title: Solar power by country

text: Austria had 421.7 MW of photovoltaics at the end of 2012, 234.5 MW of which was installed that year. Most of it is grid connected. Photovoltaic deployment in Austria had been rather modest for many years, while in other European countries, such as Germany, Italy or Spain installations were booming with new records year after year until 2011. The tide has turned in 2012. New PV installations jumped to more than 200 megawatt per year in Austria in an overall declining European solar market. The European Photovoltaic Industry Association forecasts, that Austria, together with other midsized countries, will contribute significantly to European PV deployment in the coming years.


title: Solar power by country

text: In October 2009, the city of Antwerp announced that they wanted to install 2,500 m of solar panels on the roofs of public buildings, which would be worth 265,000 kWh per annum.


title: Solar power by country

text: In December 2009, Katoen Natie announced that they would install 800,000 m of solar panels in various places, including Antwerp. It is expected that the installed solar power in the Flemish region will be increased by 25% when finished, resulting in the largest installation in Europe., the total cost being 166 million euros.


title: Solar power by country

text: Bulgaria had seen a record year in 2012 when its PV capacity multiplied several times over to more than 1 GW. In 2013, however, further deployment came to a halt.


title: Solar power by country

text: Germany is among the top-4 ranked countries in terms of installed photovoltaic solar capacity. The overall capacity has reached 42.98 gigawatts (GW) by the end of 2017. Photovoltaics contribute almost 6% to the national electricity demands. Germany has seen an outstanding period of photovoltaic installations from 2010 until 2012. During this boom, about 22 GW, or a third of the worldwide PV installations of that period was deployed in Germany alone. However, the boom period ended in 2012, and Germany's national PV market has since declined significantly, due to the amendments in the German Renewable Energy Act (EEG) that reduced feed-in tariffs and set constraints on utility-scaled installations, limiting their size to no more than 10 MW.


title: Solar power by country

text: The current version of the EEG only guarantees financial assistance as long as the overall PV capacity has not yet reached 52 GW. It also foresees to regulate annual PV growth within a range of 2.5 GW to 3.5 GW by adjusting the guaranteed fees accordingly. The legislative reforms stipulates a 40 to 45 percent share from renewable energy sources by 2025 and a 55 to 60 percent share by 2035.


title: Solar power by country

text: Large PV power plants in Germany include Senftenberg Solarpark, Finsterwalde Solar Park, Lieberose Photovoltaic Park, Strasskirchen Solar Park, Waldpolenz Solar Park, and Köthen Solar Park.


title: Solar power by country

text: By September 2013, the total installed photovoltaic capacity in Greece had reached 2,523.5 MWp from which the 987.2 MWp were installed in the period between January–September 2013 despite the unprecedented financial crisis. Greece ranks fifth worldwide with regard to per capita installed PV capacity. It is expected that PV produced energy will cover up to 7% of the country's electricity demand in 2014.


title: Solar power by country

text: A large solar PV plant is planned for the island of Crete. Research continues into ways to make the actual solar collecting cells less expensive and more efficient. Smaller solar PV farms exist throughout the country.


title: Solar power by country

text: Italy added nearly 400 MW of solar PV capacity in the year 2017 reaching a total installed PV capacity of around 19.7 GW.


title: Solar power by country

text: The number of plants and the total capacity surged in 2009 and 2010 following high incentives from "Conto Energia".


title: Solar power by country

text: The total power capacity installed tripled and plants installed doubled in 2010 compared to 2009, with an increase of plant's average dimensions.


title: Solar power by country

text: Annual growth rates were fast in recent years: 251% in 2009 and 182% in 2010. More than a fifth of the total production in 2010 came from the southern region of Apulia.


title: Solar power by country

text: In December 2012, solar PV in Italy provided employment to 100,000 people especially in design and installation.


title: Solar power by country

text: A large photovoltaic power project, the Serpa solar power plant, has been completed in Portugal, in one of Europe's sunniest areas. The 11 megawatt plant covers and comprises 52,000 PV panels. The panels are raised 2 metres off the ground and the area will remain productive grazing land. The project will provide enough energy for 8,000 homes and will save an estimated 30,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year.


title: Solar power by country

text: The Moura photovoltaic power station is located in the municipality of Moura, in the interior region of Alentejo, Portugal. Its construction involves two stages, with the first one being constructed in 13 months and completed in 2008, and the other will be completed by 2010, at a total cost of €250 million for the project.


title: Solar power by country

text: Romania has an installed capacity of 1.2 GW as of 2014. Romania is located in an area with a good solar potential of 210 sunny days per year and with an annual solar energy flux between 1,000 kWh/m2/year and 1,300 kWh/m2/year. The most important solar regions of Romania are the Black Sea coast, Dobrogea and Oltenia.


title: Solar power by country

text: Current production of 5 MW is very modest, however there are plans for an expansion in capacity by 70 MW in 2012–13 in a $210 million joint project by Rosnano and Renova. The development of renewable energy in Russia has been held back by the lack of a conducive framework and government policy.


title: Solar power by country

text: Spain was an early adopter in the development of solar energy, since it is one of the countries of Europe with more hours of sunshine. The Spanish government committed to achieving a target of 12 percent of primary energy from renewable energy by 2010 with an installed solar generating capacity of 3000 megawatts (MW). Spain is the top tenth in the installed PV solar capacity and used to export 80 percent of solar power output to Germany. Total solar power in Spain reached nearly 7 GW by the end of 2016 including both installed PV and CSP. Nearly 8 TWh of electricity was generated from photovoltaics, and 5 TWh from CSP plants in 2016. Solar PV accounted for nearly 3% of total electricity generation in 2016 along with an additional of 1.9% from solar thermal.


title: Solar power by country

text: Through a ministerial ruling in March 2004, the Spanish government removed economic barriers to the connection of renewable energy technologies to the electricity grid. The Royal Decree 436/2004 equalized conditions for large-scale solar thermal and photovoltaic plants and guaranteed feed-in tariffs, which led to a boost in solar power adoption in Spain. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the Spanish government drastically cut its subsidies for solar power and capped future increases in capacity at 500 MW per year leading to a stagnation in the new installations.


title: Solar power by country

text: At the end of 2011, there were 230,000 solar power projects in the United Kingdom, with a total installed generating capacity of 750 megawatts (MW). By February 2012 the installed capacity had reached 1,000 MW. Solar power use has increased very rapidly in recent years, albeit from a small base, as a result of reductions in the cost of photovoltaic (PV) panels, and the introduction of a Feed-in tariff (FIT) subsidy in April 2010. In 2012, the government said that 4 million homes across the UK will be powered by the sun within eight years, representing 22,000 MW of installed solar power capacity by 2020. As of April 2015, PV capacity had risen to 6,562 MW across 698,860 installations. The latest government figures indicates UK solar photovoltaic (PV) generation capacity has reached 12,404 MW in December 2017.


title: Solar power by country

text: Sarnia Photovoltaic Power Plant near Sarnia, Ontario, was in September 2010 the world's largest photovoltaic plant with an installed capacity of 80 MW. until surpassed by a plant in China. The Sarnia plant covers and contains about 10.3 million sq feet / 966,000 square metres (96.6 ha), which is about 1.3 million thin film panels. The expected annual energy yield is about 120,000 MW·h, which if produced in a coal-fired plant would require emission of 39,000 tonnes of CO per year.


title: Solar power by country

text: Canada has many regions that are sparsely populated and difficult to access, but also does not have optimal access to sunlight given the high latitudes of much of the country. Photovoltaic cells are increasingly used as standalone units, mostly as off-grid distributed electricity generation to power remote homes, telecommunications equipment, oil and pipeline monitoring stations and navigational devices. The Canadian PV market has grown quickly and Canadian companies make solar modules, controls, specialized water pumps, high efficiency refrigerators and solar lighting systems. Ontario has subsidized solar power energy to promote its growth.


title: Solar power by country

text: One of the most important uses for PV cells is in northern communities, many of which depend on high-cost diesel fuel to generate electricity. Since the 1970s, the federal government and industry has encouraged the development of solar technologies for these communities. Some of these efforts have focused on the use of hybrid systems that provide power 24 hours a day, using solar power when sunlight is available, in combination with another energy source.


title: Solar power by country

text: In June 2021, the Girasol Solar Park was inaugurated as the largest solar PV farm in the country and the entire Antilles region. It has a total installed capacity of 120 megawatts and it is estimated that it will produce 240,000 MWh per year, enough to supply the electricity consumption of more than 100,000 Dominican homes. Girasol will avoid the emission into the atmosphere of 150,000 tons of annually and the import of 400,000 barrels of oil, which contributes to mitigate the effects of climate change and represents savings in foreign exchange, respectively.


title: Solar power by country

text: Before this, in the Dominican Republic, the Monte Plata Project was the largest operating solar plant in the Caribbean with an installed capacity of 69MW.


title: Solar power by country

text: In 2014, a 1.6 MW photovoltaic rooftop system at a seaside resort, located near the parish capital, Lucea in the parish of Hanover, was inaugurated. It was developed by Sofos Jamaica, and is the largest in Jamaica until a 20 MW utility-scale solar PV plant is constructed in the Parish of Clarendon in 2015.


title: Solar power by country

text: No central database yet exists with information on installed capacity but, web searches reveal media articles, press releases and vendor web pages that share some details. Based on these sources up to the middle of 2015, there was over 3.7 MW connected to the grid but, a sizeable portion of that total, including the 1.6 MW rooftop system of a seaside resort and a commercial 500 kW-system in the country's capital, Kingston, do not feed power back to the grid despite being interconnected.


title: Solar power by country

text: Mexico was the greatest solar energy producer in Latin America until passed by Brazil. Actually is the second Latin American country with the largest installed capacity (5.6 GW in 2020).


title: Solar power by country

text: Solar power in the United States includes utility-scale solar power plants as well as local distributed generation, mostly from rooftop photovoltaics. Installations have been growing rapidly in recent years as costs have declined with the U.S. hitting 76 GW of installed solar PV capacity at the end of 2019.


