title: Silentó

text: Silentó's debut single, "Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)", made with Bolo Da Producer, was released on his YouTube channel on June 25, 2015. Over the course of one week, it gained over 2.5 million views. After making the song when he was 17 years old in his basement and having already garnered more than 100,000 streams on SoundCloud, A&R Executive Alex Wilhelm approached and signed him to Capitol Records. They then released the track as a single with an accompanying music video. It peaked at number three on the US "Billboard" Hot 100. In June 2015, Silentó performed at the BET Awards, alongside the cast of the show "Black-ish".


title: Silentó

text: He also performed the hit single on December 31, 2016, in Times Square for "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve" with Ryan Seacrest. On August 3, 2018, Silentó released his first album, "Fresh Outta High School", which was originally scheduled to be released on May 25. He later released "Fresh Outta High School Part 2" on November 29, 2018.


title: Silentó

text: On August 28, 2020, he was arrested following a domestic disturbance. After being charged with inflicting corporal injury on a spouse or cohabitant he was released. The following day he was again arrested in Valley Village, Los Angeles after walking into a stranger's home wielding a hatchet while looking for his girlfriend.


title: Silentó

text: Silentó was arrested again on October 23, 2020. Police charged him with speeding and reckless driving, alleging that he had been driving at on Interstate 85.


title: Silentó

text: On February 1, 2021, he was arrested in DeKalb County and charged with malice murder and felony murder, among other charges in the shooting and death of his cousin. Police responded to a shots fired call on January 21, 2021, at around 3:30 a.m. in the Panthersville area, and he was booked into the DeKalb jail on one count of murder. He was indicted on August 3, 2021, on charges of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm while committing a felony.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: RMS "Mauretania" was an ocean liner designed by Leonard Peskett and built by Wigham Richardson and Swan Hunter for the British Cunard Line, launched on the afternoon of 20 September 1906. She was the world's largest ship until the launch of in 1910. "Mauretania" became a favourite among her passengers. She captured the eastbound Blue Riband on her maiden return voyage in December 1907, then claimed the westbound Blue Riband for the fastest transatlantic crossing during her 1909 season, which she held both speed records for 20 years.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: The ship's name was taken from the ancient Roman province of Mauretania on the northwest African coast, not the modern Mauritania to the south. Similar nomenclature was also employed by "Mauretania"s running mate , which was named after the Roman province directly north of Mauretania, across the Strait of Gibraltar in Portugal. "Mauretania" remained in service until September 1934, when Cunard-White Star retired her; scrapping commenced in Rosyth, in 1935.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: In 1897 the German liner became the largest and fastest ship in the world. With a speed of , she captured the Blue Riband from Cunard Line's and . Germany came to dominate the Atlantic, and by 1906 they had five four-funnel superliners in service, four of them owned by North German Lloyd.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: At around the same time the American financier J. P. Morgan's International Mercantile Marine Co. was attempting to monopolise the shipping trade, and had already acquired Britain's other major transatlantic line,


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: In the face of these threats the Cunard Line was determined to regain the prestige of dominance in ocean travel not only for the company, but also for the United Kingdom. By 1902, Cunard Line and the British government reached an agreement to build two superliners, "Lusitania" and "Mauretania", with a guaranteed service speed of no less than . The British government was to loan £2,600,000 (£ in 2015) for the construction of the ships, at an interest rate of 2.75%, to be paid back over twenty years, with a stipulation that the ships could be converted to armed merchant cruisers if needed. Further funding was acquired when the Admiralty arranged for Cunard to be paid an additional sum per year to their mail subsidy.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: "Mauretania" and "Lusitania" were both designed by Cunard naval architect Leonard Peskett, with Swan Hunter and John Brown working from plans for an ocean greyhound with a stipulated service speed of twenty-four knots in moderate weather, as per the terms of her mail subsidy contract. Peskett's original configuration for the ships in 1902 was a three-funnel design, when reciprocating engines were destined to be the powerplant. A giant model of the ships appeared in "Shipbuilder's" magazine in this configuration. Cunard decided to change power plants to Parson's new turbine technology, and the ship's design was again modified when Peskett added a fourth funnel to the ship's profile. Construction of the vessel finally began with the laying of the keel in August 1904. By tradition, the hull was painted in a light grey colour for photographic purposes during her launch; a common practice of the day for the first ship in a new class, as it made the lines of the ship clearer in the black-and-white photographs. Her hull was painted black after her maiden voyage.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: In 1906, "Mauretania" was launched by the Duchess of Roxburghe. At the time of her launch, she was the largest moving structure ever built, and slightly larger in gross tonnage than "Lusitania". The main visual differences between "Mauretania" and "Lusitania" were that "Mauretania" was five feet longer and had different vents. "Mauretania" also had two extra stages of turbine blades in her forward turbines, making her slightly faster than "Lusitania". "Mauretania" and "Lusitania" were the only ships with direct-drive steam turbines to hold the Blue Riband; in later ships, reduction-geared turbines were mainly used. "Mauretania"s usage of the steam turbine was the largest application yet of the then-new technology, developed by Charles Algernon Parsons. During speed trials, these engines caused significant vibration at high speeds; in response, "Mauretania" received strengthening members aft and redesigned propellers before entering service, which reduced vibration.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: "Mauretania" was designed to suit Edwardian tastes. The ship's interior was designed by the architect Harold Peto, and her public rooms were fitted out by two notable London design houses – Ch. Mellier & Sons and Turner and Lord, with twenty-eight different types of wood, along with marble, tapestries, and other furnishings such as the stunning octagon table in the smoking room. Wood panelling for her first class public rooms was supposedly carved by three hundred craftsmen from Palestine but this seems unlikely, unnecessary and was probably executed by the yard or subcontracted, as were the majority of the second and third class areas. The multi-level first-class dining saloon of straw oak was decorated in Francis I style and topped by a large dome skylight. A series of elevators, then a rare new feature for liners, with grilles composed of the relatively new lightweight aluminium, were installed next to "Mauretania"s walnut grand staircase. A new feature was the Verandah Café on the boat deck, where passengers were served beverages in a weather-protected environment, although this was enclosed within a year as it proved unrealistic.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: The White Star Line's vessels were almost longer and slightly wider than "Lusitania" and "Mauretania". This made the White Star vessels about 15,000 gross register tons larger than the Cunard vessels. Both "Lusitania" and "Mauretania" were launched and had been in service for several years before , "Titanic" and were ready for the North Atlantic run. Although significantly faster than the "Olympic" class would be, the speed and port turnaround times of Cunard's vessels was not sufficient to allow the line to run a weekly two-ship transatlantic service from each side of the Atlantic. A third ship was needed for a weekly service, and in response to White Star's announced plan to build the three "Olympic"-class ships, Cunard ordered a third ship: . Like "Olympic", Cunard's "Aquitania" had a lower service speed, but was a larger and more luxurious vessel.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: With their increased size the "Olympic"-class liners could offer many more amenities than "Lusitania" and "Mauretania". Both "Olympic" and "Titanic" offered swimming pools, Turkish baths, a gymnasium, a squash court, large reception rooms, À la Carte restaurants separate from the dining saloons, and many more staterooms with private bathroom facilities than their two Cunard rivals.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: Heavy vibrations as a by-product of the four steam turbines on "Lusitania" and "Mauretania" plagued both ships throughout their careers. When "Lusitania" sailed at top speed the vibrations were so severe that Second and Third Class sections of the ship could become uninhabitable. In contrast, the "Olympic"-class liners chose economy over speed by installing two traditional reciprocating engines and a turbine for the central propeller. With their greater tonnage and wider beam, the "Olympic"-class liners were also more stable at sea and less prone to rolling. "Lusitania" and "Mauretania" both featured straight prows in contrast to the angled prows of the "Olympic" liners. Designed so that the ships could plunge through a wave rather than crest it, the unforeseen consequence was that the Cunard liners would pitch forward alarmingly, even in calm weather, allowing huge waves to splash the bow and forward part of the superstructure.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: The vessels of the "Olympic" class also differed from "Lusitania" and "Mauretania" in the way in which they were compartmented below the waterline. The White Star vessels were divided by transverse watertight bulkheads. While "Lusitania" also had transverse bulkheads, she also had longitudinal bulkheads running along the ship on each side, between the boiler and engine rooms and the coal bunkers on the outside of the vessel. The British commission that had investigated the sinking of "Titanic" in 1912 heard testimony on the flooding of coal bunkers lying outside longitudinal bulkheads. Being of considerable length, when flooded, these could increase the ship's list and "make the lowering of the boats on the other side impracticable", and this was what later happened with "Lusitania". Furthermore, the ship's stability was insufficient for the bulkhead arrangement used: flooding of only three coal bunkers on one side could result in negative metacentric height. On the other hand, "Titanic" was given ample stability and sank with only a few degrees list, the design being such that there was very little risk of unequal flooding and possible capsize.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: "Lusitania" did not carry enough lifeboats for all her passengers, officers and crew on board at the time of her maiden voyage (carrying four lifeboats fewer than "Titanic" would carry in 1912). This was a common practice for large passenger ships at the time, since the belief was that in busy shipping lanes help would always be nearby and the few boats available would be adequate to ferry all aboard to rescue ships before a sinking. After "Titanic" sank, "Lusitania" and "Mauretania" would be equipped with only six more clinker-built wooden boats under davits, making for a total of 22 boats rigged in davits. The rest of their lifeboat accommodations were supplemented with 26 collapsible lifeboats, 18 stored directly beneath the regular lifeboats and eight on the after deck. The collapsibles were built with hollow wooden bottoms and canvas sides, and needed assembly in the event they had to be used.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: "Mauretania" departed Liverpool on her maiden voyage on 16 November 1907 under the command of Captain John Pritchard, and on the return voyage (30 November – 5 December 1907) captured the record for the fastest eastbound crossing of the Atlantic, with an average speed of . On 23 December 1907, "Mauretania" was again at New York City and moored to Pier 54 in the North River when a squall with high winds struck, causing mooring posts on Pier 54 to give way. "Mauretania" went partially adrift, and her bow swung around and struck several barges which were bringing her coal and taking off ashes; the barges "Roan" and "Tomhicken" and the boats "Eureka 32" and "Eureka 36" were damaged and the barge "Ellis P. Rogers" was lost. In subsequent litigation, Cunard was found liable for damages.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: In September 1909, "Mauretania" captured the Blue Riband for the fastest westbound crossing—a record that was to stand for more than two decades. In December 1911, as in New York City in December 1910, "Mauretania" broke loose from her moorings while in the River Mersey and sustained damage that caused the cancellation of her special speedy Christmas voyage to New York. In a quick change of events Cunard rescheduled "Mauretania"s voyage for "Lusitania", which had just returned from New York, under the command of Captain James Charles. "Lusitania" completed Christmas crossings for "Mauretania", carrying travellers back to New York. "Mauretania" was on a westbound voyage from Liverpool to New York, beginning 10 April 1912, and was docked at Queenstown, Ireland, at the time of the disaster. "Mauretania" was transporting "Titanic"s cargo manifest carried by registered mail. Traveling on "Mauretania" at the time was the chairman of Cunard, A. A. Booth, who organised a vigil for the "Titanic" victims. In the spring of 1913 westbound transatlantic passage aboard "Mauretania" cost roughly $17 for third class passengers, as shown in the original ticket at right.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: In July 1913, King George and Queen Mary were given a special tour of "Mauretania", then Britain's fastest merchant vessel, adding further distinction to the ship's reputation. On 26 January 1914, while "Mauretania" was in the middle of annual refit in Liverpool, four men were killed and six injured when a gas cylinder exploded while they were working on one of her steam turbines. Damage to the ship was minimal; she was repaired in the new Gladstone drydock and returned to service two months later.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: After Great Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, "Mauretania" made a dash for safety in Halifax, Nova Scotia, arriving on 6 August. Shortly after, she and "Aquitania" were requested by the British government to become armed merchant cruisers, but their huge size and massive fuel consumption made them unsuitable for the duty, and they resumed their civilian service on 11 August. Later, due to lack of passengers crossing the Atlantic, "Mauretania" was laid up in Liverpool until 7 May 1915, at the time that "Lusitania" was sunk by a German U-Boat.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: "Mauretania" was about to fill the void left by "Lusitania", but she was ordered by the British government to serve as a troop ship to carry British soldiers during the Gallipoli campaign. She avoided becoming prey for German U-boats because of her high speed and the seamanship of her crew. As a troopship, she was painted in dark greys with black funnels, as were her contemporaries.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: When combined forces from the British empire and France began to suffer heavy casualties, "Mauretania" was ordered to serve as a hospital ship, along with the "Aquitania" and White Star's "Britannic", to treat the wounded until 25 January 1916. In medical service the vessel was painted white with buff funnels and large medical cross emblems surrounding the vessel and possibly illuminated signs starboard and port. Seven months later, "Mauretania" once again became a troop ship late in 1916 when requisitioned by the Canadian government to carry Canadian troops from Halifax to Liverpool.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: Her war duty was not yet over when the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, and she carried thousands of American troops.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: The ship was known by the Admiralty as HMS "Tuberose" until the end of the war, but the vessel's name was never changed by Cunard. Starting in March 1918, "Mauretania" received two forms of dazzle camouflage, a type of abstract colour scheme designed by Norman Wilkinson in 1917 in an effort to confuse enemy ships. The first camouflage scheme, applied early in March 1918, was curvilinear in nature and largely broad areas of olive with blacks, greys and blues. The second scheme was the more geometric design commonly referred to as "dazzle"; this design, applied by July 1918, was mostly several dark blues and greys with some black. After her war service, she was repainted in a drab grey scheme and finally full Cunard livery by the middle of 1919.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: Her busy sailing schedule prevented her from having an extensive overhaul scheduled in 1920. However, in 1921, Cunard removed her from service when fire broke out on E deck and decided to overhaul the ship. She returned to the Tyne shipyard where she was built, where her boilers were converted to oil firing, and returned to service in March 1922. Cunard noticed that "Mauretania" struggled to maintain her regular Atlantic service speed.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: Although the ship's service speed had improved and it now burned only of oil per 24 hours, compared to of coal previously, it was not operating at her pre-war service speeds. On one crossing in 1922 the ship managed an average speed of only .


