title: Finnish sauna

text: The sauna in Finland is an old phenomenon and its roots are difficult to trace, but its earliest versions are believed to be from 7000 BC. Bath houses were recorded in Europe during the same time period, but Finnish bathing habits were poorly documented for most of history. One of the first written mentions of what is believed to be the sauna customs of the forefathers of the Finns was written by Nestor the Chronicler in 1112. He told of "hot wooden saunas in which naked bathers beat themselves with branches and finally pour cold water over themselves".


title: Finnish sauna

text: During the Reformation in Scandinavia the popularity of saunas expanded to other countries because the European bath houses were being destroyed.


title: Finnish sauna

text: One reason the sauna culture has always flourished in Finland has been because of the versatility of the sauna. When people were moving, the first thing they did was to build a sauna. Finns have used the sauna to live in, eat, address matters of hygiene, and, most importantly, give birth in an almost sterile environment. Unlike many other, more densely populated places in Europe, the availability of wood needed to build and warm the sauna has never been an issue. Another reason for its popularity is that in such a cold climate, the sauna allows people warmth for at least a short period of time. However, it is just as popular in the summer as in the winter.


title: Finnish sauna

text: Saunas are an integral part of the way of life in Finland. They are found on the shores of Finland's numerous lakes, in private apartments, corporate headquarters, at the Parliament House and even at the depth of in Pyhäsalmi Mine. The sauna is an important part of the national identity and those who have the opportunity usually take a sauna at least once a week. The traditional sauna day is Saturday.


title: Finnish sauna

text: The sauna tradition is so strong that whenever Finns go abroad, they relish the chance to have a good sauna: even the Finnish Church in Rotherhithe, London, has its own sauna. Finnish soldiers on peacekeeping missions are famous for their saunas; even on the UNMEE mission in Eritrea, a sauna was one of the first buildings to be erected. A Second World War-era Finnish military field manual states that a break of eight hours is all that is required for a battalion to build saunas, warm them and bathe in them. Saunas, even in the military, are strictly egalitarian places: no titles or hierarchies are used in the sauna.


title: Finnish sauna

text: Taking a sauna begins with having a wash (usually a shower), followed by a sit in the sauna room, the room being typically warmed to . Water is thrown on the hot stones topping the "kiuas", a special stove used to warm up the sauna. This produces great amounts of wet steam, known as "löyly", increasing the moisture and the apparent temperature within the sauna. Only the word "löyly" is used for this particular type of steam; the Finnish word "höyry" ('steam, vapour') is never used for it except in a scientific sense. Equivalents for "löyly" can be found in the Finnic languages such as the Karelian "löyly", the Estonian "leil", the Votic "leülü", the Veps "l'öl"' and the Livonian "löul". Its original sense signified 'spirit, breath, soul' and this is still seen in the Uralic languages--for example, the Udmurt "lul", the Komi "lol", the Mansi "läl" ('life'), the Khanty "lil" and the Hungarian "lélek".


title: Finnish sauna

text: Occasionally one uses a bunch of leafy, fragrant silver birch called a "vihta" ("vasta" in Eastern Finland) to gently beat oneself. This supposedly has a relaxing effect on the muscles and also helps to soothe the irritation from mosquito bites. When the heat begins to feel uncomfortable it is customary to jump into a lake, sea, or a swimming pool, or to have a shower. In the winter, rolling in the snow or even swimming in a hole cut in lake ice, an avanto, is sometimes used as a substitute. Often after the sauna it is a custom to sit down in the dressing room or on the porch of the sauna to enjoy a sausage, along with beer or soft drinks.


title: Finnish sauna

text: After cooling down from the first bath, one goes back into the hot room and begins the cycle again. The number and duration of hot room-cooling down cycles varies from person to person based on personal preference. Usually one takes at least two or three cycles, lasting between 30 minutes to two hours. In Finland's numerous summer cottages bathing might go on well into the night. This is especially true in the summer when there's virtually no darkness at night. The sauna session itself is finished off with a thorough wash.


title: Finnish sauna

text: For someone brought up in Finland, the rules are instinctive but they are difficult to put into words. Depending on the size, composition, relationships, and the age structure of the group three basic patterns can emerge: Everyone can go to the sauna at the same time, men and women may take a sauna separately, or each family can go to sauna separately. Mixed saunas with non-family members are most common with younger adults, and are quite rare for older people or on more formal occasions. It is common for teenagers to stop going to sauna with their parents at some point.


title: Finnish sauna

text: In the sauna it is a faux pas to wear clothing in the hot room, although it is acceptable to sit on a small towel or "pefletti", a disposable tissue designed to endure heat and humidity (it can be mandatory in a public sauna, such as at a public swimming pool). While cooling off it is common to wrap a towel around the body. For a typical Finn the sauna is, with few exceptions, a strictly non-sexual place; nudity in the sauna is a very normal state of affairs among Finns without any connection with sexual intercourse. In Finland a "sauna" means only a sauna, not a brothel, sex club, or such. In public saunas, swimsuits are banned from the hot room for health reasons: in many indoor swimming pools, chlorine is added to the water for hygiene reasons; if swimwear used in such water is brought to the hot room, the chlorine will vaporize and cause breathing problems for people with asthma or allergies.


title: Finnish sauna

text: In private homes or summer residences, the sauna is usually warmed to honor the guest and refusal may be more difficult. However, Finns will not typically be very offended if their guest declines. This is particularly common if going to sauna would require a lot of effort from the guest (such as re-applying complex make-up afterwards), socially inconvenient (feeling uncomfortable about nudity and/or a mixed-sex sauna), or otherwise inconvenient (should the guest not have a change of clothes or if the sauna would take place late at night, et cetera).


title: Finnish sauna

text: Many different types of sauna can be found in Finland and Estonia. They can be classified either by the sauna building itself or by what kind of stove it uses.


title: Finnish sauna

text: The main division of saunas is between once warmed and continuously warmed stoves. All smoke saunas are once warmed, but there are also other type of ovens that are once warmed.


title: Finnish sauna

text: Once warmed stoves have larger amount of stones that are warmed up before the bathing. This can be done by burning wood, with or without chimney, oil, wood pellets, or natural gas. Continuously warmed stoves have lower amount of stones that are heated during the bathing. The warming can be done burning wood, oil or natural gas, or electrically.


title: Finnish sauna

text: The temperature in Finnish saunas is , usually , and is kept clearly above the dewpoint despite the vaporization of "löyly" water, so that visible condensation of steam does not occur as in a Turkish sauna.


title: Finnish sauna

text: The "savusauna" (smoke sauna) does not have a chimney and thus as wood is burned smoke fills the room. After the sauna reaches the appropriate temperature, the fire is extinguished and the room is ventilated. Given the construction of the room, the sauna retains sufficient heat for the duration of use. Although smoke saunas are considered a more traditional type, there has been a significant increase in construction in recent years. However, due to the amount of effort and time required to operate them -- heating can take most of a day -- they are not likely to replace most regular saunas.


title: Finnish sauna

text: Smoke saunas are still extant not only in Finland but also in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. They are considered to be cheap, simple to build, and durable (if measures of fire prevention are taken while building the sauna). The longevity is warranted by disinfectant features of smoke.


title: Finnish sauna

text: One specific and rarely seen curiosity is use of a wood pellet burner to heat a smoke sauna stove, typically the actual burner installed into a room adjacent to the actual sauna room and the kiuas. A wood pellet burner, quite similar to an oil burner, is then used to heat a smoke sauna stove - practically a big pile of rocks. As the burning process is much cleaner than with a conventional smoke stove the smoke aroma is much less pungent and soothy, while the moisture produced by the burning the pellets makes the air more pleasant than with continuously warmed stoves.


title: Finnish sauna

text: The wood stove sauna is more common in rural areas, whereas the electric sauna is more common in urban areas. The metal stove with stones on top ("kiuas") is heated with birch wood fire, and this heats the sauna room to the required temperature. If birch wood is not available any other wood will do, but well dried birch wood is preferred because of its good quality and smell, and long lasting burn. The important thing is to have a good "löyly", that is when the stones are hot enough to evaporate the water thrown on them into steam that rises to the bathers. The bather in every type of sauna sits on a high bench near the ceiling where the hot steam reaches them quickly.


title: Finnish sauna

text: In city apartments, and in most public saunas, an electric sauna stove ("kiuas") is used, as it does not require open fire and offers additional features like time delay settings, thermostat and temperature limiter. Also electric saunas usually do have kiuas stones piled over or around the heating element to allow löyly thrown onto them; either as an open, air circulating set-up or as a closed and insulated heat-storing one. Electric sauna offers a possibility for the property manager to control the sauna independently from occupants and limit sauna's electricity use. The control can be remote and wireless and can offer additional settings for sauna lightning, ventilation and steam generating devices. Apartment buildings' sauna is typically offered a few times in a week to occupants with dedicated hours for communal men's and women's sauna, and special hours for those who have requested apartment specific hours. People might prefer the more atmospheric wood stove sauna over an electric sauna, but for those living in urban apartment blocks that is rarely an option, and electric stoves are easier to use, more fire-safe, and don't produce wood litter.


title: Finnish sauna

text: Scouts and various other youth organizations often have portable tent saunas. Saunas have been built into cars, buses, car trailers, tractor trailers or even bicycles and boats. In Finland, there are companies that rent mobile saunas, and an annual mobile sauna event in Teuva.


title: Yamanote Line

text: The Yamanote Line (, Yamanote-sen) is a loop service in Tokyo, Japan, operated by the East Japan Railway Company (JR East). It is one of Tokyo's busiest and most important lines, connecting most of Tokyo's major stations and urban centres, including Marunouchi, the Yūrakuchō/Ginza area, Shinagawa, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, and Ueno, with all but two of its 30 stations connecting to other railway or underground (subway) lines.


title: Yamanote Line

text: Internally JR East refers to the "Yamanote Line" as the quadruple-track corridor between Shinagawa and Tabata via Shinjuku. The corridor consists of a pair of tracks used by Yamanote local trains and another parallel pair of tracks called "the Yamanote Freight Line" used by the Saikyō and Shōnan-Shinjuku line trains, some limited express services, and freight trains. In everyday usage, branding on maps and station signage, the "Yamanote Line" refers to the local service running the entire line looping between the Yamanote corridor via Shinjuku Station and the central portions of the Tōhoku and Tōkaidō Main Lines Via Tokyo Station. (This article uses the same definition unless noted otherwise.)


title: Yamanote Line

text: Trains run from 04:26 to 01:04 the next day at intervals as short as 2 minutes during peak periods and four minutes at other times. A complete loop takes 59 to 65 minutes. All trains stop at each station. Trains are put into and taken out of service at (which for timetabling purposes is the line's start and terminus) and sometimes . Certain trains also start from Tamachi in the mornings and end at in the evenings. Trains which run clockwise are known as and those counter-clockwise as . (Trains travel on the left in Japan, as with road traffic.)


