title: All Star (song)

text: "All Star" was the last song recorded for "Astro Lounge", Smash Mouth's second album. Along with the rest of the album, the song was produced, mixed, and engineered at H.O.S. Recording in Redwood City, California. Although the band's previous album "Fush Yu Mang" had sold over two million copies from the strength of its lead single "Walkin' on the Sun", none of the album's other tracks charted well, leading to some labeling the band a one-hit wonder. Eric Valentine, Smash Mouth's producer, said the album had the "dubious distinction" of being very successful but also frequently returned by buyers, as the rest of it sounded very little like the single. For the creation of "Astro Lounge", the band decided to shift their musical style away from the ska punk sound that characterized "Fush Yu Mang". Greg Camp, Smash Mouth's guitarist, was tasked with writing all of the songs for "Astro Lounge" due to his pop sensibilities.


title: All Star (song)

text: After seemingly completing the album, Smash Mouth presented it to their record label Interscope, but the label declined a release because they felt there was no viable first or second single. Robert Hayes, Smash Mouth's manager, offered Camp advice in writing additional songs by pointing him to a copy of "Billboard" magazine. Hayes showed Camp the top 50 songs on the chart, which featured artists such as Sugar Ray and Third Eye Blind, and told him he wanted "a little piece of each one of these songs". Over the next two days, Camp wrote "All Star" and "Then the Morning Comes", which would become the first two singles from "Astro Lounge".


title: All Star (song)

text: For the writing of "All Star", Camp considered what he had read in the fan mail the band frequently received. Many of the fans that had written to Smash Mouth considered themselves outcasts and identified strongly with the band, and Camp "set out to write an anthem" for them. He also incorporated more melancholy lyrics as well, which contrasted with the upbeat instrumentation. Smash Mouth did not have much time to record the song and brought in Michael Urbano, a session drummer, for recording instead of their regular drummer. According to Valentine, additional drum loops from older songs were used on top of the main drum track. Bassist Paul De Lisle performed the whistling on the song.


title: All Star (song)

text: Manager Robert Hayes quickly licensed the song out for use in various media, resulting in its appearance in the film "Mystery Men" just a few months later.


title: All Star (song)

text: "All Star" is set in the key of F♯ major, with a tempo of 104 beats per minute. Writers have described it musically as alternative rock and power pop. During a 2017 interview, Camp stated he was interested in exploring several layers of meaning with the stripped-down song; the social battle cry, the sports anthem, the fanbase affirmation, the poetic lyricism, the sweeping melody, the inclusion, the artistic music videos, and more. Camp described the song as "a daily affirmation that life is, in general, good", something he called a "tradition" for Smash Mouth; according to him, the band frequently read fan mail they received from kids, parents, and teachers thanking them for making "fun and lighthearted" music. In addition to this, Camp has said that the second verse addresses climate change and the hole in the Ozone layer.


title: All Star (song)

text: "All Star" was met with generally favorable reviews from music critics, and several critics noted it as an example of Smash Mouth's musical progression from "Fush Yu Mang". Todd Norden of the "Calgary Herald" praised the track as being "a lot better" than the songs on "Fush Yu Mang", and the staff of the "Associated Press" praised it as an example of the "loose and light fare" the band had embraced on "Astro Lounge". "The Morning Call" writer John Terlesky favorably mentioned the song as an example of their "new and improved" sound.


title: All Star (song)

text: The song was also praised for its familiar tone. Stephen Thompson of "The A.V. Club" lauded it as being "unstoppably infectious", and "Rolling Stone" writer David Wild felt that the song had potential to be a hit. Doug Hamilton of "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution" called it the "peak" of the album and "the perfect summer anthem". Sandra Sperounes from "Edmonton Journal" praised "All Star" as an example of Smash Mouth's intelligent songwriting, specifically noting its "veiled references to stupidity". Jay DeFoore of the "Austin American-Statesman" was more critical, calling the song a "fluffy, made-for-MTV anthem that evaporates into thin air" and "a classic example of hit-by-numbers".


title: All Star (song)

text: At the 42nd Annual Grammy Awards in 2000, "All Star" was nominated for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, ultimately losing to Santana's "Maria Maria". Retrospective reviews from the editorial staff of both "Billboard" and "Paste" ranked it as one of the best songs of 1999, as did "Rolling Stone" writer Rob Sheffield and "Spin" writer Taylor Berman. "Billboard" staff writer Gab Ginsburg noted the song's lasting cultural impact following its appearance in "Shrek" and the "hundreds" of popular meme videos; Berman felt the song had "a life of its own" and became a "cultural artifact". Geoffery Himes of "Paste" called the song "the best reason to listen to top-40 radio in 1999". In a glowing review, Leor Galil of the "Chicago Reader" lauded the song for having "transcended genre" to become "permanently stuck in America’s hippocampus". Conversely, the staff of "Noisey" listed it as one of the worst songs of the 1990s, with writer Annalise Domenighini calling the song "the only argument we need for why ska-pop should have never existed in the first place". In 2020, "The New York Times" listed the song as #1 in their top ten climate change songs.


title: All Star (song)

text: "All Star" was released on May 4, 1999, as the first single from "Astro Lounge". Also, it was the first single for the soundtrack album for the superhero film "Mystery Men" (1999). It entered the "Billboard" Hot 100 at number 75 on the week of May 22, 1999, and reached its peak position of number 4 on August 14. The song peaked at number one on the component Radio Songs chart, as well as on the Adult Top 40 and Mainstream Top 40 charts. "All Star" peaked at number two and five on the Alternative Songs and Adult Alternative Songs charts, respectively. It was later certified triple platinum in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for selling 3,000,000 certified units in the United States. The song achieved further success internationally. In Canada, "All Star" peaked at number two on the "RPM" Top Singles chart and number four and six on the Adult Contemporary and Rock/Alternative charts, respectively. It charted within the top ten on the Australian Singles Chart and peaked within the top 20 in Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Scotland, and Spain.


title: All Star (song)

text: The song ranked at number 17 on the year-end Hot 100 chart and in the top ten of the year-end US Adult Top 40, Alternative Songs, Mainstream Top 40, and Radio Songs charts for 1999. It additionally appeared on the year-end charts for Australia and Canada, ranking at number 31 and 4, respectively. The song has since been certified double platinum in the United Kingdom and platinum in Australia and Italy.


title: All Star (song)

text: "All Star" appeared on the "Billboard" Rock Streaming Songs chart, spending over 100 weeks on the chart and reaching a peak position of number three on the edition of September 21, 2019. The track ranked as one of the most-streamed rock songs of 2017 and 2018, and it ranked at number six on the year-end US Rock Streaming Songs chart in 2019.


title: All Star (song)

text: Directed by McG, the accompanying music video features cameos by William H. Macy, Ben Stiller, Hank Azaria, Paul Reubens, Kel Mitchell, Janeane Garofalo, Doug Jones, and Dane Cook as their characters from the superhero film "Mystery Men", which prominently features the song. Their appearances in the video are primarily based on stock footage from the film; in all other scenes, the characters were portrayed by body doubles and depicted exclusively from behind. The visual opens with the characters from "Mystery Men" seeking recruits, with the group rejecting several applicants before expressing interest in Smash Mouth singer Steve Harwell. The remainder of the video focuses on Harwell performing several feats (rescuing a dog from a burning building and flipping over a toppled school bus), in addition to scenes from "Mystery Men".


title: All Star (song)

text: In June 2019, the music video was remastered in HD and received subtitles in commemoration of its 20th anniversary. By that point, it had received over 219 million views on YouTube.


title: All Star (song)

text: Smash Mouth performed "All Star" at the 1999 Home Run Derby in July at Fenway Park. After the band finished playing, Camp said "Save Fenway Park", referencing plans to demolish the stadium and replace it with a new facility; this elicited boos from the crowd. Smash Mouth performed it on September 9, 1999 in pouring rain, as the opening act of the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards.


title: All Star (song)

text: A June 14, 2015, performance of the song at Taste of Fort Collins event in Fort Collins, Colorado went awry after members of the audience started throwing loaves of bread onto the stage. While the rest of the band repeated the opening riff of "All Star", Harwell began a three-minute profanity-filled verbal tirade against the crowd, with him threatening to beat up anyone who threw things onto the stage. Security restrained Harwell after he tried to enter the crowd; the band continued playing while the crowd sang the song in place of him. Smash Mouth performed the song at the Urbana Sweetcorn Festival on August 28, 2016; Harwell passed out in the middle of the set and was taken to a nearby hospital, but the band continued their set and performed the song without him.


title: All Star (song)

text: "All Star" was frequently used in films in the years following its release. The song featured in 1999's "Inspector Gadget" and "Mystery Men", the latter of which was the basis for the song's music video. It features heavily in the 2001 movie "Rat Race", in which the band performs it at a live concert, over the closing credits. It regained popularity after being featured in the 2001 DreamWorks animated movie "Shrek", where it was played over the opening credits. The filmmakers for "Shrek" had originally used the song as a placeholder for the opening credits and intended to replace it with an original composition by Matt Mahaffey that would mimic the feel of "All Star". However, DreamWorks executive Jeffrey Katzenberg suggested for them to use "All Star" over the sequence instead. Although Smash Mouth was initially apprehensive about being involved with what was considered a family film, DreamWorks was insistent on including the band's music in the film. After being granted an early screening of "Shrek", the band members were impressed and ultimately agreed to license "All Star" to appear in the film. They also performed a new rendition of the Monkees' "I'm a Believer" for the ending scene. Vicky Jenson, the co-director of the film, explained that "All Star" perfectly fits the tone and personality of its titular ogre, who is "happy in his solitary existence and has no clue that he has a lot to learn about it".


title: All Star (song)

text: "All Star" has been commonly played at sporting events; it became so popular among sports fans that they were led to play it at Major League Baseball's 1999 Home Run Derby, and have performed it at dozens of sporting events since. The second verse has been used in climate change protests. An unstaged musical theatre adaption of the song, "All Star: The Best Broadway Musical", has been written and officially sanctioned by the band. "All Star" is the only song in the musical, being adapted into various genres and styles. Siddhant Adlakha of "Polygon", who attended a reading of the play, described it as a "jukebox musical, but the jukebox is broken". Regarding the play's concept, Adlakha said it "sounds like the dumbest idea on planet, but I’ll be damned if every single member of its cast wasn’t committed to the gimmick".


