title: Raúl Esparza

text: Esparza has been nominated in all Tony categories for which an actor is eligible. He is widely regarded for his versatility on stage, having performed musicals by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen Sondheim, Kander and Ebb, Boy George, the Sherman Brothers and in plays by Mamet, Pinter, William Shakespeare, Tom Stoppard, and more. His film work includes Sidney Lumet's "Find Me Guilty" and Wes Craven's "My Soul to Take", and his television credits include roles on "The Path", "Medium", "Hannibal" and "Pushing Daisies". He narrated the audiobook for Stephen King's "Under the Dome" as well as several others, and he sings in concerts across the country.


title: Raúl Esparza

text: Esparza was born in Wilmington, Delaware, to Cuban parents, María Elena Cecilia García y Gutiérrez and Raúl Esparza y Rues, who had left the country because of the Castro regime. While his paternal grandfather had been established in Castro's sugar ministry, his father's family grew disillusioned with the government, and in 1966, his father and grandmother escaped to the U.S. by boat, while his grandfather defected through Spain. Esparza's maternal grandfather had moved to Cuba from Figueres, Alt Empordà, Catalonia, Spain.


title: Raúl Esparza

text: Esparza was raised in Miami, Florida. He graduated from Belen Jesuit in 1988 and won a Silver Knight Award in Drama that same year. In 1992, Esparza received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama and a Bachelor's degree in English from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.


title: Raúl Esparza

text: While on "Finding Your Roots", Season 8, Episode 2, Esparza learned that his Catalan great-great-grandparents founded Garcia de Pou Restaurant Supply Store in Madrid, Spain, which is still owned and operated by members of his family. He also learned that another branch of his family came from the small town of Navata, Girona, Catalonia, Spain, where they can be traced back 14 generations.


title: Raúl Esparza

text: Esparza first drew attention with his performance in the 2000 Broadway revival of "The Rocky Horror Show", which won him the Theatre World Award. Esparza's other Broadway credits include "Cabaret" (2001), "Taboo" (2003), "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" (2005), and Sondheim's "Company" (2006). He received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical and a Drama Desk Award for his performance in "Taboo". His performance in "Company" earned him a second Tony nomination, this time for Best Actor in a Musical, as well as his second Drama Desk award. Beginning in November 2007, he appeared in Harold Pinter's play "The Homecoming" and was Tony-nominated for Best Featured Actor in a Play. In 2008, he played Charlie Fox in the revival of David Mamet's "Speed-the-Plow" co-starring Jeremy Piven and Elisabeth Moss on Broadway. His performance in "Speed-the-Plow" earned him a Tony nomination for Best Actor in a Play, making him the second performer (after Boyd Gaines) to be nominated in all four acting categories a performer is eligible for at the Tonys, although he has yet to win one.


title: Raúl Esparza

text: Esparza appeared in a limited-engagement revival of Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia", which began previews at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on February 25, 2011, and opened on March 17, 2011.


title: Raúl Esparza

text: Esparza appeared in the musical "Leap of Faith" in the role of the "Reverend" Jonas Nightingale. He was involved in the workshop in 2008, the out-of-town tryout at the Ahmanson Theatre (Los Angeles) in 2010, and the Broadway production in 2012, for which he received a 2012 Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actor in a Musical.


title: Raúl Esparza

text: In 1999, Esparza played Che in the national tour of "Evita", opposite Natalie Toro. The tour was intended to open on Broadway, but failed to do so. In 2001, he appeared Off-Broadway in "tick, tick... BOOM!" by Jonathan Larson, garnering a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actor in a Musical. He appeared in two musicals by Stephen Sondheim, "Sunday in the Park with George" and "Merrily We Roll Along" at the 2002 Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration. He also appeared as the Arbiter in the Actors Fund of America concert of Tim Rice's "Chess" in September 2003.


title: Raúl Esparza

text: In 2009, Esparza starred in a production of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" at the Delacorte Theater (New York) with Anne Hathaway, from June 25 through July 12. He starred as Hapgood in the City Center Encores! staged concert production of "Anyone Can Whistle" from April 8 to 11, 2010, opposite Sutton Foster as Fay and Donna Murphy as the Mayoress.


title: Raúl Esparza

text: In February 2018, Esparza played Freddie Trumper in the Kennedy Center's revival of Tim Rice's "Chess". From October to December 2018, Esparza played the title role in Classic Stage Company's Off-Broadway production of "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui." He was nominated for the 2019 Drama Desk Award for Best Actor for the role.


title: Raúl Esparza

text: In July 2019, Esparza appeared in a production of "Road Show" at the New York City Center. In October of the same year, Esparza played Harry in the off-Broadway comedy "Seared" by Theresa Rebeck.


title: Raúl Esparza

text: In April 2020 he was a host, executive producer, and performer in "", a virtual concert in honour of the 90th birthday of composer Stephen Sondheim benefiting the charity organisation ASTEP (Artists Striving to End Poverty).


title: Raúl Esparza

text: In December 2022, Esparza was a guest narrator at Disney's Candlelight Processional at Walt Disney World.


title: Raúl Esparza

text: In 2007, Esparza had a recurring role on the TV show "Pushing Daisies" as traveling salesman Alfredo Aldarisio, a role originally given to Paul Reubens. In 2009, Esparza recorded the audiobook "Under the Dome" by Stephen King. He has done narration for "The House of the Scorpion" by Nancy Farmer and "The Book of Unholy Mischief" by Elle Newmark. In January 2010, Esparza performed opposite Lucie Arnaz, Desi Arnaz Jr., and Valarie Pettiford at the 92Y's "Lyrics and Lyricist" event honoring Desi Arnaz and his orchestra, "Babalu: The American Songbook Goes Latin". In 2010, Esparza appeared as Abel Plenkov in Wes Craven's "My Soul to Take".


title: Raúl Esparza

text: From 2013 to 2015, Esparza appeared in the recurring role of Dr. Frederick Chilton in "Hannibal". He appeared in the 2016 film "Custody", written and directed by James Lapine, as an Administration for Children's Services agent.


title: Raúl Esparza

text: In 2012, Esparza became a recurring actor on the long-running NBC drama series "" as Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Rafael Barba, starting in the third episode of the show's 14th season, "". He appeared in 11 episodes of the show's 14th season. On July 17, 2013, he was promoted to series regular for the show's 15th season. His character became the first series-regular ADA since Stephanie March in the 11th season and the first regular male ADA in series history. His role on "SVU" was not his first "Law & Order" role, however, as he had previously portrayed an ADA in a 2009 episode of "", and a suspect in a 2010 episode of the original "Law & Order". On February 7, 2018, Esparza left "SVU" in the episode "” after six seasons on the show.


title: Raúl Esparza

text: Although having left the series to return to the stage, Esparza has been back on the show, making a very brief cameo before the main title in the Season 21 episode "Redemption in Her Corner". He made another guest appearance in Season 22 episode "Sightless in a Savage Land" and in the Season 23 Finale, "A Final Call at Forlini's Bar.


title: Raúl Esparza

text: Esparza married Michele Marie Perez, his high-school girlfriend, in 1994. They divorced in 2007. Esparza was the subject of a "The New York Times" profile in 2006 in which he revealed that he is bisexual.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels "Black Water" (1992), "What I Lived For" (1994), and "Blonde" (2000), and her short story collections "The Wheel of Love" (1970) and "Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories" (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel "them" (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014, and is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. Since 2016, she has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches short fiction in the spring semesters.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates was born in Lockport, New York, the eldest of three children of Carolina ("née" Bush), a homemaker of Hungarian descent, and Frederic James Oates, a tool and die designer. She grew up on her parents' farm outside the town.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Her brother, Fred Jr., and sister, Lynn Ann, were born in 1943 and 1956, respectively. (Lynn Ann is severely autistic and institutionalized, and Oates has not seen her since 1971.) Oates grew up in the working-class farming community of Millersport, New York, and characterized hers as "a happy, close-knit and unextraordinary family for our time, place and economic status", but her childhood as "a daily scramble for existence". Her paternal grandmother, Blanche Woodside, lived with the family and was "very close" to Joyce. After Blanche's death, Joyce learned that Blanche's father had killed himself, and Blanche had subsequently concealed her Jewish heritage; Oates eventually drew on aspects of her grandmother's life in writing the novel "The Gravedigger's Daughter" (2007).


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Violence marred the lives of Oates and her recent ancestors: Oates's mother's biological father was murdered in 1917, which led to Oates mother's informal adoption; and Oates's paternal grandmother survived, at age fourteen, an attempted murder-suicide at the hands of her own father. As a child, Oates’s next-door neighbor pled guilty to charges of arson and attempted murder of his family, and was sentenced to a prison term at Attica Correctional Facility.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates attended the same one-room school her mother had attended as a child. She became interested in reading at an early age and remembers Blanche's gift of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (1865) as "the great treasure of my childhood, and the most profound literary influence of my life. This was love at first sight!" In her early teens, she read the work of Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Fyodor Dostoevsky, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and Henry David Thoreau, writers whose "influences remain very deep".


