title: Herbert Nitsch

text: Herbert Nitsch (born 20 April 1970) is an Austrian freediver who has held world records in all of the eight freediving disciplines recognised by AIDA International. He is the current freediving world record champion and "the deepest man on earth". This title was given to him when he set a world record in the "No Limit" discipline at the depth of . To date, he has achieved 33 official World Records across all freediving disciplines, and one world record in the traditional Greek discipline of Skandalopetra . He surpassed his own No Limit depth with a dive in June 2012 to , suffering injury in the process.


title: Herbert Nitsch

text: Nitsch holds the No-Limits record, the title of "Deepest man on Earth" in which the diver can make use of a weighted sled to descend as far as possible and uses an air-filled balloon or other buoyancy device to return to the surface. Nitsch set the world record in Spetses, Greece in June 2007 when he descended to , beating his own record of set the previous year. He also held the world record in the Constant Weight event, which is considered by many to be the classic free-diving discipline: the diver descends next to a line, not using the line and unaided by a sled, and must maintain a constant weight, meaning that no weight can be dropped for the return to the surface. Nitsch exceeded the then world record in 2006 when he dived to a depth of , but failure to complete the strict surfacing protocols within the allotted time meant that the dive was disqualified. In Hurghada, Egypt, in December 2006 he did a Constant Weight World Record dive of , adding 2 m on top of Guillaume Néry's previous record.


title: Herbert Nitsch

text: Later in 2007, he also set the Constant weight (No Fins) record during The Triple Depth in Dahab, Egypt, and went on to push the Constant record to during the World Championships in Sharm. Herbert also won the AIDA Individual World Championships.


title: Herbert Nitsch

text: Of the other five AIDA recognised events, Nitsch has been the world record holder in four: Static Apnea, Dynamic Apnea, Free Immersion and Dynamic apnea without fins. He set a time of 9 mins 4 secs for the world Static Apnea record in December 2006 when he held his breath underwater in a swimming pool in Hurgada, a time that was beaten by 4 secs in 2007 by Tom Sietas of Germany. His record of for Constant Weight without fins, set in 2004, was beaten by 14 m in 2005 by Czech free-diver, Martin Štěpánek, who was also the holder of the Free Immersion record of ; Nitsch recorded in September 2003, but his record was bettered by a dive of 101 m by Carlos Coste of Venezuela in October the same year and then twice improved upon by Štěpánek. Nitsch's Dynamic Apnea record, 183 m set in 2002, has been beaten by 40 m by Tom Sietas and women's champion, Natalia Molchanova of Russia, has also swum further than 200 m. Sietas also holds the Dynamic apnea without fins record at 183 m, beating Nitsch's 2001 distance of 134 m by almost 50 m.


title: Herbert Nitsch

text: During the 2009 Vertical Blue competition at the Dean's Blue Hole in Bahamas in April, Nitsch set the Free Immersion world record at . He also established two subsequent world record dives in Constant Weight at , and on the last day of the competition, beating by 6 m the previous record that he had set a few days earlier. He used his arms only in the last of this ascent, with a total dive time of 3:58.


title: Herbert Nitsch

text: Later that same year in December at the Dean's Blue Hole in Bahamas, Nitsch broke three world records: Variable Weight at ; Free Immersion at ; and Constant Weight at .


title: Herbert Nitsch

text: During his last competition before retiring from competitive freediving in April 2010 at Vertical Blue, again at the Dean's Blue Hole in Bahamas, Nitsch set another three world records. He landed two subsequent ones in Free Immersion at and , and a world record in Constant Weight at .


title: Herbert Nitsch

text: Nitsch focused solely on the "No Limit" events after this, in which the record attempts fall outside of regulated competition.


title: Herbert Nitsch

text: In 2012, Nitsch returned to the "No Limit" category in the waters off Santorini, Greece, with a project labeled "Extreme 800", aiming for a depth of .


title: Herbert Nitsch

text: Following extensive training using an innovative torpedo-type sled design of very high descend and ascend speed, on 6 June Nitsch managed to reach a depth of , a Guinness World Record, but ten minutes after the dive he began experiencing serious symptoms of decompression sickness. Nitsch temporarily fell asleep due to nitrogen narcosis during the last part of the ascent (as opposed to through oxygen starvation), and woke up prior to reaching the surface. Following a planned post-dive decompression, breathing medical oxygen at a shallow depth, he signaled to his support team that he felt much weaker than normal and his condition was assessed as critical enough to require an air transfer to a pre-alerted decompression chamber in Athens, where he received treatment. He incurred multiple brain strokes due to severe decompression sickness. He subsequently received extensive decompression treatment in Germany.


title: Herbert Nitsch

text: The initial prognosis was that he would need home care and be unable to walk without assistance. However, through extensive rehabilitation, he made a strong recovery. He still has balance and coordination problems on land, but does not experience them underwater. He continues to deep free-dive.


title: Herbert Nitsch

text: Asteroid 295471 Herbertnitsch, discovered by Italian amateur astronomer Vincenzo Casulli in 2008, was named in his honor. The official was published by the Minor Planet Center on 27 August 2019 ().


title: Herbert Nitsch

text: Nitsch remains to date the only person that achieved world records across all of AIDA's eight freediving disciplines, in addition to the one he had set in the Greek discipline of Skandalopetra.


title: Herbert Nitsch

text: 72m = AIDA Lake Record; after 2001-12-31 AIDA International no longer separated the records achieved in a lake from those in the sea.


title: Badagas

text: The Badagas are an ethno-linguistic community living in the Nilgiri district in Tamil Nadu, India. Throughout the district the Badugas live in nearly 400 villages, called Hattis. The Badagas speak a language called Badaga.


title: Badagas

text: The name Badaga, meaning 'northerner', comes from Old Kannada "Badagana", meaning 'north.'According to the Badaga oral tradition, their ancestors were presumed to be Vokkaligas who migrated from the plains of Mysore to avoid Muslim persecution. According to American anthropologist Paul Hockings, whose research on the Badagas spans nearly six decades, "the (Badaga) tribe despite its sketchy history is as indigenous to the Nilgiris as the English are to Britain."


title: Badagas

text: They claim to come from seven siblings living in the Talamalai Hills. After they fled from a Muslim ruler who tried to rape their sister, they settled in different parts of the Nilgiris. The second brother, Hethappa, was working outside when two Todas raped his wife and took his goods. He sought the aid of two Bayaluru, who agreed to help him if they married his two daughters. They killed the Todas, and the inhabitants of the village at the time claimed descent from the Bayalurus and Badaga daughters.


title: Badagas

text: "Thundu" (a white piece of cloth) and "Seeley" forms an integral part of the attire of the Badugu women.


title: Badagas

text: Badugas marry within their community and follow their own marriage traditions. Their important festival is Devva Habba. Devva Habba provides significant insights into the origin of Badugas. They have certain rules and regulations to be followed in implementing their cultural rituals from the birth of a child and follows through functions like puberty, marriage, naming ceremony, seventh-month pregnancy, housewarming, and finally in death.


title: Badagas

text: During time of early 1900s they were known to swear very solemn oaths by the Sri Mariamman temple. For this they bathed, brought coconut and fruit, and killed an animal. The head they put on the step of the shrine, and from seven feet off they would walk to the temple step and put out the light that was shining in front of the idol. Even the Britisher judges, in court, would also abide by this practice and occasionally send witnesses to do this ritual along with a Court official to ensure they were telling the truth. Even today they place great reverence in Sri Mariamman: in April they celebrate a car festival at the Sri Mariamman temple in Ooty when they pull the car with the image of Sri Mariamman to their music and dance.


title: Badagas

text: The Badaga language is spoken by the Badaga community. The language is closely related to Kannada. LACITO in Paris houses numerous varieties of Badaga stories and songs collected over the past two decades.


title: Badagas

text: Former Lok Sabha MP, the late Smt. Akkamma Devi, was the first Badaga woman to graduate from college and represented the Nilgiris Lok Sabha constituency from 1962 to 1967. Belli Lakshmi Ramakrishnan M.A. was the first Badaga woman post graduate in social work, and went on to be the first woman gazetted officer to serve in the Tamil Nadu State Government Department of Health and Family Welfare.


title: Badagas

text: There is a long-standing demand to restore the status of the Badagas in the list of Scheduled Tribes under the Indian Constitution. The Badagas were on the tribes list during the British Raj, as per the 1931 census. After Independence, Badagas were on the Scheduled Tribe list during the 1951 census, but were later removed.


title: Joby Harold

text: Joby Harold is an English screenwriter, producer and director who runs Safehouse Pictures with his producing partner, Tory Tunnell. The company was co-founded in 2005.


title: Joby Harold

text: Harold's latest projects are the upcoming films "Space Mountain" and "Atlas" starring Jennifer Lopez, Simu Liu, and Sterling K. Brown both of which he will be producing alongside Tunnell. He is also working on the new "Untitled Godzilla Projec"t with Legendary starring Kurt Russell, Wyatt Russell, Ren Watabe, Anna Sawai, and Kiersey Clemons. Harold is developing the movie "I.F." with Mike Mitchell attached to direct and Tiffany Haddish set to star.


title: Joby Harold

text: Recently, he wrote and Executive Produced the series "Obi-Wan Kenobi" for Disney+ and also worked on "", the last in the live action "Transformers" film series, for Paramount Pictures as a sequel to "Bumblebee", along with a sci-fi thriller "Cloaker" for Warner Bros., which Safehouse Pictures is producing. Previously, he executive produced "", after writing on "". He also executive produced "Edge of Tomorrow" for Doug Liman, starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt as well as co-writing "" starring Charlie Hunnam and Jude Law, which he and Tory Tunnell produced under their Safehouse banner. He also wrote a draft for the upcoming superhero movie "The Flash", as part of the DC Extended Universe which Matthew Vaughn and Robert Zemeckis were formally circling to direct, followed by Sam Raimi, Marc Webb, and Phil Lord and Chris Miller. He recently co-wrote the zombie movie "Army of the Dead," alongside director Zack Snyder and Shay Hatten, which was released on Netflix in May 2021.


