title: Us (2019 film)

text: "Us" grossed $175.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $80.1 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $255.2 million, against a production budget of $20 million. "Deadline Hollywood" calculated the net profit of the film to be $119million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues.


title: Us (2019 film)

text: In the United States and Canada, initial tracking had "Us" grossing $35–40million in its opening weekend. By the week of its release, estimates had risen to $45–50million, with advance ticket sales on Fandango outpacing "A Quiet Place" ($50.2 million) and "Get Out" ($33.7 million). The film made $29.1 million on its first day, including $7.4 million from Thursday night previews, one of the best-ever for a horror film and far higher than the Thursday night preview numbers for "Get Out", which only grossed $1.8 million, increasing weekend estimates for "Us" to $68 million. It went on to earn $71.1 million at the box office, debuting at number one and becoming the second best opening for a live-action original film after "Avatar" ($77 million in 2009), as well as the third-best total for a horror film after "It" ($123.4 million in 2017) and "Halloween" ($76.2 million in 2018) and the best ever opening for an original horror film not based on a known property. In its second weekend, the film made $33.6 million, dropping 52.7% (slightly above-average for a horror film but much larger than the 15% seen by "Get Out") and finishing second behind newcomer "Dumbo".


title: Us (2019 film)

text: The website's critical consensus reads, "With Jordan Peele's second inventive, ambitious horror film, we have seen how to beat the sophomore jinx, and it is "Us"." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on 56 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an overall positive score of 80%, with 60% saying they would definitely recommend it. "Us" was described by "Rolling Stone" as "spill-your-soda scary", compared to the "existentially terrifying" "Get Out".


title: Us (2019 film)

text: Monica Castillo of "RogerEbert.com" gave the film four out of four, writing that: ""Us" is another thrilling exploration of the past and oppression this country is still too afraid to bring up. Peele wants us to talk, and he's given audiences the material to think, to feel our way through some of the darker sides of the human condition and the American experience." David Griffin of "IGN" gave the film 9.0/10, calling it "a very, very strange film. But that's OK because it wouldn't be a Jordan Peele joint if there wasn't a little risk involved. Peele has proven that he's not a one-hit wonder with this truly terrifying, poignant look at one American family that goes through hell at the hands of maniacal doppelgangers". John DeFore of "The Hollywood Reporter" called "Us" "a fiercely scary movie whose meaning is up for grabs".


title: Us (2019 film)

text: Richard Brody of "The New Yorker" called the film a "colossal achievement," writing, ""Us" is a horror film—though saying so is like offering a reminder that "The Godfather" is a gangster film or that "" is science fiction. Genre is irrelevant to the merits of a film, whether its conventions are followed or defied; what matters is that Peele cites the tropes and precedents of horror in order to deeply root his film in the terrain of pop culture—and then to pull up those roots."


title: Us (2019 film)

text: Conversely, Stephanie Zacharek of "Time" thought Peele had too many ideas and not enough answers compared to "Get Out" and said, "Peele goes even deeper into the conflicted territory of class and race and privilege; he also ponders the traits that make us most human. But this time, he's got so many ideas he can barely corral them, let alone connect them. He overthinks himself into a corner, and we're stuck there with him."


title: Us (2019 film)

text: Disability rights groups National Spasmodic Dysphonia Association and RespectAbility criticised Nyong'o for basing her performance on spasmodic dysphonia. She later apologised.


title: Us (2019 film)

text: Critic Jim Vejvoda related the Tethered to "urban legends" and "xenophobic paranoia about the Other", also writing they resembled the Morlocks in H. G. Wells's 1895 novel, "The Time Machine". Journalist Noel Ransome viewed the film as being about "the effects of classism and marginalization", writing "the Tethered are effigies of this same situational classism. They're trapped—mentally and physically—and ignored". Joel Meares of Rotten Tomatoes also noted that the Tethered, referencing the "we're Americans" line, are representatives of the duality of American society, how some citizens can afford to live on top of the class system while others are stuck in poverty. He also noted the title "Us" could mean "U.S.", or United States.


title: Us (2019 film)

text: Manohla Dargis of "The New York Times" notes that the Wilsons are "introduced with an aerial sweep of greenery" similar to the opening of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining", and sees that movie as the principal influence on "Us". Describing Peele as a "true cinephile", she also identifies allusions to other films, including "Jaws", "A Nightmare on Elm Street", and "The Goonies", as well as one scene suggesting an influence by the Austrian film director Michael Haneke's 1997 horror film "Funny Games" and subsequent U.S. remake.


title: Us (2019 film)

text: The Tethered's red jump suits and single glove were an allusion to Michael Jackson along with the "Thriller" shirt seen on young Adelaide, and Peele has stated that Jackson was "the patron saint of duality". Peele referenced many other instances of 1980s culture, including allusions to "The Lost Boys" and Hands Across America, stating "Everything in this movie was deliberate, that is one thing I can guarantee you. Unless you didn't like something and that was a complete accident".


title: Us (2019 film)

text: The film contains numerous references to Jeremiah 11:11, which reads: "Therefore thus saith the Lord: 'I will bring on them a disaster they cannot escape. Although they cry out to me, I will not listen to them'" (NIV). Critic Rosie Fletcher commented on the context, with Jeremiah warning Jerusalem was facing destruction due to false idols, and expressed the opinion that the film's characters also "worshiped the wrong things", such as Ophelia, the virtual assistant.


title: Us (2019 film)

text: Peele later explained in the film's digital release special features that a central theme of the film is American privilege:


title: Us (2019 film)

text: "Us" was nominated for one Art Directors Guild, four Critics' Choice Movie Awards, one Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild, three MTV Movie & TV Awards, eight NAACP Image Awards, four People's Choice Awards, one Bram Stoker Award (won), seven Saturn Awards (winning one), one Screen Actors Guild Award, and one World Soundtrack Awards (won).


title: Ashley Judd

text: Ashley Judd (born Ashley Tyler Ciminella; April 19, 1968) is an American actress. She grew up in a family of performing artists: she is the daughter of the late country music singer Naomi Judd and the half-sister of country music singer Wynonna Judd. Her acting career has spanned more than three decades, and she has also become heavily involved in global humanitarian efforts and political activism.


title: Ashley Judd

text: Judd has starred in films that have been well received and films that have been box office successes, including: "Ruby in Paradise" (1993), "Heat" (1995), "Smoke" (1995), "Norma Jean & Marilyn" (1996), "A Time to Kill" (1996), "Kiss the Girls" (1997), "Double Jeopardy" (1999), "Where the Heart Is" (2000), "Frida" (2002)", High Crimes" (2002), "Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood" (2002), "De-Lovely" (2004), "Twisted" (2004), "Bug" (2006), "Dolphin Tale" (2011), "Olympus Has Fallen" (2013), "Divergent" (2014), "Dolphin Tale 2" (2014), "Big Stone Gap" (2014), "Barry" (2016) and "A Dog's Way Home" (2019). She starred as Rebecca Winstone in the 2012 television series "Missing", for which she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie.


title: Ashley Judd

text: Judd was born in 1968 in Granada Hills, Los Angeles. Her parents are Naomi Judd, who later became a country music singer and motivational speaker, and Michael Charles Ciminella, a marketing analyst for the horse racing industry. Ashley's elder half-sister, Wynonna Judd, is also a country music singer.


title: Ashley Judd

text: Ashley's paternal grandfather was of Sicilian (Italian) descent, and her paternal grandmother was a distant descendant of Mayflower pilgrim William Brewster.


title: Ashley Judd

text: When Ashley was born, her mother was still a housewife; she did not become well known as a singer until the early 1980s, after she had returned to Kentucky. Judd's parents divorced in 1972 when Ashley was four. The following year, Ashley's mother Naomi returned with Ashley to Kentucky, where Judd lived for most of her childhood.


title: Ashley Judd

text: Judd attended 13 schools before college, including the Sayre School (Lexington, Kentucky), Paul G. Blazer High School (Ashland, Kentucky), and Franklin High School in Tennessee. She briefly tried modeling in Japan during a school break. At the University of Kentucky, she majored in French and minored in anthropology, art history, theater, and women's studies. She joined the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma. Judd spent a semester studying in France as part of her major. She graduated from the University of Kentucky Honors Program and was nominated to Phi Beta Kappa.


title: Ashley Judd

text: After college Judd drove across country to Hollywood, where she studied with acting teacher Robert Carnegie at Playhouse West. During this time, she worked as a hostess at The Ivy restaurant and lived in a Malibu rental house. Around that time, she returned East to Williamson County, Tennessee, where she lived near her mother and sister.


title: Ashley Judd

text: Starting in 1991, Judd appeared as Ensign Robin Lefler, a Starfleet officer, in two episodes of "", "Darmok" and "". From 1991 to 1994, she had a recurring role as Reed, the daughter of Alex (Swoosie Kurtz), on the NBC drama "Sisters".


title: Ashley Judd

text: She made her feature film debut with a small role in 1992's "Kuffs". In 1993, she was cast in her first starring role playing the title character in Victor Nuñez's "Ruby in Paradise". This won the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize. Believing that this role would shape the rest of her career, Judd was extremely nervous before the audition, nearly getting into a car accident en route. "From the first three sentences, I knew it was written for me", she told the "San Jose Mercury News". She received rave reviews in her role as Ruby Lee Gissing, a young woman trying to make a new life for herself. This performance would launch her career as an actress.


title: Ashley Judd

text: Nuñez later told biographer James L. Dickerson that Judd created the resonance of this character: "The resonance, those moments, was not contrived. It was just a matter of creating the scene and trusting that it was worth telling."


