the funding of the expedition, and the Black Prince returned to Bordeaux, having contracted an illness on this expedition that would ail him until his death in 1376.

They reorganised their army at Peyrepertuse Castle. Then, with the help of many Castilian rebels and Bertrand du Guesclin's Frenchmen, they defeated Peter at the Battle of Montiel on 14 March 1369. Henry killed "the Cruel King", now a prisoner, with his own hand. This definitively won him the Castilian throne and the name of Henry II.

Before being consolidated in his throne and being able to hand on power to his son John, Henry had to defeat Ferdinand I of Portugal. He embarked on the three Ferdinand Wars. Ferdinand's main ally in these wars was John of Gaunt, the husband of Peter's daughter Constance. Henry was allied with Charles V of France. He put the Castilian navy at Charles' disposal and they played a key part in the siege of La Rochelle, and the Battle of La Rochelle where the admiral Ambrosio Boccanegra completely defeated the English side.

Henry recompensed his allies, but he still had to defend his interests in the kingdom of Castile and León. Consequently, he denied the King of Aragon the territories that he had promised him in the difficult times.

Henry then went to war against Portugal and England in the Hundred Years' War. For most of his reign he had to fight off the attempts of John of Gaunt, a son of Edward III of England, to claim the Castilian throne in right of Constance. In his domestic policy he started to rebuild the kingdom, sped up the transformation of the royal administration; and held numerous courts. He also permanently set up the Lordship of Biscay after the death of his brother Tello. In foreign policy, he favoured France over England.

He died on 29 May 1379 in Santo Domingo de la Calzada. His son John I of Castile succeeded him on the throne.

Policy regarding Jews
Henry was as hostile to the Jews as Peter had been friendly. In order to pay Bertrand du Guesclin's mercenaries, he imposed a war contribution of twenty thousand gold doubloons on the already heavily oppressed community of Toledo, and issued an order to take all the Jews of Toledo as prisoners, to give them neither food nor drink, and if they still refused to raise this enormous sum, to sell their property, both movable and immovable, at auction. Nonetheless, he was compelled, owing to his financial straits, to have recourse to Jewish financiers. He made Don Joseph Pichon his chief tax-collector (contador major), and appointed several Jews farmers of the taxes.

The demands of the Cortes in Toro (1369) and in Burgos (1374 and 1377) against the Jews harmonized perfectly with Henry's inclinations. He ordered the Jews to wear the humiliating badge, and forbade them to use Christian names. He further ordered that for short loans Christian debtors should repay only two-thirds of the principal. Shortly before his death Henry declared that Jews should no longer be permitted to hold public office.

Henry was potentially the first ruler since the Visigothic King Ergica to implement anti-Jewish policies in the Iberian Peninsula.

Burial
After Henry's death, his body was transported to Burgos, then to Valladolid, then finally to Toledo where he was buried in Capilla de los Reyes Nuevos de Toledo His remains are still there today. His grave is in the choir stalls at one side of the church and it is in the Plateresque style. The box is adorned with the shields of Castille and León, and the lower interior part has three panels decorated with trophies. There are two cherubs over the panels, holding the cartouche on which the king's epitaph is displayed. The inscription translates to:

"Here lies the most adventurous and noble knight and king, the sweetly remembered Don Henry, son of the late noble king Don Alfonso, who came from Benmarin and ended his life in Santo Domingo de la Calzada, he just died gloriously on the XXX day of May, in the year of our saviour Jesus Christ MCCCLXXIX."

There is a recumbent statue of Henry II on top of the tomb. It is made from polychromed alabaster. It depicts the king wearing his royal robes, with his sword in his left hand and his girdle decorated with the lions of Castile. His right hand holds the sceptre, the upper end of which rests on three pillows that support the monarch's head. The king wears slippers and his feet rest on a recumbent lion.

The king's entrails are buried in the Cathedral of Santo Domingo de la Calzada.

Partners and children
On 27 July 1350, Henry married Juana Manuel, the daughter of Juan Manuel, Prince of Villena, head of a younger branch of the royal house of Castile. They had three children:

 * John I (1358–1390)
 * Eleanor (1361–1425), wife of Charles III of Navarre
 * Joanna (1372–1376), died young

He had several children outside wedlock, some of which he mentioned in his will dated 29 May 1374:

 * Alfonso Enriquez, Count of Gijón and Noreña (1355 – c. 1400), a son of Elvira Íñiguez, Count of Noreña and Gijón. He married Isabel of Portugal, Lady of Viseu.
 * Leonor de Castilla, daughter of Leonor Álvarez, from Dueñas, Palencia.
 * Juana de Castilla (1367–¿?), daughter of Elvira Íñiguez. Her father mentioned her in his will, and said that if she did not marry Pedro de Aragón then she would inherit Urueña. Pedro was the Marquis of Villena (1362—Aljubarrota, 1385) and son of Alfonso de Aragón y Foix.
 * Constanza Enríquez de Castilla. Her father did not mention her mother's name.  When he wrote the will in 1374, she was engaged to Infante Denis, Lord of Cifuentes (1354–1397).  However she eventually married his brother, Infante John, Duke of Valencia de Campos (1349–1387).  She inherited Alba de Tormes.
 * Fernando Enríquez de Castilla (1365–1438). His father describes him as the son of Beatriz Fernández.
 * María de Castilla (1375-c.1393), daughter of Beatriz Fernández. She married Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (Admiral of Castile), Lord of Mendoza, and Mayordomo mayor of King John II of Castile.
 * Fadrique de Castilla (1360–1394), son of Beatriz Ponce de León y Jérica. Named Duke of Benavente by his father, he died in prison in Almodóvar del Río in 1394. He married Leonor Sánchez de Castilla, illegitimate daughter of Sancho Alfonso, 1st Count of Alburquerque.
 * Beatriz de Castilla (?-1409), daughter of Beatriz Ponce de León y Jérica and Lady of Niebla. She married Juan Alonso de Guzmán in 1370 or 1371.  He was Lord of Sanlúcar de Barrameda and the first Count of Niebla.  Later she became a nun in the San Clement Monastery in Seville, where she was buried.
 * Enrique de Castilla (1378–1404), son of the Cordoban Lady Juana de Sousa, daughter of Vasco Alfonso de Sousa, the mayor of Córdoba, with María Gómez Carrillo, the Duchess of Medina Sidonia and Countess of Cabra.  Enrique is buried in the Cathedral of Córdoba.
 * Pedro Enríquez de Castilla (?-1366). He is buried in Segovia Cathedral.
 * Isabel Enríquez de Castilla (?-c.1419), daughter of Juana de Cárcamo. She married Gonzalo Núñez de Guzmán, however, this marriage was dissolved by Pope Clemente VII. Later she entered the monastery of Santa Clara la Real de Toledo where she became its abbess and was buried.
 * Inés Enríquez de Castilla (?-c.1443), daughter of Juana de Cárcamo, also an abbess of the monastery at Santa Clara la Real de Toledo where she was buried.
 * Juana Enríquez de Castilla, daughter de Juana, Lady of Cifuentes and wife of Infante Denis, Lord of Cifuentes (1354–1397), son of Peter I of Portugal and Inês de Castro, she is buried at Santa María de Guadalupe.

Titles
By the end of his reign, he bore the titles of the King of Castile, Toledo, León, Galicia, Sevilla, Córdoba, Murcia, Jaén, the Algarve and Lord of Molina.

title: Henry II of Castile


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Connie Francis

Connie Francis (born Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero; December 12, 1937) is an American pop singer, actress, and top-charting female vocalist of the late 1950s and early 1960s. She is estimated to have sold more than 100 million records worldwide.

In 1960, Francis was recognized as the most successful female artist in Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Australia, and in every other country where records were purchased. She was the first woman in history to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, just one of her other 53 career hits.

1937–1955: early life and first appearances
Francis was born to an Italian-American family in the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, the first child of George and Ida (née Ferrari-di Vito) Franconero, spending her first years in the Crown Heights, Brooklyn area (Utica Avenue/St. Marks Avenue) before the family moved to New Jersey.

Growing up in an Italian-Jewish neighborhood, Francis became fluent in Yiddish, which led her later to record songs in Yiddish and Hebrew.

In her autobiography Who's Sorry Now? published in 1984, Francis recalls that she was encouraged by her father to appear regularly at talent contests, pageants, and other neighborhood festivities from the age of four as a singer and accordion player.

Francis attended Newark Arts High School in 1951 and 1952. She and her family moved to Belleville, New Jersey, where Francis graduated as salutatorian from Belleville High School Class of 1955.

Francis continued to perform at neighborhood festivities and talent shows (some of them broadcast on television), appearing alternately as Concetta Franconero and Connie Franconero. Under the latter name, she appeared on NBC's variety show Startime Kids between 1953 and 1955.

During rehearsals for her appearance on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts in December 1950, Francis was advised by Godfrey to change her stage name to Connie Francis for easier pronunciation. Godfrey also told her to drop the accordion—advice she gladly followed, as she had begun to hate the large and heavy instrument. Around the same time, Francis took a job as a singer on demonstration records, to bring unreleased songs to the attention of established singers and/or their management who might choose to record them for a professional commercial record.

1955–1957: recording contract but commercial failure
In 1955, Startime Kids went off the air. In May that same year, George Franconero Sr. and Francis's manager George Scheck raised money for a recording session of four songs which they hoped to sell to a major record company under Francis's own name. Even when MGM Records decided to sign a contract with her, it was because one track she had recorded, "Freddy", happened to be the name of the son of a company executive, Harry A. Meyerson, who thought of the song as a nice birthday gift. Hence, "Freddy" was released as Francis's first single, which turned out to be a commercial failure, just like her next eight solo singles.

Despite these failures, Francis was hired to record the vocals for Tuesday Weld's "singing" scenes in the 1956 movie Rock, Rock, Rock, and for Freda Holloway in the 1957 Warner Brothers rock and roll movie Jamboree.

In the fall of 1957, Francis enjoyed her first modest success with a duet single she had recorded with Marvin Rainwater: "The Majesty of Love", with "You, My Darlin' You" as the B-side, peaked at number 93 on the Billboard Hot 100. Eventually, the single sold over one million copies.

1957–1959: last chance and breakthrough
However, her minor chart success came too late for her record label—Francis's recording contract consisted of ten solo singles and one duet single. Though success had finally seemed to come with "The Majesty of Love", Francis was informed by MGM Records that her contract would not be renewed after her last solo single.

