title: British Airways

text: "Club Europe" is the short-haul business class available on all short-haul flights. This class allows for access to business lounges at most airports and complimentary onboard catering. The middle seat of the standard Airbus configured cabin is left free. Instead, a cocktail table folds up from under the middle seat on refurbished aircraft. Pillows and blankets are available on longer flights.


title: British Airways

text: "First" is offered on all British Airways Airbus A380s, Boeing 777-300ERs, Boeing 787-9/10s and on some of their Boeing 777-200ERs. There are between eight and fourteen private suites depending on the aircraft type. Each First suit comes with a bed, a wide entertainment screen, and in-seat power.


title: British Airways

text: Dedicated British Airways 'Galleries First' lounges are available at some airports. The exclusive 'Concorde Room' lounges at Heathrow Terminal 5 and New York JFK airports offer pre-flight dining with waiter service and more intimate space. Business lounges are used where these are not available.


title: British Airways

text: "Club World" is the mid-haul and long-haul business class cabin. It is offered on all Boeing 777, Boeing 787, Airbus A380, and selected Airbus A321 aircraft. The cabin features fully convertible flat bed seats. In 2006, British Airways launched "Next Generation New Club World", featuring larger seats. The Club World cabins are all configured in a similar design on widebody aircraft with aisle seats facing forwards, while middle seats and window seats face backwards (British Airways is one of only five carriers with backwards-facing business-class seats; American Airlines, Etihad Airways, United Airlines and Qatar Airways are the others).


title: British Airways

text: In March 2019, BA unveiled its new business-class seats on the new A350 aircraft, which feature a suite with a door. This will be re-fitted on to most of BAs wide-body fleet over the coming years.


title: British Airways

text: "World Traveller Plus" is the premium economy class cabin provided on all BA long haul aircraft. This cabin offers wider seats, extended leg-room, additional seat comforts such as larger IFE screen (on most aircraft) a foot rest and power sockets. A complimentary 'World Traveller' bar is offered along with an upgraded main meal.


title: British Airways

text: "World Traveller" is the mid-haul and long-haul economy class cabin. It offers seat-back entertainment, complimentary food and drink, pillows, and blankets. AVOD personal TV screens are available on all A321s, A350s, A380s, B777s and B787s. AC power outlets and USB plug-in points are offered in every seat row on the Airbus A350, A380, Boeing B787, B777-300ER and on refurbished B777-200ER aircraft. The outlets accept both UK and US plugs.


title: British Airways

text: British Airways is known to have a strong reputation for safety and has been consistently ranked within the top 20 safest airlines globally according to "Business Insider" and "AirlineRatings.com."


title: British Airways

text: Since BA's inception in 1974, it has been involved in three hull-loss incidents (British Airways Flight 149 was destroyed on the ground at Kuwait International Airport as a result of military action during the First Gulf War with no one on board) and two hijacking attempts. To date, the only fatal accident experienced by a BA aircraft occurred in 1976 with British Airways Flight 476 which was involved in a midair collision later attributed to an error made by air traffic control.


title: Oliver Hudson

text: Oliver Rutledge Hudson (born September 7, 1976) is an American actor. He is known for his roles as Adam Rhodes in the CBS comedy series "Rules of Engagement" (2007–2013), Jeff Fordham on the ABC musical drama series "Nashville" (2013–2015) and Wes Gardner in the Fox horror comedy "Scream Queens". He appeared as one of the main cast members of the ABC sitcom "Splitting Up Together", produced by Ellen DeGeneres. In 2022, he began starring as FBI agent Garrett Miller in Fox's "The Cleaning Lady".


title: Oliver Hudson

text: Hudson was born in Los Angeles to Academy Award-winning actress Goldie Hawn and musician Bill Hudson. After his parents divorced in 1980, he and his sister, actress Kate Hudson, were raised in Colorado by their mother and her partner, actor Kurt Russell. He has four half-siblings: Emily and Zachary, from his biological father's marriage to actress Cindy Williams; Lalania, from another of his father's relationships in 2006; and Wyatt, from his mother's relationship with Kurt Russell.


title: Oliver Hudson

text: Hudson is of Italian, English, German, and, through his maternal grandmother, Hungarian Jewish, descent. He was raised in the Jewish faith.


title: Oliver Hudson

text: Hudson appeared opposite his mother in the 1999 comedy film "The Out-of-Towners" and later starred in several teen movies, such as "The Smokers" and "Going Greek". In 2002, he played the lead role of The WB comedy series "My Guide to Becoming a Rock Star". Hudson also appeared in a recurring role opposite Katie Holmes as her love interest, Eddie Doling, in sixteen episodes of "Dawson's Creek" from 2002 to 2003.


title: Oliver Hudson

text: Hudson starred in The WB series "The Mountain" from 2004 to 2005; the show was canceled after 13 episodes. In 2006, he starred in horror films "The Breed" and "Black Christmas". He also starred with Claire Forlani in the Lifetime movie "Carolina Moon" in 2007. From 2007 to 2013, Hudson starred as Adam Rhodes in the CBS sitcom "Rules of Engagement" (2007–2013). In 2013, Hudson was cast in the recurring role of Jeff Fordham for the second season on the ABC drama series "Nashville". Hudson later was promoted to series regular for the third season.


title: Oliver Hudson

text: In 2015, Hudson was cast as a series regular on the horror comedy anthology series "Scream Queens" playing Wes Gardner, the father of a college sorority pledge member. Also in 2015, Hudson and his sister, Kate Hudson, launched FL2, a men's activewear line and subsidiary of Fabletics. In 2017, Hudson was cast in the lead role of Martin in the ABC sitcom "Splitting Up Together" which premiered in 2018. The series was cancelled after two seasons.


title: Oliver Hudson

text: On September 22, 2019, he became the first panelist to win the Doris Award on the ABC version of "To Tell the Truth". In January 2022, he began starring as FBI agent Garrett Miller, in Fox's "The Cleaning Lady".


title: Oliver Hudson

text: Hudson will play in the lead role of Will in the CBS comedy pilot "The Three of Us" which was created by Frank Pines. The release date has not yet been announced. More recently, he was attached to developing "Worlds Best Dad" via Jupiter Entertainment, after signing a first look deal with his production company Bronco Productions.


title: Oliver Hudson

text: Hudson married actress Erinn Bartlett on June 9, 2006, in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The couple have three children: two sons, Wilder Brooks (born August 23, 2007) and Bodhi Hawn (born March 19, 2010), and a daughter, Rio Laura (born July 18, 2013).


title: Carbon

text: Carbon () is a chemical element with the symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—its atom making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Carbon makes up only about 0.025 percent of Earth's crust. Three isotopes occur naturally, C and C being stable, while C is a radionuclide, decaying with a half-life of about 5,730 years. Carbon is one of the few elements known since antiquity.


title: Carbon

text: Carbon is the 15th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, and the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. Carbon's abundance, its unique diversity of organic compounds, and its unusual ability to form polymers at the temperatures commonly encountered on Earth, enables this element to serve as a common element of all known life. It is the second most abundant element in the human body by mass (about 18.5%) after oxygen.


title: Carbon

text: The atoms of carbon can bond together in diverse ways, resulting in various allotropes of carbon. Well-known allotropes include graphite, diamond, amorphous carbon and fullerenes. The physical properties of carbon vary widely with the allotropic form. For example, graphite is opaque and black while diamond is highly transparent. Graphite is soft enough to form a streak on paper (hence its name, from the Greek verb "γράφειν" which means "to write"), while diamond is the hardest naturally occurring material known. Graphite is a good electrical conductor while diamond has a low electrical conductivity. Under normal conditions, diamond, carbon nanotubes, and graphene have the highest thermal conductivities of all known materials. All carbon allotropes are solids under normal conditions, with graphite being the most thermodynamically stable form at standard temperature and pressure. They are chemically resistant and require high temperature to react even with oxygen.


title: Carbon

text: The most common oxidation state of carbon in inorganic compounds is +4, while +2 is found in carbon monoxide and transition metal carbonyl complexes. The largest sources of inorganic carbon are limestones, dolomites and carbon dioxide, but significant quantities occur in organic deposits of coal, peat, oil, and methane clathrates. Carbon forms a vast number of compounds, with almost ten million compounds described to date, and yet that number is but a fraction of the number of theoretically possible compounds under standard conditions.


title: Carbon

text: The allotropes of carbon include graphite, one of the softest known substances, and diamond, the hardest naturally occurring substance. It bonds readily with other small atoms, including other carbon atoms, and is capable of forming multiple stable covalent bonds with suitable multivalent atoms. Carbon is known to form almost ten million compounds, a large majority of all chemical compounds. Carbon also has the highest sublimation point of all elements. At atmospheric pressure it has no melting point, as its triple point is at and , so it sublimes at about . Graphite is much more reactive than diamond at standard conditions, despite being more thermodynamically stable, as its delocalised pi system is much more vulnerable to attack. For example, graphite can be oxidised by hot concentrated nitric acid at standard conditions to mellitic acid, C(COH), which preserves the hexagonal units of graphite while breaking up the larger structure.


title: Carbon

text: Carbon sublimes in a carbon arc, which has a temperature of about 5800 K (5,530 °C or 9,980 °F). Thus, irrespective of its allotropic form, carbon remains solid at higher temperatures than the highest-melting-point metals such as tungsten or rhenium. Although thermodynamically prone to oxidation, carbon resists oxidation more effectively than elements such as iron and copper, which are weaker reducing agents at room temperature.


title: Carbon

text: Carbon is the sixth element, with a ground-state electron configuration of 1s2s2p, of which the four outer electrons are valence electrons. Its first four ionisation energies, 1086.5, 2352.6, 4620.5 and 6222.7 kJ/mol, are much higher than those of the heavier group-14 elements. The electronegativity of carbon is 2.5, significantly higher than the heavier group-14 elements (1.8–1.9), but close to most of the nearby nonmetals, as well as some of the second- and third-row transition metals. Carbon's covalent radii are normally taken as 77.2 pm (C−C), 66.7 pm (C=C) and 60.3 pm (C≡C), although these may vary depending on coordination number and what the carbon is bonded to. In general, covalent radius decreases with lower coordination number and higher bond order.


