title: Appian Way

text: By 290 BC, the sovereignty of the Samnites had ended. The heel of Italy lay open to the Romans. The dates are somewhat uncertain and there is considerable variation in the sources, but during the Third Samnite War the Romans seem to have extended the road to Venusia, where they placed a colony of 20,000 men. After that they were at Tarentum.


title: Appian Way

text: Roman expansion alarmed Tarentum, the leading city of the Greek presence (Magna Graecia) in southern Italy. They hired the mercenary, King Pyrrhus of Epirus, in neighboring Greece to fight the Romans on their behalf. In 280 BC the Romans suffered a defeat at the hands of Pyrrhus at the Battle of Heraclea on the coast west of Tarentum. The battle was costly for both sides, prompting Pyrrhus to remark "One more such victory and I am lost." Making the best of it, the Roman army turned on Greek Rhegium and effected a massacre of Pyrrhian partisans there.


title: Appian Way

text: Rather than pursue them, Pyrrhus went straight for Rome along the Via Appia and then the Via Latina. He knew that if he continued on the Via Appia he could be trapped in the marsh. Wary of such entrapment on the Via Latina also, he withdrew without fighting after encountering opposition at Anagni. Wintering in Campania, he withdrew to Apulia in 279 BC, where, pursued by the Romans, he won a second costly victory at the Battle of Asculum. Withdrawing from Apulia for a Sicilian interlude, he returned to Apulia in 275 BC and started for Campania up the Roman road.


title: Appian Way

text: Supplied by that same road, the Romans successfully defended the region against Pyrrhus, crushing his army in a two-day fight at the Battle of Beneventum in 275 BC. The Romans renamed the town from "Maleventum" ("site of bad events") to Beneventum ("site of good events") as a result. Pyrrhus withdrew to Greece, where he died in a street fight in Argos in 272 BC. Tarentum fell to the Romans that same year, who proceeded to consolidate their rule over all of Italy.


title: Appian Way

text: The Romans pushed the Via Appia to the port of Brundisium in 264 BC. The itinerary from Beneventum was now Venusia, Silvium, Tarentum, Uria and Brundisium. The Roman Republic was the government of Italy, for the time being. Appius Claudius died in 273, but in extending the road a number of times, no one has tried to displace his name upon it.


title: Appian Way

text: The Appian Way's path across today's regions Lazio and Campania has always been well known, while the exact position of the part located in Apulia (the original one, not the extension by Trajan) was unknown, since there were no visible remains of the Appian Way in that region.


title: Appian Way

text: In the first half of the 20th century, the professor of ancient Roman topography Giuseppe Lugli managed to discover, with the then innovative technique of photogrammetry, what probably was the route of the Appian Way from Gravina in Puglia ("Silvium") up to Taranto. When analysing aerophotogrammetric shots of the area, Lugli noticed a path () named "la Tarantina", whose direction was still largely influenced by the centuriation; this, according to Lugli, was the path of the Appian Way. This path, as well as the part located in today's Apulia region, was still in use in the Middle Ages. A further piece of evidence for Lugli's proposed path is the presence of a number of archaeological remains in that region, among them the ancient settlement of Jesce.


title: Appian Way

text: By studying the distances given in the Antonine Itinerary, Lugli also assigned the Appian Way stations "Blera" and "Sublupatia" (which also occurs on the "Tabula Peutingeriana") respectively to the areas "Murgia Catena" and "Taverna" (between masseria (estate farmhouse) S. Filippo and masseria S. Pietro). However, the toponym "Murgia Catena" defined too large an area, so that it didn't allow a clear localization of the Appian Way station. Recently Luciano Piepoli, based on the distances given in the Antonine Itinerary and on recent archeological findings, has suggested that "Silvium" should be "Santo Staso", an area very close to Gravina in Puglia, "Blera" should be "masseria Castello", and "Sublupatia" should be "masseria Caione".


title: Appian Way

text: The emperor Trajan built the Via Traiana, an extension of the Via Appia from Beneventum, reaching Brundisium via Canusium and Barium rather than via Tarentum. This was commemorated by an arch at Beneventum.


title: Appian Way

text: Travellers could cross the Adriatic Sea through the Otranto Strait towards Albania either by landing at present day Durrës through the Via Egnatia or near the ancient town of Apollonia and continue towards present day Rrogozhina in central Albania.


title: Appian Way

text: In 73 BC, a slave revolt (known as the Third Servile War) under the ex-gladiator of Capua, Spartacus, began against the Romans. Slavery accounted for roughly every third person in Italy.


title: Appian Way

text: Spartacus defeated many Roman armies in a conflict that lasted for over two years. While trying to escape from Italy at Brundisium he unwittingly moved his forces into the historic trap at Apulia in Calabria. The Romans were well acquainted with the region. Legions were brought home from abroad and Spartacus was pinned between armies. The ex-slave army was defeated at the Siler River by Marcus Licinius Crassus. Pompey's armies captured and killed several thousand rebels that escaped from the battle and Crassus captured several thousand more. The Romans judged that the slaves had forfeited their right to live. In 71 BC, 6,000 slaves were crucified along the Via Appia from Rome to Capua.


title: Appian Way

text: In 1943, during World War II, the Allies fell into the same trap Pyrrhus had retreated to avoid, in the Pomptine fields, the successor to the Pomptine marshes. The marsh remained, despite many efforts to drain it, until engineers working for Benito Mussolini finally succeeded. (Even so, the fields were infested with malarial mosquitos until the advent of DDT in the 1950s.)


title: Appian Way

text: Hoping to break a stalemate at Monte Cassino, the Allies landed on the coast of Italy at the Anzio-Nettuno area - ancient Antium - which was midway between Ostia and Terracina. They found that the place was undefended. They intended to move along the line of the Via Appia to take Rome, outflanking Monte Cassino, but they did not do so quickly enough. The Germans occupied Mounts Laziali and Lepini along the track of the old Via Latina, from which they rained down shells on Anzio. Even though the Allies expanded into all the Pomptine region, they gained no ground. The Germans counterattacked down the via Appia from the Alban hills in a front four miles wide, but could not retake Anzio. The battle lasted for four months, one side being supplied by sea, the other by land through Rome. In May 1944, the Allies broke out of Anzio and took Rome. The German forces escaped to the north of Florence.


title: Appian Way

text: For the 1960 Summer Olympics, it served as part of the men's marathon course that was won by Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia.


title: Appian Way

text: After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the road fell out of use; Pope Pius VI ordered its restoration. A new Appian Way was built in parallel with the old one in 1784 as far as the Alban Hills region. The new road is the "Via Appia Nuova" ("New Appian Way") as opposed to the old section, now known as "Via Appia Antica". The old Appian Way close to Rome is now a free tourist attraction. It was extensively restored for Rome's Millennium and Great Jubilee celebrations. The first are still heavily used by cars, buses and coaches but from then on traffic is very light and the ruins can be explored on foot in relative safety. The Church of Domine Quo Vadis is in the second mile of the road. Along or close to the part of the road closest to Rome, there are three catacombs of Roman and early Christian origin and one of Jewish origin.


title: Appian Way

text: The construction of Rome's ring road, the Grande Raccordo Anulare or GRA, in 1951 caused the Appian Way to be cut in two. More recent improvements to the GRA have rectified this through the construction of a tunnel under the Appia, so that it is now possible to follow the Appia on foot for about from its beginning near the Baths of Caracalla.


title: Appian Way

text: Many parts of the original road beyond Rome's environs have been preserved, and some are now used by cars (for example, in the area of Velletri). The road inspires the last movement of Ottorino Respighi's "Pini di Roma". To this day the Via Appia contains the longest stretch of straight road in Europe, totaling .


title: Appian Way

text: There are the remains of several Roman bridges along the road, including the Ponte di Tre Ponti, Ponte di Vigna Capoccio, Viadotta di Valle Ariccia, Ponte Alto and Ponte Antico.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke ( ) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. At the 2020 census, the population was 100,011, making it the 8th most populous city in the Commonwealth of Virginia and the largest city in Virginia west of Richmond. It is located in the Roanoke Valley of the Roanoke Region of Virginia.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke is the largest municipality in Southwest Virginia, and is the principal municipality of the Roanoke Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which had a 2020 population of 315,251. It is composed of the independent cities of Roanoke and Salem, and Botetourt, Craig, Franklin, and Roanoke counties. Bisected by the Roanoke River, Roanoke is the commercial and cultural hub of much of Southwest Virginia and portions of Southern West Virginia.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: First called Big Lick, after a large outcropping of salt that drew the wildlife to the site near the Roanoke River, the town was established in 1852 and chartered in 1874. In 1882, Big Lick became the town of Roanoke, and in 1884, it was chartered as the independent city of Roanoke. The name "Roanoke" is said to have originated from an Algonquian word for "shell money", which was the name used for the river by the Algonquian speakers who lived away, where the river emptied into the sea near Roanoke Island. The native people who lived near where the city was founded did not speak Algonquian. They spoke Siouan languages, Tutelo, and Catawban. There were also Cherokee speakers in the general area who fought with the Catawba people. The city grew frequently via annexation through the middle of the 20th century. The last annexation was in 1976. The state legislature has since prohibited cities from annexing land from adjacent counties. Roanoke's location in the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the middle of the Roanoke Valley between Maryland and Tennessee, made it the transportation hub of western Virginia and contributed to its rapid growth.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: During colonial times, the site of Roanoke was an important hub of trails and roads. The Great Indian Warpath, which later merged into the colonial Great Wagon Road, was one of the most heavily traveled roads of 18th-century America. It ran from Philadelphia through the Shenandoah Valley to the future site of Roanoke, where the Roanoke River passed through the Blue Ridge. The Carolina Road branched off in Cloverdale, Virginia, to Boones Mill, Virginia, and on to the Yadkin River Valley. The Roanoke Gap proved a useful route for immigrants to settle the Carolina Piedmont region. At Roanoke Gap, another branch of the Great Wagon Road, the Wilderness Road, continued southwest to Tennessee.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: In the 1850s, Big Lick became a stop on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad (V&T) which linked Lynchburg with Bristol on the Virginia-Tennessee border.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: After the American Civil War (1861–1865), William Mahone, a civil engineer and hero of the Battle of the Crater, was the driving force in the linkage of three railroads, including the V&T, across the southern tier of Virginia to form the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio Railroad (AM&O), a new line extending from Norfolk to Bristol, Virginia in 1870. However, the Financial Panic of 1873 wrecked the AM&O's finances. After several years of operating under receiverships, Mahone's role as a railroad builder ended in 1881 when northern financial interests took control. At the foreclosure auction, the AM&O was purchased by E.W. Clark & Co., a private banking firm in Philadelphia which controlled the Shenandoah Valley Railroad then under construction up the valley from Hagerstown, Maryland. The AM&O was renamed Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W).