title: Joby Harold

text: His company Safehouse Pictures is producing several projects including the "Battle of Britain" for director Ridley Scott, "Liberators" with Michael B. Jordan attached to star, Patricia Arquette’s directorial debut "Love Canal", and the feature adaptation of "Space Invaders". In television, Harold produced the female drama "Spinning Out" at Netflix, starring January Jones and Kaya Scodelario. She previously was a partner with Weed Road Pictures, until they struck a deal with Sony in 2015.


title: Joby Harold

text: He previously executive produced the WGN series "Underground". Harold broke into a business in 2005, writing and directing the film "Awake" for The Weinstein Company, starring Hayden Christensen, Jessica Alba, Terrence Howard and Lena Olin, which Tunnell also produced.


title: Fugly (film)

text: Fugly (or ""F*UGLY"", as it appears on the poster) is an Indian Hindi comedy-drama social thriller film directed by Kabir Sadanand and produced by Ashvini Yardi, Alka Bhatia and Akshay Kumar. It was released on 13 June 2014. The film features Jimmy Sheirgill as one of many lead characters, including debut appearances from Mohit Marwah, Vijender Singh, Arfi Lamba and Kiara Advani.


title: Fugly (film)

text: Dev (Mohit Marwah), Devi (Kiara Advani), Gaurav (Vijender Singh) and Aditya (Arfi Lamba) are close friends. Gaurav is the son of the CM of Haryana, while the rest of his friends are commoners. Gaurav is uninterested in his family's politics and is the only educated person in his family. Gaurav is nice-hearted, but always high on adrenaline because of his influential father. He has a knack of getting into trouble with police because of this attitude, but the police tend to ignore his pranks.


title: Fugly (film)

text: A local grocer, Nunu has an evil eye on Devi and one day gropes her in his shop. The four of them decide to teach him a lesson. At night, they decide to break into his shop and thrash him warning him not to see her again. Although outnumbered and in bad state Nunu challenges them to leave Devi behind for him. Dev is very angry and decides to teach him a lesson. They put him in their car's trunk and drive him to an isolated location. They are intercepted by Inspector R.S. Chautala (Jimmy Shergill) who is patrolling the highway. Gaurav, as usual, tries to act smart and gets involved in a scuffle with Chautala. This enrages him and he suspects foul play. When he checks the car he discovers Nunu inside the trunk. Chautala kills Nunu in order to frame them in his murder case. In the morning after severe threat he puts up a demand of Rs. 6.1 million of ransom money, which they have to arrange in 24 hours. Gaurav is afraid to tell his father about the incident because he was actually involved in Nunu's kidnapping, since this would cost his father his CM chair. Somehow everyone is able to arrange 2.4 million.


title: Fugly (film)

text: Chautala further blackmails them by recording them handing over the money to him, as evidence of attempting to bribe a policeman. He gives them 3 more days to arrange for the money with additional Rs. 1 million as penalty. The four of them are further forced to arrange a rave party with a drug dealer, which is again raided by Chautala. He forces them into drug dealing as well to extract more juice out of them.


title: Fugly (film)

text: The four of them decide that they had enough and want to expose him in a sting operation. They almost succeed in extracting a confession out of him on camera, but are busted and Chautala also kidnaps Devi. Chautala outsmarts them on every step and the four slip deep into trouble with every step they try. Finally, they are arrested on false charges and meanwhile out on bail.


title: Fugly (film)

text: Dev in the end decides that he has to sacrifice his life to expose the truth. In the next scene, Dev is in the hospital and his narration is interrupted by Chautala. He clears up the ICU room of everyone to have a private moment with Dev. Dev tricks him by cutting off his own life support and getting into a scuffle with Chautala. As the medics and reporters rush into the room, they find Dev dead and it appears as if Chautala has killed him. This is telecast live on the news. Chautala attempts to blackmail Gaurav's father in an isolated region but is shot dead by his colleague.


title: Fugly (film)

text: Plans for "Fugly" were announced in 2013, and actors such as Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar were confirmed to be performing in the film. Filming for "Fugly" was initially intended to begin in September 2013, but was delayed until October of the same year. Filming took place in Delhi and Mumbai, and the key song was shot in March 2014.


title: Fugly (film)

text: Critic Subhash K. Jha gave it 4 stars and said that this film is thoughtful and at times brilliant. Moreover, it possesses a very rare virtue, a conscience.


title: Fugly (film)

text: The soundtrack is composed by Prashant Vadhyar, Yo Yo Honey Singh & Raftaar. All lyrics written by Yo Yo Honey Singh, Raftaar Dillin Nair, Arshia Nahid, Sumit Aroraa, Niren Bhatt & Rajveer Ahuja.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: The 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting occurred on December 7, 1993, aboard a Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) train in Garden City Park, New York. As the train arrived at Merillon Avenue station, passenger Colin Ferguson began firing at other passengers with a semi-automatic pistol. Six of the victims were killed and nineteen others were wounded before Ferguson was tackled and held down by other passengers on the train.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Ferguson's trial was noted for a number of unusual developments, including his dismissing his defense counsel, insisting on representing himself and questioning his victims on the stand. He was convicted in February 1995 on six counts of murder and nineteen counts of attempted murder. He is currently incarcerated at Great Meadow Correctional Facility, with an earliest possible release date of August 6, 2309.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: On December 7, 1993, Colin Ferguson purchased a ticket for the 5:33 p.m. eastbound train at the Flatbush Avenue station in Brooklyn, New York, which stopped at the Jamaica station in Queens. He boarded the third car of the eastbound Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) commuter train from Penn Station to Hicksville, along with more than eighty other passengers. He sat on the southwestern end of the car, carrying a Ruger P89 semi-automatic pistol and a canvas bag filled with 160 rounds of ammunition.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: As the train approached the Merillon Avenue station in Garden City Park, Long Island, Ferguson drew the gun, dropped several cartridges on the ground, stood up, and opened fire at random. During the next three minutes, he killed six people and injured another nineteen. Some passengers mistook the gunshots for caps or fireworks until a woman shouted, "He's got a gun! He's shooting people!" Ferguson walked east (forward) on the train, pulling the trigger steadily about every half second. Several passengers tried to hide beneath their seats, while others fled to the eastern end of the train and tried to enter the next car. Ferguson walked down the aisle of the train and shot people to his right and left as he passed each seat, briefly facing each victim before firing. An article in "The New York Times" called Ferguson's actions "as methodical as if he were taking tickets." Ferguson said, "I'm going to get you," over and over as he walked down the aisle.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Other passengers farther away in the train did not realize that a shooting had occurred until after the train stopped, as a crowd of panicked passengers fled from the third car into neighboring cars. One man appeared annoyed by their unruliness and said, "Be calm," before they forced a train door open and fled into the station. Two people were injured in the stampede of passengers. The train's conductor was informed of the shooting, but he decided against opening the train doors right away because two of the cars were not yet at the platform. An announcement was made ordering conductors not to open the doors, but engineer Thomas Silhan climbed out the window of his cab and opened each door from the outside so that panicked passengers could escape.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Ferguson had emptied two 15-round magazines during the shooting. While he was reloading his third magazine, somebody yelled, "Grab him!" Passengers Michael O'Connor, Kevin Blum, and Mark McEntee tackled him and pinned him to one of the train's seats. Several other passengers ran forward to grab his arms and legs and helped to pin him across a three-seat row with his head towards the window and legs towards the aisle. While he was pinned, Ferguson said, "Oh God, what did I do? What did I do? I deserve whatever I get." He also repeatedly pleaded with those holding him: "Don't shoot me. I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Five to six people continued to hold him pinned for some time while they awaited relief. Ferguson was held down for several minutes; Andrew Roderick, an off-duty LIRR police officer who was picking up his wife from the train, then boarded the train and handcuffed him.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Police detectives later said it appeared Ferguson had been planning the shooting for more than a week. LIRR police chief Joseph Flynn said, "This was the work of a deranged, maniacal person who for a variety of reasons decided to explode." None of Ferguson's victims were black, although it was unclear whether any other black passengers were aboard the train. Ferguson showed no emotion as he sat in the back of a police car, which some passengers said was as shocking and disturbing as the violence of the shooting itself. Upon seeing Ferguson, one of the victims became hysterical and shouted, "How can he be sitting there so calm after everything he did?"


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Police found pieces of notebook paper in Ferguson's pockets with scribbled notes with the heading "reasons for this". One of the notes referred to "racism by Caucasians and Uncle Tom Negroes". They included a reference to "the false allegations against me by the filthy Caucasian racist female on the #1 line", a reference to his February 1992 arrest. Ferguson's notes expressed anger towards the New York State Workers' Compensation Board, Asians, Governor Mario Cuomo, and "so-called civil right leaders such as the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, C. Vernon Mason, and Calvin Butts." They also included the names and telephone numbers of the Lt. Governor, the Attorney General, and the Manhattan law firm that Ferguson had previously threatened, whom he referred to as "those corrupt 'black' attorneys who not only refuse to help me but tried to steal my car". The notes indicated Ferguson planned to wait to start the killings until he was beyond the New York City limit out of respect for outgoing Mayor David Dinkins and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Ferguson showed no remorse during hours of questioning from the Nassau County District Attorney's Office. Officials there said, "He was lucid and clear and aware of what was going on." Ferguson was arraigned on December 8, 1993. He never spoke during the arraignment and did not enter a plea. He was ordered held without bail. As Ferguson was escorted from the courthouse, a reporter asked him if he hated whites, to which Ferguson replied, "It's a lie".


