title: 98 Degrees

text: Unlike most boy bands, they formed independently and were later picked up by a record label, rather than being assembled by a label or a producer. They have sold over 10 million records worldwide and achieved eight top 40 singles in the U.S. In the late 90s to the early 00s, the group reached top-five on the "Billboard" Hot 100 with the songs "Give Me Just One Night (Una Noche)", "Because of You", "The Hardest Thing" and "Thank God I Found You" (with Mariah Carey and Joe); the latter as featured artists, topping the chart also making it their first and only number-one song.


title: 98 Degrees

text: The group reunited for a one-time performance at Mixtape Festival in Hershey, PA in August 2012. After the performance, the reunion expanded into a new album and a spot on "The Package" tour in 2013.


title: 98 Degrees

text: The founding members of 98 Degrees met after Massillon, Ohio native Jeff Timmons decided to quit college and pursue a music career with best friend Jeremy Volk. He studied psychology at Kent State University in his home state of Ohio, and planned on a career playing football in the NFL. In 1995 he sang at a college party with three friends and received a positive reaction from the female audience about his voice. The following day he left college and headed out to Los Angeles, California. "It was a pretty hasty decision, looking back, but I was young and dumb. Sometimes ignorance is bliss," he said in 2004. He met a former student of the Cincinnati School for Creative and Performing Arts who passed his name on to another graduate, Nick Lachey, who was attending Miami (of Ohio) University to study sports medicine. Lachey flew to Los Angeles and, after hitting it off, decided to form a boyband. Lachey suggested inviting one of his friends, Justin Jeffre, to join them. Jeffre, a history student at University of Cincinnati, had attended SCPA with Lachey and they had performed together before in various outfits such as a barbershop quartet at the amusement park Kings Island and a cover band. The final member to join the band was Lachey's younger brother Drew, who was working in New York City as an emergency medical technician, as a replacement for founding member Jonathan Lippman.


title: 98 Degrees

text: After rejecting a series of names (including Just Us and Next Issue), upon the suggestion by their manager Paris D'Jon, they decided on "98 Degrees" describing body temperature and their music.


title: 98 Degrees

text: Taking a series of jobs including landscaping, working as club security officers and delivering take-out food, the band refined its harmonies and presentation, looking to groups such as Boyz II Men, Take 5, and Jodeci for inspiration. The new group also made the rounds of auditions in Los Angeles and gradually built up its contacts in the music industry. The group's wait for a manager and a recording contract did not take long, as they seized an opportunity to perform during a radio broadcast of a Boyz II Men concert, which they attended in the hope of passing a demo tape to the band. They were discovered by music manager Paris D'Jon, who was co-managing Montell Jordan at the time.


title: 98 Degrees

text: Just before the group signed their deal founding member Jonathan Lippman departed the group due to his religious beliefs, he later went on to form CCM group True Vibe.


title: 98 Degrees

text: The group's emergence at a time when teen-oriented acts like the Spice Girls, the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC were just hitting the top of the charts around the world compelled them to differentiate themselves from the mere "boy band" status that they derided. From the start, they emphasized that they wrote much of their own material, which reflected R&B influences more than mainstream pop roots. "There are major differences musically between groups, not to mention the fact that we were signed to Motown, which gives us a little more credibility as far as R&B and soul music goes."


title: 98 Degrees

text: With their debut single, "Invisible Man" which peaked at No. 12 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, achieving gold-record status after its July 1997 release, 98 Degrees was off to a promising start. Although critical 8 to the debut of the group was mixed, a Billboard review of their first single noted their vocal abilities, and the addition of a new track helped to keep the band in the public eye. The group also toured extensively, including concert dates in Asia. They also opened for several dates of Janet Jackson's Velvet Rope Tour, exposing them to a wider audience.


title: 98 Degrees

text: After building popularity with their appearance in the animated Disney movie "Mulan", and singing "True to Your Heart", a duet with labelmate Stevie Wonder, their album "98 Degrees and Rising" went 4× platinum in 1998. Production credit included Atlanta-based producer and Babyface co-writing partner Daryl Simmons. Musician credits on the breakthrough album featured Atlanta-based session musician and former Earth, Wind & Fire guitarist Dick Smith. After the second album, 98 Degrees left Motown for its parent company, Universal Records.


title: 98 Degrees

text: The band's first major hit was "Because of You" (number three on the U.S. Hot 100 and number five on the Canadian Singles Chart) and went platinum. "The Hardest Thing" followed the success by reaching No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified gold.


title: 98 Degrees

text: In 1999, 98 Degrees released their Christmas album "This Christmas", which spawned the top 40 single "This Gift". Within a month after its release the album was certified platinum. The group appeared as featured guests on Amy Grant's 1999 CBS Christmas special, "A Christmas to Remember". Nick Lachey was featured on Jessica Simpson's album on the track "Where You Are", which was released as a single and reached the top 40. The group appeared in the album called "" with their song "The Love That You've Been Looking For".


title: 98 Degrees

text: The group scored a "Billboard" Hot 100 No. 1 hit in the U.S. with the single "Thank God I Found You", a collaboration with Mariah Carey and Joe. The single went gold, selling 700,000 copies. It stayed at No. 1 on the Hot 100 for one week and the top 200 singles sales chart for 51 weeks. The single went to the top 10 in the UK charts and the group also received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for the same song.


title: 98 Degrees

text: In the summer of 2000, 98 Degrees released the first single of their new album "Give Me Just One Night (Una Noche)", the single went to No. 2 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and was certified gold. In September 2000, the band's album "Revelation" was released. "Revelation" peaked at No. 2 on the "Billboard" 200 and went 2× Platinum. The band's next singles were "My Everything" and "The Way You Want Me To", both reaching the Top 40.


title: 98 Degrees

text: In September 2001, the band appeared at Madison Square Garden alongside Luther Vandross and Usher singing Michael Jackson's hit song "Man in the Mirror". The performance was part of a show to celebrate .


title: 98 Degrees

text: In 2002, 98 Degrees released a compilation album called "The Collection", with the new single "Why (Are We Still Friends)". The single reached the top 40; at that point the group had sold over 10 million records and released 12 singles.


title: 98 Degrees

text: In 2003, the group went on hiatus. At the time, Drew Lachey stated that 98 Degrees had not broken up. During the hiatus, Drew and his wife had their first daughter shortly after he won the second season of "Dancing with the Stars". Nick Lachey married singer Jessica Simpson and released two solo albums, "SoulO" and "What's Left of Me". Timmons released the solo album "Whisper That Way" and participated in the VH1 reality TV series, "Mission Man Band". Jeffre ran for mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio, and worked on independent media projects.


title: 98 Degrees

text: The band reunited in 2004 to perform on "Nick & Jessica's Family Christmas" TV special. In September 2005, 98 Degrees performed at Club Purgatory in Over-the-Rhine to support Jeffre in his candidacy for mayor of Cincinnati.


title: 98 Degrees

text: On June 20, 2012, Nick and Drew Lachey announced on Ryan Seacrest that the group would reunite for a one-time performance at Mixtape Festival in Hershey, PA in August. The group also performed at "The Today Show" on August 17.


title: 98 Degrees

text: In an interview with "Rolling Stone" on July 26, 2012, Drew Lachey revealed that a week before, the group had their first rehearsal in over a decade. He also explained the group decided to come back together because they were all at that place in their lives where they felt comfortable committing to being in a group again, and they also felt the timing was right because the pop music genre has come back around. "Music is very cyclical. You go through rock stages, R&B stages, rap stages... It's an uphill battle if you try and do pop during a rap stage," says Lachey. Regarding the group's future, he said at this time, they currently have no plan beyond their performances at "The Today Show" and the Mixtape Festival. However, in September 2012, he revealed the group was going to go back into the studio to record a new album in October.


title: 98 Degrees

text: On January 22, 2013, the group appeared on "The View" along with New Kids on the Block and Boyz II Men to announce their joint tour would take place in summer 2013. This tour is named "The Package" and the 12 members on tour (Boyz II Men with 3 members, NKOTB with 5 members and 98 Degrees with 4 members) jokingly refer to themselves as "The Dirty Dozen". The North American tour began on May 28, 2013. The band also performed a song during the season finale of NBC's "The Sing-Off", which Nick Lachey hosts, on December 23, 2013.


title: 98 Degrees

text: In summer 2016, they regrouped again to headline the My2K Tour, their first headlining tour in 15 years. They were supported by O-Town, Ryan Cabrera, and Dream, putting together a bill of pop acts that were first popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s at larger venues.


title: 98 Degrees

text: In 2017, they returned to Universal Music and put out their second Christmas album, "Let it Snow", because of their 20th anniversary. They also plan to do a tour around the fall in promotion of the album, which is called "At Christmas Tour".


title: 98 Degrees

text: On November 23, 2017, the band made a 90-second musical appearance in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, performed in New York City.


title: 98 Degrees

text: On May 21, 2018, the band made a musical appearance at Miss USA, singing "The Hardest Thing" and "I Do", as the three final girls did their last walk on the stage.


title: 98 Degrees

text: From October 15 to October 16, 2018, 98 Degrees appeared at Epcot at Walt Disney World as part of the Eat To The Beat concert series during the annual Food and Wine Festival.


title: 98 Degrees

text: On July 9, 2021, the band released a new single titled "Where Do You Want To Go", their first release since their 2013 album. They joined Canadian country singer Brett Kissel on the single "Ain't the Same" in April 2022.


title: ROYGBIV

text: ROYGBIV is an acronym for the sequence of hues commonly described as making up a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. There are several mnemonics that can be used for remembering this color sequence, such as the name "Roy G. Biv" or sentences such as "Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain".


title: ROYGBIV

text: In the Renaissance, several artists tried to establish a sequence of up to seven primary colors from which all other colors could be mixed. In line with this artistic tradition, Sir Isaac Newton divided his color circle, which he constructed to explain additive color mixing, into seven colors. Originally he used only five colors, but later he added orange and indigo to match the number of musical notes in the major scale.


title: ROYGBIV

text: The Munsell color system, the first formal color notation system (1905), names only five "principal hues": red, yellow, green, blue, and purple.


title: ROYGBIV

text: Isaac Newton's color sequence (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) is kept alive today by several popular mnemonics. One is simply the nonsense word "roygbiv", which is an acronym for the seven colors. This word can also be envisioned as a person's name, "Roy G. Biv".


