title: History of the Catholic Church

text: The sexual revolution of the 1960s brought challenging issues for the Church. Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical "Humanae Vitae" reaffirmed the Catholic Church's traditional view of marriage and marital relations and asserted a continued proscription of artificial birth control. In addition, the encyclical reaffirmed the sanctity of life from conception to natural death and asserted a continued condemnation of both abortion and euthanasia as grave sins which were equivalent to murder.


title: History of the Catholic Church

text: The efforts to lead the Church to consider the ordination of women led Pope John Paul II to issue two documents to explain Church teaching. "Mulieris Dignitatem" was issued in 1988 to clarify women's equally important and complementary role in the work of the Church. Then in 1994, "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis" explained that the Church extends ordination only to men in order to follow the example of Jesus, who chose only men for this specific duty.


title: History of the Catholic Church

text: In June 2004, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I's visited Rome on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June) for another personal meeting with Pope John Paul II, for conversations with the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and for taking part in the celebration for the feast day in St. Peter's Basilica.


title: History of the Catholic Church

text: The Patriarch's partial participation in the Eucharistic liturgy at which the Pope presided followed the program of the past visits of Patriarch Dimitrios (1987) and Patriarch Bartholomew I himself: full participation in the Liturgy of the Word, joint proclamation by the Pope and by the Patriarch of the profession of faith according to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in Greek and as the conclusion, the final Blessing imparted by both the Pope and the Patriarch at the Altar of the Confessio. The Patriarch did not fully participate in the Liturgy of the Eucharist involving the consecration and distribution of the Eucharist itself.


title: History of the Catholic Church

text: In accordance with the Catholic Church's practice of including the Filioque clause when reciting the Creed in Latin, but not when reciting the Creed in Greek, Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have recited the Nicene Creed jointly with Patriarchs Demetrius I and Bartholomew I in Greek without the "Filioque" clause. The action of these Patriarchs in reciting the Creed together with the Popes has been strongly criticized by some elements of Eastern Orthodoxy, such as the Metropolitan of Kalavryta, Greece, in November 2008


title: History of the Catholic Church

text: The declaration of Ravenna in 2007 re-asserted these beliefs, and re-stated the notion that the bishop of Rome is indeed the "protos", although future discussions are to be held on the concrete ecclesiological exercise of papal primacy.


title: History of the Catholic Church

text: Major lawsuits emerged in 2001 claiming that priests had sexually abused minors. In response to the ensuing scandal, the Church has established formal procedures to prevent abuse, encourage reporting of any abuse that occurs and to handle such reports promptly, although groups representing victims have disputed their effectiveness.


title: History of the Catholic Church

text: Some priests resigned, others were defrocked and jailed, and there were financial settlements with many victims. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned a comprehensive study that found that four percent of all priests who served in the US from 1950 to 2002 had faced some sort of accusation of sexual misconduct.


title: History of the Catholic Church

text: With the election of Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, the Church largely saw a continuation of the policies of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, with some notable exceptions: Benedict decentralized beatifications and reverted the decision of his predecessor regarding papal elections. In 2007, he set a Church record by approving the beatification of 498 Spanish Martyrs. His first encyclical "Deus caritas est" discussed love and sex in continued opposition to several other views on sexuality.


title: History of the Catholic Church

text: With the election of Pope Francis in 2013, following the resignation of Benedict XVI, Francis is the current and first Jesuit pope, the first pope from the Americas, and the first from the Southern Hemisphere. Since his election to the papacy, he has displayed a simpler and less formal approach to the office, choosing to reside in the Vatican guesthouse rather than the papal residence. He has signalled numerous dramatic changes in policy as well—for example removing conservatives from high Vatican positions, calling on bishops to lead a simpler life, and taking a more pastoral attitude towards homosexuality.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: "Fifteen Million Merits" is the second episode of the first series of the British science fiction anthology series "Black Mirror". It was written by the series creator and showrunner Charlie Brooker and his wife Konnie Huq and directed by Euros Lyn. It first aired on Channel 4 on 11 December 2011.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Set in a world where most of society must cycle on exercise bikes in order to earn currency called "merits", the episode tells the story of Bing (Daniel Kaluuya), who meets Abi (Jessica Brown Findlay) and convinces her to participate in a talent show so she can become famous. The episode was inspired by Huq's idea that her technology-obsessed husband Brooker would be happy in a room covered by screens; it additionally drew motivation from the narrative of talent shows leading to fame. "Fifteen Million Merits" incorporates elements of dystopian fiction, science fiction and drama, and offers commentary on capitalism.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: The episode received a positive critical reception. The relationship of Abi and Bing drew comparison to that of Julia and Winston in "Nineteen Eighty-Four", whilst Abi's objectification was compared to that of female media figures. The episode's ambiguous ending led to discussion about the commodification of dissent. The visual style and music of the episode were praised, as was the romance between Abi and Bing. The acting received a mixed reception, as did the world-building, but the depressing humour and bleak tone of the episode garnered positive reviews. "Fifteen Million Merits" was nominated for a British Academy Television Craft Award, but did not win; while on critics' lists of "Black Mirror" episodes by quality, it generally places middling or poorly.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Bing Madsen (Daniel Kaluuya) lives in a room surrounded by screens that wake him up, serve as a video game console and feature regular adverts. He rides on a stationary bike to generate electricity in exchange for "merits", which he needs to pay for his daily cost of living. He sits next to Dustin (Paul Popplewell), an obnoxious man who degrades the overweight cleaners as they pass and watches pornography as he cycles.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Overhearing Abi Khan (Jessica Brown Findlay) singing in the toilets, Bing convinces her to enter "Hot Shot", a virtual talent show whose winners can live a life of luxury. He offers to buy her entry ticket, having inherited millions of merits from his deceased brother. The ticket costs more merits than he thought, 15 million, almost his entire savings, but he buys it. Bing goes with Abi to the audition and she gives him an origami penguin. Abi is made to drink a carton of "Cuppliance" before performing "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)" by Irma Thomas for the judges Wraith, Hope and Charity (Ashley Thomas, Rupert Everett and Julia Davis, respectively). The judges are unimpressed, but Wraith offers a place for Abi on his pornography channel "WraithBabes". Despite Bing's protestations from backstage, Abi, succumbing to pressure from the audience and judges, accepts.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Whilst in his room, Bing sees an advert for "WraithBabes" featuring Abi. He cannot afford the merits to skip it, and a high-pitched noise sounds when he looks away from the screens, so he must watch. Increasingly agitated, he smashes a screen out of frustration and then hides a shard of glass under his bed. Bing then becomes single-mindedly obsessed with cycling and being as frugal as possible. He buys a "Hot Shot" ticket and hides the shard of glass in his trousers. Onstage, he starts performing a dance number, then pulls out the shard and threatens to slice his own neck. Wraith goads him to do it, but the other judges encourage him to speak. Bing passionately and angrily rants about the heartless, artificial system they live under. Hope declares the speech the most heartfelt in "Hot Shot" history and offers Bing his own regular show on one of his channels.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Bing is shown recording his show, where he rants while holding the shard to his neck. Despite criticising the system on his show, he now lives in much larger quarters, and the episode ends with him looking out from his room at what appears to be a vast green forest.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: The executive producers Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones began work on "Black Mirror" in 2010, having previously worked together on other television programmes. The programme was commissioned for three hour-long episodes by Channel 4, taking its budget from the comedy department. Brooker's production company Zeppotron produced the show for Endemol. "Fifteen Million Merits" was the first "Black Mirror" episode to be written, though it aired second, following "The National Anthem".


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: "Fifteen Million Merits" was written by Brooker and his wife Konnie Huq; an inspiration for the episode was Huq's remark that Brooker would "basically be happy in a room where every wall" was an iPad screen. Huq had conceived of a future where the walls of every house would be a touch-screen television, whilst Brooker had been inspired by avatars and Miis on the Xbox 360 and Wii. Huq had also had an idea that gyms should be powered by the energy produced by its exercise equipment.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Additionally, Brooker said that the episode is based on a narrative promoted by talent shows where becoming an "overnight star" is "one of the main means of salvation that's held up" for people who "do a job they hate for little reward". At the time, Huq was presenting "The Xtra Factor", a reality series companion show. She had previously presented the children's television show "Blue Peter" and noted that many children wanted to be famous without knowing what they would be famous for. The episode was also influenced by "The Year of the Sex Olympics", a 1968 dystopian television play that comments on reality television.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: In an article promoting "Black Mirror" shortly before its release, Brooker mentioned the "1984" ad produced by Apple, Inc. for the Apple Macintosh computer. He said that the advert "implied the Mac might save mankind from a nightmarish Orwellian future", but that such a world would instead "probably" look "a bit like" the one in "Fifteen Million Merits". He and Huq nicknamed the episode the ""Screenwipe" Story" because of the similarities between Bing's monologues and Brooker's televised rants on "Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe".


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: The ending went through various drafts. One idea featured Bing and Abi living together, both unhappy with their lives; another idea had Bing deliver his stream and anxiously pore over the ratings for it. One ending revealed that the exercise bikes were not connected to anything, contrary to the implication that they are generating electricity; Jones commented that the viewer may think this anyway.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Euros Lyn directed the episode; Brooker had written reviews of Lyn's work on the science fiction programme "Doctor Who" and Lyn was familiar with his articles in "The Guardian" and his show "Nathan Barley". Daniel Kaluuya was cast as Bing Madsen, based on an audition in which he performed Bing's rant on "Hot Shot". Kaluuya would later be cast by Jordan Peele in the 2017 horror film "Get Out" because of the strength of this scene. Jessica Brown Findlay played Abi, having recently finished working on historical drama "Downton Abbey". Rupert Everett played Judge Hope, Julia Davis played Judge Charity and Ashley Thomas, known by the stage name "Bashy", played Judge Wraith.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Additionally, characters riding the exercises bikes include Dustin, an unpleasant cyclist played by Paul Popplewell and Swift, a woman with a crush on Bing played by Isabella Laughland. Hannah John-Kamen was cast as the "Hot Shot" winner Selma, whilst Kerrie Hayes played Glee, a poor singer wanting to appear on "Hot Shot".