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: It was during these years her promenade was enclosed. Cunard decided that the ship's once revolutionary turbines were in desperate need of an overhaul. In 1923, a major refitting was begun in Southampton. "Mauretania"s turbines were dismantled. Halfway through the overhaul, the shipyard workers went on strike and the work was halted, so Cunard had the ship towed to Cherbourg, France, where the work was completed at another shipyard. In May 1924, the ship returned to Atlantic service.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: In 1928 "Mauretania" was refurbished with a new interior design and in the next year her speed record was broken by a German liner, , with a speed of . On 27 August, Cunard permitted the former ocean greyhound to have one final attempt to recapture the record from the newer German liner. She was taken out of service and her engines were adjusted to produce more power to give a higher service speed; however, this was still not enough. "Bremen" represented a new generation of ocean liners that were far more powerful and technologically advanced than the aging Cunard liner. Even though "Mauretania" did not beat her German rival, the ship lost by just a fraction after decades of design improvement and beat all her own previous speed records both east and westbound. In 1929, "Mauretania" collided with a train ferry near Robbins Reef Light. No-one was killed or injured and her damage was quickly repaired.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: In 1930, with a combination of the Great Depression and newer competitors on the Atlantic run, "Mauretania" became a dedicated cruise ship running six day cruises from New York to Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. On 19 November 1930, "Mauretania" rescued 28 people and the ship's cat of the Swedish cargo ship which foundered in the Atlantic Ocean south east of Cape Race, Newfoundland. In 1932, she was painted white for cruise service. When Cunard Line merged with White Star Line in 1934, "Mauretania", along with , , and other aging ocean liners, were deemed surplus to requirements and withdrawn from service.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: Cunard White Star withdrew "Mauretania" from service following a final eastward crossing from New York to Southampton in September 1934. The voyage was made at an average speed of , equalling the original contractual stipulation for her mail subsidy. She was then laid up at Southampton, her twenty-eight years of service at a close.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: In May 1935 her furnishings and fittings were put up for auction by Hampton and Sons and on 1 July that year she departed Southampton for the last time to Metal Industries shipbreakers at Rosyth. One of her former captains, the retired commodore Sir Arthur Rostron, captain of during the rescue, came to see her on her final departure from Southampton. Rostron refused to go aboard "Mauretania" before her final journey, stating that he preferred to remember the ship as she was when he commanded her.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: En route to Rosyth, "Mauretania" stopped at her birthplace on the Tyne for half an hour, where she drew crowds of sightseers. Rockets were fired from her bridge, messages relayed, and she was boarded by the Lord Mayor of Newcastle. The mayor bade her farewell from the people of Newcastle, and her last captain, A. T. Brown, then resumed his course for Rosyth.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: Approximately 30 miles north of Newcastle is the small seaport of Amble, Northumberland. The local town council sent a telegram to the ship stating, "Still the finest ship on the seas." To which "Mauretania" replied with, "to the last and kindliest port in England, greetings and thanks." Amble, to this day, is still known as 'Amble, the Friendliest Port', and this is still seen on signs when entering the town.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: With masts cut down to fit, the ship passed under the Forth Bridge and was delivered to the breakers.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: "Mauretania" arrived at Rosyth in Scotland at about 6 am on 4 July 1935 during a half-gale, passing under Forth Bridge. By 6:30 am she passed the entrance to the Metal Industries yards under the command of Pilot Captain Whince. A lone kilted piper was present at the quayside, playing a funeral lament for the popular vessel. It was reported to author and historian John Maxtone-Graham that upon the final shut-down of her great engines, she gave a dark "final shudder...". "Mauretania" had her last public inspection on 8 July, a Sunday with 20,000 in attendance, with the monies raised going to local charities. Scrapping began shortly after and with great rapidity. Unusually, she was cut up afloat in drydock, with a complex system of wooden battens and pencil marks to monitor her balance. In a month her funnels were gone. By 1936 she was little more than a hulk, and she was beached at the tidal basin at Metal Industries and her remaining structure was scrapped by 1937.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: To prevent a rival company using the name and to keep it available for a future Cunard White Star liner, arrangements were made for the Red Funnel Paddle Steamer "Queen" to be renamed "Mauretania" in the interim before the launch of the new RMS "Mauretania" in 1938.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: The demise of the beloved "Mauretania" was protested by many of her loyal passengers, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who wrote a private letter against the scrapping.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: The ship's bell is in the reception of the Lloyd's Register, Fenchurch Street, London. Annually for Remembrance Day, Lloyds Register observe two minutes of silence and lay a wreath at its base in honour of servicemen and women.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: Some of the furnishings from "Mauretania" were installed in a bar/restaurant complex in Bristol called the Mauretania Bar (now Java Bristol), situated in Park Street. The bar was panelled with great quantities of richly carved and gilt old growth African mahogany, which came from her first class lounge. The neon sign made for the 1937 opening on the south wall still advertises "Mauretania" and her bow lettering was used above the entrance. Additionally, nearly the complete first class reading-writing room, with the original chandeliers and ornate gilt grilled bookcases, has been serving as the boardroom at Pinewood Studios, west of London. The colour is no longer shimmering silver sycamore – it has been altered over the years to an amber. According to a Channel 4 programme about coast properties the whole of the Second Class drawing room from the ship form the interior of a white and blue house overlooking Poole Harbour; the drawing room is overlooked by a balustraded circular veranda which is also original. Other panels and fittings were used to decorate the foyer and auditorium areas of the now defunct Windsor Cinema in Carluke. Some of the timber panelling was also used in the extension (completed in 1937) of St John the Baptist's Catholic Church in Padiham, Lancashire.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: In 2010, an African mahogany pilaster from the first class lounge, fluted with an intricate gilt acanthus motif and intact rams head capital, was discovered and restored; since 2012, it has been on permanent display in the Discovery Museum's Segedunum Annex at Wallsend, just a few hundred yards from where it was carved and installed in the Swan Hunter fitting out basin, over a century earlier. Many examples of the liner's fixtures and fittings exist in private collections as well, including large sections of moulding, panelling, ceilings and samples of her turbine blades.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: An original model of "Mauretania" is displayed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. after a long stay on the retired "Queen Mary" in Long Beach, California. Originally with a black hull, it was repainted to show her white cruising paint scheme in the 1930s after it was gifted to the RMS Queen Mary by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: Another scale model of "Mauretania" is displayed at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle upon Tyne. It is still in its original color scheme.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: A large builder's model, showing "Mauretania" in her white cruising paint scheme, is displayed in the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic's Cunard exhibit in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Originally a model of "Lusitania", it was converted to represent "Mauretania" after "Lusitania" was torpedoed.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: Another large builder's model is situated aboard the ocean liner "Queen Elizabeth 2", currently located in Dubai. This model was also originally "Lusitania", and, like the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic's model, it was converted into "Mauretania" after "Lusitania" was lost. When inspecting the model, one can tell it was "Lusitania" by examining the different boom crutches and bridge front, which is on the boat deck level.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: A model of the vessel which was commissioned by Cunard is now held in the collection of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: "Mauretania" is remembered in a song, "The fireman's lament" or "Firing the Mauretania", collected by Redd Sullivan. The song starts "In 19 hundred and 24, I ... got a job on the Mauretania"; but then goes on to say "shovelling coal from morn till night" (not possible in 1924 as she was oil-fired by then). The number of "fires" is said to be 64. Hughie Jones also recorded the song but the last verse of Hughie's version calls upon "all you trimmers" whereas Redd Sullivan's version calls upon "stokers".