title: Yamanote Line

text: The line also acts as a fare zone destination for JR tickets from locations outside Tokyo, permitting travel to any JR station on or within the loop. This refers to stations on the Yamanote Line as well as the Chūō-Sōbu and Chūō Rapid Lines and between and .


title: Yamanote Line

text: The line colour used on all rolling stock, station signs and diagrams is JNR Yellow Green No.6 (■, Munsell code 7.5GY 6.5/7.8), known in Japanese as .


title: Yamanote Line

text: Due to the Yamanote Line's central location connecting most of Tokyo's major commuter hubs and commercial areas, the line is very heavily used. Sections of the line were running over 250% capacity in the 1990s, remained above 200% for most of the 2000s with most sections dropping below 150% in 2018. This is due to larger and more frequent trains being introduced to the Yamanote Line and the opening of parallel relief lines such as the Tokyo Metro and Ueno–Tokyo Line. The maximum overcrowding during rush hour is about 158%.


title: Yamanote Line

text: The ridership intensity of the Yamanote Line in 2018 was 1,134,963 passengers - km / km of route. The daily ridership of the Yamanote Line estimated in a 2015 MLIT National Transit census was about 4 million people per day. However, in both cases "Yamanote Line" refers to JR East's internal definition of the entire rail corridor between Shinagawa and Tabata stations via Shinjuku which includes the ridership of the Saikyō and Shōnan–Shinjuku Lines on the parallel Yamanote freight line. Meanwhile, the ridership of the Yamanote Line services between Tabata and Shinagawa Station via Tokyo are excluded and counted as part of the Tōhoku and Tōkaidō Main Lines.


title: Yamanote Line

text: "Yamanote" literally refers to inland, hillier districts or foothills (as distinct from areas close to the sea). In Tokyo, "Yamanote" lies along the western side of the Yamanote Line loop. The word consists of the Japanese morphemes "yama", meaning 'mountain', the genitive suffix "no", and "te", meaning 'hand', thus literally translating as "mountain's hand", analogous to the English term "foothills".


title: Yamanote Line

text: "Yamanote-sen" is officially written in Japanese without the "kana" , which makes its pronunciation ambiguous in print. The characters may also be pronounced "yamate", as in Yamate-dōri (Yamate Street), which runs parallel to the west side of the Yamanote Line. The Seishin-Yamate Line in Kobe and the Yamate area of Yokohama also use this pronunciation.


title: Yamanote Line

text: After World War II, SCAP ordered all train placards to be romanized, and the Yamanote Line was romanized as "Yamate Line". It was thus alternatively known as "Yamanote" and "Yamate" until 1971, when the Japanese National Railways changed the pronunciation back to "Yamanote". Some older people still refer to the line as the "Yamate Line".


title: Yamanote Line

text: , the line's services are operated exclusively by a fleet of 50 11-car E235 series EMUs, the first of which was introduced on the line on 30 November 2015. However, a number of technical faults, including problems with door close indicators, resulted in the train being taken out of service the same day. The E235 series returned to service on the Yamanote Line on 7 March 2016.


title: Yamanote Line

text: Prior to the E235 series, the line's services were operated by E231-500 series EMUs, which were in use from April 21, 2002 to January 20, 2020. These trains originally each included two "six-door cars" with six pairs of doors per side and bench seats that were folded up to provide standing room only during the morning peak until 10 a.m. From February 22, 2010, the seats were no longer folded up during the morning peak, and all trains were standardized with newly built four-door cars by 31 August 2011. This was due to reduced congestion on the line as well as preparation for the installation of platform doors on all stations by 2017.


title: Yamanote Line

text: The E231 series supported a new type of traffic control system, called digital Automatic Train Control (D-ATC). The series also had a more modern design and has two 15-inch LCD monitors above each door, one of which is used for displaying silent commercials, news and weather; and another which is used for displaying information on the next stop (in Japanese, English, Korean and more) along with notification of delays on Shinkansen and other railway lines in the greater Tokyo area. The E231-500 series trains were based at Tokyo General Rolling Stock Centre near Ōsaki Station.


title: Yamanote Line

text: The predecessor of the present-day Yamanote Line was opened on 1 March 1885 by the Nippon Railway Company, operating between Shinagawa Station in the south and Akabane Station in the north. The top part of the loop between and (a distance of 3.3 km) opened on 1 April 1903, and both lines were merged to become the Yamanote Line on 12 October 1909.


title: Yamanote Line

text: The line was electrified on December 16, 1909, soon after the Osaki – Shinagawa section was double-tracked on November 30. The loop was completed in 1925 with the opening of the double track, electrified section between and on 1 November, providing a north–south link via Tokyo Station through the city's business centre. A parallel freight line, also completed in 1925, ran along the inner side of the loop between Shinagawa and Tabata.


title: Yamanote Line

text: During the prewar era, the Ministry of Railways did not issue permits to private suburban railway companies for new lines to cross the Yamanote Line from their terminal stations to the central districts of Tokyo, forcing the companies to terminate services at stations on the line. This policy led to the development of around major transfer points on the Yamanote Line, most notably at and (which are now the two busiest passenger railway stations in the world).


title: Yamanote Line

text: The contemporary Yamanote Line came into being on 19 November 1956 when it was separated from the Keihin-Tōhoku Line and given its own set of tracks along the eastern side of the loop between Shinagawa and . However, Yamanote Line trains continued to periodically use the Keihin-Tōhoku tracks, particularly on holidays and during off-peak hours, until rapid service trains were introduced on the Keihin-Tōhoku Line in 1988.


title: Yamanote Line

text: A major explosion on the Yamanote Freight Line in Shinjuku in 1967 led to the diversion of freight traffic to the more distant Musashino Line. To address severe undercapacity, the freight line was repurposed for use by Saikyo Line and Shōnan-Shinjuku Line trains, as well as certain limited express trains such as the "Narita Express" and some liner services. Likewise, from 14 March 2015 onwards, the Ueno-Tokyo Line starts services, which connects the Tohoku Main Line and Joban Line to the Tokaido Main Line, to provide further relief on the busiest portion of the Yamanote Line today, the segment between Ueno and Tokyo stations.


title: Yamanote Line

text: Automatic train control (ATC) was introduced from 6 December 1981, and digital ATC (D-ATC) was introduced from 30 July 2006.


title: Yamanote Line

text: Station numbering was introduced on JR East stations in the Tokyo area from 20 August 2016, with Yamanote Line stations numbered using the prefix "JY".


title: Yamanote Line

text: A new station, Takanawa Gateway Station, opened on 14 March 2020. This station was built on the Yamanote Line and Keihin-Tohoku Line between Shinagawa and Tamachi stations, becoming the first new station on the line since Nishi-Nippori was built in 1971. The distance between Shinagawa and Tamachi stations was 2.2 km, making it the longest stretch of track between stations on the Yamanote Line. The new station was constructed on top of the 20-hectare former railyard, which is undergoing rationalization and redevelopment by JR East; it is roughly parallel to the existing Sengakuji Station on the Toei Asakusa and Keikyu Main lines. The Yamanote Line and the Keihin-Tohoku Line tracks were moved slightly to the east to be aligned closer to the Tokaido Shinkansen tracks. The area on the west side of the yard made available will be redeveloped with high-rise office buildings, creating an international business center with good connections to the Shinkansen and Haneda Airport.


title: Yamanote Line

text: In October 2022 JR East began performing trial runs for driverless trains on the line aimed to begin sometime in 2028. Two sets, 17 and 18, were fitted with the new system and re-entered service on the line as train crew conduct ongoing tests on their performance. Furthermore, the two sets are easy to distingush with an “ATO” (Automatic Train Operation) sticker located on the front and sides of each set. Once ATO is fully installed, this will be the first line of JR East to feature driverless trains.


title: Yamanote Line

text: b. Ridership of the section between Shinagawa-Tabata (via Shinjuku) including ridership from the Saikyo and Shonan-Shinjuku services operating through this section. Ridership in the report estimated from OD surveys and commuter pass data. 「平均通過人員」or average passenger intensity is defined by JR East as Annual passenger-kilometre / route length / number of workdays per year.


title: Country Joe McDonald

text: Joseph Allen "Country Joe" McDonald (born January 1, 1942) is an American musician who was the lead singer of the 1960s psychedelic rock group Country Joe and the Fish.


title: Country Joe McDonald

text: McDonald was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in El Monte, California, where he was student conductor and president of his high school marching band. At the age of 17, he enlisted in the United States Navy for three years and was stationed in Japan. After his enlistment, he attended Los Angeles City College for a year. In the early 1960s, he began busking on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California. His father, Worden McDonald, from Oklahoma, was of Scottish Presbyterian heritage (the son of a minister) and worked for a telephone company. His mother, Florence Plotnick, was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants and served for many years on the Berkeley City Council. In their youth, both were Communist Party members and named their son after Joseph Stalin, before renouncing the cause.


title: Country Joe McDonald

text: McDonald has recorded 33 albums and has written hundreds of songs over a career spanning 60 years. In 1965, he and Barry Melton co-founded Country Joe & the Fish which became a pioneer psychedelic rock band with their eclectic performances at the Avalon Ballroom, the Fillmore Auditorium, the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, and both the 1969 original and 1979 reunion Woodstock Festivals.


title: Country Joe McDonald

text: Their best-known song is his "The "Fish" Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag" (1965), a black comedy novelty song about the Vietnam War, whose familiar chorus ("One, two, three, what are we fighting for?") is well known to the Woodstock generation and Vietnam veterans of the 1960s and '70s. McDonald wrote the song in about 20 minutes for an anti-Vietnam War play. The "Fish Cheer" was the band performing a call-and-response with the audience, spelling the word "fish", followed by Country Joe yelling, "What's that spell?" twice, with the audience responding, and then, the third time, "What's that spell?", followed immediately by the song. The "Fish Cheer" evolved into the "Fuck Cheer" after the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. The cheer was on the original recording of "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag", being played right before the song on the LP of the same name. The cheer became popular and the crowd would spell out F-I-S-H when the band performed live. During the summer of 1968 the band played on the Schaefer Music Festival tour. Gary "Chicken" Hirsh suggested before one of the shows to spell the word "fuck" instead of "fish". Although the crowd loved it, the management of the Schaefer Beer Festival did not and kicked the band off the tour for life. "The Ed Sullivan Show" then canceled a previously scheduled appearance by the band, telling them to keep the money they had already been paid in exchange for never playing on the show. The modified cheer continued at most of the band's live shows throughout the years, including Woodstock and elsewhere. In Worcester, Massachusetts, McDonald was arrested for obscenity and fined $500 for uttering "fuck" in public.


