The Russian-American Company Under the High Patronage of His Imperial Majesty was a state-sponsored chartered company formed on the basis of the United American Company. Emperor Paul I of Russia chartered the company in the Ukase of 1799, it had the mission of establishing new settlements in Russian America, conducting trade with natives, carrying out an expanded colonization program. Russia's first joint-stock company, it came under the direct authority of the Ministry of Commerce of Imperial Russia. Count Nikolai Petrovich Rumyantsev exercised a pivotal influence upon the early activities of the Company. In 1801 the company's headquarters moved from Irkutsk to Saint Petersburg, the merchants who were the major stockholders were soon replaced with Russia's nobility and aristocracy. Count Rumyantsev funded Russia's first naval circumnavigation of the globe under the joint command of Adam Johann von Krusenstern and Nikolai Rezanov in 1803–1806, he funded and directed the Ryurik's circumnavigation of 1814–1816, which provided substantial scientific information on Alaska's and California's flora and fauna, important ethnographic information on Alaskan and Californian natives.
During the Russian-California period when they operated Fort Ross, the Russians named present-day Bodega Bay, California as "Rumyantsev Bay" in his honor. In 1799 the Russian government appointed an official, with the title'Correspondent', to maintain oversight of company affairs, the first being Nikolai Rezanov; this role was soon expanded to a three-seat board of directors, with two elected by the stockholders and one appointed by the government. Additionally the directors had to send reports of the company's activities directly to the tsar, they appointed a Chief Manager of the company, stationed in North America to directly administer the forts, trade stations and outposts. Alexander Andreyevich Baranov was appointed as the first Chief Manager. During his tenure, he founded both Pavlovskaya and New Archangel, settlements that became operating bases for the company, he was replaced in 1818 by an officer appointed from the Imperial Russian Navy. The position of Chief Manager was thereafter reserved for Imperial Naval officers.
The Ukase of 1799 granted the company a monopoly over trade in Russian America, defined with a southern border of 55° N latitude. Tsar Alexander I in the Ukase of 1821 asserted its domain to 45°50′ N latitude, revised by 1822 to 51° N latitude; this border was challenged by both Great Britain and the United States, which resulted in the Russo-American Treaty of 1824 and the Russo-British Treaty of 1825. These established 54°40′ as the ostensible southward limit of Russian interests; the only attempt by the Russians to enforce the ukase of 1821 was the seizure of the U. S. brig Pearl in 1822, by the Russian sloop Apollon. The Pearl, a vessel of the maritime fur trade, was sailing from Boston, Massachusetts to New Archangel/Sitka; when the U. S. government protested, the Russians paid compensation. Due to treaty violations in 1833 with the British by the company's governor, Baron Ferdinand von Wrangel, the Russians leased the southeastern sector of what is now the Alaska Panhandle, to the Hudson's Bay Company in 1838 as part of a damages settlement.
The lease gave the HBC authority as far north as 56° 30' N. Under Baranov, who governed the region between 1790 and 1818, a permanent settlement was established in 1804 at "Novo-Arkhangelsk", a thriving maritime trade was organized. Alutiiq and Aleut men from the Kodiak and the Aleutian Islands were forcibly conscripted to work for the company for three-year periods because they were "among the most sophisticated and effective sea otter hunters in the world." During its initial years, the company had problems in maintaining a pool of skilled crewmen for its ships. The limited number of Russian men proficient in naval craft in the Empire sought employment in the Imperial Russian Navy; the RAC had difficulty recruiting men for naval training, in part due to the continued practise of serfdom in the Empire, which kept most peasants tied to the land. In 1802 the Imperial government directed the Imperial Navy to send officers for employment in the RAC, with half of their pay to come from the company.
