title: Golf club

text: Most chippers have a loft greater than 10 degrees, which is the maximum loft permitted by the Rules of Golf for a club to be classed as a putter, so these clubs are actually classed as irons. To be legal for sanctioned play, a chipper cannot have any feature that is defined in the rules as allowable only on putters, e.g. two striking faces or a flat-topped "putter grip". This disqualifies many chipper designs, but there are some USGA-conforming chippers, and non-conforming designs can still be used for informal play.


title: Golf club

text: The shafts of the woods were made of different types of wood before being replaced by hickory in the middle of the 19th century. The varieties of woods included ash, purpleheart, orangewood, and blue mahoe.


title: Golf club

text: Despite the strength of hickory, the long-nose club of the mid nineteenth century was still prone to breaking at the top of the back swing. The club heads were often made from woods including apple, pear, dogwood, and beech in the early times until persimmon became the main material. Golf clubs have been improved and the shafts are now made of steel, titanium, other types of metals or carbon fiber. The shaft is a tapered steel tube or a series of stepped steel tubes in telescopic fashion. This has improved the accuracy of golfers. The grips of the clubs are made from leather or rubber.


title: Golf club

text: The shaft is a tapered tube made of metal (usually steel) or carbon fiber composite (referred to as graphite). The shaft is roughly in diameter near the grip and from in length. Shafts weigh from , depending on the material and length.


title: Golf club

text: Shafts are quantified in a number of different ways. The most common is the shaft flex. Simply, the shaft flex is the amount that the shaft will bend when placed under a load. A stiffer shaft will not flex as much, which requires more power to flex and "whip" through the ball properly (which results in higher club speed at impact for more distance), while a more flexible shaft will whip with less power required for better distance on slower swings, but may torque and over-flex if swung with too much power causing the head not to be square at impact, resulting in lower accuracy. Most shaft makers offer a variety of flexes. The most common are: L/W (Lady/Women's), A/I (Soft Regular, Intermediate or Senior), R (Regular), S (Stiff), and X (Tour Stiff, Extra Stiff or Strong). A regular flex shaft is generally appropriate for those with an average head speed (), while an A-Flex (or senior shaft) is for players with a slower swing speed (), and the stiffer shafts, such as S-Flex and X-Flex (Stiff and Extra-Stiff shafts) are reserved only for those players with an above average swinging speed, usually above . Some companies also offer a "stiff-regular" or "firm" flex for players whose club speed falls in the upper range of a Regular shaft (), allowing golfers and club makers to fine-tune the flex for a stronger amateur-level player.


title: Golf club

text: At impact, the club head can twist as a result of torque applied to the shaft, reducing accuracy as the face of the club is not square to the player's stance. The ability of a shaft to twist along its length due to this torque is fundamentally a function of the flex of the shaft itself; a stiffer shaft will also torque less. To counter torque in more flexible shafts, club makers design the shafts with varying degrees of torque through their length, particularly along the thinnest part of the shaft where it joins with the club head. This results in a point at which the shaft is most flexible, called the "kick point"; above that point the increasing diameter of the shaft makes it more rigid, while below that point the shaft is reinforced internally to reduce torquing of the club head. Shafts have typically been classified as having a low, medium or high kick; a low kick means the shaft will store energy closer to the club head, which means the club head can twist more but also allows for higher club head speeds. A high kick shaft will store energy closer to the grip; such a shaft will feel firmer when swinging it and will give better control over direction, but the same strength swing will flex the shaft less, which will reduce club-head speed.


title: Golf club

text: Widely overlooked as a part of the club, the shaft is considered by many to be the engine of the modern club head. Shafts range in price from a mere US$4 to over US$1200. Current graphite shafts weigh considerably less than their steel counterparts (sometimes weighing less than for a driver shaft), allowing for lighter clubs that can be swung at greater speed. Beginning in the late 1990s, custom shafts have been integrated into the club-making process. These shafts will, within a given flex rating, address specific criteria, such as to launch the ball higher or lower or to adjust for the timing of a player's swing to load and unload the shaft at the correct moments of the swing for maximum power. Whereas in the past each club could come with only one shaft, today's club heads can be fitted with dozens of different shafts, each with slight variation in behavior, creating the potential for a much better fit for the average golfer.


title: Golf club

text: The grip of the club is attached to the opposite end of the shaft from the club head, and is the part of the club the player holds on to while swinging. Originally, the grip was composed of one or more leather strips wrapped around the shaft. The leather outer wrap on a grip is still seen on some clubs, most commonly putters, but most modern grips are a one-piece "sleeve" made of rubber, synthetic or composite material that is slid over the shaft and secured with an adhesive. These sleeve grips allow club makers and golfers to customize the grip's diameter, consistency (softness/firmness) and texturing pattern to best fit the player. Clubs with an outer "wrap" of leather or leather-like synthetic still typically have a "sleeve" form underneath to add diameter to the grip and give it its basic profile.


title: Golf club

text: According to the rules of golf, all club grips must have the same cross-section shape along their entire length (the diameter can vary), and with the exception of the putter, must have a circular cross-section. The putter may have any cross section that is symmetrical along the length of the grip through at least one plane; "shield" profiles with a flat top and curved underside are common. Grips may taper from thick to thin along their length (and virtually all do), but they are not allowed to have any "waisting" (a thinner section of the grip surrounded by thicker sections above and below it) or "bulges" (thicker sections of the grip surrounded by thinner sections). Minor variations in surface texture (such as the natural variation of a "wrap"-style grip) are not counted unless significant.


title: Golf club

text: Advances in materials have resulted in more durable, longer-lasting soft grips, but nevertheless grips do eventually dry out, harden, or are otherwise damaged and must be replaced. Replacement grips sold as do-it-yourself kits are generally inexpensive and of high quality, although custom grips that are larger, softer, or textured differently from the everyday "wrap"-style grip are generally bought and installed by a clubsmith.


title: Golf club

text: Re-gripping used to require toxic, flammable solvents to soften and activate the adhesive, and a vise to hold the club steady while the grip was forced on. The newest replacement kits, however, use double-sided tape with a water-activated adhesive that is slippery when first activated, allowing easier installation. Once the adhesive cures, it creates a very strong bond between grip and shaft and the grip is usually impossible to remove without cutting it off.


title: Golf club

text: The hosel is the portion of the club head to which the shaft attaches. Though largely ignored by players, hosel design is integral to the balance, feel and power of a club. Modern hosels are designed to place as little mass as possible over the top of the striking face of the club, which lowers the center of gravity of the club for better distance.


title: Golf club

text: Each head has one face which contacts the ball during the stroke. Putters may have two striking faces, as long as they are identical and symmetrical. Some chippers (a club similar in appearance to a double-sided putter but having a loft of 35–45 degrees) have two faces, but are not legal. Page 135 of the 2009 USGA rules of golf states:


title: Golf club

text: The club head must have only one striking face, except that a putter may have two such faces if their characteristics are the same, and they are opposite each other.


title: Golf club

text: A putter is a club with a loft not exceeding ten degrees designed primarily for use on the putting green.


title: Golf club

text: The trim ring, usually black (It may have additional trim colors), that is found directly on top of the hosel on many woods and irons. The ferrule is mostly decorative, creating a continuous line between the shaft and the wider hosel, but in some cases it can form part of the securing mechanism between hosel and shaft. Ferrules of differing weights can fine-tune the center of mass of the overall club head, but for these minute adjustments, screw-in weighted inserts at specific points on the club head are usually used instead.


title: Golf club

text: The rules of golf limit each player to a maximum of 14 clubs in their bag. Strict rules prohibit sharing of clubs between players that each have their own set (if two players share clubs, they may not have more than 14 clubs combined), and while occasional lending of a club to a player is generally overlooked, habitual borrowing of other players' clubs or the sharing of a single bag of clubs slows play considerably when both players need the same club.


title: Golf club

text: The above set is only 12 clubs; these (or equivalent hybrid substitutes) are found in virtually every golf bag. To this, players typically add two of the following:


title: Golf club

text: Women's club sets are similar in overall makeup, but typically have higher lofts and shorter, more flexible shafts in retail sets to accommodate the average female player's height and swing speed.


title: Golf club

text: Variations on this basic set abound; several club options usually exist for almost any shot depending on the player's skill level and playing style, and the only club universally considered to be indispensable is the putter. Some consider the modern deep-faced driver to be equally irreplaceable; this is cause for some debate, as professional players including Tiger Woods have played and won tournaments without using a driver, instead using a 3-wood for tee shots and making up the difference on the approach using a lower-lofted iron.


title: Golf club

text: The most common omissions are the "long irons", numbered from 2 to 5, which are notoriously difficult to hit well. The player can supplement the gaps in distance with either higher-numbered woods such as the 5 and even the 7-wood, or may replace the long irons with equivalently-numbered hybrid clubs. If hybrids are used, higher-lofted woods are often omitted as redundant, but ladies' and seniors' sets commonly feature both hybrids and high-lofted woods, omitting the long irons entirely in favor of the lofted woods, and replacing the mid-irons (5–7) with hybrids. The combination allows for higher launch angles on the long-distance clubs, which gives better distance with slower swing speeds. Where a club is omitted and not replaced with a club of similar function, players may add additional clubs of a different function such as additional wedges.


title: Golf club

text: While 14 clubs is a maximum, it is not a minimum; players are free to use any lesser number of clubs they prefer, so substitutions for the common omissions above are not always made; a player may simply choose to play without a 5-wood or 2–4 irons, instead using a 4-wood and moving directly to their 5-iron as desired distance decreases (a 4-wood in a skilled golfer's hands averages 200 yards; a 5-iron in the same player's hands would be about 160, which is a large gap but not unplayable). Other clubs may be omitted as well. On courses where bags must be carried by the player, the player may take only the odd-numbered irons; without the 4, 6 or 8 irons (the 3 is sometimes removed instead of the 4) the bag's weight is considerably reduced. Carrying only a driver, 3-wood, 4-hybrid, 5-7-9 irons, pitching and sand wedges, and a putter reduces the number of clubs in the bag to 9; this is a common load-out for a "Sunday bag" taken to the driving range or to an informal game. A skilled player can usually overcome the lesser selection of club lofts by reducing their swing speed on a lower-loft iron and/or placing the ball further forward in their stance to get the same carry distance and/or launch angle as the next higher loft number. Another increasingly common informal format is a deliberately low upper limit such as four clubs, or three clubs plus putter, with a typical load being a wood or hybrid, middle iron, wedge and putter, although often with significant variation between players with regards to which specific clubs are favored in each role.


