title: Dennis Price

text: Price was born in Ruscombe in Berkshire. He had distant Welsh family connections, and was the son of Brigadier-General Thomas Rose Caradoc Price (1875–1949) CMG DSO (who was a great-grandson of Sir Rose Price, 1st Baronet and, through his mother, a descendant of the Baillie baronets of Polkemmet, near Whitburn, West Lothian) and his wife Dorothy, née Verey, daughter of Sir Henry Verey, Official Referee of the Supreme Court of Judicature. He attended Copthorne Prep School, Radley College and Worcester College, Oxford. He studied acting at the Embassy Theatre School of Acting.


title: Dennis Price

text: Price made his first appearance on stage at the Croydon Repertory Theatre in June 1937, followed by a London debut at the Queen's Theatre on 6 September 1937 in "Richard II".


title: Dennis Price

text: He served in the Royal Artillery from March 1940 to June 1942 during the Second World War, but returned to acting after being invalided out, appearing with Noël Coward in "This Happy Breed" and "Present Laughter" and later as Charles Condomine in "Blithe Spirit", which he later named in "Who's Who in the Theatre" as one of his two favourite parts along with the title role in André Obey's "Noah".


title: Dennis Price

text: Price's first film role was in "A Canterbury Tale" (1944). He impressed Gainsborough Pictures, which put him under contract. According to Brian MacFarlane, Price was "mercilessly used by Gainsborough [Pictures] in one unsuitable role after another" in this period.


title: Dennis Price

text: He was given a support role in "A Place of One's Own" (1945) starring James Mason. British National borrowed him for "The Echo Murders" (1946), a Sexton Blake film; he was then fourth-billed as the villain in a Gainsborough melodrama, "Caravan" (1946) with Stewart Granger and Jean Kent, playing the type of villainous part that had made James Mason a star (and that Mason was no longer interested in playing). It was a huge success.


title: Dennis Price

text: Price was a villain again in Gainsborough's "The Magic Bow" (1946) with Granger and Kent. Two Cities Films used him in one of its melodramas, "Hungry Hill" (1947). Gainsborough used him in villainous roles in "Dear Murderer", "Holiday Camp", "Jassy" and "Master of Bankdam" (all 1947).


title: Dennis Price

text: He made two for Bernard Knowles, supporting Margaret Lockwood in "The White Unicorn" and a comedy, "Easy Money" (both 1948). He followed this with a thriller, "Snowbound", and a crime melodrama "Good-Time Girl" (both 1948). In 1948, British exhibitors voted Price the tenth-most popular British actor at the box office.


title: Dennis Price

text: He was promoted to starring roles. He was given the title role in "The Bad Lord Byron" (1949); this was a huge flop at the box-office, and helped kill off the Gainsborough melodrama. Much more successful, both at the box-office and among critics was "Kind Hearts and Coronets" (1949), for Ealing Films; he played the suave serial murderer Louis Mazzini with Alec Guinness playing his eight relatives.


title: Dennis Price

text: Price was in a wartime drama, "The Lost People" (1949). In the same year, he was a guest judge on a BBC radio broadcast of the Piddingtons show. His role was to represent the eyes of listeners as the Piddingtons performed their telepathy act in the Piccadilly studios, and in the Tower of London. He was ensuring that no cheating was going on and overseeing the telepathy tests as a witness.


title: Dennis Price

text: He was loaned to Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) to make two films: the musical "The Dancing Years" (1950), a sizeable hit; and the thriller "Murder Without Crime" (1950), was less successful.


title: Dennis Price

text: Back at Rank, Price was a villain in "The Adventurers", and was borrowed by 20th Century Fox for "I'll Never Forget You" (both 1951).


title: Dennis Price

text: He played the lead in "Lady Godiva Rides Again" (1951), and after a cameo in "The Magic Box" (1951) he had top billing in a comedy, "Song of Paris" (1952).


title: Dennis Price

text: Price supported in "The Tall Headlines" (1952) and had the lead in some B-films: "Noose for a Lady" (1953), "Murder at 3am" (1953) and "Time Is My Enemy" (1954). In "A" pictures he was now a supporting actor, with his films including "The Intruder" (1953), "For Better, for Worse" (1954), "That Lady" (1955), "Oh... Rosalinda!!" (1955), "Private's Progress" (1956), "Charley Moon" (1956) with Max Bygraves, "Port Afrique" (1956), "A Touch of the Sun" (1956), "Fortune Is a Woman" (1957), "The Naked Truth" (1957), "Danger Within" (1959), "I'm All Right Jack" (1959), and "School for Scoundrels" (1960). He was top billed in "Don't Panic Chaps!" (1959), a minor comedy made by Hammer Films.


title: Dennis Price

text: In the 1950s, Price appeared in London and New York City in new plays and revivals of classics. It has been suggested that he was the first name actor on television to play a "more or less overtly gay role" in "Crime on Our Hands" (1954). In 1957, he made his debut in South Africa in lead roles in "Separate Tables".


title: Dennis Price

text: As a radio actor, Price was the original "No. 1" in charge of the crew of HMS "Troutbridge" in the first series of the long-running radio comedy series "The Navy Lark" in 1959, but was unable to continue the role in the second series because of other work commitments; he was replaced by Stephen Murray. His film appearances from this period included "Tunes of Glory" (1960) and "The Amorous Prawn" (also known as "The Playgirl and the War Minister", 1962). In "Victim" (1961) he portrayed one of several characters being blackmailed because of their (then illegal) homosexuality. In the horror spoof "What a Carve Up!" (1961) he starred alongside Kenneth Connor, Sid James, Shirley Eaton and Donald Pleasence, while in the science fiction film "The Earth Dies Screaming" (1964) he appeared alongside Willard Parker and Thorley Walters.


title: Dennis Price

text: In the BBC television series "The World of Wooster" (1965–67), Price's performance as Jeeves was described by "The Times" as "an outstanding success", and P. G. Wodehouse said Price had "that essential touch of Jeeves mystery". Working with Ian Carmichael as Bertie Wooster, this now almost completely lost series was based on the novels and short stories of P. G. Wodehouse. He also appeared in an episode of "The Avengers".


title: Dennis Price

text: In 1967, Price was declared bankrupt; he attributed his financial distress to "extravagant living and most inadequate gambling". He then moved to the tax haven island of Sark, which coincided with an escalation in his alcoholism. Towards the end of his life, Price appeared in a series of horror movies including " The Haunted House of Horror" (1969), "Twins of Evil" (1971), "Horror Hospital" (1973) and "Theatre of Blood" (1973), as well as five films directed by Jesús Franco. One of his last film appearances was a star-studded version of "Alice in Wonderland" (1972) with Ralph Richardson, Robert Helpmann, Peter Sellers and Dudley Moore, among others. On television, he had recurring roles in the ITC series "Jason King" (1971) and "The Adventurer" (1972).


title: Dennis Price

text: Price died of heart failure, complicated by a hip fracture, in Guernsey in 1973, at the age of 58. He was cremated at the Foulon Vale Crematorium, Guernsey, and his ashes were buried outside St. Peter's Anglican Church on Sark, next to the traditional burial plot of the seigneurs of Sark.


title: Dennis Price

text: In the book "British Film Character Actors" (1982), Terence Pettigrew wrote that Price's most successful screen characterisations were "refined, self-centred, caddish and contemptuous of a world inhabited by inferiors. Everything about him was deceptive. He could be penniless and still manage to look as if he owned the bank. But behind all that grand talk and lordly ways, there skulked, in his characters, the most ordinary of shabby, grasping souls."


title: Dennis Price

text: Price was married to the actress Joan Schofield from 1939 to 1950. They had two daughters. Price was bisexual.


title: Dennis Price

text: In April 1954, he tried to commit suicide by gas in a London guest house. Public sympathy led to a revival of his career and the offer of film roles.


The National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (, ; NSB) was a Dutch fascist and later Nazi political party that called itself a "movement". As a parliamentary party participating in legislative elections, the NSB had some success during the 1930s. Under German occupation, it remained the only legal party in the Netherlands during most of the Second World War.


title: National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands

text: The NSB was founded in Utrecht in 1931 during a period when several nationalist, fascist and Nazi parties were founded. The founders were Anton Mussert, who became the party's leader, and Cornelis van Geelkerken. The party based its program on Italian fascism and German Nazism: however, unlike the latter, before 1936 the party was not anti-semitic and even had Jewish members.


text: In 1933, after a year of building an organization, the party organized its first public meeting, a "Landdag" in Utrecht which was attended by 600 party militants. Here the party presented itself. After that, the party's support began to grow. In the same year, the government forbade civil servants to be members.


text: In the provincial elections of 1935, the party gained eight percent of the votes and two seats in the Senate. This was achieved against the background of the economic hardship of the Great Depression. Mussert's image as a reliable politician and his pragmatism allowed him to unite the different types of fascism and contributed to the party's success. This was bolstered by the party's strong organization and its political strategy, which was not oriented towards revolution but a democratic and legal take over of the country. By 1936, the party was holding annual mass meetings near Lunteren in Gelderland and, in 1938, it built the Muur van Mussert there, a wall which was supposed to be one element in a set of buildings and monuments inspired by the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg.


text: In 1936, under the influence of Meinoud Rost van Tonningen, the party became more radical and openly anti-semitic. Rost van Tonningen began to question Mussert's leadership, with the support of the German Nazi Party, increasing divisions within the party. This radicalisation led to decreased support for the party and a strong anti-fascist reaction of the political parties, trade unions and churches. In the 1937 general elections, the party gained only four percent of the votes and four seats in the House of Representatives, although it increased its representation in the Senate to five seats. In parliament, the NSB MPs showed little respect for parliamentary procedures and rules. Many NSB MPs were called to order by the chairman of parliament for physical and verbal violence. In the provincial election of 1939, the party also gained four percent of the votes.


text: After the Second World War broke out, the NSB sympathized with the Germans and advocated strict neutrality for the Netherlands. In May 1940, 800 NSB members and sympathizers were put in custody by the Dutch government, after the German invasion. Supporters of the party in the Dutch East Indies were also interned at that time, and when a Japanese invasion of the colony began some of these were deported to Surinam and interned in the Jodensavanne internment camp. Soon after the Dutch defeat on 14 May 1940, the imprisoned European NSB members in the Netherlands were set free by German troops. In June 1940, Mussert delivered a speech in Lunteren in which he called for the Netherlands to embrace the Germans and renounce the Dutch Monarchy, which had fled to London.


