title: Smash (TV series)

text: As "Bombshell" works to open on Broadway in New York City, the show runs into legal and creative troubles which threaten its future. Meanwhile, the cast and crew (featured in Season 1) attempt to find work. Karen meets two aspiring friends and partners (Kyle, a stage writer played by Andy Mientus, and Jimmy, a composer played by Jeremy Jordan) and tries to get their work noticed, especially by Derek. Derek works with Broadway star Veronica Moore (Jennifer Hudson), who becomes friends with Karen. Ivy gets the lead in "Liaisons", a show based on the play "Les Liaisons Dangereuses". "Bombshell" needs work in order to open on Broadway. First, Peter Gillman (Daniel Sunjata), a dramaturg with whom Julia had a rocky relationship is hired in order to help re-write the show. Second, Jerry (Michael Cristofer) replaces Eileen as the show's producer after she had to step down when the federal authorities found out (through Jerry's orchestration) that she had financed "Bombshell" with illegal money. Jimmy and Kyle's show, called "Hit List", eventually goes to the New York Fringe Festival and then they meet a producer for an off-broadway theater called Manhattan Theatre Workshop. Karen quits "Bombshell" to be in "Hit List" because she has to choose one of them. Ivy takes Karen's role as Marilyn Monroe in "Bombshell". "Hit List" starts rehearsals. Karen and Jimmy's relationship starts to develop but may cause some disturbance in the work place with Derek's secret feelings for Karen. "Hit List" goes to Broadway produced by Jerry and "Bombshell" and "Hit List" go head-to-head at the Tony Awards. "Hit List" wins 7 Tonys, which is more than "Bombshell", however "Bombshell" wins Best Musical and Best Actress (Ivy Lynn) in a Leading Role.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: Development began in 2009 at Showtime by then-Showtime entertainment president Robert Greenblatt and Steven Spielberg, from an idea by Spielberg, who had been working on the concept for years; Greenblatt, described as a "devoted theater geek", had also produced a musical adaptation of the film "9 to 5" in 2009. The original concept was that each season would follow the production of a new musical; if any of them were "stage-worthy", Spielberg would help produce them as stage productions. The series was inspired by successful TV Dramas "The West Wing" and "Upstairs, Downstairs" and used them as role models. Garson Kanin's novel "Smash" (New York: Viking, 1980) provided the title and setting, although the plots have little in common. As a Showtime show, the script contained a lot of nudity. "It was definitely a cable show," Debra Messing said.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: In January 2011, Greenblatt brought the project with him to NBC when he was made NBC Entertainment president. Theresa Rebeck was brought on as showrunner and wrote the pilot script after Executive producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron suggested her to Spielberg and Greenblatt. NBC ordered production of a pilot in January 2011 for the 2011–12 television season.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: Michael Mayer directed the pilot episode, with Spielberg serving as an executive producer. It has been reported that the pilot cost $7.5 million to produce. On May 11, 2011, NBC picked the project up to series. When the network announced its 2011–12 schedule on May 15, 2011, the series was slated to premiere in mid-season. NBC opted to hold the show for mid-season in order to pair it up with the hit reality show "The Voice" on Monday nights. On August 1, 2011, it was announced by the press that the show's series premiere date would be February 6, 2012, the night after Super Bowl XLVI, with heavy promotion through early winter on many of the network's properties before the premiere. At the NBC Press Tour, Greenblatt announced that "Smash" would have 15 episodes produced for the first season to coincide with "The Voice".


title: Smash (TV series)

text: The series is a production of Universal Television in association with DreamWorks. Theresa Rebeck is the creator of the series, as well as the writer of the pilot episode and five of the first season's episodes, including the season finale. The series has a large number of executive producers, including Steven Spielberg, Craig Zadan, Neil Meron, David Marshall Grant, Rebeck, Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman serve as the composers and executive producers. In March 2012, Rebeck stepped down as showrunner of the musical drama. On April 24, 2012, "The Hollywood Reporter" reported that "Gossip Girl" executive producer Joshua Safran would take the lead for the second season, while Rebeck would remain a writer and an executive producer. However, on May 2, 2012, Rebeck stated in an interview that she would not be returning to the show in any capacity.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: Many of those behind "Smash" began the series with high hopes. Rebeck was a large part of that. As one early hire later described her to "BuzzFeed": "She was this kick-ass woman showrunner who wasn't taking shit from the network. Someone who had a very clear vision who was going to stand up to the network. They were all good things in the beginning."


title: Smash (TV series)

text: Despite her experience writing and producing in television, Rebeck had never been a showrunner, responsible for the day-to-day operations of a series, before. David Marshall Grant, a playwright and actor who had served in that capacity during "Brothers & Sisters"' final seasons, was hired as executive producer to help her with it. Rebeck was reportedly resentful, and worried that she was being set up to fail and Grant positioned to replace her. Very quickly she began shutting him out of key decisions.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: Rebeck also decided she would not run a "writers' room," i.e., a regular meeting with the entire writing staff to discuss and perfect episodes and plotlines. "[They] really are not my thing, because I can only stand being in a room with people so many hours a day," she told "New York". "And I feel like early drafts should be speedy because everyone changes their mind, so why spend a lot of time up front parsing sentences?" Instead she would follow the example of showrunners like Matthew Weiner and Aaron Sorkin and have writers submit a first draft, which she then revised.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: Very quickly, the writers recalled, the show became a "dictatorship". Rebeck's opinion was the only one that mattered. She insisted on writing the second and third episodes herself, and writers said that the drop in quality was evident during pre-air screenings. During this time Rebeck was often fighting with Spielberg, who wanted Hilty, Greenblatt, or Grant replaced. As a result of these distractions, plotlines like Julia's adoption dilemma (mirroring Rebeck's real life) began to assume unusual prominence, and along with them secondary characters like Leo and Ellis became almost main characters—the latter because Spielberg reportedly liked him.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: Since the writers never met as a group, they found that finished episodes often repeated the same character moments instead of advancing those characters, and that strange out-of-context moments, usually musical numbers set away from the stage, had been inserted. They were particularly frustrated in trying to write for Julia, whom Rebeck had based on herself and consequently would not allow to have any difficulties. Later in the season, they were hoping that Greenblatt would win some of their fights. "You know it's bad when "our last hope was the network"," one told "BuzzFeed". However, many of them said the show's own problems were not entirely Rebeck's fault, since Greenblatt also intervened in things like costume design and Spielberg was not informed of the conflicts until near the end.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: After she left the show, Rebeck, who, citing confidentiality requirements, did not respond to the "BuzzFeed" story at first other than to say she "was treated quite badly", spoke at some length to "The New York Observer" about "Smash":


title: Smash (TV series)

text: Following the show's cancellation, Kate Aurthur, the writer of the "BuzzFeed" story, reposted an email exchange she had with Rebeck. Pointing to the show's decline in ratings during its second season, Rebeck asked, "If in fact [I] was the problem with [the show], wouldn't things have gotten better—rather than dramatically worse—once [I] left?" She accused Aurthur of relying on a single unnamed source and asked that the story, which she called "wildly untrue", be taken down.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: NBC announced on June 9, 2011, that they had signed a deal with Columbia Records for a soundtrack of the series. The deal gives Columbia worldwide digital and physical rights to the first season, with options to subsequent seasons. The deal includes both original songs written for the series and any covers of songs featured on the show.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: The series soundtrack for Season 1, "The Music of Smash", was released on May 1, 2012. The album debuted on the "Billboard" 200 at #9, with 40,000 copies sold in its first week.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: A "Bombshell" cast recording, featuring original songs from the first and second season of the show, was released on February 12, 2013, selling 16,000 copies in its first week. It contains all 22 songs written for the fictional "Bombshell" musical and features lead vocals by Katharine McPhee (Karen Cartwright) and Megan Hilty (Ivy Lynn) as Marilyn Monroe.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: In addition to songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, the show's second season featured songs by up-and-coming composers Drew Gasparini, Joe Iconis, and writing duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: Several songs were written and performed for the series' Season 2 fictional musical, "Hit List". On October 15, 2013, it was announced that "Hit List" would be staged in concert format at 54 Below on December 9. "Smash" stars Jeremy Jordan, Andy Mientus, and Krysta Rodriguez were scheduled to perform. Because of demand for tickets, an additional performance was scheduled for December 8.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: During production of the show, executive producer Craig Zadan said: "We stand on the set, watch the "Bombshell" numbers and say, "Wouldn't this be great on Broadway? And so far that's where we've left it. Our priority now is producing a great TV show".


title: Smash (TV series)

text: In June 2015, following a sold-out reunion performance at the Minskoff Theatre, it was announced that "Bombshell" would head to the Broadway stage. The executive producers of "Smash" and the "Bombshell" concert, Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, were set to executive produce the Broadway production. No timeline for the show has been announced.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: In May 2020, shortly after a virtual cast reunion during a live-streamed concert, it was announced that a musical based solely on the plot of the series was in the works for a Broadway production. Spielberg, Greenblatt, and Meron are all attached as producers, with Bob Martin and Rick Elice penning the book to Wittman and Shaiman's score, and Bergasse returning to choreograph. Of the announcement, Spielberg stated, ""Smash" is near and dear to my heart, and it seems fitting that a new musical inspired by what we did on the show would eventually come to the stage. I'm beyond thrilled to be working with this incredible creative team and my producing partners, who began the "Smash" journey with me over 10 years ago."


title: Smash (TV series)

text: On May 20, 2022, a first reading followed by a week-long workshop occurred of "SMASH: The Musical," with a script by Martin and Elice, music and lyrics by Wittman and Shaiman, and produced by Spielberg, Greenblatt, and Meron. According to Shaiman, while there are no "concrete plans" to bring the musical to Broadway, he was hopeful it would premiere on Broadway "sooner than later." Among the performers were Hilty, Rodriguez, Brooks Ashmanskas, Beth Leavel, Bonnie Milligan, Daniel Breaker, Kristine Nielsen, Maddie Baillio, and Christian Thompson, with Stephen Oremus as musical director.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: The pilot of "Smash" received positive reviews from television critics, but the critical response was less positive as the season progressed.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: Review aggregator "Metacritic", which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 of reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 79 based on 32 reviews. Maureen Ryan of "The Huffington Post" called it one of the strongest new shows of the season.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: "Huffington Post" editor Karen Ocamb praised the writing and the creativity of the series. Mary McNamara of the "Los Angeles Times" called the show a "triumph" and said creator Theresa Rebeck as well as her team "have managed to capture the grand and sweeping gesture that is musical theater and inject it with the immediate intimacy of television."


