Battle of Midway

The Battle of Midway was a pivotal naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II. It took place from June 4 to June 7, 1942, approximately one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, about five months after the Japanese capture of Wake Island, and six months after the Empire of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor that had led to a formal state of war between the United States and Japan. During the battle, the United States Navy defeated a Japanese attack against Midway Atoll (located northwest of Hawaii) and destroyed four Japanese aircraft carriers and a heavy cruiser while losing a carrier and a destroyer.

The battle was a crushing defeat for the Japanese and is widely regarded as the most important naval battle of World War II. The battle permanently weakened the Japanese Navy, particularly through the loss of over 200 naval aviators.^[2] Strategically, the U.S. Navy was able to seize the initiative in the Pacific and go on the offensive.

The Japanese plan of attack was to lure America's few remaining carriers into a trap and sink them.^[3] The Japanese also intended to occupy Midway Atoll to extend Japan's defensive perimeter farther from its home islands. This operation was considered preparatory for further attacks against Fiji and Samoa, as well as the invasion of Hawaii.^[4]

Had the Japanese captured Midway, the northeastern Pacific Rim would have been essentially defenseless. Japanese success also would have removed the last capital ships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet, ensuring Japanese naval supremacy in the Pacific until perhaps late 1943. The Midway operation, like the attack on Pearl Harbor that had plunged the United States into war, was not part of a campaign for the conquest of the United States itself, but was aimed at its elimination as a strategic Pacific power, thereby giving Japan a free hand in establishing its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. It was also hoped that another defeat would force the U.S. to negotiate an end to the Pacific War with conditions favorable for Japan.^[5]

Aaron SorkinAaron Benjamin Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an American screenwriter, producer and playwright. After graduating from Syracuse University

Aaron Benjamin Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an American screenwriter, producer and playwright. After graduating from Syracuse University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Musical Theatre in 1983, Sorkin spent much of the 1980s in New York as a struggling, largely unemployed actor.^[1] He found his passion in writing plays however, and quickly established himself as a young promising playwright. His stageplay A Few Good Men caught the attention of Hollywood producer David Brown, who bought the film rights before the play even premiered.^[2]

Castle Rock Entertainment hired Sorkin to adapt A Few Good Men for the big screen. The movie, directed by Rob Reiner, became a box office success. Sorkin spent the early 1990s writing two other screenplays at Castle Rock for the films Malice and The American President. In the mid-1990s he worked as a script doctor on films such as Schindler's List and Bulworth. In 1998 his television career began when he created the TV comedy series Sports Night for the ABC network. Sports Night's second season was its last, and in 1999 overlapped with the debut of Sorkin's next TV series, the multiple Emmy-award-winning political drama The West Wing, this time for the NBC network. In 2006, after a three year hiatus, he returned to television with a dramedy called Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, about the backstage drama at a late night sketch comedy show, once again for the NBC network. His most recent feature film screenplay is Charlie Wilson's War, which is set to open in movie theaters on Christmas day 2007.^[3]

After more than a decade away from the theatre, Sorkin returned to adapt for the stage his screenplay The Farnsworth Invention, which started a workshop run at La Jolla Playhouse in February 2007. He has battled with a cocaine addiction for many years, but after a highly publicized arrest he received treatment in a drug diversion program and rid himself of the drug dependence. In television, Sorkin is known as a controlling writer, who rarely shares the job of penning the teleplays with other writers. His writing staff are more likely to do research and come up with stories for him to tell. His trademark is writing rapid-fire dialogue and extended soliloquies, and in television, this penchant is complemented by frequent collaborator Thomas Schlamme's characteristic visual technique called the "Walk and Talk".

Cougar

The Cougar (Puma concolor), also Puma and Mountain lion, is a New World mammal of the Felidae family. This large, solitary cat has the greatest range of any mammal in the Western Hemisphere,^[2] extending from Yukon in Canada to the southern Andes of South America. An adaptable, generalist species, the Cougar is found in every major New World habitat type. It is the second heaviest cat in the New World, after the Jaguar, and the fourth heaviest in the world, after the Tiger, Lion, and Jaguar, although it is most closely related to smaller felines.

A capable stalk-and-ambush predator, the Cougar pursues a wide variety of prey. Its primary food is deer, particularly in the northern part of its range, but it hunts species as small as insects and rodents, as well as large ungulates. It prefers habitats with dense underbrush for stalking, but it can live in open areas.

The Cougar is territorial and persists at low population densities, with individual territory sizes dependent on terrain, vegetation, and prey abundance. While a large predator, it is not always the dominant species in its range, competing with other animals such as wolves and humans for prey such as white-tailed deer. It is a reclusive cat and usually avoids people; attacks on humans are rare, with 9 known fatalities of humans in North America in the last 110 years ^[3], with attacks increasing more recently.^[4]

Due to persecution as a dangerous pest animal that would sometimes prey on livestock during the European colonization of the Americas, and continuing human development of Cougar habitat, populations have dropped in many parts of its historical range. In particular, the Cougar was thought to be extirpated in eastern North America, with the exception of an isolated Florida sub-population; the animal may be recolonizing parts of its former eastern territory. DNA evidence ^[5] has confirmed its existence in eastern North America, which supports many sightings and footprint evidence collected in recent years. ^[3]