title: Lizard

text: Acoustic communication is less common in lizards. Hissing, a typical reptilian sound, is mostly produced by larger species as part of a threat display, accompanying gaping jaws. Some groups, particularly geckos, snake-lizards, and some iguanids, can produce more complex sounds and vocal apparatuses have independently evolved in different groups. These sounds are used for courtship, territorial defense and in distress, and include clicks, squeaks, barks and growls. The mating call of the male tokay gecko is heard as "tokay-tokay!". Tactile communication involves individuals rubbing against each other, either in courtship or in aggression. Some chameleon species communicate with one another by vibrating the substrate that they are standing on, such as a tree branch or leaf.


title: Lizard

text: Lizards are found worldwide, excluding the far north and Antarctica, and some islands. They can be found in elevations from sea level to . They prefer warmer, tropical climates but are adaptable and can live in all but the most extreme environments. Lizards also exploit a number of habitats; most primarily live on the ground, but others may live in rocks, on trees, underground and even in water. The marine iguana is adapted for life in the sea.


title: Lizard

text: The majority of lizard species are predatory and the most common prey items are small, terrestrial invertebrates, particularly insects. Many species are sit-and-wait predators though others may be more active foragers. Chameleons prey on numerous insect species, such as beetles, grasshoppers and winged termites as well as spiders. They rely on persistence and ambush to capture these prey. An individual perches on a branch and stays perfectly still, with only its eyes moving. When an insect lands, the chameleon focuses its eyes on the target and slowly moves towards it before projecting its long sticky tongue which, when hauled back, brings the attach prey with it. Geckos feed on crickets, beetles, termites and moths.


title: Lizard

text: Termites are an important part of the diets of some species of Autarchoglossa, since, as social insects, they can be found in large numbers in one spot. Ants may form a prominent part of the diet of some lizards, particularly among the lacertas. Horned lizards are also well known for specializing on ants. Due to their small size and indigestible chitin, ants must be consumed in large amounts, and ant-eating lizards have larger stomachs than even herbivorous ones. Species of skink and alligator lizards eat snails and their power jaws and molar-like teeth are adapted for breaking the shells.


title: Lizard

text: Larger species, such as monitor lizards, can feed on larger prey including fish, frogs, birds, mammals and other reptiles. Prey may be swallowed whole and torn into smaller pieces. Both bird and reptile eggs may also be consumed as well. Gila monsters and beaded lizards climb trees to reach both the eggs and young of birds. Despite being venomous, these species rely on their strong jaws to kill prey. Mammalian prey typically consists of rodents and leporids; the Komodo dragon can kill prey as large as water buffalo. Dragons are prolific scavengers, and a single decaying carcass can attract several from away. A dragon is capable of consuming a carcass in 17 minutes.


title: Lizard

text: Around 2 percent of lizard species, including many iguanids, are herbivores. Adults of these species eat plant parts like flowers, leaves, stems and fruit, while juveniles eat more insects. Plant parts can be hard to digest, and, as they get closer to adulthood, juvenile iguanas eat faeces from adults to acquire the microflora necessary for their transition to a plant-based diet. Perhaps the most herbivorous species is the marine iguana which dives to forage for algae, kelp and other marine plants. Some non-herbivorous species supplement their insect diet with fruit, which is easily digested.


title: Lizard

text: Lizards have a variety of antipredator adaptations, including running and climbing, venom, camouflage, tail autotomy, and reflex bleeding.


title: Lizard

text: Lizards exploit a variety of different camouflage methods. Many lizards are disruptively patterned. In some species, such as Aegean wall lizards, individuals vary in colour, and select rocks which best match their own colour to minimise the risk of being detected by predators. The Moorish gecko is able to change colour for camouflage: when a light-coloured gecko is placed on a dark surface, it darkens within an hour to match the environment. The chameleons in general use their ability to change their coloration for signalling rather than camouflage, but some species such as Smith's dwarf chameleon do use active colour change for camouflage purposes.


title: Lizard

text: The flat-tail horned lizard's body is coloured like its desert background, and is flattened and fringed with white scales to minimise its shadow.


title: Lizard

text: Many lizards, including geckos and skinks, are capable of shedding their tails (autotomy). The detached tail, sometimes brilliantly coloured, continues to writhe after detaching, distracting the predator's attention from the fleeing prey. Lizards partially regenerate their tails over a period of weeks. Some 326 genes are involved in regenerating lizard tails. The fish-scale gecko "Geckolepis megalepis " sheds patches of skin and scales if grabbed.


title: Lizard

text: Many lizards attempt to escape from danger by running to a place of safety; for example, wall lizards can run up walls and hide in holes or cracks. Horned lizards adopt differing defences for specific predators. They may play dead to deceive a predator that has caught them; attempt to outrun the rattlesnake, which does not pursue prey; but stay still, relying on their cryptic coloration, for "Masticophis" whip snakes which can catch even swift prey. If caught, some species such as the greater short-horned lizard puff themselves up, making their bodies hard for a narrow-mouthed predator like a whip snake to swallow. Finally, horned lizards can squirt blood at cat and dog predators from a pouch beneath its eyes, to a distance of about ; the blood tastes foul to these attackers.


title: Lizard

text: The earliest known fossil remains of a lizard belong to the iguanian species "Tikiguania estesi", found in the Tiki Formation of India, which dates to the Carnian stage of the Triassic period, about 220 million years ago. However, doubt has been raised over the age of "Tikiguania" because it is almost indistinguishable from modern agamid lizards. The "Tikiguania" remains may instead be late Tertiary or Quaternary in age, having been washed into much older Triassic sediments. Lizards are most closely related to the Rhynchocephalia, which appeared in the Late Triassic, so the earliest lizards probably appeared at that time. Mitochondrial phylogenetics suggest that the first lizards evolved in the late Permian. It had been thought on the basis of morphological data that iguanid lizards diverged from other squamates very early on, but molecular evidence contradicts this.


title: Lizard

text: Mosasaurs probably evolved from an extinct group of aquatic lizards known as aigialosaurs in the Early Cretaceous. Dolichosauridae is a family of Late Cretaceous aquatic varanoid lizards closely related to the mosasaurs.


title: Lizard

text: The position of the lizards and other Squamata among the reptiles was studied using fossil evidence by Rainer Schoch and Hans-Dieter Sues in 2015. Lizards form about 60% of the extant non-avian reptiles.


title: Lizard

text: Both the snakes and the Amphisbaenia (worm lizards) are clades deep within the Squamata (the smallest clade that contains all the lizards), so "lizard" is paraphyletic.


title: Lizard

text: The cladogram is based on genomic analysis by Wiens and colleagues in 2012 and 2016. Excluded taxa are shown in upper case on the cladogram.


title: Lizard

text: In the 13th century, lizards were recognized in Europe as part of a broad category of "reptiles" that consisted of a miscellany of egg-laying creatures, including "snakes, various fantastic monsters, […], assorted amphibians, and worms", as recorded by Vincent of Beauvais in his "Mirror of Nature". The seventeenth century saw changes in this loose description. The name Sauria was coined by James Macartney (1802); it was the Latinisation of the French name "Sauriens", coined by Alexandre Brongniart (1800) for an order of reptiles in the classification proposed by the author, containing lizards and crocodilians, later discovered not to be each other's closest relatives. Later authors used the term "Sauria" in a more restricted sense, i.e. as a synonym of Lacertilia, a suborder of Squamata that includes all lizards but excludes snakes. This classification is rarely used today because Sauria so-defined is a paraphyletic group. It was defined as a clade by Jacques Gauthier, Arnold G. Kluge and Timothy Rowe (1988) as the group containing the most recent common ancestor of archosaurs and lepidosaurs (the groups containing crocodiles and lizards, as per Mcartney's original definition) and all its descendants. A different definition was formulated by Michael deBraga and Olivier Rieppel (1997), who defined Sauria as the clade containing the most recent common ancestor of Choristodera, Archosauromorpha, Lepidosauromorpha and all their descendants. However, these uses have not gained wide acceptance among specialists.


title: Lizard

text: Lizards have frequently evolved convergently, with multiple groups independently developing similar morphology and ecological niches. "Anolis" ecomorphs have become a model system in evolutionary biology for studying convergence. Limbs have been lost or reduced independently over two dozen times across lizard evolution, including in the Anniellidae, Anguidae, Cordylidae, Dibamidae, Gymnophthalmidae, Pygopodidae, and Scincidae; snakes are just the most famous and species-rich group of Squamata to have followed this path.


title: Lizard

text: Most lizard species are harmless to humans. Only the largest lizard species, the Komodo dragon, which reaches in length and weighs up to , has been known to stalk, attack, and, on occasion, kill humans. An eight-year-old Indonesian boy died from blood loss after an attack in 2007.


title: Lizard

text: Numerous species of lizard are kept as pets, including bearded dragons, iguanas, anoles, and geckos (such as the popular leopard gecko).Monitor lizards such as the savannah monitor and tegus such as the Argentine tegu and red tegu are also kept.


title: Lizard

text: Green iguanas are eaten in Central America, where they are sometimes referred to as "chicken of the tree" after their habit of resting in trees and their supposedly chicken-like taste, while spiny-tailed lizards are eaten in Africa. In North Africa, "Uromastyx" species are considered "dhaab" or 'fish of the desert' and eaten by nomadic tribes.Lizards such as the Gila monster produce toxins with medical applications. Gila toxin reduces plasma glucose; the substance is now synthesized for use in the anti-diabetes drug exenatide (Byetta). Another toxin from Gila monster saliva has been studied for use as an anti-Alzheimer's drug.


