title: Richard Halsey Best

text: June 4, 1942 was the last day Best flew for the U.S. Navy. Just after Best landed on "Enterprise", he began to cough up blood. Over the next twenty-four hours, his hemoptysis (coughing up blood) continued. He became acutely ill with a temperature of , and was admitted to Pearl Harbor Hospital.


title: Richard Halsey Best

text: Back in Pearl Harbor, Best was examined by the flight surgeon. During the morning flight on June 4 flying at several VB-6 pilots had encountered difficulties with oxygen supply, so Best gave the order to reduce the altitude to . The oxygen rebreather of Best's SBD had become heated during the unusually long search on the morning mission on June 4. The material used in the rebreather to remove exhaled carbon dioxide was sodium hydroxide. If the device containing this material were abnormally heated, it could release caustic soda fumes through the pilot's oxygen mask; consequently, Best had inhaled caustic fumes. Sometime in the past, Best had contracted latent tuberculosis, which remained in his lungs in an inactive state for years. The inhaled caustic fumes caused a chemical pneumonitis and eroded away a tuberculosis granuloma, transforming the inactive form of the organism into an active form, resulting in the progression from latent TB infection to TB disease. Best was transferred from Pearl Harbor Hospital to Fitzsimons General Hospital in Aurora, Colorado, where he received proper treatment for his tuberculosis. Best was hospitalized in Fitzsimons Hospital until September 1943. He retired from the U.S. Navy in 1944 with a 100% disability.


title: Richard Halsey Best

text: After his retirement from the Navy, Best moved to Santa Monica, California, where he lived for the rest of his life. After discharge from the hospital, Best worked in a small research division of the Douglas Aircraft Corporation. This division became part of the Rand Corporation in December 1948, where Best headed the security department until his retirement in March 1975. Best wrote the preface to the manual of "Battlehawks 1942" flight simulation video game released in 1988 by LucasFilm Games.


title: Richard Halsey Best

text: Best was married to Doris Avis (Albrio) (1914–1968) and had a daughter, a son, a grandson, and a step-daughter.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier ( , ; ; 26 August 17438 May 1794), also Antoine Lavoisier after the French Revolution, was a French nobleman and chemist who was central to the 18th-century chemical revolution and who had a large influence on both the history of chemistry and the history of biology.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: It is generally accepted that Lavoisier's great accomplishments in chemistry stem largely from his changing the science from a qualitative to a quantitative one. Lavoisier is most noted for his discovery of the role oxygen plays in combustion. He recognized and named oxygen (1778) and hydrogen (1783), and opposed phlogiston theory. Lavoisier helped construct the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform chemical nomenclature. He predicted the existence of silicon (1787) and discovered that, although matter may change its form or shape, its mass always remains the same.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier was a powerful member of a number of aristocratic councils, and an administrator of the "Ferme générale". The "Ferme générale" was one of the most hated components of the "Ancien Régime" because of the profits it took at the expense of the state, the secrecy of the terms of its contracts, and the violence of its armed agents. All of these political and economic activities enabled him to fund his scientific research. At the height of the French Revolution, he was charged with tax fraud and selling adulterated tobacco, and was guillotined.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was born to a wealthy family of the nobility in Paris on 26 August 1743. The son of an attorney at the Parlement of Paris, he inherited a large fortune at the age of five upon the death of his mother. Lavoisier began his schooling at the Collège des Quatre-Nations, University of Paris (also known as the Collège Mazarin) in Paris in 1754 at the age of 11. In his last two years (1760–1761) at the school, his scientific interests were aroused, and he studied chemistry, botany, astronomy, and mathematics. In the philosophy class he came under the tutelage of Abbé Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, a distinguished mathematician and observational astronomer who imbued the young Lavoisier with an interest in meteorological observation, an enthusiasm which never left him. Lavoisier entered the school of law, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1763 and a licentiate in 1764. Lavoisier received a law degree and was admitted to the bar, but never practiced as a lawyer. However, he continued his scientific education in his spare time.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier's education was filled with the ideals of the French Enlightenment of the time, and he was fascinated by Pierre Macquer's dictionary of chemistry. He attended lectures in the natural sciences. Lavoisier's devotion and passion for chemistry were largely influenced by Étienne Condillac, a prominent French scholar of the 18th century. His first chemical publication appeared in 1764. From 1763 to 1767, he studied geology under Jean-Étienne Guettard. In collaboration with Guettard, Lavoisier worked on a geological survey of Alsace-Lorraine in June 1767. In 1764 he read his first paper to the French Academy of Sciences, France's most elite scientific society, on the chemical and physical properties of gypsum (hydrated calcium sulfate), and in 1766 he was awarded a gold medal by the King for an essay on the problems of urban street lighting. In 1768 Lavoisier received a provisional appointment to the Academy of Sciences. In 1769, he worked on the first geological map of France.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: While Lavoisier is commonly known for his contributions to the sciences, he also dedicated a significant portion of his fortune and work toward benefitting the public. Lavoisier was a humanitarian—he cared deeply about the people in his country and often concerned himself with improving the livelihood of the population by agriculture, industry, and the sciences. The first instance of this occurred in 1765, when he submitted an essay on improving urban street lighting to the French Academy of Sciences.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Three years later in 1768, he focused on a new project to design an aqueduct. The goal was to bring water from the river Yvette into Paris so that the citizens could have clean drinking water. But, since the construction never commenced, he instead turned his focus to purifying the water from the Seine. This was the project that interested Lavoisier in the chemistry of water and public sanitation duties.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Additionally, he was interested in air quality and spent some time studying the health risks associated with gunpowder's effect on the air. In 1772, he performed a study on how to reconstruct the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, after it had been damaged by fire, in a way that would allow proper ventilation and clean air throughout.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: At the time, the prisons in Paris were known to be largely unlivable and the prisoners' treatment inhumane. Lavoisier took part in investigations in 1780 (and again in 1791) on the hygiene in prisons and had made suggestions to improve living conditions, suggestions which were largely ignored.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Once a part of the Academy, Lavoisier also held his own competitions to push the direction of research towards bettering the public and his own work. One such project he proposed in 1793 was to better public health on the "insalubrious arts".


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier had a vision of public education having roots in "scientific sociability" and philanthropy.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier gained a vast majority of his income through buying stock in the General Farm, which allowed him to work on science full-time, live comfortably, and allowed him to contribute financially to better the community. (It would also contribute to his demise during the Reign of Terror many years later.)


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: It was very difficult to secure public funding for the sciences at the time, and additionally not very financially profitable for the average scientist, so Lavoisier used his wealth to open a very expensive and sophisticated laboratory in France so that aspiring scientists could study without the barriers of securing funding for their research.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: He also pushed for public education in the sciences. He founded two organizations, and Musée des Arts et Métiers, which were created to serve as educational tools for the public. Funded by the wealthy and noble, the Lycée regularly taught courses to the public beginning in 1793.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: At the age of 26, around the time he was elected to the Academy of Sciences, Lavoisier bought a share in the "Ferme générale", a tax farming financial company which advanced the estimated tax revenue to the royal government in return for the right to collect the taxes. On behalf of the Ferme générale Lavoisier commissioned the building of a wall around Paris so that customs duties could be collected from those transporting goods into and out of the city. His participation in the collection of its taxes did not help his reputation when the Reign of Terror began in France, as taxes and poor government reform were the primary motivators during the French Revolution.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier consolidated his social and economic position when, in 1771 at age 28, he married Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, the 13-year-old daughter of a senior member of the "Ferme générale". She was to play an important part in Lavoisier's scientific career—notably, she translated English documents for him, including Richard Kirwan's "Essay on Phlogiston" and Joseph Priestley's research. In addition, she assisted him in the laboratory and created many sketches and carved engravings of the laboratory instruments used by Lavoisier and his colleagues for their scientific works. Madame Lavoisier edited and published Antoine's memoirs (whether any English translations of those memoirs have survived is unknown as of today) and hosted parties at which eminent scientists discussed ideas and problems related to chemistry.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: A portrait of Antoine and Marie-Anne Lavoisier was painted by the famed artist Jacques-Louis David. Completed in 1788 on the eve of the Revolution, the painting was denied a customary public display at the Paris Salon for fear that it might inflame anti-aristocratic passions.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: For three years following his entry into the "Ferme générale", Lavoisier's scientific activity diminished somewhat, for much of his time was taken up with official "Ferme générale" business. He did, however, present one important memoir to the Academy of Sciences during this period, on the supposed conversion of water into earth by evaporation. By a very precise quantitative experiment, Lavoisier showed that the "earthy" sediment produced after long-continued reflux heating of water in a glass vessel was not due to a conversion of the water into earth but rather to the gradual disintegration of the inside of the glass vessel produced by the boiling water. He also attempted to introduce reforms in the French monetary and taxation system to help the peasants.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: The Farmers General held a monopoly of the production, import and sale of tobacco in France, and the taxes they levied on tobacco brought revenues of 30 million livres a year. This revenue began to fall because of a growing black market in tobacco that was smuggled and adulterated, most commonly with ash and water. Lavoisier devised a method of checking whether ash had been mixed in with tobacco: "When a spirit of vitriol, "aqua fortis" or some other acid solution is poured on ash, there is an immediate very intense effervescent reaction, accompanied by an easily detected noise." Lavoisier also noticed that the addition of a small amount of ash improved the flavour of tobacco. Of one vendor selling adulterated goods, he wrote "His tobacco enjoys a very good reputation in the province... the very small proportion of ash that is added gives it a particularly pungent flavour that consumers look for. Perhaps the Farm could gain some advantage by adding a bit of this liquid mixture when the tobacco is fabricated." Lavoisier also found that while adding a lot of water to bulk the tobacco up would cause it to ferment and smell bad, the addition of a very small amount improved the product. Thereafter the factories of the Farmers General added, as he recommended, a consistent 6.3% of water by volume to the tobacco they processed. To allow for this addition, the Farmers General delivered to retailers seventeen ounces of tobacco while only charging for sixteen. To ensure that only these authorised amounts were added, and to exclude the black market, Lavoisier saw to it that a watertight system of checks, accounts, supervision and testing made it very difficult for retailers to source contraband tobacco or to improve their profits by bulking it up. He was energetic and rigorous in implementing this, and the systems he introduced were deeply unpopular with the tobacco retailers across the country. This unpopularity was to have consequences for him during the French Revolution.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier urged the establishment of a Royal Commission on Agriculture. He then served as its Secretary and spent considerable sums of his own money in order to improve the agricultural yields in the Sologne, an area where farmland was of poor quality. The humidity of the region often led to a blight of the rye harvest, causing outbreaks of ergotism among the population. In 1788 Lavoisier presented a report to the Commission detailing ten years of efforts on his experimental farm to introduce new crops and types of livestock. His conclusion was that despite the possibilities of agricultural reforms, the tax system left tenant farmers with so little that it was unrealistic to expect them to change their traditional practices.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier's researches on combustion were carried out in the midst of a very busy schedule of public and private duties, especially in connection with the "Ferme Générale". There were also innumerable reports for and committees of the Academy of Sciences to investigate specific problems on order of the royal government. Lavoisier, whose organizing skills were outstanding, frequently landed the task of writing up such official reports. In 1775 he was made one of four commissioners of gunpowder appointed to replace a private company, similar to the Ferme Générale, which had proved unsatisfactory in supplying France with its munitions requirements. As a result of his efforts, both the quantity and quality of French gunpowder greatly improved, and it became a source of revenue for the government. His appointment to the Gunpowder Commission brought one great benefit to Lavoisier's scientific career as well. As a commissioner, he enjoyed both a house and a laboratory in the Royal Arsenal. Here he lived and worked between 1775 and 1792.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier was a formative influence in the formation of the Du Pont gunpowder business because he trained Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, its founder, on gunpowder-making in France; the latter said that the Du Pont gunpowder mills "would never have been started but for his kindness to me."


