title: Mr. Freeze

text: Freeze has one weapon that is more powerful than his gun, suit, and other cryotechnology: his mind. A brilliant scientific genius with an incredible mind for invention, he is skilled in physics, engineering, genetics, computer science, chemistry, and medical science. His science and technology are even as advanced as Apokilips or Lex Luthor's. His childhood obsession with cryogenics has led him to become one of the most gifted cryogenicists in Gotham. Victor was also able to build a cryonic life support machine for Catwoman, whose heart was surgically removed by Hush, and was capable of inventing a wide variety of cryotechnology for his extensive array of cryogenic weapons and armor. Freeze is a remarkable medical scientist in his research on the pathology and neuroscience of Nora's neurological illness. His specialization in cryonics has successfully proven his thesis on immortality through suspended animation; preserving his wife in a frozen state to delay her illness until a cure could be found is the best example of his research.


title: Mr. Freeze

text: Combined with his suit, Freeze's strength and durability are augmented to superhuman levels. Freeze's suit protected him from a bomb attack by the Ventriloquist's henchmen but the helmet of the armor was damaged by a sniper, causing the gases to leak due to the pressure. Freeze's strength and durability increased further after receiving a more advanced cryogenic armor, which was less heavy than the previous one, and was capable of withstanding gunshots and explosives. Freeze's most iconic weapon is his freeze gun, capable of creating gusts of cold that approach absolute zero. The gun is also capable of creating a "cold field" and imprison its opponents in a cocoon of ice.


title: Mr. Freeze

text: In the "Underworld Unleashed" storyline, the demon Neron granted Mr. Freeze the ability to generate subzero temperatures, no longer needing his freeze gun or refrigeration power suit. However, after his encounter with Green Lantern, Donna Troy, and Purgatory in Central Park, he reverted to his original subzero biology. He then gained a new subzero armor and weaponry.


title: Mr. Freeze

text: The character of Mr. Freeze has been analyzed as a stereotypical depiction of a villainous European in fiction. "IGN"s list of the Top 100 Comic Book Villains of All Time List ranked Mr. Freeze as #67.


title: Mr. Freeze

text: In "Blackhawk", Mr. Freeze appears as a robot created and controlled by Professor Thurman to pose as a villain so that Thurman could use his "Instant Freeze Icing Machine" invention to commit crimes without incriminating himself, but the plan is eventually foiled by the Blackhawks and Thurman is arrested.


title: Mr. Freeze

text: In the comic book adaptation of "Smallville Season Eleven", Mr. Freeze becomes an agent for the Intergang so he can obtain money to continue researching a way to save his wife Nora. At a safe house, Joe Chill is confronted by Batman, who attacks him for murdering his parents until Superman calms him down. Superman calmly explains to Chill that they needed to locate a man known as the Prankster whom they believe is developing the weapons Chill will sell to the Intergang. Mr. Freeze and the Prankster arrive to kill Chill. While Superman tries to distract the villains, Batman tries to get Chill out of the area. Mr. Freeze kills Chill and frames Batman for the crime. Batman escapes with an injured Superman while the FBI pursue them.


title: Mr. Freeze

text: Batman and Superman arrive at a location to confront Prankster who attacks him with a robotic suit that Toyman develops. Prankster reveals that Mr. Freeze is brainwashed by him and attacking the citizens of Metropolis. His suit's fuel cells are overloading and will explode with Freeze above Metropolis' water purification plant. Anyone within one mile will get killed in the explosion. Superman goes to stop the Prankster while Batman takes down Mr. Freeze with help from Green Arrow. Mr. Freeze is then sent to Arkham Asylum. There, he becomes a member of the Yellow Lanterns with Bane and Poison Ivy, all because of Parallax. Fortunately, Professor Hamilton finds a way to reboot the rings, and all the Yellow Lanterns lose their powers. The inmates of Arkham Asylum nearly fall to their deaths from the sky, but Superman saves them all. After Parallax is defeated, the criminals are returned to Arkham Asylum.


title: Mr. Freeze

text: Based in the DC Animated Universe, Mr. Freeze is part of a group of ice-themed villains called the "Cold Warriors" that try to overthrow a small African nation. The Cold Warriors appear in "Justice League Adventures" #12 (December 2002).


title: Mr. Freeze

text: In "DC Super Friends" #16, Mr. Freeze is part of a group of ice-themed villains called the "Ice Pack" that encases an entire city in ice and snow. They end up fighting each other for control of the group until Mr. Freeze suggests to compete for dominance by committing dastardly cold crimes. While his colleagues are busy, Freeze simply removes his cryo-suit and takes a walk through the city. The Super Friends melt the ice, forcing Victor to surrender in order to return to his suit.


title: Mr. Freeze

text: In the alternate timeline of "Flashpoint", Mr. Freeze attacks the S.T.A.R. Labs in Central City to find a cure for his wife Nora. However, Citizen Cold attacks and uses his cold gun to freeze Mr. Freeze's body. Mr. Freeze tries to escape on robotic legs, but Citizen Cold freezes him to death and tells him that Nora is dead. This version of Mr. Freeze is a friend of Fallout's and pursues revenge against Citizen Cold for murdering him. It is later revealed that radiation produced by Fallout is the cure Mr. Freeze was searching for.


title: Mr. Freeze

text: In the "" reality, Mr. Freeze did not stay locked inside Arkham after clashing with Batman, despite his cell still being kept cold for him. Instead, he remained surprisingly low-key during Superman's Regime, remaining in hiding for five years before being captured by Killer Croc. Detained in a prison in the sewers of Gotham, Freeze was soon rescued by Harley Quinn and her Joker Clan.


title: Mr. Freeze

text: In "Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" crossover, Mr. Freeze appears mutated into a polar bear as one of the various other Arkham inmates mutated by Shredder and Foot Clan to attack Batman and Robin. Batman is captured, but Robin manages to escape. The Ninja Turtles and Splinter then arrive, where Splinter defeats the mutated villains, while Batman uses his new Intimidator Armor to defeat Shredder and the Turtles defeat Ra's al Ghul. Later, Gordon tells Batman that the police scientists have managed to turn all of the inmates at Arkham back to normal and are currently in A.R.G.U.S. custody.


title: Mr. Freeze

text: Victor Fries appears in the 2017 series "". In this series, Victor Fries retires from his criminal lifestyle to focus on curing his wife's disease. It is later revealed that, due to his unique, cryogenically-dependent physiology, Fries's aging had been slowed considerably. His father was a member of the Nazi SS during the Second World War, but acted as a double agent, allowing America to stay one step ahead of Germany on the scientific front. As a result of this, a massive freeze cannon is constructed beneath a lighthouse off the coast of Gotham City. The superweapon is discovered by Neo-Joker (the second Harley Quinn who felt that by taking pills to retain his sanity, Jack Napier was destroying the most beautiful part of himself) and is used to freeze most, if not all, of Gotham. Freeze is able to reverse the effects with the aid of Batgirl. It is also revealed that Fries had been contacted by Batman in an attempt to secure the villain's aid to save the life of Alfred Pennyworth. Unfortunately, their efforts were in vain.


title: Mr. Freeze

text: In DC Graphic Novels for Young Adults, Nora and Victor's backgrounds and the beginnings of their romance are the premise of "Victor and Nora: A Gotham Love Story", written by Lauren Myracle and with art by Isaac Goodhart, released in November 2020.


title: NXT Women's Championship

text: The NXT Women's Championship is a women's professional wrestling championship created and promoted by the American promotion WWE. It is defended on the NXT brand division, the promotion's developmental territory. Introduced on April 5, 2013, the inaugural champion was Paige. The current champion is Roxanne Perez, who is in her first reign.


title: NXT Women's Championship

text: At the time the title was established, NXT was a developmental territory for WWE. In September 2019, the promotion began promoting NXT as its "third brand" when the "NXT" television program was moved to the USA Network. Two years later, however, NXT reverted to its original function as WWE's developmental brand.


title: NXT Women's Championship

text: In 2020, the NXT Women's Championship became the first and so far only NXT championship to be selected by a Royal Rumble match winner, and subsequently, it became the first and so far only NXT championship to be defended at a WrestleMania at WrestleMania 36. In September 2022, the NXT UK Women's Championship was unified into the NXT Women's Championship by Mandy Rose.


title: NXT Women's Championship

text: In June 2012, WWE established NXT as their developmental territory, replacing Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW). The following year on April 5, the NXT Women's Championship was introduced during WrestleMania Axxess. On the May 30 tapings of "NXT" (aired June 5), WWE's Chief Brand Officer Stephanie McMahon announced that there would be an eight-woman single-elimination tournament, featuring four women from NXT and four from WWE's main roster competing to be crowned the first NXT Women's Champion. During the June 20 tapings of "NXT" (aired July 24), Paige defeated Emma in the tournament final to become the inaugural champion.


title: NXT Women's Championship

text: Paige successfully defended her title at Arrival against Emma. Then-NXT General Manager, John "Bradshaw" Layfield, stripped Paige of the title on the April 24, 2014, episode of "NXT", as Paige had recently won the WWE Divas Championship, and was in turn promoted to WWE's main roster. A new tournament began the following week. The finals occurred at TakeOver where Charlotte defeated Natalya to win the vacant NXT Women's Championship. On the September 16, 2015, episode of "NXT", now NXT General Manager William Regal announced that Bayley would defend her title against Sasha Banks in the main event at on October 7 in the first-ever 30-minute Iron Woman match in WWE history. At the event, Bayley defeated Banks to retain the championship, scoring the win with 3 falls to 2.


title: NXT Women's Championship

text: Although NXT had been established as WWE's developmental territory, WWE began promoting it as their "third brand" in September 2019 when "NXT" was moved to the USA Network. This subsequently made the NXT Women's Championship one of the top three singles titles for women in WWE, along with the Raw Women's Championship—which had replaced the Divas title in 2016—and the SmackDown Women's Championship. This was validated in 2020; first, Charlotte Flair (previously known as just Charlotte) won the 2020 Women's Royal Rumble and chose to challenge for the NXT Women's Championship at WrestleMania 36, becoming the first Royal Rumble winner to challenge for an NXT title, and secondly, the title became the first NXT championship to be defended at a WrestleMania where during WrestleMania 36 Part 2, Flair defeated defending champion Rhea Ripley to win her record-tying second NXT Women's Championship. However, WWE revamped NXT in September 2021 and returned the brand to its original function as a developmental territory.