title: Lizard

text: Lizards appear in myths and folktales around the world. In Australian Aboriginal mythology, Tarrotarro, the lizard god, split the human race into male and female, and gave people the ability to express themselves in art. A lizard king named Mo'o features in Hawaii and other cultures in Polynesia. In the Amazon, the lizard is the king of beasts, while among the Bantu of Africa, the god UNkulunkulu sent a chameleon to tell humans they would live forever, but the chameleon was held up, and another lizard brought a different message, that the time of humanity was limited. A popular legend in Maharashtra tells the tale of how a common Indian monitor, with ropes attached, was used to scale the walls of the fort in the Battle of Sinhagad. In the Bhojpuri speaking region of India and Nepal, there is a belief among children that, on touching skink's tail three (or five) time with the shortest finger gives money.


title: Lizard

text: Lizards in many cultures share the symbolism of snakes, especially as an emblem of resurrection. This may have derived from their regular molting. The motif of lizards on Christian candle holders probably alludes to the same symbolism. According to Jack Tresidder, in Egypt and the Classical world they were beneficial emblems, linked with wisdom. In African, Aboriginal and Melanesian folklore they are linked to cultural heroes or ancestral figures.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The Jacksonville Jaguars are a professional American football team based in Jacksonville, Florida. The Jaguars compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) South division. The team plays its home games at TIAA Bank Field.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: Founded alongside the Carolina Panthers in 1995 as an expansion team, the Jaguars competed in the AFC Central until they were moved to the AFC South in 2002. The franchise is owned by Shahid Khan, who bought the team from its original majority owner Wayne Weaver in 2012.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The Jaguars saw early success, making the playoffs in each of their second through fifth seasons, a four-year span in which they won two division titles and appeared in two AFC Championship Games. They are the youngest NFL expansion team to appear in a conference championship (by their second season in 1996, along with the Panthers) and clinch their conference's top seed (by their fifth season in 1999). The Jaguars have been less successful since, with only three playoff appearances and one division title since 2000. Jacksonville is one of four NFL franchises that have never played in the Super Bowl, alongside the Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, and division rival Houston Texans.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The day after the NFL awarded the expansion team to Jacksonville, Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver held up the Jaguars' proposed silver helmet and teal jersey at the NFL owners' meeting in Chicago. The team's colors were to be teal, gold, and silver with black accents. However, this jersey and helmet design, with a gold leaping jaguar, created controversy. Ford Motor Company, then-parent of the automaker Jaguar, believed that the Jaguars' logo bore too much resemblance to the automaker's logo. Though no lawsuit was brought to trial, lawyers from the team and the automaker negotiated an ultimately amicable agreement whereby Jaguar would be named the official car of the Jaguars, and the Jaguars would redesign their uniforms.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The new logo was a snarling jaguar head with a teal tongue, which Weaver said was his wife's touch. He also claimed that the teal tongue came from "feeding Panthers to our Jaguars" — an obvious jab at their expansion brethren. During the Jaguars' first-ever preseason game teal-colored candies were handed out to all the fans who attended, turning their tongues a teal color just like on the logo. Additionally, raspberry lollipops were handed out by the "Candy Man" in section 142 to also turn the home fans' tongues teal.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: In 2009, Weaver announced that he wanted to 'clean up' the team's image. This meant the elimination of the full-body crawling Jaguar logo, the clawing Jaguar, and the two previous wordmarks which bent the text around these logos.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: In February 2013, Jaguars owner Shahid Khan, who had acquired the team in late 2011, introduced a new brand identity for the team that included a new logo, wordmark, and secondary logo. The new Jaguar head logo was intended to be "fiercer" and more realistic. The secondary logo incorporated the new Jaguar head logo along with the first official usage of the team's popular nickname "Jags". The two images were encased in a shield-style shape, designed to be a tribute to Jacksonville's military community.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: Beginning in 2013, the Jaguars began to feature gold more prominently than in the past. In fact, from 2009 to 2012, gold had only been used in the team logo and as a minor accent color.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: For most of their history, the Jaguars have done what many other NFL teams located in subtropical climates traditionally practice: wear their white jerseys at home during the first half of the season — forcing opponents to wear their dark ones under the sweltering autumns in Jacksonville. The only exceptions were in 2004 and 2008–10, when the Jaguars chose to wear teal for all home games. In the preseason, the Jaguars typically wear teal at home, since these games are played at night when there is very little advantage with the heat.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: Following the logo change, the redesigned uniforms featured an all-black helmet, white pants with teal, black, and gold stripes, and numbers with gold inner trim and black outer trim. The home jersey was teal with white numbers and the away jersey was white with teal numbers. Both jerseys had a black collar and no sleeve stripes.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: A prowling jaguar on each sleeve replaced the leaping jaguar going across both shoulders in the original design. The Jaguars in 1995 were the first NFL team to have 2-tone borders on their numbers and lettering, and the first NFL team to show a complex logo (the crawling Jaguar) on the sleeve.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: Minor modifications were introduced to the Jaguars uniform during this time, most notably the font of the jersey numbers, replacing the original block numbers with a unique font. Two stripes were also added to the end of the sleeves below the prowling jaguar.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The team introduced a black alternate jersey in 2002. During that same year, the team also introduced alternate black pants, worn with either the white or the teal jersey. After the black pants were introduced, the white pants would only be seen for the first few games of the year, presumably due to the heat. The black pants originally included two teal stripes down each side. The fan reaction to the extra black in the alternate jersey and alternate pants was positive, so in 2004 the Jaguars went through a formal uniform change, which teams are only allowed to do once every five years. These changes were mostly to the away look. Before 2004, the white away jerseys had teal numbers with black and gold trim, but after, the white jerseys had black numbers with teal and gold trim. The black pants were also changed. The teal stripes were replaced with the Jaguar logo on each hip. Teal almost disappeared from the away uniform.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The stripes on the white pants were altered in 2008 so that the center, thickest stripe was black, and its accents were teal. In the 2008 year, the gold in the uniforms noticeably shifted from a bright yellow metallic appearance to more beige.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The Jaguars unveiled new uniforms for the 2009 season. Team owner Wayne Weaver reportedly wanted to "clean up" the look, feeling that the team had too many uniform styles. The new uniforms were introduced in a press conference on April 22.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: At this press conference, Weaver elaborated that different people had taken different liberties with the Jaguars' image over the years, singling out the 'All Black' look which the team wore for every prime-time home game from 2003 to 2007 as a point of regret. He also said that the team would wear their teal jerseys at home even on hot days, saying that the practice of choosing to wear white on hot days had also diluted the team's image. The new uniform reflected a simpler look overall. The collar and sleeve ends are the same color as the rest of the jersey. The crawling jaguar was removed. The numbers on the jerseys were changed to a simpler, block font with a thicker, single color border. After all of these subtractions, two features were added. The first was a "JAGUARS" wordmark underneath the NFL insignia on the chest. The second was two thin 'stripes' of off-color fabric which were added to each midseam of the jersey, curling up to the neckline on the front and below the number on the back. The stripe on the home jersey is a white line next to a black line, matching the color of the numbers, and the stripe on the away jersey is a black line next to a teal line, again matching the numbers. The pants have similar stripes, both for the home and away uniform. The away uniforms were still black pants and numbers on a white jersey, but they now used teal as the only accent color as opposed to using gold in previous years. The Jaguars' identity, in terms of colors, beginning in 2009 is exclusively teal and black, with gold only being used in the logo. The final change made to the Jaguars' uniforms in 2009 was to the helmet. The new helmet and facemask were black just like the old ones, but when light hit the new ones a certain way, both the helmet and face mask sparkled with a shiny teal appearance. These were the first helmets in professional football which changed color with different angles of light. The logo and number decals also incorporated this effect.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: Prior to the 2012 season, new Jaguars owner Shahid Khan announced that the team would once again use a black jersey, something they had not done since 2008. In September of that year, the team announced that it would use the black jersey and black pants as their primary home uniform. The teal jersey was resurrected as an alternate.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: On April 23, 2013, the Jaguars unveiled new uniforms designed by Nike. The primary home jersey is black with white numerals outlined in teal and gold. The road jersey is white with teal numerals outlined in black and gold, marking the first time since 2003 that the team has used teal numbers on their road jersey. The alternate jersey is teal with black numerals outlined in white and gold. The team had never before used black numbers on their teal jersey. All three jerseys feature a contrasting stripe that bends around the neck, and semi-glossy patches on the shoulders meant to resemble claw marks. The team added their new shield logo onto a patch just above the player's heart, meant to pay tribute to Jacksonville's military heritage.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The helmet, first of its kind in the NFL, featured a glossy gold finish in the back that fades to matte black in the front, via a color gradient.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The new uniform set includes black and white pants with the Jaguars logo on the hip and a tri-color pattern down the player's leg.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: In November 2015, as one of eight teams participating in Nike's "Color Rush" initiative for four games of "Thursday Night Football" during the 2015 season, Jacksonville introduced an all-gold second alternative uniform. The set features a gold jersey with black sleeves and black trim, as well as all gold pants. The white front and back numbers are lined in the teal accent color and bordered by black. The TV numbers on the shoulders are white with black bordering. The set also features gold undershirts and socks.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: On April 19, 2018, the Jaguars again revealed re-designed uniforms. The new design returns to an all-black gloss helmet and removes many of the complicated details from the previous set. For the first time, there will be no borders at all on any of the jersey numbers. There are no stripes or team logo on the pants; only an NFL logo and a Nike logo, which is the first and only of its kind in the NFL. Like the 2009 uniform set, the only gold in the uniform set belongs to the Jaguar logo itself, and the block number font is not distinct from that used by other teams. The sleeve trim and collar trim are both a different color than the rest of the jersey, that and the solitary Jaguar logo are the only distinct markings on the jersey. For the first time, the sock has a teal stripe between the black and white. The black jersey is the primary, as it has been since 2012, and the teal is the alternate. The Jaguars continued to pair the uniforms with either black or white pants, but added alternate teal pants for the first time.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: In 2019, the Jaguars began wearing either solid black or white socks as part of a new NFL mandate allowing solid-colored hosiery on the field.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: In Week 3 of the 2020 season against the Miami Dolphins, the Jaguars wore an all-teal ensemble for the first time, complete with solid teal socks.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: On February 17, 2021, the Jaguars officially announced that the club would return to wearing teal jerseys as its designated primary home jersey color.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: TIAA Bank Field (formerly known as Jacksonville Municipal Stadium, Alltel Stadium, and EverBank Field) is located on the north bank of the St. Johns River, and has been the home of the Jaguars since the team's first season in 1995. The stadium has a capacity of 69,132, with additional seating added during Florida–Georgia Game and the Gator Bowl.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The stadium served as the site of Super Bowl XXXIX in addition to four Jaguar playoff games including the 1999 AFC Championship Game. It also hosted the ACC Championship Game from 2005 to 2007 and the River City Showdown in 2007 and 2008.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: From 1995 to 1997 and again from 2006 to 2009, the stadium was named Jacksonville Municipal Stadium. From 1997 to 2006, the stadium was referred to as Alltel Stadium. The naming rights were purchased by EverBank prior to the 2010 season. Prior to the 2018 season the Jaguars announced the stadium would be renamed TIAA Bank Field.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The stadium got a substantial upgrade in 2014 with the addition of new scoreboards, pools, cabana seating and premium seating that includes 180 field-level seats. The scoreboards are high and long. The new scoreboards at TIAA Bank Field are now the world's largest video boards. Two by pools were installed in the north end zone along with the cabana seating. The stadium upgrades were $63 million that owner Shahid Khan helped finance $20 million of the total cost.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The Jaguars share rivalries with the other three teams in the AFC South: the Indianapolis Colts, Houston Texans, and Tennessee Titans.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The team's rivalry with the Titans is the most notable as the two teams were division rivals dating back to the Jaguars entry into the in NFL in , when the Titans played as the Houston Oilers. During the 1995 season, the Jaguars recorded their first win as a franchise over the Oilers in Houston. The rivalry intensified in the late 1990s as both teams were consistently near the top of the AFC Central standings. In , the Jaguars posted a 14–2 record with both losses coming to Tennessee. The two teams met in the AFC Championship Game, with Tennessee beating Jacksonville for a third time that season, 33–14. The rivalry continued into the 2000s as both teams were placed in the newly formed AFC South in . The Titans lead the overall series, 33–21, having also won the only playoff game in the series.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The Jaguars also have geographic rivalries with the two other Florida-based teams: the Miami Dolphins and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Jaguars, Dolphins, and Buccaneers frequently play each other during the preseason. During the AFC Central days of the mid-1990s and early 2000s, the Jaguars had a rivalry with the Pittsburgh Steelers as the two teams were consistently in playoff contention. The rivalry would reach new heights in the 2000s and 2010s when the Jaguars and Steelers joined the AFC South and North respectively. Jacksonville also defeated Pittsburgh in the playoffs in and .


