title: Index fund

text: An index fund (also index tracker) is a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) designed to follow certain preset rules so that the fund can a specified basket of underlying investments. While index providers often emphasize that they are for-profit organizations, index providers have the ability to act as "reluctant regulators" when determining which companies are suitable for an index. Those rules may include tracking prominent indexes like the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average or implementation rules, such as tax-management, tracking error minimization, large block trading or patient/flexible trading strategies that allow for greater tracking error but lower market impact costs. Index funds may also have rules that screen for social and sustainable criteria.


title: Index fund

text: An index fund's rules of construction clearly identify the type of companies suitable for the fund. The most commonly known index fund in the United States, the S&P 500 Index Fund, is based on the rules established by S&P Dow Jones Indices for their S&P 500 Index. Equity index funds would include groups of stocks with similar characteristics such as the size, value, profitability and/or geographic location of the companies. A group of stocks may include companies from the United States, Non-US Developed, emerging markets or Frontier Market countries. Additional index funds within these geographic markets may include indexes of companies that include rules based on company characteristics or factors, such as companies that are small, mid-sized, large, small value, large value, small growth, large growth, the level of gross profitability or investment capital, real estate, or indexes based on commodities and fixed-income. Companies are purchased and held within the index fund when they meet the specific index rules or parameters and are sold when they move outside of those rules or parameters. Think of an index fund as an investment utilizing rules-based investing. Some index providers announce changes of the companies in their index before the change date whilst other index providers do not make such announcements.


title: Index fund

text: The main advantage of index funds for investors is they don't require much time to manage as the investors don't have to spend time analyzing various stocks or stock portfolios. Most investors also find it difficult to beat the performance of the S&P 500 Index. Some legal scholars have previously suggested a value maximization and agency-costs theory for understanding index funds stewardship.


title: Index fund

text: One index provider, Dow Jones Indexes, has 130,000 indices. Dow Jones Indexes says that all its products are maintained according to clear, unbiased, and systematic methodologies that are fully integrated within index families.


title: Index fund

text: , index funds made up 20.2% of equity mutual fund assets in the US. Index domestic equity mutual funds and index-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs), have benefited from a trend towards more index-oriented investment products. From 2007 through 2014, index domestic equity mutual funds and ETFs received $1 trillion in new net cash, including reinvested dividends. Index-based domestic equity ETFs have grown particularly quickly, attracting almost twice the flows of index domestic equity mutual funds since 2007. In contrast, actively managed domestic equity mutual funds experienced a net outflow of $659 billion, including reinvested dividends, from 2007 to 2014.


title: Index fund

text: The first theoretical model for an index fund was suggested in 1960 by Edward Renshaw and Paul Feldstein, both students at the University of Chicago. While their idea for an "Unmanaged Investment Company" garnered little support, it did start off a sequence of events in the 1960s.


title: Index fund

text: Qualidex Fund, Inc., a Florida Corporation, chartered on 05/23/1967 (317247) by Richard A. Beach (BSBA Banking and Finance, University of Florida, 1957) and joined by Walton D. Dutcher Jr., filed a registration statement (2-38624) with the SEC on October 20, 1970 which became effective on July 31, 1972. "The fund organized as an open-end, diversified investment company whose investment objective is to approximate the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Stock Average", thereby becoming the first index fund.


title: Index fund

text: In 1973, Burton Malkiel wrote "A Random Walk Down Wall Street", which presented academic findings for the lay public. It was becoming well known in the popular financial press that most mutual funds were not beating the market indices. Malkiel wrote:


title: Index fund

text: John Bogle graduated from Princeton University in 1951, where his senior thesis was titled: "The Economic Role of the Investment Company". Bogle wrote that his inspiration for starting an index fund came from three sources, all of which confirmed his 1951 research: Paul Samuelson's 1974 paper, "Challenge to Judgment"; Charles Ellis' 1975 study, "The Loser's Game"; and Al Ehrbar's 1975 "Fortune" magazine article on indexing. Bogle founded The Vanguard Group in 1974; as of 2009 it was the largest mutual fund company in the United States.


title: Index fund

text: Bogle started the First Index Investment Trust on December 31, 1975. At the time, it was heavily derided by competitors as being "un-American" and the fund itself was seen as "Bogle's folly". In the first five years of Bogle's company, it made 17 million dollars. Fidelity Investments Chairman Edward Johnson was quoted as saying that he "[couldn't] believe that the great mass of investors are going to be satisfied with receiving just average returns". Bogle's fund was later renamed the Vanguard 500 Index Fund, which tracks the Standard and Poor's 500 Index. It started with comparatively meager assets of $11 million but crossed the $100 billion milestone in November 1999; this astonishing increase was funded by the market's increasing willingness to invest in such a product. Bogle predicted in January 1992 that it would very likely surpass the Magellan Fund before 2001, which it did in 2000.


title: Index fund

text: John McQuown and David G. Booth of Wells Fargo, and Rex Sinquefield of the American National Bank in Chicago, established the first two Standard and Poor's Composite Index Funds in 1973. Both of these funds were established for institutional clients; individual investors were excluded. Wells Fargo started with $5 million from their own pension fund, while Illinois Bell put in $5 million of their pension funds at American National Bank. In 1971, Jeremy Grantham and Dean LeBaron at Batterymarch Financial Management "described the idea at a Harvard Business School seminar in 1971, but found no takers until 1973. Two years later, in December 1974, the firm finally attracted its first index client."


title: Index fund

text: In 1981, Booth and Sinquefield started Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA), and McQuown joined its board of directors. DFA further developed indexed-based investment strategies. Vanguard started its first bond index fund in 1986.


title: Index fund

text: Frederick L. A. Grauer at Wells Fargo harnessed McQuown and Booth's indexing theories, which led to Wells Fargo's pension funds managing over $69 billion in 1989 and over $565 billion in 1998. In 1996, Wells Fargo sold its indexing operation to Barclays Bank of London, which it operated under the name Barclays Global Investors (BGI). Blackrock, Inc. acquired BGI in 2009; the acquisition included BGI's index fund management (both its institutional funds and its iShares ETF business) and its active management.


title: Index fund

text: Economist Eugene Fama said, "I take the market efficiency hypothesis to be the simple statement that security prices fully reflect all available information." A precondition for this strong version of the hypothesis is that information and trading costs, the costs of getting prices to reflect information, are always 0. A weaker and economically more sensible version of the efficiency hypothesis says that prices reflect information to the point where the marginal benefits of acting on information (the profits to be made) do not exceed marginal costs. Economists cite the efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) as the fundamental premise that justifies the creation of the index funds. The hypothesis implies that fund managers and stock analysts are constantly looking for securities that may out-perform the market; and that this competition is so effective that any new information about the fortune of a company will rapidly be incorporated into stock prices. It is postulated therefore that it is very difficult to tell ahead of time which stocks will out-perform the market. By creating an index fund that mirrors the whole market the inefficiencies of stock selection are avoided.


title: Index fund

text: In particular, the EMH says that economic profits cannot be wrung from stock picking. This is not to say that a stock picker cannot achieve a superior return, just that the excess return will on average not exceed the costs of winning it (including salaries, information costs, and trading costs). The conclusion is that most investors would be better off buying a cheap index fund. Note that return refers to the ex-ante expectation; ex-post realisation of payoffs may make some stock-pickers appear successful. In addition, there have been many criticisms of the EMH.


title: Index fund

text: Tracking can be achieved by trying to hold all of the securities in the index, in the same proportions as the index. Other methods include statistically sampling the market and holding "representative" securities. Many index funds rely on a computer model with little or no human input in the decision as to which securities are purchased or sold and are thus subject to a form of passive management.


title: Index fund

text: The lack of active management generally gives the advantage of much lower fees compared to actively managed mutual funds and, in taxable accounts, lower taxes. In addition it is usually impossible to precisely mirror the index as the models for sampling and mirroring, by their nature, cannot be 100% accurate. The difference between the index performance and the fund performance is called the "tracking error", or, colloquially, "jitter."


title: Index fund

text: Index funds are available from many investment managers. Some common indices include the S&P 500, the Nikkei 225, and the FTSE 100. Less common indexes come from academics like Eugene Fama and Kenneth French, who created "research indexes" in order to develop asset pricing models, such as their Three Factor Model. The Fama–French three-factor model is used by Dimensional Fund Advisors to design their index funds. Robert Arnott and Professor Jeremy Siegel have also created new competing fundamentally based indexes based on such criteria as dividends, earnings, book value, and sales.


title: Index fund

text: Indexing is traditionally known as the practice of owning a representative collection of securities, in the same ratios as the target index. Modification of security holdings happens only periodically, when companies enter or leave the target index.


title: Index fund

text: Synthetic indexing is a modern technique of using a combination of equity index futures contracts and investments in low-risk bonds to replicate the performance of a similar overall investment in the equities making up the index. Although maintaining the future position has a slightly higher cost structure than traditional passive sampling, synthetic indexing can result in more favourable tax treatment, particularly for international investors who are subject to U.S. dividend withholding taxes. The bond portion can hold higher yielding instruments, with a trade-off of corresponding higher risk, a technique referred to as enhanced indexing.


title: Index fund

text: Enhanced indexing is a catch-all term referring to improvements to index fund management that emphasize performance, possibly using active management. Enhanced index funds employ a variety of enhancement techniques, including customized indexes (instead of relying on commercial indexes), trading strategies, exclusion rules, and timing strategies. The cost advantage of indexing could be reduced or eliminated by employing active management. Enhanced indexing strategies help in offsetting the proportion of tracking error that would come from expenses and transaction costs. These enhancement strategies can be:


title: Index fund

text: Because the composition of a target index is a known quantity, relative to actively managed funds, it costs less to run an index fund. Typically expense ratios of an index fund range from 0.10% for U.S. Large Company Indexes to 0.70% for Emerging Market Indexes. The expense ratio of the average large cap actively managed mutual fund as of 2015 is 1.15%. If a mutual fund produces 10% return before expenses, taking account of the expense ratio difference would result in an after expense return of 9.9% for the large cap index fund versus 8.85% for the actively managed large cap fund.