title: NXT Women's Championship

text: In January 2020, WWE briefly began referring to the women's championship as the "NXT Championship" to bring it on an equal level as the men's title, though reverted to calling it the NXT Women's Championship soon after; it remained as NXT Women's Championship on the official title history during this time.


title: NXT Women's Championship

text: In August 2022, WWE announced that the NXT UK brand would go on hiatus and would relaunch as NXT Europe in 2023. As such, NXT UK's championship's were unified into their respective NXT championship counterparts. On September 4, 2022, at Worlds Collide, reigning NXT Women's Champion Mandy Rose defeated NXT UK Women's Champion Meiko Satomura and Blair Davenport in a triple threat match to unify the NXT UK Women's Championship into the NXT Women's Championship. Satomura was recognized as the final NXT UK Women's Champion, while Rose went forward as the unified NXT Women's Champion.


title: NXT Women's Championship

text: The original NXT Women's Championship belt featured an oval shaped silver center plate. At the top of the plate was the WWE logo. The center of the plate was the NXT logo encrusted with pink diamonds; red coloring was behind the letter "X". Above the NXT logo read "Women's" while below the logo read "Champion". There were two side plates, which were skinny and matched the curve of the center plate. The inner side plates were encrusted with pink diamonds, while the outer side plates were blank silver plates. The plates were on a black leather strap. When first introduced, the WWE logo was the long-standing scratch logo but in August 2014, all of WWE's pre-existing championships at the time received a minor update, changing the scratch logo to WWE's current logo that was originally used for the WWE Network.


title: NXT Women's Championship

text: On April 1, 2017, at WrestleMania Axxess, NXT General Manager William Regal announced that all of the existing NXT title belts at the time would be redesigned. The new title belts were unveiled at that same night and given to the winners of their respective matches. The redesigned women's championship featured a nearly identical design to the redesigned NXT Championship, including being on a black leather strap, but with a couple of notable differences. The belt was smaller to fit the women. The letters "NXT" on the center plate were silver instead of gold, while the rest of the plate was gold. One other difference was that a banner reading "Women's" was underneath the WWE logo. Coming in line with the majority of WWE's other championship belts, the new design featured side plates with a removable center section that could be customized with the champion's logo; the default plates featured the WWE logo.


title: NXT Women's Championship

text: On April 2, 2022, during NXT's WrestleMania week event, Stand & Deliver, reigning champion Mandy Rose debuted a new belt design; it is largely similar to the previous version (2017–2022), but the silver behind the logo was replaced by multi-colored paint (matching the NXT 2.0 colorscheme) and the letters "N" and "T" on the center plate were updated to the font style of the NXT 2.0 logo. The default side plates were also updated, replacing the WWE logo with the NXT 2.0 logo. Coming in line with all other women's championships in WWE, the plates are on a white leather strap instead of black.


title: NXT Women's Championship

text: As of 28, 2022, there have been 15 reigns between 13 champions, and two vacancies. Paige was the inaugural champion. Asuka is the longest reigning champion at 510 days, beginning on April 1, 2016, and ending on August 24, 2017; however, WWE recognizes the reign as 522 days, with it ending on September 6, 2017, the date the episode in which she vacated the title aired on tape delay. Kairi Sane has the shortest reign at 71 days; however, WWE recognizes Charlotte Flair's second reign as the shortest at 63 days due to tape delay (in reality, Flair held the title for either 73 or 74 days; the exact date that she won the title is unknown). Paige is the youngest champion, winning it at the age of 20, while Shayna Baszler is the oldest, winning the championship at 38. Baszler and Flair are tied for the most reigns at two. Only three women have held the title for a continuous reign of one year (365 days) or more: Asuka, Shayna Baszler, and Mandy Rose.


title: NXT Women's Championship

text: Roxanne Perez is the current champion in her first reign. She defeated Mandy Rose on the December 13, 2022 episode of "NXT" in Orlando, Florida.


title: Diameter

text: In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest chord of the circle. Both definitions are also valid for the diameter of a sphere.


title: Diameter

text: In more modern usage, the length formula_1 of a diameter is also called the diameter. In this sense one speaks of diameter rather than diameter (which refers to the line segment itself), because all diameters of a circle or sphere have the same length, this being twice the radius formula_2


title: Diameter

text: For a convex shape in the plane, the diameter is defined to be the largest distance that can be formed between two opposite parallel lines tangent to its boundary, and the is often defined to be the smallest such distance. Both quantities can be calculated efficiently using rotating calipers. For a curve of constant width such as the Reuleaux triangle, the width and diameter are the same because all such pairs of parallel tangent lines have the same distance.


title: Diameter

text: For an ellipse, the standard terminology is different. A diameter of an ellipse is any chord passing through the centre of the ellipse. For example, conjugate diameters have the property that a tangent line to the ellipse at the endpoint of one diameter is parallel to the conjugate diameter. The longest diameter is called the major axis.


title: Diameter

text: The word "diameter" is derived from (), "diameter of a circle", from (), "across, through" and (), "measure". It is often abbreviated formula_4 or formula_5


title: Diameter

text: The definitions given above are only valid for circles, spheres and convex shapes. However, they are special cases of a more general definition that is valid for any kind of formula_6-dimensional (convex or non-convex) object, such as a hypercube or a set of scattered points. The or of a subset of a metric space is the least upper bound of the set of all distances between pairs of points in the subset. Explicitly, if formula_7 is the subset and if formula_8 is the metric, the diameter is


title: Diameter

text: If the metric formula_8 is viewed here as having codomain formula_11 (the set of all real numbers), this implies that the diameter of the empty set (the case formula_12) equals formula_13 (negative infinity). Some authors prefer to treat the empty set as a special case, assigning it a diameter of formula_14 which corresponds to taking the codomain of formula_1 to be the set of nonnegative reals.


title: Diameter

text: For any solid object or set of scattered points in formula_6-dimensional Euclidean space, the diameter of the object or set is the same as the diameter of its convex hull. In medical parlance concerning a lesion or in geology concerning a rock, the diameter of an object is the least upper bound of the set of all distances between pairs of points in the object.


title: Diameter

text: In planar geometry, a diameter of a conic section is typically defined as any chord which passes through the conic's centre; such diameters are not necessarily of uniform length, except in the case of the circle, which has eccentricity formula_17


title: Diameter

text: The symbol or variable for diameter, , is sometimes used in technical drawings or specifications as a prefix or suffix for a number (e.g. "⌀ 55 mm"), indicating that it represents diameter. For example, photographic filter thread sizes are often denoted in this way.


title: Diameter

text: In German, the diameter symbol (German "") is also used as an average symbol ("Durchschnittszeichen").


title: Diameter

text: The Latin small letter o with stroke is similar in size and design to this. The diameter symbol ⌀ is distinct from the empty set symbol , from an (italic) uppercase phi , and from the Nordic vowel (Latin capital letter O with stroke). See also slashed zero.


title: Diameter

text: The symbol has a Unicode code point at , in the Miscellaneous Technical set. On an Apple Macintosh, the diameter symbol can be entered via the character palette (this is opened by pressing in most applications), where it can be found in the Technical Symbols category. In Unix/Linux/ChromeOS systems, it is generated using  . It can be obtained in Unix-like operating systems using a Compose key by pressing, in sequence, . In Windows, it can be entered in most programs with Alt code 8960.


title: Diameter

text: The character will sometimes not display correctly, however, since many fonts do not include it. In many situations, the Nordic letter ø at Unicode is an acceptable substitute. It can be entered on a Macintosh by pressing (the letter o, not the number 0). In Unix/Linux/ChromeOS systems, it is generated using   or . AutoCAD uses available as a shortcut string .


title: Diameter

text: The diameter of a circle is exactly twice its radius. However, this is true only for a circle, and only in the Euclidean metric. The page on Jung's theorem discusses some more general inequalities relating the diameter to the radius.


title: Celibacy

text: Celibacy (from Latin "caelibatus") is the state of voluntarily being unmarried, sexually abstinent, or both, usually for religious reasons. It is often in association with the role of a religious official or devotee. In its narrow sense, the term "celibacy" is applied only to those for whom the unmarried state is the result of a sacred vow, act of renunciation, or religious conviction. In a wider sense, it is commonly understood to only mean abstinence from sexual activity.


title: Celibacy

text: Celibacy has existed in one form or another throughout history, in virtually all the major religions of the world, and views on it have varied.


title: Celibacy

text: Classical Hindu culture encouraged asceticism and celibacy in the later stages of life, after one has met one's societal obligations. Jainism, on the other hand, preached complete celibacy even for young monks and considered celibacy to be an essential behavior to attain moksha. Buddhism is similar to Jainism in this respect. There were, however, significant cultural differences in the various areas where Buddhism spread, which affected the local attitudes toward celibacy. A somewhat similar situation existed in Japan, where the Shinto tradition also opposed celibacy. In most native African and Native American religious traditions, celibacy has been viewed negatively as well, although there were exceptions like periodic celibacy practiced by some Mesoamerican warriors.


title: Celibacy

text: The Romans viewed celibacy as an aberration and legislated fiscal penalties against it, with the exception of the Vestal Virgins, who took a 30-year vow of chastity in order to devote themselves to the study and correct observance of state rituals.


title: Celibacy

text: In Christianity, celibacy means the promise to live either virginal or celibate in the future. In addition to the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches, the Anglican Communion and some Protestant churches or communities such as the Shakers also know a promise or vow of celibacy for example for members of religious orders, hermits, consecrated virgins and deaconesses.


title: Celibacy

text: Judaism and Islam have denounced celibacy, as both religions emphasize marriage and family life. However, the priests of the Essenes, a Jewish sect during the Second Temple period, practised celibacy. Several hadiths indicate that the Islamic prophet Muhammad denounced celibacy.


title: Celibacy

text: The English word "celibacy" derives from the Latin "caelibatus", "state of being unmarried", from Latin , meaning "unmarried". This word derives from two Proto-Indo-European stems, * "alone" and * "living".


