1.
Patrick Read Johnson
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Patrick Read Johnson is an American filmmaker, special effects artist and screenwriter. Born in Wadsworth, Illinois, he is best known for his work on the films Spaced Invaders, Angus, Babys Day Out, The Genesis Code. He also has written and produced films as Dragonheart. He first saw the film during Spring Break, sometime between late March and early April 1977, when ILM was scrambling to complete VFX shots, Johnson began developing 5-25-77 in 1999 after he met Gary Kurtz. In 2001, Johnson began seeking funding for 5-25-77, and didnt start shooting the film until 2004, an incomplete preview cut was exhibited in 2007 at Star Wars Celebration IV and at the Hamptons International Film Festival in 2008, where 5-25-77 won the Heineken Red Star Award. Johnson spent the summer of 2012 test-screening 5-25-77, his trip also becoming the subject of a documentary called Hearts of Dorkness, Patrick Read Johnson at the Internet Movie Database Patrick Read Johnson on Twitter
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John Hughes (filmmaker)
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John Wilden Hughes, Jr. was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Hughes was born in Lansing, Michigan, to a mother who volunteered in charity work and John Hughes and he spent the first twelve years of his life in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Hughes described himself as kind of quiet as a kid, I grew up in a neighborhood that was mostly girls and old people. There werent any boys my age, so I spent a lot of time by myself, and every time we would get established somewhere, we would move. Life just started to get good in seventh grade, and then we moved to Chicago, I ended up in a really big high school, and I didnt know anybody. But then The Beatles came along changed my whole life, and then Bob Dylans Bringing It All Back Home came out and really changed me. Thursday I was one person, and Friday I was another and my heroes were Dylan, John Lennon and Picasso, because they each moved their particular medium forward, and when they got to the point where they were comfortable, they always moved on. In 1963, Hughess family moved to Northbrook, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago and this is where Hughess father found work selling roofing materials. There Hughes attended Glenbrook North High School, which gave him inspiration for the films made his reputation in later years. After dropping out of the University of Arizona, Hughes began selling jokes to well-established performers such as Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers. Hughes used his jokes to get a job at Needham, Harper & Steers as an advertising copywriter in Chicago in 1970. During this time, he created became the famous Edge Credit Card Shaving Test ad campaign. Hughes work on the Virginia Slims account frequently took him to the Philip Morris headquarters in New York City and this gave him the opportunity to hang around the offices of the National Lampoon magazine. Hughes subsequently penned a story, inspired by his trips as a child. That piece, Vacation 58, later became the basis for the film National Lampoons Vacation and his first credited screenplay, Class Reunion, was written while still on staff at the magazine. The resulting film became the second attempt by the flagship to duplicate the runaway success of Animal House. It was Hughess next screenplay for the imprint, National Lampoons Vacation and that films success, along with the success of another of Hughes scripts, Mr. Mom, earned Hughes a three-movie deal with Universal Studios. It was the first in a string of efforts set in or around high school, including The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Weird Science, Ferris Buellers Day Off and Some Kind of Wonderful
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Joe Mantegna
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Joseph Anthony Joe Mantegna, Jr. is an American actor, producer, writer, director, and voice actor. Mantegna began his career on the stage in 1969 with the musical Hair, expanding to film and television, Mantegna is best known for his roles in box office hits including Three Amigos, The Godfather Part III, Forget Paris and Up Close & Personal. As of the 2015–2016 TV season, he stars in the CBS television series Criminal Minds as FBI Supervisory Special Agent David Rossi. Since the 1991 episode Bart the Murderer, Mantegna has had a role on the animated series The Simpsons as mob boss Fat Tony. Mantegna has starred in the series First Monday and Joan of Arcadia and he earned Emmy Award nominations for his roles in three different miniseries, The Last Don, The Rat Pack, and The Starter Wife. He has also served as producer for various movies and television movies, including Corduroy, Hoods. Parkers fictional detective Spenser in three movies between 1999 and 2001, and has narrated several audiobook readings of the Spenser novels. An avid firearm enthusiast, he is the host of MidwayUSAs Gun Stories on the cable television Outdoor Channel and his daughter Gia Mantegna is also an actor. Mantegna was raised Catholic and attended J. Sterling Morton High School East in Cicero and he studied acting at the Goodman School of Drama at DePaul University from 1967 to 1969. While still a man in Chicago, he played bass in a band called The Apocryphals, which later played with another local group, The Missing Links. Mantegna is still close to the original members of Chicago. Mantegna made his debut in the 1969 stage production of Hair. He co-wrote Bleacher Bums, a play which was first performed at Chicagos Organic Theater Company. In the movie Xanadu, he had a role which was cut, although since his name is in the films credits. Mantegna won a Tony award for his portrayal of Richard Roma in David Mamets play Glengarry Glen Ross and he has had a long and successful association with Mamet, appearing in a number of his works. Mantegna made his film debut in Medusa Challenger. He played womanizing dentist Bruce Fleckstein in Compromising Positions and he starred in an episode of The Twilight Zone in 1985 called Shelter Skelter. His other early roles were supporting performances in The Money Pit, Weeds
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Lara Flynn Boyle
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Lara Flynn Boyle is an American actress. She is best known for her performances as Donna Hayward in Twin Peaks and she has also appeared in films including Happiness and Men in Black II. Boyle was born in Davenport, Iowa, the daughter of Sally, a worker, assistant, and manager. She has German, Irish, and Italian ancestry and she is named after a character in Boris Pasternaks novel Doctor Zhivago. She was raised in Chicago, Illinois and Wisconsin and she graduated from The Chicago Academy for the Arts. Boyles first film role was a bit part in Ferris Buellers Day Off and she then appeared in the mini-series Amerika and feature film Poltergeist III. Although she was cast in Dead Poets Society, her scenes were deleted and her first major role was as Donna Hayward in the critically acclaimed television series Twin Peaks. When the series ended in 1991, creator David Lynch produced a movie, Twin Peaks, Fire Walk with Me, in November 2015, it was revealed that she will not be reprising the role for the third season set to air in 2017. She starred on show until 2003, when, in a dramatic attempt to revamp the show and cut costs. For her performance as Helen Gamble, she received an Emmy nomination as well as several Screen Actors Guild ensemble cast nominations. Boyle also made a appearance in the role of Helen Gamble in an episode of Ally McBeal. In 2002, Boyle played a role in the blockbuster feature film Men in Black II as the villainous shapeshifting alien Serleena. She also guest-starred on one of the last episodes of Ally McBeal, this time as Tally Cupp, in 2005, Boyle joined the cast of Las Vegas for a seven-episode stint as Monica Mancuso, a new hotel owner. She played Barbara Amiel in the TV true story Shades of Black, about Amiels controversial husband, Boyle also guest-starred as an ambitious reporter involved with the suspects in a possible murder in the Law & Order 2008 episode Submission. Boyle was in a relationship with Twin Peaks partner Kyle MacLachlan. She also dated comedian David Spade and they went public with their romance at the 1999 Emmys, and remained together until the end of 2000. Her first husband was John Patrick Dee III, whom she married on August 11,1996 and her current husband is Donald Ray Thomas II, a real-estate investor, whom she married on December 18,2006, in San Antonio, Texas. Lara Flynn Boyle at the Internet Movie Database Lara Flynn Boyle at AllMovie
5.
Joe Pantoliano
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Joseph Peter Joe Pantoliano, often referred to by his nickname Joey Pants, is an American actor. Marshal Cosmo Renfro in both The Fugitive and U. S. Marshals films, Pantoliano was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, the son of Italian American parents Mary, a bookie and seamstress, and Dominic Monk Pantoliano, a hearse driver and factory foreman. He attended HB Studio, and studied extensively with actors John Lehne and he first grew to fame as Guido the Killer Pimp in Risky Business, and continued to rise in 1985 when he appeared as the villainous Francis Fratelli in teen classic The Goonies. He gained fame amongst a new generation as Cypher in the 1999 landmark sci-fi film The Matrix and he also played Deputy Marshal Cosmo Renfro in The Fugitive along with Tommy Lee Jones, and reprised the role in the sequel U. S. Marshals. He is known for his portrayals of criminals, criminal investigators, detectives, in 2003, Pantoliano replaced Stanley Tucci in the Broadway play Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. That same year he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for The Sopranos, in 2013, he was cast as Yogi Berra in the Broadway production of Bronx Bombers, but dropped out during rehearsals due to creative differences. When not acting, Pantoliano also writes and he is the author of two memoirs, Whos Sorry Now, The True Story of a Stand-Up Guy and Asylum, Hollywood Tales From My Great Depression, Brain Dis-Ease, Recovery and Being My Mothers Son. In the latter, he writes about his addictions to alcohol, food, sex, Vicodin, Pantoliano lives with his wife, former model Nancy Sheppard, and their four children. He was introduced to his wife by his friend, actress Samantha Phillips and he claims that his recent film Canvas was what helped him come to terms with his depression. Rather than hide his struggle from the public, he has chosen to speak out about it to some of the stigmas that are commonly associated with mental illness. He founded an organization, No Kidding, Me Too. to unite members of the entertainment industry in educating the public about mental illness. The title comes from the response he’s heard all too often after divulging how mental illness affected him, he’s also shot a documentary called No Kidding, Me Too. I thought it was very revealing, official website Joe Pantoliano at the Internet Movie Database Joe Pantoliano interview with ABILITY Magazine
6.
Brian Haley
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Brian Carlo Haley is an American actor and stand-up comedian. His stand-up act is characterized by playing his all-American looks against manic outbursts, Haley was born in Seattle, Washington to a large Catholic family, the fifth of six children. His father was an executive and his mother was a homemaker. His father is of Irish and Italian descent, which is where he gets his Italian middle name Carlo, at the age of three his family moved to Saint-Jovite, Quebec and he was put in a boarding home where he learned to speak fluent French. He disliked the experience so much that upon his return to Seattle 18 months later, he refused to speak the language except to translate for his younger sister and he began acting as a child in the Seattle area doing community and school theater. As a teenager, he stumbled upon the set of Scorchy in downtown Seattle. After seeing some of the movie being filmed, jumping into a few shots as an extra and meeting the star, Connie Stevens, at 15 he moved to rural Ellensburg, Washington. After high school, he took on jobs, including lumberjack, hay buck. He eventually enlisted in the US Army to join the Special Forces and he was in the service from 1980 to 1985 where he won letters of commendation and the Army Achievement Medal, but left early to pursue a career in show business. While in the Army, he was in the play Guys, after his tour in the Army, he began doing stand-up in his native Seattle and quickly rose to headliner status. However, it was his big break on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1990 that launched his career in earnest. His first appearance led to a flood of television and film roles, in 1994, he starred in the movie Babys Day Out. The movie was popular in overseas markets, especially India. In 1994, he had a stand out role in the comedy film Little Giants as over the top dad Mike Hammersmith, in 1995, he replaced Thomas Haden Church on NBCs TV series Wings playing the part of mechanic Budd Bronski. That same year he was in a Clio Award winning Super Bowl ad for Miller Lite beer playing hard luck football quarterback Elmer Bruker, in 1997, he portrayed The Hooded Avenger on the Weird Al Show. From 1998 to 1999 he played bartender Tom Vanderhulst on the short lived CBS series Maggie Winters. He has made numerous guest appearances on TV shows such as 30 Rock, The Drew Carey Show, in 2009, he played Clint Eastwoods discontented son Mitch in the award-winning movie Gran Torino. In February 2007, he appeared on Broadway as tennis commentator Ryan Becker in the Terrence McNally play Deuce and he currently lives in New York City and has a production company, Haleywood Productions
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20th Century Fox
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Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation is an American film studio currently owned by 21st Century Fox. It is one of the Big Six major American film studios and is located in the Century City area of Los Angeles, the studio was formerly owned by News Corporation. 20th Century Fox is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America, in 2015, 20th Century Fox celebrated its 80th anniversary as a studio. Spyros Skouras, then manager of the Fox West Coast Theaters, the studios biggest star, Will Rogers, died in a plane crash weeks after the merger. Its leading female star, Janet Gaynor, was fading in popularity and promising leading men James Dunn, at first, it was expected that the new company was originally to be called Fox-20th Century, even though 20th Century was the senior partner in the merger. However, 20th Century brought more to the bargaining table besides Schenck and Zanuck, the new company, 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, began trading on May 31,1935, the hyphen was dropped in 1985. Schenck became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, while Kent remained as President, Zanuck became Vice President in Charge of Production, replacing Foxs longtime production chief Winfield Sheehan. The company established a training school. The contracts included an option for renewal for as long as seven years. For many years, 20th Century Fox claimed to have founded in 1915. For instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary, however, in recent years it has claimed the 1935 merger as its founding, even though most film historians agree it was founded in 1915. The companys films retained the 20th Century Pictures searchlight logo on their credits as well as its opening fanfare. Also on the Fox payroll he found two players who he built up into the studios leading assets, Alice Faye and seven-year-old Shirley Temple, favoring popular biographies and musicals, Zanuck built Fox back to profitability. Thanks to record attendance during World War II, Fox overtook RKO, while Zanuck went off for eighteen months war service, junior partner William Goetz kept profits high by going for light entertainment. The studios—indeed the industrys—biggest star was creamy blonde Betty Grable, in 1942, Spyros Skouras succeeded Kent as president of the studio. Together with Zanuck, who returned in 1943, they intended to make Foxs output more serious-minded. During the next few years, with pictures like The Razors Edge, Wilson, Gentlemans Agreement, The Snake Pit, Boomerang, and Pinky, Zanuck established a reputation for provocative, adult films. Fox also specialized in adaptations of best-selling books such as Ben Ames Williams Leave Her to Heaven, starring Gene Tierney and they also made the 1958 film version of South Pacific
8.
South Asia
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Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian Plate, which rises above sea level as Nepal and northern parts of India situated south of the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush. South Asia is bounded on the south by the Indian Ocean and on land by West Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, the current territories of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka form the countries of South Asia. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation is an economic cooperation organisation in the region which was established in 1985, South Asia covers about 5.1 million km², which is 11. 51% of the Asian continent or 3. 4% of the worlds land surface area. The population of South Asia is about 1.749 billion or about one fourth of the worlds population, overall, it accounts for about 39. 49% of Asias population and is home to a vast array of peoples. The area of South Asia and its extent is not clear cut as systemic. Aside from the region of South Asia, formerly part of the British Empire, there is a high degree of variation as to which other countries are included in South Asia. Modern definitions of South Asia are consistent in including Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar is included by some scholars in South Asia, but in Southeast Asia by others. Some do not include Afghanistan, others question whether Afghanistan should be considered a part of South Asia or the Middle East, the mountain countries of Nepal and Bhutan, and the island countries of Sri Lanka and Maldives are generally included as well. Myanmar is often added, and by various deviating definitions based on often substantially different reasons, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the common concept of South Asia is largely inherited from the administrative boundaries of the British Raj, with several exceptions. The Aden Colony, British Somaliland and Singapore, though administered at various times under the Raj, have not been proposed as any part of South Asia. Additionally Burma was administered as part of the Raj until 1937, the 562 princely states that were protected by but not directly ruled by the Raj became administrative parts of South Asia upon joining Union of India or Dominion of Pakistan. China and Myanmar have also applied for the status of members of SAARC. This bloc of countries include two independent countries that were not part of the British Raj – Nepal, and Bhutan, Afghanistan was a British protectorate from 1878 until 1919, after the Afghans lost to the British in the Second Anglo-Afghan war. The United Nations Statistics Divisions scheme of sub-regions include all eight members of the SAARC as part of Southern Asia, population Information Network includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as part of South Asia. Maldives, in view of its characteristics, was admitted as a member Pacific POPIN subregional network only in principle, the Hirschman–Herfindahl index of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific for the region includes only the original seven signatories of SAARC. The British Indian Ocean Territory is connected to the region by a publication of Janes for security considerations, the inclusion of Myanmar in South Asia is without consensus, with many considering it a part of southeast Asia and others including it within South Asia. Afghanistan was of importance to the British colonial empire, especially after the Second Anglo-Afghan War over 1878–1880, Afghanistan remained a British protectorate until 1919, when a treaty with Vladimir Lenin included the granting of independence to Afghanistan. Following Indias partition, Afghanistan has generally included in South Asia
9.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
10.
Fred Thompson
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Fred Dalton Thompson was an American politician, attorney, lobbyist, columnist, film and television actor, and radio host. Thompson, a Republican, served in the United States Senate representing Tennessee from 1994 to 2003, Thompson served as chairman of the International Security Advisory Board at the United States Department of State, was a member of the U. S. As an actor, Thompson appeared in a number of movies, in the final months of his U. S. Senate term in 2002, Thompson joined the cast of the long-running NBC television series Law & Order, playing Manhattan District Attorney Arthur Branch. Thompson was born in Sheffield, Alabama on August 19,1942, the son of Ruth Inez and Fletcher Session Thompson, Thompson had English and distant Dutch ancestry. He attended public school in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, graduating from Lawrence County High School, thereafter, he worked days in the local post office, and nights at the Murray bicycle assembly plant. Thompson then entered Florence State College, becoming the first member of his family to attend college and he went on to earn his Juris Doctor degree from the Vanderbilt Law School in 1967. Thompson was admitted to the State Bar of Tennessee in 1967, at that time, he shortened his first name from Freddie to Fred. He worked as an assistant U. S. attorney from 1969 to 1972, successfully prosecuting bank robberies, Thompson was the campaign manager for Republican U. S. Senator Howard Bakers reelection campaign in 1972 and was minority counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee in its investigation of the Watergate scandal. In the 1980s Thompson worked as an attorney, with law offices in Nashville and Washington, D. C. handling personal injury claims and his clients included a German mining group and Japans Toyota Motors Corporation. Thompson served on corporate boards. He also did work and served on the board of directors for engineering firm Stone & Webster. Thompson was sometimes credited for supplying Republican Senator Howard Bakers famous question, What did the President know, and this question is said to have helped frame the hearings in a way that eventually led to the downfall of President Richard Nixon. A Republican staff member, Donald Sanders, found out about the White House tapes, Thompson was informed of the existence of the tapes, and he in turn informed Nixons attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt. Thereby publicly revealing the existence of recordings of conversations within the White House. National Public Radio later called that session and the discovery of the Watergate tapes a turning point in the investigation. According to historian Stanley Kutler, however, Thompson and Baker carried water for the White House and they werent going to mindlessly go down the tubes. When the Watergate investigation began to pick up speed, tapes revealed that Nixon remarked to his then-Chief of Staff Alexander Haig, Oh shit, hes dumb as hell
11.
Cynthia Nixon
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Cynthia Ellen Nixon is an American actress. She is known for her portrayal of Miranda Hobbes in the HBO series, Sex and she reprised the role in the films Sex and the City and Sex and the City 2. Other film credits include Amadeus, The Pelican Brief, Little Manhattan,5 Flights Up, James White, Nixon made her Broadway debut in the 1980 revival of The Philadelphia Story. Other Broadway credits include The Real Thing, Hurlyburly, Indiscretions, The Women, Wit and her other television roles include playing political figures Eleanor Roosevelt in Warm Springs, Michele Davis in Too Big to Fail, and playing Nancy Reagan in the 2016 television film Killing Reagan. Nixon was born in New York City, the child of Anne Elizabeth, originally from Chicago. She is of English and German descent and she is no relation to the late U. S. President Richard Nixon. Nixons parents divorced when she was six years old and she graduated from Hunter College High School and attended Barnard College. In the spring of 1986, she studied abroad with Semester at Sea, Nixons first onscreen appearance was as an imposter on To Tell the Truth, where her mother worked. She began acting at age 12 as the object of a wealthy school mates crush in The Seven Wishes of a Rich Kid and she made her feature debut co-starring with Kristy McNichol and Tatum ONeal in Little Darlings. She made her Broadway debut as Dinah Lord in a 1980 revival of The Philadelphia Story, in 1984, while a freshman at Barnard College, Nixon made theatrical history by simultaneously appearing in two hit Broadway plays directed by Mike Nichols. These were The Real Thing, where Nixon played the daughter of Jeremy Irons and Christine Baranski, and Hurlyburly, the two theaters were just two blocks apart and Nixons roles were both short, so she could run from one to the other. Onscreen, she played the role of Salieris maid/spy, Lorl, in 1985, she appeared alongside Jeff Daniels in Lanford Wilsons Lemon Sky at Second Stage Theatre. She landed her first major supporting role in a movie as an intelligent teenager who aids her boyfriend in building a bomb in Marshall Brickmans The Manhattan Project. She reprised the role for the 2004 sequel Tanner on Tanner and she was the guest star in the second episode of the long running NBC television series Law & Order. She played the role of a woman in a February 1993 episode of Murder, She Wrote titled. Nixon was a member of the Off-Broadway theatrical troupe Drama Dept. Nixon has contributed supporting performances to Addams Family Values, Babys Day Out, Marvins Room. She raised her profile significantly as one of the four regulars on HBOs successful comedy Sex, Nixon received three Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, winning the award in 2004, for the shows final season. In 2002, she landed a role in the indie comedy Igby Goes Down
12.
Gorilla
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Gorillas are ground-dwelling, predominantly herbivorous apes that inhabit the forests of central Africa. The eponymous genus Gorilla is divided into two species, the gorillas and the western gorillas, and either four or five subspecies. They are the largest living primates, the DNA of gorillas is highly similar to that of humans, from 95–99% depending on what is counted, and they are the next closest living relatives to humans after the chimpanzees and bonobos. Gorillas natural habitats cover tropical or subtropical forests in Africa, although their range covers a small percentage of Africa, gorillas cover a wide range of elevations. The mountain gorilla inhabits the Albertine Rift montane cloud forests of the Virunga Volcanoes, ranging in altitude from 2, 200–4,300 metres. The word gorilla comes from the history of Hanno the Navigator, members of the expedition encountered a savage people, the greater part of whom were women, whose bodies were hairy, and who our interpreters called Gorillae. The word was later used as the species name, though it is unknown whether what these ancient Carthaginians encountered were truly gorillas, another species of ape or monkeys. The American physician and missionary Thomas Staughton Savage and naturalist Jeffries Wyman first described the gorilla in 1847 from specimens obtained in Liberia. The name was derived from Ancient Greek Γόριλλαι, meaning tribe of hairy women, the closest relatives of gorillas are the other two Homininae species, chimpanzees and humans, all of them having diverged from a common ancestor about 7 million years ago. Human gene sequences differ only 1. 6% on average from the sequences of corresponding gorilla genes, until recently, gorillas were considered to be a single species, with three subspecies, the western lowland gorilla, the eastern lowland gorilla and the mountain gorilla. There is now agreement that there are two species, each with two subspecies, more recently, a third subspecies has been claimed to exist in one of the species. The separate species and subspecies developed from a type of gorilla during the Ice Age. Primatologists continue to explore the relationships between various gorilla populations, the species and subspecies listed here are the ones upon which most scientists agree. The proposed third subspecies of Gorilla beringei, which has not yet received a trinomen, is the Bwindi population of the mountain gorilla, some variations that distinguish the classifications of gorilla include varying density, size, hair colour, length, culture, and facial widths. Now, over 100,000 western lowland gorillas are thought to exist in the wild, with 4,000 in zoos, mountain gorillas are the most severely endangered, with an estimated population of about 880 left in the wild and none in zoos. Population genetics of the lowland gorillas suggest that the western and eastern lowland populations diverged ~261 thousand years ago, gorillas move around by knuckle-walking, although they sometimes walk bipedally for short distances while carrying food or in defensive situations. Wild male gorillas weigh 135 to 180 kg while females usually weigh half as much as adult males at 70–115 kg. Adult males are 1.7 to 1.8 m tall, female gorillas are shorter, with smaller arm spans
13.
John Neville (actor)
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John Reginald Neville, CM, OBE was an English theatre and film actor who moved to Canada in 1972. He enjoyed a resurgence of attention in the 1980s as a result of his starring role in Terry Gilliams The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Neville was born in Willesden, London, the son of Mabel Lillian and Reginald Daniel Neville, Neville was a West End idol of the 1950s, hailed as one of the most potent classical actors of the Burton-OToole generation. He also alternated with Richard Burton the parts of Othello and Iago in Othello and he was a frequent visiting player at the Bristol Old Vic. He received good reviews in the adaptation of Lolita, called Lolita, My Love. Noted for his good looks and mellifluous voice, the young Neville was frequently described as the young John Gielguds natural successor. For a while, he took over the role of Nestor Le Fripé from Keith Michell in the original West End production of the musical Irma La Douce. For a brief period in 1963, he returned to the London stage, playing Alfie in the version of the play by Bill Naughton. It became one of Britains leading provincial repertory theatres, though Dunlop and Ustinov soon left, Neville remained at the theatre until 1967 when he resigned over funding disputes with the local authority and the Arts Council. With his family, he left Britain in 1972 and devoted his career to the Canadian theatre, taking up the post of artistic director at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton. In 1988, Terry Gilliam cast him as the lead in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, in the film, Neville plays the character at three different stages of his life, in his 30s, his 50s and his 70s. From 1995–98, Neville had a prominent recurring role in The X-Files television series as The Well Manicured Man, although he made numerous other television appearances and occasional film roles, the main focus of Nevilles career was always the theatre. He had a role as Terrence in David Cronenbergs 2002 Spider. In the same year he appeared alongside Vanessa Redgrave in the 2002 film adaptation of Crime. In 2003, Neville performed a reading of John Miltons Samson Agonistes. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2006, according to publicists at Canadas Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Neville died peacefully surrounded by family on 19 November 2011, aged 86. Neville suffered with Alzheimers disease in his later years and he is survived by his wife, Caroline, and their six children. His grandson is actor Joe Dinicol and he was part of the In Memoriam segment at the 18th Screen Actors Guild Awards
14.
Eddie Bracken
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Edward Vincent Eddie Bracken was an American actor. During this era, he also had success on Broadway, with performances in plays like Too Many Girls, brackens later movie roles include National Lampoons Vacation, Oscar, and Rookie of the Year. Bracken was born in Astoria, Queens, New York, the son of Catherine, Bracken performed in vaudeville at the age of nine and gained fame with the Broadway musical Too Many Girls in a role he reprised for the 1940 film adaptation. He had performed in a film series called The Kiddie Troupers prior to that. In 1936, Bracken enjoyed success on Broadway with his run in the Joseph Viertel play So Proudly We Hail. The military drama, co-starring Richard Cromwell, opened to much fanfare, in the 1940s, director Preston Sturges cast Bracken in two of his best-loved films, The Miracle of Morgans Creek, opposite Betty Hutton, and Hail the Conquering Hero. Due to the popularity of films, Eddie Bracken was a household name during World War II. He made numerous radio broadcasts during this era, notably on The Eddie Bracken Show and he appeared on Broadway in Shinbone Alley, Hello, Dolly. The Odd Couple and Sugar Babies and his last appearance on Broadway was in the musical Dreamtime, directed by David Niles at the Ed Sullivan Theater at the age of 77. Duncan in Home Alone 2, Lost in New York, Bracken also had a long career with Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey, starring in dozens of productions in the 1980s–early 2000s. One high point was their production of Show Boat in which he played Capn Andy Hawkes and this production was broadcast on PBS in 1990. He also played a cameo in Patrick Read Johnsons 1994 film, Babys Day Out, Bracken has acted in films with two actors who later became U. S. Presidents, these were Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. On November 14,2002, Bracken died in Glen Ridge, New Jersey and his wife of 63 years, Connie, a former actress, died in August 2002, just three months before his death. Connie was his leading lady in the Broadway production of What a Life in 1938, together Eddie and Connie had five children, two sons and three daughters. For his contributions to radio and television, Bracken has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 1651 Vine Street and 6751 Hollywood Boulevard respectively. Eddie Bracken at the Internet Broadway Database Eddie Bracken at the Internet Movie Database Eddie Bracken at AllMovie Eddie Bracken at Find a Grave
15.
Verne Troyer
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Verne Troyer is an American actor, stunt actor and comedian. He is notable for his height of 2 ft 8 in and he is best known for playing Mini-Me in the Austin Powers series of comedy films. Since 2014, Troyer has appeared as The Boss in adverts for gambling site Bgo. com, Troyer was born in Sturgis, Michigan, the son of Susan, a factory worker, and Reuben Troyer, a repair technician. He has two siblings, Davon and Deborah, during his childhood, Troyer spent much time visiting Amish relatives in Centreville, Michigan, and graduated from Centreville High School in 1987. Troyer was initially raised Amish but his parents left the faith when he was a child and he has stated that his parents never treated me any different than my other average sized siblings. I used to have to carry wood, feed the cows and pigs and he reportedly married model Genevieve Gallen on February 22,2004, but filed for an annulment the next day. Though the couples engagement was reported, Troyer and his attorney deny that the two ever had any formal wedding plans, saying that Gallen had fabricated the story for her own financial gain. On June 25,2008, a home video leaked of Troyer and his former live-in girlfriend, Ranae Shrider. The video, filmed in 2008 in Beverly Hills, California, kevin Blatt, the man responsible for brokering the deal for Paris Hiltons sex tape in 2003, tried to sell the video. Troyer, through his attorney, Ed McPherson, sued TMZ, Blatt. In May 2015, Verne, his girlfriend Brittney Powell, and her son Tyson appeared on Celebrity Wife Swap, where she switched places with Hines Wards wife. In the USA The Surreal Life, Fame Games Welcome to Sweden Celebrity Juice – himself The Smoking Gun Presents, Worlds Dumbest. com TV Campaign – Beat the Boss Whose Line Is It Anyway. – himself Through the Keyhole – himself Celebrity Wife Swap – himself Verne Troyer at the Internet Movie Database Verne Troyer interview, Movieset. com, accessed August 12,2015
16.
