title: Bernie Taupin

text: Taupin wrote the lyrics for "Rocket Man", "Levon", "Crocodile Rock", "Honky Cat", "Tiny Dancer", "Candle in the Wind", "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting", "Bennie and the Jets", "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters", "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me", "The Bitch is Back", "Daniel", and 1970's "Your Song", their first hit. Hits in the 1980s include "I'm Still Standing", "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues", "Sad Songs", and "Nikita." In the 1990s, Taupin and John had more hits, including "The One", "Simple Life", "The Last Song", "Club at the End of the Street" and "Believe." In September 1997, Taupin rewrote the lyrics of "Candle in the Wind" for "Candle in the Wind 1997", a tribute to the late Diana, Princess of Wales.


title: Bernie Taupin

text: The 1991 film documentary "Two Rooms" described the John/Taupin writing style, which involves Taupin writing the lyrics on his own and John then putting them to music, with no further interaction between the two. The process is still fundamentally the same, with John composing to Taupin's words, but the two interact on songs far more today, with Taupin joining John in the studio as the songs are written and occasionally during recording sessions.


title: Bernie Taupin

text: Taupin and John had their first Broadway musical open in March 2006 with "". Taupin wrote lyrics for 10 songs (and an 11th completed non-album track "Across the River Thames") for John's 2006 album "The Captain & The Kid" (sequel to "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy") and appeared on the cover with him for the first time marking their 40th anniversary of working together. ("Across the River Thames" was issued as an Internet-only download as a bonus with certain editions of "The Captain & the Kid".)


title: Bernie Taupin

text: On 25 March 2007, Taupin made a surprise appearance at John's 60th birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden, briefly discussing their 40-year songwriting partnership. Of Taupin's importance to their careers, as recorded on the "Elton 60 – Live at Madison Square Garden" DVD, John told the audience that without Taupin there probably would not be an 'Elton John' as the public has come to know him. Taupin and John also composed several songs for "The Union", a collaboration album between Elton and his longtime hero Leon Russell released in October 2010. They also collaborated on five original songs for the 2011 Miramax movie "Gnomeo and Juliet", including the Golden Globe-nominated "Hello Hello". Taupin and John's most-recent album collaboration is "Wonderful Crazy Night", released in 2016.


title: Bernie Taupin

text: In 2018, Taupin and John collaborated on two original songs for the animated film "Sherlock Gnomes". In 2019, the movie "Rocketman" was released, containing an original song written by Taupin and John for the film, "(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again", which plays over the closing credits. The film depicts the personal friendship of Taupin (played by Jamie Bell) and John during the 1970s and 1980s. They later won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for the song "(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again".


title: Bernie Taupin

text: In addition to writing for Elton John, Taupin has also written lyrics for use by other composers, with notable successes including "We Built This City", which was recorded by Starship, and "These Dreams," recorded by Heart (both of which were collaborations with English composer/musician Martin Page). In 1978, he co-wrote the album "From the Inside" with Alice Cooper.


title: Bernie Taupin

text: Taupin has also produced "American Gothic" for singer-songwriter David Ackles. Released in 1972, it did not enjoy big sales, but the album was highly acclaimed by music critics in the US and UK. The influential British music critic Derek Jewell of the UK "Sunday Times" described the album as being "the "Sgt. Pepper" of folk." Of Ackles's four albums, it was the only one recorded in England rather than in the United States. Taupin and Ackles had become acquainted when Ackles was selected to be the co-headlining act for Elton John's 1970 American debut at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Taupin was mentioned specifically as being one of the reasons "American Gothic" was selected by the writers and editors for inclusion in the book, "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die". He also collaborated on the book "Burning Cold" with photographer Gary Bernstein. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Taupin also collaborated with French American musician, Josquin Des Pres (American musician) on at least 13 songs in his collection that have been performed and recorded by artists worldwide.


title: Bernie Taupin

text: In 2002, Willie Nelson and Kid Rock recorded "Last Stand in Open Country" for Nelson's album "The Great Divide". The song was the title track of the first album from Taupin's band Farm Dogs (see below). Nelson's album included two other Taupin songs, "This Face" and "Mendocino County Line". The latter, a duet between Nelson and Lee Ann Womack, was made into a video and released as the album's first single. The song won the 2003 Grammy for best vocal collaboration in country music. In 2004, he co-wrote Courtney Love's song "Uncool", from her 2004 debut solo album "America's Sweetheart". In 2005, he co-wrote the title track to "What I Really Want For Christmas" with Brian Wilson for his first seasonal album. In 2006, he won a Golden Globe Award for his lyrics to the song "A Love That Will Never Grow Old" from the film "Brokeback Mountain". The music of the song was composed by Argentine producer and songwriter Gustavo Santaolalla.


title: Bernie Taupin

text: In 1971, Taupin recorded a spoken-word album titled "Taupin", in which he recites some of his early poems against a background of impromptu, sitar-heavy music created by some members of Elton's band, including Davey Johnstone and Caleb Quaye. Side one, "Child", contains poems about his early childhood in southern Lincolnshire. The first poem, "The Greatest Discovery," which looks at his birth from the perspective of his older brother Tony, was also set to music by Elton John and included on Elton's eponymous second album, "Elton John". There are poems about Taupin's first two childhood homes, Flatters and Rowston Manor, and others about his relationship with his brother and grandfather. Side Two includes a variety of poems of varying obscurity, from a marionette telling her own story to a rat catcher who falls victim to his prey. Taupin stated in interviews that he was not pleased with the album.


title: Bernie Taupin

text: In 1980, Taupin recorded his first album as a singer, "He Who Rides the Tiger". The album failed to make a dent in the charts. Taupin later suggested in interviews that he did not have the creative control he would have liked over the album. In 1987, he recorded another album, "Tribe". The songs were co-written with Martin Page. "Citizen Jane" and "Friend of the Flag" were released as singles. Videos of both singles featured Rene Russo, the sister of Toni, his wife at that time.


title: Bernie Taupin

text: In 1996, Taupin formed a band called Farm Dogs, whose two albums were conscious (and successful) throwbacks to the grittier, earthier sound of "Tumbleweed Connection". While Taupin wrote the lyrics, the music was a collaborative effort among the band members. Their first album, 1996's "Last Stand in Open Country", received critical praise but little airplay. The title track was later recorded by Willie Nelson and Kid Rock for Nelson's 2002 album "The Great Divide". In 1998, Farm Dogs released its second and final album, "Immigrant Sons". The album was unsuccessful despite a tour of small clubs across America.


title: Bernie Taupin

text: In 1973, Taupin collected all his lyrics up through the "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" album into a book, "Bernie Taupin: The One Who Writes the Words for Elton John". In addition to the lyrics from the albums, this book contained the lyrics to all the single B-sides, various rarities, and Taupin's 1970 spoken-word album. The songs are illustrated by various artists, friends, and celebrity guests such as John Lennon and Joni Mitchell. The book is in black & white except for the cover.


title: Bernie Taupin

text: In 1977, Taupin collaborated with rock photographer David Nutter on "It's A Little Bit Funny", adding text and helping chronicle Elton John's year-long Louder Than Concorde Tour. The now-collectible book was published in hard and soft cover editions by Penguin Books. It collects the better part of one year's worth of personal adventures and memories of Elton and the band, aboard his private plane, on the beaches of Barbados, at backstage gatherings and in some quieter off-stage moments with friends (including some famous faces that Elton and Bernie met and palled around with in their travels).


title: Bernie Taupin

text: In 1978, Taupin also appeared in an episode of "The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries", "The Hardy Boys & Nancy Drew Meet Dracula", singing backup to Shaun Cassidy. In 1988, Taupin published an autobiography of his childhood, "A Cradle of Haloes: Sketches of a Childhood". The book was released only in the UK. It tells the tale of a childhood fuelled by fantasy in rural Lincolnshire in the 1950s and 1960s, ending in 1969 as Taupin gets on the train to seek his fortune in London.


title: Bernie Taupin

text: In 1991, Taupin self-published a book of poems called "The Devil at High Noon". In 1994, Taupin's lyrics up through the "Made in England" album were collected into a hardcover book, "Elton John & Bernie Taupin: The Complete Lyrics", published by Hyperion. However, it does not appear that Taupin was intimately involved in this project, as it contains multiple misspellings and outright misrenderings of the lyrics. It is also missing some of the rarities and B-sides found in the earlier collection. As with the 1973 collection, the songs are illustrated by various artists, this time in full colour throughout.


title: Bernie Taupin

text: In 1992, Taupin was asked to produce a benefit for AIDS Project Los Angeles. The event featured no songs written by the writer, instead opening with an acoustic set of performances of material chosen by the performers followed by selections from the musical "West Side Story", chosen for its "timeless message of tolerance that is relevant to every decade."


title: Bernie Taupin

text: In addition to his music, much of his time is spent creating his visual art. Attributing his passion for art to his mother, Daphne, Taupin began displaying and selling his original artwork in 2010. Consisting of large, mixed media, contemporary assemblages, the art has been shown and collected across the United States and Canada.


title: Bernie Taupin

text: Taupin's artwork has been seen at Art Miami, Art Southampton, the LA Art Fair, and in various galleries. His artwork often incorporates the American flag.


title: Bernie Taupin

text: Taupin has been married four times. His first three marriages ended in divorce. His wives were: Maxine Feibelman (1971–76); Toni Lynn Russo (1979–91), sister of actress Rene Russo; Stephanie Haymes Roven (1993–98), daughter of entertainers Dick Haymes and Fran Jeffries; and Heather Kidd (March 2004–present), with whom he has two daughters, Charley Indiana and Georgey Devon. Taupin moved to the United States from England in the mid-1970s and became a US citizen in 1990. He lives in Santa Barbara County, California.


title: Bernie Taupin

text: Taupin was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to music.