title: Index fund

text: The investment objectives of index funds are easy to understand. Once an investor knows the target index of an index fund, what securities the index fund will hold can be determined directly. Managing one's index fund holdings may be as easy as every six months or every year.


title: Index fund

text: Turnover refers to the selling and buying of securities by the fund manager. Selling securities in some jurisdictions may result in capital gains tax charges, which are sometimes passed on to fund investors. Even in the absence of taxes, turnover has both explicit and implicit costs, which directly reduce returns on a dollar-for-dollar basis. Because index funds are passive investments, the turnovers are lower than actively managed funds.


title: Index fund

text: Style drift occurs when actively managed mutual funds go outside of their described style (i.e., mid-cap value, large cap income, etc.) to increase returns. Such drift hurts portfolios that are built with diversification as a high priority. Drifting into other styles could reduce the overall portfolio's diversity and subsequently increase risk. With an index fund, this drift is not possible and accurate diversification of a portfolio is increased.


title: Index fund

text: Index funds must periodically "rebalance" or adjust their portfolios to match the new prices and market capitalization of the underlying securities in the stock or other indexes that they track. This allows algorithmic traders (80% of the trades of whom involve the top 20% most popular securities) to perform index arbitrage by anticipating and trading ahead of stock price movements caused by mutual fund rebalancing, making a profit on foreknowledge of the large institutional block orders. This results in profits transferred from investors to algorithmic traders, estimated to be at least 21 to 28 basis points annually for S&P 500 index funds, and at least 38 to 77 basis points per year for Russell 2000 funds. In effect, an index, and consequently, all funds tracking an index are announcing ahead of time the trades that they are planning to make, allowing value to be siphoned by arbitrageurs, in a legal practice known as "index front running". Algorithmic high-frequency traders all have advanced access to the index re-balancing information, and spend large sums on fast technology to compete against each other to be the first—often by a few microseconds—to make these arbitrages.


title: Index fund

text: John Montgomery of Bridgeway Capital Management says that the resulting "poor investor returns" from trading ahead of mutual funds is "the elephant in the room" that "shockingly, people are not talking about." Related "time zone arbitrage" against mutual funds and their underlying securities traded on overseas markets is likely "damaging to financial integration between the United States, Asia and Europe."


title: Index fund

text: One problem occurs when a large amount of money tracks the "same" index. According to theory, a company should not be worth more when it is in an index. But due to supply and demand, a company being added can have a demand shock, and a company being deleted can have a supply shock, and this will change the price. This does not show up in tracking error since the index is also affected. A fund may experience less impact by tracking a less popular index.


title: Index fund

text: Since index funds aim to match market returns, both under- and over-performance compared to the market is considered a "tracking error". For example, an inefficient index fund may generate a positive tracking error in a falling market by holding too much cash, which holds its value compared to the market.


title: Index fund

text: According to The Vanguard Group, a well-run S&P 500 index fund should have a tracking error of 5 basis points or less, but a Morningstar survey found an average of 38 basis points across all index funds.


title: Index fund

text: Diversification refers to the number of different securities in a fund. A fund with more securities is said to be better diversified than a fund with smaller number of securities. Owning many securities reduces volatility by decreasing the impact of large price swings above or below the average return in a single security. A Wilshire 5000 index would be considered diversified, but a bio-tech ETF would not.


title: Index fund

text: Since some indices, such as the S&P 500 and FTSE 100, are dominated by large company stocks, an index fund may have a high percentage of the fund concentrated in a few large companies. This position represents a reduction of diversity and can lead to increased volatility and investment risk for an investor who seeks a diversified fund.


title: Index fund

text: Some advocate adopting a strategy of investing in every security in the world in proportion to its market capitalization, generally by investing in a collection of ETFs in proportion to their home country market capitalization. A global indexing strategy may have lower variance in returns than one based only on home market indexes, because there may be less correlation between the returns of companies operating in different markets than between companies operating in the same market.


title: Index fund

text: Asset allocation is the process of determining the mix of stocks, bonds and other classes of investable assets to match the investor's risk capacity, which includes attitude towards risk, net income, net worth, knowledge about investing concepts, and time horizon. Index funds capture asset classes in a low-cost and tax-efficient manner and are used to design balanced portfolios.


title: Index fund

text: A combination of various index mutual funds or ETFs could be used to implement a full range of investment policies from low to high risk.


title: Index fund

text: Research conducted by the World Pensions Council (WPC) suggests that up to 15% of overall assets held by large pension funds and national social security funds are invested in various forms of passive strategies including index funds, as opposed to the more traditional actively managed that still constitute the largest share of institutional investments The proportion invested in passive funds varies widely across jurisdictions and fund type.


title: Index fund

text: The relative appeal of index funds, ETFs and other index-replicating investment vehicles has grown rapidly for various reasons ranging from disappointment with underperforming actively managed mandates to the broader tendency towards cost reduction across public services and social benefits that followed the 2008-2012 Great Recession. Public-sector pensions and national reserve funds have been among the early adopters of index funds and other passive management strategies.


title: Index fund

text: In the United States, mutual funds price their assets by their current value every business day, usually at 4:00 p.m. Eastern time, when the New York Stock Exchange closes for the day. Index ETFs, in contrast, are priced during normal trading hours, usually 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. Index ETFs are also sometimes weighted by revenue rather than market capitalization.


title: Index fund

text: Typically mutual funds supply the correct tax reporting documents for only one country, which can cause tax problems for shareholders citizen to or resident of another country, either now or in the future.


title: Index fund

text: US citizens/taxpayers living at home or abroad should particularly consider whether their investment in an ex-US fund (meaning the fund is administered by a foreign investment company) not providing annual 1099 forms (which report distributed income and capital gains/losses) or annual PFIC annual information statements will be subject to punitive US taxation under section 1291 of the US tax code. Note that if a PFIC annual information statement is provided, a careful filing of form 8621 is required to avoid punitive US taxation.


title: Index fund

text: U.S. mutual funds are required by law to distribute realized capital gains to their shareholders. If a mutual fund sells a security for a gain, the capital gain is taxable for that year; similarly a realized capital loss can offset any other realized capital gains.


title: Index fund

text: Scenario: An investor entered a mutual fund during the middle of the year and experienced an overall loss for the next six months. The mutual fund itself sold securities for a gain for the year, therefore must declare a capital gains distribution. The IRS would require the investor to pay tax on the capital gains distribution, regardless of the overall loss.


title: Index fund

text: A small investor selling an ETF to another investor does not cause a redemption on ETF itself; therefore, ETFs are more immune to the effect of forced redemption causing realized capital gains.


title: Legends of Tomorrow (season 7)

text: The seventh and final season of the American television series "Legends of Tomorrow", which is based on characters from DC Comics, premiered on The CW on October 13, 2021 and ended on March 2, 2022, consisting of 13 episodes. It is set in the Arrowverse, sharing continuity with the other television series of the universe, and is a spin-off of "Arrow" and "The Flash". The season was produced by Berlanti Productions, Warner Bros. Television, and DC Entertainment, with Phil Klemmer and Keto Shimizu serving as showrunners.


title: Legends of Tomorrow (season 7)

text: The season was announced in February 2021. Principal cast members Caity Lotz, Tala Ashe, Jes Macallan, Olivia Swann, Adam Tsekhman, Shayan Sobhian, Lisseth Chavez, Amy Louise Pemberton, Nick Zano, and Matt Ryan return from previous seasons.


title: Legends of Tomorrow (season 7)

text: In February 2021, The CW renewed "Legends of Tomorrow" for a seventh season. Paiman Kalayeh and Mercedes M. Valle joined the writer's room, while Leah Poulliot and Emily F. Cheever were promoted to staff writers. Phil Klemmer and Keto Shimizu return as co-showrunners.


title: Legends of Tomorrow (season 7)

text: Main cast members Caity Lotz, Tala Ashe, Jes Macallan, Olivia Swann, Adam Tsekhman, Shayan Sobhian, Lisseth Chavez, Amy Louise Pemberton, Nick Zano and Matt Ryan return as Sara Lance, Zari Tarazi, Ava Sharpe, Astra Logue, Gary Green, Behrad Tarazi, Esperanza Cruz, Gideon and Nate Heywood respectively. In February 2021, Dominic Purcell, who stars as Mick Rory / Heat Wave, indicated he would leave the series after the seventh season as it was the last on his contract. However, two months later, he announced he would be leaving the series after the sixth season, but would return periodically in the seventh; he ultimately did not appear outside of archive footage in the 100th episode. In July, it was announced that Ryan would be playing a new character named Gwyn Davies, rather than return as John Constantine, and that Pemberton, who voices Gideon, and who had occasionally played a human version of her character in past seasons, will be playing human Gideon full-time.


title: Legends of Tomorrow (season 7)

text: In October, it was announced that former series regular Wentworth Miller would return for the 100th episode. The following week, former series regulars Victor Garber, Brandon Routh, Courtney Ford, Arthur Darvill, Franz Drameh, and Falk Hentschel were also confirmed to return. The following January, former series regular Matt Letscher returned for two episodes.


title: Legends of Tomorrow (season 7)

text: In February, Donald Faison was revealed to be appearing in the season finale in an undisclosed role, later revealed to be Booster Gold. Following the season finale, it was announced that regardless of whether or not an eighth season would be ordered, this season would be Zano's last appearance as a series regular. Zari Tomaz, who was portrayed by Tala Ashe as a main character in seasons three and four before returning in a recurring capacity from season five, exited the series at the end of this season with Nick Zano. Tala Ashe stayed on as Zari Tarazi.


