title: Heptarchy

text: The other main kingdoms, which were conquered by others entirely at some point in their history, before the unification of England, are:


title: Tropic of Capricorn

text: The Tropic of Capricorn (or the Southern Tropic) is the circle of latitude that contains the subsolar point at the December (or southern) solstice. It is thus the southernmost latitude where the Sun can be seen directly overhead. It also reaches 90 degrees below the horizon at solar midnight on the June Solstice. Its northern equivalent is the Tropic of Cancer.


title: Tropic of Capricorn

text: The Tropic of Capricorn is one of the five major circles of latitude marked on maps of Earth. Its latitude is currently south of the Equator, but it is very gradually moving northward, currently at the rate of 0.47 arcseconds, or 15 metres, per year.


title: Tropic of Capricorn

text: Less than 3% of the world's population lives south of it; this is equivalent to about 30% of the population of the Southern Hemisphere.


title: Tropic of Capricorn

text: When this line of latitude was named in the last centuries BC, the Sun was in the constellation Capricornus at the December solstice. This is the date each year when the Sun reaches zenith at this latitude, the southernmost latitude it reaches for the year. (Due to the precession of the equinoxes the Sun currently appears in Sagittarius at this solstice.)


title: Tropic of Capricorn

text: The Tropic of Capricorn is the dividing line between the Southern Temperate Zone to the south and the tropics to the north. The Northern Hemisphere equivalent of the Tropic of Capricorn is the Tropic of Cancer.


title: Tropic of Capricorn

text: The Tropic of Capricorn's position is not fixed, but constantly changes because of a slight wobble in the Earth's longitudinal alignment relative to its orbit around the Sun. Earth's axial tilt varies over a 41,000 year period from 22.1 to 24.5 degrees and currently resides at about 23.4 degrees. This wobble means that the Tropic of Capricorn is currently drifting northward at a rate of almost half an arcsecond (0.468″) of latitude, or 15 metres, per year (it was at exactly 23° 27′S in 1917 and will be at 23° 26'S in 2045). Therefore, distance between Arctic Circle and Tropic of Capricorn is essentially constant moving in tandem. See under circles of latitude for information.


title: Tropic of Capricorn

text: There are approximately 10 hours, 41 minutes of daylight during the June solstice (Southern Hemisphere winter). During the December solstice (Southern Hemisphere summer), there are 13 hours, 35 minutes of daylight. The length of the Tropic of Capricorn at 23°26′11.7″S is 36,788 km (22,859 mi).


title: Tropic of Capricorn

text: In most of this belt of southern Africa, a minimum of seasonal rainfall is reliable and farming is possible, though yields struggle to compete with for example the Mississippi basin, even against like-to-like soil fertilisers. Rivers have been successfully dammed particularly flowing from relief precipitation areas (high emininences) and those from the edge of the Great Rift Valley, such as the Zambezi, well within the Tropics. This, with alluvial or enriched soil, enables substantial yield grain farming in areas with good soil. Across this large region pasture farming is widespread, where intensive, brief and rotational it helps to fertilise and stabilise the soil, preventing run-off and desertification. This approach is traditional to many tribes and promoted by government advisors such as Allan Savory, a Zimbabwean-born biologist, farmer, game rancher, politician and international consultant and co-founder of the Savory Institute. According to the United Nations University Our World dissemination he is credited with developing "holistic management" in the 1960s and has led anti-desertification efforts in Africa for decades using a counterintuitive approach to most developed economies of increasing the number of livestock on grasslands rather than fencing them off for conservation. Such practices in this area have seen success and won generous awards; he gave the keynote speech at UNCCD's Land Day in 2018, and later that year a TED (conference) address, widely re-broadcast.


title: Tropic of Capricorn

text: In Australia, areas around the Tropic have some of the world's most variable rainfall. In the east advanced plants such as flowering shrubs and eucalyptus and in most bioregions grasses have adapted to cope with means such as deep roots and little transpiration. Wetter areas, seasonally watered, are widely pasture farmed. As to animals, birds and marsupials are well-adapted. Naturally difficult arable agriculture specialises in dry fruits, nuts and modest water consumption produce. Other types are possible given reliable irrigation sources and, ideally, water-retentive enriched or alluvial soils, especially wheat; shallow irrigation sources very widely dry up in and after drought years. The multi-ridge Great Dividing Range brings relief precipitation enough to make hundreds of kilometres either side cultivable, and its rivers are widely dammed to store necessary water; this benefits the settled areas of New South Wales and Queensland.


title: Tropic of Capricorn

text: Behind the end of the green hills, away from the Pacific, which is subject to warm, negative phases of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (colloquially this is an "El Niño year/season") is a white, red and yellow landscape of 2,800 to 3,300 kilometres of rain shadow heading west in turn feature normally arid cattlelands of the Channel Country, the white Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre National Park, the mainly red Mamungari Conservation Park, then the Gibson Desert, after others the dry landscape settlement of Kalbarri on the west coast and its rest, northward. The Channel Country features an arid landscape with a series of ancient flood plains from rivers which only flow intermittently. The principal rivers are Georgina River, Cooper Creek and the Diamantina River. In most years, their waters are absorbed into the earth or evaporate, but when there is sufficient rainfall in their catchment area, these rivers flow into Lake Eyre, South Australia. One of the most significant rainfall events occurred in 2010 when a monsoonal low from ex-Cyclone Olga created a period of exceptional rainfall.


title: Tropic of Capricorn

text: El Niño adverse phases cause a shift in atmospheric circulation; rainfall becomes reduced over Indonesia and Australia, rainfall and tropical cyclone formation increases over the tropical Pacific. The low-level surface trade winds, which normally blow from east to west along the equator, either weaken or start blowing from the other direction.


title: Tropic of Capricorn

text: In South America, whilst in the continental cratons soils are almost as old as in Australia and Southern Africa, the presence of the geologically young and evolving Andes means that this region is on the western side of the subtropical anticyclones and thus receives warm and humid air from the Atlantic Ocean. As a result, areas in Brazil adjacent to the Tropic are impressively productive agricultural regions, producing large quantities of crops such as sugarcane, and the natural rainforest vegetation has been almost entirely cleared, except for a few remaining patches of Atlantic Forest. Further south in Argentina, the temperate grasslands of the Pampas region is equally influential in wheat, soybeans, maize, and beef, making the country one of the largest worldwide agricultural exporters, similar to the role played by the Prairies region in Canada.


title: Tropic of Capricorn

text: West of the Andes which creates a rain shadow air is further cooled and dried by the cold Humboldt Current which makes it very arid, creating the Atacama Desert, one of the driest in the world, so that no glaciers exist between Volcán Sajama at 18˚30'S and Cerro Tres Cruces at 27˚S. Vegetation here is almost non-existent, though on the eastern slopes of the Andes rainfall is adequate for rainfed agriculture.


title: Tropic of Capricorn

text: Starting at the Prime Meridian and heading eastwards, the Tropic of Capricorn passes through 10 countries:


title: Tropic of Capricorn

text: The following cities and landmarks are either located near the Tropic of Capricorn, or the tropic passes through them.


title: Tropic of Capricorn

text: As most of earth's land is in the Northern Hemisphere only four countries are wholly south of the Tropic of Capricorn (which contrasts with 73, about one third of the current total, wholly north of the Tropic of Cancer):


title: Anemone

text: Anemone () is a genus of flowering plants in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae. Plants of the genus are commonly called windflowers. They are native to the temperate and subtropical regions of all continents except Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica. The genus is closely related to several other genera including "Anemonoides", "Anemonastrum", "Hepatica", and "Pulsatilla". Some botanists include these genera within "Anemone".


title: Anemone

text: "Anemone" are perennials that have basal leaves with long leaf-stems that can be upright or prostrate. Leaves are simple or compound with lobed, parted, or undivided leaf blades. The leaf margins are toothed or entire.


title: Anemone

text: Flowers with 4–27 sepals are produced singly, in cymes of 2–9 flowers, or in umbels, above a cluster of leaf- or sepal-like bracts. Sepals may be any color. The pistils have one ovule. The flowers have nectaries, but petals are missing in the majority of species.


title: Anemone

text: The fruits are ovoid to obovoid shaped achenes that are collected together in a tight cluster, ending variously lengthened stalks; though many species have sessile clusters terminating the stems. The achenes are beaked and some species have feathery hairs attached to them.


title: Anemone

text: "Anemone" was named by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 and is situated in the tribe Anemoneae, subfamily Ranunculoideae, and the family Ranunculaceae. As considered in the broader sense ("sensu lato") the genus is sometimes considered to include a number of other genera, such as "Anemonoides", "Anemonastrum", "Hepatica", "Pulsatilla", "Knowltonia", "Barneoudia", and "Oreithales". Several of these were included as separate genera within Anemoneae by Wang "et al.", a tribe with six genera in total.


title: Anemone

text: Early molecular analyses divided the genus into two subgenera ("Anemonidium" and "Anemone"), with seven sections, and 12 informal subsections. Ziman and colleagues (2008) treated the genus "Anemone" as 5 subgenera, 23 sections, 4 subsections, 23 series and about 118 species. A further reclassification by Hoot and colleagues (2012) estimated 200 species.


title: Anemone

text: Hoot et al. found many of the previously defined subdivisions, based on morphological characteristics were polyphyletic or paraphyletic. In contrast two clearly defined monophyletic clades emerged corresponding to the above two subgenera. "Anemonidium" demonstrated four subclades, corresponding to sections. The larger subgenus "Anemone" showed a similar pattern.


title: Anemone

text: Hoot et al. proposed the following two subgenera and several sections be retained, with a number of subsections and series:


title: Anemone

text: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Greek () means 'daughter of the wind', from (, 'wind') + feminine patronymic suffix (, so 'daughter of'). The "Metamorphoses" of Ovid tells that the plant was created by the goddess Aphrodite when she sprinkled nectar on the blood of her dead lover Adonis, and Ovid describes the etymology as referring to the frailty of the petals that can be easily blown away by the wind. "Anemone" may also refer to Nea'man, the Phoenician name for Adonis, referring to an earlier Syrian myth of the god of vegetation, also tusked by a boar. The common name windflower is used for the entire genus.


