title: Mongolian language

text: When asking questions in Mongolian, a question marker is used to show a question is being asked. There are different question markers for yes/no questions and for information questions. For yes/no questions, and are used when the last word ends in a short vowel or a consonant, and their use depends on the vowel harmony of the previous word. When the last word ends in a long vowel or a diphthong, then and are used (again depending on vowel harmony). For information questions (questions asking for information with an interrogative word like who, what, when, where, why, etc.), the question particles are and , depending on the last sound in the previous word.


title: Mongolian language

text: Basic interrogative pronouns - ( 'what'), - ( 'where'), ( 'who'), ( 'why'), ( 'how'), ( 'when'), ( 'what kind')


title: Mongolian language

text: In Mongolian, verbs have a stem and an ending. For example, the stems , , and are suffixed with , , and respectively: , , and . These are the infinitive or dictionary forms. The present/future tense is formed by adding either , , , or to the stem. These do not change for different pronouns, so 'I/you/he/she/we/you all/they study' will always be . is the present/future tense verb for 'to be'; likewise, is 'to read', and is 'to see'. The final vowel is barely pronounced and is not pronounced at all if the word after begins with a vowel, so is pronounced 'hello, how are you?'.


title: Mongolian language

text: Modern Mongolian is an agglutinative—almost exclusively suffixing—language, with the only exception being reduplication. Mongolian also does not have gendered nouns, or definite articles like "the". Most of the suffixes consist of a single morpheme. There are many derivational morphemes. For example, the word consists of the root 'to be', an epenthetic ‑‑, the causative ‑‑ (hence 'to find'), the derivative suffix ‑ that forms nouns created by the action (like -"ation" in "organisation") and the complex suffix ‑ denoting something that belongs to the modified word (‑ would be genitive).


title: Mongolian language

text: Nominal compounds are quite frequent. Some derivational verbal suffixes are rather productive, e.g. 'to speak', 'to speak with each other'. Formally, the independent words derived using verbal suffixes can roughly be divided into three classes: final verbs, which can only be used sentence-finally, i.e. ‑ (mainly future or generic statements) or ‑ (second person imperative); participles (often called "verbal nouns"), which can be used clause-finally or attributively, i.e. ‑ (perfect-past) or ‑ 'want to'; and converbs, which can link clauses or function adverbially, i.e. ‑ (qualifies for any adverbial function or neutrally connects two sentences) or ‑ (the action of the main clause takes place until the action expressed by the suffixed verb begins).


title: Mongolian language

text: Roughly speaking, Mongolian has between seven and nine cases: nominative (unmarked), genitive, dative-locative, accusative, ablative, instrumental, comitative, privative and directional, though the final two are not always considered part of the case paradigm. If a direct object is definite, it must take the accusative, while it must take the nominative if it is indefinite. In addition to case, a number of postpositions exist that usually govern the genitive, dative-locative, comitative and privative cases, including a marked form of the nominative (which can itself then take further case forms). There is also a possible attributive case (when a noun is used attributively), which is unmarked in most nouns but takes the suffix ‑ (‑) with a minority. Nouns can also take a reflexive-possessive suffix, indicating that the marked noun is possessed by the subject of the sentence: I friend- save- "I saved my friend". However, there are also somewhat noun-like adjectives to which case suffixes seemingly cannot be attached directly unless there is ellipsis.


title: Mongolian language

text: "Note: the rules governing the morphology of Mongolian case endings are intricate; particularly in relation to loanwords. The rules given below are only indicative. In many situations, further (more general) rules must also be taken into account in order to produce the correct form: these include the presence of an unstable nasal or unstable velar, and the rules governing when the vowel before the final consonant must be deleted from the stem on the addition of a case ending. The additional morphological rules specific to loanwords are not covered."


title: Mongolian language

text: The nominative case is used when a noun (or other part of speech acting as one) is the subject of the sentence, and the agent of whatever action (not just physically) takes place in the sentence. In Mongolian, the nominative case does not have an ending.


title: Mongolian language

text: The accusative case is used when a noun acts as a direct object (or just “object”), and receives action from a transitive verb. It is formed by:


title: Mongolian language

text: The genitive case is used to show possession of something. It is formed by adding one of the following endings: ‑н (n) ‑ы (i) ‑ий (ii) ‑ийн (iin) ‑ын (in) ‑гийн (giin). For example:


title: Mongolian language

text: The dative-locative case is used to show the location of something, or to specify that something is in something else.


title: Mongolian language

text: Plurality may be left unmarked, but there are overt plurality markers, some of which are restricted to humans. A noun that is modified by a numeral usually does not take any plural affix. There are four ways of forming plurals in Mongolian:


title: Mongolian language

text: Personal pronouns exist for the first and second person, while the old demonstrative pronouns have come to form third person (proximal and distal) pronouns. Other word (sub-)classes include interrogative pronouns, conjunctions (which take participles), spatials, and particles, the last being rather numerous.


title: Mongolian language

text: Negation is mostly expressed by "-güi" (-) after participles and by the negation particle "bish" () after nouns and adjectives; negation particles preceding the verb (for example in converbal constructions) exist, but tend to be replaced by analytical constructions.


title: Mongolian language

text: Mongolian uses differential case marking, being a regular Differential Object Marking (DOM) language. DOM emerges from a complicated interaction of factors such as referentiality, animacy and topicality.


title: Mongolian language

text: Mongolian also exhibits a specific type of Differential Subject Marking (DSM), in which the subjects of embedded clauses (including adverbial clauses) occur with accusative case.


title: Mongolian language

text: The noun phrase has the order: demonstrative pronoun/numeral, adjective, noun. Attributive sentences precede the whole NP. Titles or occupations of people, low numerals indicating groups, and focus clitics are put behind the head noun. Possessive pronouns (in different forms) may either precede or follow the NP. Examples:


title: Mongolian language

text: The verbal phrase consists of the predicate in the center, preceded by its complements and by the adverbials modifying it and followed (mainly if the predicate is sentence-final) by modal particles, as in the following example with predicate "bichsen":


title: Mongolian language

text: In this clause the adverbial, "helehgüigeer" 'without saying [so]' must precede the predicate's complement, "üüniig" 'it-' in order to avoid syntactic ambiguity, since "helehgüigeer" is itself derived from a verb and hence an "üüniig" preceding it could be construed as its complement. If the adverbial was an adjective such as "hurdan" 'fast', it could optionally immediately precede the predicate. There are also cases in which the adverb must immediately precede the predicate.


title: Mongolian language

text: For Khalkha, the most complete treatment of the verbal forms is by Luvsanvandan (ed.) (1987). However, the analysis of predication presented here, while valid for Khalkha, is adapted from the description of Khorchin.


title: Mongolian language

text: Most often, of course, the predicate consists of a verb. However, there are several types of nominal predicative constructions, with or without a copula. Auxiliaries that express direction and aktionsart (among other meanings) can with the assistance of a linking converb occupy the immediate postverbal position; e.g.


title: Mongolian language

text: The next position is filled by converb suffixes in connection with the auxiliary, "baj-" 'to be', e.g.


title: Mongolian language

text: Suffixes occupying this position express grammatical aspect; e.g. progressive and resultative. In the next position, participles followed by "baj-" may follow, e.g.,


title: Mongolian language

text: Here, an explicit perfect and habituality can be marked, which is aspectual in meaning as well. This position may be occupied by multiple suffixes in a single predication, and it can still be followed by a converbal Progressive. The last position is occupied by suffixes that express tense, evidentiality, modality, and aspect.


title: Mongolian language

text: Unmarked phrase order is subject–object–predicate. While the predicate generally has to remain in clause-final position, the other phrases are free to change order or to wholly disappear. The topic tends to be placed clause-initially, new information rather at the end of the clause. Topic can be overtly marked with "bol", which can also mark contrastive focus, overt additive focus ('even, also') can be marked with the clitic "ch", and overt restrictive focus with the clitic "l" ('only').


title: Mongolian language

text: The inventory of voices in Mongolian consists of passive, causative, reciprocal, plurative, and cooperative. In a passive sentence, the verb takes the suffix -"gd"- and the agent takes either dative or instrumental case, the first of which is more common. In the causative, the verb takes the suffix -"uul"-, the causee (the person caused to do something) in a transitive action (e.g. 'raise') takes dative or instrumental case, and the causee in an intransitive action (e.g. 'rise') takes accusative case. Causative morphology is also used in some passive contexts:


title: Mongolian language

text: The semantic attribute of animacy is syntactically important: thus the sentence, 'the bread was eaten by me', which is acceptable in English, would not be acceptable in Mongolian. The reciprocal voice is marked by -"ld"-, the plurative by -"cgaa"-, and the cooperative by -"lc"-.


title: Mongolian language

text: Mongolian allows for adjectival depictives that relate to either the subject or the direct object, e.g. "Liena nücgen untdag" 'Lena sleeps naked', while adjectival resultatives are marginal.


title: Mongolian language

text: One way to conjoin clauses is to have the first clause end in a converb, as in the following example using the converb "-bol":


title: Mongolian language

text: Some verbal nouns in the dative (or less often in the instrumental) function very similar to converbs: e.g. replacing "olbol" in the preceding sentence with "olohod" find- yields 'when we find it we'll give it to you'. Quite often, postpositions govern complete clauses. In contrast, conjunctions take verbal nouns without case:


title: Mongolian language

text: Finally, there is a class of particles, usually clause-initial, that are distinct from conjunctions but that also relate clauses:


title: Mongolian language

text: Mongolian has a complementizer auxiliary verb "ge"- very similar to Japanese "to iu". "ge"- literally means 'to say' and in converbal form "gezh" precedes either a psych verb or a verb of saying. As a verbal noun like "gedeg" (with "ni") it can form a subset of complement clauses. As "gene" it may function as an evidentialis marker.


title: Mongolian language

text: Mongolian clauses tend to be combined paratactically, which sometimes gives rise to sentence structures which are subordinative despite resembling coordinative structures in European languages:


title: Mongolian language

text: In the subordinate clause the subject, if different from the subject of main clause, sometimes has to take accusative or genitive case. There is marginal occurrence of subjects taking ablative case as well. Subjects of attributive clauses in which the head has a function (as is the case for all English relative clauses) usually require that if the subject is not the head, then it take the genitive, e.g. "tüünii idsen hool" that.one- eat- meal 'the meal that s/he had eaten'.


