text:
Mr. Nice Guy (1997 film)

Mr. Nice Guy (一個好人, LSHK Jat1 go3 hou2 jan4) is a 1997 English-language Hong Kong action comedy film directed by Sammo Hung and starring Jackie Chan and Richard Norton. Hung cameos as an unfortunate cyclist. The film was released in Hong Kong on 31 January 1997.

Mr. Nice Guy features a collaboration between Chan and Norton, reuniting them for the first time since 1993's City Hunter. Set in Melbourne, Australia, it is Chan's first film to be scripted and shot in English.

Plot
Mob boss Giancarlo discovers that his lover Tina is actually a mole for the Demons street gang, so he buries her alive at a mining site.

Television journalist Diana records footage of a cocaine deal gone wrong between the Italian mob and a street gang called The Demons. During the deal, mob boss Giancarlo kills the Demons' leader Grank and a gun fight ensues. Giancarlo spots Diana and her partner Richard and orders his gang to chase them. Richard is captured while Diana flees from the mobsters, bumping into TV chef Jackie, who helps her escape. During the chase, she accidentally switches the videotape of the drug trade with one of Jackie's cooking videos. Jackie brings the tape to his adoptive brother Romeo, a police officer. Romeo's children watch the video, unaware of what it is and that their father is investigating the mob. The mob force Richard to give them Diana's address. They ambush Diana at her house and kidnap her when they realize the tapes were switched and Jackie has the tape they want. Diana escapes after creating a distraction in front of a crowd.

The mob believes Jackie has the tape and follows him around, while some Demons follow them, hoping for a chance to kill some of the mobsters in retaliation for killing Grank. Jackie is forced to fend them off and run when they attack him at a benefit event he is hosting at the mall. Puzzled at the mobsters' actions, one of the Demons asks a mobster why they are chasing Jackie. Jackie learns why the mob is chasing him after Diana sneaks into his house searching for the tape. She is attacked by Jackie's friend Lakeisha, who thinks her an intruder, but Jackie intervenes. Diana begs for the tape, but Jackie is convinced that he does not have it. Before Diana can leave Jackie's apartment building, Giancarlo's henchmen show up, unaware that Demon members have been following them.

Jackie and the women escape from the roof just as the Demons throw grenades in Jackie's apartment, killing the mobsters and blowing up Jackie's apartment. The Demons realize afterwards that was Jackie's apartment, and how serious Giancarlo is about retrieving the videotape. They decide to exploit the situation in order to extort money from Giancarlo. They call Giancarlo to set up a meeting to trade the tape and the mob's stolen cocaine for a large sum of money. Everyone decides to stay at Lakeisha's home for safety, but the Demons soon find them. They kidnap Jackie's girlfriend Miki (Miki Lee) and give Jackie a cell phone, demanding that he give them the videotape in 12 hours. Jackie turns to Romeo for the police's help. The next day, Jackie goes to meet the Demons to trade in a decoy videotape, but no Demon meets Jackie in person. Instead, they frequently call him on his cell phone and make him go to various locations in the city.

The police trace each call, but discover the Demons are trying to thwart their presence, so they follow Jackie instead. However, the gang discovers this and they escape with Miki. Jackie, angry at the cops' mishandling, refuses to work with them anymore. However, he is kidnapped by the Demons moments later. Jackie fights off the gang and causes their van to crash. Before the police show up, Jackie forces one of the Demons to tell him where Miki is: at a construction site. Jackie insists to Diana and Lakeisha not to follow him to the construction site, but they go there anyway. While Jackie looks for Miki, Giancarlo and his men show up. A fight ensues between Jackie and the mobsters, which ends in Jackie getting captured. Lakeisha and Miki are also taken, while Diana is injured but escapes. Giancarlo murders the other Demons on site except for Sandy, who also escapes but with serious injuries.

Meanwhile, Romeo discovers his son watching Diana's tape, the proof he needs to arrest the mob, and visits the hospital where Diana and Sandy are being treated. The women inform him about what happened to Jackie and the others. At Giancarlo's home, Giancarlo demands the tape from Jackie one last time. Jackie decides to call Romeo, but he is not home. Afterwards Jackie is forced into an unfair fight with Giancarlo. After taking a beating, Giancarlo orders his men to kill Jackie and the women at "the guesthouse", which is code for a mining site used by Giancarlo where he buries people alive. However, they escape and destroy Giancarlo's home by driving through it in a 120-ton mining vehicle, which also causes cocaine to be spread outside in view of the police. The authorities arrive with Romeo, but they decide to state that they did not witness anything and that it was just another gang battle, so that Jackie can go free while the mobsters are arrested for possession of cocaine.

Cast

 * Jackie Chan as Jackie
 * Richard Norton as Giancarlo's Luchetti
 * Miki Lee as Miki
 * Karen McLymont as Lakeisha
 * Gabrielle Fitzpatrick as Diana
 * Vince Poletto as Romeo
 * Barry Otto as Baggio
 * Sammo Hung as Cyclist
 * Emil Chau as Ice Cream Vendor
 * Joyce Godenzi as Cook Show Audience (as Mina Godenzi)
 * Peter Houghton as Richard
 * Peter Lindsay as Grank, Demon Gang Leader
 * David No as Victor
 * Rachel Blakely as Sandy, Demon Gang Member
 * Judy Green as Tina, Demon Gang Member
 * Aaron Notarfrancesco as Sonny
 * Jake Notarfrancesco as Nancy
 * Matthew Dyktynski as Cooking Show Floor Manager

Jackie Chan Stunt Team

 * Brad Allan
 * Chan Man-Ching
 * Andy Cheng
 * Rocky Lai
 * Nicky Li
 * Mars
 * Lee Seung Hoon

Production
The film was originally going to be the fifth film in Jackie Chan's Police Story film series, with its setting in Sydney, Australia, but in a month's time it was revised to become a stand-alone action film set in Melbourne. It is Chan's first film to be scripted and shot in English.

According to his book I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action, Chan hurt his neck when he messed up on a flip during a fight scene. He also broke his nose during filming.

Box office
Mr. Nice Guy opened on Chinese New Year, 1997, against director Hung's own Once Upon a Time in China and America. Both were box office successes, but Mr. Nice Guy was the bigger of the two. It made HK$45,420,457 (US$) during its Hong Kong run. In Taipei, Taiwan, Mr. Nice Guy grossed NT$43.1 million (US$1.5 million) and sold 201,407 tickets in 1997. In China, it grossed CN¥65 million (US$million) at the box office. In South Korea, it sold 702,027 tickets and grossed US$3.44 million. In Japan, it earned ¥370 million (US$million) at the box office.

In North America, Mr. Nice Guy was released by New Line Cinema on 20 March 1998 in 1,463 theatres. In its opening weekend, it grossed US$5,250,704 ($3,588 per screen) on its way to a total of US$12,716,953, equivalent to $26,016,998 adjusted for inflation in 2021. In Europe, the film sold 912,178 tickets. The film grossed US$19 million in international territories outside of North America, for a total of US$31,716,953 grossed worldwide, equivalent to $64,824,555 adjusted for inflation in 2021.

Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an aggregated review score of 43% based on 30 critic reviews.

Accolades

 * 1997 Golden Horse Film Festival
 * Winner: Best Action Direction (Wing Cho)
 * 1998 Hong Kong Film Awards
 * Nomination: Best Action Choreography (Wing Cho)

New Line Cinema edit and DVD releases
For US$6 million, New Line Cinema acquired from Golden Harvest the international distribution rights to the film outside of Asia. The film received a partial dub, a new score, and more than 13 minutes of cuts were made. Most of the cuts were bits of violence (violence against women in particular), and cuts for pacing. Many scenes were also rearranged. The most noticeable scene rearrangement are the opening scenes of Giancarlo killing Tina and Jackie's cooking show. The original version opens with Giancarlo killing Tina, then Jackie's cooking show, but New Line Cinema's edit opens the other way around, giving the movie a "lighter" tone from the start.

There are also differences between the Hong Kong and the Japanese versions of the film. The only scene cut from the Hong Kong version is the entirety of a dinner scene featuring Jackie, Romeo, Baggio, Lakiesha, Sonny, and Nancy (Romeo's children). The Japanese version contains this scene in its entirety, whereas the New Line Cinema edit contains most of this scene, but with a few cuts.

Various DVD versions of this film have been made. The Warner Brothers Japanese R2 version is the only version available with the original English dialog and the fully uncut version (the Japanese edit). However, the picture is non-anamorphic and has no English subtitles. The Taiwan Funny version has the New Line Cinema and Taiwanese versions, but the latter is dubbed in Mandarin. The HK version is similar to the Taiwanese, but dubbed in Cantonese. Both dubbed Asian versions refer to the Demons as the "Wolves," although in the end credits the actors are credited as "Demons."