title: Golf club

text: The ruling authorities of golf, The R&A (formerly part of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews) and the United States Golf Association (USGA), reserve the right to define what shapes and physical characteristics of clubs are permissible in tournament play. The current rules for club design, including the results of various rulings on clubs introduced for play, are defined in Appendix II of the Rules of Golf.


title: Golf club

text: The overarching principle of club design used by both authorities is defined in Appendix II-1a, which states: "The club must not be substantially different from the "traditional and customary form and make". The club must be composed of a shaft and a head and it may also have material added to the shaft to enable the player to obtain a firm hold (see 3 below). All parts of the club must be fixed so that the club is one unit, and it must have no external attachments." In addition, Appendix II-4a states, regarding club heads, that "the club head must be generally "plain in shape". All parts must be rigid, structural in nature and functional. The club head or its parts must not be designed to resemble any other object. It is not practicable to define 'plain in shape' precisely and comprehensively."


title: Golf club

text: These two rules are used as the basis for most of the more specific rules of Appendix II, including that no club may have a concave face (1931) and various rules defining what is "traditional" about the shapes of specific clubs, while allowing for the progression of technology. The "traditional and customary" rule was originally used to ban the introduction of steel club shafts (patented in 1910), as that material was not traditional for shafts; that specific ban was rescinded in 1924 by the USGA (the R&A would continue to ban steel shafts until 1929), and steel would become universal until the development of graphite shafts whose introduction was less controversial. The "plain in shape" rule was more recently bent to allow for non-traditional driver club head shapes, such as squares, as a compromise to club-makers after imposing and enforcing a 460cc volume limit on these same club heads.


title: Golf club

text: Many recently developed woods have a marked "trampoline effect" (a large deformation of the face upon impact followed by a quick restoration to original dimensions, acting like a slingshot), resulting in very high ball speeds and great lengths of tee shots. As of 1 January 2008, the USGA and R&A have settled on a regulation that limits the acceptable "trampoline effect" to a coefficient of restitution (COR)—a measurement of the efficiency of the transfer of energy from the club head to the ball—of .830.


title: Golf club

text: Other large scale USGA rulings involve a 1990 lawsuit, and subsequent settlement, against Karsten Manufacturing, makers of the PING brand, for their use of square, or U-grooves in their immensely popular Ping Eye2 irons. The USGA argued that players who used the Eye2 had an unfair advantage in imparting spin on the ball, which helps to stop the ball on the putting greens. The USGA utilized John L. Saksun, founder of Canadian golf company Accuform Golf, as a consultant to set up methods of measuring the unique grooves and determining PING's compliance with the rulings. Saksun, by proposing a cost-effective solution to help PING change the design of subsequent Eye2s, saved PING hundreds of millions. PING subsequently withdrew their US$100 million lawsuit against the USGA. Ping’s older clubs were "grandfathered in" and allowed to remain in play as part of the settlement. However, the USGA has begun phasing in a ban on square grooves in golf. Manufacturers were required to discontinue noncompliant clubs by January 1, 2011. According to the USGA, as January 1, 2010, professional golfers on one of the top tours, or those attempting to qualify for one of the three Open Championships (since then four) will need to use new conforming wedges (those without square grooves). Moreover, those who plan to qualify for any other USGA championship (Amateur championships—under 18, Amateur, over 25, and over 50 in both sexes, and four-ball, along with international team championships), will need new conforming wedges by 2014. In addition, this regulation includes IGF and USGA-sanctioned regional amateur events as well, as a "condition of competition". Wedges that conform to the new standard are often marketed as "CC" or "Condition of Competition" wedges; this moniker is likely to fall into disuse as players upgrade clubs and the use of non-conforming irons diminishes.


title: Louella Parsons

text: Louella Parsons (born Louella Rose Oettinger; August 6, 1881 – December 9, 1972) was an American movie columnist and a screenwriter. She was retained by William Randolph Hearst because she had championed Hearst's mistress Marion Davies and subsequently became an influential figure in Hollywood. At her peak, her columns were read by 20 million people in 700 newspapers worldwide.


title: Louella Parsons

text: She remained the unchallenged “Queen of Hollywood gossip” until the arrival of the flamboyant Hedda Hopper, with whom she feuded for years.


title: Louella Parsons

text: Louella Parsons was born Louella Rose Oettinger in Freeport, Illinois, the daughter of Helen (Stine) and Joshua Oettinger. Her father was of German Jewish descent, as was her maternal grandfather, while her maternal grandmother, Jeanette Wilcox, was of Irish origin. During her childhood, her parents attended an Episcopal church. She had two brothers, Edwin and Fred, and a sister, Rae. In 1890, her widowed mother married John H. Edwards. They lived in Dixon, Illinois.


title: Louella Parsons

text: Parsons decided to become a writer or a reporter during high school. At her 1901 high school graduation, she gave a foretelling speech, entitled "Great Men", after which her principal announced that she would become a great writer.


title: Louella Parsons

text: After high school, Parsons enrolled in a teacher's course at a local Dixon college. She received a financial contribution from a distant German relative. While still in college, Parsons obtained her first newspaper job as a part-time writer for the "Dixon Star". In 1902, she became the first female journalist in Dixon, where she gossiped about Dixon social circles, making a step towards her Hollywood career.


title: Louella Parsons

text: She and her first husband, John Parsons, moved to Burlington, Iowa. Her only child, Harriet (1906–1983), who grew up to become a film producer, was born there. While in Burlington, Parsons saw her first motion picture, "The Great Train Robbery" (1903).


title: Louella Parsons

text: When her marriage broke up, Parsons moved to Chicago. In 1912, she had her first taste of the movie industry working for George K. Spoor as a scenario writer at the Essanay Company in Chicago, selling her first script for $25. Her daughter, Harriet, was billed as "Baby Parsons" in several movies, which included "The Magic Wand" (1912), written by Louella Parsons. She also wrote a book titled "How to Write for the Movies".


title: Louella Parsons

text: In 1914, Parsons began writing the first movie gossip column in the United States for the "Chicago Record Herald". William Randolph Hearst bought that newspaper in 1918 and Parsons was out of a job, as Hearst had not yet discovered that movies and movie personalities were news. Parsons then moved to New York City and started working for the "New York Morning Telegraph" writing a similar movie column, which attracted the attention of Hearst after he saw her interview of his mistress and protégé Marion Davies. Parsons had encouraged readers to "give this girl a chance" while the majority of critics disparaged Davies. Parsons showered the former chorus girl with praise which led to a friendship between the two women and led to an offer from Hearst in 1923 for her to become the $200-a-week motion-picture editor of his "New York American". Her perpetual praise of Davies did not go unnoticed by others as well. The phrase "Marion never looked lovelier" became a standard in her column and a tongue-in-cheek cultural catchphrase.


title: Louella Parsons

text: There was persistent speculation that Parsons was elevated to her position as the Hearst chain's lead gossip columnist because of a scandal about which she did "not" write. In 1924, director Thomas Ince died after being carried off Hearst's yacht, allegedly to be hospitalized for indigestion. Many Hearst newspapers falsely claimed that Ince had not been aboard the boat at all and had fallen ill at the newspaper mogul's home. Charlie Chaplin's secretary reported seeing a bullet hole in Ince's head when he was removed from the yacht. Rumors proliferated that Chaplin was having an affair with Hearst's mistress Davies, and that an attempt to shoot Chaplin may have caused Ince's death. Allegedly, Parsons was also aboard the yacht that night but she ignored the story in her columns. The official cause of death was listed as heart failure.


title: Louella Parsons

text: Parsons was a founding member of the New York Newspaper Women's Club, and was elected president of the organization for one term in 1925.


title: Louella Parsons

text: In 1925, Parsons contracted tuberculosis and was told she had six months to live. She spent a year in Palm Springs, California, which led to it being a popular resort for Hollywood movie stars. She moved to Arizona for the dry climate, then to Los Angeles, where she decided to stay. With the disease in remission, she went back to work, and Hearst suggested she become a syndicated Hollywood columnist for his newspapers. As she and the publishing mogul developed an ironclad relationship, her "Los Angeles Examiner" column came to appear in over seven hundred newspapers the world over, with a readership of more than 20 million, and Parsons gradually became one of the most powerful voices in the movie business with her daily allotment of gossip.


title: Louella Parsons

text: Beginning in 1928, she hosted a weekly radio program featuring movie star interviews that was sponsored by SunKist. A similar program in 1931 was sponsored by Charis Foundation Garment. In 1934, she signed a contract with the Campbell's Soup Company and began hosting a program titled "Hollywood Hotel", which showcased stars in scenes from their upcoming movies. The stars appeared for free which did not please rival broadcasters or all of the stars but they did not complain in case of reprisals. Her opening line of the show was "My first exclusive of tonight is...", which became feared. The show was cancelled after the Screen Actors Guild demanded payment for its members. Warner Bros. paid her $50,000 to appear in a filmed version in 1937, but the film flopped.


title: Louella Parsons

text: Parsons saw herself as the social and moral arbiter of Hollywood and many feared her disfavor more than that of movie critics.


title: Louella Parsons

text: Parsons had informants in studio corridors, hairdressers' salons, and lawyers' and doctors' offices. Her husband Harry Martin was a urologist and Hollywood physician, and it was thought that he passed on information he learnt in his position as a studio doctor. She worked from her Beverly Hills home with a staff consisting of a secretary, her assistant reviewer (Dorothy Manners, who worked with Parsons for thirty years), a "leg" man who gathered news, and a female reporter who covered the cafés. She had three telephones in her office. She also had former silent-movie stars on her payroll to help them financially.


title: Louella Parsons

text: She considered the biggest scoop of her career to be the divorce of Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Mary Pickford, at that time the most famous couple in Hollywood. Parsons had learnt of the split from Pickford herself, who had made the mistake of counting on the columnist's discretion. Parsons sat on the story for six weeks, hoping that they would reconcile and concerned that the news might damage the film industry, but published once she heard that the "Los Angeles Times" had also got the story.


title: Louella Parsons

text: When she had received a tip that Clark Gable was divorcing his second wife Ria, Parsons essentially held Mrs. Gable hostage at her home until she was sure that her story was speeding across the wire ahead of any other service.