title: ROYGBIV

text: Another traditional mnemonic device has been to turn the initial letters of the seven spectral colors into a sentence, most commonly "Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain" (or the slight alternative "Richard Of York Gained Battles In Vain"). This mnemonic is said to refer to the defeat and death of Richard, Duke of York at the Battle of Wakefield in 1460, or to his son Richard III being defeated at the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. Another sentence sometimes used is "Read Out Your Good Book In Verse", referring to the Bible.


title: ROYGBIV

text: In the modern era, these traditional mnemonics have been adapted to reflect the use of the rainbow flag as a symbol of LGBT movements. In Ireland, a campaign to reduce homophobic prejudice among schoolchildren revolves around the phrase "Respect Others, You Grow By Including Variety". In 2021, drag queen Alaska Thunderfuck released the song "ROY G BIV BBT", which adds new initials to the acronym representing "black", "brown" and "trans".


title: Jeremy (song)

text: "Jeremy" is a song by American rock band Pearl Jam, with lyrics written by vocalist Eddie Vedder and music written by bassist Jeff Ament. "Jeremy" was released in August 1992 as the third single from Pearl Jam's debut album, "Ten" (1991). The song was inspired by a newspaper article Vedder read about Jeremy Wade Delle, a high school student who shot himself in front of his English class on January 8, 1991. It reached the number 5 spot on both the Album and Modern Rock "Billboard" charts. It did not originally chart on the regular "Billboard" Hot 100 singles chart since it was not released as a commercial single in the US at the time, but a re-release in July 1995 brought it up to number 79.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: The song gained popularity for its music video, directed by Mark Pellington and released in 1992, which received heavy rotation by MTV and became a hit. The original music video for "Jeremy" was directed and produced by Chris Cuffaro. Epic Records and MTV later rejected the music video, and released the version directed by Pellington instead. In 1993, the "Jeremy" video was awarded four MTV Video Music Awards, including Best Video of the Year.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: "Jeremy" features lyrics written by vocalist Eddie Vedder and music written by bassist Jeff Ament. The song's music was written before the band went out on tour in support of Alice in Chains in February 1991.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: I already had two pieces of music that I wrote on acoustic guitar... with the idea that I would play them on a Hamer 12-string bass I had just ordered. When the bass arrived, one of [the pieces] became "Jeremy"... I had an idea for the outro when we were recording it the second time... I overdubbed a twelve-string bass, and we added a cello. That was big-time production, for us... Rick [Parashar]’s a supertalented engineer-musician... Stone [Gossard, Pearl Jam’s rhythm guitarist] was sick one day, and Ed, Rick and I conjured up the art piece that opens and closes the song. That was so fun—I wanted to make a whole record like that.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: We knew it was a good song, but it was tough getting it to feel right—for the chorus to sit back and the outro to push over the top. The tune went from practically not making it on the record to being one of the best takes. I'm not sure if it's the best song on the album but I think it's the best take. On "Jeremy" I always heard this other melody in the choruses and the end, and it never sounded good on guitar or bass. So we brought in a cello player which inspired a background vocal, and those things made the song really happen. Most of the time if something doesn't work right away, I just say fuck it—but this was an instance when perseverance paid off.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: "Jeremy" is based on two different true stories. The song takes its main inspiration from a newspaper article about a 15-year-old boy named Jeremy Wade Delle from Richardson, Texas, who shot himself in front of his teacher and his second-period English class of 30 students on the morning of January 8, 1991. In a 2009 interview, Vedder said that he felt "the need to take that small article and make something of it—to give that action, to give it reaction, to give it more importance."


title: Jeremy (song)

text: Delle was described by schoolmates as "real quiet" and known for "acting sad". After coming into class late that morning, Delle was told to get an admittance slip from the school office. He left the classroom, and returned with a .357 Magnum revolver. Delle walked to the front of the classroom, announced "Miss, I got what I really went for", put the barrel of the firearm in his mouth, and pulled the trigger before his teacher or classmates could react. Lisa Moore, a schoolmate, knew Jeremy from the in-school suspension program: "He and I would pass notes back and forth and he would talk about life and stuff," she said. "He signed all of his notes, 'Write back.' But on Monday he wrote, 'Later days.' I didn't know what to make of it. But I never thought this would happen."


title: Jeremy (song)

text: It came from a small paragraph in a paper which means you kill yourself and you make a big old sacrifice and try to get your revenge. That all you're gonna end up with is a paragraph in a newspaper. Sixty-four degrees and cloudy in a suburban neighborhood. That's the beginning of the video and that's the same thing in the end; it does nothing... nothing changes. The world goes on and you're gone. The best revenge is to live on and prove yourself. Be stronger than those people. And then you can come back.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: The second story the song is based on, involved a student that Vedder knew from his junior high school in San Diego, California, who committed a school shooting. He elaborated further in a 1991 interview:


title: Jeremy (song)

text: I actually knew somebody in junior high school, in San Diego, California, that did the same thing, just about, didn't take his life but ended up shooting up an oceanography room. I remember being in the halls and hearing it and I had actually had altercations with this kid in the past. I was kind of a rebellious fifth-grader and I think we got in fights and stuff. So it's a bit about this kid named Jeremy and it's also a bit about a kid named Brian that I knew and I don't know... the song, I think it says a lot. I think it goes somewhere... and a lot of people interpret it different ways and it's just been recently that I've been talking about the true meaning behind it and I hope no one's offended and believe me, I think of Jeremy when I sing it.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: The picture used for the cover was taken by Lance Mercer and the little girl who appears on it is Jessica Curtis, daughter of Kelly Curtis, the group's long-time manager.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: On August 17, 1992, "Jeremy" was released as a single in Europe. The following month, on September 14, it was issued in the United Kingdom. The B-sides were the previously unreleased "Footsteps" and "Yellow Ledbetter". Both of these were later included on the compilation album "Lost Dogs" (2003), "Footsteps" as an alternate version. "Yellow Ledbetter" can also be found on the band's "rearviewmirror (Greatest Hits 1991–2003)". In the United States, "Jeremy" was not released as a single until June 27, 1995; before that date, the single was only available as a more expensive import version.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: "Jeremy" became the most successful song from "Ten" on the American rock charts. It peaked at number five on the US "Billboard" Album Rock Tracks and "Billboard" Modern Rock Tracks charts. The single has been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). "Jeremy" reached the top 40 on the Canadian Singles Chart. It also reached the UK top 20, peaked at number 93 in Germany, reached the top 40 in New Zealand, and was a top-10 success in Ireland. At the 1993 Grammy Awards, "Jeremy" received nominations for Best Rock Song and Best Hard Rock Performance.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: Chris True of AllMusic said that "Jeremy" "is where Pearl Jam mania galvanized and propelled the band past the 'Seattle sound' and into rock royalty." He described it as a "classic buildup tune" and proclaimed it as "arguably Pearl Jam's most earnest work and one of their most successful singles." Stephen M. Deusner of "Pitchfork" said, "'Jeremy' is the most past Freudian psychodrama on an album full of them."


title: Jeremy (song)

text: In July 1991, Vedder became acquainted with photographer Chris Cuffaro. Vedder suggested Cuffaro film a music video for the band. On Vedder's insistence, Epic gave Cuffaro permission to use any song off "Ten". He chose "Jeremy", which was not intended to be released as a single at the time. Epic refused to fund the clip, forcing Cuffaro to finance it himself.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: Cuffaro raised the money by taking out a loan and selling all of his furniture and half his guitar collection. He first filmed several scenes of a young actor, Eric Schubert, playing the part of Jeremy. Cuffaro and his crew spent a day filming Schubert playing the part of Jeremy. The scenes with Pearl Jam were filmed in a warehouse on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. A revolving platform was rigged at the center of the set, and the members of the band climbed on it individually to give the illusion of the song being performed as a crew member spun the giant turntable by hand. Vedder appeared with black gaffer's tape around his biceps as a mourning band for the real Jeremy.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: By the time Cuffaro finished his music video, Epic had warmed up to the idea of releasing "Jeremy" as a single. Music video director Mark Pellington was brought in to handle the project. Pellington said that he "wasn't a huge fan of the band, but the lyrics intrigued me—I spoke to Eddie, and I really got connected to his passion." Pellington and Pearl Jam convened in Kings Cross, London, England, in June 1992 to film a new version of the "Jeremy" music video.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: Working with veteran editor Bruce Ashley, Pellington's high-budget video incorporated rapid-fire editing and juxtaposition of sound, still images, graphics and text elements with live action sequences to create a collage effect. The classroom scenes were filmed at Bayonne High School in New Jersey. The video also featured many close-ups of Vedder performing the song, with the other members of Pearl Jam shown only briefly. Some of the stock imagery was similar to the original video, but when it came to the band Pellington focused on Vedder. Vedder thus serves as the video's narrator. Ament said, "It was mostly Mark and Ed's vision. In fact, I think it would have been a better video if the rest of the band wasn’t in it. I know some of us were having a hard time with the movie-type video that Mark made, because our two previous videos were made live." Jeremy was played by 12-year-old Trevor Wilson, in his only acting role. Wilson would drown in 2016, at age 36, while swimming in Puerto Rico.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: The video premiered on August 1, 1992, and quickly found its way into heavy rotation on MTV. Michele Romero of "Entertainment Weekly" described the music video as "an "Afterschool Special" from hell." She stated that "when Eddie Vedder yowls the lyric 'Jeremy spoke in class today,' a chill frosts your cranium to the point of queasy enjoyment." The success of the "Jeremy" video helped catapult Pearl Jam to fame. Pellington stated, "I think that video tapped into something that has always been around and will always be around. You're always going to have peer pressure, you're always going to have adolescent rage, you're always going to have dysfunctional families." The video won four MTV Video Music Awards in 1993, including Best Video of the Year, Best Group Video, Best Metal/Hard Rock Video, and Best Direction. Trevor Wilson appeared with Pearl Jam onstage when they won Best Video of the Year. Vedder introduced him to the crowd, saying, "This is Trevor. He lives", and handed him the award.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: In the entirety of Eddie Vedder's 1993 MTV VMA acceptance speech, he said, "Thank you, everybody. This is Trevor. He lives." as he and Trevor raised clasped hands, Eddie patted Trevor on the head, and the audience cheered. Eddie goes on to say "No, um... I mean, I guess you gotta say thanks... No, the real shit is... If it weren't for music, I think I would have shot myself in the front of the classroom, you know. It really is what kept me alive, so this is kind of full circle. So to the power of music, thanks." then hands the award to Trevor.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: In Pellington's video, Jeremy is played by Trevor Wilson. He is shown at school being alienated from, and taunted by, his classmates, running shirtless through a forest, and screaming at his parents at a dinner table. Only Jeremy is shown moving in the video; all of the other characters depicted are almost always frozen in a series of stationary tableaus. Shots of words depicting others' presumed descriptions of Jeremy—such as "problem", "peer", "harmless", and "bored"—frequently appear onscreen. Included are three biblical allusions: "the serpent was subtil", from Genesis , "the unclean spirit entered", from Mark , and "", referencing the concept of original sin.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: As the song becomes more dense and frenetic, Jeremy's behavior becomes increasingly agitated. Strobe lighting adds to the anxious atmosphere. Jeremy is shown standing, arms raised in a "V" (as described in the lyrics at the beginning of the song), in front of a wall of billowing flames. He is later shown staring at the camera while wrapped in an American flag, surrounded by fire. He then stands shirtless in an artificial forest, surrounded by various drawings. He becomes aggravated, breaks off a branch, and swings it at various trees in anger, all while lights flash around his body.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: The final scene of the video shows Jeremy striding into class shirtless, tossing an apple to the teacher, and standing before his classmates. He reaches down and draws back his arm as he takes a gun out of his pocket. (The gun only appears onscreen in the unedited version of the video.) The edited version cuts to an extreme close-up of Jeremy's face as he puts the barrel of the gun in his mouth, closes his eyes, and pulls the trigger. After a flash of light, the screen turns black. The next shot is a pan across the classroom, showing Jeremy's blood-spattered classmates, all completely still, recoiling in horror. The video ends on a shot of a dangling blackboard, on which all the harsh terms and phrases seen earlier are scrawled.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: Pellington's original video shows Jeremy putting the gun in his mouth at the climax, but this ran afoul of MTV restrictions on violent imagery, so the weapon was cropped out of the shot by zooming in on the upper part of Jeremy's face. The ambiguity created by the gun being unseen, combined with the subsequent shot of the defensive posture of Jeremy's classmates and the large amount of blood on them, ironically led many viewers to believe that the video ended with Jeremy shooting his classmates, not himself. In 1997, "Rolling Stone" described the song and video as depicting an unpopular student bringing a gun to class and shooting people. Pellington himself dismisses this interpretation of the video. He said, "Probably the greatest frustration I've ever had is that the ending is sometimes misinterpreted as that he shot his classmates. The idea is, that's his blood on them, and they're frozen at the moment of looking."


