title: Nashville SC

text: Nashville SC's primary colors are electric gold and acoustic blue, referencing the colors of Nashville’s flag. The club's crest is a gold octagon with a monogram "N" and several vertical bars in blue. The vertical bars were chosen to represent sound waves and vibrations, referencing the city's musical history.


title: Nashville SC

text: The team plays at Geodis Park, a 30,000-seat soccer-specific stadium at the Nashville Fairgrounds. The $275 million stadium was mostly funded by revenue bonds from the Nashville government, per an agreement with the Nashville Metro Council that was approved in November 2017. The council approved the stadium on September 4, 2018, with the votes 31-yes and 8-no, with a crowd in the audience in the room. A proposal to submit the plan to a referendum based on Metro government's "partial funding" was rejected by the council, with the votes 25-yes (to reject the referendum) and 12-no (to permit).


title: Nashville SC

text: In January 2019, John Rose, a U.S. representative from Cookeville led the nonprofit that operates the Tennessee State Fair to sue the team to halt construction, citing that the stadium would not leave adequate space required for the functions of the fair. However, in February of the same year, Rose and the nonprofit dismissed the lawsuit citing that city officials would not meet with the nonprofit while this suit was pending. Demolition on the Fairgrounds site began in March 2020.


title: Nashville SC

text: The agreement of the stadium and its funding details was amended on February 13, 2020, with the help of Nashville Mayor John Cooper to make the stadium 100 percent privately funded with the team will also funding $19 million of infrastructure improvements in the immediate area.


title: Nashville SC

text: Nashville, for their first two seasons, had played in Nissan Stadium; owned by the NFL's Tennessee Titans. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were limited seating capacity in their tenure while using the stadium.


title: Nashville SC

text: This is a list of MLS seasons completed by Nashville. For the full season-by-season history, see List of Nashville SC seasons.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: Yesterday and Today (also rendered as "Yesterday"... and Today in part of the original packaging) is a studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Released in the United States and Canada in June 1966, it was their ninth album issued on Capitol Records and twelfth American release overall. Typical of the Beatles' North American discography until 1967, the album contains songs that Capitol had withheld from its configurations of the band's recent EMI albums, along with songs that the group had released elsewhere on non-album singles. Among its 11 tracks are songs from the EMI albums "Help!" and "Rubber Soul", and three new 1966 recordings that would appear on "Revolver" in countries outside North America.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: "Yesterday and Today" is remembered primarily for the controversy surrounding its original cover image. Known as the "butcher cover", it was taken by photographer Robert Whitaker and shows the band dressed in white coats and covered with decapitated baby dolls and pieces of raw meat. Although the photo was intended to be part of a larger work critiquing the adulation afforded the Beatles, the band members insisted it was a statement against the Vietnam War. Others interpreted it as the Beatles protesting the record company's policy of "butchering" their albums for the North American market. In response to retailers' outrage at the gory subject matter, Capitol immediately withdrew the LP and replaced the cover image with a shot of the band posed around a "steamer" trunk.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: The album's title plays on that of the song "Yesterday". The original LP became a highly prized item among collectors. Since some of Capitol's pressing plants merely pasted the trunk image onto the existing LP covers, the album also encouraged a phenomenon of stripping back the top layer of artwork in the search for a banned butcher cover. Having been deleted from Capitol's catalogue in 1986, "Yesterday and Today" was reissued on CD in 2014.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: In keeping with the record company's policy for all the Beatles' North American LPs until 1967, Capitol Records selected songs for "Yesterday and Today" by culling from the albums the band released in Britain, and other territories overseen by EMI, and from tracks issued on non-album singles outside North America. The industry preference in the US for shorter LPs facilitated this policy, as did the fact that the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help!" albums were presented as "genuine" soundtrack albums in the US, since the non-film songs were replaced by orchestral selections from the respective film scores. In this way, even though the group had recorded six albums for EMI by early 1966, "Yesterday and Today" was the Beatles' tenth American Capitol album, and twelfth overall. The two non-Capitol albums were "A Hard Day's Night", then on United Artists Records, and "Introducing... The Beatles" on Vee Jay Records.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: That Capitol should be preparing a new Beatles album for a June release, the first of three for the year, was also consistent with the US approach to the band's LP releases, following the pattern of 1964 and 1965. Similarly, the February 1966 single "Nowhere Man" – a song Capitol omitted from its reconfigured "Rubber Soul" in December 1965 – was a typical practice whereby the company exploited the most commercial-sounding EMI LP tracks and signalled a forthcoming album.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: "Yesterday and Today" included songs from the Beatles' two most recent LPs that had not yet been included on American albums, plus three from the LP they began recording in April 1966, plus two songs which until then had only been released back-to-back on a single:


title: Yesterday and Today

text: The collection covers a diverse range of "phases" in the Beatles' musical development, according to author Michael Frontani, given the band's maturation between June 1965 and May 1966. It includes material drawing on the American folk and country styles, and songs that anticipate British psychedelia in their drug-inspired lyrics and musical experimentation.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: The hodge-podge nature in which Capitol repackaged their work for the North American market infuriated the Beatles, as it did Brian Epstein and George Martin, the band's manager and record producer, respectively. The June 1966 LP was unusual in its inclusion of tracks that had yet to be issued in the UK. These three "Revolver" recordings were all written by John Lennon, whose presence as a composer on Capitol's eleven-song version of "Revolver" was therefore greatly reduced. In a 1974 interview, Lennon complained that the Beatles "put a lot of work into the sequencing" of their albums and that they were told "there was some rule or something" against issuing the full fourteen-song LPs in the US, which led to Capitol releases such as "Yesterday and Today".


title: Yesterday and Today

text: On 25 March 1966, photographer Robert Whitaker hosted a photo session with the Beatles at his studio at 1 The Vale, off King's Road in Chelsea. Having spent three months away from the public eye, the band members had expanded their interests and were eager to depart from the formula imposed on them as pop stars, both in their music and in their presentation. Whitaker similarly had ambitions that the photo session should break new ground. He planned a conceptual art piece titled "A Somnambulant Adventure", which he later described as "a considered disruption of the conventions surrounding orthodox pop star promotional photography".<ref name="DeMain/MojoSpecial"></ref> Whitaker conceived the piece as a comment on the Beatles' fame, having accompanied them on their August 1965 US tour and been alarmed at the scenes of Beatlemania he witnessed then.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: Whitaker assembled props such as plastic doll parts, trays of meat, white butchers' coats, a hammer and nails, a birdcage, cardboard boxes, and sets of false teeth and eyes. During the shoot, he took several reels of film of the band members interacting with the objects, culminating in a series of photos of the group dressed in the white coats and draped with pieces of meat and body parts from the baby dolls. The band were used to Whitaker's fondness for the surreal and played along. Lennon recalled that they were motivated by "boredom and resentment at having to do "another" photo session and "another" Beatles thing. We were sick to death of it." Whitaker's concept was also compatible with their own black humour and their interest in the avant-garde.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: Whitaker intended that "A Somnambulant Adventure" would be a triptych design across two panels of a 12-inch LP cover. Among various comments he later made on the subject, he said the panels would be the inner gatefold spread or, alternatively, the front and back cover. The butcher photo was to appear in the central portion of the triptych or on the back cover. He planned to reduce the image to just "two-and-a-quarter inches square" and set it in the middle of the panel; bejewelled silver halos would be added behind the band members' heads, and the remaining space would be designed as a Russian religious icon in colours of silver and gold. Whitaker said: "The meat is meant to represent the fans, and the false teeth and the false eyes is the falseness of representing a god-like image as a golden calf."


title: Yesterday and Today

text: For the front cover, or left-hand portion of the triptych, Whitaker planned to use a photo of the Beatles holding two strings of sausages, symbolising umbilical cords, that appeared to connect to the belly of a woman whose back was to camera. This photo would be set inside another image, showing a woman's womb, thereby representing the Beatles' birth and emphasising their human qualities. The third part of Whitaker's triptych was a photo of George Harrison hammering long nails into Lennon's head, suggesting trepanation. Apparently in a state of transcendence, Lennon's face would be rendered as wood grain and a horizon would be added in which ocean and sky were reversed. Whitaker credited Man Ray as a partial inspiration for this idea and said it again emphasised the band's human qualities over their idol status.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: The Beatles submitted photographs from the session for their promotional materials. Contrary to Whitaker's original vision, the band chose the butcher photo as the cover image for "Yesterday and Today", and Lennon and Paul McCartney insisted that it was the Beatles' statement against war, particularly the Vietnam War. Capitol president Alan Livingston was immediately against using the image, but Epstein told him that the Beatles were adamant. In a 2002 interview published in "Mojo" magazine, Livingston recalled that his principal contact was with McCartney, who pushed strongly for the photo to be used as the album cover and described it as "our comment on the [Vietnam] war". Capitol's art director was more impressed with the image and prepared it to appear like a painting, with a canvas effect.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: The cover photo was soon replaced with a picture of the four band members posed around an open "steamer" trunk. This image was taken by Whitaker at Epstein's NEMS offices, near Carnaby Street. Rather than being submitted as an afterthought, the trunk photo had been pasted onto a mock-up LP sleeve and was being considered by Epstein while the Beatles filmed promotional clips for "Paperback Writer" and "Rain" at Chiswick House on 20 May. Lennon later described the replacement as "an awful looking photo of us looking just as deadbeat but supposed to be a happy-go-lucky foursome". Music critic Tim Riley describes it as "tame" but, due to the Beatles' sullen expressions, still evocative of their will to ridicule the standard band portrait.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: In the United States, Capitol Records printed approximately 750,000 copies of "Yesterday and Today" with the "butcher cover". The album was scheduled for a 15 June release. Around 60,000 copies were sent to US radio and the print media and to Capitol branch offices for marketing purposes. Reaction was immediate; disc jockeys were outraged by the cover image, and most retailers found it so distasteful they refused to stock the LP. Livingston contacted Epstein, who conceded to having the cover replaced with the trunk photo.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: On 10 June, Capitol launched "Operation Retrieve", recalling all copies of the LP from distributors to replace the offending image, as well as items such as promotional posters. The total cost to Capitol of replacing the cover and promotional materials was $250,000 (equivalent to $ in ), wiping out the company's initial profit. All copies were ordered shipped back to the record label, leading to its rarity and popularity among collectors. On 14 June, Capitol sent a memo to reviewers asking them to disregard the artwork and quoting Livingston's explanation that "The original cover, created in England, was intended as 'pop art' satire. However, a sampling of public opinion in the United States indicates that the cover design is subject to misinterpretation."


title: Yesterday and Today

text: In Britain, the same photograph had been used to promote the "Paperback Writer" single, starting with a full-page ad, in black-and-white, in the 3 June issue of the "NME". A different photo from the shoot appeared in full colour on the cover of the 11 June edition of "Disc and Music Echo"; lacking the doll parts but retaining the raw meat, the image was accompanied by a caption reading, "Beatles: What a Carve-Up!" The picture attracted an unfavourable response from many of the magazine's readers, and the UK music press were similarly offended by the ads for the single. To the public, the Beatles' celebration of the grotesque was something that had previously been evident only in Lennon's books of nonsensical verse and drawings. Some US commentators and music industry executives viewed the cover imagery as a statement on Capitol's policy of "butchering" the Beatles' albums for the North American market. In her study of the band's contemporary audience, sociologist Candy Leonard says that some fans recall interpreting the "butcher cover" in this way and supporting the Beatles "and their sense of humour".


title: Yesterday and Today

text: The backlash against the butcher cover in the US was reported in the 25 June issue of "Billboard". The cover controversy marked the first time that the Beatles' judgment was criticised by the media and distributors. At the time, Lennon's political directness was unusual for a pop star; he said the butcher sleeve was "as relevant as Vietnam", adding that "If the public can accept something as cruel as the war, they can accept this cover." McCartney called their critics "soft". When interviewed on 15 August during the band's 1966 US tour, however, Lennon called the image "unsubtle", and he and Harrison said they might have fought the recall decision had the photo been better. In "The Beatles Anthology", Harrison dismissed the butcher cover as "gross" and "stupid", adding: "Sometimes we all did stupid things thinking it was cool and hip when it was naïve and dumb; and that was one of them." In 2007, Martin recalled that the cover had been the cause of his first strong disagreement with the band. He added: "I thought it was disgusting and in poor taste... It suggested that they were madmen. Which they were, but not in that way."


title: Yesterday and Today

text: Despite Capitol's recall of the original LP, some distributors had already delivered stock to retailers, and copies were sold to customers in line with the scheduled 15 June release date. Capitol released "Yesterday and Today" with the amended cover on 20 June. "Record World"s reviewer included the LP among the magazine's "albums of the week" and wrote: "The new Beatle album contains a number of their recent hits... Also some rousing new ones like 'Drive My Car.' Of course, it'll be a big package." "Billboard" described it as a "Hot album release" and said that the five previously unissued songs "all have singles potential", particularly "And Your Bird Can Sing" and "Drive My Car". "Cash Box" rated the new tracks "top notch" and said "The Fab Four outdo themselves with this stunning set... Top of the charts is the place for this one."


title: Yesterday and Today

text: The cover controversy endured, and was soon followed by controversies in Japan and the Philippines, where the Beatles performed in early July and inadvertently snubbed Filipino First Lady Imelda Marcos, and again in the US, with the furore over Lennon's "more popular than Jesus" remark. "KRLA Beat" berated the Beatles for supplying "the most nauseating album cover ever seen in the US", saying that the image amused no one and appeared to be designed for "shock value". The reviewer added that the band seemed ignorant of their audience's tastes, and concluded: "But those wise in the ways of the entertainment business have stuck to the same thought throughout the Beatle reign – 'No one can kill the Beatles except themselves'. And perhaps they're doing it now." Writing in the October issue of "HiFi/Stereo Review", Gene Lees said that the butcher cover was indicative of the Beatles' "contempt for society" and of the same "obnoxious arrogance" that they had demonstrated in their "insulting behavior" towards Imelda Marcos. Lees opined that the group's music had deteriorated along with their charm; he found the LP "dull through repetition" and a "grab-bag", with the title track the most appealing but still a "pretty miserable" performance and lyrically "cluttered to the point of incomprehensibility".


title: Yesterday and Today

text: The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified "Yesterday and Today" as a gold record, signifying it as a "million seller", on 8 July. The album topped the "Billboard" Top LPs chart in the US on 30 July, displacing Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night". It stayed at number 1 for five weeks and also topped the sales charts in "Cash Box" and "Record World". During that time, the Beatles played their final concert tour, in the US and Canada, and included "Yesterday", "Nowhere Man", "If I Needed Someone" and "Day Tripper" in their set list. In February 1976, following the expiration of the Beatles' 1967 contract with EMI, "Yesterday and Today" was made available as an import in the UK via EMI International.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: According to figures published in 2009 by former Capitol executive David Kronemyer, further to estimates he gave in "MuseWire" magazine, "Yesterday and Today" had sold 967,410 copies in the US by 31 December 1966, and 1,230,558 copies by the end of the decade. As of 2014, the album was certified 2x Multi-Platinum by the RIAA, indicating US sales of over 2 million.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: In his 1977 book "The Beatles Forever", Nicholas Schaffner commented on the enduring aspect of Capitol's reconfiguring of the Beatles' EMI LPs:


title: Yesterday and Today

text: If you are an American Beatlemaniac, it is possible that you rate albums such as "Beatles '65", "Beatles VI", and "Yesterday and Today" among your favorites. Mention this to a British fan, however, and, unless he is a seasoned collector, he might have little or no idea what you're talking about... He, in turn, may cite such unfamiliar titles (to Americans) as "With the Beatles" or "Beatles for Sale"; even should you agree on the respective excellence of, say, the "Hard Day's Night" or "Revolver" albums, you'll actually be talking about quite different compilations... You would both be right, for until 1967 and "Sgt. Pepper"... no British rock album could reasonably hope to survive the voyage across the Atlantic intact.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: Writing in the 21st century, both Tim Riley and "American Songwriter" journalist Jim Beviglia classified "Yesterday and Today" as a compilation album. Joe Bosso of "MusicRadar" said it was one in a series of "hit-filled compilation albums" that the American Capitol label "sliced and diced" from the Beatles' original British albums.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: In early 1986, Capitol deleted "Yesterday and Today" and nine other Beatles albums from its catalogue. The company announced that over the next two years, the Beatles' catalogue would be streamlined to adhere to the band's EMI releases up to "Revolver". The international standardisation of their catalogue was established in 1987 with the CD release of their EMI albums, followed by the two-volume "Past Masters" compilation containing all the band's non-album singles. In 2014, the album was reissued as part of the Beatles' "U.S. Albums" box set. In a review of the box set for "Mojo" magazine, Jon Savage described "Yesterday and Today" as a "rag-bag of material" for which the withdrawn butcher cover was an apt depiction, since the album represented "the worst piece of vandalism" carried out by Capitol on the band's music. Although he acknowledged that the company's approach was in keeping with all of the band's previous US releases, Savage was critical of Capitol's failure to include "Paperback Writer" and its B-side, "Rain", and for leaving the US version of "Revolver" with "three key songs... ripped from its heart".


title: Yesterday and Today

text: The original LP sleeves for "Yesterday and Today" were assembled at Capitol's four US plants situated in different cities: Los Angeles, California; Scranton, Pennsylvania; Winchester, Virginia; and Jacksonville, Illinois. Numbers designating where the covers originated were printed near the RIAA symbol on the back; for example, stereo copies from the Los Angeles plant were designated "5" and mono Los Angeles copies were marked "6". Mono copies outnumbered stereo copies by about ten to one, making the stereo copies far more rare and valuable to collectors. Capitol initially ordered plant managers to destroy the covers, and the Jacksonville plant delivered most of its copies to a landfill. However, faced with so many jackets already printed, Capitol decided instead to paste the replacement cover over the old ones. The new cover had to be trimmed on the open end by about 3 mm (1/8 inch) because the new sheet, known as a "slick", was not placed exactly "square" on top of the original cover. Tens of thousands of these so-called 'trunk covers' were sent out. As word of this manoeuvre became known to the public, owners of the altered cover attempted, usually unsuccessfully, to peel off the pasted-over cover, hoping to reveal the original image hidden beneath. Eventually, the soaring value and desirability of unpasted-over 'butcher covers' spurred the development of intricate and complex techniques for peeling the 'trunk cover' off in such a way that only faint horizontal glue lines remained on the original cover.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: Copies that have never had the white cover pasted onto them, known as "first state" covers, are very rare and command the highest prices. Copies with the pasted-on cover intact above the 'butcher' image are known as "second state" or "pasteovers". Today, "pasteover" covers that have remained unpeeled are also becoming increasingly rare and valuable; these can be identified if Ringo Starr's black V-neck shirt from the original cover can be seen through the paste-over to the right of the trunk lid (in alignment with the word "Today" from the album title). Covers that have had the 'trunk cover' removed to reveal the underlying 'butcher' image are known as "third state" covers; these are now the most common (and least valuable, although their value varies depending on how well the cover is removed) as people continue to peel second state covers. The most valuable and highly prized first and second state 'butcher covers' are those that were never opened and remain still sealed in their original shrink-wrap. Since the first documented collector's sale of a mono "butcher cover" LP in 1974, which fetched US$457.00, the value of first state mono versions has consistently appreciated, reaching $20,000 in 2006.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: In 1987, Alan Livingston released for sale 24 "first state" butcher covers from his private collection. When the original cover was scrapped in June 1966, Livingston took a case of already-sealed 'butcher cover' albums from the warehouse before they were to be pasted over with the new covers, and kept them in a closet at his home. These albums were first offered for sale at a Beatlefest convention at the Marriott Hotel near Los Angeles International Airport on Thanksgiving weekend 1987 by Livingston's son. These still-sealed pristine items, which included nineteen mono and five stereo versions, are the very rarest and most valuable 'butcher covers' in existence. These so-called "Livingston Butchers" today command premium prices among collectors, the five stereo versions being the most rare and valuable of these. In April 2006, Heritage Auction Galleries sold one of the sealed mono "Livingston Butchers" at auction in Dallas for close to $39,000.


title: Yesterday and Today

text: An extremely rare original "first state" stereo copy that was not from the Livingston collection was presented for appraisal at a 2003 Chicago taping of the PBS series "Antiques Roadshow". It was still in the possession of the original owner, who had bought it at Sears & Roebuck on the day of release in 1966 – the only day that the original 'butcher cover' versions were on sale before being recalled by Capitol. Although not in its original shrink-wrap, it had rarely been played and was still in excellent condition, and "Roadshow" appraiser Gary Sohmers valued it at US$10,000–$12,000. In 2016, a mint condition "first state" stereo copy of "Yesterday and Today" in shrink-wrap was sold for $125,000.<ref name="RS/BannedButcherCover"></ref>


title: Yesterday and Today

text: Leonard writes that the album was "beloved by fans at the time", yet it became "lost for decades after the transition to digital music" and notable instead for the 'butcher cover' episode. "Yesterday and Today" received its first release on compact disc in 2014, individually and as part of the Beatles' box set "The U.S. Albums". Mixes included on the mono/stereo 2014 CD differ from the original North American LP releases. "Drive My Car" in mono has been replaced with the UK mono mix, and "Doctor Robert" in mono omits Lennon's very quiet spoken words at the end. All tracks in stereo except "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work It Out" have been replaced with versions from the 2009 UK-format stereo CDs. The cover is the 'butcher cover', but included in the CD is a sticker with the 'trunk cover'.


title: Oxidation state

text: In chemistry, the oxidation state, or oxidation number, is the hypothetical charge of an atom if all of its bonds to different atoms were fully ionic. It describes the degree of oxidation (loss of electrons) of an atom in a chemical compound. Conceptually, the oxidation state may be positive, negative or zero. While fully ionic bonds are not found in nature, many bonds exhibit strong ionicity, making oxidation state a useful predictor of charge.


title: Oxidation state

text: The oxidation state of an atom does not represent the "real" formal charge on that atom, or any other actual atomic property. This is particularly true of high oxidation states, where the ionization energy required to produce a multiply positive ion is far greater than the energies available in chemical reactions. Additionally, the oxidation states of atoms in a given compound may vary depending on the choice of electronegativity scale used in their calculation. Thus, the oxidation state of an atom in a compound is purely a formalism. It is nevertheless important in understanding the nomenclature conventions of inorganic compounds. Also, several observations regarding chemical reactions may be explained at a basic level in terms of oxidation states.


title: Oxidation state

text: Oxidation states are typically represented by integers which may be positive, zero, or negative. In some cases, the average oxidation state of an element is a fraction, such as for iron in magnetite (see below). The highest known oxidation state is reported to be +9, displayed by iridium in the tetroxoiridium(IX) cation (). It is predicted that even a +10 oxidation state may be achieved by platinum in tetroxoplatinum(X), . The lowest oxidation state is −5, as for boron in .


title: Oxidation state

text: In inorganic nomenclature, the oxidation state is represented by a Roman numeral placed after the element name inside the parenthesis or as a superscript after the element symbol, e.g. Iron(III) oxide.


title: Oxidation state

text: The term "oxidation" was first used by Antoine Lavoisier to signify the reaction of a substance with oxygen. Much later, it was realized that the substance, upon being oxidized, loses electrons, and the meaning was extended to include other reactions in which electrons are lost, regardless of whether oxygen was involved.


title: Oxidation state

text: The increase in the oxidation state of an atom, through a chemical reaction, is known as oxidation; a decrease in oxidation state is known as a reduction. Such reactions involve the formal transfer of electrons: a net gain in electrons being a reduction, and a net loss of electrons being oxidation. For pure elements, the oxidation state is zero.


title: Oxidation state

text: IUPAC has published a "Comprehensive definition of the term oxidation state (IUPAC Recommendations 2016)".<ref name="10.1515/pac-2015-1204"></ref> It is a distillation of an IUPAC technical report "Toward a comprehensive definition of oxidation state" from 2014.<ref name="10.1515/pac-2013-0505"></ref> The current IUPAC "Gold Book" definition of oxidation state is:


title: Oxidation state

text: The underlying principle is that the ionic charge is "the oxidation state of an atom, after ionic approximation of its bonds", where ionic approximation means, hypothesizing that all bonds are ionic. Several criteria were considered for the ionic approximation:


title: Oxidation state

text: In a bond between two different elements, the bond's electrons are assigned to its main atomic contributor/higher electronegativity; in a bond between two atoms of the same element, the electrons are divided equally. This is because most electronegativity scales depend on the atom's bonding state, which makes the assignment of the oxidation state a somewhat circular argument. For example, some scales may turn out unusual oxidation states, such as -6 for platinum in , for Pauling and Mulliken scales. The dipole moments would, sometimes, also turn out abnormal oxidation numbers, such as in CO and NO, which


title: Oxidation state

text: are oriented with their positive end towards oxygen. Therefore, this leaves the atom's contribution to the


title: Oxidation state

text: bonding MO, the atomic-orbital energy, and from quantum-chemical calculations of charges, as the only viable criteria with cogent values for ionic approximation. However, for a simple estimate for the ionic approximation, we can use Allen electronegativities, as only that electronegativity scale is truly independent of the oxidation state, as it relates to the average valence‐electron energy of the free atom:


title: Oxidation state

text: While introductory levels of chemistry teaching use postulated oxidation states, the IUPAC recommendation and the "Gold Book" entry list two entirely general algorithms for the calculation of the oxidation states of elements in chemical compounds.


title: Oxidation state

text: Introductory chemistry uses postulates: the oxidation state for an element in a chemical formula is calculated from the overall charge and postulated oxidation states for all the other atoms.


title: Oxidation state

text: where OS stands for oxidation state. This approach yields correct oxidation states in oxides and hydroxides of any single element, and in acids such as HSO or HCrO. Its coverage can be extended either by a list of exceptions or by assigning priority to the postulates. The latter works for HO where the priority of rule 1 leaves both oxygens with oxidation state −1.


title: Oxidation state

text: Additional postulates and their ranking may expand the range of compounds to fit a textbook's scope. As an example, one postulatory algorithm from many possible; in a sequence of decreasing priority:


title: Oxidation state

text: This set of postulates covers oxidation states of fluorides, chlorides, bromides, oxides, hydroxides, and hydrides of any single element. It covers all oxoacids of any central atom (and all their fluoro-, chloro-, and bromo-relatives), as well as salts of such acids with group 1 and 2 metals. It also covers iodides, sulfides, and similar simple salts of these metals.


title: Oxidation state

text: This algorithm is performed on a Lewis structure (a diagram that shows all valence electrons). Oxidation state equals the charge of an atom after each of its heteronuclear bonds has been assigned to the more-electronegative partner of the bond (except when that partner is a reversibly bonded Lewis-acid ligand) and homonuclear bonds have been divided equally:


title: Oxidation state

text: where each "—" represents an electron pair (either shared between two atoms or solely on one atom), and "OS" is the oxidation state as a numerical variable.


title: Oxidation state

text: After the electrons have been assigned according to the vertical red lines on the formula, the total number of valence electrons that now "belong" to each atom is subtracted from the number "N" of valence electrons of the neutral atom (such as 5 for nitrogen in group 15) to yield that atom's oxidation state.


title: Oxidation state

text: This example shows the importance of describing the bonding. Its summary formula, HNO, corresponds to two structural isomers; the peroxynitrous acid in the above figure and the more stable nitric acid. With the formula HNO, the simple approach without bonding considerations yields −2 for all three oxygens and +5 for nitrogen, which is correct for nitric acid. For the peroxynitrous acid, however, the two oxygens in the O–O bond each has OS = −1 and the nitrogen has OS = +3, which requires a structure to understand.


title: Oxidation state

text: Organic compounds are treated in a similar manner; exemplified here on functional groups occurring in between CH and CO:


title: Oxidation state

text: Analogously for transition-metal compounds; on the left has a total of 36 valence electrons (18 pairs to be distributed), and on the right has 66 valence electrons (33 pairs):


title: Oxidation state

text: A key step is drawing the Lewis structure of the molecule (neutral, cationic, anionic): atom symbols are arranged so that pairs of atoms can be joined by single two-electron bonds as in the molecule (a sort of "skeletal" structure), and the remaining valence electrons are distributed such that sp atoms obtain an octet (duet for hydrogen) with a priority that increases in proportion with electronegativity. In some cases, this leads to alternative formulae that differ in bond orders (the full set of which is called the resonance formulas). Consider the sulfate anion ( with 32 valence electrons; 24 from oxygens, 6 from sulfur, 2 of the anion charge obtained from the implied cation). The bond orders to the terminal oxygens do not affect the oxidation state so long as the oxygens have octets. Already the skeletal structure, top left, yields the correct oxidation states, as does the Lewis structure, top right (one of the resonance formulas):


title: Oxidation state

text: The bond-order formula at the bottom is closest to the reality of four equivalent oxygens each having a total bond order of 2. That total includes the bond of order to the implied cation and follows the 8 − "N" rule requiring that the main-group atom's bond order equals 8 minus "N" valence electrons of the neutral atom, enforced with a priority that proportionately increases with electronegativity.


title: Oxidation state

text: This algorithm works equally for molecular cations composed of several atoms. An example is the ammonium cation of 8 valence electrons (5 from nitrogen, 4 from hydrogens, minus 1 electron for the cation's positive charge):


title: Oxidation state

text: Drawing Lewis structures with electron pairs as dashes emphasizes the essential equivalence of bond pairs and lone pairs when counting electrons and moving bonds onto atoms. Structures drawn with electron dot pairs are of course identical in every way:


title: Oxidation state

text: The algorithm contains a caveat, which concerns rare cases of transition-metal complexes with a type of ligand that is reversibly bonded as a Lewis acid (as an acceptor of the electron pair from the transition metal); termed a "Z-type" ligand in Green's covalent bond classification method. The caveat originates from the simplifying use of electronegativity instead of the MO-based electron allegiance to decide the ionic sign. One early example is the OS−RhCl(CO)(PPh) complex with SO as the reversibly-bonded acceptor ligand (released upon heating). The Rh−S bond is therefore extrapolated ionic against Allen electronegativities of rhodium and sulfur, yielding oxidation state +1 for rhodium:


title: Oxidation state

text: illustrates that, in this algorithm, homonuclear bonds are simply ignored (the bond orders are in blue).


title: Oxidation state

text: To obtain the oxidation states, the formal charges are summed with the bond-order value taken positively at the carbon and negatively at the oxygen.


title: Oxidation state

text: Applied to molecular ions, this algorithm considers the actual location of the formal (ionic) charge, as drawn in the Lewis structure. As an example, summing bond orders in the ammonium cation yields −4 at the nitrogen of formal charge +1, with the two numbers adding to the oxidation state of −3:


title: Oxidation state

text: Also in anions, the formal (ionic) charges have to be considered when nonzero. For sulfate this is exemplified with the skeletal or Lewis structures (top), compared with the bond-order formula of all oxygens equivalent and fulfilling the octet and 8 − "N" rules (bottom):


title: Oxidation state

text: A bond graph in solid-state chemistry is a chemical formula of an extended structure, in which direct bonding connectivities are shown. An example is the AuORb perovskite, the unit cell of which is drawn on the left and the bond graph (with added numerical values) on the right:


title: Oxidation state

text: We see that the oxygen atom bonds to the six nearest rubidium cations, each of which has 4 bonds to the auride anion. The bond graph summarizes these connectivities. The bond orders (also called bond valences) sum up to oxidation states according to the attached sign of the bond's ionic approximation (there are no formal charges in bond graphs).


title: Oxidation state

text: Determination of oxidation states from a bond graph can be illustrated on ilmenite, FeTiO. We may ask whether the mineral contains Fe and Ti, or Fe and Ti. Its crystal structure has each metal atom bonded to six oxygens and each of the equivalent oxygens to two irons and two titaniums, as in the bond graph below. Experimental data show that three metal-oxygen bonds in the octahedron are short and three are long (the metals are off-center). The bond orders (valences), obtained from the bond lengths by the bond valence method, sum up to 2.01 at Fe and 3.99 at Ti; which can be rounded off to oxidation states +2 and +4, respectively:


title: Oxidation state

text: Oxidation states can be useful for balancing chemical equations for oxidation-reduction (or redox) reactions, because the changes in the oxidized atoms have to be balanced by the changes in the reduced atoms. For example, in the reaction of acetaldehyde with Tollens' reagent to form acetic acid (shown below), the carbonyl carbon atom changes its oxidation state from +1 to +3 (loses two electrons). This oxidation is balanced by reducing two Ag cations to Ag (gaining two electrons in total).


title: Oxidation state

text: An inorganic example is the Bettendorf reaction using SnCl to prove the presence of arsenite ions in a concentrated HCl extract. When arsenic(III) is present, a brown coloration appears forming a dark precipitate of arsenic, according to the following simplified reaction:


title: Oxidation state

text: Here three tin atoms are oxidized from oxidation state +2 to +4, yielding six electrons that reduce two arsenic atoms from oxidation state +3 to 0. The simple one-line balancing goes as follows: the two redox couples are written down as they react;


title: Oxidation state

text: One tin is oxidized from oxidation state +2 to +4, a two-electron step, hence 2 is written in front of the two arsenic partners. One arsenic is reduced from +3 to 0, a three-electron step, hence 3 goes in front of the two tin partners. An alternative three-line procedure is to write separately the half-reactions for oxidation and reduction, each balanced with electrons, and then to sum them up such that the electrons cross out. In general, these redox balances (the one-line balance or each half-reaction) need to be checked for the ionic and electron charge sums on both sides of the equation being indeed equal. If they are not equal, suitable ions are added to balance the charges and the non-redox elemental balance.


title: Oxidation state

text: Lewis formulae are rule-based approximations of chemical reality, as are Allen electronegativities. Still, oxidation states may seem ambiguous when their determination is not straightforward. If only an experiment can determine the oxidation state, the rule-based determination is ambiguous (insufficient). There are also truly dichotomous values that are decided arbitrarily.


title: Oxidation state

text: Seemingly ambiguous oxidation states are derived from a set of resonance formulas of equal weights for a molecule having heteronuclear bonds where the atom connectivity does not correspond to the number of two-electron bonds dictated by the 8 − "N" rule. An example is SN where four resonance formulas featuring one S=N double bond have oxidation states +2 and +4 for the two sulfur atoms, which average to +3 because the two sulfur atoms are equivalent in this square-shaped molecule.


title: Oxidation state

text: Fractional oxidation states are often used to represent the average oxidation state of several atoms of the same element in a structure. For example, the formula of magnetite is , implying an average oxidation state for iron of +. However, this average value may not be representative if the atoms are not equivalent. In a crystal below , two-thirds of the cations are and one-third are , and the formula may be more clearly represented as FeO·.


title: Oxidation state

text: Likewise, propane, , has been described as having a carbon oxidation state of −. Again, this is an average value since the structure of the molecule is , with the first and third carbon atoms each having an oxidation state of −3 and the central one −2.


title: Oxidation state

text: An example with true fractional oxidation states for equivalent atoms is potassium superoxide, . The diatomic superoxide ion has an overall charge of −1, so each of its two equivalent oxygen atoms is assigned an oxidation state of −. This ion can be described as a resonance hybrid of two Lewis structures, where each oxygen has an oxidation state of 0 in one structure and −1 in the other.


title: Oxidation state

text: For the cyclopentadienyl anion , the oxidation state of C is −1 + − = −. The −1 occurs because each carbon is bonded to one hydrogen atom (a less electronegative element), and the − because the total ionic charge of −1 is divided among five equivalent carbons. Again this can be described as a resonance hybrid of five equivalent structures, each having four carbons with oxidation state −1 and one with −2.


title: Oxidation state

text: Finally, fractional oxidation numbers are not used in the description of red lead. is represented as lead(II,IV) oxide, showing the oxidation states of the two nonequivalent lead atoms.


title: Oxidation state

text: Most elements have more than one possible oxidation state. For example, carbon has nine possible integer oxidation states from −4 to +4:


title: Oxidation state

text: Many compounds with luster and electrical conductivity maintain a simple stoichiometric formula, such as the golden TiO, blue-black RuO or coppery ReO, all of obvious oxidation state. Ultimately, assigning the free metallic electrons to one of the bonded atoms is not comprehensive and can yield unusual oxidation states. Examples are the LiPb and ordered alloys, the composition and structure of which are largely determined by atomic size and packing factors. Should oxidation state be needed for redox balancing, it is best set to 0 for all atoms of such an alloy.


title: Oxidation state

text: This is a list of known oxidation states of the chemical elements, excluding nonintegral values. The most common states appear in bold. The table is based on that of Greenwood and Earnshaw, with additions noted. Every element exists in oxidation state 0 when it is the pure non-ionized element in any phase, whether monatomic or polyatomic allotrope. The column for oxidation state 0 only shows elements known to exist in oxidation state 0 in compounds.


title: Oxidation state

text: A figure with a similar format was used by Irving Langmuir in 1919 in one of the early papers about the octet rule. The periodicity of the oxidation states was one of the pieces of evidence that led Langmuir to adopt the rule.


title: Oxidation state

text: The oxidation state in compound naming for transition metals and lanthanides and actinides is placed either as a right superscript to the element symbol in a chemical formula, such as Fe or in parentheses after the name of the element in chemical names, such as iron(III). For example, is named iron(III) sulfate and its formula can be shown as Fe. This is because a sulfate ion has a charge of −2, so each iron atom takes a charge of +3.


title: Oxidation state

text: Oxidation itself was first studied by Antoine Lavoisier, who defined it as the result of reactions with oxygen (hence the name). The term has since been generalized to imply a "formal" loss of electrons. Oxidation states, called "oxidation grades" by Friedrich Wöhler in 1835, were one of the intellectual stepping stones that Dmitri Mendeleev used to derive the periodic table. William B. Jensen gives an overview of the history up to 1938.


title: Oxidation state

text: When it was realized that some metals form two different binary compounds with the same nonmetal, the two compounds were often distinguished by using the ending "-ic" for the higher metal oxidation state and the ending "-ous" for the lower. For example, FeCl is ferric chloride and FeCl is ferrous chloride. This system is not very satisfactory (although sometimes still used) because different metals have different oxidation states which have to be learned: ferric and ferrous are +3 and +2 respectively, but cupric and cuprous are +2 and +1, and stannic and stannous are +4 and +2. Also, there was no allowance for metals with more than two oxidation states, such as vanadium with oxidation states +2, +3, +4, and +5.


title: Oxidation state

text: This system has been largely replaced by one suggested by Alfred Stock in 1919 and adopted by IUPAC in 1940. Thus, FeCl was written as iron(II) chloride rather than ferrous chloride. The Roman numeral II at the central atom came to be called the "Stock number" (now an obsolete term), and its value was obtained as a charge at the central atom after removing its ligands along with the electron pairs they shared with it.


title: Oxidation state

text: The term "oxidation state" in English chemical literature was popularized by Wendell Mitchell Latimer in his 1938 book about electrochemical potentials. He used it for the value (synonymous with the German term "Wertigkeit") previously termed "valence", "polar valence" or "polar number" in English, or "oxidation stage" or indeed the "state of oxidation". Since 1938, the term "oxidation state" has been connected with electrochemical potentials and electrons exchanged in redox couples participating in redox reactions. By 1948, IUPAC used the 1940 nomenclature rules with the term "oxidation state", instead of the original "valency". In 1948 Linus Pauling proposed that oxidation number could be determined by extrapolating bonds to being completely ionic in the direction of electronegativity. A full acceptance of this suggestion was complicated by the fact that the Pauling electronegativities as such depend on the oxidation state and that they may lead to unusual values of oxidation states for some transition metals. In 1990 IUPAC resorted to a postulatory (rule-based) method to determine the oxidation state. This was complemented by the synonymous term oxidation number as a descendant of the Stock number introduced in 1940 into the nomenclature. However, the terminology using "ligands" gave the impression that oxidation number might be something specific to coordination complexes. This situation and the lack of a real single definition generated numerous debates about the meaning of oxidation state, suggestions about methods to obtain it and definitions of it. To resolve the issue, an IUPAC project (2008-040-1-200) was started in 2008 on the "Comprehensive Definition of Oxidation State", and was concluded by two reports and by the revised entries "Oxidation State" and "Oxidation Number" in the IUPAC Gold Book. The outcomes were a single definition of oxidation state and two algorithms to calculate it in molecular and extended-solid compounds, guided by Allen electronegativities that are independent of oxidation state.


title: Danielle Savre

text: Danielle Kathleen Savre (born August 26, 1988) is an American actress and singer. She is known for her television roles, such as her lead performances in the 2007 MTV music drama "Kaya", the 2016 TLC drama "Too Close to Home", and the ABC "Grey's Anatomy" spinoff "Station 19", and for her roles in the films "Wild About Harry" and "Boogeyman 2". She was born in Simi Valley, California.


title: Danielle Savre

text: In 2006 Savre was cast in the straight-to-DVD film "". In 2007 she was cast the 2009 drama film "Wild About Harry" (originally titled "American Primitive") playing the part of Madeline, a 1970s teenager who comes to realize that her father is gay. The same year Savre was cast as the titular rock star character on the MTV series "Kaya" which ran for one season. She also starred in the 2007 horror film "Boogeyman 2" playing the lead role of Laura Potter.


title: Danielle Savre

text: Savre has made guest appearances in several television shows like "The X-Files", "" and "Charmed". She had recurring roles in the television show "Summerland" as Callie, and the NBC series "Heroes" as Jackie Wilcox. However, in "Heroes", her character is killed in the ninth episode "Homecoming" of the first season, though she reappears thrice more: once retrospectively in "Six Months Ago", and twice during the fourth season, in "Once Upon a Time in Texas" and "Pass/Fail".


title: Danielle Savre

text: In 2014, Savre was cast as the cheating wife in the 2015 thriller film "Adulterers" (also known as "Avouterie"). The same year she was cast as "Margo, the acting head of the leading shapeshifting family" in the "Supernatural" spinoff series "" which ultimately was not ordered to series. In 2016, Savre was cast as lead character Anna in the Tyler Perry drama series "Too Close to Home".


title: Danielle Savre

text: In 2018, Savre was cast as a main character, the bisexual firefighter Maya Bishop, on the "Grey's Anatomy" spinoff drama series, "Station 19".


title: Danielle Savre

text: In her teens, Savre was a part of music groups, Sweet Obsession and Trinity. Savre was professionally choreographed by choreographer Shane Sparks during both her group's performances and during her solo singing career. In addition, Savre sang during her 2007 role as Kaya in the MTV music drama "Kaya".


title: African Pygmies

text: The African Pygmies (or Congo Pygmies, variously also Central African foragers, "African rainforest hunter-gatherers" (RHG) or "Forest People of Central Africa") are a group of ethnicities native to Central Africa, mostly the Congo Basin, traditionally subsisting on a forager and hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They are divided into three roughly geographic groups:


title: African Pygmies

text: They are notable for, and named for, their short stature (described as "pygmyism" in anthropological literature). They are assumed to be descended from the original Middle Stone Age expansion of anatomically modern humans to Central Africa, albeit substantially affected by later migrations from West Africa, from their first appearance in the historical record in the 19th century limited to a comparative small area within Central Africa, greatly decimated by the prehistoric Bantu expansion, and to the present time widely affected by enslavement at the hands of neighboring Bantu, Ubangian and Central Sudanic groups.


title: African Pygmies

text: Most contemporary Pygmy groups are only partially foragers and partially trade with neighbouring farmers to acquire cultivated foods and other material items; no group lives deep in the forest without access to agricultural products. A total number of about 900,000 Pygmies were estimated to be living in the central African forests in 2016, about 60% of this number in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The number does not include Southern Twa populations, who live outside of the Central Africa forest environment, partly in open swamp or desert environments.


title: African Pygmies

text: Additionally, West African hunter-gatherers may have dwelled in western Central Africa earlier than 32,000 BP and dwelled in West Africa between 16,000 BP and 12,000 BP until as late as 1000 BP or some period of time after 1500 CE. West African hunter-gatherers, many of whom dwelt in the forest-savanna region, were ultimately acculturated and admixed into larger groups of West African agriculturalists, akin to the migratory Bantu-speaking agriculturalists and their encounters with Central African hunter-gatherers.


title: African Pygmies

text: The term "Pygmy", as used to refer to diminutive people, derives from Greek πυγμαῖος "pygmaios" (via Latin "Pygmaeus", plural "Pygmaei"), a term for "dwarf" from Greek mythology. The word is derived from πυγμή pygmē, a term for "cubit" (lit. "fist"), suggesting a diminutive height.


title: African Pygmies

text: The use of "Pygmy" in reference to the small-framed African hunter-gatherers dates to the early 19th century, in English first by John Barrow, "Travels Into the Interior of Southern Africa" (1806). However, the term was used diffusely, and treated as unsubstantiated claims of "dwarf tribes" among the Bushmen of the interior of Africa, until the exploration of the Congo basin. In the 1860s, two Western explorers, Paul Du Chaillu and Georg Schweinfurth, claimed to have found the mythical "Pygmies". A commentator wrote in 1892 that, thirty years ago (viz., in the 1860s), "nobody believed in the existence of African dwarf tribes" and that "it needed an authority like Dr. Schweinfurth to prove that pygmies actually exist in Africa" (referencing Georg August Schweinfurth's "The Heart of Africa", published 1873). "African Pygmy" is used for disambiguation from "Asiatic Pygmy", a name applied to the Negrito populations of Southeast Asia.


title: African Pygmies

text: Dembner (1996) reported a universal "disdain for the term 'pygmy among the Pygmy peoples of Central Africa: the term is considered a pejorative, and people prefer to be referred to by the name of their respective ethnic or tribal groups, such as Bayaka, Mbuti and Twa. There is no clear replacement for the term "Pygmy" in reference to the umbrella group. A descriptive term that has seen some use since the 2000s is "Central African foragers".


title: African Pygmies

text: Regional names used collectively of the western group of Pygmies are "Bambenga" (the plural form of Mbenga), used in the Kongo language, and "Bayaka" (the plural form of Aka/Yaka), used in the Central African Republic.


title: African Pygmies

text: The Congo Pygmy speak languages of the Niger–Congo and Central Sudanic language families. There has been significant intermixing between the Bantu and Pygmies.


title: African Pygmies

text: African Pygmies are often assumed to be the direct descendants of the Middle Stone Age hunter-gatherer peoples of the central African rainforest.


title: African Pygmies

text: Genetic evidence for the deep separation of Congo Pygmies from the lineage of West Africans and East Africans, as well as admixture from archaic humans, was found in the 2010s. The lineage of African Pygmies is strongly associated with mitochondrial (maternal line) haplogroup L1, with a divergence time between 170,000 and 100,000 years ago.


title: African Pygmies

text: They were partially absorbed or displaced by later immigration of agricultural peoples of the Central Sudanic and Ubangian phyla beginning after about 5,500 years ago, and, beginning about 3,500 years ago, by the Bantu, adopting their languages.


title: African Pygmies

text: Substantial non-Bantu and non-Ubangian substrates have been identified in Aka and in Baka, respectively, on the order of 30% of the lexicon. Much of this vocabulary is botanical, deals with honey harvesting, or is otherwise specialized for the forest and is shared between the two western Pygmy groups. This substrate has been suggested as representing a remnant of an ancient "western Pygmy" linguistic phylum, dubbed "Mbenga" or "Baaka". However, as substrate vocabulary has been widely borrowed between Pygmies and neighboring peoples, no reconstruction of such a "Baaka" language is possible for times more remote than a few centuries ago.


title: African Pygmies

text: An ancestral Pygmy language has been postulated for at least some Pygmy groups, based on the observation of linguistic substrates. According to Merritt Ruhlen (1994), "African Pygmies speak languages belonging to either the Nilo-Saharan or the Niger–Kordofanian family. It is assumed that Pygmies once spoke their own language(s), but that, through living in symbiosis with other Africans, in prehistorical times, they adopted languages belonging to these two families."


title: African Pygmies

text: Roger Blench (1997, 1999) criticized the hypothesis of an ancestral "Pygmy language", arguing that even if there is evidence for a common ancestral language rather than just borrowing, it will not be sufficient to establish a specifically "Pygmy" origin rather than any of the several potential language isolates of (former) hunter-gatherer populations that ring the rainforest. He argued that the Pygmies do not form the residue of a single ancient stock of Central African hunter-gatherers, but that they are rather descended from several neighboring ethno-linguistic groups, independently adapting to forest subsistence strategies. Blench adduced the lack of clear linguistic and archaeological evidence for the antiquity of the African Pygmies, that the genetic evidence, at the time of his writing, was inconclusive, and that there is no evidence of the Pygmies having a hunting technology distinctive from that of their neighbors. He argued that the short stature of Pygmy populations can arise relatively quickly (in less than a few millennia) under strong selection pressures.


title: African Pygmies

text: West African hunter-gatherers may have spoken a set of presently extinct Sub-Saharan West African languages. In the northeastern region of Nigeria, Jalaa, a language isolate, may have been a descending language from the original set(s) of languages spoken by West African hunter-gatherers.


title: African Pygmies

text: Genetic studies have found evidence that African Pygmies are descended from the Middle Stone Age peopling of Central Africa, with a separation time from West and East Africans of the order 130,000 years.


title: African Pygmies

text: African Pygmies in the historical period have been significantly displaced by, and assimilated to, several waves of Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan speakers, of the Central Sudanic, Ubangian, and Bantu phyla.


title: African Pygmies

text: Genetically, African pygmies have some key differences between them and Bantu peoples. African pygmies' uniparental markers display the most ancient divergence from other human groups among anatomically modern humans, second only to those displayed among some Khoisan populations. Researchers identified an ancestral and autochthonous lineage of mtDNA shared by Pygmies and Bantus, suggesting that both populations were originally one, and that they started to diverge from common ancestors around 70,000 years ago. After a period of isolation, during which current phenotype differences between Pygmies and Bantu farmers accumulated, Pygmy women started marrying male Bantu farmers (but not the opposite). This trend started around 40,000 years ago, and continued until several thousand years ago. Subsequently, the Pygmy gene pool was not enriched by external gene influxes.


title: African Pygmies

text: Mitochondrial haplogroup L1c is strongly associated with pygmies, especially with Bambenga groups. L1c prevalence was variously reported as: 100% in Ba-Kola, 97% in Aka (Ba-Benzélé), and 77% in Biaka, 100% of the Bedzan (Tikar), 97% and 100% in the Baka people of Gabon and Cameroon, respectively, 97% in Bakoya (97%), and 82% in Ba-Bongo. Mitochondrial haplogroups L2a and L0a are prevalent among the Bambuti.


title: African Pygmies

text: Patin, et al. (2009) suggest two unique, late Pleistocene (before 60,000 years ago) divergences from other human populations, and a split between eastern and western pygmy groups about 20,000 years ago.


title: African Pygmies

text: Ancient DNA was able to be obtained from two Shum Laka foragers from the early period of the Stone to Metal Age, in 8000 BP, and two Shum Laka foragers from the late period of the Stone to Metal Age, in 3000 BP.


title: African Pygmies

text: The mitochondrial DNA and Y-Chromosome haplogroups found in the ancient Shum Laka foragers were Sub-Saharan African haplogroups. Two earlier Shum Laka foragers were of haplogroup L0a2a1 – broadly distributed throughout modern African populations – and two later Shum Laka foragers were of haplogroup L1c2a1b – distributed among both modern West and Central African agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers. One earlier Shum Laka forager was of haplogroup B and one later Shum Laka forager haplogroup B2b, which, together, as macrohaplogroup B, is distributed among modern Central African hunter-gatherers (e.g., Baka, Bakola, Biaka, Bedzan).


title: African Pygmies

text: The autosomal admixture of the four ancient Shum Laka forager children was ~35% Western Central African hunter-gatherer and ~65% Basal West African – or, an admixture composed of a modern western Central African hunter-gatherer unit, a modern West African unit, existing locally before 8000 BP, and a modern East African/West African unit likely from further north in the regions of the Sahel and Sahara.


title: African Pygmies

text: The two earlier Shum Laka foragers from 8000 BP and two later Shum Laka foragers from 3000 BP show 5000 years of population continuity in region. Yet, modern peoples of Cameroon are more closely related to modern West Africans than to the ancient Shum Laka foragers. Modern Cameroonian hunter-gatherers, while partly descended, are not largely descended from the Shum Laka foragers, due to the apparent absence of descent from Basal West Africans.


title: African Pygmies

text: The Bantu expansion is hypothesized to have originated in a homeland of Bantu-speaking peoples located around western Cameroon, a part of which Shum Laka is viewed as being of importance in the early period of this expansion. By 3000 BP, the Bantu expansion is hypothesized to have already begun. Yet, the sampled ancient Shum Laka foragers – two from 8000 BP and two from 3000 BP – show that most modern Niger-Congo speakers are greatly distinct from the ancient Shum Laka foragers, thus, showing that the ancient Shum Laka people were not the ancestral source population of the modern Bantu-speaking peoples.


title: African Pygmies

text: While Southern African hunter-gatherers are generally recognized as being the earliest divergent modern human group, having diverged from other groups around 250,000 BP - 200,000 BP, as a result of the sampling of the ancient Shum Laka foragers, Central African hunter-gatherers are shown to have likely diverged at a similar time, if not even earlier.


title: African Pygmies

text: Various hypotheses have been proposed to explain the short stature of African pygmies. Becker, et al., suggest African pygmyism may have evolved as an adaptation to the significantly lower average levels of ultraviolet light available beneath the canopy of rainforest environments. In similar hypothetical scenarios, because of reduced access to sunlight, a comparatively smaller amount of anatomically formulated vitamin D is produced, resulting in restricted dietary calcium uptake, and subsequently restricted bone growth and maintenance, resulting in an overall population average skeletal mass near the lowest periphery of the spectrum among anatomically modern humans.


title: African Pygmies

text: Other proposed explanations include the potentially lesser availability of protein-rich food sources in rainforest environments, the often reduced soil-calcium levels in rainforest environments, the caloric expenditure required to traverse rainforest terrain, insular dwarfism as an adaptation to equatorial and tropical heat and humidity, and pygmyism as an adaptation associated with rapid reproductive maturation under conditions of early mortality.


title: African Pygmies

text: Additional evidence suggests that, when compared to other Sub-Saharan African populations, African pygmy populations display unusually low levels of expression of the genes encoding for human growth hormone and its receptor associated with low serum levels of insulin-like growth factor-1 and short stature.


title: African Pygmies

text: A study by Price, et al., provides insight into the role genetics plays in the reduced stature of African pygmies:


title: African Pygmies

text: The African Pygmies are particularly known for their vocal music, usually characterized by dense contrapuntal improvisation. Simha Arom says that the level of polyphonic complexity of Pygmy music was reached in Europe in the 14th century, yet Pygmy culture is unwritten and ancient, some Pygmy groups being the first known cultures in some areas of Africa. Music permeates daily life, with songs for entertainment, special events, and communal activities. The Pygmie people are known to use a instrument called the n'dehou which is a bamboo flute. The n'dehou only produces a single sound, however, the person using this instrument would wield their breath and inhale making high-pitched sounds; this allows the individual to make polyrhythmic music using a one-note instrument. Along with the different sounds of the breath and the n'dehou, The musician may also stomp their feet or tap on their chest to add even more dimension and complexity to the music. The n'dehou was popularized by Francis Bebey, a Cameroonian musical artist.


title: African Pygmies

text: Polyphonic music is found among the Aka–Baka and the Mbuti, but not among the Gyele (Kola) or the various groups of Twa.


title: African Pygmies

text: In the Republic of Congo, where Pygmies are estimated to make up between 1.2% and 10% of the population, many Pygmies live as slaves to Bantu masters. The nation is deeply stratified between these two major ethnic groups. The Pygmy slaves belong from birth to their Bantu masters in a relationship that the Bantus call a time-honored tradition. Even though the Pygmies are responsible for much of the hunting, fishing and manual labor in jungle villages, Pygmies and Bantus alike say Pygmies are often paid at the master's whim; in cigarettes, used clothing, or even nothing at all. As a result of pressure from UNICEF and human-rights activists, a law that would grant special protections to the Pygmy people is awaiting a vote by the Congo parliament.


title: African Pygmies

text: In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the Ituri Conflict, Ugandan backed rebel groups were accused by the UN of enslaving Mbutis to prospect for minerals and forage for forest food, with those returning empty handed being killed and eaten.


title: African Pygmies

text: In 2003, Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of Mbuti pygmies, told the UN's Indigenous People's Forum that during the Congo Civil War, his people were hunted down and eaten as though they were game animals. In neighboring North Kivu province there has been cannibalism by a death squad known as "Les Effaceurs" ("the erasers") who wanted to clear the land of people to open it up for mineral exploitation. Both sides of the war regarded them as "subhuman" and some say their flesh can confer magical powers.


title: African Pygmies

text: Makelo asked the UN Security Council to recognize cannibalism as a crime against humanity and an act of genocide. According to Minority Rights Group International there is extensive evidence of mass killings, cannibalism and rape of Pygmies and they have urged the International Criminal Court to investigate a campaign of extermination against pygmies. Although they have been targeted by virtually all the armed groups, much of the violence against Pygmies is attributed to the rebel group, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo, which is part of the transitional government and still controls much of the north, and their allies.


title: African Pygmies

text: In Northern Katanga Province starting in 2013, the Pygmy Batwa people, whom the Luba people often exploit and allegedly enslave, rose up into militias, such as the "Perci" militia, and attacked Luba villages. A Luba militia known as "Elements" attacked back, notably killing at least 30 people in the "Vumilia 1" displaced people camp in April 2015. Since the start of the conflict, hundreds have been killed and tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes. The weapons used in the conflict are often arrows and axes, rather than guns.


title: African Pygmies

text: Ota Benga was a teenage pygmy boy from the Congo. Ota was purchased from slave traders and was brought to the United states to be exhibited for his different looks. Ota had sharpened teeth as a result of the traditions of his tribe and he was also short in stature. In 1906, Ota was brought to the Bronx Zoo and exhibited in the monkey house. Ota was given a bow and arrow for protection from the animals. After the exhibit was closed, Ota was not able to return home to the Congo and he lived out the rest of his life in Virginia until he became depressed and ended his life at the age of 33 years old.


title: African Pygmies

text: Historically, the Pygmy have always been viewed as inferior by both the village dwelling Bantu tribes and colonial authorities. This has translated into systematic discrimination. One early example was the capture of Pygmy children under the auspices of the Belgian colonial authorities, who exported Pygmy children to zoos throughout Europe, including the world's fair in the United States in 1907.


title: African Pygmies

text: Pygmies are often evicted from their land and given the lowest paying jobs. At a state level, Pygmies are not considered citizens by most African states and are refused identity cards, deeds to land, health care and education access.


title: African Pygmies

text: There are roughly 500,000 Pygmies remaining in the rainforest of Central Africa. This population is rapidly decreasing as poverty, intermarriage with Bantu peoples, Westernization, and deforestation gradually destroy their way of life and culture.


title: African Pygmies

text: The greatest environmental problem the Pygmies face is the loss of their traditional homeland, the tropical forests of Central Africa. In countries such as Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo this is due to deforestation and the desire of several governments in Central Africa to evict the Pygmies from their forest habitat in order to profit from the sale of hardwood and the resettlement of farmers onto the cleared land. In some cases, as in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this conflict is violent. Certain groups, such as the Hutus of the Interahamwe, wish to eliminate the Pygmy and take the resources of the forest as a military conquest, using the resources of the forest for military as well as economic advancement. Since the Pygmies rely on the forest for their physical as well as cultural survival, as these forests disappear, so do the Pygmy.


title: African Pygmies

text: Along with Raja Sheshadri, the fPcN-Global.org website conducted research on the Pygmies. The human rights organization states that, as the forest has receded under logging activities, its original inhabitants have been pushed into populated areas to join the formal economy, working as casual laborers or on commercial farms and being exposed to new diseases. This shift has brought them into closer contact with neighboring ethnic communities whose HIV levels are generally higher. This has led to the spread of HIV into the pygmy group.


title: African Pygmies

text: Since poverty has become very prevalent in Pygmy communities, sexual exploitation of indigenous women has become a common practice. Commercial sex has been bolstered by logging, which often places large groups of male laborers in camps which are set up in close contact with the Pygmy communities.


title: African Pygmies

text: Human rights groups have also reported widespread sexual abuse of indigenous women in the conflict-ridden eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Despite these risks, Pygmy populations generally have poor access to health services and information about HIV. One British medical journal, "The Lancet", published a review showing that Pygmy populations often had less access to health care than neighboring communities. According to the report, even where health care facilities exist, many Pygmies do not use them because they cannot pay for consultations and medicines, they do not have the documents and identity cards needed to travel or obtain hospital treatment, and they are subjected to humiliating and discriminatory treatment.


title: African Pygmies

text: Studies in Cameroon and the DRC in the 1980s and 1990s showed a lower prevalence of HIV in Pygmy populations than among neighboring groups, but recent increases have been recorded. One study found that the HIV prevalence among the Baka Pygmies in eastern Cameroon rose from 0.7 percent in 1993 to 4 percent in 2003.


title: African Pygmies

text: A consortium of researchers conducted a case study on the Pygmies of Africa and concluded that deforestation has greatly affected their everyday lives. Pygmy culture is threatened today by the forces of political and economic change.


title: Future discography

text: The discography of American rapper Future consists of nine studio albums, one compilation album, one collaborative album, 24 mixtapes, two extended plays, and 117 singles (including 61 as a featured artist).


title: Future discography

text: On October 19, 2018, Future released a collaborative mixtape with Juice Wrld, "Wrld on Drugs". The album debuted and peaked at number two on the "Billboard" 200. It produced the top-40 single, "Fine China", which debuted and peaked at number 26 on the Hot 100.


title: Future discography

text: On January 18, 2019, Future released his seventh studio album, "The Wizrd". The album debuted and peaked atop the "Billboard" 200. On June 7, 2019, Future released his debut extended play, "Save Me". The EP debuted and peaked at number five on the "Billboard" 200.


title: Future discography

text: On May 15, 2020, Future released his eighth studio album, "High Off Life". The album debuted and peaked atop the "Billboard" 200. It produced the top-10 single, "Life Is Good", which features Drake and reached number two on the "Billboard" Hot 100. It also produced the top-40 single, "Trillionaire", which features YoungBoy Never Broke Again and debuted and peaked at number 34 on the Hot 100. On November 13, 2020, Future released a collaborative album with Lil Uzi Vert, "Pluto x Baby Pluto". The album debuted and peaked at number two on the "Billboard" 200. In 2021, Future was featured alongside Young Thug on Drake's single, "Way 2 Sexy", which became his first number-one single. That same year, he released a collaboration with Gunna, "Too Easy", which reached number 16 on the Hot 100.


title: Future discography

text: On April 29, 2022, Future released his ninth studio album, "I Never Liked You". The album debuted and peaked atop the "Billboard" 200. It produced his second number-one single, "Wait for U", which features Drake and Tems, and also became his second song to debut at the top of the Hot 100 and his second collaboration with Drake to reach the top, following "Way 2 Sexy" in 2021. The number-one debuts of both the album and "Wait for U" made Future the seventh artist to simultaneously debut a song and album at the top of their respective charts. The album also produced the top-20 singles, "Love You Better" (charted at number 12), "Keep It Burnin", which features Kanye West (charted at number 15), and the top-40 single, "Worst Day" (charted at number 34).


title: Dybbuk box

text: The Dybbuk box, or Dibbuk box (), is a wine-cabinet claimed to be haunted by a "dybbuk", a concept from Jewish mythology. The box gained notoriety when it was auctioned off on eBay by owner Kevin Mannis, who created a story featuring Jewish Holocaust survivors and paranormal claims as part of his eBay item description. Mannis' story was the inspiration for the 2012 horror film "The Possession".


title: Dybbuk box

text: In 2003, writer and furniture refinishing business owner Kevin Mannis purchased the cabinet from the yard sale of a local attorney in Portland, Oregon and began developing a backstory. According to Mannis, "The carving in the back of it is my carving. The stone that was in the box is something that is a signature creation of mine also. Make no mistake, I conceived of the Dybbuk Box – the name, the term, the idea – and wrote this creative story around it to post on eBay." Mannis' auction description included a story claiming the cabinet was previously owned by a survivor of the Holocaust in Poland who said it contained the malicious spirit of a dybbuk, and that the box had paranormal powers and was responsible for his bad luck and nightmares. Subsequent owners retold Mannis' story when reselling the item and amplified it with their own claims of "strange phenomena".


title: Dybbuk box

text: One owner, Jason Haxton, Director of the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, Missouri, launched a website that consolidated claims about the cabinet called "dibbukbox.com" that reportedly received hundreds of thousands of hits and created what has been described as an "internet legend". In 2004, Haxton sold the rights to the story to a Hollywood production company. The subsequent film "The Possession", produced by Sam Raimi, was released in 2012. Haxton later gave the cabinet to "Ghost Adventures" star Zak Bagans to display in his museum. In 2018, fans of rapper Post Malone claimed his spate of bad luck was caused by his contact with the cabinet.


title: Dybbuk box

text: According to author Allan S. Mott, "we embrace such stories because they tap into our own fears and prejudices". Mott said the story "taps into our belief that out in the world there is a supernatural evil that will attack anyone regardless of how good they are. They allow people to make some sense of a chaotic world.” Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand noted that the story features "a supernatural angle" and "first-person narrative"; a variation on typical urban legends. Cal State anthropology professor and folklore specialist Elliott Oring criticized claims about the cabinet, saying, “Go through [the story and] you will see areas that seem to require suspending critical functions". Arizona minister and author Rev. Jim Willis opined that the story was most likely "a very elaborate hoax,” but that his opinion "takes all the fun away” from the popular urban legend.


title: Dybbuk box

text: Chris French, head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths' College, said the box's owners were "already primed to be looking out for bad stuff. If you believe you have been cursed, then inevitably you explain the bad stuff that happens in terms of what you perceive to be the cause. Put it like this: I would be happy to own this object."


title: Dybbuk box

text: In his Closer Look column in "Skeptical Inquirer" online, in January 2019 investigator Kenny Biddle reviewed the Dibbuk Box he found on display in Zak Bagans Haunted Museum in Las Vegas. His conclusion, following careful investigation of the cabinet's construction and history, was "Despite what various owners would have us think, the infamous dibbuk Box is not a [haunted] Jewish wine-cabinet from Spain but instead a minibar from New York." Biddle also wrote that he believes Mannis created the dybbuk box story "from whole cloth", and that "This elaborate story that started the entire legend was not an account of real supernatural events, but instead a fictional backstory he came up with to sell an ordinary and incomplete mini bar." Biddle's claim of the box and its legend being fraudulent is backed up by a screen capture of a Facebook post made by the originator of the legend, Kevin Mannis, to the "Haunt ME" page. The post, dated October 24, 2015, states:


title: Dybbuk box

text: In 2021, Mannis admitted to writer Charles Moss that the box was his own creation: "I am a creative writer. The Dybbuk Box is a story that I created. And the Dybbuk Box story has done exactly what I intended it to do when I posted it 20 years ago... Which is to become an interactive horror story in real-time”, and that he "added new elements to the Dybbuk Box story over the years to help evolve it, keep it relevant and interesting".


title: Andrew Santino

text: Andrew W. Santino (born October 16, 1983) is an American stand-up comedian, actor and podcaster known for television series and films such as "Sin City Saints", "The Disaster Artist", "Mixology", "I'm Dying Up Here" and "Dave".


title: Andrew Santino

text: Santino grew up in River North, Chicago. Raised by a single mother, he lived in Section 8 housing. He went to high school at Naperville North High School in Naperville, Illinois. He also attended Arizona State University.


title: Andrew Santino

text: On "I'm Dying Up Here", he played Bill Hobbs, a talented, popular comedian who sabotages himself with a bitter attitude and negative outlook on life. Currently he stars in the series "Dave", which tells the fictionalized story of rapper Lil Dicky. Santino portrays Dave's roommate and manager. In 2017, he released 'Home Field Advantage' a Showtime special. He also played a recurring character in the NBC drama "This Is Us", a producer of the fictional sitcom "The Manny".


title: Andrew Santino

text: Santino produces and hosts a podcast, "Whiskey Ginger", where he interviews friends in the entertainment industry as they reflect on their past while sipping whiskey. In 2020, Santino began co-hosting the "Bad Friends" podcast with Bobby Lee.


title: 28 Days (film)

text: 28 Days is a 2000 American comedy-drama film directed by Betty Thomas and written by Susannah Grant. Sandra Bullock stars as Gwen Cummings, a newspaper columnist obliged to enter rehabilitation for alcoholism. The film costars Viggo Mortensen, Dominic West, Elizabeth Perkins, Azura Skye, Steve Buscemi, and Diane Ladd.


title: 28 Days (film)

text: Gwen Cummings is an alcoholic who spends her nights in a drunken haze with her boyfriend, Jasper. They arrive late and disheveled to her sister Lily's wedding, where Gwen knocks over the wedding cake and drunkenly steals a limousine, crashing into a house. Given a choice between jail time or 28 days in a rehab center, she chooses rehab.


title: 28 Days (film)

text: Gwen is introduced to a variety of patients: hypersexual cocaine addict Oliver, former doctor Daniel, mother of two Roshanda, older addict Bobbi Jean, Dutch immigrant Gerhardt, and Gwen’s roommate Andrea, a teenage heroin addict. Angry and resistant, Gwen refuses to take part in treatment or admit she is an alcoholic, but struggles with flashbacks of her mother, an addict who died of an overdose when Gwen and Lily were children.


title: 28 Days (film)

text: On visiting day, Jasper slips Gwen a bottle of painkillers and they sneak off for an inebriated day together. Cornell, the facility’s director and a recovering addict himself, prepares to kick Gwen out to serve her jail sentence, but she still denies that she has a problem. Storming back to her room, she takes one of her smuggled pills, but spits it out and tosses the bottle out of her third-story window. After spending the day suffering withdrawal symptoms alone, she climbs out of the window to retrieve the pills. She falls, severely spraining her ankle, and is rescued by Eddie, a new patient.


title: 28 Days (film)

text: Finally convinced that she has a problem, Gwen asks Cornell for another chance and begins to participate in the recovery process. Jasper visits and proposes to Gwen with champagne, which she throws in the lake. Returning to her room, she stops Andrea from cutting herself, and grows closer to her and their fellow addicts, who warn that Jasper does not take her sobriety seriously. Gwen learns that Eddie is a professional baseball player, and they share an impulsive kiss but form a friendship instead. Discovering that he is a fan of "Santa Cruz", Andrea’s favorite soap opera, Gwen and the group begin watching it together.


