title: System of measurement

text: Both imperial units and US customary units derive from earlier English units. Imperial units were mostly used in the former British Empire and the British Commonwealth, but in all these countries they have been largely supplanted by the metric system. They are still used for some applications in the United Kingdom but have been mostly replaced by the metric system in commercial, scientific, and industrial applications. US customary units, however, are still the main system of measurement in the United States. While some steps towards metrication have been made (mainly in the late 1960s and early 1970s), the customary units have a strong hold due to the vast industrial infrastructure and commercial development.


title: System of measurement

text: While imperial and US customary systems are closely related, there are a number of differences between them. Units of length and area (the inch, foot, yard, mile, etc.) have been identical since the adoption of the International Yard and Pound Agreement; however, America and, formerly, India retained older definitions for surveying purposes. This gave rise to the US survey foot for instance. The avoirdupois units of mass and weight differ for units larger than a pound (lb). The imperial system uses a stone of 14 lb, a long hundredweight of 112 lb and a long ton of 2240 lb. The stone is not used in the US and the hundredweights and tons are short: 100 lb and 2000 lb respectively.


title: System of measurement

text: Where these systems most notably differ is in their units of volume. A US fluid ounce (fl oz), about 29.6 millilitres (ml), is slightly larger than the imperial fluid ounce (about 28.4 ml). However, as there are 16 US fl oz to a US pint and 20 imp fl oz per imperial pint, the imperial pint is about 20% larger. The same is true of quarts, gallons, etc.; six US gallons are a little less than five imperial gallons.


title: System of measurement

text: The avoirdupois system served as the general system of mass and weight. In addition to this there are the troy and the apothecaries' systems. Troy weight was customarily used for precious metals, black powder and gemstones. The troy ounce is the only unit of the system in current use; it is used for precious metals. Although the troy ounce is larger than its avoirdupois equivalent, the pound is smaller. The obsolete troy pound was divided into 12 ounces, rather than the 16 ounces per pound of the avoirdupois system. The apothecaries' system was traditionally used in pharmacology, but has now been replaced by the metric system; it shared the same pound and ounce as the troy system but with different further subdivisions.


title: System of measurement

text: Natural units are units of measurement defined in terms of universal physical constants in such a manner that selected physical constants take on the numerical value of one when expressed in terms of those units. Natural units are so named because their definition relies on only properties of nature and not on any human construct. Varying systems of natural units are possible, depending on the choice of constants used.


title: System of measurement

text: A unit of measurement that applies to money is called a unit of account in economics and unit of measure in accounting. This is normally a currency issued by a country or a fraction thereof; for instance, the US dollar and US cent ( of a dollar), or the euro and euro cent.


title: System of measurement

text: ISO 4217 is the international standard describing three letter codes (also known as the currency code) to define the names of currencies established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).


title: System of measurement

text: Throughout history, many official systems of measurement have been used. While no longer in official use, some of these customary systems are occasionally used in day-to-day life, for instance in cooking.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: Six Feet Under is an American death metal band from Tampa, Florida, formed in 1993. The band consists of five members: founding vocalist Chris Barnes, guitarists Ray Suhy and Jack Owen, bassist Jeff Hughell and drummer Marco Pitruzzella. It was originally a side project formed by Barnes with guitarist Allen West of Obituary, but became a full-time commitment after Barnes was dismissed from Cannibal Corpse in 1995. Six Feet Under has released 13 albums, and is listed by Nielsen Soundscan as the fourth bestselling death metal act in the U.S.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: After Barnes and West joined forces, they recruited Terry Butler, who knew West from his involvement with Massacre, and Greg Gall, Terry Butler's brother-in-law. Six Feet Under first played in 1993 at clubs, performing mostly cover songs. The band began writing original material in the middle of 1994. Because Barnes was already signed to Metal Blade Records with Cannibal Corpse, Six Feet Under signed to this label.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: Their first album, "Haunted", was released on September 1, 1995. "Haunted" was produced by Brian Slagel (who discovered Slayer) and Scott Burns (record producer) (who discovered Sepultura and worked with Napalm Death, and Deicide, among others). By this point Chris Barnes had made Six Feet Under his main priority. In 1995, in the process of recording the album Vile, he parted ways with Cannibal Corpse.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: Six Feet Under's next release was the "Alive and Dead" EP on October 29, 1996. A dual studio/live EP, it contains three studio recordings ("Insect", "Drowning", and a Judas Priest cover, "Grinder") and four tracks from "Haunted" performed live. The band released their second studio album, "Warpath", on September 9, 1997.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: In 1998, Allen West left to rejoin Obituary and was replaced by Steve Swanson. This is the only lineup change that the band had until January 2011. Combined with Barnes' departure from Cannibal Corpse, the arrival of Swanson helped turn Six Feet Under from a mere side-project to a band in its own right.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: July 13, 1999, saw the release of Six Feet Under's third studio album, "Maximum Violence". As the name of the album suggests, the lyrics on this release are much more violent than on past releases - though maximum may have been an overstatement due to some room for more violence. The band also recorded a death-metal retooling of the Kiss song "War Machine".


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: During the summer of 2000, Six Feet Under participated in the Vans Warped Tour, a festival that, at the time, usually featured punk rock bands.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: Further pursuing their interest in cover songs, Six Feet Under released an album entirely of covers, "Graveyard Classics", on October 24, 2000. The songs were given death metal makeovers in regards to the timbre of the vocals and instruments, but the original riffs and rhythms of the songs were left intact. Songs include Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf", Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water", and Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze".


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: The group's fourth studio album, "True Carnage" (August 7, 2001), was also their first recording to feature guest artists: Ice-T raps while Barnes roars on "One Bullet Left", and Karyn Crisis joins Barnes for "Sick and Twisted". "True Carnage" peaked on the Billboard Heatseeker's charts at number 18.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: Six Feet Under undertook a lengthy bout of American tours, commencing in the summer of 2002, with supporters Skinless and Sworn Enemy. Their June 14 performance was recorded for a DVD and live album release, "Double Dead Redux". September 2002 saw the band touring with Hatebreed. Around Christmas 2002, they participated in some European festivals with bands such as Kataklysm and Dying Fetus.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: The band next released "Bringer of Blood", on September 23, 2003. In addition to his trademark guttural vocals, Barnes also began using higher pitched pig squeal vocals on this release.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: "Graveyard Classics 2" came out on October 19, 2004. This cover album focused solely on the 1980 AC/DC album "Back in Black". AllMusic reviewer Wade Kergan remarked that the death metal-makeover on these forefather songs "are equal parts menace and kitsch... Six Feet Under are obviously having a blast as they rip through them."


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: Six Feet Under released their sixth studio album on March 21, 2005, entitled "13". While writing the lyrics, Chris Barnes reportedly entered "a vision" from smoking large quantities of marijuana and meditating.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: Metal Blade Records issued "A Decade in the Grave" on October 28, 2005, a five-disc box set. The first two discs are 'best-of' material, the third is a rarities collection, the fourth disc is from one of the band's first concerts back in 1995, and the final disc is a live DVD from 2005.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: In November 2005, Chris Barnes joined the Finnish death metal band Torture Killer as lead vocalist for a side project. His new bandmates saw this as a huge compliment, having started out as a Six Feet Under and Obituary cover band. Barnes sung vocals on their 2006 studio album "Swarm!"


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: Six Feet Under toured for the majority of 2006 before hitting the studios to record their next album, "Commandment", which was released on April 17, 2007. The album works within the band's formula. According to music critic Chad Bowar, the album has "catchy death metal songs... [that are] crushingly heavy, but also have a great groove to them."


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: Six Feet Under played Metalfest 2007 tour alongside openers Finntroll, Belphegor, and Nile, their most heavily promoted tour to date. A music video for "Doomsday" aired on MTV2's "Headbangers Ball", starting on November 10 of that year.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: On December 24, 2007, Six Feet Under announced on their website that they would go to the studio in early 2008 to record a new album. The album, titled "Death Rituals", was released on Metal Blade Records on November 11, 2008, in the US, and November 17, 2008, in the UK.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: As announced on January 31, 2008, Chris Barnes officially parted ways with Torture Killer, to be replaced by Juri Sallinen. Drummer Greg Gall is currently writing and recording material with a new band called Exitsect, along with guitarist Sam Williams (Denial Fiend, Down by Law), bassist Frank Watkins (Obituary, Gorgoroth), guitarist Joe Kiser (Murder-Suicide Pact, Slap Of Reality) and vocalist Paul Pavlovich (Assück).


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: In early 2011, Terry Butler left to join fellow death metal band Obituary. Drummer Greg Gall had also left.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: In November 2011, Rob Arnold and Matt Devries posted statements saying they have departed from Chimaira to play in Six Feet Under full-time. However, in 2012, Matt Devries left the band to join Fear Factory, replacing longtime bassist Byron Stroud. The vacant position was subsequently filled by ex-Brain Drill 7-string bassist, Jeff Hughell.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: The band's ninth studio album "Undead" was released on May 22, 2012. It was also announced on the same day that Rob Arnold would be replaced by Swedish guitarist Ola Englund of bands Feared and Scarpoint. The band says that Rob will remain a central writing partner and collaborator on future Six Feet Under releases.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: According to a recent interview on March 21, 2013, Barnes is already writing material for the band's next album.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: In 2013, guitarist Ola Englund and drummer Kevin Talley departed the band. Marco Pitruzzella took over on drums.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: On May 5, 2015, Six Feet Under released their eleventh studio album, "Crypt of the Devil". On this release Chris Barnes incorporated Phil Hall, Josh Hall and Brandon Ellis from the band Cannabis Corpse for the studio line up.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: In April 2015, Jeff Hughell left the Hatefest tour in Europe and Victor Brandt of Entombed filled in as a temporary bassist.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: The band released their fourth cover album on May 27, 2016, with Ray Suhy on guitar and bass and Josh Hall on drums, both from Cannabis Corpse, appearing on the album.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: In 2016 longtime guitarist Steve Swanson left the band and was replaced by Cannabis Corpse member Ray Suhy.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: On January 10, 2017, the band announced their twelfth studio album, "Torment", which was released by Metal Blade Records on February 24. The album marked the debut of drummer Marco Pitruzzella with the addition of Jeff Hughell who recorded guitar and bass for the album. Torment was received poorly by fans and critics alike, citing lazy songwriting and poor production. On February 28, former Cannibal Corpse and Deicide guitarist Jack Owen joined the band.


