title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: According to Suetonius, Caesar's assassination ultimately occurred primarily due to concerns that he wished to crown himself the king of Rome. These concerns were exacerbated by the "three last straws" of 45 and 44 BC. In just a few months, Caesar had disrespected the Senate, removed People's Tribunes, and toyed with monarchy. By February, the conspiracy that caused his assassination was being born.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: The conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar began with a meeting between Cassius Longinus and his brother-in-law Marcus Brutus in the evening of 22 February 44 BC, when after some discussion the two agreed that something had to be done to prevent Caesar from becoming king of the Romans.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: The two men then began to recruit others. While it took only one man to murder another, Brutus believed that for the assassination of Caesar to be considered a legitimate removal of a tyrant, done for the sake of their country, it must include a large number of Rome's leading men. They attempted to strike a balance: they aimed to recruit enough men to surround Caesar and fight his supporters, but not so many that they would risk being discovered. They preferred friends to acquaintances and recruited neither reckless youths nor feeble elders. In the end, the conspirators recruited senators near the age of forty, as were they. The men assessed each potential recruit with innocent-sounding questions. The ancient sources report that in the end, around sixty to eighty conspirators joined the plot, although the latter number may be a scribal error.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: Notable conspirators included Pacuvius Labeo, who answered affirmatively on 2 March when Brutus asked him whether it was wise for a man to put himself into danger if it meant overcoming evil or foolish men; Decimus Brutus, who joined on 7 March after being approached by Labeo and Cassius; Gaius Trebonius, Tillius Cimber, Minucius Basilus, and the brothers Casca (Publius and another whose name is unknown), all men from Caesar's own ranks; and Pontius Aquila, who had been personally humiliated by Caesar. According to Nicolaus of Damascus, the conspirators included Caesar's soldiers, officers, and civilian associates, and while some joined the conspiracy due to concerns over Caesar's authoritarianism, many had self-interested motives such as jealousy: feeling that Caesar had not rewarded them enough or that he had given too much money towards Pompey’s former supporters. The conspirators did not meet openly but instead secretly assembled at each other's homes and in small groups in order to work out a plan.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: First, the conspirators discussed the addition of two other men to the conspiracy. Cicero, the famous orator, was trusted by both Cassius and Brutus, and had made it no secret that he considered Caesar's rule oppressive. He also had great popularity among the common people and a large network of friends, which would help attract others to join their cause. However, the conspirators considered Cicero too cautious; at that time, Cicero was over sixty, and the conspirators thought he would be too likely to put safety over speed when planning the assassination. Next, the conspirators considered Mark Antony, aged thirty-nine and one of Caesar's best generals. The conspirators were agreeing to attempt to recruit him until Gaius Trebonius spoke. He revealed that he had personally approached Antony the summer before and asked him to join a different conspiracy to end Caesar's life, and Antony had turned him down. This rejection to the old conspiracy caused the conspirators to decide against recruiting Antony.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: Now, however, a new idea took place. Antony was strong because of his familiarity with the soldiers, and powerful due to his consulship. If Antony was not to join them, then they must assassinate Antony as well, lest he interfere with the conspiracy. Eventually, this idea was expanded upon and split the conspirators into two factions. The "optimates", the "Best Men" of Rome, among the conspirators wanted to go back to the way things were before Caesar. This would entail killing both Caesar and all the men around him, including Antony, and reverting Caesar's reforms. The former supporters of Caesar among the conspirators did not agree to this. They liked Caesar's reforms, and did not want a purge of Caesar's supporters. However, even they agreed to kill Antony.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: Brutus disagreed with both. He argued that killing Caesar, and doing nothing else, was the option they should choose. The conspirators claimed to be acting based on the principles of law and justice, he told them, and it would be unjust to kill Antony. While the assassination of Caesar would be viewed as the killing of a tyrant, killing his supporters would be seen only as a politicized purge and the work of Pompey's former supporters. By keeping Caesar's reforms intact, they would both keep the support of the Roman people, who Brutus believed opposed Caesar the king, not Caesar the reformer, and the support of Caesar's soldiers and other supporters. His argument convinced the other conspirators. They began making plans for Caesar's assassination.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: The conspirators believed that how and where they assassinated Caesar would make a difference. An ambush in a secluded area would have a different impact on public opinion than an assassination in the heart of Rome. The conspirators came up with multiple ideas for the assassination. They considered an attack on Caesar while he was walking on the Via Sacra, the "Sacred Street". Another idea was to wait to attack him during the elections for new consuls. The conspirators would wait for Caesar to begin crossing the bridge that all voters crossed as part of the election procedures, and then topple him over the rail and into the water. There would be conspirators waiting in the water for Caesar, with daggers drawn. Another plan was to attack at a gladiatorial game, which had the benefit that nobody would be suspicious of armed men.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: Finally, somebody brought up the idea to assassinate Caesar at one of the senate meetings. All other plans had one detractor: while Caesar had no official bodyguards, he asked his friends to protect him in public. Most of these friends were imposing and dangerous-looking and the conspirators were afraid that they would interfere with the assassination. Here, this would not be an issue, since only senators were allowed in the Senate House. Some also said that the murder of a tyrant in full view of the Senate would not be seen as a political plot, but as a noble act, done on behalf of their country. The conspirators ultimately settled on this as the chosen plan. Caesar would be leaving the city on 18 March to embark on a military campaign against the Getae and the Parthians. The last senate meeting before that date was on the 15th, the Ides of March, and so the conspirators chose this as the day of the assassination.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: In the days leading up to the Ides, Caesar was not completely oblivious to what was being planned. According to the ancient historian Plutarch, a seer had warned Caesar that his life would be in danger no later than the Ides of March. The Roman biographer Suetonius identifies this seer as a haruspex named Spurinna. In addition, on 1 March, Caesar watched Cassius speaking with Brutus at the senate house and said to an aide, "What do you think Cassius is up to? I don't like him, he looks pale."


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: Two days before the assassination, Cassius met with the conspirators and told them that, should anyone discover the plan, they were to turn their knives on themselves.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: On the Ides of March of 44 BC, conspirators and non-conspirators met at the Senate House of Pompey, located in the Theatre of Pompey, for the senate meeting. Usually, the senators would be meeting at the Roman Forum, but Caesar was financing a reconstruction of the forum and so the senators met in other venues throughout Rome, this being one of them. There were gladiatorial games underway at the Theatre, and Decimus Brutus, who owned a company of gladiators, stationed them in the Portico of Pompey, also located in the Theatre of Pompey. The gladiators could be useful to the conspirators: if a fight broke out to protect Caesar, the gladiators could intervene; if Caesar was killed but the conspirators became under attack, the gladiators could protect them; and since it was impossible to enter the Senate House without going through the Portico, the gladiators could block entrance to both if necessary.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: The senators waited for Caesar's arrival, but he did not come. The reason for this is that early that morning, Calpurnia, Caesar's wife, was awoken from a nightmare. She had dreamt that she was holding a murdered Caesar in her arms and mourning him. Other versions have Calpurnia dream that the front pediment of their house had collapsed and that Caesar had died; yet another shows Caesar's body streaming with blood. Calpurnia had no doubt heard Spurinna's warnings of great peril to Caesar's life, which helps explain her visions. Around 5a.m., Calpurnia begged Caesar not to go to the senate meeting that day. After some hesitation, Caesar acquiesced. Although not superstitious, he knew that Spurinna and Calpurnia were involved in Roman politics, and decided to be cautious. Caesar sent Mark Antony to dismiss the Senate. When the conspirators heard of this dismissal, Decimus went to Caesar's home to try to talk him into coming to the Senate meeting. "What do you say, Caesar?" Decimus said. "Will someone of your stature pay attention to a woman's dreams and the omens of foolish men?" Caesar eventually decided to go.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: Caesar was walking to the senate house when he caught sight of Spurinna. "Well, the Ides of March have come!" Caesar called out playfully. "Aye, the Ides have come," said Spurinna, "but they are not yet gone." Mark Antony started to enter with Caesar, but was intercepted by one of the plotters (either Trebonius or Decimus Brutus) and detained outside. He remained there until after the assassination, at which point he fled.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: According to Plutarch, as Caesar took his seat, Lucius Tillius Cimber presented him with a petition to recall his exiled brother. The other conspirators crowded round to offer their support. Both Plutarch and Suetonius say that Caesar waved him away, but Cimber grabbed Caesar's shoulders and pulled down Caesar's toga. Caesar then cried to Cimber, "Why, this is violence!" (""Ista quidem vis est!""). At the same time, Casca produced his dagger and made a glancing thrust at the dictator's neck. Caesar turned around quickly and caught Casca by the arm. According to Plutarch, he said in Latin, "Casca, you villain, what are you doing?" Casca, frightened, shouted simultaneously "Brother! Help me!" (). Though Caesar was able to violently throw Casca away, Gaius Servilius Casca stabbed him in the side. Within moments, Caesar was attacked from all directions, with Cassius, slashing Caesar's face, Bucilianus stabbing at the back and Decimus slicing his thigh. Caesar attempted to fight back, but tripped and fell; the men continued stabbing him as he lay defenseless on the lower steps of the portico. Caesar was stabbed 23 times. Suetonius relates that a physician who performed an autopsy on Caesar established that only one wound (the second one to his ribs) had been fatal. This autopsy report (the earliest known post-mortem report in history) describes that Caesar's death was mostly attributable to blood loss from his stab wounds.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: The dictator's last words are a contested subject among scholars and historians. Suetonius himself says he said nothing, nevertheless, he mentions that others have written that Caesar's last words were the Greek phrase "" (transliterated as ""Kai su, teknon?"": "You too, child?" in English). Plutarch also reports that Caesar said nothing, pulling his toga over his head when he saw Brutus among the conspirators. According to Plutarch, after the assassination, Brutus stepped forward as if to say something to his fellow senators not involved in the plot; they, however, fled the building. Brutus and his companions then marched through the city, announcing: "People of Rome, we are once again free!" They were met with silence, as the citizens of Rome had locked themselves inside their houses as soon as the rumours of what had taken place began to spread. According to Suetonius, after the murder all the conspirators fled; Caesar's body lay untouched for some time afterwards, until finally three common slaves put him on a litter and carried him home, with one arm hanging down.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: Virgil wrote in the "Georgics" that several unusual events took place preceding Caesar's assassination.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: A wax statue of Caesar was erected in the Forum displaying the 23 stab wounds. A crowd who had amassed there expressed their anger at the assassins by burning the Senate House. Two days after the assassination, Mark Antony summoned the senate and managed to work out a compromise in which the assassins would not be punished for their acts, but all of Caesar's appointments would remain valid. By doing this, Antony most likely hoped to avoid large cracks in government forming as a result of Caesar's death. Simultaneously, Antony diminished the goals of the conspirators. The result unforeseen by the assassins was that Caesar's death precipitated the end of the Roman Republic. The Roman lower classes, with whom Caesar was popular, became enraged that a small group of aristocrats had sacrificed Caesar. Antony capitalized on the grief of the Roman mob and threatened to unleash them on the Optimates, perhaps with the intent of taking control of Rome himself. But, to his surprise and chagrin, Caesar had named his grandnephew Gaius Octavius his sole heir, bequeathing him the immensely potent Caesar name as well as making him one of the wealthiest citizens in the Republic. Upon hearing of his adoptive father's death, Octavius abandoned his studies in Apollonia and sailed across the Adriatic Sea to Brundisium. Octavius became "Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus" or Octavian, the son of the great Caesar, and consequently also inherited the loyalty of much of the Roman populace. Octavian, aged only 18 at the time of Caesar's death, proved to have considerable political skills, and while Antony dealt with Decimus Brutus in the first round of the new civil wars, Octavian consolidated his tenuous position. Antony did not initially consider Octavius a true political threat due to his young age and inexperience, but Octavius quickly gained the support and admiration of Caesar's friends and supporters.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: To combat Brutus and Cassius, who were massing an enormous army in Greece, Antony needed soldiers, the money from Caesar's war chests, and the legitimacy that Caesar's name would provide for any action he took against them. With passage of the Lex Titia on 27 November 43 BC, the Second Triumvirate was officially formed, composed of Antony, Octavian, and Caesar's Master of the Horse Lepidus. It formally deified Caesar as Divus Iulius in 42 BC, and Caesar Octavian henceforth became "Divi filius" ("Son of the Divine"). Seeing that Caesar's clemency had resulted in his murder, the Second Triumvirate brought back proscription, abandoned since Sulla. It engaged in the legally sanctioned murder of a large number of its opponents in order to fund its forty-five legions in the second civil war against Brutus and Cassius. Antony and Octavian defeated them at Philippi.