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: This is a partial list of the Jaguars' last five completed seasons. For the full season-by-season franchise results, see List of Jacksonville Jaguars seasons.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: "Note: The Finish, Wins, Losses, and Ties columns list regular season results and exclude any postseason play."


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: On October 9, 2022, the Jacksonville Jaguars officially retired Tony Boselli's number 71, at a halftime ceremony against the division-rival Houston Texans. It is the first number retired by the organization.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: A contest was held in July 2006 to name the club's ring of honor as "Pride of the Jaguars" was chosen with 36% of the vote. It was unveiled during the 2006 season during a game against the New York Jets on October 8. Former offensive tackle Tony Boselli was the first player inducted.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: On January 1, 2012, team owner Wayne Weaver and his wife Delores were added to the Pride of the Jaguars in their final game before the sale of the team to Shahid Khan. On June 7, 2012, the Jaguars announced Fred Taylor would be the next inductee into the Pride of the Jaguars. He was officially inducted on September 30, 2012. Longtime Jaguars quarterback Mark Brunell was also inducted into the "Pride of the Jaguars" on December 15, 2013. The most recent addition was WR Jimmy Smith, inducted in 2016.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The Jaguars have had nine head coaches (including two interim coaches) throughout their franchise history. Their first head coach was Tom Coughlin, who compiled a 72–64 (.529) overall record with the team from 1995 to 2002. Jack Del Rio was the longest-tenured head coach in Jaguars history, holding the position from 2003 to 2011. The current head coach is Doug Pederson, who was hired on February 3, 2022, and is the ninth head coach in franchise history.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: Since his introduction in 1996, Jaxson de Ville has served as the Jaguars' mascot. Jaxson entertains the crowd before and during games with his antics. The mascot has established a reputation for making dramatic entrances including bungee jumping off the stadium lights, sliding down a rope from the scoreboard, and parachuting into the stadium.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: Jaxson's antics got him into trouble in 1998 and stemmed the changing of the NFL's mascot rules, and also caused him to calm down. However, Jaxson was still seen, by some, as a mascot that gets in the way during the game. After the October 22, 2007 game against Indianapolis, Colts President Bill Polian complained to the NFL, and Jaxson was reprimanded again.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: Jaxson's first appearance was on August 18, 1996, and was played by Curtis Dvorak from his inception until his retirement in June 2015.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The Jacksonville Roar is the professional cheerleading squad of the Jaguars. The group was established in 1995, the team's inaugural year, and regularly performs choreographed routines during the team's home contests.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: In addition to performing at games and pep rallies, members function as goodwill ambassadors of the team, participating in corporate, community, and charitable events in the Jacksonville metropolitan area where they sign autographs and pose for pictures. They also join NFL tours to entertain American servicemen and women around the world.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The Jacksonville Jaguars Foundation was established in 1994, when the franchise deal was first announced. Since then, the Foundation has given over $20 million to area efforts in community improvement. The Foundation focuses on many initiatives, such as Honor Rows, anti-tobacco programs, NFL Play 60, and support for veterans. The Foundation grants over $1 million annually to organizations that assist "economically and socially disadvantaged youth and families".


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: The Jaguars' first head coach, Tom Coughlin, established the Tom Coughlin Jay Fund Foundation in 1996 to help young cancer victims and their families with emotional and financial assistance. The charity remained in Jacksonville after Coughlin left to coach the New York Giants.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: From their inaugural 1995 season until 2013, the Jaguars' flagship radio station was WOKV, which simulcasts on both AM 690 and on 104.5 FM.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: Starting with the 2014 season, the team moved their broadcast to WJXL and WJXL-FM (1010 AM and 92.5 FM) and simulcast on 99.9 Gator Country


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: Frank Frangie is the play-by-play announcer with former Jaguars players Tony Boselli and Jeff Lageman providing color analysis.