title: Country Joe McDonald

text: McDonald subsequently embarked on a solo career. One of his solo albums, the 1973 Vanguard LP "Paris Sessions", was reviewed by Robert Christgau in "" (1981), in which he said: "Amazing. The man (repeat: man) has written feminist songs that are both catchy and sensible. Despite the real/honest prison poem and the silly, outdated record fan routines, his best in about five years."


title: Country Joe McDonald

text: In 2003 McDonald was sued for copyright infringement over his signature song, specifically the "One, two, three, what are we fighting for?" chorus part, as derived from the 1926 early jazz classic "Muskrat Ramble", co-written by Kid Ory. The suit was brought by Ory's daughter Babette, who held the copyright at the time. Since decades had already passed from the time McDonald composed his song in 1965, Ory based her suit on a new version of it recorded by McDonald in 1999. The court, however, upheld McDonald's laches defense, noting that Ory and her father were aware of the original version of the song, with the same questionable section, for some three decades without bringing a suit. In 2006, Ory was ordered to pay McDonald $395,000 for attorney fees and had to sell her copyrights to do so.


title: Country Joe McDonald

text: In 2004, McDonald regrouped with three of the original members of Country Joe and the Fish (Bruce Barthol, David Bennett Cohen, and Gary "Chicken" Hirsh) and they toured the United States and the United Kingdom as the "Country Joe Band".


title: Country Joe McDonald

text: In 2005, McDonald joined a larger protest against California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget cuts at the California State Capitol Building. Later in 2005, political commentator Bill O'Reilly compared McDonald to Cuban President Fidel Castro, remarking on McDonald's involvement in Cindy Sheehan's protests against the Iraq War.


title: Country Joe McDonald

text: In 2015, McDonald (with assistance from Alec Palao), formed The Electric Music Band; the intention of the group was to perform the early psychedelic material of the early career of Country Joe And The Fish. The band has performed


title: Country Joe McDonald

text: Electric Music For The Mind And Body in its entirety, and band members include Palao, the Rain Parade's Matt Piucci and Derek See of the Chocolate Watchband.


title: Country Joe McDonald

text: In 2019, Mc Donald was scheduled to play on Woodstock's 50th Anniversary festival, which was cancelled after negotiations between partners failed.


title: Country Joe McDonald

text: McDonald was married to Kathe Werum from 1963 to 1966 and married Robin Menken a year after his divorce from Werum. In 1968, Menken gave birth to the couple's first daughter, Seven Anne McDonald, in San Francisco. Seven had a career as a TV child actor in the late 1970s and early 1980s, managed Johnny Depp's Viper Room nightclub and the alternative rock band Smashing Pumpkins in the 1990s, and wrote for "Details", "Elle", "LA Weekly" and "Harper's Bazaar" magazines in the 1990s and 2000s. Seven was the subject of and inspiration behind the song "Silver and Gold". McDonald has noted that his girlfriend at the time, Janis Joplin, showed much anger for breaking up with her to be with Menken but asked him to write a song about her; the result was "Janis".


title: Country Joe McDonald

text: Seven's name was the inspiration behind the character Six on Blossom, cited by Don Reo on PeopleTV special Blossom Cast Reunion aired 2017, timestamp 10:07-10:33. Don's son went to school with Seven, Don asked his son if she would be cool with him naming a character Seven, Seven said no, so it was either Six or Eight.


title: Country Joe McDonald

text: McDonald has four other children, Devin (b. 1976) and Tara (b. 1980) from his marriage to Janice Taylor, and Emily (b. 1988) and Ryan (b. 1991) from his marriage to Kathy Wright.


title: Strix (mythology)

text: The strix (plural striges or strixes), in the mythology of classical antiquity, was a bird of ill omen, the product of metamorphosis, that fed on human flesh and blood. It also referred to witches and related malevolent folkloric beings.


title: Strix (mythology)

text: The "strix" is described as a large-headed bird with transfixed eyes, rapacious beak, greyish white wings, and hooked claws in Ovid's "Fasti". This is the only thorough description of the strix in Classical literature. Elsewhere, it is described as being dark-colored.


title: Strix (mythology)

text: The "strīx" () was a nocturnally crying creature which positioned its feet upwards and head below, according to a pre-300 BC Greek origin myth. It is probably meant to be (and translated as) an owl, but is highly suggestive of a bat which hangs upside-down.


title: Strix (mythology)

text: The "strix" in later folklore was a bird which squirted milk upon the lips of (human) infants. Pliny in his "Natural History" dismissed this as nonsense and remarked it was impossible to establish what bird was meant by this. The same habit, where the strix lactates foul-smelling milk onto an infant's lips is mentioned by Titinius, who noted the placement of garlic on the infant was the prescribed amulet to ward against it.


title: Strix (mythology)

text: In the case of Ovid's "striges", they threatened to do more harm than that. They were said to disembowel an infant and feed on its blood. Ovid allows the possibilities of the "striges" being birds of nature, or products of magic, or transformations by witches using magical incantations.


title: Strix (mythology)

text: According to Antoninus Liberalis's "Metamorphoses", the "strīx" () was a metamorphosis of Polyphonte; she and her bear-like sons Agrios and Oreios were transformed into birds as punishment for their cannibalism. Here the strix is described as (a bird) "that cries by night, without food or drink, with head below and tips of feet above, a harbinger of war and civil strife to men".


title: Strix (mythology)

text: The tale only survives in the form as recorded by Antonius who flourished 100–300 AD, but it preserved an older tale from the lost "Ornithologia" by Boios, dated to before the end of 4th century BC.


title: Strix (mythology)

text: In this Greek myth, the ill-omened "strīx" herself did not perpetrate harm on humans. But one paper suggests guilt by association with her sons, and seeks to reconstruct an ancient Greek belief in the man-eating "strīx" dating back to this age (4th century BC). In an opposing view, one study failed to find the ancient Greeks subscribing to the "strīx" as a "terror" to mankind, but noted a widespread belief in Italy that it was a "bloodthirsty monster in bird form." This study surmises that the Greeks later borrowed the concept of "strix" as witches, a concept articulated in Ovid, and one scholar estimates the Greeks adopted the "strix" as "child-murdering horrors" by the "last centuries BC". The modern Greek form may betray an influence of a Latin diminutive "strigula".


title: Strix (mythology)

text: The first Latin allusion is in Plautus' comedy "Pseudolus" dated to 191 BC, in which an inferior cook's cuisine is metaphorized as the "striges" ("vampyre owls") devouring the diners' gastrointestinal organs while still alive, and shortening their lifespan. Commentators point to this as attestation that the "striges" were regarded as man-eating (anthropophagism).


title: Strix (mythology)

text: In Ovid's "Fasti" (8 AD), the "striges" targeted legendary king Procas in his cradle. The assault was detected and interrupted but left the infant with scars on his cheeks and discoloration of his complexion. A ritual to keep the "striges" away from the newborn prince was subsequently performed by the nymph Cranae (or goddess Carna), who owned a wand of whitethorn, ("spina") given to her by Janus, which could expel evil from all doors.


title: Strix (mythology)

text: Petronius's novel "Satyricon" (late 1st century AD) includes a tale told by the character Trimalchio, describing the "striges" that snatched away the body of a boy who had already died, substituting a straw doll. The striges made their presence known by their scream, and a manservant attending to the intrusion discovered a woman and ran her through with a sword so that she groaned, but his whole body turned livid and would die a few days later.


title: Strix (mythology)

text: Pliny's comment that "["strix"]...employed in maledictions" signified that its name invoked in "potent" magic curses according to one interpretation, but it may have only been used as curse-word, reflecting its regard as an accursed creature.


title: Strix (mythology)

text: There are several examples of the strix's plumage, etc., said to be used as an ingredient in magic. Horace in his "Epodes", wrote that the strix's feathers are an ingredient in a love potion, as has his contemporary Propertius. Medea's rejuvenating concoction which she boiled in a cauldron used a long list of ingredients, including the strix's wings.


title: Strix (mythology)

text: The "striges" also came to mean "witches". One paper speculates that this meaning is as old as the 4th century BC, on the basis that in the origin myth of Boios, various names can be connected to the Macedonia-Thrace region well known for witches. But more concrete examples occur in Ovid's "Fasti" (early 1st century AD) where the "striges" as transformations of hags is offered as one possible explanation, and Sextus Pompeius Festus (fl. late 2nd century) glossed as "women who practice witchcraft" "("maleficis mulieribus")" or "flying women" ("witches" by transference)


title: Strix (mythology)

text: There are "striges", vultures, and "bubo" owls which cry in the marshes in Hades, by the edge of Tartarus according to Seneca the Younger's tragedy "Hercules Furens". Also, according to the legend of Otus and Ephialtes, they were punished in Hades by being tied to a pillar with snakes, with a strix perched on that column.


title: Strix (mythology)

text: The legend of the strix survived into the Middle Ages, as recorded in Isidore's "Etymologiae". In the 7th–8th century John of Damascus equated the "stiriges" (Greek plural: ) with the "gelloudes" (pl. of "gelllo") in his entry "Perī Stryggōn )". He wrote that they sometimes had corporeal bodies and wore clothing, and sometimes appeared as spirits.


title: Strix (mythology)

text: The Latin term "striga" in both name and sense as defined by Medieval lexicographers was in use throughout central and eastern Europe.


title: Strix (mythology)

text: "Strega" (obviously derived from Latin "striga") is the Italian term for "witch". This word itself gave a term sometimes also used in English, stregheria, a form of witchcraft. In Romanian, "strigăt" means 'scream', "strigoaică" is the name of the Romanian feminine vampire, and "strigoi "is the Romanian male vampire. Both can scream loudly, especially when they become poltergeists—a trait they have in common with the banshees. "Strigăt" is also the Romanian name of the barn owl and of the death's-head hawkmoth. In Albanian folklore, we can find the shtriga, and in Slavic - the strzyga/stryha.


title: Strix (mythology)

text: Linnaeus named the biological genus of earless owls "Strix"; historically, this genus was (erroneously) thought to extend to barn owls.


title: Damageplan

text: Damageplan was an American heavy metal band from Dallas, Texas, formed in 2003. Following the demise of their previous group Pantera, brothers Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul Abbott wanted to start a new band. The pair recruited former Diesel Machine and Halford guitarist Patrick Lachman on vocals, and later Bob Zilla on bass. Damageplan released "New Found Power", their only album, on February 10, 2004. "New Found Power" debuted at number 38 on the "Billboard" 200, selling 44,676 copies in its first week.


