title: Ganges Delta

text: One of the greatest challenges people living on the Ganges Delta may face in coming years is the threat of rising sea levels caused by climate change. An increase in sea level of could result in six million people losing their homes in Bangladesh.


title: Ganges Delta

text: Important gas reserves have been discovered in the delta, such as in the Titas and Bakhrabad gas fields. Several major oil companies have invested in exploration of the Ganges Delta region.


title: Ganges Delta

text: To offset land loss, tidal river management has been implemented in the delta. This method has been implemented in 5 beels and resulted in benefits including decreased waterlogging, creation of agricultural areas, improved navigation and land creation.


title: Frédéric Joliot-Curie

text: Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie (; ; 19 March 1900 – 14 August 1958) was a French physicist and husband of Irène Joliot-Curie, with whom he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 for their discovery of Induced radioactivity. They were the second ever married couple, after his wife's parents, to win the Nobel Prize, adding to the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. Joliot-Curie and his wife also founded the Orsay Faculty of Sciences, part of the Paris-Saclay University.


title: Frédéric Joliot-Curie

text: Born in Paris, France, Frédéric Joliot was a graduate of ESPCI Paris. In 1925 he became an assistant to Marie Curie, at the Radium Institute. He fell in love with her daughter Irène Curie, and soon after their marriage in 1926 they both changed their surnames to Joliot-Curie. At the insistence of Marie, Joliot-Curie obtained a second baccalauréat, a bachelor's degree, and a doctorate in science, doing his thesis on the electrochemistry of radio-elements.


title: Frédéric Joliot-Curie

text: While a lecturer at the Paris Faculty of Science, he collaborated with his wife on research on the structure of the atom, in particular on the projection, or recoil, of nuclei that had been struck by other particles, which was an essential step in the discovery of the neutron by James Chadwick in 1932. In 1935 they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery of Induced radioactivity, resulting from the creation of short-lived radioisotopes by nuclear transmutation from the bombardment of stable nuclides such as boron, magnesium, and aluminium with alpha particles.


title: Frédéric Joliot-Curie

text: In 1937 he left the Radium Institute to become a professor at the Collège de France. In January 1939 he wrote a letter to his Soviet colleague Abram Ioffe, alerting him to the fact that German physicists had recently discovered nuclear fission of uranium bombarded by neutrons, releasing large amounts of energy. He went on to work on nuclear chain reactions and the requirements for the successful construction of a nuclear reactor that uses controlled nuclear fission to generate energy. Joliot-Curie was mentioned in Albert Einstein's 1939 letter to President Roosevelt as one of the leading scientists on the course to nuclear chain reactions. The Second World War, however, largely stalled Joliot's research, as did his subsequent post-war administrative duties.


title: Frédéric Joliot-Curie

text: At the time of the Nazi invasion in 1940, Joliot-Curie managed to smuggle his working documents and materials to England with Hans von Halban, Moshe Feldenkrais and Lew Kowarski. During the French occupation he took an active part in the French Resistance. In June 1941 he took part in the founding of the National Front, and became its president. In the spring of 1942, he joined the French Communist Party to become a member of its Central Committee in 1956. Collins and LaPierre in their book "Is Paris Burning?" note that during the Paris uprising in August 1944 he served in the Prefecture of Police, manufacturing Molotov cocktails for his fellow insurgents, the Resistance's principal weapon against German tanks. The Prefecture was the scene of some of the most intense fighting during the uprising.


title: Frédéric Joliot-Curie

text: A team of scientists and intelligence officers from the allied Alsos Mission later found Curie at the Collège de France. He was sent to England to be interviewed and gave important information about the names and activities of German scientists.


title: Frédéric Joliot-Curie

text: He served as director of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, and appointed by Charles De Gaulle in 1945, he became France's first High Commissioner for Atomic Energy. In 1948 he oversaw the construction of the first French atomic reactor. He and Irène visited Moscow for the two hundred and twentieth anniversary of the Russian Academy of Science and returned sympathizing with "hard-working Russians". His affiliation with the Communist party caused Irène to be detained on Ellis Island during her third trip to the US, coming to speak in support of Spanish refugees, at the Joint Antifascist Refugee Committee's invitation. A devoted communist, he was purged in 1950 and relieved of most of his duties, but retained his professorship at the Collège de France. Joliot-Curie was one of the eleven signatories to the Russell–Einstein Manifesto in 1955. On the death of his wife in 1956, he took over her position as Chair of Nuclear Physics at the Sorbonne. Frédéric's health was by that time declining, and he died in 1958 from liver disease, which, like the death of his wife, was said to be the result of overexposure to radiation.


title: Frédéric Joliot-Curie

text: Joliot-Curie was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and of the Academy of Medicine and named a Commander of the Legion of Honour.


title: Frédéric Joliot-Curie

text: He was elected a Foreign Member of England's Royal Society (ForMemRS) and a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1946.


title: Frédéric Joliot-Curie

text: Joliot-Curie appeared as himself in "Kampen om tungtvannet" ("La bataille de l'eau lourde" in French; 1948), a French–Norwegian semi-documentary film about sabotage of the Vemork heavy water plant in Norway during World War II. His assistants Hans Halban and Lev Kovarski also appear. Joliot-Curie is shown lecturing about nuclear fission and chain reaction at the Collège de France.


title: Frédéric Joliot-Curie

text: He was the recipient of the first (1950) Stalin Peace Prize, awarded on 6 April 1951 for his work as president of the World Council of Peace, which he carried out from 1950 until his death in 1958.


title: Frédéric Joliot-Curie

text: A street in Sofia, Bulgaria, and the nearby Joliot-Curie Metro Station are named after Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Other streets bearing his name can be found in the Rivière-des-Prairies borough of north Montreal, Canada; in Bucharest, Târgu-Mureș, and Cluj-Napoca, Romania; in Warsaw and Wrocław, Poland; and in Poprad, Slovakia; in Gera, Germany.


title: Frédéric Joliot-Curie

text: Frédéric and Irène hyphenated their surnames to Joliot-Curie after they married on 4 October 1926 in Paris, France, although their daughter has said, "Many people used to name my parents Joliot-Curie, but they signed their scientific papers Irène Curie and Frédéric Joliot."


title: Frédéric Joliot-Curie

text: Joliot-Curie's daughter, Hélène Langevin-Joliot, was born in 1927. She is a nuclear physicist and professor at the University of Paris. Her brother, Pierre Joliot, was born in 1932. He is a biochemist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.


title: Frédéric Joliot-Curie

text: Frédéric Joliot-Curie devoted the last years of his life to the creation of the Orsay Faculty of Sciences and a centre for nuclear physics at Orsay, now part of Paris-Saclay University, where his children were educated.


title: Ernest Scared Stupid

text: Ernest Scared Stupid is a 1991 American comedy horror film directed by John Cherry and starring Jim Varney. It is the fifth film to feature the character Ernest P. Worrell. In the film, Ernest unwittingly unleashes an evil troll upon a small town on Halloween night and helps the local children fight back. It was shot in Nashville, Tennessee like its predecessors "Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam", "Ernest Goes to Camp", "Ernest Saves Christmas", and "Ernest Goes to Jail".


title: Ernest Scared Stupid

text: Due to its modest gross of $14,143,280 at the U.S. box office, Disney opted not to continue the franchise, making this the fourth and final Ernest film to be released under the Disney label, Touchstone Pictures. The next film in the series, "Ernest Rides Again", was independently distributed, was a box office bomb and was the final Ernest film to be released theatrically. Subsequent Ernest films were made for the straight-to-video market.


title: Ernest Scared Stupid

text: Its opening credits feature a montage of clips from various horror and science fiction films, including "Nosferatu" (1922), "White Zombie" (1932), "Phantom from Space" (1953), "The Brain from Planet Arous" (1957), "The Screaming Skull" (1958), "Missile to the Moon" (1958), "The Hideous Sun Demon" (1958), "The Giant Gila Monster" (1959), "The Killer Shrews" (1959), "Battle Beyond the Sun" (1959), and "The Little Shop of Horrors" (1960).


title: Ernest Scared Stupid

text: In the late 19th century, the demonic troll Trantor transforms children into wooden dolls to feast upon their energy in Briarville, Missouri. The townsfolk capture him and seal him under an oak tree, with Phineas Worrell, one of the village elders and an ancestor of Ernest P. Worrell, establishing the seal. Trantor vengefully places a curse on the Worrell family, stating that he can only be released on the night before Halloween by a Worrell. As part of the curse, every generation of Worrells will get "dumber and dumber and dumber", until the dumbest member of the family is foolish enough to release him from his earthly prison.


title: Ernest Scared Stupid

text: One hundred years later, Ernest, a sanitation worker, helps a few of his middle school friends, Kenny Binder, Elizabeth and Joey, construct a treehouse in the same tree that unknowingly contains the dormant creature, after the mayor's sons demolished their own cardboard haunted house. When Old Lady Hackmore discovers this, she angrily leaves. Following her, Ernest learns the story of Trantor and idiotically reports it to the kids. Inadvertently, Ernest releases the troll. Joey is walking home from the treehouse when he hears something rustling through the trees. Joey slowly walks and slips down in a muddy hole. Trantor grabs Joey's wrist and turns him into a wooden doll. Ernest finds Kenny's dad, Sheriff Cliff Binder, and explains the situation but Binder does not believe him. After none of the townsfolk will assist Ernest because of the upcoming Halloween party, he mounts a one-man (and one-dog) defense operation in preparation for Trantor's appearance. Meanwhile, Trantor captures a boy on a skateboard as his second victim.


title: Ernest Scared Stupid

text: Tom and Bobby Tulip, hoping to exploit Ernest, sell him various fake troll traps, but one backfires on the mayor's sons and Ernest loses his job. Ernest, Kenny and Elizabeth return to Hackmore, where they learn that only "the heart of a child, and a mother's care" can defeat the troll. Later that night, Trantor claims Elizabeth as his third victim as he sneaks into her house while she is resting on her bed.


