title: Edward the Elder

text: The standard of Anglo-Saxon learning declined severely in the ninth century, particularly in Wessex, and Mercian scholars such as Plegmund played a major part in the revival of learning initiated by Alfred. Mercians were prominent at the courts of Alfred and Edward, and the Mercian dialect and scholarship commanded West Saxon respect. It is uncertain how far Alfred's programmes continued during his son's reign. English translations of works in Latin made during Alfred's reign continued to be copied, but few original works are known. The script known as Anglo-Saxon Square minuscule reached maturity in the 930s, and its earliest phases date to Edward's reign. The main scholarly and scriptorial centres were the cathedral centres of Canterbury, Winchester and Worcester; monasteries did not make a significant contribution until Æthelstan's reign. Very little survives of the manuscript production of Edward's reign.


title: Edward the Elder

text: The only surviving large-scale embroideries which were certainly made in Anglo-Saxon England date to Edward's reign. They are a stole, a maniple and a possible girdle removed from the coffin of St Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral in the nineteenth century. They were donated to the shrine by Æthelstan in 934, but inscriptions on the embroideries show that they were commissioned by Edward's second wife, Ælfflæd, as a gift to Frithestan, Bishop of Winchester. They probably did not reach their intended destination because Æthelstan was on bad terms with Winchester.


title: Edward the Elder

text: In 901 a meeting at Southampton was attended by Edward's brother and sons, his household thegns and nearly all bishops, but no ealdormen. It was on this occasion that the king acquired land from the Bishop of Winchester for the foundation of the New Minster, Winchester. No charters survive for the period from 910 to the king's death in 924, much to the puzzlement and distress of historians. Charters were usually issued when the king made grants of land, and it is possible that Edward followed a policy of retaining property which came into his hands to help finance his campaigns against the Vikings. Charters rarely survive unless they concerned property which passed to the church and were preserved in their archives, and another possibility is that Edward was making grants of property only on terms which ensured that they returned to male members of the royal house; such charters would not be found in church archives.


title: Edward the Elder

text: Clause 3 of the law code called "I Edward" provides that people convincingly charged with perjury shall not be allowed to clear themselves by oath, but only by ordeal. This is the start of the continuous history in England of trial by ordeal; it is probably mentioned in the laws of King Ine (688 to 726), but not in later codes such as those of Alfred. The administrative and legal system in Edward's reign may have depended extensively on written records, almost none of which survive. Edward was one of the few Anglo-Saxon kings to issue laws about bookland. There was increasing confusion in the period as to what was really bookland; Edward urged prompt settlement in bookland and folkland disputes, and his legislation established that jurisdiction belonged to the king and his officers.


title: Edward the Elder

text: According to the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", there was a general submission of rulers in Britain to Edward in 920:


title: Edward the Elder

text: This passage was regarded as a straightforward report by most historians until the late twentieth century, and Frank Stenton observed that "each of the rulers named in this list had something definite to gain from an acknowledgement of Edward's overlordship." Since the 1980s this submission has been viewed with increasing scepticism, particularly as the passage in the "Chronicle" is the only evidence for it, unlike other submissions such as that one in 927 to Æthelstan, for which there is independent support from literary sources and coins. Alfred Smyth points out that Edward was not in a position to impose the same conditions on the Scots and the Northumbrians as he could on conquered Vikings, and argues that the "Chronicle" presented a treaty between kings as a submission to Wessex. Stafford observes that the rulers had met at Bakewell on the border between Mercia and Northumbria, and that meetings on borders were generally considered to avoid any implication of submission by either side. Davidson points out that the wording "chosen as father and lord" applied to conquered army groups and burhs, not relations with other kings. In his view:


title: Edward the Elder

text: Edward continued Æthelflæd's policy of founding burhs in the north-west, at Thelwall and Manchester in 919, and "Cledematha" (Rhuddlan) at the mouth of the River Clwyd in North Wales in 921.


title: Edward the Elder

text: Nothing is known of his relations with the Mercians between 919 and the last year of his life, when he put down a Mercian and Welsh revolt at Chester. Mercia and the eastern Danelaw were organised into shires at an unknown date in the tenth century, ignoring traditional boundaries, and historians such as Sean Miller and David Griffiths suggest that Edward's imposition of direct control from 919 is a likely context for a change which ignored Mercian sensibilities. Resentment at the changes, at the imposition of rule by distant Wessex, and at fiscal demands by Edward's reeves, may have provoked the revolt at Chester. He died at the royal estate of Farndon, twelve miles south of Chester, on 17 July 924, shortly after putting down the revolt, and was buried in the New Minster, Winchester. In 1109, the New Minster was moved outside the city walls to become Hyde Abbey, and the following year the remains of Edward and his parents were translated to the new church.


title: Edward the Elder

text: According to William of Malmesbury, Edward was "much inferior to his father in the cultivation of letters", but "incomparably more glorious in the power of his rule". Other medieval chroniclers expressed similar views, and he was generally seen as inferior in book learning, but superior in military success. John of Worcester described him as "the most invincible King Edward the Elder". However, even as war leader he was only one of a succession of successful kings; his achievements were overshadowed because he did not have a famous victory like Alfred's at Edington and Æthelstan's at Brunanburh, and William of Malmesbury qualified his praise of Edward by saying, "The chief prize of victory, in my judgment, is due to his father." Edward has also been overshadowed by chroniclers' admiration for his highly regarded sister, Æthelflæd.


title: Edward the Elder

text: A principal reason for the neglect of Edward is that very few primary sources for his reign survive, whereas there are many for Alfred. He was largely ignored by historians until the late twentieth century, but he is now highly regarded. He is described by Keynes as "far more than the bellicose bit between Alfred and Æthelstan", and according to Nick Higham: "Edward the Elder is perhaps the most neglected of English kings. He ruled an expanding realm for twenty-five years and arguably did as much as any other individual to construct a single, south-centred, Anglo-Saxon kingdom, yet posthumously his achievements have been all but forgotten." In 1999 a conference on his reign was held at the University of Manchester, and the papers given on this occasion were published as a book in 2001. Prior to this conference, no monographs had been published on Edward's reign, whereas his father has been the subject of numerous biographies and other studies.


title: Edward the Elder

text: Edward's cognomen 'the Elder' was first used in Wulfstan's "Life of St Æthelwold" at the end of the tenth century, to distinguish him from King Edward the Martyr.


title: Edward the Elder

text: Around 900 he married Ælfflæd, daughter of Ealdorman Æthelhelm, probably of Wiltshire. Their children were:


title: Edward the Elder

text: Edward married for a third time, around 919, Eadgifu, the daughter of Sigehelm, Ealdorman of Kent. Their children were:


title: Voice of Vietnam

text: The Voice of Vietnam or VOV (also Radio the Voice of Vietnam, Vietnamese: "Đài Tiếng nói Việt Nam") is the Vietnamese national radio broadcaster. Directly controlled by the government of Vietnam, it is tasked with propagating the policies of the Party and the laws of the state.


title: Voice of Vietnam

text: Prior to 1945, the Vietnamese were banned from owning radio receivers, and broadcasting was under control of the French colonial government, which established the first radio station in Vietnam, "Radio Saigon", in the late 1920s.


title: Voice of Vietnam

text: Vietnam's national radio station, now called the "Voice of Vietnam", started broadcasting from Dalat just a week after the declaration of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam with the declaration "This is the Voice of Vietnam, broadcasting from Hanoi, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam." During the Vietnam War, Radio Hanoi operated as a propaganda tool of North Vietnam. In August 1968, Voice of Vietnam commenced shortwave broadcasts for Vietnamese living abroad.


title: Voice of Vietnam

text: South Vietnam set up its own network in Saigon in 1955 from the roots of the ex-State of Vietnam's station, named as "Radio Vietnam". Meanwhile, in 1962, the NLFSVN established their own radio station, named "Liberation Radio Station".


title: Voice of Vietnam

text: Following Reunification, all of the radio stations were combined into the Voice of Vietnam, which became the national radio station in 1978.


title: Voice of Vietnam

text: In 1990, VOV launched the first FM station of the network, with the original frequency at 100.0 MHz. At first, this station was dedicated to music, entertainment and information program. It later become the flagship frequency of the news and generalist station (VOV1), whereas the music content was transferred into the FM frequency of 102.7 MHz - which is the music station VOV3 at present.


title: Voice of Vietnam

text: The Vietnamese-language program for Vietnamese diaspora was first transmitted on 16 August 1991 on longwaves and shortwaves, following the foreign language programs since the founding of the radio network's external service. At the same year, the socio-culture oriented station VOV2 was established.


title: Voice of Vietnam

text: In 1998, Radio the Voice of Vietnam published its first daily newspaper, named "Voice of Vietnam". At the same time, the first FM radio channel for the foreign community in Vietnam, operated-and-owned by VOV World Service, was inaugurated. The station transmitted at the frequency of FM 105.5 MHz in Hanoi and 105.7 MHz in Ho Chi Minh City. The following year (1999), VOV expanded its platform with the launching of the news webpage www.vovnews.vn (later www.vov.vn).


title: Voice of Vietnam

text: On 1 October 2004, VOV began transmitting VOV4, a radio station dedicated to minorities in Vietnam nationwide.


title: Voice of Vietnam

text: From 7 September 2008, to commemorate the 68th founding anniversary of the network, VOV launched their own television channel. Originally named "Hệ phát thanh có hình" (lit. "Visualised Radio Station"), it was renamed into "Kênh Truyền hình Đài Tiếng nói Việt Nam" or "Kênh Truyền hình Tiếng nói Việt Nam" ("Voice of Vietnam Television Channel") in 2012 after the VOV was licensed to operating the television system.


title: Voice of Vietnam

text: From 18 May 2009, the VOV Transportation Network was established. First transmitting officially in Hanoi on 21 June 2009 with the frequency of FM 91.0 MHz, it was expanded into the South, first with Ho Chi Minh City on 2 January 2010 with the same frequency, then to Mekong Delta region on 25 June 2017 with the FM frequency 90.0 MHz.