title: Damageplan

text: While Damageplan was promoting the album at a concert on December 8, 2004 at the Alrosa Villa nightclub in Columbus, Ohio, US, deranged fan Nathan Gale climbed on stage and killed guitarist Dimebag Darrell and three others before being fatally shot by police officer James Niggemeyer. Although no motive was found, some of Gale's friends reported that he believed that Pantera had stolen his lyrics and that its former members were attempting to steal his identity. Damageplan's manager confirmed there are unreleased Damageplan recordings, although they have not surfaced, and the band has been inactive since the incident. Vinnie and Zilla joined the band Hellyeah, and Lachman joined the Mercy Clinic. Vinnie Paul died in 2018.


title: Damageplan

text: By 2003, drummer Vinnie Paul and guitarist Dimebag Darrell were plagued with difficulties that their previous metal band, Pantera, was experiencing. Both described the performance level of Pantera's vocalist, Phil Anselmo, as "hit and miss, depending on what type of chemicals he was on". Following the release of Pantera's 2000 album "Reinventing the Steel" and the subsequent tour, Anselmo and bassist Rex Brown started to focus on their side projects, and did not discuss or record any further Pantera material, while Darrell and Paul wanted to continue to write and play music. Both Abbott brothers thought it was time to move on, and, upon disbanding Pantera, they began writing new material.


title: Damageplan

text: A demo of the song "Crawl" was sent to former Halford guitarist Pat Lachman who auditioned as vocalist. Lachman was hired, and New Found Power was formed in early 2003 with former Jerry Cantrell guitarist Shawn Matthews on bass initially, who was replaced after the album recording with the brothers' tattoo artist, Bob Zilla. When writing music, Paul claimed; "we put no boundaries on it ... we wanted it to be very diverse", and Darrell said "We wanted to stretch out and expand our capabilities to their fullest." The band changed its name to Damageplan and decided to name the first album "New Found Power".


title: Damageplan

text: The single "Save Me" debuted on American radio on January 26, 2004, and the band's debut album, "New Found Power", was released in the United States on February 10. The album was recorded at the brothers' backyard studio, Chasin' Jason, in Arlington, Texas, where previous Pantera albums were also recorded. The Abbott brothers found out that during recording, everyone was willing to contribute and "put 100% effort into it" while with Pantera, but they found it too difficult to have Anselmo in the recording studio. Corey Taylor of Slipknot and Stone Sour, Zakk Wylde of Black Label Society, and Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains made guest appearances on the tracks "Fuck You", "Soul Bleed", and the bonus track "Ashes to Ashes" respectively, and Sterling Winfield handled co-production duties.


title: Damageplan

text: "New Found Power" sold 44,676 copies in its first week to debut at number 38 on the "Billboard" 200. The album received mixed reviews from music critics; Christine Klunk of PopMatters commented "I'm not in the least bit interested in where this band goes or what new and exciting ways they'll think of to abuse the listeners," while Johnny Loftus of AllMusic felt it was a "blazing new beginning".


title: Damageplan

text: Alice in Chains' vocalist/guitarist Jerry Cantrell attended a Thanksgiving party hosted by the Abbott brothers. Darrell and Paul had a demo of the first song they wrote, titled "Ashes to Ashes". Lachman insisted that it was on the "backburner" until Cantrell showed interest. The band entered the Abbott brothers' backyard studio with Cantrell to record "Ashes to Ashes". Although the song was not completed in time to be featured on "New Found Power", it was included on the Japanese version, and for the soundtrack "". To promote "New Found Power", the band toured with Hatebreed, Drowning Pool, and Unearth on the second installment of the Headbangers Ball.


title: Damageplan

text: On December 8, 2004, the band was on a tour at the Alrosa Villa nightclub in Columbus, Ohio. Moments into the concert, Nathan Gale, a deranged 25-year-old ex-marine and fan of the band, climbed onto the stage, drew a 9 mm Beretta 92FS, and shot Dimebag Darrell five times in the head, killing him instantly. The band's head of security Jeffery "Mayhem" Thompson then engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Gale, which allowed Paul and other members to escape. However, Thompson was shot and killed in the ensuing struggle. A fan named Nathan Bray, who attempted to give CPR to Thompson and Darrell, and Erin Halk, a U.S. Marine-turned-roadie who tried to disarm Gale while he was reloading, were both shot and killed as well. Once the police arrived, Columbus Police officer James Niggemeyer approached the stage from behind, and saw Gale holding his weapon to a hostage, who was the band's drum technician. Niggemeyer shot Gale once in the head with a 12-gauge Remington Model 870, killing him instantly. Fifteen shots were fired by Gale, and an additional 36 rounds were found in his possession.


title: Damageplan

text: A police investigation did not find any motive behind the shooting, although Gale's mother stated that he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and that he believed the Abbott brothers had stolen his lyrics while trying to steal his identity. She was unaware if her son took the medication he was given for his condition, but was proud of his military service following his discharge, and had given him the weapon that was used in the shooting. Major Jason Johnston, a Marine Corps spokesman at The Pentagon, was unable to comment on Gale's discharge.


title: Damageplan

text: A foundation called The Dimebag Darrell Memorial Fund was founded after the incident, which donated its profits to cover medical expenses of drum technician John Brooks and tour manager Chris Paluska, who were among those injured during the shooting. A public memorial service for Darrell took place on December 14, 2004 at Arlington Convention Center in Arlington, Texas. Many musicians paid tribute to Darrell on message boards and at live performances.


title: Damageplan

text: In May 2005, Niggemeyer was called before a grand jury, which was convened by the Franklin County prosecutor's office to examine the actions taken on the night of Dimebag Darrell's demise, a standard practice when deadly force is used. The jury found that there was no wrongdoing on Niggemeyer's part. Franklin County prosecutor Ron O'Brien commented, "There was little doubt [the shooting] was lawful, given the 200 eyewitnesses and the circumstances that surrounded the shooting. Nevertheless, we still have an independent body review the facts". Niggemeyer was nominated for a bravery award on the TV show "America's Most Wanted".


title: Damageplan

text: In a 2005 interview, Damageplan manager Paul Bassman said that unreleased recordings before Darrell's death were near completion. He commented, "Vinnie Paul has said there will be a follow-up album down the road, as Dime would have wanted his music to be heard." Rumors circulated of another album, although nothing has been released.


title: Damageplan

text: Following the events since Dimebag Darrell's death, Paul was unsure if he wanted to continue playing music. He was invited to join the band called Hellyeah, which included members of Mudvayne and Nothingface, but declined the offer. However, bassist Jerry repeatedly called Paul, and he accepted to join the project as he thought "Everybody had their head in the right place." Hellyeah released its debut album on April 10, 2007. One week later, Zilla joined the band as its new bassist, after left due to "personal reasons". The album was recorded at Abbott's backyard studio, Chasin' Jason, where "New Found Power" was also recorded.


title: Damageplan

text: Vocalist Lachman joined The Mercy Clinic, which aided the grieving process. He commented, "you have to get back on the horse. You could easily let a decade go by and not do anything. I'm happy to have walked away with my life after the situation I was thrown into. But, I mean, what do you do? I'm a musician. I'm going to make music. What Dime would have told me was, 'You make music, motherfucker. Get back on it. Do what you do.' So, that's what I did." Before the shooting, Phil Anselmo stated in the December 2004 edition of "Metal Hammer" that Dimebag "deserves to be severely beaten". He apologized and said the "severely beaten" comment was a joke, although Paul requested "Metal Hammer" to provide the audio tapes to discern the nature of the comments. Paul concluded that the quote was not a joke and referred to Anselmo as the "master of lies".


title: Damageplan

text: A book titled "A Vulgar Display of Power: Courage and Carnage at the Alrosa Villa" was penned by author Chris Armold. For 14 months, Armold interviewed people and researched the events leading up to December 8, stating "It's not a book about rock stars, but heroes, regular guys who made the ultimate sacrifice." In his research, Armold found no evidence that the comments Anselmo made before Darrell's death had influenced Gale's actions. The book was released in 2007.


title: Damageplan

text: In a 2017 interview with Loudwire, Paul had stated that he had planned to release all unreleased Damageplan recordings at some point in the future, many of which have no vocals. He even stated having some of Dimebag Darrell's favorite musicians, such as Rob Halford of Judas Priest to record vocals for the songs.


title: Damageplan

text: According to Johnny Loftus of AllMusic, Damageplan incorporated elements of traditional heavy metal, post-grunge, metalcore, and death metal. Damageplan's sound has been described as groove metal, nu metal and thrash metal.


title: Damageplan

text: The lyrical process was a collaborative effort consisting of Paul, Darrell, and Lachman. Themes explored on the album included the brothers' experiences, Darrell commented, "the crumbling of one empire and then starting over ... So there are a lot of lyrics about being reborn in a sense, about it being a new day, moving forward, letting go of the past and becoming something new." This is exemplified in the songs "Reborn", "Wake Up", and "Breathing New Life". "Blunt Force Trauma" is about when someone or something comes up behind you when you least expect it, "it could be a situation in your life, it could be a person you know with a beer bottle".


title: Damageplan

text: When writing music, the Abbott brothers suggested guitar riffs and "grooves", while Lachman added his input to modify the song's structure. The band's sound has been described by music critics to be similar to Pantera. Christine Klunk of "PopMatters" disliked the similarities and commented, "aside from a constant, driving rhythm, repetitive riffs, and unintelligible lyrics about (I'm assuming) kicking ass—there's nothing of interest to pay attention to". The song "Breathing New Life" features 180 beats-per-minute bass drum pedaling, what Vik Bansal of MusicOMH described as "exploding into a blaze of riffage and a cool chorus". Bansal was impressed with certain elements of the song such as the switch from downbeat singing to "a big chorus lodged in power chord heaven", and the incorporated groove rhythms. However, he felt Dimebag "borrow[ed]" Anthrax's guitar solo from the song "Only".


title: Grand Rapids Gold

text: The Grand Rapids Gold are an American professional basketball team in the NBA G League based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and are affiliated with the Denver Nuggets. The Gold play their home games at Van Andel Arena. They began play as the Anaheim Arsenal in 2006, before relocating to Springfield, Massachusetts, in 2009, becoming the Springfield Armor. After five seasons in Springfield, the franchise moved to Grand Rapids in 2014 and were subsequently renamed the Grand Rapids Drive, before changing their name again to the Gold in 2021.


title: Grand Rapids Gold

text: The franchise began in 2006 as the Anaheim Arsenal as an expansion team in the NBA Development League (NBA D-League). Based in Anaheim, California, and playing at the Anaheim Convention Center, the Arsenal were an affiliate of the Atlanta Hawks, Los Angeles Clippers, Orlando Magic and Portland Trail Blazers. However, the Arsenal era was mainly marked by futility, never having a winning season or a playoff berth. On March 31, 2009, the Arsenal announced that they would relocate to Springfield, Massachusetts.