title: Jeremy (song)

text: Another change that was made to the version for MTV was the shortening of the Pledge of Allegiance sequence, showing Jeremy's classmates making a gesture that could be either the Roman salute, the American Bellamy salute or the Hitler salute.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: After "Jeremy", Pearl Jam backed away from making music videos. "Ten years from now," Ament said, "I don't want people to remember our songs as videos." The band did not release another video until 1998's "Do the Evolution", which is entirely animated.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: In 1996, a shooting occurred at Frontier Junior High School in Moses Lake, Washington, that left three dead and a fourth injured. The prosecutors for the case said the shooter, Barry Loukaitis, was influenced by the edited version of the music video.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: MTV and VH1 have rarely broadcast the video since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, but it still airs from time to time on MTV Classic. It can also occasionally be seen playing at Hard Rock Cafe locations. Documentaries about the era, such as "I Love the '90s", tend to omit mention of the video. However, clips of it were shown during VH1's countdown "100 Greatest Songs of the '90s", which placed "Jeremy" at number 11. The video was included in MuchMusic's list of the 12 most controversial videos, due to its subject of suicide, and in light of school shootings.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: The uncensored version of the video was remastered in high definition and released on Pearl Jam's official YouTube channel on June 5, 2020, to mark National Gun Violence Awareness Day. The remastered version also features a new audio track, remixed by Brendan O'Brien for the 2009 reissue of "Ten". This version was shown as part of VH1 Classic's retrospective "Pearl Jam Ten Revisited", which coincided with the album's rerelease.


title: Jeremy (song)

text: "Jeremy" was first performed live by Pearl Jam on May 17, 1991, at the Off Ramp Café in Seattle, Washington. The band's 1992 appearance on "MTV Unplugged" included a performance of the song. At the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, the band had intended to play the Dead Boys song "Sonic Reducer", but MTV insisted on "Jeremy", since the video was in heavy rotation (although it had been released after the deadline for that year's awards). At the end of the intense performance, however, Vedder managed to sneak in a reference to "Sonic Reducer" by singing that song's first line: "I don't need no... I don't need no mom and dad."


title: Jeremy (song)

text: Live performances of "Jeremy" can be found on the "Animal" single, the "Dissident"/"Live in Atlanta" box set, various official bootlegs, the "Live at the Gorge 05/06" box set, and the "Drop in the Park" LP included in the Super Deluxe edition of the "Ten" reissue. Performances of the song are also included on the DVD "Touring Band 2000" and the "MTV Unplugged" DVD included in the "Ten" reissue.


title: Modified Mercalli intensity scale

text: The Modified Mercalli intensity scale (MM, MMI, or MCS), developed from Giuseppe Mercalli's Mercalli intensity scale of 1902, is a seismic intensity scale used for measuring the intensity of shaking produced by an earthquake. It measures the effects of an earthquake at a given location, distinguished from the earthquake's inherent force or strength as measured by seismic magnitude scales (such as the "" magnitude usually reported for an earthquake). While shaking is caused by the seismic energy released by an earthquake, earthquakes differ in how much of their energy is radiated as seismic waves. Deeper earthquakes also have less interaction with the surface, and their energy is spread out across a larger volume. Shaking intensity is localized, generally diminishing with distance from the earthquake's epicenter, but can be amplified in sedimentary basins and certain kinds of unconsolidated soils.


title: Modified Mercalli intensity scale

text: Intensity scales empirically categorize the intensity of shaking based on the effects reported by untrained observers and are adapted for the effects that might be observed in a particular region. By not requiring instrumental measurements, they are useful for estimating the magnitude and location of historical (preinstrumental) earthquakes: the greatest intensities generally correspond to the epicentral area, and their degree and extent (possibly augmented by knowledge of local geological conditions) can be compared with other local earthquakes to estimate the magnitude.


title: Modified Mercalli intensity scale

text: Italian volcanologist Giuseppe Mercalli formulated his first intensity scale in 1883. It had six degrees or categories, has been described as "merely an adaptation" of the then standard Rossi–Forel scale of 10 degrees, and is now "more or less forgotten". Mercalli's second scale, published in 1902, was also an adaptation of the Rossi–Forel scale, retaining the 10 degrees and expanding the descriptions of each degree. This version "found favour with the users", and was adopted by the Italian Central Office of Meteorology and Geodynamics.


title: Modified Mercalli intensity scale

text: In 1904, Adolfo Cancani proposed adding two additional degrees for very strong earthquakes, "catastrophe" and "enormous catastrophe", thus creating a 12-degree scale. His descriptions being deficient, August Heinrich Sieberg augmented them during 1912 and 1923, and indicated a peak ground acceleration for each degree. This became known as the "Mercalli–Cancani scale, formulated by Sieberg", or the "Mercalli–Cancani–Sieberg scale", or simply "MCS", and was used extensively in Europe and remains in use in Italy by the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV).


title: Modified Mercalli intensity scale

text: When Harry O. Wood and Frank Neumann translated this into English in 1931 (along with modification and condensation of the descriptions, and removal of the acceleration criteria), they named it the "modified Mercalli intensity scale of 1931" (MM31). Some seismologists refer to this version the "Wood–Neumann scale". Wood and Neumann also had an abridged version, with fewer criteria for assessing the degree of intensity.


title: Modified Mercalli intensity scale

text: The Wood–Neumann scale was revised in 1956 by Charles Francis Richter and published in his influential textbook "Elementary Seismology". Not wanting to have this intensity scale confused with the Richter magnitude scale he had developed, he proposed calling it the "modified Mercalli scale of 1956" (MM56).


title: Modified Mercalli intensity scale

text: In their 1993 compendium of historical seismicity in the United States, Carl Stover and Jerry Coffman ignored Richter's revision, and assigned intensities according to their slightly modified interpretation of Wood and Neumann's 1931 scale, effectively creating a new, but largely undocumented version of the scale.


title: Modified Mercalli intensity scale

text: The basis by which the U.S. Geological Survey (and other agencies) assigns intensities is nominally Wood and Neumann's MM31. However, this is generally interpreted with the modifications summarized by Stover and Coffman because in the decades since 1931, "some criteria are more reliable than others as indicators of the level of ground shaking". Also, construction codes and methods have evolved, making much of built environment stronger; these make a given intensity of ground shaking seem weaker. Also, some of the original criteria of the most intense degrees (X and above), such as bent rails, ground fissures, landslides, etc., are "related less to the level of ground shaking than to the presence of ground conditions susceptible to spectacular failure".


title: Modified Mercalli intensity scale

text: The categories "catastrophe" and "enormous catastrophe" added by Cancani (XI and XII) are used so infrequently that current USGS practice is to merge them into a single category "Extreme" abbreviated as "X+".


title: Modified Mercalli intensity scale

text: The lesser degrees of the MMI scale generally describe the manner in which the earthquake is felt by people. The greater numbers of the scale are based on observed structural damage.


title: Modified Mercalli intensity scale

text: The correlation between magnitude and intensity is far from total, depending upon several factors, including the depth of the hypocenter, terrain, and distance from the epicenter. For example, a magnitude 7.0 quake in Salta, Argentina, in 2011, that was 576.8 km deep, had a maximum felt intensity of V, while a magnitude 2.2 event in Barrow in Furness, England, in 1865, about 1 km deep, had a maximum felt intensity of VIII.


title: Modified Mercalli intensity scale

text: The small table is a rough guide to the degrees of the MMI scale. The colors and descriptive names shown here differ from those used on certain shake maps in other articles.


title: Modified Mercalli intensity scale

text: Dozens of intensity-prediction equations have been published to estimate the macroseismic intensity at a location given the magnitude, source-to-site distance, and perhaps other parameters (e.g. local site conditions). These are similar to ground motion-prediction equations for the estimation of instrumental strong-motion parameters such as peak ground acceleration. A summary of intensity prediction equations is available. Such equations can be used to estimate the seismic hazard in terms of macroseismic intensity, which has the advantage of being related more closely to seismic risk than instrumental strong-motion parameters.


title: Modified Mercalli intensity scale

text: The MMI scale is not defined in terms of more rigorous, objectively quantifiable measurements such as shake amplitude, shake frequency, peak velocity, or peak acceleration. Human-perceived shaking and building damages are best correlated with peak acceleration for lower-intensity events, and with peak velocity for higher-intensity events.