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates began writing at the age of 14, when Blanche gave her a typewriter. Oates later transferred to several bigger, suburban schools and graduated from Williamsville South High School in 1956, where she worked for her high school newspaper. She was the first in her family to complete high school.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: As a teen, Oates also received early recognition for her writing by winning a Scholastic Art and Writing Award.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates earned a scholarship to attend Syracuse University, where she joined Phi Mu. She found Syracuse to be "a very exciting place academically and intellectually", and trained herself by "writing novel after novel and always throwing them out when I completed them". It was at this point that Oates began reading the work of Franz Kafka, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, and Flannery O'Connor, and she noted, "these influences are still quite strong, pervasive". At the age of 19, she won the "college short story" contest sponsored by "Mademoiselle". Oates was elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior and graduated valedictorian from Syracuse University with a B.A. "summa cum laude" in English in 1960, and received her M.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1961. She was a Ph.D. student at Rice University but left to become a full-time writer.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Evelyn Shrifte, president of the Vanguard Press, met Oates soon after Oates received her master's degree. "She was fresh out of school, and I thought she was a genius", Shrifte said. Vanguard published Oates' first book, the short-story collection "By the North Gate", in 1963.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: The Vanguard Press published Oates' first novel, "With Shuddering Fall" (1964), when she was 26 years old. In 1966, she published "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?", a short story dedicated to Bob Dylan and written after listening to his song "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue". The story is loosely based on the serial killer Charles Schmid, also known as "The Pied Piper of Tucson". It has been anthologized many times and adapted as a 1985 film, "Smooth Talk", which starred Laura Dern. In 2008, Oates said that of all her published work, she is most noted for "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Another early short story, "In a Region of Ice" ("The Atlantic Monthly", August 1966), features a young, gifted Jewish-American student. It dramatizes his drift into protest against the world of education and the sober, established society of his parents, his depression, and eventually murder-cum-suicide. It was inspired by a real-life incident (as were several of her works) and Oates had been acquainted with the model of her protagonist. She revisited this subject in the title story of her collection "Last Days: Stories" (1984). "In the Region of Ice" won the first of her two O. Henry Awards.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Her second novel was "A Garden of Earthly Delights" (1967), first of the so-called Wonderland Quartet published by Vanguard 1967–71. All were finalists for the annual National Book Award. The third novel in the series, "them" (1969), won the 1970 National Book Award for Fiction. It is set in Detroit during a time span from the 1930s to the 1960s, most of it in black ghetto neighborhoods, and deals openly with crime, drugs, and racial and class conflicts. Again, some of the key characters and events were based on real people whom Oates had known or heard of during her years in the city. Since then she has published an average of two books a year. Frequent topics in her work include rural poverty, sexual abuse, class tensions, desire for power, female childhood and adolescence, and occasionally the 'fantastic'. Violence is a constant in her work, even leading Oates to have written an essay in response to the question, "Why Is Your Writing So Violent?"


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: In 1990, she discussed her novel, "Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart", which also deals with themes of racial tension, and described "the experience of writing [it]" as "so intense it seemed almost electric". She is a fan of poet and novelist Sylvia Plath, describing Plath's sole novel "The Bell Jar" as a "near perfect work of art", but though Oates has often been compared to Plath, she disavows Plath's romanticism about suicide, and among her characters, she favors cunning, hardy survivors, both women and men. In the early 1980s, Oates began writing stories in the Gothic and horror genres; in her foray into these genres, Oates said she was "deeply influenced" by Kafka and felt "a writerly kinship" with James Joyce.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: In 1996, Oates published "We Were the Mulvaneys", a novel following the disintegration of an American family, which became a best-seller after being selected by Oprah's Book Club in 2001. "We Were the Mulvaneys" was eventually turned into a TV movie, which was nominated for several awards. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Oates wrote several books, mostly suspense novels, under the pen names Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Since at least the early 1980s, Oates has been rumored to be a favorite to win the Nobel Prize in Literature by oddsmakers and critics. Her papers, held at Syracuse University, include 17 unpublished short stories and four unpublished or unfinished novellas. Oates has said that most of her early unpublished work was "cheerfully thrown away".


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: One review of Oates's 1970 story collection "The Wheel of Love" characterized her as an author "of considerable talent" but at that time "far from being a great writer".


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates's 2006 short story "Landfill" was criticized because it drew on the death, several months earlier, of John A. Fiocco Jr., a 19-year-old New Jersey college student.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: In 1998, Oates received the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature, which is given annually to recognize outstanding achievement in American literature.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates founded "The Ontario Review", a literary magazine, in 1974 in Canada, with Raymond J. Smith, her husband and fellow graduate student, who would eventually become a professor of 18th-century literature. Smith served as editor of this venture, and Oates served as associate editor. The magazine's mission, according to Smith, the editor, was to bridge the literary and artistic culture of the US and Canada: "We tried to do this by publishing writers and artists from both countries, as well as essays and reviews of an intercultural nature." In 1978, Sylvester & Orphanos published "Sentimental Education".


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: In 1980, Oates and Smith founded Ontario Review Books, an independent publishing house. In 2004, Oates described the partnership as "a marriage of like minds – both my husband and I are so interested in literature and we read the same books; he'll be reading a book and then I'll read it – we trade and we talk about our reading at meal times ...".


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates taught in Beaumont, Texas, for a year, then moved to Detroit in 1962, where she began teaching at the University of Detroit. Influenced by the Vietnam war, the 1967 Detroit race riots, and a job offer, Oates moved across the river into Canada in 1968 with her husband, to a teaching position at the University of Windsor in Ontario. In 1978, she moved to Princeton, New Jersey, and began teaching at Princeton University.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Among others, Oates influenced Jonathan Safran Foer, who took an introductory writing course with Oates in 1995 as a Princeton undergraduate. Foer recalled later that Oates took an interest in his writing and his "most important of writerly qualities, energy," noting that she was "the first person to ever make me think I should try to write in any sort of serious way. And my life really changed after that." Oates served as advisor for Foer's senior thesis, which was an early version of his novel "Everything Is Illuminated" (published to acclaim in 2002).


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates retired from teaching at Princeton in 2014 and was honored at a retirement party in November of that year.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates has taught creative short fiction at UC Berkeley since 2016 and offers her course in spring semesters.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates was raised Catholic but as of 2007 is an atheist. In an interview with "Commonweal" magazine, Oates stated, "I think of religion as a kind of psychological manifestation of deep powers, deep imaginative, mysterious powers which are always with us."


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates self-identifies as a liberal, and supports gun control. She was a vocal critic of former US President Donald Trump and his policies, both in public and on Twitter.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates opposed the shuttering of cultural institutions on Trump's inauguration day as a protest against the President, stating this "would only hurt artists. Rather, cultural institutions should be sanctuaries for those repelled by the inauguration."


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: In January 2019, Oates stated that "Trump is like a figurehead, but I think what really controls everything is just a few really wealthy families or corporations."


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates is a regular poster on Twitter with her account given to her by her publisher HarperCollins. She has drawn particular criticism for the purportedly perceived Islamophobia of her tweets. Oates stated in her criticized tweet, "Where 99.3% of women report having been sexually harassed & rape is epidemicEgyptnatural to inquire: what's the predominant religion?" She later backtracked from that statement. Oates was also criticized for responding to a Mississippi school's pulling of "To Kill a Mockingbird" from its eighth grade curriculum with a tweet claiming that Mississippians do not read.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates defended her statements on Twitter saying, "I don't consider that I really said anything that I don't feel and I think that sometimes the crowd is not necessarily correct. You know, Kierkegaard said, 'The crowd is a lie.' The sort of lynch mob mentality among some people on Twitter and they rush after somebodythey rush in this direction; they rush over here; they're kind of rushing around the landscape of the news".


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates writes in longhand, working from "8 till 1 every day, then again for two or three hours in the evening." Her prolificacy has become one of her best-known attributes, although often discussed disparagingly. "The New York Times" wrote in 1989 that Oates's "name is synonymous with productivity", and in 2004, "The Guardian" noted that "Nearly every review of an Oates book, it seems, begins with a list [of her publication totals]".


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: In a journal entry written in the 1970s, Oates sarcastically addressed her critics, writing, "So many books! so many! Obviously JCO has a full career behind her, if one chooses to look at it that way; many more titles and she might as well... what?... give up all hopes for a 'reputation'? […] but I work hard, and long, and as the hours roll by I seem to create more than I anticipate; more, certainly, than the literary world allows for a 'serious' writer. Yet I have more stories to tell, and more novels […] ". In "The New York Review of Books" in 2007, Michael Dirda suggested that disparaging criticism of Oates "derives from reviewer's angst: How does one judge a new book by Oates when one is not familiar with most of the backlist? Where does one start?"


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Several publications have published lists of what they deem the best Joyce Carol Oates books, designed to help introduce readers to the author's daunting body of work. In a 2003 article entitled "Joyce Carol Oates for dummies", "The Rocky Mountain News" recommended starting with her early short stories and the novels "A Garden of Earthly Delights" (1967), "them" (1969), "Wonderland" (1971), "Black Water" (1992), and "Blonde" (2000). In 2006, "The Times" listed "them", "On Boxing" (in collaboration with photographer John Ranard) (1987), "Black Water", and "" (2006) as "The Pick of Joyce Carol Oates". In 2007, "Entertainment Weekly" listed its Oates favorites as "Wonderland", "Black Water", "Blonde", "I'll Take You There" (2002), and "The Falls" (2004). In 2003, Oates herself said that she thinks she will be remembered for, and would most want a first-time Oates reader to read, "them" and "Blonde", although she "could as easily have chosen a number of titles."


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates's extensive bibliography contains poetry, plays, criticism, short stories, eleven novellas, and sixty novels, including "Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart;" "Black Water;" "Mudwoman;" "Carthage;" "The Man Without a Shadow;" and "A Book of American Martyrs." She has published several novels under the pseudonyms Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates met Raymond J. Smith, a fellow graduate student, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and they married in 1961. Smith became a professor of 18th-century literature and, later, an editor and publisher. Oates described the partnership as "a marriage of like minds..." and "a very collaborative and imaginative marriage".


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Smith died of complications from pneumonia on February 18, 2008, and the death affected Oates profoundly. In April 2008, Oates wrote to an interviewer, "Since my husband's unexpected death, I really have very little energy [...] My marriagemy love for my husbandseems to have come first in my life, rather than my writing. Set beside his death, the future of my writing scarcely interests me at the moment."