title: Solar power by country

text: The United States is in the top 4 ranking for countries with the most solar PV installed. The American Solar Energy Industries Association projects that total solar PV capacity will reach over 100 GW by 2021.


title: Solar power by country

text: Electrical generation has been rising in tandem with capacity as U.S. Energy Information Administration data show that utility-scale solar power generated 1.8% of total U.S. electricity in 2019, up from <0.1% in 2005.


title: Solar power by country

text: This figure is even higher in certain states, already reaching over 10% of generation in five states (California, Hawaii, Nevada, Massachusetts, and Vermont).


title: Solar power by country

text: The United States conducted much early research in photovoltaics and concentrated solar power and is among the top countries in the world in deploying the technology, being home to 4 of the 10 largest utility-scale photovoltaic power stations in the world as of 2017. The energy resource continues to be encouraged through official policy with 29 states having set mandatory renewable energy targets as of October 2015, solar power being specifically included in 20 of them.


title: Solar power by country

text: Aside from utility projects, roughly 784,000 homes and businesses in the nation have installed solar systems through the second quarter of 2015.


title: Solar power by country

text: A number of Pacific island states have committed to high percentages of renewable energy use, both to serve as an example to other countries and to cut the high costs of imported fuels. A number of solar installations have been financed and assisted by Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates. Solar farms have gone online in Tuvalu, Fiji and Kiribati. UAE-Pacific Partnership Fund solar projects completed by Masdar in 2016 included: 1MW in the Solomon Islands, 500 kW in Nauru, 600 kW in the Marshall Islands, 600 kW in Micronesia and a 450 kW solar-diesel hybrid plant in Palau. American Samoa has 2 MW of solar installed at Pago Pago Airport.


title: Solar power by country

text: Australia had over 23,466 megawatts (MW) of installed photovoltaic (PV) solar power by September 2021 making it a leader in solar power deployment on a watts per capita basis. The largest solar power station in Australia is the 313 MW Limondale Solar Farm. Other significant solar arrays include the 275 MW Darlington Point Solar Farm, 220 MW Bungala solar plant, 200 MW Sunraysia Solar Farm and 174 MW Wellington Solar Farm.


title: Solar power by country

text: A 9 MW (megawatts, electrical) solar thermal `coal saver' system was constructed at Liddell power station. The system used `compact linear Fresnel reflector' technology developed in Australia. It provided solar-powered steam to the 600 MW black coal power station's boiler feedwater heater. By 2016, it was "effectively" closed and an effort to build a similar 40 MW solar boost at Kogan Creek coal power station was stopped.


title: Solar power by country

text: The planned Australia–ASEAN Power Link aims to connect Singapore to 26,000MW of solar and wind energy in the north west of Australia.


title: Solar power by country

text: Solar power in New Zealand currently only generates 0.1 percent of New Zealand's electricity since more emphasis has been placed on hydroelectric, geothermal, and wind power in New Zealand's push for renewable energy. Solar power systems were installed in 42 schools in New Zealand in the Schoolgen program, a program developed by Genesis Energy to educate students in solar power. Each participating school has a 2 kW solar panel. Between February 2007 and 29 December 29, 2012, 395.714 MWh were produced.


title: Solar power by country

text: In 2010, New Zealand's largest thin film solar array was the 20 kW array installed at Hubbard Foods A 21.6 kW photovoltaic array was installed in Queenstown in 2009. In April 2012, New Zealand's largest solar power plant was the 68.4 kW array installed to meet 70% of the electricity needs of South Auckland Forging Engineering Ltd, which is expected to pay for itself in eight to nine years.


title: Solar power by country

text: Brazil began to install solar energy on a massive scale starting in 2017, quickly becoming the Latin American country with the most solar energy installed. The total installed solar power in Brazil was estimated at 21 GW at October 2022, generating approximately 2.48% of the country's electricity demand. In 2023 Brazil will be among the 10 largest countries in the world in terms of installed solar power. In 2020, Brazil was the 14th country in the world in terms of installed solar power (7.8 GW).


title: Solar power by country

text: Chile is currently the third Latin American country (and second in South America) with the most installed solar energy, 4.4 GW in 2021. As the Atacama Desert has the highest solar irradiation in the world, and Chile has always had problems obtaining energy (the country basically does not produce oil, gas and coal), renewable energy is seen as the solution for the country's shortcomings in the energy field.


title: Solar power by country

text: The 246MW El Romero solar photovoltaic plant open in November 2016 at Vallenar in the Atacama region It was the largest solar farm in Latin America when it opened.


title: Solar power by country

text: By the first half of 2015 Chile reached 546 MW of PV installed capacity, and 1,647 MW are under construction.


title: Infographic

text: Infographics (a clipped compound of "information" and "graphics") are graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly. They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system's ability to see patterns and trends. Similar pursuits are information visualization, data visualization, statistical graphics, information design, or information architecture. Infographics have evolved in recent years to be for mass communication, and thus are designed with fewer assumptions about the readers' knowledge base than other types of visualizations. Isotypes are an early example of infographics conveying information quickly and easily to the masses.


title: Infographic

text: Infographics have been around for many years and recently the increase of the number of easy-to-use, free tools have made the creation of infographics available to a large segment of the population. Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have also allowed for individual infographics to be spread among many people around the world. Infographics are widely used in the age of short attention span.


title: Infographic

text: In newspapers, infographics are commonly used to show the weather, as well as maps, site plans, and graphs for summaries of data. Some books are almost entirely made up of information graphics, such as David Macaulay's "The Way Things Work". The Snapshots in "USA Today" are also an example of simple infographics used to convey news and current events.


title: Infographic

text: Modern maps, especially route maps for transit systems, use infographic techniques to integrate a variety of information, such as the conceptual layout of the transit network, transfer points, and local landmarks. Public transportation maps, such as those for the Washington Metro and the London Underground map, are well-known infographics. Public places such as transit terminals usually have some sort of integrated "signage system" with standardized icons and stylized maps.


title: Infographic

text: In his 1983 "landmark book" "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information", Edward Tufte defines "graphical displays" in the following passage:


title: Infographic

text: While contemporary infographics often deal with "qualitative" or soft subjects, generally speaking, Tufte's 1983 definition still speaks, in a broad sense, to what infographics are, and what they do—which is to condense large amounts of information into a form where it will be more easily absorbed by the reader.


title: Infographic

text: In 1626, Christoph Scheiner published the "Rosa Ursina sive Sol", a book that revealed his research about the rotation of the sun. Infographics appeared in the form of illustrations demonstrating the Sun's rotation patterns.


title: Infographic

text: In 1786, William Playfair, an engineer and political economist, published the first data graphs in his book "The Commercial and Political Atlas". To represent the economy of 18th Century England, Playfair used statistical graphs, bar charts, line graphs, area charts, and histograms. In his work, "Statistical Breviary", he is credited with introducing the first pie chart.


title: Infographic

text: Around 1820, modern geography was established by Carl Ritter. His maps included shared frames, agreed map legends, scales, repeatability, and fidelity. Such a map can be considered a "supersign" which combines sign systems—as defined by Charles Sanders Peirce—consisting of symbols, icons, indexes as representations. Other examples can be seen in the works of geographers Ritter and Alexander von Humboldt.


title: Infographic

text: In 1857, English nurse Florence Nightingale used information graphics to persuade Queen Victoria to improve conditions in military hospitals. The principal one she used was the Coxcomb chart, a combination of stacked bar and pie charts, depicting the number and causes of deaths during each month of the Crimean War.


title: Infographic

text: 1861 saw the release of an influential information graphic on the subject of Napoleon's disastrous march on Moscow. The graphic's creator, Charles Joseph Minard, captured four different changing variables that contributed to Napoleon's downfall in a single two-dimensional image: the army's direction as they traveled, the location the troops passed through, the size of the army as troops died from hunger and wounds, and the freezing temperatures they experienced.


title: Infographic

text: James Joseph Sylvester introduced the term "graph" in 1878 in the scientific magazine "Nature" and published a set of diagrams showing the relationship between chemical bonds and mathematical properties. These were also some of the first mathematical graphs.


title: Infographic

text: In 1900, the African-American historian, sociologist, writer, and Black rights activist, W.E.B. Du Bois presented data visualizations at the Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris, France. In addition to curating 500 photographs of the lives of Black Americans, Du Bois and his Atlanta University team of students and scholars created 60 handmade data visualizations to document the ways Black Americans were being denied access to education, housing, employment, and household wealth.


title: Infographic

text: The Cologne Progressives developed an aesthetic approach to art that focused on communicating information. Gerd Arntz, Peter Alma and Augustin Tschinkel, all participants in this movement were recruited by Otto Neurath for the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum, where they developed the Vienna Method from 1926 to 1934. Here simple images were used to represent data in a structured way. Following the victory of Austrofascism in the Austrian Civil War, the team moved to the Netherlands where they continued their work rebranding it Isotypes (International System of Typographic Picture Education). The method was also applied by IZOSTAT (ИЗОСТАТ) in the Soviet Union.


title: Infographic

text: In 1942 Isidore Isou published the Lettrist manifesto, a document covering art, culture, poetry, film, and political theory. The included works also called metagraphics and hypergraphics, are a synthesis of writing and visual art.


title: Infographic

text: In 1958 Stephen Toulmin proposed a graphical argument model, called The Toulmin Model of Argumentation. The diagram contained six interrelated components used for analyzing arguments and was considered Toulmin's most influential work, particularly in the field of rhetoric, communication, and computer science. The Toulmin Model of Argumentation became influential in argumentation theory and its applications.


title: Infographic

text: In 1972 and 1973, respectively, the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft included on their vessels the Pioneer Plaques, a pair of gold-anodized aluminum plaques, each featuring a pictorial message. The pictorial messages included nude male and female figures as well as symbols that were intended to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft. The images were designed by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake and were unique in that their graphical meanings were to be understandable to extraterrestrial beings, who would have no conception of human language.


