title: Meg Donnelly

text: Meg Elizabeth Donnelly (born July 25, 2000) is an American actress. She portrayed Taylor Otto in the ABC sitcom "American Housewife", and Addison in the 2018 Disney Channel Original Movie "Zombies" and its sequels, "Zombies 2" (2020) and "Zombies 3" (2022). Since 2022, she has starred as Mary Campbell in the CW television series "The Winchesters", which serves as a prequel to "Supernatural".


title: Meg Donnelly

text: Donnelly was born in New York City and grew up in Peapack-Gladstone, New Jersey. She is an only child. She began training in voice, dance and acting at the Annie’s Playhouse School of Performing Arts in Far Hills, New Jersey at the age of six. She has appeared as a featured vocalist in several Kids of the Arts, Broadway Kids and Time To Shine productions in New York City.


title: Meg Donnelly

text: Donnelly co-starred as Ash in the 2013 Netflix series "Team Toon". She was the American face of Clean and Clear's 2015 Awkward to Awesome campaign, and was the understudy for the role of Louisa von Trapp in the NBC television special "The Sound of Music Live!". Donnelly also appeared in the feature film "The Broken Ones" that premiered at the 2017 SOHO International Film Festival.


title: Meg Donnelly

text: Donnelly played the starring role of Taylor Otto in the ABC sitcom "American Housewife" from 2016 to 2021. On August 5, 2018, Donnelly released her first single, "Smile". On March 1, 2019, Donnelly released her second single, "Digital Love".


title: Meg Donnelly

text: She stars as Addison in the Disney Channel Original Movie musical "Zombies" that premiered on February 16, 2018. In February 2019, it was announced that Donnelly would be reprising her role as Addison for a "Zombies" sequel, "Zombies 2", which premiered on Disney Channel on February 14, 2020. A third entry in the series, "Zombies 3", was released in July and August 2022 on Disney+ and Disney Channel, respectively.


title: Meg Donnelly

text: In March 2022, Donnelly was cast in the co-lead role of Mary Campbell in the "Supernatural" spinoff, "The Winchesters", which was picked up to series by The CW in May 2022.


title: British American Tobacco

text: British American Tobacco plc (BAT) is a British multinational company that manufactures and sells cigarettes, tobacco and other nicotine products. The company, established in 1902, is headquartered in London, England. As of 2019, it is the largest tobacco company in the world based on net sales.


title: British American Tobacco

text: BAT has operations in around 180 countries, and its cigarette brands include Dunhill, Kent, Lucky Strike, Pall Mall and Rothmans. Its brands also include Vype and Vuse and Glo.


title: British American Tobacco

text: BAT has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It has a secondary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. BAT plc ordinary shares are also listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the form of American Depositary Shares.


title: British American Tobacco

text: The company was formed in 1902, when the United Kingdom's Imperial Tobacco Company and the United States' American Tobacco Company agreed to form a joint venture, the "British-American Tobacco Company Ltd." The parent companies agreed not to trade in each other's domestic territory and to assign trademarks, export businesses and overseas subsidiaries to the joint venture. James Buchanan Duke became company chairman supported by Hugo Cunliffe-Owen (later Chairman) and Albert Jeffress (later Deputy Chairman); then business was begun in countries as diverse as Canada, China, Germany, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, but not in the United Kingdom or in the United States.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In China, BAT inherited a factory in the Pudong district of Shanghai from W.D. & H.O. Wills, one of the precursor companies of Imperial Tobacco. Under the management of James Augustus Thomas from Lawsonville, in North Carolina's Rockingham County, by 1919 the Shanghai factory was producing more than 243 million cigarettes per week. Thomas worked closely with the local Wing Tai Vo Tobacco Company, which developed into BAT's principal Chinese partner after its success with the "Ruby Queen" cigarette brand.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In 1911, the American Tobacco Company sold its share of the company. Imperial Tobacco gradually reduced its shareholding, but it was not until 1980 that it divested its remaining interests in the company.


title: British American Tobacco

text: At its peak in 1937, BAT manufactured and distributed 55 billion cigarettes in China. The company's assets were seized by the Japanese in 1941 following their 1937 invasion. In 1949 the company was ejected from China following the foundation of the People's Republic.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In 1976 the Group companies were reorganised under a new holding company, "B.A.T. Industries". In 1994 BAT acquired its former parent, American Tobacco Company (though reorganised after anti-trust proceedings). This brought the Lucky Strike and Pall Mall brands into BAT's portfolio.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In 1999 it merged with Rothmans International, which included a share in a factory in Burma. This made it the target of criticism from human rights groups. It sold its share of the factory in 2003 after an "exceptional request" from the British government.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In 2002, BAT lost a lawsuit about the right to sell cigarettes under the Marlboro brand name in the UK. It had acquired Rothmans, which had previously bought a licence to use the name from Philip Morris. Philip Morris' attorneys invoked a get-out clause for the case of a major change of ownership.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In 2003, BAT acquired Ente Tabacchi Italiani (ETI) S.p.A., Italy's state tobacco company. The important acquisition would elevate BAT to the number two position in Italy, the second largest tobacco market in the European Union. The scale of the enlarged operations would bring significant opportunities to compete and grow ETI's local brands and BAT's international brands.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In August 2003, BAT acquired a 67.8% holding in the Serbian tobacco company Duvanska Industrija Vranje (DIV), allowing local manufacture of its brands, freeing them from import duties. In the longer term, export opportunities are planned as neighbouring countries in south east Europe developed free trade agreements.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In July 2004, the U.S. business of British American Tobacco (Brown & Williamson) was combined with that of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (R. J. Reynolds), under the R. J. Reynolds name. R. J. Reynolds and Brown & Williamson were the second and third-ranking U.S. tobacco companies prior to the combination. When they combined, R. J. Reynolds became a subsidiary of Reynolds American, with BAT holding a 42% share.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In January 2007, BAT closed its remaining UK production plant in Southampton with the loss of over 600 jobs. However, the global Research and Development operation and some financial functions will continue on the site.


title: British American Tobacco

text: BAT acquired 60% of Indonesia's Bentoel Group in 2009 before increasing its stake to 100% the following year.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In May 2011, BAT acquired the Colombian company Productora Tabacalera de Colombia S.A.S. (Protabaco).


title: British American Tobacco

text: In October 2015, BAT acquired the Croatian tobacco company TDR d.o.o. Brands and Factory in Kanfanar.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In October 2016, BAT offered to buy the remaining 57.8 percent of U.S. cigarette maker Reynolds American in a $47 billion takeover that would create the world's biggest listed tobacco company with brands including Newport, Lucky Strike and Pall Mall. In January 2017, Reynolds agreed to an increased $49.4 billion deal. The deal was completed in July 2017.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In April 2017, the company announced the acquisition of a number of Bulgarian cigarette brands from Bulgartabac for more than €100 million.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In March 2021, the company bought a stake of close to 20% in the Canada-based cannabis producer OrganiGram for about £126m as part of a diversification strategy.


title: British American Tobacco

text: International Brands include Dunhill, Kent, North State, Lucky Strike, Pall Mall, Vogue, Rothmans International, Winfield, State Express 555, KOOL, and Viceroy. BAT does not necessarily own the rights to all of these brands in every nation they are marketed.


title: British American Tobacco

text: Local brands owned by British American Tobacco include: Benson & Hedges (Bangladesh), John Players Gold Leaf (Bangladesh), State Express 555 (Vietnam), Belmont (Colombia, Chile, Nicaragua and Venezuela), Jockey Club (Argentina), Stradbroke (Australia), Hollywood, Derby, Free, Minister and Plaza (Brazil), du Maurier (Canada), Prince (Denmark), North State (Finland), HB (Germany), Sopianae (Hungary), Wills (India), Ardath, Bentoel, and Tali Jagat (Indonesia), Carrolls, Carrolls Kings, Grand Parade, Black Allen (Germany), Sweet Afton, Major (Ireland), Boots, Alas (Mexico), Gold Leaf (Bangladesh, Pakistan), Jan III Sobieski (Poland), Yava Gold (Russia), Courtleigh, Peter Styvesant (South Africa), Benson & Hedges, Dunhill, Kent, Pall Mall, Perilly's, Peter Stuyvesant, and Rothmans (Malaysia), Parisienne (Switzerland), Maltepe (Turkey), Xon, Astra and Karvon (Uzbekistan), Craven A (Vietnam and Jamaica) as well as BAT snus, Holiday, Freedom and Park Drive (New Zealand) Royals (UK and Malta), Embassy (Kenya), Viceroy, Newport, Lucky Strike in Dominican Republic and Delta in El Salvador.


title: British American Tobacco

text: On 11 June 2006, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company announced that it would manufacture Camel brand snus in Sweden in partnership with British American Tobacco; the product would be test-marketed in Portland, Oregon and Austin, Texas by the end of the month.


title: British American Tobacco

text: BAT has diversified into various fields at different times in its history. Its U.S. retail division, BATUS Retail Group, acquired Gimbels, Kohl's, and Saks Fifth Avenue in the 1970s and Marshall Field's and its divisions in 1982. It purchased the United Kingdom retail chain Argos in 1979. The company sold Kohl's grocery stores to A&P in 1983. In 1986, BATUS sold the Kohl's department stores and two Marshall Field's divisions, The Crescent and Frederick & Nelson; BATUS closed Gimbels the same year, with many locations being absorbed by sister division Marshall Field's, as well as Allied Stores' Stern's and Pomeroy's divisions. In 1990, Dayton Hudson Corporation (now Target Corporation) purchased Marshall Field's, Dillard's purchased Ivey's (another Marshall Field's division), Investcorp S.A. purchased Saks Fifth Avenue, and Argos was demerged (Argos was acquired by previous parent company GUS plc in 1998).


title: British American Tobacco

text: The Group was a major financial services company with the acquisitions of Eagle Star (1984), Allied Dunbar (1985) and the Farmers Group, Inc. (1988). Around 1996 British American Tobacco merged its financial operations into a single operating unit, British American Financial Services (BAFS). This division merged with Zurich Insurance Company in 1998 to form the Zurich Financial Services Group.


title: British American Tobacco

text: British American Tobacco Ghana Limited is a public limited company operated by British American in Ghana. The company is listed () on the stock index of the Ghana Stock Exchange, the GSE All-Share Index. It was formed in 1999 out of a merger between the Pioneer Tobacco Company and Meridian Tobacco.