title: Carbon

text: Carbon-based compounds form the basis of all known life on Earth, and the carbon–nitrogen cycle provides some of the energy produced by the Sun and other stars. Although it forms an extraordinary variety of compounds, most forms of carbon are comparatively unreactive under normal conditions. At standard temperature and pressure, it resists all but the strongest oxidizers. It does not react with sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, chlorine or any alkalis. At elevated temperatures, carbon reacts with oxygen to form carbon oxides and will rob oxygen from metal oxides to leave the elemental metal. This exothermic reaction is used in the iron and steel industry to smelt iron and to control the carbon content of steel:


title: Carbon

text: Carbon reacts with sulfur to form carbon disulfide, and it reacts with steam in the coal-gas reaction used in coal gasification:


title: Carbon

text: Carbon combines with some metals at high temperatures to form metallic carbides, such as the iron carbide cementite in steel and tungsten carbide, widely used as an abrasive and for making hard tips for cutting tools.


title: Carbon

text: Atomic carbon is a very short-lived species and, therefore, carbon is stabilized in various multi-atomic structures with diverse molecular configurations called allotropes. The three relatively well-known allotropes of carbon are amorphous carbon, graphite, and diamond. Once considered exotic, fullerenes are nowadays commonly synthesized and used in research; they include buckyballs, carbon nanotubes, carbon nanobuds and nanofibers. Several other exotic allotropes have also been discovered, such as lonsdaleite, glassy carbon, carbon nanofoam and linear acetylenic carbon (carbyne).


title: Carbon

text: Graphene is a two-dimensional sheet of carbon with the atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. As of 2009, graphene appears to be the strongest material ever tested. The process of separating it from graphite will require some further technological development before it is economical for industrial processes. If successful, graphene could be used in the construction of a space elevator. It could also be used to safely store hydrogen for use in a hydrogen based engine in cars.


title: Carbon

text: The amorphous form is an assortment of carbon atoms in a non-crystalline, irregular, glassy state, not held in a crystalline macrostructure. It is present as a powder, and is the main constituent of substances such as charcoal, lampblack (soot) and activated carbon. At normal pressures, carbon takes the form of graphite, in which each atom is bonded trigonally to three others in a plane composed of fused hexagonal rings, just like those in aromatic hydrocarbons. The resulting network is 2-dimensional, and the resulting flat sheets are stacked and loosely bonded through weak van der Waals forces. This gives graphite its softness and its cleaving properties (the sheets slip easily past one another). Because of the delocalization of one of the outer electrons of each atom to form a π-cloud, graphite conducts electricity, but only in the plane of each covalently bonded sheet. This results in a lower bulk electrical conductivity for carbon than for most metals. The delocalization also accounts for the energetic stability of graphite over diamond at room temperature.


title: Carbon

text: At very high pressures, carbon forms the more compact allotrope, diamond, having nearly twice the density of graphite. Here, each atom is bonded tetrahedrally to four others, forming a 3-dimensional network of puckered six-membered rings of atoms. Diamond has the same cubic structure as silicon and germanium, and because of the strength of the carbon-carbon bonds, it is the hardest naturally occurring substance measured by resistance to scratching. Contrary to the popular belief that ""diamonds are forever"", they are thermodynamically unstable (Δ"G"°(diamond, 298 K) = 2.9 kJ/mol) under normal conditions (298 K, 10 Pa) and should theoretically transform into graphite. But due to a high activation energy barrier, the transition into graphite is so slow at normal temperature that it is unnoticeable. However, at very high temperatures diamond will turn into graphite, and diamonds can burn up in a house fire. The bottom left corner of the phase diagram for carbon has not been scrutinized experimentally. Although a computational study employing density functional theory methods reached the conclusion that as and , diamond becomes more stable than graphite by approximately 1.1 kJ/mol, more recent and definitive experimental and computational studies show that graphite is more stable than diamond for , without applied pressure, by 2.7 kJ/mol at "T" = 0 K and 3.2 kJ/mol at "T" = 298.15 K. Under some conditions, carbon crystallizes as lonsdaleite, a hexagonal crystal lattice with all atoms covalently bonded and properties similar to those of diamond.


title: Carbon

text: Fullerenes are a synthetic crystalline formation with a graphite-like structure, but in place of flat hexagonal cells only, some of the cells of which fullerenes are formed may be pentagons, nonplanar hexagons, or even heptagons of carbon atoms. The sheets are thus warped into spheres, ellipses, or cylinders. The properties of fullerenes (split into buckyballs, buckytubes, and nanobuds) have not yet been fully analyzed and represent an intense area of research in nanomaterials. The names "fullerene" and "buckyball" are given after Richard Buckminster Fuller, popularizer of geodesic domes, which resemble the structure of fullerenes. The buckyballs are fairly large molecules formed completely of carbon bonded trigonally, forming spheroids (the best-known and simplest is the soccerball-shaped C buckminsterfullerene). Carbon nanotubes (buckytubes) are structurally similar to buckyballs, except that each atom is bonded trigonally in a curved sheet that forms a hollow cylinder. Nanobuds were first reported in 2007 and are hybrid buckytube/buckyball materials (buckyballs are covalently bonded to the outer wall of a nanotube) that combine the properties of both in a single structure.


title: Carbon

text: Of the other discovered allotropes, carbon nanofoam is a ferromagnetic allotrope discovered in 1997. It consists of a low-density cluster-assembly of carbon atoms strung together in a loose three-dimensional web, in which the atoms are bonded trigonally in six- and seven-membered rings. It is among the lightest known solids, with a density of about 2 kg/m. Similarly, glassy carbon contains a high proportion of closed porosity, but contrary to normal graphite, the graphitic layers are not stacked like pages in a book, but have a more random arrangement. Linear acetylenic carbon has the chemical structure −(C:::C)−. Carbon in this modification is linear with "sp" orbital hybridization, and is a polymer with alternating single and triple bonds. This carbyne is of considerable interest to nanotechnology as its Young's modulus is 40 times that of the hardest known material – diamond.


title: Carbon

text: In 2015, a team at the North Carolina State University announced the development of another allotrope they have dubbed Q-carbon, created by a high energy low duration laser pulse on amorphous carbon dust. Q-carbon is reported to exhibit ferromagnetism, fluorescence, and a hardness superior to diamonds.


title: Carbon

text: In the vapor phase, some of the carbon is in the form of dicarbon (). When excited, this gas glows green.


title: Carbon

text: Carbon is the fourth most abundant chemical element in the observable universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. Carbon is abundant in the Sun, stars, comets, and in the atmospheres of most planets. Some meteorites contain microscopic diamonds that were formed when the Solar System was still a protoplanetary disk. Microscopic diamonds may also be formed by the intense pressure and high temperature at the sites of meteorite impacts.


title: Carbon

text: In 2014 NASA announced a greatly upgraded database for tracking polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the universe. More than 20% of the carbon in the universe may be associated with PAHs, complex compounds of carbon and hydrogen without oxygen. These compounds figure in the PAH world hypothesis where they are hypothesized to have a role in abiogenesis and formation of life. PAHs seem to have been formed "a couple of billion years" after the Big Bang, are widespread throughout the universe, and are associated with new stars and exoplanets.


title: Carbon

text: It has been estimated that the solid earth as a whole contains 730 ppm of carbon, with 2000 ppm in the core and 120 ppm in the combined mantle and crust. Since the mass of the earth is , this would imply 4360 million gigatonnes of carbon. This is much more than the amount of carbon in the oceans or atmosphere (below).


title: Carbon

text: In combination with oxygen in carbon dioxide, carbon is found in the Earth's atmosphere (approximately 900 gigatonnes of carbon — each ppm corresponds to 2.13 Gt) and dissolved in all water bodies (approximately 36,000 gigatonnes of carbon). Carbon in the biosphere has been estimated at 550 gigatonnes but with a large uncertainty, due mostly to a huge uncertainty in the amount of terrestrial deep subsurface bacteria. Hydrocarbons (such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas) contain carbon as well. Coal "reserves" (not "resources") amount to around 900 gigatonnes with perhaps 18,000 Gt of resources. Oil reserves are around 150 gigatonnes. Proven sources of natural gas are about (containing about 105 gigatonnes of carbon), but studies estimate another of "unconventional" deposits such as shale gas, representing about 540 gigatonnes of carbon.


title: Carbon

text: Carbon is also found in methane hydrates in polar regions and under the seas. Various estimates put this carbon between 500, 2500 Gt, or 3,000 Gt.


title: Carbon

text: In the past, quantities of hydrocarbons were greater. According to one source, in the period from 1751 to 2008 about 347 gigatonnes of carbon were released as carbon dioxide to the atmosphere from burning of fossil fuels. Another source puts the amount added to the atmosphere for the period since 1750 at 879 Gt, and the total going to the atmosphere, sea, and land (such as peat bogs) at almost 2,000 Gt.


title: Carbon

text: Carbon is a constituent (about 12% by mass) of the very large masses of carbonate rock (limestone, dolomite, marble and so on). Coal is very rich in carbon (anthracite contains 92–98%) and is the largest commercial source of mineral carbon, accounting for 4,000 gigatonnes or 80% of fossil fuel.


title: Carbon

text: As for individual carbon allotropes, graphite is found in large quantities in the United States (mostly in New York and Texas), Russia, Mexico, Greenland, and India. Natural diamonds occur in the rock kimberlite, found in ancient volcanic "necks", or "pipes". Most diamond deposits are in Africa, notably in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, the Republic of the Congo, and Sierra Leone. Diamond deposits have also been found in Arkansas, Canada, the Russian Arctic, Brazil, and in Northern and Western Australia. Diamonds are now also being recovered from the ocean floor off the Cape of Good Hope. Diamonds are found naturally, but about 30% of all industrial diamonds used in the U.S. are now manufactured.


title: Carbon

text: Carbon-14 is formed in upper layers of the troposphere and the stratosphere at altitudes of 9–15 km by a reaction that is precipitated by cosmic rays. Thermal neutrons are produced that collide with the nuclei of nitrogen-14, forming carbon-14 and a proton. As such, of atmospheric carbon dioxide contains carbon-14.


title: Carbon

text: Carbon-rich asteroids are relatively preponderant in the outer parts of the asteroid belt in the Solar System. These asteroids have not yet been directly sampled by scientists. The asteroids can be used in hypothetical space-based carbon mining, which may be possible in the future, but is currently technologically impossible.


