11-11-11 is a 2011 supernatural horror film written and directed by Darren Lynn Bousman. The film is set at 11:11 on the 11th day of the 11th month and concerns an entity from another world that enters the earthly realm through Heaven's 11th gate. The film was released in 17 theaters domestically on November 11, 2011. It was distributed by Epic Pictures Group in North America, though most of its revenues were generated from foreign showings.

Plot
Joseph Crone wakes in his hotel room at 11:11 AM on November 7, 2011. His manager, Grant, arrives and urges Joseph to write his next novel after telling him that his previous book sold over 5 million copies. Joseph begins writing about how after his wife and son died, he lost all faith in a higher power and God and writes "God is dead, or maybe he was never alive."

On November 8, 2011, Joseph attends his support group meeting where Sadie is telling her story.  Outside, Sadie tells Joseph that he should speak up, calling him good with words, and gives him a notebook. On departure, Joseph is immediately in a car accident. At the hospital, he has an MRI scan and the doctors reveal to him that he is perfectly healthy and uninjured while the other driver was killed in the crash. Joseph tells Sadie that he feels that he has no purpose and prays for God to kill him every day. He then examines his watch and sees that it stopped exactly at 11:11. That night, Joseph gets a call from his estranged brother, Samuel, who is living in Spain with their father, Richard, and learns their father is dying.

On November 9, 2011, Joseph goes to Barcelona, Spain, to visit his father. There, Joseph meets with Samuel, who uses a wheelchair. Samuel urges Joseph to put aside his hatred for the church and asks Joseph to stay the night. Later Samuel tells Joseph that his congregation dwindled away and asks him to try to get some of his fans to follow his church.

In Samuel's study, the local housekeeper Ana demands that Samuel show Joseph the video de los demonios. Ana shows Joseph a security video taken on November 3 that depicts the faint outline of what appears to be a demon at 11:11 PM. Joseph tells Samuel that he's been seeing the number 11-11 frequently in the past few days. Joseph later talks to Ana and finds a diary, only titled El Libro de Ana. Ana claims that it's the gospel according to her. That night, Joseph reads that people who frequently see the number 11-11 have been "Activated", and saves Samuel, who is being strangled by demon-like creatures.

On November 10, 2011, at a meeting of Samuel's congregation, a man named Javier brandishes a gun at Samuel, dropping a camera in the process. Joseph disarms Javier, who runs off. Joseph and Samuel then visit the cemetery where their mother, Lauren, is buried. Joseph points out that Samuel's birthday and Lauren's death both took place on November 11. Joseph tells Samuel that the attack the night before, Joseph's accident, David's death, and the apparitions all occurred at 11:11 on the clock. Samuel urges Joseph to not look for meaning where there is none. Joseph goes to find a shop to develop the photos on Javier's camera, and the employees say that the photos will be developed the next day. Joseph visits an occult bookstore where the keeper reads a passage from a book, detailing that on November 11, 2011, a sacrifice will be made that will "destroy faith and the Serpent will rise". Joseph becomes convinced that Samuel is a prophet to save the church and that on November 11, 2011, at 11:11, Samuel will be sacrificed by these demons for the devil to rise.

On November 11, 2011, Joseph finds that Sadie has arrived in Barcelona, and they are cornered in a maze by Javier, who brandishes the gun at Joseph before fleeing. When Joseph and Sadie return to the house, they find that Richard has died. Joseph breaks into Javier's home and finds Samuel's photos in a diary with the word SACRIFICIO scrawled on its pages, along with 11-11-11. Javier finds Joseph and shoots him.

Joseph comes to that night, calls Sadie, and tells her to get the photos that were developed as he runs back to the house. He finds Samuel, who urges Joseph to save the notebooks that chronicle the church's history. As they do, they're cornered by the demonic beings, who take Samuel at 11:02PM. Joseph attempts to find and rescue Samuel as Sadie gets the photos. Joseph finds Samuel, suspended in the air, surrounded by the beings. A sinkhole opens, causing Joseph to fall away from rescue, but he manages to crawl out of the sinkhole as one of the creatures readies a blade to stab Samuel. Joseph steps in the path of the blade exactly at 11:11, and the beings disappear.

Sadie, looking through the photos, burns them all. Joseph and Samuel lie out in the rain as Joseph begins to die. Samuel tells Joseph that 11-11 was not a window opening, but one closing, and that the end of the world could only be stopped then. Joseph finds the notebooks and reads one that Samuel wrote, depicting his own death.  Samuel stands, collects the notebooks, and leaves Joseph to die after revealing that the beings were, in fact, angels and that he was the devil that needed to be stopped. A new religion will start, and Joseph's, Samuel's, Sadie's, Grant's, and Ana's books will become the new gospels.

Sometime later, a large church is filled with Samuel's followers, each bearing a book titled The Book of Joseph.

Cast

Production

Reception
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 7% approval rating based on 14 reviews, with an average rating of 3.71/10. Metacritic reports a score of 26/100 based on 5 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".

Release
The film was most popular in Brazil and Russia.

See also
 The Number 23
 2012

References

External links

2011 films
2011 horror films
2011 independent films
2011 horror thriller films
American horror thriller films
American supernatural horror films
American independent films
American supernatural thriller films
Spanish independent films
Spanish supernatural horror films
Spanish horror thriller films
English-language Spanish films
Columbia Pictures films
Films directed by Darren Lynn Bousman
Films scored by Joseph Bishara
Films set in 2011
Films set in Barcelona
Films shot in Barcelona
The Devil in film
Religious horror films
Films about Catholic priests
2010s English-language films
2010s American films
English-language horror films

11-11-11 (film)


The Hibbert Lectures are an annual series of non-sectarian lectures on theological issues. They are sponsored by the Hibbert Trust, which was founded in 1847 by the Unitarian Robert Hibbert with a goal to uphold "the unfettered exercise of private judgement in matters of religion.". In recent years the lectures have been broadcast by the BBC.

Lecturers (incomplete list)

1878-1894 (First Series)
1878 Max Müller On the Religions of India (inaugural)
1879 Peter le Page Renouf The Religion of the Egyptians
1880 Ernest Renan Lectures on the Influence of the Institutions, Thought And Culture of Rome on Christianity And the Development of the Catholic Church
1881 T. W. Rhys Davids Indian Buddhism
1882 Abraham Kuenen National Religions and Universal Religion
1883 Charles Beard The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in its Relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge
1884 Albert Reville The Native Religions of Mexico and Peru
1885 Otto Pfleiderer The Influence of the Apostle Paul on the Development of Christianity
1886 John Rhys Lectures on the origin and growth of religion as illustrated by Celtic heathendom
1887 Archibald Sayce Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians
1888 Edwin Hatch Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages Upon the Christian Church
1891 Eugene, Count Goblet D'Alviella Lectures on the Origin and Growth of the Concept of God, as Illustrated by Anthropology and History
1892 Claude Montefiore The Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Hebrews
1893 Charles Barnes Upton Lectures on the bases of religious belief
1894 James Drummond Via, Veritas, Vita; Christianity in its most simple and intelligible form

1900-1949
1906 Franz Cumont (on Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism)
1908 William James A Pluralistic Universe
1911 Lewis Richard Farnell The Higher Aspects of Greek Religion
1912 James Hope Moulton Early Zoroastrianism
1913 Josiah Royce The Problem of Christianity, online edition (volume one)
1913 David Samuel Margoliouth The Early Development of Mohammedanism
1914 Herbert A. Giles Confucianism and Its Rivals
1916 Louis de La Vallée-Poussin The Way to Nirvána: Ancient Buddhism as a Discipline of Salvation
1916 Philip H. Wicksteed The reactions between dogma & philosophy illustrated from the works of S. Thomas Aquinas
1919 Joseph Estlin Carpenter Theism in Medieval India
1920 William Ralph Inge "The State, Visible and Invisible"
1921 James Moffatt The Approach to the New Testament
1922 Lawrence Pearsall Jacks Religious Perplexities
1923 Felix Adler The Reconstruction of the Spiritual Ideal
1924 Lawrence Pearsall Jacks Human consciousness towards God
1925 Francis Greenwood Peabody
1929 Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan An Idealist View of Life
1930 Rabindranath Tagore The Religion of Man
1931 George Dawes Hicks The Philosophical Bases of Theism
1932 Robert Seymour Conway Ancient Italy and Modern Religion
1933 Lawrence Pearsall Jacks The Revolt Against Mechanism
1934 Albert Schweitzer Religion in Modern Civilization
1936 William Ernest Hocking Living Religions and a World Faith
1937 Gilbert Murray Liberality and Civilisation

1950-1999
1959 Basil Willey Darwin And Butler: Two Versions of Evolution
1963 James Luther Adams
1964 Geoffrey Nuttall, Roger Thomas, Roy Drummond Whitehorn, Harry Lismer Short, The Beginnings of Nonconformity
1965 Frederick Hadaway Hilliard Christianity in education
1977 Jonathon Porritt, Bringing Religion Down to Earth
1979 Rustum Roy Experimenting with Truth
1989 Bede Griffiths, Christianity in the Light of the East

2000-
2003 James L. Cox Religion without God: Methodological Agnosticism and the Future of Religious Studies
2005 Karen Armstrong and Khalid Hameed Spirituality and global citizenship

Notes

British lecture series
Religious education in the United Kingdom
Unitarianism in the United Kingdom
Recurring events established in 1878
1878 establishments in the United Kingdom

Hibbert Lectures


Roero (;  ) is a geographical area in the north-east corner of the province of Cuneo in Piedmont, north-west Italy. This hilly region is known for its wines and for its fruit production: particularly the peaches of Canale and the local variety of pear known as Madernassa which originated in the late eighteenth century in Vezza d'Alba. Strawberries are also grown.

The name comes from the Roero family of bankers and traders, who were prominent in the political life of Asti and its environs, and who dominated this area for a number of centuries during the Middle Ages.

