title: United Abominations

text: United Abominations is the eleventh studio album by American thrash metal band Megadeth. Released on May 15, 2007, "United Abominations" is the first Megadeth release distributed through Roadrunner Records and, with the exception of the band's frontman Dave Mustaine, was recorded with an all-new line-up. It is the first album since "The World Needs a Hero" (2001) to be recorded by a full-time line-up as the previous studio album "The System Has Failed" (2004) was recorded by Mustaine alongside session musicians. While touring to promote the album, guitarist Glen Drover left the band for personal reasons and was replaced by Chris Broderick, leaving this as the only Megadeth studio album to which he contributed.


title: United Abominations

text: "United Abominations" was well received by critics and debuted at number eight on the "Billboard" 200, the highest chart position for the band since 1994's "Youthanasia" until it was succeeded by 2013's "Super Collider". Greg Prato of AllMusic stated Megadeth "sound reborn" on "United Abominations". The lyrics of the album deal with politics and the state the world is in, with Ed Thompson of IGN stating the album is the band's most politically charged. The album was named the number one metal album of 2007 by "Guitar World". In the 2007 Burrn! magazine Reader's Poll, it was voted Best Album Cover, and "Washington Is Next!" was voted Best Tune.


title: United Abominations

text: Prior to the release of "United Abominations", Megadeth signed a recording contract with Roadrunner Records. The band had troubles with music rights involving two former labels that carried Megadeth, Capitol and Sanctuary Records. This is the first Megadeth album since the 2004 album "The System Has Failed", which was released through Sanctuary. While on tour to support "The System Has Failed", Megadeth frontman, guitarist, and vocalist Dave Mustaine contemplated breaking up Megadeth to record as a solo artist. At a sold-out concert in Buenos Aires, Mustaine stated the band would stay together. The show in Buenos Aires, at which this information was announced, was recorded and released on CD and DVD as "".


title: United Abominations

text: Megadeth had a new band lineup, aside from Mustaine, comprising Glen Drover (guitar), James LoMenzo (bass guitar), and Shawn Drover (drums). Mustaine chose these people for full-time members rather than session musicians. He stated that he liked the Drovers' "sibling chemistry" and that LoMenzo was a "legend".


title: United Abominations

text: Mustaine stated he did not "go into making this record with any pre-conceived notions". He said some of the lyrics on "United Abominations" were written about his frustration with his past record labels, stating "a lot of that translated into the intensity on the record." Mustaine wrote the songs for the album in an attempt to "stir something in the minds of the listener". The lyrics of the album were mostly about choices the American government were making at the time, which Mustaine found to be foolish. Mustaine stated recording the new songs was "super fun", despite having troubles with some of the complex music and vocal arrangements. All of the lyrics and music, with the exception of one song, were written by Mustaine. "Never Walk Alone... A Call to Arms" was co-written by Mustaine and guitarist Glen Drover. When bassist James LoMenzo was asked about the lyrics of the album, he said to "talk to Dave about that". Although most of the band had no writing credits on the album, they stated that they were excited about recording the music.


title: United Abominations

text: "United Abominations" was recorded in 2006 at SARM Hook End Studios, London, England; the Steakhouse, Studio City, California; Big Fish Encinitas, California and Backstage Productions. Additional overdubs were recorded at S.I.R. rehearsal studio, Hollywood, California and Mustaine Music, Fallbrook, California. Most of the record was tracked in England because Mustaine admired the fact that his favorite band, Led Zeppelin, previously recorded there many times. Mustaine produced the album, with additional production handled by Jeff Balding and Andy Sneap.


title: United Abominations

text: "À Tout le Monde (Set Me Free)", is a remake of "A Tout le Monde" which originally appeared on the 1994 album "Youthanasia". The song is a more uptempo version of the original song, and features Lacuna Coil vocalist Cristina Scabbia singing backing vocals. Scabbia stated she was "really surprised about it because 'A Tout le Monde' is a song that I've always loved. It was a big surprise for me to get this invitation—I was really honored to be part of it." Mustaine chose Scabbia over three other choices because of her "reign in the heavy metal business". Mustaine later stated that he originally intended for the song to be a B-side for Japan, but the president of Roadrunner Records (Megadeth's label for this release) wanted "À Tout le Monde (Set Me Free)" released as the album's first single.


title: United Abominations

text: "Amerikhastan" is about "immigration and fighting in between religions". Mustaine said the song was "basically (a) part 2 to “Holy Wars”."


title: United Abominations

text: The song "Gears of War" is featured on the soundtrack to the video game of the same name. Initially, the song had no lyrics; however, Microsoft approached Megadeth, asking to use the song in "Gears of War". The band accepted the offer and wrote lyrics for the song, but it was too late to use the lyrics in the version for the video game, as the game was near completion.


title: United Abominations

text: All artwork for the album was selected from a contest held by DeviantArt. The contestants were asked to design a new version of Vic Rattlehead, the band mascot which appears on nearly every Megadeth album cover. Mustaine chose from the top 11 finalists to be included in the CD booklet. The cover was unveiled in August 2006, of which the image depicts the United Nations headquarters in flames and being destroyed by flying oil barrels. Rattlehead and the "Angel of Deth" are pictured in the foreground. Although the cover of the CD was not the contest's winner, Mustaine chose it as his favorite picture and wanted it for the cover. No band photographs were taken for the CD booklet, leaving the entire design as fan-made artwork. The album cover was made digitally using dated equipment with dated programs. The contest in which he had taken part of had stiff competition; for example Ed Repka and Hugh Syme were contestants.


title: United Abominations

text: "United Abominations" was originally set for an October 2006 release, but with the scheduled release date rapidly approaching, Mustaine told "Billboard" magazine in August 2006, "We're putting the finishing touches on it. We've got a little more work before it's finished, but it should be out some time next year." The completed album was leaked on to the internet in April 2007 and the first official pressing of the album was released exclusively in Japan on May 8 and contained a cover of the 1970 Led Zeppelin song "Out on the Tiles". The album was released internationally on May 15. The album had sold nearly 60,000 copies in the US in its first week and debuted at number eight on the "Billboard" 200, 10 places higher than the band's previous album, 2004's "The System Has Failed". The album debuted at number two in Finland, five in Canada, and the top 30 in seven other countries. As of August 19, 2007, the album had managed to sell about 122,000 copies in the US.


title: United Abominations

text: Megadeth started touring in March 2007 in support of the album in Canada opening for Heaven & Hell and Down, followed by a North American tour opening for Heaven and Hell and touring with Machine Head. On this tour, which lasted until May, the band debuted the songs "Gears of War", "Washington Is Next!" and "Sleepwalker". After the Heaven and Hell tour, Megadeth started the worldwide Tour of Duty, which lasted until March 2008. Megadeth also toured in Australia on Gigantour with Static-X, DevilDriver, Lacuna Coil, and Bring Me the Horizon as supporting acts. At one concert in Australia and in Italy (Milan), Cristina Scabbia performed on stage with Megadeth for "À Tout le Monde (Set Me Free)".


title: United Abominations

text: "United Abominations" received generally positive reviews, and was thought of as a return to form for Megadeth by critics. Don Kaye of Blabbermouth.net said the album "is an unabashedly guitar-driven album, stuffed with riffs and leads coming from all directions. The sense of explosive instrumentation under precise control that was a hallmark of early Megadeth efforts is back, which means that Megadeth, in many ways, is back too." About.com reviewer Chad Bowar stated the album "is the best Megadeth album in at least a decade." Greg Prato of AllMusic praised the album, stating "Megadeth's crunchy, venomous thrash has remained intact. Megadeth were never afraid to show off their prog-worthy chops, and the 2007 lineup appears custom-made for tackling 'tricky bits'. Mustaine and company certainly sound reborn." "Rolling Stone" reviewer Evan Serpick noted a downside to the album, stating it sounded too much like all of the band's previous albums. Ed Thompson of IGN praised the album and its political lyrics, saying it "cranks out so much attitude, so much opinion, and so much firebranded speech that the album could be mistaken for a political rally." Commenting on the Megadeth's new lineup, Jon Weiderhorn from MTV said "Once again, the system is fully operational." In a less enthusiastic review, BBC Music's Eamonn Stack wrote that even though the thrash musicianship is evident, the edge has been "sacrificed for the sake of speed and technical playing". "United Abominations" was voted the best metal album of 2007 by the reader's poll in the June 2008 issue of "Guitar World" and the Brave Pick of 2007 by "Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles".


title: United Abominations

text: On July 10, 2007, a rebuttal was posted by Mark Leon Goldberg on the UN Dispatch blog against the accusations made in the title track of the album, "United Abominations". Goldberg reviewed the song verse-by-verse, pointing out what he believed were false accusations. The blog stated that "we at UN Dispatch refuse to let Megadeth's witless screed go unchallenged. We listened [to the song] so you don't have to".


title: The Party (1968 film)

text: The Party is a 1968 American comedy film directed by Blake Edwards, and starring Peter Sellers and Claudine Longet. The film has a very loose structure, and essentially serves as a series of set pieces for Sellers's improvisational comedy talents. Based on a fish-out-of-water premise, the film is about a bungling actor from India, Hrundi V. Bakshi (portrayed by Sellers), who accidentally gets invited to a lavish Hollywood dinner party and "makes terrible mistakes based upon ignorance of Western ways".


title: The Party (1968 film)

text: The protagonist Hrundi Bakshi was influenced by two of Sellers' earlier characters: the Indian doctor Ahmed el Kabir in "The Millionairess" (1960) and Inspector Clouseau in "The Pink Panther" series. In turn, the character Hrundi Bakshi went on to be influential, inspiring several later popular characters, including Amitabh Bachchan's character Arjun Singh in the 1982 Bollywood blockbuster "Namak Halaal", Rowan Atkinson's character Mr. Bean in the 1990s British sitcom of the same name, and Hank Azaria's character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon in the American animated sitcom "The Simpsons".


title: The Party (1968 film)

text: A film crew is making a "Gunga Din"-style costume epic. Unknown Indian actor Hrundi V. Bakshi (Peter Sellers) plays a bugler, but continues to play after repeatedly being shot and after the director (Herb Ellis) yells "cut." Hrundi accidentally blows up an enormous fort set rigged with explosives. The director fires Hrundi immediately and calls the studio head, General Fred R. Clutterbuck (J. Edward McKinley). Clutterbuck writes down Hrundi's name to blacklist him, but he inadvertently writes it on the guest list of his upcoming dinner party.