title: Carbon

text: Isotopes of carbon are atomic nuclei that contain six protons plus a number of neutrons (varying from 2 to 16). Carbon has two stable, naturally occurring isotopes. The isotope carbon-12 (C) forms 98.93% of the carbon on Earth, while carbon-13 (C) forms the remaining 1.07%. The concentration of C is further increased in biological materials because biochemical reactions discriminate against C. In 1961, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) adopted the isotope carbon-12 as the basis for atomic weights. Identification of carbon in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments is done with the isotope C.


title: Carbon

text: Carbon-14 (C) is a naturally occurring radioisotope, created in the upper atmosphere (lower stratosphere and upper troposphere) by interaction of nitrogen with cosmic rays. It is found in trace amounts on Earth of 1 part per trillion (0.0000000001%) or more, mostly confined to the atmosphere and superficial deposits, particularly of peat and other organic materials. This isotope decays by 0.158 MeV β emission. Because of its relatively short half-life of 5730 years, C is virtually absent in ancient rocks. The amount of C in the atmosphere and in living organisms is almost constant, but decreases predictably in their bodies after death. This principle is used in radiocarbon dating, invented in 1949, which has been used extensively to determine the age of carbonaceous materials with ages up to about 40,000 years.


title: Carbon

text: There are 15 known isotopes of carbon and the shortest-lived of these is C which decays through proton emission and alpha decay and has a half-life of 1.98739 × 10 s. The exotic C exhibits a nuclear halo, which means its radius is appreciably larger than would be expected if the nucleus were a sphere of constant density.


title: Carbon

text: Formation of the carbon atomic nucleus occurs within a giant or supergiant star through the triple-alpha process. This requires a nearly simultaneous collision of three alpha particles (helium nuclei), as the products of further nuclear fusion reactions of helium with hydrogen or another helium nucleus produce lithium-5 and beryllium-8 respectively, both of which are highly unstable and decay almost instantly back into smaller nuclei. The triple-alpha process happens in conditions of temperatures over 100 megakelvins and helium concentration that the rapid expansion and cooling of the early universe prohibited, and therefore no significant carbon was created during the Big Bang.


title: Carbon

text: According to current physical cosmology theory, carbon is formed in the interiors of stars on the horizontal branch. When massive stars die as supernova, the carbon is scattered into space as dust. This dust becomes component material for the formation of the next-generation star systems with accreted planets. The Solar System is one such star system with an abundance of carbon, enabling the existence of life as we know it.


title: Carbon

text: The CNO cycle is an additional hydrogen fusion mechanism that powers stars, wherein carbon operates as a catalyst.


title: Carbon

text: Rotational transitions of various isotopic forms of carbon monoxide (for example, CO, CO, and CO) are detectable in the submillimeter wavelength range, and are used in the study of newly forming stars in molecular clouds.


title: Carbon

text: Under terrestrial conditions, conversion of one element to another is very rare. Therefore, the amount of carbon on Earth is effectively constant. Thus, processes that use carbon must obtain it from somewhere and dispose of it somewhere else. The paths of carbon in the environment form the carbon cycle. For example, photosynthetic plants draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (or seawater) and build it into biomass, as in the Calvin cycle, a process of carbon fixation. Some of this biomass is eaten by animals, while some carbon is exhaled by animals as carbon dioxide. The carbon cycle is considerably more complicated than this short loop; for example, some carbon dioxide is dissolved in the oceans; if bacteria do not consume it, dead plant or animal matter may become petroleum or coal, which releases carbon when burned.


title: Carbon

text: Carbon can form very long chains of interconnecting carbon–carbon bonds, a property that is called catenation. Carbon-carbon bonds are strong and stable. Through catenation, carbon forms a countless number of compounds. A tally of unique compounds shows that more contain carbon than do not. A similar claim can be made for hydrogen because most organic compounds contain hydrogen chemically bonded to carbon or another common element like oxygen or nitrogen.


title: Carbon

text: The simplest form of an organic molecule is the hydrocarbon—a large family of organic molecules that are composed of hydrogen atoms bonded to a chain of carbon atoms. A hydrocarbon backbone can be substituted by other atoms, known as heteroatoms. Common heteroatoms that appear in organic compounds include oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, and the nonradioactive halogens, as well as the metals lithium and magnesium. Organic compounds containing bonds to metal are known as organometallic compounds ("see below"). Certain groupings of atoms, often including heteroatoms, recur in large numbers of organic compounds. These collections, known as "functional groups", confer common reactivity patterns and allow for the systematic study and categorization of organic compounds. Chain length, shape and functional groups all affect the properties of organic molecules.


title: Carbon

text: In most stable compounds of carbon (and nearly all stable "organic" compounds), carbon obeys the octet rule and is "tetravalent", meaning that a carbon atom forms a total of four covalent bonds (which may include double and triple bonds). Exceptions include a small number of stabilized "carbocations" (three bonds, positive charge), "radicals" (three bonds, neutral), "carbanions" (three bonds, negative charge) and "carbenes" (two bonds, neutral), although these species are much more likely to be encountered as unstable, reactive intermediates.


title: Carbon

text: Carbon occurs in all known organic life and is the basis of organic chemistry. When united with hydrogen, it forms various hydrocarbons that are important to industry as refrigerants, lubricants, solvents, as chemical feedstock for the manufacture of plastics and petrochemicals, and as fossil fuels.


title: Carbon

text: When combined with oxygen and hydrogen, carbon can form many groups of important biological compounds including sugars, lignans, chitins, alcohols, fats, and aromatic esters, carotenoids and terpenes. With nitrogen it forms alkaloids, and with the addition of sulfur also it forms antibiotics, amino acids, and rubber products. With the addition of phosphorus to these other elements, it forms DNA and RNA, the chemical-code carriers of life, and adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the most important energy-transfer molecule in all living cells.


title: Carbon

text: Commonly carbon-containing compounds which are associated with minerals or which do not contain bonds to the other carbon atoms, halogens, or hydrogen, are treated separately from classical organic compounds; the definition is not rigid, and the classification of some compounds can vary from author to author (see reference articles above). Among these are the simple oxides of carbon. The most prominent oxide is carbon dioxide (). This was once the principal constituent of the paleoatmosphere, but is a minor component of the Earth's atmosphere today. Dissolved in water, it forms carbonic acid (), but as most compounds with multiple single-bonded oxygens on a single carbon it is unstable. Through this intermediate, though, resonance-stabilized carbonate ions are produced. Some important minerals are carbonates, notably calcite. Carbon disulfide () is similar. Nevertheless, due to its physical properties and its association with organic synthesis, carbon disulfide is sometimes classified as an "organic" solvent.


title: Carbon

text: The other common oxide is carbon monoxide (CO). It is formed by incomplete combustion, and is a colorless, odorless gas. The molecules each contain a triple bond and are fairly polar, resulting in a tendency to bind permanently to hemoglobin molecules, displacing oxygen, which has a lower binding affinity. Cyanide (CN), has a similar structure, but behaves much like a halide ion (pseudohalogen). For example, it can form the nitride cyanogen molecule ((CN)), similar to diatomic halides. Likewise, the heavier analog of cyanide, cyaphide (CP), is also considered inorganic, though most simple derivatives are highly unstable. Other uncommon oxides are carbon suboxide (), the unstable dicarbon monoxide (CO), carbon trioxide (CO), cyclopentanepentone (CO), cyclohexanehexone (CO), and mellitic anhydride (CO). However, mellitic anhydride is the triple acyl anhydride of mellitic acid; moreover, it contains a benzene ring. Thus, many chemists consider it to be organic.


title: Carbon

text: With reactive metals, such as tungsten, carbon forms either carbides (C) or acetylides () to form alloys with high melting points. These anions are also associated with methane and acetylene, both very weak acids. With an electronegativity of 2.5, carbon prefers to form covalent bonds. A few carbides are covalent lattices, like carborundum (SiC), which resembles diamond. Nevertheless, even the most polar and salt-like of carbides are not completely ionic compounds.


title: Carbon

text: Organometallic compounds by definition contain at least one carbon-metal covalent bond. A wide range of such compounds exist; major classes include simple alkyl-metal compounds (for example, tetraethyllead), η-alkene compounds (for example, Zeise's salt), and η-allyl compounds (for example, allylpalladium chloride dimer); metallocenes containing cyclopentadienyl ligands (for example, ferrocene); and transition metal carbene complexes. Many metal carbonyls and metal cyanides exist (for example, tetracarbonylnickel and potassium ferricyanide); some workers consider metal carbonyl and cyanide complexes without other carbon ligands to be purely inorganic, and not organometallic. However, most organometallic chemists consider metal complexes with any carbon ligand, even 'inorganic carbon' (e.g., carbonyls, cyanides, and certain types of carbides and acetylides) to be organometallic in nature. Metal complexes containing organic ligands without a carbon-metal covalent bond (e.g., metal carboxylates) are termed "metalorganic" compounds.


title: Carbon

text: While carbon is understood to strongly prefer formation of four covalent bonds, other exotic bonding schemes are also known. Carboranes are highly stable dodecahedral derivatives of the [BH] unit, with one BH replaced with a CH. Thus, the carbon is bonded to five boron atoms and one hydrogen atom. The cation [(PhPAu)C] contains an octahedral carbon bound to six phosphine-gold fragments. This phenomenon has been attributed to the aurophilicity of the gold ligands, which provide additional stabilization of an otherwise labile species. In nature, the iron-molybdenum cofactor (FeMoco) responsible for microbial nitrogen fixation likewise has an octahedral carbon center (formally a carbide, C(-IV)) bonded to six iron atoms. In 2016, it was confirmed that, in line with earlier theoretical predictions, the hexamethylbenzene dication contains a carbon atom with six bonds. More specifically, the dication could be described structurally by the formulation [MeC(η-CMe)], making it an "organic metallocene" in which a MeC fragment is bonded to a η-CMe fragment through all five of the carbons of the ring.


title: Carbon

text: It is important to note that in the cases above, each of the bonds to carbon contain less than two formal electron pairs. Thus, the formal electron count of these species does not exceed an octet. This makes them hypercoordinate but not hypervalent. Even in cases of alleged 10-C-5 species (that is, a carbon with five ligands and a formal electron count of ten), as reported by Akiba and co-workers, electronic structure calculations conclude that the electron population around carbon is still less than eight, as is true for other compounds featuring four-electron three-center bonding.