The designated zone of production for the DOCG wines Roero and Roero Arneis is a subset of this territory which comprises the communes of Castellinaldo, Canale, Corneliano d'Alba, Piobesi d'Alba and Vezza d'Alba, plus parts of Baldissero d'Alba, Castagnito, Guarene, Govone, Magliano Alfieri, Montà, Monteu Roero, Pocapaglia, Priocca, Santa Vittoria d'Alba, Santo Stefano Roero and Sommariva Perno.

Extent
The territory lies to the north of Alba. The river Tanaro marks its southern border, dividing it from the Langhe. To the north-east its informal boundary with Monferrato follows approximately the line of the border between the provinces of Cuneo and Asti, although Cisterna d'Asti can be taken to be part of Roero. To the north-west it is confined by the province of Turin. To the west its border is taken to be the SS 661 state road which runs through the communes of Bra, Sanfrè and Sommariva del Bosco.

The communes which fall, partly or entirely within Roero are thus:
Alba
Baldissero d'Alba
Bra
Canale
Castagnito
Castellinaldo
Ceresole Alba
Cisterna d'Asti
Corneliano d'Alba
Govone
Guarene
Magliano Alfieri
Montà
Montaldo Roero
Monteu Roero
Monticello d'Alba
Piobesi d'Alba
Pocapaglia
Priocca
Sanfrè
Santa Vittoria d'Alba
Santo Stefano Roero
Sommariva del Bosco
Sommariva Perno
Vezza d'Alba

Viticulture

Roero is a recognized wine-making area of the Province of Cuneo in the Piedmont region; along with its neighbours Langhe and Monferrato it forms the "Distretto Langhe, Roero e Monferrato" wine district.

Roero wines include the red Roero, as well as the white Roero Arneis, and sparkling white Roero Arneis Spumante. The name "Roero" lacking any further specification is reserved for red wines made from a minimum of 95% Nebbiolo grapes with the addition of 2%–5% of non-aromatic red varieties. Roero must be aged in cellars for twenty months, six of them in wooden barrels, while Roero riserva (reserve) must be aged at least 32 months total, with the same minimum of six months spent in wood. Nebbiolo has 194.90 hectares dedicated to it in Roero.

Meanwhile, Roero Arneis and Roero Arneis Spumante are made from 95% Arneis grapes with the rest from non-aromatic white varieties of the Piedmonte region. The Arneis grape variety has 832.89 hectares of vineyards devoted to it in Roero.

Roero became a DOC region in 1985 and a DOCG region in 2005.

Other wines produced include Barbera d'Alba, Birbèt, Bonarda, Favorita, Moscato d'Asti and Nebbiolo d'Alba.

Notes

References
 Enoteca Regionale del Roero
 http://www.comune.asti.it/cultura/stemmi/roero.shtml  provides an account of the Roero family. See also :it:Roero (famiglia).
 Official UNESCO photo selection
 Complete UNESCO photo gallery before selection

Wine regions of Italy
Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont: Langhe-Roero and Monferrato

Roero


The Taipei Cultural Mosque () is a mosque in Taipei, Taiwan. It is the third mosque in Taiwan.

History
The mosque was originally built in 1950 at Roosevelt Road in Taipei. Because of the expansion of roads a few year later, the mosque was moved to Xinhai Road. It was reopened in 1983. The mosque was inaugurated by the Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the ROC, Assad Abdul Aziz Al-Zuhair. The mosque was renovated on April 2010 with help from the Indonesian Economic and Trade Office to Taipei.

Architecture
The mosque is a building with five floors. It has Islamic traditional culture and modern architecture.

Activities
The mosque serves as the headquarters of the Chinese Muslim Youth League. It also houses the office of the Taiwan Halal Integrity Development Association, a group that issues Halal certification to food products produced in Taiwan for Muslims to eat. The mosque also has dormitories for Muslim travelers and foreign missionaries to stay.

Funding
It is not like Taipei Grand Mosque, which is heavily supported by the ROC government and Kuomintang. Taipei Cultural Mosque depends heavily on private donations. This makes it a purely civilian mosque concentrating on religious affairs.

References

Mosques in Taiwan
Taipei

Taipei Cultural Mosque


Clematis virginiana (also known as devil's darning needles, devil's hair, love vine, traveller's joy, virgin's bower, Virginia virgin's bower, wild hops, and woodbine; syn. Clematis virginiana L. var. missouriensis (Rydb.) Palmer & Steyermark  ) is a vine of the Ranunculaceae  (buttercup family) native to North America from Newfoundland to southern Manitoba down to the Gulf of Mexico.  The rationale for some of the common names is unclear, as they include examples normally applied to unrelated plants, including twining parasites (e.g. "devil's hair" for Cuscuta). The name "Love Vine" also is applied to alleged aphrodisiacs, such as Caribbean species of Cassytha, which are unrelated to Clematis, not being in the family Ranunculaceae.

Description
This plant is an aggressively growing vine which can climb to heights of  by twisting leafstalks. The leaves are opposite and pinnately compound, trifoliate (3 leaflets) that have coarse unequal teeth on the margins. It produces small dull white flowers of width  from July to September that are faintly sweetly fragrant; sometimes dioecious so that there are separate staminate (male) and pistillate (female) plants. The male plants are a little showier in flower and don't bear seed. The dry fruit is an achene with long hair as silvery gray feathery plumes attached in late August into November. It grows on the edges of the woods, moist slopes, fence rows, in thickets and on streambanks. It grows in full sun to light full shade and is very adaptable to many soils from sandy to clay, dry to draining wet, and acid to alkaline with a pH range of 6.0 to 8.5. It has a deep but sparse, fibrous root system that makes it hard to transplant.(2.) Good for USDA hardiness zones of 3 to 8. Virgin's bower is not commonly planted in gardens and landscapes in most places. It is sold by a good number of native plant nurseries and some specialty and large conventional nurseries.

What is usually sold at most every conventional nursery or garden center is the similar sweet autumn clematis, Clematis terniflora, from Japan that is much more rampant growing, that bears heavier clouds of white flowers with a stronger fragrance, that has simple leaves not compound with 3 leaflets, that as one plant self-sows around a lot, and becomes an invasive plant when escaping cultivation in North America.

It is a larval host of the clematis clearwing moth (Alcathoe caudata).

References

Further reading

virginiana
Vines
Flora of Northern America
Plants described in 1755
Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus

Clematis virginiana


A frigate () is a warship. The term has been used for warships of many sizes and roles for a few centuries.  During the age of sail they were small, agile ships that were extensively used in the American War of Independence, and later against the British.  Their main use was shore defense.

In the modern day the term Frigate covers a broad range of ships. This is primarily for political reasons. The generally accepted term is of a warship less that 6, 000 dwt and greater that around 2, 000 dwt. Its primary purpose is usually anti-submarine warfare. It can also be a long range patrol vessel or in smaller navies an anti-air vessel.

Warships
Ships

Frigate


Breast reduction is a plastic surgery to make human breasts smaller. The doctor takes out fat, skin, and glands. It is done on women most of the time, but men can also get it. In 2005, more than 113,000 women had breast reductions.

Aside from aesthetic reasons, many women choose to undergo breast reduction surgery to help reduce back strain, skin irritation, or breathing problems caused by large breasts.

References

Surgery
Breasts

Breast reduction


The German-speaking Community of Belgium (, short DGB) is one of the three federal communities in Belgium. It is the main part of the so-called East Cantons () of Belgium. It has an area of , and a population of over 73,000, of which almost 100% are German speaking (traditionally Ripuarian-speaking).

Its capital is Eupen; it is part of the province of Liège and borders on the Netherlands, Germany, and Luxembourg.

The area was known as Eupen-Malmedy, and is now called the East Cantons. It is made up of the German-speaking Community and the municipalities of Malmedy and Waimes (Weismes), which belong to the French-Speaking Community of Belgium.

The East Cantons were part of the Rhine Province of Prussia in Germany until 1920 but were annexed by Belgium following Germany's defeat in World War I and the subsequent Treaty of Versailles. Thus they also became known as the cantons rédimés, "redeemed cantons". The peace treaty of Versailles demanded the "questioning" of the local population about their political status.

This was not a secret vote, and anyone who did not want to become Belgian had to register their full name and address. Many locals feared reprisals or even expulsion after enlisting.

In the mid-1920s the kingdom of Belgium seemed to want to sell the region back to Germany. The French government told the Belgians to stop the Belgian-German talks about the deal.

In 1940 the new cantons were retaken by Germany in World War II. They had only been in Belgium for 20 years, so the majority of people of the east cantons still thought of themselves as German. Following the defeat of Germany in 1945 the cantons were once again taken over by Belgium.

In the early 1960s Belgium was divided into four language areas, the Dutch speaking Flemish area, the French speaking area, the bilingual capital of Brussels, and the German speaking area of the east cantons. In 1973, three communities and three regions were established and granted internal autonomy. The legislative Parliament of the German-speaking Community, Rat der Deutschsprachigen Gemeinschaft, was set up. Today the German-speaking Community has a degree of self government, especially in language and cultural matters, but it still part of French speaking Wallonia.

Some people want the German-speaking Community to be its own region. One of these is the current Minister-President Karl-Heinz Lambertz.