title: Rat

text: Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents. Species of rats are found throughout the order Rodentia, but stereotypical rats are found in the genus "Rattus". Other rat genera include "Neotoma" (pack rats), "Bandicota" (bandicoot rats) and "Dipodomys" (kangaroo rats).


title: Rat

text: Rats are typically distinguished from mice by their size. Usually the common name of a large muroid rodent will include the word "rat", while a smaller muroid's name will include "mouse". The common terms "rat" and "mouse" are not taxonomically specific. There are 56 known species of rats in the world.


title: Rat

text: The best-known rat species are the black rat ("Rattus rattus") and the brown rat ("Rattus norvegicus"). This group, generally known as the Old World rats or true rats, originated in Asia. Rats are bigger than most Old World mice, which are their relatives, but seldom weigh over in the wild.


title: Rat

text: The term "rat" is also used in the names of other small mammals that are not true rats. Examples include the North American pack rats (aka wood rats) and a number of species loosely called kangaroo rats. Rats such as the bandicoot rat ("Bandicota bengalensis") are murine rodents related to true rats but are not members of the genus "Rattus".


title: Rat

text: Male rats are called "bucks"; unmated females, "does", pregnant or parent females, "dams"; and infants, "kittens" or "pups". A group of rats is referred to as a "mischief".


title: Rat

text: The common species are opportunistic survivors and often live with and near humans; therefore, they are known as commensals. They may cause substantial food losses, especially in developing countries. However, the widely distributed and problematic commensal species of rats are a minority in this diverse genus. Many species of rats are island endemics, some of which have become endangered due to habitat loss or competition with the brown, black, or Polynesian rat.


title: Rat

text: Wild rodents, including rats, can carry many different zoonotic pathogens, such as "Leptospira", "Toxoplasma gondii", and "Campylobacter". The Black Death is traditionally believed to have been caused by the microorganism "Yersinia pestis", carried by the tropical rat flea ("Xenopsylla cheopis"), which preyed on black rats living in European cities during the epidemic outbreaks of the Middle Ages; these rats were used as transport hosts. Another zoonotic disease linked to the rat is foot-and-mouth disease.


title: Rat

text: Rats become sexually mature at age 6 weeks, but reach social maturity at about 5 to 6 months of age. The average lifespan of rats varies by species, but many only live about a year due to predation.


title: Rat

text: The black and brown rats diverged from other Old World rats in the forests of Asia during the beginning of the Pleistocene.


title: Rat

text: The characteristic long tail of most rodents is a feature that has been extensively studied in various rat species models, which suggest three primary functions of this structure: thermoregulation, minor proprioception, and a nocifensive-mediated degloving response. Rodent tails—particularly in rat models—have been implicated with a thermoregulation function that follows from its anatomical construction. This particular tail morphology is evident across the family Muridae, in contrast to the bushier tails of Sciuridae, the squirrel family. The tail is hairless and thin skinned but highly vascularized, thus allowing for efficient countercurrent heat exchange with the environment. The high muscular and connective tissue densities of the tail, along with ample muscle attachment sites along its plentiful caudal vertebrae, facilitate specific proprioceptive senses to help orient the rodent in a three-dimensional environment. Murids have evolved a unique defense mechanism termed "degloving" that allows for escape from predation through the loss of the outermost integumentary layer on the tail. However, this mechanism is associated with multiple pathologies that have been the subject of investigation.


title: Rat

text: Multiple studies have explored the thermoregulatory capacity of rodent tails by subjecting test organisms to varying levels of physical activity and quantifying heat conduction via the animals' tails. One study demonstrated a significant disparity in heat dissipation from a rat's tail relative to its abdomen. This observation was attributed to the higher proportion of vascularity in the tail, as well as its higher surface-area-to-volume ratio, which directly relates to heat's ability to dissipate via the skin. These findings were confirmed in a separate study analyzing the relationships of heat storage and mechanical efficiency in rodents that exercise in warm environments. In this study, the tail was a focal point in measuring heat accumulation and modulation.


title: Rat

text: On the other hand, the tail's ability to function as a proprioceptive sensor and modulator has also been investigated. As aforementioned, the tail demonstrates a high degree of muscularization and subsequent innervation that ostensibly collaborate in orienting the organism. Specifically, this is accomplished by coordinated flexion and extension of tail muscles to produce slight shifts in the organism's center of mass, orientation, etc., which ultimately assists it with achieving a state of proprioceptive balance in its environment. Further mechanobiological investigations of the constituent tendons in the tail of the rat have identified multiple factors that influence how the organism navigates its environment with this structure. A particular example is that of a study in which the morphology of these tendons is explicated in detail. Namely, cell viability tests of tendons of the rat's tail demonstrate a higher proportion of living fibroblasts that produce the collagen for these fibers. As in humans, these tendons contain a high density of golgi tendon organs that help the animal assess stretching of muscle in situ and adjust accordingly by relaying the information to higher cortical areas associated with balance, proprioception, and movement.


title: Rat

text: The characteristic tail of murids also displays a unique defense mechanism known as "degloving" in which the outer layer of the integument can be detached in order to facilitate the animal's escape from a predator. This evolutionary selective pressure has persisted despite a multitude of pathologies that can manifest upon shedding part of the tail and exposing more interior elements to the environment. Paramount among these are bacterial and viral infection, as the high density of vascular tissue within the tail becomes exposed upon avulsion or similar injury to the structure. The degloving response is a nocifensive response, meaning that it occurs when the animal is subjected to acute pain, such as when a predator snatches the organism by the tail.


title: Rat

text: Specially bred rats have been kept as pets at least since the late 19th century. Pet rats are typically variants of the species brown rat, but black rats and giant pouched rats are also sometimes kept. Pet rats behave differently from their wild counterparts depending on how many generations they have been kept as pets. Pet rats do not pose any more of a health risk than pets such as cats or dogs. Tamed rats are generally friendly and can be taught to perform selected behaviors.


title: Rat

text: Selective breeding has brought about different color and marking varieties in rats. Genetic mutations have also created different fur types, such as rex and hairless. Congenital malformation in selective breeding have created the dumbo rat, a popular pet choice due to their low, saucer-shaped ears. A breeding standard exists for rat fanciers wishing to breed and show their rat at a rat show.


title: Rat

text: In 1895, Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, established a population of domestic albino brown rats to study the effects of diet and for other physiological studies. Over the years, rats have been used in many experimental studies, adding to our understanding of genetics, diseases, the effects of drugs, and other topics that have provided a great benefit for the health and wellbeing of humankind.


title: Rat

text: The aortic arches of the rat are among the most commonly studied in murine models due to marked anatomical homology to the human cardiovascular system. Both rat and human aortic arches exhibit subsequent branching of the brachiocephalic trunk, left common carotid artery, and left subclavian artery, as well as geometrically similar, nonplanar curvature in the aortic branches. Aortic arches studied in rats exhibit abnormalities similar to those of humans, including altered pulmonary arteries and double or absent aortic arches. Despite existing anatomical analogy in the inthrathoracic position of the heart itself, the murine model of the heart and its structures remains a valuable tool for studies of human cardiovascular conditions.


title: Rat

text: The rat's larynx has been used in experimentations that involve inhalation toxicity, allograft rejection, and irradiation responses. One experiment described four features of the rat's larynx. The first being the location and attachments of the thyroarytenoid muscle, the alar cricoarytenoid muscle, and the superior cricoarytenoid muscle, the other of the newly named muscle that ran from the arytenoid to a midline tubercle on the cricoid. The newly named muscles were not seen in the human larynx. In addition, the location and configuration of the laryngeal alar cartilage was described. The second feature was that the way the newly named muscles appear to be familiar to those in the human larynx. The third feature was that a clear understanding of how MEPs are distributed in each of the laryngeal muscles was helpful in understanding the effects of botulinum toxin injection. The MEPs in the posterior


title: Rat

text: cricoarytenoid muscle were focused mostly at the midbelly. In addition, the medial thyroarytenoid muscle were focused at the midbelly while the lateral thyroarytenoid muscle MEPs were focused at the anterior third of the belly. The fourth and final feature that was cleared up was how the MEPs were distributed in the thyroarytenoid muscle.


title: Rat

text: Laboratory rats have also proved valuable in psychological studies of learning and other mental processes (Barnett 2002), as well as to understand group behavior and overcrowding (with the work of John B. Calhoun on behavioral sink). A 2007 study found rats to possess metacognition, a mental ability previously only documented in humans and some primates.


title: Rat

text: Domestic rats differ from wild rats in many ways. They are calmer and less likely to bite; they can tolerate greater crowding; they breed earlier and produce more offspring; and their brains, livers, kidneys, adrenal glands, and hearts are smaller (Barnett 2002).


title: Rat

text: Brown rats are often used as model organisms for scientific research. Since the publication of the rat genome sequence, and other advances, such as the creation of a rat SNP chip, and the production of knockout rats, the laboratory rat has become a useful genetic tool, although not as popular as mice. When it comes to conducting tests related to intelligence, learning, and drug abuse, rats are a popular choice due to their high intelligence, ingenuity, aggressiveness, and adaptability. Their psychology seems in many ways similar to that of humans.


title: Rat

text: Entirely new breeds or "lines" of brown rats, such as the Wistar rat, have been bred for use in laboratories. Much of the genome of "Rattus norvegicus" has been sequenced.


title: Rat

text: Early studies found evidence both for and against measurable intelligence using the "g factor" in rats. Part of the difficulty of understanding animal cognition generally, is determining what to measure. One aspect of intelligence is the ability to learn, which can be measured using a maze like the T-maze. Experiments done in the 1920s showed that some rats performed better than others in maze tests, and if these rats were selectively bred, their offspring also performed better, suggesting that in rats an ability to learn was heritable in some way.


title: Rat

text: Rats have been used as working animals. Tasks for working rats include the sniffing of gunpowder residue, demining, acting and animal-assisted therapy.


