text: Teenage and adult fans have shown interest in clothing with images from the show; Erin Comella, brand manager for "My Little Pony", said that these fans are "literally dressed in the brand". Hasbro has been providing its licensed clothing vendors such as Hot Topic with "My Little Pony"-themed shirts and other apparel for all genders and multiple age groups. In part of the older fanbase, Hasbro has come to consider "My Little Pony" as a "lifestyle" brand, and , has arranged over 200 licenses across fifteen categories of products. According to Julie Duffy, Hasbro's vice president of global brand publicity, while their primary market is the young demographic, "[Hasbro has] found ways to strike the right balance by working with licensees to offer [their] adult fans exciting merchandise geared just for them". Though Hasbro has not revealed how much of "My Little Pony" product sales are bolstered by the brony fandom, Caitlin Dewey of "The Washington Post" suggests that the continued success of the franchise four years after its introduction is tied in part to bronies' interest in the show and products, and Hasbro's williness to market products towards the adult audience.


title: My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fandom

text: Hasbro and Hub Network have used advertising parodying others' works that are more geared towards the adult fans. Hub Network used a promotional billboard in Los Angeles showing the pony characters parodying the films "Bridesmaids" and "Poltergeist". Hub Network also made a parody of Apple's App Store, which included the phrase, "There's a pony for that." A promotional campaign leading up to the second season finale, "A Canterlot Wedding", in which Twilight's brother Shining Armor marries Princess Cadance, parodied elements of the 2011 British royal wedding, including the placement of an advertisement in the "New York Times" wedding announcement section.


text: At the onset of the fandom, Hasbro was generally tolerant of uploads of content and derivative works on sites such as YouTube. However, in late 2011, a fan-run website called "Ponyarchive" that was reposting for no cost the complete high-definition episodes that were being sold on iTunes closed down after receiving cease and desist letters from Hasbro. The otherwise "hands-off" policy has enabled the growth of the fandom. In another case, Hasbro was required to take legal action to protect the "My Little Pony" trademark against a group working on a massively multiplayer online game, "MLP: Online", though the developers, after working with Hasbro's legal team, are seeking to develop a new "Friendship Is Magic"-related game without the trademark issues. Though many fan-created videos combine copyright footage of "Friendship Is Magic" with adult elements from films inappropriate for children like "Inglourious Basterds" or foul language from musical artists such as Wu-Tang Clan, Hasbro has not taken a stance against these videos and has recognized that the parodies and remixes form a culture of participation that has helped to draw larger attention to the show. In light of the Stop Online Piracy Act, Daniel Nye Griffiths of "Forbes" considered the fans' re-use of copyrighted works and creation of new works from them as examples of the inevitable result of any media gaining a fandom, and praised Hasbro for embracing the means to extend the brand through this instead of trying endlessly to stop such infringements. More recently, Hasbro has taken a more proactive stance, including issuing cease and desist letters to more visible projects such as "" and "MLP Online", and selling episodes on YouTube, which in turn has caused some fan videos to run afoul of YouTube's Content ID system.


text: A monthly "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic" comic began its run in November 2012 by IDW Publishing. The comic, like the show, is aimed to appeal to younger children with their parents, but includes various pop culture and fandom nods to draw in the older readers. IDW has reported that over 100,000 copies of the first issue were pre-ordered, outselling numerous other comic for that month, and making it the best selling issue in IDW's history, as well as one of the best selling single issue comics of 2012. IDW have made plans to reprint the first issue to meet further demand as well as republish the first set as a standalone volume early in 2013. The monthly comic and its separate "micro-series", featuring single-issue stories that focus on one character, have regularly been along the top 100 issues sold each month, one of the few non-DC, non-Marvel comics outside of "The Walking Dead" that appear in this list, and remain IDW's top-selling publication.


text: In addition to releasing official digital albums of songs from the show due to brony demand, Hasbro has worked with Lakeshore Records to create an album of EDM remixes of the show's songs, entitled "DJPON3 Presents My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Remixed" inspired by the numerous fan remixes.


text: The adult fandom has been perceived negatively by others, with coverage of the brony fandom overshadowing the show itself. Much of the fandom's ridicule from others comes from the perception of the mostly adult male fanbase enjoying a show that is marketed to the young female demographic. Through this, the brony community has encountered ridicule through trolling on internet forums, not only from its inception at 4chan, but after moving away from the site. This has also been called out in conservative popular media. The Fox News Channel comedy talk program "Red Eye" poked fun at the fandom because it largely consists of young adult males. Commenting on Schlichter's article, Greg Pollowitz of "National Review Online" wrote that considering the target audience he could not understand the show's appeal to adult men. Jerry Springer attempted to bring bronies onto his talk for a segment on "Outrageously Guilty Pleasures", though fans warned others about the potential ridicule.


text: The gender-based criticism has also affected younger male fans of the show, such as with Michael Morones above. Another story that gained national attention was that of Grayson Bruce, a nine-year-old fan who was told to stop bringing a Rainbow Dash backpack to school to prevent bullying that he was receiving. An online campaign to show support for Grayson gained over 32,000 supporters on its Facebook page, and the brony fanbase, the show's creators and voice actors, and various news commentators including Glenn Beck, Ronan Farrow and Eugene Volokh have stood up for the boy's actions. The school later revised its decision after speaking to the family and clarifying it was not trying to blame the child for the incident.


text: Rebecca Angel, writing for "Wired"s Geekmom column, described some of the negative feedback from fellow writers about the mostly male brony culture that included accusations of pedophilia and immaturity. Angel defended the fandom's culture, describing adult fans' interest as a form of escapism, and that the show provides characters they can relate to and talk about with other fans. She also acknowledged the double standard whereas females can watch male-oriented entertainment without question, while male bronies receive criticism about their interest in the show. Angel later described the brony fandom as rebellious towards gender roles, stating that "having interests that go against what men are supposed to embrace is the sneakiest kind of rebellion". In a similar vein, an "Idea Channel" segment from the Public Broadcasting Service said that the ridicule received by the brony community is partly because the male appreciation for the show challenges preconceived notions of gender roles in the mass media.


text: Some media have been critical of the adult-oriented material created by fans. In some cases, these videos may appear in Internet searches that children may perform while looking for online copies of the program or while searching for images of characters from the show, forcing parents to have to discuss pornography and sex with their children. For example, the parody series "PONY.MOV", animated by animator Max Gilardi in the style of John Kricfalusi, places the characters in explicit adult situations and was described by the web site io9 as "disgusting ... and most certainly NSFW". Fans acknowledge that such material is generated by a subset of the group, but consider it "an unavoidable part of any online fandom", as described by "TV Guide"s Sadie Gennis, and do not worry about this facet.


text: A study performed by graduate students from the University of Connecticut found that "a particularly extreme subset" of the brony fandom shows characteristics of hegemonic masculinity, where male members strive to keep their majority in the numbers by purposely excluding and alienating females. Sherilyn Connelly and others have noted that bronies alienate other fans of the franchise by focusing on the fandom itself rather than the franchise. She also said that bronies created an atmosphere of entitlement and anger when the franchise didn't accommodate the fans' demands, resulting in a culture where death threats are made publicly and lightly.


text: Since the fandom's birth on 4chan in 2010, many media outlets have been critical of a vocal portion of the fandom that advocates racist and white nationalist ideologies. The New York Post reported that My Little Pony was a popular show among white nationalist and neo-fascist groups. "Vice" reported on alt-right attempts to infiltrate brony and furry fandoms, where edgy and politically incorrect memes proliferated. In "Rolling Stone", journalist Lauren Orsini acknowledged that extremist subsets of the fandom had existed since at least the mid-2010s.


text: Kaitlyn Tiffany, writing for "The Atlantic" described the popularity of fanart with racist or violent imagery and accounts who post extremist views on imageboards, particularly 4chan's "Politically Incorrect" and "My Little Pony" boards. "Mic" reported that there was an increasing amount of anti-racist content during the George Floyd protests. In response, Derpibooru, the most popular brony fanart site, officially banned racist content in 2020.


text: In 2014, a fan-created pony character called "Aryanne" entered circulation, featuring white fur, a blonde mane, blue eyes and a swastika cutie-mark; over 2,000 fan created images of the character were found on the fan site Derpibooru. In 2016, during Donald Trump's campaign for President, images of My Little Pony characters wearing Make America Great Again hats, and Pit Viper sunglasses were commonly found on brony fan sites. "The New Republic" published an op-ed that decried the fandom's white nationalist aspects, saying "Yes, there is a connection between white identity politics and My Little Pony", saying that many on the alt-right supported the show because they viewed the fictional land Equestria as being an "example of nationalist politics."


text: Radical aspects of the fandom were scrutinized by the media after the Indianapolis FedEx shooting on April 15, 2021. The shooter, Brandon Scott Hole, frequently posted "My Little Pony" content to his Facebook page. Fans of the show quickly condemned Hole's actions and the racist views espoused by a small subset of the fandom.


text: Before Hasbro revived the toy series with its "Friendship Is Magic" line, the "My Little Pony" toys were collected mainly by women who grew up with the toys during the 1980s and 1990s. Bonnie Zacherle, the original creator of the franchise, noted that the toys and show were originally conceived to appeal to preschool children of both genders, and considers it a "good thing" for the adult fandom to have the same appreciation of the show as the collectors. According to Summer Hayes, author of six books about "My Little Pony" toy collections and organizer of the annual "My Little Pony" collectors' fair, some of these collectors appreciated the attention of the brony community. Hayes said that the brony community has participated in the toy fair, and that other collectors resent the sudden popularity of "Friendship Is Magic". She said that these earlier fans and collectors had thought; " ... what about us? We've been here forever, and nobody seemed to care. But now that there are all these guys in their 20s that are crazy about it, it's suddenly important and it means something." Hayes also said, "To the bronies, I say, I think My Little Pony is awesome, so more power to you".