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Colin Ferguson was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on January 14, 1958 to Von Herman and May Ferguson. Von Herman was a wealthy pharmacist and the managing director of the large pharmaceutical company Hercules Agencies, and was described by "Time" magazine as "one of the most prominent businessmen in Jamaica". Ferguson attended the Calabar High School in Red Hills Road, Kingston, from 1969 to 1974, where the principal described him as a "well-rounded student" who played cricket and soccer. He graduated in the top third of his class.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Von Herman was killed in a car crash in 1978 when Ferguson was aged 20, and his funeral was attended by government and military luminaries. Ferguson's mother died from cancer soon afterwards, and the deaths destroyed the family's fortunes. Family friends said that this deeply disturbed Ferguson. He moved to the United States in 1982 on a visitor's visa. His friends speculated that he had trouble dealing with racism in the U.S. and that he felt frustrated because he couldn't find work outside of menial jobs.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Ferguson married Audrey Warren on May 13, 1986, a native of Southampton County, Virginia, which qualified him for permanent U.S. residence. The couple moved to a house on Long Island where they often fought, sometimes to the point that police intervention was required. On May 18, 1988, she obtained an uncontested divorce from Ferguson, claiming that the marriage ended because they had "differing social views". Acquaintances said that she left Ferguson because he was "too aggressive or antagonistic" for her, and that the divorce was a "crushing blow" to Ferguson.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Ferguson got a job doing clerical work for the Ademco Security Group in Syosset, New York. He slipped and fell on August 18, 1989, while standing on a stool to reach invoices from a filing cabinet, injuring his head, neck, and back, and the injury led to his termination. Ferguson filed a complaint with the state workers' compensation agency, which reviewed the matter over the next several years. He enrolled at Nassau Community College in East Garden City, where he made the dean's list three times. Also that year, he was forced to leave a class after a disciplinary hearing board found that he had acted overly aggressively towards the teacher.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: In late 1990, Ferguson transferred to Adelphi University in Garden City, where he majored in business administration. He spoke out against coexistence with whites, routinely made calls for retributive revolution, and regularly accused others around him of racism. On one occasion, he complained that a white woman in the library shouted racial epithets at him after he asked her about a class assignment, but an investigation concluded that the incident never occurred. Later, he attended a symposium by a faculty member discussing her experiences in South Africa under apartheid. Ferguson interrupted the professor by shouting, "We should be talking about the revolution in South Africa and how to get rid of the white people" and, "Kill everybody white!" Students and teachers tried to quiet him, but he started threatening them, repeatedly saying, "The black revolution will get you." He was suspended from the school in June 1991 as a result of the threats. Although he was free to reapply after the suspension, he chose not to.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: In 1991, Ferguson rented a room in Flatbush, Brooklyn. He was unemployed and lived around many other West Indian immigrants. Neighbors said that he dressed very neatly but kept to himself and rarely smiled or spoke to anybody, except occasionally to say hello. "He had delusions of grandeur," his landlord Patrick Denis recounted. "He felt like, 'I'm such a great person. There must be only one thing holding me back. It must be white people.'" In 1992, Ferguson's ex-wife filed a complaint with police alleging that he pried open the trunk of her car. Prior to the shooting, she had not seen him since the divorce.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: In February 1992, Ferguson was arrested and charged with harassing a woman on a subway. The woman tried to sit in a vacant seat alongside Ferguson and asked him to move over, prompting him to scream at her and press his leg and elbow against her until police officers pinned him to the ground. Ferguson tried to escape the police and shouted, "Brothers, come help me!" He sent letters to the New York City Police Commissioner and other officials complaining about his arrest, describing it as "viscous and racist," and claiming that he was brutalized by the officers who arrested him. The New York City Transit Authority investigated and dismissed the claims.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: In September 1992, Ferguson was awarded $26,250 for his workers' compensation claim against Ademco Security Group. In April 1993, he insisted that he was still in pain and demanded that the case be reopened so that he could get more money for medical treatment. In the following weeks, Ferguson visited a Manhattan law firm for a consultation, and attorney Lauren Abramson said that she immediately felt uncomfortable and threatened by him. She asked a law clerk to sit in on the meeting because she did not want to be alone with Ferguson, which she had never done before. Ferguson was neatly dressed during the consultation, but he acted strangely and identified himself by a false name before providing his real name. Months later, he made threatening calls to members of the firm, claiming that they were discriminating against him. In one of the calls, he made reference to a massacre which occurred in California. The calls prompted the lawyers to start locking their inner office doors out of fear. Ferguson tried to have his workers' compensation claim reopened by the New York State Workers' Compensation Board, which reexamined the case due to his persistence, but it was ultimately rejected. The board placed him on a list of potentially dangerous people whom security guards were to watch for.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: In April 1993, Ferguson moved to California in search of new career opportunities. He unsuccessfully applied for several jobs, including at a car wash where the manager laughed at him. Ferguson purchased a Ruger P89 9×19mm pistol at a Turner's Outdoorsman in Long Beach for $400 after waiting the fifteen-day period required under California's gun laws. He presented himself as a California resident by providing a driver's license that he received two months earlier, which had an address of the Long Beach motel where he stayed. He had been robbed by two men, so he started carrying the gun with him in a paper bag. Ferguson moved back to New York in May 1993 because, as he told a friend, he did not like competing with immigrants and Hispanics for jobs. His Flatbush landlord said that he appeared even more unstable upon his return, speaking in the third person about "some apocryphal-type doom scenario" which included black people rising up and striking down "their pompous rulers and oppressors." Ferguson started taking five showers a day and could be heard by neighbors repeatedly chanting at night "all the black people killing all the white people." His landlord became increasingly concerned about Ferguson's obsession with racism and apparent growing mental instability, and asked him to move out by the end of the month.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Anthony J. Falanga was appointed Ferguson's attorney on December 11, 1993. Falanga called for his client to receive a psychiatric evaluation. Under New York state law, an insanity defense would require Ferguson's lawyers to prove he suffers from a mental disease or defect and, as a result, could not tell whether his actions were right or wrong. At the time, lawyers and mental health experts said such a defense would be difficult because Ferguson appeared to have carefully planned the attacks, and because he said, "oh God, what did I do" after he was stopped. However, media outlets and legal experts at the time speculated a defense could argue Ferguson suffered from paranoia, particularly based on Ferguson's history of irrational racism allegations and claims that whites were discriminating against him. Ferguson was placed on suicide watch in the Nassau County Jail.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: On December 18, 1993 Ferguson asked a judge to let him replace Falanga with Colin A. Moore, a Brooklyn-based attorney with a reputation for pursuing allegations of racism in the criminal-justice system. Moore offered to represent Ferguson pro bono. Before a ruling was even made on the request, Moore held a press conference announcing he would seek a change of venue to Brooklyn, claiming it was impossible for Ferguson to receive a fair trial in a Nassau court due to a "severe underrepresentation of African-Americans on the Nassau County jury panel." Later, Moore withdrew his offer to represent Ferguson, citing conflicts he did not explain. Ferguson told a judge he questioned Falanga's integrity, disagreed with his handling of the case and had no intention of cooperating with him. Dr. Allen Reichman, a psychiatrist who interviewed Ferguson, indicated in his report that Ferguson may have been feigning mental illness when he spoke of conspiracies against him. Reichman said Ferguson's assertions were "vague and somewhat evasive," in contrast to the normally detailed and highly focused nature of systematized paranoid delusional thinking. On January 5, 1994, a report by a court-appointed psychologist and psychiatrist concluded Ferguson was suffering from paranoid personality disorder but was competent to stand trial.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: On January 19, 1994, after three days of evidence presentation, a grand jury handed up a 93-count indictment against Ferguson, which carried the possibility of up to 175 years in prison. Nassau County District Attorney Denis Dillon said of the sentence maximum; "it's not quite infinity, but it will do." Dillon also announced he would not agree to any plea bargain in the case. The indictment included two counts of murder for each slain victim, both for intentional murder and for depraved indifference to human life. It also included 19 counts of attempted murder, 34 counts of assault, criminal possession of a weapon, intent to use the weapon, violation of civil rights of each of the 25 victims and "intent to harass, annoy, threaten and alarm" the victims "because of their race, color or national origin."