text: In 1940 the German occupation government had outlawed all socialist and communist parties; in 1941 it forbade all parties, except for the NSB. The NSB openly collaborated with the occupation forces. Its membership grew to about 100,000. The NSB played an important role in lower government and civil service; every new mayor appointed by the German occupation government was a member of the NSB. On the national level, Mussert had expected he would be made leader of an independent Dutch state allied to Germany; in reality, however, the Austrian Nazi Arthur Seyss-Inquart was in charge of an occupation government. He chose to work with the remaining establishment as he realised that the NSB lacked popular support and talented candidates for more important functions.


text: Mussert had in total five meetings with Adolf Hitler in which he pleaded for an independent Netherlands, but he was unsuccessful. Although Seyss-Inquart had proposed that Mussert should be made Prime Minister of the Netherlands, he was only given the honorary title 'Leader of the Dutch People', and he was allowed to build a marginal State Secretariat, but he was given little or no actual power. His influence in the party waned at the expense of Rost van Tonningen and other more pro-German members. Unlike Mussert, Rost van Tonningen was in favour of incorporation of the Netherlands into a Greater Germanic Reich. Beginning in the summer of 1943, many male members of the NSB were organized in the Landwacht, which helped the government control the population.


text: On 4 September 1944, the Allied forces conquered Antwerp and the NSB expected the fall of the Netherlands to come soon. On 5 September, most of the NSB's leadership and many members fled to Germany and the party's organization fell apart, on what is known as "Dolle Dinsdag" (Mad Tuesday). Mussert himself spent the winter of 1944–45 at the estate of Bellinckhof, near Almelo. In these final months of the war the movement fractured further and further, and Mussert ordered measurements against leaders who behaved 'dishonorably' in September 1944. In the beginning of 1945 he terminated the memberships of Rost van Tonningen and Van Geelkerken. However, at that time Musserts power was severely weakened by the war events and the fracturing of the NSB.


text: After the German surrender on 6 May 1945, the NSB was outlawed. Mussert was arrested the following day. Many of the members of the NSB were arrested, but only a few were convicted.


text: There were no attempts to continue the organization illegally. Former members were shunned and sometimes imprisoned or humiliated. After that, they and their children remained stigmatized for a long time in society. The senior leadership was arrested and faced charges. Mussert was executed on 7 May 1946, Van Geelkerken was imprisoned, Rost van Tonningen committed suicide while awaiting trial.


text: The NSB started out as a classical fascist party, which based itself on the principles of leadership. It wanted a fascist state with a compliant government, fascist order and state control. It put the national interest above the individual interest and the interest of social groups (pillars) that had characterized Dutch society. The party was anti-parliamentary and authoritarian. Its program, which was otherwise modeled on the program of the German Nazi Party, initially lacked reference to anti-semitic or racist ideology of the Nazi Party. After 1936, under the influence of Meinoud Rost van Tonningen, the party became more oriented towards the Nazi Party and took on its anti-semitic and racist ideas. It also began to sympathize with the aggressive foreign policy of Italy and Germany.


text: Practical demands of the NSB were: abolition of individual voting rights, corporatism, a duty to work and serve in the army, limits on the freedom of the press, laws against strikes. It demanded a unification of the Netherlands with Flanders and French Flanders in a Greater Netherlands, which would also control a large colonial empire consisting of Belgian Congo, Dutch East Indies and perhaps South Africa. This state would not be a part of Germany, but only an independent loyal ally to Germany.


text: The NSB copied elements of the Italian Fascists and German Nazis. Like Mussolini's Fascists, the NSB uniforms included black shirts, and the Party adopted the Fascist salute. Since 1933 it used the salute "Hou Zee!", which, Anton Mussert said, connoted courage and referred to the "glorious" maritime history of the Dutch Republic. It also began using titles like "Leider" for Mussert (Leader; similar to Duce or Führer), "Kameraad" for men (comrade) and "Kameraadske" ('comradess', a neologism) for women. One party slogan was "Mussert or Moscow", evoking the Fascist defense against supposed Communist subversion. Although the Party later adopted the Nazi red and black colors and the swastika symbol, the original NSB flag used the Prince's Flag. A blue "wolfsangel" (a hooked symbol of a wolf trap) on a white disc was set against an orange field.


text: This table shows the results of the NSB in elections to the House of Representatives (lower house), the Senate, the States-Provincial, and the party's political leadership: the fractievoorzitter, is the chair of the parliamentary party and the lijsttrekker is the party's top candidate in the general election, these posts are normally taken by the party's leader. The membership of NSB is also represented. The House of Representatives then had 100 members.


text: Before 1940 the NSB held seats in provincial and municipal legislatures, but did not cooperate in any governments. After 1940 these legislatures stopped functioning and the NSB's role in local and provincial legislatures expanded. All newly appointed mayors were members of the NSB.


text: The following figure shows the election results of the provincial elections of 1935 and 1939, per province. It shows the areas where the NSB was strong, namely in South Holland, North Holland and Gelderland. The NSB was the strongest in Drenthe and Limburg. In 1935, it became the second largest party in Limburg. The party was weaker in Friesland, North Brabant and Zeeland.


text: The NSB drew its main support from the middle class: civil servants, farmers, business people and soldiers supported the party. Most of these people were not part of the strong pillarized organisations surrounding the socialist unions, and the Protestant and Catholic churches. Instead they were often a loose member of the weaker liberal pillar, which was very diverse. The NSB party scored particularly well in Drenthe, Gelderland and the towns of Limburg at the border with Germany. The synod of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands declared membership of the NSB irreconcilable with membership in their church denomination in 1936 and reaffirmed this in 1941. The Catholic Church warned against the party's ideology in 1936 and banned support for the NSB in 1936 on pain of exclusion from the sacraments. A mandement from the Roman Catholic bishops declared in 1941 membership of the NSB illicit to a high degree.


text: Historians Lou de Jong and A.A. de Jonge have characterized NSB members as socially isolated opportunists who were motivated to join the NSB through a mix of opportunism, idealism and social connections.


text: The party was organized with Mussert serving as party chair and political leader. From September 1940 until its dissolution, Carolus Josephus Huygen served as Secretary General of the party. Yearly the party organized a "Landdag", where Mussert held a political speech.


text: The NSB was surrounded by several party organizations. It published a weekly newspaper, "Volk en Vaderland" ("People and Fatherland"). Between 1931 and 1935 the party had its own paramilitary organization, the black uniformed "Weerbaarheidsafdeling" (WA), similar to the "Sturmabteilung" of the Nazi Party. It was refounded in 1940. It also founded its own youth organization, "Nationale Jeugdstorm" (Youthstorm); a farmers' organization; and a daily newspaper, "Het Nationale Dagblad" (The National Daily).


text: The term "NSB'er" has become synonymous with traitor in the Netherlands, and is used as an insult, especially in the context of ratting somebody out to authorities.


text: A grim joke after World War II, made by Dutch Resistance fighters, is that former NSB members insisted that their acronym actually stood for "Niet So [zo] Bedoeld" or "I didn't mean it like that" as they attempted to downplay their treachery.


text: The NSB was methodically isolated by other parties. Before the war the socialist Social Democratic Workers' Party and "Nederlands Verbond van Vakverenigingen" (Dutch Association of Trade Unions) coordinated counter-demonstrations and propaganda with a separate organization 'Freedom, Labour and Bread'. The NSB lobbied with the German occupiers to have other political organisations outlawed. Although the Germans had no problem with banning the socialists, communists and Christian-democrats, it was considerably harder for the NSB to convince them to get rid of their fascist rivals. Eventually, the Germans forbade these too and urged members to join the NSB, as these parties were considered too small. The most important rival for the NSB was the Nederlandsche Unie, an organisation founded in 1940, which wanted to rebuild Dutch society within the cadre of the changed balance of power. Although their point of view was later considered collaborationist, many Dutch joined the movement as an alternative to the NSB, which it soon outgrew. The end for the Nederlandsche Unie came when they refused to support the German invasion of the Soviet-Union. Hence, as of 1941 to 1945, the NSB was the only permitted political party in the Netherlands.


title: Victoria Hislop

text: Born in Bromley, Kent, she was raised in Tonbridge and attended Tonbridge Grammar School. She studied English at St Hilda's College, Oxford, and worked in publishing and as a journalist before becoming an author.


title: Victoria Hislop

text: Her novel "The Island" (2005) was a number-one bestseller in Britain, its success in part the result of having been selected by the "Richard & Judy Book Club" for their 2006 Summer Reads. "To Nisi" (The Island) was filmed as a TV series by the Greek TV channel MEGA.


title: Victoria Hislop

text: In 2009, she donated the short story "Aflame in Athens" to Oxfam's "Ox-Tales" project, four collections of British stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the "Fire" collection. Hislop has a particular affection for Greece. She visits the country often for research and other reasons, and has a second home on the island of Crete.


title: Victoria Hislop

text: Victoria married "Private Eye" editor Ian Hislop on 16 April 1988 in Oxford; the couple have two children, Emily Helen (born 1990) and William David (born 1993).


title: Victoria Hislop

text: In 2020, Hislop was granted honorary Greek citizenship for promoting modern Greek history and culture. The following year she was a contestant on "Dancing with the Stars", the Greek version of "Strictly Come Dancing".


title: Kim Sung-kyu (actor, born 1986)

text: Kim Sung-kyu (born January 6, 1986) is a South Korean actor. He is best known for his roles in crime thriller "The Outlaws" (2017) and in the Netflix series "Kingdom" (2019).


title: Spin the bottle

text: Spin the bottle is a kissing party game commonly played by teenagers. The game was very popular among teenagers during the second half of the 20th century because it fostered "sexual" interactions between boys and girls. It has even been described as "the party game of choice for glandularly excited high schoolers". It has been described as a coming-of-age party game.


title: Spin the bottle

text: Even though the game might be played occasionally by young teenagers or young adults, its popularity has declined since the 1980s.


title: Spin the bottle

text: The game is played by several players who sit, stand, or kneel in a circle. A bottle is placed on the floor in the center of the circle. A player spins the bottle, and must kiss the person to whom the bottle points when it stops spinning. Alternatively, the person to whom the bottle is pointing must kiss the person at the rear end of the bottle.


title: Spin the bottle

text: There are a very large number of variants. One variant is that instead, two players must hug within five seconds, otherwise, they have to kiss in 10 seconds and if the 10 seconds are up and they have not kissed, then they have to French kiss. Variations allow for other tasks to be accomplished. It can also be used to decide the players for other games, such as truth or dare or seven minutes in heaven. Variations may also include penalties, such as removing a piece of clothing.


title: Spin the bottle

text: Written records of bottle-spinning games date back to the 1920s, though early accounts make no mention of kissing.


title: Richard Libertini

text: Richard Joseph Libertini (May 21, 1933 – January 7, 2016) was an American stage, film and television actor.


title: Richard Libertini

text: He was known for playing character roles and his ability to speak in numerous accents. His films include "Catch-22" (1970), "The In-Laws" (1979), "Popeye" (1980), "All of Me" (1984), "Fletch" (1985), "Fletch Lives" (1989), "Awakenings" (1990), "Lethal Weapon 4" (1998), and "Dolphin Tale" (2011).


title: Richard Libertini

text: Libertini was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and graduated from Emerson College in Boston. During his early years, Libertini worked in New York City and in Chicago. He moved to Los Angeles to pursue his acting career during the 1960s.


title: Richard Libertini

text: He was an original cast member of "The Mad Show", a 1966 Off-Broadway musical-comedy produced by "Mad" magazine. His first film appearances were in "The Night They Raided Minsky's" (1968), "Don't Drink the Water" (1969) and "Catch-22" (1970).


title: Richard Libertini

text: Two of his more memorable film roles came in the comedies "Fletch" (1985), in which he played Chevy Chase's character's doubting editor, a role he repeated in the 1989 sequel "Fletch Lives", and "The In-Laws" (1979), in which he played General Garcia, an insane Latin American dictator whose closest advisor was a cartoon face drawn on his own hand a la Señor Wences. He portrayed Nosh, an electronics expert who is the childhood best friend of Burt Reynolds's character, in "Sharky's Machine" (1981).


title: Richard Libertini

text: He also played a traveling vaudevillian in Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven" (1978), the greengrocer George W. Geezil in Robert Altman's "Popeye" (1980), a Hispanic priest in "Best Friends" (1982), the servant Giuseppe in "Unfaithfully Yours" (1984), spiritual advisor Prahka Lasa ("Back in Bowl!") in "All of Me" (1984), the bandit Dijon in Disney's animated feature film "" (1990), and a rabbi in "Lethal Weapon 4" (1998).


title: Richard Libertini

text: On television, Libertini was a series regular in the first season of "Soap" as the Godfather. He appeared as three different characters in episodes of "Barney Miller". He also appeared in "Evaluation" (1978) and "Middle Age" (January 1979). He guest starred in the "" episode "Accession" as a Bajoran named Akorem Laan, and in the "Sonny with a Chance" episode "Dakota's Revenge" as Izzy, an insane mechanic. He also voiced Wally Llama on "Animaniacs", and starred in three short-lived sitcoms: "Family Man" (1988), in which he played a middle-aged comedy writer who married a much younger woman and became a father late in life; "The Fanelli Boys" (1990–1991), in which he played an Italian priest; and "Pacific Station" (1991–1992), in which he played a police detective.


title: Richard Libertini

text: Libertini appeared on the TV show "Supernatural". His final film role was that of a fisherman in the 2011 film "Dolphin Tale". From October 2011 through January 2012, Libertini appeared on Broadway as a rabbi in "Honeymoon Motel," the Woody Allen-penned segment of "Relatively Speaking".


title: Richard Libertini

text: Libertini married actress Melinda Dillon on September 30, 1963; he had one child with her, Richard. They divorced in 1978.


title: Richard Libertini

text: Libertini died at the age of 82 in Venice, California on January 7, 2016, from cancer. He had been diagnosed two years prior.


title: Bakar (musician)

text: Abubakar Baker Shariff-Farr (born 12 February 1994), better known as Bakar, is a British singer. Known for his experimental indie rock style, he made his professional solo debut with the mixtape "Badkid" in May 2018, subsequently releasing the extended play "Will You Be My Yellow?" in September 2019. He released his debut album "Nobody's Home" in February 2022.


title: Bakar (musician)

text: Bakar grew up in Camden in North London and attended a state school before being sent to a boarding school in Surrey by his mother. He is of Yemeni and Tanzanian descent. He expressed that "going outside of London and hearing other tastes and how that can relate to [him], it definitely did something to [him]."


title: Bakar (musician)

text: Bakar began creating music in 2015 by cutting up samples of Bombay Bicycle Club and King Krule songs and uploading them to an anonymous SoundCloud account. For the next few years, he continuously uploaded projects and works to the platform, several of which are no longer available.


title: Bakar (musician)

text: Bakar officially independently released his debut single, "Big Dreams" in March 2017. In 2018, the song later gained popularity after being featured on the official soundtrack of the video game "FIFA 19". Bakar performed the song "Scott Free" on the online German music series ColorsxStudios in March 2017, where it has amassed over 300 thousand views . Before the end of 2017, Bakar had self-released the non-album singles "Small Town Girl" and "Something I Said".


title: Bakar (musician)

text: In early 2018, Bakar released the single "Million Miles" and announced the his debut full length project, "Badkid". In April 2018, he released the project's third single, "All In", following the lead single "Big Dreams" (2017) and "Million Miles" (2018). Bakar performed at Live at Leeds in May 2018, where he was described by "NME" as an "electrifying performer" who "cemented himself as one of Britain's most exciting new acts". He released "Badlands" as the final single off of "Badkid" a week later. Bakar's performance set at The Great Escape in May 2018 was also well received by critics. "Badkid" was released as a mixtape under Bakar's own record label,"*bash", on 22 May 2018. He marked the release of the mixtape with a headlining performance at Camden Assembly in London. He announced a headlining tour of the United Kingdom including a performance at The Dome in London. After completing the sold out tour, Bakar released the non-album single "Dracula" in October 2018.


title: Bakar (musician)

text: Bakar signed to both Black Butter Records and September Management in early 2019. In January 2019, American rapper Sheck Wes mentioned a future collaboration with Bakar. In March 2019, Bakar released the non-album single set "Chill" and "Sold Your Soul" alongside the announcement of another headlining European tour, "Bakar & The Badkids". In August 2019, Bakar announced the release of the EP, "Will You Be My Yellow?", and released its lead single "Hell n Back". The single became a sleeper hit in the United States, experiencing the longest trip to No. 1 on the Triple A chart in "Billboard" chart history, eventually peaking on 30 June 2020 (its 27th week). "Hell n Back" was also certified Gold in Australia in 2020. The six-track EP "Will You Be My Yellow?" was released to critical acclaim under Black Butter Records on 20 September 2019. The project was written and recorded within just eight weeks, and was produced by frequent collaborators Zach Nahome and Matty Tavares. It featured the track "Stop Selling Her Drugs" featuring American musician Dominic Fike.


title: Bakar (musician)

text: In November 2019, Bakar performed "Hell n Back" for his second performance on the German music series ColorsxStudios, following his first performance "Scott Free" in March 2017. The former was released commercially as a non-album single and has amassed over one million views on YouTube . In November 2019, British singer Collard released the single "Stone" featuring Bakar. In December 2019, the song "Hell n Back" was used in the promotional ad for Arsenal F.C. x Adidas's Bruised Banana range, highlighting the lyric "Will you be my yellow?" which Bakar sings in the video.


title: Bakar (musician)

text: In January 2020, the song "Hell n Back" placed No. 62 on triple j's Hottest 100 of 2019. In February 2020, Bakar performed "Circles" by Mac Miller on BBC Radio 1Xtra as a tribute to the late rapper. Bakar was featured alongside American producer Kenny Beats on New Zealand singer Benee's single "Night Garden".


title: Bakar (musician)

text: Musical influences cited by Bakar include Madlib and Foals. He has described his music as "schizophrenic", and said that he attempts to "bridge the gap" between different music genres. "Ones to Watch" described his style as a "melting pot of indie, rap, rock, and punk".


title: Bakar (musician)

text: Bakar also modelled as part of Virgil Abloh's debut runway show for Louis Vuitton In June 2018 and then again in February 2019. In November 2019, he modelled for Prada's "A Gift to Give" campaign alongside models Pixie Geldof and Sara Blomqvist.


title: Bakar (musician)

text: Joe Goggins of "DIY" compared Bakar's vocal style to that of Kele Okereke from Bloc Party. Alex McFayden of "Clash" also compared his sound to that of Bloc Party. Ashleigh Kane of "Crack Magazine" deemed him as "indie's revivalist". Bakar's style has been noted as a progressive shift from the 'stale' sound of British rock in the late 2010s. Bakar has received endorsements from artists like Skepta, Elton John and fashion designer Virgil Abloh.


title: Mujra

text: Mujra is a dance performance by women in a format that emerged during Mughal rule in India, where the elite class and local rulers like the nawabs of the Indian society (often connected to the Mughal emperor's court) used to frequent courtesans for their entertainment.


title: Mujra

text: It combines elements of the native classical Kathak dance with native music including thumris and ghazals. It also includes poems from other Mughal periods like the emperors from Akbar to Bahadur Shah Zafar's ruling periods. Mujra was traditionally performed at mehfils and in special houses called . During Mughal rule in the subcontinent, in places such as Delhi, Lucknow, Jaipur, the tradition of performing mujra was a family art and often passed down from mother to daughter. These courtesans or tawaifs had some power and prestige due to their access to the elite class and some of them came to be known as authorities on culture. Some noble families would send their sons to them to learn etiquette and the art of conversation from them. They were sometimes called Nautch girls which included dancers, singers and playmates of their patron nawabs.


title: Mujra

text: In Lahore, Mughal empire's Heera Mandi neighbourhood, the profession was a cross between art and exotic dance, with the performers often serving as courtesans amongst Mughal royalty or wealthy patrons. "The wealthy even sent their sons to the salons of "tawaifs", high-class courtesans that have been likened to Japanese geishas, to study etiquette."


title: Mujra

text: As a musical genre, mujras historically reconstruct an aesthetic culture of sixteenth-to-nineteenth-century South Asia in which heightened musical and dance entertainment afforded a medium for exchange between one woman and many men — what ethnomusicologist Regula Qureshi calls, "an asymmetry of power that is tempered with gentility."


title: Mujra

text: Modern Mujra dancers perform at events like weddings, birthday and bachelor parties in countries where traditional Mughal culture is prevalent, such as Pakistan. To a lesser extent, dancers in Pakistan often perform a modern form of mujra along with popular local music.


title: Mujra

text: In 2005, when dance bars were closed across Maharashtra state, many former bar girls moved to 'Congress House' near Kennedy Bridge on Grant Road area in Mumbai, the city's oldest hub for mujra, and started performing mujra there. The women are trained in mujra in Agra of India and Lahore and Karachi of Pakistan. Dawn newspaper, Karachi, describes Lahore's Heera Mandi area as, "Pakistan's oldest red light district was for centuries, a hub of traditional erotic dancers, musicians and prostitutes."


title: Mujra

text: In many areas of the Indian subcontinent, they are called by different names – for example they are called "tawaifs" in North India and Pakistan (in Urdu-speaking areas), "baijis" in Bengal, and "naikins" in Goa.


title: Mujra

text: Mujra has been depicted in Bollywood films like Sadhna (1958), "Pakeezah" (1972), "Umrao Jaan" (1981), "Zindagi Ya Toofan" (1958) and "Devdas" (1955), or in other films that show the past Mughal rule and its culture. The dance is upscaled and taught with more dance choreography to make the female dancer more fluent in her moves and to be more artistic and feminine. The women are usually the center of the public eye and can dance and entertain the audience for a long time.


title: Mujra

text: In Pakistan's Lollywood films like "Anjuman" (1970), one can see many mujra dances being performed before the movie is over while in Pakistani dramas such as "Deewar-e-Shab" (2019) and "Umrao Jan Ada" (2003), there were also several Mujra performances.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Cephalopods vary enormously in size. The smallest are only about long and weigh less than at maturity, while the largest—the giant and colossal squids—can exceed in length and weigh close to half a tonne (), making them the largest living invertebrates. Living species range in mass more than three-billion-fold, or across nine orders of magnitude, from the lightest hatchlings to the heaviest adults. Certain cephalopod species are also noted for having individual body parts of exceptional size. The giant and colossal squids, for example, have the largest known eyes among living animals.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Cephalopods were at one time the largest of all organisms on Earth, and numerous species of comparable size to the largest present day squids are known from the fossil record, including enormous examples of ammonoids, belemnoids, nautiloids, orthoceratoids, teuthids, and vampyromorphids. In terms of mass, the largest of all known cephalopods were likely the giant shelled ammonoids and endocerid nautiloids, though perhaps still second to the largest living cephalopods when considering tissue mass alone.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Giant cephalopods have fascinated humankind since time immemorial. The earliest surviving records are perhaps those of Aristotle and Pliny the Elder, both of whom described squids of very large size. Tales of giant squid have been common among mariners since ancient times, and may have inspired the monstrous kraken of Nordic legend, said to be as large as an island and capable of engulfing and sinking any ship. Similar tentacled sea monsters are known from other parts of the globe, including the Akkorokamui of Japan and Te Wheke-a-Muturangi of New Zealand. The Lusca of the Caribbean and Scylla in Greek mythology may also derive from giant squid sightings, as might eyewitness accounts of other sea monsters such as sea serpents.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Size, and particularly maximum size, continues to be one of the most interesting aspects of cephalopod science to both the general public and researchers in the field. This is evidenced by the regular coverage given to the giant squid—and more recently, the colossal squid—in both the popular press and academic literature. Due to its status as a charismatic megafaunal species, the giant squid has been proposed as an emblematic animal for marine invertebrate conservation. Life-sized models of the giant squid are a common sight in natural history museums around the world, and preserved specimens are much sought after for display.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Cephalopods vastly larger than either giant or colossal squids have been postulated at various times. Perhaps the most notable of these is the so-called St. Augustine Monster, a large carcass weighing several tonnes that washed ashore on the United States coast near St. Augustine, Florida, in 1896. Zoologist Addison Emery Verrill of Yale, at the time the country's foremost authority on cephalopods, was initially convinced that it represented a previously unknown species of gigantic octopus, and even proposed for it the scientific name "Octopus giganteus". However, having received tissue samples he quickly retracted his original opinion, identifying it instead as the remains of a whale. Nevertheless, the possible existence of such a gargantuan octopus was taken seriously well into the 20th century, until reanalyses in 1995 and 2004 of the original tissue samples—together with those of other similar carcasses—showed conclusively that they were all masses of the collagenous matrix of whale blubber.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Cephalopods of enormous size have featured prominently in fiction. Some of the best known examples include the giant squid from Jules Verne's 1870 novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" and its various film adaptations; the giant octopus from the 1955 monster movie "It Came from Beneath the Sea"; and the giant squid from Peter Benchley's 1991 novel "Beast" and the TV film adaptation of the same name.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Mantle length (ML) is the standard size measure for coleoid cephalopods (shell diameter being more common for nautiluses) and is almost universally reported in the scientific literature. The mantle is the cephalopod's "body", lying posterior to the head and enclosing the visceral mass and mantle cavity, the latter being used for locomotion by jet propulsion. Unless otherwise indicated, mantle length is measured dorsally over the midline of the mantle (sometimes specified as "dorsal mantle length", DML). It is a straight-line measure, not measured over the curve of the body. In Decapodiformes (ten-limbed cephalopods), mantle length is measured from the anterior edge of the mantle (near the head), to the posterior end of the mantle or the apex of the united fins, whichever is longer. In Octopodiformes (eight-limbed cephalopods), the anterior edge of the mantle is not clearly delimited dorsally due to advanced head–mantle fusion, and mantle length is therefore taken from the midpoint between the eyes to the posterior end of the mantle. When "ventral" mantle length is meant instead of dorsal this is always specified as such and abbreviated VML.


title: Cephalopod size

text: As an indication of overall size, mantle length is generally considered more reliable than total length because cephalopod limbs may easily be stretched beyond their natural length and are often damaged or missing in preserved specimens (this is particularly true of the long tentacles of many squid species). Nevertheless, mantle length is not equally applicable to all species. Certain benthic octopuses such as "Callistoctopus ornatus" are able to elongate and retract their mantles and therefore mantle length measurements, even when taken from a live specimen, may vary considerably. Another problematic case is that of the gelatinous cirroteuthids, whose weakly muscled mantles are prone to substantial shrinkage during preservation. The interocular distance may be a more reliable standard for this group.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Total length (TL) is measured along the dorsal midline with the limbs outstretched and in line with the body axis. It is the greatest measurable extent of a specimen from the posterior end of the mantle or fins (or tail, if present) to the apex of the longest limb. It is recommended that arms and tentacles be measured in a relaxed state so as not to exaggerate their length, but historically this practice was not always followed and some of the more extreme published giant squid measurements have been attributed to artificial lengthening of the tentacles. Although total length is often mentioned in relation to the largest cephalopod species, it is otherwise seldom used in teuthology. As with mantle length, it is a straight-line measure.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Total length is not to be confused with arm span—also known as "arm spread", "radial span", or "radial spread"—which may be much larger and is often reported for octopuses (for which the arms usually constitute the vast majority of the length). In squids, total length is inclusive of the feeding tentacles, which in some species may be longer than the mantle, head, and arms combined (chiroteuthids such as "Asperoteuthis acanthoderma" being a prime example).


title: Cephalopod size

text: A related measure is standard length (SL), which is the combined length of the mantle, head, and arms, excluding the often long feeding tentacles. This measure is particularly useful for species such as the giant squid, where almost the entire bulk of the animal takes up less than half of its total length.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Mass (often abbreviated WT for 'weight') is reported far less frequently than either mantle or total length, and accurate records do not exist for all of the large cephalopod species. It can also vary widely depending on the state of the specimen at the time of weighing (for example, whether it was measured live or dead, wet or dry, frozen or thawed, pre- or post-fixation, with or without egg mass, and so on).


title: Cephalopod size

text: In contrast to the vast majority of living cephalopods, which are wholly soft-bodied, size determination of the few surviving shelled species (in terms of shell diameter) is comparatively straightforward and can be accomplished with a high level of precision. Whatever the type of cephalopod, in the absence of whole specimens, size can often be estimated from only partial remains. For example, cephalopod beaks can be used for mantle length, total length and body mass estimation, and this method has notably been used to estimate the maximum size of the colossal squid. The lower rostral length (LRL) of the beak is often used for this purpose. The rostral length of the lower and upper beaks is the standard measure of beak size in Decapodiformes; hood length is preferred for Octopodiformes.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Hatchlings of "Idiosepius thailandicus", possibly the smallest extant cephalopod species at maturity, have a mantle length of around . The closely related "Idiosepius pygmaeus" weighs only upon hatching and increases in weight to as it reaches maturity in 50 days. Even smaller are the hatchlings of the commercially important "Illex illecebrosus", with a mass of . Hatchlings of the giant Pacific octopus ("Enteroctopus dofleini")—one of the two largest octopus species—weigh on average.


title: Cephalopod size

text: At the other extreme are nautiluses, which upon hatching typically have a shell diameter of or more (depending on the species), the largest hatchling size among extant invertebrates. Hatchlings of "Nautilus belauensis", one of the larger species, are estimated to weigh on the order of and mature at around after almost 4000 days, or around 11 years.


title: Cephalopod size

text: The smallest adult size among living cephalopods is attained by the so-called pygmy squids, "Idiosepius", and certain diminutive species of the genus "Octopus", both of which weigh less than at maturity. "Idiosepius thailandicus" is perhaps the smallest of all, with females averaging in mantle length and males . Average wet weights are around , respectively.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Other tiny species include members of the bobtail squid family Sepiolidae; the myopsid squid genera "Australiteuthis" and "Pickfordiateuthis"; the oegopsid squid genera "Abralia" and "Abraliopsis"; the pygmy cuttlefish "Sepia pulchra"; and the ram's horn squid, "Spirula spirula".


title: Cephalopod size

text: The octopod superfamily Argonautoidea is characterised by markedly dwarfed males. The four extant genera of the group are "Argonauta", "Haliphron", "Ocythoe", and "Tremoctopus", all of which are exclusively pelagic. The greatest disparity in the size of the sexes is seen in the blanket octopuses of the genus "Tremoctopus". Norman "et al." (2002) reported a fully mature male "Tremoctopus violaceus" measuring in total length and weighing a mere . By comparison, the large females of this species reach total lengths of and probably some in weight. This is the most extreme sexual size dimorphism known among non-microscopic animals, with mature females being at least 10,000 times heavier than males, and likely up to 40,000 times heavier. The related genera "Argonauta" and "Ocythoe" have similarly small males, but the females are not nearly as large as those of "Tremoctopus", and the size dimorphism is therefore less pronounced. The females of the fourth argonautoid genus, "Haliphron", are the largest of all (and possibly the largest octopuses of any kind), but the males are also much larger, at up to .


title: Cephalopod size

text: Numerous species of so-called micromorphic ammonites are known. "Maximites" from the Upper Carboniferous is the smallest known ammonoid. Adult specimens reached only in shell diameter.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Squids are the largest living cephalopods in terms of each of mantle length, total length, and mass, with the largest species by at least two of these measures being the colossal squid, "Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni". Reaching an estimated in mantle length and in total length, and weighing as much as , this species is also the largest of all extant invertebrates. The only other squid that approaches these dimensions is the giant squid of the genus "Architeuthis", with females up to , in mantle length, and possibly as much as in total length, making it likely the longest of all cephalopods. The two largest octopus species—"Enteroctopus dofleini" and "Haliphron atlanticus"—can both exceed , and the former has a maximum total length of more than . Cirrate (finned) octopods can also reach a large size, with the largest captured specimen likely being a "Cirrothauma magna" of total length and mantle length, though observations from submersibles suggest that members of this group can exceed in total length.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Members of the other cephalopod groups are substantially smaller, although the largest cuttlefish can exceed in weight and in mantle length. Cephalopods of comparable size to the largest present day squid are known from fossil remains, including enormous examples of ammonoids, belemnoids, nautiloids, orthoceratoids, teuthids, and vampyromorphids.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Though a substantial number of colossal squid ("Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni") remains have been recorded (Xavier "et al.", 1999 collated 188 geographical positions for whole or partial specimens caught by commercial and scientific fisheries), very few adult or subadult animals have ever been documented, making it difficult to estimate the maximum size of the species. McClain "et al." (2015) stated that only 12 "complete" specimens were known.


title: Cephalopod size

text: The largest known complete specimen of the colossal squid was a mature female captured in the Ross Sea in February 2007. Its weight was initially estimated at , its mantle length at , and its total length at . Once completely thawed the specimen was found to weigh , but to measure only in mantle length and in total length. It is likely that the specimen, and particularly its tentacles, shrank considerably "post mortem" as a result of dehydration, having been kept in a freezer for 14 months. (As reported by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, specimens of "Nototodarus sloanii", the New Zealand arrow squid, can shrink by as much as 22% when dehydrated with alcohol solutions.) The colossal squid specimen contracted by a further 5% after several years in preservative fluid (first formalin and later propylene glycol). The fins of the 2007 Ross Sea specimen measured around across and it had a mantle width of . The arms ranged in length from , while the two tentacles were around long.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Beaks recovered from sperm whale stomachs indicate the existence of animals surpassing even the 2007 Ross Sea specimen. That specimen had a lower rostral length (LRL) of and weighed , where as the submature female from 2003 had a LRL of . By comparison, the largest known colossal squid beak from a sperm whale stomach measured in LRL. Though the number of large colossal squid specimens known to science is too small to get a good idea of the relationship between beak size and overall body size, a beak of such enormity indicates a truly massive animal weighing perhaps as much as . However, the scaling relationship for this species shows considerable latitude, as demonstrated by a beak of LRL extracted from an animal weighing only .


title: Cephalopod size

text: The maximum size of the giant squid ("Architeuthis dux") has long been a subject of both popular debate and academic inquiry. Unlike the colossal squid, the giant squid is known from a substantial number of mature specimens. The total number of recorded specimens (across all developmental stages) approaches a thousand, with approximately 700 documented , of which around 460 had been measured in some way. This number has since increased substantially, with 57 specimens recorded from Japanese waters during an exceptional 15-month period between 2014 and 2015.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Based on a 40-year data set of more than 50 giant squid specimens, Roper & Shea (2013:114) suggest an average total length at maturity of and a "rarely encountered maximum length" of . Of the nearly 100 specimens examined by Clyde Roper, the largest was " long". O'Shea & Bolstad (2008) give a maximum total length of for females based on the examination of more than 130 specimens, measured "post mortem" and relaxed, as well as beaks recovered from sperm whales (which do not exceed the size of those found in the largest complete specimens). Steve O'Shea estimated the maximum total length for males at . Older records of or more were likely exaggerated by stretching of the long feeding tentacles or resulted from inadequate measurement methods such as pacing. O'Shea has stated that, given the available evidence, the highest upper bound he would consider plausible for the giant squid's total length would be , and that the likelihood that there exist 20-metre giant squid is "so exceedingly remote that you couldn't justify the effort in writing about it".


title: Cephalopod size

text: Including the head and arms but excluding the tentacles (standard length, SL), the species very rarely exceeds according to O'Shea & Bolstad (2008). Paxton (2016a) considers to be the greatest reliably measured SL, based on a specimen reported by Verrill (1880a:192), and considers specimens of SL or more to be "very probable", but these conclusions have been criticised by giant squid experts. O'Shea (2003a) put the maximum weight of female giant squid at , based on the examination of some 105 specimens as well as beaks recovered from sperm whales (which do not exceed the size of those found in the largest complete specimens). Giant squid are sexually size dimorphic, with the maximum weight for males estimated at , though heavier specimens have occasionally been reported (such as a specimen and a specimen). Roper & Jereb (2010a:121) give a maximum weight of up to , and "possibly greater". Discredited weights of as much as a tonne () or more are not uncommon in older literature (see below).


title: Cephalopod size

text: The third-heaviest extant squid species is "Taningia danae", also known as the Dana octopus squid. The largest well documented specimen is a 160 cm ML mature female reported by Roper & Vecchione (1993) from the North Atlantic. The original paper gave the mass of this specimen as , but according to Roper & Jereb (2010h:266) this figure is wrong and stems from a typographical error, the correct mass being . Roper & Vecchione (1993) were however consistent in their use of the 61.4 kg figure. Another similarly large specimen—a female weighing —was reported from northern Spanish waters by González "et al." (2003:297) (see also initial reports). In July 2010, a sperm whale was photographed off the Azorean island of Faial with a large squid—likely "T. danae"—in its mouth. The specimen's maximum width, from fin tip to fin tip, was estimated at ; this would approximate its mantle length.


title: Cephalopod size

text: "Onykia robusta", previously known as "Moroteuthis robusta" and sometimes called the robust clubhook squid, has a mantle length of up to . Some older records exceed this, such as the ML reported by Verrill (1876:237) from a specimen with a total length of (excluding the ends of the tentacles, which had been destroyed). Nesis (1987:192) likewise gave a maximum mantle length of , but Roper & Jereb (2010i:364) wrote that "this old record might be in error", with the species commonly growing to ML. Glaubrecht & Salcedo-Vargas (2004:66) provided a maximum total length of . Literature sources give a maximum weight of . There exist numerous published records of large individuals of this species.


title: Cephalopod size

text: The Humboldt squid ("Dosidicus gigas"), also known as the 'jumbo squid', grows to a maximum mantle length of at least , if not . The largest animals are found off the western coast of South America; northern populations reach ML, and in general ML is more typical for the species. Southern populations may have a total length approaching , and possibly up to . Again, specimens from the northern hemisphere are much smaller, with those off the Californian coast reaching total lengths of less than . The Humboldt squid commonly attains a weight of around and can reach a maximum of . There are anecdotal reports of much larger individual animals, including from diver Scott Cassell, who has dived with Humboldt squid over 300 times (reportedly more than any other person).


title: Cephalopod size

text: "Kondakovia longimana", sometimes known as the giant warty squid, is a little known species with a circum-Antarctic distribution in the Southern Ocean. The largest complete specimen, found floating at the surface off the South Orkney Islands, had a mantle length of , but a damaged female specimen with an estimated mantle length of around is known. The largest complete specimen had a wet weight of . The species' maximum weight has been estimated at .


title: Cephalopod size

text: The giant Pacific octopus ("Enteroctopus dofleini") grows to more than in total length and at least in mantle length. Cosgrove (1987) and Cosgrove & McDaniel (2009:69) gave a maximum confirmed weight of for a live specimen collected in the mid-1960s. Norman "et al." (2014:124) accept a maximum weight of at least , which approximates the reported for a specimen caught off Santa Barbara, California, in 1945, of which photographic evidence survives. No specimens approaching this size have been reported since the middle of the 20th century, with recent specimens very rarely exceeding . It is possible that the maximum size of the species has decreased over this period, perhaps due to bioaccumulation of toxicants (see below).


title: Cephalopod size

text: In 2002, a giant specimen of "Haliphron atlanticus", the seven-arm octopus, was caught by fishermen trawling at a depth of off the eastern Chatham Rise, New Zealand. This specimen, the largest of this species and possibly of all octopuses, was the first validated record of "Haliphron" from the South Pacific. It had a mantle length of , a total length of , and a weight of , although it was incomplete. The total length of the specimen, when complete, has been estimated at , and its weight at .


title: Cephalopod size

text: Certain extinct cephalopods rivalled or even exceeded the size of the largest living species. In particular, the subclass Ammonoidea is known to have included a considerable number of species that may be considered "giant" (defined by Stevens, 1988 as those exceeding in shell diameter). The largest confirmed ammonite, a specimen of "Parapuzosia seppenradensis" discovered in a German quarry in 1895, measures in diameter, though its living chamber is largely missing. The diameter of the complete shell has been estimated at , assuming the living chamber took up one-fourth of the outer whorl. Teichert & Kummel (1960:6) suggested an even larger original shell diameter of around for this specimen, assuming the body chamber extended for three-fourths to one full whorl. In 1971 a portion of an ammonite possibly surpassing this specimen was reportedly found in a brickyard in Bottrop, western Germany. A specimen found by Jim Rockwood, from the Late Triassic near Williston Lake, British Columbia, was said to measure more than across, but was later determined to be a concretion.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Heteromorph ammonites are known to have exceeded in length also, but since their shells were uncoiled to varying degrees, they were overall much smaller than the largest non-heteromorphs. The greatest lengths of all were reached by the orthocones of endocerid nautiloids such as "Cameroceras" and "Endoceras", which may have exceeded , although their maximum size is uncertain; while the largest well documented endocerid fossil is likely the 3-metre-long () shell fragment housed at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, there are published reports of even larger specimens. Teichert (1927) mentioned specimens up to long from the Middle Ordovician limestone of Estonia and Frey (1995:72) gave a maximum shell length of for the group. On the subject of endocerid size, nautiloid specialist Rousseau H. Flower wrote:


title: Cephalopod size

text: They are not all large, by any means, but specimens twelve feet [] in length have been collected, and fragments of greater diameter indicate a much greater maximum length. I am not wholly inclined to discredit a report of an endoceroid found in a quarry near Watertown New York, which was measured before it was broken up and found to attain a length of .


title: Cephalopod size

text: However, the uncoiled length of the largest ammonites far exceeds that of even these giant endocerids. "Parapuzosia seppenradensis", the largest known ammonite species, had an estimated maximum unrolled shell length of around . It was also possibly the heaviest of all known cephalopods, past or present, with an estimated live mass of , of which the shell would constitute 705 kg. By comparison, the largest endocerids may have weighed around . In terms of mass, these are the largest known invertebrates that have ever lived, though perhaps still second to the largest living cephalopods when considering tissue mass alone, since in shell-bearing species the vast majority of the living tissue is restricted to the body chamber, which occupies only a fraction of the internal shell volume. They might also be the largest—or at least longest—shell-bearing animals that have ever lived.


title: Cephalopod size

text: The maximum sizes of certain cephalopod species, most notably the giant squid and giant Pacific octopus, have often been misreported and exaggerated. The literature on cephalopod size has been further muddied by the frequent misattribution of various squid specimens to the giant squid genus "Architeuthis", often based solely on their large size. In the academic literature alone, such misidentifications encompass at least the oegopsid families Chiroteuthidae, Cranchiidae, Ommastrephidae, Onychoteuthidae, and Psychroteuthidae. This situation is further confused by the occasional usage of the common name 'giant squid' in reference to large squids of other genera.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Perhaps the most notable misidentification relates to a photograph taken some time before 1993 by diver H. Kubota off southern Japan. The image shows a large individual of "Onykia robusta" (previously known as "Moroteuthis robusta"), which appears to be sick or dying, alongside a diver in shallow water. A video of the same animal appeared in a Japanese made-for-television film. The image was published in the 1993 book "European Seashells" by Guido T. Poppe and Yoshihiro Goto, where it was identified as "Architeuthis dux", the giant squid, and said to have been taken in the North Atlantic. If true, this image would represent the first known photograph of a live giant squid. In "The Search for the Giant Squid" (1998), Richard Ellis wrote:


title: Cephalopod size

text: For a moment, I thought that some obscure photograph had captured the most elusive image in natural history. Fortunately for those who have devoted their lives to searching for "Architeuthis", this was only an aberration, a case of mistaken identity.


title: Cephalopod size

text: It would be more than a decade before the true first photographs of a live giant squid in the wild were taken on 30 September 2004 by Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori. Kubodera and his team subsequently became the first to "film" a live "adult" giant squid on 4 December 2006, and the first to "film" a live giant squid "in its natural habitat" in July 2012. These milestones were preceded by the first footage of a live (paralarval) giant squid in 2001, and the first image of a live adult giant squid on 15 January 2002. Since then, live giant squid have been photographed and filmed on a number of occasions.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Reports of giant squid ("Architeuthis dux") specimens reaching or even exceeding in total length are widespread, but no animals approaching this size have been scientifically documented in recent times. This is despite there being hundreds of specimens available for study ( 700 documented as of 2015, of which 460 measured in some way), including numerous recent examples, such as the 57 specimens recorded from Japanese waters over a 15-month period in 2014–2015. It is now thought likely that such lengths were achieved by great lengthening of the two long feeding tentacles, analogous to stretching elastic bands, or resulted from inadequate measurement methods such as pacing.


title: Cephalopod size

text: On the subject of the oft-cited maximum size of 18 metres—or 60 feet—Dery (2013) quoted giant squid experts Steve O'Shea and Clyde Roper:


title: Cephalopod size

text: If this figure [45 ft or ] seems a little short of the Brobdingnagian claims made for "Architeuthis" in most pop-science stories about the animal, that's probably because virtually every general-interest article dutifully repeats the magic number of "60" feet.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Steve O'Shea deplores the media's perpetuation of what he believes to be a credulity-straining exaggeration, based on the 19th-century biologist Thomas Kirk's eyeball estimate of a specimen's length. In a comment on the final draft of this article, O'Shea wrote, "Kirk "paced" it, in his own words, for he had no ruler/measure handy, and I believe this misrepresentation has been perpetuated enough; if they were foot-on-foot, as in heel directly to toe, I would accept 57 (or 58, whatever the precise figure was), but I think perpetuating this as fact any longer is doing a disservice to science."


title: Cephalopod size

text: Roper, in his comments on the final draft of this article, was even more conservative, writing, "there are no "confirmed" records of giant squid longer than about 45 feet [] total length. Most are in the 25–35-foot [] range. I have examined specimens in museums and laboratories around the world—perhaps a 100 or so—and I believe the 60-foot number comes from fear, fantasy, and pulling the highly elastic tentacles out to the near breaking point when they are measured on the shore or on deck."


title: Cephalopod size

text: Paxton (2016a) investigated the maximum size of "Architeuthis" by performing a statistical analysis using data from literature records of giant squid specimens. He selected what he regarded as the largest size records for each of mantle length (ML), standard length (SL), and total length (TL). Paxton's study has been criticised by giant squid experts, who have called into question the reliability of some of the selected literature records.


title: Cephalopod size

text: For mantle length, Paxton (2016a:83) considered the reported by Dell (1952:98) as the "longest measured", though "more reliably" the ML specimen from Lyall Bay, New Zealand, documented by Kirk (1880:312). Paxton added: "A specimen from Mauritius is often mistakenly cited but consultation of the primary paper (Staub, 1993) reveals an ill-defined length which is clearly not ML." The greatest measured ML of a giant squid recovered from a sperm whale is either the reported by Keil (1963:320) (though Paxton writes: "the account is confused and the 2.4 m figure probably refers to the head and ML combined") or the of a specimen that had been swallowed whole off the Azores, detailed by Clarke (1955:589) and Clarke (1956:257). The "longest visually estimated" ML, according to Paxton, is the of a specimen apparently observed in the North Atlantic off Portugal, attributed to a personal communication with T. Lipington. A more modest ML is also given, based on a sighting in the Indian Ocean sourced to the TV documentary of Lynch (2013).


title: Cephalopod size

text: For standard length (excluding the tentacles), Paxton (2016a:83) cited the of the "Three Arms specimen" documented by Verrill (1880a:192) as the "longest measured". Among specimens recovered from sperm whales, the longest "definitely measured" SL is the reported by Clarke (1956:257) and the longest "visually estimated" SL is the attributed to a photograph of a sperm whale with giant squid remains in its jaws, though Paxton conceded that it is "[n]ot clear how much/what portion of body was eaten". For the "longest visually estimated", more extreme supposed SLs of and are cited to Starkey (1963) and Ellis (1998a:246), respectively (the latter an eyewitness account by Dennis Braun). Paxton treated these last two size estimates as SLs as opposed to TLs because "squid do not generally leave their tentacles exposed except when grabbing prey and this appears to be the case for "Architeuthis"".


title: Cephalopod size

text: For total length, Paxton (2016a:83) considered three records as candidates for the "longest measured": the specimen of Berzin (1972:199), the specimen described by Kirk (1888) as "Architeuthis longimanus"—a strangely proportioned animal that has been much commented on—and the "Thimble Tickle specimen" reported by Verrill (1880a:191), which is often cited as the largest giant squid ever recorded. Of the last one, Paxton wrote: "Sometimes mistakenly cited as but the source is clear that it is 55 ft long." The first two records, particularly that of Berzin, are more questionable, as Paxton explained:


title: Cephalopod size

text: The accuracy of the two longest measured TLs of 19 and 16.81 m from a specimen found in the gut of a sperm whale from the Indian Ocean and from the specimen from New Zealand in 1887, respectively, should also be questioned but again are certainly not impossible. The New Zealand specimen (named "Architeuthis longimanus" Kirk, 1888) clearly has the largest ratio of TL to ML ever known in "Architeuthis" [...] which led <nowiki>[</nowiki>O'Shea & Bolstad, 2008<nowiki>]</nowiki> to suggest that the length was paced out and/or there was extensive post-mortem stretching. However, a re-reading of the original paper suggests that the specimen, although initially paced out, was actually measured, nevertheless the TL is at the edge of the 99.9% prediction interval range [...] and so it was certainly an unusual specimen. Berzin's (1972) Indian Ocean claim is suspect because of the roundness of the figure, the lack of detailed measurements and because in an associated photo, the mantle (whose length was not given) does not look very large compared to the men in the image. Consequently the measurement, if accurate, would represent another animal with very long tentacles.


title: Cephalopod size

text: However, as Paxton (2016a:86) pointed out, the genetic analysis of Winkelmann "et al." (2013)—which concluded that there is likely a single, globally-distributed species of "Architeuthis"—did not encompass these two specimens, and it is therefore possible that there exists a second, as yet unsampled, giant squid species with proportionately longer tentacles.


title: Cephalopod size

text: The total length of the Berzin specimen was later confirmed to be erroneous; according to Valentin Yukhov, who was involved in the specimen's discovery, it should have read . The misprint was reproduced in the English translation published the following year and was later propagated in a number of papers on giant squid. With the Berzin specimen not being as large as originally reported, the longest giant squid recovered from a sperm whale is the TL individual recorded by Clarke (1956:257) (this specimen also has the longest confirmed ML and SL of any giant squid from a sperm whale). Paxton considered the "longest visually estimated" TL to be the published by Murray (1874:121), from an eyewitness account by fisherman Theophilus Picot, who claimed to have struck the floating animal from his boat, causing it to attack. Picot managed to hack off one of its tentacles, which was subsequently examined by a number of authors.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Perhaps the largest of all recorded giant squid specimens was the one found floating at the surface off Saint-Gilles, Réunion, on 4 March 2016. Although due to its great size the specimen could not be retrieved in its entirety, the head and arm crown were saved. Crucially, this meant the beak could be measured to estimate the mantle length and total length of the specimen. Using different allometric scaling equations, the lower rostral length of the beak, at , gave an estimated dorsal mantle length of and this, in turn, was used to estimate the total length at .