title: Grand Rapids Gold

text: On July 29, 2009, it was announced that Dee Brown would become the head coach. On September 2, the Armor picked first in the 2009 NBA Development League Expansion Draft, selecting center Marcus Campbell. The team ended their inaugural 2009–10 season with a record of 7–43 (.140), the worst record in D-League history. They also became the first (and so far only) team to lose every road game, as they went 0–25. No team won less than 20% of their games until the 2019-20 Northern Arizona Suns (.190); the 2020-21 Iowa Wolves broke the dubious record by going 2–13 for a percentage of .133.


title: Grand Rapids Gold

text: During the 2010–11 season, the Armor started by picking fifth in the D-League Draft, and selected La Salle's Vernon Goodridge. The Armor would end up finishing with a record of 13–37, sixth in the seven-team Eastern Conference. After the season, head coach Dee Brown opted to leave the team to join the Detroit Pistons. Brown was replaced soon after by Bob MacKinnon Jr. During the 2010–11 season, the team was an affiliate of the New Jersey Nets, New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers.


title: Grand Rapids Gold

text: For the 2011–12 season, the Armor entered into a single affiliation partnership with the Brooklyn Nets, giving the Nets full control over the basketball operations of and making them the sole affiliate for the Armor. The Nets became the second NBA team to enter into a single affiliation with an NBA D-League team, joining the Houston Rockets and the Rio Grande Valley Vipers.


title: Grand Rapids Gold

text: On April 15, 2014, it was announced that the SSJ Group purchased the Springfield Armor and would relocate the team to Grand Rapids, Michigan for the 2014–15 season. The Grand Rapids franchise would be locally owned and established a single-franchise "hybrid" affiliation with the Detroit Pistons. The affiliation between the Pistons and the Drive was the third between the two cities as the Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League and the Grand Rapids Griffins of the American Hockey League also share an affiliation, as do the Detroit Tigers of the American League and the West Michigan Whitecaps of the Midwest League.


title: Grand Rapids Gold

text: The team launched a name-the-team contest shortly after the formal announcement. The contest produced four finalists: Drive, Chairmen, Horsepower, and Blue Racers. The community was encouraged to vote online in order to determine which of the four names would become the official team name. Out of those names, the Grand Rapids Drive was selected.


title: Grand Rapids Gold

text: On July 29, 2020, the Pistons announced that the organization had officially purchased the Northern Arizona Suns from the Phoenix Suns and were relocating the franchise to Detroit for the 2021–22 season. It was also announced that the affiliation between the Pistons and Drive would end after the 2020–21 season. The ownership of the Drive were stated as looking for an option to continue operations once the affiliation was set to end of after the 2020–21 season. The Drive would be one of several G League teams to opt out of the single-site shortened season held in Orlando. On January 8, 2021, the Drive stated they were negotiating with a new affiliate and could include a new name and logo.


title: Grand Rapids Gold

text: On April 27, 2021, the Drive announced a new affiliation agreement with the Denver Nuggets. As part of the new affiliation, the Drive were rebranded as the Grand Rapids Gold, with the name, logo and color scheme announced on July 7. The organization operates under a hybrid model with the Nuggets controlling the basketball operations and SSJ Group, with Steve Jbara as owner and president, controlling the team's business operations and community engagement. On August 19, the Gold named Jason Terry as its new head coach.


title: Grand Rapids Gold

text: With the DeltaPlex Arena set to close before the start of the 2022-23 season, the Gold announced on June 2, 2022 that they had signed a five-year lease with Van Andel Arena to serve as their new home.


title: Charlie Haas

text: Charles Doyle Haas II (born March 27, 1972) is an American professional and former amateur wrestler. He is best known for his time in World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) from 2000-2009 and Ring of Honor (ROH) from 2010-2013. In WWE he was a member of Team Angle, which later became a Tag Team duo with Shelton Benjamin known as "The World's Greatest Tag Team".


title: Charlie Haas

text: Haas was an amateur wrestler in high school, and attended Seton Hall University on a wrestling scholarship, before becoming a stockbroker. He became a professional wrestler in 1996, and regularly teamed with his brother, Russ, with the two winning numerous championships on the independent circuit, including the CZW World Tag Team Championship and the JAPW Tag Team Championship. After signing contracts with WWE, The Haas Brothers were assigned to WWE's developmental territories, where they won the MCW Southern Tag Team Championship on three occasions. After Russ died in 2001 due to a heart attack, Haas began wrestling in singles competition, winning the HWA Heavyweight Championship once.


title: Charlie Haas

text: Haas formed a team with Shelton Benjamin and the two debuted on "SmackDown" in December 2002. They won the WWE Tag Team Championship twice, and dubbed themselves The World's Greatest Tag Team before they split in 2004. Haas won the WWE Tag Team Championship once more with Rico, and gained Miss Jackie, whom he later married, as a valet. Haas then transferred into singles competition before being released from WWE in 2005. After a short stint in Jersey All Pro Wrestling (JAPW) and other independent promotions, Haas was re-signed to WWE in April 2006. He formed a short-lived team with Viscera, before reforming the World's Greatest Tag Team with Benjamin. After Benjamin transferred to the ECW brand, Haas began wrestling with a comical luchador persona, before developing a character where he imitated other wrestlers and WWE Hall of Famers. In addition, Haas won the last match on "WWE Heat" when the show ended on May 30, 2008.


title: Charlie Haas

text: Haas was released from WWE in February 2010. He soon returned to the independent circuit, including returning to JAPW and appearing for Ring of Honor. In September 2010, he won the NWA Texas Heavyweight Championship. On April 1, 2011, Haas and Benjamin won the ROH World Tag Team Championship and held it until December 2011. Haas announced his retirement from professional wrestling in March 2013, but returned to competition in August that same year. Aside from wrestling, Haas and his then-wife Jackie ran a nutritional store, Custom Muscle Nutrition and Smoothie Shop, in Frisco, Texas, which they opened in October 2008 but has since closed.


title: Charlie Haas

text: After debuting in 1996 as a professional wrestler, Haas regularly teamed with his brother Russ for numerous independent promotions. On July 22, 1998, The Haas Brothers won the Jersey All Pro Wrestling Tag Team Championship by defeating The Skin Head Express. They lost it to The Nation of Immigration just over a month later on August 25. They won the championship for the second time on May 21, 1999, by defeating The Big Unit (Rick Silver and Dave Desire), and held the championship until February 25, 2000 when they were defeated by Da Hit Squad. During 2000 they also held the Pennsylvania Championship Wrestling Tag Team Championship and the ECWA Tag Team Championship in the East Coast Wrestling Association promotion, which they won by defeating The Backseat Boyz (Trent Acid and Johnny Kashmere).


title: Charlie Haas

text: The Haas brothers began competing for Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW) in November 1999, losing to The King Pinz at "The War Begins" on November 20, 1999. They competed regularly for CZW throughout early 2000, and won the CZW World Tag Team Championship on February 12 at "Climbing The Ladder" by defeating The Kashmerino Brothers and The Thrill Kill Kult in a three-way match. On July 10, they lost the championship to The Backseat Boyz at "Caged To The End", when Johnny Kashmere defeated Russ in a singles match and was awarded the championship.


title: Charlie Haas

text: After a World Wrestling Federation (WWF) tryout match at Madison Square Garden on August 7, 2000, they signed a developmental contract with WWF. The two worked their way through the tag ranks in the WWF's developmental territories, Memphis Championship Wrestling (MCW) and the Heartland Wrestling Association (HWA). The brothers won the MCW Southern Tag Team Championship three times during early 2001, defeating The Dupps the first time and The Island Boyz and Joey Matthews and Christian York in a three-way match on both the second and third occasions. Russ died from a heart attack due to a pre-existing heart condition, on December 15, 2001 at age 27. The brothers fought in house shows and dark matches in the WWF up until Russ died. After Russ' death, Charlie continue to fight in dark matches. After Russ' death as a tribute to him, Haas wrote Russ' name on his wrist tape, and used the name "R.C. Haas" (standing for Russ–Charlie) before being called up to the main WWE roster. On January 2, 2002, Haas won the HWA Heavyweight Championship, his first singles championship, by defeating Val Venis. He was later stripped of the title on January 29 due to a scripted contract loophole. After World Wrestling Entertainment (renamed from the WWF) ended its affiliation with the HWA, Haas was moved to Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) where he competed until December 2002.


title: Charlie Haas

text: Haas debuted on WWE's main roster on the December 26, 2002 episode of "SmackDown!" as a heel (villainous character) along with Shelton Benjamin as Team Angle. The tag team was the "contingency plan" of Paul Heyman, and were intended to help WWE Champion Kurt Angle retain his title, attacking Chris Benoit and Brock Lesnar in an attempt to soften them up. They quickly won the WWE Tag Team Championship on February 6, 2003, by defeating Los Guerreros (Eddie and Chavo Guerrero Jr.). They held the championship for three months, including a successful title defense at WrestleMania XIX against Los Guerreros and the team of Chris Benoit and Rhyno, before losing the championship to Eddie Guerrero and his new partner Tajiri in a ladder match on May 18 at Judgment Day. On the June 12 episode of "SmackDown!", Angle fired Haas and Benjamin after they blamed him for losing the Tag Team Championship and began to question his leadership. The duo then dubbed themselves The World's Greatest Tag Team, although announcers made sure to add "Self Proclaimed" to the name. Haas and Benjamin regained the championship from Guerrero and Tajiri on the July 3 episode of "SmackDown!", but lost it to the reformed Los Guerreros on September 18. The team was separated when Benjamin was moved to the Raw brand as part of the 2004 Draft Lottery.


title: Charlie Haas

text: After Benjamin's draft, Haas turned into a fan favorite and gained Miss Jackie as a valet. He teamed with Rico to win the WWE Tag Team Championship on April 22, 2004. The pair lost the championship to the Dudley Boyz on June 17, and shortly afterwards, Haas became a singles wrestler, although he retained Miss Jackie as his valet. Haas lost a match to Luther Reigns at the Great American Bash.


title: Charlie Haas

text: Haas was later involved in an angle in which he was in a love triangle with Miss Jackie, who was acknowledged on-screen as his fiancée, and Dawn Marie. The storyline culminated when Haas served as the special-guest referee in a match at Armageddon between the two women. After the match, Haas left both women in storyline, although he continued his relationship with Miss Jackie off-screen. In early 2005, he formed a tag team with Hardcore Holly. They were involved in a feud (scripted rivalry) with MNM for the WWE Tag Team Championship, but never won the championship.


title: Charlie Haas

text: On July 8, 2005, Haas was released by World Wrestling Entertainment along with his real-life wife Jackie Gayda.


title: Charlie Haas

text: He returned to JAPW later in July 2005, and began a feud for the JAPW Heavyweight Championship with Jay Lethal. On September 10 at "JAPW Haas of Pain", Lethal defeated Haas to retain his title. In JAPW, on October 27, 2007, Haas was inducted along with his late brother Russ into the first class of the Jersey All Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame.