title: Ernest Scared Stupid

text: While Kenny and his friend Gregg are walking, Trantor uses Elizabeth's voice to lure Kenny away, then takes Gregg as a fourth victim. Despite parents being upset at their missing children, Mayor Murdock and Sheriff Binder still proceed with a Halloween party at the school, believing the missing children will be there. Trantor appears there and takes the mayor's oldest son as his fifth and final wooden doll. In the ensuing fight between Trantor and Ernest, Trantor turns Ernest's dog Rimshot into a wooden doll before being repelled by soft-serve ice cream on Ernest's hands. Kenny realizes that "mother's care" refers to milk and rallies a troll-fighting team to destroy them.


title: Ernest Scared Stupid

text: Back at the treehouse, Trantor successfully summons his army of trolls while Ernest unsuccessfully tries to stop them. The townspeople show up, only for the trolls to overwhelm and beat them up. Kenny and his friends arrive and begin destroying the trolls with milk. During the fight, Trantor escapes beneath the tree where he summons the powers of the underworld, making him invincible, especially to milk. Enraged, Kenny unsuccessfully tries to destroy Trantor, who also turns Kenny into a doll. With the other townsfolk now backing him up and telling him to douse Trantor in milk, Ernest realizes that milk weakened the troll children, while unconditional love ("the heart of a child") would weaken Trantor himself. He takes Trantor and dances with him while the mob watches, overloading him with love, and finally kisses his snot-ridden nose, causing Trantor to explode.


title: Ernest Scared Stupid

text: With Trantor's destruction, Ernest is proclaimed a hero. Sheriff Binder apologizes to his son for doubting him and Ernest. All of the wooden dolls as well as Rimshot are restored, including those from the early 19th century, and everyone is reunited with their families.


title: Ernest Scared Stupid

text: The horror blog A Boos/Booze Situation compared the film to "Hocus Pocus" which also received a poor box office showing but was cemented as a cult classic. In addition, the blog praised the scene in which a girl discovers the troll in her bed, claiming that it has a strong reputation for terrifying young viewers. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert reviewed the film on their movie review show “Siskel & Ebert At the Movies”. Both of them gave thumbs down, calling it a film with Jim Varney “mugging his way through a dumb script.”


title: Ernest Scared Stupid

text: Ken Hanke of the Mountain Xpress (Asheville, North Carolina) wrote the film was “not good”, but that it was “kind of likable”.


title: Ernest Scared Stupid

text: The film had its first DVD release from Touchstone Home Entertainment on September 3, 2002. Mill Creek Entertainment re-released it on DVD on January 18, 2011, as part of the two-disc set Ernest Triple Feature along with "Ernest Goes to Camp" and "Ernest Goes to Jail". Its third re-release was on May 10, 2011, as an individual film.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: The 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama began on February 10, 2007, when Barack Obama, then junior United States senator from Illinois, announced his candidacy for President of the United States in Springfield, Illinois. After winning a majority of delegates in the Democratic primaries of 2008, on August 23, leading up to the convention, the campaign announced that Senator Joe Biden of Delaware would be the vice presidential nominee. At the 2008 Democratic National Convention on August 27, Barack Obama was formally selected as the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States in 2008. He was the first African American in history to be nominated on a major party ticket.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: On November 4, 2008, Obama defeated the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, making him the President-elect and the first African American elected President. He was the third sitting U.S. Senator, after Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy, to be elected president. Upon the vote of the Electoral College on December 15, 2008, and the subsequent certification thereof by a Joint Session of the United States Congress on January 8, 2009, Barack Obama was elected as President of the United States and Joe Biden as Vice President of the United States, with 365 of 538 electors. He also became the first president to not be born in the contiguous United States, as he was born in Hawaii (A non-contiguous state in the United States, along with Alaska, which marked Obama's birth).


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: On June 3, 2008, after the Montana and South Dakota primaries, he secured enough delegates to clinch the nomination of the Democratic Party for President of the United States.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: His opponent in the general election, Republican John McCain, passed the delegate threshold to become the apparent nominee of his party on March 4. On June 7, Hillary Clinton, Obama's remaining opponent in the quest for the Democratic nomination, conceded defeat and urged her supporters to back Obama. After a June 26 dinner at which Obama encouraged his fundraisers to donate to Clinton's debt-saddled campaign, Obama and Clinton ran their first post-primary event together in Unity, New Hampshire, on June 27. Over the first two weeks of July, the campaign ran a heavier schedule of fundraising events, drawing from former donors to Clinton's campaign.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Obama strategically had pictures made with financial experts Warren Buffett and Paul Volcker so the public would perceive him as having inside knowledge of Wall Street.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Obama's vice presidential running mate had been a subject of speculation since the end of the primaries. As of August 2008, some of the most popular choices for vice president included, but were not limited to, New York Senator Hillary Clinton, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, retired General and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, and retired General Wesley Clark.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: On August 21, 2008, Obama announced that he had made a selection for his running mate, but would not reveal until August 23 who it was. Obama's campaign encouraged supporters to sign up for a text messaging system that would alert them the moment he announced his choice.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Shortly after Biden withdrew from the presidential race, Obama privately told him he was interested in finding an important place for Biden in his administration. Biden declined Obama's first request to vet him for the vice-presidential slot, fearing the vice presidency would represent a loss in status and voice from his Senate position, but he later changed his mind. In early August, Obama and Biden met in secret to discuss the possibility, and developed a strong personal rapport. On August 22, 2008, Obama announced that Biden would be his running mate. "The New York Times" reported that the strategy behind the choice reflected a desire to fill out the ticket with someone with foreign policy and national security experience—and not to help the ticket win a swing state or to emphasize Obama's "change" message. Others pointed out Biden's appeal to middle-class and blue-collar voters, as well as his willingness to aggressively challenge Republican nominee John McCain in a way that Obama seemed uncomfortable doing at times. In accepting Obama's offer, Biden ruled out running for president again in 2016, but his comments in later years seemed to back off that stance, as he did not want to diminish his political power by appearing uninterested in advancement. Biden was officially nominated for vice president on August 27 by voice vote at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Biden's vice-presidential campaigning gained little media visibility, as far greater press attention was focused on the Republican running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. During one week in September 2008, for instance, the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism found that Biden was included in only five percent of coverage of the race, far less than the other three candidates on the tickets received. Biden nevertheless focused on campaigning in economically challenged areas of swing states and trying to win over blue-collar Democrats, especially those who had supported Hillary Clinton. Biden attacked McCain heavily despite a long-standing personal friendship. He said, "That guy I used to know, he's gone. It literally saddens me." As the financial crisis of 2007–2010 reached a peak with the liquidity crisis of September 2008 and the proposed bailout of the United States financial system became a major factor in the campaign, Biden voted in favor of the $700billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which went on to pass in the Senate 74–25.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: On October 2, 2008, Biden participated in the vice-presidential debate with Palin at Washington University in St. Louis. Post-debate polls found that while Palin exceeded many voters' expectations, Biden had won the debate overall. During the campaign's final days, he focused on less populated, older, less well-off areas of battleground states, especially Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, where polling indicated he was popular and where Obama had not campaigned or performed well in the Democratic primaries. He also campaigned in some normally Republican states, as well as in areas with large Catholic populations.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Under instructions from the campaign, Biden kept his speeches succinct and tried to avoid offhand remarks, such as one he made about Obama's being tested by a foreign power soon after taking office, which had attracted negative attention. Privately, Biden's remarks frustrated Obama. "How many times is Biden gonna say something stupid?" he asked. Obama campaign staffers referred to Biden blunders as "Joe bombs" and kept Biden uninformed about strategy discussions, which in turn irked Biden. Relations between the two campaigns became strained for a month, until Biden apologized on a call to Obama and the two built a stronger partnership. Publicly, Obama strategist David Axelrod said Biden's high popularity ratings had outweighed any unexpected comments. Nationally, Biden had a 60% favorability rating in a Pew Research Center poll, compared to Palin's 44%.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: On November 4, 2008, Obama and Biden were elected with 53% of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes to McCain–Palin's 173.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: At the same time Biden was running for vice president he was also running for reelection to the Senate, as permitted by Delaware law. On November4, he was reelected to the Senate, defeating Republican Christine O'Donnell. Having won both races, Biden made a point of waiting to resign from the Senate until he was sworn in for his seventh term on January 6, 2009. He became the youngest senator ever to start a seventh full term, and said, "In all my life, the greatest honor bestowed upon me has been serving the people of Delaware as their United States senator." Biden cast his last Senate vote on January 15, supporting the release of the second $350billion for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and resigned from the Senate later that day. In an emotional farewell, Biden told the Senate: "Every good thing I have seen happen here, every bold step taken in the 36-plus years I have been here, came not from the application of pressure by interest groups, but through the maturation of personal relationships." Delaware Governor Ruth Ann Minner appointed longtime Biden adviser Ted Kaufman to fill Biden's vacated Senate seat.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: In July 2008 Obama traveled to Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, the West Bank, Israel, Germany, France, and Britain. During the course of this trip he met with assorted international leaders, including President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom, as well as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Conservative opposition leader (and future Prime Minister) David Cameron.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: On July 24, 2008, he gave a speech at the Victory Column in Berlin before a crowd of estimated 200,000 to 240,000 people.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: There were three presidential debates between Obama and McCain. No third party candidates or Independent candidates were offered an invitation to join in any of the debates, as Obama and McCain were the only candidates on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The Commission on Presidential Debates proposed, and the candidates agreed, that two of three 90-minute debates would be in an informal, seated, talk show format, while the third would be in a town hall format that allowed both candidates to walk around.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: On June 4, John McCain proposed a series of ten joint town hall meetings with Obama, at which the two could engage each other. Obama first agreed in principle to the notion, but later rejected McCain's proposal, offering instead one town-hall event on the Independence Day holiday and four traditional debate-style joint appearances. Hank Paulson, President Bush's Treasury Secretary, said Obama's comprehension of the financial crisis compared to McCain's was as broad as "night and day". McCain's confidence vastly lowered when Obama questioned his ideas on the financial crisis in a meeting on September 25 at the White House with Bush and other congressmen. McCain did not have suggestions regarding what he would do to fix the economy, particularly Henry Paulson's $700 billion three-page bank recovery plan (TARP). Neither McCain nor Bush had read it. Obama's confidence escalated from that point. This was the turning point of the campaign. That stock market loss was subsequently exceeded by an even larger −7.0% plunge on September 29, 2008.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: On September 24, 2008, after the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, McCain announced that he was suspending his campaign to return to Washington to help craft a $700 billion bailout package for the troubled financial industry, and he stated that he would not debate Obama until Congress passed the bailout bill. Despite this decision, McCain was portrayed as not playing a significant role in the negotiations for the first version of the bill, which fell short of passage in the House. He eventually decided to attend the first presidential debate on September 26, despite Congress' lack of immediate action on the bill. His ineffectiveness in the negotiations and his reversal in decision to attend the debates were seized upon to portray McCain as erratic in his response to the economy. Days later, a second version of the original bailout bill was passed by both the House and Senate, with Obama, his vice presidential running mate Joe Biden, and McCain all voting for the measure (Hillary Clinton would as well).