title: Modified Mercalli intensity scale

text: The effects of any one earthquake can vary greatly from place to place, so many MMI values may be measured for the same earthquake. These values can be displayed best using a contoured map of equal intensity, known as an isoseismal map. However, each earthquake has only one magnitude.


title: Nabataeans

text: The Nabataeans or Nabateans (; Nabataean Aramaic: , , vocalized as ; Arabic: , , singular , ; compare ; ) were an ancient Arab people who inhabited northern Arabia and the southern Levant. Their settlements—most prominently the assumed capital city of Raqmu (present-day Petra, Jordan)—gave the name Nabatene () to the Arabian borderland that stretched from the Euphrates to the Red Sea.


title: Nabataeans

text: The Nabateans emerged as a distinct civilization and political entity between the 4th and 2nd centuries BCE, with their kingdom centered around a loosely controlled trading network that brought considerable wealth and influence across the ancient world.


title: Nabataeans

text: Described as fiercely independent by contemporary Greco-Roman accounts, the Nabataeans were annexed into the Roman Empire by Emperor Trajan in 106 CE. Nabataeans' individual culture, easily identified by their characteristic finely potted painted ceramics, was adopted into the larger Greco-Roman culture. They later converted to Christianity during the Later Roman Era. Jane Taylor describes them as "one of the most gifted peoples of the ancient world".


title: Nabataeans

text: The original form of the name of the Nabataeans was , which is recorded in Babylonian Akkadian as , and was the "broken" plural form of the Arabic term , meaning "distinguished man." This name underwent two principal evolutions, with the omission of the glottal stop producing the form , and the replacement of by a voiced palatal approximant producing the form .


title: Nabataeans

text: Some scholars have identified the people named as in Neo-Assyrian Akkadian records and in the Hebrew Bible based on the similarity of their names with , which is the Arabic name of the Nabataeans. The scholar Israel Ephʿal has rejected this identification because of the use of a in the Akkadian and Hebrew forms while the Arabic form uses a , and because the former forms possess a which is absent from the Arabic form, as attested by to the discovery of a Taymanitic inscription in the Jabal Ġunaym which records the name of the as . The scholar Edward Lipiński has however refuted this rejection by demonstrating that these various forms of the name were derived from an original form , from which the glottal stop was replaced by a palatal approximant, hence producing the Akkadian and Hebrew forms and , while omission of the glottal stop produced the Arabic form .


title: Nabataeans

text: The Nabataeans were first mentioned, under the name of , by the Neo-Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III, who mistakenly referred to them as an Aramaean tribe, although their presence in his list between two other North Arabian tribes, the Ḫagaranu and the Liʾtau, shows that they were an Arabic population.


title: Nabataeans

text: During the 8th to 7th centuries BCE, the Nabataeans were living in the part of the Syrian Desert immediately adjacent to the western border of Babylonia, and at the time of the Babylonian king Marduk-apla-iddina II, some of them were present in Babylonia itself, with his inscriptions recording the existence of a city of Nabatu settled by this tribe. Some of these Babylonian Nabataeans were placed by the Neo-Assyrian king Sargon II into the service of the governor of Ašipā.


title: Nabataeans

text: The Nabataeans were mentioned again by the Neo-Assyrian king Sennacherib, although his inscriptions do not contain any further information about them.


title: Nabataeans

text: During the 660s and 650s BCE, the Nabataeans were ruled by a chief bearing the Babylonian Aramaic name of Nadnu, reflecting the significant Babylonian cultural influence under which the tribe was. During this period, the Nabataeans were vassals of the Neo-Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, and their neighbours in the Babylonian border region were the Arab tribe of Masʾaya, who themselves lived in the western border regions of Bīt-Amukkani.


title: Nabataeans

text: In 652 BCE, the Babylonian king Shamash-shum-ukin rebelled against his younger brother, the Neo-Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. Shortly after, in 651 BCE, Nadnu also rebelled against Ashurbanipal and made contact with, Shamash-shum-ukin, who offered captives from Sippar to his envoys at Kutha. Although the Qedarites had supported Shamash-shum-ukin in the war which opposed Shamash-shum-ukin to Ashurbanipal as result of this rebellion, there is no information available regarding the role of Nadnu's involvement within this conflict.


title: Nabataeans

text: According to letters sent to Ashurbanipal by the Assyrian general Nabȗ-šum-lišir who served in the region of the south-west border of Babylonia at the time of Shamash-shum-ukin's rebellion, a caravan which had left the territory of the Nabataeans was attacked by one Ayakabaru son of ʿAmyaṯaʿ of the Masʾaya tribe, with only one of its members managing to escape and reaching a fortified Assyrian outpost.


title: Nabataeans

text: Following the complete suppression of the Babylonian revolt in 648 BCE, while the Assyrians were busy until 646 BCE conducting operations against the Elamite kings who had supported Shamash-shum-ukin, the southern Phoenician cities and the kingdom of Judah seized the opportunity and rebelled against Assyrian authority. By this time, most of the Nabataeans had moved into the steppe regions of the Syrian Desert, more specifically in the north-east of the Palmyrena region, where Nadnu's Nabataeans, along with the Qedarites led by Abiyaṯeʿ, Ayamu, and Uaiṯaʿ ben Birdāda, took advantage of the situation to conduct raids against the western borderlands of the Neo-Assyrian Empire ranging from the Jabal al-Bišrī to the environs of the city of Damascus, and were able to intensify their pressure on the areas of the Middle Euphrates and of Palmyrena.


title: Nabataeans

text: Once the Assyrian war in Elam was complete, in 645 BCE Ashurbanipal attacked the Qedarites and the Nabataeans during a three-months campaign with the goal of subjugating the Arabs permanently. The Assyrian armies first attacked from Ḫadattâ, passing through the desert between Laribda, Ḫuraruna and Yarki before reaching Azalla after defeating the joint forces of the Qedarites, Nabataeans, and another tribe, the Isammeʾ, in the region between Yarki and Azalla; the Assyrians then proceeded from Azalla to Quraṣiti, where they attacked Uaiṯaʿ ben Birdāda, who fled, captured his mother, sister and family, many prisoners, as well as donkeys, camels, sheep, and goats, and seized the tribe's idols, and dispatched them all through the Damascus road; finally, the Assyrians marched out from Damascus till Ḫulḫuliti, and from there carried out their final attack on the Arabs near the Mount Ḫukkurina, where they captured Abiyaṯeʿ and Ayamu. Due to the Assyrian campaign, the Qedarites rebelled against Uaiṯaʿ and handed him over to the Assyrians.


title: Nabataeans

text: After Ashurbanipal had defeated the Qedarite king Yauṯaʿ ben Ḫazael, the latter fled into the territory of the Nabataeans, who were then living beyond the area of control and influence of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and sought the sanctuary of Nadnu. Due to increased Assyrian influence in the desert as a result of his campaign, however, Nadnu refused to grant refuge to Yauṯaʿ, and he himself instead swore allegiance Ashurbanipal and pledged to pay annual tribute to the Neo-Assyrian Empire.


title: Nabataeans

text: Some time after the campaign against the Qedarites was complete, during the later 640s BCE the Assyrians conducted a campaign against the Nabataeans, who were then living around the Wādī Sirḥān or to its immediate south. During this campaign, the Assyrian army destroyed the settlements of the Nabataeans and captured Nadnu, his wife, his children, and large amounts of booty. Nadnu's son, Nuḫuru, was able to escape before willingly surrendering to Ashurbanipal, who appointed him as the new king of the Nabataeans.


title: Nabataeans

text: The Nabataeans appear to not have pressed against the Transjordanian region during the period which oversaw the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its replacement by the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and the Canaanite kingdoms of Palestine were strong enough to resist the Arabs once the region had come under Babylonian hegemony.


title: Nabataeans

text: In the 6th century BCE, the Nabataeans were living in the northwestern part of the Arabian peninsula to the south of the Wādī Sirḥān, possibly in the region of Taymāʾ and al-Jawf, where they neighboured the Canaanite state of Edom, and where, according to a 6th century BCE inscription from the Jabal Ġunaym, they had engaged in war against the people of the oasis of Taymāʾ.


title: Nabataeans

text: After the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II annexed the Canaanite kingdoms of Judah in 587 BC and of Ammon and Moab in 582 BC, and the later Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus campaigned through Edom in 553 BC, the resulting power vacuum in Transjordan allowed the Arabs of the Syrian desert, including the Qedarites and the Nabataeans, to expand into these former states' settled territories close to the desert, including across southern Transjordan and Palestine until the Judaean hills, where they remained throughout the existence of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and cohabited with the sedentary Ammonite, Moabite, and Edomite populations, with whom these Arab incomers mingled over several generations.


title: Nabataeans

text: When Cyrus II conquered the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 539 BC, the Arab populations of the Syrian desert and of North Arabia, including the Qedarites, as well as the desert routes going into Mesopotamia from these regions, became part of his Persian Achaemenid Empire. Thanks to the Achaemenid Empire's multinational structure and its policy of tolerance and the end of any independent polities within Transjordan and Palestine, these Arab groups became integrated into the Persian Empire's economic, administrative, and military systems, with this process also being driven by the development of trade in Arabia as well as the military activities of the Achaemenid kings due to which warriors from all the populations ruled by their empire, including those from the Arab peoples, required their enrollment into the Achaemenid army.


title: Nabataeans

text: Thus, in 480 BC, camel-riding Arab units participated in the Achaemenid king Xerxes I's invasion of Greece, and Arab units of the Achaemenid army also participated in the empire's overseas and coastal military activities in 410 and 386 BC.


title: Nabataeans

text: Achaemenid rule over the Transjordanian Arabs lasted until Egypt under Amyrtaeus rebelled against Persian rule and embarked on anti-Persian activities in Palestine, Phoenicia and Cyprus at the same time that the Persian Empire was itself facing a number of internal crisis which greatly weakened it. In this situation, Persian rule broke down in Transjordan, which became independent.


title: Nabataeans

text: The Nabataeans remained independent after the Macedonian conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander III of Macedon and during the time of the Hellenistic states established by the Diadochi.


