title: Velvet Revolver

text: The resulting album, titled "Contraband", was released on June 8, 2004. Helped by the success of the single "Slither", it debuted at number one on the "Billboard" 200, selling over 250,000 copies in the first week. "Contraband" went on to sell four million copies worldwide, 2.9 million of which were sold in the United States, and was certified 2× platinum by the RIAA. Both "Slither" and "Fall to Pieces" managed to peak at number one on the Mainstream Rock Chart as well as number 56 and 67 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, respectively. "Slither" also peaked at number one on the Modern Rock Chart and number 35 on the UK Singles Chart. The album's third single, "Dirty Little Thing", peaked at number eight on the Mainstream Rock chart.


title: Velvet Revolver

text: Critically, the album was generally well received. Despite being praised for its hedonism and maturity, critics noted a disconnection between "singer and band". Velvet Revolver won the Kerrang! Award for Best International Newcomer in 2004, and the following year they won the Best Hard Rock Performance Grammy Award for "Slither". They also received a nomination for Rock Artist of the Year at the Billboard Music Awards while "Fall to Pieces" was nominated for a Song of the Year/Rock Radio Radio Music Award. They recorded a new song entitled "Come On, Come In" for the movie "Fantastic Four" in 2005, which peaked at number 14 on the Mainstream Rock Chart. "Fall to Pieces" then re-entered the charts, peaking at number twenty-five on the Adult Top 40 the same year.


title: Velvet Revolver

text: Velvet Revolver toured extensively for nineteen months in support of "Contraband". They toured both the United States and Europe twice, while also performing in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. They performed at Live 8 and various festivals including Download Festival, as well as Ozzfest. It was during the tour that the band members, with the exception of Kushner, began to relapse on alcohol and drugs. Though they managed to get clean in time for the recording of their new album, Slash felt that "[the band] lost [Weiland]" and "thought the overall spirit of everything was declining at that point."


title: Velvet Revolver

text: Weiland announced in 2005 that Velvet Revolver's next album would be titled "Libertad" and would be a concept album. When they started writing material, they decided against the concept idea. Initially, the band started working with producer Rick Rubin on the album. However, due to his methods, such as having a crew to do the work and engineering while only popping in occasionally, and due to the fact that he was also working with other bands at the same time, they decided against continuing with Rubin. At the suggestion of Weiland, Velvet Revolver began working with Brendan O'Brien. Slash stated that O' Brien "brought more than just discipline to the equation, he brought a musicality that stems from the fact that he plays guitar, bass and drums. At any given moment he could play along [with the band] and it really helped the process." While writing for the album, Weiland believed that his bandmates were going to reunite with Guns N' Roses when the band's manager was talking to Axl Rose about switching management companies, and were not going to record their second album. He was later convinced by the band that this was not the case.


title: Velvet Revolver

text: Following the completion of the album, Velvet Revolver performed for and inducted Van Halen into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with Weiland and Slash speaking on the band's behalf, on March 12, 2007. The band played a medley of "Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love" and "Runaround". Shows in South America with Aerosmith followed in April. They released the EP "Melody and the Tyranny" on June 1 to serve as a precursor to the release of their new album, which featured two songs from "Libertad", a cover of Talking Heads song "Psycho Killer" and a video documentary about the making of "Libertad" as well as a live video of the band performing "Do It for the Kids".


title: Velvet Revolver

text: "Libertad" was released on July 3, 2007, peaking at number five on the Billboard 200. The album's first single "She Builds Quick Machines" peaked at 74 on the Hot Canadian Digital Singles. The second and third singles, "The Last Fight" and "Get Out the Door", both peaked at number 16 and 34 on the Mainstream Rock Chart, respectively. Critical reception to the album was mixed. Though some critics praised the album and felt that "Libertad" gave the band an identity of their own, outside of the Guns N' Roses and Stone Temple Pilots comparisons, others described the album as "bland" and noted that the band have still to gel with them "play[ing] to their strengths instead of finding a collective sound."


title: Velvet Revolver

text: In support of "Libertad", Velvet Revolver toured North America with Alice in Chains from August 2007 to October. They also performed at the Virgin Festival, Gods of Metal, and Download in 2007. A November tour of Japan was canceled after they were denied visas, and in 2008, a tour of Australia was postponed, due to health issues, and later canceled following Weiland's decision to voluntarily enter a rehab facility. On November 21, 2007, Weiland was arrested after crashing his car while driving on an L.A. highway. He was charged with driving under the influence of drugs with a prior conviction and later released on $40,000 bail. Velvet Revolver then toured both the US and the UK, as well as some European shows, on the Rock n' Roll as It Should Be tour from January 24 to April 1, 2008. They also played at the Dubai Desert Rock Festival on March 8 the same year. It was during the tour that Weiland "got back into his old ways", which started to take their toll on the rest of the band with the cancellation of the Australian tour seen as the "final blow".


title: Velvet Revolver

text: On the UK tour, the band members never spoke with Weiland, with the exception of a few arguments around the stage. Tensions came to a head during Velvet Revolver's Glasgow show on March 20, 2008, where Weiland announced to the crowd that it was the band's last tour, unaware that the other band members were already planning on firing him. After Sorum posted a message about the show on his website, Weiland issued a statement through Blabbermouth.net in response, saying he "made many attempts to remain cordial with the members of [Velvet Revolver], but mainly, the likes of [Sorum]" and that "[the band] were a gang. But ego and jealousy can get the better of anyone." Slash later stated that it would not be Velvet Revolver's last tour. Weiland's departure was announced on April 1. Weiland also departed the cover band Camp Freddy, which also featured Sorum, and reunited with Stone Temple Pilots, before being fired in 2013.


title: Velvet Revolver

text: After Weiland's departure, the band began recording and searching for a new singer. The search was sporadic with the band spending some time auditioning singers, then turning into solo projects, returning to the band, then abandoning it again. Several names were rumored to be auditioning for the band through the years. Myles Kennedy (Alter Bridge) was strongly rumored due to his collaborations with Slash; Lenny Kravitz, Chester Bennington of Linkin Park, Steve Isaacs formerly of Skycycle and the Panic Channel, Royston Langdon of Spacehog, Donovan Leitch of Camp Freddy, Ours singer Jimmy Gnecco and Scars on Broadway guitarist Franky Perez, as well as previous auditionee Sebastian Bach. Kushner later revealed that Perez was officially hired by the band as vocalist for a brief time in 2008.


title: Velvet Revolver

text: Slash, McKagan, and Sorum all contributed to the song "Kissed It" for the Macy Gray album "The Sellout", which was released on June 22, 2010. Despite not featuring Kushner, the trio were credited as Velvet Revolver on the album. The band released their first concert DVD on November 16, 2010, entitled "Live In Houston", which was filmed June 18, 2004, at the Verizon Wireless Theater while the band was touring in support of "Contraband". Slash, McKagan and Sorum made a performance at the Road Recovery benefit concert on September 13 with a guest appearance from Kushner.


title: Velvet Revolver

text: Velvet Revolver reunited for a one-off performance with Scott Weiland at a benefit concert for the late John O'Brien, on January 12, 2012. Following a benefit show for the Road Recovery in 2011 with the other Velvet Revolver members, each one agreed to a one-off reunion before Kushner invited Weiland, who also agreed. Kushner also stated it was then unknown what Velvet Revolver's plans were for the future after the reunion show; "I know everyone's got other commitments, but I think everyone's like, 'Let's get this thing done and get through this and then we'll see.'"


title: Velvet Revolver

text: In April 2012, Weiland remarked that he would like to reunite permanently with Velvet Revolver, saying that "if Maynard James Keenan can do it with A Perfect Circle and Tool, then there's no reason why I shouldn't go and do it with both bands". Further in May in an interview with ABC Radio Weiland said that he had reunited with the band permanently for a tour and an album, which was denied a few days later by Slash in an interview with 93X.


title: Velvet Revolver

text: On May 12, 2014, in an interview at the MusiCares benefit concert, Slash told journalist Lucas H. Gordon that he "think[s] [they're] gonna audition a singer" in the future. However, he also stated that he would be touring with his solo band "for the next year and a half."


title: Velvet Revolver

text: On June 29, 2014, in an interview to Totalrock radio, Duff McKagan talked to Hayley Leggs in Clisson France about the subject of a new lead vocalist for Velvet Revolver and revealed that there had been at least one audition for the role of lead vocalist, but said that the person that they auditioned did not properly impress the remaining members of the band. He also ruled himself out of being the band's lead vocalist.


title: Velvet Revolver

text: On December 3, 2015, Weiland was found dead on his tour bus around 9 pm, one day before he was to perform in Minnesota with his band the Wildabouts, which ended the possible reunion. Both Slash and McKagan rejoined Guns N' Roses in 2016.


title: Velvet Revolver

text: Velvet Revolver's first album "Contraband" was described by Johnny Loftus of AllMusic as an "updated version of Guns N' Roses swagger behind Scott Weiland's glammy, elastic vocals." David Browne of "Entertainment Weekly" stated that "[a]nyone expecting "Use Your Illusion III," though, will be in for a slight buzzkill" and that "[t]he songs suggest the pop grunge of Weiland's old band more than the careening overdrive of GN'R." A number of reviewers made some comparisons to the members previous bands, with PopMatters reviewer David Powell stating that ""Contraband" is a pretty good record of unpretentious rock and roll that suffers from inevitable comparison with the best efforts of its parent bands." He went on to state that while Velvet Revolver's "heritage is evident on most of the songs", "Contraband" "improves with repeat listening, which is encouraging." Velvet Revolver's second album "Libertad" saw the band's style change with the presence of producer Brendan O'Brien, noted by AllMusic reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine. Erlewine also stated that "too often, there are concessions between Weiland and the others during the course of a song." Tom Sinclair of "Entertainment Weekly" stated that "Libertad" "feels both comfortingly familiar and vaguely exotic." Songs such as "Let it Roll" and "She Mine" have seen some comparisons to the Doors, the Rolling Stones and the Stooges, as noted by "San Francisco Chronicle" reviewer Jaan Uhelszki. The "New York Post" commented that "Slash's guitar riffs throughout this new record are as aggressive as a caged cat" and "


title: Velvet Revolver

text: Velvet Revolver have received one Grammy Award. The band won the Grammy when "Slither" was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2005. The song "Fall to Pieces" received a nomination for Song of the Year/Rock Radio Radio Music Award in 2005. The band won the Best International Newcomer Kerrang! Award in 2004 while they were nominated for a Rock Artist of the Year Billboard Music Award in 2005.