title: Infographic

text: A pioneer in data visualization, Edward Tufte, wrote a series of books – "Visual Explanations", "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information", and "Envisioning Information" – on the subject of information graphics. Referred to by The New York Times as the “da Vinci of Data”, Tufte began to give day-long lectures and workshops on the subject of infographics starting in 1993. , Tufte still gives these lectures. To Tufte, good data visualizations represent every data point accurately and enable a viewer to see trends and patterns in the data. Tufte's contribution to the field of data visualization and infographics is considered immense, and his design principles can be seen in many websites, magazines, and newspapers today.


title: Infographic

text: The infographics created by Peter Sullivan for The Sunday Times in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s were some of the key factors in encouraging newspapers to use more infographics. Sullivan is also one of the few authors who have written about information graphics in newspapers. Likewise, the staff artists at USA Today, the United States newspaper that debuted in 1982, established the goal of using graphics to make information easier to comprehend. However, the paper has received criticism for oversimplifying news stories and for creating infographics that some find emphasizes entertainment over content and data. Tufte coined the term chartjunk to refer to graphics that are visually appealing to the point of losing the information contained within them.


title: Infographic

text: With vector graphics and raster graphics becoming ubiquitous in computing in the 21st Century, data visualizations have been applied to commonly used computer systems, including desktop publishing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS).


title: Infographic

text: Closely related to the field of information graphics is information design, which is the creation of infographics.


title: Infographic

text: By the year 2000, Adobe Flash-based animations on the Internet had made use of many key practices in creating infographics in order to create a variety of products and games.


title: Infographic

text: Likewise, television began to incorporate infographics into the viewers' experiences in the early 2000s. One example of infographics usage in television and in pop culture is the 2002 music video by the Norwegian musicians of Röyksopp, for their song "Remind Me." The video was composed entirely of animated infographics. Similarly, in 2004, a television commercial for the French nuclear technology company Areva used animated infographics as an advertising tactic. Both of these videos and the attention they received have conveyed to other fields the potential value of using information graphics to describe complex information efficiently.


title: Infographic

text: With the rise of alternatives to Adobe Flash, such as HTML 5 and CSS3, infographics are now created in a variety of media with a number of software tools.


title: Infographic

text: The field of journalism has also incorporated and applied information graphics to news stories. For stories that intend to include text, images, and graphics, the system called the maestro concept allows entire newsrooms to collaborate and organize a story to successfully incorporate all components. Across many newsrooms, this teamwork-integrated system is applied to improve time management. The maestro system is designed to improve the presentation of stories for busy readers of media. Many news-based websites have also used interactive information graphics in which the user can extract information on a subject as they explore the graphic.


title: Infographic

text: Many businesses use infographics as a medium for communicating with and attracting potential customers. Information graphics are a form of content marketing and have become a tool for internet marketers and companies to create content that others will link to, thus possibly boosting a company's reputation and online presence.


title: Infographic

text: Religious denominations have also started using infographics. For example, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has made numerous infographics to help people learn about their faith, missionaries, temples, lay ministry, and family history efforts.


title: Infographic

text: Infographics are finding a home in the classroom as well. Courses that teach students to create their own infographics using a variety of tools may encourage engagement in the classroom and may lead to a better understanding of the concepts they are mapping onto the graphics.


title: Infographic

text: With the popularity of social media, infographics have become popular, often as static images or simple web interfaces, covering any number of topics. Such infographics are often shared between users of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and Reddit. The hashtag #infographic was tweeted 56,765 times in March 2012 and at its peak 3,365 times in a span of 24 hours.


title: Infographic

text: The three parts of all infographics are the visual, the content, and the knowledge. The visual consists of colors and graphics. There are two different types of graphics – theme, and reference. These graphics are included in all infographics and represent the underlying visual representation of the data. Reference graphics are generally icons that can be used to point to certain data, although they are not always found in infographics. Statistics and facts usually serve as the content for infographics and can be obtained from any number of sources, including census data and news reports. One of the most important aspects of infographics is that they contain some sort of insight into the data that they are presenting – this is the knowledge.


title: Infographic

text: Infographics are effective because of their visual element. Humans receive input from all five of their senses (sight, touch, hearing, smell, taste), but they receive significantly more information from vision than any of the other four. Fifty percent of the human brain is dedicated to visual functions, and images are processed faster than text. The brain processes pictures all at once, but processes text in a linear fashion, meaning it takes much longer to obtain information from text. Entire business processes or industry sectors can be made relevant to a new audience through a guidance design technique that leads the eye. The page may link to a complete report, but the infographic primes the reader making the subject-matter more accessible. Online trends, such as the increasingly short attention span of Internet users, has also contributed to the increasing popularity and effectiveness of infographics.


title: Infographic

text: When designing the visual aspect of an infographic, a number of considerations must be made to optimize the effectiveness of the visualization. The six components of visual encoding are spatial, marks, connection, enclosure, retinal properties, and temporal encoding. Each of these can be utilized in its own way to represent relationships between different types of data. However, studies have shown that spatial position is the most effective way to represent numerical data and leads to the fastest and easiest understanding by viewers. Therefore, the designers often spatially represent the most important relationship being depicted in an infographic.


title: Infographic

text: There are also three basic provisions of communication that need to be assessed when designing an infographic – appeal, comprehension, and retention. "Appeal" is the idea that communication needs to engage its audience. Comprehension implies that the viewer should be able to easily understand the information that is presented to them. And finally, "retention" means that the viewer should remember the data presented by the infographic. The order of importance of these provisions depends on the purpose of the infographic. If the infographic is meant to convey information in an unbiased way, such as in the domains of academia or science, comprehension should be considered first, then retention, and finally, appeal. However, if the infographic is being used for commercial purposes, then appeal becomes most important, followed by retention and comprehension. When infographics are being used for editorial purposes, such as in a newspaper, the appeal is again most important but is followed first by comprehension and then retention.


title: Infographic

text: However, the appeal and the retention can in practice be put together with the aid of a comprehensible layout design. Recently, as an attempt to study the effect of the layout of an infographic on the comprehension of the viewers, a new Neural Network-based cognitive load estimation method was applied on different types of common layouts for the infographic design. When the varieties of factors listed above are taken into consideration when designing infographics, they can be a highly efficient and effective way to convey large amounts of information in a visual manner.


title: Infographic

text: Data visualizations are often used in infographics and may make up the entire infographic. There are many types of visualizations that can be used to represent the same set of data. Therefore, it is crucial to identify the appropriate visualization for the data set and infographic by taking into consideration graphical features such as position, size, shape, and color. There are primarily five types of visualization categories – time-series data, statistical distributions, maps, hierarchies, and networking.


title: Infographic

text: Time-series data is one of the most common forms of data visualization. It documents sets of values over time. Examples of graphics in this category include index charts, stacked graphs, small multiples, and horizon graphs. Index charts are ideal to use when raw values are less important than relative changes. It is an interactive line chart that shows percentage changes for a collection of time-series data based on a selected index point. For example, stock investors could use this because they are less concerned with the specific price and more concerned with the rate of growth. Stacked graphs are area charts that are stacked on top of each other, and depict aggregate patterns. They allow viewers to see overall patterns and individual patterns. However, they do not support negative numbers and make it difficult to accurately interpret trends. An alternative to stacked graphs is small multiples. Instead of stacking each area chart, each series is individually shown so the overall trends of each sector are more easily interpreted. Horizon graphs are a space efficient method to increase the data density of a time-series while preserving resolution.


title: Infographic

text: Statistical distributions reveal trends based on how numbers are distributed. Common examples include histograms and box-and-whisker plots, which convey statistical features such as mean, median, and outliers. In addition to these common infographics, alternatives include stem-and-leaf plots, Q–Q plots, scatter plot matrices (SPLOM) and parallel coordinates. For assessing a collection of numbers and focusing on frequency distribution, stem-and-leaf plots can be helpful. The numbers are binned based on the first significant digit, and within each stack binned again based on the second significant digit. On the other hand, Q–Q plots compare two probability distributions by graphing quantiles against each other. This allows the viewer to see if the plot values are similar and if the two are linearly related. SPLOM is a technique that represents the relationships among multiple variables. It uses multiple scatter plots to represent a pairwise relation among variables. Another statistical distribution approach to visualize multivariate data is parallel coordinates. Rather than graphing every pair of variables in two dimensions, the data is repeatedly plotted on a parallel axis, and corresponding points are then connected with a line. The advantage of parallel coordinates is that they are relatively compact, allowing many variables to be shown simultaneously.


title: Infographic

text: Maps are a natural way to represent geographical data. Time and space can be depicted through the use of flow maps. Line strokes are used with various widths and colors to help encode information. Choropleth maps, which encode data through color and geographical region, are also commonly used. Graduated symbol maps are another method to represent geographical data. They are an alternative to choropleth map and use symbols, such as pie charts for each area, over a map. This map allows for more dimensions to be represented using various shapes, sizes, and colors. Cartograms, on the other hand, completely distort the shape of a region and directly encode a data variable. Instead of using a geographic map, regions are redrawn proportionally to the data. For example, each region can be represented by a circle and the size/color is directly proportional to other information, such as population size.


title: Infographic

text: Many data sets, such as spatial entities of countries or common structures for governments, can be organized into natural hierarchies. Node-link diagrams, adjacency diagrams, and enclosure diagrams are all types of infographics that effectively communicate hierarchical data. Node-link diagrams are a popular method due to the tidy and space-efficient results. A node-link diagram is similar to a tree, where each node branches off into multiple sub-sections. An alternative is adjacency diagrams, which is a space-filling variant of the node-link diagram. Instead of drawing a link between hierarchies, nodes are drawn as solid areas with sub-sections inside of each section. This method allows for size to be easily represented than in the node-link diagrams. Enclosure diagrams are also a space-filling visualization method. However, they use containment rather than adjacency to represent the hierarchy. Similar to the adjacency diagram, the size of the node is easily represented in this model.


title: Infographic

text: Network visualization explores relationships, such as friendships and cliques. Three common types are force-directed layout, arc diagrams, and matrix view. Force-directed layouts are a common and intuitive approach to network layout. In this system, nodes are similar to charged particles, which repel each other. Links are used to pull related nodes together. Arc diagrams are one-dimensional layouts of nodes with circular arcs linking each node. When used properly, with good order in nodes, cliques and bridges are easily identified in this layout. Alternatively, mathematicians and computer scientists more often use matrix views. Each value has an (x,y) value in the matrix that corresponds to a node. By using color and saturation instead of text, values associated with the links can be perceived rapidly. While this method makes it hard to view the path of the nodes, there are no line crossings, which in a large and highly connected network can quickly become too cluttered.


title: Infographic

text: While all of these visualizations can be effectively used on their own, many modern infographics combine multiple types into one graphic, along with other features, such as illustrations and text. Some modern infographics do not even contain data visualization, and instead are simply a colorful and succinct ways to present knowledge. Fifty-three percent of the 30 most-viewed infographics on the infographic sharing site visual.ly did not contain actual data.


title: Infographic

text: Infographics can be created by hand using simple everyday tools such as graph paper, pencils, markers, and rulers. However, today they are more often created using computer software, which is often both faster and easier. They can be created with general illustration software.


title: Infographic

text: Diagrams can be manually created and drawn using software, which can be downloaded for the desktop or used online. Templates can be used to get users started on their diagrams. Additionally, the software allows users to collaborate on diagrams in real time over the Internet.


title: Infographic

text: There are also numerous tools to create very specific types of visualizations, such as creating a visualization based on embedded data in the photos on a user's smartphone. Users can create an infographic of their resume or a “picture of their digital life.”


