title: India at the Cricket World Cup

text: India returned to Australia to play the knockout matches. In the quarterfinals, India played Bangladesh at Melbourne, which they won comfortably by 109 runs. India, batting first, scored 302/6, thanks to an attacking century from Rohit (137 from 126 balls, 14 fours and 3 sixes), who dominated the Bangladeshi bowling with support from Raina (65 from 57 balls, 7 fours and 1 six). The duo shared a partnership of 122 runs for the 4th wicket. Then the Indian pacers, led by Yadav (4/31) and Shami (2/37), never allowed the Bangladeshi batsmen to settle down as they were bowled all out for 193. The match became controversial due to an erroneous umpiring decision involving Rohit. During the 40th over, Rohit, who was batting on 90, pulled a full toss bowled by Bangladeshi bowler Rubel Hossain and was caught at square-leg. However, the umpire Aleem Dar thought that the ball was above waist height and declared it a no-ball, meaning that Rohit was not out. Replays showed that the ball was waist height, and therefore a legal delivery. This decision led to an uproar in Bangladesh, with irate Bangladeshi fans burning effigies of Dar in protest. Even the ICC President Mustafa Kamal, who hails from Bangladesh, and the Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina opposed the controversial decision. Nevertheless, this incident did not remove the shine from India's clinical victory, which brought them to the semifinals, where they played co-hosts Australia at Sydney. India lost the toss and were made to bowl first on a perfect batting pitch. Australia recovered from the early loss of opener David Warner due to a brilliant century from vice-captain Steve Smith. Supported by a half-century from opener Aaron Finch, the duo put on 182 runs for the 2nd wicket. However, after that the Australian innings wobbled due to good bowling from Yadav (4/72), who achieved a second consecutive 4-wicket haul and provided the important breakthroughs, but due to a late blitz by fast bowler Mitchell Johnson, who scored 27 not out from just 14 balls, the Australians finished their innings at 328/7. A score of 329, though a huge one, was considered gettable taking into account the strength of the Indian batting lineup. The Indians started the chase well with an opening stand of 76 between Rohit (34 from 48 balls, 1 four and 2 sixes) and Dhawan (45 from 41 balls, 6 fours and 1 six). But following the dismissal of Dhawan, the rest of the Indian batsmen succumbed to a combined effort from the Australian pace attack. A slow 70 run stand between Rahane (44 from 68 balls, 2 fours) and Dhoni (65 from 65 balls, 3 fours and 2 sixes) for the 5th wicket only delayed the inevitable as India crashed to 233 all out in the 47th over, losing the match by 95 runs and ending their title defence. It was the second time since 1987 that India failed to defend their World Cup title.


title: India at the Cricket World Cup

text: Although India could not successfully defend their World Cup title, several positives emerged from the tournament from an Indian point of view. For the first time ever in a Cricket World Cup, India finished the Group stage unbeaten, with their only loss in the tournament coming against the eventual champions Australia in the semifinal. They achieved 11 consecutive World Cup match victories starting from 2011 during the tournament, which is just below the Cup record of 25 wins in a row, held by Australia. Barring the semifinal, the Indian team bowled out the opposition in every match, a remarkable feat for a bowling attack traditionally considered to be weaker than the batting. With 412 runs from 8 matches including 2 centuries, opener Dhawan was the fifth highest run scorer of the tournament, while the fast bowlers Yadav and Shami bagged the third and fourth spots respectively among the tournament's leading bowlers with 18 and 17 wickets respectively. Skipper and wicketkeeper Dhoni effected 15 dismissals in the Cup, coming second among the leading wicketkeepers in the tournament.


title: India at the Cricket World Cup

text: India were considered one of the favourites to win the 2019 Cricket World Cup hosted in England and Wales. Their record prior to the tournament had been excellent, with highly successful tours of Australia and New Zealand, which was followed by a narrow 2-3 loss in an ODI series at home against Australia. The team for this World Cup was considered to be a strong one, with a powerful batting line comprising captain Virat Kohli, openers Rohit Sharma and K. L. Rahul and veteran wicketkeeper-batsman Mahendra Singh Dhoni, a fast bowling line-up comprising Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and Bhuvneshwar Kumar hailed by experts as the best fast-bowling unit India has ever produced, two brilliant wrist spinners including Yuzvendra Chahal and slow left-arm wrist-spin bowler Kuldeep Yadav and quality all-rounders in Hardik Pandya, Kedar Jadhav and Ravindra Jadeja. The only weakness in the side was the number four batsman slot, with Vijay Shankar controversially selected in place of the regular two-down batsman Ambati Rayudu. The round-robin format last used in the 1992 World Cup was used for this tournament, with India playing all the other nine participating teams once.


title: Ants from Up There

text: Ants from Up There is the second studio album by British rock band Black Country, New Road, released on 4 February 2022 on Ninja Tune. Recorded at Chale Abbey on the Isle of Wight, the album was produced by the band's live sound engineer Sergio Maschetzko, and is the final album to feature lead vocalist and guitarist Isaac Wood, who announced his departure from the band on 31 January 2022, four days prior to the album's release.


title: Ants from Up There

text: Written during COVID-19 lockdowns and road-tested during brief touring stints in support of their debut album, "For the First Time" (2021), the album was released almost exactly a year after their debut, and was preceded by four singles: "Chaos Space Marine", "Bread Song", "Concorde" and "Snow Globes".


title: Ants from Up There

text: The album received unanimous critical acclaim upon its release. It became Black Country, New Road's highest-charting album, debuting at No. 3 on the UK Albums Chart and also reaching the top ten in Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Scotland.


title: Ants from Up There

text: "Ants from Up There" is Black Country, New Road's second album, following their 2021 debut "For the First Time". Speaking to "NME" at the 2021 Mercury Prize awards ceremony, for which their debut album had been nominated, the band confirmed that they had already completed work on a follow-up, describing the album as "sad, epic, and possibly more universally likeable" and that the songs are "more palatable" compared to "For the First Time." Bassist Tyler Hyde stated that "we have figured out what we're trying to say, so it makes a bit more sense. Some of the songs are shorter. We attempted to write songs that were three and a half minutes."


title: Ants from Up There

text: Writing for the album began in winter 2020, when the United Kingdom announced a new lockdown to combat deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic. Hyde and Wayne expressed disgust with Prime Minister Boris Johnson's actions during the lockdown. The band embarked on a socially distant summer tour in June 2021 to road test their new material. Wayne claimed in an interview with Uncut, "That tour had quite a specific purpose. It wasn't necessarily just to be present out there on the road, it was to workshop these songs and see how they fared in front of people; to make sure we hadn't got it wrong."


title: Ants from Up There

text: The album was recorded over two weeks at Chale Abbey Studios, on the Isle of Wight, in the summer of 2021. The band's live sound engineer, Sergio Maschetzko, produced the sessions. Hyde told Uncut, "He'd never actually recorded an album before. The intention was to capture what we were doing live as closely as possible and he was the man for the job because he knows us better than anyone else - he sometimes knows our playing better than we do." As a result, the band recorded the majority of the album live in the studio. The album was recorded in the late summer of 2021. In an interview with Uncut, Wayne said, "It's funny, because the day we started recording was the day that everyone opened up in the UK. We were in a farmhouse for two weeks without access to a car, so in a way it was a continuation of our isolation. But I suppose that's how the album was written, so maybe it's faithful [to the material] – that's how it was recorded as well."


title: Ants from Up There

text: Wood, the lead vocalist, announced his departure from the band on 31 January 2022 due to mental health reasons, four days before the album's release date. The band's first United States tour was cancelled as a result. The remaining members said they will not continue to perform music written with Wood after his departure.


title: Ants from Up There

text: Musically, "Ants from Up There" primarily incorporates post-rock and chamber pop. It has been compared to Canadian indie rock bands Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade, with the band noting that they were directly influenced by Arcade Fire's "Funeral" (2004), Sufjan Stevens' "Illinois" (2005), Arthur Russell's "Iowa Dream" (2019) and Billie Eilish's "Happier Than Ever" (2021) during the recording process. Hyde and drummer Charlie Wayne stated that the album took some structural influence from pop music, describing its makeup as "more conceptually pop than sounding like pop". Whereas "For the First Time" was a collection of songs that the band had already been playing live, "Ants from Up There" was the first album where the band specifically sought to make every song fit with the others as "one body of work", according to saxophonist Lewis Evans.


title: Ants from Up There

text: Many of the album's tracks stem from initial writing sessions between band members Issac Wood (vocals, guitar), Tyler Hyde (bass) and Luke Mark (guitar), who lived together during the first COVID-19 lockdown. Drummer Charlie Wayne noted: "The first time I heard ideas for "Concorde" or "The Place Where He Inserted the Blade" was when I came over to hang out in their kitchen and we got this little drum kit set up." In January 2021, the month before the release of the band's debut studio album, "For the First Time", the full band convened for a week to work on new material: "Eventually there was a week-long rehearsal session in Hoxton in January where we all came together, and that's when the songs really became whole. It's only when everyone has brought their own constituent parts to it that you can really credit it as Black Country, New Road."


title: Ants from Up There

text: "Basketball Shoes", which dates back prior to the release of "For the First Time", was the first song written for the album, followed by "Snow Globes". Hyde stated that "other than that, most of them were written at the same time and they were all essentially birthed by 'Basketball Shoes'". In comparison to "For the First Time", which was emotionally apathetic and dealt with fictional scenarios, Hyde and Wayne said "Ants from Up There" features more vulnerable lyrical topics.