text: The adult fandom has gained media attention through outlets such as "Wired", Fox News Channel and "The Wall Street Journal". Stephen Colbert gave a shout-out to the brony fandom at least twice on his comedy news show, "The Colbert Report", although since then his positive connection with the fan base has become questionable. Erin Burnett of CNN's "Outfront" reported on the 2012 Summer BronyCon, and ended the segment with a recolored character from the show representing the pony version of herself. The fans gave her some artwork of her character as a way of "welcoming [her] to the herd". NPR's comedy radio show "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" highlighted the brony fandom in an episode in June 2011, and the following week quizzed former US President Bill Clinton about elements from the show during a telephone interview segment called "Not My Job"; Clinton correctly answered the three multiple choice questions, leading at least one journalist to jokingly refer to him as a brony. An episode of "Hot In Cleveland" dealing with fan conventions included references to the brony fandom.


text: Lexicographer Grant Barrett listed "brony" as a memorable new word of 2011. "Time" named "the bronies" as the ninth-best meme of 2011, the Internet meme research site Know Your Meme listed it among its top ten memes of 2011, and "PC Magazine" named it one of 2011's top memes.


text: The adult fandom of "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic" has led to references to the program in popular culture. The animated television show "Mad" spoofed "Friendship Is Magic" at least twice; one segment was called "My Little War Horse". An episode of "Bob's Burgers", "The Equestranauts", satirized bronies and their conventions. A secret level in the video game "Diablo III" included enemies named "Rainbow Western", "Midnight Sparkle" and "Nightmarity", alluding to "Friendship Is Magic". Owlchemy Labs added a "Brony Mode" to their video game "Snuggle Truck" as free downloadable content in October 2012 specifically as a nod to the brony community. The mode replaces the fuzzy animals in the game with "Friendship Is Magic"-inspired ponies which the user must drive safely across a landscape. An extended character, the Mechromancer, available as downloadable content for the game "Borderlands 2", includes numerous references to the show and the fans through the character's skill tree. "Bronies: The Musical" is a 2014 off-Broadway production written by Tom Moore and Heidi Powers that is inspired by the brony culture, and won for Best Musical in the Hollywood Fringe Festival. The popularity of the show as a result of the brony fandom led to a brief bit of animation created by the show to be used in an NFL advertisement during Super Bowl XLIX. An episode in Season 3 of "The Toys That Made Us" covers the "My Little Pony" brand and includes discussions of the brony fandom.


text: The Pirate Party Germany's parliamentary group in the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin (the Berlin state parliament) has insisted on the inclusion of a break called "pony time", in which an episode from the series is shown, during their meetings at their parliamentary office, which displeased many other members in the Berlin parliament. The internet activist group Anonymous used the character Rainbow Dash to deface the website of the Social Democratic Party of Austria in 2011 and 2012. A teenage white hat hacker used the name "Pinkie Pie" for anonymity and a fan drawing of the character wielding an axe as part of a successful entry in an early 2012 contest sponsored by Google Chrome to break the security of the web browser; the same user also was the first to break the security in a second contest held later in 2012, and found an important security flaw in the Linux kernel. A May 2013 update to Google Hangouts included an easter egg that would have "Friendship Is Magic"-inspired ponies run across the chat window. A similar update in August 2013 as part of YouTube's "Geek Week" added two easter eggs, one that would cause ponies to cross the screen on searching for "bronies", and a second that, if searching on a number of different pony names like "Twilight Sparkle", would change the site's title bar to a representative color of that pony.


text: An article that appeared in the "New York Times" on December 26, 2011, "Navigating Love and Autism" by Amy Harmon, described how a young woman with Asperger syndrome used "My Little Pony" characters to relieve stress. She visualized the character Twilight Sparkle whenever she "found herself in a bad-mood rut". The story misidentified Twilight Sparkle as Fluttershy on initial publication and the paper issued a correction, which some journalists have jokingly considered as "the best New York Times correction ever", though others saw it as a sign of the journalistic integrity of the "Times". Harmon was contacted by fans about the mistake, and said, "I hate to get anything wrong, but I confess to some enjoyment in finding the right way to phrase this one." In 2015, the "New York Times" reported that Dylann Roof, the sole perpetrator of the Charleston church shooting, was a fan of "My Little Pony", but later corrected itself after recognizing it had been duped in an experiment run by a blogger who had faked the claim but made it as credible as possible as to test how little fact checking major news sources were doing on a high-interest topic.


text: The musician Andrew W.K. said that he strongly identifies with the overenthusiastic character of Pinkie Pie. He said, "She's another creature, much like I am in this world, who is doing everything she can to have fun," and that he feels inspired by the character spreading excitement and joy to others. He hosted a panel called "What Would Pinkie Pie Do?" at the Canterlot Gardens convention in September 2012, and described it as "the most intense experience of [his] life".


text: Lena Hall, a Broadway actress and singer, stated she watches the show as it makes her feel "super happy" and appreciates the lessons the show teaches, and considers herself a "Pegasister". In winning the 2014 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, Hall ended her acceptance speech mentioning the television show's subtitle, "Friendship Is Magic". Over four months after her shout-out at the Tonys, Hall announced on her Twitter that she would be a guest star in the show's fifth season, and soon appeared in the episode "The Mane Attraction" as Coloratura/Rara. Upon the episode's premiere, Hall live streamed her reaction to the episode with her niece on Periscope and letting viewers ask questions during the commercial breaks, she went into detail about her experiences behind the scenes of the production of the episode and her history with the show itself, admitting to binge-watching the first three seasons of the show when she first started to watch it.


text: After a call-out to bronies on Twitter by fellow professional wrestler Dolph Ziggler, Xavier Woods publicly identified as a brony in March 2015. Woods and his fellow members of The New Day, a wrestling stable who were WWE Raw Tag Team Champions at the time (and would go on to become the longest reigning team in WWE history), subsequently added unicorn imagery as a part of their gimmick, even claiming to possess "unicorn magic" to help them in their matches. They also named one of their signature moves the "Unicorn Stampede".


text: Actor Billy Bob Thornton admitted to watching the show during a 2016 interview with "GQ". He and his daughter Bella used to watch "My Little Pony", which she eventually grew out of, and when searching for the series to watch again, came across "Friendship Is Magic" and started watching it with her. He also liked the show's positive messages about how the world works, pointing to "The Cutie Map" as an example. On an episode of "Late Night with Seth Meyers", Thornton also claimed that while his daughter's favorite character is Twilight Sparkle, his favorites were Fluttershy (who he said was his favorite because "she talks like Marilyn Monroe") and Rainbow Dash.


text: William Shatner confirmed himself to be a brony through his personal Twitter, and had been a guest star in the show's 's episode "The Perfect Pear", along with Felicia Day, who appeared in the very same episode.


text: The CEO of Valve, Gabe Newell, has stated on multiple occasions that he is a fan of the show and is indeed a brony.


title: North American XF-108 Rapier

text: The North American XF-108 Rapier was a proposed long-range, high-speed interceptor aircraft designed by North American Aviation intended to defend the United States from supersonic Soviet strategic bombers. The aircraft would have cruised at speeds around with an unrefueled combat radius over , and was equipped with radar and missiles offering engagement ranges up to against bomber-sized targets.


title: North American XF-108 Rapier

text: To limit development costs, the program shared engine development with the North American XB-70 Valkyrie strategic bomber program, and used a number of elements of earlier interceptor projects. The program had progressed only as far as the construction of a single wooden mockup when it was cancelled in 1959, due to a shortage of funds and the Soviets' adoption of ballistic missiles as their primary means of nuclear attack. Had it flown, the F-108 would have been the heaviest fighter of its era.


title: North American XF-108 Rapier

text: Prior to the project's cancellation, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower noted that raising the F-108 interceptor force would have cost the U.S. taxpayer $4 billion (equivalent to $ billion today).


title: North American XF-108 Rapier

text: During the early 1950s, the USAF proposed a very high-performance, long-range interceptor. On 20 July 1955, formal development of what became known as the Long-Range Interceptor, Experimental (LRI-X) was approved, planned as an F-102 Delta Dagger/F-106 Delta Dart replacement. The specification was laid down on 6 October 1955, calling for an interceptor that could fly at at a speed of Mach 1.7 (, with a range of . It was to have a two-man crew and at least two engines. A further consideration was that an integrated fire-control system would be fitted, allowing the interception of a bomber at and three targets to be destroyed during a single mission.


title: North American XF-108 Rapier

text: Of the eight interested companies, contracts for preliminary studies were issued to North American Aviation, Lockheed and Northrop on 11 October 1955, five days after the specification's release. Of the paper designs, the North American proposal, dubbed "NA-236", seemed the most promising. The NA-236 shared some similarities with the XF-108, although the most obvious differences were the additions of two finlets at the midspan of the horizontal stabilizers, and canards. Political and budgetary difficulties led to the cancellation of the program on 9 May 1956.


title: North American XF-108 Rapier

text: After considerable confusion, the program was reinstated on 11 April 1957 with North American awarded a contract for two prototypes. The designation F-108 was issued, also known as "Weapon System 202A" (WS-202A). North American's company designation was "NA-257", although it was basically identical to the NA-236. At the time, Air Defense Command anticipated an order for 480 aircraft.


title: North American XF-108 Rapier

text: The resulting design went through considerable evolution, owing to both its cutting-edge technology and continual redefinition of the USAF requirements. Early revisions prominently featured canards, with a span of , and a wing of 53.5° sweep. The aircraft in this configuration would have had a maximum takeoff weight of with a operational ceiling. In addition to the F-108's interceptor role, North American proposed it as a penetration fighter to aid its own B-70 Valkyrie supersonic bomber prototype. Commonality between the B-70 bomber and the F-108 included the escape capsule and General Electric YJ93 engines. Another role considered was for the F-108 to be "gap-fillers" for the Distant Early Warning (DEW) system; because of its great speed, the F-108 could have scanned up to per hour.


title: North American XF-108 Rapier

text: From September 1958, substantial engineering and design changes were implemented; however, SAC had lost interest in the escort fighter concept. To accompany the B-70 all the way to its target and back, the F-108 in its initial concept would have, at best, marginal range. On 30 December 1958, YF-108A preproduction aircraft on order were reduced from 31 to 20 test aircraft and the first test flight was delayed from February to April 1961. The eventual design, which was built as a full-sized XF-108 mockup, was displayed to Air Force officials on 17–20 January 1959. The project was given the name "Rapier" on 15 May 1959, following a contest by the Air Defense Command asking airmen for suggestions.


