title: Hannibal King

text: Reynolds has said that his performance reminded a rival executive of Marvel antihero Deadpool. The exec is said to have told Reynolds, "Trust me, if they ever make a movie about Deadpool, you're the only guy who can play Deadpool," and sent Reynolds a copy of the comic, "Cable & Deadpool" #2, in which Deadpool refers to his own scarred appearance as "Ryan Reynolds crossed with a Shar-Pei." When Reynolds read that comic that name-dropped him, he fell in love with the character and was driven to bring him to the movies.


title: Semiconductor fabrication plant

text: In the microelectronics industry, a semiconductor fabrication plant (commonly called a fab; sometimes foundry) is a factory where devices such as integrated circuits are manufactured.


title: Semiconductor fabrication plant

text: Fabs require many expensive devices to function. Estimates put the cost of building a new fab over one billion U.S. dollars with values as high as $3–4 billion not being uncommon. TSMC invested $9.3 billion in its "Fab15" 300 mm wafer manufacturing facility in Taiwan. The same company estimations suggest that their future fab might cost $20 billion. A foundry model emerged in the 1990s: Foundries that produced their own designs were known as integrated device manufacturers (IDMs). Companies that farmed out manufacturing of their designs to foundries were termed fabless semiconductor companies. Those foundries, which did not create their own designs, were called pure-play semiconductor foundries.


title: Semiconductor fabrication plant

text: The central part of a fab is the clean room, an area where the environment is controlled to eliminate all dust, since even a single speck can ruin a microcircuit, which has nanoscale features much smaller than dust particles. The clean room must also be damped against vibration to enable nanometer-scale alignment of machines and must be kept within narrow bands of temperature and humidity. Vibration control may be achieved by using deep piles in the cleanroom's foundation that anchor the cleanroom to the bedrock, careful selection of the construction site, and/or using vibration dampers. Controlling temperature and humidity is critical for minimizing static electricity. Corona discharge sources can also be used to reduce static electricity. Often, a fab will be constructed in the following manner: (from top to bottom): the roof, which may contain air handling equipment that draws, purifies and cools outside air, an air plenum for distributing the air to several floor-mounted fan filter units, which are also part of the cleanroom's ceiling, the cleanroom itself, which may or may not have more than one story, a return air plenum, the clean subfab that may contain support equipment for the machines in the cleanroom such as chemical delivery, purification, recycling and destruction systems, and the ground floor, that may contain electrical equipment. Fabs also often have some office space.


title: Semiconductor fabrication plant

text: The clean room is where all fabrication takes place and contains the machinery for integrated circuit production such as steppers and/or scanners for photolithography, in addition to etching, cleaning, doping and dicing machines. All these devices are extremely precise and thus extremely expensive. Prices for most common pieces of equipment for the processing of 300 mm wafers range from $700,000 to upwards of $4,000,000 each with a few pieces of equipment reaching as high as $340,000,000 each (e.g. EUV scanners). A typical fab will have several hundred equipment items.


title: Semiconductor fabrication plant

text: Typically an advance in chip-making technology requires a completely new fab to be built. In the past, the equipment to outfit a fab was not very expensive and there were a huge number of smaller fabs producing chips in small quantities. However, the cost of the most up-to-date equipment has since grown to the point where a new fab can cost several billion dollars.


title: Semiconductor fabrication plant

text: Another side effect of the cost has been the challenge to make use of older fabs. For many companies these older fabs are useful for producing designs for unique markets, such as embedded processors, flash memory, and microcontrollers. However, for companies with more limited product lines, it is often best to either rent out the fab, or close it entirely. This is due to the tendency of the cost of upgrading an existing fab to produce devices requiring newer technology to exceed the cost of a completely new fab.


title: Semiconductor fabrication plant

text: There has been a trend to produce ever larger wafers, so each process step is being performed on more and more chips at once. The goal is to spread production costs (chemicals, fab time) over a larger number of saleable chips. It is impossible (or at least impracticable) to retrofit machinery to handle larger wafers. This is not to say that foundries using smaller wafers are necessarily obsolete; older foundries can be cheaper to operate, have higher yields for simple chips and still be productive.


title: Semiconductor fabrication plant

text: The industry was aiming to move from the state-of-the-art wafer size 300 mm (12 in) to 450 mm by 2018. In March 2014, Intel expected 450 mm deployment by 2020. But in 2016, corresponding joint research efforts were stopped.


title: Semiconductor fabrication plant

text: Additionally, there is a large push to completely automate the production of semiconductor chips from beginning to end. This is often referred to as the "lights-out fab" concept.


title: Semiconductor fabrication plant

text: The International Sematech Manufacturing Initiative (ISMI), an extension of the US consortium SEMATECH, is sponsoring the "300 mm Prime" initiative. An important goal of this initiative is to enable fabs to produce greater quantities of smaller chips as a response to shorter lifecycles seen in consumer electronics. The logic is that such a fab can produce smaller lots more easily and can efficiently switch its production to supply chips for a variety of new electronic devices. Another important goal is to reduce the waiting time between processing steps.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: Italian Somalia (; ; ), was a protectorate and later colony of the Kingdom of Italy in present-day Somalia. Ruled in the 19th century by the Somali Sultanates of Hobyo and Majeerteen in the north, and the Hiraab Imamate and Geledi Sultanate and the Biimaal Sultanate leading a resistance against the colonials in southern Somalia for decades. The territory was acquired in the 1880s by Italy through various treaties.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: In 1936, the region was integrated into Italian East Africa as the Somalia Governorate. This would last until Italy's loss of the region in 1941, during the East African campaign of World War II. Italian Somalia then came under British military administration until 1950, when it became a United Nations trusteeship, the Trust Territory of Somalia under Italian administration. On 1 July 1960, the Trust Territory of Somalia united in agreement with the former British Somaliland protectorate to form the Somali Republic.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: The late 19th century had a huge impact in the Horn of Africa. The Somali Sultans that then controlled the region, such as Yusuf Ali Kenadid, Boqor Osman Mahamuud, Ahmed Yusuf, and Olol Dinle entered into treaties with one of the European colonial powers Great Britain, and France or Abyssinia.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: At the end of the 19th century, a growing social-political movement developed within Italy to start expanding its influence, since many other European countries had already been doing so, which was effectively leaving Italy behind. Italy also had serious economic problems. It is also argued by some historians that Italy had a minor interest in the mutton and livestock that were then plentiful in Somalia, though whatever designs Italy may have had on the resource-challenged Somali landscape were undoubtedly subordinate to its interest in the region's ports and the waters and lands to which they provided access.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: Cesare Correnti organized an expedition under the "Società Geografica Italiana" in 1876. The next year, the travel journal "L’Esploratore" was established by Manfredo Camperio. The "Società di Esplorazioni Commerciali in Africa" was created in 1879, with the Italian industrial establishment involved as well. The "Club Africano", which three years later became the "Società Africana D’Italia", was also established in Somalia in 1880.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: In late 1888, Sultan Yusuf Ali Kenadid entered into a treaty with Italy, making his Sultanate of Hobyo an Italian protectorate. His rival Boqor Osman Mahamuud was to sign a similar agreement vis-a-vis his own Majeerteen Sultanate (Majeerteenia) the following year. Both rulers had entered into the protectorate treaties to advance their own expansionist goals, with Sultan Kenadid looking to use Italy's support in his ongoing power struggle with Boqor Osman over the Majeerteen Sultanate, as well as in a separate conflict with the Hiraab Sultanate over an area to the south of Hobyo. In signing the agreements, the rulers also hoped to exploit the rival objectives of the European imperial powers so as to more effectively assure the continued independence of their territories. The Italians, for their part, were interested in the largely arid territory mainly because of its ports, which could grant them access to the strategically important Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aden.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: The terms of each treaty specified that Italy was to steer clear of any interference in the Sultanates' respective administrations. In return for Italian arms and an annual subsidy, the Sultans conceded to a minimum of oversight and economic concessions. The Italians also agreed to dispatch a few ambassadors to promote both the Sultanates' and their own interests. The new protectorates were thereafter managed by Vincenzo Filonardi through a chartered company. An Anglo-Italian border protocol was later signed on 5 May 1894, followed by an agreement in 1906 between Cavalier Pestalozza and General Swaine acknowledging that Baran fell under the Majeerteen Sultanate's administration.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: The last piece of land acquired by Italy in Somalia in order to form Italian Somaliland was the Jubaland region. Britain ceded the territory in 1925 as a reward for the Italians having joined the Allies in World War I. The British retained control of the southern half of the partitioned Jubaland territory, which was later called the Northern Frontier District (NFD).