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: In June 1791, Lavoisier made a loan of 71,000 livres to Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours to buy a printing works so that du Pont could publish a newspaper, "La Correspondance Patriotique". The plan was for this to include both reports of debates in the National Constituent Assembly as well as papers from the Academy of Sciences. The revolution quickly disrupted the elder du Pont's first newspaper, but his son E.I. du Pont soon launched "Le Republicain" and published Lavoisier's latest chemistry texts.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier also chaired the commission set up to establish a uniform system of weights and measures which in March 1791 recommended the adoption of the metric system. The new system of weights and measures was adopted by the Convention on 1 August 1793. Lavoisier himself was removed from the commission on weights and measures on 23 December 1793, together with mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace and several other members, for political reasons.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: One of his last major works was a proposal to the National Convention for the reform of French education. He also intervened on behalf of a number of foreign-born scientists including mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange, helping to exempt them from a mandate stripping all foreigners of possessions and freedom.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: As the French Revolution gained momentum, attacks mounted on the deeply unpopular "Ferme générale", and it was eventually abolished in March 1791. In 1792 Lavoisier was forced to resign from his post on the Gunpowder Commission and to move from his house and laboratory at the Royal Arsenal. On 8 August 1793, all the learned societies, including the Academy of Sciences, were suppressed at the request of Abbé Grégoire.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: On 24 November 1793, the arrest of all the former tax farmers was ordered. Lavoisier and the other Farmers General faced nine accusations of defrauding the state of money owed to it, and of adding water to tobacco before selling it. Lavoisier drafted their defense, refuting the financial accusations, reminding the court of how they had maintained a consistently high quality of tobacco. The court was however inclined to believe that by condemning them and seizing their goods, it would recover huge sums for the state. Lavoisier was convicted and guillotined on 8 May 1794 in Paris, at the age of 50, along with his 27 co-defendants.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: According to popular legend, the appeal to spare his life so that he could continue his experiments was cut short by the judge, Coffinhal: ""La République n'a pas besoin de savants ni de chimistes; le cours de la justice ne peut être suspendu."" ("The Republic needs neither scholars nor chemists; the course of justice cannot be delayed.") The judge Coffinhal himself would be executed less than three months later, in the wake of the Thermidorian reaction.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier's importance to science was expressed by Lagrange who lamented the beheading by saying: ""Il ne leur a fallu qu'un moment pour faire tomber cette tête, et cent années peut-être ne suffiront pas pour en reproduire une semblable."" ("It took them only an instant to cut off this head, and one hundred years might not suffice to reproduce its like.")


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: A year and a half after his execution, Lavoisier was completely exonerated by the French government. During the White Terror, his belongings were delivered to his widow. A brief note was included, reading "To the widow of Lavoisier, who was falsely convicted".


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: During late 1772 Lavoisier turned his attention to the phenomenon of combustion, the topic on which he was to make his most significant contribution to science. He reported the results of his first experiments on combustion in a note to the Academy on 20 October, in which he reported that when phosphorus burned, it combined with a large quantity of air to produce acid spirit of phosphorus, and that the phosphorus increased in weight on burning. In a second sealed note deposited with the Academy a few weeks later (1 November) Lavoisier extended his observations and conclusions to the burning of sulfur and went on to add that "what is observed in the combustion of sulfur and phosphorus may well take place in the case of all substances that gain in weight by combustion and calcination: and I am persuaded that the increase in weight of metallic calces is due to the same cause."


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: During 1773 Lavoisier determined to review thoroughly the literature on air, particularly "fixed air," and to repeat many of the experiments of other workers in the field. He published an account of this review in 1774 in a book entitled "Opuscules physiques et chimiques" (Physical and Chemical Essays). In the course of this review, he made his first full study of the work of Joseph Black, the Scottish chemist who had carried out a series of classic quantitative experiments on the mild and caustic alkalies. Black had shown that the difference between a mild alkali, for example, chalk (CaCO), and the caustic form, for example, quicklime (CaO), lay in the fact that the former contained "fixed air," not common air fixed in the chalk, but a distinct chemical species, now understood to be carbon dioxide (CO), which was a constituent of the atmosphere. Lavoisier recognized that Black's fixed air was identical with the air evolved when metal calces were reduced with charcoal and even suggested that the air which combined with metals on calcination and increased the weight might be Black's fixed air, that is, CO.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: In the spring of 1774, Lavoisier carried out experiments on the calcination of tin and lead in sealed vessels, the results of which conclusively confirmed that the increase in weight of metals in combustion was due to combination with air. But the question remained about whether it was in combination with common atmospheric air or with only a part of atmospheric air. In October the English chemist Joseph Priestley visited Paris, where he met Lavoisier and told him of the air which he had produced by heating the red calx of mercury with a burning glass and which had supported combustion with extreme vigor. Priestley at this time was unsure of the nature of this gas, but he felt that it was an especially pure form of common air. Lavoisier carried out his own research on this peculiar substance. The result was his memoir "On the Nature of the Principle Which Combines with Metals during Their Calcination and Increases Their Weight", read to the Academy on 26 April 1775 (commonly referred to as the Easter Memoir). In the original memoir, Lavoisier showed that the mercury calx was a true metallic calx in that it could be reduced with charcoal, giving off Black's fixed air in the process. When reduced without charcoal, it gave off an air which supported respiration and combustion in an enhanced way. He concluded that this was just a pure form of common air and that it was the air itself "undivided, without alteration, without decomposition" which combined with metals on calcination.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: After returning from Paris, Priestley took up once again his investigation of the air from mercury calx. His results now showed that this air was not just an especially pure form of common air but was "five or six times better than common air, for the purpose of respiration, inflammation, and ... every other use of common air". He called the air dephlogisticated air, as he thought it was common air deprived of its phlogiston. Since it was therefore in a state to absorb a much greater quantity of phlogiston given off by burning bodies and respiring animals, the greatly enhanced combustion of substances and the greater ease of breathing in this air were explained.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier's researches included some of the first truly quantitative chemical experiments. He carefully weighed the reactants and products of a chemical reaction in a sealed glass vessel so that no gases could escape, which was a crucial step in the advancement of chemistry. In 1774, he showed that, although matter can change its state in a chemical reaction, the total mass of matter is the same at the end as at the beginning of every chemical change. Thus, for instance, if a piece of wood is burned to ashes, the total mass remains unchanged if gaseous reactants and products are included. Lavoisier's experiments supported the law of conservation of mass. In France it is taught as Lavoisier's Law and is paraphrased from a statement in his "Traité Élémentaire de Chimie": "Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed." Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765) had previously expressed similar ideas in 1748 and proved them in experiments; others whose ideas pre-date the work of Lavoisier include Jean Rey (1583–1645), Joseph Black (1728–1799), and Henry Cavendish (1731–1810).


