title: War of the currents

text: At a July meeting Board of Electrical Control, Brown's criticisms of AC and even his knowledge of electricity was challenged by other electrical engineers, some of whom worked for Westinghouse. At this meeting, supporters of AC provided anecdotal stories from electricians on how they had survived shocks from AC at voltages up to 1000 volts and argued that DC was the more dangerous of the two.


title: War of the currents

text: Brown, determined to prove alternating current was more dangerous than direct current, at some point contacted Thomas Edison to see if he could make use of equipment to conduct experiments. Edison immediately offered to assist Brown in his crusade against AC companies. Before long, Brown was loaned space and equipment at Edison's West Orange, New Jersey laboratory, as well as laboratory assistant Arthur Kennelly.


title: War of the currents

text: Brown paid local children to collect stray dogs off the street for his experiments with direct and alternating current. After much experimentation killing a series of dogs, Brown held a public demonstration on July 30 in a lecture room at Columbia College. With many participants shouting for the demonstration to stop and others walking out, Brown subjected a caged dog to several shocks with increasing levels of direct current up to 1,000 volts, which the dog survived. Brown then applied 330 volts of alternating current which killed the dog. Four days later he held a second demonstration to answer critics' claims that the DC probably weakened the dog before it died. In this second demonstration, three dogs were killed in quick succession with 300 volts of AC. Brown wrote to a colleague that he was sure this demonstration would get the New York Board of Electrical Control to limit AC installations to 300 volts. Brown's campaign to restrict AC to 300 volts was unsuccessful but legislation did come close to passing in Ohio and Virginia.


title: War of the currents

text: What brought Brown to the forefront of the debate over AC and his motives remain unclear, but historians note there grew to be some form of collusion between the Edison company and Brown. Edison records seem to show it was Edison Electric Light treasurer Francis S. Hastings who came up with the idea of using Brown and several New York physicians to attack Westinghouse and the other AC companies in retaliation for what Hastings thought were unscrupulous bids by Westinghouse for lighting contracts in Denver and Minneapolis. Hasting brought Brown and Edison together and was in continual contact with Brown. Edison Electric seemed to be footing the bill for some of Brown's publications on the dangers of AC. In addition, Thomas Edison himself sent a letter to the city government of Scranton, Pennsylvania recommending Brown as an expert on the dangers of AC. Some of this collusion was exposed in letters stolen from Brown's office and published in August 1889.


title: War of the currents

text: During this period Westinghouse continued to pour money and engineering resources into the goal of building a completely integrated AC system. To gain control of the Sawyer-Man lamp patents he bought Consolidated Electric Light in 1887. He bought the Waterhouse Electric Light Company in 1888 and the United States Illuminating Company in 1890, giving Westinghouse their own arc lighting systems as well as control over all the major incandescent lamp patents not controlled by Edison. In April 1888 Westinghouse engineer Oliver B. Shallenberger developed an induction meter that used a rotating magnetic field for measuring alternating current, giving the company a way to calculate how much electricity a customer used. In July 1888 Westinghouse paid a substantial amount to license Nikola Tesla's US patents for a poly-phase AC induction motor and obtained a patent option on Galileo Ferraris' induction motor design. Although the acquisition of a feasible AC motor gave Westinghouse a key patent in building a completely integrated AC system, the general shortage of cash the company was going through by 1890 meant development had to be put on hold for a while. The difficulties of obtaining funding for such a capital intensive business was becoming a serious problem for the company and 1890 saw the first of several attempts by investor J. P. Morgan to take over Westinghouse Electric.


title: War of the currents

text: Thomson-Houston was continuing to expand, buying seven smaller electric companies including a purchase of the Brush Electric Company in 1889. By 1890 Thomson-Houston controlled the majority of the arc lighting systems in the US and a collection of its own US AC patents. Several of the business deals between Thomson-Houston and Westinghouse fell apart and in April 1888 a judge rolled back part of Westinghouse's original Gaulard Gibbs patent, stating it only covered transformers linked in series.


title: War of the currents

text: With the help of the financier Henry Villard the Edison group of companies also went through a series of mergers: "Edison Lamp Company", a lamp manufacturer in East Newark, New Jersey; "Edison Machine Works", a manufacturer of dynamos and large electric motors in Schenectady, New York; "Bergmann & Company", a manufacturer of electric lighting fixtures, sockets, and other electric lighting devices; and "Edison Electric Light Company", the patent-holding company and the financial arm backed by J.P. Morgan and the Vanderbilt family for Edison's lighting experiments, merged. The new company, "Edison General Electric Company", was formed in January 1889 with the help of Drexel, Morgan & Co. and Grosvenor Lowrey with Villard as president. It later included the Sprague Electric Railway & Motor Company.


title: War of the currents

text: Through the fall of 1888 a battle of words with Brown specifically attacking Westinghouse continued to escalate. In November George Westinghouse challenged Brown's assertion in the pages of the "Electrical Engineer" that the Westinghouse AC systems had caused 30 deaths. The magazine investigated the claim and found at most only two of the deaths could be attributed to Westinghouse installations.


title: War of the currents

text: Although New York had a criminal procedure code that specified electrocution via an electric chair, it did not spell out the type of electricity, the amount of current, or its method of supply, since these were still relative unknowns. The New York Medico-Legal Society, an informal society composed of doctors and lawyers, was given the task of working out the details and in late 1888 through early 1889 conducted a series of animal experiments on voltage amounts, electrode design and placement, and skin conductivity. During this time they sought the advice of Harold Brown as a consultant. This ended up expanding the war of currents into the development of the chair and the general debate over capital punishment in the US.


title: War of the currents

text: After the Medico-Legal Society formed their committee in September 1888 chairman Frederick Peterson, who had been an assistant at Brown's July 1888 public electrocution of dogs with AC at Columbia College, had the results of those experiments submitted to the committee. The claims that AC was more deadly than DC and was the best current to use was questioned with some committee members pointing out that Brown's experiments were not scientifically carried out and were on animals smaller than a human being. At their November meeting the committee recommended 3000 volts although the type of electricity, direct current or alternating current, was not determined.


title: War of the currents

text: In order to more conclusively prove to the committee that AC was more deadly than DC, Brown contacted Edison Electric Light treasurer Francis S. Hastings to arrange the use of the West Orange laboratory. There on December 5, 1888 Brown set up an experiment with members of the press, members of the Medico-Legal Society, the chairman of the death penalty commission, and Thomas Edison looking on. Brown used alternating current for all of his tests on animals larger than a human, including 4 calves and a lame horse, all dispatched with 750 volts of AC. Based on these results the Medico-Legal Society's December meeting recommended the use of 1000–1500 volts of alternating current for executions and newspapers noted the AC used was half the voltage used in the power lines over the streets of American cities.


title: War of the currents

text: Westinghouse criticized these tests as a skewed self-serving demonstration designed to be a direct attack on alternating current. On December 13 in a letter to the "New York Times", Westinghouse spelled out where Brown's experiments were wrong and claimed again that Brown was being employed by the Edison company. Brown's December 18 letter refuted the claims and Brown even challenged Westinghouse to an electrical duel, with Brown agreeing to be shocked by ever-increasing amounts of DC power if Westinghouse submitted himself to the same amount of increasing AC power, first to quit loses. Westinghouse declined the offer.


title: War of the currents

text: In March 1889 when members of the Medico-Legal Society embarked on another series of tests to work out the details of electrode composition and placement they turned to Brown for technical assistance. Edison treasurer Hastings tried unsuccessfully to obtain a Westinghouse AC generator for the test. They ended up using Edison's West Orange laboratory for the animal tests.


title: War of the currents

text: Also in March, Superintendent of Prisons Austin Lathrop asked Brown if he could supply the equipment needed for the executions as well as design the electric chair. Brown turned down the job of designing the chair but did agree to fulfill the contract to supply the necessary electrical equipment. The state refused to pay up front, and Brown apparently turned to Edison Electric as well as Thomson-Houston Electric Company to help obtaining the equipment. This became another behind-the-scenes maneuver to acquire Westinghouse AC generators to supply the current, apparently with the help of the Edison company and Westinghouse's chief AC rival, Thomson-Houston. Thomson-Houston arranged to acquire three Westinghouse AC generators by replacing them with new Thomson-Houston AC generators. Thomson-Houston president Charles Coffin had at least two reasons for obtaining the Westinghouse generators; he did not want his company's equipment to be associated with the death penalty and he wanted to use one to prove a point, paying Brown to set up a public efficiency test to show that Westinghouse's sales claim of manufacturing 50% more efficient generators was false.


title: War of the currents

text: That spring Brown published "The Comparative Danger to Life of the Alternating and Continuous Electrical Current" detailing the animal experiments done at Edison's lab and claiming they showed AC was far deadlier than DC. This 61-page professionally printed booklet (probably paid for by the Edison company) was sent to government officials, newspapers, and businessmen in towns with populations greater than 5000 inhabitants.


title: War of the currents

text: In May 1889 when New York had its first criminal sentenced to be executed in the electric chair, a street merchant named William Kemmler, there was a great deal of discussion in the editorial column of the "New York Times" as to what to call the then-new form of execution. The term ""Westinghouse"d" was put forward as well as ""Gerry"cide" (after death penalty commission head Elbridge Gerry), and ""Brown"ed". "The Times" hated the word that was eventually adopted, electrocution, describing it as being pushed forward by "pretentious ignoramuses". One of Edison's lawyers wrote to his colleague expressing an opinion that Edison's preference for "dynamort", "ampermort" and "electromort" were not good terms but thought "Westinghouse"d was the best choice.""


title: War of the currents

text: William Kemmler was sentenced to die in the electric chair around June 24, 1889, but before the sentence could be carried out an appeal was filed on the grounds that it constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the U.S. Constitution. It became obvious to the press and everyone involved that the politically connected (and expensive) lawyer who filed the appeal, William Bourke Cockran, had no connection to the case but did have connection to the Westinghouse company, obviously paying for his services.


