title: Petlyakov Pe-2

text: The aircraft did not show its true potential until the end of 1941, after the Soviet Air Force had a chance to regroup after the German onslaught, during the Winter. The Pe-2 quickly proved itself to be a highly capable aircraft, able to elude the Luftwaffe's interceptors and allowing their crews to develop great accuracy with their bombing. It could give German fighters fits when it could outrun them, at times reaching over 400 mph.


title: Petlyakov Pe-2

text: The records of the 16th and 39th BAPs of the Western Front Air Force note that the Pe-2's crews had the greatest success in repelling the attacks of enemy fighters in June and July 1941. On 1 July, for example, six Pe-2s fended off attacks by four Messerschmitt Bf 109s, shooting down two of them. A week later a group of Pe-2s was attacked by four Bf 109s and again brought down two of the attackers. On both occasions the Petlyakovs suffered no losses. On the southern front, a bombing mission against Ploiești, in Romania, by six Pe-2s, led by Capt. A. Tsurtsulin, was a great success: 552,150 lbs of petroleum were burnt in the raid. The Romanian information agency claimed that at least 100 Soviet planes had bombed Ploiești.


title: Petlyakov Pe-2

text: The Pe-2 regiments' operations were not always successful and the service pilots complained about insufficient defensive armament and survivability: there was a great risk of fire and insufficient armour protection, especially for the navigators and gunners. German pilots soon discovered the limited sighting angles of the ventral gun mounting and its poor reliability. The ammunition belt of the UBT machine-gun often jammed after the first burst of fire when shooting in extreme positions. The navigator and the radio operator were poorly protected. On average, ten Pe-2 gunners were wounded for every pilot, and two or three were killed for the loss of one pilot.


title: Petlyakov Pe-2

text: Throughout 1942 the design was steadily refined and improved, in direct consultation with pilots who were actually flying them in combat. Improved armour protection and a fifth ShKAS machine-gun was installed and fuel tanks modified. Despite anecdotal reports by Soviet fliers, Pe-2s were daylight bombers, often crewed by comparative novices in the early years of the war, and took significant losses, even when well protected by fighters. In December 1942 General Turkel of the Soviet Air Force estimated the life expectancy of a Pe-2 was 30 combat flights. An example of loss rates after the Soviets gained the upper hand can be gained by the losses suffered by the 1st and 2nd BAK. The former started the month of July 1943 with 179 machines, and lost 52 that month, and 59 the next, ending August with 156 bombers after receiving replacements. The 2nd BAK started July with 122 Pe-2s, with monthly losses of 30 and 20, ending August 1943 with 114 Pe-2s after replacements arrived. Most of these losses were at the hands of the thinly stretched German fighter groups, which continued to inflict significant losses when present in strength, even in the closing months of the war. For example, in the Baltic where JG54 Grünherz were the main opposition, and greatly outnumbered, the Soviet 1st Gv BAK lost 86 Pe-2s shot down (another 12 to other causes), mostly to German fighters between 23 July 1944 and 8 February 1945. Western sources use mark Pe-2FT for production series after 83, where FT stands for Frontovoe Trebovanie (Frontline Request), although Soviet documents do not use this identification. Final versions Pe-2K (transitional version of Pe-2I) and Pe-2I were produced in small numbers, due to the unwillingness of Soviet industry to decelerate production numbers.


title: Petlyakov Pe-2

text: In 1941, after the outbreak of the Continuation War, Finland purchased six war booty Pe-2 aircraft from Germany. These arrived at State Aircraft Factory facilities at Härmälä, near Tampere, in January 1942, where the airframes were overhauled and given Finnish serial numbers. The seventh Pe-2 was bought from the Germans in January 1944, and it was flown to Finland at the end of the month.


title: Petlyakov Pe-2

text: It was initially planned to use these planes as dive bombers in the 1st flight of LeLv 48, which began to receive its aircraft in July 1942, but during the training it was found out that this caused too much strain for the engines. Thus, the role of Pe-2s was changed to fly long-range photographic and visual reconnaissance missions for the Army General Headquarters. These sorties began in late 1942, and were often flown with two 250 kg (551 lb) bombs for harassment bombing and in order to cover the true purpose of missions.


title: Petlyakov Pe-2

text: By the time the Soviet Fourth strategic offensive started in June 1944, the secondary bombing role had already ended and the surviving Pe-2s began to be used solely at Karelian Isthmus in escorted (normally by four FiAF Bf 109 Gs) photographic reconnaissance flights in order to find out enemy troop concentrations. These vital missions were flown successfully, allowing artillery and Finnish Air Force and "Luftwaffe"s Gefechtsverband Kuhlmey's bombers to make their strikes against the formations preparing for attack, which had an important impact on the outcome of the Battle of Tali-Ihantala, where the Soviet advance was halted.


title: Petlyakov Pe-2

text: During the Continuation War, three Pe-2s were lost in accidents or technical failures, one was destroyed in bombing of Lappeenranta airfield, one was shot down by Soviet fighters and one went missing in action. In the Lapland War the only remaining machine flew a single reconnaissance sortie in October 1944. On average, the aircraft flew some 94 hours per plane during the war.


title: Petlyakov Pe-2

text: PE-301 and PE-215 were destroyed when Soviet aircraft bombed the Lappeenranta airfield on 2 July 1944. PE-212 went down in 1943, PE-213 was destroyed in an emergency landing in 1942. PE-214 was destroyed in a failed take-off attempt at Härmälä on 21 May 1942: as Härmälä airfield was quite short, the pilot had to try to lift off with too little speed, which caused the aircraft to stall and crash, killing the crew. PE-217 managed to shoot down a Soviet fighter in 1944. PE-216 was destroyed in a forced landing in 1944. PE-211 survived the war and was removed from FAF lists in 1946. It was still standing beside the Kauhava airfield in 1952, but further information on its fate is unknown.


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: Josephine Margaret Bakhita, (ca. 1869 – 8 February 1947), was a Sudanese-Italian Canossian religious sister who lived in Italy for 45 years, after having been a slave in Sudan. In 2000, she was declared a saint, the first Black woman to receive the honor in the modern era.


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: She was born around 1869 in Darfur (now in western Sudan) in the village of Olgossa, west of Nyala and close to Mount Agilerei. She was one of the Daju people; her respected and reasonably prosperous father was brother of the village chief. She was surrounded by a loving family of three brothers and three sisters; as she says in her autobiography: "I lived a very happy and carefree life, without knowing what suffering was".


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: In 1877, when she was 7–8 years old, she was seized by Arab slave traders, who had abducted her elder sister two years earlier. She was forced to walk barefoot about to El-Obeid and was sold and bought twice before she arrived there. Over the course of twelve years (1877–1889) she was sold three more times and then she was finally given her freedom


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: 'Bakhita' was not the name she received from her parents at birth. It is said that the trauma of her abduction caused her to forget her original name; she took one given to her by the slavers, "bakhīta" (بخيتة), Arabic for 'lucky' or 'fortunate'. She was also forcibly converted to Islam.


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: In El-Obeid, Bakhita was bought by a rich Arab who used her as a maid for his two daughters. They treated her relatively well, until after offending one of her owner's sons, wherein the son lashed and kicked her so severely that she spent more than a month unable to move from her straw bed. Her fourth owner was a Turkish general, and she had to serve his mother-in-law and his wife, who were cruel to their slaves. Bakhita says: "During all the years I stayed in that house, I do not recall a day that passed without some wound or other. When a wound from the whip began to heal, other blows would pour down on me."


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: She once said that the most terrifying of all of her memories there was when she (along with other slaves) was marked by a process resembling both scarification and tattooing, which was a traditional practice throughout Sudan. As her mistress was watching her with a whip in her hand, a dish of white flour, a dish of salt and a razor were brought by a woman. She used the flour to draw patterns on her skin and then she cut deeply along the lines before filling the wounds with salt to ensure permanent scarring. A total of 114 intricate patterns were cut into her breasts, belly and into her right arm.


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: By the end of 1882, El-Obeid came under the threat of an attack of Mahdist revolutionaries. The Turkish general began making preparations to return to his homeland and sold his slaves. In 1883, Bakhita was bought in Khartoum by the Italian Vice Consul Callisto Legnani, who did not beat or punish her. Two years later, when Legnani himself had to return to Italy, Bakhita begged to go with him. At the end of 1884 they escaped from a besieged Khartoum with a friend, Augusto Michieli. They travelled a risky trip on camelback to Suakin, which was the largest port of Sudan. In March 1885 they left Suakin for Italy and arrived at the port of Genoa in April. They were met there by Augusto Michieli's wife, Maria Turina Michieli, to whom Legnani gave ownership of Bakhita. Her new owners took her to their family villa at Zianigo, near Mirano, Veneto, about west of Venice. She lived there for three years and became nanny to the Michieli's daughter Alice, known as 'Mimmina', born in February 1886. The Michielis brought Bakhita with them back to the Sudan where they stayed for nine months before returning to Italy.


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: Suakin on the Red Sea was besieged but remained in Anglo-Egyptian hands. Augusto Michieli acquired a large hotel there and decided to sell his property in Italy and to move his family to Sudan permanently. Selling his house and lands took longer than expected. By the end of 1888, Turina Michieli wanted to see her husband in Sudan even though land transactions were unfinished. Since the villa in Zianigo was already sold, Bakhita and Mimmina needed a temporary place to stay while Micheli went to Sudan without them. On the advice of their business agent Illuminato Cecchini, on 29 November 1888, Michieli left both in the care of the Canossian Sisters in Venice. There, cared for and instructed by the Sisters, Bakhita encountered Christianity for the first time. Grateful to her teachers, she recalled, "Those holy mothers instructed me with heroic patience and introduced me to that God who from childhood I had felt in my heart without knowing who He was."