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier, together with Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, Claude-Louis Berthollet, and Antoine François de Fourcroy, submitted a new program for the reforms of chemical nomenclature to the Academy in 1787, for there was virtually no rational system of chemical nomenclature at this time. This work, titled "Méthode de nomenclature chimique" ("Method of Chemical Nomenclature", 1787), introduced a new system which was tied inextricably to Lavoisier's new oxygen theory of chemistry.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: The classical elements of earth, air, fire, and water were discarded, and instead some 55 substances which could not be decomposed into simpler substances by any known chemical means were provisionally listed as elements. The elements included light; caloric (matter of heat); the principles of oxygen, hydrogen, and azote (nitrogen); carbon; sulfur; phosphorus; the yet unknown "radicals" of muriatic acid (hydrochloric acid), boric acid, and "fluoric" acid; 17 metals; 5 earths (mainly oxides of yet unknown metals such as magnesia, baria, and strontia); three alkalies (potash, soda, and ammonia); and the "radicals" of 19 organic acids.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: The acids, regarded in the new system as compounds of various elements with oxygen, were given names which indicated the element involved together with the degree of oxygenation of that element, for example sulfuric and sulfurous acids, phosphoric and phosphorous acids, nitric and nitrous acids, the "ic" termination indicating acids with a higher proportion of oxygen than those with the "ous" ending.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Similarly, salts of the "ic" acids were given the terminal letters "ate," as in copper sulfate, whereas the salts of the "ous" acids terminated with the suffix "ite," as in copper sulfite.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: The total effect of the new nomenclature can be gauged by comparing the new name "copper sulfate" with the old term "vitriol of Venus." Lavoisier's new nomenclature spread throughout Europe and to the United States and became common use in the field of chemistry. This marked the beginning of the anti-phlogistic approach to the field.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier is commonly cited as a central contributor to the chemical revolution. His precise measurements and meticulous keeping of balance sheets throughout his experiment were vital to the widespread acceptance of the law of conservation of mass. His introduction of new terminology, a binomial system modeled after that of Linnaeus, also helps to mark the dramatic changes in the field which are referred to generally as the chemical revolution. Lavoisier encountered much opposition in trying to change the field, especially from British phlogistic scientists. Joseph Priestley, Richard Kirwan, James Keir, and William Nicholson, among others, argued that quantification of substances did not imply conservation of mass. Rather than reporting factual evidence, opposition claimed Lavoisier was misinterpreting the implications of his research. One of Lavoisier's allies, Jean Baptiste Biot, wrote of Lavoisier's methodology, "one felt the necessity of linking accuracy in experiments to rigor of reasoning." His opposition argued that precision in experimentation did not imply precision in inferences and reasoning. Despite opposition, Lavoisier continued to use precise instrumentation to convince other chemists of his conclusions, often results to five to eight decimal places. Nicholson, who estimated that only three of these decimal places were meaningful, stated:


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: The "official" version of Lavoisier's Easter Memoir appeared in 1778. In the intervening period, Lavoisier had ample time to repeat some of Priestley's latest experiments and perform some new ones of his own. In addition to studying Priestley's dephlogisticated air, he studied more thoroughly the residual air after metals had been calcined. He showed that this residual air supported neither combustion nor respiration and that approximately five volumes of this air added to one volume of the dephlogisticated air gave common atmospheric air. Common air was then a mixture of two distinct chemical species with quite different properties. Thus when the revised version of the Easter Memoir was published in 1778, Lavoisier no longer stated that the principle which combined with metals on calcination was just common air but "nothing else than the healthiest and purest part of the air" or the "eminently respirable part of the air". The same year he coined the name oxygen for this constituent of the air, from the Greek words meaning "acid former". He was struck by the fact that the combustion products of such nonmetals as sulfur, phosphorus, charcoal, and nitrogen were acidic. He held that all acids contained oxygen and that oxygen was therefore the acidifying principle.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier's chemical research between 1772 and 1778 was largely concerned with developing his own new theory of combustion. In 1783 he read to the academy his paper entitled "Réflexions sur le phlogistique" (Reflections on Phlogiston), a full-scale attack on the current phlogiston theory of combustion. That year Lavoisier also began a series of experiments on the composition of water which were to prove an important capstone to his combustion theory and win many converts to it. Many investigators had been experimenting with the combination of Henry Cavendish's inflammable air, which Lavoisier termed hydrogen (Greek for "water-former"), with "dephlogisticated air" (air in the process of combustion, now known to be oxygen) by electrically sparking mixtures of the gases. All of the researchers noted Cavendish's production of pure water by burning hydrogen in oxygen, but they interpreted the reaction in varying ways within the framework of phlogiston theory. Lavoisier learned of Cavendish's experiment in June 1783 via Charles Blagden (before the results were published in 1784), and immediately recognized water as the oxide of a hydroelectric gas.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: In cooperation with Laplace, Lavoisier synthesized water by burning jets of hydrogen and oxygen in a bell jar over mercury. The quantitative results were good enough to support the contention that water was not an element, as had been thought for over 2,000 years, but a compound of two gases, hydrogen and oxygen. The interpretation of water as a compound explained the inflammable air generated from dissolving metals in acids (hydrogen produced when water decomposes) and the reduction of calces by inflammable air (a combination of gas from calx with oxygen to form water).


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Despite these experiments, Lavoisier's antiphlogistic approach remained unaccepted by many other chemists. Lavoisier labored to provide definitive proof of the composition of water, attempting to use this in support of his theory. Working with Jean-Baptiste Meusnier, Lavoisier passed water through a red-hot iron gun barrel, allowing the oxygen to form an oxide with the iron and the hydrogen to emerge from the end of the pipe. He submitted his findings of the composition of water to the Académie des Sciences in April 1784, reporting his figures to eight decimal places. Opposition responded to this further experimentation by stating that Lavoisier continued to draw the incorrect conclusions and that his experiment demonstrated the displacement of phlogiston from iron by the combination of water with the metal. Lavoisier developed a new apparatus which used a pneumatic trough, a set of balances, a thermometer, and a barometer, all calibrated carefully. Thirty savants were invited to witness the decomposition and synthesis of water using this apparatus, convincing many who attended of the correctness of Lavoisier's theories. This demonstration established water as a compound of oxygen and hydrogen with great certainty for those who viewed it. The dissemination of the experiment, however, proved subpar, as it lacked the details to properly display the amount of precision taken in the measurements. The paper ended with a hasty statement that the experiment was "more than sufficient to lay hold of the certainty of the proposition" of the composition of water and stated that the methods used in the experiment would unite chemistry with the other physical sciences and advance discoveries.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier employed the new nomenclature in his "Traité élémentaire de chimie" ("Elementary Treatise on Chemistry"), published in 1789. This work represents the synthesis of Lavoisier's contribution to chemistry and can be considered the first modern textbook on the subject. The core of the work was the oxygen theory, and the work became a most effective vehicle for the transmission of the new doctrines. It presented a unified view of new theories of chemistry, contained a clear statement of the law of conservation of mass, and denied the existence of phlogiston. This text clarified the concept of an element as a substance that could not be broken down by any known method of chemical analysis and presented Lavoisier's theory of the formation of chemical compounds from elements. It remains a classic in the history of science. While many leading chemists of the time refused to accept Lavoisier's new ideas, demand for "Traité élémentaire" as a textbook in Edinburgh was sufficient to merit translation into English within about a year of its French publication. In any event, the "Traité élémentaire" was sufficiently sound to convince the next generation.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: The relationship between combustion and respiration had long been recognized from the essential role which air played in both processes. Lavoisier was almost obliged, therefore, to extend his new theory of combustion to include the area of respiration physiology. His first memoirs on this topic were read to the Academy of Sciences in 1777, but his most significant contribution to this field was made in the winter of 1782–1783 in association with Laplace. The result of this work was published in a memoir, "On Heat." Lavoisier and Laplace designed an ice calorimeter apparatus for measuring the amount of heat given off during combustion or respiration. The outer shell of the calorimeter was packed with snow, which melted to maintain a constant temperature of around an inner shell filled with ice. By measuring the quantity of carbon dioxide and heat produced by confining a live guinea pig in this apparatus, and by comparing the amount of heat produced when sufficient carbon was burned in the ice calorimeter to produce the same amount of carbon dioxide as that which the guinea pig exhaled, they concluded that respiration was, in fact, a slow combustion process. Lavoisier stated, ""la respiration est donc une combustion,"" that is, respiratory gas exchange is a combustion, like that of a candle burning.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: This continuous slow combustion, which they supposed took place in the lungs, enabled the living animal to maintain its body temperature above that of its surroundings, thus accounting for the puzzling phenomenon of animal heat. Lavoisier continued these respiration experiments in 1789–1790 in cooperation with Armand Seguin. They designed an ambitious set of experiments to study the whole process of body metabolism and respiration using Seguin as a human guinea pig in the experiments. Their work was only partially completed and published because of the Revolution's disruption, but Lavoisier's pioneering work in this field inspired similar research on physiological processes for generations.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier's fundamental contributions to chemistry were a result of a conscious effort to fit all experiments into the framework of a single theory. He established the consistent use of the chemical balance, used oxygen to overthrow the phlogiston theory, and developed a new system of chemical nomenclature which held that oxygen was an essential constituent of all acids (which later turned out to be erroneous).