title: Ashley Judd

text: Oliver Stone, who had seen Judd in Nuñez's film, cast her in "Natural Born Killers". Her scenes were later cut from the version of the film released theatrically. The following year, she gained critical acclaim for her role as Harvey Keitel's estranged daughter in Wayne Wang's "Smoke" and also as Val Kilmer's wife in Michael Mann's "Heat". That same year she also played the role of Callie in Philip Ridley's dark, adult fairy tale, "The Passion of Darkly Noon".


title: Ashley Judd

text: In 1996, she co-starred with Mira Sorvino as Marilyn Monroe in "Norma Jean and Marilyn", where she recreated the photo shoot for the centerfold for the first issue of "Playboy". The same year she had a supporting role in the thriller film "A Time to Kill". It received positive reviews and was a major box office success. By the end of the 1990s, Judd had achieved considerable success as a leading actress, having lead roles in additional thrillers that performed well at the box office, including "Kiss the Girls" (1997) and "Double Jeopardy" (1999).


title: Ashley Judd

text: In the early 2000s she starred in "Where the Heart Is" (2000), "Someone Like You" (2001), and "High Crimes" (2002). These were moderate box office successes. Her film "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" (2002) also performed well. In 2002 she starred in the critically acclaimed film "Frida."


title: Ashley Judd

text: In 2004 she received praise and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress, for her performance in "De-Lovely", opposite Kevin Kline, who played Cole Porter . She also starred in "Twisted" (2004). This was widely panned.


title: Ashley Judd

text: Judd played the role of Maggie the Cat in the 2003 Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof".


title: Ashley Judd

text: In 2010, Judd was Janet Tamaro's original choice for the role of Detective Jane Rizzoli in the TV series "Rizzoli & Isles" but she declined. Angie Harmon took the role. In 2011, Judd co-starred with Patrick Dempsey in the film "Flypaper". In 2012, she starred as Rebecca Winstone on the ABC series "Missing". In 2014, she appeared as Natalie Prior in "Divergent", which she reprised in the 2015 sequel "".


title: Ashley Judd

text: In 2014, Judd was the narrator of the documentary film about Turkish preacher Fethullah Gülen, "Love is a Verb", directed by Terry Spencer Hesser. The following year she became the first woman to narrate the opening for the telecast of the Kentucky Derby.


title: Ashley Judd

text: Starting in 2004, Judd was the advertising "face" of American Beauty, an Estée Lauder cosmetic brand sold at Kohl's department stores, and of H. Stern jewelers. In June 2007, Goody's Family Clothing launched three fashion clothing lines with Judd in the fall to be called "AJ", "Love Ashley", and "Ashley Judd". In 2008 they added an "Ashley Judd Plus" line.


title: Ashley Judd

text: In December 1999, Judd became engaged to Dario Franchitti, a Scottish racing driver who competed in Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART). They married in December 2001 at Skibo Castle in Scotland. They had no children together. Judd is an antinatalist: "It's unconscionable to breed with the number of children who are starving to death in impoverished countries." They divorced in 2013.


title: Ashley Judd

text: Judd is an avid martial arts practitioner: she enjoys kickboxing, judo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, kung-fu, and taekwondo.


title: Ashley Judd

text: In February 2006, she entered a program at Shades of Hope Treatment Center in Buffalo Gap, Texas and stayed for 47 days. She was there for treatment of depression, insomnia, and codependency.


title: Ashley Judd

text: In 2011, Judd released her memoir "All That is Bitter and Sweet", in which she discusses her life from adolescence to adulthood. She concentrates on her humanitarian work as an adult.


title: Ashley Judd

text: In February 2021, while hiking in the jungle in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Judd shattered her leg. African porters transported her for 55 hours to reach a hospital for surgery in South Africa.


title: Ashley Judd

text: By May 2007, Judd completed a BA degree at the University of Kentucky. She was awarded an Honorary DHL degree from Union College in Barbourville, Kentucky, on May 9, 2009.


title: Ashley Judd

text: She returned to post-grad studies, earning a mid-career MPA degree (MC/MPA) from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2010.


title: Ashley Judd

text: In August 2016, Judd enrolled at UC Berkeley to pursue a PhD in Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy. She took a medical leave of absence two months later because she was suffering from siege migraines.


title: Ashley Judd

text: Judd follows sports at her alma mater, and has attended many University of Kentucky basketball games.


title: Ashley Judd

text: During the 2007 IndyCar season, Judd criticized allowing rookie Milka Duno to race. After the final race, Judd said to reporters:


title: Ashley Judd

text: "I know this is not very sportsmanlike, but they've got to get the 23 car (Duno) off the track. It's very dangerous. I'm tired of holding my tongue. She shouldn't be out there. When a car is 10 miles [an hour] off the pace, it's not appropriate to be racing. People's lives are at stake."


title: Ashley Judd

text: In October 2015, Judd told "Variety" that she had been sexually harassed by a studio mogul but did not name the person. In October 2017, she said the person was Harvey Weinstein, co-founder of Miramax, and said that the sexual harassment occurred during the filming of "Kiss the Girls."


title: Ashley Judd

text: On April 30, 2018, Judd filed a defamation and sexual harassment lawsuit against Weinstein, stating that he hurt her career by spreading lies about her after she rejected his sexual advances. Weinstein filed a motion to dismiss in July. In January 2019, a federal judge in California dismissed Judd's claim of sexual harassment against Weinstein but allowed Judd to pursue her defamation claim that Weinstein sabotaged her career.


title: Ashley Judd

text: At the Women in the World summit in April 2019, Judd addressed Georgia's six-week abortion ban, which had been passed in March 2019. She said that she had been raped three times, and became pregnant once. She said,


title: Ashley Judd

text: "As everyone knows, and I'm very open about it, I'm a three-time rape survivor. One of the times that I was raped there was conception and I'm very thankful I was able to access safe and legal abortion. Because the rapist, who is a Kentuckian, as am I, and I reside in Tennessee, has paternity rights in Kentucky and Tennessee. I would've had to co-parent with my rapist."


title: Ashley Judd

text: For more than a decade, Judd has conducted humanitarian work that focuses on gender equality, and the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls. In 2016, she was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for UNFPA, the United Nations agency with responsibilities including sexual and reproductive health. As of May 2018, she had visited UNFPA's projects for women and girls affected by humanitarian crises in Jordan, Turkey, Ukraine, and Bangladesh, and its development work in India and Sri Lanka.


title: Ashley Judd

text: Judd has also travelled with YouthAIDS to places affected by illness and poverty, such as Cambodia, Kenya, and Rwanda. She has since become an advocate for preventing poverty and promoting awareness internationally. She has met with political and religious leaders on behalf of the deprived about political and social change. Judd has narrated three documentaries for YouthAIDS that aired on the Discovery Channel, in National Geographic, and on VH1.


title: Ashley Judd

text: In 2011, she joined the Leadership Council of the International Center for Research on Women. Other organizations Judd has been involved with include Women for Women International and Equality Now. She is a member of the advisory board for Apne Aap Women Worldwide, an organization fighting sex-trafficking and inter-generational prostitution in India.


title: Ashley Judd

text: Judd is active on the speakers' circuit, giving speeches about gender equality, abuse and humanitarian topics.


title: Ashley Judd

text: In 2008, Judd supported Barack Obama's presidential campaign. In 2009, she appeared in a one-minute video advertisement for the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, in which Judd condemned Alaska governor Sarah Palin for supporting aerial wolf hunting. In response, Palin stated the reason these wolves are killed is to protect the caribou population in Alaska. Palin called the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund an "extreme fringe group". In 2010, Judd signed the Animal Legal Defense Fund's petition to urge Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear to protect that state's homeless animals through tough enforcement of Kentucky's Humane Shelter Law.


title: Ashley Judd

text: Judd is active in humanitarian and political causes. She was appointed Global Ambassador for YouthAIDS, an education and prevention program of the international NGO Population Services International (PSI), promoting AIDS prevention and treatment. Judd was honored November 10, 2009, as the recipient of the fourth annual "USA Today" Hollywood Hero, awarded for her work with PSI. On October 29, 2006, Judd appeared at a "Women for Ford" event for Democratic Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. She has also campaigned extensively both locally and nationally for a variety of Democratic candidates, including President Barack Obama in critical swing states.


title: Ashley Judd

text: On September 8, 2010, CNN interviewed Judd about her second humanitarian mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Judd traveled with the Enough Project, a project to end genocide and crimes against humanity. In the interview, Judd discussed her efforts to raise awareness about how conflict minerals fuel sexual violence in Congo. During her trip, Judd visited hospitals for victims of sexual violence, camps for displaced persons, mines, and civil society organizations. On September 30, 2010, CNN published an op-ed titled "Ashley Judd: Electronics fuel unspeakable violence" by Judd and Enough Project co-founder John Prendergast regarding the continued violence in Congo. On November 26, 2010, she published a subsequent op-ed, "Costs of Convenience", excerpted from her trip diary from eastern Congo. These pieces discussed the recent provision in the Dodd-Frank Reform bill that requires companies to prove where their minerals originated, and the link between modern electronics (which rely on those minerals) and mining camps plagued by such violence.


title: Ashley Judd

text: Judd represented Tennessee as a delegate to the 2012 Democratic National Convention. She also considered returning to Kentucky and challenging Senator Mitch McConnell in 2014. In response, the conservative Super PAC American Crossroads released an attack ad against Judd in Kentucky.


title: Ashley Judd

text: In February 2013, she invited her Twitter followers to join a mailing list, hinting that she might ultimately announce a run for the Senate to those on the list. However, she announced on March 27, 2013, that she would not run, citing her need to be focused on her family. Judd later endorsed Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes.


title: Ashley Judd

text: On July 26, 2016, Judd attended a Creative Coalition luncheon in support of DC Statehood that took place during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. The event, hosted by Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, also included actors Elizabeth Banks, Tim Daly, Josh Gad, William Baldwin, and David Schwimmer.