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: The Second Triumvirate was ultimately unstable and could not withstand internal jealousies and ambitions. Antony detested Octavian and spent most of his time in the East, while Lepidus favoured Antony but felt himself obscured by both his colleagues. Following the Sicilian revolt, led by Sextus Pompey, a dispute between Lepidus and Octavian regarding the allocation of lands broke out. Octavian accused Lepidus of usurping power in Sicily and of attempted rebellion and, in 36 BC, Lepidus was forced into exile in Circeii and stripped of all his offices except that of Pontifex Maximus. His former provinces were awarded to Octavian. Antony, meanwhile, married Caesar's lover, Cleopatra, intending to use the fabulously wealthy Egypt as a base to dominate Rome. A third civil war subsequently broke out between Octavian on one hand and Antony and Cleopatra on the other. This final civil war culminated in the latter's defeat at Actium in 31 BC; Octavian's forces would then chase Antony and Cleopatra to Alexandria, where they would both commit suicide in 30 BC. With the complete defeat of Antony and the marginalisation of Lepidus, Octavian, having been restyled "Augustus", a name that raised him to the status of a deity, in 27 BC, remained as the sole master of the Roman world and proceeded to establish the Principate as the first Roman "Emperor".


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: Most of the conspirators' names are lost to history and only about twenty are known. Nothing is known about some of those whose names have survived. The known members are:


title: Assassination of Julius Caesar

text: Marcus Tullius Cicero was not a member of the conspiracy and was surprised by it. He later wrote to the conspirator Trebonius that he wished he had been "invited to that superb banquet" and believed that the conspirators should also have killed Mark Antony.


title: Quartz

text: Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical formula of SiO. Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in Earth's continental crust, behind feldspar.


title: Quartz

text: Quartz exists in two forms, the normal α-quartz and the high-temperature β-quartz, both of which are chiral. The transformation from α-quartz to β-quartz takes place abruptly at . Since the transformation is accompanied by a significant change in volume, it can easily induce microfracturing of ceramics or rocks passing through this temperature threshold.


title: Quartz

text: There are many different varieties of quartz, several of which are classified as gemstones. Since antiquity, varieties of quartz have been the most commonly used minerals in the making of jewelry and hardstone carvings, especially in Eurasia.


title: Quartz

text: Quartz is the mineral defining the value of 7 on the Mohs scale of hardness, a qualitative scratch method for determining the hardness of a material to abrasion.


title: Quartz

text: The word "quartz" is derived from the German word "Quarz", which had the same form in the first half of the 14th century in Middle High German and in East Central German and which came from the Polish dialect term "kwardy", which corresponds to the Czech term "tvrdý" ("hard").


title: Quartz

text: The Ancient Greeks referred to quartz as κρύσταλλος ("krustallos") derived from the Ancient Greek "κρύος" ("kruos") meaning "icy cold", because some philosophers (including Theophrastus) apparently believed the mineral to be a form of supercooled ice. Today, the term "rock crystal" is sometimes used as an alternative name for transparent coarsely crystalline quartz.


title: Quartz

text: Quartz belongs to the trigonal crystal system at room temperature, and to the hexagonal crystal system above . The ideal crystal shape is a six-sided prism terminating with six-sided pyramids at each end. In nature quartz crystals are often twinned (with twin right-handed and left-handed quartz crystals), distorted, or so intergrown with adjacent crystals of quartz or other minerals as to only show part of this shape, or to lack obvious crystal faces altogether and appear massive. Well-formed crystals typically form as a druse (a layer of crystals lining a void), of which quartz geodes are particularly fine examples. The crystals are attached at one end to the enclosing rock, and only one termination pyramid is present. However, doubly terminated crystals do occur where they develop freely without attachment, for instance, within gypsum.


title: Quartz

text: α-quartz crystallizes in the trigonal crystal system, space group "P"321 or "P"321 (space group 152 or 154 resp.) depending on the chirality. Above , α-quartz in "P"321 becomes the more symmetric hexagonal "P"622 (space group 181), and α-quartz in "P"321 goes to space group "P"622 (no. 180). These space groups are truly chiral (they each belong to the 11 enantiomorphous pairs). Both α-quartz and β-quartz are examples of chiral crystal structures composed of achiral building blocks (SiO tetrahedra in the present case). The transformation between α- and β-quartz only involves a comparatively minor rotation of the tetrahedra with respect to one another, without a change in the way they are linked. However, there is a significant change in volume during this transition, and this can result in significant microfracturing in ceramics and in rocks of the Earth's crust.


title: Quartz

text: Although many of the varietal names historically arose from the color of the mineral, current scientific naming schemes refer primarily to the microstructure of the mineral. Color is a secondary identifier for the cryptocrystalline minerals, although it is a primary identifier for the macrocrystalline varieties.


title: Quartz

text: Pure quartz, traditionally called rock crystal or clear quartz, is colorless and transparent or translucent, and has often been used for hardstone carvings, such as the Lothair Crystal. Common colored varieties include citrine, rose quartz, amethyst, smoky quartz, milky quartz, and others. These color differentiations arise from the presence of impurities which change the molecular orbitals, causing some electronic transitions to take place in the visible spectrum causing colors.


title: Quartz

text: The most important distinction between types of quartz is that of "macrocrystalline" (individual crystals visible to the unaided eye) and the microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline varieties (aggregates of crystals visible only under high magnification). The cryptocrystalline varieties are either translucent or mostly opaque, while the transparent varieties tend to be macrocrystalline. Chalcedony is a cryptocrystalline form of silica consisting of fine intergrowths of both quartz, and its monoclinic polymorph moganite. Other opaque gemstone varieties of quartz, or mixed rocks including quartz, often including contrasting bands or patterns of color, are agate, carnelian or sard, onyx, heliotrope, and jasper.


title: Quartz

text: Amethyst is a form of quartz that ranges from a bright vivid violet to dark or dull lavender shade. The world's largest deposits of amethysts can be found in Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, Russia, France, Namibia and Morocco. Sometimes amethyst and citrine are found growing in the same crystal. It is then referred to as ametrine. An amethyst derives its color from traces of iron in its structure.


title: Quartz

text: Inclusions of the mineral dumortierite within quartz pieces often result in silky-appearing splotches with a blue hue. Shades of purple or grey sometimes also are present. "Dumortierite quartz" (sometimes called "blue quartz") will sometimes feature contrasting light and dark color zones across the material. "Blue quartz" is a minor gemstone.


title: Quartz

text: Citrine is a variety of quartz whose color ranges from a pale yellow to brown due to a submicroscopic distribution of colloidal ferric hydroxide impurities. Natural citrines are rare; most commercial citrines are heat-treated amethysts or smoky quartzes. However, a heat-treated amethyst will have small lines in the crystal, as opposed to a natural citrine's cloudy or smoky appearance. It is nearly impossible to differentiate between cut citrine and yellow topaz visually, but they differ in hardness. Brazil is the leading producer of citrine, with much of its production coming from the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The name is derived from the Latin word "citrina" which means "yellow" and is also the origin of the word "citron". Sometimes citrine and amethyst can be found together in the same crystal, which is then referred to as ametrine. Citrine has been referred to as the "merchant's stone" or "money stone", due to a superstition that it would bring prosperity.