title: Legends of Tomorrow (season 7)

text: The season premiered on The CW on October 13, 2021, and consisted of thirteen episodes. The season finale aired on March 2, 2022, and was not treated as a series finale even though an eighth season had not yet been ordered. Despite this, the series was cancelled on April 29, 2022.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: The Armistice of 11 November 1918 was the armistice signed at Le Francport near Compiègne that ended fighting on land, sea, and air in World War I between the Entente and their last remaining opponent, Germany. Previous armistices had been agreed with Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary. It was concluded after the German government sent a message to American president Woodrow Wilson to negotiate terms on the basis of a recent speech of his and the earlier declared "Fourteen Points", which later became the basis of the German surrender at the Paris Peace Conference, which took place the following year.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: Also known as the Armistice of Compiègne (, ) from the place where it was officially signed at 5:45 a.m. by the Allied Supreme Commander, French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, it came into force at 11:00 a.m. Central European Time (CET) on 11 November 1918 and marked a victory for the Allies and a defeat for Germany, although not formally a surrender.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: The actual terms, which were largely written by Foch, included the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front, the withdrawal of German forces from west of the Rhine, Allied occupation of the Rhineland and bridgeheads further east, the preservation of infrastructure, the surrender of aircraft, warships, and military materiel, the release of Allied prisoners of war and interned civilians, eventual reparations, no release of German prisoners and no relaxation of the naval blockade of Germany. The armistice was extended three times while negotiations continued on a peace treaty. The Treaty of Versailles, which was officially signed on 28 June 1919, took effect on 10 January 1920.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: Fighting continued up until 11 a.m. CET on 11 November 1918, with 2,738 men dying on the last day of the war.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: The military situation for the Central Powers had been deteriorating rapidly since the Battle of Amiens at the beginning of August 1918, which precipitated a German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line and loss of the gains of the German spring offensive. The Allied advance, later known as the Hundred Days Offensive, entered a new stage on 28 September, when a massive United States and French attack opened the Meuse–Argonne offensive, while to the north, the British were poised to assault at the St Quentin Canal, threatening a giant pincer movement.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire was close to exhaustion, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was in chaos, and on the Macedonian front, resistance by the Bulgarian Army had collapsed, leading to the Armistice of Salonica on 29 September. In Germany, chronic food shortages caused by the Allied blockade were increasingly leading to discontent and disorder. Although morale on the German front line was reasonable, battlefield casualties, starvation rations and Spanish flu had caused a desperate shortage of manpower, and those recruits that were available were war-weary and disaffected.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: On 29 September 1918, the German Supreme Army Command at Imperial Army Headquarters in Spa of occupied Belgium informed Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Imperial Chancellor, Count Georg von Hertling, that the military situation facing Germany was hopeless. Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff, probably fearing a breakthrough, claimed that he could not guarantee that the front would hold for another two hours and demanded a request be given to the Entente for an immediate ceasefire. In addition, he recommended the acceptance of the main demands of US president Woodrow Wilson (the Fourteen Points) including putting the Imperial Government on a democratic footing, hoping for more favorable peace terms. This enabled him to save the face of the Imperial German Army and put the responsibility for the capitulation and its consequences squarely into the hands of the democratic parties and the parliament. He expressed his view to officers of his staff on 1 October: "They now must lie on the bed that they've made for us."


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: On 3 October 1918, the liberal Prince Maximilian of Baden was appointed Chancellor of Germany, replacing Georg von Hertling in order to negotiate an armistice. After long conversations with the Kaiser and evaluations of the political and military situations in the Reich, by 5 October 1918 the German government sent a message to President Woodrow Wilson to negotiate terms on the basis of a recent speech of his and the earlier declared "Fourteen Points". In the subsequent two exchanges, Wilson's allusions "failed to convey the idea that the Kaiser's abdication was an essential condition for peace. The leading statesmen of the Reich were not yet ready to contemplate such a monstrous possibility." As a precondition for negotiations, Wilson demanded the retreat of Germany from all occupied territories, the cessation of submarine activities and the Kaiser's abdication, writing on 23 October: "If the Government of the United States must deal with the military masters and the monarchical autocrats of Germany now, or if it is likely to have to deal with them later in regard to the international obligations of the German Empire, it must demand not peace negotiations but surrender."


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: In late October 1918, Ludendorff, in a sudden change of mind, declared the conditions of the Allies unacceptable. He now demanded the resumption of the war which he himself had declared lost only one month earlier. By this time however the German Army was suffering from poor morale and desertions were on the increase. The Imperial Government stayed on course and Ludendorff was dismissed from his post by the Emperor and replaced by Lieutenant General Wilhelm Groener. On 5 November, the Allies agreed to take up negotiations for a truce, now also demanding reparation payments.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: The latest note from President Wilson was received in Berlin on 6 November 1918. That same day, the delegation led by Matthias Erzberger departed for France.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: A much bigger obstacle, which contributed to the five-week delay in the signing of the Armistice and to the resulting social deterioration in Europe, was the fact that the French, British and Italian governments had no desire to accept the "Fourteen Points" and President Wilson's subsequent promises. For example, they assumed that the de-militarization suggested by Wilson would be limited to the Central Powers. There were also contradictions with their post-War plans that did not include a consistent implementation of the ideal of national self-determination. As Czernin points out:


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: The sailors' revolt that took place during the night of 29 to 30 October 1918 in the naval port of Wilhelmshaven spread across the whole country within days and led to the proclamation of a republic on 9 November and to the announcement of the abdication of Wilhelm II.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: In some areas, soldiers challenged the authority of their officers and on occasion established Soldiers' Councils, such as the Brussels Soldiers' Council set up by revolutionary soldiers on 9 November.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: Also on 9 November, Max von Baden handed over the office of Chancellor to Friedrich Ebert, a Social Democrat. Ebert's SPD and Erzberger's Catholic Centre Party had enjoyed an uneasy relationship with the Imperial government since Bismarck's era in the 1870s and 1880s. They were well represented in the Imperial Reichstag, which had little power over the government, and had been calling for a negotiated peace since 1917. Their prominence in the peace negotiations would cause the new Weimar Republic to lack legitimacy in right-wing and militarist eyes.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: The Armistice was the result of a hurried and desperate process. The German delegation headed by Matthias Erzberger crossed the front line in five cars and was escorted for ten hours across the devastated war zone of Northern France, arriving on the morning of 8 November 1918. They were then taken to the secret destination aboard Ferdinand Foch's private train parked in a railway siding in the Forest of Compiègne.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: Foch appeared only twice in the three days of negotiations: on the first day, to ask the German delegation what they wanted, and on the last day, to see to the signatures. The Germans were handed the list of Allied demands and given 72 hours to agree. The German delegation discussed the Allied terms not with Foch, but with other French and Allied officers. The Armistice amounted to complete German demilitarization (see list below), with few promises made by the Allies in return. The naval blockade of Germany was not completely lifted until complete peace terms could be agreed upon.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: There were very few negotiations. The Germans were able to correct a few impossible demands (for example, the decommissioning of more submarines than their fleet possessed), extended the schedule for the withdrawal and registered their formal protest at the harshness of Allied terms. But they were in no position to refuse to sign. On Sunday, 10 November 1918, the Germans were shown newspapers from Paris to inform them that the Kaiser had abdicated. That same day, Ebert instructed Erzberger to sign. The cabinet had earlier received a message from Paul von Hindenburg, head of the German High Command, requesting that the armistice be signed even if the Allied conditions could not be improved on.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: The Armistice was agreed upon at 5:00 a.m. on 11 November 1918, to come into effect at 11:00 a.m. CET, for which reason the occasion is sometimes referred to as "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month". Signatures were made between 5:12 a.m. and 5:20 a.m., CET.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: The occupation of the Rhineland took place following the Armistice. The occupying armies consisted of American, Belgian, British and French forces.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: The Armistice was prolonged three times before peace was finally ratified. During this period it was also developed.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: The British public was notified of the armistice by a subjoined official communiqué issued from the Press Bureau at 10:20 a.m., when British Prime Minister David Lloyd George announced: "The armistice was signed at five o'clock this morning, and hostilities are to cease on all fronts at 11 a.m. to-day." An official communique was published by the United States at 2:30 pm: "In accordance with the terms of the Armistice, hostilities on the fronts of the American armies were suspended at eleven o'clock this morning."