title: Anemone

text: "Anemone" species are sometimes targeted by cutworms, the larvae of noctuid moths such as angle shades and heart and dart.


title: Anemone

text: Some of the species are grown in gardens. Their popularity varies by species and region. In addition to certain straight species being available, hybrids and cultivars are available for certain species. Certain species, such as "Anemone coronaria", are typically only available in hybrid form while others, such as "Anemonoides blanda" are nearly always sold in straight species form.


title: Anemone

text: Cultivated anemones are nearly always one of the following colors: bluish violet, white, pink, red, and hues in a range between violet and pink. There are no truly blue anemones, despite the frequent use of the label "blue" in marketing to describe blue-violet flowers (flowers that are more violet than blue). Color labelling inaccuracy in marketing is found in treatments of numerous other genera, especially as it concerns the color blue — although some popular garden flowers from the same family are actually blue, such as some selections from "Delphinium". One species of anemone, "Anemone ranunculoides", is unusual for its yellow flowers. Typically, only double-flowered forms of it are cultivated.


title: Anemone

text: The spring-flowering autumn-planted ephemeral species "Anemonoides blanda" is grown in large-scale commercial cultivation and can be purchased in bulk quantities. It is most commonly-available with a bluish violet flower (usually erroneously called "Blue Shades" despite its flower being more purple than blue) that varies from intense to pale, depending upon the individual plant and possibly soil conditions. A white-flowered form is the second-most common type. The least common of the commonly-cultivated forms is a pale pink. The violet, and especially pink, forms sometimes possess petals that fade to white near the flower center. The genus contains quite a number of other spring-flowering species. "A. hortensis" and the hybrid "A. fulgens" have less-divided leaves than some others and have rose-purple or scarlet flowers.


title: Anemone

text: Among the most well-known anemones is "A. coronaria", often called the poppy anemone. It is a tuberous-rooted plant with parsley-like divided leaves and large poppy-like blossoms on stalks of from 15–20 cm high. It can be planted in the fall in zones 7 or 8 without extra protection or in spring in cooler zones. If planted in fall it will flower in the spring and if planted in the spring it will flower in late summer. The flowers are typically scarlet, crimson, bluish purple, reddish purple, or white. There are also double-flowered varieties, in which the stamens in the centre are replaced by a tuft of narrow petals. It has been used as a garden plant, in hybrid form in particular, for a long time in some parts of the world. Double forms are named varieties. Hybrids of the de Caen and St. Brigid groups are the most prevalent on the market. In Israel, large numbers of red-flowering non-hybrid "A. coronaria" can be seen growing in certain natural areas.


title: Anemone

text: "Eriocapitella hupehensis", and its white cultivar 'Honorine Joubert', the latter especially, are well-known autumn-flowering selections. They grow well in well-drained but moisture-retentive soil and reach 60–100 cm in height, blooming continually for several weeks. "E. hupehensis", "E. vitifolia", and their hybrids and are particularly attractive to honeybees. A number of low-growing species, such as the native British "Anemonoides nemorosa" and "Anemonoides apennina", have woodlands and other shady places as their habitat. "Hepatica" species typically also grow in shade.


title: Anemone

text: Garden-cultivated anemones generally grow best in a loamy well-drained evenly-moist fertile soil, although the ephemeral "A. blanda" does not require as much moisture during the summer when it is dormant (unlike the related "Eranthis" species that can suffer if they become too dry even while dormant). Some prairie species that are rarely cultivated, such as "Anemone cylindrica", grow well in drier warmer conditions and poor soil. "A. coronaria" has been described by some professional sources as preferring acidic soil and by others as preferring alkaline soil. Hardy species may be planted in October in many zones. Unlike a hardier species such as "A. blanda", "A. coronaria" is described as hardy only as low as climate zone 7 by some sources and by others hardy only as low as zone 8. Various strategies, such as the use of protection, can be tried to plant them outdoors in fall in zone 6 but results may vary. As with other plants, some species can be readily raised from seed while some hybrids may be sterile. "A. blanda" typically blooms in mid spring. The larger anemone species typically grow well in partial shade, or in full sun provided they are shielded from the hottest sun in southern areas. A well-drained soil, enriched with compost, is typically utilized.


title: Anemone

text: If cut flowers are desired, it is best to harvest the flowers early in the morning while it is still cold outside while the bloom is still closed. To open your flowers place in room temperature water out of direct sun. "A. coronaria" blooms can be purchased from some florists, between November and June depending upon availability.


title: Anemone

text: "Anemone" has several different meanings depending on the culture and context in which the flower is being used.


title: Anemone

text: Several of the Western meanings of anemone flowers pertain to the Greek mythology of the origin of the anemone flower featuring Adonis and Aphrodite. The goddess Aphrodite kept the mortal man Adonis as a lover; when Adonis was gored by a wild boar, Aphrodite's tears at his death mixed with his blood and gave rise to the anemone. In other versions, the boar was sent by other jealous Greek gods to murder Adonis. These origin stories reflect the classical dual meanings of the arrival of spring breezes and the death of a loved one.


title: Anemone

text: In the Victorian language of flowers, the anemone represented a forsaken love of any kind, while European peasants carried them to ward off pests and disease as well as bad luck.


title: Anemone

text: In other cultures, the meanings differ. In Chinese and Egyptian cultures, the flower of anemone was considered a symbol of illness due to its coloring. The anemone can be a symbol of bad luck in Eastern cultures. The Japanese anemone may be associated with ill tidings.


title: Biscuit

text: A biscuit is a flour-based baked and shaped food product. In most countries biscuits are typically hard, flat, and unleavened. They are usually sweet and may be made with sugar, chocolate, icing, jam, ginger, or cinnamon. They can also be savoury, similar to crackers. Types of biscuit include sandwich biscuits, digestive biscuits, ginger biscuits, shortbread biscuits, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate-coated marshmallow treats, Anzac biscuits, "biscotti", and "speculaas".


title: Biscuit

text: In most of North America, nearly all hard sweet biscuits are called "cookies", while the term "biscuit" is used for a soft, leavened quick bread similar to a less sweet version of a "scone". "Biscuit" may also refer to hard flour-based baked animal feed, as with dog biscuit.


title: Biscuit

text: The modern-day difference in the English language regarding the word "biscuit" is remarked on by British cookery writer Elizabeth David in "English Bread and Yeast Cookery", in the chapter "Yeast Buns and Small Tea Cakes" and section "Soft Biscuits". She writes, It is interesting that these soft biscuits (such as scones) are common to Scotland and Guernsey, and that the term biscuit as applied to a soft product was retained in these places, and in America, whereas in England it has completely died out.


title: Biscuit

text: The Old French word "bescuit" is derived from the Latin words "bis" (twice) and "coquere", "coctus" (to cook, cooked), and, hence, means "twice-cooked". This is because biscuits were originally cooked in a twofold process: first baked, and then dried out in a slow oven. This term was then adapted into English in the 14th century during the Middle Ages, in the Middle English word "bisquite", to represent a hard, twice-baked product (see the German Zwieback). The Dutch language from around 1703 had adopted the word "koekje" ("little cake") to have a similar meaning for a similar hard, baked product. The difference between the secondary Dutch word and that of Latin origin is that, whereas the "koekje" is a cake that rises during baking, the biscuit, which has no raising agent, in general does not (see gingerbread/ginger biscuit), except for the expansion of heated air during baking. Another cognate Dutch form is beschuit, which is a circular and brittle grain product usually covered by savoury or sweet toppings and eaten at breakfast.


title: Biscuit

text: When continental Europeans began to emigrate to colonial North America, the two words and their "same but different" meanings began to clash. The words "cookie" or "cracker" became the words of choice to mean a hard, baked product. Further confusion has been added by the adoption of the word biscuit for a small leavened bread popular in the United States. According to the American English dictionary Merriam-Webster, a cookie is a "small flat or slightly raised cake". A biscuit is "any of various hard or crisp dry baked product" similar to the American English terms cracker or cookie, or "a small quick bread made from dough that has been rolled out and cut or dropped from a spoon".


title: Biscuit

text: In a number of other European languages, terms derived from the Latin "bis coctus" refer instead to yet another baked product, similar to the sponge cake; e.g. Spanish "bizcocho", German "Biskuit", Russian "бисквит" ("biskvit"), Polish "biszkopt".


title: Biscuit

text: In modern Italian usage, the term "biscotto" is used to refer to any type of hard twice-baked biscuit, and not only to the "cantuccini" as in English-speaking countries.


title: Biscuit

text: The need for nutritious, easy-to-store, easy-to-carry, and long-lasting foods on long journeys, in particular at sea, was initially solved by taking live food along with a butcher/cook. However, this took up additional space on what were either horse-powered treks or small ships, reducing the time of travel before additional food was required. This resulted in early armies' adopting the style of hunter-foraging.


title: Biscuit

text: The introduction of the baking of processed cereals including the creation of flour provided a more reliable source of food. Egyptian sailors carried a flat, brittle loaf of millet bread called "dhourra" cake while the Romans had a biscuit called "buccellum". Roman cookbook "Apicius" describes: "a thick paste of fine wheat flour was boiled and spread out on a plate. When it had dried and hardened, it was cut up and then fried until crisp, then served with honey and pepper."


title: Biscuit

text: Many early physicians believed that most medicinal problems were associated with digestion. Hence, for both sustenance and avoidance of illness, a daily consumption of a biscuit was considered good for health.


title: Biscuit

text: Hard biscuits soften as they age. To solve this problem, early bakers attempted to create the hardest biscuit possible. Because it is so hard and dry, if properly stored and transported, navies' hardtack will survive rough handling and high temperature. Baked hard, it can be kept without spoiling for years as long as it is kept dry. For long voyages, hardtack was baked four times, rather than the more common two. To soften hardtack for eating, it was often dunked in brine, coffee, or some other liquid or cooked into a skillet meal.


title: Biscuit

text: The collection "Sayings of the Desert Fathers" mentions that Anthony the Great (who lived in the 4th century AD) ate biscuits and the text implies that it was a popular food among monks of the time and region.