title: History of chess

text: The history of chess can be traced back nearly 1500 years to its earliest known predecessor, called chaturanga, in India; its prehistory is the subject of speculation. From India it spread to Persia. Following the Arab invasion and conquest of Persia, chess was taken up by the Muslim world and subsequently spread to Spain and the rest of Southern Europe. The game evolved roughly into its current form by about 1500 CE.


title: History of chess

text: "Romantic chess" was the predominant playing style from the late 18th century to the 1880s. Chess games of this period emphasized quick, tactical maneuvers rather than long-term strategic planning. The Romantic era of play was followed by the Scientific, Hypermodern, and New Dynamism eras. In the second half of the 19th century, modern chess tournament play began, and the first official World Chess Championship was held in 1886. The 20th century saw great leaps forward in chess theory and the establishment of the World Chess Federation. In 1997, an IBM supercomputer beat Garry Kasparov, the then world chess champion, in the famous Deep Blue versus Garry Kasparov match, ushering the game into an era of computer domination. Since then, computer analysis – which originated in the 1970s with the first programmed chess games on the market – has contributed to much of the development in chess theory and has become an important part of preparation in professional human chess. Later developments in the 21st century made the use of computer analysis far surpassing the ability of any human player accessible to the public. Online gaming, which first appeared in the mid-1990s, also became popular in the 21st century.


title: History of chess

text: Precursors to chess originated in India. There, its early form in the 7th century CE was known as "chaturaṅga" (), which translates to "four divisions (of the military)": infantry, cavalry, elephantry, and chariotry. These forms are represented by the pieces that would evolve into the modern pawn, knight, bishop, and rook, respectively.


title: History of chess

text: Chess was introduced to Persia from India and became a part of the princely or courtly education of Persian nobility. Around 600 CE in Sassanid Persia, the name for the game became "chatrang" (), which subsequently evolved to "shatranj" (; ) after the conquest of Persia by the Rashidun Caliphate, due to the lack of native "ch" and "ng" sounds in the Arabic language. The rules were developed further during this time; players started calling "Shāh!" (Persian for "King!") when attacking the opponent's king, and "Shāh Māt!" (Persian for "the king is helpless" – see checkmate) when the king was attacked and could not escape from attack. These exclamations persisted in chess as it traveled to other lands.


title: History of chess

text: The game was taken up by the Muslim world after the early Arab Muslims conquered the Sassanid Empire, with the pieces largely keeping their Persian names. The Moors of North Africa rendered the Persian term ""shatranj"" as "shaṭerej", which gave rise to the Spanish ', ' and ""; in Portuguese it became , and in Greek (ζατρίκιον), but in the rest of Europe it was replaced by versions of the Persian "shāh" ("king"). Thus, the game came to be called or in Latin, in Italian, in Catalan, in French (Old French ), in Dutch, in German, in Polish, in Latvian, in Danish, in Norwegian, in Swedish, in Finnish, in South Slavic languages, in Hungarian and in Romanian; there are two theories about why this change happened:


title: History of chess

text: The Mongols call the game "shatar", and in Ethiopia it is called "senterej", both evidently derived from "shatranj".


title: History of chess

text: Chess spread directly from the Middle East to Russia, where chess became known as шахматы (, literally "checkmates", a plurale tantum).


title: History of chess

text: The game reached Western Europe and Russia by at least three routes, the earliest being in the 9th century. By the year 1000 it had spread throughout Europe. Introduced into the Iberian Peninsula by the Moors in the 10th century, it was described in a famous 13th-century Spanish manuscript covering "shatranj", backgammon and dice named the "Libro de los juegos", which is the earliest European treatise on chess as well as being the oldest document on European tables games.


title: History of chess

text: Chess spread throughout the world and many variants of the game soon began taking shape. Buddhist pilgrims, Silk Road traders and others carried it to the Far East where it was transformed and assimilated into a game often played on the intersection of the lines of the board rather than within the squares. "Chaturanga" reached Europe through Persia, the Byzantine empire and the expanding Arabian empire. Muslims carried chess to North Africa, Sicily, and Iberia by the 10th century.


title: History of chess

text: The game was developed extensively in Europe. By the late 15th century, it had survived a series of prohibitions and Christian Church sanctions to almost take the shape of the modern game. Modern history saw reliable reference works, competitive chess tournaments, and exciting new variants. These factors added to the game's popularity, further bolstered by reliable timing mechanisms (first introduced in 1861), effective rules, and charismatic players.


title: History of chess

text: The earliest precursor of modern chess is a game called chaturanga, which flourished in India by the 6th century, and is the earliest known game to have two essential features found in all later chess variations—different pieces having different powers (which was not the case with checkers and Go), and victory depending on the fate of one piece, the king of modern chess. A common theory is that India's development of the board, and chess, was likely due to India's mathematical enlightenment involving the creation of the number zero. Other game pieces (speculatively called "chess pieces") uncovered in archaeological findings are considered as coming from other, distantly related board games, which may have had boards of 100 squares or more.


title: History of chess

text: Chess was designed for an "ashtāpada" (Sanskrit for "having eight feet", i.e. an 8×8 squared board), which may have been used earlier for a backgammon-type race game (perhaps related to a dice-driven race game still played in south India where the track starts at the middle of a side and spirals into the center). Ashtāpada, the uncheckered 8×8 board served as the main board for playing chaturanga. Other Indian boards included the 10×10 "Dasapada" and the 9×9 "Saturankam". Traditional Indian chessboards often have X markings on some or all of squares a1 a4 a5 a8 d1 d4 d5 d8 e1 e4 e5 e8 h1 h4 h5 h8: these may have been "safe squares" where capturing was not allowed in a dice-driven backgammon-type race game played on the ashtāpada before chess was invented.


title: History of chess

text: The Cox-Forbes theory, proposed in the late 18th century by Hiram Cox, and later developed by Duncan Forbes, asserted that the four-handed game chaturaji was the original form of chaturanga. The theory is no longer considered tenable.


title: History of chess

text: In Sanskrit, the word "chaturaṅga" literally means "having four limbs (or parts)" and in epic poetry often means "army" (the four parts are elephants, chariots, horsemen, foot soldiers). The name came from a battle formation mentioned in the Indian epic Mahabharata. The game chaturanga was a battle-simulation game which rendered Indian military strategy of the time.


title: History of chess

text: Some people formerly played chess using a die to decide which piece to move. There was an unproven theory that chess started as this dice-chess and that the gambling and dice aspects of the game were removed because of Hindu religious objections.


title: History of chess

text: Scholars in areas to which the game subsequently spread, for example the Arab Abu al-Hasan 'Alī al-Mas'ūdī, detailed the Indian use of chess as a tool for military strategy, mathematics, gambling and even its vague association with astronomy. Mas'ūdī notes that ivory in India was chiefly used for the production of chess and backgammon pieces, and asserts that the game was introduced to Persia from India, along with the book "Kelileh va Demneh," during the reign of emperor Nushirwan.


title: History of chess

text: In some variants, a win was by checkmate, or by stalemate, or by "bare king" (taking all of an opponent's pieces except the king).


title: History of chess

text: In some parts of India the pieces in the places of the rook, knight and bishop were renamed by words meaning (in this order) Boat, Horse, and Elephant, or Elephant, Horse, and Camel, but keeping the same moves.


title: History of chess

text: The Karnamak-i Ardeshir-i Papakan, a Pahlavi epical treatise about the founder of the Sassanid Persian Empire, mentions the game of chatrang as one of the accomplishments of the legendary hero, Ardashir I, founder of the Empire. The oldest recorded game in chess history is a 10th-century game played between a historian from Baghdad and a pupil.


title: History of chess

text: A manuscript explaining the rules of the game called "Matikan-i-chatrang" (the book of chess) in Middle Persian or Pahlavi still exists.


title: History of chess

text: In the 11th-century "Shahnameh", Ferdowsi describes a Raja visiting from India who re-enacts the past battles on the chessboard. A translation in English, based on the manuscripts in the British Museum, is given below:


title: History of chess

text: The "Shahnameh" goes on to offer an apocryphal account of the origins of the game of chess in the story of Talhand and Gav, two half-brothers who vie for the throne of Hind (India). They meet in battle and Talhand dies on his elephant without a wound. Believing that Gav had killed Talhand, their mother is distraught. Gav tells his mother that Talhand did not die by the hands of him or his men, but she does not understand how this could be. So the sages of the court invent the game of chess, detailing the pieces and how they move, to show the mother of the princes how the battle unfolded and how Talhand died of fatigue when surrounded by his enemies. The poem uses the Persian term "Shāh māt" (check mate) to describe the fate of Talhand.


title: History of chess

text: The philosopher and theologian Al-Ghazali mentions chess in "The Alchemy of Happiness" (c. 1100). He uses it as a specific example of a habit that may cloud a person's good disposition:


title: History of chess

text: The appearance of the chess pieces had altered greatly since the times of chaturanga, with ornate pieces and chess pieces depicting animals giving way to abstract shapes. This is because of a Muslim ban on the game's lifelike pieces, as they were said to have been too like idols. The Islamic sets of later centuries followed a pattern which assigned names and abstract shapes to the chess pieces, as Islam forbids depiction of animals and human beings in art. These pieces were usually made of simple clay and carved stone.


title: History of chess

text: As a strategy board game played in China, chess is believed to have been derived from the Indian chaturanga. Chaturanga was transformed into the game xiangqi where the pieces are placed on the intersection of the lines of the board rather than within the squares. The object of the Chinese variation is similar to chaturanga, i.e. to render helpless the opponent's king, known as "general" on one side and "governor" on the other. Chinese chess also borrows elements from the game of Go, which was played in China since at least the 6th century BC. Owing to the influence of Go, Chinese chess is played on the intersections of the lines on the board, rather than in the squares. The game of Xianqi is also unique in that the middle rank represents a river, and is not divided into squares. Chinese chess pieces are usually flat and resemble those used in checkers, with pieces differentiated by writing their names on the flat surface.


