title: HSL and HSV

text: Using the same name for these three different definitions of saturation leads to some confusion, as the three attributes describe substantially different color relationships; in HSV and HSI, the term roughly matches the psychometric definition, of a chroma of a color relative to its own lightness, but in HSL it does not come close. Even worse, the word "saturation" is also often used for one of the measurements we call chroma above ("C" or "C").


title: HSL and HSV

text: All parameter values shown below are given as values in the interval , except those for "H" and "H" which are in the interval .


title: HSL and HSV

text: The original purpose of HSL and HSV and similar models, and their most common current application, is in color selection tools. At their simplest, some such color pickers provide three sliders, one for each attribute. Most, however, show a two-dimensional slice through the model, along with a slider controlling which particular slice is shown. The latter type of GUI exhibits great variety, because of the choice of cylinders, hexagonal prisms, or cones/bicones that the models suggest (see the diagram near the top of the page). Several color choosers from the 1990s are shown to the right, most of which have remained nearly unchanged in the intervening time: today, nearly every computer color chooser uses HSL or HSV, at least as an option. Some more sophisticated variants are designed for choosing whole sets of colors, basing their suggestions of compatible colors on the HSL or HSV relationships between them.


title: HSL and HSV

text: Most web applications needing color selection also base their tools on HSL or HSV, and pre-packaged open source color choosers exist for most major web front-end frameworks. The CSS 3 specification allows web authors to specify colors for their pages directly with HSL coordinates.


title: HSL and HSV

text: HSL and HSV are sometimes used to define gradients for data visualization, as in maps or medical images. For example, the popular GIS program ArcGIS historically applied customizable HSV-based gradients to numerical geographical data.


title: HSL and HSV

text: Image editing software also commonly includes tools for adjusting colors with reference to HSL or HSV coordinates, or to coordinates in a model based on the "intensity" or luma defined above. In particular, tools with a pair of "hue" and "saturation" sliders are commonplace, dating to at least the late-1980s, but various more complicated color tools have also been implemented. For instance, the Unix image viewer and color editor xv allowed six user-definable hue ("H") ranges to be rotated and resized, included a dial-like control for saturation ("S"), and a curves-like interface for controlling value ("V")—see fig. 17. The image editor Picture Window Pro includes a "color correction" tool which affords complex remapping of points in a hue/saturation plane relative to either HSL or HSV space.


title: HSL and HSV

text: Video editors also use these models. For example, both Avid and Final Cut Pro include color tools based on HSL or a similar geometry for use adjusting the color in video. With the Avid tool, users pick a vector by clicking a point within the hue/saturation circle to shift all the colors at some lightness level (shadows, mid-tones, highlights) by that vector.


title: HSL and HSV

text: Since version 4.0, Adobe Photoshop's "Luminosity", "Hue", "Saturation", and "Color" blend modes composite layers using a luma/chroma/hue color geometry. These have been copied widely, but several imitators use the HSL (e.g. PhotoImpact, Paint Shop Pro) or HSV geometries instead.


title: HSL and HSV

text: HSL, HSV, HSI, or related models are often used in computer vision and image analysis for feature detection or image segmentation. The applications of such tools include object detection, for instance in robot vision; object recognition, for instance of faces, text, or license plates; content-based image retrieval; and analysis of medical images.


title: HSL and HSV

text: For the most part, computer vision algorithms used on color images are straightforward extensions to algorithms designed for grayscale images, for instance k-means or fuzzy clustering of pixel colors, or canny edge detection. At the simplest, each color component is separately passed through the same algorithm. It is important, therefore, that the features of interest can be distinguished in the color dimensions used. Because the "R", "G", and "B" components of an object's color in a digital image are all correlated with the amount of light hitting the object, and therefore with each other, image descriptions in terms of those components make object discrimination difficult. Descriptions in terms of hue/lightness/chroma or hue/lightness/saturation are often more relevant.


title: HSL and HSV

text: Starting in the late 1970s, transformations like HSV or HSI were used as a compromise between effectiveness for segmentation and computational complexity. They can be thought of as similar in approach and intent to the neural processing used by human color vision, without agreeing in particulars: if the goal is object detection, roughly separating hue, lightness, and chroma or saturation is effective, but there is no particular reason to strictly mimic human color response. John Kender's 1976 master's thesis proposed the HSI model. Ohta et al. (1980) instead used a model made up of dimensions similar to those we have called "I", "α", and "β". In recent years, such models have continued to see wide use, as their performance compares favorably with more complex models, and their computational simplicity remains compelling.


title: HSL and HSV

text: While HSL, HSV, and related spaces serve well enough to, for instance, choose a single color, they ignore much of the complexity of color appearance. Essentially, they trade off perceptual relevance for computation speed, from a time in computing history (high-end 1970s graphics workstations, or mid-1990s consumer desktops) when more sophisticated models would have been too computationally expensive.


title: HSL and HSV

text: HSL and HSV are simple transformations of RGB which preserve symmetries in the RGB cube unrelated to human perception, such that its "R", "G", and "B" corners are equidistant from the neutral axis, and equally spaced around it. If we plot the RGB gamut in a more perceptually-uniform space, such as CIELAB (see below), it becomes immediately clear that the red, green, and blue primaries do not have the same lightness or chroma, or evenly spaced hues. Furthermore, different RGB displays use different primaries, and so have different gamuts. Because HSL and HSV are defined purely with reference to some RGB space, they are not absolute color spaces: to specify a color precisely requires reporting not only HSL or HSV values, but also the characteristics of the RGB space they are based on, including the gamma correction in use.


title: HSL and HSV

text: If we take an image and extract the hue, saturation, and lightness or value components, and then compare these to the components of the same name as defined by color scientists, we can quickly see the difference, perceptually. For example, examine the following images of a fire breather (). The original is in the sRGB colorspace. CIELAB "L"* is a CIE-defined achromatic lightness quantity (dependent solely on the perceptually achromatic luminance "Y", but not the mixed-chromatic components "X" or "Z", of the CIEXYZ colorspace from which the sRGB colorspace itself is derived), and it is plain that this appears similar in perceptual lightness to the original color image. Luma is roughly similar, but differs somewhat at high chroma, where it deviates most from depending solely on the true achromatic luminance ("Y", or equivalently "L"*) and is influenced by the colorimetric chromaticity ("x,y", or equivalently, "a*,b*" of CIELAB). HSL "L" and HSV "V", by contrast, diverge substantially from perceptual lightness.


title: HSL and HSV

text: Though none of the dimensions in these spaces match their perceptual analogs, the "value" of HSV and the "saturation" of HSL are particular offenders. In HSV, the blue primary and white are held to have the same value, even though perceptually the blue primary has somewhere around 10% of the luminance of white (the exact fraction depends on the particular RGB primaries in use). In HSL, a mix of 100% red, 100% green, 90% blue—that is, a very light yellow —is held to have the same saturation as the green primary even though the former color has almost no chroma or saturation by the conventional psychometric definitions. Such perversities led Cynthia Brewer, expert in color scheme choices for maps and information displays, to tell the American Statistical Association:


title: HSL and HSV

text: If these problems make HSL and HSV problematic for choosing colors or color schemes, they make them much worse for image adjustment. HSL and HSV, as Brewer mentioned, confound perceptual color-making attributes, so that changing any dimension results in non-uniform changes to all three perceptual dimensions, and distorts all of the color relationships in the image. For instance, rotating the hue of a pure dark blue toward green will also reduce its perceived chroma, and increase its perceived lightness (the latter is grayer and lighter), but the same hue rotation will have the opposite impact on lightness and chroma of a lighter bluish-green— to (the latter is more colorful and slightly darker). In the example below (), the image on the left (a) is the original photograph of a green turtle. In the middle image (b), we have rotated the hue ("H") of each color by , while keeping HSV value and saturation or HSL lightness and saturation constant. In the image on the right (c), we make the same rotation to the HSL/HSV hue of each color, but then we force the CIELAB lightness ("L"*, a decent approximation of perceived lightness) to remain constant. Notice how the hue-shifted middle version without such a correction dramatically changes the perceived lightness relationships between colors in the image. In particular, the turtle's shell is much darker and has less contrast, and the background water is much lighter.


title: HSL and HSV

text: Because hue is a circular quantity, represented numerically with a discontinuity at 360°, it is difficult to use in statistical computations or quantitative comparisons: analysis requires the use of circular statistics. Furthermore, hue is defined piecewise, in 60° chunks, where the relationship of lightness, value, and chroma to "R", "G", and "B" depends on the hue chunk in question. This definition introduces discontinuities, corners which can plainly be seen in horizontal slices of HSL or HSV.


title: HSL and HSV

text: Charles Poynton, digital video expert, lists the above problems with HSL and HSV in his "Color FAQ", and concludes that:


title: HSL and HSV

text: The creators of HSL and HSV were far from the first to imagine colors fitting into conic or spherical shapes, with neutrals running from black to white in a central axis, and hues corresponding to angles around that axis. Similar arrangements date back to the 18th century, and continue to be developed in the most modern and scientific models.


title: HSL and HSV

text: To convert from HSL or HSV to RGB, we essentially invert the steps listed above (as before, ). First, we compute chroma, by multiplying saturation by the maximum chroma for a given lightness or value. Next, we find the point on one of the bottom three faces of the RGB cube which has the same hue and chroma as our color (and therefore projects onto the same point in the chromaticity plane). Finally, we add equal amounts of "R", "G", and "B" to reach the proper lightness or value.


title: HSL and HSV

text: Then we can find a point along the bottom three faces of the RGB cube, with the same hue and chroma as our color (using the intermediate value "X" for the second largest component of this color):


title: HSL and HSV

text: In the above equation, the notation formula_23 refers to the remainder of the Euclidean division of formula_24 by 2. formula_24 is not necessarily an integer.


title: HSL and HSV

text: When formula_24 is an integer, the "neighbouring" formula would yield the same result, as formula_28 or formula_29, as appropriate.


title: HSL and HSV

text: Finally, we can find "R", "G", and "B" by adding the same amount to each component, to match lightness:


title: HSL and HSV

text: The polygonal piecewise functions can be somewhat simplified by a clever use of minimum and maximum values as well as the remainder operation.