Rotten Tomatoes
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Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by Senh Duong and since January 2010 has been owned by Flixster, in February 2016, Rotten Tomatoes and its parent site Flixster were sold to Comcasts Fandango. Warner Bros. retained a minority stake in the merged entities, since 2007, the websites editor-in-chief has been Matt Atchity. The name, Rotten Tomatoes, derives from the practice of audiences throwing rotten tomatoes when disapproving of a stage performance. From early 2008 to September 2010, Current Television aired the weekly The Rotten Tomatoes Show, featuring hosts, a shorter segment was incorporated into the weekly show, InfoMania, which ended in 2011. In September 2013, the website introduced TV Zone, a section for reviewing scripted TV shows, Rotten Tomatoes was launched on August 12,1998, as a spare-time project by Senh Duong. His goal in creating Rotten Tomatoes was to create a site where people can get access to reviews from a variety of critics in the U. S. As a fan of Jackie Chans, Duong was inspired to create the website after collecting all the reviews of Chans movies as they were being published in the United States, the first movie whose reviews were featured on Rotten Tomatoes was Your Friends & Neighbors. The website was an success, receiving mentions by Netscape, Yahoo. and USA Today within the first week of its launch. They officially launched it on April 1,2000, in June 2004, IGN Entertainment acquired rottentomatoes. com for an undisclosed sum. In September 2005, IGN was bought by News Corps Fox Interactive Media, in January 2010, IGN sold the website to Flixster. The combined reach of both companies is 30 million unique visitors a month across all different platforms, according to the companies, in May 2011, Flixster was acquired by Warner Bros. In early 2009, Current Television launched the version of the web review site. It was hosted by Brett Erlich and Ellen Fox and written by Mark Ganek, the show aired every Thursday at 10,30 EST on the Current TV network. The last episode aired on September 16,2010 and it returned as a much shorter segment of InfoMania, a satirical news show that ended in 2011. By late 2009, the website was designed to enable Rotten Tomatoes users to create, one group, The Golden Oyster Awards, accepted votes of members for different awards, as if in parallel to the better-known Oscars or Golden Globes. When Flixster bought the company, they disbanded the groups, announcing, in the meantime, please use the Forums to continue your conversations about your favorite movie topics. As of February 2011, new community features have been added, for example, users can no longer sort films by fresh ratings from rotten ratings, and vice versa
17.
At the Movies (U.S. TV series)
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At the Movies is a movie review television program produced by Disney-ABC Domestic Television in which two film critics share their opinions of newly released films. Its original hosts were Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, the hosts of Sneak Previews on PBS. Following Siskels death in 1999, Ebert worked with various guest critics until choosing Chicago Sun-Times colleague Richard Roeper as his partner in 2000. Ebert suspended his appearances in 2006 for treatment of thyroid cancer, from April to August 2008 Michael Phillips, a successor of Siskel at the Chicago Tribune, co-hosted with Roeper. Starting on September 6,2008, Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz took over as hosts, their partnership lasted only one season. On August 5,2009, it was announced that Phillips would return to the show as a permanent co-host, teaming with A. O. Scott of The New York Times for what would be the programs final season. During its run with Siskel and Ebert as hosts, the series was nominated for Primetime Emmy Awards seven times and also for Outstanding Information Series and it was widely known for the thumbs up/thumbs down review summaries given during Siskels and Eberts tenures. The show aired in syndication in the United States and on CTV in Canada, the shows cancellation was announced on March 24,2010, and the last episode was aired during the weekend of August 14–15,2010. The following month, Ebert announced a new version of At the Movies, however, the series has been on an indefinite hiatus since December 2011 and unlikely to return, given Eberts death on April 4,2013. The series itself began in September 1986 as Siskel & Ebert & the Movies, when Siskel and Ebert signed with Buena Vista Entertainment, the title of the show was shortened to simply Siskel and Ebert in mid-1987. The program was recorded in the studios of WBBM-TV, Chicagos CBS owned and operated station. Some time after Disneys 1996 purchase of Capital Cities/ABC, the tapings were moved to ABCs Chicago station, WLS-TV. Siskel and Ebert often had notably divergent tastes, and as a result, many viewers considered such fights to be the highlight of the program. In joint appearances on the show circuit, especially on David Lettermans shows. Widely circulated outtakes from promo-recording sessions show the two both bickering and joking off-air, only once during his long association with Roger Ebert did Gene Siskel ever change his vote on a movie. The 1996 film Broken Arrow had initially given a thumbs up. In 1998, Gene Siskel was hospitalized for treatment of a brain tumor, for a few weeks, the show was taped with Siskel on the telephone and Ebert in the studio. Although Siskel would eventually return to the studio, he seemed noticeably more lethargic, in February 1999, Siskel announced he was taking a leave of absence for further treatment of the tumor, hoping to return
18.
Roger Ebert
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Roger Joseph Ebert was an American film critic and historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, the two verbally sparred and traded humorous barbs while discussing films. They created and trademarked the phrase Two Thumbs Up, used when both hosts gave the film a positive review. After Siskel died in 1999, Ebert continued hosting the show with various co-hosts and then, starting in 2000, Ebert lived with cancer of the thyroid and salivary glands from 2002. This required treatments necessitating the removal of his jaw, which cost him the ability to speak or eat normally. His ability to write remained unimpaired, however, and he continued to publish frequently both online and in print until his death on April 4,2013. Roger Joseph Ebert was born in Urbana, Illinois, the child of Annabel, a bookkeeper, and Walter Harry Ebert. He was raised Roman Catholic, attending St. Marys elementary school and his paternal grandparents were German immigrants and his maternal ancestry was Irish and Dutch. In his senior year, he was president and editor-in-chief of his high school newspaper. In 1958, he won the Illinois High School Association state speech championship in radio speaking, regarding his early influences in film criticism, Ebert wrote in the 1998 parody collection Mad About the Movies, I learned to be a movie critic by reading Mad magazine. Mads parodies made me aware of the machine inside the skin – of the way a movie might look original on the outside, I did not read the magazine, I plundered it for clues to the universe. Pauline Kael lost it at the movies, I lost it at Mad magazine, Ebert began taking classes at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an early-entrance student, completing his high-school courses while also taking his first university class. After graduating from Urbana High School in 1960, Ebert then attended and received his degree in 1964. As an undergraduate, he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, One of the first movie reviews he ever wrote was a review of La Dolce Vita, published in The Daily Illini in October 1961. Ebert spent a semester as a student in the department of English there before attending the University of Cape Town on a Rotary fellowship for a year. He returned from Cape Town to his studies at Illinois for two more semesters and then, after being accepted as a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago. Instead Kogan referred Ebert to the city editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, Jim Hoge and he attended doctoral classes at the University of Chicago while working as a general reporter at the Sun-Times for a year
19.
Gene Siskel
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Eugene Kal Gene Siskel was an American film critic and journalist for Chicago Tribune. Along with colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted a series of review shows on television from 1975 to 1999. Siskel was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Ida and his parents were Russian Jewish immigrants. Siskel was raised by his aunt and uncle after both his parents died when he was ten years old and his first print review was for the film Rascal, which was written one month before he became the papers film critic. His review of the film was favorable but received no stars by default since the paper did not use a system for films at the time. For a time afterwards, Gene was acquainted with Playboy magazine publisher, in 1975, Siskel teamed up with Roger Ebert, film reviewer for Chicago Sun-Times, to host a show on the local Chicago PBS station WTTW which eventually became Sneak Previews. Sneak Previews gained an audience in 1977 WTTW offered it as a series to the PBS program system. Siskel and Ebert left WTTW and PBS in 1982 for syndication and their new show, At the Movies, was produced and distributed by Tribune Broadcasting, the parent company that owned the Chicago Tribune and WGN-TV. Sneak Previews continued on PBS for 14 more years with other hosts, in 1986, Siskel and Ebert left Tribune Broadcasting to have their show produced by the syndication arm of The Walt Disney Company. The new incarnation of the show was originally titled Siskel & Ebert & the Movies, at the Movies also continued a few more years with other hosts. A very early appearance of Siskel, taken from Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You, predecessor to Sneak Previews, is included in For the Love of Movies, The Story of American Film Criticism. In this 2009 documentary film he is debating with Ebert over the merits of the film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Normally, Siskel and Roger Ebert would refuse to guest star in movies or televisual series as they felt it would undermine their responsibility to the public. However, they both could not resist appearing on an episode of the television series The Critic, the title character of which was a film critic who hosted a television show. In the episode, Siskel and Ebert split and each wants Jay Sherman and they also once appeared in an episode of the childrens television series Sesame Street. Siskel also appeared as himself on an episode of The Larry Sanders Show, Siskel was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor on May 8,1998. He underwent brain surgery three days later, Siskel died from complications of another surgery at the age of 53 on February 20,1999. After Siskels death, the producers of Siskel & Ebert began using other film critics on a basis as an audition for a permanent successor
20.