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier also did early research in physical chemistry and thermodynamics in joint experiments with Laplace. They used a calorimeter to estimate the heat evolved per unit of carbon dioxide produced, eventually finding the same ratio for a flame and animals, indicating that animals produced energy by a type of combustion reaction.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier also contributed to early ideas on composition and chemical changes by stating the radical theory, believing that radicals, which function as a single group in a chemical process, combine with oxygen in reactions. He also introduced the possibility of allotropy in chemical elements when he discovered that diamond is a crystalline form of carbon.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: He was also responsible for the construction of the gasometer, an expensive instrument he used at his demonstrations. While he used his gasometer exclusively for these, he also created smaller, cheaper, more practical gasometers that worked with a sufficient degree of precision that more chemists could recreate.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Overall, his contributions are considered the most important in advancing chemistry to the level reached in physics and mathematics during the 18th century.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Mount Lavoisier in New Zealand's Paparoa Range was named after him in 1970 by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: During his lifetime, Lavoisier was awarded a gold medal by the King of France for his work on urban street lighting (1766), and was appointed to the French Academy of Sciences (1768). He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1775.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: Lavoisier's work was recognized as an International Historic Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society, Académie des sciences de L'institut de France and the Société Chimique de France in 1999. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier's Louis 1788 publication entitled "Méthode de Nomenclature Chimique", published with colleagues Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, Claude Louis Berthollet, and Antoine François, comte de Fourcroy, was honored by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, presented at the Académie des Sciences (Paris) in 2015.


title: Antoine Lavoisier

text: A number of Lavoisier Medals have been named and given in Lavoisier's honour, by organizations including the Société chimique de France, the International Society for Biological Calorimetry, and the DuPont company He is also commemorated by the Franklin-Lavoisier Prize, marking the friendship of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and Benjamin Franklin. The prize, which includes a medal, is given jointly by the Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie in Paris, France and the Science History Institute in Philadelphia, PA, USA.


title: John Titor

text: John Titor and (TimeTravel_0) are pseudonyms used on the Time Travel Institute and Art Bell's Post-to-Post forums during 2000 and 2001 by a poster claiming to be an American military time traveler from 2036. Titor made numerous vague and specific predictions regarding calamitous events in 2004 and beyond, including a nuclear war. Inconsistencies in his explanations, the uniform inaccuracy of his predictions, and a private investigator's findings all led to the general impression that the entire episode was an elaborate hoax. A 2009 investigation concluded that Titor was likely the creation of Larry Haber, a Florida entertainment lawyer, along with his brother Morey, a computer scientist.


title: John Titor

text: The first posts using John Titor's military symbol appeared on the "Time Travel Institute" forums on November 2, 2000, under the name "TimeTravel_0". At that time the name "John Titor" was not being used. The posts discussed time travel in general, the first one being the "six parts" description of what a time machine would need to have to work (see below) and responses to questions about how such a machine would work. Early messages tended to be short. A second thread was also made due to shortcomings in the forum software at the time.


title: John Titor

text: The name "John Titor" was not introduced until January 2001, when TimeTravel_0 began posting at the Art Bell BBS Forums (which required a name or pseudonym for every account). The Titor posts ended in late March 2001.


title: John Titor

text: Around 2003, various websites reproduced Titor's posts, re-arranging them into narratives. Not all refer to the original dates posted.


title: John Titor

text: In his online postings, Titor claimed to be an American soldier from 2036, based in Tampa, Florida. He was assigned to a governmental time-travel project, and sent back to 1975 to retrieve an IBM 5100 computer, which he said was needed to debug various legacy computer programs in 2036 – a possible reference to the UNIX year 2038 problem. The IBM 5100 runs the APL and BASIC programming languages.


title: John Titor

text: Titor said he had been selected for this mission specifically, given that his paternal grandfather was directly involved with the assembly and programming of the 5100. In support of this, he described unpublicized features of the 5100, leading to assumptions that a computer scientist was behind the postings. Titor claimed to be on a stopover in the year 2000 for "personal reasons", to collect pictures lost in the (future) civil war and to visit his family, of whom he spoke often.


title: John Titor

text: Titor also said he had been, for a few months, trying to alert anyone that would listen about the threat of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease spread through beef products and about the possibility of civil war within the United States. When questioned about them by an online subscriber, Titor also expressed an interest in mysteries such as UFOs, which he claimed remained unexplained in his time. Titor suggested that UFOs and extraterrestrials might be travelers from much further into the future than his own time, with superior time machines.


title: John Titor

text: Titor described his time machine on several occasions. In an early post, he described it as a "stationary mass, temporal displacement unit powered by two top-spin, dual positive singularities", producing a "standard off-set Tipler sinusoid".


title: John Titor

text: According to the posts, the device was installed in the rear of a 1966 Chevrolet Corvette convertible. The posts later mentioned a 1987 truck with four-wheel drive.


title: John Titor

text: Although invoking the , whereby events from his timeline may differ from our own, Titor also expressed assurance that the differences were minimal. As such, his descriptions have been interpreted as predictions and compared with historical events since 2001.


title: John Titor

text: The most immediate of Titor's predictions were of an upcoming civil war in the United States having to do with "order and rights". He described it as beginning in 2005,<ref name="John Titor, 2/1/01 8:36">John Titor, 2/1/01 8:36</ref> with civil unrest surrounding the presidential election of that year. This civil conflict that he characterized as "having a Waco type event every month that steadily gets worse" would be "pretty much at everyone's doorstep" and erupt by 2008.


title: John Titor

text: As a result of the war, the United States would split into five regions based on various factors and differing military objectives. This civil war, according to Titor, would end in 2015 with a brief but intense World War III.


title: John Titor

text: Titor refers to the exchange as "N Day". Washington, D.C. and Jacksonville, Florida are specifically mentioned as being hit. After the war, Omaha, Nebraska would be the new U.S. capital. Titor was vague as to the exact motivations and causes for World War III. At one point, he characterized the hostilities as being led by "border clashes and overpopulation". He also pointed to the contemporary conflict between Arabs and Israel as not a cause, but rather a milestone that precedes a hypothetical World War III.


title: John Titor

text: Titor claimed that as a 13-year-old in 2011, he joined the Fighting Diamondbacks, a shotgun infantry unit in Florida, for at least four years. In other posts, he described himself as hiding from the war.


title: John Titor

text: Titor claimed that the "Everett–Wheeler model of quantum physics", better known as the many-worlds interpretation, was correct. According to Titor, this caused a new timestream to form because of his time travel. This makes his predictions non-falsifiable, since believers can say that the events were averted by Titor's postings.


title: John Titor

text: "The New Republic" called Titor the most famous of several internet forum posters who claimed to be time travelers.


title: John Titor

text: An Italian television program, "Voyager – Ai confini della conoscenza", aired the results of an investigation of John Titor on May 19, 2008. Private investigator Mike Lynch found no registry evidence, past or present, of any individual named John Titor. He did, however, identify the John Titor Foundation, a for-profit company formed on September 16, 2003, with no office or address other than a rented post box in Kissimmee, Florida. An IP address connected with Titor also geolocated to Kissimmee.


title: John Titor

text: In 2009, a report by John Hughston of the Hoax Hunter website named Larry Haber, a Florida entertainment lawyer, as the CEO of the foundation. Lynch concluded that Larry Haber and his brother Richard, a computer scientist, were very likely the men behind John Titor, whom they actually introduced in 1998, accompanied by different predictions, including chaos due to the Y2K "bug". John Hughston also reported that John Titor is a trademark registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office; the Titor trademark is now classified as "Abandoned".


title: John Titor

text: In 2018, multimedia artist Joseph Matheny, creator of the alternate reality game "Ong's Hat", said that he worked as a consultant for unnamed individuals responsible for the legend. John Titor "is a story that was created as a literary experiment by people who were observing what I was doing with Ong's Hat and these people wanted to do something like that. I was a consultant on the project, [but] it wasn't my project."


title: Kiran Rao

text: Kiran Rao (born 7 November 1973) is an Indian film producer, screenwriter, and director who works in Hindi cinema. In 2016, Rao co-founded Paani Foundation, a non-profit organisation working towards the mission of fighting drought in Maharashtra.


title: Kiran Rao

text: Kiran Rao was born on 7 November 1973 in Bangalore, and grew up in Kolkata. In 1992, her parents decided to leave Calcutta so she moved to Mumbai with Ajay Goyal. She graduated with a food sciences major from the Sophia College for Women in 1995. She attended the Social Communications Media course at the Sophia Polytechnic for two months, but then quit and left for Delhi. She got her master's degree at AJK Mass Communication Research Center at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.


title: Kiran Rao

text: Actress Aditi Rao Hydari is Rao's first cousin. Rao's paternal and Hydari's maternal grandfather, J. Rameshwar Rao, was the Raja of Wanaparthy, a large estate under the Nizam of Hyderabad. Wanaparthy is a district of Telangana.


title: Kiran Rao

text: Rao started her career as the assistant director in the epic film "Lagaan" directed by Ashutosh Gowariker, whom she also assisted later on "Swades: We, the People". "Lagaan" was nominated for 74th Academy Awards in the foreign language film category. Aamir Khan produced and starred in the same film. Before "Lagaan", she has also done minute role of supporting actress in "Dil Chahta Hai". She also worked as second assistant director with Academy Award-nominated director Mira Nair on the indie hit "Monsoon Wedding".


title: Kiran Rao

text: She scripted and directed the film "Dhobi Ghat", which was released in January 2011 under Aamir Khan Productions. She has started writing her next film which will have roots in Kolkata.


title: Kiran Rao

text: Kiran Rao was made the chairperson of the Mumbai Film Festival - MAMI in 2015. She also sang a Marathi song 'Toofan Aalaya', the Satyamev Jayate Water Cup Anthem


title: Kiran Rao

text: Rao married actor Aamir Khan in December 2005, after Khan divorced his first wife Reena Dutta in 2002. They met on the sets of "Lagaan". Rao was one of the film's assistant directors. They were living in Bandra, a Mumbai suburb. The couple have a son, Azad Rao Khan, born in December 2011, through a surrogate mother who has been named after Abul Kalam Azad.


title: Kiran Rao

text: Rao has been a vegan, and she has influenced her husband, Aamir Khan, to turn vegan as well. After discussing the issue, both of them decided to turn vegan.


title: Kiran Rao

text: On 3rd July 2021, Kiran Rao and Aamir Khan announced their decision to divorce after 15 years of marriage via a joint statement where they thanked their family and friends for their continuous support in this matter. They will continue to nurture their son Azad Khan (born 2011) as co-parents.


