title: Synthetic diamond

text: Hall achieved the first commercially successful synthesis of diamond on December 16, 1954, and this was announced on February 15, 1955. His breakthrough was using a "belt" press, which was capable of producing pressures above and temperatures above . The press used a pyrophyllite container in which graphite was dissolved within molten nickel, cobalt or iron. Those metals acted as a "solvent-catalyst", which both dissolved carbon and accelerated its conversion into diamond. The largest diamond he produced was across; it was too small and visually imperfect for jewelry, but usable in industrial abrasives. Hall's co-workers were able to replicate his work, and the discovery was published in the major journal "Nature". He was the first person to grow a synthetic diamond with a reproducible, verifiable and well-documented process. He left GE in 1955, and three years later developed a new apparatus for the synthesis of diamond—a tetrahedral press with four anvils—to avoid violating a U.S. Department of Commerce secrecy order on the GE patent applications.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Synthetic gem-quality diamond crystals were first produced in 1970 by GE, then reported in 1971. The first successes used a pyrophyllite tube seeded at each end with thin pieces of diamond. The graphite feed material was placed in the center and the metal solvent (nickel) between the graphite and the seeds. The container was heated and the pressure was raised to about . The crystals grow as they flow from the center to the ends of the tube, and extending the length of the process produces larger crystals. Initially, a week-long growth process produced gem-quality stones of around (1 carat or 0.2 g), and the process conditions had to be as stable as possible. The graphite feed was soon replaced by diamond grit because that allowed much better control of the shape of the final crystal.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: The first gem-quality stones were always yellow to brown in color because of contamination with nitrogen. Inclusions were common, especially "plate-like" ones from the nickel. Removing all nitrogen from the process by adding aluminum or titanium produced colorless "white" stones, and removing the nitrogen and adding boron produced blue ones. Removing nitrogen also slowed the growth process and reduced the crystalline quality, so the process was normally run with nitrogen present.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Although the GE stones and natural diamonds were chemically identical, their physical properties were not the same. The colorless stones produced strong fluorescence and phosphorescence under short-wavelength ultraviolet light, but were inert under long-wave UV. Among natural diamonds, only the rarer blue gems exhibit these properties. Unlike natural diamonds, all the GE stones showed strong yellow fluorescence under X-rays. The De Beers Diamond Research Laboratory has grown stones of up to for research purposes. Stable HPHT conditions were kept for six weeks to grow high-quality diamonds of this size. For economic reasons, the growth of most synthetic diamonds is terminated when they reach a mass of to .


title: Synthetic diamond

text: In the 1950s, research started in the Soviet Union and the US on the growth of diamond by pyrolysis of hydrocarbon gases at the relatively low temperature of . This low-pressure process is known as chemical vapor deposition (CVD). William G. Eversole reportedly achieved vapor deposition of diamond over diamond substrate in 1953, but it was not reported until 1962. Diamond film deposition was independently reproduced by Angus and coworkers in 1968 and by Deryagin and Fedoseev in 1970. Whereas Eversole and Angus used large, expensive, single-crystal diamonds as substrates, Deryagin and Fedoseev succeeded in making diamond films on non-diamond materials (silicon and metals), which led to massive research on inexpensive diamond coatings in the 1980s.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: From 2013, reports emerged of a rise in undisclosed synthetic melee diamonds (small round diamonds typically used to frame a central diamond or embellish a band) being found in set jewelry and within diamond parcels sold in the trade. Due to the relatively low cost of diamond melee, as well as relative lack of universal knowledge for identifying large quantities of melee efficiently, not all dealers have made an effort to test diamond melee to correctly identify whether it is of natural or man-made origin. However, international laboratories are now beginning to tackle the issue head-on, with significant improvements in synthetic melee identification being made.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: There are several methods used to produce synthetic diamonds. The original method uses high pressure and high temperature (HPHT) and is still widely used because of its relatively low cost. The process involves large presses that can weigh hundreds of tons to produce a pressure of at . The second method, using chemical vapor deposition (CVD), creates a carbon plasma over a substrate onto which the carbon atoms deposit to form diamond. Other methods include explosive formation (forming detonation nanodiamonds) and sonication of graphite solutions.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: In the HPHT method, there are three main press designs used to supply the pressure and temperature necessary to produce synthetic diamond: the belt press, the cubic press and the split-sphere (BARS) press. Diamond seeds are placed at the bottom of the press.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: The internal part of the press is heated above and melts the solvent metal. The molten metal dissolves the high purity carbon source, which is then transported to the small diamond seeds and precipitates, forming a large synthetic diamond.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: The original GE invention by Tracy Hall uses the belt press wherein the upper and lower anvils supply the pressure load to a cylindrical inner cell. This internal pressure is confined radially by a belt of pre-stressed steel bands. The anvils also serve as electrodes providing electric current to the compressed cell. A variation of the belt press uses hydraulic pressure, rather than steel belts, to confine the internal pressure. Belt presses are still used today, but they are built on a much larger scale than those of the original design.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: The second type of press design is the cubic press. A cubic press has six anvils which provide pressure simultaneously onto all faces of a cube-shaped volume. The first multi-anvil press design was a tetrahedral press, using four anvils to converge upon a tetrahedron-shaped volume. The cubic press was created shortly thereafter to increase the volume to which pressure could be applied. A cubic press is typically smaller than a belt press and can more rapidly achieve the pressure and temperature necessary to create synthetic diamond. However, cubic presses cannot be easily scaled up to larger volumes: the pressurized volume can be increased by using larger anvils, but this also increases the amount of force needed on the anvils to achieve the same pressure. An alternative is to decrease the surface area to volume ratio of the pressurized volume, by using more anvils to converge upon a higher-order platonic solid, such as a dodecahedron. However, such a press would be complex and difficult to manufacture.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: The BARS apparatus is claimed to be the most compact, efficient, and economical of all the diamond-producing presses. In the center of a BARS device, there is a ceramic cylindrical "synthesis capsule" of about in size. The cell is placed into a cube of pressure-transmitting material, such as pyrophyllite ceramics, which is pressed by inner anvils made from cemented carbide (e.g., tungsten carbide or VK10 hard alloy). The outer octahedral cavity is pressed by 8 steel outer anvils. After mounting, the whole assembly is locked in a disc-type barrel with a diameter about . The barrel is filled with oil, which pressurizes upon heating, and the oil pressure is transferred to the central cell. The synthesis capsule is heated up by a coaxial graphite heater, and the temperature is measured with a thermocouple.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Chemical vapor deposition is a method by which diamond can be grown from a hydrocarbon gas mixture. Since the early 1980s, this method has been the subject of intensive worldwide research. Whereas the mass production of high-quality diamond crystals make the HPHT process the more suitable choice for industrial applications, the flexibility and simplicity of CVD setups explain the popularity of CVD growth in laboratory research. The advantages of CVD diamond growth include the ability to grow diamond over large areas and on various substrates, and the fine control over the chemical impurities and thus properties of the diamond produced. Unlike HPHT, CVD process does not require high pressures, as the growth typically occurs at pressures under .