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: When Michieli returned to take her daughter and maid back to Suakin, Bakhita firmly refused to leave. For three days, Michieli tried to force the issue, finally appealing to the attorney general of the King of Italy; while the superior of the Institute for baptismal candidates (catechumenate) that Bakhita attended contacted the Patriarch of Venice about her protegée's problem. On 29 November 1889, an Italian court ruled that because the British had outlawed slavery in Sudan before Bakhita's birth and because Italian law had never recognized slavery as legal, Bakhita had never legally been a slave. For the first time in her life, Bakhita found herself in control of her own destiny, and she chose to remain with the Canossians. On 9 January 1890 Bakhita was baptized with the names of 'Josephine Margaret' and 'Fortunata' (the Latin translation of the Arabic "Bakhita"). On the same day, she was also confirmed and received Holy Communion from Archbishop Giuseppe Sarto, the Cardinal Patriarch of Venice and later Pope Pius X.


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: On 7 December 1893, Josephine Bakhita entered the novitiate of the Canossian Sisters and on 8 December 1896, she took her vows, welcomed by Cardinal Sarto. In 1902 she was assigned to the Canossian convent at Schio, in the northern Italian province of Vicenza, where she spent the rest of her life. Her only extended time away was between 1935 and 1939, when she stayed at the Missionary Novitiate in Vimercate (Milan); mostly visiting other Canossian communities in Italy, talking about her experiences and helping to prepare young sisters for work in Africa. A strong missionary drive animated her throughout her entire life – "her mind was always on God, and her heart in Africa".


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: During her 42 years in Schio, Bakhita was employed as the cook, sacristan, and portress (doorkeeper) and was in frequent contact with the local community. Her gentleness, calming voice, and the ever-present smile became well known and Vicenzans still refer to her as "Sor Moretta" ("little brown sister") or "Madre Moretta" ("black mother"). Her special charisma and reputation for sanctity were noticed by her order; the first publication of her story ("Storia Meravigliosa" by Ida Zanolini) in 1931, made her famous throughout Italy. During the Second World War (1939–1945) she shared the fears and hopes of the townspeople, who considered her a saint and felt protected by her presence. Bombs did not spare Schio, but the war passed without a single casualty.


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: Her last years were marked by pain and sickness. She used a wheelchair but she retained her cheerfulness, and if asked how she was, she would always smile and answer: "As the Master desires." In the extremity of her last hours, her mind was driven back to her youth in slavery and she cried out: "The chains are too tight, loosen them a little, please!" After a while, she came round again. Someone asked her, "How are you? Today is Saturday," probably hoping that this would cheer her because Saturday is the day of the week dedicated to Mary, mother of Jesus. Bakhita replied, "Yes, I am so happy: Our Lady... Our Lady!" These were her last audible words.


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: Bakhita died at 8:10 PM on 8 February 1947. For three days, her body lay in repose while thousands of people arrived to pay their respects. Her remains were translated to the Church of the Holy Family of the Canossian convent of Schio in 1969.


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: A young student once asked Bakhita: "What would you do, if you were to meet your captors?" Without hesitation, she replied: "If I were to meet those who kidnapped me, and even those who tortured me, I would kneel and kiss their hands. For, if these things had not happened, I would not have been a Christian and a religious today".


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: The petitions for her canonization began immediately, and the process commenced by Pope John XXIII in 1959, twelve years after her death. On 1 December 1978, Pope John Paul II declared Josephine Venerable, the first step towards canonization. On 17 May 1992, she was declared Blessed and given 8 February as her feast day. On 1 October 2000, she was canonized as Saint Josephine Bakhita. She is venerated as a modern African saint, and as a statement against the brutal history of slavery. She has been adopted as the patron saint of modern Sudan and human trafficking survivors. Caritas Bakhita House in London, which provides accommodation and support for women escaping human trafficking, is named in her honour.


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: Bakhita's legacy is that transformation is possible through suffering. Her story of deliverance from physical slavery also symbolises all those who find meaning and inspiration in her life for their own deliverance from spiritual slavery. In May 1992, news of her beatification was banned by Khartoum which Pope John Paul II visited nine months later. On 10 February 1993, he solemnly honoured Bakhita on her own soil. "Rejoice, all of Africa! Bakhita has come back to you. The daughter of Sudan sold into slavery as a living piece of merchandise and yet still free. Free with the freedom of the saints."


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: Pope Benedict XVI, on 30 November 2007, in the beginning of his second encyclical letter "Spe Salvi" ("In Hope We Were Saved"), relates her life story as an outstanding example of the Christian hope.


title: Josephine Bakhita

text: Josephine Margaret Bakhita is honored with a Lesser Feast on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, also on 8 February.


title: Demon Lord, Retry!

text: An anime television series adaptation by Ekachi Epilka aired from July 4 to September 19, 2019. Episode 12 ended by claiming, "To be continued!"


title: Demon Lord, Retry!

text: As Akira Ono prepares to shut down the servers of his creation, the MMORPG "Infinity Game", he suddenly finds himself in the body of his character, Demon Lord Hakuto Kunai, after an unexplained event. The new world he wakes up in appears to be set within "Infinity Game", but with some differences. He encounters and summons various companions who join him on his travels, and his reputation as "Demon Lord" spreads throughout the land, making him a target. Eventually, Ono/Kunai finds himself having to deal with the sociological problems of the Kingdom of Holy Light and the Satanist cult that opposes it, as he continues to pursue his mission of finding out why and how he was summoned.


title: Demon Lord, Retry!

text: Futabasha started publishing since June 2017 under their Monster Bunko imprint, illustrated by Kōji Ogata. Three volumes have been published between June 2017 and June 2018. A second, revised, edition of the light novels, illustrated by Makoto Iino, began publishing under Futabasha's M Novels label from October 2018. This series is also available in English with J-Novel Club acquiring the rights for English releases in July 2019, with the first English-translated volume being published in November 2019.


title: Demon Lord, Retry!

text: A manga adaptation with art by Amaru Minotake has been serialized via Futabasha's digital publication "Web Comic Action" since October 2017. It was collected in five "tankōbon" volumes in December 2019. J-Novel Club has licensed the manga. Amaru Minotake continued the manga re-vamped under the title "Demon Lord, Retry! R" in 2020, with the first volume published in July. As of July 2022, another five volumes have been published. J-Novel Club is continuing to license the manga for English translation.


title: Demon Lord, Retry!

text: An anime television series adaptation by Ekachi Epilka aired from July 4 to September 19, 2019 on Tokyo MX and BS Fuji. The series is directed by Hiroshi Kimura, with Ōka Tanisaki handled the series composition, and Chiyo Nakayama designed the characters. Kaori Ishihara performed the series' opening theme song "Tempest," while Haruka Tōjō performed the series' ending theme song "New." Funimation had licensed the series. Following Sony's acquisition of Crunchyroll, the series was moved to Crunchyroll.


title: A Study in Pink

text: "A Study in Pink" is the first episode of the television series "Sherlock" and first broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on 25 July 2010. It introduces the main characters and resolves a murder mystery. It is loosely based upon the first Sherlock Holmes novel, "A Study in Scarlet".


title: A Study in Pink

text: The episode was written by Steven Moffat, who co-created the series. It was originally filmed as a 60-minute pilot for "Sherlock", directed by Coky Giedroyc. However, the BBC decided not to transmit the pilot, but instead commissioned a series of three 90-minute episodes. The story was refilmed, this time directed by Paul McGuigan. The British Board of Film Classification has rated the pilot as a 12 certificate (not suitable for children under 12) for video and online exhibition, and it is included as an additional feature on the DVD released on 30 August 2010.


title: A Study in Pink

text: John Watson, an army doctor injured in Afghanistan, meets Sherlock Holmes, who is looking for a flatmate to share a flat at 221B Baker Street, owned by landlady Mrs. Hudson. The police, led by Detective Inspector Lestrade, have been baffled by a series of deaths, described as "serial suicides". Holmes looks at the latest crime scene: the body of Jennifer Wilson, who was dressed in pink. She managed to claw the word "Rache" into the floor, and Sherlock reckons the victim died before completing the name "Rachel", the name of her deceased daughter. Holmes deduces she is from out of town and therefore had a suitcase. The police have not found a carry-on with the body, but Holmes discovers it abandoned nearby. Meanwhile, after a phone call, Watson is compelled to meet a man who claims to be Holmes's "arch-enemy". The man offers him money to spy on Holmes, but Watson refuses. He also tells Watson that he misses the war, not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as his therapist believes.


title: A Study in Pink

text: When Watson returns to Baker Street, Holmes asks him to text Wilson's still-missing phone, hoping the murderer will make a move. While waiting at a local restaurant, Holmes notices a taxi and they outpace it on foot with shortcuts. However, the passenger is innocent. Holmes presumes "Rachel" was Wilson's e-mail password, and the victim planted her phone on the killer so GPS could trace him. At the same time, Watson finds the signal is coming from 221B Baker Street; Mrs. Hudson tells Holmes a taxi is waiting for him. Outside, the cabbie confesses to the murders but proclaims he merely speaks to his victims, and they kill themselves. The cabbie challenges Holmes to solve his puzzle. Later, he pulls out two bottles containing an identical pill: one is harmless, the other is poison. Afterward, he invites the victims to choose one, promising he will swallow the other — and he threatens to shoot them if they refuse.


title: A Study in Pink

text: Sherlock soon deduces the driver is an estranged father who was told three years earlier he was dying. The driver admits that he has a "sponsor" for his work, paying money for each murder for the driver's children. Holmes, having already noticed that the 'gun' is a novelty cigarette lighter, attempts to leave. However, the driver rechallenges him to choose a pill and see if he can solve the puzzle. Meanwhile, Watson has traced the GPS signal from the phone and followed the two men. He shoots the driver through a window in the adjacent building. Holmes tortures the cabbie to force him to say whether the pill taken was correct and who the sponsor is. He eventually reveals the name "Moriarty". The police arrive, and Holmes deduces the shooter is Watson but hides the truth from the police. Holmes and Watson leave the scene and run into the enigmatic man who claims to be Sherlock's arch-enemy earlier. He turns out to be Sherlock's elder brother, Mycroft, who works for the British government. Watson finally understands that Mycroft tried to bribe him out of genuine concern for Sherlock. Mycroft instructs his secretary to increase their surveillance status.