In September 2019, Warner Archive Collection announced that it would release the film on Blu-ray, including the original uncut version newly remastered in HD sourced from a 4K scan of the original camera negative, in addition to the original New Line cut. The Blu-ray was released on 29 October 2019.

title: Mr. Nice Guy (1997 film)


text:
Talk:Henri Cartan

Biography assessment rating comment
The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Edofedinburgh 01:19, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

The MacTutor archive gives his birthday as 8 July rather than the 18th. Can anyone confirm which date is correct?

http://www.academie-sciences.fr/membres/C/Cartan_Henri.htm says 8 July.

Charles Matthews 21:01, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

I suspect that "killing" in paragraph 3 is the name of the mathematician (Wilhelm Killing?) and should be capitalised. Agingjb (talk) 09:04, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Henri Cartan. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080822100853/http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h0ohPHQlam1qDDEtg1CMLPJwj3Ow to http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h0ohPHQlam1qDDEtg1CMLPJwj3Ow
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080909215743/http://smf.emath.fr/Publications/Gazette/2004/100/smf_gazette_100_7-8.pdf to http://smf.emath.fr/Publications/Gazette/2004/100/smf_gazette_100_7-8.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080909215746/http://smf.emath.fr/Publications/Gazette/2004/100/smf_gazette_100_12-15.pdf to http://smf.emath.fr/Publications/Gazette/2004/100/smf_gazette_100_12-15.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 19:16, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Henri Cartan


text:
Talk:List of national memorials of the United States

Why are some National Memorials not listed?
The National AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco is not listed among the national memorials - and I suspect there are several other national memorials this article does not include.

The memorial was named a national memorial by the US Congress in 1994 or thereabouts.

71.198.146.98 (talk) 10:59, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Non-NPS Nat'l Memorials?
I removed two items which were not federally designated protected areas. Anyone can call themselves a "national memorial" -it is not the same thing at all. Are there, in fact, any federally designated "National Memorials" not run be the NPS? Rmhermen 19:51, May 13, 2004 (UTC)
 * Benjamin Franklin National Memorial is Congressionally authorized, but administerd by the Franklin Institute. However, it is an "affiliated area" of the NPS, meaning that the Institute can request certain assistance from that agency. —  Eoghanacht  talk 14:56, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

 * In answer to your question, are there federally designated "National Memorials" not run by the NPS, there is now:
 * St. Francis Dam Disaster National Memorial and National Monument, authorized by Congress, and signed by the President as part of the lands Bill S.47 passed on March 12, 2019.
 * This National Memorial will be the first in US history to be run by the United States Forest Service on land that was previously owned by the Forest Service. --Santaclaritahistory (talk) 08:04, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

George Mason Memorial?
Should the George Mason Memorial be included in this list? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sedna1000 (talk • contribs) 10:24, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Added. Although the NPS has a webpage for this site, they do not include it in their list of areas while other memorials in the Mall are listed. Rmhermen (talk) 02:26, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Update Manhattan?
How about the National September 11 Memorial & Museum? SergeWoodzing (talk) 23:55, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * That is a private foundation, not a public park. Rmhermen (talk) 00:10, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. How would one know that, from the name? SergeWoodzing (talk) 01:15, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
 * You wouldn't, and this is true of many memorials in the U.S. Rmhermen (talk) 02:48, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Jefferson National Expansion Memorial
Jefferson National Expansion Memorial is classified by NPS as a National Historic Site, not a National Memorial, so I'm removing it from this list and adding it to the NHS list. In 1935, it was the first NHS designated by the Secretary of the Interior. See here for references, or Google the full term "Jefferson National Expansion Memorial National Historic Site". This is akin to Fred-Spots. Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Battlefields Memorial National Military Park contains the word "Memorial" in its name, but its designation is a National Military Park. Yoho2001 (talk) 11:19, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The NPS disagrees with you in its designations list. I see nowhere in the Historic Sites Act that specifies that sites created under its authority are "National Historic Sites", and the executive order only calls for "a historic site". Your search suggestion is not giving me anything official beyond that link, and I am very inclined to use the NPS's current designations rather than what this older and potentially misnamed book and little else uses.. Reywas92 Talk  05:50, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

I didn't realize this was being discussed on two different talk pages. I agree with Reywas92 that we should reflect the NPS's own current classifications. Ethelred unraed (talk) 23:04, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

 * The NPS does call it a National Historic Site (see this travel itinerary). Last week, the site was redesignated a national park. It's not clear whether the new name replaces its NHS designation, or is in addition to it. The NPS can classify things as they like, but that classification sometimes does not reflect fact. For example, it counts Oregon Caves NM & Preserve as a single park, when it's really two separate units--a national monument and a national preserve--similar to Great Sand Dunes, and several Alaska parks and preserves, which are counted as separate units. Yoho2001 (talk) 08:48, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on List of National Memorials of the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120311003821/http://home.nps.gov/applications/budget2/documents/chronop.pdf to http://home.nps.gov/applications/budget2/documents/chronop.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120311003821/http://home.nps.gov/applications/budget2/documents/chronop.pdf to http://home.nps.gov/applications/budget2/documents/chronop.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 21:20, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Congressionally-designated non-NPS national memorials

 * David Berger National Memorial, listed on NPS site at https://www.nps.gov/dabe/index.htm but not a unit or affiliated area:
 * AIDS Memorial Grove, designated by Congress as a national memorial in 1996
 * National World War I Museum and Memorial designated 'as a ‘‘World War I Museum and Memorial’’.' in 2014. (page 568).
 * Battle of Midway National Memorial with Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.
 * Space Mirror Memorial
 * Medicine Creek Treaty National Memorial is an NM under FWS in Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge.

Official list with a few more non-NPS NMs with links to laws can be found at. Thoughts on how to present these? Reywas92Talk 07:53, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

 * They could be added to the current table with a column noting each memorial's caretaker, or broken off into a separate table. David Berger NMem used to be an affiliated NPS unit. Was it quietly disconnected? On a visit there in recent years, they offered the national park passport stamp. Yoho2001 (talk) 08:58, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

 * As of March 12, 2019, Senate bill S.47 created the St. Francis Dam National Memorial and National Monument to be run by the United States Forest Service. This is the first in US history to be run by the Forest Service, but it is an officially designated National Memorial and National Monument authorized by the US Congress. It should be included in this list of National Memorials. Congress decided to keep the Forest Service as administrator since the land already belonged to the Forest Service. --Santaclaritahistory (talk) 08:17, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Please add the St. Francis Dam National Memorial and National Monument to this list.
As stated in previous discussions, the St. Francis Dam National Memorial and National Monument was created officially by Congress on March 12, 2019 with the passage of Senate bill S.47 signed into law by the President.

Please add this to the list of National Memorials of the United States. It is the first National Memorial in US history to be run by the United States Forest Service. Congress has mandated that the Forest Service come up with a plan for a Visitor's Center and educational facilities within 3 years. There is also a plan to build a memorial wall with the names of all the victims of the disaster.

Here is information for the listing:

Name: Saint Francis Dam National Memorial and National Monument

Photo:

Location: California. Latitude: 34° 32' 29.39" N Longitude: -118° 30' 26.99" W

Date established: March 12, 2019

Area: 353 Acres

Description: The St. Francis Dam, a creation of Los Angeles water chief William Mulholland, collapsed on March 12, 1928, sending a wall of water and devastation through San Francisquito Canyon and the Santa Clara River Valley before emptying into the Pacific Ocean 54 miles away. The towns of Saugus, Piru, Fillmore, and Santa Paula suffered tremendous damage from the resulting flood. In all, more than 400 people perished, making this the second largest disaster in California history, and the second worst dam disaster in United States history after the Johnstown Flood. Plans are underway to build a visitor's center and memorial wall at the site. Santaclaritahistory (talk) 08:48, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

COI disclosure: I am President of the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society and the St. Francis Dam National Memorial Foundation.