title: Celibacy

text: The words "abstinence" and "celibacy" are often used interchangeably, but are not necessarily the same thing. Sexual abstinence, also known as "continence", is abstaining from some or all aspects of sexual activity, often for some limited period of time, while celibacy may be defined as a voluntary religious vow not to marry or engage in sexual activity. Asexuality is commonly conflated with celibacy and sexual abstinence, but it is considered distinct from the two, as celibacy and sexual abstinence are behavioral and those who use those terms for themselves are generally motivated by factors such as an individual's personal or religious beliefs.


title: Celibacy

text: A. W. Richard Sipe, while focusing on the topic of celibacy in Catholicism, states that "the most commonly assumed definition of "celibate" is simply an unmarried or single person, and celibacy is perceived as synonymous with sexual abstinence or restraint." Sipe adds that even in the relatively uniform milieu of Catholic priests in the United States there seems to be "simply no clear operational definition of celibacy". Elizabeth Abbott commented on the terminology in her "A History of Celibacy" (2001) that she "drafted a definition that discarded the rigidly pedantic and unhelpful distinctions between celibacy, chastity and virginity".


title: Celibacy

text: The concept of "new" celibacy was introduced by Gabrielle Brown in her 1980 book "The New Celibacy". In a revised version (1989) of her book, she claims abstinence to be "a response on the outside to what's going on, and celibacy is a response from the inside". According to her definition, celibacy (even short-term celibacy that is pursued for non-religious reasons) is much more than not having sex. It is more intentional than abstinence, and its goal is personal growth and empowerment. Although the Gabrielle Brown repeatedly states that celibacy is a matter of choice, she clearly suggests that those who do not choose this route are somehow missing out. This new perspective on celibacy is echoed by several authors including Elizabeth Abbott, Wendy Keller, and Wendy Shalit.


title: Celibacy

text: The rule of celibacy in the Buddhist religion, whether Mahayana or Theravada, has a long history. Celibacy was advocated as an ideal rule of life for all monks and nuns by Gautama Buddha, except for Japan where it is not strictly followed due to historical and political developments following the Meiji Restoration. In Japan, celibacy was an ideal among Buddhist clerics for hundreds of years. But violations of clerical celibacy were so common for so long that, finally, in 1872, state laws made marriage legal for Buddhist clerics. Subsequently, ninety percent of Buddhist monks/clerics married. An example is Higashifushimi Kunihide, a prominent Buddhist priest of Japanese royal ancestry who was married and a father whilst serving as a monk for most of his lifetime.


title: Celibacy

text: Gautama, later known as the Buddha, is known for his renunciation of his wife, Princess Yasodharā, and son, Rahula. In order to pursue an ascetic life, he needed to renounce aspects of the impermanent world, including his wife and son. Later on both his wife and son joined the ascetic community and are mentioned in the Buddhist texts to have become enlightened. In another sense, a buddhavacana recorded the zen patriarch Vimalakirti as being an advocate of marital continence instead of monastic renunciation, the sutra became somewhat popular due to its brash humour as well as integrating the role of women in laity as well as spiritual life.


title: Celibacy

text: In the religious movement of Brahma Kumaris, celibacy is also promoted for peace and to defeat power of lust.


title: Celibacy

text: There is no explicit commandment in the New Testament that Jesus Christ's disciples have to live in celibacy. although it is a general view that Christ himself lived a life of perfect chastity, thus "Voluntary chastity is the imitation of him who was the virgin Son of a virgin Mother". One of his invocations is "King of virgins and lover of stainless chastity" "(Rex virginum, amator castitatis)". Furthermore, Christ says the following in Matthew 19, verse 11: "There are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it". Many supporters of priestly celibacy rely on this passage.


title: Celibacy

text: Paul the Apostle emphasized the importance of overcoming the desires of the flesh and saw the state of celibacy being superior to that of marriage. Paul made parallels between the relations between spouses and God's relationship with the church. "Husbands love your wives even as Christ loved the church. Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies" (Ephesians 5:25–28). Paul himself was celibate and said that his wish was "that all of you were as I am" (1 Corinthians 7,7). In fact, this entire chapter is a defense of and a call to celibacy.


title: Celibacy

text: The early Christians lived in the belief that the End of the World would soon come upon them, and saw no point in planning new families and having children. According to Chadwick, this was why Paul encouraged both celibate and marital lifestyles among the members of the Corinthian congregation, regarding celibacy as the preferable of the two.


title: Celibacy

text: In the counsels of perfection (evangelical counsels) Jesus Christ "gave the rule of the higher life founded upon his own most perfect live. According to this counsels persons may be called to voluntary celibacy".


title: Celibacy

text: A number of early Christian martyrs were women or girls who had given themselves to Christ in perpetual virginity, such as Saint Agnes and Saint Lucy. According to most Christian thought, the first sacred virgin was Mary, the mother of Jesus, who was consecrated by the Holy Spirit during the Annunciation. Tradition also has it that the Apostle Matthew consecrated virgins. In the Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches, a consecrated virgin, is a woman who has been consecrated by the church to a life of perpetual virginity in the service of God.


title: Celibacy

text: The Desert Fathers were Christian hermits, and ascetics who had a major influence on the development of Christianity and celibacy. Paul of Thebes is often credited with being the first hermit or anachorite to go to the desert, but it was Anthony the Great who launched the movement that became the Desert Fathers. Sometime around AD 270, Anthony heard a Sunday sermon stating that perfection could be achieved by selling all of one's possessions, giving the proceeds to the poor, and following Christ.(Matt. 19.21) He followed the advice and made the further step of moving deep into the desert to seek complete solitude.


title: Celibacy

text: Over time, the model of Anthony and other hermits attracted many followers, who lived alone in the desert or in small groups. They chose a life of extreme asceticism, renouncing all the pleasures of the senses, rich food, baths, rest, and anything that made them comfortable. Thousands joined them in the desert, mostly men but also a handful of women. Religious seekers also began going to the desert seeking advice and counsel from the early Desert Fathers. By the time of Anthony's death, there were so many men and women living in the desert in celibacy that it was described as "a city" by Anthony's biographer.


title: Celibacy

text: The first Conciliar document on clerical celibacy of the Western Christian Church (Synod of Elvira, can. xxxiii) states that the discipline of celibacy is to refrain from the use of marriage, i.e. refrain from having carnal contact with one's spouse.


title: Celibacy

text: According to the later St. Jerome (420), celibacy is a moral virtue, consisting of living in the flesh, but outside the flesh, and so being not corrupted by it ("vivere in carne praeter carnem"). Celibacy excludes not only libidinous acts, but also sinful thoughts or desires of the flesh. Jerome referred to marriage prohibition for priests when he claimed in "Against Jovinianus" that Peter and the other apostles had been married before they were called, but subsequently gave up their marital relations.


title: Celibacy

text: Celibacy as a vocation may be independent from religious vows (as is the case with consecrated virgins, ascetics and hermits). In the Catholic, Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox traditions, bishops are required to be celibate. In the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox traditions, priests and deacons are allowed to be married, yet have to remain celibate if they are unmarried at the time of ordination.


title: Celibacy

text: In the early Church, higher clerics lived in marriages. Augustine of Hippo was one of the first to develop a theory that sexual feelings were sinful and negative. Augustine taught that the original sin of Adam and Eve was either an act of foolishness "(insipientia)" followed by pride and disobedience to God, or else inspired by pride. The first couple disobeyed God, who had told them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:17). The tree was a symbol of the order of creation. Self-centeredness made Adam and Eve eat of it, thus failing to acknowledge and respect the world as it was created by God, with its hierarchy of beings and values. They would not have fallen into pride and lack of wisdom, if Satan had not sown into their senses "the root of evil" "(radix mali)". Their nature was wounded by concupiscence or libido, which affected human intelligence and will, as well as affections and desires, including sexual desire.


title: Celibacy

text: The sin of Adam is inherited by all human beings. Already in his pre-Pelagian writings, Augustine taught that original sin was transmitted by concupiscence, which he regarded as the passion of both soul and body, making humanity a "massa damnata" (mass of perdition, condemned crowd) and much enfeebling, though not destroying, the freedom of the will.


title: Celibacy

text: In the early 3rd century, the Canons of the Apostolic Constitutions decreed that only lower clerics might still marry after their ordination, but marriage of bishops, priests, and deacons were not allowed.


title: Celibacy

text: One explanation for the origin of obligatory celibacy is that it is based on the writings of Saint Paul, who wrote of the advantages of celibacy allowed a man in serving the Lord. Celibacy was popularised by the early Christian theologians like Saint Augustine of Hippo and Origen. Another possible explanation for the origins of obligatory celibacy revolves around more practical reason, "the need to avoid claims on church property by priests' offspring". It remains a matter of Canon Law (and often a criterion for certain religious orders, especially Franciscans) that priests may not own land and therefore cannot pass it on to legitimate or illegitimate children. The land belongs to the Church through the local diocese as administered by the Local Ordinary (usually a bishop), who is often an "ex officio" corporation sole. Celibacy is viewed differently by the Catholic Church and the various Protestant communities. It includes clerical celibacy, celibacy of the consecrated life, voluntary lay celibacy, and celibacy outside of marriage.


title: Celibacy

text: The Protestant Reformation rejected celibate life and sexual continence for preachers. Protestant celibate communities have emerged, especially from Anglican and Lutheran backgrounds. A few minor Christian sects advocate celibacy as a better way of life. These groups included the Shakers, the Harmony Society and the Ephrata Cloister.


title: Celibacy

text: Many evangelicals prefer the term "abstinence" to "celibacy". Assuming everyone will marry, they focus their discussion on refraining from premarital sex and focusing on the joys of a future marriage. But some evangelicals, particularly older singles, desire a positive message of celibacy that moves beyond the "wait until marriage" message of abstinence campaigns. They seek a new understanding of celibacy that is focused on God rather than a future marriage or a lifelong vow to the Church.


title: Celibacy

text: There are also many Pentecostal churches which practice celibate ministry. For instance, The full-time ministers of the Pentecostal Mission are celibate and generally single. Married couples who enter full-time ministry may become celibate and could be sent to different locations.


title: Celibacy

text: During the first three or four centuries, no law was promulgated prohibiting clerical marriage. Celibacy was a matter of choice for bishops, priests, and deacons.