title: Six Feet Under (band)

text: The band released a digital-only EP on July 6, 2018, titled "Unburied", consisting of previously unreleased material from the recording sessions of their prior four albums. That same year, Chris announced that the band was writing material for their 13th album. The album title, "Nightmares of the Decomposed", was revealed on April 21 and was released on October 2, 2020.


title: 2003 NHL Entry Draft

text: The 2003 NHL Entry Draft was the 41st NHL Entry Draft. It was held at the Gaylord Entertainment Center in Nashville, Tennessee on June 21 and 22, 2003.


title: 2003 NHL Entry Draft

text: Goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury was selected first overall by the Pittsburgh Penguins. This was only the third time a goalie was selected first overall in the draft, after Michel Plasse in 1968 and Rick DiPietro in 2000. Eric Staal was selected second, by the Carolina Hurricanes, and Nathan Horton was the third selection, by the Florida Panthers.


title: 2003 NHL Entry Draft

text: Many analysts rate this draft as having one of the most talented groups of players, some say even better than the 1979 NHL Draft. Every first-round pick went on to play in a regular season NHL game. Among those, two played only a handful of games: Hugh Jessiman (2 games) and Shawn Belle (20). All other first round picks had much more substantial NHL careers: the third-fewest games was Marc-Antoine Pouliot with 192. Fleury, Staal, Horton, Nikolay Zherdev, and Patrice Bergeron all became NHL regulars immediately after they were drafted. Milan Michalek was expected to do the same, and was selected for the San Jose Sharks' NHL roster after training camp, but suffered a serious knee injury that ruled him out for the season. All of the top ten selections played at least nine games in the NHL in the 2005–06 season. Calgary Flames' first round selection Dion Phaneuf scored 20 goals in his rookie campaign, becoming the third defenceman to do so, after Brian Leetch and Barry Beck. Mike Richards and Jeff Carter (Flyers), Zach Parise (Devils), Ryan Getzlaf (Ducks), and Eric Staal (Hurricanes) all led their teams in scoring in the 2007–08 regular season, and Dustin Brown (Kings) went on to break the record for most Stanley Cups won by an American team captain (two, in 2012 and 2014).


title: 2003 NHL Entry Draft

text: Later rounds of the draft also featured more players than usual that went on to have substantial NHL careers. These included Shea Weber (49th overall pick), Corey Crawford (52nd), David Backes (62nd), Jimmy Howard (64th), Clarke MacArthur (74th), Jan Hejda (106th), Paul Bissonnette (121st), Kyle Quincey (132nd), Lee Stempniak (148th), Nigel Dawes (149th), Marc Methot (168th), Nate Thompson (183rd), Drew Miller (186th), Joe Pavelski (205th), Kyle Brodziak (214th), Tobias Enstrom (239th), Dustin Byfuglien (245th), Shane O'Brien (250th), Matt Moulson (263rd), Jaroslav Halak (271st), David Jones (288th), and Brian Elliott (291st).


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Judy Kuhn (born May 20, 1958) is an American actress and singer, known for her work in musical theatre. A four-time Tony Award nominee, she has released four studio albums and sang the title role in the 1995 film "Pocahontas", including her rendition of the song "Colors of the Wind", which won its composers the Academy Award for Best Original Song.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Kuhn made her professional stage debut in 1981 and her Broadway debut in the 1985 original production of the musical "The Mystery of Edwin Drood". Subsequent Broadway roles include Cosette in "Les Misérables" (1987), Florence Vassy in "Chess" (1988), and Amalia Balash in "She Loves Me" (1993). For all three, she received Tony Award nominations. She also received an Olivier Award nomination for her 1989 West End debut playing Maria/Futura in "Metropolis". Other musical roles include Betty Schaeffer in the 1993 US premiere production of "Sunset Boulevard" in Los Angeles and her Obie Award winning role as Emmie in the 2001 Off-Broadway production of "Eli's Comin". She received a fourth Tony nomination in 2015 for her role as Helen Bechdel in the original Broadway production of "Fun Home", and a second Olivier nomination in 2020 for her role as Golde in a London revival of "Fiddler on the Roof".


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Kuhn (pronounced ) was born in New York City to Jewish parents and grew up in Bethesda, Maryland. She attended Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C. She entered Oberlin College. After taking voice lessons with Frank Farina, Kuhn transferred into the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Kuhn was also interested in musical theater and other types of music, in addition to classical music for which the Conservatory is best known. She trained as an "operatic soprano" at Oberlin, and graduated in 1981.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: After college, she moved to Boston, where she waited tables and studied acting. After appearing in summer stock, Kuhn moved back to New York.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Her Broadway debut was in "Drood", a Rupert Holmes musical based on the unfinished Charles Dickens novel, in 1985. She played the roles of "Alice / Miss Isabel Yearsley / Succubae" and understudied the title role played by Betty Buckley. Her next appearance on Broadway was in the ill-fated "Rags", which opened on August 21, 1986, and closed after four performances.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Her next role of Cosette in the 1987 multiple award-winning Broadway production of "Les Misérables" brought her the first Tony Award nomination, as Best Featured Actress in a Musical (1987), and the Drama Desk Award (1987) nomination as Outstanding Featured Actress in A Musical.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Kuhn appeared in the Trevor Nunn-directed "Chess", with music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus and lyrics by Tim Rice in the 1988 Broadway transfer from the West End, playing one of the main roles (Florence Vassy). Despite the show's success in London, Trevor Nunn decided to rework it for Broadway from a pop/rock opera as staged in London into a more conventional musical theater piece with a new book by Richard Nelson. As a result, the new show was greeted with mostly negative reviews and closed after less than a two-month run, on June 25, 1988. Kuhn's performance in the musical received praise from the critics. "Her beautiful pop-soprano voice is the show's chief pleasure. She acts the sympathetic, gutsy role with spirit and heart", wrote "Variety". The "Village Voice" noted that "she pours a river of feeling and lush vocal tone into...the role". She garnered her second Tony Award nomination, this time as Best Actress in a Musical (1988), and a 1988 Drama Desk Award nomination as Outstanding Actress in a Musical. In addition, The Original Broadway Cast recording of the musical was nominated for a Grammy Award.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: She reprised her role of Florence Vassy later in January 1989 in a Carnegie Hall concert performance with the rest of the Broadway cast, which was a benefit for the Emergency Shelter Inc. She also performed in a "Chess" concert version in 1989 in Skellefteå, Sweden, during a chess World Cup final tournament, where she joined with Tommy Körberg and Murray Head, two principal actors from 1986 West End production of the musical.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Kuhn made her London debut in 1989, when she starred in the West End production of "Metropolis", with Jeremy Kingston, reviewing for "The Times" (London) writing "I greatly enjoyed Kuhn's edgy, angular performance." She received an Olivier Award nomination as Best Actress in a Musical.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Kuhn's next major Broadway project, "Two Shakespearean Actors" (1992), despite a cast that included Brian Bedford, Frances Conroy, Hope Davis, Victor Garber, Laura Innes and Eric Stoltz, was commercially unsuccessful, closing after 29 regular performances.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: In 1993, Kuhn played in the Roundabout Theater Company revival of "She Loves Me", portraying Amalia Balash, a young Budapest shopgirl who is unaware that the co-worker she despises is the young man with whom she's been sharing an anonymous correspondence. Her performance earned her a Tony Award nomination as Best Actress in a Musical. The 1993 Broadway recording of this revival does not feature Kuhn, who left the production before the album was produced.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: In December 1993, Kuhn played the role of Betty Schaefer in the U.S premiere production of "Sunset Boulevard" at the Shubert Theatre in Los Angeles. The L.A production recorded a cast album, which is the only unabridged cast recording of the show with the original London recording being cut by thirty minutes.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Regional theatre credits in the early 1990s include "The Glass Menagerie" at the McCarter Theatre, Princeton, New Jersey, in 1991 as "Laura" and "Martin Guerre", at the Hartford Stage Company, Hartford, Connecticut, in 1993. Kuhn reprised her role as Cosette in 1995, for the 10th anniversary concert performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London, which was released on DVD as "".


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Kuhn appeared in the Broadway concert "King David" which was a 1997 Disney project with a book and lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Alan Menken and directed by Mike Ockrent. It played for a nine-performance limited run at the New Amsterdam Theatre.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Kuhn sang in the second annual benefit concert for The Actors' Fund of "Funny Girl" in September 2002 at the New Amsterdam Theatre, with different actresses taking on the role of Fanny Brice. She sang "Who Are You Now?" and "People" of which Andrew Gans of "Playbill" wrote: she "provided an intense, moving, full-voiced 'People,' sensationally belting 'are the luckiest peeeeeeople (wow!) in the wooorld'."