title: Carbon

text: The English name "carbon" comes from the Latin "carbo" for coal and charcoal, whence also comes the French "charbon", meaning charcoal. In German, Dutch and Danish, the names for carbon are "Kohlenstoff", "koolstof" and "kulstof" respectively, all literally meaning coal-substance.


title: Carbon

text: Carbon was discovered in prehistory and was known in the forms of soot and charcoal to the earliest human civilizations. Diamonds were known probably as early as 2500 BCE in China, while carbon in the form of charcoal was made around Roman times by the same chemistry as it is today, by heating wood in a pyramid covered with clay to exclude air.


title: Carbon

text: In 1722, René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur demonstrated that iron was transformed into steel through the absorption of some substance, now known to be carbon. In 1772, Antoine Lavoisier showed that diamonds are a form of carbon; when he burned samples of charcoal and diamond and found that neither produced any water and that both released the same amount of carbon dioxide per gram.


title: Carbon

text: In 1779, Carl Wilhelm Scheele showed that graphite, which had been thought of as a form of lead, was instead identical with charcoal but with a small admixture of iron, and that it gave "aerial acid" (his name for carbon dioxide) when oxidized with nitric acid. In 1786, the French scientists Claude Louis Berthollet, Gaspard Monge and C. A. Vandermonde confirmed that graphite was mostly carbon by oxidizing it in oxygen in much the same way Lavoisier had done with diamond. Some iron again was left, which the French scientists thought was necessary to the graphite structure. In their publication they proposed the name "carbone" (Latin "carbonum") for the element in graphite which was given off as a gas upon burning graphite. Antoine Lavoisier then listed carbon as an element in his 1789 textbook.


title: Carbon

text: A new allotrope of carbon, fullerene, that was discovered in 1985 includes nanostructured forms such as buckyballs and nanotubes. Their discoverers – Robert Curl, Harold Kroto and Richard Smalley – received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996. The resulting renewed interest in new forms led to the discovery of further exotic allotropes, including glassy carbon, and the realization that "amorphous carbon" is not strictly amorphous.


title: Carbon

text: Commercially viable natural deposits of graphite occur in many parts of the world, but the most important sources economically are in China, India, Brazil and North Korea. Graphite deposits are of metamorphic origin, found in association with quartz, mica and feldspars in schists, gneisses and metamorphosed sandstones and limestone as lenses or veins, sometimes of a metre or more in thickness. Deposits of graphite in Borrowdale, Cumberland, England were at first of sufficient size and purity that, until the 19th century, pencils were made by sawing blocks of natural graphite into strips before encasing the strips in wood. Today, smaller deposits of graphite are obtained by crushing the parent rock and floating the lighter graphite out on water.


title: Carbon

text: There are three types of natural graphite—amorphous, flake or crystalline flake, and vein or lump. Amorphous graphite is the lowest quality and most abundant. Contrary to science, in industry "amorphous" refers to very small crystal size rather than complete lack of crystal structure. Amorphous is used for lower value graphite products and is the lowest priced graphite. Large amorphous graphite deposits are found in China, Europe, Mexico and the United States. Flake graphite is less common and of higher quality than amorphous; it occurs as separate plates that crystallized in metamorphic rock. Flake graphite can be four times the price of amorphous. Good quality flakes can be processed into expandable graphite for many uses, such as flame retardants. The foremost deposits are found in Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany and Madagascar. Vein or lump graphite is the rarest, most valuable, and highest quality type of natural graphite. It occurs in veins along intrusive contacts in solid lumps, and it is only commercially mined in Sri Lanka.


title: Carbon

text: According to the USGS, world production of natural graphite was 1.1 million tonnes in 2010, to which China contributed 800,000 t, India 130,000 t, Brazil 76,000 t, North Korea 30,000 t and Canada 25,000 t. No natural graphite was reported mined in the United States, but 118,000 t of synthetic graphite with an estimated value of $998 million was produced in 2009.


title: Carbon

text: The diamond supply chain is controlled by a limited number of powerful businesses, and is also highly concentrated in a small number of locations around the world (see figure).


title: Carbon

text: Only a very small fraction of the diamond ore consists of actual diamonds. The ore is crushed, during which care has to be taken in order to prevent larger diamonds from being destroyed in this process and subsequently the particles are sorted by density. Today, diamonds are located in the diamond-rich density fraction with the help of X-ray fluorescence, after which the final sorting steps are done by hand. Before the use of X-rays became commonplace, the separation was done with grease belts; diamonds have a stronger tendency to stick to grease than the other minerals in the ore.


title: Carbon

text: Historically diamonds were known to be found only in alluvial deposits in southern India. India led the world in diamond production from the time of their discovery in approximately the 9th century BC to the mid-18th century AD, but the commercial potential of these sources had been exhausted by the late 18th century and at that time India was eclipsed by Brazil where the first non-Indian diamonds were found in 1725.


title: Carbon

text: Diamond production of primary deposits (kimberlites and lamproites) only started in the 1870s after the discovery of the diamond fields in South Africa. Production has increased over time and an accumulated total of over 4.5 billion carats have been mined since that date. Most commercially viable diamond deposits were in Russia, Botswana, Australia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. By 2005, Russia produced almost one-fifth of the global diamond output (mostly in Yakutia territory; for example, Mir pipe and Udachnaya pipe) but the Argyle mine in Australia became the single largest source, producing 14 million carats in 2018. New finds, the Canadian mines at Diavik and Ekati, are expected to become even more valuable owing to their production of gem quality stones.


title: Carbon

text: In the United States, diamonds have been found in Arkansas, Colorado and Montana. In 2004, a startling discovery of a microscopic diamond in the United States led to the January 2008 bulk-sampling of kimberlite pipes in a remote part of Montana.


title: Carbon

text: Carbon is essential to all known living systems, and without it life as we know it could not exist (see alternative biochemistry). The major economic use of carbon other than food and wood is in the form of hydrocarbons, most notably the fossil fuel methane gas and crude oil (petroleum). Crude oil is distilled in refineries by the petrochemical industry to produce gasoline, kerosene, and other products. Cellulose is a natural, carbon-containing polymer produced by plants in the form of wood, cotton, linen, and hemp. Cellulose is used primarily for maintaining structure in plants. Commercially valuable carbon polymers of animal origin include wool, cashmere and silk. Plastics are made from synthetic carbon polymers, often with oxygen and nitrogen atoms included at regular intervals in the main polymer chain. The raw materials for many of these synthetic substances come from crude oil.


title: Carbon

text: The uses of carbon and its compounds are extremely varied. It can form alloys with iron, of which the most common is carbon steel. Graphite is combined with clays to form the 'lead' used in pencils used for writing and drawing. It is also used as a lubricant and a pigment, as a molding material in glass manufacture, in electrodes for dry batteries and in electroplating and electroforming, in brushes for electric motors and as a neutron moderator in nuclear reactors.


title: Carbon

text: Charcoal is used as a drawing material in artwork, barbecue grilling, iron smelting, and in many other applications. Wood, coal and oil are used as fuel for production of energy and heating. Gem quality diamond is used in jewelry, and industrial diamonds are used in drilling, cutting and polishing tools for machining metals and stone. Plastics are made from fossil hydrocarbons, and carbon fiber, made by pyrolysis of synthetic polyester fibers is used to reinforce plastics to form advanced, lightweight composite materials.


title: Carbon

text: Carbon fiber is made by pyrolysis of extruded and stretched filaments of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and other organic substances. The crystallographic structure and mechanical properties of the fiber depend on the type of starting material, and on the subsequent processing. Carbon fibers made from PAN have structure resembling narrow filaments of graphite, but thermal processing may re-order the structure into a continuous rolled sheet. The result is fibers with higher specific tensile strength than steel.


title: Carbon

text: Carbon black is used as the black pigment in printing ink, artist's oil paint and water colours, carbon paper, automotive finishes, India ink and laser printer toner. Carbon black is also used as a filler in rubber products such as tyres and in plastic compounds. Activated charcoal is used as an absorbent and adsorbent in filter material in applications as diverse as gas masks, water purification, and kitchen extractor hoods, and in medicine to absorb toxins, poisons, or gases from the digestive system. Carbon is used in chemical reduction at high temperatures. Coke is used to reduce iron ore into iron (smelting). Case hardening of steel is achieved by heating finished steel components in carbon powder. Carbides of silicon, tungsten, boron and titanium, are among the hardest known materials, and are used as abrasives in cutting and grinding tools. Carbon compounds make up most of the materials used in clothing, such as natural and synthetic textiles and leather, and almost all of the interior surfaces in the built environment other than glass, stone and metal.


title: Carbon

text: The diamond industry falls into two categories: one dealing with gem-grade diamonds and the other, with industrial-grade diamonds. While a large trade in both types of diamonds exists, the two markets function dramatically differently.


title: Carbon

text: Unlike precious metals such as gold or platinum, gem diamonds do not trade as a commodity: there is a substantial mark-up in the sale of diamonds, and there is not a very active market for resale of diamonds.


title: Carbon

text: Industrial diamonds are valued mostly for their hardness and heat conductivity, with the gemological qualities of clarity and color being mostly irrelevant. About 80% of mined diamonds (equal to about 100 million carats or 20 tonnes annually) are unsuitable for use as gemstones are relegated for industrial use (known as "bort)". synthetic diamonds, invented in the 1950s, found almost immediate industrial applications; 3 billion carats (600 tonnes) of synthetic diamond is produced annually.


title: Carbon

text: The dominant industrial use of diamond is in cutting, drilling, grinding, and polishing. Most of these applications do not require large diamonds; in fact, most diamonds of gem-quality except for their small size can be used industrially. Diamonds are embedded in drill tips or saw blades, or ground into a powder for use in grinding and polishing applications. Specialized applications include use in laboratories as containment for high pressure experiments (see diamond anvil cell), high-performance bearings, and limited use in specialized windows. With the continuing advances in the production of synthetic diamonds, new applications are becoming feasible. Garnering much excitement is the possible use of diamond as a semiconductor suitable for microchips, and because of its exceptional heat conductance property, as a heat sink in electronics.