 * I am currently working on writing descriptions for the NMems on the article and when I’m done with that will add info about those that are not NPS units/affiliated areas. I will note here, however, that the St. Francis Dam National Memorial has not been created, rather authorized to be established. I alluded to this in the lead and will expand later with other authorized sites, but the memorial will need to actually be built. Reywas92Talk 19:03, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

redlink
How can the National Veterans Memorial and Museum, dedicated in 2018, still be a redlink?!! --Doncram (talk) 22:40, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
 * There is a Draft:National Veterans Memorial and Museum that started and I added a bit to (User_talk:SounderBruce/Archive_30). It should definitely be moved to mainspace soon, it's a notable museum and memorial! Reywas92Talk 00:11, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The draft still needs to be rewritten, since I'm not confident that it takes full advantage of the sources. A red link is no big problem...in the interim, it could be redirected to something else.  Sounder Bruce  02:56, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Redirected to what? Rewritten how, to what extent? The article does not need to be in a finished state to be in the mainspace; I think it's a decent start that does not require every statement in the sources to be presentable. If you're not going to finish it, let's put it out there for others to find and work on too. Reywas92Talk 13:36, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:24, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
 * MLK-Nobel Speech.jpg

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 00:31, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Va., can be seen prior to the Sunset Parade June 4, 2013 130604-M-MM982-036.jpg

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 21:52, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
 * David Berger National Memorial, NPS (47349852492).jpg

A separate article on national memorials?
Should there be an article separate from this that is about the concept of the American national memorial, not just a list of them? While the opening paragraphs do go into some detail on the subject of national memorials and their history, more details could be added, and more topics related to American national memorials could be addressed. However, I'm not sure if it is necessary to do so. What are your opinions on this? ERBuermann (talk) 16:07, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

 * You're more than welcome to add a background or history section to this article! If and when it gets longer a split may be appropriate, but it doesn't need to be separate yet. Reywas92Talk 15:14, 3 November 2022 (UTC)


text:
Snake in the Eagle's Shadow

Snake in the Eagle's Shadow is a 1978 Hong Kong martial arts action comedy film directed by Yuen Woo-ping in his directorial debut. It stars Jackie Chan, Hwang Jang-lee, and Yuen Woo-ping's real life father, Yuen Siu-tien. The film's plot is about Chien Fu (Jackie Chan), an orphan who is bullied at a kung fu school, meeting an old beggar, Pai Cheng-tien (Yuen Siu-tien), who becomes his sifu (teacher) and trains him in Snake Kung Fu.

Right after this film, Yuen Woo-ping directed Drunken Master, released in the same year, which also starred Jackie Chan, Hwang Jang-lee and Yuen Siu-tien. The film established Chan's slapstick kung fu comedy style which he further developed with Drunken Master, while also establishing the basic plot structure used in many martial arts films internationally since then.

Plot
Chien Fu, an orphan adopted by a kung fu school, is overworked as their janitor while being bullied and abused by the kung fu teachers as a walking punching-bag. The school's cook, Ah-Wu, is his only sympathizer. Chien befriends an old beggar by offering him a meal and a place to stay. Unknown to Chien, the old beggar is actually Pai Cheng-tien, one of the last surviving masters of the Snake-style of kung fu. Pai is on the run from the Eagle Claw clan, which is viciously killing off all of the rival Snake-style masters. He is ambushed by Eagle Claw student Su Chen and an assassin masquerading as a Christian missionary (Roy Horan), and is injured. After being abused once more, Chien later finds Pai and helps him recover. Pai agrees to give him more lessons, on the condition that he does not call him "sifu" ("master"), since they are friends. The real reason, however, is to keep Chien's connection with him secret from his pursuers.

Chien practices the lessons and learns to avoid being hurt by the school's bumbling teachers. When the school is invaded by the Mantis school, to everyone's amazement Chien easily defeats their master using the snake style. One of the passing wanderers who witnesses the fight is the high master of the Eagle Clan, Sheng Kuan, who recognizes the style at once and decides to tail Chien.

Chien meets Shang Kuan, who inquires about the old beggar, claiming that he was a colleague of Pai's. As a show of 'proof', he easily fends off Chien's attacks. Chien realises that his Snake-style fighting is no match for the style practiced by the stranger, and thus creates a new style from watching his pet cat kill a cobra.

Later on the Eagle Claw conspirators track down Pai, who manages to kill Su Chen. He returns to Chien for hiding, but it is then shown that Ah-Wu is also an Eagle Claw conspirator as he puts poison into their tea. Chien rushes to fetch Sheng Kuan, but sensing danger, Pai flees, with his enemy in pursuit. As Chien hurries after them, he finally learns the truth behind the conspiracy upon defeating the fake missionary, and eventually challenges Sheng Kuan to single combat after Pai is brought down. Apparently at a disadvantage in the initial phase, Chien brings his new 'Cat Claw' technique—against which Sheng Kuan knows no defense—to bear, killing him. When Ah-Wu shows up after the fight and reveals his true allegiance, Chien and Pai feign defeat, and then, after fatally injuring Wu, reveal that they have by chance avoided ingesting the poison.

Afterwards, the two friends wander off to refine Chien's new technique, giving it its titular name.

Cast

 * Jackie Chan – Chien Fu (as Cheng Lung)
 * Hwang Jang-lee – Sheng Kuan
 * Yuen Siu-tien – Pai Chang-tien (as Simon Yuen)
 * Dean Shek – Teacher Li
 * Fung Hak-on – Master Chao Chi-chih
 * Tino Wong – Ah-Wu
 * Peter Chan – Teacher Lian
 * Hsu Hsia – Su Chen
 * Charlie Chan – Master Hung
 * Roy Horan – Missionary/Russian
 * Fung Ging-man – Teacher Chui
 * Chiang Kam – Ah Kwai
 * Chen Yao-lin – Master Hung
 * Lung Chen-tien – Three Provinces Champ
 * Chan Lung – Substitute Instructor
 * Gam Yam – Chang
 * Yuen Yat-choh
 * Chiu Chi-ling
 * Choi Fai
 * Chan Laap-ban

Crew

 * Producer: Ng See-yuen
 * Executive Producer: Chang Chuan
 * Screenplay by: Hsi Hua-an, Tsai Chi-kuang, Ng See-yuen
 * Asst. Directors: Hsiao Lung, Ho Tien-cheng
 * Film Editing: Pan Hsiung-yao
 * Cinematography: Chang Hai
 * Lighting: Lin Wei
 * Music: Chou Fu-liang, Jean-Michel Jarre, Didier Marouani (both uncredited)
 * Costume Designer: Kung Chuan-kai
 * Set Design: Union Design
 * Art: Ting Yuan-ta
 * Props: Yang Shih-cheng
 * Costume: Pao Kuo-lan
 * Sound Effect: Wu Kuo-hua
 * Sound Recording: Universal Recording Co.
 * Fighting Instructors: Yuen Woo-ping, Hsu Hsia
 * Asst. Fighting Instructors: Yuen Chen-wei, Yuan Hsin-yi, Yuan Kuei
 * Director: Yuen Woo-ping

Production
Prior to Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, Chan had worked for director Lo Wei who wanted to make him into the new "Bruce Lee" in films like New Fist of Fury. However, those films yielded relatively poor box office returns. When producer Ng See-yuen decided to make a comedy with Chan as the star, the concept did not initially meet with approval from the film distributors. However, Ng and Chan persevered and together with Drunken Master, this film launched Jackie Chan into national stardom.

The combination of comedy, martial arts, stunts and acrobatics had been done before, in Lau Kar-leung's 1975 film Spiritual Boxer. However, the release of Snake in the Eagle's Shadow heralded a new direction for Hong Kong action movies.

Ng See-yuen and Yuen Woo-ping checked over many actors for the part of the old, eccentric, wandering Kung Fu master, before Ng suggested casting Yuen's own father, Yuen Siu-tien. Yuen would continue to reprise the role of Beggar So several more times before his death in 1979.

According to his book I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action, Chan lost a tooth after Hwang Jang-lee kicked him in the face during a fight scene. His arm was also accidentally slashed by a sword that was supposed to be blunt, but while he was screaming in pain, the camera kept rolling.

Music
As well as original music by Chou Fu-liang, the film also features Jean Michel Jarre's "Oxygène (Part 2)" and Space's "Magic Fly". Like many Hong Kong movies of the era, it also includes samples from western movie scores, including You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me, Carrie, and Star Wars.

Film producer Serafim Karalexis got the rights to distribute the movie in America in the 80s, retitled "The Eagle's Shadow". It had a new score made due to copyright issues with the original score. The U.S. film and its promotional materials billed Chan as "Jacky Chan."

Box office
At the Hong Kong box office, Snake in the Eagle's Shadow earned HK$2,708,748.20 (US$), becoming the 13th-highest-grossing film of the year. In South Korea, it was the second-highest-grossing film of 1979 (behind Jackie Chan's Drunken Master), with 765,930 box admissions in Seoul, equivalent to an estimated gross revenue of approximately 0million (US$). Combined, the film grossed an estimated total of approximately US$ in East Asia, equivalent to US$million adjusted for inflation.

Separate sequel
In 1979, a film titled Snake in the Eagle's Shadow II a.k.a. Snaky Knight Fight Against Mantis (or Snaky Knight Fights the Mantis) was released. It was directed by Chang Hsin-yi and starred Wang Tao. However, the film was not a true sequel, rather it was an attempt by the studio to capitalize on the success of the original film. Footage including a montage and a fight scene from Snake in the Eagle's Shadow were spliced into the film. Chan's image was also used on the cover of some versions.