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: The Civil Forum on the Presidency was the venue of back-to-back interviews of U.S. presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama by pastor Rick Warren on August 16, 2008, at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Following his victory, Obama gave his victory speech at Grant Park in his home city of Chicago on November 4, 2008, before an estimated crowd of 240,000. Viewed on television and the Internet by millions of people around the globe, Obama's speech focused on the major issues facing the United States and the world, all echoed through his campaign slogan of change. He also mentioned his grandmother, who had died two nights earlier.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: The Obama campaign's fundraising broke previous records for presidential primary and general campaigns, and has changed expectations for future presidential elections. The campaign avoided using public campaign funds, raising all of its money privately from individual donors. By the general election the campaign committee raised more than $650 million for itself, and coordinated with both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and at least 18 state-level Democratic committees to create a joint-fundraising committee to raise and split tens of millions of dollars more.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Post-election fundraising continued for the separate transition administration, called the Obama-Biden Transition Project, and also the separate inaugural ceremonies and celebrations committee.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: According to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, Obama's campaign raised more money in the first quarter of 2008 ($133,549,000) than it had raised in all of 2007 ($103,802,537). The campaign had a relatively small total of $21.9 million in May, but went on to raise $52 million in June, after Obama had secured the nomination.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: On June 19, Obama was the first major-party presidential candidate to turn down public financing for a general election campaign since the system was created in the aftermath of Watergate. Obama was expected to raise $265 million between the time of the announcement and election day.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: By rejecting the funds in favor of private donations, the campaign was in a position to outspend John McCain prior to the election. Had he signed on to the plan, the campaign would only have been able to spend $84.1 million between the party convention in August and the general election in November.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Obama explained his decision to opt out of the public financing system, saying, "public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who've become masters at gaming this broken system."


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Critics of the decision argued that the decision contradicted earlier statements that he would attempt to reach agreement with McCain to obtain public financing,


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: and asserted that Obama's campaign was receiving as much support from unregulated 527 groups as McCain's.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: On September 4, 2008, the Obama campaign announced they raised $10 million in the 24-hour period after Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's acceptance speech. The RNC reported raising $1 million in the same period.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: On October 19, 2008, Obama's campaign announced a record fundraising total of $150 million for September 2008. This exceeded the campaign's single-month record ($66 million) for August 2008.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: The campaign raised much of its cash in small donations over the internet, with about half of its intake coming in increments of less than $200. Both major party campaigns screened regularly for patterns of abuse and returned or rejected donations in excess of legal limits, from overseas, from untraceable addresses, or from fraudulent names. After some criticism of the Obama campaign on conservative blogs, the Republican National Committee asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate the Obama campaign's screening practices.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Obama's campaign is notable for its extensive use of a logo. The logo, consisting of a circle, with the center suggesting a sun rising over fields in the colors of the American flag, was designed by a team at Chicago design firm Sender LLC. "We were looking at the "o" of his name and had the idea of a rising sun and a new day," according to Sol Sender, now a strategist at VSA Partners. "The sun rising over the horizon intended to evoked a new sense of hope."


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Obama's campaign used the slogan "Change we can believe in" and the chant "Yes We Can". The latter slogan is shared with the United Farm Workers and associated with its founder Dolores Huerta and is well known amongst Latinos in its Spanish form Sí se puede. The "Change we can believe in" has been used in parodies both during and since the campaign. John McCain attempted to criticize Obama by enumerating various controversial policy positions he allegedly took and proclaiming "that's not change we can believe in" alongside a banner proclaiming McCain as "a leader we can believe in". Since the campaign it has been used to parody campaigns against incumbents as being "change you can't believe in" such as by British blog LeftFootForward against David Cameron or by the "Economist" against the People's Democratic Party of Tajikistan.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: The "" poster was an iconic image of Barack Obama designed by artist Shepard Fairey. It consisted of a stylized stencil portrait of Obama in solid red, white (actually beige) and (pastel and dark) blue. Either the words "", "", or "" were under the image of Obama (in some versions other words were used). It was created and distributed widely—as a digital image, on posters and other paraphernalia—during the 2008 election season. Initially it was distributed independently but with the approval of the official Obama campaign. The image became one of the most widely recognized symbols of Obama's campaign message, spawning many variations and imitations, including some commissioned by the campaign itself. In January 2009, after Obama had won the election, Fairey's mixed-media stenciled portrait version of the image was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution for its National Portrait Gallery.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: The signature campaign typeface was Gotham, typically using capital letters with occasional use of the script Snell Roundhand. Gotham was designed in 2000 by Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, originally for "GQ" magazine. Prior to Gotham, the campaign used the typeface Gill Sans in upper case and lower case. Another Hoefler and Frere-Jones font, Requiem, was used for the campaign logo.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: U2's "City of Blinding Lights" was often played in anticipation of Obama's speeches during campaign events. Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising" was also played heavily during his campaign rallies. Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" was frequently played immediately after Obama's speeches. Barack Obama personally asked Joss Stone in August to write and record his presidential campaign song, reportedly due to the fact that she appeals across racial boundaries. Ben Harper's "Better Way" was also played at a few events throughout the campaign. Furthermore, Obama's candidacy inspired artists to create more unsolicited music and music videos than any other candidate in American political history. Examples include "Yes We Can" by will.i.am, of the band The Black Eyed Peas; "Make it to the Sun" by Ruwanga Samath and Maxwell D; "Barack Obama" by JFC; and "Unite the Nation" by the Greek-American hip hop group Misa/Misa.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Obama was particularly noted for his use of the Internet to rally supporters and make his policies known. He is the first U.S. President to have effectively used the internet and social media for successful political outcomes. His successful presidential campaign raised the bar and are now presidential standards.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: "The integration of technology into the process of field organizing … is the success of the Obama campaign," says Sanford Dickert, who worked as John Kerry's chief technology officer for the 2004 campaign. "But the use of technology was not the end-all and be-all in this cycle. Technology has been a partner, an enabler for the Obama campaign, bringing the efficiencies of the internet into the real-world problems of organizing people in a distributed, trusted fashion."


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Obama's campaign was further strengthened by his opponent John McCain's comparatively limited use of the Internet. McCain did not have the organization of Obama's campaign, nor did he spend a comparable amount of money on this portion of the campaign. Both opportune timing and usage of online campaigning gave Obama significant advantage over McCain.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Through forums and social websites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. Obama built relationships with his supporters, and would-be supporters. He developed an upfront, personable and face-to-face quality that gave his supporters a sense of security and trust, which inspired them to rally others in their local communities. The supporters of Obama themselves formed a nationwide community.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: All of his policies were made available online, and updates were sent to the subscribers of his political party via email and text message, ultimately making him the most technologically savvy candidate to date, increasing his popularity among young voters.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: In early 2007, the Obama campaign launched a social-networking site called my.barackobama.com, or MyBO for short, and recruited 24-year-old Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes to help develop the platform and their social networking strategy. MyBo became the hub of the campaign's online efforts to organize supporters.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: The nationwide community provided useful and effective tools, such as the Neighbor-to-Neighbor tool, allowing supporters to reach a large number of people in a short time in their own community, which in turn led to campaign rallying for more Obama support. An unprecedented communication strategy was the "online call tool". Over one million calls were made from residential, personal laptops and desktops. Online communication led to Obama supporters engaging in social activities such as signmaking and door-to-door petitioning for Obama support, as well as simply discussing their opinions about policies and issues they supported along with Obama. As described by campaign adviser Steve Spinner, the campaign grew "from zero to 700 employees in a year and raised $200 million. That's a super-high-growth, fast-charging operation."


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: In 2008, campaign staffers stationed in the long-shot battle ground state of Georgia, reinvented the tedious, messy process of reporting and aggregating nightly data and intelligence upward through the campaign apparatus—making the organizing work of vast Obama field infrastructure more immediately measurable. NationalField became an internal social network within the field organization, used to monitor the daily activities of the sprawling grassroots effort. It allowed staff to share what they were working on and benchmark themselves against other staffers. Unlike a standard social graph, where all users have access to all information, NationalField was based on a hierarchical social graph where the higher level you were in the organization, the broader your view of the information below you.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: The platform closely reflected the team-building model of the Obama Campaign, often associated with organizer and Harvard professor Marshall Ganz in that it was an intensely structured a social network.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: After trailing Republicans for many election cycles in their use of micro-targeting, the 2008 Obama campaign was the first Democratic presidential campaign to benefit from the existence of a national voter file. In 2007, DNC chairman Howard Dean centralized data collection and management by hiring the Voter Activation Network and creating the database Votebuilder. Votebuilder created a web-based interface for the database and permitted the Obama campaign to give neighborhood-level volunteers access to the registered voter list for their area of responsibility.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: In October 2008, Obama was voted "Advertising Age" magazine's "Marketer of the Year" by members of the Association of National Advertisers for the campaign, surpassing Apple and Zappos.com. In a post-election analysis of the campaign, the magazine lauded its "understanding of ground-level marketing strategies and tactics, everything from audience segmentation and database management to the creation and maintenance of online communities."