title: History of chess

text: An alternative origin theory contends that chess arose from xiangqi or a predecessor thereof, existing in China since the 3rd century BC. David H. Li, a translator of ancient Chinese texts, hypothesizes that general Han Xin drew on the earlier game of Liubo to develop an early form of Chinese chess in the winter of 204–203 BC. The German chess historian Peter Banaschak, however, points out that Li's main hypothesis "is based on virtually nothing." He notes that the "Xuanguai lu", authored by the Tang Dynasty minister Niu Sengru (779–847), remains the first real source on the Chinese chess variant xiangqi.


title: History of chess

text: A prominent variant of chess in East Asia is the game of shogi, transmitted from India to China and Korea before finally reaching Japan. The three distinguishing features of shogi are:


title: History of chess

text: Drops were not originally part of shogi. In the 13th century, shogi underwent an expansion, creating the game of dai shogi, played on a 15×15 board with many new pieces, including the independently invented rook, bishop and queen of modern Western chess, the drunk elephant that promotes to a second king, and also the even more powerful lion, which among other idiosyncrasies has the power to move or capture twice per turn. Around the 14th or 15th centuries, the popularity of dai shogi then waned in favour of the smaller chu shogi, played on a smaller 12×12 board which removed the weakest pieces from dai shogi, similarly to the development of Courier chess in the West. In the meantime, the original 9×9 shogi, now termed sho shogi, continued to be played, but was regarded as less prestigious than chu shogi and dai shogi. Chu shogi was very popular in Japan, and the rook, bishop, and drunk elephant from it were added to sho shogi, where the first two remain today.


title: History of chess

text: In the 15th and 16th centuries, yet more shogi variants were described, on large boards and with many more pieces. The 1694 book "Shōgi Zushiki" details tenjiku shogi (16×16), dai dai shogi (17×17), maka dai dai shogi (19×19), and tai shogi (25×25); it also mentions wa shogi (11×11), ko shogi (19×19), and taikyoku shogi (36×36). It is not thought that these games were played very much.


title: History of chess

text: Chu shogi declined in popularity after the addition of drops to sho shogi and the removal of the drunk elephant in the 16th century, becoming moribund around the late 20th century. These changes to sho shogi created what is essentially the modern game of shogi.


title: History of chess

text: The Thai variant of chess, makruk is a close living relative to chaturanga, retaining the vizier, non-checkered board, limited promotion, offset kings, and elephant-like bishop move.


title: History of chess

text: Names recorded from the 1880s by Russian sources, quoted in Murray, among the Soyot people (who at the time spoke the Soyot Turkic language) include: "merzé" (dog), "täbä" (camel), "ot" (horse), "ōl" (child) and Mongolian names for the other pieces. This game is called shatar; a large 10×10 variant called hiashatar was also played.


title: History of chess

text: The change with the queen is likely due to the Arabic word "firzān" or Persian word "farzīn" (= "vizier") being confused with Turkic or Mongolian native words ("merzé" = "mastiff", "bar" or "bars" = "tiger", "arslan" = "lion").


title: History of chess

text: Chess was also recorded from the Yakuts, Tunguses, and Yukaghirs; but only as a children's game among the Chukchi. Chessmen have been collected from the Yakutat people in Alaska, having no resemblance to European chessmen, and thus likely part of a chess tradition coming from Siberia.


title: History of chess

text: Chess passed from Persia to the Arab world, where its name changed to Arabic shatranj. From there it passed to Western Europe, probably via Spain.


title: History of chess

text: Over the centuries, features of European chess (e.g. the modern moves of queen and bishop, and castling) found their way via trade into Islamic areas. Murray's sources found the old moves of queen and bishop still current in Ethiopia. The game became so popular it was used in writing at that time, played by nobility and regular people. The poet al-Katib once said, "The skilled player places his pieces in such a way as to discover consequences that the ignorant man never sees... thus, he serves the Sultan's interests, by showing how to foresee disaster."


title: History of chess

text: Chess has 1000 years of history in Russia. Chess was probably brought to Old Russia in 9th century via the Volga-Caspian trade route. From the 10th century cultural connections with the Byzantine Empire and the Vikings also influenced the history of chess in Russia. The vocabulary in Russian chess has various foreign-language elements and testifies to different influences in the evolution of chess in Russia. Chess is mentioned in folk poems as a popular game and is documented in the Old Russian "byliny". Numerous archeological finds of the chess game have already been found in the regions of Old Russia. From 1262 on chess was called in Russia "shakhmaty". Various foreign travellers commented that in the 16th century, chess was popular among all classes in Russia. Ivan IV the Terrible, who ruled Russia from 1530 to 1584, is said to have died while playing chess. In 1791 the popular chess book "Morals of Chess" by Benjamin Franklin was translated into Russian and published in the country. Chess enjoys a very high status in Russia and was gradually introduced as a school subject in all primary schools since 2017.


title: History of chess

text: Shatranj made its way via the expanding Islamic Arabian empire to Europe. It also spread to the Byzantine empire, where it was called . Chess appeared in Southern Europe during the end of the first millennium, often introduced to new lands by conquering armies, such as the Norman Conquest of England. Previously little known, chess became popular in Northern Europe when figure pieces were introduced.


title: History of chess

text: In the 14th century, Timur played an enlarged variation of the game which is commonly referred to as Tamerlane chess. This complex game involved each pawn having a particular purpose, as well as additional pieces.


title: History of chess

text: The sides are conventionally called White and Black. But, in earlier European chess writings, the sides were often called Red and Black because those were the commonly available colours of ink when handwriting drawing a chess game layout. In such layouts, each piece was represented by its name, often abbreviated (e.g. "ch'r" for French "chevalier" = "knight").


title: History of chess

text: The social value attached to the game – seen as a prestigious pastime associated with nobility and high culture – is clear from the expensive and exquisitely made chessboards of the medieval era. The popularity of chess in the Western courtly society peaked between the 12th and the 15th centuries. The game found mention in the vernacular and Latin language literature throughout Europe, and many works were written on or about chess between the 12th and the 15th centuries. H. J. R. Murray divides the works into three distinct parts: the didactic works e.g. Alexander of Neckham's "De scaccis" (c. 1180); works of morality like "Liber de moribus hominum et officiis nobilium sive super ludo scacchorum" (Book of the customs of men and the duties of nobles or the Book of Chess), written by Jacobus de Cessolis; and the works related to various chess problems, written largely after 1205. Chess terms, like "check," were used by authors as a metaphor for various situations.


title: History of chess

text: Chess was soon incorporated into the knightly style of life in Europe. Peter Alfonsi, in his work "Disciplina Clericalis," listed chess among the seven skills that a good knight must acquire. Chess also became a subject of art during this period, with caskets and pendants decorated in various chess forms. Queen Margaret of England had green and red chess sets made of jasper and crystal. Kings Henry I, Henry II and Richard I of England were chess patrons. King Alfonso X of Castile and Tsar Ivan IV of Russia gained a similar status.


title: History of chess

text: Saint Peter Damian denounced the bishop of Florence in 1061 for playing chess even when aware of its evil effects on the society. The bishop of Florence defended himself by declaring that chess involved skill and was therefore "unlike other games," and similar arguments followed in the coming centuries. Two incidents in 13th-century London, in which men of Essex resorted to violence resulting in death as an outcome of playing chess, caused further sensation and alarm. The growing popularity of the game – now associated with revelry and violence – alarmed the Church.


title: History of chess

text: The practice of playing chess for money became so widespread during the 13th century that Louis IX of France issued an ordinance against gambling in 1254. This ordinance turned out to be unenforceable and was largely neglected by the common public, and even the courtly society, which continued to enjoy the now-prohibited chess tournaments uninterrupted.


title: History of chess

text: The pieces, which had been nonrepresentational in Islamic countries (see piece values in shantranj), changed shape in Christian cultures. Carved images of men and animals reappeared. The shape of the rook, originally a rectangular block with a V-shaped cut in the top, changed; the two top parts separated by the split tended to get long and hang over, and in some old pictures look like horses' heads. The split top of the piece now called the bishop was interpreted as a bishop's mitre or a fool's cap.


title: History of chess

text: By the mid-12th century, the pieces of the chess set were depicted as kings, queens, bishops, knights and men at arms. Chessmen made of ivory began to appear in North-West Europe, and ornate pieces of traditional knight warriors were used as early as the mid 13th century. The initially nondescript pawn had now found association with the "pedes", "pedinus," or the footman, which symbolized both infantry and loyal domestic service.


title: History of chess

text: The following table provides a glimpse of the changes in names and character of chess pieces as they crossed from India through Persia to Europe:


title: History of chess

text: The game, as played during the early Middle Ages, was slow, with many games lasting days. Some variations in rules began to change the shape of the game by the year 1300. A notable, but initially unpopular, change was the ability of the pawn to move two places in the first move instead of one.


title: History of chess

text: Attempts to make the start of the game run faster to get the opposing pieces in contact sooner included:


title: History of chess

text: The queen and bishop remained relatively weak until between 1475 AD and 1500 AD, in Spain (in the Kingdom of Valencia), the queen's and bishop's modern moves started and spread, making chess close to its modern form. The first document showing the Queen (or Dama) moving this way is the allegorical poem Scachs d'amor, written in Catalan in Valencia in 1475. This form of chess got such names as "Queen's Chess" or "Mad Queen Chess" (Italian "alla rabiosa" = "with the madwoman"). This led to much more value being attached to the previously minor tactic of pawn promotion. Checkmate became easier and games could now be won in fewer moves. These new rules quickly spread in Spain and throughout the rest of Western Europe, with the exception of the rules about stalemate, which were finalized in the early 19th century. The modern move of the queen may have started as an extension of its older ability to once move two squares with jump, diagonally or straight. Marilyn Yalom says that the new move of the queen started in Spain: see history of the queen.