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: News of the armistice being signed was officially announced towards 9:00 a.m. in Paris. One hour later, Foch, accompanied by a British admiral, presented himself at the Ministry of War, where he was immediately received by Georges Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France. At 10:50 a.m., Foch issued this general order: "Hostilities will cease on the whole front as from November 11 at 11 o'clock [Central European Time]. The Allied troops will not, until further order, go beyond the line reached on that date and at that hour." Five minutes later, Clemenceau, Foch and the British admiral went to the Élysée Palace. At the first shot fired from the Eiffel Tower, the Ministry of War and the Élysée Palace displayed flags, while bells around Paris rang. Five hundred students gathered in front of the Ministry and called upon Clemenceau, who appeared on the balcony. Clemenceau exclaimed "Vive la France!"—the crowd echoed him. At 11:00 a.m., the first peace-gunshot was fired from Fort Mont-Valérien, which told the population of Paris that the armistice was concluded, but the population were already aware of it from official circles and newspapers.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: Although the information about the imminent ceasefire had spread among the forces at the front in the hours before, fighting in many sections of the front continued right until the appointed hour. At 11 a.m. there was some spontaneous fraternization between the two sides. But in general, reactions were muted. A British corporal reported: "...the Germans came from their trenches, bowed to us and then went away. That was it. There was nothing with which we could celebrate, except cookies." On the Allied side, euphoria and exultation were rare. There was some cheering and applause, but the dominant feeling was silence and emptiness after 52 exhausting months of war.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: The peace between the Allies and Germany was subsequently settled in 1919, by the Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles that same year.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: Many artillery units continued to fire on German targets to avoid having to haul away their spare ammunition. The Allies also wished to ensure that, should fighting restart, they would be in the most favourable position. Consequently, there were 10,944 casualties, of whom 2,738 men died, on the last day of the war.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: An example of the determination of the Allies to maintain pressure until the last minute, but also to adhere strictly to the Armistice terms, was Battery 4 of the US Navy's long-range 14-inch railway guns firing its last shot at 10:57:30 a.m. from the Verdun area, timed to land far behind the German front line just before the scheduled Armistice.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: Augustin Trébuchon was the last Frenchman to die when he was shot on his way to tell fellow soldiers, who were attempting an assault across the Meuse river, that hot soup would be served after the ceasefire. He was killed at 10:45 a.m.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: Marcel Toussaint Terfve was the last Belgian soldier to die as he was mortally wounded from German machine gun fire and died from his lung wound at 10:45 a.m.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: Earlier, the last British soldier to die, George Edwin Ellison of the 5th Royal Irish Lancers, was killed that morning at around 9:30 a.m. while scouting on the outskirts of Mons, Belgium.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: The final Canadian, and Commonwealth, soldier to die, Private George Lawrence Price, was shot and killed by a sniper while part of a force advancing into the Belgian town of Ville-sur-Haine just two minutes before the armistice to the north of Mons at 10:58 a.m.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: Henry Gunther, an American, is generally recognized as the last soldier killed in action in World War I. He was killed 60 seconds before the armistice came into force while charging astonished German troops who were aware the Armistice was nearly upon them. He had been despondent over his recent reduction in rank and was apparently trying to redeem his reputation.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: News of the armistice only reached Germany's African forces, still fighting in Northern Rhodesia (today's Zambia), about two weeks later. The German and British commanders then had to agree on the protocols for their own armistice ceremony.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: After the war, there was a deep shame that so many soldiers died on the final day of the war, especially in the hours after the treaty had been signed but had not yet taken effect. In the United States, Congress opened an investigation to find out why and if blame should be placed on the leaders of the American Expeditionary Forces, including John Pershing. In France, many graves of French soldiers who died on 11 November were backdated to 10 November.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: The celebration of the Armistice became the centrepiece of memories of the war, along with salutes to the unknown soldier. Nations built monuments to the dead and the heroic soldiers, but seldom aggrandizing the generals and admirals. 11 November is commemorated annually in many countries under various names such as Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, Veterans Day, and in Poland, it is Independence Day.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: During World War II, after German success in the Battle of France, Adolf Hitler arranged that negotiations for an end of hostilities with France would take place at Compiègne in the same rail car as the 1918 conference. The Armistice of 22 June 1940 was portrayed as revenge for Germany's earlier defeat, and the Glade of the Armistice was mostly destroyed.


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: The end of the Second World War in China (end of the Second Sino-Japanese War) formally took place on 9 September 1945 at 9:00 a.m. (the ninth hour of the ninth day of the ninth month). The date was chosen to echo the 1918 Armistice (on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month), and because "nine" is a homophone of the word for "long lasting" in Chinese (to suggest that the peace won would last forever).


title: Armistice of 11 November 1918

text: The myth that the German Army was stabbed in the back, by the Social Democratic government that was formed in November 1918, was created by reviews in the German press that grossly misrepresented British Major-General Frederick Maurice's book, "The Last Four Months". "Ludendorff made use of the reviews to convince Hindenburg."


title: Ticketmaster

text: Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc. is an American ticket sales and distribution company based in Beverly Hills, California with operations in many countries around the world. In 2010, it merged with Live Nation under the name Live Nation Entertainment.


title: Ticketmaster

text: The company's ticket sales are fulfilled digitally or at its two main fulfillment centers located in Charleston, West Virginia, and Pharr, Texas for both primary and secondary markets. Ticketmaster's clients include venues, artists and promoters. Clients control their events and set ticket prices, and Ticketmaster sells tickets that the clients make available to them.


title: Ticketmaster

text: Ticketmaster charges a fee on tickets purchased and resold on the platform. The fees from ticket sales can account for a large percentage of overall ticket costs and have received scrutiny from regulators, customers, and musicians for its fees. The company has faced scrutiny from the United States Department of Justice for retaliation against venues violating its 2010 10-year consent decree from the Live Nation merger, which has been extended an additional 5-years from 2020 through 2025. Following the widespread criticism towards the company's handling of the pre-sale of Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour, the Department of Justice began a formal investigation into Live Nation Entertainment on the grounds of monopoly, antitrust law and consumer rights violations.


title: Ticketmaster

text: Ticketmaster was founded in Phoenix, Arizona in 1976 by college staffers Peter Gadwa and Albert Leffler, as well as businessman Gordon Gunn III. The company originally licensed computer programs and sold hardware for ticketing systems. Its first ticketed concert was Electric Light Orchestra, held at the University of New Mexico.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In 1982, Fred Rosen was appointed CEO of Ticketmaster and moved the company to Los Angeles to be closer to the live entertainment industry. The move enabled the company to build contracts with many well-known venues including the LA Forum. Rosen drove investment into the company and led the switch to computerized ticketing. By 1985 the company had operations in the U.S., Canada and Europe. Under Rosen, the company moved into publishing and set up a travel agency and acquired rival Ticketron in 1991, making it the market leader.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In 1998, USA Networks Inc., later named InterActiveCorp (IAC), purchased a majority stake in Ticketmaster. That same year, the company merged with CitySearch and was renamed Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch. In May 2000, Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch acquired TicketWeb Inc., a ticket vendor that sold tickets online and over the phone. In 2003, IAC repurchased the remaining Ticketmaster stock that it had previously sold off.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In September 2006, Ticketmaster President Sean Moriarty told NPR that Ticketmaster had lobbied several states to enact laws that would limit the ticket resale market to authorized companies. Economists worried these laws would harm competition, but Moriarty expressed the need to reduce corrupt scalpers and counterfeit tickets.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In January 2008, Ticketmaster acquired Paciolan Inc., a developer of ticketing system applications and hosted ticketing systems, after litigation over the potential breach of antitrust laws. Also in January, Ticketmaster acquired the UK-based secondary ticket marketplace, Getmein.com. And finally, in that same January, Ticketmaster acquired TicketsNow, a ticket reseller in the United States, for $265 million.


title: Ticketmaster

text: IAC spun off Ticketmaster as its own company in the summer of 2008. Later in 2008, Ticketmaster acquired Front Line Management, an artist management firm that worked with artists such as Aerosmith, Christina Aguilera and Jimmy Buffett. Front Line CEO Irving Azoff became CEO of the new company, which was renamed Ticketmaster Entertainment.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In February 2009, Ticketmaster entered into an agreement to merge with event promoter Live Nation to form Live Nation Entertainment. The deal was cleared by the U.S. Justice Department in January 2010 under the condition that the company sell Paciolan to Comcast Spectacor or another firm, and license its software to Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), its biggest competitor. The new company, which would be called Live Nation Entertainment, would also be subject to provisions for 10 years that prevented it from retaliating against venues that partnered with competing ticketing firms. This consent decree was extended in 2020 by an additional 5 years, and that the company acted in violation of the terms of the 2010 agreement. Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino was named CEO of the new company.


title: Ticketmaster

text: One year after merging, Live Nation settled a previous class action lawsuit against Ticketmaster which alleged that the company had misled plaintiffs in its descriptions of delivery and processing fees.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In 2015, Ticketmaster acquired Front Gate Tickets, a music festival ticketing service that provided services for festivals including Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits. The same year, the company acquired Universe, a DIY ticketing platform. In 2017, TicketWeb, Ticketmaster's self-service ticketing platform, acquired Strobe Labs, a marketing platform that allows users to market to fans through social media. In 2018, Ticketmaster acquired UPGRADED, a company which converts physical tickets into digital ones, utilising blockchain.


title: Ticketmaster

text: Ticketmaster sells tickets that its clients make available to them. In 2009, Ticketmaster released a digital ticketing system that required customers to prove their identity prior to purchase. The company believed this would help circumvent brokers and scalpers.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In 2016, Ticketmaster released a statement in favor of the Better Online Ticket Sales Act (BOTS Act), which banned the use of ticket bots to buy large amounts of tickets online and resell them at inflated prices. The following year, the company filed a lawsuit against the ticket broker Prestige Entertainment after the company used bots to buy more than 30,000 tickets to the Broadway play "Hamilton".


title: Ticketmaster

text: In November 2020, Ticketmaster announced it will check the COVID-19 vaccination status of ticket buyers before issuing passes when live events return in 2021. Fans that either failed to verify their vaccination status or tested positive would be denied access to the event.


title: Ticketmaster

text: The face value of Ticketmaster tickets is determined by the artist or client. In addition to the face value price, venues and Ticketmaster add fees to pay for their services.


title: Ticketmaster

text: Fee amounts vary between events and are dependent on the venue, available delivery methods, and preferences of the artist. Some economists and activist groups have claimed that high ticket prices are due to a lack of competition within the music industry.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In 2013, the jam band The String Cheese Incident gave fans money to purchase 400 tickets to one of its shows in order to resell them on its own site with fewer fees. The band said they were protesting Ticketmaster's ticket fees, while Ticketmaster argued that the band was taking revenue from venues and promoters.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In 2022, Ticketmaster was experimenting with a demand-based, dynamic pricing which would vary the ticket price based upon demand. The new system is touted to give artists a higher share of the revenues that would otherwise be coming through resale ticket sales.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In May 1994, the grunge band Pearl Jam filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice claiming Ticketmaster had cut the group out of venue bookings in a dispute over fees. The investigation was closed without action in 1995, though the Justice Department stated it would continue to monitor the developments in the ticket industry. Chuck Philips, a reporter who covered the issue, was told by sources close to the case that the investigation was closed due to a combination of a shortage of resources and the case being difficult and having uncertain prospects.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In a 2009 article by the CBC, Ticketmaster argued that legislation was needed in Ontario to protect fans from scalpers and unauthorized ticket brokers saying, "You and I both know there is a thriving ticket-broker industry ... so the law is really a fiction ... We very strongly feel the law needs to be modernized to reflect the reality of internet commerce. By keeping a price cap in place, you're really just driving the [resale] business into the shadows." That same year, musician Bruce Springsteen complained of a conflict of interest between Ticketmaster and TicketsNow after fans were directed to TicketsNow once tickets to his concert sold out on Ticketmaster.com. Irving Azoff, Ticketmaster CEO at the time, released an apology and stated that the TicketsNow link would no longer be shown for Springsteen's concerts. In 2018, the United States Department of Justice began reviewing complaints by AEG that claimed the company had engaged in anti-competitive practices. As of April 2018, the Department of Justice had not released comments on its investigation.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In 2020, the Department of Justice fined Ticketmaster $3 million for violating a consent decree resulting from the Live Nation merger. The consent decree is extended through 2025 and is required to enforce its own compliance with the decree with a penalty of $1 million for any future violations.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In May 2013, Ticketmaster agreed to pay up to $23 million for enrolling customers into a rewards program that charged $9 per month. Ticketmaster made $85 million in fees, from customers who took about eight months on average to cancel their enrollment in the program. 1.12 million customers were eligible to claim up to a $30 refund.


