title: Neil Ruddock

text: In 2006, Ruddock helped produce "Football Saved My Life" a reality sports TV show for Bravo which attempted to change the lives of 15 dysfunctional men through their involvement with football.


title: Neil Ruddock

text: In November 2011, he appeared in "James May's Man Lab" on BBC Two, coaching James May on how to score a penalty kick in front of 20,000 Germans at Veltins-Arena, Gelsenkirchen. James May missed the penalty. He appeared again in April 2013 as a member of the Manlab team representing China at the Rock, Paper, Scissors world championships.


title: Neil Ruddock

text: In 2019 and 2020, Ruddock featured in both seasons of ITV show Harry's Heroes, which featured former football manager Harry Redknapp attempting get a squad of former England international footballers back fit and healthy for a game against Germany legends.


title: Neil Ruddock

text: Ruddock was given the nickname "Razor" by teammates after they claimed to have seen the unrelated boxer Donovan Ruddock billed as "Razor Ruddock" in a boxing match at White Hart Lane; however, Donovan Ruddock never boxed at White Hart Lane during his career.


title: Neil Ruddock

text: In 2011, Ruddock declared bankruptcy. On 25 September 2014, he was featured in an episode of the Channel 5 programme "Can't Pay? We'll Take It Away!" where he was approached by High Court enforcement agents who were seeking to collect an alleged unpaid bill to a dog kennel of £3,000. During the encounter, Ruddock's wife used expletives while throwing water on the enforcement agents.


title: Ashur (god)

text: Ashur, Ashshur, also spelled Ašur, Aššur (Sumerian: AN.ŠAR₂, Assyrian cuneiform: , also phonetically ) is a god of the ancient Assyrians and Akkadians, and the head of the Assyrian pantheon in Mesopotamian religion, who was worshipped mainly in northern Mesopotamia, and parts of north-east Syria and south-east Asia Minor which constituted old Assyria. He may have had a solar iconography.


title: Ashur (god)

text: Aššur was a deified form of the city of Assur, which dates from the mid 3rd millennium BC and was the capital of the Old Assyrian kingdom. As such, Ashur did not originally have a family, but as the cult came under southern Mesopotamian influence, he later came to be regarded as the Assyrian equivalent of Enlil, the chief god of Nippur. Enlil was the most important god of the southern pantheon from the early 3rd millennium BC until Hammurabi founded an empire based in Babylon in the mid-18th century BC, after which Marduk replaced Enlil as the chief god in the south. In the north, Ashur absorbed Enlil's wife Ninlil (as the Assyrian goddess Mullissu) and his sons Ninurta and Zababa—this process began around the 14th century BC and continued down to the 7th century.


title: Ashur (god)

text: During the various periods of Assyrian conquest, such as the Old Assyrian Empire of Shamshi-Adad I (1813–1750 BC), Middle Assyrian Empire (1391–1056 BC) and Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC), Assyrian imperial propaganda proclaimed the supremacy of Ashur and declared that the conquered peoples had been abandoned by their own gods.


title: Ashur (god)

text: When Assyria conquered Babylon in the Sargonid period (8th–7th centuries BC), Assyrian scribes began to write the name of Ashur with the cuneiform signs AN.ŠAR, the ideograms for "whole heaven" in Sumerian, simplified into AN.ŠAR2 in Assyrian cuneiform, which came to be pronounced "Aššur" in the Assyrian dialect of Akkadian, the language of Assyria and Babylonia. The intention seems to have been to put Aššur at the head of the Babylonian pantheon, where Anshar and his counterpart Kishar ("whole earth") preceded even Enlil and Ninlil. Thus in the Sargonid version of the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian national creation myth, Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, does not appear, and instead it is Ashur, as Anshar, who slays Tiamat the chaos-monster and creates the world of humankind.


title: Ashur (god)

text: Ashur was represented as the winged sun disc that appears frequently in Assyrian iconography. Many Assyrian kings had names that included the name Ashur, including, above all, Ashur-uballit I, Ashurnasirpal, Esarhaddon (Ashur-aha-iddina), and Ashurbanipal. Epithets include "bêlu rabû" "great lord", "ab ilâni" "father of gods", "šadû rabû" "great mountain", and "il aššurî" "god of Ashur". The symbols of Ashur include:


title: Ashur (god)

text: An Assyrian standard, which probably represented the world column, has the disc mounted on a bull's head with horns. The upper part of the disc is occupied by a warrior, whose head, part of his bow, and the point of his arrow protrude from the circle. The rippling water rays are V-shaped, and two bulls, treading river-like rays, occupy the divisions thus formed. There are also two heads—a lion's and a man's—with gaping mouths, which may symbolize tempests, the destroying power of the sun, or the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates. Jastrow regards the winged disc as "the purer and more genuine symbol of Ashur as a solar deity". He calls it "a sun disc with protruding rays", and says: "To this symbol the warrior with the bow and arrow was added—a despiritualization that reflects the martial spirit of the Assyrian empire".


title: Ashur (god)

text: Simo Parpola explored the use of the 'Tree of life' motif when Ashur is depicted in reliefs. Often, Ashur is depicted in a winged disk hovering on top of a tree, for instance, in Ashurnasirpal's throne room in Calah which was inscribed with "vice-regent of Ashur".


title: Ashur (god)

text: Parpola continues by drawing on parallels between the Ein Sof in the Kabbalah and the symbolism of Ashur with the Tree of life. The depiction of Ashur, the universal God, behind a solar disk, representing light as his essential nature, just as in Kabbalah, is just one instance of Parpola's comparison.


title: Racemic mixture

text: In chemistry, a racemic mixture, or racemate (), is one that has equal amounts of left- and right-handed enantiomers of a chiral molecule or salt. Racemic mixtures are rare in nature, but many compounds are produced industrially as racemates.


title: Racemic mixture

text: The first known racemic mixture was racemic acid, which Louis Pasteur found to be a mixture of the two enantiomeric isomers of tartaric acid. He manually separated the crystals of a mixture by hand, starting from an aqueous solution of the sodium ammonium salt of racemate tartaric acid. Pasteur benefited from the fact that ammonium tartrate salt that gives enantiomeric crystals with distinct crystal forms (at 77 °F). Reasoning from the macroscopic scale down to the molecular, he reckoned that the molecules had to have non-superimposable mirror images.


title: Racemic mixture

text: From racemic acid found in grapes; from Latin "racemus", meaning a bunch of grapes. This acid, when naturally produced in grapes, is only the right-handed version of the molecule, better known as tartaric acid. In many Germanic languages racemic acid is called “grape acid” e.g. German "traubensäure" and Swedish "druvsyra". Carl von Linné gave red elderberry the scientific name "Sambucus racemosa" as the Swedish name, "druvfläder", means 'grape elder', so called because its berries grow in a grape-like cluster.


title: Racemic mixture

text: A racemic mixture is denoted by the prefix (±)- or dl- (for sugars the prefix - may be used), indicating an equal (1:1) mixture of dextro and levo isomers. Also the prefix rac- (or racem-) or the symbols RS and SR (all in "italic" letters) are used.


title: Racemic mixture

text: If the ratio is not 1:1 (or is not known), the prefix (+)/(−), - or d/l- (with a slash) is used instead.


title: Racemic mixture

text: A racemate is optically inactive (achiral), meaning that such materials do not rotate of plane-polarized light. Although the two enantiomers rotate plane-polarized light in opposite directions, the rotations cancel each other out because they are present in equal amounts of negative (-) counterclockwise (levorotatory) and positive (+) clockwise (dextrorotatory) enantiomers.


title: Racemic mixture

text: In contrast to the two pure enantiomers, which have identical physical properties except for the direction of rotation of plane-polarized light, a racemate sometimes has different properties from either of the pure enantiomers. Different melting points are most common, but different solubilities and boiling points are also possible.


title: Racemic mixture

text: Pharmaceuticals may be available as a racemate or as the pure enantiomer, which might have different potencies. Because biological systems have many chiral asymmetries, pure enantiomers frequently have very different biological effects; examples include glucose and methamphetamine.


title: Racemic mixture

text: There are four ways in which a racemate can be crystallized, depending on the substance; three of which H. W. B. Roozeboom had distinguished by 1899:


title: Racemic mixture

text: The separation of a racemate into its components, the individual enantiomers, is called a chiral resolution. Various methods exist for this separation, including crystallization, chromatography, and the use of various reagents.


title: Racemic mixture

text: Without a chiral influence (for example a chiral catalyst, solvent or starting material), a chemical reaction that makes a chiral product will always yield a racemate. That can make the synthesis of a racemate cheaper and easier than making the pure enantiomer, because it does not require special conditions. This fact also leads to the question of how biological homochirality evolved on what is presumed to be a racemic primordial earth.


title: Racemic mixture

text: The reagents of, and the reactions that produce, racemic mixtures are said to be "not stereospecific" or "not stereoselective", for their indecision in a particular stereoisomerism. A frequent scenario is that of a planar species (such as an sp carbon atom or a carbocation intermediate) acting as an electrophile. The nucleophile will have a 50% probability of 'hitting' either of the two sides of the planar grouping, thus producing a racemic mixture:


title: Racemic mixture

text: Some drug molecules are chiral, and the enantiomers have different effects on biological entities. They can be sold as one enantiomer or as a racemic mixture. Examples include thalidomide, ibuprofen, cetirizine and salbutamol. A well known drug that has different effects depending on its ratio of enantiomers is amphetamine. Adderall is an unequal mixture of both amphetamine enantiomers. A single amphetamine dose combines the neutral sulfate salts of dextroamphetamine and amphetamine, with the dextro isomer of amphetamine saccharate and D/L-amphetamine aspartate monohydrate. The original Benzedrine was a racemic mixture. The prescription analgesic tramadol is also a racemate.