title: Voice of Vietnam

text: From 2015 to 2018, VOV co-operated with the Office of the Vietnamese National Assembly to broadcast a television channel which aimed at Vietnamese political activities and relatable issues.


title: Voice of Vietnam

text: On 2 June 2015, Voice of Vietnam officially acquired the VTC Digital Television Network from the Ministry of Information and Communications. It was first owned by the Vietnam Multimedia Corporation from 2004 to 2013. At the same year, the English-language radio station "VOV English 24/7" went on test broadcasting in 1 October, and officially commence on-air more than a month later at 6 November under the frequency of FM 104.0 MHz.


title: Voice of Vietnam

text: From 2017, VOV began operating the "VOV Media" app on smartphones, and in 2020, VOV launched "VOV LIVE", a digital platform featuring live radio & TV channel with on-demand programs as well.


title: Voice of Vietnam

text: The VOV runs eight national domestic radio stations and one international service, four of which are only available on FM frequencies; one is running as a block on sister station; plus live streams and listen again on applications such as VOV LIVE and VOV Media.


title: Hades

text: Hades (; ; ), in the ancient Greek religion and myth, is the god of the dead and the king of the underworld, with which his name became synonymous. Hades was the eldest son of Cronus and Rhea, although this also made him the last son to be regurgitated by his father. He and his brothers, Zeus and Poseidon, defeated their father's generation of gods, the Titans, and claimed rulership over the cosmos. Hades received the underworld, Zeus the sky, and Poseidon the sea, with the solid earth, long the province of Gaia, available to all three concurrently. In artistic depictions, Hades is typically portrayed holding a bident and wearing his helm with Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog of the underworld, standing to his side.


title: Hades

text: The Etruscan god Aita and the Roman gods Dis Pater and Orcus were eventually taken as equivalent to Hades and merged into Pluto, a Latinisation of Plouton (), itself a euphemistic title often given to Hades.


title: Hades

text: The origin of Hades' name is uncertain but has generally been seen as meaning "the unseen one" since antiquity. An extensive section of Plato's dialogue "Cratylus" is devoted to the etymology of the god's name, in which Socrates is arguing for a folk etymology not from "unseen" but from "his knowledge ("eidenai") of all noble things". Modern linguists have proposed the Proto-Greek form *"Awides" ("unseen"). The earliest attested form is "Aḯdēs" (), which lacks the proposed digamma. Martin Litchfield West argues instead for an original meaning of "the one who presides over meeting up" from the universality of death.


title: Hades

text: In Homeric and Ionic Greek, he was known as "Áïdēs". Other poetic variations of the name include "Aïdōneús" () and the inflected forms "Áïdos" (, gen.), "Áïdi" (, dat.), and "Áïda" (, acc.), whose reconstructed nominative case *"Áïs" () is, however, not attested. The name as it came to be known in classical times was "Háidēs" (). Later the iota became silent, then a subscript marking (), and finally omitted entirely ().


title: Hades

text: Perhaps from fear of pronouncing his name, around the 5th century BC, the Greeks started referring to Hades as Plouton ( "Ploútōn"), with a root meaning "wealthy", considering that from the abode below (i.e., the soil) come riches (e.g., fertile crops, metals and so on). Plouton became the Roman god who both rules the underworld and distributed riches from below. This deity was a mixture of the Greek god Hades and the Eleusinian icon Ploutos, and from this he also received a priestess, which was not previously practiced in Greece. More elaborate names of the same genre were "Ploutodótēs" () or "Ploutodotḗr" (), meaning "giver of wealth".


title: Hades

text: Epithets of Hades include "Agesander" () and "Agesilaos" (), both from "ágō" (, "lead", "carry" or "fetch") and "anḗr" (, "man") or "laos" (, "men" or "people"), describing Hades as the god who carries away all. Nicander uses the form "Hegesilaus" ().


title: Hades

text: He was also referred to as "Zeus katachthonios" (Ζεὺς καταχθόνιος), meaning "the Zeus of the underworld", by those avoiding his actual name, as he had complete control over the underworld.


title: Hades

text: In Greek mythology, Hades, the god of the Greek underworld, was the first-born son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea. He had three older sisters, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera, as well as a younger brother, Poseidon, all of whom had been swallowed whole by their father as soon as they were born. Zeus was the youngest child and through the machinations of their mother, Rhea, he was the only one that had escaped this fate. Upon reaching adulthood, Zeus managed to force his father to disgorge his siblings. After their release, the six younger gods, along with allies they managed to gather, challenged the elder gods for power in the Titanomachy, a divine war. The war lasted for ten years and ended with the victory of the younger gods. Following their victory, according to a single famous passage in the "Iliad" ("Book XV", ln.187–93), Hades and his two brothers, Poseidon and Zeus, drew lots for realms to rule. Zeus received the sky, Poseidon received the seas, and Hades received the underworld, the unseen realm to which the souls of the dead go upon leaving the world as well as any and all things beneath the earth.


title: Hades

text: Hades obtained his wife and queen, Persephone, through abduction at the behest of Zeus. This myth is the most important one Hades takes part in; it also connected the Eleusinian Mysteries with the Olympian pantheon, particularly as represented in the "Homeric Hymn to Demeter", which is the oldest story of the abduction, most likely dating back to the beginning of the 6th century BC. Helios told the grieving Demeter that Hades was not an unworthy groom or son-in-law given his status among the gods, as her own brother and king on his own right:


title: Hades

text: Despite modern connotations of death as evil, Hades was actually more altruistically inclined in mythology. Hades was portrayed as passive and never portrayed negatively; his role was often maintaining relative balance. That said, he was also depicted as cold and stern, and he held all of his subjects equally accountable to his laws. Any other individual aspects of his personality are not given, as Greeks refrained from giving him much thought to avoid attracting his attention.


title: Hades

text: Hades ruled the dead, assisted by others over whom he had complete authority. The House of Hades was described as full of "guests," though he rarely left the underworld. He cared little about what happened in the world above, as his primary attention was ensuring none of his subjects ever left his domain.


title: Hades

text: He strictly forbade his subjects to leave his domain and would become quite enraged when anyone tried to leave, or if someone tried to steal the souls from his realm. His wrath was equally terrible for anyone who tried to cheat death or otherwise crossed him, as Sisyphus and Pirithous found out to their sorrow. While usually indifferent to his subjects, Hades was very focused on the punishment of these two people; particularly Pirithous, as he entered the underworld in an attempt to steal Persephone for himself, and consequently was forced onto the "Chair of Forgetfulness". Another myth is about the Greek god Asclepius who was originally a demigod, son of Apollo and Coronis, a Thessalian princess. During his lifetime, he became a famous and talented physician, who eventually was able to bring the dead back to life. Feeling cheated, Plouton persuaded Zeus to kill him with a thunderbolt. After his death, he was brought to Olympus where he became a god. Hades was only depicted outside of the underworld once in myth, and even that is believed to have been an instance where he had just left the gates of the underworld, which was when Heracles shot him with an arrow as Hades was attempting to defend the city of Pylos. After he was shot, however, he traveled to Olympus to heal. Besides Heracles, the only other living people who ventured to the underworld were also heroes: Odysseus, Aeneas (accompanied by the Sibyl), Orpheus, to whom Hades showed uncharacteristic mercy at Persephone's urging, who was moved by Orpheus' music, Theseus with Pirithous, and, in a late romance, Psyche. None of them were pleased with what they witnessed in the realm of the dead. In particular, the Greek war hero Achilles, whom Odysseus conjured with a blood libation, said:


title: Hades

text: The consort of Hades was Persephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter. Persephone did not submit to Hades willingly, but was abducted by him while picking flowers in the fields of Nysa (her father, Zeus, had previously given Persephone to Hades, to be his wife, as is stated in the first lines of the "Homeric Hymn to Demeter"). In protest of his act, Demeter cast a curse on the land and there was a great famine; though, one by one, the gods came to request she lift it, lest mankind perish and cause the gods to be deprived of their receiving gifts and sacrifices, Demeter asserted that the earth would remain barren until she saw her daughter again. Zeus then sends for his son, Hermes, and instructs him to go down to the underworld in hopes that he may be able to convince Hades to allow Persephone to return to Earth, so that Demeter might see Persephone and cause the famine to stop. Hermes obeys and goes down to Hades' realm, wherein he finds Hades seated upon a couch, Persephone seated next to him. Hermes relays Zeus' message, and Hades complies, saying,


title: Hades

text: Afterwards, Hades readies his chariot, but not before he secretly gives Persephone a pomegranate seed to eat; Hermes takes the reins, and he and Persephone make their way to the Earth above, coming to a halt in front of Demeter's temple at Eleusis, where the goddess has been waiting. Demeter and Persephone run towards each other and embrace one another, happy that they are reunited. Demeter, however, suspects that Persephone may have eaten food while down in the underworld, and so she questions Persephone, saying:


title: Hades

text: Persephone does admit that she ate the food of the dead, as she tells Demeter that Hades gave her a pomegranate seed and forced her to eat it. Persephone's eating the pomegranate seed binds her to Hades and the underworld, much to the dismay of Demeter. Zeus, however, had previously proposed a compromise, to which all parties had agreed: of the year, Persephone would spend one third with her husband.


title: Hades

text: It is during this time, when Persephone is down in the underworld with her husband, that winter falls upon the earth, "an aspect of sadness and mourning."


title: Hades

text: The hero Orpheus once descended into the underworld in search of his late wife Eurydice, who died when a snake bit her. So lovely was the music he played that it charmed even Hades (as well as his wife Persephone), who allowed him to take Eurydice to the land of the living, as long as he did not look back at her on his way out.