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: After six months of near suicidal grieving for Smith, Oates met Charles Gross, a professor in the Psychology Department and Neuroscience Institute at Princeton, at a dinner party at her home. In early 2009, Oates and Gross were married. On April 13, 2019, Oates announced via Twitter that Gross had died at the age of 83.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: As a diarist, Oates began keeping a detailed journal in 1973, documenting her personal and literary life; it eventually grew to "more than 4,000 single-spaced typewritten pages". In 2008, Oates said she had "moved away from keeping a formal journal" and instead preserved copies of her e-mails.


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: As of 1999, Oates remained devoted to running, of which she has written, "Ideally, the runner who's a writer is running through the land- and cityscapes of her fiction, like a ghost in a real setting". While running, Oates mentally envisions scenes in her novels and works out structural problems in already-written drafts; she formulated the germ of her novel "You Must Remember This" (1987) while running, when she "glanced up and saw the ruins of a railroad bridge", which reminded her of "a mythical upstate New York city in the right place".


title: Joyce Carol Oates

text: Oates was a member of the board of trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation from 1997 to 2016. She is an honorary member of the Simpson Literary Project, which annually awards the $50,000 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize to a mid-career writer. She has served as the Project's artist-in-residence several times.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: Sportverein Werder Bremen von 1899 e. V. (), commonly known as Werder Bremen (), Werder or simply Bremen, is a German professional sports club based in Bremen, Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. Founded on 4 February 1899, they are best known for their professional association football team, who compete in the Bundesliga, the first tier of the German football league system. Werder share the record for most seasons played in the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich, and are third in the all-time Bundesliga table, behind Bayern and Borussia Dortmund.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: Werder have been German champions four times, have won the DFB-Pokal six times, the DFL-Ligapokal once, the DFL-Supercup thrice, and the European Cup Winners' Cup once. The team's first major trophy came in the 1960–61 DFB-Pokal, a competition they last won in 2008–09. Their first German championship came in 1964–65, and their latest in 2003–04, when they won the double. In Europe, Werder won the 1992 European Cup Winners' Cup in a final against AS Monaco. They were runners-up in the 2008–09 UEFA Cup, losing against Shakhtar Donetsk in the final.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: Since 1909, Werder have played at the Weserstadion. The team have a rivalry with fellow northern German club Hamburger SV, known as the Nordderby (English: North derby). In April 2022, Werder had 40,100 members.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: On 4 February 1899, FV Werder Bremen was founded by a group of 16-year-old students who had won a football, after they were victorious in a tug of war tournament. The students took the name "Werder" from the German word for "river peninsula", which described the riverside field on which they played their first football games. The club's first match was played on 10 September 1899 against ASC 1898 Bremen, winning 1–0. In 1900, the team was represented at the founding of the German Football Association (DFB) at Leipzig. They then enjoyed some early success, winning a number of local championships. In 1903, all three Werder teams won their local league competitions. In these years, FV participated in qualification rounds for the national championships held by the Norddeutscher Fussball Verband (NFV), one of the seven major regional leagues after the turn of the century, but were unable to advance. Due to the club's early popularity, Werder became the first club in Bremen to charge spectators a fee to attend their games and to fence in their playing field.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: Steady growth after the First World War led the club to adopt other sports (athletics, baseball, chess, cricket, and tennis). On 19 January 1920, the team adopted their current name; Sportverein Werder Bremen. Football remained the club's main sport, and in 1922, they became the first club in Bremen to hire a professional coach; Ferenc Kónya. The team made regular appearances in year-end NFV play-offs through the 1920s and on into the early 1930s, but did not enjoy any success. In the mid-1930s, striker Matthias Heidemann became the club's first international.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: In 1933, German football was re-organized by the Nazi's into 16 first tier divisions known as Gauligen, as Werder became part of Gauliga Niedersachsen. The team scored their first real successes, capturing division titles in 1934, 1936, and 1937, and participated for the first time in the national play-offs. The shape of the Gauligen changed through the course of the Second World War, and in 1939, the Gauliga Niedersachsen was split into two divisions. SV played in the Gauliga Niedersachsen/Nord where they captured a fourth title in 1942. In 1944–45, German football was suspended after only two matches. Like other organizations throughout Germany, the club was disbanded on the order of the occupying Allied authorities after the war. They re-constituted themselves on 10 November 1945 as Turn- und Sportverein Werder 1945 Bremen, which was changed to Sport-Club Grün-Weiß 99 Bremen on 4 February 1946. The team played in the Stadtliga Bremen, and after winning the competition, participated in the northern German championship, advancing to the quarter-finals. They were able to reclaim the name SV Werder on 25 March 1946 before taking part in the play-offs.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: In these years, professionals were not permitted to play in Germany, so it was normal for football players to take on other jobs, often with the club's local patron. In the case of Werder, a number of the players worked at the nearby Brinkmann tobacco factory, and so the side took on the nickname "Texas 11" after one of the company's popular cigarette brands.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: Between the end of the Second World War and the formation of the Bundesliga in 1963, the club continued to perform, being recognized as one of the top two teams in northern Germany, along with Hamburger SV. In 1960–61, Werder managed to win their first DFB-Pokal, defeating 1. FC Kaiserslautern. The team consisted of future international Sepp Piontek, former international Willi Schröder, and Arnold Schütz, among others. A second place in the 1962–63 Oberliga Nord, behind Hamburger SV, was enough to qualify as a founder member for the 1963–64 Bundesliga. The first goal of the newly created Bundesliga was scored by Borussia Dortmund's Friedhelm Konietzka against Werder. In the league's second season, Werder won their first national championship, finishing three points clear of 1. FC Köln. One of the team's stars was German international Horst-Dieter Höttges. Werder finished runners-up in 1967–68, but then languished in the bottom half of the table for a dozen years.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: In April 1971, in an away match at Borussia Mönchengladbach, Bundesliga history was created. In the 88th minute, Gladbach striker Herbert Laumen fell in Werder's goal, after a collision with Bremen goalkeeper Günter Bernard. The right goalpost subsequently broke, bringing the whole goal down, and could not be repaired nor replaced. The referee stopped the game at the score of 1–1, and the DFB later awarded the match to Werder with a score of 2–0. As a consequence, the wooden goals were replaced by aluminium ones. An attempt to improve by signing high-priced players earned the team the derisive nickname of "Millionenelf" (English: "Million squad") and turned out to be an expensive failure. In 1979–80, the club was relegated from the Bundesliga for the first time, after a 17th-place finish.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: The team won the 1980–81 2. Bundesliga Nord title and were promoted back to the Bundesliga. Manager Otto Rehhagel was appointed in April 1981, and under his guidance, Werder recovered themselves, as Rehhagel subsequently led the side to a string of successes. Bremen were Bundesliga runners-up in 1982–83, 1984–85 and 1985–86. In 1983 and 1986, the team lost the title both times on goal difference. In 1986, Werder hosted Bayern Munich in the penultimate match of the season; Bremen needed a win to secure their second Bundesliga title. In the 88th minute, with the score of 0–0, they were awarded a penalty kick, which Michael Kutzop took. He missed, as he hit the right goalpost; the game ended 0–0. Bayern won their last match, but Werder lost 1–2 to VfB Stuttgart, and Bayern took the title. Werder won their second league title two years later, in 1987–88, only conceding a then-record 22 goals. They also reached the semi-final of the 1987–88 UEFA Cup, in which they were eliminated by Bayer Leverkusen. In the third round of the 1989–90 UEFA Cup, Bremen defeated defending champions Napoli and their star player Diego Maradona 8–3 on aggregate, after winning 5–1 at home.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: Werder reached the DFB-Pokal final in 1989 and 1990, and were victorious in 1991. This was followed by winning the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1991–92, beating AS Monaco 2–0 in the final. In 1992–93, the team won their third Bundesliga title and won their third DFB-Pokal the following year. Werder became the first German club to reach the group stage in the newly re-branded UEFA Champions League in 1993–94. That season saw a memorable comeback against Belgian club Anderlecht, later hailed as one of the examples of the "Wunder von der Weser" (English: "Wonder of the Weser"). Werder were trailing 3–0 after 66 minutes, as they managed to turn the game around and win 5–3. In this period, Werder had numerous internationals, including Mario Basler, Marco Bode, Andreas Herzog, Karl-Heinz Riedle, Wynton Rufer, and Rudi Völler among others.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: Bremen finished runners-up in the 1994–95 Bundesliga; at the end of the season, Rehhagel left the club for Bayern Munich, after a then-national record 14-year stint at the club. As Werder's most successful manager, Rehhagel employed a "controlled offensive" style of play on a tight budget during his reign. Rehhagel's successors (Aad de Mos, Dixie Dörner, Wolfgang Sidka, and Felix Magath) could not bring silverware to the club. In May 1999, former Werder defender and youth coach Thomas Schaaf took over. He kept the team in the Bundesliga, and won the DFB-Pokal only weeks later, defeating Bayern on penalties.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: Werder's league performance stabilized in the following seasons, as they regularly finished in the upper half of the table. In 2003–04, they won the double for the first time, winning both the Bundesliga and the DFB-Pokal, as Bremen became the third club in Bundesliga history to achieve this feat. The team would also regularly qualify for the Champions League during the 2000s. In the last match of the 2005–06 Bundesliga season, Werder won 2–1 at arch-rivals Hamburger SV to qualify for the Champions League as runners-up, instead of Hamburg. Bremen reached the semi-finals of the 2006–07 UEFA Cup, in which they were eliminated by Spanish club RCD Espanyol. In 2008–09, Bremen struggled in their Bundesliga campaign, eventually finishing tenth, their worst league performance in more than a decade. Nevertheless, the club reached the UEFA Cup final, as well as the DFB-Pokal final. Werder lost the UEFA Cup final against Ukrainian team Shakhtar Donetsk; 1–2 after extra time. In the DFB-Pokal final, Bremen fared better, as they defeated Bayer Leverkusen by a scoreline of 1–0. In April and May 2009, Werder had played Hamburg four times in 19 days; once in the Bundesliga, in the semi-final of the DFB-Pokal, and twice in the semi-final of the UEFA Cup. Bremen defeated Hamburg 2–0 in the Bundesliga, and eliminated them from the DFB-Pokal and the UEFA Cup.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: During the 2000s and early 2010s, Werder had numerous players who were sold for large transfer fees, including Diego, Torsten Frings, Miroslav Klose, Mesut Özil, and Claudio Pizarro among others. In October 2010, Bremen's Pizarro became the then-record holder of highest foreign goal-scorer in Bundesliga history. Uninspiring league finishes characterised the 2010s and in 2013, Schaaf left the club by mutual consent after a disappointing 14th place in the Bundesliga. The 2015–16 season saw Werder avoiding the Bundesliga promotion-relegation play-offs, beating direct rivals Eintracht Frankfurt by a scoreline of 1–0 in the last match of the season, after a goal in the 88th minute. In 2019–20, the team beat 1. FC Köln 6–1 on the last matchday to finish 16th, as rivals Fortuna Düsseldorf lost their match; however, Bremen had to play the promotion-relegation play-offs against 1. FC Heidenheim to avoid relegation. The tie ended in a 2–2 draw on aggregate, as Werder won on the away goals rule and avoided relegation. They finished 17th the following season, however, and were relegated to the 2. Bundesliga for the first time since the 1979–80 season. The team finished runners-up in the 2021–22 2. Bundesliga and won promotion back to the Bundesliga after one season.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: Werder have had 24 different managers since the beginning of the Bundesliga era in 1963. Otto Rehhagel served the longest term, being in office for fourteen years. Hans Tilkowski, Willi Multhaup, Rudi Assauer, and Otto Rehhagel served two terms each, while Fritz Langner served three.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: Werder Bremen have used several different crests during their history. Their first crest was created in 1900; a monogram, which spelled "FVW", as the club was then known as "FV Werder Bremen". The logo was replaced in 1902 by a green-coloured crest, which spelled the founding year 1899 in the top left corner, "F.V.W." diagonally in the middle, and "Bremen" in the bottom right corner. It was modified in 1911, as the inscriptions were placed diagonally, and the badge's colours became black with a green stripe that crossed it, along with a change in the crest's outline. In 1924, a green-coloured (with a white outline), oval-shaped crest with a large white-coloured "W" was created. The oval shape was changed into a diamond shape in 1929, to create the club's current crest, save for a spell in the early 1970s when the coat of arms of Bremen was used. In addition, a star is displayed above the crest on the team's shirts to represent their four Bundesliga titles.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: Werder have played their home games at the same location since 1909. That year saw the construction of a shared sports venue with a wooden grandstand, built by the Allgemeinen Bremer Turn- und Sportverein. In 1926, the stadium was renovated; a new grandstand with dressing rooms and a restaurant were constructed, costing 1,250,000 RM. At the time, the venue was known as the "ATSB-Kampfbahn", and was also used for political mass gatherings. In 1930, it was called the "Weserstadion" for the first time. Five years later, the stadium was known as the "Bremer Kampfbahn", and in the following years it was mostly used by the Nazi Party, as sporting activities were rarely practiced. In the first years after the Second World War, only American sports like baseball and American football were practiced at the venue (now known as the "IKE-Stadium"). In 1947, the stadium was reopened as a shared sports venue and took its former name "Weserstadion".