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Frederick J. Kimball, a civil engineer and partner in the Clark firm, headed the new line and the new Shenandoah Valley Railroad. For the junction for the Shenandoah Valley and the Norfolk and Western roads, Kimball and his board of directors selected the small Virginia village called Big Lick, on the Roanoke River. Although the grateful citizens offered to rename their town "Kimball", at his suggestion, they agreed to name it Roanoke after the river. As the N&W brought people and jobs, the Town of Roanoke quickly became an independent city in 1884. In fact, Roanoke became a city so quickly that it earned the nickname "Magic City".


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Kimball's interest in geology was instrumental in the development of the Pocahontas coalfields in western Virginia and West Virginia. He pushed N&W lines through the wilds of West Virginia, north to Columbus, Ohio and Cincinnati, Ohio, and south to Durham, North Carolina, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This gave the railroad the route structure it was to use for more than 60 years.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The Virginian Railway (VGN), an engineering marvel of its day, was conceived and built by William Nelson Page and Henry Huttleston Rogers. Following the Roanoke River, the VGN was built through the City of Roanoke early in the 20th century. It merged with the N&W in 1959.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The opening of the coalfields made N&W prosperous and Pocahontas bituminous coal world-famous. Transported by the N&W and neighboring Virginian Railway (VGN), local coal fueled half the world's navies. Today it stokes steel mills and power plants all over the globe.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The Norfolk & Western was famous for manufacturing steam locomotives in-house. It was N&W's Roanoke Shops that made the company known industry-wide for its excellence in steam power. The Roanoke Shops, with its workforce of thousands, is where the famed classes A, J, and Y6 locomotives were designed, built, and maintained. New steam locomotives were built there until 1953, long after diesel-electric had emerged as the motive power of choice for most North American railroads. About 1960, N&W was the last major railroad in the United States to convert from steam to diesel power. When N&W converted to diesel power, 2,000 railroad workers were laid off.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The presence of the railroad also made Roanoke attractive to manufacturers. American Viscose opened a large rayon plant in Southeast Roanoke in October 1917. This plant closed in 1958, leaving 5,000 workers unemployed.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and (0.8%) is water.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke is located in the valley and ridge province of Virginia immediately west of the Blue Ridge Mountains and east of the Allegheny Mountains.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Within the city limits is Mill Mountain, which stands detached from surrounding ranges. Its summit features the Roanoke Star, Mill Mountain Zoo, the Discovery Center interpretive building, and an overlook of the Roanoke Valley. The Appalachian Trail runs through the northern section of Roanoke County several miles north of the city, while the Blue Ridge Parkway runs just to the south of the city. Carvins Cove, the second-largest municipal park in America at , lies in northeast Roanoke County and southwest Botetourt County. Smith Mountain Lake is several miles southeast of the city. The Jefferson National Forest is nearby. Roanokers and visitors to the area enjoy hiking, mountain biking, cross-country running, canoeing, kayaking, fly fishing and other outdoor pursuits.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The city is located in the North Fork of Roanoke winemaking region. The "North Fork of Roanoke" appellation is a designated American Viticultural Area, recognizing the unique grape growing conditions present in the area. Valhalla Vineyards is located just outside the city limits of Roanoke.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The Roanoke River flows through the city of Roanoke. Some stretches of the river flow through parks and natural settings, while others flow through industrial areas. Several tributaries join the river in the city, most notably Peters Creek, Tinker Creek and Mud Lick Creek.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Though located along the Blue Ridge Mountains at elevations exceeding , Roanoke lies in the humid subtropical climate zone (Köppen "Cfa"), with four distinct, but generally mild, seasons; it is located in USDA hardiness zone 7b, with the suburbs falling in zone 7a. Extremes in temperature have ranged from as recently as August 21, 1983, down to on December 30, 1917, though neither nor is reached in most years; the most recent occurrence of each is July 8, 2012 and February 20, 2015. More typically, the area records an average of 6.1 days where the temperature stays at or below freezing and 30.5 days with + highs annually. The normal monthly mean temperature ranges from in January to in July.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Based on the 1991−2020 period, the city averages of snow per winter. Roanoke experienced something of a snow drought in the 2000s until December 2009 when of snow fell on Roanoke in a single storm. Winter snowfall has ranged from trace amounts in 1918–19 and 1919–20 to in 1959–60; unofficially, the largest single storm dumped approximately three feet (0.9 m) from December 16−18, 1890.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Flooding is the primary weather-related hazard faced by Roanoke. Heavy rains, most frequently from remnants of a hurricane, drain from surrounding areas to the narrow Roanoke Valley. The most recent significant flood was in the fall of 2004, caused by the remains of Hurricane Ivan. The most severe flooding in the city's history occurred on November 4, 1985, when heavy storms from the remnants of Hurricane Juan stalled over the area. Ten people drowned in the Roanoke Valley and others were saved by rescue personnel.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Many residents complain that they are prone to allergies because of pollen from trees in the surrounding mountains. Most famously, the family of Wayne Newton moved from Roanoke to the dry climate of Phoenix, Arizona, because of his childhood asthma and allergies. However, there have not been clinical studies to establish that these conditions are more prevalent in Roanoke than in other cities with similar vegetation and climate.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: "Note: the US Census treats Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic category. This table excludes Latinos from the racial categories and assigns them to a separate category. Hispanics/Latinos can be of any race."


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: At the 2000 census, there were 94,911 people, 42,003 households and 24,235 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,213.2 per square mile (854.6/km). There were 45,257 housing units at an average density of 1,055.3 per square mile (407.5/km). The racial makeup of the city was 69.38% White, 26.74% African American, 0.20% Native American, 1.15% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 0.72% from other races, and 1.78% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.48% of the population.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: There were 42,003 households, of which 25.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 37.1% were married couples living together, 16.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 42.3% were non-families. 35.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 12.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.20 and the average family size was 2.86.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: 22.6% of the population were under the age of 18, 8.2% from 18 to 24, 30.5% from 25 to 44, 22.3% from 45 to 64, and 16.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females, there were 88.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 84.3 males.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The median household income was $30,719 and the median family income was $37,826. Males had a median income of $28,465 and females $21,591. The per capita income was $18,468. About 12.9% of families and 15.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 24.4% of those under age 18 and 11.3% of those age 65 or over.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke's economy developed around the Norfolk and Western Railroad, with a strong emphasis on manufacturing. Roanoke's economic history also includes Sun Belt characteristics as it was once a center for the garment industry. Surrounding areas have relied on traditional industries of the rural South such as textiles and furniture manufacturing, which have lost jobs to offshore outsourcing. Despite Virginia's being a right to work state, unions have traditionally represented workers at many large employers in the Roanoke area and southwest Virginia.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke was formerly the headquarters of Norfolk and Western Railway until its merger with the Southern Railway created the Norfolk Southern Railway in 1982. Norfolk Southern continues to operate maintenance facilities and a rail yard in Roanoke but moved its marketing department out and closed its downtown office building in 2015. On May 18, 2020, after 139 years of production, Norfolk Southern shut down the locomotive shops and moved all operations to the Juniata Locomotive Shops in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Wachovia Bank, then known as First Union, acquired Roanoke-based Dominion Bank in 1993 and maintains an operations and customer service center in Roanoke. Other firms have been acquired by companies headquartered elsewhere, including such as Roanoke Electric Steel and architectural and engineering firm Hayes, Seay, Mattern and Mattern, (HSMM) which has been acquired by the multi-national conglomerate AECOM. Roanoke's rates of economic and population growth have been less than the state and national averages since the 1960s. The immediate Roanoke area has a low unemployment rate, but a brain drain of workers unable to find satisfactory employment and underemployment are sometimes cited as explanations.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The City of Roanoke has created initiatives to address the brain drain of the region such as a database to match job seekers who wish to reside in the Roanoke area with employers looking for candidates. Additionally, a career and lifestyle fair has been held shortly after Christmas in recent years to show the professional and social opportunities in the area to those visiting family for the holidays.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke's economy has areas of strength. The city is the health care and retail hub of a large area, driving the expansion of Carilion Clinic and Valley View Mall. Norfolk Southern remains a major employer. FreightCar America hired several hundred persons to assemble rail cars in shops leased from Norfolk Southern and has closed a plant in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in part because of the lower costs for the Roanoke facility. Recently though, the company laid off its Roanoke employees and said it plans to temporarily close the plant. The corporate offices of Virginia Transformer Corporation and utility company RGC Resources are situated in this city. General Electric and TMEIC manufacture large drive systems for electrical generation stations and factories at their joint facility in Salem. Elbit Systems of America manufactures night vision goggles at its plant in Roanoke County, and some of its former employees have started other firms such as Optical Cable Corporation. The proximity of automotive assembly plants in the South has attracted manufacturers including Dynax, Koyo, Metalsa and Yokohama, formerly Mohawk Tire. Roanoke's location allows for delivery within one day to most markets in the southeast, northeast, mid-atlantic, and Ohio Valley, which has made it a distribution center for such companies as Orvis, Elizabeth Arden, and Hanover Direct. United Parcel Service (UPS) maintains a major facility at the Roanoke Regional Airport. While the city of Roanoke has lost population, suburbs in Roanoke County, southern Botetourt County, and areas of Bedford County and Franklin County near Smith Mountain Lake have grown.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: According to Roanoke's 2021 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in the city are:


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: EventZone was created in 2003 by the merger of various existing event organizers. EventZone is charged with assisting in the creation of new festivals and activities in the downtown Roanoke "event zone," defined as bounded by Williamson Road, 6th Street, SW, the Roanoke Civic Center and Rivers Edge Park.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke's festivals and cultural events include the Chili Cook-Off, Festival in the Park, Local Colors Festival, Henry Street Festival, Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration, Big Lick Blues Festival, Strawberry Festival, and the large red, white, and blue illuminated Mill Mountain Star (formerly illuminated in red following drunk driving fatalities in the Roanoke Valley; temporarily illuminated in white on April 22, 2007, in remembrance of the Virginia Tech Massacre of April 16, 2007) on Mill Mountain, which is visible from many points in the city and surrounding valley.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Center in the Square was opened in downtown Roanoke on December 9, 1983, near the city market as part of the city's downtown revitalization effort. The Center, a converted warehouse, houses the History Museum of Western Virginia, which contains exhibits and artifacts related to the area's history and has a library of materials available to scholars and the public. The Center also houses the Science Museum of Western Virginia and the Hopkins Planetarium. The Science Museum maintains a permanent installation of neon sign art featuring the work of local Mark Jamison, the subject of Slash Coleman's PBS special "The Neon Man and Me".


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Formerly housed in Center in the Square, the Taubman Museum of Art has now vacated the Center and opened a new facility at 110 Salem Avenue SE. The art museum features 19th and 20th century American art, contemporary and modern art, decorative arts, and works on paper, and presents exhibitions of both regional and national significance. The new facility was designed by Los Angeles-based architect Randall Stout, who earlier in his career worked under Frank Gehry. The new space opened on November 8, 2008. The facility's design sparked debate in the community between those who feel it is a bold, refreshing addition to Roanoke and those who feel its unusual, irregular design featuring sharp angles contrasts too strongly with the existing buildings. Some are also concerned about the facility's cost at a time when many Roanoke area artistic organizations face financial challenges. The Taubman Family, which established Advance Auto Parts contributed $15.2 million to the project. As a result, the museum was renamed The Taubman Museum of Art.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The Virginia Museum of Transportation houses many locomotives that were built in Roanoke, including the Norfolk and Western J class#611 and Norfolk & Western 1218 steam engines, and other locomotives and rolling stock. The museum also houses exhibits covering aviation, automobiles and buses.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke's landmark former passenger rail station hosts the O. Winston Link Museum dedicated to the late steam-era railroad photography of O. Winston Link since 2004.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The Harrison Museum of African-American Culture is dedicated to the history and culture of Roanoke's African-American community and is currently located at a former school in the Gainsboro section of Roanoke. Gainsboro, originally Gainesborough for founder Major Kemp Gaines, was originally a separate community that petitioned for township status in 1835. The Harrison Museum will move to Center in the Square after the Center's remodeling is completed.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Berglund Center auditorium and theatre, now known as the Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre, has hosted concerts, touring Broadway theatre performances, and the Miss Virginia pageant. The city's first permanent artwork funded by the Percent for Art ordinance stands before the theater. Dedicated in 2008, the stainless steel sculpture, "In My Hands", is one of more than 100 works in the city's public art catalogue.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The Shaftman Performance Hall, which opened in May 2001 and is located at the Jefferson Center, hosts a concerts, performances, entertainment events, and lectures. The Jefferson Center—formerly Jefferson High School—also houses offices and display spaces for cultural organizations.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: In 2006, the former Dumas Hotel was reopened as the Dumas Center for Artistic and Cultural Development. The hotel is located on a segment of First Street NW commonly known as Henry Street. Located across the railroad tracks from the center of downtown Roanoke, Henry Street served as the commercial and cultural center of Roanoke's African American community prior to desegregation. The Dumas Hotel hosted such guests as Louis Armstrong, Ethel Waters, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole when they performed in Roanoke. The renovated Dumas Center houses an auditorium with more than 180 seats, the Downtown Music Lab: a recording studio and music education center for teens, the Dumas Drama Guild and the offices of Opera Roanoke.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke Children's Theatre is Roanoke's professional children's theatre. It can be found within the new Taubman Museum of Art in downtown Roanoke. The theatre delivers four shows a year that are geared towards a family audience. The theatre extends their programming in various arts outreach programs throughout the valley and surrounding areas.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Mill Mountain Theatre, a regional theatre, is located on the first floor of Center in the Square. As the name implies, the theatre was originally located on Mill Mountain from 1964 until 1976 when its original facility was destroyed by fire. The theatre has both a main stage for mainstream performances and a smaller black box theatre called Waldron Stage which hosts both newer and more experimental plays along with other live events.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The Grandin Theatre in the Grandin Village of Southwest Roanoke regularly screens art house films, family features, and mainstream movies. The Grandin Theatre was the home of Mill Mountain Theatre from 1976 until 1983.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Virginia Western Theatre has performances in Whitman Auditorium at Virginia Western Community College, and has been performing original and well known theatrical productions since 1968.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke has also been home to the Showtimers Community Theatre since 1951. Showtimers was formed in the summer of 1950, by a group of people who wanted to present a summer season of amateur productions. Over the years, Showtimers has produced over 300 different shows, from standard, classic theatre pieces to the modern and avant-garde; from comedies designed solely to entertain to serious 'think pieces' on social issues; from small, intimate musicals to large shows made famous on Broadway. Showtimers presents six shows per year.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The Star City Playhouse is well known in Roanoke. "The owners have over 50 years of combined experience working in and around theater on Broadway in New York and maintain an impressive array of costumes and extensive set pieces that have been donated over the years through Marlow's contacts from New York."


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Opera Roanoke was founded in 1976 as the Southwest Virginia Opera Society, Opera Roanoke has collaborated with the finest talent in our region, across the state and from cultural centers around the nation. Under the direction of Victoria Bond, Craig Fields, Steven White and Scott Williamson, Opera Roanoke has maintained a reputation for presenting outstanding productions featuring some of the finest singers in the opera world. Metropolitan Opera stars Eleanor Steber and Irene Dalis were among the company's earliest artistic advisors. Although they did not perform, they mentored many young artists in the company's fledgling years as a community organization.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The Roanoke Symphony Orchestra (RSO) was established in 1952. It has special youth and student activities. The Roanoke Youth Symphony has three ensembles: The Roanoke Youth Symphony Orchestra (RYSO); the String Ensemble and the Flute Ensemble. The Roanoke Symphony Chorus was established in 1999 under the direction of Dr. John Hugo. There was a previous organization called the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, mentioned in the "Roanoke Times" in February 1942: "Something unique in theatrical circles of the nation is the Civic Theatre of Roanoke, formed from five organizations — Gilbert and Sullivan Light Opera company, the Academy Players, the Civic Chorus, the Community's Children's Theatre and the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra — for the purpose of the better production of entirely local plays and concerts."