title: British American Tobacco

text: BAT have found many imaginative ways over the years to keep its brands in the public eye. ITC Limited, in which BAT holds a minority share, as recently as 1996 secured an arrangement to sponsor the Cricket World Cup which was branded the "Wills World Cup" and thereby achieved a high level of brand recognition for the Wills cigarette brand in India where young cricket fans were a key target market.


title: British American Tobacco

text: Furthermore, BAT established The British American Tobacco Internship programme which is designed to help new graduates gain experience in their chosen field of study in a dynamic global organization.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In 1997 BAT brought its participation in the sport to new levels with the purchase of the Tyrrell team for approximately £30 million. The team raced as Tyrrell for the 1998 season before being renamed as British American Racing (BAR).


title: British American Tobacco

text: In 2005, a European Union (EU) directive was brought into force which required national governments to legislate to prevent tobacco sponsorship.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In 2004, BAR announced that technology partner Honda had purchased a 45% stake and in September 2005 it announced that Honda would be buying the remaining 55% stake. The team raced as Honda Racing F1 Team in 2006, the last year of the Lucky Strike sponsorship before leaving the sport. For the 2006 season, the team was renamed as Honda F1 Racing Team, with BAT only advertised at a couple of races. All links between the two companies were severed for 2007.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In 2019, McLaren signed a multi-year deal with British American Tobacco. McLaren's announcement of a "global partnership" with BAT brings the company back into Formula 1 for the first time since Honda succeeded BAR.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In late 2019, BAT and McLaren announced the signing of an enhanced partnership deal that saw BAT become a Principal Partner of McLaren with increased branding position. McLaren will advertise VUSE (previously VYPE) & VELO (previously LYFT) on their F1 and IndyCar cars.


title: British American Tobacco

text: As far back as 1958, BAT had information that cigarettes cause cancer. Three senior BAT scientists – H.R. Bentley, D.G.I. Felton, and W.W. Reid – travelled to the United States that year and talked to dozens of experts inside and outside of the tobacco industry. According to industry documents, all but one of those consulted believed a connection between cigarettes and cancer had been proved.


title: British American Tobacco

text: Industry documents from the 1970s to the late 1990s shows that tobacco companies were seriously concerned about fatwas against smoking by Muslim jurists in Muslim majority countries. In 1996, an internal document from British American Tobacco warned that, because of the spread of "extremist views" from fundamentalists in countries such as Afghanistan, the industry would have to "prepare to fight a hurricane".


title: British American Tobacco

text: The Nigerian federal government filed a lawsuit against BAT and two other tobacco companies in 2007. Nigeria was seeking $42.4 billion, $34.4 billion of which the government seeks in anticipation of the future cost of treating Nigerians for tobacco-related illnesses. It is also seeking $1.04 billion as a fine for the companies' advertising and marketing campaign allegedly targeting Nigerian youth, and has asked the companies to fund an awareness campaign to educate young people about the dangers of their product. Several Nigerian state governments have filed similar petitions. The government withdrew its lawsuit in February 2008.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In 2008, the company was the subject of a BBC Two documentary, in which Duncan Bannatyne investigated the marketing practices of the company in Africa and specifically the way the company targets younger Africans with branded music events, competitions and the sale of single cigarette sticks. Many of the practices uncovered by Bannatyne appeared to break BAT's own code of conduct and company standards. Towards the end of the programme, Bannatyne interviewed Dr Chris Proctor, Head of Science and Regulation, in which Proctor admitted that advertisements targeting children from three African countries were 'disappointing'. In many of these undeveloped countries, the awareness of health risks from smoking is very low or nonexistent.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In September 2001, BAT invested $7.1m in North Korean state-owned enterprise called the Korea Sogyong Trading Corporation, which employs 200 people in Pyongyang to produce up to two billion cigarettes a year. The operation is run by BAT's Singapore Division. Brands of cigarettes produced are Kumgansan, Craven A and Viceroy. BAT claims that the cigarettes are produced only for consumption in North Korea, although there are allegations that the cigarettes are smuggled for sale overseas.


title: British American Tobacco

text: British American Tobacco was declared the winner of the 2008 Roger Award, the award for the worst transnational corporation operating in New Zealand.


title: British American Tobacco

text: British American Tobacco spent more than €700,000 lobbying the EU in 2008, up to four times as much as the company declared on the EU's register of interest representatives, according to a report by Corporate Europe Observatory. The report argues that BAT's hidden lobbying activities, which are clearly not in the public interest, should be exposed to public scrutiny.


title: British American Tobacco

text: The three largest Canadian tobacco companies, Imperial Tobacco Canada (a division of British American Tobacco), JTI-Macdonald Corp and Rothmans Benson & Hedges, were the subject of the largest class action lawsuit in Canadian history. The case started on 12 March 2012 in Quebec Superior Court, and the companies face a potential payout of C$27 billion (US$21.6 billion) in damages and penalties. In addition, a number of Canadian provinces are teaming to sue tobacco companies to recover healthcare costs caused by smoking.


title: British American Tobacco

text: On 1 June 2015, Quebec Superior Court Justice Brian Riordan has awarded more than $15 billion to Quebec smokers in a landmark case that pitted them against three Canadian cigarette giants, including JTI-Macdonald Corp.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In 2012, British American Tobacco, along with Philip Morris International and Imperial Tobacco, sued the Australian Commonwealth government. At the High Court of Australia, they argued that the Commonwealth's plain packaging legislation was unconstitutional because it usurped the companies' intellectual property rights and good will on other than just terms. However, the challenge was unsuccessful.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In November 2014, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) fined BAT £650,000 after it determined that the company glutted the Belgian market with tobacco products with the likelihood these products would illegally find themselves back into the UK, with UK excise taxes not paid. The event highlighted a tobacco-smuggling issue that many anti-tobacco activists have been attempting to bring to light for years. Following several investigations, HMRC reportedly seized more than 1.4 billion cigarettes and 330 tons of hand rolling tobacco in 2013–2014. BAT denied all claims and described the allegation and fine as "unjustified".


title: British American Tobacco

text: In late November 2015, an episode of BBC's "Panorama" program alleged that BAT was bribing officials in Rwanda, Burundi and Kenya in exchange for their limiting the implementation of the WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in their respective countries. The episode showed documents provided by whistleblower Paul Hopkins, who worked for BAT in Kenya for 13 years. BAT denied the claims.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In 2017, it was reported that BAT and other tobacco companies used a mixture of threats and bullying behaviour to stop or lessen the implementation of anti-smoking legislation in at least eight African countries. One document showed that in Uganda BAT stated that the Tobacco Control Act flew in the face of the country's constitution. Another document showed that lawyers acting on behalf of BAT requested that the high court in Kenya "quash in its entirety" anti-smoking legislation.


title: British American Tobacco

text: The Serious Fraud Office opened a 'formal investigation' in August 2017 based on the dossier of evidence supplied by former employee and whistleblower Paul Hopkins. The formal investigation is based on claims by Hopkins that BAT had paid bribes to government officials in Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda and Comoros to undermine tobacco control regulations in the African market which is the only market showing growth. BAT responded by classifying Hopkins as "a rogue former employee". BAT Chief Executive Nico Durante said BAT operated in 200 countries and he could not give a 100% guarantee that everything was being done by the book.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In January 2021, the Serious Fraud Office closed its investigation into corruption at BAT after concluding that the evidence gathered “did not meet the evidential test for prosecution as defined in the Code for Crown Prosecutors”.


title: British American Tobacco

text: On 14 September 2021, in a report published by the NGO STOP, the NGO accused British American Tobacco of having distributed more than $600,000 in the form of cash, cars or campaign donations to dozens of politicians, legislators, civil servants, journalists and employees of competing companies between 2008 and 2013.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In April 2015, medical experts and anti-tobacco campaigners accused Philip Barton, the British High Commissioner to Pakistan, of lobbying for BAT interests. The group released photos showing Barton attending a meeting on 13 March in Islamabad, where BAT executives attempted to convince the Pakistani Finance and Health Minister to veto plans requiring large health warnings on cigarette packets. This activity was deemed contrary to Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) policy. It followed an earlier incident when the British Ambassador to Panama was reprimanded for similar activity on BAT's behalf.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In August 2017, former employee and whistleblower Paul Hopkins released internal documents to "The Guardian", a British newspaper, claiming British American Tobacco actively made efforts to market and sell its products in unstable, deeply impoverished nations and conflict zones, including Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Iraq. Leaked PowerPoint presentations from 2011 included details of strategies to continue selling black-market cigarettes "in black paper bags" in parts of Somalia controlled by the fundamentalist Islamic militant group Al-Shabaab, plans to develop "a consumer relevant brand portfolio" and "sustainable... volume growth" in South Sudan just two days before the nation gained independence, and the active marketing and growth of the Kent cigarette brand in Iraq and Syria, despite "volatile markets" in the middle of the Iraq War and Syrian Civil War, respectively.


title: British American Tobacco

text: In February 2021, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (OCCRP) published an investigation according to which trafficking of BAT cigarettes had helped finance jihadist and separatist groups in northern Mali using, among other mechanisms, a system of oversupplying the country with tobacco. This has allowed billions of cigarettes to be smuggled out of the country.


title: GeForce

text: GeForce is a brand of graphics processing units (GPUs) designed by Nvidia. As of the GeForce 30 series, there have been seventeen iterations of the design. The first GeForce products were discrete GPUs designed for add-on graphics boards, intended for the high-margin PC gaming market, and later diversification of the product line covered all tiers of the PC graphics market, ranging from cost-sensitive GPUs integrated on motherboards, to mainstream add-in retail boards. Most recently, GeForce technology has been introduced into Nvidia's line of embedded application processors, designed for electronic handhelds and mobile handsets.


title: GeForce

text: With respect to discrete GPUs, found in add-in graphics-boards, Nvidia's GeForce and AMD's Radeon GPUs are the only remaining competitors in the high-end market. GeForce GPUs are very dominant in the general-purpose graphics processor unit (GPGPU) market thanks to their proprietary CUDA architecture. GPGPU is expected to expand GPU functionality beyond the traditional rasterization of 3D graphics, to turn it into a high-performance computing device able to execute arbitrary programming code in the same way a CPU does, but with different strengths (highly parallel execution of straightforward calculations) and weaknesses (worse performance for complex branching code).