title: Quartz

text: Citrine was first appreciated as a golden-yellow gemstone in Greece between 300 and 150 BC, during the Hellenistic Age. The yellow quartz was used prior to that to decorate jewelry and tools but it was not highly sought after.


title: Quartz

text: Milk quartz or milky quartz is the most common variety of crystalline quartz. The white color is caused by minute fluid inclusions of gas, liquid, or both, trapped during crystal formation, making it of little value for optical and quality gemstone applications.


title: Quartz

text: Rose quartz is a type of quartz which exhibits a pale pink to rose red hue. The color is usually considered as due to trace amounts of titanium, iron, or manganese, in the material. Some rose quartz contains microscopic rutile needles which produces an asterism in transmitted light. Recent X-ray diffraction studies suggest that the color is due to thin microscopic fibers of possibly dumortierite within the quartz.


title: Quartz

text: Additionally, there is a rare type of pink quartz (also frequently called crystalline rose quartz) with color that is thought to be caused by trace amounts of phosphate or aluminium. The color in crystals is apparently photosensitive and subject to fading. The first crystals were found in a pegmatite found near Rumford, Maine, US and in Minas Gerais, Brazil.


title: Quartz

text: Smoky quartz is a gray, translucent version of quartz. It ranges in clarity from almost complete transparency to a brownish-gray crystal that is almost opaque. Some can also be black. The translucency results from natural irradiation acting on minute traces of aluminum in the crystal structure.


title: Quartz

text: Prasiolite, also known as "vermarine", is a variety of quartz that is green in color. Since 1950, almost all natural prasiolite has come from a small Brazilian mine, but it is also seen in Lower Silesia in Poland. Naturally occurring prasiolite is also found in the Thunder Bay area of Canada. It is a rare mineral in nature; most green quartz is heat-treated amethyst.


title: Quartz

text: Not all varieties of quartz are naturally occurring. Some clear quartz crystals can be treated using heat or gamma-irradiation to induce color where it would not otherwise have occurred naturally. Susceptibility to such treatments depends on the location from which the quartz was mined.


title: Quartz

text: Prasiolite, an olive colored material, is produced by heat treatment; natural prasiolite has also been observed in Lower Silesia in Poland. Although citrine occurs naturally, the majority is the result of heat-treating amethyst or smoky quartz. Carnelian has been heat-treated to deepen its color since prehistoric times.


title: Quartz

text: Because natural quartz is often twinned, synthetic quartz is produced for use in industry. Large, flawless, single crystals are synthesized in an autoclave via the hydrothermal process.


title: Quartz

text: Quartz is a defining constituent of granite and other felsic igneous rocks. It is very common in sedimentary rocks such as sandstone and shale. It is a common constituent of schist, gneiss, quartzite and other metamorphic rocks. Quartz has the lowest potential for weathering in the Goldich dissolution series and consequently it is very common as a residual mineral in stream sediments and residual soils. Generally a high presence of quartz suggests a "mature" rock, since it indicates the rock has been heavily reworked and quartz was the primary mineral that endured heavy weathering.


title: Quartz

text: While the majority of quartz crystallizes from molten magma, quartz also chemically precipitates from hot hydrothermal veins as gangue, sometimes with ore minerals like gold, silver and copper. Large crystals of quartz are found in magmatic pegmatites. Well-formed crystals may reach several meters in length and weigh hundreds of kilograms.


title: Quartz

text: Elemental impurity incorporation strongly influences the ability to process and utilize quartz. Naturally occurring quartz crystals of extremely high purity, necessary for the crucibles and other equipment used for growing silicon wafers in the semiconductor industry, are expensive and rare. These high-purity quartz are defined containing less than 50 ppm of impurity elements. A major mining location for high purity quartz is the Spruce Pine Gem Mine in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, United States. Quartz may also be found in Caldoveiro Peak, in Asturias, Spain.


title: Quartz

text: The largest documented single crystal of quartz was found near Itapore, Goiaz, Brazil; it measured approximately 6.1×1.5×1.5 m and weighed 39,916 kilograms.


title: Quartz

text: Quartz is extracted from open pit mines. Miners occasionally use explosives to expose deep pockets of quartz. More frequently, bulldozers and backhoes are used to remove soil and clay and expose quartz veins, which are then worked using hand tools. Care must be taken to avoid sudden temperature changes that may damage the crystals.


title: Quartz

text: Almost all the industrial demand for quartz crystal (used primarily in electronics) is met with synthetic quartz produced by the hydrothermal process. However, synthetic crystals are less prized for use as gemstones. The popularity of crystal healing has increased the demand for natural quartz crystals, which are now often mined in developing countries using primitive mining methods, sometimes involving child labor.


title: Quartz

text: Tridymite and cristobalite are high-temperature polymorphs of SiO that occur in high-silica volcanic rocks. Coesite is a denser polymorph of SiO found in some meteorite impact sites and in metamorphic rocks formed at pressures greater than those typical of the Earth's crust. Stishovite is a yet denser and higher-pressure polymorph of SiO found in some meteorite impact sites. Lechatelierite is an amorphous silica glass SiO which is formed by lightning strikes in quartz sand.


title: Quartz

text: As quartz is a form of silica, it is a possible cause for concern in various workplaces. Cutting, grinding, chipping, sanding, drilling, and polishing natural and manufactured stone products can release hazardous levels of very small, crystalline silica dust particles into the air that workers breathe. Crystalline silica of respirable size is a recognized human carcinogen and may lead to other diseases of the lungs such as silicosis and pulmonary fibrosis.


title: Quartz

text: The word "quartz" comes from the German , which is of Slavic origin (Czech miners called it "křemen"). Other sources attribute the word's origin to the Saxon word "Querkluftertz", meaning "cross-vein ore".


title: Quartz

text: Quartz is the most common material identified as the mystical substance maban in Australian Aboriginal mythology. It is found regularly in passage tomb cemeteries in Europe in a burial context, such as Newgrange or Carrowmore in Ireland. The Irish word for quartz is "grianchloch", which means 'sunstone'. Quartz was also used in Prehistoric Ireland, as well as many other countries, for stone tools; both vein quartz and rock crystal were knapped as part of the lithic technology of the prehistoric peoples.


title: Quartz

text: While jade has been since earliest times the most prized semi-precious stone for carving in East Asia and Pre-Columbian America, in Europe and the Middle East the different varieties of quartz were the most commonly used for the various types of jewelry and hardstone carving, including engraved gems and cameo gems, rock crystal vases, and extravagant vessels. The tradition continued to produce objects that were very highly valued until the mid-19th century, when it largely fell from fashion except in jewelry. Cameo technique exploits the bands of color in onyx and other varieties.


title: Quartz

text: Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder believed quartz to be water ice, permanently frozen after great lengths of time. (The word "crystal" comes from the Greek word "κρύσταλλος", "ice".) He supported this idea by saying that quartz is found near glaciers in the Alps, but not on volcanic mountains, and that large quartz crystals were fashioned into spheres to cool the hands. This idea persisted until at least the 17th century. He also knew of the ability of quartz to split light into a spectrum.


title: Quartz

text: In the 17th century, Nicolas Steno's study of quartz paved the way for modern crystallography. He discovered that regardless of a quartz crystal's size or shape, its long prism faces always joined at a perfect 60° angle.


title: Quartz

text: Quartz's piezoelectric properties were discovered by Jacques and Pierre Curie in 1880. The quartz oscillator or resonator was first developed by Walter Guyton Cady in 1921. George Washington Pierce designed and patented quartz crystal oscillators in 1923. Warren Marrison created the first quartz oscillator clock based on the work of Cady and Pierce in 1927.


title: Quartz

text: Efforts to synthesize quartz began in the mid nineteenth century as scientists attempted to create minerals under laboratory conditions that mimicked the conditions in which the minerals formed in nature: German geologist Karl Emil von Schafhäutl (1803–1890) was the first person to synthesize quartz when in 1845 he created microscopic quartz crystals in a pressure cooker. However, the quality and size of the crystals that were produced by these early efforts were poor.


title: Quartz

text: By the 1930s, the electronics industry had become dependent on quartz crystals. The only source of suitable crystals was Brazil; however, World War II disrupted the supplies from Brazil, so nations attempted to synthesize quartz on a commercial scale. German mineralogist Richard Nacken (1884–1971) achieved some success during the 1930s and 1940s. After the war, many laboratories attempted to grow large quartz crystals. In the United States, the U.S. Army Signal Corps contracted with Bell Laboratories and with the Brush Development Company of Cleveland, Ohio to synthesize crystals following Nacken's lead. (Prior to World War II, Brush Development produced piezoelectric crystals for record players.) By 1948, Brush Development had grown crystals that were 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) in diameter, the largest to date. By the 1950s, hydrothermal synthesis techniques were producing synthetic quartz crystals on an industrial scale, and today virtually all the quartz crystal used in the modern electronics industry is synthetic.


title: Quartz

text: Quartz crystals have piezoelectric properties; they develop an electric potential upon the application of mechanical stress. An early use of this property of quartz crystals was in phonograph pickups. One of the most common piezoelectric uses of quartz today is as a crystal oscillator. The quartz clock is a familiar device using the mineral. The resonant frequency of a quartz crystal oscillator is changed by mechanically loading it, and this principle is used for very accurate measurements of very small mass changes in the quartz crystal microbalance and in thin-film thickness monitors.


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: is the result of a scientific drilling project of the Soviet Union in the Pechengsky District, near the Russian border with Norway, on the Kola Peninsula. The project attempted to drill as deep as possible into the Earth's crust.


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: Drilling began on 24 May 1970 using the "Uralmash-4E", and later the "Uralmash-15000" series drilling rig, and it became the deepest manmade hole in history in 1979. The diameter boreholes were drilled by branching from a central hole. The deepest reached in 1989, the deepest human-made hole on Earth, and remains so as of 2022.


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: In terms of true vertical depth, it remains the deepest borehole in the world. For two decades, it was also the world's longest borehole in terms of measured depth along the well bore until it was surpassed in 2008 by the long Al Shaheen Oil Well in Qatar.