title: Jacksonville Jaguars

text: WJAX-TV or WFOX-TV televises all preseason games and also televises regular season games that are televised nationally on ESPN or NFL Network.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: An unidentified flying object (UFO), more recently renamed by US officials as a UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon), is any perceived aerial phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. On investigation, most UFOs are identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena, while a small number remain unexplained.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Scientists and skeptic organizations such as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry have provided prosaic explanations for a large number of claimed UFOs being caused by natural phenomena, human technology, delusions, or hoaxes. Small but vocal groups of ufologists favour unconventional, pseudoscientific hypotheses, often claiming that UFOs are evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. Beliefs surrounding UFOs have inspired parts of new religions.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: While unusual sightings have been reported in the sky throughout history, UFOs became culturally prominent after World War II, escalating during the Space Age. The 20th century saw studies and investigations into UFO reports conducted by governments (such as Projects Grudge and Sign in the United States, and Project Condign in the United Kingdom), as well as by organisations and individuals.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: People have observed the sky throughout history, and have sometimes seen unusual sights, such as comets, bright meteors, one or more of the five planets that can be readily seen with the naked eye, planetary conjunctions, and atmospheric optical phenomena such as parhelia and lenticular clouds. One particularly famous example is Halley's Comet: this was recorded first by Chinese astronomers in 240 BC and possibly as early as 467 BC. As it reaches the inner solar system every 76 years, it was often identified as a unique isolated event in ancient historical documents whose authors were unaware that it was a repeating phenomenon. Such accounts in history often were treated as supernatural portents, angels, or other religious omens. While UFO enthusiasts have sometimes commented on the narrative similarities between certain religious symbols in medieval paintings and UFO reports, the canonical and symbolic character of such images is documented by art historians placing more conventional religious interpretations on such images.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: In the Pacific and European theatres during World War II, round, glowing fireballs known as "foo fighters" were reported by Allied and Axis pilots. Some proposed Allied explanations at the time included St. Elmo's fire, the planet Venus, hallucinations from oxygen deprivation, or German secret weapons. In 1946, more than 2,000 reports were collected, primarily by the Swedish military, of unidentified aerial objects over the Scandinavian nations, along with isolated reports from France, Portugal, Italy and Greece. The objects were referred to as "Russian hail" (and later as "ghost rockets") because it was thought the mysterious objects were possibly Russian tests of captured German V1 or V2 rockets. Most were identified as natural phenomena as meteors.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: The popular UFO craze by many accounts began with a media frenzy surrounding the reports on June 24, 1947, that a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier in the United States. At the time, he claimed he described the objects flying in a saucer-like fashion, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". Soon, reports of flying saucer sightings became a daily occurrence with one particularly famous example being the Roswell incident where remnants of a downed observation balloon were recovered by a farmer and confiscated by military personnel. The story received scant attention at the time, but interest in it revived in the 1990s with the publicity surrounding the television broadcast of an "Alien autopsy" video marketed as "real footage" but later admitted to be a staged "re-enactment". Various UFO claimants said that they had interacted with the aliens driving the spacecraft and a few said they had visited the crafts themselves. In 1961, the first alien abduction account was sensationalized when Barney and Betty Hill went under hypnosis after seeing a UFO and reported recovered memories of their experience that became ever more elaborate as the years went by.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: As media accounts and speculation were running rampant in the US, by 1953 intelligence officials (Robertson Panel) worried that "genuine incursions" by enemy aircraft "over U.S. territory could be lost in a maelstrom of kooky hallucination" of UFO reports. Media were enlisted to help debunk and discourage UFO reports, culminating in a 1966 TV special, “UFO: Friend, Foe or Fantasy?”, in which Walter Cronkite "patiently" explained to viewers that UFOs were fantasy. Cronkite enlisted Carl Sagan and J. Allen Hynek, who told Cronkite, “To this time, there is no valid scientific proof that we have been visited by spaceships". Fellow NICAP official Donald E. Keyhoe wrote that Vice Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first director of the CIA, "wanted public disclosure of UFO evidence".


title: Unidentified flying object

text: A 1969 National Academy of Sciences panel reviewed the Condon Report and concurred with its finding, observing that, “While further study of particular aspects of the topic (e.g., atmospheric phenomena) may be useful, a study of UFOs in general is not a promising way to expand scientific understanding of the phenomena.” Referencing the panel's conclusions, the Pentagon announced that it would no longer investigate UFO reports. According to Keith Kloor, the "allure of flying saucers" remained popular with the public into the 1970s, spurring production of such sci-fi films, as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Alien", which "continued to stoke public fascination". Kloor writes that by the late 1990s, "other big UFO subthemes had been prominently introduced into pop culture, such as the abduction phenomenon and government conspiracy narrative, via best-selling books and, of course, "The X-Files"".


title: Unidentified flying object

text: The USAF's Project Blue Book files indicate that approximately 1% of all unknown reports came from amateur and professional astronomers or other telescope users (such as missile trackers or surveyors). In 1952, astronomer J. Allen Hynek, then a consultant to Blue Book, conducted a small survey of 45 fellow professional astronomers. Five reported UFO sightings (about 11%). In the 1970s, astrophysicist Peter A. Sturrock conducted two large surveys of the AIAA and American Astronomical Society (AAS). About 5% of the members polled indicated that they had had UFO sightings.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who saw six UFOs, including three green fireballs, supported the extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs and said scientists who dismissed it without study were "unscientific". Another astronomer, Lincoln LaPaz, headed the United States Air Force's investigation into green fireballs and other UFO phenomena in New Mexico. LaPaz reported two personal sightings, of a green fireball and a disc. (Both Tombaugh and LaPaz were part of Hynek's 1952 survey.) Hynek took two photos through the window of a commercial airliner of a disc that seemed to keep pace with his aircraft.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Astronomer Andrew Fraknoi rejected the hypothesis that UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft and responded to the "onslaught of credulous coverage" in books, films and entertainment by teaching his students to apply critical thinking to such claims, advising them that "being a good scientist is not unlike being a good detective". According to Fraknoi, UFO reports "might at first seem mysterious", but "the more you investigate, the more likely you are to find that there is LESS to these stories than meets the eye".


title: Unidentified flying object

text: In a 1980 survey of 1800 members of amateur astronomer associations by Gert Helb and Hynek for CUFOS, 24% responded "yes" to the question "Have you ever observed an object which resisted your most exhaustive efforts at identification?"


title: Unidentified flying object

text: The term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was coined in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object". Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and "technical aspects" (see ).


title: Unidentified flying object

text: During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs" due to the term being introduced in the context of the Kenneth Arnold incident. The Avro Canada VZ-9AV Avrocar was a concept vehicle produced during the 1950s, which was a functional aircraft with a saucer shape. UFOs were commonly referred to colloquially, as a "Bogey" by Western military personnel and pilots during the cold war. The term "bogey" was originally used to report anomalies in radar blips, to indicate possible hostile forces that might be roaming in the area.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concerns about national security, and, more recently, in the 2010s, for unexplained reasons. Nevertheless, various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat, and nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).


title: Unidentified flying object

text: The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'". The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: As an acronym, "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", and "unidentifiable object".


title: Unidentified flying object

text: In popular usage, the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft, and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some ufologists and investigators prefer to use terms such as "unidentified aerial phenomenon" (UAP) or "anomalous phenomena", as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP). "Anomalous aerial vehicle" (AAV) or "unidentified aerial system" (UAS) are also sometimes used in a military aviation context to describe unidentified targets.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: While technically a "UFO" refers to any unidentified flying object, in modern popular culture the term UFO has generally become synonymous with alien spacecraft; however, the term ETV (ExtraTerrestrial Vehicle) is sometimes used to separate this explanation of UFOs from totally earthbound explanations.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: UFOs have been subject to investigations over the years that varied widely in scope and scientific rigor. Governments or independent academics in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, Peru, France, Belgium, Sweden, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, Spain, and the Soviet Union are known to have investigated UFO reports at various times. No official government investigation has ever publicly concluded that UFOs are indisputably real, physical objects, extraterrestrial in origin, or of concern to national defense.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Among the best known government studies are the ghost rockets investigation by the Swedish military (1946–1947), Project Blue Book, previously Project Sign and Project Grudge, conducted by the USAF from 1947 until 1969, the secret U.S. Army/Air Force Project Twinkle investigation into green fireballs (1948–1951), the secret USAF Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 by the Battelle Memorial Institute, and the Brazilian Air Force's 1977 "Operação Prato" (Operation Saucer). France has had an ongoing investigation (GEPAN/SEPRA/GEIPAN) within its space agency Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) since 1977; the government of Uruguay has had a similar investigation since 1989.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Studies show that after careful investigation, the majority of UFOs can be identified as ordinary objects or phenomena. The most commonly found identified sources of UFO reports are:


title: Unidentified flying object

text: A 1952–1955 study by the Battelle Memorial Institute for the USAF included these categories. An individual 1979 study by CUFOS researcher Allan Hendry found, as did other investigations, that fewer than one percent of cases he investigated were hoaxes and most sightings were actually honest misidentifications of prosaic phenomena. Hendry attributed most of these to inexperience or misperception.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: On October 31, 2008, the National Archives of Brazil began receiving from the Aeronautical Documentation and History Center part of the documentation of the Brazilian Air Force regarding the investigation of the appearance of UFOs in Brazil. Currently, this collection gathers cases between 1952 and 2016.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: On 1968, the SEFAA (previously CEFAA) began receiving case reports of the general public, civil aviators and the Chilean Air Force regarding the sightings or the appearance of UFOs in Chile, the initial work was an initiative of Sergio Bravo Flores who led the Chilean Committe for the Study of Unidentified Space Phenomena, supported even by the Chilean Scientific Society. Currently, the organization changed its denomination to SEFAA and its a department of the DGAC(Chile) which in turn depends on the Chilean Air Force.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: In Canada, the Department of National Defence has dealt with reports, sightings and investigations of UFOs across Canada. In addition to conducting investigations into crop circles in Duhamel, Alberta, it still considers "unsolved" the Falcon Lake incident in Manitoba and the Shag Harbour UFO incident in Nova Scotia.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Early Canadian studies included Project Magnet (1950–1954) and Project Second Storey (1952–1954), supported by the Defence Research Board.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Thousands of documents released under FOIA also indicate that many U.S. intelligence agencies collected (and still collect) information on UFOs. These agencies include the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), FBI, CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), as well as military intelligence agencies of the Army and U.S. Navy, in addition to the Air Force.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: The investigation of UFOs has also attracted many civilians, who in the U.S formed research groups such as NICAP (active 1956–1980), Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) (active 1952–1988), MUFON (active 1969–), and CUFOS (active 1973–).