title: A Study in Pink

text: The episode is loosely based on "A Study in Scarlet" and contains allusions to other works by Arthur Conan Doyle. Moffat said of "A Study in Pink" and "A Study in Scarlet": "there are many elements of the story, and the broad shape of it, but we mess around with it a lot". Tom Sutcliffe of "The Independent" points out, "Fans will recognise at once that the close-reading Sherlock applies to John's mobile phone is drawn from an almost identical analysis of a pocket watch [taken from "The Sign of the Four"]. More slyly oblique is the conversion of the lost ring that Holmes uses to lure the killer in "A Study in Scarlet" into a lost 'ring', a mobile phone that can be used to contact the killer directly." The episode also uses an identical clue to the original story, but gives it a different meaning: both stories feature "Rache" written at the scene of the crime. In the original story, Holmes dismisses a suggestion that the victim was trying to write "Rachel", instead pointing out that "Rache" is German for "revenge". In this version Holmes's interpretation is reversed: he scoffs at the "revenge" explanation and suggests the victim was trying to write "Rachel".


title: A Study in Pink

text: The "three-patch problem" that Holmes describes is similar to the term "three-pipe problem" he uses in "The Red-Headed League".


title: A Study in Pink

text: The mention by Mrs. Hudson of "Mrs. Turner who lives next door" is a reference to a point in "A Scandal in Bohemia", where Holmes' landlady is once named as Mrs. Turner, instead of as Mrs. Hudson.


title: A Study in Pink

text: The feverish shout of "The game, Mrs. Hudson, is on!" is a reference to a line in "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange", "The game is afoot", which is frequently accredited to Holmes in adaptations. In the 2013 mini-episode "Many Happy Returns", a newspaper headline tantalisingly reads "The game is back on" as a harbinger of the character's imminent return.


title: A Study in Pink

text: The cabbie is dying of a brain aneurysm, while the murderer in "A Study in Scarlet" is dying of an aortic aneurysm.


title: A Study in Pink

text: Watson's reference in the final scene to having been shot in the shoulder but developing a psychosomatic limp in the leg is an allusion to a continuity error in the Conan Doyle stories: in the original "A Study in Scarlet" Watson's injury is said to be in his shoulder, but in Conan Doyle's later Holmes stories, it is said to be in his leg.


title: A Study in Pink

text: The second murder victim's name is James Phillimore, a reference to a case Holmes failed to solve in "The Problem of Thor Bridge".


title: A Study in Pink

text: The text messages Holmes sends Watson are taken nearly word for word from a telegram Holmes sends Watson in "The Adventure of the Creeping Man".


title: A Study in Pink

text: The case Holmes is working on when he meets Watson involves a guilty brother with a green ladder. This is an apparent reference to an unfinished story found after Conan Doyle's death since completed as "The Adventure of the Tall Man" and included (sometimes as only the original outline) in some editions of the Sherlock Holmes Apocrypha.


title: A Study in Pink

text: The story was originally filmed as a 60-minute pilot for "Sherlock", directed by Coky Giedroyc. It was planned to be broadcast in mid- to late 2009. The intention was to produce a full series should the pilot prove to be successful. However, the first version of the pilot – reported to have cost £800,000 – led to rumours within the BBC and wider media that "Sherlock" was a potential disaster. The BBC decided not to transmit the pilot, requesting a reshoot and a total of three 90-minute episodes. The newly shot episode, says journalist Mark Lawson, was "substantially expanded and rewritten, and completely reimagined in look, pace and sound". The first series of "Sherlock" was produced in reverse order; "A Study in Pink" was the last of the three to be produced. This was because episode writer and co-creator Steven Moffat was busy with the fifth series of "Doctor Who". Background information on Sherlock and Mycroft's relationship was cut out of the final episode as it was viewed as giving too much away. For the pilot, the roles of Sally Donovan and Angelo were portrayed by Zawe Ashton and Joseph Long respectively but were portrayed by Vinette Robinson and Stanley Townsend in the hour-and-a-half episode.


title: A Study in Pink

text: The episode was set in 2010 rather than the Victorian period and so used modern devices such as mobile phones, TX1 London cabs and nicotine patches rather than the traditional pipe and other period props. The change from a pipe to a nicotine patch reflected changing social attitudes and broadcasting regulations. Director Paul McGuigan says that using modern technology is in keeping with Conan Doyle's character, pointing out that "In the books he would use any device possible and he was always in the lab doing experiments. It's just a modern-day version of it. He will use the tools that are available to him today in order to find things out". Sherlock Holmes still lives at the same Baker Street address as in Conan Doyle's stories. However, it was filmed at 185 North Gower Street. Baker Street was impractical because of the number of things labeled "Sherlock Holmes", which would need to be disguised.


title: A Study in Pink

text: Filming on the pilot began in January 2009 on location in London and Cardiff. It was written by Moffat and directed by Coky Giedroyc. A seven-hour night shoot took place on 20/21 January at the No Sign bar in Wind Street, Swansea. The bar had been redesigned as an Italian restaurant for the shoot, where Holmes and Watson dined. Location managers selected the bar as the venue because they needed a building that could double as an Italian restaurant that was close to an alley. On 21 January, scenes were shot in Newport Road, Cardiff. Location shooting concluded on 23 January with scenes filmed on Baker Street, London. During that week, filming was also done on location in Merthyr Tydfil.


title: A Study in Pink

text: According to Moffat and Gatiss, the BBC liked the pilot so much that they ordered three 90-minute films. However, the pilot version of "A Study in Pink" had been produced as a 60-minute film. The producers felt that they could not simply add another half an hour to the episode—they had to film it again. Producer Sue Vertue adds that additional footage to increase the length would not have matched because a different director of photography and a superior camera were used when filming the series.


title: A Study in Pink

text: "A Study in Pink" was first broadcast on BBC One on 25 July 2010. Overnight viewing figures showed that the episode was watched by a total of 7.5 million viewers on BBC One and BBC HD. Final viewing figures were up to 9.23 million viewers and averaged a 28.5% share of the UK audience with a high AI rating of 87. The episode was downloaded 1.403 million times on BBC's online iPlayer, the third most-requested programme of 2010.


title: A Study in Pink

text: The episode won a Peabody Award in 2010 "for bringing the beloved Victorian sleuth into the high-tech present while remaining faithful to his creator's original conception." It received critical acclaim. "The Guardian"'s Dan Martin said, "It's early days, but the first of three 90-minute movies, "A Study in Pink", is brilliantly promising. It has the finesse of "Spooks" but is indisputably Sherlock Holmes. The deduction sequences are ingenious, and the plot is classic Moffat intricacy. Purists will take umbrage, as purists always do." However, Sam Wollaston, also for "The Guardian", was concerned that some elements of the story were unexplained. Tom Sutcliffe for "The Independent" also suggests that Holmes was "a bit slow" to connect the attributes of the killer to a London taxicab driver, but his review is otherwise positive. He wrote, ""Sherlock" is a triumph, witty and knowing, without ever undercutting the flair and dazzle of the original. It understands that Holmes isn't really about plot but about charisma ... Flagrantly unfaithful to the original in some respects, "Sherlock" is wonderfully loyal to it in every way that matters". IGN's Chris Tilly rated the episode 7.8 out of 10, describing it as "an excellent 90-minute origin story wrapped in a rather uninspired mystery that fails to fully take flight". He was positive towards the introduction of the two lead characters and actors, but felt the mystery was "something of an anticlimax" and Inspector Lestrade was "the only weak link". Serena Davies of "The Daily Telegraph" particularly praised Cumberbatch and stated that the show "worked because it was having fun" and was "hugely enjoyable". Her only criticism was that Holmes was "too legible" and lacked the mystery previously seen in other portrayals of the character. "The A.V. Club" reviewer John Teti gave "A Study in Pink" a grade of a B, feeling that the modern-day upgrades were too forced and that the resolution was "overwrought". However, he praised the show for being "bold" and Freeman for being "eminently watchable", though the more youthful take on Holmes "[infected] the performances at times". Den of Geek selected "A Study in Pink" as one of the best TV episodes of 2010, describing it as "a masterclass in how to write an opening episode".


title: Blonde (2001 film)

text: Blonde is a 2001 American made-for-television biographical fiction film on the life of Marilyn Monroe, with Australian actress Poppy Montgomery in the lead role. The film was adapted from Joyce Carol Oates's 2000 Pulitzer Prize finalist novel of the same name.


title: Blonde (2001 film)

text: A fictional biography of Marilyn Monroe mixed with a series of real events in her life. With glimpses into her childhood years, teenaged marriage to first husband Bucky Glazer, meeting with photographer Otto Ose, career with 20th Century Fox, relationship with her mother, her foster parents, Charles Chaplin Jr. (Cass), Edward G. Robinson Jr. (Eddie G), and her marriages to baseball player Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller.


title: Blonde (2001 film)

text: In the United States' review aggregator, the Rotten Tomatoes, in the score where the site staff categorizes the opinions of independent media and mainstream media only positive or negative, the film has an approval rating of 60% calculated based on five critics reviews. By comparison, with the same opinions being calculated using a weighted arithmetic mean, the score achieved is 3.3/10.


title: Blonde (2001 film)

text: Steven Oxman of "Variety" considered that "Blonde"'s approach as a work of fiction instead of a "based on true events" retelling allowed creators "to be far more imaginative in their suppositions about the characters' private thoughts" than similar works.


title: Deafblindness

text: Deafblindness is the condition of little or no useful hearing and little or no useful sight. Different degrees of vision loss and auditory loss occur within each individual. Because of this inherent diversity, each deafblind individual's needs regarding lifestyle, communication, education, and work need to be addressed based on their degree of dual-modality deprivation, to improve their ability to live independently. In 1994, an estimated 35,000–40,000 United States residents were medically deafblind. Helen Keller was a well-known example of a deafblind individual. To further her lifelong mission to help the deafblind community to expand its horizons and gain opportunities, the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults (also called the Helen Keller National Center or HKNC), with a residential training program in Sands Point, New York, was established in 1967 by an act of Congress.


title: Deafblindness

text: The deafblind community has its own culture, comparable to those of the deaf community and the blind community. Members of the deafblind community have diverse backgrounds but are united by similar experiences and a shared, homogeneous understanding of what it means to be deafblind. Some deafblind individuals view their condition as a part of their identity.