title: GeForce

text: The "GeForce" name originated from a contest held by Nvidia in early 1999 called "Name That Chip". The company called out to the public to name the successor to the RIVA TNT2 line of graphics boards. There were over 12,000 entries received and 7 winners received a RIVA TNT2 Ultra graphics card as a reward. Brian Burke, senior PR manager at Nvidia, told "Maximum PC" in 2002 that "GeForce" originally stood for "Geometry Force" since GeForce 256 was the first GPU for personal computers to calculate the transform-and-lighting geometry, offloading that function from the CPU.


title: GeForce

text: Launched in April 2000, the first GeForce2 (NV15) was another high-performance graphics chip. Nvidia moved to a twin texture processor per pipeline (4x2) design, doubling texture fillrate per clock compared to GeForce 256. Later, Nvidia released the GeForce2 MX (NV11), which offered performance similar to the GeForce 256 but at a fraction of the cost. The MX was a compelling value in the low/mid-range market segments and was popular with OEM PC manufacturers and users alike. The GeForce 2 Ultra was the high-end model in this series.


title: GeForce

text: Launched in February 2001, the GeForce3 (NV20) introduced programmable vertex and pixel shaders to the GeForce family and to consumer-level graphics accelerators. It had good overall performance and shader support, making it popular with enthusiasts although it never hit the midrange price point. The "NV2A" developed for the Microsoft Xbox game console is a derivative of the GeForce 3.


title: GeForce

text: Launched in February 2002, the then-high-end GeForce4 Ti (NV25) was mostly a refinement to the GeForce3. The biggest advancements included enhancements to anti-aliasing capabilities, an improved memory controller, a second vertex shader, and a manufacturing process size reduction to increase clock speeds. Another member of the GeForce 4 family, the budget GeForce4 MX was based on the GeForce2, with the addition of some features from the GeForce4 Ti. It targeted the value segment of the market and lacked pixel shaders. Most of these models used the AGP 4× interface, but a few began the transition to AGP 8×.


title: GeForce

text: Launched in 2003, the GeForce FX (NV30) was a huge change in architecture compared to its predecessors. The GPU was designed not only to support the new Shader Model 2 specification but also to perform well on older titles. However, initial models like the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra suffered from weak floating point shader performance and excessive heat which required infamously noisy two-slot cooling solutions. Products in this series carry the 5000 model number, as it is the fifth generation of the GeForce, though Nvidia marketed the cards as GeForce FX instead of GeForce 5 to show off "the dawn of cinematic rendering".


title: GeForce

text: Launched in April 2004, the GeForce 6 (NV40) added Shader Model 3.0 support to the GeForce family, while correcting the weak floating point shader performance of its predecessor. It also implemented high-dynamic-range imaging and introduced SLI (Scalable Link Interface) and PureVideo capability (integrated partial hardware MPEG-2, VC-1, Windows Media Video, and H.264 decoding and fully accelerated video post-processing).


title: GeForce

text: The seventh generation GeForce (G70/NV47) was launched in June 2005 and was the last Nvidia video card series that could support the AGP bus. The design was a refined version of GeForce 6, with the major improvements being a widened pipeline and an increase in clock speed. The GeForce 7 also offers new transparency supersampling and transparency multisampling anti-aliasing modes (TSAA and TMAA). These new anti-aliasing modes were later enabled for the GeForce 6 series as well. The GeForce 7950GT featured the highest performance GPU with an AGP interface in the Nvidia line. This era began the transition to the PCI-Express interface.


title: GeForce

text: A 128-bit, 8 ROP variant of the 7800 GTX, called the RSX 'Reality Synthesizer', is used as the main GPU in the Sony PlayStation 3.


title: GeForce

text: Released on November 8, 2006, the eighth-generation GeForce (originally called G80) was the first ever GPU to fully support Direct3D 10. Manufactured using a 90 nm process and built around the new Tesla microarchitecture, it implemented the unified shader model. Initially just the 8800GTX model was launched, while the GTS variant was released months into the product line's life, and it took nearly six months for mid-range and OEM/mainstream cards to be integrated into the 8 series. The die shrink down to 65 nm and a revision to the G80 design, codenamed G92, were implemented into the 8 series with the 8800GS, 8800GT and 8800GTS-512, first released on October 29, 2007, almost one whole year after the initial G80 release.


title: GeForce

text: The first product was released on February 21, 2008. Not even four months older than the initial G92 release, all 9-series designs are simply revisions to existing late 8-series products. The 9800GX2 uses two G92 GPUs, as used in later 8800 cards, in a dual PCB configuration while still only requiring a single PCI-Express 16x slot. The 9800GX2 utilizes two separate 256-bit memory busses, one for each GPU and its respective 512 MB of memory, which equates to an overall of 1 GB of memory on the card (although the SLI configuration of the chips necessitates mirroring the frame buffer between the two chips, thus effectively halving the memory performance of a 256-bit/512MB configuration). The later 9800GTX features a single G92 GPU, 256-bit data bus, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory.


title: GeForce

text: Prior to the release, no concrete information was known except that the officials claimed the next generation products had close to 1 TFLOPS processing power with the GPU cores still being manufactured in the 65 nm process, and reports about Nvidia downplaying the significance of Direct3D 10.1. In March 2009, several sources reported that Nvidia had quietly launched a new series of GeForce products, namely the GeForce 100 Series, which consists of rebadged 9 Series parts. GeForce 100 series products were not available for individual purchase.


title: GeForce

text: Based on the GT200 graphics processor consisting of 1.4 billion transistors, codenamed Tesla, the 200 series was launched on June 16, 2008. The next generation of the GeForce series takes the card-naming scheme in a new direction, by replacing the series number (such as 8800 for 8-series cards) with the GTX or GTS suffix (which used to go at the end of card names, denoting their 'rank' among other similar models), and then adding model-numbers such as 260 and 280 after that. The series features the new GT200 core on a 65nm die. The first products were the GeForce GTX 260 and the more expensive GeForce GTX 280. The GeForce 310 was released on November 27, 2009, which is a rebrand of GeForce 210. The 300 series cards are rebranded DirectX 10.1 compatible GPUs from the 200 series, which were not available for individual purchase.


title: GeForce

text: On April 7, 2010, Nvidia released the GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480, the first cards based on the new Fermi architecture, codenamed GF100; they were the first Nvidia GPUs to utilize 1 GB or more of GDDR5 memory. The GTX 470 and GTX 480 were heavily criticized due to high power use, high temperatures, and very loud noise that were not balanced by the performance offered, even though the GTX 480 was the fastest DirectX 11 card as of its introduction.


title: GeForce

text: In November 2010, Nvidia released a new flagship GPU based on an enhanced GF100 architecture (GF110) called the GTX 580. It featured higher performance, less power utilization, heat and noise than the preceding GTX 480. This GPU received much better reviews than the GTX 480. Nvidia later also released the GTX 590, which packs two GF110 GPUs on a single card.


title: GeForce

text: In September 2010, Nvidia announced that the successor to Fermi microarchitecture would be the Kepler microarchitecture, manufactured with the TSMC 28 nm fabrication process. Earlier, Nvidia had been contracted to supply their top-end GK110 cores for use in Oak Ridge National Laboratory's "Titan" supercomputer, leading to a shortage of GK110 cores. After AMD launched their own annual refresh in early 2012, the Radeon HD 7000 series, Nvidia began the release of the GeForce 600 series in March 2012. The GK104 core, originally intended for their mid-range segment of their lineup, became the flagship GTX 680. It introduced significant improvements in performance, heat, and power efficiency compared to the Fermi architecture and closely matched AMD's flagship Radeon HD 7970. It was quickly followed by the dual-GK104 GTX 690 and the GTX 670, which featured only a slightly cut-down GK104 core and was very close in performance to the GTX 680.


title: GeForce

text: With the GTX Titan, Nvidia also released GPU Boost 2.0, which would allow the GPU clock speed to increase indefinitely until a user-set temperature limit was reached without passing a user-specified maximum fan speed. The final GeForce 600 series release was the GTX 650 Ti BOOST based on the GK106 core, in response to AMD's Radeon HD 7790 release. At the end of May 2013, Nvidia announced the 700 series, which was still based on the Kepler architecture, however it featured a GK110-based card at the top of the lineup. The GTX 780 was a slightly cut-down Titan that achieved nearly the same performance for two-thirds of the price. It featured the same advanced reference cooler design, but did not have the unlocked double-precision cores and was equipped with 3 GB of memory.


title: GeForce

text: At the same time, Nvidia announced ShadowPlay, a screen capture solution that used an integrated H.264 encoder built into the Kepler architecture that Nvidia had not revealed previously. It could be used to record gameplay without a capture card, and with negligible performance decrease compared to software recording solutions, and was available even on the previous generation GeForce 600 series cards. The software beta for ShadowPlay, however, experienced multiple delays and would not be released until the end of October 2013. A week after the release of the GTX 780, Nvidia announced the GTX 770 to be a rebrand of the GTX 680. It was followed by the GTX 760 shortly after, which was also based on the GK104 core and similar to the GTX 660 Ti. No more 700 series cards were set for release in 2013, although Nvidia announced G-Sync, another feature of the Kepler architecture that Nvidia had left unmentioned, which allowed the GPU to dynamically control the refresh rate of G-Sync-compatible monitors which would release in 2014, to combat tearing and judder. However, in October, AMD released the R9 290X, which came in at $100 less than the GTX 780. In response, Nvidia slashed the price of the GTX 780 by $150 and released the GTX 780 Ti, which featured a full 2880-core GK110 core even more powerful than the GTX Titan, along with enhancements to the power delivery system which improved overclocking, and managed to pull ahead of AMD's new release.


title: GeForce

text: The GeForce 800M series consists of rebranded 700M series parts based on the Kepler architecture and some lower-end parts based on the newer Maxwell architecture.


title: GeForce

text: In March 2013, Nvidia announced that the successor to Kepler would be the Maxwell microarchitecture. It was released in September 2014, with the GM10x series chips, emphasizing the new power efficiency architectural improvements in OEM, and low TDP products in desktop GTX 750/750 ti, and mobile GTX 850M/860M. Later that year Nvidia pushed the TDP with the GM20x chips for power users, skipping the 800 series for desktop entirely, with the 900 series of GPUs.


title: GeForce

text: This was the last GeForce series to support analog video output through DVI-I. Although, analog display adapters exist and are able to convert a digital Display Port, HDMI, or DVI-D (Digital).