title: Synthetic diamond

text: The CVD growth involves substrate preparation, feeding varying amounts of gases into a chamber and energizing them. The substrate preparation includes choosing an appropriate material and its crystallographic orientation; cleaning it, often with a diamond powder to abrade a non-diamond substrate; and optimizing the substrate temperature (about ) during the growth through a series of test runs. The gases always include a carbon source, typically methane, and hydrogen with a typical ratio of 1:99. Hydrogen is essential because it selectively etches off non-diamond carbon. The gases are ionized into chemically active radicals in the growth chamber using microwave power, a hot filament, an arc discharge, a welding torch, a laser, an electron beam, or other means.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: During the growth, the chamber materials are etched off by the plasma and can incorporate into the growing diamond. In particular, CVD diamond is often contaminated by silicon originating from the silica windows of the growth chamber or from the silicon substrate. Therefore, silica windows are either avoided or moved away from the substrate. Boron-containing species in the chamber, even at very low trace levels, also make it unsuitable for the growth of pure diamond.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Diamond nanocrystals ( in diameter) can be formed by detonating certain carbon-containing explosives in a metal chamber. These are called "detonation nanodiamonds". During the explosion, the pressure and temperature in the chamber become high enough to convert the carbon of the explosives into diamond. Being immersed in water, the chamber cools rapidly after the explosion, suppressing conversion of newly produced diamond into more stable graphite. In a variation of this technique, a metal tube filled with graphite powder is placed in the detonation chamber. The explosion heats and compresses the graphite to an extent sufficient for its conversion into diamond. The product is always rich in graphite and other non-diamond carbon forms, and requires prolonged boiling in hot nitric acid (about 1 day at ) to dissolve them. The recovered nanodiamond powder is used primarily in polishing applications. It is mainly produced in China, Russia and Belarus, and started reaching the market in bulk quantities by the early 2000s.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Micron-sized diamond crystals can be synthesized from a suspension of graphite in organic liquid at atmospheric pressure and room temperature using ultrasonic cavitation. The diamond yield is about 10% of the initial graphite weight. The estimated cost of diamond produced by this method is comparable to that of the HPHT method; the crystalline perfection of the product is significantly worse for the ultrasonic synthesis. This technique requires relatively simple equipment and procedures, but it has only been reported by two research groups, and has no industrial use. Numerous process parameters, such as preparation of the initial graphite powder, the choice of ultrasonic power, synthesis time and the solvent, are not yet optimized, leaving a window for potential improvement of the efficiency and reduction of the cost of the ultrasonic synthesis.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Traditionally, the absence of crystal flaws is considered to be the most important quality of a diamond. Purity and high crystalline perfection make diamonds transparent and clear, whereas its hardness, optical dispersion (luster), and chemical stability (combined with marketing), make it a popular gemstone. High thermal conductivity is also important for technical applications. Whereas high optical dispersion is an intrinsic property of all diamonds, their other properties vary depending on how the diamond was created.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Diamond can be one single, continuous crystal or it can be made up of many smaller crystals (polycrystal). Large, clear and transparent single-crystal diamonds are typically used as gemstones. Polycrystalline diamond (PCD) consists of numerous small grains, which are easily seen by the naked eye through strong light absorption and scattering; it is unsuitable for gems and is used for industrial applications such as mining and cutting tools. Polycrystalline diamond is often described by the average size (or grain size) of the crystals that make it up. Grain sizes range from nanometers to hundreds of micrometers, usually referred to as "nanocrystalline" and "microcrystalline" diamond, respectively.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: The hardness of diamond is 10 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, the hardest known material on this scale. Diamond is also the hardest known material for its resistance to indentation. The hardness of synthetic diamond depends on its purity, crystalline perfection and orientation: hardness is higher for flawless, pure crystals oriented to the <nowiki>[</nowiki>111<nowiki>]</nowiki> direction (along the longest diagonal of the cubic diamond lattice). Nanocrystalline diamond produced through CVD diamond growth can have a hardness ranging from 30% to 75% of that of single crystal diamond, and the hardness can be controlled for specific applications. Some synthetic single-crystal diamonds and HPHT nanocrystalline diamonds (see hyperdiamond) are harder than any known natural diamond.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Every diamond contains atoms other than carbon in concentrations detectable by analytical techniques. Those atoms can aggregate into macroscopic phases called inclusions. Impurities are generally avoided, but can be introduced intentionally as a way to control certain properties of the diamond. Growth processes of synthetic diamond, using solvent-catalysts, generally lead to formation of a number of impurity-related complex centers, involving transition metal atoms (such as nickel, cobalt or iron), which affect the electronic properties of the material.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: For instance, pure diamond is an electrical insulator, but diamond with boron added is an electrical conductor (and, in some cases, a superconductor), allowing it to be used in electronic applications. Nitrogen impurities hinder movement of lattice dislocations (defects within the crystal structure) and put the lattice under compressive stress, thereby increasing hardness and toughness.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: The thermal conductivity of CVD diamond ranges from tens of W/m-K to more than 2000 W/m-K, depending on the defects, grain boundary structures. As the growth of diamond in CVD, the grains grow with the film thickness, leading to a gradient thermal conductivity along the film thickness direction.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Unlike most electrical insulators, pure diamond is an excellent conductor of heat because of the strong covalent bonding within the crystal. The thermal conductivity of pure diamond is the highest of any known solid. Single crystals of synthetic diamond enriched in (99.9%), isotopically pure diamond, have the highest thermal conductivity of any material, 30 W/cm·K at room temperature, 7.5 times higher than that of copper. Natural diamond's conductivity is reduced by 1.1% by the naturally present, which acts as an inhomogeneity in the lattice.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Diamond's thermal conductivity is made use of by jewelers and gemologists who may employ an electronic thermal probe to separate diamonds from their imitations. These probes consist of a pair of battery-powered thermistors mounted in a fine copper tip. One thermistor functions as a heating device while the other measures the temperature of the copper tip: if the stone being tested is a diamond, it will conduct the tip's thermal energy rapidly enough to produce a measurable temperature drop. This test takes about 2–3 seconds.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Most industrial applications of synthetic diamond have long been associated with their hardness; this property makes diamond the ideal material for machine tools and cutting tools. As the hardest known naturally occurring material, diamond can be used to polish, cut, or wear away any material, including other diamonds. Common industrial applications of this ability include diamond-tipped drill bits and saws, and the use of diamond powder as an abrasive. These are by far the largest industrial applications of synthetic diamond. While natural diamond is also used for these purposes, synthetic HPHT diamond is more popular, mostly because of better reproducibility of its mechanical properties. Diamond is not suitable for machining ferrous alloys at high speeds, as carbon is soluble in iron at the high temperatures created by high-speed machining, leading to greatly increased wear on diamond tools compared to alternatives.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: The usual form of diamond in cutting tools is micron-sized grains dispersed in a metal matrix (usually cobalt) sintered onto the tool. This is typically referred to in industry as polycrystalline diamond (PCD). PCD-tipped tools can be found in mining and cutting applications. For the past fifteen years, work has been done to coat metallic tools with CVD diamond, and though the work shows promise, it has not significantly replaced traditional PCD tools.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Most materials with high thermal conductivity are also electrically conductive, such as metals. In contrast, pure synthetic diamond has high thermal conductivity, but negligible electrical conductivity. This combination is invaluable for electronics where diamond is used as a heat spreader for high-power laser diodes, laser arrays and high-power transistors. Efficient heat dissipation prolongs the lifetime of those electronic devices, and the devices' high replacement costs justify the use of efficient, though relatively expensive, diamond heat sinks. In semiconductor technology, synthetic diamond heat spreaders prevent silicon and other semiconducting devices from overheating.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Diamond is hard, chemically inert, and has high thermal conductivity and a low coefficient of thermal expansion. These properties make diamond superior to any other existing window material used for transmitting infrared and microwave radiation. Therefore, synthetic diamond is starting to replace zinc selenide as the output window of high-power CO lasers and gyrotrons. Those synthetic polycrystalline diamond windows are shaped as disks of large diameters (about 10 cm for gyrotrons) and small thicknesses (to reduce absorption) and can only be produced with the CVD technique. Single crystal slabs of dimensions of length up to approximately 10 mm are becoming increasingly important in several areas of optics including heatspreaders inside laser cavities, diffractive optics and as the optical gain medium in Raman lasers. Recent advances in the HPHT and CVD synthesis techniques have improved the purity and crystallographic structure perfection of single-crystalline diamond enough to replace silicon as a diffraction grating and window material in high-power radiation sources, such as synchrotrons. Both the CVD and HPHT processes are also used to create designer optically transparent diamond anvils as a tool for measuring electric and magnetic properties of materials at ultra high pressures using a diamond anvil cell.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Synthetic diamond has potential uses as a semiconductor, because it can be doped with impurities like boron and phosphorus. Since these elements contain one more or one fewer valence electron than carbon, they turn synthetic diamond into p-type or n-type semiconductor. Making a p–n junction by sequential doping of synthetic diamond with boron and phosphorus produces light-emitting diodes (LEDs) producing UV light of 235 nm. Another useful property of synthetic diamond for electronics is high carrier mobility, which reaches 4500 cm/(V·s) for electrons in single-crystal CVD diamond. High mobility is favorable for high-frequency operation and field-effect transistors made from diamond have already demonstrated promising high-frequency performance above 50 GHz. The wide band gap of diamond (5.5 eV) gives it excellent dielectric properties. Combined with the high mechanical stability of diamond, those properties are being used in prototype high-power switches for power stations.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Synthetic diamond transistors have been produced in the laboratory. They remain functional at much higher temperatures than silicon devices, and are resistant to chemical and radiation damage. While no diamond transistors have yet been successfully integrated into commercial electronics, they are promising for use in exceptionally high-power situations and hostile non-oxidizing environments.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Synthetic diamond is already used as radiation detection device. It is radiation hard and has a wide bandgap of 5.5 eV (at room temperature). Diamond is also distinguished from most other semiconductors by the lack of a stable native oxide. This makes it difficult to fabricate surface MOS devices, but it does create the potential for UV radiation to gain access to the active semiconductor without absorption in a surface layer. Because of these properties, it is employed in applications such as the BaBar detector at the Stanford Linear Accelerator and BOLD (Blind to the Optical Light Detectors for VUV solar observations). A diamond VUV detector recently was used in the European LYRA program.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Conductive CVD diamond is a useful electrode under many circumstances. Photochemical methods have been developed for covalently linking DNA to the surface of polycrystalline diamond films produced through CVD. Such DNA-modified films can be used for detecting various biomolecules, which would interact with DNA thereby changing electrical conductivity of the diamond film. In addition, diamonds can be used to detect redox reactions that cannot ordinarily be studied and in some cases degrade redox-reactive organic contaminants in water supplies. Because diamond is mechanically and chemically stable, it can be used as an electrode under conditions that would destroy traditional materials. As an electrode, synthetic diamond can be used in waste water treatment of organic effluents and the production of strong oxidants.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Synthetic diamonds for use as gemstones are grown by HPHT or CVD methods, and represented approximately 2% of the gem-quality diamond market as of 2013. However, there are indications that the market share of synthetic jewelry-quality diamonds may grow as advances in technology allow for larger higher-quality synthetic production on a more economic scale. They are available in yellow, pink, green, orange, blue and, to a lesser extent, colorless (or white). The yellow color comes from nitrogen impurities in the manufacturing process, while the blue color comes from boron. Other colors, such as pink or green, are achievable after synthesis using irradiation. Several companies also offer memorial diamonds grown using cremated remains.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Gem-quality diamonds grown in a lab can be chemically, physically and optically identical to naturally occurring ones. The mined diamond industry has undertaken legal, marketing and distribution countermeasures to try to protect its market from the emerging presence of synthetic diamonds. Synthetic diamonds can be distinguished by spectroscopy in the infrared, ultraviolet, or X-ray wavelengths. The DiamondView tester from De Beers uses UV fluorescence to detect trace impurities of nitrogen, nickel or other metals in HPHT or CVD diamonds.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: At least one maker of laboratory-grown diamonds has made public statements about being "committed to disclosure" of the nature of its diamonds, and laser-inscribed serial numbers on all of its gemstones. The company web site shows an example of the lettering of one of its laser inscriptions, which includes both the words "Gemesis created" and the serial number prefix "LG" (laboratory grown).


title: Synthetic diamond

text: In May 2015, a record was set for an HPHT colorless diamond at 10.02 carats. The faceted jewel was cut from a 32.2-carat stone that was grown in about 300 hours. By 2022, gem-quality diamonds of 16–20 carats were being produced.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Traditional diamond mining has led to human rights abuses in Africa and other diamond mining countries. The 2006 Hollywood movie "Blood Diamond" helped to publicize the problem. Consumer demand for synthetic diamonds has been increasing, albeit from a small base, as customers look for stones that are ethically sound and cheaper. Any kind of mining also causes irreversible changes to the bio-diversity.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: According to a report from the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotional Council, synthetic diamonds accounted for 0.28% of diamond produced for use as gemstones in 2014. In April 2022, CNN Business reported that engagement rings featuring a synthetic or a lab grown diamond jumped 63% compared to previous year, while the number of engagement rings sold with a natural diamond declined 25% in the same period.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: Around 2016, the price of synthetic diamond gemstones (e.g., 1 carat stones) began dropping "precipitously" by roughly 30% in one year, becoming clearly lower than that of mined diamonds. As of 2017, synthetic diamonds sold as jewelry were typically selling for 15–20% less than natural equivalents; the relative price was expected to decline further as production economics improve.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: In May 2018, De Beers announced that it would introduce a new jewelry brand called "Lightbox" that features synthetic diamonds.