title: Rat

text: Rats have a keen sense of smell and are easy to train. These characteristics have been employed, for example, by the Belgian non-governmental organization APOPO, which trains rats (specifically African giant pouched rats) to detect landmines and diagnose tuberculosis through smell.


title: Rat

text: Rats have long been considered deadly pests. Once considered a modern myth, the rat flood in India occurs every fifty years, as armies of bamboo rats descend upon rural areas and devour everything in their path. Rats have long been held up as the chief villain in the spread of the Bubonic Plague; however, recent studies show that rats alone could not account for the rapid spread of the disease through Europe in the Middle Ages. Still, the Centers for Disease Control does list nearly a dozen diseases directly linked to rats.


title: Rat

text: Most urban areas battle rat infestations. A 2015 study by the American Housing Survey (AHS) found that eighteen percent of homes in Philadelphia showed evidence of rodents. Boston, New York City, and Washington, D.C., also demonstrated significant rodent infestations. Indeed, rats in New York City are famous for their size and prevalence. The urban legend that the rat population in Manhattan equals that of its human population was definitively refuted by Robert Sullivan in his book "Rats" but illustrates New Yorkers' awareness of the presence, and on occasion boldness and cleverness, of the rodents. New York has specific regulations for eradicating rats; multifamily residences and commercial businesses must use a specially trained and licensed rat catcher.


title: Rat

text: Chicago was declared the "rattiest city" in the US by the pest control company Orkin in 2020, for the sixth consecutive time. It's followed by Los Angeles, New York, Washington, DC, and San Francisco. To help combat the problem, a Chicago animal shelter has placed more than 1000 feral cats (sterilized and vaccinated) outside of homes and businesses since 2012, where they hunt and catch rats while also providing a deterrent simply by their presence.


title: Rat

text: Rats have the ability to swim up sewer pipes into toilets. Rats will infest any area that provides shelter and easy access to sources of food and water, including under sinks, near garbage, and inside walls or cabinets.


title: Rat

text: Rats can serve as zoonotic vectors for certain pathogens and thus spread disease, such as bubonic plague, Lassa fever, leptospirosis, and Hantavirus infection. Researchers studying New York City wastewater have also cited rats as the potential source of "cryptic" SARS-CoV-2 lineages, due to unknown viral RNA fragments in sewage matching mutations previously shown to make SARS-CoV-2 more adept at rodent-based transmission.


title: Rat

text: Rats are also associated with human dermatitis because they are frequently infested with blood feeding rodent mites such as the tropical rat mite ("Ornithonyssus bacoti") and spiny rat mite ("Laelaps echidnina"), which will opportunistically bite and feed on humans, where the condition is known as rat mite dermatitis"."


title: Rat

text: When introduced into locations where rats previously did not exist, they can wreak an enormous degree of environmental degradation. "Rattus rattus", the black rat, is considered to be one of the world's worst invasive species. Also known as the ship rat, it has been carried worldwide as a stowaway on seagoing vessels for millennia and has usually accompanied men to any new area visited or settled by human beings by sea. The similar species "Rattus norvegicus", the brown rat or wharf rat, has also been carried worldwide by ships in recent centuries.


title: Rat

text: The ship or wharf rat has contributed to the extinction of many species of wildlife, including birds, small mammals, reptiles, invertebrates, and plants, especially on islands. True rats are omnivorous, capable of eating a wide range of plant and animal foods, and have a very high birth rate. When introduced to a new area, they quickly reproduce to take advantage of the new food supply. In particular, they prey on the eggs and young of forest birds, which on isolated islands often have no other predators and thus have no fear of predators. Some experts believe that rats are to blame for between forty percent and sixty percent of all seabird and reptile extinctions, with ninety percent of those occurring on islands. Thus man has indirectly caused the extinction of many species by accidentally introducing rats to new areas.


title: Rat

text: Rats are found in nearly all areas of Earth which are inhabited by human beings. The only rat-free continent is Antarctica, which is too cold for rat survival outdoors, and its lack of human habitation does not provide buildings to shelter them from the weather. However, rats have been introduced to many of the islands near Antarctica, and because of their destructive effect on native flora and fauna, efforts to eradicate them are ongoing. In particular, Bird Island (just off rat-infested South Georgia Island), where breeding seabirds could be badly affected if rats were introduced, is subject to special measures and regularly monitored for rat invasions.


title: Rat

text: As part of island restoration, some islands' rat populations have been eradicated to protect or restore the ecology. Hawadax Island, Alaska was declared rat free after 229 years and Campbell Island, New Zealand after almost 200 years. Breaksea Island in New Zealand was declared rat free in 1988 after an eradication campaign based on a successful trial on the smaller Hawea Island nearby.


title: Rat

text: In January 2015, an international "Rat Team" set sail from the Falkland Islands for the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands on board a ship carrying three helicopters and 100 tons of rat poison with the objective of "reclaiming the island for its seabirds". Rats have wiped out more than 90% of the seabirds on South Georgia, and the sponsors hope that once the rats are gone, it will regain its former status as home to the greatest concentration of seabirds in the world. The South Georgia Heritage Trust, which organized the mission describes it as "five times larger than any other rodent eradication attempted worldwide". That would be true if it were not for the rat control program in Alberta (see below).


title: Rat

text: The Canadian province of Alberta is notable for being the largest inhabited area on Earth which is free of true rats due to very aggressive government rat control policies. It has large numbers of native pack rats, also called bushy-tailed wood rats, but they are forest-dwelling vegetarians which are much less destructive than true rats.


title: Rat

text: Alberta was settled relatively late in North American history and only became a province in 1905. Black rats cannot survive in its climate at all, and brown rats must live near people and in their structures to survive the winters. There are numerous predators in Canada's vast natural areas which will eat non-native rats, so it took until 1950 for invading rats to make their way over land from Eastern Canada. Immediately upon their arrival at the eastern border with Saskatchewan, the Alberta government implemented an extremely aggressive rat control program to stop them from advancing further. A systematic detection and eradication system was used throughout a control zone about long and wide along the eastern border to eliminate rat infestations before the rats could spread further into the province. Shotguns, bulldozers, high explosives, poison gas, and incendiaries were used to destroy rats. Numerous farm buildings were destroyed in the process. Initially, tons of arsenic trioxide were spread around thousands of farm yards to poison rats, but soon after the program commenced the rodenticide and medical drug warfarin was introduced, which is much safer for people and more effective at killing rats than arsenic.


title: Rat

text: Forceful government control measures, strong public support and enthusiastic citizen participation continue to keep rat infestations to a minimum. The effectiveness has been aided by a similar but newer program in Saskatchewan which prevents rats from even reaching the Alberta border. Alberta still employs an armed rat patrol to control rats along Alberta's borders. About ten single rats are found and killed per year, and occasionally a large localized infestation has to be dug out with heavy machinery, but the number of permanent rat infestations is zero.


title: Rat

text: Ancient Romans did not generally differentiate between rats and mice, instead referring to the former as "mus maximus" (big mouse) and the latter as "mus minimus" (little mouse).


title: Rat

text: The rat (sometimes referred to as a mouse) is the first of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac. People born in this year are expected to possess qualities associated with rats, including creativity, intelligence, honesty, generosity, ambition, a quick temper and wastefulness. People born in a year of the rat are said to get along well with "monkeys" and "dragons", and to get along poorly with "horses".


title: Rat

text: In Indian tradition, rats are seen as the vehicle of Ganesha, and a rat's statue is always found in a temple of Ganesh. In the northwestern Indian city of Deshnoke, the rats at the Karni Mata Temple are held to be destined for reincarnation as Sadhus (Hindu holy men). The attending priests feed milk and grain to the rats, of which the pilgrims also partake.


title: Rat

text: European associations with the rat are generally negative. For instance, "Rats!" is used as a substitute for various vulgar interjections in the English language. These associations do not draw, "per se", from any biological or behavioral trait of the rat, but possibly from the association of rats (and fleas) with the 14th-century medieval plague called the Black Death. Rats are seen as vicious, unclean, parasitic animals that steal food and spread disease. However, some people in European cultures keep rats as pets and conversely find them to be tame, clean, intelligent, and playful.


title: Rat

text: Rats are often used in scientific experiments; animal rights activists allege the treatment of rats in this context is cruel. The term "lab rat" is used, typically in a self-effacing manner, to describe a person whose job function requires them to spend a majority of their work time engaged in bench-level research (such as postgraduate students in the sciences).


title: Rat

text: Rats are frequently blamed for damaging food supplies and other goods, or spreading disease. Their reputation has carried into common parlance: in the English language, "rat" is often an insult or is generally used to signify an unscrupulous character; it is also used, as a synonym for the term "nark", to mean an individual who works as a police informant or who has turned state's evidence. Writer/director Preston Sturges created the humorous alias "Ratskywatsky" for a soldier who seduced, impregnated, and abandoned the heroine of his 1944 film, "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek". It is a term (noun and verb) in criminal slang for an informant – "to rat on someone" is to betray them by informing the authorities of a crime or misdeed they committed. Describing a person as "rat-like" usually implies he or she is unattractive and suspicious.


title: Rat

text: Among trade unions, the word "rat" is also a term for nonunion employers or breakers of union contracts, and this is why unions use inflatable rats.


title: Rat

text: Depictions of rats in fiction are historically inaccurate and negative. The most common falsehood is the squeaking almost always heard in otherwise realistic portrayals (i.e. nonanthropomorphic). While the recordings may be of actual squeaking rats, the noise is uncommon – they may do so only if distressed, hurt, or annoyed. Normal vocalizations are very high-pitched, well outside the range of human hearing. Rats are also often cast in vicious and aggressive roles when in fact, their shyness helps keep them undiscovered for so long in an infested home.


title: Rat

text: The actual portrayals of rats vary from negative to positive with a majority in the negative and ambiguous. The rat plays a villain in several mouse societies; from Brian Jacques's "Redwall" and Robin Jarvis's "The Deptford Mice", to the roles of Disney's Professor Ratigan and Kate DiCamillo's Roscuro and Botticelli. They have often been used as a mechanism in horror; being the titular evil in stories like "The Rats" or H.P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" and in films like "Willard" and "Ben". Another terrifying use of rats is as a method of torture, for instance in Room 101 in George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" or "The Pit and the Pendulum" by Edgar Allan Poe.


title: Rat

text: Selfish helpfulness —those willing to help for a price— has also been attributed to fictional rats. Templeton, from E. B. White's "Charlotte's Web", repeatedly reminds the other characters that he is only involved because it means more food for him, and the cellar-rat of John Masefield's "The Midnight Folk" requires bribery to be of any assistance.


title: Rat

text: By contrast, the rats appearing in the Doctor Dolittle books tend to be highly positive and likeable characters, many of whom tell their remarkable life stories in the Mouse and Rat Club established by the animal-loving doctor.


title: Rat

text: Some fictional works use rats as the main characters. Notable examples include the society created by O'Brien's "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH", and others include "Doctor Rat", and Rizzo the Rat from The Muppets. Pixar's 2007 animated film "Ratatouille" is about a rat described by Roger Ebert as "earnest... lovable, determined, [and] gifted" who lives with a Parisian garbage-boy-turned-chef.


title: Rat

text: "Mon oncle d'Amérique" (""My American Uncle""), a 1980 French film, illustrates Henri Laborit's theories on evolutionary psychology and human behaviors by using short sequences in the storyline showing lab rat experiments.


title: Rat

text: In Harry Turtledove's science fiction novel "Homeward Bound", humans unintentionally introduce rats to the ecology at the home world of an alien race which previously invaded Earth and introduced some of its own fauna into its environment. A. Bertram Chandler pitted the space-bound protagonist of a long series of novels, Commodore Grimes, against giant, intelligent rats who took over several stellar systems and enslaved their human inhabitants. "The Stainless Steel Rat" is nickname of the (human) protagonist of a series of humorous science fiction novels written by Harry Harrison.


title: Rat

text: Wererats, therianthropic creatures able to take the shape of a rat, have appeared in the fantasy or horror genre since the 1970s. The term is a neologism coined in analogy to werewolf. The concept has since become common in role playing games like "Dungeons & Dragons" and fantasy fiction like the "" series.


title: Rat

text: One of the oldest and most historic stories about rats is "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", in which a rat-catcher leads away an infestation with enchanted music. The piper is later refused payment, so he in turn leads away the town's children. This tale, traced to Germany around the late 13th century, has inspired adaptations in film, theatre, literature, and even opera. The subject of much research, some theories have intertwined the tale with events related to the Black Plague, in which black rats played an important role. Fictional works based on the tale that focus heavily on the rat aspect include Pratchett's "The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents", and Belgian graphic novel "" ("The Ball of the Dead Rat"). Furthermore, a linguistic phenomenon when a wh-expression drags with it an entire encompassing phrase to the front of the clause has been named pied-piping after "Pied Piper of Hamlin" (see also pied-piping with inversion).


title: 2020–2023 ICC Cricket World Cup Super League

text: The 2020–23 ICC Men's Cricket World Cup Super League is the ongoing inaugural edition of the ICC Cricket World Cup Super League, a One Day International (ODI) league. The league is taking place from July 2020 to May 2023, and serves as part of the 2023 Cricket World Cup qualification process.


text: The league features thirteen teams, the twelve Full Members of the International Cricket Council (ICC), and the Netherlands, who won the 2015–17 ICC World Cricket League Championship to qualify for this competition. Each team will play an ODI series against eight of the other twelve teams, four series at home and four away. Each series consists of three ODIs.


text: The COVID-19 pandemic affected the start of the league, with several series of matches being postponed. In April 2020, following a Chief Executives' meeting, the ICC announced that it would look at the future of the league at a later date, once there is a better understanding of the impact of the pandemic on cricket. The series between England and Ireland, starting 30 July 2020, were the first matches of the league. In March 2022, as a result of the impact from the pandemic, the ICC agreed to extend the cut-off date for the tournament until May 2023, allowing the series between Ireland and Bangladesh to take place.


text: Following a trial that started in December 2019, the ICC announced the use of technology to monitor front-foot no-balls for all matches in the Super League. The third umpire called the front-foot no-balls, communicating this with the on-field umpires.


text: For the World Cup, the hosts, and the top seven sides thereafter, will qualify automatically. The remaining five teams will play in a qualifying event—the 2023 Cricket World Cup Qualifier—along with five Associate sides, from which two sides will go through to the World Cup.


text: The top twelve teams in this Super League remain in the Super League for the next World Cup cycle. The 13th ranked team in this Super League and the champions of the 2019–22 ICC Cricket World Cup League 2 will take part in World Cup Qualifier, where the better team will take the 13th spot in the next Super League while the team ranked lower will play in the next League 2.


text: The tournament is a partial round-robin league and will be played over two years. Each team will play eight other opponents, four at home and four away, in series consisting of three ODI matches. This means that a given team will not face all other opponents in their group, but all teams will play the same number of matches ( i.e., 12 matches at home and 12 matches away).


text: The match schedule was announced by the ICC on 20 June 2018 as part of the 2018–23 ICC Future Tours Programme.


text: The COVID-19 pandemic began before the start of the league, which was originally scheduled for May 2020 to March 2022, and resulted in no international cricket being played from March to July 2020. All Super League fixtures scheduled for 2020 were postponed or rescheduled with considerations for pandemic-related restrictions. Fixtures after also had to be reconsidered to account for the disruptions to the schedule.


text: Bangladesh's matches against Ireland were postponed on 21 March 2020. In April 2020, South Africa's tour to Sri Lanka was postponed. The same month, Pakistan's tour of the Netherlands and the West Indies tour of the Netherlands were both postponed, after the Dutch government banned all events in the country, both sports and cultural, until 1 September 2020. On 15 May 2020, Cricket Ireland confirmed that the tour by New Zealand had also been postponed. On 12 June 2020, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) confirmed that it had called off their tours to Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka. On 30 June, Cricket Australia confirmed that their planned home series against Zimbabwe had also been postponed due to the virus. New Zealand's tour of the West Indies was postponed, after the fixtures clashed with the West Indies rescheduled tour to England. In August 2020, the Netherlands' tour of the Zimbabwe was cancelled due to the pandemic.


text: The first matches of the Super League were Ireland's 3-match ODI series in England which were originally scheduled for September 2020 but brought forward to July and August with all three matches taking place in Southampton. Australia's tour of England, which was originally to take place in July 2020, was postponed and took place in September 2020. England's tour of South Africa was postponed following an outbreak of COVID-19 among members of both teams and the hotel staff.


text: In December, the ICC rescheduled the postponed series to a new schedule which would end in March 2023.


text: In the event that two or more teams have the same number of points, the following tie-breaking procedure is used:


text: This series was originally scheduled for September 2020 but was rescheduled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


text: This series was originally scheduled for September 2020. However, with the IPL being rescheduled to September–November 2020, this series was postponed to March 2021.


text: This series was originally scheduled for October 2020 but was rescheduled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


text: This series was originally scheduled for December 2020 but was rescheduled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


text: This series was originally scheduled for June 2020 but was rescheduled to July 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


text: This series was originally scheduled for October 2020 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


text: The series was scheduled for February 2022. It was postponed in January 2022 after Zimbabwe Cricket could not secure all the broadcasting services including the Decision Review System. It was subsequently rescheduled for June 2022.


text: The matches were originally scheduled to be played in December 2021, but were postponed after multiple cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in the West Indies team and support staff.


text: This series was originally scheduled for July 2020 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was subsequently rescheduled for August 2022.


text: This series was originally scheduled for August 2020 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was subsequently rescheduled for August 2022.


text: This series was originally scheduled for August 2020 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was subsequently rescheduled to August 2022.


text: This series was originally scheduled for January–February 2021 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic until the 2021–22 season. However, the tour was postponed in January 2022 due to the uncertainty of the quarantine rules for when the New Zealand team return home. It was subsequently scheduled for September 2022.


text: India's tour of New Zealand was postponed due to a packed calendar and COVID-19 related restrictions. The tour was subsequently rescheduled to follow the 2022 ICC Men's T20 World Cup in November 2022. On 28 June 2022, New Zealand Cricket confirmed the dates for the tour.


text: Afghanistan's tour of Sri Lanka was originally rescheduled for January 2023, but it was subsequently announced that the games would take place in November 2022.


text: This series was to be held during the 2021-22 Australian home season but has been postponed as a result of the extending of the South African home season due to disruptions to the cricket calendar caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was subsequently scheduled for January 2023. In July 2022, due to issues with domestic scheduling, Cricket South Africa withdrew from the series. As a result, the matches were scratched with the points being awarded to Australia.


text: This series was originally scheduled for March–April 2021 but was rescheduled to December 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. England's tour of South Africa was then disrupted in December 2020, following an outbreak of COVID-19 among members of both teams and the hotel staff.


text: The series was originally scheduled to be held in Sri Lanka between 1 September to 5 September 2021, but was postponed following logistic challenges that arose due to the Taliban Offensive. Both cricket boards agreed to reschedule the matches for some point during 2023.


text: This series was originally scheduled for February 2021 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 28 June 2022, New Zealand Cricket confirmed that the tour had been re-arranged for March 2023.


text: The series was original scheduled for September 2021, but was postponed in August 2021. On 3 August 2021, ECB confirmed that the tour has been re-arranged for March 2023.


text: This series was originally scheduled for September 2020 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: "Blue Whale" (), also known as the "Blue Whale Challenge", is a social network phenomenon dating from 2016 that is claimed to exist in several countries. It is a "game" reportedly consisting of a series of tasks assigned to players by administrators over a 50-day period, initially innocuous before introducing elements of self-harm and the final challenge requiring the player to commit suicide.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: "Blue Whale" first attracted news coverage in May 2016 in an article in Russian newspaper "Novaya Gazeta" that linked many unrelated child suicides to membership of group "F57" on the Russian-based VK social network. A wave of moral panic swept Russia. However, the piece was later criticised for attempting to make a causal link where none existed, and none of the suicides were found to be a result of the group activities. Claims of suicides connected to the game have been reported worldwide, but none have been confirmed.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: In November 2015, a Russian teenager posted a selfie with the caption "nya bye" before committing suicide; her death was then discussed in internet forums and groups, becoming mixed with scare stories and folklore. Further suicides were added to the group stories. Soon after, Russian journalist Galina Mursaliyeva first wrote about these "death groups" in an article published in the Russian newspaper "Novaya Gazeta" in April 2016. The article described the "F57" groups on Russian social media site VK, that she claimed had incited 130 teenagers to commit suicide. Mursaliyeva's article was criticised at the time of its release for lacking credible data and balance, with the 130 cases of suicide cited being particularly problematic. The number was originally suggested by the father of one of the teenagers, Sergey Pestov, who came to the figure 130 by using Russian media sources to look for child suicides he believed were linked to online groups; He then produced a brochure which implied that foreign intelligence operatives were responsible for encouraging Russian children to commit suicide. After an investigation by Evgeny Berg for Meduza, Mursaliyeva responded by saying in fact there had been at least 200 suicides.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: The origin of the name "Blue Whale" is uncertain. Some reports say that it comes from a song by the Russian rock band Lumen. Its opening lines are ""Why scream / When no one hears / What we're talking about?"" and it features a "huge blue whale" that "can't break through the net." Others believe it to be a reference to beaching, where whales become stranded on beaches and die.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: The game is said to run on different social media platforms and is described as a relationship between an administrator and participant. Over a period of fifty days the administrator sets one task per day; the tasks seem innocuous to begin with ("get up at 4:30a.m.", "watch a horror movie"), and move on to self-harm, leading to the participant committing suicide on the final day. As professor at Russian State University for the Humanities, Alexandra Arkhipova found that the administrators were found to be children aged between 12 and 14, drawn to the story as it became widely reported and not, as the hysteria had intimated, predatory adults.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: While many experts suggest "Blue Whale" was originally a sensationalised hoax, they believe that it is likely that the phenomenon has led to instances of imitative self-harming and copycat groups, leaving vulnerable children at risk of cyberbullying and online shaming.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: By late 2017, reported participation in Blue Whale was receding; however, internet safety organisations across the world have reacted by giving general advice to parents and educators on suicide prevention, mental health awareness, and online safety in advance of the next incarnation of cyberbullying.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: American skeptic Ben Radford researched the phenomenon, calling it the "moral panic "du jour"" and equating it to the "Dungeons & Dragons" controversies of the 1980s. Radford also states "this is only the latest in a long series of similar moral panics and outrages shared on social media ... the best antidote ... is a healthy dose of skepticism".


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: In 2016, Philipp Budeikin, a 21-year-old former psychology student who was expelled from his university, claimed that he invented the game in 2013. According to Budeikin, its purpose is to "clean society of biological wastes", as he intended to "clean" society from individuals who were deemed as having no value and considered as burdens. Although originally claiming innocence and stating he was "just having fun", Budeikin was arrested and held in Kresty Prison, Saint Petersburg, and in May 2016 pled guilty to "inciting at least 16 teenage girls to commit suicide". He was later convicted on two counts of inciting suicide of a minor. Commentators such as Benjamin Radford have pointed out that sensationalized stories in world news regarding the involvement of Budeikin have all linked back to just two Russian sources, with tabloid news outlets replicating the same information without elaboration.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: In June 2017, postman Ilya Sidorov was arrested in Moscow, also accused of setting up a "Blue Whale" group to encourage children to self-harm and ultimately commit suicide. He claimed to have persuaded 32 children to join his group and follow his commands.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: In June 2018, Russian financial analyst Nikita Nearonov was arrested for allegedly masterminding the Blue Whale game. Nearonov is suspected of grooming 10 "underage" girls in order to bring them to suicide, 2 of whom, aged 14 and 17, are known to have survived. As a financial analyst, Nearonov has been described as a "very smart" computer expert who held a large amount of contempt for teenagers, believing that they were "wicked" and "deserved to die". Police reports claim that Nearonov's involvement in the Blue Whale game was his "hobby".


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: According to news reports, the cause of death of 15-year-old Hrachya Nersisyan, who committed suicide, was the game "Blue Whale". According to the head of the department for the Protection of Minors' Rights and Combating Domestic Violence of the Main Criminal Investigation Department of the Armenian Police, Nelly Duryan, the Armenian segment of the Internet is flooded with messages about this "game", but there are no final conclusions on this issue yet.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: Despite many news reports published in Bangladeshi media attempting to link suicides with the game, no case has been officially confirmed.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: In October 2017, Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan stated that the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has been directed to investigate the Blue Whale game after reports of suicide around the country. BTRC released a notice urging people to call a specific number if any web link or any information related to the Blue Whale game were to be found. Later that month, the Bangladeshi High Court ordered a six-month ban on special night-time internet packages provided by various mobile operators across the country.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: Despite several news reports in Brazilian media linking cases of child self-harm and suicide with Blue Whale and several ongoing investigations, none have been officially confirmed.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: In response to the game, a designer and a publicity agent from São Paulo created a movement called "Baleia Rosa" (Pink Whale), which became popular. It relied on the collaboration of hundreds of volunteers. The movement was based on positive tasks that value life and combat depression. Another movement, the "Capivara Amarela" (Yellow Capybara), was created by Sandro Sanfelice, and proposed to "combat the Blue Whale game" and guide people seeking some kind of help. Participants were separated into either challengers, who are the people who need guidance, or healers, who are a kind of sponsor to the challengers. An Adventist school in southern Paraná, in partnership with other education networks, also sought to reverse the situation by proposing another charity game, the ""Jonas Challenge"" (referring to the biblical character Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale and vomited up three days later). Other games created in Brazil in response to the Blue Whale were the "Baleia Verde" (Green Whale) and the "Preguiça Azul" (Blue Sloth).


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: In Belo Horizonte and Recife metropolitan area in Brazil, many schools promoted lectures to talk about the Blue Whale game. On May 21, 2017, it was announced that the Brazilian police Specialized in High Technology Crime Repression in Piauí were preparing a digital primer to warn young people about the dangers of the game.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: In May 2017, Tencent, China's largest Internet service portal, closed 12 suspicious Blue Whale-related network groups on its social networking platform QQ. It said that the number of this kind of groups is on the rise. The search results of related keywords were also blocked.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: In April 2018, Egyptian news sources claimed a 12-year-old schoolboy had committed suicide by taking poisonous tablets to fulfill one of the challenges of the game. According to the media, the schoolboy was found with a scar in the shape of a blue whale on his right arm. In reaction to the growing media awareness of the game, Egypt's Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah uploaded a video on their YouTube channel claiming that the game is forbidden in Islam, and warning against it.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: Throughout 2017, media in India reported several cases of child suicide, self-harm and attempted suicide alleged to be a result of Blue Whale, and in response, the Indian government's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, requested that several internet companies (including Google, Facebook, and Yahoo!) remove all links which direct users to the game. Some commentators accused the government of creating a moral panic. Indian internet watchdog the Centre for Internet and Society accused the coverage of effectively spreading and advertising a "game" for which there is little evidence. The Supreme Court asked the Indian Central government to ban the game, following which the government responded that since Blue Whale wasn't an application, it couldn't be banned. For a period of time several internet providers blocked Russian social network VKontakte over concerns about the "game" believed to originate on this Russian social network.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: Finally in January 2018, after a full investigation the government reported there was no evidence that any death was as a result of Blue Whale saying “The committee analysed the internet activities, device activities, call records and other social media activity, other forensic evidences and also interacted with rescued victims associated with these incidents. Involvement of Blue Whale challenge game in any of these incidents could not be established.”


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: In September 2017, the Iranian Minister of Information and Communications Technology posted a message in his official Instagram account to warn parents and teachers about the spread of the Blue Whale challenge among Iranian teens.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: In Italy, press coverage of "Blue Whale" first appeared on 3 June 2016, in the newspaper "La Stampa", which described the challenge as "a bad joke". The debunking site BUTAC reported the total lack of evidence to affirm the game's existence. On 14 May 2017, a TV report by "Le Iene" about 'Blue Whale' on the national channel Italia 1 linked the challenge to an unconnected suicide in Livorno. The report showed several suicide scenes, mostly from videos on LiveLeak depicting adults unrelated to the challenge. It incorrectly described the footage as evidence of teenagers playing the game. The report interviewed a schoolmate of the Livorno teenager, two mothers of Russian girls who supposedly took part in the game, and the founder of the Russian Center for the safety of children from internet crimes. Following the report, coverage of the challenge in the Italian media increased, with many outlets describing it as real. There was a sharp rise in Google searches for the challenge, and some panic.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: On 15 and 16 May, newspapers announced the arrest of Budeikin, without saying that it happened months before. His unconfirmed statements about his supposed victims being "genetical rubbish" were reported as real. Paolo Attivissimo, a journalist and debunker of hoaxes, described the game as "a death myth dangerously exaggerated by sensationalist journalism". Police received calls from terrified parents and teachers, and there were reports of teenagers taking part in the challenge. These included several cases of self-mutilation and attempted suicide. Most reports were considered to be false or exaggerated. Alleged participants were reported from all over Italy: Ravenna, Brescia and Siracusa.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: On May 22, 2017, the Polizia Postale stated they had received 40 reports. On May 24 they raised the number to 70. On its website the Polizia Postale defines Blue Whale as "a practice that seems to possibly come from Russia" and offers advice to parents and teenagers. Several alleged cases have since been described by newspapers.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: In July 2020, the Israeli Child Online Protection Bureau had announced they are collaborating with TikTok to "eradicate the Blue Whale phenomenon".


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: In March 2017, authorities in Russia were investigating approximately 130 separate cases of suicide related to the phenomenon. In February a 15-year-old and 16-year-old threw themselves off the top of a 14-story building in Irkutsk, Siberia after completing 50 tasks sent to them. Before they killed themselves together, they left messages on their pages on social networks. Also in February, a 15-year-old was in critical condition after throwing herself out of an apartment and falling on snow-covered ground in the town of Krasnoyarsk, also in Siberia.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: On 26 May 2017, the Russian Duma passed a bill introducing criminal responsibility for creating pro-suicide groups on social media and in June 2017, President Putin signed a law imposing criminal penalties for inducing minors to suicide. The law imposes a maximum punishment of six years in prison.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: On July 15, 2018, the Saudi General Commission for Audio-Visual Media banned 47 video games, including "Roblox", "Grand Theft Auto V", "Assassin's Creed II" and "", that had online components that were alleged to be part of the Blue Whale game following the suicides of two teenagers that had been involved in it.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: On March 12, 2018, the parents of seven Tunisian children who claimed their children had killed themselves due to the game requested a ban on Blue Whale from the Tunisian courts. A trial court in Sousse issued an interim judgment prohibiting Blue Whale and another supposed similar game named "Miriam".


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: "Manasinata" (2019), an Indian Kannada-language drama film by R. Ravindra is based on the Blue Whale Challenge and explores issues which may lead children into suicidal internet games and challenges.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: "Early Swallows" is a 2019 Ukrainian teen drama television show which focuses on teenage issues such as drugs, bullying and the Blue Whale Challenge.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: "50 or Two Whales Meet on the Beach" (2020), a Mexican drama film follows two teens who meet and fall in love while playing the Blue Whale Challenge and decide to follow through on the last task, suicide.


title: Blue Whale Challenge

text: "Search Out" is a 2020 South Korean thriller film written and directed by Kwak Jeong that was inspired by Blue Whale Challenge.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: Rome is a historical drama television series created by John Milius, William J. MacDonald, and Bruno Heller. The series is set in the 1st century BC, during Ancient Rome's transition from Republic to Empire. The series features a sprawling cast of characters, many based on real figures from historical records, but the lead protagonists are ultimately two soldiers named Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, who find their lives intertwined with key historical events.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: An international co-production between Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States, the series was filmed in various locations, but most notably in the Cinecittà studios in Rome, Italy. The show, consisting of two seasons for a total of 22 episodes, aired on HBO, and BBC Two from 28 August 2005 to 25 March 2007, and was later released on DVD and Blu-ray.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: "Rome" received largely positive reviews and had a high number of viewers. It received substantial media attention from the start, becoming a ratings success for HBO and the BBC (although the numbers declined considerably in the second season) and being honoured with numerous awards, including four Emmy Awards, seven Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Visual Effects Society Award. The series ran for two seasons out of the planned five due to high production cost; much of the material for the third and fourth seasons was telescoped into the second season.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: The series primarily chronicles the lives and deeds of the rich, powerful, and historically significant, but it also focuses on the lives, fortunes, families, and acquaintances of two common men: Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, fictionalized versions of a pair of Roman soldiers mentioned in Caesar's "Commentarii de Bello Gallico". The fictional Vorenus and Pullo manage to witness and often influence many of the historical events presented in the series, although some dramatic license is taken.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: The first season depicts Julius Caesar's civil war of 49 BC against the traditionalist conservative faction in the Roman Senate (the Optimates), his rise to dictatorship over Rome, and his fall, spanning the time from the end of his Gallic Wars (52 BC or 701 "ab urbe condita") until his assassination on 15 March 44 BC (the infamous Ides of March). Against the backdrop of these cataclysmic events, we also see the early years of the young Octavian, who is destined to become Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome. The second season chronicles the power struggle between Octavian and Mark Antony following Caesar's assassination, spanning the period from Caesar's death in 44 BC to the suicide of Antony and Cleopatra in 30 B.C. after their defeat at the Battle of Actium.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: William J. MacDonald and John Milius pitched the idea to HBO as a miniseries, but the network made it a full-fledged series. In 2002, HBO and the BBC agreed to co-produce the series, committing a US$100–110 million (£62.7 million) budget to the production of twelve 1-hour episodes, with HBO contributing $85 million, and the BBC contributing $15 million. The BBC contributed £800,000 to every episode of "Rome" in its first season. "Rome" is the largest co-produced series with the American film market in the BBC's history. The series also marked the first series on which HBO and the BBC worked together as co-producers, although the two companies had worked together in other roles in earlier series, including "Band of Brothers" and "The Gathering Storm".


title: Rome (TV series)

text: Tranter from the BBC has said this about the development of "Rome": "It felt like something that could have been developed by us, and HBO felt like natural partners for the BBC". On 20 April 2006, Carolyn Strauss, president of HBO announced the development of a second season for "Rome".


title: Rome (TV series)

text: Between March 2004 and May 2005 "Rome" was filmed in co-production with Rai Fiction in the Italian countryside on Cinecittà studios' six sound stages in Rome. A collection of massive sets in Cinecittà studios' back lots comprised an elaborate "period reconstruction" of sections of ancient Rome. It was a huge undertaking, with an international crew of 350, and more than 50 local Italian interns.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: The production is regarded as one of the most expensive in the history of television. Funding was generously employed to recreate an impressively detailed set featuring a number of Roman Villas, the Forum, and a vast slum area of the ancient city of Rome. A significant part of this set was later destroyed by a fire that burned down a portion of the Cinecittà Studios in 2007. According to HBO, the fire started after they had finished filming the second season. A portion of the set was also used in late 2007 by the crew of the long-running BBC sci-fi drama series "Doctor Who", for the fourth-season episode "The Fires of Pompeii".


title: Rome (TV series)

text: Audio commentary on the Season 1 DVD indicates that many of the background performers used in the series were also their true professional counterparts. One example is that the actor shown in the series working as a butcher on the streets of Rome was in fact a real-life butcher.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: In a separate move, the BBC also decided to re-edit the first three episodes (all directed by Michael Apted) into two episodes. The BBC claimed that this was because the British audience were more familiar with the history of Rome than their American counterparts and so much of the history was unnecessary; however, Apted claims that the purpose was to boost the ratings by increasing the prominence of the scenes of sex and violence. In an interview with "The Times", Apted said:


title: Rome (TV series)

text: I'm really pissed off with the BBC for bringing down my first three episodes to two and, in doing so, taking out much of the vital politics. What also makes me very grumpy is that I was told that the cuts had been introduced by the BBC because they thought British viewers already knew the historical background. But all that's happened as far as the viewer is concerned is that it has made "Rome" hard to follow.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: Apted also said that he only learned of the edits by accident, "...a couple of weeks ago when one of the actors told me". Since then, the original uncut Season 1 episodes aired on UKTV Drama, coincident with the UK broadcast of Season 2 on BBC Two.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: The Italian broadcast of the series was also marred by controversy. Strong language was removed in the Italian dubbing process; as for the more explicit sex scenes and disturbing violence, they were replaced by "safe" alternative versions shot during production especially for the Italian market. Rai 4 began showing the "complete version" of the series on Italian TV in September 2009.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: Composer Jeff Beal was invited to audition for "Rome" after he completed work on HBO's "Carnivàle". The producers sent him a short edit of season 1 episode 7. From that, Beal began writing a demo score. Based on head writer Bruno Heller's desired gritty pre-Christian feel for the series, and HBO's interest in a non-modern sound, Beal chose to compose and record with live instruments from across the ancient Roman world. For each episode, Beal had about two weeks to work: in the first, he composed for – and recorded – the instruments he performed on the soundtrack. In the second week, he incorporated producer's notes, and orchestrated and recorded the other live instrumental sections.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: "Rome"'s first season originally aired on HBO in the United States between 28 August and 20 November 2005, subsequently being broadcast on the United Kingdom's BBC Two between 2 November 2005 and 4 January 2006. The second season aired on HBO in the US from 14 January 2007 to 25 March 2007.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: The series was launched in the United States on 25 August 2005, at Wadsworth Theatre in Los Angeles. HBO broadcast the series pilot "The Stolen Eagle" four days later. According to the Nielsen ratings system, the pilot broadcast was seen by 3.8 million viewers and achieved a 9.1 household rating for Sunday primetime. HBO re-aired the pilot 11 times in the week following 28 August 2005 premiere, garnering a total viewership of 8.9 million for all 11 airings. After the broadcast of only three first-season episodes, HBO announced plans to produce a second season of "Rome" in 2006, for release in March 2007. HBO aired each episode multiple times a week, and by the end of the first season, the total weekly audience for all airings exceeded seven million viewers. The second season premiered in January 2007, with the first episode attracting 1.5 million viewers. The final episode aired 25 March 2007 in the US, garnering 2.4 million viewers.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: In total, HBO spent about $10 million US$ to promote "Rome". HBO enlisted the Mozilla Firefox web browser in its marketing campaign for the series by designing a downloadable custom "Rome" Firefox theme. BBC Two premiered "Rome" in the United Kingdom on 2 November 2005, attracting 6.6 million viewers (27%); viewing figures declined in future episodes, with the season finale only attracting 3 million viewers (13%). The first episode of the second season aired on BBC Two on 20 June 2007.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: A "sanitized" version of the first series of "Rome" – with toned-down nudity and violence – aired on Rai 2 in Italy, garnering only a meager 10% audience share. RAI also stated to have co-produced the show, whereas HBO listed only itself and BBC as co-producers. The Italian newspaper, "Corriere della Sera" called it a "prime example of historical misinformation", and called actor Ciarán Hinds (Julius Caesar) a "parody". The paper also called the relationship between Atia of the Julii (Polly Walker) and Mark Antony (James Purefoy) "ridiculous". The second series was never broadcast at all on analog TV; however, starting from October 2009, digital-only channel Rai 4 broadcast the original uncut version of the first series and went on to broadcast the second series unaltered as well.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: HBO Chairman Chris Albrecht announced in a July 2006 news conference that season two of "Rome" would be its last, citing the fact that the series (called "notoriously expensive" by "Broadcasting & Cable") had been developed under a two-year contract with the BBC that would have been difficult for the BBC to extend due to the series' cost. Of the storyline, co-creator Heller said:


title: Rome (TV series)

text: In a February 2008 interview with Movieweb.com, actor Ray Stevenson stated that a "Rome" film was in development, with Heller working on a script. Heller confirmed in December that there was "talk of doing a movie version", adding that "It's moving along. It's not there until it is there. I would love to round that show off". In an April 2009 interview with the Associated Press, actor Kevin McKidd stated the "Rome" film was "in development", and Lucius Vorenus would likely be a part of it. McKidd said in a later 2009 interview, "There is a script that is being shopped and it's supposedly very good, I haven't seen it, but I am definitely going to be a part of the movie... He is very much alive, so that should be a fun story to tell." In March 2010, "Entertainment Weekly" stated that Heller had completed the script for Morning Light Productions, the film's financiers, and was now awaiting a director and a studio, since HBO Films "won't be involved". However, in a 2011 interview with "Entertainment Weekly", Heller indicated the project had stalled – "I'm not holding my breath."


title: Rome (TV series)

text: "Rome: The Complete First Season" was released as a six-disc Region 1 DVD box set in the United States in 2006, distributed by HBO Home Video. Featuring all 12 episodes, it included features such as episode commentaries, behind-the-scenes footage and making-of features. The set (without the episodic previews and recaps) was also released in Region 2, with the same title.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: Season 2 was released in North America in 2007 and soon after in Region 2. "Rome: The Complete Series" was released in November 2009 on Blu-ray in North America.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: "Rome" garnered mostly positive reviews. Sean Woods from "Rolling Stone" called the series "masterful" and "epic", and gave the series 3.5 out of 4. Alessandra Stanley from "The New York Times" said: "But behind all that gritty squalor the glory that was Rome gets lost", while reviewing season 2. Lisa Schwarzbaum from "Entertainment Weekly" gave season 2 a B and commented on the "spectacular" clothing design. Michael Ventre from "Variety" magazine was positive towards the series and was intrigued by the "complex" character of Atia of the Julii. James Poniewozik from "Time" magazine commented on the "slow start" but further stated that the series "draws you" to the ancient city of Rome.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: "Empire" magazine reviewer Helen O'Hara said: "Not as good-looking as "Gladiator", perhaps, but richer in (reasonably accurate) history and texture", and gave season 1 of "Rome" four out of five stars. Robert Bianco from "USA Today" called season 2 "the fall of "Rome"", commenting that season 2 was not as good as season 1 citing "off-key characterizations and plot absurdities". Linda Stasi from "The New York Post" called herself a "slave" to the show. Melanie McFarland from "Seattle Post-Intelligencer" called season 2 "at top of its form" and said it was as good as the former season. Historian Robin Lane Fox, writing in "The Guardian", called the series "splendidly ambitious". Eric Neigher from "Slant Magazine" called season 1 of "Rome" "good art". Robert Abele from "LA Weekly" called it the "most lavish dramatic series yet" released by HBO.


title: Rome (TV series)

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the first season has an approval rating of 83% based on 36 reviews, with an average score of 8.62/10; the critical consensus reads: ""Rome" builds slowly, but a laborious start delivers rich rewards in the form of decadent sets, delicious drama and a surprising amount of intimacy". The second season has an approval rating of 89% based on 28 reviews, with an average score of 8.05/10; the critical consensus reads: "Pulp meets prestige in "Rome"’s sensational second season -- though its style sometimes outweighs its substance".


title: Rome (TV series)

text: Capping its successful first season, "Rome" won four Emmy Awards out of eight nominations in 2006, for the episodes "Caesarion", "Triumph", "Kalends of February" and "Stealing from Saturn". The series also won an Art Directors Guild (ADG) in the category "Excellence in Production Design – Single-Camera Television Series" for the pilot episode "The Stolen Eagle". Michael Apted won the Directors Guild of America (DGA) in the category "Outstanding Directing – Drama Series, Night" for "The Stolen Eagle". The series itself was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in the category "Best Television Series – Drama", and Polly Walker who portrayed Atia of the Julii was nominated in the category "Best Performance by an Actress In A Television Series – Drama". The series was also nominated for three Satellite Awards, two for season 1 and the last for season 2. The pilot episode "The Stolen Eagle" won a Visual Effects Society (VES) award in the category "Outstanding Visual Effects – Broadcast Series". Writers Guild of America (WGA) nominated the series for the category "Best Writing – New Television Series" in 2005. The series was also nominated for four British Academy Television Awards (BAFTA), three in season 1 (2006) and one in season 2 (2008). In 2005, the series was nominated for a Cinema Audio Society Award (CAS) in the category "Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Television Series" for the episode "The Spoils". The British award ceremony nominated the series for the Royal Television Society (RTS) award in the category "Best Visual Effects – Digital Effects". For season 2 (2007) Alik Sakharov won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series, for the episode "Passover".


title: Rome (TV series)

text: There are numerous inaccuracies in the series' representation of various historical events and personages. Co-creator Bruno Heller has said, "We try to balance between what people expect from previous portrayals and a naturalistic approach... This series is much more about how the psychology of the characters affects history than simply following the history as we know it". Series Historical Consultant Jonathan Stamp also notes that the show aims for "authenticity" rather than "accuracy". The filmmakers stressed that they wanted to portray a more accurate picture of Rome, a gritty and realistic city as opposed to what they call the "Hollyrome" presentation that audiences are used to from other films, with "cleanliness and marble and togas that looked pressed."


title: Rome (TV series)

text: Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo are historical figures mentioned briefly in Caesar's "Commentarii de Bello Gallico", but their adventures and involvement in key events in the series are fictional.


title: Pentagram

text: A pentagram (sometimes known as a pentalpha, pentangle, or star pentagon) is a regular five-pointed star polygon, formed from the diagonal line segments of a convex (or simple, or non-self-intersecting) regular pentagon. Drawing a circle around the five points creates a similar symbol referred to as the pentacle, which is used widely by Wiccans and in paganism, or as a sign of life and connections. The word "pentagram" refers only to the five-pointed star, not the surrounding circle of a pentacle.


title: Pentagram

text: Pentagrams were used symbolically in ancient Greece and Babylonia. Christians once commonly used the pentagram to represent the five wounds of Jesus. Today the symbol is widely used by the Wiccans, witches, and pagans. The pentagram has magical associations. Many people who practice neopaganism wear jewelry incorporating the symbol.


title: Pentagram

text: The word "pentagram" comes from the Greek word πεντάγραμμον ("pentagrammon"), from πέντε ("pente"), "five" + γραμμή ("grammē"), "line".


title: Pentagram

text: Pentagram refers to just the star and pentacle refers to the star within the circle specifically although there is some overlap in usage. The word "pentalpha" is a 17th-century revival of a post-classical Greek name of the shape.


title: Pentagram

text: Early pentagrams have been found on Sumerian pottery from Ur circa 3500 BCE, and the five-pointed star was at various times the symbol of Ishtar or Marduk.


title: Pentagram

text: The pentagram was known to the ancient Greeks, with a depiction on a vase possibly dating back to the 7th century BC. Pythagoreanism originated in the 6th century BC and used the pentagram as a symbol of mutual recognition, of wellbeing, and to recognize good deeds and charity.


title: Pentagram

text: From around 300-150 BCE the pentagram stood as the symbol of Jerusalem, marked by the 5 Hebrew letters ירשלם spelling its name.


title: Pentagram

text: The word "Pentemychos" ( lit. "five corners" or "five recesses") was the title of the cosmogony of Pherecydes of Syros.


title: Pentagram

text: Here, the "five corners" are where the seeds of Chronos are placed within the Earth in order for the cosmos to appear.


title: Pentagram

text: In Neoplatonism, the pentagram was said to have been used as a symbol or sign of recognition by the Pythagoreans, who called the pentagram "health"


title: Pentagram

text: The pentagram was used in ancient times as a Christian symbol for the five senses, or of the five wounds of Christ. The pentagram plays an important symbolic role in the 14th-century English poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", in which the symbol decorates the shield of the hero, Gawain. The unnamed poet credits the symbol's origin to King Solomon, and explains that each of the five interconnected points represents a virtue tied to a group of five: Gawain is perfect in his five senses and five fingers, faithful to the Five Wounds of Christ, takes courage from the five joys that Mary had of Jesus, and exemplifies the five virtues of knighthood, which are generosity, friendship, chastity, chivalry, and piety.


title: Pentagram

text: The North rose of Amiens cathedral (built in the 13th century) exhibits a pentagram-based motif. Some sources interpret the unusual downward-pointing star as symbolizing the Holy Spirit descending on people.


title: Pentagram

text: Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and others perpetuated the popularity of the pentagram as a magic symbol, attributing the five neoplatonic elements to the five points, in typical Renaissance fashion.


title: Pentagram

text: By the mid-19th century, a further distinction had developed amongst occultists regarding the pentagram's orientation. With a single point upwards it depicted spirit presiding over the four elements of matter, and was essentially "good". However, the influential but controversial writer Éliphas Lévi, known for believing that magic was a real science, had called it evil whenever the symbol appeared the other way up.