title: Louella Parsons

text: Her unofficial title ‘Queen of Hollywood’ was challenged in 1938 by newcomer Hedda Hopper, to whom she was initially friendly and helpful. However, they came to be fierce rivals.


title: Louella Parsons

text: Parsons also appeared in many cameo spots in movies, including "Without Reservations" (1946), and "Starlift" (1951).


title: Louella Parsons

text: In contrast to her arch-rival Hedda Hopper, who was notorious for her column's crass tone, Parsons' writing style was often described as "sweetness and light" or "gooey". She received criticism for her casual chatty tone and casual regard for dates and places. She countered that "the best gossip" is informal and that the speed at which she needed to complete her daily column did not allow for much rewriting or polishing. She stated that she would rather get the word out than potentially disappoint her readers.


title: Louella Parsons

text: She became known in Hollywood for assuming an air of goofy vagueness in order to snap up material without people suspecting she was listening or otherwise letting their guard down.


title: Louella Parsons

text: After the death of Hearst in 1951 and with the rise of stars becoming producers, Parsons's influence diminished. She began to show signs of physical deterioration and when the "Los Angeles Examiner" folded in 1962 her column was switched to the Hearst afternoon paper, the "Los Angeles Herald-Express". This meant she lost an edge to Hopper's appearances in the morning "Los Angeles Times".


title: Louella Parsons

text: She continued her column until December 1965 when it was taken over by her assistant, Dorothy Manners, who had already been writing the column for more than a year.


title: Louella Parsons

text: When Hopper had initially come to Hollywood, she and Parsons had a mutually beneficial arrangement. Hopper was then a moderately successful actress, and according to Parson's successor, Dorothy Manners, "if anything happened on a set—if a star and leading man were having an affair—Hedda would give Louella a call.” In return, Hedda was guaranteed a few lines of copy under Louella's increasingly influential byline.


title: Louella Parsons

text: After MGM canceled her contract, Hopper struggled to maintain her career as an actress. She was offered a position as a Hollywood columnist by the Esquire Feature Syndicate due to a recommendation by Andy Hervey of MGM’s publicity department.


title: Louella Parsons

text: One of the first papers to pick up “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood” was the "Los Angeles Times", a morning paper like Louella's "Examiner". Hopper first publicly scooped Parsons with the divorce of the president's son Jimmy Roosevelt (a Goldwyn employee), who was involved with a Mayo Clinic nurse, from his wife, Betsey. The story became front-page news across the country.


title: Louella Parsons

text: When rumors began to surface that Orson Welles debut film "Citizen Kane" was inspired by Hearst's life, Parsons lunched with the director and believed his evasions and denials. Hopper arrived uninvited to an early screening of the film and wrote a scathing critique, calling it a "vicious and irresponsible attack on a great man". As a result, Hearst sent Parsons a letter complaining that he had learned about "Citizen Kane" from Hopper and not her.


title: Louella Parsons

text: On the warpath, Parsons then demanded a private screening of the film and threatened RKO chief George Schaefer on Hearst's behalf, first with a lawsuit and then with a vague but powerful threat of consequences for everyone in Hollywood. On January 10, Parsons and two lawyers working for Hearst were given a private screening of the film. Horrified by what she saw, Louella rushed out of the studio screening room to cable Hearst, who telegraphed back the terse message "Stop Citizen Kane". Soon after, Parsons called Schaefer and threatened RKO with a lawsuit if they released "Kane". She also warned other studio heads that she would expose the private lives of people throughout the industry and reveal long-suppressed scandalous information.


title: Louella Parsons

text: When Schaefer—who had also been threatened by Hearst with legal action—announced that "Citizen Kane" was scheduled to premiere in February 1941 at Radio City Music Hall, Parsons contacted the manager of Radio City Music Hall and advised him that exhibiting the film would result in a press blackout. The premiere was canceled. Other exhibitors were fearful of being sued by Hearst and refused to show the film. As a result, despite support from Hearst adversaries as Henry Luce, on release overall the film lost money. Parsons was by no means alone in her campaign against "Citizen Kane" but Welles never quite recovered his position in Hollywood afterward.


title: Louella Parsons

text: In the early 1950s, the "Los Angeles Examiner" ran on its front page, above Parsons's byline: "Ingrid Bergman Baby Due in Three Months at Rome". Bergman had left her husband, neurologist Peter Lindström, to live in Italy with director Roberto Rossellini but the news that she might be pregnant was met with some skepticism. Bergman was well known for the angelic role of Sister Benedict in "The Bells of St. Mary's".


title: Louella Parsons

text: Hopper, who had been a public supporter of Bergman, had believed the actress' denial of the pregnancy, and printed a fervent repudiation of the rumor. However, Bergman was indeed pregnant and Hopper, enraged at being scooped, launched a PR campaign decrying Bergman for being pregnant out of wedlock and carrying a married man's child. Parsons had allegedly received the tip from Howard Hughes who was incensed at Bergman for being unable to shoot a film for him as promised.


title: Louella Parsons

text: Reportedly, whereas Hopper was more inclined to see their much-publicized antagonism as funny and good for business, Parsons took it personally and saw Hopper as a rival in every possible way. Hopper also referred to Doc Martin as "that goddamn clap doctor", which infuriated Parsons.


title: Louella Parsons

text: It has been suggested that Hopper was set up as a columnist by Louis B. Mayer (with the blessing of other studio chiefs) to offset Louella's monopolistic power. Gossip columnist Liz Smith, stated that: "The studios created both of them. And they thought they could control both of them. But they became Frankenstein monsters escaped from the labs." Hopper and Parsons had a combined readership of 75 million in a country of 160 million.


title: Louella Parsons

text: Parsons' memoir "The Gay Illiterate" (1944), published by Doubleday, Doran and Company, became a bestseller. It was followed by a second volume in 1961, "Tell It to Louella", published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.


title: Louella Parsons

text: In her personal histories, she expunged significant bits of her history in order to align her life with the Catholicism she began to practice in middle age. She alleged that her first husband died on a transport ship on the way home from World War I, leaving her a widow instead of a divorced single mother. Her second marriage to Jack McCaffrey and eventual divorce is omitted.


title: Louella Parsons

text: Parsons was married three times. First, to real estate developer and broker John Dement Parsons, whom she married in 1905. From this union, they had one daughter named Harriet who was born on August 23, 1906, in Burlington City, Des Moines County, Iowa. Parsons divorced John in 1914. A year later, she married second husband John McCaffrey Jr. in 1915. The couple later divorced.


title: Louella Parsons

text: She pursued singing as a hobby, and took voice lessons with Estelle Liebling, the voice teacher of Beverly Sills.


title: Louella Parsons

text: Her third marriage was to Los Angeles surgeon Dr. Harry Martin (whom she called "Docky") in 1930; Martin served in the Army Medical Corps during World War I and World War II. His specialty was venereal diseases and he advanced to the post of Twentieth Century Fox's chief medical officer. He was also known as a heavy drinker. They remained married until Martin's death on June 24, 1951.


title: Louella Parsons

text: After Martin's death she dated songwriter Jimmy McHugh, a fellow Catholic who introduced her to many of the new teenage musical sensations of the time, including Elvis Presley. The couple were a fixture at parties, premieres, and such nightspots as Dino’s Lodge on Sunset Strip.


title: Louella Parsons

text: Harriet would later follow her mother's passion for writing, and would find employment as a writer for a popular California magazine. She also became one of the few female producers in the Hollywood studio system although she still struggled in this role despite the influence of her powerful mother.


title: Louella Parsons

text: After her retirement, Parsons lived in a nursing home where she died of arteriosclerosis on December 9, 1972, at the age of 91. Her funeral mass was attended by individuals from the movie industry with whom she had maintained genuine friendships. A convert to Roman Catholicism, she was interred in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.


title: Louella Parsons

text: Parsons has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood, one for motion pictures at 6418 Hollywood Boulevard and one for radio at 6300 Hollywood Boulevard.


title: Tudor Dixon

text: Tudor Dixon (; born May 5, 1977) is an American businesswoman and conservative political commentator. A member of the Republican Party, Dixon was the party's nominee for Governor of Michigan in the 2022 election. She lost to incumbent Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer by a vote margin of 10.6 percentage points.


title: Tudor Dixon

text: Dixon grew up in Naperville, Illinois, the daughter of Vaughn Makary (died 2022) and Catherine Makary.


title: Tudor Dixon

text: Dixon received a Bachelor of Arts with a major in psychology from the University of Kentucky in 1998. In the 2000s, she moved to Muskegon in western Michigan.


title: Tudor Dixon

text: Before her career in media, Dixon was an executive at her father's steel foundry. She acted briefly in the late 2000s and early 2010s, appearing in the vampire web series "Transitions: The Series" and the low-budget horror film "Buddy BeBop vs the Living Dead". In 2017, Dixon co-founded Lumen Student News, a now-defunct news site that produced conservative-leaning lessons for grade school students.


title: Tudor Dixon

text: In 2018, she became a conservative commentator, anchoring the weekly program "America's Voice Live" on Real America's Voice, a streaming news and opinion channel. Some of Dixon comments are that hijabs are oppressive garments and that Iranian parents are murdering daughters who marry without obtaining parental permission. She has also defended comedian's use of blackface.


title: Tudor Dixon

text: Following Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 US presidential election, Dixon promoted Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the election. In May 2022 during a Republican debate, she affirmed her belief that Trump was the rightful winner of the election. Later that year, she would not say anything when asked if the 2020 presidential election was stolen.


title: Tudor Dixon

text: In May 2021, Dixon announced her candidacy to become the Republican Party's nominee for Governor of Michigan in the 2022 election, seeking to challenge incumbent Democrat Gretchen Whitmer. In a July 2022 Republican primary debate, Dixon pledged loyalty to Trump. In a May 2022 debate, when asked "do you believe Donald Trump legitimately won the 2020 election in Michigan?," Dixon responded "Yes." In subsequent media appearances, Dixon would not say whether she still held that belief.


title: Tudor Dixon

text: Trump endorsed Dixon after Trump's former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos wrote a letter to the former president, asking him to support Dixon, whom DeVos termed "the only one who can stand toe to toe with" Whitmer. In August 2022, Dixon won the Republican primary.


title: Tudor Dixon

text: Dixon was endorsed by Trump, the DeVos family, former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grennell, representative for Michigan's 2nd congressional district Bill Huizenga, and former Democratic representative for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district Tulsi Gabbard.


