title: Cholecystitis

text: For most people with acute cholecystitis, the treatment of choice is surgical removal of the gallbladder, laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Laparoscopic cholecystectomy is performed using several small incisions located at various points across the abdomen. Several studies have demonstrated the superiority of laparoscopic cholecystectomy when compared to open cholecystectomy (using a large incision in the right upper abdomen under the rib cage). People undergoing laparoscopic surgery report less incisional pain postoperatively as well as having fewer long-term complications and less disability following the surgery. Additionally, laparoscopic surgery is associated with a lower rate of surgical site infection.


title: Cholecystitis

text: During the days prior to laparoscopic surgery, studies showed that outcomes were better following early removal of the gallbladder, preferably within the first week. Early laparoscopic cholecystectomy (within 7 days of visiting a doctor with symptoms) as compared to delayed treatment (more than 6 weeks) may result in shorter hospital stays and a decreased risk of requiring an emergency procedure. There is no difference in terms of negative outcomes including bile duct injury or conversion to open cholecystectomy. For early cholecystectomy, the most common reason for conversion to open surgery is inflammation that hides Calot's triangle. For delayed surgery, the most common reason was fibrotic adhesions.


title: Cholecystitis

text: Supportive measures may be instituted prior to surgery. These measures include fluid resuscitation. Intravenous opioids can be used for pain control.


title: Cholecystitis

text: Antibiotics are often not needed. If used they should target enteric organisms (e.g. Enterobacteriaceae), such as "E. coli" and "Bacteroides". This may consist of a broad spectrum antibiotic; such as piperacillin-tazobactam, ampicillin-sulbactam, ticarcillin-clavulanate (Timentin), a third generation cephalosporin (e.g.ceftriaxone) or a quinolone antibiotic (such as ciprofloxacin) and anaerobic bacteria coverage, such as metronidazole. For penicillin allergic people, aztreonam or a quinolone with metronidazole may be used.


title: Cholecystitis

text: In cases of severe inflammation, shock, or if the person has higher risk for general anesthesia (required for cholecystectomy), an interventional radiologist may insert a percutaneous drainage catheter into the gallbladder (percutaneous cholecystostomy tube) and treat the person with antibiotics until the acute inflammation resolves. A cholecystectomy may then be warranted if the person's condition improves.


title: Cholecystitis

text: Homeopathic approaches to treating cholecystitis have not been validated by evidence and should not be used in place of surgery.


title: Cholecystitis

text: Cholecystitis accounts for 3–10% of cases of abdominal pain worldwide. Cholecystitis caused an estimated 651,829 emergency department visits and 389,180 hospital admissions in the US in 2012. The 2012 US mortality rate was 0.7 per 100,000 people. The frequency of cholecystitis is highest in people age 50–69 years old.


title: Holy Diver

text: Holy Diver is the debut studio album by the American heavy metal band Dio, released in 1983. Vocalist Ronnie James Dio had just finished his first tenure in Black Sabbath, whose drummer, Vinny Appice, he took with him to put together his own band. The roster was completed by his former bandmate from Rainbow, Jimmy Bain, on bass and by the young guitarist Vivian Campbell, coming from the new wave of British heavy metal band Sweet Savage. The album was acclaimed by the music press and is the band's most successful effort.


title: Holy Diver

text: Released on May 25, 1983, the album has been hailed by critics as Dio's best work and a classic staple in the heavy metal genre.


title: Holy Diver

text: In the UK it attained Silver certification (60,000 units sold) by the British Phonographic Industry, achieving this in January 1986, at the same time as "The Last in Line".


title: Holy Diver

text: The original vinyl release had a photomontage LP-liner, with images from both Rainbow and Black Sabbath days.


title: Holy Diver

text: The album was remastered and re-released by Rock Candy Records in 2005. The only notable addition to the original album is an audio interview with Ronnie James Dio. Tracks 10–19 on the 2005 edition are Dio's answers to various questions about the album. The questions are not posed during the interview itself, but can be found inside the CD's booklet instead. The album, along with "The Last in Line" and "Sacred Heart", were released in a new two-CD deluxe edition on March 19, 2012 through Universal for worldwide distribution outside the U.S.


title: Holy Diver

text: "Caught in the Middle" shares the main guitar riff with Campbell's previous band Sweet Savage's song "Straight Through the Heart" (1983), whose title was used for another song in this album.


title: Holy Diver

text: The album art is illustrated by Randy Berrett. It features the band's mascot Murray, a demonic creature, pulling or whipping a snapped metal chain and a man wearing a Catholic priest's attire flailing and splashing around in a body of water, wrapped up and locked in the other end of the broken chain. Dio was quick to argue that appearances are misleading, that it could just as easily be a priest killing a devil, wanting people not to "judge a book by its cover".


title: Holy Diver

text: Around the time of making the album, a rise of heroic adventure elements in popular culture (such as J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings books and role-playing games Dungeons & Dragons) were having influence. "Much of heavy metal took place on similar turf, a realm of dark towers and impenetrable wilderness populated by battles and adversity." When Ronnie James Dio had been with Black Sabbath, "He reverently refurbished and reinvented the band's stately doom with grandiose concepts...Dio found a fertile fantasy framework for the big Sabbath themes of madness and desolation". Dio, who had read Sir Walter Scott, Arthurian tales, and science fiction growing up, had previously used fantasy lyrics in his early 1970s band Elf. Dio explained to an interviewer that influenced by his youthful reading, "When I became a songwriter, I thought what better thing to do than do what no one else is doing...to tell fantasy tales. Smartest thing I ever did."


title: Holy Diver

text: AllMusic reviewer Eduardo Rivadavia praises the album, stating that "aside from Ronnie's unquestionably stellar songwriting, "Holy Diver"s stunning quality and consistency owed much to his carefully chosen bandmates, including powerhouse drummer and fellow [Black] Sabbath survivor Vinny Appice, veteran bassist Jimmy Bain, and a phenomenal find in young Irish guitarist Vivian Campbell, whose tastefully pyrotechnic leads helped make this the definitive Dio lineup. "Holy Diver" remains the undisputed highlight of Dio's career...and, indeed, one of the finest pure heavy metal albums of the 1980s." Canadian reviewer Martin Popoff describes the album as "quintessential traditional metal", with Ronnie James Dio "almost single-handedly reinventing gothic hard rock for the '80s, incorporating strong melodic hooks and more than the genre's usual share of velvety, classical-based pyrotechnics." "Kerrang!" gave the album a positive review in 1983 and "Holy Diver" ended up at no. 5 in the British magazine's End of Year list of best releases. Today, "Kerrang!" still considers it a "perfect melodic metal album" and an "essential purchase".


title: Holy Diver

text: The rock historian Ian Christe relates that for the post-Sabbath solo career "Dio simplified his stories substantially for a younger heavy metal audience. The 1983 debut "Holy Diver", by his band Dio, reduced lush moral landscapes to simple good-versus-evil conflicts, using the lyrical duality of 'Rainbow in the Dark' and 'Holy Diver' to raise questions about deceit and hypocrisy in romance and religion. In the sharp contrasts of Dio's imagery, there was always a built-in contradiction that fed adolescent revolt: a black side to every white light, and a hidden secret behind every loud proclamation of truth. In a similar way, Dio's music balanced torrents of rage with brief acoustic interludes."


title: Holy Diver

text: On IGN's list of "Top 25 Metal Albums", "Holy Diver" is at number 8, and this statement followed, "In all his bands, in all his roles, in all his musical vagabond choices, Ronnie James Dio has been fortunate enough to be associated with some of heavy metal's best -- Sabbath, Rainbow, and his own band Dio. To best represent his tenure in the genre, one must look no farther than "Holy Diver". His first album with his new band was also his best. It is one of metal's best albums, and it spawned two of the greatest metal songs of the '80s: 'Holy Diver' and 'Rainbow in the Dark'. Featuring the underrated Vivian Campbell on guitar, this album showed that Dio could do it on his own." In 2017, it was ranked 16th on "Rolling Stone" list of "100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time".


title: Sophie von Haselberg

text: Sophie Frederica Alohilani von Haselberg (born November 14, 1986) is an American actress, best known for co-starring in the Woody Allen film "Irrational Man".


title: Sophie von Haselberg

text: was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of actress and singer Bette Midler and artist Martin von Haselberg. Her father is of German descent and her mother is of Jewish-American descent. She attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York City. She then studied sociology and East Asian studies at Yale University, worked at an ad agency in China and returned to Yale to study acting at the drama school in 2011.


title: Sophie von Haselberg

text: von Haselberg's NYC theatre debut was in October 2014 at The Vineyard in a play entitled "Billy and Ray".


title: Sophie von Haselberg

text: In 2015, von Haselberg had a role in the Woody Allen film "Irrational Man". Allen stated, "She's wonderful. She came in with a lot of other women that read and she's the spitting image of her [mother] and she was just good... I thought she was so good that I combined her part. There was another part too and when I gave her the role, then I dropped the other character out of the movie and worked it so that she could have a double role, so could appear more frequently 'cause she was impressive… She projects intelligence because she's intelligent."


title: Sophie von Haselberg

text: In 2015, von Haselberg was cast in a pilot for MTV starring Nicole Byer. In October 2015, she started shooting "The Wizard of Lies" for HBO. In 2017, she filmed the role of Joyce in the historical drama film "Ask for Jane", released the following year.


title: Sophie von Haselberg

text: In 2018, she played Linda Elwell in FX's "". She appeared in season 2, episode 1 and the Season Finale of FX's "Pose" as ACT UP activist Syd.


title: Sophie von Haselberg

text: On June 6, 2020, von Haselberg married Harry J. N. Guinness in Millbrook, New York, at the home of her parents.


title: Thread (computing)

text: In computer science, a thread of execution is the smallest sequence of programmed instructions that can be managed independently by a scheduler, which is typically a part of the operating system. The implementation of threads and processes differs between operating systems, but in most cases a thread is a component of a process. The multiple threads of a given process may be executed concurrently (via multithreading capabilities), sharing resources such as memory, while different processes do not share these resources. In particular, the threads of a process share its executable code and the values of its dynamically allocated variables and non-thread-local global variables at any given time.


title: Thread (computing)

text: Threads made an early appearance under the name of "tasks" in OS/360 Multiprogramming with a Variable Number of Tasks (MVT) in 1967. Saltzer (1966) credits Victor A. Vyssotsky with the term "thread".


title: Thread (computing)

text: The use of threads in software applications became more common in the early 2000s as CPUs began to utilize multiple cores. Applications wishing to take advantage of multiple cores for performance advantages were required to employ concurrency to utilize the multiple cores.


title: Thread (computing)

text: Scheduling can be done at the kernel level or user level, and multitasking can be done preemptively or cooperatively. This yields a variety of related concepts.


title: Thread (computing)

text: At the kernel level, a "process" contains one or more "kernel threads", which share the process's resources, such as memory and file handles – a process is a unit of resources, while a thread is a unit of scheduling and execution. Kernel scheduling is typically uniformly done preemptively or, less commonly, cooperatively. At the user level a process such as a runtime system can itself schedule multiple threads of execution. If these do not share data, as in Erlang, they are usually analogously called processes, while if they share data they are usually called "(user) threads", particularly if preemptively scheduled. Cooperatively scheduled user threads are known as "fibers"; different processes may schedule user threads differently. User threads may be executed by kernel threads in various ways (one-to-one, many-to-one, many-to-many). The term "light-weight process" variously refers to user threads or to kernel mechanisms for scheduling user threads onto kernel threads.


title: Thread (computing)

text: A "process" is a "heavyweight" unit of kernel scheduling, as creating, destroying, and switching processes is relatively expensive. Processes own resources allocated by the operating system. Resources include memory (for both code and data), file handles, sockets, device handles, windows, and a process control block. Processes are "isolated" by process isolation, and do not share address spaces or file resources except through explicit methods such as inheriting file handles or shared memory segments, or mapping the same file in a shared way – see interprocess communication. Creating or destroying a process is relatively expensive, as resources must be acquired or released. Processes are typically preemptively multitasked, and process switching is relatively expensive, beyond basic cost of context switching, due to issues such as cache flushing (in particular, process switching changes virtual memory addressing, causing invalidation and thus flushing of an untagged translation lookaside buffer, notably on x86).


title: Thread (computing)

text: A "kernel thread" is a "lightweight" unit of kernel scheduling. At least one kernel thread exists within each process. If multiple kernel threads exist within a process, then they share the same memory and file resources. Kernel threads are preemptively multitasked if the operating system's process scheduler is preemptive. Kernel threads do not own resources except for a stack, a copy of the registers including the program counter, and thread-local storage (if any), and are thus relatively cheap to create and destroy. Thread switching is also relatively cheap: it requires a context switch (saving and restoring registers and stack pointer), but does not change virtual memory and is thus cache-friendly (leaving TLB valid). The kernel can assign one thread to each logical core in a system (because each processor splits itself up into multiple logical cores if it supports multithreading, or only supports one logical core per physical core if it does not), and can swap out threads that get blocked. However, kernel threads take much longer than user threads to be swapped.


title: Thread (computing)

text: Threads are sometimes implemented in userspace libraries, thus called "user threads". The kernel is unaware of them, so they are managed and scheduled in userspace. Some implementations base their user threads on top of several kernel threads, to benefit from multi-processor machines (M:N model). User threads as implemented by virtual machines are also called green threads.


title: Thread (computing)

text: As user thread implementations are typically entirely in userspace, context switching between user threads within the same process is extremely efficient because it does not require any interaction with the kernel at all: a context switch can be performed by locally saving the CPU registers used by the currently executing user thread or fiber and then loading the registers required by the user thread or fiber to be executed. Since scheduling occurs in userspace, the scheduling policy can be more easily tailored to the requirements of the program's workload.


title: Thread (computing)

text: However, the use of blocking system calls in user threads (as opposed to kernel threads) can be problematic. If a user thread or a fiber performs a system call that blocks, the other user threads and fibers in the process are unable to run until the system call returns. A typical example of this problem is when performing I/O: most programs are written to perform I/O synchronously. When an I/O operation is initiated, a system call is made, and does not return until the I/O operation has been completed. In the intervening period, the entire process is "blocked" by the kernel and cannot run, which starves other user threads and fibers in the same process from executing.


title: Thread (computing)

text: A common solution to this problem (used, in particular, by many of green threads implementations) is providing an I/O API that implements an interface that blocks the calling thread, rather than the entire process, by using non-blocking I/O internally, and scheduling another user thread or fiber while the I/O operation is in progress. Similar solutions can be provided for other blocking system calls. Alternatively, the program can be written to avoid the use of synchronous I/O or other blocking system calls (in particular, using non-blocking I/O, including lambda continuations and/or async/await primitives).


title: Thread (computing)

text: Fibers are an even lighter unit of scheduling which are cooperatively scheduled: a running fiber must explicitly "yield" to allow another fiber to run, which makes their implementation much easier than kernel or user threads. A fiber can be scheduled to run in any thread in the same process. This permits applications to gain performance improvements by managing scheduling themselves, instead of relying on the kernel scheduler (which may not be tuned for the application). Parallel programming environments such as OpenMP sometimes implement their tasks through fibers. Closely related to fibers are coroutines, with the distinction being that coroutines are a language-level construct, while fibers are a system-level construct.


title: Thread (computing)

text: Systems such as Windows NT and OS/2 are said to have "cheap" threads and "expensive" processes; in other operating systems there is not so great a difference except in the cost of an address-space switch, which on some architectures (notably x86) results in a translation lookaside buffer (TLB) flush.


title: Thread (computing)

text: Operating systems schedule threads either preemptively or cooperatively. Multi-user operating systems generally favor preemptive multithreading for its finer-grained control over execution time via context switching. However, preemptive scheduling may context-switch threads at moments unanticipated by programmers, thus causing lock convoy, priority inversion, or other side-effects. In contrast, cooperative multithreading relies on threads to relinquish control of execution, thus ensuring that threads run to completion. This can cause problems if a cooperatively multitasked thread blocks by waiting on a resource or if it starves other threads by not yielding control of execution during intensive computation.


title: Thread (computing)

text: Until the early 2000s, most desktop computers had only one single-core CPU, with no support for hardware threads, although threads were still used on such computers because switching between threads was generally still quicker than full-process context switches. In 2002, Intel added support for simultaneous multithreading to the Pentium 4 processor, under the name "hyper-threading"; in 2005, they introduced the dual-core Pentium D processor and AMD introduced the dual-core Athlon 64 X2 processor.


title: Thread (computing)

text: Systems with a single processor generally implement multithreading by time slicing: the central processing unit (CPU) switches between different "software threads". This context switching usually occurs frequently enough that users perceive the threads or tasks as running in parallel (for popular server/desktop operating systems, maximum time slice of a thread, when other threads are waiting, is often limited to 100-200ms). On a multiprocessor or multi-core system, multiple threads can execute in parallel, with every processor or core executing a separate thread simultaneously; on a processor or core with "hardware threads", separate software threads can also be executed concurrently by separate hardware threads.


title: Thread (computing)

text: Threads created by the user in a 1:1 correspondence with schedulable entities in the kernel are the simplest possible threading implementation. OS/2 and Win32 used this approach from the start, while on Linux the GNU C Library implements this approach (via the NPTL or older LinuxThreads). This approach is also used by Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, macOS, and iOS.


title: Thread (computing)

text: An "N":1 model implies that all application-level threads map to one kernel-level scheduled entity; the kernel has no knowledge of the application threads. With this approach, context switching can be done very quickly and, in addition, it can be implemented even on simple kernels which do not support threading. One of the major drawbacks, however, is that it cannot benefit from the hardware acceleration on multithreaded processors or multi-processor computers: there is never more than one thread being scheduled at the same time. For example: If one of the threads needs to execute an I/O request, the whole process is blocked and the threading advantage cannot be used. The GNU Portable Threads uses User-level threading, as does State Threads.


title: Thread (computing)

text: "M":"N" maps some number of application threads onto some number of kernel entities, or "virtual processors." This is a compromise between kernel-level ("1:1") and user-level (""N":1") threading. In general, ""M":"N"" threading systems are more complex to implement than either kernel or user threads, because changes to both kernel and user-space code are required. In the M:N implementation, the threading library is responsible for scheduling user threads on the available schedulable entities; this makes context switching of threads very fast, as it avoids system calls. However, this increases complexity and the likelihood of priority inversion, as well as suboptimal scheduling without extensive (and expensive) coordination between the userland scheduler and the kernel scheduler.


title: Thread (computing)

text: SunOS 4.x implemented "light-weight processes" or LWPs. NetBSD 2.x+, and DragonFly BSD implement LWPs as kernel threads (1:1 model). SunOS 5.2 through SunOS 5.8 as well as NetBSD 2 to NetBSD 4 implemented a two level model, multiplexing one or more user level threads on each kernel thread (M:N model). SunOS 5.9 and later, as well as NetBSD 5 eliminated user threads support, returning to a 1:1 model. FreeBSD 5 implemented M:N model. FreeBSD 6 supported both 1:1 and M:N, users could choose which one should be used with a given program using /etc/libmap.conf. Starting with FreeBSD 7, the 1:1 became the default. FreeBSD 8 no longer supports the M:N model.


title: Thread (computing)

text: In computer programming, "single-threading" is the processing of one command at a time. In the formal analysis of the variables' semantics and process state, the term "single threading" can be used differently to mean "backtracking within a single thread", which is common in the functional programming community.


title: Thread (computing)

text: Multithreading is mainly found in multitasking operating systems. Multithreading is a widespread programming and execution model that allows multiple threads to exist within the context of one process. These threads share the process's resources, but are able to execute independently. The threaded programming model provides developers with a useful abstraction of concurrent execution. Multithreading can also be applied to one process to enable parallel execution on a multiprocessing system.


title: Thread (computing)

text: Multithreading libraries tend to provide a function call to create a new thread, which takes a function as a parameter. A concurrent thread is then created which starts running the passed function and ends when the function returns. The thread libraries also offer data synchronization functions.


title: Thread (computing)

text: Threads in the same process share the same address space. This allows concurrently running code to couple tightly and conveniently exchange data without the overhead or complexity of an IPC. When shared between threads, however, even simple data structures become prone to race conditions if they require more than one CPU instruction to update: two threads may end up attempting to update the data structure at the same time and find it unexpectedly changing underfoot. Bugs caused by race conditions can be very difficult to reproduce and isolate.


title: Thread (computing)

text: To prevent this, threading application programming interfaces (APIs) offer synchronization primitives such as mutexes to lock data structures against concurrent access. On uniprocessor systems, a thread running into a locked mutex must sleep and hence trigger a context switch. On multi-processor systems, the thread may instead poll the mutex in a spinlock. Both of these may sap performance and force processors in symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) systems to contend for the memory bus, especially if the granularity of the locking is too fine.


title: Thread (computing)

text: A popular programming pattern involving threads is that of thread pools where a set number of threads are created at startup that then wait for a task to be assigned. When a new task arrives, it wakes up, completes the task and goes back to waiting. This avoids the relatively expensive thread creation and destruction functions for every task performed and takes thread management out of the application developer's hand and leaves it to a library or the operating system that is better suited to optimize thread management.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Cortina d'Ampezzo (; , ; historical ) is a town and "comune" in the heart of the southern (Dolomitic) Alps in the Province of Belluno, in the Veneto region of Northern Italy. Situated on the Boite river, in an alpine valley, it is a summer and winter sport resort known for its skiing trails, scenery, accommodation, shops and après-ski scene, and for its jet set and Italian aristocratic crowd.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: In the Middle Ages, Ampezzo fell under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Aquileia and of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1420 it was conquered by the Republic of Venice. From 1508, it then spent much of its history under Habsburg rule, briefly undergoing some territorial changes under Napoleon, before being returned to the Austrian Empire (later Austria-Hungary), which held it until 1918. From the nineteenth century, Ampezzo became a notable regional centre for crafts. The local handmade products were appreciated by early British and German holidaymakers as tourism emerged late nineteenth century. Among the specializations of the town were crafting wood for furniture, the production of tiled stoves, and iron, copper and glass items.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Today, the local economy thrives on tourism, particularly during the winter season, when the population of the town typically increases from about 7,000 to 40,000. The Basilica Minore dei Santi Filippo e Giacomo was built between 1769 and 1775 on the site of two former thirteenth and sixteenth-century churches; it is home to the parish and the deanery of Cortina d'Ampezzo. The town also contains the Rinaldo Zardini Palaeontology Museum, established in 1975, the Mario Rimoldi Modern Art Museum, and the Regole of Ampezzo Ethnographic Museum.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Although Cortina d'Ampezzo was unable to go ahead with the scheduled 1944 Winter Olympics because of World War II, it hosted the Winter Olympics in 1956 and subsequently a number of world winter-sports events. Cortina d'Ampezzo will host the Winter Olympics for a second time when it co-hosts the 2026 Winter Olympics with Milan. The town is home to SG Cortina, a top league professional ice hockey team, and Cortina d'Ampezzo is also the start and end point of the annual Dolomites Gold Cup Race.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Several films have been shot in the town, most notably "The Pink Panther" (1963), "For Your Eyes Only" (1981), and "Cliffhanger" (1993).


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: The discovery in 1987 of a primitive tomb at Mondeval de Sora high up in the mountains to the south of Cortina testifies to the presence of Mesolithic man in the area as far back as the 6th millennium B.C. In the 6th century B.C., Etruscan writing was introduced in the province of Cadore, in whose possession it remained until the early 5th century. From the 3rd century B.C., the Romans assimilated the Veneti people, giving the area the name of "Amplitium" (from "amplus" meaning wide), today's Ampezzo.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: No historical information exists on the Cadore region from the fall of the Roman Empire until the Lombard period. It is assumed that during the Barbarian invasions, the inhabitants fled to the Fassa, Badia, Cordevole and Ampezzo valleys.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: In the Middle Ages, Ampezzo fell under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Aquileia and of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1420, the village was conquered by the Republic of Venice. In 1508 it was conquered by the Habsburgs, and by 1511 people of Ampezzo swore loyalty to the Emperor Maximilian, and that area was subsequently adjoined to the region of Pusterthal. In 1797, when the Treaty of Campo Formio was signed, Napoleon initially permitted the Habsburg Empire to retain it, but in 1810 he added Ampezzo to the Department of Piave, following an attack on the town in which it was burned by the French. It was short-lived; the Austrian Empire reclaimed it in 1813, and it remained in its possession even after the battles of Custoza and Sadowa in 1866 when Venice was ceded to Italy. The town gained a reputation as a health resort; it was reportedly free of diseases such as cholera.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: In 1874 the Ampezzo forest became the property of the Carnic Woods Consortium. Although remaining an Austrian possession until 1920 (as a part of "kronland" Tyrol), aside from being home for an ethnic German-speaking minority, Ampezzo never became a German-speaking territory and conserved its original language Ladin, a Rhaeto-Romance language.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: When Italy entered World War I in 1915, most of the male inhabitants were fighting for Austria-Hungary on the Russian front. 669 male inhabitants (most of them under 16 or over 50) tried to fight the Italian troops. Outnumbered by the Italians, they had to retreat. After the Austrian recovery in 1917, the town was occupied again by the Tyrolean "Standschützen". On 24 November 1917, the Habsburg Emperor Charles (Karl) traveled through Ampezzo and was received with enthusiasm by the population. A little girl handed the emperor a letter with the request to send her father home from the front because his wife and mother of nine children had died. After ten days, Bepe Manaigo was with his children. A total of 144 Ampezzans died as a result of the war. Ampezzo soldiers received 16 silver and 4 bronze medals for bravery. In the surrounding area of Cortina there were 38 military cemeteries, everywhere trenches, barbed wire, impact holes, splinters, ammunition and barracks; 2,450 hectares of forest were devastated.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: The mountains surrounding Cortina were themselves the theatre of several battles during the Great War.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Following Italy's victory in World War I, Ampezzo was (together with the central and southern part of Tyrol) definitively ceded to Italy in 1920. Three years later, it was separated from Tyrol (along with Colle Santa Lucia and Livinallongo del Col di Lana) and incorporated into the province of Belluno, itself part of the Veneto region.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: After the war the city was renamed "Cortina d'Ampezzo" (Curtain of the Ampezzo Valley), adopting the name of one of the six villages that made up the territory of Ampezzo, located in the middle of the Ampezzo valley.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Cortina d'Ampezzo was designated as a major redoubt and held a large ammunition storage depot (46°36'50"N / 12°09'27"E) in 1945 and had been assigned as a hold out by Italian and German troops to prevent the American and British from advancing into Austria. Town and depot was scheduled to be attacked on 26 April 1945 only last minute weather prevented this strike by the 15th AF / 49th BW


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Already an elite destination for the first British tourists in the late 18th and early 20th centuries, after World War I Cortina d'Ampezzo became a resort for upper-class Italians, too. Cortina d'Ampezzo was chosen as the venue of the 1944 winter Olympics, which did not take place due to World War II. Thanks to finally hosting the winter Olympics in 1956, Cortina grew into a world-famous resort, with a substantial increase in tourism. With a resident population of 6,150 people in 2008, Cortina has a temporary population of around 50,000 during peak periods such as the Christmas holidays and mid-August. The Ford Cortina, the UK's best-selling car of the 1970s, was named after Cortina d'Ampezzo.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: In 2002 the Ampezzaner rifle company Ŝizar Anpezo Hayden was brought back to life. Since Otto von Habsburg, the then head of the Habsburg family, visited Cortina in 2005, their patron has been Charles I of Austria. Especially because of the eventful history, the Habsburg brand is still very present in Cortina in the 21st century, as many pictures and photos of Franz Joseph I of Austria and of Charles I, who is particularly revered here, in inns, restaurants, bars and hotels testify. Since 2011 there has been a memorial for Maximilian I on the main square in memory of the year 1511 and the union of the Ampezzo valley basin with Tyrol.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: The town voted in October 2007 to secede from the region of Veneto and join the neighbouring region, Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. This was motivated by cultural ties with the Ladin-speaking community in South Tyrol and the attraction of lower taxes. The referendum is not executive, and a final decision on the matter can only be made by law from the Italian parliament with consent of both regional councils of Veneto and Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: In the European elections of 2014, the leading party was the Democratic Party with 30.4% of the vote, followed by Forza Italia (19.4%) and the autonomist Südtiroler Volkspartei with 14.1%.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Cortina is situated more or less in the centre of the Ampezzo valley, at the top of the Valle del Boite in the Dolomites, which encircle the town. The Boite river flows directly through the town of Cortina itself. The mountains in the area are described as "craggy" and "soaring", "unmistakable; like a massive coral reef ripped from the sea, strung with conifers and laced with snow". The town is positioned between Cadore (to the south) and the Puster Valley (to the north), Val d'Ansiei (to the east) and Agordo (to the west). Originally it consisted of numerous "frazioni", isolated villages and hamlets, but from the 1950s it grew rapidly as a result of tourism. Only the most remote villages have remained isolated from the main town. San Vito di Cadore is to the south of Cortina d'Ampezzo.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Among the surrounding mountains are Tofane to the west, Pomagagnon to the north, Cristallo to the northeast, Faloria and Sorapiss to the east, and Becco di Mezzodì, Croda da Lago and Cinque Torri to the south. Monte Antelao (Nantelou in Ladin) is at 3264 m the highest mountain in the Ampezzo Dolomites and the second highest in the Dolomites. When the weather is good, Monte Antelao is clearly visible from the rive in Trieste on the Adriatic Sea. The town centre is located at an elevation of , the closest high peak is that of Tofana di Mezzo, which towers at . There are numerous fast flowing rivers, streams and small lakes in the territory, such as the "Ghedina", "Pianozes" and "d'Ajal", which fill particularly during the summer snow-melt season. Fauna include marmots, roe deer, chamois and hares and, on occasion, wolves, bears and lynx. Much of the area of Cortina is part of the "Natural Park of the Ampezzo Dolomites".


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: The comune contains the following "frazioni" (parishes/wards) with their Ladino names in parentheses: Acquabona (Agabòna), Alverà, Bigontina (Begontina), Cadelverzo (Cadelvèrzo), Cademai, Cadin (Ciadìn), Campo (Ciànpo), Chiamulera (Ciamulèra), Chiave (Ciàe), Cianderìes, Coiana (Cojana), Col, Cortina, Crìgnes, Doneà, Fiames (Fiàmes), Fraìna, Gilardon (Jilardòn), Gnòche o Gràa, Guargné, Lacedel (Lazedèl), Manaigo, Majon, Melères, Mortisa (Mortìja), Pecol (Pecòl), Pezié, Pian da Lago, Pocol (Pocòl), Rònco, Salieto, Socol, Staulin (Staulìn), Val, Verocai, Vera (Vèra), Zuel (Zuèl).


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Cortina d'Ampezzo has a humid continental climate (Dfb) with short summers and long winters that vacillate between frigid, snowy, unsettled, and temperate. In late December and early January, some of Italy's lowest recorded temperatures are to be found in the region, especially at the top of the Cimabanche Pass on the border between the provinces of Belluno and Bolzano. The other seasons are generally rainy, cool to warm, and windy. During the summer temperature up to 25 degrees are present.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Cortina's population grew steadily from the time when it was annexed to the Italian State until the 1960s. Thereafter, it underwent a sharp decline (down by 2,099 inhabitants over a 30-year period), with signs of recovery only in the very last few years. Nevertheless, with 6,112 inhabitants, Cortina d'Ampezzo is the seventh most populous place in the province following Belluno (36,509), Feltre (20,688), Sedico (9,734), Ponte nelle Alpi (8,521), Santa Giustina (6,795) and Mel (6,272). In 2008, there were 44 births (7.1 ‰) and 67 deaths (10.9%), resulting in an overall reduction of 23 inhabitants (−3.8 ‰). The town's 2,808 families consisted on average of 2.2 persons.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: The presence of foreign residents in Cortina d'Ampezzo is a fairly recent phenomenon, accounting for only a small number of inhabitants in what in any case is a fairly small town. There are 298 resident foreigners in the town, representing 4.9% of the total population. This compares with 7.0% in the town Belluno, 6.4% in the entire province of Belluno, and 10.2% in the Veneto region.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: In addition to Italian, the majority of the population speak fluent Ampezzano, a local variant of Ladin, now recognized as a language rather than a dialect. Ladin is a Rhaeto-Romance language and closely resembles Romansh, which is spoken in Switzerland. The preservation of the local language, as a living medium used by younger generations, is seen as a symbol of pride and attachment to local heritage. Ladin and Tyrolean culture continues to survive despite the increasing pressure faced in recent years. Its importance is even beginning to be recognized by the local authorities who in December 2007 decided to use Ladin on signs for the names of streets and villages in compliance with regulations for the protection of linguistic minorities in force since 1999.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Beginning in the 19th century, Ampezzo became a notable regional centre for crafts. The growing importance of this sector led the Austrian Ministry of Commerce to authorize the opening of a State Industrial School in 1874, which later became the Art Institute. It became a reputable institution in teaching wood and metalwork, admitting boys from the age of 13 for up to four years of study. The local handmade products were appreciated by early British and German vacationers as tourism emerged in the late 19th century. Some of the local items were said to have mythical qualities; the Austrian journalist and anthropologist Karl Felix Wolff, for example, stated in 1935 that according to legend a local man "once made a sword that was so flexible that you could bend it over, tie it up, and then allow it to straighten out again". Among the specializations of the town were crafting wood for furniture; the production of tiled stoves; and iron, copper, and glass items.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Today the local economy thrives on tourism, particularly during the winter season, when the population of the town typically increases from about 7,000 to 40,000. Lonely Planet refers to Cortina d'Ampezzo as "one of Italy's most famous, fashionable and expensive ski resorts", which "boasts first-class facilities (skiing, skating, sledding, climbing) and superb hiking".


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Cortina is home to some of the most prestigious names in fashion (including Bulgari, Benetton, Gucci, and Geox) and various artisan shops, antiquarians, and craft stores. It is also home to many stores specializing in mountaineering equipment. The symbol of Cortina shopping remains "La Cooperativa di Cortina", founded on 28 June 1893 as "Consumverein Ampezzo". In this shopping centre many trades can be found, from confectioners to newspaper vendors, toys, gift shops, skiing stores, and blacksmiths. The building is divided into three levels (more a raised plan and a balcony). The cooperative in Cortina was one of the first cooperatives founded in the Italian Peninsula and currently provides employment to approximately 200 people.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: The five-star Miramonti Majestic Grand Hotel, of James Bond fame, is more than 100 years old. Previously an Austro-Hungarian hunting lodge, it contains 105 rooms. Other hotels of note include Hotel Cornelio on Via Cantore, Hotel Montana on Corso Italia, Hotel Menardi on Via Majom, Hotel Villa Gaiai on Via Guide Alpine, and the Grand Hotel Savoia on Via Roma. There are several mountain hostels in the vicinity, including Rifugio Faloria, Rifugio son Forca, Rifugio Capanna Tondi and Rifugio duca D'Aosta, which contains restaurants.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Near the bridge on the Bigontina River is the Town Hall, a palace in the Tyrolean style. "Piazza Angelo Dibona" houses several landmarks. The "Ciasa de ra Regoles" is one of the more important legal buildings in Ampezzo, where the ""regolieri"" — a council for the local villages that stood before the town merged — train the community and give administrative orders. It was at one time the see of Ampezzo's primary school. Currently it contains the offices of Comunanza delle Regole d'Ampezzo and the Modern Art Museum "Mario Rimoldi". The main square of Cortina d'Ampezzo is named after the famous local mountain guide Angelo Dibona.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Rinaldo Zardini Palaeontology Museum, Regole of Ampezzo Ethnographic Museum, and Mario Rimoldi Modern Art Museum.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: The Rinaldo Zardini Palaeontology Museum, established in 1975, is a paleontological museum with a collection of hundreds of fossils of all colors, shapes, and sizes, which were found, gathered, and cataloged by local photographer Rinaldo Zardini. All of the pieces were found in the Dolomites and tell of a time when these high mountain peaks were still on the bottom of a large tropical sea, populated by marine invertebrates, fish, corals, and sponges.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: The Regole of Ampezzo Ethnographic Museum is an ethnographic museum situated in an old restored Venetian sawmill at the confluence of the Boite and Felizon rivers to the north of the town. There are objects related to everyday life, rural, and pastoral practices in the vicinity; agricultural tools; techniques; materials processing; and clothing typical of the valley.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: The Mario Rimoldi Modern Art Museum is an art gallery, established in 1941, which preserves over 800 works by major Italian artists of the 20th century including Filippo De Pisis, Felice Carena, Pio Semeghini, Renato Guttuso, Tullio Garbari, Massimo Campigli, and many others. It also hosts temporary exhibitions on various topics.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: The Great War Tour stretches over across the mountains between Lagazuoi and Sass de Stria. It includes the Great War Open Air Museum with its trenches and tunnels. In winter it is accessible to skiers, but it is easier to visit on foot or by mountain bike in the summer months.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: The Basilica Minore dei Santi Filippo e Giacomo was built between 1769 and 1775 on the site of two former 13th and 16th-century churches; it is home to the parish and the deanery of Cortina d'Ampezzo. Its high wooden altar, crowned by a figure of Christ the Redeemer, was carved by Andrea Brustolon. On the ceiling are three frescoes by Luigi Ghedina: "Christ Purifying the Temple", "The Martyrdom of St. Philip", and "The Beheading of St. James".


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: The Chiesa della Madonna della Difesa was built in 1750 on the site of a ruined 14th-century building. Its façade features an intricate fresco depicting the Madonna della Difesa, and the interior is decorated with a wealth of statues, paintings, polychrome marble, and gold leaf.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: The Cappella della Beata Vergine di Lourdes (Chapel of Our Lady of Lourdes) was completed in 1907. Decorated by artist Corrado Pitscheider of the Val Gardena, it is a small church of particular interest given the reconstruction sculpture.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: The Cappella di Sant'Antonio da Padova in the village of Chiave was completed in 1791, but the interior was renovated in 1809 after serious fire damage caused by the Napoleonic troops. The furnishings include two wooden busts (Christ and St. Catherine) and a richly designed altar.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Sacrario militare di Pocol (also known as Ossario di Pocol) is a cemetery and shrine located at an altitude of towards Passo Falzarego, in the locality of Pocol. The small church and cemetery were built in 1916 as a military cemetery by the 5th Alpine group. A shrine was built in 1935 as a memorial to the thousands who lost their lives during World War I on the Dolomite front. It is a massive square tower of stone, clearly visible from the entire Ampezzo valley below. In a crypt in the centre of the structure rests the body of general Antonio Cantore, who was awarded the gold medal for military valor.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: The Castello de Zanna is a small fortress, situated in the "vila" of Minel. It consists of low, white outer walls and two white corner towers, with a small chapel dedicated to the Holy Trinity. The construction of the castle began in 1694, but on 19 August 1696 work was interrupted; the building remained unfinished in 1809 when it was burned by French revolutionary troops who had invaded Ampezzo. Since then the castle has undergone restoration.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Forte Tre Sassi (or Forte Tra i Sassi) is a fortress constructed in 1897 during the Austro-Hungarian period on the Passo Valparola. It lies between Sass de Stria and Piccolo Lagazuoi, dominating the passage between the Passo Falzarego and Val Badia in South Tyrol (Alto Adige). It was part of the large complex of Austrian fortifications built on the Italian border in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Rendered unusable due to a bombing by the Italians on 5 July 1915, the ruins remained in a state of disrepair until the advent of the 21st century, when it was restored by the local administration of Ampezzo with the assistance of the Lacedelli family. The fort houses a museum containing relics related to the First World War.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Castello di Botestagno (also known as Podestagno) was a medieval fort perched on a rock in the valley of the river Boite, a little farther north of Cortina d'Ampezzo. It is believed that it was first erected as a stakeout during conflict with the Lombards between the 7th and 8th centuries, with the aim of dominating the three valleys that converge beneath it: the Boite, the Val di Fanes, and the Val Felizon. The cornerstone, however, probably dates to the 11th century. It was held by the Germans until 1077, and then by the patriarchs of Aquileia (12th century) and Camino (13th century), until Botestagno became the seat of a captaincy. It then passed into Venetian hands and finally to the Habsburgs. During the 18th century the castle gradually lost importance until it was auctioned in 1782 by order of Emperor Joseph II. Today the fort has now almost completely disappeared; only the remnants of what must have been the wine cellars and the foundations remain, now weathered and largely covered up by vegetation.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Cortina has a long tradition in hosting writers, intellectuals, poets and editors from all over the world. Ernest Hemingway, Saul Bellow, Dino Buzzati, as well as Vittorio Gassman, Leonardo Sciascia, Leonardo Mondadori and many others, spent their vacations in the town and took part in the cultural life of the city. Through the years, this led to a continuous activity of literature festivals and book presentations, like Una Montagna di Libri ("A Mountain of Books"), held twice a year since 2009. The festival attracted to Cortina writers as Azar Nafisi, Peter Cameron, Emmanuel Carrère.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Music is important to the locals of Cortina, with a guitar found in most houses, and young musicians are often found walking the streets. Every year, from the end of July to early August, Cortina hosts the Dino Ciani Festival and Academy. It is held in honour of the celebrated Italian pianist Dino Ciani (1941–1974) who died when he was only 32. The festival attracts young pianists from around the world who are able to benefit from classes with some of the world's leading performers. The Festival of the Bands is another annual musical event featuring brass bands from Italy and beyond during the last week of August. Cortina's own band, parading in traditional costumes, is a central attraction dating back to 1861. Cortina d'Ampezzo hosted the 1953 Miss Italia contest, won by Marcella Mariani. Traditionally, on the eves of the festivals of Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity and St Philip and St James, the youth of the town would climb the hills at sunset and light fires.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: After Ernest Hemingway's wife Hadley lost a suitcase filled with Hemingway's manuscripts at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, he took a time off. He began writing that same year in Cortina d'Ampezzo, writing "Out of Season".


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Among the religious minorities, mainly a result of recent immigration, there is a small community of Eastern Orthodox Christians and Muslims. There is also a congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, which has its headquarters in Pian da Lago.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: The surroundings of Cortina have been the location for a number of movies, including mountain climbing scenes for "Cliffhanger", "Krull" and "The Pink Panther". The resort was the primary area for location shooting in Sergio Corbucci's Revisionist Spaghetti Western "The Great Silence"; the resort was used to represent Utah in the winter of 1898. It was a glamorous location for Elizabeth Taylor in "Ash Wednesday" (1973), and was also a major location for the 1981 James Bond film "For Your Eyes Only". Roger Moore's James Bond meets the character Luigi Ferrara (John Moreno) at the peak of Tofana and stays at the Hotel Miramonti. A number of action sequences were shot in the town involving Bond and Erich Kriegler (John Wyman), as Kriegler competes in the biathlon. The battle culminates in one of the famous ski chase sequences in film, where Bond has to escape Kriegler and a crew of assassins on a spike-wheeled motorcycles, his route taking them all onto the bobsleigh run. The actual town centre was also the scene of the first attack on Bond and his partner Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet) by two motorcyclists who attempted to run them over, only for Bond to eliminate them both, putting one of them through the window of a local florist.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Cortina d'Ampezzo hosted the 1956 Winter Olympics, originally scheduled for 1944, but cancelled because of World War II. The 1927 Nordic, 1941 Nordic, and 1941 Alpine World Championships were held in Cortina as well, although both 1941 championships were withdrawn by the International Ski Federation (FIS) in 1946. The region lost Winter Olympics bids in 1988 (Calgary, Canada) and 1992 (Albertville, France).


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: The town is home to SG Cortina, a professional ice hockey team in Serie A1, Italy's top division. Cortina is also the start and end point of the annual Dolomites Gold Cup Race, a historical re-evocation event for production cars on public roads. The town hosted the Red Bull Road Rage in 2009.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Cortina also offers skiing facilities for amateurs, centrally located among the 12 resorts of the Dolomiti Superski area. Cortina itself has of pistes with 34 lifts and guaranteed snow coverage of over 95% from December to April. There are six ski schools (two for cross-country) and some 300 instructors. The Faloria-Cristallo-Mietres ski area has views over the Ampezzo Valley and is suitable forall abilities, including children. The Tofane area offers more challenging opportunities from an elevation of with the Canalone and Schuss ski runs. The longest run, the Armentarola piste in the Lagazuoi-5 Torri area, starts next to the Lagazuoi refuge at and is reached by cable car. With the Forcella Staunies (currently not in operation) and the Forcella Rossa, the ski area has one of the steepest slopes in the Dolomites. There are numerous ski freeride and tour options in the mountains around Cortina.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Facilities also exist for cross-country skiing, including a long stretch of the old railway line. In and around Cortina, there are opportunities to participate in many other winter sports such as curling, ski mountaineering, snowboarding, sledding, and extreme skiing. In the summer months, sports include trekking, trail running, biking, rock climbing, tennis, golf, swimming, and ice skiing. Cortina is known for the many via ferratas in the surrounding mountains such as the VF Ivano Dibona that was used in the movie Cliffhanger. The annual Lavaredo Ultra Trail series of international trail running races is based at Cortina.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Cortina Airport was built for the 1956 Winter Olympics, but is currently closed. The town has its own bus service, connecting the centre to surrounding villages and cable car lifts. The nearest airports are those serving Venice: the distance to Treviso is while that to Venice Marco Polo Airport is . Both can be reached in about two and a quarter hours by road. The railway station for Cortina is Calalzo di Cadore, to the south east, with rail connections to Venice and a bus service to Cortina. The total journey time to Venice is about three and a half hours. There are also direct bus links from Venice Mestre and Padova railway stations, coordinated with the arrivals and departures of Eurostar trains.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Cortina was the principal intermediate station on the narrow-gauge (950mm) Dolomites Railway from Calalzo to Toblach. When the line was electrified in 1929 the only sub-station was established at Cortina. The line closed in 1964 but in February 2016 the regional governments of Veneto and Trentino-Alto Adige announced that they are to commission a feasibility study to build a new line between Calalzo, Cortina and Toblach.


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Cortina has attracted many distinguished guests, often inspiring them in their creative work. They include the Italian novelists Dino Buzzati (1906–1972), author of "The Tartar Steppe", Goffredo Parise (1929–1986) and Fernanda Pivano (1917–2009). Ernest Hemingway, author of "A Farewell to Arms", also arrived in the area in 1918 as a young ambulance driver. Other notable visitors include John Ball (1818–1889), the Irish mountaineer and naturalist who climbed Monte Pelmo in 1857, the Italian mountaineers Emilio Comici (1901–1940), Angelo Dibona (1879–1956) and Lino Lacedelli (1925–2009), the Italian skier Kristian Ghedina (born 1969), the Italian bobsledder Eugenio Monti (1928–2003), the Austrian mountaineer Paul Grohmann (1838–1908) and the Austrian skier Toni Sailer (1935–2009). Frequent visitors include the Italian businessman and former racing driver Paolo Barilla (born 1961) and the journalist and writer Indro Montanelli (1909–2001).


title: Cortina d'Ampezzo

text: Among the distinguished sportsmen from Cortina itself are the skiers Enrico Colli, his younger brother Vincenzo, and Giuseppe Ghedina who competed in the 1924 Winter Olympics, Severino Menardi who participated in the 1932 and 1936 Winter Olympics, and Stefania Constantini, gold-medalist curler in the 2022 Winter Olympics. Other local citizens include the climbers Angelo Dibona (1879–1956) and Lino Lacedelli (1925–2009), and the painter Luigi Gillarduzzi (1822–1856).


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters is an American animated television series developed by Klasky Csupo for Nickelodeon. The show focuses on three young monsters—Ickis, Oblina, and Krumm—who attend a school for monsters under a city dump and learn to frighten humans. Many of the episodes revolve around them making it to the surface in order to perform "scares" as class assignments.


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: The series premiered on October 29, 1994, on Nickelodeon. Running a total of 52 episodes over 4 seasons, the final episode aired December 6, 1997.


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: The episodes follow the adventures of Ickis, Oblina, and Krumm, three young monster friends attending a monster school whose headmaster is The Gromble.


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: The show is set in New York City, demonstrated throughout the series by the presences of the Empire State Building and the IND Subway System, and in the episode "Monster Make-Over" when Ickis refers to himself as "the ugliest, slimiest, razor fanged, sharp clawed, monster menace "this side of Newark"!" The dump the monsters inhabit is implied to be Fresh Kills Landfill, but never explicitly named in the series. The monster community includes a working economic system using toenails as currency.


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters" was created by Gábor Csupó and Peter Gaffney, and was the third animated series produced by Csupó's company Klasky Csupo, which also created the animated shows "Rugrats" and "Duckman" on USA Network. Before the final title was chosen, which took over 5 years, the series had the working titles "Monsters" and "Real Monsters". The show was conceived after Csupó and his wife and creative partner Arlene Klasky were approached by the network Nickelodeon to create a follow-up series to "Rugrats". Csupó was inspired to write a show about monsters because his own young children loved them. He also said he knew Nickelodeon would not want a series about human characters because everybody else was pitching shows about animals. Csupó drew some sketches of possible monsters on a piece of paper and successfully pitched the idea to the network: "I wanted them silly and not too skillful – and the idea worked."


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: Nickelodeon programming director Herb Scannell said the character design in "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters" was partially inspired by "Yellow Submarine", a 1968 animated film that was, in turn, inspired by The Beatles. The character Gromble, in particular, bears a close resemblance to the Blue Meanie characters from that film. Director of the series Igor Kovalyov said the style was inspired by his earlier Soviet film "Investigation Held by Kolobki" which he and Gábor Csupó showed to the producers who then gave Kovalyov's team a lot of creative freedom with the art direction and storyboarding. Csupó said some elements of the show have a look similar to the film noir genre, and called the city dump where the monster characters reside reminiscent of the visual style from the films "Blade Runner" (1982) and "Brazil" (1985). The characters guest-starred in the 1999 "Rugrats" episode "Ghost Story". Before that, David Eccles, the voice of Krumm, provided the monster voice coming from under Chuckie's bed.


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: Reviews for "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters" were very positive. Josef Adalian of "The Washington Times" praised the show's animation and sense of humor, although it was not as "hip and witty" as "The Ren & Stimpy Show" or "The Simpsons". Although he felt the show would appeal to children over nine as well as adults, he said it may not appeal to those who "react negatively to semi-scary sights and gags about body odor, physical punishment or abusive older siblings". "USA Today" writer Matt Roush called it "garish and blissfully silly" and praised the show's "outrageous characters have just enough "Ren & Stimpy" grodiness, but tempered with exceptional sweetness". Ginny Holbert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" called it a "cute and clever" series with "wit and inventive creatures", and compared the animation to the work of artist Peter Max. Gannett News Service writer Mike Hughes called it a "terrific cartoon series", and said the show's "wildly perverse humor" had a "distinctly European style" that reflected Gábor Csupó's Hungarian background.


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: "The Plain Dealer" writer Tom Feran called the show "good fun" and favorably compared the series' premise to that of the animated film "The Nightmare Before Christmas". "Boston Herald" writer Frances Katz wrote, "If there was ever a great title for a cartoon, it has to be Nickelodeon's "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters"'." Not all reviews were positive. The November 1994 issue of "Parenting" magazine listed "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters" as #1 in its top ten list of the worst new shows of the television season, describing it as "Graphic and scatological; it's just plain gross." Some media outlets pointed out similarities between "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters" and "The Brothers Grunt", an MTV animated television series created by Danny Antonucci about a group of grotesque humanoid characters. Gábor Csupó rejected these comparisons and claims his show was more story- and character-driven with a different visual style, while Antonucci's show was idea-driven. Csupó did not want "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters" to be lumped together with "The Brothers Grunt", especially since that show received low ratings and negative reviews, lasting for 8 months, and that Danny Antonucci called it "MTV's dirty little secret".


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: The pilot episode of "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters" won first prize for film animation producer for television at both the Houston Film Festival and Ottawa Film Festival. The series was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Animation in 1995 alongside "Rugrats", "Animaniacs", "Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?" and "2 Stupid Dogs". The award ultimately went to "Rugrats".


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: Mattel produced a series of "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters" action figures in 1995. They each stand approximately 4 inches (10 cm) tall and include an action feature. Other products based on the cartoon include Fleer trading cards, books, plush toys, pens, hats, backpacks, notepads, cups, gum, and videos. At one point, General Mills also included small promotional flip books of Ickis, Krumm, Oblina, and The Gromble in its Cinnamon Toast Crunch breakfast cereal.


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: In 1995, selected episodes of "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters" were released on VHS by Sony Wonder. Paramount Home Video re-released the tapes in 1997. The complete first and second seasons were released for PlayStation Network for viewing on the PlayStation 3 and PSP (PlayStation Portable) systems.


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: Nickelodeon and Amazon.com teamed up to release "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters" and other Nick shows on manufactured-on-demand DVD-R discs available exclusively through Amazon.com's CreateSpace arm.


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters" sets, among others, were discontinued when Nick began releasing traditional DVDs of many of their series in association with Shout! Factory.


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: On March 22, 2011, it was announced that Shout! Factory had acquired the home video rights to the series from Nickelodeon. They have subsequently released the first three seasons on DVD. The fourth and final season was released on June 10, 2014, as a Shout! Select title.


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: In the United Kingdom, 4 volumes are available as exclusive releases in Poundland stores. Volume 1 contains the first 9 episodes (5 half-hours) from Season 1. Volume 2 contains the first 8 episodes (4 half-hours) from Season 2, while the remaining 2 volumes make up the first 16 episodes from Season 3.


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: A video game based on the TV series was released for the Super NES and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis developed by Realtime Associates and published by Viacom New Media in 1995. Ickis also appeared in "Nicktoons Racing" for the PlayStation, PC, and Game Boy Advance yet was missing from the Game Boy Color version. Oblina also has a cameo in all the versions of "Nicktoons Racing", except the Game Boy Color version.


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: Krumm appears as a Master Model in the Wii, PlayStation 2, and Game Boy Advance versions of "", while The Gromble was a Master Model in the Nintendo DS version.


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: Oblina is a playable character in the 2021 fighting video game "Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl" and the 2022 kart racing game "", voiced by Alex Cazares.


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: In 1998, as part of the release of "The Rugrats Movie", National Amusements released an animated policy trailer featuring characters from the series.


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: Ickis, Oblina, and Krumm have all made their final major appearance in the "Rugrats" episode "Ghost Story", becoming the first time a Nicktoon crossover would be produced.


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: They also appeared in the "Robot Chicken" episode "Ants on a Hamburger", where the cast of "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters" have a meeting about the best ways to scare people with the scary little girl from "The Ring". Also, in another "Robot Chicken" episode "Blackout Window Heatstroke", Ickis gets rejected from "Monsters University".


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: In November 2022, Krumm appears in an advertisement for Paramount+ featuring Keegan-Michael Key as Mr. Garvey from "Key & Peele".


title: Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

text: Krumm also appears in Cartoon Network's "Mad" in the segment "How I Met Your Mummy", where he is seen at the restaurant.


title: Vince Russo

text: Vincent James Russo (born January 24, 1961) is an American professional wrestling booker, writer, and pundit.


title: Vince Russo

text: He is notable for his tenures with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE), World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA, now Impact Wrestling) in creative roles. He also occasionally made appearances as an on-screen authority figure, and professional wrestler, in WCW and TNA. His writing style often blurred the lines between reality and fiction, while also favoring elements such as shock twists, grand moments and larger-than-life characters over in-ring action, which made him a controversial figure amongst certain wrestling fans. Russo's time as the head of creative at the WWF during the widely acclaimed Attitude Era led the company to record high television ratings.


title: Vince Russo

text: During a self-booked in-ring career in WCW, Russo became a one-time WCW World Heavyweight Champion, and scored televised singles victories over future WWE Hall of Famers Ric Flair and Booker T (the latter to win his world title).


title: Vince Russo

text: Russo grew up in Farmingville, New York and graduated from the University of Southern Indiana (then known as Indiana State University Evansville) in 1983 with a degree in journalism. He worked for the school newspaper "The Shield" as an assistant sports editor and later as editor-in-chief.


title: Vince Russo

text: Russo got his start in pro wrestling when he began training under the tutelage of Johnny Rodz at Gleason's Gym in Brooklyn. He owned two video stores on Long Island, New York. Russo also hosted his own local radio show from 1992 to 1993 called "Vicious Vincent's World of Wrestling" which aired on Sunday nights on WGBB in Freeport, New York. The program ran for exactly one year, the final show being the one-year anniversary.


title: Vince Russo

text: In 1992, Russo was hired as a freelance writer for "WWF Magazine" following a letter that he had written to Linda McMahon, and would later become an editor in 1994 under the pseudonym of Vic Venom. He was eventually promoted to the WWF Creative Team in 1996. In that same year, "Monday Night Raw" hit a ratings low of 1.8, as "Monday Nitro" ("Raw"'s chief competition), was in the midst of an 83-week winning-streak against "Raw" head-to-head ("see" Monday Night Wars). With World Championship Wrestling (WCW) eclipsing the WWF, WWF chairman Vince McMahon called upon Russo to make changes to the televised product. Russo contributed edgy, controversial storylines involving sexual content, profanity, swerves or unexpected heel turns, and worked shoots, as well as short matches, backstage vignettes, shocking angles and levels of depicted violence. Russo's style of writing came to be known as "Crash TV" and was heavily inspired by The Jerry Springer Show.


title: Vince Russo

text: In 1997, Russo became head writer for the WWF and wrote their flagship show "Raw Is War" as well as their monthly pay-per-views. With the angles that he created, Russo had a large hand in putting WWF ahead of WCW in the Monday night rating wars during the Attitude Era. In an interview with Jeff Lane in 2015, Russo acknowledged that the first thing he wrote as WWF head writer was the episode of "Raw" that aired on December 15, 1997. At the King of the Ring pay-per-view in 1998, Ed Ferrara joined the WWF creative team and was paired with Russo. Some of the more controversial characters during this time, often cited by critics of Russo, include Sable, Val Venis and The Godfather. Russo devised the infamous Brawl for All tournament. Russo also contributed to the formation of D-Generation X, The Undertaker vs. Kane feud, the Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Mr. McMahon feud, the rise of The Rock, and Mick Foley's three-face pushes.


title: Vince Russo

text: In the two years following Russo's promotion to head writer, Raw surpassed WCW's Nitro in head-to-head ratings.


title: Vince Russo

text: In October 1999, Russo was replaced by Chris Kreski as WWF head writer, after Russo departed the company.


title: Vince Russo

text: On October 3, 1999, Russo and Ed Ferrara signed with WCW; Russo contends that his reason for leaving the WWF was the result of a dispute with Vince McMahon over the increased workload caused by the introduction of the new "SmackDown!" broadcast and McMahon's disregard of Russo's family. Russo and Ferrara attempted to make the same "Crash TV" style on "Monday Nitro" which was similar to "Raw Is War", only at an accelerated pace, including soapier storylines, more lengthy non-wrestling segments, constant heel/face turns, an increased amount of female representation on the show, fake retirements, more backstage vignettes, expanded storyline depth, title changes, and the utilization of midcard talent in a more effective manner. Russo and Ferrara often focused on poking fun at the WWF.


title: Vince Russo

text: Russo's writing style created a large turnover in title changes, reflecting his "crash TV" writing philosophy. His booking of Jushin Thunder Liger losing and regaining the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship on "Nitro" in late 1999 was not recognized by New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) in the title lineage until 2007; Liger lost the title to Juventud Guerrera, a luchador, after being hit over the head with a tequila bottle. Swerves and scenarios treated as "shoots" were heavily emphasized, as wrestlers supposedly gave unscripted interviews using "insider" terms that were only recognized by the Internet smarks; chaotic broadcasts became the norm.


title: Vince Russo

text: In January 2000, Russo received two phone calls, one from Bret Hart (then WCW World Heavyweight Champion) and another from Jeff Jarrett (then WCW United States Heavyweight Champion), both saying that they were injured, thus could not wrestle and forced to vacate their respective championships. This required Russo to alter the plans he had in mind for Hart and the New World Order. Russo and his booking committee sat down to determine what would now happen at Souled Out. One of the ideas included putting the now-vacated WCW Title on the shoot fighter Tank Abbott, a former UFC fighter. In an attempt to do something believable, the idea was originally to have a "rumble match" in which Sid Vicious would be an early entrant in the match and would last all the way to the end when Abbott would come into the match and eliminate him with one punch. Russo said that Abbott might not have held the belt for more than 24 hours if this title change had actually occurred. However, the day after he and his committee came up with the idea, he was asked to work in a committee and no longer be head writer. Russo declined the offer and left the company, with his immediate replacement being Kevin Sullivan, who along with other bookers, chose wrestler Chris Benoit to win the title from Vicious in a singles bout with Arn Anderson as the referee. Vince Russo despite political uproar increased ratings by a full point in his 3 month tenure.


title: Vince Russo

text: Three months after Russo's departure, Kevin Sullivan was ultimately relieved of his duties in March 2000 and Russo returned as lead writer, alongside the returning Eric Bischoff. The idea was that Russo and Bischoff would reboot WCW into a more modern, streamlined company that would allow the younger talent to work with the established stars. On April 10, 2000, WCW Monday Nitro edition, Vince Russo was introduced as an on-screen antagonist authority figure. Notable storyline points his character was involved with include "The New Blood vs. The Millionaire's Club"; his feud with Ric Flair where he and David Flair were involved with shaving Ric Flair's hair as well as Reid Flair's hair; his feud with Goldberg; and his short reign as world champion. On May 8, 2000, Russo booked Miss Elizabeth in her first official wrestling match against Daffney. Elizabeth left the company shortly thereafter.


title: Vince Russo

text: At Bash at the Beach 2000, Russo was involved in an incident with Hulk Hogan where Hogan was booked to lose a match against reigning WCW World Heavyweight Champion Jeff Jarrett. Hogan refused to lose the match (invoking his contract's "creative control" clause to override Russo), due to Russo's apparent lack of direction for Hogan's character following the planned loss. In the end, Russo booked Jarrett to literally lie down for Hogan, which resulted in Hogan doing a worked shoot on Russo saying, "That's why this company is in the damn shape it's in; because of bullshit like this" and scoring the pinfall victory by placing his foot on Jarrett's chest. Russo would come out later in the broadcast to nullify the match's result, as he publicly fired Hogan. This action restored the title to Jarrett, which set up a new title match between Jarrett and Booker T, with the latter winning the match and the title.


title: Vince Russo

text: As Russo promised, Hogan never resurfaced in WCW and even filed a lawsuit against Russo for defamation of character (which was dismissed in 2003 stating that the charges filed against Russo were "groundless" and "were just part of a wrestling storyline"). Hogan claims (in his autobiography, "Hollywood Hulk Hogan") that Russo turned the angle into a shoot, and that he was double-crossed by Turner executive Brad Siegel who did not want to use him anymore due to his costs per appearance. Eric Bischoff states in his autobiography, "Controversy Creates Ca$h", that Hogan winning and leaving with the title was a work which would result in his return several months later where the plan was to crown a new champion at Halloween Havoc, where Hogan would come out at the end of the show and ultimately win a champion vs. champion match – but Russo coming out to fire him was in fact a shoot which led to the lawsuit filed by Hogan. Bischoff claims that he and Hogan celebrated after the event over the angle, but were distraught to get a phone call hearing of Russo's in-ring shoot after Hogan left the arena. Mike Awesome, cousin to Hogan's nephew Horace Hogan (who also left the company following the incident) also alleged in a shoot interview published by Highspots that the disputes and the incident also affected his WCW run, in which Russo allegedly took out his problems with Hulk Hogan on Awesome, citing that he was "too close of kin" to Hogan, by portraying several poorly received gimmicks.


title: Vince Russo

text: In mid-2000, Russo entered into an angle with Ric Flair. The angle notably included Russo sending cops to the ring to arrest Flair during the wedding between Stacy Keibler and Flair's son David.


title: Vince Russo

text: In August 2000 at New Blood Rising, Russo entered into a feud with Goldberg after confronting Goldberg when the wrestler left a match and "refused to follow the script." The next PPV, Fall Brawl, saw Russo interfere in Goldberg’s match against Scott Steiner, costing Goldberg the match.


title: Vince Russo

text: On the September 18, 2000 episode of "Nitro", Russo was in a tag match alongside Sting and Booker T versus Scott Steiner and Jeff Jarret, with the wrestler getting the pin receiving a shot at Booker T's WCW World Heavyweight Championship. Russo won after Booker T dragged an unconscious Russo onto Steiner for the three count. The following week, Russo faced Booker T in a steel cage match for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. The match did not appear to have a clear winner as Russo was speared by Goldberg through the side of the cage at the same time Booker exited the cage. Two days later on WCW Thunder, Russo was announced as the winner and new champion. However, the reign was short lived as Russo announced he was vacating the title immediately after, as he was not a wrestler. Russo suffered a severe concussion from the spear spot, and took time off because of post-concussion syndrome.


title: Vince Russo

text: Russo's run as head writer and fledgling in-ring career came to a halt after the concussion and other injuries. Time Warner bought out Russo's contract shortly after the WCW buyout in May 2001.


title: Vince Russo

text: Russo later returned to WWE in June 2002 as a consultant to oversee creative direction of both "Raw" and "SmackDown!", but quickly left after two weeks, after stating that there was "no way in the world that this thing would work out". The major storyline idea he proposed was an entire restart of the WCW Invasion, featuring previously unsigned talent such as Bill Goldberg, Scott Steiner, Eric Bischoff and Bret Hart. After feeling disrespected by a phone call with Stephanie McMahon, Russo then left of his own accord (turning down a $125,000 per year stay-at-home 'advisory' role with WWE in favor of a $100,000 per year full-time position with TNA).


title: Vince Russo

text: In July 2002, Russo joined Jeff and Jerry Jarrett's NWA-TNA promotion as a creative writer and would assist in the writing and production of the shows. Russo claims that the name "Total Nonstop Action" came from him and that the original concept was, as they were exclusive to pay-per-view, to be an edgier product than WWE; the initials of the company "TNA" being a play on "T&A," short for "Tits and Ass." Throughout the first few years, there were numerous reports of a creative power struggle over the direction of the programming.


title: Vince Russo

text: During the time when these rumors circulated, Russo eventually debuted as an on-screen character when the mysterious masked wrestler "Mr. Wrestling III" helped Jeff Jarrett win the NWA World Heavyweight Championship and was eventually unveiled as him. In the on-screen story, Jarrett did not want Russo's help which led to the two become involved in a feud. Russo created his own faction of wrestlers he dubbed Sports Entertainment Xtreme (S.E.X.), recruiting the likes of Glenn Gilbertti, Sonny Siaki, B.G. James, Raven, Trinity, and others. S.E.X. faced the more traditional TNA wrestlers led by Jeff Jarrett. Eventually, Russo would leave his on-screen role and Gilbertti would become the leader of S.E.X. instead.


title: Vince Russo

text: After leaving for a brief period, Russo returned as an on-screen character on the May 28, 2003 pay-per-view where he would hit Raven with a baseball bat helping Gilbertti become the number one contender for the world championship. The next week on June 4, 2003, when Gilbertti fought Jarrett for the world championship, Russo would hit Gilbertti with a baseball bat which in turn helped Jarrett retain his belt. On the following week's pay-per-view (June 11, 2003), when A.J. Styles and Raven fought Jarrett for the world title in a triple threat match, Russo teased hitting Styles with Jarrett's trademark guitar, but eventually hit Jarrett leading Styles to win the world championship belt.


title: Vince Russo

text: Russo would then manage NWA World Heavyweight Champion A.J. Styles for the remainder of his 2003 run and S.E.X. was quietly written out of the storylines. On October 1, 2003, Russo suffered the first loss of his in-ring career in a tag team match against Dusty Rhodes and Jeff Jarrett, although his partner, Styles, yielded the pin. On the October 15, 2003 pay-per-view, Russo made his final appearance of that year in a street-fight with Jarrett. It was reported that Russo was written out of the company as a result of Hulk Hogan's signing and because Hogan reportedly said that he would not work for TNA as long as Russo was involved with the company. In February 2004, shortly after Hogan was not able to commit with TNA, Russo would eventually return but strictly as an on-air character, becoming the "Director of Authority" in the storylines. This time, he was a face, claiming to have changed his ways (which was likely inspired by Russo's real-life conversion to Christianity). However, he would disappear again in late 2004 when Dusty Rhodes was "voted" the new D.O.A. over himself at the three-hour November 2004 pay-per-view Victory Road in an interactive "election" on TNA's website. Russo left the company after the 2004 Victory Road pay-per-view. In a November 2005 interview, Russo states that he never wrote a single show on his own during this period at TNA and described his time there as a "total nightmare."


title: Vince Russo

text: On September 21, 2006, TNA president Dixie Carter re-signed Russo as a writer on the TNA creative team. Russo was paired with Dutch Mantell and Jeff Jarrett on the TNA creative team.


title: Vince Russo

text: During the March 2007 TNA pay-per-view Destination X on the "Last Rites" match with Abyss and Sting, "Fire Russo!" chants erupted from the crowd in the arena at Orlando indicating the fans' frustration with the incidents that occurred during the match.


title: Vince Russo

text: Another time the "Fire Russo!" chants were heard was at the following month's pay-per-view Lockdown that was held in St. Louis on April 15, 2007. The chants were heard during the electrified steel cage match with Team 3D and The LAX where the lights would flicker on-and-off whenever a wrestler touched the cage giving the impression of electrocution. Dixie Carter has since noted that gimmick was created by writer Dutch Mantell. However, in a 2011 interview, Mantell denied this and the two proceeded to argue over Twitter for several months after this.


title: Vince Russo

text: Russo became head of creative for TNA sometime during July 2009. On addressing the "Fire Russo!" chants, Russo said he was not head of creative during that time, and when the idea of the electrified steel cage was presented to him, he said that there was no way that the concept could have been done in a believable manner and that he was often blamed for ideas that he never even came up with. At the September 2009 No Surrender pay-per-view, Ed Ferrara joined TNA and began working on the creative team with Vince Russo and junior contributor Matt Conway.


title: Vince Russo

text: On October 27, 2009, Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff signed with TNA and were paired with Russo, whom they had conflicted with in WCW and had not worked with since they departed the company after Bash at the Beach 2000. In 2010, when asked about his relationship with Russo at TNA, Hogan said he came to TNA in peace, that the writing staff of Russo, Ed Ferrara, Matt Conway, and Jeremy Borash have really "stepped it up", and that Hogan loved Russo "from a distance". According to Russo, the three met together and worked out their differences. While working with Russo, Bischoff also stated in a February 2010 interview that it was a "very positive experience" and that their collaborations were productive.


title: Vince Russo

text: By October 6, 2011, Russo had stepped down to the role of a contributing writer, with Bruce Prichard taking over the head writer's role. On February 14, 2012, TNA president Dixie Carter explained that TNA and Russo had mutually parted ways during the week.


title: Vince Russo

text: In April 2014, the "PWInsider" website claimed that Russo was working as a consultant for TNA Wrestling. Russo denied the reports, but on July 15, "PWInsider" reported that Russo had accidentally sent an email to them with instructions on how TNA's commentators work. As a result, and after trying to state that he was not involved with TNA, Russo admitted on his website that he was already working as a consultant for TNA Wrestling to work with TNA's commentators and that one of TNA's conditions was that Russo was to keep his involvement confidential. In less than two days, Russo's statement was removed from his website.


title: Vince Russo

text: On July 30, 2014, Russo claimed that he was "officially done" with TNA. Not long after, Russo revealed that he had been working for TNA since October 24, 2013, claiming that he had been involved in creative meetings and also critiqued the weekly episodes of "Impact Wrestling". Russo stated that he was getting paid about $3,000 a month, averaging to $36,000 a year, to be a consultant with TNA.


title: Vince Russo

text: On December 8, 2017, Russo signed with the Nashville, Tennessee-based Aro Lucha promotion as a script consultant. On April 5, 2018, Aro Lucha's CEO, Jason Brown, explained via a question and answer session on WeFunder (a crowd-funding website), that Russo had been hired as an independent contractor, not as an employee. As of April 2018, Russo is no longer with the promotion.


title: Vince Russo

text: Russo was among the most controversial figures in wrestling. He often stated that the story and character elements of the show are what draws viewers, and thus emphasizes entertainment over the in-ring aspect of professional wrestling. "Newsday" writes that "Despite scripting some of the most successful WWF television programs in history, and later doing the same for WCW and TNA, Russo remains one of wrestling's most reviled personalities for his sometimes unconventional take on the wrestling business." According to Russo, one reason he is reviled is due to his take on the current WWE product; he believes there is too much actual wrestling and not enough storylines. In Russo's book, "Rope Opera", he writes that he has been conversely referred to as "the saviour of the WWF" and "the man who destroyed WCW".


title: Vince Russo

text: WWE credits Russo with being responsible for many of the Attitude Era's storylines. Likewise, Bob Kapur of "Slam! Wrestling" gives Russo credit for WWE turning away from the cartoonish style of the early 1990s and instead bringing more mature storylines and characters to the promotion.


title: Vince Russo

text: Gene Okerlund claimed in 2004 that Russo's ideas were successful in the WWF because Vince McMahon was able to control them, while Ric Flair doubted Russo's WWF influence during their time together in WCW, later blaming Russo for the disorganization of WCW. Eric Bischoff has said that Russo was hired at WCW by overstating his influence in WWF, which Bischoff called "fraudulent." Wrestling promoters Tony Khan and Jody Hamilton have criticized Russo's role in the downfall of WCW, and TNA co-founder Jerry Jarrett expressed regret at the decision of bringing Russo in.


title: Vince Russo

text: Russo's decision to have David Arquette win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship was viewed as highly controversial; though Russo defended his decision, citing that mainstream American newspapers covered the story. WrestleCrap named Arquette the worst wrestling champion of all time and called Russo's decision a "monumentally damaging blow to a company that was already at death's door." WWE's "Rise and Fall of WCW" documentary also largely blamed Russo for the decline of WCW, prompting DVD Talk critic Nick Hartel to write that "while Russo deserves a lot of blame, he was not the only one in charge." The WWE Network series "The Monday Night War: WWE vs. WCW" credited Russo with elevating younger talent in WCW. Russo himself stated " WCW and I were never on the same page; it was just that simple" regarding his WCW run. R. D. Reynolds stated that executive Jamie Kellner cancelling WCW programs from Turner Networks was what killed WCW and not Russo, Bischoff and Hulk Hogan were entirely to blame.


title: Vince Russo

text: TNA President Dixie Carter praised Russo as "incredibly talented" in 2014, but admitted his presence "proved to be too distracting to continue a working relationship"; when asked if Russo could return to the promotion she said "never say never". Various wrestlers who worked with Russo in TNA have spoken fondly of him, including: Hernandez, Kurt Angle, and AJ Styles. Velvet Sky and Angelina Love credit Russo for being supportive of TNA's Knockouts division.


title: Vince Russo

text: In 2014, Russo wrote a series of columns for What Culture, a UK-based website with a dedicated pro wrestling section. Russo began hosting a daily podcast "Vince Russo's The Brand" for "The RELM Network" on April 20, 2015. In July 2016, Russo hosted a Fightful Wrestling podcast, but left prematurely in November 2016 due to his heart no longer being interested in the current wrestling product.


title: Vince Russo

text: Russo is also an author. He has written "Forgiven: One Man's Journey from Self-Glorification to Sanctification", his autobiography (released on November 29, 2005) documenting his early life, his WWF run, as well as his Christian faith. The book was written in 2000, originally titled "Welcome To Bizarroland" and was a book that negatively portrayed people in the wrestling business. After being a born again Christian, the title and content of the book was revised to correspond with his newly found faith.


title: Vince Russo

text: Russo's second book "Rope Opera: How WCW Killed Vince Russo" was released on March 1, 2010 and chronicles his tenure with WCW and TNA. The title "Rope Opera" stems from the title of a television series idea that he pitched to networks at the time of his WWF tenure.


title: Vince Russo

text: Russo is an American of Italian descent, as his maternal grandfather was Sicilian. He has been married to his wife Amy since 1983. The couple have three children together. In October 2003, Russo became a Born Again Christian. In 2004, he formed a short-lived online Christian ministry titled "Forgiven". In late 2005, he produced two shows for his Christian "Ring of Glory" independent promotion.


title: Vince Russo

text: Russo worked with Jim Cornette in the WWF during the 1990s and in TNA during the 2000s. They regularly conflicted over their opposing views on the wrestling business. In April 2010, a law firm contacted and accused Cornette of making a "terroristic threat" after writing a letter saying, "I want Vince Russo to die. If I could figure out a way to murder him without going to prison, I would consider it the greatest accomplishment of my life." In June 2017, Russo filed a restraining order against Cornette after repeated verbal threats of physical harm towards Russo and his family. Their rivalry has been featured in "Dark Side of the Ring" episodes covering the Montreal Screwjob and WWF's Brawl for All, which aired in 2019 and 2020 respectively.


title: Nixie (folklore)

text: The Nixie, Nixy, Nix, Näcken, Nicor, Nøkk, or Nøkken (; , ; ; Norwegian ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; or ) are humanoid, and often shapeshifting water spirits in Germanic mythology and folklore.


title: Nixie (folklore)

text: Under a variety of names, they are common to the stories of all Germanic peoples, although they are perhaps best known from Scandinavian folklore. The related English "knucker" was generally depicted as a wyrm or dragon, although more recent versions depict the spirits in other forms. Their sex, bynames, and various transformations vary geographically. The German and his Scandinavian counterparts were male. The German was a female river mermaid. Similar creatures are known from other parts of Europe, such as the Melusine in France, the Xana in Asturias (Spain), and the Slavic water spirits (e.g. the Rusalka) in Slavic countries.


title: Nixie (folklore)

text: The names are held to derive from Common Germanic or , derived from PIE ("to wash"). They are related to Sanskrit , Greek and , and Irish (all meaning to wash or be washed). The form "neck" appears in English and Swedish ( or , meaning "nude"). The Swedish form is derived from Old Swedish , which corresponds to Old Icelandic ( ), and in Norwegian Nynorsk. In Finnish, the word is . In Old Danish, the form was and in modern Danish and Norwegian Bokmål it is /. The Icelandic and Faroese are horselike creatures. In Middle Low German, it was called and in Middle Dutch (compare also or plus ). The Old High German form also meant "crocodile", while the Old English could mean both a "water monster" like those encountered by Beowulf, and a "hippopotamus". The Norwegian and Swedish are related figures sometimes seen as by-names for the same creature. The southern Scandinavian version can transform himself into a horse-like "kelpie", and is called ("the brook horse"), whilst the Welsh version is called the (the "water horse").


title: Nixie (folklore)

text: English folklore contains many creatures with similar characteristics to the "Nix" or . These include Jenny Greenteeth, the Shellycoat, the river-hag Peg Powler, the -like Brag, and the Grindylow.


title: Nixie (folklore)

text: At Lyminster, near Arundel in the English county of West Sussex, there are today said to dwell "water-wyrms" called knuckers, in a pool called the "Knucker-hole". The great Victorian authority Walter William Skeat had plausibly suggested the pool's name of "knucker" (a name attested from 1835, Horsfield) was likely derived from the Old English , a creature-name found in "Beowulf". Yet the waters at the pool were badly muddied by a local antiquarian named Samuel Evershed, who from 1866 tried assiduously to connect the pool with dragons and thus with the tale of St. George and the Dragon. Any authentic water-sprite folklore the site may originally have had was thus trampled down by Evershed's enthusiastic inculcation of the local people in ideas about water-dragons.


title: Nixie (folklore)

text: The Nordic , , were male water spirits who played enchanted songs on the violin, luring women and children to drown in lakes or streams. However, not all of these spirits were necessarily malevolent; many stories indicate at the very least that were entirely harmless to their audience and attracted not only women and children, but men as well with their sweet songs. Stories also exist wherein the Fossegrim agreed to live with a human who had fallen in love with him, but many of these stories ended with the returning to his home, usually a nearby waterfall or brook. (Compare the legend of Llyn y Fan Fach in Wales.) The were said to grow despondent unless they had free, regular contact with a water source.


title: Nixie (folklore)

text: The Norwegian or , Swedish , is a related figure who, if properly approached, will teach a musician to play so adeptly "that the trees dance and waterfalls stop at his music".