title: War of the currents

text: During fact-finding hearings held around the state beginning on July 9 in New York City, Cockran used his considerable skills as a cross-examiner and orator to attack Brown, Edison, and their supporters. His strategy was to show that Brown had falsified his test on the killing power of AC and to prove that electricity would not cause certain death and simply lead to torturing the condemned. In cross examination he questioned Brown's lack of credentials in the electrical field and brought up possible collusion between Brown and Edison, which Brown again denied. Many witnesses were called by both sides to give firsthand anecdotal accounts about encounters with electricity and evidence was given by medical professionals on the human body's nervous system and the electrical conductivity of skin. Brown was accused of fudging his tests on animals, hiding the fact that he was using lower current DC and high-current AC. When the hearing convened for a day at Edison's West Orange lab to witness demonstrations of skin resistance to electricity, Brown almost got in a fight with a Westinghouse representative, accusing him of being in the Edison laboratory to conduct industrial espionage. Newspapers noted the often contradictory testimony was raising public doubts about the electrocution law but after Edison took the stand many accepted assurances from the "wizard of Menlo Park" that 1000 volts of AC would easily kill any man.


title: War of the currents

text: After the gathered testimony was submitted and the two sides presented their case, Judge Edwin Day ruled against Kemmler's appeal on October 9 and US Supreme Court denied Kemmler's appeal on May 23, 1890.


title: War of the currents

text: When the chair was first used, on August 6, 1890, the technicians on hand misjudged the voltage needed to kill William Kemmler. After the first jolt of electricity Kemmler was found to be still breathing. The procedure had to be repeated and a reporter on hand described it as "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging." George Westinghouse commented: "They would have done better using an axe."


title: War of the currents

text: The story was based on 45 letters stolen from Brown's office that spelled out Brown's collusion with Thomson-Houston and Edison Electric. The majority of the letters were correspondence between Brown and Thomson-Houston on the topic of acquiring the three Westinghouse generators for the state of New York as well as using one of them in an efficiency test. They also showed that Brown had received $5,000 from Edison Electric to purchase the surplus Westinghouse generators from Thomson-Houston. Further Edison involvement was contained in letters from Edison treasurer Hastings asking Brown to send anti-AC pamphlets to all the legislators in the state of Missouri (at the company's expense), Brown requesting that a letter of recommendation from Thomas Edison be sent to Scranton, PA, as well as Edison and Arthur Kennelly coaching Brown in his upcoming testimony in the Kemmler appeal trial.


title: War of the currents

text: Brown was not slowed down by this revelation and characterized his efforts to expose Westinghouse as the same as going after a grocer who sells poison and calls it sugar.


title: War of the currents

text: 1889 saw another round of deaths attributed to alternating current including a lineman in Buffalo, New York, four linemen in New York City, and a New York fruit merchant who was killed when the display he was using came in contact with an overhead line. NYC Mayor Hugh J. Grant, in a meeting with the Board of Electrical Control and the AC electric companies, rejected the claims that the AC lines were perfectly safe saying "we get news of all who touch them through the coroners office". On October 11, 1889, John Feeks, a Western Union lineman, was high up in the tangle of overhead electrical wires working on what were supposed to be low-voltage telegraph lines in a busy Manhattan district. As the lunchtime crowd below looked on he grabbed a nearby line that, unknown to him, had been shorted many blocks away with a high-voltage AC line. The jolt entered through his bare right hand and exited his left steel studded climbing boot. Feeks was killed almost instantly, his body falling into the tangle of wire, sparking, burning, and smoldering for the better part of an hour while a horrified crowd of thousands gathered below. The source of the power that killed Feeks was not determined although United States Illuminating Company lines ran nearby.


title: War of the currents

text: Feeks' public death sparked a new round of people fearing the electric lines over their heads in what has been called the "Electric Wire Panic". The blame seemed to settle on Westinghouse since, Westinghouse having bought many of the lighting companies involved, people assumed Feeks' death was the fault of a Westinghouse subsidiary. Newspapers joined into the public outcry following Feeks' death, pointing out men's lives "were cheaper to this monopoly than insulated wires" and calling for the executives of AC companies to be charged with manslaughter. The October 13, 1889, New Orleans "Times-Picayune" noted "Death does not stop at the door, but comes right into the house, and perhaps as you are closing a door or turning on the gas you are killed." Harold Brown's reputation was rehabilitated almost overnight with newspapers and magazines seeking his opinion and reporters following him around New York City where he measured how much current was leaking from AC power lines.


title: War of the currents

text: At the peak of the war of currents, Edison himself joined the public debate for the first time, denounced AC current in a November 1889 article in the "North American Review" titled "The Dangers of Electric Lighting". Edison put forward the view that burying the high-voltage lines was not a solution, and would simply move the deaths underground and be a "constant menace" that could short with other lines threatening people's homes and lives. He stated the only way to make AC safe was to limit its voltage and vowed Edison Electric would never adopt AC as long as he was in charge.


title: War of the currents

text: George Westinghouse was suddenly put in the role of a villain trying to defend pole-mounted AC installations that he knew were unsafe and fumbled at reporters' questions trying to point out all the other things in a large city that were more dangerous. The next month he did better in his response printed in the "North American Review", pointing out that his AC/transformer system actually used lower household voltages than the Edison DC system. He also pointed out 87 deaths in one year caused by street cars and gas lighting versus only 5 accidental electrocutions and no in-home deaths attributed to AC current.


title: War of the currents

text: The crowd that watched Feeks contained many New York aldermen due to the site of the accident being near the New York government offices and the horrifying affair galvanized them into the action of passing the law on moving utilities underground. The electric companies involved obtained an injunction preventing their lines from being cut down immediately but shut down most of their lighting until the situation was settled, plunging many New York streets into darkness. The legislation ordering the cutting down of all of the utility lines was finally upheld by the New York Supreme Court in December. The AC lines were cut down keeping many New York City streets in darkness for the rest of the winter since little had been done by the overpaid Tammany Hall city supervisors who were supposed to see to building the underground "subways" to house them.


title: War of the currents

text: Even with the Westinghouse propaganda losses, the war of currents itself was winding down with direct current on the losing side. This was due in part to Thomas Edison himself leaving the electric power business. Edison was becoming marginalized in his own company having lost majority control in the 1889 merger that formed Edison General Electric. In 1890 he told president Henry Villard he thought it was time to retire from the lighting business and moved on to an iron ore refining project that preoccupied his time. Edison's dogmatic anti-AC values were no longer controlling the company. By 1889 Edison's Electric's own subsidiaries were lobbying to add AC power transmission to their systems and in October 1890 Edison Machine Works began developing AC-based equipment.


title: War of the currents

text: With Thomas Edison no longer involved with Edison General Electric, the war of currents came to a close with a financial merger. Edison president Henry Villard, who had engineered the merger that formed Edison General Electric, was continually working on the idea of merging that company with Thomson-Houston or Westinghouse. He saw a real opportunity in 1891. The market was in a general downturn causing cash shortages for all the companies concerned and Villard was in talks with Thomson-Houston, which was now Edison General Electric's biggest competitor. Thomson-Houston had a habit of saving money on development by buying, or sometimes stealing, patents. Patent conflicts were stymieing the growth of both companies and the idea of saving on some 60 ongoing lawsuits as well as saving on profit losses of trying to undercut each other by selling generating plants below cost pushed forward the idea of this merger in financial circles. Edison hated the idea and tried to hold it off but Villard thought his company, now winning its incandescent light patent lawsuits in the courts, was in a position to dictate the terms of any merger. As a committee of financiers, which included J.P. Morgan, worked on the deal in early 1892 things went against Villard. In Morgan's view Thomson-Houston looked on the books to be the stronger of the two companies and engineered a behind the scenes deal announced on April 15, 1892, that put the management of Thomson-Houston in control of the new company, now called General Electric (dropping Edison's name). Thomas Edison was not aware of the deal until the day before it happened.


title: War of the currents

text: The fifteen electric companies that existed five years before had merged down to two; General Electric and Westinghouse. The war of currents came to an end and this merger of the Edison company, along with its lighting patents, and the Thomson-Houston, with its AC patents, created a company that controlled three quarters of the US electrical business. From this point on General Electric and Westinghouse were both marketing alternating current systems. Edison put on a brave face noting to the media how his stock had gained value in the deal but privately he was bitter that his company and all of his patents had been turned over to the competition.


title: War of the currents

text: Even though the institutional war of currents had ended in a financial merger, the technical difference between direct and alternating current systems followed a much longer technical merger. Due to innovation in the US and Europe, alternating current's economy of scale with very large generating plants linked to loads via long-distance transmission was slowly being combined with the ability to link it up with all of the existing systems that needed to be supplied. These included single phase AC systems, poly-phase AC systems, low voltage incandescent lighting, high voltage arc lighting, and existing DC motors in factories and street cars. In the engineered "universal system" these technological differences were temporarily being bridged via the development of rotary converters and motor–generators that allowed the large number of legacy systems to be connected to the AC grid. These stopgaps were slowly replaced as older systems were retired or upgraded.


title: War of the currents

text: In May 1892 Westinghouse Electric managed to underbid General Electric on the contract to electrify the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and, although they made no profit, their demonstration of a safe and effective highly flexible universal alternating current system powering all of the disparate electrical systems at the Exposition led to them winning the bid at the end of that year to build an AC power station at Niagara Falls. General Electric was awarded contracts to build AC transmission lines and transformers in that project and further bids at Niagara were split with GE who were quickly catching up in the AC field due partly to Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a Prussian mathematician who was the first person to fully understand AC power from a solid mathematical standpoint. General Electric hired many talented new engineers to improve its design of transformers, generators, motors and other apparatus.


title: War of the currents

text: A three-phase three-wire transmission system had already been deployed in Europe at the International Electro-Technical Exhibition of 1891, where Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky used this system to transmit electric power over a distance of 176 km with 75% efficiency. In 1891 he also created a three-phase transformer, the short-circuited (squirrel-cage) induction motor and designed the world's first three-phase hydroelectric power plant.


title: War of the currents

text: Patent lawsuits were still hampering both companies and bleeding off cash, so in 1896, J. P. Morgan engineered a patent sharing agreement between the two companies that remained in force for 11 years.


title: War of the currents

text: In 1897 Edison sold his remaining stock in Edison Electric Illuminating of New York to finance his iron ore refining prototype plant. In 1908 Edison said to George Stanley, son of AC transformer inventor William Stanley, Jr., "Tell your father I was wrong", probably admitting he had underestimated the developmental potential of alternating current.