title: HSL and HSV

text: Given a color with hue formula_32, saturation formula_33, and lightness formula_34, we first define the function:


title: HSL and HSV

text: The above alternative formulas allow for shorter implementations. In the above formulas the formula_41 operation also returns the fractional part of the module e.g. formula_42, and formula_43.


title: HSL and HSV

text: The base shape formula_44 is constructed as follows: formula_45 is a "triangle" for which values greater or equal to −1 start from k=2 and end at k=10, and the highest point is at k=6. Then by formula_46 we change values bigger than 1 to equal 1. Then by formula_47 we change values less than −1 to equal −1. At this point we get something similar to the red shape from fig. 24 after a vertical flip (where the maximum is 1 and the minimum is −1). The R,G,B functions of formula_48 use this shape transformed in following way: modulo-shifted on formula_49 (by formula_50) (differently for R,G,B) scaled on formula_51 (by formula_52) and shifted on formula_51 (by formula_54).


title: HSL and HSV

text: Given an HSV color with hue , saturation , and value , we can use the same strategy. First, we find chroma:


title: HSL and HSV

text: Then we can, again, find a point along the bottom three faces of the RGB cube, with the same hue and chroma as our color (using the intermediate value "X" for the second largest component of this color):


title: HSL and HSV

text: Given a color with hue formula_32, saturation formula_66, and value formula_67, first we define function :


title: HSL and HSV

text: Above alternative equivalent formulas allow shorter implementation. In above formulas the formula_41 returns also fractional part of module e.g. the formula formula_42. The values of formula_75. The base shape


title: HSL and HSV

text: is constructed as follows: formula_77 is "triangle" for which non-negative values starts from k=0, highest point at k=2 and "ends" at k=4, then we change values bigger than one to one by formula_78, then change negative values to zero by formula_79 – and we get (for formula_80) something similar to green shape from Fig. 24 (which max value is 1 and min value is 0). The R,G,B functions of formula_48 use this shape transformed in following way: modulo-shifted on formula_49 (by formula_50) (differently for R,G,B) scaled on formula_51 (by formula_85) and shifted on formula_51 (by formula_87). We observe following shape properties(Fig. 24 can help to get intuition about this):


title: HSL and HSV

text: Given an HSI color with hue , saturation , and intensity , we can use the same strategy, in a slightly different order:


title: HSL and HSV

text: Overlap (when formula_24 is an integer) occurs because two ways to calculate the value are equivalent: formula_28 or formula_29, as appropriate.


title: HSL and HSV

text: Given a color with hue , chroma , and luma , we can again use the same strategy. Since we already have "H" and "C", we can straightaway find our point along the bottom three faces of the RGB cube:


title: Husky

text: Husky is a general term for a dog used in the polar regions, primarily and specifically for work as sled dogs. It refers to a traditional northern type, notable for its cold-weather tolerance and overall hardiness. Modern racing huskies that maintain arctic breed traits (also known as Alaskan huskies) represent an ever-changing crossbreed of the fastest dogs.


title: Husky

text: Huskies have continued to be used in sled-dog racing, as well as expedition and trek style tour businesses, and as a means of essential transportation in rural communities. Huskies are also kept as pets, and groups work to find new pet homes for retired racing and adventure-trekking dogs.


title: Husky

text: Nearly all dogs' genetic closeness to the gray wolf is due to admixture. However, several Arctic breeds also show a genetic closeness with the now-extinct Taimyr wolf of North Asia due to admixture: the Siberian Husky and Greenland Dog (which are also historically associated with Arctic human populations) and to a lesser extent, the Shar Pei and Finnish Spitz. An admixture graph of the Greenland Dog indicates a best-fit of 3.5% shared material; however, an ancestry proportion ranging between 1.4% and 27.3% is consistent with the data and indicates admixture between the Taimyr wolf and the ancestors of these four high-latitude breeds.


title: Husky

text: This introgression could have provided early dogs living in high latitudes with phenotypic variation beneficial for adaption to a new and challenging environment, contributing significantly to the development of the husky. It also indicates that the ancestry of present-day dog breeds descends from more than one region.


title: Husky

text: The term "husky" first came into usage in the mid to late 1700s. At this time, "Esquimaux" or "Eskimo" was a common term for pre-Columbian Arctic inhabitants of North America. Several dialectal permutations were in use including Uskee, Uskimay and Huskemaw. Thus, dogs used by Arctic people were the dogs of the Huskies, the Huskie's dogs, and eventually simply the husky dogs. Canadian and American settlers, not well versed on Russian geography, would later extend the word to Chukotka sled dogs imported from Russia, thus giving rise to the term Siberian husky.


title: Husky

text: Huskies are energetic and athletic. They are distinguished by their hardiness and cold-weather tolerance, in contrast to many modern sprint sled dogs derived from hound and pointer crossbreeds and purebred sprinting dogs which do not have or retain these qualities. Likewise, they are distinguished from laika, as they were not developed for the primary purpose of hunting game and prey animals.


title: Husky

text: Huskies typically have a thick double coat that may come in a variety of colors. The double coat generally protects huskies against harsh winters and, contrary to what most believe, they can survive in hotter climates. During the hotter climates, huskies tend to shed their undercoat regularly to cool their bodies. In addition to shedding, huskies control their eating habits based on the season; in cooler climates, they tend to eat generous amounts, causing their digestion to generate heat, whilst in warmer climates, they eat less. Their eyes are typically pale blue, although they may also be brown, green, blue, yellow, or heterochromic. Huskies are more prone to some degree of uveitis than most other breeds.


title: Husky

text: The most commonly used dog in dog sled racing, the Alaskan husky is a mongrel bred specifically for its performance as a sled dog. The modern Alaskan husky reflects 100 years or more of crossbreeding with English Pointers, German Shepherd Dogs, Salukis and other breeds to improve its performance. They typically weigh between 18 and 34 kilograms (40 and 75 lb) and may have dense or sleek fur. Alaskan huskies bear little resemblance to the typical husky breeds they originated from, or to each other.


title: Husky

text: The Alaskan Malamute (/ˈmæləˌmjuːt/) is a large breed of husky that was originally bred for its strength and endurance to haul heavy freight as a sled dog and hound. It is similar to other arctic breeds such as the husky, the spitz, the Greenland Dog, Canadian Eskimo Dog, the Siberian Husky, and the Samoyed.


title: Husky

text: The Labrador Husky originated in the Labrador portion of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The breed probably arrived in the area with the Inuit who came to Canada around 1300 AD. Despite the name, Labrador huskies are not related to the Labrador retriever, but in fact most closely related the Canadian Eskimo Dog. There are estimated to be 50–60 Labrador huskies in the world.


title: Husky

text: The term Mackenzie River husky describes several overlapping historical populations of Arctic and sub-Arctic sled dog-type dogs, none of which constituted a breed. Dogs from the Yukon Territory were crossed with large European breeds such as St. Bernards and Newfoundlands to create a powerful freighting dog capable of surviving harsh arctic conditions during the Klondike Gold Rush.


title: Husky

text: The Sakhalin Husky, also known as the Karafuto Ken (樺太犬), is a breed of dog formerly used as a sled dog, but now nearly extinct. As of 2015, there were only seven of these dogs left on their native island of Sakhalin.


title: Husky

text: Smaller than the similar-appearing Alaskan Malamute, the Siberian Husky pulls more, pound for pound, than a Malamute. Descendants of the Chukotka sled dogs bred and used by the native Chukchi people of Siberia, a people of Paleosiberian origin, around 2000 BC which were imported to Alaska in the early 1900s, they were used as working dogs and racing sled dogs in Nome, Alaska throughout the 1910s, often dominating the All-Alaska Sweepstakes. They later became widely bred by recreational mushers and show-dog fanciers in the U.S. and Canada as the Siberian Husky, after the popularity garnered from the 1925 serum run to Nome. Siberians stand 20–23.5 inches, weigh between 35 and 60lbs (35-50 for females, 45-60 for males), and have been selectively bred for both appearance and pulling ability. They are still used regularly today as sled dogs by competitive, recreational, and tour-guide mushers.


title: Radeon RX 6000 series

text: The Radeon RX 6000 series is a series of graphics processing units developed by AMD, based on their RDNA 2 architecture. It was announced on October 28, 2020 and is the successor to the Radeon RX 5000 series. It consists of the RX 6400, RX 6500 XT, RX 6600, RX 6600 XT, RX 6650 XT, RX 6700, RX 6700 XT, RX 6750 XT, RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, RX 6900 XT and RX 6950XT for desktop computers; and the RX 6600M, RX 6700M, and RX 6800M for laptops. A sub-series for mobile, Radeon RX 6000S (consisting of RX 6600S, RX 6700S, and RX 6800S), was announced in CES 2022, targeting thin and light laptop designs.


title: Radeon RX 6000 series

text: The series is designed to compete with Nvidia's GeForce 30 series and Intel's Arc Alchemist series of cards. It is also the first generation of AMD GPUs that supports hardware accelerated real-time ray tracing, variable-rate shading and mesh shaders.


title: Radeon RX 6000 series

text: On September 14, 2020, AMD hinted at the physical design of its RX 6000 series through a tweet shared on social messaging service Twitter. At the same time, it launched a virtual island inside the video game "Fortnite" containing a large-scale rendition of the RX 6000 hardware design, which players could freely explore using the game's Creative mode.


title: Radeon RX 6000 series

text: AMD officially unveiled the first three cards, the RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT, in an event titled "Where Gaming Begins: Ep. 2" on October 28. In the event, they announced the RX 6800 XT as its flagship graphics processor, comparing its performance to that of Nvidia's RTX 3080 graphics card in 1440p and 4K resolution gaming. The 6800 XT was announced with a price tag of $649 USD, $50 lower than the RTX 3080's starting price of $699. They then introduced the RX 6800 as a competitor to Nvidia's previous-generation RTX 2080 Ti, priced at $579 compared to the 2080 Ti's $999; and the RX 6900 XT as its top card, claiming performance comparable with Nvidia's RTX 3090, but with lower power consumption and a launch price of $999, $500 cheaper than the 3090.


title: Radeon RX 6000 series

text: The Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT were released on November 18, 2020, and the RX 6900 XT was released on December 8, 2020.