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: Following Werder's first Bundesliga title in 1965, the corner stands were expanded with a second tier, enlarging the capacity in the process. In 1992, Bremen became the first German club to install skyboxes in their stadium. Six years later, in 1998, under-soil heating was implemented. In 2002, the cinder track was removed, thereby expanding the capacity. From 2008 to 2011, the venue was completely rebuilt. The façade was coated with photovoltaic panels and a new roof was built on top of the old roof supporting structure (the old roof itself was torn down). Both ends (east and west) were torn down and rebuilt parallel to the endline of the pitch, removing what was left of the old athletics track. The current capacity is 42,100.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: Werder Bremen have a long-standing rivalry with fellow northern German club Hamburger SV, known as the Nordderby (English: North derby). It goes beyond football, as there is also a historic rivalry between the cities of Hamburg and Bremen, dating back to the Middle Ages. The cities are only separated by a hundred kilometers and they are also the two biggest metropolises in northern Germany. Bayern Munich are another rival, dating back to the 1980s, when both clubs were competing for domestic honours. Bremen have developed a recent dislike of Schalke 04, after they have poached some of Werder's top players over the years (including Aílton, Fabian Ernst, Mladen Krstajić, Oliver Reck, Frank Rost, and Franco Di Santo).


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: Werder have seven ultra groups: "Wanderers-Bremen", "The Infamous Youth", "Caillera", "L'Intesa Verde", "HB Crew", "Ultra Boys", and "UltrA-Team Bremen". Werder fans maintain friendly relationships with Rot-Weiss Essen, Austrian club SK Sturm Graz, and Israeli clubs Maccabi Haifa, and Hapoel Katamon Jerusalem.


title: SV Werder Bremen

text: The official anthem of Werder Bremen is "Lebenslang Grün-Weiß" by Bremen-based band Original Deutschmacher, which is also sung before every home game. After each Bremen goal, the song I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers is played, preceded by the sound of a ship's horn.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The oldest football clubs trace their origins to the mid-19th century, a period when football evolved from being a casual pastime to an organised mainstream sport.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The identity of the oldest football clubs in the world, or even in a particular country, is often disputed or claimed by several clubs, across several codes of football. The Foot-Ball Club of Edinburgh is thought to be the earliest recorded football club in the world, with records going back to 1824. Rugby clubs also referred to themselves, or continue to refer to themselves, as simply a "football club", or as a "rugby football club". "Club" has always meant an independent entity and, during the historical period in question, very few high school or university "teams" were independent of the educational institutions concerned. Consequently, school and university football teams were seldom referred to as "clubs". That has always been the case, for example, in American football, which has always had ties to college sport in general. Conversely, however, the "oldest" still-existing "football club" with a well-documented, continuous history is Dublin University Football Club, a rugby union club founded in 1854 at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. There exists some record of Guy's Hospital Football Club being founded in London in 1843, through an 1883 fixture card referring to Guy's 40th season.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: While the first clubs emerged in Britain, possibly as early as the fifteenth century, these are poorly-documented and defunct. For example, the records of the Brewers' Company of London between 1421 and 1423 mention the hiring out of their hall "by the "football players" for "20 pence", under the heading "Trades and Fraternities". The listing of football players as a "fraternity" or a group of players meeting socially under this identity is the earliest allusion to what might be considered a football club. Other early sporting bodies dedicated to playing football include "The Gymnastic Society" of London which met "regularly" during the second half of the eighteenth century to pursue two sports: football and wrestling. The club played its matches – for example between London-based natives of Cumberland and Westmorland – at the Kennington Common from well before 1789 until about 1800.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The Foot-Ball Club (active 1824–41) of Edinburgh, Scotland, is the first documented club dedicated to football, and the first to describe itself as a football club. The only surviving club rules forbade tripping, but allowed pushing and holding and the picking up of the ball. Other documents describe a game involving 39 players and "such kicking of shins and such tumbling".


title: Oldest football clubs

text: On Christmas Day 1841, an early documented match between two self-described "football clubs" took place. The Body-guard Club (of Rochdale) lost to the Fear-nought Club after using an ineligible player as a substitute. The complete rules used in this game are unknown, but they specified twelve players on each side, with each team providing its own umpire, and the game being started by the firing of a pistol.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: A club for playing "cricket, quoits and football" was established in Newcastle on Tyne in or before 1848. The Surrey Football Club was established in 1849 and published the first non-school football list of rules (which were probably based upon the eighteenth century Gymnastic Society cited above). Windsor Home Park F.C. was in existence as early as 1854, and would go on to compete in early editions of the FA Cup.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Supported by the "Guinness Book of Records", and founded by staff at Guy's Hospital in London in 1843, the Guy's, Kings and St Thomas' RFC would be the oldest "football" club of any code. Nevertheless, the connection between the present club and the original "Guy's Hospital" formed in 1843 is still disputed, alleging that the present club is a modern amalgam of three formerly distinct hospital rugby clubs, starting with the Guy's Hospital and St Thomas' Hospital teams which were the first to merge following the union of their respective Medical Departments. The last department to merge was the King's College Hospital in 1999, although its club (founded in 1869) remained as a separate institution.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: As the Guy's, Kings and St Thomas' RFC status is still disputed, other sources state that the Dublin University Football Club (DUFC), founded in 1854, at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, would be the oldest "football" club. DUFC plays to the rugby union rules.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: In Northern Ireland, the oldest football club is Cliftonville FC, formed in September 1879. It is also the oldest active professional football club on the island of Ireland.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: It has been claimed that the present-day Barnes Rugby Football Club, from Barnes in London, is a continuation of the nineteenth-century Barnes Football Club, and moreover that the latter club was formed in 1839 and is thus the oldest club to have played football for its entire history. However, as of 2018, Barnes RFC's website claims only that the club was established in the 1920s, while alluding to "possibilities" that its history stretches back to 1862.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Sheffield F.C. in England, is the world's oldest surviving "independent" open football club; that is, the oldest club not associated with an institution such as a school, hospital or university in which was open to all to play. It was founded in 1857. Sheffield F.C. initially played Sheffield rules, a code of its own devising, although the club's rules influenced those of the England Football Association (FA (1863) including handball, free kicks, corners and throw ins. While the international governing body of association football, FIFA and the FA recognise Sheffield F.C. as the "world's oldest football club", and the club joined the FA in 1863, it continued to use the Sheffield rules. Sheffield F.C. did not officially adopt association football until 1877.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Setting its birth date in 1856, Cambridge University A.F.C. has been described by the university as the oldest club now playing association football, being recognised by The FA. For example, : "Salopians formed a club of their own in the late 1830s/early 1840s but that was presumably absorbed by the Cambridge University Football Club that they were so influential in creating in 1846". According to Charles Astor Bristed, in the early 1840s at Cambridge, there were games played between clubs from colleges and houses. Football is documented as being played on the original club ground, Parkers Piece, as early as 1838. The earliest existing evidence of the Cambridge University Football Club comes from "The Laws of the University Football Club" dated 1856, and held at Shrewsbury School. The Cambridge rules of 1863 would provide the basis for the FA's original rules.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The only survivor among the FA's founding clubs still playing association football is Civil Service F.C. Six of the 18 founding members later adopted rugby exclusively. Cray Wanderers F.C., originally of St Mary Cray and currently playing in Bromley, founded in 1860, is the oldest club now playing association football in Greater London. The code played by Cray Wanderers in its earliest years is unknown.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Liverpool Football Club (not to be confused with Liverpool F.C. of the Premier League), later known as Liverpool St Helens F.C., were formed in 1857, which claims to be the oldest open rugby club in the world. The club adopted the Rugby Union rules in 1872, never playing association rules.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Moghreb Tétouan was founded in 1922. It is the oldest club in Morocco. Moghreb Tétouan took part in Spanish Liga for 33 years until Morocco's independence was achieved in 1956.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Some of the oldest clubs in Hong Kong include St Joseph's (1880), Hong Kong Football Club (1886), Buffs (1886), all formed by Britons. The first club formed by locals was South China AA (1904).