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Filming took place in Buckingham, on a disused university campus. Due to the small budget, every scene was filmed on one set, which was redressed for each location. The sets feature working screens, as using visual effects would have required a larger budget and more time. For example, when Kaluuya swiped his hand in front of a screen attached to his bike machine, a crew member would press a button to trigger the screen's response. Digital avatars called "doppels" represented each character on the screens, including in a large "Hot Shot" audience. An illustrator and a team of animators worked on the doppels, with every cast member being assigned an avatar, and hundreds more avatars appearing in the "Hot Shot" audience. Many audience reactions were shot so that they could be inserted as appropriate responses to the story and dialogue. The "cycling chamber" shown is one of thousands in the building in which the story take place; a low budget meant this building could only be shown sparingly.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Bing's screen displays different programmes. Whilst the gameshow "Botherguts" was fictional and had to be filmed, Endemol allowed their gameshows "Don't Scare the Hare" and "The Whole 19 Yards" to be displayed on the screens. Additionally, adverts for the fictional pornography channel "WraithBabes" needed to be filmed; two real pornographic actresses were hired, with one of the actresses bringing her boyfriend to participate in the shoot. For the "WraithBabes" video featuring Abi, the team shot some graphic elements that were ultimately not used. The final version has the actor put his thumb in Abi's mouth, giving a sense of "weird violation" rather than titillation.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: To inform Kaluuya's portrayal of Bing, Lyn and Kaluuya discussed Bing's backstory in great depth, considering Bing's relationship with his deceased brother. In a key scene, Bing smashes a screen in his cell after seeing Abi in a porn advert. During filming of the scene, Kaluuya accidentally cut his foot, a moment that was included in the final cut. The episode reaches its climax with Bing's appearance on "Hot Shot", where he dances before delivering a rant. Kaluuya worked with a choreographer for the dance, whilst the rant was written by Brooker "in a real rush" to imitate Bing's feelings as he speaks. It contains lines that do not make complete sense, such as "You're sitting there slowly knitting things worse". Bing's "Hot Shot" performance was filmed in two takes, with three cameras on Kaluuya.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Judge Hope was inspired by the talent competition judge Simon Cowell, as well as BBC Radio 1 DJs from the 1970s. Davis and Everett both had the idea of affecting Australian accents, but only Everett was allowed to do so. To distance Judge Hope from the singer George Michael, Everett removed his glasses during his first scene.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: The episode features an original soundtrack by Stephen McKeon. McKeon agreed with Lyn that the score should use live musicians and sound "natural" as a contrast to the artificiality of the setting. The music for Bing's character is Western in genre, chosen to match his cell's personalised theme and to evoke the symbolism of a hero in Western film, which Bing unsuccessfully tries to embody by "saving" Abi.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: The music for pornography channel "WraithBabes" features voices by Tara Lee, McKeon's daughter, who was 16 years old at the time. The scene in which Bing works hard to achieve enough merits to enter "Hot Shot" is five minutes long; the music had to build throughout, and McKeon used a sample of an exercise bike in his composition. The song "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)" by Irma Thomas was chosen by Brooker to stand out from the dystopic setting; he wanted a catchy song with a 1960s style. It recurs in later "Black Mirror" episodes.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: The episode first aired on 11 December 2011, a week after "The National Anthem", the programme's debut episode. Coincidentally, "Fifteen Million Merits" was initially scheduled to air at the same time as the final of the eighth series of ITV's "The X Factor". Brooker contacted Channel 4, who moved the programme to a later timeslot. Trailers for the episode noted that it would air after "The X Factor" final, and one trailer ran on ITV during the final itself. Brooker commented that "Hot Shot" was not meant to "directly be" "The X Factor", as talent shows have different roles in the fictional setting of the episode.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: From June to September 2017, scenes from "Fifteen Million Merits" were featured at a Barbican Centre exhibit entitled "Into the Unknown: A Journey Through Science Fiction". The entrance contained a high installation containing extracts from the episode across multiple screens.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: The episode falls under the genres of dystopian fiction, science fiction and drama, with elements of romance. David Sims of "The A.V. Club" described it as "far-fetched satire", whilst Brooker called it "an incredibly reductive piss-taking version of capitalism". Alexandra Howard of "The 405" identified advertising and capitalism as "villain[s]" in this episode and Adam David of CNN Philippines found the world to be "techno-fascist". The janitors, the exercise bikers and the television hosts can be seen as different social classes. David thought that the world represented neoliberalism, a political system in which "freedom is merely another cage you have to pay your way to get imprisoned in". The episode addresses disadvantages to contemporary technology as well as more emotional themes: Jacob Hall of /Film found that it takes the idea of microtransactions in video games to "hellish extremes" and Ryan Lambie of "Den of Geek" wrote that the episode addresses the "fragility of relationships". The episode has a penguin motif, arising when Abi gives Bing an origami penguin, and concluding when Bing's ornamental penguin is seen in the ending.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: The episode includes several fictional television shows such as the talent show "Hot Shot" and "Botherguts", in which overweight people are degraded for entertainment. Sam Richards of "The Telegraph" noted that "Hot Shot" is "a caustic satire on TV talent shows"; it was widely considered to be based on the singing competition "The X Factor", with Judge Hope in the role of Simon Cowell. Reviewers have also drawn comparisons to the singing competition "American Idol". David Lewis of "Cultbox" compared "Botherguts" to Brooker's previous work "TVGoHome".


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: "Fifteen Million Merits" was compared to various works of dystopian fiction. Lambie made comparisons to the 20th century dystopian novels "Nineteen Eighty-Four", "Brave New World" and "We", due to the plot revolving around a "doomed relationship". However, Bing and Abi are opposite to Winston and Julia of "Nineteen Eighty-Four", who have their love suppressed by torture, as Bing "unwittingly sells Abi into a life of exploitation". Emily Yoshida of "Grantland" found the story to have parallels to 2006 film "Idiocracy", set in a commercialised dystopia. Ian Berriman of "GamesRadar+" compared the episode to the works of the American author Ray Bradbury and to the French Marxist Guy Debord's concept of the "spectacle". The first shot of the episode—in which a man is woken up in a dark room—is similar to that of the previous episode, "The National Anthem".


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Bing is a tragic hero, according to Sam Wallaston of "The Guardian". Richards believed that Bing can be seen as a satire of Brooker himself, as both can be described as a "bilious TV critic turned TV presenter". His character speaks very little for most of the episode before his stream of consciousness-style rant at the judges. Berriman suggests that the character's name could derive from the search engine Bing.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Howard described Abi as a woman who is "reduced to an object of gratification". She said that Abi's storyline is relevant to contemporary reality stars and Instagram models, arguing that "stardom, for women, equates to sexual objectification". She gave the example of the American media personality Kim Kardashian. Tim Surette of "TV.com" wrote that the episode provides a "look forward into our celebrity-obsessed culture".


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: The technology and setting of the episode were compared to contemporary technology and games. Sims used the metaphor that Bing is "stuck inside a cellphone", and that his life is a game of "Candy Crush". Brendan Connelly of "Bleeding Cool" called Bing's cell a "little tomb made out of Kinect-equipped iPads". Sims noted that the doppels each person has resemble Mii avatars.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: The ending was widely discussed by reviewers. The forest seen from Bing's window at the end of the episode can be interpreted as real or a computer-generated landscape. Connelly questioned whether Bing has "sold out" or "been deceived" into thinking his television show is having an effect. Berriman wrote that the "system can tolerate dissent, as long as it can be packaged and commodified". Yoshida concurred that "even our supposedly clear-eyed dissent to [mainstream media] can be packaged and sold".


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: "Fifteen Million Merits" premiered on Channel 4 on 11 December 2011 at 9:30 p.m., where, according to 7-day figures from the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board, the episode was watched by 1.52 million viewers.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: In 2012, Joel Collins and Daniel May were nominated for their work on the episode in the category Best Production Design at the British Academy Television Craft Awards, but did not win the award.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: The episode garnered positive reviews. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it holds an approval rating of 100% based on 14 reviews, with an average rating of 9.50/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Combining the worst aspects of reality shows, talent competitions, and a hunger for fame, 'Fifteen Million Merits' effectively shows how anything – even our humanity – could be readily exploited." It received ratings of five out of five stars in "GamesRadar", four out of five stars in "The Telegraph", three out of five stars in "Cultbox" and an A rating in "The A.V. Club". As "Fifteen Million Merits" was the second episode of "Black Mirror", many reviewers made qualitative comparisons to the first episode "The National Anthem". Sims found that it is a "grander work in every way", while Wollaston called it "much better", "more artful" and "moving", but Connelly found it disappointing in comparison to the first episode. It was Yoshida's favourite episode of the first two series. Surette wrote that the episode was "one of the most beautiful and haunting hours of science-fiction television you'll [ever] see".