title: Italian Somaliland

text: In January 1887 Italian troops from Somalia fought a battle against Ras Alula Engida's militia in Dogali, Eritrea, where they lost 500 troops. The Prime Minister, Agostino Depretis, died shortly after this defeat in July 1887. Francesco Crispi replaced him as Prime Minister. On 2 May 1889, the Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II and Italy signed a peace treaty.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: Italy gained control of the ports of the Benadir coastal area with the concession of a small strip of land on the coast from the Sultan of Zanzibar, and over the following decades, Italian settlement was encouraged. In 1905, Italy assumed the responsibility of creating a colony in southern Somalia, after several failed attempts. This followed revelations that the Benadir Company had tolerated or collaborated in the perpetuation of the slave trade. The administrative regulator was Governor Mercantelli, with the six subdivisions of Brava, Merca, Lugh, Itala, Bardera, and Jumbo.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: On 5 April 1908, the Italian Parliament enacted a basic law to unite all of the parts of southern Somalia into an area called "Somalia Italiana". The colonial power was then divided between the Parliament, the metropolitan government, and the colonial government. The power of the colonial government was the only power that was changed. The civil governor controlled export rights, regulated the rate of exchange, raised or lowered native taxes, and administered all civil services and matters relating to hunting, fishing, and conservation. The governor was in control of the police force, while nominating local residents and military arrangements.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: From 5 April 1908 to 5 May 1936, the Royal Corps of Somali Colonial Troops ("Regio corpo truppe coloniali della Somalia Italiana"), originally called the "Guard Corps of Benadir", served as the territory's formal military corps. At the start of its establishment, the force had 2,600 Italian officers. Between 1911 and 1912, over 1,000 Somalis from Mogadishu served as combat units along with Eritrean and Italian soldiers in the Italo-Turkish War. Most of the troops stationed never returned home until they were transferred back to Italian Somaliland in preparation for the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: Effective Italian control remained largely limited to the coastal areas until the early 1920s. After the collapse of the Dervish movement, wherein Diiriye Guure was sultan and wherein Mohammed Abdullah Hassan' was emir, rebellion and revolt occurred, with disputes arising between different clans in the colony. The government of the time served as a mediator while maintaining close control over the military.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: In 1920, a member of the Italian Royal Family, The Duca degli Abruzzi, who was also a famous explorer, would establish the "Società Agricola Italo-Somala" (SAIS) in order to explore the agricultural potential of the territory. That same year, the "Duca" founded the Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi ("Villabruzzi"; Jowhar) as an agricultural settlement in Italian Somaliland. The area produced sugar, bananas and cotton. On 5 December 1923, Cesare Maria De Vecchi di Val Cismon was named Governor in charge of the new colonial administration.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: In November 1920, the Banca d'Italia, the first modern bank in Italian Somaliland, was established in Mogadishu.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: After World War I in 1925, Trans-Juba, which was then a part of British East Africa, was ceded to Italy. This concession was purportedly a reward for the Italians having joined the Allies in World War I.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: Following an examination of the layout of the land, the Italians began new local infrastructure projects, including the construction of hospitals, farms and schools.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: The relationship between the Sultanate of Hobyo and Italy soured when Sultan Kenadid refused the Italians' proposal to allow a British contingent of troops to disembark in his Sultanate so that they might then pursue their battle against the Somali religious and nationalist leader Muhammad Abdullah Hassan's Dervish forces. Viewed as too much of a threat, Sultan Kenadid was eventually exiled to Aden in Yemen and then to Eritrea. His son Ali Yusuf Kenadid succeeded him on the throne. In 1924, Governor Cesare Maria De Vecchi adopted a policy of disarmentation of the northern Somali sultanates. Sultan Ali Yusuf Kenadid was thereafter in turn exiled. The Dubats colonial troops and the Zaptié gendarmerie were extensively used by De Vecchi during these military campaigns. However, unlike the southern territories, the northern sultanates were not subject to direct rule due to the earlier treaties they had signed with the Italians.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: In 1926, the agricultural colony of "Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi" comprised 16 villages, with some 3,000 Somali and 200 Italian inhabitants, and was connected by a 114 km new railway to Mogadishu. Italian colonial policy followed two principles in Italian Somaliland: preservation of the dominant clan and ethnic configurations and respect for Islam as the territory's religion.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: In 1928, the Italian authorities built the Mogadishu Cathedral ("Cattedrale di Mogadiscio"). It was constructed in a Norman Gothic style, based on the Cefalù Cathedral in Cefalù, Sicily. Following its establishment, Crown Prince Umberto II made his first publicized visit to Mogadishu. To commemorate the visit, the Arch of Umberto was constructed. The arch was built at the center of Mogadishu Garden. The Mogadishu International Airport was constructed that same year. The facility was regarded as one of the finest in the region.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: In the early 1930s, the new Italian Governors, Guido Corni and Maurizio Rava, started a policy of assimilation of the Somalis. Many Somalis were enrolled in the Italian colonial troops, and thousands of Italian colonists moved to live in Mogadishu. The city grew in size and some small manufacturing companies opened up. The Italians also settled in agricultural areas around the capital, such as Jowhar and Janale ("Genale").


title: Italian Somaliland

text: In 1930, there were 22,000 Italians living in Italian Somaliland, representing 2% of the territory's population. The majority resided in the capital Mogadishu, with other Italian communities concentrated in Jowhar, Adale ("Itala"), Janale, Jamame and Kismayo.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: In October 1934, Crown Prince Umberto II made his second publicized visit to Italian Somaliland. King Victor Emmanuel III would also travel to the territory, arriving on 3 November that same year, accompanied by Emilio de Bono, after a non-stop flight from Rome. They were welcomed by the Governor Maurizio Rava and other colonial administrators. The King then traveled to "Villabruzzi" on 5 November and then returned to Mogadishu, where he celebrated his 65th birthday on 11 November. Following his visit to Italian Somaliland, new maps and 14 stamps were published. To commemorate his visit, an Arch of Triumph was constructed in Mogadishu in 1934.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: By 1935, Mogadishu began to serve as a major naval base and port for the Italians. Then Prime Minister of Italy Benito Mussolini regarded Greater Somalia ("La Grande Somalia") as the crown jewel in Italy's colonial empire on the continent. He viewed himself less as an invader than as a liberator of the occupied Somali territories, including the Ogaden region, to which the Ethiopian Empire laid claim. On this basis, he justified his plan to invade Ethiopia. In October 1935, the southern front of the Second Italo-Abyssinian War was launched into Ethiopia from Italian Somaliland. The Italian General Rodolfo Graziani commanded the invasion forces in the south. Over 40,000 Somali troops served in the war, mostly as combat units. They backed up the over 80,000 Italians serving alongside them at the start of the offensive. Many of the Somalis were veterans from serving in Italian Libya. During the invasion of Ethiopia, Mogadishu served as a chief supply base.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: In June 1936, after the war ended, Italian Somaliland became part of Italian East Africa ("Africa Orientale Italiana") forming the Somalia Governorate. The new colony of the Italian Empire also included Ethiopia and Eritrea. To commemorate the victory, an Arch of Triumph was constructed in Mogadishu.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: From 1936 to 1940, new roads were constructed in the region, such as the "Imperial Road" from Mogadishu to Addis Ababa. New railways (114 km from Mogadishu to Jowhar) and many schools, hospitals, ports and bridges were also built.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: Since the start of the colony, many Somali troops fought in the so-called "Regio Corpo Truppe Coloniali". The soldiers were enrolled as Dubats, Zaptié and Bande irregolari. During World War II, these troops were regarded as a wing of the Italian Army's Infantry Division, as was the case in Libya and Eritrea. The Zaptié were considered the best: they provided a ceremonial escort for the Italian Viceroy (Governor) as well as the territorial police. There were already more than one thousand such soldiers in 1922. In 1941, in Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia, 2,186 Zaptìé plus an additional 500 recruits under training officially constituted a part of the Carabinieri. They were organised into a battalion commanded by Major Alfredo Serranti that defended Culqualber (Ethiopia) for three months until this military unit was destroyed by the Allies. After heavy fighting, all the Italian Carabinieri, including the Somali troops, received full military honors from the British.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: In 1935, there were over 50,000 Italians settlers living in Italian Somaliland, constituting 5% of the territory's population. Of those, 20,000 resided in Mogadishu ("Mogadiscio"), representing around 40% of the city's 50,000 residents. Mogadishu was an administrative capital of Italian East Africa, and new buildings were erected in the Italian architectural tradition. Other Italian settler communities were concentrated in Jowhar, Adale ("Itala"), Janale, Jamame, and Kismayo. These figures do not include the more than 220,000 Italian soldiers stationed throughout Italian Somaliland during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: The colony was also one of the most developed in Africa in terms of the standard of living of the colonists and of the local inhabitants, mainly in the urban areas. By 1940, the Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi ("Villabruzzi"; Jowhar) had a population of 12,000 people, of whom nearly 3,000 were Italian Somalis, and enjoyed a notable level of development with a small manufacturing area with agricultural industries (sugar mills, etc.).


title: Italian Somaliland

text: In the second half of 1940, Italian troops invaded British Somaliland, and ejected the British. The Italians also occupied Kenyan areas bordering Jubaland around the villages of Moyale and Buna. Although the Italian leadership believed were unsure where the British army would land first, Operation Canvas, to capture southern Somalia occurred first in January 1941, whereas the subsequent attempt to capture British Somaliland happened two months later in Operation Appearance.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: In the spring of 1941, Britain regained control of British Somaliland and conquered Italian Somaliland with the Ogaden. However, until the summer of 1943, there was an Italian guerrilla war in all the areas of the former Italian East Africa.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: British forces occupied Italian Somaliland and militarily administered the territory as well as British Somaliland. Faced with growing Italian political pressure inimical to continued British tenure and Somali aspirations for independence, the Somalis and the British came to see each other as allies. The first modern Somali political party, the Somali Youth Club (SYC), was subsequently established in Mogadishu in 1943; it was later renamed the Somali Youth League (SYL). The SYL evolved into the dominant party and had a moderate ideology. Hizbia Digil Mirifle Somali (HDMS) party served as the principal opposition to the right, although its platform was generally in agreement with that of the SYL.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: In November 1949, the United Nations finally opted to grant Italy trusteeship of Italian Somaliland, but only under close supervision and on the condition — first proposed by the Somali Youth League (SYL) and other nascent Somali political organizations, such as Hizbia Digil Mirifle Somali (later Hizbia Dastur Mustaqbal Somali, or HDMS) and the Somali National League (SNL), that were then agitating for independence — that Somalia achieve independence within ten years.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: In 1949, when the British military administration ended, Italian Somaliland became a United Nations trusteeship known as the Trust Territory of Somaliland. Under Italian administration, this trust territory lasted ten years, from 1950 to 1960, with legislative elections held in 1956 and 1959.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: During the 1950s, with UN funds pouring in and the presence of experienced Italian administrators who had come to see the region as their home, infrastructural and educational development blossomed in the region. School enrollment during this period was free. The decade passed relatively without incident, and was marked by positive growth in virtually all aspects of local life.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: In the 1956 parliamentary election, the Somali Youth League would win 54.29% of votes versus 26.01% for the nearest party, the Hizbia Digil Mirifle Somali. The SYL would also earn 416 of the 663 seats in the 1958 municipal election, with the HDMS securing 175 seats. By the 1959 parliamentary election, SYL would capture an even greater share of votes by winning 75.58% of the total ballot.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: Italian was an official language in Italian Somaliland during the Fiduciary Mandate, as well as in the first years of independence. By 1952, the majority of Somalis had some understanding of the language. In 1954, the Italian government established post-secondary institutions of law, economics and social studies in Mogadishu, the territory's capital. These institutions were satellites of the University of Rome, which provided all the instruction material, faculty and administration.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: On 1 July 1960, the Trust Territory of Somaliland (the former Italian Somaliland) and the former British Somaliland united to form the Somali Republic (Somalia), with Mogadishu as the nation's capital.