Francis considered a career in medicine and was about to accept a four-year scholarship offered at New York University. At what was to have been her final recording session for MGM on October 2, 1957, with Joe Lipman and his orchestra, she recorded a cover version of the 1923 song "Who's Sorry Now?" written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. Francis has said that she recorded it at the insistence of her father, who was convinced it stood a chance of becoming a hit because it was a song adults already knew and that teenagers would dance to if it had a contemporary arrangement.

Francis did not like the song and argued about it with her father heatedly, delaying the recording of the two other songs during the session so much that she thought no time was left on the continuously running recording tape. Her father insisted, though, and when the recording "Who's Sorry Now?" was finished, only a few seconds remained on the tape.

The single seemed to go unnoticed like all previous releases, just as Francis had predicted, but on January 1, 1958, it debuted on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Francis watched the show and wrote in her diary:

''I heard Dick Clark mention something about a new girl singer. So, what else is new? Another girl singer. There are ninety-five million females in the country, and I'll bet ninety-five percent of them sing. "There's no doubt about it", predicted Mr. Clark. "She's is headed straight for the number one spot". I began feeling sorry for myself and a bit envious, too. Good luck to her, I thought. And then Mr. Clark just happened to play a song called "Who's sorry now" - MY "Who's Sorry Now"! Well, the feeling was cosmic - just cosmic! Right there in my living-room, it became Mardi Gras-time and New Year's Eve at the turn of the century!'' And on February 15 of that same year, Francis performed it on the first episode of The Saturday Night Beechnut Show, also hosted by Clark. By mid-year, over a million copies had been sold, and Francis was suddenly launched into worldwide stardom. In April 1958, "Who's Sorry Now?" reached number 1 on the UK Singles Chart and number 4 in the US. For the next four years, Francis was voted the "Best Female Vocalist" by American Bandstand viewers.

As Connie Francis explains at each of her concerts, she began searching for a new hit immediately after the success of "Who's Sorry Now?" since MGM Records had renewed her contract. After the relative failure of the follow-up singles "I'm Sorry I Made You Cry," which stalled at No. 36) and "Heartaches", failing to chart at all, Francis met Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, who sang a number of ballads they had written for her. After a few hours, Francis began writing in her diary while the songwriters played the last of their ballads. This, and her refusal to let Sedaka and Greenfield see the diary to mine it for material, inspired the duo to write Sedaka's own breakthrough hit "The Diary.") Afterwards, Francis told them that she considered their ballads too intellectual and sophisticated for the young generation and requested a more lively song. Greenfield urged Sedaka to sing a song they had written that morning with the Shepherd Sisters in mind. Sedaka protested that Francis would be insulted, but Greenfield said that since she hated all the other songs they had performed, they had nothing to lose. Sedaka then played "Stupid Cupid." When he finished, Francis announced that he had just played her new hit song. It went on to reach number 14 on the Billboard chart and was her second number 1 in the UK.

The success of "Stupid Cupid" restored momentum to Francis' chart career, and she reached the U.S. top 40 an additional eight times during the remainder of the 1950s. She managed to churn out more hits by covering several older songs, such as "My Happiness" (number 2 on the Hot 100) and "Among My Souvenirs" (number 7), as well as performing her own original songs. In 1959, she gained two gold records for a double-sided hit: on the A-side, "Lipstick on Your Collar" (number 5), and on the B-side, "Frankie" (number 9).

1959–1973: international recording star
Following another idea from her father, Francis traveled to London in August 1959 to record an Italian album at EMI's famous Abbey Road Studios. Titled Connie Francis Sings Italian Favorites, the album was released in November 1959. It soon entered the album charts where it remained for 81 weeks, peaking at number 4 and becoming Francis's most successful album. "Mama," the single taken from the album, reached number 8 in the United States and number 2 in the United Kingdom.

Following this success, Francis recorded seven more albums of "favorites" between 1960 and 1964, including Jewish, German, and Irish, among others. These albums marked Francis's transition from the youth-oriented rock 'n' roll music to adult contemporary music, which George Franconero, Sr. had realized would be necessary if his daughter was to have a successful longterm music career.

Nevertheless, Francis continued to record singles aimed at the youth-oriented market. Among her top-ten hits on the Hot 100 were "Breakin' in a Brand New Broken Heart" (1961, number 7), "When the Boy in Your Arms (Is the Boy in Your Heart)" (1961, number 10), "Second Hand Love" (1962, number 7), and "Where the Boys Are" (1961, number 4). The last one became her signature tune and became the theme song of Francis's first motion picture. The movie introduced the concept of spring break, as the once sleepy town of Fort Lauderdale became the hotspot for college students on their spring vacation in the wake of the movie's success.

The success of "Connie Francis Sings Italian Favorites" in late 1959/early 1960 led Francis to become one of the first American artists to record regularly in other languages. She was followed by other major British and American recording stars including Wanda Jackson, Cliff Richard, Petula Clark, Brenda Lee, the Supremes, Peggy March, Pat Boone, Lesley Gore, the Beatles and Johnny Cash, among many others. In her autobiography, Francis mentioned that in the early years of her career, the language barrier in some European countries, especially in Germany, made it difficult for her songs to get airplay.