title: Ants from Up There

text: "Intro" contains an instrumental motif found in "Basketball Shoes", the album's closer. It incorporates klezmer elements, a style of Jewish music which Evans and multi-instrumentalist Georgia Ellery had experience playing. Lead single "Chaos Space Marine" came "about through a joke", Hyde said. The song derived its name from the eponymous miniature figurines in the "Warhammer 40,000" franchise. Third single "Concorde" was inspired by science fiction stories including "Luca" and "2012". The band listened to the music of former The War on Drugs guitarist Kurt Vile during the writing of "Good Will Hunting", which was written in two versions, one containing a time signature and the other in ; the final version is a combination of both.


title: Ants from Up There

text: "Haldern" was named after the Haldern Pop music festival in Germany, which the band played during the pandemic. It is the only song on the album to originate from an improvisation session. "Mark's Theme" is an instrumental written by Evans following the passing of his uncle Mark from COVID-19 in 2021. "Snow Globes" was performed as early as January 2020, a notable example being a 2020 Christmas livestream concert with Black Midi, with the band adding new elements to each successive live performance similar to rapper Kanye West's alterations to previously recorded studio material; the band also took inspiration from Frank Ocean's song "White Ferrari".


title: Ants from Up There

text: Hyde described closing song "Basketball Shoes" as "essentially a medley of the whole album", containing motifs repeated from the album's earlier songs such as "Concorde" and the clamp from "Snow Globes". Wayne said that it was "three songs in one, basically". It was one of the first songs the band wrote and predates "For the First Time", originally describing an unhealthy obsession with British singer Charli XCX in its earliest form before undergoing significant lyrical changes for the final version.


title: Ants from Up There

text: Wayne and Hyde named "Snow Globes" and "The Place Where He Inserted The Blade" the easiest and hardest tracks to record respectively. The former ended up on the album in the form of its first take in studio, while the recording process of the latter took considerable time due to a technical error on Wayne's part.


title: Ants from Up There

text: The album's title was its last component to be finalized, with the band naming it on the day of its deadline. It refers to the appearance of people while viewed from an airplane, tying in with the album cover and the recurring lyrical theme of the Concorde jet. The artwork for the album's promotional materials came from band members' childhood drawings.


title: Ants from Up There

text: "Ants from Up There" was announced on 12 October 2021 alongside the release of the album's first single, "Chaos Space Marine", which Wood described as "the best song [they have] ever written". On 2 November 2021, the band released "Bread Song" as the second single. The song's style and instrumentation were inspired by Steve Reichs "Music for 18 Musicians", wherein the band were to play without definitive timing and cues. A third song, "Concorde", was released on 30 November 2021 as the album's third single. In an interview with "Consequence", the band said that they used the mandolin to give the song "unpredictability" and "a snappy and spiky element".


title: Ants from Up There

text: The band released "Snow Globes", the fourth and final single, on 19 January 2022. In a statement, Wayne noted the contrast between the drum track and the rest of the instruments, serving in a more independent and expressive role. The track had previously been performed in an earlier state as part of the group's joint fundraiser for the Windmill with Black Midi on 10 December 2020.


title: Ants from Up There

text: "Ants from Up There" received universal acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, the album has received an average score of 92, based on 20 reviews. The album has been widely touted as a 'masterpiece,' receiving many perfect scores from critics upon release.


title: Ants from Up There

text: "NME" gave the album five stars out of five, proclaiming that the band managed "to pivot towards more familiar, accessible sounds and embrace traditional song structures – without sacrificing an ounce of their musical wizardry or inventiveness", declaring it "truly remarkable" and a "future cult classic" in the wake of Wood's departure. "The Independent", in a five stars out of five review, declared that "the sheer grace and ambition of "Ants..." will prove tough for 2022 to top", citing the "grunge rock crescendos accompanying images of burning starships on 'Good Will Hunting', and gargantuan arias on the 12-minute 'Basketball Shoes'" as track highlights. Ian Cohen of "Pitchfork" praised the album's "life-affirming," emo-like sentimentality in a review awarded Best New Music; he stated that by "manifesting every glimmer of hope as a heaven-sent beacon and every letdown as a plunge towards the void," the band captured the essence of "adjacent masterpieces like [Neutral Milk Hotel's] "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", [Titus Andronicus's] "The Monitor", and [Car Seat Headrest's] "Teens of Denial"" en route to "Ants"' "beautifully doomed fantasies." AllMusic's Timothy Monger gave the album four stars out of five, describing the album as "an impressive one, rife with forward momentum but preempted by its own self-mythology" regarding Wood.


title: Ants from Up There

text: Special praise was reserved for Wood's songwriting, widely lauded as an album highlight for its emotional intensity and depth. Jamie Kilkenny of "Clash" noted that "[t]he angle of ["Ants"'] lyrical riches grows ever more sentimental and singular" over repeated listens, and that "only Wood could wring so much profundity from a pleading wail to "show me the place where he inserted the blade"; or the beauty wrapped in the seemingly mundane "particles of bread" on the marvel of 'Bread Song.'" "The Line of Best Fit"'s Kyle Kohner gave the album a perfect score, praising Wood as a "clairvoyant" author of "witty, abstract storytelling" on "Ants" and remarking upon his position as "the wry mouthpiece of a band... keenly speaking to a generation of young people." Tom Morgan of "PopMatters" applauded the band's "bold and progressive" compositions, but particularly distinguished Wood's lyrics as "unique and often profound," hailing his "deft, resonant words" for their "contemporary relevance" in contrast to those of his indie coevals.


title: Ants from Up There

text: Critics also singled out closing track 'Basketball Shoes' for praise, hailing the song's "astonishing" scope and "devastating, yet cleansing" emotional impact. Sam Richards of "Uncut" compared the song favorably to "Marquee Moon" and the work of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, praising it as "a moment of euphoria, catharsis or collapse" and declaring it "a gut-wrenching epic of Dostoevskian proportions."


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: Clarence Leonard "Kelly" Johnson (February 27, 1910 – December 21, 1990) was an American aeronautical and systems engineer. He is recognized for his contributions to a series of important aircraft designs, most notably the Lockheed U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird. Besides the first production aircraft to exceed Mach 3, he also produced the first fighter capable of Mach 2, the United States' first operational jet fighter, as well as the first fighter to exceed 400 mph, and many other contributions to various aircraft.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: As a member and first team leader of the Lockheed Skunk Works, Johnson worked for more than four decades and is said to have been an "organizing genius". He played a leading role in the design of over forty aircraft, including several honored with the prestigious Collier Trophy, acquiring a reputation as one of the most talented and prolific aircraft design engineers in the history of aviation.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: In 2003, as part of its commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' flight, "Aviation Week & Space Technology" ranked Johnson eighth on its list of the top 100 "most important, most interesting, and most influential people" in the first century of aerospace. Hall Hibbard, Johnson's Lockheed boss, referring to Johnson's Swedish ancestry, once remarked to Ben Rich: "That damned Swede can actually see air."


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: Kelly Johnson was born in the remote mining town of Ishpeming, Michigan. His parents were Swedish, from the city of Malmö, county of Scania. His father ran a construction company. Johnson was 13 years old when he won a prize for his first aircraft design. He attended Flint Central High School and graduated in 1928, then went to Flint Junior College, now known as Mott Community College, and finally to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he received a Bachelor's and Master's Degree in Aeronautical Engineering.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: While attending grade school in Michigan, he was ridiculed for his name, Clarence. Some boys started calling him "Clara". One morning while waiting in line to get into a classroom, one boy started with the normal routine of calling him "Clara". Johnson tripped him so hard the boy broke a leg. The boys then decided that he was not a "Clara" after all, and started calling him "Kelly". The nickname came from the popular song at the time, "Has Anyone Here Seen Kelly? (Kelly from the Emerald Isle)". Henceforth, he was always known as "Kelly" Johnson.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: In 1937, Johnson married Althea Louise Young, who worked in Lockheed's accounting department; she died in December 1969.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: In May 1971, he married his secretary Maryellen Elberta Meade of New York; she died after a long illness on October 13, 1980, aged 46.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: Johnson died at the age of 80 at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank after physical deterioration and the advancement of senility, caused by the hardening of his arteries connecting to his brain. During his visits to the hospital, his good friend Ben Rich watched his condition worsen, writing, "His eyes seemed unfocused and lifeless, and increasingly began to slip in and out of coherence. I could barely stand to visit him, and many times he seemed not even to recognize me." He is buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery, Los Angeles, California.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: At the University of Michigan, Johnson conducted wind tunnel tests of Lockheed's proposed Model 10 airliner. He found the aircraft did not have adequate directional stability, but his professor felt it did and told Lockheed so. Upon completing his master's degree in 1933, Johnson joined Lockheed as a tool designer on a salary of $83 a month. Shortly after starting, Johnson convinced Hall Hibbard, the chief engineer, the Model 10 was unstable.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: Hibbard sent Johnson back to Michigan to conduct more tests. Johnson eventually made multiple changes to the wind tunnel model, including adding an "H" tail, to address the problem. Lockheed accepted Johnson's suggestions and the Model 10 went on to be a success. This brought Johnson to the attention of company management, and he was promoted to aeronautical engineer.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: After assignments as flight test engineer, stress analyst, aerodynamicist, and weight engineer, he became chief research engineer in 1938. In 1952, he was appointed chief engineer of Lockheed's Burbank, California plant, which later became the Lockheed-California Company. In 1956 he became Vice President of Research and Development there.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: Johnson became Vice President of Advanced Development Projects (ADP) in 1958. The first ADP offices were nearly uninhabitable; a smelly former bourbon distillery was the first ADP location, the site where his secretive team built the first P-38 Lightning prototype. Moving from the distillery to a larger building, the stench from a nearby plastic factory was so vile that Irv Culver, one of the engineers, began answering the intra-Lockheed "house" phone "Skonk Works!"