title: All Star (song)

text: "All Star" has become widely used as an internet meme and is frequently parodied. Remixes and memes have often focused on its connection to "Shrek", which has a large online fandom and meme community. The song's basic structure lends itself easily towards being used for mashups or remixes; NPR said that the song "seems like it was made to be remixed, mashed-up and squeezed through the meme machine". Both the song's chorus as well as its opening "somebody" line are frequently used as punchlines due to their widespread recognition.


title: All Star (song)

text: "Mario, You're a Plumber", uploaded to YouTube in 2009 by the channel Richalvarez, has been identified as the earliest parody of "All Star" on the platform. The video, themed around the Nintendo character Mario, has received over 1.5 million views as of November 2017. Neil Cicierega released a series of four mashup albums - "Mouth Sounds", "Mouth Silence", "Mouth Moods", and "Mouth Dreams" - which prominently remixed "All Star" as well as other popular songs from the 1990s. The popularity of 2014's "Mouth Sounds", in particular, has been cited as a point where the song received renewed popularity and interest. The track received additional exposure in 2016 from YouTuber Jon Sudano, who reached over 900,000 subscribers by exclusively posting videos of himself singing its lyrics over the instrumentals of other songs. The accompanying music video also experienced a large increase in views on YouTube towards the end of 2016. According to ABC News Radio, it increased from an average of 21,000 views per day to 155,000 a day in December 2016 and reached a peak of 478,000 views per day in 2017. By this point, "All Star" had become so popular on the internet that Austin Powell of "The Daily Dot" described it as "almost as inescapable now as it once was on commercial radio".


title: All Star (song)

text: Smash Mouth has embraced the song's status as a meme. The band was initially hesitant of its newfound popularity, but gradually warmed up to the concept. In an interview with "The Daily Dot", Harwell said they consider themselves to have "invented the meme" due to having released 10 remixes of the song through Interscope. According to Harwell, Smash Mouth has "fully accepted" the song as their legacy and consider the "obsession" with it as "a level of love [they are] more than appreciative of". Although the band has received requests to feature on remixes or covers, Smash Mouth has declined to be involved in any because "we feel if other people do it, it adds to the beauty, but if we did it, we feel it would cheapen it". Camp, who is no longer with Smash Mouth, said that he was "flattered" at the continued popularity of "All Star" and has befriended Sudano. Camp was particularly appreciative of "The Sound of Smash Mouth", a "sad" mashup with Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" that emphasizes the melancholy lyrics Camp included in "All Star".


title: Omelette

text: In cuisine, an omelette (also spelled omelet) is a dish made from beaten eggs, fried with butter or oil in a frying pan (without stirring as in scrambled egg). It is quite common for the omelette to be folded around fillings such as chives, vegetables, mushrooms, meat (often ham or bacon), cheese, onions or some combination of the above. Whole eggs or egg whites are often beaten with a small amount of milk, cream, or water.


title: Omelette

text: The earliest omelettes are believed to have originated in ancient Persia. According to "Breakfast: A History", they were "nearly indistinguishable" from the Iranian dish kookoo sabzi.


title: Omelette

text: According to Alan Davidson, the French word "omelette" () came into use during the mid-16th century, but the versions "alumelle" and "alumete" are employed by the Ménagier de Paris (II, 4 and II, 5) in 1393. Rabelais ("Gargantua and Pantagruel", IV, 9) mentions an "homelaicte d'oeufs", Olivier de Serres an "amelette", François Pierre La Varenne's "Le cuisinier françois" (1651) has "aumelette", and the modern "omelette" appears in "Cuisine bourgeoise" (1784).


title: Omelette

text: Alexandre Dumas discusses several variations of omelette in his "Grand dictionnaire de cuisine". One is an omelette with fresh herbs (parsley, chives and tarragon), another is a variation with mushrooms that Dumas says may be adapted using green peas, asparagus, spinach, sorrel or varieties of truffles. The "kirsch omelette " (or rum omelette) is a sweet omelette made with sugar and liquor, either kirsh or rum. The omelette is rolled and sprinkled with powdered sugar. A hot poker is used to burn a design into the omelette and it is served with a sweet sauce made of liquor and apricot jam. Another sweet omelette, attributed to a royal cook of Prussia, is made with apples and brown sugar glaze. Of the Arabian omelette, Dumas writes "I have been concerned in this book to give the recipes of peoples who have no true cuisine. Here, for example, is a recipe the Bey's cook was good enough to give me." The omelette itself is made with an ostrich egg and served with a spicy tomato-pepper sauce.


title: Omelette

text: In Korean cuisine, traditional omelettes are known as "gyeran-mari" (계란말이, "rolled-eggs") which is a type of savory "banchan". "Gyeran-mari" is made with beaten eggs, mixed with finely diced vegetables, meats, and seafood. This side dish is often found in most Korean banquet ("janchi") meals, as well as Korean fast food ("bunsik") restaurants.


title: Omelette

text: While the Spanish term "tortilla" and "torta" in Spain and the Philippines is applied to an omelette dish, in Mesoamerica it is a surrogate term for a flatbread made of wheat or corn. An omelette in Mesoamerica is commonly termed as "tortilla de huevos", and more colloquially, "omleta".


title: Omelette

text: In the Philippines, omelettes are known as "torta", usually encountered with the enclitic "-ng" (""tortang"") indicating it modifies the next word (the main ingredient); e.g. "tortang hipon" = "torta" ("omelette") + "-ng" and "hipon" ("shrimp"), meaning "shrimp omelette". There are many types of "torta" which are named based on their main ingredients. They include:


title: Omelette

text: An omelette Arnold Bennett incorporates smoked haddock, hard cheese (typically Cheddar), and cream. It was created at the Savoy Grill in London for the writer Arnold Bennett, who was a frequent customer, by the chef Jean Baptiste Virlogeux. It remains a British classic; cooks from Marcus Wareing to Delia Smith and Gordon Ramsay have published their recipes for it.


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda (, born Yenokh Gershevich Iyeguda; 7 November 1891 – 15 March 1938) was a Soviet secret police official who served as director of the NKVD, the Soviet Union's security and intelligence agency, from 1934 to 1936. Appointed by Joseph Stalin, Yagoda supervised arrests, show trials, and executions of the Old Bolsheviks Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, climactic events of the Great Purge. Yagoda also supervised construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal with Naftaly Frenkel, using penal labor from the GULAG system, during which 12,000–25,000 laborers died.


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: Like many Soviet NKVD officers who conducted political repression, Yagoda himself ultimately became a victim of the Purge. He was demoted from the directorship of the NKVD in favor of Nikolai Yezhov in 1936 and arrested in 1937. Charged with crimes of wrecking, espionage, Trotskyism and conspiracy, Yagoda was a defendant at the Trial of the Twenty-One, the last of the major Soviet show trials of the 1930s. Following his confession at the trial, Yagoda was found guilty and shot.


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: Yagoda was born in Rybinsk into a Jewish family. The son of a jeweller, trained as a statistician, who worked as a pharmacist's assistant, he claimed that he was an active revolutionary from the age of 14 when he worked as a compositor on an underground printing press in Nizhny Novgorod, and that at the age of 15 he was a member of a fighting squad in the Sormovo district of Nizhny Novgorod, during the violent suppression of the 1905 revolution. He said he joined the Bolsheviks in Nizhny Novgorod at the age of 16 or 17 and was arrested and sent into exile in 1911. In 1913, he moved to St. Petersburg to work at the Putilov steel works. After the outbreak of war, he joined the army, and was wounded in action.


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: There is another version of his early career, told in the memoirs of the former NKVD officer Aleksandr M. Orlov, who alleged that Yagoda invented his early revolutionary career and did not join the Bolsheviks until 1917, and that his deputy Mikhail Trilisser was dismissed from service for trying to expose the lie.


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: After the October Revolution of 1917, Yagoda rose rapidly through the ranks of the Cheka (the predecessor of the OGPU and NKVD) to become the second deputy of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the Cheka, in September 1923. After Dzerzhinsky's appointment as chairman of the Supreme Council of National Economy in January 1924, Yagoda became the deputy chief and the real manager of the State Political Directorate (OGPU), as the chairman Vyacheslav Menzhinsky had little authority because of his serious illness. In 1924, he joined the USSR's head of government, Alexei Rykov on a ship tour of the Volga. An American journalist who was allowed to join them on the trip described Yagoda as "a spare, slightly-tanned, trim looking, youngish officer" adding that it was "difficult to associate terror with the affable and modest person". By contrast, the chemist Vladimir Ipatieff met Yagoda briefly in Moscow in 1918 and later recorded that he had thought that "it was unusual for a young man in his early twenties to be so unpleasant. I felt then that it would be unlucky for me or anyone else ever to fall into his hands." When he saw him again in 1927, "his appearance had changed considerably: he had grown fatter and looked much older and very dignified and important."


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: Though Yagoda appears to have known Joseph Stalin since 1918, when they were both stationed in Tsaritsyn during the civil war, "he was never Stalin's man". When Stalin ordered that the Soviet Union's entire rural population were to be forced onto collective farms, Yagoda is reputed to have sympathised with Bukharin and Rykov, his opponents on the right of the communist party. Nikolai Bukharin claimed in a leaked private conversation in July 1928 that "Yagoda and Trilisser are with us", but once it became apparent that the right was losing the power struggle, Yagoda switched allegiance. In the contemptuous opinion of Bukharin's widow, Anna Larina, Yagoda "traded his personal views for the sake of his career" and degenerated into a "criminal" and a "miserable coward".


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: Yagoda continued to be an effective head of the OGPU until July 1931, when the Old Bolshevik Ivan Akulov was appointed First Deputy Chairman, and Yagoda was demoted to the post of Second Deputy. Akulov was dismissed and Yagoda reinstated in October 1932, After Yagoda's fall, one of his former colleagues confessed: "We met Akulov with violent hostility ... the entire party organisation in the OGPU was devoted to sabotaging Akulov." Stalin must have agreed to his reinstatement with ill grace, because four years later he accused the OGPU/NKVD of being four years behind in rooting out the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc, although Yagoda had been complicit in the execution of one of Trotsky's sympathisers, Yakov Blumkin, and in sending others to the GULAG, the system of forced labour created under his supervision.