title: Ticketmaster

text: Ticketmaster secretly partners with scalpers to drive up prices for consumers. Economists characterize the secondary market in tickets as socially wasteful rent-seeking. In the mid-2000s, Ticketmaster engaged in primary market auctions that reduced the rents involved in secondary market scalping – however, Ticketmaster ended these primary market auctions, opting instead to enter into the secondary market.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In September 2018, the Toronto Star reported that Ticketmaster was not enforcing ticket limit rules on its resale platform, TradeDesk. Ticketmaster denied the allegations, saying it would examine its resale policies on TradeDesk, and that it "never allows ticket scalpers to buy tickets ahead of fans." One month later, a group of customers filed a class action lawsuit against Ticketmaster.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In July 2019, a report by "Billboard" revealed a strategy by Live Nation, Ticketmaster's parent company, to secretly bypass placing certain tickets for sale on the primary market and instead, place them directly on resale sites "without giving fans a chance to buy them through normal channels at face value." The company acknowledged it has "facilitated the quiet transfer of concert tickets directly into the hands of resellers through the years, though only at the request of the artists involved."


title: Ticketmaster

text: In June 2018, Ticketmaster notified 40,000 U.K. customers that it had identified a hack caused by malicious software on a third-party customer support product it contracted. The company stated that customers who bought tickets between February and June 2018 may have had data compromised.


title: Ticketmaster

text: A class action lawsuit was filed against Ticketmaster in 2003, alleging that it did not fully disclose UPS and order processing fees added to tickets sold online. The case settlement was approved in 2015 and Ticketmaster issued vouchers and discount codes to fans who purchased tickets online between 1999 and 2013. In a related case, Ticketmaster filed suit against its liability insurance carrier, Illinois Union Insurance Company, a subsidiary of ACE Limited, in 2010 for failing to aid in its defense in the 2003 suit.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In June 2019, Canada's Competition Bureau fined Ticketmaster $4.5 million dollars ($3.44 million US dollars) as part of a settlement after it was discovered that Ticketmaster "topped advertised costs by more than 20% -- and sometimes as much as 65%." In addition to the required payment, Ticketmaster signed a consent agreement to ensure its advertising policies abide by Canadian law.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In December 2020, Ticketmaster "entered into a plea agreement with federal prosecutors" and agreed to pay a $10 million fine after being charged with illegally accessing computer systems of a competitor. According to FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Williams Sweeney, "Ticketmaster used stolen information to gain an advantage over its competition, and then promoted the employees who broke the law." The allegations were first reported in 2017 when a former CrowdSurge top executive hired by Ticketmaster hacked into his former employer's database.


title: Ticketmaster

text: Ticketmaster and Live Nation has faced backlash for their dynamic pricing system and "platinum" tickets when tickets for Bruce Springsteen's and Blink-182's 2023 tours went on sale in July and October 2022 respectively, which saw fans of both acts criticize prices for random seats across the venue going for hundreds or thousands of dollars during pre-sales or right when tickets went on sale for the general public.


title: Ticketmaster

text: On November 15, 2022, the first day of pre-sale of tickets to verified fans for the US leg of the Eras Tour (2023) by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, Ticketmaster's official website crashed following "historically unprecedented demand with millions showing up", halting the pre-sale. In less than an hour of availability, the ticketing platform's servers were "unable to answer", with users "either completely logged out or in a queue 2,000-plus people strong that appeared frozen." Ticketmaster immediately published a statement saying they are working to fix the issues "as the site was unprepared to accommodate the sheer force of hundreds of thousands of Swift fans", and subsequently reported that "hundreds of thousands of tickets" had already been sold and rescheduled the remaining onsales to a different time, including the Capital One onsale to November 16.


title: Ticketmaster

text: Fans and customers online widely criticized Ticketmaster for a flawed ticketing model that obstructed them from purchasing tickets. The word "Ticketmaster" was trending number one worldwide on various social media platforms such as Twitter and TikTok. Several US lawmakers took notice of the issue. US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that Ticketmaster is a monopoly and that it must be unmerged from Live Nation Entertainment. Congressman Bill Pascrel, who had previously petitioned US Attorney General Merrick Garland in support of "strong antitrust enforcement by the Biden Administration" and criticized the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, stated that he attempted to purchase tickets but was placed on the waitlist. The Tennessee Attorney General, Jonathan Skrmetti, began an investigation into "consumer complaints about chaos during the presale of tickets" to the tour. He said in a press conference on November 16 that "a lack of competition [for Ticketmaster] has led to a poor experience and higher prices for consumers." Following investigations initiated by the Tennessee Attorney General and the North Carolina Attorney General on the grounds of consumer rights violations, the federal Department of Justice began an investigation into Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster on November 18.


title: Ticketmaster

text: Swift released a statement on November 18, 2022, via her Instagram story; she asserted that she is protective of her fans and wanted to assure a quality experience for them, but found it difficult to "trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties". She said that she was "not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked [Ticketmaster], multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could." She concluded that she is taking the necessary measures to resolve the issue and resume the sale.


title: Ticketmaster

text: In December, a group of Swift's fans, called "Swifties," filed a lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation, accusing them of fraud, anti-trust violations, and price-fixing. In the lawsuit, fans demanded $2.500 for each violation, which could potentially amount to several million in total.


title: Ticketmaster

text: On December 9, 2022, the day of Bad Bunny's first concert of his World's Hottest Tour in Mexico City, an unprecedented number of tickets were cancelled, affecting a considerable group of concertgoers, whose tickets were confiscated and destroyed. Because of this, Ticketmaster received a great amount of criticism because many of the attendees who were denied entry were accused of having counterfeit or cloned tickets, even though those attendees presented proof of payment or their ticket had not even been previously scanned. The procurator of Office of the Federal Prosecutor for the Consumer, described on Twitter that the agency had already requested a report from Ticketmaster Mexico on what happened at the Estadio Azteca and asked affected consumers to formalize their complaints under the terms of the law. Due to the criticism, Ticketmaster Mexico released a statement through their social networks apologizing and saying that "the inconveniences in the accesses were a consequence of the presentation of an unprecedented number of fake tickets, which caused an out of the ordinary agglomeration of people and an intermittent operation of our system". They also offered refunds for the full cost of the tickets. However, PROFECO ordered that those affected not only be refunded the full cost of the ticket, but an additional 20%.


title: Ticketmaster

text: Ticketmaster has partnerships with venues, professional sports leagues, musical acts and theatre tours and target corporation in the United States and internationally. Ticketmaster has partnered with musical acts such as Taylor Swift, and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and theatre productions such as Hamilton and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.


title: Ticketmaster

text: Ticketmaster has been the ticketing provider for the National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL) and the National Basketball Association (NBA). In 2008, Ticketmaster entered into an agreement with the National Football League (NFL) to manage its resale market on NFL TicketExchange. Ticketmaster also works with wrestling promotions World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) (1994) and All Elite Wrestling (AEW) (2019)


title: Ticketmaster

text: In 2017, Ticketmaster announced it would open the TicketExchange platform to allow the sale and validation of tickets on third-party websites, including StubHub. Ticketmaster has also partnered with the United States Tennis Association, Tennis Canada, and the PGA Tour.


title: Hilton family

text: The Hilton family is an American family that originally comes from San Antonio, New Mexico, and spans over four generations from New York City and Los Angeles. The family members hold varying degrees of power, wealth and status as socialites in the United States. They are widely known for the Hilton Hotels & Resorts Group which was established by Conrad Hilton in 1919 when he bought his first hotel.


title: Hilton family

text: The Hilton family is one of the world's most powerful and famous families, with a net worth of over $4.5 billion.


title: Prince Christian of Denmark

text: Prince Christian of Denmark, Count of Monpezat (Christian Valdemar Henri John; born 15 October 2005) is a member of the Danish royal family. He is the eldest child of Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary. A grandson of Queen Margrethe II, he has been second in the line of succession to the Danish throne since birth, after his father.


title: Prince Christian of Denmark

text: Prince Christian was born at 1:57 am in Rigshospitalet, the Copenhagen University Hospital, in Copenhagen on Saturday, 15 October 2005. At noon on the day of his birth, 21-gun salutes were fired from the Sixtus Battery at Holmen in Copenhagen and at Kronborg Castle in Elsinore to mark the birth of a royal child. At the same time, public buses and official buildings flew the Danish flag, the Dannebrog. At sunset on the same day beacon bonfires were lit all over Denmark, while Naval Home Guard vessels lit their searchlights and directed them towards the capital. Bonfires were also lit in celebration in Australia.


title: Prince Christian of Denmark

text: Christian was hospitalised briefly on 21 October 2005 because he suffered from neonatal jaundice, a usually harmless illness and a fairly common one (especially in premature births). The first photographs of the then 6-day-old boy showed a yellow tinge to his face and hands. The prince was examined by doctors and underwent blood tests, then spent time in a light box under special coloured light rays to break down the bilirubin substance which causes jaundice. His parents took him home again the same day and he made a full recovery.