title: Nabataeans

text: The first mention of the Nabataeans during the Hellenistic period dates from 312/311 BCE, when they were attacked at Sela or perhaps at Petra without success by Antigonus I's officer Athenaeus in the course of the Third War of the Diadochi; at that time Hieronymus of Cardia, a Seleucid officer, mentioned the Nabataeans in a battle report. About 50 BCE, the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus cited Hieronymus in his report, and added the following: "Just as the Seleucids had tried to subdue them, so the Romans made several attempts to get their hands on that lucrative trade." They wrote a letter to Antigonus in Syriac letters, and Aramaic continued as the language of their coins and inscriptions when the tribe grew into a kingdom and profited by the decay of the Seleucids to extend its borders northward over the more fertile country east of the Jordan river. They occupied Hauran, and in about 85 BCE their king Aretas III became lord of Damascus and Coele-Syria.


title: Nabataeans

text: The Nabataeans were allies of the first Hasmoneans in their struggles against the Seleucid monarchs. They then became rivals of the Judaean dynasty, and a chief element in the disorders that invited Pompey's intervention in Judea. According to popular historian Paul Johnson, many Nabataeans were forcefully converted to Judaism by Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus. It was this king who, after putting down a local rebellion, invaded and occupied the Nabataean towns of Moab and Gilead and imposed a tribute of an unknown amount. Obodas I knew that Alexander would attack, so was able to ambush Alexander's forces near Gaulane destroying the Judean army (90 BC).


title: Nabataeans

text: The Roman military was not very successful in their campaigns against the Nabataeans. In 62 BCE, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus accepted a bribe of 300 talents to lift the siege of Petra, partly because of the difficult terrain and the fact that he had run out of supplies. Hyrcanus II, who was a friend of Aretas, was despatched by Scaurus to the King to buy peace. In so obtaining peace, King Aretas retained all his possessions, including Damascus, and became a Roman vassal.


title: Nabataeans

text: In 32 BCE, during King Malichus II's reign, Herod the Great, with the support of Cleopatra, started a war against Nabataea. The war began with Herod plundering Nabataea with a large cavalry force, and occupying Dium. After this defeat, the Nabataean forces amassed near Canatha in Syria, but were attacked and routed. Cleopatra's general, Athenion, sent Canathans to the aid of the Nabataeans, and this force crushed Herod's army, which then fled to Ormiza. One year later, Herod's army overran Nabataea.


title: Nabataeans

text: After an earthquake in Judaea, the Nabateans rebelled and invaded Judea, but Herod at once crossed the Jordan river to Philadelphia (modern Amman) and both sides set up camp. The Nabataeans under Elthemus refused to give battle, so Herod forced the issue when he attacked their camp. A confused mass of Nabataeans gave battle but were defeated. Once they had retreated to their defences, Herod laid siege to the camp and over time some of the defenders surrendered. The remaining Nabataean forces offered 500 talents for peace, but this was rejected. Lacking water, the Nabataeans were forced out of their camp for battle, but were defeated in this last battle.


title: Nabataeans

text: An ally of the Roman Empire, the Nabataean kingdom flourished throughout the 1st century. Its power extended far into Arabia along the Red Sea to Yemen, and Petra was a cosmopolitan marketplace, though its commerce was diminished by the rise of the Eastern trade-route from Myos Hormos to Coptos on the Nile. Under the "Pax Romana", the Nabataeans lost their warlike and nomadic habits and became a sober, acquisitive, orderly people, wholly intent on trade and agriculture. The kingdom was a bulwark between Rome and the wild hordes of the desert except in the time of Trajan, who reduced Petra and converted the Nabataean client state into the Roman province of Arabia Petraea. By the 3rd century, the Nabataeans had stopped writing in Aramaic and begun writing in Greek instead, and by the 5th century they had converted to Christianity. The new Arab invaders, who soon pressed forward into their seats, found the remnants of the Nabataeans transformed into peasants. Their lands were divided between the new Qahtanite Arab tribal kingdoms of the Byzantine vassals, the Ghassanid Arabs, and the Himyarite vassals, the Kingdom of Kinda in North Arabia. The city of Petra was brought to the attention of Westerners by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in 1812.


title: Nabataeans

text: The Nabataeans are mentioned under the name of in the Hebrew Bible, where they are often grouped with . The Roman author Pliny the Elder also listed the Nabataeans under the name of along with the (Qedarites) in his .


title: Nabataeans

text: Many examples of graffiti and inscriptions—largely of names and greetings—document the area of Nabataean culture, which extended as far north as the north end of the Dead Sea, and testify to widespread literacy; but except for a few letters no Nabataean literature has survived, nor was any noted in antiquity. Onomastic analysis has suggested that Nabataean culture may have had multiple influences. Classical references to the Nabataeans begin with Diodorus Siculus; they suggest that the Nabataeans' trade routes and the origins of their goods were regarded as trade secrets, and disguised in tales that should have strained outsiders' credulity. Diodorus Siculus (book II) described them as a strong tribe of some 10,000 warriors, preeminent among the nomads of Arabia, eschewing agriculture, fixed houses, and the use of wine, but adding to pastoral pursuits a profitable trade with the seaports in frankincense, myrrh and spices from Arabia Felix (today's Yemen), as well as a trade with Egypt in bitumen from the Dead Sea. Their arid country was their best safeguard, for the bottle-shaped cisterns for rain-water which they excavated in the rocky or clay-rich soil were carefully concealed from invaders.


title: Nabataeans

text: Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq's "Kitab al-Tabikh", the earliest known Arabic cookbook, contains a recipe for fermented Nabatean water bread (). The yeast-leavened bread is made with a high quality wheat flour called "samidh" that is finely milled and free of bran and is baked in a tandoor.


title: Nabataeans

text: Historians such as Irfan Shahîd, Warwick Ball, Robert G. Hoyland, Michael C. A. Macdonald, and others believe Nabataeans spoke Arabic as their native language. John F. Healy states that "Nabataeans normally spoke a form of Arabic, while, like the Persians etc., they used Aramaic for formal purposes and especially for inscriptions." Proper names on their inscriptions suggest that they were ethnically Arabs who had come under Aramaic influence, and the Nabataeans had already some trace of Aramaic culture when they first appear in history.


title: Nabataeans

text: The extent of Nabataean trade resulted in cross-cultural influences that reached as far as the Red Sea coast of southern Arabia. The gods worshiped at Petra were notably Dushara and Al-‘Uzzá. Dushara was the supreme deity of the Nabataean Arabs, and was the official god of the Nabataean Kingdom who enjoyed special royal patronage. His official position is reflected in multiple inscriptions that render him as "The god of our lord" (The King). The name Dushara is from the Arabic "Dhu ash-Shara": which simply means "the one of Shara", a mountain range south-east of Petra also known as Mount Seir. Therefore, from a Nabataean perspective, Dhushara was probably associated with the heavens. However, one theory which connects Dushara with the forest gives a different idea of the god. The eagle was one of the symbols of Dushara. It was widely used in Hegra as a source of protection for the tombs against thievery.


title: Nabataeans

text: Nabataean inscriptions from Hegra suggest that Dushara was linked either with the sun, or with Mercury, with which Ruda, another Arabian god, was identified. "His throne" was frequently mentioned in inscriptions, certain interpretations of the text consider it as a reference for Dhushara's wife, goddess Harisha. She was probably a solar deity.


title: Nabataeans

text: However, when the Romans annexed the Nabataean Kingdom, Dushara still had an important role despite losing his former royal privilege. The greatest testimony to the status of the god after the fall of the Nabataean Kingdom was during the 1000th anniversary of the founding of Rome where Dushara was celebrated in Bostra by striking coins in his name, Actia Dusaria (linking the god with Augustus victory at Actium). He was venerated in his Arabian name with a Greek fashion in the reign of an Arabian emperor, Philip.


title: Nabataeans

text: Sacrifices of animals were common and Porphyry’s De Abstenentia reports that, in Dumat Al-Jandal, a boy was sacrificed annually and was buried underneath an altar. Some scholars have extrapolated this practice to the rest of the Nabataeans.


title: Nabataeans

text: The Nabataeans used to represent their gods as featureless pillars or blocks. Their most common monuments to the gods, commonly known as "god blocks", involved cutting away the whole top of a hill or cliff face so as to leave only a block behind. However, over time the Nabataeans were influenced by Greece and Rome and their Gods became anthropomorphic and were represented with human features.


title: Nabataeans

text: The Nabataeans spoke an Arabic dialect but, for their inscriptions, used a form of Aramaic that was heavily influenced by Arabic forms and words. When communicating with other Middle Eastern peoples, they, like their neighbors, used Aramaic, the region's "lingua franca". Therefore, Aramaic was used for commercial and official purposes across the Nabataean political sphere. The Nabataean alphabet itself also developed out of the Aramaic alphabet, but it used a distinctive cursive script from which the Arabic alphabet emerged. There are different opinions concerning the development of the Arabic script. J. Starcky considers the Lakhmids' Syriac form script as a probable candidate. However, John F. Healey states that: "The Nabataean origin of the Arabic script is now almost universally accepted".


title: Nabataeans

text: In surviving Nabataean documents, Aramaic legal terms are followed by their equivalents in Arabic. That could suggest that the Nabataeans used Arabic in their legal proceedings but recorded them in Aramaic.


title: Nabataeans

text: Although not as dry as at present, the area occupied by the Nabataeans was still a desert and required special techniques for agriculture. One was to contour an area of land into a shallow funnel and to plant a single fruit tree in the middle. Before the 'rainy season', which could easily consist of only one or two rain events, the area around the tree was broken up. When the rain came, all the water that collected in the funnel would flow down toward the fruit tree and sink into the ground. The ground, which was largely loess, would seal up when it got wet and retain the water.


title: Nabataeans

text: In the mid-1950s, a research team headed by Michael Evenari set up a research station near Avdat (Evenari, Shenan and Tadmor 1971). He focused on the relevance of runoff rainwater management in explaining the mechanism of the ancient agricultural features, such as terraced wadis, channels for collecting runoff rainwater, and the enigmatic phenomenon of "Tuleilat el-Anab". Evenari showed that the runoff rainwater collection systems concentrate water from an area that is five times larger than the area in which the water actually drains.


title: Nabataeans

text: Another study was conducted by Y. Kedar in 1957, which also focused on the mechanism of the agriculture systems, but he studied soil management, and claimed that the ancient agriculture systems were intended to increase the accumulation of loess in wadis and create an infrastructure for agricultural activity. This theory has also been explored by E. Mazor, of the Weizmann Institute of Science.


title: Steven Furtick

text: Larry Stevens "Steven" Furtick Jr. (born February 19, 1980) is an American Baptist evangelical Christian pastor, author, and songwriter of Elevation Worship. He is the founder and senior pastor of Elevation Church, based in Charlotte North Carolina .