title: Italian Somaliland

text: A government was formed by Abdullahi Issa and Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Egal and other members of the trusteeship and protectorate governments, with Abdulcadir Muhammed Aden as President of the Somali National Assembly, Aden Abdullah Osman Daar as President of the Somali Republic, and Abdirashid Ali Shermarke as Prime Minister (later to become president from 1967 to 1969). On 20 July 1961 and through a popular referendum, the people of Somalia ratified a new constitution, which was first drafted in 1960.


title: Literary nonsense

text: Literary nonsense (or nonsense literature) is a broad categorization of literature that balances elements that make sense with some that do not, with the effect of subverting language conventions or logical reasoning. Even though the most well-known form of literary nonsense is nonsense verse, the genre is present in many forms of literature.


title: Literary nonsense

text: The effect of nonsense is often caused by an excess of meaning, rather than a lack of it. Its humor is derived from its nonsensical nature, rather than wit or the "joke" of a punchline.


title: Literary nonsense

text: Literary nonsense, as recognized since the nineteenth century, comes from a combination of two broad artistic sources. The first and older source is the oral folk tradition, including games, songs, dramas, and rhymes, such as the nursery rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle". The literary figure Mother Goose represents common incarnations of this style of writing.


title: Literary nonsense

text: The second, newer source of literary nonsense is in the intellectual absurdities of court poets, scholars, and intellectuals of various kinds. These writers often created sophisticated nonsense forms of Latin parodies, religious travesties, and political satire, though these texts are distinguished from more pure satire and parody by their exaggerated nonsensical effects.


title: Literary nonsense

text: Today's literary nonsense comes from a combination of both sources. Though not the first to write this hybrid kind of nonsense, Edward Lear developed and popularized it in his many limericks (starting with "A Book of Nonsense", 1846) and other famous texts such as "The Owl and the Pussycat", "The Dong with a Luminous Nose," "" and "The Story of the Four Little Children Who Went Around the World". Lewis Carroll continued this trend, making literary nonsense a worldwide phenomenon with "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (1865) and "Through the Looking-Glass" (1871). Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky", which appears in the latter book, is often considered quintessential nonsense literature.


title: Literary nonsense

text: In literary nonsense, certain formal elements of language and logic that facilitate meaning are balanced by elements that negate meaning. These formal elements include semantics, syntax, phonetics, context, representation, and formal diction. The genre is most easily recognizable by the various techniques or devices it uses to create this balance of meaning and lack of meaning, such as faulty cause and effect, portmanteau, neologism, reversals and inversions, imprecision (including gibberish), simultaneity, picture/text incongruity, arbitrariness, infinite repetition, negativity or mirroring, and misappropriation. Nonsense tautology, reduplication, and absurd precision have also been used in the nonsense genre. For a text to be within the genre of literary nonsense, it must have an abundance of nonsense techniques woven into the fabric of the piece. If the text employs only occasional nonsense devices, then it may not be classified as literary nonsense, though there may be a nonsensical effect to certain portions of the work. Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy", for instance, employs the nonsense device of imprecision by including a blank page, but this is only one nonsense device in a novel that otherwise makes sense. In Flann O'Brien's "The Third Policeman", on the other hand, many of the devices of nonsense are present throughout, and thus it could be considered a nonsense novel.


title: Literary nonsense

text: Gibberish, light verse, fantasy, and jokes and riddles are sometimes mistaken for literary nonsense, and the confusion is greater because nonsense can sometimes inhabit these (and many other) forms and genres.


title: Literary nonsense

text: Pure gibberish, as in the "hey diddle diddle" of nursery rhyme, is a device of nonsense, but it does not make a text, overall, literary nonsense. If there is not significant sense to balance out such devices, then the text dissolves into literal (as opposed to literary) nonsense.


title: Literary nonsense

text: Light verse, which is generally speaking humorous verse meant to entertain, may share humor, inconsequentiality, and playfulness, with nonsense, but it usually has a clear point or joke, and does not have the requisite tension between meaning and lack of meaning.


title: Literary nonsense

text: Nonsense is distinct from fantasy, though there are sometimes resemblances between them. While nonsense may employ the strange creatures, other worldly situations, magic, and talking animals of fantasy, these supernatural phenomena are not nonsensical if they have a discernible logic supporting their existence. The distinction lies in the coherent and unified nature of fantasy. Everything follows logic within the rules of the fantasy world; the nonsense world, on the other hand, has no comprehensive system of logic, although it may imply the existence of an inscrutable one, just beyond our grasp. The nature of magic within an imaginary world is an example of this distinction. Fantasy worlds employ the presence of magic to logically explain the impossible. In nonsense literature, magic is rare but when it does occur, its nonsensical nature only adds to the mystery rather than logically explaining anything. An example of nonsensical magic occurs in Carl Sandburg's "Rootabaga Stories", when Jason Squiff, in possession of a magical "gold buckskin whincher", has his hat, mittens, and shoes turn into popcorn because, according to the "rules" of the magic, "You have a letter Q in your name and because you have the pleasure and happiness of having a Q in your name you must have a popcorn hat, popcorn mittens and popcorn shoes".


title: Literary nonsense

text: Riddles only appear to be nonsense until the answer is found. The most famous nonsense riddle is only so because it originally had no answer. In Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland", the Mad Hatter asks Alice "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?" When Alice gives up, the Hatter replies that he does not know either, creating a nonsensical riddle. Some seemingly nonsense texts are actually riddles, such as the popular 1940s song "Mairzy Doats", which at first appears to have little discernible meaning but has a discoverable message. Jokes are not nonsense because their humor comes from their making sense, from our "getting" it, while nonsense is funny because it does "not" make sense, we do not "get" it.


title: Literary nonsense

text: While most contemporary nonsense has been written for children, the form has an extensive history in adult configurations before the nineteenth century. Figures such as John Hoskyns, Henry Peacham, John Sandford, and John Taylor lived in the early seventeenth century and were noted nonsense authors in their time. Nonsense was also an important element in the works of Flann O'Brien and Eugène Ionesco. Literary nonsense, as opposed to the folk forms of nonsense that have always existed in written history, was only first written for children in the early nineteenth century. It was popularized by Edward Lear and then later by Lewis Carroll. Today literary nonsense enjoys a shared audience of adults and children.


title: Literary nonsense

text: Note: None of these writers is considered a "nonsense writer". Some of them wrote texts considered to be in the genre (as in Lear, Carroll, Gorey, Lennon, Sandburg), while others only use nonsense as an occasional device (as in Joyce, Juster). All of these writers wrote outside of the nonsense genre also.


title: Literary nonsense

text: Bob Dylan wrote some lyrics that contain nonsense techniques, especially around the mid-1960s, in songs like "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" and "Tombstone Blues".


title: Literary nonsense

text: David Byrne, of the art rock/new wave group Talking Heads, employed nonsensical techniques in songwriting. Byrne often combined coherent yet unrelated phrases to make up nonsensical lyrics in songs such as: "Burning Down the House", "Making Flippy Floppy" and "Girlfriend Is Better". This tendency formed the basis of the title for the Talking Heads concert movie, "Stop Making Sense". More recently, Byrne published "Arboretum" (2006), a volume of tree-like diagrams that are, "mental maps of imaginary territory". He continues, explaining the aspect of nonsense: "Irrational logic – [...]. The application of logical scientific rigor and form to basically irrational premises. To proceed, carefully and deliberately, from nonsense, with a straight face, often arriving at a new kind of sense."


title: Literary nonsense

text: Syd Barrett, founder of Pink Floyd, was known for his often nonsensical songwriting influenced by Lear and Carroll that featured heavily on Pink Floyd's first album, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn".


title: Literary nonsense

text: Glen Baxter's comic work is often nonsense, relying on the baffling interplay between word and image.


title: Literary nonsense

text: "The Tomfoolery Show" was an American cartoon comedy television series based on the nonsense works of Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, and others.


title: Literary nonsense

text: "Zippy the Pinhead", by Bill Griffith, is an American strip that mixes philosophy, including what has been called "Heideggerian disruptions" and pop culture in its nonsensical processes.


title: Literary nonsense

text: _________. "Your Disgusting Head: The Darkest, Most Offensive—and Moist—Secrets of Your Ears, Mouth and Nose, Volume 2., 2004.


title: Literary nonsense

text: _________. "The Writings of John Lennon: In His Own Write, A Spaniard in the Works" New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964, 1965.


title: Literary nonsense

text: _________. "Tirra Lirra: Rhymes Old and New", illus. Marguerite Davis. London: George G. Harrap, 1933.


title: Literary nonsense

text: _________. "Edward Lear's Limericks and the Reversals of Nonsense," Victorian Poetry, 29 (1988): 285–299.


title: Literary nonsense

text: _________. "Society and the Self in the Limericks of Lear," The Review of English Studies, 177 (1994): 42–62.


title: Literary nonsense

text: _________. "Edward Lear's Limericks and Their Illustrations" in Explorations in the Field of Nonsense, ed. Wim Tigges (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987), pp. 101–116.


title: Literary nonsense

text: _________. "A New Defense of Nonsense; or, 'Where is his phallus?' and other questions not to ask" in Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Winter 1999–2000. Volume 24, Number 4 (186–194)


title: Oily fish

text: Oily fish are fish species with oil (fats) in soft tissues and in the coelomic cavity around the gut. Their fillets may contain up to 30% oil, although this figure varies both within and between species. Examples of oily fish include small forage fish such as sardines, herring and anchovies, and other larger pelagic fish such as salmon, trout, tuna, swordfish and mackerel.