Home releases

 * On 7 February 2000, Hong Kong Legends released a DVD containing a number of extras, including a photo gallery, Jackie Chan and Hwang Jang-lee's biographies/filmographies, the English export trailer, and an interview with producer Ng See-yuen. However, it contains a cropped 2:35:1 to 1:78:1 image and the incorrect Mandarin dub with dubtitles. This DVD contains compulsory BBFC cuts amounting to roughly 45 seconds due to animal cruelty. The Chinese credit sequence is used (reverting to 2:35:1 during this section). The English dub is one created by US studios during the film's release there (under the title "The Eagle's Shadow") to avoid copyright issues with music, but everything else is the same as the export dub commissioned by Seasonal Films.
 * On 18 June 2002, Destination Films released the first legal DVD in the United States. Despite having uncut status and a full 2:35:1 image in the correct Cantonese language, it still contains dubtitles. The English dub (and credit sequence) is the export one and intact.
 * On 16 February 2004, Mei Ah Entertainment released a remastered DVD in Hong Kong. It has uncut 2:35:1 anamorphic video. Audio include Cantonese Dolby Digital 5.1, Cantonese Dolby Digital 2.0 Dual Mono and Mandarin Dolby Digital 2.0 Dual Mono. Subtitles include Traditional, Simplified Chinese and English. Special features are limited to Cast and Crew Info and Synopsis.
 * In May 2021, 88 Films released the film on Region B Blu-ray in the UK. This edition presents the film in 2.35:1, and features Cantonese, Mandarin, and English audio tracks. Bonus features include two audio commentaries (one by Mike Leeder and Arne Venema; the other by John Kreng and R.P. "Kung Fu Bob" O'Brien), an hour-long interview with Roy Horan, and an interview with George Clarke.

Cultural impact
The film established the blueprint for Jackie Chan's kung fu comedy style, which he further developed with Drunken Master (1978) released later the same year. They both follow a similar plot structure, with Chan's character being an underdog trained by Yuen Siu-tien's beggar character. Dawn Taylor of The DVD Journal also notes that the film's plot structure has been "copied oh-so-many times by a variety of Karate Kid-type American films" since the 1980s.

title: Snake in the Eagle's Shadow


text:
Jetpac

Jetpac is a shooter video game developed and published by Ultimate Play the Game and released for the ZX Spectrum and VIC-20 in 1983 and the BBC Micro in 1984. It is the first game to be released by Ultimate Play the Game, the company which later became Rare. The game follows Jetman as he must rebuild his rocket in order to explore different planets, while simultaneously defending against hostile aliens. It was written by Ultimate co-founder Chris Stamper with graphics designed by his brother, Tim Stamper. Reviewers praised Jetpac's presentation and gameplay, and it won "Game of the Year" at the Golden Joystick Awards in 1983.

Jetpac has since been included as an unlockable minigame in 1999's Donkey Kong 64 and as part of the 2015 compilation Rare Replay. It was later included in a game compilation on the ZX Spectrum Vega. It spawned two direct sequels and a 2007 remake, Jetpac Refuelled, which was released for the Xbox Live Arcade service.

Gameplay

The game world is presented in a horizontal wraparound and consists of three platforms which Jetman can manoeuvre onto. Jetman must assemble his rocket (which spawns in pieces scattered around the map), and then fill it with fuel before taking off to the next planet, where the procedure is broadly repeated with alternate procedures. In addition, the player has to defend themselves from the planet's aliens, and for bonus points collect valuable resources which occasionally fall from above.

After the first level, the rocket stays assembled and just requires refuelling. However, every four levels, the rocket resets (giving the player an extra life) and the replacement has to be built before it can be refuelled for takeoff. Each new model has a new design with a higher number written on it, although the core gameplay remains unchanged. The enemies change forms each level (cycling back to the first after eight levels) and each alien has a different pattern of movement which means they can be dealt with in a different manner.

Development

Ultimate Play the Game was founded by brothers Tim and Chris Stamper, along with Tim's wife, Carol, from their headquarters in Ashby-de-la-Zouch in 1982. They began producing multiple video games for the ZX Spectrum throughout the early 1980s. The company were known for their reluctance to reveal details about their operations and then-upcoming projects. Little was known about their development process except that they used to work in "separate teams"; one team would work on development whilst the other would concentrate on other aspects such as sound or graphics. While developing Jetpac, the Stamper brothers closely studied the burgeoning Japanese gaming market and had started to practice developing games for their then-upcoming console, the Famicom, later predicting that the ZX Spectrum had a limited lifespan.

Jetpac was one of the few Spectrum games also available in a ROM format for use with the Interface 2, allowing "instantaneous" loading of the game when the normal method of cassette loading took minutes. The game was also able to run on the 16K version of the Spectrum.

Reception
The game sold over 300,000 copies and generated £1 million in revenue for Ultimate Play the Game, which enabled the Stamper brothers to gain a foothold in the early video gaming market.

The game was critically acclaimed. Crash praised the graphics and presentation, citing that they were of "the highest standard" and added that it was "difficult to find any real faults" with the game. CVG similarly praised the graphics, stating that the presentation was "superb" and the gameplay was considered addictive. In a retrospective review, Chris Wilkins of Eurogamer noted that the colourful graphics and sound effects were advanced for the time, but what truly made for a "faultless" experience was its simple gameplay.

ZX Computing praised the game's playability and replay value, stating that Jetpac was "a very well put together piece of software". The game was number one in the first Spectrum sales chart published by CVG. The ZX Spectrum version was voted number 73 in the Your Sinclair Readers' Top 100 Games of All Time in 1993 and was voted the 14th best game of all time by the readers of Retro Gamer for an article that was scheduled to be in a special Your Sinclair tribute issue. The game won the title "Game of the Year" at the 1983 Golden Joystick Awards.

Legacy
After the game's release, Jetpac was parodied in a long-running Crash comic strip named Lunar Jetman. The strip, designed by John Richardson, lasted from July 1984 to October 1991 and gained popular reception from readers. To develop the comic, photographs had to be processed manually on a photomechanical tone and then transferred to paper, being fully colorized in the late 1980s.

Jetpac was followed by two sequels: Lunar Jetman (1983) and Solar Jetman (1990). The latter was not released for the ZX Spectrum, and a version for the Commodore 64 was finished but never released following disappointing sales of the original NES version.

Since its release, Jetpac has been included in a number of other games developed by Rare. The game is playable in Donkey Kong 64, where it could be unlocked to play in Cranky Kong's laboratory after obtaining 15 Banana Medals. Beating Cranky Kong's high score rewards the player with the Rareware Coin, which is necessary to beat the game. The game was retained in the April 2015 Virtual Console re-release of Donkey Kong 64 on the Wii U, despite the property being technically owned by Microsoft. An enhanced remake of Jetpac, entitled Jetpac Refuelled, was released on the Xbox Live Arcade in March 2007. Microsoft's E3 2015 press conference unveiled the compilation title Rare Replay, which has a selection of thirty games from Rare's lifetime game library, including the original Jetpac and its two sequels and remake, making the Jetman series the most represented in the collection.

title: Jetpac


text:
Alexander Spotswood

Alexander Spotswood (12 December 1676 – 7 June 1740) was a British Army officer, explorer and lieutenant governor of Colonial Virginia; he is regarded as one of the most significant historical figures in British North American colonial history.

After a brilliant but unsatisfactory military career, in 1710 he was nominated colonial governor of Virginia, a post which he held for twelve years. During that period, Spotswood engaged in the exploration of the territories beyond the western border, of which he was the first to see the economic potentials. In 1716 he organised and led an expedition west of the mountains, known as Knights of the Golden Horseshoe Expedition, with which he established the Crown's dominion over the territory between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah Valley, thus taking a decisive step for the future British expansion to the West.

As the governor of Virginia, Spotswood's first preoccupation was to make sea routes safe and fight against the pirates. After a long effort, the famous pirate Blackbeard was hunted down and killed in 1718. In addition, Spotswood promoted the economic growth of the colony by founding the metallurgical settlements of Germanna; introduced the juridical instrument of habeas corpus; and introduced the rules for the commercial relations with Native Americans and those for the tobacco export trade. His tenure was characterised by a growing conflict with the Virginian political classes, which ended with his removal from office.

Years later, between 1730 and 1739, Spotswood was Postmaster General for British America and, with his young friend Benjamin Franklin, extended the postal service network north of Williamsburg and improved its efficiency.

At the outbreak of the War of Jenkins' Ear, Spotswood was called back into army service. Promoted to major general, he was put in command of the colonial troops stationed in America with the task of preparing a military action against the Spanish stronghold of Cartagena de Indias, but, in Annapolis, where he was to consult with the local governors, he died suddenly in 1740.