title: Charlie Haas

text: He won the New Legacy Championship at "Ballpark Brawl V" on August 13, 2005, defeating then-champion Christopher Daniels and Chris Sabin in a triple threat match. He successfully defended the title the next night at "Ballpark Brawl VI" against Harry Smith with Mick Foley as a referee.


title: Charlie Haas

text: During his time back in the independent circuit, Haas competed in the East Coast Wrestling Association's (ECWA) Super 8 Tournament in 2006, where he advanced all the way to the finals before losing to Davey Richards.


title: Charlie Haas

text: Haas returned to WWE in 2006, appearing on the April 17, 2006, episode of "Raw" as Rob Van Dam's handpicked opponent for his former partner, Shelton Benjamin. Haas defeated Benjamin in the ensuing match. Haas continued to wrestle on the lower midcard spot, becoming a regular fixture on "Heat".


title: Charlie Haas

text: On the June 5, 2006 episode of "Raw", Haas inadvertently knocked Lilian Garcia off the ring apron as he was entering the ring. It was announced on WWE's official website that as a result, Garcia suffered a sprained wrist. As a result of the legitimate accident, Haas began a feud with Garcia's onetime storyline love interest Viscera. Haas made advances towards Garcia, at one point forcefully kissing her and then dropping her to the ground. Haas and Viscera continued to fight for Garcia's affection in the ring, until she told them both that she wanted to be "just friends". Haas gave Viscera an eye rake in anger, and a blinded Viscera accidentally gave Garcia a Samoan drop. Though it was unintentional, when both Haas and Viscera had seen what had happened to their now former love interest, they simply had a laugh about it, thus making Haas a villain. After that, Viscera and Haas became a tag team, competing on both "Raw" and "Heat" until splitting in December 2006.


title: Charlie Haas

text: After Shelton Benjamin won a match against Super Crazy on the December 4, 2006, edition of "Raw", Haas came out to celebrate his win with a bewildered Benjamin. Haas and Benjamin announced the return of The World's Greatest Tag Team on the December 11, 2006 edition of "Raw", and they defeated The Highlanders in their return match. They then started a feud with Cryme Tyme. They continued to compete on "Raw" through the start of 2007, facing teams including John Cena and Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair and Carlito. In mid-2007, The World's Greatest Tag Team feuded briefly with The Hardys in storyline; at the One Night Stand pay-per-view on June 3, 2007, they challenged The Hardys for the World Tag Team Championship in a ladder match but were unsuccessful. The team broke up once again when Benjamin moved to the ECW brand on November 20, 2007.


title: Charlie Haas

text: Early in 2008, Haas developed a gimmick in which he would go under the ring in the middle of his matches and re-emerge wearing a mask. In this "alter-ego", Haas would sometimes perform luchador-esque maneuvers in a comical fashion (such as attempting a diving splash, but instead landing on his feet and hitting a standing splash). The opponent would often unmask Haas mid-match, returning him to his normal demeanor. During this persona, Haas usually competed in dark matches before the live broadcast of "Raw" or on "Heat".


title: Charlie Haas

text: Beginning in late August, Haas turned into a face and began a storyline in which he began to impersonate other wrestlers, a concept created by John Laurinaitis, a WWE executive. His first match on August 25, 2008 under this gimmick was a loss to Carlito's real-life brother Primo Colón, while Haas was parodying Carlito with the name "Charlito". He has portrayed such superstars as John Cena, John "Bradshaw" Layfield, Jim Ross, The Great Khali, Montel Vontavious Porter, legends such as Stone Cold Steve Austin, Bret Hart, "Mr. Perfect" Curt Hennig, Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka, Rowdy Roddy Piper, the Undertaker, Hulk Hogan and even WWE Diva Beth Phoenix for which he won a Slammy Award.


title: Charlie Haas

text: On April 15, 2009, Haas was drafted to the SmackDown brand as part of the 2009 Supplemental Draft. On the May 8, 2009 episode of "SmackDown", Haas made his in-ring return to the brand as a heel, abandoning his persona of imitating other wrestlers, and losing to John Morrison in a match where he was accompanied by his former World's Greatest Tag Team partner, Shelton Benjamin. The following week on the May 15, 2009 episode of "SmackDown", Benjamin and Haas unofficially reunited and competed against John Morrison and CM Punk in a losing effort, but Benjamin was traded to the ECW brand in June.


title: Charlie Haas

text: On July 24, 2009 episode of "SmackDown", Haas competed against R-Truth in a losing effort. The following week, on July 31, 2009 episode of "SmackDown", he competed against The Great Khali, ending in a no-contest due to Kane being involved in the match by attacking Ranjin Singh at Khali's corner.


title: Charlie Haas

text: After an absence of several months, Haas made his return to television by teaming with Mike Knox in a losing effort against Cryme Tyme on the December 31, 2009 episode of "Superstars". This marked Haas’ last match in WWE.


title: Charlie Haas

text: On March 20, 2010, Haas made a surprise return to Jersey All Pro Wrestling and defeated Devon Moore for the JAPW New Jersey State Championship. On May 22 Haas and JAPW Heavyweight Champion Dan Maff put their titles on the line in a tag team match against the Hillbilly Wrecking Crew (Brodie Lee and Necro Butcher). In the end, Maff turned on Haas and hit him with a chair, after which Lee pinned him to win the JAPW New Jersey State Championship.


title: Charlie Haas

text: On September 10, 2010, Haas won the NWA Texas Heavyweight Championship by defeating Michael Faith in Amarillo. In May 2011, Haas took part in New Japan Pro-Wrestling's first tour of the United States, the Invasion Tour 2011. In their opening show on May 13 in Rahway, New Jersey, Haas teamed with Rhyno in a tag team main event, where they defeated IWGP Heavyweight Champion Hiroshi Tanahashi and Togi Makabe. The following day in New York City, Haas unsuccessfully challenged Tanahashi for his title. On August 20, 2011, Haas became the inaugural Family Wrestling Entertainment (FWE) Heavyweight Champion by defeating Jay Lethal and Eric Young. He held the championship for four months before losing it to Young on December 17.


title: Charlie Haas

text: On September 11, 2010, Haas and Shelton Benjamin made their debut as Wrestling's Greatest Tag Team in Ring of Honor (ROH) losing to The Kings of Wrestling at the Glory By Honor IX pay-per-view. They returned to ROH at the "Ring of Honor Wrestling" television tapings on December 9, where they defeated the Bravado Brothers (Harlem and Lance). The following day, at the second set of television tapings, Haas and Benjamin defeated the All-Night Xpress of Kenny King and Rhett Titus, and participated in an eight-man tag team match, teaming with the Briscoe Brothers against the Kings of Wrestling and the All-Night Xpress, which ended in a no contest. At the Final Battle 2010 pay-per-view on December 18, Haas and Benjamin announced they would be wrestling regularly for ROH in 2011. At the following pay-per-view, 9th Anniversary Show, on February 26, 2011, Haas and Benjamin defeated the Briscoe Brothers in the main event of the evening to earn another shot at the Kings of Wrestling and the ROH World Tag Team Championship. On April 1, at the first night of the Honor Takes Center Stage pay-per-view, Haas and Benjamin defeated the Kings of Wrestling to win the ROH World Tag Team Championship. On June 26 at Best in the World 2011, Haas and Benjamin successfully defended the ROH World Tag Team Championship in a four-way match against the Briscoe Brothers, the Kings of Wrestling and the All-Night Express. The following day ROH announced that both Haas and Benjamin had signed contracts with the promotion. At Final Battle 2011, Haas and Benjamin lost the ROH World Tag Team Championship to the Briscoes despite severely attacking them before the match started, turning them into villainous characters. On May 12, 2012, at Border Wars, Haas and Benjamin regained the ROH World Tag Team Championship from the Briscoe Brothers. On June 24 at Best in the World 2012, Haas and Benjamin lost the title to Kenny King and Rhett Titus. Shortly after their loss, Benjamin was suspended in storyline, to explain his absence while wrestling in Japan. Benjamin returned at the Death Before Dishonor X pay-per-view, accompanying Haas and Rhett Titus in a tag team championship match. Following Death Before Dishonor, Haas and Benjamin would continue to feud with Titus and his new tag team partner B. J. Whitmer defeating them at Glory By Honor XI. They defeated them again in a street fight at , where Haas won the match after sent BJ against a table. On February 2, 2013, Haas turned on Benjamin during an ROH World Tag Team Championship match against the Briscoe Brothers. He continued his feud with BJ, fighting in the 11th Anniversary Show in a No Holds Barred Match. BJ won the match when the referee stopped the match.


title: Charlie Haas

text: On March 30, 2013, Haas announced his retirement from professional wrestling, which coincided with him leaving Ring of Honor. He returned to the ring several months later.


title: Charlie Haas

text: At JAPW 18th Anniversary Show in November 2014, Haas, Benjamin, and Angle reunited, as Team Angle, for the first time in 11 years. In the main event, Benjamin and Haas defeated Chris Sabin and Teddy Hart.


title: Charlie Haas

text: At NWA Parade Of Champions 2K16 in March 2016 Haas was defeated by the NWA World Heavyweight Champion Jax Dane


title: Charlie Haas

text: In 2020, after a two year retirement, Haas began to work with SWE Fury. He would defeat Tim Storm for the SWE Heavyweight Championship on February 6, 2021 in Irving, Texas.


title: Charlie Haas

text: On the January 13, 2022 episode of "Impact!", Haas made his Impact Wrestling debut by challenging Josh Alexander to a match. The following week on "Impact!!", Haas lost to Alexander, and after the match, they embraced in the middle of the ring.


title: Charlie Haas

text: Haas married fellow professional wrestler Jackie Gayda in 2005. The couple have four children. In December 2020, Haas announced that he and Gayda were divorced.


title: Charlie Haas

text: Haas competed in amateur wrestling during high school, and for Seton Hall University, where he attended on a wrestling scholarship. He also has various other awards for wrestling from high school. Haas was a two-time Big East Champion at Seton Hall and graduated with a degree in economics and business. He then became a stockbroker with Goldman Sachs. According to Haas via the Q&A section on his website, he is a devout Christian. Following the death of his brother, Haas has wrestled with Russ (his brother's name) written on his wrist tape as a tribute. Since 2002 he has maintained a close friendship with his longtime tag team partner Shelton Benjamin, who he often refers to as his "brother." Benjamin served as Haas's best man at his wedding to Gayda and was the godfather to Haas' oldest daughter.


title: Charlie Haas

text: His grandfather Hugh Devore, was an assistant with the Houston Oilers and a former Head Coach of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Haas' brother Russ was also a professional wrestler, until his death in 2001 due to a heart attack.


title: Charlie Haas

text: In 2008, Haas and Gayda opened the "Custom Muscle Nutrition and Smoothie Shop", a nutritional store, in Frisco, Texas.