title: Radeon RX 6000 series

text: On February 3, 2021, Gigabyte registered a range of RX 6700 XT graphics cards with the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC), with the filing indicating that all seven would ship with 12 GB of memory. On March 3, 2021, AMD officially announced the RX 6700 XT card, set to compete with Nvidia's RTX 3060 Ti and 3070 cards. It launched on March 18, 2021.


title: Radeon RX 6000 series

text: On May 31, 2021, AMD announced the RX 6000M series of GPUs designed for laptops, including the RX 6600M, RX 6700M, and RX 6800M. They became available on June 1.


title: Radeon RX 6000 series

text: On June 23, Gigabyte registered six RX 6600 XT graphics cards with the EEC, indicating they would all have 8 GB of memory. This was just over a month after ASRock made similar filings for both the RX 6600 and 6600 XT, each with 8 GB of memory. On July 5, "VideoCardz" discovered that Taiwanese graphics card retailer PowerColor had already created product pages for the unannounced Radeon 6600 and 6600 XT GPUs.


title: Radeon RX 6000 series

text: On July 30, AMD announced the RX 6600 and 6600 XT GPUs, which were released on August 11, 2021. The RX 6600 XT is available for $379 USD MSRP.


title: Radeon RX 6000 series

text: In early 2022, AMD announced the low-end SKUs of the 6000 series; the RX 6400 and RX 6500 XT. These cards support only 4 PCIe lanes (albeit at PCIe 4.0 speeds), which can bottleneck performance on low-end machines lacking PCIe 4.0. They also lack GPU-accelerated video encoding features offered by the higher-end models.


title: Radeon RX 6000 series

text: Much like Nvidia's competing GeForce 30 series, releases sold out almost immediately due to a combination of low stock and scalping bots.


title: Radeon RX 6000 series

text: The RX 6800 and 6800 XT were launched on November 18, 2020, but due to low stock availability, sold out at most retailers that day. American retailer Micro Center restricted sales to in-store only, claiming that stock "will be extremely limited at launch". "PCMag" reported that both cards on Newegg sold out as early as 6:05 a.m. PST, and that they were unavailable on AMD's own store website by 6:11 a.m. Retailer B&H Photo Video refused to accept orders for the cards, stating in part, "We do not know and are therefore unable to provide a date or time for when these items will become available to purchase."


title: Radeon RX 6000 series

text: Scalpers were reportedly reselling the GPUs on eBay for around US$1000–1500, roughly double the launch price. Frustrated social media users tried to derail the listings by using bots to make fake bids on the scalped GPUs at absurd prices; in one instance, an auction for an RX 6800 XT saw bids as high as US$70,000.


title: Radeon RX 6000 series

text: The RX 6900 XT was launched on December 8, 2020, and similarly to the RX 6800 and 6800 XT, it sold out on the same day it was released. According to "PCMag", it was listed as out of stock on Newegg by 6:02 a.m. PST, just two minutes after it went on sale. AMD's store website, struggling to keep up with the high number of visitors, kept displaying 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable errors to customers attempting to buy the graphics card; by 6:35 a.m., it was sold out.


title: Radeon RX 6000 series

text: For chipset tables with professional class GPUs based on RDNA 2 architecture, see W6000 series, W6000X series, and W6000M series (mobile).


title: Sans-serif

text: In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than serif typefaces. They are often used to convey simplicity and modernity or minimalism.


title: Sans-serif

text: Sans-serif typefaces have become the most prevalent for display of text on computer screens. On lower-resolution digital displays, fine details like serifs may disappear or appear too large. The term comes from the French word , meaning "without" and "serif" of uncertain origin, possibly from the Dutch word meaning "line" or pen-stroke. In printed media, they are more commonly used for display use and less for body text.


title: Sans-serif

text: Before the term "sans-serif" became common in English typography, a number of other terms had been used. One of these outmoded terms for sans-serif was gothic, which is still used in East Asian typography and sometimes seen in typeface names like News Gothic, Highway Gothic, Franklin Gothic or Trade Gothic.


title: Sans-serif

text: Sans-serif typefaces are sometimes, especially in older documents, used as a device for emphasis, due to their typically blacker type color.


title: Sans-serif

text: For the purposes of type classification, sans-serif designs are usually divided into three or four major groups, the fourth being the result of splitting the "grotesque" category into grotesque and neo-grotesque.


title: Sans-serif

text: This group features most of the early (19th century to early 20th) sans-serif designs. Influenced by Didone serif typefaces of the period and sign painting traditions, these were often quite solid, bold designs suitable for headlines and advertisements. The early sans-serif typefaces often did not feature a lower case or italics, since they were not needed for such uses. They were sometimes released by width, with a range of widths from extended to normal to condensed, with each style different, meaning to modern eyes they can look quite irregular and eccentric. Grotesque typefaces have limited variation of stroke width (often none perceptible in capitals). The terminals of curves are usually horizontal, and many have a spurred "G" and an "R" with a curled leg. Capitals tend to be of relatively uniform width. Cap height and ascender height are generally the same to produce a more regular effect in texts such as titles with many capital letters, and descenders are often short for tighter line spacing. Most avoid having a true italic in favor of a more restrained oblique or sloped design, although at least some sans-serif true italics were offered.


title: Sans-serif

text: Examples of grotesque typefaces include Akzidenz-Grotesk, Venus, News Gothic, Franklin Gothic and Monotype Grotesque. Akzidenz Grotesk Old Face, Knockout, Grotesque No. 9 and Monotype Grotesque are examples of digital fonts that retain more of the eccentricities of some of the early sans-serif types.


title: Sans-serif

text: According to Monotype, the term "grotesque" originates from , meaning "belonging to the cave" due to their simple geometric appearance. The term arose because of adverse comparisons that were drawn with the more ornate Modern Serif and Roman typefaces that were the norm at the time.


title: Sans-serif

text: Neo-grotesque designs appeared in the mid-twentieth century as an evolution of grotesque types. They are relatively straightforward in appearance with limited stroke width variation. Similar to grotesque typefaces, neo-grotesques often feature capitals of uniform width and a quite 'folded-up' design, in which strokes (for example on the 'c') are curved all the way round to end on a perfect horizontal or vertical. Helvetica is an example of this. Unlike earlier grotesque designs, many were issued in large families from the time of release.


title: Sans-serif

text: Neo-grotesque type began in the 1950s with the emergence of the International Typographic Style, or Swiss style. Its members looked at the clear lines of Akzidenz-Grotesk (1898) as an inspiration for designs with a neutral appearance and an even colour on the page. In 1957 the release of Helvetica, Univers, and Folio, the first typefaces categorized as neo-grotesque, had a strong impact internationally: Helvetica came to be the most used typeface for the following decades.


title: Sans-serif

text: Other, later neo-grotesques include Unica, Imago and Rail Alphabet, and in the digital period Arial, Acumin, San Francisco and Roboto.


title: Sans-serif

text: Geometric sans-serif typefaces are based on geometric shapes, like near-perfect circles and squares. Common features are a nearly-circular capital 'O', sharp and pointed uppercase 'N' vertices, and a "single-storey" lowercase letter 'a'. The 'M' is often splayed and the capitals of varying width, following the classical model.


title: Sans-serif

text: The geometric sans originated in Germany in the 1920s. Two early efforts in designing geometric types were made by Herbert Bayer and Jakob Erbar, who worked respectively on Universal Typeface (unreleased at the time but revived digitally as Architype Bayer) and Erbar (circa 1925). In 1927 Futura, by Paul Renner, was released to great acclaim and popularity.


title: Sans-serif

text: Geometric sans-serif typefaces were popular from the 1920s and 1930s due to their clean, modern design, and many new geometric designs and revivals have been developed since. Notable geometric types of the period include Kabel, Semplicità, Bernhard Gothic, Nobel and Metro; more recent designs in the style include ITC Avant Garde, Brandon Grotesque, Gotham, Avenir, Product Sans and Century Gothic. Many geometric sans-serif alphabets of the period, such as those authored by the Bauhaus art school (1919–1933) and modernist poster artists, were hand-lettered and not cut into metal type at the time.


title: Sans-serif

text: A separate inspiration for many types described "geometric" in design has been the simplified shapes of letters engraved or stenciled on metal and plastic in industrial use, which often follow a simplified structure and are sometimes known as "rectilinear" for their use of straight vertical and horizontal lines. Designs which have been called geometric in principles but not descended from the Futura, Erbar and Kabel tradition include Bank Gothic, DIN 1451, Eurostile and Handel Gothic, along with many of the typefaces designed by Ray Larabie.


title: Sans-serif

text: Humanist sans-serif typefaces take inspiration from traditional letterforms, such as Roman square capitals, traditional serif typefaces and calligraphy. Many have true italics rather than an oblique, ligatures and even swashes in italic. One of the earliest humanist designs was Edward Johnston's Johnston typeface from 1916, and, a decade later, Gill Sans (Eric Gill, 1928). Edward Johnston, a calligrapher by profession, was inspired by classic letter forms, especially the capital letters on the Column of Trajan.


title: Sans-serif

text: Humanist designs vary more than gothic or geometric designs. Some humanist designs have stroke modulation (strokes that clearly vary in width along their line) or alternating thick and thin strokes. These include most popularly Hermann Zapf's Optima (1958), a typeface expressly designed to be suitable for both display and body text. Some humanist designs may be more geometric, as in Gill Sans and Johnston (especially their capitals), which like Roman capitals are often based on perfect squares, half-squares and circles, with considerable variation in width. These somewhat architectural designs may feel too stiff for body text. Others such as Syntax, Goudy Sans and Sassoon Sans more resemble handwriting, serif typefaces or calligraphy.


title: Sans-serif

text: Frutiger, from 1976, has been particularly influential in the development of the modern humanist sans genre, especially designs intended to be particularly legible above all other design considerations. The category expanded greatly during the 1980s and 1990s, partly as a reaction against the overwhelming popularity of Helvetica and Univers and also due to the need for legible computer fonts on low-resolution computer displays. Designs from this period intended for print use include FF Meta, Myriad, Thesis, Charlotte Sans, Bliss, Skia and Scala Sans, while designs developed for computer use include Microsoft's Tahoma, Trebuchet, Verdana, Calibri and Corbel, as well as Lucida Grande, Fira Sans and Droid Sans. Humanist sans-serif designs can (if appropriately proportioned and spaced) be particularly suitable for use on screen or at distance, since their designs can be given wide apertures or separation between strokes, which is not a conventional feature on grotesque and neo-grotesque designs.