title: Oldest football clubs

text: In India, some of the oldest clubs are Calcutta Football Club (founded in 1872, later merged with Calcutta Cricket Club founded in 1792 to form Calcutta Cricket and Football Club), Sarada FC, Aryan FC (1884), Sovabazar FC (1886), Mohun Bagan AC (1889), Mohammedan SC (1891), and East Bengal Club (1920). All of these clubs are from Kolkata.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya is a Baghdad-based men's club founded in 1931 in Kingdom of Iraq under British Administration. It plays within the Iraqi Premier League.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: In Japan, the oldest rugby (1866) and association football club (1886) is Yokohama Country & Athletic Club.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The oldest continuing association football club for men of nowadays Pakistan is Karachi Port Trust Football Club, founded in 1887, at the time of the British Raj, when Karachi was part of the Bombay Presidency.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The oldest still active football club is the First Vienna Football Club founded on the 22nd of August 1894. Their early rivals, the Vienna Cricket and Football-Club, was founded only one day later.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Football Club Spa was founded by the Hunter-Blair family of Blairquhan, Ayrshire, Scotland, and was in operation in 1863. The fourth Baronet took his family there in order to economise. The oldest club still in existence today in Belgium is Royal Antwerp FC, founded in 1880.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The oldest football club still in existence today is Slavia Prague, founded in 1892. The first football club to be founded in the country was the football section of the sport club Regatta Prague, founded in May 1891, but discontinued in 1896, when all its footballers left to found the club DFC Prague.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The oldest functioning football clubs in Croatia are NK Rijeka, formed in 1906 competing in the highest Croatian division, and possibly HNK Segesta, a club playing in the third division and founded in the same year.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Kjøbenhavns Boldklub is the oldest football club in Denmark and the oldest active club in continental Europe. The sports club was formed in 1876 and association football was first played two years later.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The first football club in France was established in Paris in 1863 by English expatriates, as the following excerpt from a contemporary newspaper shows: "A number of English gentlemen living in Paris have lately organised a football club... The football contests take place in the Bois de Boulogne, by permission of the authorities and surprise the French amazingly".


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Le Havre AC was founded as an athletics and rugby club in 1872, making it the oldest surviving football club registered in France and continental Europe. They began playing association football on a regular basis in 1894. Technically AS Strasbourg could be considered the first French association football team, being established in 1890; they were however a German team at the time.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The oldest surviving rugby football club is Heidelberger RK, which was founded on 9 May 1872 as a rowing and rugby club. The HRK has won 14 national titles 1927, 1928, 1971, 1973, 1976, 1986, 2010–2015, 2017 and 2018. The biggest success of the club was the qualification for the Rugby European Challenge Cup 2018/19 - only to be denied participation, because their main sponsor owns Stade Francais. The second oldest still surviving rugby club is Hannover 1878 founded 1878 and winning 9 German championships. Both clubs still play in the 1. Bundesliga.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The first association football in Germany (and likely the first outside Great Britain) was Dresden English, founded on 18 March 1874. The club had over 70 members by then, primarily Englishmen working in Dresden, with its matches being attended by hundreds of spectators. Nevertheless, Dresden English was dissolved in 1898.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The oldest still active association football club is BFC Germania 1888 founded on 15 April 1888. They play in the 10th division as of season 2020/21 and never managed to win any national titles.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The oldest still active football clubs in Hungary are Műegyetemi AFC founded in autumn 1897 as a proper football club and III. Kerületi TVE, which whose football section was founded officially in 1899 but stemmed from the 1897-founded Budai Football Csapat. The first ever football club to be founded in Hungary was Budapesti Torna Club having founded its football section in February 1897, dissolved in 1945–46.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: In Italy, Genoa C.F.C. is the oldest active football club: it was founded by Charles De Grave Sells, S. Green, George Blake, W. Rilley, George Dormer Fawcus, H.M. Sandys, E. De Thierry, Johnathan Summerhill Sr., Johnathan Summerhill Jr. and Sir Charles Alfred Payton in Genoa on 7 September 1893. However, Genoa C.F.C. was not the first Italian football club, being Torino Football & Cricket Club (1887) but its history lasted only for 4 years. Founded by Edoardo Bosio (owner of Bosio & Caratsch, the earliest brewery in Italy), the team broke up in 1891. Older than Genoa and Torino is Associazione Sportiva Dilettantistica Fanfulla, a sports club founded in Lodi in 1873, but its football section was established thirty-five years later in 1908.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The oldest football club in Poland was Lechia Lwów, established in 1903. As Lviv became a part of the USSR (and nowadays Ukraine), the club ceased to exist. Seniority of the football club in current borders of Poland and still active in the Polish league system is subject to a dispute between two Kraków based clubs Wisła Kraków and Cracovia. Both clubs have been founded in 1906.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The oldest football club in Slovakia is 1. FC Tatran Prešov, founded in 1898, that after many name changes plays in the Slovakian second league.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The first football club was founded in 1900 by the German minority in Ljubljana, the Laibacher Sportverein and got discontinued in 1909, followed by the Hungarian minority Lendevai FE in 1903, and the German minority in Celje (Athletik SK in 1906). In 1911, the first Slovenian football club of the Slovenian minority opened in Ljubljana, Ilirija, followed by Slovan two years later. Ilirija is nowadays considered by the Slovenian FA as the oldest running football club in the country, because the Lendava-based club went bankrupt in 2012, although it got recreated right away.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Founded on 23 December 1889, Recreativo de Huelva is the oldest football club in Spain. Two Scots, Alexander Mackay and Robert Russell Ross, overseas workers at the Rio Tinto mines, founded Huelva Recreation Club to provide their employees with physical recreation. Recreativo predates Sevilla Foot-ball Club, which was founded a month later and it is not related with Sevilla FC, founded on 1905.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: FC St. Gallen 1879 is the oldest active football club in Switzerland, founded on 19 April 1879 as FC St. Gallen.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The oldest football (and also the oldest cricket) club in The Netherlands is Koninklijke UD (Royal UD) from Deventer, founded in 1875.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Although football variants have been played in North America since the 1820s, the claim of oldest continuous football club in North America is still a matter of debate.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Oneida Football Club of Boston, Massachusetts, established in 1862, was the first organised team to play any kind of football in the United States. The game played by the club, known as the "Boston game", was an informal local variant that predated the codification of rules for association or American football. The team, which consisted of graduates of Boston's elite preparatory schools, played on Boston Common from 1862 to 1865, during which time they reportedly never lost a game or even gave up a single point.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: In terms of gridiron football the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League can trace their roots back to the Hamilton Football Club (nicknamed the "Tigers") which formed in 1869, then later merged with the Hamilton Wildcats in 1950 to form the current franchise. Their rivals to the north, the Toronto Argonauts, were founded four years later in 1873 and have a mostly unchanged franchise history. Both clubs began as rugby football clubs and only later adapted to the gridiron-style of play which would become known as Canadian football. The oldest continuous rugby club in North America which still plays rugby is the McGill University Rugby Football Club which was established in 1863, although their first recorded game was not until 1865. The oldest independent (non-university) rugby club is the Westmount Rugby Club of Montreal, which formed in 1876.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: In 1869, Rutgers University and Princeton University competed in the first US intercollegiate football game. According to U.S. Soccer, the rules of this game resembled rugby and association football more closely than gridiron football. However, university-affiliated teams competing in intercollegiate championships are not typically classified as "clubs".