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: The Clive Cussler Isaac Bell novel "The Thief" is set aboard "Mauretania". A terrible fire engulfs the forward storage area but it is brought under control.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: "Mauretania" is mentioned at the beginning of James Cameron's Titanic, when Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) says that "Titanic" does not appear larger than "Mauretania", her snobbish fiancé Caledon Hockley (Billy Zane) explains to her that "Titanic" is much larger and luxurious than "Mauretania".


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: The "Mauretania" appears in "The Country Mouse and the City Mouse Adventures" episode "Posh Mice" in which the title characters travel among the mice and rat passengers on the ship's maiden voyage and thwart a steward's attempts to steal two Italian immigrants' papers and life savings during the voyage.


title: RMS Mauretania (1906)

text: The historical novel "Maiden Voyage" by British writer Roger Harvey set in Newcastle in the 1900s gives an accurate account of the building of "Mauretania" and features characters involved with her turbine engines. The climax of two love stories and a thriller comes as the ship approaches New York on her maiden voyage.


title: Angèle (singer)

text: Angèle Van Laeken () (; born 3 December 1995) is a Belgian singer, songwriter, pianist, record producer and actress.


title: Angèle (singer)

text: She was one of 2018's biggest breakout acts in French and Belgian pop music, breaking Stromae's record for weeks at the top of the Belgian singles charts with her 2018 single "Tout oublier" which features her brother, Roméo Elvis.


title: Angèle (singer)

text: Angèle van Laeken was born on 3 December 1995, in Uccle, Brussels-Capital Region. Angèle is the daughter of the singer Marka and of the actress Laurence Bibot. Her brother is the rapper Roméo Elvis.


title: Angèle (singer)

text: Angèle spent a difficult adolescence in a strict Catholic school before attending the Decroly School. The artistic options at this high school helped develop her musical skills. She then enrolled in the Jazz Studio Antwerp for a jazz education before joining her father's band.


title: Angèle (singer)

text: Angèle gave her first performances in cafés around Brussels. Notably at the restaurant Le Delecta, in Ixelles, now closed.


title: Angèle (singer)

text: She was first noticed for her cover of Dick Annegarn, "Bruxelles", and on Instagram videos where she mixed singing and comedy. In 2017, she was the support act for Ibeyi and the Belgian rapper Damso, whom she also accompanied in his album Lithopédion.


title: Angèle (singer)

text: Her first single, "La Loi de Murphy", was released in late 2017 and received millions of views on YouTube. A second single "Je veux tes yeux" was released in early 2018. The two video clips were directed by the Belgian photographer Charlotte Abramow.


title: Angèle (singer)

text: In May 2018, she performed her first Parisian concert at the Trianon accompanied by MC Solaar on her cover of his song "Victime de la mode". She performed in several summer festivals in Belgium, France and Switzerland such as Les Ardentes, Dour, Garorock, and Rock Werchter. In 2018, Angèle released her third single, "La Thune".


title: Angèle (singer)

text: In August 2018, she announced the tracklist of her first album "Brol" on the Initial label. The album was released on 5 October 2018, the same day as her single duet with her brother, Roméo Elvis. This album was successful and resulted in Angèle invitation to perform on various French TV shows. The single, "Tout oublier", spent nine weeks at number 1 on the Ultratop charts, breaking the record for a Belgian artist formerly set by Stromae.


title: Angèle (singer)

text: In 2019, Angèle became one of the most sought for artists in France and Belgium and affirmed her feminism with the song "Balance ton quoi" in reference to the French #metoo movement, Balance ton porc. Pierre Niney makes an appearance in the video alongside some of Angèle's friends to talk about struggles her female friends have encountered with men. Angèle became an ambassador for Chanel afterwards.


title: Angèle (singer)

text: In April 2020, Angèle performed for "One World: Together At Home", a global broadcast and digital special to support front-line healthcare workers and the WHO during the COVID-19 pandemic, hosted by Lady Gaga.


title: Angèle (singer)

text: In October 2020, Angèle was pictured alongside London singer Dua Lipa on the set of a music video. A collaboration with the latter was later announced and would feature on the reissue of Lipa's new album Future Nostalgia. "Fever" was released on 30 October 2020. The music video was released a week later on 6 November 2020 on YouTube. Before the release of the video, Lipa announced on social media that Angèle will be appearing as a special guest on her live stream concert Studio 2054 on 27 November 2020.


title: Angèle (singer)

text: Angèle is a fan of Ella Fitzgerald and Hélène Ségara. She is inspired by many musical genres from French songs to electronic music and rap, which she disliked as a teenager. She became influenced by rap, particularly while performing with her brother Romeo Elvis and the rappers Caballero and JeanJass.


title: Angèle (singer)

text: From 2017 to 2019, she dated French dancer and choreographer Léo Walk. She wrote the song "Perdus" which is about the end of their relationship, linked to her new notoriety.


title: Angèle (singer)

text: In August 2020, Angèle announced on Instagram that she was dating French comedian Marie Papillon, while coming out. They separated the following year. In her 2021 self-titled Netflix documentary, Angèle confirmed her bisexuality.


title: Angèle (singer)

text: The D6bels Music Awards is a musical event organized by RTBF, a public radio and television service of the French Community of Belgium.


title: Angèle (singer)

text: The MIA's, in full Music Industry Awards, are Flemish music prizes that are awarded by the VRT in collaboration with Music Centre Flanders.


title: Angèle (singer)

text: Victoires de la Musique is an annual French award ceremony where the Victoire accolade is delivered by the French Ministry of Culture to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry that recognizes the best musical artists of the year. The awards are the French equivalent to the Grammy Awards and the Brit Awards for music, and it is one of the major awards in France.


title: Mute swan

text: The mute swan (Cygnus olor) is a species of swan and a member of the waterfowl family Anatidae. It is native to much of Eurosiberia, and (as a rare winter visitor) the far north of Africa. It is an introduced species in North America, home to the largest populations outside of its native range, with additional smaller introductions in Australasia and southern Africa. The name 'mute' derives from it being less vocal than other swan species. Measuring in length, this large swan is wholly white in plumage with an orange beak bordered with black. It is recognizable by its pronounced knob atop the beak, which is larger in males.


title: Mute swan

text: The mute swan was first formally described by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin as "Anas olor" in 1789, and was transferred by Johann Matthäus Bechstein to the new genus "Cygnus" in 1803. Both "cygnus" and "olor" mean "swan" in Latin; "cygnus" is a variant form of "cycnus", a borrowing from Greek "kyknos", a word of the same meaning.


title: Mute swan

text: Despite its Eurasian origin, its closest relatives are the black swan of Australia and the black-necked swan of South America, not the other Northern Hemisphere swans of the genus "Cygnus". The species is monotypic, with no living subspecies.


title: Mute swan

text: Mute swan subfossils, 6,000 years old, have been found in post-glacial peat beds of East Anglia, Great Britain. They have been recorded from Ireland east to Portugal and Italy, and from France, 13,000 BP (Desbrosse and Mourer-Chauvire 1972–1973). The paleosubspecies. "Cygnus olor bergmanni", which differed only in size from the living bird, is known from fossils found in Azerbaijan. A related paleospecies recorded from fossils and subfossils is the Giant swan, "Cygnus falconeri", a flightless species which lived on the islands of Malta and Sicily during the Middle Pleistocene.


title: Mute swan

text: Fossils of swan ancestors more distantly allied to the mute swan have been found in four U.S. states: California, Arizona, Idaho and Oregon. The timeline runs from the Miocene to the late Pleistocene, or 10,000 BP. The latest find was in Anza Borrego Desert, a state park in California. Fossils from the Pleistocene include "Cygnus paloregonus" from Fossil Lake, Oregon, Froman's Ferry, Idaho, and Arizona, referred to by Howard in "The Waterfowl of the World" as "probably the mute type swan".


title: Mute swan

text: Adults of this large swan typically range from long, although can range in extreme cases from , with a wingspan. Males are larger than females and have a larger knob on their bill. On average, this is the second largest waterfowl species after the trumpeter swan, although male mute swans can easily match or even exceed a male trumpeter in mass. Among standard measurements of the mute swan, the wing chord measures , the tarsus is and the bill is . The plumage is white, while the legs are dark grey. The beak of the mute swan is bright orange, with black around the nostrils and a black nail.