title: GeForce

text: In March 2014, Nvidia announced that the successor to Maxwell would be the Pascal microarchitecture; announced on 6 May 2016 and released on 27 May 2016. Architectural improvements include the following:


title: GeForce

text: In August 2018, Nvidia announced the GeForce successor to Pascal. The new microarchitecture name was revealed as "Turing" at the Siggraph 2018 conference. This new GPU microarchitecture is aimed to accelerate the real-time ray tracing support and AI Inferencing. It features a new Ray Tracing unit (RT Core) which can dedicate processors to the ray tracing in hardware. It supports the DXR extension in Microsoft DirectX 12. Nvidia claims the new architecture is up to 6 times faster than the older Pascal architecture. A whole new Tensor core design since Volta introduces AI deep learning acceleration, which allows the utilisation of DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling), a new form of anti-aliasing that uses AI to provide crisper imagery with less impact on performance. It also changes its integer execution unit which can execute in parallel with the floating point data path. A new unified cache architecture which doubles its bandwidth compared with previous generations was also announced.


title: GeForce

text: The new GPUs were revealed as the Quadro RTX 8000, Quadro RTX 6000 and Quadro RTX 5000. The high end Quadro RTX 8000 features 4,608 CUDA cores and 576 Tensor cores with 48GB of VRAM. Later during the Gamescom press conference, Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang, unveiled the new GeForce RTX series with RTX 2080 Ti, 2080, and 2070 that will use the Turing architecture. The first Turing cards were slated to ship to consumers on September 20, 2018. Nvidia announced the RTX 2060 on January 6, 2019 at CES 2019.


title: GeForce

text: On July 2, 2019, Nvidia announced the GeForce RTX Super line of cards, a 20 series refresh which comprises higher-spec versions of the RTX 2060, 2070 and 2080. The RTX 2070 and 2080 were discontinued.


title: GeForce

text: In February 2019, Nvidia announced the GeForce 16 series. It is based on the same Turing architecture used in the GeForce 20 series, but disabling the Tensor (AI) and RT (ray tracing) cores to provide more affordable graphic cards for gamers while still attaining a higher performance compared to respective cards of the previous GeForce generations.


title: GeForce

text: Like the RTX Super refresh, Nvidia on October 29, 2019 announced the GTX 1650 Super and 1660 Super cards, which replaced their non-Super counterparts.


title: GeForce

text: Nvidia officially announced at the GeForce Special Event that the successor to GeForce 20 series will be the 30 series, it is built on the Ampere microarchitecture. The GeForce Special Event introduced took place on September 1, 2020 and set September 17th as the official release date for the RTX 3080 GPU, September 24th for the RTX 3090 GPU and October 29th for the RTX 3070 GPU. With the latest GPU launch being the RTX 3090 Ti. The RTX 3090 Ti is the highest-end Nvidia GPU on the Ampere microarchitecture, it features a fully unlocked GA102 die built on the Samsung 8 nm node due to supply shortages with TSMC. The RTX 3090 Ti has 10,752 CUDA cores, 336 Tensor cores and texture mapping units, 112 ROPs, 84 RT cores, and 24 gigabytes of GDDR6X memory with a 384-bit bus. When compared to the RTX 2080 Ti, the 3090 Ti has 6,400 more CUDA cores. Due to the global chip shortage, the 30 series was controversial as scalpers and high demand meant that GPU prices skyrocketed for the 30 series and the AMD RX 6000 series.


title: GeForce

text: Since the GeForce 2 series, Nvidia has produced a number of graphics chipsets for notebook computers under the "GeForce Go" branding. Most of the features present in the desktop counterparts are present in the mobile ones. These GPUs are generally optimized for lower power consumption and less heat output in order to be used in notebook PCs and small desktops.


title: GeForce

text: Beginning with the GeForce 8 series, the "GeForce Go" brand was discontinued and the mobile GPUs were integrated with the main line of GeForce GPUs, but their name suffixed with an "M". This ended in 2016 with the launch of the laptop GeForce 10 series – Nvidia dropped the "M" suffix, opting to unify the branding between their desktop and laptop GPU offerings, as notebook Pascal GPUs are almost as powerful as their desktop counterparts (something Nvidia tested with their "desktop-class" notebook GTX 980 GPU back in 2015).


title: GeForce

text: The "GeForce MX" brand, previously used by Nvidia for their entry-level desktop GPUs, was revived in 2017 with the release of the GeForce MX150 for notebooks. The MX150 is based on the same Pascal GP108 GPU as used on the desktop GT 1030, and was quietly released in June 2017.


title: GeForce

text: Similar to the mobile GPUs, Nvidia also released a few GPUs in "small form factor" format, for use in all-in-one desktops. These GPUs are suffixed with an "S", similar to the "M" used for mobile products.


title: GeForce

text: Beginning with the nForce 4, Nvidia started including onboard graphics solutions in their motherboard chipsets. These onboard graphics solutions were called mGPUs (motherboard GPUs). Nvidia discontinued the nForce range, including these mGPUs, in 2009.


title: GeForce

text: After the nForce range was discontinued, Nvidia released their Ion line in 2009, which consisted of an Intel Atom CPU partnered with a low-end GeForce 9 series GPU, fixed on the motherboard. Nvidia released an upgraded "Ion 2" in 2010, this time containing a low-end GeForce 300 series GPU.


title: GeForce

text: Since the release of the GeForce 100 series of GPUs, Nvidia changed their product naming scheme to the one below.


title: GeForce

text: Nvidia develops and publishes GeForce drivers for Windows 10 x86/x86-64 and later, Linux x86/x86-64/ARMv7-A, OS X 10.5 and later, Solaris x86/x86-64 and FreeBSD x86/x86-64. A current version can be downloaded from Nvidia and most Linux distributions contain it in their own repositories. Nvidia GeForce driver 340.24 from 8 July 2014 supports the EGL interface enabling support for Wayland in conjunction with this driver. This may be different for the Nvidia Quadro brand, which is based on identical hardware but features OpenGL-certified graphics device drivers. On the same day the Vulkan graphics API was publicly released, Nvidia released drivers that fully supported it. Nvidia has released drivers with optimizations for specific video games concurrent with their release since 2014, having released 150 drivers supporting 400 games in April 2022.


title: GeForce

text: Basic support for the DRM mode-setting interface in the form of a new kernel module named codice_1 has been available since version 358.09 beta.


title: GeForce

text: The support Nvidia's display controller on the supported GPUs is centralized in codice_1. Traditional display interactions (X11 modesets, OpenGL SwapBuffers, VDPAU presentation, SLI, stereo, framelock, G-Sync, etc.) initiate from the various user-mode driver components and flow to codice_1.


title: GeForce

text: In May 2022, Nvidia announced that it would release a partially open source driver for the Turing architecture and newer, in order to enhance the ability for it to be packaged as part of Linux distributions. At launch Nvidia considered the driver to be alpha quality for consumer GPUs, and production ready for datacenter GPUs. Currently the userspace components of the driver (including OpenGL, Vulkan, and CUDA) remain proprietary. In addition, the open source components of the driver are a wrapper for the GPU System Processor (GSP) firmware, a binary blob.


title: GeForce

text: Community-created, free and open-source drivers exist as an alternative to the drivers released by Nvidia. Open-source drivers are developed primarily for Linux, however there may be ports to other operating systems. The most prominent alternative driver is the reverse-engineered free and open-source "nouveau" graphics device driver. Nvidia has publicly announced to not provide any support for such additional device drivers for their products, although Nvidia has contributed code to the Nouveau driver.


title: GeForce

text: Free and open-source drivers support a large portion (but not all) of the features available in GeForce-branded cards. For example, nouveau driver lacks support for the GPU and memory clock frequency adjustments, and for associated dynamic power management. Also, Nvidia's proprietary drivers consistently perform better than nouveau in various benchmarks. However, and version 3.16 of the Linux kernel mainline, contributions by Nvidia allowed partial support for GPU and memory clock frequency adjustments to be implemented.


title: GeForce

text: The license has common terms against reverse engineering and copying, and it disclaims warranties and liability.


title: GeForce

text: Starting in 2016 the GeFORCE license says Nvidia "SOFTWARE may access, collect non-personally identifiable information about, update, and configure Customer's system in order to properly optimize such system for use with the SOFTWARE." The privacy notice goes on to say, "We are not able to respond to "Do Not Track" signals set by a browser at this time. We also permit third party online advertising networks and social media companies to collect information... We may combine personal information that we collect about you with the browsing and tracking information collected by these [cookies and beacons] technologies."


title: GeForce

text: The software configures the user's system to optimize its use, and the license says, "NVIDIA will have no responsibility for any damage or loss to such system (including loss of data or access) arising from or relating to (a) any changes to the configuration, application settings, environment variables, registry, drivers, BIOS, or other attributes of the system (or any part of such system) initiated through the SOFTWARE".


title: GeForce

text: Due to a serious security vulnerability, before the March 26, 2019 security update, users of GeForce Experience were vulnerable to remote code execution, denial of service and privilege escalation attacks.


title: GeForce

text: When installing new drivers, GeForce Experience may force the system to restart after a 60-second countdown, without giving the user any choice.


title: BFI Top 100 British films

text: In 1999, the British Film Institute surveyed 1,000 people from the world of British film and television to produce a list of the greatest British films of the 20th century. Voters were asked to choose up to 100 films that were "culturally British".


title: Alton Brown

text: Alton Crawford Brown Jr. (born July 30, 1962) is an American television personality, food show presenter, chef, author, voice actor, and cinematographer. He is the creator and host of the Food Network television show "Good Eats" that ran for 14 seasons, host of the miniseries "Feasting on Asphalt" and "Feasting on Waves", and host and main commentator on "Iron Chef America" and "Cutthroat Kitchen". Brown is a best-selling author of several books on food and cooking. A recap series titled "Good Eats Reloaded" aired on Cooking Channel, and a true sequel series, "Good Eats: The Return", ran from 2019 to 2021 on Food Network.


title: Alton Brown

text: Alton Brown was born July 30, 1962, in Los Angeles, California. Brown's father, Alton Brown Sr., was a media executive in Cleveland, Georgia; owner of radio station WRWH; and publisher of the newspaper "White County News". He died on Alton's last day of sixth grade from an apparent suicide.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown studied film at the University of Georgia in the early 1980s, and got his start in television as the cinematographer for music videos,