title: Pentagram

text: The apotropaic use of the pentagram symbol in German folklore (called "Drudenfuss" in German) is referred to by Goethe in "Faust" (1808), where a pentagram prevents Mephistopheles from leaving a room (but did not prevent him from entering by the same way, as the outward pointing corner of the diagram happened to be imperfectly drawn):


title: Pentagram

text: Wu Xing () are the five phases, or five elements in Taoists Chinese tradition. They are differentiated from the formative ancient Japanese or Greek elements, due to their emphasis on cyclic transformations and change. The five phases are: Fire (火 "huǒ"), Earth (土 "tǔ"), Metal (金 "jīn"), Water (水 "shuǐ"), and Wood (木 "mù"). The Wuxing is the fundamental philosophy and doctrine of traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture.


title: Pentagram

text: Based on Renaissance-era occultism, the pentagram found its way into the symbolism of modern occultists. Its major use is a continuation of the ancient Babylonian use of the pentagram as an apotropaic charm to protect against evil forces. Éliphas Lévi claimed that "The Pentagram expresses the mind's domination over the elements and it is by this sign that we bind the demons of the air, the spirits of fire, the spectres of water, and the ghosts of earth." In this spirit, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn developed the use of the pentagram in the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram, which is still used to this day by those who practice Golden Dawn-type magic.


title: Pentagram

text: Aleister Crowley made use of the pentagram in his Thelemic system of magick: an adverse or inverted pentagram represents the descent of spirit into matter, according to the interpretation of Lon Milo DuQuette. Crowley contradicted his old comrades in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, who, following Levi, considered this orientation of the symbol evil and associated it with the triumph of matter over spirit.


title: Pentagram

text: The five-pointed star is a symbol of the Baháʼí Faith. In the Baháʼí Faith, the star is known as the "Haykal" (), and it was initiated and established by the Báb. The Báb and Bahá'u'lláh wrote various works in the form of a pentagram.


title: Pentagram

text: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is theorized to have began using both upright and inverted five-pointed stars in Temple architecture, dating from the Nauvoo Illinois Temple dedicated on 30 April 1846. Other temples decorated with five-pointed stars in both orientations include the Salt Lake Temple and the Logan Utah Temple. These usages come from the symbolism found in Revelation chapter 12: "And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars."


title: Pentagram

text: Because of a perceived association with Satanism and occultism, many United States schools in the late 1990s sought to prevent students from displaying the pentagram on clothing or jewelry. In public schools, such actions by administrators were determined in 2000 to be in violation of students' First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.


title: Pentagram

text: The encircled pentagram (referred to as a pentacle by the plaintiffs) was added to the list of 38 approved religious symbols to be placed on the tombstones of fallen service members at Arlington National Cemetery on 24 April 2007. The decision was made following ten applications from families of fallen soldiers who practiced Wicca. The government paid the families to settle their pending lawsuits.


title: Pentagram

text: The inverted pentagram is the symbol used for Satanism, sometimes depicted with the goat's head of Baphomet within it, which originated from the Church of Satan. In some depictions the devil is depicted, like Baphomet, as a goat, therefore the goat and goat's head is a significant symbol throughout Satanism. The pentagram is also used as the logo for The Satanic Temple, which also featured a depiction of Baphomet's head.


title: Pentagram

text: The five-pointed star is a symbol of the Serer religion and the Serer people of West Africa. Called "Yoonir" in their language, it symbolizes the universe in the Serer creation myth, and also represents the star Sirius.


title: Pentagram

text: The pentagram has been used in Judaism since at least 300BCE when it first was used as the stamp of Jerusalem. It is used to represent justice, mercy, and wisdom.


title: Pentagram

text: The pentagram is the simplest regular star polygon. The pentagram contains ten points (the five points of the star, and the five vertices of the inner pentagon) and fifteen line segments. It is represented by the Schläfli symbol {5/2}. Like a regular pentagon, and a regular pentagon with a pentagram constructed inside it, the regular pentagram has as its symmetry group the dihedral group of order 10.


title: Pentagram

text: The pentagram can be constructed by connecting alternate vertices of a pentagon; see details of the construction. It can also be constructed as a stellation of a pentagon, by extending the edges of a pentagon until the lines intersect.


title: Pentagram

text: A uniform truncated pentagram t{5/2} produces a doubly-wrapped pentagon with overlapping vertices and edges, {10/2}. A shallower truncation produces an isogonal figure, like this one with equally spaced vertices. A truncated retro-pentagram t{5/3}, or a quasitruncation, produces a decagram, {10/3}.


title: Pentagram

text: plays an important role in regular pentagons and pentagrams. Each intersection of edges sections the edges in the golden ratio: the ratio of the length of the edge to the longer segment is "φ", as is the length of the longer segment to the shorter. Also, the ratio of the length of the shorter segment to the segment bounded by the two intersecting edges (a side of the pentagon in the pentagram's center) is "φ". As the four-color illustration shows:


title: Pentagram

text: The pentagram includes ten isosceles triangles: five acute and five obtuse isosceles triangles. In all of them, the ratio of the longer side to the shorter side is "φ". The acute triangles are golden triangles. The obtuse isosceles triangle highlighted via the colored lines in the illustration is a golden gnomon.


title: Pentagram

text: As a result, in an isosceles triangle with one or two angles of 36°, the longer of the two side lengths is "φ" times that of the shorter of the two, both in the case of the acute as in the case of the obtuse triangle.


title: Pentagram

text: A pentagram can be drawn as a star polygon on a sphere, composed of five great circle arcs, whose all internal angles are right angles. This shape was described by John Napier in his 1614 book "Mirifici logarithmorum canonis descriptio" (Description of the wonderful rule of logarithms) along with rules that link the values of trigonometric functions of five parts of a right spherical triangle (two angles and three sides). It was studied later by Carl Friedrich Gauss.


title: Pentagram

text: All ten 4-dimensional Schläfli–Hess 4-polytopes have either pentagrammic faces or vertex figure elements.


title: Pentagram

text: The pentagram of Venus is the apparent path of the planet Venus as observed from Earth. Successive inferior conjunctions of Venus repeat with an orbital resonance of approximately 13:8—that is, Venus orbits the Sun approximately 13 times for every eight orbits of Earth—shifting 144° at each inferior conjunction. The tips of the five loops at the center of the figure have the same geometric relationship to one another as the five vertices, or points, of a pentagram, and each group of five intersections equidistant from the figure's center have the same geometric relationship.


title: Swan Lake

text: Swan Lake ( ), Op. 20, is a ballet composed by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1875–76. Despite its initial failure, it is now one of the most popular ballets of all time.


title: Swan Lake

text: The scenario, initially in two acts, was fashioned from Russian and German folk tales and tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. The choreographer of the original production was Julius Reisinger (Václav Reisinger). The ballet was premiered by the Bolshoi Ballet on at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Although it is presented in many different versions, most ballet companies base their stagings both choreographically and musically on the 1895 revival of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, first staged for the Imperial Ballet on 15 January 1895, at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. For this revival, Tchaikovsky's score was revised by the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatre's chief conductor and composer Riccardo Drigo.


title: Swan Lake

text: There is no evidence to prove who wrote the original libretto, or where the idea for the plot came from. Russian and German folk tales have been proposed as possible sources, including "The Stolen Veil" by Johann Karl August Musäus, but both those tales differ significantly from the ballet.


title: Swan Lake

text: One theory is that the original choreographer, Julius Reisinger, who was a Bohemian (and therefore likely to be familiar with "The Stolen Veil)", created the story. Another theory is that it was written by Vladimir Petrovich Begichev, director of the Moscow Imperial Theatres at the time, possibly with Vasily Geltser, danseur of the Moscow Imperial Bolshoi Theatre (a surviving copy of the libretto bears his name). Since the first published libretto does not correspond with Tchaikovsky's music in many places, one theory is that the first published version was written by a journalist after viewing initial rehearsals (new opera and ballet productions were always reported in the newspapers, along with their respective scenarios).


title: Swan Lake

text: Some contemporaries of Tchaikovsky recalled the composer taking great interest in the life story of Bavarian King Ludwig II, whose life had supposedly been marked by the sign of Swan and could have been the prototype of the dreamer Prince Siegfried.


title: Swan Lake

text: Begichev commissioned the score of "Swan Lake" from Tchaikovsky in May 1875 for 800 rubles. Tchaikovsky worked with only a basic outline from Julius Reisinger of the requirements for each dance. However, unlike the instructions for the scores of "The Sleeping Beauty" and "The Nutcracker", no written instruction is known to have survived.


title: Swan Lake

text: From around the time of the turn of the 19th century until the beginning of the 1890s, scores for ballets were almost always written by composers known as "specialists" who were highly skilled at scoring the light, decorative, melodious, and rhythmically clear music that was at that time in vogue for ballet. Tchaikovsky studied the music of "specialists" such as the Italian Cesare Pugni and the Austrian Ludwig Minkus, before setting to work on "Swan Lake".


title: Swan Lake

text: Tchaikovsky had a rather negative opinion of the "specialist" ballet music until he studied it in detail, being impressed by the nearly limitless variety of infectious melodies their scores contained. Tchaikovsky most admired the ballet music of such composers as Léo Delibes, Adolphe Adam, and later, Riccardo Drigo. He would later write to his protégé, the composer Sergei Taneyev, "I listened to the Delibes ballet "Sylvia" ... what charm, what elegance, what wealth of melody, rhythm, and harmony. I was ashamed, for if I had known of this music then, I would not have written "Swan Lake"." Tchaikovsky most admired Adam's 1844 score for "Giselle", which used the "Leitmotif" technique: associating certain themes with certain characters or moods, a technique he would use in "Swan Lake", and later, "The Sleeping Beauty".