title: Steven Furtick

text: Furtick was born and raised in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, and attended Berkeley High School. At the age of 16, after reading the book "Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire" by Jim Cymbala, he felt called to pastor a church in a major city. Furtick received a Bachelor of Arts in communication from North Greenville University and a Master of Divinity from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.


title: Steven Furtick

text: In 2004, Furtick served as worship leader at Christ Covenant Church in Shelby, North Carolina. In 2006, he moved to Charlotte, North Carolina and founded Elevation Church with seven families and his own. The church had their first service on February 5, 2006.


title: Steven Furtick

text: In 2007, he helped found the music group Elevation Worship as a songwriter and since has been nominated for GMA Dove and Grammy Awards, winning a Grammy for their album, "Old Church Basement".


title: Steven Furtick

text: In 2007, he made headlines when his church gave $40,000 to members in envelopes with $5, $20, and even $1,000, telling them to spend it kindly on others.


title: Steven Furtick

text: Furtick speaks at events all over the world including the 2011 Global Leadership Summit hosted by Bill Hybels, the C3 Conference 2012 hosted by Ed Young Jr., the Hillsong Conference 2012 hosted by Brian Houston, and the Presence Conference in 2012 and 2013 hosted by Phil Pringle. Furtick also participated in The Elephant Room 1 and The Elephant Room 2 hosted by James MacDonald. Furtick was named to Oprah's "SuperSoul100" list of visionaries and influential leaders in 2016.


title: Steven Furtick

text: In 2012, in response to a need of mentorship for 1,000 students in area schools, Furtick launched an outreach program at Elevation Church called the M1 Initiative. Furtick said, "We have always said we want to be a blessing to our city and support our leaders with a volunteer force they can count on." More than 1,600 members responded and committed to mentoring a child for the 2012–2013 school year.


title: Steven Furtick

text: Furtick has committed to donating 12 percent of Elevation Church's giving to support outreach efforts nationally and globally.


title: Steven Furtick

text: Furtick is a New York Times best selling author. He has also participated in various philanthropic campaigns, donating clothes and furniture to families in need.


title: Steven Furtick

text: Pastor Steven Furtick has known associations with pastors like T.D. Jakes and Joel Osteen, both commonly referenced figures in relation to Prosperity theology.


title: Steven Furtick

text: In 2013, Furtick refused to answer questions about his salary, his tax-free housing allowance, and how much he makes from books and speaking fees, and how the church is governed. Elevation has stated that Furtick is generous to the church with the money he receives from writing books—that he arranges for the church to purchase his books directly from the publisher, allowing Elevation to receive the author's discount and keep the money from sales. They have also reported that the publisher pays the church to produce marketing materials to promote Furtick's books. Elevation has confirmed that Furtick's salary is set by a Board of Overseers composed of other megachurch pastors, who vote on his salary based on a compensation study conducted by an outside firm, and that Furtick does not vote on his own salary.


title: Steven Furtick

text: On October 2, 2020, Trinity Broadcasting Network began airing programming from Furtick, replacing the Kenneth Copeland ministries program "Believer's Voice of Victory".


title: Nordstrom

text: Nordstrom, Inc. () is an American luxury department store chain headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and founded by John W. Nordstrom and Carl F. Wallin in 1901. The original Wallin & Nordstrom store operated exclusively as a shoe store, and a second Nordstrom's shoe store opened in 1923. The growing Nordstrom Best chain began selling clothing in 1963, and became the Nordstrom full-line retailer that presently exists by 1971. The company founded its off-price Nordstrom Rack division in 1973, and grew both full-line and off-price divisions throughout the United States in the following years before expanding into Canada in 2014. In the American market, it competes with department stores including Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue.


title: Nordstrom

text: John W. Nordstrom was born on February 15, 1871, in the town of Luleå in Northern Sweden. In 1887, Nordstrom immigrated to the United States at the age of 16. His name at birth was Johan Nordström, which he later anglicized to John Nordstrom. After landing in New York, he began working in Michigan and was able to save enough money to purchase a potato farm in Arlington, Washington. In 1897, he joined the Klondike Gold Rush in Canada's Yukon Territory. After two years of prospecting, he finally struck gold, but sold his disputed claim for $13,000. Returning to Seattle with his newfound wealth, he married Hilda Carlson in 1900 and searched for a business venture.


title: Nordstrom

text: Nordstrom eventually settled on a shoe store that opened in 1901, called Wallin & Nordstrom. Carl F. Wallin, the co-founder of the store, was the owner of the adjacent shoe repair shop. John and Hilda had five children, three of whom would follow him into the family business, Everett W. (1903), Elmer J. (1904) and Lloyd N. Nordstrom.


title: Nordstrom

text: In 1928, John W. Nordstrom retired and sold his shares to two of his sons, Everett and Elmer. In 1929, Wallin also retired and sold his shares to them. The 1930 grand opening of the remodeled Second Avenue store marked the change of name to Nordstrom's. Lloyd Nordstrom subsequently joined the company in 1933, and the three brothers ran the business together for almost forty years.


title: Nordstrom

text: By 1958, Nordstrom had expanded to eight stores in two states but still sold only shoes. Apparel came with its purchase of Best's Apparel of Seattle in 1963, and the company's name was changed to Nordstrom Best.


title: Nordstrom

text: In 1971, the company was taken public on NASDAQ. It was moved to the New York Stock Exchange in 1999 under the ticker symbol JWN after John W. Nordstrom, its founder.


title: Nordstrom

text: Their business continued beyond stores in 1974. On December 5, the National Football League announced the signing of a franchise agreement that would put a team in Seattle, Washington. Representing the family as majority partner of the consortium was Lloyd W. Nordstrom. However, he would never see a game as owner, as he died of a heart attack on January 20, 1976, eight months before the newly-christened Seattle Seahawks took the field. While the Nordstrom group had majority control, entrepreneur Herman Sarkowsky was the first chief operating officer.


title: Nordstrom

text: By 1975, Nordstrom expanded into Alaska (the only time by acquisition) by purchasing Northern Commercial Company and opened its first Nordstrom Rack clearance store in Seattle. A strong northwest regional retailer with sales already approaching $250 million making it the third-largest specialty retailer in the United States, the company opened its first Southern California store at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa in 1978. By the early 1990s, it had opened 26 stores plus Racks in California. Subsequent expansion relied on creating a strongly decentralized regional structure, beginning with the Northeast in the Tysons Corner Center in Virginia (1988), the Midwest in the Oakbrook Center in Illinois (1991), the Southeast in Atlanta (1998), and the Southwest in Dallas (1996). In a new region, the initial store was used as a base for training and recruitment for subsequent expansion, and was usually backed by its own distribution center. From 1978 to 1995, Nordstrom opened a total of 46 full-line department stores.


title: Nordstrom

text: In 1976, Nordstrom opened a series of stores called Place Two to sell a more limited selection of apparel in smaller markets. By 1983, there were ten Place Two stores, but the cost of upgrading the smaller stores, especially from a systems perspective, outweighed the benefit, and the division was discontinued. The last two remaining Place Two stores closed on April 1, 1995. The company also expanded into direct sales in 1993, beginning with a catalog division led by John N.'s son Dan that was followed by an e-commerce business. Nordstrom.com's fulfillment and contact centers are located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Seattle, Washington. Currently, it has distribution centers in Ontario, California; Newark, California; Portland, Oregon; Dubuque, Iowa; Upper Marlboro, Maryland; and Gainesville, Florida.


title: Nordstrom

text: Nordstrom FSB, a wholly owned subsidiary of Nordstrom, Inc., is a federally chartered savings bank doing business as Nordstrom Bank. It was formed in 1991 in Scottsdale, Arizona, with its customer contact center in Centennial, Colorado. Nordstrom FSB was formerly known as Nordstrom National Credit Bank and changed its name to Nordstrom FSB in March 2000. The bank offers various banking and credit products, such as Nordstrom Signature VISA, Nordstrom retail credit and debit cards, interest-bearing checking accounts, check cards, and certificates of deposits. It offers Nordstrom customers cards under Nordstrom Rewards – its customer loyalty program – where customers earn points when making purchases with the card at Nordstrom and other retailers.


title: Nordstrom

text: In 1995, Nordstrom opened their first store location in New York State. It is located at The Westchester, an upscale shopping mall in White Plains, New York, a suburb of New York City. Nordstrom has since opened stores in Garden City, New York, and Manhattan (in 2019).


title: Nordstrom

text: Beginning in 1995, the fourth generation of brothers and cousins had been co-presidents for a time. John Whitacre was appointed as the first non-Nordstrom CEO in 1997. In 1998, Nordstrom replaced its downtown Seattle store with a new flagship location in the former Frederick & Nelson building across the street. A two-year renovation of this location was completed in 2016. At , the downtown Seattle location is the chain's largest store. By contrast, the smallest Nordstrom store, as of September 2008, opened in 1980 in Salem, Oregon, with a total area of just under . This location has since closed.


title: Nordstrom

text: In 2000 the Nordstrom family reasserted its control, with the sons of Bruce A. (Blake, Erik and Peter) assuming senior roles in the company which they continue to hold. Blake Nordstrom served as sole President of the company from 2000 to 2014 with Erik and Peter joining him as co-Presidents in 2015.


title: Nordstrom

text: Nordstrom sold its stand-alone boutique chain Façonnable in 2007, though it still offers that label in its lineup.


title: Nordstrom

text: In February 2011, Nordstrom announced the acquisition of HauteLook, an LA-based online retailer that offers flash sales on designer goods. The deal included Nordstrom paying $180 million in stock and a three-year "earn-out" payment based on HauteLook's financial performance. On May 26, 2011, Nordstrom announced that they would be closing the downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, Circle Center Mall location due to declining business at the site. The remaining location on the north side of the city at the Fashion Mall at Keystone as well as the future Nordstrom Rack store in the Rivers Edge Shopping Center, also on the north side, remained as the only two locations in the state. Erik Nordstrom, president of stores at Nordstrom stated, "We've enjoyed serving our customers in downtown Indianapolis, but unfortunately our business has declined over the long term for some time and despite our efforts to turn things around we don't see the outlook significantly changing."


title: Nordstrom

text: In August 2011, Nordstrom opened the store Treasure & Bond in SoHo, New York. Intended to test the waters of the tumultuous high-end department store scene in New York, all profits of Treasure & Bond are donated to charity. The customer base of the smaller store is thought to be the younger sisters of the typical Nordstrom customer.