title: Mute swan

text: The mute swan is one of the heaviest flying birds. In several studies from Great Britain, males (known as "cobs") were found to average from about , with a weight range of while the slightly smaller females (known as "pens") averaged about , with a weight range of . While the top normal weight for a big cob is roughly , one unusually big Polish cob weighed almost and this counts as the largest weight ever verified for a flying bird, although it has been questioned whether this heavyweight could still take flight.


title: Mute swan

text: Young birds, called cygnets, are not the bright white of mature adults, and their bill is dull greyish-black, not orange, for the first year. The down may range from pure white to grey to buff, with grey/buff the most common. The white cygnets have a leucistic gene. Cygnets grow quickly, reaching a size close to their adult size in approximately three months after hatching. Cygnets typically retain their grey feathers until they are at least one year old, with the down on their wings having been replaced by flight feathers earlier that year.


title: Mute swan

text: All mute swans are white at maturity, though the feathers (particularly on the head and neck) are often stained orange-brown by iron and tannins in the water.


title: Mute swan

text: The colour morph "C. o." morpha "immutabilis" ( is Latin for "immutable, unchangeable, unalterable"), also known as the "Polish swan", has pinkish (not dark grey) legs and dull white cygnets; as with white domestic geese, it is found only in populations with a history of domestication. Polish swans carry a copy of a gene responsible for leucism.


title: Mute swan

text: Mute swans nest on large mounds that they build with waterside vegetation in shallow water on islands in the middle or at the very edge of a lake. They are monogamous and often reuse the same nest each year, restoring or rebuilding it as needed. Male and female swans share the care of the nest, and once the cygnets are fledged it is not uncommon to see whole families looking for food. They feed on a wide range of vegetation, both submerged aquatic plants which they reach with their long necks, and by grazing on land. The food commonly includes agricultural crop plants such as oilseed rape and wheat, and feeding flocks in the winter may cause significant crop damage, often as much through trampling with their large webbed feet, as through direct consumption. It will also feed on small proportions of aquatic insects, fish and frogs.


title: Mute swan

text: Unlike black swans, mute swans are usually strongly territorial with just a single pair on smaller lakes, though in a few locations where a large area of suitable feeding habitat is found they can be colonial. The largest colonies have over 100 pairs, such as at the colony at Abbotsbury Swannery in southern England, and at the southern tip of Öland Island, Ottenby Preserve, in the coastal waters of the Baltic Sea, and can have nests spaced as little as apart. Non-mated juveniles up to 3–4 years old commonly form larger flocks, which can total several hundred birds, often at regular traditional sites. A notable flock of non-breeding birds is found on the River Tweed estuary at Berwick-upon-Tweed in northeastern England, with a maximum count of 787 birds. A large population exists near the Swan Lifeline Station in Windsor, and live on the Thames in the shadow of Windsor Castle. Once the adults are mated they seek out their own territories and often live close to ducks and gulls, which may take advantage of the swan's ability to reach deep water weeds, which tend to spread out on the water surface.


title: Mute swan

text: The mute swan is less vocal than the noisy whooper and Bewick's swans; they do, however, make a variety of sounds, often described as "grunting, hoarse whistling, and snorting noises." During a courtship display, mute swans utter a rhythmic song. The song help synchronize the movements of their heads and necks. It could technically be employed to distinguish a bonded couple from two dating swans, as the rhythm of the song typically fails to match the pace of the head movements in two dating swans. Mute swans usually hiss at competitors or intruders trying to enter their territory. The most familiar sound associated with mute swans is the vibrant throbbing of the wings in flight which is unique to the species, and can be heard from a range of , indicating its value as a contact sound between birds in flight. Cygnets are especially vocal, and communicate through a variety of whistling and chirping sounds when content, as well as a harsh squawking noise when distressed or lost.


title: Mute swan

text: Mute swans can be very aggressive in defence of their nests and are highly protective of their mate and offspring. Most defensive acts from a mute swan begin with a loud hiss and, if this is not sufficient to drive off the predator or intruder, are followed by a physical attack. Swans attack by striking at the threat with bony spurs in their wings, accompanied by biting with their large bill, while smaller waterbirds such as ducks are normally grabbed with the swan's bill and dragged or thrown clear of the swan and its offspring. The wings of the swan are very powerful, though not strong enough to break an adult man's leg, as is commonly misquoted. Large waterfowl, such as Canada geese, (more likely out of competition than in response to potential predation) may be aggressively driven off, and mute swans regularly attack people who enter their territory.


title: Mute swan

text: The cob is responsible for defending the cygnets while on the water, and will sometimes attack small watercraft, such as canoes, that it feels are a threat to its young. The cob will additionally try to chase the predator out of his family territory, and will keep animals such as foxes and raptors at bay. In New York (outside its native range), the most common predators of cygnets are common snapping turtles. Healthy adults are rarely preyed upon, though canids such as coyotes, felids such as lynx, and bears can pose a threat to infirm ones (healthy adults can usually swim away from danger and nest defense is usually successful.) and there are a few cases of healthy adults falling prey to golden eagles. In England, there has been an increased rate of attacks on swans by out-of-control dogs, especially in parks where the birds are less territorial. This is considered criminal in British law, and the birds are placed under the highest protection due to their association with the monarch. Mute swans will readily attack dogs to protect themselves and their cygnets from an attack, and an adult swan is capable of overwhelming and drowning even large dog breeds.


title: Mute swan

text: The familiar pose with neck curved back and wings half raised, known as busking, is a threat display. Both feet are paddled in unison during this display, resulting in more jerky movement. The swans may also use the busking posture for wind-assisted transportation over several hundred meters, so-called windsurfing.


title: Mute swan

text: Like other swans, mute swans are known for their ability to grieve for a lost or dead mate or cygnet. Swans will go through a mourning process, and in the case of the loss of their mate, may either stay where its counterpart lived, or fly off to join a flock. Should one of the pair die while there are cygnets present, the remaining parent will take up their partner's duties in raising the clutch.


title: Mute swan

text: Mute swans lay from 4 to 10 eggs. The female broods for around 36 days, with cygnets normally hatching between the months of May and July. The young swans do not achieve the ability to fly before about 120 to 150 days old. This limits the distribution of the species at the northern edge of its range as the cygnets need to learn to fly before the ponds and lakes freeze over.


title: Mute swan

text: The mute swan is found naturally mainly in temperate areas of Europe then across the Palearctic as far east as Primorsky Krai, near Sidemi.


title: Mute swan

text: It is partially migratory throughout northern latitudes in Europe and Asia, as far south as North Africa and the Mediterranean. It is known and recorded to have nested in Iceland and is a vagrant to that area as well as to Bermuda, according to the UN Environment Programme chart of international status chart of bird species, which places it in 70 countries, breeding in 49 countries, and vagrant in 16 countries. While most of the current population in Japan is introduced, mute swans are depicted on scrolls more than 1,000 years old, and wild birds from the mainland Asian population still occur rarely in winter. Natural migrants to Japan usually occur along with whooper and sometimes Bewick's swans.


title: Mute swan

text: The mute swan is protected in most of its range, but this has not prevented illegal hunting and poaching. It is often kept in captivity outside its natural range, as a decoration for parks and ponds, and escapes have happened. The descendants of such birds have become naturalised in the eastern United States and Great Lakes, much as the Canada goose has done in Europe.


title: Mute swan

text: The total native population of mute swans is about 500,000 birds at the end of the breeding season (adults plus young), of which up to 350,000 are in Russia. The largest single breeding concentration is 11,000 pairs in the Volga Delta.


title: Mute swan

text: The population in the United Kingdom is about 22,000 birds as of the 2006–2007 winter, a slight decline from the peak of about 26,000–27,000 birds in 1990. This includes about 5,300 breeding pairs, the remainder being immatures. Other significant populations in Europe include 6,800–8,300 breeding pairs in Germany, 4,500 pairs in Denmark, 4,000–4,200 pairs in Poland, 3,000–4,000 pairs in the Netherlands, about 2,500 pairs in Ireland, and 1,200–1,700 pairs in Ukraine.


title: Mute swan

text: For many centuries, mute swans in Great Britain were domesticated for food, with individuals being marked by nicks on their webs (feet) or beaks to indicate ownership. These marks were registered with the Crown and a Royal Swanherd was appointed. Any birds not so marked became Crown property, hence the swan becoming known as the "Royal Bird". It is quite possible that this domestication saved the mute swan from extirpation through overhunting in Great Britain.


title: Mute swan

text: Populations in western Europe were largely exterminated by hunting pressure in the 13th–19th centuries, with the exception of semi-domesticated birds maintained as poultry by large landowners. Better protection in the late 19th and early 20th centuries allowed birds to return to most or all of their former range. More recently in the period from about 1960 up to the early 1980s, numbers declined significantly again in many areas in England, primarily due to lead poisoning from birds swallowing lead shot from shooting and discarded fishing weights made from lead. After lead weights and shot were mostly replaced by other less toxic alternatives, mute swan numbers increased again rapidly.


title: Mute swan

text: Since being introduced into North America, the mute swan has increased greatly in number to the extent that it is considered as an invasive species there. Populations introduced into other areas remain small, with around 200 in Japan, fewer than 200 in New Zealand and Australia, and about 120 in South Africa.


title: Mute swan

text: The mute swan was introduced to North America in the late 19th century. Recently, it has been widely viewed as an invasive species because of its rapidly increasing numbers and its adverse effects on other waterfowl and native ecosystems. For example, a study of population sizes in the lower Great Lakes from 1971 to 2000 found that mute swan numbers were increasing at an average rate of at least 10% per year, doubling the population every seven to eight years. Several studies have concluded that mute swans severely reduce densities of submerged vegetation where they occur.