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: The Mountain Between Us is a 2017 American drama film directed by Hany Abu-Assad and written by Chris Weitz and J. Mills Goodloe, based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Charles Martin. It stars Idris Elba and Kate Winslet as a surgeon and a journalist, respectively, who survive a plane crash, with a dog, and are stranded in the High Uintas Wilderness with injuries and harsh weather conditions. The film premiered on September 9, 2017, at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, and was theatrically released in the United States on October 6, 2017, by 20th Century Fox.


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: After their flight is canceled due to stormy weather, neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Bass (Idris Elba) and photojournalist Alex Martin (Kate Winslet) hire private pilot Walter (Beau Bridges) to get them from Idaho to Denver for connecting flights to Alex's wedding in New York and Ben's emergency surgery appointment in Baltimore. Walter, who has not filed a flight plan, suffers a fatal stroke mid-flight, and the plane crashes on a mountaintop in the High Uintas Wilderness. Ben, Alex, and Walter's Labrador Retriever survive the crash but Alex has injured her leg quite badly. Ben attends to her cuts and injured knee, and buries the pilot while she is unconscious.


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: Once conscious, Alex thinks Ben has a better chance of finding help if he leaves her behind, but Ben refuses. Stranded for days with dwindling supplies, Alex grows skeptical that they will be rescued, although Ben wants to wait for help with the plane's wreckage. He agrees to climb a ridge to see if there is any sign of a road, but sees nothing but mountains and narrowly avoids falling down the side.


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: Alex goes through Ben's things and listens to a message from his wife saying, 'I'm glad to have had this time with you'. Alex is found by a cougar, who viciously fights and wounds the dog. She shoots a flare at the big cat, killing it. The dog returns and later, when Ben comes back he tends to the dog’s wounds. They cook the cougar's corpse giving them, Ben thinks, ten days of food.


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: The two argue over waiting for rescue or descending the mountain to find help/a phone signal. Alex starts a lone descent down the mountain. Ben catches up, having located the tail end of the plane he finds a beacon - but it is smashed. The two hike down to the tree-line and spend the night in a cave.


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: Using her telephoto lens, Alex thinks she sees a cabin. At the same time that Alex falls into freezing water, Ben comes across the empty cabin. He pulls her out, but she remains unconscious and severely dehydrated. Ben again saves her life by fashioning an IV. They stay there for several days while Alex recovers; Ben reveals that his wife died two years prior from a brain tumor. Eventually they have sex. As he sleeps, Alex takes his picture. Later, she again tells Ben to leave her behind to find help. Ben initially agrees but soon returns; they press forward again.


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: The dog alerts them to a nearby timber yard. On their way toward it, Ben's leg gets caught in a bear trap. Alex cannot free him, but she reaches the yard and collapses in front of an approaching truck. Ben awakens in a hospital and goes to Alex's room, where he finds her with Mark (Dermot Mulroney), her fiancé. After a brief conversation, Ben leaves, heartbroken.


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: Ben and Alex go their separate ways after the hospital, with Ben keeping the dog. Alex tries calling Ben, but he ignores her calls until she sends him photos she had taken on the mountain, writing that only he can understand them. This encourages Ben to call Alex. They meet at a restaurant in New York, where it is revealed that Alex is now a part-time teacher, and Ben is a consultant at trauma clinics in London because his frostbitten hands will not recover sufficiently for him to perform surgery again. Ben says he did not call Alex because he thought she had married; Alex says she could not go through with it because she fell in love with Ben. Outside the restaurant, Ben admits to Alex that they survived because they fell in love. Alex dismisses her feelings and reminds Ben of something he said on the mountain: "the heart is just a muscle." She tells him she does not know how they could be together in the real world. They hug goodbye, and begin to depart in opposite directions. While walking away both become distraught, and finally turn and begin running back to each other. A split second before the two embrace, the screen cuts to black and the credits roll.


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: The project was first developed in January 2012, with Mexican director Gerardo Naranjo set to direct a script by J. Mills Goodloe. In August 2012, Scott Frank was hired to re-write the script. In November 2014, Hany Abu-Assad replaced Naranjo, and Chris Weitz was later hired to re-write the script.


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: Abu-Assad has said of the film, "I really didn’t see an epic love story against the background of survival, I think optimism and hope is crucial to survive. And to go on with your life even if you’ve had a lot of bad luck. So if you give (in) to the bad luck, you will die. (But) if you fight the bad luck, you have a better chance to survive and make your life better. This is very simple wisdom, yes? But still very crucial especially in these kind of days, when everybody feels entitled to their good luck."


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: The film went through several lead casting changes. In March 2012, it was announced that Michael Fassbender would star as Bass, but by September 2014, Fassbender dropped out due to a scheduling conflict, and Charlie Hunnam replaced him. Margot Robbie also came on board to star as Alex. In November 2014, Robbie dropped out of the project, and Rosamund Pike entered negotiations for the lead role. In December 2015, both Hunnam and Pike dropped out.


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: In February 2016, Idris Elba came on board, followed by Kate Winslet in June 2016. Dermot Mulroney joined the cast as Winslet's character's fiancé in early February 2017.


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: Principal photography started on December 5, 2016, in Vancouver, and continued until February 24, 2017. Elba and Winslet filmed scenes at the Vancouver International Airport and Abbotsford International Airport on December 7, 2016. Filming stopped for Christmas holidays, from December 20, 2016 to January 3, 2017.


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: Most of the filming took place in Canada, on the border of Alberta and British Columbia. Abu-Assad has described the locations as having very cold temperatures, and tough and harsh filming conditions. Many scenes were shot on a mountaintop, and he and the crew had to drive 40 minutes before reaching the film's base camp. When the weather was okay, they could board the helicopter to reach their destination along with their supplies.


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: German-Iranian composer Ramin Djawadi composed & conducted the music for the film. The official trailer for the movie was released with "Dusk Till Dawn" by Zayn Malik and Sia as the soundtrack. The score from the film is now released at Lakeshore Records. Soundtrackdreams reviewed, 'The main theme from “The mountain between us” is the best advertisement for this score; a sweeping piano and violin theme, both grandiose and intimate at the same time, a proper dramatic opening that gets emotional from the first minutes without an adjustment period. The first cue is the kind of piece that could have very well sat at the end as the dramatic climax of the movie. The horn buildup towards the end joins the rolling piano in making sure this theme will end up as one of the most memorable he has ever written.'


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: The film premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, on September 9, 2017. The film was initially set for release in the United States on October 20, 2017 but was later moved up to October 6, 2017.


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: , "The Mountain Between Us" has grossed $30.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $30.7 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $62.3 million, against a production budget of $35 million.


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: In the United States and Canada, the film was released alongside "Blade Runner 2049" and "", and was expected to gross $11–12 million from 3,088 theaters in its opening weekend. It ended up debuting to $10.1 million, finishing second at the box office, behind "Blade Runner 2049" ($32.5 million). The film dropped 47% in its second weekend, making $5.7 million and falling to 5th.


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 38%, based on 173 reviews, with an average rating of 5.10/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""The Mountain Between Us" may be too far-fetched for some viewers to appreciate, but it's elevated by reliably engaging performances from Idris Elba and Kate Winslet." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 48 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: Jordan Mintzer of "The Hollywood Reporter" described the film as "an easily digestible love story-cum-survival tale that tosses two excellent actors in the snow and lets them do their thing," before concluding that "what really helps "Mountain" overcome its far-fetched scenario is the pairing of Winslet and Elba, who know how to turn up the charm tenfold yet make Alex and Ben seem (mostly) like real people." Tim Grierson of "ScreenDaily" noted that the film "struggles to balance its life-or-death stakes with its far more florid love story," but added that "the considerable chemistry between Kate Winslet and Idris Elba certainly helps sell this tearjerker."


title: The Mountain Between Us (film)

text: In his review for "Variety", Peter Debruge described it as "a movie in which neither the subzero temperature nor the romantic heat penetrates more than skin deep." Also criticizing the film, Steve Pond of "TheWrap" found it unnecessarily lengthy and said that "a love story cheapens the grand survival story." Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of "The A.V. Club" criticized the central characters as "a couple of one-note personality-test types" with "zero romantic chemistry," and wrote that the script "actually tones down the howling outrageousness of Martin’s novel, which seems to miss the point. But, structurally, it’s the same junk. Problems pop out of nowhere and resolve themselves, while torturous motivations attempt to explain why characters would withhold basic information from one another for weeks..."


title: Breakdancing

text: Breakdancing, also called breaking or b-boying/b-girling, is an athletic style of street dance originating from the African American and Puerto Rican communities in the United States. While diverse in the amount of variation available in the dance, breakdancing mainly consists of four kinds of movement: toprock, downrock, power moves and freezes. Breakdancing is typically set to songs containing drum breaks, especially in hip-hop, funk, soul music and breakbeat music, although modern trends allow for much wider varieties of music along certain ranges of tempo and beat patterns.