title: Nordstrom

text: Nordstrom announced plans to open a Nordstrom Rack in Milwaukee in 2014. In late November 2012, Nordstrom announced that they would also be opening a full-line Nordstrom Department Store in 2015 in Milwaukee at Mayfair Mall, a half-mile away from the Nordstrom Rack location. Milwaukee was the largest metropolitan area in the country that did not have a Nordstrom until 2015. Such unmet demand was highlighted in Nordstrom's decision to open in the Milwaukee area.


title: Nordstrom

text: On January 4, 2013, Nordstrom announced plans for a new location in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan region. The store, to be located at the Ridgedale Center, would be the second in the area. Following the success of its Mall of America opening in 1991, Nordstrom sought to expand in the Twin Cities market. Plans for a Ridgedale Center store were first released in 2007, only to be canceled in 2009. The location eventually opened in September 2015.


title: Nordstrom

text: Nordstrom opened a 138,000-square-foot, two-level, full-line store March 2015 in The Mall of San Juan in San Juan, Puerto Rico. After Hurricane Maria in 2017, the store suffered major water damage and it closed temporarily after the hurricane. Nordstrom reopened the store on November 9, 2018. On May 7, 2020, Nordstrom announced that it would not reopen due to COVID-19 pandemic, leaving this store closed permanently.


title: Nordstrom

text: In May 2015, Pete and Erik Nordstrom joined their brother Blake Nordstrom as co-presidents of Nordstrom. This arrangement lasted until Blake Nordstrom's death in January 2019. Before this appointment, Pete Nordstrom was executive vice president and president of merchandising while Erik Nordstrom was executive vice president and president of Nordstrom.com.


title: Nordstrom

text: Nordstrom opened its first Rack location in Philadelphia in the fall of 2014. In the fall of 2015, Nordstrom opened their first Nordstrom Rack store in Delaware. The company is opening its first full-line store in New York City on April 12, 2018, a three-floor store at 57th Street and Broadway, in the Columbus Circle neighborhood.


title: Nordstrom

text: In 2016, Nordstrom entered into a partnership with Tesla Motors under which the automaker opened retail galleries inside the Nordstrom locations in The Grove, Los Angeles, in SouthPark Mall in Charlotte, North Carolina and in Somerset Collection in Troy, Michigan.


title: Nordstrom

text: In 2016, Nordstrom began selling products from J. Crew, Olivia Palermo + Chelsea28, Adore Me, and Eloquii. In 2017, Nordstrom announced they would be expanding their natural beauty-focused stations.


title: Nordstrom

text: On February 2, 2017, Bloomberg News reported that Nordstrom would cease to carry Ivanka Trump's branded fashion line, citing weak sales. The retailer cuts 10 percent of its most poorly performing brands each year. Nordstrom's action came after a boycott campaign against retailers carrying products having Trump family labels. President Donald Trump responded with a tweet directed at Nordstrom, condemning the brand for its treatment of his daughter. The company's stock dropped by 0.65% in the aftermath of the tweet before ending the day with a gain of more than 4%. "Fortune" declared this quick recovery to have broken Trump's market-moving "tweet curse".


title: Nordstrom

text: In October 2017, Nordstrom launched its first "Nordstrom Local" in West Hollywood, which is set to focus on personal shopping and styling, rather than carrying merchandise. In June 2017, Nordstrom Inc.'s founding family, which owned 31.2 percent of the company, said it was looking to take Nordstrom private. In October, the family suspended its efforts, because of trouble completing a financing package. Lenders were asking for 13 percent interest, about twice the typical rate for retailers.


title: Nordstrom

text: On January 2, 2019 Blake Nordstrom, co-president of Nordstrom, died suddenly at the age of 58. He was a lifetime employee of his family's company, rising through the ranks until he became a vice-president and then co-president.


title: Nordstrom

text: In fiscal year 2019, digital sales reached 33% of total sales, marking a growing transition to online retail.


title: Nordstrom

text: On March 16, the company announced that effective the following day, all locations would temporarily close during the COVID-19 pandemic. On May 5, Nordstrom began reopening stores and announced that sixteen locations would permanently close by August.


title: Nordstrom

text: In late September, Nordstrom announced that by the end of 2021, their stores and websites would no longer sell products made from fur or exotic skins.


title: Nordstrom

text: In October 2021, Nordstrom announced a partnership with 11 Honoré, a luxury e-retailer focused on plus-sized designer fashion, where the company's clothing will be accessible in Nordstrom stores as well as on the retailer's website.


title: Nordstrom

text: Nordstrom Canada Retail, Inc. () is the Canadian division of Nordstrom, and was announced on September 13, 2012. In this market, it competes with Canadian department stores including Holt Renfrew, Hudson's Bay, and Simons.


title: Nordstrom

text: Four full-line Nordstrom stores were announced for the first phase of expansion, with nine full-line stores total expected in the long term. Most of these stores are located in vacated Sears Canada storefronts in Cadillac Fairview-managed shopping centers, including Chinook Centre in Calgary; Rideau Centre in Ottawa; Toronto Eaton Centre in Toronto; and Pacific Centre in Vancouver. The stores at the CF-managed Sherway Gardens and the Oxford-managed Yorkdale Shopping Centre in Toronto were new construction. Of the first four stores announced, the Calgary store was the first to open on September 19, 2014. It was followed by the Ottawa store on March 6, 2015; the Vancouver store on September 18, 2015; and the Sherway Gardens store on September 15, 2017. The Yorkdale store was confirmed on April 8, 2013, and opened on October 21, 2016. The Toronto Eaton Centre was the last of the six stores to be announced on January 15, 2014, however, it was the fourth to open on September 18, 2016.


title: Nordstrom

text: The first Nordstrom Rack opened at Vaughan Mills on March 21, 2018; and then a second location in Deerfoot Meadows in Calgary and a flagship location at One Bloor in Toronto opened on May 3, 2018. Nordstrom Rack opened three other additional stores in Fall 2018; one at Heartland Town Centre in Mississauga, one at Ottawa Trainyards, and finally one at South Edmonton Commons.


title: Nordstrom

text: Nordstrom holds six annual sales. Two of these are Half-Yearly sales, which take place semi-annually in May and late December, as well as three additional seasonal sales. Nordstrom's largest sale event is the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale, which is held each July. Limited amounts of merchandise set to be released for the following fall are sent to Nordstrom stores early, where they are sold at discount. For ten days prior to Anniversary Sale, Nordstrom gives early access to members who make appointments.


title: Nordstrom

text: Nordstrom Local service hubs are oriented for amenities including online order pickup, personal styling, and tailoring. They do not have their own inventory, and instead source merchandise from full-line stores as needed. , there are seven Nordstrom Local locations between New York City and Los Angeles, which average .


title: Nordstrom

text: Nordstrom Rack originated as a bargain basement in the downtown Seattle flagship store in 1973. It has since expanded into an off-price department store chain in its own right. , there are 249 Nordstrom Rack locations.


title: Nordstrom

text: Last Chance clearance stores sell merchandise that cannot be resold at Nordstrom or Nordstrom Rack, including Nordstrom Rack returns that exceed the 45-day return policy. , there are two Last Chance locations in the Chicago and Phoenix suburbs.


title: Nordstrom

text: Nordstrom operates six flagship stores in four U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. They are noted for being considerably smaller than competitors' flagship stores.


title: Nordstrom

text: In 2009, Nordstrom was listed at No. 72 in "Fortune" magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work For 2009. Nordstrom is a Hall of Fame member of "Fortune" magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For". Nordstrom was No. 36 on the same list in 2008, No. 24 in 2007, No. 46 in 2006 and No. 88 in 2005. For the 20th year in a row, they made the list coming in at No. 94 in 2017.


title: Nordstrom

text: In 2018, the company was ranked 183rd on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by revenue.


title: Nordstrom

text: In December 2013, the fashion trade magazine, "Women's Wear Daily" reported Nordstrom as the top fashion retailer.


title: SoFi

text: SoFi Technologies, Inc. (commonly known as SoFi) is an American online personal finance company and online bank. Based in San Francisco, SoFi provides financial products including student and auto loan refinancing, mortgages, personal loans, credit card, investing, and banking through both mobile app and desktop interfaces.


title: SoFi

text: SoFi, short for Social Finance Inc., was founded in the summer of 2011 by Mike Cagney, Dan Macklin, James Finnigan, and Ian Brady, four students who met at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The founders hoped SoFi could provide more affordable options for those taking on debt to fund their education. The company's inaugural loan program was a pilot at Stanford; for this pilot program, 40 alumni lent about $2 million to approximately 100 students, for an average of $20,000 per student.


title: SoFi

text: In September 2012, SoFi raised $77.2 million, led by Baseline Ventures, with participation from DCM and Renren. Additional investors included Ron Suber.


title: SoFi

text: On October 2, 2013, SoFi announced that it had raised $500 million in debt and equity to fund and refinance student loans. This total funding amount came from $90 million in equity, $151 million in debt, and $200 million in bank participations, with the remaining capital from alumni and community investors. The $151 million in debt includes a $60 million line of credit from Morgan Stanley, and a $41 million line of credit from Bancorp.


title: SoFi

text: As of September 2013, SoFi had funded $200 million in loans to 2500 borrowers at the company's 100 eligible schools.


title: SoFi

text: In November 2013, SoFi announced a deal with Barclays and Morgan Stanley to create a bond backed by peer-to-peer student loans, which would create the first securitization of these loans to receive a credit rating.


title: SoFi

text: In April 2014, SoFi raised $80 million in a Series C round led by Discovery Capital Management with participation from Peter Thiel, Wicklow Capital, and existing investors. Money was raised to expand the footprint of the company's student loan refinancing business and to extend into new products like mortgages and personal loans.


title: SoFi

text: In February 2015, the company announced a $200 million funding round led by Third Point Management. That same month, the company officially began offering personal loans. By March 2015, the company was offering mortgages in more than 20 states, up from its initial launch that included under ten states in October 2014. By April 2015, the company had funded more than $2 billion in loans, including student loan refinancing, mortgages, personal loans, and MBA loans. To celebrate its $2 billion milestone, SoFi announced a contest, #2BillionTogether, to pay off one of its members student loans. In September 2015, former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt was added as an advisor. The firm also raised a $1 billion round of investment from SoftBank and said it had funded $4 billion in loans.


title: SoFi

text: In May 2016, SoFi became the first startup online lender to receive a triple-A rating from Moody's. In September 2016, SoFi launched SoFi at Work, an employee benefit program to reduce student debt and build financial wellness, and announced it has more than 600 corporate partners. As of October 2016, SoFi has funded more than $12 billion in total loan volume and has 175,000 members. In February 2017, it was announced that Social Finance Inc. raised an additional $500 million from an investor group led by Silver Lake, and also including SoftBank, to help support global expansion.