title: Celibacy

text: Statutes forbidding clergy from having wives were written beginning with the Council of Elvira (306) but these early statutes were not universal and were often defied by clerics and then retracted by hierarchy. The Synod of Gangra (345) condemned a false asceticism whereby worshipers boycotted celebrations presided over by married clergy." The Apostolic Constitutions () excommunicated a priest or bishop who left his wife 'under the pretense of piety"' (Mansi, 1:51).


title: Celibacy

text: "A famous letter of Synesius of Cyrene () is evidence both for the respecting of personal decision in the matter and for contemporary appreciation of celibacy. For priests and deacons clerical marriage continued to be in vogue".


title: Celibacy

text: "The Second Lateran Council (1139) seems to have enacted the first written law making sacred orders a diriment impediment to marriage for the universal Church." Celibacy was first required of some clerics in 1123 at the First Lateran Council. Because clerics resisted it, the celibacy mandate was restated at the Second Lateran Council (1139) and the Council of Trent (1545–64). In places, coercion and enslavement of clerical wives and children was apparently involved in the enforcement of the law. "The earliest decree in which the children [of clerics] were declared to be slaves and never to be enfranchised [freed] seems to have been a canon of the Synod of Pavia in 1018. Similar penalties were promulgated against wives and concubines (see the Synod of Melfi, 1189 can. xii), who by the very fact of their unlawful connexion with a subdeacon or clerk of higher rank became liable to be seized by the over-lord". Celibacy for priests continues to be a contested issue even today.


title: Celibacy

text: In the Roman Catholic Church, the Twelve Apostles are considered to have been the first priests and bishops of the Church. Some say the call to be eunuchs for the sake of Heaven in Matthew 19 was a call to be sexually continent and that this developed into celibacy for priests as the successors of the apostles. Others see the call to be sexually continent in Matthew 19 to be a caution for men who were too readily divorcing and remarrying.


title: Celibacy

text: The view of the Church is that celibacy is a reflection of life in Heaven, a source of detachment from the material world which aids in one's relationship with God. Celibacy is designed to "consecrate themselves with undivided heart to the Lord and to "the affairs of the Lord, they give themselves entirely to God and to men. It is a sign of this new life to the service of which the Church's minister is consecrated; accepted with a joyous heart celibacy radiantly proclaims the Reign of God." In contrast, Saint Peter, whom the Church considers its first Pope, was married given that he had a mother-in-law whom Christ healed (Matthew 8). But some argue that Peter was a widower, due to the fact that this passage does not mention his wife, and that his mother-in-law is the one who serves Christ and the apostles after she is healed. Furthermore, Peter himself states: "Then Peter spoke up, 'We have left everything to follow you!' 'Truly I tell you,' Jesus replied, 'no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much' (Mark 10,28–30).


title: Celibacy

text: Usually, only celibate men are ordained as priests in the Latin Rite. Married clergy who have converted from other Christian denominations can be ordained Roman Catholic priests without becoming celibate. Priestly celibacy is not "doctrine" of the Church (such as the belief in the Assumption of Mary) but a matter of discipline, like the use of the vernacular (local) language in Mass or Lenten fasting and abstinence. As such, it can theoretically change at any time though it still must be obeyed by Catholics until the change were to take place. The Eastern Catholic Churches ordain both celibate and married men. However, in both the East and the West, bishops are chosen from among those who are celibate. In Ireland, several priests have fathered children, the two most prominent being Bishop Eamonn Casey and Father Michael Cleary.


title: Celibacy

text: The classical heritage flourished throughout the Middle Ages in both the Byzantine Greek East and the Latin West. When discerning the population of Christendom in Medieval Europe during the Middle Ages, Will Durant, referring to Plato's ideal community, stated on the "oratores" (clergy):


title: Celibacy

text: "The clergy, like Plato's guardians, were placed in authority not by the suffrages of the people, but by their talent as shown in ecclesiastical studies and administration, by their disposition to a life of meditation and simplicity, and (perhaps it should be added) by the influence of their relatives with the powers of state and church. In the latter half of the period in which they ruled [AD 800 onwards], the clergy were as free from family cares as even Plato could desire; and in some cases it would seem they enjoyed no little of the reproductive freedom accorded to the guardians. Celibacy was part of the psychological structure of the power of the clergy; for on the one hand they were unimpeded by the narrowing egoism of the family, and on the other their apparent superiority to the call of the flesh added to the awe in which lay sinners held them …"


title: Celibacy

text: With respect to clerical celibacy, Richard P. O'Brien stated in 1995, that in his opinion, "greater understanding of human psychology has led to questions regarding the impact of celibacy on the human development of the clergy. The realization that many non-European countries view celibacy negatively has prompted questions concerning the value of retaining celibacy as an absolute and universal requirement for ordained ministry in the Roman Catholic Church".


title: Celibacy

text: Some homosexual Christians choose to be celibate following their denomination's teachings on homosexuality.


title: Celibacy

text: In 2014, the American Association of Christian Counselors amended its code of ethics to eliminate the promotion of conversion therapy for homosexuals and encouraged them to be celibate instead.


title: Celibacy

text: In Hinduism, celibacy is usually associated with the "sadhus" ("holy men"), ascetics who withdraw from society and renounce all worldly ties. Celibacy, termed "brahmacharya" in Vedic scripture, is the fourth of the "yamas" and the word literally translated means "dedicated to the Divinity of Life". The word is often used in yogic practice to refer to celibacy or denying pleasure, but this is only a small part of what "brahmacharya" represents. The purpose of practicing "brahmacharya" is to keep a person focused on the purpose in life, the things that instill a feeling of peace and contentment. It is also used to cultivate occult powers and many supernatural feats, called siddhi.


title: Celibacy

text: Islamic attitudes toward celibacy have been complex, Muhammad denounced it, however some Sufi orders embrace it. Islam does not promote celibacy; rather it condemns premarital sex and extramarital sex. In fact, according to Islam, marriage enables one to attain the highest form of righteousness within this sacred spiritual bond but the Qur'an does not state it as an obligation. The Qur'an () states, "But the Monasticism which they (who followed Jesus) invented for themselves, We did not prescribe for them but only to please God therewith, but that they did not observe it with the right observance." Therefore, religion is clearly not a reason to stay unmarried although people are allowed to live their lives however they are comfortable; but relationships and sex outside of marriage, let alone forced marriage, is definitely a sin, "Oh you who believe! You are forbidden to inherit women against their will" (). In addition, marriage partners can be distractions from practicing religion at the same time, "Your mates and children are only a trial for you" () however that still does not mean Islam doesn't encourage people who have sexual desires and are willing to marry. Anyone who doesn't (intend) to get married in this life can always do it in the Hereafter instead.


title: Celibacy

text: Celibacy was practiced by women saints in Sufism. Celibacy was debated along with women's roles in Sufism in medieval times.


title: Celibacy

text: Celibacy, poverty, meditation, and mysticism within an ascetic context along with worship centered around Saint's tombs were promoted by the Qadiri Sufi order among Hui Muslims in China. In China, unlike other Muslim sects, the leaders (Shaikhs) of the Qadiriyya Sufi order are celibate. Unlike other Sufi orders in China, the leadership within the order is not a hereditary position, rather, one of the disciples of the celibate Shaikh is chosen by the Shaikh to succeed him . The 92-year-old celibate Shaikh Yang Shijun was the leader of the Qadiriya order in China as of 1998.


title: Celibacy

text: The spiritual teacher Meher Baba stated that "[F]or the [spiritual] aspirant a life of strict celibacy is preferable to married life, if restraint comes to him easily without undue sense of self-repression. Such restraint is difficult for most persons and sometimes impossible, and for them married life is decidedly more helpful than a life of celibacy. For ordinary persons, married life is undoubtedly advisable unless they have a special aptitude for celibacy". Baba also asserted that "The value of celibacy lies in the habit of restraint and the sense of detachment and independence which it gives" and that "The aspirant must choose one of the two courses which are open to him. He must take to the life of celibacy or to the married life, and he must avoid at all costs a cheap compromise between the two. Promiscuity in sex gratification is bound to land the aspirant in a most pitiful and dangerous chaos of ungovernable lust."


title: Celibacy

text: In Sparta and many other Greek cities, failure to marry was grounds for loss of citizenship, and could be prosecuted as a crime. Both Cicero and Dionysius of Halicarnassus stated that Roman law forbade celibacy. There are no records of such a prosecution, nor is the Roman punishment for refusing to marry known.


title: Celibacy

text: Pythagoreanism was the system of esoteric and metaphysical beliefs held by Pythagoras and his followers. Pythagorean thinking was dominated by a profoundly mystical view of the world. The Pythagorean code further restricted his members from eating meat, fish, and beans which they practised for religious, ethical and ascetic reasons, in particular the idea of metempsychosis – the transmigration of souls into the bodies of other animals.


title: Celibacy

text: "Pythagoras himself established a small community that set a premium on study, vegetarianism, and sexual restraint or abstinence. Later philosophers believed that celibacy would be conducive to the detachment and equilibrium required by the philosopher's calling."


title: Celibacy

text: The tradition of sworn virgins developed out of the "Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit" (, or simply the "Kanun"). The "Kanun" is not a religious document – many groups follow it, including Roman Catholics, the Albanian Orthodox, and Muslims.


title: Celibacy

text: Women who become sworn virgins make a vow of celibacy, and are allowed to take on the social role of men: inheriting land, wearing male clothing, etc.


title: Ultimate tensile strength

text: Ultimate tensile strength (UTS), often shortened to tensile strength (TS), ultimate strength, or formula_1 within equations, is the maximum stress that a material can withstand while being stretched or pulled before breaking. In brittle materials the ultimate tensile strength is close to the yield point, whereas in ductile materials the ultimate tensile strength can be higher.


title: Ultimate tensile strength

text: The ultimate tensile strength is usually found by performing a tensile test and recording the engineering stress versus strain. The highest point of the stress–strain curve is the ultimate tensile strength and has units of stress. The equivalent point for the case of compression, instead of tension, is called the compressive strength.


title: Ultimate tensile strength

text: Tensile strengths are rarely of any consequence in the design of ductile members, but they are important with brittle members. They are tabulated for common materials such as alloys, composite materials, ceramics, plastics, and wood.