title: Prince Christian of Denmark

text: Christian was baptized on 21 January 2006 in Christiansborg Palace Chapel by Bishop Erik Norman Svendsen. Christian's godparents are his paternal uncle, Prince Joachim of Denmark; his maternal aunt, Jane Stephens; his father's first cousin, the Crown Prince of Greece; the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Norway; the Crown Princess of Sweden; and two friends of the couple, Jeppe Handwerk and Hamish Campbell. He was named Christian Valdemar Henri John, continuing the Danish royal tradition of alternating between the names Christian and Frederik in direct line.


title: Prince Christian of Denmark

text: He received a number of presents on the occasion of his christening, including a pony called Flikflak from the Folketing, Denmark's national parliament.


title: Prince Christian of Denmark

text: Christian is second in line to the Danish throne (his father, Crown Prince Frederik, being first). Since the 16th century, first-born sons of Danish monarchs have traditionally been alternately named Frederik and Christian.


title: Prince Christian of Denmark

text: On 11 September 2006, Per Stig Møller, Denmark's Minister for Foreign Affairs, formally wrote and signed a hand-written document confirming Prince Christian's place in the line of succession. The prince's full name, his dates of birth and christening, and the names of his godparents were recorded as dictated by the Royal Law of 1799.


title: Prince Christian of Denmark

text: Christian was the first member of the Danish royal family to attend nursery school. At the same age, the Crown Prince had a nanny at the Palace to teach him rudimentary lessons. He is also the first member of the royal family to attend a public state school, Tranegårdskolen in Hellerup. The Danish court announced in October 2019 that Christian and his three younger siblings would undertake a 12-week school stay at Lemania-Verbier International School in Verbier, Switzerland, in the beginning of 2020. The stay was cut short and the siblings returned home in March due to the intensification of the COVID-19 situation in Denmark. In April 2021, it was announced that Christian would undertake his secondary education at the Danish boarding school Herlufsholm, starting in August 2021. In June 2022, shortly after finishing the first year of his upper secondary education, it was announced that Christian would no longer attend the school, after recurring allegations of bullying, violence and sexual abuse at the institution surfaced in a documentary. He instead attends the public school Ordrup Gymnasium.


title: Prince Christian of Denmark

text: Christian attended the opening of the new elephant house at the Copenhagen Zoo with his grandfather, Prince Henrik. Christian was the one who opened the elephant house by pressing a button on an interactive console. The elephants were a gift from the King and Queen of Thailand to the Queen and Prince Consort of Denmark on their last visit to Thailand. He and his siblings accompanied their parents on an official visit to Greenland on 1–8 August 2014, where Christian partook in several official engagements. Likewise, he accompanied his parents on most of their engagements during the family's official visit to the Faroe Islands on 23–26 August 2018.


title: Prince Christian of Denmark

text: Christian was confirmed on 15 May 2021 in the Royal Chapel of Fredensborg Palace. On 13 June 2021, Christian accompanied his grandmother and father at the COVID-19 postponed centenary of the reunification of Denmark and Northern Schleswig, following the route his great-great-grandfather Christian X rode on 15 July 1920 over the old border between Denmark and Germany. Accompanying his father, Christian attended a memorial for the victims of the 2022 Copenhagen mall shooting on 5 July 2022.


title: Prince Christian of Denmark

text: Christian is styled as "His Royal Highness Prince Christian of Denmark, Count of Monpezat". He has been Prince of Denmark since birth and Count of Monpezat since 30 April 2008, when Queen Margrethe granted the title to her male-line descendants


title: Prince Christian of Denmark

text: In 2006 Scandinavian Airlines System was in the process of purchasing new Airbus A319 aircraft and in Christian's honour the first of these, delivered on 8 August 2006, was named "Christian Valdemar Viking".


title: Martin Shaw

text: Martin Shaw (born 21 January 1945) is an English actor. He came to national recognition as Doyle in ITV crime-action television drama series "The Professionals" (1977–1983). Further notable television parts include the title roles in "The Chief" (1993–1995), "Judge John Deed" (2001–2007) and "Inspector George Gently" (2007–2017). He has also acted on stage and in film, and has narrated numerous audiobooks and presented various television series.


title: Martin Shaw

text: Shaw was born in Birmingham. His childhood was spent in Alleyne Grove in Erdington and Sutton Coldfield. Shaw attended Great Barr School, where he excelled in English literature and drama lessons. At sixteen, he was offered a scholarship to a Birmingham drama school but declined.


title: Martin Shaw

text: In his youth, Shaw was involved in a drunken brawl with a friend, suffering broken teeth, injuries to his face and a fractured skull, and needed cheekbone surgery.


title: Martin Shaw

text: At age eighteen, Shaw moved to London to attend the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He served his apprenticeship in repertory as an assistant stage manager at the Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch and the Bristol Old Vic.


title: Martin Shaw

text: Shaw took key roles in the first revival of "Look Back in Anger" (Royal Court/Criterion, 1968); in the National Theatre's "Saturday, Sunday, Monday" opposite Laurence Olivier (1973); and in "A Streetcar Named Desire" presented by the Piccadilly Theatre in 1974. He later acknowledged the role of Stanley Kowalski in 'Streetcar' as a point of breakthrough in his career.


title: Martin Shaw

text: In 1985, Shaw played Elvis Presley in Alan Bleasdale's critically acclaimed "Are You Lonesome Tonight?". It told the story of Presley's last few hours. After a long run in London, the production visited Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide in Australia.


title: Martin Shaw

text: Shaw's portrayal of Lord Goring in "An Ideal Husband" on Broadway earned him a Tony Award nomination and a Drama Desk award.


title: Martin Shaw

text: After filming finished on the TV series "Judge John Deed", Shaw took the role of Thomas More in Robert Bolt's play "A Man for All Seasons". Shaw's daughter, Sophie, played opposite him as More's daughter, Margaret. The production toured Britain's cities before a run in London at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.


title: Martin Shaw

text: In 2013. in a new production of the classic play "Twelve Angry Men" at the Garrick Theatre London, Shaw played the part of the dissenting juror (identified as juror number 8).


title: Martin Shaw

text: In 2016 Shaw toured and hit the West End again with a lively production of Hobson's Choice at the Vaudeville. After completing filming the final episode of George Gently, Shaw again toured in 2017 with the U.K. premier of Gore Vidal's 1960 political piece: The Best Man. Shaw played the part of William Russell, former US Secretary of State.


title: Martin Shaw

text: Shaw began television work in 1967. Parts in one-off plays for Granada Television led to his playing hippy student Robert Croft, Lucile Hewitt's boyfriend, in "Coronation Street". Another early role was booze and football-loving Welsh medical student Huw Evans in the television comedy series "Doctor in the House". He later guest-starred, playing the same role, in the follow-up series "Doctor at Large", now a nervous expectant father in the episode "Mother and Father Doing Well".


title: Martin Shaw

text: Shaw appeared with future co-star Lewis Collins in an episode of "The New Avengers". Both played the roles of terrorists. Shaw portrayed Ray Doyle ("Agent 4–5") in the British television series "The Professionals" (1977–1983), opposite Collins. Shaw played another law-enforcement role in the 1990s ITV production "The Chief".


title: Martin Shaw

text: In 1983, Shaw played Robert Falcon Scott in "The Last Place on Earth". The series was filmed at Frobisher Bay near the city of Iqaluit on Baffin Island, Canada. In interview at the time, Shaw commented that he generally responded well to the testing physical conditions, particularly when they enhanced the reality of the scene. In the same year he played Sir Henry Baskerville in "The Hound of the Baskervilles", an adaptation of the novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He acted opposite Ian Richardson's Sherlock Holmes and Donald Churchill's Dr. Watson.


title: Martin Shaw

text: He played Cecil Rhodes in "Rhodes", an eight-part serial that aired in 1996 and was filmed on location in South Africa. Shaw's younger son, Joe, took early leave of his drama school course to play the part of the youthful Rhodes.


title: Martin Shaw

text: Another television acting credit includes the role of Dr Robert Kingston in "Always and Everyone" (1999–2002), a British accident and emergency medical series, played alongside Niamh Cusack.


title: Martin Shaw

text: In 2001, he took the title role in the BBC drama "Judge John Deed". The character gave an editorial voice to the television writer and producer G.F. Newman's ideas about lifestyle choices such as vegetarianism and alternative medicine as well as issues of social justice. One episode about the safety of the MMR vaccine was banned.


title: Martin Shaw

text: Between seasons of "Judge John Deed", Shaw took the role of poetic bespectacled forensic detective Adam Dalgliesh in P.D. James's "Death in Holy Orders" in 2003 and "The Murder Room" in 2005. After the sixth season of "Judge John Deed" had been filmed, Shaw appeared in the series "Apparitions", broadcast by the BBC in 2008. This was Shaw's first project as executive director.


title: Martin Shaw

text: From 2007 until 2017 he played the title role in the BBC TV series "Inspector George Gently" alongside co-star Lee Ingleby.


title: Martin Shaw

text: On 9 May 2015 Shaw recited "For the Fallen" at in Horse Guards Parade, London which was broadcast on BBC 1.


title: Martin Shaw

text: In 2021 he played the role of Dennis Stephenson, leader of a fictitious religious cult called the Barum Brethren, in the BritBox original series "The Long Call". The series premiered in autumn 2021, and is based on the Ann Cleeves bestselling novel.


title: Martin Shaw

text: Although Shaw is not classified as a film actor he has had several roles over the years. His first film role was an Irish communist in a 1967 television adaptation of the novel, "Love on the Dole". Better known is his 1971 role of Banquo in Roman Polanski's "Macbeth". He has also been seen as an undercover Second World War operative in the 1975 production "Operation Daybreak"; a singing and dancing futuristic magician "Zax" in "Facelift"; the role of Rachid in the 1973 film "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad", and a wanted villain leading a life on the run in a circus troupe in "Ladder of Swords" (1989).