title: Ashley Judd

text: Judd attended the 2017 Women's March. She performed a poem written by Nashville-area poet Nina Donovan, "Nasty Woman", to applause from the crowd.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough, (; 29 August 192324 August 2014) was an English actor, filmmaker, and entrepreneur. He was the president of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), as well as the life president of Chelsea FC. He joined the Royal Air Force during the Second World War and served in the film unit, going on several bombing raids over Europe and filming the action from the rear gunner's position. He was the older brother of broadcaster Sir David Attenborough and motor executive John Attenborough. He was married to actress Sheila Sim from 1945 until his death.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: As an actor, he is best remembered for his film roles in "Brighton Rock" (1948), "I'm All Right Jack" (1959), "The Great Escape" (1963), "The Sand Pebbles" (1966), "Doctor Dolittle" (1967), "10 Rillington Place" (1971), "Jurassic Park" (1993), and "Miracle on 34th Street" (1994). In 1952 he appeared on the West End stage, originating the role of Detective Sergeant Trotter in Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" which has since become the world's longest-running play.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: For his directorial debut, 1969's "Oh! What a Lovely War", Attenborough was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Direction, and he was nominated for his films "Young Winston", "A Bridge Too Far", and "Cry Freedom". He won two Academy Awards for "Gandhi" in 1983: Best Picture and Best Director. The BFI ranked "Gandhi" the 34th greatest British film of the 20th century. Attenborough also won four BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and the 1983 BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: Attenborough was born on 29 August 1923 in Cambridge, the eldest of three sons of Mary Attenborough (née Clegg), a founding member of the Marriage Guidance Council, and Frederick Levi Attenborough, a scholar and academic administrator who was a fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and wrote a standard text on Anglo-Saxon law. Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and studied at RADA.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: In September 1939, while Frederick Attenborough was Principal of University College, Leicester (1932–1951), the Attenboroughs took in two German Jewish refugee girls, Helga and Irene Bejach (aged 9 and 11 respectively), who lived with them in College House and were adopted by the family after the war when it was discovered that their parents had been killed. The sisters moved to the United States in the 1950s and lived with an uncle, where they married and took American citizenship; Irene died in 1992 and Helga in 2005.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: During the Second World War, Attenborough served in the Royal Air Force. After initial pilot training he was seconded to the newly formed Royal Air Force Film Production Unit at Pinewood Studios, under the command of Flight Lieutenant John Boulting (whose brother Peter Cotes later directed Attenborough in the play "The Mousetrap") where he appeared with Edward G. Robinson in the propaganda film "Journey Together" (1945). He then volunteered to fly with the Film Unit and after further training, where he sustained permanent ear damage, qualified as a sergeant, flying on several operations over Europe filming from the rear gunner's position to record the outcome of RAF Bomber Command sorties.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: Attenborough's acting career started on stage and he appeared in shows at Leicester's Little Theatre, Dover Street, prior to his going to RADA, where he remained Patron until his death. Attenborough's first major credited role was provided in Brian Desmond Hurst's "The Hundred Pound Window" (1944) playing Tommy Draper who helps rescue his accountant father who has taken a wrong turn in life. Attenborough's film career had begun in 1942, however, in an uncredited role as a sailor deserting his post under fire in the Noël Coward/David Lean production "In Which We Serve" (his name and character were omitted from the original release-print credits), a role that helped type-cast him for many years as a spiv in films like "London Belongs to Me" (1948), "Morning Departure" (1950) and his breakthrough role as Pinkie Brown in John Boulting's film adaptation of Graham Greene's novel "Brighton Rock" (1947), a role that he had previously played to great acclaim at the Garrick Theatre in 1943. He played the lead at age 22 as an RAF cadet pilot in "Journey Together" (1945), in which top-billed Edward G. Robinson played his instructor.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: Early in his stage career, Attenborough starred in the West End production of Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap", which went on to become the world's longest running stage production. Both he and his wife were among the original cast members of the production, which opened in 1952 at the Ambassadors Theatre, moving to St Martin's Theatre in 1974; the production ran continuously for nearly seven decades, until it was shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The Attenboroughs took a 10 per cent profit-participation in the production, which was paid for out of their combined weekly salary; Attenborough later wrote in his autobiography, "It proved to be the wisest business decision I've ever made... but foolishly I sold some of my share to open a short-lived Mayfair restaurant called 'The Little Elephant' and later still, disposed of the remainder in order to keep "Gandhi" afloat."


title: Richard Attenborough

text: At the beginning of the 1950s Attenborough featured on radio on the BBC Light Programme introducing records.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: Attenborough worked prolifically in British films for the next 30 years, including in the 1950s, appearing in several successful comedies for John and Roy Boulting, such as "Private's Progress" (1956) and "I'm All Right Jack" (1959).


title: Richard Attenborough

text: In 1963, he appeared alongside Steve McQueen and James Garner in "The Great Escape" as RAF Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett ("Big X"), the head of the escape committee, based on the real-life exploits of Roger Bushell. It was his first appearance in a major Hollywood film blockbuster and his most successful film thus far. During the 1960s, he expanded his range of character roles in films such as "Séance on a Wet Afternoon" (1964) and "Guns at Batasi" (1964), for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Regimental Sergeant Major Lauderdale. In 1965 he played Lew Moran opposite James Stewart in "The Flight of the Phoenix". In 1967 and 1968, he won back-to-back Golden Globe Awards in the category of Best Supporting Actor, the first time for "The Sand Pebbles", again co-starring Steve McQueen, and the second time for "Doctor Dolittle" starring Rex Harrison.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: His portrayal of the serial killer John Christie in "10 Rillington Place" (1971) garnered excellent reviews. In 1977, he played the ruthless General Outram, again to great acclaim, in the Indian director Satyajit Ray's period piece "The Chess Players".


title: Richard Attenborough

text: He took no acting roles following his appearance in Otto Preminger's version of "The Human Factor" (1979) until his appearance as John Hammond in Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" (1993) and the film's sequel, "" (1997). He starred in the remake of "Miracle on 34th Street" (1994) as Kris Kringle. Later he made occasional appearances in supporting roles, including as Sir William Cecil in the historical drama "Elizabeth" (1998), Jacob in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" and as "The Narrator" in the film adaptation of Spike Milligan's comedy book "Puckoon" (2002).


title: Richard Attenborough

text: He made his only appearance in a film adaptation of Shakespeare when he played the English ambassador who announces that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead at the end of Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet" (1996).


title: Richard Attenborough

text: In the late 1950s, Attenborough formed a production company, Beaver Films, with Bryan Forbes and began to build a profile as a producer on projects including "The League of Gentlemen" (1959), "The Angry Silence" (1960) and "Whistle Down the Wind" (1961), appearing in the cast of the first two films. His performance in "The Angry Silence" earned him his first nomination for a BAFTA. "Séance on a Wet Afternoon" won him his first BAFTA award.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: His feature film directorial debut was the all-star screen version of the hit musical "Oh! What a Lovely War" (1969), after which his acting appearances became sporadic as he concentrated more on directing and producing. He later directed two epic period films: "Young Winston" (1972), based on the early life of Winston Churchill, and "A Bridge Too Far" (1977), an all-star account of Second World War Operation Market Garden.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: He won the 1982 Academy Award for Best Director for his historical epic "Gandhi", and as the film's producer, the Academy Award for Best Picture; the same film garnered two Golden Globes, this time for Best Director and Best Foreign Film, in 1983. He had been attempting to get the project made for 18 years. He directed the screen version of the musical "A Chorus Line" (1985) and the anti-apartheid drama "Cry Freedom" (1987). He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director for both films. The success of the latter film prompted Attenborough to sign a contract with Universal Pictures to produce and direct films over the next five years, set to produce three films for the studio, and timetable calls would be set up by January and the first production was slated for release by 1989.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: His later films as director and producer include "Chaplin" (1992) starring Robert Downey Jr., as Charlie Chaplin and "Shadowlands" (1993), based on the relationship between C. S. Lewis and Joy Gresham (C. S. Lewis was portrayed by Anthony Hopkins, who had appeared in four previous films for Attenborough: "Young Winston", "A Bridge Too Far", "Magic" and "Chaplin").


title: Richard Attenborough

text: Between 2006 and 2007, he spent time in Belfast, working on his last film as director and producer, "Closing the Ring", a love story set in Belfast during the Second World War, and starring Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer and Pete Postlethwaite.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: Despite maintaining an acting career alongside his directorial roles, Attenborough never directed himself (save for an uncredited cameo appearance in "A Bridge Too Far").