title: Synthetic diamond

text: In July 2018, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission approved a substantial revision to its Jewelry Guides, with changes that impose new rules on how the trade can describe diamonds and diamond simulants. The revised guides were substantially contrary to what had been advocated in 2016 by De Beers. The new guidelines remove the word "natural" from the definition of "diamond", thus including lab-grown diamonds within the scope of the definition of "diamond". The revised guide further states that "If a marketer uses 'synthetic' to imply that a competitor's lab-grown diamond is not an actual diamond, ... this would be deceptive." In July 2019, the third party diamond certification lab GIA (Gemological Institute of America) dropped the word 'synthetic' from its certification process and report for lab-grown diamonds, according to the FTC revision.


title: Waiting... (film)

text: Waiting... is a 2005 American independent black comedy film written and directed by Rob McKittrick (in his directorial debut) and starring Ryan Reynolds, Anna Faris, and Justin Long. McKittrick wrote the screenplay while working as a waiter.


title: Waiting... (film)

text: The script was initially sold in a film deal to Artisan Entertainment, but was released by Lions Gate Entertainment (which purchased Artisan in 2003). Producers Chris Moore and Jeff Balis of Live Planet's "Project Greenlight" fame also took notice of the project and assisted. The film made over US$6 million, more than twice the budget of the film, in its opening weekend.


title: Waiting... (film)

text: The film takes place during a single day at "Shenaniganz", a franchise restaurant. Dean, who has been working there for four years, learns from his mother that a schoolmate recently graduated from college and has secured a high paying job in electrical engineering.


title: Waiting... (film)

text: Dean's co-worker Monty takes new employee Mitch through his training, introducing him to the staff both in the restaurant and kitchen. Monty also shows Mitch the "Penis Game", where the male staff deliberately expose their genitalia to their unsuspecting coworkers, as well as the ways the staff deal with rude and entitled customers. In one scene food is sent back which the kitchen staff then gladly contaminate with spit, dandruff and other unsavory bits.


title: Waiting... (film)

text: The remaining waitstaff are Serena, Monty's ex-girlfriend; Natasha, the underage hostess who shares a mutual attraction with Monty; Amy, who is Dean's girlfriend; Calvin, a hopeless romantic who cannot urinate in public, and Naomi, a constantly angry waitress. Managing them is Dan, who offers Dean the Assistant Manager position in competition to Calvin. However, an altercation with a customer who left a pitiful tip to Dean results in Dan demanding an answer from him by the end of the day.


title: Waiting... (film)

text: As the day winds down, Dean is left on his own during the final hour of business. In the last few minutes of opening time two new guests arrive, one of which Dean quickly realizes is Chet, his successful schoolmate. Initially annoyed, Dean is humbled by Chet when he leaves Dean $100 for his $30 meal, leaving Dean with $70 in tips. Ironically, Chet reiterates 'You look like you need it more than me', which Dean had retorted to the earlier customer. When Dean is called to Dan's office to give his decision in regards to the promotion, Dean ultimately turns it down and quits instead to return to college for a more promising future.


title: Waiting... (film)

text: When the shift ends, the staff all head to a party at Monty and Dean's house, where Monty refrains from having sex with the underage Natasha as she is not of legal age yet, but promises they will when she does the following week. Mitch, who had been unable to speak all day largely due to Monty's interruptions, finally rants in regards to the entire staff and quits. Prior to leaving, Mitch exposes his genitals in the form of "The Goat", which head chef Raddimus had said earlier would grant him instant god-status. Monty declares his allegiance to Mitch, having now replaced Dean in his absence.


title: Waiting... (film)

text: In a post credits scene, Dan is shown arriving at the customers house who Dean had insulted earlier, incorrectly believing it was the location of the party. The customer angrily demands from Dan the milkshake he was earlier promised.


title: Waiting... (film)

text: The film grossed over double its budget during the opening weekend with $6,021,106 in 1,652 theaters. It opened at #7 in the U.S. box office. Its total gross was $18,637,690 with $16,124,543 within the U.S. and $2,513,147 in foreign markets.


title: Waiting... (film)

text: "Waiting..." received mixed to mostly negative reviews. , the film holds a 30% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 92 reviews with an average rating of 4.18 out of 10; the site's consensus states: ""Waiting"... is a gross-out comedy that's more gross than comic." Metacritic gave the film a 30/100, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Roger Ebert gave the film a 1.5 stars out of 4 claiming that ""Waiting..." is melancholy for comedy". Despite negative reviews from critics, "Waiting..." has garnered a small cult following.


title: Waiting... (film)

text: The original score for the film was composed by Adam Gorgoni. A soundtrack was released and is available only through the iTunes Store. The track listing is as follows:


title: Waiting... (film)

text: The film also included songs by The Rattlesnakes, The New Pornographers, Reaching Forward, Spoon, REO Speedwagon, Peaches, Leftfield, Goldfinger, Spin Doctors, Sunday's Best, High Speed Scene, and Large Pro.


title: Waiting... (film)

text: A direct-to-DVD sequel, titled "Still Waiting...", was released on February 17, 2009. The second film is about another Shenaniganz location dealing with new competition from a Hooters-like sports bar called TaTa's Wing Shack run by Calvin from the first movie.


title: Sahih al-Bukhari

text: Sahih al-Bukhari () is a "hadith" collection and a book of "sunnah" compiled by the Persian scholar Muḥammad ibn Ismā‘īl al-Bukhārī (810–870) around 846. Alongside "Sahih Muslim", it is one of the most valued books in Sunni Islam after the Quran. Both books are part of the Kutub al-Sittah, the six major Sunni collections of "hadith" of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The book is also revered by Zaydi Shias. It consists of an estimated 7,563 "hadith" narrations across its 97 chapters.


title: Sahih al-Bukhari

text: Sources differ on the exact number of hadiths in Sahih al-Bukhari, with definitions of "hadith" varying from a prophetic tradition or "sunnah", or a narration of that tradition. Experts have estimated the number of full-"isnad" narrations in the Sahih at 7,563, with the number reducing to around 2,600 without considerations to repetitions or different versions of the same "hadith." Bukhari chose these narrations from a collection of 600,000 narrations he had collected over 16 years. The narrations are distributed across 97 chapters covering "fiqh" (Islamic jurisprudence), among other subjects. Each chapter contains references to relevant verses from the Quran. It provides proper Islamic guidance in almost all aspects of Muslim life such as the method of performing prayers and other actions of worship directly from Muhammad.


title: Sahih al-Bukhari

text: It is reported that Bukhari traveled widely throughout the Abbasid Caliphate from the age of 16. Bukhari found the earlier "hadith" collections including both "ṣaḥīḥ" (authentic, sound)"" and "hasan" narrations. He also found that many of them included "daʻīf" (weak) narrations. This aroused his interest in compiling hadith whose authenticity was beyond doubt.


title: Sahih al-Bukhari

text: What further strengthened his resolve was something his teacher and contemporary "hadith" scholar Ishaq Ibn Rahwayh had told him. Bukhari narrates, "We were with Ishaq Ibn Rahwayh who said, "If only you would compile a book of only authentic narrations of the Prophet." This suggestion remained in my heart so I began compiling the "Sahih"." Bukhari also said, "I saw the Prophet in a dream and it was as if I was standing in front of him. In my hand was a fan with which I was protecting him. I asked some dream interpreters, who said to me, 'You will protect him from lies.' This is what compelled me to produce the "Sahih"."


title: Sahih al-Bukhari

text: Bukhari imposed four conditions the narrators of a "hadith" must meet, in order for the narration to be included in his Sahih:


title: Sahih al-Bukhari

text: Bukhari began organizing his book in the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, before moving to the Al-Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina. Bukhari completed writing the book in Bukhara around 846 (232 AH), before showing it to his teachers for examination and verification. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani quoted Abu Jaʿfar al-‘Uqaili as saying, "After Bukhari had written the "Sahih", he showed it to Ali ibn al-Madini, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Yahya ibn Ma'in as well as others. They examined it and testified to its authenticity with the exception of four "hadith"." Ibn Hajar then concluded with al-'Uqaili's saying, "And those four are as Bukhari said, they are authentic." Bukhari spent the last twenty-four years of his life visiting other cities and scholars, making minor revisions to his book and teaching the hadith he had collected. In every city that Bukhari visited, thousands of people would gather to listen to him recite traditions.


title: Sahih al-Bukhari

text: Each version of the "Sahih" is named by its narrator. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani in his book "Nukat" asserts the number of narrations is the same in each version. There are many books that noted differences between the different versions, the best known being "Fath al-Bari". The version transmitted by Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Firabri (d. 932), a trusted student of Bukhari, is the most famous version of the Sahih al-Bukhari today. All modern printed version are derived from this version. Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi quoted al-Firabri in "History of Baghdad": "About seventy thousand people heard "Sahih Bukhari" with me." al-Firabri is not the only transmitter of Sahih al-Bukhari. Many others narrated the book, including Ibrahim ibn Ma'qal (d. 907), Hammad ibn Shakir (d. 923), Mansur Burduzi (d. 931) and Husain Mahamili (d. 941).


title: Sahih al-Bukhari

text: The orientalist Manjana said in Cambridge in 1936 that the oldest manuscript he had come across up to that point was written in 984 (370 AH), according to the narration of al-Mirwazi from al-Firabri. The oldest full manuscript is a version on the narration of Abu Dharr al-Heravi (d. 1043) written in Maghrebi script, present in the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul is from 1155 (550 AH).