title: Smash (TV series)

text: David Wiegand of the "San Francisco Chronicle" gave the program a rave review: "[It's so] good you can't help wondering why no one thought of it before, a compelling mix of credible real-life melodrama with a fictionalized approximation of what it takes to get a Broadway show from the idea stage to opening night." Tim Goodman from "The Hollywood Reporter" called the pilot episode "Excellent, a bar-raiser for broadcast networks", and superior to "Glee". He also praised writing and acting for the series, comparing it to the quality of a cable television series. Matt Mitovich of TVLine called the cast "pretty damn perfect" and complimented the musical numbers.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: Robert Bianco of "USA Today" gave the show three and a half out of four stars and wrote, "Unless you're allergic to musicals in general and Broadway in particular, you should find that a compelling central story, a strong cast, an out-of-the-procedural-mold premise and some rousing, roof-raising numbers more than compensate for any lingering problems." Tanner Stransky of "Entertainment Weekly" ranked the pilot episode as the 8th best television episode of 2012, saying, "After we watched the subsequent 14 episodes of "Smash" with a mixture of fascination and dismay (seriously, did Debra Messing's Julia wear a men's pajama top to meet her lover?), it was difficult to recall that the pilot was positively magical. But it was. In fact, that episode-ending performance of 'Let Me Be Your Star' (featuring dueling divas Megan Hilty and Katharine McPhee) was among TV's most watchable and gleeful three minutes of the year. Rare is the series whose high-water mark is its pilot, and "Smash" is a shining example."


title: Smash (TV series)

text: Chris Harnick of "The Huffington Post" wrote, "How has the rest of Season 1 been so far? Not so phenomenal. That's not to say it has been downright terrible—there have been some highly entertaining moments—but it certainly hasn't been goosebumps-inducing, like the final moments of Episode 1, set to 'Let Me Be Your Star.'" Kevin Fallon summed up the response in "The Atlantic", writing that "there's been an almost visceral reaction to how rapidly and sharply the show's quality has dipped, and just how much promise "Smash" has thwarted...In other words: It's "bad."" Fallon cites other critics in demonstrating the general acceptance of this opinion.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: "Smash" received a number of awards and nominations. In 2012, it was nominated for four Primetime Emmy Awards, winning one for Choreography.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: In June 2011, "Smash" was one of eight honorees in the "Most Exciting New Series" category at the 1st Critics' Choice Television Awards, voted by journalists who had seen the pilots.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: Due to the already positive buzz surrounding the show, NBC offered early viewings of the pilot on different platforms. From January 15 through January 30, 2012, it was screened on selected flights of American Airlines. From January 16 through February 6, 2012, the full pilot was offered for free on iTunes, Amazon Video, Xbox, and Zune.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: The ratings for the Season 1 premiere were strong but ratings steadily dropped as the series progressed. The pilot episode was watched by 11.44 million viewers and had an 18–49 rating of 3.8/10. It was also the third-highest-rated new drama debut of the 2011–2012 television season (behind "Once Upon a Time" and "Touch") and "delivered the biggest 10 p.m. rating of any drama in this television season", according to "Entertainment Weekly". The program also had the highest 18–49 rating and viewership for an NBC series in the time slot since November 2008, but ratings declined in subsequent episodes. The fourth episode, aired on February 27, was seen by 6.6 million viewers and received a 2.3/6 rating in the 18–49 age group. However, the show's fifth episode, aired on March 5, saw a 17% increase in ratings. It had an 18–49 rating of 2.7/7 and was seen by 7.76 million viewers. But ratings for the show decreased in later episodes, with the eighth episode dropping to an 18–49 rating of 2.1/5 and viewership going down to 6.4 million viewers. Nonetheless, it became NBC's #1 drama in adults 18–49 and total viewers. The series was also up 160 percent in adults 18–49 versus NBC's season average in the time period prior to "Smash" (with a 2.6 rating vs. a 1.0, "live plus same day") and in total viewers, "Smash" has improved the time period by 100 percent (7.7 million vs. 3.9 million).


title: Smash (TV series)

text: For Season 2, "Smash" was scheduled for Tuesdays at 10 at mid-season starting February 5, behind the low-rated "The New Normal" and several weeks before the new season of "The Voice" premiered, and the ratings cratered, with the February 5, 2013 2-hour 2-episode season premiere getting a 1.2 rating in the 18–49 demo. The ratings slid further to 0.9 for the 3rd episode and stayed around that number through the sixth episode, when NBC announced it was moving "Smash" to Saturdays as of April 6, 2013 and changing up its Tuesday lineup to put its dating reality show "Ready for Love" behind "The Voice".


title: Smash (TV series)

text: Ovation has picked up off-network rights to "Smash". The first season debuted on July 19, 2013. Season 2 episodes, scheduled to begin airing in November 2013, were pushed back to January 2014.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: The first season of "Smash" was released under the title "Smash: Season One" as a widescreen four-disc DVD box set on October 29, 2012, formatted for Region 2. The DVD formatted for Region 1 was released on January 8, 2013. Distributed by Universal Studios Home Entertainment, the set features every episode and includes several DVD extras including behind-the-scenes footage and making-of features as well as extended and deleted scenes and a blooper reel. Also included is an UltraViolet copy of each episode.


title: Smash (TV series)

text: The Target exclusive edition of the Season 1 set includes a fifth disc that includes the full-length music video for "Touch Me" performed by Katharine McPhee, as well as twenty minutes of additional interviews with Jack Davenport (Derek Wills) and Megan Hilty (Ivy Lynn).


title: Roast (comedy)

text: A roast is a form of humor in which a specific individual, a guest of honor, is subjected to jokes at their expense, intended to amuse the event's wider audience. Such events are intended to honor a specific individual in a unique way. In addition to jokes and insult comedy, such events may also involve genuine praise and tributes. The implication is that the roastee is able to take the jokes in good humor and not as serious criticism or insult. The individual is surrounded by friends, fans, and well-wishers, who can receive some of the same treatment as well during the course of the evening. The party and presentation itself are both referred to as a "roast". The host of the event is called the roastmaster, a pun on toastmaster. Anyone who is mocked in such a way is said to have been "roasted".


title: Roast (comedy)

text: There is a parallel tradition in some countries in which the host of formal events, such as award ceremonies and annual dinners, is expected to good-naturedly mock the event's attendees. In some cases, this has caused controversy when the host is seen as being too insulting. There is also a concept of roasting on internet social media, where a person asks others to mock them, usually by putting up a photo of themselves. Though the mockery is solicited, this activity, too, has caused controversy, with some considering it a form of cyberbullying. Even more controversial is the practice of simply insulting others for comedic effect, which some have referred to as "roasting", though comedians have stressed that a true roast requires the consent of the target.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: In 1949, the New York Friars Club held its first roast with French singer Maurice Chevalier as the guest of honor.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: The final few seasons of the television show "Kraft Music Hall", from 1968 to 1971, included broadcasts of the Friars Club Roast; the celebrities roasted included Johnny Carson, Milton Berle, Jack Benny, Don Rickles, and Jerry Lewis.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: Dean Martin hosted a series of roasts on television in 1974 as part of the final season of his self-titled variety show. After the show was cancelled, NBC decided to schedule a series of "The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast" specials from the former MGM Grand Hotel and Casino (now Bally's Las Vegas) in the Ziegfeld Room; these were recorded and aired approximately once every two months from late 1974 to early 1979, and another three were produced in 1984. The celebrities roasted included actors Kirk Douglas, Bette Davis, and Jimmy Stewart; athletes Muhammad Ali, Joe Namath, and Wilt Chamberlain; comedians Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, and Redd Foxx; politicians Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater; and singers Frank Sinatra and Martin himself. The humor at these broadcast tributes was far tamer than the sometimes extremely vulgar and explicit language of the private, non-televised ones.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: From 1998 to 2002, the cable channel Comedy Central produced and broadcast the annual roast of the New York Friars Club, with roasts of the celebrities Drew Carey, Jerry Stiller, Rob Reiner, Hugh Hefner, and Chevy Chase.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: Based on the success of these roasts, Comedy Central began hosting their own roasts on an approximately annual basis, under the name "Comedy Central Roast". The first roastee was Denis Leary in 2003, followed by Jeff Foxworthy, Pamela Anderson, William Shatner, Flavor Flav, Bob Saget, Larry the Cable Guy, Joan Rivers, David Hasselhoff, Donald Trump, Charlie Sheen, Roseanne Barr, James Franco, Justin Bieber, Rob Lowe, Bruce Willis, and Alec Baldwin.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: Comedian Jeff Ross notably gained fame through his participation in the televised Comedy Central roasts, and is frequently referred to as the "Roastmaster General" (a position he in fact holds with the New York Friars' Club).


title: Roast (comedy)

text: In 2010, Comedy Central's international affiliates began to produce and air their own local roasts as well. Comedy Central New Zealand has aired roasts of Mike King and Murray Mexted, Comedy Central Africa has aired roasts of Steve Hofmeyr, Kenny Kunene, Somizi Mhlongo, AKA and Khanyi Mbau, Comedy Central Latin America has aired a roast of Héctor Suárez, Comedy Central Spain has aired roasts of Santiago Segura, El Gran Wyoming, and José Mota, and Comedy Central Netherlands has aired roasts of Gordon (which was the highest-watched broadcast in the history of the channel), Giel Beelen, Johnny de Mol, Ali B and Hans Klok.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: The fourth (and final) episode of "The Richard Pryor Show" in 1977 was a roast of host Richard Pryor.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: Basketball player Shaquille O'Neal produced two editions of his "Shaq's All Star Comedy Roast": of himself in 2002, and of Emmitt Smith in 2003.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: The cable channel MTV produced one roast in 2003, of Carson Daly, which was billed as the "MTV Bash".