title: Ultimate tensile strength

text: The ultimate tensile strength of a material is an intensive property; therefore its value does not depend on the size of the test specimen. However, depending on the material, it may be dependent on other factors, such as the preparation of the specimen, the presence or otherwise of surface defects, and the temperature of the test environment and material.


title: Ultimate tensile strength

text: Some materials break very sharply, without plastic deformation, in what is called a brittle failure. Others, which are more ductile, including most metals, experience some plastic deformation and possibly necking before fracture.


title: Ultimate tensile strength

text: Tensile strength is defined as a stress, which is measured as force per unit area. For some non-homogeneous materials (or for assembled components) it can be reported just as a force or as a force per unit width. In the International System of Units (SI), the unit is the pascal (Pa) (or a multiple thereof, often megapascals (MPa), using the SI prefix "mega"); or, equivalently to pascals, newtons per square metre (N/m). A United States customary unit is pounds per square inch (lb/in or psi). Kilopounds per square inch (ksi, or sometimes kpsi) is equal to 1000 psi, and is commonly used in the United States, when measuring tensile strengths.


title: Ultimate tensile strength

text: Many materials can display linear elastic behavior, defined by a linear stress–strain relationship, as shown in figure 1 up to point 3. The elastic behavior of materials often extends into a non-linear region, represented in figure 1 by point 2 (the "yield point"), up to which deformations are completely recoverable upon removal of the load; that is, a specimen loaded elastically in tension will elongate, but will return to its original shape and size when unloaded. Beyond this elastic region, for ductile materials, such as steel, deformations are plastic. A plastically deformed specimen does not completely return to its original size and shape when unloaded. For many applications, plastic deformation is unacceptable, and is used as the design limitation.


title: Ultimate tensile strength

text: After the yield point, ductile metals undergo a period of strain hardening, in which the stress increases again with increasing strain, and they begin to neck, as the cross-sectional area of the specimen decreases due to plastic flow. In a sufficiently ductile material, when necking becomes substantial, it causes a reversal of the engineering stress–strain curve (curve A, figure 2); this is because the "engineering stress" is calculated assuming the original cross-sectional area before necking. The reversal point is the maximum stress on the engineering stress–strain curve, and the engineering stress coordinate of this point is the ultimate tensile strength, given by point 1.


title: Ultimate tensile strength

text: Ultimate tensile strength is not used in the design of ductile static members because design practices dictate the use of the yield stress. It is, however, used for quality control, because of the ease of testing. It is also used to roughly determine material types for unknown samples.


title: Ultimate tensile strength

text: The ultimate tensile strength is a common engineering parameter to design members made of brittle material because such materials have no yield point.


title: Ultimate tensile strength

text: Typically, the testing involves taking a small sample with a fixed cross-sectional area, and then pulling it with a tensometer at a constant strain (change in gauge length divided by initial gauge length) rate until the sample breaks.


title: Ultimate tensile strength

text: When testing some metals, indentation hardness correlates linearly with tensile strength. This important relation permits economically important nondestructive testing of bulk metal deliveries with lightweight, even portable equipment, such as hand-held Rockwell hardness testers. This practical correlation helps quality assurance in metalworking industries to extend well beyond the laboratory and universal testing machines.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: The Six Nations Championship (known as the Guinness Six Nations for sponsorship reasons) is an annual international men's rugby union competition between the teams of England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales. The current champions are France, who won the 2022 tournament.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: The tournament is organised by the unions of the six participating nations under the banner of Six Nations Rugby, which is responsible for the promotion and operation of the men's, women's and under-20s tournaments, and the Autumn International Series, as well as the negotiation and management of their centralised commercial rights.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: The Six Nations is the successor to the Home Nations Championship (1883–1909 and 1932–39), played between teams from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, which was the first international rugby union tournament. With the addition of France, this became the Five Nations Championship (1910–31 and 1947–99), which in turn became the Six Nations Championship with the addition of Italy in 2000.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: England and Wales have won the championship the most times, both with 39 titles, but England have won the most outright titles with 29. Since the Six Nations era started in 2000, only Italy and Scotland have failed to win the Six Nations title.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: The tournament was first played in 1883 as the Home Nations Championship among the four Home Nations of the United Kingdom – England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. However, England was excluded from the 1888 and 1889 tournaments due to their refusal to join the International Rugby Football Board. The tournament then became the Five Nations Championship in 1910 with the addition of France. The tournament was expanded in 2000 to become the Six Nations Championship with the addition of Italy.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: Following the relative success of the Tier 2 nations in the 2015 Rugby World Cup, there were calls by Octavian Morariu, the president of Rugby Europe, to let Georgia and Romania join the Six Nations due to their consistent success in the European Nations Cup and ability to compete in the Rugby World Cup.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: The tournament begins on the first weekend in February and culminates on the second or third Saturday in March. Each team plays every other team once (a total of 15 matches), with home ground advantage alternating from one year to the next. Before the 2017 tournament, two points were awarded for a win, one for a draw and none for a loss. Unlike many other rugby union competitions, a bonus point system had not previously been used.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: A bonus point system was first used in the 2017 Championship. The system is similar to the one used in most rugby championships (0 points for a loss, 2 for a draw, 4 for a win, 1 for scoring four or more tries in a match, and 1 for losing by 7 points or fewer). The only difference is that a team that wins all their games (a Grand Slam) are automatically awarded 3 extra points - to ensure they cannot be overtaken by a defeated team on bonus points.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: Before 1994, teams equal on match points shared the championship. Since then, ties have been broken by considering the points difference (total points scored minus total points conceded) of the teams. The rules of the championship further provide that if teams tie on both match points and points difference, the team that scored the most tries wins the championship. Were this decider to be a tie, the tying teams would share the championship. To date, however, match points and points difference have been sufficient to decide the championship.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: The Wooden Spoon is a metaphorical award given to the team that finishes in last place, or alternatively by a team that loses all of its games in a championship. Since the inaugural Six Nations tournament in 2000, only England and Ireland have avoided finishing last. Italy have finished last 15 times in the Six Nations era, and have lost every match 11 times.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: The winners of the Six Nations are presented with the Championship Trophy. This was originally conceived by the Earl of Westmorland, and was first presented to the winners of the 1993 championship, France. It is a sterling silver trophy, designed by James Brent-Ward and made by a team of eight silversmiths from the London firm William Comyns.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: It has 15 side panels representing the 15 members of the team and with three handles to represent the three officials (referee and two touch judges). The cup has a capacity of 3.75 litres – sufficient for five bottles of champagne. Within the mahogany base is a concealed drawer which contains six alternative finials, each a silver replica of one of the team emblems, which can be screwed on the detachable lid.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: The new trophy was designed and crafted by Thomas Lyte silversmiths and replaces the 1993 edition, which is being retired as it represented the nations that took part in the Five Nations Championship. Ireland were the last team to win the old trophy and the first team to win the new one.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: The Triple Crown may only be won by one of the Home Nations of England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales, when one nation wins all three of their matches against the others. The Triple Crown dates back to the original Home Nations Championship, but the physical Triple Crown Trophy has been awarded only since 2006, when the Royal Bank of Scotland (the primary sponsor of the competition) commissioned Hamilton & Inches to design and create a dedicated Triple Crown Trophy. It has since been won four times by Ireland and Wales, and three times by England.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: Several individual competitions take place under the umbrella of the tournament. Some of these trophies are also awarded for other matches between the two teams outside the Six Nations.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: The opening of Aviva Stadium in May 2010 ended the arrangement with the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) that allowed the all-Ireland governing body for rugby union, the Irish Rugby Football Union, to use the GAA's flagship stadium, Croke Park, for its international matches. This arrangement was made necessary by the 2007 closure and subsequent demolition of Ireland's traditional home at Lansdowne Road; Aviva Stadium was built on the former Lansdowne Road site. During this construction, Croke Park was the largest of the Six Nations grounds, with a capacity of 82,300.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: In 2012 Italy moved their home games from the 32,000 seat Stadio Flaminio, to Stadio Olimpico, also in Rome, with a capacity of 72,000.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: The French Rugby Federation (FFR) had planned to build a new stadium of its own, seating 82,000 in the southern suburbs of Paris, because of frustrations with their tenancy of Stade de France. However the project was cancelled in December 2016. France played their 2018 match against Italy at Stade Vélodrome in Marseille.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: In 2020, Wales played their final game at Parc y Scarlets in Llanelli due to the Millennium Stadium being used as Dragon's Heart Hospital in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: Ronan O'Gara of Ireland holds the career scoring record with 557 points. England's Jonny Wilkinson currently holds the records for individual points in one match (35 points against Italy in 2001) and one season with 89 (scored in 2001).