title: Sahih al-Bukhari

text: The number of detailed commentaries on the Sahih are numbered around 400, including "Tafsir al-Gharib ma fi al-Sahihayn" by al-Humaydī (d. 1095), Ibn Kathir's (d. 1373) "Sharh", "Fath al-Bari" by Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani (d. 852 AH), "Al-Tawshih" by al-Suyuti (d. 1505), "Irshad al-Sari" by al-Qastallani (d. 1517), "Umdat al-Qari by Badr al-Din al-Ayni", and "Al-Tanqih" by al-Zarkashi (d. 1392). Modern commentaries are also written by Saeed Ahmad Palanpuri, Anwar Shah Kashmiri,"" Kausar Yazdani, Muhammad Taqi Usmani,"" and Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhalawi.


title: Sahih al-Bukhari

text: Few scholars have commented on Bukhari's reasons behind naming the chapters in his Sahih, known as "tarjumat al-bab"."" Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani is noted to be one of them. Shah Waliullah Dehlawi had mentioned 14 reasons, later modified by Mahmud al-Hasan to make it 15"." Kandhlawi is noted to have found as many as 70, even writing a book on the topic, "Al-Abwab wat-Tarajim li Sahih al-Bukhari".""


title: Sahih al-Bukhari

text: "Sahih al-Bukhari" was originally translated into English by Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din al-Hilali and Muhammad Muhsin Khan, titled "The Translation of the Meanings of Sahih al-Bukhari: Arabic-English" (1971), derived from the Arabic text of "Fath Al-Bari", published by the Egyptian Maktabat wa-Maṭbaʻat Muṣṭafá al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī in 1959. It is published by Al Saadawi Publications and Darussalam Publications and is included in the USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts. Large numbers of "hadith" narrations included in Hilali and Khan's work have been translated by Muhammad Ali and Thomas Cleary. The book is also available in numerous languages including Urdu, Bengali, Bosnian, Tamil, Malayalam, Albanian, Malay, and Hindi, among others.


title: Sahih al-Bukhari

text: In 2019, the Arabic Virtual Translation Center in New York translated and published the first complete English translation of "Sahih al-Bukhari" titled "Encyclopedia of Sahih Al-Bukhari", including explanatory notes, a glossary of every term, and biographies of all narrators in the "isnad".


title: Sahih al-Bukhari

text: Sunni Muslims regard "Sahih al-Bukhari" as one of the two most important books among the Kutub al-Sittah alongside the "Sahih Muslim", written by al-Bukhari's student Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj. The two books are known as the "'Sahihayn" (The Two "Sahihs")'. Al-Nawawi wrote about Sahih al-Bukhari, "The scholars, may God have mercy on them, have agreed that the most authentic book after the dear Quran are the two Sahihs of Bukhari and Muslim." Siddiq Hasan Khan (d. 1890) wrote, "All of the Salaf and "Khalaf" assert that the most authentic book after the book of Allah is Sahih al-Bukhari and then Sahih Muslim."


title: Sahih al-Bukhari

text: In the "Introduction to the Science of Hadith", Ibn al-Salah wrote: "The first to author a "Sahih" was Bukhari [...], followed by Abū al-Ḥusayn Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj an-Naysābūrī al-Qushayrī, who was his student, sharing many of the same teachers. These two books are the most authentic books after the Quran. As for the statement of Al-Shafi‘i, who said, "I do not know of a book containing knowledge more correct than Malik's book [Muwatta Imam Malik]," [...] he said this before the books of Bukhari and Muslim. The book of Bukhari is the more authentic of the two and more useful." Ibn al-Salah also quoted Bukhari as having said, "I have not included in the book [Sahih al-Bukhari] other than what is authentic and I did not include other authentic hadith for the sake of brevity." In addition, al-Dhahabi quoted Bukhari as having said, "I have memorized one hundred thousand authentic hadith and two hundred thousand which are less than authentic."


title: Sahih al-Bukhari

text: Criticism has also been directed at apparent contradictions within Bukhari regarding the ahruf of the Quran. Some narrations state the Quran was revealed only in the dialect of Muhammad's tribe, the Quraysh, while others state it was revealed in seven ahruf. Certain prophetic medicine and remedies espoused in Bukhari, such as cupping, have been noted for being unscientific. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, on the basis of contrary archaeological evidence, criticised a hadith regarding Adam's height and human height.


title: Sahih al-Bukhari

text: In the 2003 book "The Idea of Women in Fundamentalist Islam", Lamia Shehadeh used gender theory to critique an "ahaad" hadith about women's leadership. Another hadith reported by Abu Hurairah was criticized by Fatema Mernissi for being reported out of context and without any further clarification in the Sahih. The clarification is given in a hadith reported by Aisha in al-Zarkashi's (1344–1392) hadith collection. According to Charles Kurzman, this case raises the question of whether other narrations in Bukhari have been reported incompletely or lack proper context. In 2017, Rachid Aylal, a Quranist, published a book criticizing the Sahih, titled "Sahih Al-Bukhari: The End of a Legend". It was banned in Morocco for disturbing spiritual security, due to pressure from Islamists.


title: HarperCollins

text: HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Corp. The name is a combination of several publishing firm names: Harper & Row, an American publishing company acquired in 1987—whose own name was the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers (founded in 1817) and Row, Peterson & Company—together with Scottish publishing company William Collins, Sons (founded in 1819), acquired in 1989.


title: HarperCollins

text: The worldwide CEO of HarperCollins is Brian Murray. HarperCollins has publishing groups in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, India, and China. The company publishes many different imprints, both former independent publishing houses and new imprints.


title: HarperCollins

text: Collins was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in 1989, and was combined with Harper & Row, which NewsCorp had acquired two years earlier. In addition to the simplified and merged name, the logo for HarperCollins was derived from the torch logo for Harper and Row, and the fountain logo for Collins, which were combined into a stylized depiction of flames atop waves.


title: HarperCollins

text: In 1990, HarperCollins sold J. B. Lippincott & Co., its medical publishing division, to the Dutch publisher Wolters Kluwer.


title: HarperCollins

text: In 1996, HarperCollins sold Scott Foresman and HarperCollins College to Pearson, which merged them with Addison-Wesley Longman.


title: HarperCollins

text: News Corporation purchased the Hearst Book Group, consisting of William Morrow & Company and Avon Books, in 1999. These imprints are now published under the rubric of HarperCollins. HarperCollins bought educational publisher Letts and Lonsdale in March 2010.


title: HarperCollins

text: In 2011, HarperCollins announced they had agreed to acquire the publisher Thomas Nelson. The purchase was completed on July 11, 2012, with an announcement that Thomas Nelson would operate independently given the position it has in Christian book publishing. Both Thomas Nelson and Zondervan were then organized as imprints, or "keystone publishing programs," under a new division, HarperCollins Christian Publishing. Key roles in the reorganization were awarded to former Thomas Nelson executives.


title: HarperCollins

text: In 2018, HarperCollins acquired the business publisher Amacom from the American Management Association.


title: HarperCollins

text: In 2020, HarperCollins acquired the children's publishers Egmont Books UK, Egmont Poland and Schneiderbuch Germany from the Egmont Group.


title: HarperCollins

text: On March 29, 2021, HarperCollins announced that it would acquire HMH Books & Media, the trade publishing division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, for $349 million. The deal would allow HMH to pay down its debt and focus on digital education. The deal was completed on May 10. As of July 7, 2021, HMH's adult books will be published as Mariner Books, while HMH's children's books will be published as Clarion Books.


title: HarperCollins

text: Brian Murray, the current CEO of HarperCollins, succeeded Jane Friedman who was CEO from 1997 to 2008. Notable management figures include Lisa Sharkey, current senior vice president and director of creative development and Barry Winkleman from 1989 to 1994.


title: HarperCollins

text: In April 2012, the United States Department of Justice filed "United States v. Apple Inc.", naming Apple, HarperCollins, and four other major publishers as defendants. The suit alleged that they conspired to fix prices for e-books, and weaken Amazon.com's position in the market, in violation of antitrust law.


title: HarperCollins

text: In December 2013, a federal judge approved a settlement of the antitrust claims, in which HarperCollins and the other publishers paid into a fund that provided credits to customers who had overpaid for books due to the price-fixing.


title: HarperCollins

text: On November 5, 2012, HarperCollins announced to employees privately and then later in the day publicly that it was closing its remaining two US warehouses, to merge shipping and warehousing operations with R. R. Donnelley in Indiana. The Scranton, Pennsylvania, warehouse closed in September 2013 and a Nashville, Tennessee, warehouse, under the name Thomas Nelson (which distributes the religious arm of HarperCollins/Zondervan Books), in the winter of 2013. Several office positions and departments continued to work for HarperCollins in Scranton, but in a new location.


title: HarperCollins

text: The Scranton warehouse closing eliminated about 200 jobs, and the Nashville warehouse closing eliminated up to 500 jobs; the exact number of distribution employees is unknown.


title: HarperCollins

text: HarperCollins previously closed two US warehouses, one in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in 2011 and another in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 2012. "We have taken a long-term, global view of our print distribution and are committed to offering the broadest possible reach for our authors," said HarperCollins Chief Executive Brian Murray, according to" Publishers Weekly". "We are retooling the traditional distribution model to ensure we can competitively offer the entire HarperCollins catalog to customers regardless of location." Company officials attribute the closings and mergers to the rapidly growing demand for e-book formats and the decline in print purchasing.


title: HarperCollins

text: In June 2020, HarperCollins was one of a group of publishers who sued the Internet Archive, arguing that its collection of e-books was denying authors and publishers revenue and accusing the library of "willful mass copyright infringement".


title: HarperCollins

text: In September 2020, HarperCollins sued Lindsay Lohan for entering into a book deal and collecting a $350,000 advance for a tell-all memoir that never materialized.


title: HarperCollins

text: A 2022 book written by Rosemary Sullivan, with HarperCollins as main publisher, designated a Jewish notary as the most likely suspect in Anne Frank's betrayal. The conclusion was challenged by experts. The notary's family members threatened a lawsuit and started a foundation. The Dutch publisher withdrew the book, but HarperCollins has not taken any definitive decision.


title: HarperCollins

text: On November 10, 2022, approximately 250 unionized workers at HarperCollins began an indefinite strike.