Origins and youth
Alexander Spotswood was born in Tangier, a city on the African shore of the Strait of Gibraltar, in 1676. At that time the city, under English occupation, was run by a local governor and housed a garrison, where Spotswood's father, Robert, practiced as surgeon, first as surgeon George Elliott's assistant, succeeding him when he died and marrying his widow, Catharine Maxwell, who gave him an only son, Alexander. Alexander's older half-brother (by his mother's first marriage to George Elliott) was Roger Elliott, who became one of the first governors of Gibraltar.

Both parents had Scottish origins, and the father, although economically ruined, could boast an illustrious lineage. His family had ancient baronial origins and had enjoyed great prestige until the time of the English revolution. There had been illustrious Spotswoods, such as judge Robert Spottiswoode (Alexander's grandfather) and Archbishop John Spottiswoode.

In 1684, following attacks of native Berber troops under the guide of governor Ali ben Abdallah, the city of Tangier was evacuated and the Spotswood family returned to England, where the father died in 1688. In May 1693, at the age of sixteen, Spotswood enlisted in the English Army, the army of the Kingdom of England, with the rank of Ensign in the Earl of Bath's Regiment of Foot. He served first in Ireland and then in the Flanders. Over the years, distinguishing himself for skill, courage and intelligence, he climbed the military hierarchy to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

First army experience
The War of Spanish Succession broke out in 1701. The main European powers fought each other throughout the following decade. John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, was in command of the English army stationed in central Europe. Alexander Spotswood was part of it as deputy quartermaster general. The troops remained quartered along the River Rhine for three years for the protection of the Netherlands. Marlborough's army descended into Bavaria In 1704, taking the Franco-Bavarian forces by surprise. The Battle of Blenheim took place on August 13 and ended in a major British victory. During the battle Spotswood was severely wounded in the chest during a heavy artillery attack. Medicated on the battlefield, he was then sent to London to convalesce. He survived the and kept the cannonball, which he used to show his friends and guests.

He returned to the Flanders almost two years later. On 11 July 1708 he fought in the Battle of Oudenaarde, in the Netherlands, where his horse was killed and he fell prisoner to the French troops. But Duke of Marlborough, once again the winner of the battle, obtained his release by negotiating personally with the enemy, and Spotswood returned to his duties as quartermaster general to oversee the corn supply for the troops.

However, his disappointment for the slowdown of his military career was growing. Despite the good relationship with and the trust of his superiors, he was stuck in the rank of lieutenant colonel. His ambitions, fuelled by the many but never kept promises of promotion, were continuously frustrated. In September 1709, having spent half of his life in the army, he took his leave and returned to London.

Governor of Virginia

During the war, Spotswood had made good friends not only with the Duke of Marlborough, but also with another of his commanders, George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney. Hamilton had held the post of governor of the colony of Virginia from 1704, but resided in London and was represented on American soil by a plenipotentiary delegate, with a nominal mandate as deputy governor. In 1707 the deputy governor, Robert Hunter, had been captured by the French at sea and the colony was thus temporarily administered by a local government. At the suggestion of Hamilton himself, with perhaps an additional push by Marlborough, on February 18, 1710 Queen Anne appointed Spotswood as vice governor of Virginia. On April 3, Spotswood left for the Americas from the port of Spithead, in southern England, aboard the man-of-war HMS Deptford, in convoy with other British ships to ward off pirate attacks.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Virginia was the most prosperous and populous of the Thirteen Colonies. The inhabitants numbered around 80,000, including 20,000 slaves – most of them from the Bight of Biafra – employed in the vast tobacco plantations, at the service of a confederation of landowners. The export of tobacco was still one of the most lucrative activities, but in recent times, due to the war against the French and the consequent closure of the Atlantic trade routes, it was not as rewarding as in the past, and overproduction had caused prices to drop. In addition, in a period considered the golden age of piracy, the southern waters of British America were swarming with pirates and corsairs. Coming from the Caribbean Sea, they sailed northwards along the American coastline as far as Virginia, making harmful raids. Moreover, the land borders of the colony were at that time threatened by the aggressive behaviour of numerous Native American tribes.

Arrival at the colony
After ten weeks of good navigation, the convoy arrived in Virginia on June 20, and landed at the Hampton Roads bay (then known as Kecoughtan, the local Algonquian name). Three days later, Spotswood was in Williamsburg, the capital of the colony, where he was sworn in as governor, in the newly built Capitol. The Virginians gave him an enthusiastic welcome, both because he was the first governor present on the territory after four vacant years, and because he brought with him a royal decree that extended to colonial citizens the right of habeas corpus, granted to the subjects in England since the time of the Bill of Rights of 1689.

For the previous four years the colony had been ruled by the twelve members of the Governor's Council, who were appointed by the King. Just like the fifty representatives of the House of Burgesses (who were elected by their Virginian peers), they belonged to the class of the great landowners whose real aim was to establish a de facto oligarchy. Their interests often clashed with those of the Crown, and in the oversea territories their interests generally prevailed. On July 5 Spotswood made his first encounter with this problem. A resolution passed by the Governor's Council prior to his arrival had abolished the application of the annual payments for the tobacco lease and established the principle that tobacco be exchanged at a public sale. Now, considering the low revenues, the Crown had decided to return to the old method of trade, but the Governor's Council, whose members controlled the public sale of tobacco, refused to implement the new rule. Spotswood favoured the council's opinion, and this was the first public conflict of interests between the Crown, of which Spotswood would be for years to come a staunch supporter, and the wishes of the local ruling classes.

On October 26 of the same year began a long meeting of the House of Burgesses and the Governor's Council – the first since 1706 – during which Spotswood listed some points in the program he intended to implement, namely,: to strengthen the military defence of the colony; to keep down the number of slaves escaping from the plantations; to extend the postal service; to complete the construction of the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg. In addition, following the Crown's suggestions, he proposed to rebuild the College of William and Mary which had been destroyed by a fire five years earlier, and to establish a court of oyer and terminer (a sort of superior criminal court) that would have to meet every six months.

Threats at the borders
Meanwhile, another pressing issue reawakened his military vocation. A colonial militia of about 15,000 men was deployed to protect the land borders. The majority of the troop came from the lower labouring classes, were poorly armed and operated under the orders of inexperienced commanders. Since his arrival in Virginia, Spotswood had shown concern about the colony's vulnerability and had started to reorganise and strengthen the militia to match the task of defending the colony. During the summer of 1711, he personally supervised the installation of a series of cannons in the ports between Yorktown and Jamestown to prevent a possible French naval invasion.

In September 1711, the Tuscarora, an Indian nation whose territories extended from Virginia to the heart of North Carolina, engaged in an extended period of conflict with the settlers for commercial and border protection reasons and, during a series of attacks on settlements and plantations on the Carolina-Virginia border, killed hundreds of colonists. That was the beginning of the so-called Tuscarora War. Spotswood, well aware that it was a real war, considering how badly equipped the militia was, requested weapons and ammunition from England, which however would take a few months to arrive. His aim being to prevent other tribes from joining the Tuscarora revolt, he headed south with the 15,000 militia men and stopped on the bank of the Nottoway River. The local tribes proved to be well disposed towards the British and offered them military support against the Tuscarora. As a guarantee, Spotswood demanded that each tribe deliver two of the young sons of the tribal chiefs as hostages, to be educated in Williamsburg at the William and Mary's College. The objective was twofold: to give them a Christian education, so that they could return later as missionaries to their own tribes – within the framework of a wider operation to civilise the Indians –, and at the same time to guarantee for a certain period of time the friendship of those tribes.

In early December, hostages from several tribes arrived in Williamsburg. The House of Burgesses, however, was not happy about this resolution, as they would have liked a more direct military action against the Indians. Spotswood argued that a field operation could not be sustained and that his initiatives were, for the time being, "a sober way of waging war." However, an amount of £20,000 was set aside to wage war against the Tuscarora, and discussions carried on until Christmas, when Spotswood dissolved the assembly. Between the summer and the fall of the following year, some of the rebel Tuscarora chiefs were captured and transferred to North Carolina for trial.

Contrasts with the House of Burgesses
The War of Spanish Succession ended in April 1713, and the British victory led to the reopening of the Atlantic trade routes and the annexation of new colonies. The Virginian economy was revitalised, and in particular the tobacco export trade which in recent years had been severely affected by the conflict. Tobacco in those days was also used as a means of payment and was sold by the weight. To make more profit traders often added poor quality to high-quality varieties, causing prices to drop. Previous colonial governments had made attempts on several occasions to regulate the trade, but nothing had ever really come of it.

So, in November 1713, Spotswood, to bring the tobacco market under control and set limits to the practices of the big landowners, submitted to the House of Burgesses the Tobacco Inspection Act. The new law, supported by the Governor's Council, required tobacco to be inspected before shipment to Europe. In Spotswood's intentions there would thus be a reduction in the quantities exported, resulting in an increase in the quality of the goods and a consequent increase in demand and in price. To soften the opposition of the House of Burgesses', Spotswood appointed as inspectors some of the representatives in favour of his proposal, which was finally approved. The reform, however, produced only partial results compared with the expectations: prices did not rise immediately, and the inspection procedure was disliked by the landowners.

