title: Alexander Rossi

text: Rossi's 2018 season began with a controversial third-place finish at the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. Rossi was running in second on the final restart and attempted to pass leader Robert Wickens in the first turn, but got loose and made contact with Wickens, who in turn retired from the race. Rossi argued that while he "[felt] bad" about the contact, he also believed Wickens' defense of the lead forced him into the marbles, causing his car to get loose. Wickens, however, said he "expected more" from Rossi, and proceeded to call his move "desperate." Rossi's driving was further criticized by NBC Sports' Jerry Bonkowski, who opined that he "ruined what was a near-perfect day — make that weekend — for another driver." Ironically, Rossi would again battle with Wickens in the closing stages of the following race at Phoenix, securing another third-place finish behind race winner Josef Newgarden and Wickens. After the podium celebration, both Wickens and Rossi made light of the St. Petersburg clash; Rossi stated that Wickens "should definitely have two podiums right now," to which the Canadian jokingly replied, "About time you said it!" The following week, Rossi qualified on pole position for the Grand Prix of Long Beach. He converted the pole position into his third career win, leading race runner-up and 2014 IndyCar Series champion Will Power to call Rossi "a standout of the field right now in every respect."


title: Alexander Rossi

text: Rossi began the Indianapolis 500 from the last row on the grid, starting in 32nd place. He completed a series of impressive overtakes throughout the race, leading him to a fourth-place finish. The following week in Detroit, Rossi finished third in race one. He then qualified on pole for the second race and led 46 of the first 63 laps; however, he was pressured late in the race by teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay. Rossi preceded to lock his brakes, overshooting the upcoming turn and leading to a puncture. He was forced to pit, reentering the track in 13th and finishing in 12th. Rossi rebounded later in the season to win the pole and the race at Mid-Ohio, using a two-stop strategy. The win moved Rossi into second in the Drivers' Championship standings, 46 points behind Scott Dixon. Rossi won the following race at Pocono as well, though the event was overshadowed by a serious accident early in the race involving Wickens (who was injured and airlifted to a local hospital), resulting in a red flag period. At Gateway, Rossi used fuel strategy to finish second, gaining a few points on Dixon. After an eighth-place finish at Portland, Rossi entered the final race at Sonoma 29 points behind Dixon. At the start, he broke his front wing after contact with Andretti, dropping him back in the field. He recovered to place seventh in the race, finishing a total of 57 points behind Dixon in the championship.


title: Alexander Rossi

text: Rossi began the 2019 season with a fifth-place finish at St. Petersburg. He scored his first win of 2019 at Long Beach, where he repeated his success from the previous season. Rossi's 20-second margin of victory over Newgarden was the largest margin of victory at Long Beach since Al Unser Jr.'s 23-second margin in 1995. He dedicated the victory to his grandfather; the win came on the day Rossi learned of his death.


title: Alexander Rossi

text: At the 2019 Indianapolis 500, Rossi was in contention for the win before encountering a fuel pump problem in the pits on lap 137. The delay resulted in a 23-second pit stop, which likely would have taken him out of contention had Marcus Ericsson not spun entering the pit lane, forcing a caution flag. On the ensuing restart, Rossi fell from fifth to sixth place, while also being seventh in line as Oriol Servià, a lapped car, was in front of him. Rossi was then held up and blocked by Servia (he would later call his actions "unacceptable" and "one of the most disrespectful things I've ever seen in a racecar"), eventually shaking his fist at the Spanish driver as he finally passed him. Rossi eventually recovered to pass Simon Pagenaud for the lead and seemed to have the advantage as Pagenaud was in danger of not being able to make it to the end of the race on fuel, but a late caution nullified that advantage. Rossi's Honda lacked the horsepower of Pagenaud's Chevrolet, which was ultimately the deciding factor as he finished the race in second behind Pagenaud.


title: Alexander Rossi

text: Rossi's second-place finish at Indianapolis sparked a run of three such finishes in four races as he also finished second at the first Detroit race and at Texas. At Road America in June, Rossi broke through to win with a 28.4-second margin of victory over second-place Will Power. Power stated after the race that he "never actually saw" Rossi due to the length of the gap between the two drivers. At Pocono, Rossi was involved in a first-lap incident with Takuma Sato, with Rossi calling Sato's driving "disgraceful" and saying "I can't even begin to understand after last year how Takuma thinks any sort of driving like that is acceptable." Rossi would go on to enter the final race at Laguna Seca second in points before fading to third behind Newgarden and Pagenaud


title: Alexander Rossi

text: In 2020 Rossi recorded no wins for the first time in his IndyCar career, but scored five podiums. 2021 proved to be a struggle for both Rossi and Andretti Autosport, as he once again failed to win any races that year and only secured one podium finish at Portland.


title: Alexander Rossi

text: 2022 started slowly for Rossi, with no podiums or victories before the Indianapolis 500. Following the Indianapolis 500 Andretti Autosport announced that Rossi would leave the team at the end of the 2022 season and would be replaced by Kyle Kirkwood. The following day Rossi announced he had signed a contract with Arrow McLaren SP for 2023 and beyond.


title: Alexander Rossi

text: Rossi's performance improved significantly following the Indianapolis 500. He finished second to Will Power in Detroit and finished third at the following race at Road America. After struggling in the following rounds, Rossi finally broke through on July 30, 2022, winning the Gallagher Grand Prix on the IMS Road Course which ended his 49-race winless drought in the IndyCar Series.


title: Alexander Rossi

text: On the 3rd of June 2022. It was announced that Rossi would be joining Arrow McLaren SP for the 2023 season.


title: Alexander Rossi

text: Rossi competed in his first ever Baja 1000 in 2018, driving with Jeff Proctor in the No. 709 Honda Ridgeline, becoming the fifth Indianapolis 500 winner to participate in the race. Rossi explained that he was eager to try a different racing series, saying, "It's just one of those iconic races. There's a Honda connection, so [when offered the ride] I just figured, 'Why not?' I'm pretty excited about it. It's something new, something different. I'm looking forward to the experience." Rossi nearly collided with a spectator's car that was travelling the wrong way on the course around 33 miles into the race. His team placed second in their class in the final results.


title: Alexander Rossi

text: Rossi returned to the Baja 1000 in 2019. Rossi and Proctor's truck was leading when Rossi rolled over the vehicle. The truck was able to continue for about 100 miles after the crash but eventually retired due to mechanical problems.


title: Alexander Rossi

text: After skipping the 2020 edition due to scheduling clashes, another Baja 1000 start came in 2021. Sharing the Ridgeline with Proctor, Richard Glaszczak, and Steve Hengeveld, Rossi's team claimed the Class 7 victory.


title: Alexander Rossi

text: On August 15, 2019, Rossi announced plans to make his debut in the Bathurst 1000 in October, competing with fellow IndyCar Series driver James Hinchcliffe as a wildcard entry for Walkinshaw Andretti United, a partnership between Andretti Autosport and United Autosports. The pair started the race on the back row of the grid in 25th, finishing 19th before being promoted to 18th after a penalty demoted DJR Team Penske's Fabian Coulthard from sixth to 21st.


title: Alexander Rossi

text: Rossi was born in Auburn, California, and raised in Nevada City, often waking up at 4 a.m. local time on Sunday mornings to watch the Formula One races in Europe. He graduated from Auburn's Forest Lake Christian High School at the age of 16 in order to begin pursuing his European racing career. He is a fan of the National Football League's New England Patriots; despite not growing up in Boston, Rossi explains, "I've been a Patriots fan really since 2009, solely because of when I was living in Europe, the only NFL games I could watch on the television package they had at the time was Patriots or Green Bay Packers games. I was originally a San Francisco 49ers fan, but then considering I didn't watch any of the games for about seven years, I switched to being a Patriots fan despite not being from Boston." Rossi serves as a TAG Heuer ambassador alongside former Patriots and current Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady.


title: Alexander Rossi

text: Rossi is a Protestant Christian. He cites his two most important life influences as God and his parents, adding, "I believe there's always a greater plan. I feel that driving race cars and being involved in Formula One and motorsports is my opportunity to share my beliefs." Rossi describes having his faith while growing up as "something that was hugely important to me. That carried all the way through my entire childhood. I was very fortunate to be a product of a Christian family with my mom and dad and grandmother." He was a speaker at the Fellowship of Christian Athletes' "Nights of Champions" program in 2017. When asked in mid-2019 about his status at Andretti Autosport beyond the end of that season, Rossi replied that his career path was "in God's hands."


title: Alexander Rossi

text: Rossi's 2016 Indianapolis 500 win earned him a nomination at the 2016 ESPY Awards for Best Driver. He attended the awards ceremony on July 13, though the award went to NASCAR's 2015 Sprint Cup Series champion, Kyle Busch.


title: Alexander Rossi

text: In March 2017, Rossi was a guest on an episode of Harry Connick Jr.'s eponymous talk show, "Harry". He has appeared on "The Rich Eisen Show" on two occasions, in July 2016 after winning the Indianapolis 500 and again in January 2018.


title: Alexander Rossi

text: Rossi appeared on the 30th season of CBS' "The Amazing Race" with fellow IndyCar driver Conor Daly as his teammate. The pair won the fourth leg of the race, though they were eventually eliminated, finishing in fourth place. On April 19, 2018, he appeared on the season four premiere of CNBC's "Jay Leno's Garage" alongside Tanner Foust.


title: Alexander Rossi

text: Rossi's Manor Marussia F1 helmet featured a red, white, and blue design with prominent sponsorship placement for Alaska Coffee Roasting, one of his longtime personal sponsors. He also ran a "#JB17" decal on his visor honoring his former teammate, Jules Bianchi. Since moving to IndyCar with Andretti, Rossi has continued running the #JB17 decal, though it has since been moved to an area just below the visor on either side of the helmet. The basic design remains similar to his helmet from his brief Formula One career, though the blue background has changed to a combination of black and gray, and additional sponsorship placements have been added to represent his partnerships with TAG Heuer and Honda. For the 2018 Indianapolis 500, TAG Heuer tapped street artist Alec Monopoly to design Rossi's helmet for the race. The helmet featured a more colorful design with graphics meant to resemble street art.