title: Tudor Dixon

text: In the general election Dixon lost, doing "nearly eight points worse than the base Republican vote", according to Paul Cordes, chief of staff of the Michigan Republican Party.


title: Tudor Dixon

text: Dixon supports a ban on all abortions except solely when necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman, and would oppose any exceptions for rape or incest. She has also said she does not believe the mother's health is a sufficient reason, saying that the "health of the mother and life of the mother are different." In an interview, she described the example of a 14-year-girl raped by her uncle as a "perfect example" of an abortion that she believes should be prohibited, adding, "a life is a life for me." In follow-up interviews, she has repeated her belief that there should be no exceptions for victims of rape and incest.


title: Tudor Dixon

text: In a June 2020 episode of her "America's Voice Live" show, Dixon said "our kids are not at risk" of catching COVID-19. When Gretchen Whitmer brought this up during an October 2022 debate, Dixon denied making the comment and said "My own children have had COVID, so I would never say that."


title: Tudor Dixon

text: Following an October 2022 decision to include covid-19 vaccines on the CDC's optional immunization recommendation schedule, Dixon alleged that "liberal policymakers are pushing COVID-19 vaccines on our children and forcing parents out of the process". According to "Michigan Advance", the state "does not have a vaccine mandate for COVID-19 and unvaccinated children are not precluded from attending school"; the media outlet further noted that "This is not the first time Dixon has touted misinformation about COVID-19 and children".


title: Tudor Dixon

text: In a June 2020 episode of her show, Dixon invoked a conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 pandemic was part of a plot that Democrats have planned for decades in order to topple the United States.


title: Tudor Dixon

text: Dixon plans to found Education Savings Accounts, which can hold funding for students to use on various options of schools. In order to establish Education Savings Accounts, she has called for the repeal of the state's constitutional provision prohibiting public funding of private schools. The DeVos family shares this end goal, for which it has been advocating for years.


title: Tudor Dixon

text: Dixon proposed a piece of legislation that would ban teachers from talking about sexual orientation or gender identity with K-3 students. She called for the resignation of the leader of Michigan's Department of Education due to LGBT training materials, stating that "our schools are laboratories for their social experiments and our children are their lab rats."


title: Tudor Dixon

text: In June 2022, Dixon spoke in support of a bill that would prohibit drag shows in public schools and permit parents and guardians to sue schools that host drag shows. Critics highlighted the lack of evidence for such events in Michigan schools, and they pointed out that drag shows were not defined in the bill.


title: Tudor Dixon

text: Dixon has made numerous public comments that have been condemned as racist, such as calling hijabs oppressive garments and defending the usage of blackface. She has promoted conspiracy theories that Planned Parenthood aims to control the black population and that the George Floyd protests were part of a scheme by Democrats to take down Donald Trump. During her campaign for Governor, Dixon made a gender-based attack, suggesting her opponent is not a "real woman".


title: Tudor Dixon

text: Dixon supports tax cuts, especially by ending the state's flat income tax of 4.25%, which makes up one-sixth of the state's total budget. Her plan to replace revenue lost by the tax cut relies on tourists from other states. Dixon has vowed not to cut police funding. Dixon has criticized Gretchen Whitmer for her order to shut down the Line 5 pipeline, arguing that the closing will only lead to an increase in energy prices. She has also criticized Whitmer's policies regarding nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dixon, whose grandmother died at a nursing home amid the pandemic, accused Whitmer of being "ruled by fear".


title: Tudor Dixon

text: Dixon supports the Michigan Voter ID Initiative. If passed, the initiative would require governmental ID to vote, end the sending of unsolicited applications for absentee ballots, abolish ballot drop boxes, prohibit ballot harvesting, restrict election expenses to be publicly funded, and toughen punishments for election fraud. Dixon also called for an audit of the 2020 election results in Michigan.


title: Tudor Dixon

text: Dixon is married to Aaron William Dixon, a financial controller, and they have four daughters. She is a breast cancer survivor, having been diagnosed in 2015.


title: BWT (company)

text: BWT, registered name BWT AG, is an Austrian manufacturing company of water treatment systems with its headquarters in Mondsee.


title: BWT (company)

text: The company has four main production sites at Mondsee (Austria), Schriesheim (Germany), Paris (France), Aesch (Switzerland) numerous subsidiaries and affiliated companies and a global distribution network.


title: BWT (company)

text: BWT AG was founded as Benckiser Wassertechnik in 1823 by Johann Adam Benckiser in Germany. Following several acquisitions and mergers the company was purchased in 1990 by Andreas Weißenbacher in a management-buyout. The company was floated on the Vienna Stock Exchange in 1992. The WAB Group is the principal shareholder of BWT AG, with around 20% of the shares owned by diverse shareholders (and roughly 6% owned by the company (as of February 2014).


title: BWT (company)

text: The product portfolio covers the entire spectrum of water treatment technology. This includes filtration, filter media ion exchange systems for demineralisation, alternative limescale protection, water softening, decarbonisation, disinfection (UV, ozone, chlorine dioxide, etc.), metering technology, membrane technology microfiltration, ultrafiltration and nanofiltration, reverse osmosis), pure steam generators, pure water distillation, UV systems, ozone generators, ion exchange membranes, electrolysis, electrodialysis, electrodeionisation, chlorine dioxide generators and metering pumps. BWT now develops membranes for fuel cells and batteries.


title: BWT (company)

text: The filter cartridge for table water using the patented Mg technology received the National Award for Innovation for Upper Austria in 2011. The technology developed by BWT enriches the tap water with magnesium during the filtration process while removing any extraneous elements e.g. calcium, heavy metals , and taste-inhibiting substances (e.g. chlorine).


title: BWT (company)

text: In 2011, the Rondomat Duo S series of large water softeners (large water softeners are installed in buildings, commercial premises and industrial plants to prevent limescale deposits and the associated damage to the water pipe network and any appliances and systems connected to it) won the Austrian national design prize in the Capital Goods category awarded by the Federal Ministry of the Economy Family and Youth (German: Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft, Familie und Jugend).


title: BWT (company)

text: BWT’s building technology products for private households have been winners of the Plus X Award on two occasions. In 2012, the AQA perla water softening system was voted 'Best Product of the Year 2013', and the E1 Single Lever filter (a drinking water filter that prevents foreign particles and contaminants from entering the domestic system through the pipe network and damaging the installations) received the same accolade in 2013.


title: BWT (company)

text: BWT has a wide range of sponsorship deals with various motorsport teams, such as Mücke Motorsport in DTM, Forze Hydrogen Electric Racing, a student racing team from the Delft University of Technology, making race cars on hydrogen, ADAC-GT Masters and Formula 4 and Walter Lechner Racing in the high profile Porsche Carrera Cup Germany and Porsche Supercup.


title: BWT (company)

text: Most notably, in Formula One, they lent their pink corporate colours to the Racing Point F1 Team (previously Racing Point Force India and Force India Formula One) from 2017 till the end of 2020 as title sponsors up until the team rebranded as Aston Martin Cognizant moving forward in the 2021 season. The sponsorship was continued with the new Aston Martin team for 2021, with BWT taking the role of a Global Partner. The livery featured subtle BWT brand accents, as well as BWT brand logos.


title: BWT (company)

text: In 2021, Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team driver, Sebastian Vettel, signed-on to become a BWT Ambassador. The personal sponsorship included full BWT branding and colours for the drivers helmet.


title: Crowder (musician)

text: David Wallace Crowder (born November 29, 1971), known professionally by his mononymous stage name Crowder since 2012, is an American contemporary Christian music singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and author. He was the lead singer in the now defunct David Crowder Band, before he started his solo career in 2012 on sixstepsrecords and Sparrow Records labels. He released his first solo album. "Neon Steeple", on May 27, 2014. Crowder released his first solo single off the album, "I Am", on November 25, 2013, which rose to the No. 3 position on the Christian Songs chart. "American Prodigal", Crowder's second solo album, was released on September 23, 2016 and his third, "I Know a Ghost", on November 9, 2018. His fourth solo album, "Milk & Honey", released on June 11, 2021.


title: Crowder (musician)

text: He was born David Wallace Crowder, on November 29, 1971, in Texarkana, Texas. He went to college at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.


title: Crowder (musician)

text: Crowder was the lead vocalist of the David Crowder Band from 1996 until it was disbanded in 2012 when Crowder started his solo career on Sparrow Records imprint, "sixstepsrecords". During the band's time together they released 16 singles through 6 studio albums, 2 live albums, 4 EPs and a compilation album.


title: Crowder (musician)

text: Crowder released his debut solo studio album on May 27, 2014, "Neon Steeple". The lead single, "I Am", released on November 25, 2013, charted at No, 3 on the "Billboard" Christian Songs chart. "Come As You Are" achieved a Grammy nomination in 2015 for Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song.


title: Crowder (musician)

text: His second solo album, "American Prodigal", was released September 23, 2016. The first single, "Run Devil Run", was released on June 18, 2016. "Forgiven" was the second single released.


title: Crowder (musician)

text: On September 19, 2018, Crowder announced a third solo album and released the first two singles, "Red Letters" and "Wildfire". The album, "I Know a Ghost", was released on November 9, 2018.


title: Andy Borowitz

text: Andy Borowitz (born January 4, 1958) is an American writer, comedian, satirist, and actor. Borowitz is a "The New York Times"-bestselling author who won the first National Press Club award for humor. He is known for creating the NBC sitcom "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and the satirical column "The Borowitz Report".


title: Andy Borowitz

text: Borowitz was born to a marginally observant Reform Jewish family in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where he graduated from Shaker Heights High School.


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In 1980, Borowitz graduated "magna cum laude" from Harvard College, where he lived in Adams House and was president of the "Harvard Lampoon". He also wrote for the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. Borowitz studied with playwright William Alfred and wrote his undergraduate thesis on Restoration comedy.


title: Andy Borowitz

text: After graduating from Harvard, Borowitz moved to Los Angeles to work for producer Bud Yorkin at Tandem Productions, the company Yorkin co-founded with producer Norman Lear, the creator of "All in the Family". From 1982 through 1983, he wrote for the television series "Square Pegs", starring Sarah Jessica Parker. From 1983 through 1984, he wrote for the television series "The Facts of Life". He wrote for various television series through the 1980s.


title: Andy Borowitz

text: During his marriage to writer and producer Susan Borowitz (1982–2005), the two co-created "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" which ran for six seasons on NBC and launched the acting career of Will Smith. The series won NAACP's Image Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1993.