title: Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005 video game)

text: Need for Speed: Most Wanted is a 2005 open-world racing video game, and the ninth installment in the "Need for Speed" series. Developed by EA Canada and EA Black Box and published by Electronic Arts, it was released on November 11, 2005, for PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, Nintendo DS, Microsoft Windows, Game Boy Advance and Xbox 360. An additional version, Need for Speed: Most Wanted 5-1-0, was released in the same year for PlayStation Portable. The game focuses on street racing-oriented gameplay involving a selection of events and racing circuits found within the fictional city of Rockport, with the game's main story involving players taking on the role of a street racer who must compete against 15 of the city's most elite street racers to become the most wanted racer of the group, in the process seeking revenge against one of the groups who took their car and developing a feud with the city's police department.


text: "Most Wanted" brought in many notable improvements and additions over other entries in the series, its major highlight being more in-depth police pursuits. Certain editions of the game were packaged with the ability for online multiplayer gaming. Upon its release, the game received positive reviews from critics and became a commercial success, selling 16 million copies worldwide, becoming one of the best entries in the series as a result. Its success led to a collector's edition, "Black Edition", which provided additional content for the game.


text: The game was succeeded by "" in 2006, which provided a sequel to "Most Wanted"s story, with a virtual edition being made available for PlayStation 3 via the PlayStation Store in May 2012, until it was discontinued the following year. A , developed by Criterion Games, was released in October 2012.


text: In the game, players take part in illegal street races across "Most Wanted"s setting, utilizing a variety of licensed real-world cars (available at the time of the game's development and release) that can be upgraded and customized with new parts while contending with the involvement of the police in their efforts to impede the player. Racing events feature a mixture of competitive racing across circuit or point-to-point races, and checkpoint, sprint and drag races. The game features three modes of play - Career, Quick Race, and Challenge Series - with a fourth mode allowing for multiplayer being available to players on certain console editions. While many of the racing events feature those used in previous entries in the games, particularly the "Underground" set of games, some events - Drifting, Street X, Underground Racing League tournaments and Outrun - are absent from "Most Wanted", and replaced with two new ones.


text: The game features a selection of stock cars to choose from, each of which can be modified during the game's career mode with upgrades to enhance its performance and visual appearance. Customization of the car's appearance is limited; the main emphasis of customization is to reduce the car's heat level rather than for reputation as in the "Underground" series - while some elements that were possible in the previous installments were removed, others received minor changes such as players being able to make use of whole body kits on cars, the use of only one vinyl for the vehicle, and exterior colours being limited to the car's main body, wheels and window tinting. Additional cars are available for the player to use - most of which are acquired from the game's Blacklist Racers or unlocked after defeating a Blacklist Racer, while others are bonuses available from completing challenges; a number of cars available in the game are exclusives added in by the "Black Edition" copy of the game. Police cars cannot be driven in the game, except during special events in the game's Challenge Series mode. "Most Wanted", like the "Underground" series, avoids the use of major vehicle damage on all racing models, with only scratched paint and heavily cracked windshields constituting the whole of the racers' damage modelling. Police cars, on the other hand, sustain heavy damage when hit by the player's car or caused by the player to crash into other cars or obstacles.


text: During races and the game's Career mode, players can make use of Nitrous Boosts to help give them an edge against opponents. Unlike in "", which first introduced the gameplay mechanic, Nitrous Boosts recharge over time, thus allowing the player to re-use it when needed. Players can use a second ability to help out in tough situations called "Speedbreaker" - when used, the ability slows down time (similar to bullet time), induces drift and momentarily increase the weight of the player's vehicle to make it harder to be pushed around, thus allowing players to maneuver their vehicle out of a difficult situation.


text: While the concept of players being engaged by police had been a feature of most entries in the series since "the first Need for Speed title", the development of "Most Wanted" saw the gameplay mechanic enhanced and firmly introduced into the series through the employment of a complex system. When players become engaged in a police pursuit, usually from conducting a traffic offence (referred to as "Infractions" in the game) in sight of a police unit (such as speeding), their aim at this point is to escape from the pursuit by either evading or taking out pursuing vehicles. The game's on-screen HUD is modified during a pursuit, including highlighting pursuing police units on the mini-map, displaying the vehicle's heat level, and adding a Pursuit bar at the bottom detailing the number of police units in the pursuit, how many have been evaded, and how many have been taken out. The pursuit system calculates how the police handle the player via the heat level accumulated against the player's current car. Heat accumulates from committing offences and continually evading capture by the police, with higher levels of heat causing the police to be more aggressive, from employing additional tactics and tools (such as roadblocks, spike strips, and police helicopters), to involving stronger, faster police cars such as police SUVs and Federal units. If a player has only one car actively pursuing them, reinforcements may be called in and arrive after a period of time.


text: Players can lose the police through skillful driving, making use of their special abilities, ramming pursuing vehicles and utilizing "Pursuit Breakers" - environmental traps, highlighted on the mini-map, which when triggered cause a certain number of police vehicles to be taken out of action, such as smashing through a gas station. Evading and losing the police - either by disabling/immobilizing vehicles, gaining some distance from pursuers, or a combination of both - does not end a pursuit, once there are no more active vehicles. Instead, the player enters a "cooldown" period when this happens, which pauses the pursuit (and any reinforcements being called in), they must hide and avoid being spotted by police for a period of time. The length of time for this period is longer at higher levels of heat but can be decreased significantly if the player reaches and hides in special concealment spots around the game's setting, which are marked on the mini-map during this phase and are used to place them out of sight of police units. A pursuit fully ends when the player successfully escapes the police, or is overwhelmed and trapped, and thus "busted" as a result.


text: In the game's main mode, the objective is to race against each of the setting's major street racers (or Blacklist Racer) and defeat them. Initially, players begin by completing a tutorial sequence of events to ease players into the game, whereupon they must choose a car to use for the rest of the game. The selection available is limited, but more become available as the player defeats each Blacklist racer, including better performance upgrades for these, with players able to sell any car acquired at any time during the game - cars can be bought at car lots, while upgrades and customization parts can be bought at garages. Events in this mode are divided into two categories - Racing events, and Milestones. While Racing events focus on the game's main series of racing events which earn money rewards when won, Milestones focus on completing specific objectives, most of which usually involve being involved in a police pursuit and raising the player's Bounty - a form of currency detailing how much trouble the player has caused for the police in the game's setting, based on the number of offences and damage to property they had caused. An example of a Milestone can be the player being required to enter a police pursuit and then attempting to escape it within a set amount of time.


text: Police pursuits in this mode can occur in Free Roam, during a race, or from activating one in the game's pause menu - the latter can be done only if there are any Milestones yet to be completed. Although police units will mainly impede a player if they begin pursuing them in a race, they will attempt to arrest them when in Free Roam. If the police achieve this, the player is fined based on their heat level, which is reset, and their car is given an impound strike - if the player cannot pay their fines, or receive a third strike on their car, it is impounded and lost; losing all of their cars this way and having no money to buy a new one, automatically ends the game. If the player escapes pursuit, the car retains the heat level it accumulated but can lose this by either having its visual looks changed or by driving another vehicle for a period of time. Players can view a statistic screen at any time during this mode to view their records regarding infractions, the cost to state, deployed tactics and pursuit lengths.


text: To take on each Blacklist Racer, players must complete events and Milestones associated with them, whereupon they must win against the racer in a successive series of races - the number increases as the player progresses in the story. Defeating a Blacklist Racer not only unlocks the next opponent and a new series of events, along with new Milestones to achieve but also unlocks additional cars and upgrade parts as well, along with allowing the player to claim two rewards from them. Each Blacklist Racer has six rewards they can offer when defeated. While three of these rewards consist of special customization parts and unique performance upgrades, the other three, concealed from the player until selected, consist of the racer's personal car - a uniquely modified vehicle - and two randomly selected bonus functions - extra money; impound recovery of lost vehicles; a "get-out-of-jail-free-card"; the removal of an impound strike on any car. Any component Markers selected can be acquired by visiting the garages after returning to Free Roam. In addition, defeating specific Blacklist Racers unlocks access to the other districts of the city - the player has access to one district, to begin with, but unlocks more as they progress in the game, including additional safehouses.


text: In Quick Race mode, players can enter any event they wish and use any car that they want, while opting to either make custom parameters for the event (i.e. the number of laps) or let the game create a random set of parameters. The number of events and cars to choose from depend on the player's progress in the game's Career mode.


text: In Challenge Series mode, players take part in a successive series of events, in which completing one unlocks the next event. While around half of these are focused on checkpoint races, the other consist of a mixture of pursuit events akin to the Milestone events in Career Mode, with each event tasking the player to complete its goal using a specific vehicle on a specific route/from a starting position, and beginning on a certain level of heat. Vehicles for each event are pre-tuned, and range from various cars available in Career mode to those not accessible such as dump trucks and police cars. Completing specific challenges rewards the player with bonus cars for use in Career and Quick Race mode.


text: Multiplayer in "Most Wanted" consists of online modes, which were available for the Xbox 360, Xbox, PC and PlayStation Portable editions of the game. Up to 4 players can participate in an online race and can race in 4 game modes including circuit, sprint, lap knockout and speed trap. Furthermore, there is the option to enable Performance Matching in an online race - all cars in the race are automatically upgraded to match the performance (i.e. top speed, handling, etc.) of the fastest car in that particular race. As soon as the race is over, all modifications made to the cars by performance matching are removed. The online multiplayer lobby was shut down on August 1, 2011, though it is still possible to play the game in multiplayer, but through an unofficial modification called "Most Wanted Online".