title: War of the currents

text: Some cities continued to use DC well into the 20th century. For example, central Helsinki had a DC network until the late 1940s, and Stockholm lost its dwindling DC network as late as the 1970s. A mercury-arc valve rectifier station could convert AC to DC where networks were still used. Parts of Boston, Massachusetts, along Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue still used 110 volts DC in the 1960s, causing the destruction of many small appliances (typically hair dryers and phonographs) used by Boston University students, who ignored warnings about the electricity supply.


title: War of the currents

text: New York City's electric utility company, Consolidated Edison, continued to supply direct current to customers who had adopted it early in the twentieth century, mainly for elevators. The New Yorker Hotel, constructed in 1929, had a large direct-current power plant and did not convert fully to alternating-current service until well into the 1960s. This was the building in which AC pioneer Nikola Tesla spent his last years, and where he died in 1943. New York City's Broadway theaters continued to use DC services until 1975, requiring the use of outmoded manual resistance dimmer boards operated by several stagehands. This practice ended when the musical "A Chorus Line" introduced computerized lighting control and thyristor (SCR) dimmers to Broadway, and New York theaters were finally converted to AC.


title: War of the currents

text: In January 1998, Consolidated Edison started to eliminate DC service. At that time there were 4,600 DC customers. By 2006, there were only 60 customers using DC service, and on November 14, 2007, the last direct-current distribution by Con Edison was shut down. Customers still using DC were provided with on-site AC to DC rectifiers. Pacific Gas and Electric Company still provides DC power to some locations in San Francisco, primarily for elevators, supplied by close to 200 rectifiers each providing power for 7–10 customers.


title: War of the currents

text: The Central Electricity Generating Board in the UK maintained a 200–volt DC generating station at Bankside Power Station in London until 1981. It exclusively powered DC printing machinery in Fleet Street, then the heart of the UK's newspaper industry. It was decommissioned later in 1981 when the newspaper industry moved into the developing docklands area further down the river (using modern AC-powered equipment).


title: War of the currents

text: High-voltage direct current (HVDC) systems are used for bulk transmission of energy from distant generating stations or for interconnection of separate alternating-current systems.


title: Pet Rock

text: Pet Rock is a collectible toy made in 1975 by advertising executive Gary Dahl. They were marketed live rocks, in custom cardboard boxes, complete with straw and breathing holes. The fad lasted about six months, ending after a short increase in sales during the Christmas season of December 1975. Although by February 1976 they were discounted due to lower sales, Dahl sold over 1 million Pet Rocks for $4 each, and became a millionaire.


title: Pet Rock

text: With his money, Dahl opened a bar named "Carry Nations" in downtown Los Gatos, California, a reference to Carrie Nation. Dahl continued to work in advertising; however, he avoided interviews for years, because "a bunch of wackos" harassed him with lawsuits and threats. Dahl said in 1988, "Sometimes I look back and wonder if my life would have been simpler if I hadn't done it."


title: Pet Rock

text: Gary Dahl came up with the idea in a bar while listening to his friends complain about their pets; this gave him the idea for the perfect "pet": a rock. A rock would not need to be fed, walked, bathed, or groomed, and it would not die, become sick, or be disobedient. Dahl said that they were to be the perfect pets and joked about it with his friends.


title: Pet Rock

text: Dahl took his "pet" idea seriously, however, and . The manual was full of puns and gags that referred to the rock as an actual pet.


title: Pet Rock

text: Dahl's biggest expense was the die-cutting and manufacture of the boxes. The rocks only cost one cent each, and the straw was nearly free. For the initial run of booklets, Dahl had a printing job for a client, and "tacked" the pet rock booklet onto the main job. This resulted in a batch requiring only a cut and trim, at almost no cost to him.


title: Pet Rock

text: A 32-page official training manual titled "The Care and Training of Your Pet Rock" was included, with instructions on how to properly raise and care for one's new Pet Rock (notably lacking instructions for feeding, bathing, changing, and so on). The instruction manual contained gags, puns and jokes, and listed several commands that could be taught to the new pet. While "sit" and "stay" were effortless to accomplish, "roll over" usually required a little extra help from the trainer. "Come," "stand" and "shake hands" were found to be near-impossible to teach; however, "attack" was fairly simple (with some help from the owner's force).


title: Pet Rock

text: In the 1999 comedy film "Office Space", Tom Smykowski (portrayed by Richard Riehle) cites the Pet Rock as a lucrative idea that made its inventor a millionaire, ultimately prompting him to produce his own invention, a 'Jump to Conclusions' floor mat.


title: Pet Rock

text: In the "SpongeBob SquarePants" season 3 episode "The Great Snail Race", Patrick Star is portrayed with his pet rock.


title: Pet Rock

text: Otto owns a Pet Rock in "", released in 2022. To promote the film, Sabec Limited released an official Pet Rock game for Nintendo Switch and mobile phones.


title: Pet Rock

text: Zoe from "Sesame Street" owns a pet rock called Rocco. A video of Elmo from "Sesame Street" shouting at Zoe's Pet Rock went viral in 2022.


title: Dijon mustard

text: Dijon mustard () is a traditional mustard of France, named after the town of Dijon in Burgundy, France, which was the center of mustard making in the late Middle Ages and was granted exclusive rights in France in the 17th century. First used in 1336 for the table of King Philip VI, it assumed its current form in 1856 when Jean Naigeon of Dijon replaced the vinegar usually used in prepared mustard with verjuice, the acidic juice of unripe grapes.


title: Dijon mustard

text: The main ingredients of the modern condiment are brown mustard seeds ("Brassica juncea") and a mixture of white wine, vinegar, water, and salt designed to imitate the original verjuice. It can be used as an accompaniment to all meats in its usual form as a paste, or it can be mixed with other ingredients to make a sauce.


title: Dijon mustard

text: In 2008, the Anglo-Dutch group Unilever, which had several mustard plants in Europe, closed the "Amora" manufacturing plant. Since July 15 2009, Dijon mustard is no longer manufactured and packaged in the town of Dijon, but in the neighbouring town of Chevigny-Saint-Sauveur, and 80% of mustard seeds used in the manufacture of contemporary Dijon mustard come from Canada. The Grey Poupon mustard brand available in the United States originated in Dijon in 1866.


title: Dijon mustard

text: Due to smaller than usual Canadian crop of mustard seeds in 2021, a shortage of dijon mustard began in France in 2022. The shortfall in Canadian production was caused by a heatwave, attributable to climate change. The shortage has been exacerbated by stockpiling by consumers.


title: Dijon mustard

text: Dijon mustard does not have a protected geographical indication (PGI). 80% of seeds used to make the mustard come from Canada. A 1937 decree ruled that "Dijon mustard" can be used as generic designation and has no link to a specific terroir. However, "moutarde de Bourgogne" has a PGI and its seeds have to be produced in Bourgogne.


title: Tia-Clair Toomey

text: Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr (born 22 July 1993) is an Australian weightlifter and CrossFit Games athlete. She is the most dominant athlete at the CrossFit Games, having won six times at the competition. She also won the gold medal in the women's event at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast.


title: Tia-Clair Toomey

text: Toomey also competed in the women's event at the 2016 Summer Olympics and came in 14th. At the CrossFit Games, Toomey was runner-up in 2015 and 2016, before becoming winner of the 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 CrossFit Games.


title: Tia-Clair Toomey

text: Tia-Clair Toomey was born on 22 July 1993 to Debbi and Brendon Toomey in Nambour, Queensland, Australia, the eldest of three girls. She grew up in Dunethin Rock along the Maroochy River on the Sunshine Coast, where her parents worked on a cane farm. She attended a primary school in North Arm, Queensland. When she was 12, the family moved to Weipa after the sugarcane mill closed. She studied at Western Cape College in Weipa, and then boarded at the Townsville Grammar School in Townsville in 2009. After finishing school in 2011, she went to study nursing at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. However, she left after six months and moved to Gladstone to be with her future husband Shane Orr. There she worked for a time as a dental assistant, and then as a lab technician at a Rio Tinto facility.


title: Tia-Clair Toomey

text: Toomey competed in athletics while she was at school as a runner. When she was in Gladstone, she focused on 400m hurdling, and was introduced to CrossFit by Shane Orr who had used it to supplement his training while he was playing for Gladstone Rugby Union. Although initially reluctant, she joined a CrossFit gym and became involved in the sport; soon after she started participating in CrossFit competitions in 2013. She learned the basics of weightlifting through her CrossFit classes.


title: Tia-Clair Toomey

text: Toomey first competed in the CrossFit Open less than a month after learning CrossFit in 2013. The following year she qualified for the Regionals, but was only ranked 18th in the Australian Regional. Toomey first qualified for the CrossFit Games in 2015 after two years of CrossFit competitions. She finished runner-up to Katrín Davíðsdóttir in her debut year, and was named Rookie of the Year.


title: Tia-Clair Toomey

text: At the 2016 CrossFit Games, the women's competition was tightly fought between Davíðsdóttir and Toomey, but Toomey was again placed second after Davíðsdóttir managed to hold off a strong challenge from Toomey to win a second time.


title: Tia-Clair Toomey

text: The 2017 CrossFit Games was again a close-fought competition, this time between Toomey and fellow Australian Kara Webb. Significantly, Webb was penalized after a judging error which resulted in dropped points for Webb in the penultimate event. Toomey won her first Games in a tight finish, beating Webb by only two points.


title: Tia-Clair Toomey

text: At the 2018 Games, Toomey won convincingly with a 64-point lead over second-place Laura Horvath. The following year in the 2019 Games, she won with a large margin of 195 points over Kristin Holte, and became the first woman to win three CrossFit Games.


title: Tia-Clair Toomey

text: In 2020, Toomey extended her record to four consecutive wins. Her performance in 2020 was the most dominant display ever by a female CrossFit athlete at the Games, winning 9 of the 12 events in the final stage at the Games, with a margin of victory of 360 points over Katrín Davíðsdóttir.


title: Tia-Clair Toomey

text: Toomey further extended the number of titles won to five at the 2021 CrossFit Games with another dominant display, winning 9 out of 15 events at the Games and setting a record score of 1,435. The five wins equalled the record set by Mat Fraser, and she also broke Fraser's record of 29 total event wins by setting a new record of 33 event wins.