title: Deafblindness

text: The medical condition of deafblindness occurs in different forms. For some, this condition might happen congenitally from birth as a result of genetic defect, for others it happens suddenly due to a form of illness or accident that results in a modality deprivation of either vision or hearing, or both. A person might be born deaf and become blind at a later stage in life, or vice versa. In any given case of deafblindness, many possible onsets and causes of this condition exist; some happen gradually, others happen unexpectedly and suddenly. The diagnosis of deafblindness could be medically classified into specific types based on one's symptoms and causes.


title: Deafblindness

text: Deafblind people communicate in many different ways as determined by the nature of their condition, the age of onset, and what resources are available to them. For example, someone who grew up deaf and experienced vision loss later in life is likely to use a sign language (in a visually modified or tactile form). Others who grew up blind and later became deaf are more likely to use a tactile mode of spoken/written language. Methods of communication include:


title: Deafblindness

text: Multisensory methods have been used to help deafblind people enhance their communication skills. These can be taught to very young children with developmental delays (to help with pre-intentional communication), young people with learning difficulties, and older people, including those with dementia. One such process is Tacpac.


title: Deafblindness

text: Deafblind people often use the assistance of people known as support-service providers (SSPs), who help the deafblind with tasks such as routine errands, guiding the deafblind through unfamiliar environments, and facilitating communication between the deafblind person and another person.


title: Deafblindness

text: Braille equipment includes a variety of multipurpose devices, which enhance access to distance communication. Some can be used as stand-alone devices connected via Wi-Fi, while others are paired with a mobile device to provide tactile access to e-mail, text messaging, and other modern communication resources. To receive Braille equipment, an eligible consumer must be proficient in Braille and must have access to the Internet or cellular telephone service.


title: Deafblindness

text: Telebraille does not have a computer communications modem, but does have a TTY (TDD) modem. It was designed as a TTY for deaf-blind people and is also useful for face-to-face conversation. It has two components: The sighted component is a modified SuperCom TTY device. It has a qwerty keyboard and a single-line LED display. The display is regular size and is not particularly suited to people with low vision. The SuperCom TTY can be connected directly to the telephone line using a conventional telephone jack or the telephone receiver can be coupled to the SuperCom on a cradle on top of the device. Text flows past the display in a continuous stream, like tickertape. The SuperCom is connected to the Braille portion of the device by a cable that is about 2 ft (0.6 m) long. The Braille display is about 15 characters in width, although a knockout allows additional characters to be installed, at considerable additional cost. The Telebraille is able to communicate in ASCII mode, but is not compatible with conventional computer modems. There is what looks like a RS-232 socket on the back of the Braille component, but the instructions for the Telebraille state that this jack is for "future use" and that no computer devices should be attached to it.


title: Deafblindness

text: A graphic Braille display can be used in sensing graphic data such as maps, images, and text data that require multiline display capabilities such spreadsheets and equations. Graphic braille displays available in the market are DV-2 (from KGS), Hyperbraille, and TACTISPLAY Table/Walk (from Tactisplay Corp.). For example, TACTISPLAY Table can show 120*100 resolution refreshable braille graphics on one page.


title: Deafblindness

text: The 1959 play "The Miracle Worker", and its film adaptation released in 1962, recounts Anne Sullivan's efforts to draw Helen Keller from her world of blindness and deafness.


title: Deafblindness

text: The Who’s 1969 album "Tommy" tells one continuous life story about a deafblind mute boy named Tommy through songs.


title: Deafblindness

text: The 2005 Bollywood film "Black" featured Rani Mukerji as a deafblind character named Michelle McNally.


title: Deafblindness

text: The film "Marie's Story" (2014) relates the childhood and education of Marie Heurtin (1885–1921), a deafblind woman.


title: Deafblindness

text: Haben Girma, the first deafblind individual to graduate from Harvard Law School, released an autobiography entitled "" in 2019.


title: Deafblindness

text: "Feeling Through" is a 2019 American short drama film directed by Doug Roland that is the first film ever to star a deafblind actor (Robert Tarango) in a lead role; it is about a teenager and a deafblind man. It was nominated for the 2021 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.


title: Reed Alexander

text: Reed Alexander (born December 23, 1994) is an American actor, journalist, and author. He is currently a financial news reporter for Insider, formerly “Business Insider,” covering Wall Street and investment banking. Among his most recognizable credentials from his time as an actor is his role as Nevel Papperman in Nickelodeon's "iCarly". He reprised the role of Nevel on an episode of "Sam & Cat" as well as the Paramount+ revival of "iCarly".


title: Reed Alexander

text: Alexander first received recognition for his food blog that began in 2009 which turned into a second career as a spokesman for healthy eating habits. He appeared in "Will & Grace" for which he was nominated for a Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a Television Series (Comedy) – Guest Starring Actor. He was also in 2009's direct-to-video telefilm "".


title: Reed Alexander

text: Alexander attended the First inauguration of Barack Obama after "helping out [a] local grass roots campaigns for one of the political parties in the Presidential Election of 2008." Alexander has been a spokesperson for the American Heart Association and Clinton Foundation's anti-obesity program called Alliance for a Healthier Generation, has been involved in promoting Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative, and has been credited with being able to get healthy eating messages to young audiences. He has published a website on healthy eating geared toward young people and a book, "KewlBites: 100 Nutritious, Delicious, and Family-Friendly Dishes" (2013).


title: Reed Alexander

text: Alexander obtained his undergraduate degree in media studies and broadcast journalism from New York University. , he had graduated with his master's of science in journalism at Columbia University. He is currently a financial news reporter at Insider Inc. Starting in 2022, Alexander started a new position as a Lecturer for Journalism Studies at the University of Miami.


title: Jonathan Kimmel

text: Jonathan Kimmel (born November 4, 1976) is an American television and film director, writer, producer, actor and composer. He is the younger brother of Jimmy Kimmel. He is married to writer and lecturer Carly Hirsch, and is the father of Wesley Kimmel (also known as "The Baby Bachelor") and Beatrix Kimmel.


title: Jonathan Kimmel

text: Kimmel is an alumnus of Arizona State University's long-running Farce Side Comedy Hour troupe. He also directed, performed and wrote for the show.


title: Jonathan Kimmel

text: Kimmel's writing credits include six seasons of "South Park", during which the show won three Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award. He has also contributed several voice-overs, including the voice of his brother Jimmy in the "Fishsticks" episode. After that, he served as co-executive producer and head writer for MTV's "The Andy Milonakis Show". Additionally, he assisted on "Crank Yankers", where he was also a composer and voice-over performer. Other writing credits include: "That's My Bush!", "Drawn Together", "The Bonnie Hunt Show" and "The Man Show".


title: Jonathan Kimmel

text: Kimmel's performing credits include: a guest-starring role on "Life with Bonnie"; the character Xavier on the ABC pilot "Let Go"; the voice of Scab in Disney's "The Wild"; the Singing Ass in Sarah Silverman's ""; the voice of the King on "Drawn Together"; the Boneologist and as The Fog on "Minoriteam", as well as dozens of voices and characters on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!". Kimmel has also guest-starred in several roles on "The Sarah Silverman Program". He directed the music video for The Killers' ninth charity Christmas single, "Joel the Lump of Coal", which features his brother Jimmy (who also co-wrote the song).


title: Jonathan Kimmel

text: Kimmel currently serves as executive producer and director, on the reboot of "Crank Yankers", for Comedy Central.


title: Jonathan Kimmel

text: Kimmel currently resides in Los Angeles, and works as a segment director on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" (after three years as a writer on the program).