title: Six Nations Championship

text: The record for tries in a match is held by Scotsman George Lindsay who scored five tries against Wales in 1887. England's Cyril Lowe and Scotland's Ian Smith jointly hold the record for tries in one season with 8 (Lowe in 1914, Smith in 1925). Ireland's Brian O'Driscoll has the Championship record for tries with 26.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: The record for appearances is held by Sergio Parisse of Italy, with 69 appearances, since his Six Nations debut in 2004.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: The most points scored by a team in one match was 80 points, scored by England against Italy in 2001. England also scored the most ever points in a season in 2001 with 229, and most tries in a season with 29. Wales hold the record for fewest tries conceded during a season in the Six Nations era, conceding only 2 in 5 games in 2008, but the 1977 Grand Slam-winning France team did not concede a try in their four matches. Wales hold the record for the longest time without conceding a try, at 358 minutes in the 2013 tournament.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: The Championship is run from headquarters in Dublin, Ireland by Six Nations Rugby Ltd. Benjamin Morel became the CEO of the Six Nations Championship as of 5 November 2018, replacing John Feehan, who stepped down on 20 April 2018.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: The BBC has long covered the tournament in the United Kingdom, broadcasting all matches apart from England home matches between 1997 and 2002, which were shown live by Sky Sports with highlights on the BBC. In addition, Welsh language coverage of broadcasts matches featuring the Welsh team shown by the BBC are shown on S4C in Wales in the United Kingdom. Between 2003 and 2015, the BBC covered every match live on BBC Sport either on BBC One or BBC Two with highlights also on the BBC Sport website and either on the BBC Red Button or late at night on BBC Two. In 2011, it was announced that the BBC's coverage of the tournament on TV, radio and online would be extended to 2017.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: On 9 July 2015, in reaction to bids by Sky for the rights beginning in 2018, the BBC ended its contract two seasons early, and renegotiated a joint contract with ITV Sport for rights to the Six Nations from 2016 through 2021. ITV acquired rights to England, Ireland and Italy home matches, while the BBC retained rights to France, Scotland and Wales home matches. By ending its contract early, the BBC saved around £30 million, while the new contract generated £20 million in additional revenue for the Six Nations.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: With the end of the contract nearing, speculation once again emerged in 2020 that Sky was pursuing rights to the Six Nations from 2022 onward; under the Ofcom "listed events" rules, rights to the tournament can be held by a pay television channel if delayed broadcasts or highlights are made available on free-to-air television. It was reported that the bid for CVC Equity Partners to purchase a stake in the Six Nations was being hindered by a desire for a more lucrative broadcast contract; a call for the Six Nations to be moved to Category A (which requires live coverage to air free-to-air) was rejected. In May 2021, the BBC and ITV renewed their contracts through 2025. The BBC will continue to broadcast home matches from Scotland and Wales and all women's and under-20s matches, with ITV airing England, France, Ireland and Italy home matches.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: In Ireland, RTÉ have broadcast the championship since RTÉ's inception and continued to do so until 2017, while TG4 televised highlights. However, in late 2015 RTÉ's free-to-air rival TV3 was awarded the rights for every game from the Six Nations on Irish television from 2018 to 2021. In 2022 it was announced that RTÉ and Virgin Media would share broadcasting rights.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: Until 1998, the Championship had no title sponsor. Sponsorship rights were sold to Lloyds TSB Group for the 1999 tournament and the competition was titled the Lloyds TSB 5 Nations and Lloyds TSB 6 Nations until 2002.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: The Royal Bank of Scotland Group took over sponsorship from 2003 until 2017, with the competition being branded the RBS 6 Nations. A new title sponsor was sought for the 2018 tournament and beyond. However, after struggling to find a new sponsor, organisers agreed a one-year extension at a reduced rate. As the RBS brand was being phased out, the tournament was named after the NatWest banking subsidiary, becoming the NatWest 6 Nations.


title: Six Nations Championship

text: On 7 December 2018, Guinness was announced as the Championship's new title sponsor, with the competition to be named the Guinness Six Nations from 2019 to 2024. Due to the "Loi Évin" laws which prohibit alcohol sponsorship in sport, "Guinness" cannot be used as part of the branding of the tournament in France. The French-language logo for the tournament replaces the Guinness logo with the word "Greatness" in the same color and typeface as the Guinness wordmark.


title: Angry Birds

text: Angry Birds is a Finnish action-based media franchise created by Rovio Entertainment. The game series focuses on the eponymous flock of angry birds who try to save their eggs from green-colored pigs. Inspired by the game "Crush the Castle", the game has been praised for its successful combination of fun gameplay, comical style, and low price. Its popularity led to many spin-offs; versions of "Angry Birds" created for PCs and video game consoles, a market for merchandise featuring its characters, "Angry Birds Toons", a televised animated series, and two films; "The Angry Birds Movie" and its sequel "The Angry Birds Movie 2". By January 2014, there had been over 2 billion downloads across all platforms, including both regular and special editions.


title: Angry Birds

text: By July 2015, the series' games had been downloaded more than 3 billion times collectively, making it the most downloaded freemium game series of all time. The original "Angry Birds" has been called "One of the most mainstream games out right now", "One of the great runaway hits of 2010", and "The largest mobile app success the world has seen so far". The first main-series video game sequel, "Angry Birds 2", was released on 30 July 2015.


title: Angry Birds

text: The first game in the series was initially released on 11 December 2009 for iOS. At the time, the 2009 swine flu epidemic was in the news, so the staff decided to use pigs as the enemies of the Angry Birds. The company released ports of the game to other touchscreen smartphone operating systems, including Android. In early 2019, all remaining "Angry Birds" games released before October 2014 (with the exception of "Friends") were discontinued and removed from app stores, though "Bad Piggies" was added back in early 2020. Rovio has declined to explain their reasoning behind the decision apart from a brief tweet and support response, both giving different answers. However in June 2021, by popular demand of the fans, Rovio announced that the classic games will be available on the stores again sometime in the future. A recreated version of the original "Angry Birds" game known as "Rovio Classics: Angry Birds" came to mobile platforms on March 31, 2022.


title: Angry Birds

text: These games were soft-launched in select countries but were discontinued after a few months of its release. Some of them never made a release.


title: Angry Birds

text: From 2011 to 17, Angry Birds has collaborated with many other companies and released variations of the game in the respective companies' theme. Most of them were Flash-based. All of the games featured exclusive levels and elements that aid in promotion.


title: Angry Birds

text: This features Angry Birds and Bad Piggies as playable characters or exclusive rewards featuring them, along with some miscellaneous references to the franchise.


title: Angry Birds

text: Rovio is investigating ways to expand the "Angry Birds" brand, including merchandise, television shows and movies. Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio Mobile, has envisioned a feature film in the stop-motion animation style of Aardman Animations. To that end, Rovio has purchased a Helsinki-based animation studio to prepare "Angry Birds" short cartoons on the Nicktoons station's Nickelodeon Extra, the first of which was a Christmas special named "Wreck the Halls" that debuted in December 2011. Hed acknowledges that such a film would be years away, and that Rovio must keep the characters relevant until then, by producing sequels or new ports of the original game.


title: Angry Birds

text: "Angry Birds Toons", a TV series based on the game, made its debut on 16 March 2013. "Angry Birds Toons" is released through third-party video distribution platforms, including Comcast's Xfinity On-Demand in the US, Samsung Smart TVs, and Roku set-top boxes. It is also available in a number of countries on traditional television broadcasts. "Angry Birds Toons" is available on mobile devices by an additional "Angry Birds Toons" channel on all of the "Angry Birds" apps homescreens. DVD version for the TV series was released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The series has a total of 3 seasons.


title: Angry Birds

text: On 11 April 2014, Rovio released "Piggy Tales", a stop motion animated series. It tells the stories of the Minion Pigs' life.


title: Angry Birds

text: On 1 November 2014, Rovio released "Angry Birds Stella", a 2D/3D animated series, telling the stories of Stella's life and that of her friends on their own island.


title: Angry Birds

text: On 3 July 2015, Rovio released the "Rocket Science Show", an educational live-action-animated series, the NASA tell viewers facts about planets in the Solar System.


title: Angry Birds

text: On 12 July 2015, "Real Angry Birds", inspired by the game "Angry Birds", premiered on "Nat Geo Wild".


title: Angry Birds

text: In 2016, Rovio released "Fun Game Coding", another educational live-action-animated series, containing insightful instructions from tech-savvy Rovio employees.


title: Angry Birds

text: On 10 March 2017, Rovio released "Angry Birds Blues", a computer-animated series based on "The Angry Birds Movie". It shows the lives of the Blues having fun, while the Hatchlings were doing random stuff and ruining their plans.


title: Angry Birds

text: On 3 July 2017, Netflix and KidsClick picked up every "Angry Birds Toons", "Angry Birds Stella", and "Piggy Tales" episode in the form of 23 compilations.


title: Angry Birds

text: On 1 June 2018, U.S. television production company Big Fish Entertainment announced that they would be partnering with Rovio to create a game show based on "Angry Birds" currently called "Angry Birds Challenge".


title: Angry Birds

text: On 9 June 2018, a series titled "Angry Birds BirLd Cup" was released on YouTube. It follows two teams (Team Red & Team Chuck) of rambunctious kids ready to put their soccer skills to the test. With Everton stars Wayne Rooney, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Tom Davies, and Cenk Tosun on hand to lend their expertise and officiate the competition, the two teams will go head to head in a series of soccer-centric challenges to earn points. The team that scores the most points will claim the illustrious BirLd Cup, and BirLdwide acclaim.


title: Angry Birds

text: On 17 November 2018, a series titled "Angry Birds on the Run" was released on YouTube. The series focuses on the birds being sent to the real world on a girl's phone causing mayhem while the pigs are looking for them.


title: Angry Birds

text: In late 2018, Rovio announced that a new, long-form "Angry Birds" television series titled "" is in production and was originally set for release in 2021 on Netflix. It was pushed and was released in January 2022. It focuses on Red, Stella, Bomb, and Chuck as teenagers in summer camp causing mayhem with their teacher being the Mighty Eagle.


title: Angry Birds

text: On 1 June 2019, a series titled "Angry Birds MakerSpace" was released on YouTube. It features the birds and pigs working together in a shared workspace.


title: Angry Birds

text: On 18 January 2020, a series titled "Angry Birds Slingshot Stories" was released on YouTube. It features structures from the original "Angry Birds" game and shows the birds and pigs' life outside the levels.


title: Angry Birds

text: On 31 August 2020, a new series titled "Angry Birds Bubble Trouble" was released on Amazon Freetime Unlimited and YouTube. It shows Red, Chuck, Bomb, Silver, and Stella in their "Dream Blast" designs having fun and dreaming.


title: Angry Birds

text: A 3D computer-animated film adaptation, "The Angry Birds Movie", was released on May 20, 2016 which fully anthropomorphizes the characters for the first time in franchise history, giving them limbs and voices. Developed, produced and financed by Rovio Entertainment, it is animated by Sony Pictures Imageworks and distributed worldwide by Sony Pictures Entertainment under their Columbia Pictures banner. It is directed by animation veterans Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reilly in their directorial debut. Jon Vitti wrote the film's screenplay, and John Cohen and Catherine Winder served as the producers. Rovio also hired David Maisel, former executive producer of Marvel Studios films such as "Iron Man", to be the executive producer of its feature-length films.


title: Angry Birds

text: A sequel, "The Angry Birds Movie 2" was released on August 13, 2019 which was co-produced by both Rovio Animation and Sony Pictures Animation. Directed by the creator of "The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack", Thurop Van Orman, the sequel breaks from the series' source material by having the Birds and Pigs ending their rivalry to form an alliance to battle a larger threat, as well as becoming one of the most critically well-received video game film adaptations ever made, garnering an unprecedented score of 73% from Rotten Tomatoes.