title: Book of Ezra

text: The Book of Ezra is a book of the Hebrew Bible; which formerly included the Book of Nehemiah in a single book, commonly distinguished in scholarship as Ezra–Nehemiah. The two became separated with the first printed rabbinic bibles of the early 16th century, following late medieval Latin Christian tradition. Composed in Hebrew and Aramaic, its subject is the Return to Zion following the close of the Babylonian captivity, and it is divided into two parts, the first telling the story of the first return of exiles in the first year of Cyrus the Great (538 BC) and the completion and dedication of the new Temple in Jerusalem in the sixth year of Darius I (515 BC), the second telling of the subsequent mission of Ezra to Jerusalem and his struggle to purify the Jews from marriage with non-Jews. Together with the Book of Nehemiah, it represents the final chapter in the historical narrative of the Hebrew Bible.


title: Book of Ezra

text: Ezra is written to fit a schematic pattern in which the God of Israel inspires a king of Persia to commission a leader from the Jewish community to carry out a mission; three successive leaders carry out three such missions, the first rebuilding the Temple, the second purifying the Jewish community, and the third sealing the holy city itself behind a wall. (This last mission, that of Nehemiah, is not part of the Book of Ezra.) The theological program of the book explains the many problems its chronological structure presents. It probably appeared in its earliest version around 399 BC, and continued to be revised and edited for several centuries before being accepted as scriptural in the early Christian era.


title: Book of Ezra

text: The Book of Ezra consists of ten chapters: chapters 1–6, covering the period from the Cyrus the Great to the dedication of the Second Temple, are told in the third person; chapters 7–10, dealing with the mission of Ezra, are told largely in the first person. The book contains several documents presented as historical inclusions, written in Aramaic while the surrounding text is in Hebrew (1:2–4, 4:8–16, 4:17–22, 5:7–17, 6:3–5, 6:6–12, 7:12–26)


title: Book of Ezra

text: In the early 6th century BC, the Kingdom of Judah rebelled against the Neo-Babylonian Empire and was destroyed. As a result, the royal court, the priests, the prophets and scribes were taken into captivity in the city of Babylon. There a profound intellectual revolution took place, the exiles blaming their fate on disobedience to their God and looking forward to a future when he would allow a purified people to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. The same period saw the rapid rise of Persia, previously an unimportant kingdom in present-day southern Iran, to a position of great power, and in 539 BC Cyrus II, the Persian ruler, conquered Babylon.


title: Book of Ezra

text: It is difficult to describe the parties and politics of Judea in this period because of the lack of historical sources, but there seem to have been three important groups involved: the returnees from the exile who claimed the reconstruction with the support of Cyrus II; "the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin"; and a third group, "people of the land", who seem to be local opposition against the returnees building the Temple in Jerusalem.


title: Book of Ezra

text: The following table is a guide to major events in the region during the period covered by the Book of Ezra:


title: Book of Ezra

text: The single Hebrew book Ezra–Nehemiah, with title "Ezra", was translated into Greek around the middle of the 2nd century BC. The Septuagint calls Esdras B to Ezra–Nehemiah and Esdras A to 1 Esdras respectively; and this usage is noted by the early Christian scholar Origen, who remarked that the Hebrew 'book of Ezra' might then be considered a 'double' book. Jerome, writing in the early 5th century, noted that this duplication had since been adopted by Greek and Latin Christians. Jerome himself rejected the duplication in his Vulgate translation of the Bible into Latin from the Hebrew; and consequently all early Vulgate manuscripts present Ezra-Nehemiah as a single book. However, from the 9th century onwards, Latin bibles are found that for the first time separate the Ezra and Nehemiah sections of Ezra-Nehemiah as two distinct books, then called the first and second books of Ezra; and this becomes standard in the Paris Bibles of the 13th century. It was not until 1516/17, in the first printed Rabbinic Bible of Daniel Bomberg that the separation was introduced generally in Hebrew Bibles.


title: Book of Ezra

text: 1 Esdras, also known as "Esdras α", is an alternate Greek-language version of Ezra. This text has one additional section, the 'Tale of the Three Guardsmen' in the middle of Ezra 4. 1 Esdras (3 Esdras in the Vulgate) was considered apocryphal by Jerome.


title: Book of Ezra

text: Koresh of Ezra 1:1 is called "king of Persia", which title was introduced not by Cyrus the Great but by his grandson and probable namesake Xerxes (486–465 BC).


title: Book of Ezra

text: Scholars are divided over the chronological sequence of the activities of Ezra and Nehemiah. Ezra 7:8 says that Ezra arrived in Jerusalem in the seventh year of king Artaxerxes, while Nehemiah 2:1–9 has Nehemiah arriving in Artaxerxes' twentieth year. If this was Artaxerxes I (465–424 BC), then Ezra arrived in 458 and Nehemiah in 445 BC. Nehemiah 8–9, in which the two (possibly by editorial error) appear together, supports this scenario.


title: Book of Ezra

text: The contents of Ezra–Nehemiah are structured in a theological rather than chronological order: "The Temple must come first, then the purifying of the community, then the building of the outer walls of the city, and so finally all could reach a grand climax in the reading of the law."


title: Book of Ezra

text: The narrative follows a repeating pattern in which the God of Israel "stirs up" the king of Persia to commission a Jewish leader (Zerubbabel, Ezra, Nehemiah) to undertake a mission; the leader completes his mission in the face of opposition; and success is marked by a great assembly. The tasks of the three leaders are progressive: first the Temple is restored (Zerubabbel), then the community of Israel (Ezra), and finally the walls which will separate the purified community and Temple from the outside world (Nehemiah). The pattern is completed with a final coda in which Nehemiah restores the belief of Yahweh. This concern with a schematic pattern-making, rather than with history in the modern sense of a factual account of events in the order in which they occurred, explains the origin of the many problems which surround both Ezra and Nehemiah as historical sources.


title: Book of Ezra

text: Twentieth-century views on the composition of Ezra revolved around whether the author was Ezra himself (and who may have also authored the Books of Chronicles) or was another author or authors (who also wrote the Chronicles). More recently it has been increasingly recognised that Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles all have extremely complex histories stretching over many stages of editing, and most scholars now are cautious of assuming a unified composition with a single theology and point of view. As an indication of the many layers of editing which Ezra has undergone, one recent study finds that Ezra 1–6 and Ezra 9–10 were originally separate documents, that they were spliced together at a later stage by the authors of Ezra 7–8, and that all have undergone extensive later editing.


title: Book of Ezra

text: Seven purported Persian decrees of kings or letters to and from high officials are quoted in Ezra. Their authenticity has been contentious; while some scholars accept them in their current form, most accept only part of them as genuine, while still others reject them entirely. L.L. Grabbe surveys six tests against which the documents can be measured (comparative known Persian material, linguistic details, contents, presence of Jewish theology, the Persian attitude to local religions, and Persian letter-writing formulas) and concludes that all the documents are late post-Persian works and probable forgeries, but that some features suggest a genuine Persian correspondence behind some of them.


title: In hoc signo vinces

text: "In hoc signo vinces" (, ) is a Latin phrase conventionally translated into English as "In this sign thou shalt conquer".


title: In hoc signo vinces

text: The Latin phrase itself renders, rather loosely, the Greek phrase "", transliterated as ""en toútōi níka"" (, ), literally meaning "in this, conquer".


title: In hoc signo vinces

text: Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius was an early Christian author (c. 240 – c. 320) who became an advisor to the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine I (and tutor to his son), guiding the Emperor's religious policy as it developed during his reign. His work "De Mortibus Persecutorum" has an apologetic character, but has been treated as a work of history by Christian writers. Here Lactantius preserves the story of Constantine's vision of the Chi Rho before his conversion to Christianity. The full text is found in only one manuscript, which bears the title, "Lucii Caecilii liber ad Donatum Confessorem de Mortibus Persecutorum".


title: In hoc signo vinces

text: The bishop Eusebius of Caesaria, a historian, states that Constantine was marching with his army (Eusebius does not specify the actual location of the event, but it is clearly not in the camp at Rome), when he looked up to the sun and saw a cross of light above it, and with it the Greek words "(ἐν) τούτῳ νίκα" ("In this, conquer"), a phrase often rendered into Latin as "in hoc signo vinces" ("in this sign, you will conquer").


title: In hoc signo vinces

text: At first, Constantine did not know the meaning of the apparition, but on the following night, he had a dream in which Christ explained to him that he should use the sign of the cross against his enemies. Eusebius then continues to describe the Labarum, the military standard used by Constantine in his later wars against Licinius, showing the Chi-Rho sign. The accounts by Lactantius and Eusebius, though not entirely consistent, have been connected to the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (312 AD), having merged into a popular notion of Constantine seeing the Chi-Rho sign on the evening before the battle.


title: In hoc signo vinces

text: The phrase appears prominently placed as a motto on a ribbon unfurled with a passion cross to its left, beneath a window over the Scala Regia, adjacent to the equestrian statue of Emperor Constantine, in the Vatican. Emperors and other monarchs, having paid respects to the Pope, descended the Scala Regia, and would observe the light shining down through the window, with the motto, reminiscent of Constantine's vision, and be reminded to follow the Cross.


title: Daniel Daly

text: Daniel Joseph Daly (November 11, 1873 – April 27, 1937) was a United States Marine and one of nineteen U.S. servicemen to have been awarded the Medal of Honor twice. He earned his first Medal of Honor during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, and the second in Haiti in 1915. Daly and Major General Smedley Butler are the only Marines who earned two Medals of Honor in two separate actions.


title: Daniel Daly

text: In World War I, Daly became further entrenched in Marine Cops lore when he is said to have yelled, "Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?" to his company before charging the Germans at the Battle of Belleau Wood. Butler described Daly as "the fightingest Marine I ever knew...It was an object lesson to have served with him."


title: Daniel Daly

text: Daly's Medals of Honor are on display at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia.


title: Daniel Daly

text: Daniel Joseph Daly was born on November 11, 1873, in Glen Cove, New York, on Long Island. He spent his youth in New York City, working as a newsboy among other jobs. Despite his slight build— tall and weighing —Daly occasionally fought as a semi-pro boxer.


title: Daniel Daly

text: Daly enlisted in the United States Marine Corps on January 10, 1899, at the age of 25. His first posting was with the Asiatic Fleet aboard the cruiser USS "Newark". In 1900, the fleet arrived in China during the Boxer Rebellion. On July 15, 1900, Private Daly and his commanding officer, Captain Newt H. Hall, set out to reconnoiter a position while under siege by the Boxers. A working party, scheduled to follow to construct defenses, never arrived. While Captain Hall returned for the working party, Daly single-handedly fought off a furious Boxer attack on the position, an action which earned him his first Medal of Honor.