title: The Party (1968 film)

text: Hrundi receives his invitation and drives to the party. Upon parking his car, he steps into mud. Hrundi tries to rinse the mud off his shoe in a pool that flows through the house, but he loses his shoe. After many failures, he is reunited with his shoe served to him on a silver platter by one of the waiters.


title: The Party (1968 film)

text: Hrundi has awkward interactions with everyone at the party, including Clutterbuck's dog, Cookie. He meets famous Western movie actor "Wyoming Bill" Kelso (Denny Miller), who gives Hrundi an autograph. Hrundi later accidentally shoots Kelso with a toy gun, but Kelso doesn't see who did it. Hrundi feeds a caged macaw food from a container marked "Birdie Num Num" and drops the food on the floor. Hrundi at various times during the film activates a panel of electronics that control the intercom, a copy of the "Manneken Pis" (soaking a guest), and a retractable bar (while Clutterbuck is sitting at it). After Kelso hurts Hrundi's hand while shaking it ("My goodness, I would have been disappointed if you hadn't crushed my hand"), Hrundi sticks his hand into a bowl of crushed ice containing caviar. While waiting to wash his hand, he meets aspiring actress Michèle Monet (Claudine Longet), who came with producer C.S. Divot (Gavin MacLeod). Hrundi shakes Divot's hand, and Divot then shakes hands with other guests, passing around the fishy odor, and back to Hrundi after he has washed his hand.


title: The Party (1968 film)

text: At dinner, Hrundi's place setting by the kitchen door has a very low chair that puts his chin near the table. An increasingly drunk waiter, Levinson (Steve Franken), tries to serve dinner and fights with the other staff. During the main course, Hrundi's roast chicken catapults off his fork and becomes impaled on a guest's tiara. Hrundi asks Levinson to retrieve his meal, but the woman's wig comes off along with her tiara, as she obliviously engages in conversation. Levinson ends up brawling with other waiting staff, and dinner is disrupted.


title: The Party (1968 film)

text: Hrundi apologizes to his hosts; then needs to go to the bathroom. He wanders through the house, opening doors and barging in on various servants and guests in embarrassing situations. He ends up in the backyard, where he accidentally sets off the irrigation sprinklers. At Divot's insistence, Michèle gives an impromptu guitar performance of "Nothing to Lose" to impress the guests. Hrundi goes upstairs, where he saves Michèle from Divot's unwanted advances by dislodging Divot's toupee. Hrundi finally finds a bathroom, but he breaks the toilet, drops a painting in it, gets toilet paper everywhere, and floods the bathroom. To avoid being discovered Hrundi sneaks onto the roof and falls into the pool. Michèle leaps in to save him, but he's then coerced to drink alcohol to warm up. A Russian dance troupe arrives at the party. Upstairs, Hrundi finds Michèle crying in the next room and consoles her. Divot bursts in and demands Michèle leave with him. Michèle says no, and Divot cancels her screen test the next day. Hrundi persuades her to stay and have a good time with him. They return to the party in borrowed clothes. The party gets wilder, and Hrundi offers to retract the bar to make room for dancing. Instead, he opens a retractable floor with a pool underneath, causing guests to fall in the pool. Levinson makes more floors retract, and more guests fall in. Clutterbuck's daughter arrives with friends and a baby elephant painted with "THE WORLD IS FLAT" on its forehead and hippie slogans over its body. Hrundi takes offense and asks them to wash the elephant. The entire house is soon filled with soap bubbles.


title: The Party (1968 film)

text: Back at his home, Divot suddenly realizes that Hrundi is the fired actor who blew up the set, and he races back to the party. As the band plays on, Clutterbuck tries to save his suds-covered paintings. The air conditioning blows suds everywhere as the guests dance to psychedelic music, and Clutterbuck's distraught wife falls into the pool three times. Divot pulls up as the police and fire department personnel work to resolve everything. Hrundi apologizes one last time to Clutterbuck as Divot reveals who Hrundi is, but Clutterbuck accidentally chokes the headwaiter instead of Hrundi. Kelso gives Hrundi an autographed photo and Stetson hat as Hrundi and Michèle leave in Hrundi's Morgan three-wheeler car. Outside her apartment, Hrundi and Michèle appear on the verge of admitting that they have fallen for each other. Hrundi gives Michèle the hat as a keepsake, and she says he can come get it any time. Hrundi suggests he could come by next week, and she readily agrees. Hrundi smiles and drives off as his car backfires.


title: The Party (1968 film)

text: "The Party" was the only non-Pink Panther collaboration between Sellers and Edwards. Producer Walter Mirisch knew that Sellers and Edwards were considered liabilities; in his autobiography, Mirisch wrote "Blake had achieved a reputation as a very expensive director, particularly after "The Great Race"." Sellers had played an Indian man (Dr. Ahmed el Kabir) in his hit film "The Millionairess" (1960), and another Indian physician in " The Road to Hong Kong" (1962). He is mostly remembered as a similar klutz as Inspector Clouseau in "The Pink Panther" series.


title: The Party (1968 film)

text: The film's interiors were shot on a set, at the MGM lot, though this may be a mistake as IMDb lists the Samuel Goldwyn Studios on Formosa as the correct address, likely as other Mirisch Productions, including "West Side Story", were shot there as well. The original script was only 63 pages in length. Edwards later said it was the shortest script he ever shot from, and the majority of the content in the film was improvised on set.


title: The Party (1968 film)

text: The film draws much inspiration from the works of Jacques Tati; Bakshi arrives at the party in a Morgan three-wheeler which may suggest Monsieur Hulot's car in "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday". However, it was not the same car (Salmson AL3). The entire film storyline is reminiscent of the Royal Garden restaurant sequence of "Playtime", and the comedic interaction with inanimate objects and gadgets parallels several of Tati's films, especially "Mon Oncle".


title: The Party (1968 film)

text: The score of "The Party" was composed by Henry Mancini, including the song "Nothing to Lose". Mancini, commenting on audience reactions, noted "That's what I get for writing a nice song for a comedy. Nobody's going to hear a note of it." During a scene later in the film, the band can be heard playing "It Had Better Be Tonight (Meglio stasera)", a song Mancini composed for the first "Pink Panther" film. The CD originally was released on August 20, 1995 by BMG Victor.


title: The Party (1968 film)

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 83% based on 23 reviews, with an average score of 6.60/10.


title: The Party (1968 film)

text: "The Party" is considered a classic comedic cult film. Edwards' biographers Peter Lehman and William Luhr said, ""The Party" may very well be one of the most radically experimental films in Hollywood history; in fact it may be the single most radical film since D.W. Griffith's style came to dominate the American cinema." Saul Austerlitz wrote "Despite the offensiveness of Sellers's brownface routine, "The Party" is one of his very best films...Taking a page from Tati, this is neorealist comedy, purposefully lacking a director's guiding eye: look here, look there. The screen is crammed full of activity, and the audience's eyes are left to wander where they may."


title: The Party (1968 film)

text: "The Party" has been criticized as having perpetuated brown stereotypes and using "brownface". Shane Danielson described it in "The Guardian" as "A comic masterpiece - yet hardly the most enlightened depiction of our subcontinental brothers. Still, propelled by Seller's insane brio, this late display of blackface provided some guilty chuckles, and at least one enduring catchphrase (the immortal 'Birdie num-num')."


title: The Party (1968 film)

text: However, the film was also hugely popular in India. The late Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was a fan and was very fond of repeating Bakshi's line "In India we don't "think" who we are, we "know" who we are!", the character's reply to a hostile "Who do you think you are?" The character Hrundi Bakshi also inspired Amitabh Bachchan's character Arjun Singh in the 1982 Bollywood blockbuster "Namak Halaal". Additionally, for his film "The Alien", the legendary Indian director Satyajit Ray was planning on casting Sellers as a Marwari businessman. Ray was a fan of Sellers, and believed he could convincingly portray Indian characters based on his performances in "The Party" and "The Millionairess". Sellers eventually pulled out of the project and the film fell apart.


title: Shafaq Naaz

text: Shafaq Naaz is an Indian television actress and trained Kathak dancer, known for her role of Kunti in "Mahabharat" and Mayuri in "Chidiya Ghar". She is the sister of actress Falaq Naaz.


title: Field goal

text: A field goal (FG) is a means of scoring in gridiron football. To score a field goal, the team in possession of the ball must place kick, or drop kick, the ball through the goal, i.e., between the uprights and over the crossbar. The entire ball must pass through the vertical plane of the goal, which is the area above the crossbar and between the uprights or, if above the uprights, between their outside edges. American football requires that a field goal must only come during a play from scrimmage (except in the case of a fair catch kick) while Canadian football retains open field kicks and thus field goals may be scored at any time from anywhere on the field and by any player. The vast majority of field goals, in both codes, are place kicked. Drop kicked field goals were common in the early days of gridiron football but are almost never done in modern times. In most leagues, a successful field goal awards three points (a notable exception is six-man football in which, due to the small number of players available to stop the opposing team from blocking the kick, a field goal is worth four points).


title: Field goal

text: A field goal may also be scored through a fair catch kick, but this is extremely rare. Since a field goal is worth only three points, as opposed to a touchdown, which is worth six points, it is usually only attempted in specific situations (see Strategy).


title: Field goal

text: The goal structure consists of a horizontal crossbar suspended above the ground, with two vertical goalposts apart extending vertically from each end of the crossbar. In American football, the goals are centered on each end line; in Canadian football, they are centered on each goal line.


title: Field goal

text: As a field goal is worth only three points, while a touchdown scores at least six (which usually becomes seven with a successful conversion, and potentially eight with a two-point conversion), teams will generally attempt a field goal only in the following situations:


title: Field goal

text: Except in desperate situations, a team will generally attempt field goals only when keeping a drive alive is unlikely, and its kicker has a significant chance of success, as a missed field goal results in a turnover at the spot of the kick (in the NFL) or at the line of scrimmage (in the NCAA). In American high school rules and Canadian football, where a missed field goal is treated the same as a punt, most teams still opt not to attempt field goals from very long range since field goal formations are not conducive to covering kick returns. Even under ideal conditions, the best professional kickers historically had difficulty making kicks longer than 50 yards consistently. If a team chooses not to attempt a field goal on their last down, they can punt to the other team. A punt cannot score any points in American football unless the receiving team touches the ball first and the kicking team recovers it (though it can result in a single in Canadian football), but it may push the other team back toward its own end.