title: Roast (comedy)

text: The magazine "Guitar World" organized three "Rock & Roll Roasts" from 2012 to 2014, of musicians Zakk Wylde, Dee Snider, and Corey Taylor.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: RuPaul's Drag Race has aired five roast-themed episodes: A roast of RuPaul in season 5 in 2013 and in RuPaul's Secret Celebrity Drag Race in 2020, a roast of Michelle Visage in season 9 in 2017, a mock-funeral roast of Lady Bunny in season 4 of All-Stars in 2019 and a Nice Girls Roast in season 13.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: Some attempts have been made to adapt the American roast format to a British audience. Channel 4 launched the latest British version on April 7, 2010 with "A Comedy Roast", with initial victims being Bruce Forsyth, Sharon Osbourne, and Chris Tarrant. Davina McCall and Barbara Windsor were other victims.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: The television series "Roast Battle" ran for four series from 2018 to 2020 on the British channel Comedy Central. It was an adaptation of the US series "Jeff Ross Presents Roast Battle".


title: Roast (comedy)

text: The Indian comedy group All India Bakchod organized the live show "AIB Knockout" in January 2015 featuring Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh with Karan Johar as the roastmaster. The programme caused a controversy for allegedly featuring distasteful, sexist, offending, and humiliating content. Videos of the event were removed from YouTube. Comedy Nights Bachao by Optimystix Productions is also based on this format; however, they avoid going too racy to keep the show family friendly.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: Artists and producers working for Shanghai Xiao Guo Culture Co. Ltd., started importing foreign stand-up comedy formats since 2012. "Roast!", a Chinese version of Comedy Central Roasts, has reached 2.33 billion hits on Tencent's video streaming platform, according to Maoyan, a movie and TV site. "Roast!" differs in that, instead of a single annual special, it consists of annual seasons of 10 shows with a different celebrity victim – typically singers or actors – each week (season one contains 11 including a triple-length Chinese New Year special). Its offspring, web show "Rock & Roast", has also become a hit in China, with 70 million viewers in its 2019 season a steady increase from 50 million from its prior season.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: Roasts have sometimes been portrayed in fictional TV shows. In other cases, standalone roasts have been produced of historical characters, with both roastee and roasters played by actors.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: "The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast" aired one fictional roast, of George Washington (played by Jan Leighton), on March 15, 1974.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: Part 2 of the 1979 TV special "Legends of the Superheroes" was a roast of various DC Comics superhero characters, hosted by Ed McMahon.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: The 1997 episode "The Roast" of the series "The Larry Sanders Show" revolved around a roast of the title character. The theme of one of the episodes (Season 5 episode 15) of the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation was the main character Leslie Knope roasting the media of the fictional town of Pawnee in a local correspondents lunch. In the 2009 episode "Stress Relief" of "The Office", main character Michael Scott organizes a roast of himself.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: The 2019 Netflix series "Historical Roasts", hosted by Jeff Ross, featured roasts of historical figures Abraham Lincoln (played by Bob Saget), Freddie Mercury (James Adomian), Anne Frank (Rachel Feinstein), Martin Luther King Jr. (Jerry Minor), Cleopatra (Ayden Mayeri), and Muhammad Ali (Jaleel White).


title: Roast (comedy)

text: The White House Correspondents' Association and Radio and Television Correspondents' Association have annual dinners that, in some years, feature a comedy roasting of the U.S. President. Don Imus at the RTCA in 1996, Stephen Colbert in 2006 and Michelle Wolf in 2018 have received particular attention for their biting remarks during their speeches.


title: Roast (comedy)

text: During presidential election years in the U.S., it is customary for both major party candidates to attend the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, typically engaging in a roast of each other, and occasionally themselves.


title: Eric Woolfson

text: Eric Norman Woolfson (18 March 1945 – 2 December 2009) was a Scottish songwriter, lyricist, vocalist, executive producer, pianist, and co-creator of The Alan Parsons Project. Together with Parsons they sold over 50 million albums worldwide. Following the 10 successful albums The Alan Parsons Project made, Woolfson pursued a career in musical theatre.


title: Eric Woolfson

text: Woolfson was born into a Jewish family in the Charing Cross area of Glasgow, where his family owned the Elders furniture store. He was raised in the Pollokshields area on the south side of the city and educated at the High School of Glasgow. Woolfson's interest in music was inspired by an uncle, and he taught himself to play the piano. After leaving school he briefly flirted with becoming an accountant before moving to London to seek opportunities in the music industry.


title: Eric Woolfson

text: Arriving in London in 1963, he found work as a session pianist. The then current record producer for the Rolling Stones, Andrew Loog Oldham, signed him as a songwriter. During the following years, Woolfson wrote songs for artists such as Marianne Faithfull, Frank Ifield, Joe Dassin, The Tremeloes, Marie (French singer), Marmalade, Dave Berry, Peter Noone, and The Poets. In due course Woolfson signed other publishing deals as more of his songs were adopted by leading recording artists, throughout Europe and America. He also signed a deal with Southern Music, where he worked alongside composers and lyricists such as Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.


title: Eric Woolfson

text: In 1971, with the assistance of Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley, Lol Creme and Graham Gouldman (who later became 10cc), a single was produced under the name of Eric Elder ("San Tokay" b/w "Sunflower") and issued on UK Philips 6006 081 and US Philips 40699. Woolfson then produced a single by Graham Gouldman ("Nowhere to Go" b/w "Growing Older") which was issued in 1972 on UK CBS 7739. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Woolfson was an independent record producer for several record companies, and worked with artists including Dave Berry, the Equals, the Tremeloes and, in 1973, Darren Burn. Despite his success, he found that earning a living as a songwriter was not easy and decided to try artist management.


title: Eric Woolfson

text: His move into management was instantly successful. His first two signings were Carl Douglas (whose record Kung Fu Fighting (1974) was one of the biggest selling hits of all time) and engineer/record producer Alan Parsons.


title: Eric Woolfson

text: In 1974, Woolfson met record producer Alan Parsons at the Abbey Road Studios in London where both were working on different projects. Parsons asked Eric to become his manager and they worked together with a number of bands and artists including Pilot, Cockney Rebel, John Miles, Al Stewart, Ambrosia and The Hollies.


title: Eric Woolfson

text: Subsequently, Eric and Alan formed The Alan Parsons Project, the name originally being intended as a working title for their collaborative project. From 1976 to 1987, Woolfson and Parsons collaborated on the conception and lyrics for all ten albums by The Alan Parsons Project, which have achieved worldwide sales in excess of 50 million.


title: Eric Woolfson

text: On every Project album, Woolfson would sing a guide vocal track for each song, which the album's eventual lead vocalists would use as a reference. Some of these tracks can be heard on the new remastered editions of various Project albums released in 2007. Woolfson himself was the actual singer on many of the Project's biggest hits, such as "Time", "Don't Answer Me", "Prime Time" and the band's signature tune "Eye in the Sky", which peaked at No. 3 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 on 16–30 October 1982.


title: Eric Woolfson

text: "Freudiana" was originally meant to be the 11th album by The Alan Parsons Project, but Woolfson was keen to explore the possibility of realising the project as a musical. While recording the album, Brian Brolly was introduced to Woolfson and promised to steer the album in this new direction. Brolly was previously a partner with Andrew Lloyd Webber, and together they created such musicals as "Cats". With some help from Brolly, Woolfson was able to turn "Freudiana" into a stage musical.


title: Eric Woolfson

text: Before the Freudiana stage production opened in 1990 in Vienna, a double-length studio album was released. The musical had a successful run, and it was planned that the show would open in other cities. However, plans were put on hold when a lawsuit broke out between Brolly and Woolfson, each fighting for control of the project. The studio disc (the "white" album) was quite difficult to obtain for a while. There was also a double-length German-language cast disc (the "black" album) which is currently out of print.


title: Eric Woolfson

text: His first three musicals were "Freudiana" (1990), about Sigmund Freud; "Gaudi" (1993), about Antonio Gaudi, and "Gambler" (1996). A fourth musical "Edgar Allan POE", based on the life of the author, was given a world premiere concert production at Abbey Road studios, London in 2003. An album was released in 2003 as (this contains some but not all of the songs from the stage version) and a musical album CD 'Edgar Allan Poe' (containing the complete musical score of 17 songs) and DVD of the POE Abbey Road concert were released in 2009. DVD.


title: Eric Woolfson

text: "Dancing with Shadows" (inspired by the anti-war play "Forest Fire" by the Korean playwright Cham Bum-Suk and with a book by Ariel Dorfman) was premiered in July 2007 in Korea.


title: Eric Woolfson

text: Woolfson died from kidney cancer in London on 2 December 2009. He was survived by his wife, daughters Sally Seddon and Lorna Covington, and three grandchildren. He is buried in Cathcart Cemetery, near Glasgow.


title: 7.65×21mm Parabellum

text: The 7.65×21mm Parabellum (designated as the 7,65 Parabellum by the C.I.P. and also known as .30 Luger and 7.65mm Luger) is a pistol cartridge that was introduced in 1898 by German arms manufacturer Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken (DWM) for their new Pistol Parabellum. The primary developers of the pistol cartridge were firearms designers Georg Luger and Hugo Borchardt, who developed the round from the earlier 7.65×25mm Borchardt while working at DWM.


title: 7.65×21mm Parabellum

text: In 1897, the C-93 Borchardt pistol was submitted for testing to the Swiss Military Trials Committee. The committee found the Borchardt too heavy and unwieldy to serve as a military sidearm. Georg Luger was asked by DWM to improve upon the Borchardt pistol. He developed the 7.65×21mm Parabellum cartridge from the 7.65×25mm Borchardt. By shortening the cartridge case, Luger was able to design a narrower grip, and the toggle action required a shorter stroke than in the original Borchardt design. A transitional Borchardt-Luger model in the new caliber was submitted to the Swiss commission in 1898. After further improvements, the final result became the DWM Pistole-Parabellum ("Luger pistol"). The loading for the new cartridge was standardized and mass production began in 1900–1901 in DWM's factory in Karlsruhe, Germany.


title: 7.65×21mm Parabellum

text: Around 1903, a separate load was developed for Parabellum carbines, with about 20% more powder (increased from the standard 0.32–0.35 g to 0.40 g) and a blackened cartridge case. This carbine load was manufactured until sometime after World War I.


title: 7.65×21mm Parabellum

text: Since its introduction, 7.65×21mm Parabellum ammunition has been manufactured in several countries for both domestic use and for export, including Germany, Switzerland, Finland, France, Portugal, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the United States.


title: 7.65×21mm Parabellum

text: With the adoption of the Luger Parabellum Model 1900 pistol in 1900, the 7.65mm Luger became the standard pistol cartridge of the Swiss Army.