title: Alexander Rossi

text: In 2020, Rossi used some of his helmets to raise awareness for charitable causes. After his Bathurst 1000 debut, Rossi auctioned off his helmet, donating the proceeds to Wires Wildlife Rescue in aid of the Australian bushfires. His Indianapolis 500 helmet in August was designed by TAG Heuer to honor frontline workers and heroes in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Forgetting curve

text: The forgetting curve hypothesizes the decline of memory retention in time. This curve shows how information is lost over time when there is no attempt to retain it. A related concept is the strength of memory that refers to the durability that memory traces in the brain. The stronger the memory, the longer period of time that a person is able to recall it. A typical graph of the forgetting curve purports to show that humans tend to halve their memory of newly learned knowledge in a matter of days or weeks unless they consciously review the learned material.


title: Forgetting curve

text: The forgetting curve supports one of the seven kinds of memory failures: transience, which is the process of forgetting that occurs with the passage of time.


title: Forgetting curve

text: From 1880 to 1885, Hermann Ebbinghaus ran a limited, incomplete study on himself and published his hypothesis in 1885 as "" (later translated into English as "Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology"). Ebbinghaus studied the memorisation of nonsense syllables, such as "WID" and "ZOF" (CVCs or Consonant–Vowel–Consonant) by repeatedly testing himself after various time periods and recording the results. He plotted these results on a graph creating what is now known as the "forgetting curve". Ebbinghaus investigated the rate of forgetting, but not the effect of spaced repetition on the increase in retrievability of memories.


title: Forgetting curve

text: Here, formula_2 represents 'Savings' expressed as a percentage, and formula_3 represents time in minutes, counting from one minute before end of learning. The constants c and k are 1.25 and 1.84 respectively. Savings is defined as the relative amount of time saved on the second learning trial as a result of having had the first. A savings of 100% would indicate that all items were still known from the first trial. A 75% savings would mean that relearning missed items required 25% as long as the original learning session (to learn all items). 'Savings' is thus, analogous to retention rate.


title: Forgetting curve

text: In 2015, an attempt to replicate the forgetting curve with one study subject has shown the experimental results similar to Ebbinghaus' original data.


title: Forgetting curve

text: Ebbinghaus' experiment contributed a lot to experimental psychology. He was the first to carry out a series of well-designed experiments on the subject of forgetting, and he was one of the first to choose artificial stimuli in the research of experimental psychology. Since his introduction of nonsense syllables, a large number of experiments in experimental psychology has been based on highly controlled artificial stimuli.


title: Forgetting curve

text: Hermann Ebbinghaus hypothesized that the speed of forgetting depends on a number of factors such as the difficulty of the learned material (e.g. how meaningful it is), its representation and other physiological factors such as stress and sleep. He further hypothesized that the basal forgetting rate differs little between individuals. He concluded that the difference in performance can be explained by mnemonic representation skills.


title: Forgetting curve

text: He went on to hypothesize that basic training in mnemonic techniques can help overcome those differences in part. He asserted that the best methods for increasing the strength of memory are:


title: Forgetting curve

text: His premise was that each repetition in learning increases the optimum interval before the next repetition is needed (for near-perfect retention, initial repetitions may need to be made within days, but later they can be made after years). He discovered that information is easier to recall when it's built upon things you already know, and the forgetting curve was flattened by every repetition. It appeared that by applying frequent training in learning, the information was solidified by repeated recalling.


title: Forgetting curve

text: Later research also suggested that, other than the two factors Ebbinghaus proposed, higher original learning would also produce slower forgetting. The more information was originally learned, the slower the forgetting rate would be.


title: Forgetting curve

text: Spending time each day to remember information will greatly decrease the effects of the forgetting curve. Some learning consultants claim reviewing material in the first 24 hours after learning information is the optimum time to actively recall the content and reset the forgetting curve. Evidence suggests waiting 10–20% of the time towards when the information will be needed is the optimum time for a single review.


title: Forgetting curve

text: However, some memories remain free from the detrimental effects of interference and do not necessarily follow the typical forgetting curve as various noise and outside factors influence what information would be remembered. There is debate among supporters of the hypothesis about the shape of the curve for events and facts that are more significant to the subject. Some supporters, for example, suggest that memories of shocking events such as the Kennedy Assassination or 9/11 are vividly imprinted in memory (flashbulb memory). Others have compared contemporaneous written recollections with recollections recorded years later, and found considerable variations as the subject's memory incorporates after-acquired information. There is considerable research in this area as it relates to eyewitness identification testimony, and eyewitness accounts are found demonstrably unreliable.


title: Forgetting curve

text: Many equations have since been proposed to approximate forgetting, perhaps the simplest being an exponential curve described by the equation


title: Forgetting curve

text: where formula_5 is retrievability (a measure of how easy it is to retrieve a piece of information from memory), formula_6 is stability of memory (determines how fast formula_5 falls over time in the absence of training, testing or other recall), and formula_3 is time.


title: Roman art

text: The art of Ancient Rome, and the territories of its Republic and later Empire, includes architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work. Luxury objects in metal-work, gem engraving, ivory carvings, and glass are sometimes considered to be minor forms of Roman art, although they were not considered as such at the time. Sculpture was perhaps considered as the highest form of art by Romans, but figure painting was also highly regarded. A very large body of sculpture has survived from about the 1st century BC onward, though very little from before, but very little painting remains, and probably nothing that a contemporary would have considered to be of the highest quality.


title: Roman art

text: Ancient Roman pottery was not a luxury product, but a vast production of "fine wares" in "terra sigillata" were decorated with reliefs that reflected the latest taste, and provided a large group in society with stylish objects at what was evidently an affordable price. Roman coins were an important means of propaganda, and have survived in enormous numbers.


title: Roman art

text: While the traditional view of the ancient Roman artists is that they often borrowed from, and copied Greek precedents (much of the Greek sculptures known today are in the form of Roman marble copies), more of recent analysis has indicated that Roman art is a highly creative pastiche relying heavily on Greek models but also encompassing Etruscan, native Italic, and even Egyptian visual culture. Stylistic eclecticism and practical application are the hallmarks of much Roman art.


title: Roman art

text: Pliny, Ancient Rome's most important historian concerning the arts, recorded that nearly all the forms of art – sculpture, landscape, portrait painting, even genre painting – were advanced in Greek times, and in some cases, more advanced than in Rome. Though very little remains of Greek wall art and portraiture, certainly Greek sculpture and vase painting bears this out. These forms were not likely surpassed by Roman artists in fineness of design or execution. As another example of the lost "Golden Age", he singled out Peiraikos, "whose artistry is surpassed by only a very few ... He painted barbershops and shoemakers’ stalls, donkeys, vegetables, and such, and for that reason came to be called the 'painter of vulgar subjects'; yet these works are altogether delightful, and they were sold at higher prices than the greatest paintings of many other artists.” The adjective "vulgar" is used here in its original definition, which means "common".


title: Roman art

text: The Greek antecedents of Roman art were legendary. In the mid-5th century BC, the most famous Greek artists were Polygnotos, noted for his wall murals, and Apollodoros, the originator of chiaroscuro. The development of realistic technique is credited to Zeuxis and Parrhasius, who according to ancient Greek legend, are said to have once competed in a bravura display of their talents, history's earliest descriptions of "trompe-l'œil" painting. In sculpture, Skopas, Praxiteles, Phidias, and Lysippos were the foremost sculptors. It appears that Roman artists had much Ancient Greek art to copy from, as trade in art was brisk throughout the empire, and much of the Greek artistic heritage found its way into Roman art through books and teaching. Ancient Greek treatises on the arts are known to have existed in Roman times, though are now lost. Many Roman artists came from Greek colonies and provinces.


title: Roman art

text: The high number of Roman copies of Greek art also speaks of the esteem Roman artists had for Greek art, and perhaps of its rarer and higher quality. Many of the art forms and methods used by the Romans – such as high and low relief, free-standing sculpture, bronze casting, vase art, mosaic, cameo, coin art, fine jewelry and metalwork, funerary sculpture, perspective drawing, caricature, genre and portrait painting, landscape painting, architectural sculpture, and "trompe-l'œil" painting – all were developed or refined by Ancient Greek artists. One exception is the Roman bust, which did not include the shoulders. The traditional head-and-shoulders bust may have been an Etruscan or early Roman form. Virtually every artistic technique and method used by Renaissance artists 1,900 years later had been demonstrated by Ancient Greek artists, with the notable exceptions of oil colors and mathematically accurate perspective. Where Greek artists were highly revered in their society, most Roman artists were anonymous and considered tradesmen. There is no recording, as in Ancient Greece, of the great masters of Roman art, and practically no signed works. Where Greeks worshipped the aesthetic qualities of great art, and wrote extensively on artistic theory, Roman art was more decorative and indicative of status and wealth, and apparently not the subject of scholars or philosophers.


title: Roman art

text: Owing in part to the fact that the Roman cities were far larger than the Greek city-states in power and population, and generally less provincial, art in Ancient Rome took on a wider, and sometimes more utilitarian, purpose. Roman culture assimilated many cultures and was for the most part tolerant of the ways of conquered peoples. Roman art was commissioned, displayed, and owned in far greater quantities, and adapted to more uses than in Greek times. Wealthy Romans were more materialistic; they decorated their walls with art, their home with decorative objects, and themselves with fine jewelry.


title: Roman art

text: In the Christian era of the late Empire, from 350 to 500 CE, wall painting, mosaic ceiling and floor work, and funerary sculpture thrived, while full-sized sculpture in the round and panel painting died out, most likely for religious reasons. When Constantine moved the capital of the empire to Byzantium (renamed Constantinople), Roman art incorporated Eastern influences to produce the Byzantine style of the late empire. When Rome was sacked in the 5th century, artisans moved to and found work in the Eastern capital. The Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople employed nearly 10,000 workmen and artisans, in a final burst of Roman art under Emperor Justinian (527–565 CE), who also ordered the creation of the famous mosaics of Basilica of San Vitale in the city of Ravenna.