title: History of chess

text: A poem "Caïssa" published in 1527 led to the chess rook being often renamed as "castle", and the modern shape of the rook chess piece; see Vida's poem for more information.


title: History of chess

text: An Italian player, Gioacchino Greco, regarded as one of the first true professionals of the game, authored an analysis of a number of composed games that illustrated two differing approaches to chess. His work was influential in popularizing chess, and demonstrated many theories regarding game play and tactics.


title: History of chess

text: The first full work dealing with the various winning combinations was written by François-André Danican Philidor of France, regarded as the best chess player in the world for nearly 50 years, and published in the 18th century. He wrote and published "L'Analyse des échecs" (The Analysis of Chess), an influential work which appeared in more than 100 editions.


title: History of chess

text: Writings on the theory of how to play chess began to appear in the 15th century. The oldest surviving printed chess book, "Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez" ("Repetition of Love and the Art of Playing Chess") by Spanish churchman Luis Ramirez de Lucena was published in Salamanca in 1497. Lucena and later masters like Portuguese Pedro Damiano, Italians Giovanni Leonardo Di Bona, Giulio Cesare Polerio and Gioachino Greco or Spanish bishop Ruy López de Segura developed elements of openings and started to analyze simple endgames.


title: History of chess

text: In the 18th century the center of European chess life moved from the Southern European countries to France. The two most important French masters were François-André Danican Philidor, a musician by profession, who discovered the importance of pawns for chess strategy, and later Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais who won a famous series of matches with the Irish master Alexander McDonnell in 1834. Centers of chess life in this period were coffee houses in big European cities like "Café de la Régence" in Paris and "Simpson's Divan" in London.


title: History of chess

text: As the 19th century progressed, chess organization developed quickly. Many chess clubs, chess books and chess journals appeared. There were correspondence matches between cities; for example the London Chess Club played against the Edinburgh Chess Club in 1824. Chess problems became a regular part of 19th-century newspapers; Bernhard Horwitz, Josef Kling and Samuel Loyd composed some of the most influential problems. In 1843, von der Lasa published his and Bilguer's "Handbuch des Schachspiels" ("Handbook of Chess"), the first comprehensive manual of chess theory.


title: History of chess

text: Competitive chess became visible in 1834 with the La Bourdonnais-McDonnell matches, and the 1851 London Chess tournament raised concerns about the time taken by the players to deliberate their moves. On recording time it was found that players often took hours to analyze moves, and one player took as much as two hours and 20 minutes to think over a single move at the London tournament. The following years saw the development of speed chess, five-minute chess and the most popular variant, a version allowing a bank of time to each player in which to play a previously agreed number of moves, e.g. two hours for 30 moves. In the final variant, the player who made the predetermined number of moves in the agreed time received additional time budget for his next moves. Penalties for exceeding a time limit came in form of fines and forfeiture. Since fines were easy to bear for professional players, forfeiture became the only effective penalty; this added "lost on time" to the traditional means of losing such as checkmate and resigning.


title: History of chess

text: In 1861 the first time limits, using sandglasses, were employed in a tournament match at Bristol, England. The sandglasses were later replaced by pendulums. Modern clocks, consisting of two parallel timers with a small button for a player to press after completing a move, were later employed to aid the players. A tiny latch called a flag further helped settle arguments over players exceeding time limit at the turn of the 19th century.


title: History of chess

text: A Russian composer, Vladimir Korolkov, authored a work entitled "Excelsior" in 1958 in which the White side wins only by making six consecutive captures by a pawn. Position analysis became particularly popular in the 19th century. Many leading players were also accomplished analysts, including Max Euwe, Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov and Jan Timman. Digital clocks appeared in the 1980s.


title: History of chess

text: Another problem that arose in competitive chess was when adjourning a game for a meal break or overnight. The player who moved last before adjournment would be at a disadvantage, as the other player would have a long period to analyze before having to make a reply when the game was resumed. Preventing access to a chess set to work out moves during the adjournment would not stop him from analyzing the position in his head. Various strange ideas were attempted, but the eventual solution was the "sealed move". The final move before adjournment is not made on the board but instead is written on a piece of paper which the referee seals in an envelope and keeps safe. When the game is continued after adjournment, the referee makes the sealed move and the players resume.


title: History of chess

text: The first modern chess tournament was held in London in 1851 and won, surprisingly, by German Adolf Anderssen, who was relatively unknown at the time. Anderssen was hailed as the leading chess master, and his brilliant, energetic attacking style became typical for the time, although it was retrospectively regarded as strategically shallow. Sparkling games like Anderssen's Immortal game and Evergreen Game or Morphy's Opera game were regarded as the highest possible summit of the chess art.


title: History of chess

text: Deeper insight into the nature of chess came with two younger players. American Paul Morphy, an extraordinary chess prodigy, won against all important competitors, including Anderssen, during his short chess career between 1857 and 1863. Morphy's success stemmed from a combination of brilliant attacks and sound strategy; he intuitively knew how to prepare attacks. Prague-born Wilhelm Steinitz later described how to avoid weaknesses in one's own position and how to create and exploit such weaknesses in the opponent's position. In addition to his theoretical achievements, Steinitz founded an important tradition: his triumph over the leading Polish-German master Johannes Zukertort in 1886 is regarded as the first official World Chess Championship. Steinitz lost his crown in 1894 to a much younger German mathematician Emanuel Lasker, who maintained this title for 27 years, the longest tenure of all World Champions.


title: History of chess

text: It took a prodigy from Cuba, José Raúl Capablanca (World champion 1921–27), who loved simple positions and endgames, to end the German-speaking dominance in chess; he was undefeated in tournament play for eight years until 1924. His successor was Russian-French Alexander Alekhine, a strong attacking player, who died as the World champion in 1946, having briefly lost the title to Dutch player Max Euwe in 1935, regaining it two years later.


title: History of chess

text: Between the world wars, chess was revolutionized by the new theoretical school of so-called hypermodernists like Aron Nimzowitsch and Richard Réti. They advocated controlling the center of the board with distant pieces rather than with pawns, inviting opponents to occupy the center with pawns which become objects of attack.


title: History of chess

text: Since the end of 19th century, the number of annually held master tournaments and matches quickly grew. Some sources state that in 1914 the title of chess grandmaster was first formally conferred by Tsar Nicholas II of Russia to Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall, but this is a disputed claim. The tradition of awarding such titles was continued by the World Chess Federation (FIDE), founded in 1924 in Paris. In 1927, Women's World Chess Championship was established; the first to hold it was Czech-English master Vera Menchik.


title: History of chess

text: During World War II, many prominent chess players died or were killed, including: Isaak Appel, Zoltan Balla, Sergey Belavenets, Henryk Friedman, Achilles Frydman, Eduard Gerstenfeld, Alexander Ilyin-Genevsky, Mikhail Kogan, Jakub Kolski, Leon Kremer, Arvid Kubbel, Leonid Kubbel, Salo Landau, Moishe Lowtzky, Vera Menchik, Vladimir Petrov, David Przepiorka, Ilya Rabinovich, Vsevolod Rauzer, Nikolai Riumin, Endre Steiner, Mark Stolberg, Abram Szpiro, Karel Treybal, Alexey Troitzky, Samuil Vainshtein, Heinrich Wolf, and Lazar Zalkind.


title: History of chess

text: After the death of Alekhine, a new World Champion was sought in a tournament of elite players ruled by FIDE, who have controlled the title since then, with a sole interruption. The winner of the 1948 tournament, Russian Mikhail Botvinnik, ushered in an era of Soviet dominance in the chess world. Until the end of the Soviet Union, there was only one non-Soviet champion, American Bobby Fischer (champion 1972–75).


title: History of chess

text: In the previous informal system, the World Champion decided which challenger he would play for the title and the challenger was forced to seek sponsors for the match. FIDE set up a new system of qualifying tournaments and matches. The world's strongest players were seeded into "Interzonal tournaments", where they were joined by players who had qualified from "Zonal tournaments". The leading finishers in these Interzonals would go on the "Candidates" stage, which was initially a tournament, later a series of knock-out matches. The winner of the Candidates would then play the reigning champion for the title. A champion defeated in a match had a right to play a rematch a year later. This system worked on a three-year cycle.


title: History of chess

text: Botvinnik participated in championship matches over a period of fifteen years. He won the world championship tournament in 1948 and retained the title in tied matches in 1951 and 1954. In 1957, he lost to Vasily Smyslov, but regained the title in a rematch in 1958. In 1960, he lost the title to the Latvian prodigy Mikhail Tal, an accomplished tactician and attacking player. Botvinnik again regained the title in a rematch in 1961.


title: History of chess

text: Following the 1961 event, FIDE abolished the automatic right of a deposed champion to a rematch, and the next champion, Armenian Tigran Petrosian, a genius of defense and strong positional player, was able to hold the title for two cycles, 1963–69. His successor, Boris Spassky from Russia (1969–72), was a player able to win in both positional and sharp tactical style.


title: History of chess

text: The next championship saw the first non-Soviet challenger since World War II, Bobby Fischer, who defeated his Candidates opponents by unheard-of margins and won the world championship match. In 1975, however, Fischer refused to defend his title against Soviet Anatoly Karpov when FIDE refused to meet his demands, and Karpov obtained the title by default. Karpov defended his title twice against Viktor Korchnoi and dominated the 1970s and early 1980s with a string of tournament successes.


title: History of chess

text: Karpov's reign finally ended in 1985 at the hands of another Russian player, Garry Kasparov. Kasparov and Karpov contested five world title matches between 1984 and 1990; Karpov never won his title back.


title: History of chess

text: In 1993, Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short cut ties with FIDE to organize their own match for the title and formed a competing Professional Chess Association (PCA). From then until 2006, there were two simultaneous World Champions and World Championships: the PCA or Classical champion extending the Steinitzian tradition in which the current champion plays a challenger in a series of many games; the other following FIDE's new format of many players competing in a tournament to determine the champion. Kasparov lost his Classical title in 2000 to Vladimir Kramnik of Russia.