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: Drilling began on 24 May 1970 using the Uralmash-4E, a serial drilling rig used for drilling oil wells. The rig was slightly modified to be able to reach a depth. In 1974, the new purpose-built Uralmash-15000 drilling rig was installed onsite, named after the new target depth, set at .


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: On 6 June 1979, the world depth record held by the Bertha Rogers hole in Washita County, Oklahoma, United States, at , was broken. In October 1982, the first hole reached , and the second hole was started in January 1983 from a depth of the first hole.


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: In 1983, the drill passed in the second hole, and drilling was stopped for about a year for numerous scientific and celebratory visits to the site.


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: This idle period may have contributed to a breakdown after drilling resumed; on 27 September 1984, after drilling to , a section of the drill string twisted off and was left in the hole. Drilling was restarted in September 1986 from from the first hole.


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: The third hole reached in 1989. In that year, the hole depth was expected to reach by the end of 1990 and by 1993.


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: In June 1990, a breakdown occurred in the third hole at of depth. The drilling of the fourth hole was started in January 1991 from of depth of third hole. The drilling of the fourth hole was stopped in April 1992 at of depth. Drilling of the fifth hole started in April 1994 from of depth of the third hole. Drilling was stopped in August 1994 at of depth due to lack of funds and the well itself was mothballed.


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: Because of higher-than-expected temperatures at this depth and location, instead of the expected , drilling deeper was deemed unfeasible. The unexpected decrease in density, the greater porosity, and the unexpectedly high temperatures caused the rock to behave somewhat like a plastic, making drilling nearly impossible.


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: The Kola Superdeep Borehole penetrated about a third of the way through the Baltic Shield continental crust, estimated to be around deep, reaching Archean rocks at the bottom. The project has been a site of extensive geophysical examinations. The stated areas of study were the deep structure of the Baltic Shield, seismic discontinuities and the thermal regime in the Earth's crust, the physical and chemical composition of the deep crust and the transition from upper to lower crust, lithospheric geophysics, and to create and develop technologies for deep geophysical study.


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: To scientists, one of the more fascinating findings to emerge from this well is that no transition from granite to basalt was found at the depth of about , where the velocity of seismic waves has a discontinuity. Instead, the change in the seismic wave velocity is caused by a metamorphic transition in the granite rock. In addition, the rock at that depth had been thoroughly fractured and was saturated with water, which was surprising. This water, unlike surface water, must have come from deep-crust minerals and had been unable to reach the surface because of a layer of impermeable rock.


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: Another unexpected discovery was a large quantity of hydrogen gas. The drilling mud that flowed out of the hole was described as "boiling" with hydrogen.


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: In 1992, an international geophysical experiment obtained a reflection seismic crustal cross-section through the well. The Kola-92 working group consisted of researchers from the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland, the University of Wyoming in the United States, and the University of Bergen in Norway, as well as several Russian earth science research institutions.


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: The drilling terminated in 1995 due to a lack of funds. The scientific team was transferred to the federal state unitary subsidiary enterprise "Kola Superdeep", reduced and reoriented to a thorough study of the exposed section. In 2007, the scientific team was dissolved and the equipment was transferred to a private company and partially liquidated.


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: In 2008, the company was liquidated due to unprofitability, and the site was abandoned. The site is still visited by curious sightseers, who have reported that the structure over the borehole has been partially destroyed or removed.


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: In May 2008, the Kola Superdeep Borehole's record "length" (but not record depth) was surpassed by a curved borehole of the extended reach drilling well BD-04A in the Al Shaheen Oil Field in Qatar, with a total length of and a horizontal reach of .


title: Kola Superdeep Borehole

text: In terms of depth below the surface, the Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3 retains the world record at reached in 1989 and is still the deepest artificial point on Earth.


title: Nicene Creed

text: The original Nicene Creed (; ; ) was first adopted at the First Council of Nicaea in 325. In 381, it was amended at the First Council of Constantinople. The amended form is also referred to as the Nicene Creed, or the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed for disambiguation.


title: Nicene Creed

text: The Nicene Creed is the defining statement of belief of Nicene or mainstream Christianity and in those Christian denominations that adhere to it. The Nicene Creed is part of the profession of faith required of those undertaking important functions within the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.


title: Nicene Creed

text: Nicene Christianity regards Jesus as divine and "begotten of the Father". Various non-Nicene doctrines, beliefs, and creeds have been formed since the fourth century, all of which are considered heresies by adherents of Nicene Christianity.


title: Nicene Creed

text: In Western Christianity, the Nicene Creed is in use alongside the less widespread Apostles' Creed. In musical settings, particularly when sung in Latin, this creed is usually referred to by its first word, . On Sundays and solemnities, one of these two creeds is recited in the Roman Rite Mass after the homily. In the Byzantine Rite, the Nicene Creed is sung or recited at the Divine Liturgy, immediately preceding the Anaphora (eucharistic prayer), and is also recited daily at compline.


title: Nicene Creed

text: The purpose of a creed is to provide a doctrinal statement of correct belief. The creeds of Christianity have been drawn up at times of conflict about doctrine: acceptance or rejection of a creed served to distinguish believers and heretics. For that reason, a creed was called in Greek a , which originally meant half of a broken object which, when fitted to the other half, verified the bearer's identity. The Greek word passed through Latin into English "symbol", which only later took on the meaning of an outward sign of something.


title: Nicene Creed

text: The Nicene Creed was adopted to resolve the Arian controversy, whose leader, Arius, a clergyman of Alexandria, "objected to Alexander's (the bishop of the time) apparent carelessness in blurring the distinction of nature between the Father and the Son by his emphasis on eternal generation". Emperor Constantine called the Council at Nicaea to resolve the dispute in the church which resulted from the widespread adoption of Arius' teachings, which threatened to destabilize the entire empire. Following the formulation of the Nicene Creed, Arius' teachings were henceforth marked as heresy.


title: Nicene Creed

text: The Nicene Creed of 325 explicitly affirms the Father as the "one God" and as the "Almighty," and Jesus Christ as "the Son of God", as "begotten of[...] the essence of the Father," and therefore as "consubstantial with the Father," meaning, "of the same substance" as the Father; "very God of very God." The Creed of 325 does mention the Holy Spirit but not as "God" or as "consubstantial with the Father." The 381 revision of the creed at Constantinople, which is often referred to as the Nicene Creed, speaks of the Holy Spirit as worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son. The Athanasian Creed, formulated about a century later, which was not the product of any known church council and not used in Eastern Christianity, describes in much greater detail the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The earlier Apostles' Creed, apparently formulated before the Arian controversy arose in the fourth century, does not describe the Son or the Holy Spirit as "God" or as "consubstantial with the Father."


title: Nicene Creed

text: The original Nicene Creed was first adopted at the First Council of Nicaea, which opened on 19 June 325. The text ends with anathemas against Arian propositions, preceded by the words: "We believe in the Holy Spirit" which terminates the statements of belief.


title: Nicene Creed

text: F. J. A. Hort and Adolf von Harnack argued that the Nicene Creed was the local creed of Caesarea (an important center of Early Christianity) recited in the council by Eusebius of Caesarea. Their case relied largely on a very specific interpretation of Eusebius' own account of the council's proceedings. More recent scholarship has not been convinced by their arguments. The large number of secondary divergences from the text of the creed quoted by Eusebius make it unlikely that it was used as a starting point by those who drafted the conciliar creed. Their initial text was probably a local creed from a Syro–Palestinian source into which they inserted phrases to define the Nicene theology. The Eusebian Creed may thus have been either a second or one of many nominations for the Nicene Creed.


title: Nicene Creed

text: The 1911 "Catholic Encyclopedia" says that, soon after the Council of Nicaea, the church composed new formulae of faith, most of them variations of the Nicene Symbol, to meet new phases of Arianism, of which there were at least four before the Council of Sardica (341), at which a new form was presented and inserted in its acts, although the council did not accept it.


title: Nicene Creed

text: What is known as the "Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed" or the "Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed", received this name because it was adopted at the Second Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople in 381 as a modification of the original Nicene Creed of 325. In that light, it also came to be very commonly known simply as the "Nicene Creed". It is the only authoritative "ecumenical" statement of the Christian faith accepted by the Catholic Church (with the addition of the Filioque), the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Church of the East, much of Protestantism including the Anglican communion. (The Apostles' and Athanasian creeds are not as widely accepted.)


title: Nicene Creed

text: It differs in a number of respects, both by addition and omission, from the creed adopted at the First Council of Nicaea. The most notable difference is the additional section:


title: Nicene Creed

text: Since the end of the 19th century, scholars have questioned the traditional explanation of the origin of this creed, which has been passed down in the name of the council, whose official acts have been lost over time. A local council of Constantinople in 382 and the Third Ecumenical Council (Council of Ephesus of 431) made no mention of it, with the latter affirming the 325 creed of Nicaea as a valid statement of the faith and using it to denounce Nestorianism. Though some scholarship claims that hints of the later creed's existence are discernible in some writings, no extant document gives its text or makes explicit mention of it earlier than the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon in 451. Many of the bishops of the 451 council themselves had never heard of it and initially greeted it skeptically, but it was then produced from the episcopal archives of Constantinople, and the council accepted it "not as supplying any omission but as an authentic interpretation of the faith of Nicaea". In spite of the questions raised, it is considered most likely that this creed was in fact introduced at the 381 Second Ecumenical Council.


title: Nicene Creed

text: On the basis of evidence both internal and external to the text, it has been argued that this creed originated not as an editing of the original Creed proposed at Nicaea in 325, but as an independent creed (probably an older baptismal creed) modified to make it more like the Nicene Creed. Some scholars have argued that the creed may have been presented at Chalcedon as "a precedent for drawing up new creeds and definitions to supplement the Creed of Nicaea, as a way of getting round the ban on new creeds in Canon 7 of Ephesus". It is generally agreed that the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed is not simply an expansion of the Creed of Nicaea, and was probably based on another traditional creed independent of the one from Nicaea.