title: Carbon

text: Pure carbon has extremely low toxicity to humans and can be handled safely in the form of graphite or charcoal. It is resistant to dissolution or chemical attack, even in the acidic contents of the digestive tract. Consequently, once it enters into the body's tissues it is likely to remain there indefinitely. Carbon black was probably one of the first pigments to be used for tattooing, and Ötzi the Iceman was found to have carbon tattoos that survived during his life and for 5200 years after his death. Inhalation of coal dust or soot (carbon black) in large quantities can be dangerous, irritating lung tissues and causing the congestive lung disease, coalworker's pneumoconiosis. Diamond dust used as an abrasive can be harmful if ingested or inhaled. Microparticles of carbon are produced in diesel engine exhaust fumes, and may accumulate in the lungs. In these examples, the harm may result from contaminants (e.g., organic chemicals, heavy metals) rather than from the carbon itself.


title: Carbon

text: Carbon generally has low toxicity to life on Earth; but carbon nanoparticles are deadly to "Drosophila".


title: Carbon

text: Carbon may burn vigorously and brightly in the presence of air at high temperatures. Large accumulations of coal, which have remained inert for hundreds of millions of years in the absence of oxygen, may spontaneously combust when exposed to air in coal mine waste tips, ship cargo holds and coal bunkers, and storage dumps.


title: Carbon

text: In nuclear applications where graphite is used as a neutron moderator, accumulation of Wigner energy followed by a sudden, spontaneous release may occur. Annealing to at least 250 °C can release the energy safely, although in the Windscale fire the procedure went wrong, causing other reactor materials to combust.


title: Carbon

text: The great variety of carbon compounds include such lethal poisons as tetrodotoxin, the lectin ricin from seeds of the castor oil plant "Ricinus communis", cyanide (CN), and carbon monoxide; and such essentials to life as glucose and protein.


title: Gary Cole

text: Gary Michael Cole (born September 20, 1956) is an American television, film and voice actor. Cole began his professional acting career on stage at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 1985. On television, he has had starring roles in the TV series "Midnight Caller", "American Gothic", "The West Wing", "Crusade", "The Good Wife", "The Good Fight", "Veep", "Chicago Fire", and "Mixed-ish". In film, he has appeared in "The Brady Bunch Movie", "One Hour Photo", "Office Space", "", "Breach", "", "Pineapple Express", and "In the Line of Fire". He is also known for voicing the title character on the Adult Swim series "Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law", Principal Shepherd on "Family Guy", Mayor Fred Jones Sr. on "Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated", and James Timothy Possible on "Kim Possible". As of season 19, Cole joined "NCIS", taking over from Mark Harmon, who left the show, as FBI Special Agent, and new head of Gibbs' team, Alden Parker.


title: Gary Cole

text: Gary Michael Cole was born on September 20, 1956, in Park Ridge, Illinois, and raised in nearby Rolling Meadows. His father, Robert, was a municipal finance director, and his mother, Margaret or "Peggy", was a school administrative assistant. Cole has an older sister, Nancy.


title: Gary Cole

text: While attending Rolling Meadows High School, Cole made his acting debut as Snoopy in a high school production of Clark Gesner's "Peanuts" musical "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown". Cole attended Illinois State University, where he studied theater as a classmate with fellow future actors Laurie Metcalf and John Malkovich.


title: Gary Cole

text: Cole began his professional career in 1983 as a stage actor in Chicago, where he joined the ensemble of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 1985. In an early role, Cole played accused Army triple-murderer Capt Jeffrey MacDonald in the mini-series "Fatal Vision". Cole has also appeared in several off-Broadway productions in New York City. He has done voice work on several animated series ("Family Guy"; "Kim Possible"; "Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law"; "Archer") and had a recurring role on the drama "The West Wing" as Vice President Bob Russell. He also starred as Captain Matthew Gideon on the short-lived "Babylon 5" spin-off "Crusade", and had notable guest appearances on "" and "Arrested Development". He also played Joe Maxwell on DCOM "Cadet Kelly" and appeared as real-life astronaut Edgar Mitchell in HBO's recreation of Project Apollo, "From the Earth to the Moon". One of his most notable roles in 1991 was as General Custer in the much acclaimed television film "Son of the Morning Star".


title: Gary Cole

text: Between 1988 and 1991, Cole became popular on TV for playing the part of Jack "Nighthawk" Killian in the series "Midnight Caller". In 1999, Cole starred in the film "Office Space", in which he portrayed the micromanaging office supervisor Bill Lumbergh. When asked about the oft-quoted character, Cole said: He played "The Brady Bunch" patriarch Mike Brady in the 1995 film "The Brady Bunch Movie", the 1996 sequel "A Very Brady Sequel", and the 2002 television film "The Brady Bunch in the White House".


title: Gary Cole

text: Cole starred as Lieutenant Conrad Rose on the TNT series "Wanted", he is also the voice of the title character on the Adult Swim series "Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law", and starred as Sheriff Lucas Buck on the one season 1995 show, "American Gothic". Cole also appeared in the films "", "Forever Strong", and "American Pastime".


title: Gary Cole

text: Cole played Katherine Mayfair's ex-husband Wayne on "Desperate Housewives" and has played the dangerous drug lord Ted Jones in "Pineapple Express" with Seth Rogen and James Franco. He also appeared in an episode from the third season of the USA Network series "Psych" as S.W.A.T. commander Cameron Luntz. Cole also played Bill Owens, Sy Parrish's (Robin Williams) boss, in the film "One Hour Photo".


title: Gary Cole

text: In 2008, Cole appeared on "Chuck" as Sarah's con-artist father (in "Chuck Versus the DeLorean"), a role which he reprised in 2011 (in "Chuck Versus the Wedding Planner"). He also appeared in the fifth season of HBO's "Entourage" playing Ari Gold's old pal Andrew Klein for a 3-episode story arc prior to joining the regular cast in the sixth season.


title: Gary Cole

text: He played ballistics expert Kurt McVeigh on "The Good Wife" and on "The Good Fight". In both cases, he played opposite Christine Baranski, who portrayed lawyer Diane Lockhart.


title: Gary Cole

text: Cole had a guest-appearance on the fourth season of the HBO series "True Blood", playing Sookie Stackhouse's grandfather.


title: Gary Cole

text: In 2013, Cole began a recurring role on "Suits" as Cameron Dennis, the former mentor of Harvey Specter, one of the show's main characters. Also in 2013, Cole began a major recurring role as Kent Davison on the HBO comedy series "Veep", joining the main cast at the start of the show's second season. In 2014, he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his work in season three. Additionally, Cole was nominated with his fellow cast members for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series for seasons 2, 3, 4, and 5 before ultimately winning the award in 2017 for season 6.


title: Gary Cole

text: Cole currently provides the voice of Sergeant Boscoe on "Bob's Burgers" and Principal Shepherd on "Family Guy". He appears in triplicate as 10 Minutes, 10 Days and 10 Years in the Future Spokesguy in Kabbage's 2019 commercial campaign.


title: Gary Cole

text: Cole married actress Teddi Siddall on March 8, 1992. Their daughter Mary is pursuing an acting career. On June 19, 2017, Siddall filed for divorce. Siddall died in 2018. On July 7 2021, Cole married interior designer Michelle Knapp.


title: Murphy's law

text: Murphy's law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." In some formulations, it is extended to "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time."


title: Murphy's law

text: The perceived perversity of the universe has long been a subject of comment, and precursors to the modern version of Murphy's law are abundant. Recent significant research in this area has been conducted by members of the American Dialect Society.


title: Murphy's law

text: "The first experiment already illustrates a truth of the theory, well confirmed by practice, what-ever can happen will happen if we make trials enough." In later publications "whatever can happen will happen" occasionally is termed "Murphy's law", which raises the possibility—if something went wrong—that "Murphy" is "De Morgan" misremembered (an option, among others, raised by Goranson on the American Dialect Society list).


title: Murphy's law

text: Society member Stephen Goranson has found a version of the law, not yet generalized or bearing that name, in a report by Alfred Holt at an 1877 meeting of an engineering society.


title: Murphy's law

text: It is found that anything that can go wrong at sea generally does go wrong sooner or later, so it is not to be wondered that owners prefer the safe to the scientific … Sufficient stress can hardly be laid on the advantages of simplicity. The human factor cannot be safely neglected in planning machinery. If attention is to be obtained, the engine must be such that the engineer will be disposed to attend to it.


title: Murphy's law

text: American Dialect Society member Bill Mullins has found a slightly broader version of the aphorism in reference to stage magic. The British stage magician Nevil Maskelyne wrote in 1908:


title: Murphy's law

text: It is an experience common to all men to find that, on any special occasion, such as the production of a magical effect for the first time in public, everything that "can" go wrong "will" go wrong. Whether we must attribute this to the malignity of matter or to the total depravity of inanimate things, whether the exciting cause is hurry, worry, or what not, the fact remains.


title: Murphy's law

text: In 1948, humorist Paul Jennings coined the term "resistentialism", a jocular play on "resistance" and "existentialism", to describe "seemingly spiteful behavior manifested by inanimate objects", where objects that cause problems (like lost keys or a runaway bouncy ball) are said to exhibit a high degree of malice toward humans.


title: Murphy's law

text: In 1949, according to Robert A.J. Matthews in a 1997 article in "Scientific American", lay the origin of the "name" "Murphy's law", whereas the "concept" itself had already long since been known to humans. As quoted by Richard Rhodes, Matthews said, "The familiar version of Murphy's law is not quite 50 years old, but the essential idea behind it has been around for centuries. […] The modern version of Murphy's Law has its roots in U.S. Air Force studies performed in 1949 on the effects of rapid deceleration on pilots." Matthews goes on to explain how Captain Edward A. Murphy was the eponym, but only because his original thought was modified subsequently into the now established form that is not exactly what he himself had said. Details are given below.


title: Murphy's law

text: In 1952, as an epigraph to a mountaineering book, John Sack described the same principle as an "ancient mountaineering adage":


title: Murphy's law

text: Differing recollections years later by various participants make it impossible to pinpoint who first coined the saying "Murphy's law". The law's name supposedly stems from an attempt to use new measurement devices developed by Edward A. Murphy. The phrase was coined in an adverse reaction to something Murphy said when his devices failed to perform and was eventually cast into its present form prior to a press conference some months later – the first ever (of many) given by John Stapp, a U.S. Air Force colonel and Flight Surgeon in the 1950s.