title: Mute swan

text: In 2003, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to "minimize environmental damages attributed to Mute Swans" by reducing their numbers in the Atlantic Flyway to pre-1986 levels, a 67% reduction at the time. According to a report published in the "Federal Register" of 2003 the proposal was supported by all thirteen state wildlife agencies which submitted comments, as well as by 43 bird conservation, wildlife conservation and wildlife management organisations. Ten animal rights organisations and the vast majority of comments from individuals were opposed. At this time mute swans were protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act due to a court order, but in 2005 the United States Department of the Interior officially declared them a non-native, unprotected species. Mute swans are protected in some areas of the U.S. by local laws as, for example, in Connecticut.


title: Mute swan

text: The status of the mute swan as an introduced species in North America is disputed by the interest group "Save the Mute Swans". They assert that mute swans are native in the region and therefore deserving of protection. They claim that mute swans had origins from Russia and cite historical sightings and fossil records. These claims have been rejected as specious by the U.S. Department of the Interior.


title: Mute swan

text: The mute swan had absolute protection in New Zealand under the Wildlife Act 1953, but this was changed in June 2010 to a lower level of protection. It still has protection, but is now allowed to be killed or held in captivity at the discretion of the Minister of Conservation.


title: Mute swan

text: A small feral population exists in the vicinity of Perth, Australia; however, it is believed to number less than 100 individuals.


title: Mute swan

text: The mute swan has been the national bird of Denmark since 1984. Prior to that, the skylark was considered Denmark's national bird (since 1960).


title: Mute swan

text: The fairy tale "The Ugly Duckling" by Hans Christian Andersen tells the story of a cygnet ostracised by his fellow barnyard fowl because of his perceived unattractiveness. To his delight (and to the surprise of others), he matures into a graceful swan, the most beautiful bird of all.


title: Mute swan

text: Today, the British Monarch retains the right to ownership of all unmarked mute swans in open water, but Queen Elizabeth II exercised her ownership only on certain stretches of the Thames and its surrounding tributaries. This ownership is shared with the Vintners' and Dyers' Companies, who were granted rights of ownership by the Crown in the 15th century.


title: Mute swan

text: The mute swans in the moat at the Bishops Palace at Wells Cathedral in Wells, England have for centuries been trained to ring bells via strings attached to them to beg for food. Two swans are still able to ring for lunch.


title: Mute swan

text: The pair of swans in the Boston Public Garden are named Romeo and Juliet after the Shakespearean couple; however, it was found that both of them are females.


title: Dollar Tree

text: Dollar Tree, Inc. is an American multi-price-point chain of discount variety stores. Headquartered in Chesapeake, Virginia, it is a "Fortune" 500 company and operates 15,115 stores throughout the 48 contiguous U.S. states and Canada. Its stores are supported by a nationwide logistics network of 24 distribution centers. Additionally, the company operates stores under the name of Dollar Bills, as well as a multi-price-point variety chain under the Family Dollar banner.


title: Dollar Tree

text: Dollar Tree competes in the dollar store and low-end retail markets. Each Dollar Tree stocks a variety of products, including national, regional, and private-label brands. Departments found in a Dollar Tree store include health and beauty, food and snacks, party, seasonal décor, housewares, glassware, dinnerware, household cleaning supplies, candy, toys, gifts, gift bags and wrap, stationery, craft supplies, teaching supplies, automotive, electronics, pet supplies, and books. Most Dollar Tree stores also sell frozen foods and dairy items such as milk, eggs, pizza, ice cream, frozen dinners, and pre-made baked goods. In August 2012, the company began accepting manufacturer coupons at all of its store locations.


title: Dollar Tree

text: In 1953, K. R. Perry opened a Ben Franklin variety store in Norfolk, Virginia, which later became known as "K&K 5&10".


title: Dollar Tree

text: In 1970, K. R. Perry, Doug Perry, and Macon Brock started "K&K Toys" in Norfolk, Virginia. This mall concept grew to over 130 stores on the East Coast.


title: Dollar Tree

text: In 1986, Doug Perry, Macon Brock, and Ray Compton started another chain store called "Only $1.00" with five stores, one in Georgia, one in Tennessee, and three in Virginia. The expansion of dollar stores was continued alongside K&K Toys stores, mostly in enclosed malls.


title: Dollar Tree

text: On April 27, 1989, the first “Dollar Tree”-branded store opened at the Jessamine Mall in Sumter, South Carolina. In a May 1989 advertisement in the Sun-News, the fledgling chain, apparently already planning 100 stores for the eastern United States, bills the dollar-pricing model as the “hottest new shopping concept in America”.


title: Dollar Tree

text: In 1991, the corporation made a decision to focus exclusively on the expansion of dollar stores after selling K&K stores to KB Toys, owned by Melville Corporation.


title: Dollar Tree

text: In 1993, the name "Only $1.00" was changed to "Dollar Tree Stores" to address what could be a multi-price-point strategy in the future, and part equity interest was sold to SKM partners, a private equity firm.


title: Dollar Tree

text: Brock and the co-founders of Dollar Tree got the idea for the company from another retailer known as Everything's A Dollar, which went bankrupt in the 1990s.


title: Dollar Tree

text: On March 6, 1995, Dollar Tree, Inc. went public on the NASDAQ exchange at $15 a share, with a market cap then calculated at $225 million.


title: Dollar Tree

text: In 1997, the company opened its first distribution center and its new store support center, both located in Chesapeake, Virginia.


title: Dollar Tree

text: In 1999, Dollar Tree acquired "Only $One" stores based in New York. That same year, the company opened its second distribution center in Olive Branch, Mississippi.


title: Dollar Tree

text: In 2000, Dollar Tree acquired "Dollar Express", a Philadelphia-based company, and also built a new distribution center in Stockton, California. In 2001, the company opened two additional distribution centers, in Savannah, Georgia, and Briar Creek, Pennsylvania. In 2003, Dollar Tree acquired Salt Lake City, Utah-based "Greenbacks, Inc.", and opened a new distribution center in Marietta, Oklahoma.


title: Dollar Tree

text: In 2004, Dollar Tree opened its first store in North Dakota which marked its operation of stores in all 48 contiguous states. The company also opened new distribution centers in Joliet, Illinois, and Ridgefield, Washington.


title: Dollar Tree

text: In 2006, Dollar Tree celebrated its 20th year of retailing at a $1.00 price point, opened its 3,000th store, and acquired 138 "DEAL$" stores, previously owned by SUPERVALU INC.


title: Dollar Tree

text: In 2007, Dollar Tree expanded its Briar Creek Distribution Center and crossed the $4 billion sales threshold. In 2008, Dollar Tree earned a place in the Fortune 500. By the close of 2009, the company opened a store in Washington, D.C., and purchased a new distribution center in San Bernardino, California.


title: Dollar Tree

text: In 2009, Dollar Tree redesigned its website with a new e-commerce platform. DollarTree.com sells Dollar Tree merchandise in larger quantities to individuals, small businesses, and organizations. The company also advertises in-store events, specials, seasonal promotions, and featured products through the site, and users can locate a retail store, research information about Dollar Tree, and view product recalls. Dollar Tree also added customer ratings and reviews, and customer stories to the site.


title: Dollar Tree

text: In 2010, the corporation opened its 4,000th chain store and acquired 86 Canadian Dollar Giant stores which are based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The stores are operated in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario. These are the first retail locations outside of the United States operated by Dollar Tree.


title: Dollar Tree

text: In 2011, Dollar Tree achieved total sales of $6.63 billion, opened 278 new stores, and completed a expansion of its distribution center in Savannah, Georgia.


title: Dollar Tree

text: In 2012, Dollar Tree opened another 345 new stores and exceeded $7 billion in sales, with an end-of-the-year market cap at $9.13 billion.


title: Dollar Tree

text: On July 28, 2014, Dollar Tree announced that it was offering $9.2 billion for the purchase of competitor chain store Family Dollar. On August 18, 2014, Dollar General lodged a competing bid of $9.7 billion for Family Dollar. The bid was rejected on August 20, 2014, by the Family Dollar board, which said it would proceed with the deal with Dollar Tree.


title: Dollar Tree

text: In January 2015, Dollar Tree announced plans to divest 300 stores in order to appease US regulators scrutinizing its proposed takeover of Family Dollar stores.


title: Dollar Tree

text: In June 2015, the firm agreed to sell 330 stores to private equity company Sycamore Partners as part of the approval process for its $8.5 billion takeover of Family Dollar.


title: Dollar Tree

text: The company was ranked 134 on the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the United States corporations by revenue.


title: Dollar Tree

text: In March 2019, as part of its reposition plan, Dollar Tree announced that it will close up to 390 Family Dollar stores along with renovating 1,000 other locations.


title: Dollar Tree

text: On March 3, 2021, it was announced that Dollar Tree had quietly introduced a combination Family Dollar/Dollar Tree store concept, with the first one opening in early 2021. Dollar Tree has opened and operated nearly 50 locations by the end of 2020, primarily in small towns with populations of just a few thousand people.


title: Dollar Tree

text: On September 28, 2021, CEO Michael Witynski, citing increased shipping and labor costs squeezing profit margins, announced that some prices will be rising above $1, possibly to as much as $1.50.


title: Dollar Tree

text: On November 23, 2021, it was announced that Dollar Tree plans to raise its prices from a dollar for typical items to $1.25 in response to inflation and pressure from investors to raise prices. Some of the items sold at Dollar Tree will not have their prices increased. The retailer will introduce the new price point in more than 2,000 stores by December 2021 and complete the roll-out across most of its 8,000 stores by the first quarter of 2022.


title: Dollar Tree

text: Dollar Tree is classified as an extreme discount store. It claims to be able to achieve this because their buyers "work extremely hard to find the best bargains out there", and it has "great control over the tremendous buying power at the dollar price-point". Its prices are primarily designed to attract financially disadvantaged customers, but it has also become popular within immigrant communities.