title: Nicene Creed

text: The Third Ecumenical Council (Ephesus) reaffirmed the original 325 version of the Nicene Creed and declared that "it is unlawful for any man to bring forward, or to write, or to compose a different () faith as a rival to that established by the holy Fathers assembled with the Holy Ghost in Nicaea" (i.e., the 325 creed). The word is more accurately translated as used by the council to mean "different", "contradictory", rather than "another". This statement has been interpreted as a prohibition against changing this creed or composing others, but not all accept this interpretation. This question is connected with the controversy whether a creed proclaimed by an ecumenical council is definitive in excluding not only excisions from its text but also additions to it.


title: Nicene Creed

text: In one respect, the Eastern Orthodox Church's received text of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed differs from the earliest text, which is included in the acts of the Council of Chalcedon of 451: The Eastern Orthodox Church uses the singular forms of verbs such as "I believe", in place of the plural form ("we believe") used by the council. Byzantine Rite Eastern Catholic Churches use exactly the same form of the creed, since the Catholic Church teaches that it is wrong to add "and the Son" to the Greek verb "", though correct to add it to the Latin , which does not have precisely the same meaning. The form generally used in Western churches does add "and the Son" and also the phrase "God from God", which is found in the original 325 Creed.


title: Nicene Creed

text: The following table, which indicates by square brackets the portions of the 325 text that were omitted or moved in 381, and uses to indicate what phrases, absent in the 325 text, were added in 381, juxtaposes the earlier (AD 325) and later (AD 381) forms of this creed in the English translation given in Philip Schaff's compilation "The Creeds of Christendom" (1877).


title: Nicene Creed

text: In the late 6th century, some Latin-speaking churches added the word ("and the Son") to the description of the procession of the Holy Spirit, in what many Eastern Orthodox Christians have at a later stage argued is a violation of Canon VII of the Third Ecumenical Council, since the words were not included in the text by either the Council of Nicaea or that of Constantinople. This was incorporated into the liturgical practice of Rome in 1014. eventually became one of the main causes for the East-West Schism in 1054, and the failures of the repeated union attempts.


title: Nicene Creed

text: The Vatican stated in 1995 that, while the words ("and the Son") would indeed be heretical if used with the Greek verb (from , "out of" and , "(I) come or go")—which is one of the terms used by St. Gregory of Nazianzus and the one adopted by the Council of Constantinople—the word is not heretical when associated with the Latin verb and the related word . Whereas the verb in Gregory and other Fathers necessarily means "to originate from a cause or principle," the Latin term (from , "forward;" and , "to go") has no such connotation and simply denotes the communication of the Divine Essence or Substance. In this sense, is similar in meaning to the Greek term , used by the Fathers from Alexandria (especially Cyril of Alexandria) as well as others. Partly due to the influence of the Latin translations of the New Testament (especially of John 15:26), the term (the present participle of ) in the creed was translated into Latin as . In time, the Latin version of the creed came to be interpreted in the West in the light of the Western concept of , which required the affirmation of the to avoid the heresy of Arianism.


title: Nicene Creed

text: The view that the Nicene Creed can serve as a touchstone of true Christian faith is reflected in the name "symbol of faith", which was given to it in Greek and Latin, when in those languages the word "symbol" meant a "token for identification (by comparison with a counterpart)".


title: Nicene Creed

text: In the Roman Rite mass, the Latin text of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, with (God from God) and (and from the Son), phrases absent in the original text, was previously the only form used for the "profession of faith". The Roman Missal now refers to it jointly with the Apostles' Creed as "the Symbol or Profession of Faith or Creed", describing the second as "the baptismal Symbol of the Roman Church, known as the Apostles' Creed".


title: Nicene Creed

text: Some evangelical and other Christians consider the Nicene Creed helpful and to a certain extent authoritative, but not infallibly so in view of their belief that only Scripture is truly authoritative. Non-Trinitarian groups, such as the Church of the New Jerusalem, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Jehovah's Witnesses, explicitly reject some of the statements in the Nicene Creed.


title: Nicene Creed

text: There are several designations for the two forms of the Nicene Creed, some with overlapping meanings:


title: Nicene Creed

text: This section is not meant to collect the texts of all liturgical versions of the Nicene Creed, and provides only three, the Greek, the Latin, and the Armenian, of special interest. Others are mentioned separately, but without the texts. All ancient liturgical versions, even the Greek, differ at least to some small extent from the text adopted by the First Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople. The Creed was originally written in Greek, owing among other things to the location of the two councils.


title: Nicene Creed

text: Although the councils' texts have (" believe[...] confess[...] await"), the creed that the Churches of Byzantine tradition use in their liturgy has (" believe[...] confess[...] await"), accentuating the personal nature of recitation of the creed. The Latin text, as well as using the singular, has two additions: (God from God) and (and from the Son). The Armenian text has many more additions, and is included as showing how that ancient church has chosen to recite the creed with these numerous elaborations of its contents.


title: Nicene Creed

text: An English translation of the Armenian text is added; English translations of the Greek and Latin liturgical texts are given at English versions of the Nicene Creed in current use.


title: Nicene Creed

text: The Latin text adds and to the Greek. On the latter see The Filioque Controversy above. Inevitably also, the overtones of the terms used, such as a and , differ ( meaning ruler of all; meaning omnipotent, almighty). The implications of the difference in overtones of and was the object of the study "The Greek and the Latin Traditions regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit" published by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in 1996.


title: Nicene Creed

text: Again, the terms and , translated as "of one being" or "consubstantial", have different overtones, being based respectively on Greek (stable being, immutable reality, substance, essence, true nature), and Latin (that of which a thing consists, the being, essence, contents, material, substance).


title: Nicene Creed

text: , which in classical Latin is used with the accusative case of the thing held to be true (and with the dative of the person to whom credence is given), is here used three times with the preposition "in", a literal translation of the Greek (), and once in the classical preposition-less construction ().


title: Nicene Creed

text: The version in the Church Slavonic language, used by several Eastern Orthodox churches is practically identical with the Greek liturgical version.


title: Nicene Creed

text: This version is used also by some Byzantine Rite Eastern Catholic Churches. Although the Union of Brest excluded addition of the Filioque, this was sometimes added by Ruthenian Catholics, whose older liturgical books also show the phrase in brackets, and by Ukrainian Catholics. Writing in 1971, the Ruthenian Scholar Fr. Casimir Kucharek noted, "In Eastern Catholic Churches, the may be omitted except when scandal would ensue. Most of the Eastern Catholic Rites use it." However, in the decades that followed 1971 it has come to be used more rarely.


title: Nicene Creed

text: The versions used by Oriental Orthodoxy and the Church of the East may differ from the Greek liturgical version in having "We believe", as in the original text, instead of "I believe".


title: Nicene Creed

text: The version found in the 1662 "Book of Common Prayer" is still commonly used by some English speakers, but more modern translations are now more common. The International Consultation on English Texts published an English translation of the Nicene Creed, first in 1970 and then in successive revisions in 1971 and 1975. These texts were adopted by several churches. The Roman Catholic Church in the United States, which adopted the 1971 version in 1973, and the Catholic Church in other English-speaking countries, which in 1975 adopted the version published in that year, continued to use them until 2011, when it replaced them with the version in the "Roman Missal third edition". The 1975 version was included in the 1979 Episcopal Church (United States) "Book of Common Prayer", but with one variation: in the line "For us men and for our salvation", it omitted the word "men".