title: Racemic mixture

text: In some cases (e.g., ibuprofen and thalidomide), the enantiomers interconvert or racemize "in vivo". This means that preparing a pure enantiomer for medication is largely pointless. However, sometimes samples containing pure enantiomers may be made and sold at a higher cost in cases where the use requires specifically one isomer (e.g., for a stereospecific reagent); compare omeprazole and esomeprazole. Moving from a racemic drug to a chiral specific drug may be done for a better safety profile or an improved therapeutic index. This process is called chiral switching and the resulting enantiopure drug is called a chiral switch. As examples, esomeprazole is a chiral switch of (±)-omeprazole and levocetirizine is a chiral switch of (±)-cetirizine.


title: Racemic mixture

text: While often only one enantiomer of the drug may be active, there are cases in which the other enantiomer is harmful, like salbutamol and thalidomide. The (R) enantiomer of thalidomide is effective against morning sickness, while the (S) enantiomer is teratogenic, causing birth defects. Since the drug racemizes, the drug cannot be considered safe for use by women of child-bearing age, and its use is tightly controlled when used for treating other illness.


title: Racemic mixture

text: Methamphetamine is available by prescription under the brand name Desoxyn. The active component of Desoxyn is dextromethamphetamine hydrochloride. This is the right-handed isomer of methamphetamine. The left-handed isomer of methamphetamine, levomethamphetamine, is an OTC drug that is less centrally-acting and more peripherally-acting.


title: Racemic mixture

text: Wallach's rule (first proposed by Otto Wallach) states that racemic crystals tend to be denser than their chiral counterparts. This rule has been substantiated by crystallographic database analysis.


title: Nichole Hiltz

text: Nichole Marie Hiltz is an American actress. She has appeared in several films, made-for-TV movies, and television series. Her most recent long-running television credit is for USA Network's "In Plain Sight" from 2008 to 2012 in which she portrayed Brandi Shannon, younger sister of the main character.


title: Nichole Hiltz

text: Hiltz has made guest appearances on several television shows, including "NYPD Blue", "The O.C.", "Strong Medicine", "Cold Case", "The Shield", "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "V.I.P.", "", "Bones, " and "Smallville". She also appeared in three episodes of "Desperate Housewives". She played the semiregular character Ginny Dannegan in "The Riches".


title: Nichole Hiltz

text: Hiltz got into acting via performers such as Michelle Pfeiffer, and the show Punky Brewster. This would lead her to take acting classes in Boston after high school.


title: Nichole Hiltz

text: For a short time in 2006, Hiltz was engaged to Canadian actor Mike Smith (of "Trailer Park Boys" fame). The two actors met during the filming of "".


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: Matilda Wormwood, also known by her adoptive name Matilda Honey, is the title character of the bestselling 1988 children's novel "Matilda" by Roald Dahl. She is a highly precocious five and a half (six and a half in the 1996 film) year old girl who has a passion for reading books. Her parents do not recognize her great intelligence and show little interest in her, particularly her father, a secondhand car dealer who verbally abuses her. She then gets adopted by Miss Honey, who has taught her at her school, who is very nice to her and does notice her intelligence. She discovers she has psychokinetic powers which she uses to her advantage. In the BBC Radio 4 two-part adaptation of the novel, she is played by Lauren Mote, and in the 1996 film, she is portrayed by American actress Mara Wilson. In the 2022 film, she is played by Alisha Weir.


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: Matilda Wormwood is a brave, intelligent and confident girl with telekinesis, a power that she uses with her mind. She educates herself. She also does not receive support from her family, who do not realize how bright of a child she is. She is a highly educated girl.


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: Matilda is a young girl of genius intelligence, having developed skills such as walking and speech at an early age. However, these prodigious characteristics displayed by her character are ignored by her neglectful parents who want her to watch television in order to nurture her literacy skills. Matilda, in return, plays practical jokes on her parents (her father in particular), such as replacing her father's hair tonic with her mother's platinum blonde hair dye and gluing her father's favourite hat to his head with "Super-Super Glue".


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: Matilda has read a variety of books, especially at the age of four, when she read many in six months:


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: Matilda's supreme intellect has given her psychokinetic abilities, which she discovered in class one day after inadvertently tipping over a glass of water containing a live newt on Miss Trunchbull, using said powers. Her capabilities of psychokinesis were confirmed on the afternoon of that same day when using the powers of her mind to tip over a glass, to the shock of herself and Miss Honey, so Matilda decides to exercise this ability at home by levitating a cigar. She continues to polish her talent, and learns of Miss Honey's traumatic and unspeakably abusive childhood at the hands of her aunt and guardian, Miss Trunchbull, after her father Magnus' unexpected death. Out of sympathy for Miss Honey's woes, Matilda develops a scheme in revenge against Miss Trunchbull, and in class one day she levitates a piece of chalk to the blackboard while Miss Trunchbull is visiting the room and tormenting the students, posing as the spirit of Magnus and threatening to punish Miss Trunchbull by name if she does not leave her inheritance to his daughter. Horrified, she completely vanishes from existence following the events of Matilda's practical joke, leaving her house and worldly possessions to her niece, without any information established relating to her current whereabouts.


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: After the position of headmaster is overtaken by a different teacher, Matilda is relocated to the year six classroom (which was one of the many preventions standing in her way during Miss Trunchbull's tyranny, due to her particular hatred for especially young children and doubts regarding Matilda's genius intelligence), but finds herself unable to summon her psychokinesis one day. Miss Honey suggests that, after her promotion to the year six class, all of the intellect remaining unused in reception was now being exercised, so as a result Matilda had lost her gift. (However, in the movie, although Matilda ceases using her telekinetic ability quite as frequently as before but because of the more frequent use of her knowledge, she still continues to use it on occasion, whereas in the book she seems to lose it entirely.) Aside from this, Matilda also specializes in the fields of reading and multiplication, having developed an astounding vocabulary and intellect during babyhood that went ignored because of her parents' immense ignorance.


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: In the 1996 film Matilda was portrayed by American child actress Mara Wilson. Newborn Matilda was portrayed by two sets of twins: Alissa and Amanda Graham and Trevor and James Gallagher; nine-month-old Matilda was portrayed by Kayla and Kelsey Fredericks; toddler Matilda by Amanda and Caitlin Fein and four year by Sara Magdalin.


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: In the Musical Stratford production Matilda was portrayed by three young actresses Adrianna Bertola; Josie Griffiths and Kerry Ingram.


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: When the production transferred to West End Kerry Ingram was the only one who transferred and three new actresses were brought in: Cleo Demetriou; Sophia Kiely and Eleanor Worthington Cox. When Kerry Ingram and Sophia Kiely left the show, two actresses replaced them: Jade Marner and Isobelle Molloy. In the Autumn of 2012, a whole new cast was brought in, with Lucy-Mae Beacock, Hayley Canham, Chloe Hawthorn and Lara Wollington all playing Matilda. At the end of their runs, these four girls were replaced by Elise Blake, Cristina Fray, Lollie Mckenzie and Georgia Pemberton. With the most recent cast change in March 2014, Blake and Fray departed and three new girls joined the cast in the role of Matilda; Tasha Chapple, Car Jenkins and Lottie Sicilia. Later on in September 2014, Jenkins and McKenzie departed and two new girls joined the cast in the role of Matilda; Matilda Shapland (who was in Les Misérables before) and Violet Tucker (in her west end debut.) With the most recent cast change in March 2015, Chapple and Sicilia departed and two new girls joined the cast in the role of Matilda; Anna-Louise Knight and Lara McDonnell. Later on in September 2015, Shapland and Tucker departed and two new girls joined the cast in the role of Matilda; Evie Hone and Lizzie Wells.


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: When Matilda transferred to Broadway Sophia Gennusa, Oona Laurence, Bailey Ryon and Milly Shapiro started rotating the role. They have since been replaced by four new actresses Paige Brady, Gabriella Pizzolo, Ripley Sobo and Ava Ulloa. Later on they have been replaced by four new actresses Tori Feinstein, Eliza Holland Madore, Brooklyn Shuck and Fina Strazza. Later on in September 2015, Matilda Shapland and Violet Tucker will depart and two new girls will the cast in the role of Matilda; Evie Hone and Lizzie Wells. Eliza, Brooklyn and Fina departed from the show and are replaced by Mattea Conforti, Mimi Ryder, Alexandra Vlachos and Rileigh McDonald. Soon in 2016 Mattea, Mimi, Rileigh, and Alexandra departed from the cast. Soon they were replaced by Ava Briglia, Willow McCarthy, and Aviva Winick, often referred to by their nickname, the "Tri-Tildas." Due to unforeseen circumstances, Winick departed from the cast in September 2016, and Tori Feinstein returned to reprise her role as Matilda alongside Briglia and McCarthy from November 2016 to the Broadway show's closure in January 2017.


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: With the most recent cast change at the West End in March 2016, Lara McDonnell and Anna-Louise Knight departed and three new girls joined the cast in the role of Matilda; Clara Read, Emily-May Stephenson, and Zaris-Angel Hator. Read made her debut on 15 March 2016; Stephenson and Hator debuted on 21 March and 31 March respectfully. In September, Evie Hone departed from the cast, and in October, Emily-May Stephenson left as well, being replaced by new Matildas Sara Sheen, who debuted on 13 September 2016, and Abbie Vena, who debuted on 22 September.


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: On 2 March 2017, a cast change was announced. The current West End Matildas, Zaris-Angel Hator, Clara Read and Sara Sheen would be replaced by three new girls: Lilian Hardy, Emma Moore and Éva-Marie Saffrey. Abbie Vena would remain in the title role.


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: Clara Read bowed out of the title role on 12 March, and two days later, Emma Moore debuted, along with an entirely new team of child cast members. Sara Sheen took her final bow on 18 March 2017, and on 26 March, Lilian Hardy debuted along with several other new child actors in the roles of Matilda's classmates. On 1 April, Zaris-Angel Hator took her final bow.


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: In September 2017, three new girls were cast. Lily-Mae Evans, Savannah Read and Kitty Peterkin took up the role of Matilda alongside Emma Moore. Abbie Vena took her final bow in October 2017.


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: March 2018 saw another cast change, with Kitty Peterkin and Emma Moore both departing, and being replaced by Olivia Wells and Sara Munday.


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: In September 2018, Read and Evans were both replaced by Isobel Hubble and Francesca McKeown. Wells and Munday continued for a second contract.