title: Cephalopod size

text: More extreme and outlandish giant squid size claims—belonging firmly in the realm of cryptozoology—have appeared in the works of authors such as Bernard Heuvelmans, Willy Ley, and Ivan T. Sanderson. The existence of these gargantuan squids is often supported by reference to the giant circular scars sometimes found on sperm whales, which are assumed to have been inflicted by the suckers of struggling giant squid. Sometimes these claims are accompanied by extrapolations of body size based on the isometric upscaling of a "typical" giant squid. However, such scars are not necessarily of squid origin and may instead represent fungal growths or bite marks, with sea lampreys ("Petromyzon marinus") being one possible source. Even in the case of genuine giant squid sucker marks it is possible that subsequent skin growth has enlarged them well beyond their original dimensions.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Nevertheless, claims of enormous sucker scars are widespread in the literature. Richard Ellis collected some of "the more egregious examples" in his book, "The Search for the Giant Squid". These include the claim of Dozier (1976) that "an ordinary giant squid of 50 feet [] leaves teeth-ringed sucker marks measuring between three and four inches [] across on a whale, but sperm whales have been captured with tentacle marks 18 inches [] across." L. Harrison Matthews's monographic treatment of the sperm whale, published in 1938, includes the following: "Nearly all male Sperm whales carry scars caused by the suckers and claws of large squids, scars caused by suckers up to 10 cm. [] in diameter being common. The claw marks take the form of scratches 2–3 m. [] in length, and appear to be of more frequent occurrence than sucker marks". Ellis (1998a:142) wrote that this 10 cm figure is "so much larger than any other recorded sucker dimensions that one suspects some sort of error, either in measuring or in transcription."


title: Cephalopod size

text: Measurements of , and even have been conjectured for giant squids from the size of sucker marks found on the skins of captured sperm whales, but it is dangerous to place too much reliance on this evidence. Verrill says the largest suckers on the tentacles of a long specimen measured 1 in [] in diameter, and those on a 52-footer [] about . Daniel (1925), however, examined sucker marks on the head of one cachalot which measured 3 in [] across, and others measuring up to in diameter have been found on the skins of sperm whales captured in the North Atlantic. Ivan Sanderson (1956) goes even further and claims that sucker marks over have been found on the heads of cachalots, but he does not explain how the poor whales managed to escape from the clutches of such colossi!


title: Cephalopod size

text: The general consensus of opinion is that exceptionally large sucker marks, i.e. over in diameter, are old scars that have increased in size as the sperm whale grew.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Perhaps the most extreme published claim, ridiculed by Ellis (1998a:142), appeared in Willy Ley's 1959 book, "Exotic Zoology": "Toothed whales, vomiting in death struggle, have shown evidence of still larger kraken; in one case a 6-foot [] piece of tentacle, "with a diameter of 2 feet" [; emphasis in original], has been claimed. Another claim goes for marks on the skin of such a whale, looking like the mark of a sucking disk over 2 feet [] in diameter".


title: Cephalopod size

text: Marine biologist Frederick Aldrich, who personally examined more than a dozen giant squid specimens, wrote that his largest specimen from Newfoundland bore tentacular suckers "approximately two inches [] in diameter" but that "[s]uckers and their toothed armament of over twelve inches [] in diameter have been found in the stomachs of sperm whale as indigestible wastes". This led him to entertain the idea of giant squid over long, and even to suggest a binomial name for this super-sized species, were it ever to be discovered: "Architeuthis halpertius".


title: Cephalopod size

text: By comparison, giant squid suckers "normally" reach a maximum diameter of only a few centimetres. Based on a detailed examination of a number of large specimens from New Zealand waters, Förch (1998:55) wrote that "[t]he largest suckers [...] on the sessile arms are a very constant in external diameter". In giant squid the largest suckers of all are found on the central portion of the tentacular club, called the "manus", and among the specimens examined by Förch (1998:53) these reached a maximum diameter of . Clarke (1980) wrote: "I have not yet seen conclusive evidence to suggest that sucker scars are larger than across". According to Roper & Boss (1982:97), the largest suckers of the tentacular clubs reach in diameter.


title: Cephalopod size

text: It is now accepted that the giant squid has a maximum mass of several hundred kilograms, but the literature is rife with claims of much greater weights. Clarke (1966), for example, put the mass of the largest giant squid specimens at around . Similarly, Richard Ellis wrote: "Where [giant] squid carcasses have actually been weighed, it appears that the longest ones—in the 50-foot [] range, for example—weigh about a ton []." Much greater estimates of giant squid mass can be found in, for example, "Natural History of Marine Animals" by MacGinitie & MacGinitie (1949): "two arms of "Architeuthis" that were long were found, and if one reconstructed a body [...] the squid to which these arms belonged was in diameter and long, with an overall measurement of . It would have weighed about 42 tons []." They added that a specimen, such as the one reported from Thimble Tickle, "would have weighed 29 or 30 tons [] including the tentacles—a truly noble animal, being a little more than one-fifth the weight of the largest whale and larger than the whale sharks and basking sharks, the largest of all fishes". Ellis characterised these estimates as "unfounded exaggerations". In the revised edition of "Natural History of Marine Animals", published in 1968, the authors reduced their estimate to less than 8 tonnes.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Bernard Heuvelmans believed that "there must be "Architeuthis" weighing more than 5 tons, and some even larger ones which must weigh between 2 and 27 tons, the normal weight being around 8 tons. There are good reasons to believe that there may even exist specimens twice as long as that of Thimble Tickle, which, depending upon their girth, might have weighed between 16 and 216 tons, but more likely around 64 tons." Ellis, who considered these estimates "utterly ridiculous", wrote:


title: Cephalopod size

text: Heuvelmans commits a fundamental error in calculating the weight of some of these monsters when he writes that "the density of living creatures is only slightly higher than that of water ... a decimetre of living flesh weighs about as much as a litre of water." That may be true for some other living creatures, but the flesh of "Architeuthis", saturated with ammonium chloride, is "lighter" than water, and the giant squid is neutrally buoyant. (This is believed to be the reason that dead or dying squid are found floating at the surface or washed up on the beach.) His assumption, therefore, that the 55-foot-long [] Thimble Tickle squid would have "probably weighed near 24 tons" is patently erroneous.


title: Cephalopod size

text: On the subject of the Thimble Tickle specimen's mass, Wood (1982:190) referred to the work of Soviet zoologist and writer Igor Akimushkin:


title: Cephalopod size

text: According to Dr Igor Akimushkin (1965), the Russian teuthologist, a long giant squid will weigh 1 tonne [] if the head, mantle and arms combined make up half the total length. Since there is a cubic relationship between the linear dimensions of "Architeuthis" and its volume or weight, this means the Thimble Tickle monster must have scaled about 2.8 tonnes [] (i.e. the weight of a large bull hippopotamus), although 2 tonnes [] is probably a more realistic figure.


title: Cephalopod size

text: The maximum size of the giant Pacific octopus ("Enteroctopus dofleini") has long been a source of debate in the scientific community, with dubious reports of specimens weighing hundreds of kilograms.


title: Cephalopod size

text: In 1885, reporting on the longest octopus specimen reliably recorded up to that point, renowned malacologist William Healey Dall wrote:


title: Cephalopod size

text: In 1874 I speared an octopus in the harbor of Iliuliuk, Unalashka, which was afterward hung, by a cord tied around the body immediately behind the arms, to one of the stern davits of the coast survey vessel under my command. As soon as the animal died and the muscles relaxed, I noticed that the tips of the longer tentacles just touched the water. On measuring the distance with a cord, I found it to be sixteen feet [], giving the creature a spread from tip to tip of the longest pair of arms, of not less than thirty-two feet []. The arms toward the tips were all exceedingly slender, but rather stout toward the body, which was somewhat over a foot [] long. The largest suckers were two and a half inches [] in diameter; the whole creature nearly filled a large washtub. Parts of this specimen are now in the U. S. national museum.


title: Cephalopod size

text: In an article for the National Marine Fisheries Service summarising knowledge on the giant Pacific octopus, High (1976:17–18) wrote:


title: Cephalopod size

text: Several octopuses in excess of 100 pounds [] have been encountered and captured. Much larger ones have been reported but, like the Loch Ness Monster, these usually elude the careful photographer or scientist. Most octopuses weigh less than 70 pounds [] with a stretched length of 15 feet [] or less. Overall length between arms is not a suitable measure because of the animal's unusual elasticity.


title: Cephalopod size

text: In the late 1950s, I interviewed a Canadian commercial diver, Jock MacLean of Prince Rupert, B.C. He reported capturing an immense creature weighing 600 pounds [] and measuring 32 feet [] from arm tip to top. MacLean's photographs, unfortunately, were of poor quality. Smaller animals, to 400 pounds [], were occasionally taken in his commercial octopus fishing endeavor.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Hochberg & Fields (1980:436) referenced the same specimen, writing: "the largest specimen on record with a total arm spread of 9.6 m [] and a weight of 272 kg []". These figures are only estimates, however, as—contrary to the above quotation from High (1976:17–18)—it appears that this specimen was never collected and measured. Murray Newman, director of the Vancouver Aquarium for 37 years, quoted Jock MacLean in his 1994 memoir, "Life in a Fishbowl": "Next year [1957] in the same place, I saw one, maybe thirty-two feet [] across and six hundred pounds []. Didn't go for her, though, no place to keep her!" Nevertheless, the misleadingly precise metric conversion of 272 kg (for 600 lb) and the "im"precise conversion of 9.6 m (for 32 ft; naively employing a conversion factor of 0.3 instead of 0.3048) gained wide acceptance as the maximum recorded dimensions of the giant Pacific octopus, and have been much repeated.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Jock MacLean is also reported to have "captured" a animal with an arm span of near Port Hardy, British Columbia, in March 1956. Another giant specimen was caught off Santa Barbara, California, in 1945. Its weight was recorded as and the surviving photograph makes it possible to estimate its total length at more than and arm span at . In a book dedicated to the giant Pacific octopus, Cosgrove & McDaniel (2009:72) summarised knowledge on the species's maximum size as follows:


title: Cephalopod size

text: The specimen William Dall speared in 1885 at Iliuliuk had the largest radial span of any giant Pacific octopus ever measured. Jock MacLean's 1956 Port Hardy behemoth was the biggest ever weighed. The Santa Barbara specimen photographed in 1945 was the second heaviest. It would appear that octopuses weighing as much as and with radial spans of over are within the realm of possibility, but have never actually been documented by both measuring and weighing.