title: Dollar Tree

text: On July 28, 2014, Dollar Tree announced that a deal had been reached and approved by both parties to purchase Family Dollar for $8.5 billion plus acquisition of the $1 billion in debt currently held by Family Dollar. The deal came in the month following activist investor and major shareholder Carl Icahn's demand that Family Dollar be promptly put up for sale. After their reported deal had been struck, Dollar General entered the bidding, surpassing Dollar Tree's offer, with a $9.7 billion bid on August 18, 2014. On August 20, 2014, Family Dollar rejected the Dollar General bid, saying it was not a matter of price, but concerns over antitrust issues that had convinced the company and its advisers that the deal could not be concluded on the terms proposed. The Family Dollar board had been analyzing potential antitrust issues that could arise from doing a deal with Dollar General, since the start of the year a statement from CEO Howard Levine outlined.


title: Dollar Tree

text: Dollar Tree stores in Canada sell items for C$1.50 or less. On October 11, 2010, Dollar Tree announced its acquisition of Dollar Giant, originally incorporated in 2001 in Vancouver, Canada, for $52 million. At the time of the acquisition, Dollar Giant had about 85 retail outlets in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario. Approximately 30 of its retail locations are in British Columbia, making it the second largest dollar store chain in that province. It was Canada's fourth largest operator of dollar stores. Dollar Tree has since rebranded all of its Dollar Giant stores to Dollar Tree; these were the first retail locations outside of the United States operated by Dollar Tree. The company now operates 227 stores across Canada, concentrated in Western Canada and Ontario. Dollar Tree Canada's merchandising team is located in Mississauga, Ontario, while its corporate office remains in Burnaby in Greater Vancouver.


title: Dollar Tree

text: The Consumer Product Safety Commission lists several recalls for products sold at Dollar Tree stores. The recalled products include salsa jars with broken glass inside them, hot-melt mini glue guns (recalled in January 2008) which could short circuit and cause burns, and candle sets (recalled in February 2004) which could produce excessive flame.


title: Isa Briones

text: Isabella Camille Briones (; born January 17, 1999) is an American actor and singer. A veteran of musical theatre, she rose to prominence for her starring roles in the CBS All Access (later Paramount+) series "" (2020), including Soji, an android "daughter" of Data.


title: Isa Briones

text: Isa Briones began her career as a model in New York City at age three, and started acting in feature films and stage productions in 2008. She won the Ovation Award for Featured Actress In a Musical for "Next to Normal" in 2018 in Los Angeles. Afterward, she returned to New York and became the youngest performer in the first touring company of "Hamilton", playing multiple roles and earning praise for her "sultry alto" voice.


title: Isa Briones

text: In addition to multiple acting performances in "Star Trek: Picard", Briones sang a new arrangement of "Blue Skies" by Irving Berlin for the season one finale.


title: Isa Briones

text: Isa Briones was born in London, England, to Jon Jon Briones and Megan Briones ( Johnson), and she has a younger brother, Teo. Her family members are all musical theatre actors. She is Filipino on her father's side, and Swedish and Irish on her mother's.


title: Isa Briones

text: Her parents met in Stuttgart while auditioning for "Miss Saigon"; her father was closing its West End theatre production when Briones was born. She was ten months old when her family moved from London to New York City, where she began work as a model at age three. In 2006, when Briones was seven, her family moved to Los Angeles.


title: Isa Briones

text: Briones learned acting and singing at home from her parents. She majored in theatre and musical theatre at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts.


title: Isa Briones

text: Briones began her acting career as a child in 2008. She appeared in television commercials and played supporting roles in feature films including "Brown Soup Thing", "Takers" and "Lonely Boy".


title: Isa Briones

text: For a television pilot in 2010, Briones played one of three children of a single mother moonlighting as a drug kingpin in Beverly Hills. In 2018, she appeared along with her father in an episode of "".


title: Isa Briones

text: In 2019, Briones was cast in "" as two sets of synthetic twins: Dahj and Soji, and Jana and Sutra. Briones sent tapes of herself to audition for the web television series while she was playing multiple roles on stage in "Hamilton", and learned during the process that she would portray twins in the series. She made her debut as both Dahj and Soji during the season premiere in January 2020. Sutra is introduced in episode nine.


title: Isa Briones

text: Briones said she identified most closely with Soji who, after Romulan attacks, learns she is not human but rather an android created from a remnant of Data: "I think that's a very relatable story as a mixed person, deciding that you can be... both Filipino and white, and you can be both synthetic and human, if that's how you feel inside." Sutra presented a different direction for Briones, who chose a similar look to Data, and the novel challenge of acting opposite herself as Soji.


title: Isa Briones

text: In his review of the series' debut episode, "Entertainment Weekly"s Darren Franich called its plot developments "shock tactics" and Dahj "vacant". Scott Collura of "IGN" wrote that Soji is effectively a plot device, but Briones "gives it her all week after week, reacting best she can to Soji's changing status quo". Keith DeCandido from "Tor.com" said her performance improved with each episode; "her confused post-activation Soji is her best work".


title: Isa Briones

text: Paramount+ confirmed in April 2021 that Briones would return for the series' second season, in which she added a new character, Kore, genetically engineered "daughter" of 21st century geneticist Adam Soong (Brent Spiner). In the season finale "Farewell", Kore frees herself from Soong's influence and is recruited by Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) to join the Travelers.


title: Isa Briones

text: In October, Briones was added to the cast of the Disney+ series "Goosebumps", based on the novels by R. L. Stine. Briones plays Jane, a bookworm thought by her high-school classmates to be a snob.


title: Isa Briones

text: Briones has performed in numerous stage musicals since childhood. She played Susan in a Los Angeles production of "Miracle on 34th Street", in which Megan Briones appeared as her mother.


title: Isa Briones

text: In 2018, Briones earned three Ovation Award nominations for Featured Actress In a Musical from the LA STAGE Alliance. She was nominated for her portrayal of Perón's mistress in "Evita", and won for her performance in one of two discrete productions of "Next to Normal". In his review of "Next to Normal" in August 2016, Cary Ginell of "BroadwayWorld" wrote, "Briones gives a disquietingly effective, achingly nuanced portrayal" of her character, Natalie; in October, Ginell called her song in "Evita" "one of the most quietly exquisite moments in the entire musical." Margaret Gray of the "Los Angeles Times" called Briones the "breakout star" of "Next to Normal" in May 2017: "Briones played the role before ... and she has a lock on it." Erin Conley of OnStage Los Angeles praised Briones's "beautiful, crystal clear voice."


title: Isa Briones

text: Briones joined her father when he moved back to New York in January 2018. She was cast in "Hamilton" following a seven-month audition process, becoming at age 19 the youngest person to join the first national touring company. Over the course of its one-year run, she played both Peggy Schuyler and Maria Reynolds, and understudied for the role of Eliza Hamilton. Her performances brought praise from Judith Newmark of the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch": she "effectively plays Peggy Schuyler as a cupcake and Maria Reynolds as a flambé." "Cincinnati CityBeat"s Rick Pender wrote, "Briones brings a sultry alto to her second role as Maria Reynolds," Hamilton's mistress. She toured with the company until March 2019, and was cast in "Star Trek: Picard" in April.


title: Isa Briones

text: After production wrapped in Los Angeles on the series' first season, Briones returned to the stage. She appeared in AJ Rafael's "Crazy Talented Asians", and "#Hash(tag) America" by Anthony Fedorov and Raye Zaragoza. In May 2020, Briones and the cast of "Crazy Talented Asians" began producing a monthly online performance series.


title: Isa Briones

text: Briones returned to the stage in Los Angeles in April 2022 for a reading of "Graves", a play written by Ellie Pyle and directed by Bola Ogun. In July, she joined the cast of "Grease" as staged by Musical Theatre West. Sean McMullen of "The Press-Enterprise" called her presence as Betty Rizzo "tough, seasoned, and visceral." Steven Stanley of Stage Scene LA wrote, "Briones gives Rizzo both power pipes and tough-girl swagger".


title: Isa Briones

text: Briones has recorded several video duets with fellow Filipino-American performer AJ Rafael. Their version of "Rewrite the Stars" from "The Greatest Showman" was released as a single.


title: Isa Briones

text: For the "Star Trek: Picard" season one finale, "", Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" was set to play during Data's final scene as a bookend to his performance in "". Composer Jeff Russo wrote a new arrangement for the episode, and series co-creator Alex Kurtzman suggested they ask Briones to perform the vocals. Briones said, "it's so right that this is the song" playing at the end of Data's journey. Her rendition was released as a single in 2020.


title: Isa Briones

text: In April 2020, Briones joined her "Star Trek: Picard" castmates including Jonathan Frakes, Jeri Ryan and Brent Spiner in a video message of hope to viewers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In July of that year, Briones took part in the Star Trek Universe Virtual Panel for Comic-Con@Home, the virtual event that replaced San Diego Comic-Con in 2020.


title: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

text: A Tomb of the Unknown Soldier or Tomb of the Unknown Warrior is a monument dedicated to the services of an unknown soldier and to the common memories of all soldiers killed in war. Such tombs can be found in many nations and are usually high-profile national monuments. Throughout history, many soldiers have died in war with their remains being unidentified. Following World War I, a movement arose to commemorate these soldiers with a single tomb, containing the body of one such unidentified soldier.


title: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

text: A shrine in Jinju, Korea, which commemorated those who died in defense of Korea during the Imjin War in 1592, has been described as the first Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It is, however, more inclusive, in that it is a memorial to all who died in defense of the city against the forces of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, civilian as well as soldier. Beginning in 1593, when the Ministry of Rites received permission to perform a sacrifice for all who died in the battle, not only the identifiable bodies, the state offered sacrifices for the dead twice a year in spring and autumn until 1908, when the practice was ended by royal edict.


title: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

text: The first known monument of an unknown soldier in Europe is Landsoldaten ("The Valiant Private Soldier") (1849), from the First Schleswig War, in Fredericia, Denmark.


title: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

text: During the First World War, the British and French armies who were allies during the war jointly decided to bury soldiers themselves. In the UK, under the Imperial War Graves Commission (now Commonwealth War Graves Commission), the Reverend David Railton had seen a grave marked by a rough cross while serving in the British Army as a chaplain on the Western Front, which bore the pencil-written legend "An Unknown British Soldier".