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: In March 2019, Wells and Munday were replaced by Hannah Selk and Zoe Simon. McKeown and Hubble each accepting a further 6 months, alongside Selk and Simon.


title: Matilda Wormwood

text: In September 2019, The show introduced its 100th Matilda as McKeown, Hubble and Selk were replaced by Tilly-Raye Bayer, Olivia Juno Cleverley and Alex Munden who both share the lead role with Zoe Simon from September 2019.


title: Gibi ASMR

text: Gibi ASMR (; born December 19, 1994) is an American ASMR performer, YouTube personality, Twitch streamer, and cosplayer.


title: Gibi ASMR

text: Gibi has a background in theater and film, and graduated with the class of 2017 from Northwestern University's School of Communication with a Bachelor of Science in Film.


title: Gibi ASMR

text: During the early years of ASMR content, Gibi was a high school sophomore with anxiety and insomnia when YouTube's recommendation algorithm introduced her to the genre. After watching and listening to ASMR for years, Gibi created her YouTube channel in June 2016, before her senior year of college. That summer, she began cosplaying and attending anime conventions; inspired by earlier creators, she incorporated these interests into role-play ASMR videos, which feature both existing and original characters. From the start, Gibi intended to treat video-making as a full-time job, which included taking her winter quarter off from college to focus on production. Within six months of graduating, she was earning enough to create videos full-time, and after a year reached one million subscribers.


title: Gibi ASMR

text: At the suggestion of her editor, Gibi created her Twitch channel in 2017, on which she streams ASMR and plays video games. In 2019, she hosted a web miniseries by Rooster Teeth called Encounter Culture.


title: Gibi ASMR

text: Polydor Records contacted Gibi in 2019 and asked if she would perform an ASMR read-through of Billie Eilish's album, "When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?." Gibi recorded the project for free; since its upload it has amassed over 3 million views. That summer, Gibi was hired to star in "Reese The Movie: A Movie About Reese," an official feature-length ASMR project about Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.


title: Gibi ASMR

text: Gibi is considered one of YouTube's top ASMR creators. Her videos have been recommended by authors for "Bustle", "Den of Geek," "Heavy.com", and "Insider". Writing for "The New York Times Magazine", Jamie Lauren Keiles called Gibi "the LeBron James of touching stuff," and wrote favorably of her genuine online persona.


title: Gibi ASMR

text: Gibi takes strict privacy precautions for the sake of friends and family. In the past, she refrained from sharing her relationship status or city of residence. In 2019, Gibi married her husband, Ben, whom she met at Northwestern and today manages her business affairs. The couple relocated in January 2020, revealing their former residence was in a suburb of Chicago. In November 2020, Gibi revealed her first name as Gina.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: Neighborhoods is the sixth studio album by American rock band Blink-182, released September 27, 2011, through DGC Records and Interscope. Their first album of new material in eight years (the longest gap between albums to date), its recording followed the band's breakup and later reconciliation. Due to conflicts within the trio, the band entered an "indefinite hiatus" in 2005 and the members explored various side-projects. After two separate tragedies regarding the band and their entourage, the members of Blink-182 decided to reunite in late 2008, with plans for a new album and tour. It was the last studio album to feature founding member Tom DeLonge until his return to the band in 2022.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: The band's studio autonomy, tours, managers, and personal projects stalled the recording process, which lasted from shortly after the band's February 2009 reunion to July 2011. Blink-182 developed "Neighborhoods" in separate studios and regrouped at various periods to record. Their numerous delays in the recording process resulted in the cancelation of a European tour and the label setting a deadline for the album to be due. The trio wrote lyrics on such subjects as isolation, confusion, and death. They infused inspiration from each member's various musical tastes to form a unique sound that recalled their separate upbringings, leading the trio to compare the album to separate neighborhoods.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: "Neighborhoods" was released to mixed reviews from critics; some felt it was a natural evolution from the band's previous releases, while others found it stale and disjointed. The album debuted at number two on the "Billboard" 200 and "Up All Night" and "After Midnight" were released as singles, with both attracting modest success on "Billboard"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s Alternative Songs chart. Despite this, "Neighborhoods" did not sell as well as earlier releases and the band would depart from Interscope the following fall.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: Blink-182 announced on February 22, 2005, that they would be going on an "indefinite hiatus". The decision, in reality a breakup of the group, stemmed from internal band tension, which had arisen in late 2004 during their European tour. Guitarist and vocalist Tom DeLonge expressed his desire to take a half-year respite from touring in order to spend more time with family. Bassist/vocalist Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker were dismayed by his decision, which they felt was an overly long break. Following the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, DeLonge agreed to perform at Music for Relief's Concert for South Asia, a benefit show to aid victims. Further arguments ensued during rehearsals, rooted in the band members' increasing paranoia and bitterness toward one another. DeLonge felt his priorities were "mad different", and the breakdown in communication led to heated exchanges, resulting in his exit from the group. During the hiatus, DeLonge formed the rock band Angels & Airwaves, while Barker and Hoppus continued playing together in +44. Two events in late 2008 would lead to the band's eventual reformation: the death of longtime producer Jerry Finn (who suffered a cerebral hemorrhage) and a near-fatal plane crash involving Barker and collaborator DJ AM.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: The two incidents raised rumors of a possible Blink-182 reunion. Hoppus was alerted about Barker's accident by a phone call in the middle of the night and jumped on the next flight to the burn center. DeLonge learned of the crash via the TV news at an airport while waiting to board a flight. He landed and mailed a letter and two photographs to Barker: a photo of Blink aboard a submarine in the Middle East and another of himself and his two kids. "One was 'Do you remember who we were?' and the other was 'This is who I am now'" DeLonge said. He also commented that, no matter what had happened between himself and Barker in the past, "none of it matters when it comes down to somebody getting hurt". Hoppus first spoke on the matter in a blog post in November 2008, writing that he "hadn't had it in him" to post, adding that "these past two months have been the hardest times I can remember". He also revealed that he, DeLonge, and Barker had all spoken in the aftermath. Barker quashed reunion rumors in December, but noted that they had been getting along.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: Talk of a reunion commenced weeks after the trio began speaking again. After a two-hour phone conversation between DeLonge and Hoppus, an arrangement was made for the trio to meet up at Hoppus and Barker's Los Angeles studio in October 2008. DeLonge was the first to approach the subject of reuniting. The trio had, in Hoppus' words, "two gnarly heart-to-hearts", during which the three opened up. "Tom had just kind of come out to Los Angeles for the day", recalled Hoppus, "I remember he said, 'So, what do you guys think? Where are your heads at?' And I said, 'I think we should continue with what we've been doing for the past 17 years. I think we should get back on the road and back in the studio and do what we love doing'". Eventually, the band appeared for the first time on stage together in nearly five years as presenters at the 51st Grammy Awards on February 8, 2009. The band's official website was updated with a statement: "To put it simply, we're back. We mean, really back. Picking up where we left off and then some. In the studio writing and recording a new album. Preparing to tour the world yet again. Friendships reformed. 17 years deep in our legacy."


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: Blink-182 began recording demos of new material in 2009. All three members brought song ideas that they had worked on for years. As the band got back together, Barker said that the trio immediately "got inspired" by practicing their old songs and listening to them again, and they decided to record demos. There were four demos done, and only one was near completion, "Up All Night". The trio wanted to release it as a single then, but quickly realized that it was too ambitious to complete it before their reunion tour began in July. Sessions were stalled by the summer 2009 reunion tour, during which the band reconnected musically and emotionally. During the tour, Barker got a phone call that DJ AM had overdosed and died in New York, which heavily affected him. In addition to the tragedy regarding DJ AM, DeLonge was diagnosed with skin cancer the following year, but this eventually cleared up. The band did a large amount of writing before leaving on tour, but upon its completion, they took time off to "chill and do other stuff", with intentions to regroup in 2010. In June and July 2010, Blink-182 spent time at their rehearsal spot, with the intention to wrap up touring by September and stay in the studio for the rest of the year until the record was finished. The album sessions were to be partially documented in "The Blinkumentary", which was scrapped in 2012.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: The recording and release of "Neighborhoods" was delayed multiple times. This was due to the way the band chose to work—in bits and pieces, alone and together, in a pair of California studios—in addition to each member's busy schedules. The album was recorded at both DeLonge's studio in San Diego and in Los Angeles by Hoppus and Barker. Recording in separate studios was DeLonge's idea, and ideas were exchanged via email. Various engineers met up in person to trade files on hard drives. Although the three musicians were rarely in the same room while recording, opting to work on their parts individually, DeLonge asserted that the method of recording was a more efficient way of working considering their schedules, not due to a lack of unity within the band. In addition, Barker was releasing a solo record, DeLonge was involved in Angels & Airwaves, and Hoppus had to fly to New York City once a week to film his television show, "Hoppus on Music". The record was the band's first to be self-produced, due to the death of longtime producer Jerry Finn in 2008. Not only did Finn helm their last three studio albums, but he served as an invaluable member of the band: part adviser, part impartial observer, he helped smooth out tensions and hone their sound. "I honestly still feel like he's in the studio with us, because for me, personally, everything that was about recording and being in a studio, I learned from Jerry", said Hoppus. Instead of a producer, each band member had their own dedicated sound engineer, with Hoppus and DeLonge receiving help from longtime co-production partners Chris Holmes and "Critter", respectively. DeLonge, who was against using a producer after self-producing most of his Angels & Airwaves records, described the band situation as "very democratic", noting that he learned during the recording process to "let go and be okay with not being able to control everything".