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Anthem Wrestling Exhibitions LLC, commonly known by its trade name Impact Wrestling (stylized as "IMPACT! Wrestling"), is an American professional wrestling promotion based in Nashville, Tennessee. It is a subsidiary of Anthem Sports & Entertainment.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Founded by Jeff and Jerry Jarrett in 2002, the promotion was initially known as NWA: Total Nonstop Action ("NWA-TNA") and was associated with the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), though not an official member. In 2004, the promotion became known as Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA), but it continued to use the NWA World Heavyweight and Tag Team championships as part of its agreement with the NWA. After the agreement ended in 2007, the company created its own TNA World Heavyweight and TNA World Tag Team championships. The promotion was purchased by Anthem at the beginning of 2017 and, in March of that year, was fully rebranded under its current name after its flagship, weekly television series.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: From its inception, the promotion had been considered the second-largest in the United States behind WWE. Impact was viewed by some to have fallen behind longtime rival Ring of Honor in 2017, with the loss of their U.S. television contract with Spike in 2014, as well as monetary and personnel issues, being noted as factors to their decline. Since 2019, Impact has been thought by many to have recovered, through its sustained international television distribution, and the purchase by its parent company of AXS TV, which subsequently began carrying Impact programming. Nonetheless, with the formation of All Elite Wrestling (AEW) that year, and that promotion's high-profile U.S. television deal with TNT (which is seen in more households than AXS), Impact is still viewed as a smaller promotion by comparison.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: The concept of TNA originated shortly after World Championship Wrestling (WCW) ended in 2001, with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, later WWE) gaining a monopoly on the industry. While on a fishing trip, Bob Ryder, Jeff Jarrett and Jerry Jarrett contemplated their futures in the professional wrestling business. Ryder suggested a company not reliant on television, but rather one going straight to pay-per-view. In July 2002, Vince Russo joined Jeff and Jerry Jarrett's NWA-TNA promotion as a creative writer and would assist in the writing and production of the shows. Russo states that he coined the name "Total Nonstop Action", the initials of the company "TNA" being a play on "T&A". The original intention, as they were exclusive to pay-per-view, was to be viewed as an edgier product than WWE.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Initially, TNA's show operated as the company's main source of revenue, in place of monthly pay-per-view events used by other promotions. These shows took place mostly at the Tennessee State Fairground Sports Arena in Nashville, Tennessee, nicknamed the "TNA Asylum". In October 2002, Panda Energy purchased a controlling interest (72%) of Total Nonstop Action Wrestling. TNA (which originally traded as "J Sports and Entertainment") was renamed "TNA Entertainment". Dixie Carter was appointed president of TNA Entertainment in spring 2003. "Xplosion" launched on November 27, 2002, as TNA's first regular cable show and featured exclusive matches taped at the TNA Asylum as well as exclusive interviews with TNA wrestlers. The last weekly pay-per-view took place on September 8, 2004.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: In May 2004, TNA introduced its second weekly television program, "Impact!" (stylized as "iMPACT!"), produced at Soundstage 21, nicknamed the "Impact Zone", at Universal Studios Florida and broadcast on Fox Sports Net. With the show's première, TNA introduced a six-sided wrestling ring, the implementation of the "Fox Box" displaying competitors and timekeeping for the match and a generally more sports-like style than the sports entertainment style exemplified by WWE.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: TNA would subsequently discontinue producing weekly pay-per-views in favor of a traditional monthly pay-per-view schedule, beginning with Victory Road in November 2004. TNA's television contract with Fox Sports expired in May 2005. Without television exposure, "Impact!" would continue to air through webcasts – originally made available via BitTorrent and eventually via RealPlayer – and replace "Xplosion"'s timeslot on Urban America Television.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: In August 2005, Marvel Toys launched the first line of TNA action figures, which included a six-sided ring and Ultimate X playset.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: On September 11, 2005, TNA held its Unbreakable pay per view. Unbreakable is remembered for the three-way match main event for the TNA X Division Championship, between A.J. Styles, Christopher Daniels, and Samoa Joe, which received a rare 5 Star match rating from wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer, the first and currently the only one the company had received.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Later that year, TNA would later secure a television deal with Spike TV; "Impact!" debuted on the network on October 1, 2005. The episode saw Team 3D make their TNA debut. TNA would gain attention for the many high-profile wrestlers that would join the promotion during "Impact"s run on Spike. From 2005 to 2009, these include Kevin Nash, Rhino, Christian Cage, Sting (who made appearances at previous "Asylum" shows), Scott Steiner, Kurt Angle, Booker T, and Mick Foley.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: In April 2006, TNA launched a YouTube channel, featuring clips from "Impact" and exclusive content. Beginning with Bound for Glory in October 2006, TNA began holding select pay-per-view events outside of Orlando, Florida. In January 2007, TNA announced a deal with New Motion, Inc. which led to the introduction of TNA Mobile service. TNA has also launched "TNA U TV"; podcasts aired through YouTube to help promote the company.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: In March 2008, Tristar Productions acquired an exclusive license deal to produce and distribute TNA trading cards and memorabilia. On September 9, 2008, Midway Games released the "TNA Impact"! video game. On October 23, 2008, TNA began producing its programming in HD. In addition, a new HD set for "Impact" was introduced, including new lighting, and large high-resolution screens.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: On June 21, 2009, TNA launched an online video-vault subscription-service where subscribers could watch past pay-per-views by choosing one of three payment options.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: In October 2009, TNA President Dixie Carter hired Hulk Hogan and former WCW President Eric Bischoff. Both obtained a position behind the scenes; with Bischoff part of creative and Hogan as a consultant. Under their tenure, TNA would see several revamps in 2010. Beginning with Genesis in January, TNA returned to using a four-sided ring. That month, Jakks Pacific announced a five-year agreement to produce TNA action figures. "Impact!" would also begin airing on Monday nights directly opposite of "WWE Raw", marking the first time that two major professional wrestling promotions would go head to head since the launch of WCW Monday Nitro in 1995. The show would permanently move to Mondays on March 8, 2010, Spike would keep the Thursday night slot open for repeats of the Monday night shows. During this time, Ric Flair, Rob Van Dam, Mr. Anderson would make their debuts, while Jeff Hardy would make his return. "Impact!" would later return to Thursday nights on May 3.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: During the May 3, 2011 "Impact!" television tapings, the show would change its name to "Impact Wrestling". On November 7, 2011, TNA revealed that Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) would become TNA's official developmental territory. In December 2011, TNA debuted their new India-based subsidiary promotion Ring Ka King. On May 31, 2012, "Impact Wrestling" began airing live at a new start time of 8 p.m. EST on Thursday nights. The live schedule would continue throughout 2012. In March 2013, TNA began taping Impact from different venues around the United States and terminated its lease with Universal Studios. On March 14, TNA introduced a new universal HD stage which would be used for all weekly programming. On November 2, TNA ended its relationship with OVW.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: TNA formed a relationship with Japanese promotion Wrestle-1 beginning in July 2013 with a meeting between TNA founder Jeff Jarrett and Wrestle-1 head Keiji Mutoh. It was arranged for Jarrett to wrestle for W-1 in October 2013. In November, A.J. Styles successfully defended the TNA World Heavyweight Championship at a Wrestle-1 show in Japan.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Hulk Hogan's contract with TNA expired in October 2013, ending his time as creative consultant with the company.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: From the period of 2013 to 2014, many well-known names or veterans of the company left TNA. In December 2013, A.J. Styles left TNA after his contract expired. Styles later said that he could not accept TNA's new contract offer, which would see him take a 60% cut in pay. TNA founder Jeff Jarrett would resign from the company in December 2013, but remained an "investor". The following year Jarrett revealed plans to start a new professional wrestling promotion, Global Force Wrestling. Further departures in 2014 included TNA veterans Sting, Chris Sabin, Hernandez, Christopher Daniels and Kazarian all leaving the company in that year, and the contracts of TNA Hall of Famers Bully Ray and Devon reportedly expired in October 2014, with TNA moving them to the alumni section of their roster in January 2015.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: In late July, the "TMZ" website reported that Spike TV was not renewing "Impact Wrestling" beyond October. TNA would refute the report, stating that negotiations were still ongoing. On August 14, "Impact Wrestling" moved to Wednesday nights. On August 20, TNA signed an extension with Spike TV until the end of 2014.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: In November 2014, TNA announced a new agreement with Discovery Communications to distribute its programming in the United States on Destination America and to selected international markets. Spike's outreach at the time was estimated to be more than 97 million homes while Destination America was estimated to reach 59 million households. "Impact Wrestling" ceased airing new televised events on Spike after November 19 episode. The final episodes of 2014 were "Best of TNA" clip shows. On January 7, 2015, "Impact Wrestling" moved to Destination America, with a live debut from The Manhattan Center's Grand Ballroom in New York City.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: In addition to "Impact Wrestling", which was now airing on Friday nights, two new shows produced were "Impact Wrestling: Unlocked", hosted by Mike Tenay, and "TNA Wrestling's Greatest Matches", a series presenting the best matches in the company's history. From December 2014 to March 2015, several employees re-signed with TNA, including Kurt Angle, Jeff Hardy, Gail Kim, Mr. Anderson, Abyss and Matt Hardy. Awesome Kong also re-joined the company following several years of absence. During this period, veteran Samoa Joe and commentator Tazz left the company by mutual consent.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: On April 27, 2015, Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan joined TNA as senior producer of creative and talent development.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Destination America gained over 41.94 million viewers over the course of 2015's first quarter, making this the channel's best first quarter ever, followed by their best May ever in prime time. In both cases, Discovery Communications touted "Impact Wrestling" as one of the reasons for the increase in viewers. Despite this success, Discovery Communications dropped "Unlocked" and "Greatest Matches" from their programming in May 2015.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: On November 19, TNA signed a deal with Pop TV to air "Impact Wrestling", where it premiered on Tuesday, January 5, 2016, in a live special held at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. With this move to Pop, "Impact Wrestling" introduced a new HD set, graphics and theme music. This show saw the semi-finals and finals of the TNA World Title Series, which was won by Ethan Carter III. Husband and wife team Mike Bennett and Maria Kanellis would debut soon after. Subsequent shows would include episodes taped during a tour of England, which would be the last TNA appearances for Kurt Angle. TNA returned to taping "Impact Wrestling" at the Impact Zone at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, beginning with a live Impact Wrestling on March 15. On March 19, longtime TNA wrestlers Eric Young and Bobby Roode left the promotion after 12 years. On April 22, Velvet Sky, another longtime TNA wrestler, left the company.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: On August 12, Billy Corgan became the promotion's new president, while Dixie Carter became chairwoman and Chief Strategy Officer.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: On October 13, Corgan sued TNA due to an unpaid debt which Corgan claimed TNA has defaulted on. The state of Tennessee has also put a lien on TNA for unpaid taxes. Anthem Sports & Entertainment, parent company of "Impact Wrestling"'s Canadian broadcaster, Fight Network, offered to help TNA and repay Corgan for the loans, while also offering additional financial assistance to TNA to help keep them from filing for bankruptcy. On October 31, Corgan lost his injunction that kept TNA from selling the company, but TNA was required to pay Corgan back by November 1. It was possible that one of the other minority owners could pay Corgan, effectively making them the majority owner of TNA.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: On November 3, the company revealed that Anthem Sports & Entertainment provided a credit facility to fund operations for TNA and that Corgan was no longer with the company as president. However, Corgan himself stated that neither TNA nor Anthem Sports & Entertainment had yet repaid the $2.7 million debt that was owed to him by TNA and, as such, he was considering suing, as well as converting the debt into a 36% stake. As the result of a settlement between Corgan and TNA, Anthem Sports & Entertainment had acquired the loans Corgan made to Carter.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Anthem Sports & Entertainment purchased a majority stake of TNA, re-organizing TNA's parent company. Dixie Carter retained a 5% minority stake in the company, but resigned as chairwoman after fourteen years with the company and joined Fight Media Group's advisory board. The promotion's parent company, TNA Entertainment, was changed firstly to Impact Ventures and then to Anthem Wrestling Exhibitions, LLC., with Anthem's Executive Vice President Ed Nordholm becoming President of the new parent company. On January 5, Jeff Jarrett was brought back by Anthem to serve as a consultant. Anthem re-branded the promotion as Impact Wrestling, after its primary television series two months later. Wrestlers Drew Galloway, Matt Hardy, Jeff Hardy, Jade, Crazzy Steve, Mike Bennett and Maria Kanellis left the company during this period.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: On April 20, Impact announced a merger with Jarrett's Global Force Wrestling (GFW). The company subsequently announced that they were re-branding again and taking the GFW name in June; the re-branding was short-lived as they severed ties with Jarrett that October. During that time, Anthem launched the Global Wrestling Network, a new streaming service which featured content from to their tape library and other sources. Jarrett subsequently filed a lawsuit against Anthem in the District Court of Tennessee for copyright infringement over the GFW rights; the lawsuit was ultimately settled out of court.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Don Callis and Scott D'Amore became Executive Vice Presidents in January 2018, taking charge of Impact Wrestling's day-to-day operations. At the first tapings under their tenure, the company reverted to a traditional four-sided ring, and the show also saw the return of former World Heavyweight Champion Austin Aries, as well the debuts of new wrestlers such as Kiera Hogan, Su Yung, Pentagón Jr., Fénix and Brian Cage. The company also announced a partnership with live streaming service Twitch to produce content for their platform, starting with "Brace for Impact", which was co-promoted with New Jersey-based promotion WrestlePro. Their first live show was "Impact vs. Lucha Underground", a co-promoted show with Lucha Underground.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: "Impact!" subsequently moved to Pursuit Channel beginning January 11, 2019. Two months later, the promotion announced that Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) would serve as its developmental territory once again. In May, Impact Plus replaced the Global Wrestling Network as the official streaming app for the promotion. "Impact!" began airing on Anthem-owned AXS TV after Bound for Glory in October.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Impact would hold events behind closed doors at Skyway Studios in Nashville. During the pandemic, the promotion cancelled its planned event, and Tessa Blanchard, who became the first woman to win the promotion's World Championship earlier that year at Hard to Kill, was fired and stripped of the championship after a long absence. Slammiversary saw the returns of The Motor City Machine Guns, Eric Young, Doc Gallows and EC3, as well as the debuts of Karl Anderson and Heath Slater.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: After the events of AEW Winter Is Coming on December 2, 2020, Impact began a partnership with All Elite Wrestling (AEW), which lasted until Bound for Glory 2021. AEW-contracted wrestlers Kenny Omega and Christian Cage held the Impact World Championship during this time; this marked Cage's first in-ring return to the promotion since 2008. In February 2021, Impact launched "Before the Impact" (abbreviated as "BTI"), and "Xplosion" was canceled after 19 years the following month. During No Surrender Impact announced a new partnership with New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW).