title: Sans-serif

text: Due to the diversity of sans-serif typefaces, many do not exactly fit into the above categories. For example, Neuzeit S has both neo-grotesque and geometric influences, as does Hermann Zapf's URW Grotesk. Whitney blends humanist and grotesque influences, while Klavika is a geometric design not based on the circle. Sans-serif typefaces intended for signage, such as Transport and Highway Gothic (both used on road signs), may have unusual features to enhance legibility and differentiate characters, such as a lower-case 'L' with a curl or 'i' with serif under the dot.


title: Sans-serif

text: A particular subgenre of sans-serifs is those such as Rothbury, Britannic, Radiant, and National Trust with obvious variation in stroke width. These have been called 'modulated' or 'stressed' sans-serifs. They are nowadays often placed within the humanist genre, although they predate Johnston which started the modern humanist genre. These may take inspiration from sources outside printing such as brush lettering or calligraphy.


title: Sans-serif

text: Letters without serifs have been common in writing across history, for example in casual, non-monumental epigraphy of the classical period. However, Roman square capitals, the inspiration for much Latin-alphabet lettering throughout history, had prominent serifs. While simple sans-serif letters have always been common in "uncultured" writing and sometimes even in epigraphy, such as basic handwriting, most artistically-authored letters in the Latin alphabet, both sculpted and printed, since the Middle Ages have been inspired by fine calligraphy, blackletter writing and Roman square capitals. As a result, printing done in the Latin alphabet for the first three hundred and fifty years of printing was "serif" in style, whether in blackletter, roman type, italic or occasionally script.


title: Sans-serif

text: The earliest printing typefaces which omitted serifs were not intended to render contemporary texts, but to represent inscriptions in Ancient Greek and Etruscan. Thus, Thomas Dempster's "De Etruria regali libri VII" (1723), used special types intended for the representation of Etruscan epigraphy, and in c. 1745, the Caslon foundry made Etruscan types for pamphlets written by Etruscan scholar John Swinton. Another niche used of a printed sans-serif letterform from 1786 onwards was a rounded sans-serif script typeface developed by Valentin Haüy for the use of the blind to read with their fingers.


title: Sans-serif

text: Towards the end of the eighteenth century neoclassicism led to architects increasingly incorporating ancient Greek and Roman designs in contemporary structures. Historian James Mosley, the leading expert on early revival of sans-serif letters, has found that architect John Soane commonly used sans-serif letters on his drawings and architectural designs. Soane's inspiration was apparently the inscriptions dedicating the Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, Italy, with minimal serifs. These were then copied by other artists, and in London sans-serif capitals became popular for advertising, apparently because of the "astonishing" effect the unusual style had on the public. The lettering style apparently became referred to as "old Roman" or "Egyptian" characters, referencing the classical past and a contemporary interest in Ancient Egypt and its blocky, geometric architecture.


title: Sans-serif

text: Mosley writes that "in 1805 Egyptian letters were happening in the streets of London, being plastered over shops and on walls by signwriters, and they were astonishing the public, who had never seen letters like them and were not sure they wanted to". A depiction of the style (as an engraving, rather than printed from type) was shown in the "European Magazine" of 1805, described as "old Roman" characters. However, the style did not become used in printing for some more years. (Early sans-serif signage was not printed from type but hand-painted or carved, since at the time it was not possible to print in large sizes. This makes tracing the descent of sans-serif styles hard, since a trend can arrive in the dated, printed record from a signpainting tradition which has left less of a record or at least no dates.)


title: Sans-serif

text: The inappropriateness of the name was not lost on the poet Robert Southey, in his satirical "Letters from England" written in the character of a Spanish aristocrat. It commented: "The very shopboards must be... painted in Egyptian letters, which, as the Egyptians had no letters, you will doubtless conceive must be curious. They are simply the common characters, deprived of all beauty and all proportion by having all the strokes of equal thickness, so that those which should be thin look as if they had the elephantiasis." Similarly, the painter Joseph Farington wrote in his diary on September 13, 1805 of seeing a memorial engraved "in what is called "Egyptian Characters"".


title: Sans-serif

text: Around 1816, the Ordnance Survey began to use 'Egyptian' lettering, monoline sans-serif capitals, to mark ancient Roman sites. This lettering was printed from copper plate engraving.


title: Sans-serif

text: Around 1816, William Caslon IV produced the first sans-serif printing type in England for the Latin alphabet, a capitals-only face under the title 'Two Lines English Egyptian', where 'Two Lines English' referred to the typeface's body size, which equals to about 28 points. Although it is known from its appearances in the firm's specimen books, no uses of it from the period have been found; Mosley speculates that it may have been commissioned by a specific client.


title: Sans-serif

text: A second hiatus in interest in sans-serif appears to have lasted for about twelve years, until Vincent Figgins' foundry of London issued a new sans-serif in 1828. David Ryan felt that the design was "cruder but much larger" than its predecessor, making it a success. Thereafter sans-serif capitals rapidly began to be issued from London typefounders.


title: Sans-serif

text: Much imitated was the Thorowgood "grotesque" face of the early 1830s. This was arrestingly bold and highly condensed, quite unlike the classical proportions of Caslon's design, but very suitable for poster typography and similar in aesthetic effect to the (generally wider) slab serif and "fat faces" of the period. It also added a lower-case. The term "grotesque" comes from the Italian word for "cave", and was often used to describe Roman decorative styles found by excavation, but had long become applied in the modern sense for objects that appeared "malformed or monstrous". The term "grotesque" became commonly used to describe sans-serifs.


title: Sans-serif

text: Similar condensed sans-serif display typefaces, often capitals-only, became very successful. Sans-serif printing types began to appear thereafter in France and Germany.


title: Sans-serif

text: A few theories about early sans-serifs now known to be incorrect may be mentioned here. One is that sans-serifs are based on either "fat face typefaces" or slab-serifs with the serifs removed. It is now known that the inspiration was more classical antiquity, and sans-serifs appeared before the first dated appearance of slab-serif letterforms in 1810. The Schelter & Giesecke foundry also claimed during the 1920s to have been offering a sans-serif with lower-case by 1825. Wolfgang Homola dated it in 2004 to 1882 based on a study of Schelter & Giesecke specimens; Mosley describes this as "thoroughly discredited"; even in 1986 Walter Tracy described the claimed dates as "on stylistic grounds... about forty years too early".


title: Sans-serif

text: Sans-serif lettering and typefaces were popular due to their clarity and legibility at distance in advertising and display use, when printed very large or small. Because sans-serif type was often used for headings and commercial printing, many early sans-serif designs did not feature lower-case letters. Simple sans-serif capitals, without use of lower-case, became very common in uses such as tombstones of the Victorian period in Britain.


title: Sans-serif

text: The first use of sans-serif as a running text has been proposed to be the short booklet "Feste des Lebens und der Kunst: eine Betrachtung des Theaters als höchsten Kultursymbols" (Celebration of Life and Art: A Consideration of the Theater as the Highest Symbol of a Culture), by Peter Behrens, in 1900.


title: Sans-serif

text: Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sans-serif types were viewed with suspicion by many printers, especially those of fine book printing, as being fit only for advertisements (if that), and to this day most books remain printed in serif typefaces as body text. This impression would not have been helped by the standard of common sans-serif types of the period, many of which now seem somewhat lumpy and eccentrically-shaped. In 1922, master printer Daniel Berkeley Updike described sans-serif typefaces as having "no place in any artistically respectable composing-room." By 1937 he stated that he saw no need to change this opinion in general, though he felt that Gill Sans and Futura were the best choices if sans-serifs had to be used.


title: Sans-serif

text: Through the early twentieth century, an increase in popularity of sans-serif typefaces took place as more artistic sans-serif designs were released. While he disliked sans-serif typefaces in general, the American printer J.L. Frazier wrote of Copperplate Gothic in 1925 that "a certain dignity of effect accompanies... due to the absence of anything in the way of frills", making it a popular choice for the stationery of professionals such as lawyers and doctors. As Updike's comments suggest, the new, more constructed humanist and geometric sans-serif designs were viewed as increasingly respectable, and were shrewdly marketed in Europe and America as embodying classic proportions (with influences of Roman capitals) while presenting a spare, modern image. Futura in particular was extensively marketed by Bauer and its American distribution arm by brochure as capturing the spirit of modernity, using the German slogan ""die Schrift unserer Zeit"" ("the typeface of our time") and in English ""the typeface of today and tomorrow""; many typefaces were released under its influence as direct clones, or at least offered with alternate characters allowing them to imitate it if desired.


title: Sans-serif

text: In the post-war period, an increase of interest took place in "grotesque" sans-serifs. Writing in "The Typography of Press Advertisement" (1956), printer Kenneth Day commented that Stephenson Blake's eccentric Grotesque series had returned to popularity for having "a personality sometimes lacking in the condensed forms of the contemporary sans cuttings of the last thirty years." Leading type designer Adrian Frutiger wrote in 1961 on designing a new face, Univers, on the nineteenth-century model: "Some of these old sans-serifs have had a real renaissance within the last twenty years, once the reaction of the 'New Objectivity' had been overcome. A purely geometrical form of type is unsustainable." Of this period in Britain, Mosley has commented that in 1960 "orders unexpectedly revived" for Monotype's eccentric Monotype Grotesque design: "[it] represents, even more evocatively than Univers, the fresh revolutionary breeze that began to blow through typography in the early sixties" and "its rather clumsy design seems to have been one of the chief attractions to iconoclastic designers tired of the... prettiness of Gill Sans".


title: Sans-serif

text: By the 1960s, neo-grotesque typefaces such as Univers and Helvetica had become popular through reviving the nineteenth-century grotesques while offering a more unified range of styles than on previous designs, allowing a wider range of text to be set artistically through setting headings and body text in a single family. The style of design using asymmetric layouts, Helvetica and a grid layout extensively has been called the Swiss or International Typographic Style.


title: Mikhail Tolstykh

text: Mikhail Sergeyevich Tolstykh (, ; 19 July 1980 – 8 February 2017), better known by his "nom de guerre" Givi (Ги́ви), was a Ukrainian separatist colonel. He was mainly known as the commander of the Donetsk People's Republic's Somalia Battalion of the Separatist Forces in the war in Donbas from 2014, until his death in early 2017.