Yet another initiative by Spotswood caused him to lose the favour of the Virginian elite. In December 1714, he had the Indian Trade Act passed. All commercial activities with the Indians south of the James River were placed under the exclusive control of the Virginia Indian Company, established with an allocation of £10,000. The measure should have put an end to the illegal trade that took place along the border and which, according to Spotswood, was one of the reasons for the unrest of the Indians, and at the same time was against the interests of the colonials who were trading privately with the Indian tribes. William Byrd II, an influential member of the Governor's Council who wanted Spotswood's position for himself, was in control of much of the trade with the Indians, particularly the Cherokee, to whom he sold cloth and weapons. Shortly after the law was passed, Byrd left for England on personal business, but certainly also with the intention of bringing Spotswood discredit in the various branches of the royal administration.

The disputes between Spotswood and the members of the House of Burgesses grew until they degenerated in 1715. During an assembly held between August and September the representatives, instead of concentrating on the problems of the colony's defence as was Spotswood's recommendation, challenged the Indian Trade Act and the Tobacco Inspection Act. The discontent generated by the latter among landowners and merchants had played a fundamental role in the last elections of the House of Burgesses. Almost all the representatives who had previously supported the act had lost their seat, and a large section of the newly elected were in disagreement. The scarce rainfall of the previous year had provided the tobacco traders with reasons to justify the request of being allowed to sell all the tobacco produced, regardless of its quality, ignoring therefore the provisions of the Tobacco Inspection Act.

After five weeks of time-wasting discussions – which irritated him all the more now that some Indian tribes at the border were becoming hostile, putting the application of the Indian Trade Act at risk –, Spotswood put an end to the debates and closed the assembly. It was not so much the closing of the Assembly that intensified the hostility of the representatives against the governor, it was rather his definition of the House of Burgesses as "a Set of Representatives, whom Heaven has not generally endowed with the Ordinary Qualifications requisite to Legislators". In early 1716, an anonymous letter from Virginia to the London Board of Trade denounced Spotswood for alleged violations of the law, even more strongly than previous still anonymous letters, and accused him of greed and tyranny.

First explorations of the western frontier
Despite the contrasts with the House of Burgesses, during the middle years of his tenure, Spotswood concentrated mainly on the exploration beyond the western frontier, beyond the foothills of Piedmont. On account of the Tuscarora war, the situation at the border had become tense again, but after one hundred years of periods of war followed by periods of peace, the British and the Indians had learned that, in the absence of a winner, they had better try and live together. To deal with the Indian threat, since his arrival in Virginia Spotswood had sent rangers to patrol the border and explorers in search of a pass through the Blue Ridge Mountains. In the spring of 1714, he personally joined an expedition to explore the upper reaches of the York and Mattaponi Rivers. These explorations took place for precise strategic purposes. The French had long been trying to open a connection between their colonies in New France and the forts along the Mississippi River; their possible success – which Spotswood believed imminent – would soon cut off the British from the interior of the region, based as they were along the coast near the mouth of the James River.

In the summer of 1714, having sufficiently secured the borders, Spotswood went into action by establishing two forest settlements beyond the Tidewater border, which for the past century had signed the limit of British expansion. The first settlement, Fort Christanna, stood on the southern bank of the Meherrin River, near the border with North Carolina. Built for the headquarters of the Virginia Indian Company, the company created under the Indian Trade Act, the fort housed a school for the education of Indians to the Christian way of life. Spotswood's objectives, in addition to those of immediate strategic utility already pursued at the time of the Tuscarora war, were ambitious: to turn the traditionally semi-nomadic Indians into a resident population.

The second settlement established by Spotswood was Germanna, situated north of a bend of the Rapidan River. A group of refugees from the Palatinate, arrived in America in 1709 with the approval of Queen Anne following the destruction of their lands during the War of Spanish Succession, had settled in the region and they had discovered deposits of silver and iron. Initially, nine families of German Protestants settled in Germanna, working for the local smelting furnaces.

In October 1714, news came that Queen Anne had died in early August. During the assembly of the House of Burgesses following the event, Spotswood proclaimed the new king, George I of Great Britain, and claimed the results obtained during the summer: the frontier had been secured; the economy was improving and the defence costs had been reduced thanks to the building of Fort Christanna, which made it easier to control the Indians by concentrating their commercial interests in a single area, and thanks to Germanna, where mining was already a profitable activity.

Knights of the golden horseshoe expedition

1716 saw the results of the previous explorations in the western territories. On June 12, Spotswood reported to the Governor's Council that some rangers had found a passage through the mountains and offered himself to lead an expedition beyond Piedmont, in regions then unknown. The Council approved the proposal, on the consideration of its commercial and strategic potential.

Spotswood left Williamsburg with a few men on August 20, 1716, and headed for Germanna, where a meeting point had been fixed. Here the expeditionary force was formed, and on 29 August a group of sixty-three men set off for the mountains. The group included influential members of the settlers' community, servants, rangers, native guides and a good number of horses and dogs. The group went up the Rapidan River, hunting animals and toasting the new king, through a dense bushy area crossed by numerous water streams. During the march, some men contracted measles and were left behind in a field hospital readily set up and manned by rangers. The rest of the group proceeded under the threats of bears and rattlesnakes, until they reached the source of the Rapidan River on the Blue Ridge Mountains, on 5 September.

They crossed the mountains passing through a gorge by the name of Swift Run Gap at an altitude of 720 m, bordered by two mountain peaks. Spotswood named George the higher of the two in honour of the king, and his companions named the other Alexander in his honour. They descended from the ridge towards the Shenandoah Valley: the first Westerners to set eyes and foot on it. Crossing woods and meadows populated by elks and buffalos, after about ten kilometres they reached the bottom of the valley and the course of the Shenandoah River, which was renamed Euphrates. Gun shots were fired here in honour of the king and a great toast was held. Spotswood engraved the king's name on a rock and in an empty wine bottle introduced a card containing the British claim on the river and its territory. The bottle was buried in the riverbank.

On September 7, the company left for Germanna, and in ten days was back in Williamsburg. The following winter, Spotswood gave each member of the expedition a miniature gold horseshoe with engraved in Latin: Sic juvat transcendere montes ("This is the way to cross the mountains"). Since then, the expedition was also known as "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe Expedition" and described by Spotswood's biographer, Walter Havighurst, as "the most romantic episode in the history of Virginia". It played a leading historical role not so much for the practical results it achieved, but for the impulse and the inspiration it provided for those who later wanted to venture in the exploration of the interior of the American colonies.

The expedition also left considerable traces in American literature. A few months after the company's return, a humanities professor at William and Mary's College, Arthur Blackamore wrote a short poem in Latin celebrating the expedition: Expeditio Ultramontana. The original Latin text, considered to be among the best examples of Latin poetry in 18th century America, has been lost, but the English version that George Seagood produced in 1729 survives in its entirety.

Over a century later, in 1835, William Alexander Caruthers published a chivalric novel, The Knights of the Golden Horse-Shoe, telling a somewhat revisited history of the expedition. In the 20th century, the poet Gertrude Claytor wrote a commemorative poem of the Golden Horseshoe Expedition. Engraved on a bronze plaque, in 1934 it was posted near Swift Run Gap.

Opposition in London and in Williamsburg
The success of the Transmontane Expedition was welcomed in the London administrative offices, but in less than a year a severe blow to the Spotswood's peace of mind came from the capital.

At the beginning of the year 1717, a large group of influential London merchants wrote a letter to the Board of Trade declaring that the legislation promoted by Spotswood harmed the commercial interests of both the motherland and Virginia itself. The merchants reported that, due to the corruption of the inspectors by the landowners, the lower quality production was not only still on the market – in contradiction with the purposes of the Tobacco Inspection Act – but had actually overtaken the higher quality varieties. The Virginia Indian Company's monopoly on trade with Indians also deprived the merchants of a lucrative market, and this, coupled with heavy export regulations, made their activities unprofitable. The merchants therefore asked for the abolition of those laws which they considered an obstacle to the development of trade. The king thus put a veto on the Tobacco Inspection Act and on the Indian Trade Act, and Spotswood was forced to revoke both. William Byrd, in a letter from England to Philip Ludwell, a member of the Governor's Council, wrote that he had contributed to the abrogation of those laws and to the weakening of the position and influence of the governor.

The House of Burgesses opposed public funding of Fort Christanna, which had to be dismantled as a consequence, although Spotswood feared that this would destabilise the border, leaving local Indian tribes without British support and at the mercy of the Carolina tribes. This put an end to the Indian Trade Act, but not to the principles it sought to implement, which remained central in Spotswood's policy for years to come. As for the Tobacco Inspection Act, on the other hand, years later, in 1730, the same measures were successfully re-proposed and did not meet as strong an opposition as previously. In all probability, the hostility of the House of Burgesses, rather than to a genuine intention to favour trade, was due to its tendency to oppose the actions of the governor, who had been fighting for years with the representatives for the effective control of the colony.