Francis used these reflections as the basis for her April 1960 recording, "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" which would go on to become the first single by a female artist to top the Hot 100. Veteran lyricist Ralph Maria Siegel penned a set of German lyrics, named "Die Liebe ist ein seltsames Spiel", which, after some friction between Francis and her MGM executives, was recorded and released. The song peaked at number 1 in West Germany. She had two more number one hits there, "Paradiso" in September 1962 and "Barcarole in der Nacht" in July 1963.

It was not until her number 7 on the US charts, "Many Tears Ago", later in 1960 when Francis began to record cover versions of her songs in foreign languages other than German. Over the years she expanded her recording portfolio to 15 languages. She also sang in Romanian during a live performance at the 1970 edition of the Cerbul de Aur in Brașov, Romania. Francis was not fluent in all of these languages and she had to learn her foreign language songs phonetically. Francis explained in a 1961 television interview that she was fluent in Spanish and Italian, but always had a translator nearby to make sure her translated lyrics and especially her pronunciation were as correct as possible. In the wake of "Die Liebe ist ein seltsames Spiel", Francis enjoyed her greatest successes outside the United States. During the 1960s, her songs not only topped the charts in numerous countries around the world, but she was also voted the number 1 singer in over 10 countries. In 1960, she was named the most popular artist in Europe, the first time a non-European received this honor. From mid-1961 to mid-1963, Radio Luxembourg closed each day's broadcasts with "It's Time to Say Goodnight", a song Francis had recorded especially for them and was not officially released until 1996.

Francis's enduring popularity overseas led to television specials in countries around the world such as Britain, Germany, Spain and Italy. Even at the height of the Cold War, Francis's music was well received in Iron Curtain countries, and some of her recordings were made available on state-owned record labels such as Melodiya in the former Soviet Union and on Jugoton in former Yugoslavia, although it was common knowledge that rock 'n' roll was highly disparaged in Eastern bloc countries.

In the US, Connie Francis had a third number-one hit in 1962: "Don't Break the Heart That Loves You", and her success led MGM to allow her complete freedom to choose whichever songs she wanted to record.

Francis's first autobiography, For Every Young Heart, was published in 1963. On July 3 that same year, she played a Royal Command Performance for Queen Elizabeth II at the Alhambra Theatre in Glasgow, Scotland. During the height of the Vietnam War in 1967, Connie Francis performed for US troops. Francis recalls this story frequently during the introduction to "God Bless America" at her live concerts.

Due to music trends in the early and mid-1960s, especially the British Invasion, Francis's chart success on Billboard's Hot 100 began to wane after 1963. She had her final top-ten hit, "Vacation", in 1962. A number of Francis's singles reached the top 40 in the US Hot 100 in the mid-1960s, with her last top-40 entry in 1964 being her cover version of "Be Anything (but Be Mine)", a 1952 song made famous by singer/bandleader Eddy Howard. Despite her declining success on the Hot 100, Francis remained a top concert draw, and her singles – with a more mature style – were charting on the top quarter of Billboard's Adult Contemporary (AC) Charts and sometimes even reached Billboard's Country Charts. Francis enjoyed lasting chart success in the US until her contract with MGM Records expired in 1969.

In 1965, Connie Francis participated in that year's edition of the annual San Remo Festival, where her team partner Gigliola Cinquetti and she presented "Ho bisogno di vederti", which finished on number 5 of the final ranking.

Francis returned to San Remo in 1967 to present "Canta Ragazzina" with her team partner Bobby Solo. In the US, however, "Time Alone Will Tell", Francis's cover version of San Remo's 1967 winning entry "Non pensare a me" which had been presented by Iva Zanicchi and Claudio Villa, peaked at number 94 on Billboard's Hot 100 and at number 14 on Billboard's AC charts.

In 1973, Francis returned to the recording studio, cutting "(Should I) Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree?", b/w "Paint the Rain" on GSF Records. This answer song to "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree" by Tony Orlando & Dawn bubbled under the charts. The recording of a German version, though, remained unfinished.

1974–1981: tragedy and return
After her modest success with "(Should I) Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree?" Francis began performing regularly again. While appearing at the Westbury Music Fair in New York, on November 8, 1974, Francis was raped at the Jericho Turnpike Howard Johnson's Lodge in Jericho, New York, and nearly suffocated under the weight of a heavy mattress the culprit had thrown upon her. She subsequently sued the motel chain for failing to provide adequate security and reportedly won a $2.5 million judgment, one of the largest such judgments in history, leading to a reform in hotel security. Her rapist was never found. In the years after the incident, Francis went into depression, taking as many as 50 Darvon pills a day and rarely leaving her home in Essex Fells, New Jersey.

In 1977, Francis underwent nasal surgery and completely lost her voice. She went through three more operations and was unable to sing for four years.

In 1978, Francis returned to the recording studio to cut an album titled Who's Happy Now? The lead recording on this album was a disco version of "Where the Boys Are". That and other songs from the Who's Happy Now? sessions were subsequently recorded in Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and German. The Spanish and German recordings became albums of their own in as Connie Francis en Español in Spain and as Was ich bin (What I Am) in Germany. All three albums and the singles culled from them were released on United Artists Records.