title: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

text: He suggested (together with the French in their own country) the creation at a national level of a symbolic funeral and burial of an "Unknown Warrior", proposing that the grave should in the UK include a national monument in the form of what is usually, but not in this particular case, a headstone. The idea received the support of the Dean of Westminster, Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and later from King George V, responding to a wave of public support. At the same time, a similar concern grew in France. In November 1916, a local officer of Le Souvenir français proposed the idea of burying "an unknown soldier" in the Panthéon. A formal bill was presented in Parliament in November 1918. The decision was voted into law in September 1919.


title: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

text: The United Kingdom and France conducted services connected with their 'monumental' graves (as presumably newly conceived, and in any case approved, by their respective armies) on Armistice Day 1920 (the burial itself taking place later in January of the following year in France). In the UK, the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior was created at Westminster Abbey, while in France "La tombe du soldat inconnu" was placed in the Arc de Triomphe.


title: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

text: The idea of a symbolic Tomb of the Unknown Soldier then spread to other countries. In 1921, the United States unveiled its own Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Portugal its Túmulo do Soldado Desconhecido, and Italy its "La tomba del Milite Ignoto". Other nations have followed the practice and created their own tombs.


title: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

text: In Serbia, soldiers of World War I are commemorated by the Monument to the Unknown Hero on the mountain of Avala.


title: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

text: In the Philippines, the "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier" at the "Libingan ng mga Bayani" ("Cemetery of the Heroes") is the cemetery's most prominent structures.


title: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

text: The Tombs of the Unknown Soldiers typically contain the remains of a soldier who is unidentified (or "known but to God" as the stone is sometimes inscribed). These remains are considered impossible to identify, and so serve as a symbol for all of a country's unknown dead wherever they fell in the war being remembered. The anonymity of the entombed soldier is the key symbolism of the monument; it could be the tomb of anyone who fell in service of the nation, and therefore serves as a monument symbolizing all of the sacrifices.


title: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

text: At least one unknown soldier has been identified by DNA analysis. This was an airman from the Vietnam War.


title: Fredric March

text: Fredric March (born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel; August 31, 1897 – April 14, 1975) was an American actor, regarded as one of Hollywood's most celebrated, versatile stars of the 1930s and 1940s. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1931) and "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946), as well as the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for "Years Ago" (1947) and "Long Day's Journey into Night" (1956).


title: Fredric March

text: March is one of only two actors, the other being Helen Hayes, to have won both the Academy Award and the Tony Award twice.


title: Fredric March

text: March was born in Racine, Wisconsin, the son of Cora Brown Marcher (1863–1936), a schoolteacher from England, and John F. Bickel (1859–1941), a devout Presbyterian Church elder who worked in the wholesale hardware business. March attended the Winslow Elementary School (established in 1855), Racine High School, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi.


title: Fredric March

text: He began a career as a banker, but an emergency appendectomy caused him to re-evaluate his life, and in 1920, he began working as an "extra" in movies made in New York City, using a shortened form of his mother's maiden name. He appeared on Broadway in 1926, and by the end of the decade, he signed a film contract with Paramount Pictures.


title: Fredric March

text: Like Laurence Olivier, March had a rare protean quality to his acting that allowed him to assume almost any persona convincingly, from Robert Browning to William Jennings Bryan to Dr Jekyll - or Mr. Hyde. He received an Oscar nomination for the 4th Academy Awards in 1930 for "The Royal Family of Broadway", in which he played a role modeled on John Barrymore. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 5th Academy Awards in 1932 for "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (tied with Wallace Beery for "The Champ", although March accrued one more vote than Beery). This led to roles in a series of classic films based on stage hits and classic novels like "Design for Living" (1933) with Gary Cooper and Miriam Hopkins; "Death Takes a Holiday" (1934); "Les Misérables" (1935) with Charles Laughton; "Anna Karenina" (1935) with Greta Garbo; "Anthony Adverse" (1936) with Olivia de Havilland; and as the original Norman Maine in "A Star is Born" (1937) with Janet Gaynor, for which he received his third Academy Award nomination.


title: Fredric March

text: March resisted signing long-term contracts with the studios, enabling him to play roles in films from a variety of studios. He returned to Broadway after a ten-year absence in 1937 with a notable flop, "Yr. Obedient Husband", but after the success of Thornton Wilder's "The Skin of Our Teeth", he focused as much on Broadway as on Hollywood. He won two Best Actor Tony Awards: in 1947 for the play "Years Ago", written by Ruth Gordon and in 1957 for his performance as James Tyrone in the original Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night". He also had major successes in "A Bell for Adano" in 1944 and "Gideon" in 1961, and he played in Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People" on Broadway in 1951. During this period, he also starred in films, including "I Married a Witch" (1942) and "Another Part of the Forest" (1948). March won his second Oscar in 1946 for "The Best Years of Our Lives".


title: Fredric March

text: March also branched out into television, winning Emmy nominations for his third attempt at "The Royal Family" for the series "The Best of Broadway" as well as for television performances as Samuel Dodsworth and Ebenezer Scrooge. On March 25, 1954, March co-hosted the 26th Annual Academy Awards ceremony from New York City, with co-host Donald O'Connor in Los Angeles.


title: Fredric March

text: March's neighbor in Connecticut, playwright Arthur Miller, was thought to favor March to inaugurate the part of Willy Loman in the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Death of a Salesman" (1949). However, March read the play and turned down the role, whereupon director Elia Kazan cast Lee J. Cobb as Willy and Arthur Kennedy as one of Willy's sons, Biff Loman. Cobb and Kennedy were two actors with whom the director had worked in the film "Boomerang" (1947). March later regretted turning down the role and finally played Willy Loman in Columbia Pictures's 1951 film version of the play, directed by Laslo Benedek. March earned his fifth and final Oscar nomination as well as a Golden Globe Award. He also played one of two leads in "The Desperate Hours" (1955) with Humphrey Bogart. Bogart and Spencer Tracy had both insisted upon top billing, and Tracy withdrew, leaving the part available for March.


title: Fredric March

text: In 1957, March was awarded the George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for "distinguished contribution to the art of film".


title: Fredric March

text: On February 12, 1959, March appeared before a joint session of the 86th United States Congress, reading the Gettysburg Address as part of a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth.


title: Fredric March

text: March co-starred with Spencer Tracy in the 1960 Stanley Kramer film "Inherit the Wind", in which he played a dramatized version of famous orator and political figure William Jennings Bryan. March's Bible-thumping character provided a rival for Tracy's Clarence Darrow-inspired character. In the 1960s, March's film career continued with a performance as President Jordan Lyman in the political thriller "Seven Days in May" (1964) in which he co-starred with Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Edmond O'Brien; the part earned March a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actor.


title: Fredric March

text: March made several spoken word recordings, including a version of Oscar Wilde's "The Selfish Giant" issued in 1945 in which he narrated and played the title role, and "The Sounds of History", a twelve volume LP set accompanying the twelve volume set of books "The Life History of the United States", published by Time-Life. The recordings were narrated by Charles Collingwood, with March and his wife Florence Eldridge performing dramatic readings from historical documents and literature.


title: Fredric March

text: Following surgery for prostate cancer in 1970, it seemed his career was over; yet, he managed to give one last performance in "The Iceman Cometh" (1973) as the complicated Irish saloon keeper, Harry Hope.


title: Fredric March

text: March was married to actress Florence Eldridge from 1927 until his death in 1975, and they had two adopted children. They appeared in seven films together, the last being "Inherit the Wind".


title: Fredric March

text: March and Eldridge commissioned Wallace Neff to build their house in Ridgeview Drive, Bel Air, in 1934. It has subsequently been owned by the philanthropist Wallis Annenberg and the actors Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston.


title: Fredric March

text: Throughout his life, March and Eldridge were supporters of the Democratic Party. In July 1936, March co-founded the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League (HANL), along with the writers Dorothy Parker and Donald Ogden Stewart, the director Fritz Lang, and the composer Oscar Hammerstein.


title: Fredric March

text: In 1938, March was one of many Hollywood personalities who were investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the hunt for Communists in the film community. In July 1940, he was among a number of individuals who were questioned by a HUAC subcommittee which was led by Representative Martin Dies Jr.


title: Fredric March

text: Later, in 1948, he and his wife sued the anti-communist publication "Counterattack" for defamation, seeking $250,000 in damages. The suit was settled out of court.


title: Fredric March

text: March died of prostate cancer, at the age of 77, in Los Angeles, and he was buried at his estate in New Milford, Connecticut.


title: Fredric March

text: Biographies of March include "Fredric March: Craftsman First, Star Second" by Deborah C. Peterson (1996), and "Fredric March: A Consummate Actor" (2013) by Charles Tranberg.


title: Fredric March

text: March was briefly a member of an interfraternity society composed of leading students formed at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1919 and 1920 named the Ku Klux Klan which is not believed to have been affiliated with the notorious organization of that name. In actuality, March was an outspoken proponent of the civil rights movement for five decades, and worked closely with the NAACP. When the collegiate organization was named, the (later national) KKK was a small regional organization. As the national KKK became better known, the collegiate organization changed its name in 1922.