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: Prior to 1929, the only labor camp in the USSR was the Solovki Special Purpose Camp, which fell under the purview of the OGPU. As deputy head of the OGPU, Yagoda organized construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal using forced labor at breakneck speed between 1931 and 1933, though at the cost of huge casualties. The construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal was started under his watch, but completed only after his fall by his successor Nikolai Yezhov. For his contribution to the Baltic canal's construction, he was later awarded the Order of Lenin. Yagoda greatly expanded the use of prison to assist with the building of the Berezniki Works chemical plant and other projects. From 1929-1930, the number of prison laborers in OGPU camps expanded from 22,848 to 155,000, and after November 1930 became known as the Main Camp Administration, or GULAG system.


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: Yagoda had founded a secret poison laboratory of OGPU that was at disposal of Stalin. It was later alleged during the later show-trial of Yagoda, that Yagoda's former NKVD boss, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky was slowly poisoned during two weeks by two assistants of Yagoda. However Menzhinsky was ill for several years before he died and this may have been a false testimony during the Stalinist purges. Menhzinsky death was followed one day later by death of Max Peshkov, the son of Maxim Gorky, the doyen of Soviet literature. Yagoda had been cultivating Gorky as a potentially useful contact since 1928 and employed Gorky's secretary, Pyotr Kryuchkov, as a spy. "Whenever Gorky met Stalin or other members of the Politburo, Yagoda would visit Kryuchkov's flat afterward, demanding a full account of what had been said. He took to visiting public baths with Kryuchkov. One day in 1932, Yagoda handed his valuable spy $4,000 to buy a car." He had developed an obsession with Max Peshkov's wife, Timosha, and visited her daily when she was newly widowed, though her mother denied that they were ever lovers. According to Arkady Vaksberg and other researchers, Yagoda poisoned Maxim Gorky and his son on the orders from Joseph Stalin.


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: On 10 July 1934, two months after Menzhinsky's death, Joseph Stalin appointed Yagoda People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, a position that included oversight of both the regular and the secret police, the NKVD. He was in charge of investigating the Kirov assassination. At some point, it was discovered by the NKVD that a conspiratorial Opposition Bloc had been formed in 1932, by Leon Trotsky and various other soviet politicians like Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev. Yagoda then worked closely with Andrei Vyshinsky in organizing the first Moscow Show Trial, which resulted in prosecution and subsequent execution of Zinoviev and Kamenev in August 1936, beginning the Great Purge. The Red Army high command was not spared and its ranks were thinned by Yagoda, as a precursor to the later and more extensive purge in the Soviet military. More than a quarter of a million people were arrested during the 1934–1935 period; the GULAG system was vastly expanded under his stewardship, and penal labor became a major developmental resource in the Soviet economy.


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: Stalin became increasingly disillusioned with Yagoda's performance. In the middle of 1936, Stalin received a report from Yagoda detailing the unfavorable public reaction abroad to the show trials and the growing sympathy among the Soviet population for the executed defendants. The report enraged Stalin, interpreting it as Yagoda's advice to stop the show trials and in particular to abandon the planned purge of Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Marshal of the Soviet Union and the former commander in chief of the Red Army. Stalin was already unhappy with Yagoda's services, mostly due to mismanagement of Kirov's assassination and his failure to fabricate "proofs" of ties between Kamenev and Zinoviev and the Okhrana (the tsarist security organization). As one Soviet official put it, "The Boss forgets nothing."


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: Another possible reason Stalin did not trust Yagoda was his failure to report the existence of the Bloc of Oppositions earlier. On 25 September 1936, Stalin sent a telegram (co-signed by Andrei Zhdanov) to the members of the Politburo. The telegram read:


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: "We consider it absolutely necessary and urgent that Comrade Yezhov be appointed to head the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. "Yagoda has obviously proved unequal to the task of exposing the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc". The GPU was four years late in this matter. All party heads and most of the NKVD agents in the region are talking about this."


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: A day later, he was replaced by Nikolai Yezhov. There are two theories as to why Yagoda did not report on the bloc earlier. He may have found out about it only in 1936, or he knew about its activities for some time but covered it up because of his sympathies to the opposition. According to the anti-communist soviet defector Grigori Tokaev, who was an underground participant in an oppositional group, the opposition was working with parts of the police and Yagoda himself:He [Yagoda] was removed from the NKVD, and we lost a strong link in our opposition intelligence service. ... The NKVD, now headed by Yezhov, took another step forward. The Little Politbureau had penetrated the Yenukidze-Sheboldayev and the Yagoda-Zelinsky conspiracies and broken through the opposition's links within the central institutions of the political police.Yagoda was demoted to the post of People's Commissar for Post and Telegraph.


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: In March 1937, Yagoda was arrested on Stalin's orders. Yezhov announced Yagoda's arrest for diamond smuggling, corruption and working as a German agent since joining the party in 1917. Yezhov even blamed Yagoda for an attempt to assassinate him by sprinkling mercury around his office. He was accused of poisoning Maxim Gorky and his son. It was discovered that Yagoda's two Moscow apartments and his dacha contained, besides a large collection of female clothing and apparel, 3,904 pornographic photos, 11 pornographic films, 165 pornographically carved pipes and cigarette holders, one rubber dildo, the two bullets that killed Zinoviev and Kamenev and 549 books - some of which were trotskyist works. Yezhov took over the apartments. He had spent four million rubles decorating his three homes, boasting that his garden had "2,000 orchids and roses".


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: Yagoda was found guilty of treason and conspiracy against the Soviet government at the Trial of the Twenty-One in March 1938. He denied he was a spy, but admitted most other charges. Solzhenitsyn describes Yagoda as expecting clemency from Stalin after the show trial: "Just as though Stalin had been sitting right there in the hall, Yagoda confidently and insistently begged him directly for mercy: 'I appeal to you! "For you" I built two great canals!' And a witness reports that at just that moment a match flared in the shadows behind a window on the second floor of the hall, apparently behind a muslin curtain, and, while it lasted, the outline of a pipe could be seen."


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: Yagoda was summarily shot after the trial. In 1988, on the 50th anniversary of the trial, the Soviet authorities belatedly cleared all of the other 20 defendants of any criminal offence, admitting that the entire trial was built on false confessions. Yagoda was the only defendant not to be posthumously rehabilitated.


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: Yagoda's father, Grigori, the jeweller, who was aged 78 in 1938, wrote directly to Stalin disowning "our only surviving son" because of "his grave crimes". This contrition was not enough to save him, or his wife, from being arrested and dying in labour camps.


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: Yagoda had two brothers. One was killed during the suppression of the revolt in Sormovo in 1905; the other was shot for taking part in a mutiny in a regiment during the war with Germany. Their sister, Lilya, was arrested on 7 May 1937, and shot on 16 July. She was photographed before her execution, as was normal for condemned prisoners. That photograph was retrieved from KGB archives and published in the book "Ordinary Citizens" by David King.


title: Genrikh Yagoda

text: Yagoda's wife was , one of whose uncles, Yakov Sverdlov, was a prominent Bolshevik, and another, Zinovy Peshkov, was the adopted son of the writer Maxim Gorky. She was shot on 16 July 1938. Her brother, Leopold Averbakh, was shot in August 1937. Their father was also shot.


title: Horns (film)

text: Horns is a 2013 dark fantasy, mystery, comedy, horror, and thriller film directed by Alexandre Aja from a screenplay written by Keith Bunin, based on the 2010 novel of the same name by Joe Hill. It stars Daniel Radcliffe as a young man falsely accused of murdering his girlfriend, who uses his newly discovered paranormal abilities to uncover the real killer.


title: Horns (film)

text: "Horns" premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, and was theatrically released in the United States on October 31, 2014.


title: Horns (film)

text: Ignatius "Ig" Perrish is the prime suspect when his girlfriend, Merrin Williams, is raped and murdered. Despite his declarations of innocence, he is shunned by the community. He visits his parents and brother, Terry, to hide from the press. After a vigil led by Merrin's father, who believes Ig to be guilty, Ig gets drunk, urinates on Merrin's memorial, and spends the night with a female friend. The next morning, he awakes with a pair of horns protruding from his head. The horns have special powers that force people to tell Ig their darkest secrets and desires; at Ig's bidding, they act upon them.


title: Horns (film)

text: While seeing his doctor about having the horns removed, Ig, under anesthesia, dreams of his childhood, when he first met Merrin. A young Ig and his friends play with cherry bombs; Ig risks a dangerous dare to win a cherry bomb and nearly drowns, but is saved by Lee Tourneau, his childhood friend, who is now a lawyer. He gives Lee the cherry bomb in exchange for fixing Merrin's broken necklace. Lee loses two fingers when the cherry bomb goes off accidentally in his hand. Ig and Merrin bond over the fixed necklace and fall in love, frequenting a treehouse in the woods together.


title: Horns (film)

text: Ig visits his parents and, under the horns' power, his mother reveals that she does not want him as her son and asks him to leave. His father tells him he is worthless without Merrin and his friend helps him burn down the lab where DNA tests were being conducted. As Ig heads to a bar, in the parking lot he goads the reporters into a brawl. He attempts to find evidence proving that he did not kill Merrin from people in the bar. Several people confess their deepest and darkest secrets and the owner-bartender burns down the building to collect the insurance.


title: Horns (film)

text: From one confession, Ig learns a new witness in the case is a waitress at the diner where Merrin broke up with him the night she died. Ig finds her and discovers she has been fabricating her stories to become famous. When Ig talks to Terry, he learns that Terry drove Merrin from the diner the night she died. When he touches Terry, Ig sees what happened that night: Merrin left the car en route to her home and ran into the woods. Terry passed out in the car and woke up the next morning with a bloody rock in his hand, finding Merrin dead under the treehouse. Afraid that he would be implicated, he fled. Infuriated, Ig assaults Terry until he is arrested by Officer Eric Hannity, who is another childhood friend. The next morning, Ig is released from jail with Lee's help. Ig notices Lee wearing Merrin's cross necklace and questions him about it. Lee insists there are things about him and Merrin that Ig never knew.