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Kuhn's Off-Broadway and regional theater credits in this period include: "As Thousands Cheer" (1998) Off-Broadway at the Drama Dept., Greenwich House Theater; "Strike up the Band" (1998) Off-Broadway Encores! Concerts at New York City Center; the title role in "The Ballad of Little Jo" (2000) at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago; "Eli's Comin" (2001) Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre Company (for which she won an Obie Award); "The Highest Yellow" (2004) at the Signature Theater in Virginia; and "Three Sisters" (2005) In a new adaption by Craig Lucas at the Intiman Theater in Seattle, Washington.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: On October 23, 2007, Kuhn returned to the Broadway production of "Les Misérables" after 20 years, this time assuming the role of Fantine. She succeeded Lea Salonga and remained with the show until the revival ended on January 6, 2008.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Kuhn portrayed Fosca in the Off-Broadway Classic Stage Company revival of the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical "Passion" from its opening in February 2013 through its scheduled closing in April 2013. Kuhn had previously played Fosca in the Stephen Sondheim celebration production in 2002 at the Kennedy Center.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: In 2013, Kuhn originated the role of Helen Bechdel in the off-Broadway Public Theater production of the musical "Fun Home", which began its run September 30, 2013 and opened officially on October 22, 2013. The run was extended multiple times and closed on January 12, 2014. She played the same role in the Broadway production, which ran from April 2015 to September 10, 2016, at the Circle in the Square.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Kuhn played the role of "Golde" in the Broadway revival of "Fiddler on the Roof", starting on November 22, 2016. She played Golde in the Menier Chocolate Factory (London) production of "Fiddler on the Roof" which began on November 23, 2018, and ran to March 9, 2019.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Her television credits include "Law & Order" and "", "All My Children" and two PBS shows: "My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies" (recorded 1998, released 1999) and "In Performance at the White House: A Tribute to Broadway – The Shows" in March 1988.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Kuhn sang the title role in the 1995 Disney animated film "Pocahontas". The film's score won an Academy Award, and the soundtrack reached #1 on the "Billboard" 200, selling over 2.5 million copies. The film included Kuhn's rendition of the song "Colors of the Wind", which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and a Grammy Award.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Kuhn also sang as Pocahontas in the straight-to-video sequel "" and in "If You Can Dream", a Disney Princess song. Kuhn briefly appeared in the film "Long Time Since" (1998) and supplied the vocals for the movie's soundtrack, which includes a rendition of Auld Lang Syne.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: She has performed in concert at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and Avery Fisher Hall in Manhattan, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and at the Royal Albert Hall in London. She has performed in a solo cabaret/nightclub act at, for example, Joe's Pub at the Public Theater in October 2007 and the Iridium in New York in January 2008. She performed her solo concert at Feinstein's at Loews Regency in March 2012.


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Her first solo album, "Just in Time: Judy Kuhn Sings Jule Styne", was released on January 31, 1995. Kuhn's second solo album, "Serious Playground: The Songs of Laura Nyro", was released on October 2, 2007. In 2013, she released her third album "All This Happiness", which contains pop, jazz, cabaret, and blues songs, along with the title song of the album, from the Stephen Sondheim musical "Passion".


title: Judy Kuhn

text: Kuhn also teaches a song interpretation class at Michael Howard Studios in New York City, where she studied earlier in her career. Andrew Gans of "Playbill" wrote that Kuhn "possesses one of the richest and most exciting instruments around; it is also an extremely versatile and rangy voice" and that Kuhn has "remarkable interpretive skills".


title: Namitha Pramod

text: Namitha Pramod (born 19 September 1996) is an Indian actress who appears mainly in Malayalam films She made her acting debut in the Malayalam film "Puthiya Theerangal".


title: Namitha Pramod

text: She went on to appear in super hit films like Puthiya Theerangal (2012),"Sound" "thoma" (2013), "Pullipulikalum" "Aattinkuttiyum" (2013), "Vikramadithyan" (2014), "Villali Veeran" (2014), "Chandrettan Evideya" (2015), "Amar Akbar Anthony" (2015), "Adi Kapyare Kootamani" (2015), "Role Models" (2017) & "Al Mallu" (2020).


title: Namitha Pramod

text: Namitha Pramod was born in Kottayam as the daughter of Pramod, a businessman and Indu, a housewife. Her younger sister is Akhita Pramod. She attended Carmel Girls Higher Secondary School in Thiruvananthapuram. She attended the St. Teresa's College, Kochi to pursue a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology. She has stated that she was "not going to let [her] acting career compromise [her] studies".


title: Namitha Pramod

text: Namitha started acting when she was in seventh standard by acting in "Vellankanni Mathavu", "Amme Devi", and "Ente Manasa Puthri". She made her debut in Rajesh Pillai's critically acclaimed "Traffic". In her next film "Puthiya Theerangal" she played her first lead role, playing a fisherwoman, opposite Nivin Pauly. It was followed by more lead roles in "Sound Thoma" with Dileep and "Pullipulikalum Aattinkuttiyum" with Kunchacko Boban in which she played a Mohiniyattam dancer. She was not trained in Mohiniyattam and learned the dance steps in Saranya Mohan's dance school in Alappuzha for four days. Both films were successful and she was selected as Top Star (Female) 2013 in Malayalam.


title: Namitha Pramod

text: In 2014, she was first seen in "En Kadhal Pudhithu", her debut Tamil film directed by Maaris Kumar which had a delayed release, followed by Lijin Jose's "Law Point" in which she played a modern, city bred girl named Maya. In Lal Jose's "Vikramadithyan", she played the role of Deepika, a Konkani girl, which required her to speak a few lines in Konkani, a language she had never used before. Her next film "Villali Veeran", in which she paired once again with Dileep, had her playing the role of an ad filmmaker. Her last release in 2014 was "Ormayundo Ee Mukham", a romantic drama in which she was cast opposite Vineeth Sreenivasan.Her first release of 2015 was Chandrettan Evideya where she portrayed the role of Dr.Geethanjali along with Dileep and Anusree.Her performance was critically acclaimed and she went on to receive her first nomination at Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress.


title: Namitha Pramod

text: She has acted in many commercials of Bhima Jewellers, Francis Alukkas and Ripple Tea. She has participated in reality show "Ningalkkum Aakaam Kodeeshwaran" on Asianet.


title: Sleight of hand

text: Sleight of hand (also known as prestidigitation or legerdemain ()) refers to fine motor skills when used by performing artists in different art forms to entertain or manipulate. It is closely associated with close-up magic, card magic, card flourishing and stealing. Because of its heavy use and practice by magicians, sleight of hand is often confused as a branch of magic; however, it is a separate genre of entertainment and many artists practice sleight of hand as an independent skill. Sleight of hand pioneers with worldwide acclaim include Dan and Dave, Ricky Jay, Derek DelGaudio, David Copperfield, Yann Frisch, Norbert Ferré, Dai Vernon, Cardini, Tony Slydini and Helder Guimarães.


title: Sleight of hand

text: The word "sleight", meaning "the use of dexterity or cunning, especially so as to deceive", comes from the Old Norse. The phrase "sleight of hand" means "quick fingers" or "trickster fingers". Common synonyms of Latin and French include "prestidigitation" and "legerdemain" respectively. Seneca the Younger, philosopher of the Silver Age of Latin literature, famously compared rhetorical techniques and illusionist techniques.


title: Sleight of hand

text: Sleight of hand is often used in close-up magic, where the sleights are performed with the audience close to the magician, usually in physical contact or within . This close contact eliminates theories of fake audience members and the use of gimmicks. It makes use of everyday items as props, such as cards, coins, rubber bands, paper, phones and even saltshakers. A well-performed sleight looks like an ordinary, natural and completely innocent gesture, change in hand position or body posture. In addition to manual dexterity, sleight of hand in close-up magic depends on the use of psychology, timing, misdirection, and natural choreography in accomplishing a magical effect.


title: Sleight of hand

text: Sleight of hand during stage magic performances is not common, as most magic events and stunts are performed with objects visible to a much larger audience, but is nevertheless done occasionally by many stage performers. The most common magic tricks performed with sleight of hand on stage are rope manipulations and card tricks, with the first typically being done with a member of the audience to rule out the possibility of stooges and the latter primarily being done on a table while a camera is live-recording, allowing the rest of audience to see the performance on a big screen. Worldwide acclaimed stage magician David Copperfield often includes illusions featuring sleight of hand in his stage shows.


title: Sleight of hand

text: Although being mostly used for entertainment and comedy purposes, sleight of hand is also notoriously used to cheat at casinos and gambling facilities throughout the world. Common ways to professionally cheat at card games using sleight of hand include palming, switching, ditching, and stealing cards from the table. Such techniques involve extreme misdirection and years of practice. For these reasons, the term "sleight of hand" frequently carries negative associations of dishonesty and deceit at many gambling halls, and many magicians known around the world are publicly banned from casinos, such as British mentalist and close-up magician Derren Brown, who is banned from every casino in Britain.


title: Sleight of hand

text: Unlike card tricks done on the streets or on stage and card cheating, cardistry is solely about impressing without illusions, deceit, misdirection and other elements commonly used in card tricks and card cheating. Cardistry is the art of card flourishing, and is intended to be visually impressive and to give the appearance of being difficult to perform. Card flourishing is often associated with card tricks, but many sleight of hand artists perform flourishing without considering themselves magicians or having any real interest in card tricks.


title: Sleight of hand

text: The art of card throwing generally consists of throwing standard playing cards with excessively high speed and accuracy, powerful enough to slice fruits like carrots and even melons. Like flourishing, throwing cards is meant to be visibly impressive and does not include magic elements. Magician Ricky Jay popularized throwing cards within the sleight of hand industry with the release of his 1977 book "Cards as Weapons", which was met with large sales and critical acclaim. Some magic tricks, both close-up and on stage, are heavily connected to throwing cards.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: The Notting Hill Carnival is an annual Caribbean festival event that has taken place in London since 1966 on the streets of the Notting Hill area of Kensington, each August over two days (the August bank holiday Monday and the preceding Sunday).


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: It is led by members of the British Caribbean community, and attracts around two and a half million people annually, making it one of the world's largest street festivals, and a significant event in British African Caribbean and British Indo-Caribbean culture. In 2006, the UK public voted it onto a list of icons of England.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: The roots of the Notting Hill Carnival that took shape in the mid-1960s had two separate but connected strands. A "Caribbean Carnival" was held on 30 January 1959 in St Pancras Town Hall as a response to the problematic state of race relations at the time; the UK's first widespread racial attacks, the Notting Hill race riots in which 108 people were charged, had occurred the previous year. The 1959 event, held indoors and televised by the BBC, was organised by the Trinidadian journalist and activist Claudia Jones (often described as "the mother of the Notting Hill Carnival") in her capacity as editor of influential black newspaper "The West Indian Gazette", and directed by Edric Connor; showcasing elements of a Caribbean carnival in a cabaret style, it featured among other things the Mighty Terror singing the calypso "Carnival at St Pancras", The Southlanders, Cleo Laine, the Trinidad All Stars and Hi–fi steel bands dance troupe, finishing with a Caribbean Carnival Queen beauty contest and a Grand Finale Jump-Up by West Indians who attended the event.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: Another important strand was the "hippie" London Free School-inspired festival in Notting Hill that became the first organised outside event, in August 1966. The prime mover was Rhaune Laslett, who was not aware of the indoor events when she first raised the idea. This festival was a more diverse Notting Hill event to promote cultural unity. A street party for neighbourhood children turned into a carnival procession when Russell Henderson's steel band (who had played at the earlier Claudia Jones events) went on a walkabout. By 1970, "the Notting Hill Carnival consisted of 2 music bands, the Russell Henderson Combo and Selwyn Baptiste's Notting Hill Adventure Playground Steelband and 500 dancing spectators."