title: HarperCollins

text: The Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers union includes people in design, marketing, publicity and sales for the company. A representation of the local has run the local's Twitter account since 2018


title: Oxymoron

text: An oxymoron (usual plural oxymorons, more rarely oxymora) is a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposing meanings within a word or phrase that creates an ostensible self-contradiction. An oxymoron can be used as a rhetorical device to illustrate a rhetorical point or to reveal a paradox.


title: Oxymoron

text: A more general meaning of "contradiction in terms" (not necessarily for rhetoric effect) is recorded by the "OED" for 1902.


title: Oxymoron

text: The term is first recorded as Latinized Greek ', in Maurus Servius Honoratus (c. AD 400); it is derived from the Greek word ' "sharp, keen, pointed" and "dull, stupid, foolish"; as it were, "sharp-dull", "keenly stupid", or "pointedly foolish". The word "oxymoron" is autological, i.e. it is itself an example of an oxymoron. The Greek compound word "", which would correspond to the Latin formation, does not seem to appear in any known Ancient Greek works prior to the formation of the Latin term.


title: Oxymoron

text: Oxymorons in the narrow sense are a rhetorical device used deliberately by the speaker, and intended to be understood as such by the listener.


title: Oxymoron

text: In a more extended sense, the term "oxymoron" has also been applied to inadvertent or incidental contradictions, as in the case of "dead metaphors" ("barely clothed" or "terribly good"). Lederer (1990), in the spirit of "recreational linguistics", goes as far as to construct "logological oxymorons" such as reading the word "nook" composed of "no" and "ok" or the surname "Noyes" as composed of "no" plus "yes", or far-fetched punning such as "divorce court", "U.S. Army Intelligence" or "press release".


title: Oxymoron

text: There are a number of single-word oxymorons built from "dependent morphemes" (i.e. no longer a productive compound in English, but loaned as a compound from a different language), as with "pre-posterous" (lit. "with the hinder part before", compare "hysteron proteron", "upside-down", "head over heels", "ass-backwards" etc.) or "sopho-more" (an artificial Greek compound, lit. "wise-foolish").


title: Oxymoron

text: The most common form of oxymoron involves an adjective–noun combination of two words, but they can also be devised in the meaning of sentences or phrases.


title: Oxymoron

text: One classic example of the use of oxymorons in English literature can be found in this example from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", where Romeo strings together thirteen in a row:


title: Oxymoron

text: In literary contexts, the author does not usually signal the use of an oxymoron, but in rhetorical usage, it has become common practice to advertise the use of an oxymoron explicitly to clarify the argument, as in:


title: Oxymoron

text: In this example, "Epicurean pessimist" would be recognized as an oxymoron in any case, as the core tenet of Epicureanism is equanimity (which would preclude any sort of pessimist outlook). However, the explicit advertisement of the use of oxymorons opened up a sliding scale of less than obvious construction, ending in the "opinion oxymorons" such as "business ethics".


title: Oxymoron

text: J. R. R. Tolkien interpreted his own surname as derived from the Low German equivalent of "dull-keen" (High German "") which would be a literal equivalent of Greek "oxy-moron".


title: Oxymoron

text: "Comical oxymoron" is a term for the claim, for comical effect, that a certain phrase or expression is an oxymoron (called "opinion oxymorons" by Lederer (1990)).


title: Oxymoron

text: The humour derives from implying that an assumption (which might otherwise be expected to be controversial or at least non-evident) is so obvious as to be part of the lexicon.


title: Oxymoron

text: An example of such a "comical oxymoron" is "educational television": the humour derives entirely from the claim that it is an oxymoron by the implication that "television" is so trivial as to be inherently incompatible with "education".


title: Oxymoron

text: In a 2009 article called "Daredevil", Garry Wills accused William F. Buckley of popularising this trend, based on the success of the latter's claim that "an intelligent liberal is an oxymoron."


title: Oxymoron

text: Examples popularized by comedian George Carlin in 1975 include "military intelligence" (a play on the lexical meanings of the term "intelligence", implying that "military" inherently excludes the presence of "intelligence") and "business ethics" (similarly implying that the mutual exclusion of the two terms is evident or commonly understood rather than the partisan anti-corporate position).


title: Oxymoron

text: Similarly, the term "civil war" is sometimes jokingly referred to as an "oxymoron" (punning on the lexical meanings of the word "civil").


title: Oxymoron

text: Other examples include "honest politician", "act naturally", "affordable caviar" (1993), "happily married" and "Microsoft Works" (2000).


title: Oxymoron

text: Listing of antonyms, such as "good and evil", "male and female", "great and small", etc., does not create oxymorons, as it is not implied that any given object has the two opposing properties simultaneously.


title: Oxymoron

text: In some languages, it is not necessary to place a conjunction like "and" between the two antonyms; such compounds (not necessarily of antonyms) are known as dvandvas (a term taken from Sanskrit grammar).


title: Oxymoron

text: For example, in Chinese, compounds like 男女 (man and woman, male and female, gender), 陰陽 (yin and yang), 善惡 (good and evil, morality) are used to indicate couples, ranges, or the trait that these are extremes of.


title: Oxymoron

text: The Italian "pianoforte" or "fortepiano" is an example from a Western language; the term is short for "gravicembalo col piano e forte", as it were "harpiscord with a range of different volumes", implying that it is possible to play both soft and loud (as well as intermediate) notes, not that the sound produced is somehow simultaneously "soft and loud".


title: Brad Wilk

text: Brad Wilk (born September 5, 1968) is an American drummer. He is best known as a member of the rock bands Rage Against the Machine (1991–2000, 2007–2011, 2019–present), Audioslave (2001–2007, 2017), and Prophets of Rage (2016–2019).


title: Brad Wilk

text: Wilk started his career as a drummer for Greta in 1990, and helped co-found Rage Against the Machine with Tom Morello and Zack de la Rocha in August 1991. Following that band's breakup in October 2000, Wilk, Morello, Rage Against the Machine bassist Tim Commerford and Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell formed the supergroup Audioslave, which broke up in 2007. From 2016 to 2019, he played in the band Prophets of Rage, with Commerford, Morello, Chuck D, B-Real and DJ Lord. He currently plays in the band Rage Against the Machine following their reunion.


title: Brad Wilk

text: Wilk has also performed drums on English metal band Black Sabbath's final album "13", released in June 2013. He briefly played with Pearl Jam shortly after the release of their debut album "Ten".


title: Brad Wilk

text: Wilk was born on September 6, 1968, in Portland, Oregon. He was raised in Chicago, Illinois, before his family settled in Southern California. He started to play the drums when he was thirteen years old. He has cited John Bonham, Keith Moon, and Elvin Jones as his greatest influences. Wilk was a fan of Van Halen in his youth.


title: Brad Wilk

text: Wilk's success as the drummer of Rage Against the Machine came from the failure of a different band; he once auditioned for a band called Lock Up, who released one album (titled "Something Bitchin' This Way Comes") through Geffen records in 1989 and broke up when the album received little media attention upon release. Former Lock Up guitarist Tom Morello was looking to pick up where Lock Up left off and start a new band, and contacted Wilk, who was playing with the band Greta, to see if he was interested in playing the drums. A short while after, the duo met Zack de la Rocha while he was rapping freestyle in a club, and through him, bassist Tim Commerford (a childhood friend of de la Rocha). The band played two shows in 1991, and spent 1992 frequenting the L. A. club circuit, during which they signed a record deal with Epic Records, and released their self-titled debut album that November. They quickly achieved commercial success and would go on to release three more studio albums–"Evil Empire" in 1996, "The Battle of Los Angeles" in 1999, and "Renegades" in 2000– before disbanding in October 2000.


title: Brad Wilk

text: Rage Against the Machine reunited to play at the Coachella Music Festival in Coachella, California on January 22, 2007. On April 29, 2007, Rage Against the Machine reunited at the Coachella Music Festival (Rage Against the Machine reunion tour). The band played in front of an EZLN backdrop to the largest crowds of the festival. Initially thought to be a one-time event, the band played seven more shows that year in the United States (including their first non-festival concert in seven years at the Alpine Valley Music Theater in East Troy, Wisconsin), and in January 2008, they played their first shows outside of the U.S. as part of the Big Day Out Festival in Australia and New Zealand. The band continued to tour around the world, headlining many large festivals in Europe and the United States, including Lollapalooza in Chicago. After a brief South America tour in 2010, they created their own festival, LA Rising, which they headlined on July 30, 2011. In November 2012, they released a XX anniversary boxset of their first album. In April 2014, Wilk indicated LA Rising would be Rage's final show.


title: Brad Wilk

text: On November 1, 2019, it was reported that Rage Against the Machine would be reuniting a second time, and were to perform at the 2020 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival before it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On February 10, 2020, the band announced dates and locations for their worldwide Public Service Announcement Tour, which was postponed due to the pandemic.


title: Brad Wilk

text: After de la Rocha left Rage Against the Machine in October 2000, the remaining members formed Audioslave with former Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell. The band released their self-titled debut album in 2002. Their second album, "Out of Exile", was released in 2005 and debuted at the number one position on the Billboard 200. It was followed by "Revelations" in 2006. Compared to Rage Against the Machine, the majority of Audioslave's music was apolitical. After several months of inactivity, Audioslave formally disbanded in February 2007 when Cornell left to focus on his solo career.


title: Brad Wilk

text: In 2016, Wilk reunited with Morello and Commerford, joining Chuck D, B-Real and DJ Lord to form the supergroup Prophets of Rage. The band played original material as well as covers of songs by Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy and Cypress Hill. Their debut tour was entitled "Make America Rage Again" to protest Donald Trump's policies and the 2016 American presidential election.


title: Brad Wilk

text: During its three years, the band released one EP in 2016, "The Party's Over", and one eponymous full-length studio album in 2017. Prophets of Rage disbanded in 2019 with the confirmation of the 2020 reunion of Rage Against the Machine.