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke and surrounding communities host the annual Commonwealth Games of Virginia, an Olympic-style amateur sports festival. Beginning in 2010, the Blue Ridge Marathon on the Parkway is scheduled to be held in the city.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The 1971–1972 Virginia Squires of the ABA were the only major league sports team to regularly play home games in Roanoke. During the 1971–1972 season, the Squires split home games between Richmond, Norfolk, Hampton Roads and Roanoke. Julius Erving played his professional rookie season with the Squires in 1971–1972.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Minor league baseball has been more successful in building and maintaining a fan base than have the Roanoke Valley's other minor league sports teams. In the 1940s and early 1950s, Roanoke was home to a class B farm team of the Boston Red Sox. Since 1955, neighboring Salem has hosted the local minor league baseball team, currently the Salem Red Sox of the Low-A Carolina League. The team had previously been affiliated with the Houston Astros and Colorado Rockies and known as the Avalanche until becoming an affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, whose ownership group purchased the Avalanche in 2007, for the 2009 season.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Minor league hockey has a history in the Roanoke Valley dating to the 1960s. It reached a zenith of popularity in the mid- to late-1990s with the Roanoke Express of the ECHL. The team's attendance declined due to a lack of post-season success and management turmoil. The Express folded after the 2003–04 season.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The 2005–06 revival by the UHL's Roanoke Valley Vipers failed after one season. The team had a losing record and the midwestern-based league was unable to rekindle the interest of the local fanbase. The team was formed to provide a travel partner for a UHL franchise in Richmond which also folded after the 2005–06 season.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: In 2016, professional ice hockey returned to Roanoke after ten years when the Roanoke Rail Yard Dawgs of the Southern Professional Hockey League began play.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The Roanoke Dazzle of the National Basketball Development League (NBDL) and the Roanoke Steam of the af2 (arena football) folded after never developing consistent followings. The Dazzle's attendance was similar to other inaugural franchises in the league. It was one of the last two teams to remain in its original city. Over the years, Roanoke has also had teams in soccer and men's and women's semi-professional football.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: For a number of years, Roanoke, with Richmond and Norfolk, was one of the nominally neutral sites for the annual basketball game between the Virginia Cavaliers and Virginia Tech Hokies. During most of the 1970s and 1990s, the University of Virginia dominated the rivalry and as such tended to have significantly greater fan representation, despite Roanoke's closer proximity to Virginia Tech's home in Blacksburg. In the late 1990s, the schools started holding these games in their own campus facilities.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke served as the home for the Big South Conference men's basketball tournament and women's basketball tournament in 2001 and 2002.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The Virginia Tech Hokies ice hockey team has used the Roanoke Civic Center as its regular season home venue, from 2006 to the present season. In 2010, the Roanoke College ice hockey team began using the Roanoke Civic Center as its home venue as well.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: From the 1940s to the late 1960s, Roanoke's Victory Stadium hosted an annual Thanksgiving Day game between Virginia Tech and the Virginia Military Institute and other high-profile college football games. From 1946 to 1950, Victory Stadium also hosted the South's Oldest Rivalry between the University of Virginia and the University of North Carolina.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The Roanoke Valley Chess Club was formed in 1947 in Roanoke, and is the oldest continuing chess club in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The club has served to bring and sustain chess activities to the region, and holds regular events. These events include United States Chess Federation Grand Prix tournaments. The club also holds volunteer annual outreach events during Roanoke's Festival in the Park, Grandin Court Block Party, Tons of Fun, and more.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke has a weak mayor-city manager form of government. The city manager is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the city's government and has the authority to hire and fire city employees. The mayor has little, if any, executive authority and essentially is the "first among equals" on the Roanoke City Council. The mayor, however, has a bully pulpit as Roanoke media frequently cover the mayor's appearances and statements. The current mayor of Roanoke is Sherman Lea and the current city manager is Robert S. Cowell. The city council has six members, not counting the mayor, all of whom are elected on an at-large basis. A proposal for a ward-based council, in which the mayor and vice mayor would continue to be elected at-large, was rejected by Roanoke voters in 1997, but ward system advocates still contend that the at-large system results in a disproportionate number of council members coming from affluent neighborhoods and that electing some or all council members on a ward basis would result in a more equal representation of all areas of the city. The four-year terms of city council members are staggered, so there are biennial elections. The candidate who receives the most votes is designated the vice mayor for the following two years.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Independent candidate David A. Bowers, a former Democrat, defeated incumbent Democrat Nelson Harris for Mayor in the May 2008 election with 53% of the vote. In both the 2000 election, Republican Ralph K. Smith and in the 2004 election Nelson Harris won with less than 40% of the vote in competitive three-way races.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: In the May 2008 council elections, Democrats Court Rosen, Anita Price, and Sherman Lea defeated a slate of loosely allied independent city council candidates including incumbent Brian Wishneff. In the May 2006 council elections, a slate of three former Democrats running on an independent slate backed by Harris defeated the candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties. This election ended the city's long-running debate about the fate of Victory Stadium.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke is represented by two members of the Virginia House of Delegates, Sam Rasoul (D-11th) and Chris Head (R-17th), and one member of the Virginia Senate, John Edwards (D-21st). Former Roanoke mayor Ralph Smith won the 2007 election in the neighboring 22nd Senate district after defeating incumbent Brandon Bell for the Republican nomination in the primary election and Democrat Michael Breiner in the general election.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The City of Roanoke lies within , which also includes Lynchburg and much of the Shenandoah Valley and is represented by Republican Ben Cline. , represented by Republican Morgan Griffith of neighboring Salem, has traditionally covered southwest Virginia but has expanded into parts of Salem, Roanoke County and counties to the north of Roanoke to make up for population losses in the rest of the district. Republican Bob Good represents much of the area to south and east of Roanoke, including nearby Franklin County, in which also stretches north to Charlottesville.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke is one of the few Democratic pockets in heavily Republican southwestern Virginia. It has supported the Democratic Party nominee in every election since 1988, and in all but one election since 1976. In statewide elections, Roanoke is often one of the few areas west of Charlottesville to vote Democratic.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The local public school division is Roanoke City Public Schools. The two general enrollment public high schools in Roanoke City are Patrick Henry High School, located in the Raleigh Court area, and William Fleming High School, located in Northwest Roanoke. The six public middle schools in Roanoke City are Woodrow Wilson, James Madison Middle School and John P. Fishwick that feed into Patrick Henry High School, and Lucy Addison, William Ruffner and James Breckinridge, that feed into William Fleming High School. The Noel C. Taylor learning academy is a combined middle and high school that serves students with individual educational needs.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Private non-parochial schools in Roanoke City include Community High School, that provides classes from ninth to 12th grade, and New Vista Montessori, that provides classes from third to ninth grade. Private non-parochial schools outside of Roanoke City, but in the Roanoke Metropolitan Area, include North Cross School, which provides education from pre-kindergarten through the 12th grade.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Private parochial schools in Roanoke City include North Cross and Roanoke Catholic, that provide classes from kindergarten to twelfth grade, and Roanoke Adventist Preparatory, that provides classes from kindergarten to eighth grade. Private parochial schools outside of Roanoke City, but in the Roanoke Metropolitan Area, include Roanoke Valley Christian Schools, Faith Christian School, Mineral Springs Christian School, Parkway Christian Academy and Life Academy, all in Roanoke County.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Two four-year private institutions are situated in neighboring localities – Roanoke College in the city of Salem, and Hollins University in Roanoke County. Virginia Tech and Radford University's main campuses are located the nearby New River Valley, but Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Research Institute opened in Roanoke in 2007 and Virginia Tech also operates a satellite campus for higher education in Roanoke's downtown. The medical school is in cooperation with Carilion Clinic, the regional nonprofit health care organization based in Roanoke. Virginia Western Community College is located in the city of Roanoke, as is the Jefferson College of Health Sciences.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The city's daily newspaper, "The Roanoke Times", has been published since 1886. Weekday circulation averages a little over 90,000 with Sunday circulation around 103,000. In 2002, it was designated the best-read daily newspaper in the country by the 2002 Scarborough Report. Of 162 newspapers in top US metropolitan areas, "The Roanoke Times" ranked first in the percentage of adults who read their daily newspaper. It ranked first again in 2006. "The Roanoke Times" established a web site in 1995 and has developed a web portal at Roanoke.com.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: "The Roanoke Times" formerly published "Blue Ridge Business Journal" which served the business community in Roanoke and the surrounding region. However, it ceased freestanding publication in 2010 and was folded into the newspaper's Sunday Business Publication as "The Ticker". "Valley Business Front" is a monthly publication that targets the business community in the region. The weekly "Roanoke Tribune" was founded in 1939 by Fleming Alexander and covers the city's African-American community. Main Street Newspapers publishes weekly newspapers for surrounding communities such as Salem, Vinton, southwest Roanoke County and Botetourt County. "Play by Play" is a monthly publication dedicated to local and regional sports.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: "The Roanoke Star-Sentinel" is a weekly newspaper which covers the city of Roanoke. "The South Roanoke Circle" is an independent monthly newspaper for the neighborhood of South Roanoke.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: "The Roanoker" is the area's bi-monthly lifestyle magazine and is published by Leisure Publishing, which also publishes the bi-monthly "Blue Ridge Country" magazine.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke and Lynchburg are grouped in the same television market, which currently ranks #67 in the United States with 440,398 households. There are affiliates for all networks as well as independent stations. Stations in this market that are located in Roanoke include NBC affiliate WSLS 10, CBS affiliate WDBJ 7, Fox affiliate WFXR Fox 21/27, PBS affiliate WBRA-15, and ION Television affiliate WPXR-38.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The Roanoke-Lynchburg radio market has a population of 449,800 and is ranked #115 in the United States as of 2020.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Interstate 581 is the primary north-south roadway through the city. It is also the only interstate highway as Interstate 81 passes north of the city limits. Interstate 581 is a concurrency with U.S. Route 220, which continues as the Roy L. Webber Expressway from downtown Roanoke, where the I-581 designation ends, south to State Route 419. Route 220 connects Roanoke to Martinsville, Virginia and Greensboro, North Carolina. The proposed Interstate 73 would generally parallel Route 220 between Roanoke and Greensboro and would likely be a concurrency with I-581 through the city. The primary east-west roadway is U.S. Route 460, named Melrose Avenue and Orange Avenue. Route 460 connects Roanoke to Lynchburg. U.S. Route 11 passes through the city, primarily as Brandon Avenue and Williamson Road, which was a center of automotive-based commercial development after World War II. Other major roads include U.S. Route 221, State Route 117 (known as Peters Creek Road) and State Route 101 (known as Hershberger Road). The Blue Ridge Parkway also briefly runs adjacent to the city border.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke is divided into four quadrants: Northwest (NW), Northeast (NE), Southwest (SW) and Southeast (SE). The mailing address for locations in Roanoke includes the two letter quadrant abbreviation after the street name. For example, the Center in the Square complex in downtown Roanoke has the address "1 Market Square SE".