text: "Most Wanted" takes place in the fictional city of Rockport, which consists of three major districts: Rosewood, Camden Beach and Downtown Rockport. The city consists of areas featuring grimy industrial complexes, affluent suburbs, mountainous and wooded surroundings, a university campus, and a downtown core, with a mixture of road networks ranging from coastal roads to major highways. The setting is heavily influenced by cities from across the United States' "Rust Belt" and Pacific Northwest, with some resemblances to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon. Much of the game's events and story take place in a fixed time period between sunrise and sunset, compared to the previous title's races that took place at night.


text: In the city of Rockport, members of the Rockport Police Department (RPD) work to put an end to the city's illegal street racing scene. A task force of traffic officers led by Sergeant Jonathan Cross works to bring down the street racers involved, including a group known as the "Blacklist" fifteen street racers who have gained notoriety for their racing and their evasion of the police. The player, a street racer who arrives at Rockport to challenge the Blacklist with a custom painted blue and silver BMW M3 GTR, receives help from fellow street racer Mia Townsend (played by Josie Maran) in setting up a race with Razor, the Blacklist's lowest-ranked driver. The player attracts the attention of Razor by winning race after race in their M3 GTR, including two races against Razor's henchmen, Ronald "Ronnie" McCrea and Toru "Bull" Sato. Competing with him in a "pink slip" race a few days later, Mia discovers the player's BMW has left a huge oil slick at the start line when the race began, and calls the player to warn them to end the race fast. However, the M3 breaks down due to engine failure and the player loses the race, forcing them to forfeit their car to Razor. Cross soon arrives with the RPD and arrests the player for street racing after Razor and the other street racers escape, but is forced to release them due to a lack of evidence as the player no longer had a car to drive.


text: Once free, Mia picks up the player from the police station and reveals to the player that Razor had sabotaged their car in order to seize it and use it to climb up in ranks within the Blacklist, and advises them to do the same in order to get revenge. Providing them with a safehouse and securing a new car, the player begins working to compete against the Blacklist in a series of street races and challenges involving police pursuits. In time, the player rises up in the ranks, gaining enough reputation to soon attract Razor's attention once they become the #2 racer on the Blacklist. The rivals soon compete again in another pink slip race, with the player eventually defeating Razor and recovering their prized BMW M3 GTR.


text: Shortly after their victory, Razor refuses to hand over the keys to the M3, which Mia snatches from him, telling him "it's over Razor". Razor retorts by saying "it ain't over until I say it's over" and attempts to assault Mia to retrieve the keys. Mia subdues him and reveals herself to be an undercover police officer for the RPD, who had been working to bring down the Blacklist from the inside for Cross. Cross soon arrives with backup to arrest the Blacklist before they can flee after Mia revealed herself to them as a cop. While Razor and the other drivers are all arrested, Mia refuses to let the player be captured and tosses them the keys, advising them to run. She lies to Cross who questions the player’s whereabouts, saying that he got away. This infuriates Cross, who demands the entire RPD go after the player, who is now the most wanted street racer in the nation. As the RPD begins a citywide manhunt for the player, Mia contacts them and informs them with an escape route out of the city by jumping a derelict bridge on the city limits. She tells him that they can no longer go back to any of the safe houses as Cross knows about them, and that their car is fast enough to make the jump. The player successfully evades the cops by jumping the bridge and escaping Rockport. In a post-credits scene, Cross creates a national-level warrant for the player and his BMW M3 GTR, adding him to the National Most Wanted List. This event leads to the sequel, "".


text: "Need for Speed: Most Wanted 'Black Edition", a collector's edition of "Most Wanted", was released in celebration of the "Need for Speed" series' 10th anniversary and in conjunction with the release of "Most Wanted". The Black Edition features additional races, bonus cars and other additional content. The Black Edition comes with a special feature DVD that contains interviews and videos about the game. The Black Edition was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2 and Xbox in the United States and Australia; only the PlayStation 2 version of Black Edition was released additionally for Europe.


text: The cutscenes in the game are live-action videos shot with real actors and set pieces, and CGI effects are added to car exteriors and environments for extra visual flair. The videos are presented in a significantly different style from the "Underground" series, and this presentation of cut scenes is used again in "" and "".


text: The depiction between all of the versions graphics-wise is not the same, especially on portable versions. The Microsoft Windows version varies by hardware and can look better compared to the console versions. The recommended hardware or above has a similar frame rate to the Xbox 360 version. The game makes heavy use of the HDRR and motion blur effects to give a more realistic feel.


text: Need for Speed: Most Wanted 5-1-0 is a PlayStation Portable port of "Most Wanted", released on the same day as its console and personal computer counterparts. Similar to "Most Wanted", "Most Wanted 5-1-0" features a similar Blacklist 15 listing and Career Mode, with the addition of "Tuner Takedown", a "Be the Cop" mode not featured on "Most Wanted". "Most Wanted 5-1-0" lacks many elements of its other console and PC counterparts, like cut scenes, a storyline and a free roam mode, and contains minor differences (including listing the real name of a Blacklist racer rather than his/her nickname). The title of the game is based on the numerals "5-1-0", which is the police code for street racing.


text: EA ceased support to the Windows version of the game very early in its life cycle. The latest patch for the Windows version (1.3) was released on December 6, 2005.


text: The music featured in the game are mostly licensed music by EA Trax. It is a variety of music genres ranging from rap, hip-hop, electronica, and rock, sung by artists like The Prodigy, Celldweller, Styles of Beyond (who is known for performing the game's signature menu theme song, "Nine Thou" as well as performing another song called "Shapeshifter" with Celldweller), Rock, Lupe Fiasco, Disturbed, Avenged Sevenfold, BT & The Roots (who is known for performing the song "Tao of the Machine" that was originally in "Blade II"), Static-X, Bullet for My Valentine, and Hush. The rap songs mostly play in the game's main menu, while the hip hop, rock songs, electronica, and techno music mostly play during race sequences. The game features a score composed by Paul Linford that plays during pursuit sequences. Paul Linford, alongside Chris Vrenna, developed two original songs that play during races; "The Mann" and "Most Wanted Mashup". The licensed songs can be played during free roam, races, and are optional during pursuit chases if the player chooses to not play the licensed score performed by Paul Linford, or may not be played at all. Some of the pursuit chase music would eventually be featured in its successor, "".


text: "Need for Speed: Most Wanted" was met with positive reviews. "GameSpot" praised the game for its "sharp graphics" and "outstanding sound effects", but noted the AI for being sometimes easy at first, and sometimes hard at later stages. "IGN" praised the map design, describing it as "a crazily chromed out, sepia-tone landscape of industrial structures", the car modelling, the car line up and the return of exotics. Particularly strong praise was given to the police system, saying that the cops continually grow in aggressiveness and numbers and they add component of challenge, annoyance, and heat that makes this game challenging and entertaining. Praise even went to the cut-scenes and their casting, which usually falls victim to critics, saying that this mixture of animated, highly coloured FMV characters and stylized backgrounds is both imaginative and refreshing.


text: "Need for Speed: Most Wanted" was a commercial success; it sold 16 million copies worldwide and 3.9 million in the United States, making it the best-selling title in the series. The PlayStation 2 version of "Most Wanted" received a "Double Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 600,000 copies in the United Kingdom.


text: A reboot of "Most Wanted" IP was developed by Criterion Games, simply titled "" and was released in October 2012.


title: 1985 MOVE bombing

text: The 1985 MOVE bombing was the destruction of residential homes in the Osage neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, by the Philadelphia Police Department following a standoff and firefight with the community organization MOVE. Two explosive devices were dropped by a police helicopter on the roof of the house that was occupied by MOVE, causing a fire which the Philadelphia Fire Department subsequently let burn out of control, destroying 61 neighboring houses over two city blocks, and leaving 250 people homeless. Six adults and five children in the MOVE compound died in the attack, with one adult and one child surviving. A lawsuit in federal court found that the city used excessive force and violated constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure.


title: 1985 MOVE bombing

text: In 1981, MOVE relocated to a row house at 6221 Osage Avenue in the Cobbs Creek area of West Philadelphia. Neighbors complained to the city for years about trash around their building, confrontations with neighbors, and bullhorn announcements of political messages by MOVE members. The bullhorn was broken and inoperable for the three weeks prior to the police bombing of the row house.


title: 1985 MOVE bombing

text: The police obtained arrest warrants in 1985 charging four MOVE occupants with crimes including parole violations, contempt of court, illegal possession of firearms, and making terroristic threats. Mayor Wilson Goode and police commissioner Gregore J. Sambor classified MOVE as a terrorist organization. Police evacuated residents of the area from the neighborhood prior to their action. Residents were told that they would be able to return to their homes after a 24-hour period.


title: 1985 MOVE bombing

text: On Monday, May 13, 1985, nearly 500 police officers, along with city manager Leo Brooks, arrived in force and attempted to clear the building and execute the arrest warrants. Water and electricity were shut off in order to force MOVE members out of the house. Commissioner Sambor read a long speech addressed to MOVE members that started with, "Attention MOVE: This is America. You have to abide by the laws of the United States." When the MOVE members did not respond, the police decided to forcibly remove the people who remained in house, which consisted of seven adults and six children.


title: 1985 MOVE bombing

text: There was an armed standoff with police, who threw tear gas canisters at the building. The MOVE members fired at them, and a gunfight with semi-automatic and automatic firearms ensued. Police used more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition before Commissioner Sambor ordered that the compound be bombed. From a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter, Philadelphia Police Department Lt. Frank Powell proceeded to drop two 1.5-pound (0.75 kg) bombs (which the police referred to as "entry devices") made of Tovex, a dynamite substitute, combined with two pounds of FBI-supplied C-4, targeting a fortified, bunker-like cubicle on the roof of the house.