title: History of chess

text: Earlier in 1999, Kasparov as the reigning world champion played a game online against the world team composed of more than 50,000 participants from more than 75 countries. The moves of the world team were decided by plurality vote, and after 62 moves played over four months Kasparov won the game.


title: History of chess

text: The FIDE World Chess Championship 2006 reunified the titles, when Kramnik beat the FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov and became the undisputed World Chess Champion. In September 2007, Viswanathan Anand from India became the next champion by winning a championship tournament. In October 2008, Anand retained his title, decisively winning the rematch against Kramnik. Anand retained his title until 2013, when he lost it to Magnus Carlsen from Norway, the current World Chess Champion. Carlsen defended his title four times. However, he declined to defend his title in the 2023 championship, and thus will relinquish it to the winner of that match.


title: History of chess

text: Stalemate was originally considered an inferior form of victory; at various times it has been considered a win, a draw, or even a loss for the player delivering it. Since the 18th century, it has been considered a draw.


title: History of chess

text: The convention that White moves first was established in the 19th century; previously either White or Black could move first.


title: History of chess

text: Rules concerning draws by repetition and the fifty-move rule have been refined and now require a formal claim. Perpetual check is no longer included in the rules of chess.


title: History of chess

text: There have been no recent changes to the moves of the pieces, but the wording of some rules has been changed for the purposes of clarity.


title: History of chess

text: In line with the rule against receiving outside assistance, if a player's mobile phone or other electronic device generates sound, the player is immediately forfeited. In amateur tournaments players are asked to hand their phones to the tournament director; in professional tournaments they may be required to go through a metal detector.


title: Accelerationism

text: Accelerationism is a range of Marxist and reactionary ideas in critical and social theory that propose that social processes, such as capitalist growth and technological change, should be drastically intensified to destabilize systems to create further radical social change referred to as "acceleration". The term also refers to the post-Marxist idea that because of capitalism's internal contradictions and instabilities which can jeopardize its growth, the abolition of the system and its class structures could be brought about by its acceleration. Various ideas, including Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's idea of deterritorialization, Jean Baudrillard's proposals for "fatal strategies", and aspects of the theoretical systems and processes developed by English philosopher, and later Dark Enlightenment commentator, Nick Land, are crucial influences on accelerationism, which aims to analyze and subsequently promote the social, economic, cultural, and libidinal forces that constitute the process of acceleration.


title: Accelerationism

text: Accelerationism has since been taken as an ideological spectrum divided into mutually contradictory left-wing and right-wing variants. Both support the indefinite intensification of capitalism and its structures as well as the conditions for a technological singularity, a hypothetical point in time where technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible.


title: Accelerationism

text: However, the term has, in a manner strongly distinguished from original accelerationist theorists, been used by right-wing extremists such as neo-fascists, neo-Nazis, white nationalists and white supremacists to increasingly refer to an "acceleration" of racial conflict through assassinations, murders and terrorist attacks as a means to violently achieve a white ethnostate.


title: Accelerationism

text: The term "accelerationism" was first coined by professor and author Benjamin Noys in his 2010 book "The Persistence of the Negative" to describe the trajectory of certain post-structuralists who embraced unorthodox Marxist and counter-Marxist overviews of capital, such as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their 1972 book "Anti-Oedipus", Jean-François Lyotard in his 1974 book "Libidinal Economy" and Jean Baudrillard in his 1976 book "Symbolic Exchange and Death".


title: Accelerationism

text: English alt-right theorist and writer Nick Land, commonly credited with creating and inspiring accelerationism's basic ideas and concepts, cited a number of philosophers who express anticipatory accelerationist attitudes in his 2017 essay "A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism". Firstly, Friedrich Nietzsche argued in a fragment in "The Will to Power" that "the leveling process of European man is the great process which should not be checked: one should even accelerate it." Then, taking inspiration from this notion for "Anti-Oedipus", Deleuze and Guattari speculated on an unprecedented "revolutionary path" to further perpetuate capitalism's tendencies that would later become a central idea of accelerationism:


title: Accelerationism

text: Land also cites Karl Marx, who in his 1848 speech "On the Question of Free Trade" anticipated accelerationist principles a century before Deleuze and Guattari by describing free trade as socially destructive and fuelling class conflict, then effectively arguing for it:


title: Accelerationism

text: Land attributes the increasing speed of the modern world, along with the associated decrease in time available to think and make decisions about its events, to unregulated capitalism and its ability to exponentially grow and self-improve, describing capitalism as "a positive feedback circuit, within which commercialization and industrialization mutually excite each other in a runaway process." He argues that the best way to deal with capitalism is to participate more in order to foster even greater exponential growth and self-improvement via creative destruction, believing such acceleration of those abilities and technological progress to be intrinsic to capitalism but impossible for non-capitalist systems, and stating that "Capital revolutionizes itself more thoroughly than any extrinsic 'revolution' possibly could."


title: Accelerationism

text: The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), an experimental theory collective that existed from 1995 to 2003, included Land as well as other influential social theorists such as Mark Fisher and Sadie Plant as members. Prominent contemporary left-wing accelerationists include Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, authors of the "Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics"; and the Laboria Cuboniks collective, who authored the manifesto "Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation". For Mark Fisher, writing in 2012, "Land's withering assaults on the academic left [...] remain trenchant", although problematic since "Marxism is nothing if it is not accelerationist". Aria Dean notably synthesized the analysis of racial capitalism with accelerationism, arguing that the binary between humans, and machines and capital, is already blurred by the scars of the Atlantic slave trade. Benjamin H. Bratton's book "The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty" has been described as concerning accelerationist ideas, focusing on how information technology infrastructures undermine modern political geographies and proposing an open-ended "design brief". Tiziana Terranova's "Red Stack Attack!" links Bratton's stack model and left-wing accelerationism. Out of Xenofeminism grew a strand of accelerationist thought labeled "gender accelerationism," asserting that the destruction of the patriarchy and the gender binary is not just a preferred future, but an outright inevitability of capitalism's acceleration.


title: Accelerationism

text: Left-wing accelerationism, commonly referred to as "L/Acc", is often attributed to Mark Fisher, a prior CCRU member and mentor for Srnicek and Williams. Left-wing accelerationism seeks to explore, in an orthodox and conventional manner, the ways in which modern society has the momentum to create futures that are equitable and liberatory. While both strands of accelerationist thinking remain rooted in a similar range of thinkers, left accelerationism appeared with the intent to use their ideas for the goal of achieving an egalitarian future. In response to this strand of accelerationism and its optimism for egalitarianism and liberation, which departs from prior interests in experimentation and delirium, Land rebuked its ideas in an interview with "The Guardian", saying that "the notion that self-propelling technology is separable from capitalism is a deep theoretical error".


title: Accelerationism

text: Since "accelerationism" was coined in 2010, the term has taken on several new meanings, particularly by right-wing extremist movements and terrorist organizations, that has led the term to be sensationalized on multiple occasions. Several commentators have used the label "accelerationist" to describe a controversial political strategy articulated by the Slovenian philosopher, Freudo-Marxist theorist, and writer Slavoj Žižek. An example often cited of this is when, in a November 2016 interview with Channel 4 News, Žižek asserted that were he an American citizen, he would vote for former U.S. president Donald Trump as the candidate more likely to disrupt the "status quo" of politics in that country.


title: Accelerationism

text: In spite of its original philosophical and theoretical interests, since the late 2010s, international networks of neo-fascists, neo-Nazis, White nationalists, and White supremacists have increasingly used the term "accelerationism" to refer to right-wing extremist goals, and have been known to refer to an "acceleration" of racial conflict through violent means such as assassinations, murders, terrorist attacks and eventual societal collapse, in order to achieve the building of a White ethnostate. Far-right accelerationism has been widely considered as detrimental to public safety. The inspiration for this distinct variation is occasionally cited as American Nazi Party and National Socialist Liberation Front member James Mason's newsletter "Siege", where he argued for sabotage, mass killings, and assassinations of high-profile targets to destabilize and destroy the current society, seen as a system upholding a Jewish and multicultural New World Order. His works were republished and popularized by the Iron March forum and Atomwaffen Division, right-wing extremist organizations strongly connected to various terrorist attacks, murders, and assaults. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks hate groups and files class action lawsuits against discriminatory organizations and entities, "on the case of white supremacists, the accelerationist set sees modern society as irredeemable and believe it should be pushed to collapse so a fascist society built on ethnonationalism can take its place. What defines white supremacist accelerationists is their belief that violence is the only way to pursue their political goals."


title: Accelerationism

text: Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings that killed 51 people and injured 49 others, strongly encouraged right-wing accelerationism in a section of his manifesto titled "Destabilization and Accelerationism: Tactics". It also influenced John Timothy Earnest, the perpetrator of the Escondido mosque fire at Dar-ul-Arqam Mosque in Escondido, California; and committing the Poway synagogue shooting which resulted in one dead and three injured, and influenced Patrick Crusius, the perpetrator of the El Paso Walmart shooting that killed 23 people and injured 23 others. Tarrant and Earnest in turn influenced Juraj Krajčík, the perpetrator of the 2022 Bratislava shooting that left dead two patrons of a gay bar. Sich Battalion urged its members to buy a copy of Tarrant's manifesto, encouraging them to “get inspired” by it.


title: Accelerationism

text: Although these right-wing extremist variants and their connected strings of terrorist attacks and murders are regarded as certainly uninformed by critical theory, which was a prime source of inspiration for Land's original ideas that led to accelerationism, Land himself became interested in the Atomwaffen-affiliated theistic Satanist organization Order of Nine Angles (ONA), that adheres to the ideology of Neo-Nazi terrorist accelerationism, describing the ONA's works as "highly-recommended" in a blog post. Since the 2010s, the political ideology and religious worldview of the Order of Nine Angles, founded by the British neo-Nazi leader David Myatt in 1974, have increasingly influenced militant neo-fascist and neo-Nazi insurgent groups associated with right-wing extremist and White supremacist international networks, most notably the Iron March forum.