Government
The German-speaking Community has its own government, which is appointed for five years by its parliament. The Government is headed by a Minister-President, who acts as the "prime minister" of the Community, and is assisted by the Ministry of the German-speaking Community. The government currently formed by four Ministers:
 Karl-Heinz Lambertz, Minister-President and Minister for District Authorities
 Bernd Gentges, Deputy Minister-President and Minister for Vocational Training and Employment, Social Policy and Tourism
 Oliver Paasch, Minister for Education and Research
 Isabelle Weykmans, Minister for Culture and Media, Monuments and Sites, Youth and Sport

Towns and cities in the German-speaking Community

 Amel
 Büllingen
 Burg-Reuland
 Bütgenbach
 Eupen
 Kelmis
 Lontzen
 Raeren
 Sankt Vith

Other websites
 Deutschsprachige Gemeinschaft Official site of the German-speaking Community in Belgium
 Parliament of the DG
 Official site of Karl-Heinz Lambertz, the current premier
 The German-speaking Community (named Ostbelgien), belgium.be

Regions of Belgium
Wallonia
Liège (province)

German-speaking Community of Belgium


Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Ozymandias är en dikt (sonett) av den brittiske poeten Percy Bysshe Shelley. Den publicerades första gången den 11 januari 1818 i tidningen The Examiner. Under antiken var Ozymandias (Ὀσυμανδύας) ett grekiskt namn på farao Ramses II.

Källor

Brittisk litteratur
Brittisk poesi
Dikter 1818
Forntidens Egypten i fiktion
Verk av Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias


Serene Highness is a style of address used by several princely and noble families throughout present-day Europe. It has also been used historically. It ranks below Royal Highness and Imperial Highness.

is the title reserved for the princes of the sovereign princely families, currently unique the ruling families of  Monaco and Liechtenstein. Some heraldists believe it is also due to the descendants of the sovereign Principality of Sperlinga, who sold the Castle but kept the title, and it is from all its members.

Examples of usage
 Princes of the Blood at the French royal court of Versailles (such as His Serene Highness The Duke of Penthièvre)
 The present Prince of Monaco and all his descendants in line father and mother.
 Giovanni I, Prince of Sperlinga  .
 Various German princely states prior to the country being unified in 1871.
 Various Russian princely families
 Her Serene Highness Princess Romanova-Krasinskaya
 Princes of Carignan

Styles (manners of address)

Serene Highness


A dog sled is a sled that is pulled by sled dogs and can go over ice and snow. Dog sleds were first made by First Nations people in Canada before the English and French got there, because they had no horses so they used dogs to travel. They were also made by people in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia because it was also easier to travel with dogs in parts of those countries.

Racing dog sleds is a popular sport which a lot of people enjoy watching or actually going in the sleds to race. It is more popular in places where there is not much horse racing.

Animal-powered vehicles

Dog sled


USA Today (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virginia. Its newspaper is printed at 37 sites across the United States and at five additional sites internationally. The paper's dynamic design influenced the style of local, regional, and national newspapers worldwide through its use of concise reports, colorized images, informational graphics, and inclusion of popular culture stories, among other distinct features.

With an average print circulation of 159,233  a digital-only subscriber base of 504,000  and an approximate daily readership of 2.6 million, USA Today has the largest circulation of any newspaper in the United States. It has been shown to maintain a generally center-left audience, in regards to political persuasion. USA Today is distributed in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and an international edition is distributed in Asia, Canada, Europe, and the Pacific Islands.

History

USA Today was first conceived on February 29, 1980, when a company task force known as "Project NN" met with then-chairman of Gannett, Al Neuharth, in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Early regional prototypes of USA Today included East Bay Today, an Oakland, California-based publication published in the late 1970s to serve as the morning edition of the Oakland Tribune, an afternoon newspaper which Gannett owned at the time. On June 11, 1981, Gannett printed the first prototypes of the proposed publication. The two proposed design layouts were mailed to newsmakers and prominent leaders in journalism for review and feedback. Gannett's board of directors approved the launch of the national newspaper, titled USA Today, on December 5, 1981. At launch, Neuharth was appointed president and publisher of the newspaper, adding those responsibilities to his existing position as Gannett's chief executive officer.

Gannett announced the launch of the paper on April 20, 1982. USA Today began publishing on September 15, 1982, initially in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. metropolitan areas, for a newsstand price of 25¢ (equivalent to ¢ in 2020). After selling out the first issue, Gannett gradually expanded the national distribution of the paper, reaching an estimated circulation of 362,879 copies by the end of 1982, double the amount of sales that Gannett projected.

The design uniquely incorporated color graphics and photographs. Initially, only its front news section pages were rendered in four-color, while the remaining pages were printed in a spot color format. The paper's overall style and elevated use of graphics – developed by Neuharth, in collaboration with staff graphics designers George Rorick, Sam Ward, Suzy Parker, John Sherlock and Web Bryant – was derided by critics, who referred to it as a "McPaper" or "television you can wrap fish in", because it opted to incorporate concise nuggets of information more akin to the style of television news, rather than in-depth stories like traditional newspapers, which many in the newspaper industry considered to be a dumbing down of content. Although USA Today had been profitable for just ten years as of 1997, it changed the appearance and feel of newspapers around the world.

On July 2, 1984, the newspaper switched from predominantly black-and-white to full-color photography and graphics in all four sections. The following week, on July 10, USA Today launched an international edition intended for U.S. readers abroad, followed four months later on October 8 with the rollout of the first transmission via satellite of its international version to Singapore. On April 8, 1985, the paper published its first special bonus section, a 12-page section called "Baseball '85", which previewed the 1985 Major League Baseball season.

By the fourth quarter of 1985, USA Today had become the second-largest newspaper in the United States, reaching a daily circulation of 1.4 million copies. Total daily readership of the paper by 1987 (according to Simmons Market Research Bureau statistics) had reached 5.5 million, the largest of any daily newspaper in the U.S. On May 6, 1986, USA Today began production of its international edition in Switzerland. USA Today operated at a loss for most of its first four years of operation, accumulating a total deficit of $233 million after taxes, according to figures released by Gannett in July 1987; the newspaper began turning its first profit in May 1987, six months ahead of Gannett corporate revenue projections.

On January 29, 1988, USA Today published the largest edition in its history, a 78-page weekend edition featuring a section previewing Super Bowl XXII; the edition included 44.38 pages of advertising and sold 2,114,055 copies, setting a single-day record for an American newspaper (and surpassed seven months later on September 2, when its Labor Day weekend edition sold 2,257,734 copies). On April 15, USA Today launched a third international printing site, based in Hong Kong. The international edition set circulation and advertising records during August 1988, with coverage of the 1988 Summer Olympics, selling more than 60,000 copies and 100 pages of advertising.

By July 1991, Simmons Market Research Bureau estimated that USA Today had a total daily readership of nearly 6.6 million, an all-time high and the largest readership of any daily newspaper in the United States. On September 1, 1991, USA Today launched a fourth printsite for its international edition in London for the United Kingdom and the British Isles. The international edition's schedule was changed as of April 1, 1994, to Monday through Friday, rather than from Tuesday through Saturday, in order to accommodate business travelers; on February 1, 1995, USA Today opened its first editorial bureau outside the United States at its Hong Kong publishing facility; additional editorial bureaus were launched in London and Moscow in 1996.

On April 17, 1995, USA Today launched its website to provide real-time news coverage; in June 2002 the site expanded to include a section providing travel information and booking tools. On August 28, 1995, a fifth international publishing site was launched in Frankfurt, Germany, to print and distribute the international edition throughout most of Europe.

On October 4, 1999, USA Today began running advertisements on its front page for the first time. In 2017, some pages of USA Today's website features Auto-Play functionality for video or audio-aided stories.

On February 8, 2000, Gannett launched USA Today Live, a broadcast and Internet initiative designed to provide coverage from the newspaper to broadcast television stations nationwide for use in their local newscasts and their websites; the venture also provided integration with the USA Today website, which transitioned from a text-based format to feature audio and video clips of news content.

The paper launched a sixth printing site for its international edition on May 15, 2000, in Milan, Italy, followed on July 10 by the launch of an international printing facility in Charleroi, Belgium.

In 2001, two interactive units were launched: on June 19, USA Today and Gannett Newspapers launched the USA Today Careers Network (now Careers.com), a website featuring localized employment listings, then on July 18, the USA Today News Center was launched as an interactive television news service developed through a joint venture with the On Command Corporation that was distributed to hotels around the United States. On September 12 of that year, the newspaper set an all-time single day circulation record, selling 3,638,600 copies for its edition covering the September 11 attacks. That November, USA Today migrated its operations from Gannett's previous corporate headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, to the company's new headquarters in nearby McLean.

In 2004, Jack Kelley, a senior foreign correspondent for USA Today, was found to have fabricated foreign news reports over the past decade. Kelley resigned.

On December 12, 2005, Gannett announced that it would combine the separate newsroom operations of the online and print entities of USA Today, with USAToday.com's vice president and editor-in-chief Kinsey Wilson promoted to co-executive editor, alongside existing executive editor John Hillkirk.

In December 2010, USA Today launched the USA Today API for sharing data with partners of all types.

Newsroom restructuring and 2011 graphical tweaks
On August 27, 2010, USA Today announced that it would undergo a reorganization of its newsroom, announcing the layoffs of 130 staffers. It also announced that the paper would shift its focus away from print and place more emphasis on its digital platforms (including USAToday.com and its related mobile applications) and launch of a new publication called USA Today Sports.

On January 24, 2011, to reverse a revenue slide, the paper introduced a tweaked format that modified the appearance of its front section pages, which included a larger logo at the top of each page; coloring tweaks to section front pages; a new sans-serif font, called Prelo, for certain headlines of main stories (replacing the Gulliver typeface that had been implemented for story headers in April 2000); an updated "Newsline" feature featuring larger, "newsier" headline entry points; and the increasing and decreasing of mastheads and white space to present a cleaner style.

2012 redesign

On September 14, 2012, USA Today underwent the first major redesign in its history, in commemoration for the 30th anniversary of the paper's first edition. Developed in conjunction with brand design firm Wolff Olins, the print edition of USA Today added a page covering technology stories and expanded travel coverage within the Life section and increased the number of color pages included in each edition, while retaining longtime elements. The "globe" logo used since the paper's inception was replaced with a new logo featuring a large circle rendered in colors corresponding to each of the sections, serving as an infographic that changes with news stories, containing images representing that day's top stories.