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown was dissatisfied with the quality of cooking shows airing on American television, so he set out to produce his own show. In preparation, he enrolled in the New England Culinary Institute, graduating in 1997. Brown says he was a poor science student in high school and college, but he focused on the subject to understand the underlying processes of cooking. He is outspoken in his shows about his dislike of single-purpose kitchen utensils and equipment such as garlic presses and margarita machines, although he adapts a few traditionally single-purpose devices, such as rice cookers and melon ballers, into multipurpose tools.


title: Alton Brown

text: The pilot for "Good Eats" first aired in July 1998 on the PBS member TV station WTTW in Chicago. Food Network picked up the show in July 1999. Many of the "Good Eats" episodes feature Brown building makeshift cooking devices in order to point out that many of the devices sold at conventional "cooking" stores are simply fancified hardware store items. "Good Eats" was nominated for the Best TV Food Journalism Award by the James Beard Foundation in 2000. The show was also awarded a 2006 Peabody Award. In May 2011, Alton Brown announced an end to "Good Eats" after 14 seasons. The final episode, "Turn on the Dark", aired February 10, 2012.


title: Alton Brown

text: On Alton's 2017 book tour, he stated that "Good Eats" would have a sequel and that it would be released to the internet in 2018. This was changed in late 2018 when Brown made arrangements with The Cooking Channel to air "revised" versions of several episodes with new recipes entitled "Good Eats Reloaded", in which he stated new episodes of "Good Eats" are also in the works. Thirteen episodes of "Good Eats Reloaded" aired in late winter and early spring 2019, and were added to the "Good Eats" reruns on The Cooking Channel. It was announced on June 5, 2019, that the new show would be called "Good Eats Returns"; it premiered on the Food Network with the slightly revised title "Good Eats: The Return" on Sunday, August 25.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown relaunched the show in two versions: as "Good Eats Reloaded" on Cooking Channel (which updates, reworks and adds to original "Good Eats" episodes), and on Food Network as "Good Eats: The Return" in August 2019 (all-new episodes). New episodes of "Reloaded" premiered in April 2020. New "Return" episodes were in the writing process and planned to be filming over the summer of 2020, but were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These episodes eventually saw release, initially as an exclusive on the new Discovery+ streaming service. In June 2021, the episodes premiered on Food Network as a companion to the "Chopped: Alton's Maniacal Baskets" tournament. On July 13, 2021, Brown announced that "Good Eats: The Return" would not be returning for a third season.


title: Alton Brown

text: In 2004, Brown appeared on "Iron Chef America: Battle of the Masters". This was the second attempt to adapt the Japanese cooking show "Iron Chef" to American television (the first being UPN's "Iron Chef USA", which featured William Shatner). Brown served as the expert commentator, a modified version of the role played by Dr. Yukio Hattori in the original show. When the show became a series, Brown began serving as the play-by-play announcer, with Kevin Brauch as kitchen reporter. Brown also served as the host for all five seasons of the spin-off "The Next Iron Chef".


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown's third series, "Feasting on Asphalt", explores the history of eating on the move. Brown and his crew traveled around the United States via motorcycle in a four-part miniseries about the history of road food. Brown samples food all along his travel route. He includes a "history of food" segment documenting famous road trips and interviews many of the foodies he meets en route.


title: Alton Brown

text: The series premiered on Food Network on July 29, 2006. The miniseries was picked up for a second run, "Feasting on Asphalt 2: The River Run", in 2007. Six episodes were filmed between April and May 2007. The episodes trace the majority of the length of the Mississippi River through Brown's travels. The second run of episodes began airing on Food Network on August 4, 2007. The third season uses the title "Feasting on Waves" and has Brown traveling the Caribbean by boat in search of local cuisine.


title: Alton Brown

text: In 2013, Brown began hosting the cooking competition series "Cutthroat Kitchen" on the Food Network. In each episode, four chefs are each given $25,000 with which to bid on items that can be used to hinder their opponents' cooking, such as confiscating ingredients or forcing them to use unorthodox tools and equipment. Three chefs are eliminated one by one, and the winner keeps his/her unspent money as the day's prize. The series premiered on August 11, 2013.


title: Alton Brown

text: In October 2013, Brown launched Alton Brown Live: The Edible Inevitable Tour, his first national tour visiting 46 cities through March 2014. The show included stand-up comedy, talk show antics, a multimedia lecture, live music, and "extreme" food experimentation. After a hiatus of several months while Brown worked on his Food Network shows, the tour resumed in October 2014 and concluded on April 4, 2015, in Houston, Texas, after visiting more than 60 cities.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown mounted a second tour show, Alton Brown Live: Eat Your Science, in 2016. The show toured through the fall of 2017. All totaled, Brown's shows have played over 225 dates including Broadway. Both his tours have included "large, unusual and probably dangerous" food demonstrations, audience participation, and even food songs performed by Brown and his combo. Brown has been quoted as saying his final tour will launch in the fall of 2020.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown's third tour titled Alton Brown Live: Beyond the Eats was announced on his Twitter page in March 2021. The tour began in October 2021 and is ongoing.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown is the recipient of two James Beard Awards. He won the Best Book award in 2003 for his first book, "I'm Just Here for the Food", and the Broadcast Media Award in 2011 for TV Food Personality/Host. He has also been nominated four additional times.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown served as a mentor on Season 8 of "The Next Food Network Star" alongside Bobby Flay and Giada De Laurentiis. During Season 8, each mentor selected and mentored a team of five finalists. Alton's finalist, Justin Warner, was the Season 8 winner; however, Brown will not be producing Warner's show.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown guest-starred in an episode of "SpongeBob SquarePants" titled "House Fancy" where he provides the voice of Nicholas Withers, the host of the titular show.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown appeared on the Travel Channel show "The Layover" with Anthony Bourdain which focused on the city of Atlanta in 2013. In the episode Bourdain takes Brown to the Clermont Lounge.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown guest starred as the "Guest Bailiff" and "Expert Witness" in John Hodgman's comedy/court show podcast "Judge John Hodgman".


title: Alton Brown

text: In October 2017, Brown was featured on the Food Network television show "Chopped" in a five-part series called "Alton Brown's Challenge".


title: Alton Brown

text: In June 2022, he appeared on the web series "Good Mythical Morning" episode "Match the Flavor to the Doritos". He was originally scheduled to appear in a summer 2020 episode, as he revealed in a livestream in March 2020, however did not happen due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown has done commercial work for General Electric products, including five infomercials touting the benefits of GE refrigerators, washers and dryers, water purifiers, Trivection ovens, and dishwashers. The infomercials are produced in the "Good Eats" style, employing the use of unusual camera angles, informational text, props, visual aids, scientific explanations, and the same method of delivery. These infomercials are distributed to wholesale distributors of appliances/plumbing devices.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown has also aided GE in developing a new type of oven. He was initially called by GE to help their engineers learn more about the effects of heat on food; that grew into an active cooperation to develop GE's Trivection oven.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown has promoted Colgate toothpaste, Dannon yogurt, Welch's, Shun knives, and Heifer International. In 2010, he endorsed kosher salt use in a campaign for Cargill. In 2020, he began doing commercials for Healthy Choice's line of low-fat, low-calorie, vegetable-based "Power Dressings",


title: Alton Brown

text: In 2012, Brown gained popularity by pioneering the use of humorous "Analog Tweets", wherein he posts pictures of hand-drawn Twitter responses on Post-it Notes which he has stuck to his computer monitor.


title: Alton Brown

text: On June 28, 2013, Alton Brown joined the Nerdist Podcast Network with his podcast "The Alton Browncast", covering food news, men's style, music and other topics. Through February 15, 2017, 68 episodes have been produced.


title: Alton Brown

text: With the COVID-19 quarantine in 2020 and the subsequent delays in production on Season 16 of "Good Eats" (Season 2 of "The Return"), Alton took to YouTube to make two new online cooking series.


title: Alton Brown

text: Pantry Raid was a series of once-weekly shorts (usually released on Fridays or Saturdays) for making palatable foods while staying safe at home. The episodes were filmed in the "Good Eats" test kitchens at Brain Food Productions and consisted of Alton and a cameraman as the only personnel onsite.


title: Alton Brown

text: Quarantine Quitchen [aka "QQ"] started as a single livestream titled "The Browns Make Dinner", referring to Alton and his wife Elizabeth making dinner at their loft apartment in Georgia. After the success of the first such "episode", the once-weekly series is now released live every Tuesday.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown lives in Marietta, Georgia. He and his former wife DeAnna, an executive producer on "Good Eats", divorced in 2015. They have one daughter born in 1999. A few members of his extended family appeared on "Good Eats" (such as his late grandmother, his mother, and daughter, who is known on the show as "Alton's Spawn"), but most of his "family" portrayed on the series were actors or members of the show's production crew.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown and Atlanta restaurant designer Elizabeth Ingram became engaged in 2018. According to Brown's Instagram account, as of September 2018, he and Ingram had married, on a boat in Charleston, South Carolina.


title: Alton Brown

text: In the fifth episode of Season 18 of "Worst Cooks in America", Brown referred to his current wife as his third wife.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown was once a motorcycling enthusiast, although he no longer owns one. Additionally, Brown is an airplane pilot, and was featured in the aviation magazine "AOPA Flight Training". He owned two planes, a Cessna 206 and a Cessna 414.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown enjoys vintage watches and wore a different watch for every season of "Good Eats"; this was used in production to quickly identify which season a clip is from. When his watch broke down midseason, he continued to wear the broken timepiece to maintain this system. Twenty years after the Omega Seamaster watch his father left him was stolen, Brown bought it from an eBay seller and had it restored.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown changed his eating habits in 2009 in order to lose weight and become healthier, losing over the course of nine months.


title: Alton Brown

text: Brown discussed his Christian beliefs in a 2010 interview with "Eater". He said at the time: I'm not a spooky snake handler because I live in Georgia and I'm Christian ... that I believe in the Bible, that I travel with the Bible, that I read the Bible every day. I'm still me. I'm still a guy doing a job. I find, actually, that people ask me a lot about it. I don't hit people over the head with the Bible ... I still feel a funny little tinge in my stomach when I'm out to dinner with my wife and daughter in New York. We'll go to dinner and we'll be sitting around the table and we'll say grace. You know what? People are going to stare at you. I used to feel really self-conscious. But I've gotten to a point where I think, nah, I'm not going to feel bad about that. I'm not going to apologize about that. Brown said in a December 2014 interview in "Time" that he "could no longer abide the Southern Baptist Convention's indoctrination of children and its anti-gay stance" adding that he is now "searching for a new belief system."