Francis returned again to the studio in 1981 to cut "Comme ci, comme ça", and "I'm Me Again", the latter of which became the title track of an album which featured the new songs. "I'm Me Again" became Francis' last single to chart on the AC charts.

1981–1988: more tragedy
In 1981, further tragedy struck Francis when her brother, George Franconero, Jr., with whom she was very close, was murdered by Mafia hitmen.

Despite that, she took up live performing again, even gracing the American Bandstand 30th Anniversary Special and appearing in the town where she had been raped. Francis' new-found success was short-lived, though. She was diagnosed with manic depression, which again brought her career to a halt. She was committed to multiple psychiatric hospitals. Francis attempted suicide in 1984.

Nevertheless, in 1984, Francis was able to write and publish her autobiography, Who's Sorry Now?, which became a New York Times bestseller.

1989–2018: later career
In 1989, Francis resumed her recording and performing career once again. For Malaco Records, Francis recorded a double album entitled Where the Hits Are, containing re-recordings of 18 of her biggest hits, as well as six classics of yesteryear Francis had always wanted to record such as "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" and "Torn Between Two Lovers".

In 1992, a medley of remixed versions of her biggest German hits charted in Germany. A single, entitled "Jive, Connie", ended up among the top-ten best-selling singles of the year, which brought Francis the prestigious R.SH-Gold award for the "Best Comeback of the Year" from R.SH (short for "Radio Schleswig-Holstein"), then one of Germany's most important private radio stations. A subsequent compilation album of her biggest German hits in their original versions was also released successfully. In the wake of this, Francis recorded two duets for the German Herzklang label (a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment) with Peter Kraus, with whom she had already worked several times in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A German-language solo album was supposed to follow on Herzklang, but despite all songs being recorded and mixed, the album remains unreleased.

In 1996, Francis released the live album The Return Concert: Live at Trump's Castle. That same year, she also released With Love to Buddy, a tribute album of songs made famous by the late Buddy Holly.

In late December 2004, Francis headlined in Las Vegas for the first time since 1989. In March and October 2007, Francis performed to sold-out crowds at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. She appeared in concert in Manila, Philippines, on Valentine's Day 2008.

In 2010, she appeared at the Las Vegas Hilton with Dionne Warwick, a show billed as "Eric Floyd's Grand Divas of Stage".

In December 2017, Francis released her most recent autobiography, Among My Souvenirs.

Musical genres
While her singles were mostly kept in the then-current sounds of the day such as rock 'n' roll, novelty songs, the twist, torch ballads, or the girl group sound created by Brill Building alumni Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, Francis' albums represented her in a variety of styles, ranging from R&B, vocal jazz, and country to Broadway standards, children's music, waltzes, spiritual music, schlager music, traditionals from various ethnic groups represented in the US, and select songs from popular songwriters of the day, such as Burt Bacharach and Hal David, or Les Reed.

Marriages
Francis was married four times. In 1964, she was briefly married to Dick Kanellis, a press agent and entertainment director for the Aladdin Hotel. In January 1971, she married Izzy Marion, a hair-salon owner, divorcing 10 months later. In 1973, Francis married for the third time – her only marriage to last more than a few months – to Joseph Garzilli, a restaurateur and travel-agency owner; they divorced in 1977. It was during the third marriage that Francis adopted a baby boy, Joey. Francis married TV producer Bob Parkinson on June 27, 1985, divorcing later that year.

Relationship with Bobby Darin
Early in her career, Francis was introduced to Bobby Darin, then an up-and-coming singer and songwriter. Darin's manager arranged for him to help write several songs for her. Despite some disagreement about material, after several weeks Darin and Francis developed a romantic relationship. Francis' strict Italian father would separate the couple whenever possible. When her father learned that Darin had suggested the two elope after one of her shows, he ran Darin out of the building at gunpoint.

Francis saw Darin only two more times: once when the two were scheduled to sing together for a television show, and again when she was spotlighted on the TV series This Is Your Life. By the time of the latter's taping, Darin had married actress Sandra Dee. In her autobiography, Francis stated she and her father were driving into the Lincoln Tunnel when the radio DJ announced Dee and Darin's marriage. Her father made a negative comment about Darin finally being out of their lives. Angered, Francis wrote she hoped the Hudson River would fill the Lincoln Tunnel, killing both her and her father; she later wrote that not marrying Darin was the biggest mistake of her life.

Biopic
Francis and singer Gloria Estefan completed a screenplay for a movie based on Francis' life titled Who's Sorry Now? Estefan announced that she would produce and play the lead. She said, "[Connie Francis] isn't even in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and yet she was the first female pop star worldwide, and has recorded in nine languages. She has done a lot of things for victims' rights since her rape in the '70s.... There's a major story there." In December 2009 the film project was dropped. According to Francis: "They chose to use amateur writers to write the screenplay. I wanted the writer Robert Freeman who wrote that miniseries Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows, which won I don't know how many Emmy Awards, but Gloria and company were unwilling to hire that writer. I absolutely adored his screenplay of Judy's life ... he was so eager to do my life story for film, but she [Gloria] wouldn't agree to hire him and that was the end of that. And I'm sorry I wasted ten years with those people [i.e. the Estefans]."

In the same article, Francis said that Dolly Parton had been contacting her for years trying to produce her life story, but owing to her previous commitment to Estefan's organization, she was not able to accept Parton's offer. She noted in the article that both she and Parton had considered, independently of each other, actress Valerie Bertinelli to play Francis.