title: 7.65×21mm Parabellum

text: The Swiss "Modell 06/29" pistol served the Swiss Army until well after the adoption of a SIG P210 in 1949, and remained in limited service until the late 1960s. The SIG P210 was also manufactured in this caliber, but only for civilian use; Swiss military issues of the P210 were chambered in 9×19mm Parabellum.


title: 7.65×21mm Parabellum

text: Around 1900, Brazilian armed forces adopted the round for use in German-made Parabellum pistols (partially replacing the Simson Nagant-style revolver) and, later, in some Schmeisser MP-28 II submachine guns made in Belgium under license. It remained in limited use by some police forces up through the 1970s, such as the former Guanabara State Police (based in Rio de Janeiro).


title: 7.65×21mm Parabellum

text: The Luger pistol in 7.65mm was adopted by the Finnish in 1923 with the designation "Parabellum Pistooli 23," abbreviated m/23. About 8,000 pistols were delivered, but few survived the war. Many of these pistols were rebarreled to 9mm, and a limited quantity remained in storage until 1980 for arming noncombat personnel. The Finnish Lahti L-35 pistol, a 1929 design introduced in 1935 to replace the Luger pistol, was also originally chambered in 7.65mm Parabellum before it, too, was switched over to the 9mm Parabellum.


title: 7.65×21mm Parabellum

text: In addition to the Luger Parabellum and the SIG P210, several other handguns have been manufactured in this caliber, mainly for commercial sale in countries that restrict civilian use of contemporary military calibers such as 9mm Parabellum. Examples include the Astra A-80, Benelli B80, Beretta M952, Beretta 92, Browning Hi-Power, Colt Commander, Mamba, some models of the Ruger P series, the SIG Sauer P220, Smith & Wesson Model 59 and Walther P38 and P38K.


title: 7.65×21mm Parabellum

text: A handful of submachine guns have been manufactured in this caliber, notably the SIG Bergmann 1920 (the licensed Swiss version of the Bergmann MP-18/1), the Swiss Furrer submachine gun, and its double-barreled aerial counterpart the Flieger-Doppelpistole 1919, the M/Neuhausen MKMS, the Austrian MP34, and the Suomi M-26.


title: 7.65×21mm Parabellum

text: The name is derived from the Latin phrase "si vis pacem, para bellum"—"If you want peace, prepare for war."


title: 7.65×21mm Parabellum

text: The common rifling twist rate for this cartridge is 275 mm (1 in 10.83 in), 4 grooves, ø lands = 7.62 mm, ø grooves = 7.83 mm, land width = 3.05 mm and the primer type is small pistol. This cartridge headspaces on the shoulder of the case.


title: 7.65×21mm Parabellum

text: According to the official Commission internationale permanente pour l'épreuve des armes à feu portatives (CIP) guidelines, the 7.65×21mm Parabellum case can handle up to piezo pressure. In CIP-regulated countries, every pistol cartridge combo has to be proofed at 130% of this maximum CIP pressure to certify for sale to consumers.


title: Occupation: Rainfall

text: Occupation: Rainfall Chapter 1 is a 2020 Australian science fiction action film written and directed by Luke Sparke. It is a sequel to the 2018 film "Occupation".


title: Occupation: Rainfall

text: Two years after the alien invasion, the human resistance in Sydney learns about an alien operation called "Rainfall" related to a location, Pine Gap. No details are known but a team of three, including one Alien, sets out to learn more. The human resistance in Sydney is attacked and destroyed, along with Sydney itself. Survivors flee to a military mountain base but it too is attacked and destroyed. The recon team arrives at Pine Gap which turns out to be a US intelligence base hosting two goofy survivors despite being destroyed on the surface. "Rainfall" is an artificial asteroid of sorts hidden below the base and created by the aliens, with potential high tech capabilities. A hasty plan to destroy the asteroid is made but to no avail, the asteroid falls in the hands of attacking aliens.


title: Occupation: Rainfall

text: On 17 September 2020, it was announced that Jason Isaacs had joined the cast of "Occupation: Rainfall". On the same day, it was announced that the film was in post-production, with visual effects being worked on by artists behind "".


title: Tropicana Products

text: Tropicana Brands ("pronounced as" traa·puh·ka·nuh) is a former American fruit-based beverage company. It was founded in 1947 by Anthony T. Rossi in Bradenton, Florida. Between 1998 and 2021 it was a subsidiary of PepsiCo, but in August 2021, 61% of Tropicana was sold along with the rest of PepsiCo's juice brand portfolio for $3.3 billion to PAI Partners. PepsiCo retained the remaining 39% of ownership.


title: Tropicana Products

text: Anthony T. Rossi was born in Sicily and studied until high school. He immigrated to the United States in 1921 at the age of 21 years. He drove a taxi, was a grocer in New York, then worked as a farmer in Virginia, and then moved to Florida in 1940 where he farmed and was a restaurateur. His first involvement with the Florida citrus industry was fresh fruit gift boxes sold by Macy's and Gimbels department stores in New York City, New York.


title: Tropicana Products

text: In 1947, Rossi settled in Palmetto, Florida and began packing fruit gift boxes and jars of sectioned fruit for salads under the name Manatee River Packing Company. As the fruit segment business grew, the company moved to a larger location in East Bradenton, Florida and changed its name to Fruit Industries. The ingredients for the fresh fruit salads on the menu of New York's famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel were supplied by Fruit Industries. At the East Bradenton location, Rossi began producing frozen, concentrated orange juice as a natural extension to the fruit section business.


title: Tropicana Products

text: In 1952, Rossi purchased the Grapefruit Canning Company in Bradenton. The fresh fruit segments and orange juice business was profitable enough that he discontinued production of fruit boxes. He developed flash pasteurization in 1954, a process that raised the temperature of juice for a short time to preserve its taste. For the first time, consumers could have the fresh taste of pure not-from-concentrate juice in a chilled package. The juice, Tropicana Pure Premium, became the company's flagship product.


title: Tropicana Products

text: The company developed a trademarked cartoon mascot for the brand called Tropic-Ana, a barefoot young girl carrying oranges on her head and wearing clothing that resembles a Hawaiian grass skirt and lei. She appeared prominently on the juice cartons and even the train cars used to transport the juice. Her image was phased out during the 1980s.


title: Tropicana Products

text: Ed Price was hired as executive vice president and director in 1955 and represented the company as chairman of the Florida Citrus Commission. In 1957, the company's name was changed to Tropicana Products, Inc. to reflect the growing appeal of the Tropicana brand.


title: Tropicana Products

text: Tropicana purchased one million dollars worth of refrigerated trucks to deliver Pure Premium in the mid to late fifties. Soon, 2,000 dairies delivered Pure Premium orange juice to the doorsteps of consumers each morning. By 1958, a ship, S.S. Tropicana, was taking of juice to New York each week from the new base at Cape Canaveral, Florida. From 1960 to 1970, Tropicana utilized piggyback trailers on flatcars to move the juice more efficiently.


title: Tropicana Products

text: In 1970, Tropicana orange juice was shipped as finished goods via refrigerated boxcars in one weekly round-trip from Florida to Kearny, New Jersey. By the following year, the company was operating two 65-car unit trains a week, each carrying around of juice. The "Great White Juice Train" (the first unit train in the food industry, consisting of 150 100-short ton insulated boxcars fabricated in the Alexandria, Virginia shops of Fruit Growers Express) commenced service on June 7, 1971, over the route. An additional 100 cars were soon incorporated into the fleet, and small mechanical refrigeration units were installed to keep temperatures constant on hot days. In 2004, Tropicana's rail fleet of 514 cars traveled over – a method that is three times more fuel-efficient than other shipping methods.


title: Tropicana Products

text: Tropicana Products, Inc. went public in 1969. The stock was first sold over the counter but gained a listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TOJ. In the same year, it became the first company in the citrus industry to operate its own plastic container manufacturing plant.


title: Tropicana Products

text: Executive vice president Ed Price, who served two terms in the Florida Senate (1958–1966), resigned his position in 1972, but remained on the board of directors until 1983.


title: Tropicana Products

text: Rossi sold Tropicana to Beatrice Foods in 1978. He then retired and was inducted into the "Florida Agricultural Hall of Fame" in 1987. In 1985, Tropicana debuted Tropicana Pure Premium HomeStyle orange juice, which featured added pulp.


title: Tropicana Products

text: In the 1980s, Tropicana was acquired by The Seagram Company, Ltd. In the decade that followed, they introduced new juice beverage creations, including the orange line of bottled and frozen juice blends.


title: Tropicana Products

text: In the early nineties under Seagram, Tropicana also began to expand distribution to global markets. They formed a partnership to process and distribute Kirin-Tropicana juices in Japan. By that time, the company was also distributing Tropicana Pure Premium in Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Argentina, Panama and Sweden. As the 1990s continued, Tropicana further expanded internationally, entering several more Latin American countries, Hong Kong and China.


title: Tropicana Products

text: Seagram Beverage Group acquired Dole Food Company's global juice business in 1995, including the Dole brands in North America, and Dole, Fruvita, Looza and Juice Bowl juices and nectars in Europe. Dole was operated under Tropicana Dole Beverages North America and Tropicana Dole Beverages International.


title: Tropicana Products

text: Tropicana was acquired by PepsiCo in 1998, which combined it with the Dole brand for marketing purposes. It has become the world's leading producer of branded fruit juices. Tropicana headquarters moved to Chicago in 2003.


title: Tropicana Products

text: Due to the decreased productivity of Florida's orange crop in the wake of several damaging touches of frost, Tropicana began using a blend of Florida and Brazilian oranges in 2007. Citing an increased consumer interest in the origin of food products, the company announced in February 2012 that its Tropicana Pure Premium line would return to sourcing oranges only from Florida. Tropicana later reverted to sourcing its oranges from both Florida and Brazil due to the Asian citrus psyllid, a microscopic insect which spreads a bacterial disease that causes citrus greening. It is estimated that the disease has killed over 75 percent of Florida's citrus trees.


title: Tropicana Products

text: In February 2009, Tropicana switched the design on all cartons sold in the United States to a new image created by the Arnell Group. The new image showed the actual orange juice and redesigned the cap to look like the outside of an orange. After less than two months and a 20 percent drop in sales, Tropicana switched back to its original design of an orange skewered by a drinking straw.