During this period of time, in addition to William Byrd's mission to London, other members of the Governor's Council were openly taking position against Spotswood. The most determined among them was the Reverend James Blair, delegate of the Bishop of London and president of the College of William and Mary, one of the most powerful men in the colony, who had already been behind the dismissal of past governors Edmund Andros and Francis Nicholson. The reason for this opposition was once again to be found in the resistance, on the part of the Virginians, to royal prerogatives affirmed by Spotswood, who claimed for the governor the right to appoint judges in criminal trials (through procedures called oyer and terminer). The members of the council, on the other hand, claimed to be the only ones entitled to do so.

In any case, the Virginian popular opinion supported the governor, who was particularly popular with the small landowners, the yeomen class. And, despite Byrd's scheming against him in London and the revocation of his laws, Spotswood still enjoyed the protection of the King's ministers and of the members of the Board of Trade.

Of pirates and Indians
In a letter sent in August 1717 to Secretary of State Joseph Addison, Spotswood reported that the only sources of concern left to impair the peace and quiet of the colony were piracy and the aggressive nature of the Indians. Just a few months earlier, several armed Seneca gangs had moved from the Province of New York to the Virginia border, where they had engaged in raids and robberies.

In March 1717, some chiefs of the Catawba tribe had gone to Fort Christanna to discuss a trade treaty with the British and Spotswood, who had long-awaited the good disposition of the Indians, had joined them. In the days of the meeting an episode took place which risked compromising the negotiations. One night, some Seneca or Mohawk Indians – enemies of the Catawba – entered the fort, where the governor was lying asleep, and killed some members of the delegation, who were not bearing arms as Spotswood had imposed. Others were kidnapped. Initially, the Catawba accused the British of having betrayed them and started to leave, but Spotswood, who was in danger of seeing his plans to secure the border undermined, sent a contingent to recover the abducted, reaffirmed his friendship with the Indians, and promised them greater protection. In the end, the Catawba agreed to trade at Fort Christanna and leave some of their children there to study, and the border situation seemed to improve, at least temporarily.

The other looming threat were the pirates, who attacked ports and robbed ships, greatly hampering trade. The most famous and feared among them, Edward Teach, who went down in history as Blackbeard, had recently returned to sail the seas, having received the King's pardon and having later surrendered to the governor of North Carolina, Charles Eden, who was probably in cahoots with him. When Blackbeard attacked a convoy of ships in front of Charleston Harbor in May 1718, looting and taking prisoners, the Carolina residents sought help from neighbouring Virginia. Although he did not have a specific mandate from the king – which was necessary for the arrest and trial of pirates –, Spotswood decided to intervene, wary of Carolina's possibilities of dealing with the problem. He quickly had former Queen Anne's Revenge quartermaster William Howard arrested, who had apparently retired from piracy and lived in Virginia, suspecting that he was still in contact with Blackbeard. From Howard, later pardoned, he learned that Blackbeard was with a few men in one of his usual shelters, the Ocracoke Inlet.

Ocracoke was in North Carolina, out of his jurisdiction, but Spotswood was now determined to capture the pirate as quickly as possible, dead or alive, even by violating the sovereignty of another colony. So, without waiting for the authorization of the House of Burgesses, he sent two warships against Blackbeard under the command of Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard. On November 22, 1718, after five days of search, the pirates were taken by surprise. Maynard, aboard HMS Pearl, attacked Blackbeard's ship, who was killed in a short and bloody fight. Nine of his men died with him, and Maynard lost a dozen of his men. Two days later, Maynard returned to Jamestown with fifteen prisoners, who were later hanged, and Blackbeard's severed head was stuck on the tip of the bowsprit.

Home politics: towards a truce
The apparent quiet at the borders was the background of new conflicts within the colony. Spotswood soon faced sharp criticism from the House of Burgesses for his moves against the pirates, and when a dispute arose between Spotswood and Eden, the governor of North Carolina, over the legality of the arrest and killing of Blackbeard and his crew (they happened to be under the jurisdiction of North Carolina). Some members of the House of Burgesses published a controversial pamphlet in which they reported of illegal proceedings on the part of Spotswood and in particular of the lack of prior consultation with Governor Eden. It appears that Spotswood was highly likely aware of Eden's political weaknesses and of his compromises with the pirates, and that he purposely omitted to seek his cooperation.

At the same time, relations with the Governor's Council also reached a critical point. In the early months of 1719, with the dispute over the pirates unresolved, a hard dispute arose over the powers of some sectors of the Church. Led by James Blair and other members of the council, a first group was in favour of the current law which provided for the clergy to be directly appointed by an assembly of parishioners and without the approval of the governor. This law, which made the position of individual clergymen uncertain and dependent on the mood of parish assemblies, prompted a large part of the Virginia clergy to support Spotswood in his efforts to modify the law and give the governor, as the King's representative, the power to assign the clerical positions. Both sides turned to the Bishop of London, accusing each other of interference and abuse of power. The Bishop of London then called for an assembly of all the clergymen of Virginia to take place in Williamsburg in April at the William and Mary's College, in the presence of Blair and Spotswood. Since the assembly failed to reach a decision, the situation remained unchanged and thus Blair was the winner of the contest

This growing hostility of the council had already manifested itself during the previous year and Spotswood, unable to bring it under control, had tried to change its composition. In November 1718, he asked the Board of Trade to remove some advisers hostile to him, including Blair and Byrd, who was still in London, and to replace them with men he trusted. The Board of Trade did not fully comply with Spotswood's requests: only two of the men he proposed were appointed and the only councillor removed, Byrd – who returned to Virginia early in 1720 – was almost immediately reinstated.

1720 was the year of a change. Unable to get rid of them, the governor tried to make peace with the members of the council. Byrd, who was now resident in Virginia and could therefore be more easily controlled, became Spotswood's point of reference. The two met at the Capitol and resolved to cooperate. On April 29, 1720, during the next assembly of the council, the governor and the councillors officially declared their resolve to work in harmony from then on. In this more relaxed situation, Spotswood obtained land concessions near Germanna and the western frontier, for a total of approximately 86,000 acres, where he began to build his private residence. The Spotswood estate formed the core of the Spotsylvania County, which was established in 1720 in his honour.

Meanwhile, the buildings of the Governor's Palace and of the Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, which Spotswood had personally collaborated to design, were completed. The Governor's palace, in particular, was the subject of criticism for its pomp and excessive costs, but its architecture was appreciated, so much so that in its time it became a model for all residences of prestige.

The truce made official in 1720, although sincerely wanted by the parties involved, appears as a prelude to the final attack against Spotswood. During the summer of the following year, Byrd and Blair left for England, there to reiterate more forcefully their efforts against the governor.

Last years of government

Despite the territorial expansion established with the Expedition over the mountains, Spotswood deemed it necessary for Great Britain to expand further northwest, as far as the Great Lakes, to gain strategic advantage in view of an imminent war against the French. He had already obtained an accurate map of the entire western area of the Mississippi River System, hitherto virtually unknown to the British, to be used for an expedition to Lake Erie, where Spotswood intended to establish a settlement. In February 1720, Spotswood proposed to go on a secret mission to London to present these ideas to the government and to illustrate in detail how it was possible and necessary to conquer Spanish Florida by attacking the Spaniards in St. Augustine, in order to prevent the French fleet from entering the waters of the Thirteen colonies from the Gulf of Mexico.

The secret missions never took place, and Spotswood, during his last two years as governor, concentrated instead on resolving the Indian question. If piracy was in rapid decline after Blackbeard's death, the problems caused by the hostile and bellicose Indian tribes were increasingly worrying. The first outbreak was on the Maryland border, and was fuelled by hostilities between the neighbouring tribes and those of Virginia. In the fall of 1720, tribes from Maryland attacked plantations in the Northern Neck, whereupon Spotswood, with the support of the governor of Maryland, called a meeting with the ambassadors of the five Iroquois Confederation tribes who were in conflict with the Virginia Indians. During the meeting, which took place in Williamsburg in October 1721, three of the five ambassadors died, possibly poisoned. Despite this event, of which the Iroquois suspected the Virginia Indians, an agreement was reached by which the Potomac River became the frontier between the Indians of Virginia and the Iroquois, and no Indian was to cross it without the authorization of the British.

Encouraged by the results, Spotswood began organizing a general meeting with the Iroquois tribes and their Sachems (supreme leaders), with the collaboration with the governors of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York. By June 1722, the time was ripe for Spotswood to sail from Virginia with one delegate from the Governor's Council and one from the House of Burgesses, and many gifts for the Iroquois from the Virginia Indians and from the colony's government. He set sail for New York and from there, along with Pennsylvania governor William Keith and some New York government spokesmen, he left by land for the city of Albany, located on the banks of the Hudson River.