title: Roman art

text: Of the vast body of Roman painting we now have only a very few pockets of survivals, with many documented types not surviving at all, or doing so only from the very end of the period. The best known and most important pocket is the wall paintings from Pompeii, Herculaneum and other sites nearby, which show how residents of a wealthy seaside resort decorated their walls in the century or so before the fatal eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. A succession of dated styles have been defined and analysed by modern art historians beginning with August Mau, showing increasing elaboration and sophistication.


title: Roman art

text: Starting in the 3rd century AD and finishing by about 400 we have a large body of paintings from the Catacombs of Rome, by no means all Christian, showing the later continuation of the domestic decorative tradition in a version adapted - probably not greatly adapted - for use in burial chambers, in what was probably a rather humbler social milieu than the largest houses in Pompeii. Much of Nero's palace in Rome, the Domus Aurea, survived as grottos and gives us examples which we can be sure represent the very finest quality of wall-painting in its style, and which may well have represented significant innovation in style. There are a number of other parts of painted rooms surviving from Rome and elsewhere, which somewhat help to fill in the gaps of our knowledge of wall-painting. From Roman Egypt there are a large number of what are known as Fayum mummy portraits, bust portraits on wood added to the outside of mummies by a Romanized middle class; despite their very distinct local character they are probably broadly representative of Roman style in painted portraits, which are otherwise entirely lost.


title: Roman art

text: Nothing remains of the Greek paintings imported to Rome during the 4th and 5th centuries, or of the painting on wood done in Italy during that period. In sum, the range of samples is confined to only about 200 years out of the about 900 years of Roman history, and of provincial and decorative painting. Most of this wall painting was done using the "a secco" (dry) method, but some fresco paintings also existed in Roman times. There is evidence from mosaics and a few inscriptions that some Roman paintings were adaptations or copies of earlier Greek works. However, adding to the confusion is the fact that inscriptions may be recording the names of immigrant Greek artists from Roman times, not from Ancient Greek originals that were copied. The Romans entirely lacked a tradition of figurative vase-painting comparable to that of the Ancient Greeks, which the Etruscans had emulated.


title: Roman art

text: Roman painting provides a wide variety of themes: animals, still life, scenes from everyday life, portraits, and some mythological subjects. During the Hellenistic period, it evoked the pleasures of the countryside and represented scenes of shepherds, herds, rustic temples, rural mountainous landscapes and country houses. Erotic scenes are also relatively common. In the late empire, after 200AD, early Christian themes mixed with pagan imagery survive on catacomb walls.


title: Roman art

text: The main innovation of Roman painting compared to Greek art was the development of landscapes, in particular incorporating techniques of perspective, though true mathematical perspective developed 1,500 years later. Surface textures, shading, and coloration are well applied but scale and spatial depth was still not rendered accurately. Some landscapes were pure scenes of nature, particularly gardens with flowers and trees, while others were architectural vistas depicting urban buildings. Other landscapes show episodes from mythology, the most famous demonstrating scenes from the "Odyssey".


title: Roman art

text: In the cultural point of view, the art of the ancient East would have known landscape painting only as the backdrop to civil or military narrative scenes. This theory is defended by Franz Wickhoff, is debatable. It is possible to see evidence of Greek knowledge of landscape portrayal in Plato's "Critias" (107b–108b): ... and if we look at the portraiture of divine and of human bodies as executed by painters, in respect of the ease or difficulty with which they succeed in imitating their subjects in the opinion of onlookers, we shall notice in the first place that as regards the earth and mountains and rivers and woods and the whole of heaven, with the things that exist and move therein, we are content if a man is able to represent them with even a small degree of likeness ...


title: Roman art

text: Roman still life subjects are often placed in illusionist niches or shelves and depict a variety of everyday objects including fruit, live and dead animals, seafood, and shells. Examples of the theme of the glass jar filled with water were skillfully painted and later served as models for the same subject often painted during the Renaissance and Baroque periods.


title: Roman art

text: Pliny complained of the declining state of Roman portrait art, "The painting of portraits which used to transmit through the ages the accurate likenesses of people, has entirely gone out ... Indolence has destroyed the arts."


title: Roman art

text: In Greece and Rome, wall painting was not considered as high art. The most prestigious form of art besides sculpture was panel painting, i.e. tempera or encaustic painting on wooden panels. Unfortunately, since wood is a perishable material, only a very few examples of such paintings have survived, namely the Severan Tondo from , a very routine official portrait from some provincial government office, and the well-known Fayum mummy portraits, all from Roman Egypt, and almost certainly not of the highest contemporary quality. The portraits were attached to burial mummies at the face, from which almost all have now been detached. They usually depict a single person, showing the head, or head and upper chest, viewed frontally. The background is always monochrome, sometimes with decorative elements. In terms of artistic tradition, the images clearly derive more from Greco-Roman traditions than Egyptian ones. They are remarkably realistic, though variable in artistic quality, and may indicate that similar art which was widespread elsewhere but did not survive. A few portraits painted on glass and medals from the later empire have survived, as have coin portraits, some of which are considered very realistic as well.


title: Roman art

text: Gold glass, or gold sandwich glass, was a technique for fixing a layer of gold leaf with a design between two fused layers of glass, developed in Hellenistic glass and revived in the 3rd century AD. There are a very few large designs, including a very fine group of portraits from the 3rd century with added paint, but the great majority of the around 500 survivals are roundels that are the cut-off bottoms of wine cups or glasses used to mark and decorate graves in the Catacombs of Rome by pressing them into the mortar. They predominantly date from the 4th and 5th centuries. Most are Christian, though there are many pagan and a few Jewish examples. It is likely that they were originally given as gifts on marriage, or festive occasions such as New Year. Their iconography has been much studied, although artistically they are relatively unsophisticated. Their subjects are similar to the catacomb paintings, but with a difference balance including more portraiture. As time went on there was an increase in the depiction of saints. The same technique began to be used for gold tesserae for mosaics in the mid-1st century in Rome, and by the 5th century these had become the standard background for religious mosaics.


title: Roman art

text: The earlier group are "among the most vivid portraits to survive from Early Christian times. They stare out at us with an extraordinary stern and melancholy intensity", and represent the best surviving indications of what high quality Roman portraiture could achieve in paint. The Gennadios medallion in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is a fine example of an Alexandrian portrait on blue glass, using a rather more complex technique and naturalistic style than most Late Roman examples, including painting onto the gold to create shading, and with the Greek inscription showing local dialect features. He had perhaps been given or commissioned the piece to celebrate victory in a musical competition. One of the most famous Alexandrian-style portrait medallions, with an inscription in Egyptian Greek, was later mounted in an Early Medieval crux gemmata in Brescia, in the mistaken belief that it showed the pious empress and Gothic queen Galla Placida and her children; in fact the knot in the central figure's dress may mark a devotee of Isis. This is one of a group of 14 pieces dating to the 3rd century AD, all individualized secular portraits of high quality. The inscription on the medallion is written in the Alexandrian dialect of Greek and hence most likely depicts a family from Roman Egypt. The medallion has also been compared to other works of contemporaneous Roman-Egyptian artwork, such as the Fayum mummy portraits. It is thought that the tiny detail of pieces such as these can only have been achieved using lenses. The later glasses from the catacombs have a level of portraiture that is rudimentary, with features, hairstyles and clothes all following stereotypical styles.


title: Roman art

text: Roman genre scenes generally depict Romans at leisure and include gambling, music and sexual encounters. Some scenes depict gods and goddesses at leisure.


title: Roman art

text: From the 3rd century BC, a specific genre known as "Triumphal Paintings" appeared, as indicated by Pliny (XXXV, 22). These were paintings which showed triumphal entries after military victories, represented episodes from the war, and conquered regions and cities. Summary maps were drawn to highlight key points of the campaign.


title: Roman art

text: These paintings have disappeared, but they likely influenced the composition of the historical reliefs carved on military sarcophagi, the Arch of Titus, and Trajan's Column. This evidence underscores the significance of landscape painting, which sometimes tended towards being perspective plans.


title: Roman art

text: This episode is difficult to pinpoint. One of Ranuccio's hypotheses is that it refers to a victory of the consul Fabius Maximus Rullianus during the second war against Samnites in 326 BC. The presentation of the figures with sizes proportional to their importance is typically Roman, and finds itself in plebeian reliefs. This painting is in the infancy of triumphal painting, and would have been accomplished by the beginning of the 3rd century BC to decorate the tomb.


title: Roman art

text: Early Roman art was influenced by the art of Greece and that of the neighbouring Etruscans, themselves greatly influenced by their Greek trading partners. An Etruscan speciality was near life size tomb effigies in terracotta, usually lying on top of a sarcophagus lid propped up on one elbow in the pose of a diner in that period. As the expanding Roman Republic began to conquer Greek territory, at first in Southern Italy and then the entire Hellenistic world except for the Parthian far east, official and patrician sculpture became largely an extension of the Hellenistic style, from which specifically Roman elements are hard to disentangle, especially as so much Greek sculpture survives only in copies of the Roman period. By the 2nd century BC, "most of the sculptors working in Rome" were Greek, often enslaved in conquests such as that of Corinth (146 BC), and sculptors continued to be mostly Greeks, often slaves, whose names are very rarely recorded. Vast numbers of Greek statues were imported to Rome, whether as booty or the result of extortion or commerce, and temples were often decorated with re-used Greek works.