title: Tia-Clair Toomey

text: Toomey won her sixth title, and $310,000 prize money, at the 2022 CrossFit Games. She placed first in two of thirteen events at the competition.


title: Tia-Clair Toomey

text: Toomey lifted her then-personal best clean and jerk at a CrossFit competition in September 2013 after training for only 6 months, and her performance caught the attention of the weightlifting coach Miles Wydall. He later offered to coach Toomey on weightlifting and encouraged Toomey to try to get to the Rio Olympics representing Australia. After just 18 months of serious weightlifting training, she qualified for the Olympics when she finished third at the 2016 Oceania Weightlifting Championships with a combined lift of . In the Olympic weightlifting competition at the 2016 Summer Olympics, she competed in the Women's 58 kg division, but missed her personal best by and finished 14th.


title: Tia-Clair Toomey

text: In December 2020, Toomey announced her plan to train with the Australian bobsleigh team and try to qualify for the 2022 Winter Olympics to be held in China. In her first bobsled competition in South Korea in February 2021, she won two races as brakewoman in a two-woman bobsled team. Her team qualified for the Winter Olympic in January 2022, however, they were not selected for the Australian team due to regulations that the new event monobob and the 2-woman team must have the same driver, and the monobob driver Bree Walker was favoured and chosen.


title: Tia-Clair Toomey

text: Toomey also competed in weightlifting at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. She won gold in the event with a combined total of .


title: Tia-Clair Toomey

text: Toomey met her husband and coach, Shane Orr, while she was still in high school and they were both participating in a local triathlon event in Weipa, later introduced to each other at a fishing competition. They married in 2017. They owned a gym in Gladstone, which they sold in early 2019 after they moved to Cookeville, Tennessee in early October 2018 to train at Rich Froning's gym CrossFit Mayhem. Multiple CrossFit Games male champion, Mat Fraser, then trained with them in Cookeville and Shane coached both of them in preparation for the 2019 and 2020 CrossFit Games. She moved in 2021 to Nashville, Tennessee used as a base for PRVN Fitness training camp where her husband is head coach.


title: Oslo, August 31st

text: Oslo, August 31st () is a 2011 Norwegian drama film directed by Joachim Trier. It is the second film, along with "Reprise" (2006) and "The Worst Person in the World" (2021), in Trier's "Oslo Trilogy". The film is a homage to, and loosely based on Pierre Drieu La Rochelle's novel "Will O' the Wisp" (1931) and Louis Malle's feature film "The Fire Within" (1963).


title: Oslo, August 31st

text: The film premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. It won the Best Film and Best Cinematography awards at the Stockholm International Film Festival (SIFF). It received widespread critical acclaim, and was one of three films on the Norwegian shortlist for submissions to the 84th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.


title: Oslo, August 31st

text: Anders is a recovering drug addict in an Oslo rehab clinic. On his first opportunity to take an overnight trip from the rehab centre, he meets an old girlfriend and then attempts suicide by filling his pockets and walking into a lake. Unable to go through with it, he returns to the rehab centre, where he does not mention his suicide attempt in group therapy.


title: Oslo, August 31st

text: On 30 August, he is given a day's leave to attend a job interview in the city centre. He goes to visit his friend Thomas and his wife Rebecca and their two children. While there, he admits that after meeting his old girlfriend Malin, he felt nothing and never loved another former girlfriend, Iselin, which Thomas tries to play off. Anders slowly reveals to him that he is having suicidal thoughts. At 34 years of age, he feels he is too old to start over and is unenthused about the interview as an editorial assistant that he is applying for. He sees Thomas as being happy, but Thomas talks about his own difficulties in life including being too tired to maintain passion with his wife, having limited time to focus on his career, and the lack of true friendships as he gets older. The two part on good terms and Thomas begs Anders not to do anything terrible but not before inviting him to a party held by their mutual friend Mirjam.


title: Oslo, August 31st

text: Anders goes to his job interview, but beforehand calls the girlfriend he was dating while he was on drugs, Iselin, and getting her voicemail, begs her to call him back.


title: Oslo, August 31st

text: At the job interview, when he is asked about the gaps in his resume, Anders admits to being a former drug addict, causing the interviewer to grow uncomfortable. Anders abruptly ends the interview, taking his application with him and throwing it out.


title: Oslo, August 31st

text: Following his interview, Anders has plans to meet with his sister, Nina, but is surprised and angry when Nina's girlfriend, Tove, shows up instead, eventually admitting that Nina does not want to see him and finds it difficult he is being let out of rehab. Tove is supposed to go with Anders to the family home, which is being sold to pay for his rehab, but Anders refuses to let her accompany him and takes the keys and leaves alone instead.


title: Oslo, August 31st

text: Anders goes to Mirjam's party hoping to meet Thomas. Instead, he runs into old friends unaware of his recent sobriety, and quickly breaks it by drinking at the party. The party is Mirjam's birthday and they eventually have a conversation about how difficult Mirjam finds ageing as all her female friends have children and her male friends are dating increasingly younger women. To comfort her, Anders gives her a lingering kiss, which makes things awkward between them. Anders retreats to a room alone and again calls Iselin, leaving a message on her voicemail wondering if she still loves him and hinting that he would like to get back together with her. He then rifles through the coats and purses of the party-goers, stealing money and abruptly leaving when he is caught by Mirjam.


title: Oslo, August 31st

text: Anders heads to his old drug dealer's place where he buys a gram of heroin. He then meets up at a bar with a friend of his and two pretty young women who are still in school. At the bar, Anders sees a man staring at him who he realizes is a man who Iselin cheated on him with. Before leaving, Anders tells him he forgives him, but the man is instead angry at him, telling him that the way he treated Iselin while they were dating was cruel.


title: Oslo, August 31st

text: Anders and the group party well into the morning, getting drunk, making out, and eventually going to a local pool which they realize is about to be shut down as it is the last day of August. The others go swimming while Anders refuses to join them.


title: Oslo, August 31st

text: Anders finally goes to his family home where everything is in disarray, about to be packed up. He finally calls Iselin one last time, telling her that he did not mean anything he had previously said. He retreats to his childhood bedroom where he shoots up.


title: Oslo, August 31st

text: "Oslo, August 31st" has received widespread critical acclaim from both film critics and audiences. SIFF jury president Whit Stillman called the film "a perfectly painted portrait of a generation".


title: Oslo, August 31st

text: Review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes reports that 97% of critics have given the film a positive review, based on 63 reviews with an average rating of 8.3/10. The general consensus being: "An upfront study of a drug addict confronting his demons, "Oslo, August 31st" makes this dark journey worthwhile with fantastic directing and equally fantastic acting". Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, reports the film has a score of 84. Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film four out of four stars and said the film is "quietly, profoundly, one of the most observant and sympathetic films I've seen". Ebert went on to name it the ninth best film of the year in his annual list.


title: Oslo, August 31st

text: In addition to its wins at the Stockholm International Film Festival, "Oslo, August 31st" won the Amanda Award for Best Director and Best Editing at the 2012 Norwegian International Film Festival, the Transilvania International Film Festival's top "Transilvania Trophy" and Best Screenplay awards in Romania, as well as the Special Jury Prize at the Istanbul Film Festival.


title: Frances Barber

text: Frances Barber (née Brookes, born 13 May 1958) is an English actress. She received Olivier Award nominations for her work in the plays "Camille" (1985), and "Uncle Vanya" (1997). Her film appearances include three collaborations with Gary Oldman in "Prick Up Your Ears" (1987), "We Think the World of You" (1988) and "Dead Fish" (2005); as well as "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid" (1987); "Soft Top Hard Shoulder" (1992); and latterly "Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool" (2017). Barber's numerous television credits include "The Street" (2009), "Doctor Who" (2011), and "Silk" (2012–2014).


title: Frances Barber

text: Barber was born in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England. Her parents are S.W. Brookes and Gladys Simpson; Barber is the fourth of six children. She attended the Wolverhampton Municipal Grammar School.


title: Frances Barber

text: Barber studied drama at the University College of North Wales in Bangor, where she was a contemporary of director Danny Boyle, who became her boyfriend.


title: Frances Barber

text: She appeared in the Pet Shop Boys' musical "Closer to Heaven" in 2001 as well as being guest singer for the song "Friendly Fire" on the Pet Shop Boys' 2006 live concert at the Mermaid Theatre. She also appeared alongside Ian McKellen and Roger Allam in the Old Vic's pantomime production of "Aladdin" in the 2005–2006 Christmas season. She again starred with Ian McKellen in 2007 playing Goneril in Trevor Nunn's production of "King Lear" and as Arkadina in Chekhov's "The Seagull" with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon followed by a world tour throughout the year. They again performed the two plays in repertory at the New London Theatre on Drury Lane, opening in November 2007 and closing mid-January 2008.


title: Frances Barber

text: In 2011, she guest-starred in the "Doctor Who" episodes "A Good Man Goes to War" and "The Wedding of River Song" (and five other episodes, sometimes uncredited) as Madame Kovarian. She also acted in the television film "We'll Take Manhattan" as Diana Vreeland.


title: Frances Barber

text: Barber is a British unionist. She signed a letter supporting a No vote ahead of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. After the Scottish National Party won 56 seats at the 2015 general election, she caused controversy after making comments on Twitter comparing the SNP to the Third Reich, further stating "God help us all is all I can say when the racist S.N.P. try to take over, England will react we will have civil war."


title: Frances Barber

text: Barber urged a vote for the Labour Party at the 2017 UK general election. Critical of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, she said "I will vote Labour holding my nose. Urge you too." In September 2017, she resigned from the party, saying: "I can't belong to a party full of Misogyny, Anti-Semitism and Thuggery". In the 2019 United Kingdom general election, she backed the Liberal Democrats.


title: Frances Barber

text: In 2018, she was among the signatories to a letter published in "The Observer" arguing that debate surrounding reforms of the Gender Recognition Act were being silenced. In September 2020, she signed a further letter in support of J.K. Rowling, against what "The Scotsman" described as "the abuse and death threats" Rowling had received after publicising her views.