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: Duke Vin, full name Vincent George Forbes, is credited as being a co-founder of Notting Hill Carnival, having brought the first sound system to the United Kingdom in 1955 when he was a stowaway on a ship from Jamaica to the United Kingdom, and brought what is thought to be the very first sound system to the Notting Hill Carnival in 1973, which paved the way for the many sound systems that operate at carnival today. Duke Vin became a legend in Ladbroke Grove and had a huge influence on the popularisation of reggae and ska in Britain, and played at Notting Hill Carnival with his sound system, ‘Duke Vin the Tickler’s’, every year from the year it was founded until his death in 2012.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: Emslie Horniman's Pleasance (in the Kensal Green district of the area), has been the carnival's traditional starting point. Among the early bands to participate were Ebony Steelband and Metronomes Steelband. As the carnival had no permanent staff and head office, the Mangrove restaurant in Notting Hill, run by another Trinidadian, Frank Crichlow, came to function as an informal communication hub and office address for the carnival's organisers.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: Leslie Palmer, who was director from 1973 to 1975, is credited with "getting sponsorship, recruiting more steel bands, reggae groups and sound systems, introducing generators and extending the route." He encouraged traditional masquerade, and for the first time in 1973 costume bands and steel bands from the various islands took part in the street parade, alongside the introduction of stationary sound systems, as distinct from those on moving floats, which, as Alex Pascall has explained, "created the bridge between the two cultures of carnival, reggae and calypso." "Notting Hill Carnival became a major festival in 1975 when it was organised by a young teacher, Leslie Palmer." The carnival was also popularised by live radio broadcasts by Pascall on his daily "Black Londoners" programme for BBC Radio London.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: By 1976, the event had become definitely Caribbean in flavour, with around 150,000 people attending. However, in that year and several subsequent years, the carnival was marred by riots, in which predominantly Caribbean youths fought with police – a target due to the continuous harassment the population felt they were under. During this period, there was considerable press coverage of the disorder, which some felt took an unfairly negative and one-sided view of the carnival. For a while it looked as if the event would be banned. Prince Charles was one of the few establishment figures who supported the event. Leila Hassan campaigned for Arts Council England to recognise the Notting Hill Carnival as an art form. Since 1978 the national Panorama competition is held on the Saturday preceding the carnival.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: Concerns about the size of the event resulted in London's then mayor, Ken Livingstone, setting up a Carnival Review Group to look into "formulating guidelines to safeguard the future of the Carnival". An interim report by the review resulted in a change to the route in 2002. When the full report was published in 2004, it recommended that Hyde Park be used as a "savannah" (an open space to draw crowds away from residential areas), though the proposal of such a move attracted concerns, including that the Hyde Park event might overshadow the original street carnival.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: In 2003, the Notting Hill Carnival was run by a limited company, the Notting Hill Carnival Trust Ltd. A report by the London Development Agency on the 2002 Carnival estimated that the event contributed around £93 million to the London and UK economy, set against an estimated £6–10 million costs. However, the 2016 residents' survey commissioned by local Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Victoria Borwick found that while 6% of businesses reported an upturn in trade, many others boarded up their shopfronts and lost business due to closure.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: For 2014, a Notting Hill Carnival illustrated guide was created by official city guide to London visitlondon.com. The infographic includes Carnival tips, transport information and a route map. The book "Carnival: A Photographic and Testimonial History of the Notting Hill Carnival", by Ishmahil Blagrove and Margaret Busby, was also published in August 2014 by Rice N Peas.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: In 2015 there was controversy when the Carnival Trust charged journalists £100 to cover the event, and demanded copies of all work produced relating to the event within three weeks of the end of the Carnival. The National Union of Journalists organised a boycott of the event. In 2016 the charge remained; however, in June 2017, the Carnival's new event management team introduced a revised media policy, with no request for any accreditation fees.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: In 2016, when the Golden Jubilee of Notting Hill Carnival was celebrated, 42 hours of live video coverage was broadcast by music live-streaming platform Boiler Room from the Rampage, Deviation, Aba Shanti-I, Channel One, Nasty Love, Saxon Sound, King Tubbys, Gladdy Wax and Disya Jeneration soundsystems.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: The 2020 carnival was cancelled due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, although free live-streamed events were shown online across four channels. On 18 June 2021, it was announced that the 2021 Carnival would not take place either, due to "ongoing uncertainty and Covid-19 risk".


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: In 2022, Notting Hill Carnival returned after two-year hiatus. It started with a run to remember 72 victims of the Grenfell Tower fire from 2017.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: Carnival is not alien to British culture. Bartholomew Fair and Southwark Fair in the 18th century were moments of great festivity and release. There was juggling, pickpocketing, whoring, drinking, masquerade – people dressed up as the Archbishop of Canterbury and indulged in vulgar acts. It allowed people a space to free-up but it was banned for moral reasons and for the antiauthoritarian behaviour that went on like stoning of constables. Carnival allowed people to dramatise their grievances against the authorities on the street... Notting Hill Carnival single-handedly revived this tradition and is a great contribution to British cultural life."


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: This huge street festival attracts around one million people every year to Notting Hill and highlights Caribbean and Black diasporic cultures. Carnival uses influences from many other festivals around the world. Authors Julian Henriques and Beatrice Ferrara claim the festival draws mainly on the Trinidad Carnival as well as Crop Over, Canadian Caribana in Toronto and the US Labor Day Festival in Brooklyn. They also explain that Notting Hill Carnival is dually influenced by its diasporic cultures and its own country's influences. Henriques and Ferrara claim: "Carnival also has an explosive auditory impact due to its cacophony of sounds, in which soca, steel bands, calypso floats and sound systems mix and mingle in a multi-media and multi-sensory event" (Ferrara 132). This mixture of percussion, with emphasis on the beat and rhythm, leads to the extreme dancing in the streets for which Carnival is known, with citizens participating to the beat of the music, using mud and paint, dancing with the lower parts of the body. Henriques and Ferrara explain that people emphasize the "baseness" of the music, with everything being about the "bottom": the ground, the bottom of the body, and the bottom of the beat. The festival uses influences from the Jamaican dancehalls and British clubs, and the music is made loud enough for participants to feel the beat. The vibrations from the speakers allow people to better connect with the ground and bring their experience to another level.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: The authors of the same article further explain how Notting Hill Carnival also creates "territory". The parade route portion of the Carnival is where carnival floats play both recorded and live music and circulate the street, visualizing the boundaries of Carnival and marking its territory. The circulating movement of the Carnival parade is also an extending of space through sound. Territorializing the space through sounds of African beats, such as the pan, fosters a sense of identity and unity for the overall Carnival.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: The Carnival further diversified in 1984 with the appearance of the London School of Samba. Formed in that year, they were the first samba school in the UK and have paraded every year since (with the exception of 1992). Other samba schools have also paraded in Carnival, notably Acadêmicos de Madureira (1992–94), Quilombo do Samba (1993–2006) and the Paraiso School of Samba (since 2002). These groups are also notable as they sometimes parade with more than 200 performers, along with several decorated floats.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: Compared to other major music and art events such as Glastonbury Festival, Notting Hill Carnival has historically struggled to gain any live coverage outside of local media. The majority of carnival live broadcasts have been traditionally on BBC London radio (hitting a peak of coverage in the years of 2003 and 2004), and on BBC Radio 1Xtra in more recent years.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: Since the carnival did not have local authority permission, initial police involvement was aimed at preventing it taking place at all, which resulted in regular confrontation and riots. In 1976, the police had been expecting hostility due to what they deemed as trouble the year before. Consequently, after discovering pickpockets in the crowd, police took a heavy-handed approach against the large congregation of black people and it became "no-man's land". The 1600-strong police force violently broke up the carnival, with the arrest of 60 people. In the aftermath of the event, the carnival was portrayed in a very pointed way, with those aiding the riots lumped together as the "trouble-makers" responsible.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: After the 1976 Notting Hill Carnival the Police Federation pressed for the introduction of riot shields to protect police from objects thrown at them, although the shields also had the potential for aggressive use, as in 1977.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: A change of policy came after a confrontation in 1987, when the Carnival was allowed to take place with police adopting a more conciliatory approach. During the 2000 Carnival, two men were murdered; and future policing, while conciliatory, resulted in police deployment in large numbers: upwards of 11,000.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: The Mayor of London's Carnival Review Group's report (published in 2004,) led to the parades taking a circular rather than linear route, but a recommendation to relocate the event in Hyde Park has been resisted. Some crimes associated with the carnival have taken place on its periphery: in 2007, two teenagers were wounded in separate shooting incidents just outside the carnival area on the Monday evening; however, police said there had been a decline in the number of carnival-linked arrests in comparison with the previous year.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: The 2008 Carnival was marred by rioting at the very end of the weekend, involving about 40 youths battling with police, and more than 300 people were arrested. The carnival has come under criticism for its cost to the London taxpayer, with the cost of policing the event more than £6,000,000; however, it is argued that this should be put into context since the carnival is estimated to bring approximately £93,000,000 into the local economy.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: Despite talk of the 2011 Carnival being cancelled in the wake of the early August riots in the UK that year, it was seen as being relatively peaceful. Five people were arrested for a stabbing at Ladbroke Grove. The victim was one of 86 people who were taken to hospital. In total 245 people were detained by police over the two days of the carnival.


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: In recent years, there has been much less serious trouble, and it is generally viewed very positively by the authorities as a dynamic celebration of London's multicultural diversity, though dominated by the Caribbean culture. However, there has been controversy over the public safety aspects of holding such a well-attended event in narrow streets in a small area of London. A survey in 2016 commissioned by local Conservative MP Victoria Borwick found that "Nine out of ten residents living along the route of the Notting Hill Carnival flee their homes to escape the 'frightening and intimidating' event."