title: North American XF-108 Rapier

text: Even as the XF-108 program was progressing well, there were signs that would ultimately lead to its eventual cancellation. Unconfirmed Soviet bomber threats, the overwhelming trend toward offensive and defensive nuclear missiles in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as well as rising costs, contributed to the termination of the XF-108. The cancellation was announced on 23 September 1959. North American continued refining the design through 1960 in hopes that the program might be revived. Despite the extra money and time spent on the Rapier, it was not wholly in vain; the North American A-5 Vigilante supersonic carrier-based nuclear strike bomber developed for the U.S. Navy, which was later modified into a carrier-based reconnaissance aircraft, retained the fuselage/weapon package and systems design of the Rapier. In many ways the Vigilante could be seen as the successful application of the Rapier design principles in a Mach 2 supersonic design.


title: North American XF-108 Rapier

text: Hughes Aircraft would continue the development of the advanced fire control system and the GAR-9 missile. Development of the F-108 radar and missiles was continued by the USAF and the system was eventually used in the Lockheed YF-12 program. The final configuration for the rear cockpit in the YF-12A looked similar to that of the F-108 since it incorporated the same displays and controls required for the Hughes AN/ASG-18 fire control system.


title: North American XF-108 Rapier

text: The initial F-108 configuration featured a very large "cranked" delta wing. There were fixed ventral stabilizers on the wings, mounted at mid-span, and a tall all-moving vertical tailfin, supplemented by two ventral stabilizers that extended when the landing gear retracted. Although some earlier versions of the design had separate tailplanes or forward canards, both were abandoned in the final design. The large fuselage and wing had two and five fuel tanks, respectively, giving an estimated combat radius of some . Top speed was estimated at , about Mach 3, at . The aircraft was powered by two General Electric J93 turbojet engines, also used in North American's XB-70 Valkyrie bomber, in the fuselage.


title: North American XF-108 Rapier

text: The F-108 was intended to carry the Hughes AN/ASG-18 radar, the U.S.'s first pulse-Doppler radar set. It was to have look-down/shoot-down capability, but could track only one target at a time. The radar was paired with an infra-red search and tracking (IRST) system on the wing leading edges. The radar was used to guide the Hughes GAR-9 (later redesignated AIM-47) air-to-air missile, three of which would be carried on a rotary launcher in an internal weapons bay. The GAR-9 was a very large, long-range weapon with its own radar set for terminal homing. It was intended to fly at Mach 6, with a range of almost .


title: North American XF-108 Rapier

text: As part of WS-202A, a design for a high-speed (Mach 3+) aerial target for use in testing the F-108's weapons system was proposed. The Wright Air Development Center requested the designation XQ-11 for the target design; the request was denied due to the early stage of development, and the F-108 program was cancelled before further work was undertaken.


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: Survivor is the third studio album by American girl group Destiny's Child. It was released in Japan on April 25, 2001, and in the US on May 1, 2001, by Columbia Records. The album features production by lead singer Beyoncé Knowles and J.R. Rotem, with additional production from Poke & Tone, Cory Rooney and Mark J. Feist. Four singles were released from the album: "Survivor", "Bootylicious", a cover of Samantha Sang's "Emotion", and "Nasty Girl".


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: The album was a massive commercial success, debuting at number one in over fifteen countries across Europe, North America and other continents. In the United States, the album debuted at number one on the "Billboard" 200 chart with first-week sales of 663,000 copies, the highest first-week sales figures of any female group in the SoundScan era, and stayed at number one for two consecutive weeks. It earned Destiny's Child two Grammy Award nominations for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, and Best R&B Album. "Survivor" was certified quadruple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on January 7, 2002. "Billboard" ranked "Survivor" at number 70 on the magazine's Top 200 Albums of the Decade.


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: The album has sold over 4.7 million copies in the United States and over 10 million copies worldwide.


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: In December 1999, LeToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson tried to split with their manager, Mathew Knowles, claiming that he was keeping too much of the group's profits and that he favored Beyoncé Knowles and Kelly Rowland. When the music video for "Say My Name" debuted in February 2000, Roberson and Luckett found out that they were being replaced with Michelle Williams, a former backup singer for Monica, and Farrah Franklin, an aspiring singer-actress. In July 2000, just five and a half months after joining, it was announced that Franklin would be leaving the group. According to the group, Franklin missed a handful of promotional appearances and concerts and was asked to leave the group. Franklin stated that she quit because of negative vibes in the group and her inability to assert any control in decision making.


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: After emerging as the group's focal point, Knowles assumed more control taking a greater hand in writing the material and even producing some of the record herself. Knowles' intention was not to monopolize the spotlight, however, she did co-write and produce all of the album's 18 cuts. She explained, "I only wanted to do like three songs... The label kept saying "Do another song, do another song, do another song". It wasn't planned. It wasn't like I said, OK, I'm going to take charge." The album was originally planned to be called "Independent Women", but was later changed to "Survivor" because of the turmoil that has coincided with the group.


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: The song "Survivor" was inspired by a pun that a radio station had made about the fact that three members had already left the group, comparing the band to the reality game show "Survivor". Knowles was inspired to take the negative comment and turn it into a positive thing by writing a song out of it. Knowles wrote the song "Bootylicious" on a plane flight to London while listening to the track "Edge of Seventeen" by Stevie Nicks when the word "Bootylicious" just popped in to her head. This claim has been highly disputed as Rob Fusari said in a 2010 interview that he alone had the idea for the song and had wanted to use a guitar riff from the song "Eye of the Tiger" but after not being able to find it used a similar riff from Stevie Nicks' song "Edge of Seventeen". After hearing Beyoncé claim credit for the song in an interview with Barbara Walters, he telephoned Mathew Knowles,


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: While recording sessions were going on, Rowland recorded the song "Angel" which appeared on the soundtrack of "Down to Earth" (2001).


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: The album received generally positive reviews. "Survivor" received a score of 63 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 17 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". "Entertainment Weekly" praised the album, calling it "the divas' premature, but inevitable growing pains album." "Spin" commented that ""Survivor" is relentlessly inventive in its recombinations." "New York" was less impressed, saying: "All fifteen tracks are one-dimensional disses and dismissals of scantily clad women, vengeful boyfriends, and the group's assorted doubters." AllMusic commented that the album is "as contrived and calculated as a Mariah Carey record, only without the joy."


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: Rob Sheffield by "Rolling Stone" remained fascinated by the group's journey, claiming: "Destiny's Child aren't just a pop group, they're pure drama, each hit single another chapter in their ongoing saga of the-tribe-has-spoken lineup changes, controversies and all-round fabulousness. Beyonce Knowles, Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams, debut as a trio, are the great pop group of the moment, ruling the radio with fluid R&B, and they are shouting it." Sheffield at the end wrote that "the only real weakness on "Survivor" is the self-righteous tone creeping into the songs. These gals are on a roll, no doubt about it, and if there's no telling where Destiny's Child will go from here, that's part of the drama that keeps us glued to the pop spectacle they've set in motion - and Survivor is packed with enough hits to keep the show rolling."


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: The album won the Soul Train Lady of Soul Award for Best R&B/Soul Album of the Year, the Teen Choice Award for R&B/Soul Album of the Year – Group, Band, or Duo, and the American Music Award for Favorite Pop/Rock Album. Destiny's Child won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal by Duo or Group for the song "Survivor". "Survivor" itself was nominated for Best R&B Album.


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: "Survivor" debuted at number one on the US "Billboard" 200 with first-week sales of 663,275 copies, the highest first-week sales figures of any female group in the SoundScan era and the highest first-week sales figures of any album in Columbia Records' history. It remained atop the chart in its second week with a 49% decline to 358,959, pushing the albums sales past the one million mark after only 2 weeks in stores and remains the longest run atop the chart for Destiny's Child. In its third week "Survivor" slipped to number 3 scanning 221,884 and held the same position in its fourth frame with 175,237 copies sold. In its fifth week the album climbed one spot to No.2 with 169,487 scans. "Survivor" spent its first thirteen weeks in the top 10 of the "Billboard" 200 (2 more than "The Writing's on the Wall") and by the end of 2001 had sold 3,718,446 copies in the US and ranked as the seventh best-selling album of the year, the second year in a row that the group had made the top ten best-sellers list.


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: "Survivor" debuted at number one in over fifteen countries, including the United Kingdom where it was certified 3× Platinum by BPI for sales of over 900,000 and went on to sell over a million copies. It also reached number one in Canada, selling over 31,000 copies in its first week (and was eventually certified 4× Platinum, for sales of 400,000 copies), as well as debuting or peaking in the top ten in Australia, Sweden, Japan, Hungary, France, Italy, Finland, Denmark and Poland. With "Survivor", Destiny's Child became the first US female group to have a number one album on the UK charts since Diana Ross and the Supremes hit the position 24 years ago with a greatest hits package. "Survivor" is the first album of original studio material (i.e., not a greatest hits collection) by a female American group to hit number one in the 43-year history of the UK chart.


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: "Survivor", the album's title track, spent six weeks at the number-two position on the "Billboard" Hot 100, being barred from the number one position by Janet Jackson's "All for You." "Independent Women Part I" (also featured in the remake film "Charlie's Angels" and on its soundtrack) occupied the number one slot on "Billboard"'s Hot 100 (for 11 weeks), R&B and dance charts. "Bootylicious" served as the album's third single and topped the "Billboard" Hot 100 for 2 weeks. "Emotion" was issued as the album's fourth single and continued the group's streak of top-ten hits in the United States, peaking at number ten on the "Billboard" Hot 100. "Nasty Girl" served as the album's fifth and final single and only charted internationally, reaching the top ten in Australia, as well as the top 30 in Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland.