title: Biscuit

text: At the time of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the daily allowance on board a Royal Navy ship was one pound of biscuit plus one gallon of beer. Samuel Pepys in 1667 first regularised naval victualling with varied and nutritious rations. Royal Navy hardtack during Queen Victoria's reign was made by machine at the Royal Clarence Victualling Yard at Gosport, Hampshire, stamped with the Queen's mark and the number of the oven in which they were baked. When machinery was introduced into the process the dough was thoroughly mixed and rolled into sheets about long and wide which were stamped in one stroke into about sixty hexagonal-shaped biscuits. This left the sheets sufficiently coherent to be placed in the oven in one piece and when baked they were easy to separate. The hexagonal shape rather than traditional circular biscuits meant a saving in material and was easier to pack. Biscuits remained an important part of the Royal Navy sailor's diet until the introduction of canned foods. Canned meat was first marketed in 1814; preserved beef in tins was officially added to Royal Navy rations in 1847.


title: Biscuit

text: Early biscuits were hard, dry, and unsweetened. They were most often cooked after bread, in a cooling bakers' oven; they were a cheap form of sustenance for the poor.


title: Biscuit

text: By the 7th century AD, cooks of the Persian empire had learnt from their forebears the techniques of lightening and enriching bread-based mixtures with eggs, butter, and cream, and sweetening them with fruit and honey. One of the earliest spiced biscuits was gingerbread, in French, "pain d'épices", meaning "spice bread", brought to Europe in 992 by the Armenian monk Grégoire de Nicopolis. He left Nicopolis Pompeii, of Lesser Armenia to live in Bondaroy, France, near the town of Pithiviers. He stayed there for seven years and taught French priests and Christians how to cook gingerbread. This was originally a dense, treaclely (molasses-based) spice cake or bread. As it was so expensive to make, early ginger biscuits were a cheap form of using up the leftover bread mix.


title: Biscuit

text: With the combination of knowledge spreading from Al-Andalus, and then the Crusades and subsequent spread of the spice trade to Europe, the cooking techniques and ingredients of Arabia spread into Northern Europe. By mediaeval times, biscuits were made from a sweetened, spiced paste of breadcrumbs and then baked (e.g., gingerbread), or from cooked bread enriched with sugar and spices and then baked again. King Richard I of England (aka Richard the Lionheart) left for the Third Crusade (1189–92) with "biskit of muslin", which was a mixed corn compound of barley, rye, and bean flour.


title: Biscuit

text: As the making and quality of bread had been controlled to this point, so were the skills of biscuit-making through the craft guilds. As the supply of sugar began, and the refinement and supply of flour increased, so did the ability to sample more leisurely foodstuffs, including sweet biscuits. Early references from the Vadstena monastery show how the Swedish nuns were baking gingerbread to ease digestion in 1444. The first documented trade of gingerbread biscuits dates to the 16th century, where they were sold in monastery pharmacies and town square farmers markets. Gingerbread became widely available in the 18th century. The Industrial Revolution in Britain sparked the formation of businesses in various industries, and the British biscuit firms of McVitie's, Carr's, Huntley & Palmers, and Crawfords were all established by 1850.


title: Biscuit

text: British biscuit companies vied to dominate the market with new products and eye-catching packaging. The decorative biscuit tin, invented by Huntley & Palmers in 1831, saw British biscuits exported around the world. In 1900 Huntley & Palmers biscuits were sold in 172 countries, and their global reach was reflected in their advertising. Competition and innovation among British firms saw 49 patent applications for biscuit-making equipment, tins, dough-cutting machines and ornamental moulds between 1897 and 1900. In 1891, Cadbury filed a patent for a chocolate-coated biscuit. Along with local farm produce of meat and cheese, many regions of the world have their own distinct style of biscuit due to the historic prominence of this form of food.


title: Biscuit

text: Biscuits and loaves were introduced in Bengal during the British colonial period and became popular within the Sylheti Muslim community. However, the middle-class Hindus of Cachar and Sylhet were very suspicious of biscuits and breads as they believed they were baked by Muslims. On one occasion, a few Hindus in Cachar caught some Englishman eating biscuits with tea which caused an uproar. The information reached the Hindus of Sylhet and a little rebellion occurred. In response to this, companies started to advertise their bread as "machine-made" and "untouched by (Muslim) hand" to tell Hindus that the breads were "safe for consumption". This incident is mentioned in Bipin Chandra Pal's autobiography and he mentions how gradually culinary habits of Hindus eventually changed and biscuits and loaves became increasingly popular.


title: Biscuit

text: Most modern biscuits can trace their origins back to either the hardtack ship's biscuit or the creative art of the baker:


title: Biscuit

text: Biscuits today can be savoury or sweet, but most are small at around in diameter, and flat. The term biscuit also applies to sandwich-type biscuits, wherein a layer of "creme" or icing is sandwiched between two biscuits, such as the custard cream, or a layer of jam (as in biscuits which, in the United Kingdom, are known as "Jammie Dodgers").


title: Biscuit

text: Sweet biscuits are commonly eaten as a snack food, and are, in general, made with wheat flour or oats, and sweetened with sugar or honey. Varieties may contain chocolate, fruit, jam, nuts, ginger, or even be used to sandwich other fillings.


title: Biscuit

text: The digestive biscuit and rich tea have a strong identity in British culture as the traditional accompaniment to a cup of tea and are regularly eaten as such. Some tea drinkers dunk biscuits in tea, allowing them to absorb liquid and soften slightly before consumption. Chocolate digestives, Rich tea, and Hobnobs were ranked the UK's top three favourite dunking biscuits in 2009. In a non-dunking poll the Chocolate Hobnob was ranked first with custard creams coming third.


title: Biscuit

text: Savoury biscuits or crackers (such as cream crackers, water biscuits, oatcakes, or crisp breads) are usually plainer and commonly eaten with cheese following a meal. Many savoury biscuits also contain additional ingredients for flavour or texture, such as poppy seeds, onion or onion seeds, cheese (such as cheese melts), and olives. Savoury biscuits also usually have a dedicated section in most European supermarkets, often in the same aisle as sweet biscuits. The exception to savoury biscuits is the sweetmeal digestive known as the "Hovis biscuit", which, although slightly sweet, is still classified as a cheese biscuit. Savoury biscuits sold in supermarkets are sometimes associated with a certain geographical area, such as Scottish oatcakes or Cornish wafer biscuits.


title: Biscuit

text: In general, the British, Australians, South Africans, New Zealanders, Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Singaporeans, Nigerians, Kenyans, and the Irish use the British meaning of "biscuit" for the sweet biscuit, the terms biscuit and cookie are used interchangeably, depending on the region and the speaker, with biscuits usually referring to hard, sweet biscuits (such as digestives, Nice, Bourbon creams, etc.) and cookies for soft baked goods (i.e. chocolate chip cookies), In Canada, this term is now used less frequently, usually with imported brands of biscuits or in the Maritimes; however, the Canadian Christie Biscuits referred to what Americans would call crackers. This sense is at the root of the name of the United States' most prominent maker of cookies and crackers, the National Biscuit Company, now called Nabisco.


title: Gravitational singularity

text: A gravitational singularity, spacetime singularity or simply singularity is a condition in which gravity is so intense that spacetime itself breaks down catastrophically. As such, a singularity is by definition no longer part of the regular spacetime and cannot be determined by "where" or "when". Gravitational singularities exist at a junction between general relativity and quantum mechanics; therefore, the properties of the singularity cannot be described without an established theory of quantum gravity. Trying to find a complete and precise definition of singularities in the theory of general relativity, the current best theory of gravity, remains a difficult problem. A singularity in general relativity can be defined by the scalar invariant curvature becoming infinite or, better, by a geodesic being incomplete.


title: Gravitational singularity

text: Gravitational singularities are mainly considered in the context of general relativity, where density apparently becomes infinite at the center of a black hole, and within astrophysics and cosmology as the earliest state of the universe during the Big Bang/White Hole. Physicists are undecided whether the prediction of singularities means that they actually exist (or existed at the start of the Big Bang), or that current knowledge is insufficient to describe what happens at such extreme densities.


title: Gravitational singularity

text: General relativity predicts that any object collapsing beyond a certain point (for stars this is the Schwarzschild radius) would form a black hole, inside which a singularity (covered by an event horizon) would be formed. The Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems define a singularity to have geodesics that cannot be extended in a smooth manner. The termination of such a geodesic is considered to be the singularity.


title: Gravitational singularity

text: The initial state of the universe, at the beginning of the Big Bang, is also predicted by modern theories to have been a singularity. In this case, the universe did not collapse into a black hole, because currently-known calculations and density limits for gravitational collapse are usually based upon objects of relatively constant size, such as stars, and do not necessarily apply in the same way to rapidly expanding space such as the Big Bang. Neither general relativity nor quantum mechanics can currently describe the earliest moments of the Big Bang, but in general, quantum mechanics does not permit particles to inhabit a space smaller than their wavelengths.


title: Gravitational singularity

text: Many theories in physics have mathematical singularities of one kind or another. Equations for these physical theories predict that the ball of mass of some quantity becomes infinite or increases without limit. This is generally a sign for a missing piece in the theory, as in the ultraviolet catastrophe, re-normalization, and instability of a hydrogen atom predicted by the Larmor formula.


title: Gravitational singularity

text: In classical field theories including special relativity, but not general relativity, one can say that a solution has a singularity at a particular point in spacetime where certain physical properties become ill defined, with spacetime serving as a background field to locate the singularity. A singularity in general relativity, on the other hand, is more complex because spacetime itself becomes ill defined, and the singularity is no longer part of the regular spacetime manifold. In general relativity, a singularity cannot be defined by "where" or "when".


title: Gravitational singularity

text: Some theories, such as the theory of loop quantum gravity, suggest that singularities may not exist. This is also true for such classical unified field theories as the Einstein–Maxwell–Dirac equations. The idea can be stated in the form that due to quantum gravity effects, there is a minimum distance beyond which the force of gravity no longer continues to increase as the distance between the masses becomes shorter, or alternatively that interpenetrating particle waves mask gravitational effects that would be felt at a distance.