title: Alton Brown

text: In November 2020, Brown declared on Twitter that he has almost always voted Republican, but that the 2016 United States Presidential Election was the first time he considered voting for a Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988. He supported Joe Biden in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, as well as Democrats running in U.S. Senate races in Georgia.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Pope Leo X (; born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, 11 December 14751 December 1521) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 9 March 1513 to his death in December 1521.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Born into the prominent political and banking Medici family of Florence, Giovanni was the second son of Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of the Florentine Republic, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1489. Following the death of Pope Julius II, Giovanni was elected pope after securing the backing of the younger members of the Sacred College. Early on in his rule he oversaw the closing sessions of the Fifth Council of the Lateran, but struggled to implement the reforms agreed. In 1517 he led a costly war that succeeded in securing his nephew Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici as Duke of Urbino, but reduced papal finances.


title: Pope Leo X

text: In Protestant circles, Leo is associated with granting indulgences for those who donated to reconstruct St. Peter's Basilica, a practice that was soon challenged by Martin Luther's "95 Theses". Leo rejected the Protestant Reformation, and his Papal bull of 1520, "Exsurge Domine", condemned Luther's condemnatory stance, rendering ongoing communication difficult.


title: Pope Leo X

text: He borrowed and spent money without circumspection and was a significant patron of the arts. Under his reign, progress was made on the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica and artists such as Raphael decorated the Vatican rooms. Leo also reorganised the Roman University, and promoted the study of literature, poetry and antiquities. He died in 1521 and is buried in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome. He was the last pope not to have been in priestly orders at the time of his election to the papacy.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici was born on 11 December 1475 in the Republic of Florence, the second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, head of the Florentine Republic, and Clarice Orsini. From an early age Giovanni was destined for an ecclesiastical career. He received the tonsure at the age of seven and was soon granted rich benefices and preferments.


title: Pope Leo X

text: His father, Lorenzo de' Medici, was worried about his character early on and wrote a letter to Giovanni to warn him to avoid vice and luxury upon the beginning of his ecclesiastical career. Here is a notable excerpt: "There is one rule which I would recommend to your attention in preference to all others. Rise early in the morning. This will not only contribute to your health, but will enable you to arrange and expedite the business of the day; and as there are various duties incident to".


title: Pope Leo X

text: His father prevailed on his relative Pope Innocent VIII to name him cardinal of Santa Maria in Domnica on 8 March 1488 when he was age 13, although he was not allowed to wear the insignia or share in the deliberations of the college until three years later. Meanwhile, he received an education at Lorenzo's humanistic court under such men as Angelo Poliziano, Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino and Bernardo Dovizio Bibbiena. From 1489 to 1491 he studied theology and canon law at Pisa.


title: Pope Leo X

text: On 23 March 1492, he was formally admitted into the Sacred College of Cardinals and took up his residence at Rome, receiving a letter of advice from his father. The death of Lorenzo on the following 8 April temporarily recalled the 16-year-old Giovanni to Florence. He returned to Rome to participate in the conclave of 1492 which followed the death of Innocent VIII, and unsuccessfully opposed the election of Cardinal Borgia (elected as Pope Alexander VI).


title: Pope Leo X

text: He subsequently made his home with his elder brother Piero in Florence throughout the agitation of Savonarola and the invasion of Charles VIII of France, until the uprising of the Florentines and the expulsion of the Medici in November 1494. While Piero found refuge at Venice and Urbino, Giovanni traveled in Germany, in the Netherlands, and in France.


title: Pope Leo X

text: In May 1500, he returned to Rome, where he was received with outward cordiality by Pope Alexander VI, and where he lived for several years immersed in art and literature. In 1503 he welcomed the accession of Pope Julius II to the pontificate; the death of Piero de' Medici in the same year made Giovanni head of his family. On 1 October 1511 he was appointed papal legate of Bologna and the Romagna, and when the Florentine republic declared in favour of the schismatic Pisans, Julius II sent Giovanni (as legate) with the papal army venturing against the French. The French won a major battle and captured Giovanni. This and other attempts to regain political control of Florence were frustrated until a bloodless revolution permitted the return of the Medici. Giovanni's younger brother Giuliano was placed at the head of the republic, but Giovanni managed the government.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Giovanni was elected pope on 9 March 1513, and this was proclaimed two days later. The absence of the French cardinals effectively reduced the election to a contest between Giovanni (who had the support of the younger and noble members of the college) and Raffaele Riario (who had the support of the older group). On 15 March 1513, he was ordained priest, and consecrated as bishop on 17 March. He was crowned Pope on 19 March 1513 at the age of 37. He was the last non-priest to be elected pope.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Leo had intended his younger brother Giuliano and his nephew Lorenzo for brilliant secular careers. He had named them Roman patricians; the latter he had placed in charge of Florence; the former, for whom he planned to carve out a kingdom in central Italy of Parma, Piacenza, Ferrara and Urbino, he had taken with himself to Rome and married to Filiberta of Savoy.


title: Pope Leo X

text: The death of Giuliano in March 1516, however, caused the pope to transfer his ambitions to Lorenzo. At the very time (December 1516) that peace between France, Spain, Venice and the Empire seemed to give some promise of a Christendom united against the Turks, Leo obtained 150,000 ducats towards the expenses of the expedition from Henry VIII of England, in return for which he entered the imperial league of Spain and England against France.


title: Pope Leo X

text: The war lasted from February to September 1517 and ended with the expulsion of the duke and the triumph of Lorenzo; but it revived the policy of Alexander VI, increased brigandage and anarchy in the Papal States, hindered the preparations for a crusade and wrecked the papal finances. Francesco Guicciardini reckoned the cost of the war to Leo at the sum of 800,000 ducats. Ultimately, however, Lorenzo was confirmed as the new duke of Urbino.


title: Pope Leo X

text: The war of Urbino was further marked by a crisis in the relations between pope and cardinals. The sacred college had allegedly grown very worldly and troublesome since the time of Sixtus IV, and Leo took advantage of a plot by several of its members to poison him, not only to inflict exemplary punishments by executing one (Alfonso Petrucci) and imprisoning several others, but also to make radical changes in the college.


title: Pope Leo X

text: On 3 July 1517 he published the names of thirty-one new cardinals, a number almost unprecedented in the history of the papacy. Among the nominations were such notable men such as Lorenzo Campeggio, Giambattista Pallavicini, Adrian of Utrecht, Thomas Cajetan, Cristoforo Numai and Egidio Canisio. The naming of seven members of prominent Roman families, however, reversed the policy of his predecessor which had kept the political factions of the city out of the Curia. Other promotions were for political or family considerations or to secure money for the war against Urbino. The pope was accused of having exaggerated the conspiracy of the cardinals for purposes of financial gain, but most of such accusations appear unsubstantiated.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Leo, meanwhile, felt the need of staying the advance of the Ottoman sultan, Selim I, who was threatening eastern Europe, and made elaborate plans for a crusade. A truce was to be proclaimed throughout Christendom; the pope was to be the arbiter of disputes; the emperor and the king of France were to lead the army; England, Spain and Portugal were to furnish the fleet; and the combined forces were to be directed against Constantinople. Papal diplomacy in the interests of peace failed, however; Cardinal Wolsey made England, not the pope, the arbiter between France and the Empire; and much of the money collected for the crusade from tithes and indulgences was spent in other ways.


title: Pope Leo X

text: In 1519 Hungary concluded a three years' truce with Selim I, but the succeeding sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, renewed the war in June 1521 and on 28 August captured the citadel of Belgrade. The pope was greatly alarmed, and although he was then involved in war with France he sent about 30,000 ducats to the Hungarians. Leo treated the Eastern Catholic Greeks with great loyalty, and by bull of 18 May 1521 forbade Latin clergy to celebrate mass in Greek churches and Latin bishops to ordain Greek clergy. These provisions were later strengthened by Clement VII and Paul III and went far to settle the constant disputes between the Latins and Uniate Greeks.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Leo was disturbed throughout his pontificate by schism, especially the Reformation sparked by Martin Luther.


title: Pope Leo X

text: In response to concerns about misconduct from some indulgence preachers, in 1517 Martin Luther wrote his "Ninety-five Theses" on the topic of indulgences. The resulting pamphlet spread Luther's ideas throughout Germany and Europe. Leo failed to fully comprehend the importance of the movement, and in February 1518 he directed the vicar-general of the Augustinians to impose silence on his monks.


title: Pope Leo X

text: On 24 May, Luther sent an explanation of his theses to the pope; on 7 August he was summoned to appear at Rome. An arrangement was effected, however, whereby that summons was cancelled, and Luther went instead to Augsburg in October 1518 to meet the papal legate, Cardinal Cajetan; but neither the arguments of the cardinal, nor Leo's dogmatic papal bull of 9 November requiring all Christians to believe in the pope's power to grant indulgences, moved Luther to retract. A year of fruitless negotiations followed, during which the controversy took popular root across the German states.


title: Pope Leo X

text: A further papal bull of 15 June 1520, "Exsurge Domine" or "Arise, O Lord", condemned forty-one propositions extracted from Luther's teachings, and was taken to Germany by Eck in his capacity as apostolic nuncio. Leo followed by formally excommunicating Luther by the bull "Decet Romanum Pontificem" or "It Pleases the Roman Pontiff", on 3 January 1521. In a brief the Pope also directed Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor to take energetic measures against heresy.


title: Pope Leo X

text: It was also under Leo that Lutheranism spread into Scandinavia. The pope had repeatedly used the rich northern benefices to reward members of the Roman curia, and towards the close of the year 1516 he sent the impolitic Arcimboldi as papal nuncio to Denmark to collect money for St Peter's. This led to the Reformation in Denmark. King Christian II took advantage of the growing dissatisfaction of the native clergy toward the papal government, and of Arcimboldi's interference in the Swedish revolt, to expel the nuncio and summon Lutheran theologians to Copenhagen in 1520. Christian approved a plan by which a formal state church should be established in Denmark, all appeals to Rome should be abolished, and the king and diet should have final jurisdiction in ecclesiastical causes. Leo sent a new nuncio to Copenhagen (1521) in the person of the Minorite Francesco de Potentia, who readily absolved the king and received the bishopric of Skara. The pope or his legate, however, took no steps to correct abuses or otherwise discipline the Scandinavian churches.