Russian merchants were excluded from the port of Guangzhou and its valuable markets, something the RAC endeavoured to change. The company funded a circumnavigation that lasted from 1803 to 1806, with the goals of expanding Russian navigational knowledge, supplying the RAC stations, opening commercial relations with the Qing Empire. While the expedition did sell its wares at the Chinese port, "no noticeable progress" towards securing Russian trading rights was made during the next half century. Due to the closed Chinese ports, the RAC had to ship its furs to the Russian port of Okhotsk. From there caravans took more than a year to reach Ayan and the Siberian Route; the majority of the pelts were traded in Kyakhta, where Chinese trade goods, principally cotton and tea, were traded. Fort Elizabeth was built in Hawaii by Georg Anton Schäffer, an agent of the RAC, his actions to attempt to overthrow the Kingdom of Hawaii is known as the Schäffer affair. Over the course of the RAC's first decade of enterprise, its officials became concerned about American ships trading in adjacent coastal regions their sale
Kelli Presley is a fictional character in the 2006 slasher film Black Christmas. The character, created by writer-director Glen Morgan and portrayed by actress Katie Cassidy, serves as a replacement to Jess from the original film. In the film, Kelli is depicted as a member of the Delta Alpha Kappa sorority. Due to being an only child and not having a large family, she decides to spend Christmas with her sorority sisters, their sorority house was once the childhood home of notorious murderer Billy Lenz. During Christmas and her sisters begin getting obscene phone calls. Realizing that Billy has returned home, the girls attempt to survive the night as, due to a snowstorm, help is unable to reach them. Critical reception towards the character was polarizing; some considered her to be likable and sympathetic, whereas others criticized her for being bland and unoriginal as well as being inferior in comparison to Jess from the original Black Christmas. Despite these criticisms, Cassidy herself was praised for her performance.
In Black Christmas, Kelli first appears with her boyfriend Kyle, telling him that she intends on spending Christmas with her sorority sisters. After arriving back at the Delta Alpha Kappa sorority house and her sisters are called by someone using Clair and Megan's phones. Worried about Megan, Kelli goes to her room only to find Kyle there. While attempting to find clues about her disappearance the power goes out, causing Megan's computer to switch on from standby mode and revealing a recording Kyle made of himself having sex with Megan. After kicking him out, she meets Clair's elder half-sister Leigh. Following Dana's murder, the killer uses her cellphone to call the girls. Suspecting that something is wrong, they go outside to look for her, only to discover Eve's severed head inside her car. Kelli calls 9-1-1, but is told that due to the snowstorm, help would be unavailable for at least two hours; when their housemother Mrs. Mac and Heather decide to take the car and reach the police station themselves, Kelli and Melissa all go to Lauren's room to watch through the window and make sure they leave safely.
Noticing that they're not leaving and Leigh go to check on them through the basement where Leigh slips on Mrs. Mac's blood, who had gotten killed by a falling icicle. During they're absence and Lauren are killed by the assailant. Going back to Lauren's room, Kyle has returned and, after a quick confrontation between him and Leigh, they decide to go to the attic in case any of the girls are still alive. While opening up the attic door, Kyle is killed; the killer is revealed to be Billy Lenz's sister Agnes, who has set up the corpses of the sorority sisters around a Christmas tree. After Leigh falls through the attic floor, the Christmas tree catches fire while Kelli and Agnes fall into one of the holes in the wall. Managing to escape with Leigh's help, they reach the hospital. At the hospital, who had survived the fire, kills Leigh but Kelli manages to retaliate by using a defibrillator, electrocuting her; when Billy chases her to the stairs, Kelli knocks him over, impaling him on the finial of a Christmas tree and killing him.
She is last seen staring at Billy's corpse. Black Christmas has three alternate endings, the second of, used as the actual ending for the UK theatrical release of the movie. In the UK ending, Billy dies on the operating table from his wounds, thus when Kelli kills Agnes, the scene ends there with her parents picking her up from the hospital; the third ending is similar, having Billy die and Kelli's parents picking her up, however his body disappears and the last shot shows someone moving through the vents, indicating that either Agnes or Billy are still alive. The first ending, which follows the original script, ends with both Kelli and Leigh surviving and Kelli getting a call from someone using Kyle's cellphone. Cassidy, cast in early 2006, revealed in an interview for When a Stranger Calls that one of the reasons she became interested in the role of Kelli was because she wanted to play a leading role in a movie and loved the script. In the same interview she described Kelli as "the girl next door" and stated that "she's there on a scholarship or something".
In an interview with IGN, Cassidy further revealed that what attracted her to the role of Kelli is that the character " up" during the course of the film and has an active role, instead of being a damsel in distress. Kelli received mixed reviews from critics, with the perception being that she fails to stand out much from the rest of the characters in the movie, with Variety describing the character as generic. Horror website Dread Central, when comparing the two movies, described Kelli as "an awful character exists in stark contrast to the likable and level-headed Jess of the original." Despite this, Screen Rant, in their list of the best final girls, when talking about Jess from the original movie, praised Kelli for being able to defeat both antagonists by herself. Katie Cassidy's performance however received a more positive response from critics. Bloody Disgusting praised Cassidy, along with her co-stars, for bringing a spin to the "sorority girl" persona. While The Film File stated that despite from the sorority girls "few of them likable or developed enough for the viewer to care about their fates", with Kelli having few personality traits, Cassidy does show a promising spark.