title: Richard Attenborough

text: After 33 years of dedicated service as President of the Muscular Dystrophy campaign, Attenborough became the charity's Honorary Life President in 2004. In 2012, the charity, which leads the fight against muscle-wasting conditions in the UK, established the Richard Attenborough Fellowship Fund to honour his lifelong commitment to the charity, and to ensure the future of clinical research and training at leading UK neuromuscular centres.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: Attenborough was also the patron of the United World Colleges movement, whereby he contributed to the colleges that are part of the organisation. He was a frequent visitor to the Waterford Kamhlaba United World College of Southern Africa (UWCSA). With his wife, they founded the Richard and Sheila Attenborough Visual Arts Centre. He founded the Jane Holland Creative Centre for Learning at Waterford Kamhlaba in Swaziland in memory of his daughter who died in the tsunami on 26 December 2004.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: He was a longtime advocate of education that does not judge upon colour, race, creed or religion. His attachment to Waterford was his passion for non-racial education, which were the grounds on which Waterford Kamhlaba was founded. Waterford was one of his inspirations for directing the film "Cry Freedom", based on the life of Steve Biko.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: He founded The Richard Attenborough Arts Centre on the Leicester University campus in 1997, specifically designed to provide access for the disabled, in particular as practitioners.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: He was elected to the post of Chancellor of the University of Sussex on 20 March 1998, replacing The Duke of Richmond and Gordon. He stood down as Chancellor of the university following graduation in July 2008.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: A lifelong supporter of Chelsea Football Club, Attenborough served as a director of the club from 1969 to 1982 and between 1993 and 2008 held the honorary position of Life Vice President. On 30 November 2008 he was honoured with the title of Life President at the club's stadium, Stamford Bridge.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: He was also head of the consortium Dragon International Film Studios, which was constructing a film and television studio complex in Llanilid, Wales, nicknamed "Valleywood". In March 2008, the project was placed into administration with debts of £15 million and was considered for sale of the assets in 2011. A mooted long-term lease to Fox 21 fell through in 2015, though the facilities continue to be used for filmmaking.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: He had a lifelong ambition to make a film about his hero the political theorist and revolutionary Thomas Paine, whom he called "one of the finest men that ever lived". He said in an interview in 2006 that "I could understand him. He wrote in simple English. I found all his aspirations – the rights of women, the health service, universal education... Everything you can think of that we want is in "Rights of Man" or "The Age of Reason" or "Common Sense"." He could not secure the funding to do so. The website "A Gift for Dickie" was launched by two filmmakers from Luton in June 2008 with the aim of raising £40m in 400 days to help him make the film, but the target was not met and the money that had been raised was refunded.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: Attenborough's father was the principal of University College, Leicester, now the city's university. This resulted in a long association with the university, with Attenborough becoming a patron. The university's Embrace Arts at the RA centre, which opened in 1997 is named in his honour. He had two younger brothers: naturalist and broadcaster David and motor trade executive John.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: Attenborough married actress Sheila Sim in Kensington on 22 January 1945. From 1949 until October 2012, they lived in Old Friars on Richmond Green in London.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: In the 1940s, he was asked to 'improve his physical condition' for his role as Pinkie in "Brighton Rock". He trained with Chelsea Football Club for a fortnight, subsequently becoming good friends with those at the club. He went on to become a director during the 1970s, helping to prevent the club losing its home ground by holding onto his club shares and donating them, worth over £950,000, to Chelsea. In 2008, Attenborough was appointed Life President of Chelsea Football Club.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: On 26 December 2004, the couple's elder daughter, Jane Holland (30 September 1955 – 26 December 2004), along with her mother-in-law, Audrey Holland, and Attenborough's 15-year-old granddaughter, Lucy, were killed when a tsunami caused by the Indian Ocean earthquake struck Khao Lak, Thailand, where they were on holiday.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: A service was held on 8 March 2005 and Attenborough read a lesson at the national memorial service on 11 May 2005. His grandson Samuel Holland, who survived the tsunami uninjured, and granddaughter Alice Holland, who suffered severe leg injuries, also read in the service. A commemorative plaque was placed in the floor of St Mary Magdalene's parish church in Richmond. Attenborough later described the Boxing Day of 2004 as "the worst day of my life". Attenborough had two other children, Michael (born 13 February 1950) and Charlotte (born 29 June 1959). Michael is a theatre director formerly the Deputy Artistic Director of the RSC and artistic director of the Almeida Theatre in London and has been married to actress Karen Lewis since 1984; they have two sons, Tom and Will. Charlotte, an actress, married Graham Sinclair in 1993 and has two children.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: He publicly endorsed the Labour Party in the 2005 General Election, despite his opposition to the Iraq War.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: Attenborough collected Picasso ceramics from the 1950s. More than 100 items went on display at the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery in Leicester in 2007, in an exhibition dedicated to family members lost in the tsunami.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: In 2008, he published an informal autobiography entitled "Entirely Up to You, Darling" in association with his colleague Diana Hawkins.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: In August 2008, Attenborough entered hospital with heart problems and was fitted with a pacemaker. In December 2008, he suffered a fall at his home after a stroke and was admitted to St George's Hospital, Tooting, South West London. In November 2009, Attenborough, in what he called a "house clearance" sale, sold part of his extensive art collection, which included works by L. S. Lowry, Christopher R. W. Nevinson and Graham Sutherland, generating £4.6 million at Sotheby's.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: In January 2011, he sold his Rhubodach estate on the Scottish Isle of Bute for £1.48 million. In May 2011, David Attenborough said his brother had been confined to a wheelchair since his stroke in 2008, but was still capable of holding a conversation. He added that "he won't be making any more films."


title: Richard Attenborough

text: In June 2012, shortly before her 90th birthday, Sheila Sim entered the professional actors' retirement home Denville Hall, in Northwood, London, for which she and Attenborough had helped raise funds. In October 2012, it was announced that Attenborough was putting the family home, Old Friars, with its attached offices, Beaver Lodge, which came complete with a sound-proofed cinema in the garden, on the market for £11.5 million. His brother David stated: "He and his wife both loved the house, but they now need full-time care. It simply isn't practical to keep the house on any more." In December 2012, in light of his deteriorating health, Attenborough moved into the same nursing home in London to be with his wife, as confirmed by their son Michael.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: Attenborough died at Denville Hall, on 24 August 2014, five days before his 91st birthday. He requested that his ashes be interred in a vault at St Mary Magdalene church in Richmond beside those of his daughter Jane Holland and his granddaughter, Lucy, both of whom had died in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. He was survived by his wife of 69 years, their oldest and youngest children, six grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and his younger brother David. His widow, actress Sheila Sim, died on 19 January 2016, aged 93.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: In the 1967 Birthday Honours, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). He was made a Knight Bachelor in the 1976 New Year Honours, having the honour conferred on 10 February 1976 and on 30 July 1993 he was created a life peer as Baron Attenborough, of Richmond upon Thames in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: Although the appointment by John Major was 'non-political' (it was granted for services to the cinema) and he could have been a crossbencher, Attenborough chose to take the Labour whip and so sat on the Labour benches. In 1992 he had been offered a peerage by Neil Kinnock, then leader of the Labour Party, but refused it as he felt unable to commit himself to the time necessary "to do what was required of him in the Upper Chamber, as he always put film-making first".


title: Richard Attenborough

text: Attenborough was the subject of "This Is Your Life" in December 1962 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the Savoy Hotel, during a dinner held to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Agatha Christie play "The Mousetrap", in which he had been an original cast member.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: In 1983, Attenborough was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian award, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolence Peace Prize by the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. He was also awarded France's most distinguished awards, the Legion of Honour and the Order of Arts and Letters and the Order of the Companions of O.R. Tambo by the South African government 'for his contribution to the struggle against apartheid'.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: In 1992, the Hamburg-based Alfred Toepfer Foundation awarded Attenborough its annual Shakespeare Prize in recognition of his life's work. The following year he was appointed a Fellow of King's College London.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: On 13 July 2006, Attenborough, along with his brother David, were awarded the titles of Distinguished Honorary Fellows of the University of Leicester "in recognition of a record of continuing distinguished service to the university".


title: Richard Attenborough

text: On 20 November 2008, Attenborough was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Drama from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) in Glasgow.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: Pinewood Studios paid tribute to his body of work by naming a purpose-built sound stage after him. In his absence because of illness, Lord Puttnam and Pinewood chairman Lord Grade officially unveiled the stage on 23 April 2012.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: The Arts for India charity committee honoured Attenborough posthumously on 19 October 2016 at an event hosted at the home of BAFTA.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: In early 1973, he was portrayed as "Dickie Attenborough" in the British Showbiz Awards sketch late in the third series of "Monty Python's Flying Circus". Attenborough is portrayed by Eric Idle as effusive and simpering. A portrayal similar to that seen in "Monty Python" can be seen in the early series of "Spitting Image", when Attenborough's caricature regularly appeared to thank others for an imaginary award.


title: Richard Attenborough

text: In 1985 he was played by Chris Barrie in "The Lenny Henry Show", in the final part of a serial pastiching "A Passage to India" and "The Jewel in the Crown". In response to the villain claiming "Gandhi won't win!", he appears in a suit covered in Academy Awards and declares "We've already won!"


title: Richard Attenborough

text: In 2012 Attenborough was portrayed by Simon Callow in the BBC Four biopic "The Best Possible Taste", about Kenny Everett.


title: Mariana Trench

text: The Mariana Trench is an oceanic trench located in the western Pacific Ocean, about east of the Mariana Islands; it is the deepest oceanic trench on Earth. It is crescent-shaped and measures about in length and in width. The maximum known depth is at the southern end of a small slot-shaped valley in its floor known as the Challenger Deep. If Mount Everest were hypothetically placed into the trench at this point, its peak would still be underwater by more than .


title: Mariana Trench

text: At the bottom of the trench, the water column above exerts a pressure of , more than 1,071 times the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level. At this pressure, the density of water is increased by 4.96%. The temperature at the bottom is .


title: Mariana Trench

text: In 2009, the Mariana Trench was established as a US National Monument. Monothalamea have been found in the trench by Scripps Institution of Oceanography researchers at a record depth of below the sea surface. Data has also suggested that microbial life forms thrive within the trench.


title: Mariana Trench

text: The Mariana Trench is named after the nearby Mariana Islands, which are named Las Marianas in honor of Spanish Queen Mariana of Austria, widow of Philip IV of Spain. The islands are part of the island arc that is formed on an over-riding plate, called the Mariana Plate (also named for the islands), on the western side of the trench.


title: Mariana Trench

text: The Mariana Trench is part of the Izu–Bonin–Mariana subduction system that forms the boundary between two tectonic plates. In this system, the western edge of one plate, the Pacific Plate, is subducted (i.e., thrust) beneath the smaller Mariana Plate that lies to the west. Crustal material at the western edge of the Pacific Plate is some of the oldest oceanic crust on Earth (up to 170 million years old), and is, therefore, cooler and denser; hence its great height difference relative to the higher-riding (and younger) Mariana Plate. The deepest area at the plate boundary is the Mariana Trench proper.