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: In Al Capp's comic strip "Li'l Abner, "Big Barnsmell's Skonk Works — spelled with an "o" — was where Kickapoo Joy Juice was brewed. When the name leaked out, Lockheed ordered it changed to "Skunk Works" to avoid potential legal trouble over use of a copyrighted term. The term rapidly circulated throughout the aerospace community, and became a common nickname for research and development offices.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: Johnson led or contributed to the development of a number of aircraft. A few examples illustrate the influence of his work. In the late 1930s, Johnson led the team that developed the advanced twin-engine fighter, the P-38 Lightning. Eventually, almost 10,000 Lightnings were built. They played a significant role in World War II.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: In 1943, responding to United States Army Air Forces' concerns about Nazi Germany's development of high performance jet fighters, Johnson proposed to develop a jet airplane in six months. The result, the P-80 Shooting Star, was completed on time and became America's first operational jet fighter.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: In 1955, at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency, Johnson initiated construction of the airbase at Groom Lake, Nevada, later known as Area 51. This project provided a secret location for flight testing the Lockheed U-2.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: Johnson also helped to design the Lockheed AQM-60 Kingfisher a decade before the famous SR-71. The Kingfisher was a highly successful single-engine Mach 4.3-capable ramjet aircraft composed mainly of steel, which was used to test American air defenses against nuclear missiles. The information and experience Johnson gained was later used to produce the A-12 spy plane for the Central Intelligence Agency. Johnson then used the combined knowledge of the Kingfisher and A-12 to produce the SR-71 Blackbird.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: Johnson also led the development of the SR-71 Blackbird family of aircraft. Through a number of significant innovations, Johnson's team was able to create an aircraft that flew so high and fast that it could neither be intercepted nor shot down. No other jet airplane has matched the Blackbird's performance.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: He served on Lockheed's board of directors from 1964 to 1980, becoming a senior vice president in 1969. He officially retired from Lockheed in 1975 and was succeeded by Ben Rich, but continued as a consultant at the Skunk Works. In June 1983, the Lockheed Rye Canyon Research and Development Center in Santa Clarita was renamed Kelly Johnson Research and Development Center, Lockheed-California Company, in honor of Johnson's 50 years of service to the company.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: A number of factors contributed to Johnson's extraordinary career. He was a very talented designer and engineer. For instance, he could quickly and accurately estimate design characteristics such as mass, characteristics that usually were determined through long calculations. He was also ambitious and an excellent salesman, aggressively promoting ideas while also earning others' trust. In addition, he created teams and a work environment where creativity and productivity could flourish.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: While at Lockheed, Johnson designed the P-38 Lightning fighter, made Fowler flaps work on the Model 14 Super Electra, and played a major role in converting the type into the Royal Air Force's Lockheed Hudson on short notice in 1938. He worked on the development of the Constellation for Howard Hughes' TWA airline.


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: Johnson is sometimes cited as the originator of the KISS principle, and his famed "down-to-brass-tacks" management style was summed up by his motto, "Be quick, be quiet, and be on time." He ran Skunk Works by "Kelly's 14 Rules":


title: Kelly Johnson (engineer)

text: Johnson had a 15th rule that he passed on by word of mouth. According to the book "Skunk Works" the 15th rule is: "Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy."


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: The Land Forces, Air Force and Naval Forces of Romania are collectively known as the Romanian Armed Forces ( or "Armata Română"). The current Commander-in-chief is Lieutenant General Daniel Petrescu who is managed by the Minister of National Defence while the president is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces during wartime.


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: As of 2021, the Armed Forces number 68,500 active personnel and 53,000 reserves. The Land Forces have a reported strength of 35,800, the Air Force 10,700, the Naval Forces 6,600, and Joint Forces 16,500, in 2020. Total defence spending currently accounts for 2.02% of total national GDP, which represents approximately 5.7 billion US dollars. The Armed Forces are built for territorial defence, with contributions to NATO missions such as in Afghanistan a secondary priority. As of 2022, Romania is ranked 38 of 140 out of the countries considered for the annual GFP review.


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: The first attempt to create an independent Romanian army was made by Gheorghe Magheru during the 1848 Wallachian Revolution, and it was based at Râureni (now part of Râmnicu Vâlcea). However, Magheru rapidly ordered his troops to disband when the Ottoman forces swept into Bucharest to stop the revolution.


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: The current Romanian Land Forces were formed in 1859, immediately after the unification of Wallachia with Moldavia, and were commanded by Alexandru Ioan Cuza, "Domnitor" of Romania until his abdication in 1866. In 1877, at the request of Nikolai Konstantinovich, Grand Duke of Russia the Romanian army joined the Russian forces, and led by King Carol I, fought in what was to become the Romanian War of Independence. They participated in the Siege of Plevna and several other battles. The Romanians won the war, but suffered about 27,000 casualties. Until World War I, the Romanian army didn't face any other serious actions, although it participated in the Second Balkan War against Bulgaria.


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: Romania mobilized its army on 5 July 1913, with intention of seizing Southern Dobruja, and declared war on Bulgaria on 10 July. In a diplomatic circular that said, "Romania does not intend either to subjugate the polity nor defeat the army of Bulgaria", the Romanian government endeavoured to allay international concerns about its motives and about increased bloodshed. According to Richard Hall, "the entrance of Romania into the conflict made the Bulgarian situation untenable and the Romanian thrust across the Danube was the decisive military act of the Second Balkan War."


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: On July 6, 1916, Romania declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary, following the initial success of the Brusilov Offensive (a major Russian offensive against the armies of the Central Powers on the Eastern Front). The Romanian armies entered Transylvania (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), together with Russian forces. However, German forces under the command of General Erich von Falkenhayn stalled the attack in November, 1916, and drove back the Romanians. At the same time, Austrian and Turkish troops invaded southern Romania, forcing the country into a two-front war. The Central Powers drove deep into Romania and conquered the south of the country (Wallachia, including Bucharest) by the end of 1916. The Romanian forces, led by Marshal Constantin Prezan, retreated into the north-east part of Romania (Moldavia). In the summer of 1917 however, Prezan, aided by the future Marshal, General Ion Antonescu, successfully defended the remaining unoccupied territories against German and Austro-Hungarian forces led by Field Marshal August von Mackensen. General Alexandru Averescu led the Second Army in the victories of the Battle of Mărăști (July 22 to August 1, 1917) and the Battle of Mărășești (August 6 to September 8, 1917). As a result of the Russian Revolution, Romania was left isolated and unable to continue the war, and was forced to sign the Treaty of Bucharest with the Central Powers. Later on, in 1919, Germany agreed, in the Treaty of Versailles Article 259, to renounce all the benefits provided to it by the Treaty of Bucharest in 1918. After the successful offensive on the Thessaloniki front, which put Bulgaria out of the war, Romania re-entered the war on November 10, 1918, a day before its end in the West.


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: After General (later Marshal) Ion Antonescu took power in September 1940, Romania signed the Tripartite Pact with the Axis Powers and subsequently took part in Operation Barbarossa in 1941. An expeditionary force invaded the Soviet Union in Bessarabia and southern Ukraine, alongside the German Wehrmacht. The expeditionary force, 'Army Group Antonescu', was composed on 22 June 1941 of the 3rd Army, the 4th Army, the 2nd Army Corps, and the 11th Infantry Division. The 3rd Army comprised the 4th Army Corps (6th and 7th Infantry Divisions), the Cavalry Corps, the Mountain Corps, two separate artillery battalion, a TA unit, and the Air Force's 3rd Army Cooperation Command. The 4th Army consisted of the 3rd Army Corps, the 5th Army Corps, the 11th Army Corps (two fortress brigades), and the 4th Army Cooperation Command. The army group-level 2nd Army Corps, under Major General N. Macici, controlled the 9th and 10th Infantry Divisions and the 7th Cavalry Brigade. Additionally the was formed for service on the Eastern Front. The Army Group's first offensive, in conjunction with the Eleventh Army, Operation Munchen, enabled Romania to retake the territory immediately east of the Dnister, former part of Moldavia. The Romanian Armies saw their first major battles at Odessa and Sevastopol, and in 1942 advanced with other Axis forces deeper into Soviet territory during Operation Blue.


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: The greatest disaster for the Romanian expeditionary force on the Eastern Front came at Stalingrad, where, during the Soviet counter-offensive of November 1942, the thinly spread forces of the Third Army (deployed north of Stalingrad) and of the Fourth Army (deployed south of Stalingrad) were attacked by vastly superior Soviet forces and suffered combined losses of some 158,000 personnel.


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: During April–May 1944 the Romanian forces led by General Mihai Racovițǎ, together with elements of the German Sixth Army were responsible for defending Northern Romania during the Soviet First Jassy-Kishinev Offensive, and took part in the Battles of Târgu Frumos. In late August 1944, the Red Army entered eastern Romania. The Battle of Jassy took place on August 20–25, 1944. 150 000 German soldiers died (80 000 in Stalingrad), 106 000 Germans was taken as prisoners by the Red Army (108 000 in Stalingrad); the fate of the rest 80 000 remain unknown. On August 23, 1944, a coup led by King Michael I of Romania deposed Marshal Antonescu and set up a pro-Soviet government. It has been estimated that the royal coup shortened the war by six months. Romania soon declared war on Nazi Germany, and the First and Fourth Armies were pressed into action. After the expelling of the last Wehrmacht remnants from Romania, the Romanian Armies took part in the Siege of Budapest and the Prague Offensive of May 1945.


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: After the Romanian Communist Party seized power, the Armed Forces of Romania was reformed to mirror the soviet model. It was reestablished as the Romanian People's Army () under the original supervision of Minister of Defence, Emil Bodnăraș. Between 1955 and 1991, the Romanian People's Army took part in events of the Warsaw Pact, of which Romania was a member. During this period, the army was supplied with weapons and equipment from the Soviet Union. From 1947 to 1960, the country divided into 3 military regions: Western (Cluj), Eastern (Bacău), and South (Bucharest).