title: Horns (film)

text: Later that night, Ig realizes snakes are following him wherever he goes and he uses them to exact vengeance against the waitress. Additionally, he gets Eric to act on his feelings for his police partner (who reciprocates his feelings) and forces Terry to overdose on drugs, causing Terry to be tormented by memories of Merrin's death. Ig meets Lee by the docks and pulls off Merrin's necklace. He realizes Lee was unable to see the horns because he was wearing the necklace. Exposed to the horns, Lee falls under their influence and admits to killing Merrin. In flashbacks, Lee was also in love with Merrin and was deeply jealous of Ig throughout their childhood. Lee followed Merrin into the woods, thinking that Merrin had been sending him signals for a long time and that she had broken up with Ig to be with him. When Merrin insisted that she loved Ig more than anyone in the world, Lee raped her in a jealous rage and killed her with a rock, stole her necklace, and planted the bloody rock on Terry. In the ensuing confrontation, Lee overpowers Ig and lights him on fire in his car, causing Ig to drive into the bay. Lee claims that Ig confessed to the crime and committed suicide. The horns allow Ig to survive, horrifically burned and disfigured.


title: Horns (film)

text: Merrin's father, who does now believe Ig is innocent, gives him the key to Merrin's lockbox. When Ig puts on Merrin's cross, his body is restored and the horns disappear. In the lockbox, he finds a note from Merrin explaining that she knew Ig was going to propose, but she was dying of cancer and did not want him to suffer, so she pushed him away under the pretense of loving someone else.


title: Horns (film)

text: Ig confronts Lee, who does not remember their earlier fight, and leads him into the woods where Merrin was killed. Eric and Terry arrive to arrest Lee. Lee confesses to the murder, but then gleefully kills Eric and injures Terry. Ig tears off the necklace, sprouting a pair of wings and bursting into flame, transforming into a demonic monster. Despite Lee fatally wounding him, Ig impales Lee on one of his horns and telepathically forces a snake down Lee's throat, killing him. Saying that his vengeance was all-consuming, Ig dies from his injuries and his smoldering corpse turns to hardened ash, and he appears to be reunited with Merrin in the afterlife.


title: Horns (film)

text: The band seen backing up Joe Anderson's character on lead trumpet is The Brass Action from Vancouver, British Columbia. The scene features the band's song, "The Devil Down Below".


title: Horns (film)

text: Explaining his initial interest in the project, Alexandre Aja said "After reading Joe Hill's cult book, I couldn't resist temptation to dive into the devilish underworld and reinvent a universal myth".


title: Horns (film)

text: Principal photography started late September 2012, in British Columbia. The filming took place in Vancouver, Mission, Surrey and Squamish, completing shooting in December 2012.


title: Horns (film)

text: The film was released in North America and the United Kingdom on October 31, 2014, however the movie was also made available via digital download on iTunes as of October 6, 2014.


title: Horns (film)

text: The film's North American distribution rights were acquired by Dimension Films and RADiUS-TWC. Anchor Bay Entertainment released the film on January 13, 2015 on DVD and Blu-ray.


title: Horns (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, 42% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 127 reviews, with an average rating of 5.4/10. The site's critical consensus says ""Horns" is a bit of a tonal jumble, but it offers enough thoughtful horror-comedy—and strong work from Daniel Radcliffe—to hook genre enthusiasts." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 46 out of 100 based on 35 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Horns (film)

text: John DeFore of "The Hollywood Reporter" gave a positive review of the film, remarking, "While this all begins as a kind of supernatural black comedy ... the tone grows darker with each revelation".


title: Horns (film)

text: Joe Hill, who wrote the novel the film is based on, praised Radcliffe's performance, calling it a "wrenching, vulnerable, emotionally naked performance that isn't like anything he's ever done on screen before. He is such a wonderful Ig Perrish".


title: Horns (film)

text: "The Guardian" scored the film two out of five stars, calling it "a "Dogma"-style mash-up of grim comedy and religious satire". Eric Kohn of "IndieWire" wrote, "Predominantly a failure of tone, ""Horns"" has plenty of admirable traits and yet dooms itself from the outset. It's an admirable conceit stuffed into far less subtle material". Peter Debruge of "Variety" sensed that the film "benefits from the helmer's twisted sensibility, but suffers from a case of overall silliness". Jonathan Weichsel of MoreHorror.com stated that "The cast is all around terrific, especially Daniel Radcliffe who is nothing short of phenomenal, and the set pieces are entertaining in that wild, over the top way that only horror can pull off effectively.".


title: Gabriella Wilde

text: Gabriella Zanna Vanessa Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe (born 8 April 1989), known professionally as Gabriella Wilde or Gabriella Calthorpe, is an English actress and model.


title: Gabriella Wilde

text: She has appeared in the films "" (2009), "The Three Musketeers" (2011), "Carrie" (2013), "Endless Love" (2014), and "Wonder Woman 1984" (2020). Her television work includes the "Doctor Who" episode "The Vampires of Venice" (2010) and the BBC historical drama series "Poldark" (2016–2019).


title: Gabriella Wilde

text: Wilde was born in Basingstoke, Hampshire. She is descended from the aristocratic Gough-Calthorpe family. Her father, businessman John Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, is a former chairman of the Watermark Group, and the grandson of Sir Fitzroy Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, 1st Baronet. Her mother, Vanessa Mary Theresa (née Hubbard), is the former wife of socialite Sir Dai Llewellyn, 4th Baronet. Vanessa is a former model who sat for David Bailey and John Swannell.


title: Gabriella Wilde

text: Through her maternal grandfather, Wilde's ancestors include Montagu Bertie, 6th Earl of Abingdon, General the Hon. Thomas Gage, and Stephanus Van Cortlandt, the first native-born Mayor of New York City. Wilde's maternal grandmother's parents were peers Bernard Fitzalan-Howard, 3rd Baron Howard of Glossop and Mona Fitzalan-Howard, 11th Baroness Beaumont.


title: Gabriella Wilde

text: Wilde has a younger sister, Octavia, as well as five half-siblings: Olivia and Arabella Llewellyn, from her mother's first marriage, and Georgiana, Isabella, and Jacobi, from her father's first marriage, to Lady Mary-Gaye Curzon. She is also "unofficial stepsisters" with Pandora Cooper-Key and Cressida Bonas, Lady Mary-Gaye's other daughters. Isabella, Olivia and Cressida are also actresses.


title: Gabriella Wilde

text: Wilde and her future husband were both educated at Windlesham House School. Afterwards she attended Heathfield St Mary's School, Ascot and St Swithun's School, Winchester, before leaving to pursue a course in art while continuing with her modelling career. She smuggled vodka into Heathfield, resulting in suspension and a transfer to St Swithun's. She studied fine art at the City and Guilds of London Art School but dropped out to pursue acting.


title: Gabriella Wilde

text: Wilde began her career as a model. Spotted at age 14 by Naomi Campbell, she joined her agency Premier Model Management and appeared in campaigns for companies including L.K.Bennett, Lacoste, Abercrombie & Fitch, Burberry, Topshop and posed for "InStyle", "Cosmopolitan", "Vogue" and "Nylon".


title: Gabriella Wilde

text: In 2007, she was named the second-most-eligible girl in Britain but rejected press attention and the "It girl" label.


title: Gabriella Wilde

text: In December 2009, Wilde made her acting debut in the adventure comedy film "". In May 2010, Wilde appeared in an episode of the BBC television series "Doctor Who" as one of the eponymous vampires in "The Vampires of Venice".


title: Gabriella Wilde

text: In December 2010, Wilde was announced to have been cast in her film debut in the adventure film "The Three Musketeers", an adaptation of the novel of the same name. Wilde portrayed the role of the queen's lady-in-waiting Constance Bonacieux and starred alongside Orlando Bloom and Logan Lerman. The film was released in October 2011 and went on to make over $132 million worldwide, but it was poorly received by critics with a rating of 24% on Rotten Tomatoes based on reviews from 90 critics.


title: Gabriella Wilde

text: In March 2012, Wilde was cast in the ABC Sci-Fi television pilot "Dark Horse". The series centers on a science student who learns that he is the chosen one, tasked with destroying the forces of evil. The pilot was not picked up by ABC for the 2012–2013 television season. That same year Wilde starred in the short film "Il Maestro" and is attached to another film titled "Squatters".


title: Gabriella Wilde

text: As well as "Dark Horse", Wilde was cast in the 2013 remake, "Carrie", that same month (as Sue Snell). The film was directed by "Boys Don't Cry" director Kimberly Peirce and starred Chloë Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore. Filming began in June 2012 and it was released in October 2013.


title: Gabriella Wilde

text: In 2013, Wilde was cast in the second film adaptation of Scott Spencer's novel "Endless Love", released 2014, opposite Alex Pettyfer. She played Caroline Penvenen in the BBC drama "Poldark" from 2015 to 2019.


title: Gabriella Wilde

text: Wilde joined Estée Lauder as their newest spokesmodel in 2015, becoming the face of the brand's advertising campaigns.


title: Gabriella Wilde

text: Wilde married musician Alan Pownall on 13 September 2014, both previously having attended Windlesham House School. They have three sons.


title: Hezekiah

text: Hezekiah (; ), or Ezekias (born , sole ruler ), was the son of Ahaz and the 13th king of Judah according to the Hebrew Bible.


title: Hezekiah

text: In the biblical narrative, Hezekiah witnessed the destruction of the northern Kingdom of Israel by Sargon's Assyrians in and was king of Judah during the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib in 701 BCE.


title: Hezekiah

text: Hezekiah enacted sweeping religious reforms, including a strict mandate for the sole worship of Yahweh and a prohibition on venerating other deities within the Temple of Jerusalem. He is considered a very righteous king in both the Second Book of Kings and the Second Book of Chronicles. He is also one of the more prominent kings of Judah mentioned in the Bible and is one of the kings mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. "No king of Judah, among either his predecessors or his successors, could [...] be compared to him", according to . Isaiah and Micah prophesied during his reign.


title: Hezekiah

text: The name Hezekiah means "Yahweh strengthens" in Hebrew. Alternately it may be translated as "Yahweh is my strength".


title: Hezekiah

text: The main biblical accounts of Hezekiah's reign are found in 2 Kings, Isaiah, and 2 Chronicles. Proverbs 25:1 commences a collection of King Solomon's proverbs which were "copied by the officials of King Hezekiah of Judah". His reign is also referred to in the books of the prophets Jeremiah, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah. The books of Hosea and Micah record that their prophecies were made during Hezekiah's reign. The book of Isaiah records when Hezekiah sought Isaiah's help when Judah was under siege by King Sennacherib of Assyria.


title: Hezekiah

text: Based on Edwin Thiele's dating, Hezekiah was born in c. 741 BCE and died in c. 687 BCE at age 54. Thiele and William F. Albright calculated his regnal years arriving at figures very close to each other, c. 715/16 and 686/87 BCE. However, Gershon Galil dates his reign to 697–642 BCE.