title: Mongolian language

text: Mongolian first adopted loanwords from many languages including Old Turkic, Sanskrit (these often via Uyghur), Persian, Arabic, Tibetan, Tungusic, and Chinese. However, more recent loanwords come from Russian, English, and Mandarin Chinese (mainly in Inner Mongolia). Language commissions of the Mongolian state continuously translate new terminology into Mongolian, so as the Mongolian vocabulary now has 'president' ('generalizer') and 'beer' ('yellow kumys'). There are several loan translations, e.g. 'train' ('fire-having cart') from Chinese ( 'fire cart') 'train'. Other loan translations include 'essence' from Chinese ( 'true quality'), 'population' from Chinese ( 'person mouth'), 'corn, maize' from Chinese ( 'jade rice') and 'republic' from Chinese ( 'public collaboration nation').


title: Mongolian language

text: In the 20th century, many Russian loanwords entered the Mongolian language, including 'doctor', 'chocolate', 'train wagon', 'calendar', 'system', (from 'T-shirt'), and 'car'.


title: Mongolian language

text: In more recent times, due to socio-political reforms, Mongolian has loaned various words from English; some of which have gradually evolved as official terms: 'management', 'computer', 'file', 'marketing', 'credit', 'online', and 'message'. Most of these are confined to the Mongolian state.


title: Mongolian language

text: Other languages have borrowed words from Mongolian. Examples (Mongolian in brackets) include Persian کشيكچى (from 'royal guard'), (from 'pheasant'), (from 'iron armour'), (from 'chief of commandant'), (from 'scissors'); Uzbek (from 'island'); Chinese 衚衕 "hutong" (from 'passageway'), 站赤 "zhanchi" (from 'courier/post station'); Middle Chinese 犢 "duk" (from 'calf'); Korean (from 'royal meal'), (from 'castrated animal'), (from 'chest of an animal'); Old English "cocer" (from 'container'); Old French "quivre" (from 'container'); Old High German "Baldrian" (from 'valerian plant'). "Köküür" and "balchirgan-a" are thought to have been brought to Europe by the Huns or Pannonian Avars.


title: Mongolian language

text: Despite having a diverse range of loanwords, Mongolian dialects such as Khalkha and Khorchin, within a comparative vocabulary of 452 words of Common Mongolic vocabulary, retain as many as 95% of these native words, contrasting e.g. with Southern Mongolic languages at 39–77% retentions.


title: Mongolian language

text: Mongolian has been written in a variety of alphabets, making it a language with one of the largest number of scripts used historically. The earliest stages of Mongolian (Xianbei, Wuhuan languages) may have used an indigenous runic script as indicated by Chinese sources. The Khitan large script adopted in 920 CE is an early Mongol (or according to some, para-Mongolic) script.


title: Mongolian language

text: The traditional Mongolian script was first adopted by Temüjin in 1204, who recognized the need to represent his own people's language. It developed from the Uyghur script when several members of the Uyghur elite who were brought into the Mongol confederation early on shared their knowledge of their written language with the Mongol imperial clan. Among the Uyghurs sharing that knowledge were Tata-tonga (), Bilge Buqa (比俚伽普華), Kara Igach Buyruk (哈剌亦哈赤北魯), and Mengsus (孟速思). From that time, the script underwent some minor disambiguations and supplementation.


title: Mongolian language

text: Between 1930 and 1932, a short-lived attempt was made to introduce the Latin script in the Mongolian state. In 1941, the Latin alphabet was adopted, though it lasted only two months.


title: Mongolian language

text: The Mongolian Cyrillic script was the result of the spreading of Russian influence following the expansion of Russian Empire. The establishment of Soviet Union helped the influence continue, and the Cyrillic alphabet was slowly introduced with the effort by Russian/Soviet linguists in collaboration with their Mongolian counterparts. It was made mandatory by government decree in 1941. It has been argued that the introduction of the Cyrillic script, with its smaller discrepancy between written and spoken form, contributed to the success of the large-scale government literacy campaign, which increased the literacy rate from 17.3% to 73.5% between 1941 and 1950. Earlier government campaigns to eradicate illiteracy, employing the traditional script, had only managed to raise literacy from 3.0% to 17.3% between 1921 and 1940. From 1991 to 1994, an attempt at reintroducing the traditional alphabet failed in the face of popular resistance. In informal contexts of electronic text production, the use of the Latin alphabet is common.


title: Mongolian language

text: In the People's Republic of China, Mongolian is the official language along with Mandarin Chinese in some regions, notably the entire Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The traditional alphabet has always been used there, although Cyrillic was considered briefly before the Sino-Soviet split. There are two types of written Mongolian used in China: the traditional Mongolian script, which is official among Mongols nationwide, and the Clear Script, used predominantly among Oirats in Xinjiang.


title: Mongolian language

text: In March 2020, the Mongolian government announced plans to use both Cyrillic and the traditional Mongolian script in official documents by 2025.


title: Mongolian language

text: The earliest surviving Mongolian text may be the , a report on sports composed in Mongolian script on stone, which is most often dated at 1224 or 1225. The Mongolian-Armenian wordlist of 55 words compiled by Kirakos of Gandzak (13th century) is the first written record of Mongolian words. From the 13th to the 15th centuries, Mongolian language texts were written in four scripts (not counting some vocabulary written in Western scripts): Uyghur Mongolian (UM) script (an adaptation of the Uyghur alphabet), 'Phags-pa script (Ph) (used in decrees), Chinese (SM) ("The Secret History of the Mongols"), and Arabic (AM) (used in dictionaries). While they are the earliest texts available, these texts have come to be called "Middle Mongol" in scholarly practice. The documents in UM script show some distinct linguistic characteristics and are therefore often distinguished by terming their language "Preclassical Mongolian".


title: Mongolian language

text: The Yuan dynasty referred to the Mongolian language in Chinese as "Guoyu" (), which means "National language", a term also used by other non-Han dynasties to refer to their languages such as the Manchu language during the Qing dynasty, the Jurchen language during the Jin dynasty (1115–1234), the Khitan language during the Liao dynasty, and the Xianbei language during the Northern Wei period.


title: Mongolian language

text: The next distinct period is Classical Mongolian, which is dated from the 17th to the 19th century. This is a written language with a high degree of standardization in orthography and syntax that sets it quite apart from the subsequent Modern Mongolian. The most notable documents in this language are the Mongolian Kangyur and Tengyur as well as several chronicles. In 1686, the Soyombo alphabet (Buddhist texts) was created, giving distinctive evidence on early classical Mongolian phonological peculiarities.


title: Mongolian language

text: Research into reconstruction of the consonants of Middle Mongol has engendered several controversies. Middle Mongol had two series of plosives, but there is disagreement as to which phonological dimension they lie on, whether aspiration or voicing. The early scripts have distinct letters for velar plosives and uvular plosives, but as these are in complementary distribution according to vowel harmony class, only two back plosive phonemes, *"/k/", *' (~ *"[k]", *') are to be reconstructed. One prominent, long-running disagreement concerns certain correspondences of word medial consonants among the four major scripts ("UM", "SM", "AM", and "Ph", which were discussed in the preceding section). Word-medial "/k/" of Uyghur Mongolian (UM) has not one, but two correspondences with the three other scripts: either /k/ or zero. Traditional scholarship has reconstructed *"/k/" for both correspondences, arguing that *"/k/" was lost in some instances, which raises the question of what the conditioning factors of those instances were. More recently, the other possibility has been assumed; namely, that the correspondence between UM "/k/" and zero in the other scripts points to a distinct phoneme, "/h/", which would correspond to the word-initial phoneme "/h/" that is present in those other scripts. "/h/" (also called "/x/") is sometimes assumed to derive from *"", which would also explain zero in "SM", "AM", "Ph" in some instances where "UM" indicates /p/; e.g. "debel" > Khalkha "deel".


title: Mongolian language

text: The palatal affricates *"č", *"čʰ" were fronted in Northern Modern Mongolian dialects such as Khalkha. was spirantized to in Ulaanbaatar Khalkha and the Mongolian dialects south of it, e.g. Preclassical Mongolian "kündü", reconstructed as ' 'heavy', became Modern Mongolian (but in the vicinity of Bayankhongor and Baruun-Urt, many speakers will say ). Originally word-final *"n" turned into /ŋ/; if *' was originally followed by a vowel that later dropped, it remained unchanged, e.g. ' became , but ' became . After i-breaking, became phonemic. Consonants in words containing back vowels that were followed by ' in Proto-Mongolian became palatalized in Modern Mongolian. In some words, word-final ' was dropped with most case forms, but still appears with the ablative, dative and genitive.


title: Mongolian language

text: The standard view is that Proto-Mongolic had '. According to this view, ' and ' were pharyngealized to and , then ' and ' were velarized to and . Thus, the vowel harmony shifted from a velar to a pharyngeal paradigm. ' in the first syllable of back-vocalic words was assimilated to the following vowel; in word-initial position it became . ' was rounded to when followed by '. VhV and VjV sequences where the second vowel was any vowel but ' were monophthongized. In noninitial syllables, short vowels were deleted from the phonetic representation of the word and long vowels became short; e.g. ' (' becomes , ' disappears) > ' (unstable "n" drops; vowel reduction) > /jama(n)/ 'goat', and ' (regressive rounding assimilation) > ' (vowel velarization) > ' (vowel reduction) > /oms-/ 'to wear'


title: Mongolian language

text: This reconstruction has recently been opposed, arguing that vowel developments across the Mongolic languages can be more economically explained starting from basically the same vowel system as Khalkha, only with "" instead of "*[e]". Moreover, the sound changes involved in this alternative scenario are more likely from an articulatory point of view and early Middle Mongol loans into Korean.


title: Mongolian language

text: </nowiki>"-shaped bracket, and to the right of each such bracket, there are other medium-sized characters|"The Secret History of the Mongols" which goes back to a lost Mongolian script original is the only document that allows the reconstruction of agreement in social gender in Middle Mongol.]]


title: Mongolian language

text: In the following discussion, in accordance with a preceding observation, the term "Middle Mongol" is used merely as a cover term for texts written in any of three scripts, Uighur Mongolian script (UM), Chinese (SM), or Arabic (AM).