title: Pharaoh ant

text: The pharaoh ant ("Monomorium pharaonis") is a small (2 mm) yellow or light brown, almost transparent ant notorious for being a major indoor nuisance pest, especially in hospitals. A cryptogenic species, it has now been introduced to virtually every area of the world, including Europe, the Americas, Australasia and Southeast Asia. It is a major pest in the United States, Australia, and Europe.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: This species is polygynouseach colony contains many queensleading to unique caste interactions and colony dynamics. This also allows the colony to fragment into bud colonies quickly.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Pharaoh ants are a tropical species, but they also thrive in buildings almost anywhere, even in temperate regions provided central heating is present.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Pharaoh workers are about 1.5 to 2 millimeters long, a little more than 1/16-inch. They are light yellow to reddish brown in color with a darker abdomen. Pharaoh ant workers have a non-functional stinger used to generate pheromones. The petiole (narrow waist between the thorax and abdomen) has two nodes and the thorax has no spines. Pharaoh ant eyesight is poor and they possess on average 32 ommatidia. The antennal segments end in a distinct club with three progressively longer segments.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Males are about 3mm long, black, winged (but do not fly). Queens are dark red and 3.6–5mm long. They initially have wings that are lost soon after mating, but do not fly.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: The pharaoh ant queen can lay hundreds of eggs in her lifetime. Most lay 10 to 12 eggs per batch in the early days of egg production and only four to seven eggs per batch later. At 27 °C (80 °F) and 80 percent relative humidity, eggs hatch in five to seven days. The larval period is 18 to 19 days, pre-pupal period three days and pupal period nine days. About four more days are required to produce sexual female and male forms. From egg to sexual maturity, it takes the pharaoh ant about 38 to 45 days, depending on temperature and relative humidity. They breed continuously throughout the year in heated buildings and mating occurs in the nest. Mature colonies contain several queens, winged males, workers, eggs, larvae, pre-pupae and pupae.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Each colony produces sexually reproductive individuals roughly twice a year. However, colonies raised in a laboratory can be manipulated to produce sexuals at any time of year. Colonies proliferate by "budding" (also called "satelliting" or "fractionating"), where a subset of the colony including queens, workers and brood (eggs, larvae and pupae) leave the main colony for an alternative nest site.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Pharaoh ant colonies appear to prefer familiar nests to novel nests while budding. This suggests the ability for colonies to remember certain qualities of their living space. However, if the novel (unfamiliar) nest is of superior quality, the colony may initially move toward the familiar, but will eventually select the unfamiliar. The colony assumes the familiar nest is preferable, unless they sense better qualities in the novel nest. This decision-making process seeks to minimize the time the colony is without a nest while optimizing the nest the colony finally chooses.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: The number of available budding locations has a large effect on colony fragmentation. A large number of bud nests results in small colony fragments, indicating that the colony has the ability to control size and caste ratios. However, a minimum group size of 469 individuals appears preferred by the species. Amount of fragmentation does not have an effect on food distribution. After budding, nest units do not compete for resources, but rather act cooperatively. This is evolutionarily explained by the high amount of genetic relatedness among these nest units. In addition, major disturbances to the central nest cause the colony to abandon it and flee to a bud nest. Thus, nest units may exchange individuals after budding occurs, further explaining their cooperative behavior.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: In Australia, "Monomorium" species is particularly successful. This fact is particularly curious because of the presence of a very aggressive ant family, "Iridomyrmex", which is quite proficient at interference competition. "Iridomyrmex" ants are able to quickly seek out food sources and prevent other ant species from reaching them. However, unlike other ant species, "Monomorium" species, despite their unaggressive nature and small size, are able to thrive even in areas where "Iridomyrmex" dominates. This success can be attributed to their efficient foraging strategy, and their novel use of venom alkaloids, repellant chemical signals. With these two behaviors, "Monomorium" species can rapidly monopolize and defend food sources.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Pharaoh ants utilize three types of pheromones. One is a long-lasting attractive chemical that is used to build a trail network. It remains detectable even if the ants do not use the trail for several days. Pharaoh ants cease activity at night and begin each day of work at around 8 am, yet parts of the trail network are identical each day. The second pheromone is also attractive, but will decay to imperceptible amounts in a matter of minutes without reapplication. This pheromone is useful in marking food sources, as these are unpredictable and the colony must be able to respond to environmental changes quickly. Individuals will not waste their time on an unprofitable trail route. The third pheromone is a repellant. Pharaoh ants were the first species found to use a negative trail pheromone. If an individual finds an unprofitable area with little food or significant danger, it will release this repellant pheromone, which will warn others and cause them to look elsewhere. While positive pheromones indicating lucrative foraging sites are very common in social insects, the pharaoh ant's negative pheromone is highly unusual. Like the food source marker, the negative pheromone is volatile, decaying roughly two hours after being emitted. It may even be insecticidal in some cases. It is so powerful that an individual can detect it from away. Pharaoh ants utilize this pheromone near forks in the trail network, and an ant that detects it will begin to walk in a zigzag manner.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Both the attractive and repellent pheromones are utilized in the decision-making an ant must make while foraging. The repellent pheromone is especially useful in the repositioning of trails after a new food source has been introduced. It also helps prevent ants from concentrating on an undesirable trail. Thus, the repellant pheromone makes the pharaoh ant a particularly efficient forager. Despite their extreme importance, there is an adaptive value to using pheromones sparingly, as it streamlines communication during important decision-making situations, such as a nest migration.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Pharaoh ants use a positive feedback system of foraging. Each morning, scouts will search for food. When one finds it, it will instantly return to the nest. This causes several ants to follow the successful scout's trail back to the food source. Soon, a large group will be upon the food. Scouts are thought to use both chemical and visual cues to remain aware of the nest location and find their way. If the colony is exploring a new region, they employ a land rush tactic, in which a large number of foragers randomly search, constantly releasing pheromones.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Even though "M. pharaonis" is most often thought an indoor pest, foraging has been found to be more prevalent outside. Even inside colonies were found to forage close to windows, indicating a propensity for outdoor environment.<ref name="Indoor/Outdoor"></ref>


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Even though scouts search independently, they use a distinct trail system that remains somewhat constant from day to day. The system consists of one to four trunk routes. Every scout uses one of these trunks in the beginning and end of its food search. In this way, the trunks get continuous chemical reinforcement and do not change much. Each trunk divides into many branch routes. These will change based on food availability.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: The organization of foraging trails is strongly affected by the health of the colony and the availability of food. Food deprivation induces a higher amount of foraging ant traffic, compared to a non-deprived population. If a food source is presented to the food deprived colony, this traffic was further increased, an indication of the pharaoh ant's recruitment tactic. If food is not present, a colony will extend its trails to a wider radius around the nest. Logically, number of trails and forager traffic is largest near a food source.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: While pheromones explain the pharaoh ant's foraging ability, each forager's capability to find its way back to the nest requires a different explanation. In fact, the pharaoh ant relies on geometry to show it the way home. Each fork in the trail system spreads at an angle between 50 and 60 degrees. When returning to the nest, a forager that encounters a fork will almost always take the path that deviates less from its current direction. In other words, it will never choose an acute angle that would drastically change its direction. Using this algorithm, each forager is able to find its way back to the nest. If the fork angle is experimentally increased to an angle between 60 and 120 degrees, "M. pharaonis" foragers were significantly less able to find their nest. This method of decision-making reduces the wasted energy that would result from traveling in the wrong direction and contributes to the pharaoh ant's efficiency in foraging.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Upon scouts’ return with food, the queens will attempt to beg for their share. Depending on food availability and each individual's condition, a scout may refuse the queen's entreaties and even run away from her. The decision of an individual to give up food to the queen may be beneficial in situations of plentiful food, as a healthy queen can reproduce and propagate the colony's genes. However, when food is highly scarce, an individual's own survival can outweigh this potential benefit. She will therefore refuse to give up food.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: A queen may also feed on secretions from larvae. This creates a positive feedback loop in which more larvae will provide more food to queens who can in turn produce more larvae.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: If a large amount of larvae results in a surplus of secretions, pharaoh ants will store the excess in the gasters of a unique caste, the replete workers. Members of this group have enormous gasters and can regurgitate their stored food when needed. In this way, the colony has a cushion against food shortages.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Pharaoh ants have a sophisticated strategy for food preference. They implement two related behaviors. The first is known as satiation. The workers will at first show a strong preference for a particular food type. However, if this food is offered alone, with no other options, for several weeks, workers will afterward show a distinct preference for a different type of food. In this way, the ants become satiated on a certain food group and will change their decision. The second behavior is called alternation. If given the continuous choice between food groups, pharaoh ants will tend to alternate between carbohydrate-rich foods and protein-rich foods. These satiation and alternation behaviors are evolutionarily adaptive. The decision to vary the type of food consumed ensures that the colony maintains a balanced diet. Edwards & Abraham 1990's result is appropriate for highly competitive environments, and consistent with a high intake:expenditure ratio.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: "Monomorium pharaonis", similar to other invasive ants, is polygynous, meaning its colonies contain many queens (up to 200). It is hypothesized that polygyny leads to lower levels of nestmate recognition in comparison to monogynous species due to the expected higher levels of genetic diversity. Because these colonies lack nestmate recognition, there is no hostility between neighbouring colonies, which is known as unicoloniality.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Many invasive ants display unicoloniality. The adaptive value of this nonaggression among colonies has to do with avoiding unnecessary injury and allowing proper resource allocation, ensuring success for all the colonies. Low nestmate recognition, caused in part by polygyny, also has a biochemical basis in "M. pharaonis". Cuticular hydrocarbons are compounds, often found on antennae, that allow for communication in many social insects. In ant species, these compounds play an especially key role in nestmate recognition. Differences in cuticular hydrocarbons are detected by other ant species, who respond accordingly. However, all pharaoh ant colonies have the same hydrocarbons on their antennae. This leads to ineffective nestmate recognition, and nonaggression between colonies.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Pharaoh ant colonies contain many queens. The ratio of queens to workers is variable and dependent on the size of the colony. An individual colony normally contains 1,000–2,500 workers, but often a high density of nests gives the impression of massive colonies. In a small colony, there will be more queens relative to workers. In addition, individuals will be larger than those in a more populous colony. This ratio is controlled by the workers in the colony. Larvae that will produce workers have characteristic hairs all over them, while larvae that will produce sexual males or females are bare. It is thought that workers can use these distinguishing features to identify larvae. Workers may cannibalize larvae in order to ensure a favorable caste ratio. This decision to cannibalize is largely determined by the present caste ratio. If plenty of fertile queens are present, for example, the workers may eat sexual larvae. The caste ratios are controlled in an attempt to maximize the growth of the colony. For example, in a small colony, the ratio of queens to workers is increased. This in turn increases the potential for reproduction, allowing colony growth. Conversely, in a large colony, the high worker to queen ratio maximizes the foraging capacity of the nest, helping sustain the population size.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: The Pharaoh ant is a polygynous species that has a relatively low worker to queen ratio of around 12.86. This allows the pharaoh ants to be able to exert social control over the size of the colony and the size of each caste. In the average nest, there are around 170 ± 8 queens, which comprises around 5.2% of the total population, whereas there are around 2185 ± 49 workers, which make up around 66.6% of the population. This low worker to queen ratio is usually associated with swift changes in the nest and may be why pharaoh ants form many new nest buds quickly. To branch out and form a new bud nest, pharaoh ants need a minimum of 469 ± 28 individuals, which explains how they proliferate so quickly.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Mating for pharaoh ants occurs within the nests with males that are usually not from the colony which ensures genetic diversity. The queen can typically produce eggs in batches of 10 to 12 at once, but can lay up to 400 eggs every time she mates. The eggs that are produced take up to 42 days to mature from an egg to an adult. Each queen within the nest lives between 4 and 12 months.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: During copulation, sperm is transferred from male to female inside a spermatophore. There are several theories regarding the adaptive value of using a spermatophore. It contains certain chemicals that may inhibit the female's sex drive. Alternatively, it may physically plug the female's gonophore. In either explanation, the spermatophore prevents the female from reproducing with another male. In essence, the use of a spermatophore is evolutionarily favorable because it increases the probability of the male's genetic code being transferred to subsequent generations by lessening potential competition from other males.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Pharaoh ant copulation, like that of many social insects, is harmful to the female. The penis valve contains sharp teeth, which latch onto a thick, soft cuticular layer in the female. This method of copulation too has an evolutionary basis. The teeth ensure sex lasts long enough for sufficient sperm transfer. Also, the pain caused to the female may, in some ways, lessen her desire to mate again.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: When the queen ant first moves to a new nest, she will rear the first group of workers. Once a worker threshold has been reached, resources will then be invested into new males and queens. When a new nest is formed, queens are not a necessity; workers can raise new queens after finding a suitable nest site.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: In pharaoh ant colonies new males and queen ants can be produced when the existing fertile queen is removed. When queens are absent, the workers in the nest can do two things: either rear existing sexual larvae or transport sexual larvae from other bud nests or from the main nest to its own nest. However, when there are fertile queens still within the nest, the worker ants will cannibalize the sexual larvae and will either reject or consume sexual larvae from other nests. On the other hand, the worker ants will always accept and nurture worker larvae from other nests. Furthermore, according to Schmidt et al., polygamous species such as pharaoh ants will have higher resource allocations towards the female caste instead of the worker caste to ensure rapid growth of new budding colonies.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: When social ants encounter ants from another colony, behavior can be either aggressive or non-aggressive. Aggressive behavior is very commonly seen; the attacking worker usually bites the opponent at the petiole. In non-aggressive behavior, antennation occurs when the two ants meet. In the case of "Monomorium pharaonis", behavior is almost always non-aggressive even when the ants are from different colonies and of different castes. Very few cases exist where aggressive behavior is seen in these ants.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: After foraging, pharaoh ants will wash themselves when a worker enters the cell. Pharaoh ants will also wash after a long feed. It has been proposed that washing has a hygienic value, keeping the nest area clean, staving off disease and disorder. Right before workers leave to forage, they also may wash themselves. However, in this instance the behavior is extremely violent, often causing the ants to fall over. It is thought that here, the washing behavior has no hygienic value and instead may be a displacement activity, a sign that the ants are deliberating whether or not to exit the nest.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Budding is a major factor underlying the invasiveness of pharaoh ants. A single seed colony can populate a large office block, almost to the exclusion of all other insect pests, in less than six months. Elimination and control are difficult because multiple colonies can consolidate into smaller colonies during extermination programs only to repopulate later.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: Pharaoh ants have become a serious pest in almost every type of building. They can feed on a wide variety of foods including grease, sugary foods, and dead insects. They can also gnaw holes in silk, rayon and rubber goods. Nests can be very small, making detection even more difficult. They are usually found in wall voids, under floors, or in various types of furniture. In homes, they are often found foraging in bathrooms or near food.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: It is recommended not to attempt extermination using insecticidal sprays and dusts because they will cause the pharaoh ants to scatter and colonies to split, although non-repellent residual insecticides have been reported to be effective.