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: The episode was seen by Connelly and Richards to overuse tropes, with Connelly calling it a "fairly prosaic story situated in an all too familiar future world". Berriman found the world-building lacking. In contrast, Surette believed it to portray "a fully realized future that might not be too far off". The episode received praise from Sims, who said it was "a dazzling piece of science fiction that builds its world out slowly but perfectly". Lewis said that its moral "is more sledgehammer than subtle", but Sims found the ending "devastating and smart". Connelly wrote that "the show really punched out through the screen" in the final scene.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Surette and Wollaston praised the work as "thought-provoking", whilst Yoshida found concepts in the episode to be "bleakly funny". It was described by Lewis as "profoundly depressing", "highly watchable" and "utterly wretched". Richards found it to have "style, savvy and lashings of acerbic humour". Meanwhile, Surette lauded it as "gripping" and Wollaston described it as "original" and "thoughtful". Sims praised the pacing as "slow" and "repetitive" but "utterly compelling". He gave as an example Bing's name being withheld during the first 20 minutes of the episode.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Wollaston remarked that "all the performances are good", though Sims found that Bing is "perhaps too inscrutable". Lewis praised Kaluuya's acting in Bing's performance on "Hot Shot". Richards enjoyed the "deliciously evil" judges, but Lambie called Judge Hope "a little too shrill" and Wollaston believed that Julia Davis—who played Judge Charity—should have had a larger role.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Reception to Abi's storyline was mostly positive and the relationship between Abi and Bing was well-received. Though Connelly considered it dubious that Abi would "choose a life of televised sex abuse over a life of menial labour", Sims found it realistic, as Abi seems "blindsided" just as the audience is. Howard found that Abi's story "rings chillingly true". Lambie found it to be "among the most moving" of recent romances he had seen, praising the "warmth" of the characters' romance contrasting with the "coldness" of the rest of the episode. Lewis thought the scene in which Abi saw the golden ticket Bing had bought "genuinely touching" and his holding Abi's hand was "sweet". Lambie singled out the scene in which Abi gives Bing an origami penguin for praise of Brown Findlay's acting.


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: The production of the episode was universally praised. Sims lauded the episode as "visually seamless" and Surette enjoyed the "gorgeous visuals". Wollaston described the world as "striking to look at and beautiful". Lambie believed it to be "some of the finest production design, music and acting [...] in a genre television show all year". Surette praised the music as "moving".


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: "Fifteen Million Merits" placed middling to poorly on critics' rankings of the 23 instalments of "Black Mirror", from best to worst:


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Meanwhile, Brian Tallerico of "Vulture" rated Kaluuya's performance the fifth best of "Black Mirror", calling it "delicate and subtle".


title: Fifteen Million Merits

text: Other critics ranked the 13 episodes in "Black Mirror"s first three series, where "Fifteen Million Merits" received an even spreading of rankings:


title: Centenarian

text: A centenarian is a person who has reached the age of 100 years. Because life expectancies worldwide are below 100 years, the term is invariably associated with longevity. In 2012, the United Nations estimated that there were 316,600 living centenarians worldwide.


title: Centenarian

text: As world population and life expectancy continue to increase, the number of centenarians is expected to increase substantially in the 21st century. According to the UK ONS, one-third of babies born in 2013 in the UK are expected to live to 100.


title: Centenarian

text: The United Nations predicts that there are 573,000 centenarians currently, almost quadruple the 151,000 suggested in the year 2000. According to a 1998 United Nations demographic survey, Japan is expected to have 272,000 centenarians by 2050; other sources suggest that the number could be closer to 1 million. The incidence of centenarians in Japan was one per 3,522 people in 2008.


title: Centenarian

text: In Japan, the number of centenarians is highly skewed towards females. Japan in fiscal year 2016 had 57,525 female centenarians, while there were 8,167 males, a ratio of 7:1. The increase of centenarians was even more skewed at 11.6:1.


title: Centenarian

text: The total number of living centenarians in the world remains uncertain. It was estimated by the Population Division of the United Nations as 23,000 in 1950, 110,000 in 1990, 150,000 in 1995, 209,000 in 2000, 324,000 in 2005, 455,000 in 2009 and 573,000 in 2021. However, these older estimates did not take into account the contemporary downward adjustments of national estimates made by several countries such as the United States; thus, in 2012, the UN estimated there to be only 316,600 centenarians worldwide. The following table gives estimated centenarian populations by country, including both the latest and the earliest known estimates, where available.


title: Centenarian

text: A supercentenarian, sometimes hyphenated as super-centenarian, is a person who has reached the age of 110 years, something only achieved by about one in 1000 centenarians.


title: Centenarian

text: Even rarer is a person who has lived to 115 – there are 63 people in recorded history who have indisputably reached this age. Only 3 of the people who have ever been validated to reach 115 are men.


title: Centenarian

text: , the only living people with such an age are Lucile Randon, Maria Branyas Morera, Fusa Tatsumi and Bessie Hendricks.


title: Centenarian

text: An aspect of blessing in many cultures is to offer a wish that the recipient lives to 100 years old. Among Hindus in India, where touching feet of elders and respected is a tradition, people who touch the feet of elders are often blessed with "May you live a hundred years". In Sweden, the traditional birthday song states, "May he/she live for one hundred years". In Judaism, "May you live to be 120 years old" is a common blessing. In Poland, "Sto lat", a wish to live a hundred years, is a traditional form of praise and good wishes, and the song "sto lat, sto lat" is sung on the occasion of the birthday celebrations—arguably, it is the most popular song in Poland and among Poles around the globe.


title: Centenarian

text: According to legends, Sages from Ancient India lived and meditated for tens of thousands of years while Great Kings ruled their kingdoms for thousands of years.


title: Centenarian

text: Chinese emperors were hailed to live ten thousand years, while empresses were hailed to live a thousand years.


title: Centenarian

text: In Italy, "A hundred of these days!" ("cento di questi giorni") is an augury for birthdays, to live to celebrate 100 more birthdays. Some Italians say "Cent'anni!", which means "a hundred years", in that they wish that they could all live happily for a hundred years. In Greece, wishing someone Happy Birthday ends with the expression "να τα εκατοστήσεις" ("na ta ekatostisis"), which can be loosely translated as "may you make it one hundred birthdays". In Sri Lanka, it is a custom to bless as "you may live 220 instead of 120".


title: Centenarian

text: In many countries, people receive a gift or congratulations from federal/state institutions on their 100th birthday.


title: Centenarian

text: In the United States, recipients usually receive a letter of congratulation from the United States President to mark their longevity.


title: Centenarian

text: "The Today Show" also presents a segment honouring centenarians and older, sponsored by Smuckers. The tradition was created in 1983 by weather presenter Willard Scott, and is now presented by his successor Al Roker.


title: Centenarian

text: In Canada, as a commonwealth country, centenarians can receive a greeting by the British Monarch, and can also receive congratulations from the Canadian Governor General, by applying through the GGS official website


title: Centenarian

text: Japanese centenarians receive a silver cup and a certificate from the Prime Minister of Japan upon the Respect for the Aged Day following their 100th birthday, honouring them for their longevity and prosperity in their lives.


title: Centenarian

text: In Madhya Pradesh, the award known as Shatayu Samman is given out to persons who live at least 100 years to promote awareness of good health.


title: Centenarian

text: North Korean centenarians receive a birthday congratulatory letter from the Supreme Leader of the DPRK.


title: Centenarian

text: On 6 July 2022, Pak Hak Sil, a centenarian living in Koup-ri of Kangnam County, Pyongyang, received a birthday letter sent by Kim Jong Un.


title: Centenarian

text: In Taiwan, people aged 100 or above receive a golden pendant necklace on Chong Yang Festival each year from the President and Ministry of Health and Welfare.


title: Centenarian

text: In the Netherlands, the monarch and their Commissioner sends a letter on the 100th birthday and on every birthday beginning with the 105th.


title: Centenarian

text: Centenarians born in Ireland receive a €2,540 "Centenarians' Bounty" and a letter from the President of Ireland, even if they are resident abroad.


title: Centenarian

text: In 2019, there were reported to be over 20,000 centenarians living in Russia, a sharp increase from 6,700 in 2007.


title: Centenarian

text: Centenarians in Russia receive a letter from Vladimir Putin, officially congratulating them for reaching one hundred years.


title: Centenarian

text: In the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms, centenarian can receive a congratulations card greetings from the British monarch King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort, who send greetings on one's 100th birthday and on every birthday beginning with the 105th.


title: Centenarian

text: The traditions of British centenarians receiving greetings and congratulations was established by King Edward VII in 1908.


title: Centenarian

text: The famous acrobat and tightrope walker Henry Johnson received a congratulatory letter from Edward VII via his royal courtier Viscount Knollys in 1906. The tradition of Royal congratulations continued in 1908, when the Secretary for King Edward VII sent a congratulatory letter to Reverend Thomas Lord of Horncastle, Lincolnshire in a newspaper clipping, declaring, "I am commanded by the King to congratulate you on the attainment of your hundredth year, after a most useful life".


title: Centenarian

text: The practice was formalised from 1917, under the reign of King George V, who also sent congratulations then sent by a telgram on the attainment of a Diamond Wedding Anniversary (or jubilee) marking 60 years of marriage.


title: Centenarian

text: During the reign of King George V, only 24 telegrams were sent; however, with the aging population, this increased to 273 during 1952, when long-reigning monarch Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne. The Queen also sent a telegram, and later a portrait-style greeting card with the notation, "I am so pleased to know that you are celebrating your one hundredth birthday. I send my congratulations and best wishes to you on such a special occasion." Each few years the card was updated with a current updated picture of the Queen to ensure people did not receive the same card more than once. The Queen further sent her congratulations on one's 105th birthday and every year thereafter as well as on special wedding anniversaries.


title: Centenarian

text: In Commonwealth Countries like New Zealand, congratulation's are sent to recipients by the British Monarch (currently King Charles III), as well as dignitaries including the Governor General, the Prime Minister, the Minister for Seniors and also local Government, honorees must apply for greetings through the official government website.


title: Centenarian

text: While the number of centenarians per capita was much lower in ancient times than today, the data suggest that they were not unheard of.


title: Centenarian

text: Estimates of life expectancy in antiquity are far lower than modern values mostly due to the far greater incidence of deaths in infancy or childhood. Those who lived past early childhood had a reasonable chance of living to a relatively old age. The assumption of what constitutes "old age", or being "elderly", at least, seems to have remained unchanged since antiquity, the line being generally drawn at either sixty or sixty-five years; Psalm 90:10 in the Hebrew Bible appears to give seventy to eighty years as the natural life expectancy of a person surviving into old age, "The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty".