title: Field goal

text: The longest field goal kick in NFL history is 66 yards, a record set by Justin Tucker on September 26, 2021, which broke the record previously held by Matt Prater (2013) at 64 yards. The third longest is 63, originally set by Tom Dempsey (1970) and then matched by Jason Elam (1998), Sebastian Janikowski (2011), David Akers (2012), Graham Gano (2018), and Brett Maher (2019). The record in the CFL is 62 yards, set by Paul McCallum on October 27, 2001. High school, college and most professional football leagues offer only a three-point field goal; however, some professional leagues have encouraged more rare kicks through "four-point field goals". NFL Europe encouraged long field goals of 50 yards or more by making those worth four points instead of three (much like Australian rules' Super Goal or basketball's three-point line), a rule since adopted by the Stars Football League. Similarly, the sport of arena football sought (unsuccessfully) to repopularize the drop kick by making that worth four points; it failed, since only one kicker (Brian Mitchell) was able to do it with any semblance of proficiency. (In six-man football, all field goals are worth four points instead of the usual three.) The overall field goal percentage during the 2010 NFL season was 82.3%. In comparison, Jan Stenerud, one of only three pure kickers in the Pro Football Hall of Fame (along with fellow placekicker Morten Andersen and punter Ray Guy), had a career field goal percentage of 66.8% from 1967 to 1985.


title: Field goal

text: When a team decides to attempt a field goal, it will generally line up in a very tight formation, with all but two players lined up along or near the line of scrimmage: the placekicker and the holder. The holder is usually the team's punter or backup quarterback. Instead of the regular center, a team may have a dedicated long snapper trained especially to snap the ball on placekick attempts and punts.


title: Field goal

text: The holder usually lines up seven to eight yards behind the line of scrimmage, with the kicker a few yards behind him. Upon receiving the snap, the holder holds the ball against the ground vertically, with the stitches away from the kicker. The kicker begins his approach during the snap, so the snapper and holder have little margin for error. A split-second mistake can disrupt the entire attempt. Depending on the level of play, the ball, upon reaching the holder, is held up by either the aid of a small rubber "tee" (all ranks up to the high school level, which is not the same as the kickoff tee, but rather a small platform, and comes in either 1 or 2 inch varieties) or is held up by the ground (in college and at the professional level).


title: Field goal

text: The measurement of a field goal's distance is from the goalpost to the point where the ball was positioned for the kick by the holder. In American football, where the goalpost is located at the back of the end zone (above the end line), the ten yards of the end zone are added to the yard line distance at the spot of the hold.


title: Field goal

text: Until the 1960s, placekickers approached the ball straight on, with the toe making first contact with the ball. The technique of kicking the ball "soccer-style", by approaching the ball at an angle and kicking it with the instep, was introduced by Hungarian-born kicker Pete Gogolak in the 1960s. Reflecting his roots in European soccer, Gogolak observed that kicking the ball at an angle could cover more distance than kicking straight-on; he played college football at Cornell and made his pro debut in 1964 with the Buffalo Bills of the AFL; his younger brother Charlie was also an NFL kicker. The soccer-style kick gained popularity and was nearly universal by the late 1970s; the last full-time straight-on kicker in the NFL was Mark Moseley, who retired in 1986.


title: Field goal

text: If there is any time left in the half, the method of resuming play after a successful field goal varies between leagues.


title: Field goal

text: A missed field goal is said to be "no good" if the kicked ball does not cross between the uprights and over the crossbar of the goal posts. If it misses to the side of the uprights, it may be called "wide left" or "wide right" as the case may be. A field goal attempt may be described as "short" if it does not have sufficient distance to go over the cross bar. Some commentators will only describe a field goal attempt as being short if it appears to have been aimed correctly while others will describe an attempt appearing to lack both accuracy and distance as being both wide and short.


title: Field goal

text: If a field goal attempt is missed, and the ball does not go out of bounds and has not been ruled dead by a referee, then a defensive player may advance the ball, as with a punt or kickoff. This type of play usually occurs either during an extremely long field goal attempt, or if the attempt is blocked. A notable return of a short field goal attempt was the Kick Six, which ended the 2013 Iron Bowl. If there is a significant likelihood of a miss and the strategic game situation warrants it, the defense places a player downfield, in or near their end zone, to catch the ball. The risk in this is that the return man may be tackled deep in his own territory, at a considerably worse position than he could have gotten by letting the ball go dead (see below); furthermore, should the returner fumble the ball, the kicking team can recover it and gain a new set of downs (the advantage is that the kicking team is lined up very close together to stop kick blockers, and not spread across the field like a kickoff or punt team, and is therefore in poor position to defend the return). Thus, teams will usually return a kick only towards the end of a half (when the kick will be the final play) or in a particularly desperate situation.


title: Field goal

text: If a ball caroms off one of the goal posts or the crossbar but lands in the field of play, the ball is considered dead and cannot be returned. (This is not the case in arena football, where large "rebound nets" surround the goal posts for the explicit purpose of keeping the ball in play.) However, if the ball continues into the goal after caroming, the score counts.


title: Field goal

text: Situations where the defense does not return a missed field goal vary between leagues and levels of play:


title: Field goal

text: Occasionally, the defense will succeed in blocking a field goal. If the ball falls in or behind the neutral zone, it is treated like a fumble and can be advanced by either team. If the ball instead falls forward beyond the neutral zone, it is treated like a missed field goal under the rules explained above.


title: Field goal

text: In the early days of football, kicking was emphasized. In 1883, the scoring system was devised with field goals counting for five points, and touchdowns and conversions worth four points. In 1897, the touchdown was raised to five points while the conversion was lowered to one point. (In 1958, the NCAA created the two-point conversion for conversions scored via run or pass; the NFL followed suit in 1994.) Field goals were devalued to four points in 1904, and then to the modern three points in 1909. The touchdown was changed to six points in 1912 in American football; the Canadian game followed suit in 1956.


title: Field goal

text: The spot of the conversion has also changed through the years. In 1924, NCAA rules spotted the conversion at the 3-yard line, before moving it back to the 5-yard line in 1925. In 1929, the spot was moved up to the 2-yard line, matching the NFL. In 1968, the NCAA diverged from the NFL rules and moved the spot back to the original 3-yard line. Canadian rules originally spotted the conversion at the 5-yard line, which remains closer than in the American code (for kicked conversions) as the goalposts are at the front of the end zone.


title: Field goal

text: In , to make conversion kicks harder, the NFL and CFL moved the line of scrimmage for conversion kicks to the 15- and 25-yard lines, respectively. (The CFL also moved the spot for two-point conversion attempts to the 3-yard line, while then NFL remained at the 2-yard line.)


title: Field goal

text: The goalposts were originally located on the goal line; this led to many injuries and sometimes interfered with play. The NCAA moved the goal posts to the rear of the end zone in 1927. The NFL (still following NCAA rules at the time) followed suit, but moved the posts back to the goal line starting in the 1932 NFL Playoff Game, a change made necessary by the size of the indoor Chicago Stadium and kept when the NFL rules stopped mirroring the NCAA rules in . The NFL kept the goal posts at the goal line until 1974, when they were moved back to the rear of the end zone, where they have remained since. This was partly a result of the narrowed hashmark distance made in (making them the same width as the goalposts), which had made for easier field-goal angles. The Canadian game still has posts on the goal line.


title: Field goal

text: The width of the goalposts and the hashmarks have also varied throughout the years. In 1959, the NCAA goalposts were widened to , the standard width for high school posts today. In 1991, the college goalposts were reduced in width to , matching the NFL. For the 1991 and 1992 seasons, this meant potentially severe angles for short field goal attempts, since the hashmark width remained at . In 1993, the NCAA narrowed the distance between the hashmarks to , matching what was the width of hashmarks in the NFL from through ; as mentioned above, the NFL narrowed the hashmarks in 1972 to goalpost width at . Canadian hash marks in amateur play are apart, 24 yards from each sideline. The Canadian Football League formerly used this spacing, but narrowed the hash mark spacing to in 2022. The Canadian field is in width, wider than the American field.


title: Field goal

text: The NFL increased the height of the uprights above the crossbar to in and in 1974. In , they were raised five feet to after the adoption of a proposal by New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick.


title: Field goal

text: The "slingshot" goalpost, having a single post curving 90° up from the ground to support the crossbar, was invented by Jim Trimble and Joel Rottman in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The first ones were built by Alcan and displayed at the Expo 67 world's fair in Montreal. The NFL had standardized its goalposts in 1966 and adopted the slingshot for the season. The NCAA subsequently adopted the same rule, but later allowed the use of "offset" goalposts with the older two-post base. The CFL was the first league to use the slingshot goalposts. They debuted in the 2nd game of the CFL's Eastern Conference final in 1966 at Montreal's Autostade because Landsdowne Park (now TD Place Stadium), the home of Ottawa Rough Riders, was undergoing renovations. They were also used in the Grey Cup the next week at Vancouver's Empire Stadium. Three schools in Division I FBS currently use dual-support posts: Florida State, LSU, and Washington State. A special exemption was allowed by the NFL for the New Orleans Saints to use the offset goalposts during the 2005 season, when they used LSU's stadium for home games after Hurricane Katrina.


title: Field goal

text: Goalposts at the professional level today are sometimes equipped with a video camera mounted to the stanchion immediately behind the center of the crossbar. Since these cameras are both above and slightly behind the crossbar, a field goal attempt will be judged good if it strikes this equipment.


title: Field goal

text: A small plastic tee, which can be high (smaller than the kickoff tee), may be used for field goals and extra points in some leagues, including US high schools and Canadian amateur play. The NFL (and most other professional leagues) has never allowed the use of tees for field goal kick attempts, having always required kickers to kick off the ground for such attempts (and for extra points; a rare exception for a U.S.-based pro league to allow the usage of such tees for such attempts was the original USFL in the 1980s). In 1948, the NCAA authorized the use of the small rubberized kicking tee for extra points and field goals, but banned them by 1989, requiring kicks from the ground, as in the NFL. The CFL allows the use of a tee for field goals and convert kicks, but it is optional.