title: Mongolian language

text: The case system of Middle Mongol has remained mostly intact down to the present, although important changes occurred with the comitative and the dative and most other case suffixes did undergo slight changes in form, i.e., were shortened. The Middle Mongol comitative -"luγ-a" could not be used attributively, but it was replaced by the suffix -"taj" that originally derived adjectives denoting possession from nouns, e.g. "mori-tai" 'having a horse' became "mor<nowiki>'</nowiki>toj" 'having a horse/with a horse'. As this adjective functioned parallel to "ügej" 'not having', it has been suggested that a "privative case" ('without') has been introduced into Mongolian. There have been three different case suffixes in the dative-locative-directive domain that are grouped in different ways: -"a" as locative and -"dur", -"da" as dative or -"da" and -"a" as dative and -"dur" as locative, in both cases with some functional overlapping. As -"dur" seems to be grammaticalized from "dotur-a" 'within', thus indicating a span of time, the second account seems to be more likely. Of these, -"da" was lost, -"dur" was first reduced to -"du" and then to -"d" and -"a" only survived in a few frozen environments. Finally, the directive of modern Mongolian, -"ruu", has been innovated from "uruγu" 'downwards'. Social gender agreement was abandoned.


title: Mongolian language

text: Middle Mongol had a slightly larger set of declarative finite verb suffix forms and a smaller number of participles, which were less likely to be used as finite predicates. The linking converb -"n" became confined to stable verb combinations, while the number of converbs increased. The distinction between male, female and plural subjects exhibited by some finite verbal suffixes was lost.


title: Mongolian language

text: Neutral word order in clauses with pronominal subject changed from object–predicate–subject to subject–object–predicate; e.g.


title: Mongolian language

text: The syntax of verb negation shifted from negation particles preceding final verbs to a negation particle following participles; thus, as final verbs could no longer be negated, their paradigm of negation was filled by particles. For example, Preclassical Mongolian "ese irebe" 'did not come' v. modern spoken Khalkha Mongolian "ireegüi" or "irsengüi".


title: Mongolian language

text: Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Mongolian, written in the Cyrillic alphabet:


title: Mongolian language

text: Article 1 of the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" in Mongolian, written in the Mongolian script:


title: Mongolian language

text: "For some Mongolian authors, the Mongolian version of their name is also given in square brackets, e.g., "Harnud [Köke]". Köke is the author's native name. It is a practice common among Mongolian scholars, for purposes of publishing and being cited abroad, to adopt a surname based on one's patronymic, in this example "Harnud"; compare Mongolian name."


title: Mongolian language

text: "Some library catalogs write Chinese language titles with each syllable separate, even syllables belonging to a single word."


title: Peter Criss

text: George Peter John Criscuola (born December 20, 1945), better known by his stage name Peter Criss, is a retired American musician, best known as a co-founder, original drummer, and vocalist of the hard rock band Kiss. Criss established The Catman character for his Kiss persona. In 2014, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Kiss.


title: Peter Criss

text: Criss was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Loretta and Joseph Criscuola, who raised their five children (of whom Peter was the eldest) as Roman Catholics. Joseph Criscuola's family came from Scafati, Salerno, Italy. Criss grew up in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn and was a childhood friend of Jerry Nolan, who would later find success as the drummer of the New York Dolls. He was an avid art student and a swing aficionado. While playing with bandleader Joey Greco, Criss ended up studying under his idol, Gene Krupa, at the Metropole Club in New York.


title: Peter Criss

text: Criss was involved with several bands throughout the mid-to-late 1960s. It was during this time that Criss joined Chelsea, who had a two-album deal with Decca Records; the group released a self-titled album in 1970. They never recorded a second album and in August 1971 became Lips (a trio consisting of Criss and his Chelsea bandmates Michael Benvenga and Stan Penridge). By the spring of 1972, Lips was just the duo of Criss and Penridge.


title: Peter Criss

text: In 1973, Pete Shepley and Mike Brand recorded an unreleased album which included post-Chelsea Michael Benvenga, and pre-Kiss Peter Criss and Gene Simmons as session musicians. It was titled "Captain Sanity".


title: Peter Criss

text: After the demise of his band Lips, Criss placed an advertisement in the East Coast edition of "Rolling Stone" "Magazine", which read:


title: Peter Criss

text: The advertisement was answered by Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, who were looking for new members for their band. Ace Frehley was added to the lineup in December 1972, and the band was named Kiss later that month. However, Simmons describes first meeting Criss in his book "Kiss And Make-Up" thus:


title: Peter Criss

text: Simmons later in the chapter describes going to a small Italian Club in Brooklyn to meet the drummer: "The drummer started to sing, and this Wilson Pickett-style voice came out of him. Paul and I said 'That's it, that's our drummer.' His name was Peter Criscuola."


title: Peter Criss

text: Kiss released their self-titled debut in February 1974. Throughout his Kiss career, Criss was the lead singer on several songs including "Black Diamond", "Hard Luck Woman", and their breakthrough hit "Beth".


title: Peter Criss

text: Criss co-wrote the ballad "Beth", a Top 10 hit for Kiss on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at No. 7 in 1976. The song remains the highest-charting song for Kiss in the United States and it earned them a People's Choice Award for "Young People's Favorite New Song" in 1977, tied with "Disco Duck". The song was written before Criss had joined Kiss, while he was still a member of Chelsea. Criss came up with the melody for the song while on a train to New York City from New Jersey where the band practiced. He and Penridge wrote the song together.


title: Peter Criss

text: On the 1979 release "Dynasty", he played only on his own composition, "Dirty Livin, and did not play at all on "Unmasked" (1980). Anton Fig, who also played on Ace Frehley's 1978 solo album, was hired as session drummer for "Dynasty" and "Unmasked". The reasons why Criss was fired from Kiss were never known, although it was obvious that his relationship with his bandmates Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley was not good at the time.


title: Peter Criss

text: Gene Simmons has said Criss was fired; Paul Stanley discussed Criss's departure in several interviews, including the commentary on "". Ace Frehley in his 2011 book, "No Regrets", also stated that Criss was fired during a band meeting in which Frehley, Simmons, Stanley and manager Bill Aucoin voted Criss out of the band. A spoken word CD released in 1999 titled "13 Classic Kiss Stories", features Bill Aucoin (Kiss's first manager) where he also discusses Criss being "let go". Criss, however, has maintained that he quit the band. The video for "Shandi" was shot in one day, and Criss was out of the band at that time; Stanley said of the shoot, "We shot a video for the song 'Shandi' after the decision to let Peter go had been confirmed. He came to the video shoot knowing it was the last time he would appear with KISS. At the end of the day, he took his makeup case with him and left. It wasn't tearful, but it was a big moment. Peter was leaving. We had fired him, and this was the last time we were going to see him in the band".


title: Peter Criss

text: Criss officially left Kiss on May 18, 1980. As a result, Kiss postponed the European tour until the end of August, thus giving the band enough time to find a replacement drummer, who they found in Brooklyn-born Eric Carr.


title: Peter Criss

text: In March 1980, Criss began recording his second solo album, "Out of Control". Released later in the year, the album was a commercial failure, despite remaining a favorite with Criss fans. The follow-up album, 1982's "Let Me Rock You", which contained one song written by Gene Simmons, was a similar failure. The album cover featured Criss without his Kiss makeup, but was not released in the U.S. at the time.


title: Peter Criss

text: For the rest of the 1980s and early 1990s, Criss was involved with a number of bands, each usually lasting less than a year. One of them was The Keep, which featured ex-Kiss guitarist Mark St. John. Criss also played with Balls of Fire from the spring of 1986 to December 1986, with Jane Booke on lead vocals, Bob Raylove on bass and JP (John Pakalenka) on guitar, who currently plays for Buckner Funken Jazz in Denver, Colorado. Balls of Fire played only seven shows before Criss left the band to enjoy his daughter Jenilee growing up. Another was the Criss Penridge Alliance, essentially Peter Criss and Stan Penridge with the 1970s jazz rock fusion band Montage (Mike Hutchens – guitar, Allen Woody – bass (Govt Mule, Allman Brothers Band), John Moss – drums and Tony Crow – keyboards) who rehearsed 39 songs including from the first 3 Peter Criss solo albums, and played around 10 shows in total.


title: Peter Criss

text: While Kiss was promoting their upcoming release "Crazy Nights", Criss appeared on the syndicated radio program "Metal Shop" and discussed his time in Kiss from a more positive perspective than before; he promoted the book he was writing at the time, an autobiography to be titled "A Face without a Kiss". He also mentioned his dream of one day opening up his own recording studio and starting his own record label, to be called Catman Records.


title: Peter Criss

text: In the early 1990s, Criss assembled a band named "Criss", which would feature future Queensrÿche guitarist Mike Stone. This band released the "Criss" EP in December 1993 and the "Cat #1" album in August 1994. He performed his last solo show on June 17, 2017, in New York City at the Cutting Room.


title: Peter Criss

text: In 1995, Criss appeared at the official Kiss Konvention in Los Angeles that led to the Kiss live performance that was recorded for "MTV Unplugged". In April 1996, Kiss held a press conference to announce a reunion tour with all four original members. The 1996–97 Alive/Worldwide Tour was an enormous success, and the reunited Kiss released a studio album, 1998's "Psycho Circus".


title: Peter Criss

text: Criss played drums on only one track on the album ("Into the Void", Ace Frehley's one lead vocal track), although Criss did have one lead vocal (a track called "I Finally Found My Way", written by guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley and Bob Ezrin) and a co-vocal taking turns in the verses with the rest of the band for the song "You Wanted the Best".


title: Peter Criss

text: Criss left over a contract dispute and was replaced by Eric Singer in 2001. He rejoined the band in late 2002 and appeared on the "" DVD and CD before departing from Kiss again in March 2004. The band had opted not to renew his contract following the Rocksimus Maximus Tour. He was once again replaced by Singer, who assumed the "Catman" persona. He said of Kiss performing with replacements for Ace Frehley and himself:


title: Peter Criss

text: In 1991, a man named Christopher Dickinson became an impostor of the real Peter Criss. Dickinson went on to do an interview with the tabloid "Star" magazine, impersonating Criss, stating that he was now a "homeless alcoholic panhandling for change". Phil Donahue had both men on his show where the real Criss confronted the impostor. Since 2004, he has kept his public appearances to a minimum. Criss now resides in Wall Township, New Jersey. He released a solo album, titled "One for All", in July 2007 on Silvercat Records.


title: Peter Criss

text: As of November 2008, Criss has been married three times: Lydia Di Leonardo (1970–79), former Playboy Playmate and Coppertone model Debra Jensen (1979–94) and Gigi Criss (since May 1998). Criss has a daughter, Jenilee, born in 1981.


title: Peter Criss

text: Criss was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008. While working out, he noticed a lump on his chest that prompted him to visit a doctor. He was successfully treated with a lumpectomy.