title: Oily fish

text: Oily fish can be contrasted with whitefish, which contain oil only in the liver and in much less overall quantity than oily fish. Examples of whitefish are cod, haddock and flatfish. White fish are usually demersal fish which live on or near the seafloor, whereas oily fish are pelagic, living in the water column away from the bottom.


title: Oily fish

text: Oily fish meat is a good source of important fat-soluble vitamins such as Vitamin A and D, and is rich in omega-3 fatty acids (white fish also contain these nutrients but at a much lower concentration). For this reason the consumption of oily fish rather than white fish can be more beneficial to humans, particularly concerning heart diseases such as stroke and ischemic heart disease; however, oily fish are known to carry higher levels of contaminants (such as mercury or dioxin or POPs) than whitefish. Among other benefits, studies suggest that the omega-3 fatty acids in oily fish may help improve inflammatory conditions such as arthritis.


title: Oily fish

text: A 1997 study published in "Annals of Neurology" followed 5,386 elderly participants in Rotterdam. It found that fish consumption decreased the risk of dementia. However, the 2.1-year average follow-up was less than the three years dementia commonly affects people prior to diagnosis. Thus, the study was unclear as to whether fish consumption protected against dementia, or if dementia prevented the participants from wanting more fish.


title: Oily fish

text: French research published in 2002 in the "British Medical Journal" (BMJ) followed 1,674 elderly residents of southern France for seven years, studying their consumption of meat versus seafood and the presence of dementia symptoms. The conclusion was that people who ate fish at least once a week had a significantly lower risk of being diagnosed with dementia over a seven-year period. This study reinforced the Annals of Neurology findings. Because of the longer term, the BMJ study provided stronger evidence of a genuine protective effect. There was a possible confounding factor in that individuals with higher education have both a lower risk of dementia and higher consumption of fish.


title: Oily fish

text: Consuming 200–400 g of oily fish twice per week may also help prevent sudden death due to myocardial infarction by preventing cardiac arrhythmia. The eicosapentaenoic acid found in fish oils appears to dramatically reduce inflammation through conversion within the body to resolvins, with beneficial effects for the cardiovascular system and arthritis.


title: Oily fish

text: In 1994, the UK Committee on Medical Aspects of Food and Nutrition Policy recommended that people eat at least two portions of fish per week, one of which should be oily fish.


title: Oily fish

text: In 2004 the UK Food Standards Agency published advice on the recommended minimum and maximum quantities of oily fish to be eaten per week, to balance the beneficial qualities of the omega-3 fatty acids against the potential dangers of ingesting polychlorinated biphenyls and dioxins. It reiterated the 1994 guideline of two portions of fish per week including one portion of oily fish, but advised eating no more than four portions per week, and no more than two portions for people who are pregnant, may become pregnant or who are breastfeeding.


title: Oily fish

text: The United States Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Exposure Reference Dose (RfI) for methylmercury (MeHg) is 0.1 micrograms per kg body weight per day. The corresponding limit of blood mercury is 5.8 micrograms per liter. The restrictions apply to certain oily fish – "marlin, swordfish, shark and, to a lesser extent, tuna". The recommendations on maximum consumption of oily fish were up to four portions (1 portion = 140g, or approx 4.9 ounces) a week for men, boys, and women past childbearing age, and up to two portions a week for women of childbearing age, including pregnant and breastfeeding women, and girls. There is no recommended limit on the consumption of white fish.


title: Oily fish

text: The EPA and 2007 U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines sets a limit only on consumption of fatty fish with greater than one part per million of methylmercury, specifically tilefish, king mackerel, shark and swordfish. There are limits, however, for nursing/pregnant women and children under the age of six. This population should completely avoid fish with high risk of mercury contamination (those listed above) and limit consumption of moderate and low-mercury fish to 12 ounces or less per week. Albacore tuna should be limited to six ounces or less per week.


title: Oily fish

text: Concerns about contamination, diet or supply have led to investigation of plant sources of omega-3 fatty acids, notably flax, hempseed and perilla oils. Lactating women who supplemented their diet with flaxseed oil showed increases in blood and breastmilk concentration of alpha-linolenic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid but no changes to concentrations of docosahexaenoic acid.


title: Piperidine

text: Piperidine is an organic compound with the molecular formula (CH)NH. This heterocyclic amine consists of a six-membered ring containing five methylene bridges (–CH–) and one amine bridge (–NH–). It is a colorless liquid with an odor described as objectionable, and typical of amines. The name comes from the genus name "Piper", which is the Latin word for pepper. Although piperidine is a common organic compound, it is best known as a representative structure element within many pharmaceuticals and alkaloids, such as natural-occurring solenopsins.


title: Piperidine

text: Piperidine was first reported in 1850 by the Scottish chemist Thomas Anderson and again, independently, in 1852 by the French chemist Auguste Cahours, who named it. Both of them obtained piperidine by reacting piperine with nitric acid.


title: Piperidine

text: Industrially, piperidine is produced by the hydrogenation of pyridine, usually over a molybdenum disulfide catalyst:


title: Piperidine

text: Piperidine itself has been obtained from black pepper, from "Psilocaulon absimile" (Aizoaceae), and in "Petrosimonia monandra".


title: Piperidine

text: The piperidine structural motif is present in numerous natural alkaloids. These include piperine, which gives black pepper its spicy taste. This gave the compound its name. Other examples are the fire ant toxin solenopsin, the nicotine analog anabasine of tree tobacco ("Nicotiana glauca"), lobeline of Indian tobacco, and the toxic alkaloid coniine from poison hemlock, which was used to put Socrates to death.


title: Piperidine

text: Piperidine prefers a chair conformation, similar to cyclohexane. Unlike cyclohexane, piperidine has two distinguishable chair conformations: one with the N–H bond in an axial position, and the other in an equatorial position. After much controversy during the 1950s–1970s, the equatorial conformation was found to be more stable by 0.72 kcal/mol in the gas phase. In nonpolar solvents, a range between 0.2 and 0.6 kcal/mol has been estimated, but in polar solvents the axial conformer may be more stable. The two conformers interconvert rapidly through nitrogen inversion; the free energy activation barrier for this process, estimated at 6.1 kcal/mol, is substantially lower than the 10.4 kcal/mol for ring inversion. In the case of "N"-methylpiperidine, the equatorial conformation is preferred by 3.16 kcal/mol, which is much larger than the preference in methylcyclohexane, 1.74 kcal/mol.


title: Piperidine

text: Piperidine is a widely used to convert ketones to enamines. Enamines derived from piperidine are substrates in the Stork enamine alkylation reaction.


title: Piperidine

text: Upon treatment with calcium hypochlorite, piperidine converts to N-chloropiperidine, a chloramine with the formula CHNCl. The resulting chloramine undergoes dehydrohalogenation to afford the cyclic imine.


title: Piperidine

text: Piperidine is used as a solvent and as a base. The same is true for certain derivatives: "N"-formylpiperidine is a polar aprotic solvent with better hydrocarbon solubility than other amide solvents, and 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine is a highly sterically hindered base, useful because of its low nucleophilicity and high solubility in organic solvents.


title: Piperidine

text: A significant industrial application of piperidine is for the production of dipiperidinyl dithiuram tetrasulfide, which is used as an accelerator of the sulfur vulcanization of rubber.


title: Piperidine

text: Piperidine and its derivatives are ubiquitous building blocks in pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals. The piperidine structure is found in, for example:


title: Piperidine

text: Piperidine is also commonly used in chemical degradation reactions, such as the sequencing of DNA in the cleavage of particular modified nucleotides. Piperidine is also commonly used as a base for the deprotection of Fmoc-amino acids used in solid-phase peptide synthesis.


title: Piperidine

text: Piperidine is listed as a Table II precursor under the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances due to its use (peaking in the 1970s) in the clandestine manufacture of PCP (1-(1-phenylcyclohexyl)piperidine, also known as angel dust, sherms, wet, etc.).


title: Them!

text: Them! is a 1954 American black-and-white science fiction monster film from Warner Bros. Pictures, produced by David Weisbart, directed by Gordon Douglas, and starring James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, and James Arness. The film is based on an original story treatment by George Worthing Yates, which was then developed into a screenplay by Ted Sherdeman and adaptation by Russell Hughes.


title: Them!

text: "Them!" is one of the first of the 1950s "nuclear monster" films, and the first "big bug" feature film to use insects as the monster.


title: Them!

text: A nest of gigantic irradiated ants is discovered in the New Mexico desert; they quickly become a national threat when it is discovered that two young queen ants and their consorts have escaped to establish new nests. The national search that follows finally culminates in a battle with "Them" in the concrete spillways and storm drain system of Los Angeles.


title: Them!

text: New Mexico State Police Sgt. Ben Peterson and Trooper Ed Blackburn discover a little girl wandering the desert, near Alamogordo, in shock and a catatonic state. They take her to a nearby vacation trailer, located by a spotter aircraft, where they find evidence that the little girl had been there when it was attacked and nearly destroyed. It is later discovered that the trailer was owned by an FBI Special Agent named Ellinson, on vacation with his wife, son, and daughter; the other members of the girl's family remain missing. Now in an ambulance, the child briefly reacts to a pulsating high-pitched sound coming from the desert. She sits upright on the stretcher, but no one else notices her reaction, and she lies back down when the noise stops.


title: Them!

text: At a general store owned by "Gramps" Johnson, Peterson and Blackburn find him dead and a wall of the store partially torn out. After a quick look-around, Peterson leaves Blackburn behind to secure the crime scene. Blackburn later goes outside to investigate a strange, pulsating sound. Gunshots are fired, the sound becomes faster and louder, and Blackburn goes missing. Peterson's captain later points out that both Johnson and Blackburn had fired their weapons at their attacker. More puzzling is the coroner's report on Johnson's brutal death, which includes a huge amount of formic acid being found in his body.


title: Them!