title: 28 Days (film)

text: Lily attends a group therapy session, revealing that a drunken Gwen ruined her wedding with a humiliating speech, and leaves in disgust when Gwen dismisses Lily’s feelings. Andrea will soon be released, and Gwen arranges a farewell skit for the group to perform. Jasper shows up unannounced, finding Gwen with Eddie; picking a fight, he insults them both and Eddie punches him, straining his friendship with Gwen. She discovers Andrea dead in their bathroom from an overdose, and commits herself to restoring her relationship with her sister. They reconcile and Gwen leaves treatment, but not before Eddie warns her that Jasper is dangerous to her sobriety.


title: 28 Days (film)

text: Jasper offers to make amends, but Gwen realizes he is unwilling to change to support her recovery. Leaving him and their old party friends at a bar, she encounters a horse on the street and is able to lift its hoof, an activity she struggled with in rehab. She breaks up with Jasper, and is later reunited with a sober Gerhardt at a floral shop. In a post-credits scene, Eddie recognizes an actor from "Santa Cruz" who arrives as a new patient.


title: 28 Days (film)

text: The film was shot in North Carolina. The YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly in Black Mountain, North Carolina, served as the Serenity Glen rehabilitation center.


title: 28 Days (film)

text: The film opened at number two at the United States box office making $10,310,672 in its opening weekend in 2,523 screens, behind "Rules of Engagement", which was on its second consecutive week at the top spot. The film went on to make $37,035,515 in the U.S. The film made a total of $25,163,430 internationally, bringing its worldwide total to $62,198,945.


title: 28 Days (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 33% approval rating based on 86 reviews with an average rating of 4.9/10. The website's consensus states: "Even though "28 Days" is tackling a difficult subject, it comes off light and superficial, and maybe even a little preachy." On Metacritic it has a score of 46% based on reviews from 26 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B+ " on scale of A to F.


title: 28 Days (film)

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" wrote: "Bullock brings a kind of ground-level vulnerability to "28 Days" that doesn't make her into a victim but simply into one more suitable case for treatment."


title: 28 Days (film)

text: Stephen Holden of "The New York Times" said it "begins with such a flurry of promise that it comes as a sharp disappointment when this drug-rehab comedy skids out of control."


title: 28 Days (film)

text: Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" called it "Too glib too often to make much of an impression any way you look at it."


title: 28 Days (film)

text: Singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, who plays one of the center's patients, contributed four songs to the soundtrack.


title: Ma Huateng

text: Ma Huateng (, born on October 29, 1971), also known as Pony Ma, is a Chinese billionaire business magnate and business oligarch. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Tencent, one of the most valuable companies in Asia, one of the largest internet and technology companies, and one of the biggest investment, gaming and entertainment conglomerates in the world. The company develops China's biggest mobile instant messaging service, WeChat, and its subsidiaries provide media, entertainment, payment systems, smartphones, internet-related services, value-added services and online advertising services, both in China and globally.


title: Ma Huateng

text: In 2007, 2014, and 2018, "Time" magazine named him one of the world's most influential people, while in 2015, "Forbes" credited him as one of the world's most powerful people. In 2017, "Fortune" ranked him as among the top businessmen of the year. In 2018, he was named one of the "Most Powerful People In The World" by the "CEOWORLD" magazine. Ma was a deputy to the Shenzhen Municipal People's Congress and a delegate in the 12th National People's Congress.


title: Ma Huateng

text: Being one of "Fortune world's greatest leaders", Ma is known for his low profile personality as compared to fellow Chinese businessman and Alibaba founder Jack Ma's outgoing personality. Ma has been compared to American investor Warren Buffett for their similar investment approaches, and often described as an "aggressive acquisitor".


title: Ma Huateng

text: Ma Huateng ranks fourth in the list of Forbes's China's 100 Richest, with a net worth of US$23.4 billion in December 2022. In November 2017, his net worth briefly surpassed that of Larry Page and Sergey Brin (individually) ranking him the ninth richest man in the world, and the first citizen from China to enter "Forbes"' top 10 richest list, though the net worth of Page and of Brin have each since eclipsed that of Ma.


title: Ma Huateng

text: Ma was born in Chaoyang, Shantou, Guangdong. When his father, Ma Chenshu (), got a job as a port manager in Shenzhen, the young Ma accompanied him. He received a Bachelor of Science in computer and applied engineering from Shenzhen University in 1993.


title: Ma Huateng

text: Ma's first job was with China Motion Telecom Development, a supplier of telecommunications services and products, where he was in charge of developing software for pagers. He reportedly earned $176 per month. He also worked for Shenzhen Runxun Communications Co. Ltd. () in the research and development department for Internet calling services.


title: Ma Huateng

text: Along with four other classmates, Ma Huateng went on to co-found Tencent in 1998. The company's first product came after Ma participated in a presentation for ICQ, the world's first Internet instant messaging service, founded in 1996 by an Israeli company. Inspired by the idea, Ma and his team launched in February 1999 a similar software, with a Chinese interface and a slightly different name – OICQ (or, Open ICQ). The product quickly became popular and garnered more than a million registered users by the end of 1999, making it one of the largest such services in China.


title: Ma Huateng

text: Talking about the founding of Tencent, he told "China Daily" in a 2009 interview that "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants", paraphrasing a quote attributed to Isaac Newton and referencing the similarities between ICQ and OICQ. "We knew our product had a future, but at that time we just couldn't afford it," Ma remembered. In order to solve the problem, Ma asked for bank loans and even talked about selling the company.


title: Ma Huateng

text: Since Tencent's prized service OICQ was offered free of charge, the company looked to venture capitalists to finance its growing operational costs. In 2000, Ma turned to US investment firm IDC and Hong Kong's telecom carrier Pacific Century CyberWorks (PCCW) who bought 40 percent of Tencent's shares for US$2.2 million. With the pager market declining, Ma improved the messaging platform by allowing QQ users to send messages to mobile handsets. Afterwards, 80 percent of the company's revenue came from deals struck with telecom operators who agreed to share message fees.


title: Ma Huateng

text: After AOL (America Online) bought ICQ in 1998, the company filed an arbitration against Tencent with the National Arbitration Forum in the United States, claiming that OICQ's domain names OICQ.com and OICQ.net were in violation of ICQ's trademark. Tencent lost the case and had to relinquish the domain names. In December 2000, Ma changed the name of the software to QQ (with "Q" and "QQ" used to stand for the word "cute").


title: Ma Huateng

text: After the AOL case, Ma decided to expand the business portfolio of Tencent. In 2003, Tencent released its own portal (QQ.com) and made forays into the online games market. By 2004, Tencent became the largest Chinese instant messaging service (holding 74 percent of the market), prompting Ma to list the company on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. After the company raised $200 million in June's IPO, Ma quickly became one of the richest people in China's telecom industry.


title: Ma Huateng

text: In 2004, Tencent launched an online gaming platform and started selling virtual goods to support the games published on that platform (weapons, gaming power), as well as emoticons and ringtones.


title: Ma Huateng

text: At Ma's behest, Tencent launched in 2005 the C2C platform Paipai.com (), a direct competitor to e-commerce giant Alibaba.


title: Ma Huateng

text: Mimicking Microsoft, Ma created two competing teams of engineers in 2010 and charged them with creating a new product. After two months, one team presented an app for text messaging and group chat – WeChat – which launched in January 2011. , WeChat (, Weixin), is the largest instant messaging platform in the world, used by 48 percent of Internet users in the Asia-Pacific region.


title: Ma Huateng

text: Other diverse services provided by Tencent include web portals, e-commerce, and multiplayer online games. Online games such as Legend of Yulong and Legend of Xuanyuan boosted revenue by more than half, up to US$5.1 billion, with a US$1.5 billion profit margin.


title: Ma Huateng

text: In December 2015, Ma announced that Tencent would build an "internet hospital" set up in Wuzhen that will provide long-distance diagnoses and medicine delivery.


title: Ma Huateng

text: In 2016, Ma transferred US$2.3 billion worth of his personal Tencent shares to his charitable foundation, the Ma Huateng Global Foundation (). However "Forbes" has not decreased his net worth as the shares are still listed under his name.


title: Ma Huateng

text: According to the official Tencent website, Ma is a deputy to the 5th Shenzhen Municipal People's Congress and served in the 12th National People's Congress.


title: Ma Huateng

text: Speaking of censorship at a tech conference in Singapore, Ma was quoted as saying "In terms of information security management, online companies from any country must abide by a defined set of criteria, and act responsibly. Otherwise it might lead to hearsay, libel and argument among citizens - not to mention between countries. That's why the need for online management is increasingly urgent."


title: Ma Huateng

text: Ma uses the nickname Pony, derived from the English translation of his family name Ma (), which means "horse." Ma Huateng seldom appears in the media and is known for his secretive lifestyle.


title: Ma Huateng

text: Ma Huateng's wealth comes from the 9.7 percent stake in Tencent Holdings. He reportedly owns property in Hong Kong and art pieces worth US$150 million. He owns a redeveloped palatial residence of in Hong Kong.


title: Jerry Siegel

text: Jerome Siegel ( ; October 17, 1914 – January 28, 1996) was an American comic book writer. He is the co-creator of Superman, in collaboration with his friend Joe Shuster. Siegel and Shuster were inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1993. Siegel also used pseudonyms including Joe Carter and Jerry Ess.


title: Jerry Siegel

text: Jerry Siegel was born on October 17, 1914, in Cleveland, Ohio, to a Jewish family. His parents were both Jewish immigrants who arrived in New York in 1900, having fled anti-Semitism in their native Lithuania. His father was born Mikhel Iankel Segalovich and his mother was born Sora Meita Khaikels, but they changed their names to Michael and Sarah Siegel after moving to America. Jerry was the last of six children (Isabel, Leo, Minerva, Roslyn, and Harry). His father was a tailor and owned a clothing store. On June 2, 1932, Jerry's father was assaulted in his store by a shoplifter and suffered a fatal heart attack. Jerry's mother died of a heart attack on August 17, 1941.


title: Jerry Siegel

text: Siegel's family moved to the Jewish neighborhood of Glenville in 1928. He attended Glenville High School in Cleveland, Ohio. At about age 16, while at Glenville, he befriended Joe Shuster. Siegel described his friendship with the similarly shy and bespectacled Shuster: "When Joe and I first met, it was like the right chemicals coming together." They shared a love of science fiction, adventure fiction, and movies.