title: Field goal

text: During the NFL season, a record 90 field goals of 50 yards or longer were made. In , this record was raised to 92 field goals of 50 yards or longer.


title: Field goal

text: According to the Guinness World Records, the longest recorded field goal successfully kicked at any level was 69 yards. It was kicked by Ove Johansson of the Abilene Christian University Wildcats in the 1976 game against East Texas State University Lions (now Texas A&M University–Commerce) in Shotwell Stadium, Abilene, Texas.


title: Field goal

text: The longest successful field goal in NFL history was 66 yards by Justin Tucker of the Baltimore Ravens against the Detroit Lions on September 26, 2021. The longest field goal attempt in an NFL game was 76 yards by Sebastian Janikowski of the Oakland Raiders against the San Diego Chargers on September 28, 2008.


title: Field goal

text: Prior to Dempsey's 1970 kick, the longest field goal in NFL history was 56 yards, by Bert Rechichar of the Baltimore Colts A 55-yard field goal, achieved by a drop kick, was recorded by Paddy Driscoll in , and stood as the unofficial record until that point; some sources indicate a 54-yarder by Glenn Presnell in as the due to the inability to precisely verify Driscoll's kick.


title: Field goal

text: In a pre-season NFL game between the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks on August 29, 2002, Ola Kimrin kicked a 65-yard field goal. However, because pre-season games are not counted toward official records, this accomplishment did not stand as the official record, even before Tucker bested it in 2021.


title: Field goal

text: All of the above kicks were successful with the use of a kicking tee, which was banned by the NCAA after the 1988 season.


title: Field goal

text: The longest known drop-kicked field goal in college football was a 62-yard kick from Pat O'Dea, an Australian kicker who played for Wisconsin. O'Dea's kick took place in a blizzard against Northwestern on November 15, 1898.


title: Field goal

text: The longest field goal in U Sports football history is 59 yards, by Niko Difonte of Calgary Dinos, playing against the UBC Thunderbirds on November 11, 2017. The field goal was the final and winning play of the 81st Hardy Cup.


title: Field goal

text: Field goal returns are rare in the NFL, since an attempt with sufficient distance that misses the uprights will automatically be dead. Returns are possible when a field goal is short, but in that case returners will usually down the ball so as to scrimmage from the spot of the kick. Normally, a return will only be attempted when there is not enough time left in the half to run a play from scrimmage. Nevertheless, the following five field goals have been returned for at least 107 yards in the 21st century (the record set by Antonio Cromartie in 2007, and later tied by Jamal Agnew in 2021, 109 yards, is also the maximum amount of yards that can be achieved on a scoring play):


title: Field goal

text: Because the goalposts in Canadian football are on the goal line, and because downing the ball in the end zone results in the kicking team scoring a single point, field goal returns are much more common. The longest missed field goal return in the CFL is 131 total yards. Against the Montreal Alouettes on August 22, 1958, the Toronto Argonauts' Boyd Carter ran 15 yards, then threw a lateral to Dave Mann, who then returned it for the final 116 yards. This return, which started 21 yards behind the goal line, was during the era of 25-yard end zones (which made the maximum theoretical missed field return distance 134 yards in those days) and therefore cannot be met or exceeded on the modern field with 20-yard end zones. Since the shortening of the end zones in the CFL in 1986, a field goal has been returned for the maximum 129 yards on four occasions: by Bashir Levingston of the Toronto Argonauts on June 28, 2007, by Dominique Dorsey also of the Toronto Argonauts on August 2, 2007, by Tristan Jackson of the Saskatchewan Roughriders on July 14, 2012 and by Trent Guy of the Montreal Alouettes on September 23, 2012.


title: Field goal

text: In NCAA college football, only five missed field goals returns for touchdowns have ever been returned 100 yards or more:


title: Field goal

text: In U Sports football, like in the CFL, the longest possible missed field goal return is 129 yards, and this has occurred three times.


title: Terminalia arjuna

text: Terminalia arjuna is a tree of the genus "Terminalia". It is commonly known as arjuna or arjun tree in English.


title: Terminalia arjuna

text: "T. arjuna" grows to about 20–25 metres tall; usually has a buttressed trunk, and forms a wide canopy at the crown, from which branches drop downwards. It has oblong, conical leaves which are green on the top and brown below; smooth, grey bark; it has pale yellow flowers which appear between March and June; its glabrous, 2.5 to 5 cm fibrous woody fruit, divided into five wings, appears between September and November.


title: Terminalia arjuna

text: The tree does not suffer from any major diseases or pests, but it is susceptible to "Phyllactinia terminale" and rot due to "polystictus affinis".


title: Terminalia arjuna

text: The arjuna is seen across the Indian Subcontinent, and usually found growing on river banks or near dry river beds in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha and south and central India, along with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.


title: Terminalia arjuna

text: The arjuna is one of the species whose leaves are fed on by the "Antheraea paphia" moth which produces the tassar silk, a wild silk of commercial importance.


title: Will Hurd

text: William Ballard Hurd (born August 19, 1977) is an American politician and former CIA clandestine officer who served as the U.S. representative for Texas's 23rd congressional district from 2015 to 2021. The district stretched approximately from San Antonio to El Paso along the U.S.-Mexican border.


title: Will Hurd

text: Following a nine-year stint with the CIA, Hurd ran for Congress in 2010, however, he was defeated in a runoff primary. Hurd ran for Congress again in 2014 and was successful. He was re-elected in 2016 and again in 2018. During his congressional tenure, Hurd became known for his expertise in technology and cybersecurity as well as for his bipartisanship. From 2019 until 2021, Hurd was the only African-American Republican in the House of Representatives. He did not seek re-election in 2020. He has expressed the belief that most voters "are normal people who want normal leaders" and speculation exists that he is considering a run for president in 2024.


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd is the son of Mary Alice Hurd and Robert Hurd. He has a brother, Chuck, and a sister, Elizabeth. His father is black and his mother is white.


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd is a graduate of John Marshall High School in Leon Valley, Texas and a graduate of Texas A&M University, where he was elected student body president. He majored in computer science and minored in international relations.


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for nine years, from 2000 to 2009. He was stationed primarily in Washington, D.C., but his tour of duty included being an operations officer in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. He speaks Urdu, the and "lingua franca" of Pakistan, where he worked undercover. One of his roles at the CIA was briefing members of Congress, which is what made Hurd want to pursue politics. He returned to Texas after his CIA service and worked as a partner with Crumpton Group LLC, a strategic advisory firm, and as a senior adviser with FusionX, a cybersecurity firm.


title: Will Hurd

text: On November 19, 2009, Hurd announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in Texas's 23rd congressional district, a district that is two-thirds Hispanic. His electronically filed campaign finance records indicated he had $70,000 on hand to fund his campaign.


title: Will Hurd

text: On February 15, 2010, the "San Antonio Express-News" endorsed Hurd. In the March 2 primary election he received the most votes, but not a majority, resulting in a runoff election on April 13, 2010. Hurd faced the second-place finisher, Francisco "Quico" Canseco, a San Antonio banker who was making his third bid for Congress. Canseco defeated Hurd in the runoff, 53% to 47%. Canseco won the general election against two-term incumbent Democrat Ciro Rodriguez, but lost reelection in 2012 to Alpine Democrat Pete Gallego by a margin of 2,500 votes.


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd once again ran for the 23rd district in the 2014 United States House of Representatives elections. After a runoff, he won the primary over Canseco. In the general election, Hurd defeated Gallego, making this the third consecutive election cycle in the district in which an incumbent was unseated. The "San Antonio Express-News" again endorsed Hurd. Even though Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had carried the district two years earlier, the result was considered an upset. Hurd conducted a post-election swing through some parts of his district that had heavily supported Gallego. He was also the only candidate ever to be endorsed by former CIA director and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who admired Hurd's work at the CIA and was disappointed by his departure to run for public office. Gates said that Hurd "has the character and the integrity and the leadership skills for higher office".


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd was renominated for a second term in the Republican primary election held on March 1, 2016, in which he defeated William Peterson, with 39,762 votes (82.2%) to 8,590 (17.8%). Former Congressman Pete Gallego was his opponent again and the race was expected to be one of the most competitive in the country. After the primary, Hurd distanced himself from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. He criticized Trump's "nasty rhetoric" about Muslims and Latinos and his proposal to build an $8 billion, wall across the American border with Mexico. Hurd described the proposal as "the most expensive, least effective way to do border security". He stated that he did not need to associate himself with Trump to succeed.


title: Will Hurd

text: During the campaign, Gallego attempted to tie Hurd to Trump, who was considered unpopular with Texas Hispanics. After the Access Hollywood tape was released, Hurd affirmed that he would not endorse or vote for Trump, based on Trump's behavior toward women and minorities. Hurd claimed that Gallego had been insufficiently aggressive in support for veteran issues and was largely a tool of Nancy Pelosi, at that time the House minority leader.


title: Will Hurd

text: In the general election Hurd defeated Gallego, 110,577 votes (48.3%) to 107,526 (47%), with Libertarian Ruben Schmidt Corvalan of San Antonio earning the remaining 10,862 (4.7%). Hurd ran sufficiently well in the Bexar County portion of the district and in nearby Medina and Uvalde counties to offset Gallego's large margins in El Paso and Maverick counties, the latter of which encompasses the border city of Eagle Pass.


title: Will Hurd

text: On March 7, 2018, Hurd won the GOP primary with 80% of the vote. No candidate won a majority of the vote in the Democratic primary in his district, forcing a runoff between former Air Force intelligence officer Gina Ortiz Jones and high-school teacher Rick Trevino. Ortiz Jones won the runoff.


title: Will Hurd

text: In July 2018, it was reported that the election was on track to become "the most expensive congressional race in the state's history".


title: Will Hurd

text: The race was the closest House race in Texas and one of the closest in the country. The Associated Press initially called it for Hurd on election night, but an additional batch of votes temporarily gave Ortiz Jones a small lead, which Hurd then regained. After all provisional and overseas ballots were counted, Hurd was declared the official winner on November 19 by a margin of 926 votes.