The paper's website was also extensively overhauled using a new, in-house content management system known as Presto and a design created by Fantasy Interactive, that incorporates flipboard-style navigation to switch between individual stories (which obscure most of the main and section pages), clickable video advertising and a responsive design layout. The site was designed and developed to be more interactive, faster, provide "high impact" advertising units (known as Gravity), and provide the ability for Gannett to syndicate USA Today content to the websites of its local properties, and vice versa. To accomplish this goal, Gannett Digital migrated its newspaper and television station websites to the Presto platform. Developers built a separate platform to provide optimizations for mobile and touchscreen devices. The Gravity ad won Digiday's Best Publishing Innovation in Advertising in 2016, thanks to an 80% full-watch user engagement rate on desktop, and 96% on mobile.

Following the relaunch, the editorial team behind USA Today Investigations ramped up its "longread" article plans, following the success of the series Ghost Factories. With differing platform requirements, USA Today's mobile website did not offer any specialized support for these multi-chapter stories. Nearing the end of 2012, more than one-third of USA Today readership was browsing only using their mobile phones, and the majority of these users were accessing the mobile website (as opposed to the iOS and Android applications) with the newer, less-obtrusive advertising strategy. Gannet Digital designed, developed, and released the longread mobile experience to coincide with the launch of Brad Heath's series Locked Up, which won the Investigative Reporters and Editors Tom Renner Award in October 2013.

Gannett Digital's focus on its mobile content experience paid off in 2012 with multiple awards; including the Eppy for Best Mobile Application, the Mobile Excellence award for Best User Experience, the MOBI award for Editorial Content, and Mobile Publisher of the Year.

The USA Today site design was launched on desktop, mobile and TV throughout 2013 and 2014, although archive content accessible through search engines remains available through the pre-relaunch design.

Mid-2010s expansion and restructuring
On October 6, 2013, Gannett test launched a condensed daily edition of USA Today (part of what was internally known within Gannett as the "Butterfly" initiative) for distribution as an insert in four of its newspapers – The Indianapolis Star, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, the Fort Myers-based The News-Press and the Appleton, Wisconsin-based The Post-Crescent. The launch of the syndicated insert caused USA Today to restructure its operations to allow seven-day-a-week production to accommodate the packaging of its national and international news content and enterprise stories (comprising about 10 pages for the weekday and Saturday editions, and up to 22 pages for the Sunday edition) into the pilot insert. Gannett later announced on December 11, that it would formally launch the condensed daily edition of USA Today in 31 additional local newspapers nationwide through April 2014 (with the Palm Springs, California-based The Desert Sun and the Lafayette, Louisiana-based Advertiser being the first newspapers outside of the pilot program participants to add the supplement on December 15), citing "positive feedback" to the feature from readers and advertisers of the initial four papers. Gannett was given permission from the Alliance for Audited Media to count the circulation figures from the syndicated local insert with the total circulation count for the flagship national edition of USA Today.

On January 4, 2014, USA Today acquired the consumer product review website Reviewed. In the first quarter of 2014, Gannett launched a condensed USA Today insert into 31 other newspapers in its network, thereby increasing the number of inserts to 35, in an effort to shore up circulation after it regained its position as the highest-circulated week daily newspaper in the United States in October 2013. On September 3, 2014, USA Today announced that it would lay off roughly 70 employees in a restructuring of its newsroom and business operations. In October 2014, USA Today and OpenWager Inc. entered into a partnership to release a Bingo mobile app called USA Today Bingo Cruise.

On December 3, 2015, Gannett formally launched the USA Today Network, a national digital newsgathering service providing shared content between USA Today and the company's 92 local newspapers throughout the United States as well as pooling advertising services on both a hyperlocal and national reach. The Louisville Courier-Journal had earlier soft-launched the service as part of a pilot program started on November 17, coinciding with an imaging rebrand for the Louisville, Kentucky-based newspaper; Gannett's other local newspaper properties, as well as those it acquired through its merger with the Journal Media Group, gradually began identifying themselves as part of the USA Today Network (foregoing use of the Gannett name outside of requisite ownership references) through early January 2016.

In May 2021, USA Today introduced a paywall for some of its online stories.

On June 16, 2022, it was reported that USA Today removed 23 articles written by journalist Gabriela Miranda after an inquiry related to one of her articles triggered an internal investigation and found that Miranda had fabricated sources on articles pertaining to the Texas Heartbeat Act, Ukrainian women's issues due to the Russian invasion, and an article on sunscreen. Miranda resigned.

Layout and format

USA Today is known for news in compact, easy-to-read-and-comprehend stories. In the main edition circulated in the United States and Canada, each edition consists of four sections: News (the "front page" section), Money, Sports, and Life. Since March 1998, the Friday edition of Life has been split into two sections: the regular Life focusing on entertainment (subtitled Weekend; section E), which features television reviews and listings, a DVD column, film reviews and trends, and a travel supplement called Destinations & Diversions (section D). The international edition of the paper features two sections: News and Money in one; with Sports and Life in the other.

Atypical of most daily newspapers, the paper does not print on Saturdays and Sundays; the Friday edition serves as the weekend edition. USA Today has published special Saturday and Sunday editions in the past: the first issue released during the standard calendar weekend was published on January 19, 1991, when it released a Saturday "Extra" edition updating coverage of the Gulf War from the previous day; the paper published special seven-day-a-week editions for the first time on July 19, 1996, when it published special editions for exclusive distribution in the host city of Atlanta and surrounding areas for the two-week duration of the 1996 Summer Olympics. USA Today prints each complete story on the front page of the respective section with the exception of the cover story. The cover story is a longer story that requires a jump (readers must turn to another page in the paper to complete the story, usually the next page of that section). On certain days, the news or sports section will take up two paper sections, and there will be a second cover story within the second section.

Each section is differentiated by a certain color in a box on the top-left corner of the first page; the principal section colors are blue for News (section A), green for Money (section B), red for Sports (section C), and purple for Life (section D); in the paper's early years, the Life and Money sections were also assigned blue nameplates and spot color, as the presses used at USA Today printing facilities did not yet accommodate the use of other colors to denote all four original sections. Orange is used for bonus sections (sections E+), which are published occasionally for business travel trends and the Olympics. Other bonus sections for sports (such as for the PGA Tour preview, NCAA basketball tournaments, Memorial Day auto races (Indianapolis 500 and Coca-Cola 600), NFL opening weekend and the Super Bowl) previously used the orange color, but later changed to the regular sports red in their sports bonus sections. To strengthen their association with USA Today, Gannett incorporated the USA Today color scheme into a graphics package for TV news programming that was phased in from late 2012 across its television station group (which was spun-off in July 2015 into the separate broadcast and digital media company Tegna). The package uses the color scheme in a rundown graphic on most stations persisting throughout their newscasts, as well as bumpers for individual story topics.

In many ways, USA Today breaks the traditional newspaper layout. Some examples of its divergence from tradition include using the left-hand quarter of each section as "reefers" (front-page paragraphs referring to stories on inside pages), sometimes using sentence-length blurbs to describe stories inside. The lead reefer is the cover page feature "Newsline", which shows summarized descriptions of headline stories featured in all four main sections and any special sections. As a national newspaper, USA Today cannot focus on the weather for any one city. Therefore, the entire back page of the News section is used for weather maps of the continental United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and temperature lists for many cities throughout the U.S. and the world. Temperatures for individual cities on the primary forecast map and temperature lists are suffixed with a one- or two-letter code, such as "t" for thunderstorms, referencing the expected weather conditions. The colorized forecast map was created by staff designer George Rorick (who left USA Today for a similar position at The Detroit News in 1986), and was copied by newspapers around the world, breaking from the traditional style of monochrome contouring or simplistic text to denote temperature ranges. National precipitation maps for the next three days (the next five days before the 2012 redesign), and four-day forecasts and air quality indexes for 36 major U.S. cities (16 cities prior to 1999) – with individual cities color-coded by the temperature contour corresponding to the given area on the forecast map – are also featured. Weather data is provided by AccuWeather, which has served as the forecast provider for USA Today for most of the paper's existence (except from January 2002 to September 2012, when forecast data was provided by The Weather Channel through a long-term multimedia content agreement with Gannett). In the bottom left-hand corner of the weather page is "Weather Focus", a graphic which explains various meteorological phenomena. On some days, the Weather Focus could be a photo of a rare meteorological event.

On business holidays or days when bonus sections are included in the issue, the Money and Life sections are usually combined into one section, while combinations of the Friday Life editions into one section are common during quiet weeks. Advertising is often covered in the Monday Money section, with a review of a recent television ad, and after Super Bowl Sunday, a review of the ads aired during the broadcast with the results of the Ad Track live survey. Stock tables for individual stock exchanges (comprising one subsection for companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and another for companies trading on NASDAQ and the American Stock Exchange) and mutual indexes were discontinued with the 2012 redesign due to the myriad electronic ways to check individual stock prices, in line with most newspapers.

Book coverage, including reviews and a national sales chart which debuted on October 28, 1994, is seen on Thursdays in Life, with the full A.C. Nielsen television ratings chart printed on Wednesdays or Thursdays, depending on release. The paper also publishes the Mediabase survey for several genres of music, based on radio airplay on Tuesdays, along with their own chart of the top ten singles in general on Wednesdays. Because of the same limitations as its nationalized forecasts, the television page in Life – which provides prime time and late night listings (running from 8:00 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Eastern Time) – incorporates boilerplate "Local news" or "Local programming" descriptions to denote time periods in which the five major English language broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and The CW) cede airtime to allow their owned and affiliated stations to carry syndicated programs or local newscasts. The television page has never carried local scheduling information similar to those in local newspapers. Like most national papers, USA Today has no comic strips.