text: The FBI sends Special Agent Robert Graham to New Mexico to investigate because one of the missing persons is an FBI Agent. After a strange impression is found in the sand near the Ellisons' trailer, the Department of Agriculture sends myrmecologists Dr. Harold Medford and his daughter, Dr. Pat Medford, to assist with the investigation. The elder Medford exposes the Ellinson girl to formic acid fumes, which releases her from her catatonic state; she screams in panic and yells "Them!". Medford's suspicions of "Camponotus vicinus" are validated by her reaction, but he will not reveal his theory prematurely.


title: Them!

text: At the Ellinson campsite, Pat encounters a giant, eight-foot-long foraging ant. Following instructions from the elder Medford, Peterson and Graham shoot off the ant's antennae, blinding it, and kill it using a Thompson submachine gun. Medford finally reveals his theory: a colony of giant ants, mutated by radiation from the first atomic bomb test near Alamogordo, is responsible for the area's deaths. General O'Brien orders an Army helicopter search, and the giant ants' nest is found. Cyanide gas bombs are tossed inside, and Graham, Peterson, and Pat descend into the nest to check for survivors. Deep inside, Pat finds evidence that two queens have hatched and escaped to establish new colonies.


title: Them!

text: Peterson, Graham, and the Medfords join a government task force that covertly begins to investigate reports of unusual activity. In one a civilian pilot has been committed to a Texas mental hospital after claiming that he was forced down by UFOs shaped like giant ants. Next, the Coast Guard receives a report of a giant queen hatching her brood in the hold of a freighter at sea in the Pacific; giant ants attack the ship's crew, and there are few survivors. The freighter is later sunk by U.S. Navy gunfire.


title: Them!

text: A third report about a large sugar theft at a rail yard leads Peterson, Graham, and Major Kibbee to Los Angeles. An alcoholic in a hospital "drunk tank" claims he has seen giant ants outside his window. The mutilated body of a father is recovered, but his two young sons are missing. Peterson, Graham, and Kibbee find evidence that they were flying a model airplane in the Los Angeles River drainage channel near the hospital. Martial law is declared in Los Angeles and troops are assigned to find the ants in the vast storm drain system under the city.


title: Them!

text: Peterson finds the two missing boys alive, trapped by the ants near their nest. He calls for reinforcements and lifts both boys to safety, just before being attacked and grabbed by a giant ant in its mandibles. Graham arrives with reinforcements and kills the ant, but Peterson dies from his injuries as the ants swarm to protect the nest. Graham and the soldiers fight off the ants, but a tunnel collapse traps Graham. Several ants charge, but he can hold them off with his submachine gun just long enough for troops to break through. The queen and her hatchlings are discovered and quickly destroyed with flamethrowers. Dr. Medford offers a philosophic observation: "When Man entered the Atomic Age, he opened the door to a new world. What we may eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict."


title: Them!

text: When "Them!" began production in the fall of 1953, it was originally conceived to be in 3D and Warner Color. During pre-production, test shots in color and 3D were made. A few color tests of the large-scale ant models were also made, but when it was time to shoot the 3D test, Warner Bros.' "All Media" 3D camera rig malfunctioned and no footage could be filmed. The next day a memo was sent out that the color and 3D aspects of the production were to be scrapped; widescreen black-and-white would now be the film's presentation format. Warner Bros. hoped to emulate the "effective shock treatment" effect of its previous science fiction thriller "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms"; ultimately, however, the film was never made in widescreen. Because of the preparation of certain scenes, many of the camera set-ups for 3D remain in the film, like the opening titles and the flamethrowers shots aimed directly at the camera.


title: Them!

text: Although Warner Bros. was dissatisfied with the color results, the film's titles were printed in vivid red and blue against a black-and-white background to give the film's opening a dramatic "punch". This effect was achieved by an Eastman Color section spliced into each release print. The 1985 VHS tape release, the subsequent LaserDisc and later DVD release have retained this black-and-white-with-two-color title effect.


title: Them!

text: The entrance to the ants' final nest was filmed along the concrete spillways of the Los Angeles River, between the First and Seventh Street Bridges, east of downtown. The depiction of the Chihuahuan Desert of southern New Mexico is actually the Mojave Desert near Palmdale, California. Mercy Hospital was a real institution and is now Brownsville Medical Center.


title: Them!

text: James Whitmore wore "lifts" in his shoes to compensate for the height difference between himself and James Arness. Whitmore also employed bits of "business" (hand gestures and motions) during scenes in which he appeared to draw more attention to his character when not speaking.


title: Them!

text: The Wilhelm scream, created three years earlier for the film "Distant Drums", is used during the action sequences: when a sailor aboard the freighter is grabbed by an ant, when James Whitmore's character is caught in an ant's mandibles, and when an overhead wooden beam falls on a soldier in the Los Angeles storm drain sequence.


title: Them!

text: The giant ants, painted a purplish-green color, were constructed and operated by unseen technicians supervised by Ralph Ayers. During the climactic battle sequence in the Los Angeles sewers, there is a brief shot of one ant moving in the foreground with its side removed, revealing its mechanical interior. This blunder has been obscured in the DVD releases of the film.


title: Them!

text: The film poster shows a gigantic ant with menacing cat-like eyes rather than the normal compound eyes of an ant.


title: Them!

text: The sounds the giant ants emit in the film were the calls of bird-voiced tree frogs mixed in with the calls of a wood thrush, hooded warbler, and red-bellied woodpecker. It was recorded at Indian Island, Georgia, on April 11, 1947, by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.


title: Them!

text: "Them!" was released in June 1954, and by the end of that year had accrued $2 million (US) in distributors' domestic (U.S. and Canada) rentals, making it the year's 51st biggest earner. According to an article in "Slate", this was Warner Bros. highest-grossing film that year. However, "1954 In Film" lists two other films from Warner Bros. that earned more in gross.


title: Them!

text: From contemporary reviews, the "Monthly Film Bulletin" stated that despite the science fiction film genre being new it had developed several sub-divisions including "the other-worldly, the primeval-monstrous, the neo-monstrous, the planetary-visitant, etc." and that ""Them!" is a "well-built example of the neo-monstrous", "less absurdly sensational than most" Discussing the ant monsters in the film, the review referred to them as "reasonably horrible--they do not entirely avoid the impression of mock-up that is almost inevitable when over-lifesize creatures have to be constructed and moved" while noting that they were "considerably more conceivable than those prehistoric remnants that have recently been emerging from bog and iceberg". The review commented on the cast as "like most science-fiction, [the film] is on the whole serviceably rather than excitingly cast" and the crew was noted, stating the direction was "smoothly machined" and the film has "decent writing" though "more short cuts might have been [taken]", finding that the start of the film was too slow. A. H. Weiler's review in "The New York Times" noted "... from the moment James Whitmore, playing a New Mexico state trooper, discovers a six-year-old moppet wandering around the desert in a state of shock, to the time when the cause of that mental trauma is traced and destroyed, "Them!" is taut science fiction". The reviewer in "Variety" opined it was a "top-notch science fiction shocker. It has a well-plotted story, expertly directed and acted in a matter-of-fact style to rate a chiller payoff and thoroughly satisfy the fans of hackle-raising melodrama". John McCarten of "The New Yorker" wrote, "If you're willing to let your imagination off its leash, you may have a fairly good time at 'Them!'"


title: Them!

text: Since its original release, "Them!" has become generally regarded as one of the best science fiction films of the 1950s. Bill Warren described it as " ... tight, fast-paced and credible ... [T]he picture is suspenseful". Phil Hardy's "" noted, "Directed by [Gordon] Douglas in semi-documentary fashion, "Them!" is one of the best American science fiction films of the fifties". Danny Peary believed the film "Ranks with "The Thing" and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" as the best of the countless '50s science fiction films". In the "Time Out Film Guide", David Pirie wrote, "By far the best of the 50s cycle of 'creature features' ... retains a good part of its power today". The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 93% approval rating with an average rating of 7.6/10, based on 57 reviews. The website's consensus reads, "One of the best creature features of the early atomic age, "Them!" features effectively menacing special effects and avoids the self-parody that would taint later monster movies".


title: Them!