title: Pope Leo X

text: The pope created 42 new cardinals in eight consistories including two cousins (one who would become his successor Pope Clement VII) and a nephew. He also elevated Adriaan Florensz Boeyens into the cardinalate who would become his immediate successor Pope Adrian VI. Leo X's consistory of 1 July 1517 saw 31 cardinals created, and this remained the largest allocation of cardinals in one consistory until Pope John Paul II named 42 cardinals in 2001.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Pope Leo X canonized eleven individuals during his reign with seven of those being a group cause of martyrs. The most notable canonization from his papacy was that of Francis of Paola on 1 May 1519.


title: Pope Leo X

text: That Leo did not do more to check the anti-papal rebellion in Germany and Scandinavia is to be partially explained by the political complications of the time, and by his own preoccupation with papal and Medicean politics in Italy. The death of the emperor Maximilian in 1519 had seriously affected the situation. Leo vacillated between the powerful candidates for the succession, allowing it to appear at first that he favoured Francis or a minor German prince. He finally accepted Charles of Spain as inevitable.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Leo was now eager to unite Ferrara, Parma and Piacenza to the States of the Church (The Papal States). An attempt late in 1519 to seize Ferrara failed, and the pope recognized the need for foreign aid. In May 1521 a treaty of alliance was signed at Rome between him and the emperor. Milan and Genoa were to be taken from France and restored to the Empire, and Parma and Piacenza were to be given to the Church on the expulsion of the French. The expense of enlisting 10,000 Swiss was to be borne equally by Pope and emperor. Charles V took Florence and the Medici family under his protection and promised to punish all enemies of the Catholic faith. Leo agreed to invest Charles V with the Kingdom of Naples, to crown him Holy Roman Emperor, and to aid in a war against Venice. It was provided that England and the Swiss might also join the league. Henry VIII announced his adherence in August 1521. Francis I had already begun war with Charles V in Navarre, and in Italy, too, the French made the first hostile movement on 23 June 1521. Leo at once announced that he would excommunicate the king of France and release his subjects from their allegiance unless Francis I laid down his arms and surrendered Parma and Piacenza to the Church. The pope lived to hear the joyful news of the capture of Milan from the French and of the occupation by papal troops of the long-coveted provinces (November 1521).


title: Pope Leo X

text: Having fallen ill with bronchopneumonia, Pope Leo X died on 1 December 1521, so suddenly that the last sacraments could not be administered; but the contemporary suspicions of poison were unfounded. He was buried in Santa Maria sopra Minerva.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Leo has been criticized for his handling of the events of the papacy. He had a musical and pleasant voice and a cheerful temper. He was eloquent in speech and elegant in his manners and epistolary style. He enjoyed music and the theatre, art and poetry, the masterpieces of the ancients and the creations of his contemporaries, especially those seasoned with wit and learning. He especially delighted in ex tempore Latin verse-making (at which he excelled) and cultivated "improvisatori". He is said to have stated, "Let us enjoy the papacy since God has given it to us", Ludwig von Pastor says that it is by no means certain that he made the remark; and historian Klemens Löffler says that "the Venetian ambassador who related this of him was not unbiased, nor was he in Rome at the time." However, there is no doubt that he was by nature pleasure-loving and that the anecdote reflects his casual attitude to the high and solemn office to which he had been called. On the other hand, in spite of his worldliness, Leo prayed, fasted, went to confession before celebrating Mass in public, and conscientiously participated in the religious services of the Church. To the virtues of liberality, charity, and clemency he added the Machiavellian qualities of deception and shrewdness, so highly esteemed by the princes of his time.


title: Pope Leo X

text: The character of Leo X was formerly assailed by lurid aspersions of debauchery, murder, impiety, and atheism. In the 17th century it was estimated that 300 or 400 writers, more or less, reported (on the authority of a single polemical anti-Catholic source) a story that when someone had quoted to Leo a passage from one of the Four Evangelists, he had replied that it was common knowledge "how profitable that fable of Christe hath ben to us and our companie." These aspersions and more were examined by William Roscoe in the 19th century (and again by Ludwig von Pastor in the 20th) and rejected. Nevertheless, even the eminent philosopher David Hume, while claiming that Leo was too intelligent to believe in Catholic doctrine, conceded that he was "one of the most illustrious princes that ever sat on the papal throne. Humane, beneficent, generous, affable; the patron of every art, and friend of every virtue". Martin Luther, in a to Leo, himself testified to Leo's universal reputation for morality:


title: Pope Leo X

text: The final report of the Venetian ambassador Marino Giorgi supports Hume's assessment of affability, and testifies to the range of Leo's talents. Bearing the date of March 1517 it indicates some of his predominant characteristics:


title: Pope Leo X

text: Leo is the fifth of the six popes who are unfavorably profiled by historian Barbara Tuchman in "The March of Folly", and who are accused by her of precipitating the Protestant Reformation. Tuchman describes Leo as a cultured – if religiously devout – hedonist.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Leo X's love for all forms of art stemmed from the humanistic education he received in Florence, his studies in Pisa and his extensive travel throughout Europe when a youth. He loved the Latin poems of the humanists, the tragedies of the Greeks and the comedies of Cardinal Bibbiena and Ariosto, while relishing the accounts sent back by the explorers of the New World. Yet "Such a humanistic interest was itself religious. ... In the Renaissance, the vines of the classical world and the Christian world, of Rome, were seen as intertwined. It was a historically minded culture where artists' representations of Cupid and the Madonna, of Hercules and St. Peter could exist side-by-side".


title: Pope Leo X

text: Pastor says that "From his youth, Leo, who had a fine ear and a melodious voice, loved music to the pitch of fanaticism". As pope he procured the services of professional singers, instrumentalists and composers from as far away as France, Germany and Spain. Next to goldsmiths, the highest salaries recorded in the papal accounts are those paid to musicians, who also received largesse from Leo's private purse. Their services were retained not so much for the delectation of Leo and his guests at private social functions as for the enhancement of religious services on which the pope placed great store. The standard of singing of the papal choir was a particular object of Leo's concern, with French, Dutch, Spanish and Italian singers being retained. Large sums of money were also spent on the acquisition of highly ornamented musical instruments, and he was especially assiduous in securing musical scores from Florence. He also fostered technical improvements developed for the diffusion of such scores. Ottaviano Petrucci, who had overcome practical difficulties in the way of using movable type to print musical notation, obtained from Leo X the exclusive privilege of printing organ scores (which, according to the papal brief, "adds greatly to the dignity of divine worship") for a period for 15 years from 22 October 1513. In addition to fostering the performance of sung Masses, he promoted the singing of the Gospel in Greek in his private chapel.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Even those who defend him against the more outlandish attacks on his character acknowledge that he partook of entertainment such as masquerades, "jests," fowling, and hunting boar and other wild beasts. According to one biographer, he was "engrossed in idle and selfish amusements".


title: Pope Leo X

text: Leo indulged buffoons at his Court, but also tolerated behavior which made them the object of ridicule. One case concerned the conceited "improvisatore" Giacomo Baraballo, Abbot of Gaeta, who was the butt of a burlesque procession organised in the style of an ancient Roman triumph. Baraballo was dressed in festal robes of velvet and with ermine and presented to the pope. He was then taken to the piazza of St Peter's and was mounted on the back of Hanno, a white elephant, the gift of King Manuel I of Portugal. The magnificently ornamented animal was then led off in the direction of the Capitol to the sound of drums and trumpets. But while crossing the bridge of Sant'Angelo over the Tiber, the elephant, already distressed by the noise and confusion around him, shied violently, throwing his passenger onto the muddy riverbank below.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Leo's most recent biographer, Carlo Falconi, says Leo hid a private life of moral irregularity behind a mask of urbanity. Scabrous verse libels of the type known as pasquinades were particularly abundant during the conclave which followed Leo's death in 1521 and made imputations about Leo's unchastity, implying or asserting homosexuality. Suggestions of homosexual attraction appear in works by two contemporary historians, Francesco Guicciardini and Paolo Giovio. Zimmerman notes Giovio's "disapproval of the pope's familiar banter with his chamberlains – handsome young men from noble families – and the advantage he was said to take of them."


title: Pope Leo X

text: Luther spent a month in Rome in 1510, three years before Leo became pontiff, and was disillusioned at the corruption he found there. In 1520, the year before his excommunication from the Catholic Church, Luther claimed that Leo lived a "blameless life." However, Luther later distanced himself from this claim and alleged in 1531 that Leo had vetoed a measure that cardinals should restrict the number of boys they kept for their pleasure, "otherwise it would have been spread throughout the world how openly and shamelessly the pope and the cardinals in Rome practice sodomy." Against this allegation is the papal bull "Supernae dispositionis arbitrio" from 1514 which, "inter alia", required cardinals to live "... soberly, chastely, and piously, abstaining not only from evil but also from every appearance of evil" and a contemporary and eye-witness at Leo's Court (Matteo Herculaneo), emphasized his belief that Leo was chaste all his life.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Historians have dealt with the issue of Leo's sexuality at least since the late 18th century, and few have given credence to the imputations made against him in his later years and decades following his death, or else have at least regarded them as unworthy of notice; without necessarily reaching conclusions on whether he was homosexual. Those who stand outside this consensus generally fall short of concluding with certainty that Leo was unchaste during his pontificate. Joseph McCabe accused Pastor of untruthfulness and Vaughan of lying in course of their treatment of the evidence, pointing out that Giovio and Guicciardini seemed to share the belief that Leo engaged in "unnatural vice" (homosexuality) while pope.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Leo X made charitable donations of more than 6,000 ducats annually to retirement homes, hospitals, convents, discharged soldiers, pilgrims, poor students, exiles, cripples, and the sick and unfortunate.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Pope Leo X died fairly suddenly of pneumonia at the age of 45 on 1 December 1521 and was buried in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. His death came just 10 months after he had excommunicated Martin Luther, the seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation, who was accused of 41 errors in his teachings.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Possibly the most lasting legacy of the reign of Pope Leo X was his perceived failure not just to stem the Reformation but to fuel it. A key issue was that his pontificate failed to bring about the reforms decreed by the Fifth Lateran Council (held between 1512 and 1517) which aimed to deal with many of their political problems as well as to reform Christendom, specifically relating to the papacy, cardinals, and curia. Some believe enforcing these decrees may have been enough to dampen support for radical challenges to church authority. But instead under his leadership, Rome's fiscal and political problems were deepened. A major contributor was his lavish spending (especially on the arts and himself) which led the papal treasury into mounting debt and his decision to authorize the sale of indulgences. The exploitation of people and corruption of religious principles linked to the practice of selling indulgences quickly became the key stimulus for the onset of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther's "95 Theses", otherwise entitled "Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences", was posted on a Church door in Wittenberg, Germany in October 1517 just seven months after the Lateran V was completed. But Pope Leo X's attempt to prosecute Luther's teaching on indulgences, and to eventually excommunicate him in January 1521, did not get rid of Lutheran doctrine but had the opposite effect of further splintering the Western church.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Leo was renowned for spending money lavishly on the arts; on charities; on benefices for his friends, relatives, and even people he barely knew; on dynastic wars, such as the War of Urbino; and on his own personal luxury. Within two years of becoming Pope, Leo X spent all of the treasure amassed by the previous Pope, the frugal Julius II, and drove the Papacy into deep debt. By the end of his pontificate in 1521, the papal treasury was 400,000 ducats in debt. This debt contributed not only to the calamities of Leo's own pontificate (particularly the sale of indulgences that precipitated Protestantism) but severely constrained later pontificates (Pope Adrian VI; and Leo's beloved cousin, Clement VII) and forced austerity measures.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Leo X's personal spending was likewise vast. For 1517, his personal income is recorded as 580,000 ducats, of which 420,000 came from the states of the Church, 100,000 from annates, and 60,000 from the composition tax instituted by Sixtus IV. These sums, together with the considerable amounts accruing from indulgences, jubilees, and special fees, vanished as quickly as they were received. To remain financially solvent, the Pope resorted to desperate measures: instructing his cousin, Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, to pawn the Papal jewels; palace furniture; tableware; and even statues of the apostles. Additionally, Leo sold cardinals' hats; memberships to a fraternal order he invented in 1520, the "Papal Knights of St. Peter and St. Paul"; and borrowed such immense sums from bankers that upon his death, many were ruined.