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd assumed office as a U.S. representative on January 3, 2015. During his first term, he ranked third among freshman House members who had the most bills passed. Much of Hurd's work focused on bipartisan cybersecurity and technology bills. Hurd has been described as a leading congressional voice on technology issues.


title: Will Hurd

text: In July 2015, Hurd was named to replace Aaron Schock of Illinois as a co-chair of the Congressional Future Caucus, along with Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. In his first term in Congress, Hurd was made the chairman of the Information Technology Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that focuses in part on cybersecurity), which is unusual for a first-term member of Congress.


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd was the vice-chair of the Border and Maritime Subcommittee of the Homeland Security Committee. He was appointed to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for his second term, replacing Mike Pompeo, who departed to head the CIA. Hurd's background as a former undercover clandestine officer led "The Daily Dot" to call him "The Most Interesting Man in Congress".


title: Will Hurd

text: Along with Brian Fitzpatrick, John Katko, and Elise Stefanik, Hurd was considered one of the most moderate Republicans in the House. He voted against his party's positions on LGBT rights, gun control, immigration, repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and congressional oversight, and he received praise for his bipartisanship. Hurd was a member of the Republican Main Street Partnership.


title: Will Hurd

text: As of August 2019, Hurd was the only black Republican in the House of Representatives. He has said that the principal role of the government in the lives of African Americans should be to empower them to do things for themselves.


title: Will Hurd

text: According to "USA Today", Hurd's district "spans two time zones and more than 800 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border". As of January 2019, Hurd was the only Republican member of Congress representing a district along the U.S.–Mexican border.


title: Will Hurd

text: In 2019, Hurd joined the Transatlantic Task Force of the German Marshall Fund and the Bundeskanzler-Helmut-Schmidt-Stiftung (BKHS), co-chaired by Karen Donfried and Wolfgang Ischinger.


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd did not seek reelection to Congress in 2020, instead becoming a Winter 2021 Resident Fellow at the Institute of Politics of the University of Chicago. There, Hurd leads a series of seminars. He is currently on the board of directors for OpenAI.


title: Will Hurd

text: In 2015, Hurd voted 96% with his party's position on roll-call votes. As of August 2019, he had voted with his party in 82% of votes in the 116th United States Congress and in line with Trump's position in 81.3% of votes.


title: Will Hurd

text: In March 2017, a three-member panel of federal judges invalidated the Texas State Legislature's 2011 drawing of three congressional districts (Hurd's 23rd district, the 27th district, and the 35th district), finding that Texas had intentionally discriminated against blacks and Latinos in violation of either the U.S. Constitution or the Voting Rights Act. Hurd's election victory occurred using a court-approved 2013 interim map that differed from the 2011 map. "The San Antonio Express-News" editorial board wrote that "partisan motivations" influenced the drawing of the lines for the U.S. House seats by the Republican majority in the Texas state legislature. Hurd staunchly defended his district's boundaries. Hurd added that a revised district plan would not affect his work in Congress or his hopes of winning a third term in 2018.


title: Will Hurd

text: Allegheny College gave the 2018 Prize for Civility in Public Life to Hurd and Beto O'Rourke, a Texas Democrat. In March 2017, facing snowstorm-induced flight cancellations, Hurd and O'Rourke, both stuck in San Antonio, needed to get back to Washington for a House vote. They rented a car and embarked on a drive that they captured on Facebook Live. Hurd and O'Rourke worked together on legislation subsequent to the road trip.


title: Will Hurd

text: In 2019, Hurd was one of eight House Republicans who voted in favor of the Equality Act, which would provide federal non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ Americans.


title: Will Hurd

text: In February 2017, Hurd voted against a resolution that would have directed the House to request ten years of President Trump's tax returns, which would then have been reviewed by the House Ways and Means Committee in a closed session. In February 2019, on "Real Time with Bill Maher", Maher pressed Hurd about his vote against the February 2017 resolution to request Trump's tax returns. Hurd said that the resolution had not been on the floor for a vote, but that he would support renewed efforts by the House to obtain the returns.


title: Will Hurd

text: In July 2019, Hurd was one of four Republican House members to vote in support of a motion to condemn tweets by Trump calling for the members of the Squad to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came".


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd did not openly support impeachment for the Trump-Ukraine scandal of fall 2019. He said, "some of these things are indeed damning. However, I want to make sure we get through this entire investigation before coming to some kind of conclusion". In December 2019, he voted against both articles of impeachment.


title: Will Hurd

text: In 2019, Hurd was one of seven Republicans to break with the Trump administration position and vote with Democrats to end a government shutdown.


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd called for a ramp-up of U.S. military action against ISIS in Libya and in Syria, using the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan as a model. He blamed ISIL's rise on the Obama administration, accusing it of underestimating the threat. Hurd has written that Islamic extremists "are in it for the long haul, which means that we have to be also". On the broader Syrian civil war, Hurd has written that "the brutal dictator Bashar al-Asad must go".


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd has called for greater U.S. defenses against foreign cyber-attacks. Following the Office of Personnel Management data breach, he wrote that federal cybersecurity was woefully inadequate. He opposes applying the Wassenaar Arrangement to cyber technologies, arguing that "attempting to regulate cybersecurity technologies through export controls is a fundamentally flawed approach" that places the U.S. at risk and "will not achieve the goal of curbing human rights violations".


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd opposed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (an international agreement with Iran over its nuclear program), calling it "short-sighted and ultimately dangerous," and called for the U.S. to reimpose various sanctions against Iran, arguing that Iran violated its obligations under the agreement. He has spoken out against Russian aggression, calling the Russian government "our adversary".


title: Will Hurd

text: Along with Martha McSally and Michael McCaul, Hurd helped draft the "Final Report of the Task Force on Combating Terrorist and Foreign Fighter Travel" of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee.


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd questioned FBI director James Comey's recommendation not to seek prosecution of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over the Clinton e-mail controversy. Referencing his experience in the CIA, Hurd said he knew the importance of classified information because he had seen his friends killed and assets put in harm's way to obtain such sensitive information.


title: Will Hurd

text: In January 2018, Hurd voted down Democratic motions in the House Intelligence Committee to allow the Justice Department and FBI to review the Devin Nunes memo, a document alleging FBI abuses of surveillance powers in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, before releasing it to the public. The FBI said it had "grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo's accuracy". Hurd voted against the release of a related memo authored by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd has opposed the CIA's efforts to mandate weaker encryption on smartphones and other devices to make it easier for federal agents to unlock them, arguing that stronger encryption thwarts hackers and protects national security.


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd favors repealing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. In 2017, when House Republican leadership introduced the American Health Care Act (a bill to repeal the ACA), he faced a political quandary. Hurd did not say whether he supported or opposed the legislation. Ultimately, after the measure was declared dead and withdrawn from a planned vote due to insufficient support, Hurd "released a statement in which he appeared to oppose the overhaul". When the bill came up for a vote again, he voted against it, opposing it because he feared it would hurt people with pre-existing medical conditions. Some Democrats castigated Hurd for the length of his consideration of the bill, but constituents and ACA supporters praised him for declining to support the bill, with former secretary of housing and urban development Julian Castro calling Hurd's vote a "good decision".


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd spoke out against Trump's 2017 executive order to build a wall along the southern border with Mexico, saying it was a "third-century solution to a 21st-century problem" and the "most expensive and least effective way to secure the border". Hurd instead advocated for a "flexible, sector-by-sector approach that empowers Border Patrol agents on the ground with the resources they need". He proposed using "a mix of technology. It's going to be significantly cheaper than building a wall. Let's focus on drug traffickers ... and human smugglers".


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd criticized Trump's 2017 executive order to bar the entry of nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries to the U.S., describing it as the "ultimate display of mistrust".


title: Will Hurd

text: Vote Smart, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that collects and distributes information on candidates for public office in the United States, "researched presidential and congressional candidates' public records to determine candidates' likely responses on certain key issues". According to its 2016 analysis, Hurd generally supports anti-abortion legislation, opposes an income tax increase, opposes federal spending that doesn't benefit the military or state security, and supports lowering taxes as a means of promoting economic growth, supports building the Keystone Pipeline, opposes the federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, opposes gun-control legislation, supports repealing the Affordable Care Act, and supports increased American intervention in Iraq and Syria beyond air support.


title: Will Hurd

text: On March 29, 2022, Simon and Schuster published Hurd's first book, entitled "American Reboot: An Idealist's Guide to Getting Big Things Done", a combination memoir and blueprint for the country's future. It received largely positive reviews.


title: Will Hurd

text: Hurd is not married. In 2017, "Politico" reported that he was dating Lynlie Wallace, the chief of staff to Texas State Representative Lyle Larson.


title: The Good Neighbor (film)

text: The Good Neighbor is a 2016 American psychological horror film directed by Kasra Farahani and written by Mark Bianculli and Jeff Richard. The film stars James Caan, Logan Miller and Keir Gilchrist. The film was released on September 16, 2016, by Vertical Entertainment.


title: The Good Neighbor (film)

text: Ethan (Miller) and Sean (Gilchrist) are tech-savvy high-school teenagers who decide to prank their neighbor Harold Grainey (Caan) by convincing him that his house is haunted. When Grainey leaves home one morning, the two set up equipment to simulate the haunting, as well as hidden cameras that will broadcast Grainey's reactions.


title: The Good Neighbor (film)

text: As the basis for a school project, Ethan requests Sean's assistance in setting up hidden cameras at Grainey's home so both can view a person's unfiltered reaction to being haunted by a poltergeist, despite Sean's initial reservations. The cameras are set up so that both can monitor Grainey's reactions for six weeks live from computers in Ethan's bedroom. Grainey has a reputation for being hostile, a recluse, and a "creepy old man" in the neighborhood, which makes it easier for Ethan to justify choosing him as his subject.


title: The Good Neighbor (film)

text: Ethan starts to initiate activities aimed at unsettling Grainey to make him believe the house is haunted, including making the kitchen door bang loudly in the middle of the night, disabling the heating system (which causes the bedroom window to shatter because of the freezing temperature), and activating the stereo in the middle of the night.


title: The Good Neighbor (film)

text: Throughout the movie, we are shown flashforwards to a criminal trial and flashbacks of Grainey and his wife. These flashbacks are all linked with the "paranormal" activities that the boys try to use to unsettle Grainey. For example, a flashback shows Grainey's wife dancing to music at 3 a.m. and crying, and one of the activities the boys do is play the same song at a similar time. Another example is how Grainey's wife used to complain about the door not shutting correctly and banging. The first activity the boys did was slam the door continuously, leading to Grainey destroying it with an axe.