title: Centenarian

text: A survey of the lifespans of male individuals with entries in the "Oxford Classical Dictionary" (i.e., a sample pre-selected to include those who lived long enough to attain historical notability) found a median lifespan of 72 years, and a range of 32 to 107 years, for 128 individuals born before 100 BC (though the same study found a median lifespan of 66 years for 100 individuals born after 100 BC but no later than 602 AD); by comparison, male individuals listed in "Chambers Biographical Dictionary" who died between 1900 and 1949 had a median lifespan of 71.5 years, with a range between 29 and 105 years.


title: Centenarian

text: The author of the 1994 study concluded that it was only in the second half of the 20th century that medical advances have extended the life expectancy of those who live into adulthood.


title: Centenarian

text: Reliable references to individuals in antiquity who lived past 100 years are quite rare, but they do exist. For instance, Cicero's wife Terentia was reported by Pliny the Elder to have lived from 98 BC to 6 AD, 104 years. Regnal dates of Bronze Age monarchs are notoriously unreliable; the sixth dynasty Egyptian ruler Pepi II is sometimes listed as having lived c. 2278 – c. 2184 BC, as he is said to have reigned for 94 years, but alternative readings cite a reign of just 64 years. Adad-guppi, mother of the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire Nabonidus apparently lived from c. 648-544 BC (c. 104 years) according to inscriptions on funeral steles.


title: Centenarian

text: Diogenes Laërtius (c. AD 250) gives one of the earliest references regarding the plausible centenarian longevity given by a scientist, the astronomer Hipparchus of Nicaea (c. 185 – c. 120 BC), who, according to the doxographer, assured that the philosopher Democritus of Abdera (c. 470/460 – c. 370/360 BC) lived 109 years. All other ancient accounts of Democritus appear to agree that the philosopher lived at least 90 years. The case of Democritus differs from those of, for example, Epimenides of Crete (7th and 6th centuries BC), who is said to have lived an implausible 154, 157, or 290 years, depending on the source.


title: Centenarian

text: Other ancient Greek philosophers thought to have lived beyond the age of 90 include Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 570/565 – c. 475/470 BC), Pyrrho of Ellis (c. 360 – c. 270 BC), and Eratosthenes of Cirene (c. 285 – c. 190 BC).


title: Centenarian

text: Hosius of Córdoba, the man who convinced Constantine the Great to call the First Council of Nicaea, reportedly lived to age 102.


title: Centenarian

text: A rare record of an ordinary person who lived to be a centenarian is the tombstone of Roman British legionary veteran Julius Valens, inscribed "VIXIT ANNIS C".


title: Centenarian

text: In the medieval period, Albert Azzo II, Margrave of Milan (d. 1097) is reported by Bernold of Constance as having lived past 100 years ("iam maior centenario").


title: Centenarian

text: Research in Italy suggests that healthy centenarians have high levels of both vitamin A and vitamin E and that this seems to be important in causing their extreme longevity. Other research contradicts this, however, and has found that this theory does not apply to centenarians from Sardinia, for whom other factors probably play a more important role. A preliminary study carried out in Poland showed that, in comparison with young healthy female adults, centenarians living in Upper Silesia had significantly higher red blood cell glutathione reductase and catalase activities, although serum levels of vitamin E were not significantly higher. Researchers in Denmark have also found that centenarians exhibit a high activity of glutathione reductase in red blood cells. In this study, the centenarians having the best cognitive and physical functional capacity tended to have the highest activity of this enzyme.


title: Centenarian

text: Other research has found that people whose parents became centenarians have an increased number of naïve B cells. It is well known that the children of parents who have a long life are also likely to reach a healthy age, but it is not known why, although the inherited genes are probably important. A variation in the gene FOXO3A is known to have a positive effect on the life expectancy of humans, and is found much more often in people living to 100 and beyond – moreover, this appears to be true worldwide.


title: Centenarian

text: Men and women who are 100 or older tend to have extroverted personalities, according to Thomas T. Perls, the director of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University. Centenarians will often have many friends, strong ties to relatives and high self-esteem. In addition, some research suggests that the offspring of centenarians are more likely to age in better cardiovascular health than their peers.


title: Centenarian

text: Lymphoblastoid cell lines established from blood samples of centenarians have significantly higher activity of the DNA repair protein PARP (Poly ADP ribose polymerase) than cell lines from younger (20 to 70 years old) individuals. The lymphocytic cells of centenarians have characteristics typical of cells from young people, both in their capability of priming the mechanism of repair after HO sublethal oxidative DNA damage and in their PARP capacity. PARP activity measured in the permeabilized mononuclear leukocyte blood cells of thirteen mammalian species correlated with maximum lifespan of the species. These findings suggest that PARP mediated DNA repair activity contributes to the longevity of centenarians, consistent with the DNA damage theory of aging.


title: Centenarian

text: Many experts attribute Japan's high life expectancy to the typical Japanese diet, which is particularly low in refined simple carbohydrates, and to hygienic practices. The number of centenarians in relation to the total population was, in September 2010, 114% higher in Shimane Prefecture than the national average. This ratio was also 92% higher in Okinawa Prefecture. In Okinawa, studies have shown five factors that have contributed to the large number of centenarians in that region:


title: Centenarian

text: Although these factors vary from those mentioned in the previous study, the culture of Okinawa has proven these factors to be important in its large population of centenarians.


title: Centenarian

text: A historical study from Korea found that male eunuchs in the royal court had a centenarian rate of over 3%, and that eunuchs lived on average 14 to 19 years longer than uncastrated men.


title: Centenarian

text: The number of Japanese centenarians was called into question in 2010, following a series of reports showing that hundreds of thousands of elderly people had gone "missing" in the country. The deaths of many centenarians had not been reported, casting doubt on the country's reputation for having a large population of centenarians.


title: Centenarian

text: In July 2010, Sogen Kato, a centenarian listed as the oldest living male in Tokyo, registered to be aged 111, was found to have died some 30 years before; his body was found mummified in his bed, resulting in a police investigation into centenarians listed over the age of 105. Soon after the discovery, the Japanese Justice Ministry found that at least 234,354 other Japanese centenarians were "missing" and began a nationwide search in early August 2010.


title: Centenarian

text: By measuring the biological age of various tissues from centenarians, researchers may be able to identify tissues that are protected from aging effects. According to a study of 30 different body parts from centenarians and younger controls, the cerebellum is the youngest brain region (and probably body part) in centenarians (about 15 years younger than expected) according to an epigenetic biomarker of tissue age known as epigenetic clock.


title: Centenarian

text: These findings could explain why the cerebellum exhibits fewer neuropathological hallmarks of age related dementias compared to other brain regions. Further, the offspring of semi-supercentenarians (subjects who reached an age of 105–109 years) have a lower epigenetic age than age-matched controls (age difference=5.1 years in peripheral blood mononuclear cells) and centenarians are younger (8.6 years) than expected based on their chronological age.


title: Centenarian

text: Centenarians are often the subject of news stories, which often focus on the fact that they are over 100 years old. Along with the typical birthday celebrations, these reports provide researchers and cultural historians with evidence as to how the rest of society views this elderly population. Some examples:


title: Carrie (novel)