title: SoFi

text: On September 11, 2017, CEO Mike Cagney announced he would resign by the end of year due to allegations of sexual harassment and skirting risk and compliance controls. Announced January 23, 2018, Anthony Noto resigned from his position as COO of Twitter, to become the CEO of SoFi. In April 2018, SoFi announced that Michelle Gill, who previously worked at TPG and Goldman Sachs, was joining the company as Chief Financial Officer.


title: SoFi

text: In October 2018, SoFi settled FTC charges, agreeing to stop making false claims about savings from student loan refinancing. The FTC alleged that SoFi had been making such false claims since April 2016. In February 2019, the FTC announced its approval of the final consent order under which SoFi is prohibited from misrepresenting to consumers how much money consumers will save or have saved using its products and from making any claims about any such savings unless the claims are backed up with reliable evidence. The order expires on February 22, 2039, or 20 years from the Commission's most recent date of filing a complaint in federal court reporting any misconduct that occurs later.


title: SoFi

text: In May 2019, SoFi closed $500 million in a single funding round led by Qatar Investment Authority. In September 2019, SoFi inked a 20-year deal with the Los Angeles Rams and the Los Angeles Chargers of the National Football League (NFL) for the naming rights to SoFi Stadium, in Inglewood, California. The deal, which is worth $30 million annually, is a record for any naming rights for a sports venue.


title: SoFi

text: In April 2020, SoFi acquired Salt Lake City payments firm Galileo for $1.2 billion in stock and cash, and Hong Kong-based investment app 8 Securities.


title: SoFi

text: SoFi merged with a SPAC in order to go public at a $9 billion dollar valuation at the end of the first quarter of 2021. After going public, the overall valuation of SoFi increased by over 12%.


title: SoFi

text: In January 2022, SoFi received approval from the OCC for a national bank charter. In February 2022, SoFi purchased Golden Pacific Bancorp, owner of Sacramento, California based Golden Pacific Bank, for $22.3 million. This allows SoFi to hold loans for investment as opposed to selling them to outside investors. The previous bank charter application was abandoned with this purchase.


title: SoFi

text: SoFi originally utilized an alumni-funded lending model that connected students and recent graduates with alumni and institutional investors via school-specific student loan funds. Investors received a financial return and borrowers received rates lower than the federal government offered. The company sought to minimize defaults by focusing on low-risk students and graduates.


title: SoFi

text: As SoFi's product offerings expanded to include mortgages, mortgage refinancing, and personal loans, the company moved away from an alumni-funded model to a non-traditional underwriting approach focused on lending to financially responsible individuals.


title: SoFi

text: They also offer cash management (checking) accounts and an investment platform that includes brokerage and robo-advisor services.


title: SoFi

text: Personal loans, student loans, home loans, and loan refinancing are all part of SoFi's lending services. With over $6 billion dollars in loans issued, SoFi has become one of the largest marketplace lenders. They continue to maintain a policy of no fees for their loans, aside from the interest.


title: SoFi

text: In 2018, SoFi introduced commission and fee-free trades of stocks and exchange-traded funds under the name SoFi Invest (formerly SoFi Wealth). This service is now called SoFi Active investing.


title: SoFi

text: SoFi Wealth, LLC had $523 million under management as of December 2021. Services offered also include traditional IRA, Roth IRA, and SEP IRA retirement accounts.


title: SoFi

text: In February 2019, SoFi launched a partnership with Coinbase to offer cryptocurrency trading. SoFi offers trading of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and more than 17 other crypto assets to users in every U.S state apart from Hawaii, New Jersey, and West Virginia. Cryptocurrency transactions are one of SoFi's only products that have fees.


title: SoFi

text: SoFi offers an online cash management account that acts as a hybrid checking/savings account. They obtain FDIC insurance through their partner banks: MetaBank, Hills Bank and Trust Company, EagleBank, East West Bank, Tristate Bank Capital Bank, and Wells Fargo.


title: SoFi

text: In July 2020, SoFi launched a partnership with Samsung Pay to launch Samsung Money by SoFi, a cash management checking/savings accounts, with a digital and physical debit card.


title: SoFi

text: In late 2020, SoFi launched its first-ever credit card, with the goal of incentivizing healthy financial habits.


title: SoFi

text: In 2022, SoFi launched SoFi Money under SoFi Bank, a checking and savings account. The previous cash management account was deprecated to pay zero percent interest, which caused controversy.


title: SoFi

text: SoFi Relay, a credit score monitoring and budgeting tool, is available to anyone who registers a free SoFi account. The service allows users to track their money in bank, credit card, investment, and loan balances and transactions as well as set financial goals. No-cost credit score tracking with weekly updates is provided through TransUnion.


title: SoFi

text: SoFi has partnered with several third party insurance companies, such as Lemonade, Inc., in order to offer life insurance, auto insurance, homeowners insurance, and renters insurance.


title: Antares

text: Antares is the brightest star in the constellation of Scorpius. It has the Bayer designation α Scorpii, which is Latinised to Alpha Scorpii. Often referred to as "the heart of the scorpion", Antares is flanked by σ Scorpii and τ Scorpii near the center of the constellation. Distinctly reddish when viewed with the naked eye, Antares is a slow irregular variable star that ranges in brightness from an apparent visual magnitude of +0.6 down to +1.6. It is on average the fifteenth-brightest star in the night sky.


title: Antares

text: Classified as spectral type M1.5Iab-Ib, Antares is a red supergiant, a large evolved massive star and one of the largest stars visible to the naked eye. Its exact size remains uncertain, but if placed at the center of the Solar System, it would reach to somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Its mass is calculated to be around 12 times that of the Sun.


title: Antares

text: Antares is the brightest and most evolved stellar member of the nearest OB association, the Scorpius–Centaurus association, located at the rim of the Upper Scorpius part illuminating the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex in its foreground. Antares is a member of the Upper Scorpius subgroup of the association, which contains thousands of stars with a mean age of 11 million years, about from Earth.


title: Antares

text: Antares appears as a single star when viewed with the naked eye, but it is actually a binary star, with its two components called α Scorpii A and α Scorpii B. The brighter of the pair is the red supergiant, while the fainter is a hot main sequence star of magnitude 5.5.


title: Antares

text: "α Scorpii" (Latinised to "Alpha Scorpii") is the star's Bayer designation. Antares has the Flamsteed designation 21 Scorpii, as well as catalogue designations such as HR 6134 in the Bright Star Catalogue and HD 148478 in the Henry Draper Catalogue. As a prominent infrared source, it appears in the Two Micron All-Sky Survey catalogue as 2MASS J16292443-2625549 and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) Sky Survey Atlas catalogue as IRAS 16262–2619. It is also catalogued as a double star WDS J16294-2626 and CCDM J16294-2626. Antares is a variable star and is listed in the General Catalogue of Variable Stars, but as a Bayer-designated star it does not have a separate variable star designation.


title: Antares

text: Its traditional name "Antares" derives from the Ancient Greek , meaning "rival to-Ares" ("opponent to-Mars"), due to the similarity of its reddish hue to the appearance of the planet Mars. The comparison of Antares with Mars may have originated with early Mesopotamian astronomers which is considered an outdated speculation, because the name of this star in Mesopotamian astronomy has always been "heart of Scorpion" and it was associated with Goddess Lisin. Some scholars have speculated that the star may have been named after Antar, or Antarah ibn Shaddad, the Arab warrior-hero celebrated in the pre-Islamic poems Mu'allaqat. However, the name "Antares" is already proven in the Greek culture, e.g. in Ptolemy's Almagest and Tetrabiblos. In 2016, the International Astronomical Union organised a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) to catalog and standardise proper names for stars. The WGSN's first bulletin of July 2016 included a table of the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN, which included "Antares" for the star α Scorpii A. It is now so entered in the IAU Catalog of Star Names.


title: Antares

text: Antares is visible all night around May 31 of each year, when the star is at opposition to the Sun. Antares then rises at dusk and sets at dawn as seen at the equator.


title: Antares

text: For two to three weeks on either side of November 30, Antares is not visible in the night sky from mid-northern latitudes, because it is near conjunction with the Sun. In higher northern latitudes, Antares is only visible low in the south in summertime. Higher than 64° northern latitude, the star does not rise at all.


title: Antares

text: Antares is easier to see from the southern hemisphere due to its southerly declination. In the whole of Antarctica, the star is circumpolar as the whole continent is above 64° S latitude.


title: Antares

text: Radial velocity variations were observed in the spectrum of Antares in the early 20th century and attempts were made to derive spectroscopic orbits. It became apparent that the small variations could not be due to orbital motion, and were actually caused by pulsation of the star's atmosphere. Even in 1928, it was calculated that the size of the star must vary by about 20%.


title: Antares

text: Antares was first reported to have a companion star by Johann Tobias Bürg during an occultation on April 13, 1819, although this was not widely accepted and dismissed as a possible atmospheric effect. It was then observed by Scottish astronomer James William Grant FRSE while in India on 23 July 1844. It was rediscovered by Ormsby M. Mitchel in 1846, and measured by William Rutter Dawes in April 1847.


title: Antares

text: In 1952, Antares was reported to vary in brightness. A photographic magnitude range from 3.00 to 3.16 was described. The brightness has been monitored by the American Association of Variable Star Observers since 1945, and it has been classified as an "LC" slow irregular variable star, whose apparent magnitude slowly varies between extremes of +0.6 and +1.6, although usually near magnitude +1.0. There is no obvious periodicity, but statistical analyses have suggested periods of 1,733 days or days. No separate long secondary period has been detected, although it has been suggested that primary periods longer than a thousand days are analogous to long secondary periods.


title: Antares

text: Research published in 2018 demonstrated that Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal people from South Australia observed the variability of Antares and incorporated it into their oral traditions as Waiyungari (meaning 'red man').


title: Antares

text: Antares is 4.57 degrees south of the ecliptic, one of four first magnitude stars within 6° of the ecliptic (the others are Spica, Regulus and Aldebaran), so it can be occulted by the Moon. The occultation of 31 July 2009 was visible in much of southern Asia and the Middle East. Every year around December 2 the Sun passes 5° north of Antares. Lunar occultations of Antares are fairly common, depending on the 18.6-year cycle of the lunar nodes. The last cycle ended in 2010 and the next begins in 2023. Shown at right is a video of a reappearance event, clearly showing events for both components.