title: Gravitational singularity

text: There are different types of singularities, each with different physical features which have characteristics relevant to the theories from which they originally emerged, such as the different shape of the singularities, "conical and curved". They have also been hypothesized to occur without event horizons, structures which delineate one spacetime section from another in which events cannot affect past the horizon; these are called "naked."


title: Gravitational singularity

text: A conical singularity occurs when there is a point where the limit of some diffeomorphism invariant quantity does not exist or is infinite, in which case spacetime is not smooth at the point of the limit itself. Thus, spacetime looks like a cone around this point, where the singularity is located at the tip of the cone. The metric can be finite everywhere the coordinate system is used.


title: Gravitational singularity

text: Solutions to the equations of general relativity or another theory of gravity (such as supergravity) often result in encountering points where the metric blows up to infinity. However, many of these points are completely regular, and the infinities are merely a result of using an inappropriate coordinate system at this point. In order to test whether there is a singularity at a certain point, one must check whether at this point diffeomorphism invariant quantities (i.e. scalars) become infinite. Such quantities are the same in every coordinate system, so these infinities will not "go away" by a change of coordinates.


title: Gravitational singularity

text: An example is the Schwarzschild solution that describes a non-rotating, uncharged black hole. In coordinate systems convenient for working in regions far away from the black hole, a part of the metric becomes infinite at the event horizon. However, spacetime at the event horizon is regular. The regularity becomes evident when changing to another coordinate system (such as the Kruskal coordinates), where the metric is perfectly smooth. On the other hand, in the center of the black hole, where the metric becomes infinite as well, the solutions suggest a singularity exists. The existence of the singularity can be verified by noting that the Kretschmann scalar, being the square of the Riemann tensor i.e. formula_1, which is diffeomorphism invariant, is infinite.


title: Gravitational singularity

text: While in a non-rotating black hole the singularity occurs at a single point in the model coordinates, called a "point singularity", in a rotating black hole, also known as a Kerr black hole, the singularity occurs on a ring (a circular line), known as a "ring singularity". Such a singularity may also theoretically become a wormhole.


title: Gravitational singularity

text: More generally, a spacetime is considered singular if it is geodesically incomplete, meaning that there are freely-falling particles whose motion cannot be determined beyond a finite time, being after the point of reaching the singularity. For example, any observer inside the event horizon of a non-rotating black hole would fall into its center within a finite period of time. The classical version of the Big Bang cosmological model of the universe contains a causal singularity at the start of time ("t"=0), where all time-like geodesics have no extensions into the past. Extrapolating backward to this hypothetical time 0 results in a universe with all spatial dimensions of size zero, infinite density, infinite temperature, and infinite spacetime curvature.


title: Gravitational singularity

text: Until the early 1990s, it was widely believed that general relativity hides every singularity behind an event horizon, making naked singularities impossible. This is referred to as the cosmic censorship hypothesis. However, in 1991, physicists Stuart Shapiro and Saul Teukolsky performed computer simulations of a rotating plane of dust that indicated that general relativity might allow for "naked" singularities. What these objects would actually look like in such a model is unknown. Nor is it known whether singularities would still arise if the simplifying assumptions used to make the simulation were removed. However, it is hypothesized that light entering a singularity would similarly have its geodesics terminated, thus making the naked singularity look like a black hole.


title: Gravitational singularity

text: Disappearing event horizons exist in the Kerr metric, which is a spinning black hole in a vacuum, if the angular momentum (formula_2) is high enough. Transforming the Kerr metric to Boyer–Lindquist coordinates, it can be shown that the coordinate (which is not the radius) of the event horizon is, formula_3, where formula_4, and formula_5. In this case, "event horizons disappear" means when the solutions are complex for formula_6, or formula_7. However, this corresponds to a case where formula_2 exceeds formula_9 (or in Planck units, , i.e. the spin exceeds what is normally viewed as the upper limit of its physically possible values.


title: Gravitational singularity

text: Similarly, disappearing event horizons can also be seen with the Reissner–Nordström geometry of a charged black hole if the charge (formula_10) is high enough. In this metric, it can be shown that the singularities occur at formula_11, where formula_4, and formula_13. Of the three possible cases for the relative values of formula_14 and formula_15, the case where formula_16 causes both formula_6 to be complex. This means the metric is regular for all positive values of formula_18, or in other words, the singularity has no event horizon. However, this corresponds to a case where formula_19 exceeds formula_20 (or in Planck units, , i.e. the charge exceeds what is normally viewed as the upper limit of its physically possible values. Also, actual astrophysical black holes are not expected to possess any appreciable charge.


title: Gravitational singularity

text: A black hole possessing the lowest formula_21 value consistent with its formula_2 and formula_10 values and the limits noted above, i.e., one just at the point of losing its event horizon, is termed extremal.


title: Gravitational singularity

text: Before Stephen Hawking came up with the concept of Hawking radiation, the question of black holes having entropy had been avoided. However, this concept demonstrates that black holes radiate energy, which conserves entropy and solves the incompatibility problems with the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy, however, implies heat and therefore temperature. The loss of energy also implies that black holes do not last forever, but rather evaporate or decay slowly. Black hole temperature is inversely related to mass. All known black hole candidates are so large that their temperature is far below that of the cosmic background radiation, which means they will gain energy on net by absorbing this radiation. They cannot begin to lose energy on net until the background temperature falls below their own temperature. This will occur at a cosmological redshift of more than one million, rather than the thousand or so since the background radiation formed.


title: We Are Marshall

text: We Are Marshall is a 2006 American biographical sports drama film directed by McG. It depicts the aftermath of the 1970 plane crash that killed 75 people: 37 players of the Marshall University Thundering Herd football team, five coaches, two athletic trainers, the athletic director, 25 boosters, and the airplane crew of five.


title: We Are Marshall

text: Matthew McConaughey stars as head coach Jack Lengyel, with Matthew Fox as assistant coach William "Red" Dawson, David Strathairn as university president Donald Dedmon, and Robert Patrick as ill-fated Marshall head coach Rick Tolley. Then-governor of Georgia Sonny Perdue has a cameo role as an East Carolina University football coach.


title: We Are Marshall

text: It was scored by Christophe Beck and written by Jamie Linden. The film addressed rebuilding the program and the healing that the community undergoes. Dr. H. Keith Spears was the Marshall University consultant.


title: We Are Marshall

text: On the evening of November 14, 1970, Southern Airways Flight 932, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 chartered by Marshall University to transport the Thundering Herd football team back to Huntington, West Virginia following their 17–14 defeat to the East Carolina University Pirates, clips trees on a ridge just one mile short of the runway at Tri-State Airport in Ceredo, West Virginia, and crashes into a nearby gully, killing all 75 people on board.


title: We Are Marshall

text: The deceased include the 37 players; head coach Rick Tolley and five members of his coaching staff; Charles E. Kautz, Marshall's athletic director; team athletic trainer Jim Schroer and his assistant, Donald Tackett; sports information director and radio play-by-play announcer Gene Morehouse; 25 boosters; and five crew members.


title: We Are Marshall

text: In the wake of the tragedy, University President Donald Dedmon leans towards indefinitely suspending the football program, but he is ultimately persuaded to reconsider by the pleas of the Marshall students and Huntington residents, and especially the few football players who didn't make the flight, led by Nate Ruffin. Dedmon hires Jack Lengyel as head coach who, with the help of Red Dawson (one of two surviving members of the previous coaching staff) manages to rebuild the team in a relatively short time, despite losing many of their prospects to the West Virginia University Mountaineers. Dedmon travels to Kansas City, where he pleads with the NCAA to waive their rule prohibiting freshmen from playing varsity football (a rule which had been abolished in 1968 for all sports except for football and basketball, and would be permanently abolished for those sports in 1972). Dedmon returns victorious.


title: We Are Marshall

text: The new team is composed mostly of the 18 returning players (three varsity, 15 sophomores) and walk-on athletes from other Marshall sports programs. Due to their lack of experience, the "Young Thundering Herd" ends up losing its first game, 29–6, to the Morehead State Eagles. The loss weighs heavily on Dawson and Ruffin, who had been hurt on the first play of the game. The Herd's first post-crash victory is a 15–13 win against Xavier University in the first home game of the season. Hours after the victory a grief-stricken Coach Dawson remains in the team's locker room, in disbelief over the Herd's first win since the crash. He walks out to a still-full stadium of Marshall fans who share his astonishment and don't want to leave the stadium either.


title: We Are Marshall

text: In the film's closing credits, we learn of the futures of each of the film's main characters: Coach Jack Lengyel, Coach Dawson, Nate Ruffin, Reggie Oliver, President Dedmon, Keith Morehouse, and others; and of the eventual success of Marshall football in the decades following the tragedy.


title: We Are Marshall

text: Filming of "We Are Marshall" commenced on April 3, 2006, in Huntington, West Virginia, and was completed in Atlanta, Georgia. The premiere for the film was held at the Keith-Albee Theatre on December 12, 2006, in Huntington; other special screenings were held at Pullman Square. The movie was released nationwide on December 22, 2006.


title: We Are Marshall

text: "We Are Marshall" was released on DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray in the United States on September 18, 2007.


title: We Are Marshall

text: During the final moments of the movie, a voiceover from Annie explains where the program went after that first season, the highs and lows. Actual game footage serves as a backdrop, including a regular season game against the Akron Zips in which offensive linemen carried an injured Byron Leftwich back to the huddle after each play. As the final credits roll, actual footage from the 1970 season is shown, featuring players who perished in the crash. Also shown is news footage from the crash. As the cast credits roll, each actor is shown standing with the real-life person who they portrayed in the film.


title: We Are Marshall

text: The film fades out with scenes of Marshall's rise to becoming an NCAA Division 1-AA power in the 1980s and 1990s, and their subsequent jump to Division 1-A (FBS).


title: We Are Marshall

text: Deborah Novak and John Witek, who produced the 2000 documentary "", filed a $100 million lawsuit in federal court in California accusing Warner Bros. and others associated with the "We Are Marshall" film of fraud, copyright infringement, and breach of contract. Novak, who directed "Marshall University: Ashes to Glory", is from Huntington and is a Marshall alumnus. In October 2008, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in a summary judgment in favor of Warner Bros.


title: We Are Marshall

text: "We Are Marshall" received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 49% out of 127 professional critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 5.8/10 and the site's consensus stating: "Matthew McConaughey almost runs "We Are Marshall" to the end zone, but can't stop it from taking the easy, feel-good route in memorializing this historic event in American sports."


title: We Are Marshall

text: The film's directing was criticized by many reviewers. Peter Hartlaub, from the "San Francisco Chronicle", blamed director McG for "half of the movie problems" and went further on saying that "He has a kinetic and kitschy style that could make next year's "Hot Wheels" movie a surprise hit, but he's completely out of place here." Peter Howell from the "Toronto Star" said the film lacked genuine drama or conflict.


title: We Are Marshall

text: McConaughey's performance was, according to some critics, one of the film's highlights. Roger Moore from the "Orlando Sentinel" gave it 4 stars out of 5 and said in his review that ""We Are Marshall" (it's the rally cry of the team) doesn't always have a handle on the grief, but it does keep emotions close to the surface. That allows McConaughey to be the most refreshing, funny and believable he ever has been."