title: Daniel Daly

text: After serving in China, Daly saw duty on various ships in the Pacific and Caribbean areas, and saw action in the Philippines and the Banana Wars. He also trained recruits, gained a reputation as an excellent boxer, and rose to the rank of gunnery sergeant. On March 14, 1911, Daly was aboard the USS "Springfield" when he spotted a gasoline fire that was spreading toward the ship's magazine. He successfully extinguished the fire, ensuring the safety of the ship's 500 crewmen, but spent several weeks hospitalized with severe burns. Daly received commendations from both the Secretary of the Navy and the Commandant of the Marine Corps for his actions.


title: Daniel Daly

text: Daly earned his second Medal of Honor in Haiti with the U.S. Marines supporting the Haitian government in a fight against Cacos insurgents. On the night of October 24, 1915, during the Battle of Fort Dipitie, Gunnery Sergeant Daly was on patrol with a detachment of three squads of the 15th Company, 2nd Marine Regiment, under the command of Major Smedley Butler. The Marines were ambushed by a force of some 400 Cacos while crossing a river, and the horse carring their machine gun was killed, its carcass sinking to the riverbed. With the battle raging throughout the night, Daly repeatedly dove to the bottom of the river until he located the horse, freed the machine gun from its restraints, and carried the of weaponry a mile back to the Marines' position. Later, rearmed and with Daly in command of one of the squads, the Marines regrouped and scattered the Cacos.


title: Daniel Daly

text: Daly's service in World War I began November 4, 1917, initially fighting in Toulon and Aisne. During the Battle of Belleau Wood in June 1918, Daly served as the first sergeant of 73rd Company, 6th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Brigade, attached to the U.S. Army's 2nd Infantry Division. One June 1, the regiment was placed in a gap in the line left by the French 43rd Division, with the intent to stop the German advance toward Paris. The Marines drove back an attack by the German 28th Division on June 2. On June 5, Daly extinguished a fire in an ammunition dump at Lucy-le-Bocage. On June 6, the Marines went on the offensive. The Germans were entrenched in the woods, separated from the Marines by of open wheat field. Facing 1,200 Germans with 200 machine guns, the 73rd Company was pinned down by intense fire. As the Marines took cover at nightfall, Daly walked openly to each of his machine gun positions, coordinating and reassuring his men. On June 10, a German machine gun unit advanced close to Daly's position. Daly immediately charged the weapon, destroying it with three grendades, shot the unit's commanding officer with his .45 caliber pistol, and took its remaining 14 soldiers prisoner. The same day, he evacuated the wounded under fire. For his actions from June 5–10, Daly was awarded the Navy Cross, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the French Médaille militaire. By the battle's end, Daly had suffered a bullet wound in the shoulder and two shrapnel wounds in the leg.


title: Daniel Daly

text: Daly left active duty for the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1919, and officially retired on February 6, 1929 at the rank of sergeant major.


title: Daniel Daly

text: According to Marine Corps lore, Daly rallied his men at Belleau Wood by yelling, "Come on, you sons-o'-bitches, do you want to live forever?" This quote first appeared in "And They Thought We Wouldn't Fight", a 1918 memoir by war correspondent Floyd Gibbons of "The Chicago Tribune". Gibbons, who was attached to Major Benjamin Berry's 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, attributed the line to an unnamed gunnery sergeant in that unit. Popular legend eventually credited Daly with the rallying cry, despite discrepancies in the story—Daly was a first sergeant, not a gunnery sergeant, and he was a member of the 6th Marine Regiment, not the 5th. Historian Alan Axelrod stated that "nobody has been found who actually heard [Daly] say it." Nevertheless, Daly's story at Belleau Wood—incorporating the quote—was one of six short films in "The Rothapfel Unit", a motion picture directed by Samuel L. Rothapfel and released in May 1919, less than a year after the battle.


title: Daniel Daly

text: For his part, Daly told a Marine Corps historian that he yelled, "For Christ's sake, men—"come on!" Do you want to live forever?" Regardless of the wording or source, the quotation has become firmly entrenched in Marine Corps lore, with Axelrod noting that the details do not "diminish the reality the legend is based on."


title: Daniel Daly

text: After leaving the Marines, Daly lived a quiet life with his sister in New York, working as a bank guard and avoiding publicity. He died of a heart attack in Glendale, Queens, New York on April 27, 1937, aged 63. He is buried at Cypress Hills National Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.


title: Daniel Daly

text: On November 10, 2005, the United States Postal Service issued its "Distinguished Marines" stamps in which Daly was honored, along with three other Marine Corps heroes. Besides Daly, these stamps honored John Basilone, John A. Lejeune, and Chesty Puller.


title: Daniel Daly

text: Daly's decorations and medals includes two Medals of Honor; the Navy Cross; Distinguished Service Cross; three Letters of Commendation; Good Conduct Medal with two bronze stars; China Relief Expedition Medal; Philippine Campaign Medal; Expeditionary Medal with one bronze star; Mexican Service Medal; Haitian Campaign Medal; World War I Victory Medal with Aisne, St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne, and Defensive-Sector clasps and Citation Star; Médaille militaire; Croix de Guerre with Palm; and the Fourragère. The last three awards are from the French government. Only the Croix de Guerre is authorized for wear by U.S. personnel. A special exception is made for Marines assigned to the 5th and 6th Marine Regiments; they are permitted to wear the Fourragère with their service and dress coats or jackets.


title: Daniel Daly

text: In 1932 the Silver Citation Star became the Silver Star, a full sized decoration. All personnel awarded the Silver Citation Star were authorized to wear the Silver Star, the USA's third highest decoration for heroism in combat.


title: Curve25519

text: In cryptography, Curve25519 is an elliptic curve used in elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) offering 128 bits of security (256-bit key size) and designed for use with the elliptic curve Diffie–Hellman (ECDH) key agreement scheme. It is one of the fastest curves in ECC, and is not covered by any known patents. The reference implementation is public domain software.


title: Curve25519

text: The original Curve25519 paper defined it as a Diffie–Hellman (DH) function. Daniel J. Bernstein has since proposed that the name Curve25519 be used for the underlying curve, and the name X25519 for the DH function.


title: Curve25519

text: The curve used is formula_1, a Montgomery curve, over the prime field defined by the prime number formula_2, and it uses the base point formula_3. This point generates a cyclic subgroup whose order is the prime formula_4, this subgroup has a co-factor of formula_5, meaning the number of elements in the subgroup is formula_6 that of the elliptic curve group. Using a prime order subgroup prevents mounting a Pohlig–Hellman algorithm attack.


title: Curve25519

text: The protocol uses compressed elliptic point (only "X" coordinates), so it allows efficient use of the Montgomery ladder for ECDH, using only "XZ" coordinates.


title: Curve25519

text: Curve25519 is constructed such that it avoids many potential implementation pitfalls. By design, it is immune to timing attacks and it accepts any 32-byte string as a valid public key and does not require validating that a given point belongs to the curve, or is generated by the base point.


title: Curve25519

text: The curve is birationally equivalent to a twisted Edwards curve used in the Ed25519 signature scheme.


title: Curve25519

text: In 2013, interest began to increase considerably when it was discovered that the NSA had potentially implemented a backdoor into the P-256 curve based Dual_EC_DRBG algorithm. While not directly related, suspicious aspects of the NIST's P curve constants led to concerns that the NSA had chosen values that gave them an advantage in breaking the encryption.


title: Curve25519

text: Since 2013, Curve25519 has become the "de facto" alternative to P-256, being used in a wide variety of applications. Starting in 2014, OpenSSH defaults to Curve25519-based ECDH and GnuPG adds support for Ed25519 keys for signing and encryption. Behavior for general SSH protocol is still being standardized as of 2018.


title: Curve25519

text: In 2017, NIST announced that Curve25519 and Curve448 would be added to Special Publication 800-186, which specifies approved elliptic curves for use by the US Federal Government. Both are described in RFC 7748. A 2019 draft of "FIPS 186-5" notes the intention to allow usage of Ed25519 for digital signatures. A 2019 draft of Special Publication 800-186 notes the intention to allow usage of Curve25519.


title: Curve25519

text: Also in 2018, RFC 8446 was published as the new Transport Layer Security v1.3 standard. It recommends support for X25519, Ed25519, X448, and Ed448 algorithms.


title: Shalin Bhanot

text: Shalin Bhanot is an Indian actor known for starring in television shows and web series. In 2022, he participated in "Bigg Boss 16".


title: Shalin Bhanot

text: Bhanot married actress Dalljiet Kaur in 2009. In 2014, the couple had their first child, a boy, Jayden Bhanot. They got divorced in 2015.


title: Shalin Bhanot

text: Bhanot has played Karan in "" on Zee TV and Agni in "Kulvaddhu" on Sony TV. He made a cameo appearance on "Kaajjal" and starred in Star Plus's "Grihasti". He participated and won the reality show "Nach Baliye 4" in 2009 along with his former partner Daljeet Kaur. He has been trained by Hollywood acting coach Michelle Danner.


title: Kirtan

text: Kirtana (; ), also rendered as Kirtan, is a Sanskrit word that means "narrating, reciting, telling, describing" of an idea or story, specifically in Indian religions. It also refers to a genre of religious performance arts, connoting a musical form of narration or shared recitation, particularly of spiritual or religious ideas, native to the Indian subcontinent.


title: Kirtan

text: With roots in the Vedic "anukirtana" tradition, a kirtan is a call-and-response style song or chant, set to music, wherein multiple singers recite or describe a legend, or express loving devotion to a deity, or discuss spiritual ideas. It may include dancing or direct expression of "bhavas" (emotive states) by the singer. Many kirtan performances are structured to engage the audience where they either repeat the chant, or reply to the call of the singer.


title: Kirtan

text: A person performing a kirtan is known as a "kirtankara" (or "kirtankar"). A Kirtan performance includes an accompaniment of regionally popular musical instruments, such as the harmonium, the veena or ektara (forms of string instruments), the tabla (one-sided drums), the "mrdanga" or "pakhawaj" (two-sided drum), flute (forms of woodwind instruments), and "karatalas" or "talas" (cymbals). It is a major practice in Hinduism, Vaisnava devotionalism, Sikhism, the Sant traditions and some forms of Buddhism, as well as other religious groups. Kirtan is sometimes accompanied by story-telling and acting. Texts typically cover religious, mythological or social subjects.


title: Kirtan

text: Kirtana () has Vedic roots and it is "telling, narrating, describing, enumerating, reporting". The term is found as "Anukirtan" (or "Anukrti", "Anukarana", literally a "re-telling") in the context of Yajna, wherein team recitations of dialogue-style and question-answer riddle hymns were part of the ritual or celebratory dramatic performance. The Sanskrit verses in chapter 13.2 of Shatapatha Brahmana (~800–700 BCE), for example, are written in the form of a riddle play between two actors.