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: In Europe the album was certified 2× Platinum in recognition of two million albums sold across the continent; its sales have since surpassed the three million mark. The album was certified 2× Platinum in Australia. The IFPI reported that "Survivor" was the third best-selling album worldwide of 2001, with 7.8 million copies sold during the year. As of November 2004, the album has sold 10 million copies worldwide.


title: Survivor (Destiny's Child album)

text: The album was included in the book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die". This and other notable rankings appear in the table below. The information regarding accolades attributed to "Survivor" is adapted from Acclaimed Music, except where otherwise noted.


title: Henry Darrow

text: Henry Darrow (born Enrique Tomás Delgado Jiménez; September 15, 1933 – March 14, 2021) was an American character actor of stage and film known for his role as Manolito "Mano" Montoya on the 1960s television series "The High Chaparral". In film, Darrow played the corrupt and vengeful Trooper Hancock in "The Hitcher". During the 1970s and 1980s, he was seen in numerous guest starring television roles. Darrow replaced Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as Zorro's father Don Alejandro de la Vega in the 1990s television series "Zorro".


title: Henry Darrow

text: Darrow was born in New York City, the first son of Gloria and Enrique Pío Delgado, who worked in the restaurant and clothing businesses. Darrow's parents had moved from Puerto Rico to New York in the early 1930s. At the age of eight, he played a woodcutter in a school play, an experience which convinced him that his destiny was as an actor.


title: Henry Darrow

text: In 1946, when Darrow was 13, his family returned to Puerto Rico, where he discovered his roots and grew to love the island he had not known. He graduated from Academia del Perpetuo Socorro high school in Miramar, Puerto Rico, as class president before enrolling in the University of Puerto Rico. There he studied political science and acting, and worked as a part-time English-language interpreter. During his third year at the University, he was awarded a scholarship (the first of its kind) to attend acting school. Thereupon Darrow moved to Los Angeles, where he enrolled in the Pasadena Playhouse. He met and married his first wife, Louise whom he referred to as Lucy, they went on to have two children, Denise and Tom. Darrow graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in theater arts.


title: Henry Darrow

text: Darrow had already landed small parts in 12 movies and 75 television series when he won the role in a 1965 stage production of "The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit". This brought him to the attention of television producer David Dortort, who immediately recruited him for his television western series "The High Chaparral", casting him as Manolito Montoya. Making its debut on American television in September 1967 (NBC), it lasted four seasons and was screened around the world. While on the show, both he and series' lead Cameron Mitchell became household names as the breakout stars of the show.


title: Henry Darrow

text: Darrow is the first Latino actor to portray Zorro on television. (José Suárez played Zorro in a 1953 Spanish film.) He starred in the series "Zorro and Son" and also has provided the voice for the animated series of "The New Adventures of Zorro". He replaced Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. as Zorro's father from 1990–1994 in the Family Channel's successful series "The New Zorro".


title: Henry Darrow

text: In 1972, Darrow co-founded the Screen Actors Guild Ethnic Minority Committee with actors Ricardo Montalbán, Edith Diaz and Carmen Zapata.


title: Henry Darrow

text: In 1974-75, Darrow portrayed police detective Manny Quinlan in the first season of "Harry O" starring David Janssen. The character was killed off at the end of the first season in a re-tooling of the series.


title: Henry Darrow

text: In 1986, he appeared in the horror film "The Hitcher" as Trooper Hancock, a ruthless and vengeful policeman who would go above the law to kill the main protagonist (who was framed for the crimes by the main antagonist).


title: Henry Darrow

text: Darrow was a member of the board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and a member of SAG's Ethnic Minorities Committee. He was also a founder of Nosotros, an organization helping Latino actors land non-stereotyped parts. Darrow served on the Advisory Committee of Bilingual Children's Television. In his later years, Darrow had cut back on his public appearances.


title: Henry Darrow

text: Darrow also appeared in hundreds of episodes of soap operas, miniseries, sitcoms and dramas, along with numerous stage plays. Television series in which he has appeared include:


title: Henry Darrow

text: In 1982, Darrow appeared as the prize wheel spinner in the music video for Santana's "Hold On", which was released as the lead single from their album "Shangó". It was directed by John Mark Robinson.


title: Field (physics)

text: In physics, a field is a physical quantity, represented by a scalar, vector, or tensor, that has a value for each point in space and time. For example, on a weather map, the surface temperature is described by assigning a number to each point on the map; the temperature can be considered at a certain point in time or over some interval of time, to study the dynamics of temperature change. A surface wind map, assigning an arrow to each point on a map that describes the wind speed and direction at that point, is an example of a vector field, i.e. a 1-dimensional (rank-1) tensor field. Field theories, mathematical descriptions of how field values change in space and time, are ubiquitous in physics. For instance, the electric field is another rank-1 tensor field, while electrodynamics can be formulated in terms of two interacting vector fields at each point in spacetime, or as a single-rank 2-tensor field.


title: Field (physics)

text: In the modern framework of the quantum theory of fields, even without referring to a test particle, a field occupies space, contains energy, and its presence precludes a classical "true vacuum". This has led physicists to consider electromagnetic fields to be a physical entity, making the field concept a supporting paradigm of the edifice of modern physics. "The fact that the electromagnetic field can possess momentum and energy makes it very real ... a particle makes a field, and a field acts on another particle, and the field has such familiar properties as energy content and momentum, just as particles can have." In practice, the strength of most fields diminishes with distance, eventually becoming undetectable. For instance the strength of many relevant classical fields, such as the gravitational field in Newton's theory of gravity or the electrostatic field in classical electromagnetism, is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source (i.e., they follow Gauss's law).


title: Field (physics)

text: A field can be classified as a scalar field, a vector field, a spinor field or a tensor field according to whether the represented physical quantity is a scalar, a vector, a spinor, or a tensor, respectively. A field has a consistent tensorial character wherever it is defined: i.e. a field cannot be a scalar field somewhere and a vector field somewhere else. For example, the Newtonian gravitational field is a vector field: specifying its value at a point in spacetime requires three numbers, the components of the gravitational field vector at that point. Moreover, within each category (scalar, vector, tensor), a field can be either a "classical field" or a "quantum field", depending on whether it is characterized by numbers or quantum operators respectively. In this theory an equivalent representation of field is a field particle, for instance a boson.


title: Field (physics)

text: To Isaac Newton, his law of universal gravitation simply expressed the gravitational force that acted between any pair of massive objects. When looking at the motion of many bodies all interacting with each other, such as the planets in the Solar System, dealing with the force between each pair of bodies separately rapidly becomes computationally inconvenient. In the eighteenth century, a new quantity was devised to simplify the bookkeeping of all these gravitational forces. This quantity, the gravitational field, gave at each point in space the total gravitational acceleration which would be felt by a small object at that point. This did not change the physics in any way: it did not matter if all the gravitational forces on an object were calculated individually and then added together, or if all the contributions were first added together as a gravitational field and then applied to an object.


title: Field (physics)

text: The development of the independent concept of a field truly began in the nineteenth century with the development of the theory of electromagnetism. In the early stages, André-Marie Ampère and Charles-Augustin de Coulomb could manage with Newton-style laws that expressed the forces between pairs of electric charges or electric currents. However, it became much more natural to take the field approach and express these laws in terms of electric and magnetic fields; in 1849 Michael Faraday became the first to coin the term "field".


title: Field (physics)

text: The independent nature of the field became more apparent with James Clerk Maxwell's discovery that waves in these fields propagated at a finite speed. Consequently, the forces on charges and currents no longer just depended on the positions and velocities of other charges and currents at the same time, but also on their positions and velocities in the past.


title: Field (physics)

text: Maxwell, at first, did not adopt the modern concept of a field as a fundamental quantity that could independently exist. Instead, he supposed that the electromagnetic field expressed the deformation of some underlying medium—the luminiferous aether—much like the tension in a rubber membrane. If that were the case, the observed velocity of the electromagnetic waves should depend upon the velocity of the observer with respect to the aether. Despite much effort, no experimental evidence of such an effect was ever found; the situation was resolved by the introduction of the special theory of relativity by Albert Einstein in 1905. This theory changed the way the viewpoints of moving observers were related to each other. They became related to each other in such a way that velocity of electromagnetic waves in Maxwell's theory would be the same for all observers. By doing away with the need for a background medium, this development opened the way for physicists to start thinking about fields as truly independent entities.


title: Field (physics)

text: In the late 1920s, the new rules of quantum mechanics were first applied to the electromagnetic field. In 1927, Paul Dirac used quantum fields to successfully explain how the decay of an atom to a lower quantum state led to the spontaneous emission of a photon, the quantum of the electromagnetic field. This was soon followed by the realization (following the work of Pascual Jordan, Eugene Wigner, Werner Heisenberg, and Wolfgang Pauli) that all particles, including electrons and protons, could be understood as the quanta of some quantum field, elevating fields to the status of the most fundamental objects in nature. That said, John Wheeler and Richard Feynman seriously considered Newton's pre-field concept of action at a distance (although they set it aside because of the ongoing utility of the field concept for research in general relativity and quantum electrodynamics).


title: Field (physics)

text: There are several examples of classical fields. Classical field theories remain useful wherever quantum properties do not arise, and can be active areas of research. Elasticity of materials, fluid dynamics and Maxwell's equations are cases in point.


title: Field (physics)

text: Some of the simplest physical fields are vector force fields. Historically, the first time that fields were taken seriously was with Faraday's lines of force when describing the electric field. The gravitational field was then similarly described.


title: Field (physics)

text: A classical field theory describing gravity is Newtonian gravitation, which describes the gravitational force as a mutual interaction between two masses.


title: Field (physics)

text: Any body with mass "M" is associated with a gravitational field g which describes its influence on other bodies with mass. The gravitational field of "M" at a point r in space corresponds to the ratio between force F that "M" exerts on a small or negligible test mass "m" located at r and the test mass itself:


title: Field (physics)

text: Stipulating that "m" is much smaller than "M" ensures that the presence of "m" has a negligible influence on the behavior of "M".


title: Field (physics)

text: where formula_3 is a unit vector lying along the line joining "M" and "m" and pointing from "M" to "m". Therefore, the gravitational field of M is


title: Field (physics)

text: The experimental observation that inertial mass and gravitational mass are equal to an unprecedented level of accuracy leads to the identity that gravitational field strength is identical to the acceleration experienced by a particle. This is the starting point of the equivalence principle, which leads to general relativity.