One of the staples of the News section is "Across the USA", a state-by-state roundup of headlines. The summaries consist of paragraph-length Associated Press reports highlighting one story in each state, the District of Columbia, and one U.S. territory. Similarly, the "For the Record" page of the Sports section (which features sports scores for the previous four days of league play plus individual non-league events, seasonal league statistics and wagering lines for that day's games) previously featured a rundown of winning numbers from the previous deadline date for all participating state lotteries and individual multi-state lotteries.

Some traditions have been retained. The lead story still appears on the upper-right side of the front page. Commentary and political cartoons occupy the last few pages of the News section. Stock and mutual fund data are presented in the Money section. But USA Today is sufficiently different in aesthetics to be recognized on sight, even in a mix of other newspapers, such as at a newsstand. The overall design and layout of USA Today has been described as neo-Victorian.

On most of the sections' front pages, in the lower left-hand corner, are "USA Today Snapshots" graphs which offer statistics on lifestyle interests according to the section (for example, a snapshot in "Life" could show how many people tend to watch a certain genre of television show based upon their mood). These "Snapshots" graphs employ icons roughly pertaining to the graph's subject (using the example above, the graph's bars could be made up of several TV sets, or ended by one). Snapshots are loosely based on research by a national institute (with the credited source in fine print below the graph).

The newspaper also features an occasional magazine supplement called Open Air, which launched on March 7, 2008, and appears several times a year. Other advertorials appear throughout the year, mainly on Fridays.

Opinion section
The opinion section prints USA Today editorials, columns by guest writers and members of the editorial board of contributors, letters to the editor, and editorial cartoons. One unique feature of the USA Today editorial page is the publication of opposing points of view: alongside the editorial board's piece on the day's topic runs an opposing view by a guest writer, often an expert in the field. The opinion pieces featured in each edition are chosen by the Board of Contributors, which is separate from the paper's news staff.

From 1999 to 2002 and again from 2004 to 2015, the editorial page editor was Brian Gallagher, who has worked for the newspaper since its founding. Other members of the editorial board included deputy editorial page editor Bill Sternberg, executive forum editor John Siniff, op-ed/forum page editor Glen Nishimura, operations editor Thuan Le Elston, letters editor Michelle Poblete, web content editor Eileen Rivers, and editorial writers Dan Carney, George Hager, and Saundra Torry. The newspaper's website calls this group "demographically and ideologically diverse."

Beginning with the 1984 United States presidential election, USA Today did not endorse candidates for the President of the United States or any other state or federal political office, a policy which has been re-evaluated during each four-year election cycle by the paper's Board of Contributors through an independent process, with any decision to override the policy based on a consensus vote in which fewer than two of the editorial board's members dissent or hold differing opinions. For most of its history, the paper's political editorials (most of them linked to the Presidential election cycle) had focused instead on major issues based on the differing concerns of voters, the vast array of information on these themes, and the board's aim to offer a fair viewpoint through the diverse political ideologies of its members and avoid reader perceptions of bias.

The avoidance of political editorials played a great part in USA Today long-standing reputation for "fluff", but after its 30th anniversary revamp, the paper took a more active stance on political issues, calling for stronger gun laws after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. It heavily criticized the Republican Party for both the 2013 government shutdown and the 2015 revolts in the United States House of Representatives that ended with the resignation of John Boehner as House Speaker. It also called out then-President Barack Obama and other top members of the Democratic Party for what it perceived as "inaction" during 2013–14, particularly over the NSA scandal and the ISIL beheading incidents.

The editorial board broke from its "non-endorsement" policy for the first time on September 29, 2016, when it published an op-ed piece condemning the candidacy of Republican nominee Donald Trump, calling him "unfit for the presidency" due to his inflammatory campaign rhetoric (particularly that aimed at the press, with certain media organizations being openly targeted and even banned from campaign rallies, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and the BBC, military veterans who had been prisoners of war, including 2008 Republican presidential candidate and Vietnam War veteran John McCain, immigrants, and various ethnic and religious groups); his temperament and lack of financial transparency; his "checkered" business record; his use of false and hyperbolic statements; the inconsistency of his viewpoints and issues with his vision on domestic and foreign policy; and, based on comments he had made during his campaign and criticisms by both Democrats and Republicans on these views, the potential risks to national security and constitutional ethics under a Trump administration, asking voters to "resist the siren song of a dangerous demagogue". The board wrote that the piece was not a "qualified endorsement" of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, for whom it was unable to reach a consensus (some editorial board members expressed that Clinton's public service record would help her "serve the nation ably as its president", while others had "serious reservations about [her] sense of entitlement, [...] lack of candor and [...] extreme carelessness in handling classified information"), suggesting instead tactical voting against Trump and GOP seats in swing states, advising voters to decide whether to vote for either Clinton, Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, Green Party nominee Jill Stein or a write-in candidate for president; or to focus on Senate, House and other down-ballot political races.

In February 2018, USA Today published an op-ed by Jerome Corsi, the DC bureau chief for the fringe conspiracy website InfoWars. Corsi, a prominent conspiracy theorist, was described by USA Today as an "author" and "investigative journalist". Corsi was a prominent proponent of the false conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not a US citizen, and Infowars has promoted conspiracy theories such as 9/11 being an "inside job."

In October 2018, USA Today was criticized by NBC News for publishing an editorial by President Trump that was replete with inaccuracies. The Washington Post fact-checker said that "almost every sentence contained a misleading statement or a falsehood."

In 2020, USA Today endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time, Democratic nominee Joe Biden. The newspaper also published an opposing editorial by Vice President Mike Pence, which called for his and Trump's re-election.

Personnel

In May 2012, Larry Kramer – a 40-year media industry veteran and former president of CBS Digital Media – was appointed president and publisher of USA Today, replacing David Hunke, who had been publisher of the newspaper since 2009. Kramer was tasked with developing a new strategy for the paper as it sought to increase revenue from its digital operations.

In July 2012, Kramer hired David Callaway – whom he had hired as lead editor of MarketWatch in 1999, two years after Kramer founded that website – as the paper's editor-in-chief. Callaway had previously worked at Bloomberg News covering the banking, investment-banking and asset-management businesses throughout Europe and at the Boston Herald, where he co-wrote a daily financial column on "comings and goings in the Boston business district".

The editor-in-chief  is Nicole Carroll.

Related publications and services

USA Weekend

USA Weekend was a sister publication that launched in 1953 as Family Weekly, a national Sunday magazine supplement intended for the Sunday editions of U.S. newspapers. It adopted its final title following Gannett's purchase of the magazine in 1985. The magazine was distributed to approximately 800 newspapers nationwide at its peak with most Gannett-owned local newspapers carrying it by default within their Sunday editions. It focused on social issues, entertainment, health, food and travel. On December 5, 2014, Gannett announced the end of USA Weekend after the December 26–28, 2014 edition, citing increasing operational costs and reduced advertising revenue. Most of its participating newspapers replaced it with the competing Sunday magazine Parade.

USA Today Sports Weekly

USA Today Sports Weekly is a weekly magazine that covers news and statistics from Major League Baseball, Minor League Baseball and NCAA baseball, the National Football League (NFL) and NASCAR. It debuted on April 5, 1991, as USA Today Baseball Weekly, a tabloid-sized publication published weekly on Wednesdays during the baseball season and bi-weekly during the off-season. The magazine expanded its sports coverage on September 4, 2002, adopting a general title after adding stories about the NFL. Sports Weekly added coverage of NASCAR on February 15, 2006, which lasted only through that year's race season. It added coverage of NCAA college football on August 8, 2007. The editorial operations of Sports Weekly operated independently from USA Today until being integrated into the newspaper's sports department in late 2005.

The Big Lead

The Big Lead is a sports blog operated by USA Today that was launched in February 2006 by Fantasy Sports Ventures, co-founded by Jason McIntyre and David Lessa. In April 2008 the blog established a strategic content and marketing partnership with Gannett. The Big Lead was purchased by Gannett  in January 2012. The site is usually updated 10 to 15 times per day between 8:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time. It mainly covers sports, but also provides news and commentary on other news topics, ranging from politics to pop culture.

USA Today: The Television Show
In 1987, Gannett and producer/former NBC CEO Grant Tinker began developing a news magazine series for broadcast syndication that attempted to bring the breezy style of USA Today to television. The result was USA Today: The Television Show (later USA Today on TV, then shortened to simply USA Today), which premiered on September 12, 1988. Correspondents on the program included Edie Magnus, Robin Young, Boyd Matson, Kenneth Walker, Dale Harimoto, Ann Abernathy, Bill Macatee and Beth Ruyak. As with the newspaper, the show was divided into four "sections" corresponding to the respective parts of the paper: News (the major headlines), Money (financial news and consumer reports), Sports (sports news and scores) and Life (entertainment and lifestyle stories). The series was syndicated by GTG Marketing, a subsidiary of GTG Entertainment, which promoted it as a prime access magazine show, hoping that stations would air it in a prime time slot.

The series was plagued by low ratings and negative reviews throughout its run. The program also suffered from being scheduled in poor timeslots in certain markets like New York City, the country's largest media market, where CBS O&O station WCBS-TV (channel 2) aired the program in a pre-dawn slot, before the program was picked up by NBC O&O WNBC five months into its run. After airing in the equally weak 5:30 a.m. slot, the series was moved to the more clear-eyed 9:30 a.m., but fared no better  (in contrast, CITY-DT in Toronto, Ontario, Canada [which became the flagship of the Citytv television network], ran it at 5:00 p.m.). The series was renewed for a second season, but the setbacks led to the mid-season cancellation of the TV version of USA Today in November 1989, after one-and-a-half seasons. The final edition aired on January 7, 1990.

Gannett announced plans to develop a USA Today-branded weekly half-hour television program titled Sports Page, as part of a renewed initiative to extend the brand into television but this program, planned for fall 2004, never launched.