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport is located in the northern part of the city and is the primary passenger and cargo airport for Southwest Virginia.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The city is known for its rail history. Into the 1960s the Norfolk and Western and Southern Railway ran three trains a day toward New York City; the trains went to different destinations to the west and south: Memphis, Nashville and New Orleans. From October 1, 1979, to October 31, 2017, Roanoke did not have passenger rail service. In August 2013, it was announced that Amtrak service as part of their "Northeast Regional" would be extended from Lynchburg to Roanoke by 2017. Construction of a platform for this new service began in fall 2016. On October 31, 2017, after nearly 40 years without passenger rail service, Amtrak resumed service to Roanoke. Before passenger rail service resumed, a bus service, the Smart Way Connector, aligned with the Amtrak schedule to connect riders to the Kemper Street Station in Lynchburg.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke is a major hub in Norfolk Southern's freight rail system. In 2006, the railroad announced plans to construct an intermodal rail yard in the community of Lafayette, Virginia of neighboring Montgomery County; however, opposition by local residents prompted Norfolk Southern to consider other potential sites. In 2007, the former Roanoke mayor David A. Bowers urged Roanoke to offer a site for the yard. Shortly thereafter, neighboring Salem proposed a site in an industrial area of the city. In 2008, Norfolk Southern determined that the Lafayette location was the only practical site. The Commonwealth of Virginia may also upgrade Norfolk Southern's rail line parallel to Interstate 81 from Roanoke through the Shenandoah Valley to encourage more freight to be shipped by rail.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: The Valley Metro bus system serves the city of Roanoke and surrounding areas. Nearly all routes originate or terminate at the Campbell Court bus station in downtown Roanoke, which is also served by Greyhound. Valley Metro also offers bus service to Blacksburg, Christiansburg, Lynchburg and Virginia Tech via the Smart Way and Smart Way Connector services. In addition, several free shuttles connect local colleges to downtown Roanoke. The Ferrum Express runs between Ferrum College in nearby Rocky Mount and downtown Roanoke, while the Hollins Express connects to Hollins University in Roanoke County.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke City is served by RIDE Solutions, a regional transportation demand management agency that provides carpool matching, cycling advocacy, transit assistance and remote work assistance to businesses and citizens in the region.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Many businesses and organizations have adopted "Star City" in their names, after the Mill Mountain Star. The older "Magic City" is still used, most prominently by Roanoke's Ford dealership. The city's original name of "Big Lick" is often used in whimsical contexts.


title: Roanoke, Virginia

text: Roanoke's status as the largest city in a mountainous area led to the nickname "Capital of the Blue Ridge".


title: Petechia

text: A petechia () is a small red or purple spot (≤4 mm in diameter) that can appear on the skin, conjunctiva, retina, and mucous membranes which is caused by haemorrhage of capillaries. The word is derived from Italian , 'freckle,' of obscure origin. It refers to one of the three descriptive types of hematoma differentiated by size, the other two being ecchymosis (>1cm in diameter) and purpura (4-10mm in diameter). The term is always used in the plural (petechiae), since a single petechia is seldom noticed or significant.


title: Petechia

text: The most common cause of petechiae is through physical trauma such as a hard bout of coughing, holding breath, vomiting, or crying, which can result in facial petechiae, especially around the eyes. Such instances are harmless and usually disappear within a few days.


title: Petechia

text: Despite this, petechiae are used by police investigators in determining whether strangulation has been part of an attack. The documentation of the presence of petechiae on a victim can help police investigators prove the case. Petechiae resulting from strangulation can be relatively tiny and light in color to very bright and pronounced. Petechiae may be seen on the face, in the whites of the eyes or on the inside of the eyelids.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: The usage share of operating systems is the percentage of computing devices that run each operating system (OS) at any particular time. All such figures are necessarily estimates because data about operating system share is difficult to obtain. There are few reliable primary sources and no agreed methodologies for its collection. Operating systems are used in numerous device types, from embedded devices without a screen through to supercomputers.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Most device types that people interact with access the web, so using web access statistics helps compare the usage share of operating systems across most device types, and also the usage share of operating systems used for the same types.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: , Android, an operating system using the Linux kernel, is the world's most-used operating system when judged by web use. It has 42% of the global market, followed by Windows with 30%, Apple iOS with 18%, macOS with 6%, then (desktop) Linux at 1.0% also using the Linux kernel. These numbers do not include embedded devices or game consoles.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: For the above devices, smartphones and other pocket-sized devices make up 58%, desktops and laptops 40%, and tablets 2.0%. Smartphones have the most use in virtually all countries, including in the US at 51% there with PC operating systems (including Windows) down to 46%.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: The most numerous type of device with an operating system are embedded systems. These use varied operating systems; a high percentage are standalone or do not have a web browser, which makes their usage share difficult to measure. Hypothetically some operating systems used in embedded systems are more popular than the ones mentioned above.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: In May 2020, Gartner predicted a decline in all market segments for 2020 (from already declining market in 2019) due to COVID-19, predicting a decline by 13.6% for all devices, while "Work from Home Trend Saved PC Market from Collapse", with them only predicting to decline by 10.5% for PCs. However, in the end according to Gartner, PC shipments grew "10.7% in Fourth Quarter of 2020 and [...] reached 275 million units in 2020, a 4.8% increase from 2019 and the highest growth in ten years." Apple in 4th place for PCs had the largest growth in shipments "for a company" in Q4 of 31.3%, while "the fourth quarter of 2020 was another remarkable period of growth for Chromebooks, with shipments increasing around 200% year over year to reach 11.7 million units. In 2020, Chromebook shipments increased over 80% to total nearly 30 million units, largely due to demand from the North American education market." Chromebooks sold more than Apple's Macs worldwide.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: According to Gartner, the following is the worldwide device shipments (referring to wholesale) by operating system, which includes smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs together.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Shipments (to stores) do not mean sales to consumers (not necessarily in the year of shipment), therefore suggesting the numbers indicate popularity and/or usage could be misleading. Not only do smartphones sell in higher numbers than traditional PCs but also as a whole a lot more, by dollar value with the gap only projected to widen, to well over double.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: For 2015 (and earlier), Gartner reports for "the year, worldwide PC shipments declined for the fourth consecutive year, which started in 2012 with the launch of tablets" with an 8% decline in PC sales for 2015 (not including cumulative decline in sales over the previous years). Gartner includes Macs (running macOS) in PC sales numbers (but not e.g. iPads and Androids), and they individually had a slight increase in sales in 2015.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: On 28 May 2015, Google announced that there were 1.4 billion Android users and 1 billion Google play users active during that month. This changed to 2 billion monthly active users in May 2017.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: On 27 January 2016, Paul Thurrott summarized the operating system market, the day after Apple announced "one billion devices":


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Microsoft backed away from their goal of one billion Windows 10 devices in three years (or "by the middle of 2018") and reported on 26 September 2016 that Windows 10 was running on over 400 million devices, and in March 2019 on more than 800 million.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: By late 2016, Android had been explained to be "killing" Apple's iOS market share (i.e. its declining sales of smartphones, not just relatively but also by number of units, when the whole market is increasing) with


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: As of 9 May 2019, the biggest smartphone companies (by market share) were Samsung, Huawei and Apple, respectively.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Gartner's own press release said, "Apple continued its downward trend with a decline of 7.7 percent in the second quarter of 2016", which is their decline, based on absolute number of units, that underestimates the relative decline (with the market increasing), along with the misleading "1.7 percent [point]" decline. That point decline means an 11.6% relative decline (from 14.6% down to 12.9%).


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Although in units sold Apple is declining, they are almost the only vendor making any profit in the smartphone sector from hardware sales alone. In Q3 2016 for example, they captured 103.6% of the market profits.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: There are more mobile phone owners than toothbrush owners, with mobile phones the fastest growing technology in history. There are a billion more active mobile phones in the world than people (and many more than 10 billion sold so far with less than half still in use), explained by the fact that some people have more than one, such as an extra for work. All the phones have an operating system, but only a fraction of them are smartphones with an OS capable of running modern applications. Currently 3.1 billion smartphones and tablets are in use across the world (with tablets, a small fraction of the total, generally running the same operating systems, Android or iOS, the latter being more popular on tablets. In 2019, a variant of iOS called iPadOS built for iPad tablets was released).


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: In 2015, eMarketer estimated at the beginning of the year that the tablet installed base would hit one billion for the first time (with China's use at 328 million, which Google Play doesn't serve or track, and the United States's use second at 156 million). At the end of the year, because of cheap tablets not counted by all analysts that goal was met (even excluding cumulative sales of previous years) as:


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: This conflicts with statistics from IDC that say the tablet market contracted by 10% in 2015 with only Huawei, ranked fifth, with big gains, more than doubling their share; for fourth quarter 2015, the five biggest vendors were the same except that Amazon Fire tablets ranked third worldwide, new on the list, enabled by its not quite tripling of market share to 7.9%, with its Fire OS Android-derivative.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Gartner excludes some devices from their tablet shipment statistic and includes them in a different category called "premium ultramobiles" with screen sizes of more than 10" inches.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Worldwide smartphone sales to end users by operating systems, as measured by Gartner, International Data Corporation (IDG) and others:


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: The most recent data from various sources published during the last twelve months is summarized in the table below. All of these sources monitor a substantial number of web sites; statistics related to one web site only are excluded.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Android currently ranks highest, above Windows (incl. Xbox console) systems. Windows Phone accounted for 0.51% of the web usage, before it was discontinued.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Considering all personal computing devices, Microsoft Windows is well below 50% usage share on every continent, and at 30% in the US (24% single-day low) and in many countries lower, e.g. China, and in India at 19% (12% some days) and Windows' lowest share globally was 29% in May 2022 (25% some days), and 29% in the US.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: iOS is slightly more popular than Windows in the US, and has been more used the last 6 months, on a monthly average basis, or for up to 11 weeks in a row (weekly average). That's because it's much more popular on the weekends, while Windows usually more used on weekdays. iOS has however been more used for up to almost 2 weeks, every day of that time-span, and even on some days, such as 29 May 2022, Android is also more used than Windows meaning iOS and Android are up to 2.6× more used than Windows there. Worldwide, Android at 43.23% is 48% more used than Windows, next at 29.2%, and iOS third at 17.67% meaning the mobile operating systems Android and iOS are combined a bit over 2× more popular then Windows. In Africa, Android at 62.66% (for May alone is 3.3× (almost 4× with iOS) than Windows at 18.81 (and iOS third at 10.74%). For a 12-month average Android is only 2.1× more popular than Windows in Africa.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Before iOS became the most popular operating system in any independent country, it was most popular in Guam, an unincorporated territory of the United States, for four consecutive quarters in 2017-18, although Android is now the most popular there. iOS has been the highest ranked OS in Jersey (a British Crown dependency in Europe) for years, by a wide margin, and iOS was also highest ranked in Falkland Islands, a British Overseas Territory, for one quarter in 2019, before being overtaken by Android in the following quarter. iOS is competitive with Windows in Sweden, where some days it is more used.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: The designation of an "Unknown" operating system is strangely high in a few countries such as Madagascar where it was at 32.44% (no longer near as high). This may be due to the fact that StatCounter uses browser detection to get OS statistics, and there the most common browsers are not often used. The version breakdown for browsers in Madagascar shows "Other" at 34.9%, and Opera Mini 4.4 is the most popular known browser at 22.1% (plus e.g. 3.34% for Opera 7.6). However browser statistics without version-breakdown has Opera at 48.11% with the "Other" category very small.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: In China, Android got to be the highest ranked operating system in July 2016 (Windows has occasionally topped it since then, while since April 2016 it or all non-mobile operating systems haven't outranked mobile operating systems, meaning Android plus iOS). In the Asian continent as a whole, Android has been ranked highest since February 2016 and Android alone has the majority share, because of a large majority in all the most populous countries of the continent, up to 84% in Bangladesh, where it has had over 70% share for over four years. Since August 2015, Android is ranked first, at 48.36% in May 2016, in the African continent when it took a big jump ahead of Windows 7, and thereby Africa joined Asia as a mobile-majority continent. China is no longer a desktop-majority country, joining India, which has a mobile-majority of 71%, confirming Asia's significant mobile-majority.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Online usage of Linux kernel derivatives (Android + ChromeOS + other Linux) exceeds that of Windows. This has been true since some time between January and April 2016, according to W3Counter and StatCounter.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: However, even before that, the figure for all Unix-like OSes, including those from Apple, was higher than that for Windows.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Windows is still the dominant desktop OS, but the dominance varies by region and it has gradually lost market share to other desktop operating systems (not just to mobile) with the slide very noticeable in the US, where macOS usage has more than quadrupled from Jan. 2009 to Dec. 2020 to 30.62% (i.e. in Christmas month; and 34.72% in April 2020 in the middle of COVID-19, and iOS was more popular overall that year; globally Windows lost to Android that year, as for the two years prior), with Windows down to 61.136% and ChromeOS at 5.46%, plus traditional Linux at 1.73%.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: There is little openly published information on the device shipments of desktop and laptop computers. Gartner publishes estimates, but the way the estimates are calculated is not openly published. Another source of market share of various operating systems is StatCounter basing its estimate on web use (although this may not be very accurate). Also, sales may overstate usage. Most computers are sold with a pre-installed operating system, with some users replacing that OS with a different one due to personal preference, or installing another OS alongside it and using both. Conversely, sales underestimate usage by not counting unauthorized copies. For example, in 2009, approximately 80% of software sold in China consisted of illegitimate copies. In 2007, the statistics from an automated update of IE7 for registered Windows computers differed with the observed web browser share, leading one writer to estimate that 25–35% of all Windows XP installations were unlicensed.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: The usage share of Microsoft's (then latest operating system) Windows 10 has slowly increased since July/August 2016, reaching around 27.15% (of all Windows versions, not all desktop or all operating systems) in December 2016. It eventually reached 79.79% on 5 October 2021, the same day on which its successor Windows 11 was released.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Web analysis shows significant variation in different parts of the world. For example, macOS use varies a lot by region, in North America claims 16.82% (17.52% in the US) whereas in Asia it is only 4.4%. In the United States usage of Windows XP has dropped to 0.38% (of all Windows versions), and its global average to 0.59%, while in Africa it is still at 2.71%, and it still has double-digit share in at least one country.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: The 2019 Stack Overflow developer survey provides no detail about particular versions of Windows. The desktop operating system share among those identifying as professional developers was:


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: In June 2016, Microsoft claimed Windows 10 had half the market share of all Windows installations in the US and UK, as quoted by BetaNews:


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: The digital video game distribution platform Steam publishes a monthly "Hardware & Software Survey", with the statistics below:


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: By Q1 2018, mobile operating systems on smartphones included Google's dominant Android (and variants) and Apple's iOS which combined had an almost 100% market share.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Smartphone penetration vs. desktop use differs substantially by country. Some countries, like Russia, still have smartphone use as low as 22.35% (as a fraction of all web use), but in most western countries, smartphone use is close to 50% of all web use. This doesn't mean that only half of the population has a smartphone, could mean almost all have, just that other platforms have about equal use. Smartphone usage share in developing countries is much higher in Bangladesh, for example, Android smartphones had up to 84% and currently 70% share, and in Mali smartphones had over 90% (up to 95%) share for almost two years. (A section below has more information on regional trends on the move to smartphones.)


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: There is a clear correlation between the GDP per capita of a country and that country's respective smartphone OS market share, with users in the richest countries being much more likely to choose Apple's iPhone, with Google's Android being predominant elsewhere.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Tablet computers, or simply "tablets", became a significant OS market share category starting with Apple's iPad. In Q1 2018, iOS had 65.03% market share and Android had 34.58% market share. Windows tablets may not get classified as such by some analysts, and thus barely register; e.g. 2-in-1 PCs may get classified as "desktops", not tablets.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Since 2016, in South America (and Cuba in North America), Android tablets have gained majority, and in Asia in 2017 Android was slightly more popular than the iPad, which was at 49.05% usage share in October 2015. In Africa, Android tablets are much more popular while elsewhere the iPad has a safe margin.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: , Android has made steady gains to becoming the most popular tablet operating system: that is the trend in many countries, having already gained the majority in large countries (India at 63.25%, and in Indonesia at 62.22%) and in the African continent with Android at 62.22% (first to gain Android majority in late 2014), with steady gains from 20.98% in August 2012 (Egypt at 62.37%, Zimbabwe at 62.04%), and South America at 51.09% in July 2015. (Peru at 52.96%). Asia is at 46%. In Nepal, Android gained majority lead in November 2014 but lost it down to 41.35% with iOS at 56.51%. In Taiwan, as of October 2016, Android after having gained a confident majority, has been on a losing streak. China is a major exception to Android gaining market share in Asia (there Android phablets are much more popular than Android tablets, while similar devices get classified as smartphones) where the iPad/iOS is at 82.84% in March 2015.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: According to StatCounter web use statistics (a proxy for all use), smartphones are more popular than desktop computers globally (and Android in particular more popular than Windows). Including tablets with mobiles/smartphones, as they also run so-called mobile operating systems, even in the United States (and most countries) are mobiles including tablets more popular than other (older originally made for desktops) operating systems (such as Windows and macOS). Windows in the US (at 33.42%) has only 8% head-start (2.55-percentage points) over iOS only; with Android, that mobile operating system and iOS have 52.14% majority. Alternatively, Apple, with iOS plus their non-mobile macOS (9.33%) has 20% more share (6.7-percentage points more) than Microsoft's Windows in the country where both companies were built.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Although desktop computers are still popular in many countries (while overall down to 44.9% in the first quarter of 2017), smartphones are more popular even in many developed countries. A few countries on all continents are desktop-minority with Android more popular than Windows; many, e.g. Poland in Europe, and about half of the countries in South America, and many in North America, e.g. Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti; up to most countries in Asia and Africa with smartphone-majority because of Android, Poland and Turkey in Europe highest with 57.68% and 62.33%, respectively. In Ireland, smartphone use at 45.55% outnumbers desktop use and mobile as a whole gains majority when including the tablet share at 9.12%. Spain was also slightly desktop-minority. As of July 2019, Sweden had been desktop-minority for eight weeks in a row.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: The range of measured mobile web use varies a lot by country, and a StatCounter press release recognizes "India amongst world leaders in use of mobile to surf the internet" (of the big countries) where the share is around (or over) 80% and desktop is at 19.56%, with Russia trailing with 17.8% mobile use (and desktop the rest).


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Smartphones (discounting tablets), first gained majority in December 2016 (desktop-majority was lost the month before), and it wasn't a Christmas-time fluke, as while close to majority after smartphone majority happened again in March 2017.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: In the week of 7–13 November 2016, smartphones alone (without tablets) overtook desktop for the first time, albeit for a short period. Examples of mobile-majority countries include Paraguay in South America, Poland in Europe and Turkey and most of Asia and Africa. Some of the world is still desktop-majority, with for example the United States at 54.89% (but not on all days). However, in some territories of the United States, such as Puerto Rico, desktop is significantly under majority, with Windows just under 25%, overtaken by Android.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: On 22 October 2016 (and subsequent weekends), mobile showed majority. Since 27 October, the desktop hasn't had a majority, including on weekdays. Smartphones alone have showed majority since 23 December to the end of the year, with the share topping at 58.22% on Christmas Day. To the "mobile"-majority share of smartphones, tablets could be added giving a 63.22% majority. While an unusually high top, a similar high also occurred on Monday 17 April 2017, with the smartphone share slightly lower and tablet share slightly higher, combining to 62.88%.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Formerly, according to a StatCounter press release, the world has turned desktop-minority; , at about 49% desktop use for that month, but mobile wasn't ranked higher, tablet share had to be added to it to exceed desktop share.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: For the Christmas season (i.e. temporarily, while desktop-minority remains and smartphone-majority on weekends), the last two weeks in December 2016, Australia (and Oceania in general) was desktop-minority for the first time for an extended period, i.e. every day from 23 December.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: In South America, smartphones alone took majority from desktops on Christmas Day, but for a full-week-average, desktop is still at least at 58%.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: The UK desktop-minority dropped down to 44.02% on Christmas Day and for the eight days to the end of the year. Ireland joined some other European countries with smartphone-majority, for three days after Christmas, topping that day at 55.39%.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: In the US, desktop-minority happened for three days on and around Christmas (while a longer four-day stretch happened in November, and happens frequently on weekends).


