title: Watch Dogs (video game)

text: Four collector's editions were available, and the GameStop pre-order version contained a poster by Alex Ross. Some journalists questioned the necessity for the amount of special editions, none of which included every piece of additional content or merchandise. An eBook, "//n/Dark Clouds" by John Shirley as a continuation of "Watch Dogs", was released in conjunction with the game. "Watch Dogs" was marketed with a live-action sequence directed by Devin Graham and a three-part documentary series by Motherboard, "Phreaked Out". After promotional material was sent to Australian media as a safe containing the game and a voicemail explaining the delivery, the Sydney offices of Nine.com.au (unaware of the voicemail) called a bomb disposal unit when the safe beeped; Ubisoft apologized to the staff.


title: Watch Dogs (video game)

text: A story expansion titled "Bad Blood" was released in September 2014. It is set one year after the events of "Watch Dogs" and follows the exploits of Raymond Kenney after Aiden Pearce left Chicago. The expansion is separate from the main game and features ten story missions, as well as new side content and gameplay mechanics, such as an RC car.


title: Watch Dogs (video game)

text: "Watch Dogs" reveal at E3 2012 generated favorable reception from critics. According to leaked marketing material, it received over eighty E3 awards and nominations and G4tv called it a "truly next-gen adventure". At E3 2013, the game received over fifty awards and nominations. The following year, Ubisoft was accused of graphical downgrading after a NeoGAF forum post compared its 2012 visuals to 2014 video footage.


title: Watch Dogs (video game)

text: According to Ubisoft researcher Thomas Geffroyd, studies and quantitative analysis indicated that about sixty percent of gamers changed their view of technology after playing "Watch Dogs". Chris Carter of "Destructoid" liked the virtual rendition of Chicago and the detail of non-player characters, concluding that the gameplay was fun. His favorite feature was the extra content, like collectibles and minigames. "Eurogamer"s Dan Whitehead found the car-handling "slick and intuitive" and called the visuals "dazzling". In "Game Informer", Jeff Marchiafava wrote that the hacking added meaning to the combat, the shooting mechanic "make[s] full-scale firefights enjoyable", and praised the stealth approach. He found that the variety of gameplay and environments in the campaign missions provided an "entertaining" experience. Kevin VanOrd of "GameSpot" thought the game's primary strength was in combat and was grateful for the hacking component's contribution. VanOrd said that the story only flourished when it left behind the "revenge-story cliches", and he felt more attached to supporting characters than to Aiden Pearce. He praised the game's open world, particularly its extra content.


title: Watch Dogs (video game)

text: At "GamesRadar", Andy Hartup said he enjoyed the set pieces and individual missions: "You'll enjoy "Watch Dogs" narrative in piecemeal, rather than as a whole". He praised the setting's details (which he thought revealed "the city's true beauty"), and called the combat and hacking "satisfying". Dan Stapleton of "IGN" praised the game's visuals and the open world's "intricately detailed" map. He also enjoyed the combat: "The cover-based gunplay feels good". "PC Gamer"s Christopher Livingston called the hacking the game's most positive feature; although he liked the stealth, his favorite approach to battle was gunplay. For "Polygon", Arthur Gies praised the combat's gunplay feature and wrote that it was "aided by a good, functional third-person cover system, which helps with more than just shooting — it also allows for effective stealth". Steven Burns of "VideoGamer.com" called the game "undoubtedly enjoyable, but it won't linger long in the memory".


title: Watch Dogs (video game)

text: Carter was dissatisfied with the story, citing "lifeless" characters and calling the plot's events "fairly predictable and clichéd"; the graphics were thought inferior to the game's marketing footage. Whitehead criticized the hacking for resorting to "tired old PipeMania-style" puzzles and saw the story and main character as the game's weakest aspects, saying that the script avoided the moral dilemmas offered by its set-up. Marchiafava agreed with Carter that the graphics were less impressive than they were in early videos, criticizing poor character design and the story for not living up to its gameplay. Like Whitehead, VanOrd said that the predicament surrounding technology "rarely reaches any conclusions or digs very deeply". Hartup criticized the main character, calling him "a bit of a dullard", and faulted the story for its reliance on "unimaginative stereotypes". Jeff Gerstmann of "Giant Bomb" criticized the story and characters for a lack of organization, which he said made it difficult to care about the game. Stapleton disliked the main character's lack of personality, and found the supporting cast more interesting. Livingston saw little to like in the story, and also preferred another character to Aiden. Gies wrote, "After a promising (albeit well-trod) start, "Watch Dogs" plot struggles to remain coherent", and likened the characters to caricatures. Tom Watson wrote in "New Statesman" that the game "has so many complex side missions and obligatory tasks that it becomes dull; it's humourlessly derivative of the open world of "Grand Theft Auto V"".


title: Watch Dogs (video game)

text: "Watch Dogs" was Ubisoft's most pre-ordered new intellectual property (IP), their second-highest pre-ordered title, the most pre-ordered game of the year (more than 800,000 copies), and the most pre-ordered game for the eighth generation of video game consoles. The company's executives predicted over 6.3 million copies in overall sales.


title: Watch Dogs (video game)

text: The day it was released, "Watch Dogs" sold the most copies of any Ubisoft title in a 24-hour period. It was the bestselling new IP ever in the United Kingdom in its first week (beating "Assassin's Creed III" record by more than 17 percent), and was the seventeenth-largest game launch of all time in the UK. Most sales were for PlayStation 4, whose hardware sales increased by 94 percent because of "Watch Dogs". After the first week, four million copies of the game had been sold. "Watch Dogs" sold 63,000 copies of the PlayStation 4 version and 31,000 for PlayStation 3 in its Japanese debut. By July 2014, the game had sold over eight million copies. It was the biggest video-game launch of the year in Britain until "Destiny" was released in September, and the third-bestselling game during the second week of that month. Nine million copies had been shipped worldwide in October, two-thirds of which were for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. According to Ubisoft's sales figures, "Watch Dogs" had sold ten million copies by the fiscal quarter ending December 31, 2014.


title: Watch Dogs (video game)

text: In June 2013, "Variety" reported that Ubisoft Motion Pictures was planning a film adaptation. That August, Sony Pictures Entertainment and New Regency were announced to be partnering with Ubisoft Motion Pictures on the project. Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese were later commissioned to write the film. A sequel, "Watch Dogs 2", was released in November 2016, followed by "" in October 2020. An animated series is also in development.


title: Masta Killa

text: Jamel Irief (born Elgin Turner; August 18, 1969), better known by his stage name Masta Killa, is an American rapper and member of the Wu-Tang Clan. Though one of the lesser-known members of the group (he was featured on only one track on their 1993 debut album "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)"), he has been prolific on Clan group albums and solo projects since the mid-1990s. He released his debut album "No Said Date" in 2004 to positive reviews, and has since released three additional albums.


title: Masta Killa

text: Born in Brooklyn, New York City, Masta Killa was the last member to join the Wu-Tang Clan; consequently he did not appear on the group's debut single "Protect Ya Neck". He was also the only member who was not a rapper at the time of the group's formation. He was extensively mentored by the GZA during his early days with the group, evident in the similar flow they both employ. He derived his rap name from the 1978 kung fu film "Shaolin Master Killer", (Shao Lin san shi liu fang). Masta only appeared on one track on the Wu-Tang Clan's first album, in the closing verse to "Da Mystery of Chessboxin". Masta only narrowly made the track, and was almost left off in favor of Killah Priest. In fact, on the "No Said Date" DVD, Killah Priest claims that he and Masta Killa were in competition for the spot on "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'", and while Killah Priest fell asleep, Masta Killa stayed up all night writing and Killah Priest woke up the next morning to Masta Killa's verse. During the time period that "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)" was being written, Masta Killa was still developing his skills as a rapper. Since the other members of Wu-Tang were far more experienced, his verse from "Da Mystery of Chessboxin", was the only thing Masta Killa had written, that was fine tuned to the point that it fit with the verses from the rest of the members.


title: Masta Killa

text: During the first round of solo projects, he made several appearances on tracks now considered Wu-Tang classics, such as "Winter Warz", "Duel of the Iron Mic", and "Glaciers of Ice". His flow at the time attracted attention for being very slow and laid-back, in contrast to the more manic, forceful styles of members like Inspectah Deck and Ghostface Killah. Masta Killa is also the Clansman fondest of Chinese martial arts imagery. In 1997, the Wu-Tang Clan's second album "Wu-Tang Forever" saw Masta become a mainstay in the group's line-up with regular appearances throughout the double album.


title: Masta Killa

text: Masta Killa was the last member to release a solo project, after it was delayed for several years and finally released in June 2004 with the title "No Said Date"; critically acclaimed, it became independent label Nature Sounds' best-selling album, notable for featuring every core member of the Wu-Tang Clan on the album after a period in the group's history that lacked unity. His second album, "Made in Brooklyn", was released on August 8, 2006, and includes production from Pete Rock and MF Doom. "Ringing Bells", the Bronze Nazareth-produced lead single from the album, was released in March 2006.


title: Masta Killa

text: In December 2012 he released his third album titled "Selling My Soul", an LP with heavy soul grooves and guests including Kurupt and the late Ol' Dirty Bastard. The album was intended as a precursor to his long-awaited album "Loyalty is Royalty", first announced in 2010 and eventually released in 2017.


title: Masta Killa

text: On the Wu-Tang Corp. website, Masta Killa stated, "I know I seem serious and quiet to a lot of the fans. That's because I take my work seriously. It's not a game. The Clan and I work hard to give you the best." He is a fan of Gladys Knight, Patti LaBelle, Barry White, Parliament-Funkadelic and Ohio Players.


title: Masta Killa

text: Masta Killa is related to both Marvin Gaye and Nat Turner, as revealed in the 2019 Wu-Tang documentary "Of Mics and Men". Masta Killa has two sons, Eternal and Jason.