The Washington Post
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The Washington Post is an American daily newspaper. It is the most widely circulated newspaper published in Washington, D. C. and was founded on December 6,1877 and its current slogan is Democracy Dies in Darkness. Located in the city of the United States, the newspaper has a particular emphasis on national politics. Daily editions are printed for the District of Columbia, Maryland, the newspaper is published as a broadsheet, with photographs printed both in color and in black and white. The newspaper has won 47 Pulitzer Prizes and this includes six separate Pulitzers awarded in 2008, the second-highest number ever awarded to a single newspaper in one year, second only to The New York Times seven awards in 2002. Post journalists have also received 18 Nieman Fellowships and 368 White House News Photographers Association awards, in years since, its investigations have led to increased review of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In 2013, its owners, the Graham family, sold the newspaper to billionaire entrepreneur. The newspaper is owned by Nash Holdings LLC, a holding company Bezos created for the acquisition, the Washington Post is generally regarded as one of the leading daily American newspapers, along with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The Post has distinguished itself through its reporting on the workings of the White House, Congress. It is one of the two daily broadsheets published in Washington D. C. the other being its smaller rival The Washington Times, unlike The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post does not print an edition for distribution away from the East Coast. In 2009, the newspaper ceased publication of its National Weekly Edition, the majority of its newsprint readership is in District of Columbia and its suburbs in Maryland and Northern Virginia. The Sunday Style section differs slightly from the weekday Style section, it is in a tabloid format, and it houses the reader-written humor contest The Style Invitational. Additional weekly sections appear on weekdays, Health & Science on Tuesday, Food on Wednesday, Local Living on Thursday, the latter two are in a tabloid format. In November 2009, it announced the closure of its U. S. regional bureaus—Chicago, Los Angeles and New York—as part of a focus on. political stories. The newspaper has bureaus in Maryland and Virginia. While its circulation has been slipping, it has one of the highest market-penetration rates of any metropolitan news daily, for many decades, the Post had its main office at 1150 15th Street NW. This real estate remained with Graham Holdings when the newspaper was sold to Jeff Bezos Nash Holdings in 2013, Graham Holdings sold 1150 15th Street for US$159 million in November 2013. The Washington Post continued to lease space at 1150 L Street NW, in May 2014, The Washington Post leased the west tower of One Franklin Square, a high-rise building at 1301 K Street NW in Washington, D. C
21.
India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE, in the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal empire, in the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as The people of the Indus, the geographical term Bharat, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety
22.
Pakistan
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Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a federal parliamentary republic in South Asia on the crossroads of Central Asia and Western Asia. It is the sixth-most populous country with a population exceeding 200 million people, in terms of area, it is the 33rd-largest country in the world with an area covering 881,913 square kilometres. It is separated from Tajikistan by Afghanistans narrow Wakhan Corridor in the north, Pakistan is unique among Muslim countries in that it is the only country to have been created in the name of Islam. As a result of the Pakistan Movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and it is an ethnically and linguistically diverse country, with a similarly diverse geography and wildlife. Initially a dominion, Pakistan adopted a constitution in 1956, becoming an Islamic republic, an ethnic civil war in 1971 resulted in the secession of East Pakistan as the new country of Bangladesh. The new constitution stipulated that all laws were to conform to the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Quran. Pakistan has an economy with a well-integrated agriculture sector. The Pakistani economy is the 24th-largest in the world in terms of purchasing power and it is ranked among the emerging and growth-leading economies of the world, and is backed by one of the worlds largest and fastest-growing middle classes. The post-independence history of Pakistan has been characterised by periods of military rule, the country continues to face challenging problems such as illiteracy, healthcare, and corruption, but has substantially reduced poverty and terrorism and expanded per capita income. It is also a member of CERN. Pakistan is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement, the name Pakistan literally means land of the pure in Urdu and Persian. It is a play on the word pāk meaning pure in Persian and Pashto, the letter i was incorporated to ease pronunciation and form the linguistically correct and meaningful name. Some of the earliest ancient human civilisations in South Asia originated from areas encompassing present-day Pakistan, the earliest known inhabitants in the region were Soanian during the Lower Paleolithic, of whom stone tools have been found in the Soan Valley of Punjab. The Vedic Civilization, characterised by Indo-Aryan culture, laid the foundations of Hinduism, Multan was an important Hindu pilgrimage centre. The Vedic civilisation flourished in the ancient Gandhāran city of Takṣaśilā, the Indo-Greek Kingdom founded by Demetrius of Bactria included Gandhara and Punjab and reached its greatest extent under Menander, prospering the Greco-Buddhist culture in the region. Taxila had one of the earliest universities and centres of education in the world. At its zenith, the Rai Dynasty of Sindh ruled this region, the Pala Dynasty was the last Buddhist empire, which, under Dharampala and Devapala, stretched across South Asia from what is now Bangladesh through Northern India to Pakistan. The Arab conqueror Muhammad bin Qasim conquered the Indus valley from Sindh to Multan in southern Punjab in 711 AD, the Pakistan governments official chronology identifies this as the time when the foundation of Pakistan was laid
23.
Sri Lanka
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Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia near south-east India. Sri Lanka has maritime borders with India to the northwest and the Maldives to the southwest, Sri Lankas documented history spans 3,000 years, with evidence of pre-historic human settlements dating back to at least 125,000 years. Its geographic location and deep harbours made it of strategic importance from the time of the ancient Silk Road through to World War II. Sri Lanka was known from the beginning of British colonial rule until 1972 as Ceylon, Sri Lankas recent history has been marred by a thirty-year civil war which decisively ended when the Sri Lankan military defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009. A diverse and multicultural country, Sri Lanka is home to many religions, ethnic groups, in addition to the majority Sinhalese, it is home to large groups of Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils, Moors, Burghers, Malays, Kaffirs and the aboriginal Vedda. Sri Lanka has a rich Buddhist heritage, and the first known Buddhist writings of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka is a republic and a unitary state governed by a semi-presidential system. The legislative capital, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, is a suburb of the capital and largest city. Along with the Maldives, Sri Lanka is one of the two countries in South Asia that are rated among high human development on the Human Development Index. In antiquity, Sri Lanka was known to travellers by a variety of names, according to the Mahavamsa, the legendary Prince Vijaya named the land Tambapanni, because his followers hands were reddened by the red soil of the area. In Hindu mythology, such as the Mahabharata, the island was referred to as Lankā, in Tamil, the island is referred to as Eelam. Ancient Greek geographers called it Taprobanā or Taprobanē from the word Tambapanni, as a British crown colony, the island was known as Ceylon, it achieved independence as the Dominion of Ceylon in 1948. The country is known in Sinhalese as Śrī Laṃkā and in Tamil as Ilaṅkai, in 1972, its formal name was changed to Free, Sovereign and Independent Republic of Sri Lanka. Later in 1978 it was changed to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, as the name Ceylon still appears in the names of a number of organisations, the Sri Lankan government announced in 2011 a plan to rename all those over which it has authority. The pre-history of Sri Lanka goes back 125,000 years, the era spans the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and early Iron Ages. Among the Paleolithic human settlements discovered in Sri Lanka, Pahiyangala and it is said that Kubera was overthrown by his demon stepbrother Ravana, the powerful emperor who built a mythical flying machine named Dandu Monara. The modern city of Wariyapola is described as Ravanas airport, early inhabitants of Sri Lanka were probably ancestors of the Vedda people, an indigenous people numbering approximately 2,500 living in modern-day Sri Lanka. According to the Mahāvamsa, a written in Pāḷi, the original inhabitants of Sri Lanka are the Yakshas and Nagas. Ancient cemeteries that were used before 600BC and other signs of advanced civilization has also discovered in Sri Lanka
24.
Bangladesh
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Bangladesh, officially the Peoples Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It shares land borders with India and Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan and China are located near Bangladesh but do not share a border with it. The countrys maritime territory in the Bay of Bengal is roughly equal to the size of its land area, Bangladesh is the worlds eighth most populous country. Dhaka is its capital and largest city, followed by Chittagong which has the countrys largest port, Bangladesh forms the largest and eastern part of the Bengal region. Bangladeshis include people of different ethnic groups and religions, Bengalis, who speak the official Bengali, make up 98% of the population. The politically dominant Bengali Muslims make the nation the worlds third largest Muslim-majority country, most of Bangladesh is covered by the Bengal delta, the largest delta on Earth. The country has 700 rivers and 8,046 km of inland waterways, highlands with evergreen forests are found in the northeastern and southeastern regions of the country. Bangladesh has many islands and a coral reef and it is home to the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest in the world. The countrys biodiversity includes a vast array of plant and wildlife, including critically endangered Bengal tigers, the Greeks and Romans identified the region as Gangaridai, a powerful kingdom of the historical subcontinent, in the 3rd century BCE. Archaeological research has unearthed several ancient cities in Bangladesh, which had trade links for millennia. The Bengal Sultanate and Mughal Bengal transformed the region into a cosmopolitan Islamic imperial power between the 14th and 18th centuries, the region was home to many principalities which had inland naval prowess. It was also a center of the worldwide muslin and silk trade. As part of British India, the region was influenced by the Bengali renaissance, the Partition of British India made East Bengal a part of the Dominion of Pakistan, and was renamed as East Pakistan. The region witnessed the Bengali Language Movement in 1952 and the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, after independence, a parliamentary republic was established. A presidential government was in place between 1975 and 1990, followed by a return to parliamentary democracy, the country has also been affected by poverty, natural disasters, hunger, dominant party systems and military coups. Bangladesh is a power and a major developing nation. Listed as one of the Next Eleven, it has the 46th largest economy and it is one of the largest textile exporters in the world. Its major trading partners are the European Union, the United States, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, with its strategically vital location between Southern, Eastern and Southeast Asia, Bangladesh is an important promoter of regional connectivity and cooperation
25.