title: Mikhail Tolstykh

text: In his interview to "Komsomolskaya Pravda", Tolstykh said he was from Ilovaisk and served as a conscript in the Ukrainian Army from 1998 to 2000 at a military training center, and wanted to continue in the army as a voluntary soldier after 2000 but was denied due to his speech impediment. He then worked at a sling rope factory and as a security guard in a supermarket. In an interview he stated that his grandfather was an ethnic Georgian; his nickname Givi is Georgian.


title: Mikhail Tolstykh

text: Tolstykh joined the rebels in the early stages of the war and was involved in the Battle of Ilovaisk. Givi led the DPR Somalia Battalion in the Second Battle of Donetsk Airport. "The Telegraph" wrote a brief article about him where he gives interview to Novorossiya TV, during which an explosion took place in close vicinity.


title: Mikhail Tolstykh

text: On 16 February 2015, Tolstykh was included by the European Council in their sanctions list. In 2016, he was charged in Ukraine with crimes including the creation of a terrorist organization, abduction, and abuse of prisoners of war.


title: Mikhail Tolstykh

text: In January 2015, several videos surfaced of Tolstykh physically abusing captured Ukrainian artillerymen from the Second Battle of Donetsk Airport. Tolstykh is seen clearly identifying himself before grabbing the prisoners by the face, brandishing a dagger, and cutting off military insignia and forcing prisoners to eat them. Oleksandra Matviychuk, head of the Kyiv-based Center for Civil Liberties, called what appears in the videos "flagrant violations of the Geneva Conventions" and said she was preparing the groundwork for prosecution.


title: Mikhail Tolstykh

text: Early in the morning of 8 February 2017, while working in his Donetsk office, Tolstykh was killed by an explosion said to be caused by an RPO-A Shmel rocket launcher fired from an unknown distance. DPR officials accused Ukrainian forces of carrying out the attack, while Ukrainian security officials claimed it to be the result of DPR infighting. In 2022 journalist Yuriy Butusov claimed that Tolstykh was killed by a counter-intelligence unit of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) which was approved by then-president Petro Poroshenko.


title: Mikhail Tolstykh

text: During his life, and posthumously, Tolstykh has enjoyed a high profile in media, and on social media. A video of Givi at his birthday party in 2015 by British journalist Graham Phillips, has been viewed more than 11 million times on YouTube. Tolstykh was known to be friends with Phillips.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Shanda Renée Sharer (June 6, 1979 – January 11, 1992) was an American girl who was tortured and burned to death in Madison, Indiana by four teenage girls. She was 12 years old at the time of her death. The incident attracted international attention due to both the brutality of the murder and the young age of the perpetrators, who were aged between 15 and 17 years old. The case was covered on national news and talk shows and has inspired a number of episodes on fictional crime shows.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Shanda Sharer was born in the Pineville Community Hospital in Pineville, Kentucky, on June 6, 1979, to Stephen Sharer and his wife Jacqueline, who was later known as Jacqueline Vaught. After Sharer's parents divorced, her mother remarried and the family moved to Louisville. There, Sharer attended fifth and sixth grades at St. Paul School, where she was on the cheerleading, volleyball, and softball teams. When her mother divorced again, the family moved in June 1991 to New Albany, Indiana, and Sharer enrolled at Hazelwood Middle School. Early in the school year, she transferred to Our Lady of Perpetual Help School, a Catholic school in New Albany, where she joined the girls' basketball team.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Melinda Loveless was born in New Albany on October 28, 1975, the youngest of three daughters, to Marjorie and Larry Loveless. Larry was drafted into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War and although horribly emotionally scarred, he was treated as a hero upon his return. Marjorie later described him as a sexual deviant who would wear her and her daughters' underwear and makeup, was incapable of staying monogamous, and had a mixture of jealousy and fascination with seeing her have sex with other men and women. They lived in or near New Albany throughout Melinda's childhood.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Larry worked irregularly for the Southern Railway after his military service; his profession allowed him to work whenever most convenient for him. In 1965, Larry became a probationary officer with the New Albany Police Department, but was fired after eight months when he and his partner assaulted an African-American man whom Larry accused of sleeping with his wife. In 1988, Larry briefly worked as a mail carrier, but quit after three months and did very little work, having brought most of his mail home to destroy it.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Marjorie had worked intermittently since 1974. When both parents were working, the family was financially well off, living in the upper-middle-class suburb of Floyds Knobs, Indiana. Larry, who was violent and abusive, did not usually share his income with the family and impulsively spent any money he earned on himself, especially firearms, motorcycles and cars. He filed for bankruptcy in 1980. Extended family members often described the Loveless daughters as visiting their homes hungry, apparently not getting enough food at home.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: The Loveless parents would often visit bars in Louisville where Larry would pretend to be a doctor or a dentist and introduce Marjorie as his girlfriend. He would also "share" her with some of his friends from work, which she found disgusting. During an orgy with another couple at their house, Marjorie tried to commit suicide, an act she would repeat several times throughout her daughters' childhoods. When Melinda was nine years old, Larry had Marjorie gang raped, after which she tried to drown herself. After that incident, she refused him sex for a month, until he raped her as their daughters overheard the event through a closed door. In the summer of 1986, after she would not let him go home with two women he met at a bar, Larry beat Marjorie so severely that she was hospitalized; he was convicted of battery.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: The extent of Larry's abuse of his daughters and other children is unclear. Various court testimonies claimed he fondled Melinda as an infant, molested Marjorie's 13-year-old sister early in the marriage, and molested the girls' cousin Teddy from age 10 to 14. Both older girls said he molested them, though Melinda did not admit this ever happened to her. She slept in bed with him until he abandoned his family when she was 14. In court, Teddy described an incident in which Larry tied all three sisters in a garage and raped them in succession; however, the sisters did not confirm this account. Larry was verbally abusive to his daughters and fired a handgun in the direction of Melinda's older sister Michelle when she was seven, intentionally missing her. He would also embarrass his children by finding their underwear and smelling it in front of other family members.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: For two years, beginning when Melinda was five, the family was deeply involved in the Graceland Baptist Church. Larry and Marjorie gave full confession and renounced drinking and swinging while they were members. Larry became a Baptist lay preacher and Marjorie became the school nurse. The church later arranged for Melinda to be taken to a motel room with a 50-year-old man for a five-hour exorcism. Larry became a marriage counselor with the church and acquired a reputation for being too forward with women, eventually attempting to rape one of them. After that incident, the Loveless parents left the church and returned to their former professions and drinking.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: In November 1990, after Larry was caught spying on Melinda and a friend, Marjorie attacked him with a knife; he was sent to the hospital after he attempted to grab it. She then attempted suicide again, and her daughters called authorities. After this incident, Larry filed for divorce and moved to Avon Park, Florida. Melinda felt crushed, especially when Larry remarried. He sent letters to her for a while, playing on her emotions, but eventually severed all contact with her, and in December 1998, he died.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Mary Laurine "Laurie" Tackett was born in Madison, Indiana, on October 5, 1974. Her mother was a fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian and her father was a factory worker with two felony convictions in the 1960s. Tackett claimed that she was molested at least twice as a child at ages 5 and 12. In May 1989, her mother discovered that Tackett was changing from a dress into jeans at school, and, after a confrontation that night, attempted to strangle her. Social workers became involved, and Tackett's parents agreed to unannounced visits to ensure that child abuse was not occurring. Tackett and her mother came into periodic conflict; at one point, her mother went to Hope Rippey's house after learning that Rippey's father had purchased an ouija board for the girls. She demanded that the board be burnt and that the Rippey house be exorcised.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Tackett became increasingly rebellious after her 15th birthday and also became fascinated with the occult. She would often attempt to impress her friends by pretending to be possessed by the spirit of "Deanna the Vampire". Tackett began to engage in self-harm, especially after early 1991 when she began dating a girl who was involved in the practice. Her parents discovered the self-mutilation and checked her into a hospital on March 19, 1991. She was prescribed an anti-depressant and released. Two days later, with her girlfriend and Toni Lawrence, Tackett cut her wrists deeply and was returned to the hospital. After treatment of her wound, she was admitted to the hospital's psychiatric ward. Tackett was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and confessed that she had experienced hallucinations since she was a young child. She was discharged on April 12. She dropped out of high school in September 1991.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Tackett stayed in Louisville in October 1991 to live with various friends. There she met Loveless; the two became friends in late November. In December, Tackett moved back to Madison on the promise that her father would buy her a car. She still spent most of her time in Louisville and New Albany, and, by December, spent most of it with Loveless.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Hope Anna Rippey was born in Madison on June 9, 1976. Her father was an engineer at a power plant. Her parents divorced in February 1984, and she moved with her mother and siblings to Quincy, Michigan, for three years. She claimed that living with her family in Michigan was somewhat turbulent. Her parents resumed their relationship in Madison in 1987. She was reunited with friends Tackett and Toni Lawrence, whom she had known since childhood, although her parents saw Tackett as a bad influence. As with the other girls, Rippey began to self-harm at age 15.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Toni Lawrence was born in Madison on February 14, 1976. Her father was a boilermaker. She was close friends with Rippey from childhood. She was abused by a relative at age 9 and was raped by a teenage boy at age 14, although the police only issued an order for the boy to keep away from Lawrence. She went into counseling after the incident but did not follow through. She became promiscuous, began to self-harm, and attempted suicide in eighth grade.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: In 1990, 14-year-old Loveless began dating another young girl named Amanda Heavrin. After Loveless's father left the family and her mother remarried, Loveless behaved erratically. She got into fights at school and reported being depressed, resulting in her receiving professional counseling. In March 1991, Loveless came out as a lesbian to her mother, who was initially furious but eventually accepted it. As the year progressed, Loveless's relationship with Heavrin deteriorated.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Heavrin met Shanda Sharer early in the fall semester at Hazelwood Junior High when they got into a fight; however, they became friends while in detention for the altercation, and later exchanged romantic letters. Loveless immediately grew jealous of Heavrin and Sharer's relationship. In early October 1991, Heavrin and Sharer attended a school dance, where Loveless found and confronted them. Although Heavrin and Loveless had never formally ended their relationship, Loveless started to date an older girl.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: After Heavrin and Sharer attended a festival together in late October, Loveless began to discuss killing Sharer and threatened her in public. Concerned about the effects of their daughter's relationship with Heavrin, Sharer's parents arranged for her to transfer to a Catholic school in late November. Heavrin states she gave letters Loveless sent her containing death threats towards Sharer to a "youth prosecutor", but the youth prosecutor never did anything about it as far as she knew.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: On the night of January 10, 1992, Lawrence (age 15), Rippey (15) and Tackett (17) drove in Tackett's car from Madison to Loveless's house in New Albany. Rippey and Lawrence, while both friends of Tackett, had not previously met Loveless (16). Upon arrival, they borrowed some clothes from Loveless, and she showed them a knife, telling them she was going to scare Sharer with it. While Tackett, Rippey, and Lawrence had never met Sharer prior to that night, Tackett had already known of the plan to intimidate the 12-year-old girl. Loveless explained to the two other girls that she disliked Sharer for being a copycat and for stealing her girlfriend.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Tackett let Rippey drive the four girls to Jeffersonville, where Sharer stayed with her father on the weekends, stopping at a McDonald's restaurant "en route" to ask for directions. They arrived at Sharer's house shortly before dark. Loveless instructed Rippey and Lawrence to go to the door and introduce themselves as friends of Heavrin (Loveless's former and Sharer's current girlfriend), then invite Sharer to come with them to see Heavrin, who was waiting for them at "the Witch's Castle", or Mistletoe Falls, a ruined stone house located on an isolated hill overlooking the Ohio River.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Sharer said that she could not go because her parents were awake, and she told the girls to come back around midnight, a few hours later. Loveless was angry at first, but Rippey and Lawrence assured her about returning for Sharer later. The four girls crossed the river to Louisville and attended a punk rock show by the band Sunspring at the Audubon Skate Park near Interstate 65. Lawrence and Rippey quickly lost interest in the music and went to the parking lot outside, where they engaged in sexual activities with two boys in Tackett's car.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Eventually, the four girls left for Sharer's house. During the ride, Loveless said that she could not wait to kill Sharer; however, Loveless also said she just intended to use the knife to frighten her. When they arrived at Sharer's house at 12:30 a.m., Lawrence refused to retrieve Sharer, so Tackett and Rippey went to the door. Loveless hid under a blanket in the back seat of the car with the knife.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Rippey told Sharer that Heavrin was still at the Witch's Castle. Sharer was reluctant to go with them, yet agreed after changing her clothes. As they got in the car, Rippey began questioning Sharer about her relationship with Heavrin. Loveless then sprang out from the back seat, put the knife to Sharer's throat and began interrogating her about her sexual relationship with Heavrin. They drove towards Utica and the Witch's Castle. Tackett told the girls that a local legend said the house was once owned by nine witches and that townspeople burned down the house to get rid of the witches.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: At the Witch's Castle, they took a sobbing Sharer inside and bound her arms and legs with rope. There, Loveless taunted that she had pretty hair and wondered how pretty she would look if they were to cut it off, which frightened Sharer even more. Loveless began taking off Sharer's rings and handed each to the girls. At some point, Rippey had taken Sharer's Mickey Mouse watch and danced to the tune it played. Tackett further taunted Sharer, claiming that the Witch's Castle was filled with human remains and Sharer's would be next. To further threaten Sharer, Tackett then retrieved a shirt with a smiley design from the car and lit it on fire, but immediately feared that the fire would be spotted by passing cars, so the girls left with Sharer.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: During the car ride, Sharer continued begging them to take her back home. Loveless ordered Sharer to slip off her bra, which she then handed over to Rippey, who slid off her own bra and replaced it with Sharer's while steering the car. They became lost, so they stopped at a gas station and covered Sharer in a blanket. While Tackett went inside to ask for directions, Lawrence called a boy she knew in Louisville and chatted for several minutes to ease her worries, but did not mention Sharer's abduction. They returned to the car but became lost again and pulled up to another gas station. There, Lawrence and Rippey spotted a couple of boys and talked to them before once again getting back into the car and leaving, arriving some time later at the edge of some woods near Tackett's home in Madison.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Tackett led them to a dark abandoned building off a logging road in a densely forested area. Lawrence and Rippey were frightened and stayed in the car. Loveless and Tackett made Sharer strip down to her underwear; then, Loveless beat Sharer with her fists. Next, Loveless repeatedly slammed Sharer's face into her knee, which cut Sharer's mouth on her own braces. Loveless tried to slash Sharer's throat, but the knife was too dull. Rippey came out of the car to hold down Sharer. Loveless and Tackett took turns stabbing Sharer in the chest. They then strangled Sharer with a rope until she was unconscious, placed her in the trunk of the car, and told the other two girls that Sharer was dead.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: The girls drove to Tackett's nearby home and went inside to drink soda and clean themselves. When they heard Sharer screaming in the trunk, Tackett went out with a paring knife and stabbed her several more times, coming back a few minutes later covered with blood. After she washed, Tackett told the girls' futures with her "runestones". At 2:30 a.m., Lawrence and Rippey stayed behind as Tackett and Loveless went "country cruising", driving to the nearby town of Canaan. Sharer continued to make crying and gurgling noises, so Tackett stopped the car. When they opened the trunk, Sharer sat up, covered in blood with her eyes rolled back in her head, but unable to speak. Tackett beat her with a tire iron until she was silent, claiming that she felt the victim's head caving in, and then told Loveless to "smell it". There were also reports of the victim being sexually assaulted with the same weapon. This tire-iron assault was off and on for hours as the girls went on a joyride through the countryside.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Loveless and Tackett returned to Tackett's house just before daybreak to clean up again. Rippey asked about Sharer, and Tackett laughingly described the torture. The conversation woke up Tackett's mother, who yelled at her daughter for being out late and bringing home the girls, so Tackett agreed to take them home. She drove to the burn pile, where they opened the trunk to stare at Sharer. Lawrence refused. Rippey sprayed Sharer with Windex and taunted, "You're not looking so hot now, are you?"