title: Field (physics)

text: Because the gravitational force F is conservative, the gravitational field g can be rewritten in terms of the gradient of a scalar function, the gravitational potential Φ(r):


title: Field (physics)

text: Michael Faraday first realized the importance of a field as a physical quantity, during his investigations into magnetism. He realized that electric and magnetic fields are not only fields of force which dictate the motion of particles, but also have an independent physical reality because they carry energy.


title: Field (physics)

text: These ideas eventually led to the creation, by James Clerk Maxwell, of the first unified field theory in physics with the introduction of equations for the electromagnetic field. The modern version of these equations is called Maxwell's equations.


title: Field (physics)

text: A charged test particle with charge "q" experiences a force F based solely on its charge. We can similarly describe the electric field E so that . Using this and Coulomb's law tells us that the electric field due to a single charged particle is


title: Field (physics)

text: A steady current "I" flowing along a path "ℓ" will create a field B, that exerts a force on nearby moving charged particles that is quantitatively different from the electric field force described above. The force exerted by "I" on a nearby charge "q" with velocity v is


title: Field (physics)

text: The magnetic field is not conservative in general, and hence cannot usually be written in terms of a scalar potential. However, it can be written in terms of a vector potential, A(r):


title: Field (physics)

text: In general, in the presence of both a charge density ρ(r, "t") and current density J(r, "t"), there will be both an electric and a magnetic field, and both will vary in time. They are determined by Maxwell's equations, a set of differential equations which directly relate E and B to ρ and J.


title: Field (physics)

text: Alternatively, one can describe the system in terms of its scalar and vector potentials "V" and A. A set of integral equations known as "retarded potentials" allow one to calculate "V" and A from ρ and J, and from there the electric and magnetic fields are determined via the relations


title: Field (physics)

text: At the end of the 19th century, the electromagnetic field was understood as a collection of two vector fields in space. Nowadays, one recognizes this as a single antisymmetric 2nd-rank tensor field in spacetime.


title: Field (physics)

text: Einstein's theory of gravity, called general relativity, is another example of a field theory. Here the principal field is the metric tensor, a symmetric 2nd-rank tensor field in spacetime. This replaces Newton's law of universal gravitation.


title: Field (physics)

text: Waves can be constructed as physical fields, due to their finite propagation speed and causal nature when a simplified physical model of an isolated closed system is set . They are also subject to the inverse-square law.


title: Field (physics)

text: For electromagnetic waves, there are optical fields, and terms such as near- and far-field limits for diffraction. In practice though, the field theories of optics are superseded by the electromagnetic field theory of Maxwell.


title: Field (physics)

text: It is now believed that quantum mechanics should underlie all physical phenomena, so that a classical field theory should, at least in principle, permit a recasting in quantum mechanical terms; success yields the corresponding quantum field theory. For example, quantizing classical electrodynamics gives quantum electrodynamics. Quantum electrodynamics is arguably the most successful scientific theory; experimental data confirm its predictions to a higher precision (to more significant digits) than any other theory. The two other fundamental quantum field theories are quantum chromodynamics and the electroweak theory.


title: Field (physics)

text: In quantum chromodynamics, the color field lines are coupled at short distances by gluons, which are polarized by the field and line up with it. This effect increases within a short distance (around 1 fm from the vicinity of the quarks) making the color force increase within a short distance, confining the quarks within hadrons. As the field lines are pulled together tightly by gluons, they do not "bow" outwards as much as an electric field between electric charges.


title: Field (physics)

text: These three quantum field theories can all be derived as special cases of the so-called standard model of particle physics. General relativity, the Einsteinian field theory of gravity, has yet to be successfully quantized. However an extension, thermal field theory, deals with quantum field theory at "finite temperatures", something seldom considered in quantum field theory.


title: Field (physics)

text: In BRST theory one deals with odd fields, e.g. Faddeev–Popov ghosts. There are different descriptions of odd classical fields both on graded manifolds and supermanifolds.


title: Field (physics)

text: As above with classical fields, it is possible to approach their quantum counterparts from a purely mathematical view using similar techniques as before. The equations governing the quantum fields are in fact PDEs (specifically, relativistic wave equations (RWEs)). Thus one can speak of Yang–Mills, Dirac, Klein–Gordon and Schrödinger fields as being solutions to their respective equations. A possible problem is that these RWEs can deal with complicated mathematical objects with exotic algebraic properties (e.g. spinors are not tensors, so may need calculus for spinor fields), but these in theory can still be subjected to analytical methods given appropriate mathematical generalization.


title: Field (physics)

text: Field theory usually refers to a construction of the dynamics of a field, i.e., a specification of how a field changes with time or with respect to other independent physical variables on which the field depends. Usually this is done by writing a Lagrangian or a Hamiltonian of the field, and treating it as a classical or quantum mechanical system with an infinite number of degrees of freedom. The resulting field theories are referred to as classical or quantum field theories.


title: Field (physics)

text: The dynamics of a classical field are usually specified by the Lagrangian density in terms of the field components; the dynamics can be obtained by using the action principle.


title: Field (physics)

text: It is possible to construct simple fields without any prior knowledge of physics using only mathematics from multivariable calculus, potential theory and partial differential equations (PDEs). For example, scalar PDEs might consider quantities such as amplitude, density and pressure fields for the wave equation and fluid dynamics; temperature/concentration fields for the heat/diffusion equations. Outside of physics proper (e.g., radiometry and computer graphics), there are even light fields. All these previous examples are scalar fields. Similarly for vectors, there are vector PDEs for displacement, velocity and vorticity fields in (applied mathematical) fluid dynamics, but vector calculus may now be needed in addition, being calculus for vector fields (as are these three quantities, and those for vector PDEs in general). More generally problems in continuum mechanics may involve for example, directional elasticity (from which comes the term "tensor", derived from the Latin word for stretch), complex fluid flows or anisotropic diffusion, which are framed as matrix-tensor PDEs, and then require matrices or tensor fields, hence matrix or tensor calculus. The scalars (and hence the vectors, matrices and tensors) can be real or complex as both are fields in the abstract-algebraic/ring-theoretic sense.


title: Field (physics)

text: In a general setting, classical fields are described by sections of fiber bundles and their dynamics is formulated in the terms of jet manifolds (covariant classical field theory).


title: Field (physics)

text: In modern physics, the most often studied fields are those that model the four fundamental forces which one day may lead to the Unified Field Theory.


title: Field (physics)

text: A convenient way of classifying a field (classical or quantum) is by the symmetries it possesses. Physical symmetries are usually of two types:


title: Field (physics)

text: Fields are often classified by their behaviour under transformations of spacetime. The terms used in this classification are:


title: Field (physics)

text: Fields may have internal symmetries in addition to spacetime symmetries. In many situations, one needs fields which are a list of spacetime scalars: (φ, φ, ... φ). For example, in weather prediction these may be temperature, pressure, humidity, etc. In particle physics, the color symmetry of the interaction of quarks is an example of an internal symmetry, that of the strong interaction. Other examples are isospin, weak isospin, strangeness and any other flavour symmetry.


title: Field (physics)

text: If there is a symmetry of the problem, not involving spacetime, under which these components transform into each other, then this set of symmetries is called an "internal symmetry". One may also make a classification of the charges of the fields under internal symmetries.


title: Field (physics)

text: Statistical field theory attempts to extend the field-theoretic paradigm toward many-body systems and statistical mechanics. As above, it can be approached by the usual infinite number of degrees of freedom argument.


title: Field (physics)

text: Much like statistical mechanics has some overlap between quantum and classical mechanics, statistical field theory has links to both quantum and classical field theories, especially the former with which it shares many methods. One important example is mean field theory.


title: Field (physics)

text: Classical fields as above, such as the electromagnetic field, are usually infinitely differentiable functions, but they are in any case almost always twice differentiable. In contrast, generalized functions are not continuous. When dealing carefully with classical fields at finite temperature, the mathematical methods of continuous random fields are used, because thermally fluctuating classical fields are nowhere differentiable. Random fields are indexed sets of random variables; a continuous random field is a random field that has a set of functions as its index set. In particular, it is often mathematically convenient to take a continuous random field to have a Schwartz space of functions as its index set, in which case the continuous random field is a tempered distribution.


title: Field (physics)

text: We can think about a continuous random field, in a (very) rough way, as an ordinary function that is formula_13 almost everywhere, but such that when we take a weighted average of all the infinities over any finite region, we get a finite result. The infinities are not well-defined; but the finite values can be associated with the functions used as the weight functions to get the finite values, and that can be well-defined. We can define a continuous random field well enough as a linear map from a space of functions into the real numbers.


title: Sköll

text: In Norse mythology, Sköll (Old Norse: "Skǫll", "Treachery" or "Mockery") is a wolf that, according to Snorri Sturluson's "Prose Edda", chases the Sun (personified as a goddess, Sól). Hati Hróðvitnisson chases the Moon (personified, see Máni).


title: Sköll

text: According to Rudolf Simek, it is possible that Sköll is another name for Fenrir, and, if so, "there could be a nature-mythological interpretation in the case of Sköll and Hati (who pursues the moon). Such an interpretation suggests the wolves may be intended to describe the phenomenon of parhelia and paraselenae or Sun dogs and Moon dogs, as these are called 'sun-wolf' in Scandinavian languages (Norwegian "solulv", Swedish "solvarg")."


title: Land of Confusion

text: "Land of Confusion" is a song by the English rock band Genesis from their 1986 album "Invisible Touch". The song was the third track on the album and was the third track released as a single, reaching No. 4 in the U.S. and No. 14 in the UK in late 1986. It also reached No. 8 in the Netherlands. The music was written by the band, while the lyrics were written by guitarist Mike Rutherford. The song's video featured puppets from the 1980s UK sketch show "Spitting Image".


title: Land of Confusion

text: "Billboard" said it has an "anxious beat" and a "tentatively hopeful lyric." "Cash Box" called it a "biting and aggressive cut" highlighted by "a tough electronic rhythm and Phil Collins’ searching vocal."