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: On March 1, 1994, William Kunstler and Ron Kuby, law partners known for representing unpopular clients, announced they had accepted a request by Ferguson to handle his case. Kunstler, who said he would not collect a fee for the defense, said Ferguson had been made out to be a "pariah" by the media and public. In April 1994, District Attorney Dillon sought a gag order for all lawyers involved in the case, arguing Kunstler and Kuby had made statements to the media that might be inadmissible during the trial and could influence potential jurors. Kunstler and Kuby argued they would have no problem finding 12 unbiased jurors and claimed Ferguson had already been publicly attacked in the press by government and police officials. Nassau County Judge Donald E. Belfi rejected the gag order on April 23, claiming the impact of inflammatory statements already made by lawyers, politicians and police would fade in the months before the trial began. However, Belfi warned attorneys from both sides to follow a State Court professional disciplinary rule which already limited their comments to news organizations.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Shortly after his incarceration began, Ferguson complained about his treatment, claiming correction officers attacked him with milk crates and a fire extinguisher, while depriving him of necessities like soap and antiperspirant spray. Ferguson said: "Of course, there is no sympathy for me in the institution. When I suffered and screamed I was told that it was a good sign by the prison guards because they were hoping for my swift departure from life." Later, Ron Kuby argued Ferguson had been a frequent target of harassment at the Nassau County jail, and requested that the United States Department of Justice intervene to ensure Ferguson's safety.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: On March 23, 1994, while returning to his cell from the medical unit, Ferguson was attacked in jail by a group of inmates. Ferguson suffered a broken nose and a swollen left eye. Prison officials had been notified by Kuby that an assault was imminent, and were in the process of following up on the warning when Ferguson was attacked. Kuby, who said he had been warned of the attack by another inmate, stated "the word was out. Everyone in the institution knew he was going to be set up." Kuby called the attack racially motivated, and later alleged some jail officials and guards had advance knowledge of the impending assault. Five inmates were charged with second-degree assault for their connection in the attack.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: In November 1994, Ferguson's lawyers claimed prison guards taunted him with claims that the election of Governor George Pataki, a death penalty supporter, meant Ferguson would be executed if found guilty. Ferguson's lawyers claimed prison guards showed him the headlines of newspaper stories about Pataki and claimed Ferguson was "headed for electrocution sometime soon." Ferguson was deeply troubled by the claims, despite assurances from his attorneys that the death penalty could only be imposed in crimes committed after a capital punishment bill became law. Ferguson was not reassured until after a judge told him the same thing, at the request of Kunstler.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Kunstler and Kuby proposed an innovative defense: Ferguson had been driven to temporary insanity by a psychiatric condition they termed "black rage." Kunstler and Kuby argued Ferguson had been driven insane by racial prejudice and could not be held criminally liable for his actions, even though he had committed the killings. The attorneys compared it to the utilization of the battered woman defense, posttraumatic stress disorder, and the child abuse syndrome in other cases to negate criminal liability. Kuby said the notes carried by Ferguson on the day of his arrest demonstrated that Ferguson was motivated by rage during the shootings. Donald E. Belfi, the Nassau County Judge assigned to the Ferguson case, criticized Kunstler for speaking to the media about the proposed defense before it had been examined by a mental health professional. Belfi said "Mr. Kunstler may have many talents, but until he receives his medical degree with a specialty in psychiatry, these types of conclusions should best be left for medical experts and the triers of the facts."


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Black rage was first proposed by psychologists William Henry Grier and Price Cobbs in their 1968 book, "Black Rage" (). Grier and Cobbs argue that black people living in a racist, white supremacist society are psychologically damaged by the effects of racist oppression. They argue that this damage causes black people to act abnormally in certain situations.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Ferguson started to claim he was not involved in the Long Island Rail Road shootings at all, and repeatedly refused to meet with a psychiatrist chosen by Kunstler and Kuby. Ferguson told the attorneys he was receiving messages straight from God, and spoke of conspiracies to destroy him by those opposed to God. On August 12, 1994, Kunstler and Kuby asked Judge Belfi to reconsider Ferguson's competence to stand trial, claiming he was growing more delusional, paranoid and obsessive by the day, and that he was too mentally unbalanced for them to mount any kind of defense. George Peck, the prosecutor in Ferguson's trial, insisted Ferguson's apparent lack of cooperation with his lawyers was a defense tactic to avoid a trial.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: On August 20, 1994, Ferguson appeared before Belfi and rejected his lawyer's efforts to have him declared mentally unfit to stand trial. Ferguson spoke in a long and rambling manner, occasionally ignoring Belfi when the judge tried to interrupt him. Ferguson claimed a police officer who escorted him from the Nassau County Jail said to him, "You realize someone else, in fact, was actually responsible for the shooting." When asked if Ferguson understood the role of the prosecuting attorney, Ferguson replied; "to perpetrate injustices against me." Kunstler and Kuby argued Ferguson's behavior was indicative of his mental imbalance, but Belfi refused the lawyers' request to reconsider his competence, citing the original psychiatric report that concluded Ferguson was able to understand the charges against him and was "malingering in an attempt to create an impression" that he was mentally imbalanced and unable to cooperate with his attorney. When Belfi ended the proceeding, Ferguson tried to continue talking. After he was placed into handcuffs by guards, Ferguson shouted "they have made it too tight," collapsed to the floor, and had to be dragged from the courtroom. Denis Dillon suggested Kunstler was trying to create "such a bizarre situation" that the court would reverse its earlier ruling regarding Ferguson's competence.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: On September 20, 1994, Kunstler and Kuby filed notice that they would pursue an insanity defense despite the objections of their client. Ferguson continued to claim he was not involved in the shootings and proposed defending himself during the trial. In the following months, Ferguson sent Judge Belfi several letters regarding disputes between Ferguson, Kunstler and Kuby. Ferguson claimed in the letters that he was not insane, and rejected Kunstler's and Kuby's "black rage" defense. Although George Peck argued the letters proved Ferguson was able to understand the charges against him and was actively participating in his defense, Kuby argued the letters only further demonstrated Ferguson's confused state of mind. On November 11, Ferguson agreed he would stop resisting efforts to meet with a court-appointed psychiatrist. As a result, Judge Belfi agreed to hold a third hearing as to whether Ferguson was mentally competent to stand trial.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: On December 10, 1994, Judge Belfi ruled Ferguson was competent to stand trial. Belfi said he based his decision in part on his conversations with Ferguson in the courtroom, including Ferguson's concern over Governor Pataki's promise to sign a death-penalty bill. Belfi strongly advised Ferguson against defending himself, but Ferguson said he intended to do so anyway. Kuby said of the decision, "What we will have now is a complete circus. A crazy man cannot defend himself. Mr. Ferguson, evidence to the contrary, believes he is not guilty and that someone else killed all those people aboard the train." Kuby continued, "Without a psychiatric defense, Ferguson has no defense. There was no doubt that he was there, that he fired the weapon, that he would have fired it more had he not been wrestled to the ground. There is no doubt that Colin Ferguson, if sane, was guilty."


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Ferguson's trial proved to be bizarre, as he cross-examined the police officers that arrested him and victims he shot. It was broadcast live by local media and Court TV, but was overshadowed by the O. J. Simpson murder case, going on simultaneously on the West Coast.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Ferguson argued that the 93 counts he was charged with were related to the year 1993, and had it been 1925 he would have been charged with only 25 counts. He admitted bringing the gun onto the train, but claimed he fell asleep and another man grabbed his gun and began firing. He also argued of a mysterious man named Mr. Su, who had information concerning a conspiracy against him. He found another man who was willing to testify that the government had implanted a computer chip in Ferguson's brain, but at the last minute decided not to call him to the stand. This individual, Raul Diaz, was a parapsychologist from Manhattan who claimed during a press conference on the courthouse steps to have witnessed an Asian man press a chip into Ferguson's head prior to the attack. According to Diaz, the Asian man told him to behold what he was about to do prior to pushing the button. "He was lasered out by a remote-control device," Diaz told reporters outside the courtroom. "He was zapped, just like that, right out of the twilight zone" and was "commanded to go up and down the aisle shooting people."


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: His cross-examination questions mostly started with "is it your testimony..." and would simply force the witness to repeat testimony already given. When a witness refused to answer the question to his satisfaction, he would often ask the judge to "admonish the witness to answer the question." During the course of his cross-examinations, Ferguson would refer to himself in the third person, particularly asking the victims of the shooting, "did you see Colin Ferguson..." to which the witness would reply, "I saw "you" shoot me." Legal experts pointed out that Ferguson's questions were pointless and were not geared towards rebutting testimony. By not recognizing when to object to testimony and closing arguments, he lost his right to appeal on those grounds. Among the defense witnesses Ferguson requested was President Bill Clinton.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Ferguson originally sought to question himself on the witness stand, but ultimately did not do so. He told the judge and media that he intended to call a number of witnesses who would prove his innocence, including a ballistic expert, a handwriting expert and two regular eyewitnesses, but they were afraid to come forward and take the stand. Ultimately, he did not call any of the witnesses. He also told Judge Belfi of an alleged conspiracy by the Jewish Defense League to kill him in prison if he was convicted. He said the prison slaying of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was "set up as a prelude against me."


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Ferguson was convicted on February 17, 1995, of murder of the six passengers who died of their injuries. He was also convicted of attempted murder for wounding nineteen passengers. He received 315 years and eight months to life, meaning his current earliest possible parole date is August 6, 2309. The judge said, "Colin Ferguson will never return to society, and will spend the rest of his natural life in prison." At the sentencing, Judge Donald E. Belfi called Ferguson a "selfish, self-righteous coward." He also used the sentencing as an opportunity to criticize New York's controversial Sentencing Cap Law, which would have capped each of Ferguson's sentences at 50 years and required that they all be served concurrently had no one died in the massacre, since all of the felonies he committed on the train were part of one occurrence. After his conviction, Ferguson was put in the position to argue in appellate briefs that he had incompetent counsel (himself).


