Captain Bennett Marco, Sergeant Raymond Shaw and the rest of their platoon are captured during the Korean War in 1952. They are all brainwashed into believing Shaw saved their lives in combat, for which he receives the Medal of Honor when they return to the United States. Years after the war is over, Marco, now an intelligence officer, begins to have a recurring nightmare in which Shaw murders two of his comrades while being watched by Chinese and Russian officials. When he learns that another platoon member has been having the same dream, he sets out to uncover the mystery.
The Communists intend to use Shaw as a sleeper agent and, using the queen of diamonds in a deck of playing cards as a subconscious trigger, compel him to follow their orders, which he does not remember afterwards. Shaw is controlled by none other than his own politically ambitious and domineering mother, who is working with the Communists in a plot to overthrow the U.S. government.
The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)During the Korean War the Soviets kidnap an American infantry patrol and take them to Manchuria, in Communist China. There, the Communists (Russian, Chinese and North Korean) implant false memories in the soldiers' minds to cover the kidnapping, and to provide a subconscious trigger in the mind of one soldier, Staff Sergeant Raymond Shaw. Brainwashed, the soldiers are covertly returned to their lines and, after reintegration into American society, unaware of what they went through.
As part of the process, Captain (later Major) Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra), Sgt. Shaw (Laurence Harvey) and the rest of the platoon believe their lives were saved in combat by Shaw, for which he is awarded the Medal of Honor. Also, when asked to describe him, each of his fellow soldiers automatically says: "Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." Privately, however, they know that Shaw is a cold, sad, unsociable loner. As Marco puts it: "It isn't as if Raymond's hard to like. He's impossible to like!"
After the war, Marco suffers a recurring nightmare: a hypnotized Shaw kills two of his platoon before the assembled Soviet, Chinese and North Korean brass while watching a practical demonstration of the Communist brainwashing technique. He wants to investigate, but receives no support from Army Intelligence, for whom he currently works, because he has no proof. This changes when he learns that another soldier from the platoon has been suffering the same nightmare and has identified the same specific Communists.
Shaw is an unwitting assassin whose actions are triggered by a Queen of Diamonds playing card. When he sees it, he will obey the next suggestion or order given to him. His intended role is that of a killer who, while carrying out his assignments, must also kill any witnesses and then forget his actions. The brainwasher, Dr. Yen, explains: "[Shaw's] brain has not just been 'washed', but 'dry-cleaned'." To test the assassin's conditioning, Dr. Yen orders Shaw to kill his newspaper publisher employer.
Raymond's mother, Eleanor Iselin (Angela Lansbury), is the driving force behind her husband Senator John Yerkes Iselin, a bombastic demagogue in the style of Joseph McCarthy who is dismissed by many people as a fool. He is also Raymond's stepfather. Raymond hates them both, especially his domineering mother. Sen. Iselin's political stature is established when (per his wife's orders) he interrupts a televised Congressional briefing of the Secretary of Defense and accuses him of knowing that some 207 Defense Department employees are Communist agents. This provokes a chaotic reaction among journalists and an enraged reaction from the Secretary.
Unknown to everyone, even Raymond, the Iselins have become Communist agents with a plan that could take them to the White House. Mrs. Iselin herself is the American operative for whom Raymond is the instrument with which to effect the operation's final step.
Raymond briefly finds happiness when he rekindles a youthful romance with Jocelyn "Jocey" Jordan, daughter of Senator Thomas Jordan, one of his stepfather's political rivals. Raymond originally courted her in order to get at his parents in a Romeo and Juliet-style romance, but in time the love turned genuine with Jocelyn and her father becoming the nearest he has ever had to having friends.
Raymond and Jocelyn are reeunited as part of a plan by Raymond's mother to get Sen. Jordan on her side. They elope. Although pleased with the match, Sen. Jordan makes it clear to Raymond's mother that he will still block her husband's bid for the vice presidential nomination of their party. She in turn has Raymond assassinate the senator, and in the process he also kills Jocey, who witnessed the event.
Raymond has no recollection of doing this, and is grief-stricken when he hears of Jocey's murder. Mrs. Iselin then primes Raymond to assassinate their party's presidential candidate at the nomination convention. Sen. Iselin, the vice-presidential candidate, will, by default, become the presidential candidate and will give an inflammatory anti-Communist speech (written by Communist agents). The assassination will cause mass hysteria in the U.S. and propel the demagogue Iselin to the White House and justify his presidential emergency powers "... that would make martial law seem like anarchy." Thereby President Iselin, the Manchurian Candidate, will be a Communist puppet.