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: The girls drove to a gas station near Madison Consolidated High School, pumped some gasoline into the car, and bought a two-liter bottle of Pepsi. Tackett poured out the Pepsi and refilled the bottle with gasoline. They drove north of Madison, past Jefferson Proving Ground to Lemon Road off U.S. Route 421, a place known to Rippey. Lawrence remained in the car while Tackett and Rippey wrapped Sharer, who was still alive, in a blanket, and carried her to a field by the gravel country road. Tackett made Rippey pour the gasoline on Sharer, and then they set her on fire. Loveless was not convinced Sharer was dead, so they returned a few minutes later to pour the rest of the gasoline on her.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: The girls went to a McDonald's restaurant at 9:30 a.m. for breakfast, where they laughed about Sharer's body looking like one of the sausages they were eating. Lawrence then phoned a friend and told her about the murder. Tackett then dropped off Lawrence and Rippey at their homes and finally returned to her own home with Loveless. She told Heavrin that they had killed Sharer and arranged to pick up Heavrin later that day.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: A friend of Loveless, Crystal Wathen, came over to Loveless's house, and they told her what had happened. Then, the three girls drove to pick up Heavrin and take her back to the Loveless home, where they told Heavrin the story. Both Heavrin and Wathen were reluctant to believe the story until Tackett showed them the trunk of the car with Sharer's bloody handprints and socks still present. Heavrin was horrified and asked to be taken home. When they pulled up in front of her house, Loveless kissed Heavrin, told her she loved her and pleaded with her not to tell anyone. Heavrin promised she would not before entering her house.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Later on the morning of January 11, 1992, two brothers from Canaan were driving toward Jefferson Proving Ground to go hunting when they noticed a body on the side of the road. They initially thought it was a mannequin of some sort, but upon exiting the vehicle realized that it was clearly the burned body of a child. They called the police at 10:55 a.m. and were asked to return to the corpse. State trooper David Camm and Jefferson County Sheriff Buck Shippley and detectives began an investigation, collecting forensic evidence at the scene. They initially suspected a drug deal gone wrong and did not believe the crime had been committed by locals. It is also to be noted that her body was posed in a suggestive position, very obviously meaning that this was done on purpose and with intention. It was also found that the victim's face and hands were burnt in an attempt to keep her unrecognizable and unidentifiable.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Sharer's father, Steven, noticed his daughter was nowhere to be found early on January 11. After phoning neighbors and friends all morning, he called his former wife, Sharer's mother, at 1:45 p.m.; they met and filed a missing person report with the Clark County sheriff.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: At 8:20 p.m., a hysterical Lawrence and Rippey went to the Jefferson County Sheriff's office with their parents. They both gave very rambling statements, identifying the victim as "Shanda", naming the two other girls involved as best as they could, and describing the main events of the previous night. After an inter-county investigation, Shippley contacted the Clark County sheriff and was finally able to match the body to Sharer's missing person report.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Detectives obtained dental records that positively identified Sharer as the victim. Loveless and Tackett were arrested on January 12. The bulk of the evidence for the arrest warrant came from the statements made by Lawrence and Rippey. The prosecution immediately declared its intention to try both Loveless and Tackett as adults. For several months, the prosecutors and defense attorneys did not release any information about the case, giving the news media only the statements by Lawrence and Rippey.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: All four girls had troubled backgrounds, with claims of physical or sexual abuse committed by a parent or other adult. Lawrence, Rippey, and Tackett all had histories of self-harming behavior. Tackett was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and suffering from hallucinations. Loveless, often described as the ringleader in the attack, had the most extensive history of abuse and mental health issues.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Tackett and Loveless were sentenced to 60 years in the Indiana Women's Prison in Indianapolis. Tackett was released in 2018, and served probation for one year. Loveless was released in September 2019. Rippey was sentenced to 60 years, with 10 years suspended for mitigating circumstances, plus 10 years of medium-supervision probation. On appeal, a judge reduced the sentence to 35 years. In exchange for her cooperation, Lawrence was allowed to plead guilty to one count of criminal confinement and was sentenced to a maximum of 20 years.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: In October 2007, Loveless's attorney, Mark Small, requested a hearing to argue for his client's release. He said that Loveless had been "profoundly retarded" by childhood abuse. Moreover, she had not been represented competently by counsel during her sentencing, which caused her to accept a plea bargain in the face of exaggerated claims about her chances of receiving the death penalty. Small also argued that Loveless, who was 16 years old when she signed the plea agreement, was too young to enter into a contract in the state of Indiana without consent from a parent or guardian, which had not been obtained. If the judge accepted these arguments, Loveless could have been retried or released outright.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: On January 8, 2008, Loveless's request was rejected by Jefferson Circuit Judge Ted Todd. Instead, Loveless would be eligible for parole in 15 years, thus maintaining the original guilty plea. On November 14, 2008, Loveless's appeal was denied by the Indiana Court of Appeals, upholding Judge Todd's ruling. Small stated that he would seek to have jurisdiction over the case moved to the Indiana Supreme Court.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Lawrence was released on December 14, 2000, after serving nine years. She remained on parole until December 2002.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: On April 28, 2006, Rippey was released from Indiana Women's Prison on parole after serving 14 years of her original sentence. She remained on supervised parole for 5 years until April 2011.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Tackett was released from Rockville Correctional Facility on January 11, 2018, the 26th anniversary of Sharer's death, after serving nearly 26 years, and has completed an additional year of parole.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Loveless was released from Indiana Women's Prison on September 5, 2019. After serving 26+ years in prison, she will serve parole in Jefferson County, Kentucky.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: During Loveless's sentencing hearing, extensive open court testimony revealed that her father Larry had abused his wife, his daughters, and other children. Consequently, he was arrested in February 1993 on charges of rape, sodomy, and sexual battery. Most of the crimes occurred from 1968 to 1977. Larry remained in prison for over two years awaiting trial; however, a judge eventually ruled that all charges except one count of sexual battery had to be dropped due to the statute of limitations, which was five years in Indiana. Loveless pleaded guilty to the one count of sexual battery. He received a sentence of time served and was released in June 1995. A few weeks following his release, Larry unsuccessfully sued the Floyd County Jail for $39 million in federal court, alleging he had suffered cruel and unusual punishment during his two-year incarceration. Among his complaints were that he was not allowed to sleep in his bed during the day or to read the newspaper.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: Sharer's father, Steven Sharer, died of alcoholism in 2005 at the age of 53. In an interview with Shanda Sharer's mother, Jacque Vaught, on the Investigation Discovery series "Deadly Women", Vaught stated that Sharer's father was so destroyed by his daughter's murder that he "did everything he could to kill himself besides put a gun to his head" and that he "drank himself to death. The man definitely died from a broken heart".