title: Poppy Liu

text: Poppy Liu (柳波) is a Chinese-American actress, activist and poet, known for her roles in the sitcoms "Sunnyside" and "Hacks".


title: Poppy Liu

text: Liu was born in Xi'an, China. Her family moved to Minnesota when she was two while her father, an engineering professor, earned a second PhD. During this time, her mother attended night classes in computer programming and worked at hotels and McDonald's. The family moved back to China when Liu was 14, where she attended an American school in Shanghai. This is where Liu developed her early interest in performing, including in Chinese dance, ballet and theater.


title: Poppy Liu

text: After graduation, Liu founded the production company Collective Sex, with a focus on decolonizing storytelling and eliminating stigmas around sex and identity. In 2018, she debuted her short film "Names of Women" in New York City, which also toured across the country at college campuses and reproductive organizations. The film was made with an all-female crew and is based on a true abortion story.


title: Poppy Liu

text: In 2019, Liu had a starring role in the NBC sitcom "Sunnyside", which moved to Hulu after four episodes. Liu has also had roles on "New Amsterdam", "", and "Better Call Saul". She has a recurring role as the blackjack dealer to a wealthy comedian in the 2021 HBO Max sitcom "Hacks", and a recurring role as performer Double Dutch on the 2021 Paramount+ sitcom "iCarly".


title: Poppy Liu

text: Liu is a doula and offers free services to women and transgender people of color. She identifies as queer and non-binary and use they/she pronouns.


title: Poppy Liu

text: In 2019, "The Advocate" named Liu one of their "Champions of Pride." In June 2022, Liu announced that she was expecting her first child while describing her 2015 abortion story and reaffirming the importance of reproductive justice.


title: 2019 Greek legislative election

text: Legislative elections were held in Greece on 7 July 2019. The elections were called by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on 26 May 2019 after the ruling Syriza party lost the European and local elections. They were the first national elections since the voting age was lowered to 17, and the number of parliamentary constituencies was increased from 56 to 59. Athens B, the largest constituency before the 2018 reforms, with 44 seats, was broken up into smaller constituencies, the largest of which had 18 seats.


title: 2019 Greek legislative election

text: The result was a victory for the centre-right liberal conservative New Democracy party led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, which received nearly 40% of the vote and won 158 seats, an outright majority.


title: 2019 Greek legislative election

text: Compulsory voting was in force for the elections, with voter registration being automatic. However, none of the legally existing penalties or sanctions have ever been enforced.


title: 2019 Greek legislative election

text: A number of changes to the electoral system were introduced following the September 2015 elections. The voting age was reduced from 18 to 17 in July 2016, with the same law also abolishing the majority bonus system, which gave a 50-seat bonus to the largest party. Instead, all 300 seats would be awarded proportionally. However, this law did not come into effect for the 2019 elections, as it was not approved with the required supermajority despite the Syriza-led government expressing support for its introduction for the 2019 elections. As a result, the previous system remained in force, with 250 seats elected in multi-member constituencies using a 3% electoral threshold, plus 50 bonus seats for the largest party.


title: 2019 Greek legislative election

text: The number of parliamentary constituencies was also modified in December 2018, with Athens B split into Athens B1 (North), Athens B2 (West), and Athens B3 (South), while Attica was split into East Attica and West Attica.


title: 2019 Greek legislative election

text: A few minutes before the polls closed, a group of young protesters stormed the 33rd polling station in the distinct of Exarcheia, Athens, and stole the ballot box. A previously-unknown anarchist group, Ballot-seeking Arsonists, later claimed responsibility. It claimed to have burned the stolen ballot box. As a result, a repeat election at the same polling station was held a week later, on 14 July. The results did not change the final allocation of seats because of the small volume of votes.


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: Insomniac is the fourth studio album by American rock band Green Day, released on October 10, 1995, by Reprise Records. It was recorded at Hyde Street in San Francisco, and the band prioritized high-energy takes during the recording sessions. Released as the follow-up to the band's multi-platinum breakthrough "Dookie", "Insomniac" featured a heavier and more “punk” sound, and bleaker lyrics than its predecessor. Lyrically, the album discusses themes such as alienation, anxiety, boredom, and drug use. "Insomniac" also served as a reaction to many early fans who had turned their backs on the band after it achieved mainstream success with "Dookie".


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: The album received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised frontman Billie Joe Armstrong's songwriting and sarcastic sense of humor. Three songs were released as singles, "Geek Stink Breath", "Stuck with Me", and "Brain Stew / Jaded". Though it peaked at number 2 on the "Billboard" 200 chart and was certified 2× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in 1996, "Insomniac" did not have the sales endurance of its predecessor "Dookie", largely due to its slightly darker lyrical tone and its heavier and more abrasive sound. "Insomniac" has sold over 2,100,000 copies in the United States and over 10,000,000 copies worldwide as of 2022. The album was reissued on vinyl on May 12, 2009. In 2021, a deluxe version of the album was released for its 25th anniversary, including previously unreleased live tracks.


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: Green Day's previous album "Dookie" (1994), their first for a major label, was approaching the ten-million sales mark by the time of recording "Insomniac", and the band's success saw them rejected by the punk circles in which the group got their start. The group also began performing at large venues such as coliseums and hockey arenas. Frontman and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong was stung by criticisms of being a "sell out", telling an interviewer: "I think I was just lost. I couldn’t find the strength to convince myself that what I was doing was a good thing. I was in a band that was huge because it was supposed to be huge, because our songs were that good. But I couldn’t even feel that I was doing the right thing, because it felt like I was making so many people angry."


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: The band's state of discombobulation inspired them to prove themselves with "Insomniac". Bassist Mike Dirnt later said: "I felt at the time that there was a real urgency to what we were doing. There was a real urgency to stake our claim and say, 'No, we belong here.' It was really important to us to make sure people knew that we weren’t just a flash in the pan." During this period the band members also underwent changes in their personal lives; Armstrong married and had a son, while Tré Cool and his wife had a daughter. For Armstrong, reaching all these milestones was a surreal experience and he struggled to process these sudden changes, noting that "what I really wanted to do was keep working, and keep writing songs...I didn’t really stop and smell the roses".


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: Much of the album was written and rehearsed in a small, Cape Cod-style home in East Oakland, California. The band decorated the walls with notes underneath song titles jokingly providing instructions for achieving the intended tempo for each track; these included “Must pop Valium for this one” and "Must take crank for this one". After the release of "Dookie", drummer Tre Cool's wife gave birth to their first child, and Cool noted that "I can hit the drums harder than I ever thought I could. Having a kid is trying – you have to watch your temper all the time – but it enhances the experience of playing in the band."


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: Eschewing the typical punk rock ethos of creating cheap, low-quality recordings, the band strove to perfect its sound on the record, drawing inspiration from bands such as the Beatles and Cheap Trick. Cool experimented with different cymbal sounds on nearly every song on the album, while Armstrong and producer Rob Cavallo developed the ritual of lining up several guitar amps and testing each one to achieve the desired sound. Much of "Insomniac" was recorded in short, high-energy bursts. Before takes, the group would drink excessive amounts of coffee, "squeeze every last drop of energy" into the recordings, and then rest immediately afterward. Bob Bradshaw of Custom Audio Electronics was employed to apply a thicker guitar sound to the songs.


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: David Browne of "Entertainment Weekly" described "Insomniac" as "14 slices of hearty anarchy, played with a follow-the-bouncing-spitball compactness and vigor." Ian Winwood of "Kerrang!" wrote of the album's "master class in buzzsaw efficiency, the songs are so economical, not to mention harsh, that the removal of even a single chord would cause each composition to collapse in on itself," calling it "the album on which its creators lost their baby teeth." The album features bleaker, more pessimistic lyrics than those of "Dookie". However, "Rolling Stone" noted that the lyrics exemplify "cold-eyed realism, not trendy nihilism or bleak despair." Armstrong's vocal delivery on the album has been described as an "adenoidal vocal whine."


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: The album begins with "Armatage Shanks", which explores disassociation and the lack of identity, with Armstrong feeling "Stranded / Lost inside myself." "Brat" takes the perspective of a "snot-nosed slob without a job" waiting for his parents to die in order to receive his inheritance. "Stuck With Me", the second single of the album, talks about being too weak and too much of a push-over to stand up for yourself. "Geek Stink Breath", the first single, discusses methamphetamine use, including side effects such as the formation of facial scabs and an accelerated pulse. "No Pride" talks about a narrator at the bottom of society, who doesn't mind being there, since he has no pride. The angst-ridden "Bab's Uvula Who?" begins with the lyric, "I've got a knack for fucking everything up," backed by a "brutal, unforgiving wall of sound." It is followed by "86", which discusses the rejection Green Day faced from the 924 Gilman Street music club in Berkeley after the band's rise to fame in 1994.


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: "Panic Song" exhibits a pessimistic view of the world, describing it as "a sick machine breeding a mass of shit." It begins with a "pummeling" instrumental introduction that has been compared to The Who. It was inspired by Armstrong's panic attacks caused by his anxiety issues and bassist Mike Dirnt's panic attacks he has suffered as a result of being born with an enlarged mitral valve in his heart. Cool tore the calluses on his hand while recording the instrumental intro, and slumped against a wall between takes. Cavallo recalled the musician's hands resembled "a bloody mess". "Brain Stew", the third single off of Insomniac talks about insomnia and is quickly followed by "Jaded". "Westbound Sign" is about Billie's wife, Adrienne, moving to California with him. "Tight Wad Hill" talks about how the activities teens once did (like getting high) are no longer fun anymore. The final track, "Walking Contradiction" was described as an anthem for "anyone who has chafed against the bounds of the demographically correct, computer-coded, image-conscious mid-'90s."


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: Before the name "Insomniac" was decided on, the band considered naming the album "Jesus Christ Supermarket" and "Tight Wad Hill". "Insomniac" was originally the working title song for "Brain Stew" on demo. After visiting collage artist Winston Smith for the album cover, Billie Joe Armstrong asked him how he managed to make such intricate pieces in such short times. Smith answered: "It's easy for me. I am an insomniac." Armstrong himself has said that the album title comes from his own insomnia, after having been woken up frequently during the night due to his son's screams. Armstrong also mentions his insomnia from the perspective of methamphetamine use in the song "Brain Stew".