Kolkata
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Kolkata /koʊlˈkɑːtɑː/ is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. In 2011, the city had a population of 4.5 million, while the population of the city and its suburbs was 14.1 million, making it the third-most populous metropolitan area in India. Recent estimates of Kolkata Metropolitan Areas economy have ranged from $60 to $150 billion making it third most-productive metropolitan area in India, after Mumbai, in the late 17th century, the three villages that predated Calcutta were ruled by the Nawab of Bengal under Mughal suzerainty. After the Nawab granted the East India Company a trading licence in 1690, Nawab Siraj ud-Daulah occupied Calcutta in 1756, and the East India Company retook it the following year. In 1793 the East India company was enough to abolish Nizamat. Calcutta was the centre for the Indian independence movement, it remains a hotbed of contemporary state politics, following Indian independence in 1947, Kolkata, which was once the centre of modern Indian education, science, culture, and politics, suffered several decades of economic stagnation. Many people from Kolkata—among them several Nobel laureates—have contributed to the arts, the sciences, Kolkata culture features idiosyncrasies that include distinctively close-knit neighbourhoods and freestyle intellectual exchanges. Though home to major cricketing venues and franchises, Kolkata differs from other Indian cities by giving importance to association football, there are several explanations about the etymology of this name, The term Kolikata is thought to be a variation of Kalikkhetrô, meaning Field of Kali. Similarly, it can be a variation of Kalikshetra, alternatively, the name may have been derived from the Bengali term kilkila, or flat area. The name may have its origin in the words khal meaning canal, followed by kaṭa, according to another theory, the area specialised in the production of quicklime or koli chun and coir or kata, hence, it was called Kolikata. The discovery and archaeological study of Chandraketugarh,35 kilometres north of Kolkata, Kolkatas recorded history began in 1690 with the arrival of the English East India Company, which was consolidating its trade business in Bengal. The area occupied by the city encompassed three villages, Kalikata, Gobindapur, and Sutanuti. Kalikata was a village, Sutanuti was a riverside weavers village. They were part of an estate belonging to the Mughal emperor and these rights were transferred to the East India Company in 1698. In 1712, the British completed the construction of Fort William, facing frequent skirmishes with French forces, the British began to upgrade their fortifications in 1756. The Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah, condemned the militarisation and his warning went unheeded, and the Nawab attacked, he captured Fort William which led to the killings of several East India company officials in the Black Hole of Calcutta. A force of Company soldiers and British troops led by Robert Clive recaptured the city the following year, declared a presidency city, Calcutta became the headquarters of the East India Company by 1772. In 1793, ruling power of the Nawabs were abolished and East India company took control of the city
26.
Star Wars
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Star Wars is an American epic space opera franchise, centered on a film series created by George Lucas. It depicts the adventures of characters a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. The franchise began in 1977 with the release of the film Star Wars and it was followed by the successful sequels The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, these three films constitute the original Star Wars trilogy. A prequel trilogy was released between 1999 and 2005, which received mixed-to-negative reactions, a sequel trilogy began in 2015 with the release of Star Wars, The Force Awakens. All seven films were nominated for Academy Awards and have been successes, with a combined box office revenue of over $7.5 billion. Spin-off films include Star Wars, The Clone Wars and Rogue One, Star Wars also holds a Guinness World Records title for the Most successful film merchandising franchise. In 2015, the value of the Star Wars franchise was estimated at USD $42 billion. In 2012, The Walt Disney Company acquired Lucasfilm for $4.06 billion and earned the rights to all subsequent Star Wars films. Walt Disney Studios owns digital distribution rights to all the Star Wars films, the events depicted in the Star Wars franchise take place in an unnamed fictional galaxy at an undetermined point in the distant past. Many species of creatures are depicted. Robotic droids are also commonplace and are built to serve their owners. Space travel is common, and many planets in the galaxy are members of a single galactic government. In the prequel trilogy, this is depicted in the form of the Galactic Republic, at the end of the trilogy and throughout the original trilogy. Preceding and during the trilogy, this government is the New Republic. One of the prominent elements of Star Wars is the Force and it is described in the first produced film as an energy field created by all living things surrounds us, penetrates us, binds the galaxy together. While the Force can be used for good, known as the side, it also has a dark side that, when pursued, imbues users with hatred, aggression. The sequel trilogy introduces the Knights of Ren, an order of practitioners of the side of the Force aligned with the First Order. The first film in the series, Star Wars, was released on May 25,1977 and this was followed by two sequels, The Empire Strikes Back, released on May 21,1980, and Return of the Jedi, released on May 25,1983
27.
Telugu language
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Telugu is a Dravidian language native to India. It is also spoken by significant minorities in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and it is one of six languages designated a classical language of India by the Government of India. Telugu ranks third by the number of speakers in India. It is one of the scheduled languages of the Republic of India. Approximately 10,000 inscriptions exist in the Telugu language, the speakers of the language call it Telugu or Tenugu. The older forms of the name include Teluṅgu, Tenuṅgu and Teliṅga, the etymology of Telugu is not certain. Some historical scholars have suggested a derivation from Sanskrit triliṅgam, as in Trilinga Desa, tradition holds that Shiva descended as a lingam on three mountains, Kaleshwaram, Srisailam, and Bhimeswaram, which are said to have marked the boundaries of the Trilinga Desa. Atharvana Acharya in the 13th century wrote a grammar of Telugu, Appa Kavi in the 17th century explicitly wrote that Telugu was derived from Trilinga. Scholar Charles P. Brown comments that it was a strange notion as all the predecessors of Appa Kavi had no knowledge of such a derivation. George Abraham Grierson and other linguists doubt this derivation, holding rather that Telugu was the older term, another view holds that tenugu is derived from the proto-Dravidian word ten– south to mean the people who lived in the south/southern direction. The name telugu then, is a result of n -> l alternation established in Telugu, according to the natve tradition Telugu grammar has a hoary past. Sage Kanva was said to be the first grammarian of Telugu, a Rajeswara Sarma discussed the hisoricity and content of Kanvas grammar written in Sanskrit. He cited twenty grammatical aphorisms ascribed to Kanva, and concluded that Kanva wrote an ancient Telugu Grammar which was lost, according to the Russian linguist M. S. Andronov, Telugu split from the Proto-Dravidian languages between 1500 and 1000 BC. According to linguist Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, Telugu, as a Dravidian language, descends from Proto-Dravidian, linguistic reconstruction suggests that Proto-Dravidian was spoken around the third millennium BC, possibly in the region around the lower Godavari river basin in peninsular India. The material evidence suggests that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian were of the associated with the Neolithic societies of South India. A legend gives the Lepakshi town a significant place in the Ramayana — this was where the bird Jatayu fell, when Sri Rama reached the spot, he saw the bird and said compassionately, “Le Pakshi” — ‘rise, bird’ in Telugu. This indicates the presence of Telugu Language during Ramayana period, there is a mention of Telugu people or Telugu country in ancient Tamil literature as Telunka Nadu. Telugu words were found in Hebrew literature, inscriptions with Telugu words dating back to 400 BC to 100 BC have been discovered in Bhattiprolu in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh
28.
Sisindri
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Sisindri is a 1995 Telugu comedy film produced by Nagarjuna Akkineni on Great India Enterprises banner, directed by Shiva Nageswara Rao. Akkineni Akhil made his debut through this film, the cast includes his real life father Akkineni Nagarjuna and other supporting actors Giribabu, Tanikella Bharani, Sudhakar, Aamani, Sarath Babu, Subhalekha Sudhakar. Tabu and Pooja Batra made guest appearances in the film, Music composed by Raj, it is his first debut individually. The film is an Indian adaptation of the Hollywood film Babys Day Out, the film was dubbed in Tamil as Chutti Kuzhandhai. The film was a box-office hit, siva Nageswara Rao decided to direct a film based on Hollywood film Babys Day Out. Nagarjunas son Akhil who was a one year old baby at that time made his debut as a child kidnapped from home. The music was composed by Raj, the lyrics written by Sirivennela Sitarama Sastry, released by the Supreme Music Company. This movie celebrated 100 days in 2 centers and 50 days in 34 centers, sisindri at the Internet Movie Database
29.
Malayalam
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Malayalam /mʌləˈjɑːləm/ is a language spoken in India, predominantly in the state of Kerala. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and was designated as a Classical Language in India in 2013 and it was developed to the current form mainly by the influence of the poet Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan in the 16th century. Malayalam has official status in the state of Kerala and in the union territories of Lakshadweep. It belongs to the Dravidian family of languages and is spoken by some 38 million people, according to one theory, Malayalam originated from Middle Tamil in the 7th century. However, the current understanding proposes the separation of Malayalam from Proto-Dravidian in the pre-historic era, Malayalam incorporated many elements from Sanskrit through the ages. Before Malayalam came into being, Old Tamil was used in literature and courts of a region called Tamilakam, including present day Kerala state, silappatikaramit was written by Chera prince Ilango Adigal from Chunkaparra, and is considered a classic in Sangam literature. Modern Malayalam still preserves many words from the ancient Tamil vocabulary of Sangam literature, the earliest script used to write Malayalam was the Vatteluttu alphabet, and later the Kolezhuttu, which derived from it. As Malayalam began to borrow words as well as the rules of grammar from Sanskrit. This developed into the modern Malayalam script, many medieval liturgical texts were written in an admixture of Sanskrit and early Malayalam, called Manipravalam. The oldest literary work in Malayalam, distinct from the Tamil tradition, is dated from between the 9th and 11th centuries, the first travelogue in any Indian language is the Malayalam Varthamanappusthakam, written by Paremmakkal Thoma Kathanar in 1785. Due to its lineage deriving from both Tamil and Sanskrit, the Malayalam script has the largest number of letters among the Indian language orthographies, the Malayalam script includes letters capable of representing almost all the sounds of all Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages. Malayalam serves as a language on the islands including the Mahl-dominated Minicoy Island. The word Malayalam originated from the Sanskrit resp, Malayalam words malai or mala, meaning hill, and elam, meaning region. Malayalam thus translates as hill region and used to refer to the land of the Chera dynasty, the language Malayalam is alternatively called Alealum, Malayalani, Malayali, Malean, Maliyad, and Mallealle. The word Malayalam originally meant only for the name of the region, Malayanma or Malayayma represented the language. With the emergence of modern Malayalam language, the name of the language started to be known by the name of the region, hence now, the word Malayanma is considered by some to represent the olden Malayalam language. The language got the name Malayalam during the mid 19th century, the origin of Malayalam, an independent offshoot of the proto-Dravidian language, has been and continues to be an engaging pursuit among comparative historical linguists. Together with Tamil, Toda, Kannada and Tulu, Malayalam belongs to the group of Dravidian languages
30.
Tamil language
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Tamil is a Dravidian language predominantly spoken by the Tamil people of India and Sri Lanka, and also by the Tamil diaspora, Sri Lankan Moors, Burghers, Douglas, and Chindians. Tamil is a language of two countries, Singapore and Sri Lanka. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and it is also used as one of the languages of education in Malaysia, along with English, Malay and Mandarin. Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in the four other South Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and it is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. Tamil is one of the classical languages in the world. Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions from 500 BC have been found on Adichanallur and 2 and it has been described as the only language of contemporary India which is recognizably continuous with a classical past. The variety and quality of classical Tamil literature has led to it being described as one of the classical traditions. A recorded Tamil literature has been documented for over 2000 years, the earliest period of Tamil literature, Sangam literature, is dated from ca.300 BC – AD300. It has the oldest extant literature among other Dravidian languages, the earliest epigraphic records found on rock edicts and hero stones date from around the 3rd century BC. More than 55% of the inscriptions found by the Archaeological Survey of India are in the Tamil language. Tamil language inscriptions written in Brahmi script have been discovered in Sri Lanka, the two earliest manuscripts from India, acknowledged and registered by the UNESCO Memory of the World register in 1997 and 2005, were written in Tamil. In 1578, Portuguese Christian missionaries published a Tamil prayer book in old Tamil script named Thambiraan Vanakkam, the Tamil Lexicon, published by the University of Madras, was one of the earliest dictionaries published in the Indian languages. According to a 2001 survey, there were 1,863 newspapers published in Tamil, Tamil belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian languages, a family of around 26 languages native to the Indian subcontinent. It is also classified as being part of a Tamil language family, the closest major relative of Tamil is Malayalam, the two began diverging around the 9th century CE. According to linguists like Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, Tamil, as a Dravidian language, descends from Proto-Dravidian, linguistic reconstruction suggests that Proto-Dravidian was spoken around the third millennium BC, possibly in the region around the lower Godavari river basin in peninsular India. The material evidence suggests that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian were of the associated with the Neolithic complexes of South India. The next phase in the reconstructed proto-history of Tamil is Proto-South Dravidian, the linguistic evidence suggests that Proto-South Dravidian was spoken around the middle of the second millennium BC, and that proto-Tamil emerged around the 3rd century BC. The earliest epigraphic attestations of Tamil are generally taken to have been shortly thereafter
31.
Bengali language
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Bengali, also known by its endonym Bangla, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in South Asia. With over 210 million speakers, Bengali is the seventh most spoken language in the world. Dominant in the last group was Persian, which was also the source of some grammatical forms, more recent studies suggest that the use of native and foreign words has been increasing, mainly because of the preference of Bengali speakers for the colloquial style. Today, Bengali is the language spoken in Bangladesh and the second most spoken language in India. Both the national anthems of Bangladesh and India were composed in Bengali, in 1952, the Bengali Language Movement successfully pushed for the languages official status in the Dominion of Pakistan. In 1999, UNESCO recognized 21 February as International Mother Language Day in recognition of the movement in East Pakistan. Language is an important element of Bengali identity and binds together a diverse region. Sanskrit was spoken in Bengal since the first millennium BCE, during the Gupta Empire, Bengal was a hub of Sanskrit literature. The Middle Indo-Aryan dialects were spoken in Bengal in the first millennium when the region was a part of the Magadha Realm and these dialects were called Magadhi Prakrit. They eventually evolved into Ardha Magadhi, Ardha Magadhi began to give way to what are called Apabhraṃśa languages at the end of the first millennium. Along with other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali evolved circa 1000–1200 AD from Sanskrit, for example, Ardhamagadhi is believed to have evolved into Abahatta around the 6th century, which competed with the ancestor of Bengali for some time. Proto-Bengali was the language of the Pala Empire and the Sena dynasty, during the medieval period, Middle Bengali was characterized by the elision of word-final অ ô, the spread of compound verbs and Arabic and Persian influences. Bengali was a court language of the Sultanate of Bengal. Muslim rulers promoted the development of Bengali as part of efforts to Islamize. Bengali became the most spoken language in the Sultanate. This period saw borrowing of Perso-Arabic terms into Bengali vocabulary, major texts of Middle Bengali include Chandidas Shreekrishna Kirtana. The modern literary form of Bengali was developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries based on the dialect spoken in the Nadia region, a west-central Bengali dialect. Bengali presents a case of diglossia, with the literary
32.
Punjabi language
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Punjabi /pʌnˈdʒɑːbi/ is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by over 100 million native speakers worldwide, making it the 10th most widely spoken language in the world. It is the language of the Punjabi people who inhabit the historical Punjab region of India. Among the Indo-European languages it is unusual in being a tonal language, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language in Pakistan, the 11th most widely spoken in India and the third-most spoken native language in the Indian Subcontinent. Punjabi is the fourth-most spoken language in the United Kingdom and third-most spoken native language in Canada, the language also has a significant presence in the United Arab Emirates, United States, Saudi Arabia, and Australia. The Punjabi language is written in the Shahmukhi and Gurmukhi scripts, the word Punjabi is derived from the word Panj-āb, Persian for Five Waters, referring to the five major eastern tributaries of the Indus River. Panj is cognate with Sanskrit pañca and Greek πέντε five, the historical Punjab region, now divided between India and Pakistan, is defined physiographically by the Indus River and these five tributaries. One of the five, the Beas River, is a tributary of another, Punjabi developed from Sanskrit through Prakrit language and later Apabhraṃśa From 600 BC Sanskrit gave birth to many regional languages in different parts of India. These all languages are called Prakrit language collectively, Shauraseni Prakrit was one of these Prakrit languages, which was spoken in north and north-western India and Punjabi and western dialects of Hindi developed from this Prakrit. Later in northern India Shauraseni Prakrit gave rise to Shauraseni Aparbhsha, Punjabi emerged as an Apabhramsha, a degenerated form of Prakrit, in the 7th century A. D. and became stable by the 10th century. By the 10th century, many Nath poets were associated with earlier Punjabi works, Arabic and Persian influence in the historical Punjab region began with the late first millennium Muslim conquests on the Indian subcontinent. The Persian language was introduced in the subcontinent a few centuries later by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic, many Persian and Arabic words were incorporated in Punjabi. Punjabi has more Persian and Arabic vocabulary than Bengali, Marathi, later, it was influenced by Portuguese and English, though these influences have been minor in comparison to Persian and Arabic. However, in India English words in the language are more widespread than Hindi. Punjabi is the most widely spoken language in Pakistan, the seventh-most widely spoken in India, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language in Pakistan. Punjabi is the language in the Punjab Province of Pakistan. Punjabi is spoken as a language by over 44. 15% of Pakistanis. About 70. 0% of the people of Pakistan speak Punjabi as either their first or second language, Lahore, the capital of the Punjab Province of Pakistan, is the largest Punjabi-speaking city in the world. 86% of the population of Lahore is native Punjabi and Islamabad
33.
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
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In Japan, the system is called the Super Famicom, or SFC for short. In South Korea, it is known as the Super Comboy and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics, although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent the different versions from being compatible with one another. It was released in Brazil on September 2,1992, by Playtronic, the SNES is Nintendos second home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System. The console introduced advanced graphics and sound compared with other systems at the time. The development of a variety of enhancement chips integrated in game cartridges helped to keep it competitive in the marketplace. The SNES remained popular well into the 32-bit era, and continues to be popular among fans, collectors, retro gamers, and emulation enthusiasts, some of whom still make homebrew ROM images. To compete with the popular Family Computer in Japan, NEC Home Electronics launched the PC Engine in 1987, the two platforms were later launched in North America in 1989 as the TurboGrafx-16 and the Genesis respectively. Both systems were built on 16-bit architectures and offered improved graphics, however, it took several years for Segas system to become successful. Nintendo executives were in no rush to design a new system, designed by Masayuki Uemura, the designer of the original Famicom, the Super Famicom was released in Japan on Wednesday, November 21,1990 for 25,000 yen. The systems release also gained the attention of the Yakuza, leading to a decision to ship the devices at night to avoid robbery, with the Super Famicom quickly outselling its chief rivals, Nintendo reasserted itself as the leader of the Japanese console market. Nintendos success was due to its retention of most of its key third-party developers from its earlier system, including Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square, Koei. Nintendo released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a version of the Super Famicom. It began shipping in limited quantities on August 23,1991, the SNES was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in April 1992 for £150, with a German release following a few weeks later. Most of the PAL region versions of the use the Japanese Super Famicom design, except for labeling. The Playtronic Super NES in Brazil, although PAL, uses the North American design, both the NES and SNES were released in Brazil in 1993 by Playtronic, a joint venture between the toy company Estrela and consumer electronics company Gradiente. The SNES and Super Famicom launched with few games, but these games were received in the marketplace. In Japan, only two games were available, Super Mario World and F-Zero. In North America, Super Mario World launched as a bundle with the console, and other titles include F-Zero, Pilotwings, SimCity
34.
Sega Genesis
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The Sega Genesis, known as the Mega Drive in most regions outside of North America, is a 16-bit home video game console which was developed and sold by Sega Enterprises, Ltd. The Genesis was Segas third console and the successor to the Master System, Sega first released the console as the Mega Drive in Japan in 1988, followed by a North American debut under the Genesis moniker in 1989. In 1990, the console was distributed as the Mega Drive by Virgin Mastertronic in Europe, by Ozisoft in Australasia, in South Korea, the systems were distributed by Samsung and were known as the Super Gam*Boy, and later the Super Aladdin Boy. The system supports a library of more than 900 games created both by Sega and an array of third-party publishers and delivered on ROM-based cartridges. It can play Master System games when the separately sold Power Base Converter is inserted, the Genesis has benefited from several peripherals and network services, as well as multiple first-party and third-party variations of the console that focus on extending its functionality. Controversy surrounding violent titles such as Night Trap and Mortal Kombat led Sega to create the Videogame Rating Council, Sega sold 30.75 million units worldwide. The console and its games continue to be popular among fans, game music fans, collectors. As of 2015, licensed third party re-releases of the console are being sold by AtGames in North America and Europe. Many games have been re-released in compilations for newer consoles and offered for download on online services, such as the Virtual Console, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network. The Genesis was succeeded by the Sega Saturn, in the early 1980s, Sega Enterprises, Inc. then a subsidiary of Gulf & Western, was one of the top five arcade game manufacturers active in the United States, as company revenues rose to $214 million. The company retained Segas North American R&D operation, as well as its Japanese subsidiary, Sega Enterprises, with its arcade business in decline, Gulf & Western executives turned to Sega Enterprises, Ltd. s president, Hayao Nakayama, for advice on how to proceed. Nakayama received permission to proceed with project, leading to the release of Segas first home video game system. The SG-1000 was not successful, and was replaced by the Sega Mark III within two years, Nakayama was then installed as CEO of the new Sega Enterprises, Ltd. In 1986, Sega redesigned the Mark III for release in North America as the Sega Master System and this was followed by a European release the next year. In 1987, Sega faced another threat to its business when Japanese computer giant NEC released the PC Engine amid great publicity. First announced in June 1988 in Beep, a Japanese gaming magazine, the developing console was referred to as the Mark V, but Sega management felt the need for a stronger name. After reviewing more than 300 proposals, the settled on Mega Drive. In North America, the name of the console was changed to Genesis, the reason for this change is not known, but it may have been due to a trademark dispute
35.