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: The Obama web campaign used consumer marketing to target individuals with customized information to their predicted interests. Political communication to viewers was based on data collected about them. This data was collected by volunteers, surveys on the website and records of consumption habits. Website surveys took a short amount of time to fill out and the company used A/B testing to determine which forms converted most effectively, led by the team's Director of Analytics Dan Siroker. More detailed surveys were requested and received through email. Records of consumption habits helped the campaign make predictions about people based on statistical models. People received messages tailored close to their beliefs. Marketing based on consumer data also enabled effective grassroots organizing through the website. Data gathered from the website indicated who the most dedicated constituents were; the website tracked how often a person visited and when. The campaign team then targeted and encouraged activists in contested, winnable areas, such as through the website program Neighbor-to-neighbor.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Soon after becoming the presumptive nominee, Obama began a biographical commercial campaign emphasizing his patriotism. The advertisements ran in 18 states, including traditionally Republican Alaska and North Carolina. Between June 6 and July 26, Obama's campaign spent $27 million on advertisements, against McCain and Republican National Committee's combined total of $24.6 million.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: In a September 15, 2008 interview with Good Morning America, Obama stated, "If we're going to ask questions about, you know, who has been promulgating negative ads that are completely unrelated to the issues at hand, I think I win that contest pretty handily." What he apparently meant was that McCain had put out more negative ads.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: On October 29 at 8:00 pm EDT, the Obama campaign's 30-minute infomercial "American Stories, American Solutions" was simulcast on NBC, CBS, Fox, Univision, MSNBC, BET and TV One, focusing on a wide range of issues including health care and taxation. The infomercial then showed an Obama speech live from Florida. Fox asked for the second part of Game Five of the 2008 World Series to be delayed by 15 minutes in order to show the commercial, and that request was granted. ABC was the only major US network not to show the ad after being indecisive during the initial approach and the Obama campaign later declined the offer. The Obama ad got 30.1 million viewers across networks compared to ABC's "Pushing Daisies" which garnered 6.3 million viewers. Prior to this, the last presidential candidate to purchase a half-hour ad was H. Ross Perot, who ran as an independent candidate in 1992. The Obama campaign also bought a channel on Dish Network to screen Obama ads 24/7. Wyatt Andrews reported on a "Reality Check" on the "CBS Evening News" the next day with doubts over the factual accuracy of some of the promises Obama made in the advertisement, given the government's enormous financial deficit.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: On June 12, 2008, the Obama campaign launched a website to counter what the campaign described as smears by his opponents. The site provided responses to issues brought up about the candidate, such as:


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Originally started by American-Israelis in late May, the "Israel for Obama" campaign aimed to refute the allegations made against Obama concerning Israel and the Jewish community. This was done by gaining endorsements from Israel. When he took a Middle East trip from Afghanistan to Iraq, Jordan and finally to Israel, they organized a small "Israel for Obama" rally for him.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Ira Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council stated that "The Democratic operation in the Jewish community was more extensive than I've seen in 35 years," The chairman of the campaign in Israel, Yeshiyah Amariel, and others such as the Jewish Alliance for Change and the Jewish Council for Education & Research used YouTube to release video endorsements from officials and normal people in Israel for Obama and his positions (such as "Israelis for Obama" and "right man for the job.") In the closing weeks of the election the campaign used support from Israelis to fight the smears spread online by bloggers. Its success caused the polls of Jewish support for Obama to increase so that by the time of the Nov. 4 election, according to exit polls, 77% of the voting American Jewish community voted for Obama over the 23% that were for John McCain.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Obama has taken positions on many national, political, economic and social issues, either through public comments or his senatorial voting record. Since announcing his presidential campaign in February 2007, Obama emphasized withdrawing American troops from Iraq, increasing energy independence (that includes New Energy For America plan), decreasing the influence of lobbyists, and promoting universal health care as top national priorities.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: The day after Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Obama's Republican opponent, Arizona Senator John McCain, announced his selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Almost immediately, the Obama/Biden ticket plunged in the polls: in a Gallup poll of likely voters, the McCain/Palin ticket gained a 10-point lead. The erosion of support for the Obama/Biden ticket was especially pronounced among white women who had previously shown strong support for Hillary Clinton. However, Obama regained and maintained the national poll average after September 19.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: A RealClearPolitics average of 14 national polls taken between October 29 and November 2 showed an average 7.3% lead for Obama over McCain. Obama's highest support in the polling average was 8.2% on October 14. Among individual polls tracked by RealClearPolitics, Obama's highest support was recorded in a "Newsweek" poll conducted between June 18 and June 19 and a Pew Research poll conducted between October 23 and October 26 showing a 15% lead.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Gallup conducted weekly polls of registered voters to measure support among the candidates. The final poll conducted between October 27 and November 2 showed 24% of pure Independents supporting Obama, trailing the 32% who favored McCain. Obama's Independent support peaked at 33% the week of October 6–12.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: A RealClearPolitics average of four national polls measuring favorable/unfavorable opinions taken between October 28 and November 2 showed an average 55.5% favorable rating and 39.8% unfavorable rating. Obama's highest ratings in the polling average were 61.2% favorable and 32.5% unfavorable on July 8.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: As of November 3, 2008, one day before the election, the RealClearPolitics electoral map excluding toss up states showed 278 electoral votes for Obama/Biden, an electoral majority, and 132 electoral votes for opponents McCain/Palin. Including toss up states, the Obama/Biden ticket led with 338 votes.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected President of the United States, sparking many celebrations in the United States and around the world. He gained almost 53% of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes. The popular vote percentage was the best showing for any presidential candidate since George H. W. Bush in 1988. His 365 electoral votes was the best showing since Bill Clinton had 379 in 1996. He won Colorado, Nevada, Virginia, Indiana, Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina, all states that were won by President George W. Bush in 2004. In addition, he became the first Democratic candidate to win one of Nebraska's electoral votes since the state decided to split their electoral votes. He was the first candidate to be elected president without winning Missouri since 1956. Though his record would be broken by both major party candidates 12 years later, Obama received more total votes than any presidential candidate in history up to that point, totaling well over 69 million votes.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: 63% of Americans who met the voting requirements voted, the highest percentage in fifty years. Obama won the moderate vote 60–39 and the independent vote 52–44.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: Joe Biden also made history by becoming the first Roman Catholic to be elected vice president. In addition, he is the longest-serving senator to become vice president, having served in the United States Senate for the 36 years prior to the election. Biden also won reelection to the Senate, but served only briefly in the 111th Congress before resigning to take his place as vice president.


title: Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign

text: On January 8, 2009, the joint session of the U.S. Congress, chaired by Vice President Cheney as President of the Senate and Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, announced and certified the votes of the Electoral College for the 2008 presidential election. From the electoral votes of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, Vice President Cheney declared 365 electoral votes for both Barack Obama of the state of Illinois and Joseph Biden of the state of Delaware and 173 electoral votes for both John McCain of the state of Arizona and Sarah Palin of the state of Alaska. Based on the results of the electoral vote count, Vice President Cheney declared officially that Obama was elected as President of the United States and Biden was elected as Vice President of the United States.


title: LaFace Records

text: LaFace Records was an American record label based in Atlanta, Georgia, that operated as a unit of Sony Music Entertainment from 2008 to 2011 and was historically a part of Bertelsmann Music Group from 1989 to 2004. It was most active and achieved its greatest commercial success during the 1990s, dealing largely in the field of urban music. It was originally distributed by its co-creator Arista Records from 1989 through 2001, after which it was shuttered and absorbed into Arista. In 2004, the label was rebooted, and it began operating through Jive Records until both were absorbed into RCA Records in 2011. Today, the label's back catalog and reissues are managed by Legacy Recordings.


title: LaFace Records

text: LaFace was formed in 1989 as a joint venture between the producing duo Antonio "L.A." Reid & Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, and Arista Records. The combined nicknames of the duo's successful production company inspired the name of the label. LaFace went on to become a successful label throughout the 1990s, responsible for launching the recording careers of such popular acts as: TLC, Toni Braxton, Outkast, Pink, Usher, Goodie Mob and Donell Jones. Towards the end of the decade, LaFace produced fewer artists, while Babyface began to focus more on his own music career. The label was acquired completely by Arista and BMG in 1999. In 2001, L.A. Reid was appointed Chairman/CEO of Arista. As a result of Reid's promotion, LaFace was dissolved as most of its prominent acts moved up to the main Arista label to continue to work under Reid.


title: LaFace Records

text: In 1992, LaFace signed Georgia duo Outkast. After receiving a $15,000 advance from LaFace in 1993, Outkast started recording the album, which was executive produced by L.A. Reid and Babyface. Outkast's first album, "Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik", was released April 26, 1994 and entered the top 20 on the "Billboard top 200". The album went on to achieve Platinum status in America.


title: LaFace Records

text: In 2004, after the corporate restructuring of the BMG labels, LaFace was reactivated as one-quarter of the newly reconstructed Zomba Music Group during the Sony BMG joint venture at the time. Most of its former roster, who had moved on to Arista, returned to the company upon its reactivation. In 2011, LaFace (along with its previous Jive/Zomba distributor) was again shuttered, this time being absorbed into RCA Records.


title: Count Your Blessings (Bring Me the Horizon album)

text: Count Your Blessings is the debut studio album by British rock band Bring Me the Horizon. Recorded at DEP International Studios in Birmingham with producer Dan Sprigg, it was originally released in the United Kingdom on 30 October 2006 by Visible Noise. The album was later issued by Earache Records in the United States on 14 August 2007. "Count Your Blessings" was supported by the release of music videos for two of the album's tracks: "Pray for Plagues" on 4 June 2007 and "For Stevie Wonder's Eyes Only (Braille)" on 6 March 2008.