title: Masta Killa

text: Masta Killa gets his name from the 1978 kung fu movie "Shaolin Master Killer", also known as the "36th Chamber of Shaolin". He is often referred to as Jamel Irief.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Nancy Freeman-Mitford (28 November 1904 – 30 June 1973), known as Nancy Mitford, was an English novelist, biographer, and journalist. The eldest of the Mitford sisters, she was regarded as one of the "bright young things" on the London social scene in the inter-war period. She wrote several novels about upper-class life in England and France, and is considered a sharp and often provocative wit. She also has a reputation as a writer of popular historical biographies.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Mitford enjoyed a privileged childhood as the eldest daughter of the Hon. David Freeman-Mitford, later 2nd Baron Redesdale. Educated privately, she had no training as a writer before publishing her first novel in 1931. This early effort and the three that followed it created little stir. Her two semi-autobiographical post-war novels, "The Pursuit of Love" (1945) and "Love in a Cold Climate" (1949), established her reputation.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Mitford's marriage to Peter Rodd (1933) proved unsatisfactory to both, and they divorced in 1957 after a lengthy separation. During the Second World War she formed a liaison with a Free French officer, Gaston Palewski, who was the love of her life. After the war Mitford settled in France and lived there until her death, maintaining contact with her many English friends through letters and regular visits.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: During the 1950s Mitford developed the concept of "U" (upper) and "non-U" language, whereby social origins and standing were identified by words used in everyday speech. She had intended this as a joke, but many took it seriously, and Mitford was considered an authority on manners and breeding.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Her later years were bittersweet, the success of her biographical studies of Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire and King Louis XIV contrasting with the ultimate failure of her relationship with Palewski. From the late 1960s her health deteriorated, and she endured several years of painful illness before her death in 1973.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: The Mitford family dates from the Norman era, when Sir John de Mitford held the Castle of Mitford in Northumberland. A later Sir John held several important public offices during the late 14th and early 15th centuries, and the family maintained a tradition of public service for many generations. In the 18th century William Mitford was a leading classical historian, responsible for the definitive history of ancient Greece. His great-grandson Algernon Bertram Mitford, born in 1837 and known as "Bertie", was a diplomat and traveller who held minor office in Disraeli's second ministry, from 1874 to 1880. In 1874 he married Clementina, the second daughter of David Ogilvy, 10th Earl of Airlie, a union that linked the Mitfords to some of Britain's most prominent aristocratic families. Blanche Ogilvy, Clementina's elder sister, became the wife of Sir Henry Montague Hozier, a soldier turned businessman. Their four children included daughters Clementine ("Clemmie"), who in 1908 married the future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Nellie, who married Bertram Romilly. Both Hozier and Blanche were promiscuous, and it is generally accepted by historians and family members that Hozier was not Clemmie's father although he was registered as such. Blanche told her friend Lady Londonderry, shortly before Clemmie's birth, that the father of the expected child was her own brother-in-law, Bertie Mitford. Most historians believe that other candidates for the paternity are more likely.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Bertie Mitford's marriage produced five sons and four daughters. His career in government service ended in 1886 when, after the death of a cousin, he inherited a considerable fortune. A condition of the inheritance was that he adopt the surname "Freeman-Mitford". He rebuilt Batsford House in Gloucestershire, the family's country seat, served briefly as a Unionist MP in the 1890s and otherwise devoted himself to books, writings and travel. In 1902, he was raised to the peerage as 1st Baron Redesdale, a re-creation of a title that had previously been held in the family but had lapsed in 1886.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Nancy Mitford's father, David Bertram Ogilvy Freeman-Mitford, was Bertie Mitford's second son, born on 13 March 1878. After several years as a tea planter in Ceylon he fought in the Boer War of 1899–1902 and was severely wounded. In 1903 he became engaged to Sydney Bowles, the elder daughter of Thomas Gibson Bowles, known as "Tap", a journalist, editor and magazine proprietor whose publications included "Vanity Fair" and "The Lady". The couple were married on 16 February 1904, after which they rented a house in Graham Street in West London. Bowles provided his son-in-law with a job, as business manager of "The Lady" magazine. David had little interest in reading and knew nothing of business; thus, according to Nancy Mitford's biographer Selina Hastings, "a less congenial post ... could hardly have been imagined". He remained in this position for 10 years. The couple's first child, a daughter, was born on 28 November 1904; they had intended to call her Ruby, but after she was born they changed their minds and named her Nancy.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Responsibility for Nancy's day-to-day upbringing was delegated to her nanny and nursemaid, within the framework of Sydney's short-lived belief that children should never be corrected or be spoken to in anger. Before this experiment was discontinued, Nancy had become self-centred and uncontrollable; Hastings writes that her first years were "characterised by roaring, red-faced rages". Just before her third birthday, a sister, Pamela, was born; the nanny's apparent change of loyalty in favour of the new arrival was a further source of outrage to Nancy, and throughout their childhood and into young adulthood she continued to vent her displeasure on her sister.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: In January 1909 a brother, Tom was born, and in June 1910 another sister, Diana, followed. That summer, to relieve the pressure on what was becoming an overcrowded nursery, Nancy attended the nearby Francis Holland School. The few months she spent there represented almost the whole of her formal schooling; in the autumn the family moved to a larger house in Victoria Road, Kensington, after which Nancy was educated at home by successive governesses. Summers were spent at the family's cottage near High Wycombe, in Buckinghamshire, or with the children's Redesdale grandparents at Batsford Park. In the winter of 1913–14 David and Sydney visited Canada, prospecting for gold on a claim that David had purchased in Swastika, Ontario. It was here that their fifth child was conceived, a daughter born in London on 8 August 1914 and christened Unity.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: On the outbreak of the First World War on 4 August 1914, David re-joined his regiment and was soon in France. In May 1915, Clement, David's older brother, was killed while serving with the 10th Royal Hussars, which made David heir to the Redesdale title and lands. On 17 August 1916 Bertie Mitford died; David, still serving at the front, became the 2nd Baron Redesdale. Sydney quickly took possession of Batsford House, much of which had been shut up for many years, and occupied the portion of it that she could afford to heat. The children had the run of the house and grounds, and were taught together in the schoolroom. This was a source of frustration for Nancy, whose lively intelligence required greater stimulus. She spent many hours reading in the Batsford House library where, according to Hastings, the foundations of her intellectual life were laid.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: The Redesdale estates were extensive, but uneconomical. At the end of the war Redesdale decided to sell Batsford Park and move his increasing family (a fifth daughter, Jessica, had been born in September 1917) to less extravagant accommodation. The house was sold early in 1919, together with much of its contents—including, to Nancy's great dismay, a large part of its library. The new family home was Asthall Manor, a Jacobean mansion near Swinbrook in Oxfordshire. This was intended as a short-term measure while a new house was built on land nearby. The family stayed in Asthall Manor for seven years, and it became the basis of many of the family scenes which Nancy was later to portray in her semi-autobiographical novels.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Growing up proved a difficult process for Nancy. Unable to form a relationship with Pamela, the sister nearest to her in age, she was bored and irritated by her younger siblings, and vented her feelings by teasing and tormenting them. Although there was undoubtedly cruelty in her taunting—the other children, led by Tom, formed a "Leag (sic) against Nancy"—her teasing was also, according to the later reflections of her nephew Alexander Mosley: "a highly-honed weapon to keep a lot of highly competitive, bright, energetic sisters in order. She used it ... as a form of self protection". Not all her interactions with her siblings were hostile; for their amusement she edited and produced a magazine, "The Boiler", to which she contributed entertainingly gruesome murder stories.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: In 1921, after years of pleading for proper schooling, Nancy was allowed a year's boarding at Hatherop Castle, an informal private establishment for young ladies of good family. Laura Thompson, in her biography of Nancy, describes Hatherop as not so much a school, "more a chaste foretaste of debutante life". Here Nancy learned French and other subjects, played organised games and joined a Girl Guide troop. It was her first extended experience of life away from home, and she enjoyed it. The following year she was allowed to accompany four other girls on a cultural trip to Paris, Florence and Venice; her letters home are full of expressions of wonder at the sights and treasures: "I had no idea I was so fond of pictures ... if only I had a room of my own I would make it a regular picture gallery".


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Nancy's eighteenth birthday in November 1922 was the occasion for a grand "coming-out" ball, which marked the beginning of her entry into Society. That was followed in June 1923 by her presentation at Court, a formal introduction to King George V at Buckingham Palace, after which she was officially "out" and could attend the balls and parties that constituted the London Season. She spent much of the next few years in a round of social events, making new friends and mixing with the "Bright Young People" of 1920s London. Nancy declared that "we hardly saw the light of day, except at dawn". In 1926 Asthall Manor was finally sold. While the new house at Swinbrook was made ready, the female members of the family were sent for three months to Paris, a period which, says Hastings, began Nancy's "lifelong love affair" with France.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Among Nancy's new London friends was Evelyn Gardner who, Nancy informed her brother Tom, was engaged "to a man called Evelyn Waugh who writes, I believe, very well". She and Waugh later developed a lasting friendship. Although she was now of age, her father maintained an aggressive hostility towards most of her male friends, particularly since, as Hastings remarks, these tended towards the frivolous, the aesthetic and the effeminate. Among them was Hamish St Clair Erskine, the second son of the 5th Earl of Rosslyn, an Oxford undergraduate four years Nancy's junior. He was, according to Hastings, the least suitable partner of all, "the most shimmering and narcissistic of all the beautiful butterflies"—and the one most likely to offend Lord Redesdale. The pair met in 1928 and became unofficially engaged, despite his homosexuality (of which Nancy may not have been aware). Against a backdrop of negativity from family and friends—Waugh advised her to "dress better and catch a better man"—the engagement endured sporadically for several years.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: As a means of augmenting the meagre allowance provided by her father, Mitford began writing, encouraged by Waugh. Her first efforts, anonymous contributions to gossip columns in society magazines, led to occasional signed articles, and in 1930 "The Lady" engaged her to write a regular column. That winter, she embarked on a full-length novel, "Highland Fling", in which various characters—mostly identifiable among her friends, acquaintances and family—attend a Scottish house-party which develops chaotically. The book made little impact when it was published in March 1931, and she immediately began work on another, "Christmas Pudding", illustrated by her close friend Mark Ogilvie-Grant. Like the earlier novel, the plot centres on a clash between the "Bright Young People" and the older generation. Hamish Erskine is clearly identifiable in the character of "Bobby Bobbin", and John Betjeman is the basis for the supporting role of Bobby's tutor. The thinly disguised caricatures pervading the book shocked Lady Redesdale, who thought it could not possibly be published under Mitford's own name.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: The affair between Erskine and Mitford continued intermittently. While she often despaired of the relationship, she refused other offers of marriage, saying that she would "never marry anyone except Hamish." In 1932 her plight was overshadowed by a family scandal involving her younger sister Diana, who had married Bryan Guinness in 1928 and was the mother of two young sons. In 1932 Diana deserted her husband to become the mistress of Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists, himself married with three children. Almost alone of her family, Mitford offered her sister support, regularly visiting her and keeping her up to date with family news and social gossip. Her own love affair with Erskine came to an abrupt end when, in June 1933, he informed her that he intended to marry the daughter of a London banker. In a final letter after their parting, Mitford wrote to him: "I thought in your soul you loved me & that in the end we should have children & look back on life together when we are old".