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: After his sentencing, Ferguson was incarcerated for a time at the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: In 1994, Ferguson was apparently involved in a fistfight with fellow inmate Joel Rifkin. The brawl began when Ferguson asked Rifkin to be quiet while Ferguson was using the telephone. The "New York Daily News" reported the fight escalated after Ferguson told Rifkin, "I wiped out six devils, and you only killed women," to which Rifkin responded, "Yeah, but I had more victims." Ferguson then punched Rifkin in the mouth.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Carolyn McCarthy — whose husband Dennis McCarthy was killed by Ferguson, and whose son Kevin McCarthy was severely injured — was subsequently elected to the United States Congress on a platform of gun control. She was motivated to run for Congress after the representative in her district, Dan Frisa, voted against an assault weapons bill. Some of Ferguson's other victims and their family members have also become involved in gun control efforts.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: McCarthy also sued Olin Corporation, the parent of Winchester Ammunition, under products liability and negligence theories for their manufacture of the Black Talon bullets used by Ferguson. The cartridges carry hollow-tipped bullets that expand upon impact, increasing the severity of wounds. One month before the LIRR shooting, Winchester Ammunition announced they were voluntarily withdrawing the Black Talon cartridges from the market. McCarthy's suit failed, partly because New York State law placed no responsibility on manufacturers for the criminal misuse of their products.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: At least a half-dozen lawsuits related to the shootings were filed against the Long Island Rail Road and its parent company, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Carolyn McCarthy filed a $36 million damage lawsuit against the two entities, claiming they failed to provide adequate protection for passengers and should have installed metal detectors and used undercover police officers. The suit sought $1 million for Dennis McCarthy's pain and suffering, $10 million for his death and for damages to survivors, and $25 million for injuries to Kevin McCarthy.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: The LIRR units in which the shootings happened, #9891 and #9892, a pair of standard M3 electric cars, were held out of service for potential use as evidence, then were renumbered to #9945 and #9946. Both units still see regular service with these new numbers. The units were expected to be retired sometime between 2016 and 2019 after the LIRR completed an order of brand-new M9 railcars to replace the remaining M3s.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Many African-Americans expressed concern that the LIRR shooting would lead to a backlash of violence and racial animosities against the black community. Civil rights activists Al Sharpton and Herbert Daughtry urged that African-Americans in general not be blamed for the crime; Sharpton, in particular, criticized what he called attempts "to demonize black and Hispanic dissatisfaction" by linking those groups to the murders. Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson delivered a sermon at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, during a service attended by the victims' grieving families. Audrey Warren released a statement shortly after the shootings expressing sorrow for the victims and their families. Jackson stressed the shootings were the result of one man and should not be seen as indicative of all African-Americans. The day after the shootings, Nassau County Executive Thomas Gulotta called Ferguson "an animal." Jackson and other African-American leaders criticized the comment as racially charged, but Gulotta later said his statement had nothing to do with race.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: During a press conference in the days after the shooting, the Long Island Rail Road Police Benevolent Association called the trains "unsafe" and said the railroad needed to triple the size of its 216-person police force. LIRR officials responded by noting that the rate of crime against passengers had dropped over the past few years before the shooting. The Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Commuter Railroad placed more officers on trains and increased the visibility of police in response to the shootings. LIRR officials also made counselors available for passengers who wanted one, and sent senior railroad officials out to trains to answer riders' questions. A "New York Times" editorial called for stronger gun control laws in response to the murders, specifically citing the ease with which Ferguson obtained a handgun in California, which had one of the country's stricter gun laws. Several Adelphi University students expressed concern that Ferguson may have been taking the train to the school with plans of shooting people out of revenge for his past experiences there, although the train Ferguson took was not the closest one to Adelphi. Most of the regular commuters who used the 5:33 Hicksville local returned to the train the day after the shootings. In interviews with the media, a number of passengers cited the need to face their fears and the psychological trauma created by the incident, rather than avoid riding their regular train.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: President Bill Clinton took notice of the LIRR shooting, calling it a "terrible human tragedy". The day after the shooting, Clinton announced he had asked Attorney General Janet Reno to review a proposal by New York City Mayor-elect Rudy Giuliani that would set up a national uniform licensing system for gun buyers. Clinton cited the Ferguson murders as a factor in his support of the program, which would include background checks, tests and required renewals every two years. About one week after the shooting, Clinton visited with O'Connor, Blum and McEntee. During his first major speech since his election as mayor, Giuliani cited the Ferguson murders while he repeated his previous calls for the death penalty and a uniform gun licensing law. During his monthly radio call-in show, Governor Mario Cuomo called the Ferguson shootings "a dramatic, spectacular slaughter", and called for stronger gun control measures. U.S. Senator Al D'Amato said the Ferguson case demonstrated the need for capital punishment in New York State because "that is the only fitting punishment for this cold-blooded killer".


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: Ferguson was the subject of a "Saturday Night Live" comedy sketch in which he, portrayed by Tim Meadows, declared "I did not shoot them, they shot me" and asked witnesses questions about shooting him while they were on the stand, then ducking when they pointed to him as the killer.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: During the 1993 summer excursion season, the LIRR presented a dinner theater mystery, "Murder on the Montauk Express", on its premier Friday evening train to the resorts of the Hamptons and Montauk. The play was not renewed after the Ferguson murders.


title: 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting

text: A 2002 book by trial consultant Mark C. Bardwell and criminal justice professor Bruce A. Arrigo examined the competency issues in the Ferguson case.


title: Longest tennis match records

text: The 1970–1973 introduction of the tiebreak reduced the opportunity for such records to be broken. However, among the four majors, the US Open, Australian Open and Wimbledon (since 2019) use the tiebreak in the final set, while the French Open, through 2021, was the only major to use the advantage set rules in the final set, which allows for an indefinite number of games until one player is ahead by two. A 2022 rule change now requires every Grand Slam tournament, even the Olympics, to use the tiebreak in the final set.


title: Longest tennis match records

text: The Isner–Mahut match at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships holds the record for the longest tennis match both in time and games played. It lasted for 11 hours and 5 minutes.


title: Longest tennis match records

text: The longest women's match (by time) took place at a tournament in Richmond, Virginia, in 1984, when Vicki Nelson took 6 hours, 31 minutes to defeat Jean Hepner 6–4, 7–6. The match featured a 29-minute, 643-shot rally, the longest in professional tennis history, though no video exists of this point.


title: Longest tennis match records

text: Unlike men's singles matches, where Grand Slam events are still played over the best of five sets, all women's matches are now played as the best of three sets. This means that there is a far greater likelihood of a match in any tournament being long enough to be included in this table. All matches since January 1, 2019 have been checked, but there are likely to be many more from earlier years which have not yet been recognised, especially as qualifying matches in ITF tournaments before that date would normally have been played over the best of three tie-break sets.


title: Longest tennis match records

text: Where different sources give durations for a particular match, the shortest elapsed time will be the one noted below.


title: Longest tennis match records

text: Note 1: The fourth-longest match listed above was recorded in the ITF live scoring data as taking 5 hours and 4 minutes. SofaScore recorded 4 hours and 54 minutes and TNNS recorded 4 hours and 55 minutes. The shortest of these has been included in this table.


title: Longest tennis match records

text: Note 2: The sixth-longest match listed above was recorded in the ITF live scoring data as taking 4 hours and 50 minutes. SofaScore recorded 4 hours and 46 minutes and TNNS recorded 4 hours and 47 minutes. The shortest of these has been included in this table.


title: Longest tennis match records

text: Note 3: The eighth-longest match listed above was recorded in the ITF live scoring data as taking 4 hours and 53 minutes. The shorter time, recorded by both SofaScore and TNNS, has been included in this table.


title: Longest tennis match records

text: The longest match consisting of two standard sets and a match tie-break was played in the second qualifying round of a $25,000 ITF tournament in Koksijde, Belgium, on August 9, 2021. Merel Hoedt defeated Berta Bonardi 7–5, 6–7, [10–4], in three hours and 37 minutes.


title: Longest tennis match records

text: Men's final between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic lasted 4 hours 57 minutes and is the third longest singles final by time played.


title: Arash (singer)

text: He represented Azerbaijan along with Aysel in the Eurovision Song Contest 2009, finishing third with the song "Always". He is also one of the judges of "Persia's Got Talent", a Persian franchise of the British talent show "Got Talent".


title: Arash (singer)

text: Arash Labbaf was born in Tehran, Iran. He and his parents lived near Mellat Park. At age ten, he and his family moved to Sweden, where he still resides. In an interview with BBC Persian Television, he has mentioned that his mother and father are from the Iranian cities of Shiraz and Isfahan, respectively.


title: Arash (singer)

text: Arash Labbaf has stated in his interviews that he is interested in association football, accordingly, he released songs about association football. Also, in an interview with Deutsche Welle, Arash stated that he had been interested in singing since childhood and he even formed an informal band with his friends.


title: Arash (singer)

text: Arash labbaf has said that the reason he chooses to sing in his native language is because of his "deep attachment to Iran and Persian culture."


title: Arash (singer)

text: His debut album, "Arash", was released by Warner Music Sweden in June 2005, after he had finished college. His singles, "Boro Boro" ("Go Away") and "Temptation" (featuring Rebecca) made it to the hit lists around Europe, and their respective videos garnered significant airplay on more than 20 MTV outlets across the world. In addition to successes in his home countries' music charts, namely Sweden and Iran, the platinum-selling singer and producer Arash has had hits notably in Eastern European and South-East European charts like Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Turkey and in Asian music charts like in Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and throughout the Arab Middle Eastern countries. His singles have been charted many times on Swiss and Finnish charts and he is especially famous in Poland.


title: Arash (singer)

text: Arash's records were certified gold in 5 countries: his album "Arash" in Germany, Russia, Slovenia, and Greece and the single "Boro Boro" in Sweden. This song was also featured in the Hindi Bollywood film "Bluffmaster!" and he was the featured Artist of the Month on MTV India.


title: Arash (singer)

text: Helena did not take part in the music video of Pure Love, although her voice was used in it. The video starred Arash, together with the Venezuelan beauty queen, Marianne Puglia.


title: Arash (singer)

text: Arash has produced along with , Robert Uhlmann, and Johan Bejerholm the Swedish entry to the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2010 "Allt jag vill ha" that was performed by Josefine Ridell.


title: Arash (singer)

text: In early 2009, it was revealed that the Azerbaijani entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 would be the song "Always" which was written and composed by Arash. The song was performed by Aysel Teymurzadeh and Arash in a duet in Semifinal 2 of the Eurovision competition. The song qualified for the Eurovision Song Contest final which took place on 16 May 2009, and was placed third. In one of his interviews, Arash explained his decision to represent Azerbaijan in this contest: "Why did I take part in the contest? I'm originally [ethnically] Azerbaijani, and I would like to have a part in this country's confident ascent in the history of Eurovision."


title: Invention of the telephone

text: The invention of the telephone was the culmination of work done by more than one individual, and led to an array of lawsuits relating to the patent claims of several individuals and numerous companies.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: The concept of the telephone dates back to the string telephone or lover's telephone that has been known for centuries, comprising two diaphragms connected by a taut string or wire. Sound waves are carried as mechanical vibrations along the string or wire from one diaphragm to the other. The classic example is the tin can telephone, a children's toy made by connecting the two ends of a string to the bottoms of two metal cans, paper cups or similar items. The essential idea of this toy was that a diaphragm can collect voice sounds from the voice sounds for reproduction at a distance. One precursor to the development of the electromagnetic telephone originated in 1833 when Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Eduard Weber invented an electromagnetic device for the transmission of telegraphic signals at the University of Göttingen, in Lower Saxony, helping to create the fundamental basis for the technology that was later used in similar telecommunication devices. Gauss's and Weber's invention is purported to be the world's first electromagnetic telegraph.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: In 1840, American Charles Grafton Page passed an electric current through a coil of wire placed between the poles of a horseshoe magnet. He observed that connecting and disconnecting the current caused a ringing sound in the magnet. He called this effect "galvanic music".