text: Named after a lyric in the album's opening song "Pray for Plagues", "Count Your Blessings" is representative of the band's early deathcore sound, which was phased out on later releases and eventually abandoned in favour of other, less aggressive styles. The band members were young when they recorded the album, and the band has largely disregarded it later in their career; it began as early as 2008, when guitarist Lee Malia was already criticising the album's quality. Most of the songs on the record quickly faded from the band's live setlists. Most band members recorded their parts individually, rather than the group doing so as a whole, with the central location of the studio credited as "a distraction." The album received some negative reviews, with the main complaints revolving around musical originality, although it still reached number 93 on the UK Albums Chart.


text: Following the release of their first extended play "This Is What the Edge of Your Seat Was Made For" in October 2004, Bring Me the Horizon toured extensively while writing new material for their full-length debut album. Due to the number of shows the band were playing at the time, much of the material was written quickly before recording was due to begin – drummer Matt Nicholls claimed that three songs were written in the space of two days due to the upcoming deadline. A number of songs are re-recordings of early demos that the band had taped for a project titled "The Bedroom Sessions" and in a broadcast session for the UK station Radio 1, namely "(I Used to Make Out With) Medusa", "Off the Heezay" and "Liquor & Love Lost" (then known as "Dragon Slaying").


text: Recording took place at DEP International Studios in Birmingham with producer Dan Sprigg, who had previously worked with bands including Cradle of Filth, Napalm Death and, more recently, Lostprophets. Frontman Oliver Sykes described the recording process as "an intense experience" due to the group's desire to make the best debut album they could, with biographer Ben Welch claiming that they "were starting to feel the pressure of all of the hype that was building around them" at the time. Due to the studio's location in the centre of the city, the young band members (all under 20 years old at the time) were often distracted and would not spend much time in the studio; this meant that each individual member ended up recording the majority of their contributions to the album alone, rather than the full unit performing together.


text: When recording "Count Your Blessings", Bring Me the Horizon intended to make an album which sounded "as heavy and brutal as they possibly could"; Welch claims that the band scrapped any song ideas that "didn't fit that criterion". Speaking in 2014 about the band's intentions when writing and recording music during their early years, Sykes claimed the group "just wanted to make noisy music". Similarly, when asked about the band's beginnings in a 2014 interview, guitarist Lee Malia explained, "When you're young, you just want to do everything to extremes. That's what the first EP and the album were like: too over-excited sounding". Matt Nicholls said that on "Count Your Blessings", Bring Me the Horizon "were influenced a lot by Swedish metal – At The Gates and stuff like that." Nicholls also said that on "Count Your Blessings", Bring Me the Horizon's members "were 18 or 19 years old and wanted to be as metal as possible." Specifically, the band's members were influenced by Norma Jean, Skycamefalling, Metallica, Pantera, At the Gates, Arch Enemy, The Dillinger Escape Plan, and In Flames at the band's beginning.


text: The musical style of "Count Your Blessings" is most often categorised as deathcore, but has also been labeled as metalcore and melodic death metal. "Count Your Blessings" uses elements of genres like melodic death metal, death metal and black metal, drawing comparisons to bands like The Black Dahlia Murder, Cannibal Corpse, At the Gates, and Obituary. "Last Rites" noted that the album's black metal-reminiscent vocals (which consist of death growls and high-pitched shrieks) were placed over a musical base of melodic death metal. According to "Drowned in Sound" columnist Raziq Rauf, the songs on the album "generally consist of The Black Dahlia Murder-style thunderous riffs mixed with some dastardly sludgy doom moments and more breakdowns than your dad's old Nissan Sunny". The lyrical content is admittedly simple, which according to Sykes is due to the fact that his life had "never been that bad" at the time he wrote them; the singer has noted that most songs on the album are "about girls or just growing up", which he claims contributes to the group's brand of "party music".


text: "Count Your Blessings" was originally released in the United Kingdom on 30 October 2006 by Visible Noise. It was not released in the United States until 14 August 2007, when it was issued by Earache Records. The version released by retailer Hot Topic featured a cover version of Slipknot's "Eyeless" as a bonus track, which had originally been recorded for "Higher Voltage: Another Brief History of Rock", a CD released for free with an issue of "Kerrang!" magazine in June 2007. A first music video for "Pray for Plagues", was directed by Kenny Lindström and released on 4 June 2007. A second music video, directed by Perrone Salvatore, "For Stevie Wonder's Eyes Only (Braille)" was issued on 6 March 2008.


text: Following the release of "Count Your Blessings", Bring Me the Horizon toured extensively in support of the album. Throughout October and November the group toured the UK with American black metal band Abigail Williams, although the Phoenix, Arizona-based band left the tour early on after drummer Zach Gibson suffered a wrist injury. Centurion replaced Abigail Williams for the remainder of the tour, and Bring Me the Horizon spent the rest of the year supporting labelmates Lostprophets. The band later replaced Bury Your Dead supporting Killswitch Engage on their European tour in January 2007, then continued to tour the UK through March and April. During the summer, the band played a number of festivals (including Download Festival).


text: Upon its release, "Count Your Blessings" debuted at number 93 on the UK Albums Chart. It also peaked at number 9 on the UK Rock & Metal Albums Chart and remained there for two further weeks, first dropping to number 14 and then to number 26.


text: Overall, "Count Your Blessings" received mixed critical reception. "Exclaim!" writer Bill Whish wrote positively about the release, praising the "vitriolic lyrics and brutally heavy guitar work" and welcoming the band as "a little more interesting" than some other metalcore artists. "DIY" magazine's Tom Connick dubbed "(I Used to Make Out With) Medusa" the "crowning jewel" of "Count Your Blessings" in a 2014 feature, claiming that it "Perfectly [captures] that youthful, drunken recklessness that defined [the band's] most controversial years" with its "razor sharp" guitar work and "thunderous breakdowns". Aaron McKay, a writer for "Chronicles of Chaos", praised Sykes' vocal delivery, likening it to Obituary frontman John Tardy.


text: However, many commentators criticised the lack of invention on the album. While AllMusic's Stewart Mason praised the album for being "vaguely interesting musically" as well as claiming that there is "a greater sense of dynamic than usual" in the genre on the release, he also commented on the "generally unimaginative songwriting", claiming it adds "little to the existing knowledge base" of the genre. Furthermore, he also criticised Sykes's vocal style on the record, which he described as an "immediately irritating" and a "high-pitched gibber". Chad Bowar for About.com highlighted the band within their scene, praising their "catchy melodies" and "decent riffs and solos", and on "Count Your Blessings" welcomed the variety in styles of vocal delivery across the collection. However, similarly to Mason, Bowar dubbed the album "way too generic and repetitive", claiming that it features "too many breakdowns" and a majority of "extremely forgettable" songs. Axl Rosenberg of MetalSucks complained that the band displayed "nothing to distinguish them from the pack" on the album, although he did praise the presence of "some decent breakdowns" and claim that the songs would make "good background noise".


text: Due to the young age of the band when they recorded the album and the drastic stylistic changes which followed its release, "Count Your Blessings" has largely been neglected in recent years, both by the band and by their fans. As early as 2008, guitarist Lee Malia was criticising the album's quality and noting that the band quickly wanted "to do something better" after its release. Following the release of "Drown" in 2014, described by "Digital Spy"s Adam Silverstein as "a universe away from the ... full-on commotion" of "Count Your Blessings", Sykes reflected that the single would have "offended" the band members when they were younger, adding that the group were "never gonna sound like that again".


text: Keyboardist Jordan Fish (who joined Bring Me the Horizon about 6 years after the album's release) has explained the drastic evolution in style between "Count Your Blessings" and later releases as simply being due to the fact that the band members "don't listen to deathcore anymore", claiming that to attempt that type of music again would be dishonest due to the members' change in tastes and feelings. "Alternative Press" writer Tyler Sharp has added that "The members of Bring Me the Horizon have evolved from teenage metalheads to a group of mature, progressed songwriters" in response to criticism of their change in style. Most of the album's songs were dropped from live performances in the years following the release of "Suicide Season" and "There Is a Hell...", although "Pray for Plagues" returned to set lists briefly in late 2014 when the band performed with original guitarist Curtis Ward at a few shows. The song is featured on the video album "Live at Wembley", recorded in December 2014.


text: Despite the radical evolution of the band since "Count Your Blessings", the album has still received some retrospective praise. In a feature published in 2015, "Kerrang!" writer Emily Carter credited the album for increasing the popularity of the band during their formative years, as well as praising its guitar riffs and the song "Pray for Plagues". AXS contributor Rey Harris described the album as "a classic among deathcore fans", highlighting "Black & Blue" in particular. Sarai C. of "Loudwire" named "Pray for Plagues" the fourth best Bring Me the Horizon song to date (as of May 2014), praising it as "one of Bring Me the Horizon's most timeless tracks". Dan Slessor for "Alternative Press" included "Tell Slater Not to Wash His Dick" as the alternative tenth choice in his feature of "The 10 best Bring Me the Horizon songs", praising its "exuberant energy and rich melody".


title: Somnus

text: In Roman mythology, Somnus ("sleep") is the personification of sleep. His Greek counterpart is Hypnos. Somnus resided in the underworld. According to Virgil, Somnus was the brother of Death (Mors), and according to Ovid, Somnus had a 'thousand' sons, the Somnia ('dream shapes'), who appear in dreams 'mimicking many forms'. Ovid named three of the sons of Somnus: Morpheus, who appears in human guise, Icelos / Phobetor, who appears as beasts, and Phantasos, who appears as inanimate objects.


title: Somnus

text: In the Greek tradition, Hypnos (Sleep) was the brother of Thanatos (Death), and the son of Nyx (Night). According to Hesiod, Sleep, along with Death, live in the underworld, while in the Homeric tradition, although "the land of dreams" was located on the road to the underworld, near the great world-encircling river Oceanus, nearby the city of Cimmerians, Sleep himself lived on the island of Lemnos.