title: Pharaoh ant

text: The recommended method to eliminate pharaoh ants is by the use of baits attractive to the species. Modern baits use insect growth regulators (IGRs) as the active substance; the ants are attracted to the bait by its food content, and take it back to the nest. Over a period of weeks the IGR prevents the production of worker ants and sterilizes the queen. Renewing the baits once or twice may be necessary.


title: Planning poker

text: Planning poker, also called Scrum poker, is a consensus-based, gamified technique for estimating, mostly used for timeboxing in "Agile principles". In planning poker, members of the group make estimates by playing numbered cards face-down to the table, instead of speaking them aloud. The cards are revealed, and the estimates are then discussed. By hiding the figures in this way, the group can avoid the cognitive bias of anchoring, where the first number spoken aloud sets a precedent for subsequent estimates.


title: Planning poker

text: Planning poker is a variation of the Wideband delphi method. It is most commonly used in agile software development, in particular in Scrum and Extreme Programming.


title: Planning poker

text: The method was first defined and named by James Grenning in 2002 and later popularized by Mike Cohn in the book "Agile Estimating and Planning", whose company trade marked the term and a digital online tool.


title: Planning poker

text: The reason to use planning poker is to avoid the influence of the other participants. If a number is spoken, it can sound like a suggestion and influence the other participants' sizing. Planning poker should force people to think independently and propose their numbers simultaneously. This is accomplished by requiring that all participants show their cards at the same time.


title: Planning poker

text: Planning poker is based on a list of features to be delivered, several copies of a deck of cards, and optionally, an egg timer that can be used to limit time spent in discussion of each item.


title: Planning poker

text: The cards in the deck have numbers on them. A typical deck has cards showing the Fibonacci sequence including a zero: 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89; other decks use similar progressions with a fixed ratio between each value such as 1, 2, 4, 8, etc.


title: Planning poker

text: The reason for using the Fibonacci sequence instead of simply doubling each subsequent value is because estimating a task as exactly double the effort as another task is misleadingly precise. A task that is about twice as much effort as a 5, has to be evaluated as either a bit less than double (8) or a bit more than double (13).


title: Planning poker

text: Several commercially available decks use the sequence: 0, ½, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100, and optionally a ? (unsure), an infinity symbol (this task cannot be completed), and a coffee cup (I need a break, and I will make the rest of the team coffee). The reason for not exactly following the Fibonacci sequence after 13 is because someone once said to Mike Cohn "You must be very certain to have estimated that task as 21 instead of 20." Using numbers with only a single digit of precision (except for 13) indicates the uncertainty in the estimation. Alternatively standard playing cards of Ace, 2, 3, 5, 8, and king can be used. Where king means: "this item is too big or too complicated to estimate". "Throwing a king" ends the discussion of the item for the current sprint.


title: Planning poker

text: When teams are not in the same geographical locations, collaborative software over the internet can be used as replacement for physical cards. Several web applications and mobile applications exist for the purpose.


title: Planning poker

text: At the estimation meeting, each estimator is given one deck of the cards. All decks have identical sets of cards in them.


title: Planning poker

text: The cards are numbered as they are to account for the fact that the longer an estimate is, the more uncertainty it contains. Thus, if a developer wants to play a 6 he is forced to reconsider and either work through that some of the perceived uncertainty does not exist and play a 5, or accept a conservative estimate accounting for the uncertainty and play an 8.


title: Planning poker

text: A study by Moløkken-Østvold and Haugen<ref name="doi:10.1109/ASWEC.2007.15"></ref> reported that planning poker provided accurate estimates of programming task completion time, although estimates by any individual developer who entered a task into the task tracker was just as accurate. Tasks discussed during planning poker rounds took longer to complete than those not discussed and included more code deletions, suggesting that planning poker caused more attention to code quality. Planning poker was considered by the study participants to be effective at facilitating team coordination and discussion of implementation strategies.


title: Charlie Christian

text: Christian was an important early performer on the electric guitar and a key figure in the development of bebop and cool jazz. He gained national exposure as a member of the Benny Goodman Sextet and Orchestra from August 1939 to June 1941. His single-string technique, combined with amplification, helped bring the guitar out of the rhythm section and into the forefront as a solo instrument. For this, he is often credited with leading to the development of the lead guitar role in musical ensembles and bands. John Hammond and George T. Simon called Christian the best improvisational talent of the swing era. In the liner notes to the album "" (Columbia, 1972), Gene Lees wrote that "Many critics and musicians consider that Christian was one of the founding fathers of bebop, or if not that, at least a precursor to it."


title: Charlie Christian

text: Christian's influence reached beyond jazz and swing. In 1990, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the category Early Influence. In a 1985 interview with "Frets" magazine Jerry Garcia named Christian and Django Reinhardt as the two guitarists who most inspired his awe and emulation.


title: Charlie Christian

text: In 2006 Oklahoma City renamed a street in its Bricktown entertainment district "Charlie Christian Avenue" (Christian was raised in Oklahoma City and was one of many musicians who jammed along the city's "Deep Deuce" section on N.E. Second Street).


title: Charlie Christian

text: Christian was born in Bonham, Texas. His family moved to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, when he was a small child. His parents were musicians. He had two brothers, Edward, born in 1906, and Clarence, born in 1911. All three sons were taught music by their father, Clarence Henry Christian. Clarence Henry was struck blind by fever, and in order to support the family he and the boys worked as buskers, on what the Christians called "busts." He would have them lead him into the better neighborhoods, where they would perform for cash or goods. When Charles was old enough to go along, he first entertained by dancing. Later he learned to play the guitar, inheriting his father's instruments upon his death when Charles was 12.


title: Charlie Christian

text: He attended Douglass School in Oklahoma City, where he was further encouraged in music by an instructor, Zelia N. Breaux. Charles wanted to play tenor saxophone in the school band, but she insisted he try trumpet instead. As he believed playing the trumpet would disfigure his lip, he quit to pursue his interest in baseball, at which he excelled.


title: Charlie Christian

text: In a 1978 interview with Charlie Christian biographer Craig McKinney, Clarence Christian said that in the 1920s and '30s Edward Christian led a band in Oklahoma City as a pianist and had a shaky relationship with the trumpeter James Simpson. Around 1931, he took the guitarist "Bigfoot" Ralph Hamilton and began secretly schooling the younger Charles in jazz. They taught him to solo on three songs, "Rose Room", "Tea for Two", and "Sweet Georgia Brown". When the time was right they took him out to one of the many after-hours jam sessions along "Deep Deuce", Northeast Second Street, in Oklahoma City.


title: Charlie Christian

text: "Let Charles play one," they told Edward. "Ah, nobody wants to hear them old blues," Edward replied. After some encouragement, he allowed Charles to play. "What do you want to play?" he asked. All three songs were big in the early 1930s, and Edward was surprised that Charles knew them. After two encores, Charles had played all three, and Deep Deuce was in an uproar. He coolly dismissed himself from the jam session, and his mother had heard about it before he got home.


title: Charlie Christian

text: Charles fathered a daughter, Billie Jean Christian (December 23, 1932 – July 19, 2004) by Margretta Lorraine Downey of Oklahoma City.


title: Charlie Christian

text: Charles soon was performing locally and on the road throughout the Midwest, as far away as North Dakota and Minnesota. By 1936 he was playing electric guitar and had become a regional attraction. He jammed with many of the big-name performers traveling through Oklahoma City, including Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum. Mary Lou Williams, the pianist for Andy Kirk and His Clouds of Joy, told the record producer John Hammond.