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: Hoppus attributed the album's delay to the band learning to work by themselves without Finn, and both he and DeLonge expressed frustration during the sessions at the band's cabal of publicists, managers, and attorneys (which DeLonge described as "the absolute diarrhea of bureaucracy"). A result of the trio's split was each members hiring his own attorney, and, during the "Neighborhoods" sessions, they had a total of four managers. Later, it was revealed that DeLonge and Hoppus would go months without direct communication, only speaking through their managers. Hoppus moved to London with his family late in the recording process, also complicating matters. Under pressure, the band released a statement in April that effectively rescheduled all European tour dates due to the album's prolonged recording. The decision—a "hugely expensive" one—was protested by DeLonge but pushed forward by Barker, who felt the trio had made commitments to only tour with new material. The biggest argument of the recording process ensued, resulting in Geffen Records setting a July 31 deadline for the record amid concerns about the volatility of the band, explaining there would be penalties if the album was not turned in on time. DeLonge joked that, "We'll probably actually drive it to the [Geffen] president's house at two in the morning and hand it through his bedroom window at the last possible minute". The band, as a whole, only entered the studio for "one or two weeks" following the release of the statement in the spring, with only three days dedicated to writing. Recording lasted through May and into the summer, and by the time of the July 31 deadline, the record was near completion and finally completed through August.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: Stylistically, "Neighborhoods" has been described as alternative rock, pop-punk, and pop rock. Pre-release, the album was described by the band as ambitious, weird, and expansive. The music of the album was inspired by each musician's tastes: DeLonge's contributions bear hints of stadium rock, Barker infuses hip hop into his drum tracks, and Hoppus felt compelled by "weird indie rock." Hoppus stated early on that a goal for the album was to try many new things, but to remain a catchy and "poppy" sensibility. The lyricism of the album was influenced by heavy events in each member's life during the latter part of the decade, elements considered dark by Hoppus. The band made sure to produce a few throwback songs recalling their sound in the "mid-90s."


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: Though DeLonge hoped to retain the angst present in the band's past work, he wanted to "deliver it in a package that's very modern, using instrumentations and formulas to launch you into different places with music that is not just three-chord pop-punk with riffs". He later felt the album was not progressive as he had wished: "I'm thinking, 'Why don't we do this? Why don't we create these landscapes?' I think we should have been pushing ourselves, and trying to push the genre forward". Likewise, Barker felt DeLonge wanted their music to be derivative of groups such as U2 or Coldplay, commenting, "For us, we were always like 'Blink is Blink, man. We want to sound like fucking Blink-182'".


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: Hoppus wrote lyrics dealing with breakdowns in communication and trust and tackled themes of isolation and confusion, but these lyrics were not specific to any of the band's history. He struggled with writing upbeat, happy songs for the album and attributed the dark lyricism to heavy events occurring shortly before the reunion. MTV News called "Neighborhoods" the "bleakest thing Blink have ever done, haunted by specters both real—depression, addiction, loss—and imagined", noting the constant lyrical mention of death in many tracks. The album mixes the electronic flourishes of +44 and the "laser-light grandeur" of Angels & Airwaves into what MTV News called "a sound that recalls nothing so much as dark streets and black expanses, mostly of the suburban variety".


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: The title "Neighborhoods" evolved out of the trio discovering that each bring a very different aesthetic to the band, each like different neighborhoods in a city. "Everybody in the world thinks of something unique unto themselves when they hear the word 'Neighborhoods'", said Hoppus. "To some it is a big city, others a small town, others suburbia, everything. The world is wide, exciting and very different. That's what "Neighborhoods" means to me". The album artwork for the record was revealed on August 4, 2011, and featured the band name written atop a city skyline. The "Neighborhoods" sleeve contains many names close to the band, including Chloe (DeLonge's pet Labrador Retriever), Ava and Jon (DeLonge's daughter Ava Elizabeth and son Jonas Rocket), Jack (Hoppus' son), Landon, Alabama and Ati (Barker's son and stepdaughter, Atiana), G! (Mike Giant, designer of the cover), and lastly, a memorial to DJ AM.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: "Ghost on the Dance Floor" opens the album and is specifically about "hearing a song you shared with someone that's passed". The track resonated with Barker, who called DeLonge one night because the song affected him while listening to it, due to the death of DJ AM. "Natives" first arose from a tribal beat Barker created in the studio, and the song's title changed multiple times before settling on simplicity. "Up All Night" is the album's oldest song, dating to just after the band's 2009 reunion, when they grouped together and produced demos. The band returned to it multiple times over the recording process, each time making it heavier than before. "After Midnight" was one of four new songs birthed from a last-minute writing session after the band canceled their European tour. Barker's favorite track (and originally titled "Travis Beat") was written in separate studios but composed and recorded together.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: "Snake Charmer", initially titled "Genesis", as a reference to the Book of Genesis, is based on the biblical story of Adam and Eve. It predates the band's reunion, and was a guitar riff DeLonge kept around to expand upon in the future. The song's coda was composed by Barker and engineer Chris Holmes. Hoppus composed two versions of "Heart's All Gone", one fast and one slow, and ended up liking both, so the slower version serves as an interlude on the album's deluxe edition. "Wishing Well" was solely created by DeLonge, and is what Hoppus describes as the epitome of the album: "It's very catchy, but the lyrics are really, really dark and a little depressing". "Kaleidoscope" arose when Hoppus woke up with the song's opening lyrics in his head, which he expanded into a Descendents-ish classic punk song. "The mentality behind it is being a slacker in 2011", Hoppus said. "The 20s and 30s malaise that is America right now". It was also inspired by the album's lengthy recording process and the transformation of the band. "This Is Home" was originally titled "Scars to Blame", but changed considerably when Hoppus took the chorus and bridge and combined it with new lyrics written by DeLonge, morphing it into what he described as "an anthem for youthful abandon".


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: "MH 4.18.2011" was a working title for a song that was to be named "Hold On", and represents a combination of Hoppus' initials and the date he wrote the song. However, DeLonge convinced Hoppus to keep the original title because he thought it sounded cool, likening it to a virus. The song was inspired by one occasion in which Hoppus was idle at a stoplight when a helicopter flew overahead, casting a large shadow. He began to think of war-torn countries and impoverished areas in which circling helicopters are a "way of life", and wrote the song to capture that mentality. The track is notable for being recorded without DeLonge's involvement, with Hoppus recording all of the guitars in addition to his usual bass and vocals. "Love Is Dangerous" arose from a minimalist, electronic ballad, but gradually took on a heavier sound when combined with guitars. Hoppus described "Fighting the Gravity" as a "very strange song", and highlighted its production: he ran a drum machine through his bass amp, and when the volume was turned up, it shook the entire building, causing a light fixture in the control room to start shaking. Hoppus and Holmes mic-ed up the fixture, creating the rattling heard near the beginning. "Even If She Falls" is an upbeat, "catchy love song" that Hoppus viewed as a positive note to end the record on.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: Expectations for "Neighborhoods" were described by "Alternative Press" as "truly gigantic, both within the music industry and the record-buying mainstream". MTV News called "Neighborhoods" one of the most anticipated albums of 2010 when the album was scheduled for that year, and then again as one of the most anticipated rock albums of 2011. "Kerrang!" also called it one of the most anticipated releases of 2011, and it was also featured on a list of "Spin" "26 Fall Albums That Matter Most". The album title and release date were officially announced in July 2011. In preparation for the deluxe edition, the band compiled ten tracks as well as three extras. The deluxe edition tracks are sequenced differently from the standard version. "Up All Night" was released as the album's lead single on July 14, and the band began streaming another new song, "Heart's All Gone", through a dedicated website on August 4. The second single from "Neighborhoods", titled "After Midnight", premiered on BBC Radio 1 on September 6, 2011. "Wishing Well" was released November 21, 2011, as a promotional single to alternative radio exclusively in the UK.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: The album leaked two weeks before its release, despite being under a very high level of security. Hoppus commented to "NME" that he was surprised it took so long to leak and was relieved rather than annoyed that it had, reading warm comments about the album online.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: Blink-182 returned to Interscope Records to distribute the album, but found the music industry landscape dramatically different since the band's last effort. "The label itself has no resources or capital to do what they used to", DeLonge said in an interview with "Billboard", "They just have you locked up on a contract". Interscope, since the band's breakup, had greatly pared down its rock department, in contrast to other labels. Blink-182 broke up at a heightened popularity period for pop-punk, but "Neighborhoods" was released in an era for the genre that "Billboard" described as "lacking exciting mainstream representation", in addition to falling sales for peer bands. The trio approached sponsorships, song releases, and social media incorporation during the rollout of "Neighborhoods". Social media such as Facebook and Twitter were present throughout each stage of the album, which Hoppus believed allowed more direct access and control over the band's music. Although Modlife, DeLonge's revenue-sharing online service, was not involved in the promotion of the record, the band's personal business projects were integrated, such as Macbeth Footwear and Famous Stars and Straps. Retailers such as Hot Topic and Interpunk.com carried different-colored vinyl editions of "Neighborhoods" that included MP3 download cards. The band partnered with AT&T in order to promote the album, appearing in a national spot for the HTC Status; they also partnered with Best Buy, which sold a uniquely colored HTC Status preloaded with the band's music. Television ads through networks such as ESPN were explored the week of release. In addition, Hoppus and DeLonge appeared in a "film festival" for the fan montage video of "Up All Night", honoring various internet fans through tongue-in-cheek categories.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: "Neighborhoods" received generally positive reviews from contemporary music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 69, based on 18 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". A pre-release review from "NME" regarded "Neighborhoods" as the band's best album, calling it "bravely progressive" and noting the dark lyricism and random experimentation. Mike Diver of BBC Music described the album as "unexpectedly great", and while agreeing the recording process gave some tracks a "dislocated feel", he concluded that ""Neighborhoods" could easily have been a disaster—that it's not, and actually a very successful endeavour, is worthy of substantial praise". Chad Grischow of IGN called "Neighborhoods" a "startlingly great rock album" in which the band "hits an artistic growth spurt", summarizing it as "the most mature, rewarding, and best album of their career". James Montgomery of MTV News called the "long-awaited, decidedly dark comeback album" a new transition for the band, calling "Neighborhoods" a "deep, dark, downright auto-biographical effort". AbsolutePunk staff writer Thomas Nassiff called "Neighborhoods" a "great record", awarding it a score of nine out of ten. He noted the album's "bleak and dark" lyricism, while describing its sound as containing elements of the trio's various side projects, as well as being a natural progression from their 2003 album. Nitsuh Abebe of "New York Magazine" deemed the record "one of those albums on which a group reunites as professionals and equals, each having gone off and collected his own interests via side projects, and then negotiates a sound that brings it all to bear: no-nonsense modern rock, serious but unpretentious, ambitious but full of the same easy hooks as ever".