title: Murphy's law

text: From 1948 to 1949, Stapp headed research project MX981 at Muroc Army Air Field (later renamed Edwards Air Force Base) for the purpose of testing the human tolerance for g-forces during rapid deceleration. The tests used a rocket sled mounted on a railroad track with a series of hydraulic brakes at the end. Initial tests used a humanoid crash test dummy strapped to a seat on the sled, but subsequent tests were performed by Stapp, at that time an Air Force captain. During the tests, questions were raised about the accuracy of the instrumentation used to measure the g-forces Captain Stapp was experiencing. Edward Murphy proposed using electronic strain gauges attached to the restraining clamps of Stapp's harness to measure the force exerted on them by his rapid deceleration. Murphy was engaged in supporting similar research using high speed centrifuges to generate g-forces. Murphy's assistant wired the harness, and a trial was run using a chimpanzee.


title: Murphy's law

text: The sensors provided a zero reading; however, it became apparent that they had been installed incorrectly, with some sensors wired backwards. It was at this point that a disgusted Murphy made his pronouncement, despite being offered the time and chance to calibrate and test the sensor installation prior to the test proper, which he declined somewhat irritably, getting off on the wrong foot with the MX981 team. George Nichols, another engineer who was present, recalled in an interview that Murphy blamed the failure on his assistant after the failed test, saying, "If that guy has any way of making a mistake, he will." Nichols' account is that "Murphy's law" came about through conversation among the other members of the team; it was condensed to "If it can happen, it will happen", and named for Murphy in mockery of what Nichols perceived as arrogance on Murphy's part. Others, including Edward Murphy's surviving son Robert Murphy, deny Nichols' account, and claim that the phrase did originate with Edward Murphy. According to Robert Murphy's account, his father's statement was along the lines of "If there's more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then he will do it that way."


title: Murphy's law

text: The phrase first received public attention during a press conference in which Stapp was asked how it was that nobody had been severely injured during the rocket sled tests. Stapp replied that it was because they always took "Murphy's law" under consideration; he then summarized the law and said that in general, it meant that it was important to consider all the possibilities (possible things that could go wrong) before doing a test and act to counter them. Thus Stapp's usage and Murphy's alleged usage are very different in outlook and attitude. One is sour, the other an affirmation of the predictable being surmountable, usually by sufficient planning and redundancy. Nichols believes Murphy was unwilling to take the responsibility for the device's initial failure (by itself a blip of no large significance) and is to be doubly damned for not allowing the MX981 team time to validate the sensor's operability and for trying to blame an underling in the embarrassing aftermath.


title: Murphy's law

text: The association with the 1948 incident is by no means secure. Despite extensive research, no trace of documentation of the saying as "Murphy's law" has been found before 1951 (see above). The next citations are not found until 1955, when the May–June issue of "Aviation Mechanics Bulletin" included the line "Murphy's law: If an aircraft part can be installed incorrectly, someone will install it that way", and Lloyd Mallan's book, "Men, Rockets and Space Rats", referred to: "Colonel Stapp's favorite takeoff on sober scientific laws—Murphy's law, Stapp calls it—'Everything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong'." The Mercury astronauts in 1962 attributed Murphy's law to U.S. Navy training films.


title: Murphy's law

text: Fred R. Shapiro, the editor of the "Yale Book of Quotations", has shown that in 1952 the adage was called "Murphy's law" in a book by Anne Roe, quoting an unnamed physicist:


title: Murphy's law

text: he described [it] as "Murphy's law or the fourth law of thermodynamics" (actually there were only three last I heard) which states: "If anything can go wrong, it will."


title: Murphy's law

text: In May 1951, Anne Roe gives a transcript of an interview (part of a Thematic Apperception Test, asking impressions on a drawing) with Theoretical Physicist number 3: "As for himself he realized that this was the inexorable working of the second law of the thermodynamics which stated Murphy's law 'If anything can go wrong it will'. I always liked 'Murphy's law'. I was told that by an architect." Anne Roe's papers are in the American Philosophical Society archives in Philadelphia; those records (as noted by Stephen Goranson on the American Dialect Society list, December 31, 2008) identify the interviewed physicist as Howard Percy "Bob" Robertson (1903–1961). Robertson's papers are at the Caltech archives; there, in a letter Robertson offers Roe an interview within the first three months of 1949 (as noted by Goranson on American Dialect Society list, May 9, 2009). The Robertson interview apparently predated the Muroc scenario said to have occurred in or after June, 1949.


title: Murphy's law

text: The name "Murphy's law" was not immediately secure. A story by Lee Correy in the February 1955 issue of "Astounding Science Fiction" referred to "Reilly's law", which "states that in any scientific or engineering endeavor, anything that can go wrong "will" go wrong". Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss was quoted in the "Chicago Daily Tribune" on February 12, 1955, saying "I hope it will be known as Strauss' law. It could be stated about like this: If anything bad can happen, it probably will."


title: Murphy's law

text: Arthur Bloch, in the first volume (1977) of his "Murphy's Law, and Other Reasons Why Things Go WRONG" series, prints a letter that he received from George E. Nichols, a quality assurance manager with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Nichols recalled an event that occurred in 1949 at Edwards Air Force Base, Muroc, California that, according to him, is the origination of Murphy's law, and first publicly recounted by USAF Col. John Paul Stapp. An excerpt from the letter reads:


title: Murphy's law

text: The law's namesake was Capt. Ed Murphy, a development engineer from Wright Field Aircraft Lab. Frustration with a strap transducer which was malfunctioning due to an error in wiring the strain gage bridges caused him to remark – "If there is any way to do it wrong, he will" – referring to the technician who had wired the bridges at the Lab. I assigned Murphy's law to the statement and the associated variations.


title: Murphy's law

text: According to Richard Dawkins, so-called laws like Murphy's law and Sod's law are nonsense because they require inanimate objects to have desires of their own, or else to react according to one's own desires. Dawkins points out that a certain class of events may occur all the time, but are only noticed when they become a nuisance. He gives as an example aircraft noise interfering with filming. Aircraft are in the sky all the time, but are only taken note of when they cause a problem. This is a form of confirmation bias whereby the investigator seeks out evidence to confirm his already formed ideas, but does not look for evidence that contradicts them.


title: Murphy's law

text: Similarly, David Hand, emeritus professor of mathematics and senior research investigator at Imperial College London, points out that the law of truly large numbers should lead one to expect the kind of events predicted by Murphy's law to occur occasionally. Selection bias will ensure that those ones are remembered and the many times Murphy's law was not true are forgotten.


title: Murphy's law

text: There have been persistent references to Murphy's law associating it with the laws of thermodynamics from early on (see the quotation from Anne Roe's book above). In particular, Murphy's law is often cited as a form of the second law of thermodynamics (the law of entropy) because both are predicting a tendency to a more disorganised state. Atanu Chatterjee investigated this idea by formally stating Murphy's law in mathematical terms. Chatterjee found that Murphy's law so stated could be disproved using the principle of least action.


title: Murphy's law

text: From its initial public announcement, Murphy's law quickly spread to various technical cultures connected to aerospace engineering. Before long, variants had passed into the popular imagination, changing as they went.


title: Murphy's law

text: Author Arthur Bloch has compiled a number of books full of corollaries to Murphy's law and variations thereof. The first of these was "Murphy's law and other reasons why things go wrong!".


title: Murphy's law

text: Yhprum's law, where the name is spelled backwards, is "anything that can go right, will go right" – the optimistic application of Murphy's law in reverse.


title: Murphy's law

text: Peter Drucker, the management consultant, with a nod to Murphy, formulated "Drucker's Law" in dealing with complexity of management: "If one thing goes wrong, everything else will, and at the same time."


title: Murphy's law

text: "Mrs. Murphy's Law" is a corollary of Murphy's Law. It states that things will go wrong when Mr. Murphy is away, as in this formulation:


title: Murphy's law

text: The 2014 movie "Interstellar" includes an alternate, optimistic interpretation of Murphy's Law. Protagonist Joseph Cooper says to his daughter, named Murphy, that "A Murphy's law doesn't mean that something bad will happen. It means that whatever "can" happen, will happen."


title: Raveena Tandon

text: Raveena Tandon (born 26 October 1972) is an Indian actress who works in Hindi films. The daughter of director Ravi Tandon, she made her acting debut in the 1991 action film "Patthar Ke Phool", which won her the Filmfare Award for New Face of the Year. Tandon established herself by playing the leading lady in the commercially successful action dramas "Dilwale" (1994), "Mohra" (1994), "Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi" (1996), and "Ziddi" (1997).


title: Raveena Tandon

text: She earned a nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 1994 drama "Laadla" and in the late 1990s, she collaborated with Govinda in several successful comedies, including "Bade Miyan Chote Miyan" (1998), "Dulhe Raja" (1998) and "Anari No.1" (1999). She also played against type in the crime dramas "Ghulam-E-Mustafa" (1997) and "Shool" (1999).


title: Raveena Tandon

text: In the 2000s, Tandon ventured into arthouse cinema with roles in the 2001 films "Daman" and "Aks", both of which garnered her critical acclaim, winning the National Film Award for Best Actress for the former and the Filmfare Special Performance Award for the latter. Post her marriage with film distributor Anil Thadani, Tandon took a break from films. She intermittently appeared on television with shows like the Sahara One drama "Sahib Biwi Gulam" (2004), the dance reality show "Chak De Bachche" (2008) and talk shows "Isi Ka Naam Zindagi" (2012) and "Simply Baatien With Raveena" (2014). After several years of hiatus, Tandon starred in the thriller "Maatr" (2017) and appeared in a supporting role in "" (2022). In 2021, she received praise for starring in the Netflix crime thriller web series "Aranyak".


title: Raveena Tandon

text: Tandon is also an environmentalist and has worked with PETA since 2002. Tandon has four children, two adopted and two with her husband.


title: Raveena Tandon

text: Tandon was born in Bombay (present-day Mumbai) to Ravi Tandon and Veena Tandon. Tandon is a niece of character actor Mac Mohan and thus a cousin of Manjari Makijany, his daughter. She has a brother Rajiv Tandon, who was married to actress Rakhi Tandon. She is also a cousin of actress Kiran Rathod. She started her career as a model.


title: Raveena Tandon

text: She received her education at Jamnabai Narsee School in Juhu and attended Mithibai College in Mumbai. During her internship at Genesis PR, she got her first film offer. In an interview with "Rediff" Tandon stated, I never thought I would become an actress. I was an intern at Genesis PR, helping [ad-man] Prahlad Kakkar, when friends and people around me started complimenting my looks. But [photographer-director] Shantanu Sheorey gave me the first break. He called and said he wanted to shoot with me. That was the time when models were becoming actors. I refused film offers. Prahlad kept saying millions of people are waiting for this chance and you keep refusing it. So I thought there is nothing to lose. Then Patthar Ke Phool happened.