text: "Them!" was nominated for an Oscar for its special effects (but the award went to "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea") and won a Golden Reel Award for best sound editing.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: Tractor Supply Company (also known as TSCO or TSC), founded in 1938, is an American retail chain of stores that sells products for home improvement, agriculture, lawn and garden maintenance, livestock, equine and pet care for recreational farmers and ranchers, pet owners, and landowners. The company has 2,000 stores and is headquartered in Brentwood, Tennessee. It is publicly traded on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol TSCO and is a Fortune 500 company.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: Charles Schmidt founded Tractor Supply Company in Chicago in 1938 as a mail-order catalog that sold tractor parts to working farms. The first retail store was founded in 1939 in Minot, North Dakota. From 1941 to 1946, the company opened stores in Nebraska, Minnesota and Iowa.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: On January 14, 1959, Tractor Supply became publicly traded on the Over-The-Counter Market and reached $10 million in sales. The company was later traded on the New York Stock Exchange.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: In 1967, TSC opened its first international stores in Canada. Two years later, Schmidt sold his controlling interest in the company to National Industries. This and other factors, such as changing executive leadership and adding inventory that strayed from its traditional categories, led to a few years of losses for the company. In 1979, the company moved to Nashville, Tennessee. In 1982, Tractor Supply put ownership of the company back in the hands of executives and returned to their farm-store niche, resulting in a break-even year. The company was incorporated in Delaware that year.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: Over time, Tractor Supply expanded to also serve hobbyist farmers, such as families living in the suburbs with an interest in gardening and livestock. In 2002, the company earned $1.21 billion.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: Just two years later, in 2004, the company reported revenues of more than $1.7 billion and "Fortune" magazine named Tractor Supply to its list of the 100 fastest growing businesses. That year, Tractor Supply moved its headquarters to Brentwood, Tennessee. Jim Wright served as the CEO from 2004-2013. He was replaced by Gregory Sandfort.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: In 2014, Tractor Supply made it on the Fortune 500 list. On March 31, 2018, the company opened its 1700th store. On September 4, 2018, the company celebrated its 80th anniversary by ringing the closing bell at the NASDAQ Stock Exchange in New York.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: TSC's 1,900th store opened in September 2020. By December, the company had 1,923 stores in 49 states. By October 2021, there were 1,967 stores in 49 states. Hal Lawton became CEO in 2020. That year, the company received a Great Place to Work certification.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Tractor Supply was deemed an essential business and remained open. The company saw revenue grow 27 percent as more people turned to gardening and pet and livestock ownership. That year, it also established the Tractor Supply Company Foundation.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: In 2021, Tractor Supply reached #291 on the "Fortune 500" list and had over 20 million members in its loyalty program, Neighbor’s Club. TSC is the largest retail ranch and farm store operator in the U.S.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: On Oct 11, 2022, Tractor Supply received clearance from the FTC to close on its acquisition of Orscheln Farm & Home. In order to mitigate federal anti-trust concerns, Tractor Supply sold 73 Orscheln stores and the Orscheln distribution center in Moberly, Missouri, to Bomgaars, and 12 stores were sold to Missouri-based farm store chain Buchheit.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: Tractor Supply carries between 15,500-20,000 products in store, including work and recreational clothing, lawn and garden tools, home goods, fencing, truck beds, chicken coops, pet food, and feed for farm animals. Around 15 percent of in-store products are unique to the store’s region. Online, the company offers thirteen product categories and sells between 125,000-150,000 products.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: In 2020, the livestock and pet products category accounted for 47 percent of the company's sales. Two categories tied for second-highest sales with 21 percent each: hardware, tools, truck and towing products; and seasonal products such as lawn and garden equipment, gifts, and toys. They were followed by clothing and footwear with 7 percent and agricultural products with 4 percent of sales. Tractor Supply’s exclusive brands represented 29 percent of their total sales in 2021.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: Tractor Supply's mission statement is: "To work hard, have fun and make money by providing legendary service and great products at everyday low prices." In the mid-2000s, Tractor Supply conducted advertising campaigns featuring the slogan "The Stuff You Need Out Here." The company’s tagline later became “For Life Out Here.”


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: In 2020, Tractor Supply was a sponsor of the NBA. In 2021, the company became a corporate sponsor of PBR.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: In 2021, the company broke ground on its ninth distribution center which will be located in Navarre, Ohio.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: The company has been a sponsor for 4-H since 2010. In the fall of 2021, Tractor Supply raised $1.3 million for 4-H members through their Paper Clover campaign. In 2016, the company started its Grants for Growing program to raise money for FFA students. In 2021, the company raised $790,269.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: In 2019, Tractor Supply started working with the MuttNation Foundation, a nonprofit founded by Miranda Lambert that helps shelter pets. The foundation is supported by proceeds from MuttNation’s line of pet products sold by Tractor Supply.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: In 2020, Tractor Supply joined Land O'Lakes, Microsoft and others in the American Connection Project to support rural broadband access.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: In 2017, all TSC stores were outfitted with LED lighting. In 2021, the company was named to Investor Business Daily's 100 Best ESG Companies. In December 2021, the company joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Green Power Partnership. TSC has committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2040.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: In 2002, Tractor Supply was part of a group (also including four liquidation firms) that purchased some of the leases of the bankrupt Quality Stores, Inc., a Michigan-based company. The company operated over 300 stores in 30 states under the names CT Farm & Country; Country General; Quality Farm & Fleet; County Post; Central Farm and Fleet, and FISCO. In September 2016, Tractor Supply acquired Petsense, LLC, a small-box specialty retailer of pet supplies primarily located in small and mid-size communities. In February 2021, the company announced that it would acquire Orscheln Farm & Home for $297 million.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: Tractor Supply also owns Del's Feed & Farm Supply, a former farm retail chain in the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii, with all but two Del's stores having been converted into Tractor Supply stores.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: A lawsuit filed against the company by former employee Melissa Douglas claims the company violated the Americans with Disabilities Act when it refused to offer her modified work duties while she was pregnant.


title: Tractor Supply Company

text: In November 1966, TSC opened its first Canadian location in London, Ontario. The Canadian stores have not been affiliated with the U.S. operation of TSC since 1987, when the American parent company sold these locations to Birch Hill Equity Partner., an investment company based in Toronto. In July 2016, Peavey Mart acquired a controlling stake in TSC, and later acquired the company outright. In 2016, the Manitoba TSC stores were rebranded as Peavey Mart, while Ontario stores were rebranded by February 2021.


title: The Great Escape (Blur album)

text: The Great Escape is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Blur. It was released on 11 September 1995 on Food and Virgin Records. The album reached number one on the UK Albums Chart and charted in the top 10 in more than ten countries around the world. Less than a year after the album was released, it was certified triple platinum in the UK. The album received near-universal acclaim on release.


title: The Great Escape (Blur album)

text: The album continued the band's run of hit singles, with "Country House", "The Universal", "Stereotypes" and "Charmless Man" all reaching the top 10 of the UK Singles Chart. "Country House" was Blur's first number one hit in the UK, beating Oasis' "Roll with It", in a chart rivalry dubbed "The Battle of Britpop".


title: The Great Escape (Blur album)

text: "The Great Escape" is often considered to be the final album of a trio of Britpop albums released by Blur in the mid-1990s, after "Modern Life Is Rubbish" (1993) and "Parklife" (1994). With Blur's 1997 self-titled album, the band would change direction and move away from Britpop in favour of a more lo-fi and alternative rock sound.


title: The Great Escape (Blur album)

text: On 17 June 1995, lead singer Damon Albarn and bassist Alex James spoke on BBC Radio 1 about coming up with a title for the album; "We've got until this Wednesday, our record company inform us, to come up with it", said Albarn. "We've been trying to get "life" into it, but nothing was very good – "Wifelife", "Darklife", "Nextlife"", added James.


title: The Great Escape (Blur album)

text: The album is in the style of a concept album, that is, most of the songs are linked by a similar theme—loneliness and detachment. Albarn subsequently revealed that much of "The Great Escape" is about himself (e.g. "Dan Abnormal" is an anagram of "Damon Albarn").


title: The Great Escape (Blur album)

text: "Mr. Robinson's Quango" was the first song recorded for the album, whilst "It Could Be You" was the last, in May 1995. The title of the latter was taken from the original advertising slogan of the United Kingdom's multimillion-pound-prize National Lottery, which had drawn much public interest after its inception the previous year.


title: The Great Escape (Blur album)

text: "Yuko and Hiro" was originally titled "Japanese Workers", whilst "The Universal" was first attempted during the "Parklife" sessions as a ska number. During the making of "The Great Escape" the song was resurrected by James, who notes in his autobiography, "Bit of a Blur", that the band had almost given up on getting it to work when Albarn came up with the string section.


title: The Great Escape (Blur album)

text: One song on the album, "Ernold Same", features then-MP Ken Livingstone. He is credited in the sleevenotes as "The Right-On" Ken Livingstone. Producer Stephen Street commented, "It was my idea to get him in because I’m not a huge fan of his. We needed somebody with a really nasal, boring voice doing the commentary and I suggested him. He came in thinking he was the bee’s knees and we were fans – we weren’t at all! ("Laughs") I couldn’t stand him and my preconceptions were confirmed when he insulted the pastel jumper I was wearing that day! But his voice suited the song."


title: The Great Escape (Blur album)

text: As with Blur's previous two albums, the liner notes also contain guitar chords for each of the songs along with the lyrics.


title: The Great Escape (Blur album)

text: The album spawned four hit singles for the band with "Country House", "The Universal", "Stereotypes" and "Charmless Man". "Stereotypes" made its debut at a secret gig at the Dublin Castle in London and was considered as the album's lead single, but "Country House" got a bigger reaction from fans. "Country House" gave the band their first number one single, beating Oasis to the top spot. "The Universal" and "Charmless Man" both reached the top 5, whilst "Stereotypes" peaked at number 7. In Japan, "It Could Be You" was released as a four-track single, featuring B-sides recorded live at the Budokan.


title: The Great Escape (Blur album)

text: "The Great Escape" was met with widespread acclaim from critics. David Cavanagh in "Select" called it "a funny, brave and heartbroken record" that "has everything you could want", while "NME" reporter Johnny Cigarettes wrote: ""The Great Escape" is so rammed with tunes, ideas, emotions, humour, tragedy, farce, and edgy beauty that it's utterly beyond contemporary compare." "Melody Maker"s Paul Lester awarded the album an unconventional 12/10 and deemed it superior to celebrated predecessor "Parklife", while noting that "Blur understand the geometry of the song, and the basic principles of pop, better than anyone today". In response to "album of the decade" claims from "Melody Maker", J. D. Considine of "The Baltimore Sun" said: ""The Great Escape" may not be the defining work of the ‘90s, but it is the best Brit-rock release this year." Less enthused was "Spin" journalist Chuck Eddy, who felt the LP ranged from "wonderful" to "detached and emotionally stiff". "The Great Escape" was named as one of the 10 best records of 1995 in "Melody Maker", "NME", "Q", "Raw" and "Select". "NME" readers voted it the third-best album of the year.


title: The Great Escape (Blur album)

text: Support from the music press soon tapered off, however, and "The Great Escape" gained many detractors. The greater commercial success of rival band Oasis is known to have played a role in this revaluation; BBC Music writer James McMahon recalled how the "critical euphoria" surrounding the album lasted "about as long as it took publishers to realise Oasis would probably shift more magazines for them". "Q" would issue an apologia for its five-star review of the record, while Graeme McMillan in "Time" remarked that it lacks the "breadth and heart" of "Parklife", feeling "cynical and uninspired in comparison". "Drowned in Sound" reporter Marc Burrows felt the LP had been overrated and then underrated, writing: "Reality is somewhere in between... "The Great Escape" reveals itself as flawed, melancholy, occasionally stunning and utterly bonkers." Other journalists retained an unapologetically favourable stance: the album was described by AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine as "a vibrant, invigorating record" that "bristles with invention", while Brian Doan of "PopMatters" dubbed it a "masterpiece" whose content examines the costs of "trusting in stasis".