title: Land of Confusion

text: The song is widely remembered for its music video, which had heavy airplay on MTV. The video features caricature puppets by the British television show "Spitting Image". After Phil Collins saw a caricatured version of himself on the show, he commissioned the show's creators, Peter Fluck and Roger Law, to create puppets of the entire band, as well as all the characters in the video.


title: Land of Confusion

text: The video opens with a caricatured Ronald Reagan (voiced by Chris Barrie), Nancy Reagan, and a monkey (a reference to the 1951 movie "Bedtime for Bonzo" which starred Reagan), going to bed at 4:30 PM. Nancy is absorbed in reading "His Way", Kitty Kelley's unauthorised biography of Frank Sinatra. Reagan, holding a teddy bear, kisses the monkey goodnight, falls asleep and begins to have a nightmare, which sets the premise for the entire video. The video intermittently features a line of feet in combat boots marching through a swamp past the heads of Cold War-era political figures including Jimmy Carter, Margaret Thatcher, Leonid Brezhnev, and Henry Kissinger.


title: Land of Confusion

text: Caricatured versions of the band members are shown playing instruments on stage during a concert: Tony Banks on an array of synthesizers (as well as a cash register full of cookies), Mike Rutherford on a four-necked guitar, and two Phil Collins puppets: one on the drums, and one singing.


title: Land of Confusion

text: During the second verse, the video shows, in order: Benito Mussolini, Ayatollah Khomeini, Mikhail Gorbachev and his aides, and Muammar Gaddafi giving speeches on large video screens in front of mass crowds. Meanwhile, Reagan is shown putting on a Superman suit and running down a street while Collins sings,


title: Land of Confusion

text: Meanwhile, the "real world" Reagan is shown exhaling in a large pool of his own sweat (at one point, a rubber duck floats by), as Nancy and the monkey look out the window. During the bridge, the Superman-costumed Reagan and a triceratops (with punk jewellery) watch a television showing various clips of West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and East German leader Erich Honecker (as Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson), Walter Cronkite, Richard Nixon, Mr. Spock (with a Rubik's Cube), and Bob Hope. This segues into a sequence set in prehistoric times, where two dinosaurs (one wearing a bow-tie) meet with Ronald and Nancy Reagan as a mammal eats an egg and reads a newspaper, and John Rambo hovers in the background. At the end of this part, the monkey from the prologue takes a large bone from Reagan and tosses it in the air, mimicking the first part of "".


title: Land of Confusion

text: As the bone begins to fall there is a shift to Collins catching a falling phone into which he states he "won't be coming home tonight, my generation will put it right" while a caricature of Prince applies mustard, ketchup and a bun to his own tongue and devours it, and a caricature of Pete Townshend is seen playing a chord on guitar and giving a thumb-up. On the "we're not just making promises" verse the bone finally lands (on top of David Bowie and Bob Dylan, but misses Mick Jagger). Reagan is then shown riding the triceratops through the streets dressed as a cowboy. As the video nears its climax, there are periodic scenes of a large group of spoofed celebrity puppets, including Tina Turner, Sting, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Bill Cosby, Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Diana and Hulk Hogan singing along to the chorus of the song, with Pope John Paul II playing an electric guitar.


title: Land of Confusion

text: At the end of the video, Reagan awakens and surfaces from the pool of sweat surrounding him; Nancy at this point is wearing a snorkel. After attempting to drink from a water glass (missing his mouth and even his face à la "Airplane!"), he fumbles for a button next to his bed. He intends to push the one labelled "Nurse", but instead presses the one titled "Nuke", setting off a nuclear explosion. Reagan then announces: "That's one heck of a nurse!" and mugs for the camera as Nancy strikes him with her snorkel.


title: Land of Confusion

text: The video, directed by John Lloyd and Jim Yukich, and produced by Jon Blair, won the short-lived Grammy Award for Best Concept Music Video during the 30th Annual Grammy Awards. The video was also nominated for an MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year in 1987, but lost to "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel (coincidentally, former lead singer of Genesis). It also made the number-one spot on "The Village Voice" critic Robert Christgau's top 10 music videos in his year-end "Dean's List" feature, and number three on the equivalent list in his annual survey of music critics, Pazz & Jop (again losing out to "Sledgehammer").


title: Land of Confusion

text: The song was played on their "Invisible Touch", "The Way We Walk", "Calling All Stations" (with Ray Wilson on vocals), "" and "The Last Domino?" tours.


title: Land of Confusion

text: The American heavy metal band Disturbed released a cover of the song on their third studio album, "Ten Thousand Fists". The song became the fourth single from that album. Vocalist David Draiman commented that the aim of covering the song was "taking a song that's absolutely nothing like us and making it our own." The line "And the sound of your laughter" in the original's bridge was replaced by "In the wake of this madness," while the bridge of the song was replaced with a short solo by guitarist Dan Donegan.


title: Land of Confusion

text: It was accompanied by a music video animated by Todd McFarlane, known as the creator of the comics series "Spawn". McFarlane had previously animated the music videos for the songs "Freak on a Leash" by Korn and "Do the Evolution" by Pearl Jam. According to McFarlane, the music video is "a big view of the corporate world and how it all ties into just one big beast for me... The world is run by one giant thing, which is driven by greed and lust." "Land of Confusion" reached No. 1 in the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks; making it Disturbed's first No. 1 single on that chart.


title: Land of Confusion

text: The video starts out with The Guy, Disturbed's mascot, falling to earth. It then shows military forces bearing the symbol of a dollar sign within a circle of white within a field of red, followed by legions of black-clad soldiers reminiscent of Adolf Hitler's Schutzstaffel. The video then shows the Guy, escaping bondage from chains, as the military forces continue to assault cities and civilians. Later on, leaders of various nations of the world (bearing close physical resemblance to George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin, Jacques Chirac, Junichirō Koizumi and Tony Blair) are shown sitting at a table with the same dollar sign on it. Eventually, the Guy confronts the soldiers, and leads the people in rebellion. Flags of several powerful nations are then shown, with the final flag sporting the dollar sign. The Guy leads the rebels to the headquarters of the United Nations where they disrupt a meeting of the U.N. representatives. The Guy then leads the angry mob into a back room where they confront the real power behind the throne, a gigantic, bloated Fat Cat. The mob then drags him to the ground and once immobilized, the Guy destroys the Fat Cat, who explodes into a shower of dollar bills.


title: Evan McPherson

text: Evan McPherson (born July 21, 1999) is an American football placekicker for the Cincinnati Bengals of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at Florida before being drafted by the Bengals in the fifth round of the 2021 NFL Draft, the only kicker to be selected that year.


title: Evan McPherson

text: During the Bengals' 2021 playoff run, McPherson tied Adam Vinatieri for most field goals made in a single postseason, with 14, and set the record for most postseason field goals made without any misses. Due to his clutch kicking, McPherson is nicknamed "Shooter" (after the "Happy Gilmore" character of a similar nickname) and "Money Mac."


title: Evan McPherson

text: McPherson started his football career at Fort Payne High School in Fort Payne, Alabama, where he spent four seasons as the team's kicker and punter. At Fort Payne, he made a 60-yard field goal and an 84-yard punt, both kicks being one yard short of the Alabama High School record. He also made the first-team All-State in 2017.


title: Evan McPherson

text: McPherson went on to play college football at Florida from 2018–2020 before choosing to forgo his senior season and enter the NFL draft. At Florida, McPherson was 51-of-60 (85.0%) on field goals, setting a Southeastern Conference record for career field goal percentage (minimum 50 attempts), and 149-of-150 on extra points. He made 5 of 8 career field goal attempts from at least 50 yards. In his three seasons with the Gators, the team recorded a 29-9 record and a 2-1 record in bowl games, including an Orange Bowl win in 2019. McPherson made all three of his field goal attempts in that game, the longest from 49 yards.


title: Evan McPherson

text: McPherson was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals in the fifth round, 149th overall, of the 2021 NFL Draft. He signed his four-year rookie contract with the Bengals on May 17, 2021.


title: Evan McPherson

text: McPherson was a perfect 5/5 on field goals during the Bengals' three 2021 preseason games, including a 57-yard kick. At the end of the pre-season, the Bengals released their only other kicker on the roster, Austin Seibert, and named McPherson the starter for the 2021 regular season. McPherson became the first player from Fort Payne High School ever to play in an NFL regular season game.


title: Evan McPherson

text: McPherson made his first regular-season field goal attempt, a 53-yarder, in the season-opener against the Minnesota Vikings on September 12, 2021. During overtime, McPherson kicked a 33-yard game-winning field goal to secure a 27–24 win, earning AFC Special Teams Player of the Week. On November 21, McPherson tied an NFL record by making three field goals from over 50 yards in one game, going 4/4 on kicks from 54, 53, 51, and 47 yards in a 32–13 win over the Las Vegas Raiders, securing his second AFC Special Teams Player of the Week award in the process. He also set the franchise record for most 50-yard field goals made in a season, breaking the old record of 4 set by Horst Muhlmann in 1970. On December 19, McPherson set the franchise record for longest field goal for the Bengals with a 58-yard kick against the Denver Broncos.


title: Evan McPherson

text: McPherson finished the season 28-of-33 on field goal attempts (84.8%), including being 9-of-11 on field goals (81.8%) from 50+ yards. In the Bengals' Wild Card game against the Las Vegas Raiders, McPherson was 4-of-4 on field goals, assisting the team to a 26–19 victory that gave them their first postseason win in 31 years. Subsequently, in the Divisional Round game, he again made 4-of-4 field goals, including two from over 50 yards. His 52-yard field goal as time expired gave the Bengals a 19–16 win over the Tennessee Titans to send them to their first AFC Championship Game since 1988. McPherson also became the first kicker in NFL history to kick at least 4 field goals in multiple games during the same postseason. In the AFC Championship Game against the Kansas City Chiefs, McPherson was again 4-of-4 on his field goal attempts, including a game winning 31-yard field goal in overtime in the 27–24 win, advancing the Bengals to Super Bowl LVI, where he kicked two more field goals in the 23-20 loss. McPherson's 14-of-14 playoff field goals set the record for most field goals made by a rookie, as well as ties the all-time record for most field goals made in a single postseason. His 12 combined 50+ yard field goals in the regular season and playoffs also set the NFL record for most combined regular season and postseason 50+ yard field goals made by one player in a single season.