title: Tropicana Products

text: In early 2010, Tropicana reduced the size of its traditional carton to in the U.S. market, and maintained the original price. This change represented a 7.8 percent price-per-ounce increase for consumers.


title: Tropicana Products

text: In 2018, Tropicana again reduced the size of its containers, from to ., due to more shortages and high demand.


title: Tropicana Products

text: On August 3, 2021, PepsiCo announced that they would sell a majority stake in Tropicana, Naked Juice and other juice brands to PAI Partners for $3.3 billion, to concentrate on their healthy snack foods and zero-calorie beverages. They would retain a 39% stake in the new joint-venture company, and have exclusive distribution rights to the brands in the USA.


title: Tropicana Products

text: In 2008, Tropicana started the "Rescue Rainforest" campaign in the U.S. in collaboration with charity Cool Earth. People could buy special promotional packs of Tropicana and enter the pack's code online. For each code entered, of rainforest would be saved. The project was based in the Ashaninka corridor in Peru, which lies in an arc of deforestation. As of June 2009, over had been saved.


title: Tropicana Products

text: Along with launching the Rescue Rainforest initiative, Tropicana has been trying to reduce their carbon footprint by encouraging carton recycling and supporting the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.


title: Tropicana Products

text: This soft drink line has largely replaced Pepsi's Slice soft drinks. Tropicana also has Fruit Snacks, and in the United Kingdom makes smoothies.


title: Tropicana Products

text: Trop50, introduced by Tropicana in 2009, is orange juice with 50 percent less sugar and calories, and no artificial sweeteners (this has Reb A or PureVia which is a form of the plant Stevia, but is chemically altered.) Trop50 is available in several varieties including Farmstand Apple, Pomegranate Blueberry, Pineapple Mango, Orange, Lemonade and Raspberry Lemonade.


title: Tropicana Products

text: A number of their juice products, designed for 'extended shelf life', are colored with the extract of cochineal beetles. As this previously embarrassed the company, they use 'Carmine' on the label which is an alternate name for the dye.


title: Tropicana Products

text: In 2010, the company announced the incoming limited release of Tropolis, a liquid fruit snack drink, for January 2011.


title: Tropicana Products

text: Apple juice marketed under the Tropicana Brand by Pepsi Canada uses Canadian apples and has a darker shade and more authentic color than the pale transparent juice marketed in the USA.


title: Tropicana Products

text: In celebration of National Orange Juice Day on May 4, 2022, Tropicana released "Tropicana Crunch", a limited-edition cereal "made just for orange juice". The cereal consisted primarily of oats, wheat, brown sugar, rice, almonds and honey. Many people reviewed the product on social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube.


title: Tropicana Products

text: Tropicana holds sponsorship to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida, the home to the baseball team Tampa Bay Rays. The name of the Bradenton Juice baseball team of the South Coast League was indicative of Tropicana's headquarters which were located in Bradenton, Florida.


title: Tropicana Products

text: The headquarters of Tropicana Products are in Chicago. PepsiCo, the parent company of Tropicana, planned to begin moving Tropicana employees into its existing Chicago facility in the first quarter of 2004. PepsiCo moved Tropicana into Chicago so all of its juice brands would be consolidated into one Chicago-based unit.


title: Tropicana Products

text: Until 2004, Tropicana Products was headquartered in the four-story Rossi Office Building in Bradenton, Florida. In 2004, the building, which was completed in 2002, was offered for $20 million. In 2007, it was sold to Bealls of Florida. The 149,000 square foot building was renamed the E. R. Beall Center.


title: Headless men

text: Various species of mythical headless men were rumoured, in antiquity and later, to inhabit remote parts of the world. They are variously known as akephaloi (Greek ἀκέφαλοι, "headless ones") or Blemmyes (; ) and described as lacking a head, with their facial features on their chest. These were at first described as inhabitants of ancient Libya or the Nile system (Aethiopia). Later traditions confined their habitat to a particular island in the Brisone River, or shifted it to India.


title: Headless men

text: Various etymologies had been proposed for the origins of the name "Blemmyes", and the question is considered unsettled.


title: Headless men

text: In antiquity, the actual tribe known as the Blemmyes were said to be named eponymously after King Blemys (Βλέμυς), according to Nonnus's 5th century epic "Dionysiaca", but no lore about headlessness is attached to the people in this work. Samuel Bochart of the 17th century derived the word "Blemmyes" from the Hebrew () "without" and () "brain", implying that the Blemmyes were people without brains (although not necessarily without heads). A Greek derivation from "blemma" () "look, glance" and "muō" () "close the eyes" has also been suggested. Wolfgang Helck claimed a Coptic word "blind" for its etymology.


title: Headless men

text: The first indirect reference to the Blemmyes occurs in Herodotus, "Histories", where he calls them the "akephaloi" ( "without a head"). The headless "akephaloi", the dog-headed cynocephali, "and the wild men and women, besides many other creatures not fabulous" dwelled in the eastern edge of ancient Libya, according to Herodotus's Libyan sources.


title: Headless men

text: Mela was the first to name the "Blemyae" of Africa as being headless with their face buried in their chest. In a similar vein, Pliny the Elder in the "Natural History" reports the Blemmyae tribe of North Africa as "[having] no heads, their mouths and eyes being seated in their breasts". Pliny situates the Blemmyae somewhere in Aethiopia (in, or in the neighbouring lands to Nubia). Modern commentators on Pliny have suggested the notion of headlessness among Blemmyes may be due to their combat tactic of keeping their heads pressed close to the chest, while half-squatting with one knee to the ground. Solinus adds they are believed to be born with their head part dismembered, their mouth and eyes deposited on the breast. The term "acephalous" ("akephaloi") was applied to people without heads whose facial parts such as eyes and mouth have relocated to other parts of the body, and the Blemmyes as described by Pliny or Solinus conform with this appellation.


title: Headless men

text: Headless men also appear in the several Asian legends. Breast-eyed races ("war-čašmān") are recurrent in the Zoroastrian scriptures as the Bundahishn, the Jamasp Namag and the Drakht-i Asurig. Furthermore the blemmyes are called "breast-eyed" ("sternophthalmi") in Strabo's "Geography". Men "without heads, and others whose eyes and mouth were on their chest" are mentioned by Al-Qazwizi inhabitating the "island of Jaba".


title: Headless men

text: In the Indian epic "Ramayana", the demon Kabandha is a headless creature with one eye in the middle of his stomach and with extra-long arms. He is cursed to remain in this form until released by Rāma. In the Chinese classic text "Classic of Mountains and Seas", the god Xingtian is described as having no head, and with his nipples as eyes and his belly button as a mouth. This is because he got decapitated in a battle against Huangdi. The yokai Dōnotsura in the Japanese folklore is depicted as a headless man with his face on his torso.


title: Headless men

text: By the 7th or 8th century, there had been composed a "Letter of Pharasmenes to Hadrian", whose accounts of marvels such as bearded women (and headless men) became incorporated into later texts. This included "De Rebus in Oriente mirabilibus" (also known as "Mirabilia"), its Anglo-Saxon translation, Gervase of Tilbury's treatise, and the Alexander legend attributed to .


title: Headless men

text: The Latin text in the recension known as the "Fermes Letter" was translated verbatim in Gervase of Tilbury's "Otia Imperialia" (ca. 1211) which describes a "people without heads" (""Des hommes sanz testes"") of a golden colour, measuring 12 feet tall and 7 feet wide, living on an isle in the River Brisone (in Ethiopia).


title: Headless men

text: The catalogue of strange peoples from "Letter" occur in the Anglo-Saxon "Wonders of the East" (translation of "Mirabilia") and the "Liber Monstrorum"; a recension of "Wonders of the East" is bound in the Beowulf manuscript. The transmission is imperfect. No name is given to the headless islanders, eight feet tall in the "Wonders of the East". Epiphagi ("epifugi") is the name of the headless in "Liber Monstrorum". This form derives from "epiphagos" in a modified recension of the "Letter of Pharasmenes" known as the "Letter of Premonis to Trajan" ("Epistola Premonis Regis ad Trajanum").


title: Headless men

text: The "Letter" material was incorporated into the Alexander legend by Leo Archipresbyter, known as "Historia de preliis" (version J), which was translated into Old French as "Roman d'Alexandre en prose". In the "prose Alexandre" the golden-coloured headless encountered by Alexandre measured just 6 feet tall, and had beards reaching their knees. In the French version, Alexander captures 30 of the headless to show the rest of the world, an element lacking in the Latin original.


title: Headless men

text: Other Alexander books that contain the headless people episode are Thomas de Kent's romance and Jean Wauquelin's chronicle.


title: Headless men

text: Blemmyes or headless people were also illustrated and described on medieval maps. The Hereford Mappa Mundi (ca. 1300) places the "Blemee" in Ethiopia (upper Nile system), deriving its information from Solinus, perhaps via Isidore of Seville.


title: Headless men

text: One Blemee standing has his face on their chest, and another below him has "eyes and mouth at their shoulders". Both varieties of Blemmyae occur according to Isidore, who reported that in Libya, besides the Blemmyae born with a face on the chest, there were reputedly "others, born without necks, [and] have their eyes on their shoulders". Some modern commentators believe the two different types represent the male and female blemmyes, with their genitals explicitly drawn. Another example is the Ranulf Higden map (ca. 1363), which bears an inscription regarding the headless in Ethiopia, although unaccompanied by any picture of the people.


title: Headless men

text: By the Late Middle Ages, world maps began to appear that located the headless people further east, in Asia, such as the Andrea Bianco map (1436) that depicted people who "all do not have heads ("omines qui non abent capites")" in India, on the same peninsula as the terrestrial paradise. But other maps of the period such as the Andreas Walsperger's map (ca. 1448) did continue to locate the headless in Ethiopia. The post-medieval map of Guillaume Le Testu (pictured above) illustrates the headless and the dog-headed cynocephali north beyond the Himalayan mountains.


title: Headless men

text: "The Travels of Sir John Mandeville" writes of "ugly folk without heads, who have eyes in each shoulder" with their mouths "round like a horseshoe, in the middle of their chest" living among the populace in the big island of Dundeya (Andaman Islands) between India and Myanmar. In other parts of the island are headless men with eyes and mouth on their backs. This has been noted as an example of Blemmyes by commentators, though Mandeville does not use the term.


title: Headless men

text: Examples of chapters on monstrous races (including the headless), taken from earlier sources, occur in the "Buch der Natur" or the "Nuremberg Chronicle".