text: Carrie is a 1974 horror novel by American author Stephen King. Taking place in Chamberlain, Maine, it revolves around Carrie White, a friendless, bullied high-school girl from an abusive religious household who discovers that she has telekinetic powers. Feeling guilt toward harassing Carrie, Sue Snell invites Carrie to the prom with Tommy Ross, but a humiliating prank during the prom by Christ Hargensen leads to Carrie destroying the town with her powers. The narrative contains fictional documents in approximately chronological order that present multiple perspectives on the prom incident and its perpetrator. "Carrie" deals with themes of ostracization and revenge, with the opening shower scene and the destruction of Chamberlain being pivotal scenes.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: King started writing "Carrie", intended to be a short story for the men's magazine "Cavalier", after a friend's suggestion about writing a story of a female character. Though King initially gave up writing "Carrie" due to discomfort and apathy, his wife Tabitha convinced King to continue writing the story, though King felt that it would never be successful. King wrote the character of Carrie based on two girls he knew in high school and enjoyed fabricating the documents for the narrative. After Doubleday accepted "Carrie" to be published, King worked with editor Bill Thompson to revise the novel.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: "Carrie" was published on April 5, 1974, with a print run of 30,000 copies, and a paperback edition was published by New American Library in April 1975. The paperback edition became a bestseller, particularly after the release of the 1976 film adaptation, totaling four million sales. "Carrie" received generally positive reviews, both contemporaneously and retrospectively. Being a debut novel, "Carrie" launched King's career and helped achieve him mainstream success. It has also been credited for reviving mainstream interest in horror fiction and being influential among contemporary horror writers. Four film adaptations have been released, with one getting a sequel, and a musical adaptation was released in 1988.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: In 1979 Chamberlain, Maine, Carietta "Carrie" White is a 16-year-old girl who is a target of ridicule for her frumpy appearance and unusual religious beliefs, instilled by her despotic mother, Margaret. One day, Carrie has her first period while showering in the girls' locker room after a physical education class. Carrie is terrified, having no understanding of menstruation as her mother, who despises everything related to intimacy, never told her about it. While Carrie believes she is dying, her classmates, led by a wealthy, popular girl named Chris Hargensen, insult her and throw tampons and sanitary napkins at her. The gym teacher, Rita Desjardin, helps Carrie clean up and tries to explain. On the way home, Carrie practices her unusual ability to control objects from a distance. The only time she recalls using this power was when she was three years old and caused stones to fall from the sky by her house. Once Carrie gets home, Margaret furiously accuses Carrie of sin and locks her in a closet so that she may pray.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: The next day, Desjardin reprimands the girls who bullied Carrie and gives them a week's detention; Chris defiantly leaves and is punished with suspension and exclusion from the prom. After an unsuccessful bid to get her privileges reinstated through her influential father, Chris decides to exact revenge on Carrie. Sue Snell, another popular girl who tormented Carrie in the locker room, feels ashamed of her behavior; she convinces her boyfriend, Tommy Ross, to invite Carrie to the prom instead. Carrie is suspicious, but accepts and begins sewing herself a prom dress. Meanwhile, Chris persuades her boyfriend Billy Nolan and his gang of greasers to gather two buckets of pig blood as she prepares a measure to rig the prom queen election in Carrie's favor.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: The prom initially goes well for Carrie: Tommy's friends are welcoming, and Tommy finds that he is attracted to Carrie as a friend. Chris's plan to rig the election is successful, and Carrie and Tommy are elected prom queen and king. However, at the moment of the coronation, Chris, from outside, dumps the pig blood onto Carrie's and Tommy's heads. Tommy is knocked unconscious by one of the buckets and dies due to serious blood loss. The sight of Carrie drenched in blood invokes laughter from the audience. Carrie leaves the building, humiliated.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: Outside, Carrie remembers her telekinesis and decides to enact vengeance on her tormentors. Using her powers, she hermetically seals the gym, activates the sprinkler system, inadvertently electrocuting many of her classmates, and causes a fire that eventually ignites the school's fuel tanks, causing a massive explosion that destroys the building. Most present at the prom are killed by electric shock, fire, or smoke; a few lucky staff and students escape. Carrie, in an overwhelming fit of rage, thwarts any incoming effort to fight the fire by opening the hydrants within the school's vicinity, then destroys gas stations and cuts power lines on her way home. She unleashes her telekinetic powers on the town, destroying several buildings and killing hundreds of people. As she does all this, she broadcasts a telepathic message, making all the townspeople aware that the carnage was caused by her, even if they do not know who she is.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: Carrie returns home to confront Margaret, who believes Carrie has been possessed by Satan and must be killed. Margaret tells her that her conception was a result of what may have been marital rape. She stabs Carrie in the shoulder with a kitchen knife, but Carrie fights back by mentally stopping Margaret’s heart as she says a prayer. Mortally wounded, Carrie makes her way to the roadhouse where she was conceived. She sees Chris and Billy leaving, having been informed of the destruction by one of Billy's friends. After Billy attempts to run Carrie over, she mentally takes control of his car and sends it racing into a wall, killing both Billy and Chris.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: Sue, who has been following Carrie's "broadcast", finds her collapsed in the parking lot, bleeding from the knife wound. The two have a brief telepathic conversation. Carrie had believed that Sue and Tommy had set her up for the prank, but realizes that Sue is innocent and has never felt real animosity towards her. Carrie forgives her and then dies, crying out for her mother.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: A state of emergency is declared and the survivors make plans to relocate. Chamberlain foresees desolation in spite of the government allocation of finances toward rehabilitating the worker districts. Desjardin and the school's principal blame themselves for what happened and resign from teaching. Sue publishes a memoir based on her experiences. A "White Committee" report investigating paranormal abilities concludes that there are and will be others like Carrie. An Appalachian woman enthusiastically writes to her sister about her baby daughter's telekinetic powers and reminisces about their grandmother, who had similar abilities.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: "Carrie" is a horror novel and is an example of supernatural and gothic fiction. It is an epistolary novel: the narrative is organized through a collection of reports and excerpts in approximate chronological order, and is structured around a framing device consisting of multiple narrators. Leigh A. Ehlers, a literary scholar, has argued that this structure is used to indicate that no particular viewpoint, scientific or otherwise, can explain Carrie and the prom night event.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: "Carrie" deals with themes of ostracization, centering around Carrie being ostracized for not conforming to societal norms. A driving force of the novel is her first period in the shower leading to her being pelted with tampons and further scorned. Sue is one of the few people to feel genuine remorse for Carrie and arranges a date with Sue's boyfriend, Tommy, for the Spring Ball. However, Chris's need for vengeance against Carrie results in pig blood being dumped on Carrie during the Spring Ball. This results in Carrie committing a massacre among the school and Chamberlain. Following the massacre, Sue is subject to the same exclusion as Carrie, despite her altruistic motives. John Kerrigan, a literary scholar, and Victoria Madden have observed that throughout the novel, Carrie is often associated with pigs, which are considered "disgusting" animals.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: "Carrie" also deals with themes of vengeance. Throughout the novel, Carrie is forced through various hardships that she manages to endure for years without using her supernatural powers. However, after being invited to a prom only to have pig blood dumped on her, Carrie "breaks" and annihilates the city. Kerrigan considers "Carrie" to be an example of a revenge tragedy. Ray B. Browne argues that the novel serves as a "revenge fantasy", while novelist Charles L. Grant has stated that "[Stephen] King uses the evil/victim device for terror". Some scholars have argued that "Carrie" is a social commentary. Linda J. Holland-Toll has stated that ""Carrie" is about disaffirmation because society makes the human monster, cannot control the monster, yet still denies the possibility of actual monster existence while simultaneously defining humans as monsters".


title: Carrie (novel)

text: By the time of writing "Carrie", King lived in a trailer in Hermon, Maine with his wife Tabitha and two children. He had a job teaching English at Hampden Academy, and wrote short stories for men's magazines such as "Cavalier". "Carrie" was originally a short story intended for "Cavalier", and King started conceptualizing the story after a friend suggested writing a story about a female character.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: The basis of the story was King imagining a scene of a girl menstruating for the first time in the shower similar to the opening scene of "Carrie" and an article from "Life" about telekinesis. As he wrote the opening shower scene, King experienced discomfort due to not being female and not knowing how he would react to the scene if he was female. He also felt apathy toward Carrie when writing the scene. After three pages, King eventually threw away the manuscript of the story in the trash. The next day, Tabitha retrieved the pages from the trash and convinced King to continue writing the story with input from her. King was ultimately able to emotionally connect to Carrie through the influence of two girls he knew. One was constantly abused at school due to her family's poverty forcing her to wear only one outfit to school. The other was a timid girl from a devoutly religious family.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: King believed "Carrie" would not be successful, thinking it would not be marketable in any genre or to any audience. He also found writing it to be a "waste of time" and found no point in sending out what he perceived as a failed story. King only continued writing it in order to please his wife and because he was unable to think of anything else to write. When King finished the first draft, "Carrie" was a 98-page long novella that he detested. In December 1972, King decided to rewrite "Carrie" and strive for it to become novel-length. He wrote in fabricated documents that were purported to be from periodicals such as "Esquire" and "Reader's Digest", imitating their style accordingly; a process that King found entertaining. After "Carrie" was accepted by the publisher Doubleday, King revised the novel with editor and friend Bill Thompson. The original ending of "Carrie" had Carrie growing demon horns and destroying an airplane thousands of miles above her. Thompson convinced King to rewrite the ending to be more subtle.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: King's manuscript for "Carrie" was given to Thompson in November 1973. Seeing potential in the novel in light of recent horror novels such as "Rosemary's Baby" (1967), Thompson convinced Lee Barker, executive editor of Doubleday, to accept the novel. In 1973, after much revision, advanced copies of "Carrie" were sent to salesmen to secure an advance. Eventually, the novel was approved for an advance of $1500. Thompson convinced Doubleday to boost the advance to $2500, moderately high for a debut novel at the time, and it was announced to King via telegram. With a print-run of 30,000 copies, the hardback edition of "Carrie" was ultimately published on April 5, 1974. Although "Carrie" was marketed as an "occult" novel, trade reviewers at the time of release called it a horror novel.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: On May 3, 1974, "Carrie" was received by the publishing company New English Library and was read overnight by president Bob Tanner. Tanner sent a copy to the parent company New American Library, which then offered Doubleday $400,000 for rights to mass-market paperback publication of "Carrie", of which King received $200,000. New English Library published "Carrie" in May 1974, and New American Library published "Carrie" under its Signet Books imprint in April 1975. With the goal of persuading the reader to buy the book, New American Library designed the novel to be "double-covered". The original cover of the paperback edition did not feature the title or the author's name; it consisted of the face of a girl in front of a silhouette. Behind the cover was a two-page picture of New England on fire, with the title and author's name on the far right. New American Library planned for the girl's silhouette to be scored to allow the reader to see the burning New England picture. The printers refused to produce the technique, and the edition was published without the scoring. Since initial publication, "Carrie" has remained in continual print and has been published throughout Europe.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: The hardback edition of "Carrie" sold modestly, but not spectacularly; it was not a bestseller. Sources of the number of sales for the hardback edition vary, ranging from 13,000 copies to 17,000 copies. In contrast, the paperback edition sold exceedingly well. In its first year, the edition sold one million copies. The sales were bolstered by the 1976 film adaptation, totaling four million sales. "Carrie" became a "New York Times" bestseller, debuting on the list on December 1976 and remaining on it for 14 weeks, peaking at #3.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: "Carrie" received generally positive reviews and has become a fan favorite. Various critics considered it an impressive literary debut. Newgate Callendar of "The New York Times" stated that despite being a debut novel, "King writes with the kind of surety normally associated only with veteran writers". The "Daily Times-Advocate" Ina Bonds considers the novel an "admirable achievement" for a first novel, and "Kirkus Reviews" believes that the debut novel is handled well by King with little nonsense. Bob Cormier from "the Daily Sentinel & Leominster Enterprise" believes that the novel could've failed because of the subject matter, but didn't, and thus finds King to be "no ordinary writer".


title: Carrie (novel)

text: Various critics wrote that the plot will scare readers, with "Library Journal" declaring the novel "a terrifying treat for both horror and parapsychology fans". Mary Schedl of "The San Francisco Examiner" wrote that "Carrie" "goes far beyond the usual limitations of the [horror] genre" to deliver a message about humanity. "Publishers Weekly" praised the novel for its sympathetic portrayal of Carrie. Both Joy Antos of "Progress Bulletin" and Gary Bogart of "Wilson Library Journal" wrote of enjoying "Carrie" despite the foregone conclusion. Nonetheless, "Booklist" stated that reading the novel required a "willing suspension of belief and taste".