Final girl
Jonathan Maberry is an American suspense author, anthology editor, comic book writer, magazine feature writer, content creator and writing teacher/lecturer. He was named one of the Today’s Top Ten Horror Writers. Jonathan Maberry was born in Kensington, attended Frankford High School, went on to Temple University. Growing up in a rough neighborhood, he began learning martial arts at the age of 6. Maberry's early work featured martial arts as a topic, such as Judo and You, Ultimate Jujutsu and Ultimate Sparring. In the next phase of his career, he departed from martial arts writing and wrote several books on the folklore and beliefs of the occult and paranormal, including The Vampire Slayers Field Guide to the Undead, written under the pen name of Shane MacDougall; the Cryptopedia won the Bram Stoker Award for best nonfiction work. His first novel, Ghost Road Blues, won the 2007 Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel; that book was the first of the Pine Deep Trilogy and was followed by Dead Man's Song and Bad Moon Rising, all from Pinnacle Books.
Maberry is a freelance comic book writer, first for Marvel and for Dark Horse and IDW Publishing. His first story, "Wolverine: Ghosts", was published as a backup story in Wolverine: Anniversary, April 2009. In August 2009 he became the regular writer for Marvel's Black Panther series, starting on the 7th issue, he wrote Marvel Zombies Return: Wolverine. In 2010, he wrote Doom War and Marvel Universe Vs The Punisher, Marvel Universe Vs Wolverine, Marvel Universe Vs The Avengers, he moved to Dark Horse Comics and produced a single miniseries, Bad Blood,with artist Tyler Crook, which went on to win the Bram Stoker Award for Best Graphic Novel. His work for IDW Publishing includes two collections of V-Wars, a five-issue standalone series Rot & Ruin: Warrior Smart, his latest series Pandemic, his bestselling work was the novelization of the 2010 film The Wolfman which starred Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving. In March 2010, the novel reached #35 on the mass-market paperback section of The New York Times Best Seller List.
It was nominated for and won the Scribe Award for Best Film Adaptation, issued by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. In 2010 Maberry began writing young adult post-apocalyptic zombie stories, his first prestigious award was for Rot & Ruin. It won the 2010 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, was named in Booklist’s Ten Best Horror Novels for Young Adults, an American Library Association Top Pick, a Bram Stoker and Pennsylvania Keystone to Reading winner, it became the first of a new series of post-apocalyptic zombie thrillers such as Dust & Decay Flesh & Bone, Fire & Ash, a collection of short stories and Pieces, Broken Lands, Lost Roads, which will be released August 25th, 2020. Maberry launched a series called The Nightsiders that blends science fiction with horror. Book 1 of that series, The Orphan Army was named as one the 100 Best Books for Children. A follow-up, Vault of Shadows was published in August 2016; the series for which Maberry is best known is the Joe Ledger Series, in which a Baltimore police detective is recruited into a Special Ops unit attached to the mysterious Department of Military Sciences, run by enigmatic Mr. Church.
Each of the books in the series pits Ledger and his team against a different kind of extreme science threat. In the first novel, Patient Zero, the threat is a pathogen. In the second book, The Dragon Factory, the villains are geneticists using cutting-edge science to restart the Nazi master race eugenics program; the rest of the series follows with The King of Plagues, Assassin’s Code, Extinction Machine, Code Zero, Predator One, Kill Switch, Dogs of War. Maberry launched Rage, the first in the follow-up Rogue Team International series featuring Joe Ledger. A collection of Maberry’s Joe Ledger short stories, Joe Ledger: Special Ops was released by JournalStone; the series' main publisher, released Joe Ledger: Unstoppable, an anthology of Ledger stories written by a variety of top suspense and mystery writers including Tim Lebbon, Scott Sigler, Steve Alten, Weston Ochse, Dana Fredsti, Christopher Golden, Joe McKinney, Jeremy Robinson, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Bryan Thomas-Schmidt, others.
In 2015 Maberry released a rare standalone novel, based on the Deadlands table top role playing game. The book was nominated for a Scribe Award for best original novel based on a licensed property, his most recent standalone novel was Glimpse, published in March 2018 by St. Martin's Press. Glimpse is a chilling thriller that explores what happens when reality and nightmares converge, how far one will go to protect the innocent when their own brain is a threat. Another standalone, will be released by St. Martin's Griffin as a trade paperback in 2020. Although a standalone,Ink has elements of other books, including characters and locations from the Pine De