title: Virgin Group

text: Virgin Group Ltd. is a British multinational venture capital conglomerate founded by Richard Branson and Nik Powell in February 1970.


title: Virgin Group

text: Virgin Group's date of incorporation is listed as 1989 by the Companies House, who class it as a holding company; however Virgin's business and trading activities date back to the 1970s. The net worth of Virgin Group was estimated at £5–5.5 billion as of November 2014.


title: Virgin Group

text: The name "Virgin" arose in 1970 when Richard Branson and Nik Powell formed a record shop, first as mail order and in 1971 with a physical store. They considered themselves virgins in business. Branson has described the "V" in the logo as an expressive tick, representing the Virgin seal of approval.


title: Virgin Group

text: The original logo from 1973 was a completely different design intended to be used for the record company that was founded by Richard Branson and Nik Powell. The logo was designed by British science-fiction artist and designer Roger Dean. According to Richard Branson in interviews and on the Virgin website, the more recent signature logo, introduced in 1978, was based on one that a designer scribbled on a napkin after a design meeting.


title: Virgin Group

text: Virgin Group has its headquarters at The Battleship Building in the Paddington district of the City of Westminster. Previously it was in The School House, Brook Green, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.


title: Virgin Group

text: The Virgin Group of companies have a complex structure that contains elements of a generic conglomerate and a keiretsu, and sometimes it simply licences its brand. Examples of licensing are Virgin Records and Virgin Media, which are owned by Universal Music Group and Liberty Global respectively.


title: Virgin Group

text: In mid-May 2013, the Virgin Group expressed its intention to seek out opportunities in Australia's healthcare industry to consolidate on the Group's Australian fitness centres. The Group also runs over 100 National Health Service (NHS) services in the United Kingdom and the healthcare division of medical services group Assura after entering the British healthcare industry in 2011.


title: Virgin Group

text: Virgin Group announced the establishment of Virgin Voyages on 4 December 2014 with financial backing from Bain Capital. The cruise line would be led by CEO Tom McAlpin, would have two new large ships built and be based in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area.


title: Virgin Group

text: Virgin StartUp is the Virgin Group's non-profit company, helping entrepreneurs across the UK to start, fund and scale their business. In 2013, Sir Richard visited Boxpark in Shoreditch, London, to launch the new organisation, revealing that he wanted to support anyone that had the same dreams and ambitions that he did as a young boy: “It was £300 from my mum that sparked the Virgin adventure 40 years ago. Today, young people need that same help and I believe Virgin StartUp will provide it – with access to early capital, strong mentorship, advice and promotion.”


title: Virgin Group

text: The organisation became a delivery partner for the UK Government's Start Up Loans Company, providing loan finance of between £500 and £25,000, advice, and mentoring to thousands of start-ups across the country. In 2016, it was awarded European Regional Development Funding and subsequently launched Ready, Steady, Grow with Virgin StartUp, a programme of support aimed at start-ups that were ready to grow. A year later, it launched the UK's first equity-based crowdfunding accelerator programme, Crowdboost.


title: Virgin Group

text: By 2018, the organisation had supported over 11,000 UK-based entrepreneurs, with over £35m in pre-seed funding.


title: Virgin Group

text: In 2014, Branson and Virgin StartUp launched the "Foodpreneur" food and drink focused start-up competition. Winners received mentorship from Branson, legal support, and brand counseling. The 2014 winners included Proper Beans, Killer Tomato, Sweetpea Pantry, and Sweet Virtues.


title: Virgin Group

text: In 2015, winners were given the opportunity to pitch Target Corporation buyers in the US. The 2015 winners included Pip & Nut, Double Dutch Drinks, Harry Bromptons, Cauli Rice, and Mallow and Marsh.


title: Virgin Group

text: Only one start-up was announced winner of the 2017 Foodpreneur prize, The Snaffling Pig Co., who won a six-week rental space at Intu Lakeside, the retail center with the highest foot traffic in the U.K.


title: Virgin Group

text: The parent company, Virgin Group Holdings Ltd, is registered in the British Virgin Islands. Richard Branson and his family hold a £2.7 billion stake in this offshore, tax-free, tax haven company.


title: Virgin Group

text: The group's health business received significant media coverage over its legal battle with NHS groups. It sued clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in Surrey after it lost out on an £82 million contract to provide children's health services across the country. The NHS bodies settled out of court with a £328,000 payout to Virgin Care, resulting in some controversy. More than 100,000 people backed a petition calling on the company to stop "dragging the NHS through the courts".


title: Virgin Group

text: In 2019, it was discovered that cell phones being sold by Virgin subsidiary company Assurance Wireless came with unremovable Chinese malware preinstalled.


title: T. R. Knight

text: Theodore Raymond Knight (born March 26, 1973) is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Dr. George O'Malley on the ABC medical drama television series "Grey's Anatomy" (2005–2009, 2020), which earned him a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2007.


title: T. R. Knight

text: Knight was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he became involved with the Guthrie Theater at the age of twelve. He attended Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, for grades K-8. Knight received the Conners Foundation Scholarship as a freshman and apprenticed at the Children's Theatre Company. He also worked at the local Red Owl supermarket alongside his brother. After finishing high school at the Academy of Holy Angels in Richfield, Knight enrolled at the University of St. Thomas for a brief period of time. He dropped out and soon landed leading roles at the Guthrie Theater.


title: T. R. Knight

text: Knight moved to New York City and appeared on the stage. He played opposite Patti LuPone in the 2001 Broadway revival of "Noises Off". He performed in 2003 as Damis in "Tartuffe". He performed in the 2003 Off-Broadway production of "Scattergood", receiving a Drama Desk Award nomination as Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play. Knight also starred Off-Broadway at Primary Stages in the 2004 drama "Boy".


title: T. R. Knight

text: On television, Knight was a regular cast member of the short-lived Nathan Lane/Laurie Metcalf 2003 CBS television series "Charlie Lawrence".


title: T. R. Knight

text: In 2005, Knight was cast in his breakthrough role as Dr. George O'Malley on the ABC medical drama "Grey's Anatomy". Introduced as a surgical intern at the fictional Seattle Grace Hospital, O'Malley worked his way up to resident level, while his relationships with his colleagues Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh), Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl) and Alex Karev (Justin Chambers) formed a focal point of the series. When Knight auditioned for the show, he expected a one-season run. In 2009, after the conclusion of the fifth season, it was confirmed that Knight would not be returning for the show's sixth season. The actor said the reason for his departure was due to a "breakdown in communication" with executive producer Shonda Rhimes, his character's lack of screen time, and his decision to come out as gay.


title: T. R. Knight

text: Knight received generally positive reviews for his performance as O'Malley, and garnered a nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series at the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards.


title: T. R. Knight

text: Knight starred as Leo Frank in a production of the musical "Parade", which opened October 4, 2009, at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. He returned to Broadway in David Mamet's "A Life in the Theatre" in 2010, where he played the role of John, opposite Patrick Stewart. In 2019, he voiced Sir Cedric, the gay protagonist in the animated series "The Bravest Knight".


title: T. R. Knight

text: In 2016 a sci-fi series called 11.22.63 with James Franco aired one season. Knight plays Johnny Clayton, Francos love interests abusive husband.


title: T. R. Knight

text: Knight is gay. On October 5, 2013, Knight married Patrick B. Leahy, a ballet dancer and writer, in Hudson, New York. They had been living together for six years.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: Hydra ( ) is a genus of small, freshwater organisms of the phylum Cnidaria and class Hydrozoa. They are native to the temperate and tropical regions. The genus was named by Linnaeus in 1758 after the Hydra, which was the many-headed beast defeated by Hercules as when the animal had a part severed, it would regenerate much like the hydra’s heads. Biologists are especially interested in "Hydra" because of their regenerative ability; they do not appear to die of old age, or to age at all.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: "Hydra" has a tubular, radially symmetric body up to long when extended, secured by a simple adhesive foot known as the basal disc. Gland cells in the basal disc secrete a sticky fluid that accounts for its adhesive properties.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: At the free end of the body is a mouth opening surrounded by one to twelve thin, mobile tentacles. Each tentacle, or cnida (plural: cnidae), is clothed with highly specialised stinging cells called cnidocytes. Cnidocytes contain specialized structures called nematocysts, which look like miniature light bulbs with a coiled thread inside. At the narrow outer edge of the cnidocyte is a short trigger hair called a cnidocil. Upon contact with prey, the contents of the nematocyst are explosively discharged, firing a dart-like thread containing neurotoxins into whatever triggered the release. This can paralyze the prey, especially if many hundreds of nematocysts are fired.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: "Hydra" has two main body layers, which makes it "diploblastic". The layers are separated by mesoglea, a gel-like substance. The outer layer is the epidermis, and the inner layer is called the gastrodermis, because it lines the stomach. The cells making up these two body layers are relatively simple. Hydramacin is a bactericide recently discovered in "Hydra"; it protects the outer layer against infection. A single "Hydra" is composed of 50,000 to 100,000 cells which consist of three specific stem cell populations that will create many different cell types. These stem cells will continually renew themselves in the body column"." "Hydras" have two significant structures on their body: the "head" and the "foot". When a "Hydra" is cut in half, each half will regenerate and form into a small "Hydra"; the "head" will regenerate a "foot" and the "foot" will regenerate a "head". If the "Hydra" is sliced into many segments then the middle slices will form both a "head" and a "foot".