title: Hezekiah

text: Hezekiah was the son of king Ahaz and Abijah. His mother, Abijah (also called Abi), was a daughter of the high priest Zechariah. He was married to Hephzibah. He died from natural causes at the age of 54 in c. 687 BCE, and was succeeded by his son Manasseh.


title: Hezekiah

text: According to the biblical narrative, Hezekiah assumed the throne of Judah at the age of 25 and reigned for 29 years. Some writers have proposed that Hezekiah served as coregent with his father Ahaz for about 14 years. His sole reign is dated by Albright as 715–687 BCE, and by Thiele as 716–687 BCE (the last ten years being a co-regency with his son Manasseh).


title: Hezekiah

text: According to the Bible, Hezekiah purified and repaired the Temple, purged its idols, and reformed the priesthood. In an effort to abolish idolatry from his kingdom, he destroyed the high places (or "bamot") and the "bronze serpent" (or "Nehushtan"), recorded as being made by Moses, which had become objects of idolatrous worship. In place of this, he centralized the worship of God at the Temple in Jerusalem. Hezekiah also defeated the Philistines, "as far as Gaza and its territory", and resumed the Passover pilgrimage and the tradition of inviting the scattered tribes of Israel to take part in a Passover festival.


title: Hezekiah

text: 2 Chronicles 30 (but not the parallel account in 2 Kings) records that Hezekiah sent messengers to Ephraim and Manasseh inviting them to Jerusalem for the celebration of the Passover. The messengers, however, were not only not listened to, but were even laughed at, although a few men of the tribes of Asher, Manasseh and Zebulun "were humble enough to come" to the city. According to the biblical account, the Passover was celebrated with great solemnity and such rejoicing as had not been seen in Jerusalem since the days of Solomon. The celebration took place during the second month, Iyar, because not enough priests had consecrated themselves in the first month.


title: Hezekiah

text: Biblical writer H. P. Mathys suggests that Hezekiah, being unable to restore the union of Judah and Israel by political means, used the invitation to the northern tribes as a final religious "attempt to restore the unity of the cult". He also notes that this account "is often considered to contain historically reliable elements, especially since negative aspects are also reported on", although he questions the full extent to which it may be considered historically reliable.


title: Hezekiah

text: After the death of Assyrian king Sargon II in 705 BCE, Sargon's son Sennacherib became king of Assyria. In 703 BCE, Sennacherib began a series of major campaigns to quash opposition to Assyrian rule, starting with cities in the eastern part of the realm. In 701 BCE, Sennacherib turned toward cities in the west. Hezekiah then had to face the invasion of Judah. According to the Bible, Hezekiah did not rely on Egypt for support, but relied on God and prayed to Him for deliverance of his capital city Jerusalem.


title: Hezekiah

text: The Assyrians recorded that Sennacherib lifted his siege of Jerusalem after Hezekiah paid Sennacherib tribute. The Bible records that Hezekiah paid him three hundred talents of silver and thirty of gold as tribute, even sending the doors of the Temple to produce the promised amount, but, even after the payment was made, Sennacherib renewed his assault on Jerusalem. Sennacherib surrounded the city and sent his Rabshakeh to the walls as a messenger. The Rabshakeh addressed the soldiers manning the city wall in Hebrew ("Yehudith"), asking them to distrust Yahweh and Hezekiah, claiming that Hezekiah's righteous reforms (destroying the idols and High Places) were a sign that the people should not trust their god to be favorably disposed. 2 Kings records that Hezekiah went to the Temple and there he prayed to God.


title: Hezekiah

text: Knowing that Jerusalem would eventually be subject to siege, Hezekiah had been preparing for some time by fortifying the walls of the capital, building towers, and constructing a tunnel to bring fresh water to the city from a spring outside its walls. He made at least two major preparations that would help Jerusalem to resist conquest: the construction of the Siloam Tunnel, and construction of the Broad Wall.


title: Hezekiah

text: Sennacherib was intent on making war against Jerusalem. Therefore Hezekiah consulted with his officers about stopping the flow of the springs outside the city. Otherwise, they thought, the King of Assyria would come and find water in abundance.


title: Hezekiah

text: According to the biblical record, Sennacherib sent threatening letters warning Hezekiah that he had not desisted from his determination to take the Judean capital. Although they besieged Jerusalem, the biblical accounts state that the Assyrians did not so much as "shoot an arrow there, ... nor cast up a siege rampart against it", and that God sent out an angel who, in one night, struck down "a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians," sending Sennacherib back "with shame of face to his own land".


title: Hezekiah

text: Sennacherib's inscriptions make no mention of the disaster suffered by his forces. But, as Professor Jack Finegan comments: "In view of the general note of boasting which pervades the inscriptions of the Assyrian kings, ... it is hardly to be expected that Sennacherib would record such a defeat." The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges refers to an "Egyptian tradition, according to which Sennacherib had already reached Pelusium in Egypt, when in a single night his army was rendered helpless by a plague of field-mice which gnawed the bows of the soldiers and the thongs of their shields". The version of the matter that Sennacherib presents, as found inscribed on what is known as the Sennacherib Prism preserved in the University of Chicago Oriental Institute, in part says: "As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke ... Hezekiah himself ... did send me, later, to Nineveh, my lordly city, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, ..." This version inflates the number of silver talents sent from 300 to 800; but in other regards it confirms the biblical record and shows that Sennacherib made no claim that he captured Jerusalem. However, Sennacherib presents the matter of Hezekiah's paying tribute as having come after the Assyrian threat of a siege against Jerusalem, whereas the Bible states it was paid before.


title: Hezekiah

text: "It came about as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him [Sennacherib] with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son became king in his place."


title: Hezekiah

text: According to Assyrian records, Sennacherib was assassinated in 681 BCE, twenty years after the 701 BCE invasion of Judah. A Neo-Babylonian letter corroborates with the biblical account a sentiment from Sennacherib's sons to assassinate him, an event Assyriologists have reconstructed as historical. The son Arda-Mulissu, who is mentioned in the letter as killing anyone who would reveal his conspiracy, successfully murders his father in c. 681 BCE, and was most likely the Adrammelech in 2 Kings, though Sharezer is not known elsewhere. Assyriologists posit the murder was motivated because Esarhaddon was chosen as heir to the throne instead of Arda-Mulissu, the next eldest son. Assyrian and Hebrew biblical history corroborate that Esarhaddon ultimately did succeed the throne. Other Assyriologists assert that Sennacherib was murdered in revenge for his destruction of Babylon, a city sacred to all Mesopotamians, including the Assyrians.


title: Hezekiah

text: Later in his life, Hezekiah was ill with a boil or an inflammation. Isaiah told him that the Lord said he should put his house in order because he would die. But Hezekiah prayed, and Isaiah returned saying that the Lord had heard his prayer and he would recover. Hezekiah asked for a sign, and Isaiah asked him whether the shadow should go forward ten degrees or go back ten degrees. Hezekiah said it should go back, and the account states, "Isaiah the prophet cried unto the LORD: and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz." The narrative of his sickness and miraculous recovery is found in 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles and Isaiah.


title: Hezekiah

text: Various ambassadors came to congratulate him on his recovery, among them from Merodach-baladan, son of the king of Babylon, "for he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick". Hezekiah, his vanity flattered by the visit, showed the Babylonian embassy all the wealth, arms and stores of Jerusalem, revealing too much information to Baladan, king of Babylon (or perhaps boasting about his wealth). He was then confronted by Isaiah, who foretold that a future generation of the people of Judah would be taken as captives to Babylon. Hezekiah was reassured that his own lifetime would see peace and security.


title: Hezekiah

text: According to Isaiah, Hezekiah lived another 15 years after praying to God. His son and successor, Manasseh, was born during this time: he was 12 years of age when he succeeded Hezekiah.


title: Hezekiah

text: According to the Talmud, the disease came about because of a dispute between him and Isaiah over who should pay whom a visit and over Hezekiah's refusal to marry and have children, although in the end he married Isaiah's daughter. Some Talmudists also considered that it might have come about as a way for Hezekiah to purge his sins or due to his arrogance in assuming his righteousness.


title: Hezekiah

text: Extra-biblical sources specify Hezekiah by name, along with his reign and influence. "Historiographically, his reign is noteworthy for the convergence of a variety of biblical sources and diverse extrabiblical evidence often bearing on the same events. Significant data concerning Hezekiah appear in the Deuteronomistic History, the Chronicler, Isaiah, Assyrian annals and reliefs, Israelite epigraphy, and, increasingly, stratigraphy". Archaeologist Amihai Mazar calls the tensions between Assyria and Judah "one of the best-documented events of the Iron Age" (172). Hezekiah's story is one of the best to cross-reference with the rest of the Mid Eastern world's historical documents.


title: Hezekiah

text: A seal impression dating back to 727–698 BCE, reading "לחזקיהו [בן] אחז מלך יהדה" "Belonging to Hezekiah [son of] Ahaz king of Judah" was uncovered in a dig at the Ophel in Jerusalem. The impression on this inscription was set in ancient Hebrew script.


title: Hezekiah

text: LMLK stored jars along the border with Assyria "demonstrate careful preparations to counter Sennacherib's likely route of invasion" and show "a notable degree of royal control of towns and cities which would facilitate Hezekiah's destruction of rural sacrificial sites and his centralization of worship in Jerusalem". Evidence suggests they were used throughout his 29-year reign. There are some bullae from sealed documents that may have belonged to Hezekiah himself.


title: Hezekiah

text: In 2015, Eilat Mazar discovered a bulla that bears an inscription in ancient Hebrew script that translates as: "Belonging to Hezekiah [son of] Ahaz king of Judah." This is the first seal impression of an Israelite or Judean king to come to light in a scientific archaeological excavation. While another, unprovenanced bulla of King Hezekiah was known, this was the first time a seal impression of Hezekiah had been discovered in situ in the course of actual excavations. Archaeological findings like the Hezekiah seal led scholars to surmise that the ancient Judahite kingdom had a highly developed administrative system. In 2018 Mazar published a report discussing the discovery of a bulla which she says may have to have belonged to Isaiah. She believes the fragment to have been part of a seal whose complete text might have read "Belonging to Isaiah the prophet." Several other biblical archaeologists, including George Washington University's Christopher Rollston have pointed to the bulla being incomplete, and the present inscription not enough to necessarily refer to the biblical figure.