title: Hades

text: In another story, Theseus and Pirithous pledged to kidnap and marry daughters of Zeus. Theseus chose Helen and together they kidnapped her and decided to hold onto her until she was old enough to marry. Pirithous chose Persephone. They left Helen with Theseus' mother, Aethra, and traveled to the underworld. Hades knew of their plan to capture his wife, so he pretended to offer them hospitality and set a feast; as soon as the pair sat down, snakes coiled around their feet and held them there. Theseus was eventually rescued by Heracles but Pirithous remained trapped as punishment for daring to seek the wife of a god for his own. According to a scholium on Aristophanes' "Frogs" by John Tzetzes, Euripides in a now lost play "Pirithous" had Pirithous, for having tried to abduct Persephone, fed to Cerberus.


title: Hades

text: Sisyphus was a mortal king from Corinth who was punished in Tartarus for revealing to the river god Asopus the whereabouts of his daughter Aegina after Zeus abducted her, and for trying to cheat death as well. Zeus, angry at Sisyphus for revealing the secret, sent Thanatos to Sisyphus, but he cleverly cast Death into his own bonds, and as a result no one could die until Ares freed Thanatos and delivered Sisyphus to him. But still, Sisyphus ordered his wife Merope not to perform any funeral rites for him and what else was accustomed as tribute to the underworld gods before he was brought to Hades. After some time that Merope had not offered proper honours, Hades learnt of this, and allowed Sisyphus to return to the world of the living so that he could punish his wife, with the understanding that he would return afterwards. Sisyphus, however, never returned as promised until years later, when he died of old age. Hades punished Sisyphus by making him roll a boulder up a hill in the underworld; but every time he reached the top, the boulder would roll down again and again. In another version, it is Persephone who lets him out.


title: Hades

text: Heracles' final labour was to capture Cerberus. First, Heracles went to Eleusis to be initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. He did this to absolve himself of guilt for killing the centaurs and to learn how to enter and exit the underworld alive. He found the entrance to the underworld at Taenarum. Athena and Hermes helped him through and back from Hades. Heracles asked Hades for permission to take Cerberus. Hades agreed as long as Heracles did not harm Cerberus. When Heracles dragged the dog out of Hades, he passed through the cavern Acherusia.


title: Hades

text: In the myth of Admetus and Alcestis, after Alcestis chose to die in place of her husband Admetus in order to save him, Heracles brought her back from the dead by fighting and defeating Hades. In other versions, like Euripides' play "Alcestis", Heracles fought Thanatos instead. At another time, Heracles sieged the town of Pylos and during the fight he wounded Hades, who had sided with the Pylians. In great pain, Hades went to Olympus to be healed by the physician of the gods, Paean.


title: Hades

text: Leuce was the most beautiful of the nymphs and a daughter of Oceanus. Hades fell in love with her and abducted her to the underworld. She lived out the span of her life in his realm, and when she died, the god sought consolation by creating a suitable memorial of their love: in the Elysian Fields where the pious spend their afterlife, he brought a white tree into existence. It was this tree with which Heracles crowned himself to celebrate his return from the underworld.


title: Hades

text: Minthe was a nymph of the river Cocytus who became Hades' mistress. A jealous Persephone trampled the nymph under her foot, transforming her into garden mint in the process. According to a scholiast on Nicander, Hades turned his dead lover into the mint herb after Persephone tore her into pieces for sleeping with him. In another version, Hades had kept Minthe as his mistress before he married Persephone, and set her aside afterwards. Minthe boasted of being more beautiful than Persephone, and that Hades would soon take her back. In anger over the hubris directed toward her daughter, Demeter trampled Minthe and turned her into mint.


title: Hades

text: Once, when a plague hit Aonia, a region in Boeotia, the people consulted the Oracle of Delphi, and the god replied that they should make an appeal to the gods of the underworld; they had to sacrifice two young maidens to appease the anger of Hades and Persephone. The girls that were chosen were Menippe and Metioche, the daughters of Orion. The girls accepted solemnly in order to save their countrymen. As they were led to the altar to be sacrificed, Hades and Persephone took pity in both of them, and transformed them into comets.


title: Hades

text: In some versions Hades is considered the master of the goddesses of Fate, not his brother Zeus and the god who designates the end and origin of all things and orders the alternation of birth and destruction, the arbiter of life and death. This relationship is very clear in Roman epics like Statius's "Thebaid", where they are mentioned taking souls to be judged by Hades and inflicting severe punishments or in Claudian's "De raptu Proserpinae" where they appear begging their master not to release the Titans and saying everything they do is for him, after Hades threatens Zeus to release the Titans against him if he does not give him a wife.


title: Hades

text: Hades is considered the father of the Furies in some versions, but the mother's identity varies. in Virgil's "Aeneid" their mother is the night goddess Nyx and in the "Orphic Hymns" their mother is Persephone by Hades. One of the rare occasions when he appears interacting with them is in Statius's "Thebaid", when Hades orders Tisiphone to punish humans for having invaded the underworld. He is said to hate Alecto, even though she is one of his children.


title: Hades

text: In contrast to many of his other classical representations the satirical author Lucian of Samosata presents Hades in a more positive and even comic way. In his "Dialogues of the Dead", he is represented trying to solve problems of some famous mythological figures and one of the most outstanding dialogues is with Protesilaus, one of the Greek heroes killed in the Trojan War. In this conversation Protesilaus asks him to be reunited with his (still living) lover, and brings up as example that Hades did the same for Admetus and Alcestis, Orpheus and Eurydice, and that he himself also knows what being in love is like. Hades is skeptical, but Persephone manages to persuade him.


title: Hades

text: According to Hesiod, when the monstrous Typhon attacked the Olympian gods, Hades is said to have trembled in fear in the underworld while Zeus fought Typhon above.


title: Hades

text: In one of Plato's dialogues, Socrates talks about Hades as a figure capable of making everyone falls by his enchantments and that is why no one ever leaves the underworld, including the sirens.


title: Hades

text: Hades, as the god of the dead, was a fearsome figure to those still living; in no hurry to meet him, they were reluctant to swear oaths in his name, and averted their faces when sacrificing to him. Since to many, simply to say the word "Hades" was frightening, euphemisms were pressed into use. Since precious minerals come from under the earth (i.e., the "underworld" ruled by Hades), he was considered to have control of these as well, and as such the Greeks referred to him as Πλούτων (Greek "Plouton"; Latin PLVTO, "Pluto", "the rich one"). This title is derived from the word Πλοῦτος (Greek "Ploutos", literally "wealth, riches"). Sophocles explained the notion of referring to Hades as "Plouton" with these words: "the gloomy Hades enriches himself with our sighs and our tears." In addition, he was called Clymenus ("notorious"), Polydegmon ("who receives many"), and perhaps Eubuleus ("good counsel" or "well-intentioned"), all of them euphemisms for a name that was unsafe to pronounce, which evolved into epithets.


title: Hades

text: He spent most of the time in his dark realm. Formidable in battle, he proved his ferocity in the famous Titanomachy, the battle of the Olympians versus the Titans, which established the rule of Zeus.


title: Hades

text: Feared and loathed, Hades embodied the inexorable finality of death: "Why do we loathe Hades more than any god, if not because he is so adamantine and unyielding?" The rhetorical question is Agamemnon's. Hades was not, however, an evil god, for although he was stern, cruel, and unpitying, he was still just. Hades ruled the underworld and was therefore most often associated with death and feared by men, but he was not Death itself — it is Thanatos, son of Nyx and Erebus, who is the actual personification of death, although Euripides' play ""Alkestis"" states fairly clearly that Thanatos and Hades were one and the same deity, and gives an interesting description of Hades as being dark-cloaked and winged; moreover, Hades was also referred to as "Hesperos Theos" ("god of death & darkness").


title: Hades

text: When the Greeks propitiated Hades, they banged their hands on the ground to be sure he would hear them. Black animals, such as sheep, were sacrificed to him. While some suggest the very vehemence of the rejection of human sacrifice expressed in myth might imply an unspoken memory of some distant past, there is no direct evidence of such a turn. The blood from all chthonic sacrifices including those to propitiate Hades dripped into a pit or cleft in the ground. The person who offered the sacrifice had to avert his face.


title: Hades

text: One ancient source says that he possessed the Cap of invisibility. His chariot, drawn by four black horses, made for a fearsome and impressive sight. These beasts were variously named as, according to Claudian: Orphnaeus, Aethon, Nycteus and Alastor while other authors listed also: Nonius, Ametheus, Abastor, Abetor and Metheus. His other ordinary attributes were the narcissus and cypress plants, the Key of Hades and Cerberus, the three-headed dog. In certain portraits, snakes also appeared to be attributed to Hades as he was occasionally portrayed to be either holding them or accompanied by them. This is believed to hold significance as in certain classical sources Hades ravished Kore in the guise of a snake, who went on to give birth to Zagreus-Dionysus. While bearing the name 'Zeus', Zeus Olympios, the great king of the gods, noticeably differs from the Zeus Meilichios, a decidedly chthonian character, often portrayed as a snake, and as seen beforehand, they cannot be different manifestations of the same god, in fact whenever 'another Zeus' is mentioned, this always refers to Hades. Zeus Meilichios and Zeus Eubouleus are often referred to as being alternate names for Hades.


title: Hades

text: The philosopher Heraclitus, unifying opposites, declared that Hades and Dionysus, the very essence of indestructible life "(zoë)", are the same god. Among other evidence, Karl Kerényi notes in his book that the Homeric Hymn To Demeter, votive marble images and epithets all link Hades to being Dionysus. He also notes that the grieving goddess Demeter refused to drink wine, as she states that it would be against "themis" for her to drink wine, which is the gift of Dionysus, after Persephone's abduction, because of this association; indicating that Hades may in fact have been a "cover name" for the underworld Dionysus. He suggests that this dual identity may have been familiar to those who came into contact with the Mysteries. Dionysus also shared several epithets with Hades such as "Chthonios" ("the subterranean"), "Eubouleus" ("Good Counselor"), and "Euclius" ("glorious" or "renowned") .