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Within a month of Erskine's departure, Mitford announced her engagement to Peter Rodd, the second son of Sir Rennell Rodd, a diplomat and politician who was ennobled that year as Baron Rennell. According to Mitford's friend Harold Acton, Rodd was "a young man of boundless promise ... he had abundant qualifications for success in any profession he deigned to choose". Other biographers describe him as irresponsible, unfaithful, a bore and unable to hold down a regular job, and as the model for Waugh's unscrupulous, amoral character Basil Seal from "Black Mischief". They were married on 4 December 1933, after which they settled into a cottage at Strand-on-the-Green on the western edges of London. Mitford's initial delight in the marriage was soon tempered by money worries, Rodd's fecklessness and her dislike of his family.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: In 1934, Mitford began her third novel, "Wigs on the Green", a satire on Sir Oswald Mosley's fascist "Blackshirt" movement. Mitford herself had briefly flirted with Mosley's New Party in 1931, although her enthusiasm was short-lived, and she soon became a vociferous opponent of the British Union of Fascists and of fascism. When the novel was published in 1935, its book cover illustrated by Bip Pares, it made little critical impact and seriously offended members of her own family, particularly her sisters Diana and Unity, both of whom were supporters of Mosley's movement and devotees of the German dictator Adolf Hitler. Diana eventually forgave Nancy, but Nancy's rift with Unity, who was outraged by her depiction in the book as the ridiculous "Eugenia Malmains", was never fully healed.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: By 1936, Nancy Mitford's marriage was largely a sham. Rodd was engaged in an affair with the wife of a friend, a situation that continued into the new year, when the Mitford family was further shaken by the 19-year-old Jessica's elopement with her cousin Esmond Romilly. A rebellious ex-Wellington schoolboy and avowed Communist, Romilly fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. The young couple were traced to Bilbao, and Nancy was despatched to bring them home but failed to persuade them, and Jessica and Esmond were married in May 1937.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Through the winter of 1937–1938, Mitford's main literary task was editing the letters of her cousins the Stanleys of Alderley, with whom she was connected through her great-grandmother Blanche Airlie. Her preoccupation with the project, nine or ten hours a day, she informed her friend Robert Byron, further damaged her relationship with Rodd, who resented the time thus spent. Nevertheless, in the summer of 1938, she discovered that she was pregnant. She hoped for a girl: "2 Peter Rodds in 1 house is unthinkable", but in September, she miscarried. Early in 1939, Rodd left for southern France to work with the relief organisations assisting the thousands of Spanish refugees who had fled from General Franco's armies in the final stages of the civil war. In May, Mitford joined him and spent several weeks there as a relief worker. She was much affected by what she saw: "I have never cried so much in all my life". The experience hardened her antifascism to the extent that she wrote: "I would join hands with the devil himself to stop any further extension of the disease".


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Having rejected the political extremes within her family, Nancy Mitford was a moderate socialist, but some of her works, such as her introductions to the Stanley letter collections, and her "U–non-U" essay of 1955, are staunch defences of the aristocratic traditions and values that she grew up with.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: The outbreak of war in September 1939 divided the Mitford family. Nancy and Rodd supported the Allies in the war. The Romillys had by this time departed for America, but the others either hoped for an Anglo-German détente or, as with Unity, were openly pro-Nazi. Unity was in Munich when war was declared. In despair, she attempted suicide by shooting herself in the head. She survived, and was sent home through neutral Switzerland. Mosley and Diana, who had married secretly in 1936, were detained under Defence Regulation 18B. Nancy, in full antifascist mode, had described her sister to the British Intelligence agency MI5 as "a ruthless and shrewd egotist, a devoted fascist and admirer of Hitler [who] sincerely desires the downfall of England and democracy in general". During the "Phoney War" of 1939–1940, Nancy was briefly an Air Raid Precautions (ARP) driver, and later worked shifts at a first-aid post in Paddington. She drew on those experiences in her fourth novel, "Pigeon Pie", a comedy about spying. It was published by Hamish Hamilton in May 1940, while there was little public appetite for lighthearted war satire, and the book was a commercial failure.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: In April 1940, Mitford suffered her second miscarriage. Shortly afterward, Rodd, who had been commissioned into the Welsh Guards, departed overseas. Alone in London, Mitford moved to the family's Rutland Gate house where she remained during the London Blitz. The main house had been requisitioned to provide a refuge for Jewish families evacuated from the bombed areas of the East End. Mitford spent much of her time looking after those families: "so hard-working, clean and grateful". A brief affair with a Free French officer, André Roy, resulted in a third pregnancy. Mitford again miscarried, with complications that led, in November 1941, to a hysterectomy. After convalescence, at loose ends, she began working as an assistant at the Heywood Hill bookshop in Curzon Street. The shop became the centre of Mitford's daily activities and was a favoured meeting place for London's literati. In September 1942, she met Gaston Palewski, a French colonel attached to General Charles de Gaulle's London staff. She found him fascinating, and he became the love of her life though her feelings were never fully reciprocated. He was an inspiration for much of her future writing. For the sake of Mitford's reputation, the affair was pursued with discretion before Palewski left for Algeria in May 1943. Thereafter, the relationship was conducted mainly by letters and occasional phone calls since Palewski was only intermittently in England before the end of the war.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: The failure of "Pigeon Pie" had cooled Mitford's desire to write, but in 1944, with Waugh's encouragement, she began planning a new novel. In March 1945, she was given three months' leave from the shop to write it. "The Pursuit of Love" is a heavily autobiographical romantic comedy in which many of her family and acquaintances appear in thin disguises. Despite the distraction of learning that her brother Tom had died fighting in Burma, she finished the book and, in September, went to Paris. Ostensibly, that was to establish a French branch of Heywood Hill, but in reality, she wished to be close to Palewski, who was now a member of de Gaulle's postwar provisional government. She was back in London in December 1945 for the publication of "The Pursuit of Love" which was, Hastings records, "an instant and phenomenal success ... the perfect antidote to the long war years of hardship and austerity, providing the undernourished public with its favourite ingredients: love, childhood and the English upper classes". The book sold 200,000 copies within a year of publication, and firmly established Mitford as a best-selling author.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: At the end of the war, Rodd returned home, but the marriage was essentially over. Although remaining on friendly terms, the couple led separate lives. Mitford's visit to France in late 1945 had revived her longing to be there, and in April 1946, having given up working in the shop the previous month, she left London to make her permanent home in Paris and never lived in England again. She was a prolific letter writer and kept contact with her large cohort of friends by a voluminous correspondence. According to Hastings, she developed many of her friendships far further on paper than she could have done through normal social intercourse.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: During her first 18 months in Paris, Mitford lived in several short-term lodgings while she enjoyed a hectic social life, the hub of which was the British Embassy under the regime of the ambassador, Duff Cooper, and his socialite wife, Lady Diana Cooper. Eventually Mitford found a comfortable apartment, with a maid, at No. 7 rue Monsieur on the Left Bank, close to Palewski's residence. Settled there in comfort, she established a pattern to her life that she mostly followed for the next 20 years, her precise timetable being determined by Palewski's varying availability. Her socialising, entertaining and working were interspersed with regular short visits to family and friends in England and summers generally spent in Venice.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: In 1948, Mitford completed a new novel, a sequel to "The Pursuit of Love" that she called "Love in a Cold Climate", with the same country house ambience as the earlier book and many of the same characters. The novel's reception was even warmer than that of its predecessor. Waugh was one of the few critics to qualify his praise; he thought that the descriptions were good but the conversations poor. In 1950 she translated and adapted André Roussin's play "La petite hutte" ("The Little Hut"), in preparation for its successful West End début in August, "The Times"s critic noted the "habit of speech at once colloquial and unexpected which instantly declares itself the creation of Miss Mitford." The play ran for 1,261 performances, and provided Mitford with a steady £300 per month in royalties. The same year "The Sunday Times" asked her to contribute a regular column, which she did for four years. The busy period in her writing life continued in 1951 with her third postwar novel, "The Blessing", another semi-autobiographical romance this time set in Paris, in which an aristocratic young Englishwoman is married to a libidinous French marquis. Harold Acton deems it her most accomplished novel, "permeated with her joyous love of France". This time Waugh (to whom the book was dedicated) had no criticism; he found the book "admirable, deliciously funny, consistent and complete, by far the best of your writings".