title: Peter Criss

text: Criss released his autobiography, "Makeup to Breakup: My Life In and Out of Kiss", co-written with author Larry Sloman, in late 2012. In 2017, Criss made the decision to retire from touring at the age of 71.


title: Peter Criss

text: In addition to playing himself in 1978's "Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park" and 1999's "Detroit Rock City", Criss has appeared on two television programs in minor roles.


title: Peter Criss

text: In 2002, he appeared in two episodes of the HBO prison drama "Oz" as inmate Martin Montgomery. He played the role of Mike in the motion picture about the JFK assassination, "Frame of Mind".


title: Peter Criss

text: Criss played himself, as well as the cameo role of "Nice Cop", in "...Thirteen Years Later", the 1998 third-season Halloween episode of "Millennium".


title: Noah Reid

text: Noah Nicholas Reid (born May 29, 1987) is a Canadian voice, stage, and screen actor; and musician. He has performed in several films and television series, including "Franklin" and the CBC comedy "Schitt's Creek". In 2016, he received a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Original Song for his work in the feature film "People Hold On". In 2019, he received a Canadian Screen Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy for his work on "Schitt's Creek".


title: Noah Reid

text: Reid was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. The son of visual artists, he became involved in theatre around age six and regularly attended productions with his family throughout his childhood. He attended Etobicoke School of the Arts and is a 2008 graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada.


title: Noah Reid

text: Starting as a child actor, Reid did extensive voice work for Canadian and American children's television and was the original voice of the title character in "Franklin" from 1997 to 2004. While at Etobicoke School of the Arts, he co-starred in "Strange Days at Blake Holsey High" (2002–2006).


title: Noah Reid

text: In 2005, Reid played Darrell Fox in the made-for-television movie "Terry," dramatizing Terry Fox's historic run for cancer research. In 2007, he appeared in the "Naturally, Sadie" episode "As the Whirly Turns". In 2009, he guest-starred in the "" episode "".


title: Noah Reid

text: Reid's first leading role in a feature film was Farley Gordon in "", which premiered at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. He then played several guest roles on television, including in the police drama "Rookie Blue" (2012, the project on which he met future wife Clare Stone) and the drama series "Cracked" (2013). In 2013, he also starred in the CW web series "Backpackers". In 2015, Reid appeared briefly in the first episode of Annie Murphy's CBC television series "The Plateaus". That year, he played the lead role in the ABC Family comedy series "Kevin From Work", which was canceled after one season.


title: Noah Reid

text: In 2016, Reid was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for Best Original Song for his work in the feature film "People Hold On" (2015), in which he also starred. He also released a self-produced full-length original album, "Songs From a Broken Chair".


title: Noah Reid

text: In 2017, Reid played the recurring role of Patrick in the third season of the CBC series "Schitt's Creek". That year, he was also cast in the independent film "Cardinals" opposite Sheila McCarthy, which premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.


title: Noah Reid

text: In 2018, Reid was promoted to a series regular on "Schitt's Creek", beginning with its fourth season. He also performed in a production of "Hamlet" at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. He appeared in the films "Buffaloed" and "Disappearance at Clifton Hill", both released in February 2020. Also in February, Reid embarked on a sold-out tour across North America to support his then-upcoming second album. However, two-thirds of the original dates had to be indefinitely postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The album, "Gemini", was released on May 29, 2020; the album's cover alluded to Reid's dual status as a musician and actor by depicting a Gemini Award statuette.


title: Noah Reid

text: Reid made his Broadway debut in April 2022, joining the original Broadway cast of Tracy Letts's "The Minutes", and released his third album, "Adjustments", in June 2022.


title: Noah Reid

text: Reid announced his engagement to former actress Clare Stone on December 31, 2018. They were married on July 25, 2020, and their first child, a son, Sullivan "Sully," was born in late summer 2022. Reid is a dual Canada-US citizen.


title: Nazi symbolism

text: The 20th-century German Nazi Party made extensive use of graphic symbols, especially the "swastika", notably in the form of the swastika flag, which became the co-national flag of Nazi Germany in 1933, and the sole national flag in 1935. A very similar flag had represented the Party beginning in 1920.


title: Nazi symbolism

text: The Nazis' principal symbol was the swastika, which the newly established Nazi Party formally adopted in 1920. The emblem was a black swastika (卐) rotated 45 degrees on a white circle on a red background. This insignia was used on the party's flag, badge, and armband. Similar shaped swastikas were seen in United States postcards wishing people good luck in the early 1900s.


title: Nazi symbolism

text: The black-white-red motif is based on the colours of the flags of the German Empire. This colour scheme was commonly associated with anti-Weimar German nationalists, following the fall of the German Empire. The Nazis denounced the black-red-gold flag of the Weimar republic (the current flag of Germany).


title: Nazi symbolism

text: In ", Adolf Hitler described the symbolism of the Nazi flag: "The red expressed the social thought underlying the movement. White the national thought. And the swastika signified the mission allotted to us—the struggle for the victory of Aryan mankind and at the same time the triumph of the ideal of creative work ..."


title: Nazi symbolism

text: Today, certain countries such as Germany (see section 86a), Austria, France, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, China and Israel have banned Nazi symbols and it is considered a criminal offence if they are displayed publicly for non-educational purposes. On August 9, 2018, Germany lifted the ban on the usage of swastikas and other Nazi symbols in video games. "Through the change in the interpretation of the law, games that critically look at current affairs can for the first time be given a USK age rating", USK managing director Elisabeth Secker told CTV. "This has long been the case for films and with regards to the freedom of the arts, this is now rightly also the case with computer and videogames."


title: Nazi symbolism

text: Under the Nazi regime, government bodies were encouraged to remove religious symbolism from their heraldry. Symbols such as crosses, saints, etc. were seen as upsetting to the Nazis; however, few German councils actually changed their often ancient symbols. Some, however, did, including Coburg, which replaced the Maure on their arms with a sword and swastika, and Thuringia, which added a swastika to the paws of their lion.


title: Nazi symbolism

text: Nazi occultist Karl Maria Wiligut believed that heraldry began in the world of the Germanic gods, and was created by Wotan, the god of war. This was influenced by the pre-Nazi occultist Guido von List, who held the same belief about heraldry.


title: Nazi symbolism

text: Letters of the historical runic alphabet and the modern Armanen runes have been used by Nazism and neo-Nazi groups that associate themselves with Germanic traditions, mainly the Sigel, Eihwaz, Tyr; c.f. Odal (see Odalism) and Algiz runes.


title: Nazi symbolism

text: The fascination that runes seem to have exerted on the Nazis can be traced to the occult and author , one of the important figures in Germanic mysticism and runic revivalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1908, List published in " ("The Secret of the Runes") a set of 18 so-called "Armanen Runes", based on the Younger Futhark, which were allegedly revealed to him in a state of temporary blindness after a cataract operation on both eyes in 1902.


title: Nazi symbolism

text: In Nazi contexts, the "s"-rune is referred to as "Sig" (after List, probably from Anglo-Saxon ""). The ", while not a rune historically, has the shape of List's "Gibor" rune. Runic "SS" was the symbol of the Schutzstaffel.


title: Nazi symbolism

text: In 1997, Wolfgang Fröhlich, Holocaust denier and former district council member for the Freedom Party, alleged that Adolf Hitler's favorite food was egg dumplings. Some restaurants in Austria started advertising the dish as a "daily special" for the 20th of April, which is Hitler's date of birth. Accordingly, many neofascists have taken to celebrate Hitler's birthday by eating "Eiernockerl", though the allegation about the dish has never been historically confirmed.


title: Nazi symbolism

text: Many symbols used by the Nazis have further been appropriated by neo-Nazi groups, including a number of runes.


title: Extrasensory perception

text: Extrasensory perception or ESP, also called sixth sense, is a claimed paranormal ability pertaining to reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, but sensed with the mind. The term was adopted by Duke University psychologist J. B. Rhine to denote psychic abilities such as intuition, telepathy, psychometry, clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, empathy and their trans-temporal operation as precognition or retrocognition.


title: Extrasensory perception

text: Second sight is a form of extrasensory perception, whereby a person perceives information, in the form of a vision, about future events before they happen (precognition), or about things or events at remote locations (remote viewing). There is no evidence that second sight exists. Reports of second sight are known only from anecdotes. Second sight and ESP are classified as pseudosciences.


title: Extrasensory perception

text: In the 1930s, at Duke University in North Carolina, J. B. Rhine and his wife Louisa E. Rhine conducted an investigation into extrasensory perception. While Louisa Rhine concentrated on collecting accounts of spontaneous cases, J. B. Rhine worked largely in the laboratory, carefully defining terms such as ESP and "psi" and designing experiments to test them. A simple set of cards was developed, originally called Zener cards – now called ESP cards. They bear the symbols circle, square, wavy lines, cross, and star. There are five of each type of card in a pack of 25.


title: Extrasensory perception

text: In a telepathy experiment, the "sender" looks at a series of cards while the "receiver" guesses the symbols. To try to observe clairvoyance, the pack of cards is hidden from everyone while the receiver guesses. To try to observe precognition, the order of the cards is determined after the guesses are made. Later he used dice to test for psychokinesis.


title: Extrasensory perception

text: The parapsychology experiments at Duke evoked criticism from academics and others who challenged the concepts and evidence of ESP. A number of psychological departments attempted, unsuccessfully, to repeat Rhine's experiments. W. S. Cox (1936) from Princeton University with 132 subjects produced 25,064 trials in a playing card ESP experiment. Cox concluded "There is no evidence of extrasensory perception either in the 'average man' or of the group investigated or in any particular individual of that group. The discrepancy between these results and those obtained by Rhine is due either to uncontrollable factors in experimental procedure or to the difference in the subjects." Four other psychological departments failed to replicate Rhine's results.


title: Extrasensory perception

text: In 1938, the psychologist Joseph Jastrow wrote that much of the evidence for extrasensory perception collected by Rhine and other parapsychologists was anecdotal, biased, dubious and the result of "faulty observation and familiar human frailties". Rhine's experiments were discredited due to the discovery that sensory leakage or cheating could account for all his results such as the subject being able to read the symbols from the back of the cards and being able to see and hear the experimenter to note subtle clues.