title: Headless men

text: The "Buch der Natur" (ca. 1349), written by Conrad of Megenberg, described the "people without heads ()" as shaggy all over the body, with "coarse hair like wild animals", but when the printed book versions appeared, their woodcut illustrations depicted them as smooth-bodied, in contradiction to the text. Conrad lumped peoples of various geography under "wundermenschen", and condemned such wondrous people as earning physical deformities due to the sins of their ancestors.


title: Headless men

text: During the Age of Discovery, a rumor of headless men called the "Ewaipanoma" was reported by Sir Walter Raleigh in his "Discovery of Guiana", to have been living on the banks of the Caura River. Of the story, Raleigh was "resolved it is true, because every child in the provinces of Aromaia and Canuri affirm the same". He also cited an anonymous Spaniard's sighting of the Ewaipanoma. Joannes de Laet, a somewhat later contemporary, dismissed the story, writing that these natives' heads were set so close to the shoulders that some were led to believe their eyes were attached to the shoulders and the mouth to their breasts.


title: Headless men

text: During the same period (around 1589–1600), another English writer, Richard Hakluyt, described a voyage by John Lok to Guinea, where he found "people without heads, called Blemines, having their eyes and mouth in their breast." The authorship of the report is ambiguous.


title: Headless men

text: The commonalities between Raleigh and Hakluyt writings might suggest the existence of an urban legend at that time, since both were English writers, writing during the same period, about trips to different continents (Africa and Latin America).


title: Headless men

text: Ewaipanomas were depicted on numerous later maps using Raleigh's account as a reference. Jodocus Hondius included them in his 1598 chart of Guyana and in a display various Amerindian peoples in a map of North America released in the same year. Cornelis Claesz, who had worked alongside Hondius on numerous occasions, reproduced this display in a 1602 map of the Americas, but modified the Ewaipanoma to possess a true head but lack a neck, setting the figure's head at the level of the shoulders. Ewaipanomas began to decrease in popularity as a cartographic motif after this point; Hondius' 1608 world map does not include them, but merely notes that headless men are reported in Guyana while casting doubt on the veracity of these claims. Pieter van den Keere's 1619 world map, which includes a Claesz-like neckless figure in a display of Amerindian tribesmen, is the last to depict Ewaipanomas.


title: Headless men

text: Explanations similar to de Laet's were repeated in later years. In the Age of Enlightenment, Joseph-François Lafitau asserted that while "acephalous" races were actually present in North America, they were no more than a local trait of having the head set deep in the shoulders. He argued that reports of "headless" traits in the "East Indies" by writers of antiquity is evidence that people of the same genetic pool migrated from Asia to North America. Contemporary literature say certain writers attribute Blemmyes' physique as an ability to raise both shoulders to an extraordinary height, and ensconcing their head in between.


title: Headless men

text: Other explanations have been offered for the legend of their unusual physique. As noted earlier, native warriors perhaps employed the tactic of keeping head tucked close to the breast while marching with one knee on the ground. Or, perhaps, they had the custom of carrying shields ornamented with faces.


title: Headless men

text: Likenesses of blemmyes are used as supports for misericords at Norwich Cathedral and Ripon Cathedral, from earlier local folklore. Writer Lewis Carroll is said to have invented characters based on objects in the Ripon church where his father served as canon, and in particular, the blemmyes here inspired his Humpty Dumpty character.


title: Headless men

text: The four giants who protect the fantasy land of Termina in "" are similar to the headless men, in the matter that their head and torso occupy the same anatomical position.Umberto Eco´s novel Baudolino, written in 2000, features Headless men as minor characters. A headless man was also featured as a monster-of-the-week in "Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated". In it, it is known as the "Headless Horror".


title: Headless men

text: Shakespeare's play "Othello" makes reference to "the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders". In his later play "The Tempest", Gonzalo admittedly believed when he was young "that there were such men whose heads stood in their breasts".


title: Headless men

text: In William Mayne’s 1987 children’s book "The Blemyah Stories", a family of Blemyahs spend a year in a medieval priory, carving stories from wood.


title: Headless men

text: Gene Wolfe writes of a man with his face on his chest in his 1989 short story collection "Endangered Species".


title: Headless men

text: In Umberto Eco's 2000 novel "Baudolino", the protagonist meets Blemmyes along with Sciapods and a number of monsters from the medieval bestiary in his quest to find Prester John.


title: Headless men

text: In his 2006 book "La Torre della Solitudine", Valerio Massimo Manfredi features the Blemmyes as fierce, sand-dwelling creatures located in the southeastern Sahara, and suggests that they are the manifestation of the evil face of mankind.


title: Headless men

text: Science fiction author Bruce Sterling wrote a short story entitled "The Blemmye's Stratagem", included in his 2006 collection "Visionary in Residence". The story describes a Blemmye during the Crusades, who is revealed to be an extraterrestrial. Sterling later stated that the idea for his story was taken from a children's story by Waleed Ali.


title: Headless men

text: In Rick Riordan's 2017 fantasy novel "The Dark Prophecy", headless men appear as the goons and bodyguards of Emperor Commodus.


title: Headless men

text: The creatures turn up on day 304 of The 1001 Nights as translated by "Sir Malcolm C. Lyons". The headless men with eyes on their chest defend "the Brass City" where the ifrit keeps a kidnapped princess as prisoner.


title: Golden triangle (universities)

text: The golden triangle refers to the triangle formed by the university cities of Cambridge, London and Oxford in the southeast of England. The triangle is occasionally referred to as the Loxbridge triangle, a portmanteau of London and Oxbridge or, when limited to five members, the G5.


title: Golden triangle (universities)

text: The list of universities considered to be members of the golden triangle varies between sources, but typically comprises the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, University College London, King's College London, and the London School of Economics. Some sources omit either or both of King's College London and the London School of Economics. while occasionally other universities are included, e.g. the London Business School and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, or all of the higher education institutions in the three cities.


title: Golden triangle (universities)

text: Golden triangle universities possess some of the largest UK university financial endowments; endowment sizes range from UCL's £139 million (2019) to Cambridge's £6.44 billion (including colleges) Further, each university receives millions of pounds in research fundings and other grants from the UK government, criticised by leaders of some other universities as disproportionate and not in the best interests of the country as a whole. In 2013/14, universities in Oxford, Cambridge and London received 46% of research funding in the UK, up from 42.6% a decade earlier.


title: Golden triangle (universities)

text: Data published by Google in 2015 showed that the top 5 non-US universities searched for by US students were all in the golden triangle: Oxford, Cambridge, King's College London, UCL and the LSE; Imperial College London was seventh (behind Edinburgh). Among UK providers with more than 10,000 students, the LSE had the highest proportion of non-UK students in 2018/19 at 67.5%, followed by Imperial at 52.7%, UCL in fourth (after University of the Arts London) at 47.7% and King's in 8th (after St Andrews, SOAS and Edinburgh) at 37.7%. Totals as of 2018/19 for non-UK students broken down by level of study are:


title: Golden triangle (universities)

text: Golden triangle universities generally do well on international rankings, which strongly reflect research performance. The LSE has, however, expressed concerns about a bias in rankings against smaller institutions and in favour of universities with large science, technology, engineering and mathematics programmes. Within its respective field of social sciences, for instance, the LSE ranks third globally (behind Oxford) in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) ranking. Some global rankings, such as those produced by Times Higher Education (THE) and QS, correct for the sizes of institutions in calculating their results but others, such as the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), make no such adjustment.


title: Golden triangle (universities)

text: The Golden Triangle universities generally do well on British university league tables, with Cambridge and Oxford consistently in the top three, and Imperial and LSE ranked in the top ten by all compilers. UCL, however, misses out on a top ten place in the Guardian University Guide, while


title: Golden triangle (universities)

text: With the exception of the LSE, the five other institutions typically considered members of the golden triangle (sometimes referred to as the G5) have among the highest research incomes of all British universities, ranking in the top seven of British universities by research grant and contract income (along with Manchester and Edinburgh) and in the top six of English universities by Research England recurrent funding (along with Manchester). These five institutions


title: Golden triangle (universities)

text: all have significant fractions of their research grant and contract income from clinical medicine, varying (in 2021/22) from 41.7% (Cambridge) to 63.6% (King's College London), compared to an average across the UK of 34.4%. Overall, 50.9% of the 2020/21 research grant and contract income of the five institutions (50.0% if the LSE is included) came from clinical medicine research, and they accounted for 34.7% of all research grant and contract income of UK universities in 2020/21 (35.2% if the LSE is included).


title: Golden triangle (universities)

text: Following the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF), the golden triangle universities saw a fall in their share of Quality Research funding (recurring funding based on the REF results rather than grants or other sources) from Research England. Analysis by Times Higher Education showed that the share of funding going to the golden triangle (not including the LSE in this analysis) fell from 35.36 per cent in 2020/21 under the previous REF to 33.05 per cent in 2021/22, although the actual funding the institutions received increased due to an overall increase in funding levels and the five universities remained (with Manchester) the top six institutions by share of funding. The LSE saw a decrease in actual funding of 9.03 per cent, leading to a 0.28 percentage point fall in its share of funding to 0.85 per cent, placing it below the post-92 Northumbria University.


title: Golden triangle (universities)

text: In 2004, the G5 universities were accused of secretly coordinating bids for an increased share of any extra money made available in the government's summer 2004 spending review. The objective was to secure extra state funding above the £3,000 student top-up fees planned in England from 2006 to cover the full costs of home and European Union undergraduates on their courses. This has been attributed to the universities stating they are offering "no cheap courses", and that they would have to reduce their intake of UK students without the additional income.


title: Golden triangle (universities)

text: The balance of funding between the 'golden triangle' and the rest of the UK has been questioned, and was specifically included in the terms of reference for an enquiry in 2018 by the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee. According to defenders of the level of funding going to the golden triangle institutions, "The apparent concentration of research in the golden triangle is little more than a reflection of the distribution of people in the UK". Analysis of grant proposals to Research Councils UK between 2012–13 and 2016–17 has shown that golden triangle institutions do not have unusually high success rates (two are actually below the expected range), but that the northern universities of Durham, Lancaster and York do. In February 2022, the UK Government announced as part of its "Levelling Up" White Paper that public investment outside of the south east would increase by 40% by 2030, despite warnings from leaders of research-intensive universities that this could reduce the importance of scientific excellence in funding decisions.