The delegation, which arrived in Albany on August 20, was the most representative the British had ever set up in the Thirteen Colonies, and their commitment must have impressed the Indians. Within a few days they were joined by the leaders and warriors of the Mohicans, Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga, and Seneca; practically all the nations in the Iroquois Confederation, followed later by the Powhatans and other tribes from Virginia. On August 29 the conference began, and Spotswood gave the inaugural address, during which he expressed hope for the continuing collaboration between the British and the Indians and reaffirmed that the Virginia tribes had had nothing to do with the death of the three Iroquois ambassadors in Williamsburg a few months earlier. He gave the Indian Chiefs pearl necklaces as a gift to demonstrate British good will. Then he asked officially for confirmation of their commitment of the previous year to put an end to the raids in Piedmont and to respect the natural boundaries of the Blue Ridge Mountains and of the Potomac River. The Indians took about ten days to answer, then the agreement, which was Spotswood's main objective, was ratified.

On 12 September, the conference ended. During the farewell ceremony with the Indian leaders, Spotswood made a gesture of high symbolic value: he detached from the collar of his jacket a gold pin in the shape of a miniature horseshoe, like the one he had given to his companions for the Transmontane Expedition, which he used to wear as a good luck charm, and gave it to the Iroquois sachems, explaining that they could use it as a pass to go on a mission to Williamsburg. Spotswood also made a personal gift to the Indians of fine fabrics and work tools. Then he left by ship along the Hudson River, heading for the open sea.

Removal from office
When he arrived in Williamsburg, Spotswood learned that, despite the popular support he enjoyed, the king had decided to revoke his position as governor. On September 25, with Spotswood back in Williamsburg, James Blair, who had been absent for the past 12 months, and the new governor, Hugh Drysdale, an Irishman, arrived in the New World on the same ship. The Drysdale nomination, dated April 3, 1722, was made official and Drysdale was sworn in as governor on September 27.

Historians are in disaccord when explaining the reasons behind the removal of Spotswood from office. Walter Havighurst identified Spotswood's character as main cause; a strong, sharp, and sometimes authoritarian character, prone to the regime of obedience in the military tradition, which the Virginia aristocracy was neither used to nor willing to accept. In fact, during the twelve years at the helm in Virginia, the governor ended up into a conflict with each one of the strong powers of the colony, as well as with the more influential of his own men, from merchants to large landowners. The causes of his removal, which are never explicitly expressed in the official documents of the time, must be sought, according to Havighurst, in the controversy over the oyer and terminer courts, or over the more recent controversy on the clergymen's appointment. However, the overall policy adopted by Spotswood was inevitably destined to enter into conflict with the political class of Virginia, representative of landowners and merchants interests, whose dominance and political interference Spotswood sought to stem, in particularly James Blair's and William Byrd's, who had the means, in terms of both power and influence, to overthrow a governor.

The evaluations of Spotswood's contemporaries were also discordant. Harsh criticisms of some aspects of his work can be found in the writings of James Blair and William Byrd, whose letters have been preserved. Equally high praise, however, can be found in Robert Beverley (see his History and Present State of Virginia), who was one of the first historians born in Virginia, as well as Spotswood's companion in the Transmontane Expedition. Another Spotswood's political ally, Hugh Jones, professor at William and Mary's College, wrote in 1724, (The Present State of Virginia), that Virginia had become more civilised in the twelve years of Spotswood's tenure than in the previous one hundred years.

Among modern historians prevails a generally positive opinion about the Spotswood administration: brilliant and significant in its character; a strong guide in a period of economic growth and cultural development. Historian John Fiske, in the late nineteenth century, described Spotswood as one of the best and most capable governors of the British colonial period in America and praised him in particular for the founding of the Germanna smelting plant and for the audacity of the Transmontane Expedition. The same opinion was expressed by historian Virginius Dabney, who described Spotswood as the most celebrated among the governors of Virginia during the colonial period.

Between Virginia and England
After the experience of government, Spotswood moved to his private residence situated along the Rappahannock River, near Germanna, where he devoted himself to the administration of his large estate and to the management of his metallurgical enterprise. Part of the production of iron and cast iron was exported to England and the rest was destined to the local market. For the other activities, mining and agriculture, Spotswood made use at first of the Palatine refugees he had introduced in Germanna almost ten years earlier, and when the contract that bound them to him expired, he resorted to slaves from Africa. Spotswood's activities also included raising livestock, producing naval supplies, pitch, tar, and turpentine.

However, having assigned land to himself in large quantities during his tenure as governor, he was accused in some circles of land grabbing. So, with the intention of coming to an advantageous agreement with the British Government in London on the amount of taxes due, and at the same time consolidating his right of ownership, Spotswood left for England in 1724. His stay in England lasted longer than expected on account of some complications, which included quantifying the extension of the land in his possession and the amount of tax to be paid. It lasted in all five years.

Up till now, at age forty-eight, Spotswood had remained a bachelor waiting for the opportunity to marry a woman of high social standing. Now, on this occasion and in the capital, shortly after his arrival, Spotswood married Anne Butler Brayne, the daughter of a London esquire and godchild of James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormond. They had four children, two boys and two girls.

The last years
Having obtained favourable tax conditions, in February 1729 Spotswood crossed the Atlantic for the fourth and final time, with his wife and children. During his absence, the volume of production in the metallurgical plant had dropped and some slaves had escaped, but this had not affected the activities in the estate as a whole. On the contrary, the prolonged active state of the furnaces made this the first stable site of this type in all of North America.

As a private citizen, Spotswood financed the construction of a church in Germanna and began building another private residence in his own forest along the Rappahannock River. The construction ended in 1732. The structure, which was destroyed in the 1750s, had a park and a cherry tree boulevard, and was larger than the Williamsburg Governor's Palace. During this period, Spotswood made peace with William Byrd. After the completion of the building Byrd wrote a detailed description of the residence, which he called an "enchanted castle", and of the solitary and measured lifestyle of its owner.

During this time, Spotswood acquired another property near Yorktown, called Temple Farm. A few decades later the house, known as Moore House from the surname of Spotswood's son-in-law who inherited it, was the theatre of a crucial episode of the American Revolution, when in 1781 General Charles Cornwallis signed the final British surrender.

During the last few years of his life, Spotswood stayed away from the frenzy of political life. At the time of Byrd's visit, some ministers in London were thinking of offering him (as Byrd testifies) the post of governor of the colony of Jamaica, with the task of taking Spanish Havana with a military action. However, nothing came of it, as it was eventually decided to resort to more peaceful ways of dealing with the Spaniards. Spotswood accepted instead a less up-front mandate, which allowed him to return to projects developed during his years as governor: in 1730 he was appointed with a ten-year term Postmaster General for the thirteen colonies and the West Indies.

At the time, the postal system covered only the coastal strip extending from New England to Pennsylvania up to Philadelphia. Virginia, cut off from courier routes, received mail once every two weeks. In 1732, Spotswood extended the postal system to Williamsburg, where the mail started to arrive on a weekly basis. Spotswood also entered into a partnership with the young publisher Benjamin Franklin, with whom he developed a personal friendship, appointing him, in 1737, postmaster for his city, Philadelphia.

War of Jenkins' Ear and death
In October 1739, due to the constant attacks on the English merchant navy by Spanish naval ships, Britain declared war on Spain. The conflict would go down in history as the war of Jenkins' Ear, named after an English captain whose ear was cut off by the Spaniards. Spotswood, who had not lost interest in military affairs, proposed to the general command of London that he personally recruit a regiment of volunteers to be employed in South America. Having obtained approval, he was appointed major general and quartermaster of the troops stationed in America, crowning thus with a promotion his military career. He was to be the leader and the organiser of a military expedition against the Spanish stronghold of Cartagena de Indias, in present-day Colombia.

At the beginning of the following May, Spotswood travelled to Annapolis, Maryland, to consult with the local governors, wait there for the arrival of his troops and later to set sail with them. But in Annapolis he was taken ill, and his death came quickly, on June 7, 1740, at the age of sixty-four. The expedition to Cartagena was postponed for a year, when the British forces placed the city under siege, but were utterly defeated.

Spotswood's body was probably buried in Annapolis, but it is possible that it was brought back home to his Temple Farm property near Yorktown and buried near the York River. In any case, the memory of Spotswood, and in particular of his government, lasted in Williamsburg for a long time to come.

Spotswood's correspondence

 * , collection of Spotswood's letters as governor of Virginia from 20 June 1710 to 28 July 1721.
 * , correspondence between Alexander Spotswood and his cousin John Spotswood.

title: Alexander Spotswood