title: Hydra (genus)

text: Respiration and excretion occur by diffusion throughout the surface of the epidermis, while larger excreta are discharged through the mouth.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: The nervous system of "Hydra" is a nerve net, which is structurally simple compared to more derived animal nervous systems. "Hydra" does not have a recognizable brain or true muscles. Nerve nets connect sensory photoreceptors and touch-sensitive nerve cells located in the body wall and tentacles.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: If "Hydra" are alarmed or attacked, the tentacles can be retracted to small buds, and the body column itself can be retracted to a small gelatinous sphere. "Hydra" generally react in the same way regardless of the direction of the stimulus, and this may be due to the simplicity of the nerve nets.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: "Hydra" are generally or sessile, but do occasionally move quite readily, especially when hunting. They have two distinct methods for moving – 'looping' and 'somersaulting'. They do this by bending over and attaching themselves to the with the mouth and tentacles and then relocate the foot, which provides the usual attachment, this process is called looping. In somersaulting, the body then bends over and makes a new place of attachment with the foot. By this process of "looping" or "somersaulting", a "Hydra" can move several inches (c. 100 mm) in a day. "Hydra" may also move by amoeboid motion of their bases or by detaching from the substrate and floating away in the current.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: When food is plentiful, many "Hydra" reproduce asexually by budding. The buds form from the body wall, grow into miniature adults and break away when mature.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: When a hydra is well fed, a new bud can form every two days. When conditions are harsh, often before winter or in poor feeding conditions, sexual reproduction occurs in some "Hydra". Swellings in the body wall develop into either ovaries or testes. The testes release free-swimming gametes into the water, and these can fertilize the egg in the ovary of another individual. The fertilized eggs secrete a tough outer coating, and, as the adult dies (due to starvation or cold), these resting eggs fall to the bottom of the lake or pond to await better conditions, whereupon they hatch into nymph "Hydra". Some "Hydra" species, like "Hydra circumcincta" and "Hydra viridissima", are hermaphrodites and may produce both testes and ovaries at the same time.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: Many members of the Hydrozoa go through a body change from a polyp to an adult form called a medusa, which is usually the life stage where sexual reproduction occurs, but "Hydra" do not progress beyond the polyp phase.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: While feeding, "Hydra" extend their body to maximum length and then slowly extend their tentacles. Despite their simple construction, the tentacles of "Hydra" are extraordinarily extensible and can be four to five times the length of the body. Once fully extended, the tentacles are slowly maneuvered around waiting for contact with a suitable prey animal. Upon contact, nematocysts on the tentacle fire into the prey, and the tentacle itself coils around the prey. Within 30 seconds, most of the remaining tentacles will have already joined in the attack to subdue the struggling prey. Within two minutes, the tentacles will have surrounded the prey and moved it into the opened mouth aperture. Within ten minutes, the prey will have been engulfed within the body cavity, and digestion will have started. "Hydra" are able to stretch their body wall considerably in order to digest prey more than twice their size. After two or three days, the indigestible remains of the prey will be discharged through the mouth aperture via contractions.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: The feeding behaviour of "Hydra" demonstrates the sophistication of what appears to be a simple nervous system.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: Some species of "Hydra" exist in a mutual relationship with various types of unicellular algae. The algae are protected from predators by "Hydra" and, in return, photosynthetic products from the algae are beneficial as a food source to "Hydra".


title: Hydra (genus)

text: The feeding response in "Hydra" is induced by glutathione (specifically in the reduced state as GSH) released from damaged tissue of injured prey. There are several methods conventionally used for quantification of the feeding response. In some, the duration for which the mouth remains open is measured. Other methods rely on counting the number of "Hydra" among a small population showing the feeding response after addition of glutathione. Recently, an assay for measuring the feeding response in hydra has been developed. In this method, the linear two-dimensional distance between the tip of the tentacle and the mouth of hydra was shown to be a direct measure of the extent of the feeding response. This method has been validated using a starvation model, as starvation is known to cause enhancement of the "Hydra" feeding response.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: "Hydras" undergo morphallaxis (tissue regeneration) when injured or severed. Typically, "Hydras" will reproduce by just budding off a whole new individual; the bud will occur around two-thirds of the way down the body axis. When a "Hydra" is cut in half, each half will regenerate and form into a small "Hydra"; the "head" will regenerate a "foot" and the "foot" will regenerate a "head". This regeneration occurs without cell division. If the "Hydra" is sliced into many segments, the middle slices will form both a "head" and a "foot". The polarity of the regeneration is explained by two pairs of positional value gradients. There is both a head and foot activation and inhibition gradient. The head activation and inhibition works in an opposite direction of the pair of foot gradients. The evidence for these gradients was shown in the early 1900s with grafting experiments. The inhibitors for both gradients have shown to be important to block the bud formation. The location that the bud will form is where the gradients are low for both the head and foot. "Hydras" are capable of regenerating from pieces of tissue from the body and additionally after tissue dissociation from reaggregates. This process, not only takes place in the pieces of tissue excised from the body column, but also from re-aggregates of dissociated single cells. It was found that in these aggregates, cells initially distributed randomly undergo sorting and form two epithelial cell layers, in which the endodermal epithelial cells play more active roles in the process. Active mobility of these, endodermal epithelial cells, form two layers in both, the re-aggregate and the re-generating tip of the excised tissue. And as these two layers are established, a patterning process takes place to form heads and feet.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: Daniel Martinez claimed in a 1998 article in "Experimental Gerontology" that "Hydra" are biologically immortal. This publication has been widely cited as evidence that "Hydra" do not senesce (do not age), and that they are proof of the existence of non-senescing organisms generally. In 2010, Preston Estep published (also in "Experimental Gerontology") a letter to the editor arguing that the Martinez data refute the hypothesis that "Hydra" do not senesce.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: The controversial unlimited lifespan of "Hydra" has attracted much attention from scientists. Research today appears to confirm Martinez' study. "Hydra" stem cells have a capacity for indefinite self-renewal. The transcription factor "forkhead box O" (FoxO) has been identified as a critical driver of the continuous self-renewal of "Hydra". In experiments, a drastically reduced population growth resulted from FoxO down-regulation.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: In bilaterally symmetrical organisms (Bilateria), the transcription factor FoxO affects stress response, lifespan, and increase in stem cells. If this transcription factor is knocked down in bilaterian model organisms, such as fruit flies and nematodes, their lifespan is significantly decreased. In experiments on "H. vulgaris" (a radially symmetrical member of phylum Cnidaria), when FoxO levels were decreased, there was a negative effect on many key features of the "Hydra", but no death was observed, thus it is believed other factors may contribute to the apparent lack of aging in these creatures.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: Hydra are capable of two types of DNA repair; nucleotide excision repair and base excision repair. These repair pathways facilitate DNA replication by removing DNA damages. The identification of these pathways in hydra was based, in part, on the presence in the hydra genome of genes homologous to genes in other genetically well studied species that have been demonstrated to play key roles in these DNA repair pathways.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: An ortholog comparison analysis done within the last decade demonstrated that "Hydra" share a minimum of 6,071 genes with humans. "Hydra" is becoming an increasingly better model system as more genetic approaches become


title: Hydra (genus)

text: available. Transgenic hydra have become attractive model organisms to study the evolution of immunity. A draft of the genome of "Hydra magnipapillata" was reported in 2010.


title: Hydra (genus)