title: Hades

text: Evidence for a cult connection is quite extensive, particularly in southern Italy, especially when considering the death symbolism included in Dionysian worship; statues of Dionysus found in the Ploutonion at Eleusis gives further evidence as the statue bears a striking resemblance to the statue of Eubouleus also known as the youthful depiction of the Lord of the underworld. The statue of Eubouleus is described as being radiant but disclosing a strange inner darkness. Ancient portrayals show Dionysus holding in his hand a "kantharos", a wine-jar with large handles, and occupying the place where one would expect to see Hades. Archaic artist Xenocles portrayed on one side of a vase, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, each with his emblems of power; with Hades' head turned back to front and, on the other side, Dionysus striding forward to meet his bride Persephone, with a "kantharos" in his hand, against a background of grapes.


title: Hades

text: Both Hades and Dionysus were associated with a divine tripartite deity with Zeus. The Orphics in particular believed that Zeus and Hades were the same deity and portrayed them as such. Zeus was portrayed as having an incarnation in the underworld identifying him as literally being Hades and leading to Zeus and Hades essentially being two representations and different facets of the same god and extended divine power. This nature and aspect of Hades and Zeus displayed in the Orphic stories is the explanation for why both Hades and Zeus are considered to be the father of Melinoë and Zagreus. The role of unifying Hades, Zeus and Dionysus as a single tripartite god was used to represent the birth, death and resurrection of a deity and to unify the 'shining' realm of Zeus and the dark realm of Hades that lay beneath the Earth.


title: Hades

text: Hades was depicted infrequently in artwork, as well as mythology, because the Greeks were so afraid of him. His artistic representations, which are generally found in Archaic pottery, are not even concretely thought of as the deity; however at this point in time it is heavily believed that the figures illustrated are indeed Hades. He was later presented in the classical arts in the depictions of the Rape of Persephone. Within these illustrations, Hades was often young, yet he was also shown as varying ages in other works. Due to this lack of depictions, there were not very strict guidelines when representing the deity. On pottery, he has a dark beard and is presented as a stately figure on an "ebony throne." His attributes in art include a bident (less commonly, a scepter), a helm, cornucopias, roosters, and a key. They key plays a doubly symbolic role in that it represents his control over the underworld and acts as a reminder that the gates of the underworld were always locked so that souls could not leave. Even if the doors were open, Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog of the underworld, ensured that, while all souls were allowed to enter into the underworld freely, none could ever escape. Cerberus is a very integral symbol of Hades so much so that when Cerberus is depicted, the depiction very rarely portrays him without Hades. Sometimes, artists painted Hades as looking away from the other gods, as he was disliked by them as well as humans.


title: Hades

text: As Pluto, he was regarded in a more positive light. He holds a cornucopia, representing the gifts he bestows upon people as well as fertility, which he becomes connected to.


title: Hades

text: In older Greek myths, the realm of Hades is the misty and gloomy abode of the dead (also called Erebus) where all mortals go when they die. Very few mortals could leave Hades once they entered. The exceptions, Heracles and Theseus, are heroic. Even Odysseus in his "Nekyia" ("Odyssey", xi) calls up the spirits of the departed, rather than descend to them. Later Greek philosophy introduced the idea that all mortals are judged after death and are either rewarded or cursed.


title: Hades

text: There were several sections of the realm of Hades, including Elysium, the Asphodel Meadows, and Tartarus. The mythographer Apollodorus, describes Tartarus as "a gloomy place in Hades as far distant from Earth, as Earth is distant from the sky." Greek mythographers were not perfectly consistent about the geography of the afterlife. A contrasting myth of the afterlife concerns the Garden of the Hesperides, often identified with the Isles of the Blessed, where the blessed heroes may dwell.


title: Hades

text: In Roman mythology, the entrance to the underworld located at Avernus, a crater near Cumae, was the route Aeneas used to descend to the realm of the dead. By synecdoche, "Avernus" could be substituted for the underworld as a whole. The "di inferi" were a collective of underworld divinities.


title: Hades

text: For Hellenes, the deceased entered the underworld by crossing the Styx, ferried across by Charon (kair'-on), who charged an "obolus," a small coin for passage placed in the mouth of the deceased by pious relatives. Paupers and the friendless gathered for a hundred years on the near shore according to Book VI of Vergil's Aeneid. Greeks offered propitiatory libations to prevent the deceased from returning to the upper world to "haunt" those who had not given them a proper burial. The far side of the river was guarded by Cerberus, the three-headed dog defeated by Heracles (Roman Hercules). Passing beyond Cerberus, the shades of the departed entered the land of the dead to be judged.


title: Hades

text: The five rivers of the realm of Hades, and their symbolic meanings, are Acheron (the river of sorrow, or woe), Cocytus (lamentation), Phlegethon (fire), Lethe (oblivion), and Styx (hate), the river upon which even the gods swore and in which Achilles was dipped to render him invincible. The Styx forms the boundary between the upper and lower worlds. See also Eridanos.


title: Hades

text: The first region of Hades comprises the Fields of Asphodel, described in "Odyssey" xi, where the shades of heroes wander despondently among lesser spirits, who twitter around them like bats. Only libations of blood offered to them in the world of the living can reawaken in them for a time the sensations of humanity.


title: Hades

text: Beyond lay Erebus, which could be taken for a euphonym of Hades, whose own name was dread. There were two pools, that of Lethe, where the common souls flocked to erase all memory, and the pool of Mnemosyne ("memory"), where the initiates of the Mysteries drank instead. In the forecourt of the palace of Hades and Persephone sit the three judges of the underworld: Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus. There at the trivium sacred to Hecate, where three roads meet, souls are judged, returned to the Fields of Asphodel if they are neither virtuous nor evil, sent by the road to Tartarus if they are impious or evil, or sent to Elysium (Islands of the Blessed) with the "blameless" heroes.


title: Hades

text: In the Sibylline oracles, a curious hodgepodge of Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian elements, Hades again appears as the abode of the dead, and by way of folk etymology, it even derives "Hades" from the name Adam (the first man), saying it is because he was the first to enter there. Owing to its appearance in the New Testament of the Bible, Hades also has a distinct meaning in Christianity.


title: Zachary Levi

text: Zachary Levi Pugh ( ; born September 29, 1980) is an American actor. He received critical acclaim for starring as Chuck Bartowski in the series "Chuck", and as the title character in "Shazam!" and its 2023 sequel, as a part of the DC Extended Universe.


title: Zachary Levi

text: He voiced Eugene Fitzherbert in the 2010 animated film "Tangled", where he performed "I See the Light" with Mandy Moore; the song won a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media. He reprised the voice role in the 2012 short film "Tangled Ever After" and in 2017, "Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure", a Disney Channel based on the film. He has appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films "" and "" as Fandral. Levi starred as Georg Nowack in the 2016 Broadway revival of "She Loves Me" opposite Laura Benanti, for which he received a Tony Award nomination.


title: Zachary Levi

text: In 2022 Levi published a memoir/self-help book titled "Radical Love: Learning to Accept Yourself and Others".


title: Zachary Levi

text: Levi was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the son of Susan Marie (née Hoctor; 1950–2015) and Darrell Pugh. He has English, German, and Welsh ancestry. When he was a child, his family moved across several states before returning to their home in Ventura, California, where he attended Buena High School for four years. He began acting on stage at the age of six, performing lead roles in regional productions such as "Grease", "The Outsiders", "Oklahoma!", "Oliver!", "The Wizard of Oz", and "Big River" at the Ojai Art Center.


title: Zachary Levi

text: Levi first appeared in the FX television movie "Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie". He played Kipp Steadman on the ABC sitcom "Less than Perfect". He also portrayed a potential boyfriend of Charisma Carpenter's character, Jane, in the then-ABC Family television movie "See Jane Date." Levi was slated to be a lead in an ABC pilot called "Three" for the 2004/2005 television season, but the show was not picked up.


title: Zachary Levi

text: He landed the starring role in "Chuck" in 2007. Levi and his "Chuck" co-star Yvonne Strahovski were both nominated for Best Action Actor and Actress Choice TV Series for the Teen Choice Awards 2010 where they both won and presented. In the summer of 2008, Levi was named one of "Entertainment Weekly's "Top Thirty People Under Thirty. He later starred in the film "" in the lead role as Dave's cousin Toby Seville. He starred in the 2010 Disney-animated feature film "Tangled", which is based on the popular fairy tale Rapunzel. He voices Flynn Rider, a bandit who finds refuge in Rapunzel's tower. He provided narration in the 2011 film "Under the Boardwalk: The Monopoly Story", a documentary about the game of Monopoly. Levi hosted the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards.


title: Zachary Levi

text: BuddyTV ranked him #97 on its list of "TV's Sexiest Men of 2011". Levi landed the male lead in the 2012 TV pilot "Let It Go", which would have aired on Fox, but was not picked up. Levi hosted the web documentaries "Tomb Raider The Final Hours", going behind the scenes of the new "Tomb Raider game". He was originally to portray Fandral in "Thor", but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts with "Chuck". He did play the role in the sequels, "" (2013), after original actor Josh Dallas had scheduling conflicts of his own, and briefly in "" (2017). Levi made his Broadway debut in a production of the musical comedy "First Date" in August 2013.


title: Zachary Levi

text: In January 2015, it was announced that Levi would be a lead member of the cast of NBC's 13-episode miniseries "Heroes Reborn" as Luke Collins. The show was not picked up for a second season. He also guest-starred as Abraham Lincoln in the Hulu original series "Deadbeat".


title: Zachary Levi

text: Levi joined the cast of the Broadway revival of "She Loves Me" in the lead role of Georg, alongside Laura Benanti as Amalia. It opened at Studio 54 on March 17, 2016, after previews on February 19, 2016, for a limited engagement through June 12. The run was later extended through July 10, when it closed. The production received high critical praise, receiving 5 Stars from "The Guardian" and was selected as a Critics' Pick for "The New York Times". Levi was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical for his performance. Critics praised Levi's performance of Georg, noting that his portrayal is "suave and handsome at times, disarmingly nebbishy at others," and that he "[exudes] sweet modesty and just a pinch of hauteur." The production had a historic livestreamed performance on June 30, 2016, with Levi and the cast participating in the first livestreamed show in Broadway history.