Politics and activism
Francis supported Richard Nixon's 1968 bid for the presidency when she recorded a campaign song for him.

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan appointed her as head of his task force on violent crime. She has also been the spokeswoman for Mental Health America's trauma campaign, as well as an involved worker for the USO and UNICEF.

In a 2011 interview, Francis described herself as "a die-hard liberal".

Lawsuits
Francis brought a suit alleging that Universal Music Group (UMG) took advantage of her condition and stopped paying royalties. The lawsuit was dismissed.

On November 27, 2002, she filed a second suit against UMG alleging the label had inflicted severe emotional distress on her and violated her moral rights when, without her permission, it synchronized several of her songs into "sexually themed" movies: the 1994 film Post Cards from America, the 1996 film The Craft, and the 1999 film Jawbreaker. This suit was also dismissed.

Francis also sued the producers of Jawbreaker for using her song "Lollipop Lips," which is heard during a sex scene.

Recognition
In 2001, "Who's Sorry Now?" was named one of the Songs of the Century.

A "Connie Francis Way" street sign is displayed at the corner of Greylock Parkway and Forest Street in Belleville, New Jersey, near the house in which she grew up.

title: Connie Francis


text:
ISO 639

ISO 639 is a standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) concerned with representation of languages and language groups. It currently consists of four sets (1-3, 5) of code, named after each part which formerly described respective set (part 4 was guidelines without its own coding system); a part 6 was published but withdrawn. It was first approved in 1967 as a single-part ISO Recommendation, ISO/R 639, superseded in 2002 by part 1 of the new series, ISO 639-1, followed by additional parts. All existing parts of the series were consolidated into a single standard in 2023, largely based on the text of ISO 639-4.

Use of ISO 639 codes
The language codes defined in the several sections of ISO 639 are used for bibliographic purposes and, in computing and internet environments, as a key element of locale data. The codes also find use in various applications, such as Wikipedia URLs for its different language editions.

History
The early form of ISO's language coding system was manifested by ISO/R 639:1967 titled Symbols for Languages, Countries and Authorities, which aimed chiefly to regulate vocabularies signifying languages, countries, and standardization agencies of ISO member bodies. Its "language symbols" consisted of one- or two-letter variable-length identifiers in capitalized Latin alphabets, e.g.  or   for English; ,  , or   for Spanish; and   for Indonesian. It was also allowed to use (the pre-1993 version of) UDC numeral auxiliaries to indicate languages.

After decoupling the country code into ISO 3166 in 1974, the first edition of the standard ISO 639:1988 Code for the representation of names of languages was published with a framework of uniformly two-letter identifiers in lowercase Latin alphabets, mostly identical in format and vocabulary to that of the current ISO 639 Set 1.

Since then, the standard has been adopted as a fundamental technology of the rapidly expanding computer industry (RFC 1766), leading to development of more expressive three-letter framework, published as ISO 639-2:1998, largely based on MARC codes for languages. The original two-letter system was redefined as ISO 639-1 in 2001.

Seeking for more extensive support of languages for widening applications, separate supersets of the ISO 639-2 namespace that cover individual languages and groups were established as ISO 639-3 and ISO 639-5, respectively. There was also an attempt to code more precise language variants using four-letter identifiers as ISO 639-6, which was later withdrawn and to be reorganized under another framework, ISO 21636.

Relatively constant updates in parts of ISO 639 had been handled by each own authority in charge until the publication of ISO 639:2023, which harmonized and reunified the body text of former standards and brought about organizational change with a joint maintenance agency supervising all sets and issuing newsletters.

Current sets and historical parts of the standard
Each set of the standard is maintained by a maintenance agency, which adds codes and changes the status of codes when needed. ISO 639-6 was withdrawn in 2014, and not included in ISO 639:2023.

Characteristics of individual codes
Scopes:
 * Individual languages
 * Macrolanguages (Set 3)
 * Collections of languages (Sets 1, 2, 5). Some collections were already in Set 2, and others were added only in Set 5:
 * Remainder groups: 36 collections in both Set 2 and 5 are of this kind — for compatibility with Set 2 when Set 5 was still not published, the remainder groups do not contain any language and collection that was already coded in Set 2 (however new applications compatible with Set 5 may treat these groups inclusively, as long they respect the containment hierarchy published in Set 5 and they use the most specific collection when grouping languages);
 * The only collection which previously assigned with two-alphabet code is Bihari (bh) during the Part 1 era, which deprecated in June 2021.
 * Regular groups: 29 collections in both Sets 2 and 5 are of this kind — for compatibility with Set 2, they can not contain other groups;
 * Families: 50 new collections coded only in Set 5 (including one containing a regular group already coded in Set 2) — for compatibility with Set 2, they may contain other collections except remainder groups.
 * Dialects: they were intended to be covered by former ISO 639-6 (proposed but now withdrawn).
 * Special situations (Sets 2, 3).
 * Reserved for local use (Sets 2, 3). Also used sometimes in applications needing an two-letter code like standard codes in Sets 1 and 2 (where the special code  is not suitable), or a three-letter code for collections like standard codes in Set 5.