text: The genomes of cnidarians are usually less than 500 MB in size, as in the "Hydra viridissima", which has a genome size of approximately 300 MB. In contrast, the genomes of brown hydras are approximately 1 GB in size. This is because the brown hydra genome is the result of an expansion event involving LINEs, a type of transposable elements, in particular, a single family of the CR1 class. This expansion is unique to this subgroup of the genus "Hydra" and is absent in the green hydra, which has a repeating landscape similar to other cnidarians. These genome characteristics make "Hydra" attractive for studies of transposon-driven speciations and genome expansions.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: Tatsumi is a fighter who is accompanied by his two childhood friends, Iyeyasu and Sayo, and sets off into the Capital to search of a way to make money in order to assist his poverty-stricken village. After being separated from his friends in a bandit attack, Tatsumi unsuccessfully attempts to enlist in the army and is swindled out of his money in the Capital. He is taken in by a noble family, but when an assassin group called Night Raid attacks, he learns that his noble hosts actually intended to torture and kill him as they had done to his friends.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: As a result, he joins Night Raid, which consists of the swordswoman Akame, the beastly fighter Leone, the self-proclaimed sniper genius Mine, the scissor-wielding Sheele, the string manipulator Lubbock, the armored warrior Bulat, and their leader Najenda, a former general of the imperial army. Night Raid is also part of the revolutionary forces assembled to overthrow the Prime Minister Honest who is manipulating the young emperor for his personal gain despite the rest of the nation falling to poverty and strife.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: The members of Night Raid carry , unique weaponry created 900 years ago out of extremely rare materials as well as legendary animals called . The power of the Teigu is so overwhelming that it is said that when two Teigu users fight each other, at least one of them is bound to die.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: Although Night Raid successfully assassinate some of Honest's cohorts, they lose Sheele during a fight against capital garrison member Seryu and then Bulat when Honest recruits the Empire's sadist general Esdeath and her Three Beasts. Tatsumi receives Bulat's Teigu, Incursio, as a result while Esdeath replaced her slain subordinates with a group of Teigu-using warriors called the Jaegers. Night Raid, along with new recruits Susanoo (a humanoid Teigu owned by Najenda) and Chelsea, fight the Jaegers with Seryu, Wave, and Akame's younger sister Kurome among its ranks. Over time, the two factions gradually lose some of their members.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: When the revolution gains momentum, Honest forms a new secret police force, the Wild Hunt, led by his own son, Syura. But Wild Hunt heavily abuses its authority by killing innocent civilians for their own plans, antagonizing both the Jaegers and Night Raid. Mine was almost killed by Seryu's suicide bomb attack, but she was saved by Tatsumi. After a battle between Wild Hunt and the Jaegers, with casualties from both sides, Esdeath blackmails Honest into dissolving the rest of Wild Hunt. Syura is killed by Lubbock after he captures both him and Tatsumi. Lubbock is killed while attempting to escape, and Tatsumi is sentenced to death despite Esdeath's attempts to save his life. The remaining Night Raid members attack the execution site to rescue Tatsumi while being pursued by the imperial general Budo, who Mine manages to kill at the cost of her Teigu while falling into a coma.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: Due to the stress he experienced while escaping the execution site, Tatsumi caused Incursio to transform. It would be revealed that Tatsumi caused the Danger Beast which Incursio was created from, Tyrant, to awaken with the doctor predicting that Tatsumi can use his Teigu a few more times left before it fully fuses onto his body and consumes him. As this occurs, Night Raid confronts the last members of Wild Hunt and finish them off, with Akame taking out big generals on the Empire's side. Akame leaves a message to Wave that she and Kurome intend to settle things as they promised each other. After his attempt to convince Kurome not to get through with it, fighting his way through Tatsumi, Wave manages to stop the sisters' duel and destroys Kurome's Teigu. With this, Wave and Kurome fake their deaths as they run off to start a new life together.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: After hearing the news of the remaining Jaegers' deaths, Esdeath resumes her duties as general to hold off the Revolutionary Army when they begin a siege on the capital to remove Honest from power. As a last resort, Honest convinces the emperor himself to join the fight with his family's Teigu. After the remaining Night Raid members assassinated those in the government who have been pulling the strings behind the stage, only Honest and Esdeath are their remaining targets. However, Honest rigged the emperor's Teigu to go berserk.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: To confront the emperor's Teigu, Tatsumi uses his last transformation to defeat it with Wave's help while changing into Tyrant. Before being fully consumed, Tatsumi asks Akame to kill him before he loses control and kills everyone. She does so during her battle with Esdeath, later revealed to have only killed the Danger Beast's soul so Tatsumi can live, managing to defeat the general at the cost of her own sword. Esdeath acknowledges her loss and uses her power to commit suicide while regretting that she never got Tatsumi to return her feelings. As the final battle unfolded, Honest attempted to flee before being mortally wounded by Leone after he fatally wounded her and she fused with the remains of her Teigu to give her enough time to capture him so the Revolutionary War can fully end; Afterwards, Leone dies peacefully.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: As Honest is later brutally executed with slow dismemberment for his crimes against the people, the Emperor accepts his own public execution while taking responsibility for his inaction as Najenda begins to rebuild their nation into better place. Tatsumi, still trapped in his dragon form, returns to his village with Mine after she recovered and gave birth to their child, who was conceived prior to Mine's coma. Kurome and Wave end up together as well, with the former still scarred by her past while the latter lost one of his internal organs as a price for using two Teigu at once. As for Akame, still working as an assassin to defend the restoring nation from those who would exploit it, she heads eastward to protect her nation and find a means to restore Tatsumi's human form and to find a cure for the pain in her body from Murasame's Trump Card; where the events of "Hinowa ga Crush!" take place.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: In 2007, Takahiro was asked to do a manga for "Square Enix" magazine. He originally came up with the idea of an "all-female band of assassins, and the protagonist is a boy who is captured by them and has to work for them". After his editor approved the idea, he waited on serialization until his company had stabilized and had released two other titles, during which he developed the characters, story and world. In August 2009, following the release of "Majikoi ~ Oh! Samurai Girls", Takahiro looked for an artist for the serialization, and recruited Tetsuya Tashiro to do the illustrations. He liked Tashiro's ability to draw fast-paced action scenes and that he can draw cute girls. In developing a chapter, Takahiro would write the script first and then have Tashiro determine the panel layout. Takahiro would occasionally get feedback on plot ideas from Tashiro and the editor.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: Written by Takahiro and illustrated by Tetsuya Tashiro, "Akame ga Kill!" was serialized in Square Enix's "shōnen" manga magazine "Gangan Joker" from March 20, 2010, to December 22, 2016. Its chapters were collected in fifteen "tankōbon" volumes, released from August 21, 2010, to February 22, 2017. On August 25, 2017, it was announced that volume 1.5 of the manga, previously included with anime's home video release, would be published as a standalone volume. The series was licensed by Yen Press in June 2014 and the first volume was released on January 20, 2015.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: A prequel titled , written by Takahiro and illustrated by Kei Toru, was serialized in "Monthly Big Gangan" from October 25, 2013, to January 25, 2019. The story focuses on Akame's past during the days she worked as an assassin for the Empire. Its chapters were collected in ten "tankōbon" volumes, released from June 21, 2014, to April 25, 2019. It was licensed by Yen Press in September 2015 and the first volume was released on March 22, 2016.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: Takahiro published a sequel manga, titled , with art by strelka in "Monthly Big Gangan" from June 24, 2017, to June 24, 2022. Its chapters were collected in eight "tankōbon" volumes, released from December 25, 2017, to August 25, 2022. Yen Press has licensed the manga, and released the chapters simultaneously as they were released in Japan.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: An anime television series adaptation of the manga was announced in January 2014. The teaser site of the series was opened on January 21, 2014. The series was directed by Tomoki Kobayashi and written by Makoto Uezu. Takahiro also supervised the scenario. Taku Iwasaki composed the series' music. The series premiered on the Tokyo MX, MBS and BS11 television stations on July 7, 2014.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: The anime was licensed by Sentai Filmworks in 2014. "Akame ga Kill!" was broadcast in the United States on Adult Swim's Toonami programming block from August 9, 2015, to February 21, 2016. The series' premiere was one of the most watched programs in the block's history, with over 1.8 million viewers. Medialink licensed the series in Asia-Pacific and streamed on Ani-One Asia YouTube channel.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: The opening theme song for episodes 1–14 is "Skyreach" performed by Sora Amamiya, while the ending theme is by Miku Sawai; for the proceeding episodes, the opening theme is "Liar Mask" by Rika Mayama and the ending theme is "Tsuki Akari" by Amamiya.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: The seventh volume sold 24,181 copies within the first week of release. The eighth volume likewise sold 37,833 copies in its debut week. Up until volume 11, the series has sold over 2.1 million copies. The English release debuted at 19th in Monthly BookScan during February 2015.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: All five volumes of the English translation have appeared on "The New York Times" Manga Best Sellers list:


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: The first volume of "Akame ga Kill! Zero" also appeared on the list for three weeks, ranking at number 6 for one week.


title: Akame ga Kill!

text: Kestrel Swift from "The Fandom Post" praised the anime's first episode for "harsh, brutal commentary on corruption and how likely it is that the more perfect someone seems, the darker the secret lurking within" as well as its production value by White Fox. Robert Mullarkey from UK Anime Network also gave the series a similar response for its action scenes and violence displayed. However, he criticized some of its characters and claimed the anime needs to "ditch the comedy". While reviewing the series' first eight episodes, Matt Packard from Anime News Network said that "it's stupid and childish" as "[t]here's nothing mature about the idea that evil always takes the form of a psychopath or a power-hungry glutton, or that people become soul-dead assassins because something traumatic happened to them once, or that the physically weak are destined to become slaves and die weeping". In the Goo ranking website, "Akame ga Kill!" ranked 36th with 9 votes in the list of Anime's Most Miserable Endings.


title: John F. Kennedy Jr. plane crash

text: John F. Kennedy Jr., the son and namesake of the former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, died when the light aircraft he was flying crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, on July 16, 1999. Kennedy's wife Carolyn Bessette and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette were also on board and died. The Piper Saratoga departed from New Jersey's Essex County Airport; its intended route was along the coastline of Connecticut and across Rhode Island Sound to Martha's Vineyard Airport.


title: John F. Kennedy Jr. plane crash

text: The official investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded that Kennedy fell victim to spatial disorientation while descending over water at night and consequently lost control of his plane. Kennedy did not hold an instrument rating and therefore was only certified to fly under visual flight rules (VFR). At the time of the crash, the weather and flight conditions were such that all basic landmarks were obscured, making visual flight challenging, although legally still permissible.


title: John F. Kennedy Jr. plane crash

text: On the evening of July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr. piloted a Piper Saratoga to attend the wedding of his cousin Rory to Mark Bailey at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. The plane also carried Kennedy's wife, Carolyn Bessette, and sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette. Lauren Bessette was to be dropped off at Martha's Vineyard Airport, while Kennedy and his wife would continue to Barnstable Municipal Airport. Kennedy had purchased his plane three months before the crash. The Bessette sisters were seated in the second row of seats, which faced the rear of the plane and were back-to-back with the pilot's seat.


title: John F. Kennedy Jr. plane crash

text: Kennedy checked in with the air traffic control tower at Martha's Vineyard Airport before his departure. At 8:38 p.m. on Friday, July 16, 1999, Kennedy departed from New Jersey's Essex County Airport, west of Midtown Manhattan. At about 9:41 p.m., unknown until subsequent official investigations, Kennedy's plane crashed nearly nose first into the Atlantic Ocean. At 10:05 p.m., a clerical-duties summer intern contacted the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) office in Bridgeport, Connecticut, about Kennedy's failure to arrive, but the intern was told that no information could be released to him over the phone.


title: John F. Kennedy Jr. plane crash

text: At 2:15 a.m. on July 17, the Kennedy family reported to the Coast Guard Air Station at Cape Cod that the plane had not arrived. At 4 a.m., the United States Coast Guard began a search and rescue operation. Kennedy's cousin Anthony Stanislas Radziwill told the press that if Kennedy was still alive, "He'll find a way to get out. He possesses the will to survive, enough will for all three of them." Officials were not optimistic about finding Kennedy alive after several pieces of debris from his plane were recovered from the ocean. "There is always hope," Coast Guard Lt. Gary Jones said. "But unfortunately, when you find certain pieces of evidence, you have to be prepared for anything."


title: John F. Kennedy Jr. plane crash

text: President Bill Clinton spoke with Kennedy's older sister, Caroline, and paternal uncle, Ted. Clinton also spoke to Andrew Cuomo, who was married to Kennedy's paternal cousin, Kerry. "He wanted to let them know he was thinking about them, that we'll do everything we can, and that our prayers are with them", Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhart said. Clinton responded by ordering U.S. Navy warships to assist in the search for Kennedy's plane. Critics argued that the search was an abuse of taxpayer dollars, as no ordinary citizen would receive similar treatment. Clinton said that the Kennedys had "suffered much, and given more", and he called for them to feel "the strength of God, the love of their friends and the prayers of their fellow citizens".


title: John F. Kennedy Jr. plane crash

text: On July 19, the NOAA vessel "Rude" finally located fragments of Kennedy's plane using side-scan sonar. "Rude" captured high-resolution images which were used to create a three-dimensional map of the ocean floor. At 11:30 p.m. on July 20, the salvage ship identified the plane's fuselage. Navy divers found parts of the plane strewn over a broad area of seabed below the surface, approximately west of Martha's Vineyard.