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: In 1980 the Romanian Land Forces was reorganized in 4 Army Commands: 1st (Bucharest), 2nd (Buzau), 3rd (Craiova) and 4th (Cluj-Napoca). In the four Army Commands were 8 Mechanized Divisions, 2 Tank Divisions and 1 Tank Brigade, as well as 4 Mountain Brigades (specialized motorized infantry units).


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: In 1989 the RLF had, as armored equipment, a total of 2715 combat vehicles: 945 outdated (soviet WW-2 type) T-34-85 tanks, 790 soviet and Czechoslovak T-55/-55A/-55AM tanks, 415 Romanian built TR-77-580, 535 Romanian built TR-85-800 and 30 soviet T-72 "Ural-1" tanks.


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: The People's Army was dissolved after the Romanian Revolution in the beginning of 1990 and was rebranded as the Romanian Armed Forces. Since 1994, Romania has been actively participating in the Partnership for Peace program and on 29 March 2004, it officially joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). During the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, Romania placed its territory and airspace at disposal for NATO troop and even sent troops to the Kosovo Force contingent in the summer of 1999 to stabilize the situation in Kosovo and Metohija. On 15 November 2002, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine created a multinational engineering battalion called ""Tisa"" , which includes an engineering company from the armed forces. Romania has taken part in the War in Afghanistan since July 2002, with Romanian contingent being increased from 962 to more than 1,500 troops in 2009. The armed forces also took part in the War in Iraq from 2003 to August 2009, in which the losses of the Romanian contingent amounted to 3 soldiers killed and at least 11 wounded.


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: The Land Forces have overhauled their equipment in recent years, and are today a modern army with multiple NATO capabilities. The Land Forces are at present planning on replacing the TAB APC vehicles with new armored personnel carriers produced in conjunction with the Germany company Rheinmetall. The Air Force currently operates modernized Soviet MiG-21 LanceR fighters and 17 F-16 A/B Block 15 MLU fighters. The Air Force has also received 7 new C-27J Spartan tactical airlift aircraft, in order to replace the bulk of the old transport force. Two modernized ex-Royal Navy Type 22 frigates were acquired by the Naval Forces in 2004 and a further four modern missile corvettes will be commissioned in the next few years. Three domestically-produced IAR 330 Puma NAVAL helicopters were also ordered by the Naval Forces, and were commissioned in late 2008. As of 2021, Romania has in total 943 tanks, 1500+ armored vehicles, 808 towed artillery and 240 rocket projectors.


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: Romania joined NATO in 2004. As a consequence, extensive preparations were made to abolish conscription by 2007 and create a professional army in place of a conscripted one.


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: The new armed forces include 64,500 military personnel. Some 35,800 make up the Romanian Land Forces, 10,700 serve as the Romanian Air Force and 6,600 are in the Romanian Naval Forces; the remaining 16,500 serve in other fields.


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: The Romanian Military will essentially undergo a three-stage restructuring. As of 2017, the first two stages have been completed. 2015 marked the end of the second stage when the armed forces reached a superior compatibility with NATO forces. In 2025, the long-term stage is to be completed. The stages aim at modernising the structure of the armed forces, reducing the personnel as well as acquiring newer and more improved technology that is compatible with NATO standards.


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: The military sees obsolete Soviet-era equipment as a major limitation and intends to replace its MiG-21 fighters by 2020 and buy modern combat helicopters, according to an August 2017 government plan. Romania is also set to acquire the MIM-104 Patriot air defence system, armored vehicles, corvettes and US M142 HIMARS rocket artillery.


title: Romanian Armed Forces

text: As of April 2022, Romania has 429 military personnel deployed in international missions. Largest deployments being: 203 troops in Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of EUFOR Althea, 101 troops in Poland as part of NATO Enhanced Forward Presence and 54 troops in Kosovo as part of KFOR.


title: Overwatch League

text: The Overwatch League (OWL) is a professional esports league for the video game "Overwatch", produced by its developer, Blizzard Entertainment. The Overwatch League follows the model of other traditional North American professional sporting leagues by using a set of permanent, city-based teams backed by separate ownership groups.


title: Overwatch League

text: The league uses the regular season and playoffs format rather than promotion and relegation used commonly in other esports and non-North American leagues, with players on the roster being assured a minimum annual salary, benefits, and a portion of winnings and revenue-sharing based on team performance. The league was announced in 2016 with its inaugural season taking place in 2018.


title: Overwatch League

text: The Overwatch League is owned by Blizzard Entertainment and run by Major League Gaming, which is also owned by Blizzard's parent company Activision Blizzard. The Overwatch League plays out similar to most North American professional sports leagues, in which all teams play scheduled games against other teams to vie for position in the season's playoffs, rather than the approach of team promotion and relegation more commonly used in other esports leagues. The league currently features twenty teams split between two conferences based on their location: East and West. The East will have eight teams, while the West will have twelve.


title: Overwatch League

text: The 2018 season consisted of non-regulation pre-season play, a regular season divided into four stages, and a post-season playoffs tournament to determine the championship team for the season. Each regular season stage lasted five weeks, with each stage ending with a short playoff of the top teams based on that stage's records to determine stage champions. Teams played 40 matches across the regular season, playing teams both within and outside their division. The post-season playoffs used teams' overall standings across all stages. The top standing team in both divisions received the top two seed in the playoffs, followed by a fixed number of teams determined from across both divisions. An All-Star weekend is also held, featuring two division-based teams selected by league representatives and voted on by fans.


title: Overwatch League

text: The 2019 season format was similar to that of the previous season, though stage playoffs for the fourth stage were eliminated and the number of matches was decreased to 28, among other changes. The 2020 season introduced a number of changes, including a home-and-away format, where each team would host home games with up to eight teams per homestand event, and the elimination of the stage format. This format was eventually changed to a bimonthly tournament-based season in April due to the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Overwatch League

text: Teams are awarded with monetary prizes for how they place at the end of the regular season, as well as for participating and placing high in the stage playoffs and post-season tournament. For example, the first season had a total prize pool of available, with the top prize of $1 million awarded to the post-season championship team.


title: Overwatch League

text: "Overwatch" is a five-versus-five team-based first-person shooter video game. Broadly, the goal is to work with team members to eliminate or repel opponents while attacking, defending, or competing for an objective. Players select from the game's roster of thirty-three heroes, split between classes of Damage (the main attackers), Support (providing healing and other buffs), and Tank (shielding teammates with high health amounts) each with their own pre-designed set of weapons and skill kits, though each player on a team must play a unique hero. Starting with stage four of the 2019 season, each team must be composed of two Damage heroes, two Supports, and two Tanks. A player can switch to an available hero within the same class if they are eliminated prior to respawning, or if they return to their current spawn point, which allows for teams to adjust their composition dynamically based on the current situation.


title: Overwatch League

text: Within league play, a regular season match features two teams (one selected as the home team, the other as the visiting team) playing a best-of-five format, with each map featuring a predetermined map type, following the same gameplay format as with normal competitive mode in "Overwatch": Control maps, played on a best-of-three rounds, and Assault, Escort, and Hybrid maps, with each team having at least one chance as the attacking team. The pool of specific maps from the standard "Overwatch" rotation are determined periodically, allowing the teams to determine their player lineups and strategy while also changing the season's metagame. A team may call in substitutes for players only between maps. The team that wins three maps first wins the match. If teams are tied after four games, a tiebreaker game played on a Control map (which cannot end in a tie) is used to break the tie and determine the match winner. Standings are based primarily on the overall match win–loss record, but ties are broken based on the total map win–loss record. Any further ties for tournament placement are broken based first on the head-to-head game win–loss record, then head-to-head match count.


title: Overwatch League

text: Overwatch League games are played on a custom server controlled by Blizzard; this server is also available to players for practices. This version of the game receives similar updates to the main commercial game, adding new maps and heroes, and altering the various hero abilities based on testing within the Public Test Realm. However, these updates are not applied immediately as they are for the commercial game, but instead no more frequent than once every six weeks. For example, a late January 2018 patch, which had significant effects on characters like Mercy and thus had potential to upset the metagame, was not applied to the league server until mid-February, at the start of the second stage. However, teams are given access to private servers updated to alongside the main release of "Overwatch" for them to practice and scrimmage against other teams to learn and develop strategies on updates and patches before experiencing them in official matches. For matches, each player is provided with an identical desktop computer, monitor, and pair of noise-cancelling headphones to play on to eliminate any handicaps related to computational or graphics processing, but players may use their preferred keyboard and mouse.


title: Overwatch League

text: While "Overwatch" is played in teams of five, Overwatch League teams can have up to six additional players that can be swapped between maps. A team's membership is locked at the start of the season, but a mid-season signing period allows teams to bring in new players or trade players between teams. Following the end of the season, teams have about one month to extend current player contracts, bring on players from affiliated Overwatch Contenders teams, or hold private tryout sessions. Subsequently, all unsigned players by the end of this period enter free agency during which players can negotiate with teams to become part of the roster; in the case of when expansion teams are added, there is a month-long period where expansion teams have exclusive negotiating rights before other teams can engage. A team's minimum roster is to be set prior to the season's pre-season matches, about two months prior to season play, but they can expand and change this roster up until a specified date. The league is not region-locked, so teams can use players of any nationality to fill their ranks, as long as the team ownership is based in that city or region. For example, the London Spitfire at the onset of the first season was entirely made up of South Korean players. The only restriction on players is to be of at least 18 years old and to be able to travel internationally.