title: Oldest football clubs

text: In the United States, gridiron-based variants of the game did not distinguish themselves from existing codes until 1871, when Harvard University began playing a variation known as the "Boston Game." This allowed a player to pick up the ball and run with it if he were chased and it quickly spread, with innovations added by Yale University student Walter Camp. The oldest existing non-university semiprofessional football club is the Watertown Red & Black, which was founded in 1896. The Arizona Cardinals, formed in Chicago in 1898, are the oldest team in the National Football League.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: One of the first teams to have played "football" under the association rules in the US was Fall River Rovers, founded in 1884.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The ten charter members of Major League Soccer were all new clubs created shortly before the league began play in 1996. However, in 2011, the league admitted the Vancouver Whitecaps, who had existed continuously since 1986.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: In 1858, in Melbourne, Victoria, members of the Melbourne Cricket Club formed a loosely organised football team, and played against other local football enthusiasts over the winter and spring of that year. The Melbourne Football Club was officially founded the following year on 14 May, and three days later (17 May), four members codified the first laws of Australian rules football. In June 1859, the Castlemaine Football Club and Melbourne University Football Club were formed, and the Geelong Football Club was formed shortly afterwards, in July. Over the next decade, many more Australian rules football clubs were formed in Victoria. Melbourne and Geelong were founding members of the Victorian Football League (VFL) (now AFL), making them the world's oldest football clubs that are now professional.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Christchurch Football Club, established in 1863, is the oldest football club of any code in New Zealand. The club initially played using its own rules, before converting to rugby football. Wellington Football Club, based in Hataitai, was established in 1870 and is the oldest continuous rugby football club in New Zealand. The honour of being the country's first organised association football club is likely to belong to Auckland's North Shore United, which was founded as North Shore in 1886. Two Dunedin-based clubs, Northern and Wakari, were officially founded in 1888, although it is possible that Northern had been playing as a team prior to this time.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Buenos Aires Cricket & Rugby Club claims to be the oldest club still in existence in Argentina. According to the club's website, the club was founded before 8 December 1864 as a cricket institution. The date of foundation has been recognised by the Buenos Aires Rugby Union. It is however believed that the club was founded in 1831, with existing documentary evidence about a cricket match played by Buenos Aires that same year. Nevertheless, the practise of any "football" code did not start until 1951 when the BACC merged with the Buenos Aires F.C. and rugby union was added.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Club Atlético del Rosario was officially established in 1867 as a cricket institution. The club soon added association football, being the first club from Rosario playing in the Primera División, the top division of Argentina. In rugby union, Rosario AC played the first inter-clubs match in the country on 28 June 1886, when the team faced Buenos Aires Football Club.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Having been established in 1875, Club Mercedes is considered the oldest association football club still in existence in Argentina. This places Mercedes above Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata and Quilmes, both founded in 1887.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Oruro Royal was founded on 26 May 1896 by the English workers hired by the Bolivian Government to build the national railways, becoming the first Bolivian football squad.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: São Paulo Athletic Club, founded on 13 May 1888 by English immigrants as a cricket club, could be considered the oldest Brazilian club to have played any code of "football", starting to play association football in 1898. After football retired from competitions in 1912, rugby union became the main sport of SPAC.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The oldest club to have been in continuous activity in association football is S.C. Rio Grande, founded in July 1900 (a famous misconception is that the oldest one would be A.A. Ponte Preta, named after the neighbourhood of the same name in the city of Campinas, but it was founded close to one month later, in August 1900. São Paulo Railway Company and São Paulo Gaz Company, both established in 1895 (and then defunct) played the first football match in Brazil that same year.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Paissandu Atlético Clube, founded on 15 August 1872, could be the oldest football club in Brazil but the team was dissolved in 1914, with only a futsal section remaining nowadays.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Santiago Wanderers was founded on 15 August 1892 by Irish community and was the first football club in Chile.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: The defunct Barranquilla Football Club founded by British railway workers in 1908 was the first football club in Colombia.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: Lima Cricket and Football Club claims to be the oldest football-practising club in Peru and the Americas, having been founded in 1859 by the city's British community.


title: Oldest football clubs

text: In Uruguay, the Montevideo Cricket Club, established in 1861, has however been ranked as the oldest rugby union club outside Europe by the World Rugby Museum of Twickenham, although the first certain rugby match played by MVCC was in 1875.


title: PUBG Mobile

text: PUBG Mobile (Chinese: 和平精英; pinyin: Hé Píng Jīng Yīng) is a free-to-play battle royale video game developed by LightSpeed & Quantum Studio, a division of Tencent Games. It is a mobile game adaptation of "". It was initially released for Android and iOS on 19 March 2018.


title: PUBG Mobile

text: It was published by multiple publishers in different regions, including Krafton, Tencent, and VNG Games. By December 2022, "PUBG Mobile" had accumulated around 1.3 billion downloads while grossing over , making it the third highest-grossing mobile game. It is also the second most-played mobile video game of all time. In 2021, the game spawned an Indian version, "Battlegrounds Mobile India", and a separate game taking place in the "PUBG Universe", called "New State Mobile".


title: PUBG Mobile

text: "PUBG Mobile" features gameplay similar to that of the original "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds". Players parachute down to a remote island and fight to remain as the last player standing, competing alone or in teams of two or four, depending on the game mode selected before the match. Each match lasts about 30 minutes.


title: PUBG Mobile

text: The game begins with the participants flying in a plane over one of many possible maps, also selected before the match. As they cross the map, players choose where to parachute down. When the plane finishes its flight, a blue border forms around the perimeter of the island, marking the boundary between the safe zone and the exterior blue zone. The safe zone shrinks every few minutes, and anyone left in the blue zone will steadily lose health as long as they remain there, potentially to the point of death. The rate of health loss increases when the safe zone shrinks.


title: PUBG Mobile

text: When players first reach the island with no supplies or weapons, they must find them around their environment or loot them from downed players. In general, better weapons and equipment are found in more dangerous parts of the map. In addition to the regular shrinking of the safe zone, temporary red zones may randomly appear to be barraged with bombs, and from time to time, the plane flies over the battlefield to release a package with special equipment, potentially including items that cannot be found elsewhere on the island. All of these special events, including the normal safe zone shrinking, are announced to the players before they occur to give a fair warning.


title: PUBG Mobile

text: Additional features unique to the mobile version of "PUBG" include log-in bonuses, missions and micro-goals, crew recruiting, map and compass improvements with larger and clear markers near the teammates, and an auto loot system, as well as an increased number of bots.


title: PUBG Mobile

text: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) Mobile is the mobile adaption of the popular battle royale game, "," developed by PUBG Studios and LightSpeed & Quantum Studio, published by Tencent Games worldwide, while Krafton and VNG Games in India, Korea and Vietnam respectively. The game was released in March 2018 and has since become one of the most popular mobile games in the world.


title: PUBG Mobile

text: The development of PUBG Mobile took just 4 months to be completed, as multiple teams from around the world contributing to the project. The project began with the original PC and console version of the game, which was developed by Brendan Greene (known as PlayerUnknown) and released in 2017. Following the success of the that particular game, Tencent Games began their own development project with PUBG Studios for the mobile version. In doing so, they had to create an evolution of the Unreal Engine 4, and was optimized to suit the mobile platform, with a focus on smoother performance and enhanced graphics.


title: PUBG Mobile

text: An abridged version of the game for lower-end Android devices, "PUBG Mobile Lite", was first released in Thailand on 24 January 2019 before releasing in Asian, Latin American, and African countries.


title: PUBG Mobile

text: international deal for the Windows version, Tencent Games and PUBG Corporation announced plans to release two mobile versions of the game in China. The first, "PUBG: Exhilarating Battlefield", is an abridged version of the original game, and was developed by LightSpeed & Quantum Studio, an internal division of Tencent Games. The second, "PUBG: Army Attack", includes more arcade-style elements, including action taking place on warships, and was developed by Tencent's Timi Studio. Both versions are free-to-play, and were released for Android and iOS devices on 9 February 2018. The games had a combined total of 75 million pre-registrations, and ranked first and second on the Chinese iOS download charts at launch. Following a soft launch in Canada, an English version of "Exhilarating Battlefield", localized as "PUBG Mobile", was released worldwide on 19 March 2018. "PUBG Mobile KR", a Korean and Japanese oriented version and "PUBG Mobile VN", a Vietnamese oriented version released in June 2018 and January 2019 respectively.


title: PUBG Mobile

text: In China, "PUBG Mobile" had been awaiting approval by the government for an authorized release, during which the game could only be offered as a public test. However, Tencent's planned release was suspended due to the government approval freeze across most of 2018. By May 2019, Tencent announced it would no longer seek to publish "PUBG Mobile" in China, but instead would re-release the game under the title "Game for Peace"; this version of the game changed elements of the original game to meet China's content restrictions, such as eliminating blood and gore. Following its release, a Taiwanese version of the game, "PUBG Mobile TW" was released.


title: PUBG Mobile

text: A version meant for lower-end mobile devices, "PUBG Mobile Lite", was released on 25 July 2019. This has support for high FPS gameplay on multiple Android devices, and features a smaller map made for 60 players. The Chinese version of the app was again renamed to "Peacekeeper Elite" in 2020.


title: PUBG Mobile

text: On 2 September 2020, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology banned "PUBG Mobile" in India amid the 2020 China-India skirmish. Following this, Tencent Games terminated all services for users in India on 30 October 2020. On 6 May 2021, Krafton announced the relaunch of the game in India, following the ban imposed by the Government of India. Krafton published the game in the country as "Battlegrounds Mobile India", which can only be accessed by users in the country.


title: PUBG Mobile

text: On 28 January 2022, a 14-year-old from Pakistan shot and killed his entire family. The game was cited as an influence for the murders according to the Punjab police.


title: PUBG Mobile

text: The game supports several e-sport leagues and tournaments. Each major region has a PUBG Mobile Club Open (PMCO) and players compete in their respective regions until later tournaments. Only 32 teams can qualify out of the many teams that signed up. This phase is known as the PMCO group stage, where the 32 teams are divided into four groups of eight. PMCO in India was held in 2019 for the first time, and the winner of the tournament was Naman Mathur and his team. Once the group stages have elapsed, the finals are hosted where the top 16 teams play. From here, the teams compete to make it to a higher level of competition known as the PUBG Mobile Pro League (PMPL). Later, eSports grew a lot in various countries including India, China, Indonesia, and many more, giving opportunities to many potential players.


title: PUBG Mobile

text: "PUBG Mobile" was the second most-downloaded mobile game of 2018, with nearly 300million downloads worldwide. The game's largest market was China, which accounted for 29% of the game's downloads, followed by India and the United States, each with about 10% (30million) of its downloads. It was the most-installed battle royale game of 2018, with about 200million more installs than "Fortnite". In March 2021, "PUBG Mobile" had accumulated more than a billion downloads outside of China. Including "Peacekeeper Elite", the Chinese version of the game, and "Battlegrounds Mobile India", the game had a total player count of around 1.3 billion as of December 2022.