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: Writing for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine remarked that "Neighborhoods" is "a different beast than any of the cheerfully snotty early Blink-182 albums, as the band picks up the gloomy thread left hanging on its eponymous 2003 album...yet it's far better to hear Blink-182 grapple with adolescent angst via the perspective of middle age than vainly attempting to re-create their youth. Perhaps Blink could stand to sharpen their words but it's better that they concentrated on their music, creating a fairly ridiculous yet mildly compelling prog-punk spin on the suburbs here". Tom Goodwyn of "NME" remarked that the album finds the band "completely at ease with its past and confident enough to acknowledge their early work, with nods on the album to moments from their whole back catalogue". British rock magazine "Kerrang" awarded "Neighborhoods" a "good" three-out-of-five score in their review. Critic Mark Sutherland noted that while "the finished product is inevitably disjointed, Blink emerge as a surprisingly serious rock proposition". He went on to add that, "While it occasionally sounds like Mark, Tom, and Travis are playing three different songs at once ('Kaleidoscope', 'After Midnight'), the band are still capable of producing genuine moments of magnificence". Scott Heisel of "Alternative Press" attributed the album's flaws to the lack of an outside producer and the fact that only a few tracks were written and recorded as a group: "Blink-182's members are still capable of writing good songs, but without a strong outside influence (i.e., a producer) and no real desire or effort to consistently work in the same room with one another, the amount of truly transcendent, classic material is minimal. Ultimately, "Neighborhoods" is a slightly awkward entry in the band's catalog that shows as much potential as it does flaws".


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: Kyle Anderson of "Entertainment Weekly" awarded the album a "B−" grade, opining that, "the peaks on "Neighborhoods"—their first disc in eight years—do little more than recall past triumphs. Outside of some latent goth leanings ('This Is Home') and a gauzy detour ('Ghost on the Dance Floor'), it's mostly twitch-crunch-whine-repeat". Michael Brown of Drowned in Sound gave a mixed review, awarding the album a lukewarm five out of ten. He critiqued that, "Blink have the potential for much more than their past reputation may convey, but "Neighborhoods" is reminiscent of that first awkward conversation after a heated argument, as no-one's quite sure where to go next". Jon Dolan of "Rolling Stone" gave the album three stars out of five, noting elements of sophistication, introspection, and darkness in the music and lyrics and commenting that "Some Clinton-era pants-dropping might've been a fun nostalgia move. But those days are gone; it's their early-2010s nightmare as much as anyone else's". Kyle Ryan of "The A.V. Club" was critical of DeLonge's vocals, saying that he "sounds flat as ever, and has a fondness for clunky lyrics", concluding that "Although Blink-182 has long since left its past as a bare-bones punk band behind, overwrought rock isn't its forte, either. "Neighborhoods" finds a nice balance between the two, but it could still use a little less fussiness". Jonathan Keefe of "Slant Magazine" considered it uninspired: "When they try to add relatively ambitious elements to the things they actually do well, Blink-182 is more successful. [...] It's admirable that Blink-182 tries to challenge themselves over the course of "Neighborhoods", but their growing pains don't make for a particularly good album or a welcome comeback". Scott McLennan of "The Boston Globe" considered the album a step forward, summarizing, "Blink-182 again delivers a record with nothing outright awful and enough dynamite songs to pack a punch at future tours". Mikael Wood of "Spin" called the album "surprisingly and refreshingly low-key", but its self-examination "comparatively adrift" with the sound of their past.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: "Neighborhoods" debuted at number two on the "Billboard" 200, with 151,000 copies sold in its first week. The album dropped to position 10 in its second week, and fell out of the top 20 soon afterward. It also debuted at number one on both the magazine's Alternative Albums and Top Rock Albums charts, number two on the Digital Albums chart, and number four on Tastemaker Albums. Internationally, the album performed best in Canada and Australia, where it also debuted in the number two position. In New Zealand, it peaked at number three, while it debuted at number six on the UK Albums Chart and in Germany.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: Despite this, sales were not as smooth as the group's label, Interscope, had hoped, according to Billboard: "Despite the extended hiatus between albums, "Neighborhoods" failed to connect on the same scale as earlier releases". As of May 2016, it had sold 353,000 units in the US. In the United Kingdom, the album went Silver, certifying sales of 60,000 units, and it was certified Gold in Australia for sales of 35,000 copies.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: Blink-182 first began touring in support of "Neighborhoods" with the 10th Annual Honda Civic Tour in August 2011. The 2011 edition marked the tenth anniversary of the tour, which Blink-182 headlined in its first incarnation. Together with My Chemical Romance, the trio fronted the 10th Annual Honda Civic Tour, which ran from August to October 2011, with additional dates scheduled in Canada with Rancid and Against Me!.<ref name="Punknews 6/10/11"></ref> In 2012, the band embarked on a worldwide 20th Anniversary Tour. They continued touring in 2012, performing the rescheduled European dates originally canceled in order to continue recording. They were scheduled to headline the Bamboozle 2012 Music Festival but canceled when Barker had to undergo an operation for tonsilitis. The 20th Anniversary Tour extended into Australia in 2013 as part of the Soundwave festival, as well as four sideshows in the US with punk acts The Vandals and Sharks. Barker, who still suffers a fear of flying, did not attend; Brooks Wackerman, drummer of Bad Religion at the time, filled in for the Australian leg of the tour.


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: Blink-182 looked back on "Neighborhoods" later with divided reactions. In 2012, DeLonge would concede that the recording method, originally his idea, led to a loss of unity, noting that emails dictated the majority of recording, due to the band members' hectic schedules. "There's some songs on there that I love, but for the most part it was disconnected", Barker recalled. "It was like, 'You do this part in your studio, and then you're gonna play on it and send it back to me'. When we're not in the studio together, you don't have the opportunity to gel off each other". In addition, Barker was still recovering from his 2008 plane crash, which made things difficult in the studio. "Dude, I was still healing", he told "Rolling Stone". "I had scabs all over my body and was, like, a bloody mess. It was just way too soon".


title: Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)

text: In 2015, following DeLonge's departure, Barker claimed DeLonge "didn't even care about ["Neighborhoods"]. He didn't even listen to mixes or masterings from that record".


title: Sugandha Mishra

text: Sugandha Santosh Mishra (born 23 May 1988) is an Indian actress, playback singer, television presenter, comedian and radio jockey in the Indian film and television industry. She is known for her character in The Kapil Sharma Show. She was also noticed for her appearance in the TV reality show "The Great Indian Laughter Challenge".


title: Sugandha Mishra

text: Sugandha Mishra was born on 23 May 1988, in Jalandhar, Punjab. Her parents are Santosh Mishra and Savita Mishra. She enrolled at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Punjab and Apeejay College of Fine Arts, Jalandhar from where she completed her Master's in Music. Since childhood, she was inclined towards music as her family belongs to Indore Gharana. She is the fourth generation of her family into singing, she was classically trained by her grandfather Pt. Shankar Lal Mishra who was a disciple of Ustaad Amir Khan Sahib.


title: Sugandha Mishra

text: Sugandha started her career as a radio jockey and worked with BIG FM India. After that, she started her singing career and sang many jingles, bhajans, and songs in many documentaries, plays, and short films. She also made her appearance in the famous TV reality show "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Singing Superstar" as a participant and became third-runner up in the show. After that, she appeared in the TV comedy show "The Great Indian Laughter Challenge" as a participant and became one of the finalists in the show.


title: Sugandha Mishra

text: Apart from that she also gave her voice in Bollywood songs in the movies like "Shree" and "Kamaal Dhamaal Malamaal". She also hosted many shows.


title: Sugandha Mishra

text: She made her acting debut on the big screen with the movie "Heropanti" in 2014 in a supporting role. She appeared on many TV shows like Dance Plus, IPL Extra Inning, Baal Veer, The Kapil Sharma Show, The Drama Company.


title: Karl Albrecht

text: Karl Hans Albrecht (; 20 February 1920 – 16 July 2014) was a German entrepreneur who founded the discount supermarket chain Aldi with his brother Theo. He was for many years the richest person in Germany. In February 2014, he was ranked the 21st-richest person in the world by Hurun Report.


title: Karl Albrecht

text: Karl and Theo Albrecht were born and raised in a Catholic family in modest circumstances in Essen, Germany. Their father, Karl Sr, was employed as a miner and later as a baker's assistant. Their mother Anna, née Siepmann, had a small grocery store in the workers' quarter of , a suburb of Essen. Theo completed an apprenticeship in his mother's store, while Karl worked in a delicatessen shop. Karl served in the Wehrmacht during World War II and was wounded on the Eastern Front. After the war, the brothers jointly took over their mother's business and founded Albrecht KG.


title: Karl Albrecht

text: In 1960, the brothers had a disagreement over whether to stock cigarettes. While Theo wanted to sell them, Karl believed they would attract shoplifters. As a result, they divided their stores into two parts, with Theo retaining all stores north of the Ruhr, while Karl retained all stores south of the Ruhr. The first Aldi (short for Albrecht Discount) was opened in 1962, and the two groups became known as Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd, respectively.


title: Karl Albrecht

text: In 1994, Karl Albrecht removed himself from the daily operations of Aldi Süd and took the position of chairman of the board until 2002. At the beginning of 2002, he also relinquished this position, thereby completely ceding control of the firm. As of 2010s, the business is no longer run by any of Karl Albrecht's family members.


title: Karl Albrecht

text: Karl Albrecht was a very reclusive man, who had not taken part in public life for several years prior to his death. As a result, little is known about him. "Forbes" magazine reported that he had two children, neither of whom was employed by Aldi. He reportedly lived in Essen, as did his brother Theo until the latter's death. Golf was one of his hobbies, and Albrecht played the sport on his own golf course, the Öschberghof, which he built in 1976. He also raised orchids.