title: Raveena Tandon

text: Tandon debuted with the film "Patthar Ke Phool" (1991) which was a hit; she received the Filmfare Award for Lux New Face of the Year for her performance. The film resulted in a breakthrough in her film career, and predominantly established her as an overnight star.


title: Raveena Tandon

text: In 1992, she starred opposite Sanjay Dutt in "Jeena Marna Tere Sang". The film was her only release of the year, and proved a moderate success. In 1993, Tandon had seven film releases. Dramas like "Kshatriya" and "Divya Shakti" were moderate successes. That year, she also starred in her Telugu cinema debut "Bangaru Bullodu", which was recorded as a hit at the box office.


title: Raveena Tandon

text: In 1994, Tandon established her status in the Bollywood film Industry as the leading lady of the cinema at the time, by appearing in ten features: out of which most of them were successful and four films were the amongst one of the highest grossing productions of the year and they were: "Mohra", "Dilwale", "", and "Laadla". She was nicknamed "Mast Mast Girl" after her performance in song "Tu cheez badi hai mast mast "in film "Mohra". "Laadla" also earned her a nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other releases of that year included the thriller "Imtihaan" with "Sunny Deol" in lead and "Saif Ali Khan" and the cult comedy "Andaz Apna Apna", the lattermost was a semi hit at the box office upon its release, and was not a major commercial success but has attained a cult status since years. Her Tamil debut "Sadhu", was also a critical and commercial success. Her another release of the year: "Zamane Se Kya Darna" was profitable at the ticket window and emerged as a moderate success.


title: Raveena Tandon

text: In 1994, Tandon established her status in the Bollywood film Industry as the leading lady of the cinema at the time, by appearing in ten features: out of which most of them were successful and four films were the amongst one of the highest grossing productions of the year and they were: "Mohra", "Dilwale", "", and "Laadla". She was nicknamed "Mast Mast Girl" after her performance in song "Tu cheez badi hai mast mast" in film "Mohra". "Laadla" also earned her a nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other releases of that year included the thriller "Imtihaan" with "Sunny Deol" in lead and "Saif Ali Khan" and the cult comedy "Andaz Apna Apna", the lattermost was a semi hit at the box office upon its release, and was not a major commercial success but has attained a cult status since years. Her Tamil debut "Sadhu", was also a critical and commercial success. Her another release of the year: "Zamane Se Kya Darna" was profitable at the ticket window and emerged as a moderate success.


title: Raveena Tandon

text: In 1995, she starred with Shah Rukh Khan for the first time in "Zamaana Deewana"; the film failed to do well. Her career was back on track with hit films such as "Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi" (1996) and "Ziddi" (1997) opposite "Sunny Deol", become the blockbuster hit of that year and "Salaakhen" (1998).


title: Raveena Tandon

text: In 1998, Tandon reinforced her status as a leading lady by appearing in two critically and commercially successful productions: "Dulhe Raja" and "Bade Miyan Chote Miyan", and both of them proved to be one of the highest grossing films of the year. Her last release of that year, "Bade Miyan Chote Miyan", co-starring Amitabh Bachchan and Govinda turned out to be the second biggest hit of the year. Tandon was offered the second lead in "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai" which went on to be the biggest hit of 1998, but she turned it down. Her other releases of that year were "Gharwali Baharwali", "", "Pardesi Babu" and "Aunty No. 1", some of which were moderate critical and commercial successes.


title: Raveena Tandon

text: In 1999, Tandon starred opposite Upendra in his self-titled Kannada psychological thriller film, "Upendra", a box office success. She also starred in "Anari No.1", which was a critical and commercial success. She also received praise from critics for her performance in "Shool".


title: Raveena Tandon

text: In the 2000s, Tandon ventured into art house productions, to learn a realistic way of acting, and rejected several mainstream film offers. Tandon worked in films such as "Bulandi" (2000) and "Aks" (2001), which won her huge acclaim from the critics. She won many awards as well as the Filmfare Special Performance Award for her performance in Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's "Aks".


title: Raveena Tandon

text: Her years in the industry paid off when she won the coveted National Film Award for Best Actress for her performance in Kalpana Lajmi's "Daman: A Victim of Marital Violence" (2001), where she played a battered wife to an abusive husband. She surprised critics and audiences with her performance in the film and received much appreciation for her work. Critic Taran Adarsh said: "Raveena Tandon lends credibility to the role of a battered wife and walks away with the honours. The pathos she conveys through her expressions makes you realise that she's a performer of substance".


title: Raveena Tandon

text: Since then, she has starred in a number of critically acclaimed films, such as "Satta" (2003) and "Dobara" (2004), but has not had much box office success. Her role as a middle-class woman thrust into the world of politics in the former was praised. Critic Taran Adarsh wrote: "Raveena Tandon delivers a bravura performance. The actress takes giant strides as a performer, giving the right touches to her character. Here's a performance that's bound to be noticed". Her role as a schizophrenic in "Dobara" was also praised with one critic saying: "Raveena is in sync with her character, playing her part with elaan". Tandon also worked in the Sahara One television series "Sahib Biwi Gulam", based on the 1953 Bengali novel "Saheb Bibi Golam" by Bimal Mitra.


title: Raveena Tandon

text: Her only release in 2006 was "Sandwich" which opened to poor reviews and reception. After doing several films, she took a break from actively appearing in films.


title: Raveena Tandon

text: In 2014, she judged season 1 of "CEO's Got Talent" on CNBC TV18 with Mahesh Bhatt and Raj Nayak. In 2015, she made a comeback to Bollywood in longtime friend Anurag Kashyap's magnum opus "Bombay Velvet". Playing a sultry jazz singer, her brief performance was highly praised by critics.


title: Raveena Tandon

text: In 2017, she was seen in the thriller movie "Maatr" in which she plays a mother who seeks revenge for her daughter's rape. Her performance was lauded and she gained critical acclaim for her performance. Her next release of the year was Onir's "Shab", where she plays a socialite.


title: Raveena Tandon

text: In 2021, Tandon made her OTT debut with the Netflix crime thriller web series "Aranyak", and received positive reviews for her performance. In 2022, Tandon appeared in a pivotal role in "" which became third highest-grossing Indian film of all time. Tandon will appear alongside Sanjay Dutt in the romantic comedy film "Ghudchadi" by Binoy Gandhi, slated for a late 2022 release.


title: Raveena Tandon

text: Tandon was chairperson of the Children's Film Society of India from 2003, but from 2004 the actress began to get complaints that she did not attend the organisation's meetings and that she was not involved with the activities set up by the society. In September 2005, Tandon resigned from her post citing personal reasons.


title: Raveena Tandon

text: In November 2005, Tandon sued the websites, "Shaadi.com" and "Shaaditimes.com", claiming that they were using unauthorised images of her to promote the site. She also sued the owner of Satyanet Solutions, as they claimed that Tandon and her husband had met through the website.


title: Raveena Tandon

text: In November 2002, Tandon sang to support People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. She has posed in many advertisement campaigns joining the likes of John Abraham, Shilpa Shetty and Amisha Patel. On the issue of cows being slaughtered for their skin, she said "Their abuse at the hands of corrupt skin and meat traders must be stopped".


title: Raveena Tandon

text: Tandon adopted two girls, Pooja and Chhaya, as a single mother in 1995 when they were 11 and 8-years-old, respectively. During late 90s she was dating Akshay Kumar, and had announced him as her boyfriend.