VRtually There
VRtually There was a weekly virtual reality news program produced by the USA Today Network, which debuted on October 20, 2016. The program, which was carried on the USA Today mobile app and is still available on YouTube, showcased three original segments outlining news stories through a first-person perspective, recorded and produced by journalists from USA Today and its co-owned local newspapers. The program incorporated "cubemercials", long-form advertisements created by Gannett's in-house creative studio GET Creative, which are designed to allow consumer engagement in fully immersive experiences through virtual reality. The last story was uploaded on August 1, 2017, less than a year after the series creation.

For the Win
USA Today operates a sports website called For the Win. The sports and sports organizations covered are the NFL, NBA, WNBA, NHL, MLB, College Football, College Basketball, Motorsports, Soccer, Golf, Outdoors, and BET. A gateway to TicketSmarter to purchase sports and other event tickets is also hosted.

For the Win has sections covering pop culture and video games. Some articles for the latter are contributed by Good Luck Have Fun (GLHF), which describes itself as a gaming content agency that provides publishers around the globe such as USA Today and Sports Illustrated, with text and video.

Awards
 USA Today Minor League Player of the Year Award – First presented in 1988, this annual award has been given to a Minor league baseball player judged to have had the most outstanding season by a thirteen-person panel of baseball experts.
 USA Today All-USA high school baseball team – First presented in 1998, the award honors between nine and eleven outstanding high school baseball players from around the United States with selection to the team (separate awards honoring the High School Baseball Player of the Year and High School Baseball Coach of the Year have been given since 1989).
 USA Today All-USA high school basketball team – First presented in 1983, the award honors outstanding male and female basketball players from high schools around the United States with selection to the team, with one member of each team being named High School Basketball Player of the Year as well as coaches from a select boys' and girls' team as High School Basketball Coach of the Year.
 USA Today All-Joe Team (NFL) – First presented in 1992 in tribute to Kansas City Chiefs veteran defensive lineman Joe Phillips, the award honors 52 players across the NFL for exemplary performance during their rookie season.
 USA Today/National Prep Poll High School Football National Championship – Predating the first publication of USA Today under the sole decision of the National Prep Poll, it is a national championship honor awarded to the best high school football team(s) in the United States, based on rankings by the newspaper's sports editorial department.
 USA Today All-USA high school football team – First presented in 1982, the award honors outstanding football players from high schools around the United States (includes ranking the Super 25 teams in the U.S. the Top 10 teams in the East, South, Midwest and West, and USA Today High School Football Player of the Year).
 USA Today High School Football Coach of the Year – First presented in 1982, awarded to a coach of one of the teams selected for the All-USA football team.
 USA Today Road Warrior of the Year only presented once, to Joyce Gioia in 2013.

In popular culture

 A futuristic 2015 edition of USA Today (Hill Valley edition) is seen in the film Back to the Future Part II (1989). As a tribute to the movie, the newspaper ran a recreation of the front page, featuring the exact headlines portrayed in the movie (except for a piece mentioning a future state visit by "Queen Diana", the Princess having died in 1997), on October 22, 2015, when the protagonist Marty McFly (played by Michael J. Fox) travels to October 21, 2015, and reads the following day's edition of the paper.
 A 1991 episode of The Simpsons ("Homer Defined") featured a parody of the paper ("U.S. of A. News"), whose lead story was "#2 is #1", in reference to pencils. Lisa criticizes the paper's blandness, but Homer retorts that "Hey, this is the only paper in America that's not afraid to tell the truth, that everything is just fine."

See also
 USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter
 Viewtron
 :Category:USA Today journalists

References

Further reading

External links

Companies based in McLean, Virginia
Gannett publications
National newspapers published in the United States
Newspapers established in 1982
Daily newspapers published in the United States
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Daily newspapers published in Virginia
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USA Today


Edouard Lalo (born Lille, 27 January 1823; died Paris, 22 April 1892) was a French composer.

His life

His family originally came from Spain.  Edouard learned to play the piano and violin at the Lille Conservatory, but his parents did not want him to take music as a profession.  So he left home when he was 16 and went to Paris.  He took some lessons and earned money by teaching and playing the violin.  He liked chamber music.  Not many people in France were interested in chamber music at that time.  With three friends he formed a string quartet and they helped to make the string quartets of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven better known in France.  He played the viola in his quartet, and later he played second violin.  In 1859 he composed a string quartet.

It was not until the 1870s, when he was already in his 50s, that he started to become really well known.  Some famous conductors such as Pasdeloup, Lamoureux and Colonne and the violinist Sarasate took an interest in his orchestral works and performed them.  He wrote a violin concerto and a work called Symphonie espagnole (Spanish Symphony) which was also for solo violin and orchestra.  Sarasate played both these works.  He wrote a cello concerto in 1877.

He wrote an opera Le roi d'Ys, but no opera house wanted to perform it.  They asked him to write a ballet instead.  He did not know anything about ballet, but he composed one called Namouna.  It had some good music, although people who did not like him said it sounded like Wagner or like the music of someone who is used to writing symphonies.

In 1888 his opera Le roi d'Ys was performed at last.  It was an enormous success, but Lalo only had four more years to live, and he did not compose anything more of importance.  He had married one of his pupils in 1865 and they had a son.

His music
In France Lalo is mainly remembered for his opera Le roi d'Ys, but in other countries his best known work is his Symphonie espagnole.  It is not really a "symphony",  it is a violin concerto.  It has  five movements and there are lots of lively, Spanish rhythms.  His cello concerto is also an excellent work.

References
The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians ed. Stanley Sadie, 1980

1823 births
1892 deaths
19th-century French composers
Romantic composers
People from Lille

Edouard Lalo


Frank Ely Gaebelein (March 31, 1899 – January 19, 1983) was an American evangelical educator, author, and editor who was the founding headmaster of The Stony Brook School in Long Island, New York. He is the author of more than twenty books, and also served as editor for Our Hope (which later merged with Eternity), Christianity Today, and Eternity magazines, style editor for the translation committee of the New International Version of the Bible, and general editor for the 12-volume Expositor's Bible Commentary.

Early life and education

Gaebelein was born in Mount Vernon, New York, the youngest of three sons, to German immigrants Arno Clemens Gaebelein and Emma Fredericka (née Grimm) Gaebelein. His father was a noted preacher and outspoken early leader of the dispensationalist and fundamentalist movements. Frank graduated from Mount Vernon High School, where he was editor of the yearbook with E. B. White (later contributor to The New Yorker magazine and author of Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little). He earned his B.A. from New York University (1920), where he was the piano soloist performing with the University Glee Club. Gaebelein's studies were interrupted briefly in 1918 to serve in the U.S. Army, where he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. He earned his A.M. from Harvard University (1921), where he studied English and comparative literature. In 1923, Gaebelein married Dorothy Laura (née Medd), with whom he had three children: Dorothy Laura G. Hampton, Donn Medd, and Gretchen Elizabeth Gaebelein Hull (who later gave birth to artist Jeff Hull (1955), Dr. Rev. Sanford Hull (1956), and Meredyth Hull Smith (1957)).

Career
Shortly after graduating from Harvard in the spring of 1921, Gaebelein was approached by John F. Carson and Ford C. Ottman to be the headmaster of The Stony Brook School, which was an outgrowth of the Stony Brook Assembly. Frank Gaebelein began organizing The Stony Brook School, which opened in the fall of 1922. He held the position of headmaster for more than four decades. During this time, he also served as an ordained deacon and presbyter at the Reformed Episcopal Church. In 1954 he served as vice-chairman for Oxford University Press's preparation of the New Scofield Reference Bible. Toward the end of his tenure at Stony Brook, Gaebelein and the school came under pressure from fundamentalists because of their embracing "new evangelicalism". One of the leaders of this movement, Harold Ockenga, invited Gaebelein to be the dean of the newly founded Fuller Theological Seminary, an offer he considered but ultimately declined. Gaebelein served on the executive committee of evangelist Billy Graham's famous sixteen-week crusade at Madison Square Garden in 1957. Following the close of the crusade in September, Graham visited Stony Brook and spoke to a crowd of 6,000 on the campus. It was due to this that the Stony Brook Assembly ceased its summer conferences, which had been conducted on the campus since 1909.

After retiring from Stony Brook in 1963, Gaebelein joined Carl F. H. Henry as co-editor of Christianity Today. While covering the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches during the Civil Rights Movement, he was criticized for abandoning his role as a reporter and joining as a protester. In 1968 he served as style committee chairman for the New International Version of the Bible. From 1969 to 1972, Gaebelein was director of the faculty summer seminar on faith and learning at Wheaton College of Illinois. In 1971, he took on the role as general editor for the Expositor's Bible Commentary, an endeavor he continued until his death (supervising, in order of publication, volumes 10, 11, 1, 9, and 12).