title: The Good Neighbor (film)

text: Sean and Ethan are mystified by Grainey's ability to withstand all these strange occurrences. In one instance, they observe Grainey being disturbed by all the strange noises and then going down to the house's basement. The duo is not able to observe what he does, as they were not able to set up a camera there as the door was locked. Grainey goes down at about 11:30 p.m. and only emerges after 7:30 a.m. This leaves Ethan perplexed, and he vows to determine the reason. They then try calling the police, claiming they heard a woman screaming in his basement. The police officer arrives and Grainey allows him to look in the basement, and the officier leaves after being satisfied there is nothing of concern.


title: The Good Neighbor (film)

text: Ethan begins to push for them to break into Grainey's basement, but Sean refuses. In an argument with Ethan, Sean discloses to Ethan that he knows the true reason why Ethan has targeted Grainey: Grainey was responsible for sending Ethan's father to jail many years ago. Ethan's father was an alcoholic who beat his wife regularly. During one such episode, Ethan's mother ran to Grainey for help. Grainey informed the police, which led to Ethan's father being jailed and ultimately getting divorced from his wife. Ethan believes Grainey is responsible for destroying his family and making him lose his father. In the meantime, Ethan throws a Halloween party, and Sean and his new girlfriend decide to make out in a spare bedroom. His girlfriend notices a camera installed on top of the bed, which leaves Sean enraged.


title: The Good Neighbor (film)

text: Sean asks Ethan to return all his equipment, but Ethan refuses, threatening Sean with the fact that the equipment was purchased using his credit card and that it is covered in Sean's fingerprints. In the middle of their argument, they observe Grainey's cat toppling over one of the living room cameras. Ethan runs to his home to collect the camera, and in doing so finds the basement door unlocked. He goes down to find that Grainey had made a shrine to his late wife in the basement. Ethan lifts a bell which Grainey gifted his wife, causing the bell to make a sound which awakes Grainey. Fearing for his safety, Ethan hides in the living room, placing the bell on a table. Grainey sees the bell and kills himself with his gun.


title: The Good Neighbor (film)

text: It is then revealed in a series of flashbacks that Grainey loved his wife dearly, and he had set up a room where he could take care of her, including arranging a nurse. The viewer then realizes that every activity performed by the boys related to Grainey's wife somehow, and Grainey is convinced that he is being haunted by his wife. A flashback is shown when Grainey first gives her the bell, saying that whenever she needed him, she only had to ring the bell. The bell noise that woke him and the fact that the bell was on the table leads Grainey to believe it was as a sign that his wife wants him to be with her, which is why he killed himself.


title: The Good Neighbor (film)

text: Ethan and Sean are arrested and sentenced to two years' probation and 500 hours of community service. Leaving the courthouse, Sean and the girls seem to share a glance and head in opposite directions. Ethan is surrounded by a slew of reporters and cameras. Having finally gained the attention he admitted to craving in an earlier scene, a slight smile appears on his face.


title: The Good Neighbor (film)

text: The Austin, Texas premiere, through the South by Southwest Film Festival, was well attended and featured appearances from the director, producers and stars.


title: The Good Neighbor (film)

text: On May 10, 2016, Variety announced that Vertical Entertainment had acquired North American theatrical distribution rights, with a release tentatively planned for fall of 2016. The film was scheduled to be released on September 16, 2016.


title: The Good Neighbor (film)

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 33% based on 15 reviews, with a weighted average of 5.30/10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 32 out of 100, based on 6 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".


title: The Good Neighbor (film)

text: Dennis Harvey of "Variety" noted that, despite featuring few locations, the film "doesn't suffer from staginess or claustrophobia", though he pined for "more insight into the protagonists’ family, friends and community." Trace Thurman of Bloody Disgusting singled out James Caan, saying that he delivered "an understated performance with extremely minimal dialogue." Likewise, Michael Roffman of Consequence of Sound praised Caan's performance, but felt that it was lost in "erratic sequencing."


title: The Orchid Thief

text: The Orchid Thief is a 1998 non-fiction book by American journalist Susan Orlean, based on her investigation of the 1994 arrest of horticulturist John Laroche and a group of Seminoles in south Florida for poaching rare orchids in the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve.


title: The Orchid Thief

text: The book is based on an article that Orlean wrote for the "New Yorker", published in the magazine's January 23, 1995 issue. Plant dealer John Edward Laroche (born February 19, 1962, in Florida) was determined to find and clone the rare ghost orchid for profit. Along the way, Orlean becomes fascinated with ghost orchids and meets many orchid enthusiasts. In their and Laroche's struggles and oddities, she gets a glimpse of true passion for the first time in her life.


title: The Orchid Thief

text: The trial following Laroche's arrest brought him to the attention of Orlean. Laroche's defense was a loophole in the law that he claimed allowed the Seminole natives to remove endangered species from the swamp. He accepted a plea deal that resulted in his being sentenced to six months' probation and a fine. As Laroche told Orlean:


title: The Orchid Thief

text: The book received a mixed reception on publication. Most critics noted both the strength of the prose and the compelling subject, while some criticized the overall trajectory of the book. Positive reviews included that of Michael Pearson at the "Atlanta Journal-Constitution" who called it "a rare and exotic tale that shows a journalist's gifts in full bloom." "New York Magazine" noted the "hilariously reported, discursive narrative wanders in many directions," but saw that as a core strength of the work.


title: The Orchid Thief

text: Critical reviews tended to note the level of tangents in the story and lack of a structure suitable for a book of length. Ted Conover, in a mixed review for the "New York Times", noted the giftedness of the storytelling, while noting that Orlean's structure often suffered in her first book-length effort. Writing for the "Chicago Tribune", Kristen Lillegard was harsher, noting the lack of forward motion in a story that "wilt[ed] under the weight of facts and figures."


title: The Orchid Thief

text: The book was adapted by Charlie Kaufman for Spike Jonze's film "Adaptation." (2002), with Nicolas Cage as Charlie Kaufman and his fictitious brother Donald, Tilda Swinton as Valerie Thomas, Meryl Streep as Orlean and Chris Cooper as Laroche. The film is a pastiche of the process of adaptation, in which a successful but self-loathing Kaufman painstakingly tries to make Orlean's book into a "simple movie about flowers" without formulaic Hollywood tropes, or the metaphysical stylings he was acclaimed for in his screenwriting debut, "Being John Malkovich".


title: The Orchid Thief

text: Kaufman struggles with writer's block, has sexual fantasies of Orlean and has enlightening discussions with other writers that lead him to ultimately make the script-within-the-film about the film itself, blending his metaphysical stylings to formulaic Hollywood tropes such as narration to communicate his neurotic thought process and a thriller-tinged third act to "wow the audience".


title: The Orchid Thief

text: In the film, Orlean is depicted as a sad writer with no fascination until she meets Laroche and has an affair with him. He introduces her to a drug extracted from the ghost orchid that makes the world fascinating and she keeps seeing him after he posted pictures of her naked online. When Kaufman becomes curious about the affair, he gets caught spying on the pair and Orlean wants Kaufman dead to save her reputation. That leads to the thriller sequence of the film in which Donald and Laroche are killed and Orlean is arrested. Kaufman lives to tell the tale and finishes the script.


title: English Revolution

text: The English Revolution is a term that describes two separate events in English history. Prior to the 20th century, it was generally applied to the 1688 Glorious Revolution, when James II was deposed and a constitutional monarchy established under William III and Mary II.


title: English Revolution

text: However, Marxist historians began using it for the period covering the 1639 to 1651 Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Interregnum that followed the Execution of Charles I in 1649, before the 1660 Stuart Restoration returned Charles II to the throne. Writing in 1892, Friedrich Engels described this period as "the Great Rebellion" and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 as "comparatively puny", although he claimed both were part of the same revolutionary movement.


title: English Revolution

text: Although Charles II was retroactively declared to have been the legal and rightful monarch since the death of his father in 1649, which resulted in a return to the status quo in many areas, a number of gains made under the Commonwealth remained in law.


title: English Revolution

text: In the Glorious Revolution of 1688, James II was replaced by William III and Mary II as monarch and a constitutional monarchy was established and was described by Whig historians as the English Revolution. This interpretation suggests that the "English Revolution" was the final act in the long process of reform and consolidation by Parliament to achieve a balanced constitutional monarchy in Britain, and laws were made that pointed towards freedom.


title: English Revolution

text: The Marxist view of the English Revolution suggests that the events of 1640 to 1660 in Britain were a bourgeois revolution in which the final section of English feudalism (the state) was destroyed by a bourgeois class (and its supporters) and replaced with a state (and society) which reflected the wider establishment of agrarian (and later industrial) capitalism. Such an analysis sees the English Revolution as pivotal in the transition from feudalism to capitalism and from a feudal state to a capitalist state in Britain.


title: English Revolution

text: The phrase "English Revolution" was first used by Marx in the short text "England's 17th Century Revolution", a response to a pamphlet on the Glorious Revolution of 1688 by Francois Guizot. Oliver Cromwell and the English Civil War are also referred to multiple times in the work The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, but the event is not directly referred to by the name. By 1892, Engels was using the term "The Great Rebellion", for the conflict, and, while still recognising it as part of the same revolutionary event, dismissing the Glorious Revolution of 1688 as "comparatively puny".


title: English Revolution

text: According to Marxist historian Christopher Hill: The Civil War was a class war, in which the despotism of Charles I was defended by the reactionary forces of the established Church and conservative landlords, and on the other side stood the trading and industrial classes in town and countryside ... the yeomen and progressive gentry, and ... wider masses of the population whenever they were able by free discussion to understand what the struggle was really about.


title: English Revolution

text: Later developments of the Marxist view moved on from the theory of bourgeois revolution to suggest that the English Revolution anticipated the French Revolution and later revolutions in the field of popular administrative and economic gains. Along with the expansion of parliamentary power the revolution broke down many of the old power relations in both rural and urban English society. The guild democracy movement of the period won its greatest successes among London's transport workers, most notably the Thames Watermen, who democratized their company in 1641–43. And with the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, rural communities began to seize timber and other resources on the estates of royalists, Catholics, the royal family, and the church hierarchy. Some communities improved their conditions of tenure on such estates.