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Mitford then began her first serious non-fiction work, a biography of Madame de Pompadour. The general view of the critics when the book was published in March 1954 was that it was "marvelous entertainment, if hardly to be taken as history". The historian AJP Taylor likened Mitford's evocation of 18th-century Versailles to "Alconleigh", the fictitious country house that formed the background to her recent best-selling novels, a comparison that she found offensive.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: In 1954 Alan Ross, a University of Birmingham professor of linguistics, devised the terms "U" and "Non-U" to differentiate the speech patterns of the social classes in England. "U" indicated upper-class usage, and "Non-U" the conventions of the lower strata of society. His article, in a learned Finnish journal and with an illustrative glossary, used " The Pursuit of Love " to exemplify upper-class speech patterns. In a spirit of mischief, Mitford incorporated the U and Non-U thesis into an article she was writing for "Encounter" on the English aristocracy. Although the aspect formed only a small section of Mitford's article, when it was published in September 1955 it caused a major stir. Few recognised the tongue-in-cheek aspect. Mitford received hundreds of letters from worried readers desperate to know if they were snobs or merely "common". The level of anxious or amused interest was sustained to such an extent that in 1956 Hamish Hamilton reproduced the article in a short book, "Noblesse Oblige". The book also included an abbreviated version of Ross's original article, and contributions from Waugh, Betjeman, Peter Fleming and Christopher Sykes, It was a tremendous success; as Lovell records, "'U and Non-U' was the buzz phrase of the day ... Nancy's comments made her the arbiter of good manners for several generations". Thompson notes the irony that the U and Non-U labels, perhaps Mitford's best-known legacy, were not her own but were borrowed for the purpose of a "tease".


title: Nancy Mitford

text: In October 1957 Palewski was appointed as France's ambassador to Italy. Mitford's meetings with him, which had become increasingly rare because of his many political and social commitments, were now reduced to a single visit a year, supplemented with occasional letters. Mitford mainly concealed her true feelings on this separation, although one acquaintance noted her increasingly "savage" teasing of friends, which was perhaps a safety valve: "If she would only tell one she is unhappy one would do what one could to comfort her". In March 1958 Mitford's father, Lord Redesdale, died. After the cremation, she informed her sister Jessica, "the ashes were done up in the sort of parcel he used to bring back from London, rich thick brown paper & incredibly neat knots".


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Meanwhile Mitford had completed her latest book, "Voltaire in Love", an account of the love affair between Voltaire and the Marquise du Châtelet. She considered it her first truly grown-up work, and her best. Published in 1957, it sold well, was taken seriously by the critics and was warmly praised by Mitford's friends. Its writing had been hampered by painful headaches arising from her apparently failing eyesight and worries that she might be going blind. The problem was resolved after a visit to the ophthalmic surgeon Patrick Trevor-Roper, who gave her new spectacles: "It is heavenly to be able to read for a long time on end & now I see how handicapped I was when doing Voltaire". She then returned to writing fiction, with "Don't Tell Alfred", in which she revived Fanny Wincham, the narrator of "The Pursuit of Love" and "Love in a Cold Climate", and placed her in a Paris setting as wife of the British ambassador. Several characters familiar from the earlier novels appear in minor roles. The book, published in October 1960, was popular with the public, but received indifferent reviews. Some of Mitford's friends disliked it, and she decided she would write no more fiction.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: In August 1962 Palewski was appointed a minister in Georges Pompidou's government, and returned to Paris. This did not mean more regular or frequent meetings, and the affair with Mitford continued at arm's length. In April 1963 Mitford was in England for the wedding of her cousin Angus Ogilvy to Princess Alexandra. A month later she was back for the funeral of her mother, Lady Redesdale, who died on 25 May. Mitford's friends were dying, too, "in middle age", she informed her long-time friend Violet Hammersley. The premature deaths included that of Evelyn Waugh, who died on 10 April 1966. Mitford saw the kindness and humour concealed behind his hostile public image, and said after his death: "What nobody ever remembers about Evelyn is everything with him was jokes. Everything". Thompson calls their relationship "one of the great literary friendships of the twentieth century".


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Amidst these personal upheavals Mitford continued writing. In 1964 she began work on "The Sun King", a biography of King Louis XIV. Her publishers decided to issue it as a lavishly illustrated "coffee table" book. When it was published in August 1966, among the many tributes to the book was that of President de Gaulle, who recommended it to every member of his cabinet. By this time, Mitford's relationship with Palewski had become dormant, and she recognised that the best days would never return. Under pressure from her landlords to leave her rue Monsieur apartment—they had raised her rent "exorbitantly"— she decided to leave Paris and buy herself a house in Versailles.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Mitford moved to No. 4 rue d'Artois, Versailles, in January 1967. The modest house had a half-acre (0.2 hectare) garden, which soon became one of her chief delights. In 1968 she began work on her final book, a biography of Frederick the Great. While confined at home in March 1969 after a series of illnesses she learned from a newspaper announcement that Palewski had married the Duchesse de Sagan, a rich divorcée. Mitford had long accepted that Palewski would never marry her. Nevertheless, she was deeply hurt by the news, although she affected a typical nonchalance. Shortly after, she entered hospital for the removal of a tumour. After the operation she continued to suffer pain, although she was able to continue working on her book. In October 1969 she undertook a tour of East Germany, to visit former royal palaces and battlefields. She finished the book, but in April 1970 was back in hospital for further tests, which did not lead to either a diagnosis or effective treatment.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: "Frederick the Great" was published later in 1970 to a muted reception. Mitford's remaining years were dominated by her illness, although for a time she enjoyed visits from her sisters and friends, and working in her garden. In April 1972 the French government made her a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur, and later that year the British government appointed her a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). She was delighted by the former honour, and amused by the latter—which she remembered Waugh had called an "insult" and turned down. At the end of 1972 she entered the Nuffield Clinic in London, where she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the blood. She lived for another six months, unable to look after herself and in almost constant pain, struggling to keep her spirits up. She wrote to her friend James Lees-Milne: "It's very curious, dying, and would have many a drôle amusing & charming side were it not for the pain". She died on 30 June 1973 at her home in the rue d'Artois and was cremated in Versailles, after which her ashes were taken to Swinbrook for burial alongside her sister Unity.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Mitford had no training as a writer or journalist; her style, particularly in the pre-war novels, is chatty and informal, much as in her letters. She may have inherited some of her natural wit and sharpness of expression from her maternal grandfather Thomas Bowles, who in his youth during the Franco-Prussian War had provided dispatches which Acton describes as "extremely graphic and amusing". Mitford's fiction, based on upper-class family life and mores, belongs to the genre of the comedy of manners. Her protagonists—typically, intelligent women surrounded by eccentric characters determined to find life amusing—are broadly autobiographical. It is unsurprising, says Thompson, that Mitford should first attempt to write a novel in the early 1930s, since many of her friends were doing the same thing. What is surprising, Thompson adds, is the ease with which she found a publisher for this first book. Perhaps, says Thompson, her publishers Thornton Butterworth "liked the idea of this pretty, well-connected girl who wrote in the style "du jour"". Mitford was later embarrassed by her prewar novels; Rachel Cooke, writing on their reissue in 2011, believes she had no reason to be: "There is a special kind of energy here, and its engine is the admirable and irresistible commitment of a writer who would rather die than be boring".


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Critics generally place the postwar novels in a different league from the earlier efforts; Cooke describes "The Pursuit of Love" as "an immaculate novel that soars many miles above what came before". In Acton's view it and its companion volume "Love in a Cold Climate" present an entirely authentic picture of country house life in England between the wars, and will long be consulted by historians of the period. In these later novels Zoë Heller of the "Daily Telegraph" hears in the prose, behind a new level of care and artfulness, "the unmistakeable Mitford trill, in whose light, bright cadences an entire hard-to-shock and easy-to-bore view of life is made manifest". At times a more serious undertone, contrasting with the "bright, brittle, essentially ephemeral" nature of her early works, becomes evident; Olivia Laing in the "Guardian", discerns "a faint and beguiling pessimism about love's pursuit and its consequences" beneath the light superficiality.


title: Nancy Mitford

text: "The Blessing" has provoked a more divided response. Waugh's judgement was that those who criticised the book were "lazy brutes ... [who] ... can't bear to see a writer grow up". More recently, Philip Hensher and others have argued that although the novel is immensely enjoyable and that Mitford's "marvellous voice" is undiminished, she is on less sure ground with her "Frenchness" than with the English country house ambience, and her picture of France as the embodiment of everything civilised is less than convincing. Similar mixed comments greeted Mitford's final novel, "Don't Tell Alfred", Waugh again hailing it as her best, "clamouring for a sequel". In this judgement he was largely alone; other critics perceived in the anecdotal framework of the book an uncertainty as to what it was about. An American reviewer wondered what parts were to be taken seriously: "What exactly goes on? ... Can you always tell an Etonian, even when he goes beat? Is all modern architecture a fraud? Do U-people really talk this way?" Similar questions were raised in the "Times Literary Supplement"s review, in relation to Mitford's fictional output as a whole: "Would she have been a better novelist if she had 'tried harder', gone in further, dropped the pose of amateurishness, cut the charm, looked beyond the worlds that she knew and, more importantly, loved?"


title: Nancy Mitford

text: The gift for vivid characterisation, which Mitford developed in her fiction, was used to full effect in her four biographical works. In the first of these, "Madame de Pompadour", she followed Waugh's advice not to write for experts but to fashion "a popular life like Strachey's "Queen Victoria"", with "plenty of period prettiness". This remained her yardstick in her subsequent biographical writings. Her own description of "Voltaire in Love" is "a Kinsey report of his romps with Mme de Châtelet and her romps with Saint-Lambert and his romps with Mme de Boufflers ... I could go on for pages". Acton thought "The Sun King" the most entertaining introduction to the subject in the English language. Mitford's informal style was remarked on by the literary critic Cyril Connolly, who wrote that her facility for transforming unpromising source material into readable form was a skill that any professional historian might envy. The historian Antonia Fraser considered Mitford an important contributor to the "remorseless process by which historical and biographical sales have soared since 1950".