title: Zachary Levi

text: In 2017, Levi reprised his role as Flynn Rider in a Disney Channel Original Movie titled "." This movie continued the story as a regular series titled "Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure", which lasted for 3 seasons, premiering on March 24, 2017, and concluding March 1, 2020. The series is based on the 2010 film "Tangled" and features the returning voices of Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi.


title: Zachary Levi

text: In 2018, Levi appeared as Dr. Benjamin Ettenberg, a love interest for the main character, Miriam 'Midge' Maisel, in the second season of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel". With the series' other principal cast members, Levi won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series at SAG's January 2019 awards ceremony.


title: Zachary Levi

text: In 2019, Levi starred as the title character in New Line Cinema and Warner Bros.' superhero comedy feature film "Shazam!", an entry in the DC Extended Universe franchise. In the film, Levi's Shazam character (also known as Captain Marvel) is the superpowered alter-ego of a teenaged boy, Billy Batson (played by Asher Angel), who retains his childish personality in his adult form similar to the 1988 20th Century Fox comedy "Big."


title: Zachary Levi

text: After a nearly two-year hiatus away from acting, Levi starred in a supporting role on "The Mauritanian", which was directed by Kevin Macdonald and starred Tahar Rahim and Jodie Foster in the lead roles. He is also set to star in two films by the Kingdom Story Company: the leading role of Kurt Warner in the biographical sports drama "American Underdog", and LaRette in "The Unbreakable Boy". He is set to reprise as Billy Batson/Shazam in "Shazam! Fury of the Gods", set to release on March 17, 2023.


title: Zachary Levi

text: In April 2010, Katharine McPhee released a preview of a music video to cinemas for her single "Terrified". Levi duets with her on the song (which was re-recorded; the original album version features Jason Reeves) and appears in the music video singing with McPhee. On May 3, 2010, the song was previewed on the "Entertainment Weekly" website and made available for purchase on iTunes. The full video premiered May 7, 2010 on the music video website Vevo. Levi financed Kendall Payne's album "Grown" after she was dropped by her label, Capitol Records.


title: Zachary Levi

text: On the soundtrack of the movie "Tangled", Levi sings "I See the Light" (with costar Mandy Moore) and "I've Got a Dream". In honor of the Oscar nomination for Best Original Song, Levi and Moore performed "I See the Light" at the 83rd Academy Awards. Levi has also been a guest member of Band from TV, a band made up of actors from various American television shows.


title: Zachary Levi

text: Levi is a sports car and motorcycle enthusiast and owns a 2009 Nissan GT-R. He is an avid gamer, having first played "Super Mario Bros.", and appreciates video games for their ability to provide interactive stories. Levi is a Libertarian.


title: Zachary Levi

text: In September 2010, Levi started his own company, The Nerd Machine. He participated in the Celebrity All Star Game at NBA All Star Weekend 2011, playing for the team coached by Magic Johnson.


title: Zachary Levi

text: On June 16, 2014, Canadian actress Missy Peregrym announced that she and Levi had married in Maui, Hawaii. They filed for divorce in April 2015, with the separation date listed in court documents as December 3, 2014.


title: Zachary Levi

text: On May 21, 2019, Active Minds, a mental health charity, announced that Levi will be an ambassador for the organization.


title: Zachary Levi

text: Levi has been open about his struggles with mental health and suicidal thoughts both on social media and in his 2022 memoir "Radical Love".


title: Zachary Levi

text: Levi was raised a Christian. In a 2002 interview with "Relevant Magazine", he said:My job on my set, I believe, is to first just love people and gain that trust with people where they know that I really do love them and care about their well-being, so that when they are running into problems, they will hopefully, at some point, come to me and ask me, 'What is your peace all about? What is your comfort all about? Where do you get your love? Where do you get your talents?' And I can turn to them and say without blinking, 'Jesus Christ.'


title: Zachary Levi

text: In a 2018 interview with Michael Rosenbaum, Levi said, "I'm very spiritual, but not particularly religious." While avowing belief in God, he said, "[Religion] is, in my opinion, very destructive to what I believe the true heart and spirit then essence of who God is."


title: Zachary Levi

text: In a 2021 interview with "The Christian Post", he said working on the movie "American Underdog" bolstered his Christian faith, and in getting to work on this project, "it feels like God's fingerprints were all over it."


title: Zachary Levi

text: Though he has no Jewish ancestry, Levi is often incorrectly perceived to be Jewish due to his stage name. In a 2016 interview, he lamented that he had been turned down for a number of roles because he was considered "too Jewish" for the part.


title: Zachary Levi

text: On February 27, 2011, Levi performed "I See the Light" with Mandy Moore at the 83rd Academy Awards. On June 12, 2016, Levi performed the title song from "She Loves Me", as part of the medley presented on the 70th Tony Awards. He has also performed live in various programs from childhood.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: "Pizzagate" is a conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 United States presidential election cycle. It has been extensively discredited by a wide range of organizations, including the Washington, D.C. police.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: In March 2016, the personal email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chair, was hacked in a spear-phishing attack. WikiLeaks published his emails in November 2016. Proponents of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory falsely claimed the emails contained coded messages that connected several high-ranking Democratic Party officials and U.S. restaurants with an alleged human trafficking and child sex ring. One of the establishments allegedly involved was the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: Members of the alt-right, conservative journalists, and others who had urged Clinton's prosecution over her use of an unrelated private email server spread the conspiracy theory on social media outlets such as 4chan, 8chan, Reddit and Twitter. In response, a man from North Carolina traveled to Comet Ping Pong to investigate the conspiracy and fired a rifle inside the restaurant to break the lock on a door to a storage room during his search. The restaurant owner and staff also received death threats from conspiracy theorists.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: Pizzagate is generally considered a predecessor to the QAnon conspiracy theory. It also generated another offshoot conspiracy theory, called Frazzledrip, which involved Hillary Clinton participating in the ritual murder of a child. Pizzagate resurged in 2020, mainly due to QAnon. While initially it was spread by only the far-right, it has since been spread by teens on TikTok "who don't otherwise fit a right-wing conspiracy theorist mold": the biggest Pizzagate spreaders on TikTok appear to otherwise be mostly interested in topics of viral dance moves and Black Lives Matter. The conspiracy theory has developed and become less partisan and political in nature, with less emphasis on Clinton and more on the alleged worldwide elite of child sex-traffickers.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: On October 30, 2016, a Twitter account posting white supremacist material which said it was run by a Jewish New York lawyer falsely claimed that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had discovered a pedophilia ring linked to members of the Democratic Party while searching through Anthony Weiner's emails. Throughout October and November 2016, WikiLeaks had published John Podesta's emails. Proponents of the conspiracy theory read the emails and alleged they contained code words for pedophilia and human trafficking. Proponents also claimed that Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., was a meeting ground for Satanic ritual abuse.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: Deriving its name from the Watergate scandal, the story was later posted on fake news websites, starting with "Your News Wire", which cited a 4chan post from earlier that year. The "Your News Wire" article was subsequently spread by pro-Trump websites, including SubjectPolitics.com, which added the claim that the NYPD had raided Hillary Clinton's property. The "Conservative Daily Post" ran a headline claiming the Federal Bureau of Investigation had confirmed the conspiracy theory.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: According to the BBC, the allegations spread to "the mainstream internet" several days before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, after a Reddit user posted a Pizzagate "evidence" document. The original Reddit post, removed some time between November 4 and 21, alleged the involvement of Comet Ping Pong:


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: The story was picked up by other fake news websites like "InfoWars", "Planet Free Will", and "The Vigilant Citizen", and was promoted by alt-right activists such as Mike Cernovich, Brittany Pettibone, and Jack Posobiec. Other promoters included: David Seaman, former writer for TheStreet.com, CBS46 anchor Ben Swann, basketball player Andrew Bogut, and "Minecraft" creator Markus "Notch" Persson, as well as the German edition of "The Epoch Times," a far-right Falun Gong-associated newspaper. On December 30, as Bogut recovered from a knee injury, members of /r/The Donald community on Reddit promoted a false theory that his injury was connected to his support for Pizzagate. Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of media analytics at Elon University, said that a disproportionate number of tweets about Pizzagate came from the Czech Republic, Cyprus, and Vietnam, and that some of the most frequent retweeters were bots.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: Members of the Reddit community /r/The_Donald created the /r/pizzagate subreddit to further develop the conspiracy theory. The sub was banned on November 23, 2016, for violating Reddit's anti-doxing policy after users posted personal details of people connected to the alleged conspiracy. Reddit released a statement afterwards, saying, "We don't want witchhunts on our site". After the ban on Reddit, the discussion was moved to the v/pizzagate sub on Voat, a defunct Reddit clone dedicated to far-right content.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: Some of Pizzagate's proponents, including David Seaman and Michael G. Flynn (Michael Flynn's son), evolved the conspiracy into a broader government conspiracy called "Pedogate". According to this theory, a "satanic cabal of elites" of the New World Order operates international child sex trafficking rings.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: By June 2020, the conspiracy theory found renewed popularity on TikTok, where videos tagged #Pizzagate were reaching over 80 million views (see relevant section).


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: In Turkey, the allegations were reported by pro-government newspapers (i.e., those supportive of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan), such as "Sabah", "A Haber", "Yeni Şafak", "Akşam" and "Star". The story appeared on Turkey's Ekşi Sözlük website and on the viral news network HaberSelf, where anyone can post content. These forums reposted images and allegations directly from the since-deleted subreddit, which were reprinted in full in the state-controlled press. Efe Sozeri, a columnist for "The Daily Dot", suggested Turkish government sources were pushing this story to distract attention from a child abuse scandal there in March 2016.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: As Pizzagate spread, Comet Ping Pong received hundreds of threats from the theory's believers. The restaurant's owner, James Alefantis, told "The New York Times": "From this insane, fabricated conspiracy theory, we've come under constant assault. I've done nothing for days but try to clean this up and protect my staff and friends from being terrorized."