title: Roman art

text: A native Italian style can be seen in the tomb monuments of prosperous middle-class Romans, which very often featured portrait busts, and portraiture is arguably the main strength of Roman sculpture. There are no survivals from the tradition of masks of ancestors that were worn in processions at the funerals of the great families and otherwise displayed in the home, but many of the busts that survive must represent ancestral figures, perhaps from the large family tombs like the Tomb of the Scipios or the later mausolea outside the city. The famous bronze head supposedly of Lucius Junius Brutus is very variously dated, but taken as a very rare survival of Italic style under the Republic, in the preferred medium of bronze. Similarly stern and forceful heads are seen in the coins of the consuls, and in the Imperial period coins as well as busts sent around the Empire to be placed in the basilicas of provincial cities were the main visual form of imperial propaganda; even Londinium had a near-colossal statue of Nero, though far smaller than the 30-metre-high Colossus of Nero in Rome, now lost. The Tomb of Eurysaces the Baker, a successful freedman (c. 50-20 BC) has a frieze that is an unusually large example of the "plebeian" style. Imperial portraiture was initially Hellenized and highly idealized, as in the Blacas Cameo and other portraits of Augustus.


title: Roman art

text: The Romans did not generally attempt to compete with free-standing Greek works of heroic exploits from history or mythology, but from early on produced historical works in relief, culminating in the great Roman triumphal columns with continuous narrative reliefs winding around them, of which those commemorating Trajan (113 AD) and Marcus Aurelius (by 193) survive in Rome, where the Ara Pacis ("Altar of Peace", 13 BC) represents the official Greco-Roman style at its most classical and refined, and the Sperlonga sculptures it at its most baroque. Some late Roman public sculptures developed a massive, simplified style that sometimes anticipates Soviet socialist realism. Among other major examples are the earlier re-used reliefs on the Arch of Constantine and the base of the Column of Antoninus Pius (161), Campana reliefs were cheaper pottery versions of marble reliefs and the taste for relief was from the imperial period expanded to the sarcophagus.


title: Roman art

text: All forms of luxury small sculpture continued to be patronized, and quality could be extremely high, as in the silver Warren Cup, glass Lycurgus Cup, and large cameos like the Gemma Augustea, Gonzaga Cameo and the "Great Cameo of France". For a much wider section of the population, moulded relief decoration of pottery vessels and small figurines were produced in great quantity and often considerable quality.


title: Roman art

text: After moving through a late 2nd century "baroque" phase, in the 3rd century, Roman art largely abandoned, or simply became unable to produce, sculpture in the classical tradition, a change whose causes remain much discussed. Even the most important imperial monuments now showed stumpy, large-eyed figures in a harsh frontal style, in simple compositions emphasizing power at the expense of grace. The contrast is famously illustrated in the Arch of Constantine of 315 in Rome, which combines sections in the new style with roundels in the earlier full Greco-Roman style taken from elsewhere, and the "Four Tetrarchs" (c. 305) from the new capital of Constantinople, now in Venice. Ernst Kitzinger found in both monuments the same "stubby proportions, angular movements, an ordering of parts through symmetry and repetition and a rendering of features and drapery folds through incisions rather than modelling... The hallmark of the style wherever it appears consists of an emphatic hardness, heaviness and angularity – in short, an almost complete rejection of the classical tradition".


title: Roman art

text: This revolution in style shortly preceded the period in which Christianity was adopted by the Roman state and the great majority of the people, leading to the end of large religious sculpture, with large statues now only used for emperors, as in the famous fragments of a colossal acrolithic statue of Constantine, and the 4th or 5th century Colossus of Barletta. However rich Christians continued to commission reliefs for sarcophagi, as in the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, and very small sculpture, especially in ivory, was continued by Christians, building on the style of the consular diptych.


title: Roman art

text: Traditional Roman sculpture is divided into five categories: portraiture, historical relief, funerary reliefs, sarcophagi, and copies of ancient Greek works. Contrary to the belief of early archaeologists, many of these sculptures were large polychrome terra-cotta images, such as the Apollo of Veii (Villa Givlia, Rome), but the painted surface of many of them has worn away with time.


title: Roman art

text: While Greek sculptors traditionally illustrated military exploits through the use of mythological allegory, the Romans used a more documentary style. Roman reliefs of battle scenes, like those on the Column of Trajan, were created for the glorification of Roman might, but also provide first-hand representation of military costumes and military equipment. Trajan's column records the various Dacian wars conducted by Trajan in what is modern day Romania. It is the foremost example of Roman historical relief and one of the great artistic treasures of the ancient world. This unprecedented achievement, over 650 foot of spiraling length, presents not just realistically rendered individuals (over 2,500 of them), but landscapes, animals, ships, and other elements in a continuous visual history – in effect an ancient precursor of a documentary movie. It survived destruction when it was adapted as a base for Christian sculpture. During the Christian era after 300 AD, the decoration of door panels and sarcophagi continued but full-sized sculpture died out and did not appear to be an important element in early churches.


title: Roman art

text: The Romans inherited a tradition of art in a wide range of the so-called "minor arts" or decorative art. Most of these flourished most impressively at the luxury level, but large numbers of terracotta figurines, both religious and secular, continued to be produced cheaply, as well as some larger Campana reliefs in terracotta. Roman art did not use vase-painting in the way of the ancient Greeks, but vessels in Ancient Roman pottery were often stylishly decorated in moulded relief. Producers of the millions of small oil lamps sold seem to have relied on attractive decoration to beat competitors and every subject of Roman art except landscape and portraiture is found on them in miniature.


title: Roman art

text: Luxury arts included fancy Roman glass in a great range of techniques, many smaller types of which were probably affordable to a good proportion of the Roman public. This was certainly not the case for the most extravagant types of glass, such as the cage cups or "diatreta", of which the Lycurgus Cup in the British Museum is a near-unique figurative example in glass that changes colour when seen with light passing through it. The Augustan Portland Vase is the masterpiece of Roman cameo glass, and imitated the style of the large engraved gems (Blacas Cameo, Gemma Augustea, Great Cameo of France) and other hardstone carvings that were also most popular around this time.


title: Roman art

text: Roman mosaic was a minor art, though often on a very large scale, until the very end of the period, when late-4th-century Christians began to use it for large religious images on walls in their new large churches; in earlier Roman art mosaic was mainly used for floors, curved ceilings, and inside and outside walls that were going to get wet. The famous copy of a Hellenistic painting in the "Alexander Mosaic" in Naples was originally placed in a floor in Pompeii; this is much higher quality work than most Roman mosaic, though very fine panels, often of still life subjects in small or micromosaic tesserae have also survived. The Romans distinguished between normal "opus tessellatum" with "tesserae" mostly over 4 mm across, which was laid down on site, and finer "opus vermiculatum" for small panels, which is thought to have been produced offsite in a workshop, and brought to the site as a finished panel. The latter was a Hellenistic genre which is found in Italy between about 100 BC and 100 AD. Most signed mosaics have Greek names, suggesting the artists remained mostly Greek, though probably often slaves trained up in workshops. The late 2nd century BC Nile mosaic of Palestrina is a very large example of the popular genre of Nilotic landscape, while the 4th century Gladiator Mosaic in Rome shows several large figures in combat. Orpheus mosaics, often very large, were another favourite subject for villas, with several ferocious animals tamed by Orpheus's playing music. In the transition to Byzantine art, hunting scenes tended to take over large animal scenes.


title: Roman art

text: Metalwork was highly developed, and clearly an essential part of the homes of the rich, who dined off silver, while often drinking from glass, and had elaborate cast fittings on their furniture, jewellery, and small figurines. A number of important hoards found in the last 200 years, mostly from the more violent edges of the late empire, have given us a much clearer idea of Roman silver plate. The Mildenhall Treasure and Hoxne Hoard are both from East Anglia in England. There are few survivals of upmarket ancient Roman furniture, but these show refined and elegant design and execution.


title: Roman art

text: Few Roman coins reach the artistic peaks of the best Greek coins, but they survive in vast numbers and their iconography and inscriptions form a crucial source for the study of Roman history, and the development of imperial iconography, as well as containing many fine examples of portraiture. They penetrated to the rural population of the whole Empire and beyond, with barbarians on the fringes of the Empire making their own copies. In the Empire medallions in precious metals began to be produced in small editions as imperial gifts, which are similar to coins, though larger and usually finer in execution. Images in coins initially followed Greek styles, with gods and symbols, but in the death throes of the Republic first Pompey and then Julius Caesar appeared on coins, and portraits of the emperor or members of his family became standard on imperial coinage. The inscriptions were used for propaganda, and in the later Empire the army joined the emperor as the beneficiary.


title: Roman art

text: It was in the area of architecture that Roman art produced its greatest innovations. Because the Roman Empire extended over so great of an area and included so many urbanized areas, Roman engineers developed methods for citybuilding on a grand scale, including the use of concrete. Massive buildings like the Pantheon and the Colosseum could never have been constructed with previous materials and methods. Though concrete had been invented a thousand years earlier in the Near East, the Romans extended its use from fortifications to their most impressive buildings and monuments, capitalizing on the material's strength and low cost. The concrete core was covered with a plaster, brick, stone, or marble veneer, and decorative polychrome and gold-gilded sculpture was often added to produce a dazzling effect of power and wealth.


title: Roman art

text: Because of these methods, Roman architecture is legendary for the durability of its construction; with many buildings still standing, and some still in use, mostly buildings converted to churches during the Christian era. Many ruins, however, have been stripped of their marble veneer and are left with their concrete core exposed, thus appearing somewhat reduced in size and grandeur from their original appearance, such as with the Basilica of Constantine.


title: Roman art

text: During the Republican era, Roman architecture combined Greek and Etruscan elements, and produced innovations such as the round temple and the curved arch. As Roman power grew in the early empire, the first emperors inaugurated wholesale leveling of slums to build grand palaces on the Palatine Hill and nearby areas, which required advances in engineering methods and large scale design. Roman buildings were then built in the commercial, political, and social grouping known as a forum, that of Julius Caesar being the first and several added later, with the Forum Romanum being the most famous. The greatest arena in the Roman world, the Colosseum, was completed around 80 AD at the far end of that forum. It held over 50,000 spectators, had retractable fabric coverings for shade, and could stage massive spectacles including huge gladiatorial contests and mock naval battles. This masterpiece of Roman architecture epitomizes Roman engineering efficiency and incorporates all three architectural orders – Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. Less celebrated but just as important if not more so for most Roman citizens, was the five-story "insula" or city block, the Roman equivalent of an apartment building, which housed tens of thousands of Romans.