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: In 2016 there were over 450 arrests, and five people were hurt in four knife attacks; however, the commander in charge of policing carnival, David Musker, said that the number of arrests had been inflated by the new Psychoactive Substances Act 2016. Based on relative attendance figures, it has been said that crime rates for the Notting Hill Carnival and for Glastonbury or other music festivals are comparable, and Ishmahil Blagrove, co-author of the book "Carnival: A Photographic and Testimonial History of the Notting Hill Carnival", states: "Notting Hill Carnival, compared to Trinidad or Brazil, is one of the safest in the world."


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: A report in 2004 by the GLA Policing Policy Director, Lee Jasper, criticised authorities for not addressing safety issues involved in over a million people attending a small inner-city residential area, quoting the Met Police spokesman Dave Musker, who in November 2016 said: "Each year … we come exceptionally close to a major catastrophic failure of public safety where members of the public will suffer serious injury."


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: In the three weeks running up to the 2017 event, the police made 656 arrests, a pre-emptive crackdown. There were 313 arrests during the two days of the 2017 Carnival, compared with 454 the previous year. On both days, a minute's silence in tribute to the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire was observed at 3 pm by Carnival-goers, many of whom wore "green for Grenfell".


title: Notting Hill Carnival

text: During the 2018 event, due to the rising levels of violent crime in London, police deployed metal detectors to prevent weapons being brought to the event. During the event, 30 police officers were injured in the line of duty, 36 weapons were confiscated and 373 arrests were made by the Metropolitan Police Service.


title: Derek Walcott

text: Sir Derek Alton Walcott (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017) was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the Homeric epic poem "Omeros" (1990), which many critics view "as Walcott's major achievement." In addition to winning the Nobel Prize, Walcott received many literary awards over the course of his career, including an Obie Award in 1971 for his play "Dream on Monkey Mountain", a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Queen's Medal for Poetry, the inaugural OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the 2010 T. S. Eliot Prize for his book of poetry "White Egrets" and the Griffin Trust For Excellence in Poetry Lifetime Recognition Award in 2015.


title: Derek Walcott

text: Walcott was born and raised in Castries, Saint Lucia, in the West Indies, the son of Alix (Maarlin) and Warwick Walcott. He had a twin brother, the playwright Roderick Walcott, and a sister, Pamela Walcott. His family is of English, Dutch and African descent, reflecting the complex colonial history of the island that he explores in his poetry. His mother, a teacher, loved the arts and often recited poetry around the house. His father was a civil servant and a talented painter. He died when Walcott and his brother were one year old, and were left to be raised by their mother. Walcott was brought up in Methodist schools. His mother, who was a teacher at a Methodist elementary school, provided her children with an environment where their talents could be nurtured. Walcott's family was part of a minority Methodist community, who felt overshadowed by the dominant Catholic culture of the island established during French colonial rule.


title: Derek Walcott

text: As a young man Walcott trained as a painter, mentored by Harold Simmons, whose life as a professional artist provided an inspiring example for him. Walcott greatly admired Cézanne and Giorgione and sought to learn from them. Walcott's painting was later exhibited at the Anita Shapolsky Gallery in New York City, along with the art of other writers, in a 2007 exhibition named "The Writer's Brush: Paintings and Drawing by Writers".


title: Derek Walcott

text: He studied as a writer, becoming "an elated, exuberant poet madly in love with English" and strongly influenced by modernist poets such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Walcott had an early sense of a vocation as a writer. In the poem "Midsummer" (1984), he wrote:


title: Derek Walcott

text: At 14, Walcott published his first poem, a Miltonic, religious poem, in the newspaper "The Voice of St Lucia". An English Catholic priest condemned the Methodist-inspired poem as blasphemous in a response printed in the newspaper. By 19, Walcott had self-published his first two collections with the aid of his mother, who paid for the printing: "25 Poems" (1948) and "Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos" (1949). He sold copies to his friends and covered the costs. He later commented:


title: Derek Walcott

text: I went to my mother and said, "I’d like to publish a book of poems, and I think it's going to cost me two hundred dollars." She was just a seamstress and a schoolteacher, and I remember her being very upset because she wanted to do it. Somehow she got it—a lot of money for a woman to have found on her salary. She gave it to me, and I sent off to Trinidad and had the book printed. When the books came back I would sell them to friends. I made the money back.


title: Derek Walcott

text: After attending high school at Saint Mary's College, he received a scholarship to study at the University College of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica.


title: Derek Walcott

text: After graduation, Walcott moved to Trinidad in 1953, where he became a critic, teacher and journalist. He founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop in 1959 and remained active with its board of directors.


title: Derek Walcott

text: Exploring the Caribbean and its history in a colonialist and post-colonialist context, his collection "In a Green Night: Poems 1948–1960" (1962) attracted international attention. His play "Dream on Monkey Mountain" (1970) was produced on NBC-TV in the United States the year it was published. Makak is the protagonist in this play; and "Makak‟s condition represents the condition of the colonized natives under the oppressive forces of the powerful colonizers". In 1971 it was produced by the Negro Ensemble Company off-Broadway in New York City; it won an Obie Award that year for "Best Foreign Play". The following year, Walcott won an OBE from the British government for his work.


title: Derek Walcott

text: He was hired as a teacher by Boston University in the United States, where he founded the Boston Playwrights' Theatre in 1981. That year he also received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in the United States. Walcott taught literature and writing at Boston University for more than two decades, publishing new books of poetry and plays on a regular basis. Walcott retired from his position at Boston University in 2007. He became friends with other poets, including the Russian expatriate Joseph Brodsky, who lived and worked in the U.S. after being exiled in the 1970s, and the Irishman Seamus Heaney, who also taught in Boston.


title: Derek Walcott

text: Walcott's epic poem "Omeros" (1990), which loosely echoes and refers to characters from the "Iliad", has been critically praised as his "major achievement." The book received praise from publications such as "The Washington Post" and "The New York Times Book Review", which chose "Omeros" as one of its "Best Books of 1990".


title: Derek Walcott

text: Walcott was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, the second Caribbean writer to receive the honour after Saint-John Perse, who was born in Guadeloupe, received the award in 1960. The Nobel committee described Walcott's work as "a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment". He won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2004.


title: Derek Walcott

text: His later poetry collections include "Tiepolo's Hound" (2000), illustrated with copies of his watercolors; "The Prodigal" (2004), and "White Egrets" (2010), which received the T.S. Eliot Prize and the 2011 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.


title: Derek Walcott

text: Derek Walcott has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, In 2008, Walcott gave the first Cola Debrot Lectures In 2009, Walcott began a three-year distinguished scholar-in-residence position at the University of Alberta. In 2010, he became Professor of Poetry at the University of Essex.


title: Derek Walcott

text: As a part of St Lucia's Independence Day celebrations, in February 2016, he became one of the first knights of the Order of Saint Lucia.


title: Derek Walcott

text: Methodism and spirituality have played a significant role from the beginning in Walcott's work. He commented: "I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation." Describing his writing process, he wrote: "the body feels it is melting into what it has seen… the 'I' not being important. That is the ecstasy...Ultimately, it's what Yeats says: 'Such a sweetness flows into the breast that we laugh at everything and everything we look upon is blessed.' That’s always there. It’s a benediction, a transference. It’s gratitude, really. The more of that a poet keeps, the more genuine his nature." He also notes, "if one thinks a poem is coming on...you do make a retreat, a withdrawal into some kind of silence that cuts out everything around you. What you’re taking on is really not a renewal of your identity but actually a renewal of your anonymity."


title: Derek Walcott

text: Walcott said his writing was influenced by the work of the American poets Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, who were also friends.


title: Derek Walcott

text: He published more than twenty plays, the majority of which have been produced by the Trinidad Theatre Workshop and have also been widely staged elsewhere. Many of them address, either directly or indirectly, the liminal status of the West Indies in the post-colonial period. Through poetry he also explores the paradoxes and complexities of this legacy.


title: Derek Walcott

text: In his 1970 essay "What the Twilight Says: An Overture", discussing art and theatre in his native region (from "Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays"), Walcott reflects on the West Indies as colonized space. He discusses the problems for an artist of a region with little in the way of truly Indigenous forms, and with little national or nationalist identity. He states: "We are all strangers here... Our bodies think in one language and move in another". The epistemological effects of colonization inform plays such as "Ti-Jean and his Brothers". Mi-Jean, one of the eponymous brothers, is shown to have much information, but to truly know nothing. Every line Mi-Jean recites is rote knowledge gained from the coloniser; he is unable to synthesize it or apply it to his life as a colonised person.


title: Derek Walcott

text: What we were deprived of was also our privilege. There was a great joy in making a world that so far, up to then, had been undefined... My generation of West Indian writers has felt such a powerful elation at having the privilege of writing about places and people for the first time and, simultaneously, having behind them the tradition of knowing how well it can be done—by a Defoe, a Dickens, a Richardson.


title: Derek Walcott

text: Walcott identified as "absolutely a Caribbean writer", a pioneer, helping to make sense of the legacy of deep colonial damage. In such poems as "The Castaway" (1965) and in the play "Pantomime" (1978), he uses the metaphors of shipwreck and Crusoe to describe the culture and what is required of artists after colonialism and slavery: both the freedom and the challenge to begin again, salvage the best of other cultures and make something new. These images recur in later work as well. He writes: "If we continue to sulk and say, Look at what the slave-owner did, and so forth, we will never mature. While we sit moping or writing morose poems and novels that glorify a non-existent past, then time passes us by."


title: Derek Walcott

text: Walcott's epic book-length poem "Omeros" was published in 1990 to critical acclaim. The poem very loosely echoes and references Homer and some of his major characters from "The Iliad". Some of the poem's major characters include the island fishermen Achille and Hector, the retired English officer Major Plunkett and his wife Maud, the housemaid Helen, the blind man Seven Seas (who symbolically represents Homer), and the author himself.


title: Derek Walcott

text: Although the main narrative of the poem takes place on the island of St. Lucia, where Walcott was born and raised, Walcott also includes scenes from Brookline, Massachusetts (where Walcott was living and teaching at the time of the poem's composition), and the character Achille imagines a voyage from Africa onto a slave ship that is headed for the Americas; also, in Book Five of the poem, Walcott narrates some of his travel experiences in a variety of cities around the world, including Lisbon, London, Dublin, Rome, and Toronto.


title: Derek Walcott

text: Composed in a variation on "terza rima", the work explores the themes that run throughout Walcott's oeuvre: the beauty of the islands, the colonial burden, the fragmentation of Caribbean identity, and the role of the poet in a post-colonial world.


title: Derek Walcott

text: In this epic, Walcott advocates the need to return to traditions in order to challenge the modernity born out of colonialism.


title: Derek Walcott

text: Walcott's work has received praise from major poets including Robert Graves, who wrote that Walcott "handles English with a closer understanding of its inner magic than most, if not any, of his contemporaries", and Joseph Brodsky, who praised Walcott's work, writing: "For almost forty years his throbbing and relentless lines kept arriving in the English language like tidal waves, coagulating into an archipelago of poems without which the map of modern literature would effectively match wallpaper. He gives us more than himself or 'a world'; he gives us a sense of infinity embodied in the language." Walcott noted that he, Brodsky, and the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who all taught in the United States, were a band of poets "outside the American experience".


title: Derek Walcott

text: The poetry critic William Logan critiqued Walcott's work in a "New York Times" book review of Walcott's "Selected Poems". While he praised Walcott's writing in "Sea Grapes" and "The Arkansas Testament", Logan had mostly negative things to say about Walcott's poetry, calling "Omeros" "clumsy" and "Another Life" "pretentious." He concluded with "No living poet has written verse more delicately rendered or distinguished than Walcott, though few individual poems seem destined to be remembered."


title: Derek Walcott

text: Most reviews of Walcott's work are more positive. For instance, in "The New Yorker" review of "The Poetry of Derek Walcott", Adam Kirsch had high praise for Walcott's oeuvre, describing his style in the following manner:


title: Derek Walcott

text: By combining the grammar of vision with the freedom of metaphor, Walcott produces a beautiful style that is also a philosophical style. People perceive the world on dual channels, Walcott’s verse suggests, through the senses and through the mind, and each is constantly seeping into the other. The result is a state of perpetual magical thinking, a kind of "Alice in Wonderland" world where concepts have bodies and landscapes are always liable to get up and start talking.


title: Derek Walcott

text: Kirsch calls "Another Life" Walcott's "first major peak" and analyzes the painterly qualities of Walcott's imagery from his earliest work through to later books such as "Tiepolo's Hound". Kirsch also explores the post-colonial politics in Walcott's work, calling him "the postcolonial writer par excellence". Kirsch calls the early poem "A Far Cry from Africa" a turning point in Walcott's development as a poet. Like Logan, Kirsch is critical of "Omeros", which he believes Walcott fails to successfully sustain over its entirety. Although "Omeros" is the volume of Walcott's that usually receives the most critical praise, Kirsch believes "Midsummer" to be his best book.


title: Derek Walcott

text: His poetry, as spoken performance, appears briefly in the sampled sounds in the music album of the group Dreadzone. Their track entitled "Captain Dread" from the album "Second Light" incorporates the fourth verse of Walcott's 1990 poem "The Schooner Flight".


title: Derek Walcott

text: In 2013 Dutch filmmaker Ida Does released "Poetry is an Island", a feature documentary film about Walcott's life and the ever-present influence of his birthplace of St Lucia.


title: Derek Walcott

text: In 1954 Walcott married Fay Moston, a secretary, and they had a son, the St. Lucian painter Peter Walcott. The marriage ended in divorce in 1959. Walcott married a second time to Margaret Maillard in 1962, who worked as an almoner in a hospital. Together they had two daughters, Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw and Anna Walcott-Hardy, before divorcing in 1976. In 1976, Walcott married for a third time, to actress Norline Metivier; they divorced in 1993. His companion until his death was Sigrid Nama, a former art gallery owner.


title: Derek Walcott

text: Walcott was also known for his passion for traveling to countries around the world. He split his time between New York, Boston, and St. Lucia, and incorporated the influences of different locations into his pieces of work.


title: Derek Walcott

text: In 1982, a Harvard sophomore accused Walcott of sexual harassment in September 1981. She alleged that after she refused a sexual advance from him, she was given the only C in the class. In 1996 a student at Boston University sued Walcott for sexual harassment and "offensive sexual physical contact". The two reached a settlement.


title: Derek Walcott

text: In 2009, Walcott was a leading candidate for the position of Oxford Professor of Poetry. He withdrew his candidacy after reports of the accusations against him of sexual harassment from 1981 and 1996.


title: Derek Walcott

text: When the media learned that pages from an American book on the topic were sent anonymously to a number of Oxford academics, this aroused their interest in the university decisions. Ruth Padel, also a leading candidate, was elected to the post. Within days, "The Daily Telegraph" reported that she had alerted journalists to the harassment cases. Under severe media and academic pressure, Padel resigned. Padel was the first woman to be elected to the Oxford post, and some journalists attributed the criticism of her to misogyny and a gender war at Oxford. They said that a male poet would not have been so criticized, as she had reported published information, not rumour.


title: Derek Walcott

text: Numerous respected poets, including Seamus Heaney and Al Alvarez, published a letter of support for Walcott in "The Times Literary Supplement," and criticized the press furor. Other commentators suggested that both poets were casualties of the media interest in an internal university affair, because the story "had everything, from sex claims to allegations of character assassination". Simon Armitage and other poets expressed regret at Padel's resignation.


title: Derek Walcott

text: Walcott died at his home in Cap Estate, St. Lucia, on 17 March 2017. He was 87. He was given a state funeral on Saturday, 25 March, with a service at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Castries and burial at Morne Fortune.


title: Derek Walcott

text: In 1993, a public square and park located in central Castries, Saint Lucia, was named Derek Walcott Square. A documentary film, "Poetry Is an Island: Derek Walcott", by filmmaker Ida Does, was produced to honor him and his legacy in 2013.


title: Derek Walcott

text: The Saint Lucia National Trust acquired Walcott's childhood home at 17 Chaussée Road, Castries, in November 2015, renovating it before opening it to the public as Walcott House in January 2016.


title: Derek Walcott

text: In January 2020 the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College in St. Lucia announced that Walcott's books on Caribbean Literature and poetry have been donated to its Library.


The Isner–Mahut match at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships is the longest tennis match in history. It was a first-round Men's singles match, in which the American 23rd seed John Isner played against French qualifier Nicolas Mahut. The match began at 6:13 pm (British Summer Time, or 17:13 UTC) on Tuesday, 2010, on Court 18 at Wimbledon. At , due to the fading daylight, play was suspended before the start of the fifth set. After resuming on Wednesday, 23 June, at , the record for longest match was broken at . Play continued until the final set was tied at 59 games all, at which point the daylight faded again, and so play was suspended once more at . Play resumed again at on Thursday, 24 June, and eventually Isner won the match at , the final set having lasted for 8 hours, 11 minutes.


title: Isner–Mahut match at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships

text: In total, the match took 11 hours, 5 minutes of play over three days, with a final score of 6–4, 3–6, 6–7, 7–6, 70–68 for a total of 183 games. It remains, by far, the longest match in tennis history in terms of both duration and number of games. The final set alone was longer than the previous longest match.


text: Both players broke numerous Wimbledon and tennis records, including each serving over 100 aces, with the match being referred to as "the endless match."


text: A rule change was instituted for the 2019 Championships, introducing a tie break when the score in the fifth set (third set for women's matches) reaches 12-12. A further rule change during 2022 is trialing a 10-point tie break in the final set of all Grand Slam matches, meaning that under current rules, the Isner–Mahut match will likely remain the longest match in tennis history.


text: The match took place during the 2010 edition of the 13-day Wimbledon Championships, held every June and July. Mahut, who was not ranked high enough to qualify for the tournament automatically, earned his place by winning in the qualifying pre-tournament, where he was seeded 27th. He played three qualification rounds, beating Frank Dancevic 6–3, 6–0, in the first round, then Alex Bogdanovic 3–6, 6–3, 24–22, and finally Stefan Koubek in five sets, 6–7(8), 3–6, 6–3, 6–4, 6–4.


text: Having played through the qualifying stage, Mahut was drawn against Isner in the first round of the Men's Singles. Their match was scheduled for Court 18, one of the larger outer courts at Wimbledon.


text: The match started on the tournament's second day. As in all men's Grand Slam matches, the match was played as best of five sets. In the first four sets of a match, a tiebreaker is used to decide a tied set; however, as of 2010, this did not apply in the fifth set except at the US Open. Thus, in the event of a tie in the fifth set, the players would continue to play the set until one of them led by two games.


text: The first four sets passed without significant incident. Isner won the first set 6–4, breaking Mahut's serve in the ninth game of the set after Mahut had twice double faulted. Mahut took the second set 6–3, having broken Isner's serve to love in the second game of the set. The third and fourth sets had no breaks of serve and were both decided by tiebreaks, with Mahut winning the third set tiebreak 9–7, and Isner winning the fourth set tiebreak 7–3, leaving the score at two sets each. At the end of the fourth set, the match was halted due to darkness.


text: Resuming on , it soon became the longest match ever. Isner failed to convert four match points on this day, the first when Mahut was serving at 9–10, the second and third when Mahut was serving at 32–33, and the fourth in the dramatic last game that they played at 58–59 on , with Mahut initially serving up 40–15 for the hold. Mahut also failed to convert two break points on Isner's serve, at 50–50. The match was suspended for a second time because of darkness on the evening of at 59–59 in the fifth set despite chants of "We want more, we want more" from the spectators.


text: Isner drank a "recovery shake" and took an ice bath. Fellow American Andy Roddick brought take-out food for him and his coach, including "three boxes of pizza, all sorts of chicken and mashed potatoes"; Isner said later that he was so hungry he "could have eaten 12 Big Macs", but reported that drinking coconut water helped him rehydrate and avoid the cramping that he had experienced in the past. He slept for less than four hours before rising. Mahut also slept for only a few hours, and had a cold bath and a massage. The next morning, the BBC reported that Mahut had been practising and Andy Murray informed them that Isner had been running on a treadmill before play resumed.


text: The match was resumed on , and both players continued to dominate their service games. With Isner serving at 68–68, Mahut went up 0–30, but Isner won 4 points in a row to hold serve. At 68–69, with Mahut serving at 15–15, Mahut netted a drop shot that would likely have won the point. Isner, far back in the court at the time, later said that he would not have had the energy to chase after that shot. At 30–30, Isner passed Mahut at the net with a difficult inside-out forehand from the middle of the court that landed just inside the line. This brought up Isner's fifth match point (his first on 24 June) and his 14th break point of the match, which Isner converted with a down-the-line backhand passing shot. Thus, after 67 minutes of play on the third day of the match, Isner won the deciding final set, 70–68. The entire match over the 3 days lasted 11 hours and 5 minutes. This new world record for the longest match ever was 4 hours and 32 minutes longer than the previous record, the first-round match between Fabrice Santoro and Arnaud Clément at the 2004 French Open, which had lasted 6 hours, 33 minutes.


text: The chair umpire throughout the match was the Swedish official Mohamed Lahyani. Lahyani said afterwards that he was so "gripped by the amazing match" that his concentration stayed solid and he did not think about eating or going to the toilet. On the second day of the match, two groups of 14 linespeople and four groups of 28 ballboys and ballgirls were used in a rotation. At the end of the match, Lahyani announced the score incorrectly, accidentally switching the scores of the two tie-break sets.


text: On the second day of play, the courtside scoreboard stood still at 47–47 and later went dark. IBM programmers said it was only programmed to go to 47–47 but would be fixed by the next day. The online scoreboard at the official website lasted slightly longer; it was reset at 50–50. Users were asked to "please add 50 to the Isner/Mahut game score". An IBM programmer worked on a hotfix for the scoring system until to accommodate the match's scores for the next day, although it would have again malfunctioned had the match gone beyond 25 more games.


text: Immediately after the match, both players and the umpire were presented with a crystal bowl and champagne flutes by Tim Henman and Ann Haydon-Jones on behalf of the All England Club, as special recognition of the match. The players were then interviewed on court by John Inverdale, before a photocall for the press alongside one of the two Court 18 scoreboards showing the score. Mahut subsequently donated memorabilia from the match for display at the International Tennis Hall of Fame's Museum in Newport, Rhode Island.


text: On 14 July, Isner and Mahut were jointly awarded the 2010 ESPY Award for "Best Record-Breaking Performance", beating fellow nominees Roger Federer and Usain Bolt. Isner accepted the award in Los Angeles on behalf of both men.


text: In addition, the AELTC placed a plaque commemorating the match at Court 18. "Time" named this match one of the Top 10 Sports Moments of 2010.


text: As the winner, Isner advanced to the second round where, on the day following the conclusion of his match with Mahut, he played Thiemo de Bakker on 25 June at on Court 5. The match was originally scheduled for 24 June but was postponed due to the continuance of Isner's first-round match against Mahut. De Bakker also had a lengthy first-round match against Santiago Giraldo, winning by a score of 16–14 in the fifth set, but unlike Isner, he had a day off before his second-round match. Isner lost to De Bakker 0–6, 3–6, 2–6 in just 74 minutes. It was the shortest men's Wimbledon match at that point in 2010, and Isner failed to serve a single ace. Isner was visibly exhausted and required medical treatment for neck and shoulder problems throughout the match.


text: Isner was also due to play a doubles match with his partner Sam Querrey on 24 June (against Michał Przysiężny and Dudi Sela), but it was postponed to 25 June. Isner's doubles match was tentatively scheduled as the second match of that day on Court 19 following another men's doubles match; however, they withdrew from the doubles because Isner had a blister on his toe. After being eliminated from the tournament, Isner said, "I'll watch sports, I'll take in the World Cup, I'll go fishing, I'll do whatever. Just anything away from the tennis court."


text: As for Mahut, his doubles match with partner Arnaud Clément against Colin Fleming and Ken Skupski started late in the evening on 24 June (also on Court 18); the match was suspended after Mahut and Clément had lost the first set. On 25 June, Mahut/Clément – Fleming/Skupski was scheduled as the fourth match on Court 18 because Clément had a third-round singles match on Centre Court against Roger Federer. Because the match between Daniel Brands and Victor Hănescu lasted almost 3 hours, 30 minutes and ended around 8:45 pm local time, the doubles match was postponed again; it was rescheduled as the first match on Court 14 on 26 June. On resumption, Fleming/Skupski defeated Mahut/Clément, 7–6, 6–4, 3–6, 7–6.


text: The two next met at the 2011 Hopman Cup exhibition in Perth. Isner broke in the opening game to record a win in straight sets. They met again at the 2011 Wimbledon Championships, again in the first round. The odds of the unseeded players meeting in another first round match was 1 in 142. Isner won "Isner–Mahut II" in straight sets (7–6, 6–2, 7–6), in 2 hours and 3 minutes.


text: Former players and commentators have called the match historic and unlikely to happen again; many also praised both participants. John McEnroe said, "This is the greatest advertisement for our sport. It makes me proud to be a part of it. We often don't get the respect we deserve in tennis for the athletic demands it places on players, but this should push that respect way up".


text: Other players, former players, officials, media commentators and fans also praised the behaviour of both players. Roger Federer said of the match, "It's so impressive to see. I mean, I was watching this. I don't know if I was crying or laughing. It was too much". Federer also added, "This is absolutely amazing. [...] This is beyond anything". Novak Djokovic extolled both players, saying, "You have to give them credit, both of them. Whoever wins today, I think both of them are winners".


text: "Sports Illustrated"'s Jon Wertheim said that the victory might give Isner a self-esteem boost. McEnroe speculated, however, that the match might have shortened Isner and Mahut's careers by six months. A sports surgeon said the players had risked dehydration, hyperthermia, and kidney damage during the long match, and that one or both might suffer "some sort of injury or persistent problem over the next six months [...] shoulder problems, tendonitis, and recurrent knee problems", as well as the inability to "get into a groove" mentally for up to a year. Mahut revealed that following the match, he spent three months suffering from depression and a back injury.


text: Mahut shared his experiences on the match in the book "Le match de ma vie" ("The Match of My Life"), which he co-wrote with Philippe Bouin. The book was published in 2011.


text: In October 2018, three months after another marathon match featuring Isner – this time against Kevin Anderson in the semifinals of 2018 Wimbledon, which Anderson won 7–6, 6–7, 6–7, 6–4, 26–24 after 6 hours and 36 minutes, the All England Club announced that Wimbledon would be introducing a rule change to prevent such long matches occurring in the future. From 2019 to 2021, tie breaks were to be played at Wimbledon if the final set score reached 12–all. This point was determined following a review of matches in the previous 20 tournaments and a consultation with players and officials. The rule was first used in the singles in the 2019 Wimbledon final between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, after their fifth set ended that way. In 2022, it was announced that all Grand Slam tournaments (even the Olympics) would collectively trial a new 10-point tie-break where scores reach 6–6 in the final set; prior to this, the French Open had been the last tournament to exclude tie-breaks from the final set.


text: Wimbledon had planned to recognize the players on the 10th anniversary of the match, but was unable to do so owing to their decision to cancel the 2020 Wimbledon Championships in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, Wimbledon posted video coverage of the match in its entirety on its YouTube channel. In lieu of an in-person reunion, John Isner and Nicolas Mahut celebrated their anniversary via social networks. Isner joked about Mahut's hairstyle: "Nicolas Mahut, I can't believe it's been 10 years. Your hair hasn't moved an inch yet!" For his part, Mahut replied: "Happy birthday friend John Isner. We should take some time together to remember that amazing story."


text: The chorus of Dan Bern's song about the match concludes with the scores of the five sets: "six–four, three–six, six–seven, seven–six, seventy–sixty-eight". An a cappella performance of "Isner & Mahut" recorded in 2010 appears on Bern's album "Live in New York".


text: HBO released a mockumentary in 2015 titled "7 Days in Hell", starring Andy Samberg and Kit Harington as two professional tennis players who face off in what becomes the longest match in history. The match takes place at Wimbledon in 2001. The film was inspired by the Isner–Mahut match and included former and current professional tennis players in cameo roles playing themselves, including John McEnroe, Chris Evert and Serena Williams.


text: This match also has a mention in Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer's 2016 song "Open String" from the album "There's a Rumpus Going On".


text: The 2018 novel "Chance to Break" by Owen Prell builds its narrative climax around the Isner–Mahut match.


text: An episode of SB Nation's "Rewinder" on July 9, 2022, focuses on the match and the background and context as to how it happened.


text: The previous record for games played in a match was the 122-game 1973 Davis Cup match in which the United States team of Stan Smith and Erik van Dillen defeated the Chile team of Patricio Cornejo and Jaime Fillol 7–9, 37–39, 8–6, 6–1, 6–3. The previous record for most games in a singles match was the 112-game 1969 match in which Pancho Gonzales defeated Charlie Pasarell 22–24, 1–6, 16–14, 6–3, 11–9, also in the first round at Wimbledon. The singles record since the introduction of the tie-break was the 2003 Australian Open quarter-final match, in which Andy Roddick and Younes El Aynaoui played 83 games; Roddick won 4–6, 7–6(5), 4–6, 6–4, 21–19.


text: The previous official record for duration was set at the 2004 French Open when Fabrice Santoro defeated Arnaud Clément 6–4, 6–3, 6–7(5), 3–6, 16–14, in 6 hours, 33 minutes. The unofficial record of 6 hours, 40 minutes, was set on 2009, when Chris Eaton defeated James Ward 6–3, 6–2, 6–7(3), 2–6, 21–19 in a playoff match to represent the Great Britain Davis Cup team in a 2009 Davis Cup Europe/Africa Zone Group I second round tie versus Ukraine. Isner–Mahut's fifth set alone lasted some 90 minutes longer than the previous longest match. Indeed, even that portion of the fifth set played on the second day was about half an hour longer than the previous longest match, so it also broke the record for the longest play in a single day.


text: John Isner served his 79th ace to take the final set to 39–38 with serve. This surpassed Ivo Karlović's 78 aces that he served on 2009 in a Davis Cup match against Radek Štěpánek. In all, Isner served 113 aces; Mahut also surpassed the previous record with 103 aces. At the 2012 edition of Wimbledon, Serena Williams had a women's record 102 aces for the entire tournament, falling short of both Isner's and Mahut's aces in a single round.


text: The length of the match exceeded the total playing time of Serena Williams in every round combined in winning the previous year's Ladies Wimbledon title. She played for less than ten hours in the entire tournament.


text: In the United Kingdom, the match was featured live in part on BBC One, BBC Two and BBC HD, which were all the television channels which the BBC used to cover Wimbledon. The match was broadcast live in its entirety on the BBC Red Button.


text: Commentating for the BBC during this match were Ronald McIntosh and Mark Cox on the first day, and McIntosh and Greg Rusedski on the second and third days. It was McIntosh's first ever Wimbledon commentary and became the longest continuous commentary for a single match in broadcasting history.


text: The fifth set of the match was covered by Xan Brooks of the Guardian on their Wimbledon Live Blog and continued the following day by Nicky Bandini.


title: GE Appliances

text: GE Appliances is an American home appliance manufacturer based in Louisville, Kentucky. It has been majority owned by Chinese multinational home appliances company Haier since 2016. It is one of the largest appliance companies in the United States and manufactures appliances under several brands, including GE, GE Profile, Café, Monogram, Haier and Hotpoint (Americas only, European rights held by Whirlpool Corporation). The company also owns FirstBuild, a co-creation community and micro-factory on the University of Louisville's campus in Louisville, Kentucky. Another FirstBuild location is in South Korea, and a FirstBuild location in India opened its doors in 2019.


title: GE Appliances

text: The company was owned by General Electric until 2016, and it was previously known as GE Appliances & Lighting and GE Consumer & Industrial. Haier has the right to use the GE brand name until 2056.


title: GE Appliances

text: GE Appliances was originally a part of General Electric, a company which began marketing a full roster of heating and cooking products in 1907. In January 2004, it became part of GE Consumer & Industrial when GE Consumer Products (founded in 1905) merged with GE Industrial Systems (founded in 1930) to form GE Consumer & Industrial. From 2010 to late 2014, GE Appliances & Lighting was a sub-business under GE Home & Business Solutions.


title: GE Appliances

text: On September 8, 2014, General Electric agreed to sell the company to Electrolux, a Swedish appliance manufacturer and the second-largest consumer appliance manufacturer after Whirlpool Corporation, for US$3.3 billion in cash. The deal carried a US$175 million termination fee clause if Electrolux was unable to complete the acquisition. The transaction was terminated in December 2015 after the United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit to block the deal on concerns that, along with Whirlpool, the combined company would control 90% of the "do-it-yourself" market for kitchen appliances sold by home construction retailers.


title: GE Appliances

text: On June 6, 2016, Haier and KKR acquired GE Appliances for $5.6 billion. Under the terms of the sale, Haier would have the right to use the GE brand name until 2056. GE Appliances launched a refreshed tagline (“good things, for life”) in 2017, a nod to its history with General Electric, which used the tagline “we bring good things to life” from 1979 to 2003.


title: GE Appliances

text: GE appliances now operates as an independent subsidiary and remains headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky.


title: GE Appliances

text: In 1951, construction began in Louisville, Kentucky on Appliance Park, the now 750 acre (400 ha) manufacturing facility that currently employs 8,100 people. In 2007, the 9,000 sq ft (840 m) Monogram Experience Center opened to provide architects, designers, contractors, and other home-industry professionals the opportunity to interact with appliances from the Monogram Collection. In 2011, a data center with platinum certification by Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design was opened. Building 6 was destroyed by an 8-alarm fire on the morning of April 3, 2015. In 2017, the company invested $30 million to construct a new washer and dryer manufacturing line. In 2017, the company moved the Supplier Distribution Center operated by Derby Supply Chain Solutions to AP2. In 2018, the company announced a $200 million investment in its laundry and dishwasher product facilities.


title: GE Appliances

text: A "mammoth" fire occurred on the morning of April 3, 2015 at the Appliance Park. Building 6 (AP6) partially collapsed and was predicted to be a total loss. The 6-acre (24,000 m) building, located at 4000 Buechel Bank Road, was mostly being used for storage, with portions leased to GE suppliers and logistics partners. More than 200 firefighters from 18 local agencies were involved in fighting the eight-alarm fire, which led to a production halt and evacuation of the other buildings in the complex. No injuries or fatalities were reported, but "shelter in place" orders were issued for homes and businesses within a 2-mile (3.2 km) radius (later reduced to a one-half mile radius) of the Appliance Park due to noxious and acrid smoke. No hazardous materials were known to be stored at the site. Because of the huge volume of smoke, gases and runoff from burning plastics and other materials the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection and USEPA were called in to monitor emissions from the fire and found they were not toxic. However, area residents reported leaf-size pieces of ash and burned insulation materials in their yards. The cause of the fire remained unclear; a local fire chief said that investigators were leaning toward a lightning strike as the probable cause.


title: GE Appliances

text: The fire was contained, but not extinguished, by the early afternoon of April 3. A statement issued by GE later that day indicated that production at the complex would remain halted over the weekend and at least through the end of the following week as the company conducted "a thorough evaluation of all other buildings" and replenished inventories of parts destroyed by the fire. The shelter-in-place order was canceled for residents within one-half mile of the site the following Sunday, April 5.


title: GE Appliances

text: Two years following the fire, an employee-led company initiative turned the site into a sustainable green space that contains native grasses, trees, and wildlife.


title: GE Appliances

text: GE Appliances’ largest manufacturing site, Appliance Park facility in Louisville, Kentucky, produces washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, and bottom-freezer refrigerators. The company also operates manufacturing sites in four states including Decatur, Alabama – which produces top freezer refrigerators; LaFayette, Georgia – cooking products; Selmer, Tennessee – Monogram built-in refrigerators and Zoneline PTACs, and Camden, South Carolina – refrigeration products. The facilities in LaFayette and Selmer are wholly owned subsidiaries of GE Appliances.


title: GE Appliances

text: In 2018, the company announced it would make major investments in its U.S. facilities including $200 million into Appliance Park in Louisville, $150 million investment in new distribution centers in Dallas, Denver, Northern Georgia, Northern California, and $115 million in its manufacturing facility in Decatur, Alabama.


title: GE Appliances

text: GE Appliances has a long history of cooking innovation and is responsible for creating the first self-cleaning oven as well as the first over-the-range microwave. GE Appliances was also the first manufacturer to launch a suite of WiFi-connected appliances as well as the first suite of appliances that work with IFTTT. As voice assistants became more common, GE Appliances became the first U.S. manufacturer to have its appliances work with Amazon Echo (2017) and Google Home (2017). The company's efforts in the connected space earned it the title of “Smart Appliance Company of the Year” in the 2019 IoT Breakthrough Awards Program.


title: Frank Leboeuf

text: Franck Alain James Leboeuf (born 22 January 1968), typically anglicised as Frank Leboeuf, is a French actor, sports commentator and former international footballer who played as a centre-back. With the French national team, Leboeuf won the 1998 FIFA World Cup and 2000 European Championship as well as a number of domestic trophies, most famously during his five years at Chelsea. Since the conclusion of his playing career, Leboeuf has transitioned to acting, appearing in stage and film productions.


title: Frank Leboeuf

text: Leboeuf was born in Marseille and raised in Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer. He was introduced to football by his father, a former Stade Rennais coach, who trained children in the sport. After starting his career in 1986 in the lower divisions of the French leagues, Leboeuf moved to Laval in 1988. In 1991, he moved to Strasbourg and played there until 1996, when he made a switch to English club Chelsea for £2.5m.


title: Frank Leboeuf

text: He played over 200 games for the club and scored 24 goals, mainly from penalties and set pieces. With Chelsea, he won two FA Cups, one League Cup and one Cup Winners' Cup. He left in 2001 for club Olympique Marseille, before finishing out his career in Qatar.


title: Frank Leboeuf

text: For France, Leboeuf was capped 50 times, scoring four goals. His first two came on 6 September 1995 in a UEFA Euro 1996 qualifier at home to Azerbaijan, contributing to a 10–0 win that remains France's record. Although he was mainly a substitute in the 1998 World Cup, he stepped in for red carded Laurent Blanc to play in the final, a 3–0 win against Brazil, a match in which he man-marked the highly rated striker Ronaldo.


title: Frank Leboeuf

text: In a UEFA Euro 2000 qualifier on 9 June 1999, Leboeuf scored the only goal from the penalty spot with five minutes to go as world champions France struggled away to amateurs Andorra. He received a winner's medal at the finals in Belgium and the Netherlands, though Blanc and Marcel Desailly were the preferred defensive partnership, including in the final.


title: Frank Leboeuf

text: He scored a late winner against co-hosts South Korea on 26 May ahead of the 2002 FIFA World Cup (3–2). Holders France were eliminated in the group stage in a shock, and he retired from the team.


title: Frank Leboeuf

text: A cultured centre-back, Leboeuf was noted for his long range passing ability and also for his consistent penalty-taking throughout his career. He took more than 20 penalties for Chelsea, missing just 3 times.


title: Frank Leboeuf

text: In 2001, whilst still playing football for Chelsea, Leboeuf had made his first acting appearance in the film "Taking Sides".


title: Frank Leboeuf

text: Following his retirement from competitive football, Leboeuf spent two years living in Los Angeles. During this time he played for amateur team Hollywood United, alongside celebrity team-mates such as Vinnie Jones, Steve Jones and Anthony LaPaglia. Leboeuf studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute in West Hollywood, keeping a low profile, and won his first acting work as a TV commentator, for a pay cheque totalling $100, which he keeps as a memento.


title: Frank Leboeuf

text: Leboeuf acted in several theatre plays in France, including starring alongside Jean-Francois Garreaud in "L'intrus" in 2010 and a role in the play "Avec Ma Belle Mère et Moi". In 2014, Leboeuf played a French Resistance fighter in the World War II film "Allies" and a doctor in the Stephen Hawking biopic "The Theory of Everything".


title: Frank Leboeuf

text: Leboeuf works as a sports commentator and analyst for RMC and ESPN in the United States. In 2010, he was a contestant on the reality television show "Koh-Lanta" in the "Koh-Lanta, le choc des héros" special series. He was forced to depart the show after two episodes due to a back injury he had suffered in a car accident shortly before the series commenced. In 2014, Leboeuf made an appearance in the television comedy series "Nos Chers Voisins" and began writing a column for "Téléfoot".


title: Frank Leboeuf

text: In 2019, Leboeuf competed on the first season of "Mask Singer", the French version of the global franchise "Masked Singer", disguised as a peacock.