Types (for individual languages):
 * Living languages (Sets 2, 3) (all macrolanguages are living languages)
 * Extinct languages (Sets 2, 3) (599, 5 of them are in Set 2:,  ,  ,  ,  ; none are in Set 1)
 * Ancient languages (Sets 1, 2, 3) (124, 19 of them are in Set 2; and 5 of them, namely,  ,  ,   and  , also have a code in Set 1:  ,  ,  ,  ,  )
 * Historical languages (Sets 2, 3) (89, 16 of them are in Set 2; none are in Set 1)
 * Constructed languages (Sets 1, 2, 3) (23, 9 of them in Set 2:,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ; 5 of them in Set 1:  ,  ,  ,  ,  )

Individual languages and macrolanguages with two distinct three-letter codes in Set 2:
 * Bibliographic (some of them were deprecated, none were defined in Set 3): these are legacy codes (based on language names in English).
 * Terminologic (also defined in Set 3): these are the preferred codes (based on native language names, romanized if needed).
 * All others (including collections of languages and special/reserved codes) only have a single three-letter code for both uses.

Relations between the sets
The different sets of ISO 639 are designed to work together, in such a way that no code means one thing in one set and something else in another. However, not all languages are in all sets, and there is a variety of different ways that specific languages and other elements are treated in the different sets. This depends, for example, whether a language is listed in Sets 1 or 2, whether it has separate B/T codes in Set 2, or is classified as a macrolanguage in Set 3, and so forth.

These various treatments are detailed in the following chart. In each group of rows (one for each scope of Set 3), the last four columns contain codes for a representative language that exemplifies a specific type of relation between the sets of ISO 639, the second column provides an explanation of the relationship, and the first column indicates the number of elements that have that type of relationship. For example, there are four elements that have a code in Set 1, have a B/T code, and are classified as macrolanguages in Set 3. One representative of these four elements is "Persian" / /.

These differences are due to the following factors.

In ISO 639 Set 2, two distinct codes were assigned to 22 individual languages, namely a bibliographic and a terminology code (B/T codes). B codes were included for historical reasons because previous widely used bibliographic systems used language codes based on the English name for the language. In contrast, the Set 1 codes were based on the native name for the language, and there was also a strong desire to have Set 2 codes (T codes) for these languages which were similar to the corresponding 2-character code in Set 1.
 * For instance, the German language (Set 1: ) has two codes in Set 2:   (B code) and   (T code), whereas there is only one code in Set 2, , for the English language.
 * 2 former B codes were withdrawn, leaving today only 20 pairs of B/T codes.

Individual languages in Set 2 always have a code in Set 3 (only the Set 2 terminology code is reused there) but may or may not have a code in Set 1, as illustrated by the following examples:
 * Set 3  corresponds to Set 2   and Set 1
 * Set 3  corresponds to Set 2   but lacks a code in Set 1.

Some codes (62) in Set 3 are macrolanguages. These are groups containing multiple individual languages that have a good mutual understanding and are commonly mixed or confused. Some macrolanguages developed a default standard form on one of their individual languages (e.g. Mandarin is implied by default for the Chinese macrolanguage, other individual languages may be still distinguished if needed but the specific code  for Mandarin is rarely used).
 * 1 macrolanguage has a Set 2 code and a Set 1 code, while its member individual languages also have codes in Set 1 and Set 2: /  contains  /,  / ; or
 * 4 macrolanguages have two Set 2 codes (B/T) and a Set 1 code: / /,  / / ,  / / , and  / / ;
 * 28 macrolanguages have a Set 2 code but no Set 1 code;
 * 29 other macrolanguages only have codes in Set 3.

Collective codes in Set 2 have a code in Set 5: e.g.  in Sets 2 and 5, which stands for Australian languages.
 * Some codes were added in Set 5 but had no code in Set 2: e.g.

Sets 2 and 3 also have a reserved range and four special codes:
 * Codes  through   are reserved for local use.
 * There are four special codes:  for languages that have no code yet assigned,   for "multiple languages",   for "undefined", and   for "no linguistic content, not applicable".

Two-letter code space
Two-letter (formerly "Alpha-2") identifiers (for codes composed of 2 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet) are used in Set 1. When codes for a wider range of languages were desired, more than 2 letter combinations could cover (a maximum of 262 = 676), Set 2 was developed using three-letter codes. (However, the latter was formally published first. )

Three-letter code space
Three-letter (formerly "Alpha-3") identifiers (for codes composed of 3 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet) are used in Set 2, Set 3, and Set 5. The number of languages and language groups that can be so represented is 263 = 17,576.

The common use of three-letter codes by three sets of ISO 639 requires some coordination within a larger system.

Set 2 defines four special codes,  ,  ,  , a reserved range   (20 × 26 = 520 codes) and has 20 double entries (the B/T codes), plus 2 entries with deprecated B-codes. This sums up to 520 + 22 + 4 = 546 codes that cannot be used in Set 3 to represent languages or in Set 5 to represent language families or groups. The remainder is 17,576 – 546 = 17,030.

There are somewhere around six to seven thousand languages on Earth today. So those 17,030 codes are adequate to assign a unique code to each language, although some languages may end up with arbitrary codes that sound nothing like the traditional name(s) of that language.