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Slammiversary 2021 marked the return of in-person spectators for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. That month, "BTI" and "Impact!" would crossover for the first time, when Josh Alexander faced T. J. Perkins for the X Division Championship in Impact's first-ever 60-minute Iron man match, which began on "BTI" and concluded in the opening minutes of "Impact!". Impact subsequently announced the end of their partnership with Twitch that August and launched a new YouTube membership program called "Impact Wrestling Insiders".


title: Impact Wrestling

text: In November 2022, Impact and DAZN signed a partnership where the streaming service will distribute select non-live shows in most countries except the United States, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: The promotion was originally formed by the Jarretts under a parent company known as J Sports & Entertainment, LLC.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Panda Energy International purchased a controlling interest (71%) in the company in 2002 from Jerry Jarrett, re-incorporating it as TNA Entertainment, LLC, in the process. In 2012, Panda Energy divested itself of its stake in TNA. Dixie Carter, the daughter of Panda Energy founder Robert Carter, who had been serving as TNA's president, acquired that stake, making her TNA's majority shareholder. Jeff Jarrett departed the company on December 22, 2013, but remained as minority shareholder until his temporary return on June 24, 2015, with the deal for his return including the transfer of his minority stake to Dixie Carter, making her sole shareholder.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: According to a report on August 7, 2015, TNA filed a new business name of Impact Ventures, LLC. It was reported near the beginning of 2016 that Aroluxe Marketing, a Brentwood, Tennessee-based marketing agency, had taken a stake in TNA at the start of 2016 in return for providing partial funding, as well as taking over TNA's production operations. It was reported in June 2016 that Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan acquired a minority stake in TNA from Dixie Carter, but he had instead provided a loan to Carter. Then on August 12, TNA appointed Corgan as the company's new president and the transition of Carter from President to the company's new chairman and Chief Strategy Officer. It was reported on September 16 by the "New York Post" that Canada's Fight Network, through its parent company, Anthem Sports & Entertainment Corporation, had taken a stake in TNA. On November 4, Corgan was removed as president, then on November 30 it also reported that Corgan had settled his lawsuit against TNA, with Anthem Sports & Entertainment Corp acquiring the loans Corgan made to Dixie in the process.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: In early 2017, TNA would go through a restructuring period that would see an ownership change, with Anthem taking 85%, Aroluxe 10% and Dixie Carter 5%. On January 4, 2017, Anthem Sports & Entertainment purchased an 85% majority stake of the company, re-organizing TNA's parent company to Anthem Wrestling Exhibitions, LLC, and Carter resigned as chairwoman after 14 years in charge, while joining the advisory board of Fight Media Group. Ed Nordholm, Anthem's Executive Vice President, then took over Anthem Wrestling Exhibitions as president.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Shortly after Anthem's acquisition of TNA, it was re-branded to Impact Wrestling. On January 5, Jeff Jarrett was brought back to the company by Anthem as an executive consultant, and later promoted to executive producer and chief creative officer. In April 2017, it was announced on "Impact!" that the promotion would "merge" with Jarrett's newer Global Force Wrestling promotion. In the lead-up to the Slammiversary XV PPV, Anthem officially announced its intent to acquire GFW to formalize the merger. However, after he took an indefinite leave of absence, the promotion later cut ties with Jarrett and had reverted to the Impact Wrestling brand on October 23. The deal for Anthem to acquire GFW was never completed.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: From June 2002 until September 2004, the promotion's original weekly pay-per-view shows took place mostly at the Tennessee State Fairground Sports Arena in Nashville, Tennessee, nicknamed the "TNA Asylum". There were a total of 111 weekly pay-per-views.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: From June 2004 to March 2013, TNA programming was taped at Universal Studios Florida's Soundstage 21. The Soundstages at Universal were dubbed the "Impact Zone" by the company. Pay-per-views were also broadcast from that location until October 2006, when Bound for Glory emanated from the Compuware Arena in Detroit.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Initially, TNA worked with Hermie Sadler's United Wrestling Federation in 2005 to create house shows. TNA permitted the usage of the ring and for championships to be defended at these events. TNA started running independent house shows on March 17, 2006. They would continue to work with United Wrestling Federation and promote independent shows at the same time, until 2007. In 2007, TNA first toured Europe, hosting two shows at Porto and Lisbon in Portugal with APW Wrestling. In 2008, TNA wrestlers appeared at Wrestle Kingdom II in Japan. Later on in 2008, TNA conducted its first tour of England, with most shows selling out. The promotion first toured Germany, Scotland and Ireland in 2009, France, Wales and the United Arab Emirates in 2010 and Belgium in 2012.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: In August 2007, live-events coordinator Craig Jenkins stated that TNA intended to stage eight pay-per-views and 96 house shows outside Orlando, Florida, in 2008.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: In 2009, during their United Kingdom tour, a house show at Wembley Arena in London broke TNA's attendance records. On July 2, 2010, MCU Park hosted a live TNA house show, which also broke the TNA domestic attendance record at the time and is currently the most attended live TNA house show in the United States, with a capacity crowd of 5,550.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: On January 31, 2013, TNA announced that they would tape their programming in different venues around the United States, with the first live show being held on March 14, in the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates, Illinois (a Chicago suburb). Unable to cover the rising costs of taping on the road, TNA would return to Universal Studios on November 21, 2013. The promotion would continue to occasionally tape programming from other venues; such as the Sands Casino Event Center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; the Manhattan Center's Grand Ballroom in New York City; The SSE Hydro in Glasgow; Manchester Arena in Manchester; Wembley Arena in London, as part of a January 2015 tour.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: In June 2017, the then-recently rebranded Impact Wrestling held a show in India, becoming the first major U.S. promotion to hold events that country. After Bound for Glory 2017 in November 2017, Impact would do a set of tapings in Ottawa.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Following the 2018 Redemption pay-per-view, Impact Wrestling would return to touring, taping in various smaller venues. The year's taping locations included Windsor, Ontario, Toronto, Mexico City, New York City, and Las Vegas. Impact hasn't returned to Universal Studios since then, and would later sell set items from their soundstage in Orlando.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: In 2019, Impact Wrestling held tapings in Philadelphia, Dallas, New York City, Houston, Windsor, Mexico City, Nashville, Toronto, Rahway, Fort Campbell, Owensboro, and other venues in Ontario.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Impact Wrestling programming was taped and held behind closed doors at Skyway Studios in the promotion's home base of Nashville, Tennessee from April 2020 through June 2021. Beginning with Slammiversary in July 2021, fans were allowed in attendance at Skyway. On October 23, 2021, Impact held their first event outside of Nashville in a year and a half with Bound for Glory, which took place just outside of Las Vegas in Sunrise Manor, Nevada.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: After a brief Las Vegas area residency to end 2021, Impact resumed a full schedule of live touring in January 2022.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: In March 2023, Impact is scheduled to hold events in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. This would mark their first shows outside of the U.S. in three years.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Impact Wrestling has worked with several international wrestling promotions, with championships from those promotions sometimes having been defended at Impact Wrestling events. Among the organizations Impact has had working relationships with are Mexico's Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) from 2007 to 2009 and The Crash, Japan's Inoki Genome Federation (IGF), New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), Wrestle-1 (W-1) and Pro Wrestling Noah (Noah).