title: Brad Wilk

text: Wilk and bandmate Tom Morello joined with Maynard James Keenan of Tool and Billy Gould of Faith No More—in a lineup that was billed as Shandi's Addiction—to record the song "Calling Dr. Love" for the 1994 Kiss tribute album . Wilk and bandmate Tim Commerford contributed in Keenan's side project Puscifer and his album ""V" Is for Vagina" on the track "Momma Sed". Wilk also contributed drums to rap group Cypress Hill's album "Skull and Bones". In addition, Wilk composed the song "Snoop Bounce (Roc N Roll Remix)" for Snoop Dogg's "" CD.


title: Brad Wilk

text: In 2005, Wilk played the lead role in the independent short movie Sleeping Dogs Lie by writer Chumahan Bowen and director Stuart Lessner. The film also features Tool lead singer Maynard James Keenan as Deputy Lance. Wilk played drums on Josh Homme's tracks on the soundtrack to "Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys". Wilk performed live with Tom Morello's side project, Street Sweeper Social Club, at the 2010 Coachella music and arts festival. In 2013, Wilk and Commerford contributed drums and bass, respectively, for Dave Grohl's "Sound City" soundtrack, on the song "Time Slowing Down". Wilk played several shows with the Sound City Players.


title: Brad Wilk

text: Having established himself as a session musician, Wilk has also contributed drums on the Black Sabbath album "13", which was released in June 2013. In late 2013, Wilk joined the band The Last Internationale and recently recorded their debut album called "We Will Reign" with producer Brendan O'Brien. The record was released in August 2014.


title: Brad Wilk

text: To the end of 2014 until June 2015, Brad Wilk was playing drums on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins along with Billy Corgan, Jeff Schroeder and also Mark Stoermer on bass. On February 26, 2015, while touring Australia with the band, he joined the Foo Fighters on stage at Sydney's Olympic (ANZ) stadium playing drums for a Van Halen cover Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love. On August 3, 2015, Wilk sat-in with The 8G Band on "Late Night with Seth Meyers". He's also been drumming for Juliette Lewis on various tours and shows.


title: Brad Wilk

text: Wilk was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1997, and is active in raising money for diabetes awareness. He has donated about $12,000 to the Orange County chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF).


title: Brad Wilk

text: Wilk developed "Olade", a sugar-free lemonade, which Food and Drug Administration in 2009 approved as a non-dietary supplement.


title: Atlantic hurricane season

text: The Atlantic hurricane season is the period in a year from June through November when tropical cyclones form in the Atlantic Ocean, referred to in North American countries as hurricanes, tropical storms, or tropical depressions. In addition, there have been several storms over the years that have not been fully tropical and are categorized as subtropical depressions and subtropical storms. Even though subtropical storms and subtropical depressions are not technically as strong as tropical cyclones, the damages can still be devastating.


title: Atlantic hurricane season

text: Worldwide, tropical cyclone activity peaks in late summer, when the difference between temperatures aloft and sea surface temperatures is the greatest. However, each tropical cyclone basin has its own seasonal patterns. On a worldwide scale, May is the least active month, while September is the most active. In the Northern Atlantic Ocean, a distinct hurricane season occurs from June 1 to November 30, sharply peaking from late August through September; the season's climatological peak of activity occurs around September 10 each season. This is the norm, but in 1938, the Atlantic hurricane season started as early as January 3.


title: Atlantic hurricane season

text: Tropical disturbances that reach tropical storm intensity are named from a pre-determined list. On average, 10.1 named storms occur each season, with an average of 5.9 becoming hurricanes and 2.5 becoming major hurricanes (Category 3 or greater). The most active season on record was 2020, during which 30 named tropical cyclones formed. Despite this, the 2005 season had more hurricanes, developing a record of 15 such storms. The least active season was 1914, with only one known tropical cyclone developing during that year.


title: Atlantic hurricane season

text: The Atlantic hurricane season is a time when most tropical cyclones are expected to develop across the northern Atlantic Ocean. It is currently defined as the time frame from June 1 through November 30, though in the past the season was defined as a shorter time frame. During the season, regular tropical weather outlooks are issued by the National Hurricane Center, and coordination between the Weather Prediction Center and National Hurricane Center occurs for systems which have not yet formed but may develop during the next three to seven days. There is also a season within a season. The strongest time for hurricane activity seems to be between mid-August through mid-October. Wind factors and temperature and moisture are perfect during this time to encourage cyclonic activity.


title: Atlantic hurricane season

text: The understanding that Atlantic hurricanes are most commonplace during a certain period of the year has been long recognized. Historical delineations of the Atlantic hurricane season varied but generally covered some part of the estival and autumnal months. Some early descriptions of the season's bounds theorized that the timing of the full moon or the moon's phases as a whole could be used to more precisely delineate the hurricane season. In the second volume of "Voyages and Descriptions" (published in 1700), English explorer and naturalist William Dampier observed that hurricanes in the Caribbean Sea were expected in July, August, and September. Mariners in the 18th century generally regarded the period from July to the end of October as the "hurricane season" based on the frequency of storms striking the Caribbean islands and the trajectories of ships traversing the Atlantic.


title: Atlantic hurricane season

text: The hurricane season was also an important influence on European naval operations within the West Indies, forcing the movement of materiel to be expedited before its onset or delayed until its end. English admiral Edward Vernon described the "hurricane months" of August and September within the West Indies as a particularly vulnerable time for maritime logistics; Vernon argued that the most optimal time for a fleet to be dispatched from Great Britain to attack Spanish assets in the Americas was August or September, in part because such ships would more likely avoid hurricanes by the time they reached the West Indies. American geographer Jedidiah Morse defined the hurricane season as the months of August, September, and October in his treatise "The American Universal Geography". American meteorologist William Charles Redfield defined the hurricane season as lasting from July 15 to October 15, citing the timeframe during which some insurance underwriters raised premiums in response to the increased likelihood of hurricanes. Based on a catalog of 355 storms between 1493–1855 in the North Atlantic compiled by M. André Poëy, W. H. Rosser described the months of July, August, September, and October as comprising the "true hurricane season of the West Indies" in his 1876 book "The Law of Storms Considered Practically".


title: Atlantic hurricane season

text: The concept of the hurricane season took on a more practical significance in forecasting operations as the United States Weather Bureau began to extend its weather prediction efforts and data collection into the tropics. In 1882, the bureau briefly considered an effort to adopt special hurricane signals between July and October 20 to emphasize the danger of such storms during that period, but dropped the effort due to a lack of funding. When the U.S. Weather Bureau built a network of weather observatories in the Caribbean in 1898, these sites telegraphed weather observations at 8 a.m. daily to the bureau's regional headquarters in Havana, Cuba, during the hurricane season; this season was defined as lasting from the beginning of June through October. By 1907, these stations in the West Indies operated within a hurricane season defined as beginning on June 15 and ending on November 15. The starting date of these regular reports was moved back to June 1 by 1915. In 1917, an increase in funding for the U.S. Weather Bureau's observing networks in the Caribbean region led to these stations reporting twice daily during a hurricane season expanded to cover the June 1 to November 30 period. This delineation was maintained when the bureau (in cooperation with United Fruit Company) began to broadcast special weather bulletins for Caribbean shipping during the hurricane season in 1922, providing information on active hurricanes and warnings twice daily.


title: Atlantic hurricane season

text: The basic concept of an "official" hurricane season began during 1935, when dedicated wire circuits known as hurricane circuits began to be set up along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, a process completed by 1955. It was originally the time frame when the tropics were monitored routinely for tropical cyclone activity, and was originally defined as from June 15 through October 31. Over the years, the beginning date was shifted back to June 1, while the end date was shifted to November 15, before settling at November 30 by 1965. This was when hurricane reconnaissance planes were sent out to fly across the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico on a routine basis to look for potential tropical cyclones, in the years before the continuous weather satellite era. Since regular satellite surveillance began, hurricane hunter aircraft fly only into storm areas which are first spotted by satellite imagery. The six-month official hurricane season established in 1965 by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) remains the current delineation of the Atlantic hurricane season. These bounds contain over 97 percent of Atlantic tropical cyclone activity. While this definition was chosen in part to make it easier for the public to remember the timing of hurricanes, storms have often formed outside the official seasonal bounds. Following several consecutive years of Atlantic tropical cyclones developing before the official June 1 start date, the World Meteorological Organization recommended in 2021 that the NHC assess moving the start date to May 15. In response, the NHC formed a team to develop quantiative criteria to evaluate extending the seasonal bounds. The agency's routine tropical weather outlooks, historically issued during the hurricane season beginning on June 1, were instead started on May 15 beginning in 2021.


title: Atlantic hurricane season

text: During the hurricane season, the National Hurricane Center routinely issues their Tropical Weather Outlook product, which identifies areas of concern within the tropics which could develop into tropical cyclones. If systems occur outside the defined hurricane season, special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued. Routine coordination occurs at 1700 UTC each day between the Weather Prediction Center and National Hurricane Center to identify systems for the pressure maps three to seven days into the future within the tropics, and points for existing tropical cyclones six to seven days into the future. Possible tropical cyclones are depicted with a closed isobar, while systems with less certainty to develop are depicted as "spot lows" with no isobar surrounding them.


title: Atlantic hurricane season

text: The North Atlantic hurricane database, or HURDAT, is the database for all tropical storms and hurricanes for the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, including those that have made landfall in the United States. The original database of six-hourly positions and intensities were put together in the 1960s in support of the Apollo space program to help provide statistical track forecast guidance. In the intervening years, this database — which is now freely and easily accessible on the Internet from the National Hurricane Center's (NHC) webpage — has been utilized for a wide variety of uses: climatic change studies, seasonal forecasting, risk assessment for county emergency managers, analysis of potential losses for insurance and business interests, intensity forecasting techniques and verification of official and various model predictions of track and intensity.


title: Atlantic hurricane season

text: HURDAT was not designed with all of these uses in mind when it was first put together and not all of them may be appropriate given its original motivation. HURDAT contains numerous systematic as well as some random errors in the database. Additionally, analysis techniques have changed over the years at NHC as their understanding of tropical cyclones has developed, leading to biases in the historical database. Another difficulty in applying the hurricane database to studies concerned with landfalling events is the lack of exact location, time and intensity at hurricane landfall.