title: Roman art

text: It was during the reign of Trajan (98–117 AD) and Hadrian (117–138 AD) that the Roman Empire reached its greatest extent and that Rome itself was at the peak of its artistic glory – achieved through massive building programs of monuments, meeting houses, gardens, aqueducts, baths, palaces, pavilions, sarcophagi, and temples. The Roman use of the arch, the use of concrete building methods, the use of the dome all permitted construction of vaulted ceilings and enabled the building of these public spaces and complexes, including the palaces, public baths and basilicas of the "Golden Age" of the empire. Outstanding examples of dome construction include the Pantheon, the Baths of Diocletian, and the Baths of Caracalla. The Pantheon (dedicated to all the planetary gods) is the best preserved temple of ancient times with an intact ceiling featuring an open "eye" in the center. The height of the ceiling exactly equals the interior radius of the building, creating a hemispherical enclosure. These grand buildings later served as inspirational models for architects of the Italian Renaissance, such as Brunelleschi. By the age of Constantine (306-337 AD), the last great building programs in Rome took place, including the erection of the Arch of Constantine built near the Colosseum, which recycled some stone work from the forum nearby, to produce an eclectic mix of styles.


title: Roman art

text: Roman aqueducts, also based on the arch, were commonplace in the empire and essential transporters of water to large urban areas. Their standing masonry remains are especially impressive, such as the Pont du Gard (featuring three tiers of arches) and the aqueduct of Segovia, serving as mute testimony to their quality of their design and construction.


title: Pulsus paradoxus

text: Pulsus paradoxus, also paradoxic pulse or paradoxical pulse, is an abnormally large decrease in stroke volume, systolic blood pressure and pulse wave amplitude during inspiration. The normal fall in pressure is less than 10 mmHg. When the drop is more than 10 mmHg, it is referred to as pulsus paradoxus. Pulsus paradoxus is not related to pulse rate or heart rate, and it is not a paradoxical rise in systolic pressure. The normal variation of blood pressure during breathing/respiration is a decline in blood pressure during inhalation and an increase during exhalation. Pulsus paradoxus is a sign that is indicative of several conditions, including cardiac tamponade, chronic sleep apnea, croup, and obstructive lung disease (e.g. asthma, COPD).


title: Pulsus paradoxus

text: The "paradox" in "pulsus paradoxus" is that, on physical examination, one can detect beats on cardiac auscultation during inspiration that cannot be palpated at the radial pulse. It results from an accentuated decrease of the blood pressure, which leads to the (radial) pulse not being palpable and may be accompanied by an increase in the jugular venous pressure height (Kussmaul's sign). As is usual with inspiration, the heart rate is slightly increased, due to decreased left ventricular output.


title: Pulsus paradoxus

text: During inspiration, the negative intra-thoracic pressure results in an increased right venous return, filling the right atrium more than during an exhalation. The increased blood volume dilates the right atrium, reducing the compliance of the left atrium due to their shared septum. Lower left atrial compliance reduces the left atrium venous return and as a consequence causes a reduction in left ventricular preload. This results in a reduction in left ventricular stroke volume and will be noted as a reduction in systolic blood pressure in inspiration.


title: Pulsus paradoxus

text: Pulsus paradoxus is therefore an exaggeration or an increase in the fall of systolic BP beyond 10 mmHg during inspiration.


title: Pulsus paradoxus

text: Normally during inspiration, a person's systolic blood pressure decreases by ≤10 mmHg and heart rate slightly increases. This is because inspiration decreases intra-thoracic pressure relative to atmospheric pressure, which increases blood flow (systemic venous return) to the right atrium of the heart by reducing pressure on the veins, particularly the venae cavae. However, the decrease in intra-thoracic pressure and stretching of the lungs during inhalation also expands the compliant pulmonary vasculature so that blood pools in the lungs and decreases pulmonary venous return to the left atrium. Also, the increased systemic venous return to the right side of the heart expands the right heart and directly compromises filling of the left side of the heart by slightly bulging the septum to the left, reducing maximum volume. Reduced left-heart filling leads to a reduced stroke volume which manifests as a decrease in systolic blood pressure, leading to a faster heart rate due to the inhibition of the baroreceptor reflex, which stimulates sympathetic outflow to the heart.


title: Pulsus paradoxus

text: Under normal physiologic conditions the large pressure gradient between the right and left ventricles prevents the septum from bulging dramatically into the left ventricle during inspiration. However such bulging does occur during cardiac tamponade where pressure equalizes between all of the chambers of the heart. As the right ventricle receives more volume, it pushes the septum into the left ventricle further reducing its volume in turn. This additional loss of volume of the left ventricle that "only" occurs with equalization of the pressures (as in tamponade) allows for the further reduction in volume, so cardiac output is reduced, leading to a further decline in BP. However, in situations where the left ventricular pressure remains higher than the pericardial sac (most frequently from coexisting disease with an elevated left ventricular diastolic pressure), there is no pulsus paradoxus.


title: Pulsus paradoxus

text: Although one or both of these mechanisms may occur, a third may additionally contribute. The large negative intra-thoracic pressure increases the pressure across the wall of the left ventricle (increased transmural pressure, equivalent to [pressure within ventricle] - [pressure outside of ventricle]). This pressure gradient, resisting the contraction of the left ventricle, causes an increase in afterload. This results in a decrease in stroke volume, contributing to the decreased pulse pressure and increased heart rate as described above.


title: Pulsus paradoxus

text: Pulsus paradoxus occurs not only with severe cardiac tamponade but also with asthma, obstructive sleep apnea and croup. The mechanism, at least with severe tamponade, is likely very similar to those of hypertrophic and restrictive cardiomyopathies (diastolic dysfunction), where a decrease in Left Ventricular (LV) filling corresponds to an increasingly reduced stroke volume. In other words, with these cardiomyopathies, as LV filling decreases, ejection fraction decreases directly, yet non-linearly and with a negative concavity (negative first and second derivatives). Similarly, with tamponade, the degree of diastolic dysfunction is inversely proportional to the LV end-diastolic volume. So during inspiration, since LV filling is lesser relative to that during expiration, the diastolic dysfunction is also proportionally greater, so the systolic pressure drops >10 mmHg. This mechanism is also likely with pericarditis, where diastolic function is chastened.


title: Pulsus paradoxus

text: Pulse pressure is quantified using a blood pressure cuff and stethoscope (Korotkoff sounds), by measuring the variation of the systolic pressure during expiration and inspiration.


title: Pulsus paradoxus

text: To measure the pulsus paradoxus, place a blood pressure cuff on the patient's arm and very slowly deflate the cuff while listening for brachial pulsations. Note the pressure that you first hear with pulsations during expiration (which will be the highest). Repeat the process, and record the pressure of pulsations heard during inspiration (which will be the lowest).


title: Pulsus paradoxus

text: If the pressure difference between the two readings is >10mmHg, it can be classified as pulsus paradoxus.


title: Pulsus paradoxus

text: Pulsus paradoxus can be caused by several physiologic mechanisms. Anatomically, these can be grouped into:


title: Pulsus paradoxus

text: PP has been shown to be predictive of the severity of cardiac tamponade. Pulsus paradoxus may not be seen with cardiac tamponade if an atrial septal defect or significant aortic regurgitation is also present.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The Montreal Alouettes (French: Les Alouettes de Montréal) are a professional Canadian football team based in Montreal, Quebec. Founded in 1946, the team has folded and been revived twice. The Alouettes compete in the East Division of the Canadian Football League (CFL) and last won the Grey Cup championship in 2010. Their home field is Percival Molson Memorial Stadium for the regular season and as of 2014 also home of their playoff games.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The original Alouettes team (1946–1981) won four Grey Cups and were particularly dominant in the 1970s. After their collapse in 1982, they were immediately reconstituted under new ownership as the Montreal Concordes. After playing for four years as the Concordes, they revived the Alouettes name for the 1986 season. A second folding in 1987 led to a nine-year hiatus of CFL football in the city.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The current Alouettes franchise was established in 1996 by the owners of the Baltimore Stallions. The Stallions were disbanded at the same time as the Alouettes' re-establishment after having been the most successful of the CFL's American expansion franchises, culminating in a Grey Cup championship in 1995. Many players from the Stallions' 1995 roster signed with the Alouettes and formed the core of the team's 1996 roster.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: For record-keeping purposes, the CFL considers all clubs that have played in Montreal as one franchise dating to 1946, and considers the Alouettes to have suspended operations in 1987 before returning in 1996. Although the Alouettes' re-establishment in 1996 is often considered a relocation of the Stallions, neither the league nor the Alouettes recognize the Baltimore franchise, or its records, as part of the Alouettes' official team history.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The latest incarnation of the Alouettes were arguably the best CFL team of the 2000s; they took home three Grey Cups in that decade bringing the franchise total to seven. The Alouettes had from 1996 to 2014 the CFL's longest active playoff streak, only having missed the playoffs three times since returning to the league. The streak came to an end in 2015. They have hosted a playoff game every year except 2001, 2007, 2013, and from 2015 to 2018. Their five losing seasons came in 2007, 2013 and from 2015 to 2018. The 2015 through 2018 Alouettes' seasons marked the first time the team missed the playoffs in consecutive years since their re-activation. Major stars of the recent era include Mike Pringle, the CFL career leader in rushing yards, and quarterback Anthony Calvillo, who led all of pro football in career passing yards before Drew Brees took over in late 2020.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The Alouettes are currently owned by Crawford Steel executives Sid Spiegel and his son-in-law Gary Stern (through their subsidiary S and S Sportsco), who took over the team on January 6, 2020; the team had been purchased by the CFL in 2019 after the previous owner, American businessman Robert Wetenhall, could not find a buyer. Prior to selling the team to the league, Wetenhall was the league's only remaining non-Canadian owner.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: Canadian football has a long history in Montreal, dating to the 1850s. The Alouettes were first formed in 1946 by Canadian Football Hall of Famer Lew Hayman along with businessmen Eric Cradock and Léo Dandurand. They named themselves after ""Alouette"", a work song about plucking the feathers from a skylark, which had become a symbol of the Québécois. The origin of the team’s name also comes from the 425 Tactical Fighter Squadron – the Royal Canadian Air Force’s first French Canadian squadron.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: They won their first Grey Cup championship in 1949, beating Calgary 28–15 led by quarterback Frank Filchock and running back Virgil Wagner.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The 1950s were a productive decade for the Als, with quarterback Sam Etcheverry throwing passes to John "Red" O'Quinn, "Prince" Hal Patterson, and with Pat Abbruzzi carrying the ball, Montreal fielded the most dangerous offence in all Canadian football. From 1954 to 1956, they reached the Grey Cup in three consecutive seasons, but questionable defensive units led the Alouettes to defeat the Edmonton Eskimos each time.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The team was purchased in 1954 by Ted Workman. Like all teams playing in the WIFU and IRFU, the Alouettes joined the newly-formed Canadian Football League in 1958. While the team continued to enjoy success for the rest of the 1950s, that all changed at the end of the 1960 season. To be more specific, the team was shaken by an announcement on November 10 – namely the trade of Hal Patterson and Sam Etcheverry to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats for Bernie Faloney and Don Paquette. Workman had concluded the deal without consulting with general manager Perry Moss. The deal quickly fell apart because Etcheverry had just signed a new contract with a no-trade clause; as a result, Etcheverry was now a free agent. The deal was reworked and Patterson was traded for Paquette. Sam Etcheverry went on to play in the NFL with the St. Louis Cardinals for 2 years (1961 and 1962) followed by the San Francisco 49ers in 1963. Faloney remained in Hamilton, and teamed with Patterson to form one of the most deadly quarterback-receiver combinations in CFL history.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: This episode remains one of the most lopsided trades ever made in the Alouettes history, and it ushered in a dark decade for the team. During that time, they failed to register a single winning season. From 1968 to 1976 the team played in the Autostade stadium—which had been built as a temporary stadium for Expo 67. The stadium's less-than-desirable location on Montreal's waterfront near the Victoria Bridge led to dismal attendance, putting more strain on the team's finances.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The Als finally bottomed out in 1969, finishing 2–12. After that season, Workman sold the team to the highly capable Sam Berger, a former part-owner of the Ottawa Rough Riders. Berger made immediate changes to the team. On December 9, the team announced that Red O'Quinn and Sam Etcheverry were returning to the organization, this time as the team's new general manager and head coach, respectively. The team also unveiled new uniforms—their home jerseys were now predominantly green, with red and white trim. The white helmets with the red "wings" used during the 1960s also disappeared, replaced by a white helmet with a stylized green and red bird's head that formed a lower-case "a". As one might expect from a team that had won only two games in 1969, many new players were brought in.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The changes paid immediate dividends. Although the team finished third in the East, they defeated the Toronto Argonauts and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the playoffs. The 1970 season culminated when the Alouettes won the 58th Grey Cup, played on November 28 at Toronto's Exhibition Stadium before a crowd of 32,669. Led by quarterback Sonny Wade (who was named the game's most valuable player, and who would soon become a fan favourite in Montreal—not unlike the status his coach had enjoyed in the 1950s), halfback Moses Denson, receivers Gary Lefebvre and Tom Pullen, along with kicker George Springate, the team defeated the Calgary Stampeders 23–10 for the city's first Grey Cup since 1949, also against the Stamps.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: That 1970 victory would herald the beginning of arguably the greatest decade in franchise history. During Berger's tenure as owner, the team played for six Grey Cups and won three (meeting both Alberta teams all of those times, and the Edmonton Eskimos in five of those six games). In 1974, the team changed their colours to match the other Montreal pro sports teams- red, white and blue. They finally moved out of the Autostade and into Olympic Stadium midway through the 1976 season and attendance shot up. In 1977, the Als had a very successful year both on the field and at the box office, winning the Grey Cup at their home field before a Grey Cup-record 68,318 fans (a CFL record that still stands as of 2017). They also averaged 59,595 fans per game at the "Big O" during the regular season, a league record that also still stands.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: However, the success ended with Berger's retirement in 1981. He sold the team to Vancouver businessman Nelson Skalbania. The flamboyant Skalbania set about signing two first-round picks from the 1981 National Football League draft and NFL name players such as Vince Ferragamo, James Scott, David Overstreet, Keith Gary and Billy "White Shoes" Johnson. Even with all that talent, the Alouettes suffered on the field, finishing with a dismal 3–13 record while attendance plummeted to under 30,000 per game. However, the East was so weak that year (Hamilton was the only team in the East to finish with a winning record) that they actually made the playoffs, finishing third in the East ahead of the 2–14 Toronto Argonauts. In the East Semi-Final, they made a fairly good showing against the second-place (and eventual East Division champions) Rough Riders before losing to the eventual East Division champions, 20–16.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: This would be the last game that the original Alouettes franchise would play. Skalbania was reported late in 1981 to be selling to oil magnate Pat Bowlen, who would later buy the NFL's Denver Broncos in 1984. Later in 1981, NFL coach George Allen obtained an option to purchase 51% of the club, and was named Alouettes' president. While holding both the option and the post, Allen was surprised by Skalbania arranging a sale of the same controlling stake to Harry Ornest, who would later own the St. Louis Blues and the Toronto Argonauts. Ornest was reluctant to take control of the Alouettes as a result of the team's high level of debt and extensive commitments to high-profile stars. In early April 1982, Allen looked set to take control of the Alouettes. However, Allen left the club in late April after Skalbania was unable to resolve 1981 debts. With the franchise in collapse, Berger tried to force Skalbania to relinquish the team to him as payment for debt. Skalbania returned from a business trip to Hong Kong in late April and was able to regain control of the team. However, Skalbania's highly leveraged business interests collapsed a month later. Unable to meet his obligations, he was forced to return the team to the league on May 13.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The CFL had anticipated the collapse of the Alouettes, and was well prepared when Skalbania returned the franchise to the league. Among potential suitors for the troubled franchise was Montreal businessman Charles Bronfman, founder and owner of the Alouettes' co-tenants at the Big O, the Montreal Expos. Bronfman had made it clear to league officials that he would not deal with Skalbania, but would be willing to establish a replacement franchise on short notice if the Alouettes ceased operations. On May 14, 1982, a day after the original Alouettes franchise folded, the CFL granted the Montreal franchise rights to Bronfman. However, Skalbania continued to assert ownership of the Montreal Alouettes name, logos and related intellectual property even though he had given up the franchise.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: Rather than risk a lawsuit from the notoriously litigious Skalbania, and unwilling to negotiate with him, Bronfman chose to operate his team under another aviation-inspired name, the Concordes. The new name was not only a reference to the then-revolutionary Concorde supersonic passenger jet, but appeared to be an appeal to both anglophones and francophones, Concorde was an Anglo-French joint venture. Unfortunately, the new name angered management at one of Montreal's most prominent corporations, aviation manufacturer Bombardier. After being a prominent sponsor of the Alouettes, Bombardier refused to have anything to do with a football team named for an aircraft built by one of its competitors, the French-based Aérospatiale.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The Concordes inherited the franchise history and records of the 1946-1981 Alouettes. Bronfman retained most of the Alouettes' coaching staff, including recently hired head coach Joe Galat, and most of the Alouettes' front office personnel. The Concordes also retained the CFL rights of all Alouettes players. In an effort to bring the team's expenses under control, former NFL players signed by Skalbania's Alouettes were released from their contracts. While many players returned to the U.S., one factor working in Bronfman's favour was that a players' strike was looming in the NFL, which helped persuade star quarterback Johnny Evans and a few other Skalbania signees to stay in Montreal.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: A nine-game losing streak to end the season doomed the 1982 Concordes to a 2–14 record – the worst record in franchise history (percentage points below the 1969 Als). The Concordes featured quarterback Luc Tousignant, the only Québécois quarterback to start a CFL game besides Gerry Dattilio. The club also featured star collegiate running back David Overstreet (a holdover from the 1981 Alouettes) who rushed for 190 yards in six games before ending his season on the injured reserve list. Other stars on the club included quarterback Johnny Evans, quarterback Turner Gill, slot back Nick Arakgi, running back Lester Brown, wide receiver Brian DeRoo, local kick returner Denny Ferdinand, defensive tackle Glen Weir, safety Preston Young, defensive end Gordon Judges, kicker-punter Don Sweet and linebacker William Hampton.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The team gradually rebounded on the field over the next three years. The Concordes won five games in 1983. While still well below .500, the East Division was so weak that year (only the eventual Grey Cup champion Argos finished with a winning record) that the Concordes were still in playoff contention on the season's final weekend. The Concordes' final game of the season was at Olympic Stadium against the Tiger-Cats. With Hamilton and Montreal tied at 5-10 for the division's third and final playoff spot, a respectable crowd of 41,157 converged to watch the Concordes play what was effectively a playoff game. These fans left heartbroken after Hamilton kicker Bernie Ruoff made a last minute field goal to tie the game 21-21. Since overtime would not be introduced in the CFL regular season until 1986, the Tiger-Cats won the final Eastern playoff berth on account of a better head-to-head record (having beaten the Concordes earlier in the year).