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Dinosaur Jr. is an American rock band formed in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1984, originally simply called Dinosaur until legal issues forced a change in name.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: The band was founded by J Mascis (guitar, vocals, primary songwriter), Lou Barlow (bass, vocals), and Murph (drums). After three albums on independent labels, the band earned a reputation as one of the formative influences on American alternative rock. Creative tension led to Mascis firing Barlow, who later formed Sebadoh and Folk Implosion. His replacement, Mike Johnson, came aboard for three major-label albums. Murph eventually quit, with Mascis taking over drum duties on the band's albums before the group disbanded in 1997. The original lineup reformed in 2005, releasing five albums thereafter.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Mascis's drawling vocals and distinct guitar sound, hearkening back to 1960s and 1970s classic rock and characterized by extensive use of feedback and distortion, were highly influential in the alternative rock movement of the 1990s.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Mascis and Barlow played together, on drums and guitar respectively, in the hardcore punk band Deep Wound, formed in 1982 while the pair were attending high school in western Massachusetts. After high school, they began exploring slower yet still aggressive music such as Black Sabbath, the Replacements, and Neil Young. Mascis's college friend Gerard Cosloy introduced him to psychedelic-influenced pop bands like Dream Syndicate, which Mascis in turn showed to Barlow. Barlow explained, "We loved speed metal ... and we loved wimpy-jangly stuff".


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Deep Wound broke up in mid-1984. Cosloy had dropped out of the University of Massachusetts Amherst to focus on running his independent record label, Homestead Records, and promised Mascis that if he were to make a record Homestead would release it. Mascis wrote a number of songs by himself and showed them to Barlow, to whom he offered the bassist position. Barlow said the songs "were fucking brilliant ...They were so far beyond. I was still into two-chord songs and basic stuff like 'I'm so sad.' While I was really into my own little tragedy, J was operating in this whole other panorama." Mascis enlisted vocalist Charlie Nakajima, also formerly of Deep Wound, and drummer Emmett Patrick Murphy, otherwise known as Murph, to complete the band. Mascis explained the concept behind the group as "ear-bleeding country".


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: The band was initially named Mogo, and played their first show on University of Massachusetts Amherst campus in the first week of September 1984. However, Nakajima used the performance to launch an extended anti-police tirade. Mascis was so appalled by Nakajima's behavior at the show that he disbanded the group the next day. A few days later Mascis invited Barlow and Murph to form a new band without telling Nakajima. "I was kind of too wimpy to kick him out, exactly," Mascis later admitted. "Communicating with people has been a constant problem in the band." The trio named themselves Dinosaur, and Mascis and Barlow took over lead-vocal duties.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Mascis took Cosloy up on his offer to release an album and Dinosaur recorded their debut album for $500 at a home studio in the woods outside Northampton, Massachusetts. Their debut album, "Dinosaur", was released in 1985. Mascis wrote all of the songs. Vocals were done by Mascis in his trademark nasal drawl which was often compared to singer Neil Young. Mascis would sing most or all of the lead vocals on all of their subsequent releases. The album did not make much of an impact commercially or critically: it sold only about 1,500 copies in its first year and was largely ignored by the majority of the music press.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: After the record's release, Dinosaur would often drive to New York City to perform shows. At one of their shows, the New York-based alternative rock band Sonic Youth was at first unimpressed by the first Dinosaur performance they saw, but after watching them play several months later, approached the band declaring themselves as fans. Sonic Youth invited Dinosaur to join them on tour in the American Northeast and northern Midwest in September 1986.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Dinosaur recorded much of their second album, "You're Living All Over Me", with Sonic Youth engineer Wharton Tiers in New York. During the recording process, tension emerged between Mascis and Murph because Mascis had very specific ideas for the drum parts. Barlow recalled, "J controlled Murph's every drumbeat ... And Murph could not handle that. Murph wanted to kill J for the longest time." Gerard Cosloy was excited by the completed album, but was devastated when Mascis told him the band was going to release it on California-based SST Records. Mascis was reluctant to sign a two-album deal with Homestead, but Cosloy felt betrayed, "There was "no way" I couldn't take it personally." After the album's completion Mascis moved to New York, leaving the rest of the band feeling alienated.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: "You're Living All Over Me" was released in 1987; early copies of the record in the Boston area were packaged with the "Weed Forestin"' tape, the first release by Barlow's side project Sebadoh. The album received much more attention in the indie-rock community than the debut. Barlow also composed two songs: the hardcore-influenced "Lose" and an acoustic sonic collage entitled "Poledo" that anticipated his work with Sebadoh.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Immediately following the release of "You're Living All Over Me", a supergroup called Dinosaurs (featuring ex-members of Country Joe and the Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Hot Tuna, Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane) sued Dinosaur over the use of the name, prompting the addition of "Jr."


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Dinosaur Jr. had a major breakthrough in the United Kingdom with their debut single for Blast First, "Freak Scene", in 1988, a version with censored lyrics being issued for radio consumption. It reached number 4 in the UK independent chart, staying on the chart for 12 weeks. The band's third album, "Bug", followed shortly afterwards, reaching number 1 on the UK independent chart and spending 38 weeks in the chart. The band's first UK singles chart placing came in 1989 with their cover of The Cure's "Just Like Heaven".


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: "Bug" was similar in musical style to "You're Living All Over Me", with the contrast between the extremely distorted instruments and the melodic vocal parts intact, as was the band's unique blend of musical influences. However, this time out, there was even more melody and the song structures were more conventional. Mascis was exhibiting an even tighter control over the band's sound, singing lead vocals on all but one song and composing the parts for Murph and Lou to play. Barlow's only lead vocal was on the album's final track, featuring an overdriven, noise-rock backing track and Barlow screaming "Why don't you like me?"


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Mascis has described "Bug" as his least favorite of the band's albums. In an interview in 2005, after the original line-up had reformed, he said, ""Bug" is my least favourite of all our records. I like some of the songs but, I dunno, I guess I really don't like the vibe of it."


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Despite the album's success, tension between Mascis and Barlow began interfering with the band's productivity, and in 1989, after touring in support of "Bug", Barlow was kicked out of the band. Barlow now focused all of his attention on the former side-project Sebadoh. "The Freed Pig", the opening track on 1991's "Sebadoh III", documents Barlow's frustration with Mascis and feeling of being treated poorly in Dinosaur Jr.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Meanwhile, the band embarked on an Australian tour with Donna Dresch filling in for Barlow. In 1990, the band released a new single, "The Wagon" on Sub Pop, their first release since Barlow's departure. The single featured a short-lived lineup including guitarist Don Fleming and drummer Jay Spiegel from the band Gumball, in addition to Mascis and Murph.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Despite the ongoing lineup turmoil, Dinosaur Jr. signed with Sire Records in 1990. They made their major-label debut "Green Mind" in 1991. The new record was virtually a J Mascis solo album, with Murph playing drums on only a few songs, as well as minimal contributions from Fleming and Spiegel, who were out of the band by the time the album was released. Mascis, whose first instrument was a drum kit, recorded many of the drum parts by himself, layering the various instrumental parts through overdubbing.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: For touring purposes, Mascis first added Van Conner, and then Mike Johnson to handle the bass parts and embarked on several tours to support "Green Mind", with support acts that included Nirvana. In 1991, Sire records released an EP titled "Whatever's Cool with Me" that featured old B-sides coupled with one new track. In 1992, the band was part of the Rollercoaster Tour, a package tour based on the successful Lollapolooza festival, which featured The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and Blur.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: The band found their live shows well received in the changing musical climate of the early 1990s, and decided to record new material with the new lineup. This time, the recording sessions were with full participation from Murph and Johnson, with the former playing most of the drums and the latter playing all of the bass parts, singing harmony vocals and even contributing a few guitar solos. This material represented the peak of the band's commercial success, with the single "Start Choppin'" reaching the top 20 in the UK, and the album that followed, "Where You Been", reaching the UK top 10 and the US top 50. The opening track, "Out There", had an accompanying video and was aired on MTV for a short time, as the show "120 Minutes" was still popular as a late-night "alternative" video show. Although the new material was more accessible than the band's 1980s albums, in terms of playing it represented a partial return to the more unrestrained power-trio sound of the original lineup.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Murph left the band after touring for "Where You Been" and was replaced for the band's live shows by George Berz, leaving Mascis as the sole remaining original member. However, the band's subsequent albums would be recorded mostly by J Mascis on his own, playing everything except for the bass and some of the harmony vocals, which continued to be handled by Mike Johnson. The commercial success continued with 1994's "Without a Sound", which placed well in both the US and UK album charts. After 1997's "Hand It Over", Mascis finally retired the Dinosaur Jr. name, with the group's final live performance being an appearance on the American talk show "The Jenny Jones Show". In 1999, Mascis released the first of two solo albums under the name J Mascis + The Fog.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: The beginnings of a Mascis–Barlow détente started in the mid-'90s when Mascis began showing up at Sebadoh shows. "I think he was kind of aware of how much shit I was talking about him," Barlow noted in a 2005 interview, "but I don't think he really ever pursued any of it. One of the things that really triggered this, for me to finally just go, 'Hey, you know, maybe this could work,' is when I realized that maybe J wasn't really holding any kind of grudge against me because he didn't like me. I was thinking, maybe he just didn't realize what he had done, or maybe he wasn't really aware of how much he'd actually hurt me. And when I started to realize that, he kind of became more human to me."