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Mitford did not regard herself as a journalist: nevertheless, her articles were popular, particularly those she contributed on Paris life to "The Sunday Times". Thompson describes this series as "a more sophisticated version of "A Year in Provence", bringing France to the English in just the way that they most like it". Thompson adds that although Mitford was always a competent writer, it is in her letters, with their freedom of expression and flights of fancy, that her true character emerges. Many have been published within collections; they are, according to "The Independent"s reviewer: "a delight, full of the sparks of an abrasive and entertaining wit, refreshingly free from politeness".


title: Nancy Mitford

text: Mitford was a prolific writer of articles, reviews, essays and prefaces, some of which were published in two collections: "The Water Beetle" (Hamish Hamilton, 1962) and "A Talent to Annoy" (Hamish Hamilton, 1986). Her translation of Madame Lafayette's romantic novel "La Princesse de Clèves" was published in America in 1950, but was heavily criticised.


title: Urumi

text: Urumi (Malayalam: "uṟumi"; Sinhalese: "ethunu kaduwa"; Hindi: "āra") is a sword with a flexible, whip-like blade, originating in the southern parts of the Indian subcontinent. It is thought to have existed from as early as the Sangam period.


title: Urumi

text: It is treated as a steel whip and therefore requires prior knowledge of that weapon as well as the sword. For this reason, the urumi is always taught last in Indian martial arts such as Kalaripayattu.


title: Urumi

text: The word "urumi vaal" is used to refer to the weapon in Tamil Nadu. In Kerala, it is also called "chuttuval", from the Malayalam words for "coiling," or "spinning,"("chuttu") and "sword" ("val"). Alternatively, Tamil names for the weapon are "surul katti" (coiling knife), "surul vaal" (coiling sword) and "surul pattakatti" (coiling machete).


title: Urumi

text: The urumi hilt is constructed from iron or brass and is identical to that of the "talwar", complete with a crossguard and frequently a slender knucklebow. The typical handle is termed a "disc hilt" from the prominent disc-shaped flange surrounding the pommel. The pommel often has a short decorative spike-like protrusion projecting from its centre. The blade is fashioned from flexible edged steel measuring three-quarters to one inch in width. Ideally, the length of the blade should be the same as the wielder's armspan, usually between 4 feet to 5.5 feet. Multiple blades are often attached to a single handle. The Sri Lankan variation can have up to 32 blades and is typically dual-wielded, with one in each hand.


title: Urumi

text: The urumi is handled like a flail but requires less strength since the blade combined with centrifugal force is sufficient to inflict injury. As with other "soft" weapons, urumi wielders learn to follow and control the momentum of the blade with each swing, thus techniques include spins and agile manoeuvres. These long-reaching spins make the weapon particularly well suited to fighting against multiple opponents. When not in use, the urumi is worn coiled around the waist like a belt, with the handle at the wearer's side like a conventional sword.


title: Urumi

text: A peptide found in the mucus of a South Indian frog is named urumin. This name is inspired from the "urumi", since urumin kills the H1N1 flu virus effectively.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: The Vagina Monologues is an episodic play written in 1996 by Eve Ensler which developed and premiered at HERE Arts Center, Off-Off-Broadway in New York and was followed by an Off-Broadway run in at Westside Theatre. The play explores consensual and nonconsensual sexual experiences, body image, genital mutilation, direct and indirect encounters with reproduction, vaginal care, menstrual periods, prostitution, and several other topics through the eyes of women with various ages, races, sexualities, and other differences.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: Charles Isherwood of "The New York Times" called the play "probably the most important piece of political theater of the last decade."


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: In 2018, "The New York Times" stated "No recent hour of theater has had a greater impact worldwide" in an article "The Great Work Continues: The 25 Best American Plays Since ‘Angels in America.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: Ensler originally starred in both the HERE premiere and in the first off-Broadway production, which was produced by David Stone, Nina Essman, Dan Markley, The Araca Group, Willa Shalit and the West Side Theater. When she left the play, it was recast with three celebrity monologists. The play has been staged internationally, and a television version featuring Ensler was produced by cable TV channel HBO. In 1998, Ensler and others, including Willa Shalit, a producer of the Westside Theatre production, launched V-Day, a global non-profit movement that has raised over for groups working to end violence against women (including those who hold fluid identities that are subject to gender-based violence), through benefits of "The Vagina Monologues".


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: In 2011, Ensler was awarded the Isabelle Stevenson Award at the 65th Tony Awards, which recognizes an individual from the theater community who has made a substantial contribution of volunteered time and effort on behalf of humanitarian, social service, or charitable organizations for her creation of the V-Day movement.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: Eve Ensler wrote the first draft of the monologues in 1996 (there have been several revisions since) following interviews she conducted with 200 women about their views on sex, relationships, and violence against women. The interviews began as casual conversations with her friends, who then brought up anecdotes they themselves had been told by other friends; this began a continuing chain of referrals. In an interview with Women.com, Ensler said that her fascination with vaginas began because of "growing up in a violent society". "Women's empowerment is deeply connected to their sexuality." She also stated, "I'm obsessed with women being violated and raped, and with incest. All of these things are deeply connected to our vaginas."


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: Ensler wrote the piece to "celebrate the vagina". Ensler states that in 1998, the purpose of the piece changed from a celebration of vaginas and femininity to a movement to stop violence against women. This was the start of the V-Day movement which has continued strong every year since, has turned into a worldwide phenomenon, and a very successful non-profit organization.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: The play opened at HERE Arts Center in New York City on October 3, 1996, with a limited run that was scheduled to end November 15 but was extended to December 31. The play gained popularity through sold-out performances, media coverage and word of mouth. "In 2001, V-Day sold out New York’s Madison Square Garden with more than seventy actors performing. The evening raised $1 million raised for groups working to end violence against women and girls."


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: "After "The Vagina Monologues" debuted in 1996, it quickly became a hit. Soon, Eve Ensler's episodic play had graduated from off-off Broadway to Madison Square Garden to college stages the world over."


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: In 2004, an all-transgender performance of "The Vagina Monologues" was held for the first time. The performance was covered by the 2006 documentary "Beautiful Daughters", which displays the hardships the all-transgender cast faced with the production.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: The play was also adapted into a Marathi play called "Yonichya Maneechya Gujagoshti" by feminist writer-activist Vandana Khare in the year 2009.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: Gabriela Youth, the one and only national democratic mass organization for young women in the Philippines also adapted the play into a Tagalog theatrical show called "Ang Usapang Puke" with its student members from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines in the year 2018.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: "The Vagina Monologues" is made up of various personal monologues read by a diverse group of women. Originally, Eve Ensler performed every monologue herself, with subsequent performances featuring three actresses, and more recent versions featuring a different actress for every role. Each of the monologues deals with an aspect of the feminine experience, touching on matters such as sex, sex work, body image, love, rape, menstruation, female genital mutilation, masturbation, birth, orgasm, the various common names for the vagina or simply as a physical aspect of the body. A recurring theme throughout the piece is the vagina as a tool of female empowerment, and the ultimate embodiment of individuality.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: Every year a new monologue is added to highlight a current issue affecting women around the world. In 2003, for example, Ensler wrote a new monologue, called "Under the Burqa", about the plight of women in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. In 2004, Ensler also wrote a monologue called "They Beat the Girl Out of My Boy. . .Or So They Tried" after interviewing a group of women whose gender identity differed from their assigned gender at birth. Every V-Day thousands of local benefit productions are staged to raise funds for local groups, shelters, and crisis centers working to end violence against women.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: V-Day is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that distributes funds to national and international grassroot organizations and programs that work to stop violence against girls and women. "The Vagina Monologues" is the cornerstone of the V-Day movement, whose participants stage benefit performances of the show and/or host other related events in their communities. Such events take place worldwide each year between 1 February and 30 April, many on college campuses as well. All performances must stick to the annual script that V-Day puts out specifically for the V-Day productions of "The Vagina Monologues". The V-Day organization encourages the renditions to include as many diverse actors as possible. With a minimum of 5 actors required by V-Day, the organization also has no maximum limit on the number of actors that can be included in the productions and encourages inclusion of as many actors as possible. The performances generally benefit rape crisis centers and shelters for women, as well as similar resource centers for women and girls experiencing violence against them.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: On 21 February 2004 Ms. Ensler in conjunction with Jane Fonda and Deep Stealth Productions produced and directed the first all-transgender performance of "The Vagina Monologues", with readings by eighteen notable transgender women and including a new monologue documenting the experiences of transgender women. It debuted in connection with "LA V-DAY Until the Violence Stops" with monologues documenting the violence against transgender women. Since that debut, many university and college productions have included these three "Transgender Monologues". "Beautiful Daughters" (2006) is a documentary about the cast of the first performance by transgender women.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: An article in "Signs" by Christine M. Cooper begins by applauding "The Vagina Monologues" for benefit performances done within the first six years (1998–2004). These performances raised over $20 million, 85 percent of which was donated to grassroots organizations that fight against violence towards women.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: "The Vagina Monologues" has been criticized by some within the feminist movement, including pro-sex feminists and individualist feminists. Sex-positive feminist Betty Dodson, author of several books about female sexuality, saw the play as having a narrow and restrictive view of sexuality. Dodson's main concern seemed to be the lack of the term "clitoris" throughout the play. She believes that the play sends a message that the vagina is the main sex organ, not the clitoris. There is also criticism of "The Vagina Monologues" about its conflation of vaginas with women, more specifically for the message of the play that women are their vaginas, as Susan E. Bell and Susan M. Reverby argue, "Generations of feminists have argued that we are more than our bodies, more than a vagina or 'the sex'. Yet, TVM re-inscribes women's politics in our bodies, indeed in our vaginas alone". The focus on women finding themselves through their vaginas, many say, seems more like a Second Wave consciousness-raising group rather than a ground-breaking, inter-sectional, Third Wave cornerstone.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: Because of the title and content of "The Vagina Monologues" being body-centric, American University chose to change their production of it to a new show including all-original pieces, giving the production the name of "Breaking Ground Monologues." Although members of American University's Women's Initiative believe that the show "was" revolutionary in the 1990s, they concluded that equating having a vagina with being a woman is not an accurate display of womanhood in the 2010s, suggesting that "The Vagina Monologues" continues to perpetuate the gender binary and erase the identity of those who are genderqueer.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: In 2015 a student organization at Mount Holyoke College canceled its annual performance of the play for being, in its opinion, insufficiently inclusive of transgender people. "At its core", Erin Murphy, the president of the school's theater group, said, "the show offers an extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman. … Gender is a wide and varied experience, one that cannot simply be reduced to biological or anatomical distinctions, and many of us who have participated in the show have grown increasingly uncomfortable presenting material that is inherently reductionist and exclusive." The traditionally all-female college had begun admitting trans women the previous year, but the college denied that had anything to do with the decision to discontinue the annual performances of the play.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: Kim Hall, a professor of philosophy at Appalachian State University, further criticizes the play, particularly the sections dealing with women in developing countries, for contributing to "colonialist conceptions of non-Western women," such as the piece "My Vagina Was My Village". Although she supports frank discussions about sex, Hall rescales many of the same critiques leveled by feminists of color at white privilege among second-wave feminists: "premature white feminist assumptions and celebrations of a global 'sisterhood.'"