title: Angry Birds

text: There have been several toys made from "Angry Birds" characters. The game's official website offers plush versions of the birds and pigs for sale, along with T-shirts featuring the game's logo and characters. In May 2011, Mattel released an "Angry Birds" board game, titled "Angry Birds: Knock on Wood". Over 10 million "Angry Birds" toys have been sold thus far. Rovio opened the first official "Angry Birds" retail store in Helsinki on 11 November 2011 at 11:11 a.m. local time. It expects to open its next retail store somewhere in China, considered the game's fastest-growing market. Merchandise has been successful, with 45% of Rovio's revenues in 2012 coming from branded merchandise.


title: Angry Birds

text: The most notable toys are the Telepods, created by Hasbro. These figures are created for "Angry Birds Star Wars II", "Angry Birds Go!", Angry Birds "Stella", and Angry Birds "Transformers". Telepods use a similar digital toy hybrid concept as Skylanders or Disney Infinity characters, but there is a different technology behind it. These are figures used to "teleport" a character of the corresponding figure into the game by scanning a tiny QR code via the device's camera. The Telepod platform technology was invented by ReToy, a bMuse company, in partnership with Hasbro. Telepods figures are not only for this use, but can also be used with the toy set that comes with the toy, like other Angry Birds board games.


title: Angry Birds

text: One of the 2012 New Models for Hot Wheels cars from Mattel is based on the Red, Blue, and Yellow Birds from "Angry Birds". The package card bears both the Hot Wheels and Angry Birds logo.


title: Angry Birds

text: On 2011, Rovio published a cookbook titled "Bad Piggies: Egg Recipes", along with doodle books based on some characters of the game. After a few weeks of the release of Angry Birds Space, they also released Angry Birds Space books about numbers, alphabets, and stickers.


title: Angry Birds

text: On 20 March 2012, "National Geographic" published a paperback book titled "Angry Birds Space: A Furious Flight Into The Final Frontier" shortly before the release of "Angry Birds Space" which became available on 22 March 2012. National Geographic also has a book titled "Angry Birds Feathered Fun" for learning all about birds.


title: Angry Birds

text: In the same year, Rovio created a contest with the prize "Angry Birds: Hatching a Universe", a book about the franchise and all the characters. It was released for sale by Titan Books on May 24, 2013; And again by Insight Editions on June 4, 2013. The book was written by Danny Gordon with a foreword by Mikael Hed.


title: Angry Birds

text: As of 10 March 2014, IDW Publishing announced that they will be publishing Angry Birds Comics starting in June 2014, with Paul Tobin being the writer.


title: Angry Birds

text: In the summer of 2017, GoComics announced that it will be running a comic strip series based on the world of "The Angry Birds Movie", with each issue available to view on its website. The strip ran for over a year, from 3 August 2017 to 20 September 2018.


title: Angry Birds

text: In early 2012, Olvi started to manufacture Angry Birds soft drinks, after licensing with Rovio with two different tastes: "Tropic" (tropical fruits) and "Paradise" (pineapple-mandarin). In September 2012 Olvi released two new tastes to the soft drink collection: "Lagoon" (pear-apple) and "Space Comet" (orange-cola).


title: Angry Birds

text: The game's characters have been used, officially or otherwise, in amusement park attractions. In September 2011, the Window of the World theme park in Changsha, China opened an unlicensed "Angry Birds" attraction. Visitors to the park use a large slingshot to launch stuffed versions of the bird characters at green balloons that represent the pigs.


title: Angry Birds

text: Upon learning of the attraction, Rovio Entertainment was reported to be considering working with the theme park to officially license it. In March 2012, Rovio announced plans for an official "Angry Birds" Land, that opened on 28 April 2012, at the Särkänniemi adventure park in Finland. Angry Birds Land opened in May 2014 at Johor Bahru City Centre in Malaysia.


title: Angry Birds

text: The first Angry Birds themed park in the UK was created in Sundown Adventureland, in the Nottinghamshire countryside.


title: Angry Birds

text: It was announced that UK theme park Thorpe Park would open their own Angry Birds Land themed area within the park in May 2014, with a "4D Cinema" showing a 10-minute Angry Birds film with 4D effects, Angry Birds Dodgems, and a slight re-theme of existing drop tower ride Detonator.


title: Angry Birds

text: Rovio opened "Activity Parks" of the game. The first one opened in Lightwater Valley, England, with dance floors, playgrounds that include slides, and touchscreen devices for visitors to play Angry Birds. The attraction also opened in Vuokatti, Finland, with obstacle courses and races, and a separate "Angry Birds Town" with kids' cars.


title: Angry Birds

text: In June 2013, Rovio and NASA opened the "Angry Birds Space Encounter" theme park at the Kennedy Space Center. It offers creating characters and shooting birds at pigs, as in the video game. It also opened in the Space Center Houston.


title: Angry Birds

text: Angry Birds World theme park at Doha Festival City opened in April 2019; the indoor part had opened in June 2018.


title: Angry Birds

text: Rovio opened a miniature Angry Birds golf course at American Dream Meadowlands in East Rutherford NJ USA on October 1, 2020.


title: Angry Birds

text: The first game received critical acclaim for gameplay and style, and is considered one of the greatest video games ever made.


title: Angry Birds

text: According to Metacritic. Only four games in the franchise received highly positive reviews with a score of 80% and above, while the two games received mixed reviews with a score of 60% and below.


title: Angry Birds

text: The "Angry Birds" characters have been referenced in television programs throughout the world. The Israeli comedy show "Eretz Nehederet" (in English: "a Wonderful Country"), one of the nation's most popular TV programs, satirized recent failed Israeli-Palestinian peace attempts by featuring the Angry Birds in peace negotiations with the pigs. Clips of the segment went viral, getting viewers from all around the world. The sketch received favorable coverage from a variety of independent blogs such as digitaltrends.com, hotair.com and intomobile.com, as well as from online news media agencies such as "Haaretz", "The Christian Science Monitor", "The Guardian", and MSNBC. American television hosts Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart and Daniel Tosh have referenced the game in comedy sketches on their respective series, "Conan", "The Daily Show", and "Tosh.0". In the "30 Rock" episode "Plan B", guest star Aaron Sorkin laments to Liz Lemon, "Our craft is dying while people are playing "Angry Birds" and poking each other on Facebook". He then provides a tip for Liz to improve her score in the game. In February 2011, American journalist Jake Tapper mockingly introduced U.S. Senator Chris Coons as the "Angry Birds champion of the Senate" during the National Press Club's annual dinner. Some of the game's more notable fans include ex-Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom, who plays the iPad version of the game, and author Salman Rushdie, who claims he is "something of a master at "Angry Birds"". Basketball star Kevin Durant is an avid fan of "Angry Birds", and regularly plays other NBA stars in matches, although he is wary of cheating. In August 2011, the Milwaukee Brewers played the "Angry Birds" theme song during the pre-game introductions of the arch-rival St. Louis Cardinals players, in reference to former Cardinals' manager Tony LaRussa's propensity to bean opposing players. "Angry Birds" also appears briefly, for comic relief, during a scene in the 2013 film "", in which Zartan plays the game while waiting for the world leaders' response to his threats of annihilation. Angry Birds were featured in the 2013 Helsinki episode of "Veep". "Angry Birds" was referenced in the film "The Starving Games", a parody of "The Hunger Games". A group in the Indian show "Dance+" have done a dance based on Angry Birds.. "Angry Birds" was referenced in the "Family Guy" episode "Turban Cowboy" where one failed skydiving attempt by Peter results in him landing in a level. The TV show "Robot Chicken" also parodied "Angry Birds" in one sketch.


title: Angry Birds

text: "Angry Birds" and its characters have been featured in advertisements for other products. In March 2011, the characters began appearing in a series of advertisements for Microsoft's Bing search engine. At the 2011 South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, Nokia used scrims on a downtown building to project an advertisement for its new N8 handset that included the game's characters. A June 2011 T-Mobile advertisement filmed in Barcelona, Spain included a real-life mock-up of the game in a city plaza, while Nokia used the game in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to promote an attempt to set a world record for the largest number of people playing a single mobile game. Finnair has also used Angry Birds in their advertising, including taping an Airbus A340 airliner with the Angry Birds figures and holding an Angry Birds tournament on board a flight to Singapore. Rovio has also prepared a number of web-based promotional variants of "Angry Birds" themed around creations of other companies, such as Finnish snack company Fazer, Spanish pizza delivery chain Telepizza, and Japanese television network Fuji TV, as well as promotions of American brands including Cheetos, Wonderful Pistachios and Coca-Cola. In November 2013, Indian brand Parle started a marketing campaign in which a trading card is included in each packet of Parle's Wafers and it included a related contest to win Angry Birds merchandise. In February 2016, Cadbury India had Angry Birds small figurines or tattoos in Cadbury Gems packs or Surprise balls. In June 2016, Kurkure India started an offer to win daily themed prizes and a trip to Angry Birds Activity Park in Malaysia.


title: Angry Birds

text: Finnish Formula One driver Heikki Kovalainen used an Angry Birds-themed helmet in the 2012 season, following a sponsorship deal with Rovio. Angry Birds also sponsored the Lotus F1 Team that year, with its logo on the top of each Lotus Renault F1 car's nosecone. As part of the deal, fellow Finn Kimi Räikkönen ran an Angry Birds 'Space' logo on his branded caps.


title: Angry Birds

text: Hockey Bird, an angry hockey playing bird, was the official mascot of the 2012 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championships. It was designed by Toni Kysenius and Rovio Entertainment.


title: Angry Birds

text: Premier League association football club Everton F.C. signed a deal with Rovio in 2017, whereby the Angry Birds logo appears on the club shirt's left sleeve beginning from the 2017–18 Premier League campaign.