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In 1998, Borowitz co-produced the film "Pleasantville", starring Reese Witherspoon, Tobey Maguire, William H. Macy, Joan Allen, and Jeff Daniels. It was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, and Best Music, Original Dramatic Score.


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In 2004 Borowitz appeared in Woody Allen's "Melinda and Melinda," starring Will Ferrell, and in "Marie and Bruce", starring Julianne Moore and Matthew Broderick. "Marie and Bruce" was co-written by Wallace Shawn and director Tom Cairns. In 2007 he appeared in the film "Fired!"


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In the late 1990s, Borowitz began e-mailing humorous news parodies to friends. In 2001, he founded "The Borowitz Report", a site that posts one 250-word news satire every weekday. The site led to greater fame and widespread attention for Borowitz as a political satirist. "The Wall Street Journal" devoted a page-one story to him and his site in 2003 and readership ultimately grew to the millions. In 2005, the newspaper syndicator Creators Syndicate began syndicating "The Borowitz Report" to dozens of major newspapers including the "Los Angeles Times", "The Seattle Times", and "The Philadelphia Inquirer". It is also one of the longest-running features at the "Newsweek" website. He has served as a commentator on the National Public Radio programs "Weekend Edition Sunday" and "Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me!", the latter on November 12, 2006. Borowitz is also a regular contributor to humor newspaper "Funny Times".


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In 2007, he started blogging for the "Huffington Post". His posts were featured on the home page of the blog and quickly became one of its most popular features. His popularity surged during the 2008 campaign, leading "The Daily Beast" to call him "America's satire king".


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In 2009, The Borowitz Report began a Twitter feed, which was voted the number-one Twitter account in the world in a "Time" magazine poll in 2011. Eventually, he abandoned the feed.


title: Andy Borowitz

text: On July 18, 2012, Borowitz announced that "The New Yorker" had acquired the Borowitz Report website, the first time that the magazine had ever made such an acquisition. In its first 24 hours as a "New Yorker" feature, "The Borowitz Report" garnered the most page views on the entire "New Yorker" website.


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In 2002, Borowitz joined the staff of CNN's "American Morning" and soon appeared on the program three mornings a week. In 2004, he covered the Democratic National Convention for the channel, paired with comedian Lewis Black of "The Daily Show". He has made numerous appearances on other television programs including "Countdown with Keith Olbermann", "Best Week Ever" on VH1 and "Live at Gotham" on Comedy Central.


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In 2010, Borowitz appeared on the PBS show "Need to Know". Tom Shales, television critic for "The Washington Post", singled out Borowitz for praise, calling him "one of the wittiest Web wags".


title: Andy Borowitz

text: Borowitz's success as a television performer led to his becoming a strong draw as a stand-up comedian, and he started headlining at major comedy clubs across the country, including Carolines on Broadway, where he hosts a monthly show called "Next Week's News". Other major comedians who have appeared with him in that show include Amy Sedaris and Susie Essman of HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm".


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In September 2007, he headlined an edition of Next Week's News at the Bumbershoot festival in Seattle, Washington, performing to standing-room-only audiences and critical acclaim in the press, including the "Seattle Post-Intelligencer". He also performed to a sold-out house at the 2007 New York Comedy Festival, which featured other prominent comedians including Denis Leary, Bill Maher, and Sarah Silverman.


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In 2008, he hosted a series of sold-out shows at New York City's 92nd Street Y called "Countdown to the Election". The show earned rave reviews and featured such guests as Arianna Huffington, Mo Rocca, Jonathan Alter, Joy Behar, and Jeffrey Toobin.


title: Andy Borowitz

text: He continued to tour the country performing stand-up, including a performance at the University of California, Santa Barbara in April 2008. The university newspaper, "Daily Nexus", reported that Borowitz played to a packed house and had the audience "erupting with laughter".


title: Andy Borowitz

text: Comedian Mike Birbiglia praised Borowitz in a May 2009 profile in "Harvard Magazine": "Andy just picked up stand-up comedy as a hobby, and he's as good at it as anybody."


title: Andy Borowitz

text: On November 28, 2010, "CBS News Sunday Morning" aired a retrospective of his career as a comedian and writer, calling him "one of the funniest people in America".


title: Andy Borowitz

text: On June 28, 2011, he performed at New York City's Central Park Summerstage and drew a crowd estimated at 5,000, setting a new record for turnout at a Summerstage spoken-word event.


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In 1998, Borowitz began contributing humor to "The New Yorker" magazine. He quickly became one of the magazine's most prolific humor contributors, writing dozens of essays including "Emily Dickinson, Jerk of Amherst", selected as one of the funniest humor pieces in the magazine's history and included in "The New Yorker"'s humor collection entitled "Fierce Pajamas". Two more humor pieces of his appeared in the magazine's 2008 collection entitled "Disquiet, Please!" He has also performed at The New Yorker Festival's humor revues at The Town Hall in New York City with such other "New Yorker" contributors as Woody Allen, Steve Martin, and Calvin Trillin. Additionally, he has joined "The New Yorker" College Tour, where he has performed with improv group The Second City and David Sedaris.


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In addition to writing for "The New Yorker", Borowitz has written for many other magazines, including "Vanity Fair" and "The Believer", and was a primary contributor to the cult magazine "Army Man".


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In 2009, Borowitz was chosen by the National Book Foundation to host the National Book Awards in New York City. Previous hosts have included such comedians and writers as Steve Martin and Garrison Keillor. His performance earned him a return engagement for the 2010 awards ceremony.


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In 2011, Library of America chose Borowitz to edit an anthology of American humor entitled "The 50 Funniest American Writers". Encompassing American humor from Mark Twain to "The Onion", the book was set to be released on October 13, 2011. The book became a best seller on the day of its publication, reaching number eight on Amazon.com and becoming the number-one humor book in the United States. It also became the first book in the 32-year history of the Library of America to become a "New York Times" and "Wall Street Journal" bestseller. Both Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com named it a Best Book of 2011, and Amazon.com named it the number-one Entertainment Book of the Year. In a feature about the book, "The Washington Post" noted the book's popular success, calling Borowitz "America's finest fake-news creator and sharpest political satirist".


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In 2012, Borowitz wrote his first autobiographical work, "An Unexpected Twist" an Amazon Kindle single. The essay recounts Borowitz's near-death experience in 2008 while undergoing emergency abdominal surgery in New York City. A mixture of dark comedy, hospital drama and love story, the book became a bestseller on its first day of release, placing number one on Amazon's Kindle Single chart. It became the first nonfiction Kindle Single to make "The Wall Street Journal" bestseller list, debuting at number six.


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In his book review for "The New York Times", Dwight Garner wrote, "Andy Borowitz is the funniest human on Twitter, and that's not mean praise. His first original e-book the current best-selling Single is a seriocomic memoir called "An Unexpected Twist", about a blockage in his colon that nearly killed him. This funny book has a sneaky emotional gravity. As the time of his illness, he'd been married only a few months, and his small book becomes a rather large love story."


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In his review of the book, journalist Seth Mnookin wrote, "Borowitz has become one of the most lauded satirists in the country – think of him as a literary Jon Stewart. His name graces the cover of one of the most successful Library of America volumes ever (The 50 Funniest American Writers* (*According to Andy Borowitz)). He was voted by Time magazine readers as having the #1 Twitter feed in the world. He even hosted the National Book Awards – twice… It's no surprise that Borowitz is able to mine his situation for humor. What makes "An Unexpected Twist" even more satisfying is his ability to highlight some of the surreal and infuriating aspects of modern American medical care without hitting the reader over the head with them."


title: Andy Borowitz

text: Since 1999, Borowitz has been the primary host of "The Moth", a New York-based storytelling group. He sings with the literary rock band Rock Bottom Remainders, a group with a rotating cast of players including Dave Barry, Matt Groening, Roy Blount Jr., Stephen King, Amy Tan, Robert Fulghum, Barbara Kingsolver, and Scott Turow. He has taught screenwriting in the United States and Europe and is on the guest faculty of the Maurits Binger Film Institute in Amsterdam.


title: Andy Borowitz

text: In October 2012, he became the host of the BBC comedy series "News Quiz USA". The hit comedy series has millions of listeners on BBC Radio 4 in the U.K. and is broadcast on the public radio station WNYC in New York.


title: Andy Borowitz

text: He was married to Susan Borowitz, the co-creator of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air". After their divorce he married Olivia Gentile, the author of "Life List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds". He has three children and lives in New Hampshire.


title: Jeremy Suarez

text: Jeremy Suarez (born July 6, 1990) is an American actor, best known for his role as Jordan Thomkins on "The Bernie Mac Show" (2001–2006), and as the voice of Koda in "Brother Bear" (2003) and "Brother Bear 2" (2006).


title: Jeremy Suarez

text: Beginning his career as a child actor at the age of five, he first appeared as Tyson Tidwell in "Jerry Maguire" (1996), and most recently appeared as Nathaniel in "The Fix" (2017). Throughout his career, Suarez has been nominated for two NAACP Image Awards, two Young Artist Awards and an Annie Award.


title: Jeremy Suarez

text: In 1996, he made his debut in "Jerry Maguire" as Rod Tidwell's son Tyson. He appeared in the short-lived sitcom "Built to Last" (1997) as Ryce Watkins, the youngest son in a family of seven. Suarez made guest appearances on sitcoms "Sister, Sister" (1996) and "The Wayans Bros." (1998), and had a recurring role as Raymond Wilkes on medical drama "Chicago Hope" (1996−98).


title: Jeremy Suarez

text: When Suarez was 11 years old, he joined the cast of the sitcom "The Bernie Mac Show" (2001−06) as Jordan Thomkins, the nephew of the titular character Bernie Mac. For portraying Jordan, Suarez received two NAACP Image Award nominations. Suarez appeared on "Larry King Live" in 2008 with his fellow cast to discuss Mac's death.


title: Jeremy Suarez

text: He voiced Koda, a bear cub whose mother was killed by the protagonist, in the Disney film "Brother Bear" (2003). A book author believed Suarez's performance was the best in the film. Suarez received an Annie Award nomination for Outstanding Achievement for Voice Acting in a Feature Production as Koda, but lost to Ellen DeGeneres. He reprised the role of Koda in sequel "Brother Bear 2" (2006).