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: In "The Vagina Monologues," depictions of sexual violence are told through mostly non-white and non-US centered stories, as Srimati Basu states, "While a few of these forms of violence, such as sexual assault and denigration of genitalia, are depicted in U.S. locations, violence is the primary register through which 'the global' is evoked, the main lens for looking outside the United States. These global locations serve to signify the terror that is used to hold the laughter in balance, to validate the seriousness of the enterprise, while the 'vagina' pieces are more directly associated with pleasure and sexuality and set in the United States".


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: In 2013, Columbia University's V-Day decided to stage the play with a cast entirely of non-white women because of the misrepresentation. That decision, too, was controversial.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: The play has also been criticized by social conservatives, such as the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) and the Network of Enlightened Women. The TFP denounced it as "a piece replete with sexual encounters, lust, graphic descriptions of masturbation and lesbian behavior", urging students and parents to protest. Following TFP and other protests, performances were cancelled at sixteen Catholic colleges. Saint Louis University made the decision not to endorse the 2007 production, claiming the yearly event was getting to be "redundant". The response of the university's student-led feminist organization was to continue the production at an off-campus location.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: In 2000, Robert Swope, a conservative contributor to a Georgetown University newspaper, "The Hoya", wrote an article critical of the play. He suggested there was a contradiction between the promotion of rape awareness on V-Day and the monologue "The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could", in which an adult woman recalls being given alcohol and statutorily raped at 13 by a 24-year-old woman as a positive, healing experience, ending the segment with the proclamation "It was a good rape."


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: Outcry from the play's supporters resulted in Swope's being fired from the staff of "The Hoya", before the piece was even run. Swope had previously criticized the play in an article he wrote entitled "Georgetown Women's Center: Indispensable Asset or Improper Expenditure?" His termination received critical editorial coverage in "The Wall Street Journal", "Salon", "National Review", "The Atlantic Monthly", "The Washington Times", "The Weekly Standard", and by Wendy McElroy of iFeminists.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: Every year, the play is performed on hundreds of college campuses as part of V-Day's College campaign.


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: Inspired by "The Vagina Monologues", many colleges have gone on to develop their own plays. Performances at colleges are always different, not always pre-written, and sometimes feature actors writing their own monologue. "The Vagina Monologues" also served as inspiration for "Yoni Ki Baat", the "South Asian adaptation of "The Vagina Monologues"", and as loose inspiration for "The Manic Monologues", "the mental-illness version of "The Vagina Monologues"."


title: The Vagina Monologues

text: The Cardinal Newman Society has criticized the performance of the play on Catholic college campuses. In 2011 ten of the fourteen Catholic universities hosting the "Monologues" were Jesuit institutions. The Jesuit Tim Clancy, pastor and philosophy professor at Gonzaga University, explains why he supports VM performances on campus: "They are not arguments – they are stories … stories of pain and suffering, stories of shame, violation and impotence" that lead to discussions on "the extremes of the human condition", responding to the call of Pope Benedict for Jesuits in their work to explore "the boundaries resulting from an erroneous or superficial vision of God and man that stand between faith and human knowledge".


title: Colombian necktie

text: A Colombian necktie (, "tie-cut") is a form of post-mortem mutilation in which the victim’s tongue is pulled through a deep cut beneath the jaw and left dangling on the neck. It first appeared in Colombia during the period known as La Violencia (1948–1958) as a method of psychological warfare designed to scare and intimidate. It was one of several documented types of public mutilation in the conflict used to terrorize people away from their land. Others included killing a pregnant woman, extracting the fetus and placing it on her body and replacing it with a rooster; stuffing the genitals of dead men into their mouths; and the "flower-vase-cut" where the victim's limbs were cut off and stuffed into their torso. The methods served to dehumanize victims, as can be seen in terms used by perpetrators such as "bocachiquear" and "picar para tamal", which refer respectively to the preparation of fish and tamales.


title: Colombian necktie

text: Its invention is sometimes erroneously attributed to drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. It is commonly referenced in popular culture and pulp fiction, although there is no verifiable evidence of it having occurred in the United States and its purported usage by domestic drug dealers is likely an urban legend. During the O. J. Simpson murder case, defense lawyers claimed that hitmen hired by drug dealers gave Nicole Brown Simpson a Colombian necktie, but this was barred from testimony for not having supporting evidence.


title: History of the National Football League championship

text: Throughout its history, the National Football League (NFL) and other rival American football leagues have used several different formats to determine their league champions, including a period of inter-league matchups to determine a true national champion.


text: Following its founding in 1920, the NFL first determined champions through end-of-season standings, switching to a playoff system in 1933 (a one-game playoff was required in 1932).


text: The rival All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and American Football League (AFL) have since merged with the NFL (the only two AAFC teams that currently exist, the Cleveland Browns and the San Francisco 49ers, joined the NFL in ), but AAFC Championship Games and records are not included in the NFL's record books. The AFL began play in 1960 and, like its rival league, used a playoff system to determine its champion.


text: From to , prior to the merger in 1970, the NFL and the AFL agreed to hold an undisputed Championship Game called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game (renamed the Super Bowl after 1968).


text: Following the merger in 1970, the Super Bowl name continued as the game to determine the NFL champion. The most important factor of the merger was that all ten AFL teams joined the NFL in , while all AFL Championship Games and records are included in NFL record books. The former NFL Championship Game became the NFC Championship Game, while the former AFL Championship Game became the AFC Championship Game. The NFL lists the old AFL/NFL championship games with "new" AFC/NFC championship games in its record books.


text: The Green Bay Packers have won the most NFL championship titles with 13 (9 pre-Super Bowl era NFL championships and 4 Super Bowls, including the first two AFL-NFL World Championship Games). The Chicago Bears have won the second most overall championships with 9 (8 pre-Super Bowl era NFL championships and one Super Bowl). The New York Jets and the Kansas City Chiefs of the AFL won the last two AFL-NFL World Championship Games, after the Super Bowl name had been officially adopted.


text: At its inception in , the NFL had no playoff system or championship game: the champion was the team with the best record during the season as determined by winning percentage, with ties excluded. This sometimes led to very unusual results, as teams played anywhere from six to twenty league games in a season, and not all teams played the same number of games or against league talent.


text: As a result, in the league's first six seasons, four league titles were disputed and had to be resolved by the league's executive committee. In 1920, the Akron Pros went undefeated, tying three games, but two teams that had won more games (and who had both tied Akron), the Buffalo All-Americans and Decatur Staleys, petitioned the league for a share of the title; both teams' petitions were denied, and Akron was awarded the first (and only) Brunswick-Balke Collender Cup. According to modern tie-breaking rules, Akron and Buffalo would be co-champions. Akron and Buffalo both awarded their team members with gold medallions.


text: The next was in the 1921 NFL season, between the same All-Americans and Staleys (with the latter now being based in Chicago). Buffalo had insisted that the last matchup between the two was an exhibition game not to be counted toward the standings, however, Chicago owner George Halas and league management insisted the game be counted in its standings (the league, at the time, did not recognize exhibition matches). The result was that although the two teams were effectively tied in the standings, the disputed game, having been played later, was given more weight and thus ended up being considered a de facto championship game. Chicago also had one fewer tie game.


text: A nearly identical situation recurred in 1924, when Chicago tried the same tactic of a final game against the Cleveland Bulldogs, but the league ruled the opposite and declared the last game "post-season", giving the Bulldogs their third consecutive league title.


text: The fourth and final disputed title was the 1925 NFL Championship controversy between the Pottsville Maroons and the Chicago Cardinals. The Maroons had been controversially suspended by the league at the end of the 1925 NFL season for an unauthorized game against a non-NFL team, allowing the Cardinals to throw together two fairly easy matches (one against a team consisting partly of high school players, also against league rules) to pass Pottsville in the standings. The league awarded the Cardinals the title, one of only two in the team's history, but the Cardinals declined the offer and the championship was vacated.