title: The Great Escape (Blur album)

text: Damon Albarn has expressed distaste for the album in later interviews, describing it as "messy" and one of the two "bad records" he has made in his career (the other being Blur's debut album "Leisure").


title: The Great Escape (Blur album)

text: "Select" named the record the 34th-best of the 1990s, while "Pitchfork" placed it 70th. It was ranked by BuzzFeed as the sixth-best album of the Britpop era. "The Great Escape" also placed at number 725 in the 2000 edition of the book, "All Time Top 1000 Albums".


title: The Great Escape (Blur album)

text: "The Great Escape" continued the commercial success of previous album "Parklife". While the latter was more of a sleeper hit, "The Great Escape" registered strong first-week sales of 188,000. In its first year, the album sold 68,000 copies in the US. By late 1996 the album had sold approximately 600,000 units in continental Europe. According to Food managing director Andy Ross, it "comfortably outsold "Parklife" everywhere except the UK. The total figure was up 400,000 and the balance came mainly from Europe and Southeast Asia." Sales in France up to late November 1996 were 125,000 units, compared with 69,000 for "Parklife". In Italy, sales were 83,000 compared with 16,000 for "Parklife".


title: The Great Escape (Blur album)

text: 4:21 into "Yuko and Hiro" is a minute long instrumental reprise of "Ernold Same". Although officially untitled, it is sometimes erroneously referred to as "A World of Difference" because these words appear in a separate box below the track list in the booklet.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: The British sixpence () piece, sometimes known as a tanner or sixpenny bit, was a denomination of sterling coinage worth of one pound or half of one shilling. It was first minted in 1551, during the reign of Edward VI, and circulated until 1980. The coin was made from silver from its introduction in 1551 until 1947, and thereafter in cupronickel.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: Before Decimal Day in 1971, sterling used the Carolingian monetary system (£sd), under which the largest unit was a pound (£), divisible into 20 shillings (s), each of 12 pence (d). Following decimalisation, it had a value of new pence (£0.025).


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: In 2016, new decimal sixpences began being minted by the Royal Mint as commemorative issues to celebrate Christmas; these coins have been produced for each year since, and are minted in sterling silver.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: The first sixpences were minted in 1551, during the reign of Edward VI. They came about as a result of the debasement of silver coinage in the 1540s, in particular the silver testoon, which fell in value from 12d to 6d. The debased testoon was likely useful in everyday transactions, and it was decided that new coinage should be introduced with the express denomination of six pence. The testoon decreased in value because, unlike today, the value of coins was determined by the market value of the metal they contained, and during the reign of Henry VIII the purity of silver in coinage had fallen significantly.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: Sixpences were minted during the reign of every British monarch after Edward VI, as well as during the Commonwealth, with a vast number of variations and alterations over the years. During the reign of George II a number of issues were designed by John Sigismund Tanner, who became Chief Engraver of the Royal Mint, and it has been suggested that this is the origin of the nickname "tanner", which was a popular name for the coin until decimalisation. An alternative explanation for the nickname is that it comes from the Angloromani word "" meaning "small thing".


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: The Royal Mint undertook a massive recoinage programme in 1816, with large quantities of gold and silver coin being minted. Previous issues of silver coinage had been irregular, and the previous issue, minted in 1787, had done little to alleviate the chronic shortage of silver coinage in general circulation. New silver coinage was to be of .925 (sterling) standard, with silver coins to be minted at 66 shillings to the pound weight. Hence, newly minted sixpences weighed  troy ounce, equivalent to 43.636 grains or 2.828 grams.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: The Royal Mint debased the silver coinage in 1920 from 92.5% silver to 50% silver. Sixpences of both alloys were minted that year. This debasement was done because of the rising price of silver around the world, and followed the global trend of elimination, or reduction in purity, of the silver in coinage. The minting of silver coinage of the pound sterling ceased completely in 1946 for similar reasons, exacerbated by the costs of the Second World War. New "silver" coinage was instead minted in cupronickel, an alloy of copper and nickel containing no silver at all.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: Beginning with Lord Wrottesley's proposals in the 1820s, there were various attempts to decimalise the pound sterling over the next century and a half. These attempts came to nothing significant until the 1960s, when the need for a currency more suited to simple monetary calculations became pressing. The decision to decimalise was announced in 1966, with the pound to be divided into 100, rather than 240, pence. Decimal Day was set as 15 February 1971, and a whole range of new coins were introduced. Sixpences continued to be legal tender, with a value of new pence, until 30 June 1980.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: In 2016, the Royal Mint began minting legal tender decimal sixpence coins in silver, intended to be bought as Christmas presents. These coins are heavier than the pre-1970 sixpence (3.35 grams instead of 2.83 grams), and have a denomination of six new pence (6p) instead of six old pence (6d). The new reverse was designed by John Bergdahl.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: Sixpences issued during the reign of Edward VI features a portrait of the king on the obverse, with a Tudor rose to the left, and the denomination to the right. Surrounding the portrait is the inscription , or similar, meaning ""Edward VI, by the Grace of God, King of England, France and Ireland"". All sixpences minted under subsequent kings and queens bear a similar inscription on the obverse identifying the monarch (or Lord Protector during the Commonwealth), with the portrait usually alternating from left-facing to right-facing, or vice versa, between monarchs. The reverse features the escutcheon of the Royal Arms of England, surrounded by the inscription , or a variant, meaning ""I have made God my helper"".


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: Starting with Elizabeth, the coins have the year of minting stamped on the reverse. Unusually, the sixpences minted in 1561 and 1562 were milled, i.e. produced by machine rather than by hand, with the press of the Frenchman Eloy Mestrelle, who had been granted authority to mint coins by the queen. Although of higher quality than hammered coins, Mestrelle's sixpences were more expensive to produce, and machine-struck coinage ceased to be minted in 1572. The coins remained in circulation for over a hundred years, but it took until the reign of Charles II for milled coins of the pound sterling to be minted again. Sixpences minted after the Tudor period no longer bear the Tudor rose on the obverse.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: Early sixpences of James I feature the alternative reverse inscription , meaning ""Let God arise and His enemies be scattered"", becoming , meaning ""What God hath put together let no man put asunder"" after 1604. Charles I sixpences follow the usual design, except that coins minted after 1630 do not bear a date, and the reverse inscription reads , meaning ""I reign under the auspices of Christ"".


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: During the beginning of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorship there was no portrait minted on the obverse – instead there is a wreathed shield featuring St George's Cross, surrounded by the inscription . The reverse features the combined arms of England and Ireland, surrounded by the inscription . In 1656 the minting of milled coinage resumed, this time with the press of the Frenchman Peter Blondeau. The obverse of Cromwell's milled coinage features a portrait in the manner of a Roman emperor, surrounded by an inscription similar to those on the coins of earlier monarchs.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: With the exception of a handful of early examples, Charles II sixpences continued to be machine-struck, and continued the usual practice of having a portrait of the monarch on the obverse. The reverse features a new design consisting of four shields arranged in a cross, with the inscription detailing the style of the monarch split across both sides of the coin. With minor changes, such as the device at the centre of the shields, and the designs between the shields, this basic design continued to be minted until the reign of George III.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: Those coins minted after the great recoinage of 1816 bear the royal coat of arms on the reverse, surrounded by the Garter, which bears the words , Middle French for ""Evil be to him who evil thinks"". George IV sixpences are similar to those of his predecessor, but on some issues the Garter surrounding the shield is replaced by floral emblems representing England, Scotland and Ireland, with the inscription (e.g. ANNO 1821) below.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: William IV sixpences have a simpler reverse, composed of the words in the middle, with a crown above, the date below, and a wreath surrounding. With the exception of a withdrawn 1887 issue, Victoria and Edward VII sixpences share this reverse. The reverse of the 1887 issue is broadly the same as the post-1816 George III coins. This reverse is shared with the half-sovereign, and since the two are of a similar size, a problem arose with people passing off sixpences as half-sovereigns. The government agreed to remove the coin from circulation in November 1887 and change the reverse.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: The reverse of George V sixpences minted prior to 1926 feature an alternative reverse design composed of a crown surmounted by a lion, with those minted after 1926 featuring a design of six oak sprigs divided by six acorns. Only a handful of Edward VIII sixpences were ever minted, and none of these entered circulation. These feature a reverse that is different again, composed of six interlinked rings, with the inscription below and part of the monarch's style inscribed above. Unusually, the profile of Edward VIII on coins faces the same way as that of his predecessor.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: George VI sixpences feature two different reverses, both featuring a crowned Royal Cypher. Those minted prior to 1949 feature a more angular font than those minted later. These later coins do not bear the abbreviation , since the king was no longer Emperor of India. The final change in the design of the sixpence came in 1953 when a new reverse was designed for the sixpences of Elizabeth II. These coins feature a floral design by Edgar Fuller and Cecil Thomas on the reverse, consisting of a rose, thistle, shamrock and leek, representing the four Home Nations.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: As the supply of silver threepence coins slowly disappeared, Royal Mint sixpences replaced them as the coins traditionally put into Christmas puddings. From the Victorian era onwards, it became tradition to mix a threepence or sixpence into the ingredients when preparing a Christmas pudding, as the coin was believed to grant good luck. Prepared on Stir-up Sunday, the last Sunday before the start of Advent, the coin would be placed into the mixture, then the mixture was stirred by every member of the family. When it came to eating the pudding on Christmas Day, whoever found the sixpence in their slice would receive good luck in the year to come.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: In Britain, there is a well-known tradition of the bride wearing "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a silver sixpence in her shoe". A silver sixpence in the bride's shoe is a traditional wedding gesture for good luck; customarily the father of the bride places the sixpence, as a token of him wishing her prosperity, love and happiness in her marriage.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: They are also used as a good luck charm by Royal Air Force aircrew who have them sewn behind their wings or brevets, a custom dating back to the Second World War.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: The archaic slang "bender" for a sixpence emerged when the coin had a high silver content and could easily be bent, sometimes deliberately to create a love token. The expression "to go on a bender" (to indulge in a binge drinking session) derives from this meaning when one could drink all day in taverns for six pence.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: In Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (Act 4, Scene 2), we learn that by his absence (ensorcelled in Titania's bower) Bottom the Weaver will forgo sixpence a day for life from the Duke. In Elizabethan times, six pence was roughly a day's wage for rustic labour in the provinces. With it, one might buy two dinners, six performances of "Hamlet" among the groundlings at the Globe Theatre, or an unbound copy of the play itself.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: In "David Copperfield", Charles Dickens describes how its protagonist dealt with a street carman about taking his travel box to a coach office in London: "I told him mine, which was down that street there, and which I wanted him to take to the Dover coach office for sixpence", then he replying: "Done with you for a tanner!"