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: Some adherents identified the Instagram account of Alefantis and pointed to some of the photos posted there as evidence of the conspiracy. Many of the images shown were friends and family who had liked Comet Ping Pong's page on Facebook. In some cases, imagery was taken from unrelated websites and purported to be Alefantis' own. The restaurant's owners and staff were harassed and threatened on social media websites, and the owner received death threats. The restaurant's Yelp page was locked by the site's operators citing reviews that were "motivated more by the news coverage itself than the reviewer's personal consumer experience".


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: Several bands who had performed at the pizzeria also faced harassment. For example, Amanda Kleinman of Heavy Breathing deleted her Twitter account after receiving negative comments connecting her and her band to the conspiracy theory. Another band, Sex Stains, had closed the comments of their YouTube videos and addressed the controversy in the description of their videos. The artist Arrington de Dionyso, who once had painted a mural at the pizzeria that had been painted over several years before the controversy, described the campaign of harassment against him in detail, and said of the attacks in general, "I think it's a very deliberate assault, which will eventually be a coordinated assault on all forms of free expression." The affair has drawn comparisons with the Gamergate harassment campaign.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: Pizzagate-related harassment of businesses extended beyond Comet Ping Pong to include other nearby D.C. businesses such as Besta Pizza, three doors down from Comet; Little Red Fox cafe; bookstore Politics and Prose; and French bistro, Terasol. These businesses received a high volume of threatening and menacing telephone calls, including death threats, and also experienced online harassment. The co-owners of Little Red Fox and Terasol filed police reports.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: Brooklyn restaurant Roberta's was also pulled into the hoax, receiving harassing phone calls, including a call from an unidentified person telling an employee that she was "going to bleed and be tortured". The restaurant became involved after a since-removed YouTube video used images from their social media accounts to imply they were part of the hoax sex ring. Others then spread the accusations on social media, claiming the "Clinton family loves Roberta's".


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: East Side Pies, in Austin, Texas, saw one of its delivery trucks vandalized with an epithet, and was the target of online harassment related to their supposed involvement in Pizzagate, alleged connections to the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Illuminati.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated Pizzagate-related threats in March 2017 as part of a probe into possible Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: On December 4, 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch, a 28-year-old man from Salisbury, North Carolina, arrived at Comet Ping Pong and fired three shots from an AR-15 style rifle that struck the restaurant's walls, a desk, and a door. Welch later told police that he had planned to "self-investigate" the conspiracy theory. Welch saw himself as the potential hero of the story—a rescuer of children. He surrendered after officers surrounded the restaurant and was arrested without incident; no one was injured.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: Welch told police he had read online that the Comet restaurant was harboring child sex slaves and that he wanted to see for himself if they were there. In an interview with "The New York Times", Welch later said that he regretted how he had handled the situation but did not dismiss the conspiracy theory, and rejected the description of it as "fake news". Some conspiracy theorists speculated the shooting was a staged attempt to discredit their investigations.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: On December 13, 2016, Welch was charged with one count of "interstate transportation of a firearm with intent to commit an offense" (a federal crime). According to court documents, Welch attempted to recruit friends three days before the attack by urging them to watch a YouTube video about the conspiracy. He was subsequently charged with two additional offenses, with the grand jury returning an indictment charging him with assault with a dangerous weapon and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: On March 24, 2017, following a plea agreement with prosecutors, Welch pleaded guilty to the federal charge of interstate transport of firearms and the local District of Columbia charge of assault with a dangerous weapon. Welch also agreed to pay $5,744.33 for damages to the restaurant. U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson sentenced Welch to four years in prison on June 22, 2017; at the sentencing hearing, Welch apologized for his conduct and said he had been "foolish and reckless". On March 3, 2020, Welch was transferred to a Community Corrections Center (CCC) and was released on May 28.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: On January 12, 2017, Yusif Lee Jones, a 52-year-old man from Shreveport, Louisiana, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana to making a threatening phone call to Besta Pizza, another pizzeria on the same block as Comet Ping Pong, three days after Welch's attack. He said he threatened Besta to "save the kids", and "finish what the other guy didn't".


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: In 2018, the city of Portsmouth, England experienced its own version of Pizzagate when the Scottish owner of a vaping business was targeted in what the Sunday Times called a "xenophobic campaign". This lasted six months. The main culprit - a man called Oliver Redmond - was prosecuted and sentenced to five months in prison. Judge William Mousley QC also imposed a three-year restraining order and was quoted as follows: "Mr Cheape said he saw 15 to 20 screenshots a day regarding him, his partner, and his business. It was described as a paedophile grooming operation, and the suggestion was made that the children were in the basement of the store, and he described that you were passing information on to his suppliers that he was a paedophile and that there was an international investigation involving Mr Cheape."


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: On January 25, 2019, Comet Ping Pong suffered an arson attack when a fire was started in one of its backrooms. Employees quickly extinguished the blaze and nobody was injured. The perpetrator escaped, but was arrested a few days later while climbing a fence at the Washington Monument and tied to the arson via security footage. He had posted a video referencing QAnon prior to the arson.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: The conspiracy theory has been widely discredited and debunked. It has been judged to be false after detailed investigation by the fact-checking website Snopes.com and "The New York Times". Numerous news organizations have debunked it as a conspiracy theory, including: "The New York Observer", "The Washington Post", "The Independent", "The Huffington Post", "The Washington Times", the "Los Angeles Times", Fox News, CNN, and the "Miami Herald". The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia characterized the matter as "fictitious".


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: Much of the purported evidence cited by the conspiracy theory's proponents had been taken from entirely different sources and made to appear as if it supported the conspiracy. Images of children of family and friends of the pizzeria's staff were taken from social media sites such as Instagram and claimed to be photos of victims.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: On December 10, 2016, "The New York Times" published an article that analyzed the theory's claims. They emphasized that:


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: In an interview with NPR on November 27, 2016, Comet Ping Pong owner James Alefantis referred to the conspiracy theory as "an insanely complicated, made-up, fictional lie-based story" and a "coordinated political attack". Syndicated columnist Daniel Ruth wrote that the conspiracy theorists' assertions were "dangerous and damaging false allegations" and that they were "repeatedly debunked, disproved and dismissed".


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: Despite the conspiracy theory being debunked, it continued to spread on social media, with over one million messages using hashtag #Pizzagate on Twitter in November 2016. Stefanie MacWilliams, who wrote an article promoting the conspiracy on "Planet Free Will", was subsequently reported by the "Toronto Star" as saying, "I really have no regrets and it's honestly really grown our audience". Pizzagate, she said, is "two worlds clashing. People don't trust the mainstream media anymore, but it's true that people shouldn't take the alternative media as truth, either".


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: On December 8, 2016, Hillary Clinton responded to the conspiracy theory, speaking about the dangers of fake news websites. She said, "The epidemic of malicious fake news and fake propaganda that flooded social media over the past year, it's now clear that so-called fake news can have real-world consequences".


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: A poll conducted by Public Policy Polling on December 6–7, 2016, asked 1,224 U.S. registered voters if they thought Hillary Clinton was "connected to a child sex ring being run out of a pizzeria in Washington DC". Nine percent of respondents said they believed she was connected, 72% said they did not, and 19% were not sure.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: A poll of voters conducted on December 17–20 by "The Economist"/YouGov asked voters if they believed that "Leaked e-mails from the Clinton campaign talked about pedophilia and human trafficking - 'Pizzagate'." The results showed that 17% of Clinton voters responded "true" while 82% responded "not true"; and 46% of Trump voters responded "true" while 53% responded "not true".


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: Academic Roger Lancaster likened the impact of Pizzagate to the Satanic panic of the 1980s : at the time, hundreds of daycare workers were falsely accused of abusing children.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: After the Comet Ping Pong shooting, Alex Jones of "InfoWars" backed off from the idea that the D.C. pizzeria was the center of the conspiracy. On December 4, "InfoWars" uploaded a YouTube video that linked Pizzagate to the November 13 death of a sex-worker-rights activist. The video falsely claimed that she had been investigating a link between the Clinton Foundation and human trafficking in Haiti. It speculated she had been murdered in connection with her investigation. According to the activist's former employer, family and friends, her death was in fact a suicide and she was not investigating the Clinton Foundation. By December 14, "Infowars" had removed two of its three Pizzagate-related videos.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: In February 2017, Alefantis' lawyers sent Jones a letter demanding an apology and retraction. Under Texas law, Jones was given a month to comply or be subject to a libel suit. In March 2017, Alex Jones apologized to Alefantis for promulgating the conspiracy theory, saying: "To my knowledge today, neither Mr. Alefantis, nor his restaurant Comet Ping Pong, were involved in any human trafficking as was part of the theories about Pizzagate that were being written about in many media outlets and which we commented upon."


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: In the days leading up to the 2016 election, Michael Flynn, then a top surrogate for Trump and later Trump's National Security Advisor, posted multiple tweets on Twitter containing conspiratorial material regarding Hillary Clinton and her staff. They alleged that John Podesta, drank the blood and bodily fluids of other humans in Satanic rituals, which "Politico" says "soon morphed into the '#pizzagate' conspiracy theory involving Comet Ping Pong". On November 2, 2016, Flynn tweeted a link to a story with unfounded accusations and wrote, "U decide – NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc ... MUST READ!" The tweet was shared by over 9,000 people, but was deleted from Flynn's account sometime during December 12–13, 2016.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: After the shooting incident at Comet Ping Pong, Michael Flynn Jr., Michael T. Flynn's son and also a member of Trump's transition team, tweeted: "Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many 'coincidences' tied to it." On December 6, 2016, Flynn Jr. was forced out of Trump's transition team. Spokesman Jason Miller did not identify the reason for his dismissal, however, "The New York Times" reported that other officials had confirmed it was related to the tweet.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: Pizzagate became a pillar of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, which emerged in 2017 and incorporated its beliefs. QAnon, which has been likened in the media to "Pizzagate on steroids", and a "big-budget sequel" to Pizzagate, linked the child trafficking ring to a nefarious worldwide conspiracy. It also developed Pizzagate's claims by adding the concepts that the sexual abuses are part of Satanic rituals and that the abusers murder the children to "harvest" the adrenochrome from their blood, which they then use as a drug or as an elixir to remain youthful.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: A related conspiracy theory known as "Frazzledrip" (sometimes spelled "Frazzled.rip") emerged in 2018, claiming that an "extreme snuff film" was recovered from Anthony Weiners stolen laptop and was circulating on the dark web. According to that story, the file named "Frazzled.rip" was hidden in a folder called "life insurance" in Weiner's computer: the video contained in that file was said to show Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin raping and murdering a young girl, drinking her adrenochrome-rich blood in a Satanic ritual, and "tak[ing] turns wearing the little girl's face like a mask".