title: Mariana Trench

text: The movement of the Pacific and Mariana plates is also indirectly responsible for the formation of the Mariana Islands. These volcanic islands are caused by flux melting of the upper mantle due to the release of water that is trapped in minerals of the subducted portion of the Pacific Plate.


title: Mariana Trench

text: The trench was first sounded during the "Challenger" expedition in 1875 using a weighted rope, which recorded a depth of . In 1877, a map was published called "Tiefenkarte des Grossen Ozeans" ("Depth map of the Great Ocean") by Petermann, which showed a "Challenger Tief" ("Challenger deep") at the location of that sounding. In 1899, , a converted collier, recorded a depth of .


title: Mariana Trench

text: In 1951, "Challenger II" surveyed the trench using echo sounding, a much more precise and vastly easier way to measure depth than the sounding equipment and drag lines used in the original expedition. During this survey, the deepest part of the trench was recorded when the "Challenger II" measured a depth of at , known as the Challenger Deep.


title: Mariana Trench

text: In 1962, the surface ship M.V. "Spencer F. Baird" recorded a maximum depth of using precision depth gauges.


title: Mariana Trench

text: In 1984, the Japanese survey vessel "Takuyō" (拓洋) collected data from the Mariana Trench using a narrow, multi-beam echo sounder; it reported a maximum depth of , also reported as . Remotely Operated Vehicle "KAIKO" reached the deepest area of the Mariana Trench and made the deepest diving record of on 24 March 1995.


title: Mariana Trench

text: During surveys carried out between 1997 and 2001, a spot was found along the Mariana Trench that had a depth similar to the Challenger Deep, possibly even deeper. It was discovered while scientists from the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology were completing a survey around Guam; they used a sonar mapping system towed behind the research ship to conduct the survey. This new spot was named the HMRG (Hawaii Mapping Research Group) Deep, after the group of scientists who discovered it.


title: Mariana Trench

text: On 1 June 2009, mapping aboard the (mothership of the Nereus vehicle), indicated a spot with a depth of . The sonar mapping of the Challenger Deep was possible by its Simrad EM120 sonar multibeam bathymetry system for deep water. The sonar system uses phase and amplitude bottom detection, with an accuracy of better than 0.2% of water depth across the entire swath (implying that the depth figure is accurate to ± ).<ref name="Daily Reports for R/V KILO MOANA"></ref><ref name="Scientic Equipment aboard the R/V KILO MOANA"></ref>


title: Mariana Trench

text: In 2011, it was announced at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting that a US Navy hydrographic ship equipped with a multibeam echosounder conducted a survey which mapped the entire trench to resolution. The mapping revealed the existence of four rocky outcrops thought to be former seamounts.


title: Mariana Trench

text: The Mariana Trench is a site chosen by researchers at Washington University and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 2012 for a seismic survey to investigate the subsurface water cycle. Using both ocean-bottom seismometers and hydrophones, the scientists are able to map structures as deep as beneath the surface.


title: Mariana Trench

text: As of 2022, twenty-two crewed descents and seven uncrewed descents have been achieved. The first was the crewed descent by Swiss-designed, Italian-built, United States Navy-owned bathyscaphe "Trieste", which reached the bottom at 1:06 pm on 23 January 1960, with Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard on board. Iron shot was used for ballast, with gasoline for buoyancy. The onboard systems indicated a depth of , but this was later revised to . The depth was estimated from a conversion of pressure measured and calculations based on the water density from sea surface to seabed.


title: Mariana Trench

text: This was followed by the uncrewed ROVs "Kaikō" in 1996 and "Nereus" in 2009. The first three expeditions directly measured very similar depths of . The fourth was made by Canadian film director James Cameron on 26 March 2012. He reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the submersible vessel "Deepsea Challenger", diving to a depth of .


title: Mariana Trench

text: In July 2015, members of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Oregon State University, and the Coast Guard submerged a hydrophone into the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, the Challenger Deep, never having previously deployed one past a mile. The titanium-shelled hydrophone was designed to withstand the immense pressure 7 miles under. Although researchers were unable to retrieve the hydrophone until November, the data capacity was full within the first 23 days. After months of analyzing the sounds, the experts were surprised to pick up natural sounds like earthquakes, typhoons, baleen whales, and machine-made sounds such as boats. Due to the mission's success, the researchers announced plans to deploy a second hydrophone in 2017 for an extended period of time.


title: Mariana Trench

text: Victor Vescovo achieved a new record descent to on 28 April 2019 using the DSV "Limiting Factor", a Triton 36000/2 model manufactured by Florida-based Triton Submarines. He dived four times between 28 April and 5 May 2019, becoming the first person to dive into Challenger Deep more than once.


title: Mariana Trench

text: On 8 May 2020, a joint project between the Russian shipbuilders, scientific teams of the Russian Academy of Sciences with the support of the Russian Foundation for Advanced Research Projects and the Pacific Fleet submerged the autonomous underwater vehicle "Vityaz-D" to the bottom of the Mariana Trench at a depth of . "Vityaz-D" is the first underwater vehicle to operate autonomously at the extreme depths of the Mariana Trench. The duration of the mission, excluding diving and surfacing, was more than 3 hours.


title: Mariana Trench

text: On 10 November 2020, the Chinese submersible "Fendouzhe" reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench at a depth of .


title: Mariana Trench

text: The expedition conducted in 1960 claimed to have observed, with great surprise because of the high pressure, large creatures living at the bottom, such as a flatfish about long, and shrimp. According to Piccard, "The bottom appeared light and clear, a waste of firm diatomaceous ooze". Many marine biologists are now skeptical of the supposed sighting of the flatfish, and it is suggested that the creature may instead have been a sea cucumber. During the second expedition, the uncrewed vehicle "Kaikō" collected mud samples from the seabed. Tiny organisms were found to be living in those samples.


title: Mariana Trench

text: In July 2011, a research expedition deployed untethered landers, called drop cams, equipped with digital video cameras and lights to explore this deep-sea region. Among many other living organisms, some gigantic single-celled foraminiferans with a size of more than , belonging to the class of monothalamea, were observed. Monothalamea are noteworthy for their size, their extreme abundance on the seafloor, and their role as hosts for a variety of organisms.


title: Mariana Trench

text: In December 2014, a new species of snailfish was discovered at a depth of , breaking the previous record for the deepest living fish seen on video.


title: Mariana Trench

text: During the 2014 expedition, several new species were filmed, including huge amphipods known as supergiants. Deep-sea gigantism is the process where species grow larger than their shallow-water relatives.


title: Mariana Trench

text: In 2016, a research expedition looked at the chemical makeup of crustacean scavengers collected from the range of within the trench. Within these organisms, the researchers found extremely elevated concentrations of PCBs, a chemical toxin banned in the 1970s for its environmental harm, concentrated at all depths within the sediment of the trench. Further research has found that amphipods also ingest microplastics, with 100% of amphipods having at least one piece of synthetic material in their stomachs.


title: Mariana Trench

text: In 2019, Victor Vescovo reported finding a plastic bag and candy wrappers at the bottom of the trench. That year, "Scientific American" also reported that carbon-14 from nuclear bomb testing has been found in the bodies of aquatic animals found in the trench.