title: PUBG Mobile

text: "PUBG Mobile" grossed () in Japan in 2018. "PUBG Mobile" grossed over in revenue by August 2020. "PUBG Mobile" grossed over in 2020, making it the highest-grossing game of the year and bringing its total revenue to over . That figure had increased to over $9 billion as of December 2022.


title: Mackenzie Astin

text: Mackenzie Alexander Astin (born May 12, 1973) is an American actor, best known for playing Andy Moffett Stickle in "The Facts of Life" (1985–1988) and Noah Baker in "Scandal" (2014–2017), and for his role in the film "Iron Will" (1994).


title: Mackenzie Astin

text: Astin was born on May 12, 1973, in Los Angeles, California, the son of actress Patty Duke and actor John Astin. His brother is actor Sean Astin. He attended Ralph Waldo Emerson Middle School and University High School in Los Angeles. He is married to Jennifer Abbott Astin (née Bautz).


title: Mackenzie Astin

text: Astin made his acting debut at age 9 in the TV movie "Lois Gibbs and the Love Canal", but is probably best remembered for his television role as Andy Moffett over four seasons from 1985 to 1988 on the sitcom "The Facts of Life". He has had recurring roles on "Scandal", "The Magicians", and "Homeland", and has made guest appearances on "LOST", "House", "Psych", "Grey's Anatomy", and "NCIS".


title: Mackenzie Astin

text: Astin has appeared in motion pictures including "Iron Will" with Kevin Spacey, "Wyatt Earp" with Kevin Costner, "The Evening Star" with Shirley MacLaine, and Whit Stillman's "The Last Days of Disco".


title: Mackenzie Astin

text: In November 2020, Astin was cast in a recurring role on the third season of the Netflix psychological thriller series "You".


title: Digitalis

text: Digitalis ( or ) is a genus of about 20 species of herbaceous perennial plants, shrubs, and biennials, commonly called foxgloves.


title: Digitalis

text: "Digitalis" is native to Europe, western Asia, and northwestern Africa. The flowers are tubular in shape, produced on a tall spike, and vary in colour with species, from purple to pink, white, and yellow. The scientific name means "finger". The genus was traditionally placed in the figwort family, Scrophulariaceae, but phylogenetic research led taxonomists to move it to the Veronicaceae in 2001. More recent phylogenetic work has placed it in the much enlarged family Plantaginaceae.


title: Digitalis

text: The best-known species is the common foxglove, "Digitalis purpurea". This biennial is often grown as an ornamental plant due to its vivid flowers which range in colour from various purple tints through pink and purely white. The flowers can also possess various marks and spottings. Other garden-worthy species include "D. ferruginea", "D. grandiflora", "D. lutea", and "D. parviflora".


title: Digitalis

text: The term "digitalis" is also used for drug preparations that contain cardiac glycosides, particularly one called digoxin, extracted from various plants of this genus. Foxglove has medicinal uses but is also very toxic to humans and other animals, and consumption can even lead to death.


title: Digitalis

text: The generic epithet "Digitalis" is from the Latin "digitus" (finger). Leonhart Fuchs first invented the name for this plant in his 1542 book "De historia stirpium commentarii insignes", based upon the German vernacular name "Fingerhut", which translates literally as 'finger hat', but actually means 'thimble'.


title: Digitalis

text: The name is recorded in Old English as 'foxes glofe/glofa' or 'fox's glove'. Over time, folk myths obscured the literal origins of the name, insinuating that foxes wore the flowers on their paws to silence their movements as they stealthily hunted their prey. The woody hillsides where the foxes made their dens were often covered with the toxic flowers. Some of the more menacing names, such as "witch's glove", reference the toxicity of the plant.


title: Digitalis

text: Henry Fox Talbot (1847) proposed 'folks' glove', where 'folk' means fairy. Similarly, R. C. A. Prior (1863) suggested an etymology of 'foxes-glew', meaning 'fairy music'. However, neither of these suggestions account for the Old English form "foxes glofa".


title: Digitalis

text: The "Flora Europaea" originally recognised a number of species now seen as synonyms of "Digitalis purpurea", or others: "D. dubia", "D. leucophaea", "D. micrantha" and "D. trojana". As of 2017, "Plants of the World Online" recognises the following 27 species (and a number of hybrids):


title: Digitalis

text: The first full monograph regarding this genus was written by Lindley in 1821. He included two sections, a section "Isoplexis" including two species, and the main section "Digitalis" with three subsections, including 2Y species, a number of which are now seen as synonyms or hybrids.


title: Digitalis

text: In the last full monograph of the genus in 1965, Werner classified the 19 recognised species in five sections (four species from Macaronesia were separated in the genus "Isoplexis" at the time):


title: Digitalis

text: In their 2000 book about "Digitalis", Luckner and Wichtl continued to uphold Werner's classification of the 19 species, but molecular studies into the phylogeny of the genus published in 2004 found that although four of Werner's sections were supported by the genetics, the section "Tubiflorae" was polyphyletic, and that the species "D. lutea" and "D. viridiflora" should be placed in the section "Grandiflorae". This study, as well as a number of other studies published around that time, reunited the genus "Isoplexis" with "Digitalis", increasing the number of species to 23.


title: Digitalis

text: Peter Hadland Davis, an expert on the flora of Turkey, had used a different circumscription than Werner in his works, and recognised eight species in the country. A 2016 molecular phylogenetic study into the relationships of the Turkish species in the section "Globiflorae" aimed to reconcile this discrepancy, finding that the classification as proposed by Davis was largely correct: "Globiflorae" contained as distinct species "D. cariensis", "D. ferruginea", "D. lamarckii", "D. lanata" and "D. nervosa", and "D. trojana" was subsumed at the infraspecific rank as "D. lanata" subsp. "trojana". This study listed 23 species: "D. transiens", "D. cedretorum", "D. ikarica" and "D. fuscescens" were not mentioned. "D. parviflora" and "D. subalpina" were not tested in this study, but the 2004 study found these two species situated within the section "Globiflorae".


title: Digitalis

text: Larvae of the foxglove pug, a moth, consume the flowers of the common foxglove for food. Other species of Lepidoptera eat the leaves, including the lesser yellow underwing.


title: Digitalis

text: Digitalis is an example of a drug derived from a plant that was formerly used by herbalists; herbalists have largely abandoned its use because of its narrow therapeutic index and the difficulty of determining the amount of active drug in herbal preparations. Once the usefulness of digitalis in regulating the human pulse was understood, it was employed for a variety of purposes, including the treatment of epilepsy and other seizure disorders, which are now considered to be inappropriate treatments.


title: Digitalis

text: A group of medicines extracted from foxglove plants are called digitalin. The use of "D. purpurea" extract containing cardiac glycosides for the treatment of heart conditions was first described in the English-speaking medical literature by William Withering, in 1785, which is considered the beginning of modern therapeutics. In contemporary medicine digitalis (usually digoxin) is obtained from "D. lanata". It is used to increase cardiac contractility (it is a positive inotrope) and as an antiarrhythmic agent to control the heart rate, particularly in the irregular (and often fast) atrial fibrillation. Digitalis is hence often prescribed for patients in atrial fibrillation, especially if they have been diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Digoxin was approved for heart failure in 1998 under current regulations by the Food and Drug Administration on the basis of prospective, randomized study and clinical trials. It was also approved for the control of ventricular response rate for patients with atrial fibrillation. American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association guidelines recommend digoxin for symptomatic chronic heart failure for patients with reduced systolic function, preservation of systolic function, and/or rate control for atrial fibrillation with a rapid ventricular response. Heart Failure Society of America guidelines for heart failure provide similar recommendations. Despite its relatively recent approval by the Food and Drug Administration and the guideline recommendations, the therapeutic use of digoxin is declining in patients with heart failure—likely the result of several factors. The main factor is the more recent introduction of several drugs shown in randomised controlled studies to improve outcomes in heart failure. Safety concerns regarding a proposed link between digoxin therapy and increased mortality seen in observational studies may have contributed to the decline in therapeutic use of digoxin, however a systematic review of 75 studies including four million patient years of patient follow-up showed that in properly designed randomised controlled studies, mortality was no higher in patients given digoxin than in those given placebo.


title: Digitalis

text: A group of pharmacologically active compounds are extracted mostly from the leaves of the second year's growth, and in pure form are referred to by common chemical names, such as digitoxin or digoxin, or by brand names such as Crystodigin and Lanoxin, respectively. The two drugs differ in that digoxin has an additional hydroxyl group at the C-3 position on the B-ring (adjacent to the pentane). This results in digoxin having a half-life of about one day (and increasing with impaired kidney function), whereas digitoxin's is about 7 days and not affected by kidney function. Both molecules include a lactone and a triple-repeating sugar called a glycoside.


title: Digitalis

text: Digitalis works by inhibiting sodium-potassium ATPase. This results in an increased intracellular concentration of sodium ions and thus a decreased concentration gradient across the cell membrane. This increase in intracellular sodium causes the Na/Ca exchanger to reverse potential, i.e., transition from pumping sodium into the cell in exchange for pumping calcium out of the cell, to pumping sodium out of the cell in exchange for pumping calcium into the cell. This leads to an increase in cytoplasmic calcium concentration, which improves cardiac contractility. Under normal physiological conditions, the cytoplasmic calcium used in cardiac contractions originates from the sarcoplasmic reticulum, an intracellular organelle that stores calcium. Human newborns, some animals, and patients with chronic heart failure lack well developed and fully functioning sarcoplasmic reticula and must rely on the Na/Ca exchanger to provide all or a majority of the cytoplasmic calcium required for cardiac contraction. For this to occur, cytoplasmic sodium must exceed its typical concentration to favour a reversal in potential, which naturally occurs in human newborns and some animals primarily through an elevated heart rate; in patients with chronic heart failure it occurs through the administration of digitalis. As a result of increased contractility, stroke volume is increased. Ultimately, digitalis increases cardiac output (cardiac output = stroke volume x heart rate). This is the mechanism that makes this drug a popular treatment for congestive heart failure, which is characterized by low cardiac output.