title: Carrie (novel)

text: Retrospectively, "Carrie" has received appraisal. Michael R. Collings and Adam Nevill declared that the plot holds up decades after publication. Collings attributed it to focus and conciseness, and Nevill attributed it to the characterization and structure. In his literary analysis, Rocky Wood called the plot "remarkably short but compelling". Michael Berry of Common Sense Media lauded the characterization and said that the epistolary structure "lend[s] a sense of realism to the outlandish proceedings". While both Grady Hendrix and James Smythe similarly praised the story; Hendrix felt that the writing was awkward much of the time, and Smythe found the epistolary-style extracts to be the "worst [and slowest] parts of the novel". Although Harold Bloom found the characterization and style to be unremarkable, he thought the novel had strong imagery and said that "Carrie at the prom scene...is a marvelous culmination of melodrama."


title: Carrie (novel)

text: "Carrie" launched King's career as an author; the $200,000 King received when "Carrie" was accepted for mass-market publication allowed King to quit his job as a teacher and become a full-time author. The novel established King as a horror writer that wrote about "the supernatural, the dark, and the bizarre". Following "Carrie" publication, King underwent a six-month period of prolific writing. During this period, King wrote rough drafts for "Blaze" and "'Salem's Lot", the latter of which became his second published novel, being published in 1976. Both "Carrie" and its 1976 film adaptation brought King into the mainstream, and he has since become one of the most successful authors in the modern era, with his novels consistently becoming bestsellers.


title: Carrie (novel)

text: For decades prior to the 1970s, horror literature had not been in the mainstream; the last novel to reach the "Publishers Weekly" bestseller list was "Rebecca" (1938). "Carrie" is credited as one of four novels to result in contemporary mainstream interest in horror literature. This interest was especially bolstered by their respective adaptations, allowing these novels to become bestsellers. "Carrie" has been influential among contemporary horror writers, with writers such as Smyth and Sarah Lotz claiming to be influenced by "Carrie". Author Jeff VanderMeer said of "Carrie" influence:


title: Carrie (novel)

text: "Carrie" has received three film adaptations and a musical adaptation. The first one, directed by Brian De Palma and starring Sissy Spacek in the title role, was released on November 3, 1976, to critical acclaim and commercial success, and is considered a noteworthy example of 1970s horror films and a major factor to King's success. A sequel to the 1976 film adaptation titled "" was released in 1999 to mixed reviews. From May 12–15, 1988, a musical adaptation was performed five times by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Virginia Theater before closing. It was a commercial and critical failure, losing more than $7 million, among the most expensive failures by Broadway theatre. A 2002 film adaptation received negative reviews, and a 2013 film adaptation received mixed reviews. An off-Broadway revival of the musical was performed from March 1–April 8, 2012. The television series "Riverdale" aired an episode titled "" in 2018 based on the musical.


title: Management consulting

text: Management consulting is the practice of providing consulting services to organizations to improve their performance or in any way to assist in achieving organizational objectives. Organizations may draw upon the services of management consultants for a number of reasons, including gaining external (and presumably objective) advice and accessing consultants' specialized expertise regarding concerns that call for additional oversight.


title: Management consulting

text: As a result of their exposure to and relationships with numerous organizations, consulting firms are typically aware of industry "best practices". However, the specific nature of situations under consideration may limit the ability or appropriateness of transferring such practices from one organization to another. Management consulting is an additional service to internal management functions and, for various legal and practical reasons, may not be seen as a replacement for internal management. Unlike interim management, management consultants do not become part of the organization to which they provide services.


title: Management consulting

text: Consultancies provide organizational change-management assistance, development of coaching skills, process analysis, technology implementation, strategy development, or operational improvement services. Management consultants often bring their own proprietary methodologies or frameworks to guide the identification of problems and to serve as the basis for recommendations with a view to more effective or efficient ways of performing work tasks.


title: Management consulting

text: Management consulting grew with the rise of management, as a unique field of study. One of the first management consulting firms was Arthur D. Little Inc., founded in 1886 as a partnership, and later incorporated in 1909. Although Arthur D. Little later became a general management consultancy, it originally specialised in technical research.


title: Management consulting

text: As Arthur D. Little focused on technical research for the first few years, the first management consultancy was that of Frederick Winslow Taylor, who in 1893 opened an independent consulting practice in Philadelphia. His business card read "Consulting Engineer – Systematizing Shop Management and Manufacturing Costs a Specialty". By inventing Scientific Management, also known as Taylor's method, Frederick Winslow Taylor invented the first method of organizing work, spawning the careers of many more management consultants. For example, one of Taylor's early collaborators, Morris Llewellyn Cooke, opened his own management consultancy in 1905. Taylor's method was used worldwide until industry switched to a method invented by W. Edwards Deming.


title: Management consulting

text: The initial period of growth in the consulting industry was triggered by the Glass–Steagall Banking Act in the 1930s, and was driven by demand for advice on finance, strategy and organization. From the 1950s onwards, consultancies expanded their activities considerably in the United States, and also opened offices in Europe and later in Asia and South America. After World War II, a number of new management consulting firms were formed, bringing a rigorous analytical approach to the study of management and strategy. The postwar years also saw the application of cybernetics principles to management through the work of Stafford Beer.


title: Management consulting

text: The management consulting firms Stern Stewart, Marakon Associates, and Alcar pioneered value-based management (VBM), or "managing for value", in the 1980s based on the academic work of Joel Stern, Dr. Bill Alberts, and Professor Alfred Rappaport. Other consulting firms including McKinsey and BCG developed VBM approaches. Value-based management became prominent during the late 1980s and 1990s.


title: Management consulting

text: The industry experienced significant growth in the 1980s and 1990s, gaining considerable importance in relation to national gross domestic product. In 1980 there were only five consulting firms with more than 1,000 consultants worldwide, whereas by the 1990s there were more than thirty firms of this size.


title: Management consulting

text: A period of significant growth in the early 1980s was driven by demand for strategy and organization consultancies. The wave of growth in the 1990s was driven by both strategy and information technology advice. In the second half of the 1980s, the big accounting firms entered the IT consulting segment. The then Big Eight, now Big Four, accounting firms (PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Ernst & Young and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu) had always offered advice in addition to their traditional services, but after the late 1980s these activities became increasingly important in relation to the maturing market of accounting and auditing. By the mid-1990s these firms had outgrown those service providers focusing on corporate strategy and organization. While three of the Big Four legally divided the different service lines after the Enron scandal and the ensuing breakdown of Arthur Andersen, they are now back in the consulting business. In 2000, Andersen Consulting broke off from Arthur Andersen and announced their new name Accenture. The name change was effective starting January 1, 2001, and Accenture is currently the largest consulting firm in the world in employee headcount. They are publicly traded on the NYSE with ticker ACN.


title: Management consulting

text: The industry stagnated in 2001 before recovering after 2003 and then enjoying a period of sustained double-digit annual revenue growth until the financial crisis of 2007–2008. As financial services and government were two of the largest spenders on consulting services, the financial crash and the resulting public sector austerity drives hit consulting revenues hard. In some markets such as the UK there was a recession in the consulting industry, something which had never happened before or since. There has been a gradual recovery in the consulting industry's growth rate in the intervening years, with a current trend towards a clearer segmentation of management consulting firms. In recent years, management consulting firms actively recruit top graduates from Ivy League universities, Rhodes Scholars, and students from top MBA programs.


title: Management consulting

text: In more recent times, traditional management consulting firms have had to face increasing challenges from disruptive online marketplaces that are aiming to cater to the increasing number of freelance management consulting professionals.


title: Management consulting

text: The functions of consulting services are commonly broken down into eight task categories. Consultants can function as bridges for information and knowledge, and external consultants can provide these bridging services more economically than client firms themselves. Consultants can be engaged proactively, without significant external enforcement, and reactively, with external pressure. Proactive consultant engagement is engaged mainly with aim to find hidden weak spots and improve performance, while the reactive consultant engagement is mostly aimed at solving problems identified by external stakeholders.


title: Management consulting

text: Marvin Bower, McKinsey's long-term director, has mentioned the benefits of a consultant's externality, that they have varied experience outside the client company.


title: Management consulting

text: Consultants have specialised skills on tasks that would involve high internal coordination costs for clients, such as organization-wide changes or the implementation of information technology. In addition, because of economies of scale, consultants' focus on and experience in gathering information worldwide and across industries makes their research less costly than it is for clients to perform themselves.


title: Management consulting

text: The Big Four audit firms (Deloitte, KPMG, PwC, Ernst & Young) have been working in the strategy consulting market since 2010. In 2013, Deloitte acquired Monitor Group—now Monitor Deloitte—while PwC acquired PRTM in 2011 and Booz & Company in 2013—now Strategy&. From 2010 to 2013, several Big Four firms have tried to acquire Roland Berger. EY followed the trend, with acquisitions of The Parthenon Group in 2014, and both the BeNeLux and French businesses of OC&C in 2016 and 2017, with all now under the EY-Parthenon brand.


title: Management consulting

text: Deloitte has been named as the largest consulting firm for six years running as per Gartner's annual consulting report. Deloitte Consulting is broken up into five practices: Strategy, Analytics and M&A, Customer & Marketing, Core Business Operations, Human Capital, Enterprise Technology & Performance. They have been ranked #4 on Vault's 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016 rankings for consulting firms.


title: Management consulting

text: In 2013, an article in "Harvard Business Review" discussed the prevalent trends within the consulting industry to evolve. The authors noted that with knowledge being democratized and information becoming more and more accessible to anyone, the role of management consultants is rapidly changing. Moreover, with more online platforms that connect business executives to relevant consultants, the role of the traditional 'firm' is being questioned.


title: Management consulting

text: In the UK, the use of external management consultants within government has sometimes been contentious due to perceptions of variable value for money. For instance, from 1997 to 2006, the UK government reportedly spent £20 billion on management consultants, raising questions in the House of Commons as to the returns upon such investment.