title: Charlie Christian

text: In 1939, Christian auditioned for John Hammond, who recommended him to the bandleader Benny Goodman. Goodman was the fourth white bandleader to feature black musicians in his live band: the first was Jimmy Durante, for whom the clarinetist Achille Baquet played and recorded in Durante's Original New Orleans Jazz Band (1918–1920); the second was the violinist Arthur Hand, who led The California Ramblers, which, from 1922 to 1925, included the trumpeter Bill Moore, who was billed as the Hot Hawaiian; the third was Ben Bernie, whose band from 1925 to 1928 also featured Moore. Goodman became the fourth by bringing in Teddy Wilson on piano in 1935 and Lionel Hampton on vibraphone in 1936. Goodman hired Christian to play with the newly formed Goodman Sextet in September 1939.


title: Charlie Christian

text: It has been claimed that Goodman was initially uninterested in hiring Christian because the electric guitar was a relatively new instrument. Goodman had been exposed to the instrument with Floyd Smith and Leonard Ware, among others, none of whom had the ability of Christian. There is a report that Goodman unsuccessfully tried to buy out Floyd Smith's contract from Andy Kirk. However, Goodman was so impressed by Christian's playing that he hired him instead.


title: Charlie Christian

text: There are several versions of the first meeting of Christian and Goodman on August 16, 1939. The encounter that afternoon at the recording studio had not gone well. Christian recalled in a 1940 article in "Metronome" magazine, "I guess neither one of us liked what I played," but Hammond decided to try again—without consulting Goodman. (Christian says Goodman invited him to the show that evening.)


title: Charlie Christian

text: He installed Christian on the bandstand for that night's set at the Victor Hugo restaurant in Los Angeles. Displeased at the surprise, Goodman called “Rose Room”, a tune he assumed Christian would be unfamiliar with. Unknown to Goodman, Christian had been reared on the tune, and he came in with his first chorus of about twenty, all of them different, all unlike anything Goodman had heard before. That version of "Rose Room" lasted forty minutes. By its end, Christian was in the band. In the course of a few days, Christian went from making $2.50 a night to $150 a week.


title: Charlie Christian

text: Christian was placed in Goodman's new sextet, which included Lionel Hampton, Fletcher Henderson, Artie Bernstein and Nick Fatool. By February 1940 Christian dominated the jazz and swing guitar polls and was elected to the Metronome All Stars. In the spring of 1940 Goodman let most of his entourage go in a reorganization. He retained Christian, and in the fall of that year Goodman led a sextet with Christian, Count Basie, longtime Duke Ellington trumpeter Cootie Williams, former Artie Shaw tenor saxophonist Georgie Auld and later drummer Dave Tough. This all-star band dominated the jazz polls in 1941, including another election to the Metronome All Stars for Christian. Johnny Guarnieri, who replaced Henderson in the first sextet, filled the piano chair in Basie's absence.


title: Charlie Christian

text: In 1966, 24 years after his death, Christian was inducted into the "Down Beat" Jazz Hall of Fame. In 1989 the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame created its first seven inductions, which included Christian.


title: Charlie Christian

text: Christian's solos are frequently described as "horn-like", and in that sense he was more influenced by horn players such as Lester Young and Herschel Evans than by early arch-top guitarists like Eddie Lang and the jazz- and bluesman Lonnie Johnson, although they both had contributed to the expansion of the guitar's role from the rhythm section to a solo instrument. Christian stated he wanted his guitar to sound like a tenor saxophone. The French gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt had little influence on him, but Christian was obviously familiar with some of his recordings. The guitarist Mary Osborne recalled hearing him play Django's solo on "St. Louis Blues" note for note, but then following it with his own ideas.


title: Charlie Christian

text: By 1939 there had already been electric guitar soloists—Leonard Ware; George Barnes; Eddie Durham, who had recorded with Count Basie; Floyd Smith, who recorded "Floyd's Guitar Blues" with Andy Kirk in March 1939, using an amplified lap steel guitar; and the Western Swing pioneer Eldon Shamblin, who was playing with Bob Wills.


title: Charlie Christian

text: Christian paved the way for the modern electric guitar sound that was followed by other pioneers, including T-Bone Walker, Eddie Cochran, Cliff Gallup, Scotty Moore, Franny Beecher, B.B. King, Chuck Berry, Carlos Santana and Jimi Hendrix. For this reason Christian was inducted in 1990 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.


title: Charlie Christian

text: Christian's exposure was so great in the brief period he played with Goodman that he influenced not only guitarists but other musicians as well. The influence he had on "Dizzy" Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Don Byas can be heard on their early bop recordings "Blue 'n' Boogie" and "Salt Peanuts". Other musicians, such as the trumpeter Miles Davis, cited Christian as an early influence. Indeed, Christian's "new" sound influenced jazz as a whole. He reigned supreme in the jazz guitar polls up to two years after his death. Black Sabbath's first manager Jim Simpson describes the band's first song, "A Song for Jim" as an “absolute Charlie Christian takeoff.”


title: Charlie Christian

text: Christian was an important contributor to the music that became known as bop, or bebop. Some of the participants in those early after-hours affairs at Minton's Playhouse, where bebop was born, credit Christian with the name "bebop", citing his humming of phrases as the onomatopoetic origin of the term.


title: Charlie Christian

text: Private recordings made in September 1939 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by Jerry Newhouse, a Goodman aficionado, capture the newly hired Christian while on the road with Goodman and feature Goodman's tenor sax player Jerry Jerome and then-local bassist Oscar Pettiford. Taking multiple solos, Christian shows much the same improvisational skills later captured on the Minton's and Monroe's recordings in 1941, suggesting that he had already matured as a musician. The Minneapolis recordings include "Stardust", "Tea for Two", and "I've Got Rhythm", the latter a favorite of bop composers and jammers.


title: Charlie Christian

text: Further examples of Christian's bebop playing can be heard in a series of recordings made at Minton's Playhouse, an after-hours club located in the Hotel Cecil, at 210 West 118th Street in Harlem, by Jerry Newman, a student at Columbia University, on a portable disk recorder in 1941, in which Christian was accompanied by Joe Guy on trumpet, Kenny Kersey on piano and Kenny Clarke on drums.


title: Charlie Christian

text: Christian's use of tension and release, a technique employed by Lester Young, Count Basie and later bop musicians, is also present on "Stompin' at the Savoy", included among the Newman recordings. The collection also includes recordings made in 1941 at Clark Monroe's Uptown House, another late-night jazz haunt in Harlem, with Oran "Hot Lips" Page. Other recordings include the tenor sax player Don Byas. The Minton's recordings were long rumored to feature "Dizzy" Gillespie and Thelonious Monk, but that has since been proved untrue, although both were regulars at the jam sessions, with Monk a regular in the Minton's house band.


title: Charlie Christian

text: Kenny Clarke claimed that "Epistrophy" and "Rhythm-a-Ning" were compositions by Christian, which Christian played with Clarke and Thelonious Monk at Minton's jam sessions. The "Rhythm-a-Ning" line is heard on "Down on Teddy's Hill" and behind the introduction on "Guy's Got to Go" from the Newman recordings. It is also a line from Mary Lou Williams's "Walkin<nowiki>'</nowiki> and Swingin'".


title: Charlie Christian

text: Clarke said Christian first showed him the chords to "Epistrophy" on a ukulele. These recordings have been packaged under a number of different titles, including "After Hours" and "The Immortal Charlie Christian". While the recording quality of many of these sessions is poor, they show Christian stretching out much longer than he could on the Benny Goodman sides. On the Minton's and Monroe's recordings, Christian can be heard taking multiple choruses on a single tune, playing long stretches of melodic ideas with ease.


title: Charlie Christian

text: Christian was just as adept with understatement as well. His work on the Goodman sextet sides "Soft Winds", "Till Tom Special", and "A Smo-o-o-oth One" show his use of few well-placed melodic notes. His work on the Sextet's recordings of the ballads "Stardust", "Memories of You", "Poor Butterfly", "I Surrender Dear" and "On the Alamo" and his work on "Profoundly Blue" with the Edmond Hall Celeste Quartet (1941) show hints of what was later called cool jazz. Although credited for very few, Christian composed many of the original tunes recorded by the Benny Goodman Sextet.


title: Charlie Christian

text: In the late 1930s Christian contracted tuberculosis, and in early 1940 he was hospitalized for a short period in which the Goodman group was on hiatus because of Goodman's back trouble. Goodman was hospitalized in the summer of 1940 after a brief stay at Santa Catalina Island, California, where the band stayed when they were on the West Coast.


title: Charlie Christian

text: Christian returned home to Oklahoma City in late July 1940 and returned to New York City in September 1940. In early 1941, Christian resumed his hectic lifestyle, heading to Harlem for late-night jam sessions after finishing gigs with the Goodman Sextet and Orchestra in New York City. In June 1941 he was admitted to Seaview, a sanitarium on Staten Island in New York City. He was reported to be making progress, and "DownBeat" magazine reported in February 1942 that he and Cootie Williams were starting a band.


title: Charlie Christian

text: After a visit to the hospital that same month by the tap dancer and drummer Marion Joseph "Taps" Miller, Christian declined in health. He died March 2, 1942, at the age of 25. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Bonham, Texas. A Texas State Historical Commission Marker and headstone were placed in Gates Hill Cemetery in 1994. The location of the historical marker and headstone was disputed, and in March 2013, Fannin County, Texas, recognized that the marker was in the wrong spot and that Christian is buried under the concrete slab.