title: Breakdancing

text: The modern dance elements of breakdancing originated among the poor youth of New York during the early 1970s, where it was introduced as breaking. It is closely attributed to the birth of hip-hop, as DJs developed rhythmic breaks for dancers. The dance form has since expanded globally, with an array of organizations and independent competitions supporting its growth. Breaking will now be featured as an Olympic sport, making its debut in the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.


title: Breakdancing

text: A practitioner of this dance is called a b-boy, b-girl, breakdancer or breaker. Although the term "breakdance" is frequently used to refer to the dance in popular culture and in the mainstream entertainment industry, "b-boying" and "breaking" were the original terms and are preferred by the majority of the pioneers and most notable practitioners.


title: Breakdancing

text: Instead of the original term "b-boying" ("break-boying"), the mainstream media promoted the art form as "breakdancing", the term by which it came to be generally known. Some enthusiasts consider "breakdancing" an ignorant, and even pejorative, term, due to the media's exploitation of the art form, while others use it to derogatorily refer to studio-trained dancers that can perform the moves but who do not live a "b-boy lifestyle", and accuse the media of displaying a simplified version of the dance that focused on "tricks" instead of culture. The term "breakdancing" has become an umbrella term that includes California-based dance styles such as popping, locking, and electric boogaloo, in addition to the New York-based b-boying. The dance itself is called "breaking."


title: Breakdancing

text: The terms "b-boy" ("break-boy"), "b-girl" ("break-girl"), and "breaker" were the original terms used to describe the dancers who performed to DJ Kool Herc's breakbeats. The obvious connection of the term "breaking" is to the word "breakbeat". DJ Kool Herc has commented that the term "breaking" was 1970s slang for "getting excited", "acting energetically" or "causing a disturbance". Most breakdancing pioneers and practitioners prefer the terms "b-boy", "b-girl", and/or "breaker" when referring to these dancers. For those immersed in hip-hop culture, the term "breakdancer" may be used to disparage those who learn the dance for personal gain rather than for commitment to the culture. B-boy London of the New York City Breakers and filmmaker Michael Holman refer to these dancers as "breakers". Frosty Freeze of the Rock Steady Crew says, "we were known as b-boys", and hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa says, "b-boys, [are] what you call break boys... or b-girls, what you call break girls." In addition, co-founder of Rock Steady Crew Santiago "Jo Jo" Torres, Rock Steady Crew member Marc "Mr. Freeze" Lemberger, hip-hop historian Fab 5 Freddy, and rappers Big Daddy Kane and Tech N9ne use the term "b-boy".


title: Breakdancing

text: Many elements of breaking can be seen in other antecedent cultures prior to the 1970s. B-boy pioneers Richard "Crazy Legs" Colon and Kenneth "Ken Swift" Gabbert, both of Rock Steady Crew, cite James Brown and Kung Fu films (notably Bruce Lee films) as influences. Many of the acrobatic moves, such as the "flare", show clear connections to gymnastics. In the 1877 book 'Rob Roy on the Baltic' John MacGregor describes seeing near Norrköping a '...young man quite alone, who was practicing over and over the most inexplicable leap in the air...he swung himself up, and then round on his hand for a point, when his upper leg described a great circle...'. The engraving shows a young man apparently breakdancing. The dance was called the Giesse Harad Polska or 'salmon district dance'. In 1894 Thomas Edison filmed Walter Wilkins, Denny Toliver and Joe Rastus dancing and performing a "breakdown". Then in 1898 he filmed a young street dancer performing acrobatic headspins. However, it was not until the 1970s that breakdancing developed as a defined dance style in the United States. There is also evidence of this style of dancing in Kaduna, Nigeria in 1959.


title: Breakdancing

text: These precursing elements began to take form in the early 1970s, as breaking began to grow at parties featuring DJs and instrumental records. It was at these parties that DJ Kool Herc, a Bronx based DJ pioneer, developed rhythmic breakdown sections by simultaneously switching between two copies of the same record, creating “breaks”. By looping the records and their simultaneous breaks, he was able to prolong the break and provide a rhythmic and improvisational base for dancers: Herc tells Jeff Chang in his book Can't Stop Won't Stop (2005), “And once they heard that, that was it, wasn't no turning back. They always wanted to hear breaks after breaks after breaks after breaks."


title: Breakdancing

text: The onset of breaking prompted dance battles known as cyphers, competitive circles in which participants took turns dancing while surrounded by onlookers. The term cypher and its use in hip-hop culture originates from the Five-Percent Nation, who utilized the term “cypher” to denote circles of people. Cyphers are environments in which breakers battle for dancing reputation, express cultural pride, and integrate elements such as toprocking or floor work to innovate one's set. Crews including the Rock Steady Crew or Mighty Zulu Kingz began to form, in response to the growth of competitive cyphers which sometimes featured cash-prizes, titles, and bragging rights.


title: Breakdancing

text: Breaking started as toprock, footwork-oriented dance moves performed standing up, but as dance crews began to experiment, a separate dance form known as uprock further influenced breaking. Uprock, also known as Brooklyn uprock, is a more aggressive dance style commonly performed between two partners that feature intricate footwork and hitting motions, mimicking a fight. As a separate dance style, it never gained the same widespread popularity as breakdancing, except for some very specific moves adopted by breakers who use it as a variation for their toprock. Uprock is also stated to have roots in gangs, as an expressive medium used to settle turf disputes, with the winner deciding the location of a future battle. Although some disagree that breakdancing ever played a part in mediating gang rivalry, the early growth of breaking still primarily served to assist the poor youth of the Bronx to stray away from gang violence and rather expel their time towards an artistic dance. One example is former gang leader Afrika Bambaataa, who hosted hip-hop parties and vowed to specifically use hip-hop to support children away from gang violence. He would eventually form the Universal Zulu Nation to further his message.


title: Breakdancing

text: Some breakers argue that because uprock was originally a separate dance style it should never be mixed with breakdancing and that the uprock moves performed by breakers today are not the original moves but imitations that only show a small part of the original uprock style. In the music video for 1985's hit single "I Wonder If I Take You Home", Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam's drummer Mike Hughes can be seen "rocking" (doing uprock) at 1:24 when viewed on YouTube.


title: Breakdancing

text: This section describes the development of breakdancing throughout the world. Countries are sorted alphabetically.


title: Breakdancing

text: Ismael Toledo was one of the first breakers in Brazil. In 1984, he moved to the United States to study dance. While in the U.S. he discovered breakdancing and ended up meeting breaker Crazy Legs who personally mentored him for the four years that followed. After becoming proficient in breakdancing, he moved back to São Paulo and started to organize crews and enter international competitions. He eventually opened a hip-hop dance studio called the Hip-Hop Street College.


title: Breakdancing

text: Born in Thailand and raised in the United States, Tuy "KK" Sobil started a community center called Tiny Toones in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 2005 where he uses dancing, hip-hop music, and art to teach Cambodian youth language skills, computer skills, and life skills (hygiene, sex education, counseling). His organization helps roughly 5,000 youths each year. One of these youths include Diamond, who is regarded as Cambodia's first b-girl.


title: Breakdancing

text: There are several ways breakdancing came to Canada. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, films such as "Breakin" (1984), "Beat Street" (1984), and the immigration of people from Chicago, New York, Detroit, Seattle, and Los Angeles introduced dance styles from the United States. Breakdancing expanded in Canada from there, with crews like Canadian Floormasters taking over the 80's scene, and New Energy opening for James Brown in 1984 at the Paladium in Montreal. Leading into the 90's, crews like Bag of Trix, Rakunz, Intrikit, Contents Under Pressure, Supernaturalz, Boogie Brats, and Red Power Squad, led the scene throughout the rest of the past two decades and counting.


title: Breakdancing

text: Breakdancing took off in France in the early 1980s with the creation of groups such as the Paris City Breakers (who styled themselves after the well-known New York City Breakers). In 1984, France became the first country in the world to have a regularly and nationally broadcast television show about Hip Hop—hosted by Sidney Duteil—with a focus on Hip Hop dance. This show led to the explosion of Hip Hop dance in France, with many new crews appearing on the scene.


title: Breakdancing

text: Breakdancing in Japan was introduced in 1983 following the release of the movie Wild Style. The release of the movie was accompanied by a tour by the Rock Steady Crew and the Japanese were captivated. Other movies such as Flashdance followed and furthered the breakdance craze. Crazy-A, who currently is the leader of the Tokyo chapter of the Rock Steady Crew, was dragged to see Flashdance by his then girlfriend and walked out captivated by the dance form and became one its earliest and one of the most influential breakers in Japanese history. Groups began to spring up as well, with early groups such as Tokyo B-Boys, B-5 Crew, and Mystic Movers popping up in Harajuku, a district in Tokyo. The breakdancing community in Japan found a home in Tokyo's Yoyogi Park in Harajuku, which still remains an active area for breakdancers and hip-hop enthusiasts. As hip-hop continued to grow in Japan, so did breakdancing and the breakdancing communities. Following the introduction of international breakdancing competitions, Japan began to compete and were praised for their agility and precision, yet they were criticized in the beginning for lacking originality. The Japanese began to truly flourish on the international stage following the breakdancing career of Taisuke Nonaka, known simply as Taisuke. Taisuke began to dominate the international scene and led the Japanese team Floorriorz to win the BOTY in 2015 against crew Kienjuice from Belarus. Despite Taisuke's successful career in group competitions, he failed to win the solo Red Bull BC One competition, an individual breakdancing championship that had continued to evade Japanese bboys. The first Japanese to win the BC One competition became Bboy Issei in 2016. Issei is widely regarded by many as the best Japanese breakdancer currently and in the eyes of some, the best worldwide. Female bboys, or "bgirls", are also prevalent in Japan and following the introduction of a female BC One competition in 2018, Japanese bgirl Ami Yuasa became the first female champion. Notable Japanese bboy crews include FoundNation, Body Carnival, and the Floorriorz. Notable Japanese bgirl crews include Queen of Queens, Body Carnival, and Nishikasai.