title: 1985 MOVE bombing

text: The ensuing fire killed 11 of the people in the house, six adults and five children: John Africa, Rhonda Africa, Theresa Africa, Frank Africa, Conrad Africa, Tree Africa, Delisha Africa, Netta Africa, Little Phil Africa, Tomaso Africa, and Raymond Africa. Ramona Africa, one of the two MOVE survivors from the house, said that police fired at those trying to escape.


title: 1985 MOVE bombing

text: Mayor Goode appointed an investigative commission called the Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission (PSIC, aka MOVE Commission), chaired by William H. Brown, III. Commissioner Sambor resigned in November 1985; in a speech the following year, he said that he was made a "surrogate" by Goode.


title: 1985 MOVE bombing

text: The MOVE Commission issued its report on March 6, 1986. The report denounced the actions of the city government, stating that dropping a bomb on an occupied row house was unconscionable. Following the release of the report, Goode made a formal public apology. No one from the city government was criminally charged in the attack. The only surviving adult MOVE member, Ramona Africa, refused to testify in court and was charged and convicted on charges of riot and conspiracy; she served seven years in prison.


title: 1985 MOVE bombing

text: Three lawsuits were filed against the city of Philadelphia including Louise James, administrator of the estate of Frank James in 1994; Ramona Africa in 1996; and Alfonso Leaphart, administrator of the estate of Vincent Leaphart.


title: 1985 MOVE bombing

text: A lawsuit appealing a judgment against the police and public officials was filed with the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on November 3, 1994 "Africa v. City of Philadelphia" (In re City of Philadelphia Litig.), 49 F.3d 945 (1995) and was decided on March 6, 1995. The court decided that the plaintiffs did not have a Fourth Amendment claim against the city because there was no seizure when the defendants dropped explosives in the plaintiffs buildings, city officials and police officers had qualified immunity under 42 U.S.C.S. § 1983, but the city did not have qualified immunity from liability despite its officials being exempt.


title: 1985 MOVE bombing

text: In 1996, a federal jury ordered the city to pay a $1.5 million civil suit judgment to survivor Ramona Africa and relatives of two people killed in the bombing. The jury had found that the city used excessive force and violated the members' constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure. Ramona was awarded $500,000 for the pain, suffering and physical harm suffered in the fire. In 1985, Philadelphia was given the nickname "The City that Bombed Itself".


title: 1985 MOVE bombing

text: In 2005, federal judge Clarence Charles Newcomer presided over a civil trial brought by residents seeking damages for having been displaced by the widespread destruction following the 1985 police bombing of MOVE. A jury awarded them a $12.83 million verdict against the City of Philadelphia.


title: 1985 MOVE bombing

text: In November 2020, the Philadelphia City Council approved a resolution to formally apologize for the MOVE bombing. The measure also established an annual day of "observation, reflection and recommitment" on May 13, the anniversary of the bombing.


title: 1985 MOVE bombing

text: Since the bombing, the bones of two children, 14-year-old Tree (Katricia Dotson) and 12-year-old Delisha Orr, were kept at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. In 2021, "Billy Penn" revealed that according to the museum, the remains had been transferred to researchers at Princeton University, though the university was unaware of their exact whereabouts. The remains had been used by Janet Monge, an adjunct professor in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting professor in the same subject at Princeton University, in videos for an online forensics course named “Real Bones: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology,” as case studies. Present-day MOVE members were shocked to learn this, with Mike Africa Jr. stating "They were bombed, and burned alive ... and now you wanna keep their bones."


title: 1985 MOVE bombing

text: The city stated the remains had gone unclaimed by the families after the bombing, but in May 2021, the city of Philadelphia's Health Commissioner, Thomas Farley, resigned under pressure after it was revealed that in 2017 he ordered the cremation and disposal of victims' remains without either identifying them or contacting members of the family. A day after Farley's resignation, staff at the Medical Examiner's Office found the box labeled "MOVE" in a refrigerated area of their office containing the un-cremated remains. As of 2021, Mike Africa Jr. stated that the Africa family have not yet decided what to do with the remains. The sisters' remains from the Medical Examiner's Office were released to their surviving brother in August 2022.


title: 1985 MOVE bombing

text: Although the bones used by Monge in the "Real Bones" course were given to the Africa family in 2021, accounts differ regarding how many remains were at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and whether all bones from MOVE bombing victims at the museum were returned in 2021. A legal team hired by the University of Pennsylvania stated that the bones of Delisha Orr were never at the Penn Museum. However, an investigation by the City of Philadelphia disagreed, and stated that there was evidence that remains of Delisha Orr were at the Penn Museum. Nine forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology disagreed with the claims published by Penn's legal team and agreed with those of the City of Philadelphia. The City of Philadelphia also questioned whether all the remains of Katricia Dotson which were at the Penn Museum were given to MOVE in 2021.


title: Aiko, Princess Toshi

text: Princess Aiko was born on 1 December 2001 at 2:43 PM in the Imperial Household Agency Hospital in Tokyo Imperial Palace,


title: Aiko, Princess Toshi

text: In a break with tradition, the name of the princess was chosen by her parents, instead of by the Emperor. It was selected from clause 56 of Li Lou II, one of the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Mencius. Aiko, the princess's personal name, is written with the kanji characters for and and means "a person who loves others". The princess also has an imperial title, , which means "a person who respects others".


title: Aiko, Princess Toshi

text: Princess Aiko began her education at Gakushūin Kindergarten on 3 April 2006. She left kindergarten on 15 March 2008.


title: Aiko, Princess Toshi

text: On her eighth birthday, it was revealed her interests included writing kanji characters, calligraphy, jump rope, playing piano and violin, and writing poetry.


title: Aiko, Princess Toshi

text: In early March 2010, Aiko began to stay home from school due to being bullied by boys in her elementary school. Aiko returned to school on a limited basis on 2 May 2010. After returning to school, a senior palace official said that she would attend a limited number of classes accompanied by her mother, upon advice from a doctor at the Crown Prince's household.


title: Aiko, Princess Toshi

text: In November 2011, Aiko was hospitalized with pneumonia. In 2014, she enrolled at the Gakushuin Girl's Junior High-school.


title: Aiko, Princess Toshi

text: In the summer of 2018, she made her first solo trip abroad to attend a summer program at Eton College. Reports from an unnamed palace source close to the family reported that Aiko provides her mother Masako with emotional support in her new role as empress. In February 2020 she was accepted at Gakushuin University where she is to major in Japanese language and literature.


title: Aiko, Princess Toshi

text: After turning age 16, Aiko began accompanying her parents at public appearances. She was ineligible to attend any of her father's ascension ceremonies in person as she was still a minor at the time. On 5 December 2021, the Sunday after her 20th birthday, she participated in formal coming of age ceremonies and was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Precious Crown by the Emperor. She attended the 2022 New Year celebration at the Imperial Palace as her first public event as a working member of the imperial family. Her first press conference took place on 17 March.


title: Aiko, Princess Toshi

text: The Imperial Household Law of 1947 abolished the Japanese nobility; under provisions of this law, the imperial family was streamlined to the descendants of Emperor Taishō. The laws of succession in Japan prevent inheritance by or through women.


title: Aiko, Princess Toshi

text: The birth of Princess Aiko sparked debate in Japan about whether the Imperial Household Law of 1947 should be changed from the current system of agnatic primogeniture to absolute primogeniture, which would allow a woman, as firstborn, to inherit the Chrysanthemum Throne ahead of a younger brother or male cousin. Although Imperial chronologies include eight empresses regnant in the course of Japanese history, their successors were always selected from amongst the members of the paternal Imperial bloodline, which is why some conservative scholars argue that the women's reigns were temporary and that male-only succession tradition must be maintained in the 21st century. Though Empress Genmei was followed on the throne by her daughter, Empress Genshō, Genshō's father, Prince Kusakabe, was also a member of the imperial dynasty, as the son of Emperor Tenmu, and therefore Genshō was a patrilineal descendant of the imperial bloodline. In addition, Empress Genshō herself was succeeded by her brother's son, thus keeping the throne in the same agnatic line; both Genshō and Genmei, as well as all other empresses regnant and emperors, belonged to the same patriline.


title: Aiko, Princess Toshi

text: A government-appointed panel of experts submitted a report on 25 October 2005, recommending that the Imperial succession law be amended to permit absolute primogeniture. On 20 January 2006, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi used part of his annual keynote speech to address the controversy when he pledged to submit a bill to the Diet letting women ascend to the throne in order that the Imperial throne be continued into the future in a stable manner. Koizumi did not announce a timing for the legislation to be introduced nor did he provide details about the content, but he did note that it would be in line with the conclusions of the 2005 government panel.


title: Aiko, Princess Toshi

text: Proposals to replace agnatic primogeniture were shelved temporarily after it was announced in February 2006 that the-then Crown Prince's younger brother, Fumihito, Prince Akishino, and his wife, Kiko, Princess Akishino, were expecting their third child. On 6 September 2006, Princess Kiko gave birth to a son, Hisahito, who was third in line to the Chrysanthemum Throne at the time of the birth under the current law, after his uncle, the then-Crown Prince, and his father, Prince Akishino. The prince's birth provided the first male heir to be born in the imperial family in 41 years. On 3 January 2007, Prime Minister Shinzō Abe announced that he would drop the proposal to alter the Imperial Household Law. Therefore, at this time, it seems unlikely that the succession laws will be changed to allow Princess Aiko to ascend the throne.


title: Tom Cotton

text: Thomas Bryant Cotton (born May 13, 1977) is an American politician, attorney, and former military officer serving as the junior United States senator for Arkansas since 2015. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2013 to 2015.


title: Tom Cotton

text: Cotton was elected as the U.S. representative for Arkansas's 4th congressional district in 2012 and to the Senate at age 37 in 2014, defeating two-term Democratic incumbent Mark Pryor.