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Innocenzo Manzetti considered the idea of a telephone as early as 1844, and may have made one in 1864, as an enhancement to an automaton built by him in 1849.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Charles Bourseul was a French telegraph engineer who proposed (but did not build) the first design of a "make-and-break" telephone in 1854. That is about the same time that Meucci later claimed to have created his first attempt at the telephone in Italy.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Bourseul explained: "Suppose that a man speaks near a movable disc sufficiently flexible to lose none of the vibrations of the voice; that this disc alternately makes and breaks the currents from a battery: you may have at a distance another disc which will simultaneously execute the same vibrations... It is certain that, in a more or less distant future, a speech will be transmitted by electricity. I have made experiments in this direction; they are delicate and demand time and patience, but the approximations obtained promise a favorable result".


title: Invention of the telephone

text: An early communicating device was invented around 1854 by Antonio Meucci, who called it a "telettrofono" . In 1871 Meucci filed a patent caveat at the US Patent Office. His caveat describes his invention, but does not mention a diaphragm, electromagnet, conversion of sound into electrical waves, conversion of electrical waves into sound, or other essential features of an electromagnetic telephone.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: The first American demonstration of Meucci's invention took place in Staten Island, New York in 1854. In 1861, a description of it was reportedly published in an Italian-language New York newspaper, although no known copy of that newspaper issue or article has survived to the present day. Meucci claimed to have invented a paired electromagnetic transmitter and receiver, where the motion of a diaphragm modulated a signal in a coil by moving an electromagnet, although this was not mentioned in his 1871 U.S. patent caveat. A further discrepancy observed was that the device described in the 1871 caveat employed only a single conduction wire, with the telephone's transmitter-receivers being insulated from a 'ground return' path.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Meucci studied the principles of electromagnetic voice transmission for many years and was able to realise his dream of transmitting his voice through wires in 1856. He installed a telephone-like device within his house in order to communicate with his wife who was ill at the time. Some of Meucci's notes purportedly written in 1857 describe the basic principle of electromagnetic voice or in other words, the telephone.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: In the 1880s Meucci was credited with the early invention of inductive loading of telephone wires to increase long-distance signals. Unfortunately, serious burns from an accident, a lack of English, and poor business abilities resulted in Meucci's failing to develop his inventions commercially in America. Meucci demonstrated some sort of instrument in 1849 in Havana, Cuba, however, this may have been a variant of a string telephone that used wire. Meucci has been further credited with the invention of an anti-sidetone circuit. However, examination showed that his solution to sidetone was to maintain two separate telephone circuits and thus use twice as many transmission wires. The anti-sidetone circuit later introduced by Bell Telephone instead canceled sidetone through a feedback process.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: An American District Telegraph (ADT) laboratory reportedly lost some of Meucci's working models, his wife reportedly disposed of others and Meucci, who sometimes lived on public assistance, chose not to renew his 1871 "teletrofono" patent caveat after 1874.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: A resolution was passed by the United States House of Representatives in 2002 that said Meucci did pioneering work on the development of the telephone. The resolution said that "if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell".


title: Invention of the telephone

text: The Meucci resolution by the US Congress was promptly followed by a Canada legislative motion by Canada's 37th Parliament, declaring Alexander Graham Bell as the inventor of the telephone. Others in Canada disagreed with the Congressional resolution, some of whom provided criticisms of both its accuracy and intent.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: A retired director general of the Telecom Italia central telecommunications research institute (CSELT), Basilio Catania, and the Italian Society of Electrotechnics, ""Federazione Italiana di Elettrotecnica"", have devoted a Museum to Antonio Meucci, constructing a chronology of his invention of the telephone and tracing the history of the two legal trials involving Meucci and Alexander Graham Bell.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: They claim that Meucci was the actual inventor of the telephone, and base their argument on reconstructed evidence. What follows, if not otherwise stated, is a summary of their historic reconstruction.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: The above information was published in the "Scientific American" Supplement No. 520 of December 19, 1885, based on reconstructions produced in 1885, for which there was no contemporary pre-1875 evidence. Meucci's 1871 caveat did not mention any of the telephone features later credited to him by his lawyer, and which were published in that Scientific American Supplement, a major reason for the loss of the 'Bell v. Globe and Meucci' patent infringement court case, which was decided against Globe and Meucci.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: The Reis telephone was developed from 1857 onwards. Allegedly, the transmitter was difficult to operate, since the relative position of the needle and the contact were critical to the device's operation. Thus, it can be called a "telephone", since it did transmit voice sounds electrically over distance, but was hardly a commercially practical telephone in the modern sense.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Thomas Edison tested the Reis equipment and found that "single words, uttered as in reading, speaking and the like, were perceptible indistinctly, notwithstanding here also the inflections of the voice, the modulations of interrogation, wonder, command, etc., attained distinct expression."


title: Invention of the telephone

text: In 1874, the Reis device was tested by the British company Standard Telephones and Cables (STC). The results also confirmed it could transmit and receive speech with good quality (fidelity), but relatively low intensity.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Elisha Gray, of Highland Park, Illinois, also devised a tone telegraph of this kind about the same time as La Cour. In Gray's tone telegraph, several vibrating steel reeds tuned to different frequencies interrupted the current, which at the other end of the line passed through electromagnets and vibrated matching tuned steel reeds near the electromagnet poles. Gray's "harmonic telegraph", with vibrating reeds, was used by the Western Union Telegraph Company. Since more than one set of vibration frequencies – that is to say, more than one musical tone – can be sent over the same wire simultaneously, the harmonic telegraph can be utilized as a 'multiplex' or many-ply telegraph, conveying several messages through the same wire at the same time. Each message can either be read by an operator by the sound, or from different tones read by different operators, or a permanent record can be made by the marks drawn on a ribbon of traveling paper by a Morse recorder. On July 27, 1875, Gray was granted U.S. patent 166,096 for "Electric Telegraph for Transmitting Musical Tones" (the harmonic).