title: Charlie Christian

text: Christian never recorded as a leader. Compilations have been released of his sessions as a sideman in which he is a featured soloist, of practice and warm-up recordings for these sessions, and some lower-quality recordings of Christian's own groups performing in nightclubs, by amateur technicians.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: The Continental Mark III is a personal luxury car marketed by Lincoln from 1969-1971 model years. The namesake successor of the 1956–1957 Continental Mark II, the Mark III again served as the flagship vehicle of Ford Motor Company. Offered as a two-door hardtop coupe, the Mark III was noted for its hidden headlights, faux rear spare-tire trunk bulge recalling the Mark II and its upright grill recalling the Rolls-Royce Pantheon grill — so named to recall the famed Roman Temple.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: The Mark III was developed as a direct competitor to the Cadillac Eldorado, creating a three-decade market rivalry between the Continental Mark series and the Eldorado.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: To lower development and production costs over its largely hand-built predecessor, the Mark III shared its chassis underpinnings with the four door Ford Thunderbird. Model-specific design elements, including hidden headlamps (with body-color covers) and the Rolls Royce-style Pantheon grille distinguished the Mark III from the Thunderbird and Lincoln Continental — while borrowing the same roof structure and rear windows, retractable into the C pillar, from the two door Thunderbird. Later models featured genuine walnut interior accents and a Cartier-branded clock. In a first for an American car, the 1970 Mark III was fitted with Michelin "X" Radial Tires as standard equipment.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: Ford manufactured the Continental Mark III at its Wixom Assembly Plant facility (Wixom, Michigan) alongside the Thunderbird and the Lincoln Continental. For 1972, in alignment with the redesign of the Thunderbird, the Mark III was superseded by the Continental Mark IV.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: The 1969 Continental Mark III was created when Lee Iacocca, Ford's vice-president, car and truck group, at the time, directed Design Vice President, Gene Bordinat, to "put a Rolls-Royce grille on a Thunderbird" in September 1965. Iacocca assigned development of the Mark III to the new "Strawberry Studio"- a special development preproduction team led by Bordinat. The Mark III was based on the fourth generation Lincoln Continental (1961–1969) and the four-door fifth generation Thunderbird introduced for 1967. With the Thunderbird "dying in the marketplace" Iacocca wanted to put the company's development investment to better use by expanding its platform over several models. The final design of the Mark III was introduced to a Lincoln-Mercury Focus Group in mid January of 1966- receiving an overwhelmingly negative response from the group. Despite this feedback, both Iacocca and Henry Ford II loved the design and overruled objections. On March 24th 1966, the Mark III was given the green light for production.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: The Mark III was intended to compete head-to-head with the top of the domestic personal luxury car market, Cadillac's heavily redesigned front wheel drive Eldorado. This placed it above the second-tier premium personal luxury cars such as the Ford Thunderbird, Buick Riviera, Oldsmobile Toronado and Chrysler New Yorker coupe. As the Eldorado was built upon the Toronado frame, the Mark III was based on the Thunderbird's. While the side-rail frame was identical to the Thunderbird's, the Mark III bore almost more bodywork. Power was adequate from Lincoln's Ford 385 engine-based V8.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: The Mark III was unveiled at the 1968 running of the 12 Hours of Sebring on March 23, 1968, as an early 1969 model. The model was a remarkable commercial success because it combined the high unit revenue of a luxury model with the low development costs and fixed cost–amortizing utility of platform-sharing, in a car that was appealing enough to buyers that many units were sold. Iacocca said, "We brought out the Mark III in April 1968, and in its very first year it outsold the Cadillac Eldorado, which had been our long-range goal. For the next five years [Marks III and IV] we had a field day, in part because the car had been developed on the cheap. We did the whole thing for $30 million, a bargain-basement price because we were able to use existing parts and designs." Iacocca explained that this transformed the Lincoln-Mercury Division from losing money on every luxury car (via low unit sales on high fixed costs) to a profit center, making the new Mark series as big a success as any he ever had in his career—a remarkable statement from an executive who led the programs for the original Ford Mustang and the Chrysler minivan family. Iacocca explained of the Mark series, "The Mark is [in 1984] Ford's biggest moneymaker, just as Cadillac is for General Motors. It's the Alfred Sloan theory: you have to have something for everybody [...] you always need a poor man's car [...] but then you need upscale cars, too, because you never know when the blue-collar guy is going to be laid off. It seems that in the United States the one thing you can count on is that even during a depression, the rich get richer. So you always have to have some goodies for them."


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: The 1969 Continental Mark III was a spiritual successor of the limited-production, ultra-luxurious Continental Mark II produced by the short-lived Continental Division of Ford Motor Company between 1956 and 1957. Being a successor to the Continental Mark II, the new Mark III was branded and marketed as the make Continental within the Lincoln-Mercury Division structure and the Lincoln name did not appear on the vehicle, VIN plate, factory paperwork, window sticker, nor official Ford Motor Company brochures and advertising. The 1969 Continental Mark III was actually not the first to use this nomenclature, which had been used on the 1958 "Continental Mark III". The new Continental Mark III was sold alongside the separate but distinct Lincoln Continental line of sedans. This created branding confusion during the entire production run of the Continental Mark series until the 1986 model year when Continental was dropped as the make and the Mark VII was rebranded as a Lincoln with VINs adjusted accordingly. The new Mark III was built at the enlarged facility at the Wixom, Michigan assembly plant, home to subsequent generations of the model. The listed retail price was US$6,741 ($ in dollars ) and 30,858 were manufactured.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: Standard equipment included power steering, brakes, windows, vacuum-activated concealed headlamps, and split bench electrically adjustable front seats. The instrument panel and trim panels on the doors featured simulated wood appliques in either English Oak or East-Indian Rosewood for 1969 models. For 1970–71 models, genuine walnut was used for the interior wood accents. After a few months, a Cartier-branded clock became standard equipment. The upholstery was either the standard vinyl with cloth inserts or the optional leather.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: A vinyl roof in cavalry twill pattern was optional on 1969 models, but examples without the vinyl roof were rare. One reason for the rarity of the plain-roofed version is the fact that the roof was made in two pieces and required extra preparation at the factory to conceal the seam; consequently, its availability was not widely advertised. Other options included the aforementioned leather interior, air conditioning, further power adjustments for the front seats, a variety of radios and 8-track tape players, tinted glass, and power locks. A limited-slip differential could be ordered, as could anti-lock brakes, called "Sure Trak". The Mark III was able to be ordered with an ASC sunroof -the second car to do so- only behind the 1968 Mercury Cougar. Cruise control was also an option. Finally, an automatic headlamp dimmer that dimmed the headlights for oncoming cars without driver intervention was available. Full instrumentation was standard.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: Despite some bad reviews by the automotive press, the public took to the car, with some 7,000 built during the remainder of the 1968 model year, and another 23,858 cars for the 1969 model year, a respectable showing; Lincoln had always trailed Cadillac in production numbers, but the Mark III almost equalled the Eldorado, which tallied 23,333 for 1969. This was the start of a long, successful run for the Continental Mark Series. The listed retail price was US$6,741 ($ in dollars ).


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: Because of its early introduction and extended production year, the 1969 model had several running changes made. Cars produced prior to July 1968 had a steering wheel pad with a much larger wood applique and Continental star logo than later cars. Cars produced prior to July 1968 featured a decorative stitching pattern on the face of the rear seat above the center arm-rest. After July 1968 the seatbelt retractors were relocated and eight additional exterior color choices were added. Cars produced before the second week of December 1968 had white indicator needles for all instruments and controls, and an electric clock with Arabic numerals was used. Cars produced after the second week of December 1968 utilized orange indicator needles for all instruments and controls, and a Cartier chronometer with Roman numerals was installed. All cars produced after December 31, 1968, were equipped with driver and front passenger head-rests as required by Federal mandate.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: There were only small changes for 1970 and 21,432 were sold. The vinyl roof was made standard, windshield wipers were now concealed, and the wheel covers were redesigned. Michelin radial tires were standard equipment (a first for an American car), and a locking steering column/ignition switch replaced the dash-mounted switch per federal mandate. The metal horn ring used in '69 was deleted from the steering wheel, and replaced by a Rim Blow unit. Increasingly stringent Federal safety requirements mandated the addition of red reflectors to the rear bumper and yellow reflectors to the sides of the front parking lamp assemblies. Although horsepower remained unchanged at 365, Federal emissions requirements were met by the installation of "Thermactor" air injection pumps on the 460 CID engine. The interior wood appliques were upgraded to genuine Walnut. The door panels were redesigned and the power seat controls were moved from the seat edge to the door armrests. The pattern of the stitching on the seats was modified.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: "Motor Trend"’s 1970 head-to-head review of the Eldorado vs. the Mark III gave the nod, barely, to the Mark III, beginning an annual "King of the Hill" series that ran for years.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: 1971 saw the Golden Anniversary for the Lincoln marque and the third and final year of Mark III production. Sales were better than ever, at 27,091 almost equal to the Eldorado's, a harbinger for the new decade.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: Little changed from the 1970 model; tinted glass became standard, as did automatic climate-controlled air conditioning and SureTrak anti-lock brakes. High-back seats became standard, and a rare special-order floor console was made available. Horsepower remained unchanged at 365, but the 460 CID V8 engine gained a more sophisticated thermostatic air cleaner assembly with its associated ductwork.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: In its second annual King of the Hill contest, Motor Trend (July, 1971) again gave the Continental Mark III the nod by a wider margin than 1970 despite it being basically a warmed-over 1968 model while the Cadillac was all-new from the ground up. M/T noted that the Mark III's leather interior was far more luxurious and better detailed than the test Eldorado's nylon cloth and the Continental's real wood dash trim was far more attractive than the Cadillac's simulate.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: The Lincoln Mark III was exceptionally popular among celebrities at the time of its debut. Notable owners included musicians Elvis Presley, James Brown, and Glen Campbell. Golfers Arnold Palmer and Byron Nelson served as brand ambassadors for the vehicle


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: Most notable is the 1977 horror film The Car which featured a highly customized 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III designed by famed Hollywood car customizer George Barris. There were four cars built for the film in six weeks. Three were used as stunt mules, the fourth for closeups. The stunt mules were destroyed during production, while the fourth is now in a private collection.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: The car's bodywork was painted in steel, pearl and charcoal coloring. The windows were laminated in two different shades, smoked on the inside and amber on the outside, so one could see out of it but not into it. In order to give "the car" a "sinister" look as requested by director Elliot Silverstein, Barris made the car's roof three inches lower than usual and altered its side fenders that same length again both higher and longer. According to Silverstein, the distinctive sound the horn of The Car makes spells out the letter X in Morse code.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: The Continental Mark III was also prominently featured in the 1971 crime action thriller film, The French Connection.


title: Lincoln Continental Mark III

text: In the 1976 comedy Cannonball, a porter named Beutell (played by Stanley Bennett Clay) races cross country in a Continental Mark III he had been hired to transport to New York.