title: Atlantic hurricane season

text: HURDAT is regularly updated annually to reflect the previous season's activity. The older portion of the database has been regularly revised since 2001. The first time in 2001 led to the addition of tropical cyclone tracks for the years 1851 to 1885. The second time was in October 2002 when Hurricane Andrew (August 1992) was upgraded to a Category 5. Recent efforts into uncovering undocumented historical hurricanes in the late 19th and 20th centuries by various researchers have greatly increased our knowledge of these past events. Tropical storms from 1851 to 1970 have already been reanalyzed with most recently, re-analysis of tropical storms from 1961 to 1965 being completed and integrated into HURDAT database in November 2019, and re-analysis of tropical storms from 1966 to 1970 being completed and integrated into HURDAT database in January 2022. Possible changes for the years 1971 onward are not yet incorporated into the HURDAT database. Due to these issues, a re-analysis of the Atlantic hurricane database is being attempted that will be completed in three years.


title: Atlantic hurricane season

text: In addition to the groundbreaking work by Partagas, additional analyses, digitization and quality control of the data was carried out by researchers at the NOAA Hurricane Research Division funded by the NOAA Office of Global Programs.


title: Atlantic hurricane season

text: The National Hurricane Center's Best Track Change Committee has approved changes for a few recent cyclones, such as Hurricane Andrew. Official changes to the Atlantic hurricane database are approved by the National Hurricane Center Best Track Change Committee.


title: Atlantic hurricane season

text: NOTE: In the following tables, all estimates of damage costs are expressed in contemporaneous US dollars (USD).


title: Atlantic hurricane season

text: A 2011 study analyzing one of the main sources of hurricanes - the African easterly wave (AEW) - found that the change in AEWs is closely linked to increased activity of intense hurricanes in the North Atlantic. The synoptic concurrence of AEWs in driving the dynamics of the Sahel greening also appears to increase tropical cyclogenesis over the North Atlantic.


title: Churchill tank

text: The Tank, Infantry, Mk IV (A22) Churchill was a British infantry tank used in the Second World War, best known for its heavy armour, large longitudinal chassis with all-around tracks with multiple bogies, its ability to climb steep slopes, and its use as the basis of many specialist vehicles. It was one of the heaviest Allied tanks of the war.


title: Churchill tank

text: The origins of the Churchill's design lay in the expectation that war in Europe might well be fought in conditions similar to those of the First World War, and thus emphasised the ability to cross difficult ground. The Churchill was hurried into production in order to build up British defences against a possible German invasion. The first vehicles had flaws that had to be overcome before the Churchill was accepted for wide use. After several Marks (versions) had been built, a better-armoured specification, the Mark VII, entered service with the British Army. The improved versions performed well in the later stages of the war.


title: Churchill tank

text: The Churchill was used by British and other Commonwealth forces during the North African, Italian and North-West Europe campaigns. In addition, 344 Churchills were sent as military aid to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and more than 250 saw active service on the Eastern Front.


title: Churchill tank

text: The Churchill tank was named either after Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had promoted the development of the tank in the First World War, or after John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. Churchill told Field Marshal Jan Smuts "That is the tank they named after me when they found out it was no damn good!"


title: Churchill tank

text: The name only incidentally matched what became the British Army practice of giving service names beginning with C to tanks. Cruiser tanks were given names, such as the contemporary Covenanter, Crusader, Cromwell, Cavalier and Comet but infantry tank naming had no particular pattern. Post-war, the merging of the cruiser and infantry tank lines in the 'universal' or main battle tanks continued with C names: Centurion, Conqueror, Chieftain, and Challenger.


title: Churchill tank

text: Initially specified just before the outbreak of the Second World War, the A20 (its General Staff specification) was to supplement the Matilda II and Valentine infantry tanks. In accordance with British infantry tank doctrine and based on the expected needs of attacking a fixed defensive line, crossing wide trenches, possibly shell-cratered ground similar to First World War trench warfare it was to be immune to the current German 3.7 cm Pak 36 anti-tank guns and carry an unditching beam.


title: Churchill tank

text: A general outline produced by Woolwich Arsenal was expanded by Belfast shipbuilders Harland & Wolff with advice from the Department of Tank Design. The General Staff had proposed that it was armed with two QF 2 pounder guns, each located in a side sponson with a coaxial Besa machine gun. A third Besa and a smoke projector would be fitted in the front hull. To reduce weight the specification was revised to prefer a maximum armour to the front of 60 mm – sufficient to protect against ordinary shells from the German 37 mm gun. Outline drawings were produced by Woolwich Arsenal based on the A12 Matilda turret – the Director of Mechanisation opposed a turretless design – and the engine and Wilson epicyclic transmission being developed for the A13 Mark III Covenanter tank. Detail design and construction of the A20 was left to Harland & Wolff, who completed four prototypes by June 1940. During the construction period, the armament was reconsidered, including fitting either a 6-pounder gun or the French short 75 mm gun (as used on Char B1) in the forward hull – the former was considered too long and the latter would require redesigning the front of the hull. In the end, a 3-inch howitzer was chosen. The A20 designs were short-lived, however, as at roughly the same time the defeated British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk. While intended for "positional warfare" and direct assaults against fortifications (it was referred to as "Shelled Area Tank", or by the French phrase "Char de Fortresse") which had been rendered pointless by the fast pace of German armoured warfare a heavy tank that could defend the infantry from other tanks was still desired.


title: Churchill tank

text: At an initial 32 tons, with a 300 hp flat-12 Meadows DAV engine, the A20 had limited power compared to the 16-ton Covenanter. This was a less serious limitation than it might appear, owing to the British distinction between the high-speed cruiser tanks and the slow-speed infantry tanks. Vauxhall, who were already involved as consultants on the suspension, were approached to see if they could build the A20 and one example was sent to Vauxhall at Luton to see if they could provide an alternative engine developing 350 bhp. To this end, they developed a flat-12 petrol engine. For speed of production, this engine was based on a Bedford Vehicles (Vauxhalls commercial vehicle operations) six-cylinder lorry engine, giving rise to its name of "Twin-Six". Although using sidevalves to fit within the space, the engine was developed with high squish pistons, dual ignition and sodium-cooled exhaust valves in Stellite seats to give 350 bhp.


title: Churchill tank

text: With France lost, the scenario of trench warfare in Northern Europe was no longer applicable and the design was revised by Dr Henry Merritt, Director of Tank Design at Woolwich Arsenal, based on the combat witnessed in Poland and France. These new specifications, for the A22 or Infantry Tank Mark IV, were given to Vauxhall in June 1940.


title: Churchill tank

text: With a German invasion of Britain looking imminent, and the loss of a substantial amount of military vehicles in the evacuation from France, the War Office specified that the A22 had to enter production within a year. By July 1940, the design was completed and by December of that year the first prototypes were completed; in June 1941, almost exactly a year as specified, the first Churchill tanks began rolling off the production line.


title: Churchill tank

text: A leaflet from the manufacturer was added to the User Handbook, which also described known faults, with work-arounds and what was being done to correct the problem. It said:


title: Churchill tank

text: Harold Drew of Vauxhall achieved miracles with the Churchill and its Merrit-Brown Tank Gearbox produced by David Brown Limited; "a brilliant design that went into production off the drawing board without adequate prototype testing and had the most disastrous teething troubles" according to Robotham, but British tanks were under-powered, under-gunned and unreliable. At the Tank Board level the Director of Artillery was still extolling the merits of the 2-pounder, and this gun was still fitted to every British tank until March 1942. In a 1942 exercise one tank had to have its gearbox changed five times.


title: Churchill tank

text: Because of its hasty development, there had been little testing and the Churchill was plagued with mechanical faults. Most apparent was that the Churchill's engine was underpowered, unreliable, and difficult to access for servicing. Another serious shortcoming was the tank's inadequate armament, the 2 pounder (40 mm) gun, which was improved by the addition of a 3-inch howitzer in the hull to deliver a HE shell, albeit not on a howitzer's usual high trajectory.


title: Churchill tank

text: Production of a turret to carry the QF 6 pounder gun began in 1941, but lack of supplies of the plate used in an all-welded design led to an alternative cast turret also being produced. These formed the distinction between Mark III and Mark IV.


title: Churchill tank

text: The poor speed of the Churchill nearly caused production to be ceased in favour of the forthcoming Cromwell tank; it was saved by the successful use of the Mk III at the Second Battle of El Alamein in October 1942.


title: Churchill tank

text: The second major improved Churchill, the Mk VII, was first used in the Battle of Normandy in 1944. The Mk VII improved on the already heavy armour of the Churchill with a wider chassis and the British 75 mm gun, which had been introduced on the Mk VI. It was primarily this variant, the A22F, which served through the remainder of war. It was re-designated A42 in 1945.


title: Churchill tank

text: The hull was made up of simple flat plates, which were bolted together in earlier models and were welded in later models. The hull was split into four compartments: the driver's position at the front, then the fighting compartment including the turret, the engine compartment, and the gearbox compartment. The suspension was fitted under the two large "panniers" on either side of the hull, the track running over the top. There were eleven bogies either side, each carrying two 10-inch wheels. Only nine of the bogies normally took the vehicle weight, the front coming into play when the vehicle nosed into the ground or against an obstacle, the rear acting in part as a track tensioner. Due to the number of wheels, the tank could survive losing several without much in the way of adverse effects as well as traversing steeper terrain obstacles. As the tracks ran around the panniers, escape hatches in the side could be incorporated into the design. These were retained throughout the revisions of the Churchill and were of particular use when the Churchill was adopted as the AVRE.


title: Churchill tank

text: The Bedford Vehicles engine was effectively two engines in horizontally opposed configuration ("flat twelve") on a common crankshaft. There were four Solex carburettors each on a separate manifold that fed three cylinders formed as a single cylinder head. The elements of the engine and ancillary components were laid out so they could be reached for maintenance through the engine deck covers. Air for the engine was drawn from the fighting compartment through air cleaners. Cooling air was drawn into the engine compartment through louvres on the sides, across the radiators and through the engine compartment by a fan driven by the clutch. This fan blew the air over the gearbox and out the rear of the hull. By opening a flap between the fighting compartment and the engine compartment, this airflow could be used to remove fumes produced by firing the armament. The capacity engine was rated at at 2,000 rpm, delivering torque over an engine speed range from 800 to 1,600 rpm.