text: Only in 1933, when the Bidwill family (which still owns the Cardinals) bought the team, did the Cardinals reverse their decision and claim the title as their own, a decision that continues to be disputed, with the Bidwills opposing any change in the record and the two current Pennsylvania teams in favor. The league recognized the Bidwills' claim to the title and has taken no other action on the issue, although a self-made championship trophy from the Maroons sits in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Ironically, it was Pottsville's win in that game against the Notre Dame All-Stars that gave professional football legitimacy over college football.


text: Part of the controversy over these older championships stems from the criteria the league used to determine its champion. The league used a variation of "win percentage" as its criterion, in which the number of wins is divided by the sum of wins and losses, and ties were excluded. The league began considering ties in its standings in 1972, counting them as half a win and half a loss, but this was not applied retroactively. Had it been, it would have changed the outcome of four 1920-1931 championships: the Buffalo All-Americans would have tied the Akron Pros for the 1920 title, the Duluth Kelleys would have tied the Cleveland Bulldogs for the 1924 title, the Pottsville Maroons would have won in 1925, and the New York Giants would have won in 1930.


text: Had win–loss differential (the standard method in baseball) been used, the Decatur Staleys would have won the 1920 title by virtue of being one game ahead of Buffalo, and the 1924 title would have been won by the Frankford Yellow Jackets, who were four games ahead of actual champion Cleveland in the standings by that measure.


text: At the end of the season, the Chicago Bears and the Portsmouth Spartans were tied with the best winning percentage at .857, with the Spartans record of 6–1–4 and the Bears record of 6–1–6 taken to be six wins, one loss, while the Green Bay Packers finished 10–3–1.


text: Had pure win–loss differential or the current (post-1972) system of counting ties as half a win, half a loss been in place in 1932, the Packers' record of 10–3–1 (.750, +7) would have won them a fourth consecutive championship, ahead of the Spartans' 6–1–4 (.727, +5) and the Bears' 6–1–6 (.692, +5).


text: To determine the champion, the league, reportedly at the behest of George Preston Marshall, voted to hold the first official playoff game in Chicago at Wrigley Field. Because of severe winter conditions before the game, and fear of low turnout, the game was held indoors at Chicago Stadium which forced some temporary rule changes. The game was played on a modified 80-yard dirt field, and Chicago won 9–0, winning the league championship. Since the game counted in the standings, Portsmouth finished third behind Green Bay.


text: A number of new rule changes were instituted, many inspired by the 1932 indoor championship game: the goal posts were moved forward to the goal line, every play started from between the hash marks, and forward passes could originate from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage (instead of five yards behind).


text: The playoff game proved so popular that the league reorganized into two divisions for the season, with the winners advancing to a scheduled championship game.


text: Starting in , the NFL decided its champion through a single postseason playoff game, called the "NFL Championship Game". During this period, the league divided its teams into two groups, through as "divisions" and from 1950 onward as "conferences".


text: Home field for the 1933 title game was determined by the won-lost percentage in use at the time; the Western Division champion Chicago Bears (10–2–1, ), having a better record than the Eastern Division champion New York Giants (11–3–0, ), won the right to host the first title playoff. Thereafter, from 1934 onward, the divisions alternated the site of the playoff, with the East/American hosting in even years and the West/National in odd years. If there was a tie for first place within the conference, an extra playoff game decided who would go to the NFL Championship Game, with a coin toss deciding where the game would be played. (This occurred nine times in these 34 seasons: 1941, 1943, 1947, 1950 (both conferences), 1952, 1957, 1958, and 1965.)


text: This last occurred during the 1965 season, when the Green Bay Packers and Baltimore Colts tied for first place in the Western Conference at 10–3–1. Green Bay had won both its games with Baltimore during the regular season, but because no tie-breaker system was in place, a conference playoff game was held on December 26 (what was scheduled to be an off-week between the end of the regular schedule and the NFL Championship Game). The Cleveland Browns, the Eastern champion at 11–3–0, did not play that week. The championship game was then held on its originally scheduled date, January 2, 1966—the first time the NFL champion was crowned in January. Green Bay won both post-season games at home, beating the injury-riddled Colts (with third-string QB Tom Matte) in overtime by a controversial field goal, and taking the title 23–12 on a very muddy field (in what turned out to be Jim Brown's final NFL game).


text: For the 1960 through 1969 seasons, the NFL staged an additional postseason game called the "Playoff Bowl" (aka the "Bert Bell Benefit Bowl" or the "Runner-up Bowl"). These games matched the second-place teams from the two conferences; the CBS television network advertised them as ""playoff games for third place in the NFL."" All ten of these consolation games were played in the Orange Bowl in Miami in January, the week "after" the NFL championship game. The NFL now classifies these contests as exhibition games and does not include the records, participants, or results in the official league playoff statistics. The Playoff Bowl was discontinued after the AFL–NFL merger; the final edition was played in January 1970.


text: Starting with the 1934 game the winning team received the Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy. The trophy was named after Ed Thorp, a noted referee, rules expert, and sporting goods dealer. Thorp died in 1934 and a large, traveling trophy was made that year, passed along from champion to champion each season with each championship team's name inscribed on it. Teams would also receive a replica trophy. The trophy was last awarded to the Green Bay Packers in 1967.


text: Late in the 1940 season, NFL President Carl Storck announced that sudden death periods would be authorized for any playoff game needed to decide either division title. It was emphasized that this did not apply to the final championship game, which would crown co-champions in the event of a tie. While a shared championship was deemed an acceptable solution, it must have become obvious that an elimination game leading to the championship must necessarily produce a winner. Commissioner Elmer Layden approved a similar arrangement for the 1941 season, with the same limitation. A coin toss would decide possession of the Ed Thorp trophy that accompanied the league title should the championship game result in a tie.


text: Sudden death overtime was finally approved for the NFL championship game in 1946 and has remained in effect ever since. The first playoff game requiring overtime was the 1958 NFL Championship Game.


text: The 1955 and 1960 NFL championship games were played on Monday afternoons, Christmas having fallen on a Sunday in those years.


text: The All-America Football Conference was created in June 1944 to compete against the NFL. Even though the league outdrew the NFL in attendance, the continuing dominance of the Cleveland Browns led to the league's downfall.


text: For its first three seasons, the league was divided into two divisions: Eastern and Western (1946–1948). The league had no divisions in 1949. The site of the championship game during the first three was determined just as it was in the NFL—a divisional rotation. In 1949, the league held a four-team playoff, with home field based upon won-lost record.


text: A tiebreaker playoff game was played in 1948 to break a tie between the Baltimore Colts and Buffalo Bills (AAFC) for the Eastern Division championship. Semifinal playoff games were held in 1949, setting up a championship final between the first-place Browns and the second-place San Francisco 49ers.


text: In 1948, the Browns became the first professional football team to complete an entire season undefeated and untied — 24 years before the 1972 Miami Dolphins of the NFL would accomplish the task, but this feat is not recognized by NFL record books. Unlike the AFL statistics which are treated as NFL statistics, records of the AAFC and its teams (most of which folded) are not recognized. However, individual AAFC player statistics are included in Pro Football Hall of Fame records, and the defunct conference is memorialized in the Hall.


text: With its creation in 1960, the AFL determined its champion via a single playoff game between the winners of its two divisions, the Eastern and Western. The AFL Championship games featured classics such as the 1962 double-overtime championship game between the Dallas Texans and the defending champion Houston Oilers. At the time it was the longest professional football championship game ever played. Also in 1963, an Eastern Division playoff was needed to determine the division winner between the Boston Patriots and Buffalo Bills.


text: In 1966, the success of the rival AFL, the spectre of the NFL's losing more stars to the AFL, and concern over a costly "bidding war" for players precipitated by the NFL's Giants' signing of Pete Gogolak, who was under contract to the AFL's Buffalo Bills, led the two leagues to discuss a merger. Pivotal to this was approval by Congress of a law (PL 89-800) that would waive jeopardy to anti-trust statutes for the merged leagues. The major point of the testimony given by the leagues to obtain the law was that if the merger were permitted, "Professional football operations will be preserved in the 23 cities and 25 stadiums where such operations are presently being conducted." The merger was announced on June 8, 1966, and became fully effective in 1970.


text: After expanding to enfranchise the New Orleans Saints in , the NFL split its 16 teams into two conferences with two divisions each: the Capitol and Century Divisions in the Eastern Conference, and the Coastal and Central Divisions in the Western Conference. The playoff format was expanded from a single championship game to a four-team tournament, with the four divisional champions participating. The two division winners in each conference met in the "Conference Championships", with the winners advancing to the NFL Championship Game. Again, the home team for each playoff game was determined by a yearly divisional or conference rotation.


text: The AFL, on the other hand, raised its total franchise number to ten with the Miami Dolphins joining the Eastern Division in 1966 and the Cincinnati Bengals joining the Western Division in 1968. The league until 1969 kept using the one-game-playoff format except when division tie-breakers were needed. In its final season, 1969, the AFL adopted a four-team playoff to determine its champion.


text: Following the NFL and AFL Championship Games for the through seasons, the NFL champion played the AFL champion in Super Bowls I through IV, the only true inter-league championship games in the history of professional football. The first two of these games were known as the "AFL-NFL Championship Game", as the title "Super Bowl" was not chosen until 1968. Thus the third AFL-NFL matchup was dubbed "Super Bowl III" and the first two matches were retronamed as Super Bowls I and II. The first two games were convincingly won by the NFL's Packers, the last two by the AFL's New York Jets and Kansas City Chiefs, leaving the leagues even at 2–2 in "Championship" competition when they subsequently merged.


text: All participants in those four AFL-NFL championship games were either AFL champions or NFL champions in the record books, no matter the outcome of the Super Bowl. Three of the four league champions who lost one of the first four Super Bowls would eventually win at least one. The exception is the Minnesota Vikings which went to three others and lost all of them.


text: After the season and Super Bowl IV, the AFL and NFL fully merged and underwent a re-alignment for the season. Three of the pre-merger NFL teams were transferred to the AFC (Browns, Colts, and Steelers) to level the conferences (AFC and NFC) at 13 teams each; each conference split into three divisions.