title: English Revolution

text: The old status quo began a retrenchment after the end of the main civil war in 1646, and more especially after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. But some gains were long-term. The democratic element introduced in the watermen's company in 1642, for example, survived, with vicissitudes, until 1827.


title: English Revolution

text: The Marxist view also developed a concept of a “Revolution within the Revolution” (pursued by Hill, Brian Manning and others) which placed a greater deal of emphasis on the radical movements of the period (such as the agitator Levellers, mutineers in the New Model Army and the Diggers) who attempted to go further than Parliament in the aftermath of the Civil War.


title: English Revolution

text: There were, we may oversimplify, two revolutions in mid-seventeenth-century England. The one which succeeded established the sacred rights of property (abolition of feudal tenures, no arbitrary taxation), gave political power to the propertied (sovereignty of Parliament and common law, abolition of prerogative courts), and removed all impediments to the triumph of the ideology of the men of property – the protestant ethic. There was, however, another revolution that never happened, though from time to time it threatened. This might have established communal property, a far wider democracy in political and legal institutions, might have disestablished the state church, and rejected the Protestant ethic.


title: English Revolution

text: The old ruling class came back with new ideas and new outlooks which were attuned to economic growth and expansion and facilitated, in the long run, the development of a fully capitalist economy. It would all have been very different if Charles I had not been obliged to summon that Parliament to meet at Westminster on November 3rd, 1640.


title: English Revolution

text: The term "English Revolution" is also used by non-Marxists in the Victorian period to refer to 1642, as (for example) critic and writer Matthew Arnold in "The Function of Criticism at the present time". ("This is what distinguishes it [the French Revolution] from the English Revolution of Charles the First's time.")


title: English Revolution

text: This idea, while popular among Marxist historians, has been criticised by many historians of more Liberal schools.


title: English Revolution

text: The notion that the events of 1640 to 1660 constitute an "English Revolution" has been criticized by historians such as Austin Woolrych, who has pointed out that


title: English Revolution

text: painstaking research in the county after county, in local record offices, and family archives, has revealed that the changes in the ownership of the real estate, and hence in the composition of the governing class, were nothing like as great as used to be thought.


title: English Revolution

text: Woolrych argues that the notion that the period constitutes an "English Revolution" not only ignores the lack of significant social change contained within the period but also ignores the long-term trends of the early modern period which extend beyond this narrow time frame.


title: English Revolution

text: Neither Marx nor Engels ever ignored the further development of the Bourgeois state beyond this point, however, as is clear from their writings on the Industrial Revolution.


title: Lev Grossman

text: Lev Grossman (born June 26, 1969) is an American novelist and journalist who wrote "The Magicians Trilogy": "The Magicians" (2009), "The Magician King" (2011), and "The Magician's Land" (2014). He was the book critic and lead technology writer at "Time" magazine from 2002 to 2016. His recent work includes the children's book "The Silver Arrow", and the screenplay for the film "The Map of Tiny Perfect Things", based on his short story.


title: Lev Grossman

text: Grossman was born on June 26, 1969 in Concord, Massachusetts. He is the twin brother of video game designer and novelist Austin Grossman, brother of sculptor Bathsheba Grossman, and son of the poet Allen Grossman and the novelist Judith Grossman. Grossman's father was born Jewish and his mother was raised Anglican, but Grossman has said, "I grew up in a very unreligious household. Very. I have no religion at all. So I come at religion as about as much of an outsider as you can be in Western civilization." On the assumption that he was raised Jewish, he has said, "I have this extremely old-world name, and people can invite me to as many Jewish book festivals as they want to--but I wasn't raised Jewish."


title: Lev Grossman

text: He is an alumnus of Lexington High School and Harvard College. He graduated from Harvard in 1991 with a degree in literature. Grossman then attended a Ph.D. program in comparative literature for three years at Yale University, but dropped out before completing his dissertation.


title: Lev Grossman

text: Grossman has written for "The New York Times", "Wired", "Salon.com", "Lingua Franca", "Entertainment Weekly", "Time Out New York", "The Wall Street Journal", and "The Village Voice". He has served as a member of the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle and as the chair of the Fiction Awards Panel. In May 2015, Grossman gave the third annual Tolkien Lecture at Pembroke College, Oxford.


title: Lev Grossman

text: In writing for "Time", he has also covered the consumer electronics industry, reporting on video games, blogs, viral videos and Web comics like Penny Arcade and Achewood. In 2006, he traveled to Japan to cover the unveiling of the Wii console. He has interviewed Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman, Joan Didion, Jonathan Franzen, J.K. Rowling, and Johnny Cash. He wrote one of the earliest pieces on Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" series. A piece written by Grossman on the game "Halo 3" was criticized for casting gamers in an "unfavorable light." Grossman was also the author of the Time Person of the Year 2010 feature article on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.


title: Lev Grossman

text: Grossman did some freelancing and wrote for other magazines. Some of the works he wrote at this time include "The Death of a Civil Servant," "Good Novels Don't Have to be Hard," "Catalog This," "The Gay Nabokov," "When Words Fail," and "Get Smart." He freelanced at "The Believer", "the Wall Street Journal", "New York Times", "Salon", "Lingua Franca", and "Time Digital". It was soon after this that his novel, "Warp", was published.


title: Lev Grossman

text: Lev Grossman's first novel, "Warp", was published in 1997 after he moved to New York City. "Warp" was about "the lyrical misadventures of an aimless 20-something in Boston who has trouble distinguishing between reality and "Star Trek"." It received largely negative customer reviews on Amazon.com, and in response, Grossman submitted fake reviews to Amazon using false names. He then recounted these actions in an essay titled "Terrors of the Amazon". His second novel, "Codex", was published in 2004 and became an international bestseller.


title: Lev Grossman

text: In an article for "The New York Times" Grossman wrote: "I wrote fiction for 17 years before I found out I was a fantasy novelist. Up till then I always thought I was going to write literary fiction, like Jonathan Franzen or Zadie Smith or Jhumpa Lahiri. But I thought wrong. ... Fantasy is sometimes dismissed as childish, or escapist, but I take what I am doing very, very seriously.


title: Lev Grossman

text: Grossman's "The Magicians" was published in hardcover in August 2009 and became a bestseller. The trade paperback edition was made available on May 25, 2010. "The Washington Post" called it "Exuberant and inventive...Fresh and compelling...a great fairy tale." The book is a dark contemporary fantasy about Quentin Coldwater, an unusually gifted young man who obsesses over Fillory, the magical land of his favorite childhood books. Unexpectedly admitted to Brakebills, a secret, exclusive college of magic in upstate New York (an amalgam of Bannerman's Castle and Olana), Quentin receives an education in the craft of modern sorcery. After graduation, he and his friends discover that Fillory is real. Michael Agger of "The New York Times" said the book "could crudely be labeled a Harry Potter for adults," injecting mature themes into fantasy literature. "The Magicians" won the 2010 Alex Award, given to ten adult books that are appealing to young adults, and the 2011 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.


title: Lev Grossman

text: In August 2011, "The Magician King", the sequel to "The Magicians", was published, which returns readers to the magical land of Fillory, where Quentin and his friends are now kings and queens. "The Chicago Tribune" said "The Magician King" was ""The Catcher in the Rye" for devotees of alternative universes" and that "Grossman has created a rare, strange and scintillating novel." It was an Editor's Choice pick of "The New York Times", who called it "[A] serious, heartfelt novel [that] turns the machinery of fantasy inside out." "The Boston Globe" said ""The Magician King" is a rare achievement, a book that simultaneously criticizes and celebrates our deep desire for fantasy."


title: Lev Grossman

text: In September 2016, Grossman announced that he was working on a King Arthur novel called "The Bright Sword."


title: Lev Grossman

text: In July 2019, Grossman, with co-writer Lilah Sturges and illustrator Pius Bak, released "The Magicians: Alice's Story", a graphic novel told from the perspective of Alice, a secondary character from the book series.


title: Lev Grossman

text: Grossman's first children's book, "The Silver Arrow", was published in September 2020. It debuted on the "New York Times" Best Seller list on September 27, 2020.


title: Lev Grossman

text: Grossman's "Magicians" trilogy was adapted for television by Sera Gamble and John McNamara for Syfy. The series received five seasons and aired from December 2015 to April 2020.


title: Lev Grossman

text: Grossman wrote the screenplay for the film "The Map of Tiny Perfect Things", based on his short story of the same name. The film was released through Amazon Prime Video on February 12, 2021.


title: Lev Grossman

text: Grossman lives in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn with his second wife, Sophie Gee, whom he married in early 2010, and his daughter Lily from a previous marriage. On June 10, 2010, his daughter Halcyon Harriet Graham was born. In September 2012, his third child, Benedict, was born.


title: Lev Grossman

text: Despite his parents' religious backgrounds, and the fact that he has included religion in his work, Grossman is a self-professed atheist.


title: AFC South

text: The American Football Conference – Southern Division or AFC South is one of the four divisions of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). It was created before the 2002 season when the league realigned divisions after expanding to 32 teams. Since its creation, the division has had the same four members: the Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Tennessee Titans.


title: AFC South

text: Before the 2002 season, the Texans did not exist, the Colts belonged to the AFC East, and the Titans and Jaguars were members of the AFC Central. The AFC South is often regarded as the NFL's "newest" division since at the time of its establishment none of the new division's members had played more than eighteen seasons in their current cities. The Colts had played in Baltimore until the end of the 1983 season, the Jaguars commenced play in 1995 and the Titans had been based in Houston (where they were known as the Oilers) until 1996. However, Indianapolis, Tennessee and Jacksonville had all won multiple division titles and wild card berths in their prior respective divisions.


title: AFC South

text: The Colts hold a 534–474–7 record and a 23–25 playoff record with two NFL league crowns, four Super Bowl appearances and two wins. The Titans hold a record of 451–475–6 with a playoff record of 17–21 including two AFL championships (as the Houston Oilers) and a loss in Super Bowl XXXIV. The Jaguars hold a 177–239 record and a 7-7 playoff record. The Texans made the playoffs for the first time in their ten-season existence in 2011 and hold a 135–169 record and a 4-6 playoff record.