title: Invention of the telephone

text: On February 14, 1876, at the US Patent Office, Gray's lawyer filed a patent caveat for a telephone on the very same day that Bell's lawyer filed Bell's patent application for a telephone. The water transmitter described in Gray's caveat was strikingly similar to the experimental telephone transmitter tested by Bell on March 10, 1876, a fact which raised questions about whether Bell (who knew of Gray) was inspired by Gray's design or vice versa. Although Bell did not use Gray's water transmitter in later telephones, evidence suggests that Bell's lawyers may have obtained an unfair advantage over Gray.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Alexander Graham Bell had pioneered a system called visible speech, developed by his father, to teach deaf children. In 1872 Bell founded a school in Boston, Massachusetts, to train teachers of the deaf. The school subsequently became part of Boston University, where Bell was appointed professor of vocal physiology in 1873.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: As Professor of Vocal Physiology at Boston University, Bell was engaged in training teachers in the art of instructing the deaf how to speak and experimented with the Leon Scott phonautograph in recording the vibrations of speech. This apparatus consists essentially of a thin membrane vibrated by the voice and carrying a light-weight stylus, which traces an undulatory line on a plate of smoked glass. The line is a graphic representation of the vibrations of the membrane and the waves of sound in the air.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: This background prepared Bell for work with spoken sound waves and electricity. He began his experiments in 1873–1874 with a harmonic telegraph, following the examples of Bourseul, Reis, and Gray. Bell's designs employed various on-off-on-off make-break current-interrupters driven by vibrating steel reeds which sent interrupted current to a distant receiver electro-magnet that caused a second steel reed or tuning fork to vibrate.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: During a June 2, 1875, experiment by Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson, a receiver reed failed to respond to the intermittent current supplied by an electric battery. Bell told Watson, who was at the other end of the line, to pluck the reed, thinking it had stuck to the pole of the magnet. Watson complied, and to his astonishment Bell heard a reed at his end of the line vibrate and emit the same timbre of a plucked reed, although there were no interrupted on-off-on-off currents from a transmitter to make it vibrate. A few more experiments soon showed that his receiver reed had been set in vibration by the magneto-electric currents induced in the line by the motion of the distant receiver reed in the neighborhood of its magnet. The battery current was not causing the vibration but was needed only to supply the magnetic field in which the reeds vibrated. Moreover, when Bell heard the rich overtones of the plucked reed, it occurred to him that since the circuit was never broken, all the complex vibrations of speech might be converted into undulating (modulated) currents, which in turn would reproduce the complex timbre, amplitude, and frequencies of speech at a distance.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: After Bell and Watson discovered on June 2, 1875, that movements of the reed alone in a magnetic field could reproduce the frequencies and timbre of spoken sound waves, Bell reasoned by analogy with the mechanical phonautograph that a skin diaphragm would reproduce sounds like the human ear when connected to a steel or iron reed or hinged armature. On July 1, 1875, he instructed Watson to build a receiver consisting of a stretched diaphragm or drum of goldbeater's skin with an armature of magnetized iron attached to its middle, and free to vibrate in front of the pole of an electromagnet in circuit with the line. A second membrane-device was built for use as a transmitter. This was the "gallows" phone. A few days later they were tried together, one at each end of the line, which ran from a room in the inventor's house, located at 5 Exeter Place in Boston, to the cellar underneath. Bell, in the work room, held one instrument in his hands, while Watson in the cellar listened at the other. Bell spoke into his instrument, "Do you understand what I say?" and Watson answered "Yes". However, the voice sounds were not distinct and the armature tended to stick to the electromagnet pole and tear the membrane.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: In a March 10, 1876, test, between two rooms in a single building in Boston showed that the telephone worked, but so far, only at a short range.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: In 1876, Bell became the first to obtain a patent for an "apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically", after experimenting with many primitive sound transmitters and receivers. Because of illness and other commitments, Bell made little or no telephone improvements or experiments for eight months until after his U.S. patent 174,465 was published., but within a year the first telephone exchange was built in Connecticut and the Bell Telephone Company was created in 1877, with Bell the owner of a third of the shares, quickly making him a wealthy man. Organ builder Ernest Skinner reported in his autobiography that Bell offered Boston-area organ builder Hutchings a 50% interest in the company but Hutchings declined.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: In 1880, Bell was awarded the French Volta Prize for his invention and with the money, founded the Volta Laboratory in Washington, where he continued experiments in communication, in medical research, and in techniques for teaching speech to the deaf, working with Helen Keller among others. In 1885 he acquired land in Nova Scotia and established a summer home there where he continued experiments, particularly in the field of aviation.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: The first successful bi-directional transmission of clear speech by Bell and Watson was made on March 10, 1876, when Bell spoke into the device, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you." and Watson complied with the request. Bell tested Gray's liquid transmitter design in this experiment, but only after Bell's patent was granted and only as a proof of concept scientific experiment to prove to his own satisfaction that intelligible "articulate speech" (Bell's words) could be electrically transmitted. Because a liquid transmitter was not practical for commercial products, Bell focused on improving the electromagnetic telephone after March 1876 and never used Gray's liquid transmitter in public demonstrations or commercial use.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Bell's telephone transmitter (microphone) consisted of a double electromagnet, in front of which a membrane, stretched on a ring, carried an oblong piece of soft iron cemented to its middle. A funnel-shaped mouthpiece directed the voice sounds upon the membrane, and as it vibrated, the soft iron "armature" induced corresponding currents in the coils of the electromagnet. These currents, after traversing the wire, passed through the receiver which consisted of an electromagnet in a tubular metal can having one end partially closed by a thin circular disc of soft iron. When the undulatory current passed through the coil of this electromagnet, the disc vibrated, thereby creating sound waves in the air.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: This primitive telephone was rapidly improved. The double electromagnet was replaced by a single permanently magnetized bar magnet having a small coil or bobbin of fine wire surrounding one pole, in front of which a thin disc of iron was fixed in a circular mouthpiece. The disc served as a combined diaphragm and armature. On speaking into the mouthpiece, the iron diaphragm vibrated with the voice in the magnetic field of the bar-magnet pole, and thereby caused undulatory currents in the coil. These currents, after traveling through the wire to the distant receiver, were received in an identical apparatus. This design was patented by Bell on January 30, 1877. The sounds were weak and could only be heard when the ear was close to the earphone/mouthpiece, but they were distinct.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: In the third of his tests in Southern Ontario, on August 10, 1876, Bell made a call via the telegraph line from the family homestead in Brantford, Ontario, to his assistant located in Paris, Ontario, some 13 kilometers away. This test was claimed by many sources as the world's first long-distance call. The final test certainly proved that the telephone could work over long distances.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Bell exhibited a working telephone at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in June 1876, where it attracted the attention of Brazilian emperor Pedro II plus the physicist and engineer Sir William Thomson (who would later be ennobled as the 1st Baron Kelvin). In August 1876 at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Thomson revealed the telephone to the European public. In describing his visit to the Philadelphia Exhibition, Thomson said, "I heard [through the telephone] passages taken at random from the New York newspapers: 'S.S. Cox Has Arrived' (I failed to make out the S.S. Cox); 'The City of New York', 'Senator Morton', 'The Senate Has Resolved To Print A Thousand Extra Copies', 'The Americans In London Have Resolved To Celebrate The Coming Fourth Of July!' All this my own ears heard spoken to me with unmistakable distinctness by the then circular disc armature of just such another little electro-magnet as this I hold in my hand."


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Only a few months after receiving U.S. Patent No. 174465 at the beginning of March 1876, Bell conducted three important tests of his new invention and the telephone technology after returning to his parents' home at Melville House (now the Bell Homestead National Historic Site) for the summer.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: On March 10, 1876 Bell had used "the instrument" in Boston to call Thomas Watson who was in another room but out of earshot. He said, "Mr. Watson, come here – I want to see you" and Watson soon appeared at his side.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: In the first test call at a longer distance in Southern Ontario, on August 3, 1876, Alexander Graham's uncle, Professor David Charles Bell, spoke to him from the Brantford telegraph office, reciting lines from Shakespeare's "Hamlet" (""To be or not to be...""). The young inventor, positioned at the A. Wallis Ellis store in the neighboring community of Mount Pleasant, received and may possibly have transferred his uncle's voice onto a phonautogram, a drawing made on a pen-like recording device that could produce the shapes of sound waves as waveforms onto smoked glass or other media by tracing their vibrations.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: The next day on August 4 another call was made between Brantford's telegraph office and Melville House, where a large dinner party exchanged "...speech, recitations, songs and instrumental music". To bring telephone signals to Melville House, Alexander Graham audaciously "bought up" and "cleaned up" the complete supply of stovepipe wire in Brantford. With the help of two of his parents' neighbours, he tacked the stovepipe wire some 400 metres (a quarter mile) along the top of fence posts from his parents' home to a junction point on the telegraph line to the neighbouring community of Mount Pleasant, which joined it to the Dominion Telegraph office in Brantford, Ontario.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: The third and most important test was the world's first true long-distance telephone call, placed between Brantford and Paris, Ontario on August 10, 1876. For that long-distance call Alexander Graham Bell set up a telephone using telegraph lines at Robert White's Boot and Shoe Store at 90 Grand River Street North in Paris via its Dominion Telegraph Co. office on Colborne Street. The normal telegraph line between Paris and Brantford was not quite 13 km (8 miles) long, but the connection was extended a further 93 km (58 miles) to Toronto to allow the use of a battery in its telegraph office. Granted, this was a one-way long-distance call. The first two-way (reciprocal) conversation over a line occurred between Cambridge and Boston (roughly 2.5 miles) on October 9, 1876. During that conversation, Bell was on Kilby Street in Boston and Watson was at the offices of the Walworth Manufacturing Company.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: "Scientific American" described the three test calls in their September 9, 1876, article, "The Human Voice Transmitted by Telegraph". Historian Thomas Costain referred to the calls as "the three great tests of the telephone". One Bell Homestead reviewer wrote of them, "No one involved in these early calls could possibly have understood the future impact of these communication firsts".


title: Invention of the telephone

text: A later telephone design was publicly exhibited on May 4, 1877, at a lecture given by Professor Bell in the Boston Music Hall. According to a report quoted by John Munro in "Heroes of the Telegraph":


title: Invention of the telephone

text: "Going to the small telephone box with its slender wire attachments, Mr. Bell coolly asked, as though addressing someone in an adjoining room, "Mr. Watson, are you ready!" Mr. Watson, five miles away in Somerville, promptly answered in the affirmative, and soon was heard a voice singing "America". [...] Going to another instrument, connected by wire with Providence, forty-three miles distant, Mr. Bell listened a moment, and said, "Signor Brignolli, who is assisting at a concert in Providence Music Hall, will now sing for us." In a moment the cadence of the tenor's voice rose and fell, the sound being faint, sometimes lost, and then again audible. Later, a cornet solo played in Somerville was very distinctly heard. Still later, a three-part song came over the wire from Somerville, and Mr. Bell told his audience "I will switch off the song from one part of the room to another so that all can hear." At a subsequent lecture in Salem, Massachusetts, communication was established with Boston, eighteen miles distant, and Mr. Watson at the latter place sang "Auld Lang Syne", the National Anthem, and "Hail Columbia", while the audience at Salem joined in the chorus."


title: Invention of the telephone

text: On January 14, 1878, at Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight, Bell demonstrated the device to Queen Victoria, placing calls to Cowes, Southampton and London. These were the first publicly witnessed long-distance telephone calls in the UK. The queen considered the process to be "quite extraordinary" although the sound was "quite faint". She later asked to buy the equipment that was used, but Bell offered to make a model specifically for her.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Bell did for the telephone what Henry Ford did for the automobile. Although not the first to experiment with telephonic devices, Bell and the companies founded in his name were the first to develop commercially practical telephones around which a successful business could be built and grow. Bell adopted carbon transmitters similar to Edison's transmitters and adapted telephone exchanges and switching plug boards developed for telegraphy. Watson and other Bell engineers invented numerous other improvements to telephony. Bell succeeded where others failed to assemble a commercially viable telephone system. It can be argued that Bell invented the telephone industry. Bell's first intelligible voice transmission over an electric wire was named an IEEE Milestone.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Elisha Gray recognized the lack of fidelity of the make-break transmitter of Reis and Bourseul and reasoned by analogy with the lover's telegraph, that if the current could be made to more closely model the movements of the diaphragm, rather than simply opening and closing the circuit, greater fidelity might be achieved. Gray filed a patent caveat with the US patent office on February 14, 1876, for a liquid microphone. The device used a metal needle or rod that was placed – just barely – into a liquid conductor, such as a water/acid mixture. In response to the diaphragm's vibrations, the needle dipped more or less into the liquid, varying the electrical resistance and thus the current passing through the device and on to the receiver. Gray did not convert his caveat into a patent application until after the caveat had expired and hence left the field open to Bell.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: When Gray applied for a patent for the variable resistance telephone transmitter, the Patent Office determined "while Gray was undoubtedly the first to conceive of and disclose the (variable resistance) invention, as in his caveat of 14 February 1876, his failure to take any action amounting to completion until others had demonstrated the utility of the invention deprives him of the right to have it considered."