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: The collage on the album cover was created by Smith and is called God Told Me to Skin You Alive, a reference to the Dead Kennedys song "I Kill Children". The cover art contains an image (the dentist) that was originally used in a collage featured in the inside cover art of Dead Kennedys' album "Plastic Surgery Disasters" (1982). Smith knew drummer Tré Cool from Green Day's time at Lookout! Records and told Cool that if he ever needed album artwork that he should call him. The cover art features several hidden images: a naked woman, three fairies, and several other ghostly faces in the flames. There are also three skulls on the entire album cover and back, one for each member of Green Day. One of the skulls requires the viewer to tilt the piece at an angle. The hidden skull is taken from Hans Holbein's 1533 painting "The Ambassadors". Green Day's version, however, is slightly different from the original, with the woman holding Armstrong's iconic Sonic Blue Fernandes imitation Stratocaster rather than an acoustic guitar.


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: Promotion for "Insomniac" was limited, with a "virtual press blackout". All of the album's singles contained the words "fuck" or "shit" and the music video for "Geek Stink Breath", showing a methamphetamine addict having his tooth removed, was removed from MTV playlists. This, combined with the "God Told Me to Skin You Alive" cover collage, led Winwood to comment that "everything about "Insomniac" was noticeably different from "Dookie", yet fully informed by the vast shadow it cast." Larry Livermore, co-founder of the band's former label Lookout Records, found "Insomniac" to be "depressing", and recalls that he "was even a bit worried about them" upon hearing the single "Brain Stew". A staff writer for "People" compared the release of "Insomniac" to Nirvana's "In Utero" (1993), which featured a darker, less accessible sound in the wake of the success of the band's multi-platinum album "Nevermind".


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: "Insomniac" debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, selling over 171,000 copies its first week of release. The first single released from "Insomniac" was "Geek Stink Breath". The song was successful on both Top 40 and rock radio stations and peaked at number 27 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 Airplay. The second single, released exclusively in the United Kingdom, was "Stuck with Me". The song was moderately successful in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, but was not one of the group's bigger hits in the US. The third single from the album was "Brain Stew/Jaded". The two were separate songs (tracks 10 and 11 on "Insomniac"), but they were released together as a single and a music video. The song "Walking Contradiction" was released as a promotional single in August to promote the album. While "86" was only released as a promotional single in Spain and Germany.


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: "Insomniac" did not have the big sales or airplay as the singles from "Dookie", but it was generally well received by critics. It earned three and a half out of five stars from "Rolling Stone", which said "In punk the good stuff actually unfolds and gains meaning as you listen without sacrificing any of its electric, haywire immediacy. And Green Day are as good as this stuff gets". "Entertainment Weekly" gave the album a B with particular praise for Billie Joe Armstrong, stating that: "Fans needn't worry about Armstrong, a new father, rhapsodizing over the joys of changing diapers or whining about being a wealthy rock star. Once more, the songs relate the travails of a pathetic, self-loathing goofball whose sense of self-worth is continually reduced to rubble by sundry jerks, authority figures, and cultural elitists."


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: However, Green Day was slightly criticized for not progressing as much as their predecessors. "Entertainment Weekly" stated that: ""Insomniac" does make you wonder about Green Day's growth, though. Between albums one and four, The Clash, to take an old-school example, branched out from guitar crunch to reggae, dub, and Spectorized pop. By comparison, Green Day sound exactly the same as on their first album, albeit with crisper production and, ominously, a palpable degeneration in their sense of humor. The few hints of growth are fairly microscopic: a tougher metallic edge to a few of the songs ... and lyrics that are bleaker than "Dookie"'s."


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: AllMusic similarly noted that "they kept their blueprint and made it a shade darker. Throughout "Insomniac", there are vague references to the band's startling multi-platinum breakthrough, but the album is hardly a stark confessional on the level of Nirvana's "In Utero". ... While nothing on the album is as immediate as "Basket Case" or "Longview," the band has gained a powerful sonic punch, which goes straight for the gut but sacrifices the raw edge they so desperately want to keep and makes the record slightly tame. Billie Joe hasn't lost much of his talent for simple, tuneful hooks, but after a series of songs that all sound pretty much the same, it becomes clear that he needs to push himself a little bit more if Green Day ever want to be something more than a good punk-pop band. As it is, they remain a good punk-pop band, and "Insomniac" is a good punk-pop record, but nothing more." Robert Christgau opined "[Armstrong's] songs conceptualize his natural whine with a musicality that undercuts his defeatism."


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: The album was included at number 8 on "Rock Sound"s "The 51 Most Essential Pop Punk Albums of All Time" list.


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: Despite being considered a commercial disappointment, Armstrong noted, "["Insomniac"] did a lot better than I thought it was going to do...From the sound of it, we knew it wasn't going to sell as much as "Dookie"." The group embarked on an extensive world tour to promote "Insomniac" in early 1996, which saw the band performing in sports arenas that contrasted with the small clubs the group was accustomed to playing. The members became increasingly uncomfortable with the level of stardom they had attained; Armstrong recalled, "We were becoming the things we hated, playing those big arenas. It was beginning to be not fun anymore."


title: Insomniac (Green Day album)

text: Green Day also became homesick because touring forced the members to leave behind their families. The band eventually decided to cancel the late 1996 European leg of the "Insomniac" tour to take time off to spend at home. During this time, the band continued to write, and eventually completed over three dozen new songs by the beginning of 1997 for the upcoming album, "Nimrod". Although the group's last effort with producer Rob Cavallo was considered a disappointment, the band did not contemplate choosing anyone else to work with on "Nimrod", because the members viewed Cavallo as a "mentor".


title: Shamier Anderson

text: Shamier Anderson (born May 6, 1991) is a Canadian actor. He is known for playing U.S. Deputy Marshal Xavier Dolls on the television series "Wynonna Earp" and "Invasion."


title: Shamier Anderson

text: Anderson is the older brother of actor Stephan James. He graduated from Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts as an Ontario Scholar then went on to study criminology and trained with weapons prior to breaking into acting. He has training in martial arts Wing Chun Kung Fu. Anderson's parents are from Spanish Town, Jamaica.


title: Shamier Anderson

text: Anderson and his brother, fellow actor Stephan James, founded a non-profit called B.L.A.C.K. Canada (Building a Legacy in Acting, Cinema + Knowledge) in 2016. In December 2020, they announced an extension of the organization called The Black Academy, which showcases Black talent across Canada in the arts, culture, entertainment, and sports. Anderson explained, "The impetus of The Black Academy stems from our long-lasting commitment, deep ties to our community, and an awareness of the lack of opportunities to celebrate and elevate Black talent in Canada." The organization's vision includes building a coalition of supporters who can provide funding, mentorship, programming, and awards to support Black excellence in Canada. More recently, he and Stephan James has struck a deal with Boat Rocker.


title: Zoo (TV series)

text: Zoo is an American drama television series based on the 2012 novel of the same name by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge, the former also serving as an executive producer for the series, which stars James Wolk, Kristen Connolly, Nonso Anozie, Nora Arnezeder and Billy Burke as a group of varied professionals who investigate the mysterious outbreak of violent animal attacks upon humans all over the world.


title: Zoo (TV series)

text: "Zoo" premiered on June 30, 2015, on CBS. CBS renewed the series for a third season in August 2016, which aired between June 29 and September 21, 2017. On October 23, 2017, CBS announced the series had been cancelled after three seasons.


title: Zoo (TV series)

text: Violent animal attacks upon humans are occurring all over the world. Jackson Oz, an American zoologist and his Kenyan friend, Abraham Kenyatta, a safari guide, as well as Jamie Campbell, a Los Angeles reporter, Mitch Morgan, a quirky veterinary pathologist, and a French intelligence agent, Chloe Tousignant, all seek to investigate the mysterious pandemic as the attacks become more coordinated and ferocious.


title: Zoo (TV series)

text: In October 2013, it was announced that CBS had given "Zoo" "a rare pilot production commitment for a pitch originating from sibling CBS TV Studios." In July 2014, the series was given a 13-episode straight-to-series order and added to the network's summer schedule.


title: Zoo (TV series)

text: The series premiered on June 30, 2015, on CBS. On October 2, 2015, "Zoo" was renewed by CBS for a second season, which premiered on June 28, 2016. On August 10, 2016, CBS renewed the series for a third season, which premiered on June 29, 2017.


title: Zoo (TV series)

text: James Wolk was the first to be cast, in November 2014, followed later the same month by Nora Arnezeder and Nonso Anozie. The main cast was rounded out in January 2015, with Kristen Connolly and Billy Burke. In February, Geoff Stults was cast in a recurring role for a "multi-episode arc". In March, Carl Lumbly was cast in a recurring role.


title: Zoo (TV series)

text: In March, 2016, Josh Salatin and Alyssa Diaz were added to the cast as series regulars in the second season. In April, Joanne Kelly was cast in a recurring role.


title: Zoo (TV series)

text: In December 2016, Gracie Dzienny, who guest-starred in the second-season finale, was promoted to series regular for the third season. In January, 2017, Aleks Paunovic was cast in a recurring role. In February, Athena Karkanis, Hilary Jardine, and Sophina Brown were cast in recurring roles.


title: Zoo (TV series)

text: The series started filming in New Orleans in January 2015. Production for the second season began filming in February 2016 in and around Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The third season started filming in mid-January 2017, also in and around Vancouver, British Columbia.


title: Zoo (TV series)

text: "Zoo" aired in Australia the day after the U.S premiere, and was simulcast in Canada. It was also aired in the UK and Ireland on Sky One, and in Israel on Yes Action.


title: Zoo (TV series)

text: Netflix carried the streaming rights in eight countries with many regions losing the show in June 2022.


title: Lou Thesz

text: Aloysius Martin "Lou" Thesz (April 24, 1916 – April 28, 2002) was an American professional wrestler. He was a three-time NWA World Heavyweight Champion and held the title for a combined total of 10 years, three months and nine days (3,749 days) – longer than anyone else in history. Considered to be one of the last true shooters in professional wrestling and described as the "quintessential athlete... a polished warrior who could break a man in two if pushed the wrong way", Thesz is widely regarded as one of the greatest wrestlers of all time and the single greatest wrestling world champion in history, and probably the last globally accepted world champion. In Japan, Thesz was known as the 'God of Wrestling' and was called "Tetsujin", which means 'Ironman', in respect for his speed, conditioning and expertise in catch wrestling. Alongside Karl Gotch and Billy Robinson, Thesz later helped train young Japanese wrestlers and mixed martial artists in catch wrestling.