title: Evan McPherson

text: In the Bengals season opening game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, McPherson set a franchise record for longest field goal with 59 yards. However, after an injury to long snapper Clark Harris, McPherson had a potential game-winning extra point blocked and missed a 29-yard field goal in overtime, leading to a 23-20 loss. In Week 4, McPherson converted both field goal attempts and all three extra points in a 27-15 win over the Miami Dolphins, earning AFC Special Teams Player of the Week. In week 6, McPherson kicked a 52-yard field goal in the Bengals 30-26 win over the New Orleans Saints.


title: Evan McPherson

text: ! colspan="2"| Career || 25 || 39 || 48 || 81.3% || 0 || 59 || 69 || 73 || 94.5% || 140 || 63.3 || 92 || 186


title: Evan McPherson

text: ! colspan="2"| Career || 4 || 14 || 14 || 100.0% || 0 || 54 || 6 || 6 || 100.0% || 24 || 64.5 || 16 || 48


title: Evan McPherson

text: McPherson's older brother Logan was also an all-state kicker for Fort Payne High School and went on to play as a punter for Louisiana Tech University. His younger brother Alex made an All-State as a kicker with Fort Payne in 2019, and as a punter in 2020. In 2021, Alex announced his commitment to attend Auburn University. Alex was the highest-ranked kicker in the 2022 class.


title: Nostromo

text: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard is a 1904 novel by Joseph Conrad, set in the fictitious South American republic of "Costaguana". It was originally published serially in monthly instalments of "T.P.'s Weekly".


title: Nostromo

text: In 1998, the Modern Library ranked "Nostromo" 47th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It is frequently regarded as amongst the best of Conrad's long fiction; F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, "I'd rather have written "Nostromo" than any other novel."


title: Nostromo

text: Conrad set his novel in the town of Sulaco, a port in the western region of the imaginary country Costaguana.


title: Nostromo

text: In his "Author's Note" to later editions of "Nostromo", Joseph Conrad provides a detailed explanation of the inspirational origins of his novel. There he relates how, as a young man of about seventeen, while serving aboard a ship in the Gulf of Mexico, he heard the story of a man who had stolen, single-handedly, "a whole lighter-full of silver". As Conrad goes on to relate, he forgot about the story until some twenty-five years later when he came across a travelogue in a used-book shop in which the author related how he worked for years aboard a schooner whose master claimed to be that very thief who had stolen the silver.


title: Nostromo

text: "Nostromo" is set in the fictional South American country of Costaguana, and more specifically in that country's Occidental Province and its port city of Sulaco. Though Costaguana is a fictional nation, its geography as described in the book resembles real-life Colombia. Costaguana has a long history of tyranny, revolution and warfare, but has recently experienced a period of stability under the dictator Ribiera.


title: Nostromo

text: Charles Gould is a native Costaguanero of English descent who owns an important silver-mining concession near the key port of Sulaco. He is tired of the political instability in Costaguana and its concomitant corruption, and uses his wealth to support Ribiera's government, which he believes will finally bring stability to the country after years of misrule and tyranny by self-serving dictators. Instead, Gould's refurbished silver mine and the wealth it has generated inspires a new round of revolutions and self-proclaimed warlords, plunging Costaguana into chaos. Among others, the forces of the revolutionary General Montero invade Sulaco after securing the inland capital. Gould, adamant that his silver mine should not become spoil for his enemies, orders Nostromo, the trusted ""Capataz de Cargadores"" (Head Longshoreman) of Sulaco, to take the mine's most recent load of silver offshore, and arranges for the mine complex to be destroyed by dynamite if the coup leaders try to take it.


title: Nostromo

text: Nostromo is an Italian expatriate who has risen to his position through his bravery and daring exploits. ("Nostromo" is Italian for "shipmate" or "boatswain", but the name could also be considered a corruption of the Italian phrase "nostro uomo" or "nostr'uomo", meaning "our man"). Nostromo's real name is Giovanni Battista Fidanza—"Fidanza" meaning "trust" in archaic Italian.


title: Nostromo

text: Nostromo is a commanding figure in Sulaco, respected by the wealthy Europeans and seemingly limitless in his abilities to command power among the local population. He is, however, never admitted to become a part of upper-class society, but is instead viewed by the rich as their useful tool. He is believed by Charles Gould and his own employers to be incorruptible, and it is for this reason that Nostromo is entrusted with removing the silver from Sulaco to keep it from the revolutionaries. Accompanied by the young journalist Martin Decoud, Nostromo sets off to smuggle the silver out of Sulaco. However, the lighter on which the silver is being transported is struck at night in the waters off Sulaco by a transport carrying the invading revolutionary forces under the command of Colonel Sotillo. Nostromo and Decoud manage to save the silver by putting the lighter ashore on Great Isabel. Decoud and the silver are deposited on the deserted island of Great Isabel in the expansive bay off Sulaco, while Nostromo scuttles the lighter and manages to swim back to shore undetected. Back in Sulaco, Nostromo's power and fame continues to grow as he daringly rides over the mountains to summon the army which ultimately saves Sulaco's powerful leaders from the revolutionaries and ushers in the independent state of Sulaco. In the meantime, left alone on the deserted island, Decoud eventually loses his mind. He takes the small lifeboat out to sea and there shoots himself, after first weighing his body down with some of the silver ingots so that he would sink into the sea.


title: Nostromo

text: His exploits during the revolution do not bring Nostromo the fame he had hoped for, and he feels slighted and used. Feeling that he has risked his life for nothing, he is consumed by resentment, which leads to his corruption and ultimate destruction, for he has kept secret the true fate of the silver after all others believed it lost at sea. He finds himself becoming a slave of the silver and its secret, even as he slowly recovers it ingot by ingot during nighttime trips to Great Isabel. The fate of Decoud is a mystery to Nostromo, which combined with the fact of the missing silver ingots only adds to his paranoia. Eventually a lighthouse is constructed on Great Isabel, threatening Nostromo's ability to recover the treasure in secret. The ever resourceful Nostromo manages to have a close acquaintance, the widower Giorgio Viola, named as its keeper. Nostromo is in love with Giorgio's younger daughter, but ultimately becomes engaged to his elder daughter Linda. One night while attempting to recover more of the silver, Nostromo is shot and killed, mistaken for a trespasser by old Giorgio.


title: Nostromo

text: Fox Film produced a lavish silent film version in 1926 called "The Silver Treasure" directed by Rowland V. Lee and starring George O'Brien. It is now a lost film.


title: Nostromo

text: In 1991, British director David Lean was to film the story of Nostromo, with Steven Spielberg producing it for Warner Bros., but Lean died a few weeks before the principal photography was to begin in Almería. Marlon Brando, Paul Scofield, Peter O'Toole, Isabella Rossellini, Christopher Lambert and Dennis Quaid had all been set to star in this adaptation, along with Georges Corraface in the title role.


title: Nostromo

text: In 1996, a television adaptation "Nostromo" was produced. It was adapted by John Hale and directed by Alastair Reid for the BBC, Radiotelevisione Italiana, Televisión Española, and WGBH Boston. It starred Claudio Amendola as Nostromo, and Colin Firth as Señor Gould.


title: WebM

text: WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML5 video and the HTML5 audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponsored by Google, and the corresponding software is distributed under a BSD license.


title: WebM

text: The WebM container is based on a profile of Matroska. WebM initially supported VP8 video and Vorbis audio streams. In 2013, it was updated to accommodate VP9 video and Opus audio. It also supports the new AV1 codec.


title: WebM

text: Native WebM support by Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Google Chrome was announced at the 2010 Google I/O conference. Internet Explorer 9 requires third-party WebM software. In 2021, Apple released Safari 14.1 for macOS, which added native WebM support to the browser. , QuickTime does not natively support WebM, but does with a suitable third-party plug-in. In 2011, the Google WebM Project Team released plugins for Internet Explorer and Safari to allow playback of WebM files through the standard HTML5 codice_1 tag. , Internet Explorer 9 and later supported the plugin for Windows Vista and later.


title: WebM

text: VLC media player, MPlayer, K-Multimedia Player and JRiver Media Center have native support for playing WebM files. FFmpeg can encode and decode VP8 videos when built with support for libvpx, the VP8/VP9 codec library of the WebM project, as well as mux/demux WebM-compliant files. On July 23, 2010 Fiona Glaser, Ronald Bultje, and David Conrad of the FFmpeg team announced the ffvp8 decoder. Their testing found that ffvp8 was faster than Google's own libvpx decoder. MKVToolNix, the popular Matroska creation tools, implemented support for multiplexing/demultiplexing WebM-compliant files out of the box. Haali Media Splitter also announced support for muxing/demuxing of WebM. Since version 1.4.9, the LiVES video editor has support for realtime decoding and for encoding to WebM format using ffmpeg libraries.


title: WebM

text: MPC-HC since build SVN 2071 supports WebM playback with internal VP8 decoder based on FFmpeg's code. The full decoding support for WebM is available in MPC-HC since version 1.4.2499.0.


title: WebM

text: Android is WebM-enabled since version 2.3 Gingerbread, which was first made available via the Nexus S smartphone and streamable since Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.


title: WebM

text: In September 2015, Microsoft announced that the Edge browser in Windows 10 would add support for WebM (Opus, Vorbis, VP9).


title: WebM

text: iOS did not natively play WebM originally, but support for WebM was added in Safari 15 as part of iOS 15.


title: WebM

text: WebM Project licenses VP8 hardware accelerators (RTL IP) to semiconductor companies for 1080p encoding and decoding at zero cost. AMD, ARM and Broadcom have announced support for hardware acceleration of the WebM format. Intel is also considering hardware-based acceleration for WebM in its Atom-based TV chips if the format gains popularity. Qualcomm and Texas Instruments have announced support, with native support coming to the TI OMAP processor. Chips&Media have announced a fully hardware decoder for VP8 that can decode full HD resolution (1080p) VP8 streams at 60 frames per second.