title: AFC South

text: The Colts' Super Bowl XLI victory in 2006 is the only Super Bowl win from the AFC South to date, and the division owns the longest active Super Bowl victory drought. The next thirteen Super Bowls were won by at least one team in the other seven divisions, including seven victories from seven divisions from 2009 to 2015.


title: AFC South

text: When the NFL realigned for the 2002 schedule, the newly created AFC South was formed from two former AFC Central teams, an AFC East team, and an expansion team. Its inaugural season was won by the Tennessee Titans who went on to play in the AFC Championship game. For the next five years, the Indianapolis Colts won the division including their victory in Super Bowl XLI. In 2007, the AFC South had the best division record of all time based on the combined 42–22 (.656 winning percentage). The record was previously held by the 1975 AFC Central's .643 winning percentage. In 2008, the Tennessee Titans won the division, ending Indianapolis' five-year streak of division titles. However, in 2009, the Colts would storm back to win their 6th division championship in Week 12 of the season with a win over the Houston Texans and a loss by the Jacksonville Jaguars to the San Francisco 49ers.


title: AFC South

text: In 2010, the Indianapolis Colts again won their division by winning their final four games, including a victory over the Jaguars that tied the records of the two teams. The Colts controlled their own destiny, with the Jacksonville Jaguars losing its last three games of the season. In 2011, the Houston Texans won their first AFC South title, qualifying for the playoffs for the first time in franchise history. In Week 14, Houston had to beat Cincinnati and New Orleans had to beat the Tennessee Titans to secure the playoffs for Houston. Houston won 20–19 and New Orleans won 22–17 against the Titans, giving Houston its first ever playoff spot. The Texans had won their first Playoff game against the Cincinnati Bengals 31–10 but then lost to the Baltimore Ravens 20–13 in the Divisional game. The Texans repeated as AFC South champions in 2012 as well after beating Indianapolis 29–17 in Week 15 that season. In the playoffs, the Texans beat the Bengals once again, 19–13, but lost to the New England Patriots 41–28 during the Divisional Weekend. The Colts would retake the AFC South division crown in 2013. Indianapolis swept all three of its divisional opponents during the 2013 campaign to reclaim its first division title since 2010. Again in 2014, the Colts claimed the division title by defeating the Texans in a week 15 matchup, 17–10. The Texans took over as AFC South champions in 2015 following their 30–6 win over Jacksonville in week 16. Houston repeated as division champions in 2016; despite finishing with matching 9–7 records along with Tennessee, the Texans earned the AFC South's automatic berth into the NFL playoffs based on finishing better against the division (5–1) than the Titans (2–4). In 2017, the Jaguars won their first AFC South title after a Titans loss to the Rams in Week 16. In the previous week, the Jaguars had clinched their first playoff berth since 2007, with a win against the Texans. The Texans reclaimed the division crown with an 11–5 record in 2018, though the Colts also made the playoffs as a wild card and defeated the Texans in Houston in the first round by a score of 21–7. In 2019, the Texans won their sixth division title with a 10–6 record, and the Titans reached the Wildcard with 9–7. The Texans would win in the Wildcard vs. the Buffalo Bills and make it to the Divisional Round, losing 51–31 to the Kansas City Chiefs. The Titans, however, would make it to the AFC Championship, also losing 35–24 to the Chiefs.


title: Salima Sultan Begum

text: Salima Sultan Begum (23 February 1539 – 2 January 1613) was the third wife and chief consort of the Mughal emperor Akbar, and the granddaughter of Babur.


title: Salima Sultan Begum

text: Salima was the daughter of Akbar's paternal aunt, Gulrukh Begum, and her husband, the Viceroy of Kannauj, Nuruddin Muhammad Mirza. She was initially betrothed to Akbar's regent, Bairam Khan, by her maternal uncle, Humayun. The bride was probably a reward for the surpassing services done by Bairam for Humayun. The couple, who had a considerable age difference of approximately forty years, were married in 1557 after Akbar had succeeded Humayun as the third Mughal emperor. However, this brief union, which did not produce any children, lasted for only three years since Bairam Khan was assassinated by a band of Afghans in 1561. After his death, Salima was subsequently married to her first cousin, Akbar. She however remained childless in both her marriages, but she raised the second son of Akbar, Murad Mirza for the first few years.


title: Salima Sultan Begum

text: Salima was a senior-ranking wife of Akbar and had much influence over her husband and his son, Jahangir. As stated by Henry Beveridge, she was entrusted with the charge of the Muslim harem of Akbar. She wielded major political influence in the Mughal court during her husband's reign as well as during his successor's (Jahangir) reign. Her name, however, appears in the histories as a reader, poet, who wrote under the pseudonym of "Makhfi" () and as pleading with Akbar for Jahangir's forgiveness. She was known as the "Khadija-uz-Zamani" () for her wisdom.


title: Salima Sultan Begum

text: Salima Sultan Begum was the daughter of Mughal princess Gulrukh Begum and her husband, the Viceroy of Kannauj, Nuruddin Muhammad Mirza. Her father was the grandson of Khwaja Hasan Naqshbandi and was a scion of the illustrious Naqshbandi Khwajas, who were held in great esteem and were related to Sultan Abu Sa'id Mirza of the Timurid Empire through his son, Sultan Mahmud Mirza.


title: Salima Sultan Begum

text: Salima's mother, Gulrukh Begum, was the daughter of the first Mughal emperor Babur. The identity of the mother of Gulrukh Begum is disputed. In some sources her mother's name is mentioned as Saliha Sultan Begum, however, this name is not mentioned in the Baburnama written by Babur himself or the Humayun-Nama written by Gulbadan Begum, and therefore the existence of such a woman is questionable. She may also have been the daughter of Dildar Begum, who may have been the same woman as Saliha Sultan Begum.


title: Salima Sultan Begum

text: Gulrukh was thus, a half-sister of the second Mughal emperor Humayun and if she was Dildar's daughter a full-sister of Humayun's youngest brother, Hindal Mirza.


title: Salima Sultan Begum

text: Salima was, therefore, a half-cousin of Emperor Akbar. Gulrukh Begum, who was known for her beauty and accomplishments in the imperial household, died four months after giving birth to her daughter.


title: Salima Sultan Begum

text: Salima was a highly educated and accomplished woman, has often been described as extremely talented, and was tactful. Proficient in Persian, she was a gifted writer and a renowned poet of her time. She wrote under the pseudonym of "Makhfi", a pseudonym later adopted by her equally talented step great-great-granddaughter, the gifted poetess, Princess Zeb-un-Nissa. Salima was also a passionate lover of books and was very fond of reading. She not only maintained a great library of her own but freely used Akbar's library as well. Abdus Hayy, the author of "Ma'asir al-umara", quotes one of her famous couplets:


title: Salima Sultan Begum

text: Akbar's court historian, Bada'uni, in his book "Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh", gives one passage which throws light on Salima's love for books. The passage runs thus: "On account of the book "Khirad-afza", which had disappeared from the library and concerning Salima Sultan Begum's study of which the Emperor [Akbar] reminded me, an order was issued that my allowance should be stopped and that they should demand the book of me." He adds that Abu'l Fazl did not lay his refutation before the Emperor, and he does not clear up the awkward doubt as to what he had done with Salima's desired book.


title: Salima Sultan Begum

text: At the age of 18, Salima Begum was married to the considerably older Bairam Khan (who was in his fifties) on 7 December 1557 in Jalandhar, Punjab. Bairam was the commander-in-chief of the Mughal army and a powerful statesman at the Mughal court, who was acting as Akbar's regent at the time. Salima's maternal uncle, Humayun, had promised Bairam that he would give his niece in marriage to him as soon as India was conquered (which was accomplished in Akbar's reign). The bride was probably a reward for the surpassing services done by Bairam for Humayun. The marriage enhanced his prestige among the Mughal nobles as it made him a member of the imperial family.


title: Salima Sultan Begum

text: It is said that the marriage excited great interest at court. It united two streams of descent from Ali Shukr Beg, that is, the Blacksheep Turkomans from Bairam Khan's side and Timur from Salima's side as Salima was a Timurid through her maternal grandfather, Emperor Babur, and through Mahmud, one of her great-grandfathers. Salima became Bairam's second wife, after the daughter of Jamal Khan of Mewat, who was his first wife and the mother of his son, Abdul Rahim. Salima and Bairam Khan's short-lived marriage did not produce any children.


title: Salima Sultan Begum

text: Shortly before he died in 1561, Bairam Khan lost his prestigious position in the Empire as he was provoked into rebelling against Akbar by conspirators who wanted to ruin him. Khan's rebellion was twice put down by Akbar, and he submitted to him. As punishment for his rebellions, Bairam was stripped of all his privileges and Akbar gave him three options: of a handsome "jagir" in the sarkar of Kalpi and Chanderi, the post of the emperor's confidential advisor, and a journey to Mecca. Bairam Khan chose the last option.


title: Salima Sultan Begum

text: While on his way to Mecca, Bairam Khan was attacked in Patan, Gujarat on 31 January 1561 by a band of Afghans, led by a man named Mubarak Khan, whose father had been killed fighting against Bairam at the Battle of Machchiwara in 1555. Bairam Khan's camp was also put to plunder and the newly widowed, Salima Begum, along with her step-son, Abdul Rahim (aged four), reached Ahmedabad after suffering many hardships. Akbar was shocked to hear the sad news of his former teacher and guardian's death. As per his orders, Salima and Abdul Rahim were brought under imperial escort to the Mughal court with great honour and respect. Akbar himself married her on 7 May 1561 as a regard for the astute services offered by her late husband to the Mughal Empire and acknowledging her exalted lineage. She was about three and a half years older than him and became his third wife.


title: Salima Sultan Begum

text: The richly talented Salima was Akbar's only other wife apart from Ruqaiya Sultan Begum, who was of the most exalted lineage, being a granddaughter of Emperor Babur through her maternal line. Salima was, thus, a senior-ranking wife of Akbar and became one of the chief consorts. Salima remained childless throughout her marriage, however, some sources mistakenly identify her as the mother of Akbar's son, Sultan Murad Mirza. The "Jahangirnama" states that Murad was the son of a royal serving-girl. However some sources cite Mariam-uz-Zamani as Murad's birth mother. He was however entrusted to the care of Salima Sultan Begum for the first few years and later returned to the care of his mother as Salima Begum left for Hajj in 1575.