title: Jeremy Suarez

text: In 2004, Suarez appeared in two feature films. He provided the voice of Russell in an animated sequence of "Fat Albert" and portrayed Li'l Gawain in "The Ladykillers". Following the end of "The Bernie Mac Show", Suarez struggled to find acting work and found employment in more conventional jobs outside of the film industry, including as a boilermaker.


title: Jeremy Suarez

text: Most of Suarez's work post-"Bernie Mac" have been in voice-overs, guest starring on "King of the Hill" and voicing a puppet in Nike commercials during the 2009 NBA Playoffs. He provided Kai's voice in the animated feature film, "Zambezia" (2012). In "" (2014), Suarez played Cooper Folly, the nerd's sidekick.


title: Dana International

text: Sharon Cohen (; born 2 February 1969), professionally known as Dana International (), is an Israeli pop singer. She has released eight albums and three additional compilation albums. She was the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 1998 in Birmingham with the song "Diva".


title: Dana International

text: After consolidating her initial commercial success with the albums "Umpatampa" (1994) and "Maganuna" (1996), she was selected in 1998 to represent Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest with her song "Diva". Placing first at the international competition, she came to public attention throughout Europe.


title: Dana International

text: Dana following up this success with the albums "Free" (1999), "Yoter VeYoter" (2001), "HaHalom HaEfshari" (2002) and "Hakol Ze Letova" (2007), she represented Israel in Eurovision a second time in 2011, this time with the song "Ding Dong", which failed to make it into the final. The same year, she became a judge on the Israeli television music talent contest "Kokhav Nolad".


title: Dana International

text: Cohen was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, to a family of Yemenite-Jewish descent. Her paternal grandparents lived in Petah Tikva. She is the youngest of three children, and was named after an uncle who had been killed during a terrorist attack.


title: Dana International

text: Though assigned male at birth, she identified as female from a very young age. She wanted to become a singer from the age of eight, when she watched Israeli singer Ofra Haza perform her song "Chai" in the 1983 Eurovision Song Contest. Although the family was quite poor, her mother worked to pay for her music lessons, and she stated that her childhood was happy. She came out as transgender at the age of 13.


title: Dana International

text: Dana International took her stage name from a feminized version of a childhood friend Daniel, who died in a car accident.


title: Dana International

text: At 18 years of age, Cohen (still legally male at the time) earned a living as a drag queen, parodying many famous female singers. During one of her performances, she was discovered by Offer Nissim, a well-known Israeli DJ, who produced her debut single "Saida Sultana" ("The Great Saida"), a satirical version of Whitney Houston's song "My Name Is Not Susan". The song received considerable exposure and helped launch her career as a professional singer.


title: Dana International

text: In 1993, Dana International flew to London for male-to-female sex reassignment surgery and legally changed her name to Sharon Cohen. Returning home with her new name, that same year Cohen released her first album, titled "Danna International", in Israel. Soon after, the album was also released in several other countries including Greece, Jordan, and Egypt (In Jordan and Egypt the album sold illegally). Sharon's stage name Dana International comes from the title track of the album, and was originally spelled with two n's. "Danna International" soon became a gold record in Israel.


title: Dana International

text: In 1994, Dana released her second, Trance-influenced album "Umpatampa", which built on the success of her debut and provided further hit singles. The album went platinum in Israel and has sold more than 50,000 copies to date. Because of her popularity and the success of this album, she won the award for "Best Female Artist of the Year" in Israel.


title: Dana International

text: In 1995, Dana attempted to fulfill her childhood dream of performing in the Eurovision Song Contest. She entered the Eurovision qualifying contest in Israel with a song entitled "Layla Tov, Eropa" ("Good Night Europe") which finished second in the pre-selections, but became another hit single.


title: Dana International

text: In late 1995, Dana released an E.P. called "E.P. Tampa" with three new songs and four remixes and special versions of her earlier songs.


title: Dana International

text: In 1996, Dana released her third album, "Maganuna". Although this album was less successful than her previous efforts, it still reached gold record sales in Israel and included the hits "Don Quixote", "Menafnefet" (Waving) and the club favorite "Cinque Milla." In 1997, Dana collaborated with the Israeli artist Eran Zur on his album "Ata Havera Sheli," and together they sang the duet "Shir Kdam-Shnati (Sex Acher)" ("Pre-Bed Song (A Different Kind of Sex)") which became a huge hit.


title: Dana International

text: Dana was chosen to represent Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest 1998 in Birmingham with the song "Diva". Orthodox Jews and others with conservative views were opposed to the choice and attempted to void her participation in the contest. In May 1998, Dana performed "Diva" at the Eurovision final and won the contest with 172 points. She became known internationally, and was interviewed by CNN, BBC, Sky News, and MTV among others mostly focusing on her life as a transsexual person before winning the contest. Dana's own words ""the message of reconciliation"" were; ""My victory proves God is on my side. I want to send my critics a message of forgiveness and say to them: try to accept me and the kind of life I lead. I am what I am and this does not mean I don't believe in God, and I am part of the Jewish Nation.""


title: Dana International

text: Dana released "Diva" as a single in Europe and it became a hit, reaching number 11 in the UK charts and the top ten in Sweden, Belgium, Finland, Ireland, and the Netherlands.


title: Dana International

text: In 1999, Dana released "Woman in Love", a Barbra Streisand cover. In May 1999, Dana again participated in the Eurovision Song Contest held in Jerusalem. Dana was a part of the interval act and sang the Stevie Wonder song "Free". One memorable moment from the event happened when she presented the award to the winners of the contest. Whilst she was carrying the heavy trophy, one of the composers of the winning Swedish entry stepped on the long trail of her dress by mistake, and she fell over on stage – in front of a television audience estimated be to one million or more, making it one of the most memorable moments in the 50-year-long history of the contest.


title: Dana International

text: She released her next album "Free" in Europe in 1999, which enjoyed moderate success. A few months later Dana moved back to Israel and started to work on different projects. Israeli and Japanese editions of "Free" were released in 2000. That same year, an Israeli documentary film was made about Dana called "Lady D".


title: Dana International

text: In 2001, after a break, Dana released her seventh album "Yoter Ve Yoter" ("More and More"). The album put her career in Israel back on track and provided two hits called "Ani Nitzachti" (I Won) and "Achrei HaKol" (After All), which eventually both went gold.


title: Dana International

text: Dana was about to sign with a major label, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, for an international recording contract. There were disagreements that led to Sony Music cancelling the deal before it was completed.


title: Dana International

text: In 2002, she released another album, "HaHalom HaEfshari" ("The Possible Dream"), which was a minor chart success. In 2003, she released an exclusive 8-CD box set, containing all singles from "The Possible Dream" and a new house version of the hit single "Cinque Milla", titled "A.lo.ra.lo.la".


title: Dana International

text: A few years later, in 2005, Dana participated in the 50th anniversary of the Eurovision Song Contest, held in Copenhagen, after "Diva" was selected as one of fourteen songs considered to be the best Eurovision songs. The song did not make it into the final top five. Dana got the chance to perform both "Diva" and an old Eurovision favourite of hers, Baccara's 1978 entry "Parlez-Vous Français?". She also recorded the song "Lola" (sung in French), to which she released a video. This video can be found on the CD "Hakol Ze Letova", released in 2007 as a bonus CD-rom video.


title: Dana International

text: After a few years away from show business, together with the relaunch of her official website, a first single of the upcoming album was released in March 2007: "HaKol Ze LeTova" ("It's All For the Best"). The second single to be released from the album, "Love Boy", became the most played song on Israeli radio in a decade. It also gained a respectable place on the airplay of the Greek radio station FLY FM 89,7. The following album, also titled "Hakol Ze Letova", was released on 15 August 2007. "At Mukhana" (You Are Ready) was the third single and "Seret Hodi" (Indian Movie; feat. "Idan Yaniv") the fourth to be released from the album, which became a bestseller in many online stores. The next single released from the album was "Yom Huledet" (Birthday).


title: Dana International

text: On 26 February 2008, Dana gained an additional achievement when the song "Ke'ilu Kan" written and composed by her and performed by Boaz Mauda, was chosen on Kdam Eurovision to represent Israel at Eurovision Song Contest 2008 in Belgrade, Serbia. It came 5th in the semi-final and gained 9th place in the final rank.


title: Dana International

text: Dana also recorded the song "Mifrats HaAhava" ("The Love Bay") for an Israeli version of the TV-show "Paradise Hotel". She also collaborated with the Ukrainian duo NeAngely (Not Angels), recording "I Need Your Love" and releasing a video. In 2009, Dana starred in a mock reality show called "Dana Kama/Nama" for cellphone provider Cellcom


title: Dana International

text: Dana campaigned for Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni shortly before 2009 legislative elections in Israel. At a women's political rally in Jerusalem Dana performed a disco song alongside Livni onstage, announcing "I now formally invite you to the diva sisterhood."


title: Dana International

text: In April 2009, Dana performed in the opening concert of Tel Aviv-Yafo Centennial Year. She performed a cover version of Danny Robas' song "Lo Nirdemet Tel Aviv" (Tel Aviv Doesn't Fall Asleep) in front of 250,000 people.


title: Dana International

text: Also in 2009, Dana International joined the 7th season of "Kokhav Nolad" (the Israeli version of "Pop Idol") as a judge, also joining the 8th one in 2010. Dana made a guest appearance, as herself, in an episode of the second series of UK sitcom "Beautiful People", which was set around her Eurovision appearance.


title: Dana International

text: On 8 March 2011, Dana International won the Israeli National Final for Eurovision with the song "Ding Dong", and represented Israel at Eurovision for a second time. The song did not qualify for the final; she thus became the first Eurovision winner to do so.


title: Dana International

text: In April 2013, after a two-year break, Dana released a new single, "Ma La'asot" (What To Do). It was released digitally worldwide on 24 April 2013. On 29 May, Dana released a video clip for the song Loca, to promote the Gay Pride Tel Aviv 2013. Dana would perform on the main event for the Gay Pride on 7 June. Her third single for that year, "Ir Shlema" (A Whole City), was released in July. Late in January 2014, Dana's new music reality show "Yeshnan Banot" premiered. Dana is the main judge on the show, attempting to find Israel's next girl group.