Death and legacy
In October 1982, Gaebelein attended the dedication of the Frank E. Gaebelein Hall at The Stony Brook School. In November 1982, he underwent a double bypass surgery, and never fully recovered. Gaebelein died two months later at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Published works
Down Through the Ages: The Story of the King James Bible (1924)
A Brief Survey of Scripture (1929)
Exploring the Bible: a study of background and principles (1929)
The Hollow Queen (1933)
Facing the Fact of Inspiration (1933)
From a Headmaster's Study (1935)
Philemon: The gospel of Emancipation: A Narrative and Devotional Commentary (1939)
Looking Unto Him: A Message for Each Day (1941)
The Christian Use of the Bible (1946)
The Servant and the Dove: Obadiah and Jonah, Their Messages and Their Work (1946)
The Meaning of Inspiration (1950)
The Story of the King James Bible (1950)
"Rutherford Today" in Samuel Rutherford, 1600-1661 (1950)
Christian Education in a Democracy (1951)
The Pattern of God's Truth (1954)
The Practical Epistle of James: Studies in Applied Christianity (1955)
"The Bible College in American Education" School and Society, 87, 223 (1959)
The Story of the Scofield Reference Bible, 1909-1959 (1959)
Commitment and the School Community (Ed.) (1960)
Toward a Philosophy of Christian Education: An Introduction to Evangelical Christian Education (Ed.) (1964)
A Christianity Today Reader (1966)
A Varied Harvest: Out of a Teacher's Life and Thought: A collection of Essays (1967)
The New Scofield Reference Bible: Its Background and Making (1967)
Christianity Today (Ed.) (1968)
The Pattern of God's Truth: Problems of Integration in Christian Education (1968)
Faith That Lives: From the Practical Epistle of James (1969)
Four Minor Prophets, Obadiah, Jonah, Habakkuk, and Haggai: Their Message for Today (1970)
From Day to Day: A Message from the Bible for Each Day of the Year (1975)
The Expositor's Bible Commentary (1976–1992)
The Christian, the Arts, and Truth: Regaining the Vision of Greatness (1985)
"What is Truth in Art?" in The Christian Imagination: Essays on Literature and the Arts (1986)

References

1899 births
1983 deaths
20th-century evangelicals
20th-century translators
American biblical scholars
American evangelicals
American people of German descent
American Reformed Episcopalians
American religious writers
American school administrators
Educators from New York (state)
Evangelical Anglican biblical scholars
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
New York University alumni
People from Stony Brook, New York
Translators of the Bible into English
Writers from Mount Vernon, New York

Frank E. Gaebelein


Mok-dong is a district in Yangcheongu, Seoul. It is in the northern west part of Yangcheon District and shares borders with Yeongdeungpo District Yanpyeongdong on its east, Shinjeongdong on its north, and Yeomchangdong on its southern north. As a typical agricultural areas in the past, it was made of small communities. In the 1970s, it started to develop as a large scale housing area. After the 1960s and 1970s, there used to be ghettos around the Anyangcheon bank formed by people who were dispossessed of their belongings and those who had moved there from rural areas, but the spots disappeared since the new town layout. The Mok-dong new town layout was announced in 1983, and completed in 1988.

Mok-dong is famous for being the number two private education center after Gangnam. Subway stations Omokgyo line five and ShinMokdong line nine are located there. Major facilities of the district include Mokdong Stadium, Anyangcheon, Yongwang mountain park, the Christian broadcasting station, SBS, and the Paris Park.

Mokdong Ice Rink

The rink opened on December 1, 1989. It is 30x61m, which is the international ice rink standard on its ground and basement floors. On the second floor there are 5,000 audience seats. Around the ground floor rink there are 10 skater waiting rooms, a restaurant with room for 200, 2 snack bars, changing rooms, training rooms, 2 skating equipment stores, and one ice hockey equipment store. Opening hours are from 14:00 to 18:00 Mondays through Saturdays and 12:00 to 18:00 on Sundays and national holidays.

Anyangcheon (Anyang stream)

The stream rises from Anyang temple in the Samseong mountain, hence the name Anyangcheon. A stream with its source in the Samseong mountain (三聖山), Hakeu stream (鶴儀川) from the Baekun mountain (白雲山), and Sanbon stream from (山本川) from Gunpo join in Seoksudong, Anyang and flow northward. The stream passes Gwangmyeong and Geumcehon, Guro, and Yeongdeungpo disctricts of Seoul and flow into Han River passing from the western side of Seongsan bridge.

Yongwangsan Park

The park was selected as the first park of Mokdong in August 1971, in an announcement by the Minister of Construction. It was developed into a city park from 1989. The park is on a hill and enjoyed by residents as a place to relax. It offers 3 types of walking courses, 2 pavilions, 28 chairs, 3 entertainment equipment. Activity facilities include 4 badminton courts, 24 gyms and 2 drinking fountains. 120 thousand visits are made per year.

Ewha Women's University Mok-dong Hospital

Mok-dong hospital is a patient-oriented hospital and provides specialized treatment of illness through a comprehensive medical testing center, medical emergency center, cardiovascular center, hematinic cell transplant center, and a cerebral nerve center for better medical quality and service improvement. The hospital also runs a breast center, obesity clinic, and a female urology clinic for the treatment of women.

Cities in South Korea

Mok-dong


Lawrence Edward Walsh (January 8, 1912 – March 19, 2014) was an American lawyer, a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and United States Deputy Attorney General who was appointed Independent Counsel in December 1986 to investigate the Iran–Contra affair during the Reagan Administration.

Early life and career

Walsh was born in Port Maitland, Nova Scotia, Canada, the son of Cornelius Edward (1879–1927) and Lila May (Sanders) Walsh. His father was a family doctor and his grandfather was a sea captain. Walsh grew up in Queens, New York, and became a naturalized citizen at the age of 10. He graduated from Flushing High School.

Walsh received his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1932 and a law degree from Columbia Law School in 1935. After graduating from law school, he served a varied career in public life, including as special assistant attorney general of Drukman Investigation from 1936 to 1938 and as a deputy assistant district attorney of New York County from 1938 to 1941. After a period in private practice of law in New York City from 1941 to 1943, he served as assistant counsel to New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey from 1943 to 1949 and as Counsel to the Governor from 1950 to 1951. He was a Counsel for the Public Service Commission from 1951 to 1953, and the general counsel and Executive Director of the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor from 1953 to 1954.

Federal judicial service

Walsh was nominated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on April 6, 1954, to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, to a new seat authorized by 68 Stat. 8. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on April 27, 1954, and received his commission the next day. His service terminated on December 29, 1957, due to his resignation, having served only three and one-half years as a judge.

Later career

After his resignation from the federal bench, Walsh served as Deputy Attorney General in the Eisenhower administration from 1957 to 1960. Thereafter, Walsh resumed the private practice of law in New York City, where he practiced from 1961 to 1981 as a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell. During this period, he worked on the Bendectin litigation and represented companies such as General Motors and AT&T. In 1969, on the recommendation of his former boss, Secretary of State and former Attorney General William P. Rogers, Walsh was named as an ambassador in the United States Delegation to the Paris Peace Talks in 1969, but held the position for only a short period of time. He served as president of the American Bar Association from 1975 until 1976. In 1981, approaching Davis Polk's mandatory retirement age, Walsh moved his practice to his wife's hometown of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where he joined the firm of Crowe & Dunlevy.

Independent Counsel

On December 19, 1986, Walsh was named as the independent counsel in charge of the Iran-Contra investigation. His investigation led to the convictions of both former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Vice Admiral John Poindexter and former NSC staffer Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, though both convictions were subsequently reversed. Walsh also brought an indictment on two counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice against former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger in June 1992. That September, one count, obstruction of justice, was dismissed.

On the eve of the 1992 presidential election, on October 30, Walsh obtained a grand jury re-indictment of Weinberger on one count of false statements. One phrase in that superseding indictment referred to President George H. W. Bush. Some believe that Bush had been closing the gap with Bill Clinton, and that this event stopped his momentum. Clinton administration attorney Lanny Davis called the decision to indict a week before the election rather than after the election "bizarre." Judge Thomas F. Hogan dismissed the October indictment two months later for being outside the statute of limitations. Weinberger's subsequent pardon by President George H. W. Bush in December 1992 preempted any trial. Walsh steadfastly denied that the investigation was politically motivated, while Bush and others criticized it as "the criminalization of policy differences."

Walsh submitted his final report on August 4, 1993, and later wrote an account of his experiences as counsel, Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up.  In 2003, Walsh published his autobiography, The Gift of Insecurity:  A Lawyer's Life.

Walsh was the model for the hero of Jacob Appel's novel, The Biology of Luck (2013).  Walsh described having a fictional character based upon him as "flattering" during an August 2013 interview.

Personal life and death

In his senior year of college, Walsh began to date Maxine Winton of Tampa, Florida, a former Barnard College student then attending Columbia Business School. They were married from 1936 until her death from cancer, at age 52, in 1964. In 1965, Walsh married Mary Alma Porter; they were married until her death on December 22, 2012. He was the father of five children — Barbara, Janet, Dale, Sara and Elizabeth.

On January 8, 2012, Walsh celebrated his 100th birthday. On March 19, 2014, Walsh died at the age of 102 in Oklahoma City.

See also
 List of centenarians (jurists and practitioners of law)

References

Sources

 Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters

Walsh, a Democrat who often served under Republicans, is no stranger to controversy.

External links
 Finding aid to the Lawrence E. Walsh Papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library

|-

1912 births
2014 deaths
20th-century American judges
American centenarians
Canadian emigrants to the United States
Canadian centenarians
Columbia College (New York) alumni
Columbia Law School alumni
Davis Polk & Wardwell lawyers
Flushing High School alumni
Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
Lawyers from New York City
Lawyers from Oklahoma City
Men centenarians
Naturalized citizens of the United States
People from Yarmouth County
Special prosecutors
United States Deputy Attorneys General
United States district court judges appointed by Dwight D. Eisenhower

Lawrence Walsh


The National People's Army (NPA; , NVA) was the armed forces of East Germany.

The NPA was founded on 1 March 1956. It developed from the Kasernierte Volkspolizei (Barracked People's Police), which was started in 1952. Serving with the army was voluntary at first. Conscription was introduced on 24 January 1962. Conscription was for male citizens between the ages of 18 and 26. If they were selected, they had to serve in the NPA for 18 months. The NVA was at its largest in 1987. It had about 175,000 soldiers at this time.

The NVA was modeled on Soviet military philosophy. Its leadership and operations were governed by the officer corp. The non-commissioned officer corps was limited in terms of authority and responsibility, unlike in the West German army. There were also political officers throughout the NVA, whose job it was to guarantee the loyalty of the military to the ruling political party.

Organization
The NVA was made up of four main branches:
 The Landstreitkräfte (Land Forces) with a strength of 120,000 soldiers.
 The Volksmarine (People's Navy) with a strength of 16,300 sailors.
 The Luftstreitkräfte/Luftverteidigung (Air Forces/Air Defense) with a strength of 39,000 airmen.
 The Grenztruppen der DDR (Border Troops of the GDR) with a strength of 50,000 border guards.