title: Fredric March

text: False rumors based on a misunderstanding of the organization of which March was a member were spread on social media that March was a white supremacist. The 500-seat theater at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh was formerly named after March. The University of Wisconsin–Madison had named the 168-seat at the Memorial Union as the Fredric March Play Circle Theater; however, in 2018, his name was removed, after student protests following reports of March's membership in a student fraternal organization calling itself Ku Klux Klan. UW–Oshkosh pulled March's name from what is now the Theatre Arts Center shortly before the 2020–21 academic term.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE) is a phenomenon in which a person perceives the world from a location outside their physical body. An OBE is a form of autoscopy (literally "seeing self"), although this term is more commonly used to refer to the pathological condition of seeing a second self, or doppelgänger.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: The term "out-of-body experience" was introduced in 1943 by G. N. M. Tyrrell in his book "Apparitions", and was adopted by researchers such as Celia Green, and Robert Monroe, as an alternative to belief-centric labels such as "astral projection" or "spirit walking". OBEs can be induced by traumatic brain injuries, sensory deprivation, near-death experiences, dissociative and psychedelic drugs, dehydration, sleep disorders, dreaming, and electrical stimulation of the brain, among other causes. It can also be deliberately induced by some. One in ten people has an OBE once, or more commonly, several times in their life.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: Psychologists and neuroscientists regard OBEs as dissociative experiences occurring along different psychological and neurological factors.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: Those experiencing OBEs sometimes report (among other types of immediate and spontaneous experience) a preceding and initiating lucid-dream state. In many cases, people who claim to have had an OBE report being on the verge of sleep, or being already asleep shortly before the experience. A large percentage of these cases refer to situations where the sleep was not particularly deep (due to illness, noises in other rooms, emotional stress, exhaustion from overworking, frequent re-awakening, etc.). In most of these cases subjects perceive themselves as being awake; about half of them note a feeling of sleep paralysis.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: Another form of spontaneous OBE is the near-death experience (NDE). Some subjects report having had an OBE at times of severe physical trauma such as near-drownings or major surgery. Near-death experiences may include subjective impressions of being outside the physical body, sometimes visions of deceased relatives and religious figures, and transcendence of ego and spatiotemporal boundaries. The experience typically includes such factors as: a sense of being dead; a feeling of peace and painlessness; hearing of various non-physical sounds, an out-of-body experience; a tunnel experience (the sense of moving up or through a narrow passageway); encountering "beings of light" and a God-like figure or similar entities; being given a "life review", and a reluctance to return to life.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: Along the same lines as an NDE, extreme physical effort during activities such as high-altitude climbing and marathon running can induce OBEs. A sense of bilocation may be experienced, with both ground and air-based perspectives being experienced simultaneously.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: In the fields of cognitive science and psychology OBEs are considered dissociative experiences arising from different psychological and neurological factors. Scientists consider the OBE to be an experience from a mental state, like a dream or an altered state of consciousness without recourse to the paranormal.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: Charles Richet (1887) held that OBEs are created by the subject's memory and imagination processes and are no different from dreams. James H. Hyslop (1912) wrote that OBEs occur when the activity of the subconscious mind dramatizes certain images to give the impression the subject is in a different physical location.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: Eugéne Osty (1930) considered OBEs to be nothing more than the product of imagination. Other early researchers (such as Schmeing, 1938) supported psychophysiological theories. G. N. M. Tyrrell interpreted OBEs as hallucinatory constructs relating to subconscious levels of personality.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: Donovan Rawcliffe (1959) connected the OBE experience with psychosis and hysteria. Other researchers have discussed the phenomena of the OBE in terms of a distortion of the body image (Horowitz, 1970) and depersonalization (Whitlock, 1978). The psychologists Nandor Fodor (1959) and Jan Ehrenwald (1974) proposed that an OBE is a defense mechanism designed to deal with the threat of death. According to (Irin and Watt, 2007) Jan Ehrenwald had described the out-of-body experience (OBE) "as an imaginal confirmation of the quest for immortality, a delusory attempt to assure ourselves that we possess a soul that exists independently of the physical body". The psychologists Donald Hebb (1960) and Cyril Burt (1968) wrote on the psychological interpretation of the OBE involving body image and visual imagery. Graham Reed (1974) suggested that the OBE is a stress reaction to a painful situation, such as the loss of love. John Palmer (1978) wrote that the OBE is a response to a body image change causing a threat to personal identity.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: Carl Sagan (1977) and Barbara Honegger (1983) wrote that the OBE experience may be based on a rebirth fantasy or reliving of the birth process based on reports of tunnel-like passageways and a cord-like connection by some OBErs which they compared to an umbilical cord. Susan Blackmore (1978) came to the conclusion that the OBE is a hallucinatory fantasy as it has the characteristics of imaginary perceptions, perceptual distortions and fantasy-like perceptions of the self (such as having no body). Ronald Siegel (1980) also wrote that OBEs are hallucinatory fantasies.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: Harvey Irwin (1985) presented a theory of the OBE involving attentional cognitive processes and somatic sensory activity. His theory involved a cognitive personality construct known as psychological absorption and gave instances of the classification of an OBE as examples of autoscopy, depersonalization and mental dissociation. The psychophysiologist Stephen Laberge (1985) has written that the explanation for OBEs can be found in lucid dreaming. David Hufford (1989) linked the OBE experience with a phenomenon he described as a nightmare waking experience, a type of sleep paralysis. Other scientists have also linked OBEs to cases of hypnagogia and sleep paralysis (cataplexy).


title: Out-of-body experience

text: In case studies fantasy proneness has been shown to be higher among OBErs than those who have not had an OBE. The data has shown a link between the OBE experience in some cases to fantasy prone personality (FPP). In a case study involving 167 participants the findings revealed that those who claimed to have experienced the OBE were "more fantasy prone, higher in their belief in the paranormal and displayed greater somatoform dissociation." Research from studies has also suggested that OBEs are related to cognitive-perceptual schizotypy.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: Terence Hines (2003) has written that spontaneous out-of-body experiences can be generated by artificial stimulation of the brain and this strongly suggests that the OBE experience is caused from "temporary, minor brain malfunctions, not by the person's spirit (or whatever) actually leaving the body." In a study review of neurological and neurocognitive data (Bünning and Blanke, 2005) wrote that OBEs are due to "functional disintegration of lower-level multisensory processing and abnormal higher-level self-processing at the temporoparietal junction." Some scientists suspect that OBEs are the result of a mismatch between visual and tactile signals.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: Richard Wiseman (2011) has noted that OBE research has focused on finding a psychological explanation and "out-of-body experiences are not paranormal and do not provide evidence for the soul. Instead, they reveal something far more remarkable about the everyday workings of your brain and body." A study conducted by Jason Braithwaite and colleagues (2011) linked the OBE to "neural instabilities in the brain's temporal lobes and to errors in the body's sense of itself". Braithwaite "et al". (2013) reported that the "current and dominant view is that the OBE occurs due to a temporary disruption in multi-sensory integration processes."


title: Out-of-body experience

text: Writers in the fields of parapsychology and occultism have written that OBEs are not psychological and that a soul, spirit or subtle body can detach itself out of the body and visit distant locations. Out-of-the-body experiences were known during the Victorian period in spiritualist literature as "travelling clairvoyance". In old Indian scriptures, such a state of consciousness is also referred to as Turiya, which can be achieved by deep yogic and meditative activities, during which a yogi may be liberated from the duality of mind and body, allowing them to intentionally leave the body and then return to it. The body carrying out this journey is called "Vigyan dehi" (""Scientific body""). The psychical researcher Frederic Myers referred to the OBE as a "psychical excursion". An early study that described alleged cases of OBE was the two-volume "Phantasms of the Living", published in 1886 by the psychical researchers Edmund Gurney, Myers, and Frank Podmore. The book was largely criticized by the scientific community because the anecdotal reports in almost every case lacked evidential substantiation.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: The theosophist Arthur Powell (1927) was an early author to advocate the subtle body theory of OBEs. Sylvan Muldoon (1936) embraced the concept of an etheric body to explain the OBE experience. The psychical researcher Ernesto Bozzano (1938) had also supported a similar view describing the phenomena of the OBE experience in terms of bilocation in which an "etheric body" can release itself from the physical body in rare circumstances. The subtle body theory was also supported by occult writers such as Ralph Shirley (1938), Benjamin Walker (1977), and Douglas Baker (1979). James Baker (1954) wrote that a mental body enters an "intercosmic region" during the OBE. Robert Crookall supported the subtle body theory of OBEs in several publications.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: The paranormal interpretation of OBEs has not been supported by all researchers within the study of parapsychology. Gardner Murphy (1961) wrote that OBEs are "not very far from the known terrain of general psychology, which we are beginning to understand more and more without recourse to the paranormal".


title: Out-of-body experience

text: In the 1970s, Karlis Osis conducted many OBE experiments with the psychic Alex Tanous. In one series of these experiments, he was asked whilst in an OBE state whether he could identify coloured targets that were placed in remote locations. Osis reported that there were 114 hits in 197 trials. However, the controls for the experiments have been criticized and, according to Susan Blackmore, the final result was not particularly significant since 108 hits would have been expected by chance alone. Blackmore noted that the results provide "no evidence for accurate perception in the OBE".


title: Out-of-body experience

text: In April 1977, a patient from Harborview Medical Center known as Maria claimed to have experienced an out-of-body experience. During her OBE she claimed to have floated outside her body and outside the hospital. Maria later told her social worker Kimberly Clark that during the OBE she had observed a tennis shoe on the third floor window ledge to the north side of the building. Clark then went to the north wing of the building and by looking out of the window could see a tennis shoe on one of the ledges. Clark published the account in 1984. The story has since been used in many paranormal books as evidence that a spirit can leave the body.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: In 1996, Hayden Ebbern, Sean Mulligan and Barry Beyerstein visited the Medical Center to investigate Clark's story. They placed a tennis shoe on the same ledge and found that it was visible from within the building and could easily have been observed by a patient lying in bed. They also discovered that the tennis shoe was easy to observe from outside the building and suggested that Maria may have overheard a comment about it during her three days in the hospital and then incorporated it into her OBE. They concluded "Maria's story merely reveals the naiveté and the power of wishful thinking" from OBE researchers seeking a paranormal explanation. Clark did not publish the description of the case until seven years after it happened, casting doubt on the story. Richard Wiseman has said that although the story is not evidence for anything paranormal it has been "endlessly repeated by writers who either couldn't be bothered to check the facts, or were unwilling to present their readers with the more skeptical side of the story." Clark responded to the accusations made in a separate paper.


title: Out-of-body experience

text: Astral projection is a paranormal interpretation of out-of-body experiences that assumes the existence of one or more non-physical planes of existence and an associated body beyond the physical. Commonly such planes are called "astral", "etheric", or "spiritual". Astral projection is often experienced as the spirit or astral body leaving the physical body to travel in the spirit world or astral plane.