title: Dana International

text: Also in 2014, Dana was the main attraction aboard the first Jewish boat to participate in the Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade. Dana stated, "I don't believe in any religion, so I'm here as an Israeli, not as a Jew. But it's time to end the persecution over religion or national reasons. Just cut out all that shit. That's my message." Previously, after she won the Eurovision song competition, a religious debate had been held as to whether, and how, Dana should pray in a synagogue, with one rabbinical authority concluding that Dana should be counted in a minyan as a man. She could not sing in front of the community since she was also a woman, according to the rabbi, and that would violate the Orthodox rule of kol isha.


title: Dana International

text: In June 2017, Dana released a new single, called "Ruti". In August 2017 she released another single, called "Yesh Li Ahava (La Costa)". In November 2017 she released a third single, called "Nish'eret Itcha" (Staying With You).


title: Dana International

text: In April 2018, Dana recorded a new version of the Jewish folk song "Hava Nagila" to promote "Israel Calling", a pre-Eurovision event. 20 years after her win in the 1998 Eurovision Song Contest in Birmingham with her song Diva, Dana released a new version of her hit in June 2018, in association with NYX Hotel and pagfilms.


title: Dana International

text: In July 2018, Dana performed at the rally during the 2018 Israeli LGBT's strike events with her song "Ani Nitzakhti" (I Won). Later that month she released a new version of the Jewish song "Mi Ha'Ish" (Who is the Man) to promote the Jerusalem Pride and Tolerance Parade, in which she performed in August.


title: Dana International

text: In May 2019, Dana performed "Just The Way You Are" as an interval act in the first semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2019, held in Tel Aviv, 20 years after her Eurovision win last brought the contest to Israel. She later performed Omer Adam's "Tel Aviv" and her Eurovision-winning song "Diva" during the final's opening flag parade.


title: Luang Pho Daeng

text: Luang was born in Thailand in 1894. He was briefly interested in becoming a monk in his 20s, but decided he would rather be married instead. He raised six children with his wife.


title: Luang Pho Daeng

text: After all of his children had grown, Luang (who was by now 50) decided to become a Buddhist monk, realizing his childhood dream. He was briefly an abbot at a temple in southern Thailand, but moved to Wat Khunaram, near his childhood home. He practiced a life of Sokushinbutsu, a form of self mummification.


title: Luang Pho Daeng

text: Luang died while meditating in 1973. His mummified body is on display at the Wat Khunaram (temple) on Ko Samui island in Thailand's Surat Thani Province. The mummy is notable for sporting a pair of sunglasses, placed by the caretakers to hide the decomposed eye sockets to make the display less disturbing. A native gecko species use the body as a hatchery, with eggs being laid beneath the skin.


title: Seeds of Yesterday (film)

text: Seeds of Yesterday is a television film released on April 12, 2015 produced by Lifetime based on the 1984 novel of the same name.


title: Seeds of Yesterday (film)

text: Thirteen years after "If There Be Thorns", Cathy and Chris arrive at Foxworth Hall, which has been re-built by Bart, for his 25th birthday party. Bart has remained obsessed with Malcolm and has an estranged relationship with his mother and uncle/stepfather due to their incestuous relationship. He has even changed his last name to Foxworth in order to emphasize his distance from them. His anger and hatred is particularly aimed towards Chris, though still showing a deep love for his mother. Jory and his wife, Melodie, arrive to announce she is pregnant with twins. Everyone but Bart is excited about the news and Bart is jealous of his brother because he secretly lusts after Melodie.


title: Seeds of Yesterday (film)

text: The next day, Cindy arrives and Bart welcomes her with contempt, not even wanting to acknowledge her as his sister due to her merely being adopted. At the birthday party, Jory and Cindy perform a ballet for the guests, but Jory has an accident that leaves him paralyzed from the waist down and ends his dance career. Melodie is distraught since she is unable to live with a husband who cannot dance, nor make love to her again. Cindy suspects that Bart was responsible for the incident since he had updated his insurance policy the day before the accident. When confronted with this suspicion, Bart denies this to Cathy and Chris, but they do not fully believe him.


title: Seeds of Yesterday (film)

text: As months pass with Jory hospitalized and Melodie becoming more depressed, Bart takes advantage of her vulnerable state and seduces her. When Jory comes home, Corrine's will is read and Bart is enraged to learn that he will inherit the Foxworth estate only on his 35th birthday, leaving Chris as the guardian of his money until then. Cathy discovers Bart and Melodie's affair when walking in on them having sex. Bart tells Cathy that Melodie loves him and points out that Malcolm was obsessed with his own mother until she abandoned him and how much he hates seeing his own mother with Chris. Cathy then confronts Melodie and threatens to ruin her life if she does not start supporting her husband Jory. Jory however soon attempts suicide by drowning himself in the pool, but is saved by Chris. Following this, Melodie promises Jory that she will be more attentive to him, but she soon tries to continue her affair with Bart, who having had her, rejects her. Cindy brings home a new boyfriend, Lance, to meet the family during dinner. However, Bart beats him after catching the two having sex. Despite his hatred towards her, Bart nevertheless starts to lust for Cindy.


title: Seeds of Yesterday (film)

text: On Christmas Day, Bart deliberately confesses his affair with Melodie to Jory, and the shock causes her to go into premature labour. She gives birth to a boy and girl named Darren and Deirdre. However, she shows no interest in them as well as Jory and abruptly abandons them. Bart follows Cindy meeting with another boyfriend at a bar and confronts her on her way home through the woods and, in the heat of the moment, has sex with her. Cindy is interested in having a relationship with Bart and admits that she has genuine feelings for him, even revealing she knows about Cathy and Chris' secret, but he rejects her, having sated his lust. Devastated, Cindy returns to school in New York.


title: Seeds of Yesterday (film)

text: Chris decides to look for a new house for Cathy, Jory, the twins, and himself to give Bart his own space. They hire a nanny, Toni, to take care of the twins. Bart starts pursuing her, which troubles Cathy since she was hoping Toni would end up with Jory instead. Bart soon accuses Toni of being with him merely for his money and breaks up with her. He then forces the family to attend a baptism at the Foxworth chapel for the twins and almost drowns Deirdre in the font, causing Cathy and Chris to decide to leave Foxworth Hall with Jory, Toni, and the twins to get away from sociopathic Bart. Bart has a mental breakdown and accuses Cathy of abandoning him for Chris, and blames her for ruining the family. He is about to kill her with a dagger before he is stopped by Jory. Finally seeing that it is hopeless to help him, Cathy decides to leave Bart for good. As he returns home after finding them a new house, Chris pulls over to help a stranded motorist and is struck by a passing truck, which kills him instantly.


title: Seeds of Yesterday (film)

text: Several hours pass before the police arrive to inform the family of Chris' accident and death. This causes Bart to realize his wrongdoings and how he has pushed people away. He realizes his love for Cindy and confesses to her when she comes home for Chris' funeral. Bart remorsefully gives a moving eulogy at Chris' funeral and is thankful to Chris for raising him when he did not need to. In the end, Cathy reveals that Jory finished his recovery, has married Toni, and they are raising the twins and expecting a child together. Bart becomes a televangelist and marries Cindy. However, Cathy chooses to remain at Foxworth Hall as she continues to mourn the loss of her beloved Chris. One day, she goes up to the attic, sits by a window and, as she envisions yellow paper flowers, there is an implication that she had died of a broken heart.


title: Java Man

text: Java Man (Homo erectus erectus, formerly also "Anthropopithecus erectus", "Pithecanthropus erectus") is an early human fossil discovered in 1891 and 1892 on the island of Java (Dutch East Indies, now part of Indonesia). Estimated to be between 700,000 and 2,000,000 years old, it was, at the time of its discovery, the oldest hominid fossils ever found, and it remains the type specimen for "Homo erectus".


title: Java Man

text: Led by Eugène Dubois, the excavation team uncovered a tooth, a skullcap, and a thighbone at Trinil on the banks of the Solo River in East Java. Arguing that the fossils represented the "missing link" between apes and humans, Dubois gave the species the scientific name "Anthropopithecus erectus", then later renamed it "Pithecanthropus erectus". The fossil aroused much controversy. Less than ten years after 1891, almost eighty books or articles had been published on Dubois's finds. Despite Dubois's argument, few accepted that Java Man was a transitional form between apes and humans. Some dismissed the fossils as apes and others as modern humans, whereas many scientists considered Java Man as a primitive side branch of evolution not related to modern humans at all. In the 1930s Dubois made the claim that "Pithecanthropus" was built like a "giant gibbon", a much misinterpreted attempt by Dubois to prove that it was the "missing link". Eventually, similarities between "Pithecanthropus erectus" (Java Man) and "Sinanthropus pekinensis" (Peking Man) led Ernst Mayr to rename both "Homo erectus" in 1950, placing them directly in the human evolutionary tree.


title: Java Man

text: To distinguish Java Man from other "Homo erectus" populations, some scientists began to regard it as a subspecies, "Homo erectus erectus", in the 1970s. Other fossils found in the first half of the twentieth century in Java at Sangiran and Mojokerto, all older than those found by Dubois, are also considered part of the species "Homo erectus". The fossils of Java Man have been housed at the Rijksmuseum van Geologie en Mineralogie and later Naturalis in the Netherlands since 1900.


title: Java Man

text: Charles Darwin had argued that humanity evolved in Africa, because this is where great apes like gorillas and chimpanzees lived. Though Darwin's claims have since been vindicated by the fossil record, they were proposed without any fossil evidence. Other scientific authorities disagreed with him, like Charles Lyell, a geologist, and Alfred Russel Wallace, who thought of a similar theory of evolution around the same time as Darwin. Because both Lyell and Wallace believed that humans were more closely related to gibbons or another great ape (the orangutans), they identified Southeast Asia as the cradle of humanity because this is where these apes lived. Dutch anatomist Eugène Dubois favored the latter theory, and sought to confirm it.


title: Java Man

text: In October 1887, Dubois abandoned his academic career and left for the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) to look for the fossilized ancestor of modern man. Having received no funding from the Dutch government for his eccentric endeavorsince no one at the time had ever found an early human fossil while looking for ithe joined the Dutch East Indies Army as a military surgeon. Because of his work duties, it was only in July 1888 that he began to excavate caves in Sumatra. Having quickly found abundant fossils of large mammals, Dubois was relieved of his military duties (March 1889), and the colonial government assigned two engineers and fifty convicts to help him with his excavations. After he failed to find the fossils he was looking for on Sumatra, he moved on to Java in 1890.