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: In 2002, the two shared the stage for two shows in London, with Barlow singing "I Wanna Be Your Dog" along with Mascis, Ron Asheton, Scott Asheton and Mike Watt, who had been performing Stooges songs as "Asheton, Asheton, Mascis and Watt".


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Mascis regained the master rights to the band's first three albums from SST in 2004, and arranged for their reissue on Merge early 2005. Later that year, he and Barlow shared the stage at benefit show for autism at Smith College organized by Barlow's mother in Northampton, Massachusetts, and played together as Deep Wound after Mascis and Sebadoh had completed their respective sets.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Following the reissues in 2005, Mascis, Barlow and Murph finally reunited to play on "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" on April 15, 2005, and in June that year, they kicked off a tour of Europe. While performing in New York City in 2006, much of the band's equipment was stolen while stored outside their hotel and has not yet been recovered. The band members were later among the curators of 2006's All Tomorrow's Parties festival.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: In 2007, the original members of Dinosaur Jr. released "Beyond" on Fat Possum Records, their first album of new material as a trio since "Bug" in 1988. It was met with critical acclaim, rating an 8.4 from Pitchfork Media and garnering positive reviews from the music press as a whole. It was considered somewhat of a sonic paradox in that even though it featured the original members who produced "two records so drenched in noise they still sound like aural assaults decades after their original release," sonically it resembled the major label releases of the 1990s in both production values and stylistic range. On the other hand, while the sound was not as extreme as the original lineup's 1980s albums, it did feature a much bigger, more unrestrained, and more live-sounding feel than their 1990s albums, though Barlow's bass was noticeably quieter than in the old days. Barlow did make his mark on the music in other ways: for the first time since "You're Living All Over Me", he contributed to the songwriting. The album went on to good commercial success, debuting on the "Billboard" 200 at number 69 its opening week.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: In February 2009, the band signed with indie label Jagjaguwar. The band's first release on the new label was titled "Farm" and released on June 23, 2009. Murph said the album was recorded at Mascis's home and marks return to the heavier, "Where You Been" LP era. The album reached number 29 on the "Billboard" 200, making it the band's highest-charting album in the US. To promote the album, the band played "<nowiki>Farm'</nowiki>"s lead-off track, "Pieces", on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" on June 25, 2009.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Dinosaur Jr. released their second album for Jagjaguwar, "I Bet on Sky, "in September 2012, to favourable reviews.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: In December 2015, Murph confirmed the band had entered the studio to begin working on their follow up to "I Bet on Sky". The album "Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not" was released on August 5, 2016, on Jagjaguwar.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: In February 2019, the song "Over Your Shoulder" from the band's 1994 album "Without a Sound" reached number 18 on Japan's "Billboard" charts. The cause is suspected to be the song's use on the Japanese TV show called "Gachinko Fight Club".


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: In February 2021, the band announced their 12th album "Sweep It Into Space", which was released on April 23, 2021. The album was originally scheduled for release in mid-2020 but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The album was preceded by the single "I Ran Away" on February 23, 2021, with a music video for the song being released on March 3, 2021. The second single, "Garden", was released with a music video on March 31, 2021. The band announced a 2021 North American tour to support the album was planned to begin in September 2021 and would conclude in February 2022.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Dinosaur Jr has been described as alternative rock, indie rock, noise rock, noise pop, hardcore punk (first albums) and grunge (early nineties).


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Dinosaur Jr. is considered to be an alternative rock band; however the band's musical style, compared to its underground contemporaries in the 1980s, differed in several ways. This included the influence of classic rock on the band's music, their use of feedback, extreme volume and the loud-quiet dynamic, and frontman Mascis's droning vocals. A characteristic of Mascis's vocal style is frequent use of vocal fry. Gerald Cosloy, head of Homestead Records, summarised the band's music: "It was its own bizarre hybrid. ... It wasn't exactly pop, it wasn't exactly punk rock—it was completely its own thing".


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Mascis listened to classic rock artists such as the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys, elements of which were incorporated into Dinosaur Jr.'s sound. In addition, Mascis was also a fan of many punk and hardcore bands such as The Birthday Party, and has frequently noted Nick Cave as an influence. Dinosaur Jr.'s members also combined elements of hardcore punk and noise rock in their songs, which often featured a large amount of feedback, distortion and extreme volume. When the master tape of "You're Living All Over Me" arrived at SST, the label's production manager noticed the level on the tape was so high it was distorting; however, Mascis confirmed it was the way he wanted the album to sound.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Similar to Mascis's guitar work, Barlow's bass lines, with their alternating heavily distorted, fast chords and pulverizing lows, draw heavily from both his hardcore past and musicians such as Lemmy from Motörhead and Johnny Ramone. "Johnny Ramone is my hero. I wanted to make that rhythmic chugging sound like he got playing guitar with the Ramones. And, I found that I got a bigger sound by strumming farther up the neck."


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Mascis's vocals are another distinctive feature of Dinosaur Jr.'s music. He attributed his "whiny low-key drawl", the opposite of the hardcore punk "bark", to artists such as John Fogerty and Mick Jagger. His style also resembled Neil Young's, but Mascis disputed this, and later commented: "That got annoying, being compared all the time." His drawl epitomised the band's slacker ethos and relaxed attitude; author Michael Azerrad said "even Mascis seemed removed from the feelings he was conveying in the music".


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: In a BBC review of their reissued albums "You're Living All Over Me" and "Bug", Zoe Street called them "Frighteningly ahead of their time." "The Seattle Times" called them "one of post-punk’s most influential bands." According to Azerrad:Dinosaur Jr was one of the first, biggest, and best bands among the second generation of indie kids, the ones who took Black Flag and Minor Threat for granted, a generation for whom the Seventies, not the Sixties, was the nostalgic ideal. Their music continued a retrograde stylistic shift in the American underground that the Replacements and other bands had begun: renouncing the antihistorical tendencies of hardcore and fully embracing the music that everyone had grown up on. In particular, Dinosaur singer-guitarist J Mascis achieved the unthinkable in underground rock—he brought back the extended guitar solo.Dinosaur Jr's music has influenced many other musicians such as Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins, Black Francis of Pixies, Radiohead, Graham Coxon of Blur, Doug Martsch of Built to Spill, Henry Rollins, Tad, Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Slowdive, Aidan Moffat of Arab Strap, Swervedriver, Uncle Tupelo, Teenage Fanclub, The Lemonheads, Tom DeLonge of Blink-182, Snow Patrol, Band of Horses, Polvo, and Kurt Vile.


title: Dinosaur Jr.

text: Their album "You're Living All Over Me" has been called possibly "the first perfect indie rock album." "Spin" named it one of "The 300 Best Albums of the Past 30 Years (1985-2014)". "Pitchfork" placed the album at number 40 on its Top 100 Albums of the 1980s list.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: The tower's main sources of income are tourism and antenna leasing. Over 150 million people have visited the tower. FootTown, a four-story building directly under the tower, houses museums, restaurants, and shops. Departing from there, guests can visit two observation decks. The two-story Main Deck (formerly known as the Main Observatory) is at , while the smaller Top Deck (formerly known as the "Special Observatory") reaches a height of . The names were changed following renovation of the top deck in 2018. The tower is repainted every five years, taking a year to complete the process.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: In 1961, transmission antennae were added to the tower. They are used for radio and television broadcasting and now broadcast signals for Japanese media outlets such as NHK, TBS, and Fuji TV. The height of the tower was not suitable for Japan's planned terrestrial digital broadcasting planned for July 2011 for the Tokyo area. A taller digital broadcasting tower, known as Tokyo Skytree, was completed on 29 February 2012.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: Since its completion in 1958, Tokyo Tower has become a prominent landmark in the city, and frequently appears in media set in Tokyo.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: A large broadcasting tower was needed in the Kantō region after NHK, Japan's public broadcasting station, began television broadcasting in 1953. Private broadcasting companies began operating in the months following the construction of NHK's own transmission tower. This communications boom led the Japanese government to believe that transmission towers would soon be built all over Tokyo, eventually overrunning the city. The proposed solution was the construction of one large tower capable of transmitting to the entire region. Furthermore, because of the country's postwar boom in the 1950s, Japan was searching for a monument to symbolize its ascendancy as a global economic powerhouse.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: Hisakichi Maeda, founder and president of Nippon Denpatō, the tower's owner and operator, originally planned for the tower to be taller than the Empire State Building, which at 381 meters was the highest structure in the world. However, the plan fell through because of the lack of both funds and materials. The tower's height was eventually determined by the distance the TV stations needed to transmit throughout the Kantō region, a distance of about . Tachū Naitō, renowned designer of tall buildings in Japan, was chosen to design the newly proposed tower. Looking to the Western world for inspiration, Naitō based his design on the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. With the help of engineering company Nikken Sekkei Ltd., Naitō claimed his design could withstand earthquakes with twice the intensity of the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake or typhoons with wind speeds of up to .