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: According to StatCounter web use statistics (a proxy for all use), in the week from 7–13 November 2016, "mobile" (meaning smartphones) alone (without tablets) overtook desktop, for the first time, with them highest ranked at 52.13% (on 27 November 2016) or up to 49.02% for a full week. Mobile-majority applies to countries such as Paraguay in South America, Poland in Europe and Turkey; and the continents Asia and Africa. Large regions of the rest of the world are still desktop-majority, while on some days, the United States, (and North America as a whole) isn't; the US is desktop-minority up to four days in a row, and up to a five-day average. Other examples, of desktop-minority on some days, include the UK, Ireland, Australia (and Oceania as a whole); in fact, at least one country on every continent has turned desktop-minority (for at least a month). On 22 October 2016 (and subsequent weekends), mobile has shown majority.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Previously, according to a StatCounter press release, the world has turned desktop-minority; , at about 49% desktop use for that month, with desktop-minority stretching up to an 18-weeks/4-months period from 28 June to 31 October 2016, while whole of July, August or September 2016, showed desktop-majority (and many other long sub-periods in the long stretch showed desktop-minority; similarly only Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays are desktop-minority). The biggest continents, Asia and Africa, have shown vast mobile-majority for long time (any day of the week), as well as several individual countries elsewhere have also turned mobile-majority: Poland, Albania (and Turkey) in Europe and Paraguay and Bolivia in South America.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: According to StatCounter's web use statistics, Saturday 28 May 2016, was the day when smartphones ("mobile" at StatCounter, that now counts tablets separately) became a most used platform, ranking first, at 47.27%, above desktops. The next day, desktops slightly outnumbered "mobile" (unless counting tablets: some analysts count tablets with smartphones or separately while others with desktops even when most tablets are iPad or Android, not Windows devices).


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Since Sunday 27 March 2016, the first day the world dipped to desktop-minority, it has happened almost every week, and by week of 11–17 July 2016, the world was desktop-minority, followed by the next week, and thereon also for a three-week period. The trend is still stronger on weekends, with e.g. 17 July 2016 showed desktop at 44.67%, "mobile" at 49.5% plus tablets at 5.7%. Recent weekly data shows a downward trend for desktops.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: According to StatCounter web use statistics (a proxy for overall use), on weekends desktops worldwide lose about 5 percent points, e.g. down to 51.46% on 15 August 2015, with the loss in (relative) web use going to mobile (and also a minuscule increase for tablets), mostly because Windows 7, ranked 1st on workdays, declines in web use, with it shifting to Android and lesser degree to iOS.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Two continents, have already crossed over to mobile-majority (because of Android), based on StatCounters web use statistics. In June 2015, Asia became the first continent where mobile overtook desktop (followed by Africa in August; while Nigeria had mobile majority in October 2011, because of Symbian that later had 51% share, then Series 40 dominating, followed by Android as dominating operating system) and as far back as October 2014, they had reported this trend on a large scale in a press release: "Mobile usage has already overtaken desktop in several countries including India, South Africa and Saudi Arabia". In India, desktop went from majority, in July 2012, down to 32%. In Bangladesh desktop went from majority, in May 2013, down to 17%, with Android alone now accounting for majority web use. Only a few African countries were still desktop-majority and many have a large mobile majority including Ethiopia and Kenya, where mobile usage is over 72%.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: The popularity of mobile use worldwide has been driven by the huge popularity increase of Android in Asian countries, where Android is the highest ranked operating system statistically in virtually every south-east Asian country, while it also ranks most popular in almost every African country. Poland has been desktop-minority since April 2015, because of Android being vastly more popular there, and other European countries, such as Albania (and Turkey), have also crossed over. The South America continent is somewhat far from losing desktop-majority, but Paraguay had lost it . Android and mobile browsing in general has also become hugely popular in all other continents where desktop has a large desktop base and the trend to mobile is not as clear as a fraction of the total web use.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: While some analysts count tablets with desktops (as some of them run Windows), others count them with mobile phones (as the vast majority of tablets run so-called mobile operating systems, such as Android or iOS on the iPad). iPad has a clear lead globally, but has clearly lost the majority to Android in South America, and a number of Eastern European countries such as Poland; lost virtually all African countries and has lost the majority twice in Asia, but gained the majority back (while many individual countries, e.g. India and most of the middle East have clear Android majority on tablets). Android on tablets is thus second most popular after the iPad.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: In March 2015, for the first time in the US the number of mobile-only adult internet users exceeded the number of desktop-only internet users with 11.6% of the digital population only using mobile compared to 10.6% only using desktop; this also means the majority, 78%, use both desktop and mobile to access the internet. A few smaller countries in North America, such as Haiti (because of Android) have gone mobile majority (mobile went to up to 72.35%, and is at 64.43% in February 2016).


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Internet based servers' market share can be measured with statistical surveys of publicly accessible servers, such as web servers, mail servers or DNS servers on the Internet: the operating systems powering such servers are found by inspecting raw response messages. This method gives insight only into market share of operating systems that are publicly accessible on the Internet.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: There will be differences in the result depending on how the sample is done and observations weighted. Usually the surveys are not based on a random sample of all IP addresses, domain names, hosts or organisations, but on servers found by some other method. Additionally, many domains and IP addresses may be served by one host and some domains may be served by several hosts or by one host with several IP addresses.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Mainframes are larger and more powerful than servers, but not supercomputers. They are used to process large sets of data, for example enterprise resource planning or credit card transactions.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: The most common operating system for mainframes is IBM's z/OS. Operating systems for IBM Z generation hardware include IBM's proprietary z/OS, Linux on IBM Z, z/TPF, z/VSE and z/VM.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Gartner reported on 23 December 2008, that Linux on System z was used on approximately 28% of the "customer z base" and that they expected this to increase to over 50% in the following five years. Of Linux on IBM Z, Red Hat and Micro Focus compete to sell RHEL and SLES respectively:


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: Like today's trend of mobile devices from personal computers, in 1984 for the first time estimated sales of desktop computers ($11.6 billion) exceeded mainframe computers ($11.4 billion). IBM received the vast majority of mainframe revenue.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: From 1991 to 1996, AT&T Corporation briefly owned NCR, one of the major original mainframe producers. During the same period, companies found that servers based on microcomputer designs could be deployed at a fraction of the acquisition price and offer local users much greater control over their own systems given the IT policies and practices at that time. Terminals used for interacting with mainframe systems were gradually replaced by personal computers. Consequently, demand plummeted and new mainframe installations were restricted mainly to financial services and government. In the early 1990s, there was a rough consensus among industry analysts that the mainframe was a dying market as mainframe platforms were increasingly replaced by personal computer networks.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: In 2012, NASA powered down its last mainframe, an IBM System z9. However, IBM's successor to the z9, the z10, led a New York Times reporter to state four years earlier that "mainframe technology—hardware, software and services—remains a large and lucrative business for IBM, and mainframes are still the back-office engines behind the world's financial markets and much of global commerce". , while mainframe technology represented less than 3% of IBM's revenues, it "continue[d] to play an outsized role in Big Blue's results".


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: The TOP500 project lists and ranks the 500 fastest supercomputers for which benchmark results are submitted. Since the early 1990s, the field of supercomputers has been dominated by Unix or Unix-like operating systems, and starting in 2017, every top 500 fastest supercomputer uses Linux as its supercomputer operating system.


title: Usage share of operating systems

text: The last supercomputer to rank #1 while using an operating system other than Linux was ASCI White, which ran AIX. It held the title from November 2000 to November 2001, and was decommissioned in 2006. Then in June 2017, two AIX computers held rank 493 and 494, the last non-Linux systems before they dropped off the list.


title: Rylan Clark

text: Ross Richard Clark (born 25 October 1988), known professionally as Rylan, is an English broadcaster and model. He finished in fifth place on the ninth series of "The X Factor" in 2012, and the following year, he won the eleventh series of "Celebrity Big Brother". He went on to present various television shows, including "Big Brother's Bit on the Side" (2013–2018)"," "This Morning" (2013–2019, 2022), "The Xtra Factor" (2016), "Up Late with Rylan" (2016), "Supermarket Sweep" (2019–2020), "Ready Steady Cook" (2020–2021), and "You Are What You Wear" (2020).


title: Rylan Clark

text: Clark was born Ross Richard Clark on 25 October 1988 in Stepney, East London, to mother Linda Clark. He has a brother, Jamie. Clark is a supporter of West Ham United, having been a Junior Hammer as a child. He was educated at Coopers' Company and Coborn School in Upminster, East London.


title: Rylan Clark

text: Clark has been a part-time model since he was 16. It was during his early modelling career that he adopted the stage name "Rylan", which was conceived when he went into a branch of WHSmith and chose the name from the "R" section of a baby name book. In 2007, he applied for "Big Brother 8", but, "the day I was going in, it got taken away from me because it got leaked to the press. It was devastating." He was in several Take That and Westlife tribute bands in Ibiza, and was also part of a Spanish boy band called 4bidden until 2010.


title: Rylan Clark

text: In September 2014, Clark got engaged to "Big Brother 14" housemate Dan Neal. On 7 November 2015, the couple got married. On 27 June 2021, it was announced that the couple had separated after six years of marriage. Rylan lives in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex.