title: Lou Thesz

text: A successful amateur wrestler in his youth and an ardent supporter of the sport in his later years, he helped establish, in addition to being a member of its inaugural class, the George Tragos/Lou Thesz Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame, which honors successful professional wrestlers with a strong amateur wrestling background, and is a charter member of several other halls of fame, including: WCW, "Wrestling Observer Newsletter", Professional Wrestling and WWE's Legacy Wing.


title: Lou Thesz

text: Thesz was born in Banat, Michigan in 1916. His family moved to St. Louis when he was a young boy. His working-class immigrant parents Martin, a shoemaker of Hungarian and German descent, and Katherine Schultz, also of German descent, hailed from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Thesz and his three sisters grew up speaking German at home and he did not start learning English until he entered kindergarten at age five. Hungarian was also spoken in the Thesz household but the children did not learn it. In addition to public school, he also had to attend German school every Saturday until he was eight. He was fluent in German and English.


title: Lou Thesz

text: Thesz's father was a national Greco-Roman wrestling middleweight champion in his native Hungary and introduced Lou to the sport as a young boy. At eight years old, Lou began a tough and thorough education in Greco-Roman wrestling under his father, which provided the fundamentals for his later success. He trained in Greco-Roman wrestling under the guidance of his father for several years until transitioning to folkstyle wrestling at high school where he was a successful competitor on his school team. He also trained in boxing as a teenager. Thesz dropped out of high school by age 14 to work at his father's shoe repair business and began training in freestyle wrestling at Cleveland High School due to his father knowing the wrestling coaches. He quickly became an accomplished freestyle wrestler, competing in city-wide intramurals and regional tournaments in the 160 lb division. At aged 16, Thesz then gained further training in freestyle wrestling under John Zastro. Thesz credited Zastro for elevating his wrestling and became his regular sparring partner. Thesz won several amateur titles and became one of the most dominant freestyle wrestlers of his weight class in the county, and caught the eye of Tom Packs, a professional wrestling promoter in St. Louis. Packs met with Thesz and asked if he wanted to wrestle professionally and Thesz accepted. Thesz later said he would have continued his amateur career had he not been asked. Packs sent Lou to George Tragos for further coaching.


title: Lou Thesz

text: George Tragos, a feared Greek Olympic freestyle wrestler, catch wrestler (also known as 'hooking' during Thesz's time) and wrestling coach at the University of Missouri, took a liking to Thesz and respected his willingness to work hard and follow instruction. He trained under the watchful eye of Tragos for nearly four years at the National Gym in St. Louis. Tragos, who had a well-deserved reputation as a dangerous catch wrestler, decried the emerging performance-related aspects of the sport and instead coached young men to be true, authentic professional wrestlers. Tragos specifically taught Thesz submission wrestling and how to wrestle from the bottom. Thesz remembered Tragos saying, "any fool can start on top. If you start at the bottom, you learn to wrestle." Ray Steele also served as a coach and mentor to Thesz during this time.


title: Lou Thesz

text: Thesz also studied under German-born catch wrestler Ad Santel, who was known for his feud with the Kodokan judo school. Thesz studied under Santel for up to five days every week during a 6 month stay in California and remembered it being the "most intensive training period of my life". Throughout his career, Thesz continued to train under Santel whenever he was in the California area. The training he received under Santel would help establish Thesz as one of the most dangerous grapplers in the world.


title: Lou Thesz

text: Thesz later met legendary former champion Ed "Strangler" Lewis in St. Louis and was encouraged to challenge Lewis to a friendly contest. Despite losing the 15 minute contest, Lewis was impressed by Thesz's skills and Lewis later became his manager and trainer. Lewis later described Thesz as "lithe as a panther and exceptionally fast. He moves with the speed of a lightweight." As his trainer, Lewis taught Thesz extremely painful and potentially crippling submission holds that would help him when facing opponents that refused to lose.


title: Lou Thesz

text: Thesz made his professional wrestling debut at the age of 17, performing in undercard matches around the St. Louis territory whilst still working at his father's shoe repair shop. However, Thesz spent most of his early career honing his craft under the tutelage of George Tragos in both catch and freestyle wrestling, and later with Ad Santel. When not taking a local booking, Tragos arranged Thesz with competitive workouts with top collegiate wrestlers in the region. Thesz then worked the Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and California territory, continuing to compete on the undercards while honing his craft on the road. Thesz notably worked out with top amateurs trained by Billy Thom, head coach of the 1936 U.S. Olympic wrestling team, and old carnival wrestlers around the region including Earl Wampler, who became his mentor and occasional workout partner on the road.


title: Lou Thesz

text: By 1937, Thesz had become one of the biggest stars in the St. Louis territory, and on December 29 he defeated Everett Marshall for the American Wrestling Association World Heavyweight Championship in a grueling three hour match, the first of many world heavyweight titles, which also made Thesz became the youngest world heavyweight champion in history, at the age of 21. There is speculation that this match may have been a legitimate shoot contest. Thesz later told wrestling historian Mike Chapman that he was there to wrestle competitively, which he did, and ended up winning the match, but was unsure if he actually won or Marshall dropped the title to him. He later dropped the title to Steve "Crusher" Casey in Boston six weeks later. He won the National Wrestling Association World Heavyweight Championship in 1939, once again defeating Marshall, and again in 1948, defeating Bill Longson.


title: Lou Thesz

text: In 1948, the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) was formed, the purpose being to create one world champion for all the various wrestling territories throughout North America. Orville Brown, the reigning Midwest World Heavyweight Championship holder, was named the first champion. Thesz, at the time, was head of a promotional combine that included fellow wrestling champions Longson, Bobby Managoff, Canadian promoter Frank Tunney and Eddie Quinn, who promoted in the St. Louis territory where NWA promoter Sam Muchnick was running opposition. Quinn and Muchnick ended their promotional war, and Thesz' promotion was absorbed into the NWA. Part of the deal was a title unification match between Brown and Thesz, who held the National Wrestling Association's World Heavyweight Championship. Unfortunately, just weeks before the scheduled bout, Brown was involved in an automobile accident that ended his career, and he was forced to vacate the championship and the NWA awarded the title to the No. 1 contender, Thesz. Thesz was chosen for his skill as a "hooker" to prevent double crosses by would-be shooters who would deviate from the planned finish for personal glory.


title: Lou Thesz

text: Between 1949 and 1956, Thesz set out to unify all the existing world titles into the National Wrestling Alliance World Heavyweight Championship. In 1952, he defeated Baron Michele Leone in Los Angeles for the California World Heavyweight title and became the closest any wrestler had been to being undisputed world heavyweight wrestling champion since Danno O'Mahony in 1936. Thesz finally dropped the title to Whipper Billy Watson in 1956, and took several months off to recuperate from an ankle injury. He regained the title from Watson seven months later.


title: Lou Thesz

text: 1957 was an important year for Thesz; on June 14, the first taint to Thesz' claim of undisputed champion occurred in a match with gymnast-turned-wrestling star, Edouard Carpentier. The match was tied at two falls apiece when Thesz claimed a legitimate back injury and forfeit the last fall, thus Carpentier was declared the winner; however, the NWA chose not to recognize the title change, deciding a championship could not change hands due to injury. Despite the NWA's decision, there were some promotions who continued to recognize Carpentier's claim to the NWA World Heavyweight Championship. That same year, Thesz became the first wrestler to defend the NWA World Heavyweight Championship in Japan, wrestling Rikidōzan in a series of 60-minute draws. Their first match notably started as a legitimate contest as Rikidōzan believed himself to be a far superior wrestler. Thesz quickly dominated Rikidōzan and easily beat him to win the first fall. Rikidōzan accepted defeat and they worked the rest of the match. Their bouts popularized professional wrestling in Japan, gaining the sport mainstream acceptance. Realizing he could make more money in the land of the rising sun, Thesz petitioned to the NWA promoters to regularly defend the championship belt in Japan, but his request was turned down, and Thesz asked to drop the title to his own hand picked champion, Dick Hutton, rather than Thesz's real-life rival and the more popular choice, Buddy Rogers. Thesz would embark on a tour of Europe and Japan, billing himself as the NWA International Heavyweight Champion; this title is still recognized as a part of All Japan Pro Wrestling's Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship.


title: Lou Thesz

text: In 1963, Thesz came out of semi-retirement to win his sixth world heavyweight championship from Buddy Rogers at the age of 46. In 1964, he infamously faced Kintaro Ohki, a student of Rikidōzan, in what turned into a legitimate shoot contest. Originally scheduled for three falls, Ohki shot on Thesz in the first round. Ohki's move to shoot on Thesz ended things fast, as Thesz wounded him to the point that Ohki was stretchered off. He would hold the NWA title until 1966 when, at the age of 50 when he lost it to Gene Kiniski. On May 29, 1968, in Bombay, Dara Singh's victory over Lou Thesz earned Dara Singh the World championship. According to Thesz, Singh (who was 12 years younger than Thesz) was "an authentic wrestler, was superbly conditioned" and had no problem losing to Dara Singh.


title: Lou Thesz

text: Thesz wrestled on a part-time basis over the next 13 years, winning his last major title in 1978, in Mexico, becoming the inaugural Universal Wrestling Alliance Heavyweight Champion at the age of 62, before dropping the championship to El Canek a year later. Thesz wrestled a match with Luke Graham in 1979 billed as his retirement match, though he did continue to wrestle periodically through the 1980s. He finally wrestled his last public match on December 26, 1990, in Hamamatsu, Japan at the age of 74, against his protégé, Masahiro Chono. This makes him one of the only male professional wrestlers, along with Abdullah The Butcher, to wrestle in seven different decades.