title: WebM

text: Nvidia is supporting VP8 and provides both hardware decoding and encoding in the Tegra 4 and Tegra 4i SoCs. Nvidia announced 3D video support for WebM through HTML5 and their Nvidia 3D Vision technology.


title: WebM

text: On January 7, 2011, Rockchip released the world's first chip to host a full hardware implementation of 1080p VP8 decoding. The video acceleration in the RK29xx chip is handled by the WebM Project's G-Series 1 hardware decoder IP.


title: WebM

text: In June 2011, ZiiLABS demonstrated their 1080p VP8 decoder implementation running on the ZMS-20 processor. The chip's programmable media processing array is used to provide the VP8 acceleration.


title: WebM

text: The original WebM license terminated both patent grants and copyright redistribution terms if a patent infringement lawsuit was filed, causing concerns around GPL compatibility.


title: WebM

text: In response to those concerns, the WebM Project decoupled the patent grant from the copyright grant, offering the code under a standard BSD license and patents under a separate grant. The Free Software Foundation, which maintains The Free Software Definition, has given its endorsement for WebM and VP8 and considers the software's license to be compatible with the GNU General Public License. On January 19, 2011, the Free Software Foundation announced its official support for the WebM project. In February 2011, Microsoft's Vice President of Internet Explorer called upon Google to provide indemnification against patent suits.


title: WebM

text: Although Google has irrevocably released all of its patents on VP8 as a royalty-free format, the MPEG LA, licensors of the H.264 patent pool, have expressed interest in creating a patent pool for VP8. Conversely, other researchers cite evidence that On2 made a particular effort to avoid any MPEG LA patents. As a result of the threat, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) started an investigation in March 2011 into the MPEG LA for its role in possibly attempting to stifle competition. In March 2013, MPEG LA announced that it had reached an agreement with Google to license patents that "may be essential" for the implementation of the VP8 codec, and give Google the right to sub-license these patents to any third-party user of VP8 or VP9.


title: WebM

text: In March 2013, Nokia filed an objection to the Internet Engineering Task Force concerning Google's proposal for the VP8 codec to be a core part of WebM, saying it holds essential patents to VP8's implementation. Nokia listed 64 patents and 22 pending applications, adding it was not prepared to license any of them for VP8. On August 5, 2013, a court in Mannheim, Germany, ruled that VP8 does not infringe a patent owned and asserted by Nokia.


title: Battle on the Ice

text: The Battle on the Ice (; , "Ledovoye poboishche"; ), alternatively known as the Battle of Lake Peipus (), took place on 5 April 1242. It was fought largely on the frozen Lake Peipus between the united forces of the Republic of Novgorod and Vladimir-Suzdal, led by Prince Alexander Nevsky, and the forces of the Livonian Order and Bishopric of Dorpat, led by Bishop Hermann of Dorpat.


title: Battle on the Ice

text: The battle was significant because its outcome determined whether Western Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox Christianity would dominate in the region. In the end, the battle represented a significant defeat for the Catholic forces during the Northern Crusades and brought an end to their campaigns against the Orthodox Novgorod Republic and other Slavic territories for the next century. The event portrayed in Sergei Eisenstein's historical drama film, "Alexander Nevsky" (1938), later created a popular but inaccurate image of the battle.


title: Battle on the Ice

text: In 1221, Pope Honorius III was again worried about the situation in the Finnish-Novgorodian Wars after receiving alarming information from the Archbishop of Uppsala. He authorized the Bishop of Finland to establish a trade embargo against the "barbarians" that threatened Christianity in Finland. The nationality of the "barbarians", presumably a citation from Archbishop's earlier letter, remains unknown, and was not necessarily known even by the Pope. However, as the trade embargo was widened eight years later, it was specifically said to be against the Russians. Based on Papal letters from 1229, the Bishop of Finland requested the Pope enforce a trade embargo against Novgorodians on the Baltic Sea, at least in Visby, Riga and Lübeck. A few years later, the Pope also requested the Livonian Brothers of the Sword send troops to protect Finland. Whether any knights ever arrived remains unknown.


title: Battle on the Ice

text: Although the missionaries and Crusaders had attempted to establish peaceful relations with the Novgorod Republic, Livonian missionary and crusade activity in Estonia caused conflicts with Novgorod, who had also attempted to subjugate, raid and convert the pagan Estonians. The Estonians also sometimes attempted to ally with the Russians against the Crusaders. In 1240 the combined forces of Teutonic Knights, other Germans from Estonia, Danish vassals from Estonia, and the exiled Prince of Pskov Yaroslav Vladimirovich attacked the Pskov Republic and Votia, a tributary of Novgorod. This triggered the counterattack from Novgorod.


title: Battle on the Ice

text: Hoping to exploit Novgorod's weakness in the wake of the Mongol and Swedish invasions, the Teutonic Knights attacked the neighboring Novgorod Republic and occupied Pskov, Izborsk, and Koporye in autumn 1240. When they approached Novgorod itself, the local citizens recalled to the city 20-year-old Prince Alexander Nevsky, whom they had banished to Pereslavl earlier that year. During the campaign of 1241, Alexander managed to retake Pskov and Koporye from the crusaders.


title: Battle on the Ice

text: In the spring of 1242, the Teutonic Knights defeated a detachment of Novgorodians about 20 km south of the fortress of Dorpat (Tartu). Led by Prince-Bishop Hermann of Dorpat, the knights and their auxiliary troops of local Ugaunian Estonians then met with Alexander's forces by the narrow strait (Lake Lämmijärv or Teploe) that connects the north and south parts of Lake Peipus (Lake Peipus proper with Lake Pskovskoye).


title: Battle on the Ice

text: On 5 April 1242 Alexander, intending to fight in a place of his own choosing, retreated in an attempt to draw the often over-confident Crusaders onto the frozen lake. Estimates on the number of troops in the opposing armies vary widely among scholars. A more conservative estimation has it that the crusader forces likely numbered around 2,600, including 800 Danish and German knights, 100 Teutonic knights, 300 Danes, 400 Germans, and 1,000 Estonian infantry. The Russians fielded around 5,000 men: Alexander and his brother Andrei's bodyguards ("druzhina"), totalling around 1,000, plus 2,000 militia of Novgorod, 1,400 Finno-Ugrian tribesmen, and 600 allied Turkish horse archers.


title: Battle on the Ice

text: The Teutonic knights and crusaders charged across the lake and reached the enemy, but were held up by the infantry of the Novgorod militia. This caused the momentum of the crusader attack to slow. The battle was fierce, with the allied Russians fighting the Teutonic and crusader troops on the frozen surface of the lake. After a little more than two hours of close quarters fighting, Alexander ordered the left and right wings of his army (including cavalry) to enter the battle. The Teutonic and crusader troops by that time were exhausted from the constant struggle on the slippery surface of the frozen lake. The Crusaders started to retreat in disarray deeper onto the ice, and the appearance of the fresh Novgorod cavalry made them retreat in panic.


title: Battle on the Ice

text: It is commonly said that "the Teutonic knights and crusaders attempted to rally and regroup at the far side of the lake, however, the thin ice began to give way and cracked under the weight of their heavy armour, and many knights and crusaders drowned"; but Donald Ostrowski writes in his article "Alexander Nevskii’s "Battle on the Ice": The Creation of a Legend" that accounts of ice breaking and knights drowning are a relatively recent embellishment to the original historical story. He cites a large number of scholars who have written about the battle, Karamzin, Solovyev, Petrushevskii, Khitrov, Platonov, Grekov, Vernadsky, Razin, Myakotin, Pashuto, Fennell, and Kirpichnikov, none of whom mention the ice breaking up or anyone drowning when discussing the battle on the ice. After analysing all the sources Ostrowski concludes that the part about ice breaking and drowning appeared first in the 1938 film "Alexander Nevsky" by Sergei Eisenstein.


title: Battle on the Ice

text: The [Russians] had many archers, and the battle began with their bold assault on the king's men [Danes]. The brothers' banners were soon flying in the midst of the archers, and swords were heard cutting helmets apart. Many from both sides fell dead on the grass. Then the Brothers' army was completely surrounded, for the Russians had so many troops that there were easily sixty men for every one German knight. The Brothers fought well enough, but they were nonetheless cut down. Some of those from Dorpat escaped from the battle, and it was their salvation that they fled. Twenty brothers lay dead and six were captured.


title: Battle on the Ice

text: Prince Alexander and all the men of Novgorod drew up their forces by the lake, at Uzmen, by the Raven's Rock; and the Germans and the Estonians rode at them, driving themselves like a wedge through their army. And there was a great slaughter of Germans and Estonians... they fought with them during the pursuit on the ice seven versts short of the Subol [north-western] shore. And there fell a countless number of Estonians, and 400 of the Germans, and they took fifty with their hands and they took them to Novgorod.


title: Battle on the Ice

text: The legacy of the battle, and its decisiveness, came because it halted the eastward expansion of the Teutonic Order and established a permanent border line through the Narva River and Lake Peipus dividing Eastern Orthodoxy from Western Catholicism. The knights' defeat at the hands of Alexander's forces prevented the crusaders from retaking Pskov, the linchpin of their eastern crusade. The Novgorodians succeeded in defending Russian territory, and the crusaders never mounted another serious challenge eastward. Alexander was canonised as a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church in 1574.


title: Battle on the Ice

text: The event was glorified in Sergei Eisenstein's patriotic historical drama film "Alexander Nevsky", released in 1938. The movie, bearing propagandist allegories of the Teutonic Knights as Nazi Germans, with the Teutonic infantry wearing modified World War I German Stahlhelm helmets, has created a popular image of the battle often mistaken for the real events. In particular, the image of knights dying by breaking the ice and drowning originates from the film. Sergei Prokofiev turned his score for the film into a concert cantata of the same title, the longest movement of which is "The Battle on the Ice".


title: Battle on the Ice

text: During World War II, the image of Alexander Nevsky became a national Russian symbol of the struggle against German occupation. The Order of Alexander Nevsky was re-established in the Soviet Union in 1942 during the Great Patriotic War. Since 2010, the Russian government has given out an Order of Alexander Nevsky (originally introduced by Catherine I of Russia in 1725) given for outstanding bravery and excellent service to the country.