title: Angry Birds

text: The game's popularity has spawned knock-off and parody games that utilize the same basic mechanics as "Angry Birds". For example, "Angry Turds" features monkeys hurling feces and other objects at hunters who have stolen their babies. Another game, titled "Chicks'n'Vixens" and released in beta form on Windows Phone devices, replaces the birds and pigs with chickens and foxes, respectively. The developer of "Chicks'n'Vixens" intended the game as a challenge to Rovio Mobile, which stated at the time that a Windows Phone port of "Angry Birds" would not be ready until later in 2011. The "Angry Birds" theme song ("Balkan Blast Remix") and its characters appear in "Just Dance 2016".


title: Angry Birds

text: "Angry Birds" has inspired works of religious analogy. A five-part essay titled "Angry Birds Yoga — How to Eliminate the Green Pigs in Your Life" was written by Giridhari Dasa of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness of Brazil, utilizing the characters and gameplay mechanics to explain various concepts of yoga in Gaudiya Vaishnavism as understood and interpreted by the Hare Krishna. The piece attracted much media attention, in Brazil and abroad, for its unique method of philosophico-religious presentation. The piece was also recognized and appreciated by Rovio Mobile's Peter Vesterbacka, who was prompted to comment on Twitter, "Very cool! I can see Angry Birds Yoga becoming a worldwide craze;-)".


title: Angry Birds

text: Rovio also launched the Angry Birds Playground in partnership with University of Helsinki. Based on the Finnish national curriculum the program covers maths, science, music, language, arts & crafts, physical education and social interaction. Focused on preschoolers of kindergarten age, the program introduced interactive learning material including books, posters, games and digital content. In 2015, a spin-off from the Rovio Angry Birds Playground was established as Fun Academy by co-founder and CEO Sanna Lukander, former Rovio's vice president of learning and book publishing, and co-founder , former Rovio's ‘Mighty Eagle’. Fun Academy is currently present in 9 countries across the world.


title: Angry Birds

text: In January 2014, it was revealed that "Angry Birds" was considered a "leaky app" and was used to collect data about its users including their sexual orientation and location by the National Security Agency (NSA) and GCHQ. In retaliation, anti-NSA hackers defaced Rovio's website. Claims were made by Edward Snowden that the app was "leaky" and that they were capable of siphoning data.


title: Angry Birds

text: According to "The Register", the information was leaked through the in-game advertisement code like that embedded by Millennial Media: "Millennial's tracking software generates a personal record for each user that can store information from their political affiliation and sexual orientation to whether their marital state was single, married, divorced, engaged or 'swinger'. This information is used to target in-app ads more effectively, and can be collected by UK and US intelligence agencies for analysis". In a statement to the press, Rovio denied that they were providing any information to the intelligence agencies, but did not exclude the possibility that their advertisers might do so.


title: Angry Birds

text: Following this revelation, on 29 January, the Angry Birds site was defaced by hackers who replaced it with "Spying Birds" via a DNS hijacking attack. According to Rovio, "The defacement was caught in minutes and corrected immediately". The Syrian Electronic Army tweeted after the incident that the attack had been carried out by "a friend" of theirs.


title: Classical Greece

text: Classical Greece was a period of around 200 years (the 5th and 4th centuries BC) in Ancient Greece, marked by much of the eastern Aegean and northern regions of Greek culture (such as Ionia and Macedonia) gaining increased autonomy from the Persian Empire; the peak flourishing of democratic Athens; the First and Second Peloponnesian Wars; the Spartan and then Theban hegemonies; and the expansion of Macedonia under Philip II. Much of the early defining politics, artistic thought (architecture, sculpture), scientific thought, theatre, literature and philosophy of Western civilization derives from this period of Greek history, which had a powerful influence on the later Roman Empire. The Classical era ended after Philip II's unification of most of the Greek world against the common enemy of the Persian Empire, which was conquered within 13 years during the wars of Alexander the Great, Philip's son.


title: Classical Greece

text: In the context of the art, architecture, and culture of Ancient Greece, the Classical period corresponds to most of the 5th and 4th centuries BC (the most common dates being the fall of the last Athenian tyrant in 510 BC to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC). The Classical period in this sense follows the Greek Dark Ages and Archaic period and is in turn succeeded by the Hellenistic period.


title: Classical Greece

text: This century is essentially studied from the Athenian outlook because Athens has left us more narratives, plays, and other written works than any of the other ancient Greek states. From the perspective of Athenian culture in Classical Greece, the period generally referred to as the 5th century BC extends slightly into the 6th century BC. In this context, one might consider that the first significant event of this century occurs in 508 BC, with the fall of the last Athenian tyrant and Cleisthenes' reforms. However, a broader view of the whole Greek world might place its beginning at the Ionian Revolt of 500 BC, the event that provoked the Persian invasion of 492 BC. The Persians were defeated in 490 BC. A second Persian attempt, in 481–479 BC, failed as well, despite having overrun much of modern-day Greece (north of the Isthmus of Corinth) at a crucial point during the war following the Battle of Thermopylae and the Battle of Artemisium. The Delian League then formed, under Athenian hegemony and as Athens' instrument. Athens' successes caused several revolts among the allied cities, all of which were put down by force, but Athenian dynamism finally awoke Sparta and brought about the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC. After both forces were spent, a brief peace came about; then the war resumed to Sparta's advantage. Athens was definitively defeated in 404 BC, and internal Athenian agitations mark the end of the 5th century BC in Greece.


title: Classical Greece

text: Since its beginning, Sparta had been ruled by a diarchy. This meant that Sparta had two kings ruling concurrently throughout its entire history. The two kingships were both hereditary, vested in the Agiad dynasty and the Eurypontid dynasty. According to legend, the respective hereditary lines of these two dynasties sprang from Eurysthenes and Procles, twin descendants of Hercules. They were said to have conquered Sparta two generations after the Trojan War.


title: Classical Greece

text: In 510 BC, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow their king, the tyrant Hippias, son of Peisistratos. Cleomenes I, king of Sparta, put in place a pro-Spartan oligarchy headed by Isagoras. But his rival Cleisthenes, with the support of the middle class and aided by pro-democracy citizens, took over. Cleomenes intervened in 508 and 506 BC, but could not stop Cleisthenes, now supported by the Athenians. Through Cleisthenes' reforms, the people endowed their city with isonomic institutions—equal rights for all citizens (though only men were citizens)—and established ostracism.


title: Classical Greece

text: The isonomic and isegoric (equal freedom of speech) democracy was first organized into about 130 "demes", which became the basic civic element. The 10,000 citizens exercised their power as members of the assembly (ἐκκλησία, "ekklesia"), headed by a council of 500 citizens chosen at random.


title: Classical Greece

text: The city's administrative geography was reworked, in order to create mixed political groups: not federated by local interests linked to the sea, to the city, or to farming, whose decisions (e.g. a declaration of war) would depend on their geographical position. The territory of the city was also divided into thirty "trittyes" as follows:


title: Classical Greece

text: A tribe consisted of three trittyes, selected at random, one from each of the three groups. Each tribe therefore always acted in the interest of all three sectors.


title: Classical Greece

text: It was this corpus of reforms that allowed the emergence of a wider democracy in the 460s and 450s BC.


title: Classical Greece

text: In Ionia (the modern Aegean coast of Turkey), the Greek cities, which included great centres such as Miletus and Halicarnassus, were unable to maintain their independence and came under the rule of the Persian Empire in the mid-6th century BC. In 499 BC that region's Greeks rose in the Ionian Revolt, and Athens and some other Greek cities sent aid, but were quickly forced to back down after defeat in 494 BC at the Battle of Lade. Asia Minor returned to Persian control.


title: Classical Greece

text: In 492 BC, the Persian general Mardonius led a campaign through Thrace and Macedonia. He was victorious and again subjugated the former and conquered the latter, but he was wounded and forced to retreat back into Asia Minor. In addition, a fleet of around 1,200 ships that accompanied Mardonius on the expedition was wrecked by a storm off the coast of Mount Athos. Later, the generals Artaphernes and Datis led a successful naval expedition against the Aegean islands.


title: Classical Greece

text: In 490 BC, Darius the Great, having suppressed the Ionian cities, sent a Persian fleet to punish the Greeks. (Historians are uncertain about their number of men; accounts vary from 18,000 to 100,000.) They landed in Attica intending to take Athens, but were defeated at the Battle of Marathon by a Greek army of 9,000 Athenian hoplites and 1,000 Plataeans led by the Athenian general Miltiades. The Persian fleet continued to Athens but, seeing it garrisoned, decided not to attempt an assault.


title: Classical Greece

text: In 480 BC, Darius' successor Xerxes I sent a much more powerful force of 300,000 by land, with 1,207 ships in support, across a double pontoon bridge over the Hellespont. This army took Thrace, before descending on Thessaly and Boeotia, whilst the Persian navy skirted the coast and resupplied the ground troops. The Greek fleet, meanwhile, dashed to block Cape Artemision. After being delayed by Leonidas I, the Spartan king of the Agiad Dynasty, at the Battle of Thermopylae (a battle made famous by the 300 Spartans who faced the entire Persian army), Xerxes advanced into Attica, and captured and burned Athens. The subsequent Battle of Artemisium resulted in the capture of Euboea, bringing most of mainland Greece north of the Isthmus of Corinth under Persian control. However, the Athenians had evacuated the city of Athens by sea before Thermopylae, and under the command of Themistocles, they defeated the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis.


title: Classical Greece

text: In 483 BC, during the period of peace between the two Persian invasions, a vein of silver ore had been discovered in the Laurion (a small mountain range near Athens), and the hundreds of talents mined there were used to build 200 warships to combat Aeginetan piracy. A year later, the Greeks, under the Spartan Pausanias, defeated the Persian army at Plataea. The Persians then began to withdraw from Greece, and never attempted an invasion again.


title: Classical Greece

text: The Athenian fleet then turned to chasing the Persians from the Aegean Sea, defeating their fleet decisively in the Battle of Mycale; then in 478 BC the fleet captured Byzantium. At that time Athens enrolled all the island states and some mainland ones into an alliance called the Delian League, so named because its treasury was kept on the sacred island of Delos. The Spartans, although they had taken part in the war, withdrew into isolation afterwards, allowing Athens to establish unchallenged naval and commercial power.


title: Classical Greece

text: In 431 BC war broke out between Athens and Sparta. The war was a struggle not merely between two city-states but rather between two coalitions, or leagues of city-states: the Delian League, led by Athens, and the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta.