Hollywood Squares is an American game show in which two contestants compete in a game of tic-tac-toe to win cash and prizes. The show piloted on NBC in 1965, the regular series debuted in 1966 on the same network; the board for the game is a 3 × 3 vertical stack of open-faced cubes, each occupied by a celebrity seated at a desk and facing the contestants. The stars are asked questions by the host, the contestants judge the truth of their answers to gain squares in the right pattern to win the game. Although Hollywood Squares was a legitimate game show, the game acted as the background for the show's comedy in the form of joke answers given by the stars prior to their real answer; the show's writers supplied the jokes. In addition, the stars were given bluff answers prior to the show; the show was scripted in this sense. In any case, as original host Peter Marshall explained at the beginning of the Secret Square game, the celebrities were briefed prior to the show to help them with bluff answers, but they otherwise heard the actual questions for the first time as they were asked on air.

In 2013, TV Guide ranked it at No. 7 in its list of the 60 greatest game shows ever. Internationally, there have been multiple versions produced under a variety of names. Although there have been variations over the years in the rules of and the prizes in the game, certain aspects of the game have remained consistent. Two contestants competed in every match, one playing X and the other O. With rare exceptions, the matches were male vs. female with the male playing the X position and referred to informally as Mr. X, with the female playing the O position and referred to informally as Ms. Circle. One of the contestants was a returning champion. Taking turns, each contestant selected a square; the star was asked a question and gave an answer, preceded by a zinger. The contestants had the choice of agreeing with the star's answer or disagreeing if they thought the star was bluffing. On rare occasions, a star did not know the correct answer to a question and was unable to come up with a plausible bluff.

In such instances, the contestant was offered the chance to answer the question and earned or lost the square based on how they answered. The contestants declined, in which case they incurred no penalty, the same star was asked another question for that contestant to agree or disagree; the objective was to complete a line across, vertically, or diagonally or to score as many squares as possible, as contestants could win by capturing five squares. Agreeing or disagreeing with a star's answer captured the square. If the contestant failed to agree or disagree the square went to his/her opponent. An exception was made if the square resulted in the opponent winning by default, not allowed. Bert Parks hosted the 1965 pilot of Hollywood Squares. NBC acquired the rights to the show, which debuted on October 17, 1966 with Peter Marshall as host, a job he held for 15 years. Marshall agreed to host. Hollywood Squares was the final addition to a short-lived game show powerhouse block on NBC, which for the next two years included Concentration, Jeopardy!, You Don't Say!, Let's Make a Deal, Match Game and others.

During most of its daytime run, NBC broadcast The Hollywood Squares at 11:30 a.m. Eastern/10:30 a.m. Central; the daytime show aired its 3,536th and last episode on June 20, 1980. The show ran at night, first on NBC from January 12 to September 13, 1968 as a mid-season replacement for the short-lived sitcom Accidental Family. A nighttime syndicated program ran from November 1, 1971 until May 22, 1981. Airing once weekly, the syndicated Squares added a second airing in 1972 and began airing daily or nightly in September 1980, the show's final season; the daytime series was played as a best two-out-of-three match between a returning champion and an opponent, with each individual game worth $200/$400 per match. A five-match champion retired with an additional $2,500, the Secret Square prize package and a new car. By 1976, the prize for a five-day champion included additional cash, two new cars and a luxury vacation, with a total value of somewhere between $20,000 and $25,000. In September 1976, an endgame was added after each match with the champion selecting a star, each of whom held an envelope with a prize.

The nighttime versions featured the same two contestants playing for the entire half-hour with each completed game worth $300 or $250. On the syndicated version, if time ran out with a game still in progress, each X or O on the board at that point was worth an additional $50 to the contestants, with each contestant guaranteed at least $100 in total winnings; the contestant with the most money at the end of the show won a bonus prize, which for the first seven years of the syndicated series was a car. From 1978–80, the endgame described above was utilized with each prize worth at least $5,000 including a new car. If the match ended in a tie, one final question w

Michael Joseph Griffin was an American Major League Baseball center fielder who hailed from Utica, New York. He played in 1511 games spread over 12 seasons for teams in the American Association, Players' League, National League, he had 1,755 hits, resulting in a.296 batting average, was a prolific base stealer who swiped 473 bases during his career. In his last year in the majors, he was the player-manager for the Brooklyn Bridegrooms for a short period of time. Scouted and signed by Billy Barnie of the Baltimore Orioles, while playing for the local Utica professional team, he was one of the premiere ball players at the time, leading his league in runs scored in 1889 and doubles in 1891. On April 16, 1887, he became the first major league player to hit a home run in his first plate appearance. Griffin was team captain of Bridegrooms in 1897 and 1898 and served as interim manager for a part of 1898, a total of four games, winning one. After the 1898 season, Brooklyn signed him to a $3,500 contract to manage the following season.

But before the season started and Baltimore merged and Baltimore manager Ned Hanlon was named Brooklyn's manager instead. Griffin was offered a $2,800 contract to play by Brooklyn. Brooklyn released him to the Cleveland Spiders, who released him to the St. Louis Perfectos. After failing to receive a contract he felt he was worth from any team, he sued Brooklyn for the salary he believed they owed him from the contract he had signed and won a judgment of $2,300 from the club, he unofficially retired from major league baseball. Griffin returned to Utica, it was here that he died from pneumonia, at age 43, was laid to rest at St. Agnes Cemetery. List of Major League Baseball career triples leaders List of Major League Baseball career runs scored leaders List of Major League Baseball career stolen bases leaders List of Major League Baseball annual runs scored leaders List of Major League Baseball annual doubles leaders List of Major League Baseball player-managers Career statistics and player information from Baseball-Reference, or Baseball-Reference SABR Biography

Changkuoth Jiath is an Australian rules footballer who plays for the Hawthorn Football Club in the Australian Football League. Born in a refugee camp in Ethiopia to South Sudanese parents, Jiath moved to Australia when he was six years old, he completed high school while boarding at Xavier College in Melbourne Known as CJ, Jaith was selected as a 2017 category B rookie. He had a delayed start to the 2018 season. Made his debut for Box Hill mid year he showed good signs. Played well in the VFL grand Final that year he continued his good form in 2019 accumulating in playing two senior games for Hawthorn late in the year. Statistics are correct to the end of 2019. VFL premiership player: 2018 Changkuoth Jiath's profile on the official website of the Hawthorn Football Club Changkuoth Jiath's playing statistics from AFL Tables

Joseph Curran was a merchant seaman and an American labor leader. He was founding president of the National Maritime Union from 1937 to 1973, a vice president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Curran was born on Manhattan's Lower East Side, his father died when he was two years old, his mother boarded with another family. He attended parochial school, but when he was 14 he was expelled during the seventh grade for truancy, he worked as a caddie and factory worker before finding employment in 1922 in the United States Merchant Marine. He worked as an able seaman and boatswain, washing dishes in restaurants when not at sea and sleeping on a Battery Park bench at night, it was during this time that he received his lifelong nickname "Big Joe."Curran joined the International Seamen's Union, but was not active in the union at first. In 1936, Curran led a strike aboard the ocean liner S. S. California docked in San Pedro, California. Curran and the crew of the Panama Pacific Line's California went on strike at sailing time and refused to cast off the lines unless wages were increased and overtime paid.

The strike was a sitdown strike. Curran and the crew refused to leave the ship, for the owners would have replaced them with strikebreakers; the crew continued to do all their duties except cast off the lines. The California remained tied up for three days. United States Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins intervened in the California strike. Speaking to the crew by telephone, Perkins agreed to arrange a grievance hearing once the ship docked at its destination in New York City, that there would be no reprisals by the company or government against Curran or the strikers. During the California's return trip, the Panama Pacific Line raised wages by $5 a month to $60 per month, but Perkins was unable to follow through on her other promises. United States Secretary of Commerce Daniel Roper and the Panama Pacific Line declared Curran and the strikers mutineers; the line took out national advertising attacking Curran. When the ship docked, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents met the ship and began an investigation into the "mutiny".

Curran and other top strike leaders were fined two days' pay and blacklisted. Perkins was able to keep the strikers from being prosecuted for mutiny, however. Seaman all along the East Coast struck to protest the treatment of the California's crew. Curran became a leader of the 10-week strike forming a supportive association known as the Seamen's Defense Committee; the S. S. California strike was only part of a worldwide wave of unrest among American seamen. A series of port and shipboard strikes broke out in 1936 and 1937 in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. In October 1936, Curran called the 1936 Gulf Coast maritime workers' strike, in part to improve working conditions and in part to embarrass the International Seamen's Union; the four-month strike idled 300 ships. Curran, believing it was time to abandon the conservative ISU, began to sign up members for a new, rival union; the level of organizing was so intense that hundreds of ships delayed their sailing time as seamen listened to organizers and signed union cards.

In May 1937, Curran and other leaders of his nascent movement formed the National Maritime Union. The Seamen's Defense Committee reconstituted itself as a union, it held its first convention in July, 30,000 seamen switched their membership from the ISU to the NMU. Curran was elected president of the new organization. Elected secretary-treasurer of the union was Jamaican-born Ferdinand Smith. Thus, from its inception NMU was racially integrated. Within six years, nearly all racial discrimination was eliminated in hiring, living accommodations and work assignments. A hallmark of the new union was the formation of hiring halls in each port; the hiring halls ensured a steady supply of experienced seamen for passenger and cargo ships, reduced the corruption which plagued the hiring of able seamen. The hiring halls worked to combat racial discrimination and promote racial harmony among maritime workers. Within a year, the NMU had more than 50,000 members, most American shippers were under contract. Stripped of most of its membership, the ISU became moribund.

In July 1937, Curran and other seamen's union leaders were invited by John L. Lewis to come to Washington, D. C. to form a major organizing drive among port workers. The unions comprised by CIO had been ejected by the American Federation of Labor in November 1936, now Lewis wanted to launch a maritime union, his goal was to create, out of the 300,000 maritime industry's workers, a union as large and influential as the Steel Workers Organizing Committee. Although Lewis favored Harry Bridges, president of the Pacific Coast District of the International Longshoremen's Association, to lead the new maritime industrial union, the other union leaders balked. Curran agreed to affiliate with the CIO, but refused to let Bridges or anyone else take over his union, his views were reflected among those of the other union leaders, the CIO's maritime industrial union never got off the ground. During the next 36 years, Joseph Curran worked to make American merchant seamen the best-paid maritime workers in the world.

NMU established a 40-hour work week, paid vacations and health benefits, tuition reimbursement, standards for shipboard food and living quarters. Curran built a union-run school to retrain union members, won large employer donations through collective bargaining to build the school. Curran was a vociferous ad

A number of armed groups have involved themselves in the ongoing Syrian Civil War. A number of sources have emphasized that as of at least late 2015/early 2016 the Syrian government was dependent on a mix of volunteers and militias, rather than the Syrian Armed Forces. Before the uprising and war broke out, the Syrian Armed Forces were estimated at 325,000 regular troops and 280,000–300,000 reservists. Of the regular troops, 220,000 were'army troops' and the rest in the navy, air force and air defense force. Following defections as early as June 2011, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated that by July 2012, tens of thousands of soldiers had defected, a Turkish official estimated 60,000; the Syrian NDF was formed out of pro-government militias. They receive their salaries and military equipment from the government, in 2013 numbered around 100,000 troops; the force acts in an infantry role, directly fighting against rebels on the ground and running counter-insurgency operations in coordination with the army, who provides them with logistical and artillery support.

The force has a 500-strong women's wing called "Lionesses of National Defense" which operates checkpoints. NDF members, like regular army soldiers, are allowed to loot the battlefields, can sell the loot for extra money. Sensing that they depend on the secular government, many of the militias of Syrian Christians fight on the Syrian government's side and seek to defend their ancient towns and farmsteads from ISIL; the Shabiha are unofficial pro-government militias drawn from Syria's Alawite minority group. Since the uprising, the Syrian government has been accused of using shabiha to break up protests and enforce laws in restive neighborhoods; as the protests escalated into an armed conflict, the opposition started using the term shabiha to describe civilians they suspected of supporting Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian government and clashing with pro-opposition demonstrators. The opposition blames the shabiha for the many violent excesses committed against anti-government protesters and opposition sympathizers, as well as looting and destruction.

In December 2012, the shabiha were designated a terrorist organization by the United States. Bassel al-Assad is reported to have created the shabiha in the 1980s for government use in times of crisis. Shabiha have been described as "a notorious Alawite paramilitary, who are accused of acting as unofficial enforcers for Assad's government". Despite the group's image as an Alawite militia, some shabiha operating in Aleppo have been reported to be Sunnis. In 2012, the Assad government created a more organized official militia known as the Jaysh al-Sha'bi with help from Iran and Hezbollah; as with the shabiha, the vast majority of Jaysh al-Sha'bi members are Alawite and Shi'ite volunteers. In February 2013, former secretary general of Hezbollah, Sheikh Subhi al-Tufayli, confirmed that Hezbollah was fighting for the Syrian Army, which in October 2012, General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah had still denied was happening on a large scale, except to admit that Hezbollah fighters helped the Syrian government "retain control of some 23 strategically located villages inhabited by Shiites of Lebanese citizenship".

Nasrallah said that Hezbollah fighters have died in Syria doing their "jihadist duties". In 2012 and 2013, Hezbollah was active in gaining control of territory in the Al-Qusayr District of Syria, by May 2013 publicly collaborating with the Syrian Army and taking 60 percent of Qusayr by the end of 14 May. In Lebanon, there have been "a recent increase in the funerals of Hezbollah fighters" and "Syrian rebels have shelled Hezbollah-controlled areas." As of 14 May 2013, Hezbollah fighters were reported to be fighting alongside the Syrian Army in the Homs Governorate. Hassan Nasrallah has called on Hezbollah to protect the shrine of Sayida Zeinab. President Bashar al-Assad denied in May 2013 that there were foreign fighters, Arab or otherwise, fighting for the government in Syria. On 25 May 2013, Nasrallah announced that Hezbollah was fighting in Syria against Islamic extremists and "pledged that his group will not allow Syrian militants to control areas that border Lebanon". In the televised address, he said, "If Syria falls in the hands of America and the takfiris, the people of our region will go into a dark period."

According to independent analysts, by the beginning of 2014 500 Hezbollah fighters had died in the Syrian conflict. On 7 February 2016, 50 Hezbollah fighters were killed in a clash by the Jaysh al-Islam near Damascus; these fighters were embedded in the Syrian Army formation called Army Division 39. Iran continues to deny the presence of its combat troops in Syria, maintaining that it provides military advice to Assad's forces in their fight against terrorist groups. Since the civil uprising phase of the Syrian civil war, Iran has provided the Syrian government with financial and military support, including training and some combat troops. Iran and Syria are close strategic allies. Iran sees the survival of the Syrian government as being crucial to its regional interests. Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was reported to be vocally in favor of the Syrian government. By December 2013 Iran was thought to have 10,000 operatives in Syria, but according to Jubin Goodarzi, assistant professor and researcher at Webster University, Iran aided the Syrian government with a limited number of deployed units and personnel, "at most in the hundred

Jeffrey J. Carter is a Canadian professional ice hockey centre playing for and an alternate captain of the Los Angeles Kings of the National Hockey League. During his NHL career, he has won the Stanley Cup in 2012 and 2014, has appeared in two All-Star Games in 2009 and 2017, led the Philadelphia Flyers – for whom he played six seasons – in scoring during their 2008–09 campaign. Carter played junior hockey in the Ontario Hockey League, he was a First Team All-Star, William Hanley Trophy and CHL Sportsman of the Year honours in his final year. Joining the Flyers' American Hockey League affiliate, the Philadelphia Phantoms after his junior career, he helped the team win the Calder Cup in 2005. Internationally, Carter has won gold medals with Team Canada at the under-18, under-20 levels and at the Olympics. During his under-20 career, he tied as Canada's all-time leading scorer at the World Juniors and was named to back-to-back Tournament All-Star Teams, he has represented Canada at the 2006 IIHF World Championship.

Carter represented Canada at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Carter played minor hockey in London, with the London Jr. Knights rep program, he played bantam hockey with the AAA Elgin-Middlesex Chiefs of the Ontario Minor Hockey Association before spending a season with the Strathroy Rockets, a Junior B team. Carter was selected in the first round, 3rd overall, of the 2001 Ontario Hockey League Priority Selection by the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, he began his OHL career in recording 35 points over 63 games as a rookie. The following season, he improved to 71 points. In the off-season, the Philadelphia Flyers selected him 11th overall in the 2003 NHL Entry Draft. Returning to the Greyhounds following his draft, he earned Second Team OHL All-Star honours in 2003–04 with a 66-point campaign. Following his third OHL season, he was assigned by the Flyers to their American Hockey League affiliate, the Philadelphia Phantoms, for their 2005 Calder Cup playoff season, he recorded five points over 12 games in his initial stint at the professional level.

Back in the OHL for his final junior season in 2004–05, he recorded a major junior career-high 74 points in 55 games. He won the OHL and CHL Sportsman of the Year Awards. After the Greyhounds were eliminated from the 2005 OHL playoffs, Carter joined the Phantoms once more and recorded 23 points in 21 playoff games, helping the team win the Calder Cup; the next season, in 2005–06, Carter made the Flyers' roster out of training camp. He was joined by fellow rookies Mike Richards and R. J. Umberger, who were both instrumental in the Phantoms' Calder Cup championship of the previous season, he scored his first career NHL goal on October 27, 2005, against Roberto Luongo of the Florida Panthers. He finished the campaign first in team-scoring among rookies with 42 points. After 37- and 53-point efforts in his second and third NHL seasons Carter and the Flyers agreed to a three-year, $15-million contract extension on June 27, 2008, days before he was set to become a restricted free agent, he responded with a breakout campaign in 2008–09, leading the team in scoring with 46 goals and 84 points.

During the season, he was named to his first NHL All-Star Game, representing the Eastern Conference. Despite a strong regular season, Carter was held to just one goal in six Stanley Cup playoff games as the Flyers were eliminated by the Pittsburgh Penguins in six games, his series was marred when he failed to score with an open net in front of him in Game 2 of the series, where Penguins goalie Marc-André Fleury made a toe save to block the shot that would have given the Flyers a 3–1 lead late in the third period. Carter was called off for a hooking penalty and the Penguins scored to tie the game and win in overtime, it was revealed that Carter had played the final four games of the series with a separated shoulder. On November 13, 2010, Carter signed an 11-year, $58 million contract extension with the Flyers through to the 2021–22 season. While in the midst of a major re-tooling, the Flyers traded Carter to the Columbus Blue Jackets on June 23, 2011, in exchange for Jakub Voráček, a 2011 first-round pick and a 2011 third-round pick.

Despite being injured in the start of the season, Carter was named an alternate captain with the Blue Jackets, one of four rotating alternates along with James Wisniewski, former Flyers teammate R. J. Umberger and Antoine Vermette. On February 23, 2012, Carter was traded to the Los Angeles Kings in exchange for Jack Johnson and a conditional first-round pick, reuniting him with former Flyer and close friend Mike Richards. On June 11, 2012, Carter scored the eventual Stanley Cup-winning goal in Game 6 of the 2012 Stanley Cup Finals against the New Jersey Devils, he would finish the 2012 playoffs with five assists. During the lockout-shortened 2012–13 season, Carter scored 26 goals along with seven assists, playing in all 48 regular season games. In the first round of the 2014 playoffs, the Kings rallied back from a 3–0 series deficit against the San Jose Sharks to win four-straight and take the series in seven games; this made Carter one of the first and only two players in history to be a part of two teams who achieved such a feat.

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