In a cynically moving scene, Raymond's mother admits to the activated Raymond that she has been a Communist agent for years. She needed an assassin to complete her plan and regrets that he is involved. After all, the world is full of killers who do not require brainwashing to do the job. The International Communist Conspiracy chose Sergeant Raymond Shaw as the assassin because it solidified their hold and control over his mother, and she intends to strike back at them, once in power.
In the course of the investigation, Marco has discovered that the Queen of Diamonds card is what is required to put Raymond in an hypnotic state and make him obey all orders without question. He uses a trick deck composed entirely of Queen of Diamonds cards in order to get the full story and to instruct Raymond not to carry out the final phase of the Iselins' plan.
Marco's attempt appears to fail. Raymond enters the convention hall and takes a position to carry out the assassination. At the last second, though, he regains self-control and takes his revenge by instead killing his stepfather and mother. He then commits suicide while wearing his now truly earned Congressional Medal of Honor.
from:
www.wikipedia.com
James Gordon Bennett arrived in Paris in 1887 and had established a Continental edition of his father's New York daily. This being the same Bennett that sent Stanley in search of Livingstone had an eye for publicity. In July 1899 he established a series of races bearing his name. The six international motor races held between 1900 and 1905 came to be known as the Gordon Bennett Cup Race but within the pages of the New York Herald and its Paris offshoot it was always referred to as the Coupe International. Gordon Bennett himself never drove an motor car and in fact never witnessed any of his races. The trophy was described as 'a valuable object d'art', and depicted a racing Panhard steered by the Genius of Progress with the Goddess of Victory upright upon the seat. The Cup was to be a competition between recognized national automobile clubs initially representing France, Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, the United States and Italy. Any club wishing to take part in the race was required to deposit the sum of 3,000 francs with the A.C.F. before 1 January 1900. The actual race to be held sometime between 15 May and 15 August. The race distance would be not less than 550 nor more than 650 kilometers. The cost of race organization would be divided amongst each of the participating clubs. The regulations covering the cars were family simple. Two side-by-side seats occupied at all times with driver and mechanic weighing no less than 60 kg. apiece and a minimum empty weight of 400 kg for the vehicle. Any means or propulsion was allowed. Each nation would be allowed to select a team of three cars with the drivers being members of the respective club and the cars themselves had to be made in their entirety in the country whose colors they wore. It was these last rules that would cause contention. The inital race would run from Paris to Lyons and was won by Fernand Charron driving a Panhard-Levassor at an average speed of 38.6 mph. 
For 1901 the Gordon Bennett Cup race was to be run concurrently with the 'open' Paris-Bordeaux race. In deference to the Cup's international status, their entrants would be dispatched before the open entrants. Napier had planned to contest the Cup on behalf of England but due to the use of French manufactured tires was relegated to the concurrent open race. The Cup turned into an all French affair. In the end the sole survivor in the cup race was Giradot but he was eclipsed by the open Mors of Fournier at an average speed of 53 m.p.h. 1902 saw the first British entrants in the cup and one a Napier driven by S.F. Edge scored an unexpected victory. The British victory in the Cup race proved a turning point for the series as the French had finally been beaten and could never take the race so lightly again.
The dawn of automobile racing was anything but that. It was thought that a car's ability to navigate roads in a reliable manner was all that could be hoped for. Outright speed was not even considered important that is until the flag dropped ... The first event to have been planned was to have been a short trial in Paris organized by "Le Velocipede" in 1887, but only one competitor turned up and so it was abandoned. The first organized event was actually a Reliability Trial run from Paris to Rouen in 1894 over a distance of 126 km. It was organized by a newspaper, Le Petite Journal, and the winning "horseless carriage" had to be "safe, easily controllable and reasonably economical to run." Twenty one entries left Paris on July 22nd, and the first home was Count de Dion in a steam driven De Dion tractor. Unfortunately for De Dion, the jury decided that his car was not a practical road vehicle and instead awarded the prize jointly to the next two leading cars, a Peugeot and a Panhard-Levassor respectively. The winning average speed was an exhilarating 17km/h. Many town races were run in the following years including Paris to Bordeaux and back. This 1895 event, a true race, was won by Emille Levassor. Driving a 2-cylinder, 4-bhp Panhard-Levassor he drove 48 hours 48 minutes virtually non-stop. Because his car only had two seats instead of the required 4 he was denied the prize of 31,000 francs, yet it is his statue that overlooks the finishing line at the Porte Maillot in Paris. An other interesting entrant in this race was the Peugeot of André Michelin which used pneumatic tires. Typically wheels used on other cars were either iron or solid rubber. At first the "air tyre" was ridiculed as impractical and indeed Michelin's car suffered from numerous flats due to the poor condition of the roads at the turn of the century. Panhard would dominate racing until the end of the century. 