title: Martin Shaw

text: Shaw has narrated many audiobooks, including Tolkien's "The Hobbit" and "The Silmarillion"; Swift's "Gulliver's Travels"; and Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights". In 2006, Shaw narrated and appeared in a DVD chronicling the "Merlins over Malta" project. This featured the return of a Second World War Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane from Britain to Malta for the first time in fifty years.


title: Martin Shaw

text: In December 2006, Shaw presented the six-part Discovery Channel Real Time TV series "", produced by Twofour, which followed the two-year restoration of his Boeing Stearman biplane after it was crashed by another pilot at Old Buckenham airfield in Norfolk. Shaw fulfilled a lifetime ambition to take the controls of a Spitfire (owned by Maurice Bayliss) and, though take-off was not permitted, he also powered an English Electric Lightning (owned by Russell Carpenter) to 150 mph in three seconds along the runway at Cranfield Airport. Shaw also compared notes with the nonagenarian builder and developer of the modern autogyro, Wing Cdr. Ken Wallis.


title: Martin Shaw

text: In 2010 he presented a documentary for the BBC titled "Dambusters Declassified" in which he investigated and debunked some of the myths of the dambusters raid known as Operation Chastise story which had been portrayed in the books "Enemy Coast Ahead" and "The Dambusters", and the film "The Dam Busters".


title: Martin Shaw

text: Among several voiceovers and appearances, in 1974, Shaw starred in a three-minute advertisement for the Mk II Ford Capri and in 1987, a TV advert for the Vauxhall Cavalier.


title: Martin Shaw

text: Shaw is a celebrity activist for animal rights and animal welfare. He is the patron of the Hillside Animal Sanctuary in Frettenham in Norfolk, a charity organisation which provides a safe home for neglected and abused animals. He also supports Viva! and Dr Hadwen Trust.


title: Martin Shaw

text: In March 2012, he also announced that he would become the official patron to the community organisation Stop Norwich UrBanisation or SNUB, whose aim is to protect Norfolk's countryside from overdevelopment and excessive urbanisation. In the press release, he stated that he was "simply furious and upset by your plight and that of all of us who wish to live in quiet and peace. I will be your Patron and keep fighting".


title: Martin Shaw

text: On 18 August 2010, Shaw collapsed during the first act of the matinee showing of "A Country Girl" at Shrewsbury's Theatre Severn. His agent, Roger Charteris, said he had been suffering from cracked ribs and was taking antibiotics for a severe chest infection. An understudy went on in his place.


title: Martin Shaw

text: Shaw won two awards in 1996 for his performance as Lord Goring in the Broadway production of "An Ideal Husband" and was nominated for a third:


title: Horrorcore

text: Horrorcore, also called horror hip hop, horror rap, death hip hop, or death rap, is a subgenre of hip hop music based on horror-themed and often darkly transgressive lyrical content and imagery. Its origins derived from certain hardcore hip hop and gangsta rap artists, such as the Geto Boys, which began to incorporate supernatural, occult, and psychological horror themes into their lyrics. Unlike most hardcore hip hop and gangsta rap artists, horrorcore artists often push the violent content and imagery in their lyrics beyond the realm of realistic urban violence, to the point where the violent lyrics become gruesome, ghoulish, unsettling, inspired by slasher films or splatter films. While exaggerated violence and the supernatural are common in horrorcore, the genre also frequently presents more realistic yet still disturbing portrayals of mental illness and drug abuse. Some horrorcore artists eschew supernatural themes or exaggerated violence in favor of more subtle and dark psychological horror imagery and lyrics.


title: Horrorcore

text: Horrorcore has incited controversy, with some members of the law enforcement community asserting that the genre incites crime. Fans and artists have been blamed for numerous high-profile instances of violent criminal activity, including the Columbine High School massacre, the Red Lake high school massacre, the Farmville murders, murders of law enforcement officers, and gang activity.


title: Horrorcore

text: Horrorcore defines a style of hip hop music that focuses primarily on dark, violent, gothic, transgressive, macabre and/or horror-influenced topics such as death, psychosis, psychological horror, mental illness, satanism, self-harm, cannibalism, mutilation, suicide, murder, torture, drug abuse, and supernatural or occult themes. The lyrics are often inspired by horror movies and are performed over moody, hardcore beats. According to rapper Mars, "If you take Stephen King or Wes Craven and you throw them on a rap beat, that's who I am". Horrorcore was described by "Entertainment Weekly" in 1995 as a "blend of hardcore rap and bloodthirsty metal". The lyrical content of horrorcore is sometimes described as being similar to that of death metal, and some have referred to the genre as "death rap". Horrorcore artists often feature dark imagery in their music videos and base musical elements of songs upon horror film scores.


title: Horrorcore

text: "LA Weekly" listed Jimmy Spicer's 1980 single "Adventures of Super Rhyme" as the first example of "proto-horrorcore", due to a lengthy segment of the song in which Spicer recounts his experience of meeting Dracula. The group Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde specialized in horror-themed music. Dana Dane's song "Nightmares" related a frightening narrative.


title: Horrorcore

text: Since 1986, Ganxsta N.I.P. has performed horror-themed lyrics that he has described as "Psycho Rap", but he was not commonly considered to be horrorcore until the term came into mainstream prominence. Ganxsta N.I.P. has written lyrics for other groups, including Geto Boys, who were also an influence on the early horrorcore sound.


title: Horrorcore

text: In 1988, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince released "A Nightmare on My Street", which described an encounter with Freddy Krueger, and the Fat Boys recorded the similarly-themed "Are You Ready for Freddy" for the film "" and its soundtrack. 1988 is also the year Insane Poetry (at the time called His Majesti) released "Armed & Dangerous", followed by their debut single as Insane Poetry, "Twelve Strokes Till Midnight", one of the first examples of music specifically made to be horrorcore.


title: Horrorcore

text: Although Kool Keith claimed to have "invented horrorcore", the first use of the term appeared on the group KMC's 1991 album "Three Men With the Power of Ten". Nonetheless, Kool Keith brought significant attention to horror-influenced hip hop with his lyrical content as a part of the Ultramagnetic MC's and his 1996 debut solo album "Dr. Octagonecologyst".


title: Horrorcore

text: The Geto Boys' debut album, "Making Trouble", contained the dark and violent horror-influenced track "Assassins", which was cited by Joseph Bruce (Violent J of the horrorcore group Insane Clown Posse) in his book "Behind The Paint" as the first recorded horrorcore song. He writes that the Geto Boys continued to pioneer the style with their second release, "Grip It! On That Other Level", with songs such as "Mind of a Lunatic" and "Trigga-Happy Nigga". The Geto Boys' 1991 album, "We Can't Be Stopped", was also influential on the horrorcore genre and contained themes of paranoia, depression, and psychological horror, especially in the track "Chuckie", and "Mind Playing Tricks on Me".


title: Horrorcore

text: While rappers in the underground scene continued to release horrorcore music, including Big L, Insane Poetry, and Insane Clown Posse, the mid-1990s brought an attempted mainstream crossover of the genre.


title: Horrorcore

text: According to the book "Icons of Hip Hop", horrorcore gained mainstream prominence in 1994 with the release of Flatlinerz' "U.S.A. (Under Satan's Authority)" and Gravediggaz' "6 Feet Deep" (released overseas as "Niggamortis"). The Flatlinerz and Gravediggaz, along with the Geto Boys and Kool Keith, remain the most important artists in the development of horrorcore as a specific genre.


title: Horrorcore

text: In 1995, an independent horror film called "The Fear" was released, which included a soundtrack consisting entirely of horrorcore songs, including Insane Clown Posse's biggest radio hit, "Dead Body Man". 1995 also saw the release of Three 6 Mafia's debut album "Mystic Stylez", which touched on heavy drug use, ritualistic sex, mass murder, torture, and Luciferianism. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's "E. 1999 Eternal", released in the same year, contains tales of the occult throughout, specifically on songs such as "Mr. Ouija 2", "Mo' Murda", "East 1999", and "Da Introduction". Tension would soon rise between Bone Thugs and Three 6 over their presumed similarities in style and use of dark imagery.


title: Horrorcore

text: In 2009, dark music-themed website Fangoria named Tech N9ne's 2001 album "Anghellic" as an iconic and influential album to the genre, the artist, and hip-hop as a whole.


title: Horrorcore

text: Horrorcore is generally not popular with mainstream audiences, though in some cities, like Detroit, it is the dominant style of hip-hop, with Detroit-based performers such as Insane Clown Posse and Eminem, as well as Brooklyn-based artists like Necro, having been commercially successful throughout the US. Horrorcore has thrived in Internet culture. Every Halloween since 2003, horrorcore artists worldwide have gotten together online and release a free compilation titled "Devilz Nite". According to the January 2004 BBC documentary "Underground USA", the subgenre "has a massive following across the US" and "is spreading to Europe". "Rolling Stone" in 2007 referred to it as a short-lived trend that generated "more shlock than shock".


title: Horrorcore

text: In 2019, experimental trio clipping. released "There Existed an Addiction to Blood", described as a "transmutation of horrorcore".


title: Horrorcore

text: In 2020, horrorcore found a small revival around the UK drill scene with acts such as Block 6, No Remorse, Official TS, and TeeZandos.


title: Horrorcore

text: Some members of the law enforcement community have asserted that the horrorcore genre is dangerous and incites crime, and the genre's artists and followers have been linked to a wide variety of crime, ranging from mass murder to gang activity and drug trafficking.


title: Horrorcore

text: In September 1996, Joseph Edward "Bubba" Gallegos, an 18-year-old from Bayfield, Colorado, killed his roommates after ingesting numerous amphetamines and listening repeatedly to horrorcore rapper Brotha Lynch Hung's song "Locc 2 da Brain". Brotha Lynch Hung is considered a horrorcore pioneer and even created his own horrorcore sub-category called "Ripgut" which is known for even more graphic lyrics dealing with hardcore gore, torture, and cannibalism. After attempting to kill his ex-girlfriend and taking two other students hostage, Gallegos was in turn killed by police. Gallegos was said to be a massive fan of Brotha Lynch Hung, and his minister suggested that the music played a role in the killings.