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: The Shanda Sharer Scholarship Fund was established in January 2009. The fund planned to provide scholarships to two students per year from Prosser School of Technology in New Albany; one scholarship to a student who is continuing his or her education, and the other scholarship to a student who is beginning his or her career and must buy tools or other work equipment. By November 2018 Shanda's mother Jacque Vaught stated that the scholarship fund had been depleted and is no longer accepting donations.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: In 2012, Jacque Vaught made her first contact with Melinda Loveless since the trials, although indirectly. Vaught donated a dog named Angel in Shanda's name to Loveless to train for the Indiana Canine Assistance Network program (ICAN) through Project2heal, which provides service pets to people with disabilities. Loveless trained dogs for the program for several years. Vaught reported that she had endured criticism over the decision, but defends it saying, "It's my choice to make. She's (Shanda) my child. If you don't let good things come from bad things, nothing gets better. And I know what my child would want. My child would want this." Vaught stated that she hoped to donate a dog every year in honor of Shanda Sharer. A documentary produced by Episode 11 Productions, titled "Charlie's Scars", captured Vaught's decision to allow Loveless to train dogs in Shanda's name. The film also has three interviews with Loveless.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: The crime was documented in two true crime books, "Little Lost Angel" by Michael Quinlan and "Cruel Sacrifice" by Aphrodite Jones; Jones's book on the case became a "New York Times" Bestseller.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: The story was turned into a play by Rob Urbinati called "Hazelwood Jr. High", which starred Chloë Sevigny as Tackett. The play was published by Samuel French, Inc. in September 2009.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: The poem "The Whole World Is Singing" by Daphne Gottlieb, is told from the point of view of Shanda Sharer and includes lines from notes written from Shanda Sharer to Amanda Heavrin.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: The poem "In God's Arms" by author Lacy Gray dedicated to the family of Shanda Renee Sharer. It was published February 8, 1993 and May 11, 1995 in the Jeffersonville, Indiana-based newspaper, "The Evening News".


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: In May 2011, "Dr. Phil" aired a two-part series on the crime, which featured Shanda Sharer's mother and sister Paige, who both harshly confronted Hope Rippey on the show, and an interview with Amanda Heavrin.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: The murder of Sharer was covered in the first of two segments in the Lifetime series "Killer Kids", episode "Jealousy", aired: July 2014.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: The Investigation Discovery series "The 1990s: The Deadliest Decade", episode "The New Girl" interviews Sharer's mother along with lead police officers, aired: November 2018.


title: Murder of Shanda Sharer

text: American artist Marlene McCarty used the Shanda Sharer murder as one of the subjects for her "Murder Girls" series of drawings about teenage female murderers, their sexuality and their relationships. McCarty's drawing titled "Melinda Loveless, Toni Lawrence, Hope Rippey, Laurie Tackett, and Shanda Sharer – January 11, 1992 (1:39 am)" (2000–2001) is now in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.


title: Atul Kulkarni

text: Atul Kulkarni (born 10 September 1965) is an Indian actor, producer and screenwriter who works in Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, English, Odia and Telugu language films. Kulkarni won the National Award for the Best Supporting Actor for the films "Hey Ram" and "Chandni Bar". He is also the president of Quest, a research-action organization concentrating on enhancing quality of education. He left his study in engineering at College of Engineering, Pune while he was in his first year. He is known for his performances in films like "Hey Ram", "Chandni Bar", "Rang De Basanti" (2006), "Natarang" (2010) among others. He has written the screenplay of Aamir Khan's movie Laal Singh Chadda. which is the official remake of Forrest Gump.


title: Atul Kulkarni

text: Kulkarni received his diploma in acting from the National School of Drama, New Delhi in 1995. He is married to theater actress Geetanjali Kulkarni, whom he met at the National School of Drama.


title: Atul Kulkarni

text: Kulkarni's first stint on stage was during his high school days. He participated in the Maharashtra State Drama Competition regularly. Between 1989 and 1992, he won awards for Acting and also for Drama-Direction. Atul enacted in Gandhi Viruddh Gandhi, the play made later famous by Dilip Prabhavalkar in Marathi professional theatre circuit until mid-90s. Later during his college days he actively participated in cultural gatherings. While studying, Atul joined Natya Aradhana, an amateur theatre group from Solapur. Atul Kulkarni holds a postgraduate diploma in dramatic arts from National School of Drama, New Delhi.


title: Atul Kulkarni

text: Atul Kulkarni, a national-award winner and a fine actor, expresses his belief of art being a product of social, political and economic changes in the society.


title: Atul Kulkarni

text: Kulkarni has been serving as President of Quest Education Support Trust. Quest Trust invests in running workshops and enabling Teachers, to support education for children of marginalized communities between 3–14 years. All this activity is mainly in State of Maharashtra. It conducts its activities in Marathi language.


title: Atul Kulkarni

text: Atul Kulkarni has been active in sharing his knowledge on running NGO with other NGO's. He does visit Maharashtra based NGO's like Snehalaya regularly. Kulkarni has been involved in an environmental project, making a 24-acre barren land in Satara District into Green area.


title: Comparison of top chess players throughout history

text: Several methods have been suggested for comparing the greatest chess players in history. There is agreement on a statistical system to rate the strengths of current players, called the Elo system, but disagreement about methods used to compare players from different generations who never competed against each other.


text: The best-known statistical method was devised by Arpad Elo in 1960 and elaborated on in his 1978 book "The Rating of Chessplayers, Past and Present". He gave ratings to players corresponding to their performance over the best five-year span of their career. According to this system the highest ratings achieved were:


text: Though published in 1978, Elo's list did not include five-year averages for later players Bobby Fischer and Anatoly Karpov. It did list January 1978 ratings of 2780 for Fischer and 2725 for Karpov.


text: In 1970, FIDE adopted Elo's system for rating current players, so one way to compare players of different eras is to compare their Elo ratings. The best-ever Elo ratings are tabulated below.


text: As of December 2015, there were 101 chess players in history who broke 2700, and fourteen of them exceeded 2800. The high peak ratings of Fischer, Karpov, and Kasparov are notable for being achieved last century (1972, 1994, and 1999 respectively). However, Fischer and Karpov are no longer in the top 20.


text: The average Elo rating of top players has risen over time. For instance, the average of the top 10 active players rose from 2751 in July 2000 to 2794 in July 2014, a 43-point increase in 14 years. The average rating of the top 100 players, meanwhile, increased from 2644 to 2703, a 59-point increase. Many people believe that this rise is mostly due to an anomaly known as ratings inflation, making it impractical to compare players of different eras.


text: Elo said it was futile to attempt to use ratings to compare players from different eras and that they could only measure the strength of a player as compared to his or her contemporaries. He also stated that the process of rating players was in any case rather approximate - he compared it to "the measurement of the position of a cork bobbing up and down on the surface of agitated water with a yard stick tied to a rope and which is swaying in the wind".


text: Many statisticians besides Elo have devised similar methods to retrospectively rate players. Jeff Sonas' rating system is called "Chessmetrics". This system takes account of many games played after the publication of Elo's book, and claims to take account of the rating inflation that the Elo system has allegedly suffered.


text: One caveat is that a Chessmetrics rating takes into account the frequency of play. According to Sonas, "As soon as you go a month without playing, your Chessmetrics rating will start to drop."


text: Sonas, like Elo, claims that it is impossible to compare the strength of players from different eras, saying:


text: Nevertheless, Sonas' website does compare players from different eras. Including data until December 2004, the ratings were:


text: In 2005, Sonas used Chessmetrics to evaluate historical annual performance ratings and came to the conclusion that Kasparov was dominant for the most years, followed by Karpov and Lasker. He also published the following list of the highest ratings ever attained according to calculations done at the start of each month:


text: In contrast to Elo and Sonas's systems, Raymond Keene and Nathan Divinsky's book "Warriors of the Mind" attempts to establish a rating system claiming to compare directly the strength of players active in different eras, and so determine the strongest player of all time (through December 2004). Considering games played between sixty-four of the strongest players in history, they came up with the following top ten:


text: These "Divinsky numbers" are not on the same scale as Elo ratings (the last person on the list, Johannes Zukertort, has a Divinsky number of 873, which would be a beginner-level Elo rating). Keene and Divinsky's system has met with limited acceptance, and "Warriors of the Mind" has been accused of arbitrarily selecting players and bias towards modern players.