title: Mariana Trench

text: Like other oceanic trenches, the Mariana Trench has been proposed as a site for nuclear waste disposal in the hope that tectonic plate subduction occurring at the site might eventually push the nuclear waste deep into the Earth's mantle, the second layer of the Earth. However, ocean dumping of nuclear waste is prohibited by international law. Furthermore, plate subduction zones are associated with very large megathrust earthquakes, the effects of which are unpredictable for the safety of long-term disposal of nuclear wastes within the hadopelagic ecosystem.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Excel forms part of the Microsoft Office suite of software.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Microsoft Excel has the basic features of all spreadsheets, using a grid of "cells" arranged in numbered "rows" and letter-named "columns" to organize data manipulations like arithmetic operations. It has a battery of supplied functions to answer statistical, engineering, and financial needs. In addition, it can display data as line graphs, histograms and charts, and with a very limited three-dimensional graphical display. It allows sectioning of data to view its dependencies on various factors for different perspectives (using "pivot tables" and the "scenario manager"). A PivotTable is a tool for data analysis. It does this by simplifying large data sets via PivotTable fields. It has a programming aspect, "Visual Basic for Applications", allowing the user to employ a wide variety of numerical methods, for example, for solving differential equations of mathematical physics, and then reporting the results back to the spreadsheet. It also has a variety of interactive features allowing user interfaces that can completely hide the spreadsheet from the user, so the spreadsheet presents itself as a so-called "application", or "decision support system" (DSS), via a custom-designed user interface, for example, a stock analyzer, or in general, as a design tool that asks the user questions and provides answers and reports. In a more elaborate realization, an Excel application can automatically poll external databases and measuring instruments using an update schedule, analyze the results, make a Word report or PowerPoint slide show, and e-mail these presentations on a regular basis to a list of participants. Excel was not designed to be used as a database.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Microsoft allows for a number of optional command-line switches to control the manner in which Excel starts.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Excel 2016 has 484 functions. Of these, 360 existed prior to Excel 2010. Microsoft classifies these functions in 14 categories. Of the 484 current functions, 386 may be called from VBA as methods of the object "WorksheetFunction" and 44 have the same names as VBA functions.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: The Windows version of Excel supports programming through Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), which is a dialect of Visual Basic. Programming with VBA allows spreadsheet manipulation that is awkward or impossible with standard spreadsheet techniques. Programmers may write code directly using the Visual Basic Editor (VBE), which includes a window for writing code, debugging code, and code module organization environment. The user can implement numerical methods as well as automating tasks such as formatting or data organization in VBA and guide the calculation using any desired intermediate results reported back to the spreadsheet.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: VBA was removed from Mac Excel 2008, as the developers did not believe that a timely release would allow porting the VBA engine natively to Mac OS X. VBA was restored in the next version, Mac Excel 2011, although the build lacks support for ActiveX objects, impacting some high level developer tools.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: A common and easy way to generate VBA code is by using the Macro Recorder. The Macro Recorder records actions of the user and generates VBA code in the form of a macro. These actions can then be repeated automatically by running the macro. The macros can also be linked to different trigger types like keyboard shortcuts, a command button or a graphic. The actions in the macro can be executed from these trigger types or from the generic toolbar options. The VBA code of the macro can also be edited in the VBE. Certain features such as loop functions and screen prompt by their own properties, and some graphical display items, cannot be recorded but must be entered into the VBA module directly by the programmer. Advanced users can employ user prompts to create an interactive program, or react to events such as sheets being loaded or changed.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Macro Recorded code may not be compatible with Excel versions. Some code that is used in Excel 2010 cannot be used in Excel 2003. Making a Macro that changes the cell colors and making changes to other aspects of cells may not be backward compatible.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: VBA code interacts with the spreadsheet through the Excel "Object Model", a vocabulary identifying spreadsheet objects, and a set of supplied functions or "methods" that enable reading and writing to the spreadsheet and interaction with its users (for example, through custom toolbars or "command bars" and "message boxes"). User-created VBA subroutines execute these actions and operate like macros generated using the macro recorder, but are more flexible and efficient.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: From its first version Excel supported end-user programming of macros (automation of repetitive tasks) and user-defined functions (extension of Excel's built-in function library). In early versions of Excel, these programs were written in a macro language whose statements had formula syntax and resided in the cells of special-purpose macro sheets (stored with file extension .XLM in Windows.) XLM was the default macro language for Excel through Excel 4.0. Beginning with version 5.0 Excel recorded macros in VBA by default but with version 5.0 XLM recording was still allowed as an option. After version 5.0 that option was discontinued. All versions of Excel, including Excel 2021 are capable of running an XLM macro, though Microsoft discourages their use.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Excel supports charts, graphs, or histograms generated from specified groups of cells. It also supports Pivot Charts that allow for a chart to be linked directly to a Pivot table. This allows the chart to be refreshed with the Pivot Table. The generated graphic component can either be embedded within the current sheet or added as a separate object.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: These displays are dynamically updated if the content of cells changes. For example, suppose that the important design requirements are displayed visually; then, in response to a user's change in trial values for parameters, the curves describing the design change shape, and their points of intersection shift, assisting the selection of the best design.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Versions of Excel up to 7.0 had a limitation in the size of their data sets of 16K (2 = ) rows. Versions 8.0 through 11.0 could handle 64K (2 = ) rows and 256 columns (2 as label 'IV'). Version 12.0 onwards, including the current Version 16.x, can handle over 1M (2 = ) rows, and (2, labeled as column 'XFD') columns.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Microsoft Excel up until 2007 version used a proprietary binary file format called Excel Binary File Format (.XLS) as its primary format. Excel 2007 uses Office Open XML as its primary file format, an XML-based format that followed after a previous XML-based format called "XML Spreadsheet" ("XMLSS"), first introduced in Excel 2002.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Although supporting and encouraging the use of new XML-based formats as replacements, Excel 2007 remained backwards-compatible with the traditional, binary formats. In addition, most versions of Microsoft Excel can read CSV, DBF, SYLK, DIF, and other legacy formats. Support for some older file formats was removed in Excel 2007. The file formats were mainly from DOS-based programs.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: OpenOffice.org has created documentation of the Excel format. Two epochs of the format exist: the 97-2003 OLE format, and the older stream format. Microsoft has made the Excel binary format specification available to freely download.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: The "XML Spreadsheet" format introduced in Excel 2002 is a simple, XML based format missing some more advanced features like storage of VBA macros. Though the intended file extension for this format is ".xml", the program also correctly handles XML files with ".xls" extension. This feature is widely used by third-party applications (e.g. "MySQL Query Browser") to offer "export to Excel" capabilities without implementing binary file format. The following example will be correctly opened by Excel if saved either as "Book1.xml" or "Book1.xls":


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Microsoft Excel 2007, along with the other products in the Microsoft Office 2007 suite, introduced new file formats. The first of these (.xlsx) is defined in the Office Open XML (OOXML) specification.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Windows applications such as Microsoft Access and Microsoft Word, as well as Excel can communicate with each other and use each other's capabilities. The most common are Dynamic Data Exchange: although strongly deprecated by Microsoft, this is a common method to send data between applications running on Windows, with official MS publications referring to it as "the protocol from hell". As the name suggests, it allows applications to supply data to others for calculation and display. It is very common in financial markets, being used to connect to important financial data services such as Bloomberg and Reuters.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: OLE Object Linking and Embedding allows a Windows application to control another to enable it to format or calculate data. This may take on the form of "embedding" where an application uses another to handle a task that it is more suited to, for example a PowerPoint presentation may be embedded in an Excel spreadsheet or vice versa.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Excel users can access external data sources via Microsoft Office features such as (for example) connections built with the Office Data Connection file format. Excel files themselves may be updated using a Microsoft supplied ODBC driver.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Excel can accept data in real-time through several programming interfaces, which allow it to communicate with many data sources such as Bloomberg and Reuters (through addins such as Power Plus Pro).


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Programmers have produced APIs to open Excel spreadsheets in a variety of applications and environments other than Microsoft Excel. These include opening Excel documents on the web using either ActiveX controls, or plugins like the Adobe Flash Player. The Apache POI opensource project provides Java libraries for reading and writing Excel spreadsheet files.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: All passwords except "password to open a document" can be removed instantly regardless of the Microsoft Excel version used to create the document. These types of passwords are used primarily for shared work on a document. Such password-protected documents are not encrypted, and a data sources from a set password is saved in a document's header. "Password to protect workbook" is an exception – when it is set, a document is encrypted with the standard password “"VelvetSweatshop"”, but since it is known to the public, it actually does not add any extra protection to the document. The only type of password that can prevent a trespasser from gaining access to a document is "password to open a document". The cryptographic strength of this kind of protection depends strongly on the Microsoft Excel version that was used to create the document.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: In "Microsoft Excel 95" and earlier versions, the password to open is converted to a 16-bit key that can be instantly cracked. In "Excel 97/2000" the password is converted to a 40-bit key, which can also be cracked very quickly using modern equipment. As regards services that use rainbow tables (e.g. Password-Find), it takes up to several seconds to remove protection. In addition, password-cracking programs can brute-force attack passwords at a rate of hundreds of thousands of passwords a second, which not only lets them decrypt a document but also find the original password.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: In "Excel 2003/XP" the encryption is slightly better – a user can choose any encryption algorithm that is available in the system (see Cryptographic Service Provider). Due to the CSP, an "Excel" file can't be decrypted, and thus the "password to open" can't be removed, though the brute-force attack speed remains quite high. Nevertheless, the older "Excel 97/2000" algorithm is set by the default. Therefore, users who do not change the default settings lack reliable protection of their documents.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: The situation changed fundamentally in "Excel 2007", where the modern AES algorithm with a key of 128 bits started being used for decryption, and a 50,000-fold use of the hash function SHA1 reduced the speed of brute-force attacks down to hundreds of passwords per second. In "Excel 2010", the strength of the protection by the default was increased two times due to the use of a 100,000-fold SHA1 to convert a password to a key.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Excel Mobile is a spreadsheet program that can edit XLSX files. It can edit and format text in cells, calculate formulas, search within the spreadsheet, sort rows and columns, freeze panes, filter the columns, add comments, and create charts. It can't add columns or rows except at the edge of the document, rearrange columns or rows, delete rows or columns, or add spreadsheet tabs. The 2007 version has the ability to use a full-screen mode to deal with limited screen resolution, as well as split panes to view different parts of a worksheet at one time. Protection settings, zoom settings, autofilter settings, certain chart formatting, hidden sheets, and other features are not supported on Excel Mobile, and will be modified upon opening and saving a workbook. In 2015, Excel Mobile became available for Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile on Windows Store.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Excel for the web is a free lightweight version of Microsoft Excel available as part of Office on the web, which also includes web versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Excel for the web can display most of the features available in the desktop versions of Excel, although it may not be able to insert or edit them. Certain data connections are not accessible on Excel for the web, including with charts that may use these external connections. Excel for the web also cannot display legacy features, such as Excel 4.0 macros or Excel 5.0 dialog sheets. There are also small differences between how some of the Excel functions work.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Microsoft Excel Viewer was a freeware program for Microsoft Windows for viewing and printing spreadsheet documents created by Excel. Microsoft retired the viewer in April 2018 with the last security update released in February 2019 for Excel Viewer 2007 (SP3).


title: Microsoft Excel

text: The first version released by Microsoft was Excel 97 Viewer. Excel 97 Viewer was supported in Windows CE for Handheld PCs. In October 2004, Microsoft released Excel Viewer 2003. In September 2007, Microsoft released Excel Viewer 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3). In January 2008, Microsoft released Excel Viewer 2007 (featuring a non-collapsible Ribbon interface). In April 2009, Microsoft released Excel Viewer 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2). In October 2011, Microsoft released Excel Viewer 2007 Service Pack 3 (SP3).