Game Boy
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It is the first handheld console in the Game Boy line and was created by Satoru Okada and Nintendo Research & Development 1. This same team, led by Gunpei Yokoi at the time, is credited with designing the Game & Watch series as well as popular games for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Redesigned versions were released in 1996 and 1998 in the form of Game Boy Pocket and Game Boy Light, the Game Boy is Nintendos second handheld system following the Game & Watch series introduced in 1980 and it combined features from both the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game & Watch. It was either bought as a unit or bundled with the puzzle game Tetris. During its early lifetime, the Game Boy mainly competed with Segas Game Gear, Ataris Lynx, the Game Boy beat its rivals and became a tremendous success. The Game Boy and its successor, the Game Boy Color, have sold over 118 million units worldwide, upon the Game Boys release in the United States, it sold its entire shipment of one million units within a few weeks. The Game Boy and Game Boy Color were discontinued in the early 2000s in favor of the subsequent Game Boy Advance, the Game Boy has four operation buttons labeled A, B, SELECT, and START, as well as a directional pad. There is a control dial on the right side of the device. At the top of the Game Boy, a sliding on-off switch, the on-off switch includes a physical lockout to prevent users from either inserting or removing a cartridge while the unit is switched on. Nintendo recommends users leave a cartridge in the slot to prevent dust, the Game Boy also contains optional input and/or output connectors. On the left side of the system is an external 3. 5mm x 1. 35mm DC power supply jack that allows users to use a rechargeable battery pack or AC adapter instead of four AA batteries. The Game Boy requires 6 V DC of at least 150 mA, a 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack is located on the bottom side of the unit which allows users to listen to the audio with the bundled headphones or external speakers. The right-side of the device offers a port which allows a user to connect to another Game Boy system via a link cable, the port can also be used to connect a Game Boy Printer. The link cable was designed for players to play head-to-head two-player games such as in Tetris. However, game developer Satoshi Tajiri would later use the cable technology as a method of communication. CPU Custom 8-bit Sharp LR35902 at 4.19 MHz and this processor is similar to an Intel 8080 in that none of the registers introduced in the Z80 are present. However, some of the Z80s instruction set enhancements over the 8080, still other instructions are unique to this particular flavor of 8080/Z80 CPU. The IC also contains integrated sound generation, the unit only has one speaker, but headphones provide stereo sound Display, Reflective STN LCD160 ×144 pixels Frame Rate, Approx
36.
Prototype
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A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from. It is a used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics. A prototype is used to evaluate a new design to enhance precision by system analysts. Prototyping serves to provide specifications for a real, working system rather than a theoretical one, in some design workflow models, creating a prototype is the step between the formalization and the evaluation of an idea. The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον prototypon, primitive form, neutral of πρωτότυπος prototypos, original, primitive, from πρῶτος protos, first and τύπος typos, a Working Prototype represents all or nearly all of the functionality of the final product. A Visual Prototype represents the size and appearance, but not the functionality, a User Experience Prototype represents enough of the appearance and function of the product that it can be used for user research. A Functional Prototype captures both function and appearance of the design, though it may be created with different techniques. A Paper Prototype is a printed or hand-drawn representation of the interface of a software product. In some cases, the final production materials may still be undergoing development themselves, process - Mass-production processes are often unsuitable for making a small number of parts, so prototypes may be made using different fabrication processes than the final product. Differences in fabrication process may lead to differences in the appearance of the prototype as compared to the final product, verification - The final product may be subject to a number of quality assurance tests to verify conformance with drawings or specifications. These tests may involve custom inspection fixtures, statistical sampling methods, prototypes are generally made with much closer individual inspection and the assumption that some adjustment or rework will be part of the fabrication process. Prototypes may also be exempted from some requirements that apply to the final product. Engineers and prototype specialists will attempt to minimize the impact of these differences on the role for the prototype. Engineers and prototyping specialists seek to understand the limitations of prototypes to exactly simulate the characteristics of their intended design and it is important to realize that by their very definition, prototypes will represent some compromise from the final production design. Due to differences in materials, processes and design fidelity, it is possible that a prototype may fail to perform acceptably whereas the design may have been sound. In general, it can be expected that individual prototype costs will be greater than the final production costs due to inefficiencies in materials. Prototypes are also used to revise the design for the purposes of reducing costs through optimization and it is possible to use prototype testing to reduce the risk that a design may not perform as intended, however prototypes generally cannot eliminate all risk. As an alternative, rapid prototyping or rapid application development techniques are used for the prototypes, which implement part
37.
ROM image
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ROMs can be copied from the read-only memory chips found in cartridge-based games and many arcade machines using a dedicated device in a process known as dumping. For most common video game systems, these devices are widely available. Dumping ROMs from arcade machines, which in fact are highly customized PCBs, while ROM images are often used as a means of preserving the history of computer games, they are also often used to facilitate the unauthorized copying and redistribution of modern games. For instance, the Nintendo GameCube used non-standard 8 cm DVD-like optical media which for a time prevented games from being copied to PCs. It was not until a security hole was found in Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II that GameCube games could be copied to a PC. Many thought that this would mark the end of Neo Geo emulation, however, as early as 2000, hackers found a way to decrypt and dump the ROMs successfully, making them playable once again in any Neo Geo emulator. Another company which used to protect their games was Capcom which is known for its CPS-2 arcade board. This contained a copy protection algorithm which was not broken until 7 years after the systems release in 1993. The original crack by the CPS2Shock Team was not a true emulation of the protection because it used XOR tables to bypass the original encryption and their stated intent was to wait until CPS-2 games were no longer profitable to release the decryption method. The full decryption algorithm was cracked in 2007 by Nicola Salmoria, Andreas Naive, another copy protection technique used in cartridge-games was to have the game attempt to write to ROM. On an authentic cartridge this would do nothing, however, emulators would often allow the write to succeed, pirate cartridges also often used writable chips instead of ROM. By reading the back to see whether the write succeeded. Alternatively, the game may simply attempt to overwrite critical program instructions, some games, such as Game Boy games, also had other hardware such as memory bank controllers connected to the cartridge bus. The game would send data to hardware by attempting to write it to specific areas of ROM, thus, if the ROM were writable. Capcoms latest arcade board is the CPS-3 and this was resistant to emulation attempts until June 2007, when the encryption method was reverse-engineered by Andreas Naive. It is currently implemented by MAME and a variant of the CPS-2 emulator Nebula, video game console emulators typically take ROM images as input files. ROM images are used when developing for embedded computers, software which is being developed for embedded computers is often written to ROM files for testing on a standard computer before it is written to a ROM chip for use in the embedded system. The lifespan of digital media is rarely great, while black-and-white photographs may survive for a century or more, many digital media can become unreadable after only 10 years
38.
Guardian angel
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A guardian angel is an angel that is assigned to protect and guide a particular person, group, kingdom, or country. Belief in guardian angels can be traced throughout all antiquity, the concept of tutelary angels and their hierarchy was extensively developed in Christianity in the 5th century by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The theology of angels and tutelary spirits has undergone many refinements since the 5th century, belief in both the East and the West is that guardian angels serve to protect whichever person God assigns them to, and present prayer to God on that persons behalf. The belief in guardian angels can be traced throughout all antiquity, pagans such as Menander and Plutarch, the guardian angel concept is present in the books of the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, and its development is well marked. These books described Gods angels as his ministers who carried out his behests, in this latter case, the prince of the kingdom of Persia contends with Gabriel. The same verse mentions Michael, one of the chief princes, in Rabbinic literature, the Rabbis expressed the notion that there are indeed guardian angels appointed by Adonai to watch over people. Lailah is an angel of the night in charge of conception, lailah serves as a guardian angel throughout a persons life and at death, leads the soul into the afterlife. According to Leo Trepp, in late Judaism, the belief developed that the people have a heavenly representative, every human being has a guardian angel. Previously the term Malakh, angel, simply meant messenger of God, modern rabbis clarify that people might indeed have guardian angels. In the New Testament the concept of guardian angel may be noted, other examples in the New Testament are the angel who succoured Christ in the garden, and the angel who delivered St. Peter from prison. In Acts 12, 12-15, after Peter had been escorted out of prison by an angel, he went to the home of Mary the mother of John, the servant girl, Rhoda, recognized his voice and ran back to tell the group that Peter was there. However, the replied, It must be his angel. Hebrews 1,14 says, Are they not all ministering spirits, sent to minister for them, in this view, the function of the guardian angel is to lead people to the Kingdom of Heaven. In the New Testament Epistle of Jude, Michael is described as an archangel, according to Saint Jerome, the concept of guardian angels is in the mind of the Church. He stated, how great the dignity of the soul, since one has from his birth an angel commissioned to guard it. The first Christian theologian to outline a specific scheme for guardian angels was Honorius of Autun in the 12th century and he said that every soul was assigned a guardian angel the moment it was put into a body. Scholastic theologians augmented and ordered the taxonomy of angelic guardians, in the 15th century, the Feast of the Guardian Angels was added to the official calendar of Catholic holidays. In his 2014 homily for the Feast of Holy Guardian Angels, October 2, Pope Francis told those gathered for daily Mass to be children who pay attention to their “traveling companion. ”“No one journeys alone and no one should think that they are alone
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