title: Hezekiah

text: Two fragmented inscriptions mentioning Hezekiah have been discovered during excavations in Jerusalem. The fragments have been identified as monumental or dedicatory inscriptions, which, if accurate, would represent the only known example(s) of such an artifact made by an Israelite king.


title: Hezekiah

text: According to the work of archaeologists and philologists, the reign of Hezekiah saw a notable increase in the power of the Judean state. At this time Judah was the strongest nation on the Assyrian–Egyptian frontier. There were increases in literacy and in the production of literary works. The massive construction of the Broad Wall was made during his reign, the city was enlarged to accommodate a large influx, and population increased in Jerusalem up to 25,000, "five times the population under Solomon." Archaeologist Amihai Mazar explains, "Jerusalem was a virtual city-state where the majority of the state's population was concentrated," in comparison to the rest of Judah's cities (167). Archaeologist Israel Finkelstein says, "The key phenomenon—which cannot be explained solely against the background of economic prosperity—was the sudden growth of the population of Jerusalem in particular, and of Judah in general" (153). He says the cause of this growth must be a large influx of Israelites fleeing from the Assyrian destruction of the northern state. It is "[t]he only reasonable way to explain this unprecedented demographic development" (154). This, according to Finkelstein, set the stage for motivations to compile and reconcile Hebrew history into a text at that time (157). Mazar questions this explanation, since, he argues, it is "no more than an educated guess" (167).


title: Hezekiah

text: The Siloam Tunnel was chiseled through 533 meters (1,750 feet) of solid rock in order to provide Jerusalem underground access to the waters of the Gihon Spring or Siloam Pool, which lay outside the city.


title: Hezekiah

text: The Siloam Inscription from the Siloam Tunnel is now in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum. It "commemorates the dramatic moment when the two original teams of tunnelers, digging with picks from opposite ends of the tunnel, met each other" (564). It is "[o]ne of the most important ancient Hebrew inscriptions ever discovered." Finkelstein and Mazar cite this tunnel as an example of Jerusalem's impressive state-level power at the time.


title: Hezekiah

text: Archaeologists like William G. Dever have pointed at archaeological evidence for the iconoclasm during the period of Hezekiah's reign. The central cult room of the temple at Arad (a royal Judean fortress) was deliberately and carefully dismantled, "with the altars and massebot" concealed "beneath a Str. 8 plaster floor". This stratum correlates with the late 8th century; Dever concludes that "the deliberate dismantling of the temple and its replacement by another structure in the days of Hezekiah is an archeological fact. I see no reason for skepticism here."


title: Hezekiah

text: Under Rehoboam, Lachish became the second-most important city of the kingdom of Judah. During the revolt of king Hezekiah against Assyria, it was captured by Sennacherib despite determined resistance (see Siege of Lachish).


title: Hezekiah

text: As the Lachish relief attests, Sennacherib began his siege of the city of Lachish in 701 BCE. The Lachish Relief graphically depicts the battle, and the defeat of the city, including Assyrian archers marching up a ramp and Judahites pierced through on mounted stakes. "The reliefs on these slabs" discovered in the Assyrian palace at Nineveh "originally formed a single, continuous work, measuring 8 feet ... tall by 80 feet ... long, which wrapped around the room" (559). Visitors "would have been impressed not only by the magnitude of the artwork itself but also by the magnificent strength of the Assyrian war machine."


title: Hezekiah

text: Sennacherib's Prism was found buried in the foundations of the Nineveh palace. It was written in cuneiform, the Mesopotamian form of writing of the day. The prism records the conquest of 46 strong towns and "uncountable smaller places," along with the siege of Jerusalem where Sennacherib says he just "shut him up ... like a bird in a cage," subsequently enforcing a larger tribute upon him.


title: Hezekiah

text: The Hebrew Bible states that during the night, the angel of YHWH (Hebrew: יהוה) brought death to 185,000 Assyrians troops, forcing the army to abandon the siege, yet it also records a tribute paid to Sennacherib of 300 silver talents following the siege. There is no account of the supernatural event in the prism. Sennacherib's account records his levying of a tribute from Hezekiah, a payment of 800 silver talents, which suggests a capitulation to end the siege. However, inscriptions have been discovered describing Sennacherib's defeat of the Ethiopian forces. These say: "As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke, I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities ... and conquered (them). ... Himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage." He does not claim to have captured the city. This is consistent with the Bible account of Hezekiah's revolt against Assyria in the sense that neither account seems to indicate that Sennacherib ever entered or formally captured the city. Sennacherib in this inscription claims that Hezekiah paid for tribute 800 talents of silver, in contrast with the Bible's 300, however this could be due to boastful exaggeration which was not uncommon amongst kings of the period. Furthermore, the annals record a list of booty sent from Jerusalem to Nineveh. In the inscription, Sennacherib claims that Hezekiah accepted servitude, and some theorize that Hezekiah remained on his throne as a vassal ruler. The campaign is recorded with differences in the Assyrian records and in the biblical Books of Kings; there is agreement that the Assyrian have a propensity for exaggeration.


title: Hezekiah

text: One theory that takes the biblical view posits that a defeat was caused by "possibly an outbreak of the bubonic plague". Another that this is a composite text which makes use of a 'legendary motif' analogous to that of the Exodus story.


title: Hezekiah

text: The Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484 BCE – c. 425 BCE) wrote of the invasion and acknowledges many Assyrian deaths, which he claims were the result of a plague of mice. The Jewish historian Josephus followed the writings of Herodotus. These historians record Sennacherib's failure to take Jerusalem is "uncontested".


title: Hezekiah

text: The Talmud (Bava Batra 15a) credits Hezekiah with overseeing the compilation of the biblical books of Isaiah, Proverbs, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes.


title: Hezekiah

text: According to Jewish tradition, the victory over the Assyrians and Hezekiah's return to health happened at the same time, the first night of Passover.


title: Hezekiah

text: Abi saved the life of her son Hezekiah, whom her godless husband, Ahaz, had designed as an offering to Moloch. By anointing him with the blood of the salamander, she enabled him to pass through the fire of Moloch unscathed (Sanh. 63b).


title: Hezekiah

text: Hezekiah is considered as the model of those who put their trust in the Lord. Only during his sickness did he waver in his hitherto unshaken trust and require a sign, for which he was blamed by Isaiah (Lam. R. i.). The Hebrew name "Ḥizḳiyyah" is considered by the Talmudists to be a surname, meaning either "strengthened by Yhwh" or "he who made a firm alliance between the Israelites and Yhwh"; his eight other names are enumerated in Isa. ix. 5 (Sanh. 94a). He is called the restorer of the study of the Law in the schools, and is said to have planted a sword at the door of the bet ha-midrash, declaring that he who would not study the Law should be struck with the weapon (ib. 94b).


title: Hezekiah

text: Hezekiah's piety, which, according to the Talmudists, alone occasioned the destruction of the Assyrian army and the signal deliverance of the Israelites when Jerusalem was attacked by Sennacherib, caused him to be considered by some as the Messiah (ib. 99a). According to Bar Kappara, Hezekiah was destined to be the Messiah, but the attribute of justice ("middat ha-din") protested against this, saying that as David, who sang so much the glory of God, had not been made the Messiah, still less should Hezekiah, for whom so many miracles had been performed, yet who did not sing the praise of God (ib. 94a).


title: Hezekiah

text: Hezekiah's dangerous illness was caused by the discord between him and Isaiah, each of whom desired that the other should pay him the first visit. In order to reconcile them God struck Hezekiah with a malady and ordered Isaiah to visit the sick king. Isaiah told the latter that he would die, and that his soul also would perish because he had not married and had thus neglected the commandment to perpetuate the human species. Hezekiah did not despair, however, holding to the principle that one must always have recourse to prayer. He finally married Isaiah's daughter, who bore him Manasseh. However, in Gen. R. lxv. 4, as quoted in Yalḳ., II Kings, 243, it is said that Hezekiah prayed for illness and for recovery in order that he might be warned and be able to repent of his sins. He was thus the first who recovered from illness. But in his prayer he was rather arrogant, praising himself; and this resulted in the banishment of his descendants. R. Levi said that Hezekiah's words, "and I have done what is good in thy eyes" (II Kings xx. 3), refer to his concealing a book of healing. According to the Talmudists, Hezekiah did six things, of which three agreed with the dicta of the Rabbis and three disagreed therewith. The first three were these: (1) he concealed the book of healing because people, instead of praying to God, relied on medical prescriptions; (2) he broke in pieces the brazen serpent (see Biblical Data, above); and (3) he dragged his father's remains on a pallet, instead of giving them kingly burial. The second three were: (1) stopping the water of Gihon; (2) cutting the gold from the doors of the Temple; and (3) celebrating the Passover in the second month.


title: Hezekiah

text: The question that puzzled Heinrich Ewald and others, "Where was the brazen serpent till the time of Hezekiah?" occupied the Talmudists also. They answered it in a very simple way: Asa and Joshaphat, when clearing away the idols, purposely left the brazen serpent behind, in order that Hezekiah might also be able to do a praiseworthy deed in breaking it.


title: Hezekiah

text: The Midrash reconciles the two different narratives of Hezekiah's conduct at the time of Sennacherib's invasion (see Biblical Data, above). It says that Hezekiah prepared three means of defense: prayer, presents, and war, so that the two Biblical statements complement each other. The reason why Hezekiah's display of his treasures to the Babylonian ambassadors aroused the anger of God was that Hezekiah opened before them the Ark, showing them the tablets of the covenant, and saying, "It is with this that we are victorious".


title: Hezekiah

text: Notwithstanding Hezekiah's immense riches, his meal consisted only of a pound of vegetables. The honor accorded to him after death consisted, according to R. Judah, in his bier being preceded by 36,000 men whose shoulders were bare in sign of mourning. According to R. Nehemiah, a scroll of the Law was placed on Hezekiah's bier. Another statement is that a yeshibah was established on his grave—for three days, according to some: for seven, according to others; or for thirty, according to a third authority. The Talmudists attribute to Hezekiah the redaction of the books of Isaiah, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes (B. B. 15a).