title: Overwatch League

text: Overwatch League players, while on a team's contract, are paid an annual salary. In the first year, a player's salary was a minimum of set by the league. Additionally, the league offers players with health and retirement benefits, as well as housing and training support. Blizzard required team owners to provide the signed players with bonuses representing at least 50% of the team's winnings and revenue. Players can negotiate for larger amounts with their team's owners and larger portion of the bonus revenue-sharing from tournament winnings and other income. For example, in 2017, Jay "sinatraa" Won secured the league's highest salary of $150,000 for his spot on the San Francisco Shock, along with a 50% share of the team's bonuses.


title: Overwatch League

text: Players are expected to follow a code of conduct set by Blizzard while playing and representing the league, and may face suspension and fines for violating these, in addition to any penalties the team itself may impose. A noted incident shortly after the league's launch saw Dallas Fuel's Félix "xQc" Lengyel suspended by the league for four games and fined $2,000 for making homophobic comments about another player; the Fuel further suspended him for the remainder of the first stage of play. Following additional conduct violations in the second stage that led to further suspension, xQc was released by the Fuel. Blizzard has since started its online "discipline tracker" in December 2018 to list players who have been temporarily suspended or fined for actions related to their behavior as representatives of the Overwatch League. Players, as part of their benefits, receive media training to help with speaking to the press and public about their roles, an issue that has been a problem in previous organized esport systems.


title: Overwatch League

text: Professional teams in the league are given the opportunity to scout for new players through two additional competitive leagues run by Blizzard. The Open Division, first started in June 2017, allows amateur teams to compete against each other in a structured season. Those that qualify at the end of the season are seeded into a post-season tournament with intra-regional matches. Players that complete all non-playoff games for their team can earn a small amount of credit to Blizzard's digital storefront, while regional winning teams can earn higher prize payouts. The Open division is played across seven different regions: Australia, China, Europe, Korea, North America, Pacific, and South America.


title: Overwatch League

text: Players or teams can then move up from the Open Division into Overwatch Contenders, a minor league to the Overwatch League. Contenders was launched in 2018 to merge existing regional tournaments into a structure to support the Overwatch League. Contenders consists of several global divisions with a number of teams within each, which may include both professional and amateur players. Contender teams may be affiliated with an Overwatch League team as an academy team, and up to two players per academy team can be signed to two-way contracts to be moved between their academy team and Overwatch League team.


title: Overwatch League

text: Contenders was launched in the first half of 2018 with five divisions with 12 teams each: Korea (replacing the Overwatch Apex tournament), China (replacing the Overwatch Premier Series), and Pacific (replacing Overwatch Pacific Championship for other Asian-Pacific countries), and adding in North America and European divisions. Prior to the second 2018 Contenders season, Blizzard added two additional divisions, for Australia and South America, bringing the total to seven. The top eight teams from the Open Division within each region are also invited to Contenders Trials, a weekly promotion and relegation tournament to compete in the following week of Contenders. For its second season in 2019, Blizzard adjusted the format by reducing the number of teams in each region to eight, while dividing the North American region into East and West divisions. Blizzard also added a regional limit of the number of "import players", which are those that live outside the division's region, to a maximum of three. These changes were reverted for the 2020 season.


title: Overwatch League

text: "Overwatch" development started around 2013, around the same time that esports and spectator-driven video gaming were starting to gain wide popularity due to accessibility of live streaming platforms. However, the game's development was not dedicated towards esports; according to lead director Jeff Kaplan, "it's dangerous to be overly committed to esport too early in the lifespan of the game" based on past experiences Blizzard had had in esports, and instead planned any esports-related goals by observing the game's player community. During "Overwatch"s beta period, between late 2015 and mid-2016, Blizzard observed that players were already forming "ad hoc" competitions and tournaments for the game. According to Nate Nanzer, who was Blizzard's global director of research and consumer insights prior to being the league's commissioner, Blizzard considered the potential if they were the ones in charge of setting up these competitions. Nanzer stated: "If we structure a league the right way and put the right investment behind it, we can actually monetize it in a way that's not too dissimilar from traditional sports." Building from this insight, Blizzard started crafting the basis for the Overwatch League. Part of this included adding competitive features into the main "Overwatch" game, such as ranked play where skilled players would be able to climb a rankings ladder, allowing them to be noticed by esport team organizers. In October 2016, Bobby Kotick, CEO of Blizzard's parent company Activision Blizzard, first mentioned the Overwatch League, describing how viewership of user-generated esports content was around 100 million, exceeding viewership for some professional NFL and NBA games, and saw the potential to provide "professional content" through the Overwatch League to tap into that viewership.


title: Overwatch League

text: Overwatch League was formally announced at BlizzCon in November 2016. The announcement stated that the league would feature franchised teams that would hire skilled "Overwatch" players to compete in live arenas and via video streaming. Teams would provide competitors with salaries and benefits and would help "cultivate team and player development". Rather than following the format of other esports that use relegation and promotion as in the "League of Legends" Championship Series, Blizzard wanted to follow the American model used in more traditional physical sports. Kotick believed that "nothing like this has ever really been done before" in esports.


title: Overwatch League

text: For Blizzard, the costs of running the league would be offset by traditional revenue streams that professional sports league have, such as promotion and advertisement, and physical League merchandise. Kotick also said that due to the digital nature of the esport, Blizzard can also obtain revenue from virtual league-based items to fans, and additional sales of "Overwatch" and other games, and they are able to include more lucrative "over-the-top advertising opportunities that wouldn't exist in traditional sports". Kotick said, just prior to the start of the inaugural season, "It's a ways before you're going to see certain revenue streams, but we're already seeing a lot of traction and enthusiasm from fans." Kotick saw the importance of making this endeavor follow the same model as the NFL, in both league structure and financial opportunities, to be able to draw in large investors to establish franchises within the league, calling it a "forever investment".


title: Overwatch League

text: Blizzard sought out potential team owners, aiming to include teams that were localized to a geographic area. Blizzard believed having such local teams would spark more interest in esports from spectators and potential sponsors through new activities around supporting their team. A first meeting for prospective team owners was held at BlizzCon 2016 after the announcement of the league's creation, with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke among the attendees. During the formative period, Blizzard hired Steve Bornstein, former president of ABC Sports and CEO of NFL Network, to serve as the company's esports chair, with particular emphasis on the broadcast and presentation of games played in the Overwatch League.


title: Overwatch League

text: Blizzard anticipated the "Overwatch" League would have a seven-figure payoff for the winning team at the end of a season. The first, shortened season of the league was expected to start in Q3 2017, with full seasons starting in 2018, with the league having half-year long seasonal breaks starting in Q4 of that year. Prior to starting the league, Blizzard planned to run a "combine," where players are invited to try out for guaranteed team contracts.


title: Overwatch League

text: Little information about the league came out of Blizzard following the initial November 2016 announcement for the next several months, leading to some speculation that the league was having trouble. In May 2017, ESPN reported that the league had been having difficulties in signing franchises, which they ascribed to two issues: the high base cost of starting a franchise, starting at $20 million with higher costs in more urban markets like New York City and Los Angeles, much higher than other esports league buy-ins, and the fact that there would be no revenue sharing until 2021, making recovery of the franchise costs difficult. These difficulties led to a delay for the start of the first season.


title: Overwatch League

text: However, during this time, Activision Blizzard was working behind the scenes to engage potential team owners, wanting to hold back as to provide large comprehensive announcements rather than trickles of information. Activision had seen the Kraft Group as a key team owner. Robert Kraft had been previously interested in investing into esports; he and Kotick had met earlier in 2013 when Kotick was looking to invest in an NFL franchise, where Kraft told him they were looking to seek investment in an esports team. Kraft spent time over the next few years evaluating other esport competitions but was not comfortable with their grassroots nature, but the Overwatch League, as explained by Kotick during BlizzCon 2016, caught his attention. By March 2017, Kraft and Activision had worked out the deal to secure the first team ownership group for the Overwatch League. Once the Kraft Group agreed to support a Boston-based team (later named the Boston Uprising), this had a snowball effect towards establishing of six other teams. The Kraft Group themselves helped to convince some of the other owners to buy into the Overwatch League.


title: Overwatch League

text: The first seven teams were revealed in July 2017, and additional teams announced in the months following. With its first twelve teams set by mid-December, Blizzard announced that its first season would run from January to June 2018, with a pre-season in December 2017 and the championship game in July 2018.


title: Overwatch League

text: In September 2017, Blizzard announced that they would make permanent use of Studio 1 at The Burbank Studios in Burbank, California, which it converted into the "Blizzard Arena", an esports venue which was initially used for both Overwatch Contenders and Overwatch League matches. Having a dedicated arena was seen to help establish the Overwatch League as a more orchestrated event compared to other esports tournaments, and to better connect players with their fans. Blizzard operated Overwatch Contenders in the Blizzard Arena in October as a means to test the facility's capabilities and make modifications to improve both the players' and audiences' experience in time for the pre-season of the Overwatch League in December.


title: Overwatch League

text: In July 2017, it was discovered that the Major League Baseball association had issued a trademark dispute for the logo that Blizzard registered for the league, stating in their complaint to the United States Patent and Trademark Office that they felt Blizzard's logo was too similar to their own and may cause confusion. However, no further filings were made by Major League Baseball within the required dispute period, indicating that either the association had decided to drop the dispute, or that the association and the Overwatch League came to an undisclosed understanding to allow the league to continue to use the logo.


title: Overwatch League

text: To support spectating on broadcast and streaming media, Blizzard implemented cosmetic modifications to the game. Each team was given dedicated character skins with their respective team colors, names, and logos to use in matches. Players outside of the league are able to purchase a character's team skin using "OWL Tokens", a special in-game currency, added to the game a day before the launch of the first regular season. Teams get a portion of the revenue of their team's skins. OWL Tokens were initially only obtainable through an in-game purchase with real currency; at the start of the second stage for the first season, however, Blizzard offered players tokens for watching the live broadcast of the games through any of the official channels.