title: Extrasensory perception

text: In the 1960s, parapsychologists became increasingly interested in the cognitive components of ESP, the subjective experience involved in making ESP responses, and the role of ESP in psychological life. This called for experimental procedures that were not limited to Rhine's favored forced-choice methodology. Such procedures have included dream telepathy experiments, and the ganzfeld experiments (a mild sensory deprivation procedure).


title: Extrasensory perception

text: Second sight may have originally been so called because normal vision was regarded as coming first, while supernormal vision is a secondary thing, confined to certain individuals. "An dà shealladh" or "the two sights", meaning "the sight of the seer", is the way Gaels refer to "second sight", the involuntary ability of seeing the future or distant events. There are many Gaelic words for the various aspects of second sight, but "an dà shealladh" is the one mostly recognized by non-Gaelic speakers, even though, strictly speaking, it does not really mean second sight, but rather "two sights".


title: Extrasensory perception

text: Parapsychology is the study of paranormal psychic phenomena, including ESP. Parapsychology has been criticized for continuing investigation despite being unable to provide convincing evidence for the existence of any psychic phenomena after more than a century of research. The scientific community rejects ESP due to the absence of an evidence base, the lack of a theory which would explain ESP and the lack of positive experimental results; it considers ESP to be pseudoscience.


title: Extrasensory perception

text: The scientific consensus does not view extrasensory perception as a scientific phenomenon. Skeptics have pointed out that there is no viable theory to explain the mechanism behind ESP, and that there are historical cases in which flaws have been discovered in the experimental design of parapsychological studies.


title: Extrasensory perception

text: There are many criticisms pertaining to experiments involving extrasensory perception, particularly surrounding methodological flaws. These flaws are not unique to a single experimental design, and are effective in discrediting much of the positive research surrounding ESP. Many of the flaws seen in the Zener cards experiment are present in the Ganzfeld experiment as well. First is the stacking effect, an error that occurs in ESP research. Trial-by-trial feedback given in studies using a "closed" ESP target sequence (e.g., a deck of cards) violates the condition of independence used for most standard statistical tests. Multiple responses for a single target cannot be evaluated using statistical tests that assume independence of responses. This increases the likelihood of card counting and, in turn, increases the chances for the subject to guess correctly without using ESP. Another methodological flaw involves cues through sensory leakage, for example, when the subject receives a visual cue. This could be the reflection of a Zener card in the holder's glasses. In this case, the subject is able to guess the card correctly because they can see it in the reflection, not because of ESP. Finally, poor randomization of target stimuli could be happening. Poor shuffling methods can make the orders of the cards easier to predict, or the cards could have been marked and manipulated, again, making it easier to predict which cards come next. The results of a meta-analysis found that when these errors were corrected and accounted for, there was still no significant effect of ESP. Many of the studies only appeared to have significant occurrence of ESP, when in fact, this result was due to the many methodological errors in the research.


title: Extrasensory perception

text: In the early 20th century, Joaquin María Argamasilla, known as the "Spaniard with X-ray Eyes", claimed to be able to read handwriting or numbers on dice through closed metal boxes. Argamasilla managed to fool Gustav Geley and Charles Richet into believing he had genuine psychic powers. In 1924, he was exposed by Harry Houdini as a fraud. Argamasilla peeked through his simple blindfold and lifted the edge of the box, so he could look inside it without others noticing.


title: Extrasensory perception

text: Science writer Martin Gardner has written that the ignorance of blindfold deception methods has been widespread in investigations into objects at remote locations from persons who claim to possess second sight. Gardner documented various conjuring techniques psychics such as Rosa Kuleshova, Lina Anderson and Nina Kulagina have used to peek from their blindfolds to deceive investigators into believing they used second sight.


title: Za'atar

text: Za'atar ( ; , ) is a culinary herb or family of herbs. It is also the name of a spice mixture that includes the herb along with toasted sesame seeds, dried sumac, often salt, as well as other spices. As a family of related Middle Eastern herbs, it contains plants from the genera "Origanum" (oregano), "Calamintha" (basil thyme), "Thymus" (typically "Thymus vulgaris", i.e., thyme), and "Satureja" (savory) plants. The name "za'atar" alone most properly applies to "Origanum syriacum", considered in biblical scholarship to be the ezov ( ) of the Hebrew Bible, often translated as "hyssop" but distinct from modern "Hyssopus officinalis". Used in Levantine cuisine, both the herb and spice mixture are popular throughout the Mediterranean region of the Middle East.


title: Za'atar

text: According to Ignace J. Gelb, an Akkadian language word that can be read "sarsar" may refer to a spice plant. This word could be attested in the Syriac "satre", and Arabic "za'atar" (or "sa'tar"), possibly the source of Latin "Satureia". Satureia ("Satureja") is a common name for "Satureja thymbra", a species of savory whose other common and ethnic names include, "Persian za'atar", "za'atar rumi" (Roman hyssop), and "za'atar franji" (European hyssop). In the Modern Hebrew language, "za'atar" is used as an Arabic loanword.


title: Za'atar

text: "Thymus capitatus" (also called "Satureja capitata") is a species of wild thyme found throughout the hills of the Levant and Mediterranean Middle East. Thyme is said to be a plant "powerfully associated with Palestine", and the spice mixture za'atar is common fare there. "Thymbra spicata", a plant native to Greece and to Palestine/Israel and has been cultivated in North America by Syrian, Palestinian, and Lebanese immigrants for use in their za'atar preparations since the 1940s.


title: Za'atar

text: Another species identified as "wild za'atar" (Arabic:"za'atar barri") is "Origanum vulgare", commonly known as European oregano, oregano, pot marjoram, wild marjoram, winter marjoram, or wintersweet. This species is also extremely common in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine, and is used by peoples of the region to make one local variety of the spice mixture.


title: Za'atar

text: Other Latin names for the herbs called za'atar in Arabic include "Origanum syriacum" (also known as Bible hyssop, Arabic oregano and wild marjoram) and "Origanum majorana" (sweet marjoram). Both oregano and marjoram are closely related Mediterranean plants of the family Lamiaceae, so it is unsurprising that they could be used interchangeably.


title: Za'atar

text: Za'atar as a prepared condiment is traditionally made with ground "origanum syriacum" mixed with roasted sesame seeds, and salt, though other spices such as sumac berries might also be added. In areas where "origanum syriacum" is not readily available, thyme, oregano, marjoram, or some combination thereof is used instead, and some commercial varieties also include roasted wheat. Traditionally, housewives throughout the Fertile Crescent, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula made their own variations of za'atar. This general practice is cited by Western observers of Middle Eastern and North African culinary cultures as one reason for their difficulties in determining the names of the different spices used. Written history lacks an early definitive reference to za'atar as a spice mixture, though unidentified terms in the Yale Babylonian Collection may be references to spice blends.


title: Za'atar

text: Some varieties may add savory, cumin, coriander or fennel seed. One distinctively Palestinian variation of za'atar includes caraway seeds, while a Lebanese variety contains more sumac and has a distinct dark red color. Like "baharat" (a typically Egyptian spice mix of ground cinnamon, cloves, and allspice or rosebuds) and other spice mixtures popular in the Arab world, za'atar is high in anti-oxidants.


title: Za'atar

text: Za'atar, both the herb and the condiment, is popular in Algeria, Armenia, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey.


title: Za'atar

text: There is evidence that a za'atar plant was known and used in Ancient Egypt, though its ancient name has yet to be determined with certainty. Remains of "Thymbra spicata", one species used in modern za'atar preparations, were found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, and according to Dioscorides, this particular species was known to the Ancient Egyptians as "saem".


title: Za'atar

text: Pliny the Elder mentions a herb "maron" as an ingredient of the "Regale Unguentum" ("Royal Perfume") used by the Parthian kings in the 1st century CE.


title: Za'atar

text: In Jewish tradition, Saadiah (d. 942), Ibn Ezra (d. circa 1164), Maimonides (1135–1204) and Obadiah ben Abraham (1465–1515) identified the "ezov" mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Hebrew: אזוב, Samaritan Hebrew: ࠀࠉࠆࠅࠁ) with the Arabic word "za'atar". Ezov/za'atar is particularly associated with ritual purity ceremonies, such as preparing the ashes of the red heifer (Numbers 19:6) and handling bodily contaminations (Leviticus 14:4, 6, 51–52; Numbers 20:18). The Children of Israel are also said to have used a clump of ezov/za'atar stalks to daub the blood of the Paschal sacrifice on the doorposts of their houses before leaving bondage in Egypt (Exodus 12:22). King David refers to the purifying powers of the herb in Psalm 51:7, "Cleanse me with ezov/za'atar and I shall be purified." Much later, ezov/za'atar appears in the 2nd century CE Mishnah as an ingredient in food at that time in Judea ('Uktzin 2:2), while elsewhere in the Talmud there is mention of herbs ground into oil (a preparation called "mish'cha t'china" in Aramaic, משחא טחינא), but it is not specified whether this was like the za'atar mix known today. In the 12th century Maimonides described the use of the za'atar (צעתר, صعتر) he identified in contemporary cuisine, noting that "the "ezov" mentioned in the Torah is the "ezov" that the homeowners eat and season their stews with it." (Mishneh Torah, Parah Adumah 3:2)


title: Za'atar

text: Along with other spiced salts, za'atar has been used as a staple in Arab cuisine from medieval times to the present.


title: Za'atar

text: Za'atar has historical significance for Palestinians, some of whom see the presence of za'atar as the signifier of a Palestinian household. For Palestinian refugees, plants and foods such as za'atar also serve as signifiers of the house, village, and region from which they hailed.


title: Za'atar

text: Once used mainly by Arab bakeries, za'atar is now a common herb in Israeli cuisine. Some Israeli companies market za'atar commercially as "hyssop" or "holy hyssop". "Hyssopus officinalis" is not found in the wild in Israel, but "Origanum vulgare" is extremely common.


title: Za'atar

text: Ecologists found that wild za'atar was on the verge of extinction in Israel due to over-harvesting. In 1977, an Israeli law was passed declaring it a protected species. Violators are subject to fines. Some Arab citizens of Israel (who traditionally picked the wild herbs) have described the legislation as "almost anti-Arab". The ban on picking wild za'atar is also enforced in the West Bank. In 2006, za'atar plants were confiscated at IDF checkpoints.