The NVA also had a large number of reserve and paramilitary forces. These could be called to serve during a crisis.

The NVA was merged into the Bundeswehr in October 1990 upon the reunification of Germany. The merging of the two German militaries was not done equally. Many non-commissioned officers and almost all commissioned officers were not accepted into the Bundeswehr. Instead, they were discharged from service. Those who were given a place in the Bundeswehr were usually demoted by one rank. Most of the barracks were closed and much of the NVA's equipment was sold or donated to other nations.

East Germany
1956 establishments in Europe
1950s establishments in Germany

German military organizations

National People's Army


Ralph Dale Earnhardt, Sr. (Aprile 29, 1951 – Februar 18, 2001) wis an American racin driver, best kent for his career drivin stock caurs in NASCAR's top division.

Earnhardt is notable for his success in the Winston Cup Series (nou the Sprint Cup Series), winnin seiventy-sax races (includin ane Daytona 500 victory in 1998). Earnhardt's seiven championships ar tied for maist aw-time wi Richard Petty. His aggressive drivin style led tae controversy an earned him the nickname "The Intimidator".

Earnhardt dee'd in a last-lap crash durin the 2001 Daytona 500. He haes been inductit in numerous halls o fame, includin the inaugural cless o the NASCAR Hall o Fame.

1951 births
2001 daiths
20t-century American racin drivers
21st-century American racin drivers
24 Oors o Daytona drivers
Accidental daiths in Florida
American fowk o Inglis strynd
American fowk o German strynd
American fowk o Erse strynd
American Speed Association drivers
Buirials in North Carolina
Dale Sr
Filmed daiths in sports
International Motorsports Hall of Fame inductees
International Race of Champions drivers
Motorsports Hall of Fame of America inductees
NASCAR Cup Series champions
NASCAR drivers
NASCAR team awners
Fowk frae Kannapolis, North Carolina
Racin drivers frae North Carolina
Racin drivers killt while racin
Rolex Sports Car Series drivers
Sports daiths in Florida

Dale Earnhardt


Gilbert White (18 July 1720 – 26 June 1793) was a pioneering English naturalist and ornithologist.

Early life and education
White was born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire. He was educated by a private tutor in Basingstoke before going to Oriel College, Oxford University. He obtained his deacon's orders in 1746, being fully ordained in 1749.

Then he held several curacies in Hampshire and Wiltshire, including Selbourne. White also held the office of Junior Proctor at Oxford and was Dean of Oriel College. In 1784 he became curate of Selborne for the last time, remaining so until his death.

Publications
White is best known for The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789). This was a collection of his letters to Thomas Pennant, the leading British zoologist of the day, and the Hon. Daines Barrington, an English barrister and Fellow of the Royal Society. These letters contained White's discoveries on local birds, animals and plants. White believed in observing birds rather than collecting specimens. He was one of the first people to separate the similar-looking Chiffchaff, Willow Warbler and Wood Warbler by means of their song.

White is regarded by many as England's first ecologist and one of the founders of modern respect for nature.

White, Gilbert 1789. The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, in the County of Southampton: with engravings and an appendix. London: Printed by T. Bensley; for B. White and Son.

White, Gilbert 1795. A Naturalist's Calendar, with observations in various branches of natural history, extracted from the papers of the late Rev. Gilbert White of Selborne, Hampshire, Senior Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. Never before published. London: printed for B. and J. White, Horace's Head, Fleet Street. This posthumous collection of previously unpublished material was put together by J. Aikin.

1720 births
1793 deaths
Church of England clergy
British ecologists
English science writers
English naturalists
People from Hampshire

Gilbert White


A Mini CD is a Compact disc that is of smaller size, usually 8 cm, instead of 12 cm, for regular CDs. These CDs can hold less data, about 210 Megabytes, or 24 minutes of music. There is also a version which can only hold 155 MB of data, or 18 minutes of music. Mini Cds also come in the shape and size of a business card, these can hold between 10 and 100 MB of data.

Compact Disc

Mini CD


Jean Sibelius (born Hämeenlinna (Tavastehus) 8 December 1865; died Järvenpää, 20 September 1957) was a Finnish composer. He is one of the most famous people from Finland and one of the greatest composers of symphonies of all time. He was born at a time when Russia had a lot of power in Finland and the Finnish people were trying hard to keep their own culture and their independence. This nationalism can be heard in a lot of his music, especially some of the choral music. After 1928 he composed very little. He lived in retirement in his home in the Finnish countryside.

His life

Early life
Jean (pronounced the French way) was born 100 km north of the Finnish capital Helsinki. His grandfather had changed the family name from a Finnish name to the Latin-sounding "Sibelius". His father died during a cholera epidemic when Jean was very young. His family spoke Swedish at home, but when he was eleven he went to a Finnish-speaking school. He learned to play the violin and wanted to be a soloist. He loved reading the Kalevala which was a long epic poem about the old Finnish legends. He also loved the Swedish-speaking poets who wrote poems about nature.

In 1885 he went to Helsinki to study law but he soon gave up law and concentrated on his violin studies and composition. He went to Berlin to continue his music studies. He became good friends with the pianist and composer Ferruccio Busoni and went with him to Leipzig. At this time he had mainly written chamber music. In Vienna he had lessons from Karl Goldmark and heard lots of orchestral music. He spent a lot of his money, much of it on drink which was to be a big problem for him for many years.

Early success

He went back to Finland in 1891. He earned money by teaching. He wrote a big work for orchestra and singers called Kullervo . The words were in Finnish, the story was from the poem Kalevala. This work made him famous.

In 1892 he married Aino Järnefelt. Her father was a general and very keen on the Finnish language. The Finnish were trying more and more at this time to be free of rule by Russia. Sibelius wrote more patriotic music during the 1890s e.g. the tone poem En Saga and the Lemminkäinen legends which include the popular The Swan of Tuonela. His patriotic tone poem Finlandia is still very popular today. His music at this time was influenced by Wagner and Tchaikovsky. He also heard Finnish folk melodies and, although he does not use them directly in his music, they became part of his musical language. In 1897 he was given a state pension which helped him financially although for many years he was still very often short of money because he had expensive tastes.

Mature years

Between 1899 and 1924 Sibelius composed the 7 symphonies which made him famous worldwide. His friend, the conductor Kajanus, conducted Sibelius's works when he took the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra on tour around Europe. His wife was becoming worried about how much alcohol he was drinking in Helsinki, so 1903 she persuaded him to move the family to a place called Ainola in the Finnish countryside. They had a house built in Järvenpää. Apart from a few short periods in Helsinki he spent the rest of his life there. The first works he wrote there were his Symphony no 2 and the Violin Concerto . He became seriously ill in 1908 and for several years he had to stop smoking cigars and drinking alcohol. He continued to travel and visited England several times and the United States in 1914 where he was very popular. After the war he continued to write more symphonies as well as some short, light pieces. The last great work that he wrote was the tone-poem Tapiola in 1926. He tried to write another symphony (no 8) but gave up and destroyed it. He never wrote any more music. He continued to live in retirement in his house in the Finnish country for another 30 years. He died of a brain hemorrhage. The house is now a Sibelius museum.

Family life
Sibelius's wife Aino came from a highly respectable family. Although her father was a general in the army, there was a very great interest in culture in the Järnefeld family which included musicians, painters and poets. Jean fell in love with Aino on his first visit to her home. Aino was to be a faithful wife to him all his life, although she suffered a lot of hardship due to his drinking problems and his debts. They had five daughters.

His works

Sibelius is best known for his symphonies and tone-poems. His symphonies are very different from one another, none can be described as being "typical" of his style. The early symphonies are Romantic in character, in the later symphonies he tries out lots of new ideas and sounds. His Violin Concerto is played by all the great violinists. Sibelius wrote lots of songs for voice and piano. These are mostly settings of Swedish poems. He also wrote many choral works, mostly in Finnish. These vocal works are not so well known outside Finland because the language is not familiar abroad, but there are some very good songs, especially Luonnotar. Besides his important works he also wrote many short works in order to earn enough money to live. These include songs as well as many short piano pieces.

Sibelius's music today is extremely popular. His music has also been an influence on recent composers.

References

 "Sibelius" by Andrew Barnett, 2007;

1865 births
1957 deaths
20th-century composers
Finnish composers

Jean Sibelius


This is an article about vascular tissue in plants. For transport in animals, see Circulatory system.

Vascular tissue is a complex tissue found in vascular plants. Complex means that it is composed of more than one cell type.

The primary components of vascular tissue are the xylem and phloem. These two tissues transport fluid and nutrients internally. There is a meristem associated with vascular tissue: the vascular cambium. All the vascular tissues within a particular plant together constitute the vascular tissue system of that plant.

Related pages
Xylem
Phloem
Vascular plant

Vascular tissue


Ceredigion (Welsh: Sir Ceredigion) is a principal area of Wales, corresponding to the historic county of Cardiganshire.

It has been administered as a county since 1282.

Welsh is spoken by more than half of the area's population.

It is considered to be a centre of Welsh culture.

The county is mainly rural with over 50 miles (80 km) of coastline and mountainous terrain.

Ceredigion


Town privileges were important things. They were special treaties or royal charters used in the Middle Ages. In such a charter, a sovereign, a monarch granted the town or city special rights. These usually included
The right to have a market, to form guilds
Some freedoms, like to determine the government of the town or city, or to judge criminals.
Some people who permanently lived in the town or city (called Burghers) had special rights. Getting these rights was a special privilege (and not granted to everyone).
Many of those charters were very similar. In the end, only few charters remained in use. Notable ones in the territory of modern-day Germany  include the  Lübeck law, the Magdeburg rights and the Kulm law.

Middle Ages

Town privileges