title: Cephalopod size

text: No specimens approaching these extreme sizes have been reported since the middle of the 20th century. This lack of giant individuals is corroborated by commercial octopus fishers; none of those interviewed by Cosgrove & McDaniel (2009) had caught a single animal weighing more than in the previous 20 years, among many thousands harvested over that period. Octopus specialist Roland Anderson, a biologist with the Seattle Aquarium for more than 30 years, had long sought, unsuccessfully, to find a giant Pacific octopus weighing more than . In an attempt to raise a truly enormous specimen, Anderson fed a number of captive males "ad libitum". The heaviest animal (nicknamed 'Big') attained a peak weight of and its largest suckers measured in diameter. Anderson suggested the species might now be maturing at a smaller size as a result of toxicant bioaccumulation, which could explain the lack of truly gigantic specimens in recent times. In particular, high concentrations of heavy metals and PCBs have been identified in the digestive glands of wild giant Pacific octopuses, likely originating from their preferred prey, the red rock crab ("Cancer productus"). A preliminary study found that aquarium animals fed equal quantities of raw sea food and live "C. productus" (caught locally in Elliott Bay) matured at a smaller size, reached a lower maximum weight ( mean), and had higher concentrations of most heavy metals, than those fed solely on raw sea food ( mean, including the aforementioned specimen).


title: Cephalopod size

text: Cephalopod size can be quantified in various ways. Some of the most common size measures are covered below. The following four tables list only extant species; extinct taxa are treated separately at the end.


title: Cephalopod size

text: The list of largest cephalopods by mantle length is dominated by squids, with more than twenty species exceeding the largest-bodied octopuses and cuttlefish. The largest of all is the colossal squid ("Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni") with an estimated maximum mantle length of (Roper & Jereb, 2010c:173). Even greater mantle lengths have historically been reported for the giant squid ("Architeuthis dux"), but these have been discredited (see O'Shea & Bolstad, 2008).


title: Cephalopod size

text: The longest scientifically documented specimens belong to the giant squid, with a maximum total length of (Roper & Shea, 2013:114). Despite its proportionally shorter tentacles, the colossal squid may rival the giant squid in total length, but the species's size limits are uncertain because only a handful of mature specimens have been recorded.


title: Cephalopod size

text: The heaviest known cephalopod, and the largest living invertebrate, is the colossal squid. The largest recorded specimen of this species, caught in the Ross Sea in 2007, weighed . However, its beak is not the largest known from this species; even bigger colossal squid beaks have been recovered from the stomachs of sperm whales, indicating that this species can grow larger still.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Nautiluses are the only extant cephalopods with a true external shell; in other groups the shell has been internalised or lost completely. Internal shells include the cuttlebones of cuttlefish, the gladii of squids and the vampire squid, the winged shells of cirrate octopods, and the spiral shells of "Spirula". Additionally, females of the octopus genus "Argonauta" secrete a specialised paper-thin eggcase in which they reside, and this is popularly regarded as a "shell", although it is not attached to the body of the animal (see Finn, 2013).


title: Cephalopod size

text: Cephalopod shell diameter is of interest to teuthologists and conchologists alike. The "Registry of World Record Size Shells", the most comprehensive publication on maximum shell size in marine molluscs, specifies that specimens "should be measured with vernier type calipers and should reflect the greatest measurable dimension of the shell in any direction including any processes of hard shell material produced by the animal (i.e. spines, wings, keels, siphonal canals, etc.) and not including attachments, barnacles, coralline algae, or any other encrusting organisms" (Pisor, 2008:14). Unlike most other measures of cephalopod size, shell diameter can be determined with a high degree of precision and usually leaves little room for ambiguity. For this reason it is usually recorded to the nearest one-tenth of a millimetre (), as is standard in conchology.


title: Cephalopod size

text: When the "Registry of World Record Size Shells" changed ownership in 2008 it was launched as an online database in addition to its print publication. Subsequent rule changes meant that all records required photographic verification. Over time, older records for which photographic evidence could not be obtained were removed from the database. As a result, some records from older editions of the registry actually exceed the size of the current official record holders, sometimes by considerable margins. Where this has occurred, the largest recorded size across all editions is shown first and any discrepancies or competing records are noted thereafter. Where a reliable literature record surpasses all specimens ever included in the registry, this is given instead and the registry record(s) noted thereafter. Pisor (2008) was the fifth and final print edition of the registry published prior to the rule change, and Barbier "et al." () is the current, continuously updated online database. The registry only covers the shells of nautiluses and "Spirula" and the eggcases of "Argonauta".


title: Cephalopod size

text: The giant and colossal squids have the largest recorded eyes of any living animal, with a maximum diameter of at least and a pupil. This is three times the size of the largest fish eyes—up to in swordfish—and more than twice the diameter of the largest whale eyes—up to , , and in blue, humpback, and sperm whales, respectively—which are the largest among vertebrates. A large colossal squid caught in 2014 and dissected at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa had eyes some across. There are unconfirmed reports from the 19th century of giant squid eyes up to across. Only the extinct ichthyosaurs are known to have approached these dimensions, with some species having eyes up to in diameter.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Despite their size, the eyes of giant and colossal squids do not appear to be disproportionately large; they do not deviate significantly from the allometric relationship seen across other squid species. Sepiolids are noted for having exceptionally large eyes, which are much bigger relative to their mantle length than those of the giant squid; the same is true of "Histioteuthis" species. Gonatids and the loliginids "Loligo" and "Lolliguncula" also have proportionately somewhat larger eyes than "Architeuthis". Some sources state that the vampire squid ("Vampyroteuthis infernalis") has the largest eyes of any animal relative to its size, with a specimen having eyes around in diameter.


title: Cephalopod size

text: There is some debate in the scientific community as to the evolutionary reason behind the extremely large eyes of giant and colossal squids. Nilsson "et al." (2012) and Nilsson "et al." (2013) argue that it is an anti-predator adaptation for enhanced detection of sperm whales, with the squids picking up plankton bioluminescence triggered by moving whales, perhaps from distances exceeding . Schmitz "et al." (2013a) and Schmitz "et al." (2013b) contend that their eyes are so large due to a phylogenetically conserved developmental pattern that governs the relative dimensions of squids and their eyes, and that any fitness benefits their size may confer in terms of predator avoidance are the result of exaptation ("pre-adaptation").


title: Cephalopod size

text: Squid giant axons can exceed in diameter: 100 to 1000 times the thickness of mammalian axons. The axons of the Humboldt squid ("Dosidicus gigas") are exceptional in that they can reach a diameter of as much as , and those of "Loligo forbesii" can also exceed 1 mm. Such was the importance of Humboldt squid to electrophysiology research that when the animals migrated out of reach of Chilean fishermen in the 1970s "it led to the demise of a world-class electrophysiology laboratory" based there. Squid giant axon diameters do not necessarily correlate with overall body size; those of the giant squid ("Architeuthis dux") are only thick.


title: Cephalopod size

text: The squid giant synapse is the largest chemical junction in nature. It lies in the stellate ganglion on each side of the midline, at the posterior wall of the squid's muscular mantle. Activation of this synapse triggers a synchronous contraction of the mantle musculature, causing the forceful ejection of a jet of water from the mantle. This water propulsion allows the squid to move rapidly through the water and, in the case of the so-called 'flying squids', even to jump through the surface of the water (breaking the air–water barrier) to escape predators. Many essential elements of how all chemical synapses function were first discovered by studying the squid giant synapse.


title: Cephalopod size

text: "Taningia danae", a very large octopoteuthid squid, possesses "lemon-sized" yellow photophores at the tips of two of its arms, which are the largest known light-emitting organs in the animal kingdom. Video footage shot in 2005 in deep water off Japan shows "T. danae" emitting blinding flashes of light from these photophores as it attacks its prey. A pair of muscular lids surrounds each photophore and it is the withdrawal of these lids that produces the flashes. A large individual filmed from a remote submersible off Hawaii in 2015 can clearly be seen opening the lids to reveal its photophores. It is believed that this highly manoeuvrable squid uses bright flashes to disorientate potential prey. The flashes may also serve to illuminate prey for easier capture or play a role in courtship and/or territorial displays.


title: Cephalopod size

text: Extreme penis elongation has been observed in the deep water squid "Onykia ingens". When erect, the penis may be as long as the mantle, head, and arms combined. As such, deep water squids have the greatest known penis length relative to body size of all mobile animals, second in the entire animal kingdom only to certain sessile barnacles.


title: Michael Smerconish

text: Michael Andrew Smerconish ( ; born March 15, 1962) is an American radio host and television presenter, political commentator, newspaper columnist, author, and lawyer. He broadcasts "The Michael Smerconish Program" weekdays at 9:00 a.m. ET on SiriusXM's POTUS Channel (124), and hosts the CNN and CNN International program "Smerconish" at 9:00 a.m. ET on Saturdays. He is a Sunday newspaper columnist for "The Philadelphia Inquirer". Smerconish has written seven books: six non-fiction works and one novel. He is also of counsel to the Philadelphia law firm of Kline & Specter.


title: Michael Smerconish

text: Smerconish was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, the son of Florence (Grovich) and Walter Smerconish. His family hails from Galicia in Eastern Europe, Montenegro, and Italy. He graduated from Central Bucks High School West, a public high school in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. He received his B.A. from Lehigh University and his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.


title: Michael Smerconish

text: He has been awarded several honorary degrees: a Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Widener University on May 26, 2016, a Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Delaware Valley College on May 19, 2018, and a Doctor of Science degree from University of the Sciences on May 20, 2020.


title: Michael Smerconish

text: Smerconish was raised in a Republican household, and while in his early teens, Smerconish began to correspond with the then Democratic Mayor of Philadelphia, Frank L. Rizzo. Eventually the two would meet and establish a close relationship. But Smerconish's start in politics came in the spring of 1980 when his father competed unsuccessfully in a Republican primary for the Pennsylvania state legislature. Smerconish worked tirelessly in his father's campaign during his own senior year in high school, during which he registered to vote for the first time. Despite his father's election loss, Smerconish was smitten with GOP politics, having met both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush during the build-up to the Pennsylvania Primary.