title: Unidentified flying object

text: On November 24, 2021, the Pentagon announced the formation of the "Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group", a new intelligence group to investigate unidentified objects that may compromise the airspace of the United States.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Following the large U.S. surge in sightings in June and early July 1947, on July 9, 1947, United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) intelligence, in cooperation with the FBI, began a formal investigation into selected sightings with characteristics that could not be immediately rationalized, such as Kenneth Arnold's. The USAAF used "all of its top scientists" to determine whether "such a phenomenon could, in fact, occur". The research was "being conducted with the thought that the flying objects might be a celestial phenomenon," or that "they might be a foreign body mechanically devised and controlled." Three weeks later in a preliminary defense estimate, the air force investigation decided that, "This 'flying saucer' situation is not all imaginary or seeing too much in some natural phenomenon. Something is really flying around."


title: Unidentified flying object

text: A further review by the intelligence and technical divisions of the Air Materiel Command at Wright Field reached the same conclusion. It reported that "the phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious," and there were disc-shaped objects, metallic in appearance, as big as man-made aircraft. They were characterized by "extreme rates of climb [and] maneuverability", general lack of noise, absence of a trail, occasional formation flying, and "evasive" behavior "when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar", suggesting a controlled craft. It was therefore recommended in late September 1947 that an official Air Force investigation be set up. It was also recommended that other government agencies should assist in the investigation.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Project Sign's final report, published in early 1949, stated that while some UFOs appeared to represent actual aircraft, there was not enough data to determine their origin.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: The Air Force's Project Sign was created at the end of 1947, and was one of the earliest government studies to come to a secret extraterrestrial conclusion. In August 1948, Sign investigators wrote a top-secret intelligence estimate to that effect, but the Air Force Chief of Staff Hoyt Vandenberg ordered it destroyed. The existence of this suppressed report was revealed by several insiders who had read it, such as astronomer and USAF consultant J. Allen Hynek and Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, the first head of the USAF's Project Blue Book.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Another highly classified U.S. study was conducted by the CIA's Office of Scientific Investigation (OS/I) in the latter half of 1952 in response to orders from the National Security Council (NSC). This study concluded UFOs were real physical objects of potential threat to national security. One OS/I memo to the CIA Director (DCI) in December read that "the reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention ... Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such a nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or any known types of aerial vehicles." The matter was considered so urgent that OS/I drafted a memorandum from the DCI to the NSC proposing that the NSC establish an investigation of UFOs as a priority project throughout the intelligence and the defense research and development community. It also urged the DCI to establish an external research project of top-level scientists, now known as the Robertson Panel to analyze the problem of UFOs. The OS/I investigation was called off after the Robertson Panel's negative conclusions in January 1953.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Project Sign was dismantled and became Project Grudge at the end of 1948. Angered by the low quality of investigations by Grudge, the Air Force Director of Intelligence reorganized it as Project Blue Book in late 1951, placing Ruppelt in charge. J. Allen Hynek, a trained astronomer who served as a scientific advisor for Project Blue Book, was initially skeptical of UFO reports, but eventually came to the conclusion that many of them could not be satisfactorily explained and was highly critical of what he described as "the cavalier disregard by Project Blue Book of the principles of scientific investigation". Leaving government work, he founded the privately funded CUFOS, to whose work he devoted the rest of his life. Other private groups studying the phenomenon include the MUFON, a grassroots organization whose investigator's handbooks go into great detail on the documentation of alleged UFO sightings.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: , issued in 1953 and 1954, defined an Unidentified Flying Object ("UFOB") as "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." The regulation also said UFOBs were to be investigated as a "possible threat to the security of the United States" and "to determine technical aspects involved." The regulation went on to say that "it is permissible to inform news media representatives on UFOB's when the object is positively identified as a familiar object" but added: "For those objects which are not explainable, only the fact that ATIC [Air Technical Intelligence Center] will analyze the data is worthy of release, due to many unknowns involved."


title: Unidentified flying object

text: A public research effort conducted by the Condon Committee for the USAF and published as the Condon Report arrived at a negative conclusion in 1968. Blue Book closed down in 1970, using the Condon Committee's negative conclusion as a rationale, thus ending official Air Force UFO investigations. However, a 1969 USAF document, known as the Bolender memo, along with later government documents, revealed that non-public U.S. government UFO investigations continued after 1970. The Bolender memo first stated that "reports of unidentified flying objects that could affect national security ... are not part of the Blue Book system," indicating that more serious UFO incidents already were handled outside the public Blue Book investigation. The memo then added, "reports of UFOs which could affect national security would continue to be handled through the standard Air Force procedures designed for this purpose." In addition, in the late 1960s a chapter on UFOs in the Space Sciences course at the U.S. Air Force Academy gave serious consideration to possible extraterrestrial origins. When word of the curriculum became public, the Air Force in 1970 issued a statement to the effect that the book was outdated and cadets instead were being informed of the Condon Report's negative conclusion.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Controversy surrounded the report, both before and after its release. It has been observed that the report was "harshly criticized by numerous scientists, particularly at the powerful AIAA ... [which] recommended moderate, but continuous scientific work on UFOs." In an address to the AAAS, James E. McDonald said he believed science had failed to mount adequate studies of the problem and criticized the Condon Report and earlier studies by the USAF as scientifically deficient. He also questioned the basis for Condon's conclusions and argued that the reports of UFOs have been "laughed out of scientific court". J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer who worked as a USAF consultant from 1948, sharply criticized the Condon Committee Report and later wrote two nontechnical books that set forth the case for continuing to investigate UFO reports.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Ruppelt recounted his experiences with Project Blue Book, a USAF investigation that preceded Condon's.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: According to a 1979 New York Times report, "records from the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and other Federal agencies" ("about 900 documents — nearly 900 pages of memos, reports and correspondence") obtained in 1978 through the Freedom of Information Act request, indicate that "despite official pronouncements for decades that U.F.O.'s were nothing more than misidentified aerial objects and as such were no cause for alarm ... the phenomenon has aroused much serious behind‐the‐scenes concern" in the US government. In particular, officials were concerned over the "approximately 10%" of UFO sightings which remained unexplained, and whether they might be Soviet aircraft and a threat to national security. Officials were concerned about the "risk of false alerts", of "falsely identifying the real as phantom”, and of mass hysteria caused by sightings. In 1947, Brigadier General George F. Schulgen of Army Air Corps Intelligence, warned “the first reported sightings might have been by individuals of Communist sympathies with the view to causing hysteria and fear of a secret Russian weapon.”


title: Unidentified flying object

text: In November 2011, the White House released an official response to two petitions asking the U.S. government to acknowledge formally that aliens have visited this planet and to disclose any intentional withholding of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings. According to the response:


title: Unidentified flying object

text: The response further noted that efforts, like SETI and NASA's "Kepler" space telescope and Mars Science Laboratory, continue looking for signs of life. The response noted "odds are pretty high" that there may be life on other planets but "the odds of us making contact with any of them—especially any intelligent ones—are extremely small, given the distances involved."


title: Unidentified flying object

text: On June 25, 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report on UAPs. The report found that the UAPTF was unable to identify 143 objects spotted between 2004 and 2021. The report said that 18 of these featured unusual movement patterns or flight characteristics, adding that more analysis was needed to determine if those sightings represented "breakthrough" technology. The report said that "some of these steps are resource-intensive and would require additional investment." The report did not link the sightings to extraterrestrial life.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: The Uruguayan Air Force has conducted UFO investigations since 1989 and reportedly analyzed 2,100 cases of which they regard approximately 2% as lacking explanation.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: In March 2007, the French space agency CNES published an archive of UFO sightings and other phenomena online.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: French studies include GEPAN/SEPRA/GEIPAN within CNES (French space agency), the longest ongoing government-sponsored investigation. About 22% of the 6,000 cases studied remain unexplained. The official opinion of GEPAN/SEPRA/GEIPAN has been neutral, stating on their FAQ page that their mission is fact-finding for the scientific community, not rendering an opinion. They add they can neither prove nor disprove the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH), but their Steering Committee's clear position is that they cannot discard the possibility that some fraction of the very strange 22% of unexplained cases might be due to distant and advanced civilizations. Possibly their bias may be indicated by their use of the terms "PAN" (French) or "UAP" (English equivalent) for "Unidentified "Aerospace" Phenomenon" (whereas "UAP" is normally used by English organizations stands for "Unidentified "Aerial" Phenomenon", a more neutral term). In addition, the three heads of the studies have gone on record in stating that UFOs were real physical flying machines beyond our knowledge or that the best explanation for the most inexplicable cases was an extraterrestrial one.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: In 2008, Michel Scheller, president of the Association Aéronautique et Astronautique de France (3AF), created the Sigma Commission. Its purpose was to investigate UFO phenomenon worldwide. A progress report published in May 2010 stated that the central hypothesis proposed by the COMETA report is perfectly credible. In December 2012, the final report of the Sigma Commission was submitted to Scheller. Following the submission of the final report, the Sigma2 Commission is to be formed with a mandate to continue the scientific investigation of UFO phenomenon.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Alleged UFO sightings gradually increased since the war, peaking in 1978 and 2005. The total number of sightings since 1947 are 18,500, of which 90% are identifiable.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: The UK's Flying Saucer Working Party published its final report in June 1951, which remained secret for over fifty years. The Working Party concluded that all UFO sightings could be explained as misidentifications of ordinary objects or phenomena, optical illusions, psychological misperceptions/aberrations, or hoaxes. The report stated: "We accordingly recommend very strongly that no further investigation of reported mysterious aerial phenomena be undertaken, unless and until some material evidence becomes available."