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Microsoft advises to view and print Excel files for free to use the Excel Mobile application for Windows 10 and for Windows 7 and Windows 8 to upload the file to OneDrive and use Excel for the web with a Microsoft account to open them in a browser.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: In addition to issues with spreadsheets in general, other problems specific to Excel include numeric precision, misleading statistics functions, mod function errors, date limitations and more.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Despite the use of 15-figure precision, Excel can display many more figures (up to thirty) upon user request. But the displayed figures are "not" those actually used in its computations, and so, for example, the difference of two numbers may differ from the difference of their displayed values. Although such departures are usually beyond the 15th decimal, exceptions do occur, especially for very large or very small numbers. Serious errors can occur if decisions are made based upon automated comparisons of numbers (for example, using the Excel "If" function), as equality of two numbers can be unpredictable.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: In the figure, the fraction 1/9000 is displayed in Excel. Although this number has a decimal representation that is an infinite string of ones, Excel displays only the leading 15 figures. In the second line, the number one is added to the fraction, and again Excel displays only 15 figures. In the third line, one is subtracted from the sum using Excel. Because the sum in the second line has only eleven 1's after the decimal, the difference when 1 is subtracted from this displayed value is three 0's followed by a string of eleven 1's. However, the difference reported by Excel in the third line is three 0's followed by a string of "thirteen" 1's and two extra erroneous digits. This is because Excel calculates with about half a digit more than it displays.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Excel works with a modified 1985 version of the IEEE 754 specification. Excel's implementation involves conversions between binary and decimal representations, leading to accuracy that is on average better than one would expect from simple fifteen digit precision, but that can be worse. See the main article for details.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Besides accuracy in user computations, the question of accuracy in Excel-provided functions may be raised. Particularly in the arena of statistical functions, Excel has been criticized for sacrificing accuracy for speed of calculation.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: As many calculations in Excel are executed using VBA, an additional issue is the accuracy of VBA, which varies with variable type and user-requested precision.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: The accuracy and convenience of statistical tools in Excel has been criticized, as mishandling missing data, as returning incorrect values due to inept handling of round-off and large numbers, as only selectively updating calculations on a spreadsheet when some cell values are changed, and as having a limited set of statistical tools. Microsoft has announced some of these issues are addressed in Excel 2010.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Excel has issues with modulo operations. In the case of excessively large results, Excel will return the error warning instead of an answer.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Excel includes February 29, 1900, incorrectly treating 1900 as a leap year, even though e.g. 2100 is correctly treated as a non-leap year. The bug originated from Lotus 1-2-3 (deliberately implemented to save computer memory), and was also purposely implemented in Excel, for the purpose of bug compatibility. This legacy has later been carried over into Office Open XML file format.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Thus a (not necessarily whole) number greater than or equal to 61 interpreted as a date and time are the (real) number of days after December 30, 1899, 0:00, a non-negative number less than 60 is the number of days after December 31, 1899, 0:00, and numbers with whole part 60 represent the fictional day.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Excel supports dates with years in the range 1900–9999, except that December 31, 1899, can be entered as 0 and is displayed as 0-jan-1900.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Converting a fraction of a day into hours, minutes and days by treating it as a moment on the day January 1, 1900, does not work for a negative fraction.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Entering text that happens to be in a form that is interpreted as a date, the text can be unintentionally changed to a standard date format. A similar problem occurs when a text happens to be in the form of a floating-point notation of a number. In these cases the original exact text cannot be recovered from the result. Formatting the cell as TEXT before entering ambiguous text prevents Excel from converting to a date.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: This issue has caused a well known problem in the analysis of DNA, for example in bioinformatics. As first reported in 2004, genetic scientists found that Excel automatically and incorrectly converts certain gene names into dates. A follow-up study in 2016 found many peer reviewed scientific journal papers had been affected and that "Of the selected journals, the proportion of published articles with Excel files containing gene lists that are affected by gene name errors is 19.6 %." Excel parses the copied and pasted data and sometimes changes them depending on what it thinks they are. For example, MARCH1 (Membrane Associated Ring-CH-type finger 1) gets converted to the date March 1 (1-Mar) and SEPT2 (Septin 2) is converted into September 2 (2-Sep) etc. While some secondary news sources reported this as a fault with Excel, the original authors of the 2016 paper placed the blame with the researchers misusing Excel.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: In August 2020 the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) published new guidelines in the journal Nature regarding gene naming in order to avoid issues with "symbols that affect data handling and retrieval." So far 27 genes have been renamed, including changing MARCH1 to MARCHF1 and SEPT1 to SEPTIN1 in order to avoid accidental conversion of the gene names into dates.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Microsoft Excel will not open two documents with the same name and instead will display the following error:


title: Microsoft Excel

text: The reason is for calculation ambiguity with linked cells. If there is a cell , and there are two books named "Book1" open, there is no way to tell which one the user means.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Microsoft originally marketed a spreadsheet program called Multiplan in 1982. Multiplan became very popular on CP/M systems, but on MS-DOS systems it lost popularity to Lotus 1-2-3. Microsoft released the first version of Excel for the Macintosh on September 30, 1985, and the first Windows version was 2.05 (to synchronize with the Macintosh version 2.2) on November 19, 1987. Lotus was slow to bring 1-2-3 to Windows and by the early 1990s, Excel had started to outsell 1-2-3 and helped Microsoft achieve its position as a leading PC software developer. This accomplishment solidified Microsoft as a valid competitor and showed its future of developing GUI software. Microsoft maintained its advantage with regular new releases, every two years or so.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Excel 2.0 is the first version of Excel for the Intel platform. Versions prior to 2.0 were only available on the Apple Macintosh.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: The first Windows version was labeled "2" to correspond to the Mac version. It was announced on October 6, 1987 and released on November 19. This included a run-time version of Windows.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: "BYTE" in 1989 listed Excel for Windows as among the "Distinction" winners of the BYTE Awards. The magazine stated that the port of the "extraordinary" Macintosh version "shines", with a user interface as good as or better than the original.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Included toolbars, drawing capabilities, outlining, add-in support, 3D charts, and many more new features.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Also, an easter egg in Excel 4.0 reveals a hidden animation of a dancing set of numbers 1 through 3, representing Lotus 1-2-3, which is then crushed by an Excel logo.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: With version 5.0, Excel has included Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), a programming language based on Visual Basic which adds the ability to automate tasks in Excel and to provide user-defined functions (UDF) for use in worksheets. VBA includes a fully featured integrated development environment (IDE). Macro recording can produce VBA code replicating user actions, thus allowing simple automation of regular tasks. VBA allows the creation of forms and in‑worksheet controls to communicate with the user. The language supports use (but not creation) of ActiveX (COM) DLL's; later versions add support for class modules allowing the use of basic object-oriented programming techniques.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: The automation functionality provided by VBA made Excel a target for macro viruses. This caused serious problems until antivirus products began to detect these viruses. Microsoft belatedly took steps to prevent the misuse by adding the ability to disable macros completely, to enable macros when opening a workbook or to trust all macros signed using a trusted certificate.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Versions 5.0 to 9.0 of Excel contain various Easter eggs, including a "Hall of Tortured Souls", a Doom-like minigame, although since version 10 Microsoft has taken measures to eliminate such undocumented features from their products.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: 5.0 was released in a 16-bit x86 version for Windows 3.1 and later in a 32-bit version for NT 3.51 (x86/Alpha/PowerPC)


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Released in 1995 with Microsoft Office for Windows 95, this is the first major version after Excel 5.0, as there is no Excel 6.0 with all of the Office applications standardizing on the same major version number.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Included in Office 97 (for x86 and Alpha). This was a major upgrade that introduced the paper clip office assistant and featured standard VBA used instead of internal Excel Basic. It introduced the now-removed Natural Language labels.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Included in Office 2000. This was a minor upgrade but introduced an upgrade to the clipboard where it can hold multiple objects at once. The Office Assistant, whose frequent unsolicited appearance in Excel 97 had annoyed many users, became less intrusive.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Included in Office 2007. This release was a major upgrade from the previous version. Similar to other updated Office products, Excel in 2007 used the new Ribbon menu system. This was different from what users were used to, and was met with mixed reactions. One study reported fairly good acceptance by users except highly experienced users and users of word processing applications with a classical WIMP interface, but was less convinced in terms of efficiency and organization. However, an online survey reported that a majority of respondents had a negative opinion of the change, with advanced users being "somewhat more negative" than intermediate users, and users reporting a self-estimated reduction in productivity.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Added functionality included the SmartArt set of editable business diagrams. Also added was an improved management of named variables through the "Name Manager", and much-improved flexibility in formatting graphs, which allow ("x, y") coordinate labeling and lines of arbitrary weight. Several improvements to pivot tables were introduced.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Also like other office products, the Office Open XML file formats were introduced, including ".xlsm" for a workbook with macros and ".xlsx" for a workbook without macros.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Specifically, many of the size limitations of previous versions were greatly increased. To illustrate, the number of rows was now 1,048,576 (2) and columns was 16,384 (2; the far-right column is XFD). This changes what is a valid "A1" reference versus a named range. This version made more extensive use of multiple cores for the calculation of spreadsheets; however, VBA macros are not handled in parallel and XLL add‑ins were only executed in parallel if they were thread-safe and this was indicated at registration.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Included in Office 2010, this is the next major version after v12.0, as version number 13 was skipped.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Microsoft no longer releases Office or Excel in discrete versions. Instead, features are introduced automatically over time using Windows Update. The version number remains 16.0. Thereafter only the approximate dates when features appear can now be given.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Excel offers many user interface tweaks over the earliest electronic spreadsheets; however, the essence remains the same as in the original spreadsheet software, VisiCalc: the program displays cells organized in rows and columns, and each cell may contain data or a formula, with relative or absolute references to other cells.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Excel 2.0 for Windows, which was modeled after its Mac GUI-based counterpart, indirectly expanded the installed base of the then-nascent Windows environment. Excel 2.0 was released a month before Windows 2.0, and the installed base of Windows was so low at that point in 1987 that Microsoft had to bundle a runtime version of Windows 1.0 with Excel 2.0. Unlike Microsoft Word, there never was a DOS version of Excel.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Excel became the first spreadsheet to allow the user to define the appearance of spreadsheets (fonts, character attributes, and cell appearance). It also introduced intelligent cell re-computation, where only cells dependent on the cell being modified are updated (previous spreadsheet programs recomputed everything all the time or waited for a specific user command). Excel introduced auto-fill, the ability to drag and expand the selection box to automatically copy a cell or row contents to adjacent cells or rows, adjusting the copies intelligently by automatically incrementing cell references or contents. Excel also introduced extensive graphing capabilities.


title: Microsoft Excel

text: Because Excel is widely used, it has been attacked by hackers. While Excel is not directly exposed to the Internet, if an attacker can get a victim to open a file in Excel, and there is an appropriate security bug in Excel, then the attacker can gain control of the victim's computer. UK's GCHQ has a tool named TORNADO ALLEY with this purpose.


title: Accenture

text: Accenture plc is an Irish-American professional services company based in Dublin, specializing in information technology (IT) services and consulting. A "Fortune" Global 500 company, it reported revenues of $61.6 billion in 2022. Accenture's current clients include 91 of the Fortune Global 100 and more than three-quarters of the Fortune Global 500. As of 2022, Accenture is considered the largest consulting firm in the world by number of employees.


title: Accenture

text: Accenture began as the business and technology consulting division of accounting firm Arthur Andersen in the early 1950s when it conducted a feasibility study for General Electric to install a computer at Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky, which led to GE's installation of a UNIVAC I computer and printer, believed to be the first commercial use of a computer in the U.S. Joseph Glickauf, an early pioneer of computer consulting , held a position as head of Arthur Andersen's administrative services division.


title: Accenture

text: In 1989, Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting became separate units of Andersen Worldwide Société Coopérative (AWSC). Throughout the 1990s, there was increasing tension between Andersen Consulting and Arthur Andersen. Andersen Consulting was paying Arthur Andersen up to 15% of its profits each year (a provision of the 1989 split was that the more profitable unit – whether AA or AC – pay the other the 15 percent), while at the same time Arthur Andersen was competing with Andersen Consulting through its own newly established business consulting service line called Arthur Andersen Business Consulting. This dispute came to a head in 1998 when Andersen Consulting put the 15% transfer payment for that year and future years into escrow and issued a claim for breach of contract against AWSC and Arthur Andersen. In August 2000, as a result of the conclusion of arbitration with the International Chamber of Commerce, Andersen Consulting broke all contractual ties with AWSC and Arthur Andersen. As part of the arbitration settlement, Andersen Consulting paid the sum held in escrow (then $1.2 billion) to Arthur Andersen, and was required to change its name, resulting in the entity being renamed Accenture.


title: Accenture

text: On 1 January 2001, Andersen Consulting adopted its current name, "Accenture". The word "Accenture" is derived from "Accent on the future". The name "Accenture" was submitted by Kim Petersen, a Danish employee from the company's Oslo, Norway office, as a result of an internal competition. Petersen felt that the name should represent its will to be a global consulting leader and high performer, and also intended that the name should not be offensive in any country in which Accenture operates.


title: Accenture

text: On 19 July 2001, Accenture's initial public offering (IPO) was priced at $14.50 per share, and the shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange; Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley served as its lead underwriters. Accenture stock closed the day at $15.17, with the day's high at $15.25. On the first day of the IPO, Accenture raised nearly $1.7 billion.


title: Accenture

text: In October 2002, the Congressional General Accounting Office (GAO) identified Accenture as one of four publicly traded federal contractors that were incorporated in a tax haven. The other three, unlike Accenture, were incorporated in the United States before they re-incorporated in a tax haven, thereby lowering their US taxes. Critics, most notably former CNN journalist Lou Dobbs, have reported Accenture's decision to incorporate in Bermuda as a US tax avoidance ploy, because they viewed Accenture as having been a US-based company. The GAO itself did not characterise Accenture as having been a US-based company; it stated that "prior to incorporating in Bermuda, Accenture was operating as a series of related partnerships and corporations under the control of its partners through the mechanism of contracts with a Swiss coordinating entity."


title: Accenture

text: Accenture engaged in an IT overhaul project for the British National Health Service (NHS) in 2003, making headlines when it withdrew from the contract in 2006 over disputes related to delays and cost overruns. The government of the United Kingdom ultimately abandoned the project five years later for the same reasons.


title: Accenture

text: Accenture announced on 26 May 2009 that its board of directors unanimously approved changing the company's place of incorporation from Bermuda to Ireland and would become Accenture plc.


title: Accenture

text: In 2012, it was revealed Accenture was paying only 3.5% in tax in the Republic of Ireland as opposed to the average rate of 24% for a UK corporation.


title: Accenture

text: In January 2014, Accenture was chosen to replace CGI Group as the lead contractor for HealthCare.gov, signing a $563 million contract to provide ongoing maintenance, software development and technology support for HealthCare.gov through 2019.


title: Accenture

text: In April 2014, Accenture acquired i4C Analytics, an advanced analytics software platform provider based in Italy that specialized in helping clients solve complex business problems through easy to use analytics applications.


title: Accenture

text: In July 2015, the United States Department of Defense awarded a major Electronic Health Records contract to Cerner, Leidos and Accenture. The contract valued $4.33 billion will serve 55 hospitals and 600 clinics. Accenture Federal Services and Leidos will play the role of configuration specialist, while Cerner is the prime contractor. In 2015, the company had about 150,000 employees in India, 48,000 in the US, and 50,000 in the Philippines.


title: Accenture

text: On 29 August 2017, Apple Inc. announced a partnership with Accenture to create iOS business software.


title: Accenture

text: In June 2018, Accenture generated controversy over the amount the firm has been charging to recruit 7,500 Customs and Border Protection officers. Under the $297 million contract, Accenture had been charging the US Government nearly $40,000 per hire, which is more than the annual salary of the average officer. According to a report published by the DHS Office of Inspector General in December 2018, Accenture had been paid $13.6M through the first ten months of the contract. They had hired two agents against a contract goal of 7,500 hires over 5 years. The report was issued as a 'management alert', indicating an issue requiring immediate attention, stating that "Accenture has already taken longer to deploy and delivered less capability than promised". The contract was terminated in 2019.


title: Accenture

text: In January 2019, CEO Pierre Nanterme stepped down from his position, citing health reasons. Twenty days after stepping down, he died in France at the age of 59 after being diagnosed with colon cancer. Chief Financial Officer David Rowland was named as the interim CEO. In July 2019, Julie Sweet, previously CEO of Accenture North America, was named the new chief executive officer of the firm, effective September 2019.


title: Accenture

text: In February 2019, contractors from Accenture's Austin, Texas, location who performed content moderation tasks for Facebook wrote an open letter to Facebook describing poor working conditions and a "Big Brother environment" that included restricted work breaks and strict non-disclosure agreements. A counselor in the Austin office stated that the content moderators could develop posttraumatic stress disorder as a result of the work, which included evaluating videos and images containing graphic violence, hate speech, animal abuse, and child abuse. Accenture issued a statement saying the company offers opportunities for moderators to advance, increase their wages, and provide input "to help shape their experience".


title: Accenture

text: On 7 January 2020, news sources reported that Accenture had agreed to acquire Symantec's 300-person cybersecurity services division from Broadcom. The $200 million acquisition was completed in April 2020.


title: Accenture

text: In February 2020, Accenture announced that it plans to shut down its media auditing by the end of August. The company also announced the appointment of Jean-Marc Ollagnier as CEO for Europe.


title: Accenture

text: In April 2020, Accenture announced that it had acquired Revolutionary Security, an American-based cybersecurity company specializing in IT and operational technology (OT).


title: Accenture

text: In May 2020, Accenture announced that it had acquired Callisto Integration, a Canada-based provider of consulting and technology services and Byte Prophecy, an Ahmedabad-based data analytics company.


title: Accenture

text: In September 2020, Accenture committed $3 billion and created a division called Accenture Cloud First. In the same month, the company announced that they would be establishing in hub in Adelaide, South Australia, with premises at Lot Fourteen.


title: Accenture

text: On 1 February 2021, Accenture acquired Imaginea Technologies, a cloud-native and agile development company. This acquisition also bolsters the Cloud First division. On 16 February 2021, Accenture acquired Infinity Works, another acquisition that bolsters Cloud First.


title: Accenture

text: In August 2021, Accenture named David Droga as chief executive officer of Accenture Interactive (later renamed Accenture Song).


title: Accenture

text: In September 2021, Accenture acquired Blue Horseshoe Solutions, Inc., a US-based supply chain management and strategy consulting firm and systems integrator specializing in fulfillment and distribution solutions.


title: Accenture

text: In April 2022, it was announced that Accenture had acquired the London-headquartered sustainability consultancy, Avieco.


title: Accenture

text: In April 2022, Accenture rebranded one of their divisions, Accenture Interactive, as Accenture Song consolidating all of their acquisitions under one brand. Accenture acquired AFD.TECH, an independent network services company, in April 2022 for an undisclosed sum. It also acquired Ergo, a data-centered business located in Argentina, and Greenfish, a sustainability consulting and engineering firm, in April 2022.


title: Accenture

text: In June 2022, Accenture acquired operational and digital engineering technology capabilities from Transcom ITS, a Japanese logistics technology services provider and Allgemeines Rechenzentrum GmbH (ARZ), a technology service provider focused on the banking sector in Austria. It also acquired Advocate Networks, a technology consultancy and managed services provider, in June 2022.


title: Accenture

text: In July 2022, Accenture acquired Solvera Solutions, a cloud consulting company, for an undisclosed sum. In August 2022, Accenture acquired Tenbu, a cloud data firm, for an undisclosed sum.


title: Accenture

text: in November 2022, it was announced Accenture had acquired the Tokyo-headquartered data science company, Albert Inc.