title: Za'atar

text: Za'atar is traditionally dried in the sun and mixed with salt, sesame seeds and sumac. It is commonly eaten with pita, which is dipped in olive oil and then za'atar. When the dried herb is moistened with olive oil, the spread is known as "za'atar-wu-zayt" or "zeit ou za'atar" ("zeit" or "zayt", meaning "oil" in Arabic and "olive" in Hebrew). This mixture spread on a dough base and baked as a bread, produces manakeesh bi zaatar. In the Mediterranean region of Middle East, ka'ak (a soft sesame seed bread), is sold in bakeries and by street vendors with za'atar to dip into or with a za'atar filling.


title: Za'atar

text: Za'atar is used as a seasoning for meats and vegetables or sprinkled onto hummus. It is also eaten with labneh (yogurt drained to make a tangy, creamy cheese), and bread and olive oil for breakfast, most commonly in Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Syria, and Lebanon, as well as other places in the Arab world. The Lebanese speciality "shanklish", dry-cured balls of labneh, can be rolled in za'atar to form its outer coating.


title: Za'atar

text: The fresh za'atar herb is used in a number of dishes. Borek is a common bread pastry that can be stuffed with various ingredients, including za'atar. A salad made of fresh za'atar leaves (Arabic: "salatet al-zaatar al-akhdar") is also popular throughout the Levant. The recipe is simple, consisting of fresh thyme, finely chopped onions, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and salt.


title: Za'atar

text: In Palestine, there is a folk belief that za'atar makes the mind alert, and children are sometimes encouraged to eat za'atar at breakfast before school.


title: Za'atar

text: Maimonides (Rambam), a medieval rabbi and physician who lived in Spain, Morocco, and Egypt, prescribed za'atar for its health advancing properties in the 12th century. Since ancient times, people in the Mediterranean region of Middle East have thought za'atar could be used to reduce and eliminate internal parasites.


title: Luxottica

text: Luxottica Group S.p.A. is an Italian eyewear conglomerate and the world's largest company in the eyewear industry. It is based in Milan, Italy.


title: Luxottica

text: Luxottica is a vertically integrated company, which has been described as a monopoly—it designs, manufactures, distributes, and retails its eyewear brands through companies such as LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, Apex by Sunglass Hut, Pearle Vision, Target Optical, and Glasses.com. It also owns EyeMed, one of the largest vision health insurance providers. Its best known brands are Costa, Ray-Ban, Persol, Oliver Peoples and Oakley. Luxottica's market power has allowed it to charge price markups of 1000%.


title: Luxottica

text: Luxottica also makes sunglasses and prescription frames for designer brands such as Chanel, Prada, Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Versace, Dolce and Gabbana, Michael Kors, Coach, Miu Miu and Tory Burch.


title: Luxottica

text: In January 2017, Luxottica announced a merger with Essilor. The combined entity would command more than one quarter of global value sales of eyewear. In March 2018, the European Commission unconditionally approved the merger of Essilor and Luxottica. On 1 October 2018, the new holding company EssilorLuxottica was born, resulting in combined market capitalization of approximately $70 billion.


title: Luxottica

text: Leonardo Del Vecchio started the company in 1961, in Agordo north of Belluno, Veneto; today the company is headquartered in Milan, Italy.


title: Luxottica

text: Del Vecchio began his career as the apprentice to a tool and diemaker in Milan, but decided to turn his metalworking skills to making spectacle parts. So in 1961, he moved to Agordo in the province of Belluno, which is home to most of the Italian eyewear industry. The new company was Luxottica s.a.s., a limited partnership with Del Vecchio as one of the founding partners. In 1967, he started selling complete eyeglass frames under the Luxottica brand, which proved successful enough that by 1971 he ended the contract manufacturing business.


title: Luxottica

text: Convinced of the need for vertical integration, in 1974, he acquired Scarrone, a distribution company. In 1981, the company set up its first international subsidiary, in Germany, the first in a rapid period of international expansion. The first of many licensing deals with a designer was struck with Armani, in 1988.


title: Luxottica

text: The company listed in New York in 1990, and in Milan in December 2000, joining the MIB-30 (now FTSE MIB) index in September 2003. The listing raised money for the company and allowed it to use its shares to acquire other brands, starting with Italian brand Vogue Eyewear in 1990, Persol and the United States Shoe Corporation (LensCrafters) in 1995, Ray-Ban in 1999 and Sunglass Hut, Inc. in 2001. Luxottica later increased its presence in the retail sector by acquiring Sydney-based OPSM in 2003, Pearle Vision and Cole National in 2004. Luxottica acquired Oakley in November 2007 for US$2.1 billion. Oakley had tried to dispute their prices because of Luxottica's large marketshare, and Luxottica responded by dropping Oakley from their stores, causing their stock price to drop, followed by Luxottica's hostile take over of the company. In August 2011, Luxottica acquired Erroca for €20 million. In March 2014, it was announced that Luxottica would partner with Google on the development of Google Glass and its integration into Luxottica's eyewear.


title: Luxottica

text: Essilor bought Daytona Beach, FL, based Costa, Inc. in 2013 and the popular brand of premium sunglasses was integrated into the Luxottica system in 2020. The approximately $270 million all-cash transaction was 2.8 times Costa's revenues from continuing operations for the trailing 12 months – a very rich valuation that approaches what Oakley received when it was acquired by Luxottica during the height of the M&A market in 2007. Luxottica has shut down Costa's headquarters, warehousing and shipping operation in Daytona Beach. About 295 employees will be let go. Costa sunglasses will be manufactured at Luxottica's plant in Foothill Ranch, California.


title: Luxottica

text: On 1 September 2014, a new organizational structure was announced, composed of two co-CEOs, one focusing on market development and the other overseeing corporate functions. After the exit of former CEO Andrea Guerra, Enrico Cavatorta was appointed CEO of Corporate Function and Interim CEO of Market (until new and permanent appointment to this role). Cavatorta left the company 40 days after being appointed CEO. In 2016, it was reported that Luxottica had lost its third chief executive in a year and a half, as Adil Mehboob-Khan stepped down a year after he replaced Cavatorta.


title: Luxottica

text: In January 2017, the company agreed to a merger with Essilor. The deal also offered a succession plan for Leonardo Del Vecchio, the company's founder. Shortly before the merger completed, reporter Sam Knight wrote in "The Guardian", "in seven centuries of spectacles, there has never been anything like it. The new entity will be worth around $50bn (£37bn), sell close to a billion pairs of lenses and frames every year, and have a workforce of more than 140,000 people." On 1 October 2018 the new holding company EssilorLuxottica was founded, resulting in combined market capitalization of approximately €46.3 billion as of the date of the merger announcement.


title: Luxottica

text: Luxottica's two main product offerings are sunglasses and prescription frames. The company operates in two sectors: manufacturing & wholesale distribution, and retail distribution.


title: Luxottica

text: These brands are sold in the company's own shops, as well as to independent distributors such as department stores, duty-free shops, and opticians.


title: Luxottica

text: Luxottica Retail has about 9,100 retail locations in the United States, Latin America, Canada, India, China, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and United Arab Emirates. The headquarters of the retail division is in Mason, Ohio, United States (North America). Their retail banners include the following:


title: Luxottica

text: Luxottica is the largest optical retailer in the United States, with 7.3% of US retail sales in 2015. With its merger with Essilor in 2018 the company owns Coastal/Clearly, an online contacts and glasses retail giant bought in 2014 that ships to over 200 countries beside its original North American market.


title: Luxottica

text: Luxottica also owns EyeMed Vision Care, a managed vision care organization in the United States. As of 2014, it is the second-largest vision benefits company in the United States.


title: Luxottica

text: The company has been criticized for the high price of its brand-name glasses, such as Ray-Ban, Oakley, and several others. A 2012 "60 Minutes" segment focused on whether the company's extensive holdings in the industry were used to keep prices high. Luxottica owns not only a large portfolio of brands (over a dozen) such as Ray-Ban and Oakley but also retailers such as Sunglass Hut, Lenscrafters and Oliver Peoples, the optical departments at Target and Sears, as well as key eye insurance groups including the second largest glasses insurance firm in the US, EyeMed. It has been accused of operating a complete monopoly on the optical industry and overcharging for its products; for example, temporarily dropping then-competitor Oakley from its frame design list, then, when the company stock crashed, purchasing the company, then increasing the prices of its Ray-Ban sunglasses. In addition, it has been argued that, by owning the vision insurance company EyeMed, it also controls part of the buyers' market as well.


title: Luxottica

text: The company has said that the market is highly competitive, and that their frames account for ~10% of sales worldwide and ~20% in the United States. Euromonitor International estimated that Luxottica's market share was 14% worldwide, with the second-largest company in the industry, Essilor, holding a 13% market share. The third-largest player was Johnson & Johnson, with a 3.9% market share. In October 2018, Luxottica and Essilor merged into a single company, EssilorLuxottica, which now occupies nearly 30% of the global market share and represents almost a billion pairs of lenses and frames sold annually.


title: Luxottica

text: The HBO series "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" has criticized the company as a prominent instance of corporate consolidation, as has the TruTV series "Adam Ruins Everything".


title: Luxottica

text: In 2019, LensCrafters founder E. Dean Butler spoke to the "Los Angeles Times", admitting that Luxottica's dominance of the eyewear industry had resulted in price markups of nearly 1,000%. In the interview, Butler noted "You can get amazingly good frames, with a Warby Parker level of quality, for $4 to $8. For $15, you can get designer-quality frames, like what you'd get from Prada." When told that some eyeglasses cost as much as $800 in the United States, Butler remarked, "I know. It's ridiculous. It's a complete rip-off."


title: Luxottica

text: The list of Luxottica shareholders with more than 2% of holdings, represented by voting shares at 23 December 2014.


title: Luxottica

text: In September 2012, Delfin S.à r.l. reduced its share of Luxottica from 66% to 62.1%, but later increased its share to 66% again.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: Super Bowl XLVI was an American football game between the National Football Conference (NFC) champion New York Giants and the American Football Conference (AFC) champion New England Patriots to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion for the 2011 season. The Giants defeated the Patriots by the score of 21–17. The game was played on February 5, 2012, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, the first time that the Super Bowl was played in Indiana.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: In addition to winning their fourth Super Bowl in team history, the Giants set a new record for the lowest regular season record (9–7, win percentage of 56.3%) by a Super Bowl champion. The Patriots entered the game with a 13–3 regular season record, and were also seeking their fourth Super Bowl win. This was a rematch of Super Bowl XLII, which New York also won, spoiling New England's run at a perfect 2007 season. The Giants and the Patriots also played in Week 9 a few months earlier, with the Giants winning on the road 24–20.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: The Giants jumped to a 9–0 lead in the first quarter of Super Bowl XLVI before the Patriots scored 17 unanswered points to take a 17–9 lead in the third quarter. But the Giants prevented the Patriots from scoring again, and two consecutive New York field goals chipped away New England's lead, 17–15, late in the third quarter. The Giants capped off an 88-yard drive with running back Ahmad Bradshaw's 6-yard game-winning touchdown with 57 seconds left in the game. Eli Manning, who completed 30 of 40 passes for 296 yards, one touchdown, and no interceptions, was named Super Bowl MVP for the second time in his career. He became the third consecutive quarterback to win the award after Aaron Rodgers in Super Bowl XLV and Drew Brees in Super Bowl XLIV. He was also the first Giants quarterback to start and win two championship games since Ed Danowski in 1938.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: The broadcast of the game on NBC broke the then record for the most-watched program in American television history, previously set during the previous year's Super Bowl. Super Bowl XLVI was watched by an estimated average audience of 111.3 million US viewers and an estimated total audience of 166.8 million, according to Nielsen, meaning that over half of the American population watched at least some of the initial broadcast. The game also set the record for most tweets per second during a sporting event, with 13.7 million tweets from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. (PST).