title: Impact Wrestling

text: The initial relationship with NJPW lasted from 2008 to 2011. Then-known as TNA Wrestling, the promotion would send wrestlers to participate in NJPW's annual Wrestle Kingdom events, as well as NJPW sending future IWGP Heavyweight Champion Kazuchika Okada on a training excursion to TNA. The relationship would be strained, when IWGP Tag Team Champions Team 3D were held off of a New Japan tour in favor of appearing on "Impact Wrestling" tapings and Okada was given a Green Hornet-inspired gimmick, a decision Executive Vice President Scott D'Amore has since apologized for on behalf of the previous regime.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: On March 2, 2014, TNA collaborated with Wrestle-1 in producing the supershow in Tokyo, Japan, where three TNA championships were defended. In May 2015, it was reported that the relationship between TNA and Wrestle-1 had ended.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Since 2015, the promotion has had a working agreement with Mexico's Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide (AAA) and in 2018, announced a partnership with the AAA-affiliated "Lucha Underground", allowing their wrestlers from the show to appear for Impact on a regular basis. In April 2018, the two promotions held "Impact vs Lucha Underground" from WrestleCon in New Orleans to a sell out crowd.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: In early 2006, the promotion began a collaboration with Hermie Sadler's United Wrestling Federation. The agreement permitted UWF to use the TNA logo on posters and signage, as well as to use the six-sided ring with TNA branding. These shows were mainly promoted as 'UWF/TNA' events. The TNA name agreement ended at the end of 2006, as TNA began to promote their own house show events, though UWF still used a six-sided ring. These events were recorded and released on DVD by Highsports.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Impact Wrestling has worked with North American independent promotions in various collaborative efforts, such as the original Global Force Wrestling (another promotion founded by Jeff Jarrett), OMEGA Championship Wrestling (owned by Matt Hardy, Jeff Hardy and Gregory Helms) and Evolve Wrestling. Since 2018, Impact has established working relationships with a number of promotions to co-promote house shows, Twitch specials, the final Impact One Night Only events, and Impact Plus Monthly Specials. These promotions include, Future Stars of Wrestling, Smash Wrestling, AML Wrestling, Superkick'd, Border City Wrestling, WrestleCade, Rocky Mountain Pro, Rockstar Pro Wrestling, Wrestlepro, Wrestling Revolver, RISE, Destiny Wrestling, Big Time Wrestling (California), DEFY Wrestling and House of Hardcore.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Impact Wrestling would begin a partnership with All Elite Wrestling in December 2020, and also furthered its re-established relationship with NJPW in February 2021. With AEW also beginning a partnership with NJPW, commentators and analysts have describe these events as the establishment of a greater territory system, a concept dubbed by AEW as "The Forbidden Door". In October 2021, the working relationship between Impact and AEW ended following Bound for Glory.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: On the January 7, 2022 episode of "SmackDown", it was announced that Knockouts Champion Mickie James would enter the 2022 Royal Rumble match. Both WWE's official Twitter account and Impact's website confirmed this soon after, with the former recognizing James as an Impact champion.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: The X Division is known for its high-flying, high-risk style matches. While most wrestlers who perform are under , thus being cruiserweights, Impact would emphasize the high-risk nature of the moves that these wrestlers perform by removing all restraints from competing in the X Division and allowing wrestlers to perform almost stunt-like moves. Because of this, wrestlers such as Samoa Joe, billed at , Kurt Angle, billed at , and Abyss, billed at , have also competed in the division. The slogan "It's not about weight limits, it's about no limits" has been famously used to describe the division.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: In August 2011, a weight limit was introduced, though it was quietly repealed in March 2012. Further changes introduced in March 2013, including a weight limit of 230 lbs, and all matches being contested as triple threat matches, were also repealed in August.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: From the promotion's first show in June 2002, a standard four-sided wrestling ring was used. In June 2004, with the premiere of "Impact!", TNA switched to a six-sided ring, as occasionally used in AAA. The six-sided ring would be retired in January 2010, only making a brief return for the 2011 Destination X event. In 2014, after a fan-voted poll to determine what type of ring the company would use from June 2014, the six-sided ring would return. The promotion would continue to use the six-sided ring until January 2018.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: Impact wrestlers are forbidden by contract from working for other companies with televised wrestling shows, but are free to perform non-televised work for any other independent wrestling promotions, domestic or international, as well as televised events held by foreign promotions that Impact Wrestling is linked to or has a working relationship with (such as AAA and NOAH). Many Impact wrestlers perform regularly for various promotions on the independent circuit in addition to Impact Wrestling weekly shows. In 2012, the company changed its policy, preventing its talent from appearing at any independent events that are later released on DVD. Top wrestlers have guaranteed contracts, but the majority of the roster are paid on a per appearance basis. Impact wrestlers are classified as independent contractors and are not offered health coverage through the promotion. As of November 2017, Impact Wrestling contracts give the performers complete ownership over all intellectual property associated with their characters.


title: Impact Wrestling

text: The Hall of Fame was introduced on May 31, 2012. As part of a yearly process, selected inductees are chosen based on their overall contributions to Impact's history. On June 10, at Slammiversary 10, Sting was revealed as the first inductee into the Hall of Fame and his formal induction took place at Bound for Glory in October 2012.


title: Hollywood Walk of Fame

text: The Hollywood Walk of Fame is a historic landmark which consists of more than 2,700 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along 15 blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California. The stars are permanent public monuments to achievement in the entertainment industry, bearing the names of a mix of actors, directors, producers, musicians, theatrical/musical groups, fictional characters, and others.


title: Hollywood Walk of Fame

text: The Walk of Fame is administered by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce who hold the trademark rights and maintained by the self-financing Hollywood Historic Trust. It is a popular tourist attraction, with an estimated 10 million annual visitors in 2010.


title: Hollywood Walk of Fame

text: The Walk of Fame runs east to west on Hollywood Boulevard, from Gower Street to the "Hollywood and La Brea Gateway" at La Brea Avenue, plus a short segment on Marshfield Way that runs diagonally between Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea; and north to south on Vine Street between Yucca Street and Sunset Boulevard. According to a 2003 report by the market research firm NPO Plog Research, the Walk attracts about 10 million visitors annually—more than the Sunset Strip, the TCL Chinese Theatre (formerly Grauman's), the "Queen Mary", and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art combined—and has played an important role in making tourism the largest industry in Los Angeles County.


title: Hollywood Walk of Fame

text: , the Walk of Fame comprises 2,725 stars, which are spaced at intervals. The monuments are coral-pink terrazzo five-point stars rimmed with brass (not bronze, an oft-repeated inaccuracy) inlaid into a charcoal-colored terrazzo background. The name of the honoree is inlaid in brass block letters in the upper portion of each star. Below the inscription, in the lower half of the star field, a round inlaid brass emblem indicates the category of the honoree's contributions. The emblems symbolize five categories within the entertainment industry:


title: Hollywood Walk of Fame

text: Of all the stars on the Walk to date, 47% have been awarded in the motion pictures category, 24% in television, 17% in audio recording, 10% in radio, and fewer than 2% in the live performance category. According to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, approximately 20 new stars are added to the Walk each year.


title: Hollywood Walk of Fame

text: Locations of individual stars are not necessarily arbitrary. Stars of many particularly well-known celebrities are found in front of the TCL (formerly Grauman's) Chinese Theatre. Oscar-winners' stars are usually placed near the Dolby Theatre, site of the annual Academy Awards presentations. Locations are occasionally chosen for ironic or humorous reasons: Mike Myers's star lies in front of an adult store called the International Love Boutique, an association with his Austin Powers roles; Roger Moore's star and Daniel Craig's star are located at 7007 Hollywood Boulevard in recognition of their titular role in the James Bond 007 film series; Ed O'Neill's star is located outside a shoe store in reference to his character's occupation on the TV show "Married ... with Children"; and the last star, at the very end of the westernmost portion of the Walk, belongs to The Dead End Kids.


title: Hollywood Walk of Fame

text: Honorees may request a specific location for their star, although final decisions remain with the Chamber. Jay Leno, for example, requested a spot near the corner of Hollywood Blvd. and Highland Ave. because he was twice picked up at that location by police for vagrancy (though never actually charged) shortly after his arrival in Hollywood. George Carlin chose to have his star placed in front of the KDAY radio station near the corner of Sunset Blvd. and Vine St., where he first gained national recognition. Lin-Manuel Miranda chose a site in front of the Pantages Theatre where his musicals, "In The Heights" and "Hamilton", played. Carol Burnett explained her choice in her 1986 memoir: While working as an usherette at the historic Warner Brothers Theatre (now the Hollywood Pacific Theatre) during the 1951 run of Alfred Hitchcock's film "Strangers on a Train", she took it upon herself to advise a couple arriving during the final few minutes of a showing to wait for the next showing, to avoid seeing (and spoiling) the ending. The theater manager fired her on the spot for "insubordination" and humiliated her by stripping the epaulets from her uniform in the theater lobby. Twenty-six years later, at her request, Burnett's star was placed at the corner of Hollywood and Wilcox—in front of the theater.


title: Hollywood Walk of Fame

text: Special category stars recognize various contributions by corporate entities, service organizations, and special honorees, and display emblems unique to those honorees. For example, former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley's star displays the Seal of the City of Los Angeles; the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) star emblem is a replica of a Hollywood Division badge; and stars representing corporations, such as Victoria's Secret and the Los Angeles Dodgers, display the honoree's corporate logo. The "Friends of the Walk of Fame" monuments are charcoal terrazzo squares rimmed by miniature pink terrazzo stars displaying the five standard category emblems, along with the sponsor's corporate logo, with the sponsor's name and contribution in inlaid brass block lettering. Special stars and Friends monuments are granted by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce or the Hollywood Historic Trust, but are not part of the Walk of Fame proper and are located nearby on private property.


title: Hollywood Walk of Fame

text: The monuments for the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon are uniquely shaped: Four identical circular moons, each bearing the names of the three astronauts (Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., and Michael Collins), the date of the first Moon landing ("7/20/69"), and the words "Apollo XI", are set on each of the four corners of the intersection of Hollywood and Vine.