title: Tokyo Tower

text: The new construction project attracted hundreds of "tobi" (), traditional Japanese construction workers who specialized in the construction of high-rise structures. The Takenaka Corporation broke ground in June 1957 and each day at least 400 laborers worked on the tower. It was constructed of steel, a third of which was scrap metal taken from US tanks damaged in the Korean War. When the 90-meter-long antenna was bolted into place on 14 October 1958, Tokyo Tower was the tallest freestanding tower in the world, taking the title from the Eiffel Tower by nine meters. Despite being taller than the Eiffel Tower, Tokyo Tower only weighs about 4,000 tons, 3,300 tons less than the Eiffel Tower. While other towers have since surpassed Tokyo Tower's height, it remained the tallest artificial structure in Japan until April 2010, when it was surpassed by the Tokyo Skytree. It was opened to the public on 23 December 1958 at a final cost of ¥2.8 billion ($8.4 million in 1958). Tokyo Tower was mortgaged for ¥10 billion in 2000.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: Planned as an antenna for telecommunications and brightly colored in accordance with the time's Aviation Law, the tower's two panoramic observatories are mostly frequented by tourists today; the tower constitutes a clear reference point in the center's chaotic skyline, forming a strong landmark, both night and day.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: Every five years, the tower is repainted in a process that takes about a year to complete. Tokyo Tower is next planned to be repainted in 2024.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: Tokyo Tower's two main revenue sources are antenna leasing and tourism. It functions as a radio and television broadcasting antenna support structure and is a tourist destination that houses several different attractions. Over 150 million people have visited the tower in total since its opening in late 1958. Tower attendance had been steadily declining until it bottomed out at 2.3 million in 2000. Since then, attendance has been rising, and it has recently been attracting approximately three million visitors per year.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: The first area tourists visit upon reaching the tower is FootTown, a four-story building stationed directly under the tower. There, visitors can eat, shop, and visit several museums and galleries. Elevators that depart from the first floor of FootTown can be used to reach the first of two observation decks, the two-story Main Observatory. For the price of another ticket, visitors can board another set of elevators from the second floor of the Main Observatory to reach the final observation deck—the Special Observatory.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: Tokyo Tower, a member of the World Federation of Great Towers, has been used by many organizations for broadcasting purposes. The structure was intended for broadcasting television, but radio antennas were installed in 1961 because it could accommodate them. While analog and digital television broadcasts are no longer conducted from the site, two FM radio stations remain on Tokyo Tower. Stations that use or have used the tower's antenna include:


title: Tokyo Tower

text: Japan employs both analog and digital broadcasting, but by July 2011 all television broadcasting was changed to solely digital. Tokyo Tower is not a reliable broadcasting antenna for completely digital broadcasting because the tower is not tall enough to transmit the higher frequency waves to areas surrounded by forests or high-rise buildings. As an alternative, a new 634-meter-tall (2,080 ft) tower called the Tokyo Skytree was opened in 2012. In an attempt to make Tokyo Tower more appealing to NHK and the five other commercial broadcasters who planned to move their transmitting stations to the new tower, Nihon Denpatō officials drafted a plan to extend its digital broadcasting antenna by 80 to 100 meters at a cost of approximately ¥4 billion (US$50 million). As a result of their move to the Skytree, only one digital television station remained on Tokyo Tower: that of the Open University of Japan, whose JOUD-DTV and JOUD-FM continued on the tower until shutting down in 2018. FM radio stations will also continue to use the tower for broadcasting in the Tokyo area. Masahiro Kawada, the tower's planning director, also pointed out the possibility of the tower becoming a backup for the Tokyo Skytree, depending on what the TV broadcasters want or need.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: The antenna's tip was damaged on 11 March 2011 by the Tōhoku earthquake. On 19 July 2012, the Tokyo Tower's height shrank to 315 meters while the top antenna was repaired for damage from the earthquake.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: Located in the base of the tower is a 4-story building known as FootTown. The first floor includes the Aquarium Gallery, a reception hall, the 400-person-capacity "Tower Restaurant", a FamilyMart convenience store and a souvenir shop. This floor's main attractions, however, are the three elevators that serve as a direct ride to the Main Observatory. The second floor is primarily a food and shopping area. In addition to the five standalone restaurants, the second floor's food court consists of four restaurants, including a McDonald's and a Pizza-La.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: FootTown's third and fourth floors house several tourist attractions. The third floor is home to the Guinness World Records Museum Tokyo, a museum that houses life-size figures, photo panels and memorabilia depicting interesting records that have been authenticated by the Guinness Book. The Tokyo Tower Wax Museum, opened in 1970, displays wax figures imported from London where they were made. The figures on display range from pop culture icons such as The Beatles to religious figures such as Jesus Christ. A hologram gallery named the Gallery DeLux, a lounge and a few specialty stores are also located on this floor. Tokyo Tower's Trick Art Gallery is located on the building's fourth and final floor. This gallery displays optical illusions, including paintings and objects that visitors can interact with.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: On the roof of the FootTown building is a small amusement park that contains several small rides and hosts live performances for children. On weekends and holidays, visitors can use the roof to access the tower's outside stairwell. At approximately 660 steps, the stairwell is an alternative to the tower's elevators and leads directly to the Main Observatory.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: Based on the hit manga and anime "One Piece", Tokyo Tower featured a small "One Piece" themed amusement park that opened in 2015 and closed in 2020. The amusement park offered a range of attractions, shops, and restaurants, all based on the characters from Eiichiro Oda's manga. Patrons enjoyed various games or attractions based on their favorite characters and enjoyed meals from the world of "One Piece". There was a gift store that features exclusive goods for "One Piece" fans.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: Tokyo Tower requires a total of of paint to completely paint the structure white and international orange, complying with air safety regulations. Before the tower's 30th anniversary in 1987, the only lighting on the tower were light bulbs located on the corner contours that extended from the base to the antenna. In the spring of 1987, Nihon Denpatō invited lighting designer Motoko Ishii to visit the tower. Since its opening 30 years earlier, the tower's annual ticket sales had dropped significantly, and in a bid to revitalize the tower and again establish it as an important tourist attraction and symbol of Tokyo, Ishii was hired to redesign Tokyo Tower's lighting arrangement.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: Unveiled in 1989, the new lighting arrangement required the removal of the contour-outlining light bulbs and the installation of 176 floodlights in and around the tower's frame. From dusk to midnight, the floodlights illuminate the entire tower. Sodium vapor lamps are used from 2 October to 6 July to cover the tower in an orange color. From 7 July to 1 October, the lights are changed to metal halide lamps to illuminate the tower with a white color. The reasoning behind the change is a seasonal one. Ishii reasoned that orange is a warmer color and helps to offset the cold winter months. Conversely, white is thought a cool color that helps during the hot summer months.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: Occasionally, Tokyo Tower's lighting is changed to specific arrangements for special events. The tower is specially lit for some annual events.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: Since 2000, the entire tower has been illuminated in a pink light on 1 October to highlight the beginning of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The tower has also had a variety of special lighting arrangements for Christmas since 1994. During New Year's Eve, the tower lights up at midnight with a year number displayed on one side of the observatory to mark the arrival of the new year. Special Japanese events have also been cause to light the tower in several non-traditional ways. In 2002, alternating sections of the tower were lit blue to help celebrate the opening of the FIFA World Cup in Japan. Alternating sections of the tower were lit green on Saint Patrick's Day in 2007 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Japanese–Irish relations. On a few occasions, Tokyo Tower has even been specially lit to correspond with corporate events. For example, the top half of the tower was lit green to correspond with the Japanese premiere of "The Matrix Reloaded" and different sections of the tower were lit red, white and black to commemorate the first day of sales of Coca-Cola C2. The tower was also lit for the new millennium in 2000 with Motoko Ishii again reprising her role as the designer. In December 2008, Nihon Denpatō spent $6.5 million to create a new night-time illumination scheme—titled the "Diamond Veil"—to celebrate the tower's 50th anniversary. The arrangement featured 276 lights in seven colors equally distributed across the towers four faces.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: When employing specialty lighting on the tower, the Main Observatory often plays an important role. During the second international "White Band Day" on 10 September 2005, the tower was completely unlit except for the Main Observatory, which was lit with a bright white light. The resulting white ring represented the White Band referenced in the day's name. The two floors of windows that make up the exterior of the Main Observatory are utilized to display words or numbers. When the tower employed lighting to commemorate terrestrial digital broadcasting first being available in the Kantō region on 1 December 2005, each side of the Main Observatory displayed the characters ("chi deji", an abbreviation for "chijō dejitaru hōsō" terrestrial digital broadcasting). More recently, the observatory displayed both "TOKYO" and "2016" to stress Tokyo's 2016 Olympic bid. Primitive images, such as hearts, have also been displayed using the observatory's windows.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: Operations at The Tokyo Tower Top Deck (at the height of 250 m) suspended operations in 2016. The Top Deck reopened on March 3, 2018. At that time, Tokyo tower also announced the renaming of both decks. Renovations on the main deck, which began in September 2016, caused partial closure of the deck.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: The Tokyo Tower has two mascots named ノッポン "Noppon". They are two brothers: Older Brother, who wears blue dungarees, and Younger Brother, who wears red dungarees. They were unveiled on 23 December 1998 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Tokyo Tower.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: Just as the Eiffel Tower is often used in popular culture to immediately locate a scene in Paris, France, the Tokyo Tower is often used in the same way for Tokyo.


title: Tokyo Tower

text: It is used in anime and manga such as "Doraemon", "Tokyo Magnitude 8.0", "Magic Knight Rayearth", "Please Save My Earth", "Cardcaptor Sakura", "Digimon", "Detective Conan", "Sailor Moon", "Tenchi Muyo!" and "Death Note". The tower is also frequently used in the Japanese "kaiju" (giant monster) film genre. It has been the location of numerous battles and visitations by Godzilla, Mothra, Gamera and King Kong ("King Kong Escapes") wherein it is frequently destroyed and rebuilt. Based on the popular manga series by Ryōhei Saigan, the 2005 film "Always Sanchōme no Yūhi" was a nostalgic view of life in the neighborhoods beneath the construction of the Tokyo Tower. In the 2022 film "Bubble", it is depicted as being destroyed by the titular reality-breaking bubbles.


title: No man's land

text: No man's land is waste or unowned land or an uninhabited or desolate area that may be under dispute between parties who leave it unoccupied out of fear or uncertainty. The term was originally used to define a contested territory or a dumping ground for refuse between fiefdoms. In modern times, it is commonly associated with World War I to describe the area of land between two enemy trench systems, not controlled by either side. The term is also used metaphorically, to refer to an ambiguous, anomalous, or indefinite area, in regards to an application, situation, or jurisdiction. It has sometimes been used to name a specific place.