title: Breakdancing

text: Breakdancing was first introduced to South Korea by American soldiers shortly after its surge of popularity in the U.S. during the 1980s, but it was not until the late 1990s that the culture and dance took hold. 1997 is known as the "Year Zero of Korean breaking". A Korean-American hip hop promoter named John Jay Chon was visiting his family in Seoul and while he was there, he met a crew named Expression Crew in a club. He gave them a VHS tape of a Los Angeles breakdancing competition called Radiotron. A year later when he returned, Chon found that his video and others like his had been copied and dubbed numerous times, and were feeding an ever-growing breaker community.


title: Breakdancing

text: In 2002, Korea's Expression Crew won the prestigious international breakdancing competition Battle of the Year, exposing the skill of the country's breakers to the rest of the world. Since then, the Korean government has capitalized on the popularity of the dance and has promoted it alongside Korean culture. R-16 Korea is the most well-known government-sponsored breakdancing event, and is hosted by the Korea Tourism Organization and supported by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism.


title: Breakdancing

text: In the 1980s the Soviet Union was in a state of the Cold War with the countries of the Western Bloc. Soviet people lived behind the Iron Curtain, so they usually learned the new fashion trends emerging in the capitalist countries with some delay. The Soviet Union first learned of breakdancing in 1984, when videotapes of the films "Breakin", "Breakin' 2" and "Beat Street" got into the country. In the USSR these movies were not released officially. They were brought home by Soviet citizens who had the opportunity to travel to Western countries (for example, by diplomats). Originally, the dance became popular in big cities: Moscow and Leningrad, as well as in the Baltic republics (some citizens of these Soviet republics had the opportunity to watch Western television). The attitude of the authorities to the new dance that came from the West was negative.


title: Breakdancing

text: The situation changed in 1985 with Mikhail Gorbachev who came to power and with the beginning of the Perestroika policy. The first to legalize the new dance were dancers from the Baltic republics. They presented this dance as the "protest against the arbitrariness of the capitalists", explaining that the dance was invented by Black Americans from poor neighborhoods. In 1985 the performance of Czech Jiří Korn was shown in the program "Morning Post", and became one of the first official demonstrations of breakdancing on Soviet television. With the support of the Leninist Young Communist League in 1986 breakdance festivals were held in the cities of the Baltic republics (Tallinn, Palanga, Riga). The next step was the spreading of the similar festivals to other Soviet republics. Festivals were held in Donetsk (Ukraine), Vitebsk (Belarus), Gorky (Russia). Breakdancing could be seen in Soviet cinema: "Dancing on the Roof" (1985), "Courier" (1986), "Publication" (1988). By the end of the decade the dance became almost ubiquitous. At almost any disco or school dance one could see a person dancing in the "robot" style.


title: Breakdancing

text: In the early 1990s the country experienced a severe economic and political crisis. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the breakdance craze was over and breakdancing became dated. The next wave of interest in breakdancing in Russia would only occur in the late 90s.


title: Breakdancing

text: Although social media such as YouTube cannot be used in China, breakdancing in China has been popular. Many people copy breakdancing videos from abroad and distribute them back to the mainland. Although it is still an underground culture in China because of some restrictions, breakdancing was reported to be a growing presence in 2013.


title: Breakdancing

text: There are many individual styles used in breakdancing. Individual styles often stem from a dancer's region of origin and influences. However, some people such as Jacob "Kujo" Lyons believe that the internet inhibits individual style. In a 2012 interview with "B-Boy Magazine" he expressed his frustration:


title: Breakdancing

text: Luis "Alien Ness" Martinez, the president of Mighty Zulu Kings, expressed a similar frustration in a separate interview three years earlier with "The Super B-Beat Show" about the top five things he hates in breakdancing:


title: Breakdancing

text: Although there are some generalities in the styles that exist, many dancers combine elements of different styles with their own ideas and knowledge in order to create a unique style of their own. Breakers can therefore be categorized into a broad style which generally showcases the same types of techniques.


title: Breakdancing

text: In addition to the styles listed above, certain footwork styles have been associated with different areas which popularized them.


title: Breakdancing

text: The musical selection for breakdancing is not restricted to hip-hop music as long as the tempo and beat pattern conditions are met. Breakdancing can be readily adapted to different music genres with the aid of remixing. The original songs that popularized the dance form borrow significantly from progressive genres of funk, soul, disco, electro, and jazz funk. A musical canon of these traditional b-boy songs have since developed, songs that were once expected to be played at every b-boying event. As the dance form grew, this standardization of classic songs prompted innovation of dance moves and break beats that reimagined the standard melodies. These songs include “Give It Up or Turn It a Loose” by James Brown, “Apache” by the Incredible Bongo Band, and "The Mexican" by Babe Ruth to name a few.


title: Breakdancing

text: The most common feature of breakdance music exists in musical breaks, or compilations formed from samples taken from different songs which are then looped and chained together by the DJ. The tempo generally ranges between 110 and 135 beats per minute with shuffled sixteenth and quarter beats in the percussive pattern. History credits DJ Kool Herc for the invention of this concept later termed the break beat.


title: Breakdancing

text: Similar to other hip-hop subcultures, such as graffiti writing, rapping, and DJing, breakers are predominantly male, but this is not to say that women breakers, b-girls, are invisible or nonexistent. Female participants, such as Daisy Castro (also known as Baby Love of Rock Steady Crew), attest that females have been breakdancing since its inception. Critics argue that it is unfair to make a sweeping generalization about these inequalities because women have begun to play a larger role in the breakdancing scene.


title: Breakdancing

text: Some people have pointed to a lack of promotion as a barrier, as full-time b-girl Firefly stated in a BBC piece: "It's getting more popular. There are a lot more girls involved. The problem is that promoters are not putting on enough female-only battles." Growing interest is being shown in changing the traditional image of females in hip-hop culture (and by extension, breakdance culture) to a more positive, empowered role in the modern hip-hop scene.


title: Breakdancing

text: In 2018, Japan's B-Girl Ami became the first B-Girl world champion of Red Bull BC One. Although B-Girl Ayumi had been invited as a competitor for the 2017 championship, it was only until 2018 that a 16 B-Girl bracket was featured as part of the main event.


title: Breakdancing

text: B-girls, such as Honey Rockwell, promote breakdancing through formal instruction ensuring a new generation of breakers.


title: Breakdancing

text: In the past 50 years, various films have depicted the dance. 1975's (filmed in 1974) "Tommy" included a breakdancing sequence during the "Sensation" number. Later, in the early 1980s, several films depicted breakdancing including "Fame", "Wild Style", "Flashdance", "Breakin'", "", "Delivery Boys", "Krush Groove", and "Beat Street". In 1985, at the height of breakdancing's popularity, Donnie Yen starred in a Hong Kong film called "Mismatched Couples" in which he performed various b-boy and breakdancing moves.


title: Breakdancing

text: The 2000s saw a resurgence of films and television series featuring breakdancing that continued into the early 2010s:


title: Breakdancing

text: In the United States, Breakdancing is widely referenced in TV advertising, as well as news, travelogue, and documentary segments, as an indicator of youth/street culture. From a production point of view the style is visually arresting, instantly recognizable and adducible to fast-editing, while the ethos is multi-ethnic, energetic and edgy, but free from the gangster-laden overtones of much rap-culture imagery. Its usability as a visual cliché benefits sponsorship, despite the relatively small following of the genre itself beyond the circle of its practitioners. In 2005, a Volkswagen Golf GTi commercial featured a partly CGI version of Gene Kelly popping and breakdancing to a remix of "Singin' in the Rain" by Mint Royale. The tagline was, "The original, updated." The dance shows "So You Think You Can Dance" and "America's Best Dance Crew" arguably brought breakdancing back to the forefront of pop culture in the United States, similar to the popularity it had enjoyed in the 1980s. The American drama television series "", a series focused on breakdancing and other forms of hip-hop dance, premiered on March 20, 2019.


title: Breakdancing

text: Since breakdancing's popularity surge in South Korea, it has been featured in various TV dramas and commercials. "Break" is a 2006 South Korean miniseries about a breakdancing competition. "Over the Rainbow" is a 2006 South Korean drama series centered on different characters who are brought together by breakdancing. "Showdown", a breakdancing competition game show hosted by Jay Park, premiered in South Korea on March 18, 2022.


title: Breakdancing

text: There have been only few video games created that focus on breakdancing. The main deterrence for attempting to create games like these is the difficulty of translating the dance into something entertaining and fun on a video game console. Most of these attempts had low to average success.


title: Mike O'Malley

text: Michael Edward O'Malley (born October 31, 1966) is an American actor, writer and producer. Born in Boston and raised in New Hampshire, O'Malley hosted the early 1990s children's game show "Nickelodeon Guts" before moving to Los Angeles later that decade to star in his own sitcom for NBC called "The Mike O'Malley Show". He is best known for his role as Jimmy Hughes on "Yes, Dear", a CBS series which aired from 2000 to 2006. He was nominated for an Emmy Award for his role as Burt Hummel on the Fox series "Glee".


title: Mike O'Malley

text: O'Malley has also guest-starred in series including "My Name Is Earl", "Raising Hope", "Parenthood" and "Parks and Recreation", and has appeared in films including "28 Days", "Deep Impact", "Leatherheads", "Eat, Pray, Love", "R.I.P.D.", "Concussion" and "Sully".


title: Mike O'Malley

text: O'Malley is also a published playwright whose plays include "Three Years From Thirty" and "Diverting Devotion". He adapted another play called "Searching for Certainty" for Peter Askin's film "Certainty", which premiered at the Boston Film Festival in 2011. O'Malley was also a writer on Showtime's comedy-drama "Shameless".


title: Mike O'Malley

text: O'Malley was the creator and an executive producer of the Starz series "Survivor's Remorse", which ran for four seasons between 2014 and 2017. He has recently been a regular on the TNT series "Snowpiercer" based on the movie of the same name.


title: Mike O'Malley

text: O'Malley was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Nashua, New Hampshire. His mother Marianne was a career counselor and father Tony O'Malley an executive in the defense industry.


title: Mike O'Malley

text: O'Malley graduated from Bishop Guertin High School in Nashua, New Hampshire in 1984, and from the University of New Hampshire in 1988, where he studied theater. He is also a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity.


title: Mike O'Malley

text: O'Malley's first role came as the host of Nickelodeon children's game show "Get the Picture" when he was 24 years old, later moving on to "Nickelodeon Guts" and later "Global GUTS" from 1992 to 1995. On the advice of Marc Summers, O'Malley moved to Los Angeles after the cancellation of "GUTS" to further pursue his acting career. O'Malley starred in "Life with Roger", a series which aired from 1996 to 1997. In 1999, two of thirteen filmed episodes of "The Mike O'Malley Show" aired before the show was canceled. During the 1990s, he also appeared as "The Rick", a character in a series of ads for the ESPN network. In 2018, The Rick made a return in ads for the ESPN+ streaming service.


title: Mike O'Malley

text: From 2000 to 2006, O'Malley starred as Jimmy Hughes on the CBS comedy "Yes, Dear". He later reprised this role in 2013 on the sitcom Raising Hope. Along with "Yes, Dear" costar Anthony Clark, O'Malley appeared in the Alan Jackson music video "The Talkin' Song Repair Blues". From 2000 to 2002, O'Malley also provided the voice of Darryl MacPherson for The WB's "Baby Blues".


title: Mike O'Malley

text: In 2006, O'Malley made a guest appearance on "My Name Is Earl" as a police officer with bowling aspirations, and made several more guest appearances on the show. In 2008, O'Malley appeared in the NBC drama "My Own Worst Enemy".


title: Mike O'Malley

text: In 2008, O'Malley became the spokesman for Time Warner Cable's digital cable. In 2009, O'Malley began playing the recurring character, Burt Hummel, the father of a gay student, on "Glee". The role lead to "Entertainment Weekly"'s Tim Stack to say, "If Mike O'Malley doesn't win an Emmy for playing Burt Hummel, I will be sorely disappointed." Chris Colfer, who plays Burt's son Kurt, has credited his off-screen relationship with O'Malley with improving the quality of their scenes together.


title: Mike O'Malley

text: Beginning in 2010, O'Malley portrayed a recurring character on "Parenthood". He also hosted "The World's Funniest Office Commercials" in 2010. On July 8, 2010, O'Malley received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor – Comedy Series for playing Burt Hummel on "Glee". Prior to its second season, O'Malley was made a series regular on "Glee". On August 8, 2010, O'Malley won the Teen Choice Award for Best Parental Unit. He returned to recurring guest star status for the show's third season.


title: Mike O'Malley

text: O'Malley made his movie debut in the 1998 film "Deep Impact", playing Elijah Wood's astronomy teacher. He followed that with a supporting role in the comedy "Pushing Tin". In 2000, he portrayed Oliver, a drug addict in rehab, in the film "28 Days". In 2005, O'Malley appeared in the film "The Perfect Man". In 2007, he had supporting roles in "Leatherheads" and "Meet Dave".


title: Mike O'Malley

text: In 2009, O'Malley participated in the American documentary film "The People Speak". In the film, he performed in a segment with political activist Staceyann Chin.


title: Mike O'Malley

text: O'Malley's feature work also includes roles in "Eat Pray Love", "Cedar Rapids", "Concussion" and "Sully".


title: Mike O'Malley

text: O'Malley is a playwright with two of his plays, "Three Years from Thirty" and "Diverting Devotion", having been published and produced Off-Broadway. In 2003, a third play, "Searching for Certainty" was produced in Los Angeles.


title: Mike O'Malley

text: He later wrote the screenplay for the film "Certainty", which is based on "Searching for Certainty". The movie began production on May 24, 2010, directed by Peter Askin and produced by O'Malley, along with Will Battersby and Per Melita. "Certainty" premiered at the Boston Film Festival on September 16, 2011, where it won the Best Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Ensemble Cast awards.


title: Mike O'Malley

text: O'Malley co-wrote the book for the musical "Escape to Margaritaville" featuring the songs of Jimmy Buffett with Greg Garcia. The show ran on Broadway from February to July 2018.


title: Mike O'Malley

text: He created the Starz basketball comedy series "Survivor's Remorse" and serves as the show's writer and producer with his production company O'Malley Ink. He is also an executive producer as well as the showrunner for the series "Heels", with a recurring role as Charlie Gully, a rival wrestling promoter.


title: Mike O'Malley

text: Along with Anthony Clark, his "Yes, Dear" co-star, he appeared in Alan Jackson's 2005 music video for "The Talkin' Song Repair Blues".


title: Mike O'Malley

text: In 2007, O'Malley kept a blog on Yahoo! Sports, which followed the Boston Red Sox throughout their journey in the MLB playoffs, which was eventually capped off by their World Series title.


title: Mike O'Malley

text: Kerry O'Malley, his younger sister, is an actress and Broadway veteran. The siblings co-starred in the first season of "Snowpiercer".


title: Mike O'Malley

text: A long time fan of Boston band Buffalo Tom, O'Malley is a close friend of lead singer Bill Janovitz. They have often supported causes together. O'Malley requested that the band create a title song for his own short-lived television show "The Mike O'Malley Show", as well as for the sitcom "Yes, Dear" which he co-starred on. According to O'Malley, his love of the band was shared with his wife and was "the glue" that kept them together during their long-distance relationship.


title: Mike O'Malley

text: O'Malley is a Boston Red Sox fan, and in May 2006, threw out the first pitch at a game in Fenway Park. He is also an avid fan of the NHL's Boston Bruins and the NFL's New England Patriots.


title: Mike O'Malley

text: O'Malley returned to his graduating "alma mater" in 2006 to deliver the commencement speech to the university's 136th graduating class. He also received an honorary degree.


title: Annecy

text: Annecy ( , ; or ) is the prefecture and largest city of the Haute-Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of Southeastern France. It lies on the northern tip of Lake Annecy, south of Geneva, Switzerland. Nicknamed the "Pearl of French Alps" in Raoul Blanchard's monograph describing its location between lake and mountains, the city controls the northern entrance to the lake gorge. Due to a lack of available building land between the lake and the protected Semnoz mountain, its population has remained stagnant, around 50,000 inhabitants, since 1950. However, the 2017 merger with several ex-communes extended the city population to 128,199 inhabitants and 177,622 for its urban area, placing Annecy seventh in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.


title: Annecy

text: Switching from the counts of Geneva's dwelling in the 13th century, to the counts of Savoy's in the 14th century, the city became Savoy's capital in 1434 during the Genevois-Nemours prerogative until 1659. Its role increased in 1536, during the Calvinist Reformation in Geneva, while the bishop took refuge in Annecy. Saint Francis de Sales gave Annecy its advanced Catholic citadel role known as Counter-Reformation. The annexation of Savoy merged the city to France in 1860. Sometimes called "Venice of the Alps", this idyllic and touristic representation comes from the three canals and the Thiou river, which passes through the old city. The city experienced an industrial development in the 19th century with silk manufacturing. Some of its industrial legacy remains today with the headquarters of NTN-SNR bearings, Salomon, Entremont and Dassault Aviation.


title: Annecy

text: From the end of the 19th century, Annecy developed tourism around its lake summer facilities, winter resorts proximity and cultural attraction with its castle renovation and fine art museum opening in 1956 and the Animated Film Festival since 1963, hosted in Bonlieu's cultural centre. The municipal environmental policy managed to keep 40.3% of green spaces, and the city was awarded the "Golden Flower" in 2015, given to the nine most-flowered French cities.


title: Annecy

text: Le vieil Annecy ("Old Annecy"; not to be confused with Annecy-le-Vieux, formerly a neighboring town but now merged into Annecy), was a settlement from the time of the Romans. Annecy was the court of the counts of Geneva or Genevois from the 10th century. It passed to the counts of Savoy in 1401. In 1444, it became the regional capital of the provinces of Genevois, Faucigny and Beaufortain.


title: Annecy

text: With the advance of Calvinism, Annecy became a centre for the Counter-Reformation, the old Bishopric of Geneva being transferred to it in 1535. Francis of Sales was born in Sales, France in 1567 and served as bishop of Annecy from 1602 to 1622; his relics are preserved in the cathedral. During the French Revolution, the Savoy region was conquered by France. Annecy became attached to the department of Mont Blanc, whose capital was Chambéry. The Catholic diocese was suppressed in 1801.


title: Annecy

text: After the Bourbon Restoration in 1815, Annecy was returned to the King of Sardinia and the Catholic diocese restored in 1822. When Savoy was annexed to France in 1860 with the Treaty of Turin, it became the capital of the new department of Haute-Savoie. Annecy was the site of the second round of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) talks in 1949. In 2012, a multiple murder occurred in the Annecy area.


title: Annecy

text: The new municipality was established on 1 January 2017 by merger with the former communes of Annecy-le-Vieux, Cran-Gevrier, Meythet, Pringy and Seynod.


title: Annecy

text: Annecy is part of four cantons (Annecy-1, Annecy-2, Annecy-3 and Annecy-4); it is the prefecture of Haute-Savoie.


title: Annecy

text: Since 2017, Annecy has consisted of six delegate cities: Annecy; Annecy-le-Vieux; Cran-Gevrier; Meythet; Pringy; and Seynod. Local government consists of a city council with 202 members. The number of members in each commune delegate depends upon its population. The Mayor is Jean-Luc Rigaut (UDI) since 2007.


title: Annecy

text: The intercommunality of Annecy, Communauté d'agglomération du Grand Annecy, includes 34 municipalities.


title: Annecy

text: The Fier forms part of the commune's northwestern border. The surrounding mountains are Mont Veyrier, Mont Semnoz, La Tournette and Parmelan.


title: Annecy

text: Annecy has an oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb) in spite of its relatively far inland position. Influenced by its elevation, summers are rather moderate on average, although they can be highly variable with extreme heat spikes. Winters see occasional freezing temperatures, but most often stays in the single-digits during daytime with frequent cold rain. Air frosts are normal during the night and snowfall is not uncommon.