title: Somnus

text: Following the Greek tradition, Virgil makes Sleep and Death brothers, and locates their dwellings next to each other, near the entrance of the underworld:


title: Somnus

text: Somnus makes a brief appearance in Virgil's "Aeneid". Virgil has Somnus cause Palinurus, the helmsman of Aeneas's ship, to fall asleep while steering the ship at night. Somnus, in the guise of Phorbas, a shipmate, appears to Palinurus and offers to take over, so that Palinurus might rest awhile. But Palinurus refused the offer, so Somnus uses a branch, "imbued" with the power of underworld's river Styx, to sprinkle Palinurus with water from the river Lethe, the underworld's river of forgetfulness. Palinurus then falls asleep, and Somnus pushes him overboard.


title: Somnus

text: Somnus, and his sons the Somnia appear in Ovid's poem "Metamorphoses". Ovid, like Virgil before him, followed Hesiod in making Sleep a denizen of the underworld. However, recalling the location of the 'land of dreams' in the "Odyssey", Ovid also locates the dwelling of Somnus "near the land of the Cimmerians". Ovid has Somnus live in a cave, describing "the home and chamber of sluggish Sleep" as a place where:


title: Somnus

text: In keeping with this theme of "silence", Ovid says that Somnus' house has no doors, "lest some turning hinge should creak".


title: Somnus

text: Like Virgil, Ovid associates Somnus with the underworld's river Lethe, which Ovid has flowing from the bottom of Somnus' cave, and "whose waves, gently murmuring over the gravelly bed, invite to slumber." Near the entrance bloom sleep-inducing poppies and other herbs, which Nox (Night) uses to spread sleep over "the darkened lands." Although Ovid connects Night with Sleep, he makes no mention of Night being Sleep's mother as she is in Hesiod.


title: Somnus

text: In the center of the main chamber, Somnus lies "in languorous repose" on a "downy-soft" black couch, surrounded by his innumerable sons, the "empty dream-shapes ["Somnia vana"], mimicking many forms, many as ears of grain in harvest-time, as leaves upon the trees, as sands cast on the shore." Ovid names three of these form-mimicking "dream shapes": Morpheus, Icelos/Phobetor, and Phantasos. About Morpheus, Ovid says "no other is more skilled than he in representing the gait, the features, and the speech of men; the clothing also and the accustomed words of each he represents." Another son called Icelos by the gods, but Phobetor by men, "takes the form of beast or bird or the long serpent", and a third son named Phantasos "puts on deceptive shapes of earth, rocks, water, trees, all lifeless things".


title: Somnus

text: In Book 11 of the "Metamorphoses", Somnus becomes involved in Ovid's telling of the love story of Ceyx and his wife Alcyone. Ceyx has died in a storm at sea. Juno the queen of the gods, sends her messenger Iris to the sleeping Somnus' cave, to command Somnus to send a dream to Alcyone, in the form of Alcyone's husband Ceyx. Arriving at the cave, Iris brushes aside the many sleeping Somnia blocking her way, and her brightly gleaming clothes wake Somnus from his deep slumber. Iris addresses Somnus as "thou rest of all things, Sleep, mildest of the gods, balm of the soul, who puttest care to flight, soothest our bodies worn with hard ministries, and preparest them for toil again!", then orders Somnus to "Fashion a shape that shall seem true form" to be sent to Alcyone. Iris immediately leaves before she herself is overcome with sleep, and Somnus wakes Morpheus to carry out what Juno has commanded, then goes back to sleep on his couch.


title: Tiffany Thornton

text: Tiffany Dawn Thornton (born February 14, 1986) is an American former actress, radio personality and singer best known for her co-starring role as Tawni Hart on the Disney Channel Original Series, "Sonny with a Chance" and the spinoff, "So Random!".


title: Tiffany Thornton

text: Thornton made her television acting debut in the pilot episode of the Fox sitcom, "Quintuplets". She then went on to appear in "8 Simple Rules", "American Dreams", "The O.C.", "Desperate Housewives", "That's So Raven", "Jericho", "Wizards of Waverly Place" and "Hannah Montana".


title: Tiffany Thornton

text: In 2009, Thornton co-starred as Tawni Hart on the Disney Channel Original Series "Sonny with a Chance" and then went on to play a part in the Disney Channel Original Movie "Hatching Pete". After "Sonny with a Chance" ended in early 2011, it was replaced by "So Random!" in the summer of 2011 and ended in 2012, where Thornton reprised her role as Tawni Hart.


title: Tiffany Thornton

text: From 2015 to 2016, Thornton was a radio personality for KLAZ 105.9 based in Hot Springs, Arkansas. She co-hosted the morning show "Kramer and Tiffany", as well as hosted her own mid-day show. She is also a blogger for DisneyBaby.com.


title: Tiffany Thornton

text: Thornton was born in College Station, Texas. She is an alumna of Texas A&M University, where she sang the national anthem at a number of sporting events. She is a Christian.


title: Tiffany Thornton

text: In December 2009, Thornton became engaged to her boyfriend, Christopher Carney, a probation officer and former lead singer of the band The Prom Kings. The couple were married on November 12, 2011 at Garvan Woodland Gardens, in Hot Springs National Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas.


title: Tiffany Thornton

text: On February 13, 2012, Thornton announced that she was pregnant with their first child. On August 14, 2012, she gave birth to their first son. The child's godparents are actors Cassandra Scerbo and Wilmer Valderrama. On October 25, 2013, Thornton announced that she was pregnant with her second child. On March 1, 2014, she gave birth to their second son. On December 4, 2015, Carney was killed in a car accident.


title: Tiffany Thornton

text: In January 2017, Thornton began a relationship with family friend and worship pastor Josiah Capaci. The couple announced their engagement on April 8, 2017. They were married on October 7, 2017. On April 11, 2018, the couple announced her pregnancy. On November 9, 2018, they had their first child together, a daughter. On December 6, 2020, the couple announced her pregnancy. On July 21, 2021, they had their second child together, a daughter.


title: Vampiro

text: Ian Richard Hodgkinson (born May 31, 1967), better known by his ring name Vampiro, is a Canadian semi-retired professional wrestler who most recently served as director of talent for Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide (AAA). He also worked for Lucha Underground as a color commentator. Hodgkinson is also member of the citizen crime patrol organization Guardian Angels, acting as head of the group's chapter in Mexico City. He is the current JCW Heavyweight Champion in his third reign.


title: Vampiro

text: Hodgkinson has wrestled for various wrestling promotions. In the United States, he is best known for his time in World Championship Wrestling, where he held the WCW World Tag Team Championship with The Great Muta. However, his greatest success was achieved in Mexican promotion Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre during the 1990s. In his professional wrestling career, Hodgkinson is a five-time World Champion having won the WWC Universal Heavyweight Championship once, the UWA World Heavyweight Championship once and the JCW Heavyweight Championship three times.


title: Vampiro

text: Hodgkinson used to be a bodyguard for the pop group Milli Vanilli. Prior to wrestling, Hodgkinson was an ice hockey goaltending prospect who was drafted by the Kingston Frontenacs of the Ontario Hockey League.


title: Vampiro

text: Hodgkinson got his start in the business working for International Wrestling out of Montreal, Quebec. He often set up the ring before events and would train with the wrestlers before their matches. He made his debut as a jobber in 1984 at the age of 16 with little training, although he has credited Abdullah the Butcher as his trainer. He wrestled under the names Ian Richards and Gene Anderson during this time.


title: Vampiro

text: After a few years in Montreal, in 1991, Hodgkinson headed down to Mexico City, looking for work in one of Mexico's premier wrestling promotions, Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre. He met with Paco Alonso and Antonio Peña, who took him as a joke because of his unique look (he had long dreadlocked blue hair and several tattoos). They decided to throw him in the ring as Vampiro Canadiense (Canadian Vampire) because he told them he liked vampires. To their surprise, with his very limited moveset that only consisted of punches, kicks, and headbutts, he became an overnight sensation, as his rock star appearance and natural good looks caught on with the young Mexican women in the audience.


title: Vampiro

text: In 1992, Vampiro would be part of multiple hair vs hair matches. The first of which would be on March 21 defeating Bestia Negra II. Throughout the months Vampiro would beat Rick Patterson, Pirata Morgan, Aaron Grundy and Sangre Chicana in hair vs hair matches. In late 1992, Vampiro participated in the CMLL World Heavyweight Championship tournament and reached the semi-final before being defeated by Black Magic. In early 1993, Vampiro would team up with Pierroth Jr. to take part in the CMLL World Tag Team Championship tournament and progressed to the final where the two would take on Dr. Wagner Jr. and El Canek in a best two out of three falls match. Going into the last match between the two teams where drawing with one win each, Dr. Wagner Jr. and El Canek would win the last match and therefore the vacant CMLL World Tag Team Championship. In the first round of the Gran Prix 1994 he lost to Yamato in the first round. In mid to late 1994, Vampiro would begin to team up with Pegasus Kid, in the final of the Trios Tournament along with El Rayo de Jalisco Jr. the pair would lose to El Dandy, El Texano and Silver King. Vampiro and Pegasus Kid would lose to El Texano and Silver King in the quarterfinals of the CMLL World Tag Team Championship number one contendership tournament. Vampiro would go on to team up with Apolo Dantés and lost to Dr. Wagner Jr. & Pierroth Jr. in the semi-final of the CMLL World Tag Team Championship number two contendership tournament. In July 1995, Vampiro reached the final of the Gran Prix 1995 before losing to Headhunter A. In what was perhaps the biggest matches of his career to this point, he took on Apolo Dantes in a best out of three falls match for the CMLL World Heavyweight Championship. In 1996, Vampiro would leave CMLL to join other top Mexican promotions such as International Wrestling Revolution Group (IWRG), Lucha Libre AAA World Wide (AAA) and "Promo Azteca" (AZTECAS). However, in 1998 he would return to CMLL, he would take part in the CMLL World Trios Championship tournament and Gran Prix 1998 and would lose both. His last match for CMLL for many years would take place on December 11, 1998.