title: Invention of the telephone

text: The carbon microphone was independently developed around 1878 by David Edward Hughes in England and Emile Berliner and Thomas Edison in the US. Although Edison was awarded the first patent in mid-1877, Hughes had demonstrated his working device in front of many witnesses some years earlier, and most historians credit him with its invention.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Thomas Alva Edison took the next step in improving the telephone with his invention in 1878 of the carbon grain "transmitter" (microphone) that provided a strong voice signal on the transmitting circuit that made long-distance calls practical. Edison discovered that carbon grains, squeezed between two metal plates, had a variable electrical resistance that was related to the pressure. Thus, the grains could vary their resistance as the plates moved in response to sound waves, and reproduce sound with good fidelity, without the weak signals associated with electromagnetic transmitters.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: The carbon microphone was further improved by Emile Berliner, Francis Blake, David E. Hughes, Henry Hunnings, and Anthony White. The carbon microphone remained standard in telephony until the 1980s, and is still being produced.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Additional inventions such as the call bell, central telephone exchange, common battery, ring tone, amplification, trunk lines, and wireless phones – at first cordless and then fully mobile – made the telephone the useful and widespread apparatus as it is now.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: The telephone exchange was an idea of the Hungarian engineer Tivadar Puskás (1844–1893) in 1876, while he was working for Thomas Edison on a telegraph exchange. Puskás was working on his idea for an electrical telegraph exchange when Alexander Graham Bell received the first patent for the telephone. This caused Puskás to take a fresh look at his own work and he refocused on perfecting a design for a telephone exchange. He then got in touch with the U.S. inventor Thomas Edison who liked the design. According to Edison, "Tivadar Puskas was the first person to suggest the idea of a telephone exchange".


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Bell has been widely recognized as the "inventor" of the telephone outside of Italy, where Meucci was championed as its inventor, and outside of Germany, where Reis was recognized as the "inventor". In the United States, there are numerous reflections of Bell as a North American icon for inventing the telephone, and the matter was for a long time non-controversial. In June 2002, however, the United States House of Representatives passed a symbolic bill recognizing the contributions of Antonio Meucci ""in the invention of the telephone"" (not ""for the invention of the telephone""), throwing the matter into some controversy. Ten days later the Canadian parliament countered with a symbolic motion attributing the invention of the telephone to Bell.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Champions of Meucci, Manzetti, and Gray have each offered fairly precise tales of a contrivance whereby Bell actively stole the invention of the telephone from their specific inventor. In the 2002 congressional resolution, it was inaccurately noted that Bell worked in a laboratory in which Meucci's materials had been stored, and claimed that Bell must thus have had access to those materials. Manzetti claimed that Bell visited him and examined his device in 1865. In 1886 it was publicly alleged by Zenas Wilber, a patent examiner, that Bell paid him one hundred dollars, when he allowed Bell to look at Gray's confidential patent filing.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: One of the valuable claims in Bell's 1876 was claim 4, a method of producing variable electric current in a circuit by varying the resistance in the circuit. That feature was not shown in any of Bell's patent drawings, but was shown in Elisha Gray's drawings in his caveat filed the same day, February 14, 1876. A description of the variable resistance feature, consisting of seven sentences, was inserted into Bell's application. That it was inserted is not disputed. But when it was inserted is a controversial issue. Bell testified that he wrote the sentences containing the variable resistance feature before January 18, 1876, "almost at the last moment" before sending his draft application to his lawyers. A book by Evenson argues that the seven sentences and claim 4 were inserted, without Bell's knowledge, just before Bell's application was hand carried to the Patent Office by one of Bell's lawyers on February 14, 1876.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Contrary to the popular story, Gray's caveat was taken to the US Patent Office a few hours before Bell's application. Gray's caveat was taken to the Patent Office in the morning of February 14, 1876, shortly after the Patent Office opened and remained near the bottom of the in-basket until that afternoon. Bell's application was filed shortly before noon on February 14 by Bell's lawyer who requested that the filing fee be entered immediately onto the cash receipts blotter and Bell's application was taken to the Examiner immediately. Late in the afternoon, Gray's caveat was entered on the cash blotter and was not taken to the Examiner until the following day. The fact that Bell's filing fee was recorded earlier than Gray's led to the myth that Bell had arrived at the Patent Office earlier. Bell was in Boston on February 14 and did not know this happened until later. Gray later abandoned his caveat and did not contest Bell's priority. That opened the door to Bell being granted US patent 174465 for the telephone on March 7, 1876.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: In 1906 the citizens of the City of Brantford, Ontario, Canada and its surrounding area formed the Bell Memorial Association to commemorate the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in July 1874 at his parents’ home, Melville House, near Brantford. Walter Allward's design was the unanimous choice from among 10 submitted models, winning the competition. The memorial was originally to be completed by 1912 but Allward did not finish it until five years later. The Governor General of Canada, Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire, ceremoniously unveiled the memorial on October 24, 1917.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: Allward designed the monument to symbolize the telephone's ability to overcome distances. A series of steps lead to the main section where the floating allegorical figure of "Inspiration" appears over a reclining male figure representing "Man, discovering his power to transmit sound through space", and also pointing to three floating figures, the messengers of "Knowledge", "Joy", and "Sorrow" positioned at the other end of the tableau. Additionally, there are two female figures mounted on granite pedestals representing "Humanity" positioned to the left and right of the memorial, one sending and the other receiving a message.


title: Invention of the telephone

text: The Bell Telephone Memorial's grandeur has been described as the finest example of Allward's early work, propelling the sculptor to fame. The memorial itself has been used as a central fixture for many civic events and remains an important part of Brantford's history, helping the city style itself as" 'The Telephone City'."


title: Angels (Robbie Williams song)

text: "Angels" is a song by the English singer-songwriter Robbie Williams. It was included on Williams's debut solo album, "Life thru a Lens" (1997), and released as a single on 1 December 1997. "Angels" was written by Williams and Guy Chambers, based on an earlier song written by Ray Heffernan.


title: Angels (Robbie Williams song)

text: Williams said he wrote "Angels" with Chambers about his aunt and uncle. Heffernan asserts that he wrote the first version in 1996, after his partner had a miscarriage, and finished it with Williams after meeting him by chance in Dublin. Williams confirmed that he had recorded a demo with Heffernan but said he rewrote the song significantly with Chambers. To avoid a lawsuit, Williams bought the rights to the song from Heffernan before it was released.


title: Angels (Robbie Williams song)

text: "Angels" is Williams's best-selling single, and the 34th-bestselling UK single of the 1990s. It was voted the best song of the previous 25 years at the 2005 Brit Awards, and in 2005 Britons voted "Angels" the song they most wanted played at their funeral. It has been covered by artists including Jessica Simpson, David Archuleta, Beverley Knight, All Angels, Declan Galbraith and Josh Groban. It was recorded in Spanish (as "Ángel") by the Mexican singers Yuridia and Marco Moré, and in Italian (as "Un Angelo") by Patrizio Buanne. Williams also recorded a Spanish version.


title: Angels (Robbie Williams song)

text: In 2011, Robbie Williams said he wrote "Angels" with his collaborator Guy Chambers in 25 minutes about his aunt and uncle. By his account, he and Chambers were sitting outside a cafe watching a water fountain, which inspired them to write the chorus. In 2016, Williams said: "It was the first of our songs that we wrote together. We could tell and hoped and prayed that we got something incredibly special." Williams expressed irritation that some assumed Chambers was the sole author.


title: Angels (Robbie Williams song)

text: The Irish singer-songwriter Ray Heffernan asserts that he wrote the first version of "Angels" in Paris in 1996, after his partner had a miscarriage. According to Heffernan, he met Williams in a pub by chance in Dublin. He showed him an incomplete version of the song, and that week the two recorded a studio demo. Williams confirmed that he had recorded a demo with Heffernan but said he rewrote the song significantly with Chambers.


title: Angels (Robbie Williams song)

text: Before the song's release, Heffernan accepted an offer from Williams's management to buy the rights for £7,500. He is thanked in the UK CD2 single liner notes. Williams said: "We could have gone to court, and it all would have been down to whether what way the judge wakes up that day out of bed ... So I gave him some money, and he went away." In 2011, Heffernan said: "For a long time, I was angry about this, but as you get older you see things differently ... the 'Angels' connection has opened doors to publishing companies and earned me a few quid."


title: Angels (Robbie Williams song)

text: "Angels" was the 38th-best-selling single of 1997 in the UK and the 26th of 1998. It was the 34th-bestselling UK single of the decade. Despite only reaching a peak of No. 4, it is Williams's bestselling UK single and according to Official UK Charts Company figures passed the million sales mark in June 2009, with a combination of both physical and download sales. It has sold 1.8 million copies in the UK as of April 2021. It was released in 1999 in the US, after Williams' debut there with "Millennium". "Angels" re-entered the ARIA Top 100 at No. 91, on 5 May 2008. After announcing his "XXV" album in June 2022, and releasing a reworked version of "Angels", titled "Angels (XXV)", the song placed at number 92 on the UK Official Singles Sales Chart on 10 June.