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: Per convention as an even-numbered Super Bowl, the Patriots as the AFC representatives had the home team designation. Super Bowl XLVI was the sixth Super Bowl in which the two teams had competed in a previous Super Bowl matchup, as the Giants and Patriots had previously met in Super Bowl XLII. Both head coaches (Tom Coughlin and Bill Belichick) and both starting quarterbacks (Eli Manning and Tom Brady) returned from Super Bowl XLII.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: A labor dispute had threatened the postponement or cancellation of the game during the spring and summer of 2011; league officials had set contingency plans to postpone the game one week if it had been necessary to postpone regular season games into the second week of January. Since the dispute was resolved well before the start of the regular season, no postponements were implemented, and the game remained as originally scheduled.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: This was the first Super Bowl to be played in Indianapolis, and only the fourth time that the Super Bowl has been played in a cold-weather city, after Detroit (XVI and XL) and Minneapolis (XXVI). Downtown Indianapolis, the home of Lucas Oil Stadium, featured an outdoor Super Bowl Village and other programs at the Indiana Convention Center.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: Working around a series of injuries, the Giants ended with a 9–7 record during the regular season and returned to the playoffs for the first time since 2008, winning the NFC East and finishing the season as the NFC's No. 4 seed. Finally back to full strength, the Giants entered their week 17 matchup with the Dallas Cowboys with both teams tied for the division lead with 8–7 records. The Giants took a 21–0 first half lead and while the Cowboys closed the gap to make the score 21–14 early in the 4th quarter, the Giants held on to defeat the Cowboys 31–14, clinching the divisional title and a playoff berth.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: New York's offense was led by Super Bowl XLII winning quarterback Eli Manning, in his seventh season as the team's starter. Manning set new career highs in nearly every statistical category in 2011, throwing for a franchise record 4,933 yards and 29 touchdowns, with 16 interceptions, giving him a 92.9 passer rating. His top target was receiver Victor Cruz, who caught 82 passes for a franchise record 1,536 yards (3rd in the NFL) and 9 touchdowns. But he had plenty of other targets, including Hakeem Nicks (76 receptions, 1,192 yards, 7 touchdowns), Mario Manningham (39 receptions and 523 yards in 12 games) and tight end Jake Ballard (38 receptions, 604 yards).


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: Although not on the field for four games due to injury, running back Ahmad Bradshaw was the team's leading rusher with 659 yards and 9 touchdowns. He was also a reliable weapon in the passing game, hauling in 34 receptions for 267 yards and two touchdowns. Brandon Jacobs also made contributions on the ground, rushing for 571 yards and 7 touchdowns.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: New York's defensive line was led by defensive ends Justin Tuck, Jason Pierre-Paul and Osi Umenyiora. Pierre-Paul racked up 86 combined tackles and ranked fourth in the NFL with 16.5 sacks, earning him the only Pro Bowl selection on the Giants defense, while Umenyiora, limited to 9 games because of injury, recorded 9 sacks and 2 forced fumbles. The Giants secondary was led by Corey Webster, who intercepted a career-high 6 passes. Defensive backs Kenny Phillips and Aaron Ross added four interceptions each, while safety Antrel Rolle picked off two passes and led the team in combined tackles with 96.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: The Giants joined the 2008 Arizona Cardinals and 1979 Los Angeles Rams as the only other team to advance to the Super Bowl with fewer than ten victories since the NFL expanded to a 16-game season in 1978, and the only one of those three to win the Super Bowl they had advanced to. They have won six consecutive playoff games away from their home stadium, dating back to their victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 2007 Wild Card round. That includes their Super Bowl XLII victory over these same Patriots, although that game was played at a neutral site (and the Giants were the designated "away" team for the game). The 2011 Giants are the first team in NFL history to reach the Super Bowl after having been outscored by their opponents in the regular season (394 points scored, 400 points allowed).


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: The Patriots finished with a 13–3 record, winning the AFC East and clinching the AFC's No. 1 seed in the playoffs. New England lost 2 consecutive games to the Steelers and Giants in week 8 and 9 respectively, before rallying to win their remaining eight games.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: Back at the helm of the offense was 12-year quarterback Tom Brady, who earned his 7th Pro Bowl selection. Starting every game of the season, Brady completed 65.6% of his passes for a career-high 5,235 yards (the second highest total in NFL history at the time) and 39 touchdown passes, with just 12 interceptions and a rating of 105.6. Brady also added 109 yards and three scores on the ground. His main weapon in the passing game was Pro Bowl receiver Wes Welker, who led the NFL with 122 receptions (22 receptions ahead of second place) for 1,569 yards and 9 touchdowns. New England also had two of the best tight ends in the NFL: Pro Bowler Rob Gronkowski, who set new tight end records for receiving (1,327 yards) and touchdown catches (17); and Aaron Hernandez, who caught 79 passes for 910 yards and 7 touchdowns, while also rushing for 45 yards. Another big element of the passing game was veteran receiver Deion Branch, who caught 51 passes for 702 yards and 5 scores. Receivers Chad Ochocinco, Tiquan Underwood, Julian Edelman, and Matthew Slater made minor contributions to the passing attack; the latter two also served as emergency defensive backs. Edelman was also a superb punt returner, returning 28 punts for 296 yards and a touchdown.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: New England had several key contributors in the ground game. Their main rusher was BenJarvus Green-Ellis, who rushed for 667 yards and 11 touchdowns. Running back Stevan Ridley added 447 yards and a 5.1 yards per carry average. Danny Woodhead contributed 351 yards with a 4.6 YPC average, and gained another 437 yards returning kickoffs. New England also had a solid offensive line, which was anchored by Pro Bowl guards Logan Mankins and Brian Waters. With all these weapons, New England ranked third in the NFL with 513 points.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: The Patriots' defensive line featured two Pro Bowl selections: Vince Wilfork, who generated 3.5 sacks, two interceptions, and one forced fumble; and Andre Carter, who contributed 10 sacks and forced two fumbles. Defensive End Mark Anderson was also a major force on the line, earning 10 sacks and two forced fumbles of his own. Behind them, Rob Ninkovich excelled at linebacker, gaining 74 tackles, 6.5 sacks, and two interceptions. In the secondary, cornerback Kyle Arrington had a breakout season. After recording just one interception in his first three years, Arrington picked off 7 passes in 2011 to lead the NFL in that category, while also making 88 tackles. Linebacker Jerod Mayo led the team in tackles with 95.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: With the victory in the 2011 AFC Championship Game Brady and head coach Bill Belichick became the first quarterback-head coach combination to reach the Super Bowl five times, surpassing the record held by Terry Bradshaw and Chuck Noll of the Pittsburgh Steelers' 1970s Super Bowl teams. Belichick tied Tom Landry for second most appearances as a head coach in the Super Bowl, behind only Don Shula's six.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: The Patriots and Giants faced each other in New England during the regular season; the Giants won that game, 24–20. Incidentally, the Giants and Patriots had also faced each other during the regular season prior to Super Bowl XLII with the Patriots winning that regular season matchup and the Giants going on to win that Super Bowl. Super Bowl XLVI marked the 13th Super Bowl that was a rematch of a regular season game. The loser in the regular season had been 7–5 in these games prior to Super Bowl XLVI.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: New York finished the season as the NFC East champion and the No. 4 seed in the conference. The Giants defeated the No. 5 seed Atlanta Falcons in the Wild Card round 24–2, the first playoff game at MetLife Stadium. Eli Manning threw for 277 yards and 3 touchdowns with no interceptions, while the Giants defense shut down the Falcons, the only Atlanta points coming from a safety given up by Manning's intentional grounding penalty in his end zone.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: The Giants then moved on to face the No. 1 seed and the defending Super Bowl XLV champion Green Bay Packers in the divisional round. The Giants never trailed in the game, winning 37–20. One of the key plays in the game was a Hail Mary pass by Manning to Hakeem Nicks, giving New York a 20–10 lead at the end of the first half. As they did to 2007 MVP Tom Brady the Patriots' record-breaking offense, the Giants generated significant pressure on Packers quarterback and season MVP Aaron Rodgers, sacking him four times and disrupting his talented receiving corps. This was the first time in NFL history a 15–1 team failed to make it past the divisional round in the playoffs.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: The Giants then faced the No. 2 seeded San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game. After a series of defensive standoffs in the fourth quarter, the game went into overtime. Both teams continued to struggle on offense, until New York linebacker Jacquian Williams stripped the ball from San Francisco wide receiver Kyle Williams after a punt return. The Giants recovered the ball at the 49ers 24-yard line, setting up a 31-yard field goal attempt by Giants kicker Lawrence Tynes. Unlike Cundiff earlier that day, Tynes' kick was successful, giving the Giants a 20–17 victory.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: As the No. 1 seed in the AFC, New England earned a first-round bye and home field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs. In the divisional round, the Patriots defeated the Denver Broncos 45–10. The Patriots dominated the game throughout, setting new franchise postseason records for total yards (509), points (45), and margin of victory (35). Tom Brady completed 18 of 25 passes for 246 yards and a postseason record five touchdowns in the first half. The Patriots defense had a breakout performance: Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow was held to just 9 of 26 completions and was sacked five times.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: In the AFC Championship Game, the Patriots faced off against the No. 2 seeded Baltimore Ravens. Brady was out-dueled by Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco, who threw for more yards and touchdowns on the same number of completions and attempts. Nevertheless, New England managed to take a 23–20 lead in the fourth quarter on a 1-yard run by Brady. With 1:44 left in the quarter, Baltimore got the ball back with one last chance to tie or win the game, driving all the way to the New England 14-yard line. But the Patriots managed to hold them there, with cornerback Sterling Moore breaking up two consecutive Ravens pass attempts in the red zone, including one in the end zone. Facing fourth down, Baltimore attempted a 32-yard field goal by kicker Billy Cundiff that would tie the game and possibly bring it to overtime. Cundiff missed the kick wide left, allowing the Patriots to advance to the Super Bowl.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: The Patriots, as the designated home team, had a choice of wearing their home navy blue jerseys or their white away jerseys. Briefly, there was speculation that the Patriots might wear the white away jerseys in order to switch the jerseys from Super Bowl XLII, where the Patriots wore dark blue and the Giants wore white. Also, the Giants were 4–0 in playoff games in their white away jerseys since the 2007 season. However, the Patriots announced on the Monday following the Conference Championship Games that they would be wearing their customary navy blue home jerseys as the home team in Super Bowl XLVI.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: Hospitality experts speculated that "Indianapolis will have seen the most severe hotel price gouging in Super Bowl history." The city has 6,000 hotel rooms, fewer than typical for a Super Bowl host city. Some rooms in downtown Indianapolis reportedly cost more than $4,000 a night. By contrast, rooms close to the stadium in previous Super Bowls were usually available for about $200. The room shortage and high prices caused some attendees to plan to stay in Chicago, 180 miles away, and ride buses to events.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: Because the Giants and Patriots drew their fan bases from New York City and Boston respectively, the Super Bowl echoed the fierce rivalry between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox in Major League Baseball. Tom Brady said of the rivalry: "There is a great rivalry...between Boston and New York...When I got to the team, it was always Red Sox-Yankees. We’ve had some pretty meaningful games against the Giants over the past few years, so I don’t think anyone is disappointed that it’s the Giants."