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Eight file collections on UFO sightings, dating from 1978 to 1987, were first released on May 14, 2008, to The National Archives by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Although kept secret from the public for many years, most of the files have low levels of classification and none are classified Top Secret. 200 files are set to be made public by 2012. The files are correspondence from the public sent to the British government and officials, such as the MoD and Margaret Thatcher. The MoD released the files under the Freedom of Information Act due to requests from researchers. These files include, but are not limited to, UFOs over Liverpool and Waterloo Bridge in London.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: On October 20, 2008, more UFO files were released. One case released detailed that in 1991 an Alitalia passenger aircraft was approaching London Heathrow Airport when the pilots saw what they described as a "cruise missile" fly extremely close to the cockpit. The pilots believed a collision was imminent. UFO expert David Clarke says this is one of the most convincing cases for a UFO he has come across.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: A secret study of UFOs was undertaken for the Ministry of Defence between 1996 and 2000 and was code-named Project Condign. The resulting report, titled "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Defence Region", was publicly released in 2006, but the identity and credentials of whomever constituted Project Condign remains classified. The report confirmed earlier findings that the main causes of UFO sightings are misidentification of man-made and natural objects. The report noted: "No artefacts of unknown or unexplained origin have been reported or handed to the UK authorities, despite thousands of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena reports. There are no SIGINT, ELINT or radiation measurements and little useful video or still IMINT." It concluded: "There is no evidence that any UAP, seen in the UKADR [UK Air Defence Region], are incursions by air-objects of any intelligent (extraterrestrial or foreign) origin, or that they represent any hostile intent." A little-discussed conclusion of the report was that novel meteorological plasma phenomenon akin to ball lightning are responsible for "the majority, if not all" of otherwise inexplicable sightings, especially reports of black triangle UFOs.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: On December 1, 2009, the Ministry of Defence quietly closed down its UFO investigations unit. The unit's hotline and email address were suspended by the MoD on that date. The MoD said there was no value in continuing to receive and investigate sightings in a release, stating that "in over fifty years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom. The MoD has no specific capability for identifying the nature of such sightings. There is no Defence benefit in such investigation and it would be an inappropriate use of defence resources. Furthermore, responding to reported UFO sightings diverts MoD resources from tasks that are relevant to Defence." "The Guardian" reported that the MoD claimed the closure would save the Ministry around £50,000 a year. The MoD said it would continue to release UFO files to the public through The National Archives.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: UFO reports, Parliamentary questions, and letters from members of the public were released on August 5, 2010, to the UK National Archives. "In one letter included in the files, a man alleges Churchill ordered a coverup of a WW II-era UFO encounter involving the Royal Air Force".


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Critics argue that all UFO evidence is anecdotal and can be explained as prosaic natural phenomena. Defenders of UFO research counter that knowledge of observational data, other than what is reported in the popular media, is limited in the scientific community and further study is needed. Studies have established that the majority of UFO observations are misidentified conventional objects or natural phenomena—most commonly aircraft, balloons including sky lanterns, satellites, and astronomical objects such as meteors, bright stars and planets. A small percentage are hoaxes. Fewer than 10% of reported sightings remain unexplained after proper investigation and therefore can be classified as unidentified in the strictest sense. According to Steven Novella, proponents of the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) suggest these unexplained reports are of alien spacecraft, however the null hypothesis cannot be excluded; that these reports are simply other more prosaic phenomena that cannot be identified due to lack of complete information or due to the necessary subjectivity of the reports. Novella says that instead of accepting the null hypothesis, UFO enthusiasts tend to engage in special pleading by offering outlandish, untested explanations for the validity of the ETH, which violate Occam's razor.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Historically, ufology has not been considered credible in mainstream science. The scientific community has generally deemed that UFO sightings are not worthy of serious investigation except as a cultural artifact.<ref name="Sturrock/Stanford"></ref>


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Studies of UFOs rarely appear in mainstream scientific literature. When asked, some scientists and scientific organizations have pointed to the end of official governmental studies in the U.S. in December 1969, following the statement by the government scientist Edward Condon that further study of UFOs could not be justified on grounds of scientific advancement.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Jacques Vallée, a scientist and ufologist, claimed there were deficiencies in most UFO research, including government studies. He criticized the mythology and cultism often associated with UFO sightings, but despite the challenges, Vallée contended that several hundred professional scientists — a group both he and Hynek termed "the invisible college" — continued to study UFOs quietly on their own time.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: UFOs have become a prevalent theme in modern culture, and the social phenomena have been the subject of academic research in sociology and psychology.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Besides anecdotal visual sightings, reports sometimes include claims of other kinds of evidence, including cases studied by the military and various government agencies of different countries (such as Project Blue Book, the Condon Committee, the French GEPAN/SEPRA, and Uruguay's current Air Force study).


title: Unidentified flying object

text: A comprehensive scientific review of cases where physical evidence was available was carried out by the 1998 Sturrock panel, with specific examples of many of the categories listed below.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: A scientifically skeptical group that has for many years offered critical analyses of UFO claims is the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI). One example is the response to local beliefs that "extraterrestrial beings" in UFOs were responsible for crop circles appearing in Indonesia, which the government and the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN) described as "man-made". Thomas Djamaluddin, research professor of astronomy and astrophysics at LAPAN stated: "We have come to agree that this 'thing' cannot be scientifically proven. Scientists have put UFOs in the category of pseudoscience."


title: Unidentified flying object

text: UFOs have been the subject of investigations by various governments who have provided extensive records related to the subject. Many of the most involved government-sponsored investigations ended after agencies concluded that there was no benefit to continued investigation. These same negative conclusions also have been found in studies that were highly classified for many years, such as the UK's Flying Saucer Working Party, Project Condign, the U.S. CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel, the U.S. military investigation into the green fireballs from 1948 to 1951, and the Battelle Memorial Institute study for the USAF from 1952 to 1955 (Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14).


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Some public government reports have acknowledged the possibility of the physical reality of UFOs, but have stopped short of proposing extraterrestrial origins, though not dismissing the possibility entirely. Examples are the Belgian military investigation into large triangles over their airspace in 1989–1991 and the 2009 Uruguayan Air Force study conclusion (see below).


title: Unidentified flying object

text: In 2007, former Arizona governor Fife Symington claimed he had seen "a massive, delta-shaped craft silently navigate over Squaw Peak, a mountain range in Phoenix, Arizona" in 1997.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell claimed he knew of senior government employees who had been involved in "close encounters", and because of this, he has no doubt that aliens have visited Earth.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: In May 2019, "The New York Times" reported that American Navy fighter jets had several instances of unidentified instrumentation and tracking data while conducting exercises off the eastern seaboard of the United States from the summer of 2014 to March 2015. The "Times" published a cockpit instrument video which appeared to show an object moving at high speed near the ocean surface as it appeared to rotate, and objects that appeared capable of high acceleration, deceleration and maneuverability. In two separate incidents, a pilot reported his cockpit instruments locked onto and tracked objects but he was unable to see them through his helmet camera. In another encounter, flight instruments recorded an image described as a sphere encasing a cube between two jets as they flew about 100 feet apart. The Pentagon officially released these videos on April 27, 2020. The United States Navy has said there have been "a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years".


title: Unidentified flying object

text: In March 2021, news media announced a comprehensive report is to be compiled of UFO events accumulated by the United States over the years.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: On April 12, 2021, the Pentagon confirmed the authenticity of pictures and videos gathered by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), purportedly showing "pyramid shaped objects" hovering above the USS Russell in 2019, off the coast of California, with spokeswoman Susan Gough saying "I can confirm that the referenced photos and videos were taken by Navy personnel. The UAPTF has included these incidents in their ongoing examinations." In May 2021, military pilots recalled their related encounters, along with camera and radar support, including one pilot's account noting that such incidents occurred "every day for at least a couple of years", according to an interview broadcast on the news program, "60 Minutes" (16 May 2021). Science writer and skeptic Mick West suggested the image was the result of an optical effect called a bokeh which can make out of focus light sources appear triangular or pyramidal due to the shape of the aperture of some lenses.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: On June 25, 2021, U.S. Defense and intelligence officials released the Pentagon UFO Report on what they know about a series of unidentified flying objects that have been seen by American military pilots. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that the UFO sightings by pilots "may not be extraterrestrial."


title: Unidentified flying object

text: In December 2021, further official governmental investigations into UAPs and related, along with annual unclassified reports presented to Congress, have been authorized and funded. Some have raised concerns about the new investigations.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: UFOs are sometimes an element of conspiracy theories in which governments are allegedly intentionally "covering up" the existence of aliens by removing physical evidence of their presence or even collaborating with extraterrestrial beings. There are many versions of this story; some are exclusive, while others overlap with various other conspiracy theories.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: In the U.S., an opinion poll conducted in 1997 suggested that 80% of Americans believed the U.S. government was withholding such information. Various notables have also expressed such views. Some examples are astronauts Gordon Cooper and Edgar Mitchell, Senator Barry Goldwater, Vice Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter (the first CIA director), Lord Hill-Norton (former British Chief of Defense Staff and NATO head), the 1999 French COMETA study by various French generals and aerospace experts, and Yves Sillard (former director of CNES, new director of French UFO research organization GEIPAN).


title: Unidentified flying object

text: It has also been suggested, by a few paranormal authors, that all or most human technology and culture is based on extraterrestrial contact (see also ancient astronauts).