title: Pope Leo X

text: At Leo's death, the Venetian ambassador Gradenigo estimated the number of the Church's paying offices at 2,150, with a capital value of approximately 3,000,000 ducats and a yearly income of 328,000 ducats.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Leo X raised the Church to a high rank as the friend of whatever seemed to extend knowledge or to refine and embellish life. He made the capital of Christendom, Rome, a center of European culture. While yet a cardinal, he had restored the church of Santa Maria in Domnica after Raphael's designs; and as pope he had San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, on the Via Giulia, built, after designs by Jacopo Sansovino and pressed forward the work on St Peter's Basilica and the Vatican under Raphael and Agostino Chigi. Leo's constitution of 5 November 1513 reformed the Roman university, which had been neglected by Julius II. He restored all its faculties, gave larger salaries to the professors, and summoned distinguished teachers from afar; and, although it never attained to the importance of Padua or Bologna, it nevertheless possessed in 1514 a faculty (with a good reputation) of eighty-eight professors.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Leo called Janus Lascaris to Rome to give instruction in Greek, and established a Greek printing-press from which the first Greek book printed at Rome appeared in 1515. He made Raphael custodian of the classical antiquities of Rome and the vicinity, the ancient monuments of which formed the subject of a famous letter from Raphael to the pope in 1519. The distinguished Latinists Pietro Bembo and Jacopo Sadoleto were papal secretaries, as well as the famous poet Bernardo Accolti. Other poets, such as Marco Girolamo Vida, Gian Giorgio Trissino and Bibbiena, writers of "novelle" like Matteo Bandello, and a hundred other "literati" of the time were bishops, or papal scriptors or abbreviators, or in other papal employ.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Several minor events of Leo's pontificate are worthy of mention. He was particularly friendly with King Manuel I of Portugal as a result of the latter's missionary enterprises in Asia and Africa. Pope Leo X was granted a large embassy from the Portuguese king furnished with goods from Manuel's colonies. His concordat with Florence (1516) guaranteed the free election of the clergy in that city.


title: Pope Leo X

text: His constitution of 1 March 1519 condemned the King of Spain's claim to refuse the publication of papal bulls. He maintained close relations with Poland because of the Turkish advance and the Polish contest with the Teutonic Knights. His bull of July 1519, which regulated the discipline of the Polish Church, was later transformed into a concordat by Clement VII.


title: Pope Leo X

text: Leo showed special favours to the Jews and permitted them to erect a Hebrew printing-press at Rome. Under Daniel Bomberg, that press produced manuscripts of the Talmud and Mikraot Gedolot with Leo's approval and protection.


title: Pope Leo X

text: He approved the formation of the Oratory of Divine Love, a group of pious men at Rome which later became the Theatine Order, and he canonized Francis of Paola.


title: Jean Cocteau

text: Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the surrealist, avant-garde, and Dadaist movements; and one of the most influential figures in early 20th-century art as a whole. The "National Observer" suggested that, “of the artistic generation whose daring gave birth to Twentieth Century Art, Cocteau came closest to being a Renaissance man.”


title: Jean Cocteau

text: He is best known for his novels "Le Grand Écart" (1923), "Le Livre blanc" (1928), and "Les Enfants Terribles" (1929); the stage plays "La Voix Humaine" (1930), "La Machine Infernale" (1934), "Les Parents terribles" (1938), "La Machine à écrire" (1941), and "L'Aigle à deux têtes" (1946); and the films "The Blood of a Poet" (1930), "Les Parents Terribles" (1948), "Beauty and the Beast" (1946), "Orpheus" (1950), and "Testament of Orpheus" (1960), which alongside "Blood of a Poet" and "Orpheus" constitute the so-called Orphic Trilogy. He was described as "one of [the] avant-garde's most successful and influential filmmakers" by AllMovie. Cocteau, according to Annette Insdorf, “left behind a body of work unequalled for its variety of artistic expression.”


title: Jean Cocteau

text: Though his body of work encompassed many different mediums, Cocteau insisted on calling himself a poet, classifying the great variety of his works – poems, novels, plays, essays, drawings, films – as "poésie", "poésie de roman", "poésie de thêatre", "poésie critique", "poésie graphique" and "poésie cinématographique".


title: Jean Cocteau

text: Cocteau was born in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, a town near Paris, to Georges Cocteau and his wife, Eugénie Lecomte: a socially prominent Parisian family. His father, a lawyer and amateur painter, committed suicide when Cocteau was nine. From 1900 to 1904, Cocteau attended the Lycée Condorcet where he met and began a relationship with schoolmate Pierre Dargelos, who would reappear throughout Cocteau's work, "John Cocteau: Erotic Drawings." He left home at fifteen. He published his first volume of poems, "Aladdin's Lamp", at nineteen. Cocteau soon became known in Bohemian artistic circles as "The Frivolous Prince", the title of a volume he published at twenty-two. Edith Wharton described him as a man "to whom every great line of poetry was a sunrise, every sunset the foundation of the Heavenly City..."


title: Jean Cocteau

text: In his early twenties, Cocteau became associated with the writers Marcel Proust, André Gide, and Maurice Barrès. In 1912, he collaborated with Léon Bakst on "Le Dieu bleu" for the Ballets Russes; the principal dancers being Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky. During World War I, Cocteau served in the Red Cross as an ambulance driver. This was the period in which he met the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, artists Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani, and numerous other writers and artists with whom he later collaborated. Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev persuaded Cocteau to write a scenario for a ballet, which resulted in "Parade" in 1917. It was produced by Diaghilev, with sets by Picasso, the libretto by Apollinaire and the music by Erik Satie. "If it had not been for Apollinaire in uniform," wrote Cocteau, "with his skull shaved, the scar on his temple and the bandage around his head, women would have gouged our eyes out with hairpins."


title: Jean Cocteau

text: An important exponent of avant-garde art, Cocteau had great influence on the work of others, including a group of composers known as Les six. In the early twenties, he and other members of Les six frequented a wildly popular bar named Le Boeuf sur le Toit, a name that Cocteau himself had a hand in picking. The popularity was due in no small measure to the presence of Cocteau and his friends.


title: Jean Cocteau

text: In 1918 he met the French poet Raymond Radiguet. They collaborated extensively, socialized, and undertook many journeys and vacations together. Cocteau also got Radiguet exempted from military service. Admiring of Radiguet's great literary talent, Cocteau promoted his friend's works in his artistic circle and arranged for the publication by Grasset of "Le Diable au corps" (a largely autobiographical story of an adulterous relationship between a married woman and a younger man), exerting his influence to have the novel awarded the "Nouveau Monde" literary prize. Some contemporaries and later commentators thought there might have been a romantic component to their friendship. Cocteau himself was aware of this perception, and worked earnestly to dispel the notion that their relationship was sexual in nature.


title: Jean Cocteau

text: There is disagreement over Cocteau's reaction to Radiguet's sudden death in 1923, with some claiming that it left him stunned, despondent and prey to opium addiction. Opponents of that interpretation point out that he did not attend the funeral (he generally did not attend funerals) and immediately left Paris with Diaghilev for a performance of "Les noces" ("The Wedding") by the Ballets Russes at Monte Carlo. Cocteau himself much later characterised his reaction as one of "stupor and disgust." His opium addiction at the time, Cocteau said, was only coincidental, due to a chance meeting with Louis Laloy, the administrator of the Monte Carlo Opera. Cocteau's opium use and his efforts to stop profoundly changed his literary style. His most notable book, "Les Enfants Terribles", was written in a week during a strenuous opium weaning. In "", he recounts the experience of his recovery from opium addiction in 1929. His account, which includes vivid pen-and-ink illustrations, alternates between his moment-to-moment experiences of drug withdrawal and his current thoughts about people and events in his world. Cocteau was supported throughout his recovery by his friend and correspondent, Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain. Under Maritain's influence Cocteau made a temporary return to the sacraments of the Catholic Church. He again returned to the Church later in life and undertook a number of religious art projects.


title: Jean Cocteau

text: On 15 June 1926 Cocteau's play "Orphée" was staged in Paris. It was quickly followed by an exhibition of drawings and "constructions" called "Poésie plastique–objets, dessins". Cocteau wrote the libretto for Igor Stravinsky's opera-oratorio "Oedipus rex", which had its original performance in the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt in Paris on 30 May 1927. In 1929 one of his most celebrated and well known works, the novel "Les Enfants terribles" was published.