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The team returned to the playoffs in 1984, again doing so in a weak East Division; only the defending champion Argos finished with a winning record. In 1985, they advanced all the way to the East Final. Their East Semifinal win over Ottawa that year was both their only home playoff game and only playoff win under the Concordes banner; 1984 and 1985 were the only playoff appearances for a Montreal football team from 1982 to 1986. However, as in 1984, they made the playoffs in an extremely weak East Division; the Concordes and Ti-Cats both finished with identical 8-8 records, with the Ti-Cats getting the division title by virtue of sweeping the season series. No other team in the division even managed a .500 record.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: However, attendance did not keep pace with the team's performance. The Concordes' 1983 season finale against Hamilton was the only game to attract a crowd surpassing even 30,000 under Bronfman's ownership. Moreover, the 1985 East Semifinal was a disaster at the box office due in part to poor weather conditions and haphazard facility preparations. Only 11,372 fans attended what would turn out to be the team's last home game played under the Concordes name.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: After quietly coming to terms with Skalbania, in 1986 the team attempted to embrace its predecessor's history and regenerate flagging fan interest by rebranding itself the "new" Montreal Alouettes. This would not prove to be successful, on or off the field. On the field, the team posted a 4–14 record, missing the playoffs in spite of once again finishing third in the East on account of the new "cross-over rule" the CFL had implemented for the 1986 season. Off the field, financial losses mounted and the team's attendance tumbled to 10,127 a game, including only 9,045 at their final home game (a contest against the BC Lions drew only 5200 fans, the smallest crowd at any CFL game since 1951).


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: Just before the 1987 season Carling O'Keefe brewery tore up its deal to serve as the CFL's presenting television sponsor. The collapse of the CFL's television deal proved a death blow for the Alouettes. The franchise had lost at least $15 million under Bronfman's ownership. While Bronfman was far better-financed than Skalbania, he was unwilling to spend millions of dollars underwriting his professional sports holdings indefinitely. Bronfman's overall situation was not helped by the then-emerging news that his other professional sports team, the Expos, were at the centre of a massive collusion scandal that was rocking Major League Baseball. Eventually, Bronfman decided to focus on baseball and made it clear he would not field a football team for the 1987 CFL season unless the Alouettes sold thousands of additional season tickets. Neither the necessary season ticket sales nor a viable ownership group willing to take the franchise off Bronfman's hands materialized. Re-location was not an option either; although several Canadian cities had expressed interest in acquiring a CFL team, none of the prospective candidates were even potentially large enough to support a team, or had a stadium that was suitable even for temporary use. At the time, the CFL was lukewarm to the possibility of expanding or re-locating to U.S. markets (the CFL's U.S. expansion did not come until six years later).