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: Purported frames from the video circulated to back these claims: according to Snopes, some of these images came from a YouTube video originally posted on April Fools' Day 2018, and a photo which was said to show Huma Abedin wearing a mask had been taken from the website of a Washington D.C. Indian restaurant and portrayed the owner of that establishment. Hundreds of videos on YouTube promoted these false statements, and the claims were still circulating internationally within QAnon groups two years later in 2020.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: In 2020, as the broader QAnon movement became an international phenomenon, Pizzagate also gained new traction and became less U.S.-centric in nature, with videos and posts on the topic in Italy, Brazil, Turkey and other countries worldwide each gaining millions of views. This new iteration is less partisan; the majority of the (mostly teenage) promoters of the #PizzaGate hashtag on TikTok were not right-wing, and support the Black Lives Matter movement. It focuses on an alleged global elite of child sex-traffickers, ranging from politicians to powerful businesspeople and celebrities such as Bill Gates, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Winfrey and Chrissy Teigen. Justin Bieber's 2020 song "Yummy" was alleged to be about the conspiracy theory, and rekindled support for the theory during the year. The conspiracy theory gained traction when Venezuelan YouTuber, Dross Rotzank, made a video about Bieber's music video and its alleged references to Pizzagate. Rotzank's video gained 3 million views in two days and led "Pizzagate" to become a trending topic on the Spanish-language Twitter. Adherents of the theory also believe that Bieber gave a coded signal admitting as such in a later Instagram Live video, where he touched his hat after being asked to do so in the chat if he was a victim of Pizzagate (however, there is no indication that Bieber saw this comment).


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: In April 2020, a documentary promoting Pizzagate, "Out of Shadows", was made by a former Hollywood stuntman and released on YouTube. TikTok users began promoting both "Out of Shadows" and the alleged Bieber association until the #PizzaGate hashtag was banned by the company. "The New York Times" said in June 2020 that posts on the platform with the #PizzaGate hashtag were "viewed more than 82 million times in recent months", and Google searches for the term also increased in that time. They also reported that "In the first week of June, comments, likes and shares of PizzaGate also spiked to more than 800,000 on Facebook and nearly 600,000 on Instagram, according to data from CrowdTangle ... That compares with 512,000 interactions on Facebook and 93,000 on Instagram during the first week of December 2016. From the start of 2017 through January of 2020, the average number of weekly PizzaGate mentions, likes and shares on Facebook and Instagram was under 20,000".


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: In August 2020, Facebook temporarily suspended use of the "#savethechildren" hashtag, when used to promote elements of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and QAnon. The improper use of the hashtag caused protests from the unrelated NGO Save the Children.


title: Pizzagate conspiracy theory

text: "The Pizzagate Massacre" (originally titled "Duncan"), a dark satire film inspired by the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and Edgar Maddison Welch's shooting of Comet Ping Pong, was released on VOD in November 2021.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name "Multi-Tool Word" for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including: IBM PCs running DOS (1983), Apple Macintosh running the Classic Mac OS (1985), AT&T UNIX PC (1985), Atari ST (1988), OS/2 (1989), Microsoft Windows (1989), SCO Unix (1990) and macOS (2001). Using Wine, versions of Microsoft Word before 2013 can be run on Linux.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Commercial versions of Word are licensed as a standalone product or as a component of Microsoft Office suite of software, which can be purchased either with a perpetual license or as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription.


title: Microsoft Word

text: In 1981, Microsoft hired Charles Simonyi, the primary developer of Bravo, the first GUI word processor, which was developed at Xerox PARC. Simonyi started work on a word processor called "Multi-Tool Word" and soon hired Richard Brodie, a former Xerox intern, who became the primary software engineer.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Microsoft announced Multi-Tool Word for Xenix and MS-DOS in 1983. Its name was soon simplified to "Microsoft Word". Free demonstration copies of the application were bundled with the November 1983 issue of "PC World", making it the first to be distributed on-disk with a magazine. That year Microsoft demonstrated Word running on Windows.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Unlike most MS-DOS programs at the time, Microsoft Word was designed to be used with a mouse. Advertisements depicted the Microsoft Mouse and described Word as a WYSIWYG, windowed word processor with the ability to undo and display bold, italic, and underlined text, although it could not render fonts. It was not initially popular, since its user interface was different from the leading word processor at the time, WordStar. However, Microsoft steadily improved the product, releasing versions 2.0 through 5.0 over the next six years. In 1985, Microsoft ported Word to the classic Mac OS (known as Macintosh System Software at the time). This was made easier by Word for DOS having been designed for use with high-resolution displays and laser printers, even though none were yet available to the general public. It was also notable for its very fast cut-and-paste function and unlimited number of undo operations, which are due to its usage of the piece table data structure.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Following the precedents of LisaWrite and MacWrite, Word for Mac OS added true WYSIWYG features. It fulfilled a need for a word processor that was more capable than MacWrite. After its release, Word for Mac OS's sales were higher than its MS-DOS counterpart for at least four years.


title: Microsoft Word

text: The second release of Word for Mac OS, shipped in 1987, was named Word 3.0 to synchronize its version number with Word for DOS; this was Microsoft's first attempt to synchronize version numbers across platforms. Word 3.0 included numerous internal enhancements and new features, including the first implementation of the Rich Text Format (RTF) specification, but was plagued with bugs. Within a few months, Word 3.0 was superseded by a more stable Word 3.01, which was mailed free to all registered users of 3.0. After MacWrite Pro was discontinued in the mid-1990s, Word for Mac OS never had any serious rivals. Word 5.1 for Mac OS, released in 1992, was a very popular word processor owing to its elegance, relative ease of use, and feature set. Many users say it is the best version of Word for Mac OS ever created.


title: Microsoft Word

text: In 1986, an agreement between Atari and Microsoft brought Word to the Atari ST under the name "Microsoft Write". The Atari ST version was a port of Word 1.05 for the Mac OS and was never updated.


title: Microsoft Word

text: The first version of Word for Windows was released in 1989. With the release of Windows 3.0 the following year, sales began to pick up and Microsoft soon became the market leader for word processors for IBM PC-compatible computers. In 1991, Microsoft capitalized on Word for Windows' increasing popularity by releasing a version of Word for DOS, version 5.5, that replaced its unique user interface with an interface similar to a Windows application. When Microsoft became aware of the Year 2000 problem, it made Microsoft Word 5.5 for DOS available for free downloads. , it is still available for download from Microsoft's website.


title: Microsoft Word

text: In 1991, Microsoft embarked on a project code-named Pyramid to completely rewrite Microsoft Word from the ground up. Both the Windows and Mac OS versions would start from the same code base. It was abandoned when it was determined that it would take the development team too long to rewrite and then catch up with all the new capabilities that could have been added at the same time without a rewrite. Instead, the next versions of Word for Windows and Mac OS, dubbed version 6.0, both started from the code base of Word for Windows 2.0.


title: Microsoft Word

text: With the release of Word 6.0 in 1993, Microsoft again attempted to synchronize the version numbers and coordinate product naming across platforms, this time across DOS, Mac OS, and Windows (this was the last version of Word for DOS). It introduced AutoCorrect, which automatically fixed certain typing errors, and AutoFormat, which could reformat many parts of a document at once. While the Windows version received favorable reviews (e.g., from "InfoWorld"), the Mac OS version was widely derided. Many accused it of being slow, clumsy, and memory intensive, and its user interface differed significantly from Word 5.1. In response to user requests, Microsoft offered Word 5 again, after it had been discontinued. Subsequent versions of Word for macOS are no longer direct ports of Word for Windows, instead featuring a mixture of ported code and native code.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Word for Windows is available stand-alone or as part of the Microsoft Office suite. Word contains rudimentary desktop publishing capabilities and is the most widely used word processing program on the market. Word files are commonly used as the format for sending text documents via e-mail because almost every user with a computer can read a Word document by using the Word application, a Word viewer or a word processor that imports the Word format (see Microsoft Word Viewer).


title: Microsoft Word

text: Word 6 for Windows NT was the first 32-bit version of the product, released with Microsoft Office for Windows NT around the same time as Windows 95. It was a straightforward port of Word 6.0. Starting with Word 95, each release of Word was named after the year of its release, instead of its version number.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Word 2007 introduced a redesigned user interface that emphasized the most common controls, dividing them into tabs, and adding specific options depending on the context, such as selecting an image or editing a table. This user interface, called Ribbon, was included in Excel, PowerPoint and Access 2007, and would be later introduced to other Office applications with Office 2010 and Windows applications such as Paint and WordPad with Windows 7, respectively.


title: Microsoft Word

text: The redesigned interface also includes a toolbar that appears when selecting text, with options for formatting included.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Word 2007 also included the option to save documents as Adobe Acrobat or XPS files, and upload Word documents like blog posts on services such as WordPress.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Word 2010 allows the customization of the Ribbon, adds a Backstage view for file management, has improved document navigation, allows creation and embedding of screenshots, and integrates with online services such as Microsoft OneDrive.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Word 2021 added co-authoring, a visual refresh on the start experience and tabs, automatic cloud saving, dark mode, line focus, an updated draw tab, and support for ODF 1.3.