title: Java Man

text: Again assisted by convict laborers and two army corporals, Dubois began searching along the Solo River near Trinil in August 1891. His team soon excavated a molar (Trinil 1) and a skullcap (Trinil 2). Its characteristics were a long cranium with a sagittal keel and heavy browridge. Dubois first gave them the name "Anthropopithecus" ("man-ape"), as the chimpanzee was sometimes known at the time. He chose this name because a similar tooth found in the Siwalik Hills in India in 1878 had been named "Anthropopithecus", and because Dubois first assessed the cranium to have been about , closer to apes than to humans.


title: Java Man

text: In August 1892, a year later, Dubois's team found a long femur (thighbone) shaped like a human one, suggesting that its owner had stood upright. The femur bone was found 50 feet (approx. 15 meters) from the original find one year earlier. Believing that the three fossils belonged to a single individual, "probably a very aged female", Dubois renamed the specimen "Anthropopithecus erectus". Only in late 1892, when he determined that the cranium measured about , did Dubois consider that his specimen was a transitional form between apes and humans. In 1894, he thus renamed it "Pithecanthropus erectus" ("upright ape-man"), borrowing the genus name "Pithecanthropus" from Ernst Haeckel, who had coined it a few years earlier to refer to a supposed "missing link" between apes and humans. This specimen has also been known as Pithecanthropus 1.


title: Java Man

text: In 1927, Canadian Davidson Black identified two fossilized teeth he had found in Zhoukoudian near Beijing as belonging to an ancient human, and named his specimen "Sinanthropus pekinensis", now better known as Peking Man. In December 1929, the first of several skullcaps was found on the same site, and it appeared similar but slightly larger than Java Man. Franz Weidenreich, who replaced Black in China after the latter's death in 1933, argued that "Sinanthropus" was also a transitional fossil between apes and humans, and was in fact so similar to Java's "Pithecanthropus" that they should both belong to the family Hominidae. Eugène Dubois categorically refused to entertain this possibility, dismissing Peking Man as a kind of Neanderthal, closer to humans than the "Pithecanthropus", and insisting that Pithecanthropus belonged to its own superfamily, the Pithecanthropoidea.


title: Java Man

text: After the discovery of Java Man, Berlin-born paleontologist G. H. R. von Koenigswald recovered several other early human fossils in Java. Between 1931 and 1933 von Koenigswald discovered fossils of Solo Man from sites along the Bengawan Solo River on Java, including several skullcaps and cranial fragments. In 1936, von Koenigswald discovered a juvenile skullcap known as the Mojokerto child in East Java. Considering the Mojokerto child skull cap to be closely related to humans, von Koenigswald wanted to name it "Pithecanthropus modjokertensis" (after Dubois's specimen), but Dubois protested that Pithecanthropus was not a human but an "ape-man".


title: Java Man

text: Von Koenigswald also made several discoveries in Sangiran, Central Java, where more fossils of early humans were discovered between 1936 and 1941. Among the discoveries was a skullcap of similar size to that found by Dubois at the Trinil 2 site. Von Koenigswald's discoveries in Sangiran convinced him that all these skulls belonged to early humans. Dubois again refused to acknowledge the similarity. Ralph von Koenigswald and Franz Weidenreich compared the fossils from Java and Zhoukoudian and concluded that Java Man and Peking Man were closely related. Dubois died in 1940, still refusing to recognize their conclusion, and official reports remain critical of the Sangiran site's poor presentation and interpretation.


title: Java Man

text: More than 50 years after Dubois's find, Ralph von Koenigswald recollected that, "No other paleontological discovery has created such a sensation and led to such a variety of conflicting scientific opinions." The "Pithecanthropus" fossils were so immediately controversial that by the end of the 1890s, almost 80 publications had already discussed them.


title: Java Man

text: Until the Taung childthe 2.8 million-year-old remains of an "Australopithecus africanus"were discovered in South Africa in 1924, Dubois's and Koenigswald's discoveries were the oldest hominid remains ever found. Some scientists of the day suggested that Dubois's Java Man was a potential intermediate form between modern humans and the common ancestor we share with the other great apes. The current consensus of anthropologists is that the direct ancestors of modern humans were African populations of "Homo erectus" ("Homo ergaster"), rather than the Asian populations of the same species exemplified by Java Man and Peking Man.


title: Java Man

text: Dubois first published his find in 1894. Dubois's central claim was that "Pithecanthropus" was a transitional form between apes and humans, a so-called "missing link". Many disagreed. Some critics claimed that the bones were those of an upright walking ape, or that they belonged to a primitive human. This judgment made sense at a time when an evolutionary view of humanity had not yet been widely accepted, and scientists tended to view hominid fossils as racial variants of modern humans rather than as ancestral forms. After Dubois let a number of scientists examine the fossils in a series of conferences held in Europe in the 1890s, they started to agree that Java Man may be a transitional form after all, but most of them thought of it as "an extinct side branch" of the human tree that had indeed descended from apes, but not evolved into humans. This interpretation eventually imposed itself and remained dominant until the 1940s.


title: Java Man

text: Dubois was bitter about this and locked the fossil up in a trunk until 1923 when he showed it to Ales Hrdlicka from the Smithsonian Institution. In response to critics who refused to accept that Java Man was a "missing link", in 1932 Dubois published a paper arguing that the Trinil bones looked like those of a "giant gibbon". Dubois's use of the phrase has been widely misinterpreted as a retraction, but it was intended an argument to support his claim that "Pithecanthropus" was a transitional form. According to Dubois, evolution occurred by leaps, and the ancestors of humanity had doubled their brain-to-body ratio on each leap. To prove that Java Man was the "missing link" between apes and humans, he therefore had to show that its brain-to-body ratio was double that of apes and half that of humans. The problem was that Java Man's cranial capacity was 900 cubic centimeters, about two-thirds of modern humans'.


title: Java Man

text: Like many scientists who believed that modern humans evolved "Out of Asia", Dubois thought that gibbons were closest to humans among the great apes. To preserve the proportions predicted by his theory of brain evolution, Dubois argued that Java Man was shaped more like a gibbon than a human. Imagined "with longer arms and a greatly expanded chest and upper body", the Trinil creature became a gigantic ape of about , but "double cephalization of the anthropoid apes in general and half that of man". It was therefore halfway on the path to becoming a modern human. As Dubois concluded his 1932 paper: "I still believe, now more firmly than ever, that the "Pithecanthropus" of Trinil is the real 'missing link.'"


title: Java Man

text: Based on Weidenreich's work and on his suggestion that "Pithecanthropus erectus" and "Sinanthropus pekinensis" were connected through a series of interbreeding populations, German biologist Ernst Mayr reclassified them both as being part of the same species: "Homo erectus". Mayr presented his conclusion at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium in 1950, and this resulted in Dubois's "erectus" species being reclassified under the genus "Homo". As part of the reclassification, Mayr included not only "Sinanthropus" and "Pithecanthropus", but also "Plesianthropus", "Paranthropus", "Javanthropus", and several other genera as synonyms, arguing that all human ancestors were part of a single genus ("Homo"), and that "never one more than one species of man existed on the earth at any one time". A "revolution in taxonomy", Mayr's single-species approach to human evolution was quickly accepted. It shaped paleoanthropology in the 1950s and lasted into the 1970s, when the African genus "Australopithecus" was accepted into the human evolutionary tree.


title: Java Man

text: In the 1970s a tendency developed to regard the Javanese variety of "H. erectus" as a subspecies, "Homo erectus erectus", with the Chinese variety being referred to as "Homo erectus pekinensis".


title: Java Man

text: Dubois's complete collection of fossils were transferred between 1895 and 1900 to what is now known as Naturalis, in Leiden in the Netherlands. The main fossil of Java Man, the skullcap cataloged as "Trinil 2", has been dated biostratigraphically, that is, by correlating it with a group of fossilized animals (a "faunal assemblage") found nearby on the same geological horizon, which is itself compared with assemblages from other layers and classified chronologically. Ralph von Koenigswald first assigned Java Man to the Trinil Fauna, a faunal assemblage that he composed from several Javanese sites. He concluded that the skullcap was about 700,000 years old, thus dating from the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene.


title: Java Man

text: Though this view is still widely accepted, in the 1980s a group of Dutch paleontologists used Dubois's collection of more than 20,000 animal fossils to reassess the date of the layer in which Java Man was found. Using only fossils from Trinil, they called that new faunal assemblage the Trinil H. K. Fauna, in which H. K. stands for "Haupt Knochenschicht", or "main fossil-bearing layer". This assessment dates the fossils of Java Man to between 900,000 and 1,000,000 years old. On the other hand, work published in 2014 gives a "maximum age of 0.54 ± 0.10 million years and a minimum age of 0.43 ± 0.05 million years" for Ar-Ar and luminescence dating of sediment in human-predated shell material from Trinil. Work continues on assessing the dating of this complex site.


title: Java Man

text: Other fossils attest to the even earlier presence of "H. erectus" in Java. Sangiran 2 (named after its discovery site) may be as old as 1.66 Ma (million years). The controversial Mojokerto child, which Carl C. Swisher and Garniss Curtis once dated to 1.81 ± 0.04 Ma, has now been convincingly re-dated to a maximum age of 1.49 ± 0.13 Ma, that is, 1.49 million years with a margin of error of plus or minus 130,000 years.


title: Java Man

text: The fossils found in Java are considered the type specimen for "H. erectus". Because the fossils of Java Man were found "scattered in an alluvial deposit"they had been laid there by the flow of a riverdetractors doubted that they belonged to the same species, let alone the same individual. German pathologist Rudolf Virchow, for instance, argued in 1895 that the femur was that of a gibbon. Dubois had difficulty convincing his critics, because he had not attended the excavation, and could not explain specifically enough the exact location of the bones. Because the Trinil thighbone looks very much like that of a modern human, it might have been a "reworked fossil", that is, a relatively young fossil that was deposited into an older layer after its own layer had been eroded. For this reason, there is still dissent about whether all the Trinil fossils represent the same species.


title: Java Man

text: Java Man was about tall and his thighbones show that he walked erect like modern humans. The femur is thicker than that of a modern human, indicating he was engaging in a lot of running. The skull was characterized by thick bones and a retreating forehead. The large teeth made the jaw large and jutting, with the lower lips overhanging the lower margin of the mandible, giving the impression of no chin. The browridges were straight and massive. At 900 cm, his cranial capacity was smaller than that of later "H. erectus" specimens. However, he had humanlike teeth with large canines.