title: Lou Thesz

text: After retiring, Thesz remained involved in the wrestling industry. He later became a special guest referee, promoter and trainer. He became the commissioner and occasional trainer for the shoot-style promotion Union of Wrestling Force International, and lent the promotion one of his old NWA championship belts, which they recognized as their own world title. With the promotion he spent one week every month in Japan teaching the wrestlers techniques in catch wrestling. However, by 1993 his enthusiasm for the UWFi waned as the company started moving away from its shootfighting style and favoring performers over wrestlers, and he soon severed relations with the company, taking his old championship belt back with him. His specific criticisms included the use of power bombs, deriding them as unrealistic despite his own use of them and their later use in MMA fights. As an announcer, Thesz was the color commentator for International World Class Championship Wrestling's weekly television show.


title: Lou Thesz

text: He was highly critical of modern-day professional wrestling and described it as 'choreographed tumbling', showcasing little to no actual wrestling skills. He commented on the rise of mixed martial arts and favourably compared it to his early days as a competitive catch wrestler. Through his friendship with his student Gene LeBell, Thesz had an association with Gokor Chivichyan and LeBell's Hayastan MMA Academy. He remained active as a wrestling coach, holding seminars in Virginia and later Florida. One of his most famous students, Kiyoshi Tamura, was one of the first men to beat a member of the Gracie family in over fifty years, beating Renzo Gracie by unanimous decision in an MMA fight. Kit Bauman, co-writer of Thesz's autobiography "Hooker", received a magazine mailed by Thesz that included a story on the sport of pankration, an Ancient Greek combat sport that blended wrestling and boxing (and considered an early precursor to MMA), with a brief note that Thesz wrote saying, "this sounds like something I would have enjoyed." Thesz was frequently seen in attendance at NCAA wrestling events and was a lifelong supporter of amateur wrestling. He made occasional visits to top collegiate universities in the country, most notably up striking up friendships with Old Dominion University head coach Gray Simons and University of Iowa head coach Dan Gable.


title: Lou Thesz

text: In 1992, Thesz became the president of the Cauliflower Alley Club (CAC), an organization recognizing and supporting retired wrestlers, boxers and actors who enjoyed an association with wrestling. He served as CAC's president until 2000. In 1999, he helped establish the George Tragos/Lou Thesz Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame, a hall of fame and museum located within the National Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum's Dan Gable Museum. The hall of fame honors professional wrestlers with a strong amateur wrestling background. Thesz became the first inductee alongside George Tragos, Ed "Strangler" Lewis and Frank Gotch. He served on the Board of Directors and also did part-time coaching on the wrestling mats at the museum.


title: Lou Thesz

text: Thesz was married three times. His first marriage to Evelyn Katherine Ernst on March 22, 1937. Thesz was convalescing from a severe knee injury suffered in 1939 and from 1941 to 1944 worked as a dog breeder and trainer for Dogs for Defense and later as a supervisor for the Todd Houston Shipyard. He divorced his first wife in 1944 and at the shipyard, Thesz met his second wife, Fredda Huddleston Winter, with whom he fathered three children: Jeff Thesz, Robert Thesz and Patrick Thesz. Thesz's second marriage came to an end after he and Fredda divorced in 1975. He married Charlie Catherine Thesz and remained with her for the rest of his life. Thesz lived in Norfolk, Virginia for much of his later life and started a wrestling school called the Virginia Wrestling Academy in 1988. One of Thesz's protégés Mark Fleming became head coach of the academy. He wrote an autobiography, "Hooker: An Authentic Wrestler's Adventures Inside the Bizarre World of Professional Wrestling". Thesz was drafted into the army in 1944, despite a legitimate injury to his knee and multiple medical deferments. Owing to his wrestling background, he taught hand-to-hand combat defense for medics before being discharged in 1946.


title: Lou Thesz

text: Thesz remained in remarkable physical condition in his older years, however after undergoing triple bypass surgery for an aortic valve replacement on April 9, 2002, he died due to complications weeks later on April 28, four days after his 86th birthday, in Orlando, Florida.


title: Lou Thesz

text: Thesz is strongly considered by many to be the greatest professional wrestler of the 20th century. Among his many accomplishments in the sport, he is credited with inventing a number of professional wrestling moves and holds such as the belly-to-back waistlock suplex (later known as the German suplex due to its association with Karl Gotch), the Lou Thesz press, stepover toehold facelock (STF), and the original powerbomb.


title: Lou Thesz

text: Thesz was the first wrestler to ever hold the NWA International Heavyweight Championship, which became a part of what is now the Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship under All Japan Pro Wrestling. Thesz was also the first UWA World Heavyweight Champion for the now defunct Universal Wrestling Association in Mexico, where he won the title after defeating Mil Máscaras on July 26, 1976. Thesz was the first ever TWWA World Heavyweight Champion for the now defunct International Wrestling Enterprise as well. Thesz and "The Outlaw" (Dory Funk Sr.) were the first ever NWA Pacific Coast (Vancouver) Tag Team Champions.


title: Lou Thesz

text: In 1999, his name was given to the George Tragos/Lou Thesz Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame for professional wrestling stars with a successful amateur background at the International Wrestling Institute and Museum in Waterloo, Iowa, where he was an inaugural inductee. In October 1997, Thesz was honored by a ceremony at World Wrestling Federation's (WWF) as being both the youngest and oldest world heavyweight champion at ages 21 and 50, respectively (technically, Verne Gagne holds the record for oldest champ, when he held the AWA World Heavyweight Championship in 1980 at age 54, which was tied by WWF owner Vince McMahon in 1999; Thesz has since been supplanted as the oldest NWA World Heavyweight Champion by former champion Tim Storm (who was born on February 18, 1964), who won the title at age 52 by defeating Jax Dane on October 21, 2016). In 1999, a large group of professional wrestling experts, analysts and historians named Thesz the most influential NWA World Heavyweight Champion of all time. In 2002, Thesz was named the second greatest professional wrestler of all time behind Ric Flair in the magazine article "100 Wrestlers of All Time" by John Molinaro, edited by Dave Meltzer and Jeff Marek.


title: Lou Thesz

text: Former amateur wrestler and NWA World Heavyweight Champion Jack Brisco named Thesz his all-time favorite professional wrestler by saying that "Lou Thesz was my idol. He was a great wrestler, a great example, a class man". AEW wrestler Claudio Castagnoli named Thesz his "dream" tag team partner and said, "He [Thesz] personifies wrestling. He represents everything that I think it should be. He's a class act, and he was a workhorse for the company, while at the same time being a student of the game. He was completely legit. I would have loved a chance to go one-on-one with him or to work alongside him". Japanese wrestler Rikidōzan, who had several matches with Thesz in Japan, considered Thesz to be the greatest wrestler of all time and lamented that "after the match with the world's greatest wrestler, fights with other run-of-the-mill wrestlers became unappetizing for me".


title: Lou Thesz

text: Three-time NCAA heavyweight champion and NWA World Heavyweight Champion Dick Hutton said that Thesz was the best man he ever met, in any type of wrestling (both competitive and performance). Hutton later said that Thesz was "the only man I ever faced in the ring, professional or amateur, who was faster than I was." Catch wrestling historian, wrestler and writer Jake Shannon stated that "had a promotion like the Ultimate Fighting Championship been around in their day... men like Karl Gotch, Billy Robinson, Thesz, George Gordienko, Dick Hutton, and Danny Hodge, would not only have participated in it, but most likely dominated it." National judo champion, grappler and professional wrestler Gene LeBell said that he considered Thesz to be one of his 'teachers', saying "Lou Thesz, Karl Gotch and Vic Christy all taught me a lot about grappling... From Thesz I learned how to hurt people. He had a little bit of a sadistic side". LeBell also mentioned that he learned most of his submission grappling from Thesz. LeBell also considers Thesz, Ed "Strangler" Lewis and Karl Gotch as the toughest men he has ever known. Wrestling promoter Sam Muchnick considered Ed "Strangler" Lewis as the greatest legitimate wrestler he had ever seen, with Thesz, Ray Steele, Joe Stecher, Jim Londos and John Pesek "only a few steps behind Lewis." Fellow catch wrestler Billy Robinson considered Thesz to be the greatest professional wrestler of all time, saying "everybody respected professional wrestling because of Lou Thesz. He may not have been the best competitive catch wrestler but he was very good in his time."


title: Lou Thesz

text: Thesz is an inaugural member of several professional wrestling halls of fame, including the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum, Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame, NWA Hall of Fame, WCW Hall of Fame, and the George Tragos/Lou Thesz Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame which is subsequently named after both one of his trainers along with Thesz himself. On April 2, 2016, Thesz was posthumously inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame as an inaugural member of the "Legacy" wing.


title: Ming Tsai

text: Ming Hao Tsai (; born March 29, 1964) is an American restaurateur, television personality, and celebrity chef. Tsai's restaurants have focused on east–west fusion cuisine, and have included major stakes in Blue Ginger in Wellesley, Massachusetts (a Zagat- and James Beard-recognized establishment) from 1998 to 2017, and Blue Dragon in the Fort Point Channel area of Boston (a Zagat-recognized tapas-style gastropub named in "Esquire Magazine" "Best New Restaurants 2013").


title: Ming Tsai

text: Tsai hosts "Simply Ming", a cooking show featured on American Public Television, in its seventeenth season. Past shows Tsai hosted include "Ming's Quest", a cooking show featured on the Fine Living Network, and "East Meets West". Tsai appeared in the Food Network cooking competition "The Next Iron Chef" (2010).


title: Ming Tsai

text: Clayton was born, in Newport Beach, California, United States on March 29, 1964, to Iris (née Lee), who owned a Chinese restaurant, and , an engineer, and was raised in Dayton, Ohio, where he attended The Miami Valley School. Tsai's maternal grandparents later emigrated to Dayton from Taiwan after escaping China during the Cultural Revolution. He assisted with the cooking as he was growing up in the restaurant, Mandarin Kitchen, owned by his mother. Tsai is a grandson of Chinese composer and uncle of Lauren Tsai.


title: Ming Tsai

text: Tsai later attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and then proceeded to study engineering and play varsity squash at Yale University. There, he was a member of the Phi chapter of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1986. He received a master's degree in hotel administration and hospitality marketing from Cornell University in 1989. Either the summer after his sophomore or junior year at Yale, he attended culinary school at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Tsai speaks four languages: English, Mandarin Chinese, French, and Spanish.