title: Karl Albrecht

text: In 2014, Albrecht was listed as one of the richest people in the world with an estimated net worth of . "Forbes" magazine listed him as the third richest man in the world in 2004. In 2012, with an estimated net worth in 2011 of , the magazine ranked him tenth on its list of billionaires – making him the oldest billionaire in the Top 20 list. Upon his death, Albrecht was named the richest person in Germany, and the fourth-richest in Europe.


title: Porton Down

text: Porton Down is a science park in Wiltshire, England, just northeast of the village of Porton, near Salisbury. It is home to two British government facilities: a site of the Ministry of Defence's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) – known for over 100 years as one of the UK's most secretive and controversial military research facilities, occupying – and a site of the UK Health Security Agency. It is also home to other private and commercial science organisations, and is expanding to attract other companies.


title: Porton Down

text: Porton Down is located just northeast of the village of Porton near Salisbury, in Wiltshire, England. To the northwest lies the MoD Boscombe Down airfield operated by QinetiQ. On some maps, the land surrounding the complex is identified as a "Danger Area".


title: Porton Down

text: Porton Down opened in 1916 as the War Department Experimental Station, shortly thereafter renamed the Royal Engineers Experimental Station, for testing chemical weapons in response to German use of this means of war in 1915. The laboratory's remit was to conduct research and development regarding chemical weapons agents used by the British armed forces in the First World War, such as chlorine, mustard gas, and phosgene.


title: Porton Down

text: Work at Porton started in March 1916. At the time, only a few cottages and farm buildings were scattered on the downs at Porton and Idmiston. By May 1917, the focus for anti-gas defence and respirator development had moved from London to Porton Down, and by 1918, the original two huts had become a large hutted camp with 50 officers and 1,100 other ranks. After the Armistice in 1918, Porton Down was reduced to a skeleton staff.


title: Porton Down

text: In 1919, the War Office set up the Holland Committee to consider the future of chemical warfare and defence. By 1920, the Cabinet agreed to the committee's recommendation that work would continue at Porton Down. From that date a slow permanent building programme began, coupled with the gradual recruitment of civilian scientists. By 1922, there were 380 servicemen, 23 scientific and technical civil servants, and 25 "civilian subordinates". By 1925, the civilian staff had doubled.


title: Porton Down

text: By 1926, the chemical defence aspects of Air Raid Precautions (ARP) for the civilian population was added to the Station's responsibilities. In 1929 the Royal Engineers Experimental Station became the Chemical Warfare Experimental Station (CWES) (1929–1930), and in 1930 the Chemical Defence Experimental Station (CDES) (1930–1948). In 1930, Britain ratified the 1925 Geneva Protocol with reservations, which permitted the use of chemical warfare agents only in retaliation. By 1938, the international situation was such that the Cabinet authorised offensive chemical warfare research and development and the production of war reserve stocks of chemical warfare agents by the chemical industry. This included conducting chemical warfare trials, known as the Rawalpindi experiments, on servicemen in the British Indian Army to test the effects of mustard gas.


title: Porton Down

text: During the Second World War, research at CDES concentrated on chemical weapons such as nitrogen mustard. As Allied armies penetrated Germany, they discovered operational stockpiles of munitions and weapons that contained new chemical warfare agents, including highly toxic organophosphorous nerve agents such as sarin, unknown to Britain and the Allies at the time.


title: Porton Down

text: To examine biological weapons, a highly secret separate department, called the Biology Department, Porton (BDP), was established within CDES in 1940, under veteran microbiologist Paul Fildes. Its focus included anthrax and botulinum toxin, and in 1942 it infamously carried out tests of an anthrax bio-weapon at Gruinard Island. In 1946, it was renamed the Microbiological Research Department (MRD) and, in 1957, the Microbiological Research Establishment (MRE).


title: Porton Down

text: The Common Cold Unit (CCU) was sometimes confused with the MRE, with which it occasionally collaborated but was not officially connected. The CCU was located at Harvard Hospital, Harnham Down, on the west side of Salisbury.


title: Porton Down

text: When the Second World War ended, the advanced state of German technology regarding the organophosphorous nerve agents, such as tabun, sarin and soman, had surprised the Allies, who were eager to capitalise on it. Subsequent research took the newly discovered German nerve agents as a starting point, and eventually VX nerve agent was developed at Porton Down in 1952.


title: Porton Down

text: In the late 1940s and early 1950s, research and development at Porton Down was aimed at providing Britain with the means to arm itself with a modern nerve agent-based capability and to develop specific means of defence against these agents. In the end these aims came to nothing on the offensive side because of the decision to abandon any sort of British chemical warfare capability in favour of nuclear weapons. On the defensive side there were years of difficult work to develop the means of prophylaxis, therapy, rapid detection and identification, decontamination, and more effective protection of the body against nerve agents, capable of exerting effects through the skin, the eyes and respiratory tract.


title: Porton Down

text: Tests were carried out on servicemen to determine the effects of nerve agents on human subjects, with one recorded death due to a nerve gas experiment. There have been persistent allegations of unethical human experimentation at Porton Down, such as those relating to the death of Leading Aircraftman Ronald Maddison, aged 20, in 1953. Maddison was taking part in sarin nerve agent toxicity tests; sarin was dripped onto his arm and he died shortly afterwards.


title: Porton Down

text: In the 1950s, the station, now renamed the Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment (CDEE), became involved with the development of CS, a riot-control agent, and took an increasing role in trauma and wound ballistics work. Both these facets of Porton Down's work had become more important because of the unrest and increasing violence in Northern Ireland.


title: Porton Down

text: On 1 August 1962, Geoffrey Bacon, a scientist at the Microbiological Research Establishment, died from an accidental infection of the plague bacterium "Yersinia pestis". In the same month an autoclave exploded, shattering two windows. Both incidents generated considerable media coverage at the time.


title: Porton Down

text: In 1970, the senior establishment at Porton Down was renamed the Chemical Defence Establishment (CDE) for the next 21 years. Preoccupation with defence against nerve agents continued, but in the 1970s and 1980s, the Establishment was also concerned with studying reported chemical warfare by Iraq against Iran and against its own Kurdish population.


title: Porton Down

text: Porton Down was the laboratory where initial samples of the Ebola virus were sent in 1976 during the first confirmed outbreak of the disease in Africa. The laboratory now contains samples of some of the world's most aggressive pathogens, including Ebola, anthrax and the plague, and is leading the UK's current research into viral inoculations.


title: Porton Down

text: Until 2001 the military installation of Porton Down was part of the UK government's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) when it was split into QinetiQ, initially a fully government-owned company, and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). Dstl incorporates all of DERA's activities deemed unsuitable for the privatisation planned for QinetiQ, particularly Porton Down.


title: Porton Down

text: In 2013 Dstl scientists tested samples from Syria for sarin, which is still manufactured there, to test soldiers' equipment.


title: Porton Down

text: In April 2018, Porton Down was responsible for analysis of the substance used in the nearby Salisbury poisonings, which was ultimately identified by Dstl as a Novichok nerve agent.


title: Porton Down

text: The location's government use has been split into two separately controlled locations since 1979: the original military establishment under the Ministry of Defence, and the site to the south under the Department of Health, which had been opened in 1951 for the Microbiological Research Establishment, then in 1979 transferred to the Ministry of Health to focus on public health research, with the Defence aspects returning to the then-titled Chemical Defence Establishment.


title: Porton Down

text: A factory in Sutton Oak, St Helens was requisitioned in 1917 by the War Department, renamed HM Factory, Sutton Oak and started producing the chemical warfare agent diphenyl chloroarsine. The site switched to producing Adamsite in 1922. In 1923 the War Office halted the requisition and purchased the site, renaming it the War Office Research Establishment, a.k.a. Chemical Warfare Research Establishment, and later the Chemical Defence Research Establishment Sutton Oak. During the 1920s, the site switched to producing mustard gas products, starting with the HS variant and adding the HT variant in the 1930s, and also filling armaments. After WW2, the site also produced the nerve agent sarin for experimental purposes. The site closed in 1957, with much of the work transferring to Chemical Defence Establishment Nancekuke.


title: Porton Down

text: This Royal Air Force site, built in 1940, was renamed Chemical Defence Establishment Nancekuke in July 1949. Manufacture of sarin in a pilot production facility commenced there in the early 1950s, producing about 20 tons from 1954 until 1956. It was intended as a stockpile and production facility for the UK's chemical defences during the Cold War, focussed on nerve agents, including small amounts of VX intended mainly for laboratory test purposes and to validate plant designs and optimise chemical processes for potential mass-production; full-scale production of VX agent never took place. In the late 1950s, the chemical weapons production plant was mothballed, but was maintained through the 1960s and 1970s in a state whereby production could easily re-commence if required.


title: Porton Down

text: A few small scientific start-ups were allowed to use buildings on the Porton Down campus from the mid-1990s. Porton Down has been housing companies on Tetricus Science Park, including Ploughshare Innovations since 2005, and GW Pharmaceuticals. , an expansion plan was predicted to create 2,000 jobs. Expansion started in 2016, with £9.5m in funding from Wiltshire Council, the Swindon and Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership and the European Regional Development Fund.


title: Porton Down

text: In 1942, Gruinard Island was dangerously contaminated with anthrax after a cloud of anthrax spores was released over the island during a trial. In 1981, a team of activists landed on the island and collected soil samples, a bag of which was left at the door at Porton Down. Testing showed that it still contained anthrax spores and in 1986 the Government felt obliged to take necessary steps to successfully decontaminate the island.


title: Porton Down

text: Between 1963 and 1975 the MRE carried out trials in Lyme Bay in which live bacteria were sprayed from a ship to be carried ashore by the wind to simulate an anthrax attack. The bacteria sprayed were the less dangerous "Bacillus globigii" and "Escherichia coli", but it was later admitted that the bacteria could adversely affect some vulnerable people. The town of Weymouth lay downwind of the spraying. When the trials became public knowledge in the late 1990s, Dorset County Council, Weymouth and Portland Borough Council and Purbeck District Council demanded a public inquiry to investigate the experiments. The Government refused a Public Inquiry but instead commissioned Professor Brian Spratt, to conduct an Independent Review of the possible adverse health effects. He concluded that individuals with certain chronic conditions may have been affected.