title: Overwatch League

text: Blizzard also worked to create an AI-based cameraman that could follow the action of the game as well as select key instant replays. During regular season matches, Blizzard employs a team of about 80 to 100 people to manage the game and its broadcast; this includes on-screen hosts and interviewers, play-by-play announcers or "shoutcasters", "observers" who use the AI cameraman and monitor a match from several different angles to present the best view for audiences, and broadcasting and technical support. Among those Blizzard has brought on to shoutcast matches included Christopher "MonteCristo" Mykles, Erik "DoA" Lonnquist, Matt "Mr. X" Morello, and Mitchell "Uber" Leslie. Blizzard released an Overwatch League app in early January 2018, just prior to the start of the first season, to provide schedules, results, highlights, and other details about the league's progress.


title: Overwatch League

text: Preseason play for the inaugural season began on December 6, 2017. The first regular season game was held on January 10, 2018, as the Los Angeles Valiant defeated the San Francisco Shock before a sold-out crowd at Blizzard Arena in Los Angeles. Viewership of the first night of play through the English broadcast of Twitch reached over 415,000 viewers, while never dropping below 285,000 once play started, exceeding typical Twitch viewership numbers; additional viewers not included in this include those watching the other language broadcasts on Twitch, and MLG's own streaming media. Blizzard reported that over the first week, over 10 million viewers across all streaming formats watched league play, and that the Blizzard Arena was sold-out all four days of the week. At the start of the postseason, Blizzard and Disney signed a deal for ABC, ESPN and Disney XD to air the postseason games alongside the official Twitch streams, which would also extend into the second season. The London Spitfire became the first Overwatch League champions after they defeated the Philadelphia Fusion in the Grand Finals before 22,000 fans at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York on July 27–28. The finals were watched by more than 10.8million people, a magnitude comparable to viewership of NFL regular season games.


title: Overwatch League

text: Over the first season, the league acquired over in sponsorships and broadcast rights; major sponsors included Intel, Omen by HP, Toyota, T-Mobile, and Spotify, with most deals valued at over $10 million. During the break before the start of the second season, the league announced a multi-year partnership with Fanatics as the league's outfitter to make and sell team- and OWL-related clothing and other items.


title: Overwatch League

text: Prior to the end of the 2018 season, Blizzard had stated their intent to add six expansion teams for the second season, bringing the total number of teams to 18. Blizzard desired to have two or three teams based in Europe, with the new franchise fee raised to $50million Blizzard began shopping for investors for new teams in March 2018 but, because of the higher projections, stated that the franchise fee for new teams in the second season would be higher than $20million. In September 2018, Blizzard announced eight new teams to play in the second season, the Atlanta Reign, Guangzhou Charge, Hangzhou Spark, Toronto Defiant, Paris Eternal, Washington Justice, Vancouver Titans, and Chengdu Hunters, bringing the total number of teams in the league to 20. In the second season, each team played a total of 28 games during the regular season, seven per stage, which meant that teams had one or two matches each week or may even have had a bye week, addressing issues related to fatigue and mental health of players that had arisen during the first season, in which teams played 40 games. While most regular season games were played at the Blizzard Arena in Los Angeles, select Homestand Weekends matches took place at locations in Dallas, Atlanta, and Los Angeles; these homestands were used to evaluate how home-and-away games would work in the following season. Overall global viewership was estimated at 218,000 per minute on average across all games, with most coming from outside the United States, which only had about 95,000 viewers per minute on average.


title: Overwatch League

text: In May 2019, in the middle of the season, league commissioner Nate Nanzer announced he was leaving Blizzard for Epic Games, and Pete Vlastelica, CEO and president of Activision Blizzard Esports, served as league commissioner thereafter.


title: Overwatch League

text: Blizzard signed Coca-Cola in a multiyear deal as the league's official non-alcoholic beverage sponsor, covering not only Overwatch League games but also Contenders, Open Division, and World Cup, as well as for the annual BlizzCon event. During Stage 2, Bud Light signed to be the league's alcoholic beverage sponsor for the rest of the 2019 season outside of China, with their support used to fund additional television broadcasts. Xfinity signed on as a sponsor for the 2019 OWL Playoffs and Grand Finals. Overall global viewership was estimated at 218,000 per minute on average across all games with most coming from outside the United States, which only had about 95,000 viewers per minute on average.


title: Overwatch League

text: Ahead of the 2020 season, Blizzard signed a three-year contract with YouTube to be the exclusive broadcaster of the league, replacing Twitch. As part of the deal, they made Google Cloud Platform the preferred infrastructure provider for its game servers.


title: Overwatch League

text: The third season of OWL was the first year that it began to fully adopted the away-and-home format, with game planned to take place in home arenas for each team. These home arenas were not required to be dedicated spaces for esports events, though there are some teams working with their local city to develop dedicated esports arenas that can also serve as venues for other sport and entertainment. For example, the Philadelphia Fusion's owner Comcast Spectacor announced plans to build the Fusion Arena by the time of the 2021 season, but during the 2020 season, the Fusion planned its homestand games for the Metropolitan Opera House in Philadelphia and at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. There were 52 homestand events scheduled throughout the season, with each team hosting at least two in their home arenas. Other teams which already secured larger arenas were set to host additional regular season events to allow the newer teams/arenas to become better established; for example, Dallas, Washington and Guangzhou, who were each scheduled five homestand events. These initial schedules were developed by the teams to best manage travel and cost, but Blizzard anticipates taking over the scheduling for the 2021 season. Blizzard provided flexibility in planning the 2020 schedule for teams to develop the necessarily logistics of hosting homestand events, including providing accommodations and practice areas for visiting teams during those weekends. This expansion was being coordinated with the "Call of Duty" League, a professional esports league founded by Activision in 2020 for "Call of Duty" that also followed the city-based model, many of which are owned by the same owners of OWL teams. Both leagues see similar issues in logistics, and coordinate efforts when applicable. Moreover, divisions were converted into conferences, with each conference having two divisions each, and stages were also eliminated, with teams still playing 28 games through the season with a planned mid-season All-Star break. League commissioner Pete Vlastelica stated that once the season began running, they would look to potential expansion of the league with a principle focus on more teams out of Europe.


title: Overwatch League

text: However, due to restrictions put in place to counteract the COVID-19 pandemic, the league suspended all homestands and announced that it would instead move to online play after less than a month into the 2020 season. In an official statement, Blizzard Entertainment stated its intentions of returning to the homestand format "as soon as it is safe and logistically possible". As the city of Los Angeles ordered the closure of all entertainment venues, nearly everyone involved with the production including casters and the desk worked from home for the remainder of the season. Soon after the switch to online play, the league abandoned the original conferences and instead divided the teams into two regions to account for the geographical spread of the teams. Teams exclusively competed within their regions for the duration of the regular season, with the only inter-regional matches taking place at the very end of the playoffs period. The 2020 season also introduced mid-season tournaments, featuring three across the regular season, all still split by region. At the end of the 2020 season, commissioner Pete Vlastelica stepped down to take on a new position; he would be replaced by "Call of Duty" League commissioner, Johanna Faries, who would be commissioner of both leagues.


title: Overwatch League

text: The league continued regional, online play throughout the fourth season, although some live events were planned to take place in China. The OWL expanded on its tournament format from 2020, featuring four midseason tournaments throughout the regular season. In July 2021, the league announced it would host its two postseason events live at two different venues: the playoffs would take place at Esports Stadium Arlington in Arlington, Texas, and the 2021 Grand Finals would be held at the Galen Center in Los Angeles, California. However, these live events were later canceled and shifted to online play due to increasing risks of COVID-19 and the Delta variant, as well as visa difficulties. A majority of the league's partners pulled their sponsorship after the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard for sexual harassment and discrimination taking place within the Blizzard workplace in July 2021, including Coca-Cola, Kellogg's, State Farm, and T-Mobile. In mid-August 2021, the only sponsor present during Overwatch League broadcasts was voice-over-Internet Protocol software company TeamSpeak.


title: Overwatch League

text: For the fifth season of the OWL, the league played on an early release of "Overwatch 2". Viewership numbers during the midseason tournaments were significantly lower than that of the previous season, seeing as much as a 40.5% decrease. After the release of "Overwatch 2" on October 5, 2022, the league saw a significant increase in viewership; the 2022 playoffs reached a live average minute audience of 250,000, which exceeded previous viewership numbers from when the league broadcast on Twitch in 2018 and 2019. The 2022 Grand Finals were held live for the first time since 2019. Additionally, the league secured a sponsorship deal for the playoffs with Butterfinger — their first new sponsorship since 2021.


title: Overwatch League

text: The league launched in 2018 with twelve teams, each based in a global city. Eight additional teams were added in the league's 2019 season. Prior to the 2020 season, the teams were divided between two divisions: the Atlantic Division with the American East Coast, Eastern Canadian and European teams, and the Pacific Division with the American West Coast, Western Canadian and Asian teams. With the 2020 season, the two divisions were elevated to conferences, keeping the same team distributions, but with now two divisions within each conference. Additionally, teams began playing in home/away games, with each team having one or more venues to host homestand weekends. However, due to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, all live matches were cancelled near the beginning of the 2020 season, and teams were divided into regions. Below is the region split as of the 2022 season.


title: Overwatch League

text: As of the 2022 season, 20 different teams have competed in the league, with four having won at least one Grand Finals title.