text: With only six division winners in the newly merged league, the NFL designed an eight-team playoff tournament, with four clubs from each conference qualifying. Along with the three division winners in each conference, two "wild card" teams (one from each conference), the second-place finishers with the best records in each conference, were added to the tournament. The first round was named the "Divisional Playoffs", the winners advancing to the "Conference Championships" (AFC & NFC). Two weeks later, the AFC and NFC champions met in the Super Bowl, now the league's championship game. Thus, Super Bowl V in January 1971 was the first Super Bowl played for the NFL title.


text: With the introduction of the wild card, a rule was instituted to prohibit two teams from the same division (champion and wild card) from meeting in the first-round (Divisional Playoffs). This rule would remain in effect through the season. More significantly, the home teams in the playoffs were still decided by a yearly divisional rotation, not on regular-season records (excluding the wild-card teams, who would always play on the road). This lack of "home-field advantage" was most evident in the 1972 playoffs, when the undefeated Miami Dolphins played the AFC Championship Game at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh against the Steelers, who were undefeated at home during the regular season, but had three losses on the road.


text: Beginning in , tie games were included in the computing of each team's winning percentage. Each tie was then counted as half of a win and half of a loss, rather than being omitted from the computation. Previously, the NFL disregarded any tie games played when they computed the standings, basing it on winning percentage with any ties thrown out and ignored. Overtime games were not played during the regular season until .


text: In , the league modified its 1970 playoff format by instituting a seeding system. The surviving clubs with the higher seeds were made the home teams for each playoff round. The three division champions in each conference were seeded first through third based on their regular-season records, with the wild-card team in each conference as the fourth seed.


text: Teams that earned the top seed became known as clinching "home-field advantage" throughout the playoffs, since they played all of their playoff games at their home stadium (except for the Super Bowl, played at a neutral site).


text: However, the league continued to prohibit meetings between teams from the same division in the Divisional Playoffs. Thus, there would be times when the pairing in that round would pit the first seed versus the third, and the second versus the fourth.


text: The league expanded the playoffs to 10 teams in , adding a second wild-card team (a fifth seed) from each conference. The two wild-card teams from each conference (the fourth and fifth seeds) played each other in the first round, called the "Wild Card Playoffs." The division winners (the first three seeds) would then receive a "bye" to automatically advance to the Divisional Playoffs, which became the second round of the playoffs. In the divisional round, much like the playoff format, teams from the same division were still prohibited from playing each other, regardless of seeding. Under the format, teams from the same division could meet only in the wild-card round or the conference championship. Thus, as before, a divisional champion could only play a divisional foe in the conference championship game.


text: A players' strike shortened the 1982 season to nine games. The league used a special 16-team playoff tournament for that year. The top eight teams from each conference qualified (ignoring the divisional races—there were no division standings, and in some cases, two teams from the same division did not play each other at all that season). The playoffs reverted to the 1978 format in the following year.


text: In , the NFL expanded the playoffs to twelve teams by adding a third wild-card team (a sixth seed) from each conference. The restrictions on intra-division playoff games during the Divisional Playoffs were removed. However, only the top two division winners in each conference (the 1 and 2 seeds) received byes and automatically advanced to the Divisional Playoffs as host teams. The 3 seed, the division winner with the worst regular-season record in each conference, would then host the 6 seed in the Wild Card Playoffs.


text: In , the NFL realigned into eight divisions, four per conference, to accommodate a 32nd team, the Houston Texans. The playoffs remained a 12-team tournament, with four division winners (the 1, 2, 3, and 4 seeds) and two wild cards (the 5 and 6 seeds) from each conference advancing to the playoffs. Again, only the top two division winners in each conference would automatically advance to the Divisional Playoffs, while everybody else had to play in the Wild Card round. Furthermore, the league still maintains the names "Wild Card Playoffs", "Divisional Playoffs", and "Conference Championships" for the first, second, and third rounds of the playoffs, respectively.


text: A proposal to expand the playoffs to 14 teams by adding a third wild card team (a seventh seed) from each conference, and only giving the 1 seeds the bye in the first round, was tabled by the league owners in 2013. Finally, for the season, seven teams per conference will make the playoffs.


text: Below is a list of professional football champions per season as recognized by the Pro Football Hall of Fame.


text: For the first thirteen seasons, the APFA/NFL did not hold a championship game, except in , when a playoff game was held. Played indoors on a reduced-size field, it was the precursor to the championship game (though the losing team finished in third place in the final standings). For the seasons from –, the NFL did not include tie games in the winning percentage; they were omitted from the calculation.


text: In the sortable table below, teams are ordered first by number of wins, then by number of appearances, then by year of first championship won, and finally by year of first appearance. Does not include the AFL or NFL championships won during the same seasons as the AFL–NFL Super Bowl championships before the 1970 AFL–NFL merger. Does not include AFL titles won from 1960–1965 or AAFC titles won from 1946–1949. Does not include folded NFL teams with zero "Appearances/Top 2 Finishes." In the "Seasons" column, bold years indicate NFL championships won.


text: (*) Since the NFL did not count tied games in league standings until 1972, these seasons were considered to be "perfect" at the time they finished; further, these teams had no incentive to avoid tied games in order to maintain a "perfect" season. Thus, the accuracy of calling these seasons "imperfect" is still disputed.


title: 2016–17 Manchester United F.C. season

text: The 2016–17 season was Manchester United's 25th season in the Premier League, and their 42nd consecutive season in the top-flight of English football. It began against Leicester City in the FA Community Shield, with United prevailing 2–1 to win the first trophy of the domestic calendar. In February 2017, the club won their second trophy of the campaign, beating Southampton 3–2 in the EFL Cup Final. Although they missed out on qualifying for the 2017–18 UEFA Champions League via the league, having finished in sixth place, a 2–0 victory over Ajax in the 2017 UEFA Europa League Final meant they qualified for the Champions League group stage as Europa League title holders. The triumph also made United the fifth team to have won all three main European club trophies.


title: 2016–17 Manchester United F.C. season

text: Following the departure of Louis van Gaal at the end of the previous season, the club signed former Porto, Chelsea, Inter Milan and Real Madrid manager José Mourinho on a three-year contract, with the option of a further year.


title: 2016–17 Manchester United F.C. season

text: United preceded their 2016–17 campaign with a friendly against Wigan, a tour of China, a friendly in Sweden facing Turkish club Galatasaray in the 2016 SuperGame, and Wayne Rooney's testimonial match between Manchester United and Everton at Old Trafford. The season concluded with Michael Carrick's testimonial on 4 June between United players of the 2008 European Double-winning side (plus Dimitar Berbatov, who joined the club during the following transfer window, and Michael's brother, Graeme Carrick) and an all-star team picked by Carrick, both teams respectively managed by Sir Alex Ferguson and Harry Redknapp, Carrick's first manager as a professional footballer.


title: 2016–17 Manchester United F.C. season

text: As a result of winning the 2015–16 FA Cup, Manchester United faced Leicester City, who won the 2015–16 Premier League, in their 30th FA Community Shield appearance. Manchester United won the match to claim their 21st Community Shield (including four shared titles).


title: 2016–17 Manchester United F.C. season

text: The Premier League season kicked off on 13 August and concluded on 21 May. United went undefeated for a season-record 25 matches between October and May, although 12 of them were draws.


title: 2016–17 Manchester United F.C. season

text: Manchester United entered the FA Cup in the third round with the other Premier League clubs, as well as those from the Championship. The third round draw was made on 5 December and it drew United with a home tie against Championship side Reading, managed by Jaap Stam, who returned to Old Trafford for the first time since leaving United in 2001 after a three-year spell. United cruised to a 4–0 victory on 7 January with first-half goals from Wayne Rooney – who equalled Bobby Charlton's 249-goal record for the club in the process, Anthony Martial and a second-half brace from Marcus Rashford. League One champions Wigan Athletic, managed by Warren Joyce who left his Manchester United Under-23 coaching role in November to join Wigan, were drawn as United's fourth round opponents on 9 January for another home tie. United beat the Latics 4–0 and were subsequently drawn away to Championship side Blackburn Rovers in the fifth round. United came from behind to secure a 2–1 victory, thanks to goals from Marcus Rashford and substitute Zlatan Ibrahimović. In the quarter-finals, United were drawn away to Premier League rivals Chelsea. In a fiercely contested game, Ander Herrera was sent off and N'Golo Kanté scored the winning goal to end Manchester United's defence of the FA Cup.


title: 2016–17 Manchester United F.C. season

text: As one of seven English clubs who qualified for European competition in the 2015–16 season, United received a bye to the third round of the EFL Cup, the draw for which took place on 24 August 2016. United were drawn away against Northampton Town. The match was played 21 September 2016 and Manchester United won 3–1; Michael Carrick opened the scoring in the 17th minute, but Northampton's Alex Revell equalised from the penalty spot shortly before half-time. However, goals from Ander Herrera and Marcus Rashford midway through the second half secured the win for United. The draw for the fourth round took place shortly after the match and United were drawn at home against rivals Manchester City. The game was played on 26 October 2016 with the Reds winning 1–0 via Juan Mata's goal in the 54th minute.


title: 2016–17 Manchester United F.C. season

text: Manchester United were again drawn at home in the fifth round, this time against West Ham, and United cruised to a 4–1 win, with two goals each for Zlatan Ibrahimović and Anthony Martial. Former Manchester United youth player Ashley Fletcher scored the only goal for the Hammers in the 35th minute. The draw for the semi–finals saw United paired with Hull City. The first leg was played at Old Trafford on 10 January 2017, with Mata and substitute Marouane Fellaini giving United a 2–0 win. Two weeks later, United lost the second leg at the KCOM Stadium 2–1 but progressed to the final 3–2 on aggregate.