title: Annecy

text: Annecy has hosted the Annecy International Animated Film Festival since 1960 and the Rencontres Internationales d'Annecy Cinéma & Architecture since 1999 and it was one of the oldest festivals in France.


title: Annecy

text: On 23 July 2009, Annecy played host to Stage 18 of the Tour de France, as the start/finish point for an individual time trial around Lake Annecy. It was also the start town for stage 10 of the 2018 Tour de France on 17 July 2018.


title: Annecy

text: Annecy launched a bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympic Games but lost to Pyeongchang. If they had been chosen, Annecy would have been the fourth French city to host the Winter Olympic Games, after Chamonix (1924), Grenoble (1968), and Albertville (1992).


title: Annecy

text: Ligue 1 former team Évian Thonon Gaillard F.C. played their home matches in Annecy. The club was founded in 2007, they grew up to reach Ligue 1, and stayed for three years in the division, thanks to their emblematic trainer Pascal Dupraz.


title: Annecy

text: The Annecy basin is one of the world's leading locations for the sport of paragliding, an activity of some economic importance to the region. The area regularly hosts major competitions, most recently a leg of the Paragliding World Cup in 2012.


title: Annecy

text: Due to its proximity with the lake and the mountains, Annecy is also popular for watersports (sailing, rowing, wakeboarding, water skiing) and wintersports (alpine skiing, snowboarding, Nordic skiing). Le Semnoz, a relatively small ski resort is 35 minutes away from Annecy. Other bigger ski resorts, La Clusaz and Le Grand Bornand, are only 40 minutes away. Annecy is also very popular among trail runners and many races are organized year round, such as the World Trail Running Championships in 2015.


title: Annecy

text: In the 19th century, the primary manufactures were linen and cotton goods, glass, cutlery, earthenware, and leather. The area also carried on linen bleaching and iron mining. By the First World War, it was connected by rail to Aix-les-Bains and there were factories for linen and cotton goods, felt hats, and paper, as well as a "celebrated" bell foundry at Annecy-le-Vieux.


title: Annecy

text: The Gare d'Annecy railway station offers connections with Lyon, Geneva, Paris, Grenoble and several regional destinations.


title: Annecy

text: Together with other Alpine towns Annecy engages in the Alpine Town of the Year Association for the implementation of the Alpine Convention to achieve sustainable development in the Alpine Arc. Annecy is also Alpine Town of the Year 2012.


title: Gene Vincent

text: Vincent Eugene Craddock (February 11, 1935 – October 12, 1971), known as Gene Vincent, was an American musician who pioneered the styles of rockabilly and rock and roll. His 1956 top ten hit with his backing band the Blue Caps, "Be-Bop-a-Lula", is considered a significant early example of rockabilly. His chart career was brief, especially in his home country of the US, where he notched three top 40 hits in 1956 and '57, and never charted in the top 100 again. In the UK, he was a somewhat bigger star, racking up eight top 40 hits from 1956 to 1961.


title: Gene Vincent

text: Vincent was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. He is sometimes referred to by his somewhat unusual nickname/moniker the "Screaming End".


title: Gene Vincent

text: Craddock was born February 11, 1935, in Norfolk, Virginia, to Mary Louise and Ezekiah Jackson Craddock. His musical influences included country, rhythm and blues, and gospel. His favorite composition was Beethoven's Egmont overture. He showed his first real interest in music while his family lived in Munden Point (now Virginia Beach), in Princess Anne County, Virginia, near the North Carolina line, where they ran a country store. He received his first guitar at the age of twelve as a gift from a friend.


title: Gene Vincent

text: Craddock's father volunteered to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard and patrolled American coastal waters to protect Allied shipping against German U-boats during World War II. Craddock's mother maintained the general store in Munden Point. His parents moved the family to Norfolk, the home of a large naval base, and opened a general store and sailors' tailoring shop.


title: Gene Vincent

text: Craddock dropped out of school in 1952, at the age of seventeen, and enlisted in the United States Navy. As he was under the age of enlistment, his parents signed the forms allowing him to enter. He completed boot camp and joined the fleet as a crewman aboard the fleet oiler , with a two-week training period in the repair ship , before returning to the "Chukawan". He never saw combat but completed a Korean War deployment. He sailed home from Korean waters aboard the battleship but was not part of the ship's company.


title: Gene Vincent

text: Craddock planned a career in the Navy and, in 1955, used his $612 re-enlistment bonus to buy a new Triumph motorcycle. On July 4, 1955, while he was in Norfolk, his left leg was shattered in an auto crash. He refused to allow the leg to be amputated, and the leg was saved, but the injury left him with a limp and pain. He wore a steel sheath around the leg for the rest of his life. Most accounts relate the accident as the fault of a drunk driver who struck him. Years later in some of his music biographies, there is no mention of an accident, but it was claimed that his injury was due to a wound incurred in combat in Korea. He spent time in the Portsmouth Naval Hospital and was medically discharged from the Navy shortly thereafter.


title: Gene Vincent

text: Craddock became involved in the local music scene in Norfolk. He changed his name to Gene Vincent and formed a rockabilly band, Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (a term used in reference to enlisted sailors in the U.S. Navy). The band included Willie Williams on rhythm guitar (replaced in late 1956 by Paul Peek), Jack Neal on upright bass, Dickie Harrell on drums, and Cliff Gallup on lead guitar. He also collaborated with another rising musician, Jay Chevalier of Rapides Parish, Louisiana. Vincent and His Blue Caps soon gained a reputation playing in various country bars in Norfolk. There they won a talent contest organized by a local radio DJ, "Sheriff Tex" Davis, who then became Vincent's manager.


title: Gene Vincent

text: In 1956 he wrote "Be-Bop-a-Lula", which drew comparisons to Elvis Presley and which "Rolling Stone" magazine later listed as number 103 on its "500 Greatest Songs of All Time". Local radio DJ "Sheriff Tex" Davis arranged for a demo of the song to be made, and this secured Vincent a contract with Capitol Records. He signed a publishing contract with Bill Lowery of the Lowery Group of music publishers in Atlanta, Georgia. "Be-Bop-a-Lula" was not on Vincent's first album and was picked by Capitol producer Ken Nelson as the B-side of his first single, "Woman Love". Prior to the release of the single, Lowery pressed promotional copies of "Be-Bop-a-Lula" and sent them to radio stations throughout the country. By the time Capitol released the single, "Be-Bop-a-Lula" had already gained attention from the public and radio DJs. The song was picked up and played by other U.S. radio stations (obscuring the original A-side song) and became a hit, peaking at number 7 and spending 20 weeks on the "Billboard" pop chart and reaching number 5 and spending 17 weeks on the "Cash Box" chart, and launching Vincent's career as a rock-and-roll star.


title: Gene Vincent

text: After "Be-Bop-a-Lula" became a hit, Vincent and His Blue Caps were unable to follow it up with the same level of commercial success, although they released critically acclaimed songs like "Race with the Devil" (number 96 on the "Billboard" chart and number 50 on the "Cash Box" chart) and "Bluejean Bop" (number 49 on the "Billboard" chart and another million-selling disc).


title: Gene Vincent

text: Cliff Gallup left the band in 1956, and Russell Williford joined as the new guitarist for the Blue Caps. Williford played and toured Canada with Vincent in late 1956 but left the group in early 1957. Gallup came back to do the next album and then left again. Williford came back and exited again before Johnny Meeks joined the band. The group had another hit in 1957 with "Lotta Lovin'" (highest position number 13 and spending 19 weeks on the "Billboard" chart and number 17 and 17 weeks on the "Cashbox" chart). Vincent was awarded gold records for two million sales of "Be-Bop-a-Lula", and 1.5 million sales of "Lotta Lovin'". The same year he toured the east coast of Australia with Little Richard and Eddie Cochran, drawing audiences totaling 72,000 to their Sydney Stadium concerts. Vincent also made an appearance in the film "The Girl Can't Help It", with Jayne Mansfield, performing "Be-Bop-a-Lula" with the Blue Caps in a rehearsal room. "Dance to the Bop" was released by Capitol Records on October 28, 1957. On November 17, 1957, Vincent and His Blue Caps performed the song on the nationally broadcast television program "The Ed Sullivan Show". The song spent nine weeks on the "Billboard" chart and peaked at number 23 on January 23, 1958 and reached number 36 and spent eight weeks on the "Cashbox" chart. It was Vincent's last American hit single. The song was used in the movie "Hot Rod Gang" for a dance rehearsal scene featuring dancers doing the West Coast Swing.


title: Gene Vincent

text: Vincent and His Blue Caps also appeared several times on "Town Hall Party", California's largest country music barn dance, held at the Town Hall in Compton, California. They appeared on October 25, 1958, and July 25 and November 7, 1959. However, by the end of 1959 the Blue Caps were no longer part of the billing on Gene Vincent records. The late 1959 single "Wild Cat" was credited solely to Gene Vincent, and this would be the case on all subsequent Gene Vincent releases.


title: Gene Vincent

text: A dispute with the US tax authorities and the American Musicians' Union over payments to his band and his having sold the band's equipment to pay a tax bill led Vincent to leave the United States for Europe.


title: Gene Vincent

text: On December 15, 1959, Vincent appeared on Jack Good's TV show, "Boy Meets Girl", his first appearance in England. He wore black leather, gloves, and a medallion, and stood in a hunched posture. Good is credited with the transformation of Vincent's image. After the TV appearance he toured France, the Netherlands, Germany and the UK performing in his US stage clothes.


title: Gene Vincent

text: On April 16, 1960, while on tour in the UK, Vincent, Eddie Cochran and the songwriter Sharon Sheeley were involved in a high-speed traffic accident in a private-hire taxi in Chippenham, Wiltshire. Vincent broke his ribs and collarbone and further damaged his weakened leg. Sheeley suffered a broken pelvis. Cochran, who had been thrown from the vehicle, suffered serious brain injuries and died the next day. Vincent returned to the United States after the accident.