title: Microsoft Word

text: The Mac was introduced on January 24, 1984, and Microsoft introduced Word 1.0 for Mac a year later, on January 18, 1985. The DOS, Mac, and Windows versions are quite different from each other. Only the Mac version was WYSIWYG and used a graphical user interface, far ahead of the other platforms. Each platform restarted its version numbering at "1.0". There was no version 2 on the Mac, but version 3 came out on January 31, 1987, as described above. Word 4.0 came out on November 6, 1990, and added automatic linking with Excel, the ability to flow text around graphics, and a WYSIWYG page view editing mode. Word 5.1 for Mac, released in 1992 ran on the original 68000 CPU and was the last to be specifically designed as a Macintosh application. The later Word 6 was a Windows port and poorly received. Word 5.1 continued to run well until the last Classic MacOS. Many people continue to run Word 5.1 to this day under an emulated Mac classic system for some of its excellent features, such as document generation and renumbering, or to access their old files.


title: Microsoft Word

text: In 1997, Microsoft formed the Macintosh Business Unit as an independent group within Microsoft focused on writing software for Mac OS. Its first version of Word, Word 98, was released with Office 98 Macintosh Edition. Document compatibility reached parity with Word 97, and it included features from Word 97 for Windows, including spell and grammar checking with squiggles. Users could choose the menus and keyboard shortcuts to be similar to either Word 97 for Windows or Word 5 for Mac OS.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Word 2001, released in 2000, added a few new features, including the Office Clipboard, which allowed users to copy and paste multiple items. It was the last version to run on classic Mac OS and, on Mac OS X, it could only run within the Classic Environment. Word X, released in 2001, was the first version to run natively on, and required, Mac OS X, and introduced non-contiguous text selection.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Word 2004 was released in May 2004. It included a new Notebook Layout view for taking notes either by typing or by voice. Other features, such as tracking changes, were made more similar with Office for Windows.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Word 2008, released on January 15, 2008, included a Ribbon-like feature, called the Elements Gallery, that can be used to select page layouts and insert custom diagrams and images. It also included a new view focused on publishing layout, integrated bibliography management, and native support for the new Office Open XML format. It was the first version to run natively on Intel-based Macs.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Word 2011, released in October 2010, replaced the Elements Gallery in favor of a Ribbon user interface that is much more similar to Office for Windows, and includes a full-screen mode that allows users to focus on reading and writing documents, and support for Office Web Apps.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Word 2021, added real-time co-authoring, automatic cloud saving, dark mode, immersive reader enhancements, line focus, a visual refresh, the ability to save pictures in SVG format, and a new Sketched style outline.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Microsoft Word's native file formats are denoted either by a codice_1 or codice_2 filename extension.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Although the codice_1 extension has been used in many different versions of Word, it actually encompasses four distinct file formats:


title: Microsoft Word

text: The newer codice_2 extension signifies the Office Open XML international standard for Office documents and is used by default by Word 2007 and later for Windows as well as Word 2008 and later for macOS.


title: Microsoft Word

text: During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the default Word document format (.DOC) became a "de facto" standard of document file formats for Microsoft Office users. There are different versions of "Word Document Format" used by default in Word 97–2007. Each binary word file is a Compound File, a hierarchical file system within a file. According to Joel Spolsky, Word Binary File Format is extremely complex mainly because its developers had to accommodate an overwhelming number of features and prioritize performance over anything else.


title: Microsoft Word

text: As with all OLE Compound Files, Word Binary Format consists of "storages", which are analogous to computer folders and "streams", which are similar to computer files. Each storage may contain streams or other storage. Each Word Binary File must contain a stream called the "WordDocument" stream and this stream must start with a File Information Block (FIB). FIB serves as the first point of reference for locating everything else, such as where the text in a Word document starts, ends, what version of Word created the document and other attributes.


title: Microsoft Word

text: The .docx XML format introduced in Word 2003 was a simple, XML-based format called WordProcessingML or WordML.


title: Microsoft Word

text: The Microsoft Office XML formats are XML-based document formats (or XML schemas) introduced in versions of Microsoft Office prior to Office 2007. Microsoft Office XP introduced a new XML format for storing Excel spreadsheets and Office 2003 added an XML-based format for Word documents.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Opening a Word Document file in a version of Word other than the one with which it was created can cause an incorrect display of the document. The document formats of the various versions change in subtle and not-so-subtle ways (such as changing the font or the handling of more complex tasks like footnotes). Formatting created in newer versions does not always survive when viewed in older versions of the program, nearly always because that capability does not exist in the previous version. Rich Text Format (RTF), an early effort to create a format for interchanging formatted text between applications, is an optional format for Word that retains most formatting and all content of the original document.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Plugins permitting the Windows versions of Word to read and write formats it does not natively support, such as international standard OpenDocument format (ODF) (ISO/IEC 26300:2006), are available. Up until the release of Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Office 2007, Word did not natively support reading or writing ODF documents without a plugin, namely the SUN ODF Plugin or the OpenXML/ODF Translator. With SP2 installed, ODF format 1.1 documents can be read and saved like any other supported format in addition to those already available in Word 2007. The implementation faces substantial criticism, and the ODF Alliance and others have claimed that the third-party plugins provide better support. Microsoft later declared that the ODF support has some limitations.


title: Microsoft Word

text: In October 2005, one year before the Microsoft Office 2007 suite was released, Microsoft declared that there was insufficient demand from Microsoft customers for the international standard OpenDocument format support and that therefore it would not be included in Microsoft Office 2007. This statement was repeated in the following months. As an answer, on October 20, 2005, an online petition was created to demand ODF support from Microsoft.


title: Microsoft Word

text: In May 2006, the ODF plugin for Microsoft Office was released by the OpenDocument Foundation. Microsoft declared that it had no relationship with the developers of the plugin.


title: Microsoft Word

text: In July 2006, Microsoft announced the creation of the Open XML Translator project – tools to build a technical bridge between the Microsoft Office Open XML Formats and the OpenDocument Format (ODF). This work was started in response to government requests for interoperability with ODF. The goal of the project was not to add ODF support to Microsoft Office, but only to create a plugin and an external toolset. In February 2007, this project released a first version of the ODF plugin for Microsoft Word.


title: Microsoft Word

text: In February 2007, Sun released an initial version of its ODF plugin for Microsoft Office. Version 1.0 was released in July 2007.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Microsoft Word 2007 (Service Pack 1) supports (for output only) PDF and XPS formats, but only after manual installation of the Microsoft 'Save as PDF or XPS' add-on. On later releases, this was offered by default.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Among its features, Word includes a built-in spell checker, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and utilities for manipulating and editing text. The following are some aspects of its feature set.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Several later versions of Word include the ability for users to create their formatting templates, allowing them to define a file in which: the title, heading, paragraph, and other element designs differ from the standard Word templates. Users can find how to do this under the Help section located near the top right corner (Word 2013 on Windows 8).


title: Microsoft Word

text: For example, Normal.dotm is the master template from which all Word documents are created. It determines the margin defaults as well as the layout of the text and font defaults. Although Normal.dotm is already set with certain defaults, the user can change it to new defaults. This will change other documents which were created using the template. It was previously Normal.dot.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Word can import and display images in common bitmap formats such as JPG and GIF. It can also be used to create and display simple line art. Microsoft Word added support for the common SVG vector image format in 2017 for Office 365 ProPlus subscribers and this functionality was also included in the Office 2019 release.


title: Microsoft Word

text: WordArt enables drawing text in a Microsoft Word document such as a title, watermark, or other text, with graphical effects such as skewing, shadowing, rotating, stretching in a variety of shapes and colors, and even including three-dimensional effects. Users can apply formatting effects such as shadow, bevel, glow, and reflection to their document text as easily as applying bold or underline. Users can also spell-check text that uses visual effects and add text effects to paragraph styles.


title: Microsoft Word

text: A Macro is a rule of pattern that specifies how a certain input sequence (often a sequence of characters) should be mapped to an output sequence according to a defined process. Frequently used or repetitive sequences of keystrokes and mouse movements can be automated. Like other Microsoft Office documents, Word files can include advanced macros and even embedded programs. The language was originally WordBasic, but changed to Visual Basic for Applications as of Word 97.


title: Microsoft Word

text: This extensive functionality can also be used to run and propagate viruses in documents. The tendency for people to exchange Word documents via email, USB flash drives, and floppy disks made this an especially attractive vector in 1999. A prominent example was the Melissa virus, but countless others have existed.


title: Microsoft Word

text: These macro viruses were the only known cross-platform threats between Windows and Macintosh computers and they were the only infection vectors to affect any macOS system up until the advent of video codec trojans in 2007. Microsoft released patches for Word X and Word 2004 that effectively eliminated the macro problem on the Mac by 2006.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Word's macro security setting, which regulates when macros may execute, can be adjusted by the user, but in the most recent versions of Word, it is set to HIGH by default, generally reducing the risk from macro-based viruses, which have become uncommon.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Before Word 2010 (Word 14) for Windows, the program was unable to correctly handle ligatures defined in OpenType fonts. Those ligature glyphs with Unicode codepoints may be inserted manually, but are not recognized by Word for what they are, breaking spell checking, while custom ligatures present in the font are not accessible at all. Since Word 2010, the program now has advanced typesetting features which can be enabled, OpenType ligatures, kerning and hyphenation (previous versions already had the latter two features). Other layout deficiencies of Word include the inability to set crop marks or thin spaces. Various third-party workaround utilities have been developed.


title: Microsoft Word

text: In Word 2004 for Mac OS X, support of complex scripts was inferior even to Word 97 and Word 2004 did not support Apple Advanced Typography features like ligatures or glyph variants.


title: Microsoft Word

text: Microsoft Word is only awkwardly suitable for some kinds of technical writing, specifically, that which requires: mathematical equations, figure placement, table placement and cross-references to any of these items. The usual workaround for equations is to use a third-party equation typesetter. Figures and tables must be placed manually; there is an anchor mechanism but it is not designed for fully automatic figure placement and editing text after placing figures and tables often requires re-placing those items by moving the anchor point and even then the placement options are limited. This problem is deeply baked into Word's structure since 1985 as it does not know where page breaks will occur until the document is printed.