title: No man's land

text: According to Alasdair Pinkerton, an expert in human geography at Royal Holloway, University of London, the term is first mentioned in Domesday Book (1086), to describe parcels of land that were just beyond the London city walls. The "Oxford English Dictionary" contains a reference to the term dating back to 1320, spelled "nonesmanneslond", to describe a territory that was disputed or involved in a legal disagreement. The same term was later used as the name for the piece of land outside the north wall of London that was assigned as the place of execution. The term is also applied in nautical use to a space amidships, originally between the forecastle and the booms in a square-rigged vessel where various ropes, tackle, block, and other supplies were stored. In the United Kingdom, several places called No Man's Land denoted "extra-parochial spaces that were beyond the rule of the church, beyond the rule of different fiefdoms that were handed out by the king … ribbons of land between these different regimes of power".


title: No man's land

text: The British Army did not widely employ the term when the Regular Army arrived in France in August 1914, soon after the outbreak of World War I. The terms used most frequently at the start of the war to describe the area between the trench lines included 'between the trenches' or 'between the lines'. The term 'no man's land' was first used in a military context by soldier and historian Ernest Swinton in his short story "The Point of View". Swinton used the term in war correspondence on the Western Front, with specific mention of the terms with respect to the Race to the Sea in late 1914. The Anglo-German Christmas truce of 1914 brought the term into common use, and thereafter it appeared frequently in official communiqués, newspaper reports, and personnel correspondences of the members of the British Expeditionary Force.


title: No man's land

text: In World War I, no man's land often ranged from several hundred yards to in some cases less than 10 yards. Heavily defended by machine guns, mortars, artillery, and riflemen on both sides, it was often extensively cratered, and was riddled with barbed wire, rudimentary improvised land mines, as well as corpses and wounded soldiers who were unable to make it through the hail of bullets, explosions, and flames. The area was sometimes contaminated by chemical weapons. It was open to fire from the opposing trenches and hard going generally slowed any attempted advance.


title: No man's land

text: Not only were soldiers forced to cross no man's land when advancing, and as the case might be when retreating, but after an attack the stretcher bearers had to enter it to bring in the wounded. No man's land remained a regular feature of the battlefield until near the end of World War I, when mechanised weapons (i.e., tanks) made entrenched lines less of an obstacle.


title: No man's land

text: Effects from World War I no man's lands persist today, for example at Verdun in France, where the "Zone Rouge" (Red Zone) contains unexploded ordnance, and is poisoned beyond habitation by arsenic, chlorine, and phosgene. The zone is sealed off completely and still deemed too dangerous for civilians to return: "The area is still considered to be very poisoned, so the French government planted an enormous forest of black pines, like a living sarcophagus", comments Alasdair Pinkerton, a researcher at Royal Holloway University of London, who compared the zone to the nuclear disaster site at Chernobyl, similarly encased in a "concrete sarcophagus".


title: No man's land

text: During the Cold War, one example of "no man's land" was the territory close to the Iron Curtain. Officially the territory belonged to the Eastern Bloc countries, but over the entire Iron Curtain there were several wide tracts of uninhabited land, several hundred meters in width, containing watch towers, minefields, unexploded bombs, and other such debris. Would-be escapees from Eastern Bloc countries who successfully scaled the border fortifications could still be apprehended or shot by border guards in the zone.


title: No man's land

text: The U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba is separated from Cuba proper by an area called the Cactus Curtain. In late 1961, the Cuban Army had its troops plant an barrier of "Opuntia" cactus along the northeastern section of the fence surrounding the base to prevent economic migrants fleeing from Cuba from resettling in the United States. This was dubbed the "Cactus Curtain", an allusion to Europe's Iron Curtain and the Bamboo Curtain in East Asia. U.S. and Cuban troops placed some 55,000 land mines across the no man's land, creating the second-largest minefield in the world, and the largest in the Americas. On 16 May 1996, President Bill Clinton ordered the U.S. land mines to be removed and replaced with motion and sound sensors to detect intruders. The Cuban government has not removed the corresponding minefield on its side of the border.


title: No man's land

text: The 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and Transjordan were signed in Rhodes with the help of UN mediation on 3 April 1949. Armistice lines were determined in November 1948. Between the lines territory was left that was defined as no man's land. Such areas existed in Jerusalem in the area between the western and southern parts of the Walls of Jerusalem and Musrara. A strip of land north and south of Latrun (which became known as the Latrun salient) was also known as "no man's land" because it was not controlled by either Israel or Jordan between 1948 and 1967.


title: Grayson Allen

text: Grayson James Allen (born October 8, 1995) is an American professional basketball player for the Milwaukee Bucks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played four years of college basketball at Duke University. Allen was drafted with the 21st overall pick in the 2018 NBA draft by the Utah Jazz, where he played for one season before being traded to the Memphis Grizzlies in July 2019. In August 2021, Allen was traded to the Bucks.


title: Grayson Allen

text: He helped Duke win a national championship in 2015, but his reputation was marred by several tripping incidents. He has often been called one of Duke's best players of the 2010s.


title: Grayson Allen

text: In 2014, Allen was selected as a McDonald's All-American out of Providence School in Jacksonville, Florida, where he won a state championship the previous year. He won the McDonald's All-American Slam Dunk Contest, jumping over future Duke teammate Jahlil Okafor.


title: Grayson Allen

text: During Allen's freshman season at Duke, he averaged 4.4 points per game and was named to the ACC all-academic team. Allen became a major contributor in the NCAA tournament. On April 7, 2015, he helped Duke to victory in the NCAA championship game, scoring 16 points. After the game, commentators cited Allen as one of the main reasons for Duke's win. Coach Mike Krzyzewski agreed, saying, "We were kind of dead in the water. We were nine points down and Grayson just put us on his back."


title: Grayson Allen

text: Allen received national attention following an incident during a game against Louisville Cardinals. On February 8, 2016, Allen was assessed a flagrant-one foul after he tripped Louisville forward Ray Spalding. Commentators said the move appeared to be intentional, as Allen stuck out his leg while on the ground as Spalding was hopping over him.


title: Grayson Allen

text: In Duke's second game against Louisville, Allen exchanged elbows while scuffling for the ball and was later ejected for yelling at a referee after being called for his fifth foul. On February 25, in the closing seconds of a 15-point win against Florida State, Allen tripped opposing guard Xavier Rathan-Mayes. A day later, Allen received a reprimand from the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) for his second tripping incident in less than a month.


title: Grayson Allen

text: During the 2015–16 season, Allen was one of the best offensive players in the ACC, averaging 21 points per game and shooting 41% from three-point range. He played an average of 36.6 minutes per game and made 83.7% of his free throws. In the NCAA Tournament, Allen scored 29 points in Duke's 71–64 win over Yale, helping the team to reach the Sweet Sixteen. The team lost its next game to top-seeded Oregon, 82–68; Allen had difficulty scoring near the basket during that game, finishing with 15 points.


title: Grayson Allen

text: Entering his junior season, Allen was considered one of the top returning players in college basketball. He was named to the Associated Press preseason All-America team and was the ACC media's pick as preseason ACC Player of the Year.


title: Grayson Allen

text: On November 12, 2016, Allen scored 25 points and 10 rebounds in a 96–61 win over Grand Canyon. On November 29, 2016, Allen scored 24 points and 4 assists in a 78–69 win against Michigan State in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge. On December 10, 2016, Allen tallied 34 points in a 94–45 victory over UNLV. On January 28, 2017, Allen scored 19 points in an 85–83 win against Wake Forest. On January 30, 2017, Allen scored 21 points and 5 assists in an 84–74 victory over Notre Dame. On February 4, 2017, Allen scored 21 points in a 72–64 win against Pittsburgh. On February 9, 2017, Allen scored 25 points and 3 assists in an 86–78 win over rival North Carolina.


title: Grayson Allen

text: Prior to the start of the season, Allen stated that he was ready to put the previous season's tripping incidents behind him. However, on December 21, he tripped Elon's Steven Santa Ana and was charged with a technical foul. The next day, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski suspended Allen from the team indefinitely. After Duke's December 31 game, Krzyzewski stripped Allen of his team captaincy. Allen returned to play on January 4, 2017 after serving a one-game suspension.


title: Grayson Allen

text: During the 2016–2017 season, Allen averaged 14.5 points per game and shot 36.5% from three-point range. He averaged 29.6 minutes per game and shot 81.1% from the free-throw line. Duke reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament, where the team was upset by South Carolina; Allen scored 20 points in the defeat.


title: Grayson Allen

text: On April 18, 2017, it was announced Allen would return to Duke for his senior season. The team voted to restore him as captain for the 2017–2018 season. On November 14, 2017, Allen scored 37 points in an 88–81 win against Michigan State. On November 29, 2017, Allen scored 21 points in a 91–81 victory over Indiana. On December 2, 2017, Allen scored 25 points and 3 rebounds in a 96–80 win against South Dakota. On December 30, 2017, Allen scored 22 points and 3 rebounds in a 100–93 win over Florida State. For the season, Allen averaged 15.5 points per game on 41.8% shooting.


title: Grayson Allen

text: On March 9, 2018, Allen was assessed a flagrant-one foul in the ACC tournament for tripping North Carolina's Garrison Brooks with what was called a "hip check."


title: Grayson Allen

text: Duke reached the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament, where the team was defeated by Kansas, 85–81, in overtime. In his final collegiate game, Allen scored 12 points on 3-for-13 shooting, missed a potential game-winning shot, and missed two three-pointers late in overtime; he did, however, make several clutch free throws. Scott Gleeson of "USA Today" commented that the season "was a resurgent one for Allen as a whole, in spite of the sour ending. He took on the role of senior captain on a young team full of NBA talent. It was a flipped script from a year ago when Allen was seen as the villain of the sport for his unsportsmanlike behavior..."


title: Grayson Allen

text: During his four seasons at Duke, Allen appeared in 142 games and averaged 14.1 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 3.0 assists. He maintained a field-goal percentage of .430, a three-point field-goal percentage of .380, and a free-throw percentage of .834. Allen finished his Duke career with 1,996 points, ranking 12th on the Blue Devils' career scoring list. Allen played in 15 NCAA Tournament games, helping the Blue Devils win the 2015 NCAA National Championship. He earned All-America and Academic All-America honors in 2016, becoming the sixth Blue Devil to receive both honors in the same season. Allen also earned All-ACC Academic honors four times.