title: Kingpin (character)

text: During the 2008 "Dark Reign" storyline, the Kingpin forms an alliance with Lady Bullseye to destroy Daredevil. He orders Lady Bullseye to disguise herself as a member of the Hand and kill two corrupt cops and a judge, making it seems that Daredevil ordered this and prompting Norman Osborn as the leader of the law enforcement organization H.A.M.M.E.R. to send Bullseye in retaliation. Though Daredevil survives the fight with Bullseye, the Kingpin is undeterred and states that he has Daredevil "where he wants [his nemesis]". The Kingpin has also targeted Daredevil's friends to frame Osborn for their recent misfortunes to further his attempts on manipulating Daredevil's actions. He has Nelson disbarred as an attorney for standing up to a judge on his payroll for an unfair ruling of overturning a jury's verdict. He also causes the loss of Dakota North's private investigator license.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: In the 2009 "Daredevil" arc "Return of the King", it is revealed that the Kingpin has spent the past year living a normal life in a small Spanish fishing village. There he meets and falls in love with Marta, a young mother of two. He finds himself trying to overcome his former life as a crime lord, only to later find Marta and the two kids murdered by Lady Bullseye and the Hand who then brutally attack him, stabbing him through the shoulders with two katanas. When he asks why, Lady Bullseye replies, "The reasons are far too numerous, but if you want a specific cause, ask Daredevil". In his revenge against the Hand, the Kingpin frees and recruits the Owl to help him. Fisk begins experiencing hallucinations of his dead wife who taunts him. It turns out that Fisk's actual plan is to take the leadership of the Hand, after killing Hiroshi, the ninja-lord who ordered the family's assassinations. However, he is thwarted by Daredevil who takes the lead for himself.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: During the 2010 "Shadowland" storyline, the Kingpin approaches Iron Fist and Luke Cage, telling the two that they will need to take down Daredevil soon. The Kingpin and Lady Bullseye later perform a ritual that brings back Ghost Rider to attack the Hand. After Daredevil is dethroned from Shadowland, the Kingpin takes both Shadowland and the Hand under his rule, officially taking his place back as the crime lord of New York City.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: During the 2010–2011 "" storyline, the Kingpin hires a new Hobgoblin to steal some experimental vibranium from Horizon Labs.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: During the 2011 "Spider-Island" storyline, it is revealed that Fisk has gained spider-powers, as demonstrated by heightened reflexes and the ability to crawl on walls. Like all other New Yorkers, he lost those powers when the situation was resolved.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: With Wakanda in a weakened economic position after the destruction of its vibranium stockpile, Kingpin attempts to purchase a controlling interest in the international Bank of Wakanda, with the goal of forcing the Bank to foreclose its current debts by selling its remaining land rights so that they can be exploited for more conventional mineral wealth. Fortunately, T'Challa becomes aware of this plan in his current role as defender of Hell's Kitchen (Matt Murdock needed time away after the events of "Shadowland" and T'Challa needed to re-learn his capabilities after the loss of his kingdom's vibranium), and begins a campaign of attacks against Fisk's new forces with the aid of Sam Wilson and Luke Cage. Fisk is so focused on these more public attacks that he misses when Shuri infiltrates and replaces Fisk's right-hand-woman, Miyu, giving her full access to Fisk's financial databases. Shuri plants a worm in the database that exposes most of Fisk's illegal financial transactions, with a final backdoor worm that could expose and ruin what little resources Fisk has left if he ever tries to come after Wakanda again (not wanting to completely take away his money as the heroes know from experience that Fisk will come back but this way he is more focused on protecting what he has left rather than plans for revenge).


title: Kingpin (character)