title: Golden triangle (universities)

text: Research in 2017 by the Institute for Fiscal Studies also indicates graduates from the LSE, Oxford and Imperial earn, on average, over £40,000 per year 5 years after graduation, making them the highest earners 5 years after graduation amongst British university graduates.


title: Allied Universal

text: Allied Universal is an American provider of security systems and services, janitorial services, and staffing. The company was formed in 2016 by the merger of Universal Services of America, a Santa Ana, California-based security and janitorial services company, and AlliedBarton Security Services, based in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. At the time of the merger, the combined company was reportedly the largest provider of security guards in the United States, with 140,000 trained officers between the two companies.


title: Allied Universal

text: In October 2021, Allied Universal completed a US$5.1 billion takeover of British security firm G4S, creating a combined company of 800,000 employees, with revenues of more than US$18 billion.


title: Allied Universal

text: The company maintains two corporate headquarters, one in Santa Ana, California and the other in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.


title: Allied Universal

text: AlliedBarton was founded as Allied Security in 1957 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as a provider of contracted security guards and related services.


title: Allied Universal

text: In 2004, Allied Security acquired Malden, Massachusetts-based Security Systems Inc. (SSI) and Atlanta, Georgia-based Barton Protective Services to form AlliedBarton Security Services - creating the largest American-owned contract security services company in the United States.


title: Allied Universal

text: Universal Protection Service was founded in 1965. It started as a janitorial company and expanded into security by 1969.


title: Allied Universal

text: In 2016, AlliedBarton and Universal Services of America merged to form Allied Universal. In February 2017, the company officially began operations under its new name. After the merger, Allied Universal was considered the largest security company in North America.


title: Allied Universal

text: In January 2018, the company paid $90,000 to settle a religious discrimination lawsuit from a Muslim employee in California who sought a religious exemption to the company’s grooming standards and was fired. Also in 2018, the radio program This American Life ran an hour-long feature story about sexual harassment and racism within Allied's operations at JFK airport and the company's responses to it. In response to the allegations, the company issued a statement saying these “isolated incidents are not indicative of our culture and work ethic,” and it has “zero tolerance against sexual harassment.” A related case was later voluntarily dismissed at the plaintiffs’ request. In July, Allied Universal announced the purchase of Georgia-based US Security Associates along with its affiliate Staff Pro for $1.5 billion.


title: Allied Universal

text: In 2019, the company was attacked with a ransomware scheme by the Maze group that turned out to be a stunt designed to warn companies about system security flaws. In December, majority owner Wendel sold most of its stake in Allied Universal to a Canadian pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), and a new investment group led by investment company Warburg Pincus and an affiliate of the investment company J. Safra Group.


title: Allied Universal

text: In December 2020, the Board of Directors and Shareholders for British security firm G4S unanimously accepted a takeover offer of $5.1 billion USD from Allied Universal. The acquisition was completed in April 2021, creating a combined company of 800,000 employees, with revenues of more than $18 billion USD. The merger was completed in October of 2021.


title: Allied Universal

text: Allied Universal provides security products and services, including access control, intrusion, alarm detection, and IP-based video systems; janitorial; transition planning; green cleaning; and staffing services.


title: Allied Universal

text: The company's divisions are Allied Universal Security Services; Allied Universal Technology Services; Allied Universal Risk Advisory and Consulting Services; Allied Universal Executive Protection and Intelligence Services: and Allied Universal Event Services.


title: Allied Universal

text: Allied Universal operates in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico, Honduras, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Nicaragua. The company maintains its headquarters in both Irvine, California (West Corporate Headquarters) and in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. As of February 2022, it employed about 800,000 people. As of July 2021, Steve Jones was the company's chairman and CEO.


title: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins

text: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins is the first of three experimental albums released by John Lennon and Yoko Ono on Apple Records. It was the result of an all-night session of musical experimentation with Yoko in John's home studio at Kenwood, while his wife, Cynthia Lennon, was on holiday in Greece. Lennon and Ono's 1968 debut recording is known not only for its avant-garde content, but also for its cover, which features the couple naked. This made the album controversial to both the public and the parent record company EMI, which refused to distribute it. In an attempt to avoid controversy, the LP record was sold in a brown paper bag, and distributed by Track and Tetragrammaton in the United Kingdom and the United States respectively. "Two Virgins", while failing to chart in the UK, reached number 124 in the US. The album was followed six months later by "".


title: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins

text: John Lennon met Yoko Ono in November 1966 at the Indica Gallery in London after he received an invitation from its owner, John Dunbar, to preview an exhibition by an obscure Japanese artist. Lennon described the exhibition as "positive" and kept in touch with Ono. Two years later, Cynthia Lennon, feeling miserable and increasingly distanced from her husband, decided to go on holiday to Greece with her friends Jenny Boyd and Magic Alex. Whilst on his own, Lennon called Ono and invited her over for the night. The genesis of the album came about when Yoko expressed an interest in John's avant-garde home recordings after he had asked "Do you want to hear some of the things I've been playing around at in my studio?" Lennon then played her some of his tapes which consisted of comedy recordings and electronic sounds, both of which he knew the other Beatles would not allow on their albums. After hearing the tapes, Ono insisted that they make their own recording. Cynthia returned home unexpectedly the next day to find them sitting cross-legged on the floor in matching white robes, staring into each other's eyes.


title: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins

text: The "Unfinished Music" series was an attempt by the pair to keep a record of their life together. With Ono's "Grapefruit" in mind, they had imagined that the sound was not etched into the vinyl's grooves but was meant to be created by the listener's mind. Lennon described "Unfinished Music" as "saying whatever you want it to say. It is just us expressing ourselves like a child does, you know, however he feels like then. What we're saying is make your own music. This is "Unfinished Music"."


title: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins

text: The recordings that ended up on the album consisted largely of tape loops, playing while Lennon tried out different instruments (piano, organ, drums) and sound effects (including reverb, delay and distortion), changed tapes and played other recordings, and conversed with Ono, who vocalised ad-lib in response to the sounds. Both of them had experience in avant-garde music: Ono had staged various multimedia events in New York during the early 1960s, and Lennon had worked on audio experimentation in the Beatles. Lennon's longtime friend Peter Shotton recalled later in his memoir that many of the loops heard on the album were made by John and himself in the days before the recording. Lennon recorded directly to two-track stereophonic, but much of the source material was monophonic. The song "Together", written by George Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson, can be heard playing in the background.


title: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins

text: Shortly after the release of the "Two Virgins", John stated in an interview that he believed the album "can change people", as others "have changed my head, just with their records." He then claimed "that's what Yoko and my singing is, to change it like that". Lennon talked about making the album and Ono's influence on him, in an interview in 1980 with "Playboy"'s David Sheff: "Well, after Yoko and I met, I didn't realize I was in love with her. I was still thinking it was an artistic collaboration, as it were – producer and artist, right? ... My ex-wife was away ... and Yoko came to visit me. ... instead of making love, we went upstairs and made tapes. I had this room full of different tapes where I would write and make strange loops and things like that for the Beatles' stuff. So we made a tape all night. She was doing her funny voices and I was pushing all different buttons on my tape recorder and getting sound effects. And then as the sun rose we made love and that was "Two Virgins"." This was John's first recording project that did not feature any help from the other Beatles; parts of the album were reminiscent of later editions of the Beatles' Christmas flexi recordings.


title: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins

text: Lennon and Ono used a time-delay camera, which was set up by Tony Bramwell, to take nude photographs of themselves for the album's cover: these were taken at 34 Montagu Square, in early October 1968. Lennon explained that they "were both a bit embarrassed when we peeled off for the picture, so I took it myself with a delayed action shutter." The front cover showed them frontally nude while the rear cover showed them nude from behind. John's idea was to have the nude shot for the front album cover. Neil Aspinall recalled that Lennon gave the roll of film to an Apple employee called Jeremy, with instructions to develop the photographs. Jeremy claimed that the pictures were "mind-blowing"; Aspinall wryly observed that "Everything was always 'mind-blowing' to Jeremy" and then went on to say "but – just that one time – he was actually right. He couldn't believe it."


title: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins

text: The cover provoked an outrage, prompting distributors to sell the album in a plain brown wrapper. Quotes from Genesis Chapter 2, chosen by Derek Taylor, were placed on the back of the brown bag. The album's title arose from the couple's feeling that they were "two innocents, lost in a world gone mad", and because after making the recording, the pair consummated their relationship. Lennon said that the cover "just seemed natural for us. We're all naked really." Ono viewed the cover as a significant declaration: "I was in the artistic community, where a painter did a thing about rolling a naked woman with blue paint on her body on a canvas; ... that was going on at the time. The only difference was that we were going to stand together, which I thought was very interesting ... it was just standing straight. I liked that concept." The album was regarded by some authorities as being obscene and copies were impounded in several jurisdictions (including 30,000 copies in New Jersey in January 1969). Lennon commented that the uproar seemed to have less to do with the explicit nudity, and more to do with the fact that the pair were rather unattractive; he described it later as a picture of "two slightly overweight ex-junkies".


title: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins

text: "Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins" was released by Apple Records in the US in electronically rechanneled stereo on 11 November 1968, and in the UK in mono and electronically rechanneled for stereo on 29 November 1968. The mono version was available only in the UK by mail order. The album was distributed by Track Records in the UK and Tetragrammaton Records in the US after EMI refused to produce the cover or sleeve to the record, unless it was changed. EMI, however, pressed the record in Britain, while the album cover was printed by Technik. Apple employee Jack Oliver got around the sleeve packing problem by hiring several Apple scruffs to package the album into sleeves "in the basement of the old Apple shop".


title: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins

text: It took Lennon six months to persuade his fellow band members to agree to the release of the album, and despite not approving of the front cover, Paul McCartney was asked to provide a note for it which read: "When two great Saints meet, it is a humbling experience. The long battles to prove he was a Saint." In the UK, McCartney's quote and the album title were placed on its back cover. "Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins" failed to chart in the UK (and only 5,000 British copies were ever pressed), but managed to reach number 124 in the US, after 25,000 copies were sold. Several months after its release, Capitol gave away promotional blank picture disc copies of the album to its employees.