title: Digitalis

text: Digitalis also has a vagal effect on the parasympathetic nervous system, and as such is used in re-entrant cardiac arrhythmias and to slow the ventricular rate during atrial fibrillation. The dependence on the vagal effect means digitalis is not effective when a patient has a high sympathetic nervous system drive, which is the case with acutely ill persons, and also during exercise.


title: Digitalis

text: Digoxigenin (DIG) is a steroid found in the flowers and leaves of "Digitalis" species, and is extracted from "D. lanata". Digoxigenin can be used as a molecular probe to detect mRNA in situ and label DNA, RNA, and oligonucleotides. It can easily be attached to nucleotides such as uridine by chemical modifications. DIG molecules are often linked to nucleotides; DIG-labelled uridine can then be incorporated into RNA via "in vitro" transcription. Once hybridisation occurs, RNA with the incorporated DIG-U can be detected with anti-DIG antibodies conjugated to alkaline phosphatase. To reveal the hybridised transcripts, a chromogen can be used which reacts with the alkaline phosphatase to produce a coloured precipitate.


title: Digitalis

text: Depending on the species, the digitalis plant may contain several deadly physiological and chemically related cardiac and steroidal glycosides. Thus, the digitalis plants have earned several, more sinister, names: dead man's bells and witch's gloves.


title: Digitalis

text: Digitalis intoxication, known as "digitalism", results from an overdose of digitalis and causes gastrointestinal disturbances and pain, severe headache, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, cardiac arrhythmias, as well as sometimes resulting in xanthopsia (jaundiced or yellow vision). The toxins can be absorbed via the skin or ingestion; early symptoms of digitalism include nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, wild hallucinations, delirium, and severe headache. Depending on the severity of the toxicosis, the victim may later suffer irregular and slow pulse, tremors, various cerebral disturbances, especially of a visual nature (unusual colour visions (see xanthopsia) with objects appearing yellowish to green, and blue halos around lights), convulsions, and deadly disturbances of the heart. Other oculotoxic effects of digitalis include generalized blurry vision, as well as the appearance of blurred outlines ('halos'). Other things mentioned are dilated pupils, drooling, weakness, collapse, seizures, and even death. Because a frequent side effect of digitalis is reduction of appetite, some individuals have used the drug as a weight-loss aid.


title: Digitalis

text: Digitalis poisoning can cause heart block and either bradycardia (decreased heart rate) or tachycardia (increased heart rate), depending on the dose and the condition of one's heart. The electric cardioversion (to "shock" the heart) is generally not indicated in ventricular fibrillation in digitalis toxicity, as it can increase the dysrhythmia. Furthermore, the classic drug of choice for ventricular fibrillation in emergency setting, amiodarone, can worsen the dysrhythmia caused by digitalis, therefore, the second-choice drug lidocaine is more commonly used.


title: Digitalis

text: The entire plant is toxic (including the roots and seeds). Mortality is rare, but case reports do exist. Most plant exposures occur in children younger than six years and are usually unintentional and without associated significant toxicity. More serious toxicity occurs with intentional ingestion by adolescents and adults.


title: Digitalis

text: In some instances, people have confused foxglove with the relatively harmless comfrey ("Symphytum") plant, which is sometimes brewed into a tea, with fatal consequences. Other fatal accidents involve children drinking the water in a vase containing digitalis plants. Drying does not reduce the toxicity of the plant. The plant is toxic to animals, including all classes of livestock and poultry, as well as felines and canines.


title: Digitalis

text: According to 1981 speculation Vincent van Gogh's "Yellow Period" may have been influenced by digitalis, because it had been proposed as a therapy to control epilepsy around this time, and there are two paintings by the artist where the plant is present. Other studies immediately questioned this: there are a large number of other possible explanations for van Gogh's choice of palette, there is no evidence that van Gogh was ever given the drug or that his physician prescribed it, he was tested and had no xanthopsia, and in his many letters of the time he makes it clear that he simply liked using the colour yellow, but it has remained a popular concept.


title: Cell theory

text: In biology, cell theory is a scientific theory first formulated in the mid-nineteenth century, that living organisms are made up of cells, that they are the basic structural/organizational unit of all organisms, and that all cells come from pre-existing cells. Cells are the basic unit of structure in all organisms and also the basic unit of reproduction.


title: Cell theory

text: The theory was once universally accepted, but now some biologists consider non-cellular entities such as viruses living organisms, and thus disagree with the first tenet. As of 2021: "expert opinion remains divided roughly a third each between yes, no and don’t know". As there is no universally accepted definition of life, discussion will continue.


title: Cell theory

text: With continual improvements made to microscopes over time, magnification technology advanced enough to discover cells. This discovery is largely attributed to Robert Hooke, and began the scientific study of cells, known as cell biology. When observing a piece of cork under the scope he was able to see pores. This was shocking at the time because it was believed no one else had seen these. To further support his theory, Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann both studied cells of both animal and plants. What they discovered was there were significant differences between the two types of cells. This put forth the idea that cells were not only fundamental to plants, but animals as well.


title: Cell theory

text: Robert Hooke's microscope was a recreation of Anton van Leeuwenhoek's microscope in the 17th century, except his was 300x magnification. The discovery of the cell was made possible through the invention of the microscope. In the first century BC, Romans were able to make glass. They discovered that objects appeared to be larger under the glass. In Italy during the 12th century, Salvino D’Armate made a piece of glass fit over one eye, allowing for a magnification effect to that eye. The expanded use of lenses in eyeglasses in the 13th century probably led to wider spread use of simple microscopes (magnifying glasses) with limited magnification. Compound microscopes, which combine an objective lens with an eyepiece to view a real image achieving much higher magnification, first appeared in Europe around 1620. In 1665, Robert Hooke used a microscope about six inches long with two convex lenses inside and examined specimens under reflected light for the observations in his book "Micrographia". Hooke also used a simpler microscope with a single lens for examining specimens with directly transmitted light, because this allowed for a clearer image.


title: Cell theory

text: An extensive microscopic study was done by Anton van Leeuwenhoek, a draper who took the interest in microscopes after seeing one while on an apprenticeship in Amsterdam in 1648. At some point in his life before 1668, he was able to learn how to grind lenses. This eventually led to Leeuwenhoek making his own unique microscope. He made one with a single lens. He was able to use a single lens that was a small glass sphere but allowed for a magnification of 270x. This was a large progression since the magnification before was only a maximum of 50x. After Leeuwenhoek, there was not much progress in microscope technology until the 1850s, two hundred years later. Carl Zeiss, a German engineer who manufactured microscopes, began to make changes to the lenses used. But the optical quality did not improve until the 1880s when he hired Otto Schott and eventually Ernst Abbe.


title: Cell theory

text: Optical microscopes can focus on objects the size of a wavelength or larger, giving restrictions still to advancement in discoveries with objects smaller than the wavelengths of visible light. The development of the electron microscope in the 1920s made it possible to view objects that are smaller than optical wavelengths, once again opening up new possibilities in science.


title: Cell theory

text: The cell was first discovered by Robert Hooke in 1665, which can be found to be described in his book "Micrographia". In this book, he gave 60 'observations' in detail of various objects under a coarse, compound microscope. One observation was from very thin slices of bottle cork. Hooke discovered a multitude of tiny pores that he named "cells". This came from the Latin word "Cella", meaning ‘a small room’ like monks lived in and also "Cellulae", which meant the six sided cell of a honeycomb. However, Hooke did not know their real structure or function. What Hooke had thought were cells, were actually empty cell walls of plant tissues. With microscopes during this time having a low magnification, Hooke was unable to see that there were other internal components to the cells he was observing. Therefore, he did not think the "cellulae" were alive. His cell observations gave no indication of the nucleus and other organelles found in most living cells. In "Micrographia", Hooke also observed mould, bluish in color, found on leather. After studying it under his microscope, he was unable to observe "seeds" that would have indicated how the mould was multiplying in quantity. This led to Hooke suggesting that spontaneous generation, from either natural or artificial heat, was the cause. Since this was an old Aristotelian theory still accepted at the time, others did not reject it and was not disproved until Leeuwenhoek later discovered that generation was achieved otherwise.


title: Cell theory

text: Anton van Leeuwenhoek is another scientist who saw these cells soon after Hooke did. He made use of a microscope containing improved lenses that could magnify objects 270-fold. Under these microscopes, Leeuwenhoek found motile objects. In a letter to The Royal Society on October 9, 1676, he states that motility is a quality of life therefore these were living organisms. Over time, he wrote many more papers which described many specific forms of microorganisms. Leeuwenhoek named these "animalcules," which included protozoa and other unicellular organisms, like bacteria. Though he did not have much formal education, he was able to identify the first accurate description of red blood cells and discovered bacteria after gaining interest in the sense of taste that resulted in Leeuwenhoek to observe the tongue of an ox, then leading him to study "pepper water" in 1676. He also found for the first time the sperm cells of animals and humans. Once discovering these types of cells, Leeuwenhoek saw that the fertilization process requires the sperm cell to enter the egg cell. This put an end to the previous theory of spontaneous generation. After reading letters by Leeuwenhoek, Hooke was the first to confirm his observations that were thought to be unlikely by other contemporaries.


title: Cell theory

text: The cells in animal tissues were observed after plants were because the tissues were so fragile and susceptible to tearing, it was difficult for such thin slices to be prepared for studying. Biologists believed that there was a fundamental unit to life, but were unsure what this was. It would not be until over a hundred years later that this fundamental unit was connected to cellular structure and existence of cells in animals or plants. This conclusion was not made until Henri Dutrochet. Besides stating “the cell is the fundamental element of organization”, Dutrochet also claimed that cells were not just a structural unit, but also a physiological unit.