title: Management consulting

text: The UK has also experimented with providing longer-term use of management consultancy techniques provided internally, particularly to the high-demand consultancy arenas of local government and the National Health Service; the Local Government Association's Improvement and Development Agency and the public health national support teams; both generated positive feedback at cost levels considered a fraction of what external commercial consultancy input would have incurred.


title: Management consulting

text: In 2011, the Romanian management consulting industry began to re-initiate growth after a period of economic stagnation. At the end of 2010, a majority of Romania's management consultancies had experienced declining profits and by the end of 2011 about 70% of them had noted shrinking bottom lines. The years 2010 and 2011 represented an important test for many Romanian consulting firms according to a European Federation of Management Consultancies Associations (FEACO) study.


title: Management consulting

text: In 2015, Romanian management consulting had a turnover of 350 Mln. € and an export of 10% of the overall turnover, 75% within the EU and 25% outside. The local leader of the Romanian management consulting market is Ensight Management Consulting.


title: Management consulting

text: In 1988, the newly elected Greiner State Government commissioned a report into the State Rail Authority by Booz Allen Hamilton. The resulting report recommended up to 8,000 job losses, including the withdrawal of staff from 94 country railway stations, withdrawing services on the Nyngan- Bourke line, Queanbeyan – Cooma line and Glen Innes- Wallangarra line, the discontinuation of several country passenger services (the "Canberra XPT", the "Silver City Comet" to Broken Hill and various diesel locomotive hauled services) and the removal of sleeper trains from services to Brisbane and Melbourne. The report also recommended the removal of all country passenger services and small freight operations, but the government did not consider this to be politically feasible. The SRA was divided into business units – CityRail, responsible for urban railways; CountryLink, responsible for country passenger services; FreightRail, responsible for freight services; and Rail Estate, responsible for rail property.


title: Management consulting

text: In New Zealand the government has historically had a greater role in providing some infrastructure and services than in some other countries. Contributing reasons included insufficient scale in the private sector, smaller capital markets and historic political support for government service provision. Current infrastructure investment plans are open to a range of public/private partnerships. New Zealand governments hire in expertise to complement the advice of professional public servants. While management consultants contribute to policy and to strategy development, the Government tends to use management consultants for strategic review and for strategy execution. There is a distinction between management consultants (who generally provide advice and fixed deliverables, often for a fixed fee) and professional contractors (who work for an hourly or daily rate providing specialist services). Official figures from 2007 to 2009 show annual expenditure of about NZ$150 to NZ$180 Million by the New Zealand Government on consultants, but this may be understated. While multinational consultancy firms provide advice on major projects and in specialist areas, the majority of management consultants providing advice to the New Zealand government operate as sole practitioners or as members of small consultancy practices. The range of services provided is large, covering change management, strategic review, project and programme management, procurement, organizational design, etc.


title: Management consulting

text: Some for-profit consulting firms, including McKinsey and BCG, offer consulting services to nonprofits at subsidized rates as a form of corporate social responsibility. Other for-profit firms have spun off nonprofit consulting organizations, e.g. Bain creating Bridgespan.


title: Management consulting

text: Many firms outside of the big three offer management consulting services to nonprofits, philanthropies, and mission-driven organizations. Some, but not all, are nonprofits themselves.


title: Management consulting

text: As with all client-contractor work, liability depends heavily on the subject of contract terms. While the management consulting service provider for obvious reasons has a business reputation to protect, legally there is little protection for the client. This is due to the scope of the contract being the only thing subject to potential insurance claims as well as lawsuits.


title: Management consulting

text: As with other client-contractor relationships, settling for liabilities that exist outside the scope of the contract deliverables has been proven to be of considerable difficulty, also in management consulting. For this reason, it is important that clients procuring management consulting services think twice about what type of help they need, so that the scope, length and content of contract reflects such need.


title: Management consulting

text: Management consultants are sometimes criticized for the overuse of buzzwords, reliance on and propagation of management fads, and a failure to develop plans that are executable by the client. As stated above management consulting is an unregulated profession so anyone or any company can style themselves as management consultants. A number of critical books about management consulting argue that the mismatch between management consulting advice and the ability of executives to actually create the change suggested results in substantial damages to existing businesses. In his book, "Flawed Advice and the Management Trap", Chris Argyris believes that much of the advice given today has real merit. However, a close examination shows that most advice given today contains gaps and inconsistencies that may prevent positive outcomes in the future.


title: Management consulting

text: Ichak Adizes and coauthors also criticize the timing of consultant services. Client organizations, which are usually lacking the knowledge they want to obtain from the consultant, cannot correctly estimate the right timing for an engagement of consultants. Consultants are usually engaged too late when problems become visible to the top of the client's organizational pyramid. A proactive checkup, like a regular medical checkup, is recommended. On the other side, this opens additional danger for abuse from disreputable practitioners.


title: Management consulting

text: ISO published the international standard ISO 20700 "Guidelines for Management Consultancy Services" on June 1, 2017, replacing EN 16114.


title: Management consulting

text: An international qualification for a management consulting practitioner is Certified Management Consultant (CMC) available in the United States through the Institute of Management Consultants USA. Additional trainings and courses exist, often as part of a MBA training;


title: Silambarasan filmography

text: Silambarasan (born 3 February 1983) is an Indian actor, director, producer and singer, who works in Tamil cinema. He began his career playing minor roles as a child artist in films produced by his father T. Rajendar before his first lead role in "Kadhal Azhivathillai "(2002) also produced and directed by his father. His second film "Dum" (2003), a remake of the 2002 Kannada film "Appu", fared well commercially. In the same year he appeared in "Alai", a box office failure.


title: Silambarasan filmography

text: Silambarasan had three releases in 2004. The first was "Kovil", which deals with the relationship between a Hindu boy and a Christian girl. Silambarasan was praised by Malathi Rangarajan of "The Hindu" for acting with "restraint and maturity". It was a box office success. Silambarasan appeared next in "Kuththu", a remake of the Telugu film "Dil". The film received unfavourable reviews but had a successful theatrical run. His final release in 2004 was "Manmadhan", which he also wrote. The film was a major success, and propelled Silambarasan to stardom. The following year, he had only one release: "Thotti Jaya", in which he plays an orphaned gangster who finds love. In 2006, Silambarasan had two releases: "Saravana" (directed by K. S. Ravikumar) and "Vallavan" which he helped write and directed himself. The film was a box office success. He starred in two films in 2008: the action-masala films "Kaalai" and "Silambattam". Neither received positive reviews, but the latter was profitable.


title: Silambarasan filmography

text: Silambarasan's sole release in 2010 as a lead actor was the romance "Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa", directed and written by Gautham Vasudev Menon. The film attained cult status in Tamil cinema, and was a major breakthrough in his career. It was considered an image makeover for Silambarasan as most of his earlier films were in the action genre. The following year, he appeared in two films. The first was the ensemble drama "Vaanam", where he stars as an impoverished cable operator. The second was "Osthe", a remake of the Hindi film "Dabangg" where he played a police officer. "Podaa Podi", which began production in 2008 and was released in 2012, was a commercial failure. His next appearance as a lead actor was in "Vaalu" (2015), followed by two releases in 2016: Pandiraj's "Idhu Namma Aalu" and Menon's "Achcham Yenbadhu Madamaiyada". He went on to appear in "Anbanavan Asaradhavan Adangadhavan" (2017) and collaborated with Mani Ratnam for the first time in "Chekka Chivantha Vaanam" (2018) and Sundar. C in "Vantha Rajavathaan Varuven" (2019). After a long hiatus, STR had 2 releases in 2021: Eeswaran & Maanaadu. Upon release, Maanaadu received highly positive reviews from audiences and critics and was a blockbuster at the box office. Maanaadu proved to be a comeback film for STR. He will next be seen in a crime drama film Vendhu Thanindhathu Kaadu, which marks his third collaboration with Gautham Vasudev Menon, Corona Kumar with Director Gokul, and in a special appearance role in Maha starring Hansika Motwani as the lead. After completing these, he will start his 50th project with director Ram.


title: A Day to Remember

text: A Day to Remember (often abbreviated ADTR, and previously known as End of an Era) is an American rock band from Ocala, Florida, founded in 2003 by guitarist Tom Denney and drummer Bobby Scruggs. They are known for their amalgamation of metalcore and pop punk. The band currently consists of vocalist Jeremy McKinnon, rhythm guitarist Neil Westfall, percussionist/drummer Alex Shelnutt and lead guitarist Kevin Skaff.


title: A Day to Remember

text: Signing with Indianola Records for their first album, "And Their Name Was Treason" (2005), Scruggs was replaced by Shelnutt in 2006. Later that year the band recorded "For Those Who Have Heart" (2007) for Victory Records. They embarked on several tours of the UK and U.S. and played at several festivals before recording and releasing "Homesick" (2009). While promoting "Homesick" on tour, Denney was replaced by Skaff. Soon after releasing their next album, "What Separates Me from You" (2010), the band went on a worldwide tour to promote it. Since 2011, the band has been involved in a lawsuit with Victory Records over their recording contract. In October 2013 the band was given the right to self-release new albums until a final verdict is reached. They released their fifth album, "Common Courtesy", that month. In 2016, the band released their sixth album, "Bad Vibrations". They released their seventh album "You're Welcome" on March 5, 2021, which marked their first release under Fueled by Ramen.


title: A Day to Remember

text: After all playing in different groups in the Ocala music scene, singer Jeremy McKinnon, guitarists Neil Westfall and Tom Denney, bassist Joshua Woodard, and drummer Bobby Scruggs came together in 2003. Soon after, the band embarked onto playing only 7 shows in their first year of touring.


title: A Day to Remember

text: The band self-released an independent EP titled "Halos for Heroes, Dirt for the Dead" in 2004, which was sold at their live shows. Their eponymous and second EP, moreso a demo rather, was released in January 2005; this was a precursor to their debut studio album and contained demo versions of six songs.