title: Unidentified flying object

text: In May 2001, a press conference was held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., by an organization called the Disclosure Project, featuring twenty persons including retired Air Force and FAA personnel, intelligence officers and an air traffic controller. They all gave a brief account of their claims that evidence of UFOs was being suppressed and said they would be willing to testify under oath to a Congressional committee. According to a 2002 report in the Oregon Daily Emerald, Disclosure Project founder Steven M. Greer is an "alien theorist" who claims "proof of government coverup" consisting of 120 hours of testimony from various government officials on the topic of UFOs, including astronaut Gordon Cooper.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: On September 27, 2010, a group of six former USAF officers and one former enlisted Air Force man held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on the theme "U.S. Nuclear Weapons Have Been Compromised by Unidentified Aerial Objects" in which they claimed they had witnessed UFOs hovering near missile sites and even disarming the missiles.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: From April 29 to May 3, 2013, the Paradigm Research Group held the "Citizen Hearing on Disclosure" at the National Press Club. The group paid former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel and former Representatives Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, Roscoe Bartlett, Merrill Cook, Darlene Hooley, and Lynn Woolsey $20,000 each to hear testimony from a panel of researchers which included witnesses from military, agency, and political backgrounds.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: The void left by the lack of institutional or scientific study has given rise to independent researchers and fringe groups, including the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in the mid-20th century and, more recently, the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) and the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). The term "Ufology" is used to describe the collective efforts of those who study reports and associated evidence of unidentified flying objects.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Some private studies have been neutral in their conclusions but argued that the inexplicable core cases call for continued scientific study. Examples are the Sturrock panel study of 1998 and the 1970 AIAA review of the Condon Report.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: "Ufology" is a neologism describing the collective efforts of those who study UFO reports and associated evidence.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: UFOs have constituted a widespread international cultural phenomenon since the 1950s. Gallup Polls rank UFOs near the top of lists for subjects of widespread recognition. In 1973, a survey found that 95 percent of the public reported having heard of UFOs, whereas only 92 percent had heard of U.S. President Gerald Ford in a 1977 poll taken just nine months after he left the White House. A 1996 Gallup Poll reported that 71 percent of the United States population believed the U.S. government was covering up information regarding UFOs. A 2002 Roper Poll for the Sci-Fi Channel found similar results, but with more people believing UFOs are extraterrestrial craft. In that latest poll, 56 percent thought UFOs were real craft and 48 percent that aliens had visited the Earth. Again, about 70 percent felt the government was not sharing everything it knew about UFOs or extraterrestrial life.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: Another effect of the flying saucer type of UFO sightings has been Earth-made flying saucer craft in space fiction, for example the United Planets Cruiser C57D in "Forbidden Planet" (1956), the "Jupiter2" in "Lost in Space", and the saucer section of the USS "Enterprise" in "Star Trek". UFOs and extraterrestrials have been featured in many movies.


title: Unidentified flying object

text: The intense secrecy surrounding the secret Nevada base, known as Area 51, has made it the frequent subject of conspiracy theories and a central component of UFO folklore. In July 2019, more than 2 million people responded to a joke proposal to storm Area 51 which appeared in an anonymous Facebook post. Two music festivals in rural Nevada, "AlienStock" and "Storm Area 51 Basecamp", were subsequently organized to capitalize on the popularity of the original Facebook event.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: She attended Godolphin and Latymer School, London. After graduating from the University of Oxford, where she was a member of Lady Margaret Hall, Lawson started work as a book reviewer and restaurant critic, later becoming the deputy literary editor of "The Sunday Times" in 1986. She then embarked upon a career as a freelance journalist, writing for a number of newspapers and magazines. In 1998 her first cookery book, "How to Eat", was published and sold 300,000 copies, becoming a best-seller. Her second book, "How to Be a Domestic Goddess", was published in 2000, winning the British Book Award for Author of the Year.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: In 1999 Lawson hosted her own cooking show series, "Nigella Bites", on Channel 4, accompanied by another best-selling cookbook. "Nigella Bites" won Lawson a Guild of Food Writers Award; her 2005 ITV daytime chat show "Nigella" met with a negative critical reaction and was cancelled after attracting low ratings. She hosted the Food Network's "Nigella Feasts" in the United States in 2006, followed by a three-part BBC Two series, "Nigella's Christmas Kitchen", in the UK, which led to the commissioning of "Nigella Express" on BBC Two in 2007. Her own cookware range, Living Kitchen, has a value of £7 million, and she has sold more than 8 million cookery books worldwide to date.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: Nigella Lawson was born in 1960 in Wandsworth, London, one of the daughters of Nigel Lawson, a business and finance journalist who later became a Conservative MP and Chancellor of the Exchequer in Margaret Thatcher's government, and his first wife Vanessa Salmon (1936–1985), a socialite and the heiress to the J. Lyons and Co. fortune. Both her parents were from Jewish families. Her given name was originally suggested by her grandmother. Her family kept homes in Kensington and Chelsea.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: Nigel and Vanessa Lawson divorced in 1980, when Nigella was 20. They both remarried: her father that year to a House of Commons researcher, Therese Maclear (to whom he was married until 2008), and her mother, in the early 1980s, to philosopher A. J. Ayer (they remained married until her mother's death). As her father was at the time a prominent political figure, Nigella found some of the judgements and preconceptions that were formed about her frustrating. She has attributed her unhappiness as a child, in part, to the problematic relationship she had with her mother.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: Lawson's mother died of liver cancer in Westminster, London at the age of 48. Lawson's full-blood siblings are her brother, Dominic, former editor of "The Sunday Telegraph", sister Horatia, and sister Thomasina, who died of breast cancer, in her early thirties, in 1993; She has a half-brother, Tom, who is currently headmaster at Eastbourne College, and a half-sister, Emily; Tom and Emily are her father's children by his second wife. Lawson is a cousin to both George Monbiot and Fiona Shackleton through the Salmon family.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: Taking part in the third series of the BBC family-history documentary series, "Who Do You Think You Are?", Lawson sought to uncover some of her family's ancestry. She traced her ancestors to Ashkenazi Jews who originate from eastern Europe and Germany, leaving Lawson surprised not to have Sephardi ancestry, as she had believed. She also uncovered that her maternal great-great-great grandfather, Coenraad Sammes (later Coleman Joseph), had fled to England from Amsterdam in 1830 to escape a prison sentence following a conviction for theft. His daughter Hannah married Samuel Gluckstein, who was in business with Barnett Salmon of Salmon & Gluckstein. They had several children, including Isidore and Montague Gluckstein, who together with Salmon founded J. Lyons and Co. in 1887, and Helena, who married him. One of the children of Helena and Barnett Salmon was Alfred Salmon (1868–1928), the great-grandfather of Nigella Lawson.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: Lawson spent some of her childhood in the Welsh village of Higher Kinnerton. She had to move schools nine times between the ages of 9 and 18, and consequently she described her school years as difficult. "I was just difficult, disruptive, good at school work, but rude, I suspect, and too highly-strung", Lawson reflected. She was educated at several independent schools, among them Ibstock Place School, Queen's Gate School and Godolphin and Latymer School. She worked for many department stores in London, and went on to graduate from the University of Oxford with a second-class degree in medieval and modern languages, as a student at Lady Margaret Hall. She lived in Florence, Italy, for a time.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: Lawson originally worked in publishing, first taking a job under publisher Naim Attallah. At 23, she began her career in journalism after Charles Moore had invited her to write for "The Spectator" – her father had previously been editor at the same publication, and her older brother soon would take up the same role. Her initial work at the magazine consisted of writing book reviews, after which she became a restaurant critic there in 1985. She became the deputy literary editor of "The Sunday Times" in 1986 aged 26.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: She attracted publicity in 1989 when she admitted voting for Labour in an election, not her father's Conservative Party, and then criticised Margaret Thatcher in print. Regarding her political relationship with her father, Lawson has stated, "My father would never expect me to agree with him about anything in particular and, to be honest, we never talk about politics much."


title: Nigella Lawson

text: After "The Sunday Times", she embarked upon a freelance writing career, realising that "I was on the wrong ladder. I didn't want to be an executive, being paid to worry rather than think". In the United Kingdom, she wrote for "The Daily Telegraph", the "Evening Standard", "The Observer" and "The Times Literary Supplement", and penned a food column for "Vogue" and a make-up column for "The Times Magazine", as well as working with "Gourmet" and "Bon Appétit" in the United States. In 1995 Lawson left a two-week stint at Talk Radio early after making a statement that her shopping was done for her, apparently due to its incompatibility with the radio station's desired "common touch".


title: Nigella Lawson

text: In the mid-1990s she occasionally hosted TV press-reviews slot "What the Papers Say", and was co-host, with David Aaronovitch, of Channel 4 literary-discussion series "Booked". In 1998 she repeatedly guested on Channel 4 cookery series "Nigel Slater's Real-Food Show".


title: Nigella Lawson

text: Lawson had an established sense of cooking from her childhood, having had a mother who enjoyed cooking. She conceived the idea of writing a cookbook after she observed a dinner party host in tears because of an unset crème caramel. "How to Eat" (1998), featuring culinary tips on preparation and saving time, sold 300,000 copies in the UK. "The Sunday Telegraph" dubbed it "the most valuable culinary guide published this decade".