title: Horrorcore

text: In 1999, horrorcore group Insane Clown Posse (ICP) was considered a potential influence on school shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. ICP responded that if the shooters had been "Juggalos" (fans of ICP), they would have "gotten the whole damn school". However, Brooks Brown, the best friend of Dylan Klebold and a friend of both the shooters, was a Juggalo and had introduced Klebold to Insane Clown Posse's music.


title: Horrorcore

text: In 2005, horrorcore fan Jeff Weise committed the Red Lake Senior High School massacre. Weise was a fan of horrorcore rappers such as Mars and Prozak.


title: Horrorcore

text: Juggalo gangs have caused law enforcement concern throughout the United States due to their tendency for extreme violence and have been linked to diverse crimes. Arizona Department of Public Safety Detective Michelle Vasey has expressed concern at the Juggalos' high potential for violence, stating, "The weapons, they prefer, obviously, hatchets ... We've got battle-axes, we've got machetes, anything that can make the most violent, gruesome wound", and, "Some of the homicides we're seeing with these guys are pretty nasty, gruesome, disgusting homicides, where they don't care who's around, what's around, they're just out to kill anybody". A 2017 Denver Police Department guide warned that even Juggalos who are not affiliated with a gang are prone to commit "murder, shootings, kidnapping, rape, necrophilia, cannibalism, assault, and arson", and that "such acts give a Juggalo a sense of pride and street credit amongst peers". Allegedly horrorcore-related criminal activity has, in rare cases, even branched out into ad-hoc domestic terrorism, such as when a Juggalo-led terrorist cell calling itself the "Black Snake Militia" attempted to raid a National Guard armory in 2012.


title: Pam Beesly

text: Pamela Morgan Halpert (née Beesly) is a fictional character on the U.S. television sitcom "The Office", played by Jenna Fischer. Her counterpart in the original UK series of "The Office" is Dawn Tinsley. Pam begins the series as the receptionist at the paper distribution company Dunder Mifflin. She later becomes a saleswoman and, eventually, the office administrator, until she leaves in the series finale. Her character is at first shy and unsure, but grows increasingly assertive as the series progresses. She is artistically inclined throughout the series and attends art school. Pam shares a friendship, and then a romance, with Jim Halpert, with whom she begins dating in the fourth season, marries and starts a family.


title: Pam Beesly

text: Pam's character was originally created to be very similar to her British counterpart, Dawn Tinsley. Even minute details, such as how Pam wore her hair each day, were considered by executive producer, Greg Daniels. "When I went in for "The Office", the casting director said to me, 'Please look normal'," recalls Jenna Fischer. "Don't make yourself all pretty, and dare to bore me with your audition. Those were her words. Dare to bore me."


title: Pam Beesly

text: Taking heed of the advice, Fischer said little during the auditions, during which she was interviewed in character by show producers, in an improvisational format, to imitate the show's documentary premise. "My take on the character of Pam was that she didn't have any media training, so she didn't know how to be a good interview. And also, she didn't care about this interview," she told NPR. "So, I gave very short one-word answers and I tried very hard not to be funny or clever, because I thought that the comedy would come out of just, you know, the real human reactions to the situation... and they liked that take on it."


title: Pam Beesly

text: "When I went into the audition, the first question that they asked me in the character of Pam—they said, 'Do you like working as a receptionist?' I said, 'No.' And that was it. I didn't speak any more than that. And they started laughing."


title: Pam Beesly

text: Fischer found herself creating a very elaborate backstory for the character. For the first few seasons, she kept a list of the character history revealed on-screen by the creators, as well as her own imaginative thoughts on Pam's history. She created a rule with the set's hair and make-up department that it could not look as though it took Pam more than 30 minutes to do her hair, and she formulated ideas as to who gave Pam each piece of jewelry she wore or where she went to college. Fischer also carefully crafted Pam's quiet persona. "Well, my character of Pam is really stuck," she explained to NPR. "I mean, she's a subordinate in this office. And so, I think that for her, the only way she can express herself is in the silences, but you can say so much by not saying anything." Kathryn Hahn also auditioned for the role.


title: Pam Beesly

text: Originally meek and passive, the character grew more assertive as the seasons passed, prompting Fischer to reassess her portrayal. "I have to approach Pam differently [now]," she explained in Season 4, a defining season in which her character finally begins a long-awaited relationship with Jim and is accepted into the Pratt Institute. "She is in a loving relationship, she has found her voice, she has started taking art classes. All of these things must inform the character and we need to see changes in the way she moves, speaks, dresses, etc."


title: Pam Beesly

text: Pam Halpert has appeared in almost every episode with the exceptions of "Business Ethics", "St. Patrick's Day", and "New Leads" in which only her voice is heard, and several season 8 episodes from "Mrs. California" to "Pool Party", where she did not appear at all as Fischer was on maternity leave at the same time as the character.


title: Pam Beesly

text: At the beginning of the series, Pam and Roy have been dating for eight years and engaged for three years. Their open-ended engagement has become one of Michael's running gags and a sore spot for Pam.


title: Pam Beesly

text: Pam does not want her current job to become permanent, remarking that "I don't think it's many little girls' dream to be a receptionist." She will often do extra, unnecessary work to make her other co-workers happy. Pam is apathetic toward her work, evidenced by her frequent games of FreeCell on her office computer. However, in the pilot episode, she breaks down crying when Michael pulls an ill-judged prank by telling her that she will be fired.


title: Pam Beesly

text: Despite the abuse she takes from Michael in the early seasons, Pam becomes more honest and forward with Michael as the series progresses, often making sarcastic comments toward him.


title: Pam Beesly

text: While engaged to Roy, Pam denies, or is in denial about, having any romantic feelings for Jim. When Jim confesses his love for her at the Dunder Mifflin "Casino Night" she turns him down. She later talks to her mom on the phone and says Jim is her best friend (though she doesn't say his name), and says "Yeah, I think I am" to an unheard question. She is interrupted by Jim, who enters and kisses her; she responds by kissing him back.


title: Pam Beesly

text: Season 3 marks a turning point for Pam's character: she gains self-confidence and appears less passive and more self-assured as the season progresses. In "Gay Witch Hunt", the season's opener, it is revealed that Pam got cold feet before her wedding and did not marry Roy after all. Meanwhile, Jim has transferred to a different Dunder Mifflin branch, in Stamford, shortly after Pam rejected him a second time after their kiss. Pam moves into her own apartment, begins taking art classes, a pursuit that Roy had previously dismissed as a waste of time, and buys a new car. When the Scranton and Stamford branches merge, Jim returns to Scranton alongside a female co-worker, Karen Filippelli, whom he begins dating. Jim and Pam appeared to have ended all communication after Jim transfers to the Stamford branch; after Jim returns to Scranton, the encounters between the two are tense, despite both admitting to still harboring feelings for the other during the presence of the documentary cameras.


title: Pam Beesly

text: Roy vows to win Pam back, and after his initial efforts to improve his relationship with Pam are successful, the two get back together. After attending an after-work get-together at a local bar with their co-workers, Pam, feeling that she should be more honest with Roy, tells him about Jim kissing her at the casino night. An angered Roy yells, smashes a mirror, and trashes the bar. Pam, frightened and embarrassed by his reaction, breaks up with Roy immediately. Roy vows to kill Jim and in "The Negotiation", Roy unsuccessfully tries to attack Jim at work when he is pepper sprayed by Dwight; Roy is subsequently fired. Pam later reluctantly agrees to meet Roy for coffee at his request, and after the polite but brief meeting, it appears that their relationship has ended amicably, with Roy encouraging Pam to pursue Jim.


title: Pam Beesly

text: Pam participates in an art show, but few people attend. When Oscar and his partner visit the art show, they criticize Pam's work, not knowing that Pam is standing behind them. Affected by their statements, Pam tells the documentary crew that she is going to be more honest, culminating in a dramatic coal walk during the next-to-last episode of the season, "Beach Games", and a seemingly sincere speech to Jim in front of the entire office about their relationship. Michael also comes to the art show and reveals his loyalty and erratically kind heart by offering genuine and enthuaiastic praise of Pam's art, and by buying, framing and hanging Pam's drawing of the Dunder Mifflin building in the office. In the season finale, "The Job", she leaves a friendly note in Jim's briefcase and an old memento depicting the 'gold medal' yogurt lid from the Office Olympics, which he sees during an interview for a job at Corporate in New York City. While he is asked how he "would function here in New York", Jim is shown to have his mind back in Scranton, still distracted by the thought of Pam. Jim withdraws his name from consideration and drives back to the office, where he interrupts a talking head Pam is doing for the documentary crew by asking her out for dinner. She happily accepts, visibly moved, abandoning a train of thought about how she would be fine if Jim got the job and never came back to Scranton. Karen quits soon after, becoming the regional manager at Dunder Mifflin's Utica branch.


title: Pam Beesly

text: In Season 4, Pam retains the assertiveness she developed in the third season. Jim and Pam confess that they have started dating after the camera crew catches them kissing. The office ultimately learns of their relationship after Toby catches Pam kissing Jim on the cheek. In "Chair Model", after teasing Pam about his impending proposal, Jim tells the documentary crew he is not kidding around about an engagement and shows them a ring he bought a week after he and Pam started dating. In the next few episodes, Jim fake-proposes to Pam multiple times. In "Goodbye, Toby", Pam discovers she's been accepted at Pratt Institute, an art and design school in Brooklyn, and in an interview, Jim announces that he will propose to Pam that evening. Just as Jim is preparing to propose, however, Andy Bernard stands up and makes his own impromptu proposal to Angela. Having had his thunder stolen by Andy, Jim reluctantly puts the ring back in his jacket pocket, leaving Pam visibly disappointed as she was expecting Jim to propose that night.