title: Vampiro

text: While working in Mexico, Vampiro began a real-life feud with fellow CMLL headliner Konnan. Konnan had been the top star in the promotion prior to Vampiro's arrival and did not take well to his superstardom. The feud stems from Vampiro being offered a part in a Mexican soap opera, but then the producers changing their mind at the last minute when they learned that his command of the Spanish language was poor, and went with Konnan, a fluent Spanish speaker, instead. Vampiro considered that Konnan had sabotaged his chance to parlay his ring success into mainstream stardom, as Konnan did become a mainstream star in Mexico as a result of the role. The rivalry lasted for several years until the two resolved their differences whilst working in WCW, where they became business associates.


title: Vampiro

text: On October 19, 1991, Vampiro would team up with Villano III to defeat Dos Caras and El Canek in a CMLL and UWA joint promotion event. In 1991 he would continue to take part in CMLL and UWA joint promotion events and in 1992 he debuted for Universal Wrestling Association in a single promotion setting. On January 31, 1993, Vampiro defeated El Canek in a two out of three falls match to become the UWA World Heavyweight Champion. He would defend his Championship over the course of 1993 in both single promotion and joint promotion events. He would lose the championship to El Canek on December 19, 1993, holding the championship for almost a year, this would also be his last match for UWA.


title: Vampiro

text: On October 3, 1993, Vampiro would debut for Wrestle Association R defeating Top Gun. In June 1994, Vampiro would start on a two-month tour of Japan where he won almost all his matches and also took part in a tag team tournament where he teamed up with Lionheart and The Warlord and would be knocked out in the first round. On his second tour of Japan, between the months September and October, Vampiro would once again win the majority of his matches. He would also team up with Bob Backlund and Dos Caras to take on Hiromichi Fuyuki, Gedo and Jado for the WAR World Six-Man Tag Team Championship, which Vampiro's team lost. Vampiro would also sporadically take part in WAR events and his last match came on December 4.


title: Vampiro

text: In 1998, after spending nearly his entire career to that point in Mexico, Vampiro was signed by WCW. His first match was on the June 29, 1998, episode of "WCW Monday Nitro", defeating Brad Armstrong. He would not return to WCW until the March 18, 1999 episode of "WCW Thunder", when he defeated Prince Iaukea.


title: Vampiro

text: Later that year, he formed a stable with the Insane Clown Posse (ICP) and Raven called 'The Dead Pool' (initially called 'The Necro-Ward'). Even though the stable was short-lived, they gained popularity and had a heated feud with Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio Jr., and rival Konnan.


title: Vampiro

text: Vampiro then feuded with Berlyn. The feud began when Vampiro beat Berlyn in the WCW World Title tournament on Nitro. To exact revenge later in the night, Berlyn cost Vampiro his match against Buff Bagwell and, as a result, Vampiro was eliminated from the tournament. This feud led to the 1999 Mayhem event, where the two fought in a Dog Collar match and Vampiro made Berlyn submit to the Camel Clutch.


title: Vampiro

text: Vampiro later brought The Misfits into WCW, and began a feud with Oklahoma and "Dr. Death" Steve Williams. Vampiro and Dr. Death then faced off at Starrcade, with the stipulation that if Vampiro won, he would get five minutes in the ring against Oklahoma. After Williams was disqualified, Vampiro had his match with Oklahoma. Surprisingly, Oklahoma was able to mount a bit of offense, until Vampiro took Oklahoma's cowboy hat and then pinned him following the Nail In The Coffin.


title: Vampiro

text: In early 2000, he formed an alliance with Sting, as the "Brothers in Paint," after he helped Sting to defeat Lex Luger in a lumberjack match. This did not last long, with Vampiro turning on Sting by attacking him during a match on the April 10, 2000 episode of "WCW Monday Nitro", thus becoming a heel and joining The New Blood. At Spring Stampede 2000, Vampiro cost Sting the United States Championship in a match against Scott Steiner when he pulled Sting underneath the ring. They feuded throughout the spring, with Sting getting the upper hand on Vampiro in nearly all their encounters. This set up the Human Torch match, in which Vampiro won by setting Sting on fire. Vampiro then focused on The Demon due to his defection from the ICP formed stable, "The Dark Carnival." He kidnapped his fiancée, Asya, in a skit resembling the 1988 film "Spoorloos". Afterward, he challenged him to a Graveyard Match, which sparked the return of Sting.


title: Vampiro

text: Vampiro entered the vacant WCW United States Title tournament, losing to The Great Muta. He later joined Muta to attack Ernest 'The Cat' Miller. Vampiro won his first and only title in WCW with The Great Muta, by defeating KroniK in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on August 13, 2000. This reign was very short lived, however, as they lost the Tag Team Championship the very next night to Rey Mysterio Jr. and Juventud Guerrera in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. Vampiro later turned his back on Muta, setting up a 3 Way match at Fall Brawl with himself, Sting and Muta, which was won by Sting. Vampiro then took time away from the sport as his wife had a baby.


title: Vampiro

text: He returned a month later, where he defeated Crowbar in a Hardcore Match. Vampiro then challenged Mike Awesome at Halloween Havoc, losing via pinfall after a top rope Awesome Bomb. He was put out with an injury and did not recover before WCW was purchased by the World Wrestling Federation. Thus, his final WCW appearance was on the November 1, 2000, episode of "WCW Thunder" when he teamed up with Jeff Jarrett to take on Sting and Mike Awesome, which led to a loss for Jarrett and Vampiro after Awesome performed a running powerbomb on Vampiro and pinned him.


title: Vampiro

text: Hodgkinson has claimed that he was hospitalized during Vince McMahon's purchase of World Championship Wrestling. Hodgkinson was informed that WWF creative team had no plans for him and would not pick up his contract following the purchase. He had also claimed that he planned on leaving WCW before he broke his neck.


title: Vampiro

text: With WCW out of business Vampiro headed back to CMLL and returned to action in June, 2001. In 2002, Vampiro would appear on several Pay-per-views and mostly teamed up with top CMLL name Shocker. On September 13, at CMLL 69. Aniversario, Vampiro and Shocker took on Los Guerreros del Infierno for the CMLL World Tag Team Championship and lost. Vampiro's last match for CMLL for two years came on April 3, 2005, where Shocker would defeat him. In 2007, Vampiro would return to CMLL for a second time where he competed for only a few months.


title: Vampiro

text: In 2002 Vampiro Toured in Puerto Rico for Puerto Rican Promotion World Wrestling Council (WWC) Where he won the WWC Universal Heavyweight Championship once.


title: Vampiro

text: On August 26, 2001, he would start his first tour of All Japan Pro Wrestling lasting only a month where he would participate in mostly opening card matches and very few TV tapings. Vampiro would return in October, 2006 to participate in World's Strongest Tag Determination League 2001 and would team up with George Hines, the team would only win one match and draw another leaving them with three points and not enough to win progress to the semi final. Vampiro would go on two more tours of AJPW one in September 2006 and the second April 2007. In his last match for the promotion, Vampiro teamed up with The Great Muta to take on Taiyo Kea and Toshiaki Kawada for the World Tag Team Championship and lost.


title: Vampiro

text: September 17, 2003, Vampiro made his TNA debut costing Raven a Hair vs Hair" match against Shane Douglas. On September 19, Vampiro defeated CM Punk in an “Open Challenge” match. Then on October 1, Vampiro teamed with Sinn and Slash to face 3Live Kru (Konnan, Ron Killings, BG James) with the match ending in a DQ. The next week, Vampiro attacked Raven and tried to hang him but Raven was saved by the Gathering. The following week, Vampiro and Slash defeated CM Punk & Julio Dinero. On October 29, Vampiro faced Raven in a “Blood Gallows of Retribution” match where he lost. This was Vampiro's final match with TNA.


title: Vampiro

text: Hodgkinson had a short stint in the American hardcore promotion Xtreme Pro Wrestling. Hodgkinson had a notably stiff match with Kaos during XPW's Cold Day in Hell.


title: Vampiro

text: In 2005, he jumped from CMLL to their rival promotion AAA with Shocker and various other CMLL talents. While at AAA, both he and Konnan held booking positions. During that time, he stated that he had no plans to return to TNA or work for WWE. He stated in interviews with the UK's "Power Slam Magazine" that he had no objection to joining TNA - although he suspected it would not happen due to the presence of Sting on their roster. On April 3, 2005, Vampiro returned to the AAA ring in a six-man tag match. Vampiro would team up with Shocker to help him deal with Abismo Negro and Cibernético after Cibernético attacked Shocker's father. In his two years with AAA, Vampiro would mainly appear on TV show tapings and rarely competed at house shows.


title: Vampiro

text: In April 2008, Vampiro made his return to AAA by challenging El Mesias to a match at TripleMania XVI. The match took place on June 13, 2008, in Mexico City, Mexico. The two fought each other in a Hardcore match which ended in a draw. Vampiro defeated Konnan at Rey de Reyes (2009) with the help of Marco Corleone. At Triplemania XVII Vampiro represented Team AAA in a match where they defeated Konnan's La Legión Extranjera to regain control over AAA and force Konnan out of the company. On April 17, 2010, Vampiro turned "rudo" and aligned himself with El Zorro of "La Legión Extranjera". On August 15, 2010, at "Verano de Escandalo" Vampiro unsuccessfully challenged Dr. Wagner Jr. for the AAA Mega Championship in a three-way match, which also included Silver King. After not appearing for the promotion again for four months, Hodgkinson gave his notice and quit AAA on December 20, 2010.


title: Vampiro

text: Vampiro returned to AAA on December 16, 2011, at Guerra de Titanes, saving El Mesías from "La Sociedad" and pledging his loyalty to the promotion. Vampiro then started feuding with "La Sociedad" member Chessman. On October 7 at "Héroes Inmortales", Vampiro and Joe Líder defeated Abyss and Chessman to win the AAA World Tag Team Championship. On December 2 at "Guerra de Titanes", Vampiro lost his hair to Chessman in a six-way steel cage "Lucha de Apuestas", which also included Cibernético, Dr. Wagner Jr., L.A. Park and El Hijo del Perro Aguayo. On May 22, 2013, Vampiro and Líder were stripped of the AAA World Tag Team Championship.