title: Nigella Lawson

text: Its successor, "How to be a Domestic Goddess" (2000), focuses primarily on baking. "The Times" wrote of the book that it "is defined by its intimate, companionable approach. She is not issuing matronly instructions like Delia; she is merely making sisterly suggestions". Lawson rejected feminist criticism of her book, adding that "[s]ome people did take the domestic goddess title literally rather than ironically. It was about the pleasures of feeling like one rather than actually being one." The book sold 180,000 copies in four months, and won Lawson the title of Author of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2001, fending off competition from authors such as J. K. Rowling. "How to Eat" and "How to be a Domestic Goddess" were published in the U.S. in 2000 and 2001. As a result of the book's success, "The Observer" took her on as a social affairs columnist.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: Lawson next hosted her own cooking show television series, "Nigella Bites", which ran from 1999 to 2001 on Channel 4, followed by a Christmas special in 2001. Victor Lewis-Smith, a critic usually known for his biting comments, praised Lawson for being "formidably charismatic". The first series of "Nigella Bites" averaged 1.9 million viewers, and won her the Television Broadcast of the Year at the Guild of Food Writers Awards and the Best Television Food Show at the World Food Media Awards in 2001. The show yielded an accompanying best-selling recipe book, also called "Nigella Bites", for which Waterstone's book stores reported UK sales of over 300,000. The book won the WH Smith Lifestyle Book of the Year award.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: The "Nigella Bites" series, which was filmed in her home in west London, was later broadcast on American television channels E! and Style Network. Lawson said of the US release, "In the UK, my viewers have responded to the fact I'm trying to reduce, not add to, their burden and I'm looking forward to making that connection with Style viewers across the US". Overall, Lawson was well received in the United States. Those who did criticise her often suggested she was too flirtatious; a commentator from "The New York Times" said, "Lawson's sexy roundness mixed with her speed-demon technique makes cooking dinner with Nigella look like a prelude to an orgy". The book of "Nigella Bites" became the second best-selling cook book of Christmas 2002 in America. The series was followed by "Forever Summer with Nigella" in 2002 on Channel 4, the concept being, "that you cook to make you still feel as though you're on holiday". Fellow food writer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall condemned the concept as "cynical and reckless" and referred to the book as "Fuck Seasonality".


title: Nigella Lawson

text: In 2002 Lawson also began to write a fortnightly cooking article for "The New York Times", and brought out a profitable line of kitchenware, called the Living Kitchen range, which is sold by numerous retailers. Her range's value has continued to grow, starting at an estimated £2 million in 2003.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: In November 2003, Lawson oversaw the menu and preparations for a lunch hosted by Tony Blair at Downing Street for George W. Bush and his wife during their state visit to the UK. Former First Lady of the United States, Laura Bush, is said to be a fan of Lawson's recipes and once included one of her soups as the starter for the 2002 presidential Christmas dinner. Lawson's fifth book, "Feast: Food that Celebrates Life", released in 2004, made sales worth £3 million. London's "Evening Standard" wrote that the book "works both as a practical manual and an engrossing read. ... Nobody else writes so openly about the emotional significance of food." Lawson appeared frequently on American television in 2004, conducting cookery slots on talk shows such as "The Ellen DeGeneres Show".


title: Nigella Lawson

text: In the UK in 2005, Lawson started to host a daytime television chat show on ITV1 called "Nigella", on which celebrity guests joined her in a studio kitchen. The first episode debuted with a disappointing 800,000 viewers. The show was met with a largely negative critical reaction, and after losing 40% of its viewers in the first week, the show was cancelled. She later commented to "Radio Times" that on her first show, she was almost too frightened to come out of her dressing room. Lawson added that having to pretend to be interested in the lives of the celebrities on her show became too much of an effort.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: Her third food-based television series, called "Nigella Feasts", debuted on the Food Network in the United States in Autumn 2006 for a 13-week run. "Time" magazine wrote a favourable review of the show; "the real appeal of "Feasts" ... is her unfussy, wry, practical approach to entertaining and quality comfort food. "Feasts" will leave you wishing for an invite".


title: Nigella Lawson

text: Lawson was next signed to BBC Two to host a three-part cookery show entitled "Nigella's Christmas Kitchen", which began on 6 December 2006 and aired weekly. The first two episodes secured the second highest ratings of the week for BBC Two, with the first episode debuting with a strong 3.5 million. The final episode went on to become the top show on BBC Two the week that it was aired. "Nigella's Christmas Kitchen" won Lawson a second World Food Media Award in 2007. Her influence as a food commentator was also demonstrated in late 2006, when after she had lauded goose fat as being an essential ingredient for Christmas, sales of the product increased significantly in the UK. Waitrose and Tesco both stated that goose fat sales had more than doubled, as well as Asda's increasing by 65% from the previous week. Similarly, after she advised using prunes in a recipe on "Nigella's Christmas Kitchen", Waitrose had increased sales of 30% year on year.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: "Nigella's Christmas Kitchen" led to the commissioning of a 13-part cookery series about fast food entitled "Nigella Express". She said, "The recipes aren't particularly healthy. That said, I wouldn't describe them as junk." The show became another ratings success and one of BBC Two's top-rated shows each week. The first episode debuted with 2.85 million viewers, a high percentage above the channel's slot average. The second episode's viewing figures rose to 3.3 million, and the series peaked at 3.4 million on 22 October 2007.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: Her influence with the public was again demonstrated when sales of Riesling wine increased by 30% in the UK after she had incorporated it into her Coq au Riesling recipe on "Nigella Express". In December 2007 she appeared on BBC's "The Graham Norton Show" and revealed that she had once eaten 30 pickled eggs for a £1,000 bet, saying "How stupid to challenge me! I made them all put their money on the table in front of me. The next day I had scrambled eggs for breakfast."


title: Nigella Lawson

text: Lawson came under criticism when viewers complained that she had gained weight since the debut episode of the series. "The Guardian" however, noted, "the food matches her appearance – flawless, polished and sexy". The rights to "Nigella Express" were sold to Discovery Asia. The series was nominated at the 35th Daytime Emmy Awards in the United States for Outstanding Lifestyle Program, and Lawson herself for the Outstanding Lifestyle Host.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: The accompanying book to "Nigella Express" was released in the UK in September 2007, US in November 2007, and in Australia in 2008. Sharing the same name as the television series, the book became another best-seller in the UK, and was outselling television chef Jamie Oliver by 100,000 copies, according to Waterstone's. It was reported that over 490,000 copies had been sold by mid-December in the UK. Furthermore, the book was number one for a period on Amazon UK's best-selling books, and was ninth on their overall list of Christmas best-sellers in any category. Paul Levy of "The Guardian" wrote that the tone of the recipes was "just right. One of the appealing things about Nigella's brief introductions to each of them is that she thinks not just as cook, but as eater, and tells you whether they're messy, sticky or fussy." In January 2008, Lawson was estimated to have sold more than 3 million books worldwide. Her Christmas book was released in October 2008 and the television show in December of the same year. An American edition of the book "Nigella Christmas" with a different cover photograph was released in November 2009 with an accompanying book tour of several US cities and a special on the USA's Food Network.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: Lawson was featured as one of the three judges on a special battle of "Iron Chef America", titled "The Super Chef Battle", which pitted White House Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford and Iron Chef Bobby Flay against chef Emeril Lagasse and Iron Chef Mario Batali. This episode was originally broadcast on 3 January 2010. Lawson's cookbook "Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home" (2010) is a tie-in with the TV series "Nigella Kitchen". This was shown in the UK and on the Food Network in the United States.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: "Nigellissima: Instant Italian Inspiration" was released in 2012. The 8-part TV series entitled "Nigellissima" was broadcast by the BBC. Lawson obtained work experience in Italy during her gap year.<ref name="FinancialTimes2/11/2012"></ref>


title: Nigella Lawson

text: She travelled to the United States in 2013 and starred alongside Anthony Bourdain in the reality cooking show "The Taste". The UK version of the show began airing on 7 January 2014 on Channel 4. Lawson was granted a visa to travel to the United States and travelled there for a continuation of the series. In 2014, Lawson was hired by a chocolate company to appear in an advertisement, the advertisement was filmed in New Zealand in May for a local confection manufacturer Whittaker's.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: The UK and US series of "The Taste" were both completed and in autumn 2015 Lawson began "Simply Nigella" for BBC 2. The focus was on comfort food, familiar dishes that are simple and quick to cook.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: Lawson was spokesperson for the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest 2015, giving the twelve points to Sweden's Måns Zelmerlöw and his song "Heroes", which went on to win the contest.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: It was reported on 18 January 2016, that Lawson would make a return to Australian television, joining the eighth series of "MasterChef Australia" as a guest judge, alongside the returning judges. She returned to the show for the tenth series in 2018 and eleventh series in 2019.


title: Nigella Lawson

text: Though Lawson has enjoyed a successful career in cookery, she is not a trained chef, and does not like being referred to as a "celebrity chef". Furthermore, she does not see herself as a cook or an expert in her field. However, many have described her as a chef nonetheless. Throughout Lawson's television programmes, she emphasises that she cooks for her own pleasure, for enjoyment, and that she finds cooking therapeutic. When deciding upon which recipes to feature in her books, she takes the view of the eater, stating, "If it's something I don't want to carry on eating once I'm full, then I don't want the recipe ... I have to feel that I want to cook the thing again."