title: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins

text: The cover art was changed for each of the album's three 8-track issues: Tetragrammaton/Ampex Tapes replaced the front cover with the back cover; North America Leisure Corp (NAL) reinstated the original front cover, and General Recorded Tape (GRT) released the 8-track with a paper sheet sleeve. The album was re-issued (albeit unlicensed and unauthorized) in the US during the 1970s and 1980s. One edition on the Rock Classics label, which was released in January 1993, claimed to be distributed by Tetragrammaton (which was defunct by 1970) and not mastered from the original tape, but was merely transferred from a copy of the record with audible surface noise. The fake-stereo mix of the album was officially re-issued on Rykodisc on 3 June 1997, under the observation of Ono, with an additional bonus track—"Give Peace a Chance"'s B-side "Remember Love". This edition of the album is slightly edited; it is missing about 30 seconds of audio from the end of the second side, as well as a few seconds from the start of side two. Several unauthorized versions of the album, cassette tape and compact disc also exist.


title: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins

text: The album was abhorred by both the music critics and the public alike. Actress Sissy Spacek, using the pseudonym Rainbo, recorded the song "John, You Went Too Far This Time" in response to the album's cover. William Ruhlmann of AllMusic remarked that it was "not unlike what you might get if you turned on a tape recorder for a random half-hour in your home", calling the music "naked". More favourable, "Pitchfork" reviewer Seth Colter Walls considered the album the "fascinating" product "of a first date", while noting "it has plenty of competition" with other Fluxus-inspired sound artefacts from the era. They also wrote that "Revolution 9", created by Lennon and Ono with George Harrison, is a "much tighter" sound collage than "Two Virgins".


title: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins

text: The album was reissued on LP, CD, and digitally by Secretly Canadian on 11 November 2016. The LP was a brand-new remaster of the unedited fake-stereo mix. The CD was identical to the Rykodisc CD edition.


title: Panchkula

text: Panchkula (PKL) is a planned city and district headquarter in the Panchkula district, part of Ambala division in Haryana, India. The origin of the name Panchkula came from the place where five irrigation canals meet. Panchkula established itself in the early 1980s, where the major population came from Punjab due to the khalistani movement, and settled here. It forms a part of an adjoining area to the Chandigarh, Mohali and Zirakpur. It is approximately southeast of Chandigarh, southwest of Shimla, from Ambala and northeast of New Delhi, the national capital. It is a part of the Chandigarh capital region or Greater Chandigarh. The Chandigarh-Mohali-Panchkula metropolitan region collectively forms a Chandigarh Tricity, with a combined population of over two million.


title: Panchkula

text: The city hosts the Chandimandir Cantonment, the headquarters of the Western Command of the Indian Army. In 2011, Panchkula city had a population of 211,355 of which male and female were 111,731 and 99,624 respectively. It is a planned city like Chandigarh, with a sector system.


title: Panchkula

text: The word is derived from the local word "panch" () ("five") and "kula" () ("canals") "The city of 5 canals", possibly referring to five irrigation canals that distribute water from the Ghaggar River and these kuls pass through the Chandimandir Cantonment area to Mata Mansa Devi Mandir area. Kuls or canals were made along the contours of the hillocks in a way that they collect the water upstream and convey it downstream at the contour height higher than the actual level of the Ghaggar river at the same spot. One of the canal is called the Singh Nalla which was being beautified in 2021 by building a walking track and by planting the plants and flowers.


title: Panchkula

text: The city is named after Panchkula village that is situated on the Ambala Kalka highway, near the junction with the Chandigarh road. The city was planned and developed by the state of Haryana in the 1970s. Panchkula was supposed to be the capital.


title: Panchkula

text: The fort was built by the rulers of Kahlur State, headquarter of which was Bilaspur in Himachal Pradesh. King of Bilaspur built the Ramgarh Fort 360 years ago. In 1687, its rulers offered Guru Gobind Singh a horse, a sword and Rs 500000 when he was relocating his troops from Paonta Sahib to Anandpur Sahib after the Battle of Bhangani. In the 1750s, it eventually fell to the status of a fief under the Sirmur State, but became independent again in 1804. It is currently occupied by the progeny of Kalee Chand, younger son of King of Bilaspur Sangar Chand (r. 1197–1220), and run as a heritage hotel.


title: Panchkula

text: Mata Mansa Devi Mandir is a Hindu temple dedicated to Goddess Mansa Devi, a form of Shakti, in the Panchkula district of Haryana state in India. The temple complex is spread of . It is one of the prominent Shakti Pitha temples of North India involving seven Shakti goddesses, namely Mata Mansa Devi, Naina Devi, Jawalamukhi, Chintpurni, Brajeshwari, Chamunda Devi and Jayanti Devi. Thousands of devotees visit the shrine from various parts of the country, and especially during the Navratra mela, this number rises to lakhs every day for the nine auspicious days.


title: Panchkula

text: Panchkula district has sub-tropical continental monsoon climate with hot summers, cool winters and monsoon rainfall.It has great variation in temperature (). Sometimes winter frost occurs during December and January. The district also receives winter rains from the western disturbance. The rainfall is mostly received in the monsoon. Morni hills constitute the highest point of the district as well as of Haryana. The Ghaggar is the only perennial river, which is very shallow outside of the monsoons. The mountains and hills of Kasauli are clearly visible from Panchkula.


title: Panchkula

text: Generally, the slope of the district is from north east to south west and in this direction, most of the rivers/streams rain-fed torrents flow down and spread much gravel and pebbles in their beds. Only the Sirsa river, in Kalka Tehsil flows towards the north-west. The soils in the district are mainly light loam.


title: Panchkula

text: The underground water in the district is generally fresh and suitable for domestic and irrigation purposes. The underground water level is generally high in the southern parts and low in north and north-east which is hilly tract. The district lies in the Himalayas boundary fault zones and earthquakes of moderate to high intensity have occurred in the past.


title: Panchkula

text: According to the 2011 Census of India, the people of the city are overwhelmingly Hindu, with Sikh and Muslim micro minorities. According to the surveys conducted, majority of the people in Panchkula speaks Hindi as their first language and Punjabi is the second most spoken language.


title: Panchkula

text: In 2011, Panchkula had 48,772 households in the city, with a population of 211,355, of which male and female were 111,731 and 99,624 respectively.


title: Panchkula

text: The city is a part of the Ambala Lok Sabha constituency represented by BJP's Rattan Lal Kataria, and Panchkula state assembly constituency, represented by BJP's Gian Chand Gupta since 2019.


title: Panchkula

text: Panchkula municipality is governed under the Haryana Municipal Act, 1973. According to the 2011 Census, Panchkula is governed by a municipal council, but it has since upgraded to the status of a municipal corporation. The population of the municipality, as per Census 2011, is 210,175.


title: Panchkula

text: Since 2017, Mr Rajesh Jogpal (HCS) headed the corporation as its municipal commissioner. In December, 2019, he was transferred and replaced by IAS Sumedha Kataria. The first woman Mayor of Panchkula was Upinder Kaur Alhuwalia, who served the term from 2013 to 2018. In 2018, the state decided to hold direct elections for the post, and as of now, the mayor of Panchkula is Kulbhushan Goyal of BJP. In a closely contested mayoral election in Panchkula, Bharatiya Janata Party’s Kulbhushan Goyal trumped the Congress’ Upinder Kaur Ahluwalia by 2,057 votes.


title: Panchkula

text: BJP also secured a majority in the 20-member municipal corporation House by winning 11 seats along with its alliance partner Jannayak Janata Party. Congress won seven seats, and two went to Independent candidates.


title: Panchkula

text: In July 2020, the Panchkula Municipal Corporation was bifurcated, with Kalka and Pinjore separating from the corporation and getting their own municipal council status. The city is divided into 20 wards for the purpose of administration, and is built over an area of 32.6 square km.


title: Panchkula

text: Water supply and sewerage in Panchkula is maintained by Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA), the Public Health and Engineering Department (PHED) of the state, as well as the municipal corporation at the local level. As of 2008, 80 MLD of water is supplied to Panchkula city, and it is treated by chlorination.


title: Panchkula

text: Panchkula also produces of waste per day, out of which only about is processed. As per the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) report, 100% door to door collection has been ensured in all wards through waste pickers. Jhariwala village has a sanitary landfill for the waste, where unsegregated waste is dumped. The city also has a community composting facility, material recovery facility and biogas plant. As of 2008, the city generated 64 MLD of sewage and had three sewage treatment plants (STPs) that were functional with a capacity of 18, 39 and 15 MLD respectively.


title: Panchkula

text: Panchkula city has an interim master plan that has been published by the Town and Country Planning department of Haryana state.


title: Panchkula

text: Panchkula IT Park (also known as Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructural Development Corporation Technology Park) is the state of art infrastructure to facilitate information technology in the city. It spreads over 74 acres developed by HSIIDC situated in sector 22 on foothills of Shivalik Hills or outer Himalayas and on the banks of Ghaggar River. It is well connected to Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh.


title: Panchkula

text: Panchkula has its own Sports Complex in Sector 3 includes Tau Devi Lal Cricket Stadium, Panchkula Golf Course, Olympic Athletic Track and other multi-purpose facilities for sports.


title: Panchkula

text: Tau Devi Lal Cricket Stadium has a cricket stadium, badminton hall, football ground, athletic Track and accommodation facilities for the sportsperson. It also boasts of a state of art modern international standard Astroturf laid Hockey Stadium with lights for eager hockey enthusiasts.


title: Panchkula

text: Panchkula Golf Course was set up in 2003 over a 135-acres of land. This 18 hole golf course is located in sector 3 in the foothills of Shivalik Hills on the banks of Ghaggar River, just off the Himalayan Expressway.


title: Southern Ming

text: The Southern Ming (), also known as the Later Ming (), officially the Great Ming (), was an imperial dynasty of China and a series of rump states of the Ming dynasty that came into existence following the Jiashen Incident of 1644. Shun forces led by Li Zicheng captured Beijing and the Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide. The Ming general Wu Sangui then opened the gates of the Shanhai Pass in the eastern section of the Great Wall to the Qing banners, in hope of using them to annihilate the Shun forces. Ming loyalists fled to Nanjing, where they enthroned Zhu Yousong as the Hongguang Emperor, marking the start of the Southern Ming. The Nanjing regime lasted until 1645, when Qing forces captured Nanjing. Zhu fled before the city fell, but was captured and executed shortly thereafter. Later figures continued to hold court in various southern Chinese cities, although the Qing considered them to be pretenders.