title: Raveena Tandon

text: She began dating film distributor Anil Thadani during the making of her film "Stumped" (2003). Their engagement was announced in November 2003 and she married Thadani on 22 February 2004, in Jag Mandir Palace in Udaipur, Rajasthan according to Punjabi traditions. In March 2005, Tandon gave birth to her daughter Rasha. In July 2008, she gave birth to her son Ranbirvardhan.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Michael Rubens Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is an American businessman, politician, philanthropist, and author. He is the majority owner, co-founder and CEO of Bloomberg L.P. He was Mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013, and was a candidate for the 2020 Democratic nomination for President of the United States. He has served as chair of the Defense Innovation Board, an independent advisory board that provides recommendations on artificial intelligence, software, data and digital modernization to the United States Department of Defense, since June 2022.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Bloomberg grew up in Medford, Massachusetts, and graduated from Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Business School. He began his career at the securities brokerage Salomon Brothers before forming his own company in 1981. That company, Bloomberg L.P., is a financial information, software and media firm that is known for its Bloomberg Terminal. Bloomberg spent the next twenty years as its chairman and CEO. As of June 2022, "Forbes" ranked him as the sixteenth-richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$82 billion and ranked 14th in Forbes 400 with net worth $55 billion. Since signing The Giving Pledge, Bloomberg has given away $8.2 billion to philanthropic causes.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Bloomberg was elected the 108th mayor of New York City, and the city's third Jewish mayor. First elected in 2001, he held office for three consecutive terms, winning re-election in 2005 and 2009. Pursuing socially liberal and fiscally moderate policies, Bloomberg developed a technocratic managerial style.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: As the mayor of New York, Bloomberg established public charter schools, rebuilt urban infrastructure, and supported gun control, public health initiatives, and environmental protections. He also led a rezoning of large areas of the city, which facilitated massive and widespread new commercial and residential construction after the September 11 attacks. Bloomberg is considered to have had far-reaching influence on the politics, business sector, and culture of New York City during his three terms as mayor. He has also faced significant criticism for his expansion of the city's stop and frisk program, support for which he reversed with an apology before his 2020 presidential run.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: After a brief stint as a full-time philanthropist, he re-assumed the position of CEO at Bloomberg L.P. by the end of 2014. In November 2019, Bloomberg officially launched his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States in the 2020 election. He ended his campaign in March 2020, after having won only 61 delegates. Bloomberg self-funded $935 million for his candidacy, which set the record for the most expensive U.S. presidential primary campaign.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Bloomberg was born on February 14, 1942, at St. Elizabeth's Hospital, in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston, to William Henry Bloomberg (1906–1963), a bookkeeper for a dairy company, and Charlotte (née Rubens) Bloomberg (1909–2011). The Bloomberg Center at the Harvard Business School was named in William Henry's honor. Bloomberg's family is Jewish, and he is a member of the Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan. Bloomberg's paternal grandfather, Rabbi Alexander "Elick" Bloomberg, was a Polish Jew. Bloomberg's maternal grandfather, Max Rubens, was a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant from present-day Belarus, and his maternal grandmother was born in New York to Lithuanian Jewish parents.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: The family lived in Allston until Bloomberg was two years old, followed by Brookline, Massachusetts, for two years, finally settling in the Boston suburb of Medford, Massachusetts, where he lived until after he graduated from college.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Bloomberg became an Eagle Scout when he was twelve years old. He graduated from Medford High School in 1960. He went on to attend Johns Hopkins University, where he joined the fraternity Phi Kappa Psi. While there, he constructed the blue jay costume for the university's mascot. He graduated in 1964 with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering. In 1966, he graduated from Harvard Business School with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Bloomberg is a member of Kappa Beta Phi and Tau Beta Pi. He wrote an autobiography, "Bloomberg by Bloomberg", with help from Bloomberg News editor-in-chief Matthew Winkler.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: In 1973, Bloomberg became a general partner at Salomon Brothers, a large Wall Street investment bank, where he headed equity trading and, later, systems development. Phibro Corporation bought Salomon Brothers in 1981, and the new management fired Bloomberg, paying him $10 million for his equity in the firm.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Using this money, Bloomberg, having designed in-house computerized financial systems for Salomon, set up a data services company named Innovative Market Systems (IMS) based on his belief that Wall Street would pay a premium for high-quality business information, delivered instantaneously on computer terminals in a variety of usable formats. The company sold customized computer terminals that delivered real-time market data, financial calculations and other analytics to Wall Street firms. The terminal, first called the Market Master terminal, was released to market in December 1982.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: In 1986, the company renamed itself Bloomberg L.P. Over the years, ancillary products including Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Radio, Bloomberg Message, and Bloomberg Tradebook were launched. Bloomberg, L.P. had revenues of approximately $10 billion in 2018. As of 2019, the company has more than 325,000 terminal subscribers worldwide and employs 20,000 people in dozens of locations.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: The culture of the company in the 1980s and 1990s has been compared to a fraternity, with employees bragging in the company's office about their sexual exploits. The company was sued four times by female employees for sexual harassment, including one incident in which a victim claimed to have been raped. To celebrate Bloomberg's 48th birthday, colleagues published a pamphlet entitled "". Among various sayings that were attributed to him, several have subsequently been criticized as sexist or misogynistic.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: When he left the position of CEO to pursue a political career as the mayor of New York City, Bloomberg was replaced by Lex Fenwick and later by Daniel L. Doctoroff, after his initial service as deputy mayor under Bloomberg. After completing his final term as the mayor of New York City, Bloomberg spent his first eight months out of office as a full-time philanthropist. In fall 2014, he announced that he would return to Bloomberg L.P. as CEO at the end of 2014, succeeding Doctoroff, who had led the company since February 2008. Bloomberg resigned as CEO of Bloomberg L.P. to run for president in 2019.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: In March 2009, "Forbes" reported Bloomberg's wealth at $16 billion, a gain of $4.5 billion over the previous year, the world's biggest increase in wealth from 2008 to 2009. Bloomberg moved from 142nd to 17th in the "Forbes" list of the world's billionaires in only two years. In the 2019 "Forbes" list of the world's billionaires, he was the ninth-richest person; his net worth was estimated at $55.5 billion. Currently, Bloomberg's net worth is estimated at $59 billion, ranking him 20th on "Forbes"' list of billionaires.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Bloomberg assumed office as the 108th mayor of New York City on January 1, 2002. He won re-election in 2005 and again in 2009. As mayor, he initially struggled with approval ratings as low as 24 percent; however, he subsequently developed and maintained high approval ratings. Bloomberg joined Rudy Giuliani, John Lindsay, and Fiorello La Guardia as re-elected Republican mayors in the mostly Democratic city.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Bloomberg stated that he wanted public education reform to be the legacy of his first term and addressing poverty to be the legacy of his second.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Bloomberg chose to apply a statistical, metrics-based management approach to city government, and granted departmental commissioners broad autonomy in their decision-making. Breaking with 190 years of tradition, he implemented what "New York Times" political reporter Adam Nagourney called a "bullpen" open office plan, similar to a Wall Street trading floor, in which dozens of aides and managerial staff are seated together in a large chamber. The design is intended to promote accountability and accessibility.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: As mayor, Bloomberg turned the city's $6 billion budget deficit into a $3 billion surplus, largely by raising property taxes. Bloomberg increased city funding for the new development of affordable housing through a plan that created and preserved an estimated 160,000 affordable homes in the city. In 2003, he implemented a successful smoking ban in all indoor workplaces, including bars and restaurants, and many other cities and states followed suit. On December 5, 2006, New York City became the first city in the United States to ban trans-fat from all restaurants. This went into effect in July 2008 and has since been adopted in many other cities and countries. Bloomberg created bicycle lanes, required chain restaurants to post calorie counts, and pedestrianized much of Times Square. In 2011, Bloomberg launched the NYC Young Men's Initiative, a $127 million initiative to support programs and policies designed to address disparities between young Black and Latino men and their peers, and personally donated $30 million to the project. In 2010, Bloomberg supported the then-controversial Islamic complex near Ground Zero.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Under the Bloomberg Administration, the New York City Police Department greatly expanded its stop and frisk program, with a sixfold increase in documented stops. The policy was challenged in U.S. Federal Court, which ruled that the city's implementation of the policy violated citizens' rights under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution and encouraged racial profiling. Bloomberg's administration appealed the ruling; however, his successor, Mayor Bill de Blasio, dropped the appeal and allowed the ruling to take effect. After the September 11 attacks, with assistance from the Central Intelligence Agency, Bloomberg's administration oversaw a controversial program that surveilled Muslim communities on the basis of their religion, ethnicity, and language. The program was discontinued in 2014.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: In a January 2014 Quinnipiac poll, 64 percent of voters called Bloomberg's 12 years as mayor "mainly a success".


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: In 2001, New York's Republican mayor Rudy Giuliani, was ineligible for re-election due to the city's limit of two consecutive terms. Bloomberg, who had been a lifelong member of the Democratic Party, decided to run for mayor on the Republican ticket. Voting in the primary began on the morning of September 11, 2001. The primary was postponed later that day, due to the September 11 attacks. In the rescheduled primary, Bloomberg defeated Herman Badillo, a former Democratic congressman, to become the Republican nominee. After a runoff, the Democratic nomination went to New York City Public Advocate Mark J. Green.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Bloomberg received Giuliani's endorsement to succeed him in the 2001 election. He also had a huge campaign spending advantage. Although New York City's campaign finance law restricts the amount of contributions that a candidate can accept, Bloomberg chose not to use public funds and therefore his campaign was not subject to these restrictions. He spent $73 million of his own money on his campaign, outspending Green five to one. One of the major themes of his campaign was that, with the city's economy suffering from the effects of the World Trade Center attacks, it needed a mayor with business experience.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: In addition to running on the Republican line, Bloomberg ran on the ticket of the controversial Independence Party, in which "Social Therapy" leaders Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani exerted strong influence. Bloomberg's votes on that line exceeded his margin of victory over Green. (Under New York's fusion rules, a candidate can run on more than one party's line and combine all the votes received.) Another factor was the vote in Staten Island, which has traditionally been friendlier to Republicans than the rest of the city. Bloomberg received 75 percent of the vote in Staten Island. Overall, he won 50.3 percent to 47.9 percent.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: In the wake of the September 11 attacks, Bloomberg's administration made a successful bid to host the 2004 Republican National Convention. The convention drew thousands of protesters, among them New Yorkers who despised George W. Bush and the Bush administration's pursuit of the Iraq War.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Bloomberg was re-elected mayor in November 2005 by a margin of 20 percent, the widest margin ever for a Republican mayor of New York City. He spent almost $78 million on his campaign, exceeding the record of $74 million he spent on the previous election. In late 2004 or early 2005, Bloomberg gave the Independence Party of New York $250,000 to fund a phone bank seeking to recruit volunteers for his re-election campaign.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer won the Democratic nomination to oppose Bloomberg in the general election. Thomas Ognibene sought to run against Bloomberg in the Republican Party's primary election. The Bloomberg campaign successfully challenged the signatures Ognibene submitted to the Board of Elections to prevent Ognibene from appearing on ballots for the Republican primary. Instead, Ognibene ran on only the Conservative Party ticket. Ognibene accused Bloomberg of betraying Republican Party ideals, a feeling echoed by others.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Bloomberg opposed the confirmation of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States. Bloomberg is a staunch supporter of abortion rights and did not believe that Roberts was committed to maintaining "Roe v. Wade". In addition to Republican support, Bloomberg obtained the endorsements of several prominent Democrats: former Democratic mayor Ed Koch; former Democratic governor Hugh Carey; former Democratic City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, and his son, Councilman Peter Vallone Jr.; former Democratic Congressman Floyd Flake (who had previously endorsed Bloomberg in 2001), and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: On October 2, 2008, Bloomberg announced he would seek to extend the city's term limits law and run for a third mayoral term in 2009, arguing a leader of his field was needed following the financial crisis of 2007–08. "Handling this financial crisis while strengthening essential services ... is a challenge I want to take on," Bloomberg said at a news conference. "So should the City Council vote to amend term limits, I plan to ask New Yorkers to look at my record of independent leadership and then decide if I have earned another term."


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Ronald Lauder, who campaigned for New York City's term limits in 1993 and spent over 4 million dollars of his own money to limit the maximum years a mayor could serve to eight years, sided with Bloomberg and agreed to stay out of future legality issues. In exchange, he was promised a seat on an influential city board by Bloomberg.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Some people and organizations objected and NYPIRG filed a complaint with the City Conflict of Interest Board. On October 23, 2008, the city council voted 29–22 in favor of extending the term limit to three consecutive four-year terms. After two days of public hearings, Bloomberg signed the bill into law on November 3.


title: Michael Bloomberg

text: Bloomberg's bid for a third term generated some controversy. Civil libertarians such as former New York Civil Liberties Union Director Norman Siegel and New York Civil Rights Coalition Executive Director Michael Meyers joined with local politicians to protest the process as undermining the democratic process.