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: In the United States, the game was televised nationally by NBC. It was also streamed live online, both to computers (via NFL.com and NBCSports.com) and mobile devices (via Verizon Wireless's NFL Mobile app), the first legal online streaming of a Super Bowl telecast in the USA. Al Michaels called play-by-play for NBC, marking the eighth time that he was behind the microphone for a Super Bowl and the second time he called a Super Bowl for NBC (Michaels had previously done play-by-play for Super Bowls XXII, XXV, XXIX, XXXIV, XXXVII, and XL for ABC and Super Bowl XLIII for NBC). Cris Collinsworth was the color analyst for the game, his second Super Bowl as a game analyst and first since he was in the booth for Super Bowl XXXIX for Fox. Michele Tafoya was the sideline reporter. Bob Costas and Dan Patrick (who also presided over the trophy presentation ceremony) hosted the pregame, halftime, and postgame coverage for NBC with "Football Night in America" analysts Tony Dungy and Rodney Harrison and special guest analysts (who were seated next to Costas during the pre-game festivities), Aaron Rodgers and Hines Ward. Also helping out on NBC's broadcast were reporters Alex Flanagan, Liam McHugh, and Randy Moss and NFL insiders Mike Florio and Peter King.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: As part of "Operation Fake Sweep", Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, seized and shut down 16 websites that had provided access to pirated Internet television feeds of NFL games on February 2, in an action similar to the crackdown they had implemented the previous year. For the first time, domains in the .tv top-level domain were also seized, despite that TLD's allocation to Tuvalu.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: With the Giants' Super Bowl win, they became the first team to win Super Bowls on four different networks (XXI-CBS, XXV-ABC, XLII-Fox, and this game-NBC).


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: In the teams' local markets, the game was also broadcast by NBC stations in the New York City and Boston markets, WNBC 4 in New York City, New York and WHDH 7 in Boston, Massachusetts.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: All commercials for the game sold out by Thanksgiving 2011, at an average price of $3.5 million per thirty-second ad, by far the highest rate for Super Bowl advertising in the event's history. At least one thirty-second advertisement commanded a price of $4 million.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: Anti-abortion activist Randall Terry has said he was planning to run an advertisement featuring graphic photos of aborted fetuses during Super Bowl XLVI. Terry was not allowed to air the ad nationwide, given that the networks have a policy under equal time rules to reject all political and issue related advertising during the Super Bowl. He was able, however, under the then-current Federal Election Commission "reasonable access" rules, to force up to 35 local stations (those located in states in which the Democratic Party primaries are within 45 days of Super Bowl Sunday; Terry entered the primary as a dummy candidate primarily for the purpose of this advertisement) to run the advertisement uncensored, regardless of whether it meets Standards and Practices or Federal Communications Commission guidelines. The FCC ruled against Terry on February 3, two days before the game, when NBC owned-and-operated WMAQ-TV in Chicago refused to air the ad, citing the same equal-time statutes and the fact that Terry did not appear to be a "bona fide" candidate. The largest station to allow Terry to air his advertisement was WHDH in Boston, Massachusetts.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: An advertisement from Pepsi featured Melanie Amaro, the winner of season one of the Fox series "The X Factor". Other confirmed advertisers included Doritos (continuing its user-generated "Crash the Super Bowl" contest), Bridgestone, Volkswagen (a 60-second spot advertising the third-generation Beetle featuring dogs barking to the tune of "The Imperial March"), General Motors (four for Chevrolet; including a commercial featuring "We Are Young" by fun. that led to a massive sales spike; and one for Cadillac), Toyota, Hyundai, Acura (featuring Jerry Seinfeld in an ad for the NSX), Kia Motors (advertising the Optima with a spot starring Adriana Lima), Audi (parodying the "Twilight" series with an ad for the S7), Honda (starring Matthew Broderick in a reprisal of the lead role in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"), newcomers Dannon Yogurt and Century 21 Real Estate, Teleflora, Mars, Incorporated (introducing the M&M's brown spokescandy), The Coca-Cola Company, CareerBuilder.com (reprising their chimp advertisement campaign), Cars.com, Skechers, Relativity Media (running four advertisements for "Act of Valor"), Paramount Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures, and Universal Pictures. Anheuser-Busch has purchased nine slots during the game. An ad for Old Milwaukee beer featuring Will Ferrell aired a single time on only one station in Nebraska.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: Disney's ad for its upcoming "John Carter" was seen as exacerbating concerns about the expensive tentpole film's marketing that had been raised by its teaser the preceding August. While admitting he was "pleasantly surprised" by it, "Collider"s Adam Chitwood said he was "still not convinced that the general audience has a handle on what the film's about." An executive at a competing studio said the trailer strongly reinforced concerns that the film had experienced serious production problems that adversely affected its quality and box-office prospects. "It's like, 'Guys, this is your Hail Mary?'" The ad's ineffectiveness was cited as one of many reasons the movie failed upon its release the following month, leading Disney to take a $200 million writedown on the film.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: Chrysler aired a two-minute half time advertisement titled "Half Time in America", produced by the Wieden+Kennedy agency and narrated by Clint Eastwood. The ad drew the criticism of several leading U.S. conservatives, who suggested that its messaging implied that President Obama deserved a second term and, as such, was political payback for Obama's support for the federal bailout of the company. Both Chrysler chief marketing officer Olivier François and Chrysler Chairman and CEO Sergio Marchionne denied that the ad was intended as a politically oriented message. Overall, the ad was considered one of the better ones that aired during the game.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: There has also been some conjecture regarding the possible plagiarism of Australian band John Butler Trio's song "Zebra" by Yogurt giant Dannon. Spokesman for the band, Tom McNamara, commented that the band was currently exploring their proprietary rights with regards to the similarity of the tune to the band's hit single.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: Matthew Broderick reprised his "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" role in a Honda commercial aired during this Super Bowl which featured the Oh Yeah song. A teaser for the ad had appeared two weeks prior to the Super Bowl, which had created rumors of a possible film sequel. It was produced by Santa Monica-based RPA and directed by Todd Phillips. AdWeek's Tim Nudd called the ad "a great homage to the original 1986 film, with Broderick this time calling in sick to a film shoot and enjoying another day of slacking." On the other hand, "Jalopnik"s Matt Hardigree called the spot "sacrilegious".


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: NFL International televised the game to viewers outside of North America, with Kenny Albert and Joe Theismann calling the English language feed.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: Super Bowl XLVI was carried nationwide on radio over the Dial Global radio network, with Kevin Harlan as play-by-play announcer, Boomer Esiason as color analyst, and James Lofton and Mark Malone as sideline reporters. Locally, the game was broadcast by the New York Giants Radio Network flagship (WFAN) and the New England Patriots Radio Network flagship (WBZ-FM). Bob Papa called the game for the Giants with Carl Banks as his analyst and Howard Cross as sideline reporter, while Gil Santos was at the microphone for the Patriots with Gino Cappelletti as analyst and Scott Zolak as sideline reporter. Santos and Cappelletti returned for their sixth Super Bowl as broadcast team for the Patriots while Papa and Banks called their third and second Super Bowls, respectively, for the Giants. This was the first Super Bowl broadcast for the Giants not to feature longtime analyst Dick Lynch, who had retired from the team's radio booth following the 2007 season and died in 2008. As per the NFL's rules, all the other stations in the Giants and Patriots radio networks (as well as WCBS-AM in New York, which serves as a preseason overflow station for the Giants) carried Dial Global's feed.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra produced its own radio broadcast, with Darren Fletcher, Rocky Boiman, and Greg Brady announcing.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: On January 12, 2012, it was reported that former "American Idol" winner Kelly Clarkson would sing the National Anthem at Super Bowl XLVI. It marks the fourth time in the previous five years that an "American Idol" contestant has performed the national anthem (joining Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Hudson and Jordin Sparks). Clarkson was accompanied by the Indianapolis Children's Choir. Husband-and-wife country musicians Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert performed "America the Beautiful" as part of the ceremonies. American Sign Language translation for both songs was performed by Rachel Mazique, the currently reigning Miss Deaf America.


title: Super Bowl XLVI

text: The coin toss ceremony featured the recent inductees to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Curtis Martin, one of the inductees, was originally selected to toss the coin, but in what NESN described as "a rather awkward scene", referee John Parry ended up flipping the coin himself while Martin stood beside and watched. The Patriots won the toss, the first AFC team to do so in the Super Bowl in 15 years. Because the coin toss landed on heads, the pizza chain Papa John's offered free pizza to millions of Americans who participated in a promotional contest.