title: Hezekiah

text: Understanding the biblically recorded sequence of events in Hezekiah's life as chronological or not is critical to the contextual interpretation of his reign. According to scholar Stephen L. Harris, chapter 20 of 2 Kings does not follow the events of chapters 18 and 19 (161). Rather, the Babylonian envoys precede the Assyrian invasion and siege. Chapter 20 would have been added during the exile, and Harris says it "evidently took place before Sennacherib's invasion' when Hezekiah was "trying to recruit Babylon as an ally against Assyria.' Consequently, "Hezekiah ends his long reign impoverished and ruling over only a tiny scrap of his former domain.' Likewise, "The Archaeological Study Bible" says, "The presence of these riches' that Hezekiah shows to the Babylonians "indicates that this event took place before Hezekiah's payment of tribute to Sennacherib in 701 BC" (564). Again, "Though the king's illness and the subsequent Babylonian mission are described at the end of the accounts of his reign, they must have occurred before the war with Assyria. Thus, Isaiah's chastening of Hezekiah is due to his alliances made with other countries during the Assyrian conflict for insurance. To a reader who interprets the chapters chronologically, it would appear that Hezekiah ended his reign at a climax, but with a scholarly analysis, his end would contrarily be interpreted as a long fall from where he began".


title: Hezekiah

text: There has been considerable academic debate about the actual dates of reigns of the Israelite kings. Scholars have endeavored to synchronize the chronology of events referred to in the Hebrew Bible with those derived from other external sources. In the case of Hezekiah, scholars have noted that the apparent inconsistencies are resolved by accepting the evidence that Hezekiah, like his predecessors for four generations in the kings of Judah, had a coregency with his father, and this coregency began in 729 BCE.


title: Hezekiah

text: As an example of the reasoning that finds inconsistencies in calculations when coregencies are "a priori" ruled out, dates the fall of Samaria (the Northern Kingdom) to the 6th year of Hezekiah's reign. Albright has dated the fall of the Kingdom of Israel to 721 BCE, while Thiele calculates the date as 723 BCE. If Abright's or Thiele's dating are correct, then Hezekiah's reign would begin in either 729 or 727 BCE. On the other hand, 2 Kings 18:13 states that Sennacherib invaded Judah in the 14th year of Hezekiah's reign. Dating based on Assyrian records date this invasion to 701 BCE, and Hezekiah's reign would therefore begin in 716/715 BCE. This dating would be confirmed by the account of Hezekiah's illness in chapter 20, which immediately follows Sennacherib's departure. This would date his illness to Hezekiah's 14th year, which is confirmed by Isaiah's statement that he will live fifteen more years (29 − 15 = 14). As shown below, these problems are all addressed by scholars who make reference to the ancient Near Eastern practice of coregency.


title: Hezekiah

text: Following the approach of Wellhausen, another set of calculations shows it is probable that Hezekiah did not ascend the throne before 722 BCE. By Albright's calculations, Jehu's initial year is 842 BCE; and between it and Samaria's destruction the "Books of Kings" give the total number of the years the kings of Israel ruled as 143 7/12, while for the kings of Judah the number is 165. This discrepancy, amounting in the case of Judah to 45 years (165–120), has been accounted for in various ways; but every one of those theories must allow that Hezekiah's first six years fell before 722 BCE. (That Hezekiah began to reign before 722 BCE, however, is entirely consistent with the principle that the Ahaz/Hezekiah coregency began in 729 BCE.) Nor is it clearly known how old Hezekiah was when called to the throne, although 2 Kings states he was twenty-five years of age. His father died at the age of thirty-six; it is not likely that Ahaz at the age of eleven should have had a son. Hezekiah's own son Manasseh ascended the throne twenty-nine years later, at the age of twelve. This places his birth in the seventeenth year of his father's reign, or gives Hezekiah's age as forty-two, if he was twenty-five at his ascension. It is more probable that Ahaz was twenty-one or twenty-five when Hezekiah was born (and suggesting an error in the text), and that the latter was thirty-two at the birth of his son and successor, Manasseh.


title: Hezekiah

text: Since Albright and Friedman, several scholars have explained these dating problems on the basis of a coregency between Hezekiah and his father Ahaz between 729 and 716/715 BCE. Assyriologists and Egyptologists recognize that coregency was a practice both in Assyria and Egypt. After noting that coregencies were only used sporadically in the northern kingdom (Israel), Nadav Na'aman writes,


title: Hezekiah

text: In the kingdom of Judah, on the other hand, the nomination of a co-regent was the common procedure, beginning from David who, before his death, elevated his son Solomon to the throne. When taking into account the permanent nature of the co-regency in Judah from the time of Joash, one may dare to conclude that dating the co-regencies accurately is indeed the key for solving the problems of biblical chronology in the eighth century BC."


title: Hezekiah

text: Among the numerous scholars who have recognized the coregency between Ahaz and Hezekiah are Kenneth Kitchen in his various writings, Leslie McFall, and Jack Finegan. McFall, in his 1991 article, argues that if 729 BCE (that is, the Judean regnal year beginning in Tishri of 729) is taken as the start of the Ahaz/Hezekiah coregency, and 716/715 BCE as the date of the death of Ahaz, then all the extensive chronological data for Hezekiah and his contemporaries in the late eighth century BCE are in harmony. Further, McFall found that no textual emendations are required among the numerous dates, reign lengths, and synchronisms given in the Hebrew Testament for this period. In contrast, those who do not accept the Ancient Near Eastern principle of coregencies require multiple emendations of the Scriptural text, and there is no general agreement on which texts should be emended, nor is there any consensus among these scholars on the resultant chronology for the eighth century BCE. This is in contrast with the general consensus among those who accept the biblical and near Eastern practice of coregencies that Hezekiah was installed as coregent with his father Ahaz in 729 BCE, and the synchronisms of 2 Kings 18 must be measured from that date, whereas the synchronisms to Sennacherib are measured from the sole reign starting in 716/715 BCE. The two synchronisms to Hoshea of Israel in 2 Kings 18 are then in exact agreement with the dates of Hoshea's reign that can be determined from Assyrian sources, as is the date of Samaria's fall as stated in 2 Kings 18:10. An analogous situation of two ways of measurement, both equally valid, is encountered in the dates given for Jehoram of Israel, whose first year is synchronized to the 18th year of the sole reign of Jehoshaphat of Judah in 2 Kings 3:1 (853/852 BCE), but his reign is also reckoned according to another method as starting in the second year of the coregency of Jehoshaphat and his son Jehoram of Judah (2 Kings 1:17); both methods refer to the same calendrical year.


title: Hezekiah

text: Scholars who accept the principle of coregencies note that abundant evidence for their use is found in the biblical material itself. The agreement of scholarship built on these principles with both biblical and secular texts was such that the Thiele/McFall chronology was accepted as the best chronology for the kingdom period in Jack Finegan's encyclopedic "Handbook of Biblical Chronology".


title: Phyllida Law

text: Phyllida Ann Law (born 8 May 1932) is a British actress, known for her numerous roles in film and television.


title: Phyllida Law

text: Law was born in Glasgow, the daughter of Meg "Mego" and William Law, a journalist. Prior to the Second World War, her father was a journalist with the "Glasgow Herald" who "kept odd hours"; when the war broke out, he went into the air force and separated from his wife, later divorcing. Law would not see her father again until she was 18. Law's mother Meg worked in a dress shop in Glasgow during the war. The family also included Law's brother, James, her elder by five years, and their maternal grandmother, the wife of a Presbyterian minister, and "a fierce Presbyterian" herself whom Law "did not like as a child but can now admire."


title: Phyllida Law

text: She attended Glasgow Girls High up to age seven. The war began in September 1939 and Law and her brother were evacuated to family friends outside Glasgow in Lenzie, East Dunbartonshire, and attended a local school there, before Law transferred to Skelmorlie, Ayrshire, and then a school near the Clyde. At 13 she passed an entrance exam for Badminton School in Bristol, and became a boarder there. Leaving the school at 17, she initially accepted a place at university to read French and Literature, but disliked the experience and left. She then auditioned for the Bristol Old Vic School, intending to train as a stage designer, and discovered – by "happy mistake" – that she wanted to act instead.


title: Phyllida Law

text: Law was married to actor Eric Thompson from 1957 until his death in 1982. Their daughters, Emma and Sophie Thompson, are both actresses.


title: Phyllida Law

text: Law has worked extensively in television, including appearances in "Dixon of Dock Green", "Rumpole of the Bailey" and the 1972 adaptation of the Lord Peter Wimsey tale "The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club". She appeared in films such as "Peter's Friends" (1992), "Much Ado About Nothing" (1993) (playing Ursula, alongside daughter Emma as Beatrice) and "The Winter Guest" (1997) (playing Elspeth, alongside daughter Emma as Frances).


title: Phyllida Law

text: She was in the original London cast of "La Cage aux Folles" at the London Palladium in 1986, playing the role of Jacqueline.


title: Phyllida Law

text: In 2004, she guest-starred in the "Rosemary & Thyme" episode entitled "Orpheus in the Undergrowth" as May Beauchamp. In 2007 she guest-starred in two "Doctor Who" spin-off adventures: as Bea Nelson-Stanley in "The Sarah Jane Adventures" story "Eye of the Gorgon" and as Beldonia in the audio drama "Doctor Who: The Bride of Peladon". In 1963 Law had auditioned for one of the original four regular leads in "Doctor Who", "Miss McGovern". She did not win the part, the name of which was subsequently changed to Barbara Wright.


title: Phyllida Law

text: Also in 2007 she played Aunt Auriel in the drama "Kingdom" starring Stephen Fry. In 2008 she appeared as a guest star in "Foyle's War".


title: Phyllida Law

text: In November 2009, Law published her first book. "Notes to my Mother-In-Law" concerns the 17 years Law's mother-in-law lived with the family from the mid-1960s until her death. In January 2010 she appeared with Tony Slattery on "Ready Steady Cook". She starred alongside John Hurt in a short film entitled "Love at First Sight" which was shortlisted for an Oscar in 2012.


title: Phyllida Law

text: In 2013 Law received an Honorary Doctorate from Glasgow Caledonian University and an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.


title: Phyllida Law

text: Law was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2014 Birthday Honours by The Queen for services to drama and for charitable services.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL ) is a standardized test to measure the English language ability of non-native speakers wishing to enroll in English-speaking universities. The test is accepted by more than 11,000 universities and other institutions in over 190 countries and territories. TOEFL is one of several major English-language tests in the world, others including IELTS, Cambridge Assessment English and Trinity College London exams.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: TOEFL is a trademark of the Educational Testing Service (ETS), a private non-profit organization, which designs and administers the tests. ETS issues official score reports which are sent independently to institutions and are valid for two years following the test.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: In 1962, a national council made up of representatives of thirty government and private organizations was formed to address the problem of ensuring English language proficiency for non-native speakers wishing to study at U.S. universities. This council recommended the development and administration of the TOEFL exam for the 1963-1965 timings .