title: Overwatch League

text: Shortly prior to the beginning of the 2018 regular season, Blizzard reached a two-year deal with Twitch to be the main streaming broadcaster of the Overwatch League outside of China, reported to be valued at $90million. The service carried streams in English, French, and Korean, while users who linked their Twitch account to their Battle.net account would also be eligible for chances to receive in-game items for "Overwatch" while watching broadcasts. A subscription service known as the "All-Access Pass" also allowed users access to private streams and chat rooms with players, coaches, league officials and announcers, in-game currency to purchase team skins, emotes for use on Twitch chats, and discounts at Blizzard's store. This feature was expanded for the 2019 season to include the ability for viewers to use the "command center" app introduced during the 2018 Overwatch World Cup, to be able to view matches from different camera angles in real-time. The league also posted highlights on Twitter starting with the first season's All-Star Weekend and continuing into the second season, and also produced a weekly pre-game show called "Watchpoint".


title: Overwatch League

text: On July 11, 2018, Blizzard also announced a U.S. television deal with ESPN through the 2019 season, under which coverage of the 2018 playoffs would be simulcast across ESPN networks, including the semi-finals airing across ESPN2, ESPNews, and Disney–ABC Television Group sister channel Disney XD, the first night of the final airing on the main ESPN network (marking its first-ever primetime broadcast of an esports event), continuing on Disney XD the next day, and a highlights package the following Sunday on ABC. The arrangement continued into the 2019 season, with Disney XD adding regular-season broadcasts, and ABC adding broadcast television simulcasts of the Stage 1 and Stage 2 finals, and the all-star event. This partnership included broadcasting rights to the Overwatch World Cup as well. ESPN's sister Canadian network TSN also carried broadcasts on its platforms, including television encores of matches involving the league's new Canadian franchises.


title: Overwatch League

text: German sports channel Sport1, which broadcasts to Switzerland and Austria in addition to Germany, made a two-year deal with Blizzard games live starting in the second season, partnering to form a new eSports1 sister channel.


title: Overwatch League

text: In early 2020, YouTube reached a three-year exclusive deal to serve as broadcaster for all Activision Blizzard esports events, including the Overwatch League, Call of Duty League, and "Hearthstone", replacing Twitch. The deal was reported to be valued at $160million. Alongside the agreement, Activision Blizzard also reached an agreement to use Google Cloud Platform as its preferred infrastructure provider for its game servers.


title: Overwatch League

text: Some commentators observed that of the more than 100 players selected for teams for the first season, none of them were female. Some noted the absence of Kim "Geguri" Se-yeon, a teenage South Korean player who is recognized as one of the highest-skilled Zarya players and who was the first female player to play in the Overwatch APEX league. During the press day event prior to the start of the season, teams acknowledged they had considered signing on Geguri but noted issues with such an action. The Houston Outlaws said that there would have been a language barrier issue with her potential teammates, and complications related to co-ed housing for teams. The team also claimed that if they had brought her on board, there would have been issues from external commentators about whether it was a press stunt or an otherwise legitimate reason, and the nature of this legitimacy would shadow her career. Other teams like the London Spitfire and the New York Excelsior had looked to Geguri as a free agent but in the end desired to work from an established set of players that had already worked in leagues in the past. Team owners recognized that they want to make the player roster more diverse, but this in part requires making the community around "Overwatch" less toxic and more inviting. Nanzer also said he would like to see further diversity in players in the league, but was aware that there are cultures where there is a social stigma against professional video game players that can be a barrier to achieve this. By mid-February, during the Season 1 free agency window, Geguri was signed by the Shanghai Dragons, making her the first female player in the league, and the only so far.


title: Overwatch League

text: Additional concerns were raised following several league-issued fines and suspensions issued against a number of players based on their conduct. Journalists found that some players carried over the toxic nature from their days as YouTube or Twitch broadcasters, in which players would often routinely ridicule their opponents; many of the fines and suspensions follow from similar behavior displayed at the league level. The "Overwatch" player base outside of the league has also had issues of toxicity, which Blizzard has been trying to handle through better reporting tools. In addition to requiring the league players to follow the code of conduct, Blizzard is also watching how these players behave on off-league broadcasts, and would fine players if they engage in toxic or inappropriate behavior even if not part of a league session, as well as publicizing when the league takes such actions. Some of this poor behavior had concerned at least one of the league's sponsors, HP, since the behavior becomes associated with their brand, though such problems were not unique to esports, according to HP product manager John Ludwig.


title: Overwatch League

text: After the conclusion of the first stage of the inaugural season, ESPN reported that the revenue projections for the league has exceeded its expectations, with some insiders claiming that the league's revenue was four times greater than initially planned; this was in part through its Twitch streaming deal and new advertisers, such as Toyota and T-Mobile, that came on board a few weeks into play. Due to the success of the first season of the Overwatch League, "Fortune" named commissioner Nate Nanzer as one of their "40 Under 40" in 2018.


title: Overwatch League

text: Entering the third season, concern had been raised on the stress of the league on its players. Fifty players had dropped from the league during the first two years, with several of them citing the stress the league places on them and mental health issues.


title: Overwatch League

text: "Dot Esports" reported that the United States Department of Justice was investigating the Overwatch League in regards to their team soft cap on players' salaries in July 2021. In contrast to professional sports leagues like the NFL, where the use of player unions allows the league to implement salary caps under the Supreme Court ruling in "Amalgamated Meat Cutters v. Jewel Tea Co.", the Overwatch League currently lacks such unions, which would make salary caps potentially a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The league soft cap in 2020 was , and while a team could have salaries over that amount, they would be taxed as a luxury tax and would be considered detrimental. In October 2021, "Sports Business Journal" reported that the OWL would be eliminating the luxury tax and maximum salary caps. A settlement between the two parties was proposed, but according a report by former "ESPN" writer Jacob Wolf in late 2022, Activision Blizzard refused to terms regarding particular requests that would endure after the proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft.


title: Overwatch League

text: Activision Blizzard used the Overwatch League model to establish the Call of Duty League in 2019. While the Call of Duty League was to have its inaugural season in 2020 with the same planned home/away format that the Overwatch League was planning the use in its third season, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the Call of Duty League to switch to a fully online format. The league was a central plot element in the seventeenth season episode "Brave N00b World" of "American Dad!" which was first broadcast in May 2020.


title: High Voltage (1976 album)

text: High Voltage is the first internationally released studio album by Australian hard rock band AC/DC. It contains tracks from their first two previous Australia-only issued albums: "High Voltage" and "T.N.T." (both from 1975).


title: High Voltage (1976 album)

text: Originally released internationally on 30 April 1976 on Atlantic Records and in the US on 14 May 1976 on ATCO Records, this edition of "High Voltage" has proven popular, selling three million units in the US alone. However, initially the album was panned by some critics upon its release, including a review by "Rolling Stone" magazine's Billy Altman that called it an "all-time low" for the hard rock genre. It was re-released in 2003 as part of the "AC/DC Remasters" series.


title: High Voltage (1976 album)

text: In December 1975, Atlantic Records' UK head Phil Carson signed AC/DC to a worldwide deal. The group's first two albums, "High Voltage" and the harder driving "T.N.T.", had been hits in their native Australia the single "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)" peaked at #5 and now plans were made for the band to tour England in 1976. The group had already recorded their next single "Jailbreak" (for which they had shot a music video) and had already begun recording their third LP "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" when, in April 1976, they flew out on their first British tour. The international release only included two tracks from the Australian "High Voltage" release "She's Got Balls" and "Little Lover" with the rest of the songs taken from "T.N.T." The band arrived in the UK in the midst of the fledgling punk movement, spearheaded by bands like the Sex Pistols and the Damned. AC/DC was never really part of the movement, but got misidentified as such by some observers, as guitarist Angus Young recalled to "Guitar World"s Alan Di Perna in 1993:


title: High Voltage (1976 album)

text: In 2010 Malcolm Young concurred, telling "Mojo"s Phil Alexander, "Punk rock was just a fashion. … It didn't change the music; it changed the fashion, and that's basically all it is." In a 1977 interview with ABC's "Countdown", Bon Scott insisted, "We're pulling bigger crowds than they are. I mean, we've got our following here. It's not new wave, it's not punk, it's just people who like our band. We honestly thought that the punk and the new wave thing might spoil it a bit for us but it hasn't at all. It was a big fad, just like anything else, a big fad for a while. … The main thing about it is it gave rock music a real kick in the guts."


title: High Voltage (1976 album)

text: "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)" was edited down from an extended jam by producer George Young (older brother of guitarist Malcolm Young and Angus) and the inclusion of the bagpipes was his idea to add an extra dynamic to the track. Singer Bon Scott had played in a pipe band in his teens, so George suggested he play bagpipes on the song, not realizing that Scott had been a drummer, not a piper. Regardless, Scott – who knew how to play the recorder learned the instrument and went on to play them on stage with the band for several years. In Murray Engleheart's book "AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll", former manager Michael Browning states that the bagpipes became the bane of Scott's existence: "I think they probably put more pressure on him than anything I can think of! They invariably never worked. It's a hard instrument to time to guitars, because you're pumping them and they kind of kick in when the bag's full very difficult to time to guitars." The chanting in "T.N.T." was also George Young's idea, added after he heard Angus ad-libbing the "oi" chant to himself, and suggested he record it.


title: High Voltage (1976 album)

text: The production team of George Young and Harry Vanda was crucial in the development of AC/DC's sound. Vanda was a bandmate of Young's in The Easybeats and the pair were the main songwriters of The Easybeats' later hits, including their international hit "Friday on My Mind". In the 1994 book "Highway to Hell: The Life and Times of AC/DC Legend Bon Scott", Chris Gilbey, who was the promotion man at Albert Productions at the time, recalls to author Clinton Walker, "The great thing George and Harry taught me, as a producer, was that if you got a good rhythm track, you've got the beginnings of a record. If you don't, you've got nothing." In the same memoir Michael Browning confirms, "George and Harry's most important criterion was rhythm, the whole thing had to just feel right. If you listen to those records today, they feel good."