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: The sixpence also features in other works of British popular culture and literature. It appears in the title of the writer W. Somerset Maugham's 1919 novel, "The Moon and Sixpence", and appears in both the title and as a plot device in Michael Paraskos's novel "In Search of Sixpence". The sixpence appears in the English nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence" published in London in 1744. "Half a Sixpence" is the title of the 1963 West End stage musical, and the subsequent 1967 musical film version, of H. G. Wells's novel "Kipps".


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: "I've Got Sixpence" is a song dating from at least 1810. An elaborated version was published in 1941, words and music by Elton Box & Desmond Cox.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: the singer tells the tale of spending twopence (per verse) until he has "no-pence to send home to my wife – poor wife."


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: Some guitarists prefer the rigidity of a coin to the flexibility of a more traditional plastic plectrum; among them are Brian May of Queen and Ian Bairnson of The Alan Parsons Project. May at some time even had sixpence-sized coins featuring his own head struck by the Royal Mint, which he used, gave away, and sold as his signature plectrum.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: Sixpence None the Richer (also known as Sixpence) is an American rock band whose name was inspired by a passage from the book "Mere Christianity" by C. S. Lewis.


title: Sixpence (British coin)

text: Penguin Books initially sold books in the 1930s through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence.


title: Derek Acorah

text: Derek Francis Johnson (27 January 1950 – 4 January 2020), known professionally as Derek Acorah, was a British spiritual medium. He was best known for his television work on "Most Haunted", broadcast on Living TV (2002–2010). His career as a medium was punctuated by allegations of fakery and he also attracted controversy over a number of seances during which he reportedly made contact with high-profile figures.


title: Derek Acorah

text: Before his career as a medium, Acorah played as a footballer, and was once on the books of Liverpool, but his career was cut short by injury.


title: Derek Acorah

text: Acorah was born Derek Francis Johnson on 27 January 1950 in Bootle to Frederick Johnson and Elizabeth Courtney. He lived in Scarisbrick near Southport, in North West England. Acorah claimed that his first experience with spiritualism happened when he was six, when he saw his deceased grandfather in his grandmother's house. His grandmother, a psychic, would later influence his decision to become a medium.


title: Derek Acorah

text: Acorah attended secondary school at Warwick Bolam, and was a keen footballer in his youth, firstly playing for Bootle Boys and then, Wrexham's academy side when he was thirteen. He signed schoolboy terms with Liverpool, at the time managed by Bill Shankly. Acorah often told of a story where he told Emlyn Hughes to be careful with his new car. When Hughes turned up late for training the next day, having written the car off, Shankly had heard of Acorah's mediumship and told him, "Son, where did you get all this from? You leave that at home, you just bring your boots here and play football." Acorah also claimed that he had spoken to Shankly in the spirit world, in the years following the Scotsman's death. Acorah never made an appearance for the first team, and briefly turned out for the reserves, before being released by his hometown club. He returned to Wrexham, where he played for about a season, and had stints for Glentoran and Stockport County. After the birth of his son, he was asked by the player's union in Manchester if he wanted to play in Australia. He discussed the situation with his wife, and they made the move, where he played for USC Lion in the South Australian State League. His time at the club was cut short by injury, putting an end to his football career. On top of this, his wife suffered from homesickness, so they returned to England, but they split up soon afterwards. He then began working as a medium, adopting the surname Acorah, which he claimed came from a Dutch ancestor.


title: Derek Acorah

text: Acorah's first television appearance was on the satellite TV channel Granada Breeze in 1996. During his five years with the channel, he began with "Livetime" before later appearing weekly on "Psychic Livetime". He also appeared on "Predictions" which started out as a showcase for various studio guests but later became a vehicle for Acorah alone and renamed "Predictions with Derek Acorah".


title: Derek Acorah

text: In 2002, Acorah also featured in the television series "Antiques Ghost Show," and in 2004 he was presented with the Variety Club of Great Britain's Multichannel TV Personality of the Year Award.


title: Derek Acorah

text: In July 2001, Acorah joined a new British television programme called "Haunting Truths". It was subsequently sold to Living and renamed "Most Haunted". He worked on the show for six series.


title: Derek Acorah

text: Yvette Fielding, a presenter and executive producer of "Most Haunted", initially stated "there is no acting on this programme, none whatsoever. Everything you see and you hear is real." However, significant media attention was directed at the show in 2005, after Acorah claimed to channel spirits with names that had allegedly been suggested to him in advance, those names being "Rik Eedles" and "Kreed Kafer", anagrams of "Derek Lies" and "Derek Faker". These names were created by the show's then-resident sceptic and parapsychologist Ciarán O'Keeffe in a successful attempt to expose Acorah. Speaking in 2006, Fielding said of Acorah: "We tell people everything is real, then it turns out he was a fake, so he had to go." His time on the show saw him regularly being parodied, most notably with Shirley Ghostman (portrayed by Marc Wootton), which drew on elements of Acorah and Colin Fry, and Wootton once invaded one of Acorah's shows. He was also parodied by Dawn French on an episode of "French and Saunders", by Jon Culshaw on "Dead Ringers" and by Hugh Laurie on "Saturday Night Live".


title: Derek Acorah

text: After his 2005 departure from "Most Haunted," Acorah filmed a one-off special for LivingTV, "Derek Acorah's Quest for Guy Fawkes" followed by "Derek Acorah's Ghost Towns" with Ruggie Media. This programme ran for three series. In 2008, Acorah took part in two series for Sky Real Lives titled "Derek Acorah". In July 2006, he made a cameo appearance in the "Doctor Who" episode "Army of Ghosts".


title: Derek Acorah

text: In November 2009, Acorah featured in "Michael Jackson: The Live Seance", in which he was shown on live television attempting to contact the singer's spirit. The programme was named the worst TV programme of 2009 in a poll of more than 9,000 Yahoo! users.


title: Derek Acorah

text: Acorah's other television work includes "Celebrity Five Go to...", "Harry Hill's TV Burp", "Celebrity Quitters" and "Paranormal Egypt". He also made appearances on "Celebrity Juice", "Loose Lips", "Richard and Judy", "Bo' Selecta!", "", "The Paul O'Grady Show", "The Weakest Link" and "Loose Women". On film, he had a cameo in "Big Fat Gypsy Gangster" (2011), and played a small role in "Crispy's Curse" (2017), although the film failed to achieve a general release.


title: Derek Acorah

text: In May 2012, Acorah claimed to have received a psychic message from Madeleine McCann via a 'spirit guide', stating that the child had died some time ago but would soon be reincarnated. After widespread media outrage, Acorah used the same newspaper to publish an apology to McCann's parents.


title: Derek Acorah

text: Acorah competed in the twentieth series of "Celebrity Big Brother". He left the house on the final night in fourth place.


title: Derek Acorah

text: Acorah was firstly married to Joan Hughes from 1972 to 1982. The couple had a son together. He was later married to his wife Gwen from 1995, until his death in 2020. The couple were patrons for the charity Pathfinder Guide Dog Programme, a registered charity which provides guide dogs for the blind.


title: Derek Acorah

text: In March 2014, he was convicted of driving without due care and attention and failing to provide a breath sample following a car crash. Acorah had failed a roadside breath test but refused to give the required sample at a police station. He was banned from driving for 28 months and fined £1,000.


title: Derek Acorah

text: Acorah died on 4 January 2020, aged 69, following a short illness. His wife later confirmed that Acorah had been hospitalised with pneumonia and later developed sepsis.


title: Pete the Cat

text: Pete the Cat is a fictional cartoon cat, created by American artist James Dean. The series started with four books illustrated by Dean and with text by Eric Litwin; since then, James Dean and his wife Kimberly Dean have written and illustrated the series of books.


title: Pete the Cat

text: The first book, "Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes", is the story of a cat named Pete whose white shoes become dirty after he steps in various substances, but "Pete never loses his cool." Written as a song, its refrain is "I love my white shoes", changing to "I love my red shoes", "I love my blue shoes", and "I love my brown shoes". Then he steps in a bucket of water and the colors wash off, and they become wet, but still never loses his cool, he just sings his song.


title: Pete the Cat

text: The book was self-published in 2008 and sold 7,000 copies in 10 months before it was picked up by HarperCollins – alerted by a YouTube meme in which two little girls read the book – and distributed throughout the United States and Canada. It rose to number 8 on the "New York Times Best Seller list for picture books.


title: Pete the Cat

text: Eric Litwin (also known as "Mr. Eric") is an American storyteller and musician from Atlanta, Georgia.


title: Pete the Cat

text: The book uses a character first devised by James Dean, an artist active in Atlanta, who drew up Pete in 1999 and in 2006 self-published "The Misadventures of Pete the Cat". Litwin wrote a story about and a song for the cat, and the two began a partnership.


title: Pete the Cat

text: The collaboration between Dean and Litwin ended in 2011. James Dean and wife Kimberly Dean continue to write and illustrate the "Pete the Cat" series, now over 60 books, together.


title: Pete the Cat

text: In 2010, the Georgia Center for the Book released a list titled, "25 Books All Young Georgians Should Read". "Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes" is one of the books included in that list.