title: Churchill tank

text: The gearbox featured a regenerative steering system that was controlled by a tiller bar instead of the more commonplace brake levers or, as with the German Tiger I heavy tank, a steering wheel. The tiller was connected, with servo assistance, hydraulically to the steering brakes. The Churchill was also the first tank to utilise the Merritt-Brown triple differential gearbox, which allowed the tank to be steered by changing the relative speeds of the two tracks; this effect became more pronounced with each lower gear, ultimately allowing the tank to perform a "neutral turn" when no gear was engaged, where it could fully pivot within its own length and thus rotate in place. There were final reduction gears, of the planetary type, in the driving wheels. Although capable of the noise at that speed was so great that the Churchill was limited to by not using the highest gear.


title: Churchill tank

text: The first turrets were of cast construction and were rounded in shape, providing sufficient space to accommodate the relatively small 2 pounder gun. To fulfil its role as an infantry support vehicle, the first models were equipped with a 3-inch howitzer in the hull in a layout very similar to the French Char B1. This enabled the tank to deliver a useful high-explosive capability while retaining the anti-tank capabilities of the 2 pounder. However, like other multi-gun tanks, it was limited by a poor fire arc – the track horns limiting traverse – and elevation of only 9°. Despite the length of the gun the muzzle velocity was only . The Mark IVA (retrospectively the Churchill Mk II) dispensed with the howitzer (there had been only enough guns to equip 300 tanks) and replaced it with a bow machine gun and on the Mk III, the 2 pounder was replaced with the 6 pounder, significantly increasing the tank's anti-tank capabilities. The tank underwent field modification in North Africa with several Churchills being fitted with the 75 mm gun of destroyed M4 Shermans. These "NA75" variants were used in Italy. The use of the 75 mm increased the effectiveness of the tank, as it was a generally superior weapon to the 6 pounder, possessing similar anti-tank capabilities, while also being considerably more effective when used in infantry support roles.


title: Churchill tank

text: Churchills made use of the Vickers Tank Periscope MK.IV. In the Mark VII, the driver had two periscopes as well as a vision port in the hull front that could be opened. The hull gunner had a single periscope as well as the sighting telescope on the BESA machine gun mounting. In the turret, the gunner and loader each had single periscope and the commander had two fitted in his hatch cupola.


title: Churchill tank

text: The armour on the Churchill, often considered its most important feature, was originally specified to a minimum of and a maximum of ; this was increased with the Mk VII to a range from to . Though this armour was considerably thicker than its rivals (including the German Tiger I tank, but not the Tiger II) it was not sloped, reducing its effectiveness. Earlier models were given extra armour by the expedient of welding on extra plates.


title: Churchill tank

text: On the Mark VII, the hull front armour was made up of a lower angled piece of , a nearly horizontal plate and a vertical 6 inch plate. The hull sides, were, for the most part, . The rear was and the hull top . The turret of the Mark VII was to the front and for the other sides. The turret roof was 0.79 (20 mm) thick. Plate was specified as IT 80, the cast sections as IT 90.


title: Churchill tank

text: The A22F, also known as "Heavy Churchill", was a major revision of the design. The most significant part was the use of welding instead of riveted construction. Welding had been considered earlier for the Churchill but, until its future was assured, this was no more than testing techniques and hulls at the firing ranges. What welding reduced in the overall weight (estimates were around 4%), the thicker armour of the A22F made up for. Welding also required fewer man-hours in construction. The hull doors changed from square to round which reduced stresses. A new turret went with the new hull. The sides, which included a flared base to protect the turret ring, were a single casting while the roof, which did not need to be so thick, was a plate fitted to the top.


title: Churchill tank

text: Since the engines on the Churchill were never upgraded, the tank became increasingly slow as additional armour and armament was equipped and weight increased; while the Mk I weighed and the Mk III weighed , the Mk VII weighed . This caused a reduction in the tanks' maximum speed from its original down to .


title: Churchill tank

text: Another problem was the tank's relatively small turret that prevented the use of powerful weapons; definitive versions of the tank were armed with either the QF 6-pounder or the derivative QF 75 mm gun. The 6-pounder was effective against armoured vehicles, but less so against other targets; the 75 mm was a better all-round weapon, but lacked in effectiveness against armour. Although the Churchills with their 6-pounders could outgun many contemporary German medium tanks (like the Panzer IV with the short-barrel 75 mm gun, and the Panzer III armed with the 50 mm gun) and the thick armour of all Churchill models could usually withstand several hits from any German anti-tank gun, in the later years of the war the German Panther tank had a 75 mm high-velocity cannon as its main armament along with increased protection, against which the Churchills' own guns often lacked sufficient armour penetration to fight back effectively.


title: Churchill tank

text: The Churchill had many variations, including many specialised modifications. The most significant change to the Churchill was that it was up-gunned from 2-pounder to 6-pounder and then 75 mm guns over the course of the war. By the war's end, the late model Churchill Mk VII had exceptional amounts of armour – considerably more than the German Tiger tank. However, the firepower weakness was never fully addressed. The Mark VII turret that was designed for the 75 mm gun was of composite construction – cast with top and bottom plates welded into position.


title: Churchill tank

text: While it had weaknesses, the Churchill could cross terrain obstacles that most other tanks of its era could not. This capacity frequently proved useful, especially during the fighting in Normandy. One action in Normandy where the tank's ability to surmount obstacles was found to be of value was the capture of Hill 309 on 30/31 July 1944 (Operation Bluecoat) conducted by VIII Corps.


title: Churchill tank

text: The Churchill tank was produced with Vauxhall as the design parent. Subcontracted work on some tanks was provided by Whessoe Foundry & Engineering, Metropolitan‑Cammell Carriage & Wagon, Babcock & Wilcox, Newton, Chambers & Company and the Gloucester Railway Carriage & Wagon Company; the latter two produced some complete vehicles. Other contractors produced hulls and turrets which went to Vauxhall, Charles Roberts & Co, and Dennis Brothers for final assembly.


title: Churchill tank

text: In March and April 1942, Vauxhall stopped producing new tanks. Together with Broom & Wade (at High Wycombe) they started rebuilding earlier tanks; about 700 of the first 1,000 built were included in this scheme. The reworked tanks got an "R" as a suffix to their WD number. Changes to the hull air intakes and the full length mudguards were the most obvious changes.


title: Churchill tank

text: Turrets for the earliest Marks were single piece castings. One thousand were supplied from the United States: 600 complete from General Steel and 400 from American Steel Foundries that were finished by other companies before shipping to UK.


title: Churchill tank

text: The Churchill first saw combat on 19 August 1942, in the Dieppe Raid in France. The Dieppe raid was planned to temporarily take control of the French port of Dieppe using a strong force of about 6,000 troops – mostly drawn from inexperienced Canadian units. The operation, codenamed Jubilee, would test the feasibility of opposed landings. Nearly 60 Churchill tanks from the 14th Army Tank Regiment (The Calgary Regiment (Tank)) were allocated to support the infantry and commandos; they would be put ashore by Landing Craft Tank vessels, along with the supporting engineers. Some problems were anticipated and allowed for: waterproofing of the hulls, canvas carpets ("Bobbin") to aid the tanks crossing the short stretch of shingle beach, engineer teams to demolish road blocks and a few of the tanks were fitted with flame-throwers. The tanks, a mix of Mark I with hull howitzers, Mark II (three with flamethrowers) and Mark III (some with Bobbin), were expected to enter the town and reach a nearby airfield before retiring back to the beach to be taken off by the LCTs. Half of the tank force would be held in reserve offshore.


title: Churchill tank

text: In the event, the German defences were stronger than expected. The beach was chert which included larger stones than the anticipated shingle: according to history professor Hugh Henry, the German defenders had previously considered it impassable to tanks. Only the 30 Churchills in the first two waves of 10 LCTs were landed on the beach under heavy fire: the latter two waves were turned away. One Churchill was trapped in its LCT by shellfire. Of the 29 remaining (eight Mark I/IIs, three Oke flamethrower tanks, and 18 Mark IIIs), two sank en route to shore, and 11 were immobilized on the beach due to a combination of the chert shingle and indirect fire. Only 15 would get off the beach and over the sea wall onto the Dieppe promenade. Although these tanks were effective in engaging the defenders in the town's buildings, their further progress was blocked by concrete defences; the engineer demolition teams – killed or pinned on the beach – had not been able to accompany the tanks. Ten of these Churchills were able to return to the beach once the withdrawal had been signalled but they could not be evacuated. According to Henry, no Churchills were penetrated by German anti-tank fire while still manned. These surviving tank crews fought to cover the withdrawal of the infantry from the beach, and almost all were captured with their vehicles, having exhausted their main gun ammunition. The tank regiment's commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Johnny Andrews, was among those killed in action. Nearly 70% of the Canadians were killed, injured or captured and none of the raid's objectives were met other than the secret raid on the radar station on a headland.


title: Churchill tank

text: Two Mark II had been sent to North Africa for trials and they were joined by six Mk III Churchills (with the 6 pounder) to form the Special Tank Squadron commanded by Major Norris King. They saw action in the Second Battle of El Alamein in October 1942. This detachment, called "Kingforce", supported the attack of 7th Motor Brigade first with three tanks at Kidney Ridge (where one was hit "repeatedly" by anti-tank gun fire (including "friendly fire" from a British gun) and another took "a lot of punishment"), then the remaining five at Tell-el-Aqqaqir. The Churchills were fired on many times by Italian and German anti-tank guns, but only one was knocked out and partially caught on fire. One tank was said to have been hit up to 80 times.


title: Churchill tank

text: Kingforce, formed to test whether the Churchills could operate in Africa, was considered too slow to participate in the chase after the retreating Axis, sent back to Alexandria and disbanded after El Alamein. The 25th Army Tank Brigade of three regiments was sent to Africa, and went into action in February 1943 during the Tunisian campaign. It was followed by 21st Army Tank Brigade.