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The new Alouettes folded on June 24, 1987, just a day before the 1987 regular season started. The league had already prepared for this, and immediately released a previously-drafted eight-team schedule. However, the Alouettes' demise came so late that the June 28 "Washington Post" still announced an ESPN broadcast of an Alouettes–Stampeders game, a game that would never be played. The team did play both of its two preseason games on the road before folding. To balance out the divisions, the easternmost-West Division team, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, moved to the East Division to take the Alouettes' place (along with this, the "cross-over rule" for the playoffs was scrapped until 1997). The CFL held a dispersal draft for the Alouettes players. Some of the players left out of work by the team's demise (both on the Alouettes and players on other CFL teams who were cut to make room for former Alouettes) played in the NFL as replacement players during another players' strike later that year. During the period that the Alouettes were inactive, professional gridiron football would return to Montreal in the form of the World League of American Football's Montreal Machine, who played two seasons in 1991 and 1992 under American rules.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The Baltimore Football Club was granted an expansion franchise for 1994 by the Canadian Football League during their American expansion of the early-mid 1990s. After the NFL's Indianapolis Colts (who had moved from Baltimore in 1983) blocked attempts to name the new team the "Baltimore CFL Colts," owner Jim Speros eventually settled on "Stallions" as a nickname. The Stallions were by far the most successful of the CFL's American teams, garnering strong fan support in the Baltimore area and appearing in the Grey Cup in both its seasons, losing in 1994 and winning in 1995. To date, they are the only American-based team to play for and win the Grey Cup. Only a week before the Stallions won the Grey Cup, Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell announced his intention to relocate his NFL club to Baltimore. Support for the Stallions dried up almost overnight. Speros knew the Stallions could not even begin to compete with an NFL team. Rather than face being effectively reduced to "minor-league" status in Baltimore, Speros decided to move the Stallions elsewhere.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: At one point, Speros was very close to moving the team to Houston, Texas. Although Houston at the time was still home to the NFL's Oilers, fan support for that team had collapsed due their pending relocation to Nashville (to later become the Titans). Speros had reason to believe a CFL team there could repeat the success that had been enjoyed in Baltimore. In addition, a team in Houston would have been natural rivals for the San Antonio Texans, who were still planning to play the 1996 season had at least one other U.S. team survived. On the other hand, the proposed move to Houston was considered in some circles to be little more than a ploy to win concessions from the NFL, which presumably would not have wanted to risk the embarrassment of having one of its teams outdrawn by a team from another league in the same city. The NFL would return to Houston in 2002 in the form of the Texans.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: In the end, under prodding from league commissioner and former Alouettes running back Larry Smith, Speros began talks with Montreal. Smith had been looking for a way to return the CFL to Canada's second-largest market and, at the same time, find a way out of the failing American expansion (which Smith had also presided over). He believed that the defending Grey Cup champions would be a better vehicle for reviving football in Montreal than what would have effectively been an expansion team.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: At a league meeting on February 2, 1996; Speros formally requested permission to move the Stallions to Montreal. The request was granted, officially ending the CFL's American experiment. However, talks had been so far advanced that at least one Baltimore outlet reported that the Stallions were moving to Montreal in January. According to at least one Canadian outlet, at the same time Speros had already begun deciding whether to retain the Stallions moniker or "revive" the Alouettes. He ultimately chose the latter course, reconstituting his organisation as the third incarnation of the Alouettes. While Speros was able to reclaim the history of the 1946–86 Alouettes/Concordes franchise, he was not allowed to retain the history of the Stallions. As a result, according to official CFL records, Speros is now reckoned as having surrendered the Stallions franchise before "reactivating" the Alouettes franchise. The Alouettes are now retconned as having suspended operations from 1987 to 1995, while the Stallions are officially one of only three modern-era Grey Cup champions to fold (after the Rough Riders and the original Alouettes). The Alouettes, however, do briefly mention the Stallions on their history page.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: While all of the Stallions players were released from their contracts, general manager Jim Popp, who followed the team from Baltimore, was able to re-sign many of them. However, as with all the other U.S.-based CFL teams, the Stallions had been exempt from CFL rules that mandated a certain quota of Canadian "non-import" players on team rosters. For this reason, an expansion draft was held to help stock the Alouettes with the required number of Canadian players. Popp hired former Stallions assistant coach Bob Price to be the new head coach of the revived Alouettes. With the help of much of the core of the Stallions, the Alouettes were able to overcome a slow start to finish with their first winning record since 1979. They defeated the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the East semifinal before being defeated by the Argos 43–7 in the East Final.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: In 1997, Speros sold the team to developer and investor Robert Wetenhall, who owned the team until he officially transferred ownership to the league on May 31, 2019. Smith stepped down as league commissioner and became president of the Alouettes. Bob Price left the Alouettes to head south and coach in the NCAA. Popp hired former B.C. Lions head coach and Concordes defensive line coach Dave Ritchie as his successor.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The revived Alouettes franchise played their first two seasons at Olympic Stadium, but attendance in the cavernous domed stadium was very poor at first. The future of the franchise was very much in doubt until a twist of fate revitalized the floundering club. When a scheduled November 1997 U2 concert at Olympic Stadium conflicted with an unexpected home playoff game against the Lions (due to the CFL's recently re-established 'cross-over' playoff rule), the team decided to move the game to Molson Stadium, where they had played from 1954 to 1967. Interest in the team soared and the game was sold out, prompting the team to relocate permanently to the smaller venue beginning with the 1998 season. At the time of the Alouettes' return to Molson, the stadium's capacity was 20,202. Prior to every Sunday home game, the club plays "Sunday Bloody Sunday" over the PA system in tribute to the unintended role U2 played in saving the franchise. The team did not completely abandon the Olympic Stadium, and used it for one home game per year, from 2001 to 2009, and playoff games from 2001-2012. The Montreal Alouettes got off to a good start, winning 25 games and losing 11 in their first two seasons, and reaching the East Division Finals both times.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The fortunes for the Alouettes started to change during the 1998 season, when they acquired a young free agent quarterback from the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Anthony Calvillo, and they drafted slotback Ben Cahoon. Tracy Ham and Mike Pringle led the team to a second-place finish, but they suffered a last-second loss to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the East Final. The Alouettes finally broke through in 1999, under new head coach Charlie Taaffe, winning their first division title since 1979. However, for the fourth consecutive season they lost the East Final match in a close game against the Tiger-Cats, 27–26.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: Tracy Ham retired after the 1999 season, and Anthony Calvillo took over as the full-time starting quarterback, he led the team to their first Grey Cup final since 1979, losing to BC in a close game, as they came within a missed two point convert of sending the game into overtime. After the season Charlie Taaffe resigned to become the head coach of the Maryland Terrapins. The next season started under new coach Rod Rust at 9–2, but after Calvillo separated his shoulder, the team started struggling and after losing all their remaining games, GM Jim Popp fired Rust, led them into the playoffs, where they lost to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the East Semi-Final.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: During the off-season, the Alouettes signed Don Matthews to lead the team in the future. They came all the way back in 2002, finishing with the best record (13-5) in the CFL and winning their first Grey Cup since 1977, by defeating one of their oldest rivals, and Matthews' former team, the Edmonton Eskimos, 25–16. The Alouettes had the best record in the CFL during the 2004 season at 14–4 and looked liked a sure bet to play for the Grey Cup, but in the East Final, Anthony Calvillo got hurt, and was replaced by backup Ted White, and the Toronto Argonauts rallied to defeat the Alouettes, 26–18. During the 2004-2005 off-season, all time CFL career rushing yards leader Mike Pringle signed a one-day contract, so he could retire as a member of the Montreal Alouettes. The team participated in the first Grey Cup overtime game in almost 50 years. The Edmonton Eskimos defeated the Alouettes, 38–35.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: During the 2006 season Matthews left his position as head coach near the end of the season because of health reasons, and Jim Popp took over for the rest of the season, leading the team to the Grey Cup, where they lost 25–14 to the B.C Lions.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: Popp stayed on to coach the team during the 2007 season, and the team suffered its first losing season since coming back to Montreal in 1996, with an 8–10 record, hindered by the loss of starting quarterback Anthony Calvillo, who left the team near the end of the season to be with his wife who was sick. The team lost the East Semi-Final, 24-22, to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers with backup quarterback Marcus Brady behind center. With Montreal hosting the 2008 Grey Cup, the Alouettes wanted to be there, so they hired an experienced NFL assistant coach in Marc Trestman, and head coach Trestman helped lead them to an 11–7 record and a berth in the Grey Cup against the visiting Calgary Stampeders led by Henry Burris. The Stampeders defeated the hometown Montreal Alouettes, 22–14, in front of over 66,000 fans.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The 2009 season was a record breaking season for the Montreal Alouettes, as they set a team record for wins in a regular season, were a CFL best 15–3, and their defence was amazing, as they allowed only 324 points, second least in an 18-game season. Marc Trestman won the coach of the year. The Alouettes earned a 28–27 comeback victory in the 2009 Grey Cup, thanks to the great play of Anthony Calvillo, Ben Cahoon, and Jamel Richardson. The Alouettes trailed the Saskatchewan Roughriders, 27–11, with 8 minutes to play in the game, when they started their comeback. It all came down to the foot of field goal kicker Damon Duval, who after missing a 43-yard field on the last play, got a second chance, when the Roughriders were called for having too many players on the field (The 13th Man), which was a ten-yard penalty, so kicking from the 33 yard line, Duval nailed it through the uprights, giving Montreal an improbable Grey Cup victory, after trailing the entire game. The game turned into a Grey Cup classic, thanks to the great play of the Alouettes veterans, and broke a streak of 4 straight losses in Grey Cups. The 2010 season was another good season for Montreal, as they went 12–6 and became the first team since the 1997 Toronto Argonauts to repeat as Grey Cup Champions. They played against the Saskatchewan Roughriders for the second straight year, and won the game, 21–18, repeating as champs.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The 2011 season was another record breaking year for Anthony Calvillo, as he broke numerous records, all against the Argonauts. During their first meeting Calvillo broke the CFL all time touchdown passes record of 394 TD passes on a pass to Eric Deslauriers, Damon Allen was at the game at Molson Stadium and personally congratulated him on breaking his record. He tied Allen's record in Regina the week before with the only touchdown pass ever caught by Tim Maypray. During the teams' second meeting, he broke the completions record with a completion to Brandon London. In the teams' third meeting, Anthony Calvillo became pro football's all-time career passing yards leader, on a Jamel Richardson touchdown pass to end the third quarter. The play was stopped as his family joined him along with Mark Cohan for a special on field presentation and video tribute. NFL greats Warren Moon and Dan Marino, ESPN's Chris Berman, and Damon Allen each sent video messages congratulating him on breaking the record. Calvillo was presented with a special plaque, with the number 72382, the new pro football all-time yardage mark. The team lost an overtime thriller in the East Semi-Final at the Olympic Stadium 52–44 to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The 2012 season was another good year for the Alouettes, but after an 11–7 season they lost the East final to the Toronto Argonauts after Brian Bratton dropped a game-tying touchdown pass from Calvillo with a minute left in the game, giving Toronto a 27–20 win.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: Before the 2013 season coach Marc Trestman left the Alouettes for the NFL, becoming the head coach of the Chicago Bears. Jim Popp went looking for a new coach, but he chose an inexperienced coach in Dan Hawkins who had no pro experience. After trying to change the playbook, and upsetting a lot of the players, especially Anthony Calvillo, and a dismal 2–3 record, Jim Popp fired Hawkins, and coached the team for the rest of the year. Calvillo was not having a great year, when he suffered a season-ending concussion in Saskatchewan on a hit by Ricky Foley. Jim Popp went looking for a quarterback for the future, and it looked like he found it, in Heisman Trophy winner Troy Smith. Both Tanner Marsh and Josh Neiswander led the Alouettes to comeback wins during the year, but when Troy Smith took over, he looked more poised and comfortable than the others. The team had an 8–10 record, and still made the playoffs for an 18th straight year. Troy Smith might have led them to a surprising playoff run, if the referees had called pass interference on a possible game winning pass to Duron Carter in the last minute of play, of the East Semi-Final against the Tiger-Cats.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: Anthony Calvillo announced his retirement on January 21, after a 20-year career, including the last 16 with the Alouettes.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: On February 24, 2014, the Alouettes named former Edmonton Eskimos and Calgary Stampeders coach Tom Higgins as the 21st head coach in franchise history. Higgins coached the Eskimos against the Alouettes in both the 90th and 91st Grey Cup games. The Alouettes finished with a .500 record, qualifying for the playoffs. After dismantling the BC Lions in a crossover match the Alouettes were beaten by the Tiger-Cats 40-24.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: On May 22, 2015, Michael Sam signed a two-year contract with the Alouettes. The signing made him the first openly gay player in the CFL's history. Michael Sam left the team after dressing for one game. On August 21, 2015, owner Robert Wettenhall announced he had relieved Tom Higgins of his head coaching responsibilities and that general manager Jim Popp would take over the duties of head coach. The 2015 season was a difficult one for the Alouettes, due to injuries to starting QB Jonathan Crompton, the Alouettes went through five different quarterbacks including two rookies Rakeem Cato, and Brandon Bridge, before trading for veteran Kevin Glenn. By that time the quarterback shuffle had taken its toll on the team and they finished the year with a 6–12 record and missed the playoffs for the first time since both 1986 and their 1996 re-activation, their last year before folding on the eve of the 1987 season.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The following season on September 19, 2016, Popp was relieved of his coaching duties, while remaining as the team's general manager. Jacques Chapdelaine was named interim head coach, becoming the first Quebec-born head coach in Alouettes' history. He was named the permanent coach on December 13, 2016. Kavis Reed took over duties as the team's new general manager. 2016 was also another dismal year for the team, finishing with another losing record of 7-11. After a 3-8 start to the 2017 season, Chapdelaine was fired on September 13, 2017. The Alouettes ended the season with their worst record since reactivation, 3-15.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: On December 20, 2017, former Green Bay Packers head coach Mike Sherman was named the team's new head coach. Under Sherman the team suffered its fourth consecutive losing season, finishing the year with 5 wins and 13 losses. In the five seasons following Anthony Calvillo's retirement, the team won 30 games and lost 60.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: On February 1, 2019, the team unveiled a new logo and updated uniforms, designed by GRDN Studio, replacing the previous "angry bird" logo used since the team's reestablishment in 1996 with a stylized "M", designed to resemble a bird and plane, and introducing a new "MontreALS" tagline, playing upon the team's nickname. The team also partnered with Vice Media on aspects of accompanying marketing and content.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: On May 31, 2019, Wetenhall surrendered his ownership of the Alouettes to the league, after having attempted to pursue a sale. The CFL would operate the team on its behalf while it searched for a new owner. Several prospective suitors for the team included Clifford Starke, a 35-year-old entrepreneur in medical cannabis who is friends with former Alouette player and CFL commissioner Larry Smith, who had been negotiating for a majority stake. Also interested was former Alouettes running back Eric Lapointe, whose 2017 bid had been rejected but has maintained interest in buying the team (though he withdrew in April 2019), and Vincenzo Guzzo, CEO of Quebec's Cinémas Guzzo cinema chain. As of early June, CFL sources indicated it would not accept Starke's bid, while Guzzo's was said to be on hold. Guzzo later stated that he was displeased with the state of the Alouettes organization as a business and that, had he not been a Montreal resident, he would have never considered buying the team.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: On June 8 - two days after their last pre-season game, and just six days before their 2019 season opener, Khari Jones took over from Mike Sherman as interim head coach. Jones guided the Alouettes to a 10–8 record, good for a second-place finish in the East Division, and the team's first playoff berth since 2014. The Alouettes improved play during that season was also attributable to the performance of their quarterback Vernon Adams who passed for almost 4,000 yards. Although the team lost in the East Semi-Final to the crossover Edmonton Eskimos 37–29, the team removed the interim tag from Jones' head coach title, and he was signed to a three-year extension on November 26, 2019. On January 6, 2020, after almost a year of being owned by the league, the Alouettes found new ownership in Crawford Steel's Sid Spiegel and his father-in-law Gary Stern, whose holding company S and S Sportsco would oversee the team. Spiegel died on July 28, 2021, before being able to see the team he bought play a game; in effect, the team was controlled by his estate. On August 29, 2022 Gary Stern announced that he was stepping away from day-to-day operations with the club and resigning from his role with the Canadian Football League’s board of governors, effective immediately.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: The Alouettes' English radio network is fronted by Bell Media's CKGM, while Cogeco's CHMP is the French-language flagship.


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: Games are also heard on Sirius XM Canada and their French service Influence Franco (XM 174) and Attitude Franco (Sirius 164).


title: Montreal Alouettes

text: Touché is the mascot for the Montreal Alouettes. The team introduced a second mascot in 1999 named Blitz, but Blitz was discontinued at the start of the 2013 season.


title: Neobank

text: A neobank (also known as an online bank, internet-only bank, virtual bank or digital bank) is a type of direct bank that operates exclusively online without traditional physical branch networks. The term "challenger bank" is used in the UK to refer to a number of fintech banking startups that emerged in the wake of the 2007–2009 financial crisis. Their services may be accessed by clients through their respective computers or mobile devices.


title: Neobank

text: The range of services provided by neobanks is not as broad as that of their traditional counterparts. Unlike incumbent banks, a large portion of the income of neobanks is mainly made up of transaction fees received when customers pay with their debit card.


title: Neobank

text: The term "neobank" has been in use since at least 2016 to describe fintech-based financial providers that were challenging traditional banks. There were two main types of company that provided services digitally: companies that applied for their own banking license and companies in a relationship with a traditional bank to provide those financial services. The former were called challenger banks and the latter were called neobanks.