title: High Voltage (1976 album)

text: AC/DC's second album "T.N.T." was a breakthrough for the band composition-wise and sound-wise, containing more of the twin-guitar assault that the band would become famous for, and this may explain why only two songs were included from the glam rock leaning 1975 debut. "She's Got Balls" (about Scott's ex-wife Irene) was the first song that Scott and the Young brothers put together, while "Little Lover" had been a song Malcolm had been tinkering with since he was about 14 and had been originally titled "Front Row Fantasies" (Scott claimed to have written the song about Angus). "Can I Sit Next to You Girl" predated Scott's involvement in the band, having been recorded as a single with former vocalist Dave Evans; it features a different arrangement and slightly different lyrics from the original version. It also runs almost a minute longer. In 1993, Angus Young shared the origins of the title track with Vic Garbarini of "Guitar For the Practicing Musician": "I remember sitting home one night before going into the studio and playing around with some chords, and I suddenly thought, let's try playing...A...C...D...C. Sounded good. And then I thought AC/DC...power..."High Voltage"! I sang the chorus part to my brother in the studio and he thought it sounded great." Lyrically, the LP features Bon Scott chronicling both the good and the bad about the rock and roll lifestyle, warning aspiring musicians that "it's harder than it looks" ("It's a Long Way to the Top") but also defiantly telling the moral majority to "stick your moral standards 'cause it's all a dirty lie" ("Rock 'n' Roll Singer"). In 1994 biographer Clifton Walker observed that Scott was "virtually encapsulating his entire life" in both songs. The lyrics of "The Jack" (sometimes titled "(She's Got) The Jack") were developed by Scott who was inspired by a letter Malcolm Young received during a tour of Adelaide. The letter, from a woman in Melbourne, implied that Malcolm had given her a venereal disease, although he claims that when he got tested, he was clean. Scott's original lyrics were far more explicit than those heard on the album, which he deliberately toned down in case the song got played on radio. The bravado-driven "Live Wire", which was also sexually suggestive, would be the band's show-opener for several years.


title: High Voltage (1976 album)

text: The international release of "High Voltage" also had two different album covers from the original: one featured a picture of Angus Young as he appeared on the cover of the German single for "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)". An alternative cover was used on the international version's European release. Most editions of the international album have a version of "It's a Long Way to the Top" that is shorter than the original album version. The full length version is 5:10, while the edited version shortens the last chorus causing the track to fade out early at 5:01. Vinyl editions of the international album contain the edited version. The 1994 remastered CD on Atco Records replaced the edited version of the track with the full length version. The 2003 remastered CD on Epic Records reverted it back to the edited version.


title: High Voltage (1976 album)

text: The High Voltage Arc in the seventh part of "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure": "Steel Ball Run" by "Hirohiko Araki" is a reference to this album and song.


title: High Voltage (1976 album)

text: The album received mixed reviews when it was released in the United States. "Billboard" listed it in its "Recommended LPs" column, calling it a cross between Led Zeppelin and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band. However, the album was trashed by Billy Altman in his infamous review for "Rolling Stone": "Those concerned with the future of hard rock may take solace in knowing that with the release of the first U.S. album by these Australian gross-out champions, the genre has hit its all-time low. Lead singer Bon Scott spits out his vocals with a truly annoying aggression which, I suppose, is the only way to do it when all you seem to care about is being a star so that you can get laid every night. Stupidity bothers me. Calculated stupidity offends me." Initially they had given the album two stars, but in recent years have warmed up to it and given it three stars out of five, (which means in their terms, "Good: a record of average worth, but one that might possess considerable appeal for fans of a particular style.")Time has been far kinder to the LP; AllMusic's review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine praised Angus Young's "monster riffs" which appear to be easy but give the music its strength and this allows Scott to be "somebody who never hid the notion that lurking behind the door are some bad, dangerous things, but they're also fun, too."


title: High Voltage (1976 album)

text: Tracks 7 & 8 were previously released on the band's first Australian studio album "High Voltage" in February 1975. The rest were previously released on the band's second Australian studio album "T.N.T." in December 1975.


title: Elvis Presley on film and television

text: Elvis Presley was an American entertainer who achieved great initial success as a singer and stage performer. He publicly expressed an early career goal of following in the footsteps of his role models James Dean and Marlon Brando to become a top dramatic actor. His manager Colonel Tom Parker's persistent lobbying of William Morris Agency president Abe Lastfogel for a Presley screen test paid off on March 26, 1956, when the singer auditioned at Paramount for a supporting role in "The Rainmaker". Although not chosen for the part, he signed a contract with Paramount producer Hal Wallis on April 25 that also allowed him to make films with other studios.


title: Elvis Presley on film and television

text: His feature debut was in "Love Me Tender" in 1956 for 20th Century Fox, with the commercial success of the soundtrack EP being a bellwether for the next three Presley films, "Loving You", "Jailhouse Rock," and "King Creole." Elvis returned to acting after leaving the army in 1960, with "G.I. Blues" and a dramatic western "Flaming Star". The popularity of his romantic musicals established a formula for the coming years.


title: Elvis Presley on film and television

text: Over time, Presley became bitter that his hopes for dramatic roles were not coming to fruition, stating that "Clambake" was his worst film. He began to complain about the deteriorating quality of the films and his belief that his manager's objectives were more monetary than anything else. At the expiration of all studio contracts, he returned to live entertaining. The two concert documentaries "" in 1970 and "Elvis on Tour" in 1972 were the final theatrical releases for Presley. Fun fact: Elvis used to have a different color of light put on when recording. Red for Classical, Blue for gospel, and no lights for weary and gloomy songs. He did this in studio D in Nashville, TN


title: Hudson Hornet

text: The Hudson Hornet is a full-sized automobile that was manufactured by Hudson Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan from 1951 until 1954, when Nash-Kelvinator and Hudson merged to form American Motors Corporation (AMC). Hudson automobiles continued to be marketed under the Hudson brand name through the 1957 model year.


title: Hudson Hornet

text: The first-generation Hudson Hornets featured a functional "step-down" design with dropped floorpan and a chassis with a lower center of gravity than contemporary vehicles that helped the car handle well — an advantage for racing. The Hornet's lower and sleeker look was accentuated by streamlined styling, sometimes called "ponton" styling.


title: Hudson Hornet

text: Following the merger forming AMC in 1954, Hudson cars were built on the newer factory assembly line for Nash Statesman/Ambassador unibody chassis; therefore, all second-generation Hudson Hornets were restyled Nash automobiles that were badge engineered as a Hudson.


title: Hudson Hornet

text: The Hornet, introduced for the 1951 model year, was based on Hudson's ""step-down"" design that was first seen in the 1948 model year on the Commodore. Unlike a unibody, the design didn't fully merge the body and chassis frame into a single structure, but the floorpan footwells recessed down, in between the car's chassis rails, which were, in turn, routed around them – instead of a conventional floor, sitting on top of straight ladder frame rails – a body on frame design that later became more widely adopted, and known as a "perimeter frame". Thus one "stepped down" into a Hudson. The step-down chassis and body meant the car's "lower center of gravity...was both functional and stylish. The car not only handled well, but treated its six passengers to a sumptuous ride. The low-slung look also had a sleekness about it that was accentuated by the nearly enclosed rear wheels."


title: Hudson Hornet

text: Hudson Hornets were available as a two-door coupe, four-door sedan, a convertible, and a pillarless hardtop coupe. The models were priced the same as Commodore Eight, which was priced from US$2,543 to $3,099.


title: Hudson Hornet

text: All Hornets from 1951 through 1953 were powered by Hudson's high-compression straight-six "H-145" engine. Starting in 1952 an optional "twin-H" or twin one barrel carburetor setup was available at additional cost. The newly introduced "Twin H-Power" was available in November 1951 as a Dealer installed option at the cost of $85.60. An electric clock was standard. A L-head (flathead or side-valve) design, at it was the largest [displacement] six-cylinder engine for mass-production cars the at the time. It had a two-barrel carburetor and produced at 3800 rpm and of torque. In 1954, power was increased to from . The engine was capable of far more power in the hands of precision tuners, including Marshall Teague, who claimed he could get from an AAA- or NASCAR-certified stock Hornet, as well as Hudson engineers who developed "severe usage" options (thinly disguised racing parts). The combination of the Hudson engine with overall road-ability of the Hornets, plus the fact the cars were over-designed and over-built, made them unbeatable in competition on the dirt and the very few paved tracks of the 1950s.


title: Hudson Hornet

text: In 1952 the "Twin H-Power" version became standard equipment with dual single-barrel carburetors atop a dual-intake manifold, and power rose to . The hood featured a functional scoop that ducts cold air to the carburetors and was considered "ventilation" in 1954, rather than ram air. The engine could be tuned to produce when equipped with the "7-X" modifications that Hudson introduced later. During 1952 and 1953 the Hornet received minor cosmetic enhancements, and still closely resembled the Commodore of 1948.


title: Hudson Hornet

text: The Hornet proved to be nearly invincible in stock-car racing. "[D]espite its racing successes...sales began to languish." Hudson's competitors, using separate body-on-frame designs, could change the look of their models on a yearly basis without expensive chassis alterations" whereas the Hornet's "modern, sophisticated unibody design was expensive to update," so it "was essentially locked in" and "suffered against the planned obsolescence of the Big Three [General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler] automakers.


title: Hudson Hornet

text: A total of 35,921 Hornets were produced for 1952, with approximately 2,160 hardtops and 360 convertibles.


title: Hudson Hornet

text: The 1953 model year brought minor changes to the Hudson Hornet. The front end was modified with a new grille and a non-functional air scoop hood ornament. four different body designs: two-door club coupe, Hollywood hardtop, Convertible Brougham, and a four-door sedan.


title: Hudson Hornet

text: Hudson Hornet 1953 model year production totaled 27,208 units of which around 910 were the Hollywood hardtops. An 8-tube radio was a $100 option.