Alpha-4 code space (withdrawn)
"Alpha-4" codes (for codes composed of 4 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet) were proposed to be used in ISO 639-6, which has been withdrawn. The upper limit for the number of languages and dialects that can be represented is 264 = 456,976.

title: ISO 639


text:
Unit vector

In mathematics, a unit vector in a normed vector space is a vector (often a spatial vector) of length 1. A unit vector is often denoted by a lowercase letter with a circumflex, or "hat", as in $$\hat{\mathbf{v}}$$ (pronounced "v-hat").

The term direction vector, commonly denoted as d, is used to describe a unit vector being used to represent spatial direction and relative direction. 2D spatial directions are numerically equivalent to points on the unit circle and spatial directions in 3D are equivalent to a point on the unit sphere.

The normalized vector û of a non-zero vector u is the unit vector in the direction of u, i.e.,

where ‖u‖ is the norm (or length) of u. The term normalized vector is sometimes used as a synonym for unit vector.

Unit vectors are often chosen to form the basis of a vector space, and every vector in the space may be written as a linear combination form of unit vectors.

Cartesian coordinates
Unit vectors may be used to represent the axes of a Cartesian coordinate system. For instance, the standard unit vectors in the direction of the x, y, and z axes of a three dimensional Cartesian coordinate system are

They form a set of mutually orthogonal unit vectors, typically referred to as a standard basis in linear algebra.

They are often denoted using common vector notation (e.g., x or \vec{x}) rather than standard unit vector notation (e.g., x̂). In most contexts it can be assumed that x, y, and z, (or \vec{x}, \vec{y}, and \vec{z}) are versors of a 3-D Cartesian coordinate system. The notations (î, ĵ, k̂), (x̂1, x̂2, x̂3), (êx, êy, êz), or (ê1, ê2, ê3), with or without hat, are also used, particularly in contexts where i, j, k might lead to confusion with another quantity (for instance with index symbols such as i, j, k, which are used to identify an element of a set or array or sequence of variables).

When a unit vector in space is expressed in Cartesian notation as a linear combination of x, y, z, its three scalar components can be referred to as direction cosines. The value of each component is equal to the cosine of the angle formed by the unit vector with the respective basis vector. This is one of the methods used to describe the orientation (angular position) of a straight line, segment of straight line, oriented axis, or segment of oriented axis (vector).

Cylindrical coordinates
The three orthogonal unit vectors appropriate to cylindrical symmetry are: They are related to the Cartesian basis \hat{x}, \hat{y}, \hat{z} by:
 * (also designated or ), representing the direction along which the distance of the point from the axis of symmetry is measured;
 * , representing the direction of the motion that would be observed if the point were rotating counterclockwise about the symmetry axis;
 * , representing the direction of the symmetry axis;

The vectors and  are functions of \varphi, and are not constant in direction. When differentiating or integrating in cylindrical coordinates, these unit vectors themselves must also be operated on. The derivatives with respect to $$\varphi$$ are:

Spherical coordinates
The unit vectors appropriate to spherical symmetry are:, the direction in which the radial distance from the origin increases; , the direction in which the angle in the x-y plane counterclockwise from the positive x-axis is increasing; and , the direction in which the angle from the positive z axis is increasing. To minimize redundancy of representations, the polar angle \theta is usually taken to lie between zero and 180 degrees. It is especially important to note the context of any ordered triplet written in spherical coordinates, as the roles of and  are often reversed. Here, the American "physics" convention is used. This leaves the azimuthal angle \varphi defined the same as in cylindrical coordinates. The Cartesian relations are:

The spherical unit vectors depend on both \varphi and \theta, and hence there are 5 possible non-zero derivatives. For a more complete description, see Jacobian matrix and determinant. The non-zero derivatives are:

General unit vectors
Common themes of unit vectors occur throughout physics and geometry:

Curvilinear coordinates
In general, a coordinate system may be uniquely specified using a number of linearly independent unit vectors (the actual number being equal to the degrees of freedom of the space). For ordinary 3-space, these vectors may be denoted. It is nearly always convenient to define the system to be orthonormal and right-handed:

where $$ \delta_{ij} $$ is the Kronecker delta (which is 1 for i = j, and 0 otherwise) and  is the Levi-Civita symbol (which is 1 for permutations ordered as ijk, and −1 for permutations ordered as kji).

Right versor
A unit vector in $$\mathbb{R}^3$$ was called a right versor by W. R. Hamilton, as he developed his quaternions $$\mathbb{H} \subset \mathbb{R}^4$$. In fact, he was the originator of the term vector, as every quaternion $$q = s + v$$ has a scalar part s and a vector part v. If v is a unit vector in $$\mathbb{R}^3$$, then the square of v in quaternions is –1. Thus by Euler's formula, $$\exp (\theta v) = \cos \theta + v \sin \theta$$ is a versor in the 3-sphere. When θ is a right angle, the versor is a right versor: its scalar part is zero and its vector part v is a unit vector in $$\mathbb{R}^3$$.

Thus the right versors extend the notion of imaginary units found in the complex plane, where the right versors now range over the 2-sphere $$\mathbb{S}^2 \subset \mathbb{R}^3 \subset \mathbb{H} $$ rather than the pair {i, –i} in the complex plane.

By extension, a right quaternion is a real multiple of a right versor.

title: Unit vector