title: Tom Cotton

text: Thomas Bryant Cotton was born on May 13, 1977, in Dardanelle, Arkansas. His father, Thomas Leonard "Len" Cotton, was a district supervisor in the Arkansas Department of Health, and his mother, Avis ( Bryant) Cotton, was a schoolteacher who later became principal of their district's middle school. Cotton's family had lived in rural Arkansas for seven generations, and he grew up on his family's cattle farm. He attended Dardanelle High School, where he played on the local and regional basketball teams; standing tall, he was usually required to play center.


title: Tom Cotton

text: Cotton was accepted to Harvard College after graduating from high school in 1995. At Harvard, he majored in government and was a member of the editorial board of "The Harvard Crimson", often dissenting from the liberal majority. In articles, Cotton addressed what he saw as "sacred cows" such as affirmative action. He graduated with an A.B. "magna cum laude" in 1998 after only three years of study. Cotton's senior thesis focused on "The Federalist Papers".


title: Tom Cotton

text: After graduating from Harvard College in 1998, Cotton was accepted into a master's program at Claremont Graduate University. He left in 1999, saying that he found academic life "too sedentary", and instead enrolled at Harvard Law School. He graduated with a J.D. degree in 2002.


title: Tom Cotton

text: After graduating from Harvard Law School, Cotton spent one year as a law clerk for Judge Jerry Edwin Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He then went into private practice as an associate at law firms Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Cooper & Kirk in Washington, D.C., until he enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2005.


title: Tom Cotton

text: On January 11, 2005, Cotton enlisted in the United States Army. He entered Officer Candidate School (OCS) in March 2005 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in June. He completed the U.S. Army Ranger Course, a 62-day small unit tactics and leadership program that earned him the Ranger tab, and Airborne School to earn the Parachutist Badge.


title: Tom Cotton

text: In May 2006, Cotton was deployed to Baghdad as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) as a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division. In Iraq, he led a 41-man air assault infantry platoon in the 506th Infantry Regiment, and planned and performed daily combat patrols.


title: Tom Cotton

text: In December 2006 Cotton was promoted to first lieutenant and reassigned to the 3d Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, as a platoon leader.


title: Tom Cotton

text: From October 2008 to July 2009, Cotton was deployed to eastern Afghanistan. He was assigned within the Train Advise Assist Command – East at its Gamberi forward operating base (FOB) in Laghman Province as the operations officer of a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), where he planned daily counter-insurgency and reconstruction operations.


title: Tom Cotton

text: Cotton was honorably discharged in September 2009. During his time in the service, he completed two combat deployments overseas, was awarded a Bronze Star, two Army Commendation Medals, a Combat Infantryman Badge, a Ranger tab, an Afghanistan Campaign Medal, and an Iraq Campaign Medal. In July 2010, Cotton entered the Army Reserve (USAR). He was discharged in May 2013.


title: Tom Cotton

text: In June 2006, while stationed in Iraq, Cotton gained public attention after writing an open letter to the editor of "The New York Times", asserting three journalists had violated "espionage laws" by publishing an article detailing a classified government program monitoring terrorists' finances. The "Times" did not publish Cotton's letter, but it was published on "Power Line", a conservative blog that had been copied on the email. In the letter, Cotton called for the journalists to be prosecuted for espionage "to the fullest extent of the law" and incarcerated. He accused the newspaper of having "gravely endangered the lives of my soldiers and all other soldiers and innocent Iraqis". Cotton's claims circulated online and were reprinted in full elsewhere. According to Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University in 2011, the Espionage Act has never been used against journalists. Rosen argued accusing investigative journalists of engaging in espionage is "essentially saying that they’re working for another power, or aiding the enemy. That is culture war tactics taken to an extreme."


title: Tom Cotton

text: In 2021, Salon reported that Cotton falsely claimed in campaign ads and videos from 2011 to 2014 that he had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and earned a Bronze Star as a U.S. Army Ranger even though he did not serve in the Army's 75th Ranger Regiment. Fact-checking site Snopes rated Salon's reporting as true. In response to the article, Democratic congressman Jason Crow, who served in the 75th Ranger Regiment, criticized Cotton for calling himself a Ranger. A spokesperson for Cotton said, "To be clear, as he's stated many times, Senator Cotton graduated from Ranger School, earned the Ranger Tab, and served a combat tour with the 101st Airborne, not the 75th Ranger Regiment." As the Salon story garnered widespread attention, Cotton's spokeswoman recommended that the "Arkansas Democrat-Gazette" talk to retired Command Sergeant Major Rick Merritt, a former regimental sergeant major of the 75th Ranger Regiment, who said that Cotton is "100% a Ranger. He will always be a Ranger. It’s unfair. It’s almost slanderous."


title: Tom Cotton

text: In an article on the controversy, "Business Insider" wrote, "[w]hile the distinction [between being a "Ranger" and attending Ranger School] is rarely brought up outside of military circles, it has been fiercely debated among veterans and encapsulates the nuances of military titles."


title: Tom Cotton

text: Cotton dismissed allegations of falsifying his military record as politically driven. "I graduated from the Ranger School, I wore the Ranger tab in combat with the 101st Airborne in Iraq. This is not about my military record. This is about my politics."


title: Tom Cotton

text: Shortly after Cotton's Afghanistan deployment ended, he was introduced to Chris Chocola, a former congressman and the president of Club for Growth, a Republican political action committee that became one of Cotton's top contributors. Cotton considered a run against incumbent Democratic U.S. senator Blanche Lincoln in 2010 but declined due to lack of donors and believing it was premature. After the retirement announcement of Democratic incumbent Mike Ross in 2011, Cotton ran for Congress in Arkansas's 4th congressional district.


title: Tom Cotton

text: Following his active duty service, Cotton went to work for management consulting firm McKinsey & Company before running for Congress in Arkansas's 4th congressional district when Democratic incumbent Mike Ross announced in 2011 that he would not seek reelection.


title: Tom Cotton

text: In September 2011, "Arkansas Times" editor Max Brantley, criticized Cotton for a 1998 article he wrote in "The Harvard Crimson" in which he questioned the internet's value as a teaching tool in the classroom, saying the internet had "too many temptations" to be useful in schools and libraries. Cotton later said the internet had matured since he wrote the article.


title: Tom Cotton

text: Beth Anne Rankin, the 2010 Republican nominee, and John David Cowart, who was backed by Louisiana businessman and philanthropist Edgar Cason, were the only other Republican candidates in the race after Marcus Richmond dropped out in February 2012. In the May 22 primary, Cotton won the Republican nomination with 57.6% of the vote; Rankin finished second with 37.1%.


title: Tom Cotton

text: The Club for Growth endorsed Cotton. Of the $2.2 million Cotton raised for his campaign, Club for Growth donors accounted for $315,000 and were his largest supporters. Senator John McCain also endorsed him. Cotton was supported by both the Tea Party movement and the Republican establishment.


title: Tom Cotton

text: In the November 6 general election, Cotton defeated state senator Gene Jeffress, 59.5% to 36.7%. He was the second Republican since Reconstruction Era of the United States to represent the 4th district. The first, Jay Dickey, held it from 1993 to 2001, during the presidency of Bill Clinton, whose residence was in the district at the time. On January 3, 2013, Cotton was sworn into the House of Representatives by Speaker John Boehner.


title: Tom Cotton

text: As a freshman, Cotton became a vocal opponent of the Obama administration's foreign and domestic policies. He voted for an act to eliminate the 2013 statutory pay adjustment for federal employees, which prevented a 0.5% pay increase for all federal workers from taking effect in February 2013. Cotton voted against the 2013 Farm Bill over concerns about waste and fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, voting later that month to strip funding from that program. He also voted against the revised measure, the Agricultural Act of 2014, which expanded crop insurance and a price floor for rice farmers.


title: Tom Cotton

text: Cotton accused Obama of presenting a "false choice" between the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and war. Cotton was also criticized in some media outlets for underestimating what successful military action against Iran would entail. Cotton said, "the president is trying to make you think it would be 150,000 heavy mechanized troops on the ground in the Middle East again as we saw in Iraq. That's simply not the case." Drawing a comparison to President Clinton's actions in 1998 during the Bombing of Iraq, he elaborated: "Several days' air and naval bombing against Iraq's weapons of mass destruction facilities for exactly the same kind of behavior. For interfering with weapons inspectors and for disobeying Security Council resolutions." On July 21, 2015, Cotton and Mike Pompeo claimed to have uncovered the existence of secret side agreements between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on procedures for inspection and verification of Iran's nuclear activities under the JCPOA. Obama administration officials acknowledged the existence of agreements between Iran and the IAEA on the inspection of sensitive military sites, but denied that they were "secret side deals," calling them standard practice in crafting arms-control pacts and saying the administration had provided information about them to Congress.


title: Tom Cotton

text: On August 6, 2013, Cotton announced he would challenge Democratic incumbent Mark Pryor for his seat in the United States Senate. Stuart Rothenberg of "Roll Call" called Pryor the most vulnerable senator seeking reelection that year. Cotton was endorsed by the conservative Club for Growth PAC, Senator Marco Rubio, the National Federation of Independent Business, and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who campaigned for Cotton. The Associated Press called the race for Cotton immediately after the polls closed; he received 56.5% of the vote to Pryor's 39.4%. Cotton was sworn into office on January 6, 2015.


title: Tom Cotton

text: As a U.S. senator, Cotton has received multiple death threats. In 2018, Adam Albrett of Fairfax County, Virginia, was arrested for "faxing death threats" against President Donald Trump and members of Congress, including Cotton. Police traced the fax to Albrett using the phone number in the fax header.