text: The idea of this approach is to compare the moves played by humans to top engine moves, with the rationale that players more likely to choose these moves are also stronger.


text: A computer-based method of analyzing chess abilities across history came from Matej Guid and Ivan Bratko at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2006.


text: A similar project was conducted for World Champions in 2007–08 using Rybka 2.3.2a (then-strongest chess program) and a modified version of Guid and Bratko's program "Crafty".


text: CAPS (Computer Aggregated Precision Score) is a system created by Chess.com that compares players from different eras by finding the percentage of moves that matches that of a chess engine.


text: In 2017, Jean-Marc Alliot of the Toulouse Computer Science Research Institute (IRIT) presented a new method, based on a Markovian interpretation of a chess game. Starting with those of Wilhelm Steinitz, all 26,000 games played since then by chess world champions have been processed by a supercomputer using the Stockfish chess engine (rated above 3310 Elo).


text: These predictions have proven not only to be extremely close to the actual results when players have played concrete games against one another, but to also fare better than those based on Elo scores. The results demonstrate that the level of chess players has been steadily increasing. Magnus Carlsen (in 2013) tops the list, while Vladimir Kramnik (in 1999) is second, Bobby Fischer (in 1971) is third, and Garry Kasparov (in 2001) is fourth.


text: In 1964, Bobby Fischer listed his top 10 in "Chessworld" magazine: Morphy, Staunton, Steinitz, Tarrasch, Chigorin, Alekhine, Capablanca, Spassky, Tal, and Reshevsky. He considered Morphy to be "perhaps the most accurate", writing: "In a set match he would beat anyone alive today."


text: In 1970, Fischer named Morphy, Steinitz, Capablanca, Botvinnik, Petrosian, Tal, Spassky, Reshevsky, Svetozar Gligorić and Bent Larsen the greatest chess players in history.


text: In 1974, popular chess author Irving Chernev published an article titled "Who were the greatest?" in the English magazine CHESS. He followed this up with his 1976 book "The Golden Dozen", in which he ranked his all-time top twelve: 1. Capablanca, 2. Alekhine, 3. Lasker, 4. Fischer, 5. Botvinnik, 6. Petrosian, 7. Tal, 8. Smyslov, 9. Spassky, 10. Bronstein, 11. Rubinstein, and 12. Nimzowitsch.


text: In a 1992 interview GM Miguel Quinteros gave the opinion: "I think Fischer was and still is the greatest chess player of all time. [...] During his absence other good chess players have appeared. But no one equals Fischer's talent and perfection."


text: In 2000, when Karpov, Korchnoi and Kasparov were still active, Anand listed his top 10 as: Fischer, Morphy, Lasker, Capablanca, Steinitz, Tal, Korchnoi, Keres, Karpov and Kasparov.


text: When interviewed in 2008 shortly after Fischer's death, he ranked Fischer and Kasparov as the greatest, with Kasparov a little ahead by virtue of being on top for so many years.


text: In 2012, Anand stated that he considered Fischer the best player and also the greatest, because of the hurdles he faced.


text: Svetozar Gligorić reported in his book "Shall We Play Fischerandom Chess?"  (Batsford, 2002):At the beginning of 2001 a large poll for the "Ten Greatest Chess Players of the 20th Century, selected by "Chess Informant" readers" resulted in Fischer having the highest percentage of votes and finishing as No. 1, ahead of Kasparov, Alekhine, Capablanca, Botvinnik, Karpov, Tal, Lasker, Anand and Korchnoi.


text: BBC award-winning journalists, from their book "Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time"  (HarperCollins, 2004): Fischer, some will maintain, was "the" outstanding player in chess history, though there are powerful advocates too for Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, and Kasparov. Many chess players will dismiss such comparisons as meaningless, akin to the futile attempt to grade the supreme musicians of all time. But the manner in which Fischer stormed his way to Reykjavik, his breathtaking dominance at the Palma de Majorca Interzonal, the trouncings of Taimanov, Larsen, and Petrosian—all this was unprecedented. There never has been an era in modern chess during which one player has so overshadowed all others.


text: In a 2005 interview, Vladimir Kramnik (World Champion from 2000 to 2007) did not name a greatest player, but stated: "The other world champions had something 'missing'. I can't say the same about Kasparov: he can do everything."


text: In an interview in 2011, Vladimir Kramnik said about Anand: "I always considered him to be a colossal talent, one of the greatest in the whole history of chess", "I think that in terms of play Anand is in no way weaker than Kasparov", and "In the last 5–6 years he's made a qualitative leap that's made it possible to consider him one of the great chess players".


text: In his 2008 obituary of Bobby Fischer, Leonard Barden wrote that most experts ranked Kasparov as the best ever player, with probably Fischer second and Karpov third.


text: In a 2012 interview, Levon Aronian stated that he considers Alexander Alekhine the best player of all time.


text: In a 2015 interview after the 8th round of the Sinquefield Cup, Levon Aronian stated that he considers Garry Kasparov the strongest player of all time.


text: In a 2022 interview after the 5th round of the first leg in FIDE Grand Prix 2022, when asked if he thought that in the future Garry Kasparov or Magnus Carlsen would be considered the 'GOAT', Levon Aronian stated that "I kind of feel that Magnus will be the greatest for a long long time, because for me he is probably already the greatest but it is still continuing. It will take a long time to beat his achievements."


text: In 2012, Magnus Carlsen said that Kasparov is the greatest player of all time, adding that while Fischer may have been better at his best, Kasparov remained at the top for much longer.


text: In January 2020, Carlsen said, "Kasparov had 20 years uninterrupted as the world No 1. And I would say for very few of those years was there any doubt that he was the best player. He must be considered as the best in history." He made a similar claim in 2021, saying "Garry Kasparov, in my opinion, the greatest player there's ever been..."


text: In 2021, Hikaru Nakamura published a youtube video entitled "Hikaru's Hot Takes on the Ten Best Chess Players of All Time" in which he reviewed a chess.com article on "The 10 Best Chess Players Of All Time." In this video he suggested that it was unfair to exclude Paul Morphy and Viswanathan Anand from the 10 greatest players of all time. Hikaru stated that Bobby Fischer should "obviously be number 3" and that Garry Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen should be at number 1 and number 2 respectively with the caveat that Kasparov is only number 1 due to his time as number 1 in the world being greater than Carlsen's. At the end of the video, Hikaru said he "can live with" the top 5 as: Kasparov, Carlsen, Fischer, Capablanca and Karpov but he would put from 6 through 10: Anand, Kramnik, Botvinnik, Lasker, Morphy.


text: The table below organises the world champions in order of championship wins. (For the purpose of this table, a successful defence counts as a win, even if the match was drawn.) The table is made more complicated by the split between the "Classical" and FIDE world titles between 1993 and 2006.


title: Boxing pound for pound rankings

text: The following tables show the professional boxers listed in the latest top-10 pound for pound world rankings published by each of:


title: '96 (film)

text: 96 is a 2018 Indian Tamil-language romantic drama film written and directed by C. Premkumar. Produced by S. Nanthagopal of Madras Enterprises, the film was distributed by Lalit Kumar under his banner Seven Screen Studio. Starring Trisha Krishnan and Vijay Sethupathi in lead roles, the film has Bagavathi Perumal, Devadarshini, Aadukalam Murugadoss and Shyam Prasad appear in supporting roles. The film revolves around the reunion of former students from the batch of 1996, twenty-two years after their graduation. The reunion also serves as an opportunity for two former lovers, Ram and Jaanu, to resolve issues surrounding their breakup.


title: '96 (film)

text: Prem Kumar wrote the script during December 2015, at the period of Chennai floods and had completed the entire script within 20 days, which revolved around his life on high school reunion. After the official announcement, the principal photography of the film was commenced on 12 June 2017 at Kumbakonam, and was shot across various locations in Chennai and Pondicherry, while also being filmed in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Kolkata, Rajasthan and Kullu–Manali. The cinematography was handled by Mahendiran Jayaraju and N. Shanmuga Sundaram, with editing being handled by R. Govindaraju. The music and background score is composed by Govind Vasantha.


title: '96 (film)

text: "96" was released worldwide on 4 October 2018. The film received critical acclaim from critics, praising the script, direction, cinematography, music and the nostalgic setting of the film, the performances of Sethupathi and Trisha. It was a commercial success, grossing . In addition, the film won six Norway Tamil Film Festival, five Filmfare, Ananda Vikatan, four SIIMA, Edison, Behindwoods awards each, and also won an Asiavision, Asianet and Vanitha film award for Trisha. The film was remade by Preetham Gubbi in Kannada as "99" (2019), and by Premkumar himself in Telugu as "Jaanu" (2020). The film was further listed as one of the "All Time 150 Cult Indian Films" by "Behindwoods" in March 2020.


title: '96 (film)

text: Ramachandran aka Ram is a travel photographer. He visits his high school and is overcome by memories. A reunion is arranged through their school WhatsApp group. At the reunion, his friends Murali, Subhashini and Sathish catch up with him. Murali hesitantly mentions that Janaki aka Jaanu (Ram's childhood love) is coming from Singapore.


title: '96 (film)

text: In 1996, Ram and Jaanu have been friends and classmates in 10th grade. Jaanu is a talented singer. Ram develops feelings for Jaanu and she reciprocates. Once their board exams are over, they have a moment with each other where Jaanu asks him not to forget her until they meet again after the holidays.


title: '96 (film)

text: Back in the present, Jaanu arrives at the reunion and searches for Ram. When Subha points Ram to her, Jaanu walks towards him. She reminisces the first day of 11th grade when she eagerly awaits Ram's arrival to the classroom, but he doesn't show up. She finds that Ram has left the school because his father had financial difficulties and his family relocated to Madras overnight. Jaanu is inconsolable and pines for Ram until she completes school.