title: A Day to Remember

text: They were signed to Indianola in February 2005, for which they released their debut album, "And Their Name Was Treason" (2005) in May that year. It went on to sell over 10,000 copies.


title: A Day to Remember

text: Woodard said, "A friend of mine said he had the AIM screenname of someone at Victory Records. I didn't believe him, but I still started communicating with the guy. We IM'ed back and forth for about six months, and it happened that we were playing [...] in a town outside of Chicago. [...] It was our first time we ever played in Illinois, yet the 50–60 kids there were singing along to our tunes like they’d been fans all their lives."


title: A Day to Remember

text: Soon after signing with Victory, the band with their new drummer Alex Shelnutt went into Zing Studios to record their second album. The album, titled "For Those Who Have Heart", was released in January 2007 on Victory and peaked at number 17 on "Billboard"s Top Heatseekers chart.


title: A Day to Remember

text: In September 2007, they posted a cover of Kelly Clarkson's song, "Since U Been Gone", on their MySpace page. This was later featured on the re-release of "For Those Who Have Heart", released in February 2008, and charted at number 43 on the Top Independent Albums chart.


title: A Day to Remember

text: A Day to Remember toured the UK for the first time in January 2008, and were nominated for Best International Newcomer at the 2008 Kerrang! Awards, but lost to Black Tide.


title: A Day to Remember

text: Afterwards, the band had a lengthy tour opening for Silverstein along with The Devil Wears Prada, and Protest the Hero. They then played The Bamboozle Left on April 6 at the Verizon Amphitheater in Irvine, California, one day at the 2008 Bamboozle Festival in East Rutherford, New Jersey on May 3, as well as the Download Festival in June, and the 2008 Vans Warped Tour. Before playing the Download Festival, they toured the UK with The Devil Wears Prada and Alesana on the Road To Download Tour. In mid-2008, the band played all the U.S. dates of the "Easycore Tour" along with New Found Glory, Four Year Strong, Crime in Stereo and International Superheroes of Hardcore.


title: A Day to Remember

text: A remastered version of their first album, "And Their Name Was Treason", titled "Old Record", was released in October 2008 through Victory. Later that month, the band recorded their third studio album, "Homesick."


title: A Day to Remember

text: In December 2008, A Day to Remember toured across Australia with Parkway Drive, Suicide Silence, The Acacia Strain and Confession.


title: A Day to Remember

text: "Homesick" was released in February 2009 and placed at number 21 on "Billboard"s Top 200 Listings and at number 1 on Top Independent Albums. It was featured in "Rolling Stone"s "Top 40 Albums" that month, hitting number 21. As of July 2010, the album had sold over 200,000 copies.


title: A Day to Remember

text: Following a UK tour, A Day to Remember went on a European tour in February 2009, with the German leg of the tour supported by For The Fallen Dreams and Kenai. A Day to Remember toured the U.S. from March to May 2009 with The Devil Wears Prada, Sky Eats Airplane and Emarosa. Prior to the tour, Tom Denney had broken his wrist; filling in for him was Kevin Skaff formerly of Four Letter Lie. They toured the UK with For the Fallen Dreams and Azriel. They also toured as part of the Warped Tour 2009, played at the Download Festival 2009 and toured Asia, Australia and New Zealand in August and September.


title: A Day to Remember

text: The band contributed a track to "Punk Goes Pop 2" record from Fearless, covering The Fray's "Over My Head (Cable Car)".


title: A Day to Remember

text: On June 2, the band announced that Tom Denney had left the band because he wanted to focus on his marriage, family, and recording studio. He would remain a part of the band's process of writing new material. Skaff became a permanent replacement for Denney.


title: A Day to Remember

text: "The Downfall of Us All" was released as downloadable content for the "Rock Band" series of video games, and "NJ Legion Iced Tea" was released as a download for "Guitar Hero World Tour".


title: A Day to Remember

text: A Day to Remember were set to play Reading & Leeds Festival in 2009 but pulled out due to Neil Westfall needing surgery.


title: A Day to Remember

text: They did their first headlining tour, The Pulling Your Pud Tour, along with Parkway Drive, In Fear and Faith, and I See Stars, starting in September 2009. The band then supported Bring Me the Horizon, with guest August Burns Red, on their tour of the UK and Europe in October.


title: A Day to Remember

text: On December 16, the band released the holiday-oriented single "Right Where You Want Me to Be". A music video was also made for the song.


title: A Day to Remember

text: A Day to Remember performed at the 2010 Soundwave Australian music festival. They toured across the UK in March 2010 with support from Architects and Your Demise, followed by "Toursick" in North America with August Burns Red, Silverstein, Enter Shikari, Veara, and Go Radio from March 31 to May 18.


title: A Day to Remember

text: On July 14, MTV.com posted the music video for the band's latest single from "Homesick", "Have Faith in Me", on their website.


title: A Day to Remember

text: According to Victory, it was claimed that the band was set to release their fourth studio album titled "What Separates Me from You" on October 26. The album was recorded in Ocala, Florida, with producer Chad Gilbert, who also produced "Homesick", with the tracking finished in July. On September 20, A Day to Remember announced in a live video through Victory's website the name of their new album: "What Separates Me from You". They then revealed the cover art for the album. The album's release was delayed a few weeks, until November 16.


title: A Day to Remember

text: In November, it was announced that A Day to Remember would play the 2011 edition of the Vans Warped Tour.


title: A Day to Remember

text: On January 6, 2011, the band showcased the official music video for the first single taken from the album, "All I Want", through an MTV premiere. The video features musicians from groups including A Day to Remember's former lead guitarist Tom Denney, as well as Vic Fuentes, Pete Wentz, Dallas Taylor, and Tim Lambesis.


title: A Day to Remember

text: On January 11, the band made their national TV debut, performing the songs "All I Want" and "Better Off This Way" on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!".


title: A Day to Remember

text: Prior to Vans Warped Tour 2011, A Day to Remember headlined "The Game Changers Tour" (March – April) with support from Bring Me the Horizon, Pierce the Veil, and We Came as Romans.


title: A Day to Remember

text: On June 7, the band released the music video for the second single from the album, "All Signs Point to Lauderdale".


title: A Day to Remember

text: On December 15, it was announced that A Day to Remember planned to file suit against their label, Victory, due to breach of contract. Legal action had reportedly been initiated on May 31 of that year, with the band claiming Victory owed them over $75,000 in royalties. Victory has said that the lawsuit is actually about the band's refusal to fulfill their five- album contractual commitment, and their desire to move to a major label. A Day to Remember gave Altpress.com this statement: "A Day To Remember would like to make it clear that they did not announce nor seek any attention regarding their ongoing suit with Victory Records. This information has been public record since May of 2011 and they have no intention of speaking publicly or disparagingly regarding their disagreement with Victory. A Day To Remember will continue to release music for their fans and are looking forward to touring in 2012."


title: A Day to Remember

text: Beginning in January 2012, the band went on tour supporting Rise Against throughout the U.S., with the tour spreading over two legs and the band performing in Australia and New Zealand between two tour parts.


title: A Day to Remember

text: On February 27, the band released "2nd Sucks" as the fourth single from "What Separates Me from You".


title: A Day to Remember

text: On May 8, 2012, the band announced at a show in New Jersey that their upcoming album would be called "Common Courtesy". On December 3, the band released a countdown on their website, counting down to December 21 but not revealing what it was counting down to. When the countdown reached zero, a new single titled "Violence (Enough Is Enough)" was released. On January 21, 2013, A Day to Remember released more information about their upcoming tour, referring to it as the Right Back at It Again tour. On March 18, McKinnon announced that the new album "Common Courtesy" had completed the tracking process and was going to be mixed. On March 20, Woodard posted an image on his official Twitter account, stating that the band was back "on the road again". On the same day, the first stop of their U.S. "Right Back At It Again" tour, A Day to Remember played a new track scheduled to appear on "Common Courtesy", titled "Right Back at It Again". They have continued to play this new track on each stop of the Right Back at It Again tour. Asked about a release date for the album in an interview with WGRD in April, McKinnon said that "there's a date we've [...] tossed around in the last week, but I mean we haven't really set anything in stone." Asked in the same interview if "Common Courtesy" was going to be released on Victory, he replied that the band were "not sure", and that the lawsuit was still being settled.


title: A Day to Remember

text: On August 23, the album was announced for release on October 8, 2013. A few days prior to the release, the band won the right to self-release the album, with the band contractually obligated to owing Victory at least two more albums. McKinnon said about Victory, "The only thing [they] held above us was the right to put out this album and we won the right to put it out ourselves [...] Now it can go to a jury and good luck having a jury of random people agree that two live albums that are sold separately not count as an album, good luck with that." The band self-released the album digitally on October 8. A physical edition with additional tracks was released on November 25, by the band's own label, ADTR Records.


title: A Day to Remember

text: The band went on a UK and Europe tour in January and February 2014. In an interview in late January, McKinnon mentioned the band would film the London show on the tour, with the hopes of releasing a live album. The band toured across America throughout September and October with support acts including Bring Me the Horizon, Motionless in White and Chiodos, dubbing the venture the Parks & Devastation Tour. The band opened for blink-182 (live debut with Matt Skiba) on two dates.


title: A Day to Remember

text: On September 30, 2015, rhythm guitarist Neil Westfall announced in an interview with Ultimate Guitar that the band were casually working on new material, without a prospective release date. A Day to Remember co-headlined the Big Ass Tour in arenas with the Amity Affliction in Australia and New Zealand in December 2015, with supporting bands Motionless in White and Hands Like Houses. On March 9, 2016, "Paranoia" was premiered through Beats 1. The song was recorded with Bill Stevenson of Descendents/All. It was released as a single on 11 March. A music video was released on the same day, directed by Ethan Lader.