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: The test was originally developed at the Center for Applied Linguistics under the direction of Stanford University applied linguistics professor Dr. Charles A. Ferguson.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: The TOEFL test was first administered in 1964 by the Modern Language Association financed by grants from the Ford Foundation and Danforth Foundation.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: In 1965, The College Board and ETS jointly assumed responsibility for the continuation of the TOEFL testing program.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: In 1973, a cooperative arrangement was made between ETS, The College Board, and the Graduate Record Examinations board of advisers to oversee and run the program. ETS was to administer the exam with the guidance of the TOEFL board.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: To the present day, college admission criteria for international students who are nationals of some of the Commonwealth nations exempt them from taking the TOEFL exam. Nations which are part of the English-speaking world (from most Commonwealth realms to former British colonies e.g., Hong Kong SAR or former protectorates of the United States (Philippines, Puerto Rico) where English is the de facto official language automatically grants a TOEFL exemption with some restrictions (e.g., residents of Quebec are required to take TOEFL while the rest of Canada is exempt - also inclusive of Commonwealth nations where English is not an official language e.g., Mozambique or Namibia (English is co-official but spoken by 3% of the population)). However, this does not apply to some Commonwealth nations outside the Anglosphere, due to the IELTS, such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc., even though they may have English as the de facto official language.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: The TOEFL Internet-based test (iBT) measures all four academic English skills- reading, listening, speaking, and writing. Since its introduction in late 2005, the Internet-based Test format has progressively replaced the computer-based tests (CBT) and paper-based tests (PBT), although paper-based testing is still used in select areas. The TOEFL iBT test has been introduced in phases, with the United States, Canada, France, Germany, and Italy in 2005 and the rest of the world in 2006, with test centers added regularly. It is offered weekly at authorized test centers. The CBT was discontinued in September 2006 and these scores are no longer valid.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: Initially, the demand for test seats was higher than availability, and candidates had to wait for months. It is now possible to take the test within one to four weeks in most countries. Now, people who wish to take the test create an account on the official website to find the closest place. In the past this test lasted 4 hours, today people can choose to take the test around 3 hours. The test consists of four sections, each measuring one of the basic language skills (while some tasks require integrating multiple skills), and all tasks focus on language used in an academic, higher-education environment. Note-taking is allowed during the TOEFL iBT test. The test cannot be taken more than once every 3 days, starting from September 2019.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: One of the sections of the test will include extra, uncounted material. Educational Testing Service includes extra material to pilot test questions for future test forms. When test-takers are given a longer section, they should give equal effort to all of the questions because they do not know which question will count and which will be considered extra. For example, if there are four reading passages instead of three, then one of the passages will not be counted. Any of the four could be the uncounted one.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: The TOEFL iBT Home Edition is essentially the same test as the TOEFL iBT. However, it is taken at home while a human proctor watches through a web-camera (usually built-in to most laptops) and via sharing of the computer screen. The popularity of the Home Edition has grown during the COVID-19 pandemic as it has been the only option during lock-downs. Many students experience technical or security problems during the Home Edition tests. The ETS browser used to administer the test has been unreliable in many cases. Students who have their exams interrupted are not likely to get a refund or the chance to reschedule for a new test as the ETS as technical problems are hard to document and the processing of a complaint is slow due to the popularity of the Home Edition and the number of complaints. If the test runs smoothly, the results are accepted by most companies and universities that accept the TOEFL iBT standard edition.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: The TOEFL Paper-delivered Test is an official test for use where the internet test is unavailable, usually due to internet & computer issues.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: It consists of the Listening, Reading, and Writing sections, with scores that are the same scale as the Internet Based Test. There is no total score. Not all centers have the possibility of delivering this type of test, so it will generally be necessary to reschedule the day of the test on another available day.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: The TOEFL paper-based Test (PBT) was still available in limited areas until 2017, when it was replaced by the Paper-delivered test. Scores are valid for two years after the test date, and test takers can have their scores sent to institutions or face time.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: There are three different categories of accommodations that can be utilized for TOEFL test takers. Some of these accommodations are available for all students and some are only available for those with certain disabilities. If the accommodation the student requires isn't available then requests can be made through the Testing Accommodations Request Form. For questions, ETS provides Disability Services that can be contacted.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: The TOEFL PBT was discontinued at the end of May 2017. Official testing in areas without internet or computers now uses the TOEFL PDT.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: Most colleges use TOEFL scores as only one factor in their admission process, with a college or program within a college often setting a minimum TOEFL score required. The minimum TOEFL iBT scores range from 64 (Conservatorium van Amsterdam) to 110 (University of Oxford).


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: "TOEFL ITP" ("ITP" stands for "Institutional Testing Program") tests are paper-based and use academic content to evaluate the English-language proficiency of non-native English speakers. The tests use new and previously administered TOEFL test questions and are used for placement, progress, evaluation, exit testing and other situations. The test scores, format and content of the test matches the "TOEFL PBT", with the exception of not including the TWE (Test of Written Expression).


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: Unlike the TOEFL iBT and PBT tests, "TOEFL ITP" tests are administered by the institution and for internal use. It should not replace the need for the TOEFL iBT test, which is administered securely and includes Speaking and Writing components. There are two levels of TOEFL ITP: Level 1 (intermediate to advanced) and Level 2 (high beginning to intermediate)."TOEFL ITP" scores are mapped to the CEFR and test takers are provided with a certificate of achievement.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: ETS also offers the "TOEFL Junior" tests, a general assessment of middle school-level English-language proficiency. It is intended for students aged 11+.The tests are administered in two formats: "TOEFL Junior" Standard (on paper) and "TOEFL Junior" Comprehensive (via computer). The "TOEFL Junior" Standard test has three sections: Reading Comprehension, Listening Comprehension and Language Form and Meaning. The "TOEFL Junior" Comprehensive test has four: Reading Comprehension, Listening Comprehension, Speaking, and Writing. "TOEFL Junior" scores are mapped to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and test takers are provided with a certificate of achievement.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: The test is scored on a scale of 0 to 300 on each section, added up to determine the total score (0 - 900). The minimum passing score is 600, corresponding to 200 scores for each section.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: The TOEFL family of tests has also created the TOEFL Primary test. It is designed for students between the ages of eight and eleven. The test is divided into 3 sections: reading and listening - step 1, reading and listening - step 2, and speaking. Depending on the fluency of student's English, they will be expected to take either the step 1 or step 2 test. Students are expected to take two of the three sections, depending on their communicative skills in English. They will take either the step 1 or step 2 test. The reading and listening tests can be done on paper or digitally, but the speaking test is only available digitally.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: While the other TOEFL test scores are valid for two years, this test is only valid for one. This is because of how quickly children grow in their communicative abilities.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: Scores for these tests range from 101-115 for the reading and listening, and 1-27 on the speaking portion.


title: Test of English as a Foreign Language

text: <nowiki>*</nowiki>Note: the above comparison scores are provided by ETS, the company that creates the TOEFL tests. Other charts show different ranges


title: Michael Berryman

text: Michael John Berryman (born September 4, 1948) is an American character actor. Berryman was born with hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia, a rare condition characterized by the absence of sweat glands, hair, and fingernails; his unusual physical appearance has allowed Berryman to make a career out of portraying characters in horror movies and B movies. He came to prominence with his roles in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" in 1975 and "The Hills Have Eyes" in 1977. He has appeared in several movies and television shows, including "Star Trek" and "The X-Files".


title: Michael Berryman

text: Berryman is a strong advocate for environmental protection and lived on a wolf sanctuary for ten years. He is of partial German descent.


title: Michael Berryman

text: Berryman's father was a US Naval surgeon and was deployed to the Hiroshima fallout zone in the wake of the atomic bombing.


title: Michael Berryman

text: Berryman played Pluto in Wes Craven's 1977 horror film "The Hills Have Eyes" and the 1985 sequel "The Hills Have Eyes Part II". He has also made appearances in the science fiction and fantasy movies "My Science Project" (1985), "Weird Science" (1985), "Armed Response" (1986), "Evil Spirits" (1990), "The Guyver" (1991), and "Brutal" (2007). He appeared in the 1975 Academy Award-winning drama "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". His time on set for "The Hills Have Eyes" proved difficult for him, since, during the 4-month shoot, temperatures in the desert routinely surpassed 100 degrees Fahrenheit and, without sweat glands, he had to take special precautions to avoid suffering heatstroke.


title: Michael Berryman

text: He had a role in "The Crow" (1994) as "The Skull Cowboy", Eric Draven's guide to the land of the living. Berryman's scenes were cut from the original theatrical release, but can be found on some DVD releases under "Deleted Scenes".


title: Michael Berryman

text: He has appeared in "" and some episodes of "The X-Files". He appeared in the 1985 Mötley Crüe video for "Smokin' In the Boys Room", as well as the introduction to the band's song "Home Sweet Home". He also portrayed the devil in two episodes of "Highway to Heaven": "The Devil and Jonathan Smith" (1985) and "I Was a Middle-Aged Werewolf" (1987).


title: Michael Berryman

text: Berryman is a popular draw at genre conventions, such as the 2002 Horrorfind convention in Baltimore, Maryland, and the 2007 Eerie Horror Film Festival in Erie, Pennsylvania. He also appeared in 2001 and 2002 at the Horrorfind convention in Baltimore, Maryland and in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on June 7 and 8 attending as a guest of "The Milwaukee County Massacre", a horror film convention and music festival. Berryman appeared at the "Scarefest" convention in Lexington, Kentucky, and at the Spooky Empire convention in Orlando, Florida on October 17–19, 2008. He appeared in Roseville, Minnesota at Crypticon 2008 for "A November to Dismember" on November 14–16, 2008 for the show's third year.


title: Michael Berryman

text: Berryman starred in the British-Canadian horror film "Below Zero (2012)", directed by Justin Thomas Orstensen. He was also a special guest at the third annual San Antonio Horrific Film Fest in August 2010, the Cinema Wasteland convention in April 2011 and the Contamination Convention in Missouri in June 2012.