title: Rylan Clark

text: In 2010, Clark appeared in four episodes of the BBC series "John Bishop's Britain". Clark was then a finalist on the Sky Living modelling series "Signed by Katie Price". In May 2012, Clark auditioned for the ninth series of "The X Factor" at The O2 Arena in London in front of Louis Walsh, Gary Barlow, Tulisa and guest judge Rita Ora. He performed a dance version of Des'ree's "Kissing You". Afterwards, Barlow said: "Rylan, love your personality, hate your voice, really strange song choice as well." Walsh also admitted that he was "a bit worried". Barlow gave Clark a "no", but Ora, Tulisa and Walsh all decided to say "yes" and put him through to bootcamp.


title: Rylan Clark

text: At bootcamp, Clark sang The Pussycat Dolls' "Don't Cha" with former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger, who was then a judge. After his performance, Barlow admitted: "[I] think he's going to haunt me throughout this competition." Barlow was reluctant to send Clark through to judges' houses, however, the other three judges were in favour of him advancing. Clark was eventually put through into the boys category with Scherzinger as his mentor. At judges' houses in Dubai, he performed a stripped-back rendition of Rihanna's "We Found Love" in front of Scherzinger and Ne-Yo. Scherzinger later put Clark through to the live shows as one of her final three acts with James Arthur and Jahméne Douglas. She told him: "Rylan, it's such a big risk... but I have to take it, and you are in my final three", and he appeared to have an immense breakdown.


title: Rylan Clark

text: Clark sang "Gold" by Spandau Ballet in the first week of the live shows, and was in the bottom two with Carolynne Poole the following night. Scherzinger voted to save Clark, as he was her act, while Barlow and Tulisa voted to save Poole, based on their final showdown performance. Walsh, who had the casting vote, voted to save him, sending the result to deadlock, in which Clark had received more public votes than Poole and was saved, much to the disgust of Barlow, who stormed off stage and who later called Clark a "joke act" and "talentless".


title: Rylan Clark

text: In week 2, Clark persisted to annoy Barlow by first performing part of Barlow's "Back for Good" and then claiming that he had booked him a cab in advance in case he stormed off-stage again, to which Barlow responded "That's funny [because] I've had yours on hold for two weeks." That week, he was put through to week three on the public vote. In week 5, he was again in the bottom two with Kye Sones, but he was saved by the public vote. This happened after Barlow and Walsh voted to eliminate Clark, while Scherzinger and Tulisa, who had the casting vote, voted to eliminate Sones. Tulisa sent the result to deadlock and Sones was eliminated. In week 7, Clark revealed on "The Xtra Factor" that his psychic had told him that he would reach week 7 of the competition before leaving, however, the following night, he advanced to the quarter-final by the public vote, before being eliminated by the judges in week 8, with only Scherzinger voting to save him over Union J.


title: Rylan Clark

text: Clark became a housemate in the eleventh series of "Celebrity Big Brother" in January 2013. He was the second celebrity to enter the Big Brother House. On launch night, Clark and Italian jockey Frankie Dettori selected which celebrities would join them in the House and who would be banished to the Basement. It was revealed midway through the series that, contrary to the show's rules of staying in the Big Brother House throughout the series, he had been leaving the house each Sunday to rehearse for "The X Factor" tour, which began a day after the live final on 25 January. He made it to the final five with Neil "Razor" Ruddock, Claire Richards, Ryan Moloney and Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt. Clark was announced as the winner during the live final, after which he broke down into tears.


title: Rylan Clark

text: On 14 May 2013, as part of a revamp by Channel 5, Clark and AJ Odudu were announced as the new co-hosts of "Big Brother's Bit on the Side", replacing Jamie East and Alice Levine. Emma Willis replaced Brian Dowling as host of "Big Brother". In the 2015 series of "Celebrity Big Brother" UK vs USA, he also presented "Bit on the Side" on the weekends. For this series, the programme was renamed "Bit on the State Side" and filmed in an American-style studio. he presented "Big Brother's Bit on the Side" until the series was cancelled by Channel 5 in 2018.


title: Rylan Clark

text: In October 2015, Clark co-presented a special edition of "Most Haunted Live" with Jamie East on Really. In May 2016, he presented his own primetime chat show for Channel 5 called "Up Late with Rylan".


title: Rylan Clark

text: Since the tenth series of "The X Factor", Clark has provided all the gossip from the show on "This Morning". He has also acted as a Hub presenter until its removal from the programme in 2014. Since late 2014, Clark has also been credited as the main relief presenter for the series. He has presented with others including Ruth Langsford, Lorraine Kelly, Dan Neal (his ex-husband), Alison Hammond, Phillip Schofield, Holly Willoughby, Amanda Holden, Sarah Greene, Geri Halliwell, Gok Wan, Lisa Snowdon, Emma Willis, Rochelle Humes and Eamonn Holmes. On 1 July 2016, it was confirmed that Clark would co-host "The Xtra Factor Live" with Matt Edmondson. This would be the second time that a former "X Factor" contestant has co-hosted the series, the first being Olly Murs, who had co-hosted from 2011 to 2012.


title: Rylan Clark

text: In January 2017, it was announced that Clark would present a new daytime game show for ITV called "Babushka". He also hosted a non-broadcast pilot for ITV2 panel show "Codswallop". However, it was not commissioned for a full series. In December 2017, it was announced that Rylan would be taking a break from his duties with "This Morning" from the following January for a few months. Clark returned to "This Morning" briefly in both April 2018, July 2018 and August 2018 as a main show stand-in presenter. On 10 July 2019, it was revealed that he would present a revived version of "Supermarket Sweep". The first series aired on ITV2 on 9 September 2019 to 4 October 2019. The second series aired on 1 September to 19 December 2020, however, the show moved to its original channel ITV.


title: Rylan Clark

text: In 2018, it was announced that Clark would become a regular panellist on "" and he remained there until its cancellation in 2020. He also took over Mel Giedroyc's role as co-commentator for the Eurovision Song Contest semi-finals alongside Scott Mills. In 2018, he covered for Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2, and took over her show when she moved to the station's breakfast show in January 2019, now titled "Rylan on Saturday". Since January 2019, Rylan has also hosted multiple episodes of "The One Show" as a stand-in guest presenter.


title: Rylan Clark

text: On 18 April 2019, it was announced that Clark would begin co-presenting "" with Zoe Ball. In May 2019, Clark was the spokesperson for the United Kingdom as part of the Eurovision Song Contest 2019. On 2 September 2019, it was confirmed that he would host a revived daytime series of "Ready Steady Cook" on BBC One in 2020 and in 2021, it was renewed for series 2.


title: Rylan Clark

text: In February 2014, Clark made a guest appearance in the Sky 1 comedy series "Stella". In 2015, he reached the final of BBC One's "Celebrity MasterChef". On 21 January 2016, he announced on Twitter that he would release his autobiography titled "The Life of Rylan" on 30 June 2016. It reached number 1 in The Sunday Times Bestsellers List. He appeared as Ryan, an air steward, in the 2016 film "". In 2017, he narrated the ITVBe reality series "Spa Wars". In June 2020, it was announced that Clark would be co-hosting "" with Davina McCall.


title: Tom Araya

text: Tomás Enrique Araya Díaz (; born June 6, 1961) is a Chilean American musician, best known as the vocalist and bassist of American thrash metal band Slayer. Araya is ranked 58th by "Hit Parader" on their list of the 100 Greatest Metal Vocalists of All Time. Before Slayer was disbanded in 2019, Araya, along with Kerry King, were the only members who stayed in the band since its inception.


title: Tom Araya

text: Araya was employed as a respiratory therapist in the early 1980s and used his earnings to finance Slayer's debut album "Show No Mercy" (1983). Much of Araya's lyrical content is about serial killers, a subject he finds interesting; his first credited lyrical contribution was the vampire-themed track "At Dawn They Sleep" from 1985's "Hell Awaits".


title: Tom Araya

text: Tomás Enrique Araya Diaz was born in Viña del Mar, Chile, but his family moved to the US when he was five. He grew up in Los Angeles. His older brother, Cisco, played guitar. This inspired Araya to pick up bass at age eight. The two played Beatles and Rolling Stones songs, which he would later cite as an influence on his own music.<ref name="Exclusive! Interview With Slayer Vocalist/ Bassist Tom Araya "></ref>


title: Tom Araya

text: In the early 1980s, Araya's eldest sister suggested he enroll in a program to become certified as a respiratory therapist. Araya's father insisted he either find a job or enroll in the course. Araya enrolled in a two-year technical course, learning about air mixture ratios, drawing blood, and how to intubate.


title: Tom Araya

text: In 1981, Araya was approached by Kerry King, who asked Araya to join his band, Slayer. Araya accepted, using his earnings as a respiratory therapist to finance the band's 1983 debut album "Show No Mercy". Araya requested time off of work from his employer, the Brotman Medical Center, for Slayer's first European tour in 1984 and was denied; We need you to come in today.' They'd call me at 5:00 in the morning and wake me, 'Someone's not coming in, we need you to come in to work. After a month of sporadic attendance, his employers threatened termination; Araya replied "Well, I guess I'm fired." Along with King, Araya was one of the two original members to remain in Slayer for the entire length of the band's career, from 1981 to 2019.


title: Tom Araya

text: In 2006, Araya underwent gallbladder surgery, which disrupted The Unholy Alliance tour. Originally set to launch on June 6, the tour was postponed to June 13. Araya was also unable to finish the vocals for a song entitled "Final Six", which was to be included on Slayer's 2006 album "Christ Illusion"; later released on the special edition of the album. Araya brought his children on the tour stating "it's kind of cool to expose them at such a young age. My first concert, I was, like, 17."


title: Tom Araya

text: "We [Slayer] have been fortunate- fortunate enough to have lasted as long as we have because a lot of bands don't last that long."