title: Vampiro

text: On May 24, 2015, Vampiro, along with Matt Striker, served as one half of the English language commentators for Lucha Libre AAA World Wide's Lucha Libre World Cup internet pay-per-view.


title: Vampiro

text: In the summer of 2017, Taya was stripped of her AAA Reina de Reinas Championship for an unknown reason. She later posted a comment on Twitter saying she was "backstabbed by AAA" and announced that she was no longer a part of the AAA Roster. At a TV taping, Sexy Star returned and defeated Big Mami, Lady Shani, Faby Apache, Goya Kong and La Hiedra for the title. Taya later stated she had lost all respect for Sexy Star which started a shoot feud between Johnny Mundo (Taya's husband) and Taya and Kevin Kross. With Mundo and Vampiro having heated conversations backstage, Vampiro chose Texano Jr. to face Mundo for AAA Mega Championship, with Mundo coming out victorious. At a Triplemanía XXV press conference, Vampiro announced that Mundo would face El Hijo del Fantasma and Texano in a Tables, Ladders and Chairs match for the AAA Latin American, World Cruiserweight and Mega Championships.


title: Vampiro

text: On January 26, 2007, he was featured in a pilot for a new wrestling show produced for MTV called Wrestling Society X. He competed in a 10-man Battle Royal Death match, eventually securing one of two contracts earning him a shot at the inaugural Wrestling Society X Championship against 6-Pac (Sean Waltman). He won the WSX Championship, on the February 6th episode, after sending Waltman into an exploding coffin with a Tombstone piledriver.


title: Vampiro

text: Vampiro was involved in a what MTV claimed was a controversial angle which led to MTV canceling the fourth WSX show, due to air on Tuesday, February 20. In the (pre-taped) show, he was the recipient of a fireball to the face thrown by Ricky Banderas which resulted in Vampiro's head momentarily catching fire. The footage has since been leaked onto the internet. Later in his debut WSX match, Ricky Banderas defeated Vampiro to claim the WSX Championship.


title: Vampiro

text: In addition to appearing as an on-screen talent, Vampiro held a backstage position as the main booker.


title: Vampiro

text: On February 23, 2011, Vampiro officially came out of retirement and returned to Juggalo Championship Wrestling as both a wrestler and a company consultant. He raised hopes of developing talent, taking the company international, and, more specifically, bringing it to Latin America. At "Monster's Island", he was placed in a rivalry with giant wrestler Kongo Kong. Raven interfered in the match and attacked Vampiro, resulting in him losing by pinfall. Vampiro lost his rematch with Kong at Juggalo Championship Wrestling's first internet pay-per-view Hatchet Attacks. On August 14, Vampiro took on Corporal Robinson for the JCW Heavyweight Championship at Bloodymania V which Vampiro lost. Vampiro returned August 12, 2012, defeating Colt Cabana at Bloodymania 6. On August 11, 2013, Vampiro made his return at Bloodymania 7 teaming with 2 Tuff Tony defeating The Boogeyman and Kongo Kong.


title: Vampiro

text: On September 5, 2014, it was announced Vampiro signed with "Lucha Underground" as the color commentator for the English and Spanish-language airings. He made his in-ring debut for the promotion at the "Ultima Lucha" tapings on April 19, 2015, where he was defeated by Pentagón Jr. It was revealed after the match that he is the master of Pentagon Jr. In a podcast interview with Stone Cold Steve Austin, Vampiro revealed that he wasn't supposed to be Pentagon Jr's opponent at Ultima Lucha but after Pentagon Jr's original opponent backed out of the match, Vampiro went up to creative and requested to work the match with Pentagon Jr. and put him over because of how over Pentagon Jr. is with the fans despite being portrayed as a villain.


title: Vampiro

text: The following season Vampiro would mentor Pentagon until Ultima Lucha Dos where Pentagon (now renamed Pentagon Dark) turned on Vampiro saying that "he was the master now".


title: Vampiro

text: During Ultima Lucha Tres Vampiro turned on brand new champion Prince Puma during his match against Pentagon Dark. Thus costing Puma his belt and his Lucha Underground career, as well as pairing him back up with Pentagon Dark.


title: Vampiro

text: Hodgkinson grew up in a single parent home with his mother and two younger sisters. Hodgkinson is divorced from Kitsu with a daughter named Dasha, whose godfather is Norman Smiley.


title: Vampiro

text: The documentary film "" was produced by Odessa Filmworks and Zed Jamaica and screened in Canada on November 12, 2008.


title: Vampiro

text: He was involved in a relationship with Mexican actress Stephanie Salas and Mexican/US rock singer and Songwriter Ana Sidel co-star of the movie "The Dead Sleep Easy". He has a tattoo on his left arm that reads "Mexico City", where he had many of his matches. He is fluent in Spanish.


title: Vampiro

text: During the height of his wrestling career in Mexico, Hodgkinson starred in an action film entitled "Guerrero De La Noche", which was similar to the "El Santo" films of the 1960s and 1970s. He has also made a cameo appearance on Vanilla Ice's "Bi-Polar" as well as recording an intro to Psychopathic Records Twiztid's "Maniac Killa".


title: Vampiro

text: In July 2009 Hodgkinson reportedly had a break-in at his house; he got startled and jumped 15 feet to the ground from his bedroom window, which broke his back. In a letter posted on the JCW website in 2012, Hodgkinson admitted to having a brain tumor and stomach cancer.


title: Vampiro

text: Hodgkinson has stated his interest in world religions, particularly occult religions such as voodoo and vampirism. Hodgkinson also claims that two spirits from Guatemala are presently following him as the result of an unfinished ritual. Vampiro has since revealed that he eventually had an exorcism performed on him to have the spirits removed.


title: Vampiro

text: On July 5, 2017, Hodgkinson revealed via Facebook he has been a victim of identity theft and cyber hacking for 8 years. On April 12, 2019, Hodgkinson was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.


title: Vampiro

text: As of 2011, Hodgkinson makes occasional appearances on the Mexican show "Extranormal", which deals with paranormal activities in the world. He made his acting debut in "La Mujer de Judas", 2012 telenovela produced by TV Azteca. Hodgkinson also appeared on Fuse's "ICP Theater" as a heckler to the Insane Clown Posse.


title: Vampiro

text: Vampiro made his debut on the album "FREEKSHOW" by the band Twiztid on the track "Maniac Killa" where he recorded the introduction of the song.


title: Vampiro

text: On the Insane Clown Posse album "Forgotten Freshness Vol.3" the spitball recording for that intro on the Twiztid album was released as one of the gag tracks on the cd.


title: Vampiro

text: In 2006, Hodgkinson formed the industrial metal band Droch Fhoula. In January 2007 Carpatos Records released the band's debut maxi-single "Alter Deus". A year later in June 2008, the band released its first 6-track EP under the same title of the single.


title: Place des Vosges

text: It is located in the "Marais" district, and it straddles the dividing-line between the 3rd and 4th arrondissements of Paris. It was a fashionable and expensive square to live in during the 17th and 18th centuries, and one of the main reasons for the chic nature of Le Marais among the Parisian nobility.


title: Place des Vosges

text: Originally known as Place Royale, "Place des Vosges" was built by Henri IV from 1605 to 1612. A true square (140 m × 140 m), it embodied one of the first European programs of royal city planning (The Plaza Mayor in Madrid, begun in 1590, precedes it). It was built on the site of the Hôtel des Tournelles and its gardens: At a tournament at the Tournelles, a royal residence, Henri II was wounded and died. Catherine de' Medici had the Gothic complex demolished, and she moved to the Louvre Palace.


title: Place des Vosges

text: Place des Vosges, inaugurated in 1612 with a grand "carrousel" to celebrate the engagement of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, is a prototype of the residential squares of European cities that were to come. What was new about the "Place Royale" in 1612, was that the housefronts were all built to the same design, probably by Jean Baptiste Androuet du Cerceau of red brick with strips of stone quoins over vaulted arcades that stand on square pillars. The steeply-pitched blue slate roofs are pierced with discreet small-paned dormers above the pedimented dormers that stand upon the cornices. Only the north range was built with the vaulted ceilings that the “galleries” were meant to have. Two pavilions that rise higher than the unified roofline of the square center the north and south faces and offer access to the square through triple arches. Though they are designated the Pavilion of the King and of the Queen, no royal has ever lived in the aristocratic square, except for Anne of Austria in the Pavilion de la Reine, for a short while. Place des Vosges initiated subsequent developments of Paris that created a suitable urban background for the French aristocracy and nobility.


title: Place des Vosges

text: The square was often the place for the nobility to chat, and served as a meeting place for them. This was so until the Revolution.


title: Place des Vosges

text: Before the square was completed, Henri IV ordered The Place Dauphine to be laid out. Within a mere five-year period, the king oversaw an unmatched building scheme for the ravaged medieval city: additions to the Louvre Palace, the Pont Neuf, and the Hôpital Saint Louis as well as the two royal squares.


title: Place des Vosges

text: Cardinal Richelieu had an equestrian bronze of Louis XIII erected in the center (there were no garden plots until 1680). In the late 18th century, while most of the nobility moved to the Faubourg Saint-Germain district, the square managed to keep some of its aristocratic owners until the Revolution. It was renamed in 1799 when the "département" of the Vosges became the first to pay taxes supporting a campaign of the Revolutionary army. The Restoration returned the old royal name, but the short-lived Second Republic restored the revolutionary one in 1870.


title: Place des Vosges

text: Today the square is planted with a bosquet of mature lindens set in grass and gravel, surrounded by clipped lindens.


title: Graham Moore (writer)

text: Graham Moore (born October 18, 1981) is an American screenwriter, author and director known for his 2010 novel "The Sherlockian", as well as his screenplay for the historical film "The Imitation Game", which topped the 2011 Black List for screenplays and won the 2014 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (awarded February 2015).


title: Graham Moore (writer)

text: Moore was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised on the city's north side — "the son of two lawyers who divorced and then married two other lawyers."