text: As part of the 2012 "Marvel NOW!" initiative, the Kingpin hears about how Otto Octavius as the Superior Spider-Man has been using brutal methods to take down the local crime families, which would leave a vacuum to fill. The Kingpin's Shadowland hideout is attacked by the Superior Spider-Man to which the Kingpin claims that the Superior Spider-Man is much different than the nemesis he had fought. While escaping, the Kingpin kills his doppelgänger Smedley Kornfeld (who was hired for events like this) to fool the Superior Spider-Man.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: With his power over New York gone, Fisk set up shop in San Francisco, with the intention of rebuilding his empire there. But the vigilante Shroud acted first, taking control of the local gangs and kidnapped the Owl who also relocated to San Francisco. He transformed Owlsley into a super-computer capable of taking control of all wifi signals to locate his former girlfriend Julia Carpenter. During this time, Daredevil confirmed his secret identity, taking a positive approach to it this time and moved to San Francisco to practice law and continue his superhero career. Fisk began to make moves against both of his enemies, hiring the assassin Ikari to kidnap Foggy and Matt's new girlfriend, Kirsten McDuffie, and having his men look for Julia to have leverage against the Shroud. However, the Shroud and Daredevil came into conflict when he and Jubua Pride, the Owl's daughter, attempted to free Owlsley. The Shroud then released all private information about Daredevil's law practice's clients. Daredevil went to Fisk and offered him a deal, he would use his resources to fix his situation and assure Foggy and Kirsten are safe, and in exchange Matt Murdock would fake his death and get a new identity only Fisk would know, giving Kingpin back the power to destroy Daredevil, which he lost when he went public. However, Fisk went with his original plan instead and Ikari kidnapped Nelson and Kirsten. Meanwhile, the Shroud, Pride, and Daredevil crashed when they attempted to get Julia at an airport, allowing Kingpin's goons to take her. Fisk presented his hostages when Daredevil confronted him and had him fight Ikari to the death, with Fisk killing one of them if Daredevil wins. The fight took them to the streets, where the Shroud saved Daredevil and killed Ikari. Improvising, Daredevil took Ikari's costume and claimed to have killed the hero while the Shroud had the Owl bring to light all of Fisk's operations in exchange for his freedom. While Kingpin and Daredevil fought, the federals stormed his building. Daredevil beat down the Kingpin when he tried to flee and rescued the hostages, leaving him in bankruptcy.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: During the 2015 "Secret Wars" storyline, the Kingpin hosts a viewing party for the incursion between Earth-616 and Earth-1610 where his guests include Absorbing Man, Bullseye, Norman Osborn, Sandman, and Scorpion. Festivities are interrupted by the arrival of Punisher who reveals that since he cannot take them with him, he has to put his large supply of bullets somewhere; the Punisher then kills them all, before they are resurrected in the reconstituted universe.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: When the Purple Children acquired a machine designed by their father to enhance his powers, after Daredevil had saved them from a mob, they used the machine to erase the world's knowledge of Matt Murdock's identity as Daredevil, including the Kingpin's.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: As part of the 2015 "All-New, All-Different Marvel", Wilson Fisk represented Fisk Industries when he attended a meeting at the Universal Bank with Tiberius Stone of Alchemax, Sebastian Shaw of Shaw Industries, Darren Cross of Cross Technological Enterprises, Zeke Stane of Stane International, Shingen Harada of the Yashida Corporation, Frr'dox of Shi'ar Solutions Consolidated, and Wilhelmina Kensington of Kilgore Arms where they discussed with Dario Agger about his and Roxxon Energy Corporation's plans to exploit the Ten Realms of Asgard. Wilson Fisk also saw the arrival of Exterminatrix of the Midas Foundation, who knocked out Dario and declared herself a new member of their assembly.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: During the 2016 "Civil War II" storyline, Kingpin returns from San Francisco, where he ends up in a fight with Bushwacker which ends in Bushwacker's apparent death. Afterward, he learns from a barista named Armand that his girlfriend Sonia had gone missing. Kingpin and Turk Barrett track her to a human smuggling business that Man Mountain Marko and Kingpin's former minion Janus Jardeesh are working for. Kingpin decides not to kill Janus when he learns that he is a recently emerged Inhuman whose abilities render him undetectable by Ulysses Cain's abilities. To test this ability, Kingpin has Janus kill a security guard that Janus knocked out upon discovering the smuggling business.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: As part of the 2016 "Marvel NOW!" in a lead-up to the "" storyline, Jackal sends Rhino to Kingpin to get him on his side. He even had Rhino bring a version of Vanessa to persuade Kingpin to go along with the deal. Kingpin snaps the neck of his wife's clone, stating, "That's not my wife. That's an abomination". Rhino then fights Kingpin, even when Spider-Man shows up. After the resulting fight in which Rhino gets away, Jackal is not pleased that Kingpin declined the offer. Kingpin knows this is a set-up and has a better plan on using Spider-Man to get rid of Jackal. After Spider-Man and Spider-Woman of Earth-65 learn from the New U Technologies staff what had happened to Kaine and Anna Maria Marconi, Kingpin shows up and reveals he has been following the Jackal's trail ever since the encounter with his wife. He gives Spider-Man a folder containing the location of a meeting that Jackal will be at so Spider-Man can take down for revenge. Spider-Man is seen beating up most of the Kingpin's henchmen at a restaurant in Chinatown. Kingpin tells Spider-Man that he is ready to repay his debt and gives Spider-Man a flash drive that has the location of Norman Osborn.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: During the 2017 "Secret Empire" storyline, Kingpin is among the people trapped in a Darkforce-enclosed Manhattan. When some armed robbers raid a church for medical supplies, Kingpin saves the people inside from the armed robbers. Kingpin tells the people to present that they should let people know that he saved them once the crisis is over. He later saves Doctor Strange, Spider-Woman, and Ben Urich from the Elder God Pluorgg by ramming it with his limousine and offers his help to the heroes. After crossing through a monster-filled subway, Kingpin takes the heroes to a witch to acquire weapons to retake the Sanctum Sanctorum, though Doctor Strange argues over the side effects of black magic. Kingpin is then possessed by a demon inside a mask and attacks the heroes until Ben, transformed into a mystical knight, stops him and they come to a truce. They later help Doctor Strange in defeating Baron Mordo, who had been put in charge of New York by HYDRA Supreme Captain America, and retake the Sanctum.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: After HYDRA's defeat, Wilson Fisk is able to use a subsequent election to put himself forward as a last-minute candidate to become the Mayor of New York City, avoiding his criminal past being drawn into the issue by simply ignoring questions about it, aided by the fact that he has never been legitimately charged with anything. With his primary policy being a bill to declare all vigilantes as criminals, and despite Daredevil's own recent efforts to create a precedent for superheroes testifying under their secret identities in Washington, he is able to have Daredevil arrested in an FBI sting operation, mocking his old nemesis with the knowledge that the people he protects chose Fisk to 'protect' "them", prompting Daredevil to break a window and leap out of Fisk's office to begin his own efforts to bring down Fisk's empire. Matt Murdock then applied for the position of deputy mayor. Although Daredevil eventually attempts to set up a 'sting operation' where he and his fellow street-level heroes will capture Mayor Fisk meeting with various gang bosses, Mayor Fisk uses this plan against them and uses the opportunity to arrest all of Daredevil's allies, subsequently attempting to provoke Daredevil into attacking him. Although Mayor Fisk is able to arrest Daredevil as well, he is subsequently attacked and left in critical condition by the Hand, with various amendments made to New York's constitution by prior administrations putting Matt Murdock in control of the city, once he has escaped from captivity, thanks to the Hand attacking the police van where he was being held, Fisk in critical condition and nobody willing to challenge the legal situation. While Matt Murdock used his skills as Daredevil and the acting mayor to keep the city safe with the street-level superheroes fighting off the Hand, Fisk recovered. Murdock gave Fisk the position of mayor back to him where Fisk had to promise not to do anymore crusades against the vigilantes.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: Mayor Wilson Fisk later adopts another daughter, named Princess Fisk, who he briefly sends to go to P.S. 20 Anna Silver, the same elementary school as Lunella "Moon Girl" Lafayette.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: Mayor Wilson Fisk later appears as a member of the Power Elite. When Captain America is named as a suspect in the murder of Thunderbolt Ross, he ends up in an argument with Sharon Carter over Captain America's innocence.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: Mayor Wilson Fisk later had an encounter with Kindred. This demon kills Fisk's associates using supernatural abilities and forces him to back off of Peter Parker after revealing that he is in possession of Vanessa Fisk's soul.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: Operatives of Mayor Wilson Fisk free Electro (Francine Frye) so that she can be part of a female version of the Sinister Syndicate. When the Sinister Syndicate is formed, Mayor Fisk gives them their first mission to capture Boomerang who has stolen something from him. When the Sinister Syndicate catches Boomerang, Beetle contacts Mayor Fisk as she is given information on where the exchange should happen. As the Sinister Syndicate plans to adjourn for the night, they hear Mayor Fisk outside stating that they are harboring a criminal and are to surrender Boomerang to him or suffer the full might of New York City. The Syndicate notices the police, the SWAT Team, the Anti-Super Squad, and low-level bureaucrats. Spider-Man arrives as well and tries to get Mayor Fisk to have the authorities stand down only for Mayor Fisk to claim that Spider-Man fell prey to Boomerang's hypnotic boomerang. Electro claims that Spider-Man is buying them some time. After reading the paper in Boomerang's hand that belonged to Mayor Fisk, Beetle tells the Syndicate that they should let Boomerang go. While Beetle claimed that she betrayed them, she did it because she is a supervillain and states that she plans to have Mayor Fisk deputize them. The rest of the Syndicate is not up with this plan. The Syndicate then assists Spider-Man against Mayor Fisk's forces. Beetle has Spider-Man evacuate Boomerang while the Syndicate fights Mayor Fisk's forces while not killing them. The Syndicate is defeated and arrested by the police.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: Mayor Wilson Fisk was reunited with his Miles Morales who has become Ultimatum. He was elated to see Ultimatum again while apologizing that he did not find what he was looking for on Earth-1610. Mayor Fisk and Miles begin their next plan together, while opposing a Spider-Man version of Morales from an alternate reality.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: During the "Last Remains" arc, Norman Osborn meets up with Mayor Wilson Fisk and his men as they work on a plan to dispose of Kindred for what he did to them. Mayor Wilson Fisk is informed by Norman Osborn that Mary Jane Watson got through to Kindred. After Norman as Green Goblin crashed the confrontation and threw a Pumpkin Bomb near Mary Jane, he gave Mayor Fisk the signal to activate the trap which causes the tomb to be engulfed in darkness. It was revealed that they pulled this off by enlisting the help of Spot who powered Project Blank that was inspired by the Darkforce Dome that once surrounded Manhattan. With Kindred locked up in a special cell in Ravencroft, Norman Osborn stated to Spider-Man that he saved him from Mayor Wilson Fisk. At Ravencroft, Mayor Wilson Fisk talks to Kindred about their encounter in the Parisian catacombs. One of Mister Negative's lieutenants appears and informs him that the Inner Demons will help him get more than the Tablet of Life and Destiny.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: Mister Negative later meets with Mayor Wilson Fisk and informs him that they will need the sister counterpart of the Tablet of Life and Destiny called the Tablet of Death and Entropy. As Mister Negative has the item, he states to Mayor Fisk that their desired function can only be used when both items are together. Mayor Fisk allows Mister Negative to control Chinatown and the Lower East Side. Outside of enlisting Mister Negative to steal the Tablet of Life and Destiny from Spider-Man and Boomerang, Mayor Fisk has also enlisted the services of the crime lords Black Mariah, a Crime Master, Diamondback, Hammerhead, Madame Masque, Owl, Silvermane, and Tombstone to obtain the Tablet of Life and Destiny where the first crime lord to obtain it will win Mayor Fisk's favor. Upon getting his hands on both tablets, Mayor Fisk uses its abilities to revive Richard Fisk as Mayor Fisk realized that Vanessa would not be pleased with her resurrection. He did this as an act of redemption for Vanessa and even himself.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: During the "King in Black" storyline, one of Iron Man's plans to fight Knull's invasion is to persuade Mayor Wilson Fisk to enlist villains to help defend New York City and fight Knull's Symbiote army. This leads to Mayor Fisk paying a visit to the Bar with No Name where he asks who would like to earn some money. Kingpin puts together his incarnation of the Thunderbolts with Taskmaster, Mister Fear, Batroc the Leaper, Star, Rhino, Ampere, and Snakehead. When the villain Incendiary turned him down, Mayor Fisk shot him to serve as a warning to anyone that does not take his offer. The assignment he gives them is to take Star to Ravencroft to meet up with the one person who can help defeat Knull.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: After Mike Murdock (Matt Murdock's magically created criminal twin brother) uses the Norn stone to cement himself into reality by changing the history of the world, he inadvertently makes it so that Mayor Fisk has an illegitimate son (alongside his legitimate son Richard) with Stella Pharris named Byron "Butch" Pharris.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: Sometime later, before the "Devil's Reign" storyline, Fisk discovers physical evidence proving that he once knew Daredevil's true identity, noticing gaps in his own memory after the fact. Outraged, Mayor Fisk confronts Daredevil, who taunts him. Consequentially, Mayor Fisk appoints Butch as New York's new Kingpin, outlaws vigilantism in the city, and announces his intent to run for President of the United States. While backed by Senator Arthur Krane of the Friends of Humanity and other people, Fisk also starts the Thunderbolt units to help the NYPD crack down on superhuman vigilantism. He even visits Purple Man in prison and strangles him to submission, and later imprisons him (as he would later do with his children as well) to use him to control people, just like Doctor Doom had done a long time ago, to secure an electoral victory for himself. The few superheroes who were still free, including Captain America, Spider-Man (Ben Reilly), She-Hulk, Luke Cage and Daredevil, began trying to implement ways of defeating Fisk legally, including letting Cage run for mayor.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: Blaming Daredevil for his failures, Fisk makes the Purple Man force the population of New York City into attacking the superheroes, while Fisk seeks out Daredevil, having regained his memory of Daredevil's identity after the Purple Man was able to suggest how it might have been done as he recognized the influence of his children in the memory wipe. Fisk ends up confronting Mike Murdock, mistakes him for Matt and murders him. In return, he and his now wife Typhoid Mary are attacked by Daredevil and Elektra. Daredevil nearly kills Fisk until Elektra intervenes. Fisk is arrested, but freed by Butch Pharris and several criminal financers, who want to install him as President of the United States next. Instead, Fisk kills them, leaves Butch to succeed him as the new Kingpin, and retires from crime with Mary by his side.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: While the Kingpin has no superhuman powers, he is incredibly strong and significantly more durable than the average human, possessing remarkable strength concealed by his extremely corpulent appearance. Most of his body mass is actually muscle that has been built to extraordinary size, much like a Super Heavyweight sumo wrestler, or some Olympic weightlifters and powerlifters but at greater strength levels. He has been shown to be strong enough to hurl large men across a room, and leave imprints in concrete walls after punching them. Defying his size, the Kingpin is a master of many forms of armed and unarmed combat, especially sumo wrestling. His signature move is the bear hug. His skill is such that he once fought Captain America to a standstill in hand-to-hand combat. His daily workout typically consists of simultaneously overcoming five or more trained martial artists with his bare hands, and he stores his valuables in a custom-built safe which has no lock, only a door which is so heavy that only the Kingpin himself is strong enough to open it.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: He typically wears Kevlar armor under his clothing. Fisk sometimes carries an "obliterator cane", a walking stick that conceals a laser weapon that can vaporize a handgun or a person's head at close range. He typically wears an ornamental diamond stick-pin that conceals compressed sleeping gas that is effective if sprayed into a victim's face. Due to his wealth and intellectual acumen, Kingpin could use far more advanced defensive gadgets, but he prefers to use such things only as a last resort. As Fisk became less Spider-Man's enemy and more Daredevil's, he was portrayed more as a naturalistic mafioso than a comic book criminal mastermind, and depended less on science fiction–like weaponry.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: Although state and federal authorities are aware of the Kingpin, they have never been able to prove his involvement in many crimes, and while Fisk has occasionally been incarcerated or put under investigation, his formidable legal resources and knowledge of the law have always protected him from any serious consequences. Members of the government have worked with him when necessary (even while describing him as "the devil"), such as when they needed his help to dispose of a Manhattan office building that the Beyonder turned into gold.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: The Kingpin is intellectually formidable and is a master tactician and a highly skilled planner and organizer. He is self-educated to university graduate level in the field of political science, and is extremely skilled and knowledgeable in the organization and management of both illegal and legal business operations, allowing him to outsmart and outlast his enemies time and time again. The Kingpin's willpower is so great that he can resist even the Purple Man's mind control.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: In the "Marvel 1602" universe, Wilson Fiske is a pirate and captain of HMS "Vanessa", known as the King's Pin, who attacks the ship taking Peter Parquarh and Sir Norman Osborne back to England. However, although the attack leaves Osborne wounded, he and the crew are able to take the "Vanessa" when Peter deflects the ship's cannonballs by using his webbing to throw them back. Fiske is thrown into the sea to drown when Osborne confronts him directly, rejecting a desperate Fiske's "offer" to explain how he got his name.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: In the "Age of Apocalypse" storyline, Wilson Fisk is known as Dirigible, a wealthy businessman who bought his way into the Marauders, a human terrorist group serving Apocalypse that makes up for their lack of mutant powers using technology which allows them to fly and emit explosive blasts. Dirigible is clearly the leader of the group, as he is seen giving orders to his three teammates. Alongside Red (Norman Osborn), the Owl, and Arcade, he attacks the human refugee camps of Wakanda. However, Dirigible is killed by Gwen Stacy.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: In the 2008–2009 "Old Man Logan" storyline, there were different versions of the Kingpin that appear in a possible future timeline in which the United States has been carved up between the various super-villains as seen on Earth-807128 and Earth-21923:


title: Kingpin (character)

text: An alternate version of Wilson Fisk appears in the "House of M" storyline as a mobster who controls all crime in the human neighborhoods of Uptown New York. Kingpin cooperates with the Mutant authorities, acting as an informant on Luke Cage and his Avengers gang, in exchange for official protection of his territories.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: Kingpin appears in a story arc in the MAX version of "The Punisher", beginning with "Punisher Max" #1, with Bullseye as his main henchman. Like the mainstream version he is incredibly strong, able to squeeze someone's head until their eyes pop out. He is a highly formidable hand-to-hand combatant, cunning and utterly ruthless. This version of Fisk is also married to Vanessa and has a son, Richard, who is depicted as a young child. Following Richard's death, Fisk and Vanessa separate, with both taking Hand assassin Elektra Natchios as a lover and partner while plotting against the other.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: In the one-shot issue "Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe", the Punisher goes after the Kingpin after Microchip uses his hacking skills to destroy the Kingpin's empire. Kingpin informs the Punisher that he supported the latter's campaign to kill all of the superpowered beings, and has acquired an armory of weapons for the Punisher's use. As the Punisher attempts to shoot the Kingpin with an M16, the Kingpin grabs the rifle and destroys it with his bare hands. The Punisher responds by shooting two Desert Eagle pistols at the Kingpin, which only infuriates him. The Punisher kills the Kingpin by shooting him in the throat, and his body collapses on top of Castle, where he is found and arrested by NYPD officers. The Punisher's benefactor breaks him out of prison, whereupon Castle reveals he killed the Kingpin to acquire his high-tech weaponry, specifically a holographic scrambler, which Castle uses to disguise a helicopter as the Fantastic Four's Fantasti-car, so he can infiltrate Latveria to kill Doctor Doom.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: In the alternate future depicted in the MC2 comics, Fisk has finally succeeded in killing Daredevil, although he made the mistake of betraying Kaine in the process. Kaine attempted to revive Daredevil with sorcery, but ended up bonding him with the demon Zarathos and Reilly Tyne (son of Ben Reilly, the Scarlet Spider), creating the superhero Darkdevil. When a gang war begins, Fisk is slain by a bomb while incarcerated in prison. While dying, he has a vision of his wife and son who show the unrepentant criminal his dark past. The two spirits tell him that he can only come to the "light" if he renounces his criminal past. It is left ambiguous as to what he decided.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: During the "Spider-Verse" storyline, Wilson Fisk assisted Mysterio and his assistant Ella in a plot to obtain the Spider-Man's blood.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: During the 2015 "Secret Wars" storyline, there are different versions of Kingpin that reside in the different Battleworld domains:


title: Kingpin (character)

text: During the "Spider-Geddon" storyline, the Earth-83043 version of Wilson Fisk is the head of Kingliner and secretly orchestrated the airplane crash in the Savage Land that killed Richard and Mary Parker. Years later, Fisk and his ally Ka-Zar the Hunter are poaching dinosaurs when they set off a trap left for them by the Savage Spider-Man. While Fisk did recognize Savage Spider-Man as Peter Parker while confirming the suspicion that someone on the airplane survived, he did reveal his soldiers that were in hiding nearby. Just then, the giant spiders that raised Savage Spider-Man appeared where they attacked Fisk's soldiers and the airplane that Fisk is on.


title: Kingpin (character)

text: The Kingpin appears in "Marvel's Spider-Man" series, voiced by Travis Willingham. Similarly to his comics counterpart, this version is an exceptional combatant and criminal mastermind who posed as a respectable businessman, philanthropist, and owner of Fisk Industries to hide his true nature as the driving force behind most of New York's organized crime. Within the games' continuity, Spider-Man has existed for eight years, and it is implied that Wilson Fisk has been the Kingpin for even longer. During this time, Fisk has been Spider-Man's most prominent adversary, and managed to fend off all serious charges related to his crimes because the police were never able to gather enough incriminating evidence.


title: Ludwig Ahgren

text: Ludwig Anders Ahgren (born July 6, 1995), known mononymously as Ludwig, is an American live streamer, YouTuber, podcaster, esports commentator and competitor. Ahgren is best known for his live streams on Twitch from 2018 through late 2021, and on YouTube beginning in late 2021, where he broadcasts video-game-related content as well as non-video-game-related content such as game shows, and contests. He is also known for his work as an esports commentator at various "Super Smash Bros. Melee" tournaments. Since beginning streaming full-time on February 16, 2019, Ahgren has become one of the largest streamers on YouTube.


title: Ludwig Ahgren

text: While holding a widely publicized "subathon" event, Ahgren became the most subscribed Twitch streamer of all time in 2021, eventually reaching around 282,000 subscribers at its peak, beating the previous record set by fellow streamer Ninja. On November 29, 2021, Ahgren announced that he had signed an exclusive deal with YouTube Gaming. At the 2022 Streamer Awards, Ahgren won the award for "Streamer of the Year".


title: Ludwig Ahgren

text: Ludwig Anders Ahgren was born July 6, 1995, in Hollis, New Hampshire. Ahgren has French and Swedish ancestry. He attended Arizona State University, where he was a member of the Tempe Underground (formerly Tempe Late Night) stand-up and improv comedy club. He graduated cum laude with degrees in English Literature and Journalism in 2017.


title: Ludwig Ahgren

text: Ahgren began live streaming on Twitch part-time on May 16, 2018, becoming full-time on February 16, 2019. During 2018 and 2019, Ahgren's stream had a relatively small audience, mostly streaming the video games "Super Smash Bros. Melee", "Mario Party 2", and "Dark Souls". On November 10, 2019, Ahgren set the world record for the button mashing mini-game "Domination" from "Mario Party 4." According to "Polygon", Ahgren's record was faster than a tool-assisted speedrun bot; according to "Kotaku", this is false, since the bot was capped at a score of 160, while Ahgren was playing on a modified version that removes the cap. "Polygon"'s Owen S. Good said, "If aliens landed and I had to explain what video games are and why they are fun, I'd show them this. Take a bow, Ludwig".


title: Ludwig Ahgren

text: In January 2020, Ahgren, among other "Melee" competitors and personalities, such as Mew2King and Plup, competed in an invitational tournament for "Pokémon Sword and Shield" by 2016 Pokémon World Champion, Wolfe Glick, where Ahgren finished first. In June 2020, Ahgren was invited to compete against other popular Twitch streamers in the amateur chess tournament PogChamps of Chess.com, placing second in the consolation bracket. Ahgren subsequently made an appearance on the cover of the August 2020 edition of "Chess Life".


title: Ludwig Ahgren

text: In November 2020, after the "Melee" tournament The Big House 10 received a cease and desist letter from Nintendo, Ahgren announced the Ludwig Ahgren Championship Series 3, an impromptu charity tournament. Taking place between December 20 and 21, it raised over $261,668 for Gamers for Love.


title: Ludwig Ahgren

text: In December 2020, both Ahgren's YouTube channel and his Twitch channel reached over one million followers; Cale Michael of "Dot Esports" credited his rapid growth to his "Twitch stream expanding, continued collaboration with other big creators, and his willingness to try new forms of content out both live and for his YouTube channel." Also in December, Ahgren released a Christmas album, "A Very Mogul Christmas", to allow streamers to listen to Christmas music without DMCA issues.


title: Ludwig Ahgren

text: In January 2021, Ahgren began hosting a game show on Twitch, titled "Hivemind", with fellow streamer Cr1TiKaL. In October 2021, Ahgren was among a multitude of streamers whose earnings from Twitch were revealed in a data breach; between August 2019 and October 2021, Ahgren had earned $3.3 million through Twitch, which Ahgren confirmed.


title: Ludwig Ahgren

text: On March 14, 2021, Ahgren held a subathon that ran for 30 days, ending on April 13, 2021. A "subathon", short for "subscription marathon," is a type of livestream on Twitch where every time a streamer receives a subscription— donations from viewers—more time is added to a descending timer. Once the timer reaches zero, the stream ends. Ahgren received around 282,000 subscriptions during his subathon, breaking the previous record set in 2018 by Tyler "Ninja" Blevins of the most concurrent subscribers on Twitch.


title: Ludwig Ahgren

text: On November 29, 2021, Ahgren announced he would depart from live streaming on Twitch, and moved to YouTube Gaming on November 30. He announced this with a short comedy sketch, where he blew up a purple car symbolizing Twitch. According to "Dot Esports", Ahgren cited his move to YouTube as one of the reasons why Twitch later relaxed its exclusivity rules for its partnered streamers.


title: Ludwig Ahgren

text: In December 2021, Ahgren received two DMCA-related bans, temporarily suspending his streams. On September 11, 2022, Ahgren was banned for a third time during a stream where he deliberately played the copyrighted song "Go!!!" to see how quickly he would be banned. He was banned after one minute and thirty-one seconds which he claimed was a "world record".


title: Ludwig Ahgren

text: On July 2, 2022, Ludwig hosted an in-person version of his game show, "Mogul Money Live", to over 5,000 people at the YouTube Theater. Contestants included Pokimane, xQc, Sykkuno, Mizkif, Sodapoppin, and Fuslie; among others. Sykkuno won the show and was rewarded with a "golden toilet". The event set a new streaming record on Ludwig's YouTube channel, with 146,699 viewers at its peak.


title: Ludwig Ahgren

text: On September 23, 2022, Ahgren announced a chess boxing event, the Mogul Chessboxing Championship, that was held on December 11, 2022, in the Galen Center in Los Angeles; It featured both streamers and professional chess players. In the event, Ahgren was both co-host and a participant in a surprise chess-slap match with Connor Colquhoun. On September 27, 2022, Ahgren announced the founding of the creative agency Offbrand, along with fellow streamers Brandon 'Atrioc' Ewing, Nathan Stanz, and Nick Allen.


title: Ludwig Ahgren

text: On September 28, 2022, Ahgren and Jschlatt, a fellow content creator, founded the YouTube channel "Lud and Schlatts Musical Emporium""," a project to release royalty-free recordings of famous compositions and two original songs in the style of Nintendo video game music for the use in content creation. On October 15, Ahgren announced Swipe, his bidet product line.


title: Ludwig Ahgren

text: From October 21 to 23, 2022, Ahgren organized an invitational tournament for "Super Smash Bros. Melee" and "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate" in Las Vegas, Nevada with 32-player brackets and a prize pool of $30,002 for both games, which was increased to $52,502 due to a cross-promotion with Capital One. The event was broadcast across Ahgren's and Alpharad's channels. On October 20, the day before the event was scheduled to begin, Ahgren revealed that a major sponsor had backed out at the last minute. YouTuber MrBeast signed on as a sponsor through his company Feastables. According to Ahgren and tournament organizer Aiden 'Calvin' McCaig, the event cost $200,000 to produce.


title: Ludwig Ahgren

text: Ahgren would host another "Smash" invitational on December 18, 2022 in light of community uproar surrounding Nintendo and Panda due to the cancellation of the 2022 Smash World Tour Championships. Intending to rival Panda's Panda Cup Finale, which was to be held on the same weekend before it got postponed, Ahgren invited the top sixteen "Melee" and "Ultimate" players from Smash World Tour 2022 to compete with the primary goal of raising money to support VGBootCamp, the organizers of Smash World Tour.


title: Luke Combs

text: Luke Albert Combs (; born March 2, 1990) is an American country music singer and songwriter. Born and raised in North Carolina, Combs began performing as a child, most notably performing at Carnegie Hall. After dropping out of college to pursue a career in music, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he released his debut extended play, "The Way She Rides", in 2014.


title: Luke Combs

text: In 2017, Combs released his debut album, "This One's for You", which reached number four on the "Billboard" 200. Combs released his second album, "What You See Is What You Get", on November 8, 2019. The album topped the charts in multiple territories, becoming his first to do so. A deluxe version of the album was released on October 23, 2020, including the song "Forever After All".


title: Luke Combs

text: Combs' music has earned him two Grammy Award nominations, two iHeart Radio music awards, four Academy of Country Music Awards and six Country Music Association Awards, including the 2021 & 2022 Entertainer of the Year award, their highest honor.


title: Luke Combs

text: Combs, an only child, was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, the son of Rhonda and Chester Combs, and moved to Asheville, North Carolina, at the age of 8. He has been performing as a vocalist since childhood. While attending A. C. Reynolds High School, Combs played football and performed with multiple vocal groups, including performing a solo at Carnegie Hall. Later, he attended Appalachian State University where he worked as a bouncer at a bar before gaining stage time in that same bar. He played his first country music show at the Parthenon Cafe in Boone. With less than a month left in his senior year, he dropped out to pursue his country music career. He later moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a career in music.


title: Luke Combs

text: Combs released his first EP, "The Way She Rides", in February 2014. Later that year, he released his second EP, "Can I Get an Outlaw". In 2016, Combs' first single, "Hurricane", sold 15,000 copies in its first week, and debuted at number 46 on the "Billboard" Hot Country Songs chart. In November 2015, Combs released his third EP, "This One's for You". In late 2016, Combs was named one of Sounds Like Nashville's "Artists to Watch".


title: Luke Combs

text: Combs signed a deal with Sony Music Nashville, and the debut single from "This One's for You", "Hurricane", was re-released on Columbia Nashville. "Hurricane" reached number one on the country radio airplay chart on May 15, 2017, holding that spot for two weeks,


title: Luke Combs

text: In June 2017, Combs released his major label debut album, also titled "This One's for You" on Columbia Nashville and River House Artists. The album reached number one on "Billboard"s Top Country Albums and number five on the US "Billboard" 200 in its first week. The album's second single, "When It Rains It Pours" was released to country radio on June 19, 2017. It reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in October 2017. The album's third single, "One Number Away" was released to country radio on January 8, 2018. In June 2018, Combs released a deluxe version titled "This One's for You Too", with five bonus tracks, two of which ("She Got the Best of Me" and "Beautiful Crazy") were issued as singles with both reaching number-one. "Beautiful Crazy" reached number one on Country Airplay in February 2019, giving Combs five number-ones on the "Billboard" country chart with his first five singles. The song reached number one on three additional country charts – Hot Country Songs, Country Streaming Songs, and Country Digital Song Sales.


title: Luke Combs

text: In August 2019, "This One's for You" spent its 44th week at number one on Top Country Albums, setting the record for the longest reign at the top of that chart by a male artist.


title: Luke Combs

text: His second album "What You See Is What You Get" was released on November 8, 2019. The album has charted the singles "Beer Never Broke My Heart", "Even Though I'm Leaving", "Does to Me", a duet with Eric Church, and "Lovin' on You", all of which have reached number one on the US Country chart.


title: Luke Combs

text: In May 2020, Combs released the single "Six Feet Apart". The single quickly became popular to listeners as it illustrated the challenges of life during the COVID-19 pandemic. In June 2020, Combs confirmed his next single would be "Lovin' on You", which was released on both his second album and the EP "The Prequel", which predated the album.


title: Luke Combs

text: Combs announced a deluxe version of "What You See Is What You Get", titled "What You See Ain't Always What You Get", with five new songs; it was released on October 23, 2020. The track "Forever After All" set streaming records in country music on Apple Music and Spotify.


title: Luke Combs

text: In early 2016, Combs started dating Nicole Hocking, and the two became engaged in November 2018. They married in Florida on August 1, 2020. On January 20, 2022, Combs and Hocking announced that they are expecting their first child together, a boy, in the spring of 2022. On June 19, 2022, their son was born.


title: Luke Combs

text: Combs began to struggle with anxiety and primarily obsessional obsessive compulsive disorder in adolescence through his college years; he has said that while it is something he has learned to control better, he still struggles with obsessive thoughts from time to time.


title: Jacob Batalon

text: Jacob Batalon (; born October 9, 1996) is an American actor. Batalon achieved international recognition playing Ned Leeds in five Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films, beginning with "" (2017).


title: Jacob Batalon

text: Jacob Batalon was born on October 9, 1996, in Hawaii, to Filipino parents. Batalon has seven half-siblings: a brother and a sister from his mother, and three brothers and two sisters from his father.


title: Jacob Batalon

text: Upon graduating from the private Catholic school St. Anthony's School, he went to Damien Memorial School, then Batalon attended Kapi'olani Community College to study music theory, but later dropped out. He then took a two-year program to study acting at the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts.


title: Jacob Batalon

text: As part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he first appeared as Peter Parker's best friend Ned Leeds in "" (2017). It was Batalon's first major role. He reprised the role in "" (2018), "", "", (both 2019) and "" (2021).


title: V-2 rocket

text: The V-2 (), with the technical name "Aggregat 4" (A-4), was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the Second World War in Nazi Germany as a "vengeance weapon" and assigned to attack Allied cities as retaliation for the Allied bombings of German cities. The rocket also became the first artificial object to travel into space by crossing the Kármán line (edge of space) with the vertical launch of MW 18014 on 20 June 1944.


title: V-2 rocket

text: Research into military use of long-range rockets began when the graduate studies of Wernher von Braun attracted the attention of the Wehrmacht. A series of prototypes culminated in the A-4, which went to war as the . Beginning in September 1944, over 3,000 were launched by the Wehrmacht against Allied targets, first London and later Antwerp and Liège. According to a 2011 BBC documentary, the attacks from resulted in the deaths of an estimated 9,000 civilians and military personnel, and a further 12,000 forced laborers and Nazi concentration camps prisoners died as a result of their forced participation in the production of the weapons.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The rockets travelled at supersonic speed, impacted without audible warning, and proved unstoppable, as no effective defense existed. Teams from the Allied forces—the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union—raced to seize key Nazi manufacturing facilities, procure the Nazis' missile technology, and capture the V-2’s launching sites. Von Braun and over 100 key personnel surrendered to the Americans, and many of the original team ended up working at the Redstone Arsenal. The US also captured enough hardware to build approximately 80 of the missiles. The Soviets gained possession of the manufacturing facilities after the war, re-established production, and moved it to the Soviet Union.


title: V-2 rocket

text: In the late 1920s, a young Wernher von Braun bought a copy of Hermann Oberth's book, "Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen" ("The Rocket into Interplanetary Spaces"). The world's first large-scale experimental rocket program was Opel-RAK under the leadership of Fritz von Opel and Max Valier, a collaborator of Oberth, during the late 1920s leading to the first manned rocket cars and rocket planes, which paved the way for the Nazi era V2 program and US and Soviet activities from 1950 onwards. The Opel RAK program and the spectacular public demonstrations of ground and air vehicles drew large crowds, as well as caused global public excitement as so-called "Rocket Rumble" and had a large long-lasting impact on later spaceflight pioneers, in particular on Wernher von Braun. The Great Depression ended these activities. Von Opel left Germany in 1930 and emigrated later to France and Switzerland.


title: V-2 rocket

text: Starting in 1930, von Braun attended the Technical University of Berlin, where he assisted Oberth in liquid-fueled rocket motor tests. Von Braun was working on his doctorate when the Nazi Party gained power in Germany. An artillery captain, Walter Dornberger, arranged an Ordnance Department research grant for von Braun, who from then on worked next to Dornberger's existing solid-fuel rocket test site at Kummersdorf. Von Braun's thesis, "Construction, Theoretical, and Experimental Solution to the Problem of the Liquid Propellant Rocket" (dated 16 April 1934), was kept classified by the German Army and was not published until 1960. By the end of 1934, his group had successfully launched two rockets that reached heights of .


title: V-2 rocket

text: At the time, Germany was highly interested in American physicist Robert H. Goddard's research. Before 1939, German engineers and scientists occasionally contacted Goddard directly with technical questions. Von Braun used Goddard's plans from various journals and incorporated them into the building of the "Aggregate" (A) series of rockets, named for the German word for mechanism or mechanical system.


title: V-2 rocket

text: Following successes at Kummersdorf with the first two Aggregate series rockets, Braun and Walter Riedel began thinking of a much larger rocket in the summer of 1936, based on a projected thrust engine. In addition, Dornberger specified the military requirements needed to include a 1-ton payload, a range of 172 miles with a dispersion of 2 or 3 miles, and transportable using road vehicles.


title: V-2 rocket

text: After the A-4 project was postponed due to unfavorable aerodynamic stability testing of the A-3 in July 1936,


title: V-2 rocket

text: Braun specified the A-4 performance in 1937, and, after an "extensive" series of test firings of the A-5 scale test model, using a motor redesigned from the troublesome A-3 by Walter Thiel, A-4 design and construction was ordered 1938–39. During 28–30 September 1939, (English: "The Day of Wisdom") conference met at Peenemünde to initiate the funding of university research to solve rocket problems.


title: V-2 rocket

text: By late 1941, the Army Research Center at Peenemünde possessed the technologies essential to the success of the A-4. The four key technologies for the A-4 were large liquid-fuel rocket engines, supersonic aerodynamics, gyroscopic guidance and rudders in jet control. At the time, Adolf Hitler was not particularly impressed by the V-2; he opined that it was merely an artillery shell with a longer range and much higher cost.


title: V-2 rocket

text: In early September 1943, Braun promised the Long-Range Bombardment Commission that the A-4 development was "practically complete/concluded", but even by the middle of 1944, a complete A-4 parts list was still unavailable. Hitler was sufficiently impressed by the enthusiasm of its developers, and needed a "wonder weapon" to maintain German morale, so he authorized its deployment in large numbers.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The V-2s were constructed at the Mittelwerk site by prisoners from Mittelbau-Dora, a concentration camp where 20,000 prisoners died.


title: V-2 rocket

text: In 1943, the Austrian resistance group around Heinrich Maier managed to send exact drawings of the V-2 rocket to the American Office of Strategic Services. Location sketches of V-rocket manufacturing facilities, such as those in Peenemünde, were also sent to the Allied general staff in order to enable Allied bombers to carry out airstrikes. This information was particularly important for Operation Crossbow and Operation Hydra, both preliminary missions for Operation Overlord. The group was gradually captured by the Gestapo and most of the members were executed.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The A-4 used a 75% ethanol/25% water mixture ("B-Stoff") for fuel and liquid oxygen (LOX) ("A-Stoff") for oxidizer. The water reduced the flame temperature, acted as a coolant by turning to steam and augmented the thrust, tended to produce a smoother burn, and reduced thermal stress.


title: V-2 rocket

text: Rudolf Hermann's supersonic wind tunnel was used to measure the A-4's aerodynamic characteristics and center of pressure, using a model of the A-4 within a 40 square centimeter chamber. Measurements were made using a Mach 1.86 blowdown nozzle on 8 August 1940. Tests at Mach numbers 1.56 and 2.5 were made after 24 September 1940.


title: V-2 rocket

text: At launch the A-4 propelled itself for up to 65 seconds on its own power, and a program motor held the inclination at the specified angle until engine shutdown, after which the rocket continued on a ballistic free-fall trajectory. The rocket reached a height of or 264,000 ft after shutting off the engine.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The fuel and oxidizer pumps were driven by a steam turbine, and the steam was produced by concentrated hydrogen peroxide (T-Stoff) with sodium permanganate (Z-Stoff) catalyst. Both the alcohol and oxygen tanks were an aluminum-magnesium alloy.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The turbopump, rotating at 4000 rpm, forced the alcohol and oxygen into the combustion chamber at 125 liters (33 US gallons) per second, where they were ignited by a spinning electrical igniter. Thrust increased from 8 tons during this preliminary stage whilst the fuel was gravity-fed, before increasing to 25 tons as the turbopump pressurised the fuel, lifting the 13.5 ton rocket. Combustion gases exited the chamber at , and a speed of 2000 m (6500 feet) per second. The oxygen to fuel mixture was 1.0:0.85 at 25 tons of thrust, but as ambient pressure decreased with flight altitude, thrust increased until it reached 29 tons. The turbopump assembly contained two centrifugal pumps, one for the alcohol, and one for the oxygen, both connected to a common shaft. Hydrogen peroxide converted to steam, using a sodium permanganate catalyst powered the pump, which delivered 55 kg (120 pounds) of alcohol and 68 kg (150 pounds) of liquid oxygen per second to a combustion chamber at 1.5 MPa (210 psi).


title: V-2 rocket

text: Dr. Thiel's development of the 25 ton rocket motor relied on pump feeding, rather than on the earlier pressure feeding. The motor used centrifugal injection, while using both regenerative cooling and film cooling. Film cooling admitted alcohol into the combustion chamber and exhaust nozzle under slight pressure through four rings of small perforations. The mushroom-shaped injection head was removed from the combustion chamber to a mixing chamber, the combustion chamber was made more spherical while being shortened from 6 to 1 foot in length, and the connection to the nozzle was made cone shaped. The resultant 1.5 ton chamber operated at a combustion pressure of 1.52 MPa (220 psi). Thiel's 1.5 ton chamber was then scaled up to a 4.5 ton motor by arranging three injection heads above the combustion chamber. By 1939, eighteen injection heads in two concentric circles at the head of the 3 mm (0.12-inch) thick sheet-steel chamber, were used to make the 25 ton motor.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The warhead was another source of trouble. The explosive employed was amatol 60/40 detonated by an electric contact fuze. Amatol had the advantage of stability, and the warhead was protected by a thick layer of glass wool, but even so it could still explode in the re-entry phase. The warhead weighed and contained of explosive. The warhead's percentage by weight that was explosive was 93%, a very high percentage when compared with other types of munition.


title: V-2 rocket

text: A protective layer of glass wool was also used for the fuel tanks so the A-4 did not have a tendency to form ice, a problem which plagued other early ballistic missiles such as the balloon tank-design SM-65 Atlas which entered US service in 1959. The tanks held of ethyl alcohol and of oxygen.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The V-2 was guided by four external rudders on the tail fins, and four internal graphite vanes in the jet stream at the exit of the motor. These 8 control surfaces were controlled by Helmut Hölzer's analog computer, the , via electrical-hydraulic servomotors, based on electrical signals from the gyros. The Siemens "Vertikant" LEV-3 guidance system consisted of two free gyroscopes (a horizontal for pitch and a vertical with two degrees of freedom for yaw and roll) for lateral stabilization, coupled with a PIGA accelerometer, or the Walter Wolman radio control system, to control engine cutoff at a specified velocity. Other gyroscopic systems used in the A-4 included Kreiselgeräte's SG-66 and SG-70. The V-2 was launched from a pre-surveyed location, so the distance and azimuth to the target were known. Fin 1 of the missile was aligned to the target azimuth.


title: V-2 rocket

text: Some later V-2s used "guide beams", radio signals transmitted from the ground, to keep the missile on course, but the first models used a simple analog computer that adjusted the azimuth for the rocket, and the flying distance was controlled by the timing of the engine cut-off, "Brennschluss", ground-controlled by a Doppler system or by different types of on-board integrating accelerometers. Thus, range was a function of engine burn time, which ended when a specific velocity was achieved. Just before engine cutoff, thrust was reduced to eight tons, in an effort to avoid any water hammer problems a rapid cutoff could cause.


title: V-2 rocket

text: Dr. Friedrich Kirchstein of Siemens of Berlin developed the V-2 radio control for motor-cut-off (). For velocity measurement, Professor Wolman of Dresden created an alternative of his Doppler tracking system in 1940–41, which used a ground signal transponded by the A-4 to measure the velocity of the missile. By 9 February 1942, Peenemünde engineer Gerd had documented the radio interference area of a V-2 as around the "Firing Point", and the first successful A-4 flight on 3 October 1942, used radio control for . Although Hitler commented on 22 September 1943 that "It is a great load off our minds that we have dispensed with the radio guiding-beam; now no opening remains for the British to interfere technically with the missile in flight", about 20% of the operational V-2 launches were beam-guided. The Operation Pinguin V-2 offensive began on 8 September 1944, when (English: 'Training and Testing Battery 444') launched a single rocket guided by a radio beam directed at Paris. Wreckage of combat V-2s occasionally contained the transponder for velocity and fuel cutoff.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The painting of the operational V-2s was mostly a ragged-edged pattern with several variations, but at the end of the war a plain olive green rocket also appeared. During tests the rocket was painted in a characteristic black-and-white chessboard pattern, which aided in determining if the rocket was spinning around its longitudinal axis.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The original German designation of the rocket was "V2", unhyphenated – exactly as used for any Third Reich-era "second prototype" example of an RLM-registered German aircraft design – but U.S. publications such as "Life" magazine were using the hyphenated form "V-2" as early as December 1944.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The first successful test flight was on 3 October 1942, reaching an altitude of . On that day, Walter Dornberger declared in a speech at Peenemünde:


title: V-2 rocket

text: Two test launches were recovered by the Allies: the Bäckebo rocket, the remnants of which landed in Sweden on 13 June 1944, and one recovered by the Polish resistance on 30 May 1944 from Blizna and transported to the UK during Operation Most III. The highest altitude reached during the war was (20 June 1944). Test launches of V-2 rockets were made at Peenemünde, Blizna and Tuchola Forest, and after the war, at Cuxhaven by the British, White Sands Proving Grounds and Cape Canaveral by the U.S., and Kapustin Yar by the USSR.


title: V-2 rocket

text: Through mid-March 1944, only four of the 26 successful Blizna launches had satisfactorily reached the Sarnaki target area due to in-flight breakup () on re-entry into the atmosphere. (As mentioned above, one rocket was collected by the Polish Home Army, with parts of it transported to London for tests.) Initially, the German developers suspected excessive alcohol tank pressure, but by April 1944, after five months of test firings, the cause was still not determined. Major-General Rossmann, the Army Weapons Office department chief, recommended stationing observers in the target area – May/June, Dornberger and von Braun set up a camp at the centre of the Poland target zone. After moving to the Heidekraut, SS Mortar Battery 500 of the 836th Artillery Battalion (Motorized) was ordered on 30 August to begin test launches of eighty 'sleeved' rockets. Testing confirmed that the so-called 'tin trousers' – a tube designed to strengthen the forward end of the rocket cladding – reduced the likelihood of air bursts.


title: V-2 rocket

text: On 27 March 1942, Dornberger proposed production plans and the building of a launching site on the Channel coast. In December, Speer ordered Major Thom and Dr. Steinhoff to reconnoiter the site near Watten. Assembly rooms were established at Peenemünde and in the Friedrichshafen facilities of Zeppelin Works. In 1943, a third factory, Raxwerke, was added.


title: V-2 rocket

text: On 22 December 1942, Hitler signed the order for mass production, when Albert Speer assumed final technical data would be ready by July 1943. However, many issues still remained to be solved even by the autumn of 1943.


title: V-2 rocket

text: On 8 January 1943, Dornberger and von Braun met with Speer. Speer stated, "As head of the Todt organisation I will take it on myself to start at once with the building of the launching site on the Channel coast," and established an A-4 production committee under Degenkolb.


title: V-2 rocket

text: On 26 May 1943, the Long-Range Bombardment Commission, chaired by AEG director Petersen, met at Peenemünde to review the V-1 and V-2 automatic long-range weapons. In attendance were Speer, Air Marshal Erhard Milch, Admiral Karl Dönitz, Col. General Friedrich Fromm, and Karl Saur. Both weapons had reached the final stage of development, and the commission decided to recommend to Hitler that both weapons be put into mass production. As Dornberger observed, "The disadvantages of the one would be compensated by the other's advantages."


title: V-2 rocket

text: On 7 July 1943, Major General Dornberger, von Braun, and Dr. Steinhof briefed Hitler in his Wolf's Lair. Also in attendance were Speer, Wilhelm Keitel, and Alfred Jodl. The briefing included von Braun narrating a film showing the successful launch on 3 October 1942, with scale models of the Channel coast firing bunker, and supporting vehicles, including the . Hitler then gave Peenemünde top priority in the German armaments program stating, "Why was it I could not believe in the success of your work? if we had had these rockets in 1939 we should never have had this war..." Hitler also wanted a second launch bunker built.


title: V-2 rocket

text: Saur planned to build 2,000 rockets per month, between the existing three factories and the Nordhausen Mittelwerk factory being built. However, alcohol production was dependent upon the potato harvest.


title: V-2 rocket

text: A production line was nearly ready at Peenemünde when the Operation Hydra attack occurred. The main targets of the attack included the test stands, the development works, the Pre-Production Works, the settlement where the scientists and technicians lived, the Trassenheide camp, and the harbor sector. According to Dornberger, "Serious damage to the works, contrary to first impressions, was surprisingly small." Work resumed after a delay of four to six weeks, and because of camouflage to mimic complete destruction, there were no more raids over the next nine months. The raid resulted in 735 lives lost, with heavy losses at Trassenheide, while 178 were killed in the settlement, including Dr. Thiel, his family, and Chief Engineer Walther. The Germans eventually moved production to the underground "Mittelwerk" in the Kohnstein where 5,200 V-2 rockets were built with the use of forced labour.


title: V-2 rocket

text: Following the Operation Crossbow bombing, initial plans for launching from the massive underground Watten, Wizernes and Sottevast bunkers or from fixed pads such as near the Château du Molay were dropped in favour of mobile launching. Eight main storage dumps were planned and four had been completed by July 1944 (the one at Mery-sur-Oise was begun in August 1943 and completed by February 1944). The missile could be launched practically anywhere, roads running through forests being a particular favourite. The system was so mobile and small that only one was ever caught in action by Allied aircraft, during the Operation Bodenplatte attack on 1 January 1945 near Lochem by a USAAF 4th Fighter Group aircraft, although Raymond Baxter described flying over a site during a launch and his wingman firing at the missile without hitting it.


title: V-2 rocket

text: It was estimated that a sustained rate of 350 V-2s could be launched per week, with 100 per day at maximum effort, given sufficient supply of the rockets.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The LXV "Armeekorps" z.b.V. formed during the last days of November 1943 in France commanded by "General der Artillerie" z.V. Erich Heinemann was responsible for the operational use of V-2. Three launch battalions were formed in late 1943, "Artillerie Abteilung" 836 (Mot.), Grossborn, Artillerie Abteilung 485 (Mot.), Naugard, and "Artillerie Abteilung" 962 ("Mot."). Combat operations commenced in Sept. 1944, when training Batterie 444 deployed. On 2 September 1944, the SS "Werfer-Abteilung" 500 was formed, and by October, the SS under the command of SS Lt. Gen Hans Kammler, took operational control of all units. He formed "Gruppe Sud" with Art. Abt. 836, Merzig, and "Gruppe Nord" with Art. Abt. 485 and "Batterie" 444, Burgsteinfurt and The Hague.


title: V-2 rocket

text: After Hitler's 29 August 1944 declaration to begin V-2 attacks as soon as possible, the offensive began on 7 September 1944 when two were launched at Paris (which the Allies had liberated less than two weeks earlier), but both crashed soon after launch. On 8 September a single rocket was launched at Paris, which caused modest damage near Porte d'Italie. Two more launches by the 485th followed, including one from The Hague against London on the same day at 6:43 pm. – the first landed at Staveley Road, Chiswick, killing 63-year-old Mrs. Ada Harrison, three-year-old Rosemary Clarke, and Sapper Bernard Browning on leave from the Royal Engineers, and one that hit Epping with no casualties. Upon hearing the double-crack of the supersonic rocket (London's first ever), Duncan Sandys and Reginald Victor Jones looked up from different parts of the city and exclaimed "That was a rocket!", and a short while after the double-crack, the sky was filled with the sound of a heavy body rushing through the air.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The British government, concerned about spreading panic or giving away vital intelligence to German forces, initially attempted to conceal the cause of the explosions by making no official announcement, and euphemistically blaming them on defective gas mains. The public did not believe this explanation and therefore began referring to the V-2s as "flying gas mains". The Germans themselves finally announced the V-2 on 8 November 1944 and only then, on 10 November 1944, did Winston Churchill inform Parliament, and the world, that England had been under rocket attack "for the last few weeks".


title: V-2 rocket

text: Positions of the German launch units changed a number of times. For example, "Artillerie Init 444" arrived in the southwest Netherlands (in Zeeland) in September 1944. From a field near the village of Serooskerke, five V-2s were launched on 15 and 16 September, with one more successful and one failed launch on the 18th. That same date, a transport carrying a missile took a wrong turn and ended up in Serooskerke itself, giving a villager the opportunity to surreptitiously take some photographs of the weapon; these were smuggled to London by the Dutch Resistance. After that the unit moved to the woods near Rijs, Gaasterland in the northwest Netherlands, to ensure that the technology did not fall into Allied hands. From Gaasterland V-2s were launched against Ipswich and Norwich from 25 September (London being out of range). Because of their inaccuracy, these V-2s did not hit their target cities. Shortly after that only London and Antwerp remained as designated targets as ordered by Adolf Hitler himself, Antwerp being targeted in the period of 12 to 20 October, after which time the unit moved to The Hague.


title: V-2 rocket

text: Antwerp, Belgium was a target for a large number of V-weapon attacks from October 1944 through to the virtual end of the war in March 1945, leaving 1,736 dead and 4,500 injured in greater Antwerp. Thousands of buildings were damaged or destroyed as the city was struck by 590 direct hits. The largest loss of life by a single rocket attack during the war came on 16 December 1944, when the roof of the crowded Cine Rex was struck, leaving 567 dead and 291 injured.


title: V-2 rocket

text: An estimated 2,754 civilians were killed in London by V-2 attacks with another 6,523 injured, which is two people killed per V-2 rocket. However, this understates the potential of the V-2, since many rockets were misdirected and exploded harmlessly. Accuracy increased over the course of the war, particularly for batteries where the (radio guide beam) system was used. Missile strikes that found targets could cause large numbers of deaths – 160 were killed and 108 seriously injured in one explosion at 12:26 pm on 25 November 1944, at a Woolworth's department store in New Cross, south-east London.


title: V-2 rocket

text: British intelligence sent false reports via their Double-Cross System implying that the rockets were over-shooting their London target by . This tactic worked; more than half of the V-2s aimed at London landed outside the London Civil Defence Region. Most landed on less-heavily populated areas in Kent due to erroneous recalibration. For the remainder of the war, British intelligence kept up the ruse by repeatedly sending bogus reports implying that the rockets were now striking the British capital with heavy loss of life.


title: V-2 rocket

text: At least one V-2 missile on a mobile "Meillerwagen" launch trailer was observed being elevated to launch position by a USAAF 4th Fighter Group pilot defending against the massive New Year's Day 1945 Operation Bodenplatte strike by the Luftwaffe over the northern German attack route near the town of Lochem on 1 January 1945. Possibly, from the potential sighting of the American fighter by the missile's launch crew, the rocket was quickly lowered from a near launch-ready 85° elevation to 30°.


title: V-2 rocket

text: After the US Army captured the Ludendorff Bridge during the Battle of Remagen on 7 March 1945, the Germans were desperate to destroy it. On 17 March 1945, they fired eleven V-2 missiles at the bridge, their first use against a tactical target and the only time they were fired on a German target during the war. They could not employ the more accurate device because it was oriented towards Antwerp and could not be easily adjusted for another target. Fired from near Hellendoorn, the Netherlands, one of the missiles landed as far away as Cologne, to the north, while one missed the bridge by only . They also struck the town of Remagen, destroying a number of buildings and killing at least six American soldiers.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The final two rockets exploded on 27 March 1945. One of these was the last V-2 to kill a British civilian and the final civilian casualty of the war on British soil: Ivy Millichamp, aged 34, killed in her home in Kynaston Road, Orpington in Kent. A scientific reconstruction carried out in 2010 demonstrated that the V-2 creates a crater wide and deep, ejecting approximately 3,000 tons of material into the air.


title: V-2 rocket

text: Unlike the V-1, the V-2's speed and trajectory made it practically invulnerable to anti-aircraft guns and fighters, as it dropped from an altitude of at up to three times the speed of sound at sea level (approximately 3550 km/h). Nevertheless, the threat of what was then code-named "Big Ben" was great enough that efforts were made to seek countermeasures. The situation was similar to the pre-war concerns about manned bombers and led to a similar solution, the formation of the Crossbow Committee, to collect, examine and develop countermeasures.


title: V-2 rocket

text: Early on, it was believed that the V-2 employed some form of radio guidance, a belief that persisted in spite of several rockets being examined without discovering anything like a radio receiver. This led to efforts to jam this non-existent guidance system as early as September 1944, using both ground and air-based jammers flying over the UK. In October, a group had been sent to jam the missiles during launch. By December it was clear these systems were having no obvious effect, and jamming efforts ended.


title: V-2 rocket

text: General Frederick Alfred Pile, commander of Anti-Aircraft Command, studied the problem and proposed that enough anti-aircraft guns were available to produce a barrage of fire in the rocket's path, but only if provided with a reasonable prediction of the trajectory. The first estimates suggested that 320,000 shells would have to be fired for each rocket. About 2% of these were expected to fall back to the ground, almost 90 tons of rounds, which would cause far more damage than the missile. At a 25 August 1944 meeting of the Crossbow Committee, the concept was rejected.


title: V-2 rocket

text: Pile continued studying the problem, and returned with a proposal to fire only 150 shells at a single rocket, with those shells using a new fuse that would greatly reduce the number that fell back to Earth unexploded. Some low-level analysis suggested that this would be successful against 1 in 50 rockets, provided that accurate trajectories were forwarded to the gunners in time. Work on this basic concept continued and developed into a plan to deploy a large number of guns in Hyde Park that were provided with pre-configured firing data for grids of the London area. After the trajectory was determined, the guns would aim and fire between 60 and 500 rounds.


title: V-2 rocket

text: At a Crossbow meeting on 15 January 1945 Pile's updated plan was presented with some strong advocacy from Roderic Hill and Charles Drummond Ellis. However, the Committee suggested that a test not be carried out as no technique for tracking the missiles with sufficient accuracy had yet been developed. By March this had changed significantly, with 81% of incoming missiles correctly allotted to the grid square each fell into, or the one beside it. At a 26 March meeting the plan moved ahead, and Pile was directed to a subcommittee with RV Jones and Ellis to further develop the statistics. Three days later the team returned a report stating that if the guns fired 2,000 rounds at a missile there was a 1 in 60 chance of shooting it down. Plans for an operational test began, but as Pile later put it, "Monty beat us to it", as the attacks ended with the Allied liberation of their launching areas.


title: V-2 rocket

text: With the Germans no longer in control of any part of the continent that could be used as a launching site capable of striking London, they turned their attention to Antwerp. Plans were made to move the Pile system to protect that city, but the war ended before anything could be done.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The only effective defences against the V-2 campaign were to destroy the launch infrastructure—expensive in terms of bomber resources and casualties—or to cause the Germans to aim at the wrong place through disinformation. The British were able to convince the Germans to direct V-1s and V-2s aimed at London to less populated areas east of the city. This was done by sending deceptive reports on the sites hit and damage caused via the German espionage network in Britain, which was secretly controlled by the British (the Double-Cross System).


title: V-2 rocket

text: According to the BBC television presenter Raymond Baxter, who served with the RAF during the war, in February 1945 his squadron was carrying out a mission against a V2 launch site, when one missile was launched in front of them. One member of Baxter's squadron opened fire on it, without effect.


title: V-2 rocket

text: On 3 March 1945 the Allies attempted to destroy V-2s and launching equipment in the "Haagse Bos" in The Hague by a large-scale bombardment, but due to navigational errors the Bezuidenhout quarter was destroyed, killing 511 Dutch civilians.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The German V-weapons (V-1 and V-2) cost the equivalent of around US$500 million. Given the relatively smaller size of the German economy, this represented an industrial effort on par but slightly less than that of the U.S. Manhattan Project that produced the atomic bomb. 6,048 V-2s were built, at a cost of approximately ( in 2011) each; 3,225 were launched.


title: V-2 rocket

text: SS General Hans Kammler, who as an engineer had constructed several concentration camps including Auschwitz, had a reputation for brutality and had originated the idea of using concentration camp prisoners as slave laborers in the rocket program. More people died manufacturing the V-2 than were killed by its deployment.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The V-2 consumed a third of Germany's fuel alcohol production and major portions of other critical technologies: to distil the fuel alcohol for one V-2 launch required 30 tonnes of potatoes at a time when food was becoming scarce. Due to a lack of explosives, some warheads were simply filled in with concrete, using the kinetic energy alone for destruction, and sometimes the warhead contained photographic propaganda of German citizens who had died in Allied bombings.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The psychological effect of the V-2 was considerable, as the V-2, traveling faster than the speed of sound, gave no warning before impact (unlike bombing planes or the V-1 Flying Bomb, which made a characteristic buzzing sound). There was no effective defence and no risk of pilot or crew casualties. An example of the impression it made is in the reaction of American pilot and future nuclear strategist and Congressional aide William Liscum Borden, who in November 1944 while returning from a nighttime mission over Holland saw a V-2 in flight on its way to strike London: "It resembled a meteor, streaming red sparks and whizzing past us as though the aircraft were motionless. I became convinced that it was only a matter of time until rockets would expose the United States to direct, transoceanic attack."


title: V-2 rocket

text: With the war all but lost, regardless of the factory output of conventional weapons, the Nazis resorted to V-weapons as a tenuous last hope to influence the war militarily (hence Antwerp as V-2 target), as an extension of their desire to "punish" their foes and most importantly to give hope to their supporters with their miracle weapon. The V-2 had no effect on the outcome of the war, but it led to the ICBMs of the Cold War, which in turn were used for space exploration.


title: V-2 rocket

text: A submarine-towed launch platform was tested successfully, making it the prototype for submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The project codename was ("Test stand XII"), sometimes called the rocket U-boat. If deployed, it would have allowed a U-boat to launch V-2 missiles against United States cities, though only with considerable effort (and limited effect).


title: V-2 rocket

text: Hitler, in July 1944 and Speer, in January 1945, made speeches alluding to the scheme, though Germany did not possess the capability to fulfill these threats. These schemes were met by the Americans with Operation Teardrop.


title: V-2 rocket

text: While interned after the war by the British at CSDIC camp 11, Dornberger was recorded saying that he had begged the Führer to stop the V-weapon propaganda, because nothing more could be expected from one ton of explosive. To this Hitler had replied that "Dornberger" might not expect more, but "he" (Hitler) certainly did.


title: V-2 rocket

text: According to decrypted messages from the Japanese embassy in Germany, twelve dismantled V-2 rockets were shipped to Japan. These left Bordeaux in August 1944 on the transport U-boats and , which reached Jakarta in December 1944. A civilian V-2 expert was a passenger on "", bound for Japan in May 1945 when the war ended in Europe. The fate of these V-2 rockets is unknown.


title: V-2 rocket

text: At the end of the war, a race began between the United States and the USSR to retrieve as many V-2 rockets and staff as possible. Three hundred rail-car loads of V-2s and parts were captured and shipped to the United States and 126 of the principal designers, including Wernher von Braun and Walter Dornberger, were in American hands. Von Braun, his brother Magnus von Braun, and seven others decided to surrender to the United States military (Operation Paperclip) to ensure they were not captured by the advancing Soviets or shot dead by the Nazis to prevent their capture.


title: V-2 rocket

text: After the Nazi defeat, German engineers were moved to the United States, the United Kingdom and the USSR, where they further developed the V-2 rocket for military and civilian purposes. The V-2 rocket also laid the foundation for the liquid fuel missiles and space launchers used later.


title: V-2 rocket

text: In October 1945, "Operation Backfire" assembled a small number of V-2 missiles and launched three of them from a site in northern Germany. The engineers involved had already agreed to move to the US when the test firings were complete. The Backfire report, published in January 1946, contains extensive technical documentation of the rocket, including all support procedures, tailored vehicles and fuel composition.


title: V-2 rocket

text: In 1946, the British Interplanetary Society proposed an enlarged man-carrying version of the V-2, called Megaroc. It could have enabled sub-orbital spaceflight similar to, but at least a decade earlier than, the Mercury-Redstone flights of 1961.


title: V-2 rocket

text: Operation Paperclip recruited German engineers and Special Mission V-2 transported the captured V-2 parts to the United States. At the close of the Second World War, over 300 rail cars filled with V-2 engines, fuselages, propellant tanks, gyroscopes, and associated equipment were brought to the railyards in Las Cruces, New Mexico, so they could be placed on trucks and driven to the White Sands Proving Grounds, also in New Mexico.


title: V-2 rocket

text: In addition to V-2 hardware, the U.S. Government delivered German mechanization equations for the V-2 guidance, navigation, and control systems, as well as for advanced development concept vehicles, to U.S. defence contractors for analysis. In the 1950s some of these documents were useful to U.S. contractors in developing direction cosine matrix transformations and other inertial navigation architecture concepts that were applied to early U.S. programs such as the Atlas and Minuteman guidance systems as well as the Navy's Subs Inertial Navigation System.


title: V-2 rocket

text: A committee was formed with military and civilian scientists to review payload proposals for the reassembled V-2 rockets. This led to an eclectic array of experiments that flew on V-2s and paved the way for American manned space exploration. Devices were sent aloft to sample the air at all levels to determine atmospheric pressures and to see what gases were present. Other instruments measured the level of cosmic radiation.


title: V-2 rocket

text: Only 68 percent of the V-2 trials were considered successful. A supposed V-2 launched on 29 May 1947 landed near Juarez, Mexico and was actually a Hermes B-1 vehicle.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The U.S. Navy attempted to launch a German V-2 rocket at sea—one test launch from the aircraft carrier USS "Midway" was performed on 6 September 1947 as part of the Navy's Operation Sandy. The test launch was a partial success; the V-2 went off the pad but splashed down in the ocean only some from the carrier. The launch setup on the Midway's deck is notable in that it used foldaway arms to prevent the missile from falling over. The arms pulled away just after the engine ignited, releasing the missile. The setup may look similar to the R-7 launch procedure but in the case of the R-7 the trusses hold the full weight of the rocket, rather than just reacting to side forces.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The USSR also captured a number of V-2s and staff, letting them stay in Germany for a time. The first work contracts were signed in the middle of 1945. In October 1946 (as part of Operation Osoaviakhim) they were obliged to move to Branch 1 of NII-88 on Gorodomlya Island in Lake Seliger where Helmut Gröttrup headed up a group of 150 engineers. In October 1947, a group of German scientists supported the USSR in launching rebuilt V-2s in Kapustin Yar. The German team was indirectly overseen by Sergei Korolev, the "chief designer" of the Soviet rocketry program.


title: V-2 rocket

text: The first Soviet missile was the R-1, a duplicate of the V-2 completely manufactured in Soviet Union, which was first launched in October 1948. From 1947 until the end of 1950, the German team elaborated concepts and improvements for extended payload and range under the projects G-1, G-2 and G-4. The German team had to remain on Gorodomlya island until as late as 1952 and 1953. In parallel, Soviet work was focused on larger missiles, the R-2 and R-5, based on further developing the V-2 technology with using ideas of the German concept studies. Details of Soviet achievements were unknown to the German team and completely underestimated by Western intelligence until, in November 1957, the Sputnik 1 satellite was successfully launched to orbit by the Sputnik rocket based on R-7, the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile.


title: V-2 rocket

text: In the autumn of 1945, the group led by M. Tikhonravov K. and N. G. Chernyshov at NII-4 rocket artillery institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences developed on their own initiative the first stratospheric rocket project. VR-190 called for vertical flight of two pilots to an altitude of 200 km using captured German V-2 rockets.


title: Number

text: A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can be represented by symbols, called "numerals"; for example, "5" is a numeral that represents the number five. As only a relatively small number of symbols can be memorized, basic numerals are commonly organized in a numeral system, which is an organized way to represent any number. The most common numeral system is the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, which allows for the representation of any number using a combination of ten fundamental numeric symbols, called digits. In addition to their use in counting and measuring, numerals are often used for labels (as with telephone numbers), for ordering (as with serial numbers), and for codes (as with ISBNs). In common usage, a "numeral" is not clearly distinguished from the "number" that it represents.


title: Number

text: In mathematics, the notion of a number has been extended over the centuries to include zero (0), negative numbers, rational numbers such as one half formula_1, real numbers such as the square root of 2 formula_2 and , and complex numbers which extend the real numbers with a square root of (and its combinations with real numbers by adding or subtracting its multiples). Calculations with numbers are done with arithmetical operations, the most familiar being addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and exponentiation. Their study or usage is called arithmetic, a term which may also refer to number theory, the study of the properties of numbers.


title: Number

text: Besides their practical uses, numbers have cultural significance throughout the world. For example, in Western society, the number 13 is often regarded as unlucky, and "a million" may signify "a lot" rather than an exact quantity. Though it is now regarded as pseudoscience, belief in a mystical significance of numbers, known as numerology, permeated ancient and medieval thought. Numerology heavily influenced the development of Greek mathematics, stimulating the investigation of many problems in number theory which are still of interest today.


title: Number

text: During the 19th century, mathematicians began to develop many different abstractions which share certain properties of numbers, and may be seen as extending the concept. Among the first were the hypercomplex numbers, which consist of various extensions or modifications of the complex number system. In modern mathematics, number systems are considered important special examples of more general algebraic structures such as rings and fields, and the application of the term "number" is a matter of convention, without fundamental significance.


title: Number

text: Numbers should be distinguished from numerals, the symbols used to represent numbers. The Egyptians invented the first ciphered numeral system, and the Greeks followed by mapping their counting numbers onto Ionian and Doric alphabets. Roman numerals, a system that used combinations of letters from the Roman alphabet, remained dominant in Europe until the spread of the superior Hindu–Arabic numeral system around the late 14th century, and the Hindu–Arabic numeral system remains the most common system for representing numbers in the world today. The key to the effectiveness of the system was the symbol for zero, which was developed by ancient Indian mathematicians around 500 AD.


title: Number

text: Bones and other artifacts have been discovered with marks cut into them that many believe are tally marks. These tally marks may have been used for counting elapsed time, such as numbers of days, lunar cycles or keeping records of quantities, such as of animals.


title: Number

text: A tallying system has no concept of place value (as in modern decimal notation), which limits its representation of large numbers. Nonetheless, tallying systems are considered the first kind of abstract numeral system.


title: Number

text: The first known system with place value was the Mesopotamian base 60 system ( BC) and the earliest known base 10 system dates to 3100 BC in Egypt.


title: Number

text: The first known documented use of zero dates to AD 628, and appeared in the "Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta", the main work of the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta. He treated 0 as a number and discussed operations involving it, including division. By this time (the 7th century) the concept had clearly reached Cambodia as Khmer numerals, and documentation shows the idea later spreading to China and the Islamic world.


title: Number

text: Brahmagupta's "Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta" is the first book that mentions zero as a number, hence Brahmagupta is usually considered the first to formulate the concept of zero. He gave rules of using zero with negative and positive numbers, such as "zero plus a positive number is a positive number, and a negative number plus zero is the negative number." The "Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta" is the earliest known text to treat zero as a number in its own right, rather than as simply a placeholder digit in representing another number as was done by the Babylonians or as a symbol for a lack of quantity as was done by Ptolemy and the Romans.


title: Number

text: The use of 0 as a number should be distinguished from its use as a placeholder numeral in place-value systems. Many ancient texts used 0. Babylonian and Egyptian texts used it. Egyptians used the word "nfr" to denote zero balance in double entry accounting. Indian texts used a Sanskrit word or to refer to the concept of "void". In mathematics texts this word often refers to the number zero. In a similar vein, Pāṇini (5th century BC) used the null (zero) operator in the "Ashtadhyayi", an early example of an algebraic grammar for the Sanskrit language (also see Pingala).


title: Number

text: There are other uses of zero before Brahmagupta, though the documentation is not as complete as it is in the "Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta".


title: Number

text: Records show that the Ancient Greeks seemed unsure about the status of 0 as a number: they asked themselves "how can 'nothing' be something?" leading to interesting philosophical and, by the Medieval period, religious arguments about the nature and existence of 0 and the vacuum. The paradoxes of Zeno of Elea depend in part on the uncertain interpretation of 0. (The ancient Greeks even questioned whether  was a number.)


title: Number

text: The late Olmec people of south-central Mexico began to use a symbol for zero, a shell glyph, in the New World, possibly by the but certainly by 40 BC, which became an integral part of Maya numerals and the Maya calendar. Maya arithmetic used base 4 and base 5 written as base 20. George I. Sánchez in 1961 reported a base 4, base 5 "finger" abacus.


title: Number

text: By 130 AD, Ptolemy, influenced by Hipparchus and the Babylonians, was using a symbol for 0 (a small circle with a long overbar) within a sexagesimal numeral system otherwise using alphabetic Greek numerals. Because it was used alone, not as just a placeholder, this Hellenistic zero was the first "documented" use of a true zero in the Old World. In later Byzantine manuscripts of his "Syntaxis Mathematica" ("Almagest"), the Hellenistic zero had morphed into the Greek letter Omicron (otherwise meaning 70).


title: Number

text: Another true zero was used in tables alongside Roman numerals by 525 (first known use by Dionysius Exiguus), but as a word, meaning "nothing", not as a symbol. When division produced 0 as a remainder, , also meaning "nothing", was used. These medieval zeros were used by all future medieval computists (calculators of Easter). An isolated use of their initial, N, was used in a table of Roman numerals by Bede or a colleague about 725, a true zero symbol.


title: Number

text: The abstract concept of negative numbers was recognized as early as 100–50 BC in China. "The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art" contains methods for finding the areas of figures; red rods were used to denote positive coefficients, black for negative. The first reference in a Western work was in the 3rd century AD in Greece. Diophantus referred to the equation equivalent to (the solution is negative) in "Arithmetica", saying that the equation gave an absurd result.


title: Number

text: During the 600s, negative numbers were in use in India to represent debts. Diophantus' previous reference was discussed more explicitly by Indian mathematician Brahmagupta, in "Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta" in 628, who used negative numbers to produce the general form quadratic formula that remains in use today. However, in the 12th century in India, Bhaskara gives negative roots for quadratic equations but says the negative value "is in this case not to be taken, for it is inadequate; people do not approve of negative roots".


title: Number

text: European mathematicians, for the most part, resisted the concept of negative numbers until the 17th century, although Fibonacci allowed negative solutions in financial problems where they could be interpreted as debts (chapter 13 of "Liber Abaci", 1202) and later as losses (in ). René Descartes called them false roots as they cropped up in algebraic polynomials yet he found a way to swap true roots and false roots as well. At the same time, the Chinese were indicating negative numbers by drawing a diagonal stroke through the right-most non-zero digit of the corresponding positive number's numeral. The first use of negative numbers in a European work was by Nicolas Chuquet during the 15th century. He used them as exponents, but referred to them as "absurd numbers".


title: Number

text: As recently as the 18th century, it was common practice to ignore any negative results returned by equations on the assumption that they were meaningless.


title: Number

text: It is likely that the concept of fractional numbers dates to prehistoric times. The Ancient Egyptians used their Egyptian fraction notation for rational numbers in mathematical texts such as the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus and the Kahun Papyrus. Classical Greek and Indian mathematicians made studies of the theory of rational numbers, as part of the general study of number theory. The best known of these is Euclid's "Elements", dating to roughly 300 BC. Of the Indian texts, the most relevant is the Sthananga Sutra, which also covers number theory as part of a general study of mathematics.


title: Number

text: The concept of decimal fractions is closely linked with decimal place-value notation; the two seem to have developed in tandem. For example, it is common for the Jain math sutra to include calculations of decimal-fraction approximations to pi or the square root of 2. Similarly, Babylonian math texts used sexagesimal (base 60) fractions with great frequency.


title: Number

text: The earliest known use of irrational numbers was in the Indian Sulba Sutras composed between 800 and 500 BC. The first existence proofs of irrational numbers is usually attributed to Pythagoras, more specifically to the Pythagorean Hippasus of Metapontum, who produced a (most likely geometrical) proof of the irrationality of the square root of 2. The story goes that Hippasus discovered irrational numbers when trying to represent the square root of 2 as a fraction. However, Pythagoras believed in the absoluteness of numbers, and could not accept the existence of irrational numbers. He could not disprove their existence through logic, but he could not accept irrational numbers, and so, allegedly and frequently reported, he sentenced Hippasus to death by drowning, to impede spreading of this disconcerting news.


title: Number

text: The 16th century brought final European acceptance of negative integral and fractional numbers. By the 17th  century, mathematicians generally used decimal fractions with modern notation. It was not, however, until the 19th century that mathematicians separated irrationals into algebraic and transcendental parts, and once more undertook the scientific study of irrationals. It had remained almost dormant since Euclid. In 1872, the publication of the theories of Karl Weierstrass (by his pupil E. Kossak), Eduard Heine, Georg Cantor, and Richard Dedekind was brought about. In 1869, Charles Méray had taken the same point of departure as Heine, but the theory is generally referred to the year 1872. Weierstrass's method was completely set forth by Salvatore Pincherle (1880), and Dedekind's has received additional prominence through the author's later work (1888) and endorsement by Paul Tannery (1894). Weierstrass, Cantor, and Heine base their theories on infinite series, while Dedekind founds his on the idea of a cut (Schnitt) in the system of real numbers, separating all rational numbers into two groups having certain characteristic properties. The subject has received later contributions at the hands of Weierstrass, Kronecker, and Méray.