title: Porton Down

text: In 1954 the British Government sent biological warfare scientists to the Bahamas to release Venezuelan equine encephalitis viruses near an uninhabited island.


title: Porton Down

text: Other research showed that in Obanaghoro in southern Nigeria four British scientific missions spent 15 months dispersing and assessing the effects of experimental nerve gases. The effect on Nigerians is unknown. Historians have been unable to find out who did the extremely hazardous work of "hand charging" weapons containing the nerve agents nor have they been able to discover the effects on local schools, villages or the soil.


title: Porton Down

text: Porton Down has been involved in human testing at various points throughout the Ministry of Defence's use of the site. Up to 20,000 people took part in various trials from 1949 up to 1989:


title: Porton Down

text: From 1999 until 2006, it was investigated under Operation Antler. In 2002 a first inquest and in May 2004, a second inquest into the death of Ronald Maddison during testing of the nerve agent sarin commenced after his relatives and their supporters had lobbied for many years, which found his death to have been unlawful. The Ministry of Defence challenged the verdict which was upheld and the government settled the case in 2006. In 2006, 500 veterans claimed they suffered from the experiments.


title: Porton Down

text: In February 2006, three ex-servicemen were awarded compensation in an out-of-court settlement after they had claimed they were given LSD without their consent during the 1950s.


title: Porton Down

text: Most of the work carried out at Porton Down has to date remained secret. Bruce George, Member of Parliament and Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, told BBC News on 20 August 1999 that:


title: Porton Down

text: I would not say that the Defence Committee is micro-managing either DERA or Porton Down. We visit it, but, with eleven members of Parliament and five staff covering a labyrinthine department like the Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces, it would be quite erroneous of me and misleading for me to say that we know everything that's going on in Porton Down. It's too big for us to know, and secondly, there are many things happening there that I'm not even certain Ministers are fully aware of, let alone Parliamentarians.


title: Porton Down

text: Dstl's Porton Down site conducts animal testing. The "three Rs" of "reduce" (the number of animals used), "refine" (animal procedures) and "replace" (animal tests with non-animal tests) are used as the basic code of practice. There has been a decrease in animal experimentation in recent years. Dstl complies with all UK legislation relating to animals. Animals used include mice, guinea pigs, rats, pigs, ferrets, sheep, and non-human primates (believed to be marmosets and rhesus macaque). Publicly released figures are detailed below:


title: Porton Down

text: Different departments at Porton Down use animal experiments in different ways. Dstl's Biomedical Sciences department is involved with drug evaluation and efficacy testing (toxicology, pharmacology, physiology, behavioural science, human science), trauma and surgery studies, and animal breeding. The Physical Sciences department also uses animals in its "Armour Physics" research.


title: Porton Down

text: Like other aspects of research at Porton Down, precise details of animal experiments are generally kept secret. Media reports have suggested they include exposing monkeys to anthrax, draining the blood of pigs and injecting them with "E. coli" bacteria, and exposing animals to a variety of lethal, toxic nerve agents. Different animals are used for very different purposes. According to a 2002 report from the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Defence, mice are used mainly to research "the development of vaccines and treatments for microbial and viral infections", while pigs are used to "develop personal protective equipment to protect against blast injury to the thorax".


title: Porton Down

text: An institute similar to Porton Down, the Mordon Microbiological Research Establishment, features in the 1962 novel "The Satan Bug" by Alistair MacLean. Porton Down features in the 1977 novel "The Enemy" by Desmond Bagley, the 2010 mystery novel "Before the Poison" by Peter Robinson, and the 2022 novel "Tick Tock" by Simon Mayo.


title: Porton Down

text: Porton Down is featured in the 2022 psychological horror film "The Sleep Experiment" directed by John Farrelly. Two detectives begin an investigation into a disastrous secret military experiment where five prisoners were kept awake for thirty days in the facility.


title: Porton Down

text: Porton Down and activities there during the 1940s and early 1950s were a significant plot point in Episodes One and Two of the second season of ITV's mystery series "The Bletchley Circle". Experiments conducted at Porton Down also appear in the BBC detective drama "Spooks", including the development of the VX Nerve Agent and other potentially deadly biological weapons.


title: Porton Down

text: Porton Down was referenced frequently in the 2020 BBC TV drama "The Salisbury Poisonings", portraying its role in testing substances linked to the 2018 poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal.


title: Porton Down

text: "Grimbledon Down" was a comic strip by British cartoonist Bill Tidy, published for many years by "New Scientist". The strip was set in an ostensibly fictitious UK government research lab, referring to the controversial Porton Down biochemical research facility.


title: Porton Down

text: "Porton Down" is the name of a song by Peter Hammill. The song "Jeopardy" by Skyclad is about the experiments developed in Porton Down.


title: European hare

text: The European hare (Lepus europaeus), also known as the brown hare, is a species of hare native to Europe and parts of Asia. It is among the largest hare species and is adapted to temperate, open country. Hares are herbivorous and feed mainly on grasses and herbs, supplementing these with twigs, buds, bark and field crops, particularly in winter. Their natural predators include large birds of prey, canids and felids. They rely on high-speed endurance running to escape predation, having long, powerful limbs and large nostrils.


title: European hare

text: Generally nocturnal and shy in nature, hares change their behaviour in the spring, when they can be seen in broad daylight chasing one another around in fields. During this spring frenzy, they sometimes strike one another with their paws ("boxing"). This is usually not competition between males, but a female hitting a male, either to show she is not yet ready to mate or to test his determination. The female nests in a depression on the surface of the ground rather than in a burrow and the young are active as soon as they are born. Litters may consist of three or four young and a female can bear three litters a year, with hares living for up to twelve years. The breeding season lasts from January to August.


title: European hare

text: The European hare is listed as being of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature because it has a wide range and is moderately abundant. However, populations have been declining in mainland Europe since the 1960s, at least partly due to changes in farming practices. The hare has been hunted across Europe for centuries, with more than five million being shot each year; in Britain, it has traditionally been hunted by beagling and hare coursing, but these field sports are now illegal. The hare has been a traditional symbol of fertility and reproduction in some cultures and its courtship behaviour in the spring inspired the English idiom "mad as a March hare".


title: European hare

text: The European hare was first described in 1778 by German zoologist Peter Simon Pallas. It shares the genus "Lepus" (Latin for "hare") with 32 other hare and jackrabbit species, jackrabbits being the name given to some species of hare native to North America. They are distinguished from other leporids (hares and rabbits) by their longer legs and wider nostrils. The Corsican hare, broom hare and Granada hare were at one time considered to be subspecies of the European hare, but DNA sequencing and morphological analysis support their status as separate species.


title: European hare

text: There is some debate as to whether the European hare and the Cape hare are the same species. A 2005 nuclear gene pool study suggested that they are, but a 2006 study of the mitochondrial DNA of these same animals concluded that they had diverged sufficiently widely to be considered separate species. A 2008 study claims that in the case of "Lepus" species, with their rapid evolution, species designation cannot be based solely on mtDNA but should also include an examination of the nuclear gene pool. It is possible that the genetic differences between the European and Cape hare are due to geographic separation rather than actual divergence. It has been speculated that in the Near East, hare populations are intergrading and experiencing gene flow. Another 2008 study suggests that more research is needed before a conclusion is reached as to whether a species complex exists; the European hare remains classified as a single species until further data contradicts this assumption.


title: European hare

text: Cladogenetic analysis suggests that European hares survived the last glacial period during the Pleistocene via refugia in southern Europe (Italian peninsula and Balkans) and Asia Minor. Subsequent colonisations of Central Europe appear to have been initiated by human-caused environmental changes. Genetic diversity in current populations is high with no signs of inbreeding. Gene flow appears to be biased towards males, but overall populations are matrilineally structured. There appears to be a particularly large degree of genetic diversity in hares in the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany. It is however possible that restricted gene flow could reduce genetic diversity within populations that become isolated.


title: European hare

text: Historically, up to 30 subspecies of European hare have been described, although their status has been disputed. These subspecies have been distinguished by differences in pelage colouration, body size, external body measurements, skull morphology and tooth shape.


title: European hare

text: Twenty-nine subspecies of "very variable status" are listed by Chapman and Flux in their book on lagomorphs, including the subspecies above (with the exceptions of "L. e. connori", "L. e. creticus", "L. e. cyprius", "L. e. judeae", "L. e. rhodius", and "L. e. syriacus") and additionally:


title: European hare

text: The European hare, like other members of the family Leporidae, is a fast-running terrestrial mammal; it has eyes set high on the sides of its head, long ears and a flexible neck. Its teeth grow continuously, the first incisors being modified for gnawing while the second incisors are peg-like and non-functional. There is a gap (diastema) between the incisors and the cheek teeth, the latter being adapted for grinding coarse plant material. The dental formula is 2/1, 0/0, 3/2, 3/3. The dark limb musculature of hares is adapted for high-speed endurance running in open country. By contrast, cottontail rabbits are built for short bursts of speed in more vegetated habitats. Other adaptions for high speed running in hares include wider nostrils and larger hearts. In comparison to the European rabbit, the hare has a proportionally smaller stomach and caecum.


title: European hare

text: This hare is one of the largest of the lagomorphs. Its head and body length can range from with a tail length of . The body mass is typically between . The hare's elongated ears range from from the notch to tip. It also has long hind feet that have a length of between . The skull has nasal bones that are short, but broad and heavy. The supraorbital ridge has well-developed anterior and posterior lobes and the lacrimal bone projects prominently from the anterior wall of the orbit.


title: European hare

text: The fur colour is grizzled yellow-brown on the back; rufous on the shoulders, legs, neck and throat; white on the underside and black on the tail and ear tips. The fur on the back is typically longer and more curled than on the rest of the body. The European hare's fur does not turn completely white in the winter as is the case with some other members of the genus, although the sides of the head and base of the ears do develop white areas and the hip and rump region may gain some grey.


title: European hare

text: The European hare is native to much of continental Europe and part of Asia. Its range extends from northern Spain to southern Scandinavia, eastern Europe, and northern parts of Western and Central Asia. It has been extending its range into Siberia. It may have been introduced to Great Britain by the Romans about 2000 years ago, based on a lack of archaeological evidence before that. It is not present in Ireland, where the mountain hare is the only native hare species. Undocumented introductions probably occurred in some Mediterranean Islands. It has also been introduced, mostly as game animal, to North America in Ontario and New York State, and unsuccessfully in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, the Southern Cone in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile, Peru and the Falkland Islands, Australia, both islands of New Zealand and the south Pacific coast of Russia.


title: European hare

text: The European hare primarily lives in open fields with scattered brush for shelter. It is very adaptable and thrives in mixed farmland. According to a study in the Czech Republic, the mean hare densities were highest at elevations below , 40 to 60 days of annual snow cover, of annual precipitation, and a mean annual air temperature of around . With regards to climate, the European hare density was highest in "warm and dry districts with mild winters". In Poland, the European hare is most abundant in areas with few forest edges, perhaps because foxes can use these for cover. It requires cover, such as hedges, ditches and permanent cover areas, because these habitats supply the varied diet it requires, and are found at lower densities in large open fields. Intensive cultivation of the land results in greater mortality of young hares.


title: European hare

text: In Great Britain, the European hare is seen most frequently on arable farms, especially those with crop rotation and fallow land, wheat and sugar beet crops. In mainly grass farms, its numbers increased with are improved pastures, some arable crops and patches of woodland. It is seen less frequently where foxes are abundant or where there are many common buzzards. It also seems to be fewer in number in areas with high European rabbit populations, although there appears to be little interaction between the two species and no aggression. Although European hares are shot as game when plentiful, this is a self-limiting activity and is less likely to occur in localities where the species is scarce.


title: European hare

text: The European hare is primarily nocturnal and spends a third of its time foraging. During daytime, it hides in a depression in the ground called a "form" where it is partially hidden. It can run at , and when confronted by predators it relies on outrunning them in the open. It is generally thought of as asocial but can be seen in both large and small groups. It does not appear to be territorial, living in shared home ranges of around . It communicates with each other by a variety of visual signals. To show interest it raises its ears, while lowering the ears warns others to keep away. When challenging a conspecific, a hare thumps its front feet; the hind feet are used to warn others of a predator. It squeals when hurt or scared, and a female makes "guttural" calls to attract her young. It can live for as long as twelve years.


title: European hare

text: The European hare is primarily herbivorous and forages for wild grasses and weeds. With the intensification of agriculture, it has taken to feeding on crops when preferred foods are not available. During the spring and summer, it feeds on soy, clover and corn poppy as well as grasses and herbs. During autumn and winter, it primarily chooses winter wheat, and is also attracted to piles of sugar beet and carrots provided by hunters. It also eats twigs, buds and the bark of shrubs and young fruit trees during winter. It avoids cereal crops when other more attractive foods are available, and appears to prefer high energy foodstuffs over crude dietary fiber. When eating twigs, it strips off the bark to access the vascular tissues which store soluble carbohydrates. Compared to the European rabbit, food passes through the gut more rapidly in the European hare, although digestion rates are similar. It is sometimes coprophagial eating its own green, faecal pellets to recover undigested proteins and vitamins. Two to three adult hares can eat more food than a single sheep.


title: European hare

text: European hares forage in groups. Group feeding is beneficial as individuals can spend more time feeding knowing that other hares are being vigilant. Nevertheless, the distribution of food affects these benefits. When food is well-spaced, all hares are able to access it. When food is clumped together, only dominant hares can access it. In small gatherings, dominants are more successful in defending food, but as more individuals join in, they must spend more time driving off others. The larger the group, the less time dominant individuals have in which to eat. Meanwhile, the subordinates can access the food while the dominants are distracted. As such, when in groups, all individuals fare worse when food is clumped as opposed to when it is widely spaced.


title: European hare

text: European hares have a prolonged breeding season which lasts from January to August. Females, or does, can be found pregnant in all breeding months and males, or bucks, are fertile all year round except during October and November. After this hiatus, the size and activity of the males' testes increase, signalling the start of a new reproductive cycle. This continues through December, January and February when the reproductive tract gains back its functionality. Matings start before ovulation occurs and the first pregnancies of the year often result in a single foetus, with pregnancy failures being common. Peak reproductive activity occurs in March and April, when all females may be pregnant, the majority with three or more foetuses.


title: European hare

text: The mating system of the hare has been described as both polygynous (single males mating with multiple females) and promiscuous. Females have six-weekly reproductive cycles and are receptive for only a few hours at a time, making competition among local bucks intense. At the height of the breeding season, this phenomenon is known as "March madness", when the normally nocturnal bucks are forced to be active in the daytime. In addition to dominant animals subduing subordinates, the female fights off her numerous suitors if she is not ready to mate. Fights can be vicious and can leave numerous scars on the ears. In these encounters, hares stand upright and attack each other with their paws, a practice known as "boxing", and this activity is usually between a female and a male and not between competing males as was previously believed. When a doe is ready to mate, she runs across the countryside, starting a chase that tests the stamina of the following males. When only the fittest male remains, the female stops and allows him to copulate. Female fertility continues through May, June and July, but testosterone production decreases in males and sexual behaviour becomes less overt. Litter sizes decrease as the breeding season draws to a close with no pregnancies occurring after August. The testes of males begin to regress and sperm production ends in September.


title: European hare

text: Does give birth in hollow depressions in the ground. An individual female may have three litters in a year with a 41- to 42-day gestation period. The young have an average weight of around at birth. The leverets are fully furred and are precocial, being ready to leave the nest soon after they are born, an adaptation to the lack of physical protection relative to that afforded by a burrow. Leverets disperse during the day and come together in the evening close to where they were born. Their mother visits them for nursing soon after sunset; the young suckle for around five minutes, urinating while they do so, with the doe licking up the fluid. She then leaps away so as not to leave an olfactory trail, and the leverets disperse once more. Young can eat solid food after two weeks and are weaned when they are four weeks old. While young of either sex commonly explore their surroundings, natal dispersal tends to be greater in males. Sexual maturity occurs at seven or eight months for females and six months for males.


title: European hare

text: European hares are large leporids and adults can only be tackled by large predators such as canids, felids and the largest birds of prey. In Poland it was found that the consumption of hares by foxes was at its highest during spring, when the availability of small animal prey was low; at this time of year, hares may constitute up to 50% of the biomass eaten by foxes, with 50% of the mortality of adult hares being caused by their predation. In Scandinavia, a natural epizootic of sarcoptic mange which reduced the population of red foxes dramatically, resulted in an increase in the number of European hares, which returned to previous levels when the numbers of foxes subsequently increased. The golden eagle preys on the European hare in the Alps, the Carpathians, the Apennines and northern Spain. In North America, foxes and coyotes are probably the most common predators, with bobcats and lynx also preying on them in more remote locations.


title: European hare

text: European hares have both external and internal parasites. One study found that 54% of animals in Slovakia were parasitised by nematodes and over 90% by coccidia. In Australia, European hares were reported as being infected by four species of nematode, six of coccidian, several liver flukes and two canine tapeworms. They were also found to host rabbit fleas ("Spilopsyllus cuniculi"), stickfast fleas ("Echidnophaga myrmecobii"), lice ("Haemodipsus setoni" and "H. lyriocephalus"), and mites ("Leporacarus gibbus").


title: European hare

text: European brown hare syndrome (EBHS) is a disease caused by a calicivirus similar to that causing rabbit haemorrhagic disease (RHD) and can similarly be fatal, but cross infection between the two mammal species does not occur. Other threats to the hare are pasteurellosis, yersiniosis (pseudo-tuberculosis), coccidiosis and tularaemia, which are the principal sources of mortality.


title: European hare

text: In October 2018, it was reported that a mutated form of the rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV2) may have jumped to hares in the UK. Normally rare in hares, a significant die-off from the virus has also occurred in Spain.


title: European hare

text: In Europe, the hare has been a symbol of sex and fertility since at least Ancient Greece. The Greeks associated it with the gods Dionysus, Aphrodite and Artemis as well as with satyrs and cupids. The Christian Church connected the hare with lustfulness and homosexuality, but also associated it with the persecution of the church because of the way it was commonly hunted.


title: European hare

text: In Northern Europe, Easter imagery often involves hares or rabbits. Citing folk Easter customs in Leicestershire, England, where "the profits of the land called Harecrop Leys were applied to providing a meal which was thrown on the ground at the 'Hare-pie Bank'", the 19th-century scholar Charles Isaac Elton proposed a possible connection between these customs and the worship of Ēostre. In his 19th-century study of the hare in folk custom and mythology, Charles J. Billson cites folk customs involving the hare around Easter in Northern Europe, and argues that the hare was probably a sacred animal in prehistoric Britain's festival of springtime. Observation of the hare's springtime mating behaviour led to the popular English idiom "mad as a March hare", with similar phrases from the sixteenth century writings of John Skelton and Sir Thomas More onwards. The mad hare reappears in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll, in which Alice participates in a crazy tea-party with the March Hare and the Hatter.


title: European hare

text: Any connection of the hare to Ēostre is doubtful. John Andrew Boyle cites an etymology dictionary by A. Ernout and A. Meillet, who wrote that the lights of Ēostre were carried by hares, that Ēostre represented spring fecundity, love and sexual pleasure. Boyle responds that almost nothing is known about Ēostre, and that the authors had seemingly accepted the identification of Ēostre with the Norse goddess Freyja, but that the hare is not associated with Freyja either. Boyle adds that "when the authors speak of the hare as the 'companion of Aphrodite and of satyrs and cupids' and 'in the Middle Ages [the hare] appears beside the figure of [mythological] Luxuria', they are on much surer ground."


title: European hare

text: The hare is a character in some fables, such as "The Tortoise and the Hare" of Aesop. The story was annexed to a philosophical problem by Zeno of Elea, who created a set of paradoxes to support Parmenides' attack on the idea of continuous motion, as each time the hare (or the hero Achilles) moves to where the tortoise was, the